Day 4 - Wednesday | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Hour |

 Morning, October 16 Go To Evening Reading

“Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine.”

—John 21:12

In these words, the believer is invited to a holy nearness to Jesus. “Come and dine” implies the same table and the same meat; sometimes, it means to sit side by side and lean our head upon the Saviour’s bosom. It is being brought into the banqueting house, where the banner of redeeming love waves. “Come and dine” gives us a vision of union with Jesus because the only food we can feast upon when we dine with Jesus is himself. Oh, what union is this! It is a depth that reason cannot fathom, and we thus feed upon Jesus. “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.” It is also an invitation to enjoy fellowship with the saints. Christians may differ on various points, but they have all one spiritual appetite, and if we cannot all feel alike, we can all feed alike on the bread of life sent down from heaven. At the table of fellowship with Jesus, we are one bread and one cup. As the loving cup goes round, we pledge one another heartily therein.

Get nearer to Jesus, and you will find yourself linked more and more in Spirit to all who are Spiritourself, supported by the same heavenly manna. If we were closer to Jesus, we should be closer to one another. We likewise see in these words the source of strength for every Christian. To look at Christ is to live, but for strength to serve him, you must “come and dine.” We labor under unnecessary weakness because we neglect this percept of the Master. None of us need to put ourselves on a low diet; on the contrary, we should fatten on the marrow and fatness of the gospel to accumulate strength and urge every power to its full tension in the Master’s service. Thus, if you realize nearness to Jesus, union with Jesus, love for his people, and strength from Jesus, “come and dine” with him by faith.

Go To Morning Reading Evening, October 16

“With thee is the fountain of life.”

—Psalm 36:9

Sometimes, in our spiritual experience, human care, sympathy, or religious ordinances fail to comfort or help us. Why does our gracious God permit this? Perhaps it is because we have been living too much without him, and he therefore takes away everything upon which we have been in the habit of depending, that he may drive us to himself. It is a blessed thing to live at the fountainhead. While our skin bottles are complete, we are content, like Hagar and Ishmael, to go into the wilderness, but when those are dry, nothing will serve us but “Thou God seest me.” Like the prodigal, we love the swine troughs and forget our Father’s house. Remember, we can make swine troughs and husks, even Father’she forms of religion; they are blessed things, but we may put them in God’s place, and then they are useless. Anything becomes an idol when it keeps us away from God: even the brazen serpent is to be despised as “Nehushtan” if we worship it instead of God. The prodigal was never safer than when driven to his Father’s bosom because he could find sustenance nowhere else. Our Father is with famine in the land that may make us seek after Him more. The best position for a Christian is living wholly and directly on God’s grace—still abiding where he stood at first—“Having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” Let us never for a moment think that our standing is in our sanctification, our mortification, our graces, or our feelings, but know that because Christ offered a full atonement, we are saved, for we are complete in him. Having nothing of our own to trust but resting upon the merits of Jesus—his passion and holy life gives us the only sure ground of confidence. Beloved, when we are brought to a thirsting condition, we will eagerly turn to the fountain of life.

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

October 16: Mercy and Judgment

Ezekiel 32:1–33:33; Revelation 16:1–21; Job 37:9–15

“God is the judge,” we like to say—especially when someone struggles with injustice. However, when we get to the book of Revelation, we might struggle to understand God’s judgment. Yet even as John describes God dispensing judgment, he emphasizes God’s righteousness and loving nature. He tells us we should not forget that God is a righteous judge.

The Bible is unapologetic and straightforward when speaking about God’s judgment. This is especially true in Revelation. Here, the judgment God exacts echoes the plagues that He sent on Pharaoh and Egypt in the book of Exodus—blood, darkness, fiery hail, and locusts. Although Pharaoh was given multiple opportunities to obey God’s request, he still chose his own way. By turning the bodies of water into blood, God spoke what Pharaoh should have realized: “By this, you will know that I am Yahweh” (Exod 7:17).

Revelation 16 pronounces God righteous not despite His judgment but because of it (Rev 16:5). We might be tempted to question God’s judgment. Still, Revelation shows us that His judgment displays His righteousness. Revelation also reveals God’s love for and protection of the saints—His judgment is vengeance for their blood (Rev 16:6).

Those who receive judgment in Revelation express fierce opposition to God in their blasphemy. They rebel even to the end: “And people were burned up by the great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has the authority over these plagues, and they did not repent to give him glory” (Rev 16:9). When other judgments come, the responses are the same (see also Rev 16:11, 21). Nothing hints at repentance.

God’s judgment is not arbitrary, and His willingness to show mercy is great. Throughout the Bible, we hear about His longsuffering nature and His mercy that extends to a thousand generations. When we speak of His judgment, we should not diminish His mercy. We should talk carefully about God as a righteous judge, but we should balance and outweigh these statements by speaking of His longsuffering nature and incredible love.

How do you carefully weigh words about God’s judgment?

Rebecca Van Noord

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

October 16

The key to the Master’s orders

Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that He will send laborers into His harvest. Matthew 9:38.

The key to the missionary problem is in the hand of God, and that key is prayer, not work, that is, not work as the word is popularly understood today, because that may mean the evasion of concentration on God. The key to the missionary problem is not the key to common sense, the medical key, the key to civilization or education, or even evangelization. The key is prayer. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest.” Naturally, prayer is not practical; it is absurd; we must realize that prayer is stupid from the ordinary commonsense point of view.

There are no nations in Jesus Christ’s outlook but the world. How many of us pray without respect for persons and concerning only one person, Jesus Christ? He owns the harvest produced by distress and conviction of sin, and this is the harvest we have to pray that laborers may be thrust out to reap. We are taken up with active work while people all around are ripe to harvest, and we do not reap one of them but waste our Lord’s time in over-energized activities. Suppose the crisis comes in your Father’s and brother’s lives. Are you there as a laborer to Father’s harvest for Jesus Christ? ‘Oh, but I have a special work to do!’ No Christian has exceptional work to do. A Christian is called to be Jesus Christ’s own, one who is not above his Master and does not dictate to Jesus Christ what he intends to do. Our Lord calls to no exceptional work: He calls to Himself. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,” He will engineer circumstances and thrust you out.

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

October 16

The word of our God shall stand forever

Isa. 40:8

The Word of God is the water of life; the more ye lave it forth, the fresher it runneth. It is the fire of God’s glory; the more ye blow it, the more apparent it burneth. It is the corn of the Lord’s field; the better you grind it, the more it yields. It is the bread of heaven; the more it is broken and given forth, the more it remaineth. It is the sword of the Spirit; the more it is Spirit, the brighter it shineth.

Bishop Jewel

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