Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: November 16th

The Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. - Deuteronomy 32:9.

“THE Lord’s people” have always been comparatively few; yet not so few as some have imagined. Let us observe what God says concerning them all:-“I have reserved them to myself; they belong to me; I own them, and they acknowledge me.” So, as soon as God had delivered the law to Moses, he said, “Now, therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then shall ye be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.” Therefore we find Moses here saying, “The Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”

The Lord claims them as his own, and they acknowledge the propriety of the claim. They are witnesses,-his witnesses. They are worshippers,-his worshippers. They are servants,-his servants; as he says in the following chapter:-“Remember these, O Jacob and Israel, for thou art my servant; I have formed thee; for thou art my servant, O Israel; thou shalt not be forgotten of me.” When John ascribes power and dominion to the Saviour, he says, “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God.” If they were to reign, they were to reign for him; if they were to serve, they were to serve him. Therefore the glorified acknowledge, “Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.”

We were lost to him before, but now we are restored, by this purchase, to the owner, to whom every thing that pertains to us belongs by a thousand ties. Hence it is that none of us, if we are the Lord’s, live unto ourselves, “but whether we live, we live unto the Lord, or whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.” They are called “jewels.” “They shall be mine,” saith the Lord, “in that day when I make up my jewels.” They are his “garden;” they are his “vineyard.” God says, “I will water it every moment; I will keep it night and day, lest any hurt it.” We here see how we should behave to all the Lord’s people.

This is an improvement of the subject which David leads us to make, when he addressed those who had been opposing him:-“O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? how long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing?”-the old English word for lying. “But know that the Lord hath set apart him that is godly for himself.” And God says to them, “He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of mine eye.” We are to judge of them not by their outward condition and advantages, but by their relation to him. They are sacred as belonging to him. Christians, by a sense of their own littleness and unworthiness, often feel as if they were nothing; but there is an importance attached to them arising from their relation to God.

What are others, whatever they may possess and enjoy, compared with “the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty”? Then they should not be depressed by sorrow, or sink under their trials, but should ever remember to whom they belong, and say, “The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.”

This is my rest for ever; here will I dwell; for I have desired it. - Psalms 132:14.

THUS we read that God dwelleth in Zion. There he was in the temple which he had chosen for his habitation, the place where his honour dwelt, where he was accessible, where his oracles were deposited, where his servants ministered unto him, where his worship was celebrated, where he “clothed his priests with salvation,” and made his “saints shout aloud for joy,” and “satisfied his poor with bread.” Hence we read in the prophecies of Isaiah that the Jews were a people nigh unto him, while, on the other hand, the Gentiles are spoken of as being “far off,” “strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.”

We have succeeded to the Jews as to these means of grace and privileges, and have them in a much higher degree. He says to us as he did to Israel, “In all places where I record my name there will I come unto you, and there will I bless you.” And our Saviour says, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” He is therefore with us in his word, with us in his ministers, with us in the assembly of the saints; and his saints still find him in his palaces for a refuge; and we may hear his voice and see his “power and his glory” in the sanctuary. There we may taste that he is gracious; there we may sit under “his shadow with great delight and find his fruit sweet unto our taste.” “That his name is near,” says David, “his wondrous works declare.”

The effect shows agency, and agency evinces presence; and the effects which have taken place in the sanctuary and in the hearts of individuals show that God is there. The voice of a man could never reach the heart and turn the whole tide of the soul another way; but how often is this performed by God! A man enters the house of God prayerless, and begins to cry, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” He enters carelessly, or from curiosity, or with a view perhaps of ridicule; but he is soon “known of all and judged of all,” and the “secrets of his heart are made manifest;” and if he does not fall down on the ground, he inwardly exclaims, “God is in the midst of them of a truth.”