Morning, February 26 Go To Evening Reading
“Salvation is of the Lord.”
—Jonah 2:9
Salvation is the work of God. He alone quickens the soul “dead in trespasses and sins,” and he also maintains the soul in its spiritual life. He is both “Alpha and Omega.” “Salvation is of the Lord.” If I am prayerful, God makes me prayerful; if I have graces, they are God’s gifts to me; if I hold on in a consistent life, it is because he upholds me with his hand. I do nothing whatever my own preservation, except what God himself first does in me. Whatever I have, all my goodness is of the Lord alone. Wherein I sin, that is my own; but wherein I act rightly, that is of God, wholly and completely. THE LORD’S strength nerved my arm if I have repulsed a spiritual enemy. Do I live before men a consecrated life? It is not I, but Christ who liveth in me. Am I sanctified? I did not cleanse myself: God’s Holy Spirit sanctifies me. Am I weaned from the world? I am weaned by God’s chastisements sanctified to my good. Do I grow in knowledge? The great Instructor teaches me. All my jewels were fashioned by sacred art. I find all that I want in God, but I see nothing but sin and misery in myself. “He only is my rock and my salvation.” Do I feed on the Word? That Word would be no food for me unless the Lord made it food for my soul and helped me provide upon it. Do I live on the manna which comes down from heaven? What is that manna but Jesus Christ himself incarnate, whose body and whose blood I eat and drink? Am I continually receiving fresh increases of strength? Where do I gather my might? My help cometh from heaven’s hills: without Jesus, I can do nothing. As a branch cannot bring forth fruit except it abides in the vine, no more can I, except I abide in him. What Jonah learned in the great deep, let me know this morning in my closet: “Salvation is of the Lord.”
Go To Morning Reading Evening, February 26
“Behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague.”
—Leviticus 13:13
Strange enough, this regulation appears, yet there was wisdom in it, for the throwing out of the disease proved that the constitution was sound. This evening it may be good to see the typical teaching of so singular a rule. We, too, are lepers and may read the law of the leper as applicable to ourselves. When a man sees himself to be altogether lost and ruined, covered all over with the defilement of sin, and in no part free from pollution; when he disclaims all righteousness of his own and pleads guilty before the Lord, then he is clean through the blood of Jesus, and the grace of God. Hidden, unfelt, unconfessed iniquity is true leprosy; but when sin is seen and felt, it has received its deathblow, and the Lord looks with eyes of mercy upon the soul afflicted with it. Nothing is more deadly than self-righteousness or more hopeful than contrition. We must confess that we are “nothing else but sin,” for no confession short of this will be the whole truth. If the Holy Spirit be at work with us, convincing us of sin, there will be no difficulty in making such an acknowledgment—it will spring spontaneously from our lips. What comfort does the text afford to truly awakened sinners: the very circumstance which so grievously discouraged them is here turned into a sign and symptom of a hopeful state! Stripping comes before clothing; digging out the foundation is the first thing in the building—and a complete sense of sin is one of the earliest works of grace in the heart. O thou poor leprous sinner, utterly destitute of a sound spot, take a seat from the text, and come as thou art to Jesus—
“For let our debts be what they may, however great or small,
As soon as we have naught to pay, our Lord forgives us all.
’ Tis perfect poverty alone that sets the soul at large:
While we can call one mite our own, we have no full discharge.”
Spurgeon, C. H. Morning and Evening: Daily Readings. London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896. Print.
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