the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
The Poor Man's Morning and Evening Portions
November 18—Morning—Proverbs 25:25
"Good news from a far country."—Proverbs 25:25.
From a far country, indeed; for it is no less distance than from heaven to earth, and from beings as opposite as holiness and sin could make-even from God to man, from a rich Saviour to poor sinners! And so remote that had not this good news been sent, heaven must have remained at an eternal distance, as an inaccessible region! And what is the good news itself? The angels who were first sent to proclaim it, called it glad tidings of good things, of great joy to all people. And indeed, such glad tidings it contains, as language fails to describe. It is pardon, mercy, and peace to poor rebels. It holds forth joy, happiness, and everlasting felicity to poor sinners, enemies, and the fallen race of men. God revealed; sin atoned; Satan conquered; death destroyed; hell vanquished; heaven opened! And these not all. This good news informs also of the stupendous way by which the blessings are given, and everlasting happiness secured. Jesus, the Son of God, the author, the finisher, the source, cause, sum, substance, beginning, end, and portion of all his people. These, among an infinite and endless volume of mercies, are contained in the good news from a far country: but we must enter upon that country, to which indeed we are invited by the proclamation of the gospel, before that we shall fully know, or even conceive, the thousandth part of what God hath laid up for them that love him. My soul, hast thou heard this good news? Dost thou know the joyful sound? Art thou truly alive to the blessed things contained in it, and anxious to be interested therein? Oh then, meditate upon them; give thyself wholly to them. And while men of the world, from the world are seeking their chief good, and asking one another, what news? do thou turn a deaf ear to every other relation of a dying world, from which thou art dying daily, and let thy meditation be all the day, and let thine eyes prevent the night-watches to dwell upon this good news, and this only, which cometh from a far country.
November 18—Evening—2 Kings 7:2
"Then a lord, on whose hand the king leaned, answered the man of God, and said, behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? And he said, behold; thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not eat thereof."—2 Kings 7:2.
My soul, do not fail to remark, from the numberless instances given upon record in scripture, how the sin of unbelief is bound up in our very nature. Every man is of himself disposed to it. The subtlety of Satan induced this among the master-pieces of his devilish art. Hence nothing but an act of sovereign grace can bring a cure. What the prophet promised, in the midst of dearth, of so sudden and so great a supply of bread, appeared so incredible to human reason, that this unbelieving lord, on whose hand the king of Israel leaned, and perhaps in whose judgment he had great confidence, brake out into the indecent expression, that nothing less than the Lord’s making windows in heaven could accomplish it. But the event, to Israel’s joy, and his punishment, literally took place: and such was the pressure of the people for bread, at the gate of the city, that the unbelieving lord was trodden to death. And what is thine instruction, my soul, in the spiritual illustration of this scripture history? The Lord need not make windows in heaven, to rain down the bread of life for the famine of thy soul. Jesus himself, the true bread of God, is come down, that "whosoever believeth on him may eat and live for ever." Oh! for faith to give credit to God’s testimony of his dear Son: and both to see, and to eat of him, and to live for ever. Lord! I would say, "Evermore give me this bread!"
