February 27 Daily Devotional

A First Book of Daily Readings

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)

February 20 God tests His saints for great things beyond It is a rule of the Scriptures, and a rule, which is confirmed by and exemplified in the long history of the Church and her saints, that when God has a particularly great task for a man to perform, He generally does try him. I care not which biography you pick up; you may take the life of any man who has been signally used by God, and you will find that there has been a severe time of testing and of trial in his experience…. So one may have to pass through this kind of experience because of some great task ahead. Look at Joseph.... Can you imagine a more dismal kind of life? Everybody seemed to be against him.... But in all this God was only preparing the man for the great position that He had in store for him. And it is the same with all the great men of the Bible. Look at the suffering of a man like David.... The Apostle Paul was no exception (2 Corinthians 11 and 12).... God sometimes prepares a man for a great trial ... by giving him some lesser trials. It is there that I see the love of God shining out so gloriously. There are certain great trials that come in life, and it would be a terrible thing for people suddenly to be plunged into a great trial from the undisturbed and even tenor of their ways. So God sometimes, in His tenderness and love, sends lesser trials to prepare us for the greater ones. "If need be" (1 Peter 1:6)—if such proves needful, if God, in looking upon us as our Father, sees that this is just what we need at that moment. So we start with this great principle, that God sees and knows what is best for us and what is needful. We do not see, but God always does; and, as our Heavenly Father, He sees the need, and He prescribes the appropriate trial which is destined for our good. Spiritual Depression, pp. 25-6 February 21 It is high; thou canst not attain unto it! Paul reminded his contemporaries that Moses in giving the law to the Jews had said, "The man which doeth those things shall live by them" (Romans 10:5). That may be translated thus: "Anyone who can perform it shall live by it." God ... had said, in effect, "If you keep all that, you will have followed my commandments. That is what I demand. That is the only way of pleasing me." What is that way? Look at it. Consider it deeply...; consider what we should have to do. Can man atone for his own past sins and misdeeds? Can he blot out his own transgressions? Can he sharpen his conscience and cleanse his memory? More than these, can he live in the present in a manner that truly satisfies himself? Can he withstand temp­tation? ... Can he control his thoughts, his desires, inclinations, and imaginations as well as his every action? ... By his very greatest efforts can he, and does he, succeed in really living up to his own standard of life? Then consider God's standard. Read the law as given to the children of Israel, the Ten Com­mandments, and the moral law which St Paul, with all his zeal, could not keep when once he saw their true meaning. Then read the Sermon on the Mount and our Lord's various state­ments about the holiness of God. Then ponder His own perfect life. That is what we have to do.... Can any man do it? Can all the good intentions, and all the sincerity, and all the zeal of which anyone is capable ever provide sufficient power to scale such heights? That is the mount which we should have to climb&mddash;the mount of the holiness of God.... Is there anyone who is capable of producing such holiness? Is the power in the little engine of our life sufficient to take us to such a height? Ask St Paul. Ask Augustine, Luther, John Wesley. Ask all the noblest souls that the world has ever seen...; with one accord they answer saying, "Not the labors of my hands Can fulfill Thy law's demands...." And if they have failed, who are we to succeed? ... Our best, our all is not enough. Truth Unchanged, Unchanging, pp. 68-70 February 22 He is waiting to bless We must come [to prayer] with the simple confidence of a child. We need a child-like faith. We need this assurance that God is truly our Father, and therefore we must rigidly exclude any idea that we must go on repeating our petitions because it is our repetition that is going to produce the blessing. God likes us to show our keenness, our anxiety, and our desire over a thing. He tells us to "hunger and thirst after righteousness" and to seek it; He tells us to "pray and not to faint"; we are told to "pray without ceasing." Yes, but that does not mean mechanical repetitions; it does not mean believing that we shall be heard for our "much speaking." ... It means that when I pray I know that God is my Father, and that He delights to bless me, and that He is much more ready to give than I am to receive, and that He is always concerned about my welfare.... I must see God as my Father who has purchased my ultimate good in Christ and is waiting to bless me with His own fullness in Christ Jesus. So ... in confidence we make our requests known to God, knowing He knows all about it before we begin to speak.... But we must not come with doubtful minds; we must know that God is much more ready to give than we are to receive.... O the blessings that are stored at the right hand of God for God's children. Shame on us for being paupers when we were meant to be princes; shame on us for so often harboring unworthy, wrong thoughts of God in this matter. It is all due to fear and because we lack this simplicity, this faith, this con­fidence, this knowledge of God as our Father. If we but have that, the blessings of God will begin to fall upon us and may be so overwhelming that with D. L. Moody we shall feel that they are almost more than our physical frames can bear and cry out with him, saying, "Stop, God!" God is able to do for us exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think. Let us believe that and then go to Him in simple confidence. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, pp. 31-2 February 23 Think the thoughts of God I have often listened to Christian people who are in some perplexity; and, even as they have been stating their problem, I have realized that their trouble was wholly due to the fact that they had dropped back to the rational [i.e., human] level of thinking. For instance, when something happens to you that you do not understand, the moment you begin to feel a sense of grudge against God, you may be sure that you have already dropped back to that rational level. When you complain that what is happening to you does not seem to be fair, you are at once bringing God down to your own level of understanding.... But everything in the Christian life must be regarded from the spiritual angle. The whole of this life is spiritual. Everything about us must therefore be considered spiritually, every phase, every stage, every interest, every development...; we must think in a spiritual way and leave the other mode of thinking behind.... That was [Psalm 73] this man's problem. Why does God allow these things, he says. Why are the ungodly allowed to prosper? ... That was the problem, trying to understand God's ways...; there is only one answer to that. It is found in Isaiah 55:8, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord." ... The first thing you have to realize, God says to us, is that when you come to con­sider Me and My ways, you must not do so on that low level to which you have been accustomed...; are we not constantly guilty here? We will persist in thinking as natural men and women in these matters. We see that the matter of salvation calls for spiritual thinking; but in the things that happen to us, our thinking is prone to become rational thinking again, and we must not be surprised therefore if we do not understand God's ways, for they are altogether different from ours. The difference between the two outlooks is the difference between heaven and earth. Faith on Trial, pp. 36-7 February 24 The importance of being justified Large numbers of people ... are always asking the same question. "Why cannot I get there? Why cannot I be like that?" They read books which are meant to give instruction about the Christian way of life; they attend meetings and conferences, always seeking this something which they do not find. And they are cast down; their souls are cast down and disquietened within them. Now it is all-important ... to be quite certain that they are clear in their minds about the primary and most fundamental principles of the Christian faith.... I would not say that they are not Christians, but I am suggesting that they are what I would call miserable Christians simply because they have not understood the way of salvation, and for that reason all their beliefs and efforts have been more or less useless. They often concentrate on the question of sanctification, but it does not help them because they have not understood justification…. It is an interesting theological point as to whether such people are Christians or not. For myself I would say they are. The classic example is of course John Wesley. I would hesitate to say that John Wesley was not a Christian until 1738; but I am certain ... that [he] had not understood the way of salvation as justification by faith only, until 1738. He had in a sense sub­scribed to the full teaching of the Bible, but he had not under­stood it nor fully apprehended it...; it was only as the result of his meeting with the Moravian brethren, and in particular the conversation he had with one called Peter Bohler,... that he was truly made to understand this vital doctrine.... There was a man who had been trying to find happiness in his Christian life by doing things, preaching to the prisoners in Oxford, giving up his fellowship of his college, and facing the hazards of crossing the Atlantic in order to preach to pagans in Georgia. He was trying to find happiness by living life in a given way. Spiritual Depression, pp. 25-6 February 25 See the whole picture—then you see each part The reason, then, why I believe it is important for us to take the Sermon [on the Mount] as a whole before we come to the details is this constant danger of "missing the wood because of the trees." We are all of us ready to fix on certain particular statements and to concentrate on them at the expense of others. The way to correct that tendency, I believe, is to realize that no part of this Sermon can be understood truly except in the light of the whole. Some good friends have already said to me, "I am going to be most interested when you come to state exactly what is meant by 'Give to him that asketh thee,' " etc. That is a betrayal of a false attitude to the Sermon on the Mount. They have jumped to particular statements. There is a great danger at this point. The Sermon on the Mount, if I may use such a comparison, is like a great musical composition, a symphony if you like. Now the whole is greater than a collection of the parts, and we must never lose sight of this wholeness. I do not hesitate to say that, unless we have understood and grasped the Sermon on the Mount as a whole, we cannot understand properly any one of its particular injunctions. I mean that it is idle and useless and quite futile to confront anybody with any particular injunction in the Sermon on the Mount unless such a person has already believed, and accepted, and has indeed already conformed to, and is living, the Beatitudes. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, i, p. 22 February 26 None other Lamb, none other Name,
None other hope in heaven or earth or sea Peter and John go up to the temple at the hour of prayer, and they see an impotent man sitting at the Beautiful gate of the temple.... You remember their formula, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk." And he arose, and the people came and were full of wonder and amazement. They began praising the apostles. But Peter said, "Do not look at us. It is not by our own words or power that we have made this impotent man to walk. His name, through faith in his name, has given this man this perfect soundness in the presence of you all" (Acts 3:1-16). Again, in Acts 4 when the disciples are arraigned before the authorities and are told never again to preach in this name, there is only one answer to be given: "There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." This is the only name. The translation should be, "There is no second." Jesus Christ is not one in a series. He does not represent one authority among a number of authorities. He stands alone. In the New Testament He is the sole Authority. And so it continues right through the book [of Acts]. In preaching to Cornelius and his household, Peter says again, "Jesus Christ is Lord of all" (see Acts 10:36). The same stands out in the ministry of the Apostle Paul, who, being arrested in his career of violent opposition to, and persecution of, the Christian Church on the road to Damascus, and discovering to his amazement that the Jesus whom he had so despised and hated is none other than the Lord of glory, cries out asking, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Authority, pp. 26-7 February 27 In God we trust ... not in ourselves The Apostle Paul ... had known what it was to trust to his own zeal and sincerity and to his own efforts. He knew all about the striving and the sweating, the fasting and all the mighty efforts. But he knew also the feeling of hopelessness. He knew the failure to find satisfaction. And then he had experienced that glorious release which had come to him with the knowledge of the gospel. But here were his fellow country­men still going on in the old way ... still striving to do the impossible.... "How sad," he cried, "how tragic. They have the zeal and the sincerity, but it is of no value. They are trying to justify themselves, but they never can; and while they are thus trying and failing, they are deliberately refusing the knowledge which could give them in reality everything they desire and more." It was bad enough that all that energy and effort should be a sheer waste; but the tragedy was heightened and made infinitely greater by the contemplation of what they might have been if they had but accepted the gospel. They not only failed, but they utterly refused to be made successful. They preferred to trust to themselves and their own zeal and their own efforts and fail, rather than trust themselves to Jesus Christ and be saved. They were so anxious to do things them­selves that they refused God's offer of eternal salvation as a pure gift.... They had but to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God, that He had died to atone for their sins and had risen again from the grave in order to justify them; and they would find themselves righteous in the sight of God and receive forgiveness of their sins. They said they wanted to be right with God; yet they deliberately refused the one way of being put right with God. Truth Unchanged, Unchanging, pp. 70-2 February 28 Prayer—the highest activity of the human soul When a man is speaking to God, he is at his very acme. It is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man's true spiritual con­dition. There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life. Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer. It is not so difficult to give alms...; you can have a true spirit of philan­thropy in people who are not Christian at all.... The same applies also to the question of self-discipline&mcdash;refraining from certain things and taking up particular duties and tasks. God knows it is very much easier to preach like this from the pulpit than it is to pray. Prayer is undoubtedly the ultimate test because a man can speak to others with greater ease than he can speak to God. Ultimately, therefore, a man discovers the real condition of his spiritual life when he examines himself in private, when he is alone with God...; have we not all known what it is to find that, somehow, we have less to say to God when we are alone than when we are in the presence of others? It should not be so; but it often is. So that it is when we have left the realm of activities and outward dealings with other people, and are alone with God, that we really know where we stand in a spiritual sense. It is not only the highest activity of the soul; it is the ultimate test of our true spiritual condition. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, p. 46 February 29 Thoughts in God's House (1) What a wonderful place God's house is. Often you will find deliverance by merely coming into it. Many a time have I thanked God for His house. I thank God that He has ordained that His people should meet together in companies and worship together. The house of God has delivered me from "the mumps and measles of the soul" a thousand times and more—merely to enter its doors. How does it work? I think it works like this. The very fact that there is a house of God to come to at all tells us something. How has it come into being? It is God who has planned and arranged it. To realize that in itself puts us immediately into a more healthy condition. Then we begin to go back through history and remind ourselves of certain truths. Here am I at this present time with this terrible problem, but the Christian Church has existed all these long years. (I am already beginning to think in an entirely different way.) The house of God goes back through the centuries to the time of our Lord Himself. What is it for? What is its significance? And the cure has begun. Again, we go to the house of God, and to our amazement we find other people there before us. We are rather surprised at that because in our private misery and perplexity we had come to the conclusion that perhaps there was nothing in religion at all and that it was not worth continuing with it. But here are people who think it is worth continuing with; and we feel better. We begin to say: Perhaps I may be wrong; all these people think there is something in it; they may be right. The healing process is going on; the cure is being "con­tinued." Faith on Trial, p. 39