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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems: 17. The Man.
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 17. The Man.
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The Man.
But the great fact of the Book is a personality that looms up large through all of its pages. From beginning to end there is one striking personality dominant. All through the older portion He is coming. Men fail, the best men with the best training fail, the kingdoms fall, the kingdom and people about whom the Book is woven fail most miserably, but there is some One coming who will fill out the highest expectations. In the Gospels He has come; in the later books all thought is utterly absorbed in Him; in the last book, the climax, His coming glory floods the pages. He is the heart of the Book.
Let me gather up a few facts about this Man. I will pack them into small compass that they may be grasped together He was born in obscurity and in poverty, cradled in a stable, brought up in a country village whose good moral character was seriously questioned, had no contact with the schools of His time, being home trained, never travelled outside of a bit of territory about seventy by one hundred miles, was born of a people peculiarly exclusive and intense, had access to no literature except the very limited literature of His peculiarly seclusive people. Yet He developed a character singularly perfect.
There was in Him the utter absence of evil, and the presence of all known good. He was sterner than the sternest man in denouncing wrong, and tenderer than the tenderest woman in ministering to others. He never uttered an apology. In that He stands alone of all men of whom we have any record. He said He was without sin, and by consent of His enemies, including the man who betrayed Him and the man who condemned Him, as well as those who knew Him most intimately, He was without fault. His life for those few years of public work was literally spent out in glad, tireless service of the most practical sort for those around. He gave Himself to the needs of needy men with an utter self-forgetting abandon. Night and day, ceaselessly, tirelessly, He ministered to men, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, relieving the distressed and demonized, and even raising the dead; while He had at times no time so much as to eat, no home to call His own, and no funds upon which to draw, being ministered to in personal needs by friends.
His teachings are marked by an originality, a sweep of conception, and a freshness never approached before nor since, and wholly at variance with His human origin and His surroundings. They have become and are to-day the accepted standard for purity of conception, high ideals of life, boldness of originality, stupendousness of sweep, and simplicity of expression.
And then will you please mark keenly His method of influencing men? The world's greatest leaders and conquerors have been soldiers. Alexander, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon ruled by force, their great personality and power finding expression at the sword's point. Others have swayed men by the books they wrote. Jesus influenced men by the power of His teaching, of His thought, but far more by the strangely simple power of His life, by the touch of His personality alone.
The extent of his influence is startling even to this day, though so familiar. He lived for only thirty-three years. His public career was but for a tenth as long a time, only about three years and a bit more. He was put to death ignominiously and cruelly, and laid away in a tomb. He left no book behind, and formed no organization, only a little handful of eleven unschooled peasants whom He had associated closely with Himself in His life and work. Yet within three centuries He had changed the Roman calendar, which was practically the world's calendar. To-day the world's calendars with small exception swing about the pivot of His birth. All events of history are located by their relation to Him, their occurrence "before Christ" or in a given "year of our Lord." The nations that call themselves by His name are the dominant nations of the earth. The life of the whole world has known a new life dating from His coming. His conception of life, personal life and social life, is regarded throughout the world as the highest. To-day more than ever He is dominant in the life of the earth. Of Him the old German, Jean Paul Frederick Richter, said in words that have grown very familiar, quoting freely, that "He, being the mightiest among the holy, and the holiest among the mighty, lifted with His pierced hands the gates of empires off their hinges, turned the streams of centuries out of their channels, and to-day rules the world."
Now please mark with keenest thought what this man Jesus said about Himself. This is the most critical part of all to study regarding Him. He claimed to be the Son of God in a sense that nobody else was; before His earthly life He had been with God in closest intimacy, known only by Himself; He had come down to the earth to tell men about God; when His errand to the earth was done He would go back again to be with His Father, as He had been from before the beginning of time. Let the thoughtful man note very sharply that this is the claim Jesus made, and insistently made for Himself in the face of bitterest opposition.
Such a claim clearly stamps its maker as one of three sorts of men. Either He was a fanatic, self-deluded with regard to Himself; or else He was not a good man, but purposely said what He knew to be not so; or else—He was what He claimed to be. The purity of His life, unapproached by any other man, together with His constant, tireless, self-sacrificing service on behalf of others, clearly rules out the supposition that He was not good. And all men have agreed in His goodness.
That He was a fanatic, self-deceived with regard to Himself, swept off His mental balance by the high fervor of His spirit and hot rush of His enthusiasm, would seem the much likelier supposition of these two. Yet the wisdom of His teachings, equaled by none other, recognized and acknowledged freely by all; His rare mental calmness and poise under all circumstances, including the most trying; and the remarkable clearness and sanity of His judgment effectually dispose of this supposition.
It has been freely said, of late especially, that these followers of His, whose accounts make up the Gospel records, in their enthusiastic loyalty to Him, claim more for Him in their writing than He actually claimed for Himself. Yet be it keenly marked there, that it was this claim of His that led to the bitterness of the enmity against Him, and to its final ending in His being put to death. And further, these records are our only source of original information about Jesus and the stupendousness of His character. The unrivalled place He occupies in history and in all the race of men agrees fully with the claim put forth for Him in these four small books.
Now if these two suppositions be shut out there is left only this, the most stupendous of the three, that Jesus actually was what He claimed to be. And the severest criticism that can be made of our scholarly skeptical friends comes in just here. They agree about His life, its pure, positive goodness; His teachings, their unapproached and unapproachable wisdom; the rare sanity of His judgment, and the sublimity of His conceptions. The skeptics of skeptical France, the rationalists of rationalistic Germany, the worldly men of all the world, all practically agree here. Yet they have not accepted what He Himself believed about Himself. Surely if what they do believe about Him is true, it is altogether logical to go on, and believe what He Himself believed about Himself.