Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: July 15th

THE THREE-HEADED EVIL THING - II

The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart. - Jeremiah 17:1

Two of the monster’s heads are disposed of. What about the third? Who will take the venom out of my nature? What will express the black drop from my heart? How shall the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? How can the man that has become habituated to evil "learn to do well "? Superficially there may be much reformation. God forbid that I should forget that, or seem to minimize it. But for the thorough rejection from your nature of the corruption that you have yourself brought into it, I believe - and that is why I am. here, for I should have nothing to say if I did not believe it - I believe that there is only one remedy, and that is that into the sinful heart there should come, rejoicing and flashing, and bearing on its broad bosom before it, all the rubbish and filth of that dunghill, the great stream of the new life that is given by Jesus Christ. He was crucified for our offenses, and He lives to bestow upon us the fulness of His own holiness. So the monster’s heads are smitten off. Our disease and the tendency to it, and the weakness consequent upon it, are all cast out from us, and He reveals Himself as "the Lord who healeth thee."

Now, you may say " That is all very fine talking." Yes! but it is something a great deal more than fine talking. For eighteen centuries have established the fact that it is so; and with all their imperfections there have been millions, and there are millions to-day, who are ready to say, "Behold! it is not a delusion; it is not rhetoric. I have trusted in Him, and He has made me whole."

Now, if these things that I have been saying do fairly represent the gravity of the problem which has to be dealt with in order to heal the sicknesses of the world, then there is no need to dwell upon the thought of how absolutely confined to Jesus Christ is the power of thus dealing. God forbid that I should not give full weight to all other methods for partial reformation and bettering of humanity. I would wish them all God-speed. But there is nothing else that will deal either with my sin in its relation to God, or in its relation to my character, or in its relation to my future, except the message of the Gospel. There are plenty of other things, very helpful and good in their places, but I do want to say in one word that there is nothing else that goes deep enough.