Milo

28 APRIL

Guilty!

‘And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.’ Genesis 3:6
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 2 Timothy 2:15–3:9

The facts. Eve completed the transgression by actually eating the fruit, in a daring spirit, despising the threatening of the God who made her. She gave to her husband and he did eat. It should seem Adam was absent at first, but now sin had hardened her heart, she sought him out to make him partner in her iniquity. I suppose she used some arguments, because the Lord charges Adam not only with taking the fruit from her hand, but with hearkening to her voice. As she had eaten and was yet alive, she might, from that circumstance, tempt him to doubt and disbelieve the threatening as she had done before him. Observe:
(i) When Satan has prevailed upon any to sin, he will not suffer them to sin alone, but employs them as instruments to tempt others. Many of you know this but too well. It is a small thing for you to break God’s commands yourself, unless you can seduce others. When Adam came to consider what he had done, his answer to the Lord intimates that he wished he had never seen the face of Eve. O what a miserable greeting will those have in the other world who have helped to ruin each other in this. How will they revile and charge and curse each other!
(ii) The patience of God which ought to lead sinners to repentance, is a means of hardening them (Ecclesiastes 8:11). If Adam had found Eve struck dead upon the spot for eating the fruit, it would have terrified him from a compliance. But now her impunity made him bold.

FOR MEDITATION: I met with a young man who had formerly been a midshipman on board the Harwich.… I gave him a plain account of the manner and reason of my change, and used every argument to persuade him to relinquish his infidel schemes. He would remind me that I was the first person who had given him an idea of his liberty. He was exceedingly profane, and grew worse and worse. I saw in him a most lively picture of what I had once been. He died convinced but not changed. Narrative, 1764, Letter 13.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 8 [2/3], GENESIS 3:6–7

April 27th

What do you want?

Seekest thou great things for thyself? Jeremiah 45:5.

Are you seeking great things for yourself? Not seeking to be a great one, but seeking great things from God for yourself. God wants you in a closer relationship to Himself than receiving His gifts, He wants you to get to know Him. A great thing is accidental, it comes and goes. God never gives us anything accidental. Nothing is easier than getting into a right relationship with God except when it is not God Whom you want but only what He gives.
If you have only come the length of asking God for things, you have never come to the first strand of abandonment, you have become a Christian from a standpoint of your own. ‘I did ask God for the Holy Spirit, but He did not give me the rest and the peace I expected.’ Instantly God puts His finger on the reason—you are not seeking the Lord at all, you are seeking something for yourself. Jesus says—“Ask, and it shall be given you.” Ask God for what you want, and you cannot ask if you are not asking for a right thing. When you draw near to God, you cease from asking for things. “Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.” Then why ask? That you may get to know Him.
Are you seeking great things for yourself—‘O Lord, baptize me with the Holy Ghost’? If God does not, it is because you are not abandoned enough to Him, there is something you will not do. Are you prepared to ask yourself what it is you want from God, and why you want it? God always ignores the present perfection for the ultimate perfection. He is not concerned about making you blessed and happy just now; He is working out His ultimate perfection all the time—“that they may be one even as We are.”

April 27

“I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore.” (Rev. 1:18)

FLOWERS! Easter lilies! speak to me this morning the same dear old lesson of immortality which you have been speaking to so many sorrowing souls.

Wise old Book! let me read again in your pages of firm assurance that to die is gain.

Poets! recite to me your verses which repeat in every line the Gospel of eternal life.

Singers! break forth once more into songs of joy; let me hear again the well-known resurrection psalms.

Tree and blossom and bird and sea and sky and wind whisper it, sound it afresh, warble it, echo it, let it throb and pulsate through every atom and particle; let the air be filled with it.

Let it be told and retold and still retold until hope rises to conviction, and conviction to certitude of knowledge; until we, like Paul, even though going to our death, go with triumphant mien, with assured faith, and with serene and shining face.

O sad-faced mourners, who each day are wending
Through churchyard paths of cypress and of yew,
Leave for today the low graves you are tending,
And lift your eyes to God’s eternal blue!

It is no time for bitterness or sadness;
Twine Easter lilies, not pale asphodels;
Let your souls thrill to the caress of gladness,
And answer the sweet chime of Easter bells.

If Christ were still within the grave’s low prison,
A captive of the enemy we dread;
If from that moldering cell He had not risen,
Who then could chide the gloomy tears you shed?

If Christ were dead there would be need to sorrow,
But He has risen and vanquished death for aye;
Hush, then your sighs, if only till the morrow,
At Easter give your grief a holiday.
—May Riley Smith.
A well-known minister was in his study writing an Easter sermon when the thought gripped him that his Lord was living. He jumped up excitedly and paced the floor repeating to himself, “Why Christ is alive, His ashes are warm, He is not the great ‘I was,’ He is the great ‘I am.’ ” He is not only a fact, but a living fact. Glorious truth of Easter Day!
We believe that out of every grave there blooms an Easter lily, and in every tomb there sits an angel. We believe in a risen Lord. Turn not your faces to the past that we may worship only at His grave, but above and within that we may worship the Christ that lives. And because He lives, we shall live also.—Abbott.

27 APRIL

A hardened heart

‘And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.’ Genesis 3:6
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1 John 2:3–17

So true is that word in James 1:15: Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. The serpent had so entirely perverted the woman’s judgement and hardened her heart that nothing now appeared so desirable as what God had expressly forbid. We have her motives. In the view we had of this fruit, we may see the leading principles by which sin has always deceived, which the Apostle enumerates as the chief branches of the spirit of this world (1 John 2:16).
(i) It was pleasant to the eye. Great reason we have to make David’s prayer (Psalm 119:17) and with Job to make a covenant with our eyes [Job 31:1], for they are the inlet of many temptations. In many countries there are still pleasant trees that bear poisonous fruit. Had not the eye of her mind been blinded, she had not made this judgement.
(ii) And good for food. If she had been starving, this might have seemed the more plausible, but she had abundance and variety of what was really good and liberty to use it. Because it looked pleasant she thought it good, for she had not tried; the serpent told her so, or perhaps she saw him eat it.
(iii) Desirable to make one wise. Besides the gratification of her sensual appetites, she was drawn away by the pride of her heart and this perhaps was the chief snare. The fruit of other trees was probably as pleasant, and she knew was good for food, but none but this flattered her ambition to be raised higher in rank and knowledge.

FOR MEDITATION: Observe: when the heart is resolved upon sin, every pretence and presumption becomes a strong argument for compliance. When Satan has gained the will and made us careless of God’s command and authority, his work is done. The grossest temptations will then be welcome. How else could sinners think there was something good and desirable in drunkenness, uncleanness, blasphemy and other vile abominations which he urges them to do?

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 8 [1/3], GENESIS 3:6–7

April 26th

The supreme climb

Take now thy son, … and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. Genesis 22:2.

Character determines how a man interprets God’s will (cf. Psalm 18:25–26 ). Abraham interpreted God’s command to mean that he had to kill his son, and he could only leave this tradition behind by the pain of a tremendous ordeal. God could purify his faith in no other way. If we obey what God says according to our sincere belief, God will break us from those traditions that misrepresent Him. There are many such beliefs to be got rid of, e.g., that God removes a child because the mother loves him too much—a devil’s lie! and a travesty of the true nature of God. If the devil can hinder us from taking the supreme climb and getting rid of wrong traditions about God, he will do so; but if we keep true to God, God will take us through an ordeal which will bring us out into a better knowledge of Himself.
The great point of Abraham’s faith in God was that he was prepared to do anything for God. He was there to obey God, no matter to what belief he went contrary. Abraham was not a devotee of his convictions, or he would have slain Isaac and said that the voice of the angel was the voice of the devil. That is the attitude of a fanatic. If you will remain true to God, God will lead you straight through every barrier into the inner chamber of the knowledge of Himself; but there is always this point of giving up convictions and traditional beliefs. Don’t ask God to test you. Never declare as Peter did—‘I will do anything, I will go to death with Thee.’ Abraham did not make any such declaration, he remained true to God, and God purified his faith.