My Summer with Psalm 119 #19

As a few of you know, I love, love, LOVE Psalm 119. I thought it would be great to spend a summer focusing on that psalm and what others have had to say about it. I'll begin with Thomas Manton's Exposition of Psalm 119. It may take all summer to read all 158 sermons. But they're so GOOD, so RICH, I think it will be worth it.

Sermon 26 (Psalm 119:25)

• We are weak, and God will not overburden us. There is a great deal of the wisdom and love of God seen in the measure of the cross, and in the nature and kind of it. We have no cause to say our belly cleaveth to the dust, or that we are pressed above measure. God giveth us only a gentle remembrance. If brought upon our knees, we are not brought upon our faces.
• It is no small ease that we have a God to go to, to whom we may freely open our minds.
• God can quicken us when we are as good as dead, because he is the well-spring of life and comfort. Other things give us life, but as water scaldeth when it is the instrument of heat; but God alone can help us. God is the great quickener: That I might trust in him that raiseth the dead;’ and I am the resurrection and the life.’
• God’s power is exercised when glorified by faith and dependence.
• The point is this— That God’s children need often to go to God for quickening, because they often lie under deadness of heart, and therefore should desire God, who is the fountain of grace, to emit and send forth his influence. They need this quickening—(1.) By reason of their constant weakness; (2.) Their frequent indispositions and distempers of soul.
• Grace is like a spark in wet wood, that needs continual blowing.
• God giveth out influences according to his will or pleasure, but we must still stir up ourselves.
• We never relish the comfort of the promises till the creatures have spent their allowance, and we have been exercised. God will keep his word, and yet we must expect to be tried.
• Show him his handwriting; God is tender of his word. These arguings in prayer are not to work upon God, but ourselves.
• It is pleasing to him when we desire him to renew his work, and bring forth the actings of grace in their vigour and lustre. And let us acknowledge divine grace if there be strong actings of faith and love towards God. He is to be owned in his work.

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible