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Daily Devotionals/Readings:
Morning Devotional
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
December 26
"The last Adam." —1 Corinthians 15:45
Jesus is the federal head of His elect. As in Adam, every heir of flesh and blood has a personal interest, because he is the covenant head and representative of the race as considered under the law of works; so under the law of grace, every redeemed soul is one with the Lord from heaven, since He is the Second Adam, the Sponsor and Substitute of the elect in the new covenant of love. The apostle Paul declares that Levi was in the loins of Abrah
when Melchizedek met him: it is a certain truth that the believer was in the loins of Jesus Christ, the Mediator, when in old eternity the covenant settlements of grace were decreed, ratified, and made sure for ever. Thus, whatever Christ hath done, He hath wrought for the whole body of His Church. We were crucified in Him and buried with Him (read Col. 2:10-13), and to make it still more wonderful, we are risen with Him and even ascended with Him to the seats on high (Eph. 2:6). It is thus that the Church has fulfilled the law, and is "accepted in the beloved." It is thus that she is regarded with complacency by the just Jehovah, for He views her in Jesus, and does not look upon her as separate from her covenant head. As the Anointed Redeemer of Israel, Christ Jesus has nothing distinct from His Church, but all that He has He holds for her. Adam's righteousness was ours so long as he maintained it, and his sin was ours the moment that he committed it; and in the same manner, all that the Second Ad
is or does, is ours as well as His, seeing that He is our representative. Here is the foundation of the covenant of grace. This gracious system of representation and substitution, which moved Justin Martyr to cry out, "O blessed change, O sweet permutation!" this is the very groundwork of the gospel of our salvation, and is to be received with strong faith and rapturous joy.
Faith's Checkbook
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
December 26
God Only, You Can Trust
"Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended"
(Matthew 26:33).
Why," cries one, "this is no promise of God." Just so, but it was a promise of man, and therefore it came to nothing. Peter thought that he was saying what he should assuredly carry out; but a promise which has no better foundation than a human resolve will fall to the ground. No sooner did temptations arise than Peter denied his Master and used oaths to confirm his denial.
What is man's word? An earthen pot broken with a stroke. What is your own resolve? A blossom, which, with God's care, may come to fruit, but which, left to itself, will fall to the ground with the first wind that moves the bough.
On man's word hang only what it will bear.
On thine own resolve depend not at all.
On the promise of thy God hang time and eternity, this world and the next, thine all and the all of all thy beloved ones.
This volume is a checkbook for believers, and this page is meant as a warning as to what bank they draw upon and whose signature they accept. Rely upon Jesus without limit. Trust not thyself nor any born of woman, beyond due bounds; but trust thou only and wholly in the LORD.
MORNING THOUGHTS
DAILY WALKING WITH GOD
Octavius Winslow
DECEMBER 26.
“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38, 39
THE love of the Father is seen in giving us Christ, in choosing us in Christ, and in blessing us in Him with all spiritual blessings. Indeed, the love of the Father is the fountain of all covenant and redemption mercy to the Church. It is that river the streams whereof make glad the city of God. How anxious was Jesus to vindicate the love of the Father from all the suspicions and fears of His disciples! “I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you; for the Father Himself loves you.” “God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son.” To this love we must trace all the blessings which flow to us through the channel of the cross. It is the love of God, exhibited, manifested, and seen in Christ Jesus; Christ being, not the originator, but the gift of His love; not the cause, but the exponent of it. Oh, to see a perfect equality in the Father’s love with the Son’s love! Then shall we be led to trace all His present mercies, and all His providential dealings, however trying, painful, and mysterious, to the heart of God; thus resolving all into that from where all alike flow—everlasting and unchangeable love.
Now it is from this love there is no separation. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” The apostle had challenged accusation from every foe, and condemnation from every quarter; but no accuser rose, and no condemnation was pronounced. Standing on the broad basis of Christ’s finished work and of God’s full justification, his head was now lifted up in triumph above all his enemies round about. But it is possible that, though in the believer’s heart there is no fear of impeachment, there yet may exist the latent one of separation. The aggregate dealings of God with His Church, and His individual dealings with His saints, may at times present the appearance of an alienated affection of a lessened sympathy. The age in which this epistle was penned was fruitful of suffering to the Church of God. And if any period or any circumstances of her history boded a severance of the bond which bound her to Christ, that was the period, and those were the circumstances. But with a confidence based upon the glorious truth on which he had been descanting—the security of the Church of God in Christ—and with a persuasion inspired by the closer realization of the glory about to burst upon her view—with the most dauntless courage he exclaims, “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Our Daily Walk
F.B. Myer
December 26
A COMFORTING LETTER
"I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end."—Jer 29:11.
WE HAVE much to learn from the good advice given in this letter.
These exiles were unwilling to settle in the land to which they had been transported. They were always fretting and planning; talking of the past and contriving plans for returning to their own land and to the inheritance which they had forfeited. Therefore this letter was sent, not only to them, but to all in similar circumstances.
Are you in captivity? Your circumstances are the restraint and fetters that hold you. No prisoner in a cell could be more helpless than you are. You cannot do as you would, but you can be. Be the best you can where you are, and wait the Lord's leisure. It is by fidelity in discharging present obligations that you become fitted for better work.
Consider the needs of those around you (Jer 29:7). In this the story of Joseph is a remarkable example. When he was cast into prison, he set to work to minister to the prisoners there. What a light and comfort emanated from him, as he went to and fro among them, taking a personal interest in each—"Wherefore look ye so sadly to-day?" (Gen 40:6-7). In the peace of those to whom we minister, we shall find Our own peace.
Words of comfort and hope were spoken to the captives. Hard though their outward lot seemed, God was thinking thoughts of peace, not of evil, with respect to them. So with us; we may be having a bad time; it may appear as though everything were against us, hard, comfortless, uninviting. But in His holy heaven God is thinking about you, and His thoughts are those of peace, and not of evil. Therefore the horizon is flushed with hope. There is a good time coming, and you will forget this present, as waters that pass away. There is an allotted time to your present trouble. God will surely visit you, and perform His good word towards you.
In the meanwhile, we must live a life of constant prayer. "Ye shall call upon Me, and I will hearken unto you; ye shall seek Me, and I will be found of you" (Jer 29:12-14). We must live in a spirit of prayer and faith and converse with God. For all these things God will be enquired of, to do them.
PRAYER
For all Thy gracious care of us we reverently thank Thee, and if Thou hast permitted things to happen which have tried us sore and filled us with bitterness, help us to believe in Thine infinite love which chastens us, that through the discipline of our life we may be made partakers of Thy holiness. AMEN.
Daily Portions
Joseph Philpot
December 26
"The Lord your God in the midst of you is mighty." Zephaniah 3:17
What a mighty God we have to deal with! And what would suit our case, but a mighty God? Have we not mighty sins? Have we not mighty trials? Have we not mighty temptations? Have we not mighty foes and mighty fears? And who is to deliver us from all this mighty host except the mighty God? It is not a little God (if I may use the expression) that will do for God's people. They need a mighty God because they are in circumstances where none but a mighty God can intervene in their behalf.
Why, if you did not know feelingly and experimentally your mighty sins, your mighty trials, your mighty temptations, and your mighty fears, you would not need a mighty God. This sense of our weakness and his power, of our misery and his mercy, of our ruin and his recovery, of the aboundings of our sin and the super-aboundings of his grace—a feeling sense, I say, of these opposite yet harmonious things brings us to have personal, experimental dealings with God; and it is in these personal dealings with God that the life of all religion consists.
O what a poor, dead, useless religion is that in which there are no personal dealings with God—no calling upon his holy name out of a sincere heart; no seeking of his face, or imploring of his favor; no lying at his feet and begging of him to appear; no pitiable, lamentable case for him to have compassion upon; no wounds or sores for him to heal, no leprosy to cleanse, no enemies to put to the rout, no fears to dispel, and, I may almost say, no soul to save!
And yet such is the religion of thousands. They draw near to God with their lips, but their hearts are far from him, and while they outwardly say, "Lord, Lord," they inwardly say, "This man shall not have dominion over us." If you differ from them, and need a God near at hand and not afar off, a mighty God in the very midst of your soul, of your thoughts, desires, and affections, you may well bless him for the grace which has made you to differ, and thankfully bow your neck to sufferings and trials, as means in his hand to bring you and him together.
My Utmost for His Highest
Oswald Chambers
December 26th.
PLACED IN THE LIGHT
"If we walk in the light, as He is in the light the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." 1 John 1:7
To mistake conscious freedom from sin for deliverance from sin by the Atonement is a great error. No man knows what sin is until he is born again. Sin is what Jesus Christ faced on Calvary. The evidence that I am delivered from sin is that I know the real nature of sin in me. It takes the last reach of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, that is, the impartation of His absolute perfection, to make a man know what sin is.
The Holy Spirit applies the Atonement to us in the unconscious realm as well as in the realm of which we are conscious, and it is only when we get a grasp of the unrivalled power of the Spirit in us that we understand the meaning of 1 John 1:7, "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." This does not refer to conscious sin only, but to the tremendously profound understanding of sin which only the Holy Ghost in me realizes.
If I walk in the light as God is in the light, not in the light of my conscience, but in the light of God - if I walk there, with nothing folded up, then there comes the amazing revelation, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses me from all sin so that God Almighty can see nothing to censure in me. In my consciousness it works with a keen poignant knowledge of what sin is. The love of God at work in me makes me hate with the hatred of the Holy Ghost all that is not in keeping with God's holiness. To walk in the light means that everything that is of the darkness drives me closer into the centre of the light.
Evening Devotional
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
December 26
"Lo, I am with you alway." —Matthew 28:20
The Lord Jesus is in the midst of His church; He walketh among the golden candlesticks; His promise is, "Lo, I am with you alway." He is as surely with us now as He was with the disciples at the lake, when they saw coals of fire, and fish laid thereon and bread. Not carnally, but still in real truth, Jesus is with us. And a blessed truth it is, for where Jesus is, love becomes inflamed. Of all the things in the world that can set the heart burning, there is nothing like the presence of Jesus! A glimpse of Him so overcomes us, that we are ready to say, "Turn away Thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me." Even the smell of the aloes, and the myrrh, and the cassia, which drop from His perfumed garments, causes the sick and the faint to grow strong. Let there be but a moment's leaning of the head upon that gracious bosom, and a reception of His divine love into our poor cold hearts, and we are cold no longer, but glow like seraphs, equal to every labour, and capable of every suffering. If we know that Jesus is with us, every power will be developed, and every grace will be strengthened, and we shall cast ourselves into the Lord's service with heart, and soul, and strength; therefore is the presence of Christ to be desired above all things. His presence will be most realized by those who are most like Him. If you desire to see Christ, you must grow in conformity to Him. Bring yourself, by the power of the Spirit, into union with Christ's desires, and motives, and plans of action, and you are likely to be favoured with His company. Remember His presence may be had. His promise is as true as ever. He delights to be with us. If He doth not come, it is because we hinder Him by our indifference. He will reveal Himself to our earnest prayers, and graciously suffer Himself to be detained by our entreaties, and by our tears, for these are the golden chains which bind Jesus to His people.
EVENING THOUGHTS
DAILY WALKING WITH GOD
Octavius Winslow
DECEMBER 26.
"Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." 1 Corinthians 10:11
What an untold blessing to one believer may be the dealings of God with another! As "no man lives to himself," so no Christian is tried and supported, wounded and healed, disciplined and taught, for himself alone. God designs by His personal dealings with us to expound some law of His government, to convey some lesson of instruction to the mind, or to pour some stream of consolation into the heart of others. Thus the experience of one child of God may prove the channel of peculiar and immense blessing to many. God, in this arrangement, is but acting in accordance with a law of our nature of His own creating—the law of individual and reciprocal influence. No individual of the human family occupies in the world a position isolated and alone. He is a part of an integral system. He is a member of a complete and vast community. He is a link in a mighty and interminable chain. He cannot think, nor speak, nor move, nor act, without affecting the interests and the well-being, it may be, of myriads. By that single movement, in the utterance of that one thought, in the enunciation of that great truth, he has sent a thrill of sensation along an endless line of existence.
Who can tell where individual influence terminates? Who can place his finger upon the last link that vibrates in the chain of intelligent being? What if that influence never terminates! What if that chain never ceases to vibrate! Solemn thought! In another and a remote period, in a distant and an undiscovered region, the sentiment, the habit, the feeling, once, perhaps, thoughtlessly and carelessly set in motion, has gone on working for good or for evil, owned and blessed, or rejected and cursed of heaven. Nothing can recall it; no remorse, nor tears, nor prayers, can summon it back; no voice can persuade, no authority command it to return. It is working its way through myriads of minds to the judgment-seat, and is rushing onward, onward, onward through the countless ages of eternity! Thought is immortal. Its propagation is endless. It never dies, and it never ceases to act. Borne along upon the stream of time, who can calculate the good, or compute the evil, or observe the end of a single life? My soul! aim to live in view of this solemn fact!
But especially is this true of the child of God. He belongs to a people within a people, to a church within a church, to a kingdom within a kingdom—designated as a "chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people." In this separate and hidden community, there is a divine cement, an ethereal bond of union, which unites and holds each part to the whole, each member to the body, in the closest cohesion and unity. The apostle more than recognizes—he emphatically asserts—this truth when, speaking of the church of God, he describes it as the "whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplies." And again, when speaking of the sympathetic influence of the church, he says, "And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." And so also of the consolation. When Paul penned the letter to the church at Corinth, he was with his companions in circumstances of deep trial. He was "cast down," and disconsolate. God sought to "stay His rough wind in the day of His east wind," by sending to him an affectionate Christian minister and beloved brother. "Nevertheless," writes the apostle, in recording the fact, "God, who comforts those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus." He who wrote these words has long since been in glory; and yet the experience he then traces upon the page has been, and is still telling upon the instruction, the comfort, and the holiness of millions, and will go on telling until time shall be no more. Remember, my reader, you must quit this world, but your influence will survive you. Your character and works, when dead, will be molding the living; and they, in their turn, will transmit the lineaments and the form of a mind whose thoughts never perish, to the remotest posterity. "He, being dead, yet speaks." What an expressive epitaph! A truer sentiment, and one more solemn, never breathed from the marble tablet. The dead never die! Their memory speaks! Their character speaks! Their works speak, and speak forever!
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