^-:Jl!!^'^r,:^ * APR 2 1904 * Division Section The Hidden Years at Nazareth The Hidden Years at Nazareth By Rev. G. Campbell Morgan Pastor of New Court Congregational Church Tollington Park, London Author ot Discipieship "New York Chicago Torokto Fleming H. Revell Company Publishers of Evangelical Literature Copyright, 1898, by Fleming H. Revell Company . '* Thou art My beloved Son, in whocn I am well pleased***— Mark i. u. ** h not this the carpenter ? ** Mark vi. 3. The Hidden Years at Nazareth HE soul's first vision of Jesus is of Him as the Saviour. When we so know Him, He becomes to us the exemplar, leaving us an exam- ple, that we should follow in His steps. He is more than an example in any ordinary ac- ceptation of that term, for He not only reveals to us the pat- tern of our lives, but He also brings the power by which we 7 The may grow up into Him in all Hidden Years at things, and so reproduce in actual living the perfect and wondrous pattern that He shows. But we must clearly understand that we never get back into the life of Jesus save by the way of His death. His death is evermore the gate of life to man — not only a gate to the eternal life that stretches beyond this place and time of conflict, but the gate into the eternal life which we live to- day, if we are living in direct and positive communion with Himself. Having known Him as the Saviour, and having found our way into the realm 8 of life at the cross, then He The Hidden becomes our example, and all Years at , 1 1 • • 1 1 • r Nazaretii that He is m the revelation of the fourfold gospel marks His intention for His people. Now, beloved, let us seek to learn the purpose of Christ for us in one particular de- partment of life. It is not given to every man or woman to serve God in public places; the great ma- jority must live their lives out- side any prominent sphere, and as part of a very small circle of relatives and acquain- tances. Men will not hear even the names of the great mass of the people who are 9 The living their life throughout the Hidden Years at world to-day. I want to know ^ ^^ what there is in the life of Jesus that helps such persons. We are accustomed to think of Him as one in a public min- istry, as the man of the mar- ket-place and the crowd, the teacher who " spake as never man spake," the healer whose touch brought life and blessing to hundreds, the man who re- buked sin in high places and spoke words of infinitely sweet pity and kindness to the child and the young dis- ciple; but the greater part of His life was not lived in those places where we have grown lO most familiar with Him, but The Hidden in quiet seclusion, where the Years at J Nazareth great crowd of men and women will always live in this world. Yet how little we know concerning that period! how meager is the biblical information! I do not say it is not enough ; I believe it is enough; but in the mere matter of words, how small it is! I have the story of His birth, and then 1 lose sight of Him for twelve years. Then I see Him again, going out to His Jewish confirmation, be- coming the son of the law in that Jewish congregation, ask- ing questions of the doctors, II The and answering theirs. Ah, it Hidden Years at is a wonderful glimpse, a glit- tering flash, and then I lose Him again for eighteen long years, at the end of which time He comes to be baptized of John in Jordan, and begins His public ministry, and I see a few rapid pictures of miracles and tears and love and sym- pathy, and He is gone! If you will write, in the manner in which the lives of the men of to-day are written, the story of the daily life of Jesus, how diminutive and meager it is! What of those eighteen years? Where was He? What was He doing? As one whom 12 He has ordained to preach His The Hidden gospel in this public ministry, Years at I am intensely interested in the way He spoke to men and acted among men in His pub- lic years ; but the majority will feel that they would be better served by a revelation of how He acted amid the common- place surroundings of every- day life. Let us, then, try and see Him in those eighteen hidden years. The two verses that I have read are the only two that give us any definite or detailed account of what Jesus was doing from the time He was twelve until He was about 13 The thirty. Take the two state- Hidden Years at ments and fix them on your Nazareth ... _ minds for a moment: "Thou art My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." "Is not this the carpenter.? " These two passages supply the story of the eighteen years. Jesus was a carpenter pleasing God. But is it fair to put them to- gether like that.? I think you will see that it is. Upon what occasion did that divine voice speak? On the occasion of the baptism. Jesus had left behind all the doings of those long and weary years, and He was just at the dividing-line between private and public »4 life. He was leaving behind The Hidden Him the unknown years, and Years at 1 /- r^azareth coming out mto the fierce light that beats ever upon a public teacher. And there, at the parting of the ways, God lit up all the years that had gone with the sweet words of approval, " Thou art My be- loved Son, in whom I am well pleased." It could not have been a pronouncement upon the temptation of the wilder- ness; that was as yet an un- tried pathway. It could not have been a declaration of the divine pleasure with Gethsem- ane's garden and Calvary's cross; they were still to be 15 The reached. No; it must have Hidden Years at been a reference to the past, so that, whatever else I know, or do not know, about the hid- den years of the life of Jesus, this one thing is certain, that through them all He pleased God; for God put His seal upon them when they were closing behind Him and the new years were opening be- fore Him, saying: "I am well pleased." You remember how, after that pronounce- ment,. He went to the wilder- ness and was tempted, and after that temptation He went to Galilee, in the power of the Spirit, and began His public i6 ministry; and you find Him The Hidden going at the early part thereof Years at down to Nazareth, the place ^^^^ where He has been brought up. It was a small town, a kind of hamlet on the hillside, of perhaps three thousand in- habitants. This young man comes back to His boyhood's home, and every one knows Him. He goes to the synagogue, as was His custom, on the Sab- bath day, and reads out of the book, and then He talks to the assembled people; and they look at Him, and listen, won- der the while being depicted on their faces. Cannot you 17 The see the picture?— that little Hidden Years at synagogue, the old Jewish ^^^ people, the keen faces looking at the speaker, and then turn- ing to each other, saying: " Whence hath this man these things? We know Him per- fectly well; He is the carpen- ter." Yes; they know Him. They have watched Him toil- ing day after day, month after month, in the work- shop, bending over the bench with the tools of His craft in His hand. They cannot ac- count for Him as a teacher because they did not account for Him as a toiler. Mark, then, what these peo- i8 pie said about Him. Other The men made the blunder of say- Years av ^, r 4.U NazaretK msf He was the son of the carpenter; but these men, by a sudden flash, light up for us the eighteen years by saying, *' Is not this the carpenter? " 1 have now two facts con- cerning this period. I have the testimony of the men who knew Him best, and the testi- mony of God, who knew Him better than they did. Let us first take the human declaration, " Is not this the carpenter? " and hold it in the light of the divine, ** In whom i am well pleased"; and then let us take the divine revela- 19 The tion, " Thou art My beloved Hidden Years at Son," and hold it in the light of the human, " Is not this the carpenter? " I do not want to hide the majesty of this sweet word the "carpenter" by any mul- tiplication of words of mine. If any of you paint pictures, have you not sometimes been annoyed at the way in which men have framed them? You invite your friends' at- tention to a work of art, and they exclaim, *' What a lovely frame!" and do not seem to see the picture. We some- times frame the picture of God's words in like manner. 20 Let us express ourselves so The Hidden that the picture is seen and Years at not the frame. "Is not this the ^^^^*^ carpenter?" For the greater part, then, of the life of Jesus, He worked with His own hands for His own living. That brings the Son of God, in living, pulsating life, close to every man who works. There is a beautiful tradition, that Joseph, His reputed father, died while Jesus was yet a child, and so He worked not merely to earn His own living, but to keep the little home together in Nazareth, and Mary and the younger members of the family de- al The pended upon His toil. That Hidden Years at is a beautiful tradition. It may be true, but I do not press it. But I do press this upon you above everything else, that He worked for His liv- ing. Oh that we could get all the strength and comfort which this fact is calculated to afford! Business men, you who have been at work all the week and have been har- assed by daily labors and are weary and tired and seeking for new inspiration, this Jesus, whose name has be- come a name of sweetness and love, was not a king upon a throne. He was not aa for the greater part of His life The Hidden a teacher with the thrill and Years at ^^azafettk excitement of public life to buoy Him up. No; the long years ran on and He was doing what some of you speak of as "the daily round, the com- mon task." The man Jesus rose at daybreak, and, picking up His tools, made yokes and tables in order that He might have something to eat, and that, not for a brief period, but for eighteen years. He was an apprentice boy, a young man improving His craft, a master in His little shop with the shavings round Him and the tools about Him. 23 The That is the human picture. Hidden Years at But that human picture be- comes supremely precious to me as the light of the divine falls upon it. The eighteen years are over, the tools are laid aside, His feet will no more make music as He walks among the rustling shavings. God says, " I am pleased." It may have meant that God was pleased with Jesus because in those years He lived in the realm of the spiritual rather than the ma- terial. I believe it did mean that, but I am not going to dwell upon it. It may have meant that He was careful to 24 think of, and pray for, and Tfcc Hidden teach the younger members of Years at His household, or that He was regular in His attendance upon the services of the synagogue. I think it did mean that, be- cause I read, " He went to the synagogue, as was His cus- tom, on the Sabbath day." But I want to know what God meant about the shop, and I am going to suggest to you two things. In the first place,— and you will forgive this way of putting it, because I want the truth of it to abide upon your hearts, and if the phrasing be not elegant I want it to be forceful,— it 2C The meant that Jesus had never Hidden Years at done in that carpenter's shop ^^^ a piece of work such as we speak of in the closing years of the nineteenth century as being "shoddy work." 'M am pleased." God could not have been pleased with car- pentry that was scamped any more than with blasphemous praise. "I am pleased," and every bit of work has on it the light of divine truth. When Jesus sent out from that carpenter's shop yokes that the farmers would use, they were so fashioned and finished that they would gall no ox. "Take My yoke 36 upon you " gathers force and The Hidden Strength as an illustration Years at from the fidelity of the car- penter's shop. When Jesus said, "Take My yoke," it was because He knew that it would not gall, it would be finished and perfect. Some- times we have overshadowed the carpenter's shop with Calvary's cross. We have no right to do it. We have come to forget the fidelity of the Son of God in the little details of life as we have gazed upon His magnificent triumphs in the places of pas- sion and conflict. In the second place, the divine ap- 27 The proval meant that the influ- Hidden Years at ence of the hfe had been pure Nazareth ^^^ ^^.^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ You all know the effect of influ- ence. What sort of influence has He exerted? Pure and strong! I have sat some- times in meditative mood, and thought of my beloved Lord, and tried to carry my- self back, with all the interests that are nearest to my heart, into that land and that time when He was on earth, and I have thought, if I could just have taken my boy and ap- prenticed him to that carpen- ter, what a blessed thing it would have been. I don't 28 think Jesus would have given The Hidden him the One Hundred and Years at Nineteenth Psalm to learn be- fore he came to work in the morning, or have been talk- ing to him forevermore about heaven and getting ready for it, and hell and shunning it. But he would have lived a bright, strong, glad life be- fore Him, for no life ever touched the life of the Son of God but was the brighter and purer and stronger for the contact; and so, when the years of the carpenter's shop are over, God sets His seal of approval upon them, first, be- cause the work has been v/ell 29 The done; and, secondly, because Hidden Years at the influence of the life has been true and right and noble. Who is this coming up out of the waters of baptism, upon whom the dove hovers and settles, and concerning whom heaven's voice is heard to speak? God marks Him out here from all His fellow- men. " Thou art My beloved Son." Not ''Thou art a son, a child of Mine," but "My Son." And, to the Hebrew mind, that links Him with all the prophecies of the past. He is the anointed of God. He is the one personage who is charged with the great mis- 30 sion of restoring the kingdom The Hiddeti of God. God marks Him in Years at , , , . Naxareth that great word as His ap- pointed Messiah, as Shiloh, as the Daysman from on high, as the Dayspring; all the won- drous words of past prophecy are settled upon Him, and God marks Him as the anointed One for the carrying out of the great scheme of re- demption for the human race. And now He is standing on the banks of the Jordan, and we look upon Him for the first time with amazement and astonishment, and won- der, if this be the beloved Son of God, what has He been 3i The doinp^, where has He been in Hidden Years at the years preceding this pub- Nazareth ,. r ^ X- -i r> he manifestation ? Come back again to the question, " Is not this the carpenter? " and the wonder is presented in a new vision, from a new standpoint, from another side. The Son of God, charged with the greatest commission that any being in heaven or earth has ever had to bear, was for eighteen years at work in a carpenter's shop. Now, we hardly see the wonder of this thing until we look more closely at it. I may be speak- ing to some young man upon whose heart is lying the bur- 32 den of India, the need of The Hidden China; he is travailing in Years at ^fazafetii spirit, even in this favored land, for the dark masses of Africa; he is touched with the sacrificial passion of the Son of God to go and save somebody, and yet God has shut him up here at home. He has to live and care for a sick one. He can't go. The fire is there, but the door is not open. The passion for men consumes him, but God shuts him out from service. "Now, it is only those who know something of what that experience is who can under- stand the strange marvel of 33 The the Son of God, commissioned Hidden Years at to do the work that precedes your passion, the infinitely greater work, holding in its grasp and love all the enter- prises for the uplifting of man. And yet with that pas- sion upon Him, with the cross ever before Him and His ultimate triumph in front, every morning He goes to the carpenter's shop, every day He does work, every night goes home to rest. I tell you it is a mystery of mysteries to us restless spirits. What does it mean ? How is it that He, the beloved of God, the anointed of God, 34 can be— there is no irreverence The Hidden in saying it— content ? Now, Years at , 1 Nazareth the answer is here. Jesus lived in the power of the truth, which we are so slow to !earn, that there is something infinitely better than doing a great thing for God, and the infinitely better thing is to be where God wants us to be, to do what God wants us to do, and to have no will apart from His— to be able to say: I worship Thee, sweet will of God, And all Thy ways adore! And every day 1 live, 1 seem To love Thee more and more. Jesus understood that. The carpenter's shop was the will 35 The of God for Him, and therefore Hidden Years at He abode in that shop and N^azareth , ■ , , i • • , i did the work incidental to it. Now, pray do not misunder- stand me. From the illustra- tion I used a moment ago, you may come to think that I intend to say Jesus did it as a duty, while He longed for the cross. Nothing of the kind. "I delight to do Thy will, O my God." Go and ask Him, talk with Him reverently across the distance of nine- teen hundred years. " O Nazarene, where wouldst Thou rather be to-day, here among this work, or among the crowd, healing and teach- ing, and preaching to them ? " The Hidden and the answer would be, Yeaisat " God's will for Me is in the ^^^^^ carpenter's shop, and there- fore that is the place of My joy." But I am going to ask you to press this question a - little further. Was this a ca- pricious matter, this will of God for Jesus.^ Does it not look hard and arbitrary that God should have put that saintly soul to such common labor.? Why not have let Him face the conflict and get the victory, and hie Him back to heaven? There was a deep necessity in the whole arrangement. Let me put it ^7 The superlatively, and say, Cal- Hidden Years at vary's cross would have been nothing but the tragic ending of a mistaken life, if it had not been for the carpenter's shop! In that carpenter's shop He fought my battles. My hardest fight is never fought when there is a crowd to applaud or oppose, but when I am alone. Now, that was what Jesus was doing for eighteen years. There was no crowd to sing "Hosanna " ; no other crowd to cry " Cru- cify Him"; but alone He did His work and faced all the subtle forms of temptation that beset humankind, and one by one He put His con- The Hidden quering foot upon the neck of Years at them, until the last was baf- fled and beaten, and His ene- mies were palsied by the strong stroke of His pure right arm. That is what He was doing. There was ne- cessity for it, and because of Nazareth's shop there came Gethsemane's garden and Cal- vary's cross, and so, abiding in the will of God, by victory upon victory, He won His final triumph, and so opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Now, beloved, from this study what are we to learn.? 39 The I can only write off for you, Hidden Years at very briefly, one or two les- Nazareth ^^^^^ ,^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ j^ .^ relative lesson. I never come back to this story of the early years of Christ, and read what these men of Nazareth said about Him, without learning how dangerous a thing it is to pronounce my little sen- tence upon any single human life. O men of Nazareth, down in that carpenter's shop that you pass and repass, where you sometimes pause and look in and see Him at His work, there is the One who spoke and it was done, who put His compass upon 40 the deep, who fashioned all The ^ Hidden things by the word of His Years at ^^azaretli power, and you have never seen Him and never known Him, and your estimate of Him is that He is one of you — only a carpenter. Job's judges and Christ's critics are on a level, and they are on a level with every one of us who tries to pass his sen- tences upon his fellow-men. If people ask you for your ex- planation of the mysterious circumstances of a brother man, tell them it is a mystery of God; for the moment you suggest that there is some- thing wrong somewhere you 4t The may be getting into the re- Hidden Years at g^on of blasphemy. Perhaps Nazareth ^^,^^^ ^^^^ j^^^ ^^^^ broken on the wheel by the Potter for a remaking. " If the Potter break it upon the wheel, He shall remake it"; and God's fairest, highest place of ser- vice in the land that lies be- yond will be filled by the men and women who have been broken upon the wheel on earth. Do not let us forget that, and if we cannot under- stand what God is doing with that woman whose heart is crushed and broken with overwhelming sorrow, let us be reverently silent, lest we 42 help the men who drive the The ^ Hidden nails, and break the Lord's Years at Nazareth own heart. But I gather not only this relative lesson; there are per- sonal lessons. The first is this: the phrase "common task" should be struck out of every life. Jesus taught us that all toil is holy if the toiler be holy. Not for the sake of controversy, but as a protest against the misconception of human life, I tell you that no man has any right, simply be- cause he preaches or performs certain functions, to speak of himself as a man in " holy orders." The man who goes 43 The out to work to-morrow morn- Hidden Years at ing with his bag on his back and his tools in it, if he be a holy man, has claims to that distinction ; and if that man go down into the carpenter's shop and saw a piece of tim- ber, the saw is a vessel of the sanctuary of God, if the man is a priest who uses it. All service is sacred service. I want you to carry this thought of the working Christ into all the days of the com- ing week, behind the counter and in the office, and, beloved sisters, if I may say so, in the home. Remember that George Herbert had caught 44 the very spirit of this lovely The Hidden thought when he sang of the Years at possibility of sweeping a room and " making that and the action fine." Oh, if we could but get the Christian church, to say nothing of the outside world, free from the stupid and false ideas that this kind of work is honorable, and that is not, what a long way we should be on the road to the millennium! If every business man wrote his letters as though Jesus would have to look over them, what lovely letters we should have! I do not know that they would have tracts in them,— 45 The that is not my point,— but Hidden Years at they would be true, robust, honest letters. O you busi- ness men, won't you do your business for Christ, realizing that the work you do may be as sacred as my work? Sis- ters, won't you take the home and make it a holy place for the shining of the Shechinah? If Christ lived the larger part of His life working, then our work is smitten through and through and lit with a new beauty, and we write over it, " Part of God's work for up- lifting man." I learn this lesson also, that no man is fit for the great 46 places of service who has not T^^ fitted himself by fidelity in Years at obscurity. You want, you tell me, to preach the gospel in China. Are you living it at home? God does not want men or women to preach His gospel anywhere who have not made it shine in their own homes. I do not ask, *' Can you do the great work that hangs upon your hearts? " but, " Are you doing the pres- ent work faithfully?" Are you an Endeavorer, do you belong to the missionary so- ciety, that branch or this branch of the church, and are you so anxious to get to the 47 The meetings that you rob your (lidden Years at master of even five minutes of his time? Christ doesn't count the service, but the five minutes you have stolen. What we want is to feel that if we are to do a big thing in the public service, we must be through and through true in the small things of life. The . carpenter's shop made Cal- vary not a battle-field merely, but a day of triumph that lit heaven and earth with hope; and if you and I would tri- umph when our Calvary comes, we must triumph in the little things of the com- mon hours. 48 Date Due - 'r.~ '■■ ... . ',1 9 "'''^■^'^- -- 9^ f)