Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: July 27th

Now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations. - 1 Peter 1:6.

LET us consider the duration of the Christian’s sorrows. Brevity is the most painful circumstance that can attach to enjoyment; but it is the most alleviating with regard to suffering and distress. In the hour of pain and infirmity, time flaps over us with leaden wings, and “hope deferred maketh the heart sick; but when the desire cometh it is a tree of life.” And come it “will, and will not tarry.” No; it is only “for a season, if need be, we are in heaviness through manifold temptations.” And what is this season? What is the length of time itself to eternity? and what is the length of life to time? and what is the length commonly of suffering even to life? The sacred writers, therefore, labour to express the brevity of this in every possible way.

Thus, they tell us that the church shall have tribulation “ten days;” and ten days will be soon gone. Then they tell us that the suffering period is only “for a night,” “weeping may endure for a night.” How soon the night passes away! “but joy cometh in the, morning.” We read, also, of the “hour of temptation,” and not only so, but we read of “a moment:”- “These light afflictions, which are but for a moment;” and even this will not satisfy inspiration. Isaiah tells us that for “a small moment” God has forsaken “his people, but with everlasting kindness will he have mercy on them.” Therefore, let us sing, or sigh,-

“Yet a season, and, we know,

Happy entrance shall be given;

All our sorrows left below,

And earth exchanged for heaven.”

O Lord, I KNOW that the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. - Jeremiah 10:23.

LET us consider the conviction here expressed in its sources. “I know,” says he. It was not a matter of opinion and conjecture, but certainty. “I know that the way of man is not in himself.” Yes, but Jeremiah was a prophet; and prophets were called seers, and can see when other people are in the dark, and “they reveal things to come.” But the sources from which Jeremiah derived his convictions on this subject are the very same which are open to us all, and some of them have been much enlarged since. They are five. The first is the nature of our condition. It is a dependent one; we are not our own, and therefore are not at our own disposal. We belong to God entirely; we are his servants, his subjects, his children, and he has over us the rights of a master, of a sovereign, and of a father. He has an absolute property in us. He has “made us, and not we ourselves,” and in him “we live, move, and have our being.” If God were to summon us before him and to say to us, Take what is thine own, what should we be told to take away with us, what faculty, what possession, what comfort? Could we retain even our own existence? No, we should immediately relapse into our original dust.

The second source of this conviction is the limitation of our powers. Men think more highly of themselves than they ought to think. There are thousands of our fellow-creatures who would much rather be considered as knaves than fools. The last offence people ever forgive from others is a reflection upon their understanding. “Vain man,” says Zophar, “would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass’s colt.” When he grows up, even when he comes to what is called years of maturity, of discretion, how liable is he to be deceived and deluded! How narrow then is his horizon of vision, and how foggy and cloudy is it! How liable to bias and to misconception, and therefore unable to distinguish between appearances and realities!

The third source of conviction is history. Take the case of Abraham and Lot. They differed, and it was found necessary that they should separate. Abraham said unto Lot, “Is not the whole land before thee? if thou depart to the right hand then I will go to the left, if thou take the left hand then I will go to the right.” Lot was the nephew and the youngest, he therefore should have suffered Abraham to take the preference; but observe not only the indelicacy but the principle of his choice. It was his senses, his passions, his vanity, his love of worldly things, regardless of moral and religious considerations. And Lot chose all the plain of Sodom. What was the consequence? He was burnt out of house and home by a storm of fire and brimstone. Then his wife having become attached to the place, looked back, and became a pillar of salt.

An instance in the history of David will furnish another illustration. In his fear of Saul he said, “There is nothing better than that I should escape into the land of the Philistines. In doing so he took the worst step he could have taken; a step which was calculated to alienate from him the affections of Israel, justify the reproaches of his enemies, deprive him of the means of grace; that would familiarize him with the usages and the evils of the heathen round about; that would put himself out of the Divine protection; and that would lay him under obligation to those whom he could not oblige without betraying the cause of God. We know the embarrassment and distress which soon followed, and yet he thought this was the best thing he could do.

Paul spake with much confidence to the elders of Ephesus, that they would see his face no more, and yet he did see them again after his first imprisonment. He said to the Romans,” I long to see you that I may impart to you some Spiritual gifts, to the end ye may be established.” How little did he imagine, when he wrote that letter, he was to see them at Rome; that he should go there not as an Apostle but as a prisoner; that he should be wrecked on his voyage; that they would edify him before he could edify them; for when he came to Appii-forum and the three taverns, and saw the brethren from Rome who came to meet him, “he thanked God and took courage.”

Joseph went forth in the morning to inquire after the welfare of his brethren who were in the plain of Dothan, but he never came back; he was soon thrown into a pit, then sold a slave into Egypt, then he was imprisoned, and “the iron entered into his soul.” There is the case of Hazael, who, when a private individual, was met by Elisha, and told what evil he would do to the children of Israel, said, “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?” But though sincere in his feeling then, he did not know what a change in his character, a change in his condition would produce; for when he became king of Syria, he became all that he had execrated, and that the man of God had predicted.

The fourth source of conviction is experience. God commanded the Jews to remember all the way by which they had been led in the wilderness; and in doing so we shall not fail to see that the same things will appear to us very different according to the prospective or retrospective aspects under which we view them. How surprised we should have been, had some of our situations in life, and the principal events which have transpired in our history, been previously made known to us. So true is it, the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.

Lastly, Scripture is another source of conviction. Its concurrent testimony is, that “a man’s goings are of the Lord; how then can a man understand his own way?” “He performeth the thing that is appointed for me, and many such things are with him.”