Milo

July 20

“Seeing then that we have a great high priest … Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. Let us come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”
(Heb 4:14, 16.)

OUR great Helper in prayer is the Lord Jesus Christ, our Advocate with the Father, our Great High Priest, whose chief ministry for us these centuries has been intercession and prayer. He it is who takes our imperfect petitions from our hands, cleanses them from their defects, corrects their faults, and then claims their answer from His Father on His own account and through His all-atoning merits and righteousness.
Brother, are you fainting in prayer? Look up. Your blessed Advocate has already claimed your answer, and you would grieve and disappoint Him if you were to give up the conflict in the very moment when victory is on its way to meet you. He has gone in for you into the inner chamber, and already holds up your name upon the palms of His hands; and the messenger, which is to bring you your blessing, is now on his way, and the Spirit is only waiting your trust to whisper in your heart the echo of the answer from the throne, “It is done.”
—A. B. Simpson.
The Spirit has much to do with acceptable prayer, and His work in prayer is too much neglected. He enlightens the mind to see its wants, softens the heart to feel them, quickens our desires after suitable supplies, gives clear views of God’s power, wisdom, and grace to relieve us, and stirs up that confidence in His truth which excludes all wavering. Prayer is, therefore, a wonderful thing. In every acceptable prayer the whole Trinity is concerned.—J. Angell James.

20 JULY (PREACHED THURSDAY 20 JULY 1775)

Sending the Word to them, or them to the Word

‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.’ Acts 16:31
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Acts 16:11–40.

The context of this passage which we were just now reading affords us an instructive view of the Lord’s directing hand in disposing of his ministers and gospel according to his own good pleasure, and how he overrules the designs of his enemies to accomplish his own purposes in favour of his people. He knows them that are his, and when and where to find them. He knows how to send the Word to them or to send them to the Word, and one or the other he will do, when his time is come. Many who now believe and see what a dreadful case they must have been in if they had died in their sins, are often struck with wonder when they reflect on the first occasions that brought them to the knowledge. Some wonder that the gospel should be brought to them, rather than to the people of another town and parish, who were not more undeserving of it. Others wonder at the circumstances which first engaged them to hear it, for they can remember when they accounted it a burden and offence, and were ready to throw stones at any man that would trouble them with it. But it is his Word, he has promised that it shall not return void. He has a people in his eye, whom he designs to make willing in the day of his power [Psalm 110:3]—and all outward circumstances are ordered and disposed for their sakes.

FOR MEDITATION: O my Lord. What a series of wonders is my history! Wonders of mercy on thy part. Wonderful proofs of depravity on mine. Surely no one who reads this letter can surmise how far and how often I returned thee evil for good. I remember my faults and follies this day and fain would I praise thee for thy long-suffering and forbearance exercised for so many years towards a most undeserving creature!
Annotated Letters to a Wife, 4 August 1794

SERMON: ACTS 16:31 [1/4]

July 19th

Mastery over the believer

Ye call Me Master and Lord; and ye say well; for so I am. John 13:13.

Our Lord never insists on having authority; He never says—‘Thou shalt.’ He leaves us perfectly free—so free that we can spit in His face, as men did; so free that we can put Him to death, as men did; and He will never say a word. But when His life has been created in me by His Redemption, I instantly recognize His right to absolute authority over me. It is a moral domination—“Thou art worthy …” It is only the unworthy in me that refuses to bow down to the worthy. If when I meet a man who is more holy than myself, I do not recognize his worthiness and obey what comes through him, it is a revelation of the unworthy in me. God educates us by means of people who are little better than we are, not intellectually, but ‘holily,’ until we get under the domination of the Lord Himself, and then the whole attitude of the life is one of obedience to Him.
If Our Lord insisted upon obedience He would become a taskmaster, and He would cease to have any authority. He never insists on obedience, but when we do see Him we obey Him instantly. He is easily Lord, and we live in adoration of Him from morning till night. The revelation of my growth in grace is the way in which I look upon obedience. We have to rescue the word ‘obedience’ from the mire. Obedience is only possible between equals. It is the relationship between father and son, not between master and servant. “I and My Father are one.” “Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.” The Son’s obedience was as Redeemer, because He was Son, not in order to be Son.

July 19

“The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18:11.)

THIS was a greater thing to say and do than to calm the seas or raise the dead. Prophets and apostles could work wondrous miracles, but they could not always do and suffer the will of God. To do and suffer God’s will is still the highest form of faith, the most sublime Christian achievement. To have the bright aspirations of a young life forever blasted; to bear a daily burden never congenial and to see no relief; to be pinched by poverty when you only desire a competency for the good and comfort of loved ones; to be fettered by some incurable physical disability; to be stripped bare of loved ones until you stand alone to meet the shocks of life—to be able to say in such a school of discipline, “The cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it?”—this is faith at its highest and spiritual success at the crowning point. Great faith is exhibited not so much in ability to do as to suffer.—Dr. Charles Parkhurst.
To have a sympathizing God we must have a suffering Saviour, and there is no true fellow-feeling with another save in the heart of him who has been afflicted like him.
We cannot do good to others save at a cost to ourselves, and our afflictions are the price we pay for our ability to sympathize. He who would be a helper, must first be a sufferer. He who would be a saviour must somewhere and somehow have been upon a cross; and we cannot have the highest happiness of life in succoring others without tasting the cup which Jesus drank, and submitting to the baptism wherewith He was baptized.
The most comforting of David’s psalms were pressed out by suffering; and if Paul had not had his thorn in the flesh we had missed much of that tenderness which quivers in so many of his letters.
The present circumstance, which presses so hard against you (if surrendered to Christ), is the best shaped tool in the Father’s hand to chisel you for eternity. Trust Him, then. Do not push away the instrument lest you lose its work.”

“Strange and difficult indeed
  We may find it,
But the blessing that we need
  Is behind it.”

The school of suffering graduates rare scholars.

19 JULY

Something more

‘Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.’ Genesis 18:14
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Revelation 2:1–7

I know there are some evidently fed and strengthened; they grow in knowledge and in grace. And now and then when I am ready to faint, my heart is a little revived by hearing of a new enquirer. If I could be content with some liberty of speech and with the respect and kindness which my hearers in general show me, I might sit down quiet and be satisfied with my situation. But indeed this does not content me—I want something more. Though I am not opposed and persecuted, yet my heart is often grieved. I see many who, though they hear me patiently, yet hear in vain. I see believers who once bid fair to be pillars in the church and lights in the world, evidently declining from bad to worse, and I am daily trembling lest things which at present are confined to the knowledge of a few should break forth and become public offence and scandal. If conscience suggests to any of you, ‘Now he means me’, I am content you should think I do, though what I am speaking concerns more than one or two or three. My heart bears me witness that the Lord enables me to be in some measure fruitful to you, at least in public. Yet alas, I come short; I ought to follow you to your houses, to stop you in the streets, to break in upon you in those places and at those seasons when you would least choose to see me, and to entreat you with the affection of Christ Jesus [Philippians 1:8, NIV] to consider what you are doing—to ask you, Where is that blessedness you once spoke of? There is something in my temper that makes this an hard, an almost impossible, service. When I would speak, my mouth is stopped. But is anything too hard for the LORD?

FOR MEDITATION: And this word is for the comfort of believers under outward troubles. The promises respect the life that now is, but providences often seem to cross them. Remember Israel, they were hungry and thirsty, and saw nothing but rocks and deserts—but the Lord brought water from the rocks and gave them food out of the clouds. His arm is not shortened. He is still the same.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 37 [4/4], GENESIS 18:14