10 A Sharp Sword

CHRISTIANS VERY OFTEN experience the difficulties of living in the midst of an unbelieving family before whom they may not have free speech. Faith longs to speak, is at its best upon a ready tongue: but here was the Son of God obliged to live in a home that was full of unbelief and antagonism; from day to day to hear all around calling him Jesus bar-Joseph, and expecting Him to enter into communal life as such. At His brothers' and sisters' weddings as one of the family; in the synagogue on the Sabbath as no one in particular; in the shop as an artisan in a small way—how could He continue to believe that in reality He was God Incarnate, responsible for the Redemption of the Universe, the long-awaited Messiah of His people?

       He stayed Himself upon Isaiah 49:1-12. Here was the blue-print of this period of His life, here was the forecast of His hidden years, and also their explanation and enlightenment. He needed this time that He might become a sharp sword and a polished shaft, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, a servant that never disobeys.

       When once He came forth upon His Ministry He must be able to say that though Heaven and earth would pass away, His Words would abide: He must be able to challenge anyone to find a fault in His obedience. As a

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Sharp Sword He could call Himself the Truth, as a Polished Shaft One who came not to do His own will, but the will of Him that shot Him from His Heavenly bow. Elijah had been shot into the midst of Samaria, but swerved aside to a cave in the desert; Jonah had been shot to Nineveh, but had glanced off to Tarshish. Here was one who had been shot to Calvary, and to Calvary He must go.

       Accordingly these long years spread out before Him as years of Bible study and submission of spirit. His submission to Joseph and Mary did but produce in Him a yielded spirit which in later life never rebelled when the Word of His Father opened up some particularly painful scripture. In Isaiah 50:4-9 is the record of this daily discovery in the Bible of that which lay before Him, and of His difficulties in receiving it. If the spirit rejoiced in the Word of God, the flesh was weak and needed to be mastered by a face set as a flint. If Paul had to buffet his body to bring it into subjection, much more the Son of God, before whom lay Calvary and Hades.

       Again, it was in these formative years that He read not only of Calvary but of the glories that should follow. As He told Cleopas, He had but trodden a path clearly laid down for Messiah, a path which they should have recognised as easily as He. Was there ever a day when He led His disciples to the Mount of Olives that Zechariah 14:4 was not in His heart? He left this earth from the very spot that is one day to receive Him back again. As the Scriptures laid out before Him all the glories of the Millenial Reign, all the joy of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, all the happiness of the Ages of the Ages He set his face as a flint to win through, to bear the shame for the joy that lay before Him. The rest of His life from Jordan to Eternity lay before Him in the sacred page, if not in tiny detail at least in broad outline. His High

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Priesthood in Psalm 110, His Royalty in Psalm 2, His Marriage in Psalm 45, His Ministry in Isaiah 61, His Return in Isaiah 63.

       The very words He spoke, the parables He uttered, were culled from the Word of God in the Old Testament. The parable of the Vine from Isaiah 5, the parable of the Good Shepherd from Ezekiel 34, Psalm 23 and other Scriptures. Micah 7:6 burst through His lips in Matthew 10:36. Hosea 6:l-3 inspired His certainty of Calvary, the Resurrection on the third day, and Pentecost. It was all in the Book, and after thirty years it was in the Christ of God. The Book had made the Babe of Bethlehem what He had been before He left Heaven: the written Word had formed the Incarnate Word.

       The modernist has made great play with the Kenosis theory, but the Plerosis has escaped him.* His ignorance of the Scriptures has led him into the same misapprehension of the nature of Christ as that which clouded the minds of the men of Nazareth and Jerusalem. They saw only the carpenter of Nazareth; they missed the Word of God that had been poured into that humble person: they were so obsessed with the ordinariness of the earthen vessel that they overlooked the treasure within. As with the critics, their minds were so filled with the darkness which they loved that they could not see the Light of the World, nor value the Pearl of Great Price. Christ explained their sinful condition by the fact that they knew not the Scriptures. The Light He had was for them too; in Luke 24 He called them fools and slow of heart for missing what He had seen. What a lesson lies here for the Christian of the Last Days!

       The Book has been so designed by God that only the patient student can hope to understand it. It is like a

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jigsaw puzzle in which each separate piece must be found and fitted into its right place. It is here a little, there a little, precept upon precept, line upon line, so that the human reader is repelled by the difficulty of making it all out, and falls backward into ignorance. It takes a man who is prepared to dig for truth, as another digs for gold, with his whole energy and desire to find the wisdom of God and the understanding of the Almighty.

       Such was the Son of God. The first thirty years of His life were spent in digging, digging, digging till He knew what every Rabbi could have known if he too had been prepared to dig. But the Pharisees had taken away the Key of Knowledge. The leaders of the people alone knew the Hebrew which enabled them to read the Scriptures in the original language. How Christ, deprived by his parents of the tuition of the Rabbis, learnt that language we know not. His critics were amazed that He understood it, though He had not been to their schools. He must have taught Himself, as many another humble Christian since His time has taught himself Greek and Hebrew, yes and a dozen languages on the mission field too, that had never been put on paper—from a love of the truth and a desire to please their God. And when in conflict with those who sought to upset Him in argument He had the right answer ready; the sharp sword cut through the net of lies and gave Him victory.

*Greek: Kenosis—emptiness
             Plerosis—fulness

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