Daily Bible Notes: June, 20th
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, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.
Amos 9:9
Every sifting comes by divine command and permission . Satan must ask leave before he can lay a finger upon Job. Nay, more, in some sense our siftings are directly the work of heaven , for the text says, "I will sift the house of Israel." Satan, like a drudge, may hold the sieve, hoping to destroy the corn; but the overruling hand of the Master is accomplishing the purity of the grain by the very process which the enemy intended to be destructive. Precious, but much sifted corn of the Lord’s floor, be comforted by the blessed fact that the Lord directeth both flail and sieve to His own glory, and to thine eternal profit.
The Lord Jesus will surely use the fan which is in His hand, and will divide the precious from the vile . All are not Israel that are of Israel; the heap on the barn floor is not clean provender, and hence the winnowing process must be performed. In the sieve true weight alone has power. Husks and chaff being devoid of substance must fly before the wind, and only solid corn will remain.
Observe the complete safety of the Lord’s wheat ; even the least grain has a promise of preservation. God Himself sifts, and therefore it is stern and terrible work; He sifts them in all places, "among all nations"; He sifts them in the most effectual manner, "like as corn is sifted in a sieve"; and yet for all this, not the smallest, lightest, or most shrivelled grain, is permitted to fall to the ground. Every individual believer is precious in the sight of the Lord, a shepherd would not lose one sheep, nor a jeweller one diamond, nor a mother one child, nor a man one limb of his body, nor will the Lord lose one of His redeemed people. However little we may be, if we are the Lord’s, we may rejoice that we are preserved in Christ Jesus.
Evening
Straightway they forsook their nets, and followed Him.
Mark 1:18
When they heard the call of Jesus, Simon and Andrew obeyed at once without demur. If we would always, punctually and with resolute zeal, put in practice what we hear upon the spot, or at the first fit occasion, our attendance at the means of grace, and our reading of good books, could not fail to enrich us spiritually. He will not lose his loaf who has taken care at once to eat it, neither can he be deprived of the benefit of the doctrine who has already acted upon it. Most readers and hearers become moved so far as to purpose to amend; but, alas! the proposal is a blossom which has not been knit, and therefore no fruit comes of it; they wait, they waver, and then they forget, till, like the ponds in nights of frost, when the sun shines by day, they are only thawed in time to be frozen again. That fatal to-morrow is blood-red with the murder of fair resolutions; it is the slaughter-house of the innocents. We are very concerned that our little book of "Evening Readings" should not be fruitless, and therefore we pray that readers may not be readers only, but doers, of the word. The practice of truth is the most profitable reading of it . Should the reader be impressed with any duty while perusing these pages, let him hasten to fulfil it before the holy glow has departed from his soul, and let him leave his nets, and all that he has, sooner than be found rebellious to the Master’s call. Do not give place to the devil by delay! Haste while opportunity and quickening are in happy conjunction. Do not be caught in your own nets, but break the meshes of worldliness, and away where glory calls you. Happy is the writer who shall meet with readers resolved to carry out his teachings: his harvest shall be a hundredfold, and his Master shall have great honour.
Would to God that such might be our reward upon these brief meditations and hurried hints. Grant it, O Lord, unto thy servant!
2. "My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year" by J.H.Jowett
Ephesians 6:1-10
1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
2 "Honour your father and mother," which is the first commandment with a promise:
3 "that it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth."
4 You fathers, don't provoke your children to wrath, but nurture them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
5 Servants, be obedient to those who according to the flesh are your masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as to Christ,
6 not in the way of service only when eyes are on you, as men pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,
7 with good will doing service as to the Lord, and not to men,
8 knowing that whatever good thing each one does, he will receive the same good again from the Lord, whether he is bound or free.
9 You masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him.
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might.
THE REVEALING PRESENCE OF THE LORD
A starling never reveals the richness of its hues until we see it in the sunlight. A duty never discloses its beauties until we set it in the light of the Lord. It is amazing how a dull road is transfigured when the sunshine falls upon it! God's grace reveals the graces in all healthy things. Hidden lovelinesses troop out when we set them in the presence of the Lord.
And so the Apostle counsels an obedience which is "in the Lord." He wants us to know how beautiful common things can be when they are linked to Christ. And what he says about obedience he says about everything. One of the great secrets in the teaching of Paul is expressed in just this phrase, "in the Lord," "in Christ." It meant connection with a power-house whose energy would light up all the common lamps of life - the lamps of hope, of faith, of love, of daily labour, and of human service.
And this is the secret of the Christian life. We need no other; at least, all other secrets are involved in this. If we attend to this little preposition "in," we have entry into the infinite. If we are "in Christ," we are in the kingdom of everything that endures, and we are outside nothing but sin.
3. "Yet Another Day - A Prayer for Every Day of the Year" by John H.Jowett
June 20th.
Lord Christ, in whom all power dwelleth, give me the power to pray. May I be able to detach myself from the world,
and fix my thoughts upon the unseen! May the heavenly places become real and immediate to me!
4. "The Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith" by C.H.Spurgeon.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod
and thy staff they comfort me.
Psalms 23:4
Sweet are these words in describing a deathbed assurance. How many have repeated them in their last hours with intense delight!
But the verse is equally applicable to agonies of spirit in the midst of life. Some of us, like Paul, die daily through a tendency to gloom of soul. Bunyan puts the Valley of the Shadow of Death far earlier in the pilgrimage than the river which rolls at the foot of the celestial hills. We have some of us traversed the dark and dreadful defile of "the shadow of death" several times, and we can bear witness that the Lord alone enabled us to bear up amid its wild thoughts, its mysterious horrors, its terrible depressions. The Lord has sustained us, and kept us above all real fear of evil, even when our spirit has been overwhelmed. We have been pressed and oppressed, but yet we have lived, for we have felt the presence of the Great Shepherd, and have been confident that his crook would prevent the foe from giving us any deadly wound.
Should the present time be one darkened by the raven wings of a great sorrow, let us glorify God by a peaceful trust in him.
5. "The Morning Message" by G.Campbell Morgan.
Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not shall be rooted up.
Matthew 15:13, R.V.
You cannot grow the tulips of the Kingdom of God save as you get the bulbs from heaven.
6. "An Evening Meditation" taken from "Searchlights from the Word" by G.Campbell Morgan.
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
Psalms 61:2
This is the song of one who was away from the City and Temple of God. It is conjectured that David wrote it when he was an exile for a time, as the result of the rebellion of Absalom. From that distance, which seemed to him to be the end of the earth, he called upon God when his heart was overwhelmed, and this was the very heart of his prayer. Once more we have the employment of Rock, as symbolic of God, the reference here being to its strength and to its height, as constituting a place of refuge and security. The illuminative phase of this petition is that it puts God as a Rock into contrast with self. These were the words of a man who was supremely conscious of his own insufficiency. From the perils and the sorrows in the midst of which he was living, he found neither help nor hiding place in his own wisdom or strength. Indeed, it may be that he was realizing that bitterest of all experiences, that he had been his own worst enemy, and that the foes he had chiefly to fear were resident within his own personality. Thus his prayer was for elevation above self in God. It was a great cry; and it is one we constantly need to pray. It is only when we find refuge in the Rock that is higher than ourselves, that we are safe from the enemies without or the foes within. There is no such thing as self-sufficiency. Our sufficiency is ever 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.