BS 1235.8 .T78 1912 
 Trumbull, Charles Gallandet 
 
 1872-1941. 
 Messages for the morning 
 
 wat-rh 
 
Messages for the Morning Watch 
 
APR ^.^ 19 
 
 Messages for the 
 Morning Watch 
 
 Devotional Studies in Genesis 
 
 ^^ 
 
 M 
 
 By ^ 
 CHARLES GALLAUDET TRUMBULL 
 
 Editor of The Sunday School Times 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 191 2, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 
 Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. i 
 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. \ 
 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square j 
 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street I 
 
The writer gratefully acknowledges his 
 indebtedness to Miss Susan M. Mapes of 
 The Sunday School Times editorial staff, for 
 her invaluable assistance in preparing this 
 book for the press. 
 
Foreword 
 
 No one who has not tested it for himself can 
 know the enrichment of spending time in 
 the early morning, before entering upon the 
 day's work or even breaking one's fast, alone 
 with God in prayer and in the devotional reading 
 of His Word. This habit of keeping the Morn- 
 ing Watch, as it is called, is undoubtedly being 
 used of God for the complete making over of 
 many lives that have already been committed 
 into the keeping of His Son. 
 
 In following this practice, it is well to precede 
 the reading of the Bible, each morning, with the 
 prayer that the Holy Spirit will plainly reveal 
 to the reader the particular truth or message 
 that He has for him in the Bible passage of that 
 morning. 
 
 The writer had found in his own observance 
 of the Morning Watch that the messages sug- 
 gested for his personal needs were so rich and 
 often unexpected that he noted them down for 
 his own keeping and reference. It was in this 
 way that most of the messages in this series came 
 into being. They were not written primarily for 
 7 
 
8 FOREWORD 
 
 publication, but for personal use ; and they are 
 often of very personal application. 
 
 The writer's practice has been simply to read 
 until a needed message was received, without 
 uniformity or system in the amount of Scripture 
 material read each day. The purpose has been 
 to refrain from any hard and fast method of di- 
 vision of material, in* order that there might be 
 entire freedom to receive the needed truth. 
 
 If any of these very personal jottings are sug- 
 gestive to others in the daily fight, the writer will 
 be grateful for the privilege of sharing his rations 
 and ammunition in this way. 
 
 C. G. T. 
 
 Philadelphia, 
 
yiND God said, Let there be light: and there 
 '"' was light. Genesis i. i to 3. 
 
 There is no birthday in any one's experience 
 equal to that day when God says to him and for 
 him, " Let there be hght." For, while the ele- 
 ments had to obey God in His blessed fiat of 
 light for them, we have the privilege of choice, — 
 obedience or disobedience, when He offers His 
 hght to us. If we do not use and hve by the 
 life-giving light that God offers us, then the light 
 that is in us is darkness ; and how great is the 
 darkness ! (Matt. vi. 23). 
 
 The unspeakable blessing of light is one of the 
 first things recorded in this first word of the Old 
 Dispensation, and it is one of the first words of 
 the New Covenant : " In him was hfe ; and the 
 life was the light of men " (see John i. 4, 5, 7-9). 
 For me, if I will let God empower me to use the 
 light that He has made for me, is the pledge that 
 my pathway shall be " as the dawning light, that 
 shineth more and more unto the perfect day " 
 (Prov. iv. 18). 
 
 yfND God divided the light from the darkness, 
 •^•^ Genesis i. 4. 
 
 That division of the light from the darkness 
 9 
 
10 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 was forever : so long as darkness may exist. 
 The darkness has nothing in common with the 
 light, the hght has nothing in common with the 
 darkness. What God hath put asunder, let no 
 man join together. The sharp line of cleavage 
 between the two, established by God, was the 
 first act of God's blessing after He had created 
 the unspeakably rich, life-giving blessing of 
 light ; and it will be the last act of God's as He 
 brings to an end this age in which we live, the 
 age when the powers of darkness are permitted 
 to live and to work, — and for the last time 
 divides the light from the darkness, as the dark- 
 ness goes out, and the eternal reign of light is 
 ushered in. " For there shall be no night there " 
 (Rev. xxi. 25). 
 
 The Devil does not like this sharp division be- 
 tween hght and darkness. He counts it unneces- 
 sarily sharp, and wants us to count it so. Often 
 he succeeds in this ; it is his mission to persuade 
 us to join together what God has put asunder. 
 Let us hold, as our hope of eternal hfe and 
 eternal hght, to the God-made division of light 
 and darkness, in every choice, thought and 
 action of to-day. 
 
 yiND God said, Let the earth 'put forth grass^ 
 -^ herbs yielding seed, and the fruit-trees bear- 
 ing fruit after their kind, wherein is the seed 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS II 
 thereof^ upon the earth : and it was so. Genesis i. 5 
 
 to II. 
 
 The first record of the first created life, even 
 life in its lowest form — vegetable — declares that 
 God's will for this hfe was that it should bear 
 seed and fruit for the purpose of producing more 
 life, and that the seed and fruit of any life is after 
 its own kind : whatever kind it is, such shall be 
 the kind that it reproduces and passes on. And 
 the fruit that a life bears contains the seed of 
 more hfe of the same sort. There has been no 
 change in God's expressed will for all life that 
 He has ever created, up to life in its highest spir- 
 itual form, — yes, even to the Life that was not 
 created but that was in the beginning with God, 
 and through whom all things were made : Jesus 
 Christ, the Word, the Son of God. We are here 
 to bear fruit, in which shall be the seed of new 
 life. Those who are doing God's will by living 
 in Him in whom are the Hght and life of men, 
 are bearing fruit by calling into spiritual life 
 those about them. That is what we are here 
 for ; to spend our lives in soul-winning and soul- 
 building. If we fail to do that, we are still under 
 this first law of life, and we are bearing fruit after 
 our kind, whether we know it or want to, or not : 
 if our kind is unworthy that is what we are caus- 
 ing others to become. Always it is " after their 
 kind." 
 
12 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 Cr'O give, light upon the earth. Genesis i. 12 
 -^ to 15. 
 
 All this tremendous creative power of Je- 
 hovah's was directed toward one single object at 
 this time : the making of the earth a beautiful, 
 perfectly equipped home for His children. The 
 lights were in the firmament of heaven, some 
 millions of miles from the earth : but they were 
 there to give light upo7i the earth. If our heav- 
 enly Father wrought such stupendous acts of 
 creation for our physical dwelling-place, is not 
 His omnipotent, creative power equally at our 
 disposal for all our needs to-day, and above all, 
 for our spiritual needs, which are our most 
 baffling and difficult, and in which we are most 
 hopeless without Him? Later, His Son came 
 " to give light upon the earth." We need not 
 be in darkness one instant of this day. 
 
 CT^O divide the light from the darkness. Genesis 
 
 -^ i. 16 to 19. 
 
 In the original creation of light, recorded in 
 verses 3 and 4, God the creator divided light 
 from darkness. Now, when God commits 
 specific hght-giving duties to certain of His 
 creations. He makes it a definite part of their 
 duty to divide the light from the darkness. So 
 it is in the spiritual world. God has once for all 
 divided light from darkness : they can have noth- 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 3 
 
 ing to do with each other. But God also en- 
 trusts to His children, as co-workers with Him- 
 self, the responsibihty and privilege of dividing 
 light from darkness. 
 
 We must lead others from darkness to Christ, 
 and insist, for ourselves, upon a rigidly and re- 
 lentlessly sharp Hne of cleavage between those 
 things which belong to the hght and to the dark- 
 ness. May the God and Father of all light, and 
 the True Light which lighteth every man, keep 
 our vision clear and our will true ! 
 
 yfFTER their kind . . . after its kind. . . . 
 -" Be fruitful, and multiply . . . after its 
 kind: and God saw that it was good. Genesis i. 
 20 to 25. 
 
 Seven times in these half dozen verses record- 
 ing the creation of the fishes, the birds, and the 
 beasts, are we told that each variety of creature 
 was made after its own kind. And, like the 
 earlier vegetable creation, also after its kind, the 
 life purpose of these fishes, birds, and animals was 
 to be fruitful and multiply, each after its kind. 
 Do we dare face the thought for ourselves ? It 
 is a fact of our lives, whether we dare face it or 
 not. We are multiplying ourselves in others all 
 the time, by our unconscious personal influence, 
 and we are helping all the time to make others 
 after our kind. Is " our kind " of the sort we 
 
14 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WA TCH 
 
 would choose for all our friends and neighbours 
 and dear ones ? Only when for us " to live is 
 Christ," dare we make answer to that question. 
 
 T ET us make man in our image . . , let 
 ■^-^ them have dominion over the fish . . , the 
 birds . . . the cattle . . . and over every 
 creeping thing. . . , Be fruitful, and multiply, 
 and replenish the earthy and subdue it. Genesis i. 
 26 to 28. 
 
 Four facts are stated about man and God's 
 purposes for man. He was made in the image, 
 after the likeness, of God. There is no other 
 such stupendous fact in our existence as that. 
 He was to be the ruler, the master, of all living 
 things in the earth except fellow man : never that. 
 He was to reproduce himself in newly created 
 beings like himself : and we are all doing this all 
 the time — apart from the matter of physical par- 
 enthood — through our personal influence over 
 others. He was to subdue the earth, and be its 
 lord and master. 
 
 We are not to let the earth nor the interests 
 of the earth be our master ; that is a complete 
 reversal of God's will and purpose for us. We 
 are to subdue the earth, use it, rejoice in it as a 
 good gift of God, and also keep it under, in its 
 own place as a servant, to be used only to God's 
 honour and glory. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 5 
 
 Because we are fruitful and multiplying our- 
 selves all the time in our persistent, even if un- 
 conscious, influence over others, we need to ask 
 ourselves often whether we are seeking to live 
 the kind of life that we should be glad to see 
 multiplied all about us. 
 
 No one can have real dominion over even a 
 horse or a dog until he has first won the mastery 
 of himself. Self-mastery is not named here, be- 
 cause it was not lost until sin came in ; but we 
 have all lost it, and Christ-mastery is the only 
 thing that can replace it. 
 
 God has made me in His image after His own 
 likeness. That is enough. How can I continue 
 to defile that image ! 
 
 T7VERY herb yieldino^ seed . . . and every 
 ■*— ' tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; 
 to you it shall be for food. Genesis i. 29 to 31. 
 
 The first mention of food for man records 
 God's provision that man should live by taking 
 into himself that which had in it life. " The 
 herb yielding seed," and " the fruit of a tree 
 yielding seed," these living, multiplying, life-giv- 
 ing bodies were to furnish man's food. Later on 
 (Gen. ix. 3), animal life was given to man as 
 food, so there seems to be no Hmiting of man to 
 vegetarian diet in the Bible. But the point is 
 that bodily life can be nourished, strengthened, 
 
1 6 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 sustained, only by taking unto itself that which 
 is living. And so of our spiritual life. It can- 
 not live, be strengthened or grow, if it is not fed 
 upon hving food. When our chief interests are 
 in those things that have not in themselves 
 eternal hfe, we are not nourishing our life by 
 food at all. What of our books, our occupa- 
 tions, our conversations, our friendships? Are 
 we partaking of Hving food ? 
 
 /JND Jehovah God planted a garden eastward, in 
 -" Eden ; and there he put the man whom he had 
 formed. And out of the ground made Jehovah God 
 to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and 
 good for food ; the tree of life also in the midst of the 
 garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 
 . . . And Jehovah God took the man, and put 
 him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 
 And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of 
 every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat : but 
 of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou 
 shall not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest 
 thereof thou shall surely die. Genesis ii. i to 17. 
 
 In the garden which was the home of man, 
 God put every good thing that man needed. 
 Man had his specific duty assigned to him ; " to 
 dress it and to keep it." Moreover, he was shown 
 at the very outset the possibility of wrong-doing, 
 fully warned against it, and told what the full 
 consequences of the wrong-doing would be. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1/ 
 
 That is my life to-day. I am in the midst of 
 every good thing that I need. I am trusted with 
 the "■ dressing and keeping " of my particular 
 work, my assignment for to-day. I am fully 
 aware of the possibihties of wrong-doing to-day, 
 and know that the consequence of a7iy deliberate, 
 conscious wrong-doing will be, just so far, death : 
 death to the opportunity of victory it offered me, 
 death to my spiritual power for the time, death 
 in other ways that only God understands. I have 
 Adam's Eden opportunity to-day in the un- 
 written, clean, white page that opens before me. 
 Jesus, Saviour, give me the victory which Thou, 
 the Second Adam, didst win for me ! 
 
 ^TVD Jehovah God said, It is not good that the 
 -" man should be alone ; I will make him a help 
 meet for him. . . . Therefore shall a man leave 
 his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his 
 wife : and they shall be one flesh. Genesis ii. 
 i8 to 24. 
 
 Husband and wife were thus brought together 
 in order that the husband might have in the wife 
 a partner, a help, suited to his needs. And the 
 two were to be in closer relationship than any 
 other relationship in life, closer than that be- 
 tween child and parent : literally one. A little 
 later the wife did wrong, and was the occasion 
 of the husband's doing wrong. Unworthy they 
 
1 8 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 both were, she unworthy of him, and he of her. 
 But we do not find God saying that because of 
 the wife's failure at a certain point she is no 
 longer to be counted a suitable partner, a help 
 meet ; nor is the husband, because of his failure, 
 to be cast off. They are otie, and their oneness 
 was not conditioned upon their perfection, but 
 upon each one's need of the other and oppor- 
 tunity of helping the other. 
 
 What a flood of light this throws on the sacred 
 marriage relationship to-day ! How much of an 
 allowance does it make for divorce, for any cause ? 
 Absolutely none. And how it shuts out from 
 the home life, where divorce, perhaps, would 
 never be contemplated, but where momentary 
 separations through unlove, impatience, harsh 
 judgment, are not uncommon, even these little 
 breaks with God's plan that husband and wife 
 shall cleave unto each other, and be one. Yes, 
 even when either one has shown unworthiness 
 or failed in any way. Failing is never con- 
 fined to either one. The selfless love of Christ 
 alone can fulfill God's purpose for your married 
 life. 
 
 \70W the serpent was more subtle than any 
 -^ ^ beast of the field which Jehovah God had made. 
 Genesis iii. i. 
 
 Stop right there in your reading ! We think 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 19 
 
 that we know the fact of this statement, but we 
 do not. More subtle than anything else that enters 
 into our range of experience or our powers of con- 
 ception. We have all had such encounters with 
 that serpent, we have met defeat so constantly at 
 his hands, we have had first-hand knowledge, so 
 many times, of his subtlety, that we think that 
 we know it by this time. Right there is the 
 subtlety. He wants us to think we know, while 
 he knows that we do not. He wants us to think 
 that we can foresee, this morning, how he is going 
 to attack us to-day ; and while we are thinking 
 of this, and praying against it, and watchfully 
 guarding against it, he strikes in an utterly unex- 
 pected way, and we fall. If we think that this is 
 because we are young, that is a part of his 
 subtlety : he will trap us by this mistake when 
 we are older. If we have had mature experience 
 of him for forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years, he 
 has subtleties in reserve, still unused upon us, 
 which, if we have confidence in our own knowl- 
 edge of him, will make us as foolish babes before 
 him. He is subtle, more subtle than any other 
 perverted result of God's creation. 
 
 What hope is there, then, against him ? Just 
 the full recognition of the inspired truth of this 
 warning statement of fact which God has given 
 us here for our guidance and safety. The Devil 
 is more subtle than any planning of ours can 
 
20 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 guard against ; but he cannot outwit God. Jesus 
 Christ was and is and always will be more than a 
 match for him. When we turn in helplessness 
 from our own efforts against him to God and our 
 Saviour, leaving the fight to the7n, — really leaving 
 it to them, — the fight is won. But we must get 
 forever away from the Devil- inspired notion that 
 we can know beforehand how and where he will 
 strike next. 
 
 ^A^D the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall 
 -^-^ not surely die. Genesis iii. 2 to 4. 
 
 Most of our deliberate sins are committed be- 
 cause we beheve that the disaster from commit- 
 ting them will not be as great as it really is. 
 There is a sense in which the result of every 
 conscious sin is death. It destroys in us certain 
 powers, sensitiveness, aspiration, will, right de- 
 sire, and other mysterious but vital parts of our 
 being, and leaves us in a form of death. The 
 mystery of the exact result and effect of sin, even 
 upon one who is a disciple of Christ, is one that 
 we shall probably never understand in this 
 world; but it is certain that the effect of any sin 
 is greater, more tragic and death-dealing, than 
 Satan wants us to realize. " Ye shall not surely 
 die," is the insistent refrain he keeps sounding 
 and pounding at us : and we believe it : but it is 
 a lie. We do die, — not as souls eternally lost, if 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 21 
 
 we are in Christ, — but we do in some awful way, 
 at tragic cost to ourselves and the kingdom, re- 
 ceive death-wounds from all sin that we take 
 into our lives. Christ can forgive and restore, 
 but there is a loss to us, as there was to Adam 
 and Eve, which in this life at any rate can never 
 be made up to us. Only when we begin to 
 realize that the effects of the least sin that we 
 can think of are more unspeakably awful than 
 anything we can conceive of, shall we begin to 
 be safeguarded against this death-deahng lie of 
 the adversary of Christ and ourselves. 
 
 (y^OlJR eyes shall be opened . . . knowing 
 ^ good and evil. . . . And the eyes of them 
 both were opened, and they . . . hid themselves 
 from the presence of Jehovah God. . . . I 
 heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid. 
 Genesis iii. 5 to lo. 
 
 The result of the first sin was the same as the 
 result of every sin I have ever committed, and 
 the same as that of every sin that ever shall be 
 committed. The Devil mixed in enough truth 
 in his lying promises to be plausible. Adam 
 and Eve did not become " as God," they did not 
 " know good " by sinning ; but their eyes were 
 opened, and they knew evil. They gained noth- 
 ing by sin which added anything to their needed 
 knowledge, equipment or usefulness in life. No 
 
22 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 one was ever helped in any iota of his knowledge 
 or being by sin. Nothing good has ever come 
 to pass from that day to this as a result or a 
 sequence of sin, that could not have come to 
 pass better without sin. Sympathy, breadth of 
 view, needed knowledge : sin never gave these 
 to any one. Jesus had all these, but He never 
 sinned. Let us be quite clear as to this. The 
 only new knowledge from sin was a knowledge 
 of the bitterness, the misery, the awful loss, the 
 taste of death, which sin always brings. These 
 things do not enrich life. 
 
 The worst and always sure result of sin was 
 that the man and woman did not want to see 
 God. Before this they had rejoiced in God's 
 presence and fellowship. Now they wanted to 
 avoid Him. They were not easy in the thought 
 of being with Him, for they had put a barrier 
 between Him and themselves. The exultant 
 joy, the thrill, the sheer gladness of Hfe in Him, 
 was replaced by a dull, sodden, gray misery, or 
 worse, indifference. You've known it. I have. 
 Why should Satan ever succeed again in per- 
 suading us to replace the one with the other, life 
 with death ? Even when he offers us — as he 
 will before the day is over — that which is 
 "good," «'a dehght tp the eyes," "to be 
 desired," oh, think of what lies on the other 
 side 1 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 23 
 
 jyECAVSE ihou hast done this. Genesis iii. 
 •^ II to 21. 
 
 That is the key -word of this dark record. The 
 first sin had its immediate, direct result ; and so 
 has every sin that was ever committed. God's 
 forgiveness of sin does not make it as though it 
 had not been, — not even His forgiveness to-day 
 in Christ. God forgave this man and woman ; 
 they could not have lived, otherwise; but His 
 plan for their lives was changed because of their 
 sin, and we may believe His plan for our lives 
 has to be changed every time we sin. He still 
 cared for them, and did His best for them, but 
 that best could not be what it would have been 
 had they not sinned. They were the losers for 
 their sin, as we are for ours. The bright side of 
 the true story is that their sin did not make God 
 cast them off; He kept hold, and the very pen- 
 alties that He ordered were His most loving 
 efforts to reclaim them to the best that might 
 yet be for them. I like to think of these results 
 of their sin, not as penalties or punishments as 
 we ordinarily use the word, but as medicine, as 
 remedies, as God's safeguarding care. That is 
 the only meaning of what we call punishment at 
 His hands. 
 
 So it is with us. Let us never forget ; each 
 sin means sure loss ; but God holds on to us in 
 spite of our sin. 
 
24 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 CT^HEREFORE Jehovah God sent him forth from 
 -^ the garden of Eden, to till the ground. Genesis 
 iii. 22 to 24. 
 
 God was as loving when He sent Adam out of 
 Eden as when He placed him in Eden. The 
 later act was as directly an act of love as the 
 earlier act. For God is love, always and wholly 
 love. Everything that He does is the result of 
 His love and because of His love. This was the 
 most loving thing He could do for Adam. What 
 we call our punishments for our sins are always 
 the most loving things that God can possibly de- 
 vise for us. Let us be sure of this, for it is the 
 truth. God would have been unspeakably un- 
 loving toward Adam and Eve if He had now 
 allowed them to be exposed to the peril of eating 
 of the tree of hfe and thereby living forever in 
 their sin-poisoned natures. Just as He lovingly 
 protected them from that tragedy, so He pro- 
 vided work for the man, that he might have 
 something outside Eden to do and to live for. 
 
 Let us remember that it is God's love that works 
 in all the hardships, the bitternesses and even the 
 miseries resulting from our own sins. When our 
 Edens become a menace to us, He lovingly takes 
 them away : praise His name. His punishments 
 are loving ; His assignments of work are loving ; 
 His impoverishments are loving. For God is 
 love. 
 
I 
 
 DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 25 
 
 /f^D Jehovah had respect unto Abel and to his 
 -" offering : but unto Cain and to his offering he 
 had not respect. Genesis iv. i to 8. 
 
 God's treatment of Cain and Abel has often 
 seemed to many unfair. They both offered what 
 they had to God ; why should He treat them so 
 differently ? Had not Cain a good right to be 
 very wroth? But from the simple record of 
 these two verses, and our knowledge of God, with- 
 out reading farther we may be quite sure that 
 there was something wrong in connection with 
 Cain's offering and that Cain knew it was wrong. 
 God never failed to respect any offering of His 
 child that came from an honest purpose to 
 please Him, no matter how faulty the offering 
 was. But this was not so of Cain; there was 
 some sin of which he was fully conscious, either 
 at the time or earlier, and while it remained 
 he could not " get right with God " by any of- 
 fering. 
 
 Cain's killing of Abel may have come from the 
 fact that, after telling Abel of God's *' injustice," 
 he could get no sympathy from Abel for his po- 
 sition ; so, in desperation, he put Abel out of the 
 way. " If thou doest well, shall it [thy counte- 
 nance] not be lifted up ? " That is all we need 
 to know. When the heavens are brass, and it 
 seems as though God had turned against us, let 
 us just drop on our knees and ask Him to search 
 
26 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 us out and show us what is the sin that is keep- 
 ing Him from receiving our offering. His an- 
 swer to this sincere prayer is instant. God never 
 rejects the offering of any one whose life is first 
 laid at His feet. 
 
 /1M I my brother s keeper} . . . The voice 
 ■^ of thy brother's blood crieth unto me. Genesis 
 iv. 9, lo. 
 
 There are more kinds of murder than that of 
 Cain's. Are any of us guilty of one kind ? If 
 we should be asked to-day as to the spiritual life 
 of some one near us who does not know Christ 
 as Saviour and Lord, " Where is . . . thy 
 brother? " and we should answer, " I know not: 
 am I my brother's keeper ? " and the reply should 
 come back in condemnation : •' What hast thou 
 done ? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth 
 unto me," — we should probably think we were 
 harshly and unfairly judged. But Christ plainly 
 wants us to feel a direct and overwhelming re- 
 sponsibility for every one whom we should reach 
 for Him, and who has not yet accepted Him. I 
 am the keeper of these my brothers. And if I 
 am, and they are lost, their blood cries out against 
 me unto God. When once we fully accept this 
 truth and its obhgation, there will be compara- 
 tively few about us that we cannot eventually 
 save by winning to Christ. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 2/ 
 
 /i^O Cain went out from the presence of Je- 
 •^^ hovah. Genesis iv. ii to i6. 
 
 We do that with every sin, whether we want 
 to or not. We cannot remain in God's presence 
 with sin. It is an awful price to pay. Sin costs 
 too much. There is no misery known to man 
 hke the misery of separation from God's pres- 
 ence. Nothing can make up for it, — except the 
 sin-confessed, sin-forgiven, sin-removed restora- 
 tion that is in Christ. 
 
 ^ABAL , . , the father of such as dwell in 
 J tents and have cattle. . . . Jubal . . . 
 the father of all such as handle the harp and 
 pipe. . . . Tubal-c ably the forger of every cut- 
 ting instrument. Genesis iv. 17 to 22. 
 
 These three men were known then, and have 
 been known through the centuries since then, 
 for the particular life specialties that they chose. 
 You and I will be remembered, by those who 
 know us at all, for the particular life specialties 
 that we choose. Some outstanding character- 
 istic of ours will live longer than we. What 
 shall it be ? What would we have it be, if we 
 could have it just wliat we want ? We can have 
 it a Hkeness to Christ, if we will. But we must 
 be about it to-day, and to-morrow, and every 
 day, if it is to be that. 
 
28 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 rE wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech : 
 for I have slain a man. Genesis iv. 23, 24. 
 In direct descent from the first murderer, five 
 generations later, came the first polygamist 
 (verse 19). The only record we have of this 
 man is of his polygamy, and then of his boasting 
 of having committed murder in a way that out- 
 distanced his ancestor-murderer. Because he 
 was wounded and bruised, he killed ; and he was 
 proud of it. Cain's example was bearing rich 
 fruit. Sin always does. In what contrast this 
 stands to a descendant of the other side of 
 Adam's house, through Seth, who, when 
 wounded for our transgressions and bruised for 
 our iniquities, did not slay and avenge Himself, 
 but only loved the more ; and " with His stripes 
 we are healed." Retaliation unto death : love 
 unto life. To which branch of Adam's family 
 do we choose to belong ? 
 
 f^OD hath appointed me another seed instead of 
 ^-^ Abel ; for Cain sleiv him. Genesis iv. 25. 
 
 When Abel was dead, it must have seemed to 
 the broken-hearted mother as though there were 
 nothing left to live for. But God did for her 
 just what He always does for us after our best 
 hopes have been shattered by sin, — our own sin, 
 or some one's else. He gave her a new hope 
 by a new blessing. We destroy ; God rebuilds. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 29 
 
 Thus it goes on until we are broken down and 
 won by His ceaselessly rebuilding love, and 
 then we become builders with Him. His best 
 blessings are always ahead. This other seed : 
 of whom was Seth to be the father, down 
 the ages ? Of Jesus Christ. Don't reject 
 the latest blessing and hope that God may be 
 holding out to you. It may lead straight to 
 Jesus Christ, for yourself or, through you, for 
 others. 
 
 CT^HEN began men to call upon the name ofJe- 
 
 -^ hovah. Genesis iv. 26. 
 
 Which means, then began a time of hopeful- 
 ness and real achievement for man. For when 
 we begin to call upon God, we begin to let God 
 into our hves, to connect ourselves up with 
 power, to thrill and tingle and move with /z/e. 
 God never ceases to call upon us to do this, but 
 it is only when we respond to His call, by call- 
 ing upon Him, that He can do for us what He 
 wants to do. The men who began now to call 
 upon the name of Jehovah were the fathers of 
 Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and David, and 
 Jesus. That was the kind that God made of 
 them, because they called upon Him. Have we 
 begun to call upon God, as a habitual, daily prac- 
 tice, — as the great, saving, empowering fact in 
 our lives ? 
 
30 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 /N the day that God created man, in the likeness of 
 God made he him. Genesis v. i, 2. 
 Therefore all that I do to-day ought to be such 
 as God would do were He in my place. If I am 
 created in His likeness, my actions ought to be 
 in the likeness of His actions ; my thoughts, of 
 His thoughts ; my desires, of His desires ; my 
 very feelings in the likeness of His feelings. 
 This sounds hopeless. It is not; the moment 
 that Jesus Christ who is God is allowed to be 
 the real Master of my life and the Holy Spirit 
 of God enters into me, to occupy, possess, sub- 
 merge, overwhelm myself and my being with 
 Himself, then my lost Hkeness to God begins 
 to be regained, restored, recreated; for if any 
 man be in Christ, there is a new creation : and 
 this new creation is only the returning to the 
 first creation, made in the likeness of God. 
 Lord, restore me to-day to Thy likeness. 
 
 yfND Enoch walked with God: and he was not; 
 -^^ for God took him. Genesis v. 3 to 27. 
 
 For seven generations the monotonous record 
 gives us the bare facts of name, family, and age ; 
 then the monotony is broken by this record of a 
 man who lived less than half as many years as 
 the youngest of the others. But that half a life- 
 time — as they viewed it — was richer and fuller 
 than any of the longer hfetimes, and stands out 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 3 1 
 
 as one of the richest and fullest in the entire 
 Bible. The secret of it was simply that Enoch 
 did what Adam and Eve had done in Eden be- 
 fore their sin, and what God longs to have us all 
 do in spite of our sin, after Christ has taken care 
 of that sin for us : he walked with God. That 
 means all that Christ came to make possible. It 
 means the oneness with God that sinks self in 
 Him, makes His will our will, His purposes our 
 only purposes. His work and interests our only 
 work and interests, His life our hfe. A year of 
 such " walking " and fellowship makes Methu- 
 selah's nine hundred and sixty-nine years brief 
 and poverty-stricken in contrast. Why should 
 we not open our lives completely and forever to 
 this richness that Enoch knew? Let us do it 
 to-day ! 
 
 '\70AH . . . This same shall comfort us in 
 •^ ^ our work and in the toil of our hands, which 
 Cometh because of the ground which Jehovah hath 
 cursed. Genesis v. 28 to 32. 
 
 Notice what Noah's distinctive life-work was 
 to be. He was to comfort, which means " bring 
 strength to," mankind. As men laboured in 
 their work against a curse which their own sin 
 had brought them, he was to give them rest and 
 strength for their toil which was the direct result 
 of their sin. Now see how he did this, and ful- 
 
32 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 filled the prophecy of his father. Back in 
 Gen. iii. 17, is the record of the particular curse, 
 or sin-result, of which Lamech spoke. Later 
 on, in viii. 21, we find that, following Noah's 
 faithfulness in having obeyed God at every step 
 of the way, Noah having made his first act 
 after the deliverance an act of gratitude and 
 praise to God, God declares that He " will not 
 again curse the ground any more." This seems 
 to be the record of His removing the curse which 
 He had placed upon the ground in Adam's time, 
 whatever that curse was (and it could not well 
 have been the necessity for honest toil, for this is 
 a blessing), and that curse seems to have existed 
 only between the time of Adam and of Noah. 
 However that may be, the practical lesson for us 
 is that Noah, living true to his mission nahem^ 
 to comfort or strengthen, did by obedience to 
 God's will and avowed gratitude to God bring a 
 great blessing to all mankind, and helped men to 
 overcome a result of their sin. That we can all 
 do, and we must do it if we are true to the name 
 Christian. By obedience to our Captain's Great 
 Commission, we can bring unto Him those that 
 labour and are heavy laden by their sin, and let 
 Jesus Christ remove their curse by bearing it for 
 them. Noah had no such light and no such 
 privilege as we have in Christ : are we as true to 
 our light and privilege as he was to his ? 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 33 
 
 /fND Jehovah said, My Spirit shall not strive 
 -^-^ with man for ever, for that he also is flesh : yet 
 shall his days be a hundred and twenty years. Gen- 
 esis vi. I to 4. 
 
 There comes an end to the time when the 
 Spirit of God strives with the spirit of a man who 
 is resisting God ; that end seems to be marked 
 by the end of man's earthly Hfe. It is not be- 
 cause God grows tired and gives him up, but be- 
 cause the man has resisted the many opportuni- 
 ties and invitations so long, so steadily and 
 habitually, that he has finally placed himself be- 
 yond the power of God, by starving, atrophying, 
 killing his power to respond to God. The period 
 when he might, if he would, accept God, seems 
 to be the period of his earthly life ; and we may 
 have enough confidence in God's love and over- 
 ruling power to believe that He never lets any un- 
 saved Hfe come suddenly to an end without know- 
 ing that that life has rejected Him so deliberately 
 that it would be beyond God's power to save it. 
 
 But what an exceeding heavy obligation is 
 placed upon us, as Christian workers, when we 
 realize that every day that passes in the lives of 
 those near us who have not yet surrendered to 
 God in Christ is bringing them nearer to that 
 time when the Spirit of God must cease to strive 
 longer with them ! We can be used to prevent 
 that fatal day ever coming to pass in their lives, 
 
34 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 if we are faithful in pressing upon them the un- 
 searchably rich joy and gain of their accepting 
 Christ, and if we are faithful, also, in prayer to 
 God for them. What a challenge to personal serv- 
 ice in witnessing for Christ there is in this verse 
 that is tucked away in one of the earliest chap- 
 ters of Genesis, in the midst of a paragraph of 
 which some of the meanings are not at all clear ! 
 But our duty is clear. 
 
 T^VERY imagination of the thoughts of his heart 
 ■^-^ was only evil continually. Genesis vi. 5 to 8. 
 
 It would seem that there cannot be any more 
 desperate and awful description of the possession 
 of a man's life by sin than is given here : to have 
 all the pictures of our God-given power of im- 
 agination, — that faculty whereby we may see the 
 possibilities of life in Christ and the very splen- 
 dours of heaven itself, — become pictures of de- 
 graded, hell-created evil, and only evil, every 
 minute of our waking and dreaming time. When 
 one has reached that stage through his steady 
 permission and cultivation of sin, he is living in 
 hell, and God's most merciful act is, as the He- 
 brew of verse 7 says, to blot him out. Most of 
 us know something of the almost complete pos- 
 session by sin in intervals of our life, when our 
 better aspirations, or faculties of achievement, 
 our power even to think clearly, were paralyzed 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 35 
 
 or atrophied by the tolerated presence of sin in 
 one form or another, — selfishness, hatred, im- 
 purity. What if it were so with us " continu- 
 ally," without interruption or respite ! That is 
 the picture drawn here. And that is the possible 
 end of all tolerated sin. Is it any wonder that 
 God wants us to hate it, this day, as desperately 
 and as passionately as He hates it ? 
 
 IK TO AH IV as a righteous man. . . . Noah 
 -^ ^ walked with God. . . . And the earth was 
 corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with vio- 
 lence . . . for all flesh had corrupted their way 
 upon the earth. Genesis vi. 9 to 12. 
 
 The combination of the most awful temptations 
 in their assault upon me, the universally low tone 
 of the environment in which I may be placed to- 
 day, the entire lack of any encouragement to 
 hold to the highest standards, — all these forces 
 and influences that would pull me down are not 
 responsible for my going down if I should go 
 down. Only one thing would be responsible, 
 and that is my refusing to walk with God. Noah 
 was righteous, blameless, and the secret is plainly 
 stated. He had nothing to influence or help him 
 up — except God. 
 
 JL/TAKE ihee an ark of gopher ivood; . . . 
 -^^ three hundred cubits . . . fifty cubits 
 . . . thirty cubits. Genesis vi. 13 to 16. 
 
36 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 What a privilege and relief it would be to us 
 all if only God would plan and outline and de- 
 scribe our exact work for us to-day, in all its de- 
 tails, as to measurements, material, arrangements, 
 as He did for Noah when the time came for 
 Noah to build an ark ! It would be easy to go 
 ahead and do our duty then, with God's clear 
 specifications in hand. But that is exactly what 
 God wants to do for us, and will do for us, if we 
 will let Him as Noah did. Noah had been walk- 
 ing with God, presumably for many years, as a 
 consistent habit. Only to such a man can God 
 make all the details of his day's duty clear. God 
 has a plan for me to-day just as sharply defined 
 in all its details as the measurements and archi- 
 tecture of the ark. He wants to hold me to this 
 day's plan as closely as Noah let Him hold him 
 to the ark building. And God can make every 
 detail of this day's building clear to me, if I 
 will let Him. Consecrated, wholly surren- 
 dered, Christ-sensitized responsiveness and obe- 
 dience to the Spirit's slightest whisper all the 
 day long — and the ark is built. That is the 
 secret. 
 
 yfND I, behold, I do bring the flood of waters 
 -^-* upon the earth, to destroy all flesh. . . . 
 But I will establish my covenant with thee ; and thou 
 shall come into the ark^ thou, and thy sons, and thy 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 3/ 
 
 w'lfz, and thy sons' wives with thee. . . . Thus 
 did Noah. Genesis vi. 17 to 22. 
 
 The death penalty was declared ; and with it 
 the way of escape. And that is exactly God's 
 message to me to-day. All flesh that stays out 
 of the New Covenant that God has established is 
 to be destroyed — forever. All who will may en- 
 ter into the covenant, and take with them their 
 families. Some people say that they could not 
 believe in a God who made a hell. They seem 
 to forget that with the hell He provides a way 
 of escape : He establishes a Covenant for all who 
 will. And the man who enters into that Cove- 
 nant and leaves out a single member of his family 
 is not up to the standard of Noah. 
 
 The New Testament (or New Covenant) way 
 of putting this flood truth for the day's needs is 
 this : God is faithful, who . . . will with the 
 temptation make also the way of escape. 
 
 yJND Jehovah said unto Noah, Come thou and 
 •^^ all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen 
 righteous before me in this generation. Genesis vii. i. 
 
 There it is again : " thee aitd all thy house.'' 
 God offered Noah no higher privilege, and no 
 heavier obligation, than He offers us. When He 
 establishes His New Covenant in Christ with any 
 one to-day, He calls that one, in coming, to bring 
 along his whole house. Any one really righteous 
 
38 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 person in any household, who is not only saved by 
 Christ for the next world but wholly mastered by 
 Christ in this world, so that Christ lives in him, 
 and to him to live is Christ, is Christ's key to 
 the lives of all in that household. If any one in 
 the household fails to come into the New Cove- 
 nant, the one who is already in is as guilty as 
 Noah would have been had he closed the door 
 of the ark against one of his family. We must 
 be sobered by the solemn responsibility of this 
 truth, and rejoice in its blessed privilege. For 
 there can be no doubt about all coming when we 
 are ready to meet the cost : that God shall see us 
 righteous before Him to the extent of our self- 
 death in Christ. 
 
 T^VERY living thing that I have made will I des- 
 -^-^ troy [Heb., blot ow/] from off the face of the 
 ground. And Noah did according unto all that Je- 
 hovah commanded him. Genesis vii. 2 to 5. 
 
 God can destroy sin. God will destroy sin. 
 The people of the earth were so given up to sin, 
 saturated by it, Hving in it and of it, eaten up by 
 it, that God's great love for mankind compelled 
 only one thing: His blotting out of this vast 
 black flood of sin by a cleansing flood of water, 
 and giving the race a new opportunity in the 
 family that was not thus sold to sin. And that 
 same love, and even the same method, in princi- 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 39 
 
 pie, is my hope to-day. God can destroy my 
 sin. God will destroy my sin. He blots it out 
 in a flood mightier than that of the waters — the 
 blood of Jesus Christ. And He saves me, that 
 in this Christ, I, hke Noah, may do according 
 unto all that Jehovah commands me. Let me 
 trust this heavenly Father to-day, and His Son 
 my Saviour — Christ, to blot out my sin and to 
 keep me from sinning this day. That is what 
 Christ will do for me if my faith in Him is only 
 daring enough. 
 
 /fND Noah was six hundred years old. . . . 
 -^-* And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, 
 and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of 
 the waters of the flood. Genesis vii. 6, 7. 
 
 Noah did not let the matter end with the fact 
 that God had called him to come himself and 
 bring all his household with him into the ark, the 
 place of salvation. He did not dismiss the matter 
 with a single earnest invitation to his family to 
 come in. He saw that they went in, — his wife, 
 and his sons, and his sons' wives. There is an 
 enormous difference between understanding God's 
 call, and passing on God's call, and seeing that it 
 is accepted. The difference may be the difference 
 between eternal life and eternal death. So God 
 looks to us to see that every member of our 
 household is not only sought, but is brought 
 
40 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 in, — ill to the highest spiritual privileges and ex- 
 periences that we are having or have had. It 
 must be done because of the waters of the flood : 
 the results of sin. And Noah was not a young 
 man when he did this. If we are no longer 
 young, and have even wasted our opportunities 
 with our own dear ones for years — the door is 
 still open, the obligation is still upon us. In 
 Christ it can be done. 
 
 r\N the same day were all the fountains of the 
 ^^ great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven 
 were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty- 
 days and forty nights. Genesis vii. 8 to 12. 
 
 When God cleanses from sin. He does it thor- 
 oughly and completely. His cleansing of sin 
 out of the life of any man who will let Him is 
 done in this same thorough way. He opens the 
 flood of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ upon 
 him, and on the same day He breaks up the 
 fountains of the deep within that man's heart ; 
 and so from without and from within the sin is 
 flooded out of his life. Until that is done Christ 
 can get no fair chance at a life. We must let 
 Him cleanse us completely from our sin before 
 He can keep us from continued sinning. Some 
 who are trying to serve Christ have never yet let 
 God in Christ purge the sin wholly out of their 
 lives. Father, show me this morning the mean- 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 4I 
 
 ing of sin in all its blackness and horror and 
 death, that I may let Thee cleanse me from it as 
 Thou didst cleanse Thy world with the waters 
 of the flood. " Wash me, and I shall be whiter 
 than snow " (Ps. li. 7). 
 
 " There is a fountain filled with blood 
 Drawn from Immanuel's veins. 
 And sinners plunged beneath that flood 
 Lose all their guilty stains." 
 
 /J ND they went in unto Noah into the ark, two 
 -^ and two of alt flesh wherein is the breath of life. 
 Genesis vii. 13 to 16. 
 
 God's salvation by the ark was just as com- 
 plete and thorough as God's cleansing by the 
 flood. As we read over this entire passage, its 
 detailed itemization and reiterations seem in- 
 tended to leave us in no doubt as to this. Every 
 one in Noah's household, and the chosen repre- 
 sentatives of every beast, and of all cattle, and of 
 every creeping thing, and of every bird, — all 
 were saved. When God starts in to save, He 
 saves to the uttermost. So Christ " is able to 
 save to the uttermost [Gr., completely] them 
 that draw near unto God through Him " (Heb. 
 vii. 25). 
 
 And these were saved •* unto Noah, into the 
 ark." Noah brought them. God wants certain 
 souls saved unto ;;/^, into Christ. He wants me 
 
42 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 to bring them in, bring them to Christ. He may 
 have some prepared and ready for this to-day, 
 only awaiting my invitation. Noah met his re- 
 sponsibility, because he kept so close to God, 
 daily and habitually walking with Him. Think 
 of the obligation and the privilege that God lays 
 upon us : that souls shall, by coming unto us, 
 enter into Christ ! 
 
 /JND the flood was forty days upon the earth ; 
 ■^■^ and the waters increased, and hare up the arky 
 and it was lifted up above the earth. Genesis vii. 17. 
 
 The very thing that destroyed all who were 
 opposing God lifted up to safety those who were 
 working with God. And \.h.Q first mentioned re- 
 sult of the destroying flood is not destruction, 
 but uplifting and safety to God's loyal children. 
 What need we fear ? Why should we ever fear ? 
 
 yfND the flood was . . . upon the earth; 
 -^-^ and the waters increased . . . and the 
 waters prevailed, and increased greatly . . . 
 and the waters prevailed exceedingly ; . . . and 
 all the high mountains that were under the whole 
 heaven were covered. Genesis vii. 17 to 22. 
 
 That is the way God's cleansing flood of puri- 
 fication works. How the Bible writer piles up 
 the description as the waters pile up ! And not 
 until every high mountain under the whole 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 43 
 
 heaven was covered, we are told, did the flood 
 cease to increase and prevail. What a type is 
 this of the cleansing flood of the blood of Jesus 
 Christ ! His redemption is upon the earth, and 
 it is increasing, and prevailing, and it shall pre- 
 vail and increase greatly, and prevail exceedingly 
 until all the high mountains of sin under the 
 whole heaven shall be covered. In my life there 
 have been mountains of sin so high that it did 
 not seem possible for them to be covered. But 
 they have been, — not only exceedingly, but ex- 
 ceeding abundantly above all that I could ask or 
 think. 
 
 /f^^ every living thing was destroyed thai was 
 -" upon the face of the ground, both man, and 
 cattle, and creeping things, and birds of the heavens ; 
 and they were destroyed from the earth : and Noah 
 only was left, and they that ivere with him in the ark. 
 Genesis vii. 23, 24. 
 
 The word that closes the record of the flood's 
 destruction is a word of life, not death. Much 
 had been wiped out, but not they who were liv- 
 ing according to God's will. Nor shall they 
 ever be. 
 
 /fND God remembered Noah. Genesis viii. i. 
 -" When there does not seem to be anything 
 left in the world but God and myself, — when 
 
44 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 everything else is swept away, — that is enough : 
 God remembers me. And God is all love and 
 all power. 
 
 ^A^D God made, a wind to pass over the earth, 
 -^ and the waters assuaged; and the fountains also 
 of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, 
 and the rain from heaven was restrained ; and the 
 waters returned from off the earth continuall/. Gen- 
 esis viii. I to 5. 
 
 All this because God remembered Noah. The 
 forces of heaven and earth were enlisted, re- 
 versed, ordered about, solely because God re- 
 membered Noah, and had plans for him. God 
 has not forgotten you ; He has plans for you. 
 He will as readily order about the forces of the 
 universe on your account as He did on Noah's. 
 His plans for Noah were also plans for the whole 
 world through Noah. So they are for you : He 
 will use you for the good of the whole world, if 
 you will let Him. 
 
 DUT the dove found no rest for the sole of her 
 ■^ foot, and she returned unto him, . . . and 
 the dove came in to him at eventide ; and, to, in her 
 mouth an olive-leaf Genesis viii. 6 to 12. 
 
 God knows just when to withhold from us any 
 visible sign of encouragement, and when to grant 
 us such a sign. How good it is that we may 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 45 
 
 trust Him anyway ! When all visible evidences 
 that He is remembering us are withheld, that is 
 best : He wants us to realize that His word, His 
 promise of remembrance, is more substantial and 
 dependable than any evidence of our senses. 
 When He sends the visible evidence, that is well 
 also : we appreciate it all the more after we have 
 trusted Him without it. Those who are readiest 
 to trust God without other evidence than His 
 word always receive the greatest number of 
 visible evidences of His love. 
 
 yf^D in the second month, on the seven and 
 -" twentieth day of the month, was the earth dry. 
 Genesis viii. 13, 14. 
 
 The flood was no mere forty-day test, as most 
 people are inclined to think. Noah and his 
 family were shut in the ark for a year and ten 
 days (cf. vii. 11). God's tests sometimes last a 
 good while. But their outcome is worth wait- 
 ing for. 
 
 ^A^D Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, 
 -^ and his sons' wives with him. Genesis viii. 
 15 to 19. 
 
 God had kept them imprisoned for over a year 
 because of His surpassing love for them. And 
 God now released them from prison into a new, 
 sin-cleansed freedom, for the same reason. We 
 
46 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 can trust God for our imprisonments, and we can 
 trust God for our releases. He will not continue 
 the one, nor defer the other, a moment too long. 
 In each case, God's love for others yet unborn 
 was working in and through His love for Noah 
 and his family. So His love for us always looks 
 out toward others through us. 
 
 /iND Noah builded an altar unto Jehovah , , . 
 -^■*- and offered burnt-offerings. Genesis viii. 20 
 to 22. 
 
 May we be as quick to thank God for every 
 deliverance and blessing as we are to pray for 
 them when they are needed ! 
 
 To some it may seem hard that certain of these 
 innocent animals and birds were saved during 
 the long year of flood and destruction, only to 
 lose their life as they were offered up in sacrifice 
 to God. But they were simply entering into the 
 highest privilege that God offers us : to lose hfe 
 and self in sacrificial service to Him. That was 
 worth having life prolonged for a year. The 
 animal sacrifice was only a type : with us it may 
 be real. God has spared us and kept us through 
 all the dangers of our hfe so far, in order that we 
 may find life by losing our lives in sacrificial 
 service to Him. Shall we come up to the high 
 standard and attainment of these animals of 
 Noah's ark ? 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS A,7 
 
 yf^D God blessed Noah and his sonSj and said 
 -^-^ unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and re- 
 plenish the earth. Genesis ix. i. 
 
 As Noah and his sons were saved and com- 
 missioned to be fruitful and replenish the earth 
 physically, so we are saved and commissioned to 
 be fruitful spiritually, and replenish the kingdom. 
 We must constantly be the means, under God, of 
 the new birth of souls in Christ, thus multiplying 
 our own spiritual birth and salvation, if we would 
 show the best evidence of loyalty to our Saviour. 
 
 DUT flesh with the life thereof which is the blood 
 •^ thereof, shall ye not eat. Genesis ix. 2 to 7. 
 
 Here is an early gleam of the great truth which 
 runs throughout the Old Testament and the New, 
 that the blood is the life : the truth that found its 
 climax and culmination in the outpouring of the 
 blood of the Son of God, that we might have life, 
 His life, spotless, sinless, deathless. May I give 
 His white life the mastery over mine to-day ! 
 
 /ESTABLISH my covenant with you . . . 
 / will establish my covenant with you. Genesis 
 ix. 8 to II. 
 
 When God makes us a promise, or gives us 
 His word on any point, two facts are to be re- 
 membered : the thing zs done (" I establish "), for 
 
48 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 He has said it, and there is no such thing as time 
 with God, only an ever-present eternity ; and the 
 thing will be done (" I will establish "), for God 
 is dealing with us who Hve here in time, and that 
 which is finished with Him must yet be shown 
 forth to us in our future. 
 
 /i^D the how shall be in the cloud; and I will 
 •^-^ look upon it, that I may remember the everlast- 
 ing covenant between God and every living creature 
 of all flesh that is upon the earth. Genesis ix. 12 to 17. 
 
 If God's love is so far-reaching that He puts 
 on record a definite covenant between Himself 
 and the animals, birds, fishes, and every tiniest 
 creature of the earth, and then declares that He 
 sets up a perpetual reminder for Himself, that He 
 may never forget this pledge that He has made, — 
 then you and I need have no fear of being over- 
 looked or left out of God's infinite but particular- 
 ized love, for a hair's breadth of time. 
 
 CT^HESE three were the sons of Noah : and of these 
 ■^ was the whole earth overspread. Genesis ix. 
 
 18, 19. 
 
 It behooved them to be pretty careful of their 
 
 ways, for of them was the whole earth overspread. 
 
 How would it affect us to know that the earth 
 
 was now to be populated with the kind of people 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 49 
 
 that we are? That is just what is happening, 
 within our range of influence. We are making 
 people more hke ourselves every day we live, 
 whether we want to or not. It pays to guard 
 the influence with which we are overspreading 
 our world. 
 
 TJE was a mighty hunter before Jehovah: where- 
 -^^ fore it is said, Like Nimrod a might/ hunter 
 before Jehovah. Genesis x. i to 32. 
 
 The special mention that Nimrod did his hunt- 
 ing ** before Jehovah " seems to imply that this, 
 the chief activity of his life, for which he was 
 noted, was done before, or in the conscious pres- 
 ence of, God, and, therefore, as unto God. If a 
 huntsman in that early and primitive age of the 
 world could so faithfully live unto God in his 
 life-work, surely we ought to measure up to his 
 standard to-day in our enlightened and privileged 
 Christ-era. Is our life so God-centred that 
 every one says of us, " T/iat man is living before 
 Jehovah " ? 
 
 f^OME let us build us a city. . . . So Je- 
 ^ hovah scattered them abroad . . . and they 
 left off building the city. Genesis xi. i to 9. 
 
 This passage is mysterious and difficult, but 
 it seems to have this message : these people 
 were wholly selfish in their purposes : " Let us 
 
50 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 make us a name ; lest we be scattered." There 
 was no purpose to serve the rest of the world, 
 only self-glorification and self-preservation. But 
 effectiveness to this end is unity and cooperation, 
 for in such there is always strength, even for evil 
 purposes. God points this out when He says 
 that now nothing will be withholden from them, 
 of their unworthy purposes. It would have been 
 an unloving thing for God to permit the accom- 
 plishment, in the strength of united effort, of their 
 self-centred purposes : so, in love here, as al- 
 ways, He defeats the end which would only have 
 harmed them, and breaks up the unholy syndi- 
 cate. What a blessing for them that they left off 
 building the city ! What a blessing for us when 
 God breaks up our plans for some end that — 
 even though our intentions are good — would 
 only harm us and others if we succeeded! It 
 was of God's great love that " they left off build- 
 ing," for " except Jehovah build the house, they 
 labour in vain that build it." 
 
 OH EM . . . hegat Arpachshad . . . Terah 
 ^ begat Abram. Genesis xi. lo to 28. 
 
 This long, dry hst of " begats," just a lot of 
 genealogy, does not seem to mean much, nor do 
 the lives of the men named in it seem especially 
 worthy of any record whatsoever. But — certain 
 ones of them were leading on, in direct Hne of 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 5 1 
 
 fatherhood, first to Abraham, one of the giant, 
 heroic figures of all ages, and beyond to Jesus 
 Christ, the Son of God and the Saviour of men. 
 It was worth while to have a place and a part in 
 that! They did not know for what God was 
 using them ; nor do we know for what God is 
 using us. But any one of them might have 
 robbed himself of his intended place in this line, 
 as we may rob ourselves of the privilege God in- 
 tends for us. May we be willing, by simple 
 duty-doing, to stay in our seemingly common- 
 place position of high privilege 
 
 /f^D Sard was barren ; she had no child. Gen- 
 -^-^ esis xi. 29 to 32. 
 
 The barren wife was to become the mother, in 
 ancestry, of the Son of God. Barrenness was a 
 heart-breaking sorrow to any Oriental woman. 
 Emptiness of life and defeat of our purposes is a 
 heart-breaking sorrow to us. But Sarai came to 
 see the time when her barrenness was only the 
 testing of her faith to a richer privilege than she 
 could have dreamed of. So may our present de- 
 feat be. Milcah, proud and happy mother, 
 stayed in the comforts of the Chaldean home. 
 Sarai, her sister-in-law, childless and crushed, 
 left the homeland and went out into a world of 
 unknown dangers and hardships. Which of the 
 two would you rather be now ? 
 
52 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 f^ET thee out of thy country, . . . unto the 
 ^^ land that I will show thee : . . . and I will 
 bless thee, . . . and be thou a blessing. Gen- 
 esis xii. I to 3. 
 
 Four great events sure to come into the life of 
 every one who will let it be so, and to keep com- 
 ing day after day, are set down for me in unmis- 
 takable clearness in these few words. God asks 
 me to get out of the country that I had supposed 
 was my country, to abandon the thing that I had 
 thought was surely for me. He asks me to do 
 this in order that I may enter upon a new terri- 
 tory, or matter, or plan, which is His choice for 
 me, and which He will show me, — yet which He 
 cannot show me until I abandon my old position. 
 If I do this. He will send me a blessing which 
 He cannot otherwise send me unless I do this. 
 And the purpose of all this — my letting go of 
 the old, my entering into the new, my being 
 blessed in so doing — is what ? Just so that my 
 life may be a blessing to others. 
 
 There will be some call upon me to-day to do this 
 very thing : to abandon my own position, in some 
 matter, for God's. May I obey on the instant ! 
 
 00 Abram went, as Jehovah had spoken unto 
 ^ him, . . . and they went forth to go into 
 the land of Canaan ; and into the land of Canaan 
 they came. Genesis xii. 4, 5. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 53 
 
 Is not that a glorious assurance for me to-day ? 
 God said, Set out for the goal that I show thee. 
 Abram set out for it ; and Abram reached it. 
 No man ever failed to reach any goal that God 
 set for him if he simply obeyed God. Yet God 
 sets stupendous goals for us all. They are utterly 
 beyond our reach ; but we are going to reach 
 them, for He has said so. And reach them now 
 and here, in this life, as Abram did. How this 
 lifts us out of the racking uncertainties and agon- 
 izing strain of life that we see in those who do 
 not know God and His promises and His power ! 
 How it rebukes and forbids another instant of 
 worry in our life so long as we live ! Notice, 
 too, that this stupendous goal came to Abram — 
 both its assigning and its reaching — late in life. 
 If we are past our youth, that is no reason 
 for any uncertainty or fear as to great things 
 ahead, as yet unknown and unattempted. When 
 God says. Go, we are to start, and we are to ar- 
 rive : let us never forget that. 
 
 An old Frenchman, veteran of Napoleon's 
 campaigns, was asked by a stranger what the 
 men thought of Napoleon. His eyes snapped 
 with old-time fire as he cried out : " We loved 
 him. We believed in him. Napoleon say, ' Go 
 to the moon ! ' Every man start. Napoleon 
 find the way." 
 
 Shall we not have as much faith in our om- 
 
54 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 nipotent heavenly Father ? " If God is for us, 
 who is against us ? He that spared not His own 
 Son, but dehvered Him up for us all, how shall 
 He not also with Him freely give us all things ? " 
 (Rom. viii. 31, 32). 
 
 And Abram did not enter alone into the place 
 of promise ; those who were dearest to him, and 
 for whom he had special responsibihties, went 
 with him. If God has given me a vision of great 
 blessings, which are so far ahead that they seem 
 impossible of realization, too difficult and too 
 good to be true, let me be sure that, by simple 
 faith and unswerving obedience, into those bless- 
 ings I shall come. And those who are com- 
 mitted to my care, and whom I love most, are 
 to share them with me. May I never hinder 
 God by doubting this ! 
 
 /fND the Canaanite ivas then in the land . . . 
 -" and there builded he an altar unto Jehovah, who 
 appeared unto him. And he removed : . . . and 
 there he builded an altar unto Jehovah. Genesis 
 xii. 6 to 9. 
 
 The Canaanite stood for the most open and 
 flagrant opposition to Jehovah, in degraded and 
 soul-destroying sin. And in the land of promise, 
 to which God had brought Abram, the Canaanite 
 was present as long as Abram lived. But Je- 
 hovah was present also ; and at each stopping 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 55 
 
 place on his journey Abram turned confidently 
 to Him and built altars in His honour. In my 
 land of promise, the kingdom of Jesus Christ 
 now and here on earth, the Canaanite is present 
 — and perhaps will be as long as I live : and I 
 shall be attacked by fierce efforts to drag me into 
 his open revolt against Christ, and the degrada- 
 tion and demorahzation of the sin-mastered life. 
 But God is present also ; and constant, continu- 
 ous altar-erecting, in faith and prayer and service, 
 is my only safety. In Christ alone can I do this, 
 and be kept. 
 
 CjA y, / pray thee, thou art my sister ; thai it may 
 ^ be well with me for thy sake. Genesis xii. 
 lo to 20. 
 
 When a person is making, in general, an hon- 
 est effort to serve the Lord, he always likes to 
 base his wrong-doing on some high plane of 
 moral obligation. Abram, here, did not care 
 anything about his own safety, but he did want 
 to have things go well with him so that he might 
 be enabled to take care of his wife ! That was 
 the only reason why he suggested her lying, — so 
 at least he told himself. Whatever the motive 
 was, sincere or insincere, back of it lay a distrust 
 of the abihty or willingness of the God of truth 
 to care for them if they simply trusted Him and 
 told the truth. It was probably this same dis- 
 
56 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 trust that impelled them, because of famine, to 
 leave the land to which God had brought them. 
 And this pitiable collapse of faith and honour 
 comes just after their splendid, hfe-risking trust 
 in God and His wonderful care of them ! That 
 is the way the Devil tries to strike into any work 
 of God in our lives. The only bright spot in the 
 black incident is God's unwavering care of Abram 
 and Sarai in spite of their cowardly treason. So 
 He has held me, when I have been at my worst. 
 His continuing so to hold me is my only hope ; 
 but it is a glorious hope. " I know Him whom I 
 have believed, and I am persuaded that He is 
 able to guard that which I have committed unto 
 Him" (2 Tim. i. 12). 
 
 /J^D Abram went up out of Egjrpt, he, and his 
 -^■^ wife, and all that he had. Genesis xiii. i, 2. 
 
 That is the way God so often treats us after 
 great sin. Abram had forfeited everything. 
 God saved everything for him, added great 
 wealth to him, and brought them all out of 
 danger into safety. That is the way God has 
 usually treated me after my sin. Instead of 
 stripping me of all that I have forfeited, He has 
 safeguarded it, added richly to my blessings, and 
 brought me into a safe place. Some one has 
 said, Who could ever have conceived of such a 
 God except God Himself! Who could ever ex- 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS S7 
 
 ert such love except God Himself! Who could 
 have the faith to believe that sin-poisoned hu- 
 man nature could respond to such love, except 
 God Himself! Father, may I respond to-day, 
 by faith, and love, and obedience ! And wilt 
 Thou, through Christ Thy Son in me, let this 
 love of Thine shine out through me in my atti- 
 tude toward all my fellows ! 
 
 /JND he went on his journeys . . . unto the 
 ■^^ place where his tent had been at the beginning ; 
 . . . unto the place of the altar, which he had 
 made there at the first: and there Abram called on 
 the name of Jehovah. Genesis xiii. 3, 4. 
 
 When we have wandered away from God, and 
 are conscious of a great break in our fellowship 
 with Him because of our disobedience and faith- 
 lessness toward Him, there is only one thing to 
 do : to get back as quickly as we can to the 
 place where we were at the beginning of our 
 best life in God ; and there, at the altar of com- 
 plete and unconditional surrender — the sacrificed 
 life — call on God the Father again and commit 
 everything once more into His keeping in Christ. 
 It has been said that " the way of advance is the 
 way of remembrance " ; and for most of us, in 
 most things, it is. What we need is not so much 
 new light and guidance, but a going back to the 
 old familiar light and guidance that we have will- 
 
58 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 fully let become obscured or unreal. Then^ as 
 we live true to the best that we have known of 
 God aforetime, He can and will give us gloriously 
 new revelations of Himself. 
 
 /I^D Lot also, who went with AbrarriyhadflockSt 
 ^^ and herds and tents. Genesis xiii. 5. 
 
 It pays to keep in the company of good men. 
 But the pay is highest when we keep in their 
 company for the sake of the highest pay, — some- 
 thing higher than flocks, and herds, and tents : 
 to learn the secret of their fellowship with God. 
 Lot did not seem to want tka^ kind of pay, and 
 he did not get it. 
 
 cr'HEIR substance was great, so that they could 
 -^ not dwell together. Genesis xiii. 6, 7. 
 
 The first recorded result of great wealth was 
 that it separated its owners from each other : the 
 younger man, by it, lost out of his life the best 
 influence that he had ever had ; the older man 
 lost the opportunity of keeping by him and un- 
 der his own influence, as a friend and co-worker, 
 the only one of his own blood and rehgion in all 
 that new country and pagan land. Wealth did 
 not seem to start its owners well, at the begin- 
 ning, and it does not seem to have improved 
 much since then. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 59 
 
 /F thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to 
 the right ; or if thou take the right hand, then I 
 will go to the left. Genesis xiii. 8, 9. 
 
 Abram insisted on choosing first, and it was 
 the kind of " first choice " that we ought always 
 to make: he chose to give the other man first 
 choice. There is not much room for quarrels or 
 misunderstandings when we, in this way, always 
 look out for Number One : by making the other 
 man Number One. 
 
 00 Lot . . . moved his tent as far as Sodom. 
 ^ Now the men of Sodom were wicked. Genesis 
 xiii. 10 to 13. 
 
 Lot's taste of wealth had given him the slant 
 that it usually does give : desire for more wealth. 
 So he based his choice simply on self: How can 
 I get more than I have already ? Not, How can 
 I show Abram the spirit that he has shown me ; 
 nor. How can I do the most good in this choice ? 
 No; simply, How can I get most for myself? 
 The fact that the answer pointed in the direction 
 of notorious wickedness did not change his 
 choice ; for riothing chaiiges the choice when we 
 have once begun to make getting the chief purpose 
 of our lives. 
 
 On the other hand, the truth shines out strongly 
 here, in Abram, that wealth, when accepted not 
 as a possession but as a stewardship, need not 
 
6o MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 demoralize life and character. Abram, of great 
 wealth, was more interested in giving and serving 
 than in getting. So he could, as he did, use his 
 wealth to God's glory. Not money, but the love 
 of money y is the root of every kind of evil. Abram 
 had money ; Lot had the love of money. 
 
 But about one man in ten thousand can have 
 much money without yielding to the love of it. 
 If God has not sent us this perilous stewardship 
 unsought, we had better not take the awful risk 
 of seeking it. 
 
 /JND Jehovah said unto Abram, . . . All 
 ■^^ the land which thou seest, to thee I will give it, 
 and to thy seed forever. Genesis xiii. 14 to 18. 
 
 This promise makes one think of Eph. iii. 20, 
 •' exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or 
 think, according to the power that worketh in 
 us." Abram had not asked God for this bless- 
 ing. It was God's unsought blessing for Abram. 
 The blessings that God sends us unsought are al- 
 ways better than those that we ask Him for. We 
 cannot "ask or think" up to the "exceeding 
 abundantly " of His love. We v/ould not dare 
 to. 
 
 The whole story of Abram, so far, has been 
 the story of God's unsolicited leading of him on, 
 step by step, into an undreamed of enrichment 
 of life. And that is the story of what God is 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 6l 
 
 trying to do for me. Shall I let Him, as Abram 
 did? 
 
 yiND they took Lot, . . . and his ^oods, and 
 -^-^ departed. Genesis xiv. i to 12. 
 
 Lot now begins to pay the price of having 
 chosen what he thought was the best he could 
 get for himself. It was too high a price. No 
 matter what we get when we set out to get all 
 we can for ourselves, the price we pay for it is 
 always too high. 
 
 yJND ivhen Abram heard that his brother was 
 -" taken captive, he led forth his trained men born 
 in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued 
 as far as Dan. Genesis xiv. 13, 14. 
 
 Notice that godliness and righteousness are 
 preeminently sensible and practical. This man 
 of God had several hundred trained men, of his 
 own household, brought up under his personal 
 supervision, ready for instant action in any time 
 of need. When the emergency came, he did not 
 sit down and merely pray for deliverance, — 
 though doubtless he prayed ; he also sprang into 
 action with the decision and resourcefulness that 
 that man alone can show who has habitually been 
 making ready for any call. T/iat is what real 
 godliness does for a man. Lot, the self-seeking 
 dweller in a place of sin, had no such prepared- 
 
62 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 ness for trouble ; when the blow fell, he had to 
 depend upon his pious uncle. 
 
 nLESSED be God Most High, mho hath deliv- 
 •^ ered thine enemies into thy hand. Genesis xiv. 
 15 to 20. 
 
 The first record of a victory in battle by one 
 of God's followers contains the specific statement 
 that God won the victory. So it is always : 
 never a victory in a righteous cause but that it 
 was God, and God only, who won it for us. 
 Only as we forget this are we in danger. 
 
 T WILL not take a thread nor a shoe-latchet, 
 -* Genesis xiv. 21 to 24. 
 
 When a man shuts out from his life and pur- 
 poses, and even from his tolerated desires, the 
 spirit of getting, as we have seen was true of 
 Abram, it will constantly show itself in his life 
 and actions and decisions, to the surprise of 
 others. He will never consent to a gain for him- 
 self, if there is a higher and better way. He is 
 afraid of mere personal gain, as he sees its effects 
 upon the life and character of people around 
 him. Service interests him much more than 
 possessions. 
 
 TpEAR not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy ex- 
 ■^ ceeding great reward. Genesis xv. i. 
 
 Surely these thoughts ought to be enough to 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 63 
 
 carry us through any day of stress, or temptation, 
 or need. God is sufficient to protect us from any 
 sort of impending harm or danger. And God 
 never asks us to work for Him without pay. 
 Therein He differs from the Devil, who is so 
 much harder a taskmaster, and who never pays 
 according to his promises. No hardship that God 
 asks us to undergo in His service begins to equal 
 the greatness of the exceeding great reward that 
 follows. I have never been so supremely happy 
 as when I have been honestly and faithfully 
 striving to do God's will to the uttermost. I 
 want, and I can conceive of, no rewards that can 
 approach those I have tasted from time to time, 
 when I let Him send them, in the doing of His will. 
 
 y/ND he brought him forth abroad, and said, 
 ■^■^ Look now toward heaven, and number the 
 stars, if thou be able to number them : and he said 
 unto him, So shall thy seed be. Genesis xv. 2 to 5. 
 
 When God sets out to do a thing for us, He 
 does it in a prodigality of love-prompted abun- 
 dance that fairly staggers one who reckons things 
 by the coldly calculating standards of earth. 
 Again this brings back Eph. iii. 20; it also re- 
 minds us of Luke vi. 38 and Mai. iii. 10. 
 
 J 
 
 ND he believed in Jehovah ; and he reckoned it 
 to him for righteousness. Genesis xv. 6. 
 There is no higher form or evidence of right- 
 
64 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 eousness, nothing that rejoices the great loving 
 heart of our heavenly Father more than just 
 trusting Him, — completely, sweepingly, un- 
 questioningly. That is the behef that is always 
 reckoned to any one for righteousness. Three 
 times in the New Testament this passage is 
 quoted, it is so significant (Rom. iv. 3 ; Gal. iii. 6 ; 
 Jas. ii. 23). 
 
 Nothing so rejoices an earthly parent as the 
 unquestioning trust of a child when there is no 
 reason to trust except the child's unwavering, 
 unshakeable confidence in the parent. So it is 
 with God. Such belief is never merely passive. 
 It shows itself in our instant doing of anything 
 and everything that God asks, as in Abram's 
 case later (xxii. i to 20). But even while it is 
 called upon to do nothing but beheve, it has in 
 it all the elements and requirements of right- 
 eousness. How simple this makes our religion, 
 if we will but have it so ! 
 
 T AM Jehovah that brought thee out of Ur of the 
 -* Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. 
 Genesis xv. 7. 
 
 God never asks us to believe in Him in an 
 unreasoning or unreasonable way. When He 
 asks us to accept His word that He w^ill do for 
 us something that seems at the time wholly im- 
 possible. He quietly reminds us of what He has 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 65 
 
 already done for us, as reason for our continued 
 belief in Him. God's great work for us in the 
 past is the collateral He offers when He asks us 
 to accept His promissory notes for a future pay- 
 ment which He pledges Himself to make. He 
 may make a heavy draft upon our faith, but — 
 " I am Jehovah that brought thee out of Ur of 
 the Chaldees." 
 
 The collateral that God has already deposited 
 with each of us, in the wonderful things He has 
 done for us, is more than enough to justify our 
 faith to the uttermost. " I am Jehovah " ; that 
 is enough. But in addition to Himself, He has 
 given us His Son in covenant-evidence of His 
 love and purpose for us. Let me accept in 
 glad confidence and eagerness everything He 
 asks me to beheve of Him, as promised to me 
 by Him. 
 
 TI^ HEREBY shall I knoiv that I shall inherit it ) 
 '^'^ . . . Take me a heifer . . . And 
 the birds of prey came down, . . . and Abram 
 drove them away. Genesis xv. 8 to 11. 
 
 When God promises us a great blessing, and 
 we ask how we may know that we shall have it, 
 the answer is always the same : Bj/ your own 
 sacrifice to Me. God cannot fulfill His richest 
 blessings to any of us until we have offered up to 
 Him, in utter completeness of surrender, our- 
 
66 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 selves. Then He can do glorious things for and 
 with our lives. 
 
 And then, also, " the birds of prey " attack a 
 life as never before. The Devil does not like to 
 see any life really sacrificed to God, for he knows 
 how mightily God will use that life to defeat the 
 works of darkness. So the birds of prey come 
 down. We must expect to be attacked and 
 tempted more fiercely and continuously after our 
 life has been wholly surrendere'd to God than we 
 ever were before. 
 
 But there is a still deeper, better meaning in 
 this pledge of fulfillment that God showed 
 Abram. Every Old Testament sacrifice was a 
 foregleam and type of the Sacrifice which was to 
 fulfill all these for all time : that of our Christ, 
 the Son of God. No man's sacrifice without the 
 life-giving sacrifice of Christ could avail any- 
 thing. So Christ's sacrifice for us, which is God's 
 offering for us, is our final and irresistible pledge 
 of the fulfillment of God's promises to us. 
 
 jy^NOW of a surety that thy seed shall be 
 -^^ sojourners in a land that is not theirs / . . . 
 they shall afflict them four hundred years ; . . . 
 and afterward shall they come out with great sub- 
 stance. Genesis xv. 12 to 14. 
 
 An assured part of God's pledged blessing to 
 us is delay and suffering. A delay in Abram's 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 6/ 
 
 own lifetime that seemed to put God's pledge 
 beyond fulfillment was followed by seemingly 
 unendurable delay in the hfe of Abram's de- 
 scendants. But it was only delay : they came 
 " out with great substance." The pledge was 
 redeemed. 
 
 God is going to test me with delays : that I 
 know. And with the delays will come suffering. 
 But through it all stands God's pledge : His 
 New Covenant with me in Christ, and His 
 inviolable promise of every lesser blessing that I 
 need. The delay and the suffering are part of 
 the promised blessing; let me praise Him for 
 them to-day ; and let me wait on the Lord and 
 be of good courage ; He will strengthen my 
 heart. 
 
 DEHOLD, a smoking furnace, and a flaming 
 ■^ torch that passed between these pieces. In that 
 day Jehovah made a covenant ivith Abram. Genesis 
 
 XV. 15 to 21. 
 
 So God accepted the sacrifice that Abram, at 
 God's direction, was offering Him ; but not until 
 God had touched it with His own purifying fire. 
 Then He confirmed and renewed His covenant 
 with Abram. 
 
 That is just what I must expect God to do with 
 all that I offer Him, especially with my life itself. 
 It may be offered up in sacrifice to God as com- 
 
68 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 pletely and sincerely as I know how, in sacrifice 
 of life and self unto Him, as He has directed ; yet 
 it cannot be even acceptable to Him until it has 
 been burned out with the purifying heat of His 
 refining fire. It must not surprise me or disturb 
 me when the fire of suffering and testing begins 
 to burn deep. Let me rather rejoice in it as I 
 recognize in it God's accepting of my wholly un- 
 worthy offering, and let me wait in confidence 
 and quietness for His renewing and fulfiUing of 
 His pledges to me. 
 
 jjND Saraiy Abram's wife, took Hagar the 
 -" Egyptian, her handmaid, after Abram had 
 dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her 
 to Abram her husband to be his wife. Genesis xvi. 
 I to 6. 
 
 See the taint of Egypt cropping out again ! 
 A short cut to the accomplishment of God's 
 plans, — shorter than He intends, — always means 
 a long road of wearisome misery and regret. 
 Abram and Sarai had waited ten years for the 
 child on whom God's promise depended, and it 
 had not come. So they took matters into their 
 own hands, in a way that they knew was not His 
 way. 
 
 The tragedy of it is that this record immedi- 
 ately follows the record of Abram's splendid un- 
 selfishness (xiv), then his historic and undaunted 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 69 
 
 faith, and God's sweeping, miraculous assurance 
 and new covenant (xv). After these heights of 
 heaven itself, slump goes everything into the 
 mushy, swampy lowlands of devil-directed dis- 
 trust: wedlock dishonoured, God dishonoured, 
 Abram weakly a partner to the thing, Sarai 
 mocked, the servant abused and driven away. 
 What an awful price we pay when we try to im- 
 prove upon God's plain will for us ! He says, 
 Let Me bless you beyond all reckoning. We 
 say, I'll attend to the blessing in a better way : 
 and then we eat Dead Sea fruit. 
 
 nETURN to thy mistress^ and submit thyself 
 •^*- under her hands. . . . I will greatly 
 multiply thy seed. . . . Thou art a God that 
 seeth. Genesis xvi. 7 to 16. 
 
 Go straight back into the worst hardship you 
 have ever known ; that was God's loving message 
 to the discouraged, bewildered fugitive. But 
 God knew that in that way He could best care 
 for her and her unborn child. 
 
 His next word was that of the richest blessing 
 that any Oriental man or woman could think of: 
 many descendants. No wonder the heart-broken, 
 hunted woman cried out in thanksgiving, ** Thou 
 art a God that seeth." 
 
 Dr. Aked has done us all a service in pointing 
 out that this verse (in the A. V., " Thou God 
 
70 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 seest me") has been slandered in its misuse for 
 many years. We commonly quote it as mean- 
 ing that God always has His eye on us — as a de- 
 tective or policeman ; that we cannot get beyond 
 His sight in any wrong thing we do. That is 
 completely wrenching it out of its meaning. 
 Hagar's cry was one of thanksgiving, joy, grati- 
 tude. Even out here in the wilderness, where 
 she had not looked unto Him for help in her ex- 
 tremity, His eye in ceaseless, watchful love was 
 upon her, and He would never abandon her. She 
 never could get beyond God's love. Nor can 
 we. Our God is a God of seeing; He sees and 
 meets our need even when He may seem to have 
 forgotten all about us. 
 
 T AM God Almightf ; walk before me, and be thou 
 -^ perfect. And I will make my covenant between 
 me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. 
 And Abram fell on his face : and God talked with 
 him. Genesis xvii. i to 3. 
 
 Here is the whole priceless privilege of fellow- 
 ship in prayer and Hfe with God, and its results. 
 It is for me exactly as it was with Abram. I am 
 to walk before God to-day, in completeness : I 
 am to live and act conscious of the fact that I am 
 in His presence all the day long ; therefore I am 
 to do His will completely, — to the limit of my 
 light, not part way. That is the meaning of 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 7 1 
 
 " perfect " ; not sinless perfection, for God does 
 not enjoin the impossible. Then God pledges 
 Himself to multiply me spiritually in the lives of 
 others, so that the life of Christ in me may be 
 communicated to and reproduced in others wher- 
 ever I go. 
 
 And God will talk with me, freely and lov- 
 ingly and revealingly, if I will give Him a real 
 opportunity to do so, by going apart by myself, 
 alone with Him, and literally falling on my face 
 before Him. Do we give God a chance to talk 
 with us as He longs to ? 
 
 Jl/fy covenant is with thee. . . . Neither shall 
 -^^-^ thy name any more he called. Abram, but thy 
 name shall be Abraham. Genesis xvii. 4 to 8. 
 
 All that any one of us can ask or need as we 
 enter upon the day's march, with its dangers and 
 opportunities ahead, is this definite pledge of 
 God's : My covenant is with thee. And we have 
 His covenant in better, richer form than Abram 
 had it, — his New Covenant in Jesus Christ. That 
 New Covenant, which God in Christ pledges Him- 
 self to keep with us, includes such agreements as 
 these : " He that abideth in Me, and I in him, 
 the same beareth much fruit " ; " If ye abide in 
 Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever 
 ye will, and it shall be done unto you " ; " Lo, I 
 am with you always, even unto the end of the 
 
^2 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 world " ; "I can do all things in Him that 
 strengtheneth me." 
 
 Moreover, our names, like Abram's name, are 
 changed as the result of the covenant. " No 
 longer," says our Lord to us, " do I call you 
 servants ; . . . but I have called you friends " 
 (John XV. 15); and, "If any man is in Christ, 
 there is a new creation " (2 Cor. v. 17 margin). 
 One's name, which in the East means his inner- 
 most personality, is wholly changed ; he is born 
 anew. That is the covenant in which God 
 pledges Himself to me to-day. 
 
 /JNI^ God said unto Abraham, And as for theCy 
 -" thou shall keep my covenant, thou, and thy 
 seed after thee throughout their generations. . . . 
 As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name 
 Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. And I will 
 bless her. Genesis xvii. 9 to 16. 
 
 God never asks us to keep His best blessings 
 to ourselves. They are always of such a sort 
 that we want to share them ; and we always can 
 share them, and must share them if we are to 
 keep them. God's covenant with Abraham, 
 with all the blessings that it carried of fellowship 
 and the special favour and protection of God, 
 was for Abraham's descendants throughout gen- 
 erations to come. 
 
 Moreover, the one dearest to him on earth 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 73 
 
 was to have her name changed, as his had been, 
 and to share in the blessing. All that Christ 
 means to us, as God's covenant and richest 
 blessing to us, those who are dearest to us can 
 have also. If our name has been changed, if in 
 Christ there has been in us a new creation, so it 
 can be for those dearest to us. We are Christ's 
 key to their lives for Christ. If they do not 
 enter into our richest blessings, the fault and 
 failure are ours. God would have us in no 
 doubt as to this. Love, and faith, and prayer, 
 and patience, and Christ will accomplish it. 
 
 /f^D Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael 
 -^^ might live before thee! And God said, Nay, 
 but Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son. Genesis 
 xvii. 17 to 21. 
 
 Abraham did not dare to ask God outright for 
 the direct keeping of His promise in the best 
 way that could be thought of, but timidly sug- 
 gested that He now do the best that human 
 possibilities offered. And God, instead of deny- 
 ing him the blessing that he was forfeiting by 
 his unbelief, holds true to His promise and does 
 the thing that Abraham knew was best but 
 thought impossible. 
 
 There are " bests " in our own life and in the 
 lives of those dear to us, which long ago were 
 our ideals, and which we know were and are 
 
74 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 God's ideals for us and for them, but which we 
 have given up as no longer possible. And we 
 are weakly and timidly asking God for some 
 second-best blessing instead, as though that were 
 the best He could now do. He wants us to 
 claim now, for ourselves and for others, the best 
 that we have ever dared to think of, and then 
 ask Him confidently to do better than that 
 for us. He will. Exceeding abundantly above 
 all that we ask or think, according to the 
 Power that worketh in us — that is our authoriza- 
 tion. 
 
 TN the selfsame day, as God had said unto him, 
 -* Genesis xvii. 22 to 27. 
 
 Instant obedience is the only kind of obedience 
 there is; delayed obedience is disobedience. 
 Every time God calls us to any duty, He is 
 offering to make a covenant with us ; doing the 
 duty is our part, and He will do His part in 
 special blessing. The only way we can obey is 
 by obeying in the selfsame day, as Abraham 
 did. To be sure, we often postpone a duty and 
 then do it as fully as we can later on. It is 
 better to do this than not to do it at all. But it 
 is then, at the best, only a crippled, disfigured, 
 half-way sort of duty-doing; and a postponed duty 
 never can bring the full blessing that God in- 
 tended, and that it would have brought if done at 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 75 
 
 the earliest possible mo^nent. It is a pity to rob 
 ourselves, along with robbing God and others, by 
 procrastination. " In the selfsame day " is the 
 Genesis way of saying, " Do it now." 
 
 /f^D Jehovah appeared unto him ; . . . and 
 -^^ he lifted up his eyes and looked^ and, to, three 
 men stood over against him ; and when he saw them, 
 he ran to meet them. Genesis xviii. i to 8. 
 
 Every visitor who comes into my life to-day 
 is an appearance of Jehovah unto me. And 
 "visitor" may mean interruption. Any and 
 every interruption in my life, as brought into it 
 by other persons in ways not of my seeking nor 
 of my control, is a visitor sent or permitted of 
 God. Shall I meet these, His appearances, as 
 Abraham did : run to meet them in eagerness 
 for the opportunity that they offer ? Not unless 
 I do can I get the blessing which God is trying 
 to send by them. 
 
 This is as beautiful a picture of true Oriental 
 hospitality as one is ever likely to find in all 
 literature. There is no reason to suppose 
 Abraham knew that these men were angels or 
 messengers of God, — except that to an Oriental 
 every guest and stranger is such. Abraham 
 simply leaped forward to place himself and all 
 his resources at the service of the strangers 
 whom he at once made his guests. And he 
 
76 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 entertained angels unawares. So may we, if we 
 will receive eagerly, as from God, every one who 
 crosses our path in Hfe. The best meal we can 
 offer them is the bread of hfe. This is a call to 
 daily personal evangelism, as well as to the 
 recognizing of interruptions as God's visits and 
 tests. 
 
 TS anything too hard for Jehovah I Genesis xviii. 
 •^ 9 to 15. 
 
 Here is God's loving challenge to you and to 
 me to-day. He wants us to think of the deepest, 
 highest, worthiest desire and longing of our 
 hearts, something which perhaps was once our 
 ideal for ourselves or for some one dear to us, 
 yet which has been so long unfulfilled that we 
 have looked upon it as only a lost ideal, that 
 which might have been but now cannot be, and 
 so have given up hope of seeing it realized in 
 this life. That thing, if it is in line with what 
 we know to be His expressed will (as a son to 
 Abraham and Sarah was), God intends to do for 
 us, even if we know that it is of such utter im- 
 possibility that we only laugh at the absurdity 
 of any one's supposing it could ever now come 
 to pass. That thing God intends to do for us, 
 if we will let Him. 
 
 " Is anything too hard for Jehovah ? " Not 
 when we believe in Him enough to go forward 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 77 
 
 and do His will, and let Him do the impossible 
 for us. Even Abraham and Sarah could have 
 blocked God's plan if they had continued to dis- 
 believe in Him. The only thing too hard for 
 Jehovah is deliberate, continued disbelief in His 
 love and power and our final rejection of His 
 plans for us. If our lost ideal still fails to be 
 realized, it will be not because of our past fail- 
 ure, but because of our continued, deliberate 
 refusal to let God send it to us. Nothing is 
 too hard for Jehovah to do for them that trust 
 Him. 
 
 TpOR I have known him, to the end that he may 
 ■^ command his children and his household after 
 him, that they may keep the way of Jehovah. Gen- 
 esis xviii. i6 to 19. 
 
 That is why God '* knows " any of us on earth : 
 to the end that others through us may know 
 Him and keep His way. Is it not His chief 
 reason for keeping me alive to-day ? Some day 
 we shall know even as we are known ; but until 
 then it is solely God's love and goodness in 
 knowing us that enables us to hve and to serve. 
 Let me make sure that I understand this, His 
 purpose in knowing and keeping me, and that I 
 do not let other things, of infinitely less impor- 
 tance, come between me and my commission. 
 Father, may Thy Son, my Saviour and Master, 
 
7^ MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 and Thy Holy Spirit, my Friend and Strength- 
 ener, use me to-day as the unobstructing com- 
 municator of Thyself to the lives of all whom I 
 meet ! May many others, through Thyself work- 
 ing in me, keep Thy way. 
 
 T WILL go down now, and see whether the/ have 
 -* done altogether according to the cry of it, which 
 is come unto me. Genesis xviii. 20, 21. 
 
 God is very, very patient, and very, very fair. 
 This entirely human way of describing His thor- 
 ough investigation of the exact condition of a 
 place before taking any action is simply a sug- 
 gestion of how long He waits, how patiently He 
 works, how thoroughly He satisfies Himself that 
 all has been done that could be done, before He 
 ever, in any life, lets the full result of sin work 
 out its own end : death. Had He not treated 
 you and me in this same patient, loving way, we 
 should have been blotted out by our own sins 
 long ago. Even now God is waiting, and urging 
 a change in the lives of many who have really 
 given themselves to Christ and taken Him as 
 their Saviour, but who are holding on to sins 
 that are deadly — sins of pride or self-will, or 
 others, preventing full surrender and the master- 
 ing, never-interrupted, indwelHng presence of 
 Christ in their lives. He will not strike down 
 or cut off until we make Him. He waits and 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 79 
 
 hopes so eagerly. May we not disappoint Him ! 
 May we never force Him to realize, as He had 
 to about Sodom and Gomorrah, that His worst 
 fears about us were true ! 
 
 J HA VE taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, 
 -* mho am but dust and ashes. Genesis xviii. 
 22 to i^. 
 
 God loves a daring prayer. We know it, be- 
 cause Christian history is filled with the evidences 
 of it : of God's eager, lavish answers to the 
 prayers of the George M tillers, the Hudson Tay- 
 lors, the new-born Korean Church, and the tens 
 of thousands who have dared to stand before 
 Jehovah and challenge Him to a great test 
 of His love and power. We call it a " great " 
 test; He does not; for has any man ever 
 put any strain upon God's omnipotence and all- 
 love? 
 
 It has been pointed out that Abraham, and not 
 God, stopped first, in this prayer ; and it is so. 
 God gave no evidence of the " anger" that Abra- 
 ham seemed to fear, nor of exhaustion or im- 
 patience. Perhaps Abraham might have gone 
 farther, and with Lot alone — and God — have 
 saved Sodom, physically and spiritually. We 
 do not know ; but we do know that we can never 
 dare too much in asking God for blessings that 
 are in the line of His will. 
 
80 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 /f ND Lot sat in the gate of Sodom : . . . 
 -" and he said, Behold now, my lords, turn aside, 
 I pray you, into your servant's house. Genesis 
 xix. I to 3. 
 
 A gleam of shining white light cuts through 
 the awful blackness of this Sodom picture. By 
 his own choice, impelled by personal greed, Lot 
 had been living now for years in a place of sin. 
 Yet when these two strangers came, he treated 
 them according to the same high standards of 
 the God-given hospitality that Abraham, with 
 whom he had once hved, had shown them : and 
 he was the only man in Sodom who would do 
 this. Abraham's influence for good endured 
 above all the degrading influences in which Lot 
 lived, and in the end saved Lot and his family. 
 There is the light-gleam. It is evidently there 
 because Abraham walked with God. May I 
 walk with God so faithfully that He can, through 
 me, reach others in this enduring way 1 
 
 /1RISE, , . . lest thou he consumed in the 
 -^ iniquity of the city. But he lingered ; and the 
 men laid hold upon his hand ; . . . Jehovah be- 
 ing merciful unto him : and they brought him forth. 
 Genesis xix. 12 to 16. 
 
 We have never abandoned any sin of our own 
 accord, and we never shall. It is only because 
 God Himself, in Christ His Son, enters forcibly 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 8 1 
 
 into our life, and lays hold upon us, and leads us 
 out of sin, that we ever give it up. You and I 
 know how many times we have lingered, when 
 He was entreating us, " Arise, lest thou be con- 
 sumed in this iniquity." 
 
 Notice that the thing in which Lot was in 
 danger of destruction was the iniquity itself; the 
 margin gives, " Or, punishment," but the punish- 
 ment is only a result or ending of the sin ; the 
 sin itself is the thing that destroys and that is 
 most to be feared. Yet we have hngered, and 
 yet God has led us forth, and saved us from the 
 awful destruction in which we were choosing to 
 remain. Let us never forget this. And let us 
 bless His holy name for His merciful insistence 
 upon our salvation, by the gift of Himself in His 
 Son. 
 
 77SCAPE for thy life ; escape to the mountain. 
 -^— ' . . . And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, 
 my Lord : . . . I cannot escape to the moun- 
 tain ; . . . behold now, this city is near to flee 
 unto, and it is a little one : Oh, let me escape thither 
 (is it not a little one )) . . . Therefore the name 
 of the city was called Zoar Ithat is Little']. Genesis 
 xix. 17 to 22. 
 
 And, therefore, the name of Lot might well 
 have been called Little, also. We do not know 
 much more about Lot ; one of the only remain- 
 
82 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 ing two incidents of his life that are recorded is 
 one of drunken degradation. The point is, that 
 when God was directing his Hfe in order to save 
 him, and told him what He, God, believed was 
 the best way to act. Lot held back in distrust 
 and suggested an improvement upon God's plan. 
 God said, " This is your way of safety." Lot 
 said, " I think you must be mistaken." God 
 said, " The plain is no place for you ; get up into 
 the heights of the mountain." Lot said, " I 
 would rather go to Littleness on the plain." 
 And God let him go. God's choice for Lot was 
 a mountain height; Lot's improvement upon 
 God's choice was a place on a lower level called 
 Little. How often we have chosen Littleness as 
 an improved substitute for the mountain top to 
 which God was calling us ! Father, may I take 
 Thy choices for me unquestioningly and eagerly, 
 and live on the height which is my only place of 
 safety ! 
 
 jJND he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, 
 -^ and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that 
 which grew upon the ground. Genesis xix. 23 to 28. 
 
 In one of two ways, destruction must always 
 be the end of every sin. Either Christ must 
 destroy the sin in our lives, or the sin must des- 
 troy our lives. We may have the first if we 
 will ; we must have the second, whether we will 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 83 
 
 or not, if we do not take the first. And God's 
 ordering that sin persisted in must destroy the 
 sinner, is only another evidence of God's love. 
 It is far more merciful than that the sinner 
 should continue unhindered to go on forever in 
 the awful degradation and misery of sin. But 
 Christ's destruction of sin is God's plan for us. 
 Are we letting Christ do this ? Not merely save 
 us hereafter from the penalty of our sins, but 
 save us now from sinning ? If we are not saved 
 now, what reason have we to suppose that we 
 shall be hereafter ? 
 
 GOD remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of 
 the midst of the overthrow. Genesis xix. 29. 
 Because of the prayers of one man God deliv- 
 ered another. That is what God has delighted 
 to do from that day to this. Not only physical 
 deliverance will He give, because of intercessory 
 prayer, but spiritual deliverance also. Probably 
 more men have been saved in Christ because of 
 the faithful and faith-filled prayers of others, since 
 Christ was on earth, than in any other way. To 
 pray for a friend, patiently, enduringly, in un- 
 wavering faith, perhaps for years, and to continue 
 in this prayer until the spiritual deliverance or 
 blessing of that friend, for which we prayed, is 
 completed, is the highest service, privilege and 
 obligation that God gives us. How faithless we 
 
84 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 have been to this obligation! What a joy of 
 heaven itself it is to recognize and meet this obli- 
 gation I Who is even now being " sent out of the 
 midst of the overthrow " because oi your prayers ? 
 
 /JND Lot ivent up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the 
 -^^ mountain; . . . for he feared to dwell in 
 Zoar, Genesis xix. 30. 
 
 So that is what Lot's improvement upon God's 
 choice for him amounted to. He said, " Not Thy 
 will ; but mine." God gave him what he asked 
 for; and when he got it he found he did not 
 want it. But he could never regain, now, what 
 he had lost in rejecting God's will for him at the 
 time that God wanted him to take it. When 
 God offers us a blessing — which His will for us 
 always is — we cannot turn from it, try our own 
 plans until we find them to be failures, and then 
 go back and get the blessing we declined. We 
 may get a second or third best then, and it will 
 still be better than anything we could devise; 
 but the '' first best " of God can be had only by 
 instant obedience to His first call. Father, may 
 I give all Thy plans for me the supremacy in my 
 life to-day. 
 
 J 
 
 ND Abraham said . . . But God came. 
 Genesis xx. i to 7. 
 Abraham feared and distrusted God. Then 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 8$ 
 
 he lied, and, so far as he could, wrecked and 
 flung from him the whole great covenant that 
 God had made with him for himself and for the 
 redemption of the world ; the covenant that was 
 to lead to the birth of Jesus Christ, the Saviour 
 of mankind. Everything for time and eternity 
 was lost for Abraham and Sarah, by Abraham's 
 sin. " But God earned By direct, supernatural 
 intervention He stopped the awful onrush of 
 Abraham's sin-chosen destruction, and saved 
 everything. That is the kind of Father our 
 God is. 
 
 Notice several facts. This sin occurred in the 
 life of one who had habitually walked with God. 
 It came late in his life, after God's covenant had 
 been renewed and reaffirmed to both husband 
 and wife. It came after Abraham had, by inter- 
 cessory prayer, saved Lot from Sodom, and God 
 had shown infinite readiness to do anything that 
 Abraham asked. The sin was not a new one, 
 but an old one, and Abraham had miserably 
 failed, and been saved in exactly the same way 
 before (Gen. xii. 10-20). The sin came through 
 lack of faith in God's ability or willingness to do 
 what He had already shown He could and would 
 do. Abraham's only hope was in God's holding 
 on to him. 
 
 Let us take all these lessons deep into our 
 hearts. We need them to-day. 
 
86 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 /JND Abraham said of Sarah his wifCy She is my 
 -" sister. . . . And God said, . . . He 
 is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shall 
 live. Genesis xx. 2, 6, 7. 
 
 Abraham sinned, the old sin in the old way, 
 only it was a worse sin now because he knew 
 God better than before. And God — instead of 
 casting Abraham off forever as he deserved, or, 
 at the very least, taking from him all his promised 
 privilege and leadership, and saving him only " as 
 by fire " — gives him new, high privilege before a 
 king, as God's own specially appointed repre- 
 sentative, and says that he shall pray for this 
 king in order that his, the king's, sin may be 
 forgiven ! 
 
 Can you imagine Abraham's breaking heart 
 of humiliation, the blinding tears of joy, when he 
 came to himself and saw how God was treat- 
 ing him ? We all know about it. We have 
 sinned, deliberately, in black repudiation of 
 all God's love and goodness ; and God has 
 only heaped fresh responsibilities, honours, 
 privileges upon us, and shamed us back to 
 Himself by the overwhelming evidence of His 
 purpose to keep on trusting us to the end, 
 however we may distrust Him. That is God's 
 way. Let it be our way toward others who dis- 
 appoint us. And let us not disappoint God to- 
 day. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 8/ 
 
 rHEN Abimelech called Abraham, and said unto 
 /u'm, . . . Thou hast brought on me and 
 on m/ kingdom a great sin. . . . And Abraham 
 saidy Because I thought, Surely the fear of God is not 
 in this place. Genesis xx. 8 to i8. 
 
 There is never any position or circumstance in 
 life in which a child of God, who is Hving and 
 walking with and serving God, has any right to 
 say, " The fear of God is not in this place." The 
 moment we say it, and act as though it were so, 
 we sin ourselves and cause others to sin, as Abra- 
 ham did. The " fear of God " is there, in us at 
 least ; and it is there also in God's ordering of 
 the lives of those who seem not to know or care 
 anything about Him. The darker the things 
 about us become the more we need to remember 
 this. If we depart a hair's breadth from what 
 we know God wants us to do, things then will 
 indeed be dark: our own sin and the conse- 
 quences of it in the lives of others make a situa- 
 tion tragically worse than it needed, or ought, to 
 have been. Let me see to it that the " fear of 
 God " is masterfully in 7;ie all the day long : then 
 it shall be in every situation into which He may 
 bring me. 
 
 yf^D Jehovah visited Sarah as he had saidj and 
 •^■^ Jehovah did unto Sarah as he had spoken 
 . . . at the set time of which God had spoken. 
 Genesis xxi. i to 7. 
 
SS MESSAGES 1^0 Ji THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 Twenty-five years before, God had made His 
 first recorded promise to Abraham concerning 
 this event. At the time set by God, not by 
 Abraham, it came to pass. Because Abraham 
 and Sarah in their own minds had set the time 
 very much earlier and had been disappointed, 
 they had given up hope long before this. But 
 God, in His own good time, not a day earlier, 
 fulfilled His promise. Have you waited patiently, 
 in unshaken, unswerving trust, for twenty-five 
 years, for that cherished hope of yours which you 
 believed to be God's will for you or for some one 
 else ? Or have you, after a year or two of wait- 
 ing, perhaps even five or ten years of waiting, 
 grown discouraged and hopeless ? Your " set 
 time " may be longer than Abraham's — thirty, 
 forty, or fifty years. But God's word cannot fail. 
 Wait on the Lord : be of good courage, and He 
 shall strengthen thine heart : wait, I say, on the 
 Lord. 
 
 /JND Abraham . . . sent her aivay, . . . 
 -^-^ And the water in the bottle was spent. . . . 
 And God heard. . . . And God opened her e/es, 
 and she saw a well of water. Genesis xxi. 8 to 21. 
 
 It does not say that God miraculously created 
 a well of water to save Hagar's life and her boy's, 
 but only that " God opened her eyes " that she 
 should see what had been there all the time. Our 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 89 
 
 life is always lived in the midst of God's special 
 provisions for our particular needs. When it 
 seems to us that the time has come, through the 
 cruelty or thoughtlessness or sin of others, when 
 all is over for us, and our situation is beyond 
 hope, then God opens our eyes : and behold, " a 
 well of water." Dr. Horton has said that the 
 resources of the Christian life are just Jesus 
 Christ. When all hope seems to have died. He 
 is right here ; and when our eyes have been 
 opened, we may see, and take, if we will, of this 
 well of water springing up into eternal life. 
 
 Read the story of that other woman of long 
 ago, who thought her hfe was abandoned and lost 
 because the water in her bottle was spent ; but 
 whose eyes were opened to see a well of water 
 the like of which she had not dreamed could ever 
 come into her life (John iv. 4-26, 39-42). 
 
 yJBIMELECH . . . spake unto Abraham, 
 -^^ saying, God is iviih thee in all that thou doest.- 
 . . . So they made a covenant at Beer-sheba. 
 . . . And Abraham . . . called there on 
 the name of Jehovah, the Everlasting God. Genesis 
 xxi. 22 to 34. 
 
 Has God the mastery of your life so com- 
 pletely, that those persons around you who do 
 not honour Him, nevertheless see that your life 
 is radically different from theirs, and is so desir- 
 
90 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 able and attractive that they want to keep close 
 to you and " on your right side " ? This will 
 inevitably be so when you have died unto self so 
 completely that it is only Christ that liveth in 
 you. And when you have this rejoicing, up- 
 lifting experience of Abraham's, you will just 
 have to turn to God again, the Everlasting God, 
 as he did at Beer-sheba, and give God all the 
 glory. If you are not having this experience, 
 what is the reason ? My Christ, if Thou be lifted 
 up in my hfe, Thou wilt, in me, draw others unto 
 Thee. Oh, wilt Thou enter and master me now 
 so that Thou mayest do this Thy work through 
 me, — yet not for my honour, but for Thine. 
 
 GOD did prove Abraham, and said unto him, 
 Abraham; and he said, Here am I. . . . 
 And Abraham said, God will provide. Genesis xxii. 
 I to 8. 
 
 Between this record in Genesis and the Gospel 
 records of Jesus' offering of Himself on Calvary, 
 there is no passage in all the Bible, and certainly 
 none in outside history and literature, which 
 gives such a picture of quiet, peace-filled trust in 
 God amid the awful stress of heart-breaking agony. 
 Nothing can be added ; little need be said of it. 
 Read the eight verses over and over ; then these 
 words, quoted here, which sum up the whole 
 thing. God is love, always love, and only love. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 9 1 
 
 When, because of His love, He would prove me, 
 am I ready to say, *' Here am I " ? When the 
 proving reaches the limit of heart endurance, and 
 then goes beyond, and the heart breaks under it, 
 shall I say, in quietness and peace, " God will 
 provide " ? If in Christ I will so trust my Fa- 
 ther, how richly will He honour and bless the 
 trust that survives the test that breaks the heart ! 
 
 yfND they came to the place which God had told 
 -^^ him of. Genesis xxii. 9. 
 
 It was the place of sacrifice : the costHest 
 sacrifice that ever man could be asked to make, 
 and compared with which the mere losing of his 
 own life would have been a trifle. In offering 
 up Isaac, Abraham had to lay down his own 
 will, himself, his spirit, in absolute self-death be- 
 fore God. But God had told him of it, and he 
 was ready. God has told us of it in our own 
 lives ; just such absolute death of self is going to 
 be called for in us, some time, by a situation in 
 our life which we may not yet have come to. 
 But God has told us of it ; Christ makes it 
 eternally plain in calling us into His Way of 
 Life, which is the Way of the Cross, the sign of 
 death. Indeed, many a temptation assails us in 
 which any asserting of self means wreck : only 
 self-death in Christ can make victory possible : 
 it is the place which God has told us of. And 
 
92 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 there may come great crisis-times, if they have 
 not already come, when self-death is the only 
 way of salvation. Let us not be found unpre- 
 pared : it is the place which God has told us of. 
 
 /J^D Abraham built the altar there^ . . . 
 -^^ and took the knife to slay his son. And the 
 angel of Jehovah called unto him, . . . Lay 
 not thy hand upon the lad. Genesis xxii. 9 to 12. 
 
 Our hardest sacrifices are never so hard as we 
 thought they were going to be, ^we go on with 
 them to the very uttermost that God asks. A 
 sacrifice of self to God's will made half-way, or 
 even nine-tenths, is a grinding, cruel experience. 
 When it is made the w/iole way, with the altar 
 built, and self in one's dearest hope laid upon the 
 altar, God always comes with an unexpected 
 blessing that so overwhelms us with love and joy 
 that the hardship of the sacrifice sinks out of 
 sight. " Now I know that thou fearest God, 
 seeing thou hast not withheld." Can He say 
 that to us to-day ? No one ever knows the full 
 joy of hearing this word from God until the 
 altar has been built, and the knife is laid to the 
 sacrifice. 
 
 TN the mount of Jehovah it shall be provided. 
 -* Genesis xxii. 13, 14. 
 
 That is the mount upon which God wants us 
 to live to-day, and every day. We talk a good 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 93 
 
 deal about the mountain tops and the valleys of 
 our lives, and the ups and downs, as though it 
 were necessary for us to shift from one to the 
 other in our relations with God. It is not. Only 
 sin can lead us away from the mount in which 
 Jehovah will gloriously provide. And sin is 
 never necessary. The way to this mount of 
 God's supernatural provision is self-death, as it 
 was with Abraham: taking up the cross — the 
 sign of death — daily y and following Him whose 
 self-death gave us life. The mount itself was 
 the place of sacrifice. But when we live there, 
 in continued sacrifice, we have a companionship 
 with God and a wealth of provision which nothing 
 can take away. May every day be my mount 
 of Jehovah's providing ! 
 
 TIECAUSE thou hast done this thing, and hast 
 •^ not withheld thy son, thine only son, . . . 
 / will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heavens ; 
 . . . because thou hast obeyed my voice. Genesis 
 xxii. 15 to 24. 
 
 And from that day to this men have been 
 learning that when, at God's voice, they surrender 
 up to Him the one thing above all else that was 
 dearest to their very heart's blood, that same 
 thing is returned to them by Him a thousand 
 times over. 
 
 Abraham gives up his one and only son, at 
 
94 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 God's call, and with this disappear all his hopes 
 for the boy's life and manhood, and for a noble 
 family bearing his name. But the boy is re- 
 stored, the family becomes as the stars and sands 
 in number, and out of it, in the fullness of time, 
 appears Jesus Christ. That is just the way God 
 meets every real sacrifice of every child of His. 
 We surrender all and accept poverty : He sends 
 wealth. We renounce a rich field of service: 
 He sends us a richer one than we had dared to 
 dream of. We give up all our cherished hopes 
 and die unto self : He sends the hfe more abun- 
 dant, and tingling joy. And the crown of it all 
 is our Jesus Christ. For we can never know the 
 fullness of the life that is Christ until we have 
 made Abraham's supreme sacrifice. 
 
 The earthly founder of the family of Christ 
 must commence by losing himself and his only 
 son, just as the heavenly Founder of that family 
 did. We cannot be members of that family, 
 with the full privileges and joys of membership, 
 upon any other basis. 
 
 cr'HOU art a prince of God among us. Gen- 
 
 -^ esis xxiii. 
 
 In this quaintly told, thoroughly Oriental pic- 
 ture of the bargain made between two men, with 
 its exquisite touches of pathos, its delicate 
 humour, and its wonderful literary simplicity 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 95 
 
 and power, the one word that stands out high 
 above all the rest is the people's characterization 
 of Abraham : " Thou art a prince of God among 
 us." And that is just what God is calling you 
 and me to be to-day among our fellows. Not 
 that we should ever be able to go about with any 
 consciousness of having attained to this : that 
 would effectually destroy it. But it is His will 
 that we should let His Son our Christ so master, 
 occupy, possess, and use us that we shall all be, 
 in glorious literalness and reality, princes of God 
 among men. What is there in me that I am 
 opposing to Him in this ? Christ, purge it out 
 of my life now, that Thou mayest show Thyself, 
 in all my Hfe, to others. 
 
 <>fEHOVAH, the God of heaven, . . . he 
 J will send his angel before thee. Genesis 
 xxiv. I to 9. 
 
 There is the quiet but infinitely sufficient as- 
 surance that we have concerning the outcome of 
 anything we undertake which is in accordance 
 with God's will. For then it is not we that are 
 undertaking it ; it is God. He has planned it, 
 He is doing it, He has sent His angel on ahead 
 to prepare for it in supernatural ways and with 
 irresistible power ; and He is simply using us as 
 His instrument for His own doing of His own 
 work. His work cannot fail ; therefore we can- 
 
96 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 not fail in anything thus undertaken in accord- 
 ance with His will. 
 
 Abraham knew that he was perfectly safe in 
 absolving his servant from the oath in case the 
 plan fell through, for he knew that God's plan 
 would not fall through. He must have made 
 this seeming concession simply to ease the serv- 
 ant's mind, and not because he himself was in 
 any doubt. God never commissions us to do 
 anything for Him without at the same time pre- 
 paring the way, by His own direct action. If 
 He asks us to do something that is to affect the 
 life of another, He is working in that other's 
 life to prepare it for what we are to do. Always 
 He sends His angel on ahead of us. How 
 foohsh and wrong of us ever to hold back from 
 any commission of such a God ! 
 
 /^ JEHOVAH, ... show kindness unto my 
 ^^ master Abraham. . . . Let the same be she 
 that thou hast appointed. Genesis xxiv. lo to 14. 
 
 May my prayers, to-day and always, be as true 
 and lofty and unselfish and sure of answer as 
 was this of Abraham's trusted servant ! He was 
 a man of God ; he knew how to pray. It was 
 an intercessory prayer, wholly in behalf of others. 
 And it asked for only one thing : that he should 
 be enabled to see unerringly what God's plan, 
 God's appointment, was. He did not ask God 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 97 
 
 to do what he, the servant, wanted, but he asked 
 that he might be directed, by a simple and 
 wholly reasonable sign, to the doing of God's 
 will and the fulfilhng of God's plan. If this 
 spirit and purpose fill my life, answered prayer 
 will be my habitual experience. 
 
 v^ND it came to pass, before he had done speak- 
 -" ing. . . . And he said, Blessed be Je- 
 hovah, . . . who hath not forsaken his loving- 
 kindness and his truth. Genesis xxiv. 15 to 27. 
 
 Every right prayer is answered before the 
 prayer itself is finished — before we have " done 
 speaking." This is because God has pledged 
 His word to us that whatsoever we ask in 
 Christ's name (that is, in oneness with Christ 
 and His will) and in faith, shall be done. As 
 God's word cannot fail, whenever we meet these 
 simple conditions in prayer the answer to our 
 prayer has been granted and completed in heaven 
 as we pray, even though its showing forth on 
 earth may not occur until long afterward. So it 
 is well to close every prayer with praise to God 
 for the answer that He has already granted ; He 
 who never forsakes His lovingkindness and His 
 truth. See Daniel ix. 20-23 ; x. 12. 
 
 ^A^D the damsel ran, and told her mother's 
 ■^^ house. . . . And Laban ran out unto the 
 man. Genesis xxiv. 28 to 49. 
 
98 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 Things were moving rapidly just now to fulfill 
 God's plan for Abraham's son ; people fairly ran 
 to bring things to pass. There had been times 
 in Abraham's Hfe when things did not move so 
 rapidly, but when the delay seemed so unen- 
 durable that Abraham and Sarah gave up all 
 hope. That is the way God varies our life. To- 
 day, things may run, or things may drag, or 
 things may seem to stand still. Even worse, 
 things may seem to move backward. But if we 
 are doing God's will, and only God's will, we 
 may be sure that His unseen messengers are run- 
 ning to meet us and to carry forward unerringly 
 and irresistibly every plan that He has for us. 
 Let us simply hold true to the plan, in quiet 
 trust, as Abraham's servant did. 
 
 TIYHEN Abraham's servant heard their words, he 
 '^' bowed himself down to the earth unto Jehovah. 
 Genesis xxiv. 50 to 60. 
 
 It would be well for us all to receive as coming 
 directly from the hand of God everything that 
 comes to us, whether seeming good or ill, which 
 is beyond our own control to determine. This 
 man did not bow down to those who had spoken 
 the words that rejoiced him, but to Jehovah. 
 God had sent this blessing ; therefore he thanked 
 God. And if to-day there are spoken to me 
 words of a very different sort from seeming bless- 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 99 
 
 ing, may I have the trust and love and courage 
 to bow myself down unto Jehovah — yes, even in 
 gratitude for what He sees best to send me ! So 
 of every pleasant word or gift that comes into 
 my life. May I interpret all my life — excepting 
 only my own sin — in the terms of God's loving 
 provision for my particular needs; and may I 
 grow' in the habit of bowing down in praise unto 
 my heavenly Father for all that comes into my 
 life! 
 
 yf^D the servant took Rebekah . . . And 
 -" she said unto the servant . . . And the 
 servant said . . . And the servant told Isaac, 
 Genesis xxiv. 6i to 67. 
 
 Nothing but an unnamed servant, even after 
 the blessed and happy conclusion of this romance 
 and marriage, in the bringing to pass of which 
 he had been the all-important human instrument. 
 Just " the servant this," and " the servant that" ; 
 never of enough consequence to give his name. 
 Even when he had introduced himself to the new 
 family, it was simply, " I am Abraham's servant." 
 And he was the one man in all the earth upon 
 whose tact and judgment God was depending to 
 select a wife and mother to be second in the line 
 of the family of Jesus Christ. Perhaps nowhere 
 in the Bible, except in Christ Himself, shall we 
 find a more perfect example of selfless service 
 
lOO A4 ESS AGES FOR THE MORNING WA TCH 
 
 joined with remarkable human endowments and 
 complete consecration than in this man who 
 comes down through all history as only an un- 
 named servant. Am / willing to be thus unknown 
 and unnamedjn the biggest and best things that 
 God may ever use me for ? He can never use 
 me as He would, until I am. 
 
 Master, Servant of all and Lord of all, crucify 
 with Thyself into eternal death this self of mine 
 that clamours for " recognition " and " honour " 
 that I may rejoice most in the nameless, unknown 
 service that lifts into honour and recognition only 
 Thyself and Thy Name. 
 
 /f ^^ Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac, 
 -" . . . And it came to pass after the death 
 of Abraham, that God blessed Isaac his son. Genesis 
 
 XXV. I to II. 
 
 And now Abraham's fate and record and repu- 
 tation as a father were in Isaac's hands. Upon 
 Isaac's life depended history's verdict upon Abra- 
 ham's worth or worthlessness as a father. And 
 on our lives depends the public's verdict upon 
 our parents. " Our duty to make the past a suc- 
 cess," it has been called. Every sin of mine, 
 whether I like to have it so or not, is a reflection 
 on my parents' training. Every evidence of 
 Christ in my life adds to their honour as parents. 
 They have given all that they had unto me. For 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS lOI 
 
 their sakes, God is blessing me. For their sakes, 
 let me so receive and use His blessings that He 
 in my life may add honour to them. 
 
 AJOW these are the generations of Ishmael : 
 ■^^ . . . he abode over against all his breth- 
 ren. Genesis xxv. 12 to 18. 
 
 Not only in the place of his Hving, but in his 
 relationships, was Ishmael " over against all his 
 brethren " ; and this was the direct result of the 
 sin of his father in distrusting God and trying to 
 improve upon God's plans. We cannot fathom 
 the mystery of how our sin actually passes on in 
 injury into the lives of others who are not re- 
 sponsible for it ; but we must accept God's word 
 for it that it does. And every sin I commit puts 
 me " over against " my brethren, as it puts me 
 " over against " my Father, God ; while my every 
 victory over sin enables me to draw nearer to my 
 brethren, and enables Christ — who alone wins 
 every such victory for me — to give of Himself 
 through me to my brethren. These are the 
 choices and results that confront me to-day. 
 
 DEHOLD, I am about to die. . . , So Esau 
 
 -^ despised his birthright. Genesis xxv. 19 to 34. 
 
 If my '* birthright " in Jesus Christ is not worth 
 
 holding on to, even at the cost of losing my life for 
 
 it, what does it really am ount to ? The Christian's 
 
102 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 " birthright " — the right which comes to every- 
 one upon his new birth in Christ — is " Christ in 
 you " : it is the right to let Christ Hve out His 
 Hfe in you, do His will and His work in you 
 and through you every hour of your Hfe. That 
 is our best and dearest right, our " birthright." 
 Sometimes it may seem as though we must part 
 with hfe itself if we hold on to this. Well, what 
 if we must ? Which is worth more to us : Christ, 
 or mere human life? Shall we despise our 
 " birthright " ? 
 
 /JND there was a famine in the land, besides the 
 -^-^ first famine that was in the days of Abraham. 
 . . . Go not down into Egypt : . . . and I 
 will be with thee, and will bless thee. Genesis xxvi. 
 1 to 5. 
 
 The difficulties and perils and crises that came 
 to my father will come to me ; his having met 
 them cannot keep me from having to meet them. 
 And, while his every act of righteousness is an 
 asset of mine, I receive its full value only if I, 
 independently and of my own will, meet my diffi- 
 culties in faith and obedience. Moreover, God 
 wants all of us to do better than our parents did, 
 no matter how well they did. Abraham's record 
 was a fine one; but God wanted Isaac's to be 
 finer. Abraham sinned by going into Egypt; 
 God warned Isaac against that very sin. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 103 
 
 Our father's religion and our father's record 
 will not carry us through ; we must have our 
 own ; and the better his was, the greater is our 
 obligation to do better still. 
 
 yiND he said, She is my sister : for he feared to 
 -" safy My wife. . . . And Abimelech 
 charged all the people, saying, He that toucheth this 
 man or his wife shall surely be put to death. Genesis 
 xxvi. 6 to II. 
 
 That is the way we repay God for His love, 
 and that is the way God repays us for our sin. 
 We sin against His love and He but loves the 
 more against our sin. Isaac was afraid of the 
 imaginary peril of telling the truth, and, in 
 dehberate sin and ungrateful, traitorous distrust 
 of the God who had just pledged Himself in 
 overwhelming assurance, he preferred the real 
 peril of telling a lie. No matter what the seem- 
 ing, or even the assured, disaster of truth-telling 
 may be, it is never so bad as the hell-born, devil- 
 directed sin of telling a lie. And the fact that 
 Isaac lied was a worse disaster to him than any 
 evil results of his lying could have been ; and 
 even God's goodness in averting all evil results 
 could not undo the disaster of the lie itself. But 
 God's care and love did not waver even under 
 Isaac's unworthiness ; and that is our richest 
 blessing as it is our only hope. But let us 
 
I04 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 to-day work with God's love rather than against 
 it. 
 
 /f^D they said, We saw plainly that Jehovah 
 ■^-^ was with thee. Genesis xxvi. 1 2 to 33. 
 
 Nothing that can ever be said of us will be 
 better than that. The evidence of Jehovah's 
 presence, however it may have seemed to those 
 Philistines, showed not so much in Isaac's great 
 earthly possessions as in his behaviour under the 
 most aggravated injustice. There are not many 
 pictures, in the Bible or elsewhere, that equal 
 this one in giving us a vivid ghmpse of practical, 
 manly righteousness. Isaac was a man of peace ; 
 not because he was afraid to fight, but because 
 he had nothing to fight for but his own rights 
 and interests, and that he would not do. So God 
 blessed him, and reasserted His covenant with 
 him ; and his ungodly neighbours, even his 
 enemies, seeing that God was with him, wanted 
 to get close to him and be on his right side. 
 May I pay the price that Isaac paid for this, even 
 the death of self! And may men, seeing that 
 God is with me, come close to me that God 
 through me may reach them ! 
 
 yf ND Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau 
 ■^^ thy first-born. . . . So he blessed him. 
 Genesis xxvi. 34 to xxvii. 29. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 10$ 
 
 It is a pitiable story of dishonour, with a trail 
 of misery and suffering, bitterness and hatred, 
 that ran on and on for years afterward. No man 
 ever lied himself, or any one else, into a blessing. 
 The whole incident meant simply a curse upon 
 Jacob and Rebekah, in which Isaac and Esau 
 suffered also. 
 
 And so it is with every hair's breadth depar- 
 ture from the truth. Few of us are likely to lie 
 openly and deliberately as did Jacob. But how 
 many of us are prayerfully watchful against ex- 
 aggeration, against giving as fact what is only 
 hearsay, against saying we know when we only 
 think we know : scrupulously careful that only 
 truth shall ever pass our lips ? " Stand, there- 
 fore, having girded your loins with truth." 
 
 T TE cried with an exceeding great and hitter cry. 
 ■^ -^ . . . He took away my birthright ; and^ 
 behold, now he hath taken away my blessing. 
 Genesis xxvii. 30 to 36. 
 
 There was just about as much truth in that 
 lament of Esau's as there is in a man's cry to- 
 day that some one else has ruined his life. It 
 was not true then, and it is not true now. No 
 man's real " birthright " or " blessing " has ever 
 been taken from him by another. Esau volun- 
 tarily gave up his " birthright " in a fit of 
 cowardly, selfish fear. The *' blessing," that 
 
I06 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 Jacob thought he had secured, brought him 
 and his mother only a long trail of misery. 
 Esau lost his " blessing" not by what Jacob 
 had done, but by the attitude of murderous 
 hatred that Esau now took toward Jacob. 
 Esau still had wide open to him the possibility 
 of playing the part of a man, in unselfish love 
 and Godlikeness. That is enough of a " bless- 
 ing" for any one, and no one but himself can 
 rob him of that " blessing " and " birthright." 
 May I remember the next time I seem to be 
 wronged in any way that / am the only one who 
 can wrong or rob or injure or defraud me ! 
 
 TJAST thou but one blessing, my father} bless 
 •^-^ me, even me also, O my father. Genesis 
 xxvii. 37 to 40. 
 
 No one need ever cry out to the heavenly Fa- 
 ther in Esau's bitter hopelessness or uncertainty. 
 No one can deceive my Father and get Him to 
 bestow elsewhere the blessing that He intended 
 for me. Even if, by disobedience, I have robbed 
 myself of the blessing that He intended, I need 
 never fear, for He has ten thousand times ten 
 thousand blessings, and they may be mine for 
 the taking. After I have put from me, either in 
 willful or in unconscious sin, the first, and there- 
 fore the best, blessing He had for me, there is 
 another blessing awaiting me which I may still 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 10/ 
 
 have the instant I turn to Him again in penitence 
 and obedience ; and so His third, or fourth, or 
 one hundredth best blessing, if in sin I have re- 
 jected all His earlier blessings, is still offered to 
 me, and is infinitely richer and better than any 
 good I can ever know without Him. What a 
 Father we have ! 
 
 yJND Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing 
 -^-^ wherewith his father blessed him. Genesis 
 xxvii. 41. 
 
 And thereby Esau robbed himself of more 
 than Jacob had ever robbed him of, or ever 
 could rob him of. This business of hating a fel- 
 low man because he has a blessing that we think 
 ought to be ours is awfully unworthy — and aw- 
 fully common. We do not call it " hating " to- 
 day, nor does it often work out in the vulgar 
 sort of murder that Esau planned and hoped for. 
 But how often we let ourselves feel bitterly 
 toward some one who is getting recognition or 
 honour or praise that we want and that we think 
 we ought to have ! In church work, in the busi- 
 ness office or shop, in home or college — the Esau 
 taint is something that we all know about. It is 
 poison of the most demoralizing and deadly sort. 
 It eats into our vitals, clouds our vision, un- 
 steadies our judgment, embitters our whole out- 
 look on life, and destroys our usefulness. The 
 
I08 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 instant we find ourselves beginning to have this 
 feehng toward any one, let us turn in conscious 
 helplessness to the God of love, and ask Him in 
 Christ to work in us the instant miracle of chang- 
 ing our feelings as we ourselves are powerless to 
 do. Then let us rejoice in the blessing where- 
 with our Father has blessed our friend. 
 
 DEHOLDjthjr brother EsaUj . . . purposing 
 •*-^ to kill thee. . . . Flee thou to Laban, 
 . . . and tarry with him a few days. Genesis 
 xxvii. 42 to 45. 
 
 The one who had proposed and insisted upon 
 the sin now makes light of the results of the sin 
 that are already commencing to appear. When 
 Jacob had first protested, his mother had an- 
 swered reassuringly, " Upon me be thy curse, 
 my son ; only obey my voice " (xxvii. 1 3). For 
 sin and its results hate to be recognized at their 
 true value. That true value is so terrific that we 
 must discount it in order to sin with any com- 
 fort at all. The " few days " that Jacob " tar- 
 ried " away from home became some forty years. 
 His mother never saw him again in this world. 
 She was bereaved of both her sons in one day ; 
 and she had the satisfaction of knowing that it 
 was by her own choice and of her own sin : the 
 curse that she lightly assumed was allowed her 
 in full measure. And she made both her sons to 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS lOQ 
 
 sin, in a way that took forty years to wipe out. 
 Sin is always miserable and ghastly in itself and 
 in its consequences. The more trifling it seems, 
 the more dangerous it is by that very fact. 
 
 GOD Almighty bless thee, . . . that thou 
 mayest be a company of peoples ; . . . that 
 thou may est inherit the land ofthysojournings. Gen- 
 esis xxvii. 46 to xxviii. 4. 
 
 This constant prayer for fruitfulness and for 
 possession of the land comes to us as a foregleam 
 of the challenge that our Gospel gives us : that 
 we may let Christ use us to multiply in others 
 the life in Him that He has given us ; and that 
 the land where we live may thus be inherited 
 and possessed by those who are living the hfe 
 that is Christ. The multiplication of our eternal 
 life by our sharing it with others — is it not the 
 chief reason for our continuing to live on earth ? 
 Christ wants each one of us to become a com- 
 pany of peoples. It is simply faithfulness to the 
 Great Commission that He asks. Am I faithful ? 
 
 AJOW Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob, 
 ■^^ . . . saying, Thou shall not take a wife 
 of the daughters of Canaan ; . . . and Esau 
 . . . took . . . Mahalath the daughter of 
 Ishmael . . . to be his wife. Genesis xxviii. 
 5 to 9. 
 
 We cannot make a wrong right by plastering 
 
1 10 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WA TCH 
 
 a right over it. Esau had no real desire to do 
 right ; he was merely after his father's favour and 
 blessing. When we go after the right in any- 
 such spirit, we are not even capable of knowing 
 what is right : as Esau blunderingly mistook a 
 daughter of Ishmael for one of the pure family 
 blood, overlooking the taint of Egypt and of sin 
 in that Hfe. If my chief motive to-day in doing 
 any right thing is to get something temporal for 
 myself, or to escape the penalty of some sin, I 
 shall fail in both as miserably as Esau did. My 
 Saviour and Master, wilt Thou purge and cleanse 
 my motives and very desires until they become 
 no less than Thy own — to do the will of my 
 Father ! May I never forget that my only es- 
 cape from my own sins is to see them in their 
 naked blackness as Thou seest them, and to turn 
 in revolt from them, asking Thee to bear them 
 for me and remove them from me forever I 
 
 jDEHOLD, a ladder set up on the earth, and the 
 -'--' top of it reached to heaven : and behold, the 
 angels of God ascending and descending on it. Gen- 
 esis xxviii. 10 to 12. 
 
 So heaven and earth are connected, and there 
 is free intercourse between them for the messen- 
 gers of God. That must have been the first im- 
 pression made upon the wanderer that night as 
 he watched in this dream that was to teach him 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS III 
 
 SO much. There was nothing in Jacob's dream 
 that is not true. Heaven and earth are con- 
 nected, and God's messengers pass freely be- 
 tween them. And God asks me to be one of 
 His messengers to-day, and to pass as freely 
 back and forth between heaven and earth as 
 those angels did. Just in so far as I become 
 completely His messenger, with the bearing of 
 His message and the doing of His will my whole 
 life, shall I know the joy and freedom of this 
 heaven and earth intercourse : living and work- 
 ing on earth, but dwelling all the time, and con- 
 sciously so, in the kingdom of heaven, and find- 
 ing the kingdom of heaven within me. Christ 
 is the secret of all this. He has bridged the gulf 
 for me. 
 
 /1ND, behold, Jehovah stood above it, and said, 
 -^^ , . ' In thee and in thy seed shall all the 
 families of the earth be blessed. Genesis xxviii. 
 
 Back of every blessing stands God. Because 
 of His love and His will, the sin-caused gulf be- 
 tween heaven and me has been bridged by His 
 Son. And every word that God speaks to me is 
 in blessing. If He speaks in warning or in pun- 
 ishment or in affliction it is a blessing ; but often- 
 est His word to me is, as it was here to Jacob, a 
 showering of unexpected good things into my 
 
1 1 2 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WA TCH 
 
 life at a time when I have been particularly un- 
 deserving. I go back on Him, as Jacob had 
 done, in unworthiness and failure ; and He heaps 
 fresh privileges and responsibihties upon me, 
 saying that He wants many others to be blessed 
 through me ! That is how He saves us all : by 
 showing confidence in me after I have betrayed 
 His confidence, by continuing to use me after I 
 have insisted upon proving my uselessness. How 
 can we escape the love of such a heavenly Fa- 
 ther ! Why should I ever wound that love 
 again ? 
 
 yiND, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee 
 -" whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee 
 again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I 
 have done that which 1 have spoken to thee of. Gene- 
 sis xxviii. 15. 
 
 There are days when this assurance of our 
 heavenly Father is the most precious word that 
 could come to us. It came to me on such a day ; 
 oh, how I needed it just then ! When we realize 
 that we have forfeited His presence, that we have 
 proved our utter impotence to " hold out," that 
 our hopes of achievement and victory in His 
 service are tottering about our heads, and every- 
 thing looks black — then comes God's word to us 
 in this message of quiet promise that He made 
 to the homeless fugitive Jacob. It is not a ques- 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS II3 
 
 tion of what / deserve or have forfeited ; it is not 
 a question of my abiUty to hold out ; my achieve- 
 ment and victory are, of course, utterly beyond 
 me and impossible to me. But all that need not 
 trouble me. For, in Christ, God is still with me ; 
 He will keep me (not I Him, but He me) wher- 
 ever I go ; He will bring me back again into His 
 Land of Promise; and He will never leave me 
 until He has brought to realization every highest 
 hope that He has ever given me. That is God's 
 word to me. Lord Jesus, my Christ, it is enough. 
 Forgive my unfaith. 
 
 O UREL Y Jehovah is in this place ; and I knew it 
 *^ not. . . . This is none other than the house 
 of God, and this is the gate of heaven. Genesis 
 xxviii. 16, 17. 
 
 There ought never to be a moment of my 
 waking hours when I should have to make 
 Jacob's confession as to God's presence : " I 
 knew it not." We have God's presence in a 
 richer way than Jacob ever knew it ; for Christ 
 is with us always, even unto the end of the 
 world. 
 
 And not only with us, but within us. When 
 a man passes from the half-way knowledge of 
 God that takes the many passages in the New 
 Testament concerning " Christ in you " as figura- 
 tive, and awakens to the glorious fact that this 
 
1 14 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WA TCH 
 
 truth is not a figure of speech, but a Hteral, actual 
 reahty, he begins — if he will meet the other con- 
 ditions — to live " the life that is Christ " ; and 
 never after that is he likely to say of God's literal 
 presence, " I knew it not." Life then is habitu- 
 ally and perennially transformed for him. Always 
 Jehovah is in this place. Everywhere this is none 
 other than the house of God. And Christ in us 
 makes of our very lives the gate of heaven for all 
 those into whose lives we come. 
 
 TF God mill . . . then . . . / will. 
 -* .Genesis xxviii. 18 to 22. 
 
 Poor Jacob ! Setting up, along with his Beth-el 
 stone, a set of conditions for God to measure up 
 to, and then solemnly assuring God that if He 
 will do His part faithfully, he, Jacob, will do his 
 part, and the stone shall become a real memorial 
 of God ! God asks us for bread, and we give 
 Him a stone. He asks us for the bread of our 
 whole life, our entire living being, and we offer 
 Him the stone of some little concession, like a 
 tenth of our income, while we keep nine-tenths 
 for ourselves ! 
 
 To be sure, this sort of close bargaining, shrewd- 
 eyed, sharply conditional, and distrustful of God 
 until He had proved whether He could and would 
 ** make good," was, to be sure, all that could be 
 expected of the poor, sin-stained, lying supplanter 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS I15 
 
 at this stage of his Hfe. He had so much to learn 
 yet of God ; and it was a move in the right direc- 
 tion, though very faltering and unworthy. And 
 God met him more than half-way. But we, in 
 our enlightenment and in the love of Christ, 
 never need sink to the humiliatingly low level of 
 Jacob in bargaining with God. We know a 
 better way : " Seek yQ first the kingdom [of God], 
 and His righteousness ; and all these things shall 
 be added unto you." What a joy and privilege 
 that we can throw ourselves unconditionally upon 
 God in Christ, and find in every stone in our Hfe 
 the house of God ! 
 
 Cp'HEN Jacob went on his journey, and came to the 
 -^ land of the children of the east. And he . . . 
 rolled the stone from the well '5 mouth, and watered 
 the flock of Laban his mother's brother. Genesis 
 xxix. I to 12. 
 
 In spite of Jacob's shameful past, in spite of 
 his petty spirit in yet seeing so little of God's 
 real nature and dealings with him, God brings 
 Jacob safely on his long and perilous way and 
 leads him straight to his goal. 
 
 And then Jacob is privileged at once to render 
 a little service of courtesy and love. That is the 
 way God treats us. He brings us day after day 
 to a goal or journey's end that we ill deserve, 
 and continually lets us render bits of wayside 
 
1 1 6 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING IV A TCH 
 
 kindness to others. That is the way He safe- 
 guards and enriches our hves — hves that would 
 be so empty and valueless unless He filled them 
 with Himself, in loving, patient disregard of our 
 repeated failures. 
 
 /I ND Jacob served seven years for Rachel ; and 
 ■^'*' the/ seemed unio him but a few days, for the 
 love he had to her. Genesis xxix. 13 to 20. 
 
 To love is to have such an interest in life that 
 there is no room for any discontent or ennui. 
 But most of us have yet to learn how to love 
 those who are really dearest to us, in the way in 
 which God loves and would have us love. This 
 love is so much deeper and surer and steadier 
 and more interesting than merely the emotion 
 of love, or a strong feeling of liking ; and it is 
 wholly within the power and direction of the 
 God-given will. Such love just steadily lives and 
 spends itself for the interests of the one loved ; 
 it sees the best in that one all the time, refusing 
 to notice or be disturbed by the shortcomings or 
 failures. It is sunshine, and strength, and sym- 
 pathy to the one loved, ceaselessly ; and, when 
 its own feelings are hurt, or ignored, or cruelly 
 trampled upon, never by word or look is this 
 fact recognized or made known. It is not pro- 
 voked, taketh not account of evil ; it beareth all 
 things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, en- 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 11/ 
 
 dureth all things. There is a zest in life when 
 I let Christ in me show Himself radiantly 
 through me in this His kind of love. And life 
 is empty and wearisome when I do not. My 
 Master, may I yield ever greater obedience to 
 the call of Thy love outgoing from me toward 
 others ! 
 
 T?IJLFILL the week of this one^ and we will give 
 -*• thee the other also for the service which thou 
 shall serve with me yet seven other years. Genesis 
 xxix. 21 to 30. 
 
 Jacob loved Rachel, and had proved it by 
 seven years of service ; and his reward was in- 
 justice and the opportunity of putting in seven 
 years' more service. It was a high tribute God 
 paid to this love of Jacob's, in that He let it be 
 tested so severely ; and the love stood the test. 
 If any test can be put upon you before which 
 your love does not hold out, then it is not love 
 at all. Injustice is one of the commonest, sim- 
 plest, and most assured tests of our love. It is 
 really a reward of love : an invitation to love to 
 show itself to be pure gold. And love is the 
 one weapon against which injustice cannot for- 
 ever hold out. Let me remember, then, these 
 two truths : if love is really the master of my 
 life, I am assured of its being tested by injus- 
 tice, and I should rejoice in the test; and I 
 
1 18 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WA TCH 
 
 can always defeat injustice by more love — a 
 second seven years upon the first. Love is as- 
 sured of injustice. Injustice is assured by defeat 
 of love. 
 
 nEUBEN [a son]; , . . Simeon {heard:]; 
 -^ . . . Lem [joined]; . . . Judah 
 [praise]. Genesis xxix. 31 to 35. 
 
 The marginal notes, together with the text, 
 explain why Leah named her sons as she did. 
 Each was received by her as a token that God's 
 love was going to grant her her heart's desire. 
 The blessing has come, she has been heard, her 
 husband has been joined to her in the longed-for 
 love, praise be to God : these are her expres- 
 sions of faith and confidence before the blessing 
 itself had come to pass. We are not told just 
 what the outcome was as to her loved one's love. 
 The main thing was Leah's trust and confidence 
 in God in the face of a heart-breaking sorrow. 
 Is it not one of the most beautiful records of such 
 trust in the whole Bible ? 
 
 And it is just that sort of undaunted, invincible 
 faith — a faith that is knowledge — which God asks 
 us to give Him to-day, as we pray in Christ for 
 anything that we have reason to believe is in ac- 
 cordance with His will. He can best answer 
 those prayers in which we praise Him for the 
 answer long before the answer appears — yes, be- 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS II9 
 
 fore we have even risen from our knees as we 
 pray. ** See ; heard ; praise ! " should be oftener 
 in our prayers. 
 
 TDACHEL envied, . . . Jacob's anger was 
 ■^^ kindled. Genesis xxx. i to 8. 
 
 It is well to look sin full in the face, some- 
 times, and to see it just as it is, at its worst. 
 Even then we can never see it in as black an 
 aspect as it appears to God, whom it cost the 
 sacrifice of His only Son our Christ. This brief 
 record is all of sin and its ongoing effects. It 
 started with the sin of selfishness and envy in 
 Rachel. Her whining cry in verse I is all and 
 only selfish. If she had been living all and only 
 for her husband and her sister, in selfless love and 
 in complete trust in God, she never would have 
 said those words. 
 
 Then comes Jacob's sin — of anger instead of 
 the love that ought to have saved his wife and 
 himself at that crisis. Because Rachel selfishly 
 sinned was no reason for Jacob to sin. Because 
 some one is unjust to me is no reason for me to 
 be angry. 
 
 And finally comes the sin of dishonoured 
 marriage because of selfishness, anger, and dis- 
 trust of God : the story of Sarai, Abram and 
 Hagar over again. That is the way sin un- 
 checked piles up its ugly, loathsome, death- 
 
120 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 dealing work. And it starts with any trifle, like 
 a feeling of envy. Jesus, Saviour, may I hate 
 and fear sin as Thou dost hate and fear it for 
 me ! And when I have sinned, may I always 
 commit it instantly to Thee, in repentance, that 
 Thou mayest blot it out and stop its awful out- 
 working ! 
 
 yJND God remembered Rachel. . . , And 
 -" she . . . bare a son : . . . and she 
 called his name Joseph. Genesis xxx. 9 to 24. 
 
 So now all the envying, and discouragement, 
 and bitterness, and wrangling in the home, and 
 other sin, were seen to be worse than useless. 
 In His own good time God sent the blessing 
 that He had intended from the start. How 
 cheap and petty and uncalled for Rachel's re- 
 bellion and distrust look now ! Oh, how we all 
 need to learn to trust and to wait ! That bless- 
 ing that we have longed and prayed for for years 
 has not come yet ; but what of that ? It is com- 
 ing, if it is in line with God's will, and if I will 
 let Him send it. My discontent and rebellion 
 and distrust only delay it, unfit me for it, and 
 lessen the joy that God wants to send me in 
 it. Suppose I stop now, forever, opposing 
 my will to His, and just wait on the Lord, 
 and be of good courage, and wait, I say, on the 
 Lord. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 121 
 
 Cr'ARRY: for I have divined that Jehovah hath 
 -^ blessed me for thy sake. Genesis xxx. 25 
 to 27. 
 
 No richer, deeper blessing can come into any 
 man's life than that these words should be said 
 of him — God hath blessed some one for his sake. 
 And it may be said of you and of me to-day, if 
 we will. It does not call for extraordinary merit, 
 nor for any merit at all in us, save the merit of 
 Christ. It calls simply for our death : the entire 
 crucifixion of self and self's interests, that Christ 
 may Hve wholly in us and communicate Himself 
 unrestrictedly through us. He will see to the 
 blessing of others through us, gloriously and 
 supernaturally, if we will simply get out of the 
 way, as it were, by not obtruding ourselves be- 
 tween Him and those whom He would bless 
 through us. Don't forget Galatians ii. 20. 
 
 QO the feebler were LabarCs, and the stronger 
 ^ Jacob's. . . . And Jehovah said unto 
 Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers ; . . . 
 / will be with thee. Genesis xxx. 28 to xxxi. 3. 
 
 After a record of shameful dishonesty and 
 swollen selfishness that deserves and gets only 
 our contempt, and that dishonoured God and 
 his fathers, Jacob is met by this word from God : 
 " I will be with thee." When he deserved only 
 to be repudiated and cast off forever by God, 
 
122 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 God suggests his leaving his present surround- 
 ings and getting back into the homeland, and 
 reassuringly promises His presence and blessing ! 
 Is that the way Jacob ought to have been 
 treated ? Well, that is the way God has always 
 treated us when we have gone down into th.e 
 depths of treason to Him and His teachings ; 
 and why should not Jacob have had as much of 
 a chance as we ? The fact is, Jacob, hke our 
 selves, was so far gone that nothing but God's 
 closest presence and richest blessings could save 
 him. And how many, many times that has 
 been true of us ! God has blessed us so richly, 
 not because we were so deserving, but because 
 we were so wretchedly, miserably hopeless that 
 nothing else could save us. " Come back home," 
 He says, " and I will be with you." What a 
 heavenly Father we have ! 
 
 fy^E know that with all my power I have served 
 ^ your father. . . . I am the God of Beth-el^ 
 where thou anointedst a pillar, where thou vowedst a 
 vow unto me. Genesis xxxi. 4 to 21. 
 
 Here is what seems very much like a straight 
 lie from Jacob, talking about having whole- 
 heartedly served Laban when he had tricked 
 him so successfully ; and alongside of the He the 
 record of God's presence with him ! It seems 
 like a puzzling, inexplicable life story, does it 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 23 
 
 not ? Well, it is ; and almost as much so as 
 yours and mine. In the midst of our unworthi- 
 ness, our dishonours and dishonesties that are 
 worse than any of Jacob's in view of our in- 
 finitely greater light, is God, standing by us, ap- 
 pearing to us, caUing and directing our hves, 
 and leading us out of the destruction and death 
 that we busily plan for ourselves, into the Prom- 
 ised Land that we so continuously work against. 
 When we would see ourselves as we are and 
 God as He is, let us remember the strange, 
 tangled story of Jacob. 
 
 /f^D God came to Lab an the Syrian . . . and 
 •^■^ said. . . . Genesis xxxi. 22 to 32. 
 
 It is not a pleasant story, this of the rupture 
 and distrust and recrimination between these two 
 men, father and son, who had entered into such 
 a close and loving relationship twenty years be- 
 fore, and who were now ahenated permanently from 
 each other by the continued, long-drawn-out sin of 
 each. There is just a single bright spot in the 
 picture at this stage, and it is that God came and 
 spoke — even to the one who knew Him least. 
 
 And that is the brightness of our life in the 
 midst of our deepest unworthinesses. Always 
 God keeps coming and speaking to us. We 
 hear Him, though we often close our ears to 
 Him. Every impulse to do better, every protest 
 
124 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 within us against doing the unworthy thing that 
 we contemplate, is God's personal presence and 
 spoken word just as plainly as were His Old 
 Testament visitations. Father, give me an 
 infinitely greater sensitiveness to Thy presence 
 and Thy word through instant and habitual 
 obedience to all that Thou sayest! 
 
 'PXCEPT the God of my father , . . had 
 ■^--^ been ivith me, surely now hadst thou sent me 
 away empty. Genesis xxxi. 33 to 42. 
 
 Though Jacob was speaking in a burst of self- 
 righteous and unjustified indignation, he never- 
 theless spoke a truth that we need to remember 
 every day of our lives. It is because, and only 
 because, God is with us, that our lives receive 
 anything that is worth while. We cannot go to 
 too great an extreme in recognizing God as the 
 sole cause of everything good that comes to us. 
 A man is in a dangerous way who says, for ex- 
 ample, " This, God gave me ; but that, I got for 
 myself." If " that " is anything but sin, then 
 God gave it to him. There is nothing of good in 
 our lives except God. How our lives will enrich 
 and deepen as we practice the presence of God ! 
 
 TlyTIZPAH, . . . God is witness betwixt me 
 ^^-^ and thee. . . . God . . . judge 
 betwixt us. Genesis xxxi. 43 to 55. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 12$ 
 
 The need of all Mizpah-covenants passes when 
 Jesus Christ comes into a life. It is true that 
 " Mizpah " has been made a Christian watch- 
 word, but only by giving it an entirely different 
 sense from that in which Jacob and Laban, 
 mutually distrustful, selfish, unloving and envi- 
 ous, used it. With them it was simply a truce, 
 an agreement to keep the peace and do the right 
 thing. When Christ enters our life, no one need 
 ask us to promise to keep the peace. It is our 
 privilege so to live in Him, and to let Him live 
 in and through us, that others will want us to be 
 near them because of the peace and joy and 
 power that our life brings them. 
 
 /JND Jacob went on his way and the angels of 
 -" God met him. Genesis xxxii. i, 2. 
 
 And there are angels of God waiting for me 
 to-day, or holding themselves in readiness to 
 meet me, in order to smooth the way, and over- 
 come difficulties, and accompany me, and bring 
 to pass things that I could never do of myself. 
 Jacob was nearing a great crisis of his hfe : the 
 meeting again of his brother Esau. We are not 
 told what the angels did for Jacob; it is not 
 necessary ; they met him, that is enough. God 
 never asks us to enter upon any difficulty alone. 
 His own Son Christ dwells within us ; and His 
 appointed messengers. His angels, meet and ac- 
 
126 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 company us to work with us. Surely there is 
 nothing for me to fear to-day ! 
 
 CT^HEN Jacob mas greatly afraid. . . . And 
 
 -^ Jacob said, O God, , . . lam not worthy 
 
 of the least of all \thy'\ loving-kindnesses. . . . 
 
 And thou saidst, I mil surely do thee good. Genesis 
 
 xxxii. 3 to 12. 
 
 When we are confronted with disaster from 
 which there seems to be no escape, Jacob's 
 prayer is a good one to remember : to confess 
 our utter unworthiness of anything but the disaster 
 that threatens, especially of all the wonderful 
 loving-kindness with which God has already 
 " crowded and crowned " our hfe ; and then re- 
 mind ourselves of God's promises to us, — un- 
 deserved but nevertheless given and backed by 
 God's word, by God Himself — and clazm those 
 promises against the immediately threatening 
 future, knowing that the rich past is only an 
 earnest of the richer future. When God's pledged 
 word is the only hope we have, what a hope 
 it is I 
 
 fpOR with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and 
 -'■ now I am become two companies. Genesis 
 xxxii. lo. 
 
 For every one who has made any pretense 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 12/ 
 
 whatsoever of really serving God, as Jacob even 
 in his primitive and all too faulty way had done, 
 the backward look over life will show that the 
 "staff" has become "two companies": the 
 meagre start has grown and multiplied and en- 
 riched into an abundance that is all of God — not 
 necessarily our bank account, but the other bless- 
 ings of life that are worth so much more than 
 that. Jacob's staff at the start had been, after 
 all, something better than his walking-stick. It 
 had been Isaac's parting word to him : " God 
 Almighty bless thee . . . that thou mayest 
 be a company of peoples " (xxviii. 3) ; and it had 
 been God's own word to him at Beth-el : ** I am 
 with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou 
 goest " ; and Jacob had laid hold of this staff 
 when he had made his half-doubting, unworthily 
 selfish, but sincere covenant with God at Beth-el. 
 So the staff had grown into unthought-of full- 
 ness. When our Shepherd God asks us to say, 
 " Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me," He 
 means it. 
 
 T WILL appease him ivith the present that goeth 
 -* before me, and afterward I will see his face ; 
 peradventure he will accept me. Genesis xxxii. 
 13 to 21. 
 
 How the trembling, eager fearfulness of Jacob 
 on meeting the elder brother whom he had so 
 
128 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 flagrantly wronged, stands out in contrast with 
 the way in which we are invited to meet the 
 Elder Brother whom we have so flagrantly 
 wronged ! Jacob made these costly gifts as a 
 desperate chance against death; our wronged 
 Elder Brother's message, sent to meet us, is : "I 
 am come that ye might have life, and that ye 
 might have it more abundantly." Have we 
 taken Him at His word, and entered unreserv- 
 edly into the very fullness of the Hfe that is 
 Christ ? 
 
 yjND Jacob was left alone ; and there wrestled a 
 ■^■^ man with him. . . . And when he saw 
 that he prevailed not against him^ he touched the hol- 
 low of his thigh. . . . And he said, I will not 
 let thee go, except thou bless me. Genesis xxxii. 
 22 to 32. 
 
 Professor Willis J. Beecher has pointed out 
 that Jacob's new blessing and change of name 
 came only after he had yielded to God and 
 ceased to resist and struggle against Him. He 
 had now, for the first time, acknowledged Esau 
 as his superior ; and he evidently gave up the 
 wrestling-match after he went down in a helpless 
 heap before that fiery touch on his thigh. His 
 " prevaihng " was in the fact that he held on 
 after he had yielded and surrendered, and in- 
 sisted on claiming the blessing that God has for 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 29 
 
 those who go down in confessed helplessness be- 
 fore Him. Praise God for such times of solitary- 
 wrestling, surrender, and blessing ! They mark 
 great mountain peak times in our spiritual life, 
 when our very name and being is changed in 
 Christ. If you are conscious of the lack of some 
 great spiritual blessing is it because you have 
 not wrestled your problem through to the finish 
 of complete surrender and then confidently 
 claimed the blessing of the one who prevails 
 with God by giving up all to God ? 
 
 /JND Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked^ and, 
 -^^ behold Esau was coming, and with him four 
 hundred men. . . . And Esau ran to meet him, 
 and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed 
 him : and they wept. Genesis xxxiii. i to 4. 
 
 And so the great, black trouble and catas- 
 trophe of his life had arrived ! This was what 
 Jacob had been dreading and praying against so 
 desperately. This was what his elaborate plans 
 of strategy, in dividing his company and putting 
 forward those for whom he cared the least, had 
 tried to avert or mitigate. The catastrophe had 
 struck. The blow had fallen. The storm had 
 broken over him in all its fury. Oh, how we 
 need to take this lesson to heart ! How we 
 dread, and dodge, and agonize over God's plans 
 for our enrichment and blessing, just because to 
 
130 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 lis they seem, in the distance, to be troubles ! 
 " All things work together for good " to them 
 that love Him. 
 
 *' Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take. 
 The clouds ye so much dread 
 Are big with mercy, and shall break 
 In blessings o'er your head." 
 
 //ND Jacob came in peace. Genesis xxxiii. 
 -" 5 to 20. 
 
 Instead of the war and bloodshed and death 
 that he had feared for his dear ones and himself, 
 this was the result. The whole picture is one of 
 peace, and love, and good will, mutual trust and 
 mutual service. It was the relationship between 
 the two brothers that might have been, and that 
 God wanted, twenty years earlier. But it was 
 none the less blessed when it did come, even 
 though so long delayed. That is the wonderful 
 thing about love ; it is open to us always, at any 
 time, to enter fully into its blessings, and peace, 
 and joy. When it is permanently on the throne 
 of our life, the whole life is one of peace. We 
 have cheated ourselves and others of its bless- 
 ings, have we not? But we can claim all its 
 blessings to-day, and come in peace to the end 
 of the day. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 131 
 
 T ET us arise^ and go up to Beih-el; and I will 
 -^— ' make there an altar unto God, who answered 
 me in the day of my distress. . . . And he built 
 there an altar, . . . because there God was re- 
 vealed unto him. Genesis xxxv. i to 8. 
 
 The memory of our Beth-els is the most 
 precious, blessed memory of our lives. God 
 wants us to go back there, and rejoice in the 
 memory of the wonderful way in which, when 
 we were in distress, He revealed Himself unto us. 
 It has been said that " the way of advance is the 
 way of remembrance." Think to-day of the 
 highest mountain peak of experience of God that 
 you have ever known ; then praise Him for it, 
 rejoice that you may have it renewed to-day, 
 and know that your normal, every-day hfe in 
 Christ may now be better and higher than the 
 best Beth-el that your past has ever known. 
 That is the power and will of our God. 
 
 y/^D God appeared unto Jacob again. . . . 
 -^^ Thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, 
 but Israel shall be thy name. Genesis xxxv. 9, 10. 
 
 We need God's reminders. God had told 
 Jacob this once ; and now He lovingly reminds 
 him of it again. It was the greatest day of 
 Jacob's hfe when, after that fruitless struggle that 
 culminated his lifelong resistance against God, 
 he finally surrendered his will, claimed God's 
 
132 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 blessing, and his name was changed from " Sup- 
 planter " to " God striveth." That one day was 
 worth all the rest of his hfe before it. But it 
 would be worth Uttle now unless his constant 
 memory of it continued to direct and control his 
 hfe. So God reminds him that he is a new man, 
 with a new name and a new work to do in the 
 world. And God would remind me this morn- 
 ing of that day of highest mountain-peak privi- 
 lege when I first came to know Him better. My 
 own mere memory will not avail, either, so God 
 Himself speaks to me again. Father, I thank 
 Thee for Thy fresh gifts of the best things in my 
 past. 
 
 ^ATD God said unto him, I am God Almighty : 
 •^^ ... a nation and a company of nations 
 shall be of thee. Genesis xxxv. ii to 15. 
 
 Never to any other people were such promises 
 made as to the Jews ; and never have there been 
 any other such people as the Jews. Set apart as 
 God's own chosen people for a blessing to the 
 whole world, they have continued set apart, a 
 peculiar and chosen people. Found in almost 
 every nation in the world as a distinct part within 
 that nation, they are indeed " a nation and a 
 company of nations." Above all other peoples 
 they challenge and deserve our admiration, grati- 
 tude and love. To their great Son, Jesus Christ, 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 33 
 
 the world owes more than to any man, or to all 
 men, for Son of Man, and more than man, He 
 has saved the world, and is, in irresistibly in- 
 creasing power and triumph, its Light and Life. 
 And He was a Jew. May I never dishonour 
 and wound Him by any unworthy thought or 
 word or act against His people and the people 
 of God ! 
 
 QHE called his name Ben-oni [the son of my sor- 
 row'] : but his father called him Benjamin [the 
 son of the right hand"]. Genesis xxxv. 16 to 21. 
 
 The sorrow and suffering that cost Rachel her 
 life became to the one she loved most his right 
 hand of comfort and strength. That is exactly 
 what God would have me do, or let Him do, 
 with every sorrow and suffering that comes into 
 my life. Its purpose is not to break down, but 
 to lift up. If I see in it only an expression of 
 God's love, as it is, every experience of suffering 
 may be turned into a strengthening right hand 
 for others and for myself. I am not above my 
 Master : and He, the Lord Jesus Christ, became 
 through His sorrow and suffering unto death the 
 Right Hand of all humanity. Many another, 
 following in His footsteps and in His strength, 
 has, by life laid down, lifted many up. Every 
 one is offered this highest privilege, which was 
 also Christ's. 
 
134 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 " He suffered so, — rebuff and wrong 
 
 And sickness, — that he cried, * 'Tis vain 
 To urge : *' Be ever brave and strong ! " 
 
 'Tis false to say, *' It's worth the strain, 
 For guardian angels watch o'er men 
 And always help ! " ' He knew not then 
 His guardian angel's name was Pain." 
 
 /JND Isaac . . . died : . . . and Esau 
 -" and Jacob his sons buried him. Genesis xxxv. 
 23 to 29. 
 
 God was good to these two men to let them 
 come together again as brothers and sons of the 
 same father, and care for him in his final Home- 
 going. There had been a time when the 
 treachery and murderous hatred between them 
 seemed to make such a reunion forever impos- 
 sible ; when Esau, thinking that his father's death 
 was near at hand, had said : " The days of mourn- 
 ing for my father are at hand ; then will I slay 
 my brother Jacob." That was past now; and it 
 was past, not because years had elapsed, but be- 
 cause Jacob had yielded up absolutely to the 
 will of God, and had given his brother first place. 
 " Love never faileth." The will of God is love, 
 for God is love. There is no estrangement or 
 enmity or bitterness in our hfe that cannot be 
 forever done away with by love — God's love 
 working through us. It makes no difference 
 whether the other one meets us half-way 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 35 
 
 or not : we can go the whole way. But 
 
 only in the power of Christ, who yielded up 
 
 all that He had, in His love for us, can we do 
 this. 
 
 cr'HE generations of Esau (the same is Edom). 
 
 ■^ Esau took his wives of the daughters of 
 Canaan ; . . . and . . . Ishmaels daugh- 
 ter. Genesis xxxvi. i to 43. 
 
 Not a very interesting chapter to start the day 
 with, is it ? But one fact of absorbing interest 
 stands out : that this is a record of the far-reach- 
 ing ongoing effects and results of sin. Esau 
 tried to establish a family by taking as wives the 
 daughters of Canaan, idolatrous, who knew not 
 God ; and a daughter of Ishmael, the son of 
 Abraham's distrustful, God-doubting marriage 
 with the Egyptian Hagar. The people of Edom 
 were the result ; and they come into the history 
 later on as blocking and opposing the chosen 
 people of God, and at warfare with them, just as 
 Esau and Abraham blocked and opposed God in 
 giving rise to the new nation. The ongoing 
 effects of our sin are unthinkable and awful be- 
 yond words. That they extend to the third and 
 fourth generation is sober, literal fact, not a figure 
 of speech. But Jesus Christ who is our life can 
 break the power of sin and annihilate it, when 
 we let Him. Better still, He can keep us from 
 
136 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 sin — stop a sin before it comes into existence. 
 If I will commit myself and this day to His 
 mastery, it need not be a day like " Esau, the 
 father of the Edomites." 
 
 AND Jacob dwelt in the land of his father's so- 
 •^^ journings. Genesis xxxvii. i. 
 
 That was the land that God had given his 
 father, and his father before him. If we have 
 had fathers to whom God and God's promises 
 were their richest possession, we shall do well to 
 dwell in the land of our fathers' sojournings. We 
 do not need to improve on their experience of 
 God and discover new and better religious terri- 
 tory to live in. Esau moved into new country, 
 in more ways than one : his descendants became 
 the enemies of God's people. Jacob held to the 
 old place and the old ways ; his Descendant was 
 Jesus Christ. Our fathers for nineteen centuries 
 have been finding that to sojourn in the fertile 
 land of New Testament Christianity is sufficient 
 for all their needs ; we may safely dwell there. 
 The best part of it is, this old home-country of 
 Hfe in Christ is always new. Not one ten-thou- 
 sandth part of its reach and riches has been ex- 
 plored and discovered yet. But it is all ours, 
 now and forever, if we really sojourn in *' the life 
 that is Christ." 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 3/ 
 
 7i TOW Israel loped Joseph. . . . And Joseph 
 -^ ^ dreamed a dream, and he told it to his breth- 
 ren: and they hated him yet the more. Genesis 
 xxxvii. 2 to II. 
 
 God's giving me lavishly of His best gifts does 
 not carry with it any guarantee against my abus- 
 ing and doing harm with them. God had chosen 
 Joseph for a marked career, and was helping him 
 to reaHze this. Joseph took the evidences of 
 the promised blessing, and did the best he could 
 to wreck everything with them. His prompt 
 telling of his dreams to his family seems to have 
 been the height of self-centered folly. It could 
 do no good ; it worked out in their great sin, 
 which God mercifully overruled for good to 
 them all. So we all act, sometimes, when God 
 is lavishly blessing us. Father, may I be only 
 humbled by Thy blessings, and yield myself in 
 completer obedience to Thy will ! Keep me 
 from using Thy goodness to do ill with, as I 
 have done so many times before. 
 
 f^O now, see whether it is well ivith thy brethren, 
 ^-^ and well ivith the flock: and bring me word 
 again. . . . And Joseph went after his brethren, 
 and found them. Genesis xxxvii. 12 to 17. 
 
 He was sent on a difficult and dangerous 
 journey to look after the welfare of the men who 
 hated him. That would not strike most of us as 
 
138 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 being a very desirable, or even necessary, thing 
 to do. Yet it is exactly what we must be willing 
 to do if we have a real desire to let Christ live 
 His life in us. It is what He did. He was sent 
 by His Father to earth to see whether it was 
 well with His brethren, God's chosen people the 
 Jews, and with the flock entrusted to their care, 
 which was the whole world that they were to 
 bless. They hated Jesus ; but He went after His 
 brethren, and found them ; and the mission cost 
 Him His hfe. Joseph did the same, and his 
 mission virtually cost him his life, so far as his 
 brothers' intention toward him was concerned. 
 But Jesus and Joseph lived to save their breth- 
 ren; and so shall we, if we are as obedient to 
 God's commission to lay down our life for those 
 who hate us. It is pretty high privilege to walk 
 to-day in the footsteps of Jesus and Joseph. 
 
 cr'HEY conspired against him to slay him. , . . 
 
 -^ We shall see what will become of his dreams. 
 . . . They took him, and cast him into the pit. 
 Genesis xxxvii. 18 to 24. 
 
 It was pretty severe treatment for young 
 Joseph — deadly cruelty, with bitter, hateful con- 
 tempt ! Yet God was even then preparing to 
 use him to turn the cruelty and hatred of these 
 brothers, through the alchemy of his virtue and 
 love, into a means of saving their lives and bless- 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 39 
 
 ing them beyond their richest imagination. That 
 is what God would do, through me, for every one 
 who ever treats me with hatred or injustice. I 
 am not Hkely to be as badly treated as Joseph 
 was. But I have often made as much fuss over 
 my Httle ill-treatments as though I had been. 
 God wants to change all this, and to turn every 
 such ill-treatment into a means of rich blessing 
 toward my evil-doers through Christ's mastery 
 over me. / cannot do this ; but Christ in me 
 can. Shall I not welcome injustice, hereafter, as 
 Christ's special opportunity to show what He can 
 do through me for others ? 
 
 TOEHOLD, a caravan of Ishmaelites, . . . 
 -^ And they brought Joseph into Egypt. Genesis 
 xxxvii. 25 to 28. 
 
 The Ishmaelites were descendants of the sin 
 of Abraham, founder of the family of Joseph's 
 brethren. That sin of their father passed by 
 and offered inviting opportunity to fresh sin, 
 which they accepted. Yet to Joseph, who was 
 doing God's will, both the old sin of the Ishmael- 
 ites and the new sin of his brothers' sale simply 
 carried him forward into the blessings that God 
 was preparing for him. What a lesson this is to 
 me ! My old sins are ready to appear, like haunt- 
 ing ghosts, whenever I yield to sin ; and they 
 will work with the new sin to multiply it. But 
 
140 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 both old sins and new can be made by God to 
 yield treasures of blessing if I put myself abso- 
 lutely into His keeping in surrender to His will. 
 Yet only as I turn eternally against all sin, in 
 Christ, can He make stepping-stones of my old 
 sins for me. 
 
 TT iz my son's coat ; an evil beast hath devoured 
 -* him. . . . And the Midianites sold him into 
 Egypt. Genesis xxxvii. 29 to 36. 
 
 The greatest tragedy in the life of Jacob the 
 father and Joseph the son became, under God, 
 one of the greatest blessings of their lives. They 
 could not know this at the time, or see it, or 
 imagine it. Nevertheless, it was so, and it will 
 be so — not may be, but will be — in the case of 
 every black sorrow of our lives that comes to us 
 from others, z/we live in God's will. The worst 
 results of the sins of others hurled against us can- 
 not alter this eternal rule of God's made in our 
 behalf: " We know that to them that love God 
 all things work together for good." This means 
 that, if we really believe His word and trust Him, 
 we shall praise Him and rejoice while the clouds 
 are blackest about us. 
 
 ^TVD Jehovah was with Joseph. . . . Je- 
 -^■^ hovah blessed the Egyptians house for Joseph's 
 sake. . . . And he left all that he had in 
 Joseph's hand. Genesis xxxix. i to 6. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS I4I 
 
 That is the sort of reward God offers me if I 
 will serve Him to the limit. And people talk 
 about how much they have to " give up " by- 
 going in for the Christian Hfe. The trouble with 
 so many is that they have not the " nerve " — 
 the Bible calls it " faith " — to surrender them- 
 selves absolutely to God's will ; and so they lose, 
 both the best things He would give them and the 
 things of the world which still look good to them 
 because of their half-way surrender. Complete 
 service of God means the three things that 
 Joseph had : God Himself with us, all His re- 
 sources ours ; other people supernaturally blessed 
 because of our life — that is, we are a channel of 
 God's love into their lives ; and the trust and re- 
 spect of our fellows — everything coming our 
 way, in other words. This is always so, in the 
 long run, even if it seems to be pretty badly 
 broken into for a while, as it was with 
 Joseph. 
 
 TJflS master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph, 
 -^^ . . . Behold, my master . . . hath 
 pat all that he hath into my hand : . . . hoiv 
 then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against 
 God) . . . And he , . . fled, and got 
 him oat. Genesis xxxix. 7 to 12. 
 
 If a man will, on his knees, ask Christ to reveal 
 Himself to him in this story, he will find in it 
 
142 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WA TCH 
 
 one of the most glorious revelations of the power 
 and purity of Christ that the Bible offers. Jesus 
 said, '* Before Abraham was, I am " ; and it must 
 have been He who led Abraham's son, Joseph, 
 in triumph through these onslaughts of hell. 
 Christ can do the same for men and boys, for 
 women and girls, to-day against this sin which, 
 because it is a degrading of the most Godlike 
 powers of humanity, has in it more of hell than 
 any other sin that Satan in the councils of hell 
 ever devised. God, who is love, so loved us 
 that He gave us His only begotten Son, Jesus 
 Christ, to be our whole life ; and with Him He 
 has " freely given us all things." My Master 
 hath put all that He hath into my hand. Shall 
 I traduce Him, wound and crucify Him, by tak- 
 ing this hell that Satan offers me into the life that 
 Christ has trusted with all that He has ? No : 
 the victory that Jesus Christ gave to Joseph He 
 gives to you and to me. How the music of the 
 hosts of heaven must have surged up and down 
 the courts of heaven that day when Joseph, the 
 clean-lived young Hebrew of Jesus' own race, 
 gave Christ the mastery of his life, and Satan 
 slunk back into hell cowering and utterly de- 
 feated, doomed to the second death which shall 
 some day put an eternal end to Satan's futile and 
 impotent attacks upon Christ and all those who 
 live in Christ. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS I43 
 
 /f ND Joseph's master took him, and put him into 
 •^^ the prison. . . . But Jehovah was with 
 Joseph; . . . and that which he did, Jehovah 
 made it to prosper. Genesis xxxix. 13 to 23. 
 
 When God lets us go to prison because we have 
 been serving Him, and goes there with us, prison 
 is about the most blessed place in the world that 
 we could be in. Joseph seems to have known 
 that. He did not sulk and grow discouraged and 
 rebellious because " everything has gone to the 
 dogs, and it doesn't pay to do right, anyway." 
 If he had, the prison-keeper would never have 
 trusted him so. Joseph does not even seem to 
 have pitied himself; let us remember that if self- 
 pity is allowed to set in, that is the end of us — 
 until it is cast out utterly from us. Joseph just 
 turned over everything in joyous trust to God, 
 and so the keeper of the prison turned over 
 everything to Joseph. Lord Jesus, when the 
 prison doors close in on me, keep me trusting, 
 and keep my joy full and abounding. Prosper 
 Thy work through me in prison; even there, 
 make me free indeed. 
 
 rrrHEREFORE lookye so sadto-dayl . . . 
 '^^ Do not interpretations belong to God ) tell it 
 me, I pray you. Genesis xl. i to 8. 
 
 Joseph made it his personal business to share 
 with God the burdens of those near him, and to 
 
144 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 cheer and comfort them if he could. That morn- 
 ing greeting of his was probably radiant with 
 contagious sunshine. It is a good way to begin 
 the day. If we see others depressed or dis- 
 couraged, let us shine only the more brightly 
 with the love of Christ into their lives, and assure 
 them, if we can, that God is equal to the present 
 need, whatever it may be. 
 
 /JNI^ Joseph said unto him, This is the interpre- 
 '^ tation of it. . . . Yet did not the chief 
 butler remember Joseph, but forgat him. Genesis 
 xl. 9 to 23. 
 
 God assures two things to those who are in 
 Christ : because Christ is " the Truth," we shall 
 in Him find all truth that we need to know. He 
 is the Interpreter and the Interpretation of all 
 our life, of all our problems ; and through us He 
 will solve the riddle of others' lives and lead 
 them into "the truth" — which is Himself. 
 And we are also to share Christ's own ex- 
 perience of being forgotten or even injured 
 by the very persons whom we have loved and 
 served. Joseph had that privilege ; so shall 
 we. But if we are filled and mastered by the 
 deathless, dynamic love of Jesus Christ, that 
 love working in us and through us toward others 
 will not be even disturbed by their treatment 
 of us. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 145 
 
 /fND the ill-favoured and lean-fleshed kine did 
 •^ eat up the seven iv ell-favoured and fat kine. 
 . . . And the thin ears swallowed up the seven 
 rank and full ears. Genesis xli. i to 8. 
 
 There is a warning for us in that dream, just 
 as it stands. It is possible for the best years of 
 our life, the best experiences, the best victories 
 won, and the best service rendered, to be swal- 
 lowed up by times of failure, defeat, dishonour, 
 uselessness in the kingdom. Some men's lives 
 of rare promise and rare achievement have ended 
 so. It is awful to think of; but it is true. Yet it 
 is never necessary. 
 
 S. D. Gordon has said that the only assurance 
 of safety against this tragedy is " fresh touch with 
 God," daily, hourly. The blessed, fruitful, victo- 
 rious experiences of yesterday are not only of no 
 value to me to-day, but they will actually be 
 eaten up or reversed by to-day's failures, unless 
 they serve as incentives to still better, richer ex- 
 periences to-day. " Fresh touch with God," by 
 abiding in Christ, alone will keep the lean kine 
 and the ill-favoured grain out of my life. 
 
 T DO remember my faults this day. Genesis xh. 
 ^ 9 to 13. 
 
 Because we forget our faults so constantly, 
 God is good to remind us of them by circum- 
 stances that force us to face them. Bishop 
 
146 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 Oldham has said that there is in the hfe of every- 
 one of us " a vast area of undiscovered sin." In 
 many ways God is ceaselessly, patiently trying 
 to reveal to each of us more and more of this 
 " undiscovered country " of our lives — not for 
 our discouragement, but so that we may turn 
 each[^freshly revealed or remembered fault over to 
 Jesus Christ and have it forever done away with. 
 Let us rejoice whenever we remember present 
 faults of ours that we were overlooking. But the 
 remembering will leave us worse off than we 
 were before unless we instantly seek the victory 
 and release which are in Christ. 
 
 /fND they brought him hastily out of the dun- 
 -^-^ geon. . . . And Joseph answeredj . . . 
 // is not in me : God will give. Genesis xli. 14 to 16. 
 
 That was the reason why Joseph was brought 
 out of the dungeon : because it was his life habit 
 to say, " It is not in me : God will give." The 
 dungeon bars break for any man who learns to 
 say that. It is freedom, release. It is bondage, 
 indeed, for me to suppose that there is in me any 
 good, any knowledge, any power, anything worth 
 while, any capability of meeting the responsibilities 
 that confront me. The light of liberty breaks 
 when I say, and mean it, *' It is not in me : God 
 will give." That is the life that is Christ, and it is 
 freer and more satisfying than the life that is self. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 47 
 
 y/N'D ihz food shall be for a slore to the land 
 ■^ . . . that the land perish not. Genesis 
 xli. 17 to ^6, 
 
 And so God offers me food that is abundant 
 against the times of sore need in my Hfe, that I 
 perish not. That food is nothing else than the 
 " bread of Hfe," His own Son, Jesus Christ my 
 Lord, my Saviour, and my Life. As I feed upon 
 Christ, and let the Holy Spirit lay up stores of 
 this rich Treasure in my life, I am absolutely 
 safeguarded against the times of peril and lean- 
 ness that would otherwise be famine and destruc- 
 tion to me. I must draw upon Christ for my 
 life and as my life in exactly the same literalness 
 with which I eat my bodily food. " Except ye 
 eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His 
 blood, ye have no life in you. . . . He that 
 eateth of this bread shall live forever " (John vi. 
 53, 58). Lord Jesus, keep me, by the fullness of 
 Thy dear self within me, from those times which 
 Satan would make famine to my soul. 
 
 /^AN we find such a one as this, a man in whom 
 ^ the spirit of God is) . . . Forasmuch as 
 God hath showed thee all this, there is none so discreet 
 and wise as thou. Genesis xH. 37 to 45. 
 
 When shall we let the simple truth burn into 
 us, and cauterize out everything else, that the 
 measure of our seeming power — for it is not 
 
148 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 our power at all — is the measure of our self- 
 crucifying surrender to the will and life of God ? 
 Nothing that I am or have is of any tiniest value 
 in itself. God is of value. He will give Him- 
 self in Christ to me, will work His omnipotence 
 through me, will show forth His knowledge and 
 wisdom and love in supernatural effect through 
 me, if once for all I stop thinking that / have 
 any part in it save that of total inability and sur- 
 render. Then my life shall be marvellous in- 
 deed, not because it is my hfe, but because it is 
 a life in which the Spirit of God is. Nothing, 
 then, no earthly empire, can be too great a re- 
 sponsibiHty for — not me, but God in me. Lord 
 Jesus, my Master and my Life, purge utterly out 
 of me my lingering thoughts of self, so grudgingly 
 given up. I have no powers, no talents, no 
 ability, no education, no character, except my 
 sin-earned worthlessness. Let me never forget 
 that. And so let me rejoice that this mass of 
 worthlessness that I call " I " is dead : that it is 
 no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me. 
 Now do Thy glorious will through me forever ! 
 
 /f ND Joseph was thirty years old when he stood 
 -" before Pharaoh king of Egypt. Genesis 
 xh. 46. 
 
 He stood before Pharaoh at thirty because he 
 had been standing before God long before he 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 49 
 
 was thirty. He had simply been Hving in God ; 
 he was saturated with God ; God was his Hfe. 
 To advise the king of Egypt, and to administer 
 the empire, was an easy matter for God; and, 
 therefore, easy for one whose whole life was God. 
 So it should be with us. God has given Himself 
 to us in Christ. Christ wants to be, not my ex- 
 ternal Saviour, but my entire, literal, veritable 
 life. It will be a simple matter, then, for me to 
 stand before a king if that is my duty. No con- 
 ceivable task, responsibility, or problem of my 
 life can baffle or even tax Christ ; therefore, it 
 cannot defeat or disturb me, while ** to me to Hve 
 is Christ." 
 
 f^OD hath made me fruitful in the land of my 
 
 ^-^ affliction. Genesis xli. 47 to 52. 
 
 That is not only possible in every affliction, it 
 is the purpose of every affliction. Whether the 
 affliction is the result of our own sin, or is the 
 evidence of God's loving care, apart from our 
 sin, it may always be fruitful, and it is His will 
 that it should be. The affliction resulting from 
 my own wrong-doing is God's call to turn away 
 from sin to Him ; the affliction for which I am 
 not responsible is His call to greater fruitfulness : 
 " Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, 
 that it may bring forth more fruit." So affliction 
 is always to be rejoiced in. If we will only take 
 
ISO MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 it in this way, as God means us to, our lives shall 
 lay up grain as the sand of the sea, until we leave 
 off numbering, for it will be without number. 
 
 /i ND the seven years of famine began to come. 
 -^^ . . . And all countries came into Egypt to 
 Joseph. Genesis xli. 53 to 57. 
 
 How would j/ou like to be such that in time 
 of need every one would confidently turn to you 
 for help, and never be disappointed ? That is 
 exactly what God intends you should be. It 
 simply requires that you let the Source of every 
 good supply replace you with Himself, and then 
 pour Himself out in a lavish stream of omnipo- 
 tent helpfulness to others, all the time. That 
 was Joseph's secret of never-failing helpfulness 
 to all who came to him : God was his life. God 
 worked out this great grain administration ; 
 Joseph could never have done it. " He that be- 
 lieveth on me," said the One who is the Bread 
 and Water of hfe, '* from within him shall flow 
 rivers of living water." Does every one who 
 ever turns to you for anything always and only 
 find Christ awaiting him ? What a ministering 
 life we may live ! 
 
 /fND Joseph's ten brethren went down to buy 
 -" grain. . . . And Joseph was the governor 
 over the land ; he it was that sold to all the people. 
 Genesis xlii. i to 6. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 151 
 
 The man who was governor, and who con- 
 trolled the food supply of the world, was the 
 brother of these men who were driven to him by 
 their dire need. And the One on whose shoul- 
 der is the government of the world, and in whom 
 alone is the bread supply of the world, is my 
 Elder Brother. It is something of a privilege to 
 be thus related to the One to whom the whole 
 world in its hunger and famine must turn, is it 
 not? I have treated Him as badly as Joseph's 
 brothers once treated him ; but He has forgotten 
 it, blotted it out, put it forever behind Him. He 
 takes me right into the heavenly court life with 
 Himself, and gives me Himself as my food and 
 my life forever. Why should I ever again go 
 hungry on the husks of my own poor, selfish 
 planning and providing ? 
 
 /J ND Joseph saw his brethren^ and he knew them^ 
 ■^^ but made himself strange unto them, and spake 
 roughly with them. Genesis xlii. 7, 8. 
 
 And so may even our Elder Brother do with 
 us as did this younger brother of these men, who 
 loved them, and had the bread of their life, and 
 was to be a saviour to them. There are times 
 when Christ seems to make Himself strange unto 
 us, and to deal with us in a way that we cannot 
 comprehend. Then is the time to trust Him. 
 Whatever He does, or seems to do, He does it 
 
152 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 in a love that yearns over us. And if He does 
 seem to be remote from us or, harsh with us in 
 any way, we may be pretty sure that it is some- 
 thing of our doing that has caused this. He is 
 holding us all the time in His blessed and eternal 
 grip of love. 
 
 AT AY J my Lord, , . , we are true men. 
 -^ ^ Genesis xHi. 9 to 11. 
 
 It must have rung strangely in Joseph's ears 
 to hear these men who were liars and his 
 would-be murderers protesting, " We are true 
 men." They were, indeed, speaking the truth 
 just then as to the facts they gave him ; but they 
 were not " true men." His blood was on their 
 heads ; and they had never, so far as we know, 
 confessed their guilt to their father. Yet they 
 probably counted themselves respectable, God- 
 fearing citizens. I have as little right to claim 
 any virtue in the presence of my Elder Brother, 
 my Saviour and Master, Jesus Christ. I may 
 think I am a " true man " ; but I know that there 
 is a multitude of forgotten and undiscovered and 
 unrepaired sins in my Hfe, in the face of which I 
 am a complete and hopeless and worthless failure 
 — of myself. Only as I recognize this and con- 
 fess it daily, hourly, can my Christ replace my 
 worthless life with His glorious Self. Oh, how I 
 praise Him that, as He crucifies me with Himself, 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 153 
 
 it is no longer I, the awful failure, that lives, but 
 Christ liveth in me I 
 
 fy^E are spies. . . . And he put them all to- 
 ■* gether into ward three days. Genesis xlii. 
 12 to 17. 
 
 It must have been bitterly hard for them to be 
 so misjudged and ill-treated. They did not 
 know that their own brother was doing all this 
 for no other purpose than to work out his loving 
 plans for them. It is hard when we are mis- 
 judged and unfairly condemned. But we may 
 be confident that always, when God permits it, it 
 is only because He has loving plans for us that 
 He would work out that way. If we accept the 
 injustice in trust and love, it may be the means 
 of drawing us and the one who has wronged us 
 into a blessedly close fellowship in the Christ 
 whose love keeps us undisturbed and loving 
 through it all. Let me never be anxious or 
 angry when I am condemned for having done 
 right. 
 
 TX^-fi" are verily guilty concerning our brother; 
 
 ^^ . . . therefore is this distress come upon 
 us. . . . Then Joseph commanded to fill their 
 vessels with grain, and to restore every mans money 
 into his sack, and to give them provision for the way. 
 Genesis xlii. 18 to 25. 
 
 Thus does my consciousness of guilt cry out 
 
154 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 against me, as I fear my complete overwhelming 
 and destruction because of it ; and thus does my 
 Saviour " punish " me for it : He bears its full 
 penalty for me, fills my vessels with grain, re- 
 stores to me all that I have ever given Him, and 
 gives me a King's provision for the way. I give 
 Him my Hfe: He gives it back, recreated and 
 glorified into His likeness. Every vessel of my 
 life is heaped up, pressed down, and running over 
 with His royal bounty. But the best of all is 
 His Provision for the way : nothing less than 
 Himself. Jesus Christ is my Way ; and He is 
 my Life. Thus has He given Himself to me, so 
 that /* to me to Hve is Christ." I am " verily 
 guilty " concerning Him whom I have betrayed 
 and crucified ; I turn to Him in my famine ; and 
 this is my reward : Christ is my Life. 
 
 T TE espied his money ; . . . and their heart 
 -^-^ failed them. . . . Every man's bundle of 
 money was in his sack : and . . . they were 
 afraid. .. . . Me have ye bereaved of my chil- 
 dren: . . . all these things are against me. 
 Genesis xlii. 26 to 38. 
 
 So God kept piling up His evidences of His 
 love for them, and working out His loving and 
 wonderful plans for them ; and they were afraid, 
 for all these things were against them. The 
 money returned was not a plot to trap them ; 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 155 
 
 it was their brother's big-hearted generosity. 
 Joseph was not taken from Jacob : he was saved 
 that through the son the father might be saved, 
 and end his Hfe in his son's loving care. Simeon 
 was not taken from Jacob : he was held as a 
 hostage to insure the working out of the loving 
 plans for Jacob and all the family. But all these 
 things were against them, and they were afraid. 
 Thus do I fear and rebel against my Father's 
 wonderful and loving plans for the enriching of 
 my life. Oh, may I see the folly and the sin of 
 my distrust of Him, and rejoice in the things 
 that are against me, hereafter, forever, that He 
 may do His glorious will for me, unhindered by 
 my blindness and stupidity ! How rich He will 
 make^my life if only my heart shall always sing, 
 " Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." 
 
 /JND the famine vp as sore. . . . They had 
 -" eaten up the grain which they had. . . . 
 Except we had lingered, surely we had now returned. 
 . . . And they took double money in their hand j 
 and Benjamin; and rose up, and went. Genesis 
 xliii. I to 15. 
 
 Praise God for the famine in our life that drives 
 us in utter helplessness back to Him ! Praise 
 Him that what we have gets eaten up, and we 
 must turn to Him for more. But how like unto 
 the faltering, fearful family of Israel and his sons^ 
 
156 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 we act! We could find absolute relief, suffi- 
 ciency, satisfaction in Jesus Christ ; yet we delay, 
 debate, wonder, waste time, and stay hungry. 
 When finally in desperation we are driven to 
 Him we think we must do some great thing to 
 meet His terms, and we try to carry *' double 
 money " in all sorts of ways, to make sure of 
 what He is yearningly waiting to give us. He 
 does ask us for one thing, and one only : and 
 that is the dearest possession of our lives. With 
 Israel's family the dearest possession was Benja- 
 min. When we lay down our dearest possession, 
 then the treasures of the kingdom are flung open 
 to us and lavished into our Hfe. O Master, show 
 me this morning how to yield myself up to Thee 
 completely, and then how to ask of Thee things 
 great enough to be worthy of a King's giving. 
 Make me equal in my requests to Thy infinite 
 eagerness to give. 
 
 /f ND when Joseph saiv Benjamin with them, he 
 ■^■^ said to the steward of his house. Bring the men 
 into the house, and slay, and make ready ; for the 
 men shall dine with me at noon. Genesis xliii. i6. 
 
 When their brother, who was to be their sa- 
 viour, saw that they had brought with them the 
 dearest possession of their family, then went 
 forth the instant word for a king's feast to be 
 prepared for them. That is all that my Saviour 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 5/ 
 
 is waiting for to lavish the fullness of His bounty 
 upon me ; my bringing to Him the dearest pos- 
 session of my hfe — myself, in unconditional, 
 seemingly costly and eternal surrender, in con- 
 fessed helplessness and awful need, to His mas- 
 tery. Then He gives the word to come into His 
 own house, and eat at the table of the palace — 
 the best food that He Himself partakes of. The 
 surrender of Benjamin, their costliest possession, 
 was the key to the treasures of the kingdom — 
 yes, to the very recognition of Joseph, for these 
 brothers and Jacob. The surrender of the cost- 
 liest possession of my life is the key to the treas- 
 ures of the kingdom for me — yes, even to the 
 recognition and full appropriation of Christ as my 
 whole and only Life. Oh, Lord Jesus, show me 
 more that I may give up, that I may have more 
 of Thee ! 
 
 'DROUGHT the men to Joseph's house. And the 
 -^ men were afraid. . . . Peace be to you, 
 fear not : your God, and the God of your father, 
 hath given you treasure. . . . And he brought 
 Simeon out unto them. . . . And they made 
 ready the present against Joseph's coming. Genesis 
 xliii. 17 to 25. 
 
 What a picture it is ! The men, frightened, 
 distressed, dreading a life of bondage and pov- 
 erty, trying to explain, hoping that their little 
 
158 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 gift will help matters : and the prince of the 
 kingdom all the time having prepared for them 
 not only a feast such as only a king could give, 
 but a lifetime of wealth and love. How often 
 have I been in distress over the preparations that 
 my Master and Saviour was making for my rich 
 blessing ; yet, my fear and distrust did not turn 
 Him against me ! Over this chapter is the page- 
 heading in my Bible, " Joseph Feasts with his 
 Brothers." Over their fears was that glad, shin- 
 ing fact which was just at hand. And he was 
 their brother^ not their ruler. What a wonder- 
 ful and glorious Saviour I have ! How He lav- 
 ishes His love upon me ! How I long to yield 
 more and more to Him, until the completeness 
 of my yielding shall let Him show me the com- 
 pleteness of His love ! 
 
 TS your father well } , , , God be gracious 
 ■^ unto thee, my son. And Joseph made haste; 
 for his heart yearned. Genesis xliii. 26 to 34. 
 
 Through the whole record of this second 
 meeting of the brothers with Joseph there runs 
 one note that out-sounds every other : Joseph's 
 yearning love for them all. Everything he said 
 and did was from that standpoint, that motive, 
 only. They must have noticed, and have been 
 grateful for his kindliness ; but they did not yet 
 know the heart-break of passionate love that was 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 159 
 
 back of it all. Nor do we yet know the love of 
 Christ that is back of all that He does for us. 
 We know something of it ; we could know more, 
 if we would yield to it more ; if we should know 
 all, we should never, could never, sin against it 
 again. Let us think more of Christ's love, seek 
 to know more of it, meditate more upon it, lose 
 ourselves in more complete abandonment in it. 
 
 cr'HE Egyptians might not eat bread with the He- 
 -^ brcjvs ; for that is an abomination unto the 
 Egyptians. Genesis xliii. 32 to 34. 
 
 To be sure, the Egyptians would not have had 
 any bread at all to eat if it had not been for a 
 Hebrew ; but that was a minor matter compared 
 with the importance of their ignorant, sin-blind 
 prejudice. The facts are always of less impor- 
 tance than a prejudice, when a prejudice is 
 allowed to sway. And no one can see true, 
 judge accurately, or even know what the facts 
 are, when the blight of prejudice is permitted to 
 strike in. Prejudice is caused always and only 
 by one thing : self-sufficiency, which is sin. O 
 Lord Jesus, cleanse me from my self-satisfied 
 prejudices ! The only cure is Thyself, Thy 
 boundless love, in me, which shall always count 
 others better than myself, and thus shall reveal 
 to me their good, and show me the real facts as 
 they are. Thy love is never blind ; my selfish- 
 
l6o MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 ness is always blind. Let myself and sin be the 
 only abomination in my sight. Let Thy love be 
 the lens through which the beauty in all lives 
 about me is revealed to me. 
 
 T)UT my cup, the silver cup, in the sack's mouth 
 -*• of the youngest. . . . And the cup was 
 found in Benjamin's sack. Then they rent their 
 clothes. . • . . And Joseph said unto his breth- 
 ren. Come near to me, I pray you. . . . I am 
 Joseph your brother . , . to save you alive by 
 a great deliverance. . . . y4nd he kissed all his 
 brethren and wept upon them: and after that his 
 brethren talked with him. Genesis xliv. i to xlv. 15. 
 All that Joseph had done in seeming cruelty 
 was evidently done only in love, to throw into 
 clearer, sharper relief the full expression of his 
 saving love and forgiveness when the time for 
 that should come. And now it has come : and 
 the heart-break of the sharp joy of the unexpected 
 restoration of everything that had seemed to be 
 lost, added to a wealth and happiness of an as- 
 sured future beyond anything that the wildest 
 dreams of these sinning brothers had ever pictured 
 — there is nothing like it in all human history 
 and experience, except the greater joy of for- 
 giveness in the undreamed-of love of our forgiving 
 heavenly Father through His Son, our Saviour, 
 and Life, and Elder Brother. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS l6l 
 
 " And after that his brethren talked with him." 
 After the glory-shock of our full restoration into 
 the body of Christ, the rest of our lifetime is not 
 long enough for the conversation and communion 
 we must have with Him. That is why we must 
 *' pray without ceasing " ; we cannot help it. 
 
 /f ND when they were gone out of the city, and 
 ■^^ were not yet far off, Joseph said unto his 
 steward, Up, follow after the men; and when thou 
 dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have 
 ye rewarded evil for good) . . . Then they 
 rent their clothes, . . . and returned to the city. 
 Genesis xliv. i to 13. 
 
 From the highest hopes, with hght hearts and 
 joyful assurance of protection and plenty, they 
 are plunged into the darkness of catastrophe, 
 bewildered and dazed, crushed by the suddenness 
 and the cruel injustice of it all. They had just 
 been feasting with Joseph ; now they are led 
 back under arrest, with evidence hopelessly 
 against them. Could they continue to trust 
 Joseph and God in this affliction ? It is just the 
 sort of sudden, unaccountable affliction that may 
 strike into our lives at any time, and by the ex- 
 press order of the Father who loves us most, and 
 at whose table we have just been feasting. If it 
 does, oh, let us trust Him to the uttermost, even 
 while He seems to be slaying us, and with us 
 
1 62 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 every dearest hope ! We know that Joseph did 
 this in love ; and we see why, for the whole story 
 is before us. We may be infinitely surer that 
 our Father is doing it in greater love than Joseph 
 had, even while we cannot see why, and while 
 the end of ozcr story is blindingly hidden from 
 us. There is nothing we can do but trust. But 
 if we trust, then speedily we find that there is so 
 much more that we can do. God will become 
 dearer to us then, and His love richer and 
 sweeter, than ever He was to us before He asked 
 us to trust Him in such blindness and sorrow. 
 
 /IND thou saidst unto thy servants, Except your 
 -" youngest brother come down with you, ye shall 
 see my face no more. . . . Now therefore, let 
 thy servant, I pray thee, abide instead of the lad a 
 bondman to my lord. . . . Then Joseph could 
 not refrain himself . . . and he . . . made 
 himself known unto his brethren. Genesis xliv. 14 to 
 xlvi. I. 
 
 So it is always : real sacrifice, unto complete 
 surrender of self, brings the reveahng of God in 
 His fullness to us. As we had already seen, it 
 was only on condition of Jacob's releasing and 
 the brethren's bringing the best they had, Ben- 
 jamin, that they could even see Joseph's face 
 again. But when Judah went farther than this, 
 and offered himself to be Joseph's slave forever, 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 63 
 
 then it was that Joseph could keep back nothing, 
 but found himself compelled to reveal every- 
 thing to those for whom his heart yearned. It 
 is God's own way with us. God in Jesus Christ 
 does not, and apparently cannot, make Himself 
 fully known, in His personality and love, until 
 we have surrendered to Him, unconditionally 
 and forever, not only all we have but all we are. 
 Then God can refrain no longer, but lavishes 
 upon us, in Christ, such a reveahng of Himself 
 that it cannot be told in words. God had to 
 sacrifice Himself, in Christ, in order thus to re- 
 veal Himself to us ; but His sacrifice alone will 
 not suffice : not until we in turn have sacrificed 
 ourself to Him is the revelation possible and 
 complete. But what a revelation it is ! What 
 glory does God give us in the life that is Christ 
 as our life ! How it changes everything for us 
 thereafter, as for Joseph's brothers, from famine 
 to royal abundance ! How little is our sacrifice 
 when measured by the return : Christ Jesus our 
 Life! 
 
 /f ND Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to 
 -^-^ me, I pray you. And they came near. And 
 he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into 
 ^<?7P^- ' ' . And God sent me before you to 
 preserve you. . , . And he kissed all his breth- 
 ren. Genesis xlv. 2 to 15. 
 
1 64 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 The very crucifixion of Christ by mankind 
 was turned by God into the deliverance of man- 
 kind. Could man conceive of such a love, which 
 turns man's own sin into the blessing of redemp- 
 tion ? It is not that sin ever, under any circum- 
 stances, is or can be a blessing : the blessing lies 
 in God's attitude toward the sinner. It was not 
 the crucifixion, but Christ's use of the crucifixion, 
 that saved mankind. It was not the hatred of 
 Joseph's brothers, but Joseph's use of the results 
 of that hatred, that saved their lives. But what 
 a surpassing forgiveness and love it was in Joseph 
 that could tell them with tear-brimming eyes not 
 to be troubled over what they had done to him ! 
 Yet God's love in Christ is greater. Oh, may I 
 lose myself in it in an abandonment of trust and 
 gratitude that shall let Him show me His love 
 that passeth knowledge, and, through me, show 
 it ceaselessly to others ! 
 
 f^OME unto me : and I will give you the good of 
 ^ the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of 
 the land. . . . Also regard not your stuff ; for 
 the good of all the land of Egypt is yours. Genesis 
 xlv. 1 6 to 20. 
 
 It was a kingly offer. So is the offer that God 
 makes us in Christ. Suppose these men had 
 held back because they saw that they would 
 have to lose some of their own belongings ! 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 65 
 
 Suppose they had held on to their famine- 
 stricken property in Canaan, and had decHned to 
 trust the king ! Well, they would probably have 
 starved, or dragged out a half-starved existence. 
 Christ asks us to come unto Him ; He promises 
 us the best that the God of heaven and earth can 
 bestow ; He urges us to cut loose from all that 
 we have ; for the good of the kingdom of heaven, 
 now and here, is pledged to us instead. We 
 must choose between letting our belongings en- 
 tirely go or missing the fullness of the wealth 
 that Christ offers. How hardly do we let our 
 stuff go ! But how He dazzles our eyes with His 
 wealth, our wealth in Him, when we do ! Christ 
 Jesus, purge away my last lingering desire for 
 any vestige of my old belongings which is hinder- 
 ing my full inheritance in Thee. 
 
 /f^D Joseph gave them . , . provision for 
 ■^-^ the way. Genesis xlv. 21 to 24. 
 
 Perhaps they would have been unable to un- 
 dertake the difficult task of moving their families 
 back to Egypt without this provision. In any 
 case, it was a regal provision, with every need 
 lavishly met. So God sees that we are super- 
 naturally enabled to travel every step of the way 
 that He maps out for us. " The resources of 
 the Christian life," Dr. Robert F. Horton has 
 said, ♦• are just Jesus Christ." He is our regal 
 
1 66 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 provision for the way. He is the Way. In 
 Him our progress through Hfe to the goal that 
 God has set for us and invites us into, is just a 
 royal march of triumph, surrounded by wealth 
 and comfort. Do we believe in Christ enough 
 to let Him prove this ? For it is so ; and if we 
 are not finding it so, the fault is not Christ's. 
 " He that spared not His own Son, but delivered 
 Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also 
 freely give us all things ? " 
 
 /JNC> they told him, saying, Joseph is yet alive, 
 -" and he is ruler over all the land of Egypt. 
 . . . // is enough ; Joseph my son is yet alive : 
 I will go and see him before I die. Genesis xlv. 
 25 to 28. 
 
 There are heart-breaks of joy in God's plan for 
 His children. We can no more imagine the 
 good things that He has waiting ahead for us, 
 both in this life and in the life to come, than 
 Jacob could have imagined his lost boy alive and 
 ruling Egypt. That is the sort of miracle-sur- 
 prise awaiting me daily in the tingling, vibrant, 
 throbbing life of Jesus Christ who is my life, 
 when I let Him fulfill His will and lavish Himself 
 and His gifts and surprises upon me. When I 
 let Him become all that there is of me what a 
 here and hereafter He gives me when I can say^ 
 " To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain " ! 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 167 
 
 /^ AME to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices unio 
 ^ the God of his father Isaac. And God spake ^ 
 . . . I am God, the God of thy father : fear not. 
 Genesis xlvi. i to 7. 
 
 God reaffirms His best promises of old when- 
 ever we let Him do so. Just now Israel was at 
 the old home, where he and Esau had spent their 
 youth. It was at Beersheba also that Isaac had 
 found peace from his enemies (xxvi. 23-33), ^^^ 
 God had renewed with him the covenant of 
 Abraham. Now an entirely new chapter of 
 Israel's life is opening — the last on earth ; and 
 God tells him quietly, using his boyhood name, 
 that He is the same unchanging God, and that 
 His plans for him and his seed are unchanged 
 and assured. The best promises that God has 
 ever made to me are still guaranteed to me by 
 His inviolable word. Oh, may I remember this 
 whenever I am tempted to doubt and wonder 
 whether I used to hope too much ! We cannot 
 hope too much from God. 
 
 y^LL the souls of the house of Jacob, that came 
 -" into Egypt, were threescore and ten. Genesis 
 xlvi. 8 to 27. 
 
 And this was the man who, some seventy 
 years before, had fled from his home and every- 
 thing he held dear, alone, a fugitive, because he 
 had broken his father's heart and all but made 
 
1 68 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 his brother a murderer by his tricky, selfish, 
 lying ways. Now, loved, honoured, wealthy, 
 surrounded by children and grandchildren, he is 
 on his way to the court of Egypt to spend the 
 remaining years of his hfe in an atmosphere of 
 love, blessing, and honour beyond anything that 
 he has yet known. And all because, one night 
 at the ford of Jabbok, he yielded himself up for- 
 ever to the service and mastery of God. That is 
 the way of the surrendered hfe. We *' give up " 
 everything — everything that is poisoning and 
 ruining our life : and we get heaven's wealth now 
 and here. We give up Self, and we get God. 
 The surrendered hfe brings the life that is Christ. 
 
 yjND Joseph . . . went up to meet Israel 
 -" his father ; . . . and he presented himself 
 unto him, and fell on his neck and wept on his neck a 
 good while. And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let 
 me die, since I have seen thy face, that thou art yet 
 alive. Genesis xlvi. 28 to 34. 
 
 Praise God for our blessed, loving fathers ! 
 What a reunion we are going to have with them, 
 some day, on the Other Side ! If tears of joy 
 are allowed in heaven, we shall shed them '* a 
 good while " that day of the reunion. God calls 
 Himself our heavenly Father, and thereby has 
 made His relationship to us more like that of 
 earthly father and child than any other human 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 169 
 
 relationship. Joseph's love for his father was ex> 
 ceeded by his father's love for Joseph. It is al- 
 ways so. The one who does most for the other 
 loves most. We love God " because He first 
 loved us " ; and His greater love is the school of 
 our lesser love. And His supremest love for us 
 is Christ, the gift of the Father's life poured out 
 for us in Christ our hfe. 
 
 rO sojourn in the land are ive come ; for there is 
 no pasture for thy servants' flocks ; for the 
 famine is sore in the land of Canaan. . . . The 
 land of Egypt is before thee ; in the best of the land 
 make thy father and thy brethren to dwell. Genesis 
 xlvii. I to 6. 
 
 Did you ever come to a time of the most 
 awful famine, spiritual famine, in your life, when 
 there was no pasture to feed upon ? Joseph is 
 such a marvellous type of Christ all through his 
 life-story. So Christ at such a time takes the 
 matter Himself for us to the throne of God. He 
 tells God we are His own brothers. And what 
 is the answer ? " The kingdom of heaven is 
 before thee ; in the h'st of the kingdom make 
 thy brethren to dwell." Do you realize what it 
 means to have Jesus Christ intercede for you — 
 the Christ whom you repudiated by your own 
 sin ? Pharaoh knew not these men ; but he 
 knew Joseph; and nothing was too good for 
 
170 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 Joseph and every relative of Joseph. And we 
 are "joint heirs with Christ." Because of Christ, 
 God flings wide open the whole kingdom and 
 simply asks that we take its best. Out of 
 famine, into the best that the kingdom affords. 
 Not only that, but rulers of the King's own prop- 
 erty. O Lord Jesus, forgive my unfaith ! Open 
 my sin-bound, self-centered eyes to the wonders 
 of Thy love. Teach me how to receive more. 
 The Best of the kingdom : that means Thee. 
 I take Thee, Lord, as my feast of eternal life. 
 
 /J ND Jacob said unto Pharaoh, . . , Few 
 -^-^ and evil have been the days of the years of my 
 life. Genesis xlvii. 7 to lo. 
 
 In that sad admission Jacob showed the pres- 
 ence of God in his life. It is the glory of our 
 life that we can see our own awful sin, and suffer 
 in its contemplation, and acknowledge it freely to 
 God. If we could not do that, life would be 
 hopeless indeed. No man can see his own sin 
 save by the power of the Holy Spirit, whose 
 saving work it is to convict us of sin. There is 
 rich hope for us when our past life appears to us 
 as one black, miserable failure except for Christ's 
 part in it.' Oh, the joy of just teUing God so ! 
 The privilege of acknowledging our sin is that 
 which a little child has in coming to its mother 
 and confessing. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS I/I 
 
 But we can go farther, in Christ, than simply 
 having our sins completely forgiven. We can 
 be kept from sinning. And therein we have a 
 present heritage in Christ beyond that of the 
 best of the Old Testament saints. Christ's com- 
 plete mastery of our hves means His holding us 
 in a life of sustained victory over willful and con- 
 scioussin. If He is not able to do this, then He 
 is a limited and insufficient Saviour. But He is 
 not limited ; and He is sufficient. He is suffi- 
 cient, because " the law of the Spirit of life in 
 Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of 
 sin and death." No Christian need, or ought, to 
 say on his death-bed, " Few and evil have been 
 the days of the years of my life." That was 
 not Paul's valedictory. In Christ he may say 
 with Paul : " I have fought a good fight, I have 
 finished my course, I have kept the faith : hence- 
 forth there is laid up for me a crown of right- 
 eousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, 
 shall give me at that day ; and not to me only, but 
 also to all them that have loved His appearing." 
 
 ^ATD Joseph placed his father and his brethren, 
 ^ and gave them a possession in the land of 
 Egypt, in the best of the land. . . . And 
 Joseph nourished his father, and his brethren. Gene- 
 sis xlvii. II, 12. 
 
 Not only was Egypt, the land of plenty, which 
 
172 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH \ 
 
 stood for the bread supply of the world during \ 
 this famine time, now the permanent home of 
 these men, but the best that that land could offer 
 was theirs. And it was theirs with permanent 
 provision for themselves and their families, be- 
 cause of what was done for them by the man 
 whom they had hated and tried forever to do 
 away with. Therein is Joseph's life-story the 
 wonderful foreshadowing of the work of Jesus 
 Christ We have, by our sin and repudiation of 
 all that Christ stands for, rejected Him over and 
 over again, ever since we deliberately enlisted in 
 His service. We have revolted and tried to cast 
 off His bonds of love. What has been His retali- 
 ation ? He has not only persistently, irresistibly 
 held us within the kingdom of heaven, the land 
 of plenty, but He has insisted on giving us the 
 best that that kingdom affords, and nourishing 
 us with nothing less than Himself, as our Bread 
 of Life. Now let us once and for all give up 
 our resistance against Him ! For His love will 
 win in the end anyway ; why should we delay its 
 fullest outworkings for us and through us ? 
 
 /iND there was no bread in all the land ; for the 
 ■^^ famine was very sore. . . . Buy us and 
 our land for bread, and ive and our land will be serv- 
 ants . . . thai we may live, and not die. Gen- 
 esis xlvii. 13 to 22. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1/3 
 
 How good God is to starve us steadily and ir- 
 resistibly into that increasing surrender to Him 
 which finally has to yield completely, letting go 
 not only our dearest possessions but our very 
 selves in eternal slavery to His love, as the price 
 of that Bread of Life which we must have, or 
 die ! Whatever may have been Joseph's motives 
 in this transaction, there is no doubt about God's 
 motives toward us. He knows that so long as 
 we keep back from Him a single possession, and 
 so long as we retain the mastery or possession of 
 our own lives, we cannot have the hfe more 
 abundant that He longs to give us. And so He 
 lovingly sees to it that we starve on everything 
 else than the only and all-satisfying Bread of 
 Life, Jesus Christ His Son, which we can 
 have in fullness only on God's own terms : 
 unconditional surrender into eternal slavery — 
 the slavery of the bond service of love. But 
 when we have finally and in desperation sold 
 out — body, mind, soul, and spirit, forever — to 
 this loving King, what a feast, an eternal feast. 
 He provides ! Oh, the joy and health and 
 love and power and fullness of the Life that is 
 Christ ! 
 
 J HA VE bought you this day : . . . here is 
 ^ seed for you. . . . Ye shall give a fifth 
 unto Pharaoh. . . . Thou hast saved our Hues : 
 
174 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 . . . we will be Pharaoh's servants. Genesis 
 xlvii. 23 to 26. 
 
 It had been a choice between retaining their 
 liberty and dying, or surrendering to the king 
 and finding Hfe and provision. They wisely sur- 
 rendered, and now were glad to accept the king's 
 own terms of tribute to him. We are in exactly 
 the same relation to Him who has bought us 
 out of death into life. Yet some of us question 
 whether, on very limited incomes, we ought to 
 be expected to render to our King, not a fifth, 
 but only a tenth, of that which is wholly the re- 
 sult of His bounty to us ! Shall we not come 
 up near the standard of Old Egypt, and with 
 gratitude and heartiness pay our apportionment 
 with systematic regularity over into the Lord's 
 treasury ? The fact is, nine-tenths of our income 
 will go farther than ten-tenths, if we are really 
 His servants and pay Him outright, with grati- 
 tude and heartiness, the other tenth. 
 
 j^^D Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the 
 -^-^ land of Goshen ; and they gat them possessions 
 therein, and were fruitful and multiplied exceedingly. 
 Genesis xlvii. 27. 
 
 The best of the land was Goshen (xlvii. 6). 
 And there these men and their famiHes were liv- 
 ing, while riches increased unto them, and their 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1/5 
 
 life multiplied and extended. It was through no 
 merit of their own that they were there ; it had 
 come to pass because just one man, their brother, 
 had let God hold him inviolably true to God's 
 will. Are any living " in the best of the land " 
 of the kingdom of heaven on earth, their famine 
 turned into plenty, spiritual possessions multiply- 
 ing unto them, and their spiritual life propagated 
 in others unto the same blessing, because you 
 have thus let Christ use you in inviolable obedi- 
 ence to His will ? To see such results in the 
 lives of others because we have lived, or rather, 
 because Christ lives in us, ought to be the normal 
 experience of Christ's disciples on earth to-day. 
 " Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear 
 much fruit; and so shall ye be My disciples." 
 " He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same 
 beareth much fruit." 
 
 yJ^D the time drew near that Israel must die : 
 -^•^ and he called his son Joseph, and said unto 
 him, If noTv I have found favour in thy sight, . . . 
 deal k'lndlf and truly with me. Genesis xlvii. 
 28 to 31. 
 
 Jacob's sin was finding him out. There had 
 been a day, some seventy years before, when his 
 father, Isaac, lay near the point of death, old and 
 feeble, and his son, Jacob, came to him with a 
 blasphemous lie, and broke his father's heart, 
 
1/6 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WA TCH 
 
 and made his brother a murderer in spirit and 
 purpose. Was the old man Israel thinking Of 
 this as he entreated his boy Joseph now to speak 
 the truth to him, and asked him to seal it with 
 an oath ? Joseph's word was to be trusted. 
 Joseph kept his word : his father's longing was 
 fully met, after years of peaceful and happy life 
 in the midst of plenty in Egypt, surrounded by 
 his dear ones. And so Jacob's sin found him 
 out. That is the " finding out " of which W. M. 
 Clow, in " The Cross in Christian Experience," 
 reminds us. We sin, foully and hopelessly ; and 
 God pursues us inescapably with His love. The 
 life of His Son Jesus Christ is God's return to us 
 for our sin. Joseph's treatment of Israel is God's 
 return for Jacob's treatment of Esau. Do our 
 hearts not break as we face God's love ? Why 
 does He treat us so ? Because He is God, and 
 we are what we are. Our sin is so hopeless that 
 nothing less than the self-surrendered love of our 
 God who is Love could save us. But how glori- 
 ous and abundant a salvation it is ! Blessed be 
 the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 who according to His great mercy begat us 
 again unto a living hope by the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance 
 incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not 
 away, reserved in heaven for you, who by the 
 power of God are guarded through faith unto a 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 177 
 
 salvation ready to be revealed in the last time 
 (I Peter i. 3-5). 
 
 r\^E. said to Joseph, Behold, thy father is sick : 
 ^ and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh 
 and Ephraim. And one told Jacob, and said, Behold, 
 thy son Joseph cometh unto thee : and Israel strength- 
 ened himself, and sat upon the bed. Genesis xlviii. i, 2. 
 Praise God for the love of father and son ! At 
 its best, it is always the same, and always one of 
 the heaven sent riches of this life. Can you not 
 see the picture in these two verses ? Word 
 comes to Joseph : " Your father is sick." A 
 throb of pain goes through his heart. Every- 
 thing is dropped — state business, personal affairs, 
 all : he must be with his father at once. And 
 his boys must see their grandfather again ; they 
 go with him ; and as they go he tells them, with 
 glistening eyes and a strange break in his voice, 
 what a father Jacob has always been to him, 
 ahvays. They don't appreciate their grand- 
 father now, he says, but they will ; the whole 
 world will, some day, — and his voice breaks 
 again. It is only Israel, God's man, whom 
 Joseph sees now in his father ; and, in the midst 
 of his pain, his heart sings for joy for the man 
 that his father is, and for what his father has 
 meant to him, and taught him all his life long, 
 from the old farm days of the coat of many colours 
 
178 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 down to the present years of peace and loving 
 family fellowship in Egypt. Everything that he 
 is Joseph owes to Jacob and he knows it. 
 
 But word has come to the old man, worn with 
 sickness, that Joseph is on the way. See the 
 old-time light flash from Jacob's eye, as he springs 
 up ! " My boy Joseph coming ? I must be 
 ready for him." And as he waits, in eager, 
 tensely loving expectation, he thanks God for 
 Joseph. How much better Joseph has done 
 than his father ever did, he muses ; and tears of 
 keen sorrow come as he thinks again, •' Few and 
 evil have been the days of the years of my life." 
 He forgets — but Joseph never will — that it was 
 his boyhood training of Joseph in the old home 
 that let God into Joseph's life — the God of 
 Abraham and Isaac — in such fullness and blessed- 
 ness that the boy and man never got away from 
 that precious heritage. Jacob is Joseph's glory, 
 Joseph is Jacob's glory. But neither knows it of 
 himself, as their hearts are breaking with love in 
 the thought that this may be their last meeting. 
 
 Oh, you who have had God-led fathers, you 
 have realized what it means, have you not? 
 Can / ever forget it ? Can I ever forget the 
 lovelight that burned from my father's eyes into 
 my heart as he told me how bitterly he re- 
 proached himself for not having been a better 
 man and father ? He ! Can I ever forget that 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1/9 
 
 every blessing that has ever come into my Hfe is 
 the result of his prayers and of God in his life ? 
 And can I ever forget the word that came to me 
 on the 7th of December, 1903, in the midst of a busy 
 forenoon at the office, that he was ill, very ill ; or 
 the pain that thrust me through as I hurried to 
 his home ? The next day was his last on earth. 
 Our heavenly Father, Thou hast shown us who 
 Thou art through our earthly fathers. We know 
 Thee because we know them, and they knew 
 Thee. In Christ they and we are one, and one 
 with Thee. And we thank Thee for revealing 
 Thyself to us through our fathers. We thank 
 Thee for their lavished, costly love. May we 
 make their past a success. May we not dis- 
 honour their name. May they, as they watch 
 us from here or overhead, see Christ in us be- 
 cause we see Christ in them. 
 
 f^OD Almighty appeared unto me at Lu-{ in the 
 ^-^ land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto 
 me. Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply 
 thee, and I will make of thee a company of peoples, 
 and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an 
 everlasting possession. Genesis xlviii. 3 to 7. 
 
 Praise God for the memory of our great 
 experiences of Him ! And if we have not 
 had them, we ought to have them, and we 
 may have them by seeking for them. It is a 
 
l8o MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 great day when God makes Himself known to 
 a man in utterly new fullness, showing him 
 Christ not only as his Saviour, but as his life : 
 Christ as the entire being, the whole man, 
 body, mind, soul, and spirit. And in that 
 flood-tide of new blessing God promises to the 
 man such spiritual fruit-bearing as he had never 
 before known was possible (for it is now Christ, 
 not the man, who will do the whole work), and 
 God promises, too, that the new glory-blessing 
 that has come shall be multiplied, through the 
 man out into the lives of a company of peoples, 
 and " this land," the new wealth, Christ the life, 
 shall be given unto all these " for an everlasting 
 possession." Can such a day ever be forgotten? 
 Like all our best blessings and experiences, it is 
 a sheer, outright gift from God. It is not a 
 matter of growth, or cultivation, by ourselves : it 
 is just " ask, and ye shall receive ^ that your joy 
 may be full." Father, hold us truer to the rich 
 memory of our rich past ! 
 
 J HAD not thought to see thy face: and lo, God 
 -* hath let me see thy seed also. And Joseph 
 bowed himself with his face to the earth. Genesis 
 xlviii. 8 to 12. 
 
 That is the way God has always dealt with me. 
 It is His way with all His people : " exceeding 
 abundantly above all that we ask or think." How 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS l8l 
 
 vividly Jacob must have remembered the dreary 
 years when he had given up all hope of ever see- 
 ing his son again on earth ! How he must have 
 recalled the heart-break of that day when he 
 knew that his boy was destroyed, for he had seen 
 his blood-stained coat ! All hope gone; but God 
 still in charge; and now Joseph and Joseph's 
 sons are before him, in safety and health and 
 happiness ! And as it all swept over Joseph, 
 with the memory of that day of his brothers' 
 betrayal, and the years of hardship and injustice 
 and perhaps doubt in Egypt, is it strange 
 that he '• bowed himself with his face to the 
 earth" before his father and his father's God? 
 Shall we not remember this wonderful scene the 
 next time things get so black that all hope seems 
 dead? The same God who raised up seed to 
 Jacob through his " dead " boy Joseph is still 
 God : our God and our Father. And He can do 
 more for us through His Son and His Holy 
 Spirit to-day, than He could for Jacob and 
 Joseph. Father, we praise Thee, we love Thee, 
 and we trust Thee. 
 
 CT^HE God before whom my fathers . . . did 
 -*- walk, the God who hath fed me all my life 
 
 long unto this day, . . . bless the lads. . . . 
 
 Howbeit his younger brother shall be greater than he. 
 
 Genesis xlviii. 13 to 22. 
 
l82 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 It was a strange and beautiful and dramatic 
 scene, this death-bed benediction of one of the 
 giant figures of history upon the sons of his son. 
 Notice that " he blessed Joseph, and said, God 
 bless the lads." He blessed Joseph by blessing 
 the boys. God's blessing of the children is His 
 blessing upon the father. Any true father would 
 rather have it so. 
 
 But the two conspicuous truths here are these : 
 God's unchanging, unfaihng, and all-providing 
 love; and the arbitrary and often unexplained 
 way in which God determines and distributes 
 His earthly gifts or assignments. Joseph as- 
 sumed that his first-born should have the greater 
 temporal blessing. God said, " No " ; that it was 
 for the younger one. Jacob himself was a 
 younger son, yet his supremacy over the older 
 had been foretold by God before his birth. So 
 he now foretells a like blessing for Ephraim, the 
 younger. But God's all-sufficient love was 
 pledged to both : and that was enough. If we 
 have God's love, we may rejoice when that love 
 directs us into a less conspicuous place than our 
 younger brother. God was as loving toward 
 Manasseh as toward Ephraim. 
 
 /fSSEMBLE yourselves, . . . ye sons of 
 ■^^ Jacob ; and hearken unto Israel your father. 
 Reuben^ . . . thou shall not have the preemi- 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 83 
 
 newce. , . . Simeon and Levi . . . cursed 
 be their anger . . . Judah, thee shall thy breth- 
 ren praise. Genesis xlix. i to 12. 
 
 Another wonderful scene is this, of the death- 
 bed prophecy-song of Israel unto that group of 
 strong men his sons. Remember that here was 
 the founder of the nation Israel ; and here were 
 the founders of the twelve tribes that played and 
 shall yet play a larger part in the world's history 
 than all the rest of the world put together. With 
 a vision given him because of his years of sur- 
 rendered living unto God, Israel foretells with 
 fearless truthfulness the results of the life choices 
 of these his own sons. Sin was to have its own 
 sure reward ; so was righteousness. 
 
 Judah, in the hour of the supreme test that 
 Joseph put on the brothers just before disclosing 
 himself, had shown his self-crucifying readiness 
 to live or die for others ; and from Judah 
 was to come Jesus. The same choices and re- 
 sults confront me to-day. Self-will, and vio- 
 lence against God and my fellows; or self- 
 death, and Christ giving Himself through me to 
 the world. 
 
 ^EBULVN . . . shall be for a haven of 
 ^-^ ships. . . . Issachar . . . bowed his 
 shoulder to bear, and became a servant under task- 
 work. . . . Dan shall be a serpent in the way. 
 
l84 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 . . . I have IP aiied for thy salvaiioiiy O Jehovah. 
 Genesis xlix. 13 to 21. 
 
 In the sons of Israel was the whole gamut of 
 human hfe. We can choose from the list what 
 we will for ourselves. And in Christ alone we 
 find that we can choose and become the better 
 parts of the family of Israel. Would we be a 
 haven of ships ? Christ as our life can make of 
 us a veritable haven for all who thus need us. 
 To fill the glorious place of a servant under task- 
 work is simply to surrender unconditionally to 
 Him who " came not to be ministered unto, but 
 to minister " ; then we shall be the servant of all. 
 And only those in Christ can escape being " ser- 
 pents in the way " of all about them. Our so- 
 called best without Him is only as an adder's 
 poison. 
 
 Notice how Israel interrupts himself in the 
 midst of his foretelling to cry, " I have waited 
 for Thy salvation, O Jehovah." May that be our 
 constant remembrance ! Not only have we now 
 a full and sufficient salvation in Christ Jesus, but 
 we are waiting for its completion : for the final 
 casting off of the body of corruption : for His 
 coming again to complete the salvation of the 
 world and the universe, until God shall be all 
 and in all. As we wait in keen, tense expecta- 
 tion of that, Christ can evermore occupy us with 
 Himself, and use us to His honour and glory. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 85 
 
 <>rOSEPH is ... a fruitful bough hy a 
 J fountain. . . . And the arms of his hands 
 were made strong, by the hands of the Mighty One 
 of Jacob. . . . The blessings of thy father 
 . . . shall be ... on the crown of the head 
 of him that was separate from his brethren. Genesis 
 xlix. 22 to 26. 
 
 Here is Christ in the Old Testament as plainly 
 as Christ in the New. The blessings of Joseph 
 are the blessings that Christ lavishes upon us 
 when we meet the conditions as Joseph did. 
 Would I be " a fruitful bough " ? "I am the 
 vine, ye are the branches : he that abideth in Me, 
 and I in him, the same bringeth forth much 
 fruit." By what fountain shall I thrive ? " Who- 
 soever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
 him shall never thirst." But I need strength to 
 replace my pitiful weakness. " Be strong in the 
 Lord, and in the power of His might." " I can 
 do all things through Christ which strengtheneth 
 me." And all that I saw of Christ's blessings 
 lavished upon my father are pledged in His cove- 
 nant-blood to me, if I will be " separate from " 
 the things of my brethren of the world which 
 war against God and His will. The margin tells 
 us that to be " separate from " is to be " prince 
 among." Christ does not ask His followers to 
 take the fag end of things. Only those who 
 have died to self and been replaced by Christ 
 
1 86 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 know the fullness of enjoyment in, and possession 
 of, even the best tilings of this world. His 
 promises pledge this. What a program Christ 
 has made for us ! 
 
 /fND when Jacob made an end of charging his 
 •^-^ sons, he . . , fielded up the ghost, and 
 was gathered unto his people. And Joseph fell upon 
 his father s face, and wept upon him, and kissed him. 
 Genesis xlix. 27 to 1. 3. 
 
 There is no other day in the life of a man who 
 has had a good father like the day when that 
 father finally leaves him. He may have thought 
 he was ready for it, and that he knew what it 
 would be Hke ; but he was not. Joseph, the 
 most capable of all the sons, seems to have felt 
 his loss the most keenly. Life would always be 
 different for him now. Never again could he 
 turn to that loving, experienced, wise father for 
 counsel. Oh, the strangeness of it all ! Some- 
 thing has gone out of life that was greater than 
 we knew. Life can never be the same again, we 
 think. And it is not. For just there God comes 
 in. God would mean more to a man, after his 
 earthly father is gone, than He ever did before. 
 And so we are driven from the lesser resource to 
 the greater, and our father's God becomes our 
 God in a new and richer way. And even the 
 father and son are sometimes more closely united 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 87 
 
 than before. There may be a consciousness of 
 spiritual fellowship with the father who has cast 
 off the body, keener than any that was had while 
 the body was the barrier to such fellowship. 
 
 What a comfort in the phrase " Gathered 
 unto his people " ! The people of the family 
 of God hve in heaven. When a member of 
 such a family dies, he goes right to his own 
 dear ones in heaven. The family circle over 
 there is growing larger all the time, never to be 
 broken again. And all this has been done for us 
 by Christ Jesus. Only in Him was it possible. 
 Do we thank Him constantly enough, who took 
 into His own veins our death, and forever broke 
 the power of death for us ? 
 
 J" O, / die : in my grave . . . in the land of 
 -^— ' Canaan, there shall thou bury me. . . . 
 And Joseph went up to bury his father ; and with him 
 went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his 
 house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all 
 the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his failures 
 house. Genesis 1. 4 to 14. 
 
 God's love followed even Jacob's dead body, 
 in the same way that it had enriched him all 
 through his life. Jacob asked simply that he be 
 allowed to sleep with his fathers in his homeland. 
 God not only granted his request, but made it 
 the occasion of honouring him far beyond any- 
 
1 88 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 thing that he had asked. God never can stop 
 with merely meeting our right desires. He goes 
 lavishly beyond them. Ask or expect what we 
 will of Him, He always does better. We have 
 never asked enough. We never can, in this life : 
 He will always better it. That is His purpose, 
 His joy. Not only of tithing, but of all our re- 
 lationship with Him, He keeps saying : *< Prove 
 Me now herewith, if I will not open you the 
 windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, 
 that there shall not be room enough to receive 
 it." You have seen the graphic arrangement 
 that has been made of His word through Paul : 
 
 All that we ask. 
 ! All that we ask or think. 
 
 Above all that we ask or think. 
 Abundantly above all that we ask or think. 
 Exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. 
 According to the power that worketh in us. 
 
 Oh, that we would just press on in ever bolder 
 measure, with our requests, into the heart of 
 God ! Ask, He says ; ask, ask, ask ; and ye 
 shall receive — but always more than you ask. 
 
 TT may he that Joseph will . . . fully requite 
 -* us all the evil which we did unto him. . . 
 And Joseph wept, . . . And Joseph said unto 
 them, Fear not : . . . I will nourish you, and 
 your little ones. Genesis 1. 15 to 21. 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 1 89 
 
 Mow it must have cut Joseph to the heart to 
 learn that his brothers were afraid of him ! That 
 they were actually asking him now to forgive 
 them ! Could it be so, after all that he had done 
 to show them his love, and after that day of days 
 when he had sent all men out from him and had 
 first made himself known unto them ? Yet even 
 this evidence of their utter failure to understand 
 or even to believe in his love did not dim his love 
 one iota, wound him though it did. He only 
 loved them more, as their pitiable need of a bet- 
 ter understanding of his love showed itself so 
 cruelly. He spoke right to their hearts, and he 
 convinced them. We can hear him saying : 
 " Forgive you ? I have nothing to forgive." 
 
 But it is just the way I treat my Saviour and 
 Master. I find myself nervously and anxiously 
 bringing Him my every infraction of His dear 
 will and asking Him, insistently and laboriously, 
 to forgive me. It must only wound Him afresh. 
 Not that He does not want us to seek forgive- 
 ness after sin ; but it must be that it would be 
 more pleasing to Him for us to hve in a quiet, 
 unanxious resting in His constant forgiveness 
 than to keep running to Him every little while 
 with a fresh inquiry as to His forgiveness, as 
 though our welfare in Him depended on our ac- 
 curate bookkeeping in the forgiveness account, 
 instead of on the warm, incessant, cleansing 
 
I90 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 Gulf Stream of His love. Oh, let us trust Him 
 more quietly. Let us lose ourselves and all 
 thought of ourselves and our condition in an 
 overwhelmed realization of Himself, His love, 
 His power, His unfaiUng forgiveness, as our Life. 
 
 //ND Joseph said unto his brethren, I die; but 
 -" God will surely visit you, and bring you up 
 out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abra- 
 ham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Genesis 1. 22 to 26. 
 
 The keeping of God's promises does not de- 
 pend upon the life or death of any man. What 
 an eternally blessed comfort this truth is to us ! 
 Those things for which the Spirit of the living 
 God has impelled me to pray, which I know are 
 in accordance with His will, and for which I am 
 praying in faith and in Christ's name, nothuig can 
 defeat. They are accomplished now, in God's 
 timeless eternity. If they have to do with His 
 leading certain of His children out of Egypt into 
 the promised land of His kingdom, He will do it, 
 and nothing can prevent it. I may die, and 
 never see it in the flesh. That is a minor mat- 
 ter. It will be done, for God has promised. By 
 faith I accept this and praise God for it. Let 
 not Joseph's faith exceed mine (Heb. xi. 22). 
 Let me plan confidently for the outcome. " For 
 I know Him whom I have believed, and I am 
 persuaded that He is able to guard that which I 
 
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN GENESIS 191 
 
 have committed to Him against that day" (i 
 Tim. i. 12). 
 
 /GENESIS, the Book of the Beginnings of God's 
 ^-^ Love and Promises. 
 
 Now that we have read the book through, how 
 the promises of God stand out in the shining ra- 
 diance of His love ! The Creation and the Gar- 
 den of Eden were promises of a heaven on earth 
 to men ; but man would not have it so. Yet 
 God's love at once commenced new promises : 
 the serpent's head was to be bruised by man's 
 heel, as in Christ Jesus it is done. Then fol- 
 lowed the wonderful and wonderfully kept prom- 
 ises to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, 
 and Joseph's brethren. Many times man's sin 
 delayed God's promises, but always the promises 
 were renewed and kept. For God is greater 
 than man or Satan ; and God's love cannot be 
 defeated by man's distrust or Satan's attacks. 
 And every Genesis promise of God, as every 
 other promise of God, is wrapped up in Jesus 
 Christ, His only begotten Son, the Lord and 
 Saviour and Life of the world. 
 
 So God's promises to you and to me to- 
 day are pledged in Christ's covenant book. 
 We have done much to defeat them. We 
 have sorely and shamefully resisted Him, 
 wounded Him, delayed Him in what He has 
 
192 MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH 
 
 pledged Himself to do for us and through us. 
 But God's forgiving power in Christ is greater 
 than the death power of our sin. He will keep 
 His promises to every one who has ever received 
 Jesus Christ as Saviour, Master, and Life. To 
 none others are any promises made — save the 
 awful promise of final death ; and even that 
 promise is made in love, for God is love. 
 
 God's promises are undefeatable. Satan is but 
 an " already defeated foe." The promises of 
 glory unthinkable pledged to us in Jesus Christ 
 are ouj^Sy and they never can be taken from us; 
 they will be redeemed beyond all that we ask 
 or think. Oh, let us give our covenant-keeping 
 God and Saviour His unhindered way with us, 
 now and forever ! 
 
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