Morning & Evening Devotional Reading

 January 4– Evening

by C. H. Spurgeon, Revised and Edited by W. C. Neff

“Joseph knew his brothers, but they didn’t know him.” 

—Genesis 42:8

We sometimes consider our desire to know Jesus more deeply, but we don’t consider as often our heavenly Joseph’s desire to know us. Of course, he knew us perfectly long before we had the slightest knowledge of him. Before we existed in the world, we existed in his heart. When we were enemies to him, he knew us, our misery, our madness, and our wickedness. When we wept bitterly in despairing repentance and viewed him only as a judge and a ruler, he viewed us as his beloved brethren, and his heart yearned toward us. He never mistook his chosen, but always beheld them as objects of his infinite affection. “The Lord knows them that are his,” and this is as true of the prodigals who are feeding swine as of the children who sit at the table.

But, regrettably, we didn’t know our Royal Brother, and out of this ignorance grows a host of sins. We withheld our hearts from him and didn’t allow him to enter our love. We mistrusted him and gave no credit to his words. We rebelled against him and paid him no loving homage. The Sun of Righteousness shone forth, and we could not see him. Heaven came down to earth, and earth perceived it not.

Let God be praised; those days are over with us. Yet even now it is but little that we know of Jesus compared with what he knows of us. We have only begun to study him, but he knows us altogether. It is a blessed thing that the ignorance is not on his side, for then it would be a hopeless case for us. He will not say to us, “I never knew you.” Instead, he will confess our names on the day of his appearing, and even now he makes himself known to us in a way that he does not for the world. [M&E]