CENTRAL GRACE CHURCH

Central Grace Church

3596 Franklin Street Rocky Mount, Virginia

August 25^th 2024

10:00 am -------------------------------Let Us Fear, Labour, Hold Fast – Hebrews 4

Wednesday: 7:00 pm ----------- Blessed Meek, Hungry, Merciful & Pure – Matthew 5:6-8

Prayer

“When thou prayest, rather be thy heart without words than thy words without heart.” – John Bunyan

“When God intends great mercy for His people, the first thing He does is set them a-praying.” – Matthew Henry

“He who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find Him the rest of the day.” – Bunyan

“There is nothing that makes us love our brother so much as praying for him.” – William Law

“Abandon prayer and your spiritual life will decay.” – Isaac Watts

“To ask in ‘the name of Christ’ . . . is to set aside our own will and bow to the perfect will of God.” – Arthur Pink

“Men of God are always men of prayer.” – Henry Mahan

“Since without Christ we can do nothing; we should do nothing without Christ.”

Theirs is The Kingdom of Heaven – Matthew 5:3,10

The Christian and the non-Christian belong to two entirely different realms. You will notice the first Beatitude (blessing) and the last Beatitude promise the same reward, `for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' What does this mean? Our Lord starts and ends with it because it is His way of saying that the first thing you have to realize about yourself is that you belong to a different kingdom. You are not only different in essence; you are living in two absolutely different worlds. You are in this world; but you are not of it. You are among those other people, yes; but you are citizens of another kingdom. -- M. Lloyd Jones

The Blessed Man – Psalm 1:1-2, Spurgeon’s Treasury of David

"BLESSED"—see how this Book of Psalms opens with a benediction, even as did the famous Sermon of our Lord upon the Mount! The word translated "blessed" is a very expressive one. Hence we may learn the multiplicity of the blessings which shall rest upon the man whom God hath justified, and the perfection and greatness of the blessedness he shall enjoy. May the like benediction rest on us!

Here the gracious man is described both negatively (verse 1) and positively (verse 2). He is a man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly. He takes wiser counsel, and walks in the commandments of the Lord his God. To him the ways of piety are paths of peace and pleasantness. His footsteps are ordered by the Word of God, and not by the cunning and wicked devices of carnal men. It is a rich sign of inward grace when the outward walk is changed, and when ungodliness is put far from our actions. Note next, he standeth not in the way of sinners. His company is of a choicer sort than it was. Although a sinner himself, he is now a blood-washed sinner, quickened by the Holy Spirit, and renewed in heart. Standing by the rich grace of God in the congregation of the righteous, he dares not herd with the multitude that do evil. Again it is said, "nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful." He finds no rest in the atheist's scoffings. Let others make a mock of sin, of eternity, of hell and heaven, and of the Eternal God; this man has learned better philosophy than that of the infidel, and has too much sense of God's presence to endure to hear His name blasphemed. The seat of the scorner may be very lofty, but it is very near to the gate of hell; let us flee from it, for it shall soon be empty, and destruction shall swallow up the man who sits therein. Mark the gradation in the first verse: He walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly . . Nor standeth in the way of sinners . . Nor sitteth in the seat of scornful.

When men are living in sin they go from bad to worse. At first they merely walk in the counsel of the careless and ungodly, who forget God—the evil is rather practical than habitual—but after that, they become habituated to evil, and they stand in the way of open sinners who wilfully violate God's commandments; and if let alone, they go one step further, and become themselves pestilent teachers and tempters of others, and thus they sit in the seat of the scornful. They have taken their degree in vice, and as true Doctors of Damnation they are installed, and are looked up to by others as Masters in Belial. But the blessed man, the man to whom all the blessings of God belong, can hold no communion with such characters as these. He keeps himself pure from these lepers; he puts away evil things from him as garments spotted by the flesh; he comes out from among the wicked, and goes without the camp, bearing the reproach of Christ. O for grace to be thus separate from sinners.
And now mark his positive character. "His delight is in the law of the Lord." He is not under the law as a curse and condemnation, but he is in it, and he delights to be in it as his rule of life; he delights, moreover, to meditate in it, to read it by day, and think upon it by night. He takes a text and carries it with him all day long; and in the night-watches, when sleep forsakes his eyelids, he museth upon the Word of God. In the day of his prosperity he sings psalms out of the Word of God, and in the night of his affliction he comforts himself with promises out of the same book. "The law of the Lord" is the daily bread of the true believer.