December 20 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Jeremiah 2:1–4

Devotional

Let us note that Christ delights to think about his church. He enjoys looking upon her beauty. As the bird often returns to its nest, and as the traveller hurries to his home, so also the mind continually pursues the object of its choice. We cannot look too often on the face that we love. We always want to have our precious things in our sight.

It is even so with our Lord Jesus. From all eternity, he was “rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race” (Prov. 8:31). His thoughts rolled onward to the time when his elect would be born into the world; he viewed them in the mirror of his foreknowledge. “All the days ordained for me,” he says, “were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Ps. 139:16). When the world was set upon its pillars, he was there. And “he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel” (Deut. 32:8).

Many a time before his incarnation, he descended to this lower earth in the likeness of a man; on the plains of Mamre (Gen. 18), by the brook of Jabbok (Gen 32:24–30), beneath the walls of Jericho (Josh. 5:13), and in the fiery furnace of Babylon (Dan. 3:19, 25), the Son of Man visited his people.

Because his soul delighted in them, he could not rest away from them, for his heart longed after them. They were never absent from his heart for he had written their names upon his hands, and graven them upon his side. As the breastplate containing the names of the tribes of Israel was the most brilliant ornament worn by the high priest, so the names of Christ’s elect were his most precious jewels, and they glittered on his heart.

We may often forget to meditate upon the perfections of our Lord, but he never ceases to remember us. Let us chide ourselves for past forgetfulness, and pray for grace ever to carry him in fondest remembrance. O Lord, please paint upon the eyes of my soul the image of your Son.

[Dec 17]

Extracted from C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening (public domain), language modernized by Larry E. Wilson.