Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: July 5th

He doeth whatsoever pleaseth him. - Ecclesiastes 8:3.

WHILE the God of the whole earth seems to be doing nothing, he is doing all things according to the counsel of his own will; for he does according to his will in the “armies of heaven, and amongst the inhabitants of the earth; none can stay his hand, or say, What doest thou?” Now, when we glance our eyes over the world and the present state of the earth, it may appear to us in great confusion; but what is confusion to us may be order to him; what is deformity to us may be beauty to him. “Hence,” says Elihu, “he shall break in pieces mighty men without number, and set others in their stead.” He doeth it; he changeth the times and the seasons; he removeth kings, and setteth up kings; he causeth empires to fade or flourish, to rise or sink, at his pleasure; and disposeth the whole so as to show they are in his hands more so than the clay is in the hands of the potter.

He called Nebuchadnezzar his servant. He was the rod of his indignation, and the rod of his anger, with which he punished the nations of the earth and severely chastised his own people, the Jews; “he meant not so, neither did his heart think so.” The passions of men are under his control:-“He maketh the wrath of man to praise him, and the remainder of wrath he restrains.” We have seen the owner of a mill drawing up the hatch and letting out as much water as the grinding required, and then letting it down and restraining it. We have many specimens of God’s providence recorded in the Scriptures of truth. We may take, for instance, the case of Joseph, and consider the circumstances of that young man’s life. “What a scene of suffering did he pass through! During what a length of time did things grow worse and worse, and darker and darker! We see him sold to the Ishmaelites,-thrown into prison, where the iron enters his very soul. Then things began to turn. The chief baker and the chief butler dream; Joseph interprets; the chief butler mentions him to Pharaoh; he appears before him” and interprets his dream; and soon after we see him step into the second chariot and become the governor of Egypt. Hear what Joseph said when he made himself known to his brethren:- “Come near to me, I pray you; and they came near. And he said, I am Joseph, your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now, therefore, be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve life.” He observed the hand of God:-“You intended it for evil, but God meant it for good.”

Then let us observe how the Jewish male children were doomed to perish at the time Moses was born; and how the babe’s fine countenance pleaded for him. His parents saw that he was a goodly child, and hid him three months, till they could conceal him no longer. They then make an ark of bulrushes, and pitch it within and without, and place it among the flags in the river; and his sister is to walk up and down carelessly to see what would become of the child. Pharaoh’s daughter comes down to the river; her eye catches sight of the ark. “Fetch it to me,” she said, and added, “This is one of the Hebrew’s children.” The babe weeps, and she had compassion on it; a nurse is to be provided for it, and this nurse is his own mother. He is brought up at court in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and becomes the deliverer of the Jews, and the prophet of the Lord.

In this we behold a specimen of superintending providence; and what renders it more worthy of our regard is, that there is nothing miraculous in it. Such instances of providence have been at work everywhere ever since; they have been at work in our own history. Yes; God hath fixed the bounds of our habitation, as Newton sings:-

“His decree that forrn’d the earth

Fix’d my first and second birth;

Parents, native place, and time,

All appointed were by him.”

Had we been previously informed of some events in our lives, we should have exclaimed, “Impossible! If the Lord should make windows in heaven, may this thing be.” As to our trials, none of these have been casual: no, they have been all ordered; neither can we imagine that “affliction cometh forth of the dust, nor that trouble springs out of the ground.” Job says, “Thou hast taken me by the neck and shaken me to pieces.” “He performeth the thing that is appointed for me, and many such things are with him.”

Oh, were we able to view these things as God does, we should see in them all his manifold wisdom. “Ah,” some one is ready to say, “if he had afflicted me in any thing else, I could have borne it!” But this is the peculiarity of the affliction that shows the effect and design of it. Verily, he has opened a right vein; he has touched a right part,-that which was most susceptible of feeling, without which our afflictions will do us no good. And if we were in the mood of David, we should say, “I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me. Let, I pray thee, thy merciful kindness be for my comfort according to thy word unto thy servant.”

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn. - Isaiah 61:1-2.

HERE is a combination of tenderness and severity, and both these opposite characteristics were continually displayed by the Saviour in all their strength in his personal ministry, and in all his dealings with men in the days of his flesh. He was at once, as the Apostle says, “a merciful and a faithful high priest.” David says, referring to this combination, “Kiss the son lest he be angry, and ye perish by the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little; blessed are all they that put their trust in him.” It is impossible to do justice to his tenderness, and Watts says-

“His heart is made of tenderness,

His bowels melt with love.”

His love passeth knowledge. He was to come down “like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth,” and did he not? It was foretold of him, “a bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench till he shall bring judgment unto victory,” and did he either? When he said in language as soft as the ether of heaven, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”-“He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; He shall gather the lambs with his arm and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young”-did he not this when he taught his disciples “as they were able to bear,” and when he said to Peter, “Feed my lambs?” But oh, to see him as his forerunner also describes him, “His fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into the garner, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Observe him in dealing with the Scribes and Pharisees, and mark also that he uses no such severity with any other characters-it was only with those sanctimonious pretenders to piety, who had so deluded the common people with their pretensions that they were accustomed to say that if two persons enter heaven, one of them must be a Pharisee-“Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” “ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” John saw him in his vision as the “lion of the tribe of Judah,” and also as “a lamb that had been slain.”

What a combination of gentleness and dreadfulness does this express. He has patience, but he does not connive at sin, and if we go forward to the last scene we shall see the heavens rolling together as a scroll, and every mountain and island moving out of its place. “The kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondsman, and every freeman hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains, and say to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne; and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?”