S. And the Child Grew

AND THE CHILD GREW

TEXT: And the child grew, and waxed strong, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him… And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. - Luke 2:40-52. This one paragraph covers at least twenty-eight years of our Lord’s life, and maybe thirty. He began to be about thirty years old when he was baptized. His ministry at the outside calculation lasted between three and four years. As he was declared to be an infant on his return from Egypt, this paragraph of thirteen verses covers all the period of time from his infancy until he was thirty years old, upon which I wish to remark first, the reticence of the Bible. How prurient is human curiosity, how laboriously and even shamefully have men tried to fill up this gap of twenty-eight years with some additional accounts of the childhood of Jesus Christ! The fathers of the church, not indeed the very early fathers, but those of the centuries in which the Christian religion had greatly degenerated, invented histories of the childhood and infancy of Jesus. They are not only manifest forgeries, but ridiculously spurious. Some of them put modesty to blush, and their utter discordance in spirit, style and matter with the inspired Word of God is apparent on every page. When a great man rises up and fills the vision of the people, the reporters begin to look back into his childhood to see what promise there was then of the greatness to which he has attained, and the obscurity that rested over his youthful years is penetrated at every point by a sensational curiosity, in order to drag from the silence and mistiness of past years any little incident of his cradle or schoolboy days that can be paraded as a prophecy of that to which he has attained, and precisely the same method was adopted in the case of Jesus and with about like results. A vast deal of what is genuinely apocryphal can be found in the subsequent histories of the childhood of great men and women. The reticence of the Bible upon this subject draws and maintains a clear and sharp distinction between a God-inspired record and a human record. Next I would have you note the clear teaching of this lesson on the humanity of Jesus Christ as manifested in his development: “The child grew, and waxed strong, filled with wisdom.” “And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature.” In other words, his humanity was not a mere appearance. It was an actual humanity. His mind and body as a child were susceptible of the same development as the minds and bodies of children of the present day, or of any period of the world’s history. Very clearly and necessarily does the pure humanity of Jesus Christ appear, so that it may never be forgotten. In thinking about Him as the Messiah, and in dwelling upon that divinity whose wisdom is incapable of addition or diminution, we must not forget that on the score of his humanity there was the same necessity for development in him as in any other child. And it is this very fact that suggests the great lesson today to which your attention has been called. In the case of every child there is a crucial period. It came to Jesus when he was twelve years old. According to the Jewish interpretation of the Law of Moses, this was the turning period in a boy’s life. Every male inhabitant was required at this age to go up to Jerusalem to attend the three great annual feasts. The women were not compelled to go. The girls were never compelled to go, but just as soon as a boy reached the age of twelve the interpreter of the Law said to him, “You must go up to Jerusalem. You have now reached that age when the law must be your life-study. You now become a son of the law. You must learn the significance of the great feasts and the import of the sacrifices,” and that is why this visit is recorded. As the Law required his circumcision on the eighth day, his presentation in the Temple as a first-born male on the fortieth day (Leviticus 12:2-6) and his attendance on the annual feasts in his twelfth year, according to the Jewish customs, so this much of his child-life is recorded. Nothing to gratify curiosity, nothing to minister to superstition, but everything to show his complete obedience to every commandment of God. Now this period of twelve years of age leads me to present a theme, as I take it, of wonderful importance. I hear expressions quite frequently to this effect: “Receive no child into the church. They are too inexperienced in life’s trials. They are incapable of understanding what it means to join the church.” I am not satisfied with the logic of this undue caution nor with its practical effects. It seems to me that it can be shown that what oftentimes happens in the after life of children who early unite with the church need never happen, and that it may safely be attributed to other causes than early church connection. As I understand it, the argument is about this: As at an early period in life the trials of later years cannot be comprehended because of immaturity of mind, nor their temptations realized in the absence of experience, a child who unites with the church will be sure in later years to question the fact of his conversion, when experimentally subject to the attractions of pleasure, wealth and ambition. It is argued that one should wait until these tremendous temptations have had full sway so that it cannot be determined safely just where one is ultimately to be placed with reference to them. I desire to respectfully submit that this position is as untenable as it is plausible. If the argument holds good against a child professing faith in Jesus Christ, it is just as potent at any subsequent period of life from the simple fact that life has not one fixed period of trial, but many, and each succeeding period is a new world to its predecessor. The experience of a married life opens up as wide and unknown territory to a collegian as college days open up to a high school student or as the academy reveals to the lower grades. So parental obligations, the business struggle for existence, the duties of citizenship, the strife of politics present a new world to the happy bridegroom and the blushing bride. That is, if there are difficulties in young manhood and young womanhood that cannot be anticipated by a child ten years old; and if these things which cannot be anticipated are sufficient reasons for not then professing Christianity, then the argument would hold good that there is an equally undiscovered country before the young man and the young woman, and then before the married couple, and then before the business man, and finally after you become thirty-five or forty years old, and even older, there is a dark stretch of country ahead of you as thoroughly unknown to your experience as any past period, and that is the dispensation of God’s afflictions. You cannot anticipate it. When it comes, even though you may be fifty, sixty, or seventy years old, you are unprepared to see the wife die, the son die, the daughter die, friends die, acquaintances pass away, to feel the solitude and isolation of being left alone when those who commenced life’s journey with you have all gone and to see that the young generation knows nothing about you and cares nothing about you. When you come to any of these you will find the same difficulty of adjustment that embarrassed the ten-year-old child when confronted with the exigencies of young manhood and young womanhood. I say then that if the argument is worth anything it is just as much against avowing and openly professing your faith in Christ at one period as at another. Indeed, the age cuts no figure in the case. Whether the professor is twelve years old or fifty, the only question for consideration is this: Is the profession of faith credible? The main thing I desire to show today is that this lesson in the life of our Lord suggests how one may be well enough prepared for any new experience of life, whatever it may be, and so well prepared for it when it comes that it need not shake the religious foundation upon which your heart’s hopes have rested, and that the peculiar difficulties of each period may, by the power of God, be made valuable to your training and development rather than to your discomfiture. The secret may be told in one sentence: With physical and mental development there should be a corresponding spiritual development. Let us read the text and see: “And the child grew, and waxed strong, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him…. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature.” He not only advanced in stature and intellect, but he advanced in spiritual wisdom. He not only advanced in the favor of men, but he advanced in the favor of God. And where there is this corresponding development of the inner man, then there is nothing to be apprehended from any of the new experiences which come from enlargement of physical stature, or from expansion of mental powers, or from the trials of life’s succeeding periods. But no matter how old you are, if there has not been a corresponding enlargement of your spiritual nature, you will be just as helpless to meet the exigencies of your situation as the child may be who, joining the church at ten years of age, is shaken in his faith by the temptations of youth and by the trials of manhood. I say that there is no exemption on account of age as to this, and if the child who is early converted shall be so trained as that the spiritual nature shall enlarge in proportion as the physical and mental nature enlarges, then the fact of early conversion will be largely to his advantage. Instead of being a disadvantage it will be a positive help; and more readily than the one who was converted later in life will he be prepared for life’s exigencies, of whatever nature. The Apostle John expresses the true thought when he writes to Gaius, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper, and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” That is, make as much money as you please. I wish you may make a great deal of it, and have all the health possible. Only, covet neither wealth nor health beyond soul prosperity. Keep your soul on top. That is, if the prosperity of our soul keeps pace with our making of money and with our healthfulness of body and of mind, there is no harm done. It is the law of God that the whole man should be developed in due relation and proportion, and the trouble comes, not from the fact that one was converted and joined the church early, but from a neglect of the inner man. That is the trouble. It becomes necessary to look at this matter somewhat in its detail, in order to see its force. Unquestionably, if the mind of a boy in the public school or in the college is developed more than his soul is developed, then the intellectual predominates over the spiritual. Jesus didn’t grow that way. He waxed in physical and mental stature as he increased in spiritual wisdom. But if the conditions under which young professors of religion receive their education are such that the development of the soul is neglected while the mind is cultivated, they will naturally in later years question their conversion. Mental development is a wonderful thing. The mind begins to analyze, it gradually acquires power to examine with thoughtfulness into the most abstruse problems of mathematics.; it enlarges its historical horizon and increases its range of information. It acquaints itself with manners and customs of the different ages and different peoples of the world. And with that intellectual increase, unless there be a co-equal enlargement of the inner man, there comes conceit and pride and that soul is subject to temptation on that ground. In the same way, if a young man, being educated so far as schools accomplish that work for him, goes out into the business of life, whatever that may be-let us suppose that he concludes to be a professional soldier or sailor-and when he has finished his collegiate course and then his course in his special profession at West Point or at Annapolis, there comes into his young heart something entirely new, an experience he has never felt before. There rises an ambition to excel in his profession. If he be a sailor, feeling the authority conferred upon him as an officer of the United States, and making himself acquainted with the difficult problems of mathematics as they apply to navigation and gunnery and the tremendous power that comes from the mechanical inventions that bear upon armor and upon arms, upon projectiles and explosives, the stirrings of a mighty ambition are in him and he already sees the insignia of an admiral on his shoulder. Now I maintain that such ambition is as new a thing to him and as dangerous as the trials of young maidenhood or young manhood are to the one who joins the church at ten years of age. He is just as liable under these new conditions to make shipwreck of a profession avowed at sixteen as of one avowed at twelve. Only one thing is an effective safeguard a corresponding enlargement of his spiritual nature. Has it kept pace with his intellectual development? Has it grown strong enough to meet the stirrings of ambition in his heart? Is it able to grapple with those inordinate desires after power that are so seductive in their nature to the young heart, and can it place them in subordination to the higher nature? Now I have received this past week a letter that suggested this theme, which by a strange coincidence happens to be the Sunday school lesson today. The letter is from a young member of this church, one who joined the church early, one, who in his youth, while many faltered or fell by the wayside, remained stedfast in his Christian profession, who in all the college period was as steady in his loyalty to Christ as the magnet to the pole; who even passed the period of an early married life still as unshaken as the everlasting rock; but who now writes me that there has come upon him the great crisis of his life. He has met for the first time consciously the temptation of an inordinate ambition, and says, “Pray for me. Send me my church letter. Let me join here. I must not drift away from Christ.” In that letter is shown the clearest perception of the true relation of the inner and outer man that I have seen in twenty years of observation and reading. He has fully recognized what it will mean to him if ambition shall dominate; if even a desire to excel in an honorable profession shall so fill his vision and absorb his attention and divert and distract his mind as that when night comes he shall forget to pray, so he writes: “I need to be in touch with the spiritual influences that will keep me true to my Lord and Saviour.” The attraction of wealth had never touched him. The attraction of pleasure had been of no more power against his Christian armor than were Robin Hood’s arrows against De Bracy’s coat of mail at the storming of Frontde-Boeuf’s castle in Scott’s Ivanhoe. But here ambition comes, that mounting and vaulting devil, and he has met an enemy. Your case may be quite different. You are perhaps just a girl, say of ten years of age, and having learned to love and trust your Saviour, you come with the tears of joy in your eyes and say, “Let me follow my Saviour.” Perhaps the older brethren, knowing that you have not touched that awful boundary which tries a woman’s soul, may shake their heads and say, “you had better wait.” I say, “Don’t wait!” None would say wait if you were sixteen. But beyond sixteen is that maelstrom called society, which may be a greater foe to grace in your case than ambition to a lieutenant in the navy. The seductiveness of its distinctions, its ceaseless rounds and imperious exactions, its all-absorbing worldly-mindedness have turned more religious professions awry among women than ambition has among men. Our lesson from the life of our Lord furnishes the only remedy. Always grow in the inner man as you grow in the outer. There may be here today some Christian boy, whose near future holds a startling temptation, to-wit: The rapidity with which a certain financial venture shall pay a tremendous per cent on the principal invested. Midas had never before touched him with the magic wand of gold. The Elysium of Croesus had been veiled from his sight up to that time. But when an investment of $200 suddenly realizes $2,000, what a glitter the gold takes on, what a sheen the silver, what a felicitous rustling of the crisp bank notes; how it does make his chest enlarge to feel his heart beat against a big bank account in the book in his breast pocket! And it all at once comes to him with a rower never dreamed of before: “I will be a king on the exchange. I will rule the market.” And a voice that he never heard before is echoing in his heart like the cry of the horse leech’s daughter: “Give, give, give me more, more and yet more!” “And when this craving lust wants more I will take my brain’s brightest thought and give that. I will take my spare moments that I once gave to friendly and pleasant converse with my family and give that. I will take the time that should have been devoted to the instruction of my children and give that. I will even rub off the glow and down of the sweet peach of love and give that. I will coin all the affection of natural relations into money and give that. I will even take my hitherto priceless honor and give that. I will go with no unshrinking foot, as in the past, and stand upon the boundary line of moral questions as to the methods of money-making, but I will only ask one question: Can I do it without being caught? Can I do this and be within the margin of man’s law?” Is not this a young miser on his way to a miser’s doom? If indeed he be a child of God, what is to keep him from the downfall of usefulness? That downfall has not been hastened, but it has been retarded by an early profession of religion. If his life as a Christian is wrecked in its usefulness, it is not because he joined the church when young, but because he has not waxed in spiritual wisdom as he developed in other directions. That is the trouble. Now to bring this matter to a close, I want to put one or two matters very briefly but very clearly before you, that will show you how to guard successfully against the new temptations that arise in the new experiences of life, whatever they may be. We get at these guards by studying the life of Jesus. Listen at His expression: “My Father!” He was not talking about Joseph. “My Father!” What then is the first guard? The guard of true relationship to God. Oh, if the Holy Spirit has ever taught your stammering tongue and trembling lips to say, “Abba, Father”; if that holy and indissoluble spiritual relation is established between your orphaned and outcast soul and the God of Heaven, that is the first guard, the guard of true and genuine relationship to God. Well, what next? The guard of a religious mission “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” Now, if though a child of God you have never yourself found out and no one has ever taught you that in connection with that religious relation there is also a religious mission, then there is where your trouble will commence. How was Jesus guarded? Always before Him, as one view which no cloud could shut out from His sight, was this thought: “I have a religious mission in this world. That is why I am here. I came for that. More, ten thousand times more, than any other mission is the mission to glorify God while I live here in this life. ‘Father, Father, I have glorified thee. I came to glorify thee.’” It is to have a religious mission, to feel that the light in your soul, the light of conversion, if it is no brighter than a wax taper, has a mission, that it is the design of the God who kindled its quenchless flame, and though it be only a lowly light, and though it shine only on some low coast point, to yet keep it burning and let it shine, that some poor shipwrecked sailor seeing it may take heart again-that is the glory of a Christian mission. Oh, how defenseless, how like an unwalled city, is that Christian who has never felt that he has a religious mission, who has supposed that the transaction ended by his simply professing religion and joining the church! The Lord have mercy on your misguided soul! How shall you be able to stand when the enemies come in on you like a flood; when the siren of pleasure shall beckon, when the hope of wealth shall gild the skies of your future, when the minarets and turrets of successful ambition’s gorgeous air-castles flash before the sight of your eye? What shall guard your soul if you do not feel that you have a religious mission? Well, what is the next point? With that mission comes the sanctity of its obligation, embodied in the word, “duty.” “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” Only twelve years old, but there is an obligation on me, though just that old. “I must,” and we hear the same “I must” later on in life when He felt the shadows of the dark conflict of crucifixion coming on Him, and He cried out in the same voice: “I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work.” A ship may indeed be well built, and master workmen may have laid its keel and stepped its masts, and rigged it with ropes and shrouds, and it may have been cargoed with the choicest luxuries of commerce, but if there be no compass of duty to point out the true course yonder, whither, ah! whither will she drift or drive? There must be a port of destination. Though the sun shine not, though the storms gather, keep your helm steady; and though foes endeavor to cross your path and shift you into lateral seas, duty points with an inflexible finger to your port, “There, there.” I do wish that instead of talking about the folly of avowing your profession of religion, just as soon as you have any to profess, you would take to your heart the obligation that grows out of that mission, “I must, I must. Do not try to beguile me to sleep on flowery beds of ease. Do not invite me to step over the stile because the King’s highway is difficult, and on that other path there is shade and ease. I must keep this narrow way, and I will not turn aside lest I get into Doubting Castle and Giant Despair’s cold grip crush out of my heart the warm love of my first espousal to Jesus.” What next? You must not only feel all the import of the word “duty,” but this word, “food.” When Jesus so stedfastly pursued His way in accordance with His mission and governed by His duty to fulfil that mission, the disciples could not understand how He could hold out physically. They went off to buy provisions and were startled when they came back to find that Jesus was not hungry. Why? He had feasted: “I have meat to eat that ye know not of. It is my meat and drink to do the will of my Father that is in heaven.” It is not only “I must,” but obedience is my nourishment. From it I get my strength. It is my soul’s nutrition. And if I should even lose sight of “must” I cannot forget hunger, soul-hunger. The soul of a truly converted man or woman hungers to do the will of God, and is fed by doing the will of God. Not only food, but more. Life, according to God’s strange constitution of our being, cannot altogether be made up of mission and duty and food. We are strangely constructed with reference to happiness. We want to be happy. It is sweet and pleasant to be happy. The soul cannot uphold itself when only tears and sadness constitute its portion. There must be joy; there must be delight; there must be the thrilling sensation, the heart leaping, the exultation of joy. Well, what is said about Jesus? “I delight to do thy will, O God!” This is not “I must.” This is not “my mission,” but a richer, sweeter thought. It is more than my duty. It is my everlasting joy to serve God. I admit there is a passing fragrance in the flower; that there is an evanescent glory in the rainbow, which vanishes in the storm. I admit that there is some joy, some pleasure in wearing the crown which ambition offers, or in reaping the rewards which fashion bestows on her votaries, but I do deny in the name of the Holy One, that these joys are comparable to the delight that comes to the soul in the service of God. I delight to study thy Book. I delight to walk in the path that has been impressed with the print of the feet of Jesus. I delight, as I go along, to merge and harmonize my experience with the worthies of old-patriarchs, evangelists and martyrs-and as I get nearer home my joy finds its wings enlarging and expanding. There is more power in the pinion and wider sweep in its beat. It can soar higher and sustain itself longer, until like the enraptured eagle who leaves his eyrie on the summit of the loftiest mountain and soars to the sun, at last a dim speck, gilded with the rays of light that wrap him about, he vanishes in a blaze of glory. So they that wait often on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up as on eagle’s wings; they shall run and not faint; and as each victory is won and each height attained, and hope ever beckoning, says, “Higher, higher!” from each eminence accomplished, the glad soul looks back and says, “I rejoice. I am happy. I delight. I delight to do thy will, O God!” Sunday school of the First Baptist Church, you had this lesson today of the childhood of Christ. Oh, how I have prayed in the beginning of this new year, that its great lesson might enter your heart. Will you go away and forget the sweet thought of relationship to our Father? Will you go away and forget that every child of the Father must have a religious mission? Will you forget that with that mission comes the obligation, “I must, I must?” And that, with that obligation, performed, there comes food, your meat and drink? And with the assimilation of that spiritual food there comes joy? I delight to do thy will, O God! It makes my soul sad when I see my own children or the children of any of my brethren and sisters showing plainly that they are waxing in physical and intellectual strength out of all proportion to the increase in spiritual stature. We must not forget this lesson. Our thoughts must dwell on it. We must pray about it, and sometime in the grace of God, and by the crowning of His sweet favor, we shall, from the pinnacle of perfection in heaven, look back over the lowlying ground of this warfare, and oh, how much brighter will become heaven’s skies, and how much sweeter heaven’s songs, if we can turn to the dear Lord and say, “Master, we never would have been here, but we kept right in thy path.” His track I see, and I’ll pursue, The narrow way till Him I view. Now, I behold the Lord in righteousness; now have I awaked in His likeness, and I am satisfied.