Daily Bible Notes: October, 24th
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
The trees of the Lord are full of sap.
Psalm 104:16
Without sap the tree cannot flourish or even exist. Vitality is essential to a Christian. There must be life - a vital principle infused into us by God the Holy Ghost, or we cannot be trees of the Lord. The mere name of being a Christian is but a dead thing, we must be filled with the spirit of divine life. This life is mysterious . We do not understand the circulation of the sap, by what force it rises, and by what power it descends again. So the life within us is a sacred mystery. Regeneration is wrought by the Holy Ghost entering into man and becoming man’s life; and this divine life in a believer afterwards feeds upon the flesh and blood of Christ and is thus sustained by divine food, but whence it cometh and whither it goeth who shall explain to us? What a secret thing the sap is! The roots go searching through the soil with their little spongioles, but we cannot see them suck out the various gases, or transmute the mineral into the vegetable; this work is done down in the dark. Our root is Christ Jesus, and our life is hid in Him; this is the secret of the Lord. The radix of the Christian life is as secret as the life itself. How permanently active is the sap in the cedar! In the Christian the divine life is always full of energy - not always in fruit-bearing, but in inward operations. The believer’s graces , are not every one of them in constant motion? but his life never ceases to palpitate within. He is not always working for God, but his heart is always living upon Him. As the sap manifests itself in producing the foliage and fruit of the tree , so with a truly healthy Christian, his grace is externally manifested in his walk and conversation. If you talk with him, he cannot help speaking about Jesus. If you notice his actions you will see that he has been with Jesus. He has so much sap within, that it must fill his conduct and conversation with life.
Evening
He began to wash the disciples’ feet.
John 13:5
The Lord Jesus loves His people so much, that every day He is still doing for them much that is analogous to washing their soiled feet. Their poorest actions He accepts; their deepest sorrow He feels; their slenderest wish He hears, and their every transgression He forgives. He is still their servant as well as their Friend and Master. He not only performs majestic deeds for them, as wearing the mitre on His brow, and the precious jewels glittering on His breastplate, and standing up to plead for them, but humbly, patiently, He yet goes about among His people with the basin and the towel. He does this when He puts away from us day by day our constant infirmities and sins. Last night, when you bowed the knee, you mournfully confessed that much of your conduct was not worthy of your profession; and even tonight, you must mourn afresh that you have fallen again into the selfsame folly and sin from which special grace delivered you long ago; and yet Jesus will have great patience with you; He will hear your confession of sin; He will say, "I will, be thou clean"; He will again apply the blood of sprinkling, and speak peace to your conscience, and remove every spot. It is a great act of eternal love when Christ once for all absolves the sinner, and puts him into the family of God; but what condescending patience there is when the Saviour with much long-suffering bears the oft recurring follies of His wayward disciple; day by day, and hour by hour, washing away the multiplied transgressions of His erring but yet beloved child! To dry up a flood of rebellion is something marvellous, but to endure the constant dropping of repeated offences - to bear with a perpetual trying of patience, this is divine indeed! While we find comfort and peace in our Lord’s daily cleansing, its legitimate influence upon us will be to increase our watchfulness, and quicken our desire for holiness. Is it so ?
2. "My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year" by J.H.Jowett
Luke 14:1-11
1 When he went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees on a Sabbath to eat bread, they were watching him.
2 Behold, a certain man who had dropsy was in front of him.
3 Jesus, answering, spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?"
4 But they were silent. He took him, and healed him, and let him go.
5 He answered them, "Which of you, if your son or an ox fell into a well, wouldn't immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?"
6 They couldn't answer him regarding these things.
7 He spoke a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the best seats, and said to them,
8 "When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, don't sit in the best seat, since perhaps someone more honourable than you might be invited by him,
9 and he who invited both of you would come and tell you, 'Make room for this person.' Then you would begin, with shame, to take the lowest place.
10 But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes, he may tell you, 'Friend, move up higher.' Then you will be honoured in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.
11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted."
"PUSH" AND "PULL"
The world canonizes "push." It eulogizes the "man of push." It loves to see a man elbowing his way through the jostling crowd, and gaining for himself a "chief seat" at life's feast. He is proclaimed a "successful" man, and he rises in "the chief seat," and amid loud hurrahs he responds to the toast of his health.
Yes, "push" is the word of the world, but "pull" is the word of the Lord, and between the two there is the difference of darkness and light. "Push" is selfish and exclusive: "pull" is inclusive and neighbourly. "Push" takes as its motto, "The weakest to the wall!" "Pull" takes as its motto, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ."
The final verdict upon life will be founded, not upon our own success in gaining a chief seat, but upon our success in encouraging the faint and the weakling, and in "helping lame dogs over stiles."
My gracious Lord, help me to put on "a heart of compassion" that by neighbourly feeling and ministry I may lead my fellows to the choice places of life's feast.
3. "Yet Another Day - A Prayer for Every Day of the Year" by John H.Jowett
October 24th.
My Saviour, wilt Thou give me Thine own love for all my fellows? Save me from selfishness. May my thought include my
brother in kindly ministry! May he live in my sympathies! May I have room for him in my prayers!
4. "The Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith" by C.H.Spurgeon.
And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brazen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee:
for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord.
Jeremiah 15:20
Stability in the fear and faith of God will make a man like a wall of brass, which no one can batter down or break. Only the Lord can make such; but we need such men in the church, and in the world, but specially in the pulpit.
Against uncompromising men of truth this age of shams will fight tooth and nail. Nothing seems to offend Satan and his seed like decision. They attack holy firmness even as the Assyrians besieged fenced cities. The joy is that they cannot prevail against those whom God has made strong in his strength. Carried about with every wind of doctrine, others only need to be blown upon, and away they go; but those who love the doctrines of grace, because they possess the grace of the doctrines, stand like rocks in the midst of raging seas.
Whence this stability? "I am with thee, saith the Lord": that is the true answer. Jehovah will save and deliver faithful souls from all the assaults of the adversary. Hosts are against us, but the Lord of hosts is with us. We dare not budge an inch; for the Lord himself holds us in our place, and there we will abide for ever.
5. "The Morning Message" by G.Campbell Morgan.
God is love.
1 John 4:8
The will of God ensures the pleasure of man, because God is love. This is, perhaps, at once the simplest and sublimest statement that revelation has made concerning the nature of God ... If, then, God is love, His Will is the Will of love; and the common mistake that law and love are in any sense antagonistic must be once and forever abandoned.
6. "An Evening Meditation" taken from "Searchlights from the Word" by G.Campbell Morgan.
As He spake these things, many believed on Him.
John 8:30
When this statement is read in its true connection with the record of the things our Lord has been saying, it is found to be a radiant revelation of the impressiveness of His personality. He had been speaking in an atmosphere of criticism and enmity. Moreover, He had sternly and openly rebuked and denounced the Pharisees. Then He made to those very men, and in that hostile atmosphere, superlative claims for Himself, declaring that He worked and taught in fellowship with God, and that He always did the things that pleased God. It was then, "As He spake these things, many believed on Him." The force of all this may be gathered if we try to imagine any other teacher making such claims. If we heard any man do so, we should at once doubt his sincerity, his truthfulness. Yet when these people heard Jesus make them, "many believed on Him." There can be no explanation other than that of the harmony between the claims He made and the impression of His personality. He was What He claimed to be. Men knew it. There was no escape from the impressiveness of His reality. Truth not only fell from His lips. It emanated from Himself. This quality is still pervasive, even when men find Him in the written words. It is possible to disobey Him, even to deny the practicability of His ideals; but it is not possible to deny the beauty of those ideals, or to disbelieve in the sincerity and glory of the Lord Himself.
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.