Psalms 119:55,56

Psalms 119:55

I. The keeping of God's law is promoted by the remembering of God's name. The name of God includes all the attributes of God. (1) If I remember the attributes of God, I must remember amongst them a power before which every created thing must do homage; and if I couple with the memory of this power the thought that the undying principle I carry within me must become hereafter an organ of infinite pleasure or of infinite pain, subject as it will be to the irreversible allotments of this power, what is there which can more nerve me to obedience than the remembering God's name? (2) Or suppose that it was the love of God which was specially present to the Psalmist's mind. Who will step forward and produce a motive to Christian obedience which shall be half as stirring as the sense of having been loved with an everlasting love, and embraced from all eternity by the compassions of the Almighty?

II. Consider how the keeper of God's law is rewarded by keeping it. "I have kept Thy law. This I had, because I kept Thy precepts." While God puts man in a state of grace and afterwards keeps him there, man has a great deal to do with his own progress in grace. The Christian life is a race; no man can start in it unless he has an impulse from God: but once started, he may linger if he will, or he may press onwards if he will. Where grace is improved, more grace is imparted. If the more the Christian keeps the more he finds he has to keep, then keeping one part of the law is clearly preparatory to keeping another. From keeping we are led on to keep. If the keeping of the precepts do thus lead to the keeping of the precepts, every Christian may discern that there is a present reward allotted to those that strive after obedience; and increasing conformity to the image of Christ is that great privilege of the believer which, commencing in time, shall be completed in eternity.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2292.

Although the grace and mercy of the Holy Ghost is indeed free, all-powerful, sovereign, "blowing," as our Lord said, "where it listeth," there is yet a certain frame and temper, certain habits of conduct and behaviour, a certain disposition and preparation of heart and mind, which is likely, if not sure, wherever it is found, to draw down God's further blessing on him who has it. It is itself the good gift of God; and it prepares the way for other and better gifts. This rule and law of God's working is wonderfully illustrated by the manner in which the Gospel was first made known to the Gentiles, and the door of the kingdom of heaven thrown open, by the extension of the gift of the Holy Ghost to them also. This we read in the history of Cornelius, part of which is the Epistle for this day.

I. We see the sort of person whom the Lord delights to honour when we look at Cornelius's condition and observe under how many drawbacks and difficulties, the like of which are too commonly found enough to discourage almost any one, he contrived to be an acceptable worshipper. (1) He was not a Jew, but a Gentile, not one of God's people, but a heathen. Who can express the amount of this disadvantage? (2) He was a soldier, a pursuit and way of life not thought in general particularly favourable to the exercise of true devotion. Yet he was a devout man, and used himself to serve God, with all his house.

II. Consider the sort of service which Almighty God is likely to bless and approve in persons unfavourably situated, as Cornelius was. (1) He was a devout man, and lived in a sense of God's presence. (2) He served God, with all his house. No doubt he brought on himself the wonder, and sometimes the laughter, of his associates in the Roman army; but still he went on praying himself, and teaching and encouraging his servants to pray. (3) To his prayers he added both alms and fasting the two wings, as they are called, of prayer. This part of Scripture teaches that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, every condition, under every sort of disadvantage, he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness will surely be accepted of Him.

Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times"vol. ii., p. 118.

References: Psalms 119:57. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiii., No. 1372; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 134.Psalms 119:58. J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons,p. 198.