THE GREAT MISSIONARY by E. J. Burnham

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 5, 1902

THE GREAT MISSIONARY.

By E. J. Burnham

JESUS is the pattern Missionary. He saw the human race lost and undone. Man had forfeited to our common foe the beautiful estate bestowed upon him in the beginning. He was cut off from the family of heaven, from the life of God, and from intercourse with God and angels. Jesus knew that under such circumstances human life would be beset with cares and sorrows, with suffering, strife, and woes innumerable, and that its end would be the blackness of hopeless despair, the inevitable and terrible punishment of sin.

When all was lost, Jesus undertook for man. He came to destroy sin, the root from which all human misery springs. He laid aside His high command in heaven, His equality with the Father, the glory and the joy that were His “before the world was.” He “made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” For “in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God.” He “was in all points tempted like as we are.” Well He knows what sin has wrought; for, tho “without sin,” He has felt its sting. And “in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted.”

Divine love and pity constrained the Son of God. It was this love that sustained Him when He was “despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Love faltered not when by contact with sin and its consequences His heart was pierced to its depths, nor when He had to meet the cruel venom of those who hated Him for the very beauty and excellence of His character.

It was love that sustained Him through weary days of toil and sleepless nights of prayer for those He came to save. He looked upon the multitudes that thronged Him; and “He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.” And so it was that He “went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom.” For He was the Great Teacher. Everywhere and on all occasions, both by precept and example, He taught the way of life, the principles of righteousness. He showed men how the principles that rule in the kingdom of God apply in the affairs of every-day life; and He taught that those who do not love and practise righteousness here, will have no place in that glorious, everlasting kingdom. He reproved sin; but the repenting sinner ever found forgiveness and welcome.

Jesus ministered to physical as well as to spiritual needs. With tender, watchful care He looked out for the comfort of those who sought Him. He fed the hungry, comforted the sorrowing, and healed “every sickness and every disease among the people.” They found in Him a compassionate, sympathizing Friend, and so may we. He knows what it is to be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities.”

Jesus lived as our Example as well as our Redeemer, our Teacher, and our Friend. As He was, “so are we in this world.” In His prayer for His disciples just before His death, He said: “As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” And this is just as true to-day. We are His representatives to carry on His merciful work in the world, and to show in our lives His character and the power and excellence of His truth. He expects us to do the same works that He did, and manifest the same spirit, being moved by the same principle of unselfish love that ruled His earth-life. He calls upon us to “do good,” to “be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate;” “to comfort them that are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God,” and especially to help those to “recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.”

“Ask not to be excused, There’s earnest work to do; Stand ready to be used Where God may station you.”

E. J. BURNHAM