Milo

27 JUNE (PREACHED 23 JUNE 1776)

Where is their zeal?

‘Brethren, pray for us.’ 1 Thessalonians 5:25
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Galatians 6:1–10

I feel for the declensions of many. I will lay no stress upon my own personal concern. It is trying to flesh and blood to see any who once professed a warm regard, look shy and cold, and when one loves and studies to show it, to be misapprehended and misrepresented. Blessed be the Lord, if I have something of this kind to complain of, the instances are not many. And were it not for the cause, the effect would sit light upon me. But how many do I know who have carried it unkindly to the Lord, if not to me. O where is their zeal, where is their first love, where is the value they once put upon ordinances, where is that gospel conversation they once aimed at? Once they loved to assemble with the Lord’s people, now they may be often seen with the drunkards. Brethren, pray for me. I fear lest the Lord should be displeased. Would it be believed if I should tell it in London, where I am going, that in such a place as they suppose Olney to be and where there are so many people and where the gospel has been so many years, it should sometimes be difficult to find one man present to set the psalm before sermon on a Thursday evening? I well remember when it was far otherwise.
FOR MEDITATION:
Thus saith the LORD to Ephesus,
‘Recall to mind the happy days
And thus he speaks to some of us;
When thou wast filled with joy and praise;
‘Amidst my churches, lo, I stand,
Repent, thy former works renew,
And hold the pastors in my hand.
Then I’ll restore thy comforts too.

‘Thy works, to me, are fully known,
‘Return at once, when I reprove,
Thy patience, and thy toil, I own;
Lest I thy candlestick remove;
Thy views of gospel truth are clear,
And thou, too late, thy loss lament;
Nor can’st thou other doctrine bear.
I warn before I strike, Repent.’

‘Yet I must blame while I approve,
Hearken to what the Spirit saith,
Where is thy first, thy fervent love?
To him that overcomes by faith;
Dost thou forget my love to thee,
‘The fruit of life’s unfading tree,
That thine is grown so faint to me?
In paradise his food shall be.’

SERMON: 1 THESSALONIANS 5:25 [5/6]

One got out for the 2nd time in a few months but thankfully his homing instinct has improved:)

June 26th

Always now

We … beseech you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain. 2 Cor. 6:1.

The grace you had yesterday will not do for to-day. Grace is the overflowing favour of God; you can always reckon it is there to draw upon. “In much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses”—that is where the test for patience comes. Are you failing the grace of God there? Are you saying—‘Oh, well, I won’t count this time?’ It is not a question of praying and asking God to help you; it is taking the grace of God now. We make prayer the preparation for work, it is never that in the Bible. Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God. Don’t say—‘I will endure this until I can get away and pray.’ Pray now; draw on the grace of God in the moment of need. Prayer is the most practical thing, it is not the reflex action of devotion. Prayer is the last thing in which we learn to draw on God’s grace.
“In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours,”—in all these things manifest a drawing upon the grace of God that will make you a marvel to yourself and to others. Draw now, not presently: The one word in the spiritual vocabulary is Now. Let circumstances bring you where they will, keep drawing on the grace of God in every conceivable condition you may be in. One of the greatest proofs that you are drawing on the grace of God is that you can be humiliated without manifesting the slightest trace of anything but His grace.
“Having nothing …” Never reserve anything. Pour out the best you have, and always be poor. Never be diplomatic and careful about the treasure God gives. This is poverty triumphant.

June 26

“For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?” (Rom. 3:3.)

I THINK that I can trace every scrap of sorrow in my life to simple unbelief. How could I be anything but quite happy if I believed always that all the past is forgiven, and all the present furnished with power, and all the future bright with hope because of the same abiding facts which do not change with my mood, do not stumble because I totter and stagger at the promise through unbelief, but stand firm and clear with their peaks of pearl cleaving the air of Eternity, and the bases of their hills rooted unfathomably in the Rock of God. Mont Blanc does not become a phantom or a mist because a climber grows dizzy on its side.—James Smetham.
Is it any wonder that, when we stagger at any promise of God through unbelief, we do not receive it? Not that faith merits an answer, or in any way earns it, or works it out; but God has made believing a condition of receiving, and the Giver has a sovereign right to choose His own terms of gift.
—Rev. Samuel Hart.
Unbelief says, “How can such and such things be?” It is full of “hows”; but faith has one great answer to the ten thousand “hows,” and that answer is—GOD!—C. H. M.
No praying man or woman accomplishes so much with so little expenditure of time as when he or she is praying.
If there should arise, it has been said—and the words are surely true to the thought of our Lord Jesus Christ in all His teaching on prayer—if there should arise ONE UTTERLY BELIEVING MAN, the history of the world might be changed.
Will YOU not be that one in the providence and guidance of God our Father?—A. E. McAdam.
Prayer without faith degenerates into objectless routine, or soulless hypocrisy. Prayer with faith brings Omnipotence to back our petitions. Better not pray unless and until your whole being responds to the efficacy of your supplication. When the true prayer is breathed, earth and heaven, the past and the future, say Amen. And Christ prayed such prayers.—P. C. M.
“Nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies outside the will of God.”

26 JUNE (PREACHED 23 JUNE 1776)

A Shepherd’s heart

‘Brethren, pray for us.’ 1 Thessalonians 5:25
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Isaiah 49:8–23

We are, we must be, sharply tried by the cases of our hearers.
With respect to the congregations at large, I must have a heart like a stone if I could look seriously round this congregation without being affected. To see so many who are stumbling in the broad day, still under the power of sin, after long enjoying such uncommon advantages as the Lord has been pleased to favour this town with. To see them from week to week, from year to year, still careless and hardening under the means of grace.… often I shrink at the thought lest I am unfaithful. I fear I am not faithful, earnest or importunate enough, though I seem not to know how to be more so. I am a debtor to all, I bear a love to every soul that hears me.
But there are among you a number who not only hear but profess the truth; to these I bear a more immediate relation. I am more acquainted with them, I feel more for them. I may say without boasting, the Lord has given me, at least in a little measure, the heart of a shepherd. I feel for the distresses of many. As I am much among the people, I know a good deal of their personal and their family troubles. My heart sinks at the trials of some here before me and of others whose afflictions detain them at home. Perhaps no one in the parish knows so much of these things as I do. And I could relate cases which would, I am persuaded, draw tears from many eyes. I know likewise something of the spiritual distresses of those whom I endeavour to comfort but cannot.

FOR MEDITATION: My time and thoughts much engrossed today by an affecting and critical dispensation at Orchard Side [William Cowper attempted suicide]. I was sent for in the morning early and returned astonished and grieved. Could hardly attend to anything else.
Diary, 2 January 1773

The first temptation the enemy assaulted him with was to offer up himself as Abraham his son. He verily thought he ought to do it. We were obliged to watch with him night and day. I, my dear wife and Mrs Unwin with whom he lived, left him not an hour for seven years.
John Newton’s Funeral Sermon for William Cowper, May 1800

SERMON: 1 THESSALONIANS 5:25 [4/6]