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a manly fight, even a fight unto death,
against the evil and corruption of His
day and time. It is a lesson of per
sonal endorsement and personal iden
tification; a lesson to the world for
all time to come of how Jesus re
garded the fight, first of all, and how
He regarded the man who was mak
ing the fight; and, second, He sets an
example of how the world that be
lieves in right and righteousness
should itself become identified' with
any big movement that has for its ob
ject the cleaning up of the world of
sin and defilement. “Then cometh
Jesus to be baptized of John.”
The word of caution doubtless ap
proached Him at that time, and it
was in bold capital letters, and doubt
less in the clearest imaginable type —
caution, caution on the part of the
man who has come to this earth to be
its great Reformer and Saviour; cau
tion to the man who proposes to
establish a new Kingdom. “Be
cautious because you have got to deal
with the multitude, and in that multi
tude are so many multitudes of minds
and ways of thinking, and so you must
take caution. If you identify yourself
with this man, the world w r ill be
against you, because the world has its
back on him. If you go and identify
yourself with him now and receive
baptism at his hand, it is an endorse
ment of him which at once arrays
against you all the existing powers of
the world that are worth considering.
Following after him are people of no
prestige and power, and if you win
them you lose the rest, and then how
are you expecting to succeed in the
establishment of your Kingdom?”
That is the word of caution presented
to Him; and oh! beloved, who that
has ever tried to make a fight for
righteousness has not heard it? Who
has not felt its grip? Who has not
felt its pulling and its temptation?
Jesus felt it. Jesus knew it, and yet
He brushed aside the warning and
walked to John all the way from
Nazareth and asked to be baptized of
Him.
Then again, will you please see that
in so doing Jesus was identifying
Himself with the man whose very
•creed was imperfect, and whose very
method was questionable. John was
not a perfect man. There never was
but one perfect man. The fact that he
was filled with the Holy Ghost from
his mother’s womb does not indicate
perfection. He refused to eat with
sinners; he would not even come in
close enough contact to eat a meal
with them. It is said of Jesus that he
came eating with publicans and sin
ners —a different method; and then
again, I say, a different message.
John’s message was not a perfect gos
pel. John only preached a half gos
pel. This was the essence of John’s
gospel: Repent; repent; cease to do
evil; learn to do well. That was
John’s theory. Christ’s Gospel was:
Repent and believe; faith and repent
ance coupled together, making the
complete plan of salvation. And yet,
Imperfect in his method as John was,
having a wrong conception of the
way to deal with the world, having an
imperfect gospel with which to save
the world, Jesus came and identified
Himself with him.
And what do we mean by this? Not
that Jesus identified Himself with his
errors; those were minor things. It
was purely a question of judgment as
to' whether a man should eat with
publicans and sinners or not. John
was going as far as God had revealed
the light. Christ was given the pre
rogative of announcing the first note
in the new economy of the world’s re
demption, which is faith in Christ.
And so we find Jesus, in spite of
caution, in spite of John’s blunder in
method, coming all the way from
Nazareth, walking, and asking bap
tism at the hands of John the Bap
tist. Oh, my brethren, what does that
say? If it says anything to me it is
this: that Jesus, in that one act, puts
His finger upon the one weak spot in
all the life of the church. Jesus’
method was the exact opposite of the
method of the church of today. His
method in the very beginning of His
Kingdom on earth was that boldness
in the cause of right is more to be
considered than popularity, favor and
caution. Oh, how the church today
wriggles and twists with fear when
ever some worldling on the outside
lifts his hand and voice and criticises
the church! Jesus Christ knew that
the one retarding element in the
progress of the Kingdom of Christ
would be a consideration of the word
caution, and He proposed, by that act,
to literally trample it under His feet.
Yes, sometimes w r e can get light
thrown upon the Spirit of our Lord
through secular history, and as I look
back through the pages of the secular
history, I see gathering together three
great movements in the world that
spoke the same message that Jesus
spoke when He thus identified Him
self with John the Baptist. It was in
the fourteenth century when there
was reigning in the city of Florence
that man of moral putrefaction known
as Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Arch
duke of Florence. Under his reign,
that city literally rocked in sin and
moral putrefaction, and it went on
and on; preacher after preacher
filled the pulpits of the great cathe
drals that lift their spires today to the
heavens, and yet on and on went this
moral decay, and no man would lift
his voice against him until, after
a while, Savonarola, the monk, be
gan his ministry in that city of wick
edness, and began to lift his voice
and cry out and spare not in censure
and condemnation for existing condi
tions. More and more Pope and
priest and duke alike fell victims to
his denunciations, but in spite of this
he was given the leading pulpit in all
the city in which to preach.
When he took charge of that pulpit
there gathered around him his official
advisers, who told him that he must
b£ careful; that he could say any
thing about the wickedness of Flor
ence, but he must not touch the duke.
What cared he for a duke when he
was concerned so much with the
devil? He opened up on the duke;
he arraigned him before the bar of
Almighty God and stripped him of his
vestments, showing him in his in
iquity. What happened? Even when
the duke himself was lying upon his
death bed and Savonarola was sent
for by him to pass the absolution that
would give him admittance into
Heaven, and Savonarola, standing by
his side, demanded that the duke,
himself responsible for this condition
of immorality and corruption, should
of his own money put back into the
church and to the country every dol
lar that he had robbed, and then con
fess and repent of his sin. The duke
refused to do it, whereupon Savon
arola refused to give him absolution.
One writer, in describing Savonarola
at this point ventured to say that he
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