Quiet Talks on Following the Christ

by S. D. Gordon

In the midst of that, made increasingly difficult by the ever-increasing opposition, there came the experience of the Transfiguration Mount. It comes at a decisive turning point, where He is beginning the higher training of the Twelve for the tragic ending, so surprising and wholly unexpected to them. For a brief moment the dazzling light within was allowed to shine through the garments of His humanity. What was within transfigured the outer, the human face and form. And the overwhelming outshining light was evidence to those three men of the divine glory, the more-than-human glory hidden away within this human man.

Then within a week of the end came the Gethsemane Agony. That was the lone, sore stress of spirit under the load of the sin of others. In Gethsemane He went through in spirit what on the morrow He went through in actual experience. Gethsemane was the beginning, the anticipation of Calvary, so far as that could be anticipated. Anticipation here was terrific; yet less terrific than the actual experience.

And then came the climax, the overtopping experience of all for Him, as for us, the Calvary Cross. There He died of His own free will. He died for us. He died that we might not die. He took upon Himself what sin brings to us, while the Father's face was hidden. So He freed us from the slavery of sin, made a way for us back to real life, and so touched our hearts by His love that we were willing to go back.

And close upon the heels of that came the burial in Joseph's tomb. The burial was the completion of the death. The tomb was the climax of the cross. He was actually dead and buried. The corn of wheat had fallen down into the ground and been covered up. There was nothing lacking to make full and clear that Jesus had died.

Then came the stupendous experience of the Resurrection Morning. Our Lord Jesus yielded to death fully and wholly. Then He seized death by the throat and strangled it. He put death to death. Then He quietly yielded to the upward gravity of His sinless life and rose up. He lived the dependent life even so far as yielding to death, and now the Father quietly brought Him back again to life, to a new life.

And after waiting a while on earth among men, long enough to make it quite clear to His disciples that it was really Himself really back again, He quietly yielded further to the upward gravity, and entered upon the Ascension Life, up in the Father's presence. That life is one of intercession. He ever liveth to make intercession for us.^[53] He is our pleading advocate at the Father's right hand.^[54] Thirty years of the Nazareth life, three and a half years of personal service, nineteen hundred years, almost, of praying. What an acted-out lesson to us on prayer, the big place it had and has with Him, the true proportion of prayer to all else!

These are the experiences of our Lord Jesus that stand out clear above the mountain range of His life. It was all a high mountain range; these are the great peaks jutting sharply up above the range.

At the Loom.

Now these peaks, these outstanding experiences, as you look at them a bit, seem to fall naturally into three groups. There were certain experiences of power and of privilege, the Bethlehem Birth, the Jordan Baptism, the Nazareth Life, and the Galilean Ministry.

There were experiences of suffering and sacrifice, the Wilderness Temptation, the Gethsemane Agony, the Calvary Death, and the Joseph's Tomb of Burial.