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Daily Devotionals
Mornings and Evenings with Jesus
Devotional: January 19th

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Morning Devotional

Do good. - Hebrews 13:16.

GOD not only bestows good upon his people for their own sakes, but blesses some for the sake of others. He looks beyond the immediate possessors of his favours. These he designs shall not only be the subjects of his goodness, but the instruments; not only the recipients, but the diffusers. And how can we neglect to impart relief and comfort to others, which God is so graciously communicating to us:-“Freely we have received, freely let us give”?

It is in this way we may expect to have our mercies blessed, and this is the way also to have them increased. “The liberal soul deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand.” The objects of our benevolent regards are numerous. “As we have opportunity, we are to do good to all men, especially unto them that are of the household of faith.” These are the fatherless and the widows, whom we are to visit in their affliction; we have the sick to heal, the naked to clothe, and the hungry to feed. But there are also the careless to awaken, the ignorant to instruct, the vicious to reclaim, and the backsliding to restore. The soul is of supreme importance, and it becomes us peculiarly to aid in supporting those institutions and efforts which have in view the spiritual and eternal welfare of men.

Christians not only see wants and miseries which distress them, but which excite in them a disposition to relieve according to their power; they are delighted to indulge a spirit of benevolence; and, with regard to the extension and promotion of the Redeemer’s cause generally, they will endeavour to be accessory to its advance. And while they will be instant in praying that God’s kingdom may come, and his word may have free course and be glorified, they will be forward in offering their aid, and will rejoice when those prayers are answered.

“Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” should be our anxious and prayerful inquiry; and, if we have prayed for these objects sincerely and earnestly, consistency requires, if we would not be condemned out of our own mouths, that we should be forward to make every sacrifice in our power for these attainments.

Evening Devotional

For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. - 1 Peter 3:18.

THE righteous Lord loveth righteousness. He has united sin and sorrow by an adamantine chain. “The soul,” says he, “that sinneth shall die.” When I look at the holy Son of God, I see “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;” I hear him saying, “Behold and see if ever there was sorrow like unto my sorrow, wherewith the Lord afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.” Other sufferers suffered only in some part, he suffered in every part capable of pain; others suffered occasionally, he continually, from the manger to the cross; other sufferers know not beforehand what they have to endure, he saw the end from the beginning, all was spread before him; others have some to sympathise with them and to soothe their sorrows if they cannot remove them, but he looked for this in vain. He “looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but he found none.” With others, suffering is the offspring of sin; in him was no sin; “he did no evil, neither was guile found in his mouth.” He was the Holy One of God. He said to the multitude, “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” Judas said, “I have betrayed innocent blood.”

Is there unrighteousness with God? Does he punish the righteous with the wicked, and as the wicked, and more than the wicked? Here is a mystery. Here is a combination of the greatest innocence and the greatest suffering. Here is a mystery which would indeed be a contradiction and a blasphemy unless we could add another mystery to it, namely, that of substitution, that which arises from his interposition in our behalf, and saying, “Deliver him from going down into the pit, I have found a ransom.”

Oh, he snatched us away from the stroke and placed himself in our room, and “bore our sins in his own body upon the three.” Thus he suffered for our sins, the just for the unjust, to bring us unto God. “He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

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