Milo

19 SEPTEMBER (PREACHED OLNEY FAIR DAY)

Open books

‘… And the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.’ Revelation 20:12
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Joshua 1:1–9

When the Judge is seated, and the multitude assembled, the trial will begin. The books were opened—this you will understand is spoken after the manner of men. The Lord needs no book, but it is to represent to us the exactness of his knowledge and the impartiality of his proceedings. But what are these books? There is:
(i) the statute book, the book of the law. Some of you perhaps have this in your houses and it lies by shut up from week to week. You think it not worthy your notice, but it will be opened then and you must hear its contents.
(ii) the book of God’s remembrance. Because he exercises longsuffering now, poor blinded sinners think he regards them not. They say in their heart, at least, Psalm 73:11 [How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most High?]. But what says the Lord? Jeremiah 23:24 [Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the LORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD]; Psalm 50:21 [These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes]. Then they will find it so.
(iii) the book of conscience. Sinners strive to keep it shut now and too often prevail; they get but a little glance of its contents—they cannot bear to read it—but it is filling every day and O how will they be astonished when they are fully acquainted with its contents! When all their secret sins, their wicked works and words, are revealed to their view. Then they will be struck dumb.
FOR MEDITATION:
When the list shall be produced
Conscience then, compelled to read,
Of the talents I enjoyed;
Must allow the charge is true;
Means and mercies, how abused!
Say, my soul, what canst thou plead
Time and strength, how misemployed!
In that hour, what wilt thou do?

SERMON: REVELATION 20:11–12 [4/6] [EASTER MONDAY EVENING]

September 18th

His temptation and ours

For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Hebrews 4:15.

Until we are born again, the only kind of temptation we understand is that mentioned by St. James—“Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” But by regeneration we are lifted into another realm where there are other temptations to face, viz., the kind of temptations Our Lord faced. The temptations of Jesus do not appeal to us, they have no home at all in our human nature. Our Lord’s temptations and ours move in different spheres until we are born again and become His brethren. The temptations of Jesus are not those of a man, but the temptations of God as Man. By regeneration the Son of God is formed in us, and in our physical life He has the same setting that He had on earth. Satan does not tempt us to do wrong things; he tempts us in order to make us lose what God has put into us by regeneration, viz., the possibility of being of value to God. He does not come on the line of tempting us to sin, but on the line of shifting the point of view, and only the Spirit of God can detect this as a temptation of the devil.
Temptation means the test by an alien power of the possessions held by a personality. This makes the temptation of Our Lord explainable. After Jesus in His baptism had accepted the vocation of bearing away the sin of the world, He was immediately put by God’s Spirit into the testing machine of the devil; but He did not tire. He went through the temptation “without sin,” and retained the possessions of His personality intact.

September 18

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (Prov. 29:18.)

WAITING upon God is necessary in order to see Him, to have a vision of Him. The time element in vision is essential. Our hearts are like a sensitive photographer’s plate; and in order to have God revealed there, we must sit at His feet a long time. The troubled surface of a lake will not reflect an object.
Our lives must be quiet and restful if we would see God. There is power in the sight of some things to affect one’s life. A quiet sunset will bring peace to a troubled heart. Thus the vision of God always transforms human life.
Jacob saw God at Jabbok’s ford, and became Israel. The vision of God transformed Gideon from a coward into a valiant soldier. The vision of Christ changed Thomas from a doubting follower into a loyal, devout disciple.
But men have had visions of God since Bible times. William Carey saw God, and left his shoemaker’s bench and went to India. David Livingstone saw God, and left all to follow Him through the jungles of dark Africa. Scores and hundreds have had visions of God, and are today in the uttermost parts of the earth working for the speedy evangelization of the heathen.—Dr. Pardington.
There is hardly ever a complete silence in the soul. God is whispering to us well-nigh incessantly. Whenever the sounds of the world die out in the soul, or sink low, then we hear the whisperings of God. He is always whispering to us, only we do not hear, because of the noise, hurry, and distraction which life causes as it rushes on.—F. W. Faber.

“Speak, Lord, in the stillness,
While I wait on Thee;
Hushed my heart to listen
In expectancy.

“Speak, O blessed Master,
In this quiet hour;
Let me see Thy face, Lord,
Feel Thy touch of power.

“For the words Thou speakest,
‘They are life,’ indeed;
Living bread from Heaven,
Now my spirit feed!

“Speak, Thy servant heareth!
Be not silent, Lord;
Waits my soul upon Thee
For the quickening word!”

18 SEPTEMBER (PREACHED OLNEY FAIR DAY)

The majestic Judge

‘And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.’ Revelation 20:11–12
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Daniel 7:9–14

A throne: intimating the King himself will preside in person. An appeal lies from the judge, but not from the throne. A criminal may sometimes escape by the favour of the judge, or through some defect in the law, or for want of sufficient proof, but nothing of these can happen then. The King is Judge—he of whom it is said, His eyes are a flame of fire [Revelation 1:14; 19:12]—he whose presence none can avoid, whose knowledge none can deceive, whose power none can resist, whose sentence none can revoke. If the pomp and solemnity of an earthly assize is suited to impress an awe upon the spectators, what heart can conceive the terror and majesty of this Judge? My text in one single sentence expresses more than any exposition can reach: before him the heaven fled away.
Can the solemnity be heightened by numbers? See what a concourse—all that ever lived, small and great. The greatest not excused, the least not overlooked. But of all this immense assembly, not one will be a mere spectator, but all parties—every one has a cause of his own, a cause for eternity, before this Sovereign Judge.

FOR MEDITATION:
Can I bear his awful looks?
Shall I stand in judgement then,
When I see the opened books,
Written by the Almighty’s pen?
If he to remembrance bring,
And expose to public view,
Every work and secret thing,
Ah, my soul, what canst thou do?

SERMON: REVELATION 20:11–12 [3/6] [EASTER MONDAY EVENING]

September 17th

What’s the good of temptation?

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. 1 Cor. 10:13.

The word ‘temptation’ has come down in the world; we are apt to use it wrongly: Temptation is not sin, it is the thing we are bound to meet if we are men. Not to be tempted would be to be beneath contempt. Many of us, however, suffer from temptations from which we have no business to suffer, simply because we have refused to let God lift us to a higher plane where we would face temptations of another order.
A man’s disposition on the inside, i.e., what he possesses in his personality, determines what he is tempted by on the outside. The temptation fits the nature of the one tempted, and reveals the possibilities of the nature. Every man has the setting of his own temptation, and the temptation will come along the line of the ruling disposition.
Temptation is a suggested short cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim—not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good. Temptation is something that completely baffles me for a while, I do not know whether the thing is right or wrong. Temptation yielded to is lust deified, and is a proof that it was timidity that prevented the sin before.
Temptation is not something we may escape, it is essential to the full-orbed life of a man. Beware lest you think you are tempted as no one else is tempted; what you go through is the common inheritance of the race, not something no one ever went through before. God does not save us from temptations; He succours us in the midst of them (Heb. 2:18.)