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Daily devotions for 06-13-2005:
Devotion: Morning and Evening
Morning Title: Found Wanting
Evening Title: Saved and Called
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Morning: Found Wanting
"Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting." --Daniel 5:27
It is well frequently to weigh ourselves in the scale of God's Word. You will
find it a holy exercise to read some psalm of David, and, as you meditate upon
each verse, to ask yourself, "Can I say this? Have I felt as David felt? Has my
heart ever been broken on account of sin, as his was when he penned his
penitential psalms? Has my soul been full of true confidence in the hour of
difficulty as his was when he sang of God's mercies in the cave of Adullam, or
in the holds of Engedi? Do I take the cup of salvation and
call upon the name of the Lord?" Then turn to the life of Christ, and as you
read, ask yourselves how far you are conformed to His likeness.
Endeavour to discover whether you have the meekness, the humility, the lovely
spirit which He constantly inculcated and displayed.
Take, then, the epistles, and see whether you can go with the apostle in what
he said of his experience. Have you ever cried out as he did--"O wretched man
that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death"? Have you ever
felt his self-abasement? Have you seemed to yourself the chief of sinners, and
less than the least of all saints? Have you known anything of his devotion?
Could you join with him and say, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is
gain"? If we thus read God's Word as a test of our spiritual condition, we
shall have good reason to stop many a time and say, "Lord, I feel I have never
yet been here, O bring me here! give me true penitence, such as this I read of.
Give me real faith; give me warmer zeal; inflame me with more fervent love;
grant me the grace of meekness; make me more like Jesus. Let me no longer be
'found wanting,' when weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, lest I be found
wanting in the scales of judgment."
"Judge yourselves that ye be not judged."
Evening: Saved and Called
"Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling." --2 Timothy 1:9
The apostle uses the perfect tense and says, "Who hath saved us." Believers in
Christ Jesus are saved. They are not looked upon as persons who are in a
hopeful state, and may ultimately be saved, but they are already saved.
Salvation is not a blessing to be enjoyed upon the dying bed, and to be sung of
in a future state above, but a matter to be obtained, received, promised, and
enjoyed now. The Christian is perfectly saved in
God's purpose; God has ordained him unto salvation, and that purpose is
complete. He is
saved also as to the price which has been paid for him: "It is finished" was
the cry of the Saviour ere He died. The believer is also perfectly saved in His
covenant head, for as he fell in Adam, so he lives in Christ. This complete
salvation is accompanied by a holy
calling. Those whom the Saviour saved upon the cross are in due time
effectually called by the power of God the Holy Spirit unto holiness: they
leave their sins; they endeavour to be like Christ; they choose holiness, not
out of any compulsion, but from the stress of a new nature, which leads them to
rejoice in holiness just as naturally as aforetime they delighted in sin. God
neither chose them nor called them because they were holy, but He called them
that they might be holy, and holiness is the beauty produced by His workmanship
in them.
The excellencies which we see in a believer are as much the work of God as the
atonement itself.
Thus is brought out very sweetly the fulness of the grace of God. Salvation
must be of grace, because the Lord is the author of it: and what motive but
grace could move Him to save the guilty? Salvation must be of grace, because
the Lord works in such a manner that our righteousness is for ever excluded.
Such is the believer's privilege--a present salvation; such is the evidence
that he is called to it--a holy life.
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Daily devotions for 06-09-2005:
Devotion: Morning and Evening
Morning Title: The War is of God
Evening Title: The Lord Will Do
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Morning: The War is of God
"There fell down many slain, because the war was of God." --1 Chronicles 5:22
Warrior, fighting under the banner of the Lord Jesus, observe this verse with
holy joy, for as it was in the days of old so is it now, if the war be of God
the victory is sure. The sons of Reuben, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of
Manasseh could barely muster five and forty thousand fighting men, and yet in
their war with the Hagarites, they slew "men, an hundred thousand," "for they
cried to God in the battle, and He was entreated of them, because they put
their trust in Him." The Lord saveth not by many nor by few; it is ours to go
forth in Jehovah's name if we be but a handful of men, for the Lord of Hosts is
with us for our Captain. They did not neglect buckler, and sword, and bow,
neither did they place their trust in these weapons; we must use all fitting
means, but our confidence must rest in the Lord alone, for He is the sword and
the shield of His people. The great reason of their extraordinary success lay
in the fact that "the war was of God."
Beloved, in fighting with sin without and within, with error doctrinal or
practical, with spiritual wickedness in high places or low places, with devils
and the devil's allies, you are waging Jehovah's war, and unless He himself can
be worsted, you need not fear defeat. Quail not before superior numbers, shrink
not from difficulties or impossibilities, flinch not at wounds or death, smite
with the two-edged sword of the Spirit, and the slain shall lie in heaps.
The battle is the Lord's and He will deliver His enemies into our hands. With
steadfast foot, strong hand, dauntless heart, and flaming zeal, rush to the
conflict, and the hosts of evil shall fly like chaff before the gale.
Stand up! stand up for Jesus! To him that overcometh, The strife will not be
long; A crown of life shall be; This day the noise of battle, He with the King
of glory The next the victor's song: Shall reign eternally.
Evening: The Lord Will Do
"Thou shalt see now whether My word shall come to pass unto thee or not."
--Numbers 11:23
God had made a positive promise to Moses that for the space of a whole month He
would feed the vast host in the wilderness with flesh. Moses, being overtaken
by a fit of unbelief, looks to the outward means, and is at a loss to know how
the promise can be fulfilled. He looked to the creature instead of the Creator.
But doth the Creator expect the creature to fulfil His promise for Him? No; He
who makes the promise ever fulfils it by His own unaided omnipotence. If He
speaks, it is done--done by Himself. His promises do not depend for their
fulfillment upon the co-operation of the puny strength of man. We can
at once perceive the mistake which Moses made.
And yet how commonly we do the same! God has promised to supply our needs, and
we look to the creature to do what God has promised to do; and then, because we
perceive the creature to be weak and feeble, we indulge in unbelief. Why look
we to that quarter at all? Will you look to the north pole to gather fruits
ripened in the sun?
Verily, you would act no more foolishly if ye did this than when you look to
the weak for strength, and to the creature to do the Creator's work.
Let us, then, put the question on the right footing. The ground of faith is not
the sufficiency of the visible means for the performance of the promise, but
the all-sufficiency of the invisible God, who will most surely do as He hath
said. If after clearly seeing that the onus lies with the Lord and not with the
creature, we dare to indulge in mistrust, the question of God comes home
mightily to us: "Has the Lord's hand waxed short?" May it
happen, too, in His mercy, that with the question there may flash upon our
souls that blessed declaration, "Thou shalt see now whether My word shall come
to pass unto thee or not."
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