Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: September 4th

Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe thou shouldest see the glory of God? - John 11:40.

LET us, therefore, learn to confide in the Saviour. First, With regard to ourselves. Our state may be desperate as to relief from creatures, yet that is no reason why we should despair. Our case is not hopeless if he is nigh. If he comes our blind eyes shall be opened, our heart of stone shall be turned to flesh; he will make all things new. Do we feel our misery and danger? Through ail our perils he can bring us safe. Oh that we did more fully and implicitly believe in his all-sufficiency and goodness!

Secondly, With regard to others. There are parents whose children go astray. They are ready to despond. But they should never be tempted to give up praying and counselling the objects of their affectionate solicitude. Let us do all things in the name of Jesus; let us bring him in to our aid by faith. He can of stones raise up children to Abraham. Let us think of Manasseh, of Paul, of Bunyan. “Strong is his arm, and mighty.” But, says some, my case is desperate. My wound cannot be healed. The grave has received my father, my mother, my sister. Well, if he comes not to their grave, it is not because his arm has lost its power, but because his power is under the control of wisdom. But the fact is, he will go to that grave. The time is coming when he will look down from that elevation, and say to angels, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, and I go that I may awake him out of sleep.” And down he comes with the voice of the archangel, and changes the vile body,-

“And every face, and every form,

Looks heavenly and divine.”

And this is what Christians are all looking for. This subject is interesting to all, for he will visit every tomb and call all forth. But mark the result:-“All that are in the graves shall hear his voice and come forth, some to the resurrection of everlasting life, some to the resurrection of damnation. The benefit is peculiar. The butler and the baker were both brought out of prison; but one was restored to the favour of Pharaoh, the other was hanged. That can scarcely be called a change which brings persons out of a bad condition to place them in a worse.

The sons and daughters of vice, who pamper the body, who nourish it in sickness, who spend so much time in dressing it, should remember that death will deliver those idolized bodies to the worm, and those neglected souls to the curse of God. Oh, what a dreadful bondage are thousands under! If they die in the vanity of their minds, they will rise in all the seeds of anguish, deformity, and pain which they have sown on earth, all rendered immortal! Immortal pain! immortal anguish! immortal sorrows! Oh, there is something so dreadful in all this, that we turn from it to the language of the apostle, and say, “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. - Romans 1:18.

HERE we have the objects against which the wrath of God is revealed. It is against ungodliness. Ungodliness comprehends all the sins against the first table of the law. Ungodliness consists in a disregard of God. The ungodly do not fear him, do not love him, do not worship him, do not confide in him. God is not in all their thoughts; they practically say unto him, “Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.” It is a dreadful mistake which many make in supposing that they may be very godly characters, provided, they are moral, for religion is nothing without godliness.

What can be the duty we owe to any of our fellow creatures compared with what we owe to him who is our Maker, our Preserver, our Benefactor, our Governor, our Saviour? The servant that regards every one but his master, and the child that is dutiful to every one but his father, would be very inadequate images to hold forth the condition of the man who professes to pay a proper regard to other beings, while he lives without God and without hope in the world. On the other hand, though there may be morality without godliness, there can be no godliness without morality.

We are therefore reminded that the wrath of God is revealed against unrighteousness. Unrighteousness comprehends all the sins against the second table of the law. Unrighteousness is injustice in our dealing with our fellow creatures. “Let no man,” says the Apostle, “go beyond and defraud his brother.” But this does not go far enough; a person may be unrighteous and yet keep within the bounds of law and civil decency, and yet be unrighteous in other respects and instances. It is unrighteousness “if we render not to all their due.” It is unrighteousness if we do not afford relief to those who are in distress when we have it in our power to do it. “Withhold not,” says Solomon, “good from them to whom it is due.” “Whosoever hath this world’s goods,” says the Apostle John, “and seeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?”

It is impossible if we regard the commands of God, and the design of Providence, and the claims of our common nature. And this is not all. It is revealed against “ALL unrighteousness”- the concealed and the open, the refined and the gross. Men are for ever laying down rules which God does not sanction, and distinguishing between things which have no difference in his sight. They do not “worship a graven image,” but they “take the name of God in vain.” Others do not swear, but they “profane God’s holy day.” Many who would deem it sinful to employ a carpenter or a mason on the Lord’s day employ others. Some would not for the world steal, but they can surround the tea-table and bear witness against their neighbours by the hour. They would not murder, but they covet. And are not all these forbidden? And we are to regard all these without partiality; for all unrighteousness is sin.