Evening and Morning
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
June 16
Morning
"There brake He the
arrows of the bow, the shield, and the sword, and the battle."—Psalm 76:3.
Our Redeemer's glorious cry
of "It is finished," was the death-knell of all the adversaries of
His people, the breaking of "the and the battle." Behold the hero of
Golgotha using His cross as an anvil, and His woes as a hammer,
dashing to shivers bundle after bundle of our sins, those poisoned "arrows
of the bow"; trampling on every indictment, and destroying every
accusation. What glorious blows the mighty Breaker gives with a hammer far more
ponderous than the fabled weapon of Thor! How the diabolical darts fly to
fragments, and the infernal bucklers are broken like potters' vessels! Behold,
He draws from its sheath of hellish workmanship the dread sword of Satanic power! He snaps it across His knee, as a man breaks
the dry wood of a fagot, and casts it into the fire. Beloved, no sin of a
believer can now be an arrow mortally to wound him, no condemnation can now be
a sword to kill him, for the punishment of our sin was borne by Christ, a full
atonement was made for all our iniquities by our blessed Substitute and Surety.
Who now accuseth? Who now condemneth?
Christ hath died, yea rather, hath risen again. Jesus has emptied the quivers
of hell, has quenched every fiery dart, and broken off the head of every arrow
of wrath; the ground is strewn with the splinters and relics of the weapons of
hell's warfare, which are only visible to us to remind us of our former danger,
and of our great deliverance. Sin hath no more dominion over us. Jesus has made
an end of it, and put it away for ever. O thou enemy,
destructions are come to a perpetual end. Talk ye of all the wondrous works of
the Lord, ye who make mention of His name, keep not silence, neither by day,
nor when the sun goeth to his rest. Bless the Lord, O
my soul.
Evening
"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom
shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of
whom shall I be afraid?"—Psalm 27:1.
The Lord is my light and my
salvation." Here is personal interest, "my light," "my
salvation"; the soul is assured of it, and therefore declares it
boldly. Into the soul at the new birth divine light is poured as the precursor
of salvation; where there is not enough light to reveal our own darkness and to
make us long for the Lord Jesus, there is no evidence of salvation. After
conversion our God is our joy, comfort, guide, teacher, and in every sense our
light: He is light within, light around, light reflected from us, and light to
be revealed to us. Note, it is not said merely that the Lord gives light, but
that He is light; nor that He gives salvation, but that He is salvation; he,
then, who by faith has laid hold upon God, has all covenant blessings in his
possession. This being made sure as a fact, the argument drawn from it is put
in the form of a question, "Whom shall I fear?" A question which is its own answer. The powers of darkness are
not to be feared, for the Lord, our light, destroys them; and the damnation of
hell is not to be dreaded by us, for the Lord is our salvation. This is a very
different challenge from that of boastful Goliath, for it rests, not upon the
conceited vigour of an arm of flesh, but upon the
real power of the omnipotent I AM. "The Lord is the strength of my
life." Here is a third glowing epithet, to show that the writer's hope
was fastened with a threefold cord which could not be
broken. We may well accumulate terms of praise where the Lord lavishes deeds of
grace. Our life derives all its strength from God; and if He deigns to make us
strong, we cannot be weakened by all the machinations of the adversary. "Of
whom shall I be afraid?" The bold question looks into the future as
well as the present. "If God be for us," who can be against us,
either now or in time to come?