-1-11. How beautiful to see the feeling yet calmness with which the Lord speaks of His mission and rejection, in the parable of the husbandmen!
The Lord does not at all address them here on the ground of His service in grace, which had been rejected and closed at His entry into Jerusalem. It was no explanation to His disciples or the multitude, that a Sower went forth to sow-the ministration of grace, fresh sowing on confessedly fruitless ground, a new work of grace which the Lord was really carrying on, but as One who came, after other messengers, to seek fruit on what was already planted. And this, of course, was the judgment of that people, though long patience had been, and was still shown before the judgment was executed. The judgment here was clear, plain, and solemn, addressed plainly to their consciences, including, for the whole scene was looked at, and declared His own rejection. In plain testimony by the word, His word-for He was still externally in such form of humiliation-yet faith sees the full and clear character of patient and true, according to the truth of God, yet divine judgment, the human rightness and suitedness to situation, yet divine dignity and power in the truth. Everything had been done for the vineyard that could be done. It was, alas! an old story this, but it had been put responsibly into the hands of the husbandmen, and the rightful Owner left it thus in their hands. He who had ordered it, and settled it all at Sinai, and under Joshua, had left it, with warnings too, in the responsibility of the rulers and people to keep up, and dress, and order. He sent His servant in season, that He might receive of the fruit of the vineyard, and they beat him, and sent him away empty. We have two things here-the Jews, specially the husbandmen among them, in their responsibility, not God in His own sovereign grace; everything however put in perfect order into their hands in arrangement, blessing, and security, and, further, the patience of God's dealings, sending messenger after messenger, doing everything while possibility remained, till they had rejected and cast out His own Son. The whole ministry of Prophets was there-a ministry of patience with man (whom God had hedged about-but) in his responsibility, and Christ's coming, supremely so. The Sower's grace, as we have said, is quite distinct. This mission of His Son was last to them in this their responsibility. There was further here the distinct charge that they recognized Him as the Heir, as He was, and in their responsibility, and in such must be left to themselves, only with every external advantage afforded, had sought to get the inheritance for themselves by the destruction of the Heir. But the abuse and rebellion of their responsibility did not take it away, but drew on the judgment when all patience in instrumentality was exhausted. There was a Lord of the vineyard-who had surrendered none of His rights, and if He had sent His Son in His great love to them, and in the glory of His own patience, would not leave Him unvindicated. They wished to have the vineyard and all appertaining to it on their own right, in rebellion. It was not merely want of fruit, but active revolt against God's own title, and setting up for themselves against Him, and this in direct question between His Son and them-Him who was appointed Heir of all things. Such was the position of man's will, when the greatest exercise of patient favor put the Holy, Beloved One of God within the reach of their malice. But the Lord of the vineyard could only thereon resume His rights-come and destroy the laborers, and give the vineyard to others. But it was not only an exhibition of the nature and will of man, which their conscience must testify to the truth of, it was the revealed and foretold conduct of the people, especially of the builders. It was clearly their case. It was the stone which the builders rejected, which was to become the Head of the corner. Did they set up to be builders-were they such? Such was the judgment of their own scriptures on them. And this, too, was the Lord's doing. How opposite then were the builders to the Lord's mind! It would be marvelous in the eyes of the people in that day. The whole of Psa. 118 is of remarkable application here. The whole passage is a wonderful judgment on them, and by the use of that very Psalm on them, till that Hosanna be sung, and He becomes, in full sense, the Head of the corner, and the gates of righteousness are opened to Him, and a willing people shall sing that " His mercy " has indeed " endured forever "-entering by what His supreme grace has wrought into this their morally, and long time actually desolate place, but now the gate of the Lord into which the righteous shall enter. How blessed, and excellent the ways which have purged the sin and evil, yet loved the people, and in full righteousness accomplished all the promises, vindicating His own glory and Name, and only the more exalting the despised Son! Yet in despisal, the witness of infinite grace! These men who ruled, but not of God, could do nothing; they felt they were judged, they disputed, they condemned, but they could do nothing. The hand of wisdom held them fast in their impotency. They would have laid hold on Him, but they feared the people. They knew that He had spoken this parable against them, and, leaving Him, they departed. They take judgment only in their questioning Him. He remains there, and they have to leave Him, ashamed. In what • dignified blessedness does the blessed Lord stand forth here in the testimony of what He was, before He gave Himself willingly up, i.e., how does the testimony shine forth in Him! They have to leave Him, completely judged and baffled. They send the Pharisees and Herodians that they might entangle Him in word. As they were baffled in the question of authority, they select certain of the Pharisees and Herodians, strict in their Jewish claims, and apostate in their recognition of the heathen world-all one, if they can entangle Him who came in grace- and they propose the question which tries just these two points. And as the scribes, elders, and chief priests questioned the authority of the King of Israel, and so judged themselves, so these laid bare the woes and sorrows of Israel, without feeling and remorse, in tempting, and to entangle the Blessed One, using their sin with Satan's malice to put down and silence all good and every hope. And they are left just where they were, in the confession of the sin and ruin they had brought themselves into; without more it was a sad and terrible leaving. The Lord has only to do this, and what is our fate? These poor creatures could afterward, when it served a moment's object and madness, cry aloud in self judgment: " We have no King but Caesar! " Their address was most, to our evil flesh, attractive, had that been in Him whom they tempted, for evil of heart ever in a bad way knows righteousness, and what is upright and good abstractedly, by a conscience bad by the opposite. " Thou art true, and carest for no man, for thou lookest not on the person of man, but teachest the way of God in truth." How far was this from them! How well they knew the good and its blessedness, by a bad conscience! Nothing, in one sense, knows it so strongly. But they were precise in their requisition of an answer, a categoric answer, letting out their evil in apparent simplicity. The Lord knew their hypocrisy, and called for the seal of their present condition, into which the same unbelief that rejected Him had brought them. He was now leaving them in it. They had rejected Him, and this was all they brought out. Often the saint, standing where his own place with God is rejected, has to answer by the admitted evil of another, i.e. when thus tempted- but this is different from the predominant energy and testimony of the Holy Ghost, for He was not to strive nor cry, and He had not, whatever the testimony to Him, left this character, nor would not, nor could not, till He was risen-but in deepest judgment this may often be. They gave, or rendered nothing really to God. The Lord left them now where they had brought themselves-under Caesar. They had brought themselves into the place of ruin, refused the Deliverer-there they were left to pay to Caesar with nothing of God.
-12. Evidently now question of judgment between the Jews and Christ, as two distinct parties. Still the whole is more moral than economic. The principles, eternal principles of the Church substituted for the economic principles of Moses, rather than its economy; as chapter 10: 5, and verses 33 and 44 of this chapter.
-18. The Sadducees must have their day, for God had so appointed. It was that other form of Jewish worldly evil. They plead Moses-a clear and recognized authority from God. But there was a new world, of which they knew nothing, into which He was now entering. And before Moses had given the commandment, of which they were proud, at all, God had given promises, and revealed Himself in a covenant relationship, and in blessings which the law could not and did not affect. It was all for this world, and to regulate what was fleshly and of the flesh. But they " knew not the Scriptures, nor the power of God." These are the two things needed; if we recognize and own not the power of God, we limit the operation and extent of the Scriptures to our own, and we are astray even in interpretation of them-this is a great, perhaps not an uncommon evil. From God the testimony comes, and He views things in His own light, as to these promises, and accomplishes His own thoughts by His own power. Leave this out, and we are shut up in the puny inferences, results, and measures of our own minds and strength. Here it rested on the very point, not of Jewish integrity, as with chief priests or Pharisees, but, which was the witness of divine power, exactly in its predominance over all the results of what man was. And this was the foundation, and only could be, on the Fall; this, the result of all God's actings, in which He would be glorified, and it was in this that this Blessed One was declared to be the Son of God with power. But He answers them from the Book of Moses, in which they trusted not when it regulated their fleshly or national laws which their vanity took. It was not what Moses said to them (as a mere lawgiver, though of God) but what God said to Moses when laying the foundation of blessing and hope for the people, speaking therefore of Himself, and what He was in grace. How blessedly does the Lord turn to grace, where His own soul was refreshed and at home, from their cavils, in power, in perpetual remembrance of His people, out of the depth and simplicity of His own fullness! God said to Moses: " I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." Man might fail, evil acquire power over good, but God remained the God of His people in all the fullness of His promises in the immutability of His own purpose of love. He was not the God of the dead-that were folly, inanity, and impossibility-they were living people to inherit living promises-not a tittle of God's purposes touched, let the apparent course of events and death itself seem to mar all. His purpose remained, in His own security, what it was. How blessedly did this apply to the circumstances the Lord was in! The power of it He evinced in His resurrection, while the great principle of the change of dispensation, and the divine glory was thus brought out. The Sadducees were not the rulers, but the heretics of the nation; they are therefore plainly judged in error, as contrary to the hope, not corrupters of the righteousness, though doubtless they were, of the then Jewish state. It is remarkable the Lord's reference to this great revelation of Himself by God, as the warrant of the doctrine of resurrection; it lay at the very basis of the association of Israel with God-the basis on which their unconditional promises rested-God's name forever, His " memorial throughout all generations." It could be on no other ground with sinful man than resurrection. It flowed, too, from the nature of things, in the nature of the living God. And the resurrection, the only recognized form and power of this continuous living as a separated spirit, was recognized in no way by them; it was not Abraham if that continued so.
-25. If I understand this argument of our divine Redeemer, it includes this, that those who rise are as the angels in heaven, but God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was God of the promises. But being the God of them, yet not the God of the dead, they being dead, He was the God of them in the resurrection, and this seems His statement, for He introduces God's being their God as a proof that they rise. I am by no means fully informed from Scripture on this subject as yet, but, in His declaration to Moses, He seems to be called thus in reference to the promises made to the fathers, and these promises our Lord therefore seems to make hang, as to their validity, on the resurrection, speaking of the personal interest of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in this declaration. It was in this view a fatal error, for it struck at the root of God's faithfulness to His promises. Indeed now we know that it is the very center of all our hopes. We may remark the ground of their great error, ignorance of the Scriptures, and the power of God.
-31. The comparison of the place (Lev. 19:1818Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:18)), where this is found, with the parable, so called, of the good Samaritan, throws the strongest light on it; with which also compare the Sermon on the Mount.
But though, as regards the nation, the Lord might say: " Then have I labored in vain, and spent my strength for naught and in vain," yet still there was a work with the Lord; and His ministry here, as well as His Person, had its effect, and was owned. We speak not here of disciples who were to be witnesses for the next dispensation, but those who, by the overruling hand of God, were called to own the force of its moral power, though among the rejecting nation. Still it gives us a glimpse into a class-how numerous we know not- not far from the kingdom of God, who were in principles within morally right, though they had not received or seen the kingdom, but who may have been reaped when the harvest was gathered of the Lord's sowing. But they were still within the Jewish sphere-not the separated ones. The Lord was the perfect Discerner and Teacher of truth for Israel, as well as the Prophet of the kingdom that should come. The full display of the truth, of the foundations of their own law, was thus brought out extracted from it all, and presented to the conscience. The conscience of the scribe owned the truth presented, but indeed he went further, for he saw the distinction between that and outward services; how to place the two, and the power of the kingdom he might not know, but the moral difference of a heart aright, in the sight of God, from the mere economy he did understand. And it is a great point, the end of Judaism really, while all God's part in it was exalted and sanctioned in the highest way. It was an admirable termination to the judgment of Israel itself, and the Lord's ministry among them, sanctioning and exalting what God had given them in the law, out of their own mouths, a righteous scribe's mouth. He, Jesus, had the truth and power of the law; they refused to accredit the righteousness which corrupted the forms, and made His Father's house a house of merchandise, in a word, while they had abused the forms. The nation, as between God and them, had been judged in their chiefs, from their unconscientious rejection of John on to Himself who threw them back on that. Their external or national condition, as God's people in the earth, had been judged in this duty to render to Caesar what belonged to Caesar. God left them in their condition there-all of these, by plain important truths directly applicable to their condition in the wisdom of God. Then the Sadducees, in power as the nation- see Acts, when the truth became important and a revealed fact-as deniers of the hope of Israel, for that hope stood in resurrection, and a hope connected with the promises made to the fathers, and that revelation of God on which all their hope stood-the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Here our Lord shines forth as the extractor of all the essence of the law, as God's righteousness in the midst of the apostasy, as well as Founder of other hopes, and so as to claim the conscience of their own scribe, no follower of His. Indeed he seems to have been graciously attracted by the truth, for his mind rested on and repeated the points of the truth with pleasure, at any rate with forms, even though ordained. In doing this, the Lord sustained, too, what was eternal in the law, and passed into all dispensations, as before all, however the effect was produced. And, while He maintained what was excellent there, He carried all that was, and could enter into the dispensation of love, into it with Him in the power that established it in the strength of resurrection on the basis of love. Those that valued this might pass, and did, when power came with it, into the kingdom, yea, to find it there, yea, there only, certainly not in Israel left empty of the Lord; and doubtless there were many that did. It all centered in truth in, and went with the Lord who was now leaving them. This part of the law was concentrated and found in Him. He fulfilled the rest in His own Person in sacrifice. " No man after that durst ask him any question."
The Lord, having silenced all His adversaries, now proceeded to show their ignorance, their unbelief in what regarded the excellency of His Person, the incompetency of these scribes, and this publicly and openly, teaching in the temple. " How say the scribes that the Messiah is David's Son? For David himself said, speaking in the Holy Spirit: The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. David himself calls him Lord, and whence is he then his Son? " How blessedly, having taken out the essence and perfection of the law, and that in part from quite a hidden passage, does the Lord turn to that which constituted the change of dispensation, as regarded the Jewish people, providing for the excellency and righteousness of the Lord's Person-His transfer, on their rejection, and His leaving them, on the call of Jehovah, to the right hand of the Majesty on high! The precise applicability was perfect. The scribes had nothing to understand it with; but a great multitude, given liberty of heart and graciousness of subduing truth from the tyranny of scribe-like reasoning and dogmas, heard Him gladly. There was the sway and influence of moral blessedness and care for them. Often, where there is power and grace in some sort, we see this. Nothing was answered Him. He was there before them all in the temple, but His majesty, and the majesty of truth kept them in check and in awe; they were afraid of Him, not He of them. He said to them in His doctrine: " Beware of the scribes." But this warning is not for ignorance, though their ignorance was manifested. The Lord always judges upon plain moral evil; they sought themselves, and were hypocrites; their judgment was short and plain. But the Lord lays His finger upon what all knew, but none would say; but He, the Judge (in the power of the word now), brings all the hypocrisy plainly into light; in the acts where their credit was their external honor, they should receive greater condemnation, for the pretenses by which they sought to keep it up. I believe there was reference also here to the vanity of external service. It was a judgment of direct evil, in which the dispensation had closed in them; but it lifted up the veil on the character of the new. The best thing among them was hypocrisy; but God was indeed now looking upon what was real and internal.
36. The matter of the discourse is merely stated here; in Matthew and Luke the particulars may be gathered.
41. Here also the Lord is thinking and judging according to the Spirit of the kingdom of heaven, where the spirit of the offerer solely was noticed in a divine way, not the value of the offering with men externally, as in all that concerned the flesh, even before God, but now properly in His own intimate view of things, not the external and dispensed one. The Lord took pains to show them this, for this was addressed only to His disciples. It was a giving of self, her living; and the eye of God rested on it; the Lord noticed it. It was within all the eye of man noticed. But God was now bringing to light the glory and principle of these hidden things. God's " more " (pleion) was different from all man's. It was morally more, as Abel's sacrifice which was " a more excellent sacrifice " (pleiona thusian).