Evening and Morning
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
August 16
Morning
"Give
unto the Lord the glory due unto His name."—Psalm 29:2.
GodŐs glory is the result
of His nature and acts. He is glorious in His character, for there is such a
store of everything that is holy, and good, and lovely in God, that He must be
glorious. The actions which flow from His character
are also glorious; but while He intends that they should manifest to His
creatures His goodness, and mercy, and justice, He is equally concerned that
the glory associated with them should be given only to Himself. Nor is there
aught in ourselves in which we may glory; for who maketh us to differ from another? And what have we that we
did not receive from the God of all grace? Then how careful ought we to be to walk
humbly before the Lord! The moment we glorify ourselves, since there is
room for one glory only in the universe, we set ourselves up as rivals to the
Most High. Shall the insect of an hour glorify itself against the sun which warmed it into life? Shall the potsherd exalt
itself above the man who fashioned it upon the wheel? Shall the dust of the
desert strive with the whirlwind? Or the drops of the ocean struggle with the
tempest? Give unto the Lord, all ye righteous, give unto the Lord glory and
strength; give unto Him the honour that is due unto
His name. Yet it is, perhaps, one of the hardest struggles of the Christian
life to learn this sentence—"Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy
name be glory." It is a lesson which God is ever
teaching us, and teaching us sometimes by most painful discipline. Let a
Christian begin to boast, "I can do all things," without adding
"through Christ which strengtheneth me,"
and before long he will have to groan, "I can do nothing," and bemoan
himself in the dust. When we do anything for the Lord, and He is pleased to accept
of our doings, let us lay our crown at His feet, and exclaim, "Not I, but
the grace of God which was with me!"
Evening
"Ourselves
also, which have the firstfruits of the
Spirit."—Romans 8:23.
Present possession is
declared. At this present moment we have the first fruits of the Spirit. We
have repentance, that gem of the first water; faith, that priceless pearl;
hope, the heavenly emerald; and love, the glorious ruby. We are already made
"new creatures in Christ Jesus," by the effectual working of God the
Holy Ghost. This is called the firstfruit because it
comes first. As the wave-sheaf was the first of the harvest, so the
spiritual life, and all the graces which adorn that life, are the first
operations of the Spirit of God in our souls. The firstfruits
were the pledge of the harvest. As soon as the Israelite had plucked the
first handful of ripe ears, he looked forward with glad anticipation to the
time when the wain should creak beneath the sheaves.
So, brethren, when God gives us things which are pure, lovely, and of good
report, as the work of the Holy Spirit, these are to us the prognostics of the
coming glory. The firstfruits were always holy to
the Lord, and our new nature, with all its powers, is a consecrated thing.
The new life is not ours that we should ascribe its excellence to our own
merit; it is Christ's image and creation, and is ordained for His glory. But the
firstfruits were not the harvest, and the works
of the Spirit in us at this moment are not the consummation—the
perfection is yet to come. We must not boast that we have attained, and so
reckon the wave-sheaf to be all the produce of the year: we must hunger and
thirst after righteousness, and pant for the day of full redemption. Dear
reader, this evening open your mouth wide, and God will fill it. Let the boon
in present possession excite in you a sacred avarice for more grace. Groan
within yourself for higher degrees of consecration, and your Lord will grant
them to you, for He is able to do exceeding abundantly above what we ask or
even think.