the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
The Poor Man's Morning and Evening Portions
July 15—Morning—Psalms 119:136
"Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law."—Psalms 119:136.
Who is there of whom this may be said? Jesus, and Jesus only. He wept indeed over his beloved Jerusalem, for he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And the love he had to his redeemed, induced a bloody sweat through all the pores of his sacred body. But of every other may it not be said, "All seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s." Did we truly love Zion, would not rivers of tears run down at the present languishing state of Zion? Did we feel the full sense of distinguishing grace, would not every heart mourn over the ruins of our common nature? Think, my soul, what a mass of sin ascends as a cloud before the view of the Lord every day from a single heart of the desperately wicked transgressor? Think what an accumulation in a town, a province, an empire, the world! Might not rivers of waters run down at the contemplation? And worse, if possible! Think of that higher source of sorrow, in that the only possible remedy for this evil is slighted, and Christ, which is God’s one gracious ordinance for the recovery of our ruined nature, is so little esteemed among men. Oh how might the people of God be supposed to have their very souls melted in the contemplation! This, this is indeed the condemnation; this is the soul-destroying sin; "that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." Oh for grace to mourn over a Christ-despising generation! Oh for the "Deliverer to arise out of Zion, and turn away ungodliness from Jacob."
July 15—Evening—Genesis 22:14
"And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh; as it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen."—Genesis 22:14.
My soul! how many Jehovah-jirehs hast thou erected? At least, how many occasions hath thy bountiful Lord afforded thee for erecting them? Oh what cause have I to blush in the recollection! Had I done by my God, as Abraham did by his, what blessed helps would they have afforded me, in the same moment that they became monuments to the Lord’s praise! Surely I know all this, in theory, very plainly and fully: but how do I fall short in the practice of it! To set up the Jehovah-jireh for all that is past, is the best help to a soul in exercises for all that is to come. When I can, and do put down, after any sharp trial, any Jehovah-jireh, and say, here it was "the Lord did provide;" will it not, in any future exercise, enable me to say, ’If the Lord helped me then, may I not hope that he will help me now?’ It would be a very sad requital for past mercies, in the moment of receiving them, to say, ’Alas! the Lord did once help, but he will not. I fear, do it again.’ This would be to read the inscription of the Jehovah-jireh backward. Whereas the very sight of our Jehovah-jirehs should teach us to say, "Here the Lord helped me: here he manifested his free unmerited grace to me: and will he not again? Is he less Jehovah than he was? Is he not God all-sufficient, all-gracious still?" O it is blessed to have such stones set up as Abraham’s Jehovah-jireh. There was nothing in the patriarch’s of his own providing. His was simply an act of faith; and neither the result of his asking by prayer, or providing by his wisdom. And, my soul, do not overlook a most interesting mark which the Holy Ghost hath put upon Abraham’s Jehovah-jireh, in adding, "As it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." As if he had said, ’ all the ages and generations yet to come shall profit by the great father of the faithful’s testimony to this place; and they shall see it to the latest day of Jesus’s church upon earth? Oh! how blessed, when our personal experience bears an exact correspondence to that of the faithful gone before; when we can and do set up the same. All blessings, all provisions are in Jesus. He is the Lamb, which, from everlasting, Jehovah hath provided, and whom his people shall see in all their wants, temporal, spiritual, and eternal. And let their extremities be what they may, yea, though the exercises of their faith abound, yet let them wait but the Lord’s time, which is always the best time, and they shall most assuredly, like Abraham, find cause to call the name of every place of trial, Jehovah-jireh; concerning which, in proof and in reality it shall be said, every day and to the last day," In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen!"
