Milo

November 5

“Is there anything too hard for Jehovah?” (Gen. 18:14.)

HERE is God’s loving challenge to you and to me today. He wants us to think of the deepest, highest, worthiest desire and longing of our hearts, something which perhaps was our desire for ourselves or for someone is dear to us, yet which has been so long unfulfilled that we have looked upon it as only a lost desire, that which might have been but now cannot be, and so have given up hope of seeing it fulfilled in this life.
That thing, if it is in line with what we know to be His expressed will (as a son to Abraham and Sarah was), God intends to do for us, even if we know that it is of such utter impossibility that we only laugh at the absurdity of anyone’s supposing it could ever now come to pass. That thing God intends to do for us, if we will let Him.
“Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Not when we believe in Him enough to go forward and do His will, and let Him do the impossible for us. Even Abraham and Sarah could have blocked God’s plan if they had continued to disbelieve.
The only thing too hard for Jehovah is deliberate, continued disbelief in His love and power, and our final rejection of His plans for us. Nothing is too hard for Jehovah to do for them that trust Him.—Messages for the Morning Watch.

5 NOVEMBER

Living witnesses for God and his truth

‘… For no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.’ John 3:2
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Philemon 8–21

Now if you ask who or where are these extraordinary persons [who experienced miraculous healings], I acknowledge they are comparatively but few. The subjects of our Lord’s miraculous power were but few likewise, and he has taught us to expect that his flock will be a little flock. I confess the best are subject to so many infirmities—so many things are still amiss (for this is but a begun work). I allow that too many are pretenders. This, likewise, we are taught to expect. But there are some, and not hard to be found and known … who are living witnesses for God and his truth, who are not ashamed of the gospel, nor a shame to it, but have found and do evidence that it is the power of God unto salvation, and whose lives and conversations too prove that they are different from what they once were, and from the generality of those about them.
On the other hand, we challenge any to produce instances of the same effects wrought by any other doctrine. How much is said and written to tell people what they should be and what they should do, yet where the gospel principles are not enforced there is nothing done, nothing attempted, beyond a formal round of dull and heartless service—a little something like religion on Sundays: to go to church when the bell tolls, to repeat words because other people do, to hear without attention and then to run full swing into the world again.
Or if here and there a person is truly touched, where they have no better helps, the consequence always is that they renounce the things they held for truths, are brought into that way of thinking which is agreeable to the gospel preaching, and receive it gladly whenever it comes in their way.

FOR MEDITATION: He can call the most unworthy persons, and bring them from the most unlikely places, to labour in his vineyard. Had it not been so, you would never have heard of me. Consider what I was, and where I was (in Africa) and you must acknowledge that I am a singular instance of the sovereignty and the riches of his mercy!
John Newton to John Ryland, 29 November 1799

SERMON SERIES: JOHN 3:1–2, NO. 2 [6/6]

November 4th

The authority of reality

Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. James 4:8.

It is essential to give people a chance of acting on the truth of God. The responsibility must be left with the individual, you cannot act for him, it must be his own deliberate act, but the evangelical message ought always to lead a man to act. The paralysis of refusing to act leaves a man exactly where he was before; when once he acts, he is never the same. It is the foolishness of it that stands in the way of hundreds who have been convicted by the Spirit of God. Immediately I precipitate myself over into an act, that second I live; all the rest is existence. The moments when I truly live are the moments when I act with my whole will.
Never allow a truth of God that is brought home to your soul to pass without acting on it, not necessarily physically, but in will. Record it, with ink or with blood. The feeblest saint who transacts business with Jesus Christ is emancipated the second he acts; all the almighty power of God is on his behalf. We come up to the truth of God, we confess we are wrong, but go back again; then we come up to it again, and go back; until we learn that we have no business to go back. We have to go clean over on some word of our redeeming Lord and transact business with Him. His word ‘come’ means ‘transact.’ “Come unto Me.” The last thing we do is to come; but everyone who does come knows that that second the supernatural life of God invades him instantly. The dominating power of the world, the flesh and the devil is paralysed, not by your act, but because your act has linked you on to God and His redemptive power.

November 4

“As I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God … and the hand of the Lord was there upon me.” (Ezek. 1:1, 3.)

THERE is no commentator of the Scriptures half so valuable as a captivity. The old Psalms have quavered for us with a new pathos as we sat by our “Babel’s stream,” and have sounded for us with new joy as we found our captivity turned as the streams in the South.
The man who has seen much affliction will not readily part with his copy of the Word of God. Another book may seem to others to be identical with his own; but it is not the same to him, for over his old and tear-stained Bible he has written, in characters which are visible to no eyes but his own, the record of his experiences, and ever and anon he comes on Bethel pillars or Elim palms, which are to him the memorials of some critical chapter in his history.
If we are to receive benefit from our captivity we must accept the situation and turn it to the best possible account. Fretting over that from which we have been removed or which has been taken away from us, will not make things better, but it will prevent us from improving those which remain. The bond is only tightened by our stretching it to the uttermost.
The impatient horse which will not quietly endure his halter only strangles himself in his stall. The high-mettled animal that is restive in the yoke only galls his shoulders; and every one will understand the difference between the restless starling of which Sterne has written, breaking its wings against the bars of the cage, and crying, “I can’t get out, I can’t get out,” and the docile canary that sits upon its perch and sings as if it would outrival the lark soaring to heaven’s gate.
No calamity can be to us an unmixed evil if we carry it in direct and fervent prayer to God, for even as one in taking shelter from the rain beneath a tree may find on its branches fruit which he looked not for, so we in fleeing for refuge beneath the shadow of God’s wing, will always find more in God than we had seen or known before.
It is thus through our trials and afflictions that God gives us fresh revelations of Himself; and the Jabbok ford leads to Peniel, where, as the result of our wrestling, we “see God face to face,” and our lives are preserved. Take this to thyself, O captive, and He will give thee “songs in the night,” and turn for thee “the shadow of death into the morning.”
—William Taylor.
“Submission to the divine will is the sofest pillow on which to recline.”
“It filled the room, and it filled my life,
With a glory of source unseen;
It made me calm in the midst of strife,
And in winter my heart was green.
And the birds of promise sang on the tree
When the storm was breaking on land and sea.”

4 NOVEMBER

Till the Son makes them free

‘… For no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.’ John 3:2
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 2 Thessalonians 2:13–17

[contd from 4/6—evidence of our Lord’s mission:]
(iv) The lame walk. There is inability for the service of God in us by nature, as much as in a cripple to run a race. So that when the conscience is a little alive, and a necessity is seen to forsake evil and practise that which is good, there is no power at all till the Son makes them free by the light of the preached gospel, and then they are free indeed.
(v) The lepers are cleansed. The leprosy was an emblem of sin as: a total pollution; such as separated a person from a communion in holy things; incurable to natural and ordinary means. In this disorder all helps and medicines were of no value. God alone could heal it. But Jesus cleansed the lepers, and by his gospel he cleanses from the leprosy of sin, and frees those who believe from its guilt and from its power.
(vi) The dead are raised. Devils are cast out and raging storms silenced by this powerful word. That is, those who were dead in trespasses and sins, habitually accustomed to evil, so led and governed and hurried on by Satan in his wicked service as to break through all restraints, like the man possessed with a legion, are made partakers of a new spiritual life, brought to their right minds and enabled to live according to the will of God, to be comfortable in themselves and useful, exemplary to those about them.
FOR MEDITATION: Faith a new and comprehensive sense
It feels the touch of heavenly power,
It smells the dear Redeemer’s name
And from that boundless source,
Like ointment poured forth;
Derives fresh vigour every hour,
Faith only knows or can proclaim,
To run its daily course.
Its favour or its worth.

The truth and goodness of the LORD,
Till saving faith possess the mind,
Are suited to its taste
In vain of sense we boast;
Mean is the worldling’s pampered board,
We are but senseless, tasteless, blind,
To faith’s perpetual feast.
And deaf, and dead, and lost.

SERMON SERIES: JOHN 3:1–2, NO. 2 [5/6]