Quiet Talks about JesusGordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Religion
Quiet Talks about Jesus
Gordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Jesus Christ -- Person and offices
As He turns His face for the last time away from Galilee, and to Judea,
it is with the calmness of strong deliberation. Yet the intenseness of the
inner spirit, in its look ahead, is shown in His face, His demeanor. As He
comes to a certain Samaritan village on the road south, the usual
invitation to stop for rest and a bit of refreshment is withheld out of
respect to His evident purpose. It is clear to these villagers that His
face is set to go to Jerusalem. In Luke's striking language, "_His face
was going to Jerusalem._" What going to Jerusalem meant to Him had no
meaning to them. They saw only that face, and were so caught by the
strong, stern determination plainly written there that they felt impelled
not to offer the usual hospitality.
They were Samaritans, it is true, a half-breed race, hated by Jews, and
hating them, but invariably they had been friendly to Jesus. That must
have been a marked face that held back these homely country people from
pressing their small attentions upon Jesus. They are keener to read the
meaning of that face than are these disciples who are more familiar with
the sight of it. The impress already made upon the inner spirit by the
great event toward which Jesus had determinedly set Himself was even thus
early marked in His face.
Later, on that journey south, as the time and place are nearing, He
strides along the road, with such a look in His face as makes these men,
who had lived in closest touch, "amazed," that is, awed and frightened.
And as they followed behind, they were "afraid." It is the only time it is
said that the sight of His face made them _afraid_. Then He explains to
them what is in His thoughts, with full details of the indignities to be
heaped upon His person. The sternness of His purpose, perhaps not only the
terrible experience of knowing sin at such close range, but, not unlikely,
an anger, a hot indignation against sin and its ravages, which He was
going to stab to death, flashed blinding lightning out of those eyes.
It was, not unlikely, something of the same feeling as made Him shake with
indignation as He realized His dear friend Lazarus in the cold, clinging
embrace of death, sin's climax. The determination to conquer sin, give it
a death thrust, mingled with His acute consciousness of that through which
He must go in the doing of it, wrote deep marks on His face. It is the
beginning already of Gethsemane, as that, in turn, is of Calvary.
Earlier in the last week occurs the incident which agitates Jesus so, of
the Greeks' request for an interview. These earnest seekers for truth,
from outside the Jewish nation, seem to bring up to His mind the great
outside world, so hungry for Him, and for which He was so hungry. But,
quick as a flash, there falls over that the inky black shadow of a cross
in His path, and the instant realization that only _through it_ could He
get out to these great outside crowds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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