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February 28 Daily Devotional

A First Book of Daily Readings

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

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January 21 When I awake, I am still with Thee We are always in the presence of God. We are always in His sight. He sees our every action, indeed our every thought.... He is everywhere.... He sees it all. He knows your heart; other people do not. You can deceive them, and you can persuade them that you are quite selfless; but God knows your heart.... When we wake up in the morning we should immediately remind ourselves and recollect that we are in the presence of God. It is not a bad thing to say to ourselves before we go any further: 'Throughout the whole of this day, everything I do, and say, and attempt, and think, and imagine, is going to be done under the eye of God. He is going to be with me: He sees everything: He knows everything. There is nothing I can do or attempt but God is fully aware of it all. "Thou God seest me".' It would revolutionize our lives if we always did that... the many books which have been written on the devotional life all concentrate on this. ... This is the fundamental thing, the most serious thing of all, that we are always in the presence of God. He sees everything and knows everything, and we can never escape from His sight [see Psalm 139]. ... If we only remembered that, hypocrisy would vanish, self-adulation and all we are guilty of by way of feeling ourselves above others, would immediately disappear. . . . If we were all to practise this it would be revolutionary. I am quite certain a revival would start at once. What a difference it would make to church life, and the life of every individual. Think of all the pretence and sham, and all that is unworthy in us all! If only we realized that God is looking at all, and is aware of it all, and is recording it all! . . . the man who starts with a true realization of that is soon to be seen flying to Christ and His cross, and pleading to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, pp. 15-16
January 22 Forgetting the things which are behind...
I press on toward the goal unto the prize
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus
If you really do bemoan the fact that you have wasted so much time in the past, the thing to do is to make up for it in the present. Is not that common sense? Here is a man who comes in utterly dejected and saying: 'If only—the time I have wasted!' What I say to him is this: 'Are you making up for that lost time ? Why are you wasting this energy in telling me about the past which you cannot undo? Why don't you put your energy into the present?' I speak with vehemence because this condition has to be dealt with sternly and the last thing to do with such people is to sympathize with them. If you are suffering from this condition take yourself in hand and examine yourself from an ordinary common sense point of view. You are behaving like a fool, you are irrational, you are wasting your time and your energy. You do not really believe what you are saying. If you bemoan a wasted past, make up for it in the present, give yourself entirely to living at this present moment. That is what Paul did. He says: 'And last of all He was seen of me also as of one born out of due time.' He says in effect: I have wasted a lot of time, others have got ahead of me. But he is able to go on and to add: 'I laboured more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.' Spiritual Depression, pp. 83-4
January 23 The discipline of the Christian life It is most important for us to realize that there is such a thing as 'the discipline of the Christian life'. It is not enough to say ... that, whatever may happen to us, we have just to 'look to the Lord' and all will be well. ... It is unscriptural teaching. Were that the only thing we have to do, many of these scrip­tures would be quite unnecessary ... the Epistles need never have been written; but they have been written ... by men inspired by the Holy Spirit... what they tell us ... is that there is an essential discipline in the Christian life. One of the saddest features in the lives of certain types of Christian at the present time is that they seem to have lost sight of this aspect of the faith. This is, alas, especially true of those who are evangelical. . . . First and foremost there was a reaction against Roman Catholic teaching. In the Roman Catholic system they make a great deal of a certain type of discipline. They have many handbooks and manuals on the subject. In fact, some of the greatest masters in this kind of teaching have been Roman Catholics as, for instance, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, or the well-known Fenelon, whose famous Letters to Men and Letters to Women were very popular at one time. Now Protestants have reacted against all that, and to some extent very rightly.... But to deduce from its misuse that there is no need for discipline at all in the Christian life is quite wrong. In fact, the really great periods in Protestantism have always been characterized by the realization of the need for such disci­pline. . . . Why were men like the two Wesley brothers and Whitefield called Methodists ? They were so called because they were methodical in their living. They were Methodists because they had method in their meetings.... The very term Methodist . . . emphasizes the fact that they believed in discipline and in the importance of disciplining one's life and of knowing how to deal with oneself and how to handle oneself in the various circumstances and situations that we meet in the world we live in. Faith on Trial, pp. 23-4
January 24 Taking the gospel seriously Is it not true to say of many of us that in actual practice our view of the doctrine of grace is such that we scarcely ever take the plain teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ seriously ? We have so emphasized the teaching that all is of grace and that we ought not to try to imitate His example in order to make our­selves Christians, that we are virtually in the position of ignoring His teaching altogether and of saying that it has nothing to do with us because we are under grace. Now I wonder how seriously we take the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The best way of concentrating on that question is, I think, to face the Sermon on the Mount. What is our view, I wonder, of this Sermon? Supposing that at this point I suggested that we should all write down on paper our answers to the following questions: What does the Sermon on the Mount mean to us? Where does it come in our lives and what is its place in our thinking and outlook? What is our relationship to this extraordinary Sermon that has such a prominent position in these three chapters in the Gospel according to St. Matthew? I think you would find the result would be very interesting and perhaps very surprising. Oh, yes, we know all about the doctrine of grace and forgiveness, and we are looking to Christ. But here in these documents, which we claim to be authorita­tive, is this Sermon. Where does it come in our scheme ? Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, i, pp. 12-13
January 25 An honest gospel! [The Christian life] is not a life which at first is fairly broad, and which as you go on becomes narrower and narrower. No! The gate itself, the very way of entering into this life, is a narrow one. . . . Too often the impression is given that to be a Christian is after all very little different from being a non-Christian, that you must not think of Christianity as a narrow life, but as something most attractive and wonderful and exciting, and that you come in in crowds. It is not so according to our Lord. The gospel of Jesus Christ is too honest to invite anybody in that way. It does not try to persuade us that it is something very easy, and that it is only later on that we shall begin to discover it is hard. The gospel of Jesus Christ openly and uncompromisingly announces itself as being something which starts with a narrow entrance, a strait gate. ... We are told at the very outset of this way of life, before we start on it, that if we would walk along it there are certain things which must be left outside, behind us. There is no room for them, because we have to start by passing through a strait and narrow gate. I like to think of it as a turnstile. It is just like a turnstile that admits one person at a time and no more. And it is so narrow that there are certain things which you simply cannot take through with you. It is exclusive from the very beginning, and it is important that we should look at this Sermon in order to see some of the things which must be left behind. The first thing we leave behind is what is called worldliness. We leave behind the crowd, the way of the world. . . . The Christian way of life is not popular.. .. You cannot take the crowd with you into the Christian life; it inevitably involves a break. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, pp. 220-1
January 26 He restoreth my soul Before we begin to talk about freedom for self-expression we must discover whether or not we have that true self which God has desired for all men. If we lack it, we cannot express it, and we shall not be able to hand it back to Him and give an account of it at the dread Day of Judgement. The one urgent question therefore confronting every man is the question, What of your self? Do you possess your soul ? Is the true self still in existence? Are the vision and the divine faculty still there ? Is your soul alive ? . . . Man cannot rehabilitate his true self. He cannot find God. Man can lose his own soul, but he can never find it again. He can kill and destroy it but he cannot create it anew.... But... 'The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost' (Luke 19:10). Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, came down to earth and lived and died and rose again in order to save. He has borne the punishment that we deserve on account of sin and for spoiling and marring the image of God upon us. But more, He restores our soul to us. He gives us a new nature and fills us with power that will enable us to express this new and true self even as He expressed it Himself. This self-expression expresses man as a son of God, well-pleasing in the sight of his Heavenly Father, and as an heir to eternal life. . . . The Bible, therefore, calls upon us to give up the pleasures of sin for a season and to find our true selves in Jesus Christ. It calls upon us to this end to deny ourselves, to cut off hand or foot, to pluck out eye, to do anything that may be necessary in order to serve the best and the highest interests of this true self, for it tells us that 'it is better to enter into life halt or maimed rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into hell fire'. Truth Unchanged, Unchanging, pp. 30-1
January 27 The Lamb's Book of Life Do not announce to others in any shape or form what you are doing Do not even announce it to yourself.... Note that our Lord does not stop at saying you must not sound a trumpet before you and announce it to the world; you do not even announce it to yourself... having done it in secret you do not take your little book and put down: 'Well, I have done that. Of course I haven't told anybody else that I have done it.' . . . In effect our Lord said: 'Don't keep these books at all; don't keep spiritual ledgers; don't keep profit and loss accounts in your life; don't write a diary in this sense; just forget all about it. . . .' And what is the result of all this ? It is glorious. This is how our Lord puts it. He says, 'You must not keep the account. God does that. He sees everything and He records it all, and do you know what He will do? He will reward you openly.'... If we just forget all about it and do everything to please Him, we shall find that God will have an account. Nothing we have done will be forgotten, our smallest act will be remembered. Do you remember what He said in Matthew 25 ? 'When I was in prison you visited me. ...' And they will say, 'When did we do all this? We were not aware we have done this.' 'Of course you have done it,' He will reply, 'it is there in the Book.' He keeps the books. We must leave the account to Him. 'You know,' He says, 'you did it all in secret; but I will reward you openly. I may not be rewarding you openly in this world, but as certainly as you are alive, I will reward you openly at the Great Day . . . when the great Book shall be opened .. . and I will say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant;. . . enter thou into the joy of thy lord".' Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, pp. 19-20
January 28 Let. . . no man put a stumbling-block in his
brother's way (Romans 14:13)
) [The Psalmist] tells us [Psalm 73:15] that he was still not clear about, and still could not understand, the difficulty that had shaken him and tempted him so severely So he stopped trying to solve it, saying to himself, 'Well, I must leave this main problem for the time being. I will say nothing about it because I can see that if I express my thoughts it will cause me to offend against the generation of God's people. And I cannot do that. Very well; I will take my stand on what I am certain of, and be content not to understand the other matter for the present.'. .. How simple his method is, and yet how vital is every single step ... our speech must always be essentially positive. I mean that we should never be too ready to express our doubts and to proclaim our uncertainties. ... I remember a young man coming to me years ago. He was a student who had gone to his college grounded in the Christian faith and believing it. A Professor in that college who prided himself on being an unbeliever, and who had nothing positive to give that young man, would ridicule him and his position, not only in his lectures but in private, laughing at all his beliefs and pouring scorn upon his faith. It had landed this young man in a very grievous and unhappy condition. There are not many things worse than the action of such a Professor who, having nothing himself by which to live, tries to take away and to destroy the faith of a young man, speaking against it and trying to under­mine it. This, of course, was a malicious and intentional attack.... But we, too, can be guilty of the same thing, although we may not be aware of it. Though we may be assailed by doubts and uncertainties, we ought not to proclaim our doubts, or voice our uncertainties. ... If we can say nothing helpful we should say nothing at all. That was what this man did. Faith on Trial, pp. 27-8
January 29 Each instrument its differing note may bring
To swell the symphony the Master plays
First and foremost among the causes of depression I would not hesitate to put—temperament. There are, after all, certain different types of people. ... I wonder whether anybody wants to say: When you are talking about Christians you must not introduce temperament or types. Surely Christianity does away with all that. . . ? Now that is a very important objection, and it must be answered . . . temperament, psychology and make­up do not make the slightest difference in the matter of our salvation. That is, thank God, the very basis of our position as Christians. It does not matter what we are by temperament; we are all saved in the same way, by the same act of God in and through His Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.... It does not matter what your background is, it does not matter what temperament you may happen to have been given in this world, all that does not make the slightest difference in the matter of salvation. . . . We glory in the fact that the history of the Church proves abundantly that every conceivable type of temperament has been found, and is still to be found today, in the Church of the living God. But while I emphasize ... the matter that temperament does not make the slightest difference in the matter of our fundamental salvation, I am equally anxious to emphasize the fact that it does make a very great difference in actual experience in the Christian life. There is nothing which is quite so important as that we should ... get to know ourselves . . . though we are all Christians together, we are all different, and the problems . . . that we are likely to meet are in a large measure determined by the difference of temperament and of type. We are all in the same fight, of course, as we share the same common salvation, and have the same common central need. But the manifestations of the trouble vary from case to case and from person to person. There is nothing more futile, when dealing with this condition, than to act on the assumption that all Christians are identical in every respect. They are not, and they are not even meant to be. Spiritual Depression, pp. 14-15
January 30 The perfect picture of the life of the Kingdom of God There is nothing ... so dangerous as to say that the Sermon on the Mount has nothing to do with modern Christians ... it is something which is meant for all Christian people. It is a perfect picture of the life of the kingdom of God . . . that is why Matthew put it in his Gospel at the beginning. It is agreed that Matthew was writing his Gospel especially for the Jews. That was his set desire. Hence all this emphasis upon the kingdom of heaven. And what was Matthew out to emphasize ? Surely it was this. The Jews had a false, materialistic conception of the kingdom. They thought the Messiah was one who was coming to give them political emancipation. They were looking forward to someone who would deliver them from the bondage and yoke of the Roman Empire. They always thought of the kingdom in an external sense, a mechanical, military, materialistic sense. So Matthew puts the true teaching con­cerning the kingdom in the very forefront of his Gospel, for the great purpose of this Sermon is to give an exposition of the kingdom as something which is essentially spiritual. The kingdom is primarily something 'within you'. It is that which governs and controls the heart and mind and outlook. Far from being something which leads to great military power, it is to be 'poor in spirit'. In other words, we are not told in the Sermon on the Mount, 'Live like this and you will become Christian'; rather we are told, 'Because you are Christian live like this'. This is how Christians ought to live; this is how Christians are meant to live. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, i, pp. 16-17
January 31 Get right with God! Before the problems of life and of man can be solved we must first of all realize the true nature of the problem We must be prepared for honest thought, and a thoroughgoing examination and analysis, which will probe us to the very depths and search our motives as well as our actions. Where are such examination and analysis to be found ? .. . they are to be found alone in the Bible. . . . According to this Book, man's troubles are due to the fact that he has sinned and rebelled against God. He was created in a state of happiness which depended upon his relationship to God and his obedience to God's laws and God's will. But man rebelled against God's will and therefore broke the law of his own nature . . . happiness follows health. No­where is this succession seen more than in the spiritual and moral realms. Man has become unhealthy. A disease called sin has ravaged his being. Man refuses to recognize his cor­ruption and resorts to various expedients ... in an attempt to find happiness and peace. But invariably he fails, for the trouble is not only within himself and in his surroundings, but also in his relationship to God. Man is fighting against the only One who can give him what he needs and desires. God has said, 'There is no peace to the wicked' (Isaiah 57:21). Man, therefore, by fighting God, by resisting and disobeying Him, is robbing himself of the very prize that he covets. And whatever he may do, until a relationship of obedience to God is restored, he will never know health and happiness. He may multiply his wealth and possessions, he may perfect his educational facilities, he may gain the whole world of wealth and know­ledge; but to do so will profit him nothing so long as his relationship to God is not right. Truth Unchanged, Unchanging, pp. 49-50 :

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

A FIRST BOOK OF DAILY READINGS

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

Thoughts in God's House (i)

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



“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”

Comments on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, A First Book of Daily Readings

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