Psalm 4:6 There be many that say, Who will show us any good? LORD, lift you up the light of your countenance on us. This question forms the complaint of many sinful, or mistaken men. 1. It may be asked by the misanthropist. Whatever such persons contemplate is viewed, not only with an expectation, but an intention, to spy out imperfection or deformity. Habits of moroseness and suspicion will contaminate the purest actions. 2. Another vain inquirer after good is the sceptic, and minute philosopher. Surrounded with mists, or dazzled with excess of light, they can never see their way clearly. Every question begets a string of possibilities. Such persons often enter into tedious and perplexed labyrinths of thought, which terminate in no practical result. 3. Another is the voluptuary, and the mere man of the world. Those who, at their first outset, so far mistake the road, as to suppose that the gratifications of sense, or the vanities of ambition, can constitute the happiness of a creature that was formed for immortality, must, in a short time, expect to be disappointed. The pleasures of novelty soon grow familiar, and those of appetite are quickly cloyed. 4. The melancholy inquiry may express the desponding complaint of those who have suffered much, and who seem to sorrow without hope. We are all children of discipline, passing through this land of shadows into a state of immortality, in which we must give account of the things done in the body. Let me advise everybody, who feels this evil doubt and despondency gathering round his mind, to approach the throne of grace with the short but energetic prayer of the holy Psalmist, "Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us." (J. Hewlett, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: There be many that say, Who will shew us any good? LORD, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.WEB: Many say, "Who will show us any good?" Yahweh, let the light of your face shine on us. |
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