Day 7 - Sabbath (Saturday) | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet Hour |
“Yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant.”
—2 Samuel 23:5
This covenant is divine in its origin. “He hath made with me an everlasting covenant.” Oh, that great word, He! Stop, my soul. God, the everlasting Father, has positively made a covenant with thee; yes, that God who spake the world into existence by a word; he, stooping from his majesty, takes hold of thy hand and makes a covenant with thee. Is it not a deed, the stupendous condescension of which might ravish our hearts forever if we could really understand it? “he hath made with me a covenant.” A king has not made a covenant with me—that were somewhat; but the Prince of the kings of the earth, Shaddai, the Lord All-sufficient, the Jehovah of ages, the everlasting Elohim, “He hath made with me an everlasting covenant.” However, notice that it is particular in its application. “Yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant.” Here lies its sweetness to each believer. It is naught for me that he made peace for the world; I want to know whether he made peace for me! It is little that he hath made a covenant; I want to see if he has made a covenant with me. Blessed is the assurance that he hath made a covenant with me! If God, the Holy Ghost, gives me assurance of this, then his salvation is mine, his heart is mine, and he is mine—my God.
This covenant is everlasting in its duration. An everlasting covenant means a covenant that had no beginning and shall never, never end. How sweet amidst all the uncertainties of life, to know that “the foundation of the Lord standeth sure,” and to have God’s promise, “My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.” Like dying David, I will sing of this, even though my house may not be so with God as my heart desires.
Go To Morning Reading Evening, December 21
“I clothed thee also with embroidered work, shod thee with badgers’ skin, girded thee about with fine linen, and covered thee with silk.”
—Ezekiel 16:10
See with what matchless generosity the Lord provides for his people’s apparel. They are so arrayed that the divine skill is seen producing an unrivaled embroidered work in which every attribute takes its part and every divine beauty is revealed. No art like the art displayed in our salvation, no cunning workmanship like that beheld in the righteousness of the saints. Justification has engrossed learned pens in all ages of the church and will be the theme of admiration in eternity. God has indeed “curiously wrought it.” With all this elaboration, there is mingled utility and durability, comparable to our being shod with badgers’ skins. The animal here is unknown, but its skin covered the tabernacle, forming one of the finest and strongest leathers known. The righteousness of God by faith endureth forever, and he who is shod with this divine preparation will tread the desert safely and may even set his foot upon the lion and the adder. The purity and dignity of our holy vesture are brought out in the fine linen. When the Lord sanctifies his people, they are clad as priests in pure white; not the snow itself excels them; they are fair to look upon in the eyes of men and angels, and even in the Lord’s eyes, they are without spot. Meanwhile, royal apparel is as delicate and rich as silk. No expense is spared, no beauty withheld, no daintiness denied.
What, then? Is there no inference from this? Indeed, gratitude is felt, and joy is expressed. Come, my heart, refuse not thy evening hallelujah! Tune thy pipes! Touch thy chords!
“Strangely, my soul, art thou arrayed
By the Great Sacred Three!
In the sweetest harmony of praise
Let all thy powers agree.”
C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).
December 21: Expenses
Jeremiah 39:1–41:18; Romans 9:13–29; Proverbs 24:1–22
It’s important to pause occasionally to reflect on the cost of sin. If we don’t, we can live in it without considering the ramifications. Few passages illustrate the price of sin more vividly than the fall of Jerusalem recorded in Jer 39. The fall of Jerusalem is brutal, depressing, and sadistic, but we can learn from Jeremiah’s account of the event.
We could view Jeremiah’s depictions as merely historical or recognize the theological lessons they offer: Sin is expensive. Sin will destroy you. Sin will bring a nation to its knees. Sin will leave you begging for mercy. Sin is death. That’s what God’s people learned from this event: Disobeying Yahweh is costly. It’s not that God wants His people to endure this pain, but the pain is a natural consequence of their decisions. He cannot defend people who refuse to live as beacons of light—of goodness, beauty, and blessing—to the world. If they aren’t willing to live in His image, He is not willing to be their defender. If Yahweh did not allow Nebuchadnezzar to destroy Jerusalem, the people would never learn. The exile at this moment is also a natural result of their sin.
When we’re faced with the horror of the destruction of Jerusalem, we’re given a choice: Will we listen to the prophets of our age and respond accordingly? Will we hear God when He calls us back to obedience? Or will we continue to live in sin and suffer the consequences?
As a side effect of the grace that God has given us in Jesus, many people assume that sin is somehow okay—that it’s okay to allow it to exist. God’s response is the opposite. The grace is unmerited, and we must respond with the only merited response: complete dedication and obedience to Him. We must see the death of sin and deny it.
What sin is currently present in your life? What do you need to repent from? Have you asked God to direct you in this?
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 21
Experience or revelation
We have received … the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. 1 Cor. 2:12.
Reality is Redemption, not my experience of Redemption, but Redemption has no meaning for me until it speaks the language of my conscious life. When I am born again, the Spirit of God takes me right out of myself and my experiences and identifies me with Jesus Christ. If I am left with my experiences, my experiences have not been produced by Redemption. The proof that they are made by Redemption is that I am led out of myself all the time; I no longer pay any attention to my experiences as the ground of Reality but only to the Reality that produced the experiences. My experiences are worthless unless they keep me at the Source, Jesus Christ.
If you try to dam up the Holy Spirit in you to produce subjective experiences, you will find He will burst all bounds and take you back to the historic Christ. Never nourish an experience without having God as its Source and faith in God as its result. If you do, your experience is anti-Christian, no matter what visions you may have had. Is Jesus Christ Lord of your experiences, or do you try to lord it over Him? Is any experience dearer to you than your Lord? He must be Lord over you, and you must refrain from paying attention to any experience over which He is not Lord. There comes a time when God will make you impatient with your own experience—‘I do not care what I experience; I am sure of Him.’
Be ruthless with yourself if you are prone to talking about your experiences. Faith that is sure of itself is not faith; faith that is sure of God is the only faith.
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986).
December 21
The sea wrought and was tempestuous
Jonah 1:11
Sin in the soul is like Jonah in the ship. It turns the smoothest water into a tempestuous sea.
Selected
Samuel G. Hardman and Dwight Lyman Moody, Thoughts for the Quiet Hour (Willow Grove, PA: Woodlawn Electronic Publishing, 1997).
Comments