Milo

April 25

“And there was Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.” (Matt. 27:61)

HOW strangely stupid is grief. It neither learns nor knows nor wishes to learn or know. When the sorrowing sisters sat over against the door of God’s sepulchre, did they see the two thousand years that have passed triumphing away? Did they see anything but this: “Our Christ is gone!”

Your Christ and my Christ came from their loss; Myriad mourning hearts have had resurrection in the midst of their grief; and yet the sorrowing watchers looked at the seed-form of this result, and saw nothing. What they regarded as the end of life was the very preparation for coronation; for Christ was silent that He might live again in tenfold power.

They saw it not. They mourned, they wept, and went away, and came again, driven by their hearts to the sepulchre. Still it was a sepulchre, unprophetic, voiceless, lusterless.

So with us. Every man sits over against the sepulchre in his garden, in the first instance, and says, “This woe is irremediable. I see no benefit in it. I will take no comfort in it.” And yet, right in our deepest and worst mishaps, often, our Christ is lying, waiting for resurrection.

Where our death seems to be, there our Saviour is. Where the end of hope is, there is the brightest beginning of fruition. Where the darkness is thickest, there the bright beaming light that never is set is about to emerge. When the whole experience is consummated, then we find that a garden is not disfigured by a sepulchre. Our joys are made better if there be sorrow in the midst of them. And our sorrows are made bright by the joys that God has planted around about them. The flowers may not be pleasing to us, they may not be such as we are fond of plucking, but they are heart-flowers, love, hope, faith, joy, peace—these are flowers which are planted around about every grave that is sunk in the Christian heart.

“ ’Twas by a path of sorrows drear
  Christ entered into rest;
And shall I look for roses here,
  Or think that earth is blessed?
  Heaven’s whitest lilies blow
  From earth’s sharp crown of woe:
Who here his cross can meekly bear,
Shall wear the kingly purple there.”

25 APRIL (PREACHED 23 APRIL 1775)

‘Just so’ with God

‘Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow.’ 2 Samuel 23:5
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Philippians 3:1–11

Not so with God. David’s children were something in the sight of men: king’s sons and honourable. But alas, says he, what will this avail, unless they are precious in the Lord’s sight? We are all ‘just so’ and no otherwise than as we are with God. His judgement is right. Those whom he favours are happy in a cottage. All others are and will be miserable though they may be rich and honourable in the sight of the world. Examine, my dear friends, do you truly think so? Do you regard his loving kindness as better than life, and account all things but loss and dung in comparison with Christ? [Philippians 3:8]. If not, unless the Lord change your mind, how miserably will you be disappointed when the things you love must leave you and you be constrained to appear before God? Here is a rule for parents: do you wish your children well? Then remember to seek for them the kingdom of God and his righteousness in the first place. Endeavour to impress them with a sense of the importance of eternal things. Pray for their souls. If you neglect this and only put them in a way and set them an example of heaping up wealth, you are not their friends but their enemies.

FOR MEDITATION: And give unto Solomon my son a perfect heart. 1 Chronicles 29:19.

[When Newton was just a toddler, his mother’s pastor, David Jennings, challenged the parents in his church from the above prayer of David’s: ‘Did you ever pray this prayer for your children in good earnest? Lord give them a perfect heart. What pains have you taken to instruct and teach them the good ways of holiness?… O! be earnest and importunate with God, be daily intercessors with him for the souls of your dear children. Beg it of him, who is the God of grace, that he would give your children a perfect heart.’ Newton recalled his mother praying for him with tears.]

SERMON SERIES: 2 SAMUEL 23:5, NO. 1 [3/4]

April 24th

The warning against wantoning

Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you. Luke 10:20.

As Christian workers, worldliness is not our snare, sin is not our snare, but spiritual wantoning is, viz.: taking the pattern and print of the religious age we live in, making eyes at spiritual success. Never court anything other than the approval of God, go “without the camp, bearing His reproach.” Jesus told the disciples not to rejoice in successful service, and yet this seems to be the one thing in which most of us do rejoice. We have the commercial view—so many souls saved and sanctified, thank God, now it is all right. Our work begins where God’s grace has laid the foundation; we are not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace; our work as His disciples is to disciple lives until they are wholly yielded to God. One life wholly devoted to God is of more value to God than one hundred lives simply awakened by His Spirit. As workers for God we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and that will be God’s witness to us as workers. God brings us to a standard of life by His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that standard in others.
Unless the worker lives a life hidden with Christ in God, he is apt to become an irritating dictator instead of an indwelling disciple. Many of us are dictators, we dictate to people and to meetings. Jesus never dictates to us in that way. Whenever Our Lord talked about discipleship, He always prefaced it with an ‘IF,’ never with an emphatic assertion—‘You must.’ Discipleship carries an option with it.

April 24

“Faith is … the evidence of things not seen”
(Heb. 11:1.)

TRUE faith drops its letter in the post office box, and lets it go Distrust holds on to a corner of it, and wonders that the answer never comes. I have some letters in my desk that have been written for weeks, but there was some slight uncertainty about the address or the contents, so they are yet unmailed. They have not done either me or anybody else any good yet. They will never accomplish anything until I let them go out of my hands and trust them tothe postman and the mail.

This the way with true faith. It hands its case over to God, and then He works. That is a fine verse in the Thirty-seventh Psalm: “Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He worketh.” But He never worketh till we commit. Faith is a receiving or still better, a taking of God’s proffered gifts. We may believe, and come, and commit, and rest; but we will not fully realize all our blessing until we begin to receive and come into the attitude of abiding and taking.
—Days of Heaven upon Earth.

Dr. Payson, when a young man, wrote as follows, to an aged mother, burdened with intense anxiety on account of the condition of her son: “You give yourself too much trouble about him. After you have prayed for him, as you have done, and committed him to God, should you not cease to feel anxious respecting him? The command, ‘Be careful for nothing,’ is unlimited; and so is the expression, ‘Casting all your care on him.’ If we cast our burdens upon another, can they continue to press upon us? If we bring them away with us from the Throne of Grace, it is evident we do not leave them there. With respect to myself, I have made this one test of my prayers: if after committing anything to God, I can, like Hannah, come away and have my mind no more sad, my heart no more pained or anxious, I look upon it as one proof that I have prayed in faith; but, if I bring away my burden, I conclude that faith was not in exercise.”

24 APRIL (PREACHED 23 APRIL 1775)

Spiritual concern for our family

‘Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow.’ 2 Samuel 23:5
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1 John 3:1–14

My house. David was prosperous in many respects, but afflicted in his family. One son slain by another, and he that murdered his brother proved a rebel and traitor to his father. He had many children, but few that he could hope were the Lord’s children. His sorrow on this account found a place even in his last words. Observe hence: a good man longs for the spiritual welfare of his children and family. Indeed those who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, wish that all around them were partakers of the same mercy, but charity will, in this sense at least, begin at home. I think those of you who have dear relatives may try yourselves by this test. Do you travail, as it were, in birth for those who are dear to you? It is a good sign, and if your desires prompt you to the use of every probable and appointed means, and if a failing of success with them gives you a deep, perceptive concern, and excites your prayers to God for them yet more earnestly, be not discouraged, you may yet have the desire of your hearts. But remember, grace does not run in the blood. David had Amnon and Absalom. Manasseh, who was brought up under good Hezekiah, was wicked beyond all that were before him. Nothing but the power of God can change the heart. Therefore:
(i) Beware of trusting to outward privileges (Matthew 3:9).
(ii) Be not discouraged if you have not had them in early life. They could not have saved you of themselves, and if you seek the Lord Jesus he can save you without them.

FOR MEDITATION: A letter from Brother Harry yesterday.… May it be given me to pray earnestly for him. If his disappointments are sanctified to lead him to the one thing needful, they will be blessings, and the greatest success upon other terms would be a curse.
Diary, 9 September 1773

SERMON SERIES: 2 SAMUEL 23:5, NO. 1 [2/4]