Milo

July 25

“What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” (John 13:7.)

WE have only a partial view here of God’s dealings, His half-completed, half-developed plan; but all will stand out in fair and graceful proportions in the great finished Temple of Eternity! Go, in the reign of Israel’s greatest king, to the heights of Lebanon. See that noble cedar, the pride of its compeers, an old wrestler with northern blasts! Summer loves to smile upon it, night spangles its feathery foliage with dewdrops, the birds nestle on its branches, the weary pilgrim or wandering shepherd reposes under its shadows from the midday heat or from the furious storm; but all at once it is marked out to fall; The aged denizen of the forest is doomed to succumb to the woodman’s stroke!
As we see the axe making its first gash on its gnarled trunk, then the noble limbs stripped of their branches, and at last the “Tree of God,” as was its distinctive epithet, coming with a crash to the ground, we exclaim against the wanton destruction, the demolition of this proud pillar in the temple of nature. We are tempted to cry with the prophet, as if inviting the sympathy of every lowlier stem—invoking inanimate things to resent the affront—“Howl, fir tree; for the cedar has fallen!”
But wait a little. Follow that gigantic trunk as the workmen of Hiram launch it down the mountain side; thence conveyed in rafts along the blue waters of the Mediterranean; and last of all, behold it set a glorious polished beam in the Temple of God. As you see its destination, placed in the very Holy of Holies, in the diadem of the Great King—say, can you grudge that “the crown of Lebanon” was despoiled, in order that this jewel might have so noble a setting?
That cedar stood as a stately prop in Nature’s sanctuary, but “the glory of the latter house was greater than the glory of the former!”
How many of our souls are like these cedars of old! God’s axes of trial have stripped and bared them. We see no reason for dealings so dark and mysterious, but He has a noble end and object in view; to set them as everlasting pillars and rafters in His Heavenly Zion; to make them a “crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of our God.”—Macduff.

“I do not ask my cross to understand,
  My way to see—
Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand,
  And follow Thee.”

25 JULY

Perseverance

‘And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.’ Genesis 5:24
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Jude 12–25

The beginning of Enoch’s walking with God seems to be marked out (verse 22) from the time when he begat Methuselah, when he was about sixty-five years old. But whether it is so or not, we are sure there always must be a beginning, for as we are born in sin and under the law, we have neither skill nor power to walk with God. He is found of them that seek him not. He walked with God 300 years. So as long as he remained in the world, he persevered in this good way. He was not weary but endured to the end. Of too many it may be said that, according to outward appearance and in the judgement of men, they walked with God—some a month, some a year, some several years—but sooner or later they gave it up, and have outlived their profession. This is mournful. May the Lord revive, restore, recall all such wanderers, or their end will be dreadful. Enoch maintained his course of walking with God in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. This I think may be gathered from the fallen state of mankind and from Jude 14–15. Enoch was a prophet and, like other prophets, surrounded by those who hated him because he testified of their evil deeds. The natural course of Enoch’s abode upon earth was manifestly shortened. He lived upon the earth not half the time the rest of the patriarchs did before the flood. So the best of men are frequently cut short.

FOR MEDITATION: Enoch’s removal was:
(i) a mercy to himself. His eyes and ears and heart had been pained long enough—the world was growing worse and worse and he was taken from the evil to come.
(ii) in judgement to others. They had abused and resisted his testimony, therefore they shall hear no more. It is a dark sign upon a place or people when the Lord takes away his servants and ministers from them. But he often deals so when his Word is accounted a burden.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 13 [2/3], GENESIS 5:24

July 24th

Disposition and deeds

Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:20.

The characteristic of a disciple is not that he does good things, but that he is good in motive because he has been made good by the supernatural grace of God. The only thing that exceeds right doing is right being. Jesus Christ came to put into any man who would let Him a new heredity which would exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus says—‘If you are My disciple you must be right not only in your living, but in your motives, in your dreams, in the recesses of your mind.’ You must be so pure in your motives that God Almighty can see nothing to censure. Who can stand in the Eternal Light of God and have nothing for God to censure? Only the Son of God, and Jesus Christ claims that by His Redemption He can put into any man His own disposition, and make him as unsullied and as simple as a child. The purity which God demands is impossible unless I can be re-made within, and this is what Jesus has undertaken to do by His Redemption.
No man can make himself pure by obeying laws. Jesus Christ does not give us rules and regulations; His teachings are truths that can only be interpreted by the disposition He puts in. The great marvel of Jesus Christ’s salvation is that He alters heredity. He does not alter human nature; He alters its mainspring.

July 24

“Then believed they his words; they sang his praise. They soon forgot his works; they waited not for his counsel; but lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert. And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.” (Ps 106:12–15.)

WE read of Moses, that “he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.” Exactly the opposite was true of the children of Israel in this record. They endured only when the circumstances were favorable; they were largely governed by the things that appealed to their senses, in place of resting in the invisible and eternal God.
In the present day there are those who live intermittent Christian lives because they have become occupied with the outward, and center in circumstances, in place of centering in God. God wants us more and more to see Him in everything, and to call nothing small if it bears us His message.
Here we read of the children of Israel, “Then they believed his words.” They did not believe till after they saw—when they saw Him work, then they believed. They really doubted God when they came to the Red Sea; but when God opened the way and led them across and they saw Pharaoh and his host drowned—“then they believed.”
They led an up and down life because of this kind of faith; it was a faith that depended upon circumstances. This is not the kind of faith God wants us to have.
The world says “seeing is believing,” but God wants us to believe in order to see. The Psalmist said, “I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”
Do you believe God only when the circumstances are favorable, or do you believe no matter what the circumstances may be?—C.H.P.
Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.—St. Augustine.

24 JULY

Walking with God

‘And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.’ Genesis 5:24
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Genesis 5:18–24

To walk with God imports:
(i) acceptance by faith (Hebrews 11:6). This is through Christ the Saviour, to whom believers of old looked as he who was to come. The dispensation under which they lived was different, but their faith and its object the same.
(ii) obedience—a devotedness to God in the way of his commandments, for how can two walk together except they are agreed? [Amos 3:3]. Therefore none can walk with God who have not experienced a change of heart and views.
(iii) communion—in which the sweetness and comfort of religion consists. The desires, affections and secret prayers of the soul rising towards God, and God manifesting his light, love and peace to the soul. This is chiefly maintained on our parts by a humble attendance on the means of grace. They who thus walk with God experience his direction, protection and support. Examine what you know of this subject.

FOR MEDITATION: [written for 23 July 1775]
With him sweet converse I maintain,
Great as he is I dare be free;
I tell him all my grief and pain,
And he reveals his love to me.
Some cordial from his Word he brings,
Whene’er my feeble spirit faints;
At once my soul revives and sings,
And yields no more to sad complaints.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 13 [1/3], GENESIS 5:24