He Would Not Be God Were He Not Love

“God is essentially the God of love. The words which suggest our present meditation emphatically declare this: “God is love.” This is, perhaps, the most sublime sentence of the Bible. It is a sentence which only could arise from a divine mind. It is at once simple and grand, intelligible and affecting. It involves a truth in which an angel’s mind might expatiate, and which a child’s can grasp. It reaches to the highest, and descends to the lowest intellect. That the abstract term love, and not the concrete term loving, should be employed, expresses something beyond the ordinary meaning of the word. And what is the truth thus embodied? Just the one we are now attempting to vindicate: that God is essential love. Love is not so much an attribute of God as it is His very essence. It is not so much a moral perfection of His being as it is His being itself. He would not be God were He not love. To deny that He is love would be to deny that He is God. To unrobe Him of this essential quality of His nature would be tantamount to the unrobing Him of His essential Godhead. He would not be God were He not love!”

– Octavius Winslow, Our God, p.2-3

July 11, Evening – Our First Duty

“Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation” (Joel 1:3)

“In this simple way, by God’s grace, a living testimony for truth is always to be kept alive in the land: The beloved of the Lord are to hand down their witness for the Gospel and the covenant to their heirs, and these again to their next descendants. This is our first duty; we are to begin at the family hearth: He is a bad preacher who does not commence his ministry at home. The heathen are to be sought by all means, and the highways and hedges are to be searched, but home has a prior claim, and woe to those who reverse the order of the Lord’s arrangements.

To teach our children is a personal duty; we cannot delegate it to Sunday school teachers or other friendly helpers. These can assist us but cannot deliver us from the sacred obligation; substitutes and sponsors are wicked devices in this case: Mothers and fathers must, like Abraham, command their households in the fear of God and talk with their offspring concerning the wondrous works of the Most High.

Parental teaching is a natural duty. Who is better fitted to look after the child’s well-being than those who are the authors of his actual being? To neglect the instruction of our children is worse than brutish. Family religion is necessary for the nation, for the family itself, and for the church of God. By a thousand plots empty religion is secretly advancing in our land, and one of the most effectual means for resisting its inroads is routinely neglected—namely, the instruction of our children in the faith. It is time for parents to awaken to a sense of the importance of this matter. It is a pleasant duty to talk of Jesus to our sons and daughters, and the more so because it has often proved to be an accepted work, for God has saved the children through the parents’ prayers and admonitions. May every house into which this volume shall come honor the Lord and receive His smile.”

– Charles Spurgeon, Morning by Morning and Evening by Evening, A New Edition of the Classic Devotional Based on the ESV Bible

Christ Jesus Has True Excellency

“Yes, He is altogether lovely! This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend!” (Song of Songs 5:16)

“Worldly men imagine that there is true excellency and true happiness in those things which they are pursuing. They think that if they could but obtain them, that they would be happy. But when they obtain them, and cannot find happiness, they look for happiness in something else, and are still upon the futile pursuit.

But Christ Jesus has true excellency, and so great excellency that when they come to see it they look no further, but the mind rests there.”

– Jonathan Edwards

 

It Was Sin Which Wove the Crown of Thorns

“Surely that man must be in an unhealthy state of soul, who can think of all that Jesus suffered–and yet love those sins for which that suffering was undergone! It was sin which wove the crown of thorns! It was sin which pierced our Lord’s hands and feet and side! It was sin which brought Him to Gethsemane and Calvary, to the cross and to the grave! Cold must our hearts be, if we do not hate sin and labor to get rid of it–though we may have to cut off the right hand and pluck out the right eye in doing it!”

– J.C. Ryle, Holiness

Satan Promises the Best But Pays With the Worst

“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord!” (Romans 6:23) 

“Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst! He promises honor and pays with disgrace. He promises pleasure and pays with pain. He promises profit and pays with loss. He promises life and pays with death. But God pays as He promises all His payments are made in pure gold!”

“You have made known to me the path of life! You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand!” (Psalm 16:11)

– Thomas Brooks

My Lord Jesus Christ is Able to Save Me to the Uttermost

“He is able to save to the uttermost!” (Hebrews 7:25)

“My Lord Jesus Christ is able to save me to the uttermost!

He is able to save me the uttermost depth of my need. Science is now sounding the lowest abysses of the ocean; but there is no science, nor thought, nor imagination, which can send its plummet to the bottom of Christ’s unsearchable grace! 

Down to my sharpest sorrow He goes, down to my profoundest loneliness, down to my keenest temptation, 
down to my foulest sin! He traveled from Heaven to Calvary to atone for my sin; and I know of no descent which He will not make today.

He is able to save me the uttermost limit of my nature. And such a many-faceted nature mine is! The intellect has its demands, and the memory, and the conscience, and the imagination, and the will, and the heart–each of them cries out for a separate satisfaction. And each of them finds it in Jesus!
He answers the questions of my intellect. He plucks the deepest sorrows from my memory. He cancels the accusations of my conscience. He paints  the noblest pictures in my imagination. He renews and directs my will. He fills my heart with His love.

He is able to save me to the uttermost verge of my life. My various conditions and experiences, my conflict and my calm, my work and my rest, my gladness and my grief–He blesses me through them all. Lo, He is with me all the days, even unto the end, and through the end, and beyond the end forever and ever! Death cannot part me from Him. Eternity will only draw me closer to Him. To the ages of the ages–He is mine, and I am His!

Christ’s uttermost leaves me no more to desire!”

– Alexander Smellie, The Hour of Silence

He Preached from the Bloody Tree

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me; because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good news” (Isaiah 61:1)

“I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent” (Luke 4:43).

“We may profitably note how earnestly our Lord kept to His work. It was His business to preach, and He did preach–He was always preaching! 

Even His miracles were sermons; they were acted discourses, full of instruction. 

All of His actions were sermons–He preached by every movement. 

He preached when He did not speak–His silence was as eloquent as His words! He preached from the bloody tree!With hands and feet fastened there, He delivered the most wonderful discourse on divine justice and on love, on divine vengeance and on grace, on death and on life, on damnation and on salvation–which was ever preached in this poor world!

Oh, yes, He preached–He was always preaching; with all His heart and soul He preached. He wept in secret, that He might the more compassionately preach the gospel which wipes men’s tears and sins away. As He walked the streets, He preached as He went along. This was His one calling; and this one calling, He pursued in the power of the eternal Spirit.

As our Lord ascended He said, ‘Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature’ (Mark 16:15). His charge in brief was–preach, preach even as I have done before you!”

– Charles Spurgeon

Chris is Never Fully Valued

“So they cast him out of the vineyard and killed him!” Luke 20:15

“This parable shows us the deep corruption of human nature. The conduct of the ‘wicked farmers’ is a vivid representation of man’s dealings with God.

Let us often pray that we may thoroughly understand the exceeding sinfulness of man’s heart. Few of us, it may be feared, have the least conception of the strength and virulence of the spiritual disease with which we are born. Few entirely realize that ‘the carnal mind is enmity against God,‘ and that unconverted human nature, if it had the power, would cast its Maker down from His throne!

The behavior of the wicked farmers before us, whatever we may please to think, is only a picture of what every natural man would do to God, if he only could.

To see these things is of great importance, for Christ is never fully valued–until sin is clearly seen! We must know the depth and malignity of our disease–in order to appreciate the great Physician!”

– J.C. Ryle

Remember Who Are and Who Christ Is

“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you from there!” Deuteronomy 24:18

“Remember your sins–and Christ’s pardoning; your deserts–and Christ’s merits; your weakness–and Christ’s strength; your pride–and Christ’s humility; your many infirmities–and Christ’s restorings; your guilt–and Christ’s new applications of His blood; your failings–and Christ’s assistance; your needs–and Christ’s fullness; your temptations–and Christ’s tenderness; your vileness–and Christ’s righteousness!”

– Thomas Wilcox, Honey Out of the Rock

Live Near to God

“Prayer is the link that connects earth with Heaven! Live near to God, and all things will appear little to you in comparison with eternal realities!

When you gaze upon the sun–it makes everything else dark. When you taste honey–it makes everything else tasteless. Likewise, when your soul feeds on Jesus–it takes away the sweetness of all earthly things–pride, pleasure, fleshly lusts, all lose their sweetness.

‘Let us fix our eyes on Jesus!’ (Hebrews 12:2). Keep a continued gaze! So will the world be crucified to you–and you unto the world!”

– Robert Murray M’Cheyne