Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation | Page 2

King, the giant was naught, And the enemy
driven like cattle.
"When God looked to tell of His good will to men, And the
Shepherd-King's son whom He gave them; To shepherds, made meek
a-caring for sheep, He told of a Christ sent to save them.
"O love of the sheep, O watch in the night, And the glory, the message,
the choir; 'Twas shepherds who saw their King in the straw, And
returned with their hearts all on fire.
"When Christ thought to tell of His love to the world He said to the
throng before him, 'The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep--'
And away to the cross they bore Him.
"O love of the sheep, O blood sweat of prayer, O man on the cross,
God-forsaken; A shepherd has gone to defend all alone The sheepfold
by death overtaken.
"When God sought a King for His people, for aye, He went to the grave

to find him; And a shepherd came back, Death dead in His grasp, And a
following flock behind Him.
"O love of the sheep, O life from the dead, O strength of the faint and
the fearing; A shepherd is King, and His Kingdom will come. And the
day of His coming is nearing."[1]
Coronation Gift.
Christ is crowned. Not in any vague far-fetched meaning, but in the
plain common-sense meaning of the word, He is crowned.
For crowned means put in the place of highest power, with full right to
exercise that power at will. And when the crucified Jesus went up that
Olivet day, before the astonished eyes of the disciples, into the sightless
blue, on the cloud, He was received in the upper world by the Father.
And He was lifted up into the place of highest honour and greatest
power. He sat down at the right hand of the Father.[2]
He had said it would be so. Breathing the air thick with bitter hate on
the night of His trial, He had quietly said to the Jewish rulers that even
so it would be, bringing at once about His person the bursting of the
storm of hate.[3] Now His unfaltering trust in His Father has its sweet
reward.
The Holy Spirit poured out on Pentecost, the birthday of the Church,
was the gift of the crowned Christ. The rushing sound as of a mighty
wind that filled all the house, the tongues of flame plainly seen, the
bold talking to the crowds of foreign Jews of God's mighty power, the
faithful witnessing about the crucified Jesus in the city that hounded
Him to death, the convinced crowds openly declaring at the peril of
their lives their belief in the despised Jesus, the strangely rare
unselfishness even in money matters, and the winsome graciousness of
spirit that marked, not only the inner circle, but these greatly increased
crowds,--all this said one thing in clear unanswerable tones of
unmistakable power, Christ is crowned.[4] For the sending down of the
Holy Spirit was the act of the crowned Christ.

And every touch of the Holy Spirit's presence within trusting
hearts,--the sweet peace, the quiet assurance, the longing for purity, the
drawing away to prayer, the hunger for God's Word, the intense desire
to have others saved, the passion to please this wondrous God of
ours,--all these simple marks of the Holy Spirit's presence in our hearts,
all tell us, and each tells us, in unmistakable tones, that Christ is
crowned. For this wondrous Spirit within is the gift of the crowned
Christ.
When Jesus went up from the earth, holding as His sure captive the
captivity of suffering and death to which He had with such great
strength yielded, He received gifts, coronation gifts. The Father gave
Him all. He gave Him the disposal and control of all. This was the
crowning.
And in His great out-reaching love Christ received these gifts on behalf
of men, His blood brothers. And at once He gave to men, to His trusting
disciples, the all-inclusive gift, the Holy Spirit, His coronation gift.[5]
So God came anew to dwell with men as originally planned.
This blessed Presence within tells me, by His mere presence, that
Christ is crowned.
The writers of the New Testament make a chorus of sweet music on
this chord, ringing out in clear tones the full notes of delight and joy.
Luke's simple narrative sounds the note four times. Paul swells it out
with a joyous fulness that grows in volume and intensity as his
narrowing prison walls shut out more and more the lower lights, and
centres his upward gaze upon Jesus, "far above all rule, and authority,
and power, and dominion, and every name that is named," with "all
things in subjection under His feet."[6] John's special companion and
working