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\ / Charles Spurgeon's MORNING & EVENING
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
MORNING:
"Rend your heart, and not your garments."
-- Joel 2:13
GARMENT-RENDING and other outward signs of religious emotion, are
easily manifested and are frequently hypocritical; but to feel true
repentance is far more difficult, and consequently far less common. Men
will attend to the most multiplied and minute ceremonial
regulations-for such things are pleasing to the flesh-but true religion
is too humbling, too heart-searching, too thorough for the tastes of
the carnal men; they prefer something more ostentatious, flimsy, and
worldly. Outward observances are temporarily comfortable; eye and ear
are pleased; self-conceit is fed, and self-righteousness is puffed up:
but they are ultimately delusive, for in the article of death, and at
the day of judgment, the soul needs something more substantial than
ceremonies and rituals to lean upon. Apart from vital godliness all
religion is utterly vain; offered without a sincere heart, every form
of worship is a solemn sham and an impudent mockery of the majesty of
heaven.
HEART-RENDING is divinely wrought and solemnly felt. It is a secret
grief which is personally experienced, not in mere form, but as a deep,
soul-moving work of the Holy Spirit upon the inmost heart of each
believer. It is not a matter to be merely talked of and believed in,
but keenly and sensitively felt in every living child of the living
God. It is powerfully humiliating, and completely sin-purging; but then
it is sweetly preparative for those gracious consolations which proud
unhumbled spirits are unable to receive; and it is distinctly
discriminating, for it belongs to the elect of God, and to them alone.
The text commands us to rend our hearts, but they are naturally hard as
marble: how, then, can this be done? We must take them to Calvary: a
dying Saviour's voice rent the rocks once, and it is as powerful now. O
blessed Spirit, let us hear the death-cries of Jesus, and our hearts
shall be rent even as men rend their vestures in the day of
lamentation.
EVENING:
"Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look
well to thy herds."
-- Proverbs 27:23
Every wise merchant will occasionally hold a stock-taking, when he will
cast up his accounts, examine what he has on hand, and ascertain
decisively whether his trade is prosperous or declining. Every man who
is wise in the kingdom of heaven, will cry, "Search me, O God, and try
me"; and he will frequently set apart special seasons for
self-examination, to discover whether things are right between God and
his soul. The God whom we worship is a great heart-searcher; and of old
his servants knew him as "the Lord which searcheth the heart and trieth
the reins of the children of men." Let me stir you up in his name to
make diligent search and solemn trial of your state, lest you come
short of the promised rest. That which every wise man does, that which
God himself does with us all, I exhort you to do with yourself this
evening. Let the oldest saint look well to the fundamentals of his
piety, for grey heads may cover black hearts: and let not the young
professor despise the word of warning, for the greenness of youth may
be joined to the rottenness of hypocrisy. Every now and then a cedar
falls into our midst. The enemy still continues to sow tares among the
wheat. It is not my aim to introduce doubts and fears into your mind;
nay, verily, but I shall hope the rather that the rough wind of
self-examination may help to drive them away. It is not security, but
carnal security, which we would kill; not confidence, but fleshly
confidence, which we would overthrow; not peace, but false peace, which
we would destroy. By the precious blood of Christ, which was not shed
to make you a hypocrite, but that sincere souls might show forth his
praise, I beseech you, search and look, lest at the last it be said of
you, "Mene, Mene, Tekel: thou art weighed in the balances, and art
found wanting."
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MORNING & EVENING from HEARTLIGHT /\/\
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Morning & Evening is the classic devotional by 19th-century writer
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