M&E Wednesday

Morning and Evening: Daily Readings
by C. H. Spurgeon
Wednesday Morning, January 18

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.

Hebrews 4:9

How different will be the state of the believer in heaven from what it is here! Here he is born to toil and suffer weariness, but in the land of the immortal, fatigue is never known. Anxious to serve his Master, he finds his strength unequal to his zeal: his constant cry is, Help me to serve thee, O my God. If he be thoroughly active, he will have much labour; not too much for his will, but more than enough for his power, so that he will cry out, I am not wearied of the labour, but I am wearied in it. Ah! Christian, the hot day of weariness lasts not for ever; the sun is nearing the horizon; it shall rise again with a brighter day than thou hast ever seen upon a land where they serve God day and night, and yet rest from their labours. Here, rest is but partial, there, it is perfect. Here, the Christian is always unsettled; he feels that he has not yet attained. There, all are at rest; they have attained the summit of the mountain; they have ascended to the bosom of their God. Higher they cannot go. Ah, toil-worn labourer, only think when thou shalt rest for ever! Canst thou conceive it? It is a rest eternal; a rest that remaineth. Here, my best joys bear mortal on their brow; my fair flowers fade; my dainty cups are drained to dregs; my sweetest birds fall before Death's arrows; my most pleasant days are shadowed into nights; and the flood-tides of my bliss subside into ebbs of sorrow; but there, everything is immortal; the harp abides unrusted, the crown unwithered, the eye undimmed, the voice unfaltering, the heart unwavering, and the immortal being is wholly absorbed in infinite delight. Happy day! happy! when mortality shall be swallowed up of life, and the Eternal Sabbath shall begin.

Evening, January 18

He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Luke 24:27

The two disciples on the road to Emmaus had a most profitable journey. Their companion and teacher was the best of tutors; the interpreter one of a thousand, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The Lord Jesus condescended to become a preacher of the gospel, and he was not ashamed to exercise his calling before an audience of two persons, neither does he now refuse to become the teacher of even one. Let us court the company of so excellent an Instructor, for till he is made unto us wisdom we shall never be wise unto salvation.

This unrivalled tutor used as his class-book the best of books. Although able to reveal fresh truth, he preferred to expound the old. He knew by his omniscience what was the most instructive way of teaching, and by turning at once to Moses and the prophets, he showed us that the surest road to wisdom is not speculation, reasoning, or reading human books, but meditation upon the Word of God. The readiest way to be spiritually rich in heavenly knowledge is to dig in this mine of diamonds, to gather pearls from this heavenly sea. When Jesus himself sought to enrich others, he wrought in the quarry of Holy Scripture.

The favoured pair were led to consider the best of subjects, for Jesus spake of Jesus, and expounded the things concerning himself. Here the diamond cut the diamond, and what could be more admirable? The Master of the House unlocked his own doors, conducted the guests to his table, and placed his own dainties upon it. He who hid the treasure in the field himself guided the searchers to it. Our Lord would naturally discourse upon the sweetest of topics, and he could find none sweeter than his own person and work: with an eye to these we should always search the Word. O for grace to study the Bible with Jesus as both our teacher and our lesson!

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HOW SHALL I STUDY MY BIBLE?

 

 

 

BY FREDERIC W. FARR, D. D.

Copyright 1919

 

 

PEOPLE are always asking, how shall I study the Bible? What is the best method? There is no short cut, no royal road, and no magic method. Say to such an inquirer, "Read the Bible over and over again not once, nor twice, nor thrice, but many, many times." And that is all anyone can do. Read it until you become familiar, cognizant of its contents, until you are so familiar with your Bible, be it Bagster or Oxford, that you can close your eyes and visualize the passage by locating it upon a particular page just where it belongs.

 

In riding upon a railroad train, you hear the trainmen call out the stations, and you refer to your time card to verify the call as each station is passed, and you wonder at the trained memory of the man who can repeat that long list of way stations without a mistake, and you ask him how he ever does it, and he smiles and replies that he has done it so long it is automatic, done without thought and without effort; and so the best product of Bible study becomes spontaneous and involuntary. You have read the Bible so frequently, so thoughtfully, so earnestly, and so prayerfully that it comes to you without direct effort on your part where to locate a passage and you label it instinctively. And when the facts of Scripture are all in your head and heart, you can safely trust the Holy Spirit to interpret those facts, and you need not that any man teach you, and therefore the only thing to seek and to secure is to become familiar with the contents of the Word thoroughly cognizant of all the facts of Scripture, and read them so often that you see them on the page where they occur, even with closed eyes. In that way, a man with one book, if that book be the Bible, has a large and liberal culture and an education that will serve manifold purposes in solving the problems and bearing the burdens and discharging the duties of daily life.

 

Christian workers must be taught and trained. To teach is to cause to know; to train is to cause to do; knowing and doing are related as a means to an end, as a cause and effect. "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." Theory precedes practice. How could a man ever do anything unless he knows how it ought to be done? We not only have to be taught, we have to be trained. We must learn the theory; we must acquire the practice and knowledge as a means to an end. I shall briefly mention seven conditions under which Bible study may be prosecuted with success.

 

Regeneration

 

The first condition is indispensable and fundamental; indeed it is not so much a condition as a prerequisite, and that is regeneration. You must be born again before you can understand the Bible. It is absolutely necessary.

(Matt. 13:11.) What Daniel says of prophecy is true of all Scriptures     "The wise shall understand, the wicked shall not." He means that character rather than culture is the condition of understanding prophecy. If you would understand the prophecies of God's Word correctly, it is not necessary to graduate at a University or Seminary, and read Greek and Hebrew, but it is necessary to be good, to be pure, and to be holy. The heart makes the theologian. The heart is the organ of spiritual vision, and character rather than culture becomes the key to unlock the mysteries of prophecy. That is true of all Scripture. (1 Cor. 2:14.) Suppose a man is sitting beside you on yonder mountain top, and you are describing to him the glories of a sunset. The west is brilliant with prismatic hues of iridescent rainbow beauty. The man is indifferent, and unconcerned. You grow indignant until you discover that the man is blind. What cares he about the sunset? What knows he about your words? You do not scold him, you do not blame him, and you pity him. No unregenerate man can know anything about the mysteries of God and the meaning of the Bible. A man must be a Christian before he can open the Bible with any possibility of arriving at its meaning. It is spiritually discerned.

Suppose I say to you that on the back of your hand there are scales like those of a fish, and you look at your hand and laugh in scorn, and say that is nonsense. Suppose I take you out in yonder street and look up into the sky and say there are four moons revolving around the planet Jupiter, and you look up at that great white planet in the evening sky, and you say the man is crazy, it is no such thing. Suppose I take your razor and say it has a corrugated edge like a cross-cut saw, and you hold the razor up to the light, and you say it is not so. Put your hand under a microscope; it looks like the back of an alligator. Put the sharpest razor you ever saw under a microscopic lens; it looks like a circular saw. Put the telescope on Jupiter, and you see the four satellites in their appointed order. That former statement was foolishness to your natural eye, because it was microscopically discerned. That latter statement was foolishness to your natural eye, because it was telescopically discerned. The axioms of the Bible are foolishness to the natural mind because they are spiritually discerned. A man must be born of the Spirit before he knows what the Bible teaches.

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

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