Milo

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.

April 26

“I even reckon all things as pure loss because of the priceless privilege of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”
(Phil. 3:8.) (Weymouth.)

SHINING is always costly. Light comes only at the cost of that which produces it. An unlit candle does no shining. Burning must come before shining. We cannot be of great use to others without cost to ourselves. Burning suggests suffering. We shrink from pain.

We are apt to feel that we are doing the greatest good in the world when we are strong, and able for active duty, and when the heart and hands are full of kindly service.

When we are called aside and can only suffer; when we are sick; when we are consumed with pain; when all our activities have been dropped, we feel that we are no longer of use, that we are not doing anything.

But, if we are patient and submissive, it is almost certain that we are a greater blessing to the world in our time of suffering and pain than we were in the days when we thought we were doing the most of our work. We are burning now, and shining because we are burning.—Evening Thoughts.

“The glory of tomorrow is rooted in the drudgery of today.”

Many want the glory without the cross, the shining without the burning, but crucifixion comes before coronation.

Have you heard the tale of the aloe plant,
Away in the sunny clime?
By humble growth of a hundred years
It reaches its blooming time;
And then a wondrous bud at its crown
Breaks into a thousand flowers;
This floral queen, in its blooming seen,
Is the pride of the tropical bowers,
But the plant to the flower is sacrifice,
For it blooms but once, and it dies.

Have you further heard of the aloe plant,
That grows in the sunny clime;
How every one of its thousand flowers,
As they drop in the blooming time,
Is an infant plant that fastens its roots
In the place where it falls on the ground,
And as fast as they drop from the dying stem,
Grow lively and lovely around?
By dying, it liveth a thousand-fold
In the young that spring from the death of the old.

Have you heard the tale of the pelican,
The Arabs’ Gimel el Bahr,
That lives in the African solitudes,
Where the birds that live lonely are?
Have you heard how it loves its tender young,
And cares and toils for their good,
It brings them water from mountain far,
And fishes the seas for their food.
In famine it feeds them—what love can devise!
The blood of its bosom—and, feeding chem, dies.

Have you heard this tale—the best of them all—
The tale of the Holy and True,
He dies, but His life, in untold souls
Lives on in the world anew;
His seed prevails, and is filling the earth,
As the stars fill the sky above.
He taught us to yield up the love of life,
For the sake of the life of love.
His death is our life, His loss is our gain;
The joy for the tear, the peace for the pain.
—Selected.

26 APRIL (PREACHED 23 APRIL 1775)

Yet …

‘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: Jeremiah 31:31–34

Yet he hath made. As every believer has an although, so likewise a yet to balance it. Many are the comforts provided for the children of God, but none like the consideration of this covenant. Observe the parts:
(i) a covenant: an engagement in which the great God condescends to bind himself to performance.
(ii) everlasting: from everlasting in its glorious contrivance, to everlasting in its blessed effects.
(iii) ordered: prepared, disposed. The Lord foresaw whatever would be wanted and has provided accordingly. A fullness of grace, a supply for every want, is treasured up in this blessed covenant, and in a way wonderfully suited for the encouragement and consolation of unworthy sinners.
(iv) sure: not suspended upon uncertain conditions, but established with and in Christ, confirmed by promises, by oath and by blood.
FOR MEDITATION:

Encouraged by thy word
Thy thoughts, thou only wise!
Of promise to the poor;
Our thoughts and ways transcend,
Behold, a beggar, LORD,
Far as the arched skies
Waits at thy mercy’s door!
Above the earth extend:
No hand, no heart, O LORD, but thine,
Such pleas as mine men would not bear,
Can help or pity wants like mine.
But God receives a beggar’s prayer.

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