December 31

“With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.” (Psalm 91:16)

I get a good deal of comfort out of that promise. I don’t think that meant a short life down here, seventy years, eighty years, ninety years, or one hundred years. Do you think that any man living would he satisfied if they could live to he one hundred years old and then have to die? Not by a good deal. Suppose Adam had lived until to-day and had to die to-night, would he be satisfied? Not a bit of it! Not if he had lived a million years, and then had to die.

You know we are all the time coming to the end of things here,—the end of the week, the end of the month, the end of the year, the end of school days. It is end, end, end all the time. But, thank God, He is going to satisfy us with long life; no end to it, an endless life.

Life is very sweet. I never liked death; I like life. It would be a pretty dark world if death was eternal, and when our loved ones die we are to be eternally separated from them. Thank God, it is not so; we shall be reunited. It is just moving out of this house into a better one; stepping up higher, and living on and on forever.

December 30

“And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” (Genesis 3:9)

A man once said to me, “How do you know that God put that question to Adam?” The best answer I can give is, Because He has put it to me many a time. I doubt whether there ever has been a son or a daughter of Adam who has not heard that voice ringing through the soul many a time. Who am I? What am I? Where am I going? So let us put the question to ourselves personally, Where am I? Not in the sight of man—that is of very little account; but where am I in the sight of God?

December 29

“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:12)

Not some of them; He takes them all away.You may pile up your sins till they rise like a dark mountain, and then multiply them by ten thousand for those you cannot think of and after you have tried to enumerate all the sins you have ever committed, just let me bring one verse in, and that mountain will melt away: “The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from ALL sin.”

December 28

“And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.”

(Revelation 5:11-12)

Yes, He is worthy of all this. Heaven cannot speak too well of Him. Oh that earth would take up the echo, and join with heaven in singing, “WORTHY to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing!”

December 27

“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.” (Exodus 20:12)

The one glimpse the Bible gives us of thirty out of the thirty-three years of Christ's life on earth shows that He did not come to destroy the fifth commandment. The secret of all those silent years is embodied in that verse in Luke's Gospel—“And He went down with them and came also to Nazareth, and was subject to them.” Did He not set an example of true filial love and care when in the midst of the agonies of the cross He made provision for His mother?

December 26

(Mr. Moody’s Burial)

“So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:54-55)

I turn my back on death, and journey toward life from this time on, and away into the eternity beyond the grave I see LIFE.

December 25

“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” (Luke 2:7)

The natural human heart is like that inn at Bethlehem—no room for Christ! Every true saint of God for four thousand years had been gazing out into the future, looking and listening that they might hear the footfall of the Coming One. Bible students think that when Eve brought forth her firstborn and said: “I have got a man from the Lord,” she thought he was the Promised One. And right on for four thousand years the mothers in Israel had been looking for that Child. And now the time has arrived. He appears on earth; and the first thing we read it that there in no room for Him!

He came on no secret mission. He tells us what He came for, “to seek and to save that which was lost.” He came to get His arm under the vilest sinner and lift him up to God; to bind up the broken-hearted, and to comfort those that mourn. And yet from time to time it was announced in Jerusalem that He had come, until He was put to death on the cross, the sword was not put back into in scabbard until it had pierced the very heart of the God-man.

December 24

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

There are no tears in heaven, and there would be few on earth if the will of God was only done.

December 23

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” (John 5:24)

Salvation is instantaneous. I admit that a man may be converted so that he cannot tell when he crossed the line between death and life, but I also believe a man may be a thief one moment and a saint the next. I believe a man may be as vile as hell itself one moment, and be saved the next.

Christian growth is gradual, just as physical growth is; but a man passes from death unto everlasting life quick as an act of the will—“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.”

December 22

 “Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.” (John 8:51)

Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone up higher, that is all; gone out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal, a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint, a body like unto His own glorious body. I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in I856. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit will live forever.

December 21

“I will . . . honor Him.” (Psalm 91:15)

God’s honor is something worth seeking. Man's honor doesn’t amount to much. Suppose Moses had stopped down there in Egypt. He would have been loaded down with Egyptian titles, but they would never have reached us. Suppose he had been Chief Marshal of the whole Egyptian army, “General” Moses, “Commander” Moses; suppose he had reached the throne and become one of those Pharaohs, and his mummy had come down to our day. What is that compared with the honor God put upon him? How his name shines on the page of history!

The honor of this world doesn’t last, it is transient, it passes away; and I don’t believe any man or woman is fit for God's service that is looking for worldly preferment, worldly honors and worldly fame. Let us get it under our feet, let us rise above it, and seek the honor that comes down from above.

December 20

“Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” (John 13:1)

It is recorded of Jesus Christ, just when He was about to be departed from His disciples and led away to Calvary, that: “having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” He knew that one of His disciples would betray Him, yet He loved Judas. He knew that another disciple would deny Him, and swear that he never knew Him, and yet He loved Peter.

It was the love which Christ had for Peter that bloke his heart, and brought him back in penitence to the feet of his Lord. For three years Jesus had been with the disciple: trying to teach them His love, not only by His life and words, but by His works. And on the night of His betrayal He takes a basin of water, girds Himself with a towel, and taking the place of a servant, washes their feet; He wants to convince them of His unchanging love.

December 19

“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.” (James 1:5-6)

So faith is the golden key that unlocks the treasures of heaven. It was the shield that David took when he met Goliath on the field; he believed that God was going to deliver the Philistine into his hands. Some one has said that faith could lead Christ about anywhere; wherever He found it He honored it.

Unbelief sees something in God’s hand, and says, “I cannot get it.” Faith sees it, and says, “I will have it.”

December 18

“That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” (Ephesians 3:17-19)

Many of us think we know something of God's love, but centuries hence we shall admit we have never found out much about it. Columbus discovered America; but what did he know about its great lakes, rivers, forests, and the Mississippi valley? He died, without knowing much about what he had discovered. So, many of us have discovered something of the love of God, but there are heights, depths and lengths of it we do not know. That Love is a great ocean, and we require to plunge into it before we really know anything of it.

Among the many victims of the Paris Commune was a Catholic bishop. He was a man who knew something of the love of God in his own experience. In the little cell where he was confined, awaiting execution, was a small window in the shape of a cross. After his death there was found written above the cross “height”; below it, “depth” and at the end of each arm of the cross, “length" and “breadth.” He had learned that God’s love was unfailing in the hour of adversity and death.

December 17

“They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” (Hosea 8:7)

Whenever I hear a young man talking in a flippant way about sowing his wild oats, I don’t laugh. I feel more like crying, because I know he is going to make his grey-haired mother reap in tears ; he is going to make his wife reap in shame; he is going to make his old father and his innocent children reap with him. Only ten or fifteen or twenty years will pass before he will have to reap his wild oats; no man has ever sowed them without having to reap them. Sow the wind and you reap the whirlwind.

December 16

“Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.” (Daniel 6:10)

There is many a business man to-day who will tell you he has no time to pray: his business is so pressing that he cannot call his family around him, and ask God to bless them. He is so busy that he cannot ask God to keep him and them from the temptations of the present life-the temptations of every day. “Business is so pressing” I am reminded of the words of an old Methodist minister: “If you have so much business to attend to that you have no time to pray, depend upon it you have more business on hand than God ever intended you should have.”

But look at this man. He had the whole, or nearly the whole, of the king's business to attend to. He was Prime Minister, Secretary of State, and Secretary of the Treasury, all in one. He had to attend to all his own work, and to give an eye to the work of lots of other men. And yet he found time to pray: not just now and then, nor once in a way, not just when he happened to have a few moments to spare, but “three times a day.”

December 15

“Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.” (John 11:3)

The communion those sisters had with Jesus brought them so near to His heart that when the time of trouble came they knew where to go for comfort. A great many people do not learn that secret in prosperity, and so when the billows come rolling up against them, they don't know which way to turn. The darkest and most wretched place on the face of the earth, is a home where death has entered, and where Christ is unknown. No hope of a resurrection, no hope of a brighter day coming.