Go and Tell Jesus E-Book

Octavius Winslow

• Herausgeber: Darolt Books
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Hope messages for quarantine
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 48

Beschreibung

"Grace and Truth!" Magnificent and expressive words! Let not the Christian reader unfold these pages with the extravagant expectation of finding within them anything approaching to a consecutive and elaborate treatise upon these vast and lofty themes. They have no pretension of this kind. He will be disappointed, looking for this, in meeting with familiar, simple, and unconnected illustrations only, of these great subjects; not, however, the author trusts, the less important, precious, or sanctifying. What is Grace? It is the heart of God overflowing His free mercy in Christ to fallen man, coursing its benignant way through our lost world, and outmeasuring the ravages and the triumphs of sin. For, "where sin abounded, GRACE did much more abound." What is Truth? Momentous question! The anxious inquiry of every age, of every Church, of every lip. Pilate knows it now. And he might have known it when the question first fell from his trembling lips for ETERNAL and ESSENTIAL TRUTH stood as a criminal at his bar! But summon the witnesses, and they shall testify what is truth. Ask the devils who beheld His miracles and quailed beneath His power, and they will answer "It is Jesus, the Son of God Most High." Ask the angels who beheld His advent and announced His birth, and they will answer "It is the Savior, who is Christ the Lord." Ask His enemies who nailed Him to the tree, and they will answer "Truly it is the Son of God!" Ask His disciples who were admitted to His confidence, and who leaned upon His bosom, and they will answer, "We believe and are sure that it is Christ, the Son of the living God." Ask the Father, testifying from the 'secret place of thunder,' and He will answer "It is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Summon witnesses from the inanimate world. Ask the water blushing into wine ask the sea calmed by a word ask the earth trembling upon its axis ask the rocks rent asunder ask the sun veiled in darkness ask the heavens robed in mourning ask all nature agonized and convulsed, as He hung upon the tree and all, as with one voice, will exclaim Jesus is TRUTH. Happy are they, who, through the teaching of the Holy Spirit, receive Jesus into their hearts as the truth believe in Him as the truth walk in Him as the truth, and who, under the sanctifying influence of the truth, are employing their holiest energies in making Him known to others as "the way, the truth, and the life" thus, like their Lord, "bearing witness unto the truth."

Leseprobe

INTRODUCTION

At that time Herod the tetrarch heard the reports about Jesus, and he said to his attendants, "This is John the Baptist; he has risen from the dead! That is why miraculous powers are at work in him."

Now Herod had arrested John and bound him and put him in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, for John had been saying to him: "It is not lawful for you to have her." Herod wanted to kill John, but he was afraid of the people, because they considered him a prophet.

On Herod's birthday the daughter of Herodias danced for them and pleased Herod so much that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. 

Prompted by her mother, she said, "Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist." The king was distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he ordered that her request be granted and had John beheaded in the prison. His head was brought in on a platter and given to the girl, who carried it to her mother. John's disciples came and took his body and buried it. Then they went and told Jesus. Mt. 14:1-12

GO AND TELL JESUS

As if to illustrate the nature and test the efficacy of His great and gracious expedient of saving sinners, it pleased the redeeming God that the first subject of death should be a believer in the Lord Jesus. Scarcely had the righteous Abel laid his bleeding lamb upon the altar that altar and that lamb all expressive of the truth, and radiant with the glory of the person and work of the coming Savior before he was called to seal with his blood the faith in Christ he had professed.

But if the first victim, he was also the first victor. He fell by death, but he fell a conqueror of death. He lost the victory, but he won the battle. Thus was the “last enemy” foiled in his very first assault upon our race. The point of his lance was then turned, the venom of his sting was then impaired, and, robbed of his prey, he saw in the pale and gory form his shaft had laid low the first one of that glorious race of confessors, that “noble army of martyrs,” who in all succeeding ages should overcome sin, hell, and death, by the blood of the Lamb.

It was on an occasion similar to the death of the first martyr, that the passage suggesting the subject of these pages was written. Falling a sacrifice to his fidelity, as Abel had to his faith, John was now a mangled corpse the victim of Herod’s sin and cruelty. Taking up the headless body of their master, the disciples of John bore it to the tomb, and then went and poured their tale of woe into the ear, and laid their crushing sorrow upon the heart of Jesus. “And his disciples came and took up the body and buried it, AND WENT AND TOLD JESUS.” It was, perhaps, their first direct communication with the Savior. They had known but little of Jesus until now.

Another being had engaged their interest, and occupied their thoughts. Absorbed in their admiration of the star that heralded its approach, they had scarcely caught sight of the Sun which had just appeared above the horizon. In vain had John, with characteristic lowliness, reminded those who he was not the Messiah, and but His forerunner. Wedded to their master, they thought of, clung to, and loved only him. John must therefore die the star paling and disappearing before the deepening splendor of the divine ascending Orb.

All this was the ordering of infinite wisdom and love. The removal of John was necessary to make his disciples better acquainted with Jesus. They had heard of Him, had seen Him, and in a measure believed in Him; but they never fully knew or loved Him until now that profound grief brought them to His feet. What a Divine Savior, what a loving Friend, what a sympathizing Brother Jesus was! How truly human in His affinities, compassionate in His heart, gentle in His spirit! They had no adequate conception until the surge of sorrow flung them upon His sympathy. Ah! How they clung to Jesus now! Owning no other master, seeking no other friend, repairing to no other asylum in their lonely grief, “they went and told Jesus.”

Favored disciples! Honored men! Oh! How many now hymning their praises in heaven, or still watering their couch with tears on earth, will alike testify that until God smote the earthly idol, or broke the human staff, or dried up the creature spring, JESUS was to them as an unknown Savior and Friend. Blessed, thrice blessed sorrow that leads us to Jesus! That sorrow dark, deep, though it be will wake the harp of the glorified to heaven’s sweetest melody. The bitterest grief of the saint on earth will issue in the sweetest joy of the glorified in heaven because that grief, sanctified by the Spirit, brought the heart into a closer alliance and sympathy with Him who was emphatically a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”

We know so much of divine truth, my reader, as we have in a measure a personal experience of it in our souls. The mere speculatist and notionalist in religion is as unsatisfactory and unprofitable as the mere theorist and declaimer in science. For all practical purposes both are but ciphers. The character and the degree of our spiritual knowledge begins and terminates in our knowledge of Christ. Christ is the test of its reality, the measure of its depth, and the source of its growth.