Milo

June 29

“There we saw the giants.” (Num. 13:33.)

YES, they saw the giants, but Caleb and Joshua saw God! Those who doubt say, “We be not able to go up.” Those who believe say, “Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able.”
Giants stand for great difficulties; and giants are stalking everywhere. They are in our families, in our churches, in our social life, in our own hearts; and we must overcome them or they will eat us up, as these men of old said of the giants of Canaan.
The men of faith said, “They are bread for us; we will eat them up.” In other words, “We will be stronger by overcoming them than if there had been no giants to overcome.”
Now the fact is, unless we have the overcoming faith we shall be eaten up, consumed by the giants in our path. Let us have the spirit of faith that these men of faith had, and see God, and He will take care of the difficulties.—Selected.
It is when we are in the way of duty that we find giants. It was when Israel was going forward that the giants appeared. When they turned back into the wilderness they found none.
There is a prevalent idea that the power of God in a human life should lift us above all trials and conflicts. The fact is, the power of God always brings a conflict and a struggle. One would have thought that on his great missionary journey to Rome, Paul would have been carried by some mighty providence above the power of storms and tempests and enemies. But, on the contrary, it was one long, hard fight with persecuting Jews, with wild tempests, with venomous vipers and all the powers of earth and hell, and at last he was saved, as it seemed, by the narrowest margin, and had to swim ashore at Malta on a piece of wreckage and barely escape a watery grave.
Was that like a God of infinite power? Yes, just like Him. And so Paul tells us that when he took the Lord Jesus Christ as the life of his body, a severe conflict immediately came; indeed, a conflict that never ended, a pressure that was persistent, but out of which he always emerged victorious through the strength of Jesus Christ.
The language in which he describes this is most graphic. “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be manifested in our body.”
What a ceaseless, strenuous struggle! It is impossible to express in English the forcible language of the original. There are five pictures in succession. In the first, the idea is crowding enemies pressing in from every side, and yet not crushing him because the police of heaven cleared the way just wide enough for him to get through. The literal translation would be, “We are crowded on every side, but not crushed.”
The second picture is that of one whose way seems utterly closed and yet he has pressed through; there is light enough to show him the next step. The Revised Version translates it, “Perplexed but not unto despair.” Rotherham still more literally renders it, “Without a way, but not without a by-way.”
The third figure is that of an enemy in hot pursuit while the divine Defender still stands by, and he is not left alone. Again we adopt the fine rendering of Rotherham, “Pursued but not abandoned.”
The fourth figure is still more vivid and dramatic. The enemy has overtaken him, has struck him, has knocked him down. But it is not a fatal blow; he is able to rise again. It might be translated, “Overthrown but not overcome.”
Once more the figure advances, and now it seems to be even death itself, “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.” But he does not die, for “the life also of Jesus” now comes to his aid and he lives in the life of another until his life work is done.
The reason so many fail in this experience of divine healing is because they expect to have it all without a struggle, and when the conflict comes and the battle wages long, they become discouraged and surrender. God has nothing worth having that is easy. There are no cheap goods in the heavenly market. Our redemption cost all that God had to give, and everything worth having is expensive. Hard places are the very school of faith and character, and if we are to rise over mere human strength and prove the power of life divine in these mortal bodies, it must be through a process of conflict that may well be called the birth travail of a new life. It is the old figure of the bush that burned, but was not consumed, or of the Vision in the house of the Interpreter of the flame that would not expire, notwithstanding the fact that the demon ceaselessly poured water on it, because in the background stood an angel ever pouring oil and keeping the flame aglow.
No, dear suffering child of God, you cannot fail if only you dare to believe, to stand fast and refuse to be overcome.—Tract.

29 JUNE (PREACHED ON THANKSGIVING DAY, 29 JULY 1784)

Reverent joy: his greatness, our unworthiness

‘Rejoice with trembling.’ Psalm 2:11
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Psalm 2:1–12

This psalm is a prophecy of the establishment of the Redeemer’s kingdom in defiance of all the opposition raised against it. God had declared the decree and therefore the heathens and people, the Jews and Gentiles, kings and rulers, raged against it—as without just cause, so without effect. The Redeemer is seated in heaven and has his enemies in derision. Their resistance is to no purpose and, if persisted in, can only issue in their own ruin. They are therefore in mercy exhorted to submit and humble themselves before him. This, if they rightly know the nature of his kingdom, is their interest and would be their happiness. His subjects have good ground for joy—but a joy tempered with reverence. They may well rejoice, for he is able and engaged to bless those who put their trust in him. At the same time his greatness and their unworthiness, the dangers and snares they are exposed to, the evil within them and the enemies around them, are suited to inspire an awe and a jealousy. They are exhorted to rejoice, but with trembling. I think these words may be accommodated to enforce that temper of mind which becomes us all on the present occasion, when we professedly meet to offer our thanks to him who has the supreme government of all things, for putting an end to the late calamitous war. We have reason to rejoice and we have still reason to tremble.

FOR MEDITATION: Oh that our great men and statesmen rightly considered that the Lord reigneth—that they would seek wisdom from him to plan their enterprises and depend upon his blessing for their success. The finest spun schemes of men on earth may be compared to a spider’s web. One unforeseen contingence is sufficient to derange and sweep them away. Many proofs we have had in the course of this unhappy war that no human counsels or prospects can stand against the Lord. It is not Britannia, as our boasting song pretends, but the Lord who rules the waves, and them who sail upon them.169
John Newton to William Wilberforce, 30 March 1796

SERMON: PSALM 2:11 [1/3] [END OF AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE]

June 28th

Apprehended by God

If that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended. Phil. 3:12.

Never choose to be a worker; but when once God has put His call on you, woe be to you if you turn to the right hand or to the left. We are not here to work for God because we have chosen to do so, but because God has apprehended us. There is never any thought of—‘Oh well, I am not fitted for this.’ What you are to preach is determined by God, not by your own natural inclinations. Keep your soul steadfastly related to God, and remember that you are called not to bear testimony only, but to preach the gospel. Every Christian must testify, but when it comes to the call to preach, there must be the agonizing grip of God’s hand on you. Your life is in the grip of God for that one thing. How many of us are held like that?
Never water down the word of God; preach it in its undiluted sternness. There must be unflinching loyalty to the word of God; but when you come to personal dealing with your fellow men, remember who you are—not a special being made up in heaven, but a sinner saved by grace.
“I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do …”

June 28

“A door opened in heaven.” (Rev. 4:1.)

YOU must remember that John was in the Isle of Patmos, a lone, rocky, inhospitable prison, for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. And yet to him, under such circumstances, separated from all the loved ones of Ephesus; debarred from the worship of the Church; condemned to the companionship of uncongenial fellow-captives, were vouchsafed these visions. For him, also a door was opened.
We are reminded of Jacob, exiled from his father’s house, who laid himself down in a desert place to sleep, and in his dreams beheld a ladder which united Heaven with earth, and at the top stood God.
Not to these only, but to many more, doors have been opened into Heaven, when, so far as the world was concerned, it seemed as though their circumstances were altogether unlikely for such revelations.
To prisoners and captives; to constant sufferers, bound by iron chains of pain to sick couches; to lonely pilgrims and wanderers; to women detained from the Lord’s house by the demands of home, how often has the door been opened to Heaven.
But there are conditions. You must know what it is to be in the Spirit; you must be pure in heart and obedient in faith; you must be willing to count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ; then when God is all in all to us, when we live, move and have our being in His favor, to us also will the door be opened.
—Daily Devotional Commentary.

“God hath His mountains bleak and bare,
  Where He doth bid us rest awhile;
Crags where we breathe a purer air,
  Lone peaks that catch the day’s first smile.

“God hath His deserts broad and brown—
  A solitude—a sea of sand,
Where He doth let heaven’s curtain down,
  Unknit by His Almighty hand.”

28 JUNE (PREACHED 23 JUNE 1776)

Pray for a fresh anointing

‘Brethren, pray for us.’ 1 Thessalonians 5:25
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Galatians 5:16–26

I feel for the congregation’s heart-burnings and grudgings one towards another. Alas, when a little word inadvertently spoken shall be sufficient foundation for a quarrel. When there is a readiness to give offence, a readiness to take offence, a backwardness to reconciliation—these things throw two things in a minister’s way. He cannot but consider them as a sign that grace is low, and a means of keeping it so—that to such persons he is little useful at present and, unless the Lord interpose, he has but a poor hope of being more so. Some or other of these trials are always present to my mind and of late they have brought another troublesome thought upon me. I had not been a month in Olney before the Lord gave me such a regard for the people that it has ever since been the place of my choice. I have ever laboured to decline and avoid what the world calls advantageous offers and at this moment you are upon my heart to live and die with you, if the Lord please. But I am not my own master. And if the gospel should come to be greatly neglected and slighted and a form of godliness take place of that power which once was known here, will there not be some reason to fear lest the Lord should show his displeasure by removing it?
Brethren, pray for us. Pray for me and for yourselves—that the Lord may take away our iniquities, pour a fresh anointing upon minister and people, that I may be strengthened and owned in the work and you may know and prize and improve the privileges you enjoy.
FOR MEDITATION: [for New Year’s Evening 1775]
Preachers may, from Ezekiel’s case,
Like him, around I cast my eye,
Draw hope in this declining day,
And oh! what heaps of bones appear!
A proof like this, of sovereign grace
Like him, by JESUS sent, I’ll try,
Should chase our unbelief away.
For he can cause the dead to hear.

When sent to preach to mouldering bones,
Hear, ye dry bones, the Saviour’s word!
Who could have thought he would succeed?
He, who when dying, gasped, ‘Forgive’,
But well he knew, the LORD from stones
That gracious, sinner-loving LORD,
Could raise up Abram’s chosen seed.
Says, ‘Look to me, dry bones, and live.’

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