Quiet Talks on Following the Christ Part 8

I do not mean to use that word "pitiable" chiefly in the bodily sense, though there's so much of that. But it has a deeper meaning. Here is this fair young face turned to yours in the social group, here this strong young man needing nothing that money can buy, but yet very needy, both of them. In their young, eager faces the hidden away image, the not-yet-touched-into-new-life image of the Father looks out asking for help, help out into growth amidst so much that holds back. Inasmuch as your light, tactful touch is given here, it is done unto Jesus. Jesus is helped into the life, the G.o.d-image crowded back within is helped to get out into free expression.

You may not be sent to some distant field as young Borden was. Your personal place may be at home. But the crowd, the need, is everywhere; at home, in the social circle, and among the men driven by the pa.s.sion for business and for pleasure, in this dangerously prosperous land of ours.

Need of body even here, and deeper need of spirit. Much more tact is required, Spirit-born tact and patience and alertness, to touch and help these.

But the Spirit will guide. He has a pa.s.sion for men in their need. He has exquisite tact in touching men under all circ.u.mstances. He will take command of your life here as elsewhere. He will lead you into a life of personal service in helping men. And He will lead you _in_ that service.

This is the Galilean Ministry which will work out in your experience as the Holy Spirit has control. This is a bit of the "Follow Me" roadway.

These are the four experiences of power and privilege. They are as the great underlying experiences of our Lord's career. The other experiences grew up out of these. These were the warp threads in the loom of His life.

The others were woven into these. This is the main road that He trod. It is the main road of this "Follow Me" journey. It is along this road, between its beginning and end, that we shall run down into the valley-road stretches, and run up to the stretches along the hilltops.

3. The Valleys--experiences of Suffering And Sacrifice

The Never-absent Minor.

Here the road begins to drop down into the valleys. It runs sharply down, and on, through some wild gulches and ravines thick with lurking danger, with the upper-lights almost lost in the deep black darkness. It is darkness that can be felt more than the Egyptian darkness ever was. It proves to be the valley of the shadow of death, then--of death itself, before the upward turn comes.

The weaver we were speaking of finds some strange shuttle-threads to be woven into the pattern, gray black, ugly black threads, and red threads almost wet and sticky in their blood-like redness.

Yet this is part of the road that was trodden, and that is still waiting to be trodden by feet st.u.r.dy and bold enough to go on down into the shadows, before the upward turn is reached again. And these threads will work out a rare beauty in the pattern being woven.

Is there perfect music without the underchording of the minor? Not to human ears. For they are attuned to life as it has really come to be. And the minor chord is in real life, never quite absent; and the minor chord is in the true human heart, never wholly absent. And only the music with the minor blended in is the real music of human life. Only it can play upon the finest strings of the human heart.

But this sort of thing, the getting of beauty out of ugly threads, the getting of music where there is discord, the upward turn again of the valley road, all this is a bit of the touch of G.o.d upon life, where the hurt of sin has come in. Only the Lord Jesus can make music where sin had brought in and wrought out such discord. Only He can change the weaving into beauty, where the ugly slimy sin-threads have come in. He can lead up again out of the depths, but only He. His blood, Himself, is the thing added that makes music where no melody had ever been a possible thing; and gives the weaver's threads the transforming touch that works beauty where there was only the ugly; and pulls you up again to the higher levels. The good never comes out of bad. It comes only by something radically different coming in and overcoming the bad.

In Seoul they showed us the great bell hung at the crossing of certain chief streets there. And then they told us the bell's legend. In early twilight times an artisan had made a great bell at the king's command, but the tone of it was not pleasing to the royal ears. So a second one was made, and a third, but neither was satisfactory. Then the king said that if the man did not make a bell with pleasing tones his life should be forfeited for his failure. This was very distressing for the poor unfortunate bell-moulder.

His daughter, a young girl in her teens, either had a vision, or felt within herself that a sacrifice was the thing needful to give the bell its true tone. And so she resolved to give herself to save her father, and with rare fort.i.tude one night she plunged into the great pot of molten metal. And the tone of the bell was so sweet and musical that the king was delighted. And the maker, instead of being killed, was highly honoured. So ran the simple bit of Korean folklore.

We ran across legends quite like it in other parts of the Orient. They all seemed to point, with other similar evidence, to the feeling deep down in human consciousness of the need of sacrifice. Is it a bit of an innate instinct in our common human nature, that only through sacrifice can the hurt of life be healed? However this be, it certainly is true, that the touch of Him who gave His life clear out for men, that touch is the thing, and the only thing, that can make music where there was only discord. It is only His pierced hand upon weaver and web that touches ugly threads into beauty as they are woven into the fabric of life. Only He can lead us up out of the valley of death up to the road of life along the high hilltops.

The Wilderness.

You remember, there were four experiences of suffering and sacrifice in our Lord Jesus' life. The first of these was _the Wilderness Temptation_.

That rough road He took led straight to and through a wilderness. He was tempted. He was tempted like as we are. He was tempted more cunningly and stormily than we ever have been.

It was a pitched battle, planned for carefully, and fought with all the desperateness of the Evil One at bay against overwhelming forces. It was planned by the Holy Spirit, and fought out by our Lord in the Spirit's strength. For forty full lone days it ran its terrific course. But our Lord's line of defence never flinched. The Wilderness and Waterloo, those two terrific matchings of strength, the one of the spirit, the other of the physical, both were fought out on the same lines. Wellington's only plan for that battle was to _stand_, to resist every attempt to break his lines all that fateful day. The French did the attacking all day, until Wellington's famous charge came at its close.

Our Lord Jesus' only plan for the Wilderness battle was to _stand_, having done all to stand, to resist every effort to move Him a hair's breadth from His position. That battle brought Him great suffering; it took, and it tested, all His strength of discernment, and decision, of determined set persistence, and of dependent, deep-breathed praying. And through these the gracious power of the Spirit worked, and so the victory, full joyous victory, came.

Now it comes as a surprise to some of us to find that the "Follow Me" road leads straight to the same Wilderness. No, it is not just the same, none of these experiences mean as much to us as they did to Him. They are always less. But then they mean everything to us! We will be tempted. So surely as one sets himself to follow the blessed Master, there's one thing he can always count upon--temptation. Sooner or later it will come, usually sooner and later. So the Evil One serves notice to contest our allegiance to the new Master.

The tempter sees to it that you are tempted. That belongs to his side of the conflict. And quickly and skilfully, and with good heart he goes at his task. Through the weak or evil impulses and desires within us, and through every avenue without, those dearest to us, and every other, he will begin and continue his cunning approaches. It is well to understand this clearly, and so be ready. The closer you follow this Man ahead, the more, and the more surely, will you be tempted. It is one of the things you can count on--temptation.

But, steady there, steady! the tempter can't go a step beyond attacking, without your help. He can't make a single break in your lines from without. The only k.n.o.b to the door of your life is on the _inside_.

Temptation never gets in without help from within. I have said that the Wilderness spelled two words for our Lord Jesus, temptation _and_ victory.

We may use His spelling if we will. A temptation is a chance for a victory. Begin singing when temptation comes; out of it, resisted, comes a new steadiness in step, and a new confidence in the victorious Man of the Wilderness.[65]

But let me tell you _how_ the victory comes. It comes through our Lord Jesus. And it comes by His working _through your decision_ to resist to the last ditch.

"Lead Us Not."

The Lord Jesus gave us two special temptation prayers to make. The one is: "Lead us not into temptation."[66] That pet.i.tion has been a practical puzzle to many of us, and the explanations not always quite clear. Would G.o.d lead us into temptation? we instinctively ask. And the answer seems to be both "yes" and "no."

The "yes" means that character can come only through right choice. We must decide what our att.i.tude toward wrong shall be. It is only temptation resisted that makes the beginnings of strength. Before temptation comes there may be innocence but never virtue. Innocence resisting temptation becomes virtue. The temptation is the intense fire in which the raw iron of innocence changes into the toughened, tempered steel of virtue. It is essential to character that it resist the wrong. It is choice that makes character. The angels in the presence of G.o.d are continually choosing to remain loyal to Him. Choice includes choosing not to choose the evil, to refuse it. Adam was tempted; the temptation was bad, only bad; but it could have been made an opportunity to rise up into newness of strength.

Job was led into temptation, and he failed when the fires grew in heat, and touched him close enough; and then he learned new dependence on G.o.d alone instead of on his own integrity.

That's the "yes" side of the answer. We must decide what we will do with evil. The presence of evil forces choice upon us. The one thing G.o.d longs for is our choice, free and full choice. Freedom of choice is the image of G.o.d in which every man is made. We are like Him in _power_, in the right to choose; we become like Him in _character_ when we choose only the right. G.o.d would lead us into opportunity for the choice on which everything else hinges. The prayer says: "Lead us not into temptation."

The prayer becomes the choice. It reveals the decision of your heart. The man who thoughtfully makes the prayer makes the choice.

And with that goes the "no" side. Certainly G.o.d would not lead us into the temptation to do wrong.[67] And so He has made a way--it's a new way since our Lord Jesus was here--a way by which we can have the full opportunity for choice, and yet be sure of always choosing the right, and so growing into His image in character. To pray, "Lead us not into temptation," is practically saying, "I will go as Thou leadest. Lead me. I am willing to be led. I was not ever thus, nor _prayed_ that Thou shouldst lead me on. I loved to choose and see my path, but now--but now, lead _Thou_ me on. Here I am, willing to be led. I put out my hands for Thee to grasp and lead where Thou wilt. I'll sing, 'Where He may Lead, I'll Follow." This is the only safe road through the Wilderness. We yield wholly to His control.

May I say reverently, this was the way our Lord entered and pa.s.sed through the Wilderness, wholly under the control of Another--the Holy Spirit. He chose to yield to that control. The Spirit acted through His yielding consent, and flooded in the power that brought the victory. Even He in His purity needs so to do. How much more we in our absence of purity, and so absence of strength. "Lead us not" means practically, that we get in behind this victorious Lord Jesus. We refuse to go alone.

The Wilderness spells only defeat for the man who goes alone. We must yield wholly to this great lone Man who went before. We lean upon Him. We trust Him as Saviour from the sin that temptation yielded to has already brought. We will trust His lead wholly now as temptation comes. We will stick close and be wholly pliant in His hands. This is the first temptation prayer our Lord gives us. It means our utter surrender to His leadership.

Then there is a second prayer for temptation use: "Watch and pray that ye _enter not_ into temptation."[68] This goes with the other. It is the partner prayer. Be ever on the watch, and pray, that you may not _enter_ into temptation. Guard prayerfully against acting independently of your Leader. Watch against the temptation. Watch yourself lest you be inclined to go off alone, to break away from His lead. For there will be only one result then, defeat. These two prayers together show the way to turn temptation into victory,--"lead not," "enter not." A temptation is a chance for a victory if you never meet it alone, but always under the lead of the great Victor of the Wilderness.

Then it may help to put the thing in another way. There are two steps in victory over temptation. The first is recognition. To recognize that the thing coming for decision is a temptation to something wrong,--that's the first step in victory. It pushes the temptation out into the open. You say plainly, "This is something to be resisted." The second step as you set yourself to resist is to plead the blood of the Lord Jesus. That means pleading His victory over the tempter. That's the getting in behind Him and depending wholly upon Him.

"Follow Me" takes us into the Wilderness, and leads us into victory there.

There we will learn more about prayer, and music, and the Master, and get new strength and courage on this stretch of the valley road.

Gethsemane.

At the farther extreme of the service years, there came to the Lord Jesus the other three of these dark experiences, all three close together. On the night of the betrayal came _the Gethsemane Agony_. That was a very full evening. Around the supper table they had gathered and talked, and the Lord Jesus had made His last, tender but fruitless effort to touch Judas' heart by touching his feet. There was the long quiet heart-talk in the supper room after Judas had gone out, "and it was night" for poor Judas.[69]

Then the talk continued as they walked across the city within view of the great bra.s.s vine on Herod's temple, so beautiful in the light of the full moon. And then, as they walk through the narrow, shadowed streets, the shadows come into the Lord Jesus' spirit and words.[70] Now they are outside the wall of the city, out in the open, under the blue, and with upturned face, the great pleading prayer is breathed out.[71] Now they are across the Kidron, and now in among the shadows of the huge olive trees of the garden called Gethsemane.

It's quite dark and late. He leaves the disciples to rest under the trees, and with the inner three He pushes a bit farther on. And now He pushes on quite alone in the farther lone recesses of the woods. And now the intensity of His spirit bends His body as He kneels, then is prostrate. And the agony is upon Him. He is fighting out the battle of the morrow. He is sinless, but on the morrow He is to get under the load of a world's sin; no, it was yet more than that, He was to be Himself reckoned and dealt with as sin itself. All the horror of that broke upon Him under those trees, more intensely than it had yet. The brightness of the full moon made the shadows of the trees very dark and black, but they seemed as nothing to this awful inky black shadow of the sin load that would come, no longer in shadow but actually, on the morrow.

The agony of it is upon Him as He falls prostrate on the ground, under the tense strain of spirit. Out of the struggle a bit of prayer reaches our awed ears, "_If it be possible_ let this cup pa.s.s away from Me; yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt." And so tense is the strain that an angel comes to strengthen. With what reverent touch must he have given his help. Even after that the great drops of b.l.o.o.d.y sweat came. But now a calmer mood comes. The look full in the face of what was coming, the realizing more clearly how the Father's plan must work out, these help to steady Him.

Again a bit of prayer is heard, "Since this cannot pa.s.s away; since only so can Thy plan for the world be accomplished Thy--will--be--done." The load of the world's sin almost broke His heart that dark night under the olives. It actually did break His heart on the morrow. This is the meaning of Gethsemane, intense suffering of spirit because of the sin of others.