Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: January 3rd

Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. - Hebrews 13:5.

THE gospel is a system of benevolence. Every thing in the gospel shows the value of this principle. How it enjoins it! “As we have opportunity let us do good to all men.” “Be not weary in well-doing.” And in our present motto, “Let your conversation (that is, your habitual behaviour and course of action) be without covetousness.” How it commends this principle! “Faith, hope, and charity, and the greatest of these is charity.” “Charity which is the bond of perfectness.” “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” And saith the Apostle James, “He shall have judgment without mercy, that hath showed no mercy.”

Here let us refer to the scenes of the judgment of the last day. “Then shall the King say to them on his left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” But what had they done? Were they robbers of temples, murderers of fathers, or murderers of mothers? Were they blasphemers, that they are thus accursed? No. No, they were hard-hearted, covetous, and close-fisted. They are those whose eyes and hearts never bewailed suffering and misery. “I was hungry, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Forasmuch as ye did it not unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me.”

These, these, “THESE shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.” Nothing, therefore, can be so unbecoming the gospel, or so unworthy those who profess the gospel, as a selfish temper, as a grasping, sordid disposition; because persons of this disposition love in word only, and not in deed and in truth, and have not charity. They say, “go in peace; be ye warmed, and be ye filled.” But it is all in vain, inasmuch as they give nothing to alleviate the miseries or satisfy the wants of these sufferers. They sow only for this world’s ends. The man who seeth his brother in sin and suffering, who seeth him in want, and yet “shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?”

Such men commonly give less-not only comparatively, but absolutely-much less than many of their poorer brethren. They give much less now than they did formerly. The good and the evil that men do live after them; and if shame and sorrow could enter heaven, how much would the covetous professor of the gospel have to suffer, if such persons do go to heaven, for which there seems no necessity, if they could look down and witness, and see the immediate result of their scrapings and their hoardings; whilst others, who have been constrained from love to Christ, and to do good to the souls and bodies of their fellow-creatures, will be able to look down and see how they are still making the widow’s heart to sing for joy; how they are dropping the balm of comfort to those who are ready to perish; and how “out of the mouth of babes and sucklings” they are bringing forth praise.

The benevolence of the gospel has no limits; it is of necessity subject to no exclusiveness. But it has its preferences, and ought to “abound in all wisdom and prudence.” Charity to the soul is the soul of charity. The greatest evil from which we can deliver a man is sin-for sin involves every evil-and the greatest blessing we can bestow upon a fellow-creature is godliness, because “godliness is profitable to all things,” saith the apostle, “having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” While the tendency of the gospel is to minister relief to every kind of misery, its chief blessings are “spiritual blessings in heavenly places.”

What is the body compared to the soul? What is time compared to eternity?

To die is gain. Philippians 1:21.

THE curse to a believer is turned into a blessing, and the enemy into a friend. For “to die is gain.” The traveler then gains his Father’s home; the mariner gains the desired haven; the soldier gains his victory and triumph; the believer, after all his conflicts, gains a complete deliverance from all his sorrows and all his sins and temptations. The whole life of a Christian here is founded upon a hope that can only be accomplished by dying. It will be the completion of bliss to be with Christ, and to behold his glory.

Death to a Christian is not a bar but a bridge, so that he may pass over and take possession of his glorious inheritance. To a believer death comes so changed in its character that it ought not to be called by this name. It is not properly dying, it is “sleeping in Jesus;” it is “departing to be with Christ, which is far better;” it is “going home;” it is “entering into his rest,” and “into the joy of his Lord.” Dr. Gouge often said: “I have two friends in the world, Christ and death; Christ is my best friend, death is my second.” Adams, in his “Private Thoughts,” says, “I bless thee, O God, that I am to die. I bless thee I am capable of dying. I bless thee that I am appointed to die; and I bless thee the execution is drawing so near.” The great John Howe, having been speaking of glory, says: “Oh, how should our hearts leap for joy, that in order to our perfect blessedness nothing is further wanting than to die, and that the certainty of death completes our assurance of heaven. What should now hinder our joyful thanksgivings that we are in no danger of an earthly immortality; that it is not in the power of all the men in the world to detain us in it, and that our greatest enemies can never keep us from dying, and therefore keep us from thee.”

O, my soul, let me die “the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.”