Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: August 26th

Fulness of joy. - Psalms 16:11.

IT has been asked, Are there degrees in glory? We are persuaded there are. All analogy countenances the conclusion. Diversities and inequalities pervade all the works of God. There are gradations among the angels, for we read of thrones and dominions, principalities and powers; and, though all believers are redeemed by the same blood and justified by the same righteousness, we know there are degrees in grace. The good ground brought forth in some places thirty, in some sixty, and in some a hundred-fold. And the apostle tells us that every man shall receive according to his own labour. But here we approve of the old illustration: however unequal in size the vessels afore prepared unto glory may be, when plunged into this ocean they shall all be equally filled.

It has also been asked, Shall we know one another in heaven? Whether there be mutual recognition or not, we may be assured of this,-that nothing will be wanting to our happiness. But we may cease our anxiety respecting recognising the dear departed. Memory cannot be annihilated. Did not Peter, James, and John recognise Moses and Elias? and does not Paul tell the Thessalonians that they are his hope, and joy, and crown at the coming of the Lord Jesus?

Another inquires, Where is heaven? What part of the vast universe hath God assigned for the abode of the blessed? This it is impossible to determine: most probably it will be our present system renovated. May we not infer this from the words of the Apostle Peter?- “Looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; nevertheless we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” But is it a place? Our Lord has a body like our own, and this cannot be omnipresent; and wherever he is corporeally, there is heaven. As he himself hath said, “Where I am, there shall also my servants be.” Enoch and Elias have bodies, all the saints have bodies, and these cannot be everywhere.

We read of the hope laid up for us in heaven; of “entering into the holy place.” “And I go,” says Jesus to his disciples, “to prepare a place for you.” But, though heaven is really a place, we must chiefly consider it as a state. Even now, happiness does not essentially depend on what is without us. What was Eden to Adam and Eve after sin had filled them with shame and sorrow and fear? And Paul in prison was infinitely happier than Caesar on the throne of the nations. Oh, says the soul, when enjoying communion with the Saviour,-

“’Tis heaven to rest in thine embrace,

And nowhere else but there.”

I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. - Exodus 3:6.

ALL along from the beginning God showed favour to some for the sake of others. The principle of his dispensations has ever been the promotion of personal godliness for relative considerations; teaching men that if they were blessed, they were also to prove blessings to others; and above all it was intended to turn them to the belief of the mediation of the Lord Jesus, for whose sake all the nations and all the families of the earth were to be blessed.

Under the law the Lord was addressed as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because the covenant made with them was for Israel, in whom they were blessed, and for whose sake they received all things. But now the covenant made for the Spiritual Israel was made with a far more glorious character, who was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, ere the earth was. His name is Jesus; it is in him that we are accepted, and “blessed with all Spiritual blessings in heavenly places;” and it is for his sake that we receive all things; and therefore, while to the patriarchs and to the Jews he was known and worshipped as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” he is now under the gospel addressed as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

There are two things derivable from this address-“ I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” The first is, that unquestionably Moses had some knowledge of a future state. The very promise which God had made to the patriarch implied this. He said to Abraham, “I am thy God;” “I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.” How was this verified with regard to his life? He never had actual possession of the land of Canaan. All the possession he ever had there was a burying place, and that he dearly paid for. “By faith, therefore, he sojourned in the land of Canaan, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise;” for “he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and whose maker is God.” Wherefore the Apostle says, “God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city.”

Therefore our Saviour referred to this when, addressing the Sadducees, he said, “Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he called the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not the God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.” Their Spirits were living in an intermediate state. But even this is not the principal thing: their bodies were to live in the resurrection of the just. And he speaks of it as if it were already accomplished; for purpose and fulfilment with God are the same. He does not say he was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; but “I am the God of Abraham,” &c; “their Spirits are with me now; their renewed bodies shall be by-and-by, as certainly as they are now in the dust.”

We also observe that God sustains his relationship to those of our connections who are gone before. Delightful considerations! Where is the heart that has not bled?-where is the person who has not said, “Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness?” How pathetic was the reflection of Jacob when he was dying. He looked back to the cave which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, in the land of Canaan. “There,” says he, “they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah; and there I buried Leah.” There is one now ready to say, “There I buried my darling child.” “There I buried,” says another, “my precious husband.” “There,” says another, “I buried ‘the desire of mine eyes, removed from me with a stroke.’” Where are these dear Spirits now? With God. Where are their bodies? Sleeping in his bed; not perishing; but by-and-by to be raised up; they are all living unto him.

“God their Redeemer lives,

And often from the skies

Looks down and watches all their dust,

Till he shall bid it rise.”