Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: August 20th

I love my master: I will not go out free. - Exodus 21:5.

LOVE, as the principle of obedience, renders it perpetual. At the end of seven years, under the law, the bond-servant was allowed to go free; but if he refused to avail himself of the privilege, if he came to his master and said, “I love my master: I will not go out free,” then the master took him to the door, and bored his ear through, with an awl, to the door-post, signifying by this striking symbol that he was now a fixture, that he was now a domestic, and forever attached to the family. Our Saviour alludes to this custom when he says, “Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me, Mine ears hast thou opened.” It is in the Hebrew and in the margin, “Mine ears hast thou bored;” as much as to say, “I am thine entirely: obedience is the course in which I am going to engage, and nothing shall make me swerve from it;” “Lo, I come;” “I delight to do thy will, O my God. Yea, thy law is within my heart.” He was, therefore, “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” He could say, “With desire have I desired to eat this passover with you, my disciples, before I suffer.” “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished?”

Herein the Saviour is an example to his people; they have the same mind in them which was also in him. They are, therefore, not detained in his service against their will. They are not impressed men. They are not conscripts, but they are volunteers. They have been “made willing in the day of his power.” While duty renders it our medicine, love renders it our meat, to do the will of our heavenly Father. We take the one, we relish and enjoy the other. Our Saviour, therefore, when many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him, said to the twelve, trying their dispositions, “Will ye also go away?” “Oh,” said Peter, in the name of the rest, “go away! to whom shall we go but unto thee? for thou hast the words of eternal life.”

It is sometimes said of Christians who hold certain doctrines, “They live as they list.” Nothing is more untrue and vile in the sense of their calumniators, who mean thereby that they do evil that good may come. But if they feel those doctrines which they profess, we will venture to affirm that nothing is more true in another sense, and that they do live as they list. They do observe the Sabbath; they “call it a delight, holy of the Lord, and honourable.” They do repair to the sanctuary, and they love to repair to it; they are glad when it is said unto them, “Let us go up unto the house of the Lord.” They do not find it their prison, but their palace, their home, their Father’s house; and they can individually say, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after:-that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.” “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. - Isaiah 49:14.

WE have here a mournful complaint. Let us trace it up to its source. There is a philosophical notion prevailing, and which is of a semi-infidel complexion, which supposes that the providence of God is general and not particular. It supposes that the Deity is engaged in managing concerns of whole worlds and systems at large, and regardless of individuality. As if it were beneath God to provide for what it was not beneath God to produce. But he who wings an angel guides a sparrow; and the mite lives by him as well as the elephant; and the glowworm shines by him as well as the sun. “He clothes the grass of the field,” and “the very hairs of our head are all numbered.” It is not, however, a philosophical notion, but a religious despondency, that thus affects Christians now, as it did the Church of old, and by whom the complaint was made.

First, This despondency arises from unbelief or weakness of faith. Faith may be real, and yet weak, and very weak too. Our Saviour said to his disciples, “Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” Our comfort must always be therefore according to our faith. “In whom,” says Peter, “believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

There is always consolation here: in God’s “riches of glory by Christ Jesus;” but these can only be apprehended by faith. There is always fruit enough on the tree of life, but faith is the hand by which alone we can gather it. There is always water enough in the wells of salvation, but by faith we must draw it; so true is the language of the prophet: “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.”

Secondly, It arises from ignorance. This is very distinguishable from the former; a man may believe as far as his knowledge extends. There are persons who have a very defective acquaintance with the grounds of a sinner’s acceptance in the Beloved, and of the efficacy of the Saviour’s blood to cleanse from all sin, and of the perfection of his righteousness as entitling us to everlasting glory, and of the permanency of the everlasting covenant, “ordered in all things and sure,” and which places outstanding more secure than it was before we fell.

“More happy, but not more secure,

The glorified spirits above.”

Now, although it will be allowed that the believer’s safety does not depend upon the degree of his religious knowledge, yet his comfort must always be very materially influenced by it; and this is a reason why it is “a good thing for the heart to be established with grace.”

Thirdly, It arises from desertion. There is a suspension of Divine manifestations. Jonah felt this when in the belly of the fish: “Then I said lam cast out of thy sight.” “The Lord hath forsaken me,” says the Church here.

Fourthly, It arises from the conflicting troubles of life; although these indeed might, if viewed properly, be considered as proofs that God has not forsaken and has not forgotten us; “for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.” But so it is that in our afflictions, and when they are various, and numerous, and some of them inexplicable, then we are ready to say-

“If I am his why am I thus?”

The fact is, all suffering is the consequence of sin, and therefore naturally reminds us of it. It seems to indicate wrath, and therefore we pray, “Do not condemn me.” God is the source of light and comfort; and when there is no light and comfort with us, it is not so easy to persuade ourselves that God is with us. “If he be with us,” said Gideon, “why then has all this evil befallen us?” When “deep calleth unto deep,” it is no easy thing for the Christian to possess the “peace which passeth all understanding.”

Lastly, It arises from the delay of God in the accomplishment of prayer. “God is not slack concerning his promises, as some men count slackness.” He always has a time of his own, and this is the best time; and he never goes beyond this time; but then we expect him at an earlier time; and so when he does not come, or come so soon, we are surprised and confounded, and “hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” Blessed are all they that wait for him. “It is a good thing for a man both to hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.”

We should always learn to distinguish between the acceptance of prayer and the answer to prayer. God always immediately hears the prayer of faith, but he does not always immediately answer it. He waits to be gracious.