Part 2 (2/2)
When John returns from Jerusalem to his home we lose even the dim sight of him which our imagination has supplied. During the silent years that follow we have two thoughts of him,--as a fisherman of Galilee, and as one waiting for the coming of the Messiah. His parents' only thought of him is a life of honest toil, a comfort in their old age, a sharer in their prosperity, and an heir to their home and what they would leave behind. They little think that he will be remembered when kings of their day are forgotten; that two thousand years after, lives of him will be written because of a higher relations.h.i.+p than that of mere cousins.h.i.+p to Jesus; and that their own names will be remembered only because John was their son. Only G.o.d sees in the boy playing on the seash.o.r.e, and in the fisherman of Gennesaret, the true greatness and honor into which He will guide him.
_CHAPTER VII_
_John's View of the Coming Messiah_
In our thoughts of Jesus we have chiefly in mind the things that happened at the time of His birth and afterward. We read of them in the Gospels. John had the Old Testament only, containing promises of what was yet to happen. We have the New Testament telling of their fulfilment.
Thus far we have spoken of Jesus as John knew Him--as a boy in Nazareth, the son of Mary, and his own cousin. We have also spoken of John's ideas of the Messiah. As yet he has not thought as we do of Jesus and the Messiah being the same person. It is not easy for us to put ourselves in his place, and leave out of our thoughts all the Gospels tell us. But we must do this to understand what he understood during his youth and early manhood, respecting the Messiah _yet to come_.
Let us imagine him looking through the Old Testament, especially the books of Moses and the prophets, and finding what is said of Him; and see if we can what impressions are made on this young Bible student of prophecy. His search goes back many years. He finds the first Gospel promise. It was made while Adam and Eve, having sinned, were yet in the Garden of Eden. It was the promise of a Saviour to come from heaven to earth, through whom they and their descendants could be saved from the power of Satan and the consequences of sin. We do not know how much our first parents understood of this coming One: but we feel a.s.sured that they believed this promise, and through repentance and faith in this Saviour, they at last entered a more glorious paradise than the one they lost. That promise faded from the minds of many of their descendants and wickedness increased. But G.o.d had not forgotten it. John could find it renewed by him to Abraham, in the words, ”In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed,”--meaning that the Messiah should be the Saviour of all nations, Gentiles as well as Jews. The promise was renewed to Isaac, the son of Abraham; and then repeated to his son Jacob, in the same words spoken to his grandfather. Jacob on his dying bed told Judah what G.o.d had revealed to him, that the Messiah should be of the tribe of which Judah was the head.
Many years later G.o.d made it known to David that the Messiah should be one of his descendants. This was a wonder and delight to him as he exclaimed, ”Who am I, O Lord G.o.d, and what is mine house! for Thou hast spoken of Thy servant's house for a great while to come.” John must have been taught by his mother that they were of the honored house of David. They, in common with other Jews, believed that the ”great while to come” was near at hand.
John read in Isaiah of her who would be the mother of the Messiah, without thought that she was his aunt Mary. He read that she should call her son Immanuel, meaning ”G.o.d with us,” without thinking this was another name for his cousin Jesus. John would find other names describing His character. His eye would rest on such words and phrases as these--”Holy One;” ”Most Holy;” ”Most Mighty;” ”Mighty to Save;”
”Mighty One of Israel;” ”Redeemer;” ”Your Redeemer;” ”Messiah the Prince;” ”Leader;” ”Lord Strong and Mighty;” ”King of Glory;” ”King over all the earth.”
Most of all John would think again and again of a wonderful declaration of Isaiah, writing as if he lived in John's day, saying, ”Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulders, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, The Mighty G.o.d, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the exercise of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David.”
Had John known that these words of Isaiah referred to Jesus, he might have repeated them, not as a prophecy, but with a present meaning, saying, ”The Child _is_ born!” As he read the prophecy of Haggai, uttered more than five hundred years before--”The desire of all nations shall come”--he might have exclaimed, ”He _has_ come!”
In John's reading in the Old Testament it seems strange to us that some things made a deeper impression on him than did others, and that he understood some things so differently from what we do, especially about the Messiah's kingdom. He noticed the things about His power and glory, but seems to have misread or overlooked those about the dishonor, and suffering and death that would come upon Him. We read in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, how He was to be ”despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, ... wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, ... brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers, ... and make His grave with the wicked.” We know that all this happened. We think of a suffering Saviour. We wonder that John did not have such things in his mind. But in this he was much like his teachers, and most of the Jews. Though, as we have imagined, his family and some others were more nearly right than most people, even they did not have a full knowledge or correct understanding of all that the Old Testament Scriptures taught, concerning these things.
But at last John learned more concerning Christ than any of them. We are yet to see how this came to pa.s.s. For the present we leave him in Bethsaida, increasing in wisdom and stature. So is also his cousin in Nazareth, of whom let us gain a more distinct view before He is revealed to John as the Messiah.
_CHAPTER VIII_
_Jesus the Hidden Messiah_
”There has been in this world one rare flower of Paradise--a holy childhood growing up gradually into a holy manhood, and always retaining in mature life the precious, unstained memories of perfect innocence.”--_H.B. Stowe_.
The aged Simeon in the Temple, with the infant Jesus in his arms, said, ”Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart, O Lord, ... in peace; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation”--the expected Messiah. But it was not for Him to proclaim His having come. The aged Anna could not long speak ”of Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem,” or anywhere else. For awhile the shepherds told their wonderful story, and then died. The angels did not continue to sing their hymn of the Nativity over the plains of Bethlehem. The Wise Men returned to their own country. Herod died, and none thought of the young child he sought to kill. The hiding in Egypt was followed by a longer hiding of another kind in Nazareth. The stories of those who gathered about the infant cradle were soon forgotten, or repeated only to be disbelieved. Mary, and her husband Joseph--who acted the part of an earthly father to the heaven-born child--carried through the years the sacred secret of who and what Jesus was.
We long to know something of the holy childhood. We have allowed our imagination to have a little play, but this does not satisfy our curiosity, nor that desire which we have concerning all great men, to know of their boyhood. What did He do? Where did He go? What was His life at home, and in the village school? Who were His mates? How did He appear among His brothers and sisters? So strong is a desire to know of such things that stories have been invented to supply the place of positive knowledge; but most of them are unsatisfactory, and unlike our thoughts of Him. Thus much we do know, that, ”He grew in wisdom and stature” not only, but also ”in favor with G.o.d and man.”
It has been finally said; ”Only one flower of anecdote has been thrown over the wall of the hidden garden, and it is so suggestive as to fill us with intense longing to see the garden itself. But it has pleased G.o.d, whose silence is no less wonderful than His words, to keep it shut.” That ”one flower” refers to Jesus' visit to Jerusalem just as He was pa.s.sing from childhood to youth, when He tarried in the Temple with the learned Rabbis, asking them questions with which His mind was full, and making answers which astonished them.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PROPHET ISAIAH _Sargent_ Page 50]
A most interesting question arises in connection with that visit; Did Jesus then and there learn that He was the Messiah? When He asked His mother, ”Wist ye not that I must be in My Father's house,” or, ”about My Father's business?” did He have a new idea of G.o.d as His Father Who had sent Him into the world to do the great work which the Messiah was to perform?
There were eighteen silent years between His first visit to Jerusalem, and the time when, at thirty years of age, he made Himself known as the Messiah. They were spent as a village carpenter. He was known as such.
No one suspected Him to be anything more. In His work He must have been a model of honesty and faithfulness. We can believe that ”all His works were perfect, that never was a nail driven or a line laid carelessly, and that the toil of that carpenter's bench was as sacred to Him as His teachings in the Temple, because it was duty.”
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