Daily Bible Notes: January, 3rd
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 give thee for a covenant of the people.
Isaiah 49:8
Jesus Christ is Himself the sum and substance of the covenant, and as one of its gifts. He is the property of every believer. Believer, canst thou estimate what thou hast gotten in Christ? "In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." Consider that word "God" and its infinity, and then meditate upon "perfect man" and all his beauty; for all that Christ, as God and man, ever had, or can have, is thine - out of pure free favour, passed over to thee to be thine entailed property forever. Our blessed Jesus, as God, is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. Will it not console you to know that all these great and glorious attributes are altogether yours? Has he power? That power is yours to support and strengthen you, to overcome your enemies, and to preserve you even to the end. Has He love? Well, there is not a drop of love in His heart which is not yours; you may dive into the immense ocean of His love, and you may say of it all, "It is mine." Hath He justice? It may seem a stern attribute, but even that is yours, for He will by His justice see to it that all which is promised to you in the covenant of grace shall be most certainly secured to you. And all that He has as perfect man is yours. As a perfect man the Father’s delight was upon Him. He stood accepted by the Most High. O believer, God’s acceptance of Christ is thine acceptance; for knowest thou not that the love which the Father set on a perfect Christ, He sets on thee now?
For all that Christ did is thine. That perfect righteousness which Jesus wrought out, when through His stainless life He kept the law and made it honourable, is thine, and is imputed to thee. Christ is in the covenant. "My God, I am thine - what a comfort divine!
What a blessing to know that the Saviour is mine!
In the heavenly Lamb thrice happy I am, And my heart it doth dance at the sound of His name."
Evening
The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Luke 3:4
The voice crying in the wilderness demanded a way for the Lord, a way prepared, and a way prepared in the wilderness. I would be attentive to the Master’s proclamation, and give Him a road into my heart, cast up by gracious operations, through the desert of my nature. The four directions in the text must have my serious attention. Every valley must be exalted . Low and grovelling thoughts of God must be given up; doubting and despairing must be removed; and self-seeking and carnal delights must be forsaken. Across these deep valleys a glorious causeway of grace must be raised. Every mountain and hill shall be laid low . Proud creature-sufficiency, and boastful self-righteousness, must be levelled, to make a highway for the King of kings. Divine fellowship is never vouchsafed to haughty, highminded sinners. The Lord hath respect unto the lowly, and visits the contrite in heart, but the lofty are an abomination unto Him. My soul, beseech the Holy Spirit to set thee right in this respect. The crooked shall be made straight . The wavering heart must have a straight path of decision for God and holiness marked out for it.
Double-minded men are strangers to the God of truth. My soul, take heed that thou be in all things honest and true, as in the sight of the heart-searching God. The rough places shall be made smooth . Stumbling-blocks of sin must be removed, and thorns and briers of rebellion must be uprooted. So great a visitor must not find miry ways and stony places when He comes to honour His favoured ones with His company. Oh that this evening the Lord may find in my heart a highway made ready by His grace, that He may make a triumphal progress through the utmost bounds of my soul, from the beginning of this year even to the end of it.
2. "My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year" by J.H.Jowett
Genesis 17:1-8
1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, "I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless.
2 I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly."
3 Abram fell on his face. God talked with him, saying,
4 "As for me, behold, my covenant is with you. You will be the father of a multitude of nations.
5 Your name will no more be called Abram, but your name will be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.
6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you. Kings will come out of you.
7 I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God to you and to your offspring after you.
8 I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are travelling, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession. I will be their God."
THE NEVER-FAILING SPRINGS
"I will establish My covenant." The good promises of God are never revoked. They are like springs which know no shrinking in times of drought. Nay, in time of drought they reveal a richer fulness. The promises are confirmed in the hour of my need, and the greater my need the greater is my bounty. And so it was that the Apostle Paul came to "rejoice in his infirmities," for through his infirmities he discovered the riches of Divine grace. He brought a bigger pitcher to the fountain, and he always carried it away full. "As thy days so shall thy strength be."
So I need never fear that the promise of yesterday will exhaust itself before to-morrow. God's covenant goes with us like the ever-fresh waters of the wilderness. "They drank of that rock which followed them, and that rock was Christ." Every fulfilment of God's promise is the pledge of one to come.
God has no road without its springs. If His path stretches across the waste wilderness the "fountains shall break out in the desert," and "the wilderness shall rejoice and blossom as the rose."
3. "Yet Another Day - A Prayer for Every Day of the Year" by John H.Jowett
January 3rd.
My Father, be with me at every turning of the road. When the ways are many, reveal to me the way of life,
and help me to choose it.
4. "The Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith" by C.H.Spurgeon.
The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it.
Genesis 28:13
No promise is of private interpretation: it belongs not to one saint, but to all believers. If, my brother, thou canst in faith lie down upon a promise, and take thy rest thereon, it is thine. Where Jacob "lighted," and tarried, and rested, there he took possession. Stretching his weary length upon the ground, with the stones of that place for his pillows, he little fancied that he was thus entering into ownership of the land; and yet so it was. He saw in his dream that wondrous ladder which for all true believers unites earth and heaven; and surely where the foot of the ladder stood he must have a right to the soil, for otherwise he could not reach the divine stairway. All the promises of God are Yea and Amen in Christ Jesus; and as he is ours, every promise is ours if we will but lie down upon it in restful faith.
Come, weary one, use thy Lord's words as thy pillows. Lie down in peace. Dream only of Him. Jesus is thy ladder of light. See the angels coming and going upon him between thy soul and thy God; and be sure that the promise is thine own God-given portion, and that it will not be robbery for thee to take it to thyself, as spoken specially to thee.
5. "The Morning Message" by G.Campbell Morgan.
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
Psalm 8:4
I stand at the foot of the mountain which lifts its head beyond the cloud and catches on its summit the first gleam of the King of Day in his rising, and I say, "What am I?" That mountain has been there through the passing of the ages, and I am here and shall be gone before the sun melts the snow upon its summit. "What is man?" But the Psalmist has another point of observation: "Thou art mindful of him; thou visitest him."
6. "An Evening Meditation" taken from "Searchlights from the Word" by G.Campbell Morgan.
Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.
Matthew 3:15
"Thus." How? What is the real significance of this first recorded word of our Lord as He approached His public ministry? The answer is to be found in a consideration of the reason for the protest of John, to which it was a reply. John's baptism was to repentance and remission of sins. As he looked at Jesus, he knew that He had nothing of which to repent; no sins to be remitted. Why then should He submit to this baptism? The answer to that inquiry our Lord gave. The reason for His baptism was that through all which it symbolized He would fulfil righteousness; and only through such action could He do this. In baptism He confessed, as His own, sins which He had not committed, and repented of them before God. He was numbered with transgressors and bore the sins of many. It was at once the prophecy and interpretation of His coming passion-baptism. The most arresting fact here is that in this word we have the revelation of a new element in the Righteousness 'of God—new that is, in the sense that it had not hitherto been revealed. Included in the Divine righteousness is the determination to make it possible, by the way of vicarious suffering. Thus love is seen, mastered by righteousness; and suffering, in order to make the unrighteous righteous. Thus righteousness is seen, acting in love, that men may be brought into the place where love can bestow all its gifts. That is the righteousness unveiled in the Gospel. That is the righteousness which exceeds that of the Pharisees. How far have we entered into the personal experience of it?
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.