9 AUGUST
Bless the Lord, O my soul!
‘And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?’ Genesis 15:2
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Psalm 103:1–22
These words sound very strange from the father of the faithful. Was this a suitable answer to the promise he had just received? If we take them in their first and immediate sense, they answer to what many believers have felt and what I suppose Abraham himself was not wholly free from: a spirit of impatience and unbelief, which makes it well for us that the grace of God is free and his love unchangeable, or we might expect to be cast off for our perversity. The psalmist charges his soul, forget not all his benefits [Psalm 103:2]. There are seasons when we are liable to forget not only one or a few, but to forget them all, as:
(i) in a time of sharp affliction. Then too often a believer is like other men. The Lord has saved him from hell and appointed him to glory, but the trouble so fixes the attention that everything else seems forgot.
(ii) when the heart is keenly set upon creature good. O then a depraved nature shows itself. If we cannot have what we want, all that we have seems useless and tasteless and the sun shines upon us in vain.
From hence we may observe that a constant meditation upon the mercies of God to us, especially to our souls, is an excellent means to keep our hearts in a right frame, to make trouble sit easy and to teach us how to seek or to use the good things of this world as becomes Christians
FOR MEDITATION:
His love in time past
Forbids me to think
He’ll leave me at last
In trouble to sink;
Each sweet Ebenezer
I have in review,
Confirms his good pleasure
To help me quite through.
SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 30 [1/2], GENESIS 15:2
Milo 