Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: September 13th

And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the, goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. - Matthew 25:32-33.

HOW lovely, glorious, and sublime are the appearances of nature! And yet all these are doomed to destruction. “The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up.” The animals are very superior to all inanimate productions. How remarkable are the qualities of many of them! while some of them surpass man in strength, the sagacity of others seems scarcely distinguishable from reason itself. Yet Solomon says, “The spirit of the beast goeth downward, and the spirit of man goeth upward.” For they are not moral agents, nor destined to give account of themselves to God. But no man ever perished, or ever will perish: he had a beginning, but he will have no end. He dies indeed, but “the spirit returns to God who gave it.” He dies indeed, but the body that enters the grave, and even sees corruption, will not remain there. “All that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”

Men are not only God’s creatures, but they are God’s subjects too. He has given them not only appetites, but reason; not only passions, but conscience; he has given them not only blessings to enjoy, but laws to observe. They are capable of knowing his will; they are informed of it; they are bound to obey it. And “we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ;” for “God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.” Now, this is the subject here represented; and it is worthy our regard, that He who represents it here will himself occupy the chief place in the proceedings of that day, for “he shall come to be our Judge.” What a contrast he must have perceived, at the time he uttered these words, between his condition then and his future grandeur! He was then “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;” “He had not where to lay his head;” “He was despised and rejected of men;” but then he knew, he felt, that “before him should be gathered all nations,” and that “the Son of man should come in his glory.”

Observe, “all nations.” It must, therefore, include our own. It must include the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the professor and the profane. These will not only be spectators, but they will be parties concerned. It is a solemn thing for a man to be judged of his own conscience. Oh, how pleasing is the approval of that sentence, of that deputy of God within! but oh, how intolerable its frown! “The spirit of a man may sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear?” It is a solemn thing for a man to stand before an earthly tribunal with his property, his liberty, and his life at stake, to leave the court acquitted of all charges, to return to the bosom of his family, or to return to be confined again, not for trial, but for execution; but all this is nothing, “less than nothing and vanity,” compared with the arrangements and decisions here announced. Men are now variously intermingled, and it would not be safe for a mortal to undertake the task of separating’ them; for, as the Saviour in the parable says, “there would be danger lest, while he pulled up the tares, he should root up also the wheat with them; both, therefore, must grow together until the harvest.” Many ends are to be answered by this intermixture now,-many with regard to the wicked, many with regard to the godly themselves.

And there is another reason to be assigned why the one is now imperfectly punished and the other is imperfectly rewarded; namely, that we are now under an introductory dispensation, that we are now in a state of discipline and trial. But hereafter comes a state of retribution:-“And he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.”

I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts. - Psalms 119:63.

MAN is a social being, and as soon as he comes under the power of religion, the social principle will be sanctified as well as other things. The man who before could not be even pulled away from scenes of vice and vanity, is now able easily enough to give up his sinful pleasures and ungodly companions. Another party now rises in importance in his view; these draw away his mind, and respecting whom he now says,

“In such society as this

My willing soul would rest,

The man that dwells where Jesus is

Must be for ever blest.”

Oh now he feels his need of the blessings which constitute their portion, and therefore prays, “Remember me with the favour thou bearest unto thy people; look thou upon me, and be merciful unto me, as thou usest to do unto them that love thy name.” He loves the same exercises in which they are engaged; delights to go with them to the throne of grace; to the house of prayer and of praise; to the table of the Lord; and to walk with them henceforth in all the ordinances and commandments of the Lord, blameless. How often Christians look back to the period when everything pertaining to the people of God became attractive and inviting to them. If they saw the name of one known to be a sincere Christian, it seemed to endear him to them. As they have been passing the meadow, or the field, or the house of a pious individual, they could not help saying: O, how I envy those to whom this belongs, and who live under that roof. And could they have turned to the individual they would have said, as many have injudiciously done, Oh that I were like you; Oh that I were in your state. And as they have looked upon the communicants at the table of the Lord, they have been ready to exclaim, “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob; and thy tabernacles, O Israel.”

They were companions of them that feared the Lord in principle, and by inclination; before they might have been so by circumstances or by profession; and if they did not “take hold of the skirts of him that was called a Jew,” it was not from want of love, but from shrinking back through fear, and by a sense of their unworthiness to be associated with them. But after a while, after they had sung and sighed,

“Oh, let me see thy tribes rejoice,

And aid their triumphs with my voice,

This is my glory, Lord, to be

Join’d to thy saints and near to thee.”

Oh then they united themselves with them in the bonds of a covenant which shall never be broken. We here see what it is that makes people valuable: not worldly distinctions, not adventitious circumstances, but this, that they feel and exemplify the qualities which David ascribes to the citizen of Zion, whatever be his circumstances, “They fear the Lord,” and “keep his precepts.”