Milo

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]

September 26th

The unblameable attitude

If … thou rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee … Matthew 5:23.

If when you come to the altar, there you remember that your brother has anything against you, not—If you rake up something by a morbid sensitiveness, but—“If thou rememberest,” that is, it is brought to your conscious mind by the Spirit of God: “first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” Never object to the intense sensitiveness of the Spirit of God in you when He is educating you down to the scruple.
“First be reconciled to thy brother …” Our Lord’s direction is simple—“first be reconciled.” Go back the way you came, go the way indicated to you by the conviction given at the altar; have an attitude of mind and a temper of soul to the one who has something against you that makes reconciliation as natural as breathing. Jesus does not mention the other person, He says—you go. There is no question of your rights. The stamp of the saint is that he can waive his own rights and obey the Lord Jesus.
“And then come and offer thy gift.” The process is clearly marked. First, the heroic spirit of self-sacrifice, then the sudden checking by the sensitiveness of the Holy Spirit, and the stoppage at the point of conviction; then the way of obedience to the word of God, constructing an unblameable attitude of mind and temper to the one with whom you have been in the wrong; then the glad, simple, unhindered offering of your gift to God.

September 26

“We walk by faith, not by appearance.” (2 Cor. 5:7, R. V.)

BY faith, not appearance; God never wants us to look at our feelings. Self may want us to; and Satan may want us to. But God wants us to face facts, not feelings; the facts of Christ and of His finished and perfect work for us.
When we face these precious facts, and believe them because God says they are facts, God will take care of our feelings.
God never gives feeling to enable us to trust Him; God never gives feeling to encourage us to trust Him; God never gives feeling to show that we have already and utterly trusted Him.
God gives feeling only when He sees that we trust Him apart from all feeling, resting on His own Word, and on His own faithfulness to His promise.
Never until then can the feeling (which is from God) possibly come; and God will give the feeling in such a measure and at such a time as His love sees best for the individual case.
We must choose between facing toward our feelings and facing toward God’s facts. Our feelings may be as uncertain as the sea or the shifting sands. God’s facts are as certain as the Rock of Ages, even Christ Himself, who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

“When darkness veils His lovely face
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.”

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

Dying daily

‘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 15:12–34

This is a very lively and animated expression, especially in the original, where the words stand differently from our version: by your rejoicing which I have—that is, by our mutual rejoicing—I die daily. The Apostle uses these words as one proof of his faith in the doctrine of the resurrection and its influence to bear him above the troubles of life. They may be understood either to express the hazards and designs he was continually exposed to from the world, as a Christian and a preacher, or as the habitual experience and frame of his mind, from a conviction of the vanity of this life and the importance of the next. In this latter sense, the words suggest a subject which seems not unsuitable to our entrance on a new year.
Diary, 20 January 1755:

As merchants begin their books with an inventory of stock, so would I in a brief manner set down my present state for my future government. I trust that the Lord has caused more of his goodness to pass before me this year than I ever before experienced; I hope particularly he has taken me more off my own bottom, and given me to see more of the necessity and the sufficiency of the Lord Jesus Christ in his office of Saviour of his people, and has made me more willing to depend upon his righteousness only. I trust he has enabled me to see more clearly the truth and comfort of those particular doctrines of the glorious gospel which in these days are by many either denied, or explained away. On the other side, I labour under weakness, I am wearied with a body of sin and death; often when I would do good, evil is present with me, my affections are cold and wavering, my faith weak and interrupted. Thus I find my life to be a continual warfare. But blessed be God for the hopes of final victory over sin and corruption, through Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom I hope I can in a low degree say the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.

FOR MEDITATION: Every believer should follow the Apostle’s steps here, so as to be able to say, I die daily.

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