Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: July 6th

I will direct their way. - Isaiah 61:8.

WE may here make four suppositions. The first is, suppose our affairs were left to chance. Would we like that? Would we like to rise in the morning and look upon some beloved relative pining away by some mortal sickness, and brood upon the thought that we have nothing to comfort us but this dismal reflection,- that all is left to chance or accident?

The second supposition is, that our affairs are left to our own order and arrangement, Should we not tremble at such a thought, and say, “My ignorance unfits me for it; I know not what is good in this vain life, which is spent as a shadow. For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?” We have often been mistaken both on the side of hopes and fears. We have often desired that which would have been for our injury, and shunned that which would have been for our advantage. “The way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” Our impatience unfits us for it. God is a God of judgment. He knows best when to yield us supplies; but, like an impatient child, we desire the fruit before it is ripe. Our carnality unfits us for it. “We are so worldly-minded, and our souls so cleave to the dust, that we should be liable to sacrifice our best interests for the gratification of some earthly good. Our selfishness unfits us for it. We should think too much of our own concerns, and not enough of those of others.

The third supposition is, that our affairs should be left to the management of some fellow-creature. Who should we choose for this purpose? Not an enemy, for certain, but a friend. What friend? One who knows us best. There is much folded up in our character that our most intimate connections know nothing of. Would we have a partial friend? Ah, that partiality would most likely insure our injury and ruin. Then, should it be an angel? When God offered an angel to Moses, he declined to accept him, and told God that unless he himself went with him he would not move. “If thy presence go not with us, carry us not up hence.”

Well, then, the fourth supposition is, that our affairs are left to the disposal of God himself. This is the source of our consolation. Ah, we say, will this Lord of glory condescend to be our Father and our Friend? Will he undertake our cause, and manage all for us by the way and to the end? Oh, then we may rejoice that all our times are in his hand, and all our concerns at his disposal.

“Oh, who so fit to choose our lot

And regulate our ways”

as the only wise God? and who so worthy of all the confidence of our hearts as a Being who spared not his own Son, but sacrificed him for our salvation? Here Christians may find a never failing source of consolation, and a joy which no man taketh from them.

For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness. - 1 Corinthians 1:22-23.

IN the beginning of the gospel we find two classes of persons, Jews and Gentiles, neither of which forsooth could find evidence enough to believe it. The Jews-O they could not believe that Jesus was Messiah, though they stood by and saw him open the eyes of the blind, and raise the dead by a single word, and in a moment; but they could believe the traditions of their elders and the stories of their rabbis-the greatest impositions on human credulity that ever were invented. Then the Greeks-O, said they, how absurd it is for persons to believe in and adore as a God one who suffered and died on the cross; at the very same time they acknowledged and adored as gods, beings whose infamous lusts and passions they allowed, as if sinning was less incompatible with divinity than suffering. It is the same now; the evidence ventured upon by men as to their everlasting all is such as they would be ashamed to act upon in the lowest concerns of life. The faith of a Christian! What does a Christian believe compared with the man who believes that the Scriptures are a cunningly-devised fable? It is to the sceptic we may plainly apply the exclamation, “O man, great is thy faith.” We indeed believe difficulties, but he believes absurdities. We believe mysteries, but he swallows absolute impossibilities.

O Christian, your faith does not stand in the wisdom of man, but in the word of God. Yet the wisdom of man has always been on our side. Down to this very hour, infidelity has not produced one first-rate scholar or genius. What are the names to be found in the lists of our adversaries to weigh against our Newtons, our Boyles, our Bacons, our Lockes, our Miltons, our Joneses, and numbers more. Christians can appeal to miracles numerous, performed in public, and in the presence of those who would have detected the imposture if there had been any. We can appeal to the character of the sacred penmen, and here we say to the deist, “Were these penmen good men or bad men?”

You can take your choice of the alternatives, for either one will equally support our argument. If you say they were good men, how came good men to tell falsehoods, and profess that they received a communication which they never had received, and to declare, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ when the Lord had not spoken? If you assert them to be bad men, how came bad men to enforce all holy tempers and conversation, and to censure and condemn themselves for ever in every line they wrote?” And if we take up the Bible and examine it internally, we shall see that it is worthy of God.

When we read the Scriptures we feel the impress of the Divine agency. We are perfectly sure that whoever was the author of the book, he was a holy, a wise, and a benevolent being, who knew us perfectly, and was concerned for our welfare. And be it observed that the gospel can only impress us according to our impressions of the nature of its claims, if we receive it as human we shall naturally regard it humanly; if we receive it as Divine we shall regard it Divinely. It was thus the Thessalonians received it; and the Apostle acknowledges the consequence, “Ye received,” says he, “the word of us, not as the word of man, but as it is in truth the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.”