Milo

27 AUGUST

The duty of obedience

‘Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long on the earth.’ Ephesians 6:1–3
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Deuteronomy 5:1–22

The duty of children to obey their parents is also founded on the authority of God. It is his command. When he gave but ten commandments this was one, which shows its importance, and there is a promise—which literally was in some sense peculiar to the Old Testament dispensation, but in general it expresses that obedient children have reason to hope for his blessing, and that disobedience exposes to his displeasure. Under the law, such were subject to the same punishment as blasphemers, and there is severe threatening (Proverbs 30:17). In effect we see that those who are disobedient to their parents are usually marked by the providence of God—some meet the same return from their own, and if you enquire of them who are brought to an untimely end by the law of the land, many or most of them will confess disobedience to parents was their first fatal step that led them into the way of mischief.
This duty of obedience is also founded on the example of Jesus, who, though Lord of all, yet when he humbled himself for our sakes, was subject to his parents during his private life.
FOR MEDITATION:
Dear Myra, hear the Saviour speak,
Devote to me your early days—
He speaks this day to thee,
Can you too soon be blessed?
Renounce the world (he says), and seek
And I will guide you by my grace,
Your happiness in me;
To an eternal rest;
The world will flattering baits present,
The object of my care and love,
But ’tis delusion all,
You then shall walk in peace,
And you can only find content,
And rise to higher joys above,
By yielding to my call.
When this frail life shall cease.

John Newton to Miss Sarah Gardiner on the anniversary of her birthday

SERMON SERIES: RELATIVE DUTIES, NO. 3 [2/5], EPHESIANS 6:1–3

August 26th

Are you ever disturbed?

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you. John 14:27.

There are times when our peace is based upon ignorance, but when we awaken to the facts of life, inner peace is impossible unless it is received from Jesus. When Our Lord speaks peace, He makes peace, His words are ever “spirit and life.” Have I ever received what Jesus speaks? “My peace I give unto you”—it is a peace which comes from looking into His face and realizing His undisturbedness.
Are you painfully disturbed just now, distracted by the waves and billows of God’s providential permission, and having, as it were, turned over the boulders of your belief, are you still finding no well of peace or joy or comfort; is all barren? Then look up and receive the undisturbedness of the Lord Jesus. Reflected peace is the proof that you are right with God because you are at liberty to turn your mind to Him. If you are not right with God, you can never turn your mind anywhere but on yourself. If you allow anything to hide the face of Jesus Christ from you, you are either disturbed or you have a false security.
Are you looking unto Jesus now, in the immediate matter that is pressing, and receiving from Him peace? If so, He will be a gracious benediction of peace in and through you: But if you try to worry it out, you obliterate Him and deserve all you get. We get disturbed because we have not been considering Him. When one confers with Jesus Christ the perplexity goes, because He has no perplexity, and our only concern is to abide in Him. Lay it all out before Him and in the face of difficulty, bereavement and sorrow, hear Him say—“Let not your heart be troubled.”

August 26

“It is not in me.” (Job 28:14.)

IREMEMBER a summer in which I said, “It is the ocean I need,” and I went to the ocean; but it seemed to say “It is not in me!” The ocean did not do for me what I thought it would. Then I said, “The mountains will rest me,” and I went to the mountains, and when I awoke in the morning there stood the grand mountain that I had wanted so much to see; but it said, “It is not in me!” It did not satisfy. Ah! I needed the ocean of His love, and the high mountains of His truth within. It was wisdom that the “depths” said they did not contain, and that could not be compared with jewels or gold or precious stones. Christ is wisdom and our deepest need. Our restlessness within can only be met by the revelation of His eternal friendship and love for us.—Margaret Bottome.

“My heart is there!

Where, on eternal hills, my loved one dwells
Among the lilies and asphodels;
Clad in the brightness of the Great White Throne,
Glad in the smile of Him who sits thereon,
The glory gilding all His wealth of hair
And making His immortal face more fair—
THERE IS MY TREASURE and my heart is there.

“My heart is there!

With Him who made all earthly life so sweet,
So fit to live, and yet to die so meet;
So mild, so grand, so gentle and so brave,
So ready to forgive, so strong to save.
His fair, pure Spirit makes the Heavens more fair,
And thither rises all my longing prayer—
THERE IS MY TREASURE and my heart is there.”
—Favorite poem of the late Chas. E. Cowman.
You cannot detain the eagle in the forest. You may gather around him a chorus of the choicest birds; you may give him a perch on the goodliest pine; you may charge winged messengers to bring him choicest dainties; but he will spurn them all. Spreading his lofty wings, and with his eye on the Alpine cliff, he will soar away to his own ancestral halls amid the munition of rocks and the wild music of tempest and waterfall.
The soul of man, in its eagle soarings, will rest with nothing short of the Rock of Ages. Its ancestral halls are the halls of Heaven. Its munitions of rocks are the attributes of God. The sweep of its majestic flight is Eternity! “Lord, THOU hast been our dwelling place in all generations.”—Macduff.

“My Home is God Himself”; Christ brought me there.
I laid me down within His mighty arms;
He took me up, and safe from all alarms
He bore me “where no foot but His hath trod,”
Within the holiest at Home with God,
And bade me dwell in Him, rejoicing there.
O Holy Place! O Home divinely fair!
And we, God’s little ones, abiding there.

“My Home is God Himself”; it was not so!
A long, long road I traveled night and day,
And sought to find within myself some way,
Aught I could do, or feel to bring me near;
Self effort failed, and I was filled with fear,
And then I found Christ was the only way,
That I must come to Him and in Him stay,
And God had told me so.

And now “my Home is God,” and sheltered there,
God meets the trials of my earthly life,
God compasses me round from storm and strife,
God takes the burden of my daily care.
O Wondrous Place! O Home divinely fair!
And I, God’s little one, safe hidden there.
Lord, as I dwell in Thee and Thou in me,
So make me dead to everything but Thee;
That as I rest within my Home most fair,
My soul may evermore and only see
My God in everything and everywhere;
My Home is God.

—Author Unknown.

26 AUGUST

Bound to obey

‘Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long on the earth.’ Ephesians 6:1–3
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Proverbs 4:1–27

The duty and obligation of children is to obey and honour. This is a precept of the moral law, and the first, and indeed the only, command to which there is a special promise annexed. It partly is founded upon natural obligation. We came into the world in a helpless, pitiable state; and what would become of us in infancy when our wants are so many, when we occasion so much trouble, if God had not put a natural affection into our parents? Though a child is brought into the world with pain and danger to the mother, yet as soon as it is born she forgetteth her sorrow for joy that she is the mother of a living child. And an affection which is quite a new feeling takes place in the father also. And what care have parents while their offspring are in a state of childhood, and afterwards for their comfortable settlement in life. Thankful as they are if the Lord has quickened their own souls, they know not how to be satisfied unless their children are saved too. They tremble at the thought of seeing them hereafter at the left hand of the judgement seat. It shall be no trouble to them then, yet they know not how to think of it now. On these accounts children are surely bound to love and obey their parents.

FOR MEDITATION: It is more than sixty years since my mother died. I was then younger than you are now, but I can still remember that some people stroked my head and said, Poor child, he does not know what he has lost! Indeed I could not know the value of a good mama at that time, but I felt the want of her afterwards. For, Miss Jean, we are all such creatures, even when we are young, that we find it difficult to learn what is good; but that which is evil and wicked is so well suited to our inclinations, that we can learn it quickly, even without a teacher. Remember, my dear, in the first place, to love and honour your parents. If you do your utmost, you can never fully requite your obligations to them. You are bound to show your gratitude to them by your love, respect and obedience in all things.
John Newton to Jean Coffin (aged 10), 28 September 1792

SERMON SERIES: RELATIVE DUTIES, NO. 3 [1/5], EPHESIANS 6:1–3

August 25th

The fruitfulness of friendship

I have called you friends. John 15:15.

We never know the joy of self-sacrifice until we abandon in every particular. Self-surrender is the most difficult thing—‘I will if …!’ ‘Oh well, I suppose I must devote my life to God.’ There is none of the joy of self-sacrifice in that.
As soon as we do abandon, the Holy Ghost gives us an intimation of the joy of Jesus. The final aim of self-sacrifice is laying down our lives for our Friend. When the Holy Ghost comes in, the great desire is to lay down the life for Jesus; the thought of sacrifice never touches us because sacrifice is the love passion of the Holy Ghost.
Our Lord is our example in the life of self-sacrifice—“I delight to do Thy will, O My God.” He went on with His sacrifice with exuberant joy. Have I ever yielded in absolute submission to Jesus Christ? If Jesus Christ is not the lodestar, there is no benefit in the sacrifice; but when the sacrifice is made with the eyes on Him, slowly and surely the moulding influence begins to tell.
Beware of letting natural affinities hinder your walk in love. One of the most cruel ways of killing natural love is by disdain built on natural affinities. The affinity of the saint is the Lord Jesus. Love for God is not sentimental; to love as God loves is the most practical thing for the saint.
“I have called you friends.” It is a friendship based on the new life created in us, which has no affinity with our old life, but only with the life of God. It is unutterably humble, unsulliedly pure, and absolutely devoted to God.