Go and Tell Jesus INTRODUCTION
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As if to illustrate the nature and test the efficacy of His great and gracious expedient of saving sinners, it pleased the redeeming God that the first subject of death should be a believer in the Lord Jesus. Scarcely had the righteous Abel laid his bleeding lamb upon the altar—that altar and that lamb all expressive of the truth, and radiant with the glory of the person and work of the coming Savior—before he was called to seal with his blood the faith in Christ he had professed. But if the first victim, he was also the first victor.
He fell by death, but he fell a conqueror of death. He lost the victory, but he won the battle. Thus was the “last enemy” foiled in his very first assault upon our race. The point of his lance was then turned, the venom of his sting was then impaired, and, robbed of his prey, he saw in the pale and gory form his shaft had laid low the first one of that glorious race of confessors, that “noble army of martyrs,” who in all succeeding ages should overcome sin, hell, and death, by the blood of the Lamb.
It was on an occasion similar to the death of the first martyr, that the passage suggesting the subject of these pages was written. Falling a sacrifice to his fidelity, as Abel had to his faith, John was now a mangled corpse—the victim of Herod’s sin and cruelty. Taking up the headless body of their master, the disciples of John bore it to the tomb, and then went and poured their tale of woe into the ear, and laid their crushing sorrow upon the heart of Jesus. “And his disciples came and took up the body and buried it, AND WENT AND TOLD JESUS.” It was, perhaps, their first direct communication with the Savior. They had known but little of Jesus until now.
Another being had engaged their interest, and occupied their thoughts. Absorbed in their admiration of the star that heralded its approach, they had scarcely caught sight of the Sun which had just appeared above the horizon. In vain had John, with characteristic lowliness, reminded those who he was not the Messiah, and but His forerunner. Wedded to their master, they thought of, clung to, and loved only him. John must therefore die—the star paling and disappearing before the deepening splendor of the divine ascending Orb. All this was the ordering of infinite wisdom and love. The removal of John was necessary to make his disciples better acquainted with Jesus. They had heard of Him, had seen Him, and in a measure believed in Him; but they never fully knew or loved Him until now that profound grief brought them to His feet.
What a Divine Savior, what a loving Friend, what a sympathizing Brother Jesus was! How truly human in His affinities, compassionate in His heart, gentle in His spirit! They had no adequate conception until the surge of sorrow flung them upon His sympathy. Ah! How they clung to Jesus now! Owning no other master, seeking no other friend, repairing to no other asylum in their lonely grief, “they went and told Jesus.” Favored disciples! Honored men! Oh! How many now hymning their praises in heaven, or still watering their couch with tears on earth, will alike testify that until God smote the earthly idol, or broke the human staff, or dried up the creature spring, JESUS was to them as an unknown Savior and Friend. Blessed, thrice blessed sorrow that leads us to Jesus! That sorrow—dark, deep, though it be—will wake the harp of the glorified to heaven’s sweetest melody.
The bitterest grief of the saint on earth will issue in the sweetest joy of the glorified in heaven—because that grief, sanctified by the Spirit, brought the heart into a closer alliance and sympathy with Him who was emphatically a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”
We know so much of divine truth, my reader, as we have in a measure a personal experience of it in our souls. The mere speculatist and notionalist in religion is as unsatisfactory and unprofitable as the mere theorist and declaimer in science. For all practical purposes both are but ciphers. The character and the degree of our spiritual knowledge begins and terminates in our knowledge of Christ. Christ is the test of its reality, the measure of its depth, and the source of its growth. If you are advancing in an experimental, sanctifying acquaintance with the Lord Jesus, you are advancing in that knowledge which Paul thus estimates: “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord.” Dear reader, let the chief object of your study be to know the Lord Jesus.
It may be in the region of your sinfulness, emptiness, weakness, and foolishness that you learn Him—nevertheless, however humiliating the school, slow the progress, and limited the attainment, count every fresh step you make in a personal acquaintance with the Lord Jesus as a nobler triumph, and as bringing you into the possession of more real wealth than were the whole chests of human knowledge and science mastered, and its untold treasures poured at your feet. When adversity comes—when death approaches—when eternity unveils—oh!—how indescribably valuable, how inconceivably precious will then be one faith’s touch, one faith’s glimpse of a crucified and risen Savior!
All other attainments then vanish, and the only knowledge that abides, soothes, and comforts, is a heartfelt acquaintance with the most sublime fact of the Gospel, that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Oh! Whatever other studies may engage your thoughts, forget not, as you value your eternal destiny, to study the Lord Jesus Christ.
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