Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: May 19th

My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash and be clean? - 2 Kings 5:13.

WHEN Elisha, in answer to the application of Naaman, said to him, “Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thou shalt be clean,” Naaman was wroth, and. went away in a rage; and so he nearly missed his cure. And there are many Naamans still living, who when they begin to think of religion, or to ask, “What must I do to be saved?” turn away from the simplicity of God’s provision and appointments, and think that some devices of their own are superior. Some have even contended for their own innocence; not, indeed, that they are absolutely innocent,-this they know it is impossible to prove, for “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,”-but they are, in their own esteem, partially and comparatively innocent. If their lives have been bad, “their hearts have been good; if they are not saved, what is to become of others?” Thus the Pharisee stood and prayed with himself:-“God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, adulterers, or even as this publican.”

There are others, whose hopes are made up of outward reformation, external formalities, alms-deeds, penances, and mortifications. These are what they call good works, and upon which they depend; in regard to which it may be observed, that many of these are not good in themselves, not enjoined in Scripture, and not acceptable to God,-because they flow not from faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus. And even those which are really good, instead of being a part of the building, they are made the foundation, and therefore to be condemned, for the apostle says, “Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” These, when placed as the ground of our hope, and when put in the room of Christ, become abominable in the sight of God, seeing they are subversive of the whole scheme of the gospel. “They frustrate the grace of God,” and “make Christ to have died in vain.”

There are also some who are trusting for salvation to the absolute mercy and goodness of God; but all we know of the mercy of God is through the Mediator. We acknowledge the greatness and the freeness of God’s mercy, and that it is the source of our salvation; but the question is not as to the origin of our salvation, but as to the method and the medium of it. The question here is, First, Whether God has a right to determine the way in which he shall exercise his mercy towards the guilty, as we can have no claim upon him. Secondly, Whether he is not the only infallible judge of what regards his own glory and our welfare; and whether he, having so determined, has revealed his determination. Of this we are assured again and again:-that he will have mercy on sinners only through the merits of his Son Jesus Christ.

Nothing therefore but ignorance and pride can lead any to oppose this determination; nor can any thing but ruin and wretchedness be the result, seeing he has revealed the fact that there is salvation in none other,-that “there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, but the name of Jesus.”

For he is kind to the unthankful and to the evil. - Luke 6:35.

INGRATITUDE is the blackest of all crimes. “The ungrateful are like the grave, always receiving and never returning;” but nothing can equal our ingratitude if we refrain from speaking in our Saviour’s praise. We have no claim upon his benevolence; we are unworthy of the least of all his mercies. Nay, we are not only unworthy, but we are undeserving, ill-deserving, and hell-deserving creatures; we have sinned ourselves completely into the hands of his justice; and he could both righteously and easily have destroyed us.

Let us think also of the number and magnitude of the benefits which he bestows. Without going over the field of nature, or examining the dispensations of Providence, though in reference to them we should “abundantly utter the memory of his great goodness,” we will notice only those which refer to the Saviour’s coming “to seek and to save that which was lost;” “to deliver us from the curse of the law;” to save us from the “wrath to come;” to emancipate us from the “bondage of corruption;” to make us the “sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty;” and to entitle us to an immensity and an eternity of blessedness and honour insured to us and even begun in us here. And then let us add the expensiveness of the medium.

We sometimes do good, but it may be without design, or to gain advantage or reputation, or it may be owing to some pressure, or to deliver ourselves from some importunity, or without any self-denial. But we “know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who though he was rich yet for our sakes became poor.” We know that he laid aside the form of the sovereign, and took upon him the form of a servant. He was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief .” We have seen him in the manger, agonizing in the garden, and bleeding on the cross. And can we see this, without every feeling of our soul inducing us to exclaim-

“Let him be crown’d with majesty

Who bowed his head to death,

And be his honour sounded high

By all things that have breath.”