Evening and Morning
By Charles
Haddon Spurgeon
November 21
Morning
"Grieve not the Holy Spirit."—Ephesians
4:30.
All that
the believer has must come from Christ, but it comes solely through the channel
of the Spirit of grace. Moreover, as all blessings thus flow to you through the
Holy Spirit, so also no good thing can come out of you in holy thought, devout
worship, or gracious act, apart from the sanctifying operation of the same
Spirit. Even if the good seed be sown in you, yet it
lies dormant except He worketh in you to will and to
do of His own good pleasure. Do you desire to speak for Jesus—how can you
unless the Holy Ghost touch your tongue? Do you desire to pray? Alas! what dull work it is unless the Spirit maketh
intercession for you! Do you desire to subdue sin? Would you be holy? Would you
imitate your Master? Do you desire to rise to superlative heights of
spirituality? Are you wanting to be made like the
angels of God, full of zeal and ardour for the
Master's cause? You cannot without the Spirit—"Without me ye can do
nothing." O branch of the vine, thou canst have no fruit without the sap!
O child of God, thou hast no life within thee apart from the life
which God gives thee through His Spirit! Then let us not grieve Him or
provoke Him to anger by our sin. Let us not quench Him in one of His faintest
motions in our soul; let us foster every suggestion, and be ready to obey every
prompting. If the Holy Spirit be indeed so mighty, let
us attempt nothing without Him; let us begin no project, and carry on no
enterprise, and conclude no transaction, without imploring His blessing. Let us
do Him the due homage of feeling our entire weakness apart from Him, and then
depending alone upon Him, having this for our prayer, "Open Thou my heart
and my whole being to Thine incoming, and uphold me
with Thy free Spirit when I shall have received that Spirit in my inward
parts."
Evening
"Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with
Him."—John 12:2.
He is to
be envied. It was well to be Martha and serve, but better to
be Lazarus and commune. There are times for each purpose, and each is comely in
its season, but none of the trees of the garden yield such clusters as the vine
of fellowship. To sit with Jesus, to hear His words, to mark His acts, and
receive His smiles, was such a favour as must have
made Lazarus as happy as the angels. When it has been our happy lot to feast
with our Beloved in His banqueting-hall, we would not have given half a sigh
for all the kingdoms of the world, if so much breath could have bought them.
He is to
be imitated. It would have been a strange thing if Lazarus had
not been at the table where Jesus was, for he had been dead, and Jesus had
raised him. For the risen one to be absent when the Lord who gave him life was
at his house, would have been ungrateful indeed. We too were once dead, yea,
and like Lazarus stinking in the grave of sin; Jesus raised us, and by His life
we live—can we be content to live at a distance from Him? Do we omit to
remember Him at His table, where He deigns to feast with His brethren? Oh, this
is cruel! It behoves us to repent, and do as He
has bidden us, for His least wish should be law to us. To have lived without
constant intercourse with one of whom the Jews said, "Behold how He loved
him," would have been disgraceful to Lazarus, is it excusable in us whom
Jesus has loved with an everlasting love? To have been
cold to Him who wept over his lifeless corpse, would have argued great
brutishness in Lazarus. What does it argue in us over whom the Saviour has not only wept, but
bled? Come, brethren, who read this portion, let us return unto our heavenly
Bridegroom, and ask for His Spirit that we may be on terms of closer intimacy
with Him, and henceforth sit at the table with Him.