Milo

May 5th

Judgment on the abyss of love

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God. 1 Peter 4:17.

The Christian worker must never forget that salvation is God’s thought, not man’s; therefore it is an unfathomable abyss. Salvation is the great thought of God, not an experience. Experience is only a gateway by which salvation comes into our conscious life. Never preach the experience; preach the great thought of God behind. When we preach we are not proclaiming how man can be saved from hell and be made moral and pure; we are conveying good news about God.
In the teachings of Jesus Christ the element of judgment is always brought out, it is the sign of God’s love. Never sympathize with a soul who finds it difficult to get to God; God is not to blame. It is not for us to find out the reason why it is difficult, but so to present the truth of God that the Spirit of God will show what is wrong. The great sterling test in preaching is that it brings everyone to judgment. The Spirit of God locates each one to himself.
If Jesus ever gave us a command He could not enable us to fulfil, He would be a liar; and if we make our inability a barrier to obedience, it means we are telling God there is something He has not taken into account. Every element of self-reliance must be slain by the power of God. Complete weakness and dependence will always be the occasion for the Spirit of God to manifest His power.

May 5

“When they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushments … and they were smitten.” (2 Chron. 20:22)

OH, that we could reason less about our troubles, and sing and praise more! There are thousands of things that we wear as shackles which we might use as instruments with music in them, if we only knew how.
Those men that ponder, and meditate, and weigh the affairs of life, and study the mysterious developments of God’s providence, and wonder why they should be burdened and thwarted and hampered—how different and how much more joyful would be their lives, if, instead of forever indulging in self-revolving and inward thinking, they would take their experiences, day by day, and lift them up, and praise God for them.
We can sing our cares away easier than we can reason them away. Sing in the morning. The birds are the earliest to sing, and birds are more without care than anything else that I know of.
Sing at evening. Singing is the last thing that robins do. When they have done their daily work; when they have flown their last flight, and picked up their last morsel of food, then on a topmost twig, they sing one song of praise.
Oh, that we might sing morning and evening, and let song touch song all the way through.—Selected.

“Don’t let the song go out of your life
  Though it chance sometimes to flow
In a minor strain; it will blend again
  With the major tone you know.

“What though shadows rise to obscure life’s skies,
  And hide for a time the sun,
The sooner they’ll lift and reveal the rift,
  If you let the melody run.

“Don’t let the song go out of your life;
  Though the voice may have lost its trill,
Though the tremulous note may die in your throat,
  Let it sing in your spirit still.

“Don’t let the song go out of your life;
  Let it ring in the soul while here;
And when you go hence, ’twill follow you thence,
  And live on in another sphere.”

5 MAY

Black despair turned to hope

‘I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.’ Genesis 3:10
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Psalm 51:9–19

Observe that a sinner that feels the condemning power of the law would never expect or even ask for mercy, if the Lord did not first reveal that there is forgiveness with him. A true law work without any gospel light would shut the soul up in black despair.
Narrative, 10 March 1748:
… almost every passing wave breaking over my head.… Indeed I expected that every time the vessel descended in the sea, she would rise no more; and though I dreaded death now, and my heart foreboded the worst, if the Scriptures, which I had long since opposed, were indeed true; yet still I was but half-convinced, and remained for a space of time in a sullen frame, a mixture of despair and impatience. I thought if the Christian religion were true, I could not be forgiven; and was therefore expecting, and almost at times wishing, to know the worst of it.… Thus, as I have said, I waited with fear and impatience to receive my inevitable doom.

Therefore, we may be sure that those who venture upon general and unscriptural notions of mercy, never truly knew what the word sin means, considered as an offence against the majesty and holiness of God. When a soul has had such a conviction and yet, in the midst of many fears and faintings, continues waiting and hoping for salvation by Jesus, cannot seek it in any other, cannot give over seeking it in him, there is certainly a degree of faith.
Narrative, 10 March 1748:
I now began to think of that Jesus whom I had so often derided: I recollected the particulars of his life, and of his death—a death for sins not his own, but, as I remembered, for the sake of those who in their distress should put their trust in him.… He was pleased to show me at that time, the absolute necessity of some expedient to interpose between a righteous God and a sinful soul. Upon the gospel-scheme I saw at least a peradventure of hope, but on every other side I was surrounded with black unfathomable despair.

FOR MEDITATION: O bless him for Christ—that ever that precious name sounded in your ears.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 9 [3/3], GENESIS 3:8–13

May 4th

Vicarious intercession

Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. Hebrews 10:19.

Beware of imagining that intercession means bringing our personal sympathies into the presence of God and demanding that He does what we ask. Our approach to God is due entirely to the vicarious identification of our Lord with sin. We have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.”
Spiritual stubbornness is the most effectual hindrance to intercession, because it is based on sympathy with that in ourselves and in others that we do not think needs atoning for. We have the notion that there are certain right and virtuous things in us which do not need to be based on the Atonement, and just in the domain of ‘stodge’ that is produced by this idea we cannot intercede. We do not identify ourselves with God’s interests in others, we get petulant with God; we are always ready with our own ideas, and intercession becomes the glorification of our own natural sympathies. We have to realize that the identification of Jesus with sin means the radical alteration of all our sympathies. Vicarious intercession means that we deliberately substitute God’s interests in others for our natural sympathy with them.
Am I stubborn or substituted? Petted or perfect in my relationship to God? Sulky or spiritual? Determined to have my own way or determined to be identified with Him?

May 4

“He maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth and his hands make whole.” (Job 5:18)
The ministry of a great sorrow.

AS we pass beneath the hills which have been shaken by the earthquake and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect repose succeed those of destruction. The pools of calm water lie clear beneath their fallen rocks, the water lilies gleam, and the reeds whisper among the shadows; the village rises again over the forgotten graves, and its church tower, white through the storm twilight, proclaims a renewed appeal to His protection “in whose hand are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills is his also.”—Ruskin.

God ploughed one day with an earthquake,
  And drove His furrows deep!
The huddling plains upstarted,
  The hills were all aleap!

But that is the mountains’ secret,
  Age-hidden in their breast;
“God’s peace is everlasting,”
  Are the dream-words of their rest.

He made them the haunts of beauty,
  The home elect of His grace;
He spreadeth His mornings upon them,
  His sunsets light their face.

His winds bring messages to them—
  Wild storm-news from the main;
They sing it down the valleys
  In the love-song of the rain.

They are nurseries for young rivers,
  Nests for His flying cloud,
Homesteads for new-born races,
  Masterful, free, and proud.

The people of tired cities
  Come up to their shrines and pray;
God freshens again within them,
  As He passes by all day.

And lo, I have caught their secret!
  The beauty deeper than all!
This faith—that life’s hard moments,
  When the jarring sorrows befall,

Are but God ploughing His mountains;
  And those mountains yet shall be
The source of His grace and freshness,
  And His peace everlasting to me.

—William C. Gannett.