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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Following the Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 27. Outstanding Experiences
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Outstanding Experiences
I want to follow the Master's plan, and ask you to take a good look at His "Follow Me" road. You remember that we have had one talk together about the characteristics of our Lord Jesus' life. Now we want to talk a little about the experiences of His life. And I do not mean that we are to try to imitate these experiences, or any of them. The meaning goes much deeper than this, and yet it marks out a simpler road for our feet. I mean that as we actually go along with this Master of ours, these experiences will work out in our lives.
As we let Him in as actual Lord, and get our ears trained for His quiet voice, there will come to us some of the same things that come to Him. The same Spirit at work within us, and the same sort of a world at work without, will so work against each other as to produce certain other results, now as then. It is not to be an attempt at imitation; it's far more. It is to be obedience on our part, a real Presence within on His part, and a bitter antagonism without on the world's part; rhythmic full glad obedience, a sympathetic powerful real Presence, a tense and intensifying subtle, relentless, but continually-being-thwarted opposition. The key-note for us is simple, full obedience.
There were certain great outstanding experiences in our Lord Jesus' life. Let us briefly notice what these were and group them together. There was the Bethlehem Birth. That was a thing altogether distinctive in itself. It was a supernatural birth, the Spirit of God working along purely human lines, in a new special way, for a special purpose. It was a rare blending of God and man in the action of life. It was followed by the Nazareth Life; that was a commonplace life, lived in a commonplace village, but hallowed by the presence of the Father, and sweetened by the salt of everything being done under that Father's loving eye. The Father's presence accepted as a real thing became the fragrance of that commonplace daily life. And this life covered most of those human years.
Then our Lord turned from the hidden life of Nazareth to the public ministry. At its beginning stands the Jordan Baptism of Power. In the path of simple obedience He had gone to the Jordan, taken a place among the crowds, and accepted John's baptism. And in this act of obedience, there comes the gracious act of His Father's approval, the Holy Spirit came down upon Him in gracious, almighty power. And from this moment He was under the sway of the Spirit of Power. This was the special preparation and fitting for all that was to follow.
At once the Spirit driveth Him into the Wilderness. And for forty days He goes through the great experience of the Wilderness Temptation. In intensity and in prolonged action, it was the greatest experience thus far in His life. He suffered, being tempted. It was a concentration of the continuous temptation of the following years of action. But the Wilderness spelled out two words, temptation and victory; temptation such as had never yet been brought, and met, and fought; victory beyond what the race had known. Temptation came to have a new spelling for man, v-i-c-t-o-r-y. It came to have a new spelling for the tempter, d-e-f-e-a-t.
After His virtual rejection by the nation as its Messiah, (Joh_1:19-28.) and the imprisonment of him who stood nearest Him as Messiah,—John the Herald, there followed the Galilean Ministry. For those brief years He was utterly absorbed in personally meeting and ministering to the crying needs of the crowds. Compassion for needy men became the ruling under-passion. He was spent out in responding to the needs of men. It was not restricted to Galilee, but that stands out as the chief scene of this tireless unceasing service. The Galilean ministry meant a life spent in meeting personally the needs of men.
In the midst of that, made increasingly difficult by the ever-increasing opposition, there came the experience of the Transfiguration Mount. It comes at a decisive turning point, where He is beginning the higher training of the Twelve for the tragic ending, so surprising and wholly unexpected to them. For a brief moment the dazzling light within was allowed to shine through the garments of His humanity. What was within transfigured the outer, the human face and form. And the overwhelming outshining light was evidence to those three men of the divine glory, the more-than-human glory hidden away within this human man.
Then within a week of the end came the Gethsemane Agony. That was the lone, sore stress of spirit under the load of the sin of others. In Gethsemane He went through in spirit what on the morrow He went through in actual experience. Gethsemane was the beginning, the anticipation of Calvary, so far as that could be anticipated. Anticipation here was terrific; yet less terrific than the actual experience.
And then came the climax, the overtopping experience of all for Him, as for us, the Calvary Cross. There He died of His own free will. He died for us. He died that we might not die. He took upon Himself what sin brings to us, while the Father's face was hidden. So He freed us from the slavery of sin, made a way for us back to real life, and so touched our hearts by His love that we were willing to go back.
And close upon the heels of that came the burial in Joseph's tomb. The burial was the completion of the death. The tomb was the climax of the cross. He was actually dead and buried. The corn of wheat had fallen down into the ground and been covered up. There was nothing lacking to make full and clear that Jesus had died.
Then came the stupendous experience of the Resurrection Morning. Our Lord Jesus yielded to death fully and wholly. Then He seized death by the throat and strangled it. He put death to death. Then He quietly yielded to the upward gravity of His sinless life and rose up. He lived the dependent life even so far as yielding to death, and now the Father quietly brought Him back again to life, to a new life.
And after waiting a while on earth among men, long enough to make it quite clear to His disciples that it was really Himself really back again, He quietly yielded further to the upward gravity, and entered upon the Ascension Life, up in the Father's presence. That life is one of intercession. He ever liveth to make intercession for us. (Rom_8:34; Heb_7:25.) He is our pleading advocate at the Father's right hand. (1Jn_2:1; Heb_9:24.) Thirty years of the Nazareth life, three and a half years of personal service, nineteen hundred years, almost, of praying. What an acted-out lesson to us on prayer, the big place it had and has with Him, the true proportion of prayer to all else!
These are the experiences of our Lord Jesus that stand out clear above the mountain range of His life. It was all a high mountain range; these are the great peaks jutting sharply up above the range.