Lectionary Calendar
Friday, March 29th, 2024
Good Friday
There are 2 days til Easter!
Attention!
Partner with StudyLight.org as God uses us to make a difference for those displaced by Russia's war on Ukraine.
Click to donate today!

Daily Devotionals
Mornings and Evenings with Jesus
Devotional: July 23rd

Resource Toolbox
Morning Devotional

Ye shall he hated of all men for my name’s sake. - Matthew 10:22.

HENCE our Saviour also said to his followers, “Marvel not if the world hate you. If ye were of the world the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” And the apostle says, “If any man will live godly in Christ Jesus, he must suffer persecution.” What were the sufferings of the pious Jews under their enemies! What were the sufferings of the first Christians! What were the sufferings of our forefathers! We do well to call to remembrance former times, and to compare them with those in which we live, and in which we sit under our own fig-tree and our own vine, none daring to make us afraid legally, and under the justice and mildness of the laws of the land.

But what cannot be done legally may be done really. Few know what wives, children, servants, and dependants of various kinds suffer, even at this hour, in some parts of our own country, from this quarter; for, though the law ties the hand of persecution, yet the carnal mind is enmity against God, and the tongue can no man tame; the warmest ties of life are found to relax, and at last all the cords of love are broken asunder; and when persons become Christians indeed, what was before warm friendship is degenerated into mere civility; yea, it may become open malignity. There is no going forth to him without the camp, without bearing his reproach in some form or other.

The people of the world never did, and never will, act kindly and justly towards real religion. They will magnify the Christian’s infirmities, and will take the miscarriages of a few professors, and, like a filthy garment, throw them over the whole body of the Christian church. If they find nothing in the behaviour of Christian people that is remarkable, then they will go motive-hunting, and ascribe to them every thing that is vile, and which seems congenial with their own views and feelings, from which in this case they judge. Therefore they always consider real religion either as something really ridiculous or pitiable: it is impertinence, or it is enthusiasm, or it is hypocrisy, or it is mercenariness, or selfishness. We sometimes think that the reflection or the reproach so thrown upon the professors of religion by the people of the world arises from themselves; that, if they were more free from certain inconsistencies and unamiableness; (and they ought to he free from this,) the people of the world would be rather reconciled to them, and admire them.

But there comes a difficulty in the way: we go back to our Saviour himself, and ask, Was not he free from every inconsistency, every infirmity, every unamiableness? and did the world then admire him and love him? Alas! It opposed him more than it has ever opposed us; and the Saviour may well say to many modern temporizing professors what he said to the Jews:-“The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.”

They who love darkness will always hate the approach of light, and they who wish to continue asleep will be offended with any noise that would awaken them; and Christians cannot go on with, their work without making some noise.

Evening Devotional

I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his face from the house of Jacob. - Isaiah 8:17.

THE providence of God is oftentimes very mysterious. Thus it was here with the ancient Church. And Jacob their progenitor also said, “All these things are against me;” but he judged prematurely, and partially, and after the flesh; for while he said this, at the very time “all these things” were working for his good and subserving his real welfare. How perplexed and embarrassed Joseph must have been to reconcile his being thrown into a pit, and sold to the Ishmaelites, and imprisoned as a criminal; how difficult he found it to reconcile all this to those dreams which assured him of his future elevation.

Yet we see at length it was made perfectly plain. “Yes,” said he, “you sold me, but God sent me.” You “meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” Thus will it be with all Christians by-and-by, when in his light they shall see light; for “when Messias, who is called Christ, is come, he will tell us all things.” And we can gain this confidence with regard to distressing providences even now. Let us seek after it, and keep this thought in our minds under all these dark and painful dispensations, that “though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion;” that though he afflicts, “he does not afflict willingly;” that though “no chastisement for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, yet nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peace- able fruits of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.”

Thus shall we be able to “walk by faith” until we shall “walk by sight,” and be able to see that all the paths of the Lord have been mercy and truth. However perplexed we may now be by the dealings of Providence, we shall then find that all things have been working for our good, the darkness as well as the light, afflictions and pain as well as health and comfort, the opposition of foes as well as the kindness of friends, losses as well as gains. “Behold, we count them happy which endure; ye have heard of the patience,” as well as the perplexities, “of Job,” “and have seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy.”

“Yet a season, and we know,

Happy entrance shall be given,

All our sorrows left below,

And earth exchanged for heaven.”

Subscribe …
Get the latest devotional delivered straight to your inbox every week by signing up for the "Mornings and Evenings with Jesus" subscription list. Simply provide your email address below, click on "Subscribe!", and you'll receive a confirmation email from us. Follow the instructions in the email to confirm your subscription to this list.
adsfree-icon
Ads FreeProfile