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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Following the Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 33. Living a Nazareth Life
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Living a Nazareth Life
There was a third experience in this group. Our Lord Jesus lived the Nazareth Life. In actual order of time this came before the baptism of power. I have changed the order here, and named it third simply for the practical help in the change. With the Lord Jesus, the whole of the life was under the sway of the Holy Spirit from birth on, through the earliest conscious years, and all the years. With us, in actual experience, we are all free to confess that it has not been so from our Spirit-birth on.
That baptism of power at Jordan was without doubt a baptism of power for leadership and service. Service and leadership ever need the time of special waiting on God, and the fresh anointing by the Holy Spirit's touch, the fresh consciousness of Himself, as the only source of power in the service and leadership.
In our actual experience the Holy Spirit, coming in power, has had much to do in changing our habits, ourselves, and our lives, as well as in our service. There has been so much service that has not been backed up by the life, that many have come to feel, and to feel very deeply, that the power in service must have its roots in the human side, deep down in the daily habit of life. With our Lord Jesus that Jordan experience made no difference of this sort in His life. There was nothing needing to be changed. That Nazareth life had been lived continuously under the control of the Holy Spirit.
Look a moment at that Nazareth life of His. It means simply a commonplace, treadmill round of life lived under the hallowing touch of the Father's presence. This was according to the original plan. It is God's presence recognized that hallows what is common. It is the absence of His presence, that is, the leaving of Him out, that makes common things common; that is, it makes the familiar thing and round seem and feel common. It's the unhallowed and unhallowing touch of the selfish, of sin, that makes things seem common, in the sense of not being holy and sweet and pure and refreshing. Sin makes things grow stale to you. Selfishness affects your eye, the way things look to you. God's presence recognized keeps things fresh. His touch upon us, ever afresh, makes us fresh. Everything we touch and see is touched by a God-freshened hand, and seen through a God-freshened eye.
Now Jesus lived this commonplace round of life, and lived it under the ever-freshening touch of His Father's presence. It isn't the thing you do, nor the things that surround you, that make your life, but the spirit that breathes out of you in the midst of the things. It's the you in you that makes the life, regardless of surroundings. The outer things are the accidents, you, the spirit that breathes out of you,—this is the real thing.
Jesus lived it. That is the tremendous fact that Nazareth stands for. He lived what He taught, and He lived it first, and He lived it far more deeply and really than it could be taught to others. This was the basis of those few service years. Nazareth lies under the Galilean ministry. There were thirty years under the three-and-a-half-years. And the thirty years crop up into and out of the three-and-a-half. The life lived was the great fact at work, as the Man went about doing good. The hidden life of Nazareth lies open in the Galilean ministry.
When you are reading the wonderful works among the needy throngs, you are reading the biography of the Nazareth years, in their outer reach. The life you live is the thing that tells! This is the meaning of the thirty hidden years. The Father said, "My Son shall spend most of His years down there living, just living a true, simple Eden life; living with Me in the midst of home and carpenter shop and village." This is what the world needs so much to be taught, how to live. And the teaching must be by living, teaching by action. The message must be lived.
If we men might live Jesus! That's what the world needs. At one of the smaller meetings of the Edinburgh Conference, in 1910, a Christian gentleman from India, native of that land, said, "We don't need more Bibles in India." And then to this surprising statement, he added, "We have enough Bibles. If the Christians in India would live the Bible, India would be converted." And I thought, that will do for America, and England, and for all the world. Jesus lived it. As a man in His decisions and actions, His habits and daily round, He lived the truth.
The story is told of a missionary in some part of Africa who had not had much success in his work. He was in the habit of explaining some portion of the New Testament to the people at His house. One day the portion contained the words, "give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn thou not away." (Mat_5:42.) The people asked him if this meant what it said. He told them that it did. One of them said he would like to have the table, pointing to it; another asked for a chair, another for the bed, and so on. The missionary was rather startled at such literal taking of his teaching. He told them to come again on the morrow, and he would give his answer.
When they had gone, he and his wife had rather a heart-searching time together. They felt they had not reached the hearts of the people yet. But to do as they asked meant real sacrifice of a very personal sort. At last with much prayer they decided to meet the people where they had opened the way. And so the next day they gave their answer, and soon the house was literally bare of all its furnishings. And that night they slept on the floor, yet with a sweet peace in their hearts in the midst of this strange experience.
The next day the people came back, carrying the furniture. They had really been testing these new-comers. "Now," they said, "we believe you. You live your Book. We want you to teach us." And with open hearts they listened anew to the Gospel story, and many of them accepted Christ.
The little incident reveals the unity of the race. Those Africans said what England and America and all the world is saying, "Live it." Is your religion livable? What the world needs today is a Jesus lived, not simply taught, nor preached about, but lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. How the fire, the holy fire, of that sort of thing would catch and spread! Oh, yes, it might mean sleeping on the bare floor! That's what living-it means, the actual life overriding any mere thing that stands in the way.