Daily Bible Notes: December, 24th
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
For your sakes he became poor.
2 Corinthians 8:9
The Lord Jesus Christ was eternally rich , glorious, and exalted; but "though He was rich , yet for your sakes He became poor." As the rich saint cannot be true in his communion with his poor brethren unless of his substance he ministers to their necessities, so (the same rule holding with the head as between the members), it is impossible that our Divine Lord could have had fellowship with us unless He had imparted to us of His own abounding wealth, and had become poor to make us rich. Had He remained upon His throne of glory, and had we continued in the ruins of the fall without receiving His salvation, communion would have been impossible on both sides. Our position by the fall, apart from the covenant of grace, made it as impossible for fallen man to communicate with God as it is for Belial to be in concord with Christ. In order, therefore, that communion might be compassed, it was necessary that the rich kinsman should bestow his estate upon his poor relatives, that the righteous Saviour should give to His sinning brethren of His own perfection, and that we, the poor and guilty, should receive of His fulness grace for grace; that thus in giving and receiving, the One might descend from the heights, and the other ascend from the depths, and so be able to embrace each other in true and hearty fellowship. Poverty must be enriched by Him in whom are infinite treasures before it can venture to commune; and guilt must lose itself in imputed and imparted righteousness ere the soul can walk in fellowship with purity. Jesus must clothe His people in His own garments, or He cannot admit them into His palace of glory; and He must wash them in His own blood, or else they will be too defiled for the embrace of His fellowship.
O believer, herein is love! For your sake the Lord Jesus "became poor" that He might lift you up into communion with Himself.
Evening
The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
Isaiah 40:5
We anticipate the happy day when the whole world shall be converted to Christ; when the gods of the heathen shall be cast to the moles and the bats; when Romanism shall be exploded, and the crescent of Mohammed shall wane, never again to cast its baleful rays upon the nations; when kings shall bow down before the Prince of Peace, and all nations shall call their Redeemer blessed. Some despair of this. They look upon the world as a vessel breaking up and going to pieces, never to float again. We know that the world and all that is therein is one day to be burnt up, and afterwards we look for new heavens and for a new earth; but we cannot read our Bibles without the conviction that - "Jesus shall reign where’er the sun Does his successive journeys run."
We are not discouraged by the length of His delays; we are not disheartened by the long period which He allots to the church in which to struggle with little success and much defeat. We believe that God will never suffer this world, which has once seen Christ’s blood shed upon it, to be always the devil’s stronghold. Christ came hither to deliver this world from the detested sway of the powers of darkness. What a shout shall that be when men and angels shall unite to cry "Hallelujah, hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!" What a satisfaction will it be in that day to have had a share in the fight, to have helped to break the arrows of the bow, and to have aided in winning the victory for our Lord!
Happy are they who trust themselves with this conquering Lord, and who fight side by side with Him, doing their little in His name and by His strength! How unhappy are those on the side of evil! It is a losing side, and it is a matter wherein to lose is to lose and to be lost for ever. On whose side are you?
2. "My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year" by J.H.Jowett
Isaiah 9:1-7
1 But there shall be no more gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time, he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali; but in the latter time he has made it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. The light has shined on those who lived in the land of the shadow of death.
3 You have multiplied the nation. You have increased their joy. They rejoice before you according to the joy in harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the plunder.
4 For the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as in the day of Midian.
5 For all the armour of the armed man in the noisy battle, and the garments rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire.
6 For a child is born to us. A son is given to us; and the government will be on his shoulders. His name will be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end, on David's throne, and on his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from that time on, even forever. The zeal of the LORD of Armies will perform this.
ENTERING IN AT LOWLY DOORS
"Unto us a Child is born."
How gentle the coming! Who would have had sufficient daring of imagination to conceive that God Almighty would have appeared among men as a little child? We should have conceived something sensational, phenomenal, catastrophic, appalling! The most awful of the natural elements would have formed His retinue, and men would be chilled and frozen with fear. But He came as a little child. The great God "emptied Himself"; He let in the light as our eyes were able to bear it.
"Unto us a Son is given." And that is the superlative gift! The love that bestows such gift is all-complete and gracious. And the Son is given in order that we may all be born into sonship. It is the Son's ministry to make sons. "Now are we the sons of God," and we are of His creation.
- "Lord, I would serve, and be a son;
Dismiss me not, I pray."
3. "Yet Another Day - A Prayer for Every Day of the Year" by John H.Jowett
December 24th.
Father of all, teach me the meaning of that great word. May my life not mock my prayers! May my brotherliness witness to
Thy Fatherhood! May my unselfishness proclaim the wonders of Thy love! May my life lift the eyes of my fellows to Thee!
4. "The Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith" by C.H.Spurgeon.
Thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee.
Deuteronomy 33:29
That arch-enemy, the devil, is a liar from the beginning; but he is so very plausible that, like mother Eve, we are led to believe him. Yet in our experience we shall prove him a liar.
He says that we shall fall from grace, dishonour our profession, and perish with the doom of apostates; but, trusting in the Lord Jesus, we shall hold on our way and prove that Jesus loses none whom his Father gave him. He tells us that our bread will fail, and we shall starve with our children; yet the Feeder of the ravens has not forgotten us yet, and he will never do so, but will prepare us a table in the presence of our enemies.
He whispers that the Lord will not deliver us out of the trial which is looming in the distance, and he threatens that the last ounce will break the camel's back. What a liar he is! For the Lord will never leave us, nor forsake us. "Let him deliver him now!" cries the false fiend: but the Lord will silence him by coming to our rescue.
He takes great delight in telling us that death will prove too much for us. "How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?" But there also he shall prove a liar unto us, and we shall pass through the river singing psalms of glory.
5. "The Morning Message" by G.Campbell Morgan.
Christ Jesus: who, existing in the form of God ... emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.
Philippians 2:6,7, R.V.
The Word passed from government to obedience, from independent cooperation in the equality of Deity, to dependent submission to the Will of God. By the way of the Incarnation there came into existence a person in all points human, in all essentials Divine.
6. "An Evening Meditation" taken from "Searchlights from the Word" by G.Campbell Morgan.
I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming, down out of heaven from God.
Revelation 21:2
At last the city of God is seen, coming. It is the city which was in the counsel of God when He gave man a garden containing all its potentialities; the city which was in His purpose for man when He confused his Babel project; the city to reach which, Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees; the city whose walls have ever been before Him. It is the metropolis of the realized ideals of God for humanity, the centre of the true social order. Let us observe carefully the time of its coming. After the thousand years, Satan is to be loosed. Even the millennial reign will not have finally overcome evil in humanity. It will have held it in check, reigned over it. And so the master-spirit of evil is loosed to gather together to himself all those in whom this principle of evil still remains. The last earthly expression of it will be the futile gathering of these to war against the saints and the city of the Divine purpose. They are only gathered that they may be cast, with Satan, from the earth. So evil passes from the world for ever. Then follows the great assize, a period of august and awful silence, in which the records reveal the righteousness of the Divine government. It should be remembered that the purpose of everything in these visions is such unveilings of Jesus Christ as show Him in His relation to this earth. Evil is cast into the lake of fire. Then the new heaven and the new earth. Then the City of God, and the nations walking in the light thereof. Then the full answer to the prayers of the saints: "Thy name be hallowed, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done: As in heaven so on earth"!
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.