Milo

May 16th

The habit of wealth

Partakers of the divine nature. 2 Peter 1:4.

We are made partakers of the Divine nature through the promises; then we have to ‘manipulate’ the Divine nature in our human nature by habits, and the first habit to form is the habit of realizing the provision God has made. ‘Oh, I can’t afford it,’ we say—one of the worst lies is tucked up in that phrase. It is ungovernably bad taste to talk about money in the natural domain, and so it is spiritually, and yet we talk as if our Heavenly Father had cut us off with a shilling! We think it a sign of real modesty to say at the end of a day—‘Oh, well, I have just got through, but it has been a severe tussle.’ And all the Almighty God is ours in the Lord Jesus! And He will tax the last grain of sand and the remotest star to bless us if we will obey Him. What does it matter if external circumstances are hard? Why should they not be! If we give way to self-pity and indulge in the luxury of misery, we banish God’s riches from our own lives and hinder others from entering into His provision. No sin is worse than the sin of self-pity, because it obliterates God and puts self-interest upon the throne. It opens our mouths to spit out murmurings and our lives become craving spiritual sponges, there is nothing lovely or generous about them.
When God is beginning to be satisfied with us, He will impoverish everything in the nature of fictitious wealth, until we learn that all our fresh springs are in Him. If the majesty and grace and power of God are not being manifested in us (not to our consciousness), God holds us responsible. “God is able to make all grace abound,” then learn to lavish the grace of God on others. Be stamped with God’s nature, and His blessing will come through you all the time.

May 16

“Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days.” (Dan. 10:12, 13)

WE have wonderful teaching here on prayer, and we are shown the direct hindrance from Satan.
Daniel had fasted and prayed twenty-one days, and had a very hard time in prayer. As far as we read the narrative, it was not because Daniel was not a good man, nor because his prayer was not right; but it was because of a special attack of Satan.
The Lord started a messenger to tell Daniel that his prayer was answered the moment Daniel began to pray; but an evil angel met the good angel and wrestled with him, hindering him. There was a conflict in the heavens; and Daniel seemed to go through an agony on earth the same as that which was going on in the heavens.
“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers … against wicked spirits in high places (Eph. 6:12, margin).
Satan delayed the answer three full weeks. Daniel nearly succumbed, and Satan would have been glad to kill him; but God will not suffer anything to come above that we “are able to bear.”
Many a Christian’s prayer is hindered by Satan; but you need not fear when your prayers and faith pile up; for after a while they will be like a flood, and will not only sweep the answer through, but will also bring some new accompanying blessing.—Sermon.
Hell does its worst with the saints. The rarest souls have been tested with high pressures and temperatures, but Heaven will not desert them.—W. L. Watkinson.

16 MAY

Fly to Jesus, the stronghold

‘And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.’ Genesis 8:11
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Genesis 7:24–8:12

Awful have been the effects of sin in every age and country. But never had death such a general triumph over sinners as in the days of Noah. When he and his family were safely shut up, in that very day, the sentence long before denounced was executed, and all mankind, having corrupted their ways before God, were swept away with a flood. What heart can conceive the horror and dismay when destruction presented itself in every quarter, and the ark, which before they had slighted, and which was the only possible way of escape, was shut against them. This is an emblem of a still severer day of vengeance when the wicked shall be destroyed, not by water, but by a deluge of wrath and fire. O think of it in time and fly to Jesus, the stronghold, as prisoners of hope [Zechariah 9:12].
FOR MEDITATION:
Saved by blood, I live to tell
Shame and wonder, joy and love,
What the love of CHRIST hath done;
All at once possessed my heart;
He redeemed my soul from hell,
Can I hope thy grace to prove,
Of a rebel made a son:
After acting such a part?
Oh, I tremble still, to think
‘Thou hast greatly sinned,’ he said,
How secure I lived in sin;
‘But I freely all forgive;
Sporting on destruction’s brink,
I myself thy debt have paid,
Yet preserved from falling in.
Now I bid thee rise and live.’

In his own appointed hour,
Come, my fellow-sinners, try,
To my heart the Saviour spoke,
JESUS’ heart is full of love;
Touched me by his Spirit’s power,
Oh that you, as well as I,
And my dangerous slumber broke.
May his wondrous mercy prove!
Then I saw and owned my guilt,
He has sent me to declare,
Soon my gracious LORD replied;
All is ready, all is free;
‘Fear not, I my blood have spilt,
Why should any soul despair,
’Twas for such as thee I died.’
When he saved a wretch like me?

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 18 [1/3], GENESIS 8:11

But two years before his conversion in 1837, a minor incident brought momentum to an inexorable process.

Ryle was out shooting with his old Eton friend, Algernon Coote, and some others. In the course of the day, he swore in the hearing of Coote’s father, a keen Christian, who rebuked him sharply. Ryle never swore again. This incident led to a lifelong friendship with Algernon Coote, of whom Ryle wrote: ‘he was the first person who ever told me to think, repent and pray.’ Although he did not become a Christian forthwith, he was very much aware that his own standard of life and that of the Christians he knew were in sharp contrast. Thus when the summer of 1837 came and with it Ryle’s conversion, the foundations had been laid. Just before he was due to take his final examinations, he became very ill with inflammation of the chest. The tutor’s report on his year’s work simply states ‘Aeger’ (‘sick’). But he was able to go through with the examinations, and for this he credits Bible reading and prayer. His illness gave him more time to think, and the more he thought the more he realised Jesus Christ was not at the center of his life.

Then one Sunday afternoon, he happened to go to a service in one of the parish churches. He remembered nothing particular about it, not even the sermon. But he did respond to the manner in which the second lesson was read -by someone whose name he never knew. The passage was from the second chapter of Ephesians and when the eighth verse was reached, the reader laid emphasis on it with a short pause between each clause. Thus Ryle heard: ‘By grace are ye saved – through faith – and that not of yourselves – it is the gift of God.’

The same truth which had so transformed Luther in his discovery of justification of faith now had like effect upon Ryle. By the grace of God, he had become a Christian. Henceforth, he would be doughtily upholding Reformation principles.

Over the centuries many scholars have tried to date the events in the Bible and thus establish the date of the Creation. James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh from 1625 to 1665, and a keen scholar, aimed to complete a history of the world from Creation to AD 70. In 1650 the result of his efforts was published in Latin: Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti. In 1658 the first English edition The Annals of the World was published. This is one of that first printing in English. Ussher dated creation to 23 October, 4004BC. This date has since been a guideline for scholars with a belief in the literal truth of the Bible to refine Ussher’s chronology and establish a date for a creation as described in the Bible.