Daily Bible Notes: February, 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
I will never leave thee.
Hebrews 13:5
No promise is of private interpretation. Whatever God has said to any one saint, He has said to all. When He opens a well for one, it is that all may drink. When He openeth a granary-door to give out food, there may be some one starving man who is the occasion of its being opened, but all hungry saints may come and feed too. Whether He gave the word to Abraham or to Moses, matters not, O believer; He has given it to thee as one of the covenanted seed. There is not a high blessing too lofty for thee, nor a wide mercy too extensive for thee. Lift up now thine eyes to the north and to the south, to the east and to the west, for all this is thine.
Climb to Pisgah’s top, and view the utmost limit of the divine promise, for the land is all thine own. There is not a brook of living water of which thou mayst not drink. If the land floweth with milk and honey, eat the honey and drink the milk, for both are thine. Be thou bold to believe, for He hath said, "I will never leave thee , nor forsake thee ."In this promise, God gives to His people everything. "I will never leave thee." Then no attribute of God can cease to be engaged for us. Is He mighty? He will show Himself strong on the behalf of them that trust Him. Is He love? Then with lovingkindness will He have mercy upon us. Whatever attributes may compose the character of Deity, every one of them to its fullest extent shall be engaged on our side. To put everything in one, there is nothing you can want, there is nothing you can ask for, there is nothing you can need in time or in eternity, there is nothing living, nothing dying, there is nothing in this world, nothing in the next world, there is nothing now, nothing at the resurrection-morning, nothing in heaven which is not contained in this text -"I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."
Evening
Take up the cross, and follow Me.
Mark 10:21
You have not the making of your own cross, although unbelief is a master carpenter at cross-making; neither are you permitted to choose your own cross, although self-will would fain be Lord and master; but your cross is prepared and appointed for you by divine love, and you are cheerfully to accept it; you are to take up the cross as your chosen badge and burden, and not to stand cavilling at it. This night Jesus bids you submit your shoulder to His easy yoke. Do not kick at it in petulance, or trample on it in vain-glory, or fall under it in despair, or run away from it in fear, but take it up like a true follower of Jesus. Jesus was a cross-bearer; He leads the way in the path of sorrow. Surely you could not desire a better guide!
And if He carried a cross, what nobler burden would you desire? The Via Crucis is the way of safety; fear not to tread its thorny paths.
Beloved, the cross is not made of feathers, or lined with velvet, it is heavy and galling to disobedient shoulders; but it is not an iron cross, though your fears have painted it with iron colours, it is a wooden cross, and a man can carry it, for the Man of sorrows tried the load. Take up your cross, and by the power of the Spirit of God you will soon be so in love with it, that like Moses, you would not exchange the reproach of Christ for all the treasures of Egypt. Remember that Jesus carried it, and it will smell sweetly; remember that it will soon be followed by the crown, and the thought of the coming weight of glory will greatly lighten the present heaviness of trouble. The Lord help you to bow your spirit in submission to the divine will ere you fall asleep this night, that waking with to-morrow’s sun, you may go forth to the day’s cross with the holy and submissive spirit which becomes a follower of the Crucified.
2. "My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year" by J.H.Jowett
James 5:7-11
7 Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receives the early and late rain.
8 You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
9 Don't grumble, brothers, against one another, so that you won't be judged. Behold, the judge stands at the door.
10 Take, brothers, for an example of suffering and of perseverance, the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
11 Behold, we call them blessed who endured. You have heard of the perseverance of Job, and have seen the Lord in the outcome, and how the Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
THE PROCESS AND THE END
"Ye have seen the end of the Lord: that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy."
And so we are bidden to be patient. "We must wait to the end of the Lord." The Lord's ends are attained through very mysterious means. Sometimes the means are in contrast to the ends. He works toward the harvest through winter's frost and snow. The maker of chaste and delicate porcelain reaches his lovely ends through an awful mortar, where the raw material of bone and clay is pounded into a cream. In that mortar-chamber we have no hint of the finished ware. But be patient, even in this chamber of affliction the ware is on the way to glory!
And so it is with the ministries of our Lord. He leads us through discords into harmonies, through opposition into union, through adversities into peace. His means of grace are processes, sometimes gentle, sometimes severe; and our folly is to assume that we have reached His ends when we are only on the way to them. "The end of the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy." "Be patient, therefore," until it shall be spoken of thee and me, "And God saw that it was good."
3. "Yet Another Day - A Prayer for Every Day of the Year" by John H.Jowett
February 23rd.
Help me, O Lord, to rest in Thee to-day. May I not grow impatient! May I be quiet and trustful, waiting Thy will, until the
pillar of cloud move, and I am able to follow!
4. "The Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith" by C.H.Spurgeon.
If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
John 15:7
Of neccesity we must be in Christ to live unto him, and we must abide in him to be able to claim the largesse of this promise from him. To abide in Jesus is never to quit him for another love, or another object, but to remain in living, loving, conscious, willing union with him. The branch is not only ever near the stem, but ever receiving life and fruitfulness from it. All true believers abide in Christ in a sense; but there is a higher meaning, and this we must know before we can gain unlimited power at the throne. "Ask what ye will" is for Enochs who walk with God, for Johns who lie in the Lord's bosom, for those whose union with Christ leads to constant communion.
The heart must remain in love, the mind must be rooted in faith, the hope must be cemented to the Word, the whole man must be joined unto the Lord, or else it would be dangerous to trust us with power in prayer. The carte blanche can only be given to one whose very life is, "Not I, but Christ liveth in me." O you who break your fellowship, what power you lose! If you would be mighty in your pleadings, the Lord himself must abide in you, and you in him.
5. "The Morning Message" by G.Campbell Morgan.
In the beginning was the Word.
John 1:1
The Word of God sounded over the chaotic earth; and, in response to that Word, there arose order, beauty - everything that we see today, only in its perfection.
6. "An Evening Meditation" taken from "Searchlights from the Word" by G.Campbell Morgan.
Thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes.
Psalms 26:3
This Psalm has a note all its own. It is a prayer for justice, on the part of a soul happily conscious of its integrity and uprightness. It is impossible to fix the circumstances under which it was written. Evidently they were characterized by general deflection from the ways of God. The singer was living among evil-doers, and the judgments of God in punishment were abroad. In these circumstances the soul of the righteous appealed to the justice of God for deliverance from being involved in these calamities. The words we have emphasized are those in which we discover the ground of the appeal. He knew and pleaded the lovingkindness of Jehovah. The closing stanza shows that the answer came to him in his faith: "My foot standeth in an even place; in the congregations will I bless Jehovah." The experience is not an uncommon one in the life of faith. There are hours in which the wrong of evil men seems to threaten the safety of those who are endeavouring to walk before God, and who are doing so in the measure of their understanding of His will. In such hours, we may with confidence make our appeal to God for vindication and deliverance, and we may do so with complete assurance, in the light of His lovingkindness. To retain our attitude of loyalty to God under circumstances of difficulty created by the evil ways of godless men, is to enable us to claim His vindication and protection, on the ground of His unalterable lovingkindness. Prayer on these grounds will ever guard the heart against panic.
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.