FROM the last chapter, the impression that offences would arise is evidently forced upon us, and hence our Lord at once alludes to it. The greatest offence or hindrance to the believer now, is seeking present consolation and earthly aggrandizement; and the one who leads the Church to seek them and aids them in acquiring such, has wrought great detriment and hindrance to its welfare. The Pharisees, who desired to make a fair show in the flesh and sought acknowledgment from men, would ever be the great hinderers of Christ’s disciples. There is nothing so hard as patiently to continue a despised worshipper of God on His own earth. To have a right on account of Him, and yet to waive that right. The assertion of this right has lowered Christians into the pursuits and plans of the world and into perpetual collision with it for all that is of the world. Alas! we need not say how hindered they have been!
The Lord foresaw all, and consequently proscribes a rule which, if adhered to, would obviate such a calamity. It was simply a zealous watching of each over his fellow—a plain reversal of Cain’s effective selfishness—every one must keep his brother. If thy brother trespass against thee—if he would lead thee to seek a place and name here—if he would induce thee to court the rich man’s portion to that of Lazarus—he has done thee a great hurt, he would hinder thee. Thou must “rebuke him,” and if he repent, if he see his weakness, thou shalt forgive him, even if he seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, “I repent,” thou shalt forgive him. The readiness to forgive must be as great as the proneness to transgress; if we fail in forgiveness, we fail in our proper strength, in our own place with God. The trial and difficulty which these announcements disclose so affect the apostles, that they, in consciousness of their little ability to cope with them, cry out to the Lord: “Increase our faith.” Nothing but confidence in God can sustain the disciple in the path now set before him; but if one has it as much as “a grain of mustard seed,” the smallest seed in nature, of no visible greatness, he would say to the hindrance—the Jewish pretension of which I think “this sycamore tree” is the symbol— “Be thou plucked up by the roots, and be thou planted in the sea,” in untraceable and unexplorable distance, “and it should obey you.”
But all this is your duty as a faithful servant, and we are still to consider ourselves “unprofitable,” though we have fulfilled it. It is not optional with us to obey or not these instructions. It is simply our duty to do so; and the heart that rightly appreciates the love and service of God will eagerly adopt them, and this the healed leper in the next passage illustrates to us.
The Lord is on His way to Jerusalem, and He passes through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. His progress to the city was typical, as is evident, of His yet great triumphant epiphany he is at this moment journeying to that glorious epoch, but on His way, aliens and Gentiles are made partakers of His grace and mercies.
“Ten men that were lepers met Him,” They cried for mercy. “When Jesus saw them,” —when His eye beheld their need—
“He said unto them: Go and show yourselves unto the priests.”
He would not subvert an economy ordained of God; but hearts who have learned more largely of the goodness of God, they can step beyond it. One of the ten here can recognize in Jesus something greater than the law; he can out-step its confined and distant recognition of God, and he can with his own voice, apart from interventionary ordinances, glorify God; and, delivered from the Mosaic terrors of Mount Sinai, he fell down at the feet of Jesus, giving Him thanks; but he was an alien, “a Samaritan.”
The Lord Himself takes note that a stranger alone returns to give glory to God. He who nationally had no right to blessing by faith, obtains everything. He hears the wondrous grace, “Thy faith hath made thee whole; “he enters into all the blessedness typified in Leviticus 14. He felt in himself the virtue and the power of the kingdom of God, and as such is our present pattern, exemplifying to us that faith only can elevate us above the trammels of the law or the yoke of ordinances, without any display, but what passes between our own soul and the unseen presence of the gracious Jesus. All this is lost upon the Pharisees, or unintelligible to them; and hence, “When he was demanded of the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come,” He answered, The kingdom of God cometh not with outward show. The kingdom or reign of God is learned within; there it comes first to exercise its influence. It is not for you to look here or look there, but to know that the power of it already is “among you” in the person of the Son of God. The leper had learned this.
But though now among them, yet He warns His disciples that “the days will come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it; “they would feel their helplessness and desolation in the absence of their Lord, but yet in their anxiety for deliverance, by His presence, they were not to believe every report of His appearance, for of it there would be no uncertainty, for athwart the heaven it would gleam with all the brilliancy of lightning, but His rejection by this generation must precede that epoch, and this in addition to the “ninny things” which He personally should suffer. Also, the times would be marked by a plain similarity to those of Noe. The days of Noe evidently mean the times before the flood, so must the days of the Son of man mean the times before Christ enters with His saved ones into the everlasting ark of glory. The reference to Lot is plainer, for there we learn that, on a particular day, typical of the day of Christ’s appearance, Lot retreated from Sodom, and the fire of God’s judgments descended upon it; and so shall it be when the Son of man is revealed. And THAT day will be no time for anyone to engage themselves with earthly objects; escape should only engage them. “Remember Lot’s wife;” her heart still lingered in the devoted Sodom; yea, many a one will be left whose companion shall be rescued; proximity to the blessed does not ensure blessing. Thrice woeful to part for ever from your closest companion, and in such an hour; and we need not ask “where?” for wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.