Milo

7 OCTOBER

Learning from very grievous sin

‘And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.’ Genesis 18:20–21
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Romans 1:18–32

The cry of some sinners and in some places is louder than others. The cry and sin of Sodom was great and grievous. Let us see what might concur to increase the cry, that we may learn what are those circumstances and aggravations which make sin particularly provoking to the Lord and expose the sinner to sudden and exemplary vengeance. Observe their height of sinning. A particular instance of wickedness (not to be named without horror) is remarked in the course of their history, as likewise afterwards was found among the Benjamites in Gibeah (Judges 19). But this proves a course of abandoned sinning in other respects. When sinners do not like to retain God in their knowledge, he sometimes righteously gives them up to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient[appropriate] and many who have cast off his fear have sunk far below the level of the beasts that perish. It is to be feared, or rather there is too much ground to speak positively, that there was no abomination practised in Sodom which is not committed in our Christian country. The heart of man under the power of Satan is capable of abominations which cannot with propriety be insisted on in a public discourse, and which charity would hope may be safely omitted here. The great God, to whom the night shineth as the day, knoweth all things, and there is an hour cometh when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed. O the blasphemy, the drunkenness, the whoredom, the adultery, under which our land groans.

FOR MEDITATION: ‘Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God’ (1 Corinthians 6:9–11, NIV).

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 39 [2/3], GENESIS 18:20–21

October 6th

The bent of regeneration

When it pleased God, … to reveal His son in me. Gal. 1:15, 16.

If Jesus Christ is to regenerate me, what is the problem He is up against? I have a heredity I had no say in; I am not holy, nor likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is to tell me I must be holy, His teaching plants despair. But if Jesus Christ is a Regenerator, One Who can put into me His own heredity of holiness, then I begin to see what He is driving at when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into any man the hereditary disposition that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives are based on that disposition: His teaching is for the life He puts in. The moral transaction on my part is agreement with God’s verdict on sin in the Cross of Jesus Christ.
The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a man is struck by a sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God—“until Christ be formed in you.” The moral miracle of Redemption is that God can put into me a new disposition whereby I can live a totally new life. When I reach the frontier of need and know my limitations, Jesus says—‘Blessed are you.’ But I have to get there. God cannot put into me, a responsible moral being, the disposition that was in Jesus Christ unless I am conscious I need it.
Just as the disposition of sin entered into the human race by one man, so the Holy Spirit entered the human race by another Man; and Redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin and through Jesus Christ can receive an unsullied heredity, viz., the Holy Spirit.

October 6

“He opened not his mouth.” (Isa. 53:7.)

HOW much grace it requires to bear a misunderstanding rightly, and to receive an unkind judgment in holy sweetness! Nothing tests the Christian character more than to have some evil thing said about him. This is the file that soon proves whether we are electro-plate or solid gold. If we could only know the blessings that lie hidden in our trials we would say like David, when Shimei cursed him, “Let him curse; … it may be … that the Lord will requite me good for his cursing this day.”
Some people get easily turned aside from the grandeur of their life-work by pursuing their own grievances and enemies, until their life gets turned into one little petty whirl of warfare. It is like a nest of hornets. You may disperse the hornets, but you will probably get terribly stung, and get nothing for your pains, for even their honey is not worth a search.
God give us more of His Spirit, “who, when he was reviled, reviled not again”; but “committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.” “Consider him that endureth such contradiction of sinners against himself.”—A. B. Simpson.

“Before you” He trod all the path of woe,
He took the sharp thrusts with His head bent low.
He knew deepest sorrow and pain and grief,
He knew long endurance without relief,
He took all the bitter from death’s deep cup,
He kept not a blood-drop but gave all up.
“Before you” and for you, He won the fight
To bring you to glory and realms of light.
—L. S. P

6 OCTOBER

Sin cries out

‘And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.’ Genesis 18:20–21
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Isaiah 59:1–20

This is one of the many passages in which the Lord speaks after the manner of men. He is present in all places, and knows all things. But it intimates the exactness of his judicial proceedings, that he will not punish without cause, and that he exercises such forbearance and patience as will leave sinners without excuse. Sin has a voice, a cry. It cries for vengeance, like the blood of Abel. It is opposite to the perfections of God. His holiness, justice, truth and authority are called upon, provoked and defied by sin. Though he spare long, his honour would suffer if he did not at length take notice of it. Ah my friends, you little know what you do, when you allow yourselves in a course of sin against the great God who has power to destroy both soul and body in hell.
FOR MEDITATION:
Ah, what can I do,
And must I then go,
Or where be secure!
Forever to dwell
If justice pursue
In torments and woe
What heart can endure!
With devils in hell?
When GOD speaks in thunder,
Oh where is the Saviour
And makes himself known,
I scorned in times past?
The heart breaks asunder
His word in my favour
Though hard as a stone.
Would save me at last.

With terror I read
Lord JESUS, on thee
My sins heavy score,
I venture to call,
The numbers exceed
Oh look upon me
The sands on the shore;
The vilest of all!
Guilt makes me unable
For whom didst thou languish,
To stand or to flee,
And bleed on the tree?
So Cain murdered Abel,
Oh pity my anguish,
And trembled like me.
And say, ‘’Twas for thee’.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 39 [1/3], GENESIS 18:20–21

October 5th

The bias of degeneration

Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Romans 5:12.

The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin; but that the disposition of sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put it away (Heb. 9:26)—an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization—I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself. When Our Lord faced men with all the forces of evil in them, and men who were clean living and moral and upright, He did not pay any attention to the moral degradation of the one or to the moral attainment of the other; He looked at something we do not see, viz., the disposition.
Sin is a thing I am born with and I cannot touch it; God touches sin in Redemption. In the Cross of Jesus Christ God redeemed the whole human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a man responsible for having the heredity of sin. The condemnation is not that I am born with a heredity of sin, but if when I realize Jesus Christ came to deliver me from it, I refuse to let Him do so, from that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. “And this is the judgment” (the critical moment) “that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light.”