<u>The Anvil of Experience.</u>
Experience is going through a thing _yourself_, and having it go _through_
you. And "through" here means not as a spear is thrust through a man's
body, piercing it, but as fire goes through that which it takes hold of,
permeating; as an odor goes through a house, pervading it.
A man _knows_ only what he experiences; what he goes through; what goes
through him. He knows only what he is _certain_ of. And he is certain of
only that which he _experiences_.
It is one of the natural limitations of our humanity that it is so. Even
the primary knowledge of space, and time, and so on comes in this way. A
man knows space only by seeing or thinking through space. He knows time
only by living consciously through some moments of time. Such knowledge is
primary only in point of time.
Experience is weaving fact into the fabric of your life. The swift drive
of the double-pointed shuttle, the hard push of the loom back and forth
_goes through you_.
Experience is sowing truth in actual personal occurrences. The cutting,
upturning edge of the plow, the tearing teeth of the harrow, go on inside
your very being, while perhaps the moments drag themselves by, slow as
snails.
Experience is hammering truth into shape upon the anvil of your life,
while the pounding of the lightning trip-hammer is upon your own quivering
flesh. It is seeing that which is most precious to you, so dear as to be
your very life, seeing that in a furnace, seven times heated, while you,
standing helplessly by, hope and trust perhaps, and yet _wonder_, even
while trusting, wonder _if_--(shall I say it the way your heart talks it
out within?), or, at most, wonderingly watch with heart almost stopped,
and eyes big, to see _if_ the form of the Fourth will intervene in _your_
case, or whether something else is the Father's will.
Experience is the three young Hebrews stepping with quiet, full,
heel-to-toe tread into the hotly flaming furnace, not sure but it meant
torture and death, only sure that it was the only right thing to do. It is
the old Babylonian premier actually lowering nearer and nearer to those
green eyes, and yawning jaws, and ivories polished on many a bone, clear
of duty though not clear of anything else.
A man having a financial understanding with his church, or a contract with
his employer, or a comfortable business, may be an earnest Christian,
living a life of prayer and realizing God's power in his life, but he
cannot know the meaning of the word _trust_ as George Mueller knew it
when he might waken in the morning with not enough food in hand for the
breakfast, only an hour off, of the two thousand orphans under his care,
and in answer to his waiting prayer have them all satisfied at the usual
breakfast hour. George Mueller himself did not know the meaning of "trust"
before such experiences as he did afterwards. No one can. We _know_ only
what we _experience_.
Now Jesus became a perfect man by means of the experiences He went
through. He is an older _Brother_ to us, for He has gone through ahead
where we are now going, and where we are yet to go. He was perfectly human
in this, that He did not know our human experiences, save as He Himself
went through those experiences. With full reverence be it said of the
divine Jesus, it was necessarily so, because He was so truly human.
The whole diapason of human experience, with its joyous majors and its
sobbing minors, He knew. Except, of course, the experiences growing out of
sin. These He could not know. They belong to the abnormal side of life.
And there was nothing abnormal about Him. It was fitting that Jesus,
coming as a man to save brother men, should develop the full human
character through experience. And so He did. And forever He has a
fellow-feeling with each of us, at every point, for He Himself has _felt
our feelings_.
Jesus' experiences brought Him suffering; keen, cutting pain; real
suffering. Where there is possible danger or pain in an approaching
experience there is _shrinking_. It is a normal human trait to shrink from
pain and danger. Jesus' experiences in the suffering they brought to Him
far outreach what any other human has known. He shrank in spirit over and
over again as the expected experiences approached. He shrank back as none
other ever has, for He was more keenly alive to the suffering involved. He
suffered doubly: in the shrinking beforehand; in the actual experience.
But, be it keenly remembered, shrinking does not mean _faltering_. Neither
suffering in anticipation nor actually ever held Him back for a moment,
nor an inch's length, nor in the spirit of full-tilted obedience to His
Father's plan. This makes Jesus' experiences the greatest revealers of His
character. He was sublime in His character, His teachings, His stupendous
conceptions. He was most sublime in that wherein He touches us most
closely--His experiences.
With a new, deep meaning it can be said, knowledge is power. We humans
enter into knowledge and so into power only through experience.
Experiences are sent, or when not directly sent are allowed to come, that
through these may come knowledge, through knowledge power, through both
the likeness of God, and so, true service in helping men back to God.
Let us, you and I, go through our experiences _graciously_, not
grudgingly, not balking, cheerily, aye, with a bit of joy in the voice and
a gleam of light in the eye. And remember, and not forget, that alongside
is One who _knows_ the experience that just now is ours, and, knowing,
sympathizes.
There were with Jesus the commoner experiences and the great outstanding
ones: the mountain range with the foot-hills below and the towering peaks
above. From His earliest consciousness until the cross was reached, Jesus
ran the whole gamut of human experiences common to us all, with some
greater ones, which are the same as come to all men, but with Him
intensified clear beyond our measurements.
These greater experiences were tragic until the great tragedy was past.
Each has in it the shadow of the greatest. The Jordan waters meant turning
from a kingdom down another path to a cross. The Wilderness fight pointed
clearly to successive struggles, and the greatest. The Transfiguration
mount meant turning from the greatest glory of His divinity which any
earthly eye had seen to the little hill of death, which was to loom above
the mount. Gethsemane is Calvary in anticipation. Calvary was _the_
tragedy when love yielded to hate and, yielding, conquered. There love
held hate's climax, death, by the throat, extracted the sting, drew the
fang tooth, and drained the poison sac underneath. Love's surgery.
And the tinge of the tragedy remains in the Resurrection and Ascension in
lingering scars. They are still in that face. It is a scale ascending
from the first. In each is seen the one thing from a different angle. The
cross in advance is in each experience, growing in intensity till itself
is reached, and casting its shadow as it is left behind.
<u>Our Brother.</u>
Through the crowds at the Jordan River, there quietly walked one morning a
Man who came up to where John stood. He took a place in the line of those
waiting to be baptized, so indicating His own intention. John is absorbed
in his work, but as he faces this Man, next in order, he is startled. This
is no ordinary man. That face! Its wondrous purity! That intangible
something revealing the man! That spirit looking through those eyes into
his own! In that presence he feels his own impurity. It is the instant
unpremeditated recognition by this fine-grained Spirit-taught John of his
Master, his Chief. The remonstrance that instinctively springs to his lips
is held in check by the obedience he at once feels is due this One.
Whatever _He_ commands is right, however unexpected it may be, or however
strange it may seem.
Why did Jesus go to John for baptism? The rite was a purifying one. It
meant confession of sin, need of cleansing, a desire for cleansing, a
purpose to turn from wrong and sin and lead a new life. How _could_ Jesus
accept such a rite for Himself? Why did He? Read in the light of the whole
story of Jesus the answer seems simple. Jesus was stepping down into the
ranks of man as His _Brother_. The kingdom He was to establish among men
was to be set up and ruled over by man's Brother. The salvation was to be
by One, close up, alongside. The King will brush elbows with His subjects,
for they are brothers too. No long-range work for Jesus, but personal
touch.
In accepting John's baptism, Jesus was allying Himself with the race of
men He had come to lead up, and out, as King. He was allying Himself with
them _where they were_. It was not the path always trodden by man in
climbing to a throne. But it was the true path of fellowship with them in
their needs. He was getting hold of hands, that He might be their leader
up to the highlands of a new life. He steps to their level. He would lift
from below. He would get by the side of the man lowest down. It was clear
evidence at the start that He was the true Messiah, the King. He was their
_Brother_. He would get down alongside, and pull up with them side by side
out of the ditch of sticky mud up to good footing.
And mark keenly--and the heart glows a bit at the thought--the point He
chooses for getting into that contact with His brothers. It is _the point
where they are turning from sin_. John's baptism meant turning from sin.
It is at that point that Jesus comes forward. A man can always be
live-sure of Jesus meeting him there, close up, with outstretched hand. He
is waiting eagerly, and steps up quickly to a man's side as in his heart
he turns from sin.
But there's more yet. Read in the after light cast upon it there is much
more. This was the voluntary path away from the kingdom. It was the
beginning of all that came after. The road up the hill of the cross not
far away led out of those waters. This was the starting point. Jesus
calmly turned His face for the time being--a long time it has proved--away
from the promised Kingdom of His Father and toward the planned cross of
Satan.
It meant much, for it was the _first step_ into the path marked out. What
the Father had chosen for Him, He now chooses out for Himself. So every
bit of service, every plan, must be _twice chosen:_ by God for a man; by
the man for himself as from God. He entered eagerly, for this was His
Father's plan. That itself was enough for Jesus. But, too, it was the path
where His needy brothers were. That would quicken His pace. It was the
road wherein He would meet the _enemy_. And with a fresh prayer in His
heart and a quiet confidence in His eye He steps into the road with that
calmness that strong purpose gives.
As it proved there was danger here for Him. This was not the way approved
by man's established ideals for starting a kingdom. He was driving
straight across the carefully marked out roads of man's usage. He was
disregarding the "No trespassing" signs. There was danger here. A man
cutting a new path right across old ones meets stubborn undergrowth, and
ugly thorn hedges. Jesus struck the thorns early, and right along to the
last getting sharper. And they tore His face badly, as He cut the way
through for His brothers.
Yes, there were dangers as He pushed His way through the undergrowth down
to the water. Poison ivy thick, and fanged snakes darting guiltily aside
from fear even while wanting to strike in, tangled, gnarly roots hugging
the ground close, and bad odors and gases, and the light obscured--dangers
thick! And these Jordan waters prove chill and roily. His stepping in
stirs the mud. The storm winds sweep down the valley. A bit of a hill up
above to the west casts a long sinister shadow out over the water.
And He must have known the dangers. No need of supernatural knowledge
here. His familiarity with David and Jeremiah and other Hebrew writers,
His knowledge of human nature as it had grown to be, His knowledge of a
foe subtler than human, the fine sensitiveness of His finely organized
sensitive spirit--these would lead Him to scent the danger.
But He falters not. The calmness of His will gives steadiness to His step
down the river's bank. Aye, the dangers lured Him on. He had a keen scent
for danger, for it was danger to His race of men, whose King He was in
right and would prove Himself in fact. He would draw the thorn points by
His own flesh that men might be saved their stinging prod and slash. He
would neutralize the burning acid poison of the undergrowth by the red
alkaline from His own veins. He would use the thorns to draw the healing
salve for the wounds they had caused. He would put His firm foot on the
serpent's head that His brothers might safely come along after. This was
the meaning of His plunge into the swift waters by John's side.
The intense significance of this decisive step by Jesus is brought out
strikingly by what follows. What followed is God's comment upon it. Quick
as the act was done came the Father's approval. John's crowds were not the
only intent lookers-on that day. Jesus stands praying. Since He is going
this road it must be a-knee. Then the rift in the upper blue, the Holy
Spirit straight from the Father's presence comes upon the waiting Man and
the voice of pleased approval. And the heart of Jesus thrilled with the
sound of that approving voice. He could go any length, down any steep, if
He might only ever hear that voice in approval. Then the Holy Spirit took
possession of Him for the earth-mission. In the pathway of obedience down
that rough steep came the coveted power of God upon Him.
Three times in His life the Father's voice came, and each time at a
crisis. Now at the plunge into the Jordan waters, which meant brotherhood
with the race, and meant, too, a frostier chill of other waters later on.
At the opening of the Greek door through which led an easy path to a
great following, and away from a cross, when Jesus, with an agony
intensified by the intensified nearing of those crossed logs, turned His
step yet more steadily in the path He had chosen that first Jordan day.
And between these two, on the mountain top, when the whole fabric of the
future beyond the cross hung upon three poor wobbling, spiritually stupid,
mentally untrained Galilean fishermen.
This is the meaning of that step into the Jordan. It was the decisive
start.