Daily Bible Notes: October, 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
Pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.
Song of Solomon 7:13
The spouse desires to give to Jesus all that she produces. Our heart has "all manner of pleasant fruits," both "old and new," and they are laid up for our Beloved. At this rich autumnal season of fruit, let us survey our stores. We have new fruits. We desire to feel new life, new joy, new gratitude; we wish to make new resolves and carry them out by new labours; our heart blossoms with new prayers, and our soul is pledging herself to new efforts. But we have some old fruits too. There is our first love: a choice fruit that! and Jesus delights in it. There is our first faith: that simple faith by which, having nothing, we became possessors of all things. There is our joy when first we knew the Lord: let us revive it. We have our old remembrances of the promises. How faithful has God been!
In sickness, how softly did He make our bed! In deep waters, how placidly did He buoy us up! In the flaming furnace, how graciously did He deliver us. Old fruits, indeed! We have many of them, for His mercies have been more than the hairs of our head. Old sins we must regret, but then we have had repentances which He has given us, by which we have wept our way to the cross, and learned the merit of His blood. We have fruits, this morning, both new and old; but here is the point - they are all laid up for Jesus . Truly, those are the best and most acceptable services in which Jesus is the solitary aim of the soul, and His glory, without any admixture whatever, the end of all our efforts. Let our many fruits be laid up only for our Beloved; let us display them when He is with us, and not hold them up before the gaze of men. Jesus, we will turn the key in our garden door, and none shall enter to rob Thee of one good fruit from the soil which Thou hast watered with Thy bloody sweat. Our all shall be Thine, Thine only, O Jesus, our Beloved!
Evening
He will give grace and glory.
Psalm 84:11
Bounteous is Jehovah in His nature; to give is His delight. His gifts are beyond measure precious, and are as freely given as the light of the sun. He gives grace to His elect because He wills it, to His redeemed because of His covenant, to the called because of His promise, to believers because they seek it, to sinners because they need it. He gives grace abundantly, seasonably, constantly, readily, sovereignly; doubly enhancing the value of the boon by the manner of its bestowal. Grace in all its forms He freely renders to His people: comforting, preserving, sanctifying, directing, instructing, assisting grace, He generously pours into their souls without ceasing, and He always will do so, whatever may occur. Sickness may befall, but the Lord will give grace; poverty may happen to us, but grace will surely be afforded; death must cone but grace will light a candle at the darkest hour. Reader, how blessed it is as years roll round, and the leaves begin again to fall, to enjoy such an unfading promise as this, "The Lord will give grace."
The little conjunction "and" in this verse is a diamond rivet binding the present with the future: grace and glory always go together. God has married them, and none can divorce them. The Lord will never deny a soul glory to whom He has freely given to live upon His grace; indeed, glory is nothing more than grace in its Sabbath dress, grace in full bloom, grace like autumn fruit, mellow and perfected. How soon we may have glory none can tell! It may be before this month of October has run out we shall see the Holy City; but be the interval longer or shorter, we shall be glorified ere long. Glory, the glory of heaven, the glory of eternity, the glory of Jesus, the glory of the Father, the Lord will surely give to His chosen. Oh, rare promise of a faithful God!
Two golden links of one celestial chain:
Who owneth grace shall surely glory gain.
2. "My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year" by J.H.Jowett
Psalms 78:15-25
15 He split rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink abundantly as out of the depths.
16 He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.
17 Yet they still went on to sin against him, to rebel against the Most High in the desert.
18 They tempted God in their heart by asking food according to their desire.
19 Yes, they spoke against God. They said, "Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?
20 Behold, he struck the rock, so that waters gushed out, and streams overflowed. Can he give bread also? Will he provide meat for his people?"
21 Therefore the LORD heard, and was angry. A fire was kindled against Jacob, anger also went up against Israel,
22 because they didn't believe in God, and didn't trust in his salvation.
23 Yet he commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven.
24 He rained down manna on them to eat, and gave them food from the sky.
25 Man ate the bread of angels. He sent them food to the full.
A WONDERFUL UNBELIEF
"They believed not in God ... though He had----" Let everyone finish that sentence out of his own experience. How much grace can our unbelief withstand? The Lord had made the rock like unto a spring of water, and yet these people believed not! What has He done for thee and me? Let us retrace the pilgrimage of our own years. Let us recall the blessings by the way - the streams in the desert, the pillar of fire that led us in the night. And yet what is the quality of our faith? It is often weak and reluctant, riddled with timidities, or moth-eaten with worldly ease. It is not mighty and daring, riding forth every morning like a chivalrous knight to inevitable conquest. It creeps along, like Mr. Halting, and Miss Much-Afraid, and Mr. Little-Faith.
"He marvelled at their unbelief." The Lord Jesus wondered that men and women, seeing what they had seen, did not immediately spring to the life and service of faith. Perhaps we do not give time for faith to be born! Perhaps we do not see because we do not look. Perhaps we are blind to His mercies and are therefore dead to the faith. And therefore, perhaps, our first prayer should be, "Lord, that I might receive my sight," and then the prayer, "Lord, increase my faith."
3. "Yet Another Day - A Prayer for Every Day of the Year" by John H.Jowett
October 1st.
Gracious God, may Thy world speak to me of Thy love! May the glories of Nature lead me into reverence and love!
May the wonderful vesture draw me to still one more wonderful Lord!
4. "The Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith" by C.H.Spurgeon.
He hath given meat unto them that fear him: he will ever be mindful of his covenant.
Psalms 111:5
Those who fear God need not fear want. Through all these long years the Lord has always found meat for his own children, whether they have been in the wilderness, or by the brook Cherith, or in captivity, or in the midst of famine. Hitherto the Lord has given us day by day our daily bread, and we doubt not that he will continue to feed us till we want no more.
As to the higher and greater blessings of the covenant of grace, he will never cease to supply them as our case demands. He is mindful that he made the covenant, and never acts as if he regretted it. He is mindful of it when we provoke him to destroy us. He is mindful to love us, keep us, and comfort us, even as he engaged to do. He is mindful of every jot and tittle of his engagements, never suffering one of his words to fall to the ground.
We are sadly unmindful of our God, but he is graciously mindful of us. He cannot forget his Son who is the Surety of the Covenant, nor his Holy Spirit who actively carries out the covenant, nor his own honour, which is bound up with the covenant. Hence the foundation of God standeth sure, and no believer shall lose his divine inheritance, which is his by a covenant of salt.
5. "The Morning Message" by G.Campbell Morgan.
Till he send forth judgment unto victory.
Matthew 12:20
Christ came long ago, a lonely man, our brother-man ... He will come again to break the bruised reed of iniquity, to quench the smoking flax of opposition.
Lo, 'tis the heavenly army,
The Lord of Hosts attending:
'Tis He - the Lamb,
The great I Am,
With all His saints descending.
To you, ye kings and nations,
Ye foes of Christ assembling,
The host of light,
Prepared for fight,
Come with the cup of trembling.
Praise to the Lamb forever!
Bruised for our sin and gory,
Behold His brow,
Encircled now
With all His crowns of glory -
Beneath His feet reposing,
The whole redeemed creation
Are now at rest,
Forever blessed,
And sing His great salvation.
- Sir E. Denney.
6. "An Evening Meditation" taken from "Searchlights from the Word" by G.Campbell Morgan.
As much as in me is.
Romans 1:15
To begin to read this great letter of Paul, is to find ourselves in the very atmosphere of the closing chapters of the book of the Acts. There we found Paul expressing his conviction that he would see Rome; and we followed him through the years of stress that at last brought him there. It was almost certainly during his stay at Corinth, before starting on that long journey, that he wrote this Epistle, which opens with the expression of his desire to come to them. In connection with that expression of desire, he declared that he was ready to preach the Gospel to those in Rome, and then he used this qualifying phrase, "as much as in me is." The phrase seems to me to be at once a recognition of limitation, and of resource. The sense of limitation was the result of his overwhelming consciousness of the greatness of the Gospel. He knew that no one man was equal to its interpretation. And yet, I think, that quite unconsciously to him perhaps, the phrase was a recognition of resource. More lay within this devoted man than his natural capacities. Christ was formed within him: he was indwelt by the Spirit. Hence his ability to preach the Gospel in all its fullness as he did in this very letter. Is not the deduction patent? The measure in which a man is conscious of limitation, is the measure in which he makes possible the operation of those powers which are his in Christ.
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.