M&E Thursday

 

Morning and Evening: Daily Readings
by C. H. Spurgeon
Thursday Morning, January 19

I sought him, but I found him not.

Song of Solomon 3:1

Tell me where you lost the company of a Christ, and I will tell you the most likely place to find him. Have you lost Christ in the closet by restraining prayer? Then it is there you must seek and find him. Did you lose Christ by sin? You will find Christ in no other way but by the giving up of the sin, and seeking by the Holy Spirit to mortify the member in which the lust doth dwell. Did you lose Christ by neglecting the Scriptures? You must find Christ in the Scriptures. It is a true proverb, Look for a thing where you dropped it, it is there. So look for Christ where you lost him, for he has not gone away. But it is hard work to go back for Christ. Bunyan tells us, the pilgrim found the piece of the road back to the Arbour of Ease, where he lost his roll, the hardest he had ever travelled. Twenty miles onward is easier than to go one mile back for the lost evidence.

Take care, then, when you find your Master, to cling close to him. But how is it you have lost him? One would have thought you would never have parted with such a precious friend, whose presence is so sweet, whose words are so comforting, and whose company is so dear to you! How is it that you did not watch him every moment for fear of losing sight of him? Yet, since you have let him go, what a mercy that you are seeking him, even though you mournfully groan, O that I knew where I might find him! Go on seeking, for it is dangerous to be without thy Lord. Without Christ you are like a sheep without its shepherd; like a tree without water at its roots; like a sere leaf in the tempest--not bound to the tree of life. With thine whole heart seek him, and he will be found of thee: only give thyself thoroughly up to the search, and verily, thou shalt yet discover him to thy joy and gladness.

Evening, January 19

Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures.

Luke 24:45

He whom we viewed last evening as opening Scripture, we here perceive opening the understanding. In the first work he has many fellow-labourers, but in the second he stands alone; many can bring the Scriptures to the mind, but the Lord alone can prepare the mind to receive the Scriptures. Our Lord Jesus differs from all other teachers; they reach the ear, but he instructs the heart; they deal with the outward letter, but he imparts an inward taste for the truth, by which we perceive its savour and spirit. The most unlearned of men become ripe scholars in the school of grace when the Lord Jesus by his Holy Spirit unfolds the mysteries of the kingdom to them, and grants the divine anointing by which they are enabled to behold the invisible. Happy are we if we have had our understandings cleared and strengthened by the Master! How many men of profound learning are ignorant of eternal things! They know the killing letter of revelation, but its killing spirit they cannot discern; they have a veil upon their hearts which the eyes of carnal reason cannot penetrate. Such was our case a little time ago; we who now see were once utterly blind; truth was to us as beauty in the dark, a thing unnoticed and neglected. Had it not been for the love of Jesus we should have remained to this moment in utter ignorance, for without his gracious opening of our understanding, we could no more have attained to spiritual knowledge than an infant can climb the Pyramids, or an ostrich fly up to the stars. Jesus' College is the only one in which God's truth can be really learned; other schools may teach us what is to be believed, but Christ's alone can show us how to believe it. Let us sit at the feet of Jesus, and by earnest prayer call in his blessed aid that our dull wits may grow brighter, and our feeble understandings may receive heavenly things.

 

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… continued

HOW SHALL I STUDY MY BIBLE?

 

BY FREDERIC W. FARR, D. D.

Copyright 1919

 

 

Filled With the Holy Spirit

 

Second: A man must be baptized with the Holy Spirit as well as born of the Spirit to study the Bible successfully. Every Christian has the Holy Spirit. "If any man has not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His "and" by one

Spirit we are all baptized into one body." But there is something beyond.

There is a reception and an appropriation of the Holy Spirit as a teacher and a guide and a helper that confers a marvelous benefit upon the believer. We have a mental salvation.

 

"Be renewed in the spirit of your minds." We have talked so much about purifying the heart by faith that we have forgotten about clarifying the mind. It is quite as necessary to have a renewed mind as it is to have a clean heart. A clear head may be a product of the Holy Spirit as well as a clean heart. A man may testify to heart purity, and only God and the angels know anything about it, but if a man says anything about his clear head, as soon as he opens his mouth he gives himself away. The Holy Spirit is like oil to lubricate the mental machinery so that a man can think coherently, imagine vividly, remember retentively, and argue logically. I believe that a Christian student in the public schools uniformly takes higher rank than a scholar who is not a Christian. I ask for an explanation of that fact, and you say a Christian has a higher motive. He has a conscientious inducement to apply himself and to be faithful, but that accounts for it only in part. A Christian has a mentality illuminated by the Holy Spirit.

 

Once upon a time a young College student went into a class in mathematics with a problem in Algebra unsolved. He had studied long and hard over that lesson but in vain. When he got into the class, as happens so frequently, the Professor sent him to the board to demonstrate that particular problem that he didn't have. He was a Christian student. He didn't relish standing up before the class and failing. It was humiliating. But he went right up to the blackboard and stood before it feeling very helpless and very much ashamed, and then as he stood there with his back to the class and his face to the board, he prayed, "O God, show me how to solve this problem." In the twinkling of an eye the solution flashed into his mind, and he seized the crayon and dashed off the figures, to the applause of the whole class. That was a mental miracle. It was the Holy Spirit illuminating his mind in answer to prayer. If he had wasted the morning on the campus loitering or gossiping, as many students do, he might have gone there and stood with his face to the wall until night and prayed, and he wouldn't have been answered. But he had grappled faithfully and honestly with that problem, and what he couldn't do

God did in answer to prayer. Now that comes from having the Holy Spirit as your mentality to stimulate you, to enlighten you and to help you, and our minds need saving quite as much as our souls and quite as much as our bodies, for our highest life is a mental life, and even our spiritual life comes under the scope of our mentality, and the Holy Spirit is our teacher to guide us into all truth, and even a believer can study better with the help of the Holy Spirit.

 

A Ravenous Appetite

 

In the third place, there must be a ravenous appetite for Bible study.

"Thy words were found, and I did eat them." "I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food." If you don't love to study the Bible, you'd better postpone this course of study, but the appetite grows by what it feeds on, and if you haven't any appetite, you need praying for. Sometimes a person is run down, and goes to a doctor. Before the doctor makes a diagnosis, he begins to quiz you. The first question is how is your appetite? If you have no appetite, you need medicine. When a Christian has no appetite for God's Word, it is a dangerous symptom. Remember what the Israelites said in the wilderness, "Our soul loatheth this light bread." Light bread, indeed. It was angels' food. If it was good enough for the angels, it ought to have been good enough for the Israelites. We remember the food of the Egyptians cucumbers, melons, garlic, etc. Many people prefer novels or newspapers to the Bible members of the church too. They have no appetite. To make any progress in Bible study, you must love the Bible. Unless you put your heart into the work, it is drudgery, and it never succeeds. The highest success is the spirit in which you do your work. God never says, "Well done, thou good and successful servant," but "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

Cultivate your appetite. A strong spiritual appetite is the greatest spiritual safeguard. "How sweet are Thy words unto my mouth, yea sweeter than honey to my lips."

......... to be continued ..........

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