Praise With Uprightness of Heart

“Praise” is causative and translates a word that refers to the giving of thanks.  However, it also is translated praise and confess in its various uses in the Old Testament.  The primary meaning is to acknowledge or confess sin or God or man’s character.  The stress is on the recognition of the truth as opposed to the proclamation or verbal recitation of that sin or character.

The writer is saying that when he learns to Word he will be enabled to see and acknowledge his sin, namely the shortfall of his character as opposed to God’s character revealed in the Bible.

“I will” speaks of both the enablement such learning gives and the deliberate intent of the will that such learning will motivate.  Before he knew what the Word informs him, he was unable, not to mention ill-equipped to recognize and acknowledge the truth of his situation.  Additionally, apart from the enablement that comes from the learning of the commandments of God, there is not willingness to praise God or to confess our sin.  Those things must be revealed to us else we will never see them, and would not acknowledge them if we did.

Both of these ideas are true and are critical.  We are not able to repeat and confess and we would not were we able to in the first place.  This leaves man completely without excuse and fully dependent on God for any kind of response to God’s Word.  Remember that the context here is that of both the positive idea of obedience and the negative idea of abstaining from sin.  Both come by means of learning the Word.

It is within the capability and is surely the desire of the genuine believer to recognize and confess his or her sin and failures in character.  The reason he can do this is because he can understand and apply the Word when God teaches him whereas the unredeemed cannot.

“Uprightness” is straightness or that which is made straight.  It literally means “to go straight or direct in the way”.  It speaks of a path that is both direct and free from obstacles.  The Word has the power to cleanse the heart and make the way straight so that there is no impediment to the praise and worship of God.

We ought to note that there is nothing else that has this capacity.  Man thinks that other things have this capacity – but he is mistaken and all of his efforts lead only to failure and frustration.  Only failure and frustration.  Only God and His Word can correctly diagnose and prescribe for the human condition.  There is no other acceptable alternative – it is submission to the Word or nothing!

“The heart” once again refers to the innermost part of man.  It is the most significant part, spiritually.  It is also the most complex and inaccessible part of man.  Only God can make such parts “straight”!  And that says nothing of the tremendous power of the Word to make such complex and impossible parts straight to begin with.  What a marvelous God we serve and what marvelous wonders He can perform!!

All of this by the “learning” of the “judgments” of God.  “Learning” refers to being taught.  The idea behind the word is that of training as well as educating.  This is an acknowledgement on the writer’s part that such knowledge arises from outside of himself.  He must be educated and/or trained, as must we all.  Such knowledge and capacity does not arise from our own breast, but from the precious Word as we are taught by God’s Holy Spirit things that we would not have otherwise known.