Man Christ Jesus: Addresses on the Gospel of Luke
Walter Thomas Turpin
Table of Contents
Preface: Luke
In these addresses I have sought earnestly and, I trust, in dependence on Him without whom nothing is strong, no thing is holy, to set before my hearers the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, as He is presented in the Gospel of Luke; and as I believe each gospel was intended of God to depict Him in various aspects and glories, so I have sought, in preaching on this portion of Scripture, to give prominence and distinctness to Himself as Son of man displaying the power of Jehovah in grace in the midst of men; that being, as I believe, the special aspect of His glory which characterizes Luke’s account of our Lord.
That there should be found in the New Testament four coincident testimonies to our Lord Jesus Christ, distinct in character and purpose, is not surprising to that faith which receives the scriptures as the very Word of God, testifying of Him of whom it is rightly said, that “our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man.” That which, therefore, marks these blessed gospel histories for faith, is fulness and variety.
It has been to the preacher an unspeakable delight to dwell upon some of the perfections and glories of his precious Savior and Master and Lord, as here unfolded. A sentence or two from a pen that is now at rest will best convey what the heart has found in this ministry:
If I open the Old Testament anywhere, or the gospels, or the epistles, what different atmospheres I find myself in at once! In the Old, ways, dealings, government, man—though man and the world governed by God; piety no doubt, but piety in that scene; and even in the gospels and epistles the difference is quite as great, in certain respects more important. In the epistles (so the Acts), one active to gather; souls devoted to Christ; valuing Him and His work above all; power shown more than in Christ on earth, as He promised—it is gathering, then caring power. I get back—though now in the power of the Holy Ghost, and grace in a saving, gathering way—to man; but it soon fails. But in the gospels I find a Center where my mind reposes, which is Itself always Itself, and nothing like It; moves through a discordant scene, attracting to Itself through grace (what no apostle did or could do), and shining in Its own perfection, unaltered and unalterable in all circumstances. It is the thing about which all service is occupied as its point of departure, and to which all under divine influence is attracted, for it is God.
These are precious words, conveying what the heart has here so really found. May those who now read these addresses, as well as those who heard them delivered, be through them more filled with His own blessed company for the “little while” that yet remains.
47, Upper Grosvenor Road, Tunbridge Wells
W. T. T.
Chapter 1: Luke 2:1-14
You will find, beloved brethren, in the Old Testament Scriptures, that the holy anointing oil employed in the consecration of Aaron and his sons to the priest’s office was composed of several essential ingredients. These were myrrh, cinnamon, calamus, and cassia, with oil olive. Ex. 30. Imitation or common use of it was prohibited. It was specially set apart for that sacred purpose, and was that oil which descended on Aarons beard, and came down to the skirts of his clothing, typifying the fulness and perfections of the Lord Jesus Christ as the power of all that was bestowed upon Aaron and his sons.
Now, has it ever struck you that one reason why we have in the New Testament Scriptures four different accounts of our Lord Jesus Christ is this—that different excellences and perfections in the Christ of God might be set forth? I am not speaking of the subjects of the gospels, which, of course, are plainly to be seen. I speak of the striking manner in which, for faith, the glory of Christ stands out in this fact—that each historian, as has been said, “produces different parts in this rare and sweet compound.” See Ex. 30. And therefore you have God in His good pleasure employing four men—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—who were specially raised up and qualified by Him to present, by the Holy Ghost, the person of Christ in the various aspects in which we find Him revealed; and the one we have before us this evening is Luke.
The beauty of the Gospel of Luke, and that which gives it its character, is not so much the setting of the Lord Jesus Christ before us in His official, His personal, or His relative glories, nor indeed, as elsewhere, in His eternal Sonship, which is the characteristic of John all through, but its presentation of Christ Himself as Man. But, mark, apart altogether from that which belonged to Him, and that which He did, as Man; it is His person as Man. And, as has been said, such a Man that might have been seen any day in those wonderful times in which He lived and walked in this poor world, perfect Man, though very God. And, beloved brethren, what a theme for us, if our hearts are free; if we are at liberty, through His grace, from things around and within that distract! How sweet to sit down and contemplate this blessed Son of man, to trace His footsteps, to dwell upon all His grace, and drink in of the mind of God concerning Him! If I may say so, I believe this is the one great need of the moment for the saints of God.
Through God’s grace we have, I trust, been instructed in the doctrines of Scripture. Through His infinite mercy—I trust it is not too much to say—we know something (small it may be) of the doctrines, the great essential truths, in the epistles of the New Testament. But, beloved friends, it is another thing to know the One who gave accomplishment to all; to keep the company of the One who is above all; to drink in the spirit of this blessed One, and then to reflect it. And that is what mere information in Scripture will never give you. No amount of knowledge, however correct; no amount of intelligence, however exact, will ever put upon your soul the impress of the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ. You must be in His company, you must walk with Him, for that; and there is an abstraction, and a power, and a blessedness about it beyond all description. If you observe, you will ever find it so. The more accustomed your heart becomes adoringly to walk with Him, and know Him as a real living Person, a Companion, a Friend; One always at your side, so that you never can talk about being lonely or desolate, of being forsaken or disappointed or cast down, because He is ever with you, and He never changes, but is always Himself, and always equal to every occasion; the more, I say, Christ Himself is before you, the company you keep forms you, and you in turn reflect it. Think what a different kind of people we should be in our words, our character, our personal bearing, even towards one another! Do you suppose there would be the ungraciousness, the roughness, the uncouthness there is? Oh, beloved friends, it may be that we think little of these things, but they bespeak absence of the company and mind of Christ! You cannot be in His company, and gather up His mind, and act thus. Impossible! Indeed, that is the comfort of the gospel history. It brings us into direct contact, direct company with the blessed person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
There is another striking feature about the Gospel of Luke. From the moment you come to it, you get the sense that heaven is open. His gospel, in a very peculiar way, places you under an opened heaven; and, beloved friends, it is open from the very beginning. If you read the first chapter, you will find the visit of the angel from heaven to Zacharias. That is heaven, so to speak, let down and opened upon earth. When you come to the second chapter, you find all the world in the hands of Caesar, and God’s own people Israel also in subjection to the Roman power. The world had got away from God, and was managing its own affairs without Him. Everything was running its accustomed course, and God was left out. God was outside the whole ordered system of things, and Israel were enslaved. If they had only had eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hearts to understand, the yoke that pressed them down ought to have told them of their low moral condition before Him—but there was none of that. And while all the earth is in its full-blown departure from God, Caesar Augustus decrees that the whole world shall be taxed; and God turns it to account to bring about the accomplishment of His own purposes. Then you find the blessed Savior ushered into the scene. But in the second chapter you have to go outside with God to the plains of Bethlehem. Not to the great ones of the earth, but to the poor, ignoble, unknown, disregarded men who were following their lowly occupation of watching over their flocks by night; and then we get the blessed intimation of the angel to them:
Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior (Luke 2:10, 11).
Now, if you reflect, you will see very clearly that for God to reveal the thoughts of His own heart to us is a very different thing from His investigating the thoughts of our hearts. It is most important to have the thoughts of our hearts investigated, and for God Himself to read those thoughts out to us in secret; to look us through and through, and tell us what He sees in us, and knows about us. And we all have to pass through that personally. It is not merely the great fact, as in Scripture; but we have to travel with God, and learn in His light all that He knows about us, and sees in us. That is a necessary and an important part; but for God to reveal His thoughts to us, for God to tell us the secrets of His bosom, the thoughts that were in His mind and heart long ere sin came in, long ere this world began; thoughts that ever centered in the Son of His love; oh, what a different thing that is! And here you have a little letting out of it. “Unto you,” says the angel to the poor, obscure men outside the city, outside the world, outside the ordered system, “is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord” (v. 11).
The earth was asleep, but all heaven awake. Such was the contrast. Earth in a deathlike slumber, and heaven all alive to the fulness of the grace of God that has just come down. “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior.”
This blessed fact is the very beginning of everything for us. But you may say, as many often say, “What is there in that? I know salvation.” Ah! but do you know the Savior? Have you considered that it is possible to know about the work of Christ, and yet have but a poor knowledge of the Savior? Oh, there is a very great difference! You might know safety, you might be clear from coming judgment and from coming wrath, and yet be to a very great extent with small knowledge of Christ personally. But you could not know the Savior, you could not come in to personal contact with Him, without your soul having the divine meltings which that knowledge brings. And, beloved friends, there is another thing. You may know security, and be free from wrath and judgment, and still go on hard and fast with the world. That, I grieve to say, is what a great many people do. They try to hold religion, as they call it, in one hand, and grasp the world in the other. That is what hundreds of God’s people are doing. They may be clear about their acceptance, and I do not desire to say a word which might appear even to cloud that; but I must bear testimony to this fact, that though they seem clear about their acceptance, and their immunity from coming judgment, fully assured of all this, yet they do not seem to have that personal knowledge of the Savior which would fortify their hearts against the world; and, be assured, nothing but this will do it. Oh, brethren, assuredly if we know and have to do with the Savior Himself (I do not now speak of what He has wrought, however blessed), then the end of everything that could attract us down here is before us.
I remember hearing, not very long ago, an interesting account of the visit of a servant of God (now gone to his rest) to a remarkable man, and dear child of God, who lived away amongst the hills in a distant part of England, and who had been so chafed and exercised and harassed by all the varied trials which have, alas! sprung up amongst the children of God, the divisions which have been permitted to test them, that he was rather timid about having anything to do with almost any other Christian. (I am not justifying that for a moment. I simply state what occurred.) Well, the visitor came to the door (the two were strangers to one another in the flesh), and sought admission, but was met somewhat coldly and roughly; so much so, that at last he simply stood and repeated these blessed words, “I was a stranger, and ye took me in.” Ah! beloved brethren, the door was at once flung wide open, taxing the utmost strength of the hinges, and the welcome words were heard, “Come ye in.”
I give you this merely as an illustration of what I seek to press. Now, here was one who had come into personal contact with Christ, who knew Christ, over whom the words of Christ had power; and from the moment those words were uttered he seemed not to be able to do enough for the one to whom he was cold and distant before; he could not now bestow upon him too much care or kindness, too great hospitality, or too much affection; and then listen to his testimony. He said, “Ever since I have seen youn blessed Man in the glory of God, I have seen the end of everything down here.”
Beloved friends, nothing else will dim and fade things down here. Doctrines apart from Him, principles however true, have not the displacing power of Himself in the heart. I am not (God is my witness) speaking a word against doctrines, or principles of truth, for they have their place; but nothing will spoil the world for you, my brother, my sister; nothing will take the value out of present things but personal contact, in spirit and by faith, with Him who had not in this world where to lay His head. Do you want a sign, a proof? “Ye shall find the Babe,” you shall find this Blessed One, “wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” (v. 12). Think of all that is involved in this statement; the humiliation, the stoop, the emptying. Think of the circumstances in which He was found here. The mighty God, come down in grace, is seen a Babe, in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger!
And is that the world you covet, and court, and are shaking hands with, my brother or sister here to-night? Is that the world, young man, you desire to get on in, which gave the One to whom you trace your every blessing a reception like this? Oh, beloved friends, I feel persuaded that every one whose heart ever came in contact with the Lord Jesus, and who remembers Him in these circumstances, will turn his back happily on a world that gave his Lord only a manger at His birth, and a cross between two thieves at His death. Oh, to be able gladly to bid a long and final farewell to such a scene! But for this, beloved, you must in your souls be acquainted personally with Himself; and, I further believe, with Him where He is.
A dear saint of God, and servant of Christ, W. H. Hewitson, is reported to have said that he knew the Lord Jesus Christ better than he knew any living man. And this is considered a wonderful thing to say; but is there anything so wonderful about it? I ask you affectionately to-night, Did any one ever place himself at the disposal of your knowledge as Christ did? Did any one ever say to you, “Come, touch me; handle me; know me; abide with me; see me; observe me”?
Did any one ever do that? He has said, “Come and see”; “Abide in Me”; “Come and dine”; “Come . . . and rest.” Did any one ever do as He has done? He has laid Himself out in His blessed grace that we should know Him, the most accessible and gracious amongst men.
I am firmly convinced that the great danger of the child of God at the present moment is the world. The world has crept in and made sad inroads upon us. I am not thinking so much of the world as a snare; but what I see and deplore is the world on principle amongst the saints of God; that saints are positively citizens of this world on principle. I can understand one not cast on God entrapped and ensnared by it. Surely we all must know how exposed we are to any advance or any proposition in this way; and that we have to go through it with Christ before us, the only source of power and safety. But what I dread is that there should be the going into it on principle; adopting its ways, principles, habits, without a twitch of conscience as to it. That is the terrible part of it. Thus it is worldly positions are taken up and adopted as a matter of course. The necessity of the case is pleaded in extenuation; the impossibility of succeeding otherwise is urged; or the threadbare plea is made, “You see, I could not get on without it.” Better far, my brother, have done with it. Oh that it were engraved as with a pen of iron on our souls, how awful a thing it is to be a friend of the world—a world too that cast out the Son of God! See James 4:4.
“And has this world a charm for us,
Where Jesus suffered thus?
No, we have died to all its charms
Through Jesus’ wondrous cross.”
In a certain sense, beloved friends, we all live too far off to be acquainted with what goes on in this world. Alas! what makes up its history? Unutterable woe, disappointment, anguish, vexation, sorrow, groans, and tears, are the atmosphere of it. We little know what it is. Yes, oh, beneath the surface of the lurid glare and dazzle, what an awful scene it is! Well now, the Lord Jesus measured it all; He knew it all, weighed it all, passed through it all. There is not a scene your heart could bring up to-night that God, come down here in grace, has not fully measured.
I think it is very interesting to contrast this coming down of God with His previous comings down. He came down and visited Adam; but there was a great reserve; innocence was short-lived; sin soon terminated that state for ever. He visited Abraham, and talked with him; that was brief as well. He visited Israel coming down on the fiery mount; but, as we know, darkness and distance characterized the dispensation of the law. But what I was more particularly thinking of was that occasion when man set up that first great tower of indepen- dency in this world—the tower of Babel—when “the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.” Also of Sodom and Gomorrah He said, “I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me; and if not, I will know” (Gen. 11:18).
Oh, the contrast of this with what we have here! Here was God come down in lowly grace and love, as well as in saving power. It was not God testing, or proving, or detecting; but God manifest in flesh—God, in the blessedness and fulness of His own grace, become Man. This is the divine spring and motive of piety—God manifest in flesh. Piety is called forth by this. God manifest in flesh is the great productive and forming power of godliness. That is the meaning of the mystery of godliness. Is it, do you suppose, something in us? Ah! be assured it is not. All who know themselves in His presence know that the eye must be turned out upon an object for power, not on what is within. God manifest in the flesh is objective, and is the real power of Christianity. The subjective occupies you with yourself, and with what goes on within. Let us not appear to deny, in any sense, that there is the subjective side of the truth as the result of the objective presentation of Christ to the soul; and, assuredly, in proportion as we have before our souls what God presents to us in Scripture, and ministers by His Spirit, even the person of His Son, the subjective state is formed by that presentation. And herein is the real power of all true godliness: “God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory” (1 Tim. 3:16).
We are in the habit of making deductions and drawing conclusions, and all well in their place; but the facts of revealed truth are the things we draw conclusions from, and they are set forth by God in His own way. And that is the blessedness of His revelation. Everything else in this world is shifting and changing. Our deductions and conclusions vary and differ, but God’s revelation ever abides the same. Perhaps, too, it is white-heat, as it were, in our hearts to-day, and ice-cold to-morrow. That is just what we are, and what goes on within us; but when we come to God’s Word, there is no variation nor shadow of turning. It is always the same, and herein lies the blessedness of looking at the manifestation of the grace of God to us in the person of His blessed Son come down into this world.
There are three things that come out in the praise of the heavenly host, things which never could be true till then. We get first the ascription of “Glory to God in the highest.” It is always well to begin there. Generally we do not so begin: but nothing is lost by beginning at God’s side. “Glory to God in the highest.” That never could have been said with such deep meaning before. It is not that the whole state of blessing had not to be made good historically, but the announcement of the blessing is connected with Christ’s person and His coming. That is what is so blessed! Oh, the blessedness of connecting all with Him, with His person, when He is positively come into this world! Here was the One upon whose shoulders, as it were, the whole weight of this blessed work could be placed. In Jesus, God found One on whom He could rest for the upholding of all His glory. Well the Father knew that He, the Blessed One, would sustain everything for Him, as well as bring forth blessing for the poor creature that had departed from Him. How securely it all stood in and under Him who had come! “Glory to God in the highest” tells us this. Now God can announce the fact Himself, and the Lord Jesus spoke of it anticipatively when He said, “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do” (John 17:4).
This, then, is the announcement made, we may say, from heaven, yet upon earth, the very sphere where God had been outraged by sin. Man, as far as he could, as far as his responsibility was concerned, had tarnished the glory of God. Everything was in ruins; Israel, the chosen people, in bondage; the world a vast moral chaos, when He came who alone was the hope of man. But when Jesus is born the thoughts of God and heaven are made known upon earth. The sons of God had shouted when creation came forth from God’s hand. The Book of Job tells us how they were moved—“The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). Creation, come forth in perfection from the hand of the great Creator, thus moved them; but when they look at this great sight, they praise. There is great beauty in all this. Creation can evoke by its magnificence and grandeur the songs of the morning stars, and the shouts of the sons of God. We can, as it were, hear them say, as they behold the mighty power of God put forth to bring this orb into existence, “The hand that made us is divine.” A very beautiful and blessed sight creation was, but it pertained to Jesus alone to be the key of that note, “Glory to God in the highest.”
I would now for a little remind you how all this was made good, and on what this glory rested as a basis; and this will at once bring our souls to that great and blessed work of the cross, which alone could be the foundation on which the whole fabric of blessing, as it were, could rest. Christ must give to God a full equivalent for all His holy, righteous demands, ere glory could really be established; yet here there is no allusion to this; the work is not named. I think this is one of the most beautiful features of the passage, that all mention of the work is left out. There is not, you will observe, a hint or an allusion of any kind to the great work which the Savior was to accomplish. Of course it is understood, but it is not here expressed. How is this? The whole blessing is summed up in His own Person. The great and blessed One is here come who was to do the work. Verily the Person who was God manifest in flesh had come. He, and He alone, was competent to undertake for God’s glory. He, and He alone, could give effect to all the counsels and purposes of God. Who else could lay the foundation for these? Who else could put away sin by the sacrifice of himself? Who else could lay one hand on the throne of God, and the other on a poor sinner? “He alone the Savior is.” In connection with His advent, heaven can celebrate victories yet to be won, and connect those victories with Himself.
Now look at the second thing: “On earth peace.” But there is little peace on earth now. That is too sadly evident. The spirit of strife and war rests on the whole earth, and it seems at times as if the saints had imbibed the spirit of the age. What peace is there in the great world abroad? Why, Europe is bristling with bayonets at this moment; and the ingenuity and energy of men’s minds are concentrated on this—how, at the least expense and the saving of every trouble possible, the destruction of their fellows on a wholesale principle can be most effected. And when we come nearer home, and look at our own circle, ought not our hearts to be broken (if, indeed, we have hearts to break) when we behold the divided, torn, and broken state of the Church—the little practical manifestation of Christ amongst His own? Do you think we ought to feel that? Are we to be insensible to the afflictions of Christ? What is there to commend in maintaining a cold and chilly air of seeming indifference in relation to such sorrows? Oh, shame on us for our coldness, for our little sense of what it must be to the heart of Him who came into this world, who is the Prince of peace! I say all this, beloved friends, for I am pained to see how little we seem to feel these things. I grant, to the fullest extent, there may be a cause, yea, a necessity, for these griefs. I grant you that; but should not that increase the heart break, as well as move the conscience to its depths? That the Lord should, in His faithful grace, rebuke so severely, might assuredly afflict us. Oh, for broken hearts and weeping eyes over such a picture! But is it said, “We must stand for the truth”? Who denies it? God forbid that any one should for a moment hesitate to stand for it. But is it not possible to maintain to the utmost of our power the name and word of our Lord, and yet to have the heart afflicted at the thought of His own being allied with the dishonor done to His name, as well as the departure from His truth? It is well to remember how the blessed One Himself, when He contemplated His betrayal by one of His own disciples, was “troubled in spirit, and testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray Me” (John 13:21). Oh, that we had a little more of that blessed mind!
God knoweth I do not plead for any compromise. I would not surrender one point of truth; no, not for a moment. But then, beloved brethren, there are two ways of maintaining it. There is the brokenness of heart and the tenderness of spirit, and there is as well the feeling of shame. I say this affectionately. Bear with me! At this moment the divided, broken state of the Church is the scorn of the sceptic, the stock-in-trade of the infidel, and the delight of the devil. We are a positive disgrace at this moment in the eyes of the world. I am speaking of the whole Church of God. The great hindrance in the way of God’s purposes of grace in the world at the present moment is the state of the Church of God. Are we not to feel that? Have we so isolated ourselves from God’s Church, and have we shut ourselves up in what we have made a narrow section of it, that we have no heart, no feelings of compassion for, no tenderness in yearning over, the state of the whole Church of God? If we had Christ’s mind we should feel it, we should verily be broken-hearted about it. And when I look around from place to place, and go to prayer-meetings, and never hear a breathing to God as to this, never a cry of confession about it, not even an allusion to it, how can I help saying, “It is not in our thoughts; it does not seem to burden us; to all appearance we are not feeling it?” Let me ask you, How should you feel if your own family were blighted and blasted and scattered to the very four winds—hand against hand, and heart against heart? And yet that is not an exaggerated description of the state of Christ’s people. Oh, that we felt, even ever so little, our own sadly solemn part in it! Do we not know that there is something lying at our door? May God bring it home to us as we dwell on those beautiful words, “On earth peace.”
Thank God, it will be so yet! And there again is part of His blessedness. As has been so touchingly and beautifully said, “The state of blessedness was born in the birth of the Child.” It was not yet historically made good, but the blessing was born in the birth of Jesus, and therefore heaven can celebrate it on earth.
Then there is the third thing: “Good pleasure in men.” Herein is set forth the kindness, the goodness, the tenderness, the compassion, the interest of God, the purpose of God; His counsels as to the poor race that had departed from Him. God’s Son had become a Man. How could there be a doubt of God’s interest in men? Jesus, God’s Son, had become a Man! Could He show poor creatures like you and me a greater proof of His interest in us, His pity for us, than by His blessed Son thus coming into this world? Oh, the comfort of that word, “Good pleasure in men”!
And, beloved friends, there is more than that, because it was not the power of God as Creator. That power had already been witnessed. He had displayed His eternal power and Godhead in bringing this world into existence.
“The spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.”
But the grace that could triumph over evil, the grace that could take occasion by the fall to show itself in its fulness, that is the wonderful thing. And that is exactly what we have here; it brings to mind that blessed word in Scripture, “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21). That is what God displayed. He was not overcome by the evil of man, His creature, but He overcame the evil by the good that was in Himself. He could now express the depths of the complacency of His wondrous love, His own Son having become a Man.
One word more, and I have done. I think there are two deeply practical things that are read out to us in this scripture. It is of great importance to see that the truth of God is practical, and speaks in a practical way. The first thing this tells me is what I am; what man is; what we all are; and this is a very important point. You may track a person’s footsteps, look at his ways, his character, the evil of his doings; and that may be a perfectly true exhibition of the evil of the heart. But here it is a deeper thing, although there is no mention of it. We learn what we are in the presence of this marvelous display of God’s grace. Look at the reception the Lord Jesus got in this world; look at the effect this had. If there had been the smallest response in man, the most latent seed of goodness in his nature; if there had been one redeeming feature in the creature, that could have been worked upon; the goodness of God in Jesus would have drawn that out, so that man would have answered to it. The person of the Lord Jesus would have attracted that to himself. You remember what He said: “They hated Me without a cause” (John 15:25). That is not a pleasant, but it is a very wholesome, truth for us to learn, because there is always a great danger of our becoming elated in our hearts because of the grace of God. It ought to be the other way. We ought to magnify the riches of His grace, as displayed to us in our worthlessness.
We find, then, these two things. First of all there was no power in man to profit by the grace when it came. Secondly, when it was brought to him, he refused it, rejected it, would not have it. These are two things that enhance the grace of God. First, I learn what I am as connected with the race that turned Jesus Christ out of this world, nailing Him to the cross. I learn that the same disposition, the same heart and nature those had who did that, are in you and me. It is not eradicated, changed, altered, improved, nor bettered. I learn in the presence of God the vileness of what I am, in the treatment the Lord Jesus received in this world. And then I learn the perfect goodness of God to me. I learn what God is in the marvelous display of His own goodness and kindness; and although I find it is all over with me as far as I am concerned in state and condition, yet there is fulness of blessing for me in that blessed One.
These are things very much on the surface, but just the things I am sure we need. Above all, think of the blessedness of His own person, when we become acquainted with Him, and with God in Him. Thus we get to know God in Him. We can say, blessed be His name, “I know God! I have met God in Him, I have seen God in Him, I have heard God in Him, am brought to God in Him, am set down in all the acceptance and fulness of blessing in Christ before God!” I believe it would be impossible for any one who had really made such acquaintance with Him to go on with the world. It would put you outside at once. The more you are brought into blessed acquaintance and communion with Him personally, the more you are cast outside the world that would not have Him.
May God, in His infinite mercy, suggest to us, for meditation when alone, somewhat more of the glories of the Lord Jesus, and affect our souls, and impart to us more of His spirit, more of His tender compassion and longsuffering, more of Himself, concerning whom, when He had come, the multitude of the heavenly host praised God, saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Chapter 2: Luke 3:1-14, 21
There is a very considerable interval between the events of this chapter and what was occupying us last Tuesday evening; and before passing on I would briefly notice the way in which the second chapter of Luke concludes.
You can see how that chapter gives us the early life of our Lord Jesus Christ; His infancy and youth; some details of the circumstances connected with Him in that period; ending with the wonderful declaration, “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”
That is a very blessed reality for us to dwell upon, because it sets forth the Lord Jesus Christ as God’s unique sheaf, so to speak, in His own intrinsic, untainted purity, under God’s eye, as Man. This is the gospel, as we saw last week, that specially and peculiarly sets forth Christ as Man. Thus then the second chapter ends: “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” There was no one like Him. He was alone in His perfection; growing up, as it were, for the time of the exercise of His ministry, which was yet to come. In infancy, youth, and manhood we see Him in all that beautiful subjection to His parents which marked Him as the perfect Man; having, at the same time, the fullest sense in His own person of who He was, as well as of His mission. “How is it,” said He, “that ye sought Me? Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?”
Think, beloved friends, of all that is involved in these words; the sense that the blessed Lord had of who He was, what He was, and what He was here for; and mark as well, too, His perfect subjection as Man which accompanied that knowledge: “He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them”; He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”
This brings us to the third chapter, which presents what is introductory to the commencement of His ministry; and here let me show you an interesting point with regard to the manner in which Luke unfolds his instruction as to that. Before the blessed Lord Jesus Christ comes forward to exercise His ministry, the first thing presented is the world as it then existed.
Everything was in the most perfect order, as far as man could judge of it, and as far as man’s wisdom could accomplish it. You will find the emperor in his place, and the priests in their place; you will find, as has been said, government and religion all in their due place and order. That is how the chapter begins. It shows you the external condition of things in this world. There was everything that could be appreciated by men; all that could delight the heart of man; nothing to shock or outrage the feelings of mankind. Still all was a wilderness as far as God and light and truth were concerned. Now, is it not very striking to see how things that are excellent in the eyes of men, and appreciated by men, such a state of order and decorum, as we say, that which we have a sort of satisfaction and delight in, that all this is utter desolation so far as God is concerned? And therefore it is that God thus puts His mark of disapproval upon it. Instead of Christ being ushered into that order of things to take a throne there, to take a kingdom there, to acknowledge and accept the people in that condition, you find that God has His servant—not at Jerusalem, He would not have His witness at Jerusalem—but He has His witness exactly in that position, exactly in that locality, which is characteristic of what the whole scene was under His own eye; viz., in the wilderness. And another gospel tells us more than that, too; not merely the fact of John being in the wilderness, but that he was a voice crying in the wilderness. Nothing could be more expressive than that. The servant of God outside the ordered state of things, not claiming a throne for Jesus, but ploughing up the consciences of men. You find the most solemn voice of God here to the conscience. How striking and instructive it is! “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth” (vv. 4, 5).
These times of John were very like the days of the Lord Jesus Himself. I have no doubt at all that John, in his day, was looked upon just as the Lord Jesus was looked upon in His day, as a troubler of men. And when things are in that state before God, at any period, the man who stands apart on God’s behalf will always be regarded as an intruder. He could not be an inclusive man; he must, from the very nature of things, be a man who stands apart, whatever the compassion of heart, whatever the longings and yearnings of his soul over the condition in which people are. His position must be one outside the whole existing order of things. How could he be a testimony for God if he were in any way associated with it, if he were part and parcel of it, partaking of its methods and principles? How could he thus stand for God, and His testimony in relation to it? “The axe is laid unto the root of the trees” (v. 9). God must have this moral blot removed; He cannot accept a throne amongst a people in such a state as that. There must be a moral condition suitable to Him. This demand was the very thing that drew forth the proud opposition of Israel to Christ and God. Had Christ come and accepted honors from the nation as it stood, and taken His throne in the midst of them, recognizing them as they were, they would all have received Him; He would have been gladly welcomed and accepted. But for God to put His lance, as it were, into that putrid sore, and by John’s testimony to say, “No, there must be a moral state of things suited to Me; I cannot reign over a nation or people in that condition; there must be purity and holiness, the sweeping out of those corruptible things; I will not take My throne there”—that was the very thing which stirred up the hatred of men. If you stay in corruption, and protest, you will be allowed to stay on for ever; but if you take your stand outside; if you walk, as it were, in the wilderness of this world, separate, apart, like John the Baptist, both morally and spiritually; if you withdraw from the manners, modes, and maxims of a corrupt scene like this, having a testimony to render, the voice of God through you, His own Word, then you are an intruder and unwelcome. But if you remain in the midst of it, if you accept it as it is, you may protest, and protest, and protest; it will be to no purpose; there is no power in it; your presence countenances the corruption, and negatives and annuls your protest.
This brings us to another point. You will perceive that John’s ministry was really prophetic. Now, prophecy may be looked at in two ways. Sometimes our view of it is too limited; we have too often an imperfect knowledge of what it is. There are many prophecies which are not the foretelling of future events, although, of course, that thought is included in the term. Prophecy is not merely the foretelling of future events, but the presentation of the stern reality of things as they are. If any man, any servant of God, is empowered by God to bring to bear upon people’s consciences the awful reality of things as they are; if he, by the Spirit of God, is enabled to bring the Word of God to bear upon men’s consciences, so that there is the detection of hidden things by the power of that Word, that is prophecy.
John 4 furnishes an instance of this. It is exactly what the woman of Samaria found with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself at Jacob’s well. As He spoke to that poor woman He brought the truth, which He Himself was, in all its own power to bear on her conscience. He told her her history, opened up the hidden depths of her heart. As God He was there looking down, and searching her through and through. He could tell that woman everything in her whole life. “Sir, I perceive that Thou art a prophet,” she said. He revealed to her the solemn reality of her state before God.
That is prophecy in one aspect. No doubt it foretells future events, but you must not limit it to that. Indeed, in the New Testament, prophecy is one of the gifts of the Spirit of God acting in power in the assembly; and there it is exclusively bringing to bear on the conscience the Word of God by the Spirit of God. It is the Word of God conveyed to the conscience in such power through the ministry of the prophet as to produce the conviction that God Himself is there. John’s ministry was thus prophetic.
Another thing that is exceedingly interesting with regard to prophecy is, that when everything is in a state of ruin and corruption, this kind of ministry is God’s great way of reaching the consciences of His people. The ministry of the Word is made to apply to people’s souls. It is not so much deductions from the Word as the Word of the living God itself brought to bear on the consciences of men. It is not what the speaker says, but what that Word says, that bears fruit. That is the character of all true prophetic ministry.
Mark it here very distinctly, as we have it in the second verse—“The word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.”
In this locality was his suited place at this juncture, and not in the holy city, not in the ordered state of things according to the mind of man. He was one outside and apart; so that, like the prophet of old, he might have said, “Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men” ( Jer. 9:2).
Here, then, is God’s messenger, His mouth-piece, His witness. The one He was about to use is the man outside in the desert. First of all we have the place; next, the Word of God came unto him. When everything is in rebellion and ruin and departure, God raises up a witness, who presents in his person and circumstances the salient characteristics of God’s message for the moment. The Word of God came unto John in the wilderness. The message was distinct. And when that Word reached him, it constituted his commission, his ordination, his consecration, or whatever else you may be pleased to call it. He received it from God Himself; he was sent forth, and he went out true to that Word.
And now we come to the terms of the testimony he rendered. Let us look at it again; it is a most withering word. You could not get a truer sense of the utter moral wreck of everything before God than that which you get by reading and pondering over John’s message. There is not a class that is not addressed; there is not a soul but must be pierced through and through by it. Your heart must faint if you look at the condition it describes, and that with regard to the coming kingdom, the coming of the Lord as the Messiah. If you think of the state of things depicted by John’s message, your heart must sink within you. You are bound to say within yourself, “What is man?” Yet there is one bright thing in it, one little sentence in Isa. 40, which Luke quotes from, that has the deepest comfort for the soul—“The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass” (vv. 3-6).
“Well, the comfort is not there,” you say.
Perfectly true; it is most convicting, most searching, most solemn:
All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.
The best part of it is the most fleeting:
“The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (vv. 6-8).
Now, it is in this last sentence that the real comfort lies. How blessed, how consoling, how wonderful, too, coming in exactly where it does! God always works in this way; that is to say, first of all He exposes, reveals, manifests, lets His light in on the condition of things under His holy eye. How would you like those eyes of fire turned upon you? I speak to you earnestly, affectionately, this night, my brother, my sister. Are you prepared to be searched through and through, and discovered as to all the things that are hidden away there in your hearts, and which you think nobody else knows anything about? That is God’s way ever. Man’s way is to cover up. God’s way is to bring out into light. Man’s way is to conceal. God’s way is to manifest. He must have the thing in open daylight, as it were. He cannot allow you to cover up all that sin and iniquity. He cannot permit you to cling to corruption. He must have corruption known as corruption. He must let His light in upon things, and uncover them to us, and give them their true name. But when He does so there is immense comfort in this assurance, “The word of our God shall stand for ever.” In such days as we are passing through, that is an immense comfort. We must feel to-day, if indeed we have hearts to feel, if we are not enveloped in deep insensibility, we must feel the heaving, the rocking, the tottering, of everything down here. Let me tell you affectionately that there is not one solitary stone of stability in any one thing in this whole earthly scene, not a single solid resting-place can faith find here. The whole system is a shifting quicksand.
Now, is it otherwise if we come to the Church? By “the Church” I mean the Church of God. We are bound to own no other church than that. There is the Church of God, the Body of Christ, and all Christians belong to it. Everything else is sectarian. It matters not by what name it is called. It may be the most noble name that could be given; but everything short of the whole Church of the living God, the Body of Christ, is something less than that which is in God’s thoughts. Now then, suppose our expectations are in the direction of the Church. Looking at it in that way what shall we find? You know very well there were supposed to be certain landmarks, certain great heights, as it were, of security with regard to the truth, with regard to the doctrines of the Word of God. You know very well that security and preservation was expected from these, and they were supposed to maintain the truth intact, and to be a sort of guard to keep the truth. Well, you must surely have observed how the tide has overflown all these. The rising tide of infidelity has gone beyond the loftiest barriers that man could put up to defend the truth; and all the ancient landmarks of creeds, confessions, and articles of faith are being rapidly submerged. The infidel mind of man is more and more disposed to unbelief in what is supernatural and divine. Where, then, is stability? Faith confidently and quickly replies, In the Word of the living God. And that is one very blessed feature in Isa. 40. Everything is fading, everything is withering, passing away, going down, but the Word of the Lord shall stand fast for ever. Oh, what a blessed thing that is! Does it not search your soul through and through to-night? Do you not respond to it in your inmost soul?
But it may be that I am speaking to one here to-night who has no interest in these things at all. Friend, and fellow- traveler to eternity, what have you got? Can you say you have got Christ, you have got the truth, you have got salvation? If not, what have you? Oh, friend, will you not face this question to-night? What are you resting on? Everything is fast breaking up. People in the world know that well. The feeling abroad in the world to-day is one of general insecurity, of universal distrust as to everything. How blessed then is this verity of God, The Word of the LORD shall stand fast for ever. I commend that Word to you to-night. That Word will reveal what your poor heart wants. It reveals Christ, salvation, everything that your soul needs.
That was John’s testimony. First of all the withering up of everything that was opposed to God, and at the same time bringing that blessed Word to bear on the conscience, as well as ministering comfort by it. If any poor heart was stricken, there was, as it were, a little balm dropped from heaven. Oh, how like our God in His grace all this is!
Now we come, after John’s testimony is given, to an instance of another very interesting characteristic of the Gospel of Luke. We read:
But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias his brother Philip’s wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, added yet this above all, that he shut up John in prison (vv. 19, 20).
It is remarkable that this account should be given here, as the actual imprisonment of John did not take place at that time at all. Why, then, is it mentioned in this connection? Because Luke ever has a moral purpose in view, and presents things as they suit that purpose. Hence he commonly disregards the mere order of time; that is to say, he takes the events and circumstances, and groups them together with a moral object before his mind. Of course, all that he wrote, and all that the writers of the other gospels wrote, was inspired and revealed by the Spirit of God. Now, as to fact, John was not cast into prison until a considerable time after this. Yet I think you can have no difficulty in seeing that Luke introduces it here because he wants to put John aside, in order to bring in Jesus. That is the object of its being recorded in this place. He will now bring Jesus on the scene, and therefore he disposes, as it were, of John. It was perfectly true, remember, that John was cast into prison, but not exactly at this juncture.
Observe what follows:
Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened (v. 21).
You could not conceive anything more blessed than the suddenness with which we are, so to speak, ushered into the presence of the Master. The message and ministry of the forerunner has terminated in the record here in the most abrupt way; and John being removed off the scene in a moment, Christ henceforth occupies it. Now we are face to face with Jesus, and, oh, what a presentation of Him! what a blessed and practical setting forth of Him it is! All the people were baptized. Jesus was baptized!
Oh, beloved friends, what a comfort for one’s soul it is that the Lord, a Man from heaven, is before our eyes here! And if your heart retires from all the misery and wretchedness and failure and breakdown and weariness presented in all around, what a comfort that your eye may now rest on Jesus. And there alone it is that true rest is found. You cannot reach it in the changing things down here, nor find it in altering the condition of things around you, either in the Church or in the world. You will never find a ray of sunshine or a moment of quiet until your eye rests on Jesus! Oh, what repose He gives! What comfort and satisfaction He brings! Well may we sing of Him, that blessed “Source of calm repose” —
“Thy mighty name salvation is,
And keeps our happy souls above;
Comfort it brings, and power and peace,
And joy and everlasting love;
To us, with Thy dear name, are given
Pardon and holiness and heaven.”
And here we have Him presented as a Man—Man in absolute perfection set before us in these two things. Baptized! Why? His perfect subjection in taking His place with those who turned to God in the midst of His own people, His submitting to baptism, was the expression of His own appreciation of whatever turning to God was found in the midst of the nation. It reminds us of that beautiful verse in Psa. 40 —
“Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O My God.” (vv. 7, 8).
Mark, “I delight to do” it. You and I do it under constraint, often if not always; but with Christ it was the subjection of a perfect Man. It is wrought in us through many a sorrow, many a difficulty, many a pain, many a tempest. Thank God it is so. Thanks to a faithful God; when He begins He finishes. But, oh, the blessed contrast in Jesus, whose words were, “I delight to do Thy will”! Then, as regards a poor, trembling few in the nation, He thus speaks:
My goodness extendeth not to Thee; but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all My delight (Psa. 16:2, 3).
His goodness as Man did not extend to Jehovah, but to the excellent of the earth. He says, “My delight is in them.” Thus it is, the blessed One takes His place with those turning to God in the midst of His nation, saying, as it were, “I must be there.” So He is baptized. Oh, how blessed is that sight, beloved friends! How precious to dwell upon it! What a contrast to every other man! Here, in very truth, the eye can rest even on this blessed One, a Man in the perfection of His own nature.
But there is another word here; viz., “praying.” I do not know any other incident in His life more full of moral glories and beauties than this. He is presented in these characteristic ways very blessedly in the Gospel of Luke. This gospel, more often than any other, sets the Lord before us praying. In all the great events of His life you find Him praying. And there is another thing that I would dwell upon. You not only find Him set before us as praying, but you will find how blessedly, as a Man perfect in dependence, He takes the attitude of prayer.
Now, beloved friends, is it not true that there is a growing tendency amongst Christians amounting to a want of reverence in this respect? I know exactly what the mind of man is, and how readily it can rebound from one thing to the opposite. Thank God if we have been delivered from superstition; but, oh, let us seek grace from Him so as not to plunge into irreverence. Be assured we are in special danger in that direction, and all the more because we have been emancipated from the thraldom of superstition. When we come into the presence of God let it be with a due sense of His presence, and let us earnestly desire the manner of reverence due to Him. Surely, if the seraphim covered their faces and their feet while they cried, saying, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory,” it becomes those who in spirit and in truth worship the Father not to be their inferiors in reverence.
Baptized and praying, the heavens are opened upon this perfect One. And how well you can understand that there is now an Object the heavens can open upon. Never before had there been one whom the heavens could salute according to the thoughts and affections of God the Father. But now the heavens do open on Jesus, the perfect expression on earth of a Man according to God. Have you a heart that really delights to meditate on this theme? Does your soul respond to it? I do not know anything more blessed than to see the Lord from heaven a Man—perfect Man, perfectly subject, perfectly dependent—down here upon earth. And now the heavens open upon that blessed Object; but, thank God, they are open also now for us to look at Him in heaven. Now we look up through an opened heaven, and see Jesus in the glory of God. We see that once lowly Man glorified there. In the scene before us we are looking at Him on earth, observing His blessed pathway below, and seeing how heaven finds its object in Jesus, and how everything that heaven delighted in was met and ministered to by Jesus. But be assured of this, until your eye rests upon Him in brightest glory you will never be free from the attractions and allurements of this world. You will be a mark for the devil and the world until Christ in glory fills your soul.
“I have seen the face of Jesus,
Tell me not of aught beside;
I have heard the voice of Jesus,
All my soul is satisfied.
In the brightness of the glory
First I saw His blessèd face;
And from henceforth shall that glory
Be my home, my dwelling-place.”
Ah, beloved friends, never is earth despised in your eyes; never are things down here withered up before you; never does time, with all that it holds out and proposes, fade from your view, until they rest on Jesus in glory. This it is that makes all the difference. You hear of people going back, turning to the world, and seeking after the things in the world. “Look at So-and-so,” they say, “they are going back into the world. What a pity!” I reply without hesitation, they never were out of it. “Oh,” you say, “is it possible? Think of how true and godly they were!” Ah! be assured they never had the heart satisfied in heaven. Never! No one whose heart was ever captivated by Christ in glory would leave that blessed land. They delight in a captivity that lasts for ever. It is not a question of what we have got, it is a question of what Christ has got. Christ has got that heart, Christ has got that affection, He has won that soul.
But this is only in passing; yet I could not help bringing it in here. We see then the heavens open upon the Man who was everything to God and heaven. Now the heavens are open for us to see that same blessed Man in glory. Thank God, He is not changed! The circumstances are changed; He was in humiliation; He is in glory; yet He is the same blessed Man. I do like that old hymn of Hart’s: “There is a Man, a real Man.” And with the same heart and affection, the same love and kindness. He is in glory. There I can see Him. Standing upon the platform of His grace, I can behold Him where He is. There is nothing that dazzles, that repels, that turns me aside; for, standing upon the platform of His grace, I can rest there.
And that is the real security against everything down here. It is not finding out that things down here are worthless, but finding out that the One in heaven is above all. It is exactly like John the Baptist himself. It is, in its own way, precisely that which wrought in him. His soul had found an Object in Jesus that was above and beyond all to him. Let us just for a moment turn to it. They wanted to make rivals of John and Christ. That horrid, awful spirit of rivalry, which the devil is the prime mover in, is attempted to be set up between the forerunner and the Master. They come to John, and say, “Rabbi, He that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to Him” (John 3:26). What is John’s reply to this? “I am delighted,” says John. “You cannot bring me tidings that more delight my heart. All my heart is satisfied. All men come to Him. Well, then, I have got what my heart longs for.” “He that cometh from heaven is above all” (v. 31).
“The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand” (v. 35). “This my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease” ( vv. 29, 30).
Oh, beloved brethren, believe me when I say it again affectionately, What we want in these days is not more clearness of perception, but more room in our hearts for Christ! Be assured there are a thousand difficulties, a thousand questions, which would be all solved in a moment if it were simply and only Christ before us.
Well, may God use His Word to set Him before us in all His blessedness and exquisite beauty. And if the heavens opened to Him, if He was the Object of the Father’s love, may God grant, in His infinite grace, that we also may learn to have no other object, no one else before us but Himself. May God command His blessing on His own Word, and in His grace speak to our souls through it, for Christ’s sake.
Chapter 3: Luke 3:21, 22
The ministry of John the Baptist, which mainly occupied us last week, was of such an exceedingly searching nature to every class, that none were exempt from responsibility by the application of his word to their consciences. It was as like the ministry of Elijah of old as anything could be. Indeed, the angel Gabriel said of John that he should go before the Lord “in the spirit and power of Elias”; and that is what characterized the searching, sifting nature of his testimony. It was preparatory for the One that was coming. It said, in fact, that God was coming.
I suppose that, in some sense, God would send out, and does send out, morally, ministry of a like nature at the present moment, in connection with the near return of His blessed Son; only in this way, that it is a waking up of His own people. God would do this, beloved friends, and, I have no doubt, is doing it, in His grace, and in His own way. He is stirring up the hearts of His saints in these last times. When I say “His saints,” I mean every Christian; I mean all His own, wherever they are; not merely a few out of the whole, or any particular body; but ALL; the whole Church of the living God on earth. For wherever there is one of Christ’s members; wherever there is one that is purchased with His blood; surely God has a specially peculiar waking-up voice for such at this moment with respect to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this it is that makes it so solemn for ourselves. We must put the question to ourselves (if, indeed, we are accustomed to live in the application of the word of the Lord to our own consciences and souls), “Am I ready for His coming?” I do not now mean merely in title; I do not mean to confine the challenge to the question of fitness; but am I practically ready for all that is involved in this word, “The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”? It is very searching if, in truth and verity, we apply it to our own hearts.
John’s ministry was of a larger and wider nature, because it took in all classes; it extended to every one; not merely to Israel, but to all mankind. It was also preparatory; not to the establishment of the kingdom in the sense that the Lord would then set it up, but for the reason that God was coming. The Jews might speak of the Messiah to come according to their own thoughts; but what is pressed here is, that God is coming. John was to go before the face of God, who in His grace became a Man; but still it was God who was coming.
Now, if we think of it in that way, it searches our consciences and hearts; and that is what the word of God ever does. The Lord make us honest with our own consciences! It is a great thing to be searched down to the very depths of our moral being. It is not a question of what people may say or think of us, but how this word cuts us. And, when it is so, the inquiry arises at once, “What shall I do?” If you look at the ministry of John, you see every class brought in wanting; all the people are brought in deficient. They come and ask him, “What shall we do?” There is no preparedness anywhere; there is imperfection manifested wherever you turn; and if you think of all the grace of God shown to this world; the manifestation of God’s kindness, and mercy, and favor down here on every side; the pains He has taken with man; the pure grace He has displayed to sinners, as well as to His own; you might well ask the question which is asked in Scripture, “What is man?” And your heart would sink within you, for, no matter where you turn, you fail to find anything suited to God. Whatever there be that at all meets His mind is the product of His own grace. If there is anything which, in the smallest degree, is suited to Him, He is the One who formed it. Look at the creature in any condition as the fruit of God’s favor bestowed on him, and you must ask the question, “What is man?” You find faithlessness, inconsistency, and departure on all sides; and nowhere more than when you look at the Church. What is the Church of God upon earth to-day but the witness to the fact of the utter ruin of that which was set up on earth to be a lamp-stand for the truth? Inspect, if you will, the nearest circle of all, even those who are most responsible, because most favored in having light from God as to His mind, as well as truth recovered for them which had been lost sight of for centuries. If we think for a moment of such, what are they but witnesses to the more grievous failure of not holding fast, and maintaining for God, the truth and light which, in His sovereign grace, He had made known to them? Your heart might well sink as you behold revolt and wickedness in the world; breakdown, failure, and departure in the Church, individually and collectively, wherever your eye rests; for there is nothing that you can find comfort in anywhere.
Such is the character of things brought before us in this third chapter of Luke; and such is the effect upon the conscience and soul that are touched by the sight. Well, it is exactly at this moment that God ushers the Lord Jesus on the scene. Yes, when there is not a single thing that your heart can turn to with anything like comfort, then it is that God says, I will bring in One now whose like has never been found. Then the eye rests on Jesus; and there is perfection. I do not know anything more blessed; for it is perfection in a Man; One who, as a Man on earth, met every thought, and satisfied every desire, of the heart of God. I do not, of course, mean to say that He was not God. God forgive the thought! We know that He was divine, and we adore Him who was God’s own beloved Son, the eternal Son before ever time was, or the worlds were made. But I am speaking of Him now as entering into time, coming down into this world as Man, having taken that place in perfection before God. Again I repeat it, He was, as Man, perfect under God’s eye. That also is what comes before us in the third of Luke; and here alone there is rest.
It is very blessed to think that our faithful God and Father would assuredly bring our hearts at this moment to where perfection alone is; not to the creature, either individually or collectively, but to Jesus. That is, I believe, what is set before us here. Not, observe, Jesus as Messiah purging His floor; not His coming with the besom of judgment to remove defiled things. No doubt He will do that; He will baptize with the Holy Ghost, and with fire. John’s testimony was,
I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: whose fan is in His hand, and He will throughly purge His floor, and will gather the wheat into His garner; but the chaff He will burn with fire unquenchable (Luke 3:16, 17).
That is not what we find here.
Ah, no! it is not judgment, not Messiah purging His floor, but a Man in lowliness and subjection, a Man according to the purposes and counsels of God, in whom all the dearest thoughts of God’s heart were folded up, the only perfect, spotless Man, even Jesus! I know nothing more blessed; and, beloved friends, if one poor thing may be permitted to put a practical question to other poor things like himself, I would affectionately ask you if you can sit down and meditate on Him who is thus set before us? Alas! how little we appear to be free to meditate. Oh that we were at liberty to meditate more! In this busy, restless age we seem to be so little at leisure, to have so little time to sit down and meditate upon what Jesus is, on the records about Him, on the testimony that God has given concerning Him. Oh, how different is this to meditating on our own thoughts or our own hearts! Verily, they are not worthy of it; they are at best but worthless. The very best thing that passes through these wretched hearts of ours is not worthy to be even mentioned. But on Him! Well may we say, “My meditation of Him shall be sweet”! Dwell upon Him; think of Him. The Holy Ghost has come to bear witness of Him. The Scriptures testify of Him. Wherever you turn your gaze the object of the heart of God is presented to you in Him. And, oh, beloved friends, that is what you ever find when you come to the knowledge of yourself, not merely of the things you have done, but when you come to know yourself; the depth of the abomination and the iniquity and the vileness of your own heart; the man of self there, the depths of that treacherous, yea, villainous nature within us all to- night! If you look, in company with God, at the wretchedness, the wickedness, the worthlessness of the creature, in a word, at what man is, you cannot but admit that just as he gave up God for an apple at the first, so he would do it now. Is that the material you have found out yourself to be made of? Man just come from God’s hand, in innocence, gave up God for an apple! That, without a gloss, is what man is; and we are all by nature of that man, and after his order. May God give us to look at it, to measure it, to acknowledge it in its awful depths. What for? Only that we may witness the perfection of man in Jesus! There alone is where solace for our hearts is found, in Him in whom all the thoughts of God’s heart are met, and where we find positive perfection in a Man under God’s eye. Over such a One it was that the heavens opened!
There is, I may say emphatically of this scripture, a great reality here (and we suffer loss if we do not give it its full measurement and place in our souls), that which we find also in Rev. 5—viz., He is worthy. It is as true a description as could be given of who He is and what He is, who is set before us here in all the perfection of the position He was pleased to take in this poor world. In that position He was Himself worthy. How could we see the heavens opened unless there was an object worthy? Now, that is exactly what you find in Rev. 5. There it is a question of opening a book. Here it is a question of opening the heavens. But whether it be the opening of a book of judgment, or the heavens opening to express the appreciation and delight of the heart of God in this blessed object upon earth, it is the same One, and He is worthy! “Worthy by all to be adored,” well may we sing.
Oh, beloved friends, what a theme for us! what a comfort if in any little measure our hearts are at leisure from ourselves to enter into God’s thoughts about the One thus presented to us in His own blessedness, One perfectly worthy, intrinsically worthy! And that is just what you find in Rev. 5. The prophet saw a seven-sealed book, and “wept much,” he says,
“because no one was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon” (v. 3).
It was the book of the judgments of God with respect to the earth, and no one was found worthy to open it. But there were those at hand who had intelligence, and to the weeping seer it was said, “Weep not; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book.” Then he says, “I beheld.” And what did he behold? A Lion? A mighty Conqueror? Neither of these, but a Lamb! a suffering Victim that had exhausted all the judgment of God! And when all the created intelligences of heaven see that form before them, they raise the note of praise—WORTHY: “worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for Thou wast slain” (v. 9).
Now, here in our scripture this evening it is only the first step, as it were, toward that. Jesus had only just entered on His ministry. It is perfectly true that we have not as yet come to the end of the work, the finish of it; but it was He, and He alone, who was to do it. And that is what is so blessed. You can predicate of the Lord Jesus Christ from the very commencement of His ministry, “He shall work, and who can let it?” Everything that comes out with respect to His blessed person extended to the fulness of the work in its perfection. The whole state of blessing, all the good that was to be secured, all that answered to the heart and mind of God, was summed up there in His holy person. In due course He will accomplish the work given Him to do; but here the Person who should do the work is He who commands the whole attention of heaven—the heavens were opened!
Two things come out here, and I earnestly ask you to bear them in mind: heaven opened on a Man perfect according to the counsels and purposes of God. It is what we find set forth in Psa. 8. Three times in Scripture the question is asked, “What is man?” It is asked by Job (ch. 7), by the remnant in Psa. 144, and by the Spirit of Christ in Psa. 8. Job asks it in view of God’s care over such an insignificant thing as he was: he exclaims, “What is man?” He says, as it were, “Why shouldest Thou think of me, consider me, a poor worm?” That is what man is. Then the remnant, smarting at the hands of their enemies, ask, “What is man?” Why dost Thou not take vengeance on, and rid us of, impotent oppressors such as men are? But in Psa. 8. it is the Spirit of Christ who asks, “What is man?” And the answer is JESUS, the Man according to the whole counsel of God. He is the One who meets the heart of God—the personally worthy, intrinsically perfect, Man, upon whom the heavens can open. How blessed to think of Him!
Thank God, we can now look up into the opened heavens, and see Him there who is the Object of the heart of God. They were opened upon Him down here on earth long before the work of redemption was finished; because His person, in all the glories that marked it morally, was there under God’s eyes and before men. This moment, as we have seen, was that which ushered in His ministry. The heavens open upon Him; the Holy Ghost descends on Him. Oh, what a sight—the opened heavens and the descending Holy Ghost! The Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove, and rested on Him. How blessed to meditate on such a scene! There was One who was not only worthy for the heavens to open unto Him, but that the Spirit of God should descend in a bodily shape, and rest upon Him. The Lord Jesus, according to Acts 10, was anointed “with the Holy Ghost and with power.” And this carries back the thoughts at once to the type, even the anointing of Aaron for the ministry, the details of which are given in Ex. 29.
I need not say to you that the Holy Ghost’s coming down on the Lord Jesus did not in any sense add to His perfection. He was as perfect before as afterwards; but it was in connection with His service on earth. It was God, as it were, setting His mark upon Him, and sealing Him for His work. Acts 10, already referred to, explains that as simply as anything could do. “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him” (v. 38). This chapter furnishes a divine commentary on what took place in Luke 3.
Now, what is so significant about the anointing of Aaron in Ex. 29 is, that no mention of blood is made there. Aaron is simply anointed with oil (that precious compound which we were speaking of two weeks since), but not with blood. He himself, and by himself, is anointed with oil; and it descends from the crown of his head to the skirts of his clothing, prefiguring the Lord Jesus Christ in His own personal perfection being set apart for His ministry. Afterwards you do find blood, when Aaron and his sons are together brought in, but not with Aaron alone, because Aaron alone stands before us as a type of the Lord Jesus Christ in His intrinsic perfection.
Thank God, the Holy Ghost comes now and dwells in our bodies, if we are Christians. But upon what ground? Assuredly because the blood of redemption has been sprinkled upon us, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ has washed us whiter than snow. If we are washed from our sins in His blood, then the Holy Ghost comes and dwells in us. The oil can be poured upon the blood. The Holy Ghost seals the value of the blood. It is not the apprehension, it is not the appreciation, that our hearts have of the value of it that is sealed, nor is it our intelligence that is sealed, but God puts His seal on the value of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verily, that is something worthy of his seal. The oil rests upon the blood; God, as it were, thereby expressing His own satisfaction in the worth of that blood, as well as marking for ever as His own the one sprinkled by it.
How blessed thus to think of it! The Lord Jesus Christ has secured that for us through His finished work. Thank God, the Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost, has come down, and has never left the earth, but abides with the saints for ever. He had not previously come in person to dwell upon earth, but when Jesus is here in His own intrinsic worth, in the perfection of His own nature, and under that opened heaven, the Spirit descends in a bodily shape like a dove, and rests on Him, a perfect Man.
Another thing is, that the form He was pleased to take was intended to mark off, as it were, Him upon whom He so rested, as in the truth and blessedness of His own person. The form, observe, was that of a dove. Does not this set before us, in a very striking way, the blessed, gentle, gracious character of Him who was perfect goodness and grace? Assuredly the gentleness, kindness, tenderness of our Lord Jesus Christ is clearly brought before us in the form the blessed Spirit took. How vividly this stands out in contrast with our ungraciousness, roughness, uncouthness, hardness, and severity, of spirit as well as of word. Oh, the contrast of all that is in us to what was in Him!
But, further, we see here, in the Lord Jesus Christ’s being thus anointed with the Holy Ghost, and in the form the descending Spirit was pleased to take, that God’s Object is Christ; and how blessed for our souls just to dwell and meditate on this! God’s heart rests on Jesus. He is everything to Him. The Father’s love rests upon the Son, in delight and complacency ineffable. We may say, with adoring reverence, how God delighted thus to mark out His Object here; and not only is He thus seen as God’s Object, but Jesus alone is the fitting resting-place for the blessed Spirit in the moral deluge of this world.
Now, all this receives both emphasis and confirmation when we remember that the Spirit came down personally to dwell in the Christian and in the Church; because the Holy Ghost does dwell in the saints corporately, as well as in their bodies individually.
When He thus came He took, as we read in Acts 2, a form suitable to the occasion and purport of His coming, a form significant of what He was then about to carry on in this world; just as here He took a form suitable to the expression of the person of the perfect, blessed Man Christ Jesus. In Acts 2:2, 3 we are told,
There came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind [or hard breathing], and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.
Now, that is perfectly expressive of what He was about to do. You understand clearly, I trust, that the Holy Ghost could come down here because the work of Christ had been accomplished; Christ had finished all He came to do; the foundation, so to speak, had been laid in blood, and Jesus had been exalted; so that the descending Spirit could come and take possession of the bodies of those who had been washed from their sins in Christ’s precious blood. The form which the Holy Ghost takes is beautifully significant, because the moment had arrived when God was about to send out a far- reaching testimony into this world; a testimony not to be confined to one people or nation, but addressed to all the world. It was to go out on all sides, and this is set forth by the “cloven tongues.”
When God dealt with but one nation, He was pleased to use one language, the Hebrew tongue; but now His voice is to reach out to Gentiles as well as to Jews; hence the appearance of cloven tongues. We find also that they were “like as of fire.” What does this imply? Simply that grace reigned through righteousness. There was that in man which called for judgment; and the cross had fully met it; there sin had been judged. This testimony was to be founded upon the cross, and therefore the cloven tongues “like as of fire.”
Here is a mark of the most exquisite grace. The diverse tongues which previously had been given to men were the expression of divine displeasure and judgment; but now God’s infinite grace and goodness were to be made known to them; and hence we read of it in these words: “We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God” (v. 11). But in the scene before us in Luke, how suitable in every way to the Lord’s blessed person was the dove-like form! And thus we see in suited character the blessed One whom God was setting apart and specially anointing and sealing for His ministry.
There is another point here, of great interest and beauty, to which I would call your attention for a little. It is this: the Holy Ghost’s descending in bodily shape like a dove, and abiding on Jesus, was also the expression of the place of man acceptable before God. It is very blessed to see this unfolded here, and it is everything to our souls when we discern that we have it thus in Christ. It is a great thing to trace all up to Christ. All that He has won He shares in grace with us now on the ground of redemption. Redemption in this manner opens the way for us to come into all the blessing which we find set forth in Himself.
Thus what we have here set before us in figure is, our place before God in Christ, the Father’s delight in us as in Him, and the seal of the Holy Ghost as the expression of it.
Let us now for a little dwell upon the voice from heaven, and first observe how different it is from the voice in the first part of this chapter. Have you noticed the two voices in this third of Luke, and how they are in contrast? The first voice is in the wilderness; and it was in every sense suitable that God’s servant should be there. It is suitable that God’s servants today should be morally in the desert. No other place befits them, because of the evil state of things in this Christ- rejecting age. A witness for God to-day must stand apart; he must be morally outside; in one sense a Jeremiah, a man of tears and sorrow, who sits alone (Jer. 15:17); in another sense a Habakkuk, standing upon his watch, and setting him upon the tower; but in either case a man apart.
I was thinking the other day that the question at the present moment for every conscience and heart is this: Shall we remain within the departure and protest? or shall we go apart and testify? Now, I do believe God has raised that question, and it will not be possible honestly to shirk it. Shall I stay as part and parcel of the order of things, and protest? Let me ask you, What is the good of your protest if you do? What value, then, has your protest in it? If you stay in the thing you protest against, you take away from the value of your protest, you negative it; nay, you paralyze it; you destroy it. This is an immensely solemn question for the people of God at this moment. Of what value, I most earnestly and anxiously ask, is that protest against the world and its ways, and all that belongs to it, if the man himself who protests adheres to that against which he witnesses? Example is far more powerful than precept. Men care but little for the precept if they discover inconsistency in principle and ex- ample. There can be no doubt our lot is cast in difficult days. The words of the prophecy of Isaiah, “Truth is fallen in the street,” are at this moment receiving a painful exemplification in the professing Church. “Truth is fallen in the street,” and there are but few who seem to think it worth their while to pick it up. If a man stands for it, if a man seeks to be controlled by it, if he is a lover and a witness of it, he must be morally outside the existing order of things. Hence we see John in the wilderness; from thence sounds the first voice in Luke 3; and oh, what an awakening voice it is! How it exposes, and makes bare, and cuts up everything of man! No class of the community escapes its withering exposure; the “generation of vipers” are warned against the boasting self- complacency that would shelter itself in pride beneath the ancestry of the father of the faithful. Verily we may say, What a voice!
But we find another voice in this chapter. There is no thunder in its tones, no denunciation in its sound. It came not from the wilderness, but from heaven. It was the Father’s voice. Who but the Son could elicit its testimony? Just as on Him the heavens could open (for He was worthy), so this voice could testify, not of Him, but to Him directly, “Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased” (v. 22).
Oh, the blessedness of being made acquainted with the testimony of this voice from heaven! Wonderful grace on God’s part to allow us to know how He feels toward His beloved Son. Wonderful grace to allow us to hear what He thinks of Jesus, what He has found in Jesus. The Father’s voice from the opened heavens tells out His heart’s appreciation of Jesus; and He has revealed it for you and me, that we may share it with Him. “Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased.” Not only I am, but I have been. It is retrospective, and not present only.
It is very striking, beloved friends, to put those two voices together—the voice in the wilderness and the voice from the open heavens; the voice of John the Baptist thundering forth upon the moral death around, breaking up the highway for Him that was corning, and the Father’s voice in the preciousness of its testimony to the Son, “Thou art My beloved Son: in Thee I am well pleased.”
There is another thing that comes in, and that is, just in proportion as your conscience is affected by the first voice, your heart will find its comfort in the second voice. It tells of Him who has met God’s heart, God’s affection, God’s nature. And about Him, the Son, the Father lets us know His thoughts, and gives us to share those thoughts with himself.
Further, it is very comforting to the heart to think that poor, wretched things though we are—poor, worthless, silly sheep—yet He does not present a different object to that which His own heart has found. Christ is the Father’s Object and pleasure, and He would have Him to be yours. Christ fills all His thoughts, and He would have Him fill all yours. That is blessedness indeed, and glory as well.
We have here also, in a very marked way, an owning of the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, you do not find anything at all like this in previous ministry. The subject of ministry in itself is very interesting. I do not believe you will find preaching (such as we understand it) until you come to Christianity. I do not say there were not proclamations made. We do read in the Book of Ezra that he made a pulpit, and proclaimed the law from it; but that was not preaching, as we commonly understand the word. Further, I believe I can give you a very good reason why it is so. Preaching would have been out of keeping and order with the previous ways of God, because the law demanded doing, and man elected to be on that ground. It was the characteristic of the time or dis- pensation. Law meant a claim upon the creature to do. You can easily comprehend how out of place preaching would be then. Man was called upon to yield obedience, to do and live; but when man is brought in utterly ruined and lost, and the Lord Jesus Christ came from heaven to do all the will of God, and to seek and save the lost, then you get preaching, because there is something to preach. There is now good news to proclaim, and it takes the character of evangelizing. Philip went across the desert and evangelized one man. He preached Jesus to him. He found there one to whom he could go and tell, ignorant and desolate as he was, the new good news. That is how preaching comes in. The Lord Jesus went about preaching, and His apostles afterwards did the same. John’s preaching was more of the character of law—demanding and exacting; but man never could meet the requirements of God. John’s ministry brought conviction, but never relief; and therefore there is no heaven open, no unfolding or expression of the Father’s thoughts then. But when Jesus was here, in whose blessed person grace and truth met, the eye of God rested upon One, above and beyond all others, whose ministry would be the setting forth of the mind of heaven; One whose ministry should perfectly express God’s thoughts and the desires of His heart for poor, wretched creatures in this world. “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” John 1:17. Accordingly when He was here who was to sustain that blessed ministry, who was as well the expression of it in His own spotless person, then heaven opens, and the complacency of the Father’s heart in Him personally is sweetly expressed in those wondrous words, “Thou art My beloved Son: in Thee I am well pleased.”
Beloved friends, is there not immense comfort in that for you and me, knowing what poor, wretched creatures we are, what poor, wretched hearts are ours? It was this which moved the heart and conscience of the poor thief. No doubt the grace of God had wrought in his soul, and the Spirit of God had wrought in his conscience, but do you think it was nothing to that poor thief to look upon a spotless Man? Do you think it was nothing to him to see a Man who was absolutely perfect hanging upon the cross? Hearken to his dying utterance—“We indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this Man hath done nothing amiss” (Luke 23:41). I can well understand how that poor thief would say, O Lord, let me wrap myself in Thy eternal perfections. It was the tremendous contrast between himself and Christ that forced the confession—“We indeed justly.” There was no palliation, no excuse, no explanation. He does not attempt to lessen the enormity of the guilt, he does not complain of the severity of the sentence or dispute the justness of the position. No, here is the “no guile” condition of Psa. 32. The actual confession of sins is here. Grace has brought him to this point.
While on this subject, though a little outside what is before us in Luke 3, it may be well to call your attention to that which finds an apt illustration in the history of this saved robber; viz., the ways of God in bringing the soul to self- judgment and confession, and His ways after it. The work of the Spirit is in the first, the work of Christ is in the other. The first is the creating of a sense of need, the second is the meeting of that need. What a rest for his heart to see beside him on the cross his contrast in that spotless Man! Hence his cry, “Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.”
Now, to return to our immediate subject, we see heaven open upon a perfect Man, the Holy Ghost comes down and abides on Him, and the Father’s voice from this opened heaven salutes Him, as it were, in words which demonstrate His own exclusive blessedness—“Thou art My beloved Son.”
Oh, the blessedness of this voice and of those who were permitted to hear it, and witness this scene! Now in faith and by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven we can dwell upon it, meditate upon it, and thus taste somewhat of the joys peculiar to it.
May God by His grace lead us to hear it in the record to- night. It is, be assured, in such scenes that all true and lasting comfort can alone be found. Here the eye can rest, here the heart can repose. It is of scenes and subjects like this that the following words are descriptive. They were found, after his death, in the pocket-book of the late Venerable Henry Irwin, a beloved and faithful servant of Christ in Ireland —
“Hark! the thrilling symphonies
Seem within to seize us;
Add we to their holy lays,
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
Sweetest name on mortal’s tongue,
Sweetest note in angel’s song,
Sweetest anthem ever known –
Jesus, Jesus reigns alone.”
May God by His Spirit set that Blessed One before us. He is the balm, the sovereign balm, for every wound, the cordial for our fears. The Lord in His mercy grant that none else save Himself may be our theme and our song, so that our hearts’ affections may be called back to Him, and occupied with Him until we ourselves have reached Him on high, for His blessed name’s sake.
Chapter 4: Luke 4:1-14
There is an intimate connection, beloved brethren, between that which we have in the concluding verse of the chapter partially before us last week and the great subject of this chapter—a connection which, I believe, is given by God in order to bring before us who it really was that was thus tempted of the devil. That verse completes the genealogy as presented in the Gospel of Luke. I will just read it for you “Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.”
Now, have you ever thought what this scripture implies? There is attached to it a distinct and definite meaning, which casts a bright light on what follows. It is very clear that the Spirit of God in Luke’s Gospel traces the Lord’s genealogy up to Adam; that is to say, He shows the Lord to be a true, real Man. It is, then, Christ’s connection with the human family which is set forth here. A single sentence in one of the epistles (Gal. 4:4) gives both this and His Jewish connection
— “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman.”
This presents His connection with the human family. It is saying that He was truly and really a Man. “Made under the law”; that is to say, He was truly and really a Jew. He was pleased not only to become a Man, but also, as is said elsewhere, to take “on Him the seed of Abraham”; i.e., the Blessed One took the position and circumstances, but not the state. How blessed to meditate on the grace of such words as “The Word became flesh, and dwelt [tabernacled] among us” (John 1:14).
Now, the passage before us to-night does not set forth His connection with the nation of Israel, but His connection with the whole human family. And mark, that last verse—“Which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God”—means this, that He who was truly Man, He who was pleased to become such here—“the Word became flesh”—demonstrated and proved plainly and distinctly that though Man He was the Son of God.
He is the One whom we are privileged to look at adoringly in Luke 4. He is the One who returns from Jordan full of the Spirit; and it is very blessed that it is set before us in this way. He had gone down into John’s baptism in association with every true heart that turned to God in Israel. He had exhibited the perfection of His human nature in dependence and obedience there—“Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—and when there, as we were seeing last week, the heavens were opened upon Him, the Object upon whom the heavens could open, and the Father’s voice greeted Him in the perfection of the position that He was pleased to take, saluting Him with these words: “Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased” (v. 22).
Thus, full of the Spirit, and anointed—not to add anything to His person, but in connection with His ministry and service—He returns from Jordan, and is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of Satan. If you will turn to the Gospel of Mark (ch. 1:12, 13) you will find a very striking and touching addition to what we have either here or in Matthew’s Gospel. It is a statement that is peculiar to Mark. We read,
And immediately the Spirit driveth Him into the wilderness. And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts.
How interesting and touching a fact! This blessed, spotless, perfect, holy Man, true and very Man, yet very God, is found in the dreary desert, the solitary, howling wilderness—a more desolate scene than which you cannot conceive—where there was nothing to minister to Him, nothing in consonance with Him; there, surrounded by the wild beasts, He is for forty days tempted of Satan.
Here we are at once brought to the point when Satan steps on the scene. He had tried his power on the first man, and had succeeded. He had contested every inch of the way with Adam in a very different scene from this. In Paradise, surrounded by all the fresh proofs of the Creator’s tender care and interest in His creature; surrounded by all the marks and favors of His hand; Satan there fought with man, and won. And now he cannot endure that there should be a Man on earth, a real, true Man, who had never, like Adam, forfeited Eden; a blessed Man, who did always those things that pleased His Father and His God. I say again, the devil could not endure that the Son of God should be there as Man in connection with the human family; yet owned and greeted from heaven by the Father’s voice as the Father’s beloved One, in whom God had found His good pleasure. Satan could not permit that. And therefore he comes forward to contest the path with Him who is thus led by the Spirit into the wilderness.
You will observe, beloved friends, the contrast between Christ and every other man in that respect. Every other man is driven into the scene of temptation by his own lusts, the folly and wretchedness of his own heart. Man goes there by the very nature of that which is in him, and there is defeated and falls. But Christ is led by the Spirit of God into the wilderness, where there is the perfect contrast to everything that was found in the earthly Paradise. Thus it is we see the Blessed One here; and Satan comes and says, “I will dispute your whole title, your whole position.”
Now, there is not merely the contrast of the circumstances in which the first Adam stood with the circumstances in which the last Adam stood, but there is the contrast after the defeat of the one, and the victory of the other,—after the defeat of Adam, and after the victory of Christ. Have you ever thought of it? After the defeat of Adam, God “drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (Gen. 3:24).
Innocence is everlastingly lost. There is no possibility of lost and ruined man ever returning to that condition of innocence in which he stood originally, as created by God. But when Christ, the Second Man and last Adam, is victorious; when Satan himself is bound by the perfect obedience and dependence of the Blessed One, who is the contrast to every other man in this world—He who as Man not only lived by the Word, but kept the Word, and also kept that position which He was pleased to take in grace—then observe the contrast: angels come and minister to Him. Angels, I believe, were found connected with the cherubim in the first garden, to bar for ever the way of return—the witness to the utter ruin of responsible man. But angels are also found in the wilderness, where Jesus was victorious over Satan, as those who minister to His body; for I do not believe it went beyond that. They ministered to the bodily necessities of the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Man, the perfect, victorious Man.
How marked the contrast! They are the executors of judgment in the first garden, guarding the tree of life from fallen man, the solemn witness to the impossibility of any return to innocence but in the wilderness they are the blessed witnesses of Satan’s defeat, and of the triumph of the only obedient and dependent Man.
Now, it is very important that we should clearly understand the meaning of the word “tempted,” as applied to the blessed Lord Jesus Christ. There is no difficulty in understanding its meaning as applied to all other men. If you will turn to the Epistle of James 1:14, 15, it will help to show the contrast:
Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
From this it is very evident what the meaning of the word “tempted” is, as applied to you and me. Clearly it is the drawing forth of a principle that is within us. There is in fallen man a principle which responds to and is acted upon by the allurements or terrors which Satan brings to bear upon him. So when we speak of temptation as applied to ourselves, it is the calling out of the evil which is in us. How well we know it, if, indeed, we know ourselves in the light of God’s holy presence! But, alas! how many have never as yet measured themselves with that light! and hence it is, I have no doubt, that the man of self is but little and imperfectly known. We talk of Satan’s tripping up and turning the feet aside, and doubtless this is painfully true; but is it not too often pleaded and urged with solemn forgetfulness, that there is that in man upon which the enemy can act, and that the great power of the temptation of the enemy is in the principle that he finds within man? In this, be assured, lies the secret of the energy of Satan acting upon us, finding a response and an echo there—a something which at once responds to his touch.
But when Scripture applies the word “tempted” to the Lord Jesus Christ, it is the exact opposite to all this. You will remember that precious word, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me” (John 14:30). Oh, the blessedness of it! How it sets forth and brings out before our souls the perfection of the matchless Savior! There was nothing in Him that answered to Satan’s allurements. The presentation was entirely external. That which was typified by the fine flour mingled with oil, with the frankincense poured thereon, supplied no response to the enticements of the wily foe; and hence it is written of Him that “He Himself hath suffered being tempted” (Heb. 2:18). Let us note this well. The external presentation of delectable things for life, brought with it to the Lord Jesus, as perfect Man, a suffering peculiar to Himself. It is well said that the flesh in man, when acted upon by its desires, does not suffer. Being tempted, it enjoys. Hence we are exhorted to arm ourselves with the mind of a Christ who died rather than not obey. See 1 Pet. 4:1.
It is an immense thing to get a due sense in our souls of the difference in this respect between Christ and every other man. Here is One who never had a motive in His heart save the will of God—One whose meat and drink were to do that will. And the presentation of anything else to Him brought the most intense suffering, the deepest pain and anguish. Why? Because He was, as Man, absolutely perfect. Temptation to other men is pleasure. There is in us a kindredness to it; there is that in us which responds readily and gladly, which accepts, entertains—yea, even welcomes, the allurements of the enemy. Have you not found this out, my beloved brethren?
Is it possible that you have not as yet discovered that there is an open door, the flesh in us, for all comers? Are there no pleasures in sin? And that too even though they be but for a season? Mark what the Spirit of God says as to lust. What is lust? It is a principle of flesh that the desires to have for itself; it matters not what it is. It is the desire to possess, independent of God, and that independent will in the creature is the root and essence of sin.
There exist on all hands very mistaken notions of what sin is; and just as there are loose thoughts of sin, so there are loose thoughts of holiness. If you have wrong thoughts of holiness, it is because you have wrong thoughts of sin. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot have divinely exalted thoughts of holiness if you have not divinely true thoughts of sin. If you mistake what sin is, you will be sure to mistake what holiness is.
It is important to get down to the bottom of things. There is a way of speaking about sin which is disastrous and dangerous to an appalling extent. Sin is now limited to mere acts; certain acts are taken to define sin. Sin does produce acts, as a tree produces fruit; but it is very possible to restrain these in an outward way. Many motives would combine to render this expedient and advisable, but it were indeed blindness itself therefore to deny the existence in man of a will independent of God. That, as I have already stated, is the very essence and principle of sin, and it is found in every fallen man, but is just the very thing that was not in Jesus. The will of God was the secret spring of every movement of His blessed life. He never moved but to obey God’s will. “I delight to do Thy will,” are His own words; and how blessed and comforting are they in the light of our willfulness and waywardness! Alas! how we delight to do our own will! True it is that, in God’s infinite grace and goodness, He breaks and subjugates our will, and (blessed be His name!) forms and shapes us to His will; but there is no delight in us naturally to do God’s will. Lawlessness and independence are the natural tenants of the soil of our hearts. We delight to do our own will, and take our own way; but the spotless Man Christ Jesus was the blessed exception to it all.
I trust you can understand plainly now that when Satan did come and present these external objects to Jesus, it was intense suffering to that perfect One. As each assault of the enemy reached Him, though only from without, He suffered. “In that He Himself hath suffered being tempted.”
I know too well that when we are tempted of Satan there is an echo within, an answer there; and instead of being suffering to us, it is pleasure.
But every one is tempted, drawn away, and enticed by his own lust; then lust, having conceived, gives birth to sin; but sin, fully completed brings forth death (James 1:14, 15).
What solemn, searching words are these!
I would now, beloved brethren, invite your attention to the Lord’s temptations as they are presented by Luke; and at the outset would make this remark, that in this gospel you will find the order of their presentation to be a moral one, whereas in Matthew’s Gospel the order is historical and dispensational. Hence it is, I believe, that in this third gospel we find the last temptation is placed second. It falls in with, is suited to, the object of the Spirit here; and very instructive it is to observe the design which makes itself so apparent in each of the divine records.
There can be little doubt that the clause “Get thee behind Me,” though inserted here, really forms no part of Luke’s narrative. It was evidently taken from the Gospel of Matthew, where it rightly appears, because it is connected with the last temptation, which, as I have just intimated, Matthew places in its historical order. But there is a distinct and definite reason why those words should not appear in the translation of the Gospel of Luke; even this, that it would present Satan as returning to the attack after he was driven away by the blessed Lord; whereas if left out, then we find the Lord’s reply presented exactly as I believe it was.
Let us now, in dependence on the Lord, who alone can give us a right understanding by His Spirit, look at these various assaults of Satan.
The first is common to both Matthew and Luke. It comes first because it is the temptation of bodily, personal necessities. The Lord had become Man. As such He takes His place in this world, and the devil said unto Him, “If Thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread” (v. 3).
How affecting, beloved friends, to think of it! There He was suffering hunger, with sinless want, sinless need, as a Man down here, in conflict with the one who had vanquished every other man. Oh, what a picture for our eyes to gaze upon, even Himself thus assailed by the enemy! “If Thou be the Son of God.” It was as if the crafty, hateful foe had said, “Use your power as God, and deliver yourself out of your human necessities”; but in reality the enemy seeks to make the Blessed One give up His place of dependence as Man, the object of the devil being to tarnish His glory by setting one part of it against another. It was part of His glory, that though God over all, blessed evermore, He had been pleased to become Man, and in that position had exhibited human perfection in His absolute dependence upon and subjection to God. He perfectly maintained the position of Man which He had been pleased to enter into, thus displaying not only Man in perfection before God and men, but also the contrast with every creature, whether angels or men. It was beyond all expression intolerable to Satan that there should be such a display of Man before God and men. Up to this the enemy of God and man, victorious over man, had held the ground as having vanquished man and that too in circumstances most favorable to the creature of God’s hand and care; but now another Man is on the field of battle to meet the foe flushed with victory, and to vanquish and bind him, not by the display of His power as God, but by maintaining in perfect dependence and subjection the place He had taken as Man.
It is well to bear in mind that the Blessed One had voluntarily taken this place. In His blessed grace He who had said, “Mine ears hast Thou opened”; also said, “Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O My God: yea, Thy law is within My heart.” It were thus impossible for Him to retire from that place which He was pleased to take, simply because He was Himself Man in perfection before God. Having taken this place, His very perfection is shown in His abiding in it. He lived by the Word as well as kept the Word and this is exactly the perfection you find in Jesus here. He had no word, and therefore He does not move. He says, “It is written.” He appeals to the Scriptures; He kept the Scriptures; He lived by the Scriptures. How blessed to consider Him thus! There is something even more important than finding bread to satisfy hunger, more important than finding sustenance for the body. What is that? To keep the Word of God. Oh, the moral magnificence of it, to stand fast by the Word of God, to hold fast to the Word of God, not moved by any proffered good from that Word! That, beloved friends, is more important than life itself. That, then, is what we find in perfection in Christ when tempted—“It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” (v. 4).
Again, let us dwell upon the blessed position which the Lord Jesus Christ takes in all this. He takes the lowliest place; He meets Satan as the lowliest of men. You cannot conceive any one more lowly than He is here. There is nothing really more lowly than to be obedient. True lowliness is to obey. Ah, there is a desperate amount of pride in all that form of humility now abounding; but real lowliness, genuine lowliness, heaven-born lowliness, is the most subject, dependent principle that can be conceived. The Lord here is the lowly, dependent One. He says, as it were, “I have not come to command, but to obey.” He was pleased to take that lowly place.
Oh, the blessedness of such an Object—One who, as Man, was perfection before God and men; and hence, in the position He had been pleased to take in grace, the mind and will of God found their fullest, most perfect response. Oh, the contrast between this Blessed One and all else presented to us in the narrative! Verily we may say, His perfection sheds a solemn light on all beside in man.
With regard to ourselves, the solemn word of our God seems uttered in our souls, as it were, from heaven; that word which says, “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin” (Heb. 12:4). Have you ever thought, my beloved brethren, what that means? In the light of the perfection of Him who, as Man, when tempted, as we have seen here, “suffered,” let us dwell on the words, “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood.”
You have not yet arrived at this, that you would rather die than disobey. I do not know anything more magnificent, more morally grand, than to see the man, who has, through grace, drunk into the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ, and who stands, in all the blessed fruit of His finished work, in the place in which Christ has set us as children of God, cast upon God, governed by the Word of God, having that Word, the communications that God has been pleased to give to us in grace, ruling every thought within and every movement with- out; one who in his soul has formed by Christ this blest resolve—even to resist to blood, ready to suffer, ready to die, rather than yield, because God has spoken.
What immense blessing is in that word, “It is written”! Oh, may God by His Spirit give our hearts to seize the moral greatness of it in these days when Scripture has become so much a dead letter in people’s minds! This is a day when men tear up the Word of God, and allow the winds of a daring infidelity to blow away its precious leaves. This is a day in which men barter the truth, and compromise the great foundations of faith, in order to pander to the depraved taste of a vile, worthless, wicked generation. This is a day for the servants and friends of Christ to hold fast by Scripture, to walk according to Scripture, to allow these divine communications and revelations to have the fullest place in their souls, to live by every word of God, not merely to read the Word, but to study it, to ponder it, to receive and submit to it. Oh, to learn to obey His voice, and thus to live by every word of God! “I have esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12). “Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3).
Thus the blessed Lord simply appeals to Scripture; He simply stands by what God had written. How blessed to think of that—“It is written”! Here is the record communicated indelibly in Spirit-taught words through channels God was pleased to use. It was not merely that God raised up the vessels of inspiration, but He supplied them with the words. I know it is said, that though He raised up the vessels, they could use the words suited to the time. It is untrue! If you turn to 1 Cor. 2 you will find that the words were given from God as truly as the vessels were raised up by God. You will find both. Mark the expression—“Spirit-taught words”; not words “which man’s wisdom teacheth.” “But,” say learned people in these days, “this kind of thing is out of date, and we must keep pace with modern progress and the advance of science. The Bible is all very well in its place, but there are other voices and other authorities which must be heard and bowed to. We cannot refuse to advance with the times by being held fast in the bondage of old superstitions.”
The simple yet sublime reply of God to all this kind of mind desire (see Eph. 2:3) is, “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God” (1 Cor. 2:11, 12).
May God by His Spirit give all His own the grace to apprehend the value of the word, “It is written.” Here faith rests in a peace which nothing can disturb. How true it is, as has been well observed by another, that under God’s protection His people need not fear! The old difficulties and objections are revived, but they will meet in one way or another the old defeat. While the world lasts, skeptical books will be written and answered, and the books and perhaps the answers alike forgotten. But the Rock of Ages shall stand unchangeable; and men worn with a sense of sin shall still find rest, under “the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”
Let us now for a little look at the second temptation. It is the third really, but the second morally, as we have before noticed, being what is called the worldly temptation; i.e. the glory of the world. Satan knew that worldly glory belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ, who will indeed possess that glory ere long. As Son of man He will by-and-by have the glory of the world, according to God’s thoughts and counsels and purposes. Therefore it is that Satan comes here, and says,
“That is all given to me, and I give it to whomsoever I will.”
That was false, and yet true. It was false as to title, but true as to fact; for Satan had acquired this by man’s sin. As to title, he had none at all. Satan had no title to give glory to any one; but having, through his craft, induced man to depart from God; having assailed the first Adam, and having vanquished him, he profits by this victory over man (which was, in result, the creature’s departure from the place of confidence and trust), and here sets himself forth as the usurper. “I have all this,” he says, “and I give it to whomsoever I will. If you will own me as the giver”—that is here the meaning of worship—“if you will take it from me, all shall be yours.”
Oh! is not that exactly what the powers of this world have done? They have just taken the devil’s bribe. How solemn, how awful, to think of it!
But now look at Jesus for a moment; look at the obedience we find here. He says, “It is written.” Mark how He appeals again and again to the Scriptures; how the word of God, beloved friends, is still His great weapon in meeting the adversary. “It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve” (v.8).
Fallen man would like the gift, and would long after the gift, and the more glory it had the more it would attract him; but the Lord Jesus—the perfect Man—thought of the giver; He thought of who it was that offered it. His heart was so perfectly in unison with the heart of God that He says, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God.” He would not take an empire or a kingdom from any one else beside. He would not take glory, pleasure, or honor from Satan. Why, that is what the poor world is doing just now. Satan comes with his glittering bait, and it is readily swallowed by poor, lost, misguided man—blinded and deluded by the arch-fiend of hell, the god of this world, and prince of the power of the air. But oh, the blessedness of contemplating the first man’s contrast in the Lord Jesus Christ—the Second Man, the perfect Man! How blessed to hear Him say, “It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only.” Him only! Are you exclusive in that way, beloved friends?
I would add a word or so more on this. I have said that responsible Adam, when tempted and tried, broke down in this very thing. Adam ought to have held and maintained for God, but that is exactly what he did not do. Further, we find that historically Israel were tempted in a similar way, and broke down in the wilderness. His own people Israel entirely failed in representing this testimony. They constantly, continually, and utterly departed from God for forty years. With regard to the first temptation you will remember how He kept them in dependence in connection with the manna, and how they failed. They needed to learn the lesson of dependence—to be cast upon God day by day, and moment by moment. With regard to the third temptation they say, “Is the Lord among us or not?” So that you have the Lord Jesus Christ set before us here as the perfect contrast to man in every way and in every position and set of circumstances in which you can conceive man to be placed.
The last temptation is what is called the “religious temptation,” and it is of great spiritual profit to our souls to contemplate it, because we shall find that this is the hardest of all; this is the most difficult of all to resist. I believe, as I have stated, that Luke presents these temptations in a moral order, which gradually rises until you get to that which is morally the highest. Though not the last historically, yet it was such morally, and in it the height of temptation is reached. Hence it is that he puts it last. Let us just read the words: “And he brought Him to Jerusalem, and set Him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto Him, If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down from hence: for it is written, He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt Jehovah thy God” (vv. 9-12).
Now, you see, the object of the tempter here was to separate two things that God always puts together; that is to say, the end, and the way to get to it. I believe you will find these two things constantly and continually put together in God’s own mind. Satan separates them here. He separates the end from the way by omitting from the psalm which he quotes (Psa. 91) the very words which constitute the way to the end. What were those words? “To keep thee in all thy ways.” Mark that: “In all thy ways.” He daringly suppresses part of the scripture; he omits the words which would have left the temptation patent and unmasked. That is exactly what you find him doing at the present.
The devil, as you see here, can quote Scripture, and he can suppress Scripture; he can also pervert Scripture. How solemn to think of the subtlety of the great enemy of God and man! What force there is in the touching words of the apostle to his beloved Corinthians when he says,
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety [i.e., craft], so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ (2 Cor. 11:3).
It is thus the wily foe deals with Scripture. He takes it, as it were, in his own hand, and craftily seeks to extinguish all in the scripture that would shed its own light upon the subject he desires to assail. The greatest comfort of my heart is, that he does not know my heart; and it would be intolerable to me if the only One who does know it did not know it. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord” (Jer. 17:9, 10).
But then Satan is a very jealous observer of your ways. He knows your tastes from observation. He knows what will act upon you; he knows, as it were, the fly you will rise at. This is what is solemn. I believe he is the most intelligent of creatures, but the most miserable. No creature could be more miserable than the devil, and he wants everyone to be as miserable as himself. He studies everything; he looks at everything, and reads your character through your ways. Thank God, he does not know our hearts; only God knows them. Satan knows what is outside. He sees you, watches you; he knows, I repeat, what will take you. He studies you when you are little aware of it. Lord, grant that Thy saints may not be ignorant of his devices!
The enemy says, “I know what will catch that young man, I know what will catch that young woman; I know how to assail that old man, I know what will trip up that old woman.” Oh, it is solemn! May we take heed to our ways; may we ever be on the watch. Remember, the chart for the mariner does not only tell of the fair way, where all is clear, but it marks the shoals and rocks, the places of danger and peril and shipwreck.
But let us observe what the tempter left out here: “In all thy ways.” That is the way to the end. Mark how the Lord meets it: “It is said.” Beautiful words! “It is written” on one occasion, “It is said” on another occasion. “It is said, Thou shalt not tempt Jehovah thy God.”
Has that no voice to us? Do we never tempt Him? What is tempting the Lord our God? Let me try and tell you. Have you never known your heart to be assailed in this way: “Now let me see whether God is as good as His word”? Is that trusting Him? Is that resting in Him? Is that believing Him? Is that confiding in Him? This is the very thing that was not in Adam—confidence of the heart in God, no resting in Him who has pledged His word. It is the very opposite to it. It is to say, “I will see whether God will sustain and uphold me; I will see whether God will carry me through this thing.” Ah, that is not leaning on Him, resting in Him, but the very opposite! You are not sure then, are you? You are trying whether God will be as good as His word. That is tempting Him. But faith, confidence in God, says, “It shall be done.” How sweet those old lines
“Faith, bold faith, the promise sees,
And leans on that alone;
Laughs at impossibilities,
And says, ‘It shall be done.’”
That is resting upon God. The heart, as it were, says, “I know Him; I do not test Him, I do not tempt Him; I believe Him, and I believe what He says is true. I believe, moreover, it is true, because He says it.” You will tell me that this is reasoning in a circle. Be it so! It is a magnificent circle to reason in—it is a divine circle. I believe what He says is true, and I believe it is true, because He says it.
I will finish with just one word more—Satan departs. He could get no hold anywhere. He has met the Perfect Man, who has vanquished him by dependence and obedience, and Satan is bound. The Lord Jesus Christ bound him. And now, mark you, as He went forth full of the Holy Ghost to meet Satan, so it is beautiful to see that He “returned in the power of the Spirit.” He went in the power of the Spirit to vanquish the devil, and returns likewise. He goes to meet the strong man in the power of the Spirit, and comes back in the power of the same Spirit to scatter blessing wherever He goes. On Calvary’s cross He bruised his head in death, and in resurrection He dispenses blessing.
The Lord give us to adore the matchless grace of Jesus. Oh, the moral blessedness of dwelling on Him as Man perfect under all suffering, testing, and trial from the enemy! May God in His infinite grace read out to us the lessons that He would have us learn, and above all things I would look to Him that He would make known to us the blessedness of those words, “It is written”; for His name’s sake.
Chapter 5: Luke 9:18-36
The way, beloved friends, in which the Spirit of God introduces to us the wonderful scene in this portion of Scripture is very worthy to be observed. The surroundings of it, the connections in which it is placed, are all strikingly in keeping with the magnificence of the scene itself. There is one little word especially which gives character to this introduction, which, indeed, is characteristic of the whole narrative. That word is praying: “As He was alone praying” (v. 18).
Now, that is not merely remarkable because it sets before us the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ in one part of His blessed nature, the perfection of His nature as Man, which I need not, I trust, remind you is dependence, entire dependence being the perfection of man, and that belonged only to Christ; but further, that which would mark a perfect man: a man perfect before God in this world would be one absolutely and always dependent. And that, I need not say, was what marked most blessedly our Lord Jesus Christ as Man. He was the essentially, distinctively, dependent Man.
What adds importance to that which we have here is, that in the earlier verses of this chapter (which you can study for yourselves at leisure) you will find another part of His glory set before us in a very distinct way; that is, His glory as Jehovah-Messiah. He fulfils everything that belonged to Him as Jehovah-Messiah. He fed the poor with bread. He ministered to the need of the poor of the flock as only Jehovah could do. He could, in the largeness of who He was, open His hand, and satisfy the need of all that were in that condition before Him. Christ is not only Man, but Jehovah; He is not only Jehovah, but Man.
As Man, then, He is dependent; and that is what the Spirit of God distinctly marks in connection with His glory here. The highest part of His glory as Man is reached in this chapter. It was an upward journey that He took until He arrived at Mount Tabor. What is generally said—“He went from the manger to the cross”—is true in one sense, but not in another. More correctly expressed, He went from the manger to the very highest position of glory as Man here in this world. He went from Bethlehem to the bank of Jordan; He went from Jordan’s bank to the mount of transfiguration; and then He descended from the mount of transfiguration, from the highest point of glory as Man, into the dust of death, into Calvary’s depth of woe.
It is exceedingly blessed, and very instructive too, to get these facts distinctly before our souls; and surely if there is anything to which God would call the hearts of His people in these times, it is this: What is our resource? “Praying!” Assuredly it is in prayer. Prayer is the expression that the hope of the one who is praying is outside all visible things. The meaning of prayer is, that you can do nothing. The ground of all prayer is, that you have lost every resource but God. I do not believe we truly pray until we realize this. As long as we can arrange for ourselves we do not pray. We address ourselves to the difficulties before us, and we try to deal with them; but when we have come to our wit’s end, then we turn to God.
I have often been struck with that psalm which speaks of those who go down to the sea, and do business in great waters. When they are brought to their wits’ end, and can do nothing for themselves, then they cry to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivers them out of their distresses. He never heard a cry of need from any one without answering it; not perhaps in our way, but in His own. There was only One that cried, and was not heard, and that was Christ. There was but one perfectly righteous and dependent Man on this earth that cried and was not heard; and that was Jesus on the cross. “O My God, I cry in the daytime, but Thou hearest not.” That was the solitary exception to all God’s known ways down here.
Oh, what a blessed thing it is to have this put before our souls in Scripture! to have God calling us back to this simple position before Him with regard to everything we find in the Church and in the world at this moment; to be cast upon God; to solve the difficulties on our knees, as it were; to wait, and watch, and trust, and pray. That is our resource, and that, moreover, is the way out of the strait place we are in. Be assured of it, beloved friends, the exercise of heart in it all is that which brings glory to God, and deepest blessing to ourselves. And here is the great example in the Lord’s own perfection set before us. He was alone praying, and that is what introduces this scene of glory, when the Lord Jesus Christ gives a picture of the coming kingdom. Oh, the blessedness of this picture! Could anything surpass it? The essentially dependent One Himself glorified as a Man on the holy mount!
It has been rightly said, that at verse 18 of this chapter we have a complete break in the gospel. Another subject entirely is entered upon, and it is introduced in this way: He says to His disciples, “Whom say the people that I am?”
You will observe, beloved friends, how the question of Christ’s person is always the touch-stone. That is the point around which everything, as it were, revolves: “Whom say the people that I am?” And now you find that two very important things come out here. One is that all around is speculation. That is what is in the world to-day about God’s Christ and God’s truth—speculation. God in His infinite mercy keep us from that! But that is what you find here. “Whom say the people that I am?” They answer, One says you are Elias, another, that you are one of the prophets. That is to say, it was all a kind of speculative reasoning (curiosity, if you please), but nothing certain or divinely reached at all.
This is exactly what you have now. The air of this world is rife with questions about the truth of God and Christ. That is the kind of atmosphere that surrounds professing Christendom at this moment. There is nothing positive. There is, until you arrive at the divine area, no divine certainty either about Christ or the truth. The very things that mark the period we are passing through are uncertainty, speculation, reasoning of every kind. It is so much so, that if a person stands upon the ground of certainty, people say, “Oh, you must take care; you must not be too dogmatic!”
But, beloved friends, you cannot be too dogmatic if you have the truth. The grand point is, whether we have the truth. And who, I ask, is to bear witness to that? It must be God’s record, beloved friends. If it is not this Book in our hands, if it is not the Scriptures, the Word of God, you may get the cleverest conclusions, the clearest deductions, the wisest thoughts conceivable brought together; but if you have not the Scriptures, you have not certainty. If you have Scripture, you have certainty.
And observe another thing in connection with all this: there is simplicity in the Scriptures. You will find the great truths of God’s revelation remarkably simple. There is a magnificent simplicity in the things of God. In the things of man there always exists a certain amount of haziness; but beautiful simplicity characterizes the things of God. I admit this, that, be it ever so simple, there is no power to take it in except by the Spirit of God. And I am perfectly convinced of this, that in proportion as our minds are at work in the things of God, we are outside the direct teaching of the Spirit of God. There is nothing more hostile to the simple instruction of the Holy Ghost than the human mind. The teaching of man may be all very good and very right, but it is not the Spirit of God taking of the things of Christ, and showing them to us.
But the Lord says, “Whom say ye that I am?” He leaves, as it were, the outside circle, and brings it down to a very much closer circle, very much nearer to ourselves: “Whom say ye that I am?” How beautiful this is! The man that is taught of God answers at once. There is no hesitation, no uncertainty, no fear, but a distinct utterance, “The Christ of God.”
There is an instance, of what I was speaking to you about just now—having divine certainty. This one knew Jesus; he was taught of God. It was not flesh and blood, as we know from another gospel, that revealed this to that man. Man never reached that truth; never scaled its heights, nor fathomed its depths. Flesh and blood, in this connection, means that which comes within the region of man as he is now constituted; man in his present condition; a poor, wretched, feeble creature. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption” (1 Cor. 15:50). So here, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee”—you have no power to discover this by man’s wisdom—“but My Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 16:17).
There you have one of the most remarkable instances of the absolute certainty that the soul taught from on high has. Peter says, “The Christ of God.” Do you think he was afraid to say that? Was there any uncertainty? He knew it. How? Not because of the effect in his own heart; not because there was happiness in his own breast. It was a revelation to him. And that is what all truth must be—a revelation out of Scripture by the Holy Ghost to faith. That is to say, what is revealed from God in Scripture is understood by the teaching of the Holy Ghost. And so Peter had certainty. He knew God, and could say without any question, “The Christ of God.”
Now note, in connection with the break at this point, that the Lord Jesus takes a new title, which ever afterwards adheres to Him. Tell no man, He says, that I am the Christ of God, the Messiah; the time for that testimony is past. “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day” (v. 22). That is the new title which He takes now, “the Son of man”; because they refused Him, rejected Him. He was going to be crucified where He ought to have been crowned; and He sets before us here, not His atoning sufferings, but His martyr- sufferings.
I think I can make that very simple to you from Scripture, because, after it, He speaks of our following Him. We could not follow the Lord Jesus Christ in His atoning sufferings. Thank God, we are privileged to follow Him in the path in which He walked as a martyr, and it is so He speaks here: “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected . . . and be slain.” In that connection He at once brings out the path. He says, There is a path suited to the position I take. And instead of taking His place as the Christ of God, and receiving the glory that belonged to Him as Messiah; instead of being exalted as the second psalm presents Him, He takes another title, and sets His face towards martyrdom.
In the second psalm you find God’s Anointed; in the eighth psalm you find the Son of man. The Lord Jesus Christ is not only entitled to the inheritance, but He has Himself an additional glory, because, besides being the appointed Heir, He is the Redeemer-heir. He takes the inheritance with all the load of defilement, and redeems it, thus becoming entitled to it. This, of course, brings in resurrection, the great evidence of the accomplished work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
His sufferings referred to here, then, are all martyr- sufferings; how He would be treated by men—hated, scorned, cast out.
There is another word in this place which is very solemn for us all: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (v. 23). Let us ponder well and deeply the words, “Let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily.” “DAILY”! In this lies the test. How truly it has been said that it is terribly difficult to go on every day denying oneself, and no one knowing anything about it. Ah! it is not for me to say a word against the martyrs that in other days went to the stake, and sealed their testimony with their blood; for verily this is not the day of martyrdom. The spirit of martyrdom scarcely exists in this age. Compromise, not martyrdom, is the spirit of today. But, beloved friends, even giving all honor to the memory of the men who suffered, bled, and died for the truth as known by them, yet that was an easier thing compared with this. A man might go once for all heroically to death for the maintenance of the truth, and his name be handed down to generations, and a monument be erected to his memory; but daily taking up your cross, daily denying yourself, is a very different thing.
Are we content, beloved friends, to take up our cross? Are we content to daily deny ourselves? Alas! how this finds us out, exposes us to ourselves. I have often trembled as I thought of the readiness of the heart to pursue an entirely opposite path, and, instead of daily taking up the cross, exhibiting a daily readiness to embark in whatever will contribute to our gratification. Have you, beloved brethren, discovered the deceitfulness of your hearts in this? Not only do things attract in the world, but the heart within us is capable even of this: a willingness to transform the Church into a world for itself, a world where you can gratify your thoughts and desires just as much as the poor worldling gratifies his in the world outside. The principle is the same.
But how different the daily cross and denying yourself; and, as some one has said, denying yourself is a far harder, a far more cutting principle than self-denial. It is a knife that penetrates deeper down into the quick, as it were, of the soul; a daily, yea, hourly and momently martyrdom, without applause or praise from men; not a single ray of glory attaching to it; not an atom of commendation, not a word of encouragement; all, as it were, a secret death under the eye of God. How different to the path of nature and flesh! It is truly a hidden path; but what moral beauty it has for faith! Of it we may well say, that it is indeed “a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen: the lions whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it” (Job 28:7, 8).
“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for My sake, the same shall save it. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?” (vv. 23-25).
You see it becomes a question of one of these two things: either giving up everything for Christ, or going in for everything apart from Him. It is thus that the Lord brings this out here; and then, in order to stimulate faith, He takes Peter, James, and John up into the mount, and gives them a sight of the glory of His future kingdom.
There are three things connected with this wonderful scene. The first is, He is transfigured. I think it is beautiful that, in connection with the transfiguration, the Lord Jesus is presented in the act of praying. “As He prayed,” we read. It was not that He wrought miracles or displayed the magnificence of His Jehovah-Messiahship. It does not point to His wonderful works of power, though doubtless these were also wrought by Him; but it was not at such a moment that He was transfigured. Why is it said, “As He prayed, the fashion of His countenance was altered”? Was it not that this very glory reflected the perfection of the perfect Man before God? This, I believe, is the reason of its being set forth here. When Christ was in that attitude which, above all others, presented Him in the absoluteness of His own perfection as Man, He was transfigured. How blessed to dwell upon such words written of Him: “As He prayed, the fashion of His countenance was altered, and His raiment was white and glistering” (v. 29).
It is blessed to observe how, in the Gospel of Luke, in all the great events of the Lord’s life—at His baptism at Jordan, here at the transfiguration, then again in His agony in Gethsemane, also when choosing His apostles—all through those great scenes and events of the Lord’s life, the Spirit of God lays express emphasis upon this fact, that prayer was what marked Him in them all. He was the perfect Man cast upon God in absolute dependence.
So, then, in those words in which the transfiguration is introduced, “As He prayed, the fashion of His countenance was altered, and His raiment was white and glistering,” the first great object set before us is Himself.
Next we have the companions of Jesus on the mount, Moses and Elias; and they appear in glory. Now, beloved friends, that is very blessed. They were in the same glory with Jesus; but a glory which was, in figure, in type, kingdom-glory—the glory of Christ’s coming kingdom.
Moses and Elias, I believe, speak to us in a double way; they speak to us dispensationally and morally. Moses was the giver of the law. “The law was given by Moses.” Elias was the representative of the prophets; so much so that, when Israel had departed from God, and given up the law, Elias remained as sole representative of it in his witness to the people. These two great witnesses, then, the law and the prophets, are brought in here for this reason: everything was about to disappear, and Jesus would be left alone. At the end everything goes. Moses is gone, Elias is gone, and Christ alone is left, and remains for evermore. This will bring to your recollection that scripture, “The law and the prophets were until John” (Luke 16:16). That is to say, those administrations by which God was testing and dealing with man—the law, which came with its claims upon man; and the prophets, which always called the people back to the observance of the broken law—these subsisted and had their place until John. When he came he ushered in the Lord Jesus Christ. He was Christ’s forerunner; there was something more bright and blessed and lasting coming. John says, One is coming. Are you ready for Him? “Him that cometh after me,” are you ready for Him? God is coming. Are you ready for Him? That was the character of John’s witness. But the law and the prophets, in figure, in type, are brought in here in connection with the kingdom in order to show that they pass off the scene; but that Jesus, thank God, remains for evermore.
There is, I believe, a moral reason as well as a dispensational reason why they are here introduced. Because they represent not merely the law and the prophets, but they also illustrate what will be found at that blessed moment when the saints are changed and raised. Yes, beloved friends, when the Lord Jesus Christ is in His glory, the saints, raised and changed, shall be with Him. Moses must have been raised, for he had died. True, the place of his burial was not known to any man, for God buried His servant; and Israel were preserved, perhaps, by that very fact, from turning Moses into an idol. God buried him, and no man knew the place of his sepulcher. Elias was taken to heaven without dying; so that you have the figure exactly of the two classes: those who shall die, and those who shall not pass through death. “We shall not all sleep” means that we shall not all die; “but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump” (1 Cor. 15:51, 52). Moses and Elias represent the heavenly company, raised and changed saints, who shall be in the glory with Jesus. Oh, the blessedness of it—in the very same glory!
They appeared in glory; He glorified; they glorified with Him. Further observe one peculiarly blessed feature of this record; namely, that they are perfectly at home in that scene. All the groupings given us by the Holy Ghost in the inspired narrative point to this.
Now, beloved friends, let me ask you, What suits a man on his way to such a scene and such glory as this? Do you believe, in the bottom of your souls, that money, or power, or fame, should occupy the thoughts or affections of men and women with such hopes and prospects confessed as before them? Oh, the awful love of present things that hold with tenacious grip the heart of man!
Now there is another thing. We have the nature and character of their intercourse. Look at it for a moment, beloved friends: “There talked with Him two men” (v. 30). Could anything be more wonderful? You know it is very blessed when God speaks to us, when His voice is heard. And I sup- pose that He always takes the initiative, that He is always the first speaker. We never speak to Him until He speaks to us. I often think that if we do not speak to Him it is because we have not heard Him speaking to us. We must hear His voice before we can let Him hear our voice. “There talked with Him.” Observe, moreover, the intimacy and nearness, the closeness, the happiness of it, the absence of all reserve and distance! Could anything be more beautiful than that? God, indeed, talked with Abraham, and it is perfectly true that Abraham did plead with God for the cities of the plain; but, blessed man as he was, he knew nothing like this. It was not equal to the glory of this. There talked with Jesus on that mount, and in all that glory, two men. What was the subject of their conversation and intimacy? They “spake of His decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem” (v. 31).
What a fitting theme for glory! What a fitting theme to occupy the attention of the saints in glory! Have you thought how His death will form part of the wonderful subject that will occupy the attention and adoration of the saints of God for ever and ever? Have you thought of how the cross will never be forgotten? How that the glory with all its brightness will never obliterate the cross? In one sense the glory rests upon it. The basis, the foundation, of the glory is the cross. The cross is the grand foundation upon which the whole of the glory rests. And so how suitable it was that, in this glory with Jesus, in all this intimacy with and nearness to Him, they should speak of “His decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.”
Have you ever been struck with the illustration given us in Scripture of how the cross is the basis and foundation of the glory? Do you not remember how that the trumpet of the jubilee sounded upon the great day of atonement? There was only one day in the whole year on which the blast of that trumpet swept over the land of Israel; and that trumpet-sound brought with it restitution, comfort, and recovery to all who were in distress in that nation; but it sounded only upon the great day of atonement. What a remarkable illustration it is of that of which I have been speaking! When the sound of that trumpet was heard every bondman was freed, and returned to his former position; long-lost property reverted to its owners; and poverty and wretchedness were abolished in Israel. But what was the basis of it? The blood of atonement. And so it is here. The glory of God rests upon the cross. “Who layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters.” The beams of the chambers of glory, as it were, rest upon the deeply laid foundations of death, into which the Lamb of God went, so that everything should be established and made sure there. What could be more blessed or comforting than that? They “spake of His decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.”
Well now, let me be very brief on the second point. You will always find, if God tells us His thoughts, if He is pleased to show us what is in His mind in relation to His Son, that there is accompanying it that which brings out what we are. Here we find Peter, James, and John asleep. Oh, how little up to the thoughts of God we are! Asleep in the presence of His glory, as they afterwards were in the presence of His sorrow. They could no more keep company with Him in sorrow than they could keep company with Him in glory: “Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep” (v. 32). If we know our own hearts, we know what that is. Well may we sing —
“Thou soughtest for compassion,
Some heart Thy grief to know:
To watch Thine hour of passion;
For comforters in woe.
“No eye was found to pity,
No heart to bear Thy woe;
But shame and scorn and spitting –
None cared Thy name to know.
“Man’s boasting love disowns Thee;
Thine own the danger flee,
A Judas only owns Thee,
That Thou may’st captive be.”
How striking are the words, “But Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep.” I have no doubt that dispensationally they represent the spirit of slumber that now rests upon Israel. The nation is in a moral slumber. This is their state now, but there is a moment coming when they shall be awaked, and shall see the Lord’s glory. He will wake them up. He can call them together. No one knows where they are now, dispersed to the four winds of heaven, “a nation scattered and peeled.” Does not that vividly express the present condition of Israel? But they will awake, and see His glory. They will ere long gaze upon the smitten One. “They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn” (Zech. 12:10).
We have here also the natural feeling of man’s heart coming out, as if it had been said, How blessed to perpetuate this state of things. Peter says unto Jesus, “Let us make three tabernacles; one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias: not knowing what he said” (v. 33). He would put them all on an equality with Christ. He desired to put them all together on the same level. Beloved friends, how wonderful {i.e., amazing}! Whether asleep or awake, man, as such, is always out of keeping with God’s thoughts. Their being asleep showed them to be not up to the scene. When awake they were still not up to it. Nature cannot enter into God’s thoughts, but is always out of tune with them.
That brings us to the third point here, and this is the Father’s voice. “Let us make three tabernacles; one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias: not knowing what he said. While he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them” (vv. 33, 34).
That cloud no doubt was the Shekinah, the token of the divine presence. Now, their entering into the cloud was entirely new. No such thing had been known before. The cloud had journeyed with Israel, tarried upon the tabernacle, had been their constant companion; but they had never entered into it. The cloud that went before them removed and stood between them and the chariots of the Egyptians, and was a cloud of protection for them in past days; but they had never as yet entered into it.
“And they feared as they entered into the cloud” (v. 34). I believe that refers to Peter, James, and John, who represent the earthly saints. They fear when they see the heavenly saints entering into the cloud. But there came a voice out of the cloud, the Father’s voice. Ah! there was only one voice that could come in to vindicate the Son’s glories. How blessed is all this! It was at such a moment as this that there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son: hear Him” ( v. 5). Oh, beloved friends, do not your hearts rejoice to hear the Father thus express the infinite delight of His heart in that Son? “This is My beloved Son”!
Now, to me it is most blessed to think that He does not say, This is the Son: adore Him, worship Him. That would be perfectly right; for it is written, “When He bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, He saith, And let all the angels of God worship Him” (Heb. 1:6). Perfectly true it is that the Son is worthy of equal homage with the Father, “worthy by all to be adored”; but He does not say that here. He does not say, This is the Son: fall at His feet, and praise His name. All this, of which He is worthy beyond all human thought or power of utterance, would not express what is so blessedly and tenderly set forth in the words, “This is My beloved Son.” Ah! how God delights to reveal the depths of His heart in relation to Christ. “My Beloved Son” gives us to see the Father’s heart about that Son. “My beloved Son” lets us into the secret of Who fills that heart. “This is My beloved Son: hear Him.” How these words not only, as we have said, express the Father’s affections, but how entirely do they demonstrate Christ as supreme! And what a response is accorded to that by all who know His love! How good it is for our poor hearts to know what the blessed God feels about Jesus! Ah, beloved friends, be assured there is no subject with such power to sanctify and enrich the soul as this. Let us try and think of the unspeakable grace of our God in permitting us not only to know His thoughts about the Son of His love, but to share them with Him. Oh, what grace! Is there nothing in that for our hearts and affections? Nothing in that to carry us above this poor, wretched world?
“This is My beloved Son: hear Him.” Thus He sets the alone Object forth; and be assured, beloved friends, the Father would have that blessed Object to be everything to us. Of Him we may well sing –
“He fills the throne—the throne above,
He fills it without wrong;
The Object of His Father’s love,
Theme of the ransomed’s song.”
“This is My beloved Son” introduces us, as it were, to the opening of the Father’s heart. “Hear Him” shows the Father’s purpose that this Blessed One should be the Object of our hearts. What real comfort and delight are bound up in these expressive words, “This is My beloved Son!”
One thing more. When the Father’s voice was past, when the utterance that thus set forth the beloved One had thus died away, what do we find? When that voice that called attention to Him, that gave expression to the endearment of the Father’s heart towards Christ, and that set Him before our poor hearts, was gone, then “Jesus was found alone.” Jesus only! Oh, how blessed! Moses gone, Elias gone, everything gone; but Christ remains. And, beloved friends, I would say in connection with this that there is another word which will feed your souls, if you will only allow the Holy Ghost to minister it to you. Let me give it you; and may God make it as precious to you as He has done to others: “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of Thine hands: they shall perish; but THOU REMAINEST.” “Thou remainest!” As regards everything besides, all the material creation, “they shall perish.” “But Thou remainest!” Oh, how blessed! And that is exactly what you have in principle here. When the voice was past “Jesus was found alone.”
Oh, beloved friends, may God in His infinite grace give us to apprehend in some measure the unspeakable comfort and blessedness of such a word as that! Do you think the disciples were losers when “Jesus was found alone,” and everything else was gone? Suppose everything else does go here, what then? Can we not thus express ourselves —
“Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day,
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
Oh, Thou, that changest not, abide with me.
Do you see everything passing away, shifting, decaying, changing? If we see all around us thus breaking up, thank God for the word, “Jesus was found alone”—“Thou remainest.”
May God in His grace leave the savor of these blessed utterances on all our hearts to-night. Surely they will be a stay and a comfort to us, and minister to our souls “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
Chapter 6: Luke 22:1-46
It can scarcely fail to strike the heart, beloved friends, in reading this mournful chapter, that every thought is on death. The gloom of death overspreads everything here. We are met with the malignity and hatred of men in murderous opposition to Christ; with the treachery and vileness of Judas; and, beyond and above all that, with Christ’s own precious thoughts as He was about to become the true Passover Lamb, the one adequate answer in death to all God’s holy, righteous demands.
These are the great leading outlines of this twenty-second of Luke. I just glance at them now in a general way; but what I particularly desire to dwell upon for a little this evening is the part that speaks of, and sets before us, the Lord’s intercourse in agony with His Father respecting the unprecedented sorrow that awaited Him. It is to this in a very special way that I wish to call your attention to-night.
I believe the chapter may be divided into three or four parts; that is to say, that the Lord’s thoughts about His sorrow form one part; His thoughts about His disciples, and His instructions to them, form another part; the account of His agony in Gethsemane, and His intercourse with His Father, a third part; and the manner in which, at the end of all, He meets His enemies, the last part. But, as I have already intimated, it is only one part that I purpose dwelling upon this evening, and that is the third part, when, in the garden, the shadow of the cross is flung, as it were, over His holy soul; when He meets His Father about what was before Him; goes through the whole transaction in spirit with His Father; enters into, measures, weighs it with Him; manifesting His perfectness throughout it all.
But before we look at this great sight, it is important to observe that there are certain steps which lead up to it, and which bring out the perfection of the Lord Jesus Christ in the character in which the Gospel of Luke sets Him before us.
Our subject on previous occasions has been all the blessed perfectness of the Man Christ Jesus; and we have here, in this chapter, an additional instance furnished in certain circumstances which bring it out in a very blessed way. Look, for a moment, at this celebration of the Passover. In connection with it is mentioned a cup that was partaken of prior to the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Two cups are spoken of in Luke; and when the Lord says, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves: for I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come” (vv. 17, 18), He refers, not to the cup of the Lord’s Supper, but to the cup which went with the Passover, having its place in connection with that institution. That first cup was indicative of joys connected with the kingdom. Wine is a symbol of earthly joy; and that Passover cup is the token of the earthly joy of the kingdom, founded, of course, as it must always be, upon the blood of God’s true Passover Lamb; for, whether earthly or heavenly joy, it must rest upon the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God. It is well just to notice that in passing.
Now, the Lord here manifestly takes the place that morally was always His. He was always the true Nazarite down here—separate from men, though dwelling among them in all the grace of His heart; but now He openly takes that character which was ever His morally in Himself. Hence He says, “I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come” (v. 18).
Afterwards the Lord institutes His own Supper, of which, I need not say, He did not Himself partake. He previously partook of the Passover, as a true, obedient Jew; but now He gives to His disciples the symbols of His own holy body and precious blood, the touching expression of His ineffable love in laying down His life for them; the memorial too of the accomplishment of redemption, and of the remission of sins.
Most remarkable and affecting details connect themselves with this last Passover that He celebrated with His beloved disciples. “Go,” said the Lord to Peter and John, “and prepare us the Passover, that we may eat. And they said unto Him, Where wilt Thou that we prepare? And He said unto them, Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he entereth in. And ye shall say unto the goodman of the house, The Master saith unto thee, Where is the guest-chamber, where I shall eat the Passover with My disciples? And he shall show you a large upper room furnished: there make ready. And they went, and found as He had said unto them; and they made ready the Passover. And when the hour was come, He sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him” (vv. 9-14).
Oh, the perfect, divine dignity of Him who, whilst He was Man, was also God! How the perfection of His Godhead glory shines out here in all the majestic quietness, conscious power, and fulness of knowledge that characterized Him! And at the same time you see how distinctly everything is marked out—nothing left to what we might call a “perhaps,” or “peradventure,” or “chance.” The whole proceeding is definitely arranged by One who is Master of every circumstance, and who has all under His own hand.
But observe another thing which is exceedingly blessed. He says, “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (v. 15). Here you have the perfection of His feelings as Man, His human feelings. That is one thing that is so exceedingly blessed when we think of the Lord Jesus Christ: the combination of the human and the divine; the combination of all those wonderful, blessed feelings that marked Him as Man, with all the glory that belonged to Him as God. As a sweet hymn says —
“The union of both joined in one
Form the fountain of love in His heart.”
His love is human and also divine. You get not merely one side, but both. See the two here put together by the Holy Ghost. At the very time when His divine glory comes out, when He shows that He has everything at His disposal, then it is that His precious human affection is displayed. As has been blessedly said, He is like the father of a family about to take a long journey, and seeks to have a parting interview with His loved ones. That is the beauty of it. “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” Oh, the blessed perfection of the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ—the blessed, perfect Man! What tenderness, what consideration, what affection, breathes in every word! Put these two things together, and could there be found a more blessed study for our souls? I am lost in wonder and amazement! Perfect God and perfect Man; very God and very Man. Our souls bow to the blessed truth. It is this which promotes worship. When we have reached that blessed Person in the attraction and fulness of His own nature, then our whole moral being is commanded. The moment we reach His blessed Person we adore; we cannot help so doing. Worship cannot be got up; you cannot manufacture worship; but reach that presence, and you are on your face! And that is ever the effect, beloved friends, of the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Do we realize that in our souls? Do not for a moment think that I wish to turn your eye inwards. I hold that all realization is by faith; and I do not believe in any feelings, however religious, that are separated from faith. It must be all of faith. Take, for instance, that scene which comes before the mind as we are speaking. Think of the Lord’s Supper as He here instituted it, even on this eventful night in which He was betrayed. Thank God for the Lord’s Supper! And, blessed be His name, it is recovered to us in its simplicity! Oh, what a mercy in such days as these! He Himself has recovered it in all the primitive simplicity in which He gave it to His own. What scene on earth is like that of the Lord’s Supper? When we are really there, when we sit down in His blessed com- pany, and know we are in the presence of Himself, who gathers His own around Himself, how blessed! If Christ is in the midst, it is that which constitutes the meeting as according to His mind. If He is not there, it is no true meeting according to the Word of God. That narrows the question in a very simple way.
I do not for one moment mean to say that there are not numbers of God’s beloved, believing people who do remember the Lord, according to their measure of light, in breaking bread and drinking wine, in other circumstances. I believe, because I know it, there are true saints of God, and true servants of God, who, according to their light, and the affection of their souls toward our Lord Jesus Christ, do remember Him. And I believe He takes account of it. That is one thing that stands by itself. I would not for worlds destroy the comfort of that to any one’s soul. But remember this, it is only individual in their case. To have a collective remembrance, to have what His word implies—a communion together, it must be a remembrance together, and a remembrance together with Himself, in His own company; and for this there must be His own presence. Moreover, to have that presence there must be all the conditions of that presence, all the blessed accompaniments of that presence. All these things go together, and while it is well, and right also, to be clear and distinct about that, it is another thing entirely to take away from, and interfere with, the comfort that many a dear, though unintelligent child of God derives from the fact that he has remembered the Lord Jesus Christ. I ought to be very glad when any one has such a desire in his heart, because he has already the first element there. The great thing is to build upon that. Bring in Christ, but do not destroy the little bit that is of God. Cultivate it, add to it. Remember, we are not called upon to be breakers down of walls and hedges. The axe and the hatchet are cruel instruments. What we are called upon to do is, to “strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die” (Rev. 3:2). If we find ever so little of Christ, let us never fail to own it. Never let us fear acknowledging ever so little of the truth. Why should we be afraid to walk in the steps of the Master? Let us be well assured of this, that our ability to discover and own the little there may be of Him, flows from His being much before ourselves.
I have said all this simply in connection with Christians remembering the Lord Jesus individually, even though taking the Lord’s Supper apart from the intelligent knowledge of it as set forth in Scripture; but how good it is to be according to His mind no one can easily exaggerate.
Now, when we come together where the Lord Jesus Christ gathers His saints to His name, it is His own presence that fills our hearts and thoughts. Christ is the Center, and He is as well the Object. It is to Him the Holy Ghost gathers, and it is on Him the Spirit fixes the mind of the gathered company. Christ is there, and fills the soul. Suffer me very affectionately to press upon you that which is intended to characterize the first day of the week, and the Lord’s Table. Is it so, beloved? Or do you go there merely to derive a certain kind of satisfaction to your heart that you have broken bread and drunk wine? Which is it? Do you not see how possible it is to proclaim loudly, on the one hand, that we have escaped from system, and yet, on the other, to turn the very Supper of the Lord into little better than an empty form, a cold ceremony? That is the danger to which we are exposed: and if we practically divest it of the presence of Christ, of the fact that He is there; that we go there to remember Him, and be in His company, and under His leading; to sit before Him, and hear His voice; what a dreary void it all must be! Then indeed it might well be said, “They have taken away my Lord.”
It has been remarked, and I believe rightly, that what characterizes the presence of Christ is this: that in His presence we forget our heaviest griefs and our greatest joys. Both alike are outside. Why? Because we have then reached His presence who is greater than all. Thus it is that there is no remembrance of them for the moment. I do not say we may not return to them; but while we are there we are both abstracted and absorbed by His company; as it is said, “Lost in wonder, love, and praise.” In such a moment, strange as it may seem, silence is the most eloquent expression of the soul’s adoration. And when that silence gives way to an outpouring of the heart, “O Lord, we adore Thee!” is its utterance. If the presence of Christ commanded all the company; if every heart were riveted and enraptured; if every soul were entranced by the greatness of the One who takes His place in the midst; what a moment it would be!
It is well then to see how that the great central worship- meeting of Christianity is the Lord’s Supper. There is a peculiarity, a speciality, about it that attaches to no other meeting.
Further, the interest is not only in all these circumstances connected with the Passover, the institution of the Supper, the combination of the human and divine, so blessedly seen in our Lord Jesus Christ; but there is another point to which I desire now to direct your attention, a word used in the instructions given to the disciples; namely, “Where is the guest-chamber, where I shall eat the Passover with My disciples?” (v. 11). Observe how He particularly points to that one spot as that in which, according to His own mind, it was suitable for Him to eat the Passover with His disciples; and it was there He instituted the Supper. I cannot but feel—that there is something deeply characteristic about this word “guestchamber.” What does it mean? When He thus designated it, what did He intend to convey to their hearts, and (shall I not say?) to your heart and mine? Is He not speaking to us through this scripture, just as He spoke to them? He means simply this: that He was a Stranger here, and that we must be strangers too. He is showing us, beloved, how His earthly circumstances must form and determine ours. How touching! The Creator of all, He who formed everything, by Whom as well all is upheld, had not a spot in His own creation!
“A Pilgrim through this lonely world
The blessed Savior passed;
A mourner all His life was He,
A dying Lamb at last.
“That tender heart, that felt for all,
For all its life-blood gave;
It found on earth no resting-place,
Save only in the grave.”
Oh, may God by His Spirit revive the sense of this strangership in all our souls! We need it sadly in these days. There is a serious danger of our settling down and becoming acclimatized, as it were. The “guest-chamber” is our true position in a world where Jesus is not! It is a place where a man puts up for the night. The place bespeaks the character of the one who occupies it. He does not belong to the established order of things. With the blessed Master there, we can say –
“Though far from home, fatigued, opprest,
Here we have found a place of rest;
As exiles still, yet not unblest,
Because we cling to Thee.”
Verily, the truth that lies around this “guest-chamber” ought to speak to us as to our present place in this world, and be a distinct voice to us that we should manifest it more. Let Christendom have its costly buildings, its gorgeous temples; but the “guest-chamber” is the place that becomes the followers of Him who had not where to lay His head.
In the next place the Lord breaks every link with the old order of things. He says, “I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God” (v. 16). In this verse, as has been truly said, it is not now a question of setting up the kingdom, of establishing it as things were. He is about to establish things on a wholly new basis through redemption, through the work He was going to accomplish before God. These are deeply important and interesting circumstances connected with the celebration of the Passover and the institution of the Lord’s Supper.
There is another point here, which, though very sorrowful, it is still good and edifying for us to ponder. It is this: that where you find God most fully manifested, there you will always find man most fully exposed. This is a principle running through every part of Scripture; and what follows here is no exception to the rule: hence the Holy Spirit shows us the treachery of Judas, the wickedness of the priests, and also that which has a special voice to us; namely, the weakness of the disciples.
All would shrink from the treachery of Judas, and shudder at the evil hatred of the priests, the solemn witness to the intensity of religious animosity and malignancy, which know no bounds, and which exceed all else in the lengths to which they will go. This would be universally condemned by Christians, but many might pass over the sad witness here to how little reality there is even in the love of the Lord’s own. And, beloved friends, how solemn it is to reflect on that which we are here told obtained fast hold of them. What was it? A strife! (v. 24). Can it be possible at such a moment? Ah! yes; such is man at best; a strife, for pre-eminence too, in the presence of the most perfect manifestation of all its contrast in Jesus.
Oh, friends, what a thought, what a word for us! How the Word of God exposes us! How the presence of Christ and the grace of Christ find us out! “There was also a strife,” is the record. There were other things, but there was this. What a principle to intrude at such a moment! Does it not make one blush for very shame? Alas! what a picture of ourselves, what a witness of the material we are made of, friends. “There was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest.” Oh, the littleness of humanity, the littleness of even the best! How unblushing the impudence and insolence of the flesh! Oh, beloved friends, it is enough to break the heart, if we at all take in what we are capable of at a moment like this! For what have we here? The mighty God, who had emptied Himself, and become a Man, as a Man humbling Himself yet more. Thus, last week we had the mount of trans- figuration before us, and looked at Him descending from Tabor to Calvary, from the heights of glory into the valley of the shadow of death. It is in the presence of such grace that there is strife, the selfish assertion of the miserable, contemptible littleness of man. That is what we have here.
Let us now see how the Blessed One meets them. What does He say? Ah! beloved, Jesus was not like us. We are too apt to correct the faults of others by severity, by the lash, by cutting scorn. You never find that in Christ, and yet there never was one more sensible of the faults of others, because He knew them in His own divine mind. But, oh, the tenderness of His rebuke! What does He say? How does He deal with them? He brings Himself before them; points to Himself as the lowly One. The possession of lowliness like His, that is true greatness. The way to be great is to be lowly. Mark well His words: “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth” (vv. 25-27). Observe how He brings Himself in: “I am among you as he that serveth.” Oh, beloved friends, herein is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ! Oh, that somewhat of the savor of that spotless, holy, blessed, precious Person, in these beautiful ways, might reach us at this time, that there might be more of this companionship with Him, the learning of Him who is meek and lowly in heart, and thus the finding of rest unto our souls!
But there is not only the tender and gracious gentleness of that rebuke; for He looks upon them, and says, “Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations” (v. 28). How gracious! We know they would not have stood one hour with Him if His grace had not enabled them; and yet notice how He even gives them credit for what His own grace alone had wrought. Blessed Jesus! None like Jesus! Remember, too, they were about to forsake Him, and flee. How well He knew that! Judas sold Him, Peter denied Him, and all the rest ran away and left Him. Nevertheless, “Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations,” are His gracious words. May God in His infinite mercy fill our hearts more with the moral perfections of His blessed Son. Oh, for more constancy of soul in the company of Christ, to walk in His company, to learn of Him, to mark His ways! He never passes over anything in us; He loves us too tenderly and deeply for that; but He does not come, as it were, with an axe, and fell us to the ground. Oh, what a blessed thing it is to have to do with the Lord Jesus Christ in the grace and tenderness of His heart!
Permit me now to call your attention to the way in which the scene of His agony in Gethsemane opens, because it is in exact correspondence with what we have seen in other parts of Luke’s Gospel. I will just read the verses again, for there is nothing like having Scripture immediately before us.
And He came out, and went, as He was wont, to the mount of Olives; and His disciples also followed Him. And when He was at the place, He said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into temptation. And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed (vv.39-41).
Here again we have the great evidence of the Lord’s entire dependence as the perfect Man; for the perfection of a man is in the absolute dependence that marks him as such. That is one side of the perfection of Jesus. No doubt you have both here; but what specially and peculiarly marks Gethsemane, the scene of His agony, was this: that whilst He went through all in spirit with His Father; carried, as it were, in His heart, passed through in His soul, all the shadows of the cross that were flung upon His blessed path here, it was in His perfect, absolute dependence. And I do not believe it is without reason that it is recorded how He “kneeled down, and prayed.” I do feel, beloved friends, that there is great need to call attention to the attitude of prayer, the manner of prayer. They cannot be disconnected from one another. We do not, I believe, sufficiently take in its importance. Assuredly, as I have intimated, there is a distinct purpose of the Spirit of God in giving this record about our Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect Man; namely, that He kneeled down. I do not suppose that you will think I am overstraining the passage to say that the Holy Ghost calls special attention to the manner in which the Lord Jesus, in the perfection of His dependence as Man, approached His Father. For who, and what, is here set before us? A Man cast upon God, watching, weeping, praying; perfectly so. We see, too, that an angel strengthens Him. You know that did not go beyond His body. His body is strengthened to endure the excess of agony, to go through intense and inconceivable suffering. Thus He “kneeled down.”
Now, I suppose, when we draw nigh to God in our closets, we do not, at least when in health, recline on couches, or sit cross-legged upon chairs. I cannot imagine for a moment any person privately in his or her own room drawing near to God in that manner. Why, then, should we do it in public? Why should there be such a sharp contrast between our mode of private prayer and our manner of public prayer. Do not, beloved friends, in your minds and hearts, resent my calling attention, to this. It has been asserted that, having escaped from the meshes of superstition, we have fallen into irreverence. We ought to take to heart, and learn from, such a statement. There are many things said that are not true, but we ought to take into account, and draw instruction from, everything. Thank God, we have escaped from superstition; but it does not necessarily follow that we should therefore be irreverent. I am sure there is some ground for the charge alluded to; but if there is the realization of the presence of Christ and of God, of the soul’s being in His presence it is difficult to conceive how one can be lacking in reverence either of spirit or of posture. Even in this poor world, when a subject draws near to an earthly sovereign, who has only a fleeting life in his breast, there is every mark in the approach that betokens respect for the dignity of the royal presence. Oh! let what is here recorded rest upon the hearts of my brethren: He “kneeled down.” Think of Jesus on His knees! Yes, the perfect, blessed Man kneels down, perfect in the spirit of dependence as well as in its attitude.
“And He was withdrawn from them”—alone with His Father in the isolation of that moment. Herein is the perfection of Gethsemane, and the agony of our Lord Jesus when, in company with His Father, He passed in spirit through the whole weight of His coming sorrow. It is all in His spirit, and His perfection comes out in this too. Man and Satan were the cause of bringing about His death; but He knew how to separate between that which was of man and Satan, and to take from the Father’s hand the cup that was filled with the judgment of God. What marks the cross in contrast with Gethsemane is this: in Gethsemane He watches, and prays, and cries; as it is said, “Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard for His piety” (Heb. 5:7). His piety was the right estimation of the circumstances in which He was found. Because He was perfect He shrank from that cup which in subjection He drank. He shrank from it in the perfection of His own nature. His request that the cup might pass from Him was perfection. When the cross is reached, what marks that is a perfect calmness in undergoing judgment which no heart of man can understand; an unbroken calmness in a darkness that no human eye could penetrate. There is no agonizing, no weeping there; all is fullest submission, perfect subjection, bowing beneath the awful load, bearing it in His own body on the tree. Put the two occasions together, and see how perfectly consistent and beautiful they are; the perfection of agony in Gethsemane, the perfection of sin-bearing at Calvary.
Well, beloved friends, what a scene it is to dwell upon! One feels a kind of diffidence in speaking of it. The subject is more suited for adoration than discourse; but a solemn voice reaches the soul from the scene presented in this chapter, and one could not put it aside without seeking from God that we might dwell on it with reverence, conscious that the place is holy ground; that we might have ears to hear the voice that comes from this Blessed One in the perfection of His dependence, in all that agony as He takes the cup from His Father’s hand: “The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?”
May God by His Spirit, in His own infinite grace, apply it in all its deep significance to the heart of each of us here this evening. He can read to us the lessons that it teaches. I commend it to you affectionately and earnestly; and I would count upon your love in receiving any little word of exhortation or of warning that has passed from one’s poor lips to-night; assured that He would have us learn from, and be exercised about, every little thing connected with Christ’s glory and His truth.
May God bless His Word; may He bring home to us this wonderful scene, and fill our thoughts with it, that we may get a deeper impress in our souls of the Blessed One who is perfect Man as well as perfect God, for His precious name’s sake.
Chapter 7: Luke 23:1-49
The closing scenes in the life of our precious Lord Jesus Christ are here set before us, beloved friends, in the aspect in which the Gospel of Luke was intended by God to present them, and I invite you to dwell upon them for a little with me this evening.
We were looking last week at Gethsemane, and even though it has the appearance of repetition, permit me just to recall your attention to the difference between the agony in the garden, and the scenes recorded in this chapter in connection with the crucifixion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is deep blessing for our souls in dwelling upon, and getting an understanding of, the nature of both.
Now, what marks Gethsemane (as we have, I trust, already seen) is this: that Satan—who, you will remember, had departed from Christ for a season after the temptation in the wilderness, after the Blessed One, in the perfection of His own position in dependence upon God, had gained the victory over the tempter, had bound the strong man—Satan here returns with all the horrors of the impending death and judgment that were before Christ; he comes back again, wielding a power which he had acquired through the sin of man—“the power of death.” The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us this: “That through death He might destroy {annul} him that had the power of death.” As a usurper Satan had gained that power. Man sinned, turned away from God; death came in; and Satan, profiting by man’s disobedience, acquired that power, and he wielded that power until the Lord Jesus Christ in death annulled him who had it:
That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Heb. 2:14, 15).
Here, then, in Gethsemane, we see Satan presenting death in all its horrors, seeking to bring that in between Christ and all His perfection as Man before God, upon whom He leaned in perfect dependence as a Man. That is what constitutes the agony in the garden. It is hardly, beloved brethren, a subject to discourse about, but more one to think of upon your knees before God. But when you gaze on it; when you dwell on it here; when you see Him praying, watching, agonizing; always uninterruptedly dependent; never anything but Man perfectly cast upon God, wholly leaning upon God; taking the cup from His Father’s hand—“The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?”—shrinking from it, as it were, in the perfection of His holy nature; accepting it equally in the perfection of the same dependent Man; how it strikes you as being most mysterious and wonderful!
When we come to the cross, when the cross is actually reached, He goes through that terrible hour in all the calmness and quietness of One who had in spirit traversed the road before. There are these two things; what comes out in Gethsemane is the perfection of dependence; what comes out upon the cross is the perfection of subjection. Dependence marked Gethsemane, its anguish, and its agonies, in Luke; subjection, and superiority as Man, marked the cross. Hence we shall, when we come to look at it, see that the Lord speaks peace to the poor thief, and that He calmly commends His spirit to His Father. Death is to Him but the occasion of perfect communion, perfect fellowship, perfect rest of heart as Man with God. Because, observe—and it is well just to keep these things before the mind—in the Gospel of Luke it is not the aspect that you have in the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew He is the Victim all through. I do not mean to say that He is not this in any record you look at: He is everywhere a Victim, in that sense; but there are special aspects of His sufferings recorded in each gospel. It is the victim character in Matthew, the servant character in Mark; in Luke it is everywhere the perfect Man; while in John He is a divine Person all through. Therefore each gospel, according to what the Spirit of God had in view in the writing of it, adheres strictly and accurately to the special aspect in which the Lord is set forth. It is quite characteristic of Luke that he does not speak of the abandonment: you get that in Matthew. Luke does not say the Lord was not abandoned, but he does not record that fact. The same event is narrated, it is true, but with a different aspect, and from a different point of view. There is, of course, only one death in all the gospels, but Matthew records the abandonment. Hence he gives the Lord’s cry, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me.” Luke omits this; his object being to record the perfection and subjection that characterized Christ as a Man. Having previously, in the perfection of dependence and communion as Man, gone through all the suffering in spirit with His Father, He comes out as perfect master of the situation, and death becomes the occasion to Him to commit His spirit into His Father’s hands: “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit” (v. 46).
You notice that the chapter begins with the charge which they bring to the Roman governor, Pilate, against the blessed Lord. They accuse Him of saying that He was a King. What was their object in bringing that accusation before Pilate? When the Lord was before the chief priests and scribes it was another thing. Nothing would so arouse the prejudice, the hatred, and the animosity of the Jews as for Him to assert that He was God’s Son; because that was to claim the Messiahship, the very thing they would not allow. But to accuse Him of saying He was a King, to bring that charge against Him, was to excite the jealousy and prejudice of the Romans.
Thus did the Jews seize on the very thing that suited their mind. It was they who railed on Christ, saying that He made Himself the Son of God; and now it is they who cry before the Romans that He says He is a King. This, they know, is the point to which Pilate will attach the most importance. Oh, the subtlety of the heart of man! How cunningly it adapts all occasions to its own wicked ends! How it presses everything into its service! It is a solemn fact that there is no hatred in this world equal to religious hatred; no hatred so bitter, blind, and relentless as religious hatred. It is grievous to think that such a principle should assert itself even amongst the saints of God; and I ask sorrowfully, Is not the history of the Church, in this respect, a solemn, sad witness of the fact to which I thus call attention? See how it is manifested in Israel, in the Jewish nation. What impelled them on? Deep-seated religious hatred. Their terrible, deadly animosity against Christ consumed them, and therefore we see everything pressed, as it were, into this service. They seek to arouse the sensibilities of the Roman governor, in order, if possible, to depreciate the Blessed One. They will, so to speak, act upon every feeling in every breast to depreciate Him. Oh, the depths of the wickedness of the human heart! The awful, hidden, secret depths of the heart of man! What is it not capable of? “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? “I the Lord search the heart.” None but God Himself can get to the bottom of what moves in that deep well.
Now, all these things drop into their places here. That is how the chapter opens, with this accusation before Pilate. There was a measure of truth in what they said and yet it was false in the way it was presented. There is many a word spoken in this world that is true, which is pressed into the service of falsehood. How often a person tells the truth to hide the truth! There is no greater falsehood in this world than that. It was perfectly true that Christ was a King. He is the King of kings; He will wield the scepter of universal empire. “There shall be one Lord, and His name one.” “The Lord shall be King over all the earth.” “He shall reign for ever and ever.” “He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end.” See Zech. 14:9; Rev. 11:15; Luke 1:33. All this is true: it was false as they presented it. Their object was to bring forward His kingly titles and glories as if He were asserting them in order to subvert the Roman power. There is the point in which the untruth was. It was perfectly true He was a King; it was perfectly false that He was asserting His kingly claims at that time in order to set aside the Roman government. There could have been no foreign yoke on the Jewish nation except for Israel’s sin. They were an enslaved people because of their sins. There is nothing more solemn than to see how continually that was brought before them. On another occasion the Lord said, “Show me a penny.” What did He mean by that? If there had been the smallest lingering exercise of conscience in them, looking upon a Roman penny ought to have wrought conviction of their state. As a proof of their subjection to a foreign yoke, it ought to have brought their national sin before them, and would have done so had there been any real sensibility left in their souls.
I would remark, in passing, that it is very helpful for us as Christians to see that there is no power in this world but what God has ordained. That would settle a thousand difficulties for you if you bowed to the Word of God. It is not a question of whether the power is good or bad. The Christian’s place is to be in subjection to the civil magistrate. Why? Because there is no power except of God, the Source of all power. Scripture is very distinct and plain about that. “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation” (Rom. 13:2). If you remember who it is that has allowed the power, your duty in respect of it is simple and plain. How is it we are now living under the power of the fourth beast? God has put power into the hands of the Gentiles, and the Gentiles are responsible to Him for the exercise of it. We have nothing to do but to own the power, and to see God behind the civil magistrate. The blessed Lord, as Man on earth, recognized in this way the Roman power. His own words are precise and distinct as to this:
“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17).
The Roman yoke was brought upon the Jewish people directly in connection with the government of God. Therefore, for Christ to assert His own authority to set aside the Roman power would have been for Him to deny the very thing upon which He was insisting. Still, He was a King; but His kingdom was not of this world, and the time for Him to wear the crown had not then arrived.
I am now about to call your attention briefly to three things. The first is this: Whatever part we trace of His blessed life, whatever portion of the history, the sacred record, of our Lord Jesus Christ we study, we shall always find in the presence of each fresh incident that man is fully exposed. You cannot look at any part, whether His glory, or the sufferings and sorrows of His path down here in this world, and not find this solemn reality. So it is here. There are in this chapter three great instances of the condition in which men are found today. There is Pilate, there is Herod, and there are the Jews. Now, I find mankind classed under these three heads, and it all comes out here in each of them. Look at Pilate for a moment. He was said to be a cruel man; but, as far as we know, he had no enmity against Christ. On the contrary, he would have released Him if he could. Certain things moved that man. His natural conscience was uneasy; he was not at rest. His wife’s dream troubled him. He had the conviction as a judge, “That is an innocent Man. He is not guilty of the crimes laid to His charge.” All these things acted upon his conscience. His own sense of things asserted strongly an innocent Christ. How markedly without excuse did the evidence leave him, that at his bar was One without guilt. He knew, too, that for envy the Jewish people had delivered Him. And then his clear-sightedness as a judge must have told him that things were laid to the charge of the Blessed One which He knew not. Yet see what a history is set before us in this. Look at the struggle that went on in that man’s soul. Look at the various bidders, so to speak, all collected there in connection with this moment. What is the real secret of it? Why could he not gratify his natural conscience? Why not cast the die in favor of the Lord Jesus Christ, and free Him as One in whom there was no blame? Why not? Because Pilate could not afford to give up his friendship with the world. That was the secret of it. You remember the words recorded in another gospel, “If thou let this Man go, thou art not Caesar’s friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar” (John 19:12). If you set Him free, if you allow your natural conscience to rule you, if you listen to the voice from heaven which your wife had in that dream, if you go according to your own sense of right as a judge, you will lose the friendship of Caesar.
Oh, what a voice there is in that for our souls to-night! Is there not many a person in this company morally situated as Pilate was? Your conscience touches you; you would like to be on the side of the Lord Jesus Christ; you have had numbers of intimations of various kinds which have reached you; you would like to stand up for Him, would like to be His friend, would like to be on His side: but then there is the world; you cannot give up the world; you cannot break with it, cannot part company with its friendship. How many here may be in that position this evening! How many there are in this great city who would be on the side of Christ except that they cannot break with this world’s friendship! They cannot give up their Caesar. “If thou let this Man go, thou art not Caesar’s friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.” The moment Pilate heard that word, the die was cast; that was what decided it; and he determined to hold to Caesar; so he gives up the spotless Jesus “to their will.” Awful words! How God shows us what is at the bottom of our hearts! How He opens to us the secrets that are down there! How He, as it were, unlocks the chambers of the soul! How He comes to us and lets the light in, and shows us all the motives that work there! That is what I read in Pilate and the conflict of his feelings.
In Herod, the apostate king of apostate Israel, we see an unmixedly wicked man; a vile, wicked wretch, without a single redeeming feature in his character. Therefore the Lord does not answer him a word. I do not know anything more solemn than the interview between Christ and Herod. The Lord answers Pilate: there is no enmity in him. He also answers Caiaphas, because of the oath of God; but not a word does He utter to Herod. It is an awful thing for God to be silent to us. Better far that He speak to us in a voice of thunder, than not at all. Oh, what a thing it is when God is silent; when, so to speak, the sky over our heads is leaden, and there is no voice, no sound! Well did the psalmist pray, “Be not silent to me; lest, if Thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit” (Psa. 28:1).
Ah! that is the meaning of all this. If God is silent to thee; if God speaks no word in thine ear, ah! it is as if thou art given up for the pit. This is what the case of Herod brings before us. What a voice of the Lord has this dealing with Herod for our souls!
Then, what we have in the Jews is not only that terrible religious hatred and enmity against God and Christ, but, in another aspect of it, the world’s choice as well. Pilate says to them, as it were, Well, now, choose between these two. Here is the spotless One; the One in whom I find no fault; against whom I can record no indictment; the One who went about doing good, who spake as never man spake, whose miracles and words of kindness, whose goodness and compassion, are well known on every side: and here is Barabbas, a convicted thief, a robber, a sedition-monger. It is of necessity that one should be released at the Passover.
It is well to understand there was that custom of commemorating the intervention of God on behalf of the nation. A prisoner was annually released in remembrance that Israel had been released by God in former days. Moreover, there were two back doors, as it were, open before Pilate. One was Galilee. He heard that Christ was a Galilean. He says, as it were, I will keep my friendship with Caesar, and pass Him over to Herod; He belongs to Herod’s jurisdiction. Here is the Passover coming too. I must release one then. Shall I liberate Barabbas or Jesus?
That is the course multitudes of people are pursuing to- day. God only knows whether there is one of that character in this company to-night. If so, permit me to ask, Is not that exactly what you are doing? Your mind runs in this way: “I do not want Jesus Christ; I do want religion; I could not do without religion; I must have my religion; I would die for my religion; I must have my form of Christianity; but I cannot afford to have Jesus Christ! I will keep my religion, but I do not want Christ nor His cross.
That is exactly where the world is to-day. The world cannot do without its religion. There is what is called the religious world. Strange combination of terms! And there is the world of religion; but they do not want Christ; they will not have Christ. They want to have happiness without Him. Forms and ceremonies are an advantage to them; they can profit by such; they will go in for them to any extent—the more of them the better; but Christ is not wanted, and He is not welcome. “Not this Man, but Barabbas.” God may be thus speaking through His servant to some souls in this company to-night; some perhaps preferring their sins and follies, vanities, lusts and passions, to God’s own Christ. That is exactly what is set forth in the choice of the world. “Not this Man, but Barabbas.” Is this, dear friends, your choice? You have your Barabbas in some shape or form, but it is the very contrast to Jesus Christ, the very opposite to Him. The Barabbas of to-day is no doubt of a different character from the Barabbas of former days; but then or now, the world’s choice is not Christ. “Not this Man, but Barabbas,” is its voice still.
I trust that now you see how humanity, in every shape and form, stands out here before us. But there is a class of persons different from all these; namely, the daughters of Jerusalem, who indeed display much feeling at the sight of Christ’s sufferings, but entirely apart from faith. The distressing circumstances of that Blessed One simply aroused their human sensibilities. As McCheyne sweetly sings —
“Like tears from the daughters of Zion that roll,
I wept when the waters went over His soul;
Yet thought not that my sins had nailed to the tree
‘Jehovah Tsidkenu’: ‘t was nothing to me.”
I know that at this present moment there is a power by which it is very possible to work upon human feelings; but it is of no profit. You may work upon human feelings to such an extent that people will weep and wail; but when the excitement is past there remains no real impression on the soul. What we want are the tears of conscience, tears at the back of the eyes, so to speak, deep down in the inner man, which no eye sees but the eye of God. That is what is wanted; not the mere stirring of the natural feelings, which are ever evanescent, have no continuity in them, but quickly pass away.
Observe the grace of the blessed Lord here, the self- forgetful love of His heart—“Daughters of Jerusalem,” He says, “weep not for Me.” They did not understand the cross; they knew not what was coming upon themselves; but He adds,
For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” (vv. 28-30).
Those days did come, though I admit that the Lord’s prophecy was only partially fulfilled, and that it will have a fuller accomplishment by-and-by; but if you would read a dark and bloody page of history, sit down and read the account of the sack of the city of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus, and you will gaze on horrors that will strike to the very bottom of your soul, horrors only to be exceeded during that time of terrible tribulation which is yet to come.
“If they do these things in a green tree”—He was the green tree Himself—“what shall be done in the dry?”—that dry, apostate Israel without God, that sere and sapless tree fit only for the fire. That is the meaning of these two expressions. The dry tree was the withering, ripening-for- judgment, spiritually dead state of Israel. When they are fully manifested as dry and apostate, ready for the burning flame, what will be done then?
Now let me draw your attention to the last subject in our scripture, a part of it so deeply affecting to our souls—the immediate circumstances accompanying the crucifixion itself. First, you will notice that there was no infamy, no shame, no amount of opprobrium, too great to heap upon the spotless One. They first hang Him upon a gibbet; and I say “gibbet” for a special reason. We must look at things as they really are. We speak of the cross, and God speaks of the cross; but I sometimes think there is very little realization of what the cross means. The cross has become a fashionable ornament in Christendom; people decorate their persons with the cross. Yet what was the cross but a gibbet, the Roman mode of capital punishment—a cruel, shameful, scornful, hateful kind of death?
They hanged Him, then, upon a tree—“Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” It was not, as we know, the Jewish way of punishing criminals. We learn from the Old Testament Scriptures that when an offender was put to death by the Jews he was stoned. But to be hanged, to be placed upon a gibbet, was a Gentile, a heathen mode of execution; and thus it was they handed Christ over to the Romans, saying, “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.” The heathen Roman soldiery were little better than savage executioners, and were unrivaled for brutality and cruelty. They placed the Blessed One between two malefactors, proving what I have said before, that there was no amount of ignominy, scorn, and shame, too great to invest Him with in that moment. And therefore the Holy Ghost records here: “There were also two other, malefactors, led with Him to be put to death. And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified Him” (vv. 32, 33).
Now, Calvary means “the place of a skull”—token of the end of humanity on its own side. This is what man is reduced to, an empty skull. If you look at him in his natural state he is morally but a sightless skull. Alas! what nothingness, what vanity, marks man in his own condition at best. It seemed suitable that they should come to this place, Calvary; and there it was they crucified Him, and the two others with Him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.
And here, beloved friends, you find a thing that never was known till now—a crucified robber jeers at Him! It had never before come to this, that a man in death would laugh and scorn and ridicule another in death by his side. No such thing had ever been known until you come to the crucifixion of our precious Lord Jesus Christ. A robber, suffering the extreme penalty of the law, by His side, despises Him, contemns Him, sneers at Him, rails upon Him. Oh, what a scene! Oh, what is man not capable of! What will he not do in the presence even of God’s own precious, spotless Christ! It seemed to be reserved for that moment for man to exhibit all his worst where love endured its last. That is what comes out here. And you will find another thing, too, which I would particularly lay upon your hearts; namely, the marked way religious nature is seen. There is such a thing as religious nature as well as irreligious nature. Wherever you find mere natural religion, or the religious yet natural heart, you will find what is expressed in that word, “If thou be Christ, save Thyself and us” (v. 39). It was but the expression of the natural heart at such a moment. How solemn to witness it!
There has been for a considerable time a doctrine abroad, which perhaps has received a little more impetus of late, that, by the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, fallen and depraved humanity is connected with God. Though largely held by a certain class of professing Christians, it is a doctrine by which man is left in his lost estate and guilt, and Christ and God are dishonored. Its keystone is this: that the blessed Lord, by taking manhood into God, made that manhood the medium of communicating life to the souls of sinners; that He now does this by the sacraments, that which He Himself performed in the days of His flesh; that the eucharist communicates life to him who receives it, inasmuch as the body of Christ is really present in the sacrament. I may just say that these sacraments by which the blessings of incarnation are thus continued are administered by men who call themselves priests, these persons professing to be in an unbroken line of succession from the apostles.
What a solemn denial of the truth is this! There is no way by which man can have to do with God save through death and resurrection. No, beloved friends, the Lord Jesus Christ’s own words are full and distinct as to this: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone” (John 12:24). Mark this, I beseech you. Short of His death and resurrection there is no connecting of man with God, no being brought to God, no righteous ground upon which God can come out in all the deep, unutterable love of His heart, and take man up in a new order of things altogether. Hence it is we find His death and resurrection so brought out in Scripture. Christ as Man has taken, in glory, an entirely new place through death and resurrection. Thank God, He can now bring us there, He can give us title to be in that place, He can have us with Himself in that place; but that is the very opposite of the anti-scriptural fable of Christ’s union with sinful humanity.
What follows here is exceedingly touching. Thank God, we have often dwelt upon the history of the poor thief who was convicted and saved, and who went with Christ into Paradise; and I would not for a moment lessen the blessedness of that in our hearts; but there is a side to it that is increasingly precious to me when I think of his case. I desire to reiterate what, through grace, we have known and held; namely, that it is the great instance of surpassing, sovereign grace. This man was crucified on a gibbet; but no matter, as has been said, gibbet, or no gibbet, when God and the soul meet we have the simple and immense fact that the soul is brought at once into His presence. Mark well the words that come from his lips at this moment: “Dost not thou fear God?” not, “Art thou not ashamed of being a thief?” Here was grace that wrought in him as well as—what we also see here—grace that wrought for him. Christ was bearing that man’s sins before God, and the Spirit of God wrought conviction in that man, and repentance and faith corresponding to the work that Christ wrought for him. The work was done by Christ for him, and there was also a work done in that man by the mighty power of the Holy Spirit of God. We find here sovereign grace working in the man, and we find as well the sovereign grace that gave Jesus to do the work for him. What could be more blessed, if the Lord Jesus Christ had taken the sinner’s place, than that the sinner should be entitled to take the Savior’s place. That is exactly what we find. Christ had taken the sinner’s place, and, in virtue of that, the sinner is entitled to have the Savior’s place. Christ says, “To-day.” Oh, the blessedness of it! There is no theme out of heaven so grand as this. “To-day.” An immediate reality! This is what God meant by the sufferings and death of His own precious Son: “To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise” (v. 43). It is as if the Blessed One had said, Not the kingdom yet. True, I am a King; true, I have a kingdom; true, I shall wear a crown; but before the kingdom comes, and before the crown is worn, you will “be with Me in Paradise.”
That is what God meant by the cross, and that is what God can do for poor, vile, wretched sinners that trust in Christ. Is there a poor, lost, unforgiven one here tonight? In a moment, in a twinkle of the eye, in virtue of that wonderful victory of the Lord Jesus Christ, He can take you into heaven; Observe, too, one leading character of the Gospel of Luke here, even the bringing into present blessing: so perfect is the work of Christ that this thief taken up for his crimes was that day made absolutely fit for heaven. “To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.”
And there is more even than that. I have looked at the conversion of this thief, not only as an instance of sovereign grace, as a proof of what God meant by the cross, but in this way also: that at that moment God had a balm prepared for the heart of His precious Christ. Oh, the blessedness of it! God had this balm there in this poor thief; a poor, vile malefactor; so bad that the world was getting rid of him. And that is all the world can do: it can put men on gibbets, or shut them up in prison. A man thus shut up comes out from prison the same as he went in, save by the grace of God. The world cannot change a man’s nature. I quite grant the power of the civil law to be all right with respect to human government and authority. I fully believe that evil-doers should be dealt with by the strong arm of the law; that murderers should atone before men upon the gallows. I have not a question of it. That is all in place according to the sword of government entrusted to the hands of the Gentiles. But that accomplishes nothing for a man’s soul. A man goes to prison, and, except the grace of God work in that man’s soul, he comes out the same as he went in. Neither the gallows nor penal servitude will ever reach a man’s soul. Nothing but the mighty power of God will do that.
But how blessed to meditate on the case of that man hanging beside the precious Christ of God on the cross—a murderer, notorious for sedition and robbery, and no doubt for villainy of every kind! In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, that man passes from death to life; and in all the misery and wretchedness of his soul he turns to Christ, and says, as it were, I will reverse all the verdict against you, all the judgment against you. You are a King; you have a kingdom; you will wear a crown; you are coming to reign. I am only a poor thief; let me wrap my soul in your eternal perfections. “Lord, remember me.” Oh, what a balm for the heart of Christ that was! What a blessed, wondrous cheer from God for the heart of His own Son in the very first moment of His victory in death, that one should be hanging upon that cross who was the comfort and solace of His heart amidst the contempt, the jeers, the scoffs, the scorn and ridicule, all around!
That is what I read in this story. I do not want to lessen the sovereign grace, the work of the Spirit of God in the conscience of that man, and the work of Christ for him upon the cross; but beyond that think how it delighted God at that moment to minister comfort to the heart of His own beloved, suffering Son.
At the last stage of this great transaction there is darkness over all the earth. How suitable it should be so! God and Christ were alone there. This scene had been pictured long before in these words: “There shall be no man in the tabernacle of the congregation when he goeth in to make an atonement in the holy place” (Lev. 16:17). Though that darkness was emblematic, in a certain sense, of the darkness that rested on the mind and heart of the nation at that moment, the terrible state and condition of darkness that rested morally upon Israel, yet doubtless God intended to abstract His Son in that hour, that no eye should see what passed between Him and Christ when the Blessed One bore the judgment of God against sin.
Another thing went along with this. The veil of the temple was rent. That marked the passing away of a different kind of darkness. God had said that He would dwell in thick darkness; but now He dwells in it no longer. Previously God was hidden, though He acted. He was concealed behind the veil; but now He reveals Himself in the death of Jesus, and by means of that death. How blessed! The veil of the temple, which separated God in His holiness from man, and shut man in his sins out from God, was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; that is, from God to man. Could anything be more blessed? Yet man is to-day endeavoring to put that veil up again. That is what a large portion of Christendom now desire to do, to set up that veil again between God and man. The veil was rent in twain as soon as ever Jesus died; but people in our day want to put it up again, to put God in the darkness, and man in the distance from Him. That is the great object of the largest portion of professing Christendom. I hope I shall offend nobody if I say it openly and plainly here to-night. The genius of both popery and ritualism is to put God in the darkness and man at a distance. You have it in these two systems, the essential genius of each being distance from God. But here the veil of the temple was rent in twain; not removed to be put up at another time; not rent, observe, from man’s side, as if man were the abolisher of it, but rent from God’s side. The only One who might rend it was the One who erected it. God had erected that veil, but now He rends it. It is rent in twain from the top to the bottom.
One thing more, which is also characteristic of the Gospel of Luke. Jesus cried with a “loud voice.” Why is that recorded? Why does the Spirit of God dwell upon that here? In order to show that our Lord Jesus Christ retained the full, undiminished, unchanged strength of His manhood; that, in the full possession of all His powers as a Man; not wasted, not worn out with suffering; His strength in no sense deteriorated by what He had gone through; but in the full vigor of perfect humanity He cried with a “loud voice,” and said, “Father.” What a beautiful word! Perfect communion, perfect repose, perfect subjection of spirit in all the rest of the heart, even though death was there; but a death that truly was only the occasion of His commending His spirit into His Father’s hands. How beautiful and blessed to dwell upon this!
The Lord give our hearts to abide here in the sense of His infinite grace. In this lies the power that wins our poor, cold hearts. It is a suffering Christ that wins the affections. He wins us, attracts us, in suffering. It is when the heart rests on Him as thus suffering that we can exclaim —
“Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all”
God, in His infinite grace, set before us His suffering, precious Son in all the blessed perfections that mark Him as a Man, and keep Him before us, that we may see the folly and vanity of all else in the light of that cross, the nothingness of all the great schemes of this world. All its plans and glories are here measured and estimated at their true value.
Lord Jesus Christ, set Thou Thyself as the bleeding, suffering One before all our hearts, for Thy precious Name’s sake.
Chapter 8: Luke 23:44 - 24:27
My desire at this time, beloved friends, to connect the wonderful scenes pictured for us in these chapters by the Holy Ghost; but before doing so I wish to direct your thoughts back for a few moments to what follows the subject upon which we were dwelling last week. There is one thing in particular that I am anxious we should linger over, and contemplate all the blessedness of to-night, because it so peculiarly characterizes the Gospel of Luke. I refer to the closing utterance of our Lord Jesus Christ: “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit” (Luke 23:46).
Now, as characteristic of this gospel, it was the crowning act of the manifested dependence of a life of perfect trust in God. All through the Gospel of Luke, as we have seen, Christ is presented to us as Man perfect in subjection and dependence in all the great events of His life: perfection of subjection and dependence characterized Him as a Man. He is ever found in the blessedness of these two characteristics throughout this precious narrative; and we should bear well in mind that they constitute part of His glory as Man. Need I say He ever was God over all, blessed for evermore? but He was pleased in His grace to take this place as Man before God, and therefore He finished His human life in all the perfection that marked the position He had taken. The word “Father,” issuing from His lips at such a moment, carries with it unspeakable blessedness to the heart, which bows in adoration as permitted to listen to it. It is a wonderful word to dwell upon: “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” Oh, the infinite character of all the blessedness that it here sets forth—Sonship in perfect communion, unabated confidence and trust in God His Father as Man in death!
You will not fail to observe how different this account is from all that is recorded in the other gospels. For instance, in Matthew the divine record in every detail very markedly sets Christ before us as the Victim undergoing the abandonment of God. It is of course, the very same scene as that depicted here; there was only one scene, as there was only one Person; but the Spirit of God (may I say so, with holy reverence?) delights to set before us the many sides of the moral glory of the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is, then, His complete abandonment that Matthew records, that wonderful judgment which the Blessed One underwent upon the cross, as the Lamb of God bearing the wrath that was due to sin. Therefore the utterance that characterizes the account given in Matthew’s Gospel is, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
Now, that is not noticed here; it is not what was required in Luke’s presentation of the Lord. Of course, again I repeat, it was the same scene; but it is another side of it which is presented here, even the perfection of the confidence and trust that ever marked Him as a Man, and now in the presence of death. Death was but the occasion of the manifestation of such confidence in His Father and God; and thus it is He commends His spirit into His hands.
Another thing important to bear in mind, as we linger over this word, is the note of victory that is sounded forth. We are here permitted to listen to the Victor’s voice, the Conqueror of death, through death! death submitted to in victory, and the foundation laid for that which will yet be as thus expressed: “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54).
I may at this point say that there is a scripture which is too often quoted in an incorrect connection. You remember it is recorded of Hezekiah, that when he had recovered from his sickness and the exercises of it in his soul, he said, “The living, the living, he shall praise Thee” (Isa. 38:19). Now, it is well to remember that that is Jewish blessing. Christian blessing is of another order.
There is no subject more important to understand than the character of blessing set forth in Scripture. It is this which makes the scene in Isa. 38 so peculiar. Hezekiah, no doubt, was a true servant of God; still, all his links were down here on this earth. Therefore, to him death was intolerable. It was the severance of every tie that bound him here. It was perfectly in keeping with his position and order of blessing to say, “Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption”; again, “The Lord was ready to save me”; and again, “Death cannot celebrate Thee” (vv. 17, 18, 20). It was the character of blessing suited to that time. But in what is now before us we have the winning and inauguration of another order of blessing entirely, the ground laid for heavenly blessing.
Here we gaze on Himself, the Lord of glory, victorious over death; not an Hezekiah snatched back from the gates of the grave, rescued from the very grip of the enemy, but Himself the Lord, who underwent death, and was victorious through it. “Father,” then, expressed His perfect confidence in, and dependence on His Father in the presence of death; so that death became simply the opportunity to display that dependence which ever characterized Him as Man down here on this earth, in most perfect and blessed contrast to all that ever went before.
There is a remark in the Gospel of John to which I will refer; and I would invite you at your leisure to compare all the gospels. Do not seek to harmonize them. Verily they never disagreed! In their record and witness there never was any divergence. Nothing but perfect unity of account and revelation could mark them. You will miss the real mind of the Spirit of God, and the blessing and comfort of it for your souls, if you adopt that process. What is said in the Gospel of John is, “He dismissed His spirit.” That is, as a divine Person, He separated His spirit from His body. He could do that, because He was God. In Luke, as Man, He commends His spirit in perfect confidence to His Father. In Matthew, as the Victim, He bows His blessed head, accepting the judgment, and completing all His atoning work by His death. It is peculiarly the divine side in John. He Himself is the One who in John’s Gospel separates His spirit. Therefore the word employed there is, “He dismissed His spirit,” after having fulfilled everything that was written of Him.
It is only thus, then, that you get the knowledge of the mind of God in Scripture; you get out of Scripture what God put into Scripture, and you get all the blessedness of Scripture. It is not putting into Scripture something out of our own minds. You will find as you look at the gospels in that way, and indeed all the records that God has been pleased to give, whether in the Old Testament or the New, every blessing God unfolds in them.
Not unfrequently one little word is characteristic of the truth that is given. The word “Father” here is quite characteristic of Luke. It shows Christ’s Sonship with the Father; dependence, confidence, trust, as Man with God. Oh, what an atmosphere it takes us into! May our souls love reverently to contemplate it, to dwell upon it, remembering the place the blessed Lord took. He who was God, was pleased to become Man; and He kept that position, maintained it all through His blessed life on earth.
The next thing we have in this twenty-third of Luke is the effect of the cross on conscience, and that in a twofold way. The Roman centurion stationed there to watch the crucifixion completed, is the great witness of the power of the cross on conscience. The effect and power of what his conscience took cognizance of in connection with the death of the Lord Jesus Christ forced the almost involuntary testimony from his lips as he gazed upon Him. “Certainly this was a righteous Man” (v. 47). Oh, the power of the cross! both internally and also externally. I am bold to say there is no power on earth or in heaven equal to the power of the cross. The effect of it on conscience, heart, and affection is beyond man’s power to describe. There is, in very truth, nothing like the cross, whether we look at it here in its effects on the conscience of the centurion, or upon the crowd; for there was this testimony as well: “And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned” (v. 48). They were wholly unable to understand it, yet they were struck with the fact that something had taken place beyond the usual order of things. God was pleased thus to give proof of the power of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Further, at His burial, all the circumstances were providentially arranged and brought together in the most blessed way. First, a naturally timid man is at that moment emboldened to come and link himself with the Lord Jesus Christ in death. Joseph of Arimathea was apparently a timid man, and does not seem to have been before associated with the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. But God in His wonderful grace was now pleased to give the man the courage suited for the occasion, and he comes boldly forward and begs the body of Jesus. Secondly, Pilate, who would have been only too glad if he could have kept his character in the world, and have released Christ, gives up the body, because there was no enmity in his heart.
Thus we have these three things beautifully put together by the Spirit of God: the affection of the women, the courage of Joseph, and the willingness of Pilate, the man in whose breast there was no enmity.
There is also another thing here; and that is, the honor of the grave. There is no such thing now as the honor of the grave. It was a Jewish thing entirely. Burial was very important with the Jews, because I have no doubt it was, in their earlier history, a testimony to the fact that they were to possess the land. They were charged not to leave Joseph’s bones in Egypt. You remember how they brought his bones up, no doubt in testimony to the expectancy of resurrection in the land. But the resurrection of the Lord Jesus was to be the end of all that. An altogether new order of things was to come in now. That is what brings us to ch. 24.
I will now just call your attention to three other things in the verses we have read together to-night. The first is the occasion itself. What a day it was! In all the previous history of the world there had never been such a day as this first resurrection morn. It was the brightest day that ever dawned on this poor sinful earth. Think of it for a moment. These are the three great realities brought before us in the commencement of Luke 24: the risen Lord, the empty tomb, and the rolled-away stone. I am speaking of it now exactly as this chapter presents it to us. First we see the risen Lord, in his victory and triumph. He arises, as it were, with the fruits and spoils of His conquest. He had been through the night of judgment, entered the gates of death, passed through the confines of the tomb, finished everything He came to accomplish. You remember how the former creation was celebrated with the Sabbath in its beginning; but now the grave of God’s Son was at its close. We here come to a totally new thing. We behold a risen Man, yet who was, and is, God over all, blessed evermore (Rom. 9:5). If we contrast with this the record of the Old Testament Scriptures respecting the worthies of former times, whoever they may have been, what do we find? Why, just this, that with regard to every one of them, however long he lived, it is written, “And he died” (Gen. 5). Even as to Methuselah, the longest-lived of all in the days when human life was prolonged far beyond the length of human life to-day, the statement is that “he died.” That is the undeviating record.
Now, thank God, we come to what is altogether new, an entirely fresh and blessed reality: “He . . . is risen” (v. 6). This is indeed the new beginning. As has been truly said; “This is the second volume of our history.” God grant that every one of us may understand it! Christ’s death closed the first volume of our history, all that we were. The second volume, which opened with His resurrection, is filled up with all that He is. Volume one is the record of all that we were as children of Adam: our sins and wretchedness, our guilt and vileness, fill, as it were, its pages, a sad and solemn record of man lost and guilty before God. It is the record as of a night of darkness without the relief of a solitary star. They are blotted pages from the commencement to the end. The second volume is filled with the glory of His own person—His finished work, and all that He is in the perfection of His victories. Oh! to be well versed in the magnificence of this wonderful record of His glories, Himself the second man and last Adam.
Another thing that marks this resurrection-day in contrast with all former periods, is the blessed way in which the triumphant One has everything in His own hands, so to speak. You cannot read the account of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ without being peculiarly struck with this. We see Him now lifting every load out of the way, a blessed proof that He held things in His own hands. He had left death and judgment eternally behind Him, and is now the risen One for evermore. “Death hath no more dominion over Him” (Rom. 6:9). He is the Conqueror of death and the grave, and in this sense it was emphatically “His hour.” Contrast that for a moment, beloved friends, with what went before. You re- member how He said to them: “This is your hour, and the power of darkness” (Luke 22:53). That was man’s hour, and, oh, how he used it! how he wrought in it! Man then showed his littleness and powerlessness to the full; displayed himself in all the smallness and vileness of what the creature is and can do. “This is your hour.” And man went on, until God took the whole proceeding into His own hand, until the three hours, when Christ met God about sin, and God dealt with Christ about sin. God and Christ were alone during those three hours. As we draw near to gaze by faith on “that sight” we seem to hear the solemn words, “Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy.” What a moment that was, when God as God forsook Christ as Man! That is what marked those memorable hours. And note how God put His own seal on the perfection of that work which was there wrought out. God expressed in a very remarkable way His perfect satisfaction with all that His blessed Son had consummated. Do you know what that was? We were dwelling on the subject a little last week. He rent the veil of the temple. That was God’s striking answer to the cry of the suffering Savior. How blessed in adoring love to dwell on the complacency of His own heart in what Christ had done on the cross!
God was pleased to express His satisfaction in a twofold way. No one can say there was an interval between Christ’s precious death and that significant rending of the veil. He dies; the veil is rent. The two facts synchronize; they take place at one and the same time. Now, observe it well, whilst this was the end of the Jewish system as such, it constitutes also a clear and full witness to the falseness of popery and ritualism. The veil was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. Christendom desires to put it up again. Thank God, they cannot accomplish this end. “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever” (Eccl. 3:14). As I have already said, this was God’s blessed testimony to the value, as He measured it, of the work of His own Son, whilst it was the death-knell of all that connects itself with human, earthly religion. I am bound in faithfulness to bear my witness—though I do it without the smallest desire to wound the feelings of any—that the practice of a large part of professed Christianity at this moment is but a virtual re-erecting of the veil. How solemn to return to that which was done away in the death of Jesus! Mark it well: God rent the veil. He did not remove it, nor withdraw it, nor roll it up from the bottom, nor lower it down from the top: it was rent in twain. The Blessed One died, and the veil of the temple was rent; and in connection with it is disclosed that of which previously there could not have been, and had not been, any type. Until the veil was rent, there could not be a type illustrative of the way into the holiest having been opened by His death. This is blessedly set forth in the rending of that veil, an action which, like the wonderful work it bore witness to, is never to be repeated.
Let me here direct your thoughts to what may be called a very distinct public testimony to the fact that redemption was accomplished; namely, Christ’s glorious resurrection from among the dead. “The Lord is risen indeed” announced this great event amongst His own on that blessed morning. That this might be said, had been the fear of His enemies: “Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while He was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulcher be made sure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night, and steal Him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead” (Matt. 27:63, 64). “But God raised Him from the dead” (Acts 13:30). How simple that is. This, then, was God’s great public manifestation of His absolute satisfaction with the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore it is so truly and blessedly said, that the resurrection is the fundamental truth of the gospel. It is the great public demonstration of the completeness and efficacy of the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is true that His own remember their Lord in His death, but in fact the risen Lord is the glorified One. He who was on the cross and in the grave is now in glory. A crucifix, then, is the denial of the truth of the gospel: it is an attempt to fix the eye on a visible and superstitious representation of Christ in death, and that as well the death of shame awarded Him by man. There is at this moment, thank God, a living and glorified Christ. He is alive out of death, and seated upon the Father’s throne, at the right hand of the Majesty on high; above all, “Head over all.” The Lord in His grace give us to see the immense importance of this truth. May He keep our souls from slipping away from it. There is in us a tendency to return to earth and earthly things; and there is always opportunity in that direction.
Thus, then, the Lord is here seen in His perfect triumph and victory as the risen One; but there is something which is in saddest contrast with that which I have said was the brightest day that ever dawned on this earth, and which was beyond all appreciation in its blessedness. Look at the twenty- fourth verse: the hearts of His disciples, His followers, are broken, afflicted, despondent; nothing but gloom seemingly settling down upon them. Think of this, too: the apostles, the chosen and sent ones of Christ, not being in the very least degree in unison with the occasion! They are really in perfect contrast with that glorious day. They are all in the darkness of uncertainty; the gloom of death and the grave enshrouded their spirits, even though resurrection was come, and Jesus was alive again for evermore. They could not sing —
“Jesus lives! no longer now
Can thy terrors, death, appall us;
Jesus lives! by this we know
Thou, O grave, canst not enthrall us.
“Jesus lives! henceforth is death
But the gate of life immortal;
This shall calm our trembling breath
When we pass its gloomy portal.”
There was a combination of circumstances that operated to bring about their discordant state of soul. First of all, it is most solemn to think that the words of the Lord Jesus had been forgotten by them. The apostles’ state seems to have been, as to this, the darkest of all. The perplexity of unbelief covered their hearts and minds. The tidings of the women, as they returned from the sepulcher, had no place with them; all seemed as “idle tales.” Those shining ones that met these women at the grave said, “Remember how He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered His words” (vv. 6-8). They had certainly forgotten them.
Oh, what a voice all this has for us; for how often do we forget His words and sayings! Is there one here to-night who has forgotten His words? That is why you are sad—full of gloom and despondency. You have forgotten the Savior’s words; they have ebbed away out of your hearts. Is it, then, strange that you should be in wretchedness of heart and perplexity of soul?
“And they remembered His words”; and thus it was all was changed for them: they can now put on the garments of praise. It is very blessed to see how they left the sepulcher at once when they remembered His words.
“We cannot linger o’er the tomb:
The resurrection-day
To faith shines bright beyond its gloom,
Christ’s glory to display.”
They “returned from the sepulcher” (v. 9). That is one great change now effected. How it shows us the power of the words of Jesus! Now we have them written, praise the Lord! We have them in what is called the “Word of God.” We have the very words of Jesus.
It is truly saddening to dwell upon the state of the apostles here, and I only return to it because of the importance of the lesson it teaches us. It is instructive to see the plight into which servants of Christ may get. Alas! what poor things we are. What is possible for us either on the side of blessedness or failure is indeed wonderful. In this scene the servants appear in greater darkness and distance than all the rest. It seems as if there had been greater difficulties in the way of connecting them again with Christ than all others. The one chief in this seems to have been Peter, who, coming and looking down into the tomb, simply wonders and departs. Do you remember his confession? Taught from heaven, too; divinely illuminated by the Father, Peter, in answer to the Lord’s question, “Whom say ye that I am?” replies, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:15, 16).
Well may we say, “Ah! Peter, you have forgotten your confession, you have forgotten the revelation from heaven of the Father’s mind that reached you.” How can He be still in the grave, if He were the Son of the living God? That word, “The Son of the living God,” implies resurrection; and yet here is poor Peter all in the dark as to it. Ah! beloved friends, this is what we all are. Even the apostle, blessed man as he was, is amazed to see that the Lord Jesus was not there. He “departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass” (v. 12).
Another circumstance contributed largely to bring about this state of soul, and the consequent darkness that rested upon their hearts; that is, they were really looking for something down here in this world. Beloved friends, nothing will more certainly, more surely produce a state of wretchedness in your hearts than looking for something on earth. Nothing else will so effectually keep the soul out of its true blessing, and for the simplest of all reasons: our blessings are all in another place.
“There above is our life and glory,
There will shine an endless day.”
Let us now turn our thoughts for a moment to a brighter side of this subject; namely, how the Lord meets the low condition of His chosen ones. It is wonderful and blessed to dwell upon His matchless grace and goodness, and to see how He deals with the folly and blindness of His poor people. What a comfort it is to be enabled to say to one another to-night, “He never will give us up.” For ever blessed be His name! Alas! how quickly we can give one another up. But He never does so.
Now, observe, they were going away from Jerusalem. They were leaving the then center of God’s interests upon the earth, the place of His name and grace; they were going away from it, and He follows them, saying, as it were, by this very act, “I will never give you up.” May God by His Spirit enable us to appreciate such blessed grace as this. Forgetful, unbelieving, unintelligent as they were, yet He never will abandon them. Oh, beloved friends, that is the blessed grace that here shone forth! The very opposite to this only too often marks ourselves: we are selfish and self-seeking, even in God’s things.
Further observe the skillfulness of the love of Christ. There is nothing so skillful as love. It is to our shame we have so little divine love in our intercourse one with another. The reason of our clumsiness in dealing with each other is because we have so little love. “Love is of God,” and again, “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:7, 16). Love is the power that moves the heart and guides the hand: it is this that wings the words from the lips of one into the soul of another. A remark of the late Dr. Guthrie will illustrate this point. “A man,” said he, “may point like a lifeless finger-board along a road which he neither leads nor follows; but it is what comes from the heart of the speaker that reaches the heart of the hearer; like a ball red hot from the cannon’s mouth, he must himself burn that would set others on fire.” Some amongst us, alas! seem to glory in putting the waning spark out; the destructive principle appears to rule their ways.
Oh, the skill of the Lord’s hand! How He draws them out in all His tenderness, in all the grace and compassion of His love, and leads them step by step along the way. Well indeed may we sing:
“His is an unchanging love,
Higher than the heights above,
Deeper than the depths beneath,
Free and faithful, strong as death.”
Think for a moment, too, of the way in which He ministers to them, after He Himself has kindled those desires in their hearts. He does not let them go alone. He comes near to them, but their eyes are holden that they should not know Him. He draws out their hearts, deals with their affections, brings them on step by step. He lets them tell their own tale. Listen to it: “Art Thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? And He said unto them, What things? And they said unto Him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and have crucified Him. But we trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to- day is the third day since these things were done” (vv. 18-21).
Having allowed them thus to tell out their thoughts, He then in His grace begins to deal with them. Mark His first words, and their solemnity: “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken” (v. 25). What a voice is in these words! He further says, “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?” (v. 26).
You will not, I trust, fail to mark how the Blessed One in these words combines His sufferings and His glory: in these words a rejected and heavenly Christ is set before us, and all that Moses and the prophets had spoken are connected with Himself. It has been well said, that this should bind round our hearts every jot and syllable of God’s Word. How blessed to have pressed on us the mind of God in Scripture relative to Christ. No doubt there was to be redemption by power; but redemption by blood comes first. Even as to the blessed Christ Himself, death must come in, if God were to be vindicated, and man fully blessed. And there is not only redemption by power, but a new and heavenly life, of which they had no thought. What filled their minds was the redemption of Israel by power: they were looking for a kingdom on earth. They were influenced by selfish consideration for themselves alone, and by the essentially earthly character of Judaism. But the Lord connects the Scriptures with all that happened to Himself: “Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (v. 27). It has been blessedly said that “He awakens that ardent attention which the heart feels whenever it is touched.” Think of that Blessed One thus conducting these poor hearts through “all the Scriptures.” We may well say of this:
“It were a well-spent journey,
Though seven deaths rolled between.”
The theme here is “Himself,” and verily His name runs like a golden thread through every part of God’s Word. Oh! beloved friends, have your hearts found that out? Christ is the center of Scripture; He is the center of all the thoughts and purposes and counsels of God. If you have not Christ simply before your soul you can never understand the Scriptures. I find Him everywhere set forth in type, and sounded from the harp of prophecy, through the roll and sweep of centuries. The heart that knows Him, and loves Him, delights thus to find Him. As He is the center of all Scripture, so He is of such a heart. It is challenged as to Him: “What is thy Beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?” and without delay it is replied, “My Beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand . . . His mouth is most sweet: yea, He is altogether lovely. This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend” (S. of S. 5:9, 10, 16).
Now, I observe and mourn over a growing tendency in an opposite direction to that set forth in these words so important for us, “All the Scriptures.” This is baneful in a double way; first as to Christ, for all the Scriptures testify of Him; next as to our knowledge of and interest in Scripture. Our being partial in knowledge creates the tendency to exaggerate on one side or the other. You may rest assured of this, that all exaggeration (if I may so say) of truth, springs from a partial knowledge of the Word. That which alone can preserve us from this is, giving all the truth its due place. That which hinders us giving all the truth its place is, the not having all the truth ourselves. When I say “not having,” I mean not consciously through the ministry of the Holy Ghost. If you have only a part, the mind is biased, and its tendency is to exaggerate that part to the exclusion of much else. We should seek, beloved friends, by God’s grace, to be kept from this. The limitation of partial knowledge assuredly hinders our seeing all Christ’s glory, and deprives our own souls of precious blessing.
Bear with me in pressing on you this danger of exaggerating any part of truth from simply having only a part; and do let that little word, beloved friends, sink into your souls, “All the Scriptures”: “Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” How foolish are we to desire or accept less than “all the Scriptures,” when God has given us all! Be assured of it, when you have Christ before your soul as the center of the Scriptures, the center of the counsels and purposes and mind of God, it is indeed well. All the Scriptures testify of Christ, and point to Him; all the counsels of God revolve around Him; and it makes a wonderful difference if, instead of looking at the Scriptures in reference to yourself, you look at them in relation to Him. I remember so well how that very thing delivered me from a false notion. It is now some years ago. I remember seeing how Christ was the center of the thoughts and purposes and counsels of God, the center of all Scripture. I remember how it set me free from the thought that the elect were the center of the mind, purposes, and counsels of God. No; it is not so. It is in this our souls get balance. If you have Christ before you, you have God’s balance. This is what we need; and it is truly blessed to have the truth communicated by the ministry of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, and to see Christ everywhere, in “all the Scriptures.”
The Lord in His grace affect our souls with the record He has been pleased to give to us of this precious and wonderful scene of resurrection glory. May He fasten it on our hearts more really than ever, according to the skill of His hand and the grace of His heart; and thus bless us just as He did the feeble souls in those days.
Chapter 9: Luke 24:28-53
When last together, beloved brethren, we got as far into this closing chapter of the Gospel of Luke as that part where the Blessed One is seen expounding to those sorrowful travelers, in all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself. That was the point to which our thoughts were led last Tuesday evening: the risen Lord, in precious grace, showing how Himself is set forth everywhere in Scripture. And I was trying to impress upon you these two things: first, that we need “all the Scriptures” — not merely part of Scripture, not merely certain portions of it, but all—and, secondly, that the second Person of the blessed Trinity is in every part of it; the united testimony of the Word as God has been pleased to give it to us, and Christ the center of it: “Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (v. 27). Only permit me again to emphasize, it was Himself in His own person in Scripture.
Now, we are told that their eyes were holden, that they should not know Him; and there was a distinct purpose of God in their eyes being holden, as we shall see presently; but the Blessed One is seen here connecting the Scriptures with Him- self, and all that happened to Himself. That is what was before us last week.
I would invite you this evening to consider with me three distinct points presented in the rest of the chapter. The first is, the kindlings of His grace in their souls; the lighting up, as it were, of the fire of divine grace within them, so as to make their hearts burn. May I ask if your hearts have ever been thus on fire? What a wonderful thing it is when under His kindling the heart burns! I grant you it is not everything; I quite grant it is not the fulness of the blessing, but it is the highroad to it; it is the grand commencement and spring of the divine work in the soul.
Then comes the answer to it in the manifestation of Himself as risen. That is our second subject to-night. He had not, as far as we are aware, yet made Himself known to them as the very One who was risen. Their eyes were holden. He traced throughout the Scriptures the testimony to Himself, but He did not as yet stand truly and really as risen before them.
The third and last subject of the chapter is His departure.
These are the three subjects; and I think the three places spoken of here would answer to the subjects—Emmaus, Jerusalem, and Bethany. These three places will help us, by God’s grace, to fix our thoughts on the subjects: the words of His grace to their souls; the manifestation of Himself to them as really risen, and the consequences of it; and then the platform from which He left this world, the place to which He brought them out, and from which, having blessed them, He went up on high.
Well, now, seeking the blessed Spirit’s help, let us look at these for a little, and we shall see how they bring Himself in His person before us. Look at these kindlings: what a fire His love sets burning in their souls! Oh, beloved friends, it is a wonderful thing to think of it! He does not leave them. They were slow and foolish, slow of heart indeed, to believe all that Moses and the prophets had spoken; but He never gives them up. What a comfort to your souls and mine: He never will give up His own. It is a blessed thing to hold fast to all this grace of the heart of Christ. He will never give up even the feeblest of His own. He does not leave them. He does not say, as it were, There, I leave you now! You have turned away; you have become hard in your hearts. On the contrary, as we have seen, He went after them, He journeyed with them. And what is He doing all the time? Why, what He does still. He is making Himself necessary to them, indispensable to them. How often one hears that word—and has used it one’s self—“That is indispensable to me.” Now, there is but One that is indispensable to us, and that is Jesus. There is but One worthy of that place in our souls, and that is Christ. Christ is indispensable to us. There is not a thing in this world we could not do without; but you cannot do without Him. He is verily the indispensable One. We often think we can manage without Him, and then in all His blessed love He allows us to find out our insufficiency, and deals with us in His love, and leads us to discover that we cannot do without Him; and thus we sing —
“As weaker than a bruised reed,
We cannot do without Thee;
We want Thee here each hour of need,
Shall want Thee too in glory.”
This unfailing love of His is what kindled the fire in their souls; and there was besides all the wonderful skill of His love in doing it. Love, if I may so say, is the most skillful operator in the world. He draws their hearts out, and He goes with them and lights up this fire. Observe how easy it would have been to extinguish it. I grant it was but a little spark; still He, so to speak, fans it, ministers to it, adds the fuel of His grace to that little flame which He Himself had kindled. And then mark what happens. As they journeyed they drew near to the village whither they went, and the evening was upon them; but He (oh, the blessedness of it!) had become necessary, oh, so necessary, to them; this mysterious Stranger, who had walked that road with them, had so imprinted Himself upon the fleshy tables of their hearts; He who had walked as the unknown Stranger, as far as they were concerned, had so got possession of their affections and souls, that when the moment comes that He would withdraw, when “He made as though He would have gone further,” then it was that they “constrained Him” (vv. 28, 29).
Oh, beloved friends, how blessed all this is! The deepest love was manifested in that action of the Blessed One. If you look at it merely from the outside, you would fail to see the blessedness of it. But He drew off that He might draw out. Though He essayed to leave them, His heart was toward them, and He had so got into the affections and souls of those poor disciples that they cannot go in without Him, and “they constrained Him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent” (v. 29). How gladly He goes! That is why He drew off. For ever blessed be His name, He loves to be constrained. He kindled the fire in their souls, and when thus He had opened the door, so to speak, He went in to abide: He was constrained.
It is the same in respect of ourselves. We can have Christ by faith with us now. And it is an immense thing to have His own blessed person spiritually with us; to have His company, His presence, and to know He is with us according to His word, “I will not leave you orphans, I am coming to you” (John 14:8). And we need the sustainment and comfort and joy of that blessed presence. He conducts us, and leads us on step by step. What a blessed reality it all is! It is not that it belongs to a chosen few. Far from it; it is the portion of all His people; it is for you, beloved friends. You may have Him in your home as your Companion, your Friend, to walk beside you, to solace you, to cheer up the lonely moments of your life. How blessed it is! “Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.” Do you think it was difficult to constrain Him? Do you suppose He wanted much pressing? He wanted just as much constraining from them as kindled into a holy flame that ebbing fire in their hearts. Then, we are told, “He went in to tarry with them” (v. 29). He became their guest; for I have no doubt they entertained Him. Oh, did they not in a deeper way entertain Him? Beloved friends, there is nothing entertains our Lord Jesus Christ more than a weary, desolate heart that turns to Himself. You can bring nothing to Him so attractive as a weary, heavy-laden heart. So He was entertained in a double way. He was entertained, no doubt, because of the circumstances. They were broken-hearted, sad, cast down. He accepts the external entertainment set before Him. He went in, and while He sat at meat with them He took the initiative. He can never go into any scene where He is not first and last. But He took, as the head of the house would, the bread into His hands, and He broke it, and gave to them.
Now, that was not the Lord’s Supper. It is most important to have correct thoughts as to the Lord’s Supper, but this was not the Lord’s Supper. It was the ordinary meal they were partaking of here; but nevertheless it was the breaking of the bread which the Blessed One was pleased to make to their souls the sign of His death. As He broke that bread before them, the reality of His death on Calvary’s cross passed from the symbol in His hands, by His own power in its reality, into their souls. He brought Himself before them, as the One who had been dead.
Now you see the object of their eyes being holden until this moment. Had they recognized Him, and known Him, and accepted Him previously, it would have been a kind of substantiating of all the Jewish thoughts and aspirations which were so alive in their souls. They are to know Him as the One that died, the One who passed through death. And hence it was that until now their eyes were holden. Now would come the overthrow of everything that was merely egotistical in Judaism, and it was this very thing that ruled in their breasts at that time. They must now know Him as the One that died and rose again, as the One alive out of death. He broke the bread before their eyes as the risen One, and immediately their eyes were opened. But the moment He, by this symbol, conveyed Himself as the risen One really before their eyes, He vanished out of their sight. How blessed and how wonderful to think of it! What they had been looking for, what had moved in their souls before, was as expressed in their words, “We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel” (v. 21). What had slain all their living hopes was His death, the fact of His death. It was the death of the heir to them; and their hopes, which centered in earth, were all broken up and scattered to the winds, as we say, by His death. But now God has led them on in His wondrous grace; Christ, in His wonderful love, has led them step by step to this point. There He was Himself before them in His death, in symbol, yet as the risen One; their opened eyes rested on Him thus for an instant, and then the Savior vanishes out of their sight.
Let us now look at the consequences of this for a moment. There are two things that are perfectly beautiful here. “They said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?” (v. 32). Now, I do not think we ought to depreciate that. I am always afraid of such depreciation. We ought not to make little of it, and yet we ought not to make everything of it. What was it made their heart burn while He talked with them and while He opened the Scriptures to them? Was it not Himself? Do not tell me that anything He does is small or trifling. It was He that did it. It was He that lighted that fire, He that kindled that flame. It was His love that struck, as it were, the match in their souls.
All these exercises, under the Lord’s blessed hand, conduct to that which next comes before us—communion. But you must have burning to lead to communion; you must have burning of heart to lead to communion of heart. That is the road to communion. The heart is set on fire by the kindlings of the love of Christ; the heart is delighted as the word comes from His own blessed lips, and He conducts on to this moment. He Himself is before us, really and literally back from the dead, a living Person. That is just what it was with them. What made all the difference now is, that Himself is there before them. Not merely Himself in Scripture; because that is what you do find: He had been before them in Scripture, in His own interpretation of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms. And what a wonderful interpretation of Scripture that must have been! Not a flaw in it! Oh, what divine harmony and perfectness as He conducted them through the Scriptures, and said, as it were, I am there; and I am there; and I am there! Not a scene that He did not fill; not an event of which He was not the crowning figure, so to speak; not a circumstance that did not revolve around Him. But He, in His own blessed person, is now really before their eyes. It was more than report, it was reality now. He is there present to the gaze as alive from the dead, alive out of that death which He had undergone in the deep, eternal love of His heart for them; Himself having changed everything, altered everything, and brought in an entirely new order of things. Then it is they rise up the same hour of the night. Farewell now to weariness! It matters not that the day was far spent, that the shadows of the evening were cast upon their path: “They rose up the same hour” (v. 33), to go to the very place to which He was going. That is communion. They have got into communion now with His own thoughts. That is why I spoke of the beginnings of the kindlings of His love in their souls; and the culmination and issue of it is, He brings them to the place where He was Himself going.
Thus, then, it is we have got to Jerusalem. Observe how you are called back from Emmaus, where the kindlings began. And that which marks Jerusalem is, the manifestation and full revelation of Himself as the risen One, the manifestation of Himself as the One alive out of death. It is this which characterizes our second subject tonight. And so He comes into the midst of the apostles and disciples as they were assembled together. And note this, for it is exquisite: He connects Himself in their souls with all His risen glories, all the magnificence of the victories which He has won, and of which His resurrection is the great witness, as seen in the One whom they had known down here. That is what forms the first great part of this subject. It is the same Jesus. There is no change in Him. True, He had gone into death and come out of death; true, He was risen from the dead; true, He had passed through the portals of the tomb, and, being raised from the dead, dies no more; true, He has a glorified body; but for all that He was the same Jesus; and that is the great point in the second subject tonight. He connects Himself in resurrection glory with Himself as they knew Him as He was down here in this world. “But they, being confounded and being frightened, supposed they beheld a spirit. And He said to them, Why are ye troubled? and why are thoughts rising in your hearts?” (vv. 37- 38).
Did He ever say that to you, beloved friends? Did He ever stand beside you in the troubles and sorrows of your heart, in the trials and exercises of your souls? Did you ever hear His voice saying, “Why are ye troubled? and why are thoughts rising in your hearts?” Do you know what can put that all away? Two little words will banish for ever everything of that kind from conscience and soul. Those words are, “I myself.” Oh, what words they are, “I myself”! “Why are ye troubled? and why are thoughts rising in your hearts?” What we find here disposes of all that kind of thing. “Handle Me and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones as ye see Me having” (v.39). He establishes the fact of the identity of the Person standing before them, risen from the dead, with the very One they had known and walked in company with down here in this world; but mark it well, He is leading their souls to know Him in other parts of His glory. That is a beautiful word in the Epistle to the Colossians, where the Holy Ghost says of Him, “Who is the Beginning” (Col. 1:18). Oh, beloved brethren, what glories are involved in that word, what glories circle around that word, “Who is the Beginning, the Firstborn from among the dead”! How blessed to think of it! In Adam fallen we see the responsible man, we see the moral ruin, misery, and wretchedness, the decrepitude (may I say?) of humanity; but in the risen Christ we behold the beginning of all the new order of things that is according to God. The cross and the grave closed the history of the old; the open tomb and the resurrection morn began the history of the new, and He who began it must ever after give this character as such to all that is according to God in man. Hence He is the last Adam. That is to say, there never will be any other order of man than He: now risen, He is the last Adam. And He is the second Man, because He has closed the history of the first. He is the last Adam, because He in His own new heavenly order continues the history evermore; there will never be another. And that is what He is bringing their souls into the knowledge of here. He is setting Himself before them in those glories that pertain to Him as risen. He is, as it were, educating their souls into that, and therefore He points to these evidences, and eats before them.
Not only have we the establishment of the fact of Himself risen, but a very blessed thing connected with it too. You find peace and the foundation of it; peace and its foundation. Now, it is a grand thing that peace rests, and that peace is established, for its eternal immovability, upon such foundations as are here. Hence He announces it: “Peace unto you” (v. 36). This is His first word when He comes into their midst. Do they question it? “He showed them His hands and His feet” (v. 40). There was the price of it, the purchase of it, the foundation of it. There was the grand, eternal stability of it, the immovability of it. Is there any power on earth or in hell that can remove these marks in the Savior’s hands and side? No more can you take away that peace in evidence of which those marks were here displayed. He announces peace, and points to its evidences, those marks in His hands and side. How blessed! Is there any one here tonight who has not peace? Some one says, “That is only the gospel.” What do you mean by “only the gospel”? I would like to measure the value of all such expressions. Do you know that you can never get beyond the gospel? Never, beloved friends, whoever you may be. In it you are introduced to the heart and nature of God. I admit there are the counsels of God, fruit of the purposes of God, and that there is precious instruction in Scripture about them. But the gospel is the revelation, in this blessed Person and His work, of the heart of God Himself, and all that was connected with the manifestation and display of His nature. Is there any one here who has not known this? Is there a single soul in this company who has not peace? If such is the case, I will tell you why you have it not. You are looking into your own heart and feelings. Introspection as to the feelings of your own heart is the secret of it, the cause of your want of peace. And I will tell you more than that: in this lies the reason why the saints of God are not happy. I never knew any one to be made happy by looking within. Never! There is nothing but misery for saint or sinner by looking within. What gives peace is Christ’s finished work upon the cross. Look away, then, to Jesus, and to that great transaction accomplished for us more than eighteen hundred years ago. That, and that alone, imparts peace.
“That which can shake the cross,
May shake the peace it gave;
Which tells me Christ has never died,
And never left the grave.
“Till then my peace is sure:
It will not, cannot yield;
Jesus, I know, has died and lives:
On this firm rock I build.”
Observe how two sensations take possession of them here—amazement and joy: “While they yet believed not for joy, and wondered” (v. 41). And then He establishes the fact of His resurrection as a real Man before their eyes, by taking and eating a portion of broiled fish and of a honeycomb.
Another thing you find in connection with this incident is the true basis of faith; and I am very anxious to impress that upon every heart—the true basis of faith, which the fact of resurrection, the announcement of peace, and of the foundations of it, involve. You find two great elements in it here. One is the words of Jesus; the other is the Scriptures. I need not say that now His words are in the Scriptures. It will be well to read together v. 44 again, so that it may be impressed upon every heart. “And He said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you.” There you have His own words. They had listened to them, they had received them: “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me. Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures.” There also are the Scriptures. Now do you see the object of this? There are three things here. First, the words of Jesus for the true basis of faith; secondly, the Scriptures; and thirdly, their understanding opened by the risen Lord. So that they could say not merely, We have heard these words, we have heard Him say it, we have listened to the voice of His own mouth, but it must be so because God has said it. There is the real and true basis of faith. And they have received opened understandings as well — understandings illuminated and opened by the risen Lord Himself. The words of the Lord Jesus, now in the Scriptures as God has given them, constitute the ground upon which faith can always rest. Upon this precious, magnificent foundation which He puts under our feet we can indeed repose. How wonderful to think of it! It is not mere hearsay, nor the imagination of any person’s mind; but faith has for its immovable basis the very words of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the certainty of Holy Scripture, as God has been pleased to give it to us, as well as the understanding opened by the risen Lord. This was before the Holy Ghost came down. The Spirit of God had not yet been given, as you know; but their understandings were opened by Christ Himself, so that they could understand the Scriptures. And so He says, “Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (vv. 46, 47).
Now observe the wonderful grace displayed here. If there was a place on earth more wicked than another, more tarnished by man’s sin, more steeped in all the iniquity perpetrated in it, it was Jerusalem, yet there it was that God’s grace was first to be set forth! How blessed to think that there, where the Son of God had been cast out and despised, divine grace was to be first proclaimed! But this grace was to take in all nations, not merely one nation. The cross would be, as it were, the grave of Judaism as such, and would open the way for repentance and remission of sins to be preached among all nations, beginning at the spot which was, so to speak, the worst upon earth: “And ye are witnesses of these things” (v. 48).
This, then, brings us to our third point and that is, the Blessed One’s departure; and my object in speaking of it in this connection is to show how that marvelous mission of the disciples was to be carried out. Repentance and remission of sins was to be proclaimed world-wide, but in order to carry this out power was necessary; and therefore He says to them: “Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high”( v. 49). As if He had said, I have laid the ground of your peace, but now you want power. You have the peace, I pronounced peace and showed you the foundation of it; but you must have power in order to deliver this wonderful testimony, to preach it in My name amongst all nations.
Do you see why I connect this with the departure? Because I greatly desire that all our hearts should get a truer sense of the significance of those wondrous words, “power from on high.” Not power from earth; not power from learning; not power from education; not power from skill of any kind here; not power from or by men; but “power from on high.” And, as some one has said, and I believe it is perfectly true, “It is the power that is irresistible, and yet the easiest quenched, if He, who is Himself the power, the blessed Spirit of God, the third Person of the adorable Trinity, be grieved.” May we ever keep this in mind, even how the smallest unsuitable thing will check that power, will retard its exercise. The remembrance of that would bring us to where our solemn responsibility lies. Have we not frequently grieved Him? Have we not even in that to which it relates quenched Him often? Oh, how have we not, by our own ways, interfered with the manifestation of this power! Mark this a moment more, for that is all that concerns us at this time: this power is “from on high,” but not merely from the place to which He was going, but from that to which He was to be exalted. Power was to come down from the scene of His exaltation, and was connected with His exaltation. “Being,” says the Holy Ghost by the apostle Peter, in the Acts, after the blessed Spirit had come down,
Being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear” (Acts 2:33).
Thus we find that which is identified exactly with this utterance of the Lord Jesus here. And this “power from on high,” He distinctly tells them, was “the promise of the Father” (Acts 1:4). Now put those two things together. “The promise of the Father” —to whom, beloved friends? To Christ Himself. Not to us, but to Him, the exalted, glorified Man. “Having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He” (that is, Christ) “hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear.” That is to say, the Lord Jesus Christ, having accomplished everything as Man on earth according to God’s purpose, having fulfilled everything according to God’s pleasure as the perfect Man, and having gone on high, He, exalted, received from God, the Holy Ghost to give to others; as Man too, for He received this promise, He received the Holy Spirit, as the exalted, glorified Man; and the apostle identifies the very fact of His departure with that great reality.
There is here a kind of two-fold glory. The Holy Ghost shed forth is a proof of Christ’s exaltation, but the fact of His exaltation laid the ground for this coming down of the Holy Ghost. It is an important thing to bear in mind, for had we before us the Church, or Church truth, we should see that the Church is founded on ascension, not on resurrection. I do not mean that resurrection is excluded, but I do say, it does not go far enough, for that by which the Church is formed on earth is the Holy Ghost, who came down from the ascended, glorified Christ. There must be ascension, and exaltation as well, Christ as Man seated on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, before there can be the presence on earth of the Holy Ghost, by whom all the members are baptized into one body.
Further observe—and it is very interesting to notice it—how the Holy Ghost is designated according to the object which God had in view in the gospel. I do not know whether you have ever compared the gospels. If not I would invite you to do so; not to harmonize them; for, as I intimated on a previous occasion, harmonizing is based on the profane and irreverent assumption that the records disagree—the Lord pardon the thought! They have never disagreed, never differed. Why attempt to harmonize such records? But you can compare them, and if you do this you will find that in Matthew there is no mention at all of the ascension. We have Christ’s resurrection in that gospel, and then He goes into a mountain in Galilee, and meets the disciples there. In Mark it does tell us He ascended; and He presides, as it were, over the operations and service of His servants: Mark being the gospel of service. But the Gospel of Matthew being the dispensational record, it leaves off {concludes} with the remnant and Christ in Galilee. The Gospel of Mark shows us the Man gone on high, and presiding over the service of His people performed on earth. The Gospel of Luke shows you the Priest gone up on high. Hence I believe His lifting up of His hands is a priestly action. “He lifted up His hands, and blessed them” (v. 50). The Gospel of John speaks of the Comforter, the Lord Jesus Christ going to the Father, and sending down the Comforter to conduct the affections and hearts of His people into the Father’s house and the Father’s joys. But here in the Gospel of Luke it is connected distinctly with the Acts. This is Luke’s first letter to Theophilus; the Acts is his second. The first letter contemplates here what was coming: “Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high.” That power was distinctly in connection with the remission of sins; and the commission was to go out to all nations.
The Gospel of Luke records the commission under which every evangelist and preacher to-day through grace goes forth and stands in the mountains and valleys and highways of this world, proclaiming repentance and remission of sins. And mark, this commission comes, not from this man, nor from that, nor from so-called churches, nor from any assembly of people whatever. No, brethren, the servants of Christ hold their commission direct from heaven, from the ascended, glorified Man at God’s right hand. He is the One who calls them, and sends them when and where He will. To Him they are responsible; while, of course, those who hear, are likewise responsible to judge as to whether such speak according to God’s mind, as revealed in this Book. But it is an immense thing to keep these in their true order. I care not whether it be the greatest, the highest ecclesiastical person in the land, or the meanest connected with any body of people meeting together and calling themselves a church: all true commission in ministry under which the ministers of Christ act is neither of man as to source, nor by man as to channel. Here, then, is the commission, and the One who sends the servants — the glorified Man, Head over all things to the Church. Hence ministry is ever individual; whereas worship and praise and thanksgiving are in their nature corporate; and as surely as you mix these two things together you get into confusion.
And now we come to the positive act of departure, and we know it was from the place called Bethany. Now, it is not my purpose to say much about Bethany, and the Lord knows I have no desire to exaggerate it. I fear it has been exaggerated. As I have before observed, the exaggeration of any truth is very dangerous. It arises, I believe from not having the whole of the Scriptures before our souls. But yet Bethany comes in here in a very distinct way. “And He led them out as far as to Bethany, and He lifted up His hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven” (vv. 50, 51).
Bethany is, I believe, remarkable as the spot where He connects the affections of the remnant that were attached to Himself with the place whither He was going. He connects, as it were, the divine link which He had formed between the affections of the remnant and Himself, with that blessed place in heaven into which He was going. Therefore Bethany connected heaven with the person of Jesus. “He led them out as far as to Bethany.” I fully accept, for I believe it is perfectly true, that the character of all real blessing is as expressed in the words, “He led them out.” They describe exactly what must take place with every person who receives blessing of this order. And you will find that the more heavenly, the more distinct, the blessing is, the more you will have to be led out for it. “He led them out as far as to Bethany, and He lifted up His hands, and blessed them.” Could anything be more precious than to see the blessing coming from those pierced hands, the very same hands? Do you not cherish the thought that the Blessed One, after fulfilling the purposes of God, after accomplishing that which is the ground of the eternal blessing of His people, has carried His manhood up to the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, and there bears the nail-prints in His hands, and the spear-mark in His side, those marks which He will bear for ever as a Man; for it is the same Jesus? And, beloved friends, here is the great proof of it: He had His glorified body in the twenty-fourth of Luke, and He showed to His disciples in His glorified body the wounds in those hands; then He lifted up those wounded hands, and blessed them.
It has been beautifully said that the Gospel of Luke terminates in perfect keeping with the way it began. It opened by showing you the priest of the order of Levi ministering on earth in the temple, and closes with the Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek going up to heaven. The Gospel of Luke began with Zecharias but ends with Jesus about to enter upon the exercises of His priestly office on high.
One word further. Are there broken hearts any more? weeping eyes any more’? He has gone from them; He has left them. Ah! but He has gone to heaven, and see how they worship Him. Those closing words of Luke 24 remind me of what you find typically set forth in Lev. 23. You will see that there was a feast, and all that belonged to it preceded the Feast of Weeks. It was the wave-sheaf and all that belonged to the wave-sheaf, and following it was the Feast of Weeks. The disciples were waiting for the Feast of Weeks. He said to them, “Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high.” How magnificent the grace exhibited here! It was to begin at Jerusalem, and the power from on high was to come down at Jerusalem, the place of vileness and wickedness. Where the power of evil was most displayed, there the remission of sins was to be first proclaimed!
And now see the action: the disciples worship Him. Their hearts are linked with the heavenly Savior. They had been looking for an earthly kingdom; now they have a heavenly Friend. Their eyes follow Him into heaven, and they return to Jerusalem, the seat of God’s interests on earth, “with great joy: and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God” (vv. 52, 53).
The Lord in His grace give to our souls a corresponding sense of His preciousness, and set our hearts on fire, that we may show out upon earth what we have found in Him; and that, instead of mourning, groaning, and being dissatisfied, we may be bright and happy in His love.
And may He grant that our hearts and affections may follow Him to the place where He has gone, and that we may walk down here a little more in all the blessedness of His company there, and presence with us, until we see His face, and are with Him for ever, for His blessed name’s sake.
From A. S. Rouse printing, n.d.