Milo

December 4th

The law of antagonism

To him that overcometh.… Rev. 2:7.

Life without war is impossible either in nature or in grace. The basis of physical, mental, moral, and spiritual life is antagonism. This is the open fact of life.
Health is the balance between physical life and external nature, and it is maintained only by sufficient vitality on the inside against things on the outside. Everything outside my physical life is designed to put me to death. Things which keep me going when I am alive, disintegrate me when I am dead. If I have enough fighting power, I produce the balance of health. The same is true of the mental life. If I want to maintain a vigorous mental life, I have to fight, and in that way the mental balance called thought is produced.
Morally it is the same. Everything that does not partake of the nature of virtue is the enemy of virtue in me, and it depends on what moral calibre I have whether I overcome and produce virtue. Immediately I fight, I am moral in that particular. No man is virtuous because he cannot help it; virtue is acquired.
And spiritually it is the same. Jesus said—“In the world ye shall have tribulation,” i.e., everything that is not spiritual makes for my undoing, but—“be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” I have to learn to score off the things that come against me, and in that way produce the balance of holiness; then it becomes a delight to meet opposition.
Holiness is the balance between my disposition and the law of God as expressed in Jesus Christ.

December 4

“He went up into a mountain apart.” (Matt. 14:23.)

ONE of the blessings of the old-time Sabbath was its calm, its restfulness, its holy peace. There is a strange strength conceived in solitude. Crows go in flocks and wolves in packs, but the lion and the eagle are solitaires.
Strength is not in bluster and noise. Strength is in quietness. The lake must be calm if the heavens are to be reflected on its surface. Our Lord loved the people, but how often we read of His going away from them for a brief season. He tried every little while to withdraw from the crowd. He was always stealing away at evening to the hills. Most of His ministry was carried on in the towns and cities by the seashore, but He loved the hills the best, and oftentimes when night fell He would plunge into their peaceful depths.
The one thing needed above all others today is that we shall go apart with our Lord, and sit at His feet in the sacred privacy of His blessed presence. Oh, for the lost art of meditation! Oh, for the culture of the secret place! Oh, for the tonic of waiting upon God!—Selected.

“It is well to live in the valley sweet,
  Where the work of the world is done,
Where the reapers sing in the fields of wheat,
  As they toil till the set of sun.
But beyond the meadows, the hills I see
  Where the noises of traffic cease,
And I follow a Voice that calleth to me
  From the hilltop regions of peace.

“Aye, to live is sweet in the valley fair,
  And to toil till the set of sun;
But my spirit yearns for the hilltop’s air
  When the day and its work are done.
For a Presence breathes o’er the silent hills,
  And its sweetness is living yet;
The same deep calm all the hillside fills,
  As breathed over Olivet.”

“Every life that would be strong must have its Holy of Holies into which only God enters.”

4 DECEMBER (PREACHED CHRISTMAS EVENING 1769)

Lost in ourselves

‘For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.’ Luke 19:10
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Luke 15:1–32

If man is lost to God, is he not lost in himself also? Yes, he that sinneth against God wrongeth his own soul. The utmost meaning of the word lost in a worldly sense, falls far short of its meaning here. O think what you have lost and how are lost, if Christ has not saved you and repaired your breaches.
You have lost the image of God—all spiritual knowledge of righteousness and true holiness. This loss perhaps does not affect you—the loss of health or money would trouble you more, but it will not be always thus. If you do not lay it to heart sooner, you will at least in that solemn hour when you render up your soul to God.
You have lost his favour and communion. Do you pity a blind man? You have lost the eyes of your soul. Would you pity a man banished from all that comfort and do him good? While you remain in your natural state, you are in the case of Cain, driven from the presence of the Lord. Ah, poor blind, banished, wanderers, where can you go for good, if he that has made you will have no mercy upon you, if he that formed you will show you no favour? But still more:
You are lost under his curse—you are not only excluded from his presence, but exposed to his wrath. You hear not from him now, only in his ordinances and providences, but ere long you must see him face to face. He will reprove you and set your sins in order before your eyes. Think of that dreadful sentence (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Thus we are utterly lost except Christ seeks and saves us.
FOR MEDITATION:
Thou didst once a wretch behold,
Once a sinner near despair,
In rebellion blindly bold;
Sought thy mercy-seat by prayer;
Scorn thy grace, thy power defy,
Mercy heard and set him free,
That poor rebel, LORD, was I.
LORD, that mercy came to me.

SERMON: LUKE 19:10 [4/5]

December 3rd

Not by might nor by power

And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. 1 Cor. 2:4.

If in preaching the Gospel you substitute your clear knowledge of the way of salvation for confidence in the power of the Gospel, you hinder people getting to Reality. You have to see that while you proclaim your knowledge of the way of salvation, you yourself are rooted and grounded in faith in God. Never rely on the clearness of your exposition, but as you give your exposition see that you are relying on the Holy Spirit. Rely on the certainty of God’s redemptive power, and He will create His own life in souls.
When once you are rooted in Reality, nothing can shake you. If your faith is in experiences, anything that happens is likely to upset that faith; but nothing can ever upset God or the almighty Reality of Redemption; base your faith on that, and you are as eternally secure as God. When once you get into personal contact with Jesus Christ, you will never be moved again. That is the meaning of sanctification. God puts His disapproval on human experience when we begin to adhere to the conception that sanctification is merely an experience, and forget that sanctification itself has to be sanctified (see John 17:19). I have deliberately to give my sanctified life to God for His service, so that He can use me as His hands and His feet.

December 3

“Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child?
And she answered, It is well.” (2 Kings 4:26.)

  “Be strong, my soul?
Thy loved ones go
Within the veil. God’s thine, e’en so;
  Be strong.

  “Be strong, my soul!
Death looms in view.
Lo, here thy God! He’ll bear thee through;
  Be strong.”

FOR sixty-two years and five months I had a beloved wife, and now, in my ninety-second year I am left alone. But I turn to the ever present Jesus, as I walk up and down in my room, and say, “Lord Jesus, I am alone, and yet not alone—Thou art with me, Thou art my Friend. Now, Lord, comfort me, strengthen me, give to Thy poor servant everything Thou seest he needs.” And we should not be satisfied till we are brought to this, that we know the Lord Jesus Christ experimentally, habitually to be our Friend: at all times, and under all circumstances, ready to prove Himself to be our Friend.
—George Mueller.
Afflictions cannot injure when blended with submission.

Ice breaks many a branch, and so I see a great many persons bowed down and crushed by their afflictions. But now and then I meet one that sings in affliction, and then I thank God for my own sake as well as his. There is no such sweet singing as a song in the night. You recollect the story of the woman who, when her only child died, in rapture looking up, as with the face of an angel, said, “I give you joy, my darling.” That single sentence has gone with me years and years down through my life, quickening and comforting me.
—Henry Ward Beecher.

“E’en for the dead I will not bind my soul to grief;
Death cannot long divide.
For is it not as though the rose that climbed my garden wall
Has blossomed on the other side?
Death doth hide,
But not divide;
Thou art but on Christ’s other side!
Thou art with Christ, and Christ with me;
In Christ united still are we.”