23 Jesus of Nazareth Went About Doing Good

XXIII JESUS OF NAZARETH WENT ABOUT

DOING GOOD

Acts 10:38. The text is our Lord’s whole life on earth in one line. In one perfect line. In a line such that we can neither add one syllable to it, nor take away one syllable from it. All we have to do with this fine text is to dwell upon it, to enter into it and to picture it to ourselves, till our eyes affect our heart.

Well, then, to begin at Nazareth where He began, and from whence He takes His name.

"And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man." So much so, that when He left Nazareth He did not leave His native town because He could endure to live no longer in it. He did not leave Nazareth as Jacob left Beersheba. Jacob had to flee from Beersheba because he had deceived his father and supplanted his brother. But Jesus of Nazareth never had to escape in that way from any place in which He had ever lived, nor was He ever afraid or ashamed to return to Nazareth or anywhere else. He never had to look the other way when He saw this man or that man coming to meet Him on the street. He never had to go through another street so as not to have to pass this man’s door or that man’s window. He was never afraid to face the father or the mother or the avenging brother of any man or any woman that ever lived. He never lost an hour’s sleep in fear for what might leap to light tomorrow morning. He had no anxiety in taking up the Messiahship lest any dishonor should ever fall on His great office out of His past life. And, after He had been ordained to that office, if He was sometimes tempted to leave His post and go to finish His work somewhere else, it was not because He had neglected His duty, or had in any way shipwrecked Himself in His present charge. We try to flee from the places that have become intolerable to us on account of our own accumulated faults and follies. But Jesus of Nazareth never knew that humiliation. He was the only man born of woman whose conscience did not make Him a criminal and a coward continually. The four Evangelists try to find space for our Lord’s greatest miracles. For the water turned into wine, for the pool of Bethesda, for the ten lepers, for the woman with the issue of blood, for the raising of Lazarus, and such like. But if all the good deeds that Jesus did, and all the good words He spake as He went about were to be told, it is scarcely a hyperbole to say that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. How He went about, not only healing the sick, and cleansing the lepers, and opening the eyes of the blind; but everywhere pacifying enemies also, and reconciling offended friends, and turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers; softening and sweetening and healing the hearts and the homes of all men wherever He went. At every table at which He sat all men saw a never-to-be-forgotten example of temperance in eating and drinking and talking, together with an approachableness, and an affableness, and a brotherly love never to be forgotten. He never left any house without leaving a long-remembered blessing behind Him. The very servants who washed His feet before a supper party felt happier all the night after because of the way He spake to them and looked on them. To salute Him, or to be saluted by Him, even on the highway, was a benediction that remained with you all the day. Especially the good He did by what He said to all men as He went about. For He never opened His mouth but with wisdom. The way He spake at one time, and did not speak at another time; the things He said, and the way He said them, and the things He did not say. For a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a picture of silver. A man hath joy by the answer of his mouth; and a word spoken in season, how good is it! The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. Peter expands and applies his own text in his First Epistle in this homecoming way :--"Leaving us an example, that we should follow His steps; who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not." Jesus of Nazareth alone could truly and fully say all that which Homer puts far too easily into his hero’s mouth :--"I wrought no forward deed, said no rude word."

What a contrast to all that has been your going about and mine! How all that shuts our mouth, and brings us in guilty before God and man! When we look at our Lord as He went about; when we take every house He ever lived in, and every companion He ever walked with, and every table at which He ever sat, and every bed in which He ever slept; when we look back at every temptation also that ever came to Him to do evil, and every opportunity that was offered Him of doing good to men and bringing glory to God--what a contrast are we to Him in all that! And what a condemnation takes possession of us! When the commandment came home to me, says the Apostle, I died. And as often as the life and walk and conversation of Jesus of Nazareth all come home to me I am like Paul, I also die. Do you, my brethren? I wish you did. I pray that you may ever so die. For then, and then only, you will begin really and truly to live.

Peter here puts this forward as a sure mark of his Master’s Messiahship—that He went about doing good. All the other marks and seals of the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth are summed up in this single mark and sure seal. Other men might work miracles; might heal the sick, might cast out devils, might make iron to swim. But no son of Adam ever went about doing good but Jesus of Nazareth. "As it is written, there is none righteous, no not one. They are all gone out of the way. They all together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good; no, not one." Only one, and He Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah of God, and made of God to us our wisdom, and our righteousness, and our sanctification, and our redemption. And as it was His outstanding mark, so it must be our outstanding mark also. All men will soon know whose disciples we are when we begin to go about doing good. Not otherwise will He ever acknowledge us, and not otherwise will our fellow-men ever recognize us. Let us begin then at once to go about like Him. Let us set a watch on the door of our lips as He did, as often as we are tempted to speak. Let us recollect continually how He spake; with what wisdom, with what forethought, and with what previous reflection as to who would hear Him when He spake. Let us hold down all impatience, and all irritation, and all anger at the way other men speak to us and speak about us. Let us go about holding our tongue, and keeping our temper, and that will be half our salvation, and half our likeness to Christ. And let us brace up our slack souls continually with some such soul-strengthening Scriptures as this :--"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." An hour with Epictetus is said to have been a tonic. "Wouldst thou do good to other men when thou meetest them?" he demands of his disciples. "Then, eating, do good to them that eat with thee; and drinking, do good to them that drink with thee. Bear with them; forbear with them; yield to them; give way to them; never vent upon them thine ill humor; and then thou wilt do them and thyself good continually. And, even as the sun does not wait for incantations of men to rise, so do not thou wait for shouts of praise to do thy duty. Do good spontaneously, and immediately, and thou wilt be loved like the sun, and men will come and bask in thy beams." And his best scholar says to us on this same subject, "Go about knowing everything, and having a name for all knowledge, you cannot. But hold down your own arrogance and assumption of all knowledge, you can. Spurn the idle praises of men, you can. Keep your temper with the stupid and the ungrateful, you can. Yea, even befriend and benefit them, you can. Be sincere, be dignified, be industrious, be serious-minded, be not too critical or too exacting with other men. This is the sure way of salvation for you; with your whole heart to do what is just and to say what is true. And to go about doing good so constantly, that you will not have a moment left in which to do evil." Truly, where Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius lived and spoke and wrote, God did not leave His Son without a witness.

There is one large department of good-doing that causes some of us no little difficulty. It is the risk lest we do good to bad people; lest we give alms to the impostor, to the unthankful and the evil. Now, there is no man among you, nor woman either, who is half so much imposed upon in that way as I am. I am cheated both out of my time and out of my money and out of my sympathy continually. Till, when I am now rebuked and now laughed at for my simplicity, I take refuge with that Roman lady who in spite of all that could be said to her, would send a costly gift to her friend. You may send it, they remonstrated with her, but Domitian will be sure to seize it. I had rather Domitian seized it, she said, wrapping it up, than that I did not send it. I take refuge with Miranda also, the name of whose portrait-painter you all know. "If a poor old traveler tells her that he has neither strength, nor food, nor money left, she never bids him go to the place from whence he came, or tells him she cannot relieve him because he may be a cheat, or that she does not know him, but she relieves him because he is a stranger and is unknown to her. For as she never saw him before, so she may never see him again in this life. It may be," says Miranda, "that I often give to them that do not deserve it, and that will make a bad use of it." But what then? Is not this the very method of the Divine goodness? Does not God make His sun to rise on the evil and the good? And shall I be so absurd as to withhold a little charity from a poor wretch because he may not make the best possible use of it? Besides, when has the Scripture made merit the rule or measure of our charity? On the contrary, if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him drink. But when the love of God dwelleth in us till it has enlarged our hearts, we will make no more such absurd objections as these."You may raise a laugh at Miranda’s facility, but I have a forecast that in the long run the laughter will all be on the side of the Roman lady and on the side of Miranda her English counterpart." It has been said of Goethe that he always kept well out of the way of misery. Be that as it may; you must not do that. You must be like Jesus of Nazareth rather, who went about seeking out scenes of misery, and who rejoiced in every opportunity of showing mercy; till He died still interceding for His murderers. Let that same mind be found in you, that like Him you may be the sons and daughters of your Father which is in heaven.

But, not to perplex ourselves with impostors and undeserving beggars--what a heaven on earth this world would soon become if we all set out every morning to go about all day doing good, like Jesus of Nazareth. What a country this would soon be! What a city of ours this would soon be! What a congregation! What a house at home would our house soon become! Let us all do it. Let every one of us do it. Let us all determine to work out our own salvation by going about doing good. You to me, and I to you, and Christ to us all. Why not? And why not now, and henceforth, and to all men? And especially to the unthankful and the evil.