THERE is a divine order in Scripture, and the Spirit of God used the pens of the four evangelists so to group together the incidents in our Lord’s life and service that deep and precious truths might be conveyed to the soul; for the soul has a journey and a history. One incident does not repeat another, though it may support it; nor does one clash with another, though it may lead on the soul to another point in its apprehension of the truth in Jesus. There has been nothing unnecessarily repeated in Scripture, nor has anything been omitted which God would communicate to us, so that we might know Him and His grace in Jesus, and be built up simply but surely in the eternal verities of the Word of God.
I would draw the reader’s attention to two incidents brought before us in Matthew 9. A man sick of the palsy is brought to the Lord. The peculiar manner in which they let him down through the roof is not detailed here. The great point before us is the faith that brought him to Jesus, not the way they brought him. The need in their minds was his sickness; but the Lord takes all about us into account, even if it be a bodily ailment that makes a soul betake itself to Him. What has brought all the sickness, and misery, and grief, and sorrow into the world?
It is SIN. Sin has worked out in man’s flesh in a thousand ways, and its consequences are as numerous. How it had worked out in the palsied man we are not told, but sins there were, and Jesus knew them, though only the consequences were seen by others. They had put the case into the hands of Jesus in faith, and He heals a wound from the bottom. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the man, “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.”
Let me ask, my reader, Have you put your case into the hands of Jesus? He was here as Son of Man, feeling for men, with authority to forgive sins, and He proved it by the power which healed the consequences. He has authority now to send the message of forgiveness from heaven by the Holy Spirit to the soul that trusts Him, and that authority is proved by the power in which He rose from the dead. See the blessing which comes from the hands of Jesus: sins forgiven, disease healed, and the paralytic sent to his house a healed and forgiven man. Good cheer indeed he had; let the scribes say what they will, they could not prevent the faith that was there, nor the blessing that Jesus gave to faith. We will let them alone.
But Jesus passed from thence, and seeing Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom (his daily calling, though not a respectable one in that day), He said to him, “Follow Me.” Here we get an advance; if I may so say, a second blessing is detailed here. Anything that had previously passed in the soul of Matthew is not recorded, that is not the point of interest. We left the former case with the man sent to his home. Matthew is at his ordinary calling as a publican. Now, whatever it was that worked the readiness in Matthew to leave his calling and follow Jesus, one thing is clear, that there was readiness. This might have been the first time that the Lord had intimately and directly spoken to Matthew, but I must think that, (Zacchæus), he knew something of Jesus, knew that there was a fountain of grace for poor sinners in His heart, or why did he invite (see Luke 5:2929And Levi made him a great feast in his own house: and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them. (Luke 5:29)) publicans and sinners into the company of the One Who had called him?
How often does the very sense that we may have of what is to be found in Jesus make the soul conscious of things that oppress the spirit, and it longs to be free! Let me illustrate what I mean. Suppose the cage of an imprisoned bird were opened so that it could leave it and use its wings, but that while it could fly it was held by a thread which cramped its liberty and confined it to its former surroundings—free in one sense, not in another. Matthew was held to his publican’s calling. Can you not imagine how the thought of changing it for companionship with Jesus would be welcomed in his soul? Christ’s words, “Follow Me,” cut the thread. It is not now a man sent to his home with all the cheer of the grace of the Son of Man in his heart, but the further blessing of a man called to be in the company of the One in Whom all the grace for publicans and sinners resides. Can you not, my reader, imagine the new joy in Matthew’s soul, as he realized the thought: I may be with Him in the joy of His grace?
We have more now than the happiness of a forgiven and healed sinner; we have one taken from the receipt of custom, and made a child of the bridechamber by the simple, blessed call of Jesus. We are brought there in the power of the Spirit now, and this without leaving our ordinary occupation. To have found out that we are, through His grace, children of the bridechamber, will enable us to use this world, not as calling it our own. Christ has cut the thread for us, and called us into His own company. His fullness is the joy of the bridechamber.
T. H. R.