Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: February 23rd

Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle. - 2 Peter 1:14.

HERE we have the Christian’s present residence. “We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened,” says Paul; and here Peter says, “I must put off this my tabernacle.” By this tabernacle they mean the body. It is the same to the soul as a dwelling is to the inhabitant; but, you will observe, the apostles do not call it a palace, or a mansion, or even a house, but only a tabernacle. Paul was by craft a tent-maker; his hands, therefore, had been often employed in the construction of such residences as these. He well knew that a tent or a tabernacle had a roof but no foundation-was a temporary accommodation-a movable body, easily taken down, easily injured, easily destroyed.

Ah! do what we will with these bodies of ours, they are really no better than tabernacles,-earthly tabernacles. Nurse them as we please, pamper them, as some do, dress them, idolize them, indulge them in every kind of luxury, after all, dust they are, and unto dust they will return. “Behold, thou hast made my days as a handbreadth, and my age is as nothing before thee. Verily, every man at his best estate is altogether vanity.” But let us now see how the apostles distinguish our souls from our bodies, and how they place them above our bodies. They speak as if our bodies did not even belong to our persons. Paul says, “We that are in this tabernacle;” and Peter here avails himself of the same allusion:-“I must put off this my tabernacle;” as if we could live and act without our bodies. This is possible, and the soul is the man, and the soul is the inhabitant that is in the body, but not of it; it is not of the same material, the same quality, the same origin.

Do what we will we can never save the tabernacle, but the tenant may be saved; and surely it must be our wisdom to make its salvation our immediate and our main concern; and, therefore, our Saviour, who well knew the value of the soul, from the price of our redemption which he paid for it, meets us in all our worldly pursuits, and asks, “What is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Yet there are many persons who have no more regard for their souls than if they had none, or as if they deemed them unworthy of one moment’s thought.

This is the case with them not only while they live but often even when they die. They discover the same indifference then; they employ the physician; they call in the lawyer; they dispose of their substance; they arrange their funeral; they tell their survivors where, and how, and when, they choose to be buried: but not a word escapes them concerning their soul, and not one of their cruel relatives, or attendants in the room with them, dares to break this delusion and say to them, Have you, then, no soul? Is the soul provided for? Is your soul safe? After death is the judgment: and where will you be in the day of the Lord Jesus?

I am the truth. - John 14:6.

THERE is the truth of sincerity-and Jesus is the “faithful and true Witness,” in his lips there was no guile. There was always a correspondence between his words and his works. Everything he said could be relied upon, and can be relied upon now. There is the truth of accomplishment -he was full of this. Under the former dispensation all was figure and type: “the law was a shadow of good things to come,” but “the body was Christ.” He was the true bread which came down from heaven; the true rock whose streams flowed in the wilderness; the true tabernacle “which the Lord pitched, and not man;” the true mercy-seat. Every bleeding bullock, every slaughtered lamb, proclaimed him aloud as the “Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” All had its fulfilment in Him. There is the truth of reality. All on earth is shadow, but here all is substance.

“In vain we lavish out our lives

To gather empty wind,

The choicest blessings earth can yield

Will starve a hungry mind.”

But his flesh is meat indeed, and his blood is drink indeed; and he that eateth his flesh and drinketh his blood hath everlasting life. Then there is the truth of doctrine. There are various kinds of truth; historical, philosophical, and scientific truth; but he was Divine Truth. That truth which regards the soul and eternity; which tells us all we want to know, and all we must know; which tells us of our ruin and our recovery; of our reconciliation with God; of the only way of justification; of our sanctification; of the only way of obtaining a title to heaven, and a meetness for it. All this he revealed, and all this is contained in the glorious gospel of the blessed God.