Day 6 - Friday - Daily Devotions - Logos

 Morning, February 24 Go To Evening Reading

“I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing.”

—Ezekiel 34:26

Here is sovereign mercy—“I will give them the shower in its season.” Is it not sovereign, divine mercy?—for who can say, “I will give them showers,” except God? Only one voice can speak to the clouds and bid them beget the rain. Who sendeth down the rain upon the earth? Who scattereth the showers upon the green herb? Do not I, the Lord? So grace is the gift of God and is not to be created by man. It is also needed grace. What would the ground do without showers? You may break the clods and sow your seeds, but what can you do without the rain? As absolutely needful is the divine blessing. In vain, you labor until God, the plenteous shower, bestows and sends salvation down. Then, it is plenteous grace.

“I will send them showers.” It does not say, “I will send them drops,” but “showers.” So it is with grace. If God gives a blessing, he usually gives it in such a measure that there is not room enough to receive it. Plenteous grace! Ah! We want plenteous grace to keep us humble, prayerful, and holy; plenteous grace to make us zealous, to preserve us through this life, and at last, to land us in heaven. We cannot do without saturating showers of grace. Again, it is seasonable grace.

“I will cause the shower to come down in his season.” What is thy season this morning? Is it the season of drought? Then that is the season for showers. Is it a season of great heaviness and black clouds? Then that is the season for showers. “As thy days so shall thy strength be.” And here is a mixed blessing. “I will give thee showers of blessing.” The word is in the plural. All kinds of gifts God will send. All God’s blessings go together like links in a golden chain. If he gives converting grace, he will also give comforting grace. He will send “showers of blessing.” Look up today, O parched plant, and open thy leaves and flowers for a heavenly watering.

Go To Morning Reading Evening, February 24

“O Lord of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy upon Jerusalem?… And the Lord answered the angel … with good and comfortable words.”

—Zechariah 1:12,13

What a sweet answer to an anxious inquiry! This night let us rejoice in it. O Zion, there are good things in store for thee; thy time of travail shall soon be over; thy children shall be brought forth; thy captivity shall end. Bear the rod patiently for a season, and under the darkness still trust in God, for his love burneth towards thee. God loves the church with love too deep for human imagination: he loves her with all his infinite heart. Therefore let her sons be of good courage; she cannot be far from prosperity to whom God speaketh “good words and comfortable words.” What these comfortable words are, the prophet goes on to tell us: “I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy.” The Lord loves his church so much that he cannot bear that she should go astray to others, and when she has done so, he cannot endure that she should suffer too much or too heavily. He will not have his enemies afflict her: he is displeased with them because they increase her misery. His heart is warm towards her when God seems most to leave his church. History shows that whenever God uses a rod to chasten his servants, he always breaks it afterward as if he loathed the rod, which gave his children pain. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” God has not forgotten us because he smites—his blows are no evidence of want of love. If this is true of his church collectively, it is of necessity true also of each individual member. You may fear that the Lord has passed you by, but it is not so: he who counts the stars and calls them by their names is in no danger of forgetting his own children. He knows your case as thoroughly as if you were the only creature he ever made or the only saint he ever loved. Approach him and be at peace.

 Spurgeon, C. H. Morning and Evening: Daily Readings. London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896. Print.

February 24: The Day of Atonement

Leviticus 15–16; John 9:1–12; Song of Solomon 7:5–9

When it comes to the cost of sin, the average person probably thinks about “What can I get away with?” rather than “What do this cost other people and me emotionally?” These calculations aren’t made regarding life and death, but that is the case when it comes to sin.

The Day of Atonement is a beautiful, though horrific, illustration of this. It takes three innocent animals to deal with the people’s sin: one to purify the high priest and his family, one to be a sin offering to Yahweh that purifies the place where He symbolically dwelt (the holy of holies), and one to be sent into the wilderness to remove the people’s transgressions (Lev 16:11, 15–16, 21–22).

After the blood of the first two animals is spilled on the Day of Atonement—demonstrating the purification of God’s people—the final goat shows God’s desire to completely rid the people of their sin. “Aaron shall place his two hands on the living goat’s head, and he shall confess over it all the Israelites’ iniquities and all their transgressions for all their sins, and he shall put them on the goat’s head, and he shall send it away into the desert” (Lev 16:21).

The Day of Atonement symbolized God’s desire for His people: one day, sin would no longer stand between God and His children. Like the goat, Jesus lifts the people’s iniquities (Isa 53:12). He fulfills this prophecy, becoming the ultimate ransom; no other sacrifice is ever needed.

As the author of Hebrews says, “For the law appoints men as high priests who have weakness, but the statement of the oath, after the law, appoints a Son, who is made perfect forever” (Heb 7:28). He then goes onto say, “And every priest stands every day serving and offering the same sacrifices many times, which are never able to take away sins. But this one, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God” (Heb 10:11–12).

The price of sin may be great, but Christ has paid that price.

In what ways do you take Jesus’ sacrifice for granted? What can you do differently?

John D. Barry

 Barry, John D., and Rebecca Kruyswijk. Connect the Testaments: A One-Year Daily Devotional with Bible Reading Plan. Print. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012.

February 24th

The delight of sacrifice

I will gladly spend and be spent for you. 2 Cor. 12:15.

When the Spirit of God has shed abroad the love of God in our hearts, we begin deliberately to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ’s interests in other people, and Jesus Christ is interested in every kind of man there is. We have no right in Christian work to be guided by our affinities; this is one of the most extensive tests of our relationship with Jesus Christ. The delight of sacrifice is that I lay down my life for my Friend, not fling it away, but deliberately lay it out for Him and His interests in other people, not for a cause. Paul only spent himself for one purpose—that he might win men to Jesus Christ. Paul was attracted to Jesus all the time, never to himself. “I am made all things to all men, that I might, by all means, save some.” When a man says he must develop a holy life alone with God, he is of no more use to his fellow men: he puts himself on a pedestal, away from the ordinary run of men. Paul became a sacramental personality; Jesus Christ helped Himself to his life wherever he went. Many of us are after our own ends, and Jesus Christ cannot help Himself in our lives. If we are abandoned to Jesus, we have no lots of our own to serve. Paul said he knew how to be a ‘door-mat’ without resenting it because the mainspring of his life was devotion to Jesus. We are apt to be devoted not to Jesus Christ but to the things which emancipate us spiritually. That was not Paul’s motive: “I could wish myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren”—wild, extravagant—is it? When a man is in love, it is not an exaggeration to talk in that way, and Paul is in love with Jesus Christ.

 Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year. Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986. Print.

February 24

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst does not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is everyone born of the Spirit.

John 3:8

We know that the wind listeth to blow where there is a vacuum. If you find a tremendous rush of wind, you know there is an empty space somewhere. I am perfectly sure about this fact: if we could expel all pride, vanity, self-righteousness, self-seeking, desire for applause, honor, and promotion—if, by some divine power, we should be utterly emptied of all that, the Spirit would come as a mighty rushing wind to fill us.

A. J. Gordon

 Hardman, Samuel G., and Dwight Lyman Moody. Thoughts for the Quiet Hour. Willow Grove, PA: Woodlawn Electronic Publishing, 1997. Print.