Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: December 29th

Ask now of the days that are past. - Deuteronomy 4:32.

LET us inquire what these “days that are past” have to say concerning the scriptures. First, Have they not tended to confirm them? We must have been very unobservant indeed if they have not greatly established our faith in revelation. As we have heard, so have we seen, that the Scripture does not belie human nature, though it describes it as most depraved. It indeed represents men everywhere as fallen, guilty, corrupt, and alienated from the life of God. It tells us that “the way of transgressors is hard,” and we have seen this in actual instances. It tells us that “there is that withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth to poverty;” and we have seen those who have laid up what they ought to have laid out in the cause of God and the poor, exercised with losses, or wretched in their connections, or declining in their health, or depressed in their spirits, unfollowed by regret when they have died, and leaving no memories to embalm their names when they are gone.

On the other hand, we have never known a public-spirited Christian in our lives, who was not happy or in some way peculiarly blessed. “They shall prosper that love thee.” The Scripture tells us that “the prosperity of fools shall destroy them;” and how often have we observed how “their table has become a snare, and that which would have been for their welfare a trap”! We have seen persons rising in life, and, as riches multiplied, they have set their hearts on them, and begun to give up the Lord’s day, the sanctuary, and one religious ordinance after another, concerned only to make provision for the flesh.-The Scripture says, “Is any man afflicted? let him pray.” And have we not found prayer our best relief in trouble, both by its answers and by its exercises? “Oh,” says God, “that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy salvation as the waves of the sea.” And have we not found it true that “the backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways”?

On the other hand, the Scripture has told us that “they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength;” and have we not gained fresh succours when we have been thus engaged? The Scripture has told us that “they that sow in tears shall reap in joy;” and have we not found our humble and penitential hours our very best seasons?

Secondly, Have not the “days that are past” tended also to explain them? The Scripture explains providence, and providence explains Scripture.’ How often have we heard Christians say, “I never saw so much force and beauty in such a passage until I was brought into that affliction, or exercised with that dispensation”! “When the Puritans fled from persecution in this country to America, at first they depended much upon supplies from the mother-country. A company of them having gone down to the sea-shore, after looking anxiously for a vessel which was to bring them corn, and being disappointed, hunger induced them to search among the pebbles; and they soon found a kind of muscle, which they partook of, and found that it was wholesome and nutritious. One day, after they had made a hearty meal of this kind, a venerable old man stood up, and, returning thanks, blessed God that he had given them “to suck of the abundance of the seas, and of treasure hid in the sand,” -words which occur in the blessing of Zebulun, but which none of them had observed before, and perhaps never would but for this.

Thirdly, Have not “the days that are past” tended to endear them? Good men have always been fond of their Bibles; but when have they felt most attached to them? If we ask David, he will tell us, “This is my comfort in my affliction; for thy word hath quickened me;” “Unless thy law had been my delights, I should have perished in mine affliction;” “Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.”

Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee. - Deuteronomy 8:2.

HERE are two things to be observed: First, the call to remembrance, “Thou shalt remember.” Memory, like every other faculty, has been injured by the fall, and the injury appears not only in its weakness, but to those things in regard to which it is, in general, most unhappily conversant. It would be almost endless to adduce all the calls to remembrance afforded in the Scripture.

One thing, however, is certain; that in all these instances, the remembrance is to be experimental and practical. The sacred writers never regard remembrance as an end, but an instrument; that is, they enjoin us to remember for some purpose; to call forth such feelings, and to produce such actions as will correspond with the things we are required to remember. When Moses calls upon the Jews to look back upon their history, we must suppose he intended they should be affected with encouragement or humiliation, or gratitude, and praise, according as the case demanded. In this Spirit, and with this purpose in view, let us be influenced in all our retrospections.

Observe, secondly, the subject to be reviewed. There are four things to be noticed, and they are all to be exemplified in the experience of Christians now, as of the Jews. Yea, much more abundantly. We have the place to be reviewed, “the wilderness.” Such a place literally they were in after leaving Egypt; and we shall find many allusions to its dreariness, its solitariness, its privations, audits perils. And are not Christians in a similar condition?

What is the world, comparatively at least, but a wilderness? Christians are summoned to arise and depart hence, because it is polluted, because its friendship is enmity with God, because it is unsuitable to their new nature, because they have found that good part which shall never be taken away from them, because they look to that better country, even a heavenly, because they have not yet come to that rest and inheritance which the Lord their God shall give unto them, because their portion is beyond the world.

They were to remember their Conductor: “The way which the Lord thy God led thee.” Their safety, their joy, and happiness arose from being under his immediate care. He led them all the way by a fiery, cloudy pillar; it was a pillar of cloud by day, serving to interpose between them and the rays of a vertical sun; and it was a pillar of fire by night, to absorb the unwholesome damps, to cheer the darkness and the gloom; and by this God showed them where they were to look, and where they were to go; and it never left them until it brought them to “a city of habitation.”

And so God is the conductor of his people now. He guides them with his eye, he leads them by his word’ by his Spirit, and his providence. He is “a very present help to them in every time of trouble,” and he will never leave them nor forsake them till they have entered the promised land; where, looking back to the desert, and to all his dealings with them in the vale of tears, they will sing songs of everlasting praise to him that “led them up through the wilderness, for his mercy endureth for ever.”