the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Mornings and Evenings with Jesus
If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; If they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. - Psalms 89:30-32.
GOD loves his children too well to allow them to act improperly, or suffer them to violate the discipline under which he has placed them, without visiting them with severe and loving rebuke. It were to suppose the greatest absurdity to imagine that God will suffer his authority to be despised and his law forsaken, his statutes broken and his decisions set at naught. The very discipline he exercises in his family shows that he has not abandoned them to their own wayward and foolish courses. He gives expression to his paternal tenderness towards his disobedient children:-“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within me. My repentings are kindled together.”
No; he will “not cast away his people whom he foreknew;” but this is the law of the house:-“he will visit their transgressions with a rod, and their iniquity with stripes.” “Nevertheless,” he says, “my lovingkindness will I not take from him, nor cause my faithfulness to fail.” And these corrections of our heavenly Father regard sins of omission as well as of commission. For he commands us to do as well as prohibits, and we forsake his law and break his statutes by neglecting to do what is enjoined upon us, as well as by doing what he has prohibited us from doing.
These corrections regard the state of the heart as well as the conduct of the life. Where no deviation from the path of obedience, no miscarriages in duty, are apparent to others, our heavenly Father discovers a falling away in our feelings and motives. What a forsaking of first love-what ingratitude-what unbelief and distrust- what prodigality of time-what a perversion of that which is good-what misimprovement of privileges-does he discover in his children! These defections in duty, these backslidings of heart, call frequently and loudly for the rod of correction; and can there be any reason for wonder or surprise that we are afflicted?
Surely we have more reason to sing, “It is of the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.” “He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our transgressions,” but “his strokes are fewer than our crimes, and lighter than our guilt.”
If then I be a father, where is my honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts. - Malachi 1:6.
IT becomes us to obey whatever God commands us, and to do whatever he enjoins. First, Because he has a right to command us. He is the sovereign; we are his subjects. He is the master; we are his servants. He is the father; we are his children. A king has no such right to the obedience of his subjects; a master has no such claims to the duty of his servants; a father has no such claims to the regards of his children, as God has to all our homage. The reason is, they have not, and never can have, an absolute property in us. But God has, for it is “he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.” We derive from him our being, our powers, our possessions, all our enjoyments, and all our hopes. We are therefore his by infinite ties, and bound to serve him. And we cannot complain that we do not know what his demands are upon us. He has shown us what is good. He has told us what he has required of us. He has given us his word. We have his will, and to this we may repair, unawed by every authority in the universe unless his own, to know what he enjoins upon us. We, therefore, know his will; and to “him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” The servant which knoweth his lord’s will, and doeth it not, “shall be beaten with many stripes.”
Secondly, Because all his commands are reasonable; none of them are arbitrary or tyrannical. We may not always be able to perceive the reasons on which they are founded; but there are reasons, and these reasons are now satisfactory to him, and by and by will be more apparent and satisfactory to ourselves.
Thirdly, Because all his commands are beneficial. If a Christian serves God disinterestedly, even then he cannot serve him for naught. All that he enjoins upon us has special regard to our welfare, as well as his own glory; and “in keeping his commandments there is great reward.”
And Fourthly, we should render obedience unto all God’s commandments, because they are all practicable; they all imply a power to obey, if not already possessed, yet attainable; if not in nature yet in grace; if not in ourselves, yet in him whose authority we recognize, and who is always accessible. Thus while we are not sufficient of ourselves, even to “think anything as of ourselves, our sufficiency is of God;” and while “without him we can do nothing,” yet with his strengthening us we can “do all things.” His commands, therefore, are so many intimations of success.
