FROM THE CHURCH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 28, 1 May 1950, Page 7

FROM THE CHURCH

Presbyterian Mission Service SERMON GIVEN IN MAORI Matthew 16; 21. “From that time forth began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem and

suffer many things of the eld- . ers and chief priests and scribes and be killed and raised again the third day.”

“The death of Christ on the Cross was no mere accident in a well wrought plan. It was not just simply an act that brought to a close the life of an innocent dupe. Nor is it to be explained as an abrupt termination of a fatalist who had determined wthin himself to bring his life to a close on the Cross. Fate did not decree that the Son of God should meet His death on a cruel Roman jibbet. Our Lord was more the ‘ Master of His own destiny than that,” said the Reverend J. N. Smith; of the Presbyterian Maori Mission, in a sermon in Maori at Whakatane yesterday. “It can be quite safely said that our Lord was never free from the Shadow of the Cross,” he continued. “We cannot say where the consciousness of it really began, nor can we point to any real crisis at which it first came to Him. But of this .we are perfectly aware—that friam the Caessarean crisis on to the conclusion He showed to His disciples how He must go to Jerusalem and suffer and die.”

He must go! For one thing it was in the will of the Father, the Reverend Smith pointed out. Quite early in the career of the young Jesus we find Him dedicating Himself to the plan and purpose of God. “I must be about my Father’s business.” Many alternatives opened up to Him; but no other motive save that of doing His Father’s will could ever influence Christ.

“His death was not a murder, it was a sacrifice, something voluntarily given.”

There was no human life before His day, in His day, or since His day, which could undertake the tremendous task of atoning for the sin of the world, said Mr Smith. Even in His dying hours He was mocked with the cry: “If He be the Son of God let Him come down from the Cross,” but Jesus knew that He must stay where those evil hands had put Him. If He came down, who could take His place? Jesus came not merely to give back to men the life they had forfeited or to make their future secure, but to destroy the enemies which held them in bondage.

“And what victory was there in the Cross? It meant the defeat of all who had to persuade Him to turn aside by offering all the glamour of the world. Christ had a noble purpose to fulfil and any inferior motive was not to be countenanced. It meant that He won a conquest in the conflict which raged within His own soul—the choice of duty or of popular clamour,” the Reverend Smith added.