Milo

December 17

“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it.” (1 Thess. 5:23, 24.)

MANY years since I saw that “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” I began by following after it and inciting all with whom I had intercourse to do the same. Ten years after, God gave me a clearer view than I ever had before of the way to obtain it; namely, by faith in the Son of God. And immediately I declared to all, “We are saved from sin, we are made holy by faith.” This I testified in private, in public, and in print, and God confirmed it by a thousand witnesses. I have continued to declare this for above thirty years, and God has continued to confirm my work.—John Wesley in 1771.
“I knew Jesus, and He was very precious to my soul; but I found something in me that would not keep sweet and patient and kind. I did what I could to keep it down, but it was there. I besought Jesus to do something for me, and, when I gave Him my will, He came to my heart, and took out all that would not be sweet, all that would not be kind, all that would not be patient, and then HE shut the door.”—George Fox.
My whole heart has not one single grain, this moment, of thirst after approbation. I feel alone with God; He fills the void; I have not one wish, one will, one desire, but in Him; He hath set my feet in a large room. I have wondered and stood amazed that God should make a conquest of all within me by love.—Lady Huntington.
“All at once I felt as though a hand—not feeble, but omnipotent; not of wrath, but of love—was laid on my brow. I felt it not outwardly but inwardly. It seemed to press upon my whole being, and to diffuse all through me a holy, sin-consuming energy. As it passed downward, my heart as well as my head was conscious of the presence of this soul-cleansing energy, under the influence of which I fell to the floor, and in the joyful surprise of the moment, cried out in a loud voice. Still the hand of power wrought without and within; and wherever it moved, it seemed to leave the glorious influence of the Saviour’s image. For a few minutes the deep ocean of God’s love swallowed me up; all its waves and billows rolled over me.”—Bishop Hamline.
Holiness—as I then wrote down some of my contemplations on it—appeared to me to be of a sweet, calm, pleasant, charming, serene nature, which brought an inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness, ravishment to the soul; in other words, that it made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all manner of pleasant fruits and flowers, all delightful and undisturbed, enjoying a sweet calm and the gentle vivifying beams of the sun.—Jonathan Edwards.

  “Love’s resistless current sweeping
  All the regions deep within;
  Thought and wish and senses keeping
  Now, and every instant clean:
  Full salvation! Full salvation!
  From the guilt and power of sin.”

17 DECEMBER

Perfectly Man and perfectly God

‘Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.’ Isaiah 7:14
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Romans 5:12–21

This passage expressly and exclusively refers to the Messiah and is directly applied, as accomplished in him, by the evangelists Luke and Matthew. If sinners are to be saved without injury to his government and the honour of his law (and otherwise they must perish), two things are necessary: firstly, A virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son [for second point see 4/6]. The Mediator, the Surety, must be a man. Those whom he came to redeem were partakers of flesh and blood. He therefore took part of the same. Had not the Messiah engaged for us, a case would have occurred which I think we may justly deem incongruous to the divine wisdom—that while fire and hail, snow and vapour and the stormy wind fulfil the will of God—while the whole brute creation are faithful to the instincts planted in them by their Maker—a whole species of intelligent beings would have fallen short of the original law and design of their creation, and indeed have acted in direct and continual opposition to it. For the duty of man to live, serve and trust God with all his heart and mind, and to love his neighbour as himself, is founded in the very nature and constitution of things, and necessarily results from his relation to God and his absolute dependence on him as a creature. Such a disposition was doubtless as natural to man, before the Fall, as it is for a bird to fly, or a fish to swim. But sin degraded and disabled him, detached him from his proper centre, if I may so speak, and rendered both his obedience and happiness impossible. Neither Adam after his Fall, nor any of his posterity, have kept this law; but the Messiah fulfilled it exactly as a man, and the principles of it are renewed in all who believe in him. Though the best fall short, his obedience is accepted on their behalf, and he will at length perfectly restore them to the primitive order and honour of their creation. When they shall see him as he is, they shall be like him.

FOR MEDITATION: ‘The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven’ (1 Corinthians 15:47, 49, NIV).

SERMON SERIES: MESSIAH, NO. 5 [2/6], ISAIAH 7:14

December 16th

Wrestling before God

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, … praying always … Eph. 6:13, 18.

You have to wrestle against the things that prevent you from getting to God, and you wrestle in prayer for other souls; but never say that you wrestle with God in prayer, it is scripturally untrue. If you do wrestle with God, you will be crippled all the rest of your life. If, when God comes in some way you do not want, you take hold of Him as Jacob did and wrestle with Him, you compel Him to put you out of joint. Don’t be a hirpler in God’s ways, but be one who wrestles before God with things, becoming more than conqueror through Him. Wrestling before God tells in His Kingdom. If you ask me to pray for you and I am not complete in Christ, I may pray but it avails nothing; but if I am complete in Christ, my prayer prevails all the time. Prayer is only effective when there is completeness—“Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God.”
Always distinguish between God’s order and His permissive will, i.e., His providential purpose towards us. God’s order is unchangeable; His permissive will is that with which we must wrestle before Him. It is our reaction to the passive will of God that enables us to get at His order. “All things work together for good to them that love God”—to those who remain true to God’s order, to His calling in Christ Jesus. God’s permissive will is the means whereby His sons and daughters are to be manifested. We are not to be like jelly-fish saying—‘It’s the Lord’s will.’ We have not to put up a fight before God, not to wrestle with God, but to wrestle before God with things. Beware of squatting lazily before God instead of putting up a glorious fight so that you may lay hold of His strength.

December 16

“And there was Anna, a prophetess … which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.” (Luke 2:36, 37.)

NO doubt by praying we learn to pray, and the more we Pray the oftener we can pray, and the better we can I pray. He who prays in fits and starts is never likely to attain to that effectual, fervent prayer which availeth much.
Great power in prayer is within our reach, but we must go to work to obtain it. Let us never imagine that Abraham could have interceded so successfully for Sodom if he had not been all his lifetime in the practice of communion with God.
Jacob’s all-night at Peniel was not the first occasion upon which he had met his God. We may even look upon our Lord’s most choice and wonderful prayer with his disciples before His Passion as the flower and fruit of His many nights of devotion, and of His often rising up a great while before day to pray.
If a man dreams that he can become mighty in prayer just as he pleases, he labors under a great mistake. The prayer of Elias which shut up heaven and afterwards opened its floodgates, was one of long series of mighty prevailings with God. Oh, that Christian men would remember this! Perseverance in prayer is necessary to prevalence in prayer.
Those great intercessors, who are not so often mentioned as they ought to be in connection with confessors and martyrs, were nevertheless the grandest benefactors of the Church; but it was only by abiding at the mercy-seat that they attained to be such channels of mercy to men. We must pray to pray, and continue in prayer that our prayers may continue.
—C. H. Spurgeon.

16 DECEMBER

Inimitable

‘Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.’ Isaiah 7:14
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Isaiah 55:6–13

The Lord God has impressed a signature upon his works, which evidently distinguishes them from the feeble imitations of men. Not only the splendour of the sun, but the glimmering of the glow-worm proclaims his glory. The structure and growth of a blade of grass are the effects of the same power which produced the fabric of the heavens and the earth. In his Word likewise he is inimitable. He has a style and manner peculiarly his own. What he declares in Isaiah 55 is confirmed by the whole Scripture, My thoughts are not your thoughts … The superiority of his thoughts to ours causes a proportionable difference in his manner of operation. His ways are above, and often contrary to, our conceptions. He sometimes produces great effects by means which, to us, appear unsuitable and weak. Thus he gave Gideon a complete victory, not by providing him an army equal to that of the enemy, but by 300 men armed only with earthen pitchers and lamps.
We have but slight thoughts of holiness and therefore are but slightly affected by the evil of sin. But though he is rich in mercy, no wisdom but his own could have proposed an expedient by which the exercise of mercy towards sinners could be made to correspond with his justice and truth and the honour of his government. But infinite wisdom and infinite love provided a way in which mercy and truth meet together, and his inflexible righteousness is displayed in perfect harmony with the peace of those who have transgressed his holy laws, and God appears not only gracious, but just, in restoring rebels to favour. This is the greatest of all his works and exhibits the most glorious revelations of his perfections which creatures are capable of conceiving. The means are answerable to the grandeur of the design.… Behold—attend, admire and believe—a virgin shall conceive …
FOR MEDITATION:
Salvation! what a glorious plan,
Truth, Wisdom, Justice, Power and Love,
How suited to our need!
In all their glory shone;
The grace that raises fallen man,
When JESUS left the courts above,
Is wonderful indeed!
And died to save his own.

SERMON SERIES: MESSIAH, NO. 5 [1/6], ISAIAH 7:14