Daily Bible Notes: September, 25th
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
Just, and the justifier of him which believeth.
Romans 3:26
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Conscience accuses no longer. Judgment now decides for the sinner instead of against him.
Memory looks back upon past sins, with deep sorrow for the sin, but yet with no dread of any penalty to come; for Christ has paid the debt of His people to the last jot and tittle, and received the divine receipt; and unless God can be so unjust as to demand double payment for one debt, no soul for whom Jesus died as a substitute can ever be cast into hell. It seems to be one of the very principles of our enlightened nature to believe that God is just; we feel that it must be so, and this gives us our terror at first; but is it not marvellous that this very same belief that God is just, becomes afterwards the pillar of our confidence and peace! If God be just, I, a sinner, alone and without a substitute, must be punished; but Jesus stands in my stead and is punished for me; and now, if God be just, I, a sinner, standing in Christ, can never be punished. God must change His nature before one soul, for whom Jesus was a substitute, can ever by any possibility suffer the lash of the law. Therefore, Jesus having taken the place of the believer - having rendered a full equivalent to divine wrath for all that His people ought to have suffered as the result of sin, the believer can shout with glorious triumph, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?" Not God, for He hath justified; not Christ, for He hath died, "yea rather hath risen again." My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, He is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what He has done, and in what He is now doing for me. On the lion of justice the fair maid of hope rides like a queen.
Evening
Who of God is made unto us wisdom.
1 Corinthians 1:30
Man’s intellect seeks after rest, and by nature seeks it apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. Men of education are apt, even when converted, to look upon the simplicities of the cross of Christ with an eye too little reverent and loving. They are snared in the old net in which the Grecians were taken, and have a hankering to mix philosophy with revelation. The temptation with a man of refined thought and high education is to depart from the simple truth of Christ crucified, and to invent, as the term is, a more intellectual doctrine. This led the early Christian churches into Gnosticism, and bewitched them with all sorts of heresies. This is the root of Neology, and the other fine things which in days gone by were so fashionable in Germany, and are now so ensnaring to certain classes of divines. Whoever you are, good reader, and whatever your education may be, if you be the Lord’s, be assured you will find no rest in philosophizing divinity. You may receive this dogma of one great thinker, or that dream of another profound reasoner, but what the chaff is to the wheat, that will these be to the pure word of God. All that reason, when best guided, can find out is but the A B C of truth, and even that lacks certainty, while in Christ Jesus there is treasured up all the fulness of wisdom and knowledge.
All attempts on the part of Christians to be content with systems such as Unitarian and Broad-church thinkers would approve of, must fail; true heirs of heaven must come back to the grandly simple reality which makes the ploughboy’s eye flash with joy, and glads the pious pauper’s heart - "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." Jesus satisfies the most elevated intellect when He is believingly received, but apart from Him the mind of the regenerate discovers no rest. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." "A good understanding have all they that do His commandments."
2. "My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year" by J.H.Jowett
Psalms 107:21-32
21 Let them praise the LORD for his loving kindness, for his wonderful deeds to the children of men!
22 Let them offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and declare his deeds with singing.
23 Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do business in great waters;
24 These see the LORD's deeds, and his wonders in the deep.
25 For he commands, and raises the stormy wind, which lifts up its waves.
26 They mount up to the sky; they go down again to the depths. Their soul melts away because of trouble.
27 They reel back and forth, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits' end.
28 Then they cry to the LORD in their trouble, and he brings them out of their distress.
29 He makes the storm a calm, so that its waves are still.
30 Then they are glad because it is calm, so he brings them to their desired haven.
31 Let them praise the LORD for his loving kindness, for his wonderful deeds for the children of men!
32 Let them exalt him also in the assembly of the people, and praise him in the seat of the elders.
THE SENSE OF GRACE
A vital part of all devotion is the remembrance of the goodness of God. Such a remembrance keeps my soul in the realm of grace. I am so inclined to proclaim my personal rights rather than glorify the favour of God, so inclined to exhibit my own prowess rather than God's most gracious bounty. And whenever I lose the sense of grace I become a usurper and take the throne. Our salvation is "not of works, lest any man should boast."
And such a remembrance would keep my soul in the mood of humility. "Nothing in my hands I bring." I can no more claim the glory of salvation than a child, who has cut a shallow trench on the sands, can claim the glory of initiating the roll of the ocean-tide. I owe all my desires and all my hopes and all my present attainments to the boundless goodness of God.
And such a remembrance would keep my soul in the dispensation of love. I cannot quietly and steadily contemplate the goodness of the Lord without my soul being kindled into loving response. Without high contemplations love smoulders, and will eventually die out. But God's goodness inflames the soul, and communicates its own most gracious heat. "We love because He first loved us!"
3. "Yet Another Day - A Prayer for Every Day of the Year" by John H.Jowett
September 25th.
My Father, teach me the meaning of sonship. May I not demean it by any unworthy conception! By thinking highly may I
rise to the heights! Lift up mine eyes to the hills. And may my life follow my gaze!
4. "The Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith" by C.H.Spurgeon.
If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a burnt offering and a meat offering at our
hands, neither would he have shewed us all these things.
Judges 13:23
This is a sort of promise deduced by logic. It is an inference fairly drawn from ascertained facts. It was not likely that the Lord had revealed to Manoah and his wife that a son would be born to them, and yet had it in his heart to destroy them. The wife reasoned well, and we shall do well if we follow her line of argument.
The Father has accepted the great sacrifice of Calvary, and has declared himself well pleased therewith; how can he now be pleased to kill us? Why a substitute if the sinner must still perish? The accepted sacrifice of Jesus puts an end to fear.
The Lord has shown us our election, our adoption, our union to Christ, our marriage to the Well-beloved: how can he now destroy us? The promises are loaded with blessings, which necessitate our being preserved unto eternal life. It is not possible for the Lord to cast us away, and yet fulfil his covenant. The past assures us, and the future re-assures us. We shall not die, but live; for we have seen Jesus, and in him we have seen the Father by the illumination of the Holy Ghost. Because of this life-giving sight we must live for ever.
5. "The Morning Message" by G.Campbell Morgan.
Blessed.
Matthew 5:6
Men hold two views of what happiness consists in, viz., having and doing. To possess much, or to do some great thing, constitutes the sum of human blessedness according to popular theory. Our Teacher sweeps these conceptions away by absolutely ignoring them ... Being is everything. A man's happiness depends upon what he is in himself.
6. "An Evening Meditation" taken from "Searchlights from the Word" by G.Campbell Morgan.
No soldier on service entangleth himself in the affairs of this life.
2 Timothy 2:4
This word of Paul took on new meaning for many of us during the years of the Great War. Indeed, today it seems to some of us as though we had never seen it at all before. Of course, we had seen it, and we had given it a certain conventional interpretation. Our thinking, however, of what was included in the phrase "the affairs of this life," was very superficial in many cases. We thought of certain liberties and comforts, which the soldier is denied; and, of course, that thinking was correct so far as it went. We needed the stern and awe-inspiring experiences of those dread years to enable us to apprehend the full content of the phrase. Now we know that nothing is left out. The soldier on active service breaks with everything except the War. We saw them go in millions, leaving father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and lover; we saw them march away from promising careers, loved occupations, high ambitions, and the finest things of responsibility. Nothing was permitted to entangle them, to hinder them, or in any way to interfere with the one thing. This new understanding has brought a new revelation of the claims which our Lord's campaign makes upon us. He only asks His people to do what the sons of the commonwealth did, un-grudgingly. Does not the consideration bring a sense of shame with it? How often those who should constitute the sacramental host of God have played at war! May God forgive us, and give us another chance! And if in His grace He will, may we be worthy of it!
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.