T H E K I N Ô ’ S B U S I N E S S
332
September, 1937
Following His Steps By HERBERT LOCKYER Liverpool, England Illustrations by Ransom D . M arvin
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Son of God, He was willing to become the Son of man that He might make the sons of men the sons of God. There you find Him in Bethlehem—the King in disguise. He was born a King, but at the time of His coming what strange surroundings were His! As a King, He must have a palace, and He received a stable. As a King, He must have a throne, and He had it on His mother’s knee. As a King, He must have courtiers, and He had them in the lowly shepherds. Our Lord was willing to humble Himself, to make Himself of no reputation, that He might die as the Sinless Substitute. If we would follow Him, we must begin where our Saviour commenced—to tread the path of lowliness. The Christian life can begin only at the place of the new birth, a place of utter humiliation. We must be stripped of all fancied greatness. T o N azareth From Bethlehem we journey to Nazareth, and, following the steps of the Master, we realize that for Him Nazareth meant patience. We often refer to those thirty years which our Lord spent in Nazareth as the silent years. My friend, if you seem to think the Lord is very slow in pushing you out into what you call Christian serv ice, remember that the Lord Jesus was thirty years preparing for that vital min istry of His of three and one-half years. In Nazareth, you find Him the patient One. He labored at the bench, for was He not a carpenter by trade? Was He not going out into a broken world with power to mend broken lives? Before He entered upon that ministry, he must learn, as a carpenter, to mend broken plows. In that humble home at Nazareth, our Lord had to be patient amid the misunder standings of those who surrounded Him. His mother did not realize the full signif icance of His divine vocation. At the early “Wist ye not that I must be about my age of twelve, He rebuked her, saying:
Father’s business ?” And do we not read that His brothers and His sisters did not believe in Him? He was a mystery to them. As you have it in the Messianic Psalm, He was a stranger unto His brethren, and an alien unto His mother’s children (Psa. 69:8). Still He remained the patient One. He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. Do you find yourself at Nazareth? If so, remember that the Saviour lived there be fore you, and as the Captain of your salva tion He was made perfect through His patient suffering. T o J ordan Following His steps, from Nazareth we go to Jordan, and Jordan stands for endue- ment. At the age of thirty, our Lord turned His back upon His humble home and stepped forth into His ministry. But ere He took up His sacred task, the Holy Spirit came upon Him in peculiar fashion and thereby anointed Him for His mission. The word “Jordan” means “ death,” and our Lord truly died. He died to all thought of reputation, for at Jordan He identified Him self with the sinful race He had come to redeem. For His ministry He required the anointing with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit had been within the Lord Jesus from the time of His miraculous birth, but it was needful also that the Holy Spirit should come upon Him. At Jordan, the Spirit rested upon Him in the form of a dove, indicating the mission of peace that our Lord was about to enter upon. Have you had a “ Jordan” in your Chris tian experience? Do you know what it is to be anointed with the Holy Spirit for serv ice? God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, and you can never function as a fruitful branch of the Vine unless you know something of Jordan with its implication of death to self and its enduement with power from on high.
"For even hereunto were ye called: be cause Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps” (1 Pet. 2:21). T HERE is a sense in which following the Lord Jesus is relative. We can not follow Him in respect to His miraculous birth. W e entered the world along the avenue of natural generation. Not so the Lord Jesus. He was “conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,” and we cannot follow Him there. Neither can we follow Him in respect to His sinlessness. He was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.” We cannot fol low Him in respect to His vicarious suf ferings. The two thieves who endured the same physical agony as the Lord Jesus were dying for their own sin, but the Lord Jesus was dying for the sin of others. Yet there is a sense in which we can follow the actual steps of the Lord Jesus. In his Galatian letter, Paul reminds us that three years after his conversion he went up to Jerusalem and spent fifteen days with Peter, and what wonderful days they must have been 1 What a descriptive guide Peter must have been as he followed the steps of the Lord Jesus and pointed out to Paul the haunts of the Master! They must have been blessed days of fellowship. It is perfectly true that experiences sanc tify places. Some places stand out very prominently in your life and mine because of their happy or sorrowful association. When you come to the life of our blessed Lord, you realize that deep experiences re volve around outstanding places. F ollow H is S teps — to B ethlehem Bethlehem stands for humiliation. Do we realize all that was involved in the incarna tion of our blessed Lord? He humbled Him self, and there you have the commencement of His humiliation. Although He was the
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