Milo

7 MARCH

Repairing the ruins

‘And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ Genesis 3:4–5
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: James 1:13–15

When Satan has drawn us from the belief of the truth, there is nothing so false, absurd and dangerous but he can persuade us to receive. How vain was the thought, that she could be better than she was without the Lord’s leave and in defiance to his will. Learn the deceitfulness and hardening nature of sin, how it prevails by degrees, till at length the soul ventures the loss of all for present gratification—and is equally unmindful of past obligations and future consequences of disobedience.
As pride and self-seeking were the first sins, so the first work of God’s Spirit when he comes to renew the sinner is to lay the axe to these roots of the evil tree, which he does by a conviction of sin upon the conscience and giving affecting views of the humiliation of Jesus—man would be as God, therefore God became man. O admire this grace and look to this Saviour who alone is able to repair the ruin we have brought upon ourselves.
FOR MEDITATION: [for New Year’s Evening 1773]
Ensnared, too long, my heart has been
LORD, I have hated thee too long,
In folly’s hurtful ways;
And dared thee to thy face;
O, may I now, at length, begin
I’ve done my soul exceeding wrong
To hear what Wisdom says!
In slighting all thy grace.

Approach my soul to Wisdom’s gates
Now I would break my league with death,
While it is called today;
And live to thee alone;
No one who watches there and waits
O let thy Spirit’s seal of faith,
Shall e’er be turned away.
Secure me for thine own.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 7 [4/4], GENESIS 3:2–5

6 MARCH

An endangered species

‘And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ Genesis 3:4–5
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Psalm 119:105–120

In Satan’s reply we may note:
(i) From starting a doubt concerning the threatening, he proceeds to a bold denial. This, Eve could hardly have borne at first—but by listening to the first, she was prepared for the second. And now we may pronounce her fallen. She had sinned in her heart, though she had not actually eaten the fruit, for the law is spiritual and reaches to the thoughts (as Matthew 5:28).
(ii) He instils hard thoughts of God, as though he withheld something which he knew would increase their happiness. God doth know and therefore he forbid. This, said of the old serpent, abounds in our fallen nature. Why are sinful pleasures pursued, but upon a secret surmise that we shall be more happy by following our own will than the will of our Creator?
(iii) He opens his temptation to suit that spirit of pride and curiosity with which he had already infected her. And flattered her with:
(a) an advance in state: not only impunity but advantage. You shall be as gods. Thus Self sits in the throne of God and the creature is drawn off from subjection to a desire of independence.
(b) an increase of knowledge: what this was to be she could only learn by making the experiment. Then she found a knowledge of guilt and shame was all she gained. Ever since, vain man would be wise, but acquires nothing but vanity and vexation of spirit.
FOR MEDITATION:
Alas! by nature how depraved,
The holy Spirit must reveal
How prone to every ill!
The Saviour’s work and worth;
Our lives, to Satan, how enslaved,
Then the hard heart begins to feel
How obstinate our will!
A new and heavenly birth.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 7 [3/4], GENESIS 3:2–5

March 10th

Have a message and be one

Preach the word. 2 Tim. 4:2.

We are not saved to be “channels only,” but to be sons and daughters of God. We are not turned into spiritual mediums, but into spiritual messengers; the message must be part of ourselves. The Son of God was His own message, His words were spirit and life; and as His disciples our lives must be the sacrament of our message. The natural heart will do any amount of serving, but it takes the heart broken by conviction of sin, and baptized by the Holy Ghost, and crumpled into the purpose of God, before the life becomes the sacrament of its message.
There is a difference between giving a testimony and preaching. A preacher is one who has realized the call of God and is determined to use his every power to proclaim God’s truth. God takes us out of our own ideas for our lives and we are “batter’d to shape and use,” as the disciples were after Pentecost. Pentecost did not teach the disciples anything; it made them the incarnation of what they preached—“Ye shall be witnesses unto Me.”
Let God have perfect liberty when you speak. Before God’s message can liberate other souls, the liberation must be real in you. Gather your material, and set it alight when you speak.

March 9th

The time of relapse

Will ye also go away? John 6:67.

A penetrating question. Our Lord’s words come home most when He talks in the most simple way. We know Who Jesus is, but in spite of that He says—“Will ye also go away?” We have to maintain a venturing attitude toward Him all the time.
“From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him.” They went back from walking with Jesus, not into sin, but they relapsed. Many to-day are spending and being spent in work for Jesus Christ, but they do not walk with Him. The one thing God keeps us to steadily is that we may be one with Jesus Christ. After sanctification the discipline of our spiritual life is along this line. If God gives a clear and emphatic realization to your soul of what He wants, do not try to keep yourself in that relationship by any particular method, but live a natural life of absolute dependence on Jesus Christ. Never try to live the life with God on any other line than God’s line, and that line is absolute devotion to Him. The certainty that I know I do not know—that is the secret of going with Jesus.
Peter only saw in Jesus Someone to minister salvation to him and to the world. Our Lord wants us to be yoke-fellows with Him.
v. 70. Jesus answers the great lack in Peter. We cannot answer for others.

March 8th

The relinquished life

I am crucified with Christ. Gal. 2:20.

No one is ever united with Jesus Christ until he is willing to relinquish not sin only, but his whole way of looking at things. To be born from above of the Spirit of God means that we must let go before we lay hold, and in the first stages it is the relinquishing of all pretence. What Our Lord wants us to present to Him is not goodness, nor honesty, nor endeavour, but real solid sin; that is all He can take from us. And what does He give in exchange for our sin? Real solid righteousness. But we must relinquish all pretence of being anything, all claim of being worthy of God’s consideration.
Then the Spirit of God will show us what further there is to relinquish. There will have to be the relinquishing of my claim to my right to myself in every phase. Am I willing to relinquish my hold on all I possess, my hold on my affections, and on everything, and to be identified with the death of Jesus Christ?
There is always a sharp painful disillusionment to go through before we do relinquish. When a man really sees himself as the Lord sees him, it is not the abominable sins of the flesh that shock him, but the awful nature of the pride of his own heart against Jesus Christ. When he sees himself in the light of the Lord, the shame and the horror and the desperate conviction come home.
If you are up against the question of relinquishing, go through the crisis, relinquish all, and God will make you fit for all that He requires of you.