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Synopsis of the Books of the Bible
John Nelson Darby
1800-1882
Matthew
Introduction
Let us now consider the Gospel by Matthew. This Gospel sets Christ before
us in the character of the Son of David and of Abraham, that is to say, in
connection with the promises made to Israel, but presents Him withal as
Emmanuel, Jehovah the Saviour, for such the Christ was. It is He who, being
received, should have accomplished the promises (and hereafter He will do
so) in favour of this beloved people. This Gospel is in fact the history of
His rejection by the people, and consequently that of the condemnation of
the people themselves, so far as their responsibility was concerned (for
the counsels of God cannot fail), and the substitution of that which God
was going to bring in according to His purpose.
In proportion as the character of the King and of the kingdom develops
itself, and arouses the attention of the leaders of the people, they oppose
it, and deprive themselves, as well as the people who follow them, of all
the blessings connected with the presence of the Messiah. The Lord declares
to them the consequences of this, and shews His disciples the position of
the kingdom which should be set up on the earth after His rejection, and
also the glories which should result from it to Himself and to His people
with Him. And in His Person, and as regards His work, the foundation of the
assembly also is revealed-the church as built by Himself. In a word,
consequent on His rejection by Israel, first the kingdom as it exists now
is revealed (chap. 13), then the church (chap. 16), and then the kingdom in
the glory (chap. 17).
At length, after His resurrection, a new commission, addressed to all
nations, is given to the apostles sent out by Jesus as risen.
Chapter 1
The object of the Spirit of God, in this Gospel, being to present Jehovah
as fulfilling the promises made to Israel, and the prophecies that relate
to the Messiah (and no one can fail to be struck with the number of
references to their fulfilment), He commences with the genealogy of the
Lord, starting from David and Abraham, the two stocks from which the
Messianic genealogy sprang, and to which the promises had been made. The
genealogy is divided into three periods, conformably to three great
divisions of the history of the people: from Abraham to the establishment
of royalty, in the person of David; from the establishment of royalty to
the captivity; and from the captivity to Jesus.
We may observe that the Holy Ghost mentions, in this genealogy, the
grievous sins committed by the persons whose names are given, magnifying
the sovereign grace of God who could bestow a Saviour in connection with
such sins as those of Judah, with a poor Moabitess brought in amidst His
people, and with crimes like those of David.
It is the legal genealogy which is given here, that is to say, the
genealogy of Joseph, of whom Christ was the rightful heir according to
Jewish law. The evangelist has omitted three kings of the parentage of
Ahab, in order to have the fourteen generations in each period. Jehoahaz
and Jehoiakim are also omitted. The object of the genealogy is not at all
affected by this circumstance. The point was to give it as recognised by
the Jews, and all the kings were well known to all.
The evangelist briefly relates the facts concerning the birth of
Jesus-facts which are of infinite and eternal importance, not only to the
Jews, who were immediately interested in them, but to ourselves-facts in
which God has deigned to link His own glory with our interests, with man.
Mary was betrothed to Joseph. Her posterity was consequently legally that
of Joseph, as to the rights of inheritance; but the child she carried in
her womb was of divine origin, conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost.
The angel of Jehovah is sent, as the instrument of providence, to satisfy
the tender conscience and upright heart of Joseph, by communicating to him
that that which Mary had conceived was of the Holy Ghost.
We may remark here, that the angel on this occasion addresses Joseph as
"son of David." The Holy Ghost thus draws our attention to the relationship
of Joseph (the reputed father of Jesus) to David, Mary being called his
wife. The angel gives at the same time the name of Jesus (that is, Jehovah
the Saviour) to the child that should be born. He applies this name to the
deliverance of Israel from the condition into which sin had plunged them.
All these circumstances happened, in order to fulfil that which
Jehovah had said by the mouth of His prophet, "Behold a [the] virgin shall
be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name
Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us."
Here then is that which the Spirit of God sets before us in these few
verses: Jesus, the Son of David, conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost;
Jehovah, the Saviour, who delivers Israel from their sins; God with them;
He who accomplished those marvellous prophecies which, more or less
plainly, drew the outline that the Lord Jesus alone could fill up.
Joseph, a just man, simple in heart and obedient, discerns without
difficulty the revelation of the Lord, and obeys it.
These titles stamp the character of this Gospel, that is, of the way Christ
is presented in it. And how wonderful this revelation of Him by whom the
words and promises of Jehovah were to be fulfilled! What a groundwork of
truth for the understanding of what this glorious and mysterious Person
was, of whom the Old Testament had said enough to awaken the desires and to
confound the minds of the people to whom He was given!
Born of a woman, born under the law, heir to all the rights of David
according to the flesh, also the Son of God, Jehovah the Saviour, God with
His people:-who could comprehend or fathom the mystery of His nature in
whom all these things were combined? His life in fact, as we shall see,
displays the obedience of the perfect man, the perfections and the power of
God.
The titles which we have just named, and which we read in chapter 1: 20-23,
are connected with His glory in the midst of Israel-that is to say, the
heir of David, Jesus the Saviour of His people, and Emmanuel. His birth of
the Holy Ghost accomplished Psalm 2: 7 with regard to Him as a man born on
the earth. The name of Jesus, and His conception by the power of the Holy
Ghost, no doubt go beyond this relationship, but are linked also in an
especial manner with His position in Israel.
Chapter 2
Thus born, thus characterised by the angel and fulfilling the prophecies
that announced the presence of Emmanuel, He is formally acknowledged King
of the Jews by the Gentiles, who are guided by the will of God acting on
the hearts of their wise men.
That is to say, we find the Lord,
Emmanuel, the Son of David, Jehovah the Saviour, the Son of God, born King
of the Jews, recognised by the heads of the Gentiles. This is the testimony
of God in Matthew's Gospel, and the character in which Jesus is there
presented. Afterwards, in the presence of Jesus thus revealed, we see the
leaders of the Jews in connection with a foreign king, knowing however as a
system the revelations of God in His word, but wholly indifferent to Him
who was their object; and this king, the fierce enemy of the Lord, the true
King and Messiah, seeking to put Him to death.
The providence of God watches over the child born unto Israel, employing
means that leave the responsibility of the nation its full place; and that
accomplish at the same time all the intentions of God with regard to this
only true remnant of Israel, this only true source of hope for the people.
For, out of Him, all would fall and suffer the consequences of being
connected with the people.
Gone down into Egypt to avoid the cruel design of Herod to take away His
life, He becomes the true Branch; He recommences (that is, morally) the
history of Israel in His own Person, as well as (in a wider sense) the
history of man as the second Adam in relation with God: only that for this
His death must come in-for all, no doubt, for blessing. But He was Son of
God and Messiah, Son of David then. But to take His own place as Son of man
He must die (see John 12). It is not only the prophecy of Hosea, "out of
Egypt have I called my Son", which thus applies to this true beginning of
Israel in grace (as the beloved of God), and according to His counsels (the
people having entirely failed, so that without this, God must have cut them
off). We have seen, in Isaiah, Israel the servant giving place to Christ
the Servant, who gathers a faithful remnant (the children whom God has
given Him while He hides His face from the house of Jacob), that become the
nucleus of the new nation of Israel according to God. Chapter 49 of that
prophet gives this transition from Israel to Christ in a striking manner.
Moreover this is the basis of all the history of Israel, looked at as
having failed under the law, and being re-established in grace. Christ is
morally the new stock from which they spring (compare Isaiah 49: 3, 5).
Herod being dead, God makes it known to Joseph, in a dream, commanding him
to return, with the young child and its mother, into the land of Israel. We
should remark, that the land is here mentioned by the name that recalls the
privileges bestowed by God. It is neither Judea nor Galilee; it is "the
land of Israel." But can the Son of David, in entering it, approach the
throne of His fathers? No: He must take the place of a stranger among the
despised of His people. Directed by God in a dream, Joseph carries Him into
Galilee, whose inhabitants were objects of sovereign contempt to the Jews,
as not being in habitual connection with Jerusalem and Judea, the land of
David, of the kings acknowledged by God, and of the temple, and where even
the dialect of the language common to both betrayed their practical
separation from that part of the nation which, by the favour of God, had
returned to Judea from Babylon.
Even in Galilee Joseph establishes himself in a place, the very name of
which was a reproach to one who dwelt there, and a blot on his reputation.
Such was the position of the Son of God when He came into this world, and
such the relationship of the Son of David with His people, when, by grace
and according to the counsels of God, He stood amongst them. On the one
hand, Emmanuel, Jehovah their Saviour, on the other, the Son of David; but,
while taking His place among His people, associated with the poorest and
most despised of the flock, sheltered in Galilee from the iniquity of a
false king, who, by help of the Gentiles of the fourth monarchy, was
reigning over Judea, and with whom the priests and rulers of the people
were in connection; the latter, unfaithful to God and dissatisfied with
men, proudly detesting a yoke which their sins had brought upon them, and
which they dared not shake off, although they were not sufficiently
sensible of their sins to submit to it as the just infliction of God. Thus
is it that the Messiah is presented to us by this evangelist, or rather by
the Holy Ghost, in connection with Israel.
Chapter 3
We now begin His actual history. John the Baptist comes to prepare the way
of Jehovah before Him, according to the prophecy of Isaiah; proclaiming
that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, and calling on the people to
repent. It is by these three things that John's ministry to Israel is
characterised in this Gospel. First the Lord Jehovah Himself was coming.
The Holy Ghost leaves out the words "for our God," at the end of the verse,
because Jesus comes as man in humiliation, although acknowledged at the
same time to be Jehovah, and Israel could not be thus owned as entitled to
say "our." In the second place the kingdom of heaven
was at
hand-that new dispensation which was to take the place of the one which,
properly speaking, belonged to Sinai, where the Lord had spoken on the
earth. In this new dispensation "the heavens should reign." They should be
the source of, and characterise, God's authority in His Christ. Thirdly,
the people, instead of being blessed in their present condition, were
called to repentance in view of the approach of this kingdom. John
therefore takes his place in the wilderness, departing from the Jews, with
whom he could not associate himself because he came in the way of
righteousness (chap. 21: 32). His food is that which he finds in the
wilderness (even his prophetic garments bearing witness to the position
which he had taken on the part of God), himself filled with the Holy Ghost.
Thus was he a prophet, for he came from God, and addressed himself to the
people of God to call them to repentance, and he proclaimed the blessing of
God according to the promises of Jehovah their God; but he was more than a
prophet, for he declared as an immediate thing the introduction of a new
dispensation, long expected, and the advent of the Lord in Person. At the
same time, although coming to Israel, he did not own the people, for they
were to be judged; the threshing-floor of Jehovah was to be cleansed, the
trees that did not bear good fruit to be cut down. It would be a remnant
only that Jehovah would place in the new position in the kingdom that he
announced, without its being yet revealed in what manner it was to be
established. He proclaimed the judgment of the people.
What a fact of immeasurable greatness was the presence of the Lord God in
the midst of His people, in the Person of Him who, although He was
doubtless to be the fulfilment of all the promises, was necessarily, though
rejected, the Judge of all the evil existing among His people!
And the more we give these passages their true application, that is to say,
the more we apply them to Israel, the more we apprehend their real force.
No doubt repentance is an eternal necessity to every soul that approaches
God; but what a light is thrown upon this truth, when we see the
intervention of the Lord Himself who calls His people to this repentance,
setting aside-on their refusal-the whole system of their relationships with
Him, and establishing a new dispensation-a kingdom which only belongs to
those who hear Him-and causing at length His judgment to break forth
against His people and the city which He had so long cherished! "If thou
hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong
unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes."
This truth gives room for the exhibition of another and most highly
important one, announced here in connection with the sovereign rights of
God rather than in its consequences, but which already contained in itself
all those consequences. The people from all parts, and as we learn
elsewhere especially the ungodly and despised, went out to be baptised,
confessing their sins. But those who, in their own eyes, held the chief
place among the people, were in the eyes of the prophet who loved the
people according to God, the objects of the judgment he announced. Wrath
was impending. Who had warned these scornful men to flee from it? Let them
humble themselves like the rest; let them take their true place, and prove
their change of heart. To boast in the privileges of their nation, or of
their fathers, availed nothing before God. He required that which His very
nature, His truth, demanded. Moreover He was sovereign; He was able of
those stones to raise up children to Abraham. This is what His sovereign
grace has done, through Christ, with regard to the Gentiles. There was
reality needed. The axe was at the root of the trees, and those that did
not bring forth good fruit should be cut down. This is the great moral
principle which the judgment was going to put in force. The blow was not
yet struck, but the axe was already at the root of the trees. John was come
to bring those who received his testimony into a new position, or at least
into a new state in which they were prepared for it. On their repentance he
would distinguish them from the rest by baptism. But He who was coming
after John-He whose shoes John was not worthy to bear-would thoroughly
purge His floor, would separate those that were truly His, morally His,
from among His people Israel (that was His floor), and would execute
judgment on the rest. John on his part opened the door to repentance
beforehand; afterwards should come the judgment.
Judgment was not the only work that belonged to Jesus. Two things are
however attributed to Him in John's testimony He baptises with fire-this is
the judgment proclaimed in verse 12, which consumes all that is evil. But
He baptises also with the Holy Ghost-that Spirit which, given to, and
acting in divine energy in man, quickened, redeemed, cleansed in the blood
of Christ, brings him out fromthe influence of all that acts on the flesh,
and sets him in connection and in communion with all that is revealed of
God, with the glory into which He brings His creatures in the life which He
imparts, destroying morally in us the power of all that is contrary to the
enjoyment of these privileges.
Observe here, that the only good fruit recognised by John, as the way of
escape, is the sincere confession, through grace, of sin. Those only who
make this confession escape the axe. There were really no good trees
excepting those which confessed that they were bad.
But what a solemn moment was this for the people beloved of God! What an
event was the presence of Jehovah in the midst of the nation with whom He
stood in relationship!
Observe that John the Baptist does not here present the Messiah as the
Saviour come in grace, but as the Head of the kingdom, as Jehovah, who
would execute judgment if the people did not repent. We shall see
afterwards the position which He took in grace.
In verse 13 Jesus Himself, who until now has been presented as the Messiah
and even as Jehovah, comes to John to be baptised with the baptism of
repentance. We must remember that to come to this baptism was the only good
fruit which a Jew, in his then condition, could produce. The act proved
itself to be the fruit of a work of God-of the effectual work of the Holy
Ghost. He who repents confesses that he has previously walked afar from
God; so that it is a new movement, the fruit of God's word and work in him,
the sign of a new life, of the life of the Spirit in his soul. By the very
fact of John's mission, there was no other fruit, no other admissible
proof, of life from God, in a Jew. We are not to infer from this, that
there were none in whom the Spirit already acted vitally; but, in this
condition of the people and according to the call of God by His servant,
that was the proof of this life-of the turning of the heart to God. These
were the true remnant of the people, those whom God acknowledged as such;
and it was thus they were separated from the mass who were ripening for
judgment. These were the true saints-the excellent of the earth; although
the self-abasement of repentance could be their only true place. It was
there they must begin. When God brings in mercy and justice, they avail
themselves thankfully of the former, confessing it to be their only
resource, and they bow their heart before the latter, as the just
consequence of the condition of God's people, but as applying it to
themselves .
Now Jesus presents Himself in the midst of those who do this. Although
truly the Lord, Jehovah, the righteous Judge of His people, He who was to
purge His floor, He nevertheless takes His place among the faithful remnant
who humble themselves before this judgment. He takes the place of the
lowest of His people before God; as in Psalm 16 He calls Jehovah His Lord,
saying unto Him, "My goodness extendeth not to Thee"; and says to the
saints, and the excellent in the earth, "all my delight is in them."
Perfect testimony of grace-the Saviour identifying Himself, according to
this grace, with the first movement of the Spirit in the hearts of His own
people, humbling Himself not only in the condescension of grace towards
them, but in taking His place as one of them in their true position before
God; not merely to comfort their hearts by such kindness, but in order to
sympathise with all their sorrows and their difficulties; in order to be
the pattern, the source, and the perfect expression of every sentiment
suitable to their position.
With wicked unrepentant Israel He could not associate Himself, but with the
first living effect of the word and Spirit of God in the poor of the flock,
He could and did in grace. He does so now. With the first right step, one
really of God, Christ is found.
But there was yet more. He comes to bring those who received Him into
relation with God, according to the favour which rested on perfectness like
His, and on the love which, by taking up His people's cause, satisfied the
heart of the Lord, and, having perfectly glorified God in all that He is,
made it possible for Him to satisfy Himself with goodness. We know indeed
that in order to do this, the Saviour had to lay down His life, because the
condition of the Jew, as that of every man, required this sacrifice before
either the one or the other could stand in relation with the God of truth.
But even for this the love of Jesus did not fail. Here however He is
leading them on to the enjoyment of the blessing expressed in His Person,
which should be securely founded on that sacrifice-blessing which they must
reach by the path of repentance, into which they entered by John's baptism;
which Jesus received with them, that they might go on together towards the
possession of all the good things which God has prepared for them that
loved Him.
John, feeling the dignity and excellency of the Person of Him who came unto
him, opposes the Lord's intention. The Holy Ghost by this brings out the
true character of the Lord's action. As to Himself, it was righteousness
which brought Him there, and not sin-righteousness which He accomplished in
love. He, as well as John the Baptist, fulfilled that which belonged to the
place assigned Him by God. With what condescension He links Himself at the
same time with John-"It becometh us." He is the lowly and obedient Servant.
It was thus He ever behaved Himself on earth. Moreover, as to His position,
grace brought Jesus there, where sin brought us, who came in by the door
the Lord had opened for His sheep. In confessing sin as it is, in coming
before God in the confession of (the opposite of sin morally) our sin, we
find ourselves in company with Jesus.
Indeed it is in us the fruit of
His Spirit. This was the case with the poor sinners who came out to John.
Thus it was that Jesus took His place in righteousness and obedience among
men, and more exactly among the repentant Jews. It is in this position of a
man-righteous, obedient, and fulfilling on earth, in perfect humility, the
work for which He had offered Himself in grace, according to Psalm 40,
giving Himself up to the accomplishment of all the will of God in complete
renunciation-that God His Father fully acknowledged Him, and sealed Him,
declaring Him on earth to be His well-beloved Son.
Being baptised-the most striking token of the place He had taken with His
people-the heavens are opened unto Him, and He sees the Holy Ghost
descending on Him like a dove; and, lo! a voice from heaven, saying, "This
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
But these circumstances demand attention.
Never were the heavens opened to the earth, nor to a man on the earth,
before the beloved Son was there.
God had doubtless, in His
longsuffering and in the way of providence, blessed all His creatures; He
had also blessed His own people, according to the rules of His government
on earth. Besides this, there were the elect, whom He had preserved in
faithfulness. Nevertheless until now the heavens had not been opened. A
testimony had been sent by God in connection with His government of the
earth; but there was no object on the earth upon which the eye of God could
rest with complacency, until Jesus, sinless and obedient, His beloved Son,
stood there. But what is so precious to us is, that it is as soon as in
grace He takes publicly this place of humiliation with Israel-that is, with
the faithful remnant, presenting Himself thus before God, fulfilling His
will-the heavens open upon an object worthy of their attention. Ever
doubtless was He worthy of their adoration, even before the world was. But
now He has just taken this place in the dealings of God as a man, and the
heavens opened unto Jesus, the object of God's entire affection on the
earth. The Holy Ghost descends upon Him visibly. And He, a man on earth, a
man taking His place with the meek of the people who repented, is
acknowledged as the Son of God. He is not only anointed of God, but, as
man, He is conscious of the descent of the Holy Ghost upon Him-the seal of
the Father set upon Him. Here it is evidently not His divine nature, in the
character of the Eternal Son of the Father. The seal would not even be in
conformity with that character; and as to His Person it is manifested, and
His consciousness of it, at twelve years old in Luke's Gospel. But while He
is such, He is also a man, the Son of God on the earth, and is sealed as a
man. As a man He has the consciousness of the immediate presence of the
Holy Ghost with Him. This presence is in connection with the character of
lowliness, meekness, and obedience, in which the Lord appeared down here.
It is "like a dove" that the Holy Ghost descends upon Him; just as it was
in the form of tongues of fire, that He came down upon the heads of the
disciples, for their testimony in power in this world, according to the
grace which addressed each and every one in his own language.
Jesus thus creates in His own position as man the place into which He
introduces us by redemption (John 20: 17). But the glory of His Person is
always carefully guarded. There is no object presented to Jesus, as to Saul
for instance, and, in a still more analogous case, to Stephen, who, being
full of the Spirit, sees also the heavens opened, and looks up into them,
and sees Jesus, the Son of man, and is transformed into His image. Jesus
has come; He is Himself the object over whom the heavens open; He has no
transforming object, as Stephen, or as we ourselves in the Spirit; heaven
looks down at Him, the perfect object of delight. It is His relationship
with His Father, already existing, which is sealed.
Neither does
the Holy Ghost create His character (except so far as, with respect to His
human nature, He was conceived in the virgin Mary's womb by the power of
the Holy Ghost); He had connected Himself with the poor, in the perfection
of that character, before He was sealed, and then acts according to the
energy and the power of that which He received without measure in His human
life here below (compare Acts 10: 38, Matthew 12: 28, John 3: 34).
We find in the word four memorable occasions on which the heavens open.
Christ is the object of each of these revelations; each has its especial
character. Here the Holy Ghost descends upon Him, and He is acknowledged
the Son of God (compare John 1: 33, 34). At the end of the same chapter of
John, He declares Himself to be the Son of man. There it is the angels of
God who ascend and descend upon Him. He is, as Son of man, the object of
their ministry.
At the end of Acts 7 an entirely new scene is
opened. The Jews reject the last testimony that God sends them. Stephen, by
whom this testimony is rendered, is filled with the Holy Ghost, and the
heavens are opened to him. The earthly system was definitely closed by the
rejection of the Holy Ghost's testimony to the glory of the ascended
Christ. But this is not merely a testimony. The Christian is filled with
the Spirit, heaven is opened to him, the glory of God is manifested to him,
and the Son of man appears to him, standing at the right hand of God. This
is a different thing from the heavens open over Jesus, the object of God's
delight on earth. It is heaven open to the Christian himself, his object
being there when rejected on earth. He sees there by the Holy Ghost the
heavenly glory of God, and Jesus, the Son of man, the special object of the
testimony he renders, in the glory of God. The difference is as remarkable
as it is interesting to us; and it exhibits, in a most striking manner, the
true position of the Christian as on earth, and the change which the
rejection of Jesus by His earthly people has produced. Only, the church,
the union of believers in one body with the Lord in heaven, was not yet
revealed. Afterwards (Rev. 19) heaven opens, and the Lord Himself comes
forth, the King of kings and Lord of lords.
Thus we see Jesus, the Son of God on earth, the object of heaven's delight,
sealed with the Holy Ghost; Jesus, the Son of man, the object of the
ministry of heaven, angels being His servants; Jesus, on high at the right
hand of God, and the believer, full of the Spirit, and suffering here for
His sake, beholding the glory on high, and the Son of man in the glory; and
Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords, coming forth to judge and make
war against the scornful men who dispute His authority and oppress the
earth.
To return: the Father Himself acknowledges Jesus, the obedient man on
earth, who enters as the true Shepherd by the door, as His beloved Son in
whom is all His delight. Heaven is opened to Him; He sees the Holy Ghost
come down to seal Him, the infallible strength and support of the
perfection of His human life; and He has the Father's own testimony to the
relationship between them. No object on which His faith was to rest is
presented to Him as it is to us. It is His own relation to heaven and to
His Father which is sealed. His soul enjoys it through the descent of the
Holy Ghost and the voice of His Father.
But this passage in Matthew requires some further notice. The blessed Lord,
or rather what occurred as to Him, gives the place or model in which He
sets believers, be they Jew or Gentile: only of course we are brought there
by redemption. "I go to my Father and your Father, my God and your God," is
His blessed word after His resurrection. But to us heaven is opened; we are
sealed with the Holy Ghost; the Father owns us as sons. Only the divine
dignity of Christ's Person is always carefully guarded here in humiliation,
as in the transfiguration in glory. Moses and Elias are in the same glory,
but disappear when Peter's haste, permitted to be expressed, would put them
on a level. The nearer we are to a divine Person, the more we adore and
recognise what He is.
But another very remarkable fact is found here. For the first time, when
Christ takes this place among men in lowliness, the Trinity is fully
revealed. No doubt the Son and Spirit are mentioned in the Old Testament.
But there the unity of the Godhead is the great revealed point. Here the
Son is owned in man, the Holy Ghost comes down on Him, and the Father owns
Him as His Son. What a wonderful connection with man! what a place for man
to be in! Through Christ's connection with Him the Godhead is revealed in
its own fulness. His being a man draws it out in its display. But He was
really a man, but the Man in whom the counsels of God about man were to be
fulfilled.
Hence, as He has realised and displayed the place in which man is set with
God in His own Person, and in the counsels of grace as to us our
relationship with God, so, as we are in conflict with the enemy, He enters
into that side of our position also. We have our relationship with God and
our Father, and now we have to say to Satan also. He overcomes for us, and
shews us how to overcome. Remark too, the relationship with God is first
fully settled and brought out, and then, as in that place, the conflict
with Satan begins, and so with us. But the first question was, Would the
second Adam stand where the first had failed? only, in the wilderness of
this world and Satan's power-instead of the blessings of God-for there we
had got.
Another point is to be remarked here, fully to bring out the place the Lord
takes. The law and the prophets were till John. Then the new thing is
announced, the kingdom of heaven. But judgment closes with God's people.
The axe is at the root of the trees, the fan is in the hand of the coming
One, the wheat is gathered into God's garner, the chaff burnt up. That is,
there is a close of the history of God's people in judgment. We come in on
the ground of being lost, anticipating the judgment; but man's history as
responsible was closed. Hence it is said, "now once in the end of the world
he hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." It has
happened externally and literally to Israel; but it is morally true for us:
only we are gathered for heaven, as in result the remnant then, and shall
be in heaven. But, Christ rejected, the history of responsibility is over,
and we come in in grace as already lost. Consequent on the announcement of
this as imminent, Christ comes and, identifying Himself with the remnant
who escape on repentance, makes this new place for man on the earth: only
we could not be in it till redemption was accomplished. Still He revealed
the Father's name to those He had given Him out of it.
Chapter 4
Having thus in grace taken up His position as man on earth, He commences
His earthly career, being led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted of the devil. The righteous and holy man, the Son of God, enjoying
the privileges proper to such a one, He must undergo the trial of those
devices through which the first Adam fell. It is His spiritual condition
which is tested. It is not now an innocent man in the enjoyment of all
God's natural blessings, who is put to the proof in the midst of those
blessings which should have made him remember God. Christ, nigh to God as
His beloved Son, but in the midst of trial, having the knowledge of good
and evil, and as to outward circumstances come down into the midst of man's
fallen state, must have His faithfulness to this position fully tried with
respect to His perfect obedience. To maintain this position, He must have
no other will than that of His Father, and fulfil it or suffer it, whatever
might be the consequences to Himself. He must fulfil it in the midst of all
the difficulties, the privations, the isolation, the desert, where Satan's
power was, which might tempt Him to follow an easier path than that which
should be only for the glory of His Father. He must renounce all the rights
that belonged to His own Person, save as He should receive them from God,
yielding them up to Him with a perfect trust.
The enemy did his utmost to induce Him to make use of His privileges, "if
thou be the Son of God," for His own relief, apart from the command of God,
and in avoidance of the sufferings which might accompany the performance of
His will. But it was to lead Him to do His own will, not God's.
Jesus, enjoying in His own Person and relationship with God the full favour
of God as Son of God, the light of His countenance, goes into the
wilderness for forty days to be in conflict with the enemy. He did not go
away from man, and from all intercourse with man and the things of man, in
order (like Moses and Elias) to be with God. Being already fully with God,
He is separate from men by the power of the Holy Ghost to be alone in His
conflict with the enemy. In the case of Moses, it was man out of his
natural condition to be with God. In the case of Jesus, it is so to be with
the enemy: to be with God was His natural position.
The enemy tempts Him first by proposing to Him to satisfy His bodily need,
and, instead of waiting on God, to employ according to His own will and on
His own behalf the power with which He was endowed. But, if Israel was fed
in the wilderness with manna from God, the Son of God, however great His
power, would act in accordance with what Israel should have learnt by that
means, namely, that "man doth not live by bread only, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." The Man, the obedient Jew, the
Son of God, waited for this word, and would do nothing without it. He was
not come to do His own will, but the will of Him who sent Him. This is the
principle that characterises the Spirit of Christ in the Psalms. No
deliverance is accepted but the intervention of Jehovah at His own good
time. It is perfect patience, in order to be perfect and complete in allthe
will of God. There could be no sinful lust in Christ; but to be hungry was
no sin, yet it was a human need, and what harm in eating when hungry? There
was no will of God to do it, and that will by the word He came to do.
Satan's suggestion was, "if thou be the Son of God, command"; but He had
taken the place of a servant, and this was not commanding: he sought to get
the Lord out of the place of perfect service and obedience, out of the
place of a servant.
And note here the place the written word has, and the character of Christ's
obedience. This character is not simply that the will of God is a rule; it
is the one motive for action. We have a will arrested often by the word.
Not so Christ. His Father's will was His motive; He acted not merely
according to, but because it was, God's will. We delight to see a child who
would run off to something it delights in, stop and cheerfully do its
parents' will when called to do it. But Christ never obeyed thus, never
sought a will of His own, but was stopped by His Father's. And we are
sanctified to the obedience of Christ. Note further that the written word
is that by which He lives and by which He overcomes. All depended here on
Christ's victory, as all did on Adam's fall. But for Christ, one text,
rightly used of course, suffices. He seeks no other: that is obedience. It
suffices for Satan; he has no reply. His wiles are thus defeated.
The first principle of conquest is simple and absolute obedience, living by
words out of God's mouth. The next is perfect confidence in the path of
obedience.
In the second place then, the enemy sets Him on a pinnacle of the temple,
to induce Him to apply to Himself the promises made to the Messiah, without
abiding in the ways of God. The faithful man may assuredly reckon on the
help of God while walking in His ways. The enemy would have the Son of man
put God to the test (instead of reckoning on Him while walking in His ways)
to see whether He might be trusted in. This would have been a want of
confidence in God, not obedience; or pride, presuming on its privileges,
instead of counting on God in obedience.
Taking His place with
Israel in the condition they were in when without a king in the land, and,
quoting the directions given to them in that book to guide them in the
godly path there taught, He uses for His guidance that part of the word
which contains the divine injunction on this subject, "Thou shalt not tempt
the Lord thy God"; a passage often quoted as if it forbade excess in
trusting God; whereas it means not to distrust, and try if He is faithful.
They tempted God, saying, Is God indeed among us? And this Satan would have
had the Lord do.
The enemy, failing to deceive that obedient heart, even by hiding himself
under the use of the word of God, shows himself in his true character,
tempting the Lord, thirdly, to spare Himself all the sufferings that
awaited Him, by shewing Him the inheritance of the Son of man on earth,
that which would be His when He had reached it through all those paths,
toilsome yet necessary to the Father's glory, which the Father had marked
out for Him. All should now be His, if He would acknowledge Satan by
worshipping him, the god of this world. This in fact was what the kings of
the earth had done for only a part of these things; how often done for some
trifling vanity! but He should have the whole. But if Jesus was to inherit
earthly glory (as well as all other) the object of His heart was God
Himself, His Father, to glorify Him. Whatever might be the value of the
gift, it was as the gift of the Giver that His heart prized it. Moreover He
was in the positionof tested man and a faithful Israelite; and whatever
might be the trial of patience into which the sin of the people had brought
Him, be the trial ever so great, He would serve none but His God alone.
But if the devil carries temptation, sin, to the utmost, and shews himself
to be the adversary (Satan), the believer has the right to cast him out. If
he comes as a tempter, the believer should answer him by the faithfulness
of the word, which is man's perfect guide, according to the will of God. He
does not need to see through everything. The word is the word of Him who
does, and in following that, we walk according to a wisdom which knows
everything, and in a path formed by that wisdom, and which hence involves
absolute trust in God. The two first temptations were the wiles of the
devil, the third, open hostility to God. If he comes as the open adversary
of God, the believer has a right to have nothing to do with him. "Resist
the devil, and he will flee from you." He knows he has met Christ, not
flesh. May believers resist if Satan would tempt them by the world,
remembering it is Satan's domain in fallen man!
The believer's safeguard, morally (that is, as to the state of his heart)
is a single eye. If I seek only the glory of God, that which presents no
other motive than my own aggrandisement, or my own gratification, whether
of body or mind, will have no hold upon me; and will shew itself in the
light of the word, which guides the single eye, as contrary to the mind of
God. This is not the haughtiness that rejects temptation on the ground of
being good; it is obedience, humbly giving God His place, and consequently
His word also. "By the word of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of
the destroyer," from him that did his own will and made it his guide. If
the heart seeks God alone, the most subtle snare is discovered, for the
enemy never tempts us to seek God alone. But this supposes a pure heart,
and that there is no self-seeking. This was displayed in Jesus.
Our safeguard against temptation is the word, used by the discernment of a
perfectly pure heart, which lives in the presence of God, and learns the
mind of God in His word,
and therefore knows its application to the
circumstances presented. It is the word that preserves the soul from the
wiles of the enemy.
Observe also that, consequently, it is in the spirit of simple and humble
obedience that power lies; for where it exists, Satan can do nothing. God
is there, and accordingly the enemy is conquered.
It appears to me that these three temptations are addressed to the Lord in
the three characters, of man, of Messiah, and of Son of man.
He had no sinful desires like fallen man, but He was an hungered. The
tempter would persuade Him to satisfy this need without God.
The promises in the Psalms belonged to Him as being made to the Messiah.
And all the kingdoms of the world were His as the Son of man.
He always replies as a faithful Israelite, personally responsible to God,
making use of the Book of Deuteronomy, which treats of this subject
(namely, the obedience of Israel, in connection with the possession of the
land, and the privileges that belonged to the people in connection with
this obedi nce; and this, apart from the organisation which constituted
them a corporate body before God).
Satan departs from Him, and the angels come to exercise their ministry
towards the Messiah, the Son of man victorious through obedience. What
Satan would have Him try God about, He has fully. They are ministering
spirits for us also.
But how profoundly interesting is it to see the blessed Lord come down, the
Son of God from heaven, and take-the Word made flesh-His place among the
poor godly ones on the earth, and, as having taken that place, owned of the
Father as His Son, heaven being opened and opened to Him as man, and the
Holy Ghost coming down and abiding on Him as man though without measure,
and so forming the model of our place, though we were not yet in it; the
whole Trinity, as I have said, being first fully revealed when He is thus
associated with man; and then, we being slaves to Satan, going in this
character and relationship to meet also Satan for us, to bind the strong
man, and give man through Him this place also: only for us redemption was
needed to bring us where He is.
John being cast into prison, the Lord departs into Galilee. This movement,
which determined the scene of His ministry outside Jerusalem and Judea, had
great significance with respect to the Jews. The people (so far as centred
in Jerusalem, and boasting in the possession of the promises, the
sacrifices, and the temple, and in being the royal tribe) lost the presence
of the Messiah, the Son of David. He went away for the manifestation of His
Person, for the testimony of God's intervention in Israel, to the poor and
despised of the flock; for the remnant and poor of the flock are already in
chapters 3, 4 clearly distinguished from the heads of the people. He thus
really became the true stock, instead of being a branch of that which had
been planted elsewhere; although this effect was not yet fully manifested.
The moment corresponds with John 4.
We may remark here, that, in John's Gospel, the Jews are always
distinguished from the multitude (called the people in the Gospels). The
language, or rather the pronunciation, was entirely different. They did not
speak Chaldee in Galilee.
At the same time this manifestation of the Son of David in Galilee was the
fulfilment of a prophecy in Isaiah. The force of that prophecy is
this:-although the Roman captivity was far more terrible than the invasion
of the Assyrians when they came up against the land of Israel, there was
nevertheless this circumstance which altered everything, namely, the
presence of the Messiah, the true Light, in the land.
We observe that the Spirit of God here passes over the whole history of
Jesus until the commencement of His ministry after the death of John the
Baptist. He gives Jesus His proper position in the midst of
Israel-Emmanuel, the Son of David, the Beloved of God, acknowledged as His
Son, the faithful One in Israel, though exposed to all Satan's temptations;
and then at once, afterwards, His prophetic position announced by Isaiah,
and the kingdom proclaimed as at hand.
Chapters 5 - 8
He then gathers around Him those who were definitively to follow Him in His
ministry and His temptations; and, at His call, to link their portion and
their lot with His, forsaking all beside.
The strong man was bound, so that Jesus could spoil his goods, and proclaim
the kingdom with proofs of that power which were able to establish it.
Two things are then brought forward in the Gospel narrative. First, the
power which accompanies the proclamation of the kingdom. In two or three
verses,
without other detail, this fact is announced. The
proclamation of the kingdom is attended with acts of power that excite the
attention of the whole country, the whole extent of the ancient territory
of Israel. Jesus appears before them invested with this power. Secondly
(chaps. 5-7) the character of the kingdom is announced in the sermon on the
Mount, as well as that of the persons who should have part in it (the
Father's name withal being revealed). That is, the Lord had announced the
coming kingdom, and with the present power of goodness, having overcome the
adversary; and then shews what were the true characters according to which
it would be set up, and who could enter, and how. Redemption is not spoken
of in it; but the character and nature of the kingdom, and who could enter.
This clearly shews the moral position which this sermon holds in the Lord's
teaching.
It is evident that, in all this part of the Gospel, it is the Lord's
position which is the subject of the teaching of the Spirit, and not the
details of His life. Details come after, in order fully to exhibit what He
was in the midst of Israel, His relations with that people, and His path in
the power of the Spirit which led to the rupture between the Son of David
and the people who ought to have received Him. The attention of the whole
country being thus engaged by His mighty acts, the Lord sets before His
disciples-but in the hearing of the people-the principles of His kingdom.
This discourse may be divided into the following parts:-
The character and the portion of those who should be in the kingdom (v. 1-12).
Their position in the world (v. 13-16).
The connection between the principles of the kingdom and the law (v.
17-48).
The spirit in which His disciples should perform good works (chap. 6: 1-18).
Separation from the spirit of the world and from its anxieties (v. 19-34).
The spirit of their relation with others (chap. 7: 1-6).
The confidence in God which became them (v. 7-12).
The energy that should characterise them, in order that they might enter
into the kingdom; not however merely enter, many would seek to do that, but
according to those principles which made it difficult for man, according to
God-the strait gate; and then, the means of discerning those who would seek
to deceive them, as well as the watchfulness needed that they might not be
deceived (v. 13-23).
Real and practical obedience to His sayings, the true wisdom of those that
hear His words (v. 24-29).
There is another principle that characterises this discourse, and that is
the introduction of the Father's name. Jesus puts His disciples in
connection with His Father, as their Father. He reveals to them the
Father's name, in order that they may be in relation with Him, and that
they may act in accordance with that which He is.
This discourse gives the principles of the kingdom, but supposes the
rejection of the King, and the position into which this would bring those
that were His; who consequently must look for a heavenly reward. They were
to be a divine savour where God was known and was dealing, and would be a
spectacle to the whole world. Moreover this was God's object. Their
confession was to be so open that the world should refer their works to the
Father. They were to act, on the one hand, according to a judgment of evil
which reached the heart and motives, but also, on the other, according to
the Father's character in grace-to approve themselves to the Father who saw
in secret, where the eye of man could not penetrate. They were to have full
confidence in Him for all their need. His will was the rule according to
which there was entrance into the kingdom.
We may observe that this discourse is connected with the proclamation of
the kingdom as being near at hand, and that all these principles of conduct
are given as characterising the kingdom, and as the conditions of entrance
into it. No doubt it follows that they are suitable to those who have
entered in. But the discourse is pronounced in the midst of Israel,
before the kingdom is set up, and as the previous state called for in order
to enter, and to set forth the fundamental principles of the kingdom in
connection with that people, and in moral contrast with the ideas they had
formed respecting it.
In examining the beatitudes, we shall find that this portion in general
gives the character of Christ Himself. They suppose two things; the coming
possession of the land of Israel by the meek; and the persecution of the
faithful remnant, really righteous in their ways, and who asserted the
rights of the true King (heaven being set before them as their hope to
sustain their hearts).
This will be the position of the remnant in the last days before the
introduction of the kingdom, the last being exceptional. It was so,
morally, in the days of the Lord's disciples, in reference to Israel, the
earthly part being delayed. In reference to heaven, the disciples are
looked at as witnesses in Israel; but-while the only preservative of the
earth-they were a testimony to the world. So that the disciples are seen as
in connection with Israel, but, at the same time, as witnesses on God's
part to the world (the kingdom being in view, but not yet established). The
connection with the last days is evident; nevertheless their testimony then
had, morally, this character. Only the establishment of the earthly kingdom
has been delayed, and the church, which is heavenly, brought in. Chapter 5:
25 evidently alludes to the position of Israel in the days of Christ. And
in fact they remain captive, in prison, until they have received their full
chastisement, and then they shall come forth.
The Lord ever speaks and acts as the obedient man, moved and guided by the
Holy Ghost; but we see in the most striking manner, in this Gospel, who it
is that acts thus. And it is this which gives its true moral character to
the kingdom of heaven. John the Baptist might announce it as a change of
dispensation, but his ministry was earthly. Christ might equally announce
this same change (and the change was all-important); but in Him there was
more than this. He was from heaven, the Lord who came from heaven. In
speaking of the kingdom of heaven, He spoke out of the deep and divine
abundance of His heart. No man had been in heaven, excepting Him who had
come down from thence, the Son of man who was in heaven. Therefore, when
speaking of heaven, He spoke of that which He knew, and testified of that
which He had seen This was the case in two ways, as shewn forth in Matthew's
Gospel. It was no longer an earthly government according to the law;
Jehovah, the Saviour, Emmanuel, was present Could He be otherwise than
heavenly in His character, in the tone, in the essence, of His whole life?
Moreover, when He began His public ministry and was sealed by the Holy
Ghost, heaven was opened to Him. He was identified with heaven as a man
sealed with the Holy Ghost on earth. He was thus the continual expression
of the spirit, of the reality, of heaven. There was not yet the exercise of
the judicial power which would uphold this character in the face of all
that opposed it. It was its manifestation in patience, notwithstanding the
opposition of all around Him and the inability of His disciples to
understand Him. Thus in the sermon on the Mount we find the description of
that which was suitable to the kingdom of heaven, and even the assurance of
reward in heaven for those who should suffer on earth for His sake. This
description, as we have seen, is essentially the character of Christ
Himself. It is thus that a heavenly spirit expresses itself on earth. If
the Lord taught these things, it is because He loved them, because He was
them and delighted in them. Being the God of heaven, filled as man with the
Spirit without measure, His heart was perfectly in unison with a heaven
that He perfectly knew. Consequently therefore He concludes the character
which His disciples were to assume by these words: "Be ye therefore
perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." All their conduct was
to be in reference to their Father in heaven. The more we understand the
divine glory of Jesus, the more we understand the way in which He was as
man in connection with heaven, the better shall we apprehend what the
kingdom of heaven was to Him with regard to that which was suitable to it.
When it shall be established hereafter in power, the world will be governed
according to these principles, although they are not, properly speaking,
its own.
The remnant in the last days, I doubt not, finding all around them contrary
to faithfulness, and seeing all Jewish hope fail before their eyes, will be
forced to look upward, and will more and more acquire this character,
which, if not heavenly, is at least very much conformed to Christ.
There are two things connected with the presence of the multitude, v. 1.
First, the time required that the Lord should give a true idea of the
character of His kingdom, since already He drew the multitude after Him.
His power making itself felt, it was important to make His character known.
On the other hand, this multitude who were following Jesus were a snare to
His disciples; and He makes them understand what an entire contrast there
was between the effect which this multitude might have upon them, and the
right spirit which ought to govern them. Thus, full Himself of what was
really good, He immediately brings forward that which filled His own heart.
This was the true character of the remnant, who in the main resembled
Christ in it. It is often thus in the Psalms.
The salt of the earth is a different thing from the light of the world. The
earth, it appears to me, expresses that which already professed to have
received light from God-that which was in relationship with Him by virtue
of the light-having assumed a definite shape before Him. The disciples of
Christ were the preservative principle in the earth. They were the light of
the world, which did not possess that light. This was their position,
whether they would or no. It was the purpose of God that they should be the
light of the world. A candle is not lighted in order to be hidden.
All this supposes the case of the possibility of the kingdom being
established in the world, but the opposition of the greater part of men to
its establishment. It is not a question of the sinner's redemption, but of
the realisation of the character proper to a place in the kingdom of God;
that which the sinner ought to seek while he is in the way with his
adversary, lest he should be delivered to the judge-which indeed has
happened to the Jews.
At the same time the disciples are brought into relationship with the
Father individually-the second great principle of the discourse, the
consequence of the Son being there-and a yet more excellent thing is set
before them than their position of testimony for the kingdom. They were to
act in grace, even as their Father acted, and their prayer should be for an
order of things in which all would correspond morally to the character and
the will of their Father. "Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,"
is, that all should answer to the character of the Father, that all should
be the effect of His power. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"
is perfect obedience. Universal subjection to God in heaven and on earth
will be, to a certain point, accomplished by the intervention of Christ in
the millennium, and absolutely so when God shall be all in all. Meanwhile
the prayer expresses daily dependence, the need of pardon, the need of
being kept from the power of the enemy, the desire of not being sifted by
him, as a dispensation of God, like Job or Peter, and of being preserved
from evil.
This prayer also is adapted to the position of the remnant; it passes over
the dispensation of the Spirit, and even that which is proper to the
millennium as an earthly kingdom, in order to express the right desires,
and speak of the condition and the dangers of the remnant until the
Father's kingdom should come. Many of these principles are always true, for
we are in the kingdom, and in spirit we ought to manifest its features; but
the special and literal application is that which I have given. They are
brought into relationship with the Father in the realisation of His
character, which was to be displayed in them by virtue of this
relationship, causing them to desire the establishment of His kingdom, to
overcome the difficulties of an opposing world, to keep themselves from the
snares of the enemy, and to do the Father's will. It was Jesus who could
impart this to them. He thus passes from the law,
recognised as
coming from God, to its fulfilment, when it shall be as it were absorbed in
the will of Him who gave it, or accomplished in its purposes by Him who
alone could do so in any sense whatever.
Chapter 8
Then, in chapter 8, the Lord begins in the midst of Israel His patient life
of testimony, which closed with His rejection by the people whom God had so
long preserved for Him, and for their own blessing.
He had proclaimed the kingdom, displayed His power throughout the land, and
declared His character, as well as the spirit of those who should enter the
kingdom.
But His miracles,
as well as the whole Gospel, are always
characterised by His position among the Jews and God's dealings with them,
till He was rejected. Jehovah, yetthe man obedient to the law, foreshewing
the entrance of the Gentiles into the kingdom (its establishment in mystery
in the world), predicting the building of the church or assembly on the
recognition of His being Son of the living God, and the kingdom in glory;
and, while detecting as the effect of His presence the perversity of the
people, yet bearing on His heart with perfect patience the burden of
Israel.
It is Jehovah present in goodness, outwardly one of
themselves: wondrous truth!
First of all, we find the healing of a leper. Jehovah alone, in His
sovereign goodness, could heal the leper; here Jesus does so. "If thou
wilt," says the leper, "thou canst." "I will," replies the Lord. But at the
same time, while He shews forth in His own Person that which repels all
possibility of defilement-that which is above sin-He shews the most perfect
condescension towards the defiled one. He touches the leper, saying, "I
will, be thou clean." We see the grace, the power, the undefilable holiness
of Jehovah, come down in the Person of Jesus to the closest proximity to
the sinner, touching him so to speak. It was indeed "the Lord that healeth
thee."
At the same time He conceals Himself, and commands the man,
who had been healed, to go to the priest according to the ordinances of the
law and offer his gift. He does not go out of the place of the Jew in
subjection to the law; but Jehovah was there in goodness.
But in the next case we see a Gentile, who by faith enjoys the full effect
of that power which his faith ascribed to Jesus giving the Lord occasion to
bring out the solemn truth, that many of these poor Gentiles should come
and sit down in the kingdom of heaven with the fathers who were honoured by
the Jewish nation as the first parents of the heirs of promise, while the
children of the kingdom should be in outer darkness. In fact the faith of
this centurion acknowledged a divine power in Jesus, which, by the glory of
Him that possessed it, would (not forsake Israel, but) open the door to the
Gentiles, and graft into the olive-tree of promise branches of the wild
olive-tree in the place of those which should be cut off. The manner in
which this should take place in the assembly was not now the question.
He does not however yet forsake Israel. He goes into Peter's house, and
heals his wife's mother. He does the same to all the sick who crowd around
the house at even, when the sabbath was over. They are healed, the devils
are cast out, so that the prophecy of Isaiah was being fulfilled: "Himself
took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." Jesus put Himself in heart
under the weight of all the sorrows that oppressed Israel, in order to
relieve and heal them. It is still Emmanuel, who feels for their misery and
is afflicted in all their affliction, but who has come in with the power
that shews Him capable of delivering them.
These three cases shew this character of His ministry in a clear and
striking manner. He hides Himself; for, until the moment when He would shew
judgment to the Gentiles, He does not lift up His voice in the streets. It
is the dove that rests upon Him. These manifestations of power attract men
to Him; but this does not deceive Him: He never departs in spirit from the
place He has taken. He is the despised and the rejected of men; He has
nowhere to lay His head. The earth had more room for the foxes and the
birds than for Him, whom we have seen appear a moment before as the Lord,
acknowledged at least by the necessities which He never refused to relieve.
Therefore, if any man would follow Him, he must forsake all to be the
companion of the Lord, who would not have come down to the earth if
everything had not been in question; nor without an absolute right,
although it was at the same time in a love which could only be occupied by
its mission, and by the necessity that brought Him there.
The Lord on earth was everything or nothing. This, it is true, was to be
felt morally in its effects, in the grace which, acting by faith, attached
the believer to Him by an ineffable bond. Without this, the heart would not
have been morally put to the test. But this did not make it the less true.
accordingly the proofs of this were present: the winds and waves, to which
in the eye of man He seemed to be exposed, obeyed His voice at once-a
striking reproof to the unbelief that woke Him from His sleep, and had
supposed it possible for the waves to engulf Him, and with Him the counsels
and the power of Him who had created the winds and waves. It is evident
that this storm was permitted in order to try their faith and manifest the
dignity of His Person. If the enemy was the instrument who produced it, he
only succeeded in making the Lord display His glory. Such indeed is always
the case as to Christ, and for us, where faith is.
Now the reality of this power, and the manner of its operation, are
forcibly proved by that which follows.
The Lord disembarks in the country of the Gergesenes. There the power of
the enemy shews itself in all its horrors. If man, to whom the Lord was
come in grace, did not know Him, the devils knew their Judge in the Person
of the Son of God. The man was possessed by them. The fear they had of torme
nt at the judgment of the last day is applied in the man's mind to the
immediate presence of the Lord: "Art thou come to torment us before the
time?" Wicked spirits act on men by the dread of their power; they have
none unless they are feared. But faith only can take this fear from man. I
am not speaking of the lusts on which they act, nor of the wiles of the
enemy; I speak of the power of the enemy. Resist the devil and he will flee
from thee. Here the devils wished to manifest the reality of this power.
The Lord permits it in order to make it plain, that in this world it is not
merely man that is in question whether good or bad, but that also which is
stronger than man. The devils enter into the swine, which perish in the
waters. Sorrowful reality plainly demonstrated that it was no question of
mere disease or of sinful lusts, but of wicked spirits! However, thanks be
to God, it was a question also of One who, although a man on earth, was
more powerful than they. They are compelled to acknowledge this power, and
they appeal to it. There is no idea of resistance. In the temptation in the
wilderness Satan had been overcome. Jesus completely delivers the man whom
they had oppressed with their evil power. The power of the devils was
nothing before Him. He could have delivered the world from all the power of
the enemy, if that only had been in question, and from all the ills of
humanity. The strong man was bound, and the Lord spoiled his goods. But the
presence of God, of Jehovah, troubles the world even more than the power of
the enemy degrades and domineers over mind and body. The control of the
enemy over the heart-too peaceful, and alas! too little perceived-is more
mighty than his strength. This succumbs before the word of Jesus; but the
will of man accepts the world as it is, governed by the influence of Satan.
The whole city, who had witnessed the deliverance of the demoniac and the
power of Jesus present among them, entreat Him to depart. Sad history of
the world! The Lord came down with power to deliver the world-man-from all
the power of the enemy; but they would not. Their distance from God was
moral, and not merely bondage to the enemy's power. They submitted to his
yoke, they had become used to it, and they would not have the presence of
God.
I doubt not that that which happened to the swine is a figure of that which
happened to the impious and profane Jews who rejected the Lord Jesus.
Nothing can be more striking than the way in which a divine Person,
Emmanuel, though a man in grace, is manifested in this chapter.
Chapter 9
In the following chapter (9), while acting in the character and according
to the power of Jehovah (as we read in Psalm 103), "Who forgiveth all thine
iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases"; it is the actual grace in itself
towards and for them, in which He came, which is presented. It gives the
character of His ministry, as the previous one gives the dignity of His
Person and the bearing of what He was. He presents Himself to Israel as
their true Redeemer and Deliverer; and, to prove His title (which unbelief
already opposed) to be this blessing to Israel, and to pardon all their
iniquities which raised a barrier between them and their God, He
accomplishes the second part of the verse, and heals the disease. Beautiful
and precious testimony of kindness to Israel, and at the same time, the
demonstration of His glory who stood in the midst of His people! In the
same spirit, as He had forgiven, and healed, He calls the publican and goes
to his house-come not to call the righteous, but sinners.
But now we enter on another portion of the instruction in this Gospel-the
development of the opposition of unbelievers, of the learned men and the
religionists in particular; and that of the rejection of the work and
Person of the Lord.
The idea, the picture of that which took place, has been already set before
us in the case of the Gergesene demoniac-the power of God present for the
entire deliverance of His people, of the world, if they received Him-power
which the devils confessed to be that which should hereafter judge and cast
them out, which displayed itself in blessing to all the people of the
place, but which was rejected, because they did not desire such power to
dwell among them. They would not have the presence of God.
The narration of the details and the character of this rejection now
commences. Observe that chapter 8: 1-27 gives the manifestation of the
Lord's power-this power being truly that of Jehovah on the earth. From
verse 28 the reception this power met with in the world, and the influence
which governed the world, are set forth, whether as power, or morally in
the hearts of men.
We come here to the historical development of the rejection of this
intervention of God upon the earth.
The multitude glorify God who had given such power to a man. Jesus accepts
this place. He was man: the multitude saw Him to be man, and acknowledged
the power of God, but did not know how to combine the two ideas in His
Person.
The grace which contemns the pretensions of man to righteousness is now set
forth.
Matthew, the publican, is called; for God looks at the heart, and grace
calls the elect vessels.
The Lord declares the mind of God on this subject, and His own mission. He
came to call sinners; He would have mercy. It was God in grace, and not man
with his pretended righteousness counting on his merits.
He assigns two reasons which make it impossible to reconcile His course
with the demands of the Pharisees. How should the disciples fast when the
Bridegroom was there? When the Messiah was gone, they might well do so.
Moreover it is impossible to introduce the new principles and the new power
of His mission into the old Pharisaic forms.
Thus we have grace to sinners, but (grace rejected) now comes at once a
higher proof that Messiah-Jehovah was there, from her bed of death, He
obeys the call. As He goes, a poor woman, who had already employed every
means of cure without success, is instantaneously healed by touching in
faith the hem of His garment.
This history supplies us with the two great divisions of the grace that was
manifested in Jesus. Christ came to awaken dead Israel; He will do this
hereafter in the full sense of the word. Meanwhile, whosoever laid hold of
Him by faith, in the midst of the multitude that accompanied Him, was
healed, let the case be ever so hopeless. This, which took place in Israel
when Jesus was there, is true in principle of us also. Grace in Jesus is a
power which raises from the dead, and which heals. Thus He opened the eyes
of those in Israel who owned Him to be the Son of David, and who believed
in His power to meet their need. He cast out devils also, and gave speech
to the dumb. But having performed these acts of power in Israel, so that
the people, as to the fact, owned them with admiration, the Pharisees, the
most religious part of the nation, ascribe this power to the prince of the
devils. Such is the effect of the Lord's presence on the leaders of the
people, jealous of His glory thus manifested among them over whom they
exercised their influence. But this in no way interrupts Jesus in His
career of beneficence. He can still bear testimony among the people. In
spite of the Pharisees His patient kindness still finds place. He continues
to preach and to heal. He has compassion on the people, who were like sheep
without a shepherd, given up, morally, to their own guidance. He still sees
that the harvest is plenteous and the labourers few. That is to say, He
still sees every door open to address the people and He passes over the
wickedness of the Pharisees.
Let us sum up what we find in the chapter, the grace developed in Israel.
First, grace healing and forgiving as in Psalm 103. Then grace come to call
sinners, not the righteous; the bridegroom was there, nor could grace in
power be put in Jewish and Pharisaic vessels; it was new even in respect of
John Baptist. He comes in reality to give life to the dead, not to heal,
but whoever then touched Him by faith-for there were such-were healed in
the way. He opens eyes to see, as Son of David, and opens the dumb mouth of
him whom the devil possessed. All is rejected with blasphemy by the
self-righteous Pharisees. But grace sees the multitude as yet as having no
shepherd; and while the porter holds the door open, He ceases not to seek
and minister to the sheep.
Chapter 10
So long as God gives Him access to the people, He continues His labour of
love. Nevertheless, He was conscious of the iniquity that governed the
people, although He did not seek His own glory. Having exhorted His
disciples to pray that labourers might be sent into the harvest, He begins
(chap. 10) to act in accordance with that desire. He calls His twelve
disciples, He gives them power to cast out devils and to heal the sick, and
He sends them to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. We see, in this
mission, how much the ways of God with Israel form the subject of this
Gospel. They were to announce to that people, and to them exclusively, the
nearness of the kingdom, exercising at the same time the power they had
received: a striking testimony to Him who was come, and who could not only
work miracles Himself, but confer power on others to do so likewise. He
gave them authority over evil spirits for this purpose. It is this which
characterises the kingdom-man healed of all sickness and the devil cast out
Accordingly, in Hebrews 6, miracles are called "the powers of the world to
come."
They were also, with respect to their need, to depend entirely on Him who
sent them. Emmanuel was there. If miracles were a proof to the world of
their Master's power, the fact that they lacked nothing should be so to
their own hearts The ordinance was abrogated during that period of their
ministry which followed the departure of Jesus from this world (Luke 22:
35-37). That which He here (Matt. 10) commands His disciples appertains to
His presence as Messiah, as Jehovah Himself, on the earth. Therefore the
reception of His messengers, or their rejection, decided the fate of those
to whom they were sent. In rejecting them they rejected the Lord Emmanuel,
God with His people.
But, in fact, He sent them forth as sheep in the
midst of wolves. They would need the wisdom of serpents, and were to
exhibit the harmlessness of doves (rare union of virtues, found only in
those who, by the Spirit of the Lord, are wise unto that which is good and
simple concerning evil).
If they did not beware of men (sad testimony as to these), they would but
suffer; but when scourged and brought before councils and governors and
kings, all this should become a testimony unto them-a divine means of
presenting the gospel of the kingdom to kings and princes, without altering
its character or accommodating it to the world, or mixing up the Lord's
people with its usages and its false greatness. Moreover circumstances like
these made their testimony much more conspicuous than association with the
great ones of the earth would have done.
And, to accomplish this, they should receive such power and guidance from
the Spirit of their Father as would cause the words they spoke to be not
their own words, but His who inspired them. Here, again, their relation
with their Father, which so distinctly characterises the sermon on the
Mount, is made the basis of their capacity for the service they had to
perform. We must remember that this testimony was addressed to Israel only;
only that, Israel being under the yoke of the Gentiles since the time of
Nebuchadnezzar, the testimony would reach their rulers.
But this testimony would excite an opposition that should break all family
ties, and awaken a hatred that would not spare the life of those who had
been the most beloved. He who in spite of all this should endure to the end
should be saved. Nevertheless the case was urgent. They were not to resist,
but if the opposition took the form of persecution, they were to flee and
preach the Gospel elsewhere, for before they had gone over the cities of
Israel the Son of man should come.
They were to proclaim the
kingdom. Jehovah, Emmanuel, was there, in the midst of His people, and the
heads of the people had called the master of the house Beelzebub. This had
not stopped His testimony, but it very strongly characterised the
circumstances in which this testimony was to be rendered He sent them
forth, warning them of this state of things, to maintain this final
testimony among His beloved people as long as possible. This took place at
that time, and it is possible, if circumstances permit, to carry it on
until the Son of man comes to execute judgment. Then the master of the
house will nave risen up to shut the door. The "to-day" of Psalm 95 will be
over. Israel in possession of their cities being the object of this
testimony, it is necessarily suspended when they are no longer in their
land. The testimony to the future kingdom given in Israel by the apostles
after the Lord's death, is an accomplishment of this mission, so far as
this testimony was rendered in the land of Israel; for the kingdom might be
proclaimed as to be established while Emmanuel was on the earth; or this
might be by Christ's returning from heaven as announced by Peter in Acts 3.
And this might take place if Israel were in the land, even until Christ
should return. Thus the testimony may be resumed in Israel, whenever they
are again in their land and the requisite spiritual power is sent forth by
God.
Meanwhile, the disciples were to share in Christ's own position. If they
called the master of the house Beelzebub, much more they of His household.
But they were not to fear It was the necessary portion of those who were
for God in the midst of the people. But there was nothing hid that should
not be revealed. They themselves were to hold nothing back, but were to
proclaim on the housetops all that they had been taught; for everything
should be brought into the light; their faithfulness to God in this
respect, as well as all other things. This, while it met the secret
plottings of their enemies, was itself to characterise the ways of the
disciples. God, who is light, and sees in darkness as in light, would bring
all out into the light, but they were to do this morally now. Therefore
were they to fear nothing while performing this work, unless it were God
Himself, the righteous Judge at the last day. Moreover the hairs of their
heads were numbered. They were precious to their Father, who took notice of
even a sparrow's death. This could not happen without Him who was their
Father.
Finally, they were to be thoroughly imbued with the conviction that the
Lord was not come to send peace on the earth; no, it should be division,
even in the bosom of families. But Christ was to be more precious than
father or mother, and even than a man's own life. He who would save his
life at the expense of his testimony to Christ should lose it; he who would
lose it for the sake of Christ should gain it. He also who should receive
this testimony, in the person of the disciples, received Christ, and, in
Christ, Him that sent Him. God, therefore, being thus acknowledged in the
person of His witnesses on earth, would bestow, on whoever received the
latter, a reward according to the testimony rendered. In thus acknowledging
the testimony of the rejected Lord, were it only by a cup of cold water, he
who gave it should not lose his reward. In an opposing world, he who
believes the testimony of God, and receives (in spite of the world) the man
who bears this testimony, really confesses God, as well as His servant. It
is all that we can do. The rejection of Christ made Him a test, a
touchstone.
Chapter 11
>From that hour we find the definitive judgment of the nation, not indeed as
yet openly declared (that is in chapter 12), nor by the cessation of
Christ's ministry, which wrought, notwithstanding the opposition of the
nation, in gathering out the remnant, and in the still more important
effect of the manifestation of Emmanuel; but it is unfolded in the
character of His discourses, in the positive declarations which describe
the condition of the people, and in the Lord's conduct amid circumstances
which gave rise to the expression of the relations in which He stood
towards them.
Having sent His disciples away to preach, He continues the exercise of His
own ministry. The report of the works of Christ reaches John in prison. He,
in whose heart, notwithstanding his prophetic gift, there still remained
something of Jewish thoughts and hopes, sends by his disciples to ask Jesus
if He is the One who should come, or if they were still to look for
another.
God allowed this question in order to put everything in
its place. Christ, being the Word of God ought to be His own witness. He
ought to bear testimony to Himself as well as to John, and not to receive
testimony from the latter; and this He did in the presence of John's
disciples He healed all the diseases of men, and preached the gospel to the
poor; and John's messengers were to set before him this true testimony of
what Jesus was. John was to receive it. It was by these things men were
tested. Blessed was he who should not be offended at the lowly exterior of
the King of Israel. God manifest in the flesh did not come to seek the pomp
of royalty, although it was His due, but the deliverance of suffering men.
His work revealed a character much more profoundly divine, which had a
spring of action far more glorious than that which depended on the
possession of the throne of avid-than a deliverance which would have set
John at liberty, and put an end to the tyranny that had imprisoned him.
To undertake this ministry, to go down into the scene of its exercise, to
bear the sorrows and the burdens of His people might be an occasion of
stumbling to a carnal heart that was looking for the appearance of a
glorious kingdom which would satisfy the pride of Israel. But was it not
more truly divine more necessary to the condition of the people as seen of
God? The heart of each one therefore would be thus tested, to shew whether
he belonged to that repentant remnant, who discerned the ways of God, or to
the proud multitude, who only sought their own glory, possessing neither a
conscience exercised before God, nor a sense of their need and misery.
Having set John under the responsibility of receiving this testimony, which
put all Israel to the test, and distinguished the remnant from the nation
in general, the Lord then bears witness to John himself, addressing the
multitude, and reminding them how they had followed the preaching of John.
He shews them the exact point to which Israel had come in the ways of God.
The introduction, in testimony, of the kingdom made the difference between
that which preceded and that which followed. Among all that are born of
women there had been none greater than John the Baptist, none who had been
so near Jehovah, sent before His face, none who had rendered Him a more
exact and complete testimony, who had been so separate from all evil by the
power of the Spirit of God-a separation proper to the fulfilment of such a
mission among the people of God. Still he had not been in the kingdom: it
was not yet established; and to be in the presence of Christ in His
kingdom, enjoying the result of the establishment of His glory,
was
a greater thing than all testimony to the coming of the kingdom.
Nevertheless from the time of John the Baptist there was a notable change.
>From that time the kingdom was announced. It was not established, but it
was preached. This was a very different thing from the prophecies that
spoke of the kingdom for a yet distant period, while recalling the people
to the law as given by Moses. The Baptist went before the King, announcing
the nearness of the kingdom, and commanding the Jews to repent that they
might enter into it; Thus the law and the prophets spake on God's part
until John. The law was the rule; the prophets, maintaining the rule,
strengthened the hopes and the faith of the remnant. Now, the energy of the
Spirit impelled men to force their way through every difficulty and all the
opposition of the leaders of the nation and of a blinded people, that they
might at all costs attain the kingdom of a King rejected by the blind
unbelief of those who should have received Him. It needed-seeing that the
King had come in humiliation, and that He had been rejected-it needed this
violence to enter the kingdom. The strait gate was the only entrance.
If faith could really penetrate the mind of God therein, John was the Elias
who should come. He that had ears to hear, let him hear. It was in fact for
those only.
Had the kingdom appeared in the glory and in the power of its Head,
violence would not have been necessary; it would have been possessed as the
certain effect of that power; but it was the will of God that they should
morally be tested It was thus also that they ought to have received Elias
in spirit.
The result is given in the Lord's words which follow, that is, the true
character of this generation, and the ways of God in relation to the Person
of Jesus, manifested by His rejection itself. As a generation the
threatenings of justice, and the attractions of grace were equally lost
upon them. The children of wisdom, those whose consciences were taught of
God, acknowledged the truth of John's testimony, as against themselves, and
the grace, so necessary to the guilty, of the ways of Jesus.
John, separate from the iniquity of the nation, had, in their eyes, a
devil. Jesus, kind to the most wretched, they accused of falling in with
evil ways. Yet the evidence was powerful enough to have subdued the heart
of a Tyre or Sodom; and the righteous rebuke of the Lord warns the perverse
and unbelieving nation of a more terrible judgment than that which awaited
the pride of Tyre or the corruption of Sodom.
But this was a test for the most favoured of mankind. It might have been
said, Why was the message not sent to Tyre, ready to hearken? Why not to
Sodom, that that city might have escaped the fire that consumed it? It is
that man must be tested in every way; that the perfect counsels of God may
be developed. If Tyre or Sodom had abused the advantages which a God of
creation and of providence had heaped upon them, the Jews were to manifest
what was in the heart of man, when possessing all the promises and made the
depositaries of all the oracles of God.
They boasted of the gift, and departed from the Giver. Their blinded heart
acknowledged not and even rejected their God.
The Lord felt the contempt of His people whom He loved; but, as the
obedient man on earth, He submitted to the will of His Father, who, acting
in sovereignty, the Lord of heaven and earth, manifested, in the exercise
of this sovereignty, divine wisdom, and the perfection of His character.
Jesus accepts the will of His Father in its effects, and, thus subject,
sees its perfection.
It was befitting that God should reveal to the lowly all the gifts of His
grace in Jesus, this Emmanuel on earth; and that He should hide them from
the pride that sought to scrutinise and to judge them. But this opens the
door to the glory of God's counsels in it.
The truth was, that His Person was too glorious to be fathomed or
understood by man, although His words and His works left the nation without
excuse, in their refusal to come unto Him that they might know the Father.
Jesus, subject to His Father's will, although thoroughly sensible of all
that was painful to His heart in its effects, sees the whole extent of the
glory that should follow His rejection.
All things were delivered unto Him of His Father. It is the Son who is
revealed to our faith, the veil that covered His glory being taken away now
that He is rejected as Messiah. No one knoweth Him but the Father. Who
among the proud could fathom what He was? He who from all eternity was one
with the Father, become man, surpassed, in the deep mystery of His being,
all knowledge save that of the Father Himself. The impossibility of knowing
Him who had emptied Himself to become man, maintained the certainty, the
reality, of His divinity, which this self-renunciation might have hidden
from the eyes of unbelief. The incomprehensibility of a being in a finite
form revealed the infinite which was therein. His divinity was guaranteed
to faith, against the effect of His humanity on the mind of man. But if no
one knew the Son, except the Father only, the Son, who is truly God, was
able to reveal the Father. No man has ever seen God. The only begotten Son,
who is in the bosom of the Father, has revealed Him. No one knows the
Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him. Wretched
ignorance that in its pride rejects Him! It was thus according to the good
pleasure of the Son that this revelation was made. Distinctive attribute of
divine perfection! He came for this purpose; He did it according to His own
wisdom. Such was the truth of man's relations with Him, although He
submitted to the painful humiliation of being rejected by His own people,
as the final test of their, of man's state.
Observe also here, that this principle, this truth, with regard to Christ,
opens the door to the Gentiles, to all who should be called. He reveals the
Father to whomsoever He will. He always seeks the glory of His Father. He
alone can reveal Him-He to whomthe Father, the Lord of heaven and earth,
has delivered all things; The Gentiles are included in the rights conferred
by this title, even every family in heaven and earth. Christ exercises
these rights in grace, calling whom He will to the knowledge of the Father.
Thus we find here the perverse and faithless generation; a remnant of the
nation justifying the wisdom of God as manifested in John and in Jesus in
judgment and in grace; the sentence of judgment on the unbelievers; the
rejection of Jesus in the character in which He had presented Himself to
the nation; and His perfect submission, as man, to the will of His Father
in this rejection, giving occasion for the manifestation to His soul of the
glory proper to Him as Son of God-a glory which no man could know, even as
He alone could reveal that of the Father. So that the world who refused Him
was in total ignorance, save at the good pleasure of Him who delights in
revealing the Father.
We should also remark here, that the mission of the disciples to Israel who
rejected Christ continues (if Israel be in the land) until He comes as the
Son of man, His title of judgment and of glory as heir of all things (that
is to say, until the judgment by which He takes possession of the land of
Canaan, in a power that leaves no room for His enemies). This, His title of
judgment and glory as heir of all things, is mentioned in John 5, Daniel 7,
Psalms 8 and 80.
Observe too, that in chapter 11, the perverseness of the generation that
had rejected John's testimony, and that of the Son of man come in grace and
associating Himself in grace with the Jews, opens the door to the testimony
of the glory of the Son of God, and to the revelation of the Father by Him
in sovereign grace-a grace that could make Him known as efficaciously to a
poor Gentile as to a Jew. It was no longer a question of responsibility to
receive, but of sovereign grace that imparted to whomsoever it would. Jesus
knew man, the world, the generation which had enjoyed the greatest
advantages of all that were in the world. There was no place for the foot
to rest on in the miry slough of that which had departed from God. In the
midst of a world of evil Jesus remained the sole revealer of the Father,
the source of all good. Whom does He call? What does He bestow on those who
come? Only source of blessing and revealer of the Father, He calls all
those who are weary and heavy laden. Perhaps they did not know the spring
of all misery, namely, separation from God, sin. He knew, and He alone
could heal them. If it was the sense of sin which burdened them, so much
the better. Every way the world no longer satisfied their hearts; they were
miserable, and therefore the objects of the heart of Jesus. Moreover He
would give them rest; He does not here explain by what means; He simply
announces the fact. The love of the Father, which in grace, in the Person
of the Son, sought out the wretched, would bestow rest (not merely
alleviation or sympathy, but rest) on every one that came to Jesus. It was
the perfect revelation of the Father's name to the heart of those that
needed it; and that by the Son;-peace, peace with God. They had but to come
to Christ: He undertook all and gave rest. But there is a second element in
rest. There is more than peace through the knowledge of the Father in
Jesus. And more than that is needed; for, even when the soul is perfectly
at peace with God, this world presents many causes of trouble to the heart.
In these cases it is a question of submission or of self-will. Christ, in
the consciousness of His rejection, in the deep sorrow caused by the
unbelief of the cities in which He had wrought so many miracles, had just
manifested the most entire submission to His Father, and had found therein
perfect rest to His soul. To this He calls all that heard Him, all that
felt the need of rest to their own souls. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn
of me," that is to say, the yoke of entire submission to His Father's will,
learning of Him how to meet the troubles of life; for He was "meek and
lowly in heart," contentto be in the lowest place at the will of His God.
In fact nothing can overthrow one who is there. It is the place of perfect
rest to the heart.
Chapter 12
At length the rejection of the nation, in consequence of their contempt of
the Lord, is plainly shewn, as well as the cessation of all His relations
with them as such, in order to bring out on God's part an entirely
different system, that is to say, the kingdom in a particular form. Thus
this last chapter is the great turning-point of the whole history. Christ
is a divine witness to Himself, and John Baptist has so to receive Him, as
another would. He stood no longer as Messiah witnessed to, but as Son of
God, but gives His full testimony to John. But the nation had rejected God
manifested in warnings and grace alike: only there was a remnant. Wisdom
was justified of her children. Then comes His submission to His rejection,
evil as it might be, as the Father's will; but this leads Him out into the
consciousness of His personal glory, the real ground of that rejection. All
things were delivered to Him of His Father. None could know Him, nor any
the Father unless He revealed Him. The whole world, tested by His
perfection, was found lying in wickedness (though with a spared remnant),
but man was universally away from God. He looked down from heaven to see,
as we read, but they were all gone out of the way, none righteous, no, not
one. So Jesus, as He walked on the sea, stood alone in a judged world,
judged by His rejection, but now in the sovereign grace of the Father, as
the Son revealing Him, and calling to the revelation of this grace in
Himself. This is just now the new position. He had tried man. The very
thing that He was, hindered their receiving Him. Now he that was weary must
come to Him who stood thus alone, and He would give them rest. They must
learn of Him who thus had absolutely submitted, and they would have rest as
to the world and everything here. So with us: where we wholly bow, we come
into the conscious possession of our privileges as disowned, on the
heavenly and higher ground.
The first circumstance that brought forward the question of His Person, and
of His right to close the dispensation, was the disciples' plucking the
ears of corn and crushing them in their hands to satisfy their hunger. For
this the Pharisees rebuke them, because it was on a Sabbath day. Jesus sets
before them that the king, rejected by the malice of Saul, had partaken of
that which was only given to the priests. The Son of David, in a similar
case, might well enjoy a similar privilege. Besides God was acting in
grace. The priest also profaned the Sabbath in the service of the temple;
and One greater than the temple was there. Moreover, if they had really
known the mind of God, if they had been imbued with the Spirit which His
word declared to be acceptable to Him-"I will have mercy and not
sacrifice," they would not have condemned the guiltless. In addition to
this, the Son of man was Lord even of the Sabbath. Here He no longer takes
the title of Messiah, but that of Son of man-a name which bore witness to a
new order of things, and to a more extended power. Now that which He said
had great significance; for the Sabbath was the token of the covenant
between Jehovah and the nation (Ezek. 20: 12-20); and the Son of man was
declaring His power over it. If that was touched, it was all over with the
covenant.
The same question arises in the synagogue; and the Lord persists in acting
in grace, and in doing good, shewing them that they would do the same for
one of their sheep. This only excites their hatred, great as was the proof
of His beneficent power. They were children of the murderer. Jesus
withdraws from them, and great multitudes follow Him. He heals them,
charging them not to make Him known. In all this however His doings were
but the fulfilment of a prophecy which clearly traces out the Lord's
position at this time. The hour would come when He should bring forth
judgment unto victory. Meanwhile He retained the position of entire
lowliness, in which grace and truth could commend themselves to those who
appreciated and needed them. But in the exercise of this grace, and in His
testimony to the truth, He would do nothing to falsify this character, or
so to attract the attention of men as to prevent His true work, or which
could make it even suspected that He sought His own honour. Nevertheless
the Spirit of Jehovah was upon Him as His beloved, in whom His soul
delighted; and He should declare judgment to the Gentiles, and they should
put their trust in His name. The application of this prophecy to Jesus at
that moment is very evident. We see how guarded He was with the Jews,
abstaining from the gratification of their carnal desires respecting
Himself, and content to be in the background, if God His Father was
glorified; and glorifying Him perfectly Himself on the earth by doing good.
He was soon to be declared to the Gentiles; whether by the execution of the
judgment of God, or by presenting Himself to them as the One in whom they
should trust.
This passage is manifestly placed here by the Holy Ghost, in order to give
the exact representation of His position, before laying open the new scenes
which His rejection prepares for us.
He then casts out a devil from a man who was blind and dumb-a sad
condition, truly depicting that of the people with respect to God. The
multitude, full of admiration, exclaim, "Is not this the Son of David?" But
the religionists, on hearing it, jealous of the Lord, and hostile to the
testimony of God, declare that Jesus wrought this miracle by the power of
Beelzebub, thus sealing their own condition, and putting themselves under
the definitive judgment of God. Jesus demonstrates the absurdity of what
they had said. Satan would not destroy his own kingdom. Their own children,
who had the pretension to do the same, should judge their iniquity. But if
not the power of Satan (and the Pharisees admitted that the devils were
really cast out), it was the finger of God, and the kingdom of God was
among them.
He who had come into the strong man's house to spoil his goods had first to
bind him.
The truth is that the presence of Jesus put everything to the test;
everything on God's part was centred in Him. It is Emmanuel Himself who was
there. He who was not with Him was against Him. He who did not gather with
Him scattered. Everything now depended on Him alone. He would bear with all
unbelief as to His own Person. Grace could remove that. He could pardon all
sin; but to speak against and blaspheme the Holy Ghost (that is, to
acknowledge the exercise of a power, which is that of God, and to attribute
it to Satan) could not be pardoned; for the Pharisees admitted that the
devil was cast out, and it was only with malice, with open-eyed deliberate
hatred to God, that they attributed it to Satan. And what pardon could
there be for this? There was none either in the age of the law
or in
that of the Messiah. The fate of those who thus acted was decided. This the
Lord would have them understand. The fruit proved the nature of the tree.
It was essentially bad. They were a generation of vipers. John had told
them the same. Their words condemned them. Upon this the scribes and
Pharisees asked for a sign. This was nothing but wickedness. They had had
signs enough. It was only stirring up the unbelief of the rest.
This request gives the Lord occasion to pronounce the judgment of this
generation.
There should be only the sign of Jonah for this evil generation. As Jonah
was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so should the Son
of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. But then
lo! Christ was already rejected.
The Ninevites by their conduct should condemn this generation in the day of
judgment, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and a greater
than Jonah was here. The queen of the south likewise testified against the
wickedness of this perverse generation. Her heart attracted by the report
of Solomon's wisdom, had led her to him from the uttermost parts of the
earth; and a greater than Solomon was here. Poor ignorant Gentiles
understood the wisdom of God in His word, whether by the prophet or the
king, better than His beloved people, even when the Great King and Prophet
was among them.
This was then His judgment: the unclean spirit (of idolatry) which had gone
out of the people, finding no rest away from Israel (alas! its true house,
whereas they ought to have been the house of God), should return with seven
spirits worse than itself. They would find the house empty, swept, and
garnished; and the last state should be worse than the first. What a solemn
judgment of the people was this-that those among whom Jehovah had walked
should become the habitation of an unclean spirit, of a superabundance of
unclean spirits; not merely of seven, the complete number, but together
with these (who would incite them all to madness against God and those who
honoured God, thus leading them to their own destruction) that other
unclean spirit also, who would draw them back into the wretched idolatry
from which they had escaped! Israel's judgment was pronounced.
In conclusion Jesus publicly breaks the bonds that naturally existed
between Himself and the people after the flesh, acknowledging those only
which were formed by the word of God, and manifested by doing the will of
His Father which was in heaven. Those persons only would He acknowledge as
His relations, who were formed after the pattern of the sermon on the
Mount.
His actions and His words after this bear witness to the new work which He
was really doing on the earth. He leaves (chap. 13) the house and sits
beside the lake. He takes a new position outside, to proclaim to the
multitude that which was His true work. A sower went forth to sow.
Chapter 13
The Lord was no longer seeking fruit in His vine. It had been requisite
according to God's relations with Israel that He should seek this fruit;
but His true service, He well knew, was to bring that which could produce
fruit, and not to find any in men.
It is important to remark here, that the Lord speaks of the visible and
outward effect of His work as a Sower. The only occasion here on which He
expresses His judgment as to the inward cause is, when He says, "They had
no root"; and even here it is a matter of fact. The doctrines respecting
the divine operation needed for the production of fruit are not here spoken
of. It is the Sower who is displayed, and the result of His sowing, not
that which causes the seed to germinate in the earth. In each case, except
the first, a certain effect is produced.
The Lord is then here presented as commencing a work which is independent
of all former relation between God and men, bearing with Him the seed of
the word, which He sows in the heart by His ministry. Where it abides,
where it is understood, where it is neither choked nor dried up, it
produces fruit to His glory, and to the happiness and profit of the man who
bears it.
In verse 11 the Lord shews the reason why He speaks enigmatically to the
multitude. A distinction is now definitely made between the remnant and the
nation: the latter was under the judgment of blindness pronounced by the
prophet Isaiah. Blessed were the eyes of the disciples which saw the
Emmanuel, the Messiah, the object of the hopes and desires of so many
prophets and righteous men. All this marks judgment, and a called and
spared remnant.
I would now make a few remarks on the character of the persons of whom the
Lord speaks in the parable.
When the word is sown in a heart that does not understand it, when it
produces no relation of intelligence, of feeling, or of conscience between
the heart and God, the enemy takes it away: it does not remain in the
heart. He who heard it is not the less guilty: that which was sown in his
heart was adapted to every need, to the nature and to the condition of man.
The immediate reception of the word with joy, in the next case, tends
rather to prove that the heart will not retain it; for it is scarcely
probable in such a case that the conscience was reached. A conscience
touched by the word makes a man serious; he sees himself in the presence of
God, which is always a serious thing whatever may be the attraction of His
grace, or the hope inspired by His goodness. If the conscience has not been
reached, there is no root. The word was received for the joy it imparted;
when it brings tribulation, it is given up. When the conscience has been
already exercised, the gospel brings at once joy; but when not, it awakens
the conscience where there is a real work. In the first case it is the
answer to and meets the wants already there. In the second it creates those
wants.
Every day's history is, alas! the sad and best explanation of the third
class. There is no ill-will, there is barrenness.
That the word was understood is only affirmed of those who bear fruit. The
true understanding of the word brings a soul into connection with God,
because the word reveals God-expresses what He is. If I understand it, I
know Him; and the true knowledge of God (that is, of the Father and of His
Son Jesus Christ) is eternal life. Now, whatever may be the degree of
light, it is always God thus revealed who is made known by the word that
Jesus sows. Thus, being begotten of the word, we shall produce, in diverse
measures, the fruits of the life of God in this world. For the subject here
is the effect, in this world, of the reception of the truth brought by
Jesus (not heaven, nor that which God does in the heart to make the seed
bear fruit).
This parable does not speak, as a similitude, of the kingdom, though the
word sown was the word of the kingdom, but of the great elementary
principle of the service of Christ in the universality of its application,
and as it was realised in His own Person and service while on the earth,
and after He was gone, though fuller subjects of grace might then be
brought out.
In the six following parables we find similitudes of the kingdom. We must
remember that it is the kingdom established during the rejection of the
King,
and which consequently has a peculiar character. That is to
say, it is characterised by the absence of the King, adding to this, in the
explanation of the first parable, the effect of His return.
The first three of these six parables present the kingdom in its outward
forms in the world. They are addressed to the multitude. The last three
present the kingdom according to the estimate of the Holy Ghost, according
to the reality of its character as seen by God-the mind and counsel of God
in it. They are addressed consequently to the disciples alone. The public
establishment of the kingdom in the righteousness and power of God is also
announced to the latter, in the explanation of the parables of the tares.
Let us consider first the exterior of the kingdom publicly announced to the
multitude-the outward form which the kingdom would assume.
We must remember that the King, that is, the Lord Jesus, was rejected on
earth; that the Jews, in rejecting Him, had condemned themselves; that, the
word of God being used to accomplish the work of Him whom the Father had
sent, the Lord thus made it known that He established the kingdom, not by
His power exercised in righteousness and in judgment, but by bearing
testimony to the hearts of men; and that the kingdom now assumed a
character connected with man's responsibility, and with the result of the
word of light being sown in the earth, addressed to the hearts of men, and
left as a system of truth to the faithfulness and the care of men (God,
however, still holding good His sovereign right for the preservation of His
children and of the truth itself). This latter part is not the subject of
these parables. I have introduced it here, because it might otherwise have
been supposed that everything depended absolutely on man. Had it been so,
alas! all would have been lost.
The parable of the tares is the first. It gives us a general idea of the
effect of these sowings as to the kingdom; or rather, the result of having
for the moment committed the kingdom here below to the hands of men.
The result was that the kingdom here below no longer presented as a whole
the appearance of the Lord's own work. He sows not tares. Through the.
carelessness and the infirmity of men, the enemy found means to sow these
tares. Observe that this does not apply to the heathen or to the Jews, but
to the evil done among Christians by Satan through bad doctrines, bad
teachers and their adherents. The Lord Jesus sowed. Satan, while men slept,
sowed also. There were judaisers, philosophers, heretics who held with both
the former on the one hand, or on the other opposed the truth of the Old
Testament.
Nevertheless Christ had only sown good seed. Must the tares then be rooted
out? Clearly the condition of the kingdom during the absence of Christ
depends on the answer to this question; and it throws light also upon that
condition. But there was still less power to bring in a remedy than there
had been to prevent the evil. All must remain unremedied until the King's
interposition at the time of harvest. The kingdom of heaven on earth, such
as it is in the hands of men, must remain a mingled system. Heretics, false
brethren, will be there, as well as the fruit of the Lord's word,
testifying, in this last dealing of God with him, man's inability to
maintain that which is good and pure in its pristine state. So it has ever
been.
At the time of harvest (a phrase that designates a certain space of time
during which the events connected with the harvest will take place)-"at the
time of harvest" the Lord will deal first, in His providence, with the
tares. I say, "in His providence," because He employs the angels. The tares
shall be bound in bundles ready to be burnt.
We must observe that outward things in the world are the subject here-acts
which root out corruption-corruption that has grown up in the midst of
Christianity.
The servants are not capable of doing this. The intermingling (caused by
their weakness and carelessness) is such, that in gathering out the tares
they would root up the wheat also. Not only discernment, but the practical
power of separation would be wanting to carry out their purpose. When once
the tares are there, the servants have nothing to do with them as to their
presence in this world, in Christendom. Their service is with the good. The
work of purging Christendom from them was not in their province. It is a
work of judgment on that which is not of God, belonging to Him who can
execute it according to the perfection of a knowledge that embraces
everything, and a power that nothing escapes; which, if two men are in one
bed, knows how to take the one and leave the other. The execution of
judgment on the wicked in this world does not belong to the servants of
Christ.
He will accomplish it by the angels of His power, to whom He
commits the execution of this work.
After the binding of the tares He gathers the wheat into His garner. There
is no binding the wheat in bundles; He takes it all to Himself. Such is the
end of that which concerns the outward appearance of the kingdom here
below. This is not all that the parable can teach us, but it ends the
subject of which this part of the chapter speaks. During the absence of
Jesus the result of His sowing will be marred, as a whole down here, by the
work of the enemy. At the close He will bind all the enemy's work in
bundles; that is, He will prepare them in this world for judgment. He will
then take away the church. It is evident that this terminates the scene
below which goes on during His absence. The judgment is not yet executed.
Before speaking of it the Lord gives other pictures of the forms which the
kingdom will assume during His absence.
That which had been sown as a grain of mustard-seed becomes a great tree; a
symbol that represents a great power in the earth. The Assyrian, Pharaoh,
Nebuchadnezzar, are set before us in the word as great trees. Such would be
the form of the kingdom, which began in littleness through the word sown by
the Lord, and afterwards by His disciples. That which this seed produced
would gradually assume the form of a great power, making itself prominent
on the earth, so that others would shelter themselves under it, as birds
under the branches of a tree. This has, indeed, been the case.
We next find that it would not only be a great tree in the earth, but that
the kingdom would be characterised as a system of doctrine, which would
diffuse itself-a profession, which would enclose all it reached within its
sphere of influence. The whole of the three measures would be leavened. I
need not dwell here on the fact that the word leaven is always used in a
bad sense by the sacred writers; but the Holy Ghost gives us to understand
that it is not the regenerative power of the word in the heart of an
individual, bringing him back to God; neither is it simply a power acting
by outward strength, such as Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, and the other great
trees of scripture. But it is a system of doctrine that should characterise
the mass, pervading it throughout. It is not faith properly so called, nor
is it life. It is a religion; it is Christendom. A profession of doctrine,
in hearts which will bear neither the truth nor God, connects itself always
with corruption in the doctrine itself.
This parable of the leaven concludes His instructions to the multitude. All
was now addressed to them in parables, for they did not receive Him their
King, and He spoke of things that supposed His rejection, and an aspect of
the kingdom unknown to the revelations of the Old Testament, which have in
view either the kingdom in power, or a little remnant receiving, amid
sufferings, the word of the Prophet-King who had been rejected.
After this parable Jesus no longer remains by the seaside with the
multitude-a place suited to the position in which He stood towards the
people after the testimony borne at the end of chapter 12, and whither He
had repaired on quitting the house. He now re-enters the house with His
disciples; and there, in secluded intimacy with them, He reveals the true
character-the object-of the kingdom of heaven, the result of that which was
done in it, and the means which should be taken to cleanse everything on
earth, when the outward history of the kingdom during His absence should
have terminated. That is to say, we find here that which characterises the
kingdom to the spiritual man, that which he understands as the true mind of
God with regard to the kingdom, and the judgment which should purge out
from it all that was contrary to Him-the exercise of power which should
render it outwardly in accordance with the heart of God.
We have seen its outward history ending with this, the wheat hidden in the
garner, and the tares left in bundles on the earth ready to be burnt. The
explanation of this parable resumes the history of the kingdom at that
period; only it gives us to understand and distinguish the different parts
of the intermixture, ascribing each part to its true author. The field is
the world;
there the word was sown for the establishment, in this
manner, of the kingdom. The good seed were the children of the kingdom;
they belonged to it really according to God; they are its heirs. The Jews
were no longer so, and it was no longer the privilege of natural birth. The
children of the kingdom were born of the word. But among these, in order to
spoil the Lord's work, the enemy introduced all sorts of people, the fruit
of the doctrines which he had sown among those who were born of the truth.
This is the work of Satan in the place where the doctrine of Christ had
been planted. The harvest is the end of the age.
The reapers are
the angels It will be remarked here that the Lord does not explain
historically that which took place, but the terms used to bring in the
issue when the harvest is come. The fulfilment of that which is historical
in the parable is supposed; and He passes on to give the great result
outside that which was the kingdom during His absence on high. The wheat
(that is, the church) is in the barn, and the tares in bundles on the
earth. But He takes all that constitutes these bundles, all that as evil
offends God in the kingdom, and casts it into the furnace of fire, where
there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. After this judgment the righteous
shall shine forth like Himself, the true Sun of that day of glory-of the
age to come, in the kingdom of their Father. Christ will have received the
kingdom from the Father whose children they were; and they shall shine
forth in it with Him according to that character.
Thus we find for the multitude, the results on earth of the divine sowing,
and the machinations of the enemy-the kingdom presented under this form;
afterwards the confederacies of the wicked among themselves apart from
their natural order as growing in the field; and the taking away of the
church. For His own disciples, the Lord explains all that was necessary to
make them fully understand the language of the parable. We then find the
judgment executed by the Son of man upon the wicked, who are cast into the
fire; and the manifestation of the righteous in glory (these last events
taking place after the Lord had risen up and put an end to the outward form
of the kingdom of heaven upon earth, the wicked being gathered in
companies, and the saints taken up to heaven).
And now, having explained the public history and its results in judgment
and in glory for the full instruction of His disciples, the Lord
communicates to them the thoughts of God with respect to what was going on
upon earth, while the outward and earthly events of the kingdom were being
developed-that which the spiritual man should discern in them. To him, to
one who understood the purpose of God, the kingdom of heaven was like a
treasure hidden in a field. A man finds the treasure, and buys the field in
order to possess it. The field was not his object, but the treasure that
was in it. Thus Christ has purchased the world. He possesses it by right.
His object is the treasure hidden in it, His own people, all the glory of
the redemption connected with it; in a word, the church looked at,-not in
its moral and in a certain sense divine beauty, but as the special object
of the desires and of the sacrifice of the Lord-that which His heart had
found in this world according to the counsels and the mind of God.
In this parable it is the powerful attraction of this "new thing," which
induces the one who has found it to purchase the whole place, that he may
obtain possession of it.
The Jews were nothing new; the world had no attraction; but this new
treasure induced the One who had discovered it to sell all He had that He
might gain it. In fact Christ forsook everything. He not only emptied
Himself to redeem us, but He renounced all that belonged to Him as man, as
the Messiah on earth, the promises, His royal rights, His life, to take
possession of the world which contained in it this treasure, the people
whom He loved.
In the parable of the pearl of great price we have again the same idea, but
it is modified by others. A man was seeking goodly pearls. He knew what he
was about. He had taste, discernment, knowledge, as to that which he
sought. It was the well-known beauty of the thing that caused his research.
He knows when he has found one corresponding to his ideas, that it is worth
while to sell all that he may acquire it. It is worth this in the eyes of
one who can estimate its value. And he buys nothing else along with it.
Thus Christ has found in the church by itself a beauty and (because of this
beauty) a value, which made Him give up all to obtain it. It is just so
with regard to the kingdom. Considering the state of man, of the Jews even,
the glory of God required that all should be given up in order to have this
new thing; for there was nothing in man that He could take to Himself. Not
only He was content to give up all for the possession of this new thing,
but that which His heart seeks for, that which He finds nowhere else, He
finds in that which God has given Him in the kingdom. He bought no other
pearls. Until He found this pearl, He had no inducement to sell all that He
had. As soon as He sees it, His mind is made up; He forsakes all for it.
Its value decides Him, for He knows how to judge, and He seeks with
discernment.
I do not say that the children of the kingdom are not actuated by the same
principle. When we have learnt what it is to be a child of the kingdom, we
forsake all that we may enjoy it, that we may be of the pearl of great
price. But we do not buy that which is not the treasure, in order to obtain
it; and we are very far from seeking goodly pearls before we have found the
one of great price. In their full force these parables only apply to
Christ. The intention in these parables is to bring out that which was then
doing, in contrast with all that had taken place before-with the Lord's
relations to the Jews.
There remains yet one of the seven-that of the net cast into the sea. In
this parable there is no change in the persons employed, that is to say, in
the parable itself. The same persons who cast the net draw it to shore, and
make the separation by gathering the good fish into vessels, taking no
further notice of the bad. Securing the good fish is the work of those who
draw the net to shore. It is only when landed that this is done. The
sorting is their work, doubtless; but they have only to do with the good
fish. They know them. This is their business, the object of their fishing.
Others indeed come, and are found in the net together with the good; but
these are not good. No other judgment is needed. The fishermen know the
good. These are not such. They leave them. This forms a part of the history
of the kingdom of heaven. The judgment of the wicked is not found here. The
bad are left on the shore, when the fishermen gather the good into vessels.
The final destiny of either good or bad is not given here. It does not take
place on the shore with respect to the good; nor as to the bad by simply
leaving them there. It is subsequent to the action of the parable; and,
with respect to the bad, it does not take place merely by their separation
from the good with whom they had been intermingled, but by their
destruction. Neither in this parable, nor in that of the tares and wheat,
does the execution of judgment form part of the parable itself. There the
tares are bound and left on the field, here they are cast away out of the
netful.
Thus the gospel net has been cast into the sea of the nations, and has
enclosed of all kinds. After this general gathering, which has filled the
net, the agents of the Lord, having to do with the good, gather them
together, separating them from the bad. Remark here that this is a
similitude of the kingdom. It is the character which the kingdom assumes
when the gospel has assembled together a mass of good and bad. At the end,
when the net has been drawn so that all kinds are enclosed in it, the good
are set apart because they are precious, the others are left. The good are
gathered into divers vessels. The saints are gathered, not by the angels,
but by the work of those who have laboured in the name of the Lord. The
distinction is not made by judgment, but by the servants occupied with the
good.
The execution of the judgment is another matter. The labourers have nothing
to do with that. At the end of the age, the angels shall come forth and
sever the wicked from among the just, not the just from among the rest as
the fisherman did, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire, where
there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Here nothing is said of their
being occupied about the just. Gathering them into vessels was not the
angels' work, but that of the fishermen. The angels are in both parables
occupied with the wicked. The public result had been given, whether during
the period of the kingdom of heaven, or afterwards, in the parable of the
tares. It is not repeated here. The work to be done with regard to the
righteous when the net is full is added here. The destiny of the wicked is
repeated to distinguish the work done with respect to them from that
wrought by means of the fishermen, who gather the good into divers vessels.
Still it is presented under another aspect; and the just are left where
they were. In the parable of the tares the judgment of the wicked is
declared as in this. They are cast out into weeping and gnashing of teeth,
but there the general state of the kingdom is revealed, and we have the
righteous shining forth as the sun-the higher part of the kingdom. Here it
is only what the intelligent understand, what the spiritual mind sees; the
just are put into vessels. There is a separation by spiritual power before
judgment, which there was not in the general public state of the kingdom,
but only what providence did publicly in the field, and the good grain
received above. Here the separation is by dealings with the good. This was
the main point for spiritual intelligence. Public display is not the point;
only judgment will be executed on the wicked, in fact; then the just will
be left there.
In the explanation of the second parable, it is absolute judgment in the
case of the tares, destroying and consuming that which remains on the
field, already collected together and separated providentially from the
wheat. The angels are sent at the end, not to separate the tares from the
wheat (that was done) but to cast the tares into the fire, thus cleansing
the kingdom. In the explanation of the parable of the fish (v. 49) the
sorting itself takes place. There will be just ones on the earth, and the
wicked will be separated from among them. The practical instruction of this
parable is the separation of the good from the wicked, and the gathering
together in companies of many of the former; this is done more than once,
many others of the same being gathered elsewhere into one also. The
servants of the Lord are the instruments employed in what takes place in
the parable itself.
These parables contain things new and old. The doctrine of the kingdom, for
instance, was a well-known doctrine. That the kingdom should take the forms
described by the Lord, that it should embrace the whole world without
distinction, the people of God drawing their existence not from Abraham but
from the word-all this was quite new. All was of God. The scribe had
knowledge of the kingdom, but was entirely ignorant of the character it
would assume, as the kingdom of heaven planted in this world by means of
the word, on which all here depends.
The Lord resumes His work among the Jews.
To them He was only "the
carpenter's son." They knew His family after the flesh. The kingdom of
heaven was nothing in their eyes. The revelation of this kingdom was
carried on elsewhere, and there the knowledge of divine things was
communicated. The former saw nothing beyond those things which the natural
heart could perceive. The blessing of the Lord was arrested by their
unbelief: He was rejected as prophet, as well as king, by Israel.
Chapter 14
Our Gospel resumes the historical course of these revelations, but in such
a manner as to exhibit the spirit by which the people were animated. Herod
(loving his earthly power and his own glory more than submission to the
testimony of God, and more bound by a false human idea than by his
conscience, although in many things he appears to have owned the power of
the truth) had cut off the head of the forerunner of the Messiah, John the
Baptist; whom he had already imprisoned, in order to remove out of the
sight of his wife the faithful reprover of the sin in which she lived.
Jesus is sensible of the import of this, which is reported to Him.
Accomplishing in lowly service (however personally exalted above him),
together with John, the testimony of God in the congregation, He felt
Himself united in heart and in His work to him; for faithfulness in the
midst of all evil binds hearts very closely together; and Jesus had
condescended to take a place in which faithfulness was concerned (see Psalm
40, 9, 10). On hearing therefore of John's death He retires into a desert
place. But while departing from the multitude who thus began to act openly
in the rejection of the testimony of God, He does not cease to be the
supplier of all their wants, and to testify thus that He who could divinely
minister to all their need was amongst them. For the multitude, who felt
these wants and who, if they had not faith, yet admired the power of Jesus,
follow Him into the desert place; and Jesus, moved with compassion, heals
all their sick. In the evening His disciples beg Him to send the multitude
away that they may procure food. He refuses and bears a remarkable
testimony to the presence, in His own Person, of Him who was to satisfy the
poor of His people with bread (Psalm 132). Jehovah, the Lord, who
established the throne of David, was there in the Person of Him who should
inherit that throne. I doubt not the twelve baskets of fragments refer to
the number which, in scripture, always designates the perfection of
administrative power in man.
Remark also here, that the Lord expects to find His twelve disciples
capable of being the instruments of His acts of blessing and power,
administering according to His own power the blessings of the kingdom.
"Give ye them," said He, "to eat." This applies to the blessing of the
Lord's kingdom, and to the disciples of Jesus, the twelve, as being its
ministers; but it is likewise an all-important principle with regard to the
effect of faith in every intervention of God in grace. Faith should be able
to use the power that acts in such intervention, to produce the works which
are proper to that power, according to the order of the dispensation and
the intelligence it has respecting it. We shall find this principle again
elsewhere more fully developed.
The disciples wished to send the multitude away, not knowing how to use the
power of Christ. They should have been able to avail themselves of it in
Israel's behalf, according to the glory of Him who was among them.
If now the Lord demonstrated with perfect patience by His actions that He
who could thus bless Israel was in the midst of His people, He does not the
less bear testimony to His separation from that people in consequence of
their unbelief. He makes His disciples get into a ship to cross the sea
alone; and, dismissing the multitude Himself, He goes up into a mountain
apart to pray; while the ship that contained the disciples was tossing on
the waves of the sea with a contrary wind: a living picture of that which
has taken place. God has indeed sent forth His people to cross the stormy
sea of the world alone, meeting with an opposition against which it is hard
to strive. Meanwhile Jesus prays alone on high. He has sent away the Jewish
people, who had surrounded Him during the period of His presence here
below. The departure of the disciples, besides its general character, sets
before us peculiarly the Jewish remnant. Peter individually, in coming out
of the ship, goes in figure beyond the position of this remnant. He
represents that faith which, forsaking the earthly accommodation of the
ship, goes out to meet Jesus who has revealed Himself to it, and walks upon
the sea-a bold undertaking, but based on the word of Jesus, "Come." Yet
remark here that this walk has no other foundation than, "If it be Thou,"
that is to say, Jesus Himself. There is no support, no possibility of
walking, if Christ be lost sight of. All depends on Him. There is a known
means in the ship; there is nothing but faith, which looks to Jesus, for
walking on the water. Man, as mere man, sinks by the very fact of being
there. Nothing can sustain itself except that faith which draws from Jesus
the strength that is in Him, and which therefore imitates Him. But it is
sweet to imitate Him; and one is then nearer to Him, more like Him. This is
the true position of the church, in contrast with the remnant in their
ordinary character. Jesus walks on the water as on the solid ground. He who
created the elements as they are could well dispose of their qualities at
His pleasure. He permits storms to arise for the trial of our faith. He
walks on the stormy wave as well as on the calm. Moreover the storm makes
no difference. He who sinks in the waters does so in the calm as well as in
the storm, and he who can walk upon them will do so in the storm as well as
in the calm-that is to say, unless circumstances are looked to and so faith
fail, and the Lord is forgotten. For often circumstances make us forget Him
where faith ought to enable us to overcome circumstances through our
walking by faith in Him who is above them all. Nevertheless, blessed be
God! He who walks in His own power upon the water is there to sustain the
faith and the wavering steps of the poor disciple; and at any rate that
faith had brought Peter so near to Jesus that His outstretched hand could
sustain him. Peter's fault was that he looked at the waves, at the storm
(which, after all, had nothing to do with it), instead of looking at Jesus,
who was unchanged, and who was walking on those very waves, as his faith
should have observed. Still the cry of his distress brought the power of
Jesus into action, as his faith ought to have done; only it was now to his
shame, instead of being in the enjoyment of communion and walking like the
Lord.
Jesus having entered the ship, the wind ceases. Even so it will be when
Jesus returns to the remnant of His people in this world. Then also will He
be worshipped as the Son of God by all that are in the ship, with the
remnant of Israel. In Gennesaret Jesus again exercises the power which
shall here after drive out from the earth all the evil that Satan has
brought in. For when He returns, the world will recognise Him. It is a fine
picture of the result of Christ's rejection, which this Gospel has already
made known to us as taking place in the midst of the Jewish nation.
Chapter 15
Chapter 15 displays man and God, the moral contrast between the doctrine of
Christ and that of the Jews; and thus the Jewish system is rejected morally
by God. When I speak of the system, I speak of their whole moral condition,
systematised by the hypocrisy that sought to conceal iniquity, while
increasing it in the sight of God, before whom they presented themselves.
They made use of His name in order to sink lower, under the pretence of
piety, than the laws of natural conscience. It is thus that a religious
system becomes the great instrument of the power of the enemy, and more
especially when that, of which it still bears the name, was instituted by
God. But then man is judged, for Judaism was man with God's law and God's
culture.
The judgment which the Lord pronounces on this system of hypocrisy, while
manifesting the consequent rejection of Israel, gives rise to instruction
that goes thus much farther; and which, searching the heart of man, and
judging man according to that which proceeds from it, proves the heart to
be a spring of all iniquity; and thus makes it evident that all true
morality has its basis in the conviction and confession of sin. For,
without this, the heart is always false and flatters itself in vain. Thus
also Jesus goes to the root of everything, and comes out of the special and
temporary relations of the Jewish nation, to enter on the true morality
which belongs to all ages. The disciples did not observe the traditions of
the elders; about these the Lord did not concern Himself. He avails Himself
of the accusation, to lay it upon the conscience of their accusers, that
the judgment occasioned by the rejection of the Son of God was authorised
also on the ground of those relationships that already existed between God
and Israel. They made the commandment of God of none effect through their
traditions; and that in a most important point, and one even on which all
earthly blessings depended for the children of Israel. By their own
ordinances also Jesus exposes the consummate hypocrisy, the selfishness and
avarice, of those who pretended to guide the people, and to form their
heart to morality and to the worship of Jehovah. Isaiah had already
pronounced their judgment.
Afterwards He shews the multitude that it was a question of what man was,
of what proceeded from his heart, from within him; and points out the sad
streams that flow from that corrupt spring. But it was the simple truth
with respect to the heart of man, as known by God, which scandalised the
self-righteous men of the world, which was unintelligible even to the
disciples. Nothing so simple as the truth when it is known; nothing so
difficult, so obscure, when a judgment is to be formed respecting it by the
heart of man, who does not possess the truth; for he judges after his own
thoughts, and the truth is not in them. In short, Israel, and specially
religious Israel, and true morality are set in contrast: man is set in his
proper responsibility, and in his real colours before God.
Jesus searches the heart; but, acting in grace, He acts according to the
heart of God, and manifests it by coming out, both for the one and for the
other, of the conventional terms of God's relationship with Israel. A
divine Person, God, may walk in the covenant He has given, but cannot be
confined to it. And the unfaithfulness of His people to it is the occasion
of the revelation of Him passing out beyond that place. And note, here, the
effect of traditional religion in blinding moral judgment. What clearer or
plainer than that what came out of the mouth and heart defiled a man, not
what he ate? But the disciples through the vile influence of Pharisaic
teaching, putting outside forms for inward purity, could not understand it.
Christ now leaves the borders of Israel, and His disputes with the learned
men of Jerusalem, to visit those places which were farthest off from Jewish
privileges. He departs into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, the cities which
He had Himself used as examples of that which was farthest from repentance;
see chapter 11, where He classes them with Sodom and Gomorrah as more
hardened than they. A woman comes out of these countries. She was one of
the accursed race, according to the principles that distinguished Israel.
She was a Canaanite. She comes to beg the interposition of Jesus on behalf
of her daughter, who was possessed by a devil.
In begging this favour, she addresses Jesus by the title, which faith knew
to be His connection with the Jews-"Son of David." This gives rise to a
full development of the Lord's position, and, at the same time, of the
conditions under which man might hope to share the effect of His goodness,
yea, to the revelation of God Himself.
As the Son of David, He has nothing to do with a Canaanite. He makes her no
answer. The disciples desired to get rid of her by granting her request, in
order to have done with her importunity. The Lord answers them, that He was
not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. This was indeed the
truth. Whatever may have been the counsels of God manifested on occasion of
His rejection (see Isaiah 49), He was the minister of the circumcision for
the truth of God, to fulfil His promises made to the fathers.
The woman, in more simple and direct language, the more natural expression
of her feelings, begs for the merciful interposition of Him in whose power
she trusted. The Lord answers her, that it is not meet to take the
children's bread and give it to dogs. We see here His true position, as
come to Israel; the promises were for the children of the kingdom. The Son
of David was the minister of these promises. Could He as such blot out the
distinction of the people of God?
But that faith which derives strength from necessity, and which finds no
resource but in the Lord Himself, accepts the humiliation of its position,
and deems that with Him there is bread for the hunger of those who have no
right to it. It perseveres, too, because there is a felt want, and faith in
the power of Him who is come in grace.
What had the Lord done by His apparent harshness? He had brought the poor
woman to the expression, to the sense, of her real place before God, that
is to say, to the truth as to herself. But, then, was it the truth to say
that God was less good than she believed, less rich in mercy towards the
destitute, whose only hope and trust was in that mercy? This would have
been to deny the character and the nature of God, of which He was the
expression, the truth, and the witness, on earth; it would have been to
deny Himself, and the object of His mission. He could not say, "God has not
a crumb for such." He answers, in fulness of heart, "O woman, great is thy
faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt." God comes out of the narrow
limits of His covenant with the Jews, to act in His sovereign goodness
according to His own nature. He comes out to be God in goodness, and not
merely Jehovah in Israel.
But this goodness is exercised towards one who is brought, in the presence
of that goodness, to know that she has no right to it. To this point the
seeming harshness of the Lord had been leading her. She received all from
grace, while in herself unworthy of all. It is thus, and thus only, that
every soul obtains blessing. It is not merely the sense of need-the woman
had that from the beginning, it was that which brought her there. It is not
sufficient merely to own that the Lord Jesus can meet that need-the woman
came with that acknowledgment; we must be in the presence of the only
source of blessing, and be brought to feel that, although we are there, we
have no right to avail ourselves of it. And this is a terrible position.
When it comes to this, all is grace. God can then act according to His own
goodness, and He answers every desire which the heart can form for its
happiness.
Thus we see Christ here as a minister of the circumcision for the truth of
God, to fulfil the promises made to the fathers, and that the Gentiles also
might glorify God for His mercy, as it is written. At the same time this
last truth makes manifest the real condition of man, and the full and
perfect grace of God. On this He acts, while still faithful to His
promises; and the wisdom of God is displayed in a manner that calls forth
our admiration.
We see how much the introduction, in this place, of the story of the
Syro-Phenician woman develops and illustrates this part of our Gospel. The
beginning of the chapter shews forth the moral condition of the Jews, the
falseness of Pharisaic and sacerdotal religiousness; brings out the real
state of man as man, what the heart of man was the source of; and then
reveals the heart of God as manifested in Jesus. His dealings with this
woman display the faithfulness of God to His promises; and the blessing
finally granted exhibits the full grace of God, in connection with the
manifestation of the real condition of man, acknowledged by
conscience-grace rising above the curse which lay upon the object of this
grace-rising above everything to make itself a way to the need which faith
presented to it.
The Lord now departs thence and goes into Galilee, the place where He was
in connection with the despised remnant of the Jews. It was neither Zion,
nor the temple, nor Jerusalem, but the poor of the flock, where the people
were sitting in gross darkness (Isa. 8, 9). Thither His compassions follow
this poor remnant, and are again exercised in their behalf. He renews the
evidences, not only of His tender mercies, but of His presence who
satisfied the poor of His people with bread. Here however it is not in the
administrative power which He could bestow on His disciples, but according
to His own perfection and acting from Himself. He provides for the remnant
of His people. Accordingly it is the fulness of seven baskets of fragments
that is gathered up. He departs also without anything else taking place.
We have seen eternal morality, and truth in the inward parts, substituted
for the hypocrisy of forms, man's use of legal religion and man's heart
shewn to be a source of evil and nought else, God's heart fully revealed
that rises above all dispensation to shew full grace in Christ. Thus
dispensations are set aside though fully owned, and man and God fully shewn
out in doing so. It is a wonderful chapter as to what is everlasting in
truth as to God, and as to what the revelation of God shews man to be. And
this, note, gives occasion to the revelation of the assembly in the next
chapter, which is not a dispensation but founded on what Christ is, Son of
the living God. In chapter 12 Christ was dispensationally rejected, and the
kingdom of heaven substituted in chapter 13. Here man is set aside and what
he had made of law, and God acts in His own grace above all dispensations.
Then come the assembly and the kingdom in glory.
Chapter 16
Chapter 16 goes farther than the revelation of the simple grace of God.
Jesus reveals what was about to be formed in the counsels of that grace,
where He was owned, shewing the rejection of the proud among His people,
that He abhors them as they abhor Him. (Zech. 11). Shutting their eyes
(through perversity of will) to the marvellous and beneficent signs of His
power, which He constantly bestowed on the poor who sought Him, the
Pharisees and Sadducees-struck with these manifestations, yet unbelieving
in heart and will-demand a sign from heaven. He rebukes them for their
unbelief, shewing them that they knew how to discern the signs of the
weather; yet the signs of the times were far more striking. They were the
adulterous and wicked generation, and He leaves them: significant
expressions of what was now passing in Israel.
He warns His forgetful disciples against the devices of these subtle
adversaries to the truth, and to Him whom God had sent to reveal it. Israel
is abandoned, as a nation, in the persons of their leaders. At the same
time in patient grace He recalls His disciples to the remembrance of what
explained His words to them.
Afterwards He questions His disciples as to what men in general said of
Him. It was all matter of opinion, not of faith; that is, the uncertainty
that belongs to moral indifference, to the absence of that conscious need
of soul which can rest only in the truth, in the Saviour one has found. He
then inquires what they themselves said of Him. Peter, to whom the Father
had deigned to reveal Him, declares his faith, saying, "Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God." No uncertainty, no mere opinion is
here, but the powerful effect of the revelation, made by the Father
Himself, of the Person of Christ, to the disciple whom He had elected for
this privilege.
Here the condition of the people displays itself in a remarkable manner,
not, as in the preceding chapter, with respect to the law, but with respect
to Christ, who had been presented to them. We see it in contrast with the
revelation of His glory to those who followed Him. We have thus three
classes: first, haughty unbelieving Pharisees; next, persons conscious and
owning there was divine power and authority in Christ, but indifferent;
lastly, the revelation of God and divinely given faith.
In the fifteenth chapter, grace towards one who had no hope but in it, is
put in contrast with disobedience to and hypocritical perversion of the
law, by which the scribes and Pharisees sought to cover their disobedience
with the pretence of piety.
The sixteenth chapter, judging the unbelief of the Pharisees respecting the
Person of Christ, and setting aside these perverse men, brings in the
revelation of His Person as the foundation of the assembly, which was to
take the place of the Jews as the witness for God in the earth; and
announces the counsels of God with respect to its establishment. It shews
us, in adjunction to this, the administration of the kingdom, as it was now
being established on the earth.
Let us consider, first, the revelation of His Person.
Peter confesses Him to be the Christ, the fulfilment of the promises made
by God, and of the prophecies that announced their realisation. He was the
One who should come, the Messiah whom God had promised.
Moreover, He was the Son of God. The second Psalm had declared that, in
spite of the schemings of the leaders of the people, and the haughty
animosity of the kings of the earth, God's King should be anointed on the
hill of Zion. He was the Son, begotten of God. The kings and judges of the
earth
are called to submit themselves to Him, lest they should be
smitten with the rod of His power, when He takes the heathen for His
inheritance. Thus the true believer waited for the Son of God born in due
time upon this earth. Peter confessed Jesus to be the Son of God. So had
Nathanael also: "Thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel."
And, still later, Martha did the same.
Peter however, especially taught of the Father, adds to his confession a
word simple, yet full of power: "Thou art the Son of the living God." Not
only He who fulfils the promises, and answers to the prophecies; it is of
the living God that He is the Son, of Him in whom is life and life-giving
power.
He inherits that power of life in God which nothing can overcome or
destroy. Who can vanquish the power of Him-of this Son-who came forth from
"Him that liveth"? Satan has the power of death; it is he who holds man
under the dominion of this dreadful consequence of sin; and that, by the
just judgment of God which constitutes its power. The expression "The gates
of hades," of the invisible world, refers to this kingdom of Satan. It is
then on this power, which leaves the stronghold of the enemy without
strength, that the assembly is built. The life of God shall not be
destroyed. The Son of the living God shall not be overcome. That; then,
which God founds upon this rock of the unchangeable power of life in His
Son shall not be overthrown by the kingdom of death. If man has been
overcome and has fallen under the power of this kingdom, God, the living
God, will not be overcome by it. It is on this that Christ builds His
assembly. It is the work of Christ based on Him as Son of the living God,
not of the first Adam nor based on him-His work accomplished according to
the power which this truth reveals. The Person of Jesus, the Son of the
living God, is its strength. It is the resurrection that proved it. There
He is declared to be the Son of God with power. Accordingly it is not
during His life, but when raised from the dead, that He begins this work
Life was in Himself; but it is after the Father had burst the gates of
hades-nay, He Himself in His divine power had done so and was risen-that He
begins to build by the Holy Ghost as ascended on high, that which the power
of death or of him who wielded it-already overcome-can never destroy. It is
His Person that is here contemplated, and it is on His Person that all is
founded. The resurrection is the proof that He is the Son of the living
God, and that the gates of hades can do nothing against Him; their power is
destroyed by it. Hence we see how the assembly (though formed on earth) is
much more than a dispensation, the kingdom is not.
The work of the cross was needed; but it is not the question here of that
which the righteous judgment of God required, or of the justification of an
individual, but of that which nullified the power of the enemy. It was the
Person of Him whom Peter was given to acknowledge, who lived according to
the power of the life of God. It was a peculiar and direct revelation from
heaven by the Father. Doubtless Christ had given proofs enough of who He
was; but proofs had proved nothing to man's heart. The Father's revelation
was the way of knowing who He was, and this went far beyond the hopes of a
Messiah.
Here, then, the Father had directly revealed the truth of Christ's own
Person, a revelation which went beyond all question of relationship with
the Jews. On this foundation Christ would build His assembly. Peter,
already so named by the Lord, receives a confirmation of that title on this
occasion. The Father had revealed to Simon, the son of Jonas, the mystery
of the Person of Jesus; and secondly, Jesus also betokens, by the name He
gives him,
the steadfastness, the firmness, the durability, the
practical strength, of His servant favoured by grace. The right of
bestowing a name belongs to a superior, who can assign to the one who bears
it his place and his name, in the family or the situation he is in. This
right, where real, supposes discernment, intelligence, in that which is
going on. Adam names the animals. Nebuchadnezzar gives new names to the
captive Jews; the king of Egypt to Eliakim, whom he had placed on the
throne. Jesus therefore takes this place when He says, The Father hath
revealed this unto thee; and I also give you a place and a name connected
with this grace. It is on that which the Father hath revealed unto thee
that I am going to build My assembly,
against which (founded on the
life that comes from God) the gates of the kingdom of death shall never
prevail; and I who build, and build on this immovable foundation-I give you
the place of a stone (Peter) in connection with this living temple. Through
the gift of God thou belongest already by nature to the building-a living
stone, having the knowledge of that truth which is the foundation, and which
makes of every stone a part of the edifice. Peter was pre-eminently such by
this confession; he was so in anticipation by the election of God. This
revelation was made by the Father in sovereignty. The Lord assigns him,
withal, his place, as possessing the right of administration and authority
in the kingdom He was going to establish.
Thus far with respect to the assembly, now mentioned for the first time,
the Jews having been rejected because of their unbelief, and man a
convicted sinner.
Another subject presents itself in connection with this of the assembly
that the Lord was going to build; namely, the kingdom which was going to be
established. It was to have the form of the kingdom of heaven; it was so in
the counsels of God; but it was now to be set up in a peculiar manner, the
King having been rejected on earth.
But, rejected as He was, the keys of the kingdom were in the Lord's hand;
its authority belonged to Him. He would bestow them on Peter, who, when He
was gone, should open its doors to the Jews first, and then to the
Gentiles. He should also exercise authority from the Lord within the
kingdom; so that whatsoever he bound on earth in the name of Christ (the
true King, although gone up to heaven) should be bound in heaven; and if he
loosed anything on earth, his deed should be ratified in heaven. In a word,
he had the power of command in the kingdom of God on earth, this kingdom
having now the character of kingdom of heaven, because its King was in
heaven
and heaven would stamp his acts with its authority. But it
is heaven sanctioning his earthly acts, not his binding or loosing for
heaven. The assembly connected with the character of Son of the living God
and built by Christ, though formed on earth, belongs to heaven; the
kingdom, though governed from heaven, belongs to earth-has its place and
ministration there.
These four things then are declared by the Lord in this passage:-First, the
revelation made by the Father to Simon; Second, the name given to this
Simon by Jesus, who was going to build His assembly on the foundation
revealed in that which the Father had made known to Simon; Third, the
assembly built by Christ Himself, not yet complete, on the foundation of
the Person of Jesus acknowledged as Son of the living God; Fourth, the keys
of the kingdom that should be given to Peter, that is to say, authority in
the kingdom as administering it on the part of Christ, ordering in it that
which was His will, and which should be ratified in heaven. All this is
connected with Simon personally, in virtue of the Father's election (who,
in His wisdom, had chosen him to receive this revelation), and of Christ's
authority (who had bestowed on him the name that distinguished him as
personally enjoying this privilege).
The Lord having thus made known the purposes of God with regard to the
future-purposes to be accomplished in the assembly and in the kingdom,
there was no longer room for His presentation to the Jews as Messiah. Not
that He gave up the testimony, full of grace and patience towards the
people, which He had borne throughout His ministry. No; that indeed
continued, but His disciples were to understand that it was no longer their
work to proclaim Him to the people as the Christ From this time also He
began to teach His disciples that He must suffer and be killed and be
raised again.
But, blessed and honoured as Peter was by the revelation which the Father
had made to him, his heart still clung in a carnal manner to the human
glory of his Master (in truth, to his own), and was still far from rising
to the height of the thoughts of God. Alas! he is not the only instance of
this. To be convinced of the most exalted truths, and even to enjoy them
sincerely as truths, is a different thing from having the heart formed to
the sentiments, and to the walk here below, which are in accordance with
those truths. It is not sincerity in the enjoyment of the truth that is
wanting. What is wanting is to have the flesh, self, mortified-to be dead
to the world. We may sincerely enjoy the truth as taught of God and yet not
have the flesh mortified or the heart in a state which is according to that
truth in what it involves down here. Peter (so lately honoured by the
revelation of the glory of Jesus, and made in a very special manner the
depositary of administration in the kingdom given to the Son-having a
distinguished place in that which was to follow the Lord's rejection by the
Jews) is now doing the adversary's work with respect to the perfect
submission of Jesus to the suffering and ignominy that were to introduce
this glory and characterise the kingdom. Alas! the case was plain; he
savoured the things of men, and not the things of God. But the Lord, in
faithfulness, rejects Peter in this matter, and teaches His disciples that
the only path, the appointed and necessary path, is the cross; if any one
would follow Him, that is the path He took. Moreover what would it profit a
man to save his life and lose all-to gain the world and lose his soul? For
this was the question,
and not now the outward glory of the kingdom.
Having examined this chapter, as the expression of the transition from the
Messianic system to the establishment of the assembly founded on the
revelation of the Person of Christ, I desire also to call attention to the
characters of unbelief which are developed in it, both among the Jews and
in the hearts of the disciples. It will be profitable to observe the forms
of this unbelief.
First of all, it takes the grosser form of asking a sign from heaven. The
Pharisees and Sadducees unite to shew their insensibility to all that the
Lord had done. They require proof to their natural senses, that is, to
their unbelief. They will not believe God, either in hearkening to His
words or in beholding His works. God must satisfy their wilfulness, which
would be neither faith nor the work of God. They had understanding for
human things that were much less clearly manifested, but none for the
things of God. A Saviour lost to them, as Jews on earth, should be the only
sign granted them. They would have to submit, willing or not, to the
judgment of the unbelief they displayed. The kingdom should be taken from
them; the Lord leaves them. The sign of Jonah is connected with the subject
of the whole chapter.
We next see this same inattention to the power manifested in the works of
Jesus; but it is no longer the opposition of the unbelieving will;
occupation of heart with present things withdraws such from the influence
of the signs already given. This is weakness, not ill-will. Nevertheless
they are guilty; but Jesus calls them "men of little faith," not
"hypocrites," and "a wicked and adulterous generation."
We then see unbelief manifesting itself in the form of indolent opinion,
which proves that the heart and conscience are not interested in a subject
that ought to command them-a subject that if the heart would really face
its true importance, it would have no rest until it had arrived at
certainty with respect to it. The soul here has no sense of need;
consequently there is no discernment. When the soul feels this need, there
is but one thing that can meet it; there can be no rest till it is found.
The revelation of God that created this need, does not leave the soul in
peace until it is assured of possessing that which awakened it. Those who
are not sensible of this need can rest in probabilities, each according to
his natural character, his education, his circumstances. There is enough to
awaken curiosity-the mind is occupied about it, and judges. Faith has
wants, and, in principle intelligence as to the object which meets those
wants; the soul is exercised till it finds that which it needs. The fact is
that God is there.
This is Peter's case. The Father reveals His Son to him Though weak, living
faith was found in him, we see the condition of his soul when he says,
"Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life; and we
believe and are sure that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Happy the man to whom God reveals such truths as these, in whom He awakens
these wants! There may be conflict, much to learn, much to mortify; but the
counsel of God is there, and the life connected with it. We have seen its
effect in the case of Peter. Every Christian has his own place in the
temple of which Simon was so eminent a stone. Does it then follow that the
heart is, practically, at the height of the revelation made to it? No;
there may be, after all, the flesh not yet mortified on that side where the
revelation touches our earthly position.
In fact the revelation made to Peter implied the rejection of Christ on
earth-necessarily led to His humiliation and death. That was the point. To
substitute the revelation of the Son of God, the assembly and the heavenly
kingdom, for the manifestation of the Messiah on earth-what could it mean,
except that Jesus was to be delivered up to the Gentiles to be crucified,
and after that to rise again? But morally Peter had not attained to this.
On the contrary, his carnal heart availed itself of the revelation made to
him, and of that which Jesus had said to him, for self-exaltation. He saw,
therefore, the personal glory without apprehending the practical moral
consequences. He begins to rebuke the Lord Himself, and seeks to turn Him
aside from the path of obedience and submission. The Lord, ever faithful,
treats him as an adversary. Alas! how often have we enjoyed some truth, and
that sincerely, and yet have failed in the practical consequences that it
led to on earth! A heavenly glorified Saviour, who builds the assembly,
implies the cross on earth. The flesh does not understand this. It will
raise its Messiah to heaven, if you will; but to take its share of the
humiliation that necessarily follows is not its idea of a glorified
Messiah. The flesh must be mortified to take this place. We must have the
strength of Christ by the Holy Ghost. A Christian who is not dead to the
world is but a stumbling-stone to every one who seeks to follow Christ.
These are the forms of unbelief that precede a true confession of Christ,
and that are found alas! in those who have sincerely confessed and known
Him (the flesh not being so mortified that the soul can walk in the height
of that which it has learnt of God, and the spiritual understanding being
obscured by thinking of consequences which the flesh rejects).
But if the cross was the entrance into the kingdom, the revelation of the
glory would not be delayed. The Messiah being rejected by the Jews, a title
more glorious and of far deeper import is unfolded: the Son of man should
come in the glory of the Father (for He was the Son of God), and reward
every man according to his works. There were even some standing there who
should not taste of death (for of this they were speaking) till they had
seen the manifestation of the glory of the kingdom that belonged to the Son
of man.
We may remark here the title of "Son of God" established as the foundation;
that of Messiah given up so far as concerned the testimony rendered in that
day, and replaced by that of "Son of man," which He takes at the same time
as that of the Son of God, and which had a glory that belonged to Him in
His own right. He was to come in the glory of His Father as Son of God, and
in His own kingdom as Son of man.
It is interesting to remember here the instruction given us in the
beginning of the Book of Psalms. The righteous man, distinguished from the
congregation of the wicked, had been presented in the first Psalm. Then, in
the second, we have the rebellion of the kings of the earth and the rulers
against the Lord and against His Anointed (that is, His Christ). Now upon
this the decree of Jehovah is declared. Adonai, the Lord, shall mock at
them from heaven. Further, Jehovah's King shall be established on Mount
Zion. This is the decree: "Jehovah hath said unto me, Thou art my Son: this
day
have I begotten thee." The kings of the earth and the judges
are commanded to kiss the Son.
Now in the Psalms that follow, all this glory is darkened. The distress of
the remnant, in which Christ has a part, is related. Then, in Psalm 8, He
is addressed as Son of man, Heir of all the rights conferred in sovereignty
upon man by the counsels of God. The name of Jehovah becomes excellent in
all the earth. These Psalms do not go beyond the earthly part of these
truths, excepting where it is written, "He that sitteth in the heavens
shall laugh at them"; while in Matthew 16 the connection of the Son of God
with this, His coming with His angels (to say nothing of the assembly), are
set before us. That is to say, we see that the Son of man will come in the
glory of heaven. Not that His dwelling there is the truth declared; but
that He is invested with the highest glory of heaven when He comes to set
up His kingdom on earth. He comes in His kingdom. The kingdom is established
on the earth; but He comes to take it with the glory of heaven. This is
displayed in the following chapter, according to the promise here in verse
28.
In each Gospel that speaks of it, the transfiguration immediately follows
the promise of not tasting death before seeing the kingdom of the Son of
man. And not only so, but Peter (in his second Epistle, 1: 16), when
speaking of this scene, declares that it was a manifestation of the power
and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He says that the word of prophecy was
confirmed to them by the view of His majesty; so that they knew that
whereof they spoke, in making known to them the power and the coming of
Christ, having beheld His majesty. In fact it is precisely in this sense
that the Lord speaks of it here, as we have seen. It was a sample of the
glory in which He would hereafter come, given to confirm the faith of His
disciples in the prospect of His death which He had just announced to them.
Chapter 17
Jesus leads them up into a high mountain, and there is transfigured before
them: "His face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the
light." Moses and Elias appeared also, talking with Him. I leave the
subject of their discourse, which is deeply interesting, till we come to
the Gospel of Luke, who adds a few other circumstances, which, in some
respects, give another aspect to this scene.
Here the Lord appears in glory, and Moses and Elias with Him: the one the
legislator of the Jews; the other (almost equally distinguished) the
prophet who sought to bring back the ten apostate tribes to the worship of
Jehovah, and who, despairing of the people, went back to Horeb, whence the
law was given, and afterwards was taken up to heaven without passing
through death.
These two persons, pre-eminently illustrious in the dealings of God with
Israel, as the founder and the restorer of the people in connection with
the law, appear in company with Jesus. Peter (struck with this apparition,
rejoicing to see his Master associated with these pillars of the Jewish
system, with such eminent servants of God, ignorant of the glory of the Son
of man, and forgetting the revelation of the glory of His Person as the Son
of God) desires to make three tabernacles, and to place the three on the
same level as oracles. But the glory of God manifests itself; that is to
say, the sign known in Israel as the abode (shechinah) of that glory;
and the voice of the Father is heard. Grace may put Moses and Elias
in the same glory as that of the Son of God, and associate them with Him;
but if the folly of man, in his ignorance, would place them together as
having in themselves equal authority over the heart of the believer, the
Father must at once vindicate the rights of His Son. Not a moment elapses
before the Father's voice proclaims the glory of the Person of His Son, His
relation to Himself, that He is the object of His entire affection, in whom
is all His delight. It is He whom the disciples are to hear. Moses and
Elias have disappeared. Christ is there alone, as the One to be glorified,
the One to teach those who hear the Father's voice. The Father Himself
distinguishes Him, presents Him to the notice of the disciples, not as
being worthy of their love, but as the object of His own delight. In Jesus
He was Himself well pleased. Thus the Father's affections are presented as
ruling ours-setting before us one common object. What a position for poor
creatures like us! What grace!
At the same time the law, and all idea of the restoration of the law under
the old covenant, were passed away; and Jesus, glorified as Son of man, and
Son of the living God, remains the sole dispenser of the knowledge and the
mind of God. The disciples fall on their faces, sore afraid, on hearing the
voice of God. Jesus, to whom this glory and this voice were natural,
encourages them, as He always did when on earth, saying, "Be not afraid."
Being with Him who was the object of the Father's love, why should they
fear? Their best Friend was the manifestation of God on the earth; the
glory belonged to Him. Moses and Elias had disappeared, and the glory also,
which the disciples were not yet able to bear; Jesus-who had been thus
manifested to them in the glory given Him, and in the rights of His
glorious Person, in His relations with the Father-Jesus remains the same to
them as they had ever known Him. But this glory was not to be the subject
of their testimony until He, the Son of man, was risen from the dead-the
suffering Son of man. The great proof should then be given, that He was the
Son of God with power. Testimony thereunto should be rendered, and He would
ascend personally into that glory which had just shone forth before their
eyes.
But a difficulty arises in the minds of the disciples caused by the
doctrine of the scribes with regard to Elias. These had said that Elias
must come before the manifestation of the Messiah; and in fact the prophecy
of Malachi authorised this expectation. Why then, ask they, say the scribes
that Elias must first come? (that is to say, before the manifestation of
the Messiah); whereas we have now seen that Thou art He, without the coming
of Elias. Jesus confirms the words of the prophecy, adding, that Elias
should restore all things. "But," continues the Lord, "I say unto you, that
he is come already, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed;
likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them." Then understood they
that He spoke of John the Baptist, who came in the spirit and power of
Elias, as the Holy Ghost had declared by Zacharias his father.
Let us say a few words on this passage. First of all, when the Lord says,
"Elias truly cometh first, and shall restore all things," He does but
confirm that which the scribes had spoken, according to Malachi's prophecy,
as though He had said, "They are in the right." He then declares the effect
of the coming of Elias: "He shall restore all things." But the Son of man
was yet to come. Jesus had said to His disciples, "Ye shall not have gone
over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come." Nevertheless He had
come, and was even now speaking with them. But this coming of the Son of
man of which He spoke, is His coming in glory, when He shall be manifested
as the Son of man in judgment according to Daniel 7. It was thus that all
which had been said to the Jews should be accomplished; and in Matthew's
Gospel He speaks to them in connection with this expectation. Nevertheless
it was needful that Jesus should be presented to the nation and should
suffer. It was needful that the nation should be tested by the presentation
of the Messiah according to the promise. This was done, and as God had also
foretold by the prophets, "He was rejected of men." Thus also John went
before Him, according to Isaiah 40, as the voice in the wilderness, even in
the spirit and power of Elias; he was rejected as the Son of man should
also be.
The Lord then, by these words, declares to His disciples, in connection
with the scene they had just left, and with all this part of our Gospel,
that the Son of man, as now presented to the Jews, was to be rejected. This
same Son of man was to be manifested in glory, as they had seen for a
moment on the Mount. Elias indeed was to come, as the scribes had said; but
that John the Baptist had fulfilled that office in power for this
presentation of the Son of man; which (the Jews being left, as was fitting,
to their own responsibility) would only end in His rejection, and in the
setting aside of the nation until the days in which God would begin again
to connect Himself with His people, still dear to Him, whatever their
condition might be. He would then restore all things (a glorious work,
which He would accomplish by bringing again His Firstborn into the world).
The expression "restore all things" refers here to the Jews, and is used
morally. In Acts 3 it refers to the effect of the Son of man's own
presence.
The temporary presence of the Son of man was the moment in which a work was
accomplished on which eternal glory depends, in which God has been fully
glorified, above and beyond all dispensation and in which God and so man
has been revealed, a work of which even the outward glory of the Son of man
is but the fruit, so far as that depends on His work, and not on His divine
Person; a work in which morally He was perfectly glorified in perfectly
glorifying God. Still, with respect to the promises made to the Jews, it
was but the last step in the testing to which they were subjected by grace.
God well knew that they would reject His Son; but He would not hold them as
definitively guilty until they had really done it. Thus in His divine
wisdom (while afterwards fulfilling His unchangeable promises) He presents
Jesus to them-His Son, their Messiah. He gives them every necessary proof.
He sends them John the Baptist in the spirit and power of Elias, as His
forerunner. The Son of David is born at Bethlehem with all the signs that
should have convinced them; but they were blinded by their pride and
self-righteousness, and rejected it all. Nevertheless it became Jesus in
grace to adapt Himself, as to His position, to the wretched condition of
His people. Thus also, the Antitype of the David rejected in his day, He
shared the affliction of His people. If the Gentiles oppressed them, their
King must be associated with their distress, while giving every proof of
what He was and seeking them in love. He rejected, all becomes pure grace.
They have no longer a right to anything according to the promises, and are
reduced to receive all from that grace, even as a poor Gentile would do.
God will not fail in grace. Thus God has put them on the true footing of
sinners, and will nevertheless fulfil His promises. This is the subject of
Romans 11.
Now the Son of man who shall return will be this same Jesus who went away.
The heavens will receive Him until the times of the restitution of all
things of which the prophets have spoken. But he who was to be His
forerunner in this temporary presence here could not be the same Elias.
Accordingly John was conformed to the then manifestation of the Son of man,
saving the difference that necessarily flowed from the Person of the Son of
man, who could be but one, while that could not be the case with John the
Baptist and Elias. But even as Jesus manifested all the power of the
Messiah, all His rights to everything that belonged to that Messiah,
without assuming as yet the outward glory, His time not being come John 7),
so John fulfilled morally and in power the mission of Elias to prepare the
way of the Lord before Him (according to the we character of His coming, as
then accomplished), and answered literally to Isaiah 40, and even to
Malachi 3, the only passages applied to him. This is the reason that John
said hewas not Elias, and that the Lord said, "If ye can receive it, this
is Elias which was for to come." Therefore also John never applied Malachi
4: 5, 6 to himself; but he announces himself as fulfilling Isaiah 40: 3-5,
and this in each of the Gospels, whatever may be its particular character.
But let us go on with our chapter. If the Lord takes up into the glory, He
comes down into this world, even now in Spirit and in sympathy, and meets
the crowd and Satan's power with which we have to do. While the Lord was on
the Mount, a poor father had brought to the disciples his son who was a
lunatic and possessed by a devil. Here is developed another character of
man's unbelief, that even of the believer-inability to make use of the
power which is, so to say, at his disposal in the Lord. Christ, Son of God,
Messiah, Son of man, had overcome the enemy, had bound the strong man and
had a right to cast him out. As man, the obedient One in spite of Satan's
temptations, He had overcome him in the wilderness, and had thus a right as
man to dispossess him of his dominion over a man as to this world; and this
He did. In casting out devils and healing the sick, He delivered man from
the power of the enemy. "God," said Peter, "anointed Jesus of Nazareth with
the Holy Ghost and with power, and he went about doing good and healing all
those that were oppressed by the devil." Now this power should have been
used by the disciples, who ought to have known how to avail themselves by
faith of that which Jesus had thus manifested on earth; but they were not
able to do it. Yet what availed it to bring this power down here, if the
disciples had not faith to use it? The power was there: man might profit by
it for complete deliverance from all the oppression of the enemy; but he
had not faith to do so-even believers had not. The presence of Christ on
earth was useless, when even His own disciples knew not how to profit by
it. There was more faith in the man that brought his child than in them,
for felt want brought him to its remedy. All therefore come under the
Lord's sentence, "O faithless and perverse generation!" He must leave them,
and that which the glory had revealed above, unbelief shall realise below.
Observe here, that it is not evil in the world which puts an end to a
particular intervention of God; on the contrary, it occasions the
intervention in grace. It was on account of Satan's dominion over men that
Christ came. He departs, because those who had received Him are incapable
of using the power that He brought with Him, or that He bestows for their
deliverance; they cannot profit by the very advantages then enjoyed. Faith
was wanting. Nevertheless observe also this important and touching truth
that, as long as such dispensation from God continues, Jesus does not fail
to meet individual faith with blessing, even when His disciples cannot
glorify Him by the exercise of faith. The same sentence that judges the
unbelief of the disciples calls the distressed father to the enjoyment of
the blessing. After all, to be able to avail ourselves of His power, we
must be in communion with Him by the practical energy of faith.
He blesses then the poor father according to his need; and, full of
patience, He resumes the course of instruction He was giving His disciples
on the subject of His rejection and His resurrection as the Son of man.
Loving the Lord, and unable to carry their ideas beyond the circumstances
of the moment, they are troubled; and yet this was redemption, salvation,
the glory of Christ.
Before however going farther, and teaching them that which became the
disciples of a Master thus rejected and the position they were to occupy,
He sets before them His divine glory, and their association with Him who
had it, in the most touching manner, if they could but have understood it;
and at the same time with perfect condescension and tenderness He places
Himself with them, or rather He places them in the same place with Himself,
as Son of the great King of the temple and of all the earth.
Those who collected the tribute-money for the service of the temple come
and ask Peter if his Master does not pay it. Ever ready to put himself
forward, forgetful of the glory he had seen, and the revelation made to him
by the Father, Peter, coming down to the ordinary level of his own
thoughts, anxious that his Master should be esteemed a good Jew and without
consulting Him, replies that He does. The Lord anticipates Peter on his
coming in, and shews him His divine knowledge of that which took place at a
distance from Himself. At the same time, He speaks of Peter and Himself as
both children of the King of the temple (Son of God still keeping in
patient goodness His lowly place as a Jew), and both therefore free from
the tribute. But they should not offend. He then commands creation, (for He
can do all things, as He knows all things,) and causes a fish to bring
precisely the sum required, coupling anew the name of Peter with His own.
He had said, "Lest we offend them"; and now, "Give unto them for me and
thee." Marvellous and divine condescension! He who is the searcher of
hearts, and who disposes at will of the whole creation, the Son of the
sovereign Lord of the temple, puts His poor disciples into this same
relationship with His heavenly Father, with the God who was worshipped in
that temple. He submits to the demands that would have been rightly made on
strangers, but He places His disciples in all His own privileges as Son. We
see very plainly the connection between this touching expression of divine
grace and the subject of these chapters. It demonstrates all the
significance of the change that was taking place.
It is interesting to remark that the first epistle of Peter is founded on
Matthew 16, and the second on chapter 17, which we have just been
considering.
In chapter 16 Peter taught of the Father, confessed the
Lord to be the Son of the living God; and the Lord said that on this rock
He would build His church, and that he who had the power of death should
not prevail against it. Thus also Peter, in his first epistle, declares
that they were born again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead. Now it is by this resurrection that the power of the
life of the living God was manifested. Afterwards he calls Christ the
living stone, in coming unto whom we, as living stones, are built up a holy
temple to the Lord.
In his second epistle he recalls, in a peculiar manner, the glory of the
transfiguration, as a proof of the coming and the kingdom of the Son of
man. Accordingly he speaks in that epistle of the judgment of the Lord.
Chapter 18
In chapter 18 the great principles proper to the new order of things are
made known to the disciples. Let us search a little into these sweet and
precious instructions of the Lord.
They may be looked at in two ways. They reveal the ways of God with regard
to that which was to take the place of the Lord upon earth, as a testimony
to grace and truth. Besides this, they depict the character which is in
itself the true testimony to be rendered.
This chapter supposes Christ rejected and absent, the glory of chapter 17
not yet come. It passes over chapter 17 to connect itself with chapter 16
(except so far as the last verses of chapter 17 give a practical testimony
to His abdication of His true rights until God should vindicate them). The
Lord speaks of the two subjects contained in chapter 16, the kingdom and
the church.
That which would be proper for the kingdom was the meekness of a little
child, which is unable to assert its own rights in the face of a world that
passes it by-the spirit of dependence and humility. They must become as
little children. In the absence of their rejected Lord this was the spirit
that became His followers. He who received a little child in the name of
Jesus received Himself. On the other hand, he who put a stumbling-block in
the way of one of those little ones who believed in Jesus
should be
visited with the most terrible judgment. Alas! the world do this; but woe
unto the world on that account. As to the disciples, if that which they
most valued became a snare to them, they must pluck it out and cut it
off-must exercise the utmost carefulness in grace not to be a snare to a
little one believing in Christ, and the most unrelenting severity as to
themselves, in whatever might be a snare to them. Loss of what was most
precious here was nothing, compared with their eternal condition in another
world; for that was in question now, and sin could have no place in God's
house. Care for others, even the weakest, severity with self was the rule
of the kingdom that no snare or evil might be. As to offence, full grace in
forgiveness. They were not to despise these little ones; for if unable to
force their own way in this world, they were the objects of the Father's
special favour, as those who, in earthly courts, had the peculiar privilege
of seeing the king's face. Not that there was no sin in them, but that the
Father did not despise those that were far from Him. The Son of man was
come to save the lost.
And it was not the Father's will that one of
these little ones should perish. He spoke, I doubt not, of little children
like those whom He took in His arms; but He inculcates on His disciples the
spirit of humility and dependence on the one hand, and on the other, the
spirit of the Father, which they were to imitate in order to be truly the
children of the kingdom; and not to walk in the spirit of man, who seeks to
maintain his place and his own importance, but to humble themselves and
submit to contumely; and at the same time (and this is true glory) to
imitate the Father, who considers the lowly and admits them into His
presence. The Son of man was come on behalf of the worthless. This is the
spirit of grace spoken of at the end of chapter 5. It is the spirit of the
kingdom.
But the assembly more especially was to occupy the place of Christ on
earth. With respect to offences against oneself, this same spirit of
meekness became His disciple; he was to gain his brother. If the latter
would hearken, the thing was to be buried in the heart of the one whom he
had offended; if not, two or three more were then to be taken with him by
the offended person to reach his conscience, or serve as witnesses; but if
these appointed means were unavailing, it must be made known to the
assembly; and if this did not produce submission, he who had done the wrong
should be to him as a stranger, as a heathen and a publican was to Israel.
The public discipline of the assembly is not treated of here, but the
spirit in which Christians were to walk. If the offender bowed when spoken
to, even seventy times seven times a day, he was to be forgiven. But though
church discipline be not spoken of, we see that the assembly took the place
of Israel on earth. The without and within henceforth applied to it. Heaven
would ratify that which the assembly bound on earth, and the Father would
grant the prayer of two or three who should agree together in making their
request; for Christ would be in the midst wherever two or three should be
gathered together in or to His name.
Thus, for decisions, for
prayers, they were as Christ on the earth, for Christ Himself was there
with them. Solemn truth! immense favour, bestowed on two or three when
really gathered together in His name; but which forms asubject of the
deepest grief when this unity is pretended to, while the reality is not
there.
Another element of the character proper to the kingdom, which had been
manifested in God and in Christ, is pardoning grace. In this also the
children of the kingdom are to be imitators of God, and always to forgive.
This refers only to wrongs done to oneself, and not to public discipline.
We must pardon to the end, or rather, there must be no end; even as God has
forgiven us all things. At the same time, I believe that the dispensations
of God to the Jews are here described. They had not only broken the law,
but they had slain the Son of God. Christ interceded for them, saying,
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." In answer to this
prayer, a provisional pardon was preached by the Holy Ghost, through the
mouth of Peter. But this grace too was rejected. When it was a question of
shewing grace to the Gentiles, who, no doubt, owed them the hundred pence,
they would not hear of it, and they are given up to punishment,
until the Lord can say, "They have received double for all their sins."
In a word, the spirit of the kingdom is not outward power, but lowliness;
but in this condition there is nearness to the Father, and then it is easy
to be meek and humble in this world. One who has tasted the favour of God
will not seek greatness on earth; he is imbued with the spirit of grace, he
cherishes the lowly, he pardons those who have wronged him, he is near God,
and resembles Him in his ways. The same spirit of grace reigns, whether in
the assembly or in its members. It alone represents Christ on the earth;
and to it relate those regulations which are founded on the acceptance of a
people as belonging unto God. Two or three really gathered together in the
name of Jesus act with His authority, and enjoy His privileges with the
Father, for Jesus Himself is there in their midst.
Chapter 19
Chapter 19 carries on the subject of the spirit that is suited to the
kingdom of heaven, and goes deep into the principles which govern human
nature, and of what was now divinely introduced. A question asked by the
Pharisees-for the Lord had drawn nigh to Judea-gives rise to the exposition
of His doctrine on marriage; and turning away from the law, given on
account of the hardness of their hearts, He goes back
to God's
institution, according to which one man and one woman were to unite
together, and to be one in the sight of God. He establishes, or rather
re-establishes, the true character of the indissoluble bond of marriage. I
call it indissoluble, for the exception of the case of unfaithfulness, is
not one; the guilty person had already broken the bond. It was no longer
man and woman one flesh. At the same time, if God gave spiritual power for
it, it was still better to remain unmarried.
He then renews His instruction with respect to children, while testifying
His affection for them: here it appears to me rather in connection with the
absence of all that binds to the world, to its distractions and its lusts,
and owning what is lovely, confiding, and externally undefiled in nature;
whereas, in chapter 18, it was the intrinsic character of the kingdom.
After this, He shews (with reference to the introduction of the kingdom in
His Person) the nature of entire devotedness and sacrifice of all things,
in order to follow Him, if truly they only sought to please God. The spirit
of the world was opposed at all points,-both carnal passions and riches. No
doubt the law of Moses restrained these passions; but it supposes them,
and, in some respects, bears with them. According to the glory of the
world, a child had no value. What power can it have there? It is of value
in the Lord's eyes.
The law promised life to the man that kept it. The Lord makes it simple and
practical in its requirements, or, rather, recalls them in their true
simplicity. Riches were not forbidden by the law; that is to say, although
moral obligation between man and man was maintained by the law, that which
bound the heart to the world was not judged by it. Rather was prosperity,
according to the government of God, connected with obedience to it. For it
supposed this world, and man alive in it, and tested him there. Christ
recognises this; but the motives of the heart are tested. The law was
spiritual, and, the Son of God there; we find again what we found
before-man tested and detected, and God revealed. All is intrinsic and
eternal in its nature, for God is revealed already. Christ judges
everything that has a bad effect on the heart, and acts upon its
selfishness, and thus separates it from God. "Sell that thou hast," says
He, "and follow me." Alas! the young man could not renounce his
possessions, his ease, himself. "Hardly," says Jesus, "shall a rich man
enter into the kingdom." This was manifest: it was the kingdom of God, of
heaven; self and the world had no place in it. The disciples, who did not
understand that there is no good in man, were astonished that one so
favoured and well disposed should be still far from salvation. Who then
could succeed? The whole truth then comes out. It is impossible to men.
They cannot overcome the desires of the flesh. Morally, and as to his will
and his affections, these desires are the man. One cannot make a negro
white, or take his spots from the leopard: that which they exhibit is in
their nature. But to God, blessed be His name! all things are possible.
These instructions with regard to riches give rise to Peter's question,
What shall be the portion of those who have renounced everything? This
brings us back to the glory in chapter 17. There would be a regeneration;
the state of things should be entirely renewed under the dominion of the
Son of man. At that time they should sit on twelve thrones, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel. They should have the first place in the
administration of the earthly kingdom. Every one, however, should have his
own place; for whatever any one renounced for Jesus' sake, he should
receive a hundredfold and everlasting life. Nevertheless these things would
not be decided by appearance here; nor by the place men held in the old
system, and before men: some that were first should be last, and the last
first. In fact, it was to be feared that the carnal heart of man would take
this encouragement, given in the shape of reward for all his labour and all
his sacrifices, in a mercenary spirit, and seek to make God his debtor;
and, therefore, in the parable by which the Lord continues His discourse
(chap. 20), He establishes the principle of grace and of God's sovereignty
in that which He gives, and towards those whom He calls, in a very distinct
manner, and makes His gifts to those whom He brings into His vineyard
depend on His grace and on His call.
Chapter 20
We may remark that, when the Lord answers Peter, it was the consequence of
having left all for Christ upon His call. The motive was Christ Himself:
therefore He says, "Ye which have followed me." He speaks also of those who
had done it for His name's sake. This was the motive. The reward is an
encouragement, when, for His sake, we are already in the way. This is
always the case when reward is spoken of in the New Testament.
He
who was called at the eleventh hour was dependent on this call for his
entrance into the work; and if, in his kindness, the master chose to give
him as much as the others, they should have rejoiced at it. The first
adhered to justice; they received that which was agreed upon; the last
enjoyed the grace of his master. And it is to be remarked that they accept
the principle of grace, of confidence in it. "Whatsoever is right I will
give!" The great point in the parable is that-confidence in the grace of
the master of the vineyard, and grace as the ground of their action. But
who understood it? A Paul might come in late, God having then called him,
and be a stronger testimony to grace than the labourers who had wrought
from the dawning of the gospel day.
The Lord afterwards pursues the subject with His disciples. He goes up to
Jerusalem, where the Messiah ought to have been received and crowned, to be
rejected and put to death, but after that to rise again; and when the sons
of Zebedee come and ask him for the two first places in the kingdom, He
answers that He can lead them indeed to suffering; but as to the first
places in His kingdom, He could not bestow them, except (according to the
Father's counsels) on those for whom the Father had prepared them. Wondrous
self-renunciation! It is for the Father, for us, that He works. He disposes
of nothing. He can bestow on those who will follow Him a share in His
sufferings: everything else shall be given according to the counsels of the
Father. But what real glory for Christ and perfection in Him, and what a
privilege for us to have this motive only, and to partake in the Lord's
sufferings! and what a purification of our carnal hearts is here proposed
to us, in making us act only for a suffering Christ, sharing His cross, and
committing ourselves to God for recompense!
The Lord then takes occasion to explain the sentiments that become His
followers, the perfection of which they had seen in Himself. In the world,
authority was sought for; but the spirit of Christ was a spirit of service,
leading to the choice of the lowest place, and to entire devotedness to
others. Beautiful and perfect principles, the full bright perfection of
which was displayed in Christ. The renunciation of all things, in order to
depend confidingly on the grace of Him whom we serve, the consequent
readiness to take the lowest place, and thus to be the servant of all-this
should be the spirit of those who have part in the kingdom as now
established by the rejected Lord. It is this that becomes His followers.
With the end of verse 28 this portion of the Gospel terminates, and the
closing scenes of the blessed Saviour's life begin. At verse 29
begins His last presentation to Israel as the Son of David, the Lord, the
true King of Israel, the Messiah. He begins His career in this respect at
Jericho, the place where Joshua entered the land-the place on which the
curse had so long rested. He opens the blind eyes of His people who believe
in Him and receive Him as the Messiah, for such He truly was, although
rejected. They salute Him as Son of David, and He answers their faith by
opening their eyes. They follow Him-a figure of the true remnant of His
people, who will wait for Him.
Chapter 21
Afterwards (chap. 21), disposing of all that belonged to His willing
people, He makes His entry into Jerusalem as King and Lord, according to
the testimony of Zechariah. But although entering as King-the last
testimony to the beloved city, which (to their ruin) was going to reject
Him-He comes as a meek and lowly King. The power of God influences the
heart of the multitudes, and they salute Him as King, as Son of David,
making use of the language supplied by Psalm 118,
which celebrates
the millennial sabbath brought in by the Messiah, then to be acknowledged
by the people. The multitude spread their garments to prepare the way for
their meek, though glorious King; they cut down branches from the trees to
bear Him testimony; and He is conducted in triumph to Jerusalem, while the
people cry, "Hosanna [Save now] to the Son of David: Blessed is he that
cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!" Happy for them if
their hearts had been changed to retain this testimony in the Spirit. But
God sovereignly disposed their hearts to bear this testimony; He could not
allow His Son to be rejected without receiving it.
And now the King is going to review everything, still maintaining His
position of humility and of testimony. Apparently the different classes
come to judge Him, or to perplex Him; but in fact they all present
themselves before Him to receive at His hands, one after another, the
judgment of God respecting them. It is a striking scene that opens before
us-the true Judge, the everlasting King, presenting Himself for the last
time to His rebellious people with the fullest testimony to His rights and
to His power; and they, coming to harass and condemn Him, led by their very
malice to pass before Him one after another, laying open their real
condition, to receive their judgment from His lips, without His forsaking
for a moment (unless in cleansing the temple, before this scene commenced)
the position of Faithful and True Witness in all meekness on the earth.
The difference between the two parts of this history is distinguishable.
The first presents the Lord in His character of Messiah and Jehovah. As
Lord, He commands the ass to be brought. He enters the city, according to
the prophecy, as King. He cleanses the temple with authority. In answer to
the priests' objection He quotes Psalm 8, which speaks of the manner in
which Jehovah caused Himself to be glorified, and perfected the praises due
to Him out of the mouth of babes. In the temple also He heals Israel. He
then leaves them, no longer lodging in the city, which He could no longer
own, but with the remnant outside. The next day, in a remarkable figure He
exhibits the curse about to fall upon the nation. Israel was the fig-tree
of Jehovah; but it cumbered the ground. It was covered with leaves, but
there was no fruit. The fig-tree, condemned by the Lord, presently withers
away. It is a figure of this unhappy nation, of man in the flesh with every
advantage, which bore no fruit for the Husbandman.
Israel in fact possessed all the outward forms of religion, and were
zealous for the law and the ordinances, but they bore no fruit unto God. So
far as placed under responsibility to bring forth fruit, that is to say,
under the old covenant, they will never do so. Their rejection of Jesus put
an end to all hope. God will act in grace under the new covenant; but this
is not the question here. The fig-tree is Israel as they were, man
cultivated by God, but in vain. All was over. That which He said to the
disciples of the mountain's removing, while it is a great general
principle, refers also, I doubt not, to that which should take place in
Israel by means of their ministry. Looked at corporately on the earth as a
nation, Israel should disappear, and be lost among the Gentiles. The
disciples were those whom God accepted according to their faith.
We see the Lord entering Jerusalem as a king-Jehovah, the King of
Israel-and judgment pronounced on the nation. Then follow the details of
judgment on the different classes of which it was composed. First come the
chief priests and elders, who should have guided the people; they draw near
to the Lord and question His authority. Thus addressing Him, they took the
place of heads of the nation, and assumed to be judges, capable of
pronouncing on the validity of any claims that might be made; if not, why
concern themselves with Jesus?
The Lord, in His infinite wisdom, puts a question to them which tests their
capability and by their own confession they were incapable. How then judge
Him?
To tell them the foundation of His authority, was useless. It
was too late now to tell them. They would have stoned Him, if He had
alleged its true source. He replies, Decide on John the Baptist's mission.
If they could not do this, why inquire respecting His? They cannot do it.
If they acknowledged John to have been sent of God it would be
acknowledging Christ. To deny it would be to lose their influence with the
people. Of conscience there was no question with them. They confess their
inability. Jesus then declines their competency as leaders and guardians of
the faith of the people. They had judged themselves; and the Lord proceeds
to set their conduct, and the Lord's dealings with them, plainly before
their eyes, from verse 28 to chapter 22: 14.
First, while professing to do the will of God, they did it not; while the
openly wicked had repented and done His will. They, seeing this, were still
hardened. Again, not only had natural conscience remained untouched,
whether by the testimony of John, or by the sight of repentance in others,
but, although God had used every means to make them bring forth fruit
worthy of His culture, He had found nothing in them but perversity and
rebellion. The prophets had been rejected, and His Son would be so
likewise. They desired to have His inheritance for themselves. They could
not but acknowledge that in such case the consequence must necessarily be
the destruction of those wicked men, and the bestowal of the vineyard on
others. Jesus applies the parable to themselves, by quoting Psalm 118,
which announces that the stone rejected by the builders should become the
head-stone of the corner; moreover, that whosoever should fall on this
stone-as the nation was at that moment doing-should be broken; but that on
whomsoever it should fall-and this would be the lot of the rebellious
nation in the last days-it should grind them to powder. The chief priests
and the Pharisees understood that He spoke of them, but they dared not lay
hands on Him, because the multitude took Him for a prophet. This is the
history of Israel, as under responsibility, even till the last days.
Jehovah was seeking fruit in His vineyard.
Chapter 22
In chapter 22, their conduct with respect to the invitations of grace is
presented in its turn. The parable is therefore a similitude of the kingdom
of heaven. The purpose of God is to honour His Son by celebrating His
marriage. First of all the Jews, already invited, are bidden to the
marriage feast. They would not come. This was done during Christ's
lifetime. Afterwards, all things being ready, He again sends forth
messengers to induce them to come. This is the mission of the apostles to
the nation, when the work of redemption had been accomplished. They either
despise the message or slay the messengers.
The result is the
destruction of those wicked men and of their city. This is the destruction
that fell upon Jerusalem. On their rejection of the invitation, the
destitute, the Gentiles, those who were outside, are brought in to the
feast, and the wedding is furnished with guests. Another thing is now
presented. It is true, that we have seen the judgment of Jerusalem in this
parable, but, as it is a similitude of the kingdom, we have the judgment of
that which is within the kingdom also. There must be fitness for the
occasion. For a wedding feast there must be a wedding garment. If Christ is
to be glorified, everything must be according to His glory. There may be an
outward entrance into the kingdom, a profession of Christianity; but he who
is not clothed with that which appertains to the feast will be cast out. We
must be clothed with Christ Himself. On the other hand, all is
prepared-nothing is required. It was not the guest's part to bring
anything; the King provided all. But we must be imbued with the spirit of
that which is done. If there is any thought of what was suitable to a
wedding feast, the need of a wedding garment to appear in would surely be
felt: if not, the honour of the King's Son has been forgotten. The heart
was a stranger to it; the man himself shall become so by the judgment of
the King when He takes cognizance of the guests who have come in.
Thus also grace has been shewn to Israel, and they are judged for refusing
the invitation of the great King to the marriage of His Son. And then the
abuse of this grace by those who appear to accept it is also judged. The
bringing in of the Gentiles is declared.
Here concludes the history of the judgment of Israel in general, and of the
character which the kingdom would assume.
After this (chap. 22: 15, et seq.) the different classes of the Jews come
forward, each in turn. First, the Pharisees and the Herodians (that is,
those who favoured the authority of the Romans, and those who were opposed
to it) seek to entangle Jesus in His talk. The blessed Lord answers them
with that perfect wisdom that ever displayed itself in all He said and all
He did. On their part, it was pure wickedness manifesting a total want of
conscience. It was their own sin that had brought them under the Roman
yoke-a position contrary indeed to that which should have belonged to the
people of God on earth. Apparently therefore Christ must either become an
object of suspicion to the authorities, or renounce His claim to be the
Messiah and consequently the Deliverer. Who had occasioned this dilemma? It
was the fruit of their own sins. The Lord shews them that they had
themselves accepted the yoke. The money bore the mark of this: let them
render it then to those unto whom it belonged, and let them also-which they
were not doing-render unto God the things that were God's. He leaves them
under the yoke which they were obliged to confess they had accepted. He
reminds them of the rights of God; which they had forgotten. Such might
moreover have been Israel's state according to the establishment of power
in Nebuchadnezzar, as a "spreading vine of low stature."
The Sadducees come next before Him, and question Him as to the
resurrection, thinking to prove its absurdity. Thus, as the condition of
the nation had been exhibited in His discourse with the Pharisees, the
unbelief of the Sadducees is displayed here. They thought only of the
things of this world, seeking to deny the existence of another. But
whatever the state of degradation and subjection into which the people had
fallen, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, changed not. The
promises made to the fathers remained sure, and the fathers were living to
enjoy these promises hereafter. It was the word and the power of God which
were in question. The Lord maintains them with power and evidence. The
Sadducees were silenced.
The lawyers, struck with His reply, ask a question, which gives the Lord
occasion to extract from the whole law, that which, in the sight of God, is
its essence, presenting thus its perfection, and that which-by whatever
means it may be reached-forms the happiness of those that walk in it. Grace
alone rises higher.
Here their questioning ceases. All is judged, all is brought to light with
respect to the position of the people, and the sects of Israel; and the
Lord has laid before them the perfect thoughts of God respecting them,
whether on the subject of their condition, of His promises, or of the
substance of the law.
It was now the Lord's turn to propose His question in order to bring out
His own position. He asks the Pharisees to reconcile the title of Son of
David with that of Lord which David himself gave Him, and that in
connection with the ascension of this same Christ to sit at the right hand
of God until God had made all His enemies His footstool, and established
His throne in Zion. Now this was the whole of Christ's position at that
moment. They were unable to answer Him, and no man durst ask Him any more
questions. In fact, to understand that Psalm, would have been to understand
all the ways of God with respect to His Son at the time they were going to
reject Him. This necessarily closed these discourses by shewing the true
position of Christ, who, although the Son of David, must ascend on high to
receive the kingdom, and, while waiting for it, sit at the right hand of
God according to the rights of His glorious Person-David's Lord, as well as
David's Son.
There is another point of interest to be remarked here. In these interviews
and these discourses with the different classes of the Jews, the Lord
brings out the condition of the Jews on all sides with respect to their
relations with God, and then the position which He took Himself. He first
shews their national position towards God, as under responsibility to Him,
according to natural conscience and the privileges belonging to them. The
result would be their cutting off, and the bringing in of others into the
Lord's vineyard. This is chapter 21: 28-46. He then exhibits their
condition with regard to the grace of the kingdom, and the introduction of
Gentile sinners. Here also the result is the cutting off and the
destruction of the city.
Afterwards the Herodians and the
Pharisees, the friends of the Romans and their enemies, the pretended
friends of God, bring out the true position of the Jews with respect to the
imperial power of the Gentiles and to God. In His interview with the
Sadducees, He shews the certainty of the promises made to the fathers, and
the relationship in which God stood to them in respect of life and
resurrection. After this He puts the real meaning of the law before the
scribes; and then the position which He took, Himself the Son of David,
according to Psalm 110, which was linked with His rejection by the leaders
of the nation who stood around Him.
Chapter 23
Chapter 23 clearly shews how far the disciples are viewed in connection
with the nation, inasmuch as they were Jews, although the Lord judges the
leaders, who beguiled the people and dishonoured God by their hypocrisy. He
speaks to the multitude and to His disciples, saying, "The scribes and the
Pharisees sit in Moses' seat." Being thus expositors of the law, they were
to be obeyed in all that they said according to that law, although their
own conduct was but hypocrisy. That which is important here is the position
of the disciples; it is in fact the same as that of Jesus. They are in
connection with all that is of God in the nation, that is to say, with the
nation as the recognised people of God-consequently, with the law as
possessing authority from God. At the same time the Lord judges, and the
disciples also were practically to judge, the walk of the nation, as
publicly represented by their leaders. While still forming part of the
nation, they were carefully to avoid the walk of the scribes and Pharisees.
After having reproached these pastors of the nation with their hypocrisy,
the Lord points out the way in which they themselves condemned the deeds of
their fathers-by building the sepulchres of the prophets whom they had
slain. They were, then, the children of those who slew them, and God would
put them to the test by sending them also prophets and wise men and
scribes, and they would fill up the measure of their iniquity by putting
these to death and persecuting them-condemned thus out of their own
mouths-in order that all the righteous blood which had been shed, from
Abel's to that of the prophet Zechariah, should come upon this generation.
Frightful amount of guilt, accumulated from the beginning of the enmity
which sinful man, when placed under responsibility, has ever shewn to the
testimony of God; and which increased daily, because the conscience became
more hardened each time that it resisted this testimony! The truth was so
much the more manifest from its witnesses having suffered. It was a rock,
exposed to view, to be avoided in the people's path. But they persisted in
their evil course, and every step in advance, every similar act, was the
proof of a still increasing obduracy. The patience of God, while graciously
dealing in testimony, had not been unobservant of their ways, and under
this patience all had accumulated. All would be heaped upon the head of
this reprobate generation.
Remark here the character given to the apostles and christian prophets.
They are scribes, wise men, prophets, sent to the Jews-to the ever
rebellious nation. This very clearly brings out the aspect in which this
chapter regards them. Even the apostles are "wise men," "scribes," sent to
the Jews as such.
But the nation-Jerusalem, God's beloved city-is guilty and is judged.
Christ, as we have seen, since the cure of the blind man near Jericho,
presents Himself as Jehovah the King of Israel. How often would He have
gathered the children of Jerusalem, but they would not! And now their house
should be desolate, until (their hearts being converted) they should use
the language of Psalm 118, and, in desire, hail His arrival who came in the
name of Jehovah, looking for deliverance at His hands, and praying to Him
for it-in a word, until they should cry Hosanna to Him that should come.
They would see Jesus no more until, humbled in heart, they should pronounce
Him blessed whom they were expecting, and whom they now rejected-in short,
until they were prepared in heart. Peace should follow, desire precede, His
appearing.
The last three verses exhibit clearly enough the position of the Jews, or
of Jerusalem, as the centre of the system before God. Long since, and many
times, would Jesus, Jehovah the Saviour, have gathered the children of
Jerusalem together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings,
but they would not. Their house should remain forsaken and desolate, but
not for ever. After having killed the prophets, and stoned the messengers
sent unto them, they had crucified their Messiah, and rejected and slain
those whom He had sent to proclaim grace unto them even after His
rejection. Therefore should they see Him no more until they had repented,
and the desire to see Him was produced in their hearts, so that they should
be prepared to bless Him, and would bless Him in their hearts, and confess
their readiness to do so. The Messiah, who was about to leave them, should
be seen of them no more until repentance had turned their hearts unto Him
whom they were now rejecting. Then they should see Him. The Messiah, coming
in the name of Jehovah, shall be manifested to His people Israel. It is
Jehovah their Saviour who should appear, and the Israel who had rejected
Him should see Him as such. The people should thus return into the
enjoyment of their relationship with God.
Such is the moral and prophetic picture of Israel. The disciples, as Jews,
were viewed as part of the nation, though as a remnant spiritually detached
from it, and witnessing in it.
Chapter 24
We have already seen that the rejection of the testimony to the kingdom in
grace, is the cause of the judgment that falls upon Jerusalem and its
inhabitants. Now in chapter 24 we have the position of this testimony in
the midst of the people; the condition of the Gentiles, and the relation in
which they stood to the testimony rendered by the disciples; after this,
the condition of Jerusalem, consequent upon her rejection of the Messiah,
and her contempt for the testimony; and then the universal overthrow at the
end of those days: a state of things which should be ended by the
appearance of the Son of man, and the gathering together of the elect of
Israel from the four winds.
We must examine this remarkable passage, at once a prophecy, and
instruction to the disciples for their direction in the path they must
follow amid the coming events.
Jesus departs from the temple, and that for ever-a solemn act, which, we
may say, executed the judgment He had just pronounced. The house was now
desolate. The hearts of the disciples were still bound to it by their
former prepossessions. They draw His attention to the magnificent buildings
that composed it. Jesus announces to them its entire destruction. Seated
apart with Him on the Mount of Olives, the disciples inquire when these
things were to happen, and what would be the sign of His coming and of the
end of the age. They class together the destruction of the temple, the
coming of Christ, and the end of the age. We must observe, that here the
end of the age is the end of the period during which Israel was subject to
the law under the old covenant: a period which was to cease, giving place
to the Messiah and to the new covenant. Observe also that God's government
of the earth is the subject, and the judgments that should take place at
Christ's coming, which would put an end to the existing age. The disciples
confounded that which the Lord had said of the destruction of the temple
with this period.
The Lord treats the subject from His own point of
view (that is to say, with regard to the testimony which the disciples were
to render in connection with the Jews during His absence and to the end of
the age). He adds nothing as to the destruction of Jerusalem, which He had
already announced. The time of His coming was purposely hidden. Moreover
the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus put an end, in fact, to the position
which the Lord's instructions had in view. There was no longer any
cognizable testimony among the Jews. When this position shall be resumed,
the applicability of the passage will also recommence. After the
destruction of Jerusalem until that time the church only is in question.
The Lord's discourse is divided into three parts:-
1. The general condition of the disciples and of the world during the time
of the testimony, to the end of verse 14;
2. The period marked out by the fact that the abomination of desolation
stands in the holy place (v. 15);
3. The Lord's coming and the gathering together of the elect in Israel (v. 29).
The time of the disciples' testimony is characterised by false Christs and
false prophets among the Jews; persecution of those who render testimony,
betraying them to the Gentiles. But there is yet something more definite
with regard to those days. There would be falseChrists in Israel. There
would be wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes. They were not to be
troubled: the end would not be yet. These things were only a beginning of
sorrows. They were principally outward things. There were other events
which would bring them into greater trial, and test them more
thoroughly-things more from within. The disciples should be delivered up,
put to death, hated of all nations. The consequence of this among those who
made profession would be that many would be offended; they would betray one
another. False prophets would arise and deceive many, and, because iniquity
abounded, the love of many should wax cold-a sorrowful picture. But these
things would give occasion for the exercise of a faith that had been put to
the proof. He who endured to the end should be saved. This concerns the
sphere of testimony in particular. That which the Lord says is not
absolutely limited to the testimony in Canaan; but as it is from thence the
testimony goes forth, it is all connected with that land as the centre of
God's ways. But, in addition to this, the gospel of the kingdom should be
preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then should
the end come-the end of this age. Now, although heaven is the source of
authority when the kingdom shall be established, Canaan and Jerusalem are
its earthly centre. So that the idea of the kingdom, while extending
throughout the world, turns our thoughts to the land of Israel. It is "this
gospel of the kingdom"
which is here spoken of; it is not the
proclamation of the union of the church with Christ, nor redemption in its
fulness, as preached and taught by the apostles after the ascension, but
the kingdom which was to be established on the earth, as John the Baptist,
and as the Lord Himself, had proclaimed. The establishment of the universal
authority of the ascended Christ should be preached in all the world to
test their obedience, and to furnish those who had ears to hear with the
object of faith.
This is the general history of that which would take place until the end of
the age, without entering on the subject of the proclamation which founded
the assembly properly so called. The impending destruction of Jerusalem,
and the refusal of the Jews to receive the gospel, caused God to raise up a
special testimony by the hands of Paul, without annulling the truth of the
coming kingdom. That which follows proves that such a going forth of
testimony of the kingdom will take place at the end, and that the testimony
will reach all nations before the coming of that judgment which will put an
end to the age.
But there will be a moment when, within a certain sphere (that is, in
Jerusalem and its vicinity) a special time of suffering shall set in as
regards the testimony in Israel. In speaking of the abomination that maketh
desolate, the Lord refers us to Daniel, that we may understand whereof He
speaks. Now Daniel (chap. 12, where this tribulation is spoken of) brings
us definitely to the last days-the time when Michael shall stand up for
Daniel's people, that is, the Jews, who are under the domination of the
Gentiles-the days in which there shall be a time of trouble, such as never
had been nor ever again should be, and in which the remnant should be
delivered. In the latter part of the previous chapter of that prophet, this
time is called "the time of the end," and the destruction of the king of
the north is prophetically declared. Now the prophet announces that 1335
days before the full blessing (blessed is he that has part therein!) the
daily sacrifice should be taken away, and the abomination that maketh
desolate set up; that from this moment there should be 1290 days (that is,
one month more than the 1260 days spoken of in the Apocalypse, during which
the woman who flees from the serpent is nourished in the wilderness; and
also than the three years and a half of Daniel 7). At the end, as we find
here, the judgment comes and the kingdom is given to the saints.
Thus it is proved that this passage refers to the last days and to the
position of the Jews at that time. The events of the time past since the
Lord uttered it confirm this thought. Neither in 1260 days, nor in 1260
years, after the days of Titus, nor in 30 days or years after, did any
event take place which could be the accomplishment of these days in Daniel.
The periods are gone by many years ago. Israel has not been delivered,
neither has Daniel stood in his lot at the end of those days. It is equally
plain that Jerusalem is in question in the passage, and its vicinity, for
they that are in Judea are commanded to flee into the mountains. The
disciples who shall be there at that time are to pray that their flight may
not be on a sabbath day-an additional testimony that it is Jews who are the
subject of the prophecy; but a testimony also of the tender care which the
Lord takes of those who are His, thinking even in the midst of these
unparalleled events, of whether it would be wintry weather at the time of
their flight.
Besides this, other circumstances prove, if further proof were needed, that
it is the Jewish remnant who are in question, and not the assembly. We know
that all believers are to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. They
will afterwards return with Him. But here there will be false Christs on
the earth, and people will say, "He is here in the wilderness," "He is
there in the secret chambers." But the saints who shall be caught up and
return with the Lord have nothing at all to do with false Christs on earth,
since they will go up to heaven to be with Him there, before He returns to
the earth; while it is easy to understand that the Jews, who are expecting
earthly deliverance, should be liable to such temptations, and that they
should be deceived by them unless kept by God Himself.
This part then of the prophecy applies to the last days, the last three
years and a half before the judgment which will be suddenly poured out at
the coming of the Son of man. The Lord will come suddenly as a flash of
lightning, as an eagle to its prey, unto the spot where the object of His
judgment is found. Immediately after the tribulation of those last three
years and a half, the whole hierarchical system of government shall be
shaken and utterly overthrown. Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man
in heaven, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven
with power and great glory. This verse (30) contains the answer to the
second part of the disciples' inquiry in verse 3. The Lord gives His
disciples the warnings necessary for their guidance; but the world would
see no signs, however plain they might be to those that understand. But
this sign should be at the moment of the Lord's appearing. The brightness
of His glory whom they had despised would shew them who it was that came;
and it would be unexpected. What a terrible moment, when, instead of a
Messiah who should answer to their worldly pride, the Christ whom they had
despised shall appear in the heavens!
Afterwards the Son of man, thus come and manifested, would send to gather
all the elect of Israel from the four corners of the earth. It is this
which ends the history of the Jews, and even that of Israel, in answer to
the disciples' question, and unfolds the dealings of God with respect to
the testimony among the people who had rejected it, announcing the time of
their deep distress, and the judgment that shall be poured out in the midst
of this scene when Jesus comes, the subversion of all powers great and
small being complete.
The Lord gives the history of the testimony in Israel, and that of the
people themselves, from the moment of His departure until His return; but
the length of time, during which there should be neither people nor temple
nor city, is not specified. It is this which gives importance to the
capture of Jerusalem. It is not here spoken of in direct terms-the Lord
does not describe it; but it put an end to that order of things to which
His discourse applies, and this application is not resumed until Jerusalem
and the Jews are again brought forward. The Lord announced it at the
beginning. The disciples thought that His coming would take place at the
same time. He answers them in such a manner that His discourse should be of
use to them until the capture of Jerusalem. But when once the abomination
of desolation is mentioned, we find ourselves carried on into the last
days.
The disciples were to understand the signs He gave them. I have already
said that the destruction of Jerusalem, by the fact itself, interrupted the
application of His discourse. The Jewish nation was set aside; but verse 34
has a much wider sense, and one more really proper to it. Unbelieving Jews
should exist, as such, until all was accomplished. Compare Deuteronomy 32:
5, 20, where this judgment on Israel is specially in view. God hides His
face from them until He shall see what their end will be, for they are a
very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. This has taken
place. They are a distinct race of people unto this day. That generation
exists in the same condition-a monument of the abiding certainty of God's
dealings, and of the Lord's words.
To conclude, the government of God, exercised with regard to this people,
has been traced to its end. The Lord comes, and He gathers together the
dispersed elect of Israel.
The prophetic history continues in chapter 25: 31, which is connected with
chapter 24: 30. And as chapter 24: 31 relates the gathering together of
Israel after the appearance of the Son of man, chapter 25: 31 announces His
dealings in judgment with the Gentiles. He will appear doubtless as the
lightning with regard to the apostasy, which will be as a dead body in His
sight. But when He shall come solemnly to take His earthly place in glory,
that will not pass away like lightning. He shall sit upon the throne of His
glory, and all nations shall be gathered before Him on His throne of
judgment, and they shall be judged according to their treatment of the
messengers of the kingdom, who had gone out to preach it unto them. These
messengers are the brethren (v. 40); those who had received them are the
sheep; those who had neglected their message are the goats. The account
then which begins chapter 25: 31, of the separation of sheep and goats and
of its result, pictures the nations who are judged on earth according to
their treatment of these messengers. It is the judgment of the living, so
far at least as regards the nations-a judgment as final as that of the
dead. It is not Christ's judgment in battle as in Revelation 19. It is a
session of His supreme tribunal in His right of government over the earth,
as in Revelation 20: 4 I speak of the principle or rather of the character
of the judgment. I do not doubt that these brethren are Jews, such as the
disciples were, that is to say, those who will be in a similar position as
to their testimony. The Gentiles, who had received this message, should be
accepted, as though they had treated Christ in the same manner. His Father
had prepared for them the enjoyment of the kingdom; and they should enter
into it, being still on earth, for Christ was come down in the power of
eternal life.
I have, for the moment, passed over all between chapter 24: 31 and chapter
25: 31, because the end of this last chapter completes all that concerns
the government and the judgment of the earth. But there is a class of
persons whose history is given us in its great moral features
intermediately between these two verses I have just mentioned.
These are the disciples of Christ, outside the testimony borne in the midst
of Israel, to whom He has committed His service, and a position in
connection with Himself, during His absence. This position and this service
are in connection with Christ Himself, and not in connection with Israel,
wherever it may be that this service is accomplished.
There are however, before we come to these, some verses of which I have not
yet spoken, which apply more particularly to the state of things in Israel,
as warning to the disciples who are there, and describe the discriminating
judgment which takes place among the Jews in the last days. I speak of them
here, because all this part of the discourse-namely, from chapter 24: 31 to
chapter 25: 31-is an exhortation, an address from the Lord, on the subject
of their duties during His absence. I refer to chapter 24: 32-44. They
speak of the continual expectation which their ignorance of the moment when
the Son of man would come imposed on the disciples, and in which the
disciples were intentionally left (and the judgment is the earthly one);
while from verse 45, the Lord addresses Himself more directly, and at the
same time in a more general manner, to their conduct during His absence,
not in connection with Israel, but with His own-His household. He had
committed to them the task of supplying them with suitable food in due
season. This is the responsibility of ministry in the assembly.
It is important to remark that in the first parable the state of the
assembly is looked at as a whole; the parable of the virgins and that of
the talents give individual responsibility. Hence the servant who is
unfaithful is cut off and has his portion with hypocrites. The state of the
responsible assembly depended on their waiting for Christ, or their heart
saying He delays His coming. It would be on His return that judgment should
be pronounced on their faithfulness during the interval Faithfulness should
be approved in that day. On the other hand, practical forgetfulness of His
coming would lead to licence and tyranny. It is not an intellectual system
that is meant here: "the evil servant says in his heart, My lord delayeth
his coming"; his will was concerned in it. The result was that the fleshly
will manifested itself. It was no longer devoted service to His household,
with a heart set upon the Master's approval at His return; but worldliness
in conduct, and the assumption of arbitrary authority, to which the service
appointed him gave occasion. He eats and drinks with the drunken, he unites
himself to the world and partakes in its ways; he smites his
fellow-servants at his will. Such is the effect of putting off during His
absence, deliberately in heart, the Lord's return and holding the assembly
to be settled down here; instead of faithful service, worldly-mindedness
and tyranny. Is it not too true a picture?
What is it that has happened to those who had the place of service in the
house of God? The consequences on either hand are these: the faithful
servant, who from love and devotion to his Master applied himself to the
welfare of His household, should be made ruler on his Master's return over
all His goods; those who have been faithful in the service of the house
shall be set over all things by the Lord, when He takes His place of power
and acts as King. All things are given into the hands of Jesus by the
Father. Those who in humility have been faithful to His service during His
absence shall be made rulers over all that is committed to Him, that is,
over all things-they are but the "goods" of Jesus. On the other hand, he
who during the Lord's absence had set himself up as master, and followed
after the spirit of the flesh and of the world to which he had united
himself, should not merely have the world's portion: his Master should come
quite unexpectedly, and he should receive the punishment of hypocrites.
What a lesson for those who take to themselves a place of service in the
assembly! Observe here, that it is not said he is drunken himself, but that
he eats and drinks with those that are so. He allies himself with the world
and follows its customs. This moreover is the general aspect which the
kingdom will assume in that day, although the heart of the evil servant was
wicked. The Bridegroom would indeed tarry; and the consequences that might
be expected from the heart of man will not fail to be realised. But the
effect, we then find, is to make manifest those who had
really the
grace of Christ and those who had not.
Chapter 25
Professors, during the Lord's absence, are here presented as virgins, who
went out to meet the Bridegroom, and light Him to the house. In this
passage He is not the Bridegroom of the church. No others go to meet Him
for His marriage with the church in heaven. The bride does not appear in
this parable. Had she been introduced, it would have been Jerusalem on
earth. The assembly is not seen in these chapters as such.
It is here individual
responsibility during the absence of Christ.
That which characterised the faithful at this period was that they came out
from the world, from Judaism, from everything, even religion connected with
the world, to go and meet the coming Lord. The Jewish remnant, on the
contrary, wait for Him in the place where they are. If this expectation
were real, the characteristic of one governed by it would be the thought of
that which was necessary for the coming One-the light, the oil. Otherwise,
to be the companions of professors meanwhile, and to carry lamps with them,
would satisfy the heart. Nevertheless they all took a position; they go
out, they leave the house to go out and meet the Bridegroom. He tarries.
This also has taken place. They all fall asleep. The whole professing
church has lost the thought of the Lord's return-even the faithful who have
the Spirit. They must also have gone in again somewhere to sleep at ease-a
place of rest for the flesh. But at midnight, unexpectedly, the cry is
raised, "Behold, the bridegroom; go ye out to meet him." Alas! they needed
the same call as at first. They must again go out to meet Him. The virgins
rise, and trim their lamps. There is time enough between the midnight cry
and the Bridegroom's arrival to prove the condition of each. There were
some who had no oil in their vessels. Their lamps were going out.
The wise had oil. It was impossible for them to share it with the others.
Those only who possessed it went in with the Bridegroom to take part in the
marriage. He refused to acknowledge the others. What business had they
there? The virgins were to give light with their lamps. They had not done
it. Why should they share the feast? They had failed in that which gave
this place. What title had they to be at the feast The virgins of the feast
were virgins who accompanied the Bridegroom. These had not done so. They
were not admitted. But even the faithful ones had forgotten the coming of
Christ. They fell asleep. But, at least, they possessed the essential thing
that corresponded to it. The grace of the Bridegroom causes the cry to be
raised which proclaims His arrival. It awakens them: they have oil in their
vessels; and the delay, which occasions the lamps of the unfaithful to go
out, gives the faithful time to be ready and at their place; and forgetful
as they may have been, they go in with the Bridegroom to the wedding
feast
We pass now from state of soul to service.
For in truth (v. 14) it is as a man who had gone away from his home-for the
Lord dwelt in Israel-and who commits his goods to his own servants, and
then departs. Here, we have the principles that characterise faithful
servants, or the contrary. It is not now the personal individual
expectation, and the possession of the oil, requisite for a place in the
Lord's glorious train; neither is it the public and general position of
those who were in the Master's service, characterised as position and as a
whole, and therefore represented by a single servant; it is individual
faithfulness in the service, as before in the expectation of the
Bridegroom. The Master on His return will reckon with each one. Now what
was their position? What was the principle that would produce faithfulness?
Observe, first of all, that it is not providential gifts, earthly
possessions, that are meant. These are not the "goods that Jesus committed
to His servants when He went away. They were gifts which fitted them to
labour in His service while He was absent. The Master was sovereign and
wise. He gave differently to each, and to each according to his capacity.
Each was fitted for the service in which he was employed, and the gifts
needed for its fulfilment were bestowed on him. Faithfulness to perform it
was the only thing in question. That which distinguished the faithful from
the unfaithful was confidence in their Master. They had sufficient
confidence in His well-known character, in His goodness, His love, to
labour without being authorised in any other manner than by their knowledge
of His personal character, and by the intelligence which that confidence
and that knowledge produced. Of what use to give them sums of money, except
to trade with them? Had He failed in wisdom when He bestowed these gifts?
The devotedness that flowed from knowledge of their Master counted upon the
love of Him whom they knew. They laboured, and they were rewarded. This is
the true character, and the spring, of service in the church. It is this
that the third servant lacked. He did not know his Master-he did not trust
in Him. He could not even do that which was consistent with his own
thoughts. He waited for some authorisation which would be a security
against the character his heart falsely gave his Master. Those who knew
their Master's character entered into His joy.
There is this difference between the parable here and that in Luke 19, that
in the latter each man receives one pound; his responsibility is the only
question. And consequently he who gained ten pounds is set over ten cities.
Here the sovereignty and the wisdom of God are concerned, and he who
labours is guided by the knowledge he has of his Master; and the counsels
of God in grace are accomplished. He who has the most receives yet more. At
the same time the reward is more general. He who has gained two talents,
and he who has gained five, enter alike into the joy of the Lord whom they
have served. They have known Him in His true character, they enter into His
full joy. The Lord grant it unto us!
There is more than this in the second parable-that of the virgins. It
refers more directly and more exclusively to the heavenly character of
Christians. It is not the assembly, properly so called, as a body; but the
faithful have gone out to meet the Bridegroom, who was returning to the
marriage. At the time of His return to execute judgment, the kingdom of
heaven will assume the character of persons come out from the world, and
still more from Judaism-from all that, in point of religion, belongs to the
flesh-from all established worldly form-to have to do with the coming Lord
alone, and to go out to meet Him. This was the character of the faithful
from the beginning, as having part in the kingdom of heaven, if they had
understood the position in which they were placed by the Lord's rejection.
The virgins, it is true, had gone in again; and this falsified their
character; but the midnight cry brought them back into their true place.
Therefore they go in with the Bridegroom, and there is no question of
judging and rewarding, but of being with Him. In the first parable, and in
that of Luke, the subject is His return to earth, and individual
recompense-the results, in the kingdom, of their conduct during the King's
absence.
Service and its results are not the subject in the parable
of the virgins. Those who have no oil do not go in at all. This is enough.
The others have blessing in common; they go in with the Bridegroom to the
marriage. There is no question of particular reward, nor of difference in
conduct between them. It was the heart's expectation, though grace had to
bring them back into it. Whatever the place of service might have been, the
reward was sure. This parable applies and is limited to the heavenly
portion of the kingdom as such. It is a similitude of the kingdom of
heaven.
We may also remark here, that the delay of the Master is noticed in the
third parable likewise-"after a long time" (v. 19). Their faithfulness and
their constancy were thus put to the test. May the Lord give unto us to be
found faithful and devoted, now in the end of the ages, that He may say
unto us, "Good and faithful servants!" It is worthy of remark that in these
parables those who are in service, or go out at first, are the same as
those found at the end. The Lord would not hold out the supposition of
delay beyond "we who are alive and remain."
Weeping and gnashing of teeth are his portion who has not known his Master,
who has outraged Him by the thoughts he entertained of His character.
In verse 31 the prophetic history is resumed from verse 31 of chapter 24.
There we saw the Son of man appear like a flash of lightning, and
afterwards gather together the remnant of Israel from the four corners of
the earth. But this is not all. If He thus appears in a manner as sudden as
unexpected, He also establishes His throne of judgment and glory on the
earth. If He destroys His enemies whom He finds in rebellion against
Himself, He also sits upon His throne to judge all nations. This is the
judgment on earth of the living. Four different parties are here found
together; the Lord, the Son of man Himself-the brethren-the sheep-and the
goats. I believe the brethren here to be Jews, His disciples as Jews, whom
He had employed as His messengers, to preach the kingdom during His
absence. The gospel of the kingdom was to be preached as a testimony to all
nations; and then the end of the age should come. At the time here spoken
of, this has been done. The result should be manifested before the throne
of the Son of man on earth.
He calls these messengers therefore His brethren. He had told them they
should be ill-treated: they had been so. Still there were some who had
received their testimony.
Now such was His affection for His faithful servants, so highly did He
value them, that He judged those to whom the testimony was sent according
to the manner in which they had received these messengers, whether well or
ill, as though it had been done to Himself. What an encouragement for His
witnesses during that time of trouble, tried as their faith should be in
service! At the same time it was justice morally to those who were judged;
for they had rejected the testimony by whomsoever it was rendered. We have
also the result of their conduct, both the one and the other. It is the
King-for this is the character Christ has now taken on earth-who pronounces
judgment; and He calls the sheep (those who had received the messengers,
and had sympathised with them in their afflictions and persecutions) to
inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world; for
such had been the purpose of God with respect to this earth. He had always
the kingdom in view. They were the blessed of His (the King's) Father. It
was not children who understood their own relation with their Father; but
they were the receivers of blessing from the Father of the King of this
world. Moreover they were to enter into everlasting life; for such was the
power, through grace, of the word which they had received into their heart.
Possessed of everlasting life, they should be blessed in a world that was
blessed also.
They who had despised the testimony and those that bore it, had despised
the King who sent them; they should go away into everlasting punishment.
Thus the whole effect of Christ's coming, with regard to the kingdom and to
His messengers during His absence, is unfolded: with respect to the Jews,
as far as verse 31 of chapter 24; with respect to His servants during His
absence, to the end of verse 30 of chapter 25, including the kingdom of
heaven in its present condition, and the heavenly rewards that shall be
given; and then, from verse 31 to the end of chapter 25, with respect to
the nations who shall be blessed on the earth at His return.
Chapter 26
The Lord had finished His discourses. He prepares (chap. 26) to suffer, and
to make His last and touching adieus to His disciples, at the table of His
last passover on earth, at which He instituted, the simple and precious
memorial which recalls His sufferings and His love with such profound
interest. This part of our Gospel requires little explanation-not,
assuredly, that it is of less interest, but because it needs to be felt
rather than explained.
With what simplicity the Lord announces that which was to happen! (v. 2).
He had already arrived at Bethany, six days before the passover (John 12:
1): there He abode, with the exception of the last supper, until He was
taken captive in the garden of Gethsemane, although He visited Jerusalem,
and partook of His last meal there.
We have already examined the discourses uttered during those six days, as
well as His actions, such as the cleansing of the temple. That which
precedes this chapter (26) is either the manifestation of His rights as
Emmanuel, King of Israel, or that of the judgment of the great King with
respect to the people-a judgment expressed in discourses to which the
people could make no answer; or, finally, the condition of His disciples
during His absence. We have now His submission to the sufferings appointed
Him, to the judgment about to be executed upon Him; but which was, in
truth, only the fulfilment of the counsels of God His Father, and of the
work of His own love.
The picture of man's dreadful sin in the crucifixion of Jesus unfolds
before our eyes. But the Lord Himself (chap. 26: 1) announces it beforehand
with all the calmness of One who had come for this purpose. Before the
consultations of the chief priests had taken place, Jesus speaks of it as a
settled thing: "Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover,
and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified."
Afterwards (v. 3) the priests, the scribes, and the elders assemble to concert their plans for obtaining possession of His Person, and ridding themselves of Him.
In a word, first, the marvellous counsels of God, and the submission of
Jesus, according to His knowledge of those counsels and of the
circumstances which should accomplish them; and, afterwards, the iniquitous
counsels of man, which do but fulfil those of God. Their purposed
arrangement of detail not to take Him on the feast day as they dreaded the
people (chap. 26: 5) was not God's and fails: He was to suffer at the
feast.
Judas was but the instrument of their malice in the hand of Satan; who,
after all, did but arrange these things according to divine intention. They
wished, but in vain, to avoid taking Him at the time of the feast, on
account of the multitude, who might favour Jesus, if He appealed to them.
They had done so at His entrance into Jerusalem. They supposed Jesus would
do so, for wickedness always reckons on finding its own principles in
others. This is why it so frequently fails in circumventing the
upright-they are artless. Here it was the will of God, that Jesus should
suffer at the feast. But He had prepared a gracious relief to the heart of
Jesus-a balm to His heart more than to His body-a circumstance which is
used by the enemy to drive Judas to extremity and put him in connection
with the chief priests.
Bethany (linked in memory with the last moments of peace and tranquillity
in the Saviour's life, the place where dwelt Martha and Mary, and Lazarus
the risen dead)-Bethany
receives Jesus for the last time: the
blessed but momentary retreat of a heart which, ever ready to pour itself
out in love, was ever straitened in a world of sin, that did not and could
not respond to it; yet a heart which has given us, in His relations with
this beloved family, the example of an affection perfect, yet human, which
found sweetness in being responded to and appreciated. The nearness of the
cross, where He would have to set His face as a flint, did not deprive His
heart of the joy or the sweetness of this communion, while rendering it
solemn and affecting. In doing the work of God He did not cease to be man.
In everything He condescended to be ours. He could no longer own Jerusalem,
and this sanctuary sheltered Him for a moment from the rude hand of man.
Here He could display what He ever was as man. It is with reason, that the
act of one who in a certain sense could appreciate what He felt
(whose affection instinctively entered into the rising enmity against the
object she loved and was drawn out by it), and the act that expressed the
estimate her heart had of His preciousness and grace should be told in all
the world. This is a scene, a testimony, that brings the Lord sensibly near
to us, that awakens a feeling in our hearts which sanctifies by binding
them to His beloved Person.
His daily life was one continued tension of soul, in proportion to the
strength of His love-a life of devotedness in the midst of sin and misery.
For a moment He could, and would own (in presence of the power of evil, now
to have its way, and the love that clung to Him thus bowing under it,
through true knowledge of Him cultivated in sitting at His feet) that
devotedness to Himself, drawn out by that which His soul was in divine
perfectness bowing to. He could give an intelligent voice, its true
meaning, to that which divinely wrought affection silently acted on.
The reader will do well carefully to study this scene of touching
condescension and outpouring of heart. Jesus, Emmanuel, King and Supreme
Judge, had just been causing all things to pass in judgment before Him
(from chap. 21 to the end of 25). He had finished that which He had to say.
His task here, in this respect, was accomplished. He now takes the place of
Victim; He has only to suffer, and can allow Himself freely to enjoy the
touching expressions of affection that flow from a heart devoted to Him. He
could but taste the honey and pass on; but He does taste it, and did not
reject an affection which His heart could and did appreciate.
Again, observe the effect of deep affection for the Lord. This affection
necessarily breathes the atmosphere in which, at that moment, the spirit of
the Lord is found. The woman who anointed Him was not informed of the
circumstances about to happen, nor was she a prophetess. But the approach
of that hour of darkness was felt by one whose heart was fixed on Jesus.
The different forms of evil developed themselves before Him, and
displayed themselves in their true colours; and, under the influence of one
master, even Satan, grouped themselves around the only object against whom
it was worthwhile to array this concentration of malice, and who brought
their true character out into open daylight.
But the perfectness of Jesus, which drew out the enmity, drew out the
affection in her; and she (so to speak) reflected the perfectness in the
affection; and as that perfectness was put in action and drawn to light by
the enmity, so was her affection. Thus Christ's heart could not but meet
it. Jesus, by reason of this enmity, was still more the object that
occupied a heart which, doubtless led of God, instinctively apprehended
what was going on. The time of testimony, and even that of the explanation
of His relationship to all around Him, was over. His heart was free to
enjoy the good and true and spiritual affections of which He was the
object; and which, whatever might be their human form, shewed so plainly
their divine origin, in that they were attached to that object on which, at
this solemn moment, all the attention of heaven was centred.
Jesus Himself was conscious of His position. His thoughts were on His
departure. During the exercise of His power, He hides-He forgets-Himself.
But now oppressed, rejected, and like a lamb led to the slaughter, He feels
that He is the just object of the thoughts of those who belong to Him, of
all who have hearts to appreciate that which God appreciates. His heart is
full of the coming events, see v. 2, 10-13, 18, 21.
But yet a few words more on the woman who anointed Him The effect of having
the heart fixed in affection on Jesus is shewn in her in a striking manner.
Occupied with Him, she is sensible of His situation. She feels what affects
Him; and this causes her affection to act in accordance with the special
devotedness which that situation inspires. As hatred against Him rose up to
murderous intent, the spirit of devotedness to Him grows in answer to it in
her. Consequently, with the tact of devotedness, she does precisely that
which was suited to His situation. The poor woman was not intelligently
aware of this; yet she did the thing that was meet. Her value for the
Person of Jesus, so infinitely precious to her, made her quick-sighted with
respect to that which was passing in His mind. In her eyes Christ was
invested with all the interest of His circumstances; and she lavishes upon
Him that which expressed her affection. Fruit of this sentiment, her action
met the circumstances; and, although it was but the instinct of her heart,
Jesus gives it all the value which His perfect intelligence could attribute
to it, embracing at once the sentiments of her heart and the coming events.
But this testimony of affection and devotedness to Christ brings out the
selfishness, the want of heart, of the others. They blame the poor woman.
Sad proof (to say nothing of Judas
how little the knowledge of that
which concerns Jesus necessarily awakens suitable affection in our hearts!
After this Judas goes out, and agrees with the unhappy priests to betray
Jesus to them for the price of a slave.
The Lord pursues His career of love; and as He had accepted the poor
woman's testimony of affection, so He now bestows on His disciples one of
infinite value to our souls. Verse 16 concludes the subject of which we
have been speaking: Christ's knowledge, according to God, of that which
awaited Him; the conspiracy of the priests; the affection of the poor
woman, accepted by the Lord; the selfish cold-heartedness of the disciples;
the treachery of Judas.
The Lord now institutes the memorial of the true passover. He sends the
disciples to make arrangements for the celebration of the feast at
Jerusalem. He points out Judas as the one who would deliver Him up to the
Jews. It will be noticed, that it was not merely His knowledge of the one
who should betray Him which the Lord here expresses-He knew that when He
called him; but He says, "One of you shall betray me." It was that which
touched His heart: He wished it to touch theirs likewise.
He then points out that it is a Saviour slain who is to be remembered. It
is no longer a question of the living Messiah: all that was over. It was no
longer the remembrance of Israel's deliverance from the slavery of Egypt.
Christ, and Christ slain, began an entirely new order of things. Of Him
they were now to think-of Him slain on earth. He then draws their attention
to the blood of the new covenant, adding that which extends it to others
besides the Jews, without naming them-"It is shed for many." Moreover, this
blood is not, as at Sinai, only to confirm the covenant, for fidelity to
which they were responsible; it was shed for the remission of sins. So that
the Lord's supper presents the remembrance of Jesus slain, who, by dying,
has broken with the past; has laid the foundation of the new covenant;
obtained the remission of sins; and opened the door to the Gentiles. It is
only in His death that the supper presents Him to us. His blood is apart
from His body: He is dead. It is neither Christ living on the earth, nor
Christ glorified in heaven. He is separate from His people, as to their
joys on earth; but they are to expect Him as the companion of the happiness
He has secured for them-for He condescends to be so-in better days:-"I will
not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink
it new
with you in my Father's kingdom." But, these links broken,
who, save Jesus, could sustain the conflict? All would forsake Him. The
testimonies of the word should be accomplished. It was written, "I will
smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered abroad."
Nevertheless He would go, to renew His relationship, as a risen Saviour,
with these poor of the flock, to the same place where He had already
identified Himself with them during His life. He would go before them into
Galilee. This promise is very remarkable, because the Lord resumes, under a
new form, His Jewish relationship with them and with the kingdom. We may
here remark that, as He had judged all classes (to the end of chap. 25), He
now exhibits the character of His relationship with all those among whom He
maintained any. Whether it is the woman, or Judas, or the disciples, each
one takes his place in connection with the Lord. This is all we find here.
If Peter had natural energy enoughto go a little farther, it would only be
for a deeper fall in the place where the Lord alone could stand.
And now He isolates Himself to present, in supplication to His Father, the
sufferings that awaited Him.
But while isolating Himself for prayer, He takes three of His disciples
with Him, that in this solemn moment they may watch with Him. They were the
same three who were with Him during the transfiguration. They were to see
His glory in the kingdom, and His sufferings. He goes a little way beyond
them. As for them, they fall asleep, as they did on the mount of
transfiguration. The scene here is described in Hebrews 5: 7. Jesus was not
yet drinking the cup, but it was before His eyes. On the cross He drank it,
made sin for us, His soul feeling itself forsaken of Him. Here it is the
power of Satan, using death as a terror with which to overwhelm Him. But
the consideration of this subject will be more in place when we come to
Luke's Gospel.
We here see His soul under the load of death-by anticipation -as He alone
could know it, nor had it as yet lost its sting. We know who has the power
of death, and death as yet had the full character of the wages of sin, and
the curse, of God's judgment. But He watches and He prays. As man,
subjected by His love to this assault, in the presence of the most powerful
temptation to which He could be exposed, on the one hand He watches; on the
other, He presents His anguish to His Father. His communion was not
interrupted here, however great His distress. This distress only cast Him
the more, in all submission and in all reliance, upon His Father. But if we
were to be saved, if God was to be glorified in Him who had undertaken our
cause, the cup must not pass away from Him. And His submission is complete.
He tenderly reminds Peter of his false confidence,
making him
sensible of his weakness; but Peter was too full of himself to profit by
it; he awakes from his sleep, but his self-confidence is not shaken. A
sadder experience was needed for its cure.
The Lord therefore takes the cup, but He takes it from His Father's hand.
It was His will that He should drink it. Committing Himself thus entirely
to His Father, it is neither from the hand of His enemies, nor from that of
Satan (though they were the instruments), that He takes it. According to
the perfection with which He had subjected Himself to the will of God in
this matter, committing all to Him, it is from His hand alone that He
receives it. It is the Father's will. It is thus that we escape from second
causes, and from the temptations of the enemy, by seeking only the will of
God who directs all things. It is from Him we receive affliction and trial,
if they come.
The disciples need no longer watch: the hour is come.
He was to be
betrayed into the hands of men. This was saying enough. Judas designates
Him by a kiss. Jesus goes to meet the multitude, rebuking Peter for seeking
to resist with carnal weapons. Had Christ wished to escape, He could have
asked for twelve legions of angels and had them; but all things must be
fulfilled.
It was the hour of His submission to the effect of the
malice of man and the power of darkness, and God's judgment against sin. He
is the Lamb for the slaughter. Then all the disciples forsake Him. He
surrenders Himself, setting before the crowd that came what they were
doing. If no one can prove Him guilty, He will not deny the truth. He
confesses the glory of His Person as Son of God, and declares that
henceforth they should see the Son of man no longer in the meekness of One
who would not break the bruised reed, but coming in the clouds of heaven,
and sitting on the right hand of power. Having borne this testimony He is
condemned on account of that which He said of Himself-for the confession of
the truth. The false witnesses did not succeed. The priests and the heads
of Israel were guilty of His death, by virtue of their own rejection of the
testimony He rendered to the truth. He was the Truth; they were under the
power of the father of lies. They rejected the Messiah, the Saviour of His
people. He would come to them no more, except as Judge.
They insult and outrage Him. Each one alas! takes, as we have seen, his own
place-Jesus, that of Victim; the others, the place of betrayal, rejection,
abandonment, denial of the Lord. What a picture! What a solemn moment! Who
could stand in it? Christ alone could steadily pass through it. And He
passed through it as a victim. As such, He must be stripped of all, and
that in the presence of God. Everything else disappeared, except the sin
which led to it; and, according to grace, that also before the powerful
efficacy of this act. Peter, self-confident, hesitating, detected,
answering with untruth, swearing, denies his Master; and, painfully
convinced of man's powerlessness against the enemy of his soul and against
sin, he goes out and weeps bitterly: tears, which cannot efface his guilt,
but which, while proving the existence, through grace, of uprightness of
heart, bear witness to that powerlessness which uprightness of heart cannot
remedy.
Chapter 27
After this (chap. 27), the unhappy priests and heads of the people deliver
up their Messiah to the Gentiles, as He had told His disciples. Judas, in
despair under Satan's power, hangs himself, having cast the reward of his
iniquity at the feet of the chief priests and elders. Satan was forced to
bear witness, even by a conscience that he had betrayed, to the Lord's
innocence. What a scene! Then the priests, who had made no conscience of
buying His blood from Judas, scruple to put the money into the treasury of
the temple, because it was the price of blood. In the presence of that
which was going on, man was obliged to shew himself as he is and the power
of Satan over him. Having taken counsel, they buy a burying-ground for
strangers. These were profane enough in their eyes for that, provided they
themselves were not defiled with such money. Yet it was the time of God's
grace to the stranger, and judgment on Israel. Moreover they established
thereby a perpetual memorial of their own sin, and of the blood which has
been shed. Aceldama is all that remains in this world of the circumstances
of this great sacrifice. The world is a field of blood, but it speaks
better things than that of Abel.
This prophecy, we know, is in the book of Zechariah. The name "Jeremiah"
may have crept into the text when there was nothing more than "by the
prophet"; or it might be because Jeremiah stood first in the order
prescribed by the Talmudists for the books of prophecy; for which reason,
very likely, also, they said, "Jeremiah, or one of the prophets," as in
chapter 16: 14. But this is not the place for discussion on the subject.
Their own part in the Jewish scene closes. The Lord stands before Pilate.
Here the question is not whether He is the Son of God, but whether He is
the King of the Jews. Although He was this, yet it was only in the
character of Son of God that He would allow the Jews to receive Him. Had
they received Him as the Son of God, He would have been their King. But
that might not be: He must accomplish the work of atonement. Having
rejected Him as Son of God, the Jews now deny Him as their King. But the
Gentiles also become guilty in the person of their head in Palestine, the
government of which had been committed to them. The Gentile head should
have reigned in righteousness. His representative in Judea acknowledged the
malice of Christ's enemies; his conscience, alarmed by his wife's dream,
seeks to evade the guilt of condemning Jesus. But the true prince of this
world, as regards present exercise of dominion, was Satan. Pilate, washing
his hands (futile attempt to exonerate himself), delivers up the guiltless
to the will of His enemies, saying, at the same time, that he finds no
fault in Him. And he releases to the Jews a man guilty of sedition and
murder, instead of the Prince of life. But it was again on His own
confession, and that only, that He was condemned, confessing the same thing
in the Gentile court as He had done in the Jewish, in each the truth,
witnessing a good confession of what concerned the truth as to those before
whom He was.
Barabbas,
the expression of the spirit of Satan who was a murderer
from the beginning, and of rebellion against the authority which Pilate was
there to maintain-Barabbas was loved by the Jews; and with him, the
wrongful carelessness of the governor, who was powerless against evil,
endeavoured to satisfy the will of the people whom he ought to have
governed "All the people" make themselves guilty of the blood of Jesus in
the solemn word, which remains fulfilled to this day, till sovereign grace,
according to God's purpose, takes it off-solemn but terrible word, "His
blood be upon us and upon our children." Sad and frightful ignorance which
self-will has brought upon a people who rejected the light! Alas! how each
one, I again say, takes his own place in the presence of this touchstone-a
rejected Saviour. The company of the Gentiles, the soldiers, do that in
derision, with the brutality habitual to them as heathen and as
executioners, which the Gentiles shall do with joyful worship, when He whom
they now mocked shall be truly the King of the Jews in glory. Jesus endures
it all. It was the hour of His submission to the full power of evil.
patience must have its perfect work, in order that His obedience may be
complete on every side. He bore it all without relief, rather than fail in
obedience to His Father. What a difference between this and the conduct of
the first Adam surrounded with blessings!
Every one must be the servant of sin, or of the tyranny of wickedness, at
this solemn hour, in which all is put to the proof. They compel one Simon
(known afterwards, it appears, among the disciples) to bear the cross of
Jesus; and the Lord is led away to the place of His crucifixion. There He
refuses that which might have stupefied Him. He will not shun the cup He
had to drink, nor deprive Himself of His faculties in order to be
insensible to that which it was the will of God He should suffer. The
prophecies of the Psalms are fulfilled in His Person, by means of those who
little thought what they were doing. At the same time, the Jews succeeded
in becoming to the last degree contemptible. Their King was hung. They must
bear the shame in spite of themselves. Whose fault was it? But, hardened
and senseless, they share with a malefactor the miserable satisfaction of
insulting the Son of God, their King, the Messiah, to their own ruin, and
quote, so blinding is unbelief, from their own scriptures, as the
expression of their own mind, that which in them is put into the mouth of
the unbelieving enemies of Jehovah. Jesus felt it all; but the anguish of
His trial, where after all He was a calm and faithful witness, the abyss of
His sufferings, contained something far more terrible then all this malice
or abandonment of man. The floods doubtless lifted up their voices.
One after another the waves of wickedness dashed against Him; but the
depths beneath that awaited Him, who could fathom? His heart, His soul-the
vessel of a divine love-could alone go deeper than the bottom of that abyss
which sin had opened for man, to bring up those who lay there, after He had
endured its pains in His own soul. A heart that had been ever faithful was
forsaken of God. Where sin had brought man, love brought the Lord, but with
a nature and an apprehension in which there was no distance, no separation,
so that it should be felt in all its fulness. No one but He who was in that
place could fathom or feel it.
It is too a wonderful spectacle to see the one righteous man in the world
declare at the end of His life He was forsaken of God. But thus it was He
glorified Him as none else could have done it, and where none but He could
have done it-made sin, in the presence of God as such, with no veil to
hide, no mercy to cover or bear it with.
The fathers, full of faith, had in their distress experienced the
faithfulness of God, who answered the expectation of their hearts. But
Jesus (as to the condition of His soul at that moment) cried in vain. "A
worm and no man" before the eyes of men, He had to bear the forsaking of
the God in whom He trusted.
Their thoughts far from His, they that surround Him did not even understand
His words, but they accomplished the prophecies by their ignorance. Jesus,
bearing testimony by the loudness of His voice that it was not the weight
of death that oppressed Him, gives up the ghost.
The efficacy of His death is presented to us in this Gospel in a double
aspect. First, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the
bottom. God, who had been always hidden behind the veil, discovered Himself
completely by means of the death of Jesus. The entrance into the holy place
is made manifest-a new and living way which God has consecrated for us
through the veil. The entire Jewish system, the relations of man with God
under its sway, its priesthood, all fell with the rending of the veil.
Every one found himself in the presence of God without a veil between. The
priests were to be always in His presence. But, by this same act, the sin,
which would have made it impossible for us to stand there, was for the
believer entirely put away from before God. The holy God, and the believer,
cleansed from his sins, are brought together by the death of Christ. What
love was that which accomplished this!
Secondly, besides this, such was the efficacy of His death, that when His
resurrection had burst the bonds that held them, many of the dead appeared
in the city-witnesses of His power who, having suffered death, had risen
above it, and overcome it, and destroyed its power, or taken it into His
own hands. Blessing was now in resurrection.
The presence therefore of God without a veil, and sinners without sin
before Him, prove the efficacy of Christ's sufferings.
The resurrection of the dead, over whom the king of terrors had no more
right, displayed the efficacy of the death of Christ for sinners, and the
power of His resurrection. Judaism is over for those that have faith, and
the power of death also. The veil is rent. The grave gives up its prey; He
is Lord of the dead and of the living.
There is yet another especial testimony to the mighty power of His death,
to the import of that word, "If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw
all men unto me." The centurion who was on guard at the crucifixion of the
Lord, seeing the earthquake and those things that were done, trembling,
confesses the glory of His Person; and, stranger as he is to Israel,
renders the first testimony of faith among Gentiles: "Truly this was the
Son of God."
But the narrative goes on. Some poor women-to whom devotedness often gives,
on God's part, more courage than to men in their more responsible and busy
position-were standing near the cross, beholding what was done to Him they
loved.
But they were not the only ones who filled the place of the terrified
disciples. Others-and this often happens-whom the world had held back, when
once the depth of their affection is stirred by the question of His
sufferings whom they really loved, when the moment is so painful that
others are terrified, then (emboldened by the rejection of Christ) they
feel that the time is arrived for decision and become fearless confessors
of the Lord. Hitherto associated with those that have crucified Him, they
must now either accept that act, or declare themselves. Through grace they
do the latter.
God had prepared all beforehand. His Son was to have His tomb with the
rich. Joseph comes boldly to Pilate and asks for the body of Jesus. He
wraps the body, which Pilate grants him, in a clean linen cloth, and lays
it in his own sepulchre, which had never served to hide the corruption of
man. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
-for they were known-sat near
the sepulchre, bound by all that remained to their faith of Him whom they
had loved and followed with adoration during His life.
But unbelief has no faith in itself, and, fearing lest that which it denies
be true, it mistrusts everything. The chief priests request Pilate to guard
the sepulchre, in order to frustrate any attempt the disciples might make
to found the doctrine of the resurrection on the absence of the body of
Jesus from the tomb in which it had been laid. Pilate bids them secure the
sepulchre themselves; so that all they did was to make themselves
involuntary witnesses to the fact, and assure us of the accomplishment of
the thing they dreaded. Thus Israel was guilty of this effort of futile
resistance to the testimony which Jesus had rendered to His own
resurrection. Theywere a testimony against themselves to its truth. The
precautions which Pilate would not perhaps have taken they carried to the
extreme, so that all mistake as to the fact of His resurrection was
impossible.
The Lord's resurrection is briefly related in Matthew. The object is again,
after the resurrection, to connect the ministry and service of Jesus-now
transferred to His disciples-with the poor of the flock, the remnant of
Israel. He again assembled them in Galilee, where He had constantly
instructed them, and where the despised among the people dwelt afar from
the pride of the Jews. This connected their work with His, in that which
especially characterised it with reference to the remnant of Israel.
I shall examine the details of the resurrection elsewhere Here I only
consider its bearing in this Gospel. The sabbath ended (Saturday evening
with us-chap. 28), the two Marys come to see the sepulchre. At this moment
that was all they did. Verses 1, 2 are not consecutive, 2-4 go together.
When the earthquake and its attendant circumstances took place, no one was
there except the soldiers. At night all was secure. The disciples knew
nothing of it in the morning. When the women arrived at dawn, the angel who
sat at the door of the sepulchre re-assured them with the tidings of the
Lord's resurrection. The angel of the Lord had come down and opened the
door of the tomb, which man had closed with every possible precaution.
They had in truth only guaranteed by unexceptionable witnesses the
truth of the apostles' preaching, by placing the soldiers there. The women,
by their visit the evening before, and in the morning when the angel spoke
to them, received a full assurance to faith of the fact of His
resurrection. All that is presented here is the facts. The women had been
there in the evening. The intervention of the angel certified to the
soldiers the true character of His coming forth from the tomb; and the
visit of the women in the morning established the fact of His resurrection
as an object of faith to themselves. They go and announce it to the
disciples, who-so far from having done that which the Jews imputed to
them-did not even believe the assertions of the women. Jesus Himself
appears to the women who were returning from the sepulchre, having believed
the words of the angel.
As I have already said, Jesus connects Himself with His former work among
the poor of the flock, afar from the seat of Jewish tradition, and from the
temple, and from all that linked the people with God according to the old
covenant. He appoints His disciples to meet Him there, and there they find
Him and recognise Him; and it is there, in this former scene of the labours
of Christ, according to Isaiah 8 and 9, that they receive their commission
from Him. Hence we have not the ascension of Christ at all in this Gospel,
but all power is given unto Him in heaven and in earth, and accordingly the
commission given to His disciples extends to all nations (Gentiles). To
them they were to proclaim His rights, and make disciples of them.
It was not however the name of the Lord only, nor in connection with His
throne at Jerusalem. Lord of heaven and earth, His disciples were to
proclaim Him throughout all nations, founding their doctrine on the
confession of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. They were to
teach, not the law, but the precepts of Jesus. He would be with them, with
the disciples who thus confessed Him, unto the end of the age. It is this
which connects all that will be accomplished until Christ sits upon the
great white throne with the testimony that He Himself rendered on the earth
in the midst of Israel. It is the testimony of the kingdom, and of its
Head, once rejected by a people that knew Him not. It links the testimony
to the nations with a remnant in Israel owning Jesus as Messiah but now
risen from the dead, as He had said, but not to a Christ known as ascended
on high. Nor does it present Jesus alone, nor Jehovah, as any longer the
subject of testimony, but the revelation of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as
the holy name by which the nations were connected with God.
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