Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems: 18. The Call of the Christ.

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Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems: 18. The Call of the Christ.



TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 18. The Call of the Christ.

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The Call of the Christ.

Now please note very keenly what it was upon which Jesus laid the chief emphasis regarding Himself—it was upon His death. From His own point of view the climax of His life was His death. That last year He continually referred to it, and to its meaning for men. As the shadows of death darkened down about Him, and its chill waters deepened in their nearness, He asked that all who loved Him would remember His death. The Church has never forgotten that request of the last night. However at times the emphasis of her teachers may have swung away from it, the simple memorial meal from the Master's own hands has brought out constantly into boldest relief His great death. Every week untold thousands of many creeds and tongues and shadings of belief reverently bow in the presence of the simple bread and wine, and remember that Jesus died.

The chief personality of this Book, and of all history, is this Man. The chief event of this Man's life, in His own thought of it, was His death. He declared that for a specific purpose He deliberately yielded to death. The whole presumption is in favor of our believing that if He had not yielded Himself voluntarily up to His enemies He would never have died. He would never even have known any of the common weakness of increasing years; only a full maturing of His powers. For the element of sin which works weakness and death was lacking in Him.

This puts sharper emphasis yet upon the significance of His purpose in consenting to death. No fact stands out more plainly in the Gospel stories than this, that He yielded to death of His own accord for a great purpose. The time of His death, the fact of it, the manner of it, were controlled by the way in which He repeatedly avoided His enemies until He chose to yield to their will.

What was the purpose of His death? His point of view in yielding to it may be put simply in this way: all men have sinned; the natural, logical result of sin is death; it grieved the Father much that man had gotten into such a bad fix; out of love the Father sent Him down, and He came down to die that so man might be saved from dying. Any man and every man who is willing may accept Jesus' death as his own, and instead of his own. Whoever does can so be free from sin's power to work death in him.

But there is more than this in Jesus' understanding of the matter. He did more than die. He lived a pure, sinless life before His death, and He lived a new kind of life after His death. He said He would send down the Holy Spirit to live in each man who was willing. That Spirit would burn out the bad, make a man hate sin, and give power to resist sin. He would work out within a man the pure life of Jesus, and more, the new kind of life that Jesus lived after His death—a life lived on the earth but not subject to its power, controlled from above. This new life would be lived in part only, for there was no promise of bodily death being removed; but in a coming day it also was to be gone and that new kind of life lived fully. This was Jesus' point of view, and His purpose in yielding to death.

There is a response to this in human experience that is remarkable. There is that within a man's need that answers to this plan of Jesus. It is very common to-day, in some quarters, to find great emphasis laid upon the example of Jesus, and little or none upon His death. Let our friend who exploits the example of Jesus as the chief thing in His wonderful life, ignoring the sacrificial element in His death, let him try honestly to follow that great example fully, with no apologies for his own weakness. And if he is frank and honest he will be compelled to admit that it takes more than example to change a man. There needs to be a very positive power put into a man by some One else. It must be a power with the force of moral dynamite, if some things such as impurity and selfishness are to be put out, and kept out, and certain other things such as purity and strength and sweet, strong unselfishness to be put in.

Jesus asked that He might be accepted as man's Saviour, a Saviour from the result of sin, and from its great power. This was His earnest appeal to men when down here among us. It is the thrilling appeal of these four simple Gospels to every man. It is to-day the eager cry of Jesus' heart to each of us. A man in earnest can easily believe enough to respond with his whole life to that cry. It means a new life, with new motives, and, infinitely more, new power. And as a man quietly, resolutely steps into this path, new light begins to break in from the east, and then more, and yet more, until some day, it is promised, there will be the full shining of the sun.