Dear Friends,
Do you like history? Before I became a Christian I intended to spend my life teaching it and I still love it. Why? Because of the great lessons one can learn from it – lessons that can be a matter of life and death. Today’s devotional gives you a sample. God bless you.
Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Isaiah 57:15-16

  Isaiah 57:15-16 (ESV)

  ¹⁵ For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
      who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
  “I dwell in the high and holy place,
      and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
  to revive the spirit of the lowly,
      and to revive the heart of the contrite.
  ¹⁶ For I will not contend forever,
      nor will I always be angry;
  for the spirit would grow faint before me,
      and the breath of life that I made.

• Romans 11:20-22

  Romans 11:20-22   ESV

  ²⁰ That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. ²¹ For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. ²² Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.

Isaiah 57:15-16; Romans 11:20-22

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem! enthroned once on high,

Thou favored home of God on earth, thou heaven below the sky!

Now brought to bondage with thy sons, a curse and grief to see,

Jerusalem, Jerusalem! our tears shall flow for thee.

Oh! hadst thou known thy day of grace and flocked beneath the wing

Of him who called thee lovingly, thine own anointed King;

Then had the tribes of all the world gone up thy pomp to see,

And glory dwelt within thy gates, and all thy sons been free.

‘And who art thou that mournest me?’ replied the ruin grey,

‘And fearest not rather that thyself may prove a castaway?

I am a dried and abject branch, my place is given to thee;

But woe to every barren graft of thy wild olive tree!

‘Our day of grace is sunk in night, thy noon is in its prime;

Oh, turn and seek thy Savior’s face in this accepted time!

So, Gentile, may Jerusalem a lesson prove to thee,

And in the new Jerusalem thy home forever be!’”

[Reginald Heber in Gray & Adams Bible Commentary III, edited by James C. Gray and George M. Adams, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, n.d.), p. 341]