Milo

October 30th

Faith

Without faith it is impossible to please Him. Hebrews 11:6.

Faith in antagonism to common sense is fanaticism, and common sense in antagonism to faith is rationalism. The life of faith brings the two into a right relation. Common sense is not faith, and faith is not common sense; they stand in the relation of the natural and the spiritual; of impulse and inspiration. Nothing Jesus Christ ever said is common sense, it is revelation sense, and it reaches the shores where common sense fails. Faith must be tried before the reality of faith is actual. “We know that all things work together for good,” then no matter what happens, the alchemy of God’s providence transfigures the ideal faith into actual reality. Faith always works on the personal line, the whole purpose of God being to see that the ideal faith is made real in His children. For every detail of the commonsense life, there is a revelation fact of God whereby we can prove in practical experience what we believe God to be. Faith is a tremendously active principle which always puts Jesus Christ first—‘Lord, Thou hast said so and so’ (e.g., Matthew 6:33), ‘it looks mad, but I am going to venture on Thy word.’ To turn head faith into a personal possession is a fight always, not sometimes. God brings us into circumstances in order to educate our faith, because the nature of faith is to make its object real. Until we know Jesus, God is a mere abstraction, we cannot have faith in Him; but immediately we hear Jesus say—“He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,” we have something that is real, and faith is boundless. Faith is the whole man rightly related to God by the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

October 30

“Let us run with patience.” (Heb. 12:1.)

TO run with patience is a very difficult thing. Running is apt to suggest the absence of patience, the eagerness to reach the goal. We commonly associate patience with lying down. We think of it as the angel that guards the couch of the invalid. Yet, I do not think the invalid’s patience the hardest to achieve.
There is a patience which I believe to be harder—the patience that can run. To lie down in the time of grief, to be quiet under the stroke of adverse fortune, implies a great strength; but I know of something that implies a strength greater still: It is the power to work under a stroke; to have a great weight at your heart and still to run; to have a deep anguish in your spirit and still perform the daily task. It is a Christlike thing!
Many of us would nurse our grief without crying if we were allowed to nurse it. The hard thing is that most of us are called to exercise our patience, not in bed, but in the street. We are called to bury our sorrows, not in lethargic quiescence, but in active service—in the exchange, in the workshop, in the hour of social intercourse, in the contribution to another’s joy. There is no burial of sorrow so difficult as that; it is the “running with patience.”
This was Thy patience, O Son of man! It was at once a waiting and a running—a waiting for the goal, and a doing of the lesser work meantime. I see Thee at Cana turning the water into wine lest the marriage feast should be clouded. I see Thee in the desert feeding a multitude with bread just to relieve, a temporary want. All, all the time, Thou wert bearing a mighty grief, unshared, unspoken. Men ask for a rainbow in the cloud; but I would ask more from Thee. I would be, in my cloud, myself a rainbow—a minister to others’ joy. My patience will be perfect when it can work in the vineyard.
—George Matheson.
“When all our hopes are gone,
’Tis well our hands must keep toiling on,
For others’ sake:
For strength to bear is found in duty done;
And he is best indeed who learns to make
The joy of others cure his own heartache.”

30 OCTOBER (PREACHED 4 OCTOBER 1767)

Help and hope for the helpless and hopeless

‘Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.’ Psalm 63:7
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Psalm 9:1–20

In the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. Experience should determine us to David’s determination. The wings refer either to the holy place or to the image of a hen over her young. And there to rejoice, considering his ability (Psalm 27:1 my light … my salvation … the strength of my life), and his constancy. He will not change. From hence consider the life of faith as safe (Psalm 9), pleasant, honourable—near the Lord. This is the gospel declaration: a tender of help and hope for the helpless and hopeless. How blind are sinners to put this from them. Who else can help you at death or judgement? This is a suitable meditation to take to the Lord’s table. Think of the help you have found—of the mercy seat between the cherubim. Offer your praise and make your vows.

Diary, 28 January 1776:
Ah! I feel my weakness; how much have I said and written concerning dependence and resignation, but alas! how hard, how impossible, to practise what I know and teach, any farther than thou art pleased to strengthen me. Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief.
FOR MEDITATION:
When first before his mercy-seat,
Like David, thou may’st comfort draw,
Thou didst to him thy all commit;
Saved from the bear’s and lion’s paw
He gave thee warrant, from that hour,
Goliath’s rage I may defy,
To trust his wisdom, love and power.
For GOD, my Saviour, still is nigh.

Did ever trouble yet befall,
He who has helped me hitherto,
And he refuse to hear thy call?
Will help me all my journey through;
And has he not his promise past,
And give me daily cause to raise
That thou shalt overcome at last?
New Ebenezers to his praise.

Though rough and thorny be the road, It leads thee home, apace, to GOD;
Then count thy present trials small, For heaven will make amends for all., 291

SERMON: PSALM 63:7 [2/2] [ALSO PREACHED 28 JAN. 1776 & 3 OCT. 1779]

October 29th

Substitution

He hath made Him to be sin for us, … that we might be made the righteousness of God.… 2 Cor. 5:21.

The modern view of the death of Jesus is that He died for our sins out of sympathy. The New Testament view is that He bore our sin not by sympathy, but by identification. He was made to be sin. Our sins are removed because of the death of Jesus, and the explanation of His death is His obedience to His Father, not His sympathy with us. We are acceptable with God not because we have obeyed, or because we have promised to give up things, but because of the death of Christ, and in no other way. We say that Jesus Christ came to reveal the Fatherhood of God, the loving-kindness of God; the New Testament says He came to bear away the sin of the world. The revelation of His Father is to those to whom He has been introduced as Saviour: Jesus Christ never spoke of Himself to the world as one Who revealed the Father, but as a stumbling-block (see John 15:22–24 ). John 14:9 was spoken to His disciples.
That Christ died for me, therefore I go scot free, is never taught in the New Testament. What is taught in the New Testament is that “He died for all” (not—He died my death), and that by identification with His death I can be freed from sin, and have imparted to me His very righteousness. The substitution taught in the New Testament is twofold: “He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” It is not Christ for me unless I am determined to have Christ formed in me.

October 29

“He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” (Mal. 3:3.)

OUR Father, who seeks to perfect His saints in holiness, knows the value of the refiner’s fire. It is with the most precious metals that the assayer takes the most pains, and subjects them to the hot fire, because such fires melt the metal, and only the molten mass releases its alloy or takes perfectly its new form in the mould. The old refiner never leaves his crucible, but sits down by it, lest there should be one excessive degree of heat to mar the metal. But as soon as he skims from the surface the last of the dross, and sees his own face reflected, he puts out the fire.—Arthur T. Pierson.

“He sat by a fire of seven-fold heat,
  As He watched by the precious ore,
And closer He bent with a searching gaze
  As He heated it more and more.
He knew He had ore that could stand the test,
  And He wanted the finest gold
To mould as a crown for the King to wear,
  Set with gems with a price untold.
So He laid our gold in the burning fire,
  Tho’ we fain would have said Him ‘Nay,’
And He watched the dross that we had not seen,
  And it melted and passed away.
And the gold grew brighter and yet more bright,
  But our eyes were so dim with tears,
We saw but the fire—not the Master’s hand,
  And questioned with anxious fears.
Yet our gold shone out with a richer glow,
  As it mirrored a Form above,

That bent o’er the fire, tho’ unseen by us,
  With a look of ineffable love.
Can we think that it pleases His loving heart
  To cause us a moment’s pain?
Ah, no! but He saw through the present cross
  The bliss of eternal gain.
So He waited there with a watchful eye,
  With a love that is strong and sure,
And His gold did not suffer a bit more heat,
  Than was needed to make it pure.”