Daily Bible Notes: April, 23rd
The following daily bible notes for every day of the year, are taken from six public domain sources:
- "Morning and Evening" by Charles H.Spurgeon
- "My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year" by John H.Jowett
- "Yet Another Day - A Prayer for Every Day of the Year" by John H.Jowett
- "The Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith" by Charles H.Spurgeon
- "The Morning Message" by G.Campbell Morgan
- An Evening Meditation from "Searchlights from the Word" by G. Campbell Morgan
1. "Morning and Evening" by C.H.Spurgeon
Morning
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
Romans 8:37
We go to Christ for forgiveness, and then too often look to the law for power to fight our sins. Paul thus rebukes us, "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" Take your sins to Christ’s cross, for the old man can only be crucified there: we are crucified with Him . The only weapon to fight sin with is the spear which pierced the side of Jesus. To give an illustration - you want to overcome an angry temper, how do you go to work? It is very possible you have never tried the right way of going to Jesus with it. How did I get salvation? I came to Jesus just as I was, and I trusted Him to save me. I must kill my angry temper in the same way? It is the only way in which I can ever kill it. I must go to the cross with it, and say to Jesus, "Lord, I trust Thee to deliver me from it." This is the only way to give it a death-blow. Are you covetous? Do you feel the world entangle you? You may struggle against this evil so long as you please, but if it be your besetting sin, you will never be delivered from it in any way but by the blood of Jesus. Take it to Christ. Tell Him, "Lord, I have trusted Thee, and Thy name is Jesus, for Thou dost save Thy people from their sins; Lord, this is one of my sins; save me from it!" Ordinances are nothing without Christ as a means of mortification. Your prayers, and your repentances, and your tears - the whole of them put together - are worth nothing apart from Him. "None but Jesus can do helpless sinners good;" or helpless saints either. You must be conquerors through Him who hath loved you, if conquerors at all. Our laurels must grow among His olives in Gethsemane.
Evening
Lo, in the midst of the throne... stood a Lamb as it had been slain.
Revelation 5:6
Why should our exalted Lord appear in His wounds in glory? The wounds of Jesus are His glories, His jewels, His sacred ornaments. To the eye of the believer, Jesus is passing fair because He is "white and ruddy" white with innocence, and ruddy with His own blood. We see Him as the lily of matchless purity, and as the rose crimsoned with His own gore. Christ is lovely upon Olivet and Tabor, and by the sea, but oh! there never was such a matchless Christ as He that did hang upon the cross. There we beheld all His beauties in perfection, all His attributes developed, all His love drawn out, all His character expressed. Beloved, the wounds of Jesus are far more fair in our eyes than all the splendour and pomp of kings. The thorny crown is more than an imperial diadem. It is true that He bears not now the sceptre of reed, but there was a glory in it that never flashed from sceptre of gold. Jesus wears the appearance of a slain Lamb as His court dress in which He wooed our souls, and redeemed them by His complete atonement. Nor are these only the ornaments of Christ: they are the trophies of His love and of His victory. He has divided the spoil with the strong. He has redeemed for Himself a great multitude whom no man can number, and these scars are the memorials of the fight. Ah! if Christ thus loves to retain the thought of His sufferings for His people, how precious should his wounds be to us ! "Behold how every wound of His A precious balm distils, Which heals the scars that sin had made, And cures all mortal ills. "Those wounds are mouths that preach His grace; The ensigns of His love; The seals of our expected bliss In paradise above."
2. "My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year" by J.H.Jowett
Colossians 3:12-17
12 Put on therefore, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance;
13 bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, if any man has a complaint against any; even as Christ forgave you, so you also do.
14 Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection.
15 And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful.
16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord.
17 Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father, through him.
MASCULINE FORGIVENESS
True forgiveness is a very strong and clean and masculine virtue. There is a counterfeit forgiveness which is unworthy of the name. It is full of "buts," and "ifs," and "maybes," and "peradventures." It moves with reluctance, it offers with averted face, it takes back with one hand what it gives with the other. It forgives, but it "cannot forget." It forgives, but it "can never trust again." It forgives, but "things can never be the same as they were." What kind of forgiveness is this? It is the mercy of the police-court. It is the remission of penalty, not the glorious "abandon" of grace! It is a cold "Don't do it again," not the weeping and compassionate goodwill of the Lord.
"Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye." That is to be our motive, and that is to be our measure. We are to forgive because Christ forgave us. The glorious memory of His grace is to make us gracious. His tender, healing words to us are to redeem our speech from all harshness. In the contemplation of His cross we are to become "partakers of His sufferings," and by the shedding of our own blood help to close and heal the alienation of the world.
And we are to forgive as Christ forgave us. Resentment is to be changed into frank goodwill, and filled with the grace of the Lord.
3. "Yet Another Day - A Prayer for Every Day of the Year" by John H.Jowett
April 23rd.
Pitiful Lord, I pray for the outcasts of the land. Be gracious to all who are regarded as the off-scouring of the earth.
Multiply the ministries which seek their salvation. Turn their faces to the light, and purify them from their sin.
4. "The Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith" by C.H.Spurgeon.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.
Revelation 2:11
The first death we must endure unless the Lord should suddenly come to his temple. For this let us abide in readiness, awaiting it without fear, since Jesus has transformed death from a dreary cavern into a passage leading to glory.
The thing to be feared is not the first, but the second death; not the parting of the soul from the body, but the final separation of the entire man from God. This is death indeed. This death kills all peace, joy, happiness, hope. When God is gone all is gone. Such a death is far worse than ceasing to be: it is existence without the life which makes existence worth the having.
Now, if by God's grace we fight on to the end, and conquer in the glorious war, no second death can lay its chill finger upon us. We shall have no fear of death and hell, for we shall receive a crown of life which fadeth not away. How this nerves us for the fight! Eternal life is worth a life's battle. To escape the hurt of the second death is a thing worth struggling for throughout a lifetime.
Lord, give us faith, so that we may overcome, and then grant us grace to remain unharmed though sin and Satan dog our heels!
5. "The Morning Message" by G.Campbell Morgan.
Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
1 Thessalonians 4:18
When presently all the tribulation is passed, and the painful processes of the little while are over, and the last grim pressure ceases, then we shall be crowned with life, then we shall know the meaning of life.
6. "An Evening Meditation" taken from "Searchlights from the Word" by G.Campbell Morgan.
The night following, the Lord stood by him.
Acts 23:11
The words "the night following" are very suggestive. Paul had passed through two tremendous days. The bitterness of his foes was such that no limit would be set to what they would do to him if they could. The chief captain was afraid that they might tear him to pieces, and so had rescued him by force and secured him in the castle. The "night following" such days would inevitably be a time of reaction. Bold, courageous, fearless during the day, the night of loneliness finds the strength spent, and the enemy is never slow to take advantage of that fact. Oh, the dreads and questionings and shrinkings of the night! Then we must need help. And then it was that "the Lord stood by him." Through all the stress and strain of those terrific days Paul had maintained in speech and demeanour the honour of the Name, and now the One Who bore the Name came to him manifestly, definitely, personally. Very beautiful was the word He spoke to His servant. Paul had long before declared his conviction that he must see Rome. Perhaps the form of despondency threatening him that night was that he might never do so. It would seem so from the very fact that the Lord's message to him was that he should certainly witness at Rome also. The value of all this is patent. Loyalty to the Name will often bring the witnesses into days of strain and so to nights of foreboding. But He always comes, and even if not manifestly, yet He always stands by.
Note: To the best of our knowledge we are of the understanding that the above material, all published before 1926 and freely available elsewhere on the internet in various formats, is in the public domain.