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 Millennial 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