Day 3 - Tuesday | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

 Morning, December 17 Go To Evening Reading

“I remember thee.”

—Jeremiah 2:2

Let us note that Christ delights in thinking about Churchurch and looking at her beauty. As the bird returneth often to its nest, and as the wayfarer hastens to his home, so doth the mind continually pursue the object of its choice. We cannot look too often upon that face we love; we always desire to have our precious things in sight. It is even so with our Lord Jesus. From all eternity, “His delights were with the sons of men”; his thoughts rolled onward to when his elect should be born into the world; he viewed them in the mirror of his foreknowledge. “In thy book,” he says, “all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them” (Ps. 139:16). When the world was set upon its pillars, he was there, and he put the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. Many a time before his incarnation, he descended to this lower earth in the similitude of a man; on the plains of Mamre (Gen. 18), by the brook of Jabbok (Gen. 32:24–30), beneath the walls of Jericho (Jos. 5:13). In the fiery furnace of Babylon (Dan. 3:19, 25), the Son of Man visited his people. Because his soul delighted in them, he could not rest away from them, for his heart longed after them. Never were they absent from his heart, for he had written their names upon his hands and graven them upon his side. The breastplate containing the names of the tribes of Israel was the most brilliant ornament worn by the high priest, so the names of Christ’s elect were his most precious jewels and glittered on his heart. We may often forget to meditate upon the perfections of our Lord, but he never ceases to remember us. Let us chide ourselves for past forgetfulness and pray for grace to bear him in fondest remembrance. Lord, paint upon the eyeballs of my soul the image of thy Son.

Go To Morning Reading Evening, December 17

“I am the door: by me, if any man enters in, he shall be saved, go in and out, and find pasture.”

—John 10:9

Jesus, the great I am, is the entrance into the trueChurchh, and the way of access to God himself. He gives to the man who comes to God by him four choice privileges.

1. He shall be saved. The fugitive manslayer passed the gate of the city of refuge and was safe. Noah entered the door of the ark and was secure. None who take Jesus as the door of faith to their souls can be lost. Entrance through Jesus into peace guarantees entrance by the same door into heaven. Jesus is the only door, an open door, a wide door, a safe door, and blessed is he who rests all his hope of admission to glory upon the crucified Redeemer.

2. He shall go in. He shall be privileged to go in among the divine family, sharing the children’s bread and participating in all their honors and enjoyments. He shall go into the chambers of communion, to the banquets of love, to the treasures of the covenant, to the storehouses of the promises. He shall go in unto the King of kings in the power of the Holy Spirit, and the secret of the Lord shall be with him.

3. He shall go out. This blessing is much forgotten. We go out into the world to labor and suffer, but what a mercy to go in the name and power of Jesus! We are called to bear witness to the truth, to cheer the disconsolate, to warn the careless, to win souls, and to glorify God; and as the angel said to Gideon, “Go in this thy might,” even thus the Lord would have us proceed as his messengers in his name and strength.

4. He shall find pasture. He who knows Jesus shall never want. Going in and out shall be helpful to him: in fellowship with God, he shall grow, and in watering others, he shall be watered. Having made Jesus his all, he shall find all in Jesus. His soul shall be as a watered garden and a well of water whose waters fail not.

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

December 17: Land and Deeds

Jeremiah 32:1–44; Romans 7:7–25; Proverbs 21:13–31

Those who have purchased a home know the frightening feeling of the closing day—“Am I signing my life away? Am I binding myself to this building forever?” Imagine, on top of those feelings, knowing that the place you’re buying is about to be overrun by a foreign nation and may no longer belong to you. That’s what the prophet Jeremiah experienced.

Yahweh tells Jeremiah that his cousin will arrive with an offer to purchase a field. So when Jeremiah’s cousin shows up, Jeremiah views it as Yahweh’s will that he buy the land, and he does (Jer 32:1–12). Meanwhile, Jeremiah knows that the Babylonians are coming and that they will overrun the land of God’s people, including the land that he has just purchased. This is not a reckless act; this is a moment of faith. Jeremiah seizes the opportunity to proclaim Yahweh’s faithfulness.

Turning to his assistant, Baruch, Jeremiah remarks in front of everyone witnessing the purchase, “Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Take these deeds, this deed of the purchase, the sealed one, and this opened deed, and you must put them in an earthenware jar so that they may be kept preserved many days.’ For thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Houses and fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land’ ” (Jer 32:14–15).

Each of us has moments when we must do what no one else will do, including saying what others are unwilling to speak. What “land” is God asking you to buy, and what is He asking you to proclaim about it?

What deed is God asking you to do today? What are you to say about Yahweh’s faithfulness, and how will you act upon it?

John D. Barry

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

December 17

Redemption creates the need it satisfies.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him. 1 Cor. 2:14.

The Gospel of God creates a sense of need for the Gospel. Paul says—“If our gospel be hidden, it is hidden.”—to tGospelho are blackguards? No, “to them that are lost; in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” Most people have morality well within their own grasp and have no sense of need for the Gospel. God creates the need that no human is conscious of until He manifests Himself. Jesus said—“Ask, and it shall be given unto you,” but God cannot give until a man asks. It is not that He withholds, but that is how He has constituted things based on Redemption. Using our asking, God gets processes into work whereby He creates the thing that is not in existence until we ask. The inner reality of Redemption is that it is created all the time. As the Redemption establishes the life of God in us, it creates the things that belong to that life. Nothing can satisfy the need but that which created the need. This is the meaning of Redemption—it creates and satisfies.

“If I am lifted from the earth, I will draw all men unto Me.” We preach our own experiences, and people are interested, but no sense of need is awakened. If Jesus Christ is lifted up, the Spirit of God will create a conscious need for Him. Behind the preaching of the Gospel is the creative Redemption of God at work in the Gospel of men. It is never personal testimony that saves men. “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

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

December 17

Lot … pitched his tent toward Sodom

Gen. 13:12

And soon Lot moved into Sodom; before long Sodom moved into him.

Theodore Cuyler

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