Milo

November 11

“He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass.” (Psalm 72:6.)

AMOS speaks of the king’s mowings. Our King has many scythes, and is perpetually mowing His lawns. The musical tinkle of the whetstone on the scythe portends the cutting down of myriads of green blades, daisies and other flowers. Beautiful as they were in the morning, within an hour or two they lie in long, faded rows.
Thus in human life we make a brave show, before the scythe of pain, the shears of disappointment, the sickle of death.
There is no method of obtaining a velvety lawn but by repeated mowings; and there is no way of developing tenderness, evenness, sympathy, but by the passing of God’s scythes. How constantly the Word of God compares man to grass, and His glory to its flower! But when grass is mown, and all the tender shoots are bleeding, and desolation reigns where flowers were bursting, it is the most acceptable time for showers of rain falling soft and warm.
O soul, thou hast been mown! Time after time the King has come to thee with His sharp scythe. Do not dread the scythe—it is sure to be followed by the shower.—F. B. Meyer.

“When across the heart deep waves of sorrow
  Break, as on a dry and barren shore;
When hope glistens with no bright tomorrow,
  And the storm seems sweeping evermore;

“When the cup of every earthly gladness
  Bears no taste of the life-giving stream;
And high hopes, as though to mock our sadness,
  Fade and die as in some fitful dream,

“Who shall hush the weary spirit’s chiding?
  Who the aching void within shall fill?
Who shall whisper of a peace abiding,
  And each surging billow calmly still?

“Only He whose wounded heart was broken
  With the bitter cross and thorny crown;
Whose dear love glad words of joy had spoken,
  Who His life for us laid meekly down.

“Blessed Healer, all our burdens lighten;
Give us peace, Thine own sweet peace, we pray!

Keep us near Thee till the morn shall brighten,
And all the mists and shadows flee away!”

11 NOVEMBER

The Lord’s patience and mercy

‘And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the LORD being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city.’ Genesis 19:16
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Isaiah 1:9–20

To some of you, we seem as mockers; we can only repeat our message and leave it with your consciences, entreating the Lord to give a blessing, while we declare the danger and the remedy. That Lot escaped at last, is ascribed to the Lord’s mercy. He might justly have been left to perish with the rest. O the patience of the Lord towards his own people. Indeed it is in some respects more wonderful than his long forbearance of the wicked. These know not what they do. But believers sin and trifle against knowledge and love and experience. On this account they may be said to be though scarcely saved. They have so often provoked the Lord, that if his mercy was not infinite, he would be weary of them and cast them off for ever.

Annotated Letters to a Wife, 4 August 1796, aged 70:
O my LORD! If I would recollect or recount thy mercies they are more in number than the sands! The best part of my childhood and youth was vanity and folly but before I attained the age of man I became exceeding vile indeed and was seated in the chair of a scorner in early life. Troubles and miseries I for a time endured, were my own. I brought them upon myself by forsaking thy good and pleasant paths and choosing the way of transgressors, which I found very hard. They led to slavery, contempt, famine and despair, but my recovery from that dreadful state was wholly of thee. How exact were the terms upon which my deliverance from Africa depended. Had the ship passed one quarter of an hour sooner I had died there a wretch as I had lived.

FOR MEDITATION: We are passengers in a ship in which the Lord’s cause and faithfulness are embarked with us, and therefore we need not fear sinking. The infallible pilot will guide us safely through the storms.
John Newton to John Ryland, 28 January 1781

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 41 [3/4], GENESIS 19:16

November 10th

Fellowship in the gospel

Fellow labourer in the gospel of Christ. 1 Thess. 3:2.

After sanctification it is difficult to state what your aim in life is, because God has taken you up into His purpose by the Holy Ghost. He is using you now for His purposes throughout the world as He used His Son for the purpose of our salvation. If you seek great things for yourself—‘God has called me for this and that,’ you are putting a barrier to God’s use of you. As long as you have a personal interest in your own character, or any set ambition, you cannot get through into identification with God’s interests. You can only get there by losing for ever any idea of yourself and by letting God take you right out into His purpose for the world, and because your goings are of the Lord, you can never understand your ways.
I have to learn that the aim in life is God’s, not mine. God is using me from His great personal standpoint, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him, and never say—‘Lord, this gives me such heartache.’ To talk in that way makes me a clog. When I stop telling God what I want, He can catch me up for what He wants without let or hindrance. He can crumple me up or exalt me, He can do anything He chooses. He simply asks me to have implicit faith in Himself and in His goodness. Self-pity is of the devil; if I go off on that line I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. I have ‘a world within the world’ in which I live, and God will never be able to get me outside it because I am afraid of being frost-bitten.

November 10

“Under hopeless circumstances he hopefully believed.” (Rom. 4:18.) (Weymouth.)

ABRAHAM’S faith seemed to be in a thorough correspondence with the power and constant faithfulness of Jehovah. In the outward circumstances in which he was placed, he had not the greatest cause to expect fulfillment of the promise. Yet he believed the Word of the Lord, and looked forward to the time when his seed should be as the stars of heaven for multitude.
O my soul, thou hast not one single promise only, like Abraham, but a thousand promises, and many patterns of faithful believers before thee: it behooves thee, therefore, to rely with confidence upon the Word of God. And though He delayeth His help, and the evil seemeth to grow worse and worse, be not weak, but rather strong, and rejoice, since the most glorious promises of God are generally fulfilled in such a wondrous manner that He steps forth to save us at a time when there is the least appearance of it.
He commonly brings His help in our greatest extremity, that His finger may plainly appear in our deliverance. And this method He chooses that we may not trust upon anything that we see or feel, as we are always apt to do, but only upon His bare Word, which we may depend upon in every state.
—C. H. Von Bogatzky.
Remember it is the very time for faith to work when sight ceases. The greater the difficulties, the easier for faith; as long as there remain certain natural prospects, faith does not get on even as easily as where natural prospects fail.
—George Mueller.

10 NOVEMBER

Linger no longer

‘And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the LORD being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city.’ Genesis 19:16
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Revelation 3:14–22

But my text leads me to speak of Lot himself. Is it not strange even Lot lingered? The passage is of general application. The world, like Sodom, lies in wickedness. Believers are like Lot—the Lord informs them of the consequences of sin and says, Come out from among them, that ye be not consumed. They hear and obey. Yet they are so faint, so half in earnest, so lingering, that the Lord’s mercy is as much magnified in bearing with them after he has called them, as in calling them at first. However, he will not suffer them to perish, but employs various means by which he, as it were, takes hold of them by the hand and pulls them away by force. Let us speak to these things. The Lord’s people are prone to linger. Perhaps some of you may wonder at Lot, and think that if you were sure this place was to be instantly destroyed, you would hasten as soon and as far from it as you could. But they who know their own hearts will wonder least at him. His life was given him for a prey, but he must leave his house, his substance, his children, behind him. His heart cleaved too much to these things and the command was sudden. Now to us all these things are transacted in a spiritual manner; the judgement is yet unsure and distant, and present objects strike powerfully upon the senses. We are not to leave the world absolutely, but to forsake it in our affections while we are yet in it. Here is a call for much self denial: to forgo the love of the world—its pleasures, its friendships—to endure its scoffs, to be accounted mockers and to suffer mocks and taunts and hard treatment. The Lord pity and pardon us, these things make too much impression upon our spirits and cause us strangely to linger.

FOR MEDITATION: Let us pray for grace to linger no longer—for a powerful sense of the truth of his Word, that we may believe, act and endure, as seeing him who is invisible.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 41 [2/4], GENESIS 19:16