God's grace our best safeguard.
"So will not we go back from thee." This assurance implies that the people, in whose name the psalmist speaks, had fully learned the lesson which God designed to teach them by the withdrawal, which was chastisement, and involved bitter distress and humiliation. They had turned to God, and God had turned, in mercy and in restoring grace, to them. The issue of bitter experience was, that the people desired to be steadfast servants of God henceforth. Compare the psalmist's personal exclamation, "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now will I keep thy word." But there is a yet deeper sign of their return to right mindedness. They do not merely make a promise, "So will not we go back from thee;" they acknowledge that they need Divine help in the endeavour to keep their promise. They go on to say, "Quicken us, and we will call upon thy Name." That is the supreme lesson which the discipline and the chastisement of life are to teach us—our entire dependence on the Divine grace and upholding.
I. THE PROMISE MADE BY THE DISCIPLINED. A promise of steadfastness. The disciples of Christ went back, and walked no more with him, because his higher, spiritual truth was beyond their reach; and, as they could not apprehend it, they were offended by it. But these Israelites had wavered in their allegiance to Jehovah, because they wanted to "follow the devices and desires of their own hearts." So the result of their discipline was that most hopefully humiliating thing, the abating of self-confidence. They felt their need of God, their dependence on God, and made their resolves that henceforth they would cleave closely to him. So far good. Resolves are good; but everything depends on the spirit in which they are made. Trust in the resolve soon ends in worse failure.
II. THE HOPE OF KEEPING THEIR PROMISE, WHICH THE DISCIPLINED MIGHT CHERISH. The hope that God's grace would be their inspiration and support. They pray, "Quicken us," which not only means, "Give us life," but, "Renew to us life;" "Ever keep up the energizing, the vitalizing, and the controlling." Life expresses exactly that which we need, to change barren resolve into constant, active, and holy endeavour. We need never fear "going back," if God will graciously quicken us. That grace is our sure defence from our weak selves.—R.T.
HOMILIES BY C. SHORT