Reader, just think what a birthday is. Your birthday is the day on which you were born. The day on which God sent you into this world, giving you a free will to fight for Him or against Him. And every year regularly since that day you have had a birthday. You have been getting every year nearer and nearer to the grave, nearer and nearer home. And what is the home to which you have been drawing nearer, God’s or Satan’s? Has every fresh birthday found you growing in grace as well as in age? Can it be said of you, as it was of our blessed Lord, He "increased in _wisdom_ and stature, and in favour with God and man?" Remember that such wisdom as that mentioned there is not to be got out of learned books. It is the same kind of wisdom that Solomon had, the gift of Almighty God. Learned men write learned books, and we read their writings with delight. But a queen even took a long, a toilsome journey in person to hear the wisdom of Solomon, for he was the wisest man on earth. Just think for a moment how old you were last birthday. How many of those years can you truthfully say have been spent in the service of Christ? Jesus Christ passed thirty years here on our earth, thirty weary, sorrowful years, and He can truthfully say that every day of those thirty years was passed for you and for me! Yes, reader, every day and every hour! He bore the mocking laughter of the Jew, and the idle scoffing of the Gentile, that He might know what ridicule meant, and might help you to bear it too. He worked in the carpenter’s shop that He might know what labour was, and understand what weariness means. He saw that foxes had holes, and the birds had their nests, while He had no place in which to lay His head; and all this He suffered, that He might know the full bitterness of the cup of misery drunk by the houseless, homeless poor. And He knew too that each year, each birthday, brought Him nearer to death, and what a death it was! Oh! have you ever thought of the pain of knowing all this beforehand? Perhaps now and then, (but very rarely,) you sit down on your birthday to think of your death-day. But God has mercifully hidden from your eyes the manner and circumstances of your death. It wasn’t so with Christ. Whenever the thought of death came into His mind, there would rise up before Him a vision of three crosses of wood on a hill outside a city. Crowds of people would be standing round, and Roman soldiers keeping guard. On two of the crosses would be nailed thieves; on the centre one Himself, the Lord of life and glory. I remember seeing a picture a few years ago in London by a well-known artist. He had painted a boy standing near a carpenter’s bench in a village workshop. He had been working hard, and was now resting, and in the act of stretching Himself. Both arms were extended at full length, and the head leant slightly on one side. A woman, kneeling on the floor behind Him, was looking at some treasures in a large chest.