Psalms 119:140

Thy Word is very pure; therefore Thy servant loveth it.

Religious affections spring from love to Divine things

1. A love to Divine things for the beauty of their moral excellency is the spring of all holy affections.

2. There is given to believers a new, supernatural sense, which perceives the beauty of holiness and is affected thereby. A holy object calls out a holy affection. The beauty and sweetness of holiness as found in God forms the grand object of a spiritual taste and appetite.

3. This moral beauty in God leads to the adoration of God by saint and angel.

Conclusions.

1. By this all may try their affections, their love and their joy. Graceless persons see no beauty in holy things.

2. The natural mind may have a great sense of God’s greatness, wisdom and power: that is, of His natural attributes.

3. This sense of the natural mind may affect men in various ways--fill them with awe and terror, or with joy and praise. Hence too much stress may be placed upon the mere natural discoveries of the natural attributes in God. Man may be overwhelmed by a sense of God’s greatness and majesty, and yet be without a particle of love to Divine things. But to the spiritual mind the natural attributes of God are all the more engaging because they are supplemented by His moral attributes.

4. And so, I may add, what love to Divine things do those possess who seem to be filled with worldliness, and are so fond of operas, theatres and frivolous amusements? (Homiletic Review.)

God’s Word tried to the uttermost

(P. B. Version:--Notice a few of the ways in which the Word of God has been tried and found perfect.

I. By prophecy. Things, and events, and persons have been foretold and described in it with the minutest detail, and they have all in due time been accomplished; as the seed of the woman predicted in Paradise, the deluge, the birth of Isaac, and Abraham’s numerous posterity, the respective characters of Jacob and Esau, the future history of the twelve tribes, foretold by Jacob on his death-bed, the prophet like unto Moses, the 430 years of Israel’s wanderings, the deliverance from Egypt, and possession of Palestine, etc.

II. By miracles. Tried to the uttermost has the Word of God been by miracles of every variety, performed on every element, on the living and the dead, on fire and water, on Satan and his legions, on disease, the brute creation, and especially by the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord.

III. By persecution. Satan and wicked men have often tried to quench this spirit from Heaven. As Ahab hated Michaiah, and for the same reason, because “he told him the truth,” men have fettered and silenced and destroyed the Word of God. Jehoiakim was not the only one who cut and burnt the sacred Scriptures. It has been tried to the uttermost in the furnace of persecution, and the result is that it is “very pure,” proved more manifestly than ever to be from heaven.

IV. By science.

V. By experience. Thousands, millions have proved it to be God’s power unto salvation. It has enlightened, renewed, comforted, and saved them. (John Harding, D. D.)