Milo

October 23rd

Not a bit of it!

If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away. 2 Cor. 5:17.

Our Lord never nurses our prejudices, He mortifies them, runs clean athwart them. We imagine that God has a special interest in our particular prejudices; we are quite sure that God will never deal with us as we know He has to deal with other people. ‘God must deal with other people in a very stern way, but of course He knows that my prejudices are all right.’ We have to learn—‘Not a bit of it!’ Instead of God being on the side of our prejudices, He is deliberately wiping them out. It is part of our moral education to have our prejudices run straight across by His providence, and to watch how He does it. God pays no respect to anything we bring to Him; there is only one thing He wants of us, and that is our unconditional surrender. When we are born again, the Holy Spirit begins to work His new creation in us, and there will come a time when there is not a bit of the old order left; the old solemnity goes, the old attitude to things goes, and “all things are of God.” How are we going to get the life that has no lust, no self-interest, no sensitiveness to pokes, the love that is not provoked, that thinketh no evil, that is always kind? The only way is by allowing not a bit of the old life to be left, but only simple perfect trust in God, such trust that we no longer want God’s blessings, but only want Himself. Have we come to the place where God can withdraw His blessings and it does not affect our trust in Him? When once we see God at work, we will never bother our heads about things that happen, because we are actually trusting in our Father in Heaven Whom the world cannot see.

October 23

“There hath not failed one word of all his good promise.” (1 Kings 8:56.)

SOME day we shall understand that God has a reason in every NO which He speaks through the slow movement of life. “Somehow God makes up to us.” How often, when His people are worrying and perplexing themselves about their prayers not being answered, is God answering them in a far richer way! Glimpses of this we see occasionally, but the full revelation of it remains for the future.

“If God says ‘Yes’ to our prayer, dear heart,
And the sunlight is golden, the sky is blue,
While the smooth road beckons to me and you,
And the song-birds warble as on we go,
Pausing to gather the buds at our feet,
Stopping to drink of the streamlets we meet,
Happy, more happy, our journey will grow,
If God says ‘Yes’ to our prayer, dear heart.

“If God says ‘No’ to our prayer, dear heart,
And the clouds hang heavy and dull and gray;
If the rough rocks hinder and block the way,
While the sharp winds pierce us and sting with cold;
Ah, dear, there is home at the journey’s end,
And these are the trials the Father doth send
To draw us as sheep to His Heavenly fold,
If God says ‘No’ to our prayer, dear heart.”

Oh for the faith that does not make haste, but waits patiently for the Lord, waits for the explanation that shall come in the end, at the revelation of Jesus Christ! When did God take anything from a man, without giving him manifold more in return? Suppose that the return had not been made immediately manifest, what then? Is today the limit of God’s working time? Has He no provinces beyond this little world? Does the door of the grave open upon nothing but infinite darkness and eternal silence?
Yet, even confining the judgment within the hour of this life, it is true that God never touches the heart with a trial without intending to bring upon it some grander gift, some tenderer benediction. He has attained to an eminent degree of Christian grace who knows how to wait.—Selected.

When the frosts are in the valley,
  And the mountain tops are grey,
And the choicest buds are blighted,
  And the blossoms die away,
A loving Father whispers,
  “This cometh from my hand”;
Blessed are ye if ye trust
  Where ye cannot understand.

If, after years of toiling,
  Your wealth should fly away
And leave your hands all empty,
  And your locks are turning grey,
Remember then your Father
  Owns all the sea and land;
Blessed are ye if ye trust
  Where ye cannot understand.

—Selected.

23 OCTOBER (PREACHED 1770)

A right knowledge of sin

‘And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.’ Luke 9:35
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Revelation 5:1–14

On the knowledge of this character of Christ depends the right knowledge of the sinfulness of sin. Conceive of him for a moment as he stood transfigured in glory upon the mount and attested by a voice from heaven. And then follow him in your thoughts to those sufferings which he soon after endured. Think of him in his agony in the garden—see him the sport of servants and soldiers, see him buffeted and spit upon and at last hanging upon the cross, surrounded with his enemies who mocked his torments. Would any of you, being evil, treat a son, a beloved son, in this manner, or permit him to be so treated, if it was in your power to prevent it? And can you think that the great God would deliver up his only Son, who had always pleased him, to endure such things without an important reason? O sin, how exceeding sinful, when viewed in this light. He had, of his enormous love, given his Son to stand for sinners, and when sin was found charged upon him, though he was the beloved Son, he was not spared. Here let me drop a word:
(i) to you who go on in your sins. If God spared not his own Son, can you presume that he will spare you?
(ii) to you that are seeking to establish your own righteousness. Are you prepared to meet this holy God, who dealt thus with his own Son? Will you reject this atonement to trust to the work of your own hands?
(iii) to believers. You know there is much evil in your natures and many temptations and snares in the world. See here your best preservative against sin. The Lord help you the next time you are in danger, to remember what your sins cost Jesus. Sure, if this had not been out of your thoughts, you would not have given way in one or another instance, the remembrance of which now fills you with shame.

FOR MEDITATION: Yes, my soul, for thee, wretched sinner, a vile miserable apostate, did this wonderful Saviour leave the fullness of all glory and happiness to redeem thee from destruction, and took upon him the form of a servant, that thou mightest receive the adoption of a son.
Diary, Sunday 1 July 1752

SERMON SERIES: ON THE TRANSFIGURATION, NO. 9 [3/4]

October 22nd

The witness of the Spirit

The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit … Romans 8:16 (R.V.).

We are in danger of getting the barter spirit when we come to God, we want the witness before we have done what God tells us to do. ‘Why does not God reveal Himself to me?’ He cannot; it is not that He will not, but He cannot, because you are in the road as long as you won’t abandon absolutely to Him. Immediately you do, God witnesses to Himself; He cannot witness to you, but He witnesses instantly to His own nature in you. If you had the witness before the reality, it would end in sentimental emotion. Immediately you transact on the Redemption and stop the impertinence of debate, God gives you the witness. As soon as you abandon reasoning and argument, God witnesses to what He has done, and you are amazed at your impertinence in having kept Him waiting. If you are in debate as to whether God can deliver from sin, either let Him do it, or tell Him He cannot. Do not quote this and that person, try Matthew 11:28—“Come unto Me.” Come, if you are weary and heavy laden; ask if you know you are evil (Luke 11:13).
The simplicity that comes from our natural commonsense decisions is apt to be mistaken for the witness of the Spirit, but the Spirit witnesses only to His own nature and to the work of Redemption, never to our reason. If we try to make Him witness to our reason, it is no wonder we are in darkness and perplexity. Fling it all overboard, trust in God, and He will give the witness.

October 22

“Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.” (Exod. 3:1, 2.)

THE vision came in the midst of common toil, and that is where the Lord delights to give His revelations. He seeks a man who is on the ordinary road, and the Divine fire leaps out at his feet. The mystic ladder can rise from the market place to Heaven. It can connect the realm of drudgery with the realms of grace.
My Father God, help me to expect Thee on the ordinary road. I do not ask for sensational happenings. Commune with me through ordinary work and duty. Be my Companion when I take the common journey. Let the humble life be transfigured by Thy presence.
Some Christians think they must be always up to mounts of extraordinary joy and revelation; this is not after God’s method. Those spiritual visits to high places, and that wonderful intercourse with the unseen world, are not in the promises; the daily life of communion is. And it is enough. We shall have the exceptional revelation if it be right for us.
There were but three disciples allowed to see the transfiguration, and those three entered the gloom of Gethsemane. No one can stay on the mount of privilege. There are duties in the valley. Christ found His life-work, not in the glory, but in the valley and was there truly and fully the Messiah. The value of the vision and glory is but their gift of fitness for work and endurance.—Selected.