Milo

April 4th

Those borders of distrust

Behold, the hour cometh, … that ye shall be scattered. John 16:32.

Jesus is not rebuking the disciples, their faith was real, but it was disturbed; it was not at work in actual things. The disciples were scattered to their own interests, alive to interests that never were in Jesus Christ. After we have been perfectly related to God in sanctification, our faith has to be worked out in actualities. We shall be scattered, not into work, but into inner desolations and made to know what internal death to God’s blessings means. Are we prepared for this? It is not that we choose it, but that God engineers our circumstances so that we are brought there. Until we have been through that experience, our faith is bolstered up by feelings and by blessings. When once we get there, no matter where God places us or what the inner desolations are, we can praise God that all is well. That is faith being worked out in actualities.
“… and shall leave Me alone.” Have we left Jesus alone by the scattering of His providence? Because we do not see God in our circumstances? Darkness comes by the sovereignty of God. Are we prepared to let God do as He likes with us—prepared to be separated from conscious blessings? Until Jesus Christ is Lord, we all have ends of our own to serve; our faith is real, but it is not permanent yet. God is never in a hurry; if we wait, we shall see that God is pointing out that we have not been interested in Himself, but only in His blessings. The sense of God’s blessing is elemental.
“Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” Spiritual grit is what we need.

April 4

“Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see.” (2 Kings 6:17)

THIS is the prayer we need to pray for ourselves and for one another, “Lord, open our eyes that we may see”; for the world all around us, as well as around the prophet, is full of God’s horses and chariots, waiting to carry us to places of glorious victory. And when our eyes are thus opened, we shall see in all events of life, whether great or small, whether joyful or sad, a “chariot” for our souls.
Everything that comes to us becomes a chariot the moment we treat it as such; and, on the other hand, even the smallest trial may be a Juggernaut car to crush us into misery or despair if we consider it.
It lies with each of us to choose which they shall be. It all depends, not upon what these events are, but upon how we take them. If we lie down under them, and let them roll over us and crush us, they become Juggernaut cars, but if we climb up into them, as into a car of victory, and make them carry us triumphantly onward and upward, they become the chariots of God.—Hannah Whitall Smith.
The Lord cannot do much with a crushed soul, hence the adversary’s attempt to push the Lord’s people into despair and hopelessness over the condition of themselves, or of the church. It has often been said that a dispirited army goes forth to battle with the certainty of being beaten. We heard a missionary say recently that she had been invalided home purely because her spirit had fainted, with the consequence that her body sunk also. We need to understand more of these attacks of the enemy upon our spirits and how to resist them. If the enemy can dislodge us from our position, then he seeks to “wear us out” (Daniel 7:25) by a prolonged siege, so that at last we, out of sheer weakness, let go the cry of victory.

4 APRIL (PREACHED EASTER EVENING, 4 APRIL 1779)

Don’t be deceived

‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ Galatians 6:7
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Obadiah 1–17

There is a lamentable proneness in mankind to deceive themselves in matters of the highest importance. Indeed in worldly affairs they are quite unwilling to be imposed upon. If they have a purchase to make, how cautious are they lest there should be a flaw or mistake in the title. But with regard to the salvation of their souls, any poor pretence or show of a hope will content them. Their hearts are deceitful, and Satan the great deceiver is dextrous in putting cheats upon them. Against this, we are now warned. May the Lord impress the warning upon every heart. Let us consider some of the ways in which men are deceived:
(i) by the love of the world. The Scripture pronounces it all vanity, but it appears something to a carnal eye. Satan tempted our Lord this way. To avoid this deceit, consider Matthew 16:26.
(ii) by the love of sin. Sin is called deceitful; it blinds the eyes and hardens the heart. How many are convinced in their cooler hours, but when the temptation presents itself powerfully again, they forget what they knew.
(iii) by trusting to their own strength. When they have made a few hasty resolutions, or perhaps only purposed to resolve, they think they shall stand. How often have some of you been deceived thus!
(iv) by vain hopes, founded on the general mercy of God, their own righteousness and a formal profession of the gospel.
FOR MEDITATION:
How David, when by sin deceived,
When sin deceives it hardens too,
From bad to worse went on!
For though he vainly sought
For when the Holy Spirit’s grieved,
To hide his crimes from public view,
Our strength and guard are gone.
Of GOD he little thought.

His eye on Bathsheba once fixed,
Let those who think they stand beware,
With poison filled his soul;
For David stood before;
He ventured on adultery next,
Nor let the fallen soul despair,
And murder crowned the whole.
For mercy can restore.

SERMON: GALATIANS 6:7 [1/1]

April 3rd

If thou hadst known!

If thou hadst known … in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. Luke 19:42.

Jesus had entered into Jerusalem in triumph, the city was stirred to its foundations; but a strange god was there, the pride of Pharisaism; it was religious and upright, but a ‘whited sepulchre.’
What is it that blinds me in this my day? Have I a strange god—not a disgusting monster, but a disposition that rules me? More than once God has brought me face to face with the strange god and I thought I should have to yield, but I did not do it. I got through the crisis by the skin of my teeth and I find myself in the possession of the strange god still; I am blind to the things which belong to my peace. It is an appalling thing that we can be in the place where the Spirit of God should be getting at us unhinderedly, and yet increase our condemnation in God’s sight.
“If thou hadst known”—God goes direct to the heart, with the tears of Jesus behind. These words imply culpable responsibility; God holds us responsible for what we do not see. “Now they are hid from thine eyes”—because the disposition has never been yielded. The unfathomable sadness of the ‘might have been’! God never opens doors that have been closed. He opens other doors, but He reminds us that there are doors which we have shut, doors which need never have been shut, imaginations which need never have been sullied. Never be afraid when God brings back the past. Let memory have its way. It is a minister of God with its rebuke and chastisement and sorrow. God will turn the ‘might have been’ into a wonderful culture for the future.

April 2nd

The glory that excels

The Lord … hath sent me that thou mightest receive thy sight. Acts 9:17.

When Paul received his sight he received spiritually an insight into the Person of Jesus Christ, and the whole of his subsequent life and preaching was nothing but Jesus Christ—“I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” No attraction was ever allowed to hold the mind and soul of Paul save the face of Jesus Christ.
We have to learn to maintain an unimpaired state of character up to the last notch revealed in the vision of Jesus Christ.
The abiding characteristic of a spiritual man is the interpretation of the Lord Jesus Christ to himself, and the interpretation to others of the purposes of God. The one concentrated passion of the life is Jesus Christ. Whenever you meet this note in a man, you feel he is a man after God’s own heart.
Never allow anything to deflect you from insight into Jesus Christ. It is the test of whether you are spiritual or not. To be unspiritual means that other things have a growing fascination for you.

‘Since mine eyes have looked on Jesus,
I’ve lost sight of all beside,
So enchanted my spirit’s vision,
Gazing on the Crucified.’