The Boy Jesus and other sermons

Front matter

f

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

AND OTHEE SERMONS

Preface

In the Providence of God I have been laid aside from the ministry of the pulpit, but there is still left to me that of the press ; and in my months of silence I have had great comfort under my affliction in the selection and preparation for publication of the discourses which form this volume.

I hope also in this way to prolong my usefulness as a preacher of that gospel to the furtherance of which I gave my life at first, and would give it again, only with more intensity than ever, if 1 had the opportunity.

Praying that, as in the preaching of them originally, so now in the printing of them, these sermons may, in the hands of God's Holy Spirit, be the means of blessing to many souls, I lay them upon his altar, as a thankoffering for countless mercies.

New York, October, 1893.

Contents

Page

I. The Boy Jesus • 1

II. The Gospel according to John the Baptist ... 17

I. The Boy Jesus

A Christmas Sermon.

The boy Jesus. — Luke ii. 43 (Revised Version).

I prefer the reading of the Revisers, because it marks the difference between the original word, which in the common version is rendered " child " in the fortieth verse, and that which is translated by the same English term in the text. In the Greek, the former is (irathLov) the diminutive form of the latter (7rat?). The former denotes a little child, and is especially appropriate to one in the years of early infancy ; the latter signifies a young person, and is used of one at any age from infancy up to manhood. Besides, having regard to the statement of the forty-second verse, that he was now " twelve years old," nothing could be happier or more idiomatic than the rendering given by the Revisers, " The boy Jesus."

Our subject, then, this morning is the boyhood of him whose coming into the world is uppermost to-day in all our thoughts. Now, when we turn to the Gospel narratives, with the view of learning what they contain in reference to this portion of the life of Christ, we are at once impressed by two things, — first, the marvellous silence

l which the Evangelists have maintained concerning the years between his infancy and manhood ; and second, the still more marvellous character of the records which they have preserved belonging to that interval.

We notice, first, a marvellous reticence. We have full particulars regarding his birth, and the wonders which were attendant thereon. Luke tells us of the annunciation made by the angel to the Virgin ; of the appearance of the angel to the shepherds, and of the song of the heavenly host. And Matthew gives us an account of the coming of the wise men to Bethlehem under the guidance of the star ; of the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, and of their return to Palestine, where they took up their abode in Nazareth. But from that point on, till his baptism at the Jordan, we have only one incident of his life recorded. That, as we shall see before we close, was remarkable enough ; it is even more so than the silence of the authors of the Gospels concerning everything else. Now, when we remember how, in regard to others whose lives have been afterward noteworthy, whether as warriors or teachers, the tendency of all biographers has been to gather up every trifling detail which might help to show that the boy was " father to the man," and magnify it into importance; above all, when we know what manner of things have been told in the Apocryphal Gospels in regard to the doings of Jesus himself during his boyhood, — it is impossible to believe that this silence of the Evangelists is altogether accidental. They had ample opportunities, either by application to Mary herself, or by referring to the brothers of Jesus, who were brought up beside him, and who at a later date became his disciples, of acquainting themselves with the real facts ; they were themselves men of like passions with others,

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and if left to themselves they would have been just as likely to insert these in their memorabilia as ordinary biographers are to dwell upon the child-life of their heroes. Whence, then, this reticence ? The only satisfactory answer, as it seems to me, which can be given to that question is that they were under supernatural guidance ; and few stronger confirmations of the inspiration- of the Evangelists are to be found than that which one receives from the contrast between the Apocryphal Gospels and the narratives of Matthew and Luke in this regard. As one has said of these spurious productions, " They are particularly full of the sayings and doings of the childhood of Jesus. But they only show how unequal the human imagination was to such a theme, and bring out by the contrast of glitter and caricature the solidity and truthfulness of the Scripture narrative. They make him a worker of frivolous and useless marvels, who moulded birds of clay and made them fly, changed his playmates into kids, and so forth. In short, they are compilations of worthless and often blasphemous fables." 1 This wonderful silence of the Evangelists, therefore, tantalizing as we may sometimes feel it to be, becomes, when rightly regarded, a valuable and striking proof of their divine inspiration.

But still the question presses for an answer in another shape, " Why were they guided by the Inspiring Spirit to preserve this reticence ? " and to that, perhaps, no complete answer can be given. But one has been offered, and may be mentioned here, as suggesting a profitable train of thought. As I have already incidentally hinted, there were other children besides Jesus in the house of Joseph. They are called in the narrative " the brothers of the Lord;" and there has been much

1 Stalker's Life of Jesus Christ, p. 18.

controversy as to who they were, — whether the children of Joseph by a former marriage, or the first cousins of the Lord on his mother's side, or the children of Joseph and Mary born subsequently to the birth of Jesus; but it would not be profitable to enter here upon the merits of that discussion. Suffice it to say, that with Neander, Farrar, and not a few others, I have been led to adopt the view that these brothers were the children of Joseph and Mary. They were, of course, younger than Jesus, but they shared the Nazarene home with him for many years ; and it is noteworthy that both Mark and John agree in the statement that they remained unbelievers in his claims to the Messiahship until after his resurrection. Now, this fact may help to explain the silence of the Evangelists concerning the boyhood of the Lord. As Neander says : " It is not to be wondered at that the prophet was without honor among those who dwelt under the same roof, and saw him grow up under the same laws of ordinary human nature with themselves. True, this daily contact afforded them many opportunities of beholding the divinity that streamed through the veil of his flesh ; yet it required a spiritual mind and a lively faith to recognize the revealed Son of God in the lowly garb of humanity. The impression of humanity made upon their senses day after day, and thus grown into a habit, could not be made to yield to the divine manifestations, unless in longer time than was required for others ; but when it did yield, and after such long-continued opposition they acknowledged their brother to be the Son of God and the Messiah, they only became thereby the more trustworthy witnesses." 1 But if the record of such a life as that which they thus daily observed had been given by the

1 Neander's Life of Christ, p. 33.

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Evangelists, then it might have done for others what the observance of that life did for them ; and so it might have kept its readers from fully realizing the deity of the Son of Man. As Ellicott has observed : " The material and familiar was a hindrance to their recognition of the spiritual, — a hindrance, be it not forgotten, which in their case (that is, the case of the brothers of the Lord) was removed, but a hindrance in the case of those who could not have their advantages, which might never have been removed ; an obstacle to a true acknowledgment of their Lord's divinity, against which faith might not have been able to prevail." 1 If that view of the matter be correct, then it is easy for us to see that in this particular portion of the sacred history, " the prerogative of solemn reserve," which Scripture has assumed to itself, is for us a matter of thankfulness rather than of regret.

But now, in the second place, we find that such records as are given of the Saviours boyhood are even more marvellous than is the general silence to which we have referred. Exclusive of the account of the visit to the Temple when he was twelve years old, these records are entirely comprised in the following statements : " And the child grew, and waxed strong, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him." " And he went down with' them, and came to Nazareth ; and he was subject unto them." u And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men." Now, I have said that these utterances are more marvellous than the silence. Ordinary writers of such a history, standing merely on the human side, would have given us records of wonders that revealed his deity, and would have been most concerned to estab-

1 Historical Lectures on the Life of the Lord Jesus, p. 101.

lish the reality of that ; but these statements are all concerned with his humanity, and go to prove the genuineness of that. The Apocryphal Gospels invent miracles rather than have none at all ; but the inspired Evangelists dwell on the reality of the boyhood, and on the evidence thereby furnished of his true humanity. Does not that suggest that the Gospels were written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and from the divine standpoint ? From that standpoint it was the humanity that was the miracle. Gf that, therefore, chief mention is made. To us the mystery of the incarnation is that deity should tabernacle in humanity ; but to the celestial ones the mystery of it is that humanity should be the tabernacle of deity. Merely uninspired writers, therefore, might be expected to put forward the marvels that indicate to men the presence of deity, while those inspired by the Spirit of God speak, as we see here, of the proofs of the fact that it was a true humanity in which deity did dwell. And, in all soberness, the words of Luke, in the verses which I have quoted, take us into the very heart of the mystery of the incarnation. We do not marvel to read that " the grace of God was upon him." But when we remember that we are reading of him who was the Word, who as the Word was God, and who became flesh, and then pause over the phrases, Jesus " advanced in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and men," we are enveloped in mystery. We do not, it is true, as a general rule, feel so much difficulty over the assertion that he increased in stature, as we do over the saying that he increased in wisdom ; and yet it was just as natural that he should do the one as the other, and there is really as much of mystery in the one as in the other. What the Evangelist means to tell us is that Jesus was a real boy, and that his human growth and

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development were subject to the ordinary laws of child and boy life. From his birth, indeed, deity tabernacled within him ; but, however great the mystery, that did not interfere with his progressive human life. It conditioned it, indeed, so that it was entirely sinless, — a perfect life ; yet, thus far, only the perfect life of a boy ; and as a boy he had no advantage over other boys, save in the moral safeguards which were furnished by the residence of deity within him. When he came to earth, as Paul tells us, " he emptied himself," — that is, as I understand the words, he laid aside, not his deity, but all the accessory advantages which belong to him in right of his deity, or what the same apostle calls the " form of God ; " and he took upon him " the form," with all its limitations and conditions, first of a little child, then of a boy, then of a man. He had to learn to speak like other children. He had to learn to think like other children. He had to learn to read like other children. None of these things came to him by virtue of his divine omniscience. He had to acquire them all just like other children. That belonged to the limitation which his incarnation imposed on him. Indeed, it was involved in his incarnation. He grew in knowledge just as he grew in physical stature.

Now, with these things in our minds, let us go down with him to Nazareth. He was " brought up " in the household of Joseph, who is described as a " just " or " righteous " man, and must, therefore, have been a pious Jew ; while all that we know of Mary — the most exalted among women — proves her to have been a woman of genuine piety, of great strength of mind, and of far more than average intelligence. Their home was that of working people, — simple, unpretending, pious. And as Lois and Eunice instructed Timothy out of the

Scriptures, so, we may well believe, would Mary and Joseph talk to Jesus of the wonderful things in their national history. They told him, doubtless, the stories of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and Joseph, of Moses and Samuel; and perhaps in the home, certainly in the synagogue, — when he was old enough to understand the readers there, — he would become acquainted with the Psalms of David, and the ritual and history of his people.

Then, after the custom of the Jews at that time, when he was six years old he would be sent to school. For by an accomplished writer we are told that u eighty years before Christ, schools flourished throughout the length and breadth of the land. These schools were free, and were for all alike. Education was taken up as a national work, and laws were passed fixing the location and the form of school buildings, the number of children to one teacher, the age of pupils, and the duty of parents in preparing their children for school, and in watching over their studies. By much effort a law was passed making education compulsory ; but at first that law did not apply to Galilee, yet Galilee had its village schools which were open to all. We know that Jesus could read and write ; and we may well suppose that at the usual age he was sent to school with the other children of the village. This school at Nazareth was not like the high schools in our great cities, or the academies of our large towns and villages, where children are taught a little of almost everything ; but it was a sort of parish school, kept by an officer of the synagogue, and the children were taught to read, to write, and to cipher, and were made to learn by heart the Bible history and the Psalms that were used in public worship. Besides this, they had lessons in the meaning of the sacred law, and in the moral duties of life. . . . The teacher wore a tur-

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ban, and a long robe or gown, fastened with a girdle, around his waist. He sat upon a cushion, with his legs crossed under him, . . . and the children sat crosslegged in a circle upon cushions on the floor. They had no desks, but held their books or scrolls in their hands ; and whatever the teacher told them they would repeat together after him at the top of their voices. One can see just such schools now in Egypt and Syria." 1

This account may help us, without doing any violence to probability, to realize the school -life of " the boy Jesus and I am particular to bring it out to-day, for two reasons : first, because it may tend to reconcile the boys and girls among us to what they sometimes think is the drudgery of school-life, to remember that " the boy Jesus " went to school just as they are doing now. He did not shrink from all that was required of him there, in order that he might fit himself for the work which he was afterward to accomplish ; and if he who came to be our Saviour did all that for our sakes, it is only showing gratitude to him when we seek to make the best of ourselves through education for his sake. What a school-boy he must have been ! Such schoolboys try you to be ; and when you come to hard places in your lessons, or to difficulties in your intercourse with school-fellows or teachers, then lift your hearts in prayer to him who was once at school himself. You will be sure of his sympathy, and you will not be left without his assistance.

But I have dwelt thus on the school-life of " the boy Jesus " for a second reason ; namely, that I might show you how impossible it is to account for the intellectual greatness of Christ by the environment in which

1 Jesus of Nazareth, a Book for Young People, by Joseph P. Thompson, D.D., LL.D., pp. 76, 77.

we find him. Think of the carpenter's home and the village school of Nazareth ; then read the Sermon on the Mount, and the discourses reported in John's Gospel, and say if it be possible to believe that a young man of thirty, who was no more than a mere man, and who had only these advantages, could have been their author. Surely, the question of the Jews themselves is in order here, " How knoweth this man letters, having never learned ? " — that is, having never been at any such recognized seminary as those of Hillel and Gamaliel. There is no doubt that Jesus, being a young man, did make these discourses, which by common consent have been regarded as the greatest utterances formulated in human speech ; there is just as little doubt that he had in his boyhood no greater advantages than we have described, and so, not to speak at all of his moral perfection, his intellectual pre-eminence becomes an enigma for which nothing short of miracle can account.

But in speaking of what we may call the education of " the boy Jesus," we must not forget the locality of Nazareth. The place itself, indeed, had no enviable notoriety in the land, and there was ground enough for the question of Nathanael, " Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " but its situation was one both of beauty and of interest. The valley to which it gives its name is hidden among the hills that bound the northern edge of the plain of Esdraelon, and forms a pretty basin about a mile long by a quarter of a mile broad. To the northwest is a hill much higher than the others, the side of which is marked by little ridges, and along these the houses stand in rows, as one has said, " like a handful of pearls in a basin of emerald." Down among some olive-trees in the valley is a spring, now called the Fountain of the Virgin, to which, per-

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haps, Jesus may have accompanied his mother when she went to draw water ; and when he was old enough, he must have gone often to the top of the hill behind the town, — from which at a later date his townsmen were for casting him down, — and there feasted his eyes on the magnificent panorama that opened before him. It was not only a goodly prospect in itself, but it was covered with the most spirit-stirring historical associations. On that great plain before him many decisive battles had been fought. Far away yonder was Carmel, where Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal, and Elisha had his quiet retreat. Within sight, also, were Gilboa, on which Saul fell before the Philistines ; and Tabor, where Deborah rallied the armies of Israel against Sisera. Yonder, again, was Jezreel, where the Tishbite bearded Ahab in the vineyard which he had made his own by murder. Wherever he looked he was confronted by some historical association, and so such a prospect was to the Jewish boy much what the view from the battlements of Stirling Castle is to the young Scotchman with the halo of piety added to that of patriotism ; and even to look intelligently upon it, would be itself an education. It was thus a fitting locality for the training of him who came to set up the kingdom of God on the earth, and to reclaim the allegiance of the nations to their God.

These, then, were " the schools and schoolmasters " of "the boy Jesus," — Joseph, his mother Mary, the school, the synagogue, the locality ; and under the combined influence of them all he grew until he was twelve years old, when the one recorded incident of his boyhood occurred, and to that I must now very briefly direct your attention. Though his mother taught him much, there is no evidence to show that she said anything to him about the circumstances of his birth, or the mission on which, according to the saying of the angel, he was sent. The probability rather is that she kept all these things in her heart, and waited with patience for the manifestation of anything in himself which might give token of the fulfilment of her anticipations. The truth in all likelihood was that as he grew in intelligence, so he grew into the knowledge and recognition of the deity which from the first dwelt within him. There were probably landing-places in the stairway up which he ascended to the full recognition of his own divine Sonship and Messianic dignity ; but he went up that stairway gradually, and perhaps the attainment of the first of these landing-places by him was connected with the visit to Jerusalem which now he made. At least, it was during that visit that he made the first recorded utterance which indicated that already he felt within him and recognized the stirrings of that divine indwelling with which from the first he had been endowed.

The occasion is familiar to you all. When among the Jews a boy had reached the age of twelve, he became what was called " a son of the law," and was expected to conform to all the requirements of the Mosaic ritual. Hence it was usual for him to be taken then for the first time to the Temple of Jerusalem, to the greatest of the three annual feasts. Such an occasion was always an epoch in the history of a youth, for the scenes which passed before his eyes, both on the way to Jerusalem and in the Holy City itself, were well calculated to awaken his mind to earnest though tf illness. It was in fact the mental birth-time of many. The songs which the pilgrim* chanted on their journey ; the beauty of the country through which they passed ; the magnificence of the city to which they went ; above all, the grandeur of the temple, with its imposing wor-

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ship, — all combined to make this first visit memorable to a boy, and gave to his after life a new significance. It stimulated curiosity, it evoked power, it turned the mind into the direction of holy things ; and as Jesus was a real boy, we have every reason to believe that this going up to Jerusalem for the first time would be quickening to him in the highest degree. We do not wonder, therefore, that most of all in the metropolis he was attracted to the schools of the Doctors, and that with the eagerness natural to his age he took advantage of the opportunity to ask such questions as he had been pondering in his heart. Nay, so absorbed did he become in this employment — as interesting and suggestive to the teachers, we may believe, as it was instructive to himself — that when it was time to take their departure Joseph and his mother could not find him. At first they supposed that he was with some companions in the caravan, and they went a day's journey on their homeward way ; but when after search that evening he was not found in the company, they returned to the city, where, on the following day, after a long search, they discovered him, much to their surprise, among the students. " Son," said his mother, " why hast thou thus dealt with us ? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing." And he replied, " How is it that ye sought me ? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ? " " My father," as if he had said, " did not require to seek me. He knew — what it is strange you did not know — that I must be about his work." Thus he indicates his realization of his divine Sonship, and makes plain that he has come to the perception of his true life-work. The words must have gone to Mary's heart as with an electric thrill, reviving in her the memories of the Annunciation and of Bethlehem ; so she said nothing in reply, but laid the saying away among those which she had so often pondered, and all of which were yet to be so completely fulfilled. But now he returns with her to Nazareth, — recognizing that as an essential part of his Father's business, — and patiently, through eighteen years, he wrought at the carpenter's bench, waiting the time for his fuller manifestation, when to this earliest word of Messianic consciousness he should add these others, " My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." " I must work the work of him that sent me while it is day ; the night cometh when no man can work ; " and not to cease until he could say, " I have glorified thee on the earth ; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." " It is finished."

I have left myself no time to draw any lessons from this review of the Saviour's boyhood. I name only three inferences from this first recorded saying of the Lord :

It is a great thing to find out that God is my father. This never can be true of any one of us in precisely the same sense as it was true here of " the boy Jesus ; " but in a very real sense we must live beneath the level of our true selves until we discover that we are the children of God. We are all familiar with the story which tells how a poor dissipated man was roused to reflection and reformation by overhearing a little boy protesting against the cruelty which some children were inflicting on a kitten, in these words : " You must not hurt it, for it 's God's creature." But a deeper and more powerful influence comes into the heart with the assurance that we are God's sons ; and to have that assurance we must be " born again." The new birth is the doorway into the new relationship, and " to as many as

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receive him, to them does Christ give power [or the right] to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." This is fundamental. If we have not begun here we have not begun at all. We must be born again, and that birthday is the grandest anniversary to us of all the year.

But further, here be it observed that this consciousness of God's fatherhood involves in it the obligation to be about God's business. Duty springs out of relationship, and so the son must render filial service to his father. I am aware, indeed, that some would render this memorable sentence thus : " Wist ye not that I must be in my Father's house ? " But our preference here is very decidedly for that translation to which we have been so long accustomed, and so taken it furnishes a suggestive example for us. The Heavenly Father must have our highest love, and our most devoted service. When Joseph Neesima was meditating his flight from Japan, in order to get the education for which he longed, he was held back for a great while by that regard and reverence for his earthly parents which Buddhism had instilled into him. After a time, however, he found some Christian primers from which he learned that he had a Father in heaven ; and believing that when He called His authority was supreme, the way was opened up for his setting out on that perilous but most interesting enterprise, which finally took him back as a Christian teacher to his native land. Now, similar it is with every man who comes to the discovery for himself of the great fact that through the new birth he has become a son of God. Every other relationship becomes henceforth subordinated to that. The Father's business is now the supreme end of life, and anything he does is done by him as a department of that. Here is a test that will infallibly reveal to us whether or not we are the children of God. Let us apply it honestly, and see truly whose we are. Is God's business our constant care ; or do we make it merely an appendix to that which we regard as our true life-work ?