Milo

23 MARCH (PREACHED 21 MARCH 1773)

Longsuffering and grace

‘Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.’ 1 Timothy 1:16
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Zephaniah 3:14–20

The whole power and authority is here ascribed to Jesus Christ. Though as Mediator he was the Father’s servant, he has life in himself and gives it to whom he pleases. It is he with whom we have to do. Too many in their views of attaining mercy, think little or nothing of Jesus Christ. But may we all take note that he is upon the throne and keeps the keys of life and death, of heaven and hell. If we enquire what is the will and pleasure of this great and only Potentate, we are told it is to show forth all longsuffering and grace. Having wrought our salvation by himself he bestows it freely. So his promises run: Whosoever will—him that cometh I will in no wise cast out. Because we are slow of heart to believe, he confirms his words by examples. You that think yourself not good enough to believe, or that your sins have shut you out from hope of mercy, think of Paul. Had you seen him when he was approaching Damascus, could you have thought him likely to be a vessel of mercy? Yet how suddenly changed, how freely accepted and pardoned. Lest we should think such cases peculiar to the first preaching of the gospel he still affords such instances. Permit me to speak of myself. I had cast off all fear of God and man, and being left to my own evil heart and the power of Satan, was seated in the chair of the scorner before I was twenty years of age. Not only slighted the gospel, but treated it as a fable—was hardened beyond the sense of conviction, and like Ahab sold myself to work wickedness. In this state of mind and practice, I was overtaken by that terrible storm, all hope of being saved quite gone, and I had not the least probability of surviving one quarter of an hour, but I obtained mercy, and it was not to me only but to some of you. The Lord thought of you then and preserved me alive that I might be a witness for him at Olney.

FOR MEDITATION: I could stand forth and propose myself instead of a thousand arguments … as a pattern of thy longsuffering to all that should repent and believe.
Miscellaneous Thoughts, Saturday 24 June 1758

SERMON: SERMON: 1 TIMOTHY 1:16 [3/4]

March 22nd

The burning heart

Did not our heart burn within us? Luke 24:32.

We need to learn this secret of the burning heart. Suddenly Jesus appears to us, the fires are kindled, we have wonderful visions; then we have to learn to keep the secret of the burning heart that will go through anything. It is the dull, bald, dreary, commonplace day, with commonplace duties and people, that kills the burning heart unless we have learned the secret of abiding in Jesus.
Much of our distress as Christians comes not because of sin, but because we are ignorant of the laws of our own nature. For instance, the only test as to whether we ought to allow an emotion to have its way is to see what the outcome of the emotion will be. Push it to its logical conclusion, and if the outcome is something God would condemn, allow it no more way. But if it is an emotion kindled by the Spirit of God and you do not let that emotion have its right issue in your life, it will react on a lower level. That is the way sentimentalists are made. The higher the emotion is, the deeper the degradation will be if it is not worked out on its proper level. If the Spirit of God has stirred you, make as many things inevitable as possible, let the consequences be what they will. We cannot stay on the mount of transfiguration, but we must obey the light we received there; we must act it out. When God gives a vision, transact business on that line, no matter what it costs.

‘We cannot kindle when we will
The fire which in the heart resides,
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides;
But tasks in hours or insight will’d
Can be through hours of gloom fulfill’d.’

March 21st

Interest or identification?

I have been crucified with Christ. Gal. 2:20.

The imperative need spiritually is to sign the death-warrant of the disposition of sin, to turn all emotional impressions and intellectual beliefs into a moral verdict against the disposition of sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself. Paul says—“I have been crucified with Christ”; he does not say, ‘I have determined to imitate Jesus Christ,’ or, ‘I will endeavour to follow Him,’ but, ‘I have been identified with Him in His death.’ When I come to such a moral decision and act upon it, then all that Christ wrought for me on the Cross is wrought in me. The free committal of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the chance to impart to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.
“… nevertheless I live …” The individuality remains, but the mainspring, the ruling disposition, is radically altered. The same human body remains, but the old satanic right to myself is destroyed.
“And the life which I now live in the flesh …,” not the life which I long to live and pray to live, but the life I now live in my mortal flesh, the life which men can see, “I live by the faith of the Son of God.” This faith is not Paul’s faith in Jesus Christ, but the faith that the Son of God has imparted to him—“the faith of the Son of God.” It is no longer faith in faith, but faith which has overleapt all conscious bounds, the identical faith of the Son of God.

March 22

“And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush … saying … I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt.” (Acts 7:30, 32, 34)

THAT was a long wait in preparation for a great mission. When God delays, He is not inactive. He is getting ready His instruments, He is ripening our powers; and at the appointed moment we shall arise equal to our task. Even Jesus of Nazareth was thirty years in privacy, growing in wisdom before He began His work.—Dr. Jowett.

God is never in a hurry but spends years with those He expects to greatly use. He never thinks the days of preparation too long or too dull.

The hardest ingredient in suffering is often time. A short, sharp pang is easily borne, but when a sorrow drags its weary way through long, monotonous years, and day after day returns with the same dull routine of hopeless agony, the heart loses its strength, and without the grace of God, is sure to sink into the very sullenness of despair. Joseph’s was a long trial, and God often has to burn His lessons into the depths of our being by the fires of protracted pain. “He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver,” but He knows how long, and like a true goldsmith He stops the fires the moment He sees His image in the glowing metal. We may not see now the outcome of the beautiful plan which God is hiding in the shadow of His hand; it yet may be long concealed; but faith may be sure that He is sitting on the throne, calmly waiting the hour when, with adoring rapture, we shall say, “All things have worked together for good.” Like Joseph, let us be more careful to learn all the lessons in the school of sorrow than we are anxious for the hour of deliverance. There is a “need-be” for every lesson, and when we are ready, our deliverance will surely come, and we shall find that we could not have stood in our place of higher service without the very things that were taught us in the ordeal. God is educating us for the future, for higher service and nobler blessings; and if we have the qualities that fit us for a throne, nothing can keep us from it when God’s time has come. Don’t steal tomorrow out of God’s hands. Give God time to speak to you and reveal His will. He is never too late; learn to wait.—Selected.

“He never comes too late; He knoweth what is best;
Vex not thyself in vain; until He cometh—REST.”

Do not run impetuously before the Lord; learn to wait His time: the minute-hand as well as the hour-hand must point the exact moment for action.

March 21

“According to your faith be it unto you.” (Matt. 9:29)

PRAYING through” might be defined as praying one’s way into full faith, emerging while yet praying into the assurance that one has been accepted and heard, so that one becomes actually aware of receiving, by firmest anticipation and in advance of the event, the thing for which he asks.
Let us remember that no earthly circumstances can hinder the fulfillment of His Word if we look steadfastly at the immutability of that Word and not at the uncertainty of this ever-changing world. God would have us believe His Word without other confirmation, and then He is ready to give us “according to our faith.”

When once His Word is past,
  When He hath said, ‘I will,’ (Heb. 13:5)
The thing shall come at last;
  God keeps His promise still.” (2 Cor. 1:20)

The prayer of the Pentecostal age was like a cheque to be paid in coin over the counter.—Sir R. Anderson.

“And God said … and it was so.” (Gen. 1:9)