11 A Polished Shaft

HOW OFTEN IN those hidden years must the Tempter have tried to bring upon Jesus a feeling of frustration, of uselessness! Young men are most at home in action, not in patience, and here was a young man who did no miracle, preached no sermon, saved no soul, for the first thirty years of His life. But He came not to do His own will, however good, but the will of Him that sent Him: and it was written in the Book that His Father was to send a Messenger before Him who should prepare His way. How eagerly must He have awaited the appearance of His unknown kinsman, how hard to let the best years of His life pass by in apparent helplessness! The very book He read told of Samuel and David, of Joash and Josiah, who long before their thirtieth year had done great things for God—and here was His Own Son doing nothing. Yet it was also written that Moses the great Leader of the Old Covenant had failed at his first attempt, and that Joseph had spent his best years as a slave in Egypt learning to rule first a large private house and then a large public institution as a preparation for ruling Egypt. Must not He who was to rule the Universe undergo severe training for such a destiny? And so the shaft was polished until neither devil, brethren nor admirers could deflect Him from the path of strict obedience, an obedience which

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won Him the Name which is above every name. He learned by years of patient endurance that God values patience above success, and obedience above ability.

       Yet in addition to all this there came into His heart during these years such a love and compassion for His people, the people of God, that He could rightly be called Israel. As the Kings of England and France were called 'England' and 'France' by Shakespeare, so was Jesus called 'Israel' by the God of Israel. Year after year the pitiable condition of the Jews was borne in upon Him, their corrupt priesthood, proud clergy, famished souls and oppressed bodies. Everywhere He looked there was spiritual starvation and political oppression. The years He had spent listening to dull expositions of the Torah in the synagogue of Nazareth, attending Godless Passovers in Jerusalem, hearing of false Messiahs in Palestine made Him long for His opportunity to preach the Gospel of the Grace of God to them—indeed to tour Palestine, as Wesley was later to tour England, putting the Light into every city, town and village. As year after year passed and His eyes saw the degradation of Nazareth and Galilee (it was no accident that His Father put Him there in a village out of which no saint could be expected to emerge), there in Nazareth which was soon to attempt His murder He tasted to the full the deterioration of human nature without God, and needed not that any should warn Him about it: He had endured it in His own Person. The condition of the Priesthood was of course common property at this time. The Sadducees were little better than the Borgias. the Temple as worldly as the Vatican, the populace as ignorant as the heathen. There grew from day to day a livelier desire to purge this Augean stable, to have a spring-cleaning in His Father's House, to let people see what God had intended the Temple to be. The zeal of His Father's House was

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gnawing at His heart.

       Who can imagine the burden that lay ever more heavily upon the heart of the Man of Sorrows during those years of hidden contemplation, when none but Himself knew what He was thinking, planning, resolving? There lay at the back of His heart through it all a consuming love for His Father and a deep understanding of His sorrows. He determined to reveal His Father to men, that all might see the glory of His character and the power of His might. He realised that this was a people deceived and robbed, blind and imprisoned: and if the people of God were in such a state, what of the Gentiles, sunk in ignorance and debauched by vice? Though they could not be reached by His earthly ministry He was comforted by the knowledge given Him so often through the prophets, that after His death He was to be God's salvation to the ends of the earth. We can only imagine the thoughts of Elijah before 1 Kings 17 by his recorded actions afterwards. The ministry of Jesus that is recorded, and the prophetic word of God, lay bare to us the understanding, the zeal, the determination, the apprehension, the joy, the expectation, the compassion, the anger and the assurance that, as it were, came to the boil during that long apprenticeship, and finally burst forth in a service that never rested until He could cry triumphantly 'I have finished the work Thou gavest Me to do'.

       With a yet keener eye He saw the sin of Israel, and, past that, of the whole world. Here was a problem to be solved not by wisdom alone, but by the suffering of a shameful death. Already He had lifted daily upon his shoulder the Cross first assumed before the foundation of the world. To Him the opening of ministry meant the beginning of death: and the Messenger who called Him out was to greet Him with the words 'Behold the Lamb of God that beareth ... the Sin of the World'. He knew that

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by entering upon His ministry He was putting His first foot upon a path which could only end in Calvary.

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