Daily Bible Notes: June, 11th
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
We love Him because He first loved us.
1 John 4:19
There is no light in the planet but that which proceedeth from the sun; and there is no true love to Jesus in the heart but that which cometh from the Lord Jesus himself. From this overflowing fountain of the infinite love of God, all our love to God must spring. This must ever be a great and certain truth, that we love Him for no other reason than because He first loved us.
Our love to Him is the fair offspring of His love to us. Cold admiration, when studying the works of God, anyone may have, but the warmth of love can only be kindled in the heart by God’s Spirit. How great the wonder that such as we should ever have been brought to love Jesus at all!
How marvellous that when we had rebelled against Him, He should, by a display of such amazing love, seek to draw us back. No! never should we have had a grain of love towards God unless it had been sown in us by the sweet seed of His love to us. Love, then, has for its parent the love of God shed abroad in the heart: but after it is thus divinely born, it must be divinely nourished . Love is an exotic; it is not a plant which will flourish naturally in human soil, it must be watered from above. Love to Jesus is a flower of a delicate nature, and if it received no nourishment but that which could be drawn from the rock of our hearts it would soon wither. As love comes from heaven, so it must feed on heavenly bread. It cannot exist in the wilderness unless it be fed by manna from on high. Love must feed on love. The very soul and life of our love to God is His love to us. "I love thee, Lord, but with no love of mine, For I have none to give; I love thee, Lord; but all the love is thine, For by thy love I live.
I am as nothing, and rejoice to be Emptied, and lost, and swallowed up in thee."
Evening
There brake He the arrows of the bow, the shield, and the sword, and the battle.
Psalm 76:3
Our Redeemer’s glorious cry of "It is finished," was the death-knell of all the adversaries of His people, the breaking of "the and the battle." Behold the hero of Golgotha using His cross as an anvil, and His woes as a hammer, dashing to shivers bundle after bundle of our sins, those poisoned "arrows of the bow"; trampling on every indictment, and destroying every accusation. What glorious blows the mighty Breaker gives with a hammer far more ponderous than the fabled weapon of Thor! How the diabolical darts fly to fragments, and the infernal bucklers are broken like potters’ vessels! Behold, He draws from its sheath of hellish workmanship the dread sword of Satanic power! He snaps it across His knee, as a man breaks the dry wood of a fagot, and casts it into the fire. Beloved, no sin of a believer can now be an arrow mortally to wound him, no condemnation can now be a sword to kill him, for the punishment of our sin was borne by Christ, a full atonement was made for all our iniquities by our blessed Substitute and Surety. Who now accuseth? Who now condemneth? Christ hath died, yea rather, hath risen again. Jesus has emptied the quivers of hell, has quenched every fiery dart, and broken off the head of every arrow of wrath; the ground is strewn with the splinters and relics of the weapons of hell’s warfare, which are only visible to us to remind us of our former danger, and of our great deliverance. Sin hath no more dominion over us.
Jesus has made an end of it, and put it away for ever. O thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end. Talk ye of all the wondrous works of the Lord, ye who make mention of His name, keep not silence, neither by day, nor when the sun goeth to his rest. Bless the Lord, O my soul.
2. "My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year" by J.H.Jowett
Psalms 77:11-20
11 I will remember the LORD's deeds; for I will remember your wonders of old.
12 I will also meditate on all your work, and consider your doings.
13 Your way, God, is in the sanctuary. What god is great like God?
14 You are the God who does wonders. You have made your strength known amongst the peoples.
15 You have redeemed your people with your arm, the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah.
16 The waters saw you, God. The waters saw you, and they writhed. The depths also convulsed.
17 The clouds poured out water. The skies resounded with thunder. Your arrows also flashed around.
18 The voice of your thunder was in the whirlwind. The lightnings lit up the world. The earth trembled and shook.
19 Your way was through the sea; your paths through the great waters. Your footsteps were not known.
20 You led your people like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.
THE PATH ACROSS THE SEA
"Thy way is in the sea."
And the sea appears to be the most trackless of worlds! The sea is the very symbol of mystery, the grim dwelling-house of innumerable things that have been lost. But God's way moves here and there across this trackless wild. God is never lost among our mysteries. He knows his way about. When we are bewildered He sees the road, and He sees the end even from the beginning. Even the sea, in every part of it, is the Lord's highway. When His way is in the sea we cannot trace it. Mystery is part of our appointed discipline. Uncertainty is to prepare us for a deeper assurance. The spirit of questioning is one of the ordained means of growth. And so the bewildering sea is our friend, as some day we shall understand. We love to "lie down in green pastures," and to be led "beside the still waters," and God gives us our share of this nourishing rest. But we need the mysterious sea, the overwhelming experience, the floods of sorrows which we cannot explain. If we had no sea we should never become robust. We should remain weaklings to the end of our days.
God takes us out into the deeps. But His way is in the sea. He knows the haven, He knows the track, and we shall arrive!
3. "Yet Another Day - A Prayer for Every Day of the Year" by John H.Jowett
June 11th.
Holy Lord, teach me the meaning of real success. May I not become the victim of the world's ambition! May I esteem
holiness more than gold! May I aim at the eternal, and may I be successful!
4. "The Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith" by C.H.Spurgeon.
Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed.
Isaiah 54:4
We shall not be ashamed of our faith. Carping critics may assail the Scriptures upon which we ground our belief, but every year the Lord will make it more and more clear that in his Book there is no error, no excess, and no omission. It is no discredit to be a simple believer; the faith which looks alone to Jesus is a crown of honour on any man's head, and better than a star on his breast.
We shall not be ashamed of our hope. It shall be even as the Lord has said. We shall be fed, led, blest and rested. Our Lord will come, and then the days of our mourning shall be ended. How we shall glory in the Lord who first gave us lively hope, and then gave us that which we hoped for!
We shall not be ashamed of our love. Jesus is to us the altogether lovely, and never, never, shall we have to blush because we have yielded our hearts to him. The sight of our glorious Well-beloved will justify the most enthusiastic attachment to him. None will blame the martyrs for dying for him. When the enemies of Christ are clothed with everlasting contempt, the lovers of Jesus shall find themselves honoured by all holy beings, because they chose the reproach of Christ rather than the treasures of Egypt.
5. "The Morning Message" by G.Campbell Morgan.
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
John 13:35
It is not our doing that lightens the world. It is not our ceremonial cleanness that helps men. It is not our correctness in the holding of truth that helps a dying race. It is our love, first for our Master, then for each other, and then for the world.
6. "An Evening Meditation" taken from "Searchlights from the Word" by G.Campbell Morgan.
Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? The mercy of God endureth continually.
Psalms 52:1
In that opening question, and the immediately following assertion, we have the key to the whole of this song. The first part of it describes the mighty man and his action (verses 2-5); while the second part describes the security of the man whose trust is in God (verses 6-9). On the one hand a man is seen who by reason of his wealth and material power is vaunting his ability to encompass his own malicious purposes against a good man. Miles Coverdale rendered this phrase, "O mighty man," as "Thou tyrant," and thus gave an accurate interpretation of the kind of man this Edomite, Doeg, really was. The singer sees the folly and futility of his boasting, because he has clear vision of one great fact, that, namely, of the enduring mercy of God. This is the one and all-sufficient answer to all fear which may be caused by such evil men, when they seem entrenched in certain material strength. Over against that strength of wickedness the mercy of God is eternally operative. The rest of the song shows how much more there is than pity in the mercy of God. It is fierce and forceful: "God will likewise destroy thee for ever; He will take thee up and pluck thee out of thy tent, and root thee out of the land of the living." That is the activity of mercy. Mark the contrast in the case of the man trusting in the Lord. He says of himself: "I am like a green olive tree in the House of God."
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.