In an art gallery at Moscow is a painting by a Russian artist of "Christ in the Wilderness," which reverently and with simple dramatic power brings to you the intense humanity of our Lord, and how tremendously real to Him the temptation was. This helps to intensify to us the meaning of the Wilderness. It stands for victory, by a man, in the power of the Spirit, over the worst temptation that can come.
Then follows a long stretch of rough road with certain places sharply marked out to our eyes. The rejection by the Jewish leaders began at once.
It ran through three stages, the silent contemptuous rejection, the active aggressive rejection, then the hardened, murderous rejection running up to the terrible climax of the cross.
The contemptuous rejection of the Baptist"s claim for his Master, by the official commission sent down to inquire,[25] was followed by the more aggressive, as they began to realize the power of this man they had to deal with. John"s imprisonment revealed an intensifying danger, and the need of withdrawing to some less dangerous place.
Our Lord"s change to Galilee, and to preaching and working among the ma.s.ses, was followed by a persistent campaign on the part of the Southerners of nagging, harrying warfare against Him throughout Galilee.
It grew in bitterness and intensity, with John"s death as a further turning point to yet intenser bitterness. The visits to Jerusalem were accompanied by fiercer attacks, venomous discussions, and frenzied attempts at personal violence. This grew into the third stage of rejection, the cool, hardened plotting of His death. The last weeks things head up at a tremendous rate; our Lord appears to be the one calm, steady man, even in His terrific denunciation of them, held even and steady in the grip of a clear, strong purpose, as He pushed His way unwaveringly onward. Then came the terrible climax,--the cross. The worst venomous spittle of the serpent"s poison sac spat out there. It was the climax of hate, and the climax of His unspeakable love.
When Your Heart"s Tuned to the Music.
Surely it was a long, rough road. Its length was not measured by miles, nor years, but by the experiences of this Lone Man. So measured it becomes the longest road ever trod, from purity"s heights to sin"s depths; from love"s mountain top to hate"s deepest gulf. It makes a new record for roughness. For no one has ever suffered what our Lord Jesus did; and no one"s suffering ever had the value and meaning for another that His had and has for all men and for us. Not one of us to-day realizes how He suffered, nor the intensity of meaning that suffering actually has for all the race, and for those of us who accept it for ourselves.
It was a rough, long road, and He knew ahead that it would be. He saw dimly ahead, then more sharply outlined as He drew on, those crossed logs in the road, growing bigger and darker and more forbidding as He pushed on. But He could not be stopped by that, for He was thinking about us, and about His Father. He pushed steadily on, past crossed logs all overgrown and tangled with thorn bushes and poison ivy vines, bearing the marks of logs and thorns and poison ivy, but He went through to the end of the road, He reached His world; He reached _our hearts_. And now He is longing to reach through our hearts to the hearts of the others.
"But none of the ransomed ever knew How deep were the waters crossed; Nor how dark was the night that the Lord pa.s.sed through, "Ere He found His sheep that were lost.
"Lord, whence are those blood-drops all the way That mark out the mountain"s track?"
"They were shed for one who had gone astray Ere the Shepherd could bring him back."
But all through the mountains, thunder-riven, And up from the rocky steep, There arose a glad cry to the gate of heaven, "Rejoice! I have found my sheep.""[26]
But there was something more on that road. Do you know how the wind blows through the trees on the steep mountain side, and will make music in your heart, _if your heart is tuned to its music_, even while you are pushing your way through th.o.r.n.y tanglewood and undergrowth? Do you know how, as you go down the deep mountain ravines, with the wild rushing torrent far below, where a single misstep would mean so much, how the breeze playing through the leaves makes sweetest melody, _if your heart"s tuned to it?_
Well, this great Lone Man had a heart tuned for the music of this road.
The strong wind of His Father"s love blew down through the wild mountains into His face, and made sweetest music, and His ear was in tune and heard it. He had a tuning-fork that gave Him the true pitch for the rarest music, while His feet travelled cautiously the deep wilderness ravines, and boldly climbed through the th.o.r.n.y undergrowth of that steep hill just outside the city wall. Obedience is the rhythm of two wills, that blends their action into rarest harmony. Some of us need to use His tuning-fork,[27] so as to enjoy the music of the road.
The Pleading Call To Follow
Hungry for the Human Touch.
G.o.d hungers for the human touch. There"s an inner hesitancy in saying this, and in hearing it. We feel it can hardly be so, even though our inner hearts would wish it were so.
We know that we men hunger for the human touch, the strongest of us. And in our hour of sore need we know that our inner hearts look up, and wish we could have a really close touch with G.o.d. Well, this is a bit of the image of G.o.d in us. We were made so, like Himself. In seeing ourselves here, we are getting a closer look at the heart of G.o.d. He longs for the human touch. When He made us He breathed into our nostrils the breath of His own life. And this is not simply a bit of the first Genesis chapter.
It is a bit of every human life. There"s the breath of G.o.d in every new life born into the world. He gives a bit of Himself. We are not complete creatively until part of Himself has come to be part of us.
And Jesus" coming was but the same thing put in yet more intense, close, appealing shape to us. He came to get us in touch again after the break of sin. He gave His blood that we might have life again after the sin-break had broken off our life, and commenced to dry it up. This was an even closer touch. The breath of G.o.d came in Eden to breathe in our lungs.
The blood of His Son came on Calvary to give life-action to our hearts.
Could there be anything to make clearer His hunger for the human touch?
The Holy Spirit"s presence spells out the same thing once more. There has been every sort of thing to induce Him to go away. He has been ignored, left out of all reckoning, and talked against. Yet with a patience beyond what that word means to us, He has remained creatively in every man as the very breath of his life. And He comes and remains the very breath of the spirit life in those who yield to His pleading call.
Jesus was G.o.d coming after us. We had gone away. He came to woo us back into close touch again. He came to the nation of Israel, that through it He might reach out to all men. When He comes again it will be again to use Israel as His messenger, while He Himself will be present on the earth in a new way to woo men to Himself. When that nation"s leaders rejected John"s announcement, and so rejected our Lord Jesus, He began to appeal to individual men, while waiting for the nation. And the work with individuals was also His call to the nation.
So the chief thing He did was to call men. His presence was a call, and the crowds flocked to Him wherever He went. His life of purity and sympathy was felt as an earnest call and responded to eagerly. His doings were a very intense call. Every healed man and woman, every one set free of demon influence, every one of the fed mult.i.tudes, felt called to this man who had helped him so. His teaching was a continual call, and His preaching. But above all else stood out the personal call He gave men. For our Lord Jesus was not content to deal with the crowds simply; He dealt with men one by one in intimate heart touch.
Called to Go.
There are a number of invitations He used in calling men. It was as though in His eagerness He used every sort that might go home. And yet there was more than this; these invitations are like successive steps up into the life He wanted them to have. He said, "Come unto Me."[28] This was always the first, and still remains first. It led, and it leads, into rest of heart and life, peace with G.o.d. He quickly followed it with "Come ye after Me."[29] They must come to Him before they could come after Him. This was found to mean discipleship, learning the road. He would "make" them like Himself in going after others. He said, "take My yoke upon you."[30]This meant a bending down to get into the yoke, a surrender of will and heart to Himself, and then partnership, fellowship side-by-side with Himself.
Then He spoke another word to the innermost circle, on the night in which He was betrayed. He had a long talk that evening with the eleven around the supper table, and walking down to the grove of olives at the Brook of the Cedars.[31] Several times that evening He used this new word, "abide,"
"abide in Me." That means staying with Him, not leaving, living continuously with Him. It means a continued separation from anything that would separate from Him. And then it means a fulness of life coming from Himself into us as we draw all our life from Himself, a rich ripeness, a rounded maturity, a depth of life, and these always becoming more,--richer, rounder, deeper.
Then after the awful days of the cross were past, on the evening of the resurrection day, in the upper room with ten of the inner disciples, He practically said, "You be Myself"; "as the Father sent Me, even so send I you"[32]; "You be I." I wonder if any one of us has ever been taken or mistaken for the Lord Jesus. We would never know it, of course. But He meant it to be so.
A Scottish lady missionary in India tells of a Bible cla.s.s of girls which she had. She was teaching them about the life and character of the Lord Jesus. One day a new girl came in, fresh from the heathenism in which she grew up, knowing nothing of the Gospel. She listened, and then became quite intense and excited in her childish way, as she heard them talking about some One, how good He was, how gentle, how He was always teaching and helping the people around Him. At last she could restrain her eagerness no longer, but blurted out, "I know that man; he lives near us."
It was found that she did not know about Christ, but supposed they were speaking of a very earnest native Christian man living in her neighbourhood. She had mistaken her neighbour for Jesus. How glad that man must have been if he ever knew. This was a part of our Lord"s plan.
And at the very end, these successive invitations took the shape of a command, which was both a permission and an order,--"Go ye."[33] Men who had taken to heart, one after another, these invitations were ready for the command. They would be eager for it. The invitations were the Master"s preparation for the command. He could trust such men to go, and to keep steady and true as they went, in the power He gave them. There is one word that you find in all these invitations--"Me." They all centre about the Lord Jesus. He is the centre of gravity drawing every one, in ever growing nearness and meaning, to Himself. It is only when we have been drawn into closest touch with Him that we are qualified to "go" to others. It"s only Himself in us, only as much of Himself as is in us, that will be helpful to any one else, or will make any one else willing to break with his old way. He is the only magnet to draw men away from the old life up to Himself.
"Follow Me."
But there"s one other invitation which belongs in this list. It proves to be the greatest of them all, because you come to find it includes all these others. It"s His "Follow Me." It seems at first glance to be the same as that "Come after Me." But it is the word He repeated again and again, under different circ.u.mstances, with added explanations, to the same men, until you feel that He meant it to stand out as the great invitation to His disciples. It seems to mean different things at different times.
That is to say, it grew in its significance. It came to mean more than it had seemed to.
Peter is a good ill.u.s.tration here. The word really came to him five times, with a different, an added, meaning each time. His first following meant acquaintance.[34] John the Herald had sent his disciples, John and Andrew, along after Jesus as He was walking one day on the Jordan river road. They followed Jesus to their first acquaintance in a two hours" talk, which quite satisfied their hearts as to who He was. John never forgot that first following. Every detail of it stands out in his memory when long years after he began to write his story of the Master. Andrew went at once to hunt up Peter, and brought him face-to-face with his newly found Friend and Master. That interview settled things for Peter. Andrew"s following now included his. Following meant the beginning of the personal friendship which was to mean so much for both of them.
It was about a year after, that "Follow Me" had a new meaning to Peter and some others.[35] The invitation was an ill.u.s.trated one this time, ill.u.s.trated by a living picture of just what it meant. It was one morning by the Lake of Galilee. Peter and his partners had had a poor night"s fishing, and were out on sh.o.r.e washing their nets. The Master had come along, with a great crowd pressing in to get closer and hear better. There was danger of the crowd pushing the Master into the water. The Master borrowed Peter"s boat for a pulpit. Peter sat facing the crowd while the Master talked to them.
Was that the first time the spell of a crowd began to get its subtle heart-hold on Peter as he looked into their hungry eyes? Who can withstand the great appeal of the crowd"s eyes? Not our Lord, nor any that have caught His spirit. Then the great draught of fishes, after the fishless night, made Peter feel the Master"s power. Fishes would make him feel it, being a fisherman, as nothing else would. The sense of Jesus" power, and with it a sense of purity--interesting how the power made him feel the purity--this brought him to his knees at our Lord"s feet with the confession of his own sinfulness.
Peter was greatly moved that morning, greatly shaken. A new experience of tremendous power had come to him. And out of it came a new life, a radical change as he left the old occupation, fishing, boats, father, means of livelihood, and entered upon the new life. "Follow Me" meant a radical change of life, constant companionship with Jesus, sharing His life, going to school, getting ready for leadership and service; yes, and for suffering too. He entered the Master"s itinerant training school that morning. A man needs a sight of the Lord Jesus" power, a _feel_ of it, before he is fit to serve, or even to go to school to get ready for service.
It was some months after this that another meaning grew into the words "Follow Me," and grew out of them. The words are not spoken this time, but acted. Out of the group of disciples that He had gathered about Him our Lord prayerfully chose out Peter with the others to be sent out as His messenger to others.[36]Part of the schooling was over; now a new part, a new term of school, was to begin. He gave them a special talk that morning, and sent them out to teach and heal and do for the crowds what He had been doing.
He called them Apostles, Sent-ones, Missionaries. "Follow Me" now meant going to others. It meant more--_power_, power to do for men all the Master Himself had done. First, power felt that early morning by the lake, now power given. That was a great advance in training. Power had to be felt before it could be given, and has to be felt before it can be used.
Only as the power takes hold of our inner hearts to the feeling point, will it ever take hold of others. And no life is changed through our service till power takes hold of us to _the feeling point_.
The Deeper Meaning.
But there was a special session of the "Follow Me" school one day, a very serious session.[37]They had to be shown the red threads in the weave of the word. The words had to be held under the knife, so they could look into the cut, and see the deeper meaning. "Follow Me" had to take deeper hold of them yet, if His power was to get the deeper hold of them, and, by and by, get hold of the needy crowds. The very setting of the words gives the new meaning to them. John had felt the keen edge of Herod"s axe blade, and was now in the upper presence. They were up in the far northern part because of the growing danger threatening Him by the leaders.