Part 12 (1/2)
1. The Jordan: The Decisive Start.
2. The Wilderness: Temptation.
3. The Transfiguration: An Emergency Measure.
4. Gethsemane: The Strange, Lone Struggle.
5. Calvary: Victory.
6. The Resurrection: Gravity Upward.
7. The Ascension: Back Home Again Until----
The Jordan: The Decisive Start
<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 s.p.a.ce, and time, and so on comes in this way. A man knows s.p.a.ce only by seeing or thinking through s.p.a.ce. 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 G.o.d'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 antic.i.p.ation 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 G.o.d, and so, true service in helping men back to G.o.d.
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.