Milo

29 AUGUST

Children of unbelieving parents

‘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: 2 Kings 5:1–14

Let me add a word on the case of children who fear the Lord and have the trial of parents who treat them harshly upon that account. You are to obey your parents in the Lord. When their will is inconsistent with the will of God, you stand excused. If they will reproach you for your profession you must pray for grace not to be frightened out of it. If they would persuade or force you with the practices of the world you must not comply. But even in these things you must remember that they are your parents, and endeavour to behave with all meekness and patience. Your disobedience, if they will call it such, must be confined to such points in which you are sure you have the express warrant of Scripture on your side. In all other respects you are still bound, and if you would not prejudice them against the truth, endeavour to let them see that the knowledge of the gospel has strengthened the ties of duty and made you more observant, obliging and respectful than you were before. We are all concerned in this subject. We all stand or have stood in this relation. May the Lord lead you to reflect how you have behaved in it.
FOR MEDITATION:
If to JESUS for relief
While I know his providence
My soul has fled by prayer;
Disposes each event;
Why should I give way to grief,
Shall I judge by feeble sense,
Or heart-consuming care?
And yield to discontent?
Are not all things in his hand?
If he worms and sparrows feed,
Has he not his promise past?
Clothe the grass in rich array;
Will he then regardless stand
Can he see a child in need,
And let me sink at last?
And turn his eye away?

SERMON SERIES: RELATIVE DUTIES, NO. 3 [4/5], EPHESIANS 6:1–3

August 28th

What’s the good of prayer?

Lord, teach us to pray. Luke 11:1.

It is not part of the life of a natural man to pray. We hear it said that a man will suffer in his life if he does not pray; I question it. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God in him, which is nourished, not by food, but by prayer. When a man is born from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve that life or nourish it. Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished. Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
“Ask and ye shall receive.” We grouse before God, we are apologetic or apathetic, but we ask very few things. Yet what a splendid audacity a childlike child has! Our Lord says—“Except ye become as little children.” Ask, and God will do. Give Jesus Christ a chance, give Him elbow room, and no man will ever do this unless he is at his wits’ end. When a man is at his wits’ end it is not a cowardly thing to pray, it is the only way he can get into touch with Reality. Be yourself before God and present your problems, the things you know you have come to your wits’ end over. As long as you are self-sufficient, you do not need to ask God for anything.
It is not so true that “prayer changes things” as that prayer changes me and I change things. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of Redemption alters the way in which a man looks at things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man’s disposition.

August 28

“There he proved them.” (Exod. 15:25.)

ISTOOD once in the test room of a great steel mill. All around me were little partitions and compartments. Steel had been tested to the limit, and marked with figures that showed its breaking point. Some pieces had been twisted until they broke, and the strength of torsion was marked on them. Some had been stretched to the breaking point and their tensile strength indicated. Some had been compressed to the crushing point, and also marked. The master of the steel mill knew just what these pieces of steel would stand under strain. He knew just what they would bear if placed in the great ship, building, or bridge. He knew this because his testing room revealed it.
It is often so with God’s children. God does not want us to be like vases of glass or porcelain. He would have us like these toughened pieces of steel, able to bear twisting and crushing to the uttermost without collapse.
He wants us to be, not hothouse plants, but storm-beaten oaks; not sand dunes driven with every gust of wind, but granite rocks withstanding the fiercest storms. To make us such He must needs bring us into His testing room of suffering. Many of us need no other argument than our own experiences to prove that suffering is indeed God’s testing room of faith.
—J. H. McC.
It is very easy for us to speak and theorize about faith, but God often casts us into crucibles to try our gold, and to separate it from the dross and alloy. Oh, happy are we if the hurricanes that ripple life’s unquiet sea have the effect of making Jesus more precious. Better the storm with Christ than smooth waters without Him.—Macduff.

What if God could not manage to ripen your life without suffering?

28 AUGUST

Honour your parents

‘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: Genesis 46:26–47:12

Reverence or honour. It might be hoped that a sense of obligation might make children love their parents, yet this is not always the case, and where there is not a total want of love, there is often a great want of respect. But what shall we say of those who despise their parents, can make a jest of their infirmities and, instead of submitting as they ought, to bear with their temperaments, fly as it were in their faces. I must say, as I said before—it is a sad sign, a presumptuous contempt of God, which, unless they are partakers of his mercy by faith in Christ, will expose them to his curse both here and hereafter. When parents are old and in the decline of life, it is the duty of their children to behave to them with the greatest tenderness and care—patiently to bear with their infirmities and, if necessary and so far as in their power, to provide for them. It is to be feared there is wickedness in many hearts secretly to wish their deaths, to look upon them as a burden, especially if on the one hand they have money to leave behind them, or on the other they contribute more or less to their maintenance. All sharp language and unkind behaviour to them at such a time is not only a breach of the command but barbarous, base and ungrateful. May nothing of this be found amongst us, especially amongst those who profess to fear God. I hope such will always … study how to make the little remainder of their parents’ lives as comfortable as may be. The pains and infirmities of old age are hard enough to bear, without this addition of unkindness from those who are most obliged to them.

FOR MEDITATION: I hope often to pray that this child and all your children may be taught of God, and that if he is pleased to prolong their lives, they may grow up like olive branches around your table, may be an honour and a comfort to their parents, and when their parents shall be removed to a better world, their children may fully supply their places as members of his true church, and instruments in his hand of much good and usefulness in civil life!
John Newton to William Wilberforce, 21 December 1802

[on the birth of Robert Isaac]

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

August 27th

Theology alive

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you. John 12:35.

Beware of not acting upon what you see in your moments on the mount with God. If you do not obey the light, it will turn into darkness. “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” The second you waive the question of sanctification or any other thing upon which God gave you light, you begin to get dry rot in your spiritual life. Continually bring the truth out into actuality; work it out in every domain, or the very light you have will prove a curse.
The most difficult person to deal with is the one who has the smug satisfaction of an experience to which he can refer back, but who is not working it out in practical life. If you say you are sanctified, show it. The experience must be so genuine that it is shown in the life. Beware of any belief that makes you self-indulgent; it came from the pit, no matter how beautiful it sounds.
Theology must work itself out in the most practical relationships. “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, …” said Our Lord, i.e., you must be more moral than the most moral being you know. You may know all about the doctrine of sanctification, but are you running it out into the practical issues of your life? Every bit of our life, physical, moral and spiritual, is to be judged by the standard of the Atonement.