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\ / Charles Spurgeon's MORNING & EVENING
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Friday, April 11, 2008
MORNING:
"I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of
joint."
-- Psalms 22:14
Did earth or heaven ever behold a sadder spectacle of woe! In soul and
body, our Lord felt himself to be weak as water poured upon the ground.
The placing of the cross in its socket had shaken him with great
violence, had strained all the ligaments, pained every nerve, and more
or less dislocated all his bones. Burdened with his own weight, the
august sufferer felt the strain increasing every moment of those six
long hours. His sense of faintness and general weakness were
overpowering; while to his own consciousness he became nothing but a
mass of misery and swooning sickness. When Daniel saw the great vision,
he thus describes his sensations, "There remained no strength in me,
for my vigour was turned into corruption, and I retained no strength:"
how much more faint must have been our greater Prophet when he saw the
dread vision of the wrath of God, and felt it in his own soul! To us,
sensations such as our Lord endured would have been insupportable, and
kind unconsciousness would have come to our rescue; but in his case, he
was wounded, and felt the sword; he drained the cup and tasted every
drop.
"O King of Grief! (a title strange, yet true
To thee of all kings only due)
O King of Wounds! how shall I grieve for thee,
Who in all grief preventest me!"
As we kneel before our now ascended Saviour's throne, let us remember
well the way by which he prepared it as a throne of grace for us; let
us in spirit drink of his cup, that we may be strengthened for our hour
of heaviness whenever it may come. In his natural body every member
suffered, and so must it be in the spiritual; but as out of all his
griefs and woes his body came forth uninjured to glory and power, even
so shall his mystical body come through the furnace with not so much as
the smell of fire upon it.
EVENING:
"Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my
sins."
-- Psalms 25:18
It is well for us when prayers about our sorrows are linked with pleas
concerning our sins-when, being under God's hand, we are not wholly
taken up with our pain, but remember our offences against God. It is
well, also, to take both sorrow and sin to the same place. It was to
God that David carried his sorrow: it was to God that David confessed
his sin. Observe, then, we must take our sorrows to God. Even your
little sorrows you may roll upon God, for he counteth the hairs of your
head; and your great sorrows you may commit to him, for he holdeth the
ocean in the hollow of his hand. Go to him, whatever your present
trouble may be, and you shall find him able and willing to relieve you.
But we must take our sins to God too. We must carry them to the cross,
that the blood may fall upon them, to purge away their guilt, and to
destroy their defiling power.
The special lesson of the text is this:-that we are to go to the Lord
with sorrows and with sins in the right spirit. Note that all David
asks concerning his sorrow is, "Look upon mine affliction and my pain;"
but the next petition is vastly more express, definite, decided,
plain-"Forgive all my sins." Many sufferers would have put it, "Remove
my affliction and my pain, and look at my sins." But David does not say
so; he cries, "Lord, as for my affliction and my pain, I will not
dictate to thy wisdom. Lord, look at them, I will leave them to thee, I
should be glad to have my pain removed, but do as thou wilt; but as for
my sins, Lord, I know what I want with them; I must have them forgiven;
I cannot endure to lie under their curse for a moment." A Christian
counts sorrow lighter in the scale than sin; he can bear that his
troubles should continue, but he cannot support the burden of his
transgressions.
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Morning & Evening is the classic devotional by 19th-century writer
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