December 23—Morning Devotion
“Lo, I come.”—Psalm 40:7
What a longing had old testament saints for the Lord Jesus’s coming! And what an earnest wish and prayer it is among new testament believers, for Jesus’s coming by the visits of his grace, and the sweet influences of his Holy Spirit, from day to day! My soul, methinks I would realize by faith this day, even this very day, these words of thy Redeemer, as if he were now standing at the door of thine heart, and asking for admission. And shall I not say, under this sweet impression, “Come in, thou blessed of the Lord, wherefore standest thou without?” Oh blessed Jesus, when I consider the many precious instances of thy coming, set up from everlasting in thy goings forth for the salvation of thy chosen, thy anticipation, in thy visits before the season of thy tabernacling in our flesh; thy visits to the patriarchs and prophets; thy manifestation openly to the people; thy secret, sweet, and inexpressibly gracious visits now, and thy promised return in the clouds at the final consummation of all things; Oh Lamb of God, dost thou say, “Lo, I come?” Oh for the earnestness of faith, in all her devout longings, to cry out with the church of old, and say, “Make haste, my Beloved, and come! Oh come quickly, Lord Jesus!”
Robert Hawker (1753-1827) was an Anglican (High-Calvinist) preacher who served as Vicar of Charles Church, Plymouth. John Hazelton wrote of him:
“The prominent features…in Robert Hawker's testimony…was the Person of Christ….Dr. Hawker delighted to speak of his Lord as "My most glorious Christ.” What anxious heart but finds at times in the perusal of the doctor's writings a measure of relief, a softening, and a mellowing? an almost imperceptible yet secret and constraining power in leading out of self and off from the misery and bondage of the flesh into a contemplation of the Person and preciousness of Christ as "the chiefest among ten thousand and the altogether lovely." Christ and Him crucified was emphatically the burden of his song and the keynote of his ministry. He preached his last sermon in Charles Church on March 18th, 1827, and on April 6th he died, after being six years curate and forty-three years vicar of the parish. On the last day of his life he repeated a part of Ephesians 1, from the 6th to the 12th verses, and as he proceeded he enlarged on the verses, but dwelt more fully on these words: "To the praise of His glory Who first trusted in Christ." He paused and asked, "Who first trusted in Christ?" And then made this answer: "It was God the Father Who first trusted in Christ."
Robert Hawker on the Biblical Covenants (Complete)
Robert Hawker's Poor Man's Morning Portions
