Milo

December 9th

The offence of the natural

And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Gal. 5:24.

The natural life is not sinful; we must be apostatized from sin, have nothing to do with sin in any shape or form. Sin belongs to hell and the devil; I, as a child of God, belong to heaven and God. It is not a question of giving up sin, but of giving up my right to myself, my natural independence and self-assertiveness, and this is where the battle has to be fought. It is the things that are right and noble and good from the natural standpoint that keep us back from God’s best. To discern that natural virtues antagonize surrender to God, is to bring our soul into the centre of its greatest battle. Very few of us debate with the sordid and evil and wrong, but we do debate with the good. It is the good that hates the best, and the higher up you get in the scale of the natural virtues, the more intense is the opposition to Jesus Christ. “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh”—it is going to cost the natural in you everything, not something. Jesus said—“If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself” i.e., his right to himself, and a man has to realize Who Jesus Christ is before he will do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.
The natural life is not spiritual, and it can only be made spiritual by sacrifice. If we do not resolutely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural in us. There is no royal road there; each of us has it entirely in his own hands. It is not a question of praying, but of performing.

December 9

“For this our light and transitory burden of suffering is achieving for us a weight of glory.” (2 Cor. 4:17.) (Weymouth.)

IS achieving for us,” mark. The question is repeatedly asked—Why is the life of man drenched with so much blood, and blistered with so many tears? The answer is to be found in the word “achieving”; these things are achieving for us something precious. They are teaching us not only the way to victory, but better still the laws of victory. There is a compensation in every sorrow, and the sorrow is working out the compensation. It is the cry of the dear old hymn:

“Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee,
E’en tho’ it be a cross that raiseth me.”

Joy sometimes needs pain to give it birth. Fanny Crosby could never have written her beautiful hymn, “I shall see Him face to face,” were it not for the fact that she had never looked upon the green fields nor the evening sunset nor the kindly twinkle in her mother’s eye. It was the loss of her own vision that helped her to gain her remarkable spiritual discernment.
It is the tree that suffers that is capable of polish. When the woodman wants some curved lines of beauty in the grain he cuts down some maple that has been gashed by the axe and twisted by the storm. In this way he secures the knots and the hardness that take the gloss.
It is comforting to know that sorrow tarries only for the night; it takes its leave in the morning. A thunderstorm is very brief when put alongside the long summer day. “Weeping may endure for the night but joy cometh in the morning.”
—Songs in the Night.

“There is a peace that cometh after sorrow,
  Of hope surrendered, not of hope fulfilled;
A peace that looketh not upon tomorrow,
  But calmly on a tempest that it stilled.

“A peace that lives not now in joy’s excesses,
  Nor in the happy life of love secure;
But in the unerring strength the heart possesses,
  Of conflicts won while learning to endure.

“A peace there is, in sacrifice secluded,
  A life subdued, from will and passion free;
’Tis not the peace that over Eden brooded,
  But that which triumphed in Gethsemane.”

9 DECEMBER (PREACHED 1770)

Urge the testimonies of Scripture

‘And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.’ Matthew 17:9
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1 Corinthians 2:1–16

The account of the Transfiguration closes with the former verse [And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only]. But this verse seems to belong to the subject, and I shall employ our present opportunity in some observations upon it. It contains an injunction of secrecy for a limited time, after which they were freely to declare what they had seen. May we humbly enquire why our Lord was pleased to forbid them to speak of it till he should have risen from the dead? It may afford us some instruction for our own conduct. I conceive there might be several reasons. One reason: on account of the people. They daily saw Jesus conversing among them as a common, yea, as a poor man. The scribes and Pharisees traduced him and treated him as an impostor. Now the doctrine and miracles of our Lord in public were suited to convince the unprejudiced that he was indeed a teacher sent from God—but his transfiguration was a point which, if it had been mentioned, must have depended on the testimony of the three disciples. Who would hardly have been believed [them], when they could only say and not prove! Afterwards, when he had declared his power and glory by rising from the dead, and sent down his Spirit to confirm the words of his servants, the case was different. The disciples might enlarge upon our Lord’s public works and urge the testimonies of Scripture concerning him. But they were directed not to take notice of this; having no such proof as the world would call for to offer, their bare assertion of such an extraordinary event might bring their sincerity into suspicion. It seems still a good rule, when conversing with unawakened people with a view to their good, to keep to such things as we can plainly prove from the Scripture. And there may be some kinds of experiences which, for this reason, it would be improper to lay before worldly people, because, not being able to understand them, they would be more prejudiced against anything else we could say.

FOR MEDITATION: ‘… But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word’ (Isaiah 66:2).

SERMON SERIES: ON THE TRANSFIGURATION, NO. 13 [1/4]

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.)