the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
The Poor Man's Morning and Evening Portions
December 19—Morning—1 Corinthians 1:9
"God is faithful by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord."—1 Corinthians 1:9.
Think, my soul, what a dignity believers in Jesus are called unto, when brought into a nearness of communion with their glorious head, in any exercise of trial or affliction for his sake. God is. faithful in the appointment. How? In that it proves God’s fulfilment of his covenant promises, when Jesus and his members are considered by him as one. God is faithful in manifesting this oneness and fellowship, in making the members conformable to their glorious head, by trials or sufferings. God is faithful in sending the affliction. And God manifests his faithfulness in guiding through it, and supporting under it. The trial itself, be it what it may, is a discovery of the covenant love and faithfulness of Jehovah. Nay, God would not have manifested his faithfulness to a believer without it. What a sweet consoling thought this is to the afflicted exercised followers of the Lamb under their trials! My soul, do thou look at the subject, and learn from it to consider all tribulations in this view; and what a blessedness will pour in upon thee from so doing. Hath the Lord called thee to exercises? Hath the progress of them led thee more to Jesus? Hath the issue of them tended to endear Jesus?—Oh then, proclaim God’s faithfulness. I know, Lord, said one of old under trials, "that thy judgments are right, and that thou in very faithfulness hast afflicted me." Precious Jesus, what a dignified path is tribulation, when we are enabled to see thy footsteps going before marked with blood.
December 19—Evening—Revelation 22:4
"And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads."—Revelation 22:4.
My soul, thy morning thoughts were directed to the sweet subject of being called to fellowship with thy Lord Jesus Christ in grace. Do thou, this evening, beg of God the Holy Ghost to enable thee to connect with it the transporting subject of the everlasting enjoyment of Jesus in glory This is the great end and final consummation of all. This blessed scripture leads immediately to the contemplation: "They shall see his face;" and on "their foreheads shall be his name:" that is, the token of their oneness, union, and relationship in and with Jesus; so that he will be their glory, their supreme happiness and joy; and thus he will never cease to be the immediate head of all his body, the church, "the fulness that filleth all in all;" yea, the only and everlasting medium of communication in glory, as he is of grace in this life. Pause, my soul, over this vast thought! when soul and body, after the long separation by death, shall be again united, and both, as the redeemed of the Lord, be formed one in him in glory; both then equally made capable of enjoying Christ, and both equally disposed for that enjoyment; then will the blessedness of seeing his face be complete. No doubt but that at death the sight and enjoyment of Jesus will be a joy unspeakable and full of glory; but the full, complete, and eternal enjoyment of God in Christ must be reserved to the consummation of all things, when the Lord hath brought home all his redeemed, and the mediatorial kingdom of Jesus in grace here is swallowed up in glory, and God, in his threefold character of person, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, shall be "all in all!" Pause, again, my soul, over the vast thought! The glorious head of his church will then have brought home every individual of his body! He will fill all his members with glory. All their glory shall be in God in Christ! And God in Christ will be the life, the light, the everlasting happiness, and glory in them all. Ponder well the glorious thought! Take it with thee to thy chamber! Drop asleep with it! And, Oh! may it be the sweet thought in death, when thou droppest asleep in Jesus; then may Jesus be the last of thy dying thoughts, and the first of thy everlasting enjoyment, when, waking from the sleep of death, thou shalt open thine eyes to the glories of eternity, "to see his face, and his name in thy forehead!"
