Milo

August 22nd

“I indeed … but He”

I indeed baptize you with water … but He … shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire. Matthew 3:11.

Have I ever come to a place in my experience where I can say—“I indeed … but He”? Until that moment does come, I will never know what the baptism of the Holy Ghost means. “I indeed” am at an end, I cannot do a thing: “but He” begins just there—He does the things no one else can ever do. Am I prepared for His coming? Jesus cannot come as long as there is anything in the way either of goodness or badness. When He comes am I prepared for Him to drag into the light every wrong thing I have done? It is just there that He comes. Wherever I know I am unclean, He will put His feet; wherever I think I am clean, He will withdraw them. Repentance does not bring a sense of sin, but a sense of unutterable unworthiness. When I repent, I realize that I am utterly helpless; I know all through me that I am not worthy even to bear His shoes. Have I repented like that? Or is there a lingering suggestion of standing up for myself? The reason God cannot come into my life is because I am not through into repentance.
“He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire.” John does not speak of the baptism of the Holy Ghost as an experience, but as a work performed by Jesus Christ, “He shall baptize you.” The only conscious experience those who are baptized with the Holy Ghost ever have is a sense of absolute unworthiness.
“I indeed” was this and that;”but He” came, and a marvellous thing happened. Get to the margin where He does everything.

August 22

“And the rest, some on boards, some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land.” (Acts 27:44.)

THE marvelous story of Paul’s voyage to Rome, with its trials and triumphs, is a fine pattern of the lights and shades of the way of faith all through the story of human life. The remarkable feature of it is the hard and narrow places which we find intermingled with God’s most extraordinary interpositions and providences.
It is the common idea that the pathway of faith is strewn with flowers, and that when God interposes in the life of His people, He does it on a scale so grand that He lifts us quite out of the plane of difficulties. The actual fact, however, is that the real experience is quite contrary. The story of the Bible is one of alternate trial and triumph in the case of everyone of the cloud of witnesses from Abel down to the latest martyr.
Paul, more than anyone else, was an example of how much a child of God can suffer without being crushed or broken in spirit. On account of his testifying in Damascus, he was hunted down by persecutors and obliged to fly for his life, but we behold no heavenly chariot transporting the holy apostle amid thunderbolts of flame from the reach of his foes, but “through a window in a basket,” was he let down over the walls of Damascus and so escaped their hands. In an old clothes basket, like a bundle of laundry, or groceries, the servant of Jesus Christ was dropped from the window and ignominiously fled from the hate of his foes.
Again we find him left for months in the lonely dungeons; we find him telling of his watchings, his fastings, and his desertion by friends, of his brutal and shameful beatings, and here even after God has promised to deliver him, we see him for days left to toss upon a stormy sea, obliged to stand guard over the treacherous seaman, and at last when the deliverance comes, there is no heavenly galley sailing from the skies to take off the noble prisoner; there is no angel form walking along the waters and stilling the raging breakers; there is no supernatural sign of the transcendent miracle that is being wrought; but one is compelled to seize a spar, another a floating plank, another to climb on a fragment of the wreck, another to strike out and swim for his life.
Here is God’s pattern for our own lives. Here is a Gospel of help for people that have to live in this every day world with real and ordinary surroundings, and a thousand practical conditions which have to be met in a thoroughly practical way.
God’s promises and God’s providences do not lift us out of the plane of common sense and commonplace trial, but it is through these very things that faith is perfected, and that God loves to interweave the golden threads of His love along the warp and woof of our every day experience.—Hard Places in the Way of Faith.

22 AUGUST

Birds of prey

‘And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not. And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.’ Genesis 15:10–11
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 2 Peter 2:1–22

We note the birds came down—an emblem:
(i) of the attempts that would be made to frustrate the covenant—by men and by Satan. This is the vain thing that is always imagined from age to age [Psalm 2:1]. But as Abraham drove the birds away, so the Lord himself will protect his church and his people and keep them as the apple of his eye.
(ii) of the evil thoughts and imperfections that accompany our holy things. Alas, we cannot attempt a sacrifice to the Lord our God, but the birds of prey are ready to devour it. Of this the Apostle complains, When I would do good evil is present with me [Romans 7:21]. There are wandering thoughts, which insensibly catch our minds away till we forget almost where we are. And still worse, for there are wicked thoughts, such as would be wicked in any time or place, and are therefore doubly so when they mix with our sacrifices. The true believer, like Abraham, is grieved on this account and labours to drive them away. But formal worshippers regard them not. If they go through the outward duty they are satisfied.
(iii) May I not compare these birds to false believers? They would avail themselves of Christ’s sacrifice while they live and remain unclean, but they shall be driven away.

FOR MEDITATION: The Apostle was well acquainted with the Christian warfare, how fiercely the soul that loves Jesus is sure to be assaulted—he was well acquainted with the heart of man, how weak, deceitful and prone to wander. Yet, says he with a holy triumph, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? [Romans 8:35].… While Jesus is the foundation, root, head and husband of his people, while the Word of God is yea and amen, while the counsels of God are unchangeable, while we have a Mediator and High Priest appointed of God, while the Holy Spirit is willing and able to bear witness to the truth of the gospel, while God is wiser than men and stronger than the devil, so long, the believer in Jesus is, and shall be, safe.
Sermon on Romans 8:30, The Searcher of Hearts

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 32 [3/3], GENESIS 15:7–11

August 21st

The ministry of the unnoticed

Blessed are the poor in spirit. Matthew 5:3.

The New Testament notices things which from our standards do not seem to count. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” literally—Blessed are the paupers—an exceedingly commonplace thing! The preaching of to-day is apt to emphasize strength of will, beauty of character—the things that are easily noticed. The phrase we hear so often, ‘Decide for Christ,’ is an emphasis on something Our Lord never trusted. He never asks us to decide for Him, but to yield to Him, a very different thing. At the basis of Jesus Christ’s Kingdom is the unaffected loveliness of the commonplace. The thing I am blessed in is my poverty. If I know I have no strength of will, no nobility of disposition, then Jesus says—Blessed are you, because it is through this poverty that I enter His Kingdom. I cannot enter His Kingdom as a good man or woman, I can only enter it as a complete pauper.
The true character of the loveliness that tells for God is always unconscious. Conscious influence is priggish and un-Christian. If I say, ‘I wonder if I am of any use,’ I instantly lose the bloom of the touch of the Lord. “He that believeth in Me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water.” If I examine the outflow, I lose the touch of the Lord.
Which are the people who have influenced us most? Not the ones who thought they did, but those who had not the remotest notion that they were influencing us. In the Christian life the implicit is never conscious; if it is conscious, it ceases to have this unaffected loveliness which is the characteristic of the touch of Jesus. We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.

August 21

“He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me; because he delighted in me.” (Psa. 18:19.)

AND what is this “large place”? What can it be but God Himself, that infinite Being in whom all other beings and all other streams of life terminate? God is a large place indeed. And it was through humiliation, through abasement, through nothingness that David was brought into it.—Madame Guyon.

“I bare you on eagle’s wings, and brought you unto myself.” (Exod. 19:4.)

Fearing to launch on “full surrender’s” tide,
I asked the Lord where would its waters glide
My little bark, “To troubled seas I dread?”
“Unto Myself,” He said.

Weeping beside an open grave I stood,
In bitterness of soul I cried to God:
“Where leads this path of sorrow that I tread?”
“Unto Myself,” He said.

Striving for souls, I loved the work too well;
Then disappointments came; I could not tell
The reason, till He said, “I am thine all;
Unto Myself I call.”

Watching my heroes—those I loved the best—
I saw them fail; they could not stand the test,
Even by this the Lord, through tears not few,
Unto Himself me drew.

Unto Himself! No earthly tongue can tell
The bliss I find, since in His heart I dwell;
The things that charmed me once seem all as naught;
Unto Himself I’m brought.
—Selected.