Daily Bible Notes: May, 1st
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
His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers.
Song of Solomon 5:13
Lo, the flowery month is come! March winds and April showers have done their work, and the earth is all bedecked with beauty. Come my soul, put on thine holiday attire and go forth to gather garlands of heavenly thoughts. Thou knowest whither to betake thyself, for to thee "the beds of spices" are well known, and thou hast so often smelt the perfume of "the sweet flowers," that thou wilt go at once to thy well-beloved and find all loveliness, all joy in Him. That cheek once so rudely smitten with a rod, oft bedewed with tears of sympathy and then defiled with spittle - that cheek as it smiles with mercy is as fragrant aromatic to my heart. Thou didst not hide Thy face from shame and spitting, O Lord Jesus, and therefore I will find my dearest delight in praising Thee. Those cheeks were furrowed by the plough of grief, and crimsoned with red lines of blood from Thy thorn-crowned temples; such marks of love unbounded cannot but charm my soul far more than "pillars of perfume." If I may not see the whole of His face I would behold His cheeks, for the least glimpse of Him is exceedingly refreshing to my spiritual sense and yields a variety of delights. In Jesus I find not only fragrance, but a bed of spices; not one flower, but all manner of sweet flowers. He is to me my rose and my lily, my heart’s ease and my cluster of camphire. When He is with me it is May all the year round, and my soul goes forth to wash her happy face in the morning-dew of His grace, and to solace herself with the singing of the birds of His promises. Precious Lord Jesus, let me in very deed know the blessedness which dwells in abiding, unbroken fellowship with Thee. I am a poor worthless one, whose cheek Thou hast deigned to kiss! O let me kiss Thee in return with the kisses of my lips.
Evening
I am the rose of Sharon.
Song of Solomon 2:1
Whatever there may be of beauty in the material world, Jesus Christ possesses all that in the spiritual world in a tenfold degree. Amongst flowers the rose is deemed the sweetest, but Jesus is infinitely more beautiful in the garden of the soul than the rose can in the gardens of earth.
He takes the first place as the fairest among ten thousand. He is the sun, and all others are the stars; the heavens and the day are dark in comparison with Him, for the King in His beauty transcends all . "I am the rose of Sharon ." This was the best and rarest of roses. Jesus is not "the rose" alone, He is "the rose of Sharon," just as He calls His righteousness "gold," and then adds, "the gold of Ophir" - the best of the best. He is positively lovely, and superlatively the loveliest. There is variety in His charms . The rose is delightful to the eye, and its scent is pleasant and refreshing; so each of the senses of the soul, whether it be the taste or feeling, the hearing, the sight, or the spiritual smell, finds appropriate gratification in Jesus. Even the recollection of His love is sweet . Take the rose of Sharon, and pull it leaf from leaf, and lay by the leaves in the jar of memory, and you shall find each leaf fragrant long afterwards, filling the house with perfume. Christ satisfies the highest taste of the most educated spirit to the very full. The greatest amateur in perfumes is quite satisfied with the rose: and when the soul has arrived at her highest pitch of true taste, she shall still be content with Christ, nay, she shall be the better able to appreciate Him. Heaven itself possesses nothing which excels the rose of Sharon.
What emblem can fully set forth His beauty? Human speech and earth-born things fail to tell of Him. Earth’s choicest charms commingled, feebly picture His abounding preciousness. Blessed rose, bloom in my heart for ever!
2. "My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year" by J.H.Jowett
Psalms 124
1 If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, let Israel now say,
2 if it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose up against us;
3 then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their wrath was kindled against us;
4 then the waters would have overwhelmed us, the stream would have gone over our soul;
5 then the proud waters would have gone over our soul.
6 Blessed be the LORD, who has not given us as a prey to their teeth.
7 Our soul has escaped like a bird out of the fowler's snare. The snare is broken, and we have escaped.
8 Our help is in the LORD's name, who made heaven and earth.
THE CONDITIONS OF SERENITY
If I would be like the Psalmist, I must clearly recognize my perils. He sees the "waters," the "proud waters." He beholds the "enemy," and his "wrath," and his "teeth." He sees "the fowler" with his snare! I must not shut my eyes, and "make my judgment blind." One of the gifts of grace is the spirit of discernment, the eyes which not only detect hidden treasure, but hidden foes. The devil is an expert in mimicry; he can make himself look like an angel of light. And so must I be able to discover his snares, even when they appear as the most seductive food.
And if I would be like the Psalmist, I must clearly recognize my great Ally. "If it has not been the Lord, who was on our side!" To see the Ally on the perilous field, and to see Him on my side, gives birth to holy confidence and song. "The Lord is on my side, whom shall I fear?" I must make sure of the Ally, and "victory is secure."
And if I would be like the Psalmist, I must not omit the doxology of praise. When the prayer is answered, I am apt to forget the praise. My thanksgivings are not so ready as my requests. And so the apparently conquered enemy steals in again at the door of an ungrateful heart.
3. "Yet Another Day - A Prayer for Every Day of the Year" by John H.Jowett
May 1st.
My Saviour, this is the day the Lord hath made. May I be in the Spirit on this Thy day! Help me to rise from my dead self into
newness of life.
4. "The Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith" by C.H.Spurgeon.
The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Isaiah 55:12
When sin is pardoned, our greatest sorrow is ended, and our truest pleasure begins. Such is the joy which the Lord bestows upon his reconciled ones, that it overflows and fills all nature with delight. The material world has latent music in it, and a renewed heart knows how to bring it out and make it vocal. Creation is the organ, and a gracious man finds out its keys, lays his hand thereon, and wakes the whole system of the universe to the harmony of praise. Mountains and hills, and other great objects, are, as it were, the bass of the chorus; while the trees of the wood, and all things that have life, take up the air of the melodious song.
When God's word is made to prosper among us, and souls are saved, then everything seems full of song. When we hear the confessions of young believers, and the testimonies of well-instructed saints, we are made so happy that we must praise the Lord, and then it seems as if rocks and hills, and woods and fields, echoed our joy-notes, and turned the world into an orchestra. Lord, on this happy May-day, lead me out into thy tuneful world as rich in praise as a lark in full song.
5. "The Morning Message" by G.Campbell Morgan.
Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
Psalm 139:7
In every gleam of the glory of nature there is the evidence of an ever-present God.
Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer;
Rare is the rose-burst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it is rarer;
Sweet is the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter;
And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmaster'd the metre.
Great are the symbols of being, but that which is symboll'd is greater;
Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward Creator;
Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift stands the giving;
Back of the hand that receives, thrill the sensitive nerves of receiving.
Space is as nothing to Spirit, the deed is outdone by the doing;
The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the wooing;
And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from the heights where those shine,
Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the essence of life is divine.
- Richard Realf.
6. "An Evening Meditation" taken from "Searchlights from the Word" by G.Campbell Morgan.
Covetousness, the which is idolatry.
Colossians 3:5
In the paragraph from which these words are taken, we have a dark list of evil things against which Paul warned the saints. Perhaps the one which would by the ordinary standards of life be considered least harmful, or at least, less repugnant than the rest, is covetousness. Admittedly it is not a pleasant word, and describes something which we all dislike in other people; but the ordinary man would hardly bracket it, for instance, with fornication as equally reprehensible. And yet it is the one evil thing which Paul stops to characterize, and he does so by declaring it to be idolatry, the most heinous of spiritual sins. It is evident that the Apostle looked upon it as a most deadly form of sin. In his Roman letter he declared that it was the commandment, "Thou shalt not covet," which awoke in him the consciousness of sin. What is there in this sin which is so deadly? First, it is idolatry, in that it only obtains when man thinks of life as consisting in things possessed, rather than in righteous relationship to God. No man covets until he has lost the true outlook on life, and imagines that it can be conditioned by the things around. Therefore, it is a sin also against others, for to satisfy the desire, others are wronged. Thus, finally, it is self-destructive, for these wrong conceptions and activities always react upon the soul to its own undoing. And yet what ecclesiastical court ever yet arraigned a church-member for covetousness? Perhaps, the principle that qualification for throwing stones is freedom from the sin we would punish, is the reason of the reticence. At any rate, it may be well for us to allow our Lord to deal with us on the matter.
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.