For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a demon. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a gluttonous [pg 170] man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! And wisdom is justified by her works.—Matt. 11:7-10; 16-19.
To Jesus prophetism was not merely an historic fact, but a living reality. He believed in present-day inspiration. He and his contemporaries had seen one great prophet, fearless, heroic, with all the marks of the type, a messenger of God inaugurating a new era of spiritual ferment (vs. 12, 13). But John had to bear the prophet's lot. He was then in prison for the crime of telling a king the truth, and was soon to die to please a vindictive woman. The people, too, had wagged their heads over him. Like pouting children on the public square, who “won't play,” whether the game proposed is a wedding or a funeral, the people had criticized John for being a gloomy ascetic, and found fault with Jesus for his shocking cheerfulness. There was no way of suiting them, and no way of making them take the call of God to heart. Long before electricity was invented, human nature knew all about interposing nonconductors between itself and the truth.
Have we ever noticed students interposing a general criticism between themselves and a particular obligation?
Can it be that one of the uses of a higher education is to furnish greater facility in fuddling inconvenient truth?
Fourth Day: Looking Forward to the Cross
And it came to pass, when the days were well-nigh come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem.—Luke 9:51.
In that very hour there came certain Pharisees, saying to him, Get thee out, and go hence: for Herod would fain kill thee. And he said unto them, Go and say to that fox, Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I am perfected. Nevertheless I must go on my way to-day and to-morrow and the day following; [pg 171] for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her own brood under her wings, and ye would not!—Luke 13:31-34.
Jesus early knew that the decision was going against him. He saw the cross on the horizon of his life long before others saw it. Painters have pictured him in his father's carpenter shop, with tools on his shoulder, gazing down at his shadow shaped like a cross. He accepted death consciously and “stedfastly set his face to go up to Jerusalem,” though he knew what was awaiting him. Jerusalem had acquired a sad preeminence as the place where the struggles between the prophets and the heads of the nation were settled. He saw his own death as part of the prophetic succession. He went to it, not as a driven slave, but as a free spirit. That jackal of a king, Herod, could not scare him out of Galilee. His time was in his Father's hand. Today, tomorrow, and the day following, he would work, and then he would be perfected.
Fifth Day: New Prophets to Follow
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and garnish the tombs of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we should not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye witness to yourselves, that ye are sons of them that slew the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye offspring of vipers, how shall ye escape the judgment of hell? Therefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: some of them shall ye kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city: that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of Abel the [pg 172] righteous unto the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom ye slew between the sanctuary and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.—Matt. 23:29-36.