Milo

December 8th

The impartial power of God

For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Hebrews 10:14.

We trample the blood of the Son of God under foot if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation of the forgiveness of God and of the unfathomable depth of His forgetting, is the Death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the outcome of our personal realization of the Atonement which He has worked out for us. “Christ Jesus … is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” When we realize that Christ is made all this to us, the boundless joy of God begins; wherever the joy of God is not present, the death sentence is at work.
It does not matter who or what we are, there is absolute reinstatement into God by the death of Jesus Christ and by no other way, not because Jesus Christ pleads, but because He died. It is not earned, but accepted. All the pleading which deliberately refuses to recognize the Cross is of no avail; it is battering at another door than the one which Jesus has opened. ‘I don’t want to come that way, it is too humiliating to be received as a sinner.’ “There is none other Name …” The apparent heartlessness of God is the expression of His real heart, there is boundless entrance in His way. “We have forgiveness through His blood.” Identification with the death of Jesus Christ means identification with Him to the death of everything that never was in Him.
God is justified in saving bad men only as He makes them good. Our Lord does not pretend we are all right when we are all wrong. The Atonement is a propitiation whereby God through the death of Jesus makes an unholy man holy.

December 8

“Put on as the elect of God, kindness.” (Col. 3:12.)

THERE is a story of an old man who carried a little can of oil with him everywhere he went, and if he passed through a door that squeaked, he poured a little oil on the hinges. If a gate was hard to open, he oiled the latch. And thus he passed through life lubricating all hard places and making it easier for those who came after him.
People called him eccentric, queer, and cranky; but the old man went steadily on refilling his can of oil when it became empty, and oiled the hard places he found.
There are, many lives that creak and grate harshly as they live day by day. Nothing goes right with them. They need lubricating with the oil of gladness, gentleness, or thoughtfulness. Have you your own can of oil with you? Be ready with your oil of helpfulness in the early morning to the one nearest you. It may lubricate the whole day for him. The oil of good cheer to the downhearted one—Oh, how much it may mean! The word of courage to the despairing. Speak it.
Our lives touch others but once, perhaps, on the road of life; and then, mayhap, our ways diverge, never to meet again. The oil of kindness has worn the sharp, hard edges off of many a sin-hardened life and left it soft and pliable and ready for the redeeming grace of the Saviour.
A word spoken pleasantly is s. large spot of sunshine on a sad heart. Therefore, “Give others the sunshine, tell Jesus the rest.”

  “We cannot know the grief
  That men may borrow;
  We cannot see the souls
  Storm-swept by sorrow;
  But love can shine upon the way
  Today, tomorrow;
  Let us be kind.
  Upon the wheel of pain so many weary lives are broken
  We live in vain who give no tender token.
  Let us be kind.”

“Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love.” (Rom. 12:10.)

8 DECEMBER (PREACHED 6 DECEMBER 1767)

Placed out of danger

‘And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest …’ Isaiah 32:2
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Isaiah 53:1–12

Am I speaking to some that are now in the storm? Behold—a hiding place. Look to the Man in my text, flee to him and you shall be safe. Faith in his name shall place you out of danger, and as faith grows, you shall be out of fear likewise. O flee for refuge to the hope set before you. Dreadful as this storm sounds in the sinner’s ears, it is indeed a merciful dispensation, sent to urge him to flee to the ark before a more dreadful storm comes. Consider the person of Christ—how great and how near—as God and man (John 1:1, 14). Think of the storm he endured for our sakes (Matthew 26:36–46, Gethsemane). His office in heaven is to present and plead his own blood and righteousness for us (Romans 3:25) and to receive and dispense pardon, peace and grace and eternal life (Revelation 5:1–14). Remember his promises—and these are absolute without exception (John 10:28).
Let others remember there is a storm of unmixed wrath in reserve for those who refuse this salvation (Jeremiah 23:19).
FOR MEDITATION:
Incarnate GOD! the soul that knows
In vain the fowler spreads his net,
Thy name’s mysterious power
To draw them from thy care;
Shall dwell in undisturbed repose,
Thy timely call instructs their feet,
Nor fear the trying hour.
To shun the artful snare.

Thy wisdom, faithfulness and love,
No midnight terrors haunt their bed,
To feeble helpless worms;
No arrow wounds by day;
A buckler and a refuge prove,
Unhurt on serpents they shall tread,
From enemies and storms.
If found in duty’s way.

SERMON SERIES: ISAIAH 32:2, NO. 1 [3/3]

December 7th

Repentance

For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation. 2 Cor. 7:10.

Conviction of sin is best portrayed in the words—

‘My sins, my sins, my Saviour.
How sad on Thee they fall.’

Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a man. It is the threshold of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict of sin, and when the Holy Spirit rouses a man’s conscience and brings him into the presence of God, it is not his relationship with men that bothers him, but his relationship with God—“against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.” Conviction of sin, the marvel of forgiveness, and holiness are so interwoven that it is only the forgiven man who is the holy man, he proves he is forgiven by being the opposite to what he was, by God’s grace. Repentance always brings a man to this point: ‘I have sinned.’ The surest sign that God is at work is when a man says that and means it. Anything less than this is remorse for having made blunders, the reflex action of disgust at himself.
The entrance into the Kingdom is through the panging pains of repentance crashing into a man’s respectable goodness; then the Holy Ghost, Who produces these agonies, begins the formation of the Son of God in the life. The new life will manifest itself in conscious repentance and unconscious holiness, never the other way about. The bedrock of Christianity is repentance. Strictly speaking, a man cannot repent when he chooses; repentance is a gift of God. The old Puritans used to pray for ‘the gift of tears.’ If ever you cease to know the virtue of repentance, you are in darkness. Examine yourself and see if you have forgotten how to be sorry.

December 7

“Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, that ye may drink, both ye, and your cattle, and your beasts. And this is but a light thing in the sight of the Lord: he will deliver the Moabites also into your hands.” (2 Kings 3:16–18.)

TO human thinking it was simply impossible, but nothing is hard for God.
Without a sound or sign, from sources invisible and apparently impossible, the floods came stealing in all night long; and when the morning dawned, those ditches were flooded with the crystal waters, and reflecting the rays of the morning sun from the red hills of Edom.
Our unbelief is always wanting some outward sign. The religion of many is largely sensational, and they are not satisfied of its genuineness without manifestations, etc.; but the greatest triumph of faith is to be still and know that He is God.
The great victory of faith is to stand before some impassable Red Sea, and hear the Master say, “Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord,” and “Go forward!” As we step out without any sign or sound—not a wave-splash—and wetting our very feet as we take the first step into its waters, still marching on we shall see the sea divide and the pathway open through the very midst of the waters.
If we have seen the miraculous workings of God in some marvelous case of healing or some extraordinary providential deliverance, I am sure the thing that has impressed us most has been the quietness with which it was all done, the absence of everything spectacular and sensational, and the utter sense of nothingness which came to us as we stood in the presence of this mighty God and felt how easy it was for Him to do it all without the faintest effort on His part or the slightest help on ours.
It is not the part of faith to question, but to obey. The ditches were made, and the water came pouring in from some supernatural source. What a lesson for our faith!
Are you craving a spiritual blessing? Open the trenches, and God will fill them. And this, too, in the most unexpected places and in the most unexpected ways.
Oh, for that faith that can act by faith and not by sight, and expect God to work although we see no wind or rain.
—A. B. Simpson.