ning_. Our
Lord Jesus yielded to death fully and wholly. Then He seized death by the
throat and strangled it. He put death to death. Then He quietly yielded to
the upward gravity of His sinless life and rose up. He lived the dependent
life even so far as yielding to death, and now the Father quietly brought
Him back again to life, to a new life.

And after waiting a while on earth among men, long enough to make it quite
clear to His disciples that it was really Himself really back again, He
quietly yielded further to the upward gravity, and entered upon _the
Ascension Life_, up in the Father's presence. That life is one of
intercession. He ever liveth to make intercession for us.[53] He is our
pleading advocate at the Father's right hand.[54] Thirty years of the
Nazareth life, three and a half years of personal service, nineteen
hundred years, almost, of praying. What an acted-out lesson to us on
prayer, the big place it had and has with Him, the true proportion of
prayer to all else!

These are the experiences of our Lord Jesus that stand out clear above
the mountain range of His life. It was all a high mountain range; these
are the great peaks jutting sharply up above the range.

At the Loom.

Now these peaks, these outstanding experiences, as you look at them a bit,
seem to fall naturally into three groups. There were certain experiences
of power and of privilege, the Bethlehem Birth, the Jordan Baptism, the
Nazareth Life, and the Galilean Ministry.

There were experiences of suffering and sacrifice, the Wilderness
Temptation, the Gethsemane Agony, the Calvary Death, and the Joseph's Tomb
of Burial.

And then there were certain experiences of gladness and great glory, the
Transfiguration Mount, the Resurrection Morning, the Ascension Life, and,
we shall find a fourth here also, a future experience, the Kingdom Reign
and Glory.

These outstanding events, while distinct in themselves, are also
representative of continual experiences. The Jordan Baptism stands not
only for that event, but for the power throughout those forty and two
months. The same sort of suffering that came in Gethsemane had run all
through His life, but is strongest in Gethsemane. So each of these
experiences is really like a peak resting upon the mountain range of
constant similar experience. And these three groups of experience
continuously intermingled, interlaced and interwoven, made up the pattern
of that wondrous life.

Now th