Milo

27 DECEMBER (PREACHED NEW YEAR’S EVENING 1774)

Citizens of Zion

‘They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the LORD in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.’ Jeremiah 50:5
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Psalm 87:1–7

Zion represents the church of God. It has two branches during the present state of things: the church in glory—that is, the heavenly state—and the church on earth. Heaven answers not to the idea of a carnal heart. It is the state and place where the redeemed of the Lord rejoice in his presence and love, freed from all their sins, troubles and enemies, to which they are exposed here. Zion likewise is the church upon earth. Not this or that particular church, or denomination, but it consists of all who know Jesus, and have peace and communion with God by him. These are said to come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, and as sure as they belong to the church below, they belong to the church above, and shall in due time join. This then expresses the desire of awakened souls—they wish to be remembered with the power which the Lord bears to his people, in time and to eternity.

Now my dear friends, how stand you affected to this thought? What is Zion in your view? Have you no desire to be a citizen of Zion? They, and they only, are happy. Their sins are pardoned, their persons accepted, they have access to God, are under his immediate teaching, care, protection. His eye is upon them, his ear is open to them. How far is their portion preferable to the worldling’s while here, and when they die they are blessed indeed, and enter upon a glorious immortality. If nothing of this engages you, if you die before you are united to the Head of the church by faith, then when they are admitted, you will be shut out and must take up your abode with devils.
FOR MEDITATION: [Asking the way to Zion, written to be sung after this sermon]
Zion! the city of our God,
Firm, against every adverse shock,
How glorious is the place!
Its mighty bulwarks prove
The Saviour there has his abode,
’Tis built upon the living Rock,
And sinners see his face.
And walled around with love.

SERMON: JEREMIAH 50:5 [3/7] [TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE]

John Newton and Marylynn Rouse, 365 Days with Newton (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 2006), 371.

December 26th

Placed in the light

If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, … the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. 1 John 1:7.

To mistake conscious freedom from sin for deliverance from sin by the Atonement is a great error. No man knows what sin is until he is born again. Sin is what Jesus Christ faced on Calvary. The evidence that I am delivered from sin is that I know the real nature of sin in me. It takes the last reach of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, that is, the impartation of His absolute perfection, to make a man know what sin is.
The Holy Spirit applies the Atonement to us in the unconscious realm as well as in the realm of which we are conscious, and it is only when we get a grasp of the unrivalled power of the Spirit in us that we understand the meaning of 1 John 1:7, “the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.” This does not refer to conscious sin only, but to the tremendously profound understanding of sin which only the Holy Ghost in me realizes.
If I walk in the light as God is in the light, not in the light of my conscience, but in the light of God—if I walk there, with nothing folded up, then there comes the amazing revelation—the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses me from all sin so that God Almighty can see nothing to censure in me. In my consciousness it works with a keen poignant knowledge of what sin is. The love of God at work in me makes me hate with the hatred of the Holy Ghost all that is not in keeping with God’s holiness. To walk in the light means that everything that is of the darkness drives me closer into the centre of the light.

December 26

“Sit ye here while I go and pray yonder.” (Matt. 26:36.)

IT is a hard thing to be kept in the background at a time of crisis. In the Garden of Gethsemane eight of the eleven disciples were left to do nothing. Jesus went to the front to pray; Peter, James and John went to the middle to watch; the rest sat down in the rear to wait. Methinks that party in the rear must have murmured. They were in the garden, but that was all; they had no share in the cultivation of its flowers. It was a time of crisis, a time of storm and stress; and yet they were not suffered to work.
You and I have often felt that experience, that disappointment. There has arisen, mayhap a great opportunity for Christian service. Some are sent to the front; some are sent to the middle. But we are made to lie down in the rear. Perhaps sickness has come; perhaps poverty has come; perhaps obloquy has come; in any case we are hindered and we feel sore. We do not see why we should be excluded from a part in the Christian life. It seems like an unjust thing that, seeing we have been allowed to enter the garden, no path should be assigned to us there.
Be still, my soul, it is not as thou deemest! Thou art not excluded from a part of the Christian life. Thinkest thou that the garden of the Lord has only a place for those who walk and for those who stand! Nay, it has a spot consecrated to those who are compelled to sit. There are three voices in a verb—active, passive and neuter. So, too, there are three voices in Christ’s verb “to live.” There are the active, watching souls, who go to the front, and struggle till the breaking of the day. There are the passive, watching souls, who stand in the middle, and report to others the progress of the fight. But there are also the neuter souls—those who can neither fight, nor be spectators of the fight, but have simply to lie down.
When that experience comes to thee, remember, thou are not shunted. Remember it is Christ that says, “Sit ye here.” Thy spot in the garden has also been, consecrated. It has a special name. It is not “the place of wrestling,” nor “the place of watching,” but “the place of waiting.” There are lives that come into this world neither to do great work nor to bear great burdens, but simply to be; they are the neuter verbs. They are the flowers of the garden which have had no active mission. They have wreathed no chaplet; they have graced no table; they have escaped the eye of Peter and James and John. But they have gladdened the sight of Jesus. By their mere perfume, by their mere beauty, they have brought Him joy; by the very preservation of their loveliness in the valley they have lifted the Master’s heart. Thou needst not murmur shouldst thou be one of these flowers!—Selected.

26 DECEMBER (PREACHED NEW YEAR’S EVENING 1774)

An appeal from the heart

‘They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the LORD in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.’ Jeremiah 50:5
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1 Thessalonians 2:1–16

If ever a sense of the worth of souls is impressed upon my heart (and I hope it sometimes is), if ever I find myself willing to spend and be spent for you, if I can ever adopt with sincerity the Apostle’s words, and say, Being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us [1 Thessalonians 2:8], it is peculiarly so at the return of this opportunity. To the most of you, I preach frequently and I have no new tricks to set before you now. Why then is my heart engaged on a New Year’s evening more than at other times? Why do I stand up at these times with a solicitude as if I had never preached before, or as if I expected never to preach again? I have frequently entertained a hope upon this account, that my concern was a token for good, a token that the Lord was about to do great things for us, and that the seed I endeavour to sow among the young people should, in the course of the year, spring up abundantly and give us the prospect of a plentiful harvest. Painful experience has taught me my own insufficiency, that though I should address you with the greatest earnestness, though I should accompany every word with tears, though I could even weep blood, all my earnestness will be in vain, unless the Lord himself is pleased to take the work into his own hands and apply the word by his own power to your hearts. This has been my prayer, and from entreating the Lord, I now come to entreat and beseech you, that you would hear with attention and receive with meekness the word which, by his blessing, is able to save your souls—that I may not have to return again and say, Lord, who hath believed our report? [John 12:38].
FOR MEDITATION: [written to be sung before this sermon]
Now may fervent prayer arise
Bless, O LORD, the opening year
Winged with faith, and pierce the skies;
To each soul assembled here;
Fervent prayer shall bring us down
Clothe thy word with power divine,
Gracious answers from the throne.
Make us willing to be thine.

SERMON: JEREMIAH 50:5 [1/7] [TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE]

December 25th

His birth and our new birth

Behold, a virgin shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Emanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. Isaiah 7:14 (R.V.).

His Birth in History. “Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Jesus Christ was born into this world, not from it. He did not evolve out of history; He came into history from the outside. Jesus Christ is not the best human being, He is a Being Who cannot be accounted for by the human race at all. He is not man becoming God, but God Incarnate, God coming into human flesh, coming into it from outside. His life is the Highest and the Holiest, entering in at the lowliest door. Our Lord’s birth was an advent.
His Birth in Me. “Of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19). Just as Our Lord came into human history from outside, so He must come into me from outside. Have I allowed my personal human life to become a ‘Bethlehem’ for the Son of God? I cannot enter into the realm of the Kingdom of God unless I am born from above by a birth totally unlike natural birth. “Ye must be born again.” This is not a command, it is a foundation fact. The characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me. Immediately Christ is formed in me, His nature begins to work through me.
God manifest in the flesh—that is what is made profoundly possible for you and me by the Redemption.