Milo

September 28

“In me … peace.” (John 16:33.)

THERE is a vast difference between happiness and blessedness. Paul had imprisonments and pains, sacrifice and suffering up to the very limit; but in the midst of it all, he was blessed. All the beatitudes came into his heart and life in the midst of those very conditions.
Paganini, the great violinist, came out before his audience one day and made the discovery just as they ended their applause that there was something wrong with his violin. He looked at it a second and then saw that it was not his famous and valuable one.
He felt paralyzed for a moment, then turned to his audience and told them there had been some mistake and he did not have his own violin. He stepped back behind the curtain thinking that it was still where he had left it, but discovered that some one had stolen his and left that old second-hand one in its place. He remained back of the curtain a moment, then came out before his audience and said:
“Ladies and Gentlemen: I will show you that the music is not in the instrument, but in the soul.” And he played as he had never played before; and out of that second-hand instrument, the music poured forth until the audience was enraptured with enthusiasm and the applause almost lifted the ceiling of the building, because the man had revealed to them that music was not in the machine but in his own soul.
It is your mission, tested and tried one, to walk out on the stage of this world and reveal to all earth and Heaven that the music is not in conditions, not in the things, not in externals, but the music of life is in your own soul.

If peace be in the heart,

The wildest winter storm is full of solemn beauty,
The midnight flash but shows the path of duty,
Each living creature tells some new and joyous story,
The very trees and stones all catch a ray of glory,
If peace be in the heart.
—Charles Francis Richardson.

28 SEPTEMBER (PREACHED NEW YEAR’S MORNING, 1770)

Non-accidental death

‘I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.’ 1 Corinthians 15:31
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Acts 20:17–24; 21:7–14

We have but very faint apprehensions of that unseen world which lies beyond the moment of death. We know we must then be separated from all we have seen or known here below, and enter upon an unchangeable state. And we cannot tell how soon the summons may reach. Perhaps the disease that is to remove us may be just at the door—or we may be snatched away without notice by some of those innumerable events which the world, who know not God, call accidents—but though they are accidental to us, with respect to any power we have to foresee or prevent them, they are, in the disposal of God, as fixed and determinate as the rising or the setting of the sun. What then is our wisdom in this situation, while surrounded with so much darkness on every side? Happy they who are enabled to die daily.

John Newton to John Ryland, 26 March 1791, after Mrs Newton’s death:
I hope from henceforth I shall be a pilgrim and a stranger upon earth. The world is too poor to repair my loss. It is a wound which can only be effectually healed by him that made it. And faithful indeed are the wounds of such friend! But what is the death of a fellow worm, however beloved, to the death of Jesus! This is the thought which ought to wean us from the world and to crucify us unto it, and, indeed, which alone is sufficient for the purpose! May we die daily. May we live for ever. Amen.

FOR MEDITATION: Her [Polly’s] patience was wonderful. No complaining or impatient word was heard from her lips. She still found something to be thankful for; that she was preserved from extreme pain, that she could used her hands, though she could not move her body. Her natural spirits were good and cheerful to the last.… Excuse me, I could still run on upon a subject so near my heart. Her sufferings are now over; her tears, I trust, wiped away, and she shall weep no more. She is gone a little before I am following her. Blessed be God, I am satisfied.… if I may but live to him and be enabled to make full proof of my ministry, till his appointed time shall come.
John Newton to William Wilberforce, 24 December 1790

SERMON: 1 CORINTHIANS 15:31 [3/6]

September 27th

The “go” of renunciation

Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest. Luke 9:57.

Our Lord’s attitude to this man is one of severe discouragement because He knew what was in man. We would have said—‘Fancy losing the opportunity of winning that man!’ ‘Fancy bringing about a north wind that froze him and turned him away discouraged!’ Never apologize for your Lord. The words of the Lord hurt and offend until there is nothing left to hurt or offend. Jesus Christ has no tenderness whatever toward anything that is ultimately going to ruin a man in the service of God. Our Lord’s answers are based not on caprice, but on a knowledge of what is in man. If the Spirit of God brings to your mind a word of the Lord that hurts you, you may be sure that there is something He wants to hurt to death.
v. 58. These words knock the heart out of serving Jesus Christ because it is pleasing to me. The rigour of rejection leaves nothing but my Lord, and myself, and a forlorn hope. ‘Let the hundredfold come or go, your lodestar must be your relationship to Me, and I have nowhere to lay My head.’
v. 59. This man did not want to disappoint Jesus, nor to hurt his father. We put sensitive loyalty to relatives in place of loyalty to Jesus Christ and Jesus has to take the last place. In a conflict of loyalty, obey Jesus Christ at all costs.
v. 61. The one who says—‘Yes, Lord, but …’ is the one who is fiercely ready, but never goes. This man had one or two reservations. The exacting call of Jesus Christ has no margin of good-byes, because good-bye, as it is often used, is pagan, not Christian. When once the call of God comes, begin to go and never stop going.

September 27

“1 have found an atonement.” (Job 33:24, margin.)

DIVINE healing is just divine life. It is the headship of Christ over the body. It is the life of Christ in the frame. It is the union of our members with the very body of Christ and the inflowing life of Christ in our living members. It is as real as His risen and glorified body. It is as reasonable as the fact that He was raised from the dead and is a living Man with a true body and a rational soul today at God’s right hand.
That living Christ belongs to us in all His attributes and powers. We are members of His body, His flesh and His bones, and if we can only believe and receive it, we may live upon the very life of the Son of God. Lord, help me to know “the Lord for the body and the body for the Lord.”—A. B. Simpson.
“The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty.” (Zeph. 3:17). This was the text that first flashed the truth of Divine healing into my mind and worn-out body nearly a quarter century ago. It is still the door, wide open more than ever, through which the living Christ passes moment by moment into my redeemed body, filling, energizing, vitalizing it with the presence and power of His own personality, turning my whole being into a “new heaven and new earth.” “The Lord, thy God.” Thy God. My God. Then all that is in God Almighty is mine and in me just as far as I am able and willing to appropriate Him and all that belongs to Him. This God, “Mighty,” ALL Mighty God, is our INSIDE God. He is, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the midst of me, just as really as the sun is in the center of the heavens, or like the great dynamo in the center of the power-house of my three-fold being. He is in the midst, at the center of my physical being. He is in the midst of my brain. He is in the midst of my nerve centers.
For twenty-one years it has been not only a living reality to me, but a reality growing deeper and richer, until now at the age of seventy years, I am in every sense a younger, fresher man than I was at thirty. At this present time I am in the strength of God, doing full twice as much work, mental and physical, as I have ever done in the best days of the past, and this observe, with less than half the effort then necessary. My life, physical, mental and spiritual, is like an artesian well—always full, overflowing. To speak, teach, travel by night and day in all weather and through all the sudden and violent changes of our variable climate, is no more effort to me than it is for the mill-wheel to turn when the stream is full or for the pipe to let the water run through.

My body, soul and spirit thus redeemed,
Sanctified and healed I give, O Lord, to Thee,
A consecrated offering Thine ever more to be.
That all my powers with all their might
In Thy sole glory may unite.—Hallelujah!
—Dr. Henry Wilson.

27 SEPTEMBER (PREACHED NEW YEAR’S MORNING, 1770)

Work at dying!

‘I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.’ 1 Corinthians 15:31
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1 Corinthians 15:50–58

What is it to die daily? It is a believer’s work and his only. It is not merely to entertain frequent thoughts of death—to converse much with funerals and tombstones and to repeat often to ourselves that we are all mortal. Many things of this kind may be done with much formality. A friend of mine has told me that when he first began to have serious thoughts, he proposed a great advantage to himself: he could daily think of death. And for this purpose he procured a skull out of a churchyard, which for a time he had always lying upon his chamber table that he might look at it night and morning and say, ‘This is what I must come to.’ For a few days this seemed to affect him, but a little use took off the impression and it was no more to him than the table it lay upon. In fact, we see that few people are more hardened to the thoughts of death than many whose business calls them to be much employed about dying or dead people. Nothing of this kind will truly affect the heart, but so far as we understand the influence of the light of faith.
I shall mention two things. Firstly, to die daily is constantly to resign ourselves into the hand and will of God with respect to the time and manner of our death, an event which we are sure must soon take place, and we are uncertain when [for the second point see 5/6].

FOR MEDITATION: We are now going down the hill of life. Oh, my Lord, cast us not off in our old age, forsake us not when our strength faileth. But do thou strengthen us according to our day! I trust thou wilt. Into thy gracious hands I commend myself and her [Polly, his wife]. I rejoice that future events, to us unknown, are under thy direction. There I would leave them. I pray that we may live with thee from day to day without anxiety. Help us to redeem the time, to fill up the uncertain remainder in a manner more suitable to thy will and our obligations than we have yet done. And when the summons shall at length arrive, may it find us waiting, willing, longing to leave all below, that we may see thee as thou art and be with thee for ever.
Diary, 12 February 1784

SERMON: 1 CORINTHIANS 15:31 [2/6]