Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: August 22nd

The living know that they shall die. - Ecclesiastes 9:5.

BUT there are limits to this knowledge: let us consider these. “The living know that they shall die,” but they know not when. If there are persons who have seemed to have some kind of apprehensions or intimations previously of the time of their dissolution, these were casual and not prophetic; events alone rendered them predictions. “There is an appointed time to man upon the earth; his days also are like the days of an hireling;” God has appointed his bounds, which he cannot pass; it is he who has filled our glass, and he knows how many sands there are to run out.

But he communicates not this knowledge to any man; and therefore every man must say, with Isaac, “I know not the day of my death,” nor the week, nor the year. “The living know that they shall die,” but they know not where, -whether at home in the bosom of the family, or among unconcerned strangers,-in the garden, in the field, or on the road. Where have not persons died? Some have died in the house of God; some have died at the card-table; some have died in the playhouse. Ehud died in his summer parlour, and Pharaoh in the Red Sea. There seems hardly to be a place which has not, at one time or other, been a door of entrance into eternity. “The living know that they shall die,” but they know not how, -whether suddenly or slowly, whether by fever or by dropsy, whether by accident or by the hands and device of wicked and unreasonable men. “One dieth,” says Job, “in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet; his breasts are full of milk, and his bones are moistened with marrow. Another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never eateth with pleasure. They shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover them.” “The living know that they shall die,” but not what it is to die.

Thus Joshua said to the Jews, “Ye are going a way that ye have not gone heretofore.” It will be a new path to all of us. Here is a case in which no information can be derived from experience, -none from our own experience, none from the experience of others; for no one, however charged or importuned, ever returned to let

“the fatal secret out,

And tell us what it is to die.”

“Yet will I not forget thee.” - Isaiah 49:15.

OBSERVE the certainty of the assurance: “Yet will I not forget thee.” Here we have to assure us his word-his own word-the word of a God of truth and of faithfulness- a God “whose faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds” -who is as unchangeable as he is incomprehensible. A Being concerning whom Balaam, all wicked as he was, could say, the Lord “is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?”

The word of a Being who is free from all the sources of unfaithfulness-such as forgetfulness- such as a change of mind-such as a failure of resources- to make his word good. To render all this more striking to us, but not more binding to him, he has been pleased to add to his word his oath; and because he could swear by no greater he sware by himself; and, says the Apostle, “An oath for confirmation is an end of all strife.” “Wherein God willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise”-not to make, but to show-“the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath; that by two immutable things,” for his word was as immutable as his oath-“that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.” Hence, says God in the fifty-fourth chapter, “This is as the waters of Noah unto me; for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee nor rebuke thee; for the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord, that hath mercy on thee.”

Here we find that God’s oath interposed with regard to two things-the drowning of the world, and the desertion of the Church. We believe the former, entirely believe it. Why do we not dread a second deluge? It is not because we think there is not water enough to drown the earth again; but it is because he hath sworn that he will not. We rely upon his oath; and whatever enemies may assail his Church, he has said, “Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” How then can the Church, that is, his Church, be in danger? In all this, as Dr. Watts says, he-

“Lays the foundation of our hope,

In oaths and promises and blood.”

Covenants formerly were ratified not only by oath but also by sacrifice. So was this covenant of God by the sacrifice of his own Son-a sacrifice of infinite value. Is not this enough? No, he has not only given us the assurances in all these modes, but he has done everything he can do at present in the way of pledge and earnest; for we are not “yet come unto the rest and inheritance which the Lord God giveth us.”

All this will be done as surely as he hath remembered us in our low estate; as surely as he has given his own Son for us; as surely as he has called us by his grace; adopted us into his family; loved us with an “everlasting love, and with loving-kindness he has drawn us.” “For he that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” “If while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life.”