Milo

January 8th

Does my sacrifice live?

And Abraham built an altar … and bound Isaac his son. Genesis 22:9.

This incident is a picture of the blunder we make in thinking that the final thing God wants of us is the sacrifice of death. What God wants is the sacrifice through death which enables us to do what Jesus did, viz., sacrifice our lives. Not ‘I am willing to go to death with Thee,’ but, ‘I am willing to be identified with Thy death so that I may sacrifice my life to God.’ We seem to think that God wants us to give up things! God purified Abraham from this blunder, and the same discipline goes on in our lives. God nowhere tells us to give up things for the sake of giving them up. He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, viz., life with Himself. It is a question of loosening the bands that hinder the life, and immediately those bands are loosened by identification with the death of Jesus, we enter into a relationship with God whereby we can sacrifice our lives to Him.
It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death. He wants you to be a “living sacrifice,” to let Him have all your powers that have been saved and sanctified through Jesus. This is the thing that is acceptable to God.

January 7th

Intimate with Jesus

Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known Me? John 14:9.

These words are not spoken as a rebuke, nor even with surprise; Jesus is leading Philip on. The last One with whom we get intimate is Jesus. Before Pentecost the disciples knew Jesus as the One Who gave them power to conquer demons and to bring about a revival (see Luke 10:18–20 ). It was a wonderful intimacy, but there was a much closer intimacy to come—“I have called you friends.” Friendship is rare on earth. It means identity in thought and heart and spirit. The whole discipline of life is to enable us to enter into this closest relationship with Jesus Christ. We receive His blessings and know His word, but do we know Him?
Jesus said—“It is expedient for you that I go away”—in that relationship, so that He might lead them on. It is a joy to Jesus when a disciple takes time to step more intimately with Him. Fruitbearing is always mentioned as the manifestation of an intimate union with Jesus Christ (John 15:1–4 ).
When once we get intimate with Jesus we are never lonely, we never need sympathy, we can pour out all the time without being pathetic. The saint who is intimate with Jesus will never leave impressions of himself, but only the impression that Jesus is having unhindered way, because the last abyss of his nature has been satisfied by Him. The only impression left by such a life is that of the strong calm sanity that Our Lord gives to those who are intimate with Him.

January 6th

Worship

And he pitched his tent having Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he builded an altar. Genesis 12:8.

Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard a thing for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself; it has to be given back to Him that He may make it a blessing to others.
Bethel is the symbol of communion with God; Ai is the symbol of the world. Abraham pitched his tent between the two. The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him. Rush is wrong every time; there is always plenty of time to worship God. Quiet days with God may be a snare. We have to pitch our tents where we shall always have quiet times with God, however noisy our times with the world may be. There are not three stages in spiritual life—worship, waiting and work. Some of us go in jumps like spiritual frogs, we jump from worship to waiting, and from waiting to work. God’s idea is that the three should go together. They were always together in the life of Our Lord. He was unhasting and unresting. It is a discipline, we cannot get into it all at once.

9 JANUARY

All in confusion

‘And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.’ Genesis 1:2
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Psalm 8:1–9

The matter out of which the beauty, order and variety we now observe were framed, was at first all in confusion. The earth, the water, the deep, were one mixed mass and darkness covered the whole. The earth was without form—without a determinate form, a crude mass—and void—that is, empty, unfurnished, destitute of ornaments and inhabitants and incapable of receiving any till God was pleased to put forth his mighty power and arrange everything according to his wise plan. The wisdom of man, who would fain account for everything, has endeavoured to guess by what steps the Almighty proceeded in this work; many conjectures of this sort have been started, but they are all vain and trifling, no better than waking dreams; nay, they are presumptions. The Lord pours contempt upon such proud reasoners in his sublime questions to Job (chapter 38) and intimates that his counsel is far above, out of our sight [Psalm 10:5]. It is enough for us that things were thus in the beginning, and if we endeavour [to understand] this darkness and confusion and then compare it with the creation as it now appears, so as to say with humble admiration, ‘What has God wrought?’ and to be affected with his greatness and goodness, then we have the true philosophy. All besides is vanity and food for pride.

FOR MEDITATION: I have been witness to a great and important revolution this morning, which took place while the greatest part of the world was asleep. A while ago, darkness reigned. Had a man dropped for the first time into our world, he might have thought himself banished into a hopeless dungeon. How could he expect light to rise out of such a state? And when he saw the first glimmering of dawn in the east, how could he promise himself that it was the forerunner of such a glorious sun as has since risen! Such strangers once were we. Darkness, gross darkness, covered us: how confined were our views! And even the things which were within our reach we could not distinguish. Little did we then think what a glorious day we were appointed to see.… We knew not that there was a Sun of righteousness, and that he would dawn and rise in shine upon our hearts.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 2 [1/3], GENESIS 1:2–3

8 JANUARY (BEGUN SUNDAY EVENING 8 JANUARY 1769)

His almighty power

‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ Genesis 1:1
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Job 38:4–18

God created. God created by an immediate act of almighty power. Creatures can make, that is form one thing from another, but to give being to the first principles of things belongs to God alone. And this, in a strict and proper sense, was the work of creation. Other things were produced and disposed afterwards in the several days. When God would remind his people of his power to help them under the greatest difficulties—when he would silence the vain reasonings of their unbelief, which is so ready to say, ‘How can these things be?’—he often puts them in mind of this first revelation of his Almighty Arm (Isaiah 44:24; Jeremiah 31:35; Isaiah 51:12–13; Jeremiah 5:22). And though we have a general conviction of his power, we are too apt to fail in a right application of it to our particular cases and should therefore often consider what he hath wrought.

The heaven and the earth: that is, the visible world with all their furniture and inhabitants (Genesis 2:1). Let us humbly enquire into some of the reasons for which he created all things by his good pleasure. In general they were created for the display of his glory to intelligent creatures by the order, beauty, variety and grandeur of his works, as I have already hinted, and for the effusion of his goodness in giving life and a suitable perfection to different orders of beings. In particular he formed the earth as a theatre to display the riches of his glorious grace in the salvation of a people chosen to himself in Christ before the foundation of the world. He formed the visible heavens with an immediate reference to the benefit of the earth, particularly of man for whom the earth was made. Under the term heaven, we may likewise understand that glorious state in which he makes himself known as the fountain of happiness and joy to his angels and redeemed people. This kingdom was prepared for them from the beginning (Matthew 25:34).

FOR MEDITATION: Believers, this God is our God. How miserable are they who have no part in him.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 1 [4/4], GENESIS 1:1