From J. C. Philpot's Daily Portions
September 14 "Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death."
Psalm 107:10 God's people are here represented not as sitting in
death; were they sitting there, they would be dead altogether; but they are
sitting in the shadow of death. Observe, death has lost its
reality to them; it now can only cast a shadow, often a gloomy shadow, over
their souls; but there is no substance in it. The quickening of the Spirit
of God in them has destroyed the substance of death spiritually; and the
death and resurrection of Jesus have destroyed the substance of death
physically. Yet, though the gloomy monster--deadness of soul; and
that ghastly king of terrors--the death of the body; have been disarmed and
destroyed by "Immanuel, God with us;" yet each of them casts at times a
gloomy, darkling shadow over the souls of those who fear God. Is not your
soul, poor child of God, exercised from time to time with this inward death?
Deadness in prayer, deadness in reading the word, deadness in hearing the
truth, deadness in desires after the Lord, deadness to everything holy,
spiritual, heavenly, and divine? How it benumbs and paralyzes every
breathing of our soul Godwards! Yet it is but a shadow. Write not
bitter things against yourself, poor, tempted, exercised child of God,
because you feel such deathliness and coldness from time to time in your
heart. It will not destroy you; no, it is life in your soul that makes it
felt; and the more the life of God has been felt in your conscience, the
more painfully the deathliness of your carnal mind is experienced. Do you expect that your 'carnal mind' will ever be lively
in the things of God? What is it but a lump of death, a huge mass of
ungodliness, which, like some Behemoth, upheaves its broad flanks
continually in the heart? Yet the people of God are very often troubled in
their minds by the gloomy shadow that this death casts over their souls. But
this trouble is a mark of life. If I were dead, could I feel it? The worst
symptom of those dead in sin is, that they do not feel it. But, while we
feel it, while we sigh on account of it, while we hate it, and hate
ourselves on account of it, though it may pain and grieve, it never can
destroy. It has lost its substance, though it casts its gloomy shadow.