Milo

May 31st

God first

Put God First in Trust. Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, … for He knew what was in man. John 2:24–25 .

Our Lord trusted no man; yet He was never suspicious, never bitter, never in despair about any man because He put God first in trust; He trusted absolutely in what God’s grace could do for any man. If I put my trust in human beings first, I will end in despairing of everyone; I will become bitter, because I have insisted on man being what no man ever can be—absolutely right. Never trust anything but the grace of God in yourself or in anyone else.

Put God’s Needs First. Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God. Hebrews 10:9.
A man’s obedience is to what he sees to be a need; Our Lord’s obedience was to the will of His Father. The cry to-day is—‘We must get some work to do; the heathen are dying without God; we must go and tell them of Him.’ We have to see first of all that God’s needs in us personally are being met. “Tarry ye until.…” The purpose of this College is to get us rightly related to the needs of God. When God’s needs in us have been met, then He will open the way for us to realize His needs elsewhere.

Put God’s Trust First. And whoso receiveth one such little child in My name, receiveth Me. Matthew 18:5.
God’s trust is that He gives me Himself as a babe. God expects my personal life to be a ‘Bethlehem.’ Am I allowing my natural life to be slowly transfigured by the indwelling life of the Son of God? God’s ultimate purpose is that His Son might be manifested in my mortal flesh.

May 31

“Like a shock of corn fully ripe.” (Job 5:26)

A GENTLEMAN, writing about the breaking up of old ships, recently said that it is not the age alone which improves the quality of the fiber in the wood of an old vessel, but the straining and wrenching of the vessel by the sea, the chemical action of the bilge water, and of many kinds of cargoes.
Some planks and veneers made from an oak beam which had been part of a ship eighty years old were exhibited a few years ago at a fashionable furniture store on Broadway, New York, and attracted general notice for the exquisite coloring and beautiful grain.
Equally striking were some beams of mahogany taken from a bark which sailed the seas sixty years ago. The years and the traffic had contracted the pores and deepened the color, until it looked as superb in its chromatic intensity as an antique Chinese vase. It was made into a cabinet, and has today a place of honor in the drawing-room of a wealthy New York family.
So there is a vast difference between the quality of old people who have lived flabby, self-indulgent, useless lives, and the fiber of those who have sailed all seas and carried all cargoes as the servants of God and the helpers of their fellow men.
Not only the wrenching and straining of life, but also something of the sweetness of the cargoes carried get into the very pores and fiber of character.—Louis Albert Banks.
When the sun goes below the horizon he is not set; the heavens glow for a full hour after his departure. And when a great and good man sets, the sky of this world is luminous long after he is out of sight. Such a man cannot die out of this world. When he goes he leaves behind him much of himself. Being dead, he speaks.—Beecher.
When Victor Hugo was past eighty years of age he gave expression to his religious faith in these sublime sentences: “I feel in myself the future life. I am like a forest which has been more than once cut down. The new shoots are livelier than ever. I am rising toward the sky. The sunshine is on my head. The earth gives me its generous sap, but Heaven lights me with its unknown worlds.
“You say the soul is nothing but the resultant of the bodily powers. Why, then, is my soul more luminous when my bodily powers begin to fail? Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. I breathe at this hour the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets, and the roses as at twenty years. The nearer I approach the end the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple.”

31 MAY (PREACHED 25 AUGUST 1776)

Trivial escapes

‘Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.’ Exodus 20:7
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Colossians 3:1–17

What shall we say of the throng of profane swearers, who wound our ears and pollute our language by a horrid mixture of execrations and blasphemies in their common conversation? Their throats are an open sepulchre—their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness, the poison of asps is under their lips [Romans 3:13–14]. The Lord will not hold them guiltless. In vain their thoughtless plea, ‘they mean no harm’. In vain their presumptuous comparison of themselves with others—as though those were trivial escapes that did not affect the peace of society. If these were small sins singly, their frequency would make a vast amount. But is it a small sin, to rush against the bosses of God’s buckler [a small shield: Job 15:26], to despise so terrible a threatening as this! A habit of swearing is a sure sign not only of an unsanctified heart, but of a conscience hardened and, as it were, seared with a hot iron, callous and insensible [1 Timothy 4:2]. May the Lord awaken such.
Will any that live in a Christian land and have the Bible at hand plead ignorance of this in the great day? Surely no! Let your future lives be devoted to him who loved you.

FOR MEDITATION: I stood in need of an almighty Saviour, and such a one I found described in the New Testament. I heartily renounced my former profaneness.… I was quite freed from the habit of swearing, which seemed to have been deeply rooted in me as a second nature.
Narrative, 1764, Letter 9

‘With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be’ (James 3:9–10, NIV).
‘… revere this glorious and awesome name …’ (Deuteronomy 28:58, NIV).

SERMON: EXODUS 20:7 [2/3]

May 30th

“Yes—But …!”

Lord, I will follow Thee; but … Luke 9:61.

Supposing God tells you to do something which is an enormous test to your common sense, what are you going to do? Hang back? If you get into the habit of doing a thing in the physical domain, you will do it every time until you break the habit determinedly; and the same is true spiritually. Again and again you will get up to what Jesus Christ wants, and every time you will turn back when it comes to the point, until you abandon resolutely. ‘Yes, but—supposing I do obey God in this matter, what about …?’ ‘Yes, I will obey God if He will let me use my common sense, but don’t ask me to take a step in the dark.’ Jesus Christ demands of the man who trusts Him the same reckless sporting spirit that the natural man exhibits. If a man is going to do anything worth while, there are times when he has to risk everything on his leap, and in the spiritual domain Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold by common sense and leap into what He says, and immediately you do, you find that what He says fits on as solidly as common sense. At the bar of common sense Jesus Christ’s statements may seem mad; but bring them to the bar of faith, and you begin to find with awestruck spirit that they are the words of God. Trust entirely in God, and when He brings you to the venture, see that you take it. We act like pagans in a crisis, only one out of a crowd is daring enough to bank his faith in the character of God.

May 30

“And no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.” (Rev. 14:3)

THERE are songs which can only be learned in the valley. No art can teach them; no rules of voice can make them perfectly sung. Their music is in the heart. They are songs of memory, of personal experience. They bring out their burden from the shadow of the past; they mount on the wings of yesterday.
St. John says that even in Heaven there will be a song that can only be fully sung by the sons of earth—the strain of redemption. Doubtless it is a song of triumph, a hymn of victory to the Christ who made us free. But the sense of triumph must come from the memory of the chain.
No angel, no archangel can sing it so sweetly as I can. To sing it as I sing it, they must pass through my exile, and this they cannot do. None can learn it but the children of the Cross.
And so, my soul, thou art receiving a music lesson from thy Father. Thou art being educated for the choir invisible. There are parts of the symphony that none can take but thee.
There are chords too minor for the angels. There may be heights in the symphony which are beyond the scale—heights which angels alone can reach; but there are depths which belong to thee, and can only be touched by thee.
Thy Father is training thee for the part the angels cannot sing; and the school is sorrow. I have heard many say that He sends sorrow to prove thee; nay, He sends sorrow to educate thee, to train thee for the choir invisible.
In the night He is preparing thy song. In the valley He is tuning thy voice. In the cloud He is deepening thy chords. In the rain He is sweetening thy melody. In the cold He is moulding thy expression. In the transition from hope to fear He is perfecting thy lights.

Despise not thy school of sorrow, O my soul; it will give thee a unique part in the universal song.—George Matheson.

“Is the midnight closing round you?
  Are the shadows dark and long?
Ask Him to come close beside you,
  And He’ll give you a new, sweet song.
He’ll give it and sing it with you;
  And when weakness lets it down,
He’ll take up the broken cadence,
  And blend it with His own.

“And many a rapturous minstrel
  Among those sons of light,
Will say of His sweetest music
  ‘I learned it in the night.’
And many a rolling anthem,
  That fills the Father’s home,
Sobbed out its first rehearsal,
  In the shade of a darkened room.”