Daily Devotionals

The Poor Man's Morning and Evening Portions

Devotional: August 28th

August 28—Morning—2 Kings 4:1

"The creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen."—2 Kings 4:1.

My soul, how doth this affect thee? Art thou in debt? By nature and by practice thou wast miserably so, unless the debt be cancelled. As a creature, and as a sinful creature, thou art in thyself for ever insolvent. Thou hast nothing to pay, and art shut up in a total impossibility ever to pay. And how much owest thou unto my Lord? Alas, my soul, thou owest millions of debts to thy Almighty Creditor. The law thou hast broken; justice demands retribution; conscience condemns; Satan accuses; and the creditor is come to take not thy two sons only, but both thy two parts, soul and body, to the prison of death and hell, unless some almighty Surety hath stept in and paid the dreadful debt, that thou mayest be free. At death, and at judgment that follows, the everlasting release, or the everlasting imprisonment, will take place. And who knows whether the decision may not be to-morrow? nay, whether the same sentence as went forth to the rich man in the gospel, is not already gone forth concerning thee—" This night thy soul shall be required of thee!" Pause, my soul! Is it not high time to flee to the prophet, even the Prince of the prophets, the Lord Jesus, to tell him thy case, and to seek his deliverance? Hark, doth he say, as the prophet did to the poor woman, "What shall I do for thee? Tell me what hast thou in the house?" Is not Jesus with thee? Is not his fulness suited to thy emptiness? Hast thou him with thee in the house? Shut then the door; bring, bring, my soul, all thy empty vessels-Jesus will fill them all. Nor will his bounty stay until that all thy vessels be filled; nay, every vessel will fail, before that his grace fails. And when thou art full of Jesus, live on Jesus, and see that Jesus hath paid thy Almighty Creditor, and left enough for thee to live on for ever. Oh the rapture and the joy, when the Almighty Creditor comes, at midnight, or at cock-crowing, or in the morning, to know the dreadful debt is paid, and to hear him say, "Deliver him from going down into the pit; I have found a ransom."

August 28—Evening—John 14:24

"The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me."—John 14:24.

My soul, hast thou ever fully and thoroughly considered that sweet and precious teaching of thy Lord, which, as Mediator, when upon earth, in all his discourses and conversations with his disciples, he was perpetually shewing them? I mean, that all he was, and all he had; and all he dispensed, were the blessings and gifts of his Father, in him, to his people. If thou hast been meditating upon this most blessed point of the gospel ever so fully and closely, it will still afford new glories for every renewed attention to it; and therefore, sit down this delightful summer’s evening, and take another view of it. Jesus comes to his people in his Father’s name, and he saith in this charming scripture, that his very words are not his, but the Father’s; so much of the heart of the Father is in Christ, and in all of Christ, in all he saith, and in all he hath done. So that what is Jesus doing, in all his ministry upon earth, yea, in all his sovereignty now in heaven, but shewing to his redeemed, the Father, and the Father’s love, and grace, and mercy, towards his people in him? Did he not then come forth from the bosom of the Father full of grace and truth, as if to unfold to us what passed in the heart of the Father, of love and mercy towards his people, in the wonders of redemption? And is not Jesus now, in every renewed manifestation, teaching his redeemed the same? If all that the Father hath are our Jesus’s, and all the fulness of the Godhead bodily dwelleth in him; surely we ought never to receive any of his good and blessed gifts without acknowledging the Father’s love in them. And would not this make every blessing doubly sweet and increasingly precious? If Jesus himself be the gift of the Father, shah I not enjoy the Father in all that Jesus bestows? And as I can have no immediate communion with the Father but by him, will not the mercies gather a blessedness, and a value, in coming to my poor soul through Jesus’s hands, as the bountiful dispenser of them? Yea, shah I not find a savour, which otherwise could never have been known, in receiving them in and from Jesus; convinced, as I am, that none cometh to the Father, but by him; and but for his opening a new and living way by his blood, never should I have known the Father’s love, or the Redeemer’s grace? Dear Lord Jesus! do thou give me, by thy blessed Spirit, ever to keep in remembrance these most precious things. So shall I truly enjoy both thy person and thy gifts. And then I shall not, like the apostle, pray for a sight of the Father distinct from thee; for I shall then be perfectly satisfied and convinced, that in seeing thee, I see the Father also; and from henceforth, that I know him, and have seen him. "Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift."