Spurgeon Daily Devotional Bible: January 3

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

Spurgeon Daily Devotional Bible: January 3

Today is: Monday, January 13th, 2025 (Show Today's Devotion)

Select a Day for a Devotion in the Month of January: (Show All Months)

Morning

“Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Psalms 8

Our last reading showed us man fresh from the hand of his Maker. It will be well to pause and consider the Lord’s goodness to our race. We cannot find a fitter assistance for our meditation than David’s joyful vintage hymn.

Psa_8:2

It is a part of the excellence and glory of God that he magnifies himself by means of insignificant creatures. Though his name is excellent in all the earth yet babes may praise it, and though his glory be above the heavens sucklings may proclaim it. It needs a great orator to win men’s admiration for a doubtful character; but so surpassingly glorious is the Lord, that even a child’s tongue suffices to baffle his foes, and charm his friends.

Psa_8:4

The heavens are so vast and he so small; the moon so bright and he so mean; the stars so glorious and he so grovelling; Lord, how canst thou stoop from the sublimities of heaven to visit such a nothing as man? The study of astronomy is calculated to humble the mind as well as to enlarge it: and at the same time it excites adoring gratitude when we see the Lord lavishing his love upon creatures so insignificant as ourselves.

Psa_8:5

Since he is mortal and angels are immortal, man is a little lower than they; yet it is but for a little time and then man’s coronation with glory and honour shall have come. Then shalt it be seen that angels are but servants to the saints, and that all creatures work for their benefit.

Psa_8:8

All these creatures he either tames to his hand, or slays for his use. His fear and dread are on them all. Marred as mans dominion is, he still walks among the inferior animals with something of that awe, which, as a poet saith, “doth hedge a king.” In Adam’s innocence man’s rule of. the lower races was no doubt complete and delightful; one imagines him leaning upon a tawny lion, while a fawn frisks at the side of Eve. In the Lord Jesus, however, we see man most eminently in the place of honour, exalted in the highest. We know that the position of our Lord Jesus is a representative one for all his people, for the members are like the Head. In Jesus man is indeed “crowned with glory and honour.” It is both our duty and our privilege to rise superior to all the things of earth. We must take care to keep the world under our feet, and the creatures in their proper place. Let none of us permit the possession of any earthly creatures to be a snare unto us; we are to reign over them, and must not permit them to reign over us.

Lord, what is man, or all his race,

Who dwell so far below,

That thou shouldst visit him with grace,

And love his nature so?

That thine eternal Son should bear

To take a mortal form,

Made lower than his angels are,

To save a dying worm?

Let him be crown’d with majesty

Who bow’d his head to death;

And be his honours sounded high

By all things that have breath.

We raise our shouts, O God, to thee,

And send them to thy throne;

All glory to the united Three,

The undivided One.

‘

Twas he, and we’ll adore his name,

That form’d us by a word;

‘

Tis he restores our ruin’d frame:

Salvation to the Lord!

Evening

“Rest in the Lord.”

Gen_2:1-3

We have grouped together a few of the texts which refer to the Sabbath, in order that at one reading we may have the subject before us. In the history of the creation, we have the institution of the sacred day of rest.

Gen_2:1-3

This primitive institution was confirmed at the giving of the Law upon Sinai; and is therefore surrounded by as solemn sanctions as any other precept of the Decalogue.

Exo_20:8-11

Mar_2:23-28

We are not, however, to regard this law as forbidding the doing of works of piety, charity, or necessity, for our Lord Jesus has awarded us full liberty on these points. He corrected Jewish misconceptions, and taught us not to make a bondage of the day of rest.

Mar_2:28

Luk_14:1-5

Our Lord performed many of his noblest cures on the Sabbath, as if to show that the day was ordained to glorify God by yielding benefit to man. If at one time more than another the healing virtue flows freely from our Lord, it is on that one day in seven which is reserved for holy uses, and is called “the Lord’s Day.” In the passage which we are about to read he shows how suitable it is that a holy day should be crowned with holy deeds of mercy and love.

O day of rest and gladness,

O day of joy and light,

O balm of care and sadness,

Most beautiful, most bright!

Thou art a cooling fountain

In life’s dry, dreary sand;

From thee, like Pisgah’s mountain,

We view our promised land.

May we, new graces gaining

From this our day of rest,

Attain the rest remaining

To spirits of the blest;

And there our voice upraising

To Father and to Son,

And Holy Ghost, be praising

Ever the Three in One.