Forty days and forty nights
Thou wast fasting in the wild,
Forty days and forty nights
Tempted, and yet undefiled,—
Sunbeams scorching all the day. Chilly dewdrops nightly shed,
Prowling beasts about Thy way.
Stones Thy pillow, earth Thy bed.
Shall we not Thy sorrow share. And from earthly joys abstain,
Fasting with unceasing prayer.
Glad with Thee to suffer pain?
And if Satan, vexing sore,
Flesh or spirit should assail, Thou, his Vanquisher before,
Grant we may not faint nor fail.
So shall we have peace divine ;
Holier gladness ours shall be; Eound us too shall angels shine,
Such as ministered to Thee.^
* A. Monis Stewart. * George H. Smyttan and Francis Pott.
A Model Sermon.
67
Literature.
Burton (H.), Gleanings in the Gosjiels, 141.
Church (R. C), Advent Sermons, 29, 58.
Colenso (J. W.), Natal Sermons, 1st Ser., 279.
Drysdale (A. H.), Christ Invisible our Gain, 151.
Dudden (F. Homes), Christ and Christ's Religion, 171.
Harcourt (W. V.), Sermons, 78.
Herford (B.), Anchors of the Soul, 136.
How (W. W.), Plain Words, i. 113.
Kelley (A. R.), Intent on Pleasing Thee, 13.
Lilley (A. L.), Adventus Regni, 115, 123, 130, 138.
Little ( W. J. Knox), Light of Life, 65.
Melvill (H.), The Golden Lectures, 2nd Ser., No. 2514
Smith (Gipsy), As Jesus Passed By, 19.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, viii., No. 460.
Tyng (S. H.), The People's Pulpit, New Ser., ii. 221.'
Walker (W. L.), The True Christ, 68.
British Congregationalist, July-December 1908, 406 (Jowett).
Christian World Pulpit, xxviii. 385, 401 (Church) ; xlvii. 305
(Fairbairn) ; Ix. 121 (Brook) ; Ixxi. 348 (Bevari). Church of England Pulpit, xxvii. 85 (Rawstorne). Expositor, 1st Ser., iv. 430 (Fairbairn). Expository Times, xiv. 538 (Briggs). Homiletic Review, xliv. 74 (Hoyt).
n
A MODEL Sermon.
Now after that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand : repent ye, and believe in the gospel. — i. 14, 15.
Heke are the notes of a model sermon. We call the Lord's Prayer the model prayer. This may with equal justice be called the model sermon. It is a sermon that was preached even by our Lord on more occasions than one. It is an example for all the sermons that have been or will be preached thereafter. And although it is only the shortest possible notes of such a sermon, there is much material in it. Let us take —
I. Its Occasion. XL Its Place.
III. Its General Topic.
IV. Its Particular Contents.
I.
Its Occasion.
"Now after that John was delivered up."
The Baptism of our Lord was immediately followed by an ecstatic condition of fasting in the wilderness, at the conclusion of which He endured the great Temptation. Eeturning from the wilderness, He went, under the power of the Spirit, to imdertake His ministry in Galilee.
Swete considers that this journey to Galilee was in fact a withdrawal from Judaea, where the tidings of John's imprison- ment (Matt.), and still more the growing jealousy of the Pharisees
69
70 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
towards the new Teacher (John iv, 1), rendered a longer stay dangerous or unprofitable. Though Galilee was under the jurisdiction of Antipas, His mission there would not expose Him at first to the tetrarch's interference (cf. Mark vi. 14; Luke xiii, 31 f., xxiii. 8). It was Jerusalem, not Galilee, that shed the blood of the prophets ; in any case it was clear that Jerusalem would not tolerate His teaching; Galilee offered a better field (cf. John iv. 45).
•[J The season was the Spring, with its bright heaven, its fresh sweet earth, its gladsome, soft, yet strengthening air, its limpid living water. And within as without all was spring-time, the season of millionfold forces gladly and grandly creative, of sunlight now clear and blithesome, and now veiled with clouds that came only to break into fruitful showers. " Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee," and Galilee felt and owned the Spirit and the power. In the homes of its peasantry and the hamlets of its fishermen, on the shores of its beautiful sea, in the towns and villages that stood on its banks and were mirrored in its waves, He preached His Gospel^
II. Its Place.
"Jesus came into Galilee." ;
Where would you have thought Jesus would have gone to « found His Kingdom, to begin His ministry ? Why, up there, '\ of course, if He had been an astute man of the world, at ; Jerusalem. There was the great temple of His people, there the ornate and ancient priesthood, there the extended and venerated worship, there the historical associations of His race and of its King. Was ever city so loved by men as was ? Jerusalem ? Poets praised it, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth was Mount Zion. The people had loved it ; there Solomon had planted his temple ; and there, amid poverty, ^ pain, and war, a few returned exiles had built another and still more gracious ; there the people of God had known the siege of the heathen, there they had known the deliverance of the Most High. The great prophet of exile had broken into
' A. M. Fairbairn, Studies in the Life of Christ, 99,