In Mark 6:3 we read, "Is not this the carpenter?" I believe nothing was left to chance in the life of our Lord. Every day’s experience had been foreseen and planned in the counsels of deity before the Incarnation took place. There were no surprises for Him. He was never caught unaware. He knew the way out of everything into which He went, even the grave.
I believe that even the environment in which He lived was planned and purposed by the Father. It was no mere chance or casual happening that determined He should live His life in the environment of a carpenter’s shop.
What would you have chosen for His occupation, were it left to your discretion to decide?
He Was Not a Shepherd
You might have chosen the environment of the sheepfold and the shepherd life, for this would have been appropriate to identify the purpose of His spiritual ministry. His own favorite figure of Himself was that of the shepherd, and didn’t He come as David’s greater son and heir, and wasn’t David the shepherd king? How fitting that his Son should go from the sheepfold to the throne.
But He was not a shepherd.
He Was Not a Lawyer
Some might say, "I would have chosen the environment of a lawyer’s home."
... the lawyer in the Old Testament sense ... those men who expounded the law of God. Surely no one ever lived who so capably expounded and revealed to us all that God is, as Christ did. But He was not a lawyer.
He Was Neither a Physician or Fisherman
You might say, "I would have chosen for him the physician’s office, for truly He is the great physician." But He was not a physician.
Still someone else might say, "I would have chosen the environment of the fisherman’s hut, for He spoke of Himself as the fisher of men, and offered to teach others to become a fisher of men, also." But He was not a fisherman.
Any one of these environments in His boyhood shows, in a beautiful symbol, the glory and purpose of His spiritual ministry. But He was none of them ... He was a carpenter.
He Is The Master Shepherd
He is the Master Shepherd who seeks "until" He finds. How many shepherds have gone looking for the lost sheep in a storm, and failing to find it, returned to the comfort of their warm fireside and to the pleasure of sleep; but not so with our blessed Lord. When He starts on the trail of the lost sheep, He seeks "until."
Surely everyone who is saved by His infinite grace knows what a wonderful shepherd He is. Not only did He seek until He found us, but our hearts rejoice in the consciousness of the place of security we now occupy. Many people misquote Luke 15:5. They say, "He lays it on His shoulder." The correct quotation is, "He lays it on His shoulders." (Plural)
What a difference! A lamb or sheep laid upon the shoulder of the shepherd means it would be dangling about, but the oriental shepherd does not do it that way. He gathers the two front legs into one powerful hand, and the two hind legs into the other hand, lifts the sheep over His head and wraps it around His shoulders.
It stays there until the fold is reached. What a picture of our blessed Savior.
There we are, held on His blessed shoulders in the eternal grip of His mighty nail-pierced hands. He bears all the weight and the burden, and we rest and ride; and not only that but we rest and ride until we reach "the fold."
He is the Master Shepherd
He Is The Master Physician
He is the Master Physician. The poor woman who spent all she had
at the hands of many physicians and still she could not find healing said, "If I may touch the hem of His clothes, I shall be whole." The hand of faith reached through the crowd and drew from the Master Physician instant healing.
God be praised! He is able to deal with cases even after the undertaker has finished. He stood at the grave of Lazarus and commanded the broken-down life tissues to rebuild, the blood to liquefy and the heart to begin its ceaseless pumping and send the blood tingling from head to toe, and Lazarus came forth.
He broke up the funeral procession of the young lad from Nain by raising the corpse. He dried the falling tears in the house of Jairus by restoring the young girl.
Jesus Christ announced Himself as the resurrection and the life. Why this double title? If you have life, why do you need resurrection? And if you have resurrection, you have life. But Jesus declared He was both.
If you will conduct a search of the Scriptures you will find that no one ever died in the living presence of Jesus Christ. Also, no one who had died remained dead in the presence of Jesus. There is not one single record in the New Testament where the Lord Jesus came into the immediate presence of a corpse
that it did not result in resurrection. On the other hand, there is no record in the New Testament where anyone who was alive ... died in His presence.
Even the thieves on the cross died after He did. I have no doubt that this is the explanation of His staying away from the home of Mary and Martha until Lazarus was dead. He distinctly declared that the purpose of Lazarus death was that He might demonstrate His deity by raising him from the dead, and thus glorify the Father and the Son.
Had the Lord returned to the home of Mary and Martha before Lazarus died, Lazarus would not have died. Knowing this, Jesus stayed away. He is the Master Physician.
He is the Master Lawyer.
He is the Master Lawyer. Who has opened the heart of God to us? Who has revealed to us all His perfect and holy law? Who has expounded in life and deed the love of God? No one but Him.
He is the Master Lawyer.
He is the Master Fisherman
He is the Master Fisherman. The disciples had fished all night and caught nothing. A Stranger, in the morning, stood upon the shore and asked the embarrassing question, "Have ye any meat?" to which these experienced fisherman replied, "No." This Stranger then dared to presume upon the good nature of these expert fisherman by instructing them how to fish.
Now folks it is not real smart for someone to tell an expert fisherman ... even an unlucky one ... especially an unlucky one ... how he should have fished in order to catch something.
But this Stranger dared to do that. He said, "Cast the net on the right side of the boat." Can’t you hear Peter saying to himself, "We have cast this same net on the same side of the boat in the same spot all night long, and there simply are no fish there." Then you can hear him say, "Let’s cast the net and prove to this Stranger that we know more about fishing than He does."
The net was cast, and instead of coming up empty as Peter had expected, it came up full of fish. John was in the boat that morning, and when this happened, he had sense enough to know that there was only one Person on earth who could have done that.
He was the One who made the sea, and made the fish in the sea, and knew where the fish were in the sea. John looked at Peter and cried, "It is the Lord!"
Yes, He is the Master Fisherman.
Why A Carpenter?
But, why a carpenter? Why didn’t the Father choose one of these other occupations for Christ? Why did He choose the carpenter’s shop? Because the carpenter’s shop is the only figure that gathers into it all these others we have suggested and blends them into the one picture of what our Lord really is.
He is the Master Builder
Our Lord is described in various NT references as a builder. In Ephesians 2:21 and 4:16 our Lord is seen to be building a body that is to be His holy temple.
In these various ministries of His, we see Him selecting the materials for this body.
In the building of a house, the carpenter may send to Georgia for pine, to California for redwood and to the quarries for stone. Our Lord, in building the Church which is His body, does the same thing.
When He goes out into every avenue of sin to find those sinners and bring them into the fold in order to build them into His temple ...When He stands at the side of a poor, sin-darkened soul and reveals in a mighty flood of light all the love and grace of God...He does so that He might bring the enlightened soul
to Himself and build it into His temple. How majestically, then, the figure of the carpenter shop sets forth our Lord’s spiritual ministry.
But we must go deeper down and farther back than even this if we would understand the real reason for placing Jesus Christ in the environment of a carpenter’s shop. Jesus Christ always was, is now and always will be a carpenter.
He Built the Universe
Jesus Christ built the universe. Before He ever toiled one day in the carpenter’s shop, He had labored in the carpenter’s shop of the eternal Father.
With the Father’s blueprint before Him, He stood one day upon the platform of eternity and flung a world into existence!
He decked the heavens with stardust,
shot light into the sun,
Hung the moon in the heavens at night
to be a reflector of the sun’s glorious light
Set a compass upon the seas and
created beasts, birds, fish and man.
Regardless of what the evolutionists say, Jesus Christ built the universe.
He Built the Bible
He built the Bible. The Bible from Genesis to Revelation is the Word of the eternal God. Almost every Old Testament writer declared what he wrote was the word of Jehovah. It is a well-established fact that the Jehovah of the Old Testament is the Jesus of the New Testament. If that is so then when an Old Testament writer declared "the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying," he could with equal truth have declared "the word of Jesus came unto me, saying." Again regardless of what the world says, Jesus Christ built the Bible.
He Is Building Christians
Jesus Christ is building Christians. In 1 Corinthians we read that Jesus Christ Himself becomes the foundation, and then upon this foundation is built a Christian superstructure. It is this Christian superstructure, or Christian character, that our Lord is building into the life of every believer. How well and how perfectly He builds. He never forgets anything that is essential to the building.
He puts all kinds of temper extinguishers, habit eliminators, and old nature controls. When a sinner comes to the Lord Jesus Christ and surrenders his life to Him, Jesus Christ enters into a contract with that soul to build in him a Christian superstructure that will be a thing of spiritual beauty.
He Is Building a Body
He is building a body. Ephesians 5 declares, "For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church." As the human body is nourished from babyhood to manhood, so Christ nourishes His church. When a baby is born into this world, she/he is fed a diet of milk. As he/she grows into a robust youngster, he/she learns how to handle a knife and fork and eat the stronger foods until, feasting upon strong meat, he/she grows into a robust man.
1 Peter 2:2 says, "Like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow." But this by no means implies that a babe in Christ is to remain forever on the "bottle."
The shame of our churches today is that they are full to overflowing with "bottle babies," men and women who have been Christians for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or more years, and are still feeding upon the "pure milk of the Word." It was to those people that Paul wrote in Hebrews 5 when he declared that he had something of deep, spiritual significance to say to them, but could not because they were still on a milk diet. They should have been eating the strong meat of the Word.
When a baby reaches a certain age, Mom and Dad learn how to prop a pillow on baby’s chest, snuggle a bottle into a crease of the pillow, and allow the baby to feed himself. There may be a few out there who have never done that, but some of us did. Then you can also give the child things to play with at the same time. It is a great baby-sitter. A baby will sit there and take it’s bottle
and you can even stick a rattle in each hand. They will stay content for quite a while.
The reason so many Christians are forever on the bottle and never getting hold of a knife and fork is in order to use a knife and fork, they must let go of some other things. They cannot hold a knife and fork in their hands while at the same time they are holding on to the sinful things of the world.
Just as long as we pastors will act as spiritual nursemaids to prepare two warm bottles every Sunday and another one on Wednesday night, and let our listeners sink comfortably into their pews while we distribute the weekly doses of pure milk, they will keep right on playing with the "rattles" of this world. As long as some "pastoral nursemaid" will come to his pulpit every Sunday morning with a warm bottle of "pure milk," already predigested, and hand it out to his waiting congregation, they can occupy their hands with the things of the world.
May the Lord give all such people the grace and courage "to let go and let God."
Oh that the divine Carpenter might have His way in the building up of strong, stalwart, Christian character in the life of every believer.
He is Building a City
Jesus Christ is also building a city. He said to His disciples one day, "I go to prepare a place for you."
On the Isle of Patmos, John was kneeling among the wave-washed rocks with his face upturned to glory as he saw the Holy City coming down from God out of heaven. The place that God’s divine Carpenter had gone to prepare was now before the vision of the beloved disciple, and what a place!
John said in that city, God would wipe away all tears. ALL TEARS!
How familiar to the human family! Tears have burned their way across the face of the poor old human race since Adam turned the face of the race away from the face of God! Tears have come from broken hearts and welled up through eyes and coursed across the cheeks of mothers as they have seen daughters go the way of sin. Tears have streamed from the eyes of the brokenhearted fathers as they have seen their boys go the way of hell. Tears have flowed across the upturned faces of countless millions as they have said farewell to the flower of the land going forth to become fodder for the roaring cannons on battlefields. Tears have flowed from broken hearts over the heaped-up mounds in countless cities of the dead. Tears! I suspect if all the tears that have flowed since Adam ... could be gathered together, they could float all of the ships at sea today.
We are told our glorious Carpenter divine is building a city where tears shall never find their way across the cheek of one of God’s immortals.
Again He says, "Neither shall there be any more pain." This is another word with which the family is familiar, but it will be eliminated from the vocabulary of the saints of God forever in that city now being prepared by the divine Carpenter.
What a day that will be when we enter the portals of that city that never a shaft of pain can pierce its walls and grip the body of one of God’s immortals.
Listen to the climax of it all: "There shall be no more death."
This excruciating experience is near to every family. The Carpenter divine is building a city so perfect that though the black claws of death shall clutch at its walls while age tumbles into age, they shall never find a crevice through which they can reach and lay hold upon one of God’s immortals.
There’ll never be crepe on the doorknob,
No funeral train in the sky
No graves on the hillsides of glory,
For there we shall nevermore die.
The Call of the Carpenter
As you behold the work of your own miserable hands, will you not drop your tools of self-will and say, "Come, Carpenter so divine, tear this miserable structure down, clear away to the foundation and build upon Yourself such a Christian superstructure in my life as will cause others to say, ’I want what he has ... i want what she has.’"
Do not be afraid to trust your life to the hands of the divine Carpenter.
