This Evangelist writes as another witness of the same divine truths, joining in general testimony with those who had gone before him (1:1-4). But we shall find in him, as we do in them, something which gives his Gospel peculiarity and character, and which tells us that, though thus concurring with others in general testimony, the Spirit of revelation still has a special design by him.
But all this different service of the same Spirit, by the different Evangelists, is not (as has been noticed in previous meditations on the Gospels), incongruity, but only fullness and variety. The oil with which Aaron was anointed, and which was mystically the fullness and virtue that rests on our adorable Lord, was made, up of different odors, myrrh, calamus, cassia, and cinnamon (Ex. 30); and it is the office of one Evangelist after another, to produce different parts in this rare and sweet compound of the sanctuary, to tell out different excellencies and perfections in Jesus the Christ of God. For what one could tell out all? Surely it was sufficient joy and honor for one servant, however favored with such near revelations, to trace even one of them. The saint has the sweet profit of all together; and in language prepared for him, can turn to the beloved, and say, "because of the savor of thy good ointments, thy name is as ointment poured forth."
Now in the midst of this various service thus distributed among the Evangelists, we shall find, I judge, that St. Luke occupies his peculiar place, by presenting Jesus to us as "the man, Christ Jesus," or the anointed man. The Lord in St. Matthew, meets the Jew as their Messiah; in St. Mark he meets a needy world as the servant of that need; in St. John he meets the Church or heavenly family as the Son of the Father, to train them for their heavenly home; but here in St. Luke he meets the human family, to speak with them as the one anointed and only sanctioned Son of man. Indeed Son of man may be considered as characteristically his title here, and it is a title of very extensive meaning. It expresses man in his perfectness, or man according to God. It tells us, as it were, that man stands "a new thing" in Jesus; and that in him we see all possible human or moral beauty. He stood, if I may so express it, before the eye of the Spirit, while he was moving the hand of the Apostle to draw that picture of perfection in the human soul, which we see in 1 Cor. 13 But not only is all this moral perfectness expressed by the title " Son of man" applied to Jesus, but all his suffering and all his dignities are likewise connected with him as such. As Son of man, he was humbled so as to wonder that God should have any respect to him (Psa. 8), but as such he is also exalted to the right hand on high (Psa. 80) As such he had not where to lay his head (Luke 9:5858And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. (Luke 9:58)), but as such he also comes to the Ancient of Days to take the kingdom (Dan. 7:1313I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. (Daniel 7:13)). Judgment is committed to him as such (John 5); he is Prophet, Priest, and King as such; Heir and Lord of all things; Head and Bridegroom of the Church, and more than tongue can tell. As Son of man, he has power on earth to forgive sin (Matt. 9:66But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. (Matthew 9:6)); and is Lord of the sabbath (Mark 2:2828Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath. (Mark 2:28)), though as the same he lay three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matt. 12:4040For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Matthew 12:40)). He was the wearied Sower of the seed, and he will be the glorious Reaper of the harvest, as Son of man. He was crucified and raised again as such; but all the while, as such, had his proper place in heaven (John 3:13, 1413And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. 14And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: (John 3:13‑14)). And by and bye, as the Son of man, he will be the center of all things, heavenly and earthly, in the kingdom (John 1:5151And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. (John 1:51)). For it was in man that God had of old set his image; and when the first man, who was of the earth, had broken that image, the Son of God undertook to restore it; and thus to accomplish in man, the divine purpose by man, setting man in that place of honor and trust which God had of old provided for him.
Thus, this title or name of the Lord is an extensive one, ranging over and linking itself with his person, and with all his sorrow, and all his dignities too, save such, of course, as he owns in himself, being " God over all blessed forever." As the Son of man, therefore, he may be looked at in these three aspects. He is the anointed man,-the undefiled human temple raised at the beginning by the Holy Ghost, and then filled by him (Luke 1:35; 4:135And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. (Luke 1:35)
1And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, (Luke 4:1)). He is the humbled man, who traveled in sorrow here, down to the death of the cross (Phil. 2) He is the exalted man, crowned now with glory and honor, and by and bye to have all dominion (Heb. 2)
And as Son of man, he deals with man; and in that action, I believe, our Evangelist especially presents him to us. In this Gospel he converses with the human family; he knows man as a creature of certain faculties and passions, being himself, all the while, the anointed man, the heavenly man, who came to exhibit man according to the mind of heaven, standing for the blessed God in the midst of the human family, who had deeply revolted from him. He was the only fair untainted fruit of the human soil; and thus growing up in the midst, he exposes all beside.
This was his purpose, and that he might do this perfectly, and exhibit in himself man according to God, and in all beside, man departed into evil, he is eminently in this Gospel the social one. He is most generally seen here in human intercourse and in places of resort, carrying thus the anointed man every where, to be found and read of all. And sweet indeed would it be, if the saints read the holy lesson better. In walking before the world, their path would be the purer, in walking together it would be more refined and elevated. Not that they would put on the mode and sanctioned order of the world, but they would gracefully wear "the things that are lovely and of good report." And that would be the holy adorning of their doctrine. It would be the saint in the power of that love which behaveth itself not unseemly, but which exhibits the virtue and the praise that suits anointed men after the pattern of Jesus.
As such pattern we have him here in St. Luke. And there is beautiful order in the Gospels as they thus lie before us. The Lord had to enter the scene as to Israel, having a question with the people of his ancient election in the earth; but being refused by them, he takes his own more proper and undistracted paths, which in the Gospels, one after another, are still in order, each rising above the preceding one, and properly following it. For having tried the question with Israel in St. Matthew, he is the servant in Mark, the social Son of man in Luke, and the Son of God in St. John. He is first under us in service, then at our side in converse with us, and then above us in the solitudes of heaven. Being the rejected Heir of the Jewish vineyard in Matthew, he becomes the doer in Mark, waiting on our lower necessities, such as we have in common with other creatures, disease, infirmity, pain and want; the teacher in Luke, serving our higher necessities, such as are peculiar to as human creatures, having human affections and faculties; the divine in John, forming us for heavenly associations as saints of God and children of the Father.
This, I judge, is the characteristic order of the four Gospels. And as in the previous notices of Mark and John 1 have observed the fitness of the penmen to the peculiar task assigned to each of them, so do I judge the same as to Luke. We hear of him in the divine history as the companion of the Apostle of the Gentiles (Acts 16:1111Therefore loosing from Troas, we came with a straight course to Samothracia, and the next day to Neapolis; (Acts 16:11), Col. 4:2 Tim. 4 Philem. 1:2424Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellowlaborers. (Philemon 24)). He became associated in labor with one, whose ministry respected neither Jew nor Greek, but addressed itself to man as such. And indeed I believe that he himself had been a Gentile. His name is of Gentile character, and he seems to be distinguished from brethren who were of the circum-, vision, as others have remarked, in Col. 4:1414Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you. (Colossians 4:14).
And now having thus gathered the general intent of our Gospel, and the person of its penman, I would follow it in its order. I might feel naturally desirous to do this, from previous meditations on the other Gospels. But nothing less than the joy of the Lord in ourselves, and his praise in the thoughts and delights of his saints, should lead a step onward, even in such holy paths as these. But surely it should be the common delight of all his saints to trace him in all his goings. For where are we to have our eternal joys but in him and with him? What, beloved, is suited to our delights, if Jesus and his ways be not? What is there in any object to awaken joy, that we do not find in him? What are those affections and sympathies, which either command or soothe our hearts, that are not known in him? Is love needed to make us happy? if so, was ever love like his? If beauty can engage the sense, is it not to perfection in Jesus? If the treasures of the mind delight us in another, if richness and variousness of knowledge fill and refresh us, have we not all this in its fullness in the communicated mind of Christ? Indeed, beloved, we should challenge our hearts to find their joys in him For we are to know him so forever. And learning the perfections and beauties of his blessed word, is one of the many, many helps which we have to advance in our souls this joy in the Lord. May this present meditation serve this end in us, beloved, through the Spirit, for the Lord's sake!
1-2—I may consider these chapters together. But here I would observe, that this Gospel does not naturally distribute itself into parts, like the others, because the design of the Spirit is a moral design. Our Lord in it being eminently the Teacher, dealing with men as disciples, we shall find in the progress of it, great truths and principles considered in detached portions. It is not accuracy in mere circumstantial detail, or in the order of time and place, that we get here, but varied themes for meditation under the hand of our great Master. And as much that belongs to interpretation of general matter, may be found in the previous papers, I would principally notice here what may strike one as being characteristic of St. Luke.
Now in the opening, I observe at once something which is thus characteristic. St. Luke addresses his friend Theophilus. No doubt he was his friend in a divine sense, his beloved in the Lord, his fellow in the love of God, and he addresses him in the hope that through this Gospel which he was about to publish, this his Christian friend and brother might be established and advanced in all that which had bound him and St. Luke together. But this was all in a style peculiar to Luke. It was according to the grace of human affection, for he would thus draw Theophilus with the bonds of a man. And moreover he tells him of his own personal acquaintance with the things he was about to write, which none of the other Evangelists do, thus bringing something of the human style into his holy task. He appears himself before us, as having the faculties and affections of a man exercised about the things which were engaging him, and addressing another upon them in the same strain.
But though his words take this tone, and seem to flow in this channel, as the communications of one friend to another, yet the Holy Ghost is just as simply and fully in every thought and word of our Evangelist, as though he had been giving out what he had no personal knowledge of whatever. David knew that God had promised to raise up Christ to sit on his throne, yet spake he of the resurrection by inspiration as a prophet (Acts 2) So even though the Lord himself delivered commandments to his Apostles, yet we are told he did so, through, the Holy Ghost (Acts 1:22Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: (Acts 1:2)). And all this helps to let us know and be assured of the equal and full inspiration of the whole scripture of God. Whether it be the Lord commanding his Apostles, or Luke communicating with his friend, the one is not done merely in the personal authority of the Lord, nor the other in the personal knowledge of Luke, but both come to us under the seal of the Holy Ghost.
After this address to his friend by way of introduction, our Evangelist enters on his subject, great and blessed as it is, with all possible simplicity. Nothing can be more perfect in its season. The elevated tone in which the divine John begins his holy task of delineating the Son of God is quite in character with so high a purpose. " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." It gives notice at once of what manner of revelation was coming. But here we have something different altogether in style, but just as perfect in its place. "There was in the days of Herod the king of Judea, a certain priest." It is like a simple tale-telling, a tale of other days when truth was wont to be simple and unvarnished. The mind is held for a moment, charmed with the artlessness of this, and yet with the skill of the, divine hand which thus leads the thoughts,' though into the deepest and most wondrous scenes, so gently by these cords, the strength of which the human heart knows so well. Little might we judge to what this is to lead, but the Spirit of revelation has us surely and firmly by the hand, to take us where his grace and wisdom may please.
And the immediate scene is much of this character also, being laid in the midst of human sympathies and domestic affections. We are told of the circumstances attendant on the birth of the Baptist, and his parentage. But simple as all this is, there are secrets in it.
Zacharias and Elizabeth appear before us as the Abraham and Sarah, the Isaac and Rebekah, the Elkanah and Hannah of other days. They were in the place of righteousness, but they were childless. They were in the very place where the last prophet of Israel had put the righteous remnant, remembering the law of Moses, or walking in the ordinances of the Lord blameless (Mal. 4) But withal, they were childless, and thus witnesses to themselves that all their strength must be found in God, who by the same prophet had promised a Restorer. And all this righteousness in ordinances was as much a preparation for the promised messenger, as the acceptance of the messenger afterward would have been a preparation for the Lord of the temple. To such, accordingly, is the Elijah, the promised messenger, now given; and his birth leads, as we find here, to the birth of the promised Lord of the temple (Mal. 3), before whose face he was now to go as the dawn before the day-spring.
And we notice a difference in the manner of these two births which is according to this. John comes forth, a child of promise, born by a special gift of God enduing the mother with a natural faculty. But Jesus comes forth, a Son of God, born not through any endowment of nature, but by the Holy Ghost, beyond nature altogether. The one is the child of a barren wife, the other of a virgin. But this was a wondrous difference. Elizabeth was the mother of the saved, Mary of the Savior. Elizabeth's child was the sanctified, Mary's the Sanctifier. This was a mighty distance. The child of a barren wife has always been the symbol of the saved, or of the family of God, for it tells us of grace and gift of God towards those who had been found impotent and wanting (Isa. 54:11Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. (Isaiah 54:1), John 1:1313Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:13), Rom. 9:88That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. (Romans 9:8)), but this was the first and only child of a virgin, and he tells us, that though partaking of flesh and blood be-cause of the children, in the fullness of his person he was altogether above nature.
Such is the dawn, and such the day-spring here. These are the prophet of the Highest, and the Highest himself, the messenger, and the God of Israel. Till now all had been but darkness. The dispensation of the law (as a covenant of works), had but proved man to be darkness, and had left him so; and (as a witness of good things to come), it had but dispensed the shadows of them, which while they acted as stars in the night, told that night was still over-hanging the earth. But another season is now approaching,-a season in which God, and not man, was to appear, and "God is light."
Such a season is here introduced, and introduced too with all due solemnities,-solemnities full of gladness and liberty. Such ever wait on the blessed God, when he comes forth. The foundations of the first creation were laid with shouts of joy (Job 38:77When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:7)). And that joy was the pledge from heaven that it was God's purpose to make his creatures happy. And this indeed is his necessary purpose, for "God is love." And so in these chapters. The foundations of another creation are here laid in the infant of Bethlehem, and again all is gladness, both in heaven and earth. God is reappearing, and there must be joy, for sorrow cannot stay where he is. "Glory and honor are in his presence-strength and gladness in his place." The bread of mourners must not be eaten in his sanctuary, for joy as well as holiness must dwell there. So here all is joy. Hosts of angels celebrate praise-the shepherds repeat the glad tidings of good things-the lips of Mary, Zacharias, and Elizabeth are unsealed to tell out wonders of grace-the expectation of old Simeon is answered-the widowhood of Anna is over, and the very babe in the womb leaps for joy. Old men and maidens, young men and children, all have their share in that moment of richer joy, than when the morning stars sang together. The joy of creation, it is true, soon ceased, and groans were heard instead, for man quickly defiled God's handy-work. But still its foundations were laid with singing. So here, this joy may soon be hushed in this evil world, and the daughter of Zion prove herself unready for it, and we may have to learn that the songs of heaven fall on a heavy heart, and get no response from earth. But still the foundations of this, as of the former work of God, are laid in holy gladness.
Such, then, was the birth of these two children, and such the attending joy of heaven and earth, recorded in these strikingly beautiful chapters. In the progress of them, we get other notices of these holy children. Their growth in stature and in wisdom, while they were yet young, are given to us here, but here only, and this is quite according to that purpose of the Spirit in this Gospel, which I have already noticed. For the man is thus kept before us. These glances at the childhood and youth of the Lord, are all sweet and touching in themselves, and in character fully with our Gospel. He was the anointed child now, as he will be the anointed man by and bye. In each season equally and perfectly well-pleasing to God, consecrating every period of human life. Here we see him in subjection to his parents at Nazareth, in favor too with man as well as with God. For all this was fruit in season. He had not yet been called to witness for God against the world. When the season for that comes, we shall see him to perfection then also,, and getting the due hatred, as now he gets the due favor of men (John 7:77The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil. (John 7:7)). But as yet he is only the perfect child, at home in subjection to his parents, graced with every goodly ornament that suited such an one, and thus commending himself to the hearts and con-sciences of all.
Holy diligence in attaining all godly wisdom, marks this dear and perfect child also. Every year brought duly with it just its proper increase. But God himself was his study, his only study, for the temple, as we see here, was the scene for the display of what he had been acquiring in this season of holy diligent pupilage. Many will run to and fro and increase knowledge of various kinds, getting it in the busy schools of men. But all the knowledge which this holy child sought or acquired, was knowledge that suited the sanctuary. He did not bring forth the fruit of his diligence in the schools, but in the temple of God.
Man, however, is but little prepared for this, and so we find it here. His kindred in the flesh do not understand this child. They are pleased, perhaps, that he has attractions as a goodly child; and they judge that he is in the company, detained there by the desire of others to see and observe him. A mother's vanity might suggest that. But when they miss him indeed, they look for him where the flesh would have sought him. But he was not there. And in all this poor human nature is exposed. In the vanity, the misdirected search, the amazement, and the ignorant rebuke of Mary, man is shown out. Jesus the anointed child can thus begin to expose the corrupted nature. "Wist ye not," he can say to them. Surely this child might say, "I have more understanding than all my teachers, for thy testimonies are my meditation; I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts." And blessed is the comfort of all this to us. Blessed is it to know that our God has thus had one object, on this earth of ours, in which his whole soul delighted. A Son of man too-the happy pledge to all of us who trust in him, beloved, that our God will find even more than restored complacency in us. "Good will toward men" (ευδοκια εν ανθρωποις) was part of heaven's joy when this child was born to us.
3.-A long interval has now passed before we reach the time of this chapter. Like that of Moses in his youth, as I may call it, the course of Jesus had been interrupted through the reasonings and darkness of nature. Moses had supposed that his brethren would have understood how that God, by his hand, would deliver them; but they understood not, and their unbelief separated him from them for forty years. So Jesus, the second deliverer of Israel, the greater than Moses, was doing his Father's business in the midst of Israel; but his brethren understood not, and he had to go down to Nazareth estranged from Israel for another season. He can but pass it, however, in the same perfectness before God. Man's unbelief may change the scene, but nothing touched the heart of this holy one. He went down to Nazareth to be in subjection there, still as a goodly child, increasing in wisdom as in stature, and in favor with God and man.
But here, in this chapter, we enter on other scenes and times altogether. The children have grown up, and are ripe for their showing unto Israel. And just at this solemn moment, our Evangelist takes a full survey of the world. It was a task which properly belonged to him under the Spirit, for the Spirit through him, as I have said, looks at man, and deals with man. He here shows us how still and at rest the whole earth was sitting, for the Gentile beast had all in order, according to his mind (Zech. 1:1111And they answered the angel of the Lord that stood among the myrtle trees, and said, We have walked to and fro through the earth, and, behold, all the earth sitteth still, and is at rest. (Zechariah 1:11)). Tiberius the Roman, was emperor, his proconsuls were in their several governments, Judea itself being a member of his strength, and part of his honor. The priests, too, were in their temple. All in the earth, both as to its religion and government, was just as man would have it. But under the eye of God, all this was a wilderness; and instead, therefore, of his taking a place in it, and owning it as repose to him, the voice of his servant is sent forth to awaken it all, like Elijah in the evil days of Ahab, and to disturb this sleep of carnal contentment in which man and the world were folded.
God's thoughts are indeed thus strikingly declared not to be as man's thoughts. Man's sabbath was now a wilderness to him, and he will act on it as a wilderness. The dispensation of the law, had by this time, tested man, and found him to be hopelessly departed from righteousness. Flesh was found out, and it was proved that there was no good in it; and John is now, according to this, sent forth to call on man to take the place of a convicted sinner. He points to the remedy that was in God for such an one, but he does not reveal it as already accomplished and brought in. He announces the vanity of all flesh, uncovering the very roots of it, but his hand did not carry the seed of a better harvest. He laid the sentence of death in man, but he did not bring in life for him, He put him in the dust, but gave him no power to rise. The life and power were to come in by the Son afterward. "John did no miracle." He challenged the violent to take the kingdom by force, but he did not set before them an open door. "He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness to that light." He stood between Israel and their God, telling Israel on the one hand that they were all flesh, and that flesh was as grass; pointing to Jehovah-Jesus, God of Israel, on the other, as bringing his reward with him, and doing his work before him.
There was a mixture of grace and righteousness in his ministry. He came "in the way of righteousness," standing apart and refusing contact with the world, and thus by his light rebuking its darkness. He mourned to his generation, neither eating nor drinking, because he called on men to know themselves to be sinners, and to take their place as such. But then he came in the way of grace also, because he was the forerunner of Jesus, and went before the face of the Lord to prepare the way of salvation and the kingdom. And thus there was a mixture of grace and righteousness in his ministry, and it was clearly quite an advance upon both the law and the prophets. The law had sought to order man in the flesh according to righteousness; and the prophets had been sent, in one sense, as in aid of the law, to call the people back to obedience, so that every help and advantage might be rendered, and God's abounding patience proved in the trial of this question, whether or not man were able to restore himself and stand in righteousness. But John's ministry assumed the vanity of all expectations of this kind, and took up man as a convicted sinner. But then, such is the holy order in the divine wisdom, it was not so high a ministry as that which has now followed it. The Apostles after the resurrection, called on man to take by faith the place of a pardoned sinner. And thus over us, the light of grace and salvation has reached its noon-day strength, and we are waiting only for the light of glory and the kingdom.
With our God let me here say, there has been from the beginning a work far deeper and more excellent than that of the old creation. The old creation was, in some sense, left at man's disposal. His allegiance or disobedience were to determine its history. But the divine counsel from before creation, had planned and laid a work in, and by the Word, which could never fail, or be contingent on any strength less than his own. And it is this mystery which the Lord has before him when he says, "heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away." Creation was removable, redemption (the work of the Word) is immoveable, because the living God has joined himself with it. And thus the prophet addressing Jesus, the Word, says, "of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hand-they shall perish, but thou shalt endure." And so all things that are made may be shaken (Heb. 12:2727And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. (Hebrews 12:27)). For God himself is not joined to them, he is not their foundation. But to the work of the Word God has joined himself, for the Word was with God, and was God, and was made flesh, and became part and parcel (so to speak of this blessed mystery of everlasting goodness) of the work itself. He is the vine of the branches, the chief corner stone, and head stone of the building. This gives redemption an unspeakably more excellent glory than creation ever had. And thus the Baptist, in the ministry which we have in this chapter of our gospel, says, "the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever." All in this work is incorruptible. The seed of the life which it brings is incorruptible-the body with which it will clothe that life is incorruptible, the inheritance to which it introduces is incorruptible (1 Cor. 15:1 Peter 1) God has entered through the breach which man's sin produced in the old creation, and has joined himself with the mighty ruin, in such a way, and for such an end, as will be to the everlasting praise of his own most blessed name; and also to the sure abiding and imperishableness of this his new creation.
The 90th Psalm appears to be the utterance of a soul that has learned something of this mystery. The prophet there looks to God himself as above all created strength, he then traces the vanity which had attended the old creation, and at last finds his relief from such a sight in God's work of mercy, or the work of redemption by the Word. And this is so with us, beloved. The work of the Word, or of God made flesh, is the relief of our hearts from the painful sense of the universal vanity around us. And John's ministry might lead the soul into that sense of vanity, but it remained for another to give us this blessed and sure relief in himself, and his work, that standeth forever.
Surely we might easily learn to say that blessed was the necessity which thus cast us on God himself, wondrous was the grace which could thus repair the breach in God himself! But all this was worthy of him, and his love can account for it all, though nothing else can.
But this, beloved, only by the way, as we pass on, in connection with the ministry of the Baptist which this chapter gives us. The Lord's genealogy is then traced here, up to the sources of the human family; not to David and to Abraham as in Matthew, but to Adam; and this, I need not say, is quite according to the general mind of the Spirit in St. Luke. And the absence of all such genealogies in St. John, is in the same way entirely consistent. For genealogies recognize human or national relations; and the preserving of them, as is done in the Jewish scriptures (see 1 Chronicles &c. &c.), shows a jealousy for the order and maintenance of the human system. That system will be sustained in the kingdom, when the hearts of the children are turned to the fathers, and the hearts of the fathers to the children. But roe are told not to mind genealogies (1 Tim. 1:44Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do. (1 Timothy 1:4), Titus 3:99But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. (Titus 3:9)), for the Church is not to be the minister for ordering and maintaining the human system, but is taken into heavenly associations, the saints owning as kindred all who love the Lord Jesus Christ, and not knowing any man after the flesh.
But before I enter on the following chapter, I would observe that our Lord's Sonship of God is here owned at the time of his baptism, as in the other Evangelists. The same had been done at the time of his birth before, and is to be done at the time of his transfiguration afterward (1:35; 9:35). But there is distinct value in each. The virgin's child, from the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, was to be called "the Son of God." His person merely was then owned.-Now at his baptism, the same attestation is made a second time, with this addition, "in whom I am well pleased." His ministry was thus owned to be that which awakened the divine complacency, for his baptism was introducing him to his ministry. And this is blessedly comforting to us sinners. The law was never thus approved, for the law exacted righteousness. John the Baptist was never thus approved, for he convicted man without relieving him. But now that the Son was coming forth with grace and healing for sinners, God's mind could rest, for this was the accomplishing of the previous purpose of his own love, and thus it could now be said of the Son and his ministry, or of the Son at his baptism, " thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased." And so by and bye he will for the third time be so attested, when the glory or kingdom shines for a moment on the holy mount. And then this same attestation will come forth with this addition, "hear him." But this is equally perfect in its season, for this owned him in his kingdom, or the glory, for in the kingdom he must be listened to-every knee must bow to him, and the soul that will not hear him shall be cut off from among his people.
Thus on the three occasions-at his birth, his baptism, and his transfiguration, his Sonship of God is divinely attested; in other words, his person, his ministry, and his dominion, are all owned of the Father; the full pleasure of God resting on him, and the full subjection of the earth demanded for him. God is well pleased in him, and the earth is to hear him. And after these attestations by the voice from heaven, the resurrection comes to verify and close them all by act and deed, and to declare Jesus to be the Son of God with power..
4.-But Satan could not allow all this. Jesus owned as Son of God, and that too, in connection with the human family, as Adam had been (3:22, 38), Satan could not allow. He could not let this claim be revived without contesting it, for through his subtlety the first man had lost this dignity. God had created man, and in his likeness made him, but man had begotten children "in his own likeness" (Gen. 5:1, 31This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; (Genesis 5:1)
3And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: (Genesis 5:3)), defiled as he was, and not as a race worthy of being called "sons of God." But Jesus had now appeared to re-assert in man this lost dignity. The devil must therefore try his title to it, and with this purpose he comes now to tempt him, saying, "if thou be the Son of God." And this was a crisis between the anointed man and man's great enemy. And surely he stood, stood in the loftiest attitude of a conqueror. Everything that had surrounded Adam the first man, might well have pleaded for God against the enemy. The sweetness of the whole scene, the beauty of that garden of delights, with its rivers which parted hither and thither, the fruits and perfume, with the willing service of ten thousand tributary creatures, all had a voice for God against the accuser. But Jesus was in a wilderness which yielded nothing, but left him an hungred, and the wild beasts were with him, and all might have been pleaded for the accuser against God. All was against Jesus, as all had been for Adam, but he stood as Adam had fallen. The man of the dust failed with all to favor him, the man of God stood with all against him. And what a victory was this! What complacency in man must this have restored to the mind of God. To achieve this victory Jesus had been led up of the Spirit into this place of battle, for his commission was to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:88He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8)). He stood now as the Champion of God's glory and man's blessing, in this revolted world, to try his strength with the enemy of both, to make proof of his ministry, and to the highest pitch of praise he is more than conqueror.
But he was conqueror for us, and therefore at once comes forth with the spoils of that day to lay them at our feet. He had been alone with the enemy, but would not enjoy the victory alone. He that soweth and he that reapeth must rejoice together. It was an ancient statute of David, that he that tarried by the stuff, should share with him that went down to the battle. And it was a decree worthy the grace of "the beloved." But a better even than David, one not only of royal, but of divine grace, is here; and accordingly Jesus, the Son of God, here comes forth from the wilderness to publish peace, to heal disease, to meet all the need of those who were the captives of this enemy, to let them know that he had conquered for them.
And this tells us the character of the blessing which we sinners get from the hand of the Son of God. We get it as spoils of conquest. By sin we have forfeited all creation blessing. All such was once ours in Eden, but we lost it there, and now all blessing is the fruit of the victory of Jesus. And this gives the heart assurance while enjoying it, for we read our title to it, while we take it. The blesser has entitled himself to bless, for he has won the blessing before he confers it. We know our right to be blest in Jesus as surely as Adam knew his to be happy in Eden. And what doubt could he have had? It is not stolen waters that we • drink, nor bread eaten in secret that we feed upon, but meat won from the very jaws of the eater, and sweetness gathered from the strong. This is the character of the blessing which the Lord is giving to us sinners. It is his own well-earned spoils. And such do we get here. Full of the Holy Ghost (ver. 1), he met the devil in conflict to withstand and overthrow him; full of the Holy Ghost still (ver. 14), he meets sinners with blessing to heal and to save them. And since this day in the wilderness, he has been with the devil on Calvary, and there by death destroyed him, and has come forth in resurrection, again to part his spoils with sinners all the world over. His title is our title, and this gives us certainty of heart while we survey the glorious blessings which are ours.
But where is the sinner to value the blessing, and to array himself with the spoils of the conquering Son of God? That is the question, the only question now. Man has no mind for the blessing, and cares not about a victory and its spoils, in which the god of this world has been judged. The synagogue at Nazareth now shows us what man is, as the wilderness has just shown us what Satan is, and the stuff that we have tarried with is better in our esteem, than the fruit of victory which our David brings with him. This is now seen at Nazareth. Human desire is stirred for a moment. The people in the synagogue wonder at the gracious words of Jesus, and they fasten their eyes on him; but this current of human desire is soon met by a stronger current of human pride which sets in against it, and all this delight in the grace of Jesus goes. They hang on his lips for a moment, but the pride that suggested "is not this the carpenter's son?" overpowered the attraction after a very short struggle, and their goodness was found to be as the morning cloud or early dew that passeth away.
And so it is, beloved. Enmity to God and his anointed must win the day in the heart of man, whenever such a conflict as this is fairly raised. 'Where it is simply between mere human delight or admiration of Jesus, and the strength of nature, this scene in the synagogue at Nazareth, tells us what the end of the struggle will be. The stuff in the heart or in the house, is more heeded than the blessing of God. Indeed before now, man has sold that blessing for thirty pieces of silver, and even (if anything could be more worthless) for a mess of pottage. And this is a solemn thought. He that trusteth his heart is a fool, for God cannot trust it. There is nothing in man that God can trust. Some believed when they saw the miracles that Jesus did, but he would not commit himself unto them. Nothing of the natural man will do. "Ye must be born again." "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." Resolutions will go before temptations, and the bonds of man be broken by Satan, and communion with God in the truth through the Spirit, will alone stand the soul, when the native strength of the stoutest will go to pieces.
But this chapter shows us also that the love of the Son of God, was not to be wearied or worn out, for leaving Nazareth he goes down to Capernaum with the same blessing and spoils of war. For his love was stronger than all repulse then, as since then it has proved itself stronger than death. " Love" surely we may here say, "never faileth;" and the Son of God is still going through this world of sinners with these same spoils, as fresh as though they had been gathered yesterday, to know who will rejoice with him in them.
Such is this chapter which opens the ministry of the Son of God according to St. Luke; and as in this Gospel he is especially dealing with man, we have here at once strikingly displayed to us what man is. Like the drawing by the preacher, " there was a little city and few men in it, and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it; and there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man." The synagogue of Nazareth proves all this against the citizens of this world.
5.-We now enter on the 5th chapter, the materials of which generally we find in other Gospels, and therefore I would notice only what is characteristic. But here I may observe again, that our Evangelist is not very careful about mere historic circumstances (as the order of time and the like), because he deals rather with men and with principles. And so would it be among ourselves. If one were narrating to another some events in order to acquaint him with the events, he would be careful to note accurately the details of time and place; but if he were using the events only for the purpose of illuminating principles or enforcing truths, he would be less careful as to such things. Thus we have in this chapter, a scene which in point of time preceded much that we have already had in the previous chapter. The call of Simon to be a fisher of men, for instance, actually preceded the healing of his wife's mother, but here it follows it (see Matt. 4:88Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; (Matthew 4:8); Mark 1) But that is nothing to St. Luke. His purpose is not to determine which came the first, but to give us principles, to give us God and man, and accordingly while he is careless as to circumstances here, he discloses great moral principles in the call of Simon, which the other Evangelists had not noticed.
And striking indeed is this disclosure. It gives us a view of man brought really under the power of God. There was nothing in a draft of fishes, let it have been as large and unexpected as it might, that in the way of nature connected itself with conviction of sin. But in the way of God there was. For it is ever the discovery of God that leads to repentance or true conviction of sin. It is only in God's light that we can duly know ourselves. It was the common judgment of all those who in old time owned the fear of God, that they could not see him and live. They had carried that conscience with them ever since Adam had retreated from the presence of God among the trees of the garden. Manoah judged that he must die because he had seen God. Gideon looked for the same. Ezekiel fell on his face, and Daniel's comeliness was changed into corruption, when they came in contact with the glory. Isaiah learned the uncleanness of his lips, when he saw the King, the Lord of hosts. This was rightly learning themselves, and it was acquired in God's light. These measured themselves, not by themselves or among themselves, but by God, and thus they measured themselves duly.
And so is it now with Peter. The glory had come very near him. Others might not have perceived it. What was a large draft of fishes to ordinary fishermen but a lucky cast? But a little matter will speak great things in the ear of a soul that God is leading. A hole in the wall is enough to show a prophet great abominations; and to such an one a cloud no bigger than a man's hand is full of God's works and praise. A draft of fishes is now the glory to a heaven-led sinner; and the glory is no sooner at his side, than like others of old, Peter learns himself. His eye sees God, and he abhors himself in dust and ashes.
This knowledge of ourselves by the light of God, forms the principle of repentance. We may read many a blotted page in our own history, and be sorry and ashamed of it; but to read ourselves in the light of the glory and presence of God, leads to that repentance which the Spirit works. We learn that we are black, when the sun looks upon us (Cant. 1), when the burning brightness of the glory rises upon us, as here upon Peter.
And let me add, that as we learn ourselves in this way, so do we learn God. As my trespasses and follies may tell me much of myself, but as I shall not know myself duly and thoroughly till I see myself in the light of God's glory;, so God's works may tell me much of him, his power and Godhead, but I shall not know him really as he is, till I see him by the darkness of my own iniquity. Then it is I learn God indeed, when I see him in the face of Jesus Christ providing for me a sinner, and rolling my darkness and shame away forever in the abounding riches of his grace. It was thus Adam learned God. The six days' works of God's hand did not give Adam all that God had for him, or tell Adam all that God was. It was his transgression that drew out the full treasure. The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head, was the word that fully told Adam what God was. The woman's seed was a secret which creation had not declared; it was a treasure richer than all the fruit of Eden, and which grace abounding over sin, and not the labor of creating hands had made Adam's. Adam then learned God indeed, and the sinner so learns him now. And this is the sequel of the mystery of death and life,-we learn ourselves, all darkness as we are, in the light of the divine glory; we learn God, all goodness as he is, by the evil of our own sin.
Blessed truths these are which our Evangelist here leads us into. The scene is peculiar to him, but quite in the way of the Spirit, who would by him trace our Lord as the Great Teacher, who was dealing with men's hearts and consciences, and with truths and principles. And upon this scene, I would further observe, that the sinking here was no occasion of alarm to Peter as it was afterward (Matt. 14) Here he does not feel it, or think about it, for his soul was big with other thoughts, and his eye with other objects altogether, so that he had no place for thoughts of himself, or for fear. And this is the true healing of doubt and fear and all confusion. And what a pity it is, that this fresh sense of the fullness that is in Jesus should ever cool. It was after this that Peter feared the waters, because it was after this that his vision was less occupied with Christ. O the shame and the sorrow of all this! But have not the brightest in our company failed, dear brethren? Even David who stands among us (the redeemed of the Lord), in so dear and honored a place, when a stripling in the fight, could say even to a giant, " this day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand;" but afterward said in his heart, "I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul." Well for us indeed that one has stood through life and in death, to the perfect good pleasure and praise of our heavenly Father. Saul's hand which David feared, was not so big as Goliath's hand which David despised; but then Christ was not so large and full before the eye of David's faith afterward, as it had been before in the valley of Elah.
But into the further details of this chapter I do not enter. We have them generally in other Gospels. But there are at the close of it a few words which are peculiar to our Evangelist, and which I would therefore notice, "no man also having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new, for he saith the old is better."
This is still in the character of this Gospel, for here is disclosed another great secret in human nature, the power of man's habits and associations, and which, humanly, so hinders the power of God in his soul. We have been feeding upon the old wine (that which the flesh has been providing for us from our birth), and our appetite for the new wine (that which the Son of God has brought with him since nature and the flesh) is spoiled. We are all conscious of this. How can ye do good, says the prophet, who are accustomed to do evil? Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? And here the great prophet, in like wisdom, warns us that "no man having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new."
And it is, beloved, a solemn warning. All things are possible with God, it is most true, and he giveth more grace. But still we do well to take heed against relishing the old wine. Every thought that we follow, every desire that we indulge, savors of either the old or the new. It is a draft (small it may be), but still it is a draft of one or the other. And this leaves a solemn word behind it, on the heart and conscience of each of us. What are you thinking of, what are you tasting now? we may say to our souls through the day. Is it provision for the flesh you are making, or is it a walk in the sanctuary? Comes it from heaven or from hell? And oft-, times, beloved, the saint has to learn to his sorrow and shame at the end, the provision he had been making by the way. The patriarch was not drunk at the beginning, but he became a husbandman, planted a vineyard, and then drank of the wine. "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" the soul may indignantly reply; but if the hidden tempers of the dog be allowed, his active fury will break out in time. "Walk in the Spirit," that is the divine security, " and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. And surely, beloved, a little of that walking should enable us to change the speech and to say, the new is better. That is what our blessed Lord would have. The holy watchful habit of denying the flesh, its tempers and its lusts, will keep the appetite fresh and ready for this new and better wine, and into all this may the gentle and yet strong hand of the Spirit, lead our souls daily!
6.-Here we again have what we have already read in Matthew and Mark, and therefore generally, I would refer as above to previous papers. But I observe that the appointment of the Apostles is here made after prayer, and this is not noticed by the other Evangelists, as also on other occasions, the same notice of the Lord in prayer is peculiar to Luke. But this still shows us that the Lord is here before us rather as a man, than either as a Jew, or the Son of God. For a Jew under the law was not properly called to pray, for the law put him on his own strength; but prayer being the expression of dependence, is the first duty of a creature, like man, who should learn to wait on God as all his sufficiency and strength.
The holy instructions which we get in the progress of this chapter, are found in the sermons on the mount in Matthew. We need not determine whether the Lord delivered them on two different occasions, one of which is given us by the one Evangelist, and the other by the other, or whether the very same occasion is thus recorded differently by them. The Spirit, I am assured, designs to serve a more general purpose by our Evangelist, than by St. Matthew. In St. Matthew the Lord's words are recorded, as though he were very particularly addressing himself to a Jewish ear. There are instructions there which would exclusively, I may say, reach the conscience of a Jew, awakening in his mind recollections of the law and the prophets. These are omitted here, and the Lord speaks as having man before him, The sayings " of them of old time," that which was "the law and the prophets," errors in fastings, alms-deeds and prayers which so prevailed among the Jews, get no notice here, but all that was moral, applying itself to the heart and conscience of man does.
And this is so according to the mind of that perfect Teacher, whose instructions are here and there thus variously delivered. He was sent of the circumcision, it is true. He could not, in actual ministry, pass the Jewish boundary, but he could see man through the Jew; and it has been the good pleasure of the Holy Ghost, to chew us by St. Luke, the Lord's mind reaching out and apprehending man in this way, dealing with the human, and not merely with the Jewish, conscience and affections. In Matthew, he sees the Jew in the land; in Luke, he looks outward to man on the face of the earth; in John, he looks upward towards the Church, whose place is in heaven.
7.-This chapter opens with another instance, in our Evangelist, of disregard of mere circumstances and order of time; for the place which the case of the Centurion fills in this Gospel, is not according to that which it holds in the others. And there are other touches in this narrative peculiar and characteristic. Thus we learn here of his sending the Jews to the Lord in his behalf, a circumstance which Matthew does not notice. Because Matthew, writing more immediately for Jewish converts, would not record that feature, in the case which might have nourished the old national pride; but Luke, writing more for the Gentiles, would keep in their mind the ancient favor in which the others once stood with God. Both of these things had their moral value, which the Spirit would surely consult. So, our Evangelist does not notice the Lord's comment on the faith of this Gentile as Matthew does, for the same moral purposes,-the Jewish Evangelist noticing this, as it might help to check the rising of a Jewish boast; the other not noticing it, for it might have helped to raise a similar feeling in the mind of a Gentile.
These distinctions appear to me, to be thus perfect in their place. And then we get (and only here) the case of the widow of Nain, a case so tenderly affecting the human heart, that it properly lay under the notice of the Spirit in St. Luke. For in the style of one who was looking at man, and his sorrows and affections, our Evangelist tells us, that the young man who had died, " was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow;" and again, when the Lord raised him to life, that "he delivered him to his mother." These are strokes and touches quite according to the human tones, which have their happy and gracious current through the mind of the Lord in this Gospel. And the little word "only," is peculiar to Luke. It is used in the case of Jairus' daughter, and of the man whose child was possessed with an evil spirit, and here in the case of the widow of Nain; and such a word would appeal to the tender heart of the Son of man, and is lovely and touching in its place. Would that we caught more of the same tender spirit, while delighting at the discovery of it in Jesus! It is well for us, beloved, that he has it more largely than we; but we should seek it and cultivate it, for he loves to find it in us, and what pleases him should be our care.
And I cannot refuse to notice here, in connection with this chapter, what has struck me in these Gospels,-the ease with which our blessed Lord allowed the vail to fall from him at the bidding of faith. In old time when a king of Israel was asked to heal a man of his leprosy, he turned in a rage, and said, "am I God to kill and to make alive." But Jesus, the despised Galilean, in all the repose and certainty of conscious glory, turns at once only to say, "I will, be thou clean." The glory of the God of Israel shone out then without distraction, when faith rent the vail. So here the faith of a Gentile appeals to him as the Lord of heaven and earth, who had once said in a word, " let there be light, and there was light," and could now just " say in a word, and his servant should be healed," and immediately with the same ease the divine glory again breaks forth.. No disturbance, as though some strange thing were doing, it was only looking through the cloud again, it was only letting the vail drop, that " the life-creating Sun," the countenance of God himself, might appear in his power and grace. Anything that belonged to God was nothing too great for Jesus to take, when faith discovered him. But save to faith, he vailed himself, for lie came, the emptied Son of God, to atone for sin, and bring us home to him from whom we had departed in pride. Faith, as it were, entitled him to know himself again for a moment, and that must have been a blessed moment to him. But otherwise, through love to us, he refused to know himself in this evil and apostate world, saying, "my goodness extendeth not to thee." But faith could draw aside the vail and let him see himself for a passing moment in this dark place. What mystery of goodness was all this! and upon all this he claims our love, and the heart is dead indeed that refuses him.
This chapter then introduces the mission of John the Baptist to the Lord, which I believe to be a matter of great interest and meaning.
John had long before this testified to the person of the Son of God. As to that he had no doubt; but it seems that he was not prepared for all the results of being the Lord's witness. Like Moses in his day. Moses was the minister of God, and had the conduct of the camp through the wilderness, but he became impatient under the charge, and says, " have I conceived all this people, have I begotten them, that thou shouldst say unto me, carry them in thy bosom." The weakness of his hand to hold the glory betrays itself, and seventy others are made to share it with him. But though he is thus rebuked in the secret place of the Lord, yet before others his Lord will vindicate him, so that immediately after-wards Aaron and Miriam are put to signal reproach for not being afraid to speak against him (Num. 11, 12) Just so here with John the Baptist. John betrays the common weakness, and is offended in Christ. Like Moses he becomes impatient, not being prepared for all the cost and change of being the Lord's prisoner as well as minister. He knew Jesus to be the Son of God, as Moses had known Jehovah to be the Redeemer of Israel; but as the murmurings of the camp had been too much for the one, so the prison and injuries of Herod now prove too much for the other, and John, like Moses, must listen to the rebuke in secret, "blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me;" but before men, also like Moses, he shall stand graciously approved by his divine Master, " among them that are born of women, there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist."
This is the constant way with the blessed Lord, as here with Moses and John. Thus he smote Israel again and again in the secret places of the wilderness, but before their enemies he was as one who had not seen iniquity in them. Many a question was settled between the Lord and the camp when alone, but into the judgment of the ungodly they were not to enter. And so are the saints now under the judgment of the Father, but the future judgment does not await them. In that day they are to have boldness. Their actions may be weighed in the place of the children and heirs of God, and the glories parceled out according to that, but their persons are never to be called into judgment. In the blood they stand accepted, and rise not to judgment but to life. Salvation in their history occupies the very place which judgment once filled (Heb. 9:27, 2827And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: 28So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (Hebrews 9:27‑28)).
In this way John here proves the faithfulness and grace of his blessed Master. And after the Lord has thus vindicated and honored him before that generation, he turns to give them the character they had earned by their treatment both of John and of himself. And what is this, but a telling us that man is a creature whom God cannot cure? God had now been making full proof of him, addressing him by different ministries, but man had no answer for God. When he mourned to him, man had no tears; when he piped to him, he had no dancing. The human heart was found to be no instrument for the finger of God. All was out of tune where God tried it. Intelligence, and zeal, and action, are there at the bidding and awakening of other influences, but nothing was there for God. He would have raised a solemn tone by the Baptist, who came neither eating nor drinking, and then a more joyous one by the social Son of man; but there was no music in the heart of man for God. This was now proved after the trial of the most skilful hands, for all these attempts had been so proving the skill of the player, that wisdom stood "justified of her children." For what could have been done more than had been done? "I have piped to you, and ye have not danced; I have mourned to you, and ye have not lamented."
But after this solemn word, our Evangelist leads us to another scene; the house of a Pharisee where the Lord had gone, upon invitation to dine. For our Lord, in this Gospel, is eminently the social one; not social, however, as a servant in order to meet objects for his care and tendance, but social as a man in order to converse with men. Therefore we find him here as I have already noticed, more frequently than in the other Gospels, seated at meat in the houses of others, be they who they may, for there he could find the mind more relaxed and free to show itself.
Now this scene in the Pharisee's house is one of great moral value. It shows us that nothing rightly or really introduces us to Jesus but our sin. Admiration of him as a Teacher, or as a doer of miracles, will never throw us across his path according to God. It is only sin and the sense of it that can really introduce us to the Son of God, for he is a Savior, and sent to us of the blessed God as such. Nicodemus was led to him as a doer of mighty works; but Nicodemus must be born again, must get other thoughts of him, ere he can duly go to him. So here, this Pharisee. It is clear that it was not as a sinner he knew him. He had been attracted, amiably attracted too, by something which he had seen or heard in him, and he prepares him a feast. But there is another in the house who reaches him by a different path altogether. She is a sinner of the city, and her sin brings her to him, and she prepares another feast for him, and it is at her feast and not at the Pharisee's that the Lord really seats himself. Her tears and ointment and kisses are the feast at which the Son of God here sits, while all the costlier provision of the host is past by.
This is very blessed. It is the sinner who really provides the feast and the company for Jesus. Neither the table nor the friends of the Pharisee were quite the thing for him. It is only the faith of a sinner apprehending him as the Savior, that can spread a table for the Son of God in this wilderness world. And I observe that in every place where the conversion of Levi the publican is recorded, we are told immediately afterward, that he prepared meat for the Lord in his own house. For he was one of those whom Jesus came down from the bright heavens to visit. He was a publican, an owned and published sinner in the world, and Jesus was the Savior. The faith of such therefore opened the door and entertained him, made him welcome in his own proper character, while everything else could really but keep him outside still.
It is indeed our joy to know this and believe it. And when we begin as sinners with a Savior, our journey is wonderful and glorious beyond all thought, for our sin leads us to Christ, and then Christ leads us to the Father. And what a path that is! It stretches all along from the darkest and most distant places of creation, where sin and death reign, up to the highest heavens where love and glory dwell and shine forever. Angels have their own untainted sphere to move in, but they have never trod such a path as this. The Church passes from a sinner's darkness into God's marvelous light, and there has been nothing like that, and none but a sinner conscious of the value of the Son of God can understand it. And I see from this striking scene, that this character of a sinner saved by the grace of the Son of God is remembered to the very end. This woman loved much, but her love did not serve her as a sinner at all, for at the end, the Lord says to her "thy faith (not thy love) hath saved thee, go in peace." This is much to be observed by us all, for it is very comforting. The fruit of our love may be honored before others, as here this poor woman's tears and ointment are owned before the Pharisee. A cup of cold water shall not lose its reward, if given for love to Christ. But before the conscience of the sinner nothing is owned, but the blood and the faith that rests in it, as here. It is faith and not love that sends us on our way with the Eunuch rejoicing, or bids us with this poor woman to go in peace. And sweet it is thus to be cast on Jesus and on him only. Let the soul be as elevated, the walk as bright and unspotted, and the love as glowing as they may be, let the experience be as rich and various as David's or Paul's, yet Jesus, Jesus, is the only Savior. He first sends away in peace, and the first confidence and joy is to be kept firm to the end.
But I cannot close this part of our Gospel or quit this house of the Pharisee, fruitful spot as it is, without another look at it. For it seems to me to have been a place where the great conflict which has been often fought, the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit, or between the two wives, the bondwoman and the free, was again witnessed.
By transgression, such as Adam's, the creature assumed strength independent of God, and therefore in restoring him, God must teach him that he alone is sovereign, and that all creature strength must fail. And this is the lesson which the law and the Gospel together teach: for the law, testing man, showed the vanity of confidence in flesh; the Gospel revealing God, shows the safety of the soul that trusts in him. And the mystery of the two wives teaches the same. Hagar had strength in the flesh, but her seed was not the heir. Leah had strength and title in the flesh, but her son did not excel, but lost the birthright. Peninnah had strength in the flesh, but no child of hers delivered Israel out of their misery and oppression. But on the other hand, all blessing and honor lay with the children of promise. Isaac caused laughter, and was he in whom Abraham's house was established. Joseph got the birthright, and as soon as he was born, Jacob spoke of returning to his inheritance, for "if children, then heirs." Samuel filled the mother's heart and lips with a song, and was nourished up till he lifted Israel from the dust, regained the glory out of the hand of the enemy, and raised the stone of help in the midst of the camp. And all these things teach us, as the law and the Gospel teach us, that "by strength shall no man prevail." The rich are sent empty away, the bows of the mighty are broken, but the poor handmaid is remembered, and she that was barren bears seven.
This is the lesson which God is teaching us; the necessary lesson in a world like this of ours, where the creature has departed from God in pride; in the assumption of strength, affecting to be God. The Lord God is ever therefore saying, "not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit."
But man refuses to learn this needful lesson. In the strong assertion of the truth of it, the Lord says by his prophet, "I loved Jacob, and hated Esau, and laid his mountain and his heritage waste." Esau then in the pride and confidence of the flesh answers, "we are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places." But God will by no means allow this in the flesh, or let man boast himself, and therefore he replies again to Esau, " they shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them the border of wickedness, and the people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever" (Mal. 1)
This is the conflict in this world of ours; and that which is of flesh or of man has ever struggled with that which is of God or of the Spirit. And this struggle we have had exhibited to us from very old time, and have it still. The house of the two wives, to which I have referred, constantly presented it. That of Abraham witnessed it. There Hagar and Sarah for a season dwelt together, but in sad discord and strife.-Again the family of Jacob presented the same. Leah had the right of the flesh or of the first-born, but
Rachel was the object of election and delight; and they two, the wives of the same husband, dwelt together, but between them there was again the same disturbance, upbraidings, and annoy.—Elkanah's house was the same. Peninnah and Hannah were the Hagar and Sarah, the Leah and Rachel, again-pride and provocations from the one, and constant sorrow of heart from the other. And all these scenes were the expressions of the way in which the flesh persecutes the Spirit. And of the same struggle the Church in Galatia was the scene; and the heart of each believer is likely still to be the same every day of our journey here; and nothing heals the house, the Church, or the heart, but strengthening the freewoman, giving fruitfulness to the seed of God, the Spirit of adoption, the principle of child-like holy liberty in us and among us. Bring forth Isaac, and then send away Ishmael, and dwell in an undivided house. "Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
Now the Lord found Israel very much the same scene. That which was born after the flesh, persecuted that which was born after the Spirit. The poor barren woman was found there again, the tainted sinner or the publican, weak and lost in themselves, receiving the gracious visitation of the God of all power and love, but suffering the scorn and persecution of those who had strength in themselves, as they judged, the Pharisees, the Hagars and Peninnahs of that day. This was all in principle the flesh and the Spirit again, the bondwoman and the free; and this house which we have now been visiting was a sample of this. But, O beloved, may our faith be strengthened to do justice to God's love. That love claims our full and happy confidence. To render it only a diffident and suspicious trust is to treat it unworthily. May all such spirit of fear and bondage be gone. May the true Sarah in our hearts from henceforth cry out, and cry till it prevail, "cast out the bondwoman and her son." For when the Lord does his work, he does it in a way worthy of himself. When Israel came out of Egypt, they came out not as though they were ashamed of themselves, but harnessed and full handed. They came out, as the host of God should go out. Not a dog dared to move his tongue at them, nor was there one feeble person among their tribes. And so with us sinners going forth from under the power of darkness with our Redeemer. We are not to go forth with fear and suspicion, as though we could hardly trust the arm that was saving us; but in such a way as will give all reason to know, that the work is the work of him, "whose love is as great as his power, and neither knows measure or end." We are to leave the Pharisee's house behind us, like this poor sinner, not minding what the company there say, but bearing the sweet echo of the Lord's voice which tells us of peace still upon our heart and ear. Then we shall go forth, like Israel from Egypt, as the redeemed of the Lord ought to go, letting hell and earth know, in our joyous and perfect assurance of his salvation, that he who is higher than the highest is on our side, and that we are feeding upon "the Mighty's meat."
(To Be Continued, if the Lord will)
THE GOSPEL BY ST. LUKE
(Continued from p. 32, vol. 7)
It was not that we reached any distinct section of our Gospel, that I broke off in the previous paper with the 7th chapter, for as I have observed, it is not the character of it to preserve distinct order as to circumstances. It was rather for convenience that I did so, and would now resume our meditations with the 8th chapter, hoping for the good hand of the Lord to lead us together, beloved, along these ways of our divine Teacher. And if we but follow him, in the spirit of communion and with obedient hearts, we may by faith see him turn round on us in love, and hear him say, "I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment, that I may cause those that love me to inherit substance, and I will fill their treasures."
8.—This is the first of a series of chapters, in which we see the Lord, the twelve, and the seventy, in succession going forth to minister (see 8:1, 9:1, 10:1). And this extended exhibition of ministry is all according to the grace of the Spirit in this Gospel; and as a further expression of the same grace our Evangelist here tells us, that the Lord went "throughout every city and village"-no. spot was unvisited by his light and goodness. And this divine minister of grace is here attended by a suitable train. A company of poor sinners, who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities and cleansed of devils, follow him now to witness his grace, as by and bye when he comes forth in power, he will have behind him an equally suited train of shining ones to reflect his glory (Rev. 19:1414And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. (Revelation 19:14)).
Our Evangelist then records the parable of the sower, given to us also, we know, by both Matthew and Mark. No doubt it has the same general character and purpose in each Gospel, but I observe that the Lord here is not so careful, by directly quoting the prophet Isaiah, to apply the judgment of God to Israel, as he is in the other Evangelists, and this is still according to his mind in St. Luke.
In the progress of this chapter, we get the case of the Gadarenes, of the woman with the issue of blood, and of Jairus' daughter, combined in the same way in St. Mark also. But I would meditate a little upon them as thus combined, for I judge there is much teaching in them.
Gadara was a portion of the Jewish or sanctified earth. It was within that land on which the eyes of the God of heaven and earth would fain have rested from one end of the year to the other (Deut. 11) But the unclean had long since entered that land and defiled it, and there we find them at this time in herds, as also the full display of the enemy's unbridled strength. Legion and the swine were in Gadara, to tell us what the place of Jehovah's choice had now become. It was indeed the very palace of the strong man, but the Son of God now enters as the stronger man to do his proper work, to show himself the redeemer of the captive, and the destruction of the power of death. But the feeders of the unclean swine in that place are not prepared for this, it was a trespass on them, and they would have Jesus depart from their coasts. Nothing that we see in all the history of the Gospel, gives us such an expression of the dark and unclean region of Satan as this. With such a display of the grace and power of the stronger man in the midst of them, still they desire him not, but would sell all their interest in the Son of God for a herd of swine.
This was very awful, and Jesus has but to leave them and to return across the lake of Galilee to pursue his way in other scenes. A Jewish ruler seeks him that he would come to his house in behalf of his little only daughter who there lay a dying. He goes onward with the purpose of proving himself, in the house of the Jew, the resurrection and the life; but his path thither is interrupted by the faith of a needy stranger who touches him in the crowd. She had a plague in her body. It was a kind of fretting leprosy, a fountain of uncleanness in her very flesh, which no skill of man could heal. But in her extremity she hears of Jesus, and now by a single touch gets all that she needed.
But no one knew her or cared to know her. Both herself and her touching the Lord would have remained a secret in the busy crowd, but that he who heals her knows her and owns her before them all. The multitude was thronging and pressing him, but it was not need' or sin that urged them, and therefore he feels it not. But her fainter touch was felt, because it was the touch of a consciously needy and defiled one who had learned to believe that there was virtue in him. Her sorrow introduces her to him, and he knows her because he healed her. This was the ground and the character of their acquaintance; and the Son of God and the healed sinner thus meet together to be alone in the crowd,-she a stranger to all but him, and he treating as strangers all but her.
But this progress of the Lord through these scenes is very significant. It tells us what we know the path and action of the Son of God to be. For he has before him in the distance the day of his power in Israel, the house of the Jew, where he will make the dry bones live, and call his people from their dark and long sleep, as prisoners from the pit; but on his journey there, or during the present season by the way, a stranger engages his sympathies, a poor unnoticed one, save by himself, whom conscious deep necessity had thrown in his way, like the Church of God, which alone occupies the Son of God, while on his way to display his power in resurrection and life in Israel in the latter day.
This, I judge, is the character of what we get here; and thus this chapter which opens with the Lord going forth to his ministry, in the progress of it gives us these samples of the varied fruit of his toil both in the Church and in Israel, showing us also, as in Gadara, what a world it was into which he came to toil, that all his blessed travail might close in his own praise both in heaven and earth, the world's conviction and judgment, and the comfort of every poor sinner who will trust in him.
9.-In the opening of this chapter, we get, in order, the mission of the twelve. But the Lord does not here as in Matthew, limit their labors to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel," this distinction being still according to the general character of the two Gospels.
The exercise of Herod's conscience is then noticed here, and perhaps a little more largely than in either Matthew or Mark, and is again referred to in chap. 23. This is still according to our Evangelist, but the martyrdom of the Baptist, on the other hand, is not so fully detailed, for that was a fact in the course and history of the Jewish apostasy, and lay, therefore, less within notice of the Spirit in him.
Touching the Transfiguration which our Evangelist then gives us, and a little more particularly too than either Matthew or Mark, I desire to say a little. There is an intimation in verse 37, that this vision was witnessed at night, and that circumstance appears to me to give increased interest and significance to it. For this scene was the place of the heavenly glory, and as by and bye that place will need neither the sun nor the moon to shine in it, but the glory of God will lighten it, so this mount was lighted, as it were, by the body of the glorified Lord.
Again I notice that this journey up the hill was expressly under promise that the disciples should see the glory (ver. 27), but that the Lord was in prayer before that promised glory broke forth, and that during that season of prayer, the disciples had become heavy with sleep. Now all this is precisely the call and history of the Church in this dispensation. The Church has been withdrawn from the world by the hand of the Son of God under promise of the kingdom, but there has been decline and slumbering. The virgins have all slumbered, there has not been due watching with Christ, the spirit is willing, but the flesh has proved itself weak. But in due season, the glory appears; for though it tarried it came according to promise, and then they slumber no more, the weakness of nature, the burden of the flesh, are gone. And then too the glorified family appear also, when he who is our life shall appear, "then shall we also appear with him in glory."
But I further observe, that when the glory awakens Peter and his companions, Peter at once cries out, " Lord, it is good for us to be here"-this telling us where his heart and desire really were, though through the weakness of the flesh he had fallen asleep-like the wise virgins, who though they slumber and sleep, still have oil in their vessels, which tells us, like Peter's cry, that they were indeed, though in weakness, waiting for the Bridegroom.
This is another point of interesting instruction; and further I notice that at the close of the vision the excellent glory appears, and that too, for a very distinct purpose. A voice from it approves the Son of God, and the value of that voice I have already sought to interpret (page 15). But what I now notice is this, that this cloud of the excellent glory here gathers up and takes home the heavenly family. Peter, James, and John have to stand without, while the Lord and his companions enter within, those garments of light. That cloud was thus the true vail separating the holy from the holiest; and it is the peculiar honor of the Church, the changed and risen saints, alike transfigured or glorified, to have their place in it, while Israel and the honor of the nations only walk in the light of it. And thus this part of the vision was somewhat beyond the present thoughts of the disciples, and they therefore fear as Jesus with Moses and Elias are enfolded in that glory. For the heavenly places, or the top of the mystic ladder, up to which this cloud was now separating these glorious strangers, had not as yet been disclosed to Jewish faith. Jacob had been at the foot of it, and Jacob's people knew the God of Bethel, and lived in the hope of the promise then made touching the inheritance of the land. But neither Jacob nor they knew of anything at the top of the ladder but the voice of Jehovah who addressed him. The Transfiguration now discloses the secrets of that glorious place, and shows a family of shining heavenly ones to be there with Jehovah-Jesus. This was the mystery, a secret even to prophets and righteous men of old, that the God of their fathers was to have a family in the place out of which the blessing was to flow, and the glory was to shine, as well as a restored people and a subject -creation at the foot, to enjoy the blessing and to dwell in the light of the glory.
Thus this vision was an advance upon that of Jacob's ladder, filling out the revelation of " the purpose of his will," that God will gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth (Eph. 1:1010That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: (Ephesians 1:10)). Indeed so glorious a vision as this had never been then enjoyed. Abram's passing lamp was glorious, and the ladder of Jacob was glorious. The sight of the burning bush was full of blessing, and also that of the armed captain under the walls of Jericho. Angels were welcome visitors from heaven to patriarchs and rulers of old, and the passage of the Lord himself before the Mediator (Ex. 33) and the prophet (1 Kings 19) at the mount of God, were both perfect in their season. But this vision of the Church on the glorious top of the bill is beyond them all. That which perhaps the most nearly approaches it, is the rapture of Elijah in the presence of Elisha, for that was the conducting of the glorified ones up to the place where they are now seen. But still this surpasses it, giving us to see the heavenly family, not merely on their way to their glory, but peacefully at home in it; no terror making them afraid, no surprise as from light that was beyond them, like Isaiah, Daniel, and others; but all is perfect calm in the consciousness of being at home, though in the very midst of the brightness of it all.
But even this perhaps, had still to yield to something more glorious afterward. The 7th of Acts becomes Stephen's mount of Transfiguration after this. And then the martyr himself is stamped with the heavenly glory. He shines with the light of the children of the resurrection who are to be as the angels. It is not that like the disciples here he sees that light reflected in others, but he bears it immediately himself; let down on the mount that he might see it here, but the heaven itself is opened and he sees it there, and one waiting to receive him into it. His eyes behold him for himself, and not for another. And his word before the council is a comment on all this, showing a line of strangers and sufferers, among whom he there was taking his place, led by "the God of glory" up to "the glory of God" (Acts 7:2-552And he said, Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, 3And said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee. 4Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell. 5And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child. 6And God spake on this wise, That his seed should sojourn in a strange land; and that they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil four hundred years. 7And the nation to whom they shall be in bondage will I judge, said God: and after that shall they come forth, and serve me in this place. 8And he gave him the covenant of circumcision: and so Abraham begat Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat the twelve patriarchs. 9And the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt: but God was with him, 10And delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and he made him governor over Egypt and all his house. 11Now there came a dearth over all the land of Egypt and Chanaan, and great affliction: and our fathers found no sustenance. 12But when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first. 13And at the second time Joseph was made known to his brethren; and Joseph's kindred was made known unto Pharaoh. 14Then sent Joseph, and called his father Jacob to him, and all his kindred, threescore and fifteen souls. 15So Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, he, and our fathers, 16And were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem. 17But when the time of the promise drew nigh, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt, 18Till another king arose, which knew not Joseph. 19The same dealt subtilly with our kindred, and evil entreated our fathers, so that they cast out their young children, to the end they might not live. 20In which time Moses was born, and was exceeding fair, and nourished up in his father's house three months: 21And when he was cast out, Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and nourished him for her own son. 22And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds. 23And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel. 24And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian: 25For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not. 26And the next day he showed himself unto them as they strove, and would have set them at one again, saying, Sirs, ye are brethren; why do ye wrong one to another? 27But he that did his neighbor wrong thrust him away, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? 28Wilt thou kill me, as thou diddest the Egyptian yesterday? 29Then fled Moses at this saying, and was a stranger in the land of Madian, where he begat two sons. 30And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sina an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush. 31When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight: and as he drew near to behold it, the voice of the Lord came unto him, 32Saying, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Then Moses trembled, and durst not behold. 33Then said the Lord to him, Put off thy shoes from thy feet: for the place where thou standest is holy ground. 34I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt. 35This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush. 36He brought them out, after that he had showed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red sea, and in the wilderness forty years. 37This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear. 38This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us: 39To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt, 40Saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 41And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. 42Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? 43Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon. 44Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, as he had appointed, speaking unto Moses, that he should make it according to the fashion that he had seen. 45Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David; 46Who found favor before God, and desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob. 47But Solomon built him an house. 48Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, 49Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest? 50Hath not my hand made all these things? 51Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. 52Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: 53Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it. 54When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth. 55But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, (Acts 7:2‑55)).
This was indeed blessed; but whether there with Stephen, or here to Peter, James, and John, heavenly secrets are disclosed, and the Church is shown to be at the top of the ladder, in the glory of the Son himself. There is the celestial, as well as the terrestrial. The heavens declare the glory of God. Heaven and earth are both to have in them the witness of redemption. Redemption is too excellent a work to remain uncelebrated either here or there. It is a work that has called forth the full flow of the divine love, and power, and must be known, therefore, in heaven and on earth. The Church is appointed to tell of it there, and Israel with her attendant nations to speak of it here; and this heavenly witness of it-the Church, is here for a passing moment, seen in her place on the top of the hill. But what a grace and calling that is. The very conception of it is divine. None but God could have conceived such a purpose, nothing less than infinite love could have formed the thought of a family drawn from among sinners to be loved with the love, and glorified with the glory of the Son, to dwell in one house, and sit on one throne with him. But 0 how little do our wretched hearts value either him or his glory. What is it all to us, is the dark whisper of our souls.-May the Spirit within, silence this unbelief of nature, dear brethren.
After the vision had passed, and they were descending the hill, the Lord in the other Gospels talks to them of the ministry of Elias. But that is unnoticed here, for being Jewish ministry it was less suited to the Spirit in St. Luke. But beyond this there is nothing characteristic in this chapter, till we reach the close (ver. 51-62). But there we have a very strongly-marked path of the Lord indeed.
The recent vision on the mount may have led to it, but whether that be so or not, we find our Lord here addressing himself to his journey in the consciousness of its leading him to glory. The time had come, we read, when he was "to be received up,"-words which express his ascension to glory. And he acts according to this consciousness, sending messengers "before his face," as though it were to prepare for him a way suited to this anticipated glory. The chariot of God would be in readiness to attend him, from Jerusalem upwards (24:51), but it was now for the children of men to prepare his previous way from the place where he then was, to that city. And he was thus as it were, trying whether the world would own his claim to be "received up," as afterward he tried whether Israel would own his royal place in Zion (chap. 19:28). But neither would the world know him, or Israel receive him. The world was not ready for his claims, as is here expressed by the conduct of the Samaritan village. The earth did not care for his heavenly glory. "Go up thou bald head, go up thou bald head," an infidel world was again, in the spirit of it, saying.
But the disciples who had caught the tone of their Lord's mind on this striking occasion, look on him as another Elijah traveling on to meet the chariot of Israel, and they move him to do what Elijah had then done, by resenting this indignity of the Samaritan villagers, as of the captains and their fifties. But the way of the Son of man for the present must be different. He will pass to glory rather through sorrow of his own than through judgment of the world. He will "suffer thus far," and therefore he here restrains this motion of his disciples, bows his head to this scorn of men by seeking another village, and that too, not with preparation before his face, but as the rejected Christ of God.
In such a character he accordingly now resumes his journey. No sense of glory now fills his soul, as it had done when he set out, the Samaritans had changed its current altogether, and he goes on consciously despised and rejected of men, who had now in full deliberation hid their faces, and shut their doors upon him.-And if,. beloved, it be to the praise of grace in St. Paul, that he had learned how to be abased and how to abound, how to be full and how to be hungry, do we not here see all this to perfection in our blessed Master? He knew how one moment to act in the sense of his fullness or glory, and the next to become the despised Son of man. He takes the place which the scornful villagers of Samaria give him without an effort or a murmur.
And in this place of rejection we see those persons brought into intercourse with him, that we, beloved, through them may have some good lessons read to our souls. Two of them are introduced in Matthew (chap. 8), but not in the same moral connection as here, for the value of the cases here lies altogether in those lessons which the Lord himself teaches us by them.
The Lord speaks on each case in the full sense of his present place of rejection in the earth. The whole bearing of the instruction proceeds from that. It is the Lord's rejection that has given his saints a new place, new duties, and new attachments, and these are here brought out for our contemplation, that we may count the cost of being his. It is this rejection which tells us that there is a home for us, but that it is outside the earth altogether; that there is service or ministry for us, but beyond that which human obligations would suggest; and that there is kindredness and affection for us, but different from that which human relations would supply. Something of the new condition of those who are "in Christ" (2 Cor. 5:1717Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)) is therefore traceable here. The fullness of that is of course, more presented after this, when the Apostles through the Holy Ghost, open the mystery of the Church; but we have the principle of it here. From these three cases the Lord suggests to us the place, the duties, and the attachments, which now, since the earth has refused him, belong to us; and in those severally we see old things passed away and all become new. Nothing brings the saints into these new things, but the total rejection of their Lord by the world; but let the Lord be apprehended in his rejection, and then these new things will be entered into by the soul at once. No "looking back," no knowing of man " after the flesh," by those who have gone forth to the Son of God outside the camp; and it is only when we in spirit stand there with him, that we now understand him rightly.
Thus these holy and solemn lessons are read to our souls by our divine Teacher from his present place-" despised and rejected of men." He would still teach us, even in and through his own sorrows, that we might be kept in constant company with himself and his thoughts, as we pass on from scene to scene across this evil world.
10.-This chapter gives us in order the mission of the seventy, but it is only here that we get this, for the Lord, as I have already observed, in this Gospel looks out to man beyond the Jewish boundary; and thus we are here given to see a ministry more extended in its character than that which properly suited itself to Jewish arrangements. It intimated a departure from strict primitive order in Israel, as did a similar appointment of seventy elders in the days of Moses (Num. 11) But this is all according to St. Luke.
This mission is sent forth with a message of peace from God, to every house and every city; but withal no man was to be saluted by the way. This has great value in it. Jesus proposes, beloved, to settle not the mere intercourses of men in their social order, but the connection between God and sinners. That is the great circumstance, and which the Lord therefore must first provide for. So with our Apostle afterward. With Paul it mattered little whether the saints were bond or free; for if bond, they were still the Lord's freemen, if free, they were still the Lord's servants. Their relation to the Lord was the great thing (1 Cor. 7); as here we see it was also in the judgment of the Son of God. There was to be no saluting of any man, while there was to be the publishing of peace to every house and every city. It was not the courtesies of human life the Lord's messengers were to bear on their lips, but a happy, holy, and weighty message from God to man.
This was the mind of the blessed Lord on now sending out his messengers; and on their return with the report of their labors, he anticipates the fall of Satan. A little sample of power in the hands of the seventy, hints this result to him. But after expressing it, he turns to check in his disciples the looking chiefly at power, telling them that there was something deeper and richer than that for them, even a name in heaven, a memorial with a Father there; and how-ever excellent authority over devils might be, or power in the earth, yet that memorial was happier still. It is not that he undervalues power, or withdraws it from them. Nay, he rather rejoices in it and confirms it in their hands, saying " I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions." But the home in heaven of the children, is to be still more precious than the power in earth of the heirs of God.
And it has interested me very much to notice this, that it is just here (and in the corresponding place in Matt. 11), that the mind of the Lord in those Gospels, approaches the most nearly to what it afterward is in St. John. In St. John the Lord is in connection with the Father and the heavenly family, and it is just in this place of our Gospel that he looks out to those objects beyond all that was then surrounding him in the apostate cities of Israel. It is as though our Evangelist had just laid hold on the skirts of St. John, or rather perhaps as though this mantle of our Prophet, that energy of the Spirit which clothes him here, were taken up by that other Prophet to do by it greater wonders, and bring out richer revelations still. The Father, the Son, the headship of all things in himself, and the family who have their names written in heaven (the Church), Heb. 12: 23, these are the objects which are here present to the thoughts of the Lord, as he looks onward to what none then saw but himself, through the unbelief of the Jewish cities, and this little sample of power in the hands of the seventy. And in Spirit he rejoices in all this, and takes afresh his complacency in the person and the purpose of the Father, Lord of heaven and earth, and also in his own place in the blessed mystery, turning too in all personal intimacy towards his disciples, as meaning to identify them with all this blessedness which here passes before his mind, which prophets and kings of old had not attained, but which this communion with himself was bringing them into.
But here we have a painful instance of the way in which the Lord's Spirit was liable to be intruded on in this low-thoughted world. He was at this moment, as we have seen, happy in thought of heavenly things, when a lawyer proposes an inquiry to him, which came from other sources and springs altogether. But he bows his head to the intrusion and comes down to man's level. And in many other places, as here, we may notice the ease and patience with which he ever turned himself towards man. I have already noticed the way in which he occasionally comes forth in divine glory at the bidding of faith (page 25), but his ease as a teacher or a healer coming forth at the call of man's ignorance or need, is equally lovely in its place. Nothing was too glorious in God for Jesus to assume when faith unveiled him, and nothing too little in man for him to wait on, when necessity or ignorance appealed to him. And in all this he was never in haste, as though he felt he was meeting a difficulty, but always turns in the graceful as well as gracious ease of conscious power, telling the occasion, let it be what it may, that he was equal to it.
But this only by the way, beloved, if haply the Spirit would give us some delight in marking the ways of Jesus. This inquiry leads the Lord to the parable of the good Samaritan, which is peculiar to our Evangelist. The purpose of it was, to show this lawyer who his neighbor was; but in the usual way of the Lord, this instruction is conveyed in a body of larger doctrine. So that we get not only an answer to the inquiry, but other and larger principles of truth. I see the same in the character of the Apostle's teaching afterward. And this is always the way of power, and the way of God. God in his dispensations has done this. He does not merely restore what we had lost, but he brings in other glories and blessings which carry with them the full restoration. And so in divine instructions. The spirit of revelation not only answers the anxiety of an inquirer, but conveys that answer through truths and principles which unfold wider thoughts still. As here the law of neighborly love is taught and illustrated by a beauteous exhibition of the grace of the Gospel of the Sod of God brought in upon the complete inadequacy of everything else to answer the need of sinners.
The case which the Lord suggests in this parable, was a defiling of the land; and all that the law could do in it was to find out the wrong doer, and exact eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. Nor could the ministers of the altar under the law, provide for the case. They had their service elsewhere. But a stranger, in the liberty of his own love, may attend to it if he please. And so with us sinners. God must come forth in the activities of his own love to meet our sad condition, for it lies beyond all other help. The services of a temple will not do for those who have no cleanness fit for a temple. Man is not there by nature, his heart is no sanctuary for God, but he lies in an unclean place defiled in his blood, and what he wants is to be sought out and brought home by one who will lade his shoulders with him, as a shepherd does with his sheep. For man has been made the prey of a strong and a cruel enemy, and it is that love which will go, and at a great cost bind him up, that he needs. And such an one has met him in the Son of God in the Gospel. Under the law God was in the holy place, and the unclean must be removed, and the priest and the Levite attend that sanctuary. But in the Gospel, God is in the unclean place, seeking the ruined ones, Jesus is going about doing good, the stranger from heaven has come where man lay in his blood, and has looked on him and had compassion. The priest and the Levite, the ministers of the temple, must pass by on the other side, for this blood would defile them; but the Son of God can go and meddle with all that pollution untouched by it, and wash the wounded sinner from his blood, and anoint him with oil (Ezek. 16) And he has done all this, and changed places with the wounded sinner also. For though rich he has become poor, that we through his poverty might be made rich-though without sin he was made sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him-as the good Samaritan here changes places with the wounded traveler, getting down from his own beast and setting him on it. And he has even done more than this, for he has told us that he has his eye upon us forever, that whether present or absent he thinks of us, as here the stranger charges the host to take care of the poor helpless man, and that when he comes that way again, as surely he will, he will as surely repay him.
All this love, this costly and needed love, we have in the Son of God, the stranger from heaven, the true good Samaritan. He kept the law of love to his neighbor, but only he, and we must go to learn the way from him, "do likewise," kindle our heart at his heart if in anywise we hope to answer that end of the law. This lawyer was making his boast in the law, but he had evidently reduced and qualified it, as everyone must who seeks like him to be justified by it. "Who is my neighbor," said he, little judging that he was about to hear such a tale of love to one's neighbor as was coming forth. The law was too high, too noble for this man's thoughts-and so is it for us all-we see nothing worthy of that word, "thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself," till we trace the well-spent life of Jesus. He would have stood on the law, and refused Jesus, but he has to learn if his ears could hear it, that Jesus alone upheld the law or gave it efficacy on the hearts and consciences of others.
It is thus our salvation to know Jesus as the stranger that met us in our wounds with his oil and wine. Our Evangelist alone gives us this parable, but this is quite according to the largeness of the spirit of grace which fills his Gospel throughout.
The little scene which then closes this chapter, is also peculiar to Luke, serving his general purpose of instructing us in great principles of truth. For the two sisters here introduced, were differently minded; and being brought to the trial of the mind of Christ, we get the judgment of God on matter of much value to our souls.
The house, which we now enter, was Martha's. The Spirit of God tells us this, as being characteristic of Martha; and into her house with all readiness of heart she receives the Lord, and prepares for him the very best provision it had. His labors and fatigue called for this. Martha well knew that his ways abroad were the ways of the good Samaritan who would go on foot that others might ride, and she loves him too well not to observe and provide for his weariness. But Mary has no house for him. She was in spirit, a stranger like himself, but she opens a sanctuary for him and seats him there, the Lord of her humble temple. She takes her place at his feet and hears his words. She knows as well as Martha that he was wearied, but she knows also that there was a fullness in him that could afford to be more wearied still. Her ear and her heart therefore still use him, instead of her hand or her foot ministering to him. And in these things lay the difference between the sisters. Martha's eye saw his weariness, and would give to him; Mary's faith apprehended his fullness underneath his weariness, and would draw from him.
This brings out the mind of the Son of God. The Lord accepts the care of Martha, as long as it is simple care and diligence about his present need; but the moment she brings her mind into competition with Mary's, she learns his judgment upon all this, and is taught to know that Mary by her faith, was refreshing him with a sweeter feast than all her care and the provision of her house could possibly have supplied. For Mary's faith gave Jesus a sense of his own divine glory. It told him that though he was the wearied one, he could still feed and refresh her. She was at his feet hearing his words. There was no temple there, or light of the sun, but the Son of God was there, and he was everything to her. This was the honor he prized, and blessedly indeed was she in his secret. When he was thirsty and tired at Jacob's well, he forgot it all in giving out other waters which no pitcher could have held or well beside his own supplied, and here again she brings her soul to the same well, as knowing that in spite of all his weariness it was as full as ever for her use.
And O, dear brethren, what principles are here disclosed to us. Our God is asserting for himself the place of supreme power and supreme goodness, and he will have us debtors to him. Our sense of his fullness is more precious to him than all the service we can render him. Entitled as he is to more than all creation could render him, yet above all things does he desire that we should use his love and draw from his treasures. The honor which our confidence puts upon him is his highest honor, for it is the divine glory to be still giving, still blessing, still pouring forth from unexhausted fullness. Under the law he had to receive from us, but in the Gospel he is giving to us; and the words of the Lord Jesus are these,-" it is more blessed to give than to receive." And this place he will fill forever, for "without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better." Praise shall it is true, arise to him from everything that hath breath, but forth from himself shall go the constant flow of blessing, the light to cheer, the waters to refresh, and the leaves of the tree to heal, and our God shall taste his own joy and display his own glory in being a giver forever.
11. 1-13.-It is the Lord's way in this Gospel, as I have already noticed, to bring his mind into contact with all the exercises of the hearts and consciences of men, that thus we may get the judgment of God (for that he ever carried in him) on all that concerns us. These verses illustrate this. And the subject here is prayer, one of deep interest to our souls. May the Lord guide the counsels of our hearts upon it!
The law generally did not require prayer, for the law was testing man, and calling on him to use his strength, if he had any; while prayer on the other hand, comes forth on the sense of our weakness and dependence. I remember, however, two forms of prayer provided by the law; but one is on the ground of innocency, the other on that of obedience, and thus both were suited to the dispensation with which they were associated (Deut. 21, 26) John's ministry advanced beyond the law, convicting flesh of being but grass; and as we learn here, that he had taught his disciples to pray, we cannot doubt but that, like the law, he provided an utterance for their hearts, suited to the standing in grace and knowledge up to which his ministry was leading them. So in the same wisdom here with the Lord. He provides a prayer for them suited to the condition of faith and hope to which he had conducted them. And all this is perfect because seasonable, because suited to them who had just said, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples."
But it would not have been thus perfect or seasonable, had it been an utterance altogether according to the increased light into which the Church has been since brought. The Lord had not then entered, as the High Priest of our profession, into his heavenly sanctuary, nor was the Holy Ghost then given. Thus his own name is not pleaded here, as the Lord himself says after this, " hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name." But shortly after saying that, he adds, "in that day ye shall ask in my name"-thus plainly telling us that there would be an advance in the character of the worship of the saints. And so indeed we find it. The prayers which the Apostles, through the Spirit, make for the saints, entertain higher thoughts and deeper desires than what this prayer (perfect doubtless in its place) of our Lord expresses (see Eph. 1:33Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: (Ephesians 1:3) Col. 1 &c. &c.)
And from all this, I do indeed judge that we may easily admit the perfectness, because of the seasonableness, of this holy form of prayer, and discern spiritually that the Lord was not providing it as the abiding utterance of the Church. I do not at all say that the soul may not still use it, and find its desire at times expressed by it. But I believe the soul, fully aware of its new place under the Holy Ghost with Jesus ascended on high, is doing no despite to the Lord's holy furniture of his own sanctuary not to use it. He is the Lord of the temple still, it is most true, and our joy to own him thus; but the Holy Ghost he has now given to be the living power there, and he fills it with true and spiritual worship, with groanings which cannot be uttered, with supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks, with the spirit of adoption which ever cries "Abba Father." For the same Lord of the temple has thus so now ordained it, and it is obedience to walk onward with him. What was once the beauty of his house is now beggarly elements, because the Lord has gone onward, leaving Jerusalem and its worship behind; and it does not become us to look back on the goodly stones with admiration, if Jesus have gone forth to the Mount of Olives.
But the Lord knows our frame; and when faith is weak he is gracious, ever gracious. As one, beloved in the Lord, observed to me, when the Israelites refused to go forward, though invited by the bunch from Eshcol, and had then to travel for forty years in the desert, the cloud became a wanderer in their company also. The Lord of Israel would go back even with his faltering and unbelieving people, and still wander in a tent or tabernacle with them.. "Gracious Shepherd," the soul may indeed breathe out. The Apostle only reflects the mind of the Lord towards us, when all the coldness of the disciples towards him drew out this word,-"though the more I love you, the less I be loved." Hard to believe it, but still so it is, full, unchanging, everlasting love-a love that can stand every trial. As we sing together, "nothing changes God's affection, Abba's love will bring us through." And so towards us his poor weak children. He waits to be gracious. The saint should be far on in the desert, having seen and tasted Eshcol; but if faith be weak, the Lord does not refuse to meet us in the more southern parts, even such as border on Horeb again.
But these things, beloved, I rather suggest in connection with this subject of prayer. He himself further shows us here, in the parable of the friend asking for the loaves at midnight, the value or success of prayer; and then in his contrast between the human and heavenly Father, the warrant or securities of prayer. And these securities he shows us to be two-fold,-one drawn from the love of the relationship, the other from the positive goodness of God himself, that we may have strong assurance of heart, when we seek the Lord and his blessing.
But I cannot pass on from this, without asking, does not the little expression "from within" carry much moral value with it? I think it does. It seems to tell us that being " within" has a necessary tendency to indispose us to enter into those sympathies, into which we should at all times allow ourselves to be called. Moses, it is true, though in the midst of the pleasures of Egypt, went out to look on the burdens of his brethren; and Nehemiah, though in the Persian palace and all its delights, still wept over the desolations of the city of his father's sepulchers. They were both "within," but faith thrust them out. But their circumstances made this trial of faith the severer, and its victory more excellent and unusual. For it is indeed, beloved, dangerous to get much or far " within," lest the soul surveying its condition should say, " my children are with me in bed, I cannot rise and give thee"-then the need of a brother " without" will scarcely be heard, the burdens of Israel or the desolations of Zion will be scarcely looked at or inquired after.
This is indeed a fruitful spot in our Gospel. The lessons which it reads us are weighty and various, as all is which we get from our great Teacher, had we fervency of heart to hang over it, as in the sanctuary of our God.
14—54.-These verses give us other scenes, still illustrating, according to the way of our Evangelist, matter of value to our souls.
The Lord here listens to two challenges from his enemies, for in this world of ours, reproach was ever breaking his heart. But in the holy power of a great Teacher, as he was, he returns both these challenges on the head, or rather on the conscience, of his accusers. One said that he was allied to Satan in what he was doing; another, that at any rate he had not sufficiently proved that he was allied to God in it.-" He casts out devils through Beelzebub," said the one,-"show us a sign from heaven," said the other. But the Lord exposes such thoughts, and then lays open to them their condition, that they might learn that it was not in him, but in themselves this evil and this obscurity were to be found, for that he was " the finger of God," and " the candle set on the candlestick." In St. John's Gospel, he takes the title of "the light of the world;" but in the other Evangelists, as here, that of the candle set in the candlestick-not at all so lofty a style as the other, and this is still according to the different Gospels. But from either of these titles we learn that the Lord himself is now the light. The sun in the heavens lighted Adam in paradise, but darkness came in, and it is the Lord who now runs his course for us. "O house of Israel, come ye and let us walk in the light of the Lord."
The Lord in his answer here to the second challenge, leads us to these thoughts about him; but in the progress of all this, we notice an interruption. What he was saying bore with such force on the heart of one, who was listening, that "as he spake," she lifted up her voice and said, " blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the papa which thou hast sucked." This was a testimony to the power of the words of our divine Teacher, which is his glory in this Gospel. And a like testimony is given to him in the next stage of this same scene, for again "as he spake, a Pharisee who was present besought him to dine with him." He had evidently been moved by the power of his words, but not perhaps with the same affection as the poor woman, and he invites him to his house. And so again, when he enters the house, he continues to act as the great Teacher still, rebuking the religious pride and dark hypocrisy which he found there, until a Scribe who was present, feeling the righteous rebukes, interrupts him in like manner, and says to him, " Master, thus saying, thou reproachest us also." But the light abides faithful to its work, and goes on still making manifest the darkness that was surrounding it, till the enmity of that darkness is fully raised, and Scribes and Pharisees together begin so to urge him, that he has to withdraw the light, the power of which had thus become intolerable.
12.-It is, however, to pursue his way as a Teacher, though in other places, that the Lord thus retires from among the Scribes, the lawyers, and the Pharisees. He here enters the multitude, and at once resumes his teaching, taking for his subject what was suggested to him in the house of the Pharisee,-hypocrisy, and the persecution which a righteous remnant might count upon.
And here again, as in the previous chapter, we have a testimony to the power of his words, for " one of the company," judging, as it seems, from the current of the Lord's discourse, that he was set against oppression and the assumptions of the rich, seeks him to entertain his charge against a wrongful and injurious brother of his. But the Lord has only to act still as the light that rebukes darkness wherever it finds it, and he now among the multitude addresses a word against covetousness, as just before among the rulers, he had been addressing another word against religious pride and hypocrisy. For the world was but the place of man's darkness, and the light of heaven was therefore in all places where it entered, a reproving light (Eph. 5:1313But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. (Ephesians 5:13)). The rich and the poor, the rulers and the multitudes, were alike exposed by it. As Jeremiah in his day visited "the poor," and found that they knew not the way of the Lord, and "the great ones," and found that they had altogether broken the bonds (Jer. 5:1-51Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it. 2And though they say, The Lord liveth; surely they swear falsely. 3O Lord, are not thine eyes upon the truth? thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return. 4Therefore I said, Surely these are poor; they are foolish: for they know not the way of the Lord, nor the judgment of their God. 5I will get me unto the great men, and will speak unto them; for they have known the way of the Lord, and the judgment of their God: but these have altogether broken the yoke, and burst the bonds. (Jeremiah 5:1‑5)).
Thus we have the light here, the great Teacher, as in the preceding chapter, doing his holy work. But I observe that though much of the matter of this chapter is found in St. Matthew, yet that it is given to us in a different manner. There it is simply as a discourse of the Lord, but here it comes forth in reply to others. But this distinction is still in the character of this Gospel; because in it, as I have already noticed, the Lord is dealing with man, and drawing forth his thoughts and conscience and affections into exercise, that they may be corrected and formed by the mind of Christ according to God. The Lord's teaching, therefore, is often here, as in this chapter, in the way of answer to the inquiries and thoughts of others.
13.-The teaching of the previous chapter was all very important to our souls, and now at the opening of this, we are in "the same season" as we read, and so I believe upon the same truth also.
The man who had accused his brother to the Lord, learned from the Lord, that he himself was on the way with another accuser to another judge; for those words in verses 58, 59, were, as I understand them, addressed to him. So here some tell the Lord of the special sufferings of certain Galileans, as though they must have been sinners above others (John 9:22And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? (John 9:2)), and thus they were bringing up their brethren in like manner for judgment. But the Lord would have them also know that they were in the same condemnation, and if they repented not would all likewise perish.
With the same thoughts of the sin of Israel upon his mind, the whole nation being ripe for the judgment of a mightier slaughter than that of the Galileans, the Lord indites the parable of the barren fig tree. This fig tree was planted in a vineyard, as Israel was set in God's house, in the midst of ordinances and privileges, watered and tended with all diligence and care, but without fruit. Israel had no root in itself to yield God anything, and the ministry of Jesus, the patient dresser of this vineyard, had now nearly proved this. By that ministry the goodness of God had been leading them to repentance (Rom. 2)-it had been the digging about and dunging of this barren tree-but withal there was no fruit. And we then see in the next little scene, that there was no sense in Israel of their real state. The sick was there, and thus the need of a physcian; but they seem unconscious of it. A daughter of Abraham is found to be in disease, but the rulers of Abraham's house reject with pride the attendance of the good Physician.
In all this way the corrupted state of the nation passes before the mind of the Lord, and he seems to utter thoughts according to all this, reflecting on the great tree where the unclean had found their rest, and on the whole lump which had now felt the leaven. And in this mind he enters afresh on his journey, the proved sin and the coming judgment of Israel being only before him, he pursues his way to the city.
But here let me notice, that in St. John the Lord is seen frequently at Jerusalem, for Jerusalem had no higher character in the esteem of the stranger from heaven, than any other spot on the earth. But in the other Gospels, the Lord is not seen to enter that city which was the ordained seat of his government as son of David, till he enters it, when his ministry was closing, in royal state, offering the kingdom to the daughter of Zion, and when he is fully and formally rejected by her. In this Gospel by St. Luke, his gradual approach to the city for this purpose, is more distinctly traced than in either Matthew or Mark (see 9:51, 13:22, 31, 17:11, 17:31, 19:1, 11, 28). He seems to linger, as it were, from stage to stage, not willing to hasten the doom of the nation, because what was to happen to him there was to fill up their sin, and leave them for judgment. He was waiting to be gracious, as now in this age the long-suffering of God in not sending Jesus is salvation, not willing that any should perish. And this reserve in his movement towards the city, reminds me of the departure from it of the glory in Ezekiel (1-11.) The glory there lingers from stage to stage, as loath to depart, though the pollution in the city would not allow it to stay. And so here, the Lord lingers, in the same way delaying the hour of Jerusalem's judgment, journeying still towards it throughout this Gospel, but not reaching it till his ministry was closing.
It is, however, with strong and clear thoughts upon his heart, that he makes these approaches to the city, and eyes it in the distance. In chap. 9:51, as I have observed already, he moved onward as though his journey were conducting him to glory. In Mark 10:3232And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus went before them: and they were amazed; and as they followed, they were afraid. And he took again the twelve, and began to tell them what things should happen unto him, (Mark 10:32), he has the city before him as the place of his suffering. But here in chap. 13:22, he is looking toward it as though his presence there was to close " the day of salvation" to Israel, and bring forth the judgment of God. It was this thought that was now on his mind, all the previous scenes of this chapter, the report of the Galileans, the parable of the fig tree, and the hypocrisy of the rulers in Abraham's house, with the disease of Abraham's daughter, all led him to these thoughts, as he is now approaching the city. And it may be that this mind is so expressed in his whole manner, that one who was observing him, somewhat understanding his thoughts, says, "Lord, are there few that be saved;" and then the Lord speaks of the Master soon rising up to shut to the door.
But in the course of this reply of the Lord, I think we must apprehend that the "striving," and the "seeking," are not merely different measures of intensity in the same action, but that they are morally different actions. The " seeking" comes upon the alarm of the Master's rising up, and it is fear that awakens it; the " striving" is an action of the heart and conscience before God, ere the Master of the house had risen up, an action, therefore, not resulting simply from the fear of being left on the outside. And how often is this description of "seeking" exhibited among ourselves. Sudden alarm will call forth religious affections, but they live only while the danger passes. As says the prophet, "O inhabitant of Lebanon, that makest thy nest in the cedars, how gracious shalt thou be when pangs come upon thee, the pain as of a woman in travail"-yet will the Lord give him into the hand of them that seek his life (Jer. 22)
This passage is thus one of very important admonition to all. O that thousands of the unalarmed ones would turn to the blessed Jesus, while unmingled grace in his countenance invites and encourages them. Indeed, indeed he waits to be gracious.
But as the Lord pursues his way, it is still not of himself, either in his suffering or glory, that he is thinking upon, but of Jerusalem, and her sin and her judgment. Some tell him of Herod, and of his purposes against him; but the Lord simply tells them that Herod and all his purposes could not prevail against him, for that unimpeded by him and everything else, he must walk on till he reached. Jerusalem, which as eminent in privilege under God, was eminent in wickedness against him also, and had to fill up the measure of her guilt by slaying the last and chiefest of the prophets. Herod's rage was not therefore to be considered, for Jesus must walk through his jurisdiction. Jews alone must crucify him. And thus it is that Jerusalem is the object which the blessed Lord still has on his mind, as when he set out in verse 22. And to all this with which his soul had in this way been laboring, he gives expression, saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." Jerusalem "would not." The care of the hen was refused, but the fox was already within; and therefore nothing but present scattering instead of gathering. Herod and Rome were boasted in, and God and his Christ refused. "Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it." And the Son of God has but to leave his mountain for the present in their possession; until in the spirit of repentance and faith, the people should welcome him back and say, " blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."
14-16.-In these chapters we have the Lord's characteristic way in this Gospel very strongly marked. Throughout them he is the Teacher, the social Son of man, addressing himself to all around him, whether in the power of one who was convicting the conscience, or in the grace of one who could bind up the heart.
The contents of these chapters are very generally peculiar to this Gospel. Several parables are delivered here which we find nowhere else. And I may here observe that there are more parables in Luke than in either of the other Evangelists; and this still shows the special mind and action of the Lord in this Gospel.
But beyond this I do not mean to speak of these chapters, but refer merely to a previous paper in the Christian Witness upon them (see vol. 3. page 244), judging that what our brother has said there has much more than anticipated me. May the holy truths and admonitions found there be impressed by the Holy Ghost on all our hearts more and more.
17. 1-10.-The admonition of the Lord which opens these verses, appears to me to have been suggested to his mind by the previous scenes of chap. 14-16. All that had been passing under his eye and ear there, had led him to thoughts of offenses; and such thoughts find their utterance here in secret with his elect. He found hindrances to the display and settlement of his kingdom, where all should have been prepared for it; and he is led thus to pronounce woe on the offender.
But the demand which he makes on the hearts of his disciples, in order thus to keep them from being offenders, they find to be quite beyond them, and leads them to know that they must needs get strength out of another for it. Under this consciousness they say, "increase our faith,"-for faith is that which takes us into the resources of one who is greater than ourselves, and draws virtue out of that which has been divinely ordained to meet our necessity. And the Lord here, in answer to their desire for an increase of it, describes it to them in its two chief attributes, its sovereignty, so to speak, and its self-renunciation, being that which can command the sycamore tree into the sea, but then will come back to God and say, that all is nothing. These are its necessary excellencies. It takes all blessing from God, but leaves all glory with God (Rom. 4)
11-19.-These few verses form another distinct portion of our Gospel. The Lord is again looked at as on his way to Jerusalem, passing now through Samaria and Galilee; and in this scene, simple in its materials as it is, he takes a place before us which may well fill our souls with joy and praise. He takes the place of the altar, God's ordained place of sacrifice, and this leads our thoughts to something of blessed interest to us. I mean the place of God's altar, or the character of worship, which indeed I shortly looked at before under chapter 11.
All knowledge of God must flow from revelation, for man by wisdom knows not God; and true worship as well as divine knowledge, is always to be according to such revelation as God has at the time, or in the dispensation, given of himself.
Abel was a true worshipper, for he worshipped in faith or according to revelation (Heb. 11) The firstling of his flock was according to the promise of the bruised seed of the woman, and according to the coats of skin with which the Lord God had covered his parents.
Noah, followed Abel, and worshipped in the faith of the woman's bruised seed. He took the new inheritance only in virtue of blood (Gen. 8:2020And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. (Genesis 8:20)). He was therefore a true worshipper also.
Isaac, precisely in the track of Abraham, worshipped the God who had appeared unto him, not affecting to be wise and thus becoming a fool, but like Abraham raising his altar to the revealed God (Gen. 26:24, 2524And the Lord appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake. 25And he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there: and there Isaac's servants digged a well. (Genesis 26:24‑25)).
Jacob was a true worshipper. The Lord appears to him in his sorrow and degradation, in the misery to which his own sin had reduced him, thus revealing himself as the one in whom "mercy rejoices against judgment;" and he at once owns God as thus revealed to him; and this revealed God of Bethel was his God to the end (Gen. 28:35) Here was enlarged revelation of God, and worship following such revelation, and that is true worship.
The nation of Israel was a true worshipper, for God had revealed himself to them, and established his memorial in the rnidst of them. They knew what they worshipped (John 4:2222Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. (John 4:22)). But in the midst of this worshipping nation, there might still be true worshippers who did not conform to the divinely established order, provided their departure from it was still according to new revelation from God. As in example Gideon, Manoah, David, were all true worshippers, though they offered sacrifices on rocks or in threshing floors, and not in the appointed national place, just because by a new and special revelation the Lord had consecrated those new altars (see Judg. 6,8; 1 Chron. 21)
The healed Leper, in this passage of our Gospel, exactly on this principle, was a true worshipper, though like Gideon, Manoah, or David, he departed from the usual order, just because he apprehended God in a new revelation of himself. The healing which he had felt in his body, had a voice in the ear of faith, it being only God who could heal a leper (2 Kings 5:77And it came to pass, when the king of Israel had read the letter, that he rent his clothes, and said, Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy? wherefore consider, I pray you, and see how he seeketh a quarrel against me. (2 Kings 5:7)).
The Church of God is now in this age, a true worshipper on exactly the same ground; worshipping according to enlarged revelation, having fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And this is still, like the other cases, worship "in truth," because according to revelation. But it is " in spirit" also, because the Holy Ghost has now been given as the power to worship, enabling the saints to call God " Father," and Jesus Christ " Lord" (1 Cor. 8:66But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. (1 Corinthians 8:6)). For there is now communicated power, as well as revelation, for the purpose of worship.
This subject of worship is indeed a blessed one for further meditation to us all. The faith of the Samaritan leper, who turned from the priests at Jerusalem to lay his offering at the feet of Jesus, thus using him as God's anointed altar, has suggested it to me here. He heard the voice of healing-he owned the God of Israel in the mercy that had met him—this was revelation to him, and he believed it, and was led by it into the sanctuary. As the hymn says, beloved, looking to Jesus-
"Is he a temple? I adore
The in-dwelling majesty and power;
And still to this most holy place
Whene'er I pray, I'll turn my face."
20-18:8.-In this portion, we again get another subject for our thoughts, as disciples of the great Teacher who was ordering all for our edification. "The kingdom of God" is here treated by the Lord, in an answer to an inquiry from the Pharisees. We do not learn the circumstances of this scene, where it was, or when it was, such notices are beside the purpose of the Spirit in our Evangelist, as I have said, but we have largely our Lord's teaching upon the matter itself.
The expression, "the kingdom of God," describes a dispensation in which God or power is brought in. As the Apostle says, "the kingdom of God is not in word but in power." It is, I judge, as another has said, "the exercise or exhibition of the ruling power of God under, any circumstances."
Now this kingdom has different exhibitions; and it is this truth which our Lord here considers for our instruction. He teaches us that this kingdom of God is now "within"-as the Apostle says of it, "it is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost"-but by and bye it is to be, "the days of the Son of man," or manifest glorious power. In St. John the Lord speaks of these two forms of the kingdom also, only under different expressions from those which we have here. I mean in his confession to Pilate, where he owns himself " king of the Jews," but lets the Roman know also, that that character of his kingdom or power could not then be manifested, but that for the present it was to take another form under him as " the witness unto the truth" (John 18) So here it is now the kingdom "within," and by and bye it will be the kingdom of " the days of the Son of man." The glories belong to the same Jesus, but they are diverse. It is hidden glory now, glory within, in the Holy Ghost, the glory of a sanctuary known only to God and the worshippers,-it will be manifested glory by' and bye, or glory in the world, known from one end of heaven to the other.
And having thus testified these two forms of the kingdom, the Lord goes on to teach what was to take place ere it could pass into its second form. He tells the disciples that he himself was " to suffer many things;" that they, his Jewish remnant, were to be in " desire," to " always pray and not faint," and to dwell in the separated places, the house top and the field, which are morally the places of prayer and solitude, as Isaac and Peter witness (Gen. 24, Acts 10) And then as to all beside, he further tells them, that just on the eve of the kingdom taking thus its worldly or manifested form, or when " the days of the Son of man" should begin, the world should be found in all the surfeit and intoxication of the times of Noah or Lot, and that consequently those " days of the Son of man" should break in upon them with the surprise of lightning, but with a just discerning also between man and man-between those who are in the appointed "desire" and "prayer," and those who have found in planting and building, in buying and selling, the spoil of their hand, and are satisfied.
It is "the kingdom of God" thus taking two forms, which our blessed Lord here instructs us on. And in neither form is it subject to the "lo here or lo there" of man. It comes not with (παρατηρησεως) scrutiny. It is not the object of search, but rather manifests itself. It is the property of power to do so. Whether the kingdom be within, or abroad in the world, it will make itself known. As the Lord says of the Comforter within, "but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you." And I may instance St. Paul as being thus conscious of its presence. As soon as it filled his soul, as soon as he had "the Son revealed in him" (Gal. 1:15, 1715But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, (Galatians 1:15)
17Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. (Galatians 1:17), and that was the kingdom within), it had power at once to separate him to God. With this new and wondrous joy in him, he could go forth with Abraham from home and kindred. He did not want man's seal to be set on his title, nor man's supplies to be opened for his happiness. He neither conferred with flesh and blood, nor did he go up to Jerusalem to them that were Apostles before him, as though he needed their countenance in any wise. He went down to Arabia where sands and solitude awaited him, instead of the pillars in the Church and the city of solemnities. For the Son was revealed within,-his title was sealed and his resources were opened there by the hand of God himself, and he was independent of man's sanction and man's supplies. God was both his witness and his portion.
But this may well humble us, beloved. For how little have we learned this divine independency of the creature. Even to look to Arabia with our back upon Jerusalem, would it not be something too much for us? Have we such a kingdom within, such light and strength and joy in God, that "flesh and blood" are no longer our resources? What would our hearts feel if only sands and deserts were before us? But the first joy of adoption in Paul, gave every place on earth the same character to him, and that first joy should be ours to the end.
9-30.-Here we find another subject in like manner distinctly considered. There are three scenes in this portion of our Gospel; two of which we have in Matthew and Mark. Our Evangelist does not notice the circumstances of them in time or place, but he appears to present them here together as illustrating one great moral subject, according to his usual manner.
The subject is our approach to God, or entrance into the kingdom, and it fitly follows the previous scene, in which the nature of the kingdom was considered and taught by our Lord. He here, teaches us in order, what is needed to our making that happy journey, or entrance into the kingdom, with certainty. In the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, in the case of the little children, and of the young ruler, we are taught what are the characteristics of those who thus enter and have their welcome in the kingdom.
And it is the entire forgetting of self in every form, that is here taught us. And this is our calling, our perfection, to forsake all that is of man, or of the flesh, or of the world, that we may be established certainly and happily in God himself and his rich provision for us.
This perfection the Spirit largely unfolds in the scripture of the New Testament.-St. Paul had wisdom for the perfect, for those who had renounced the wisdom of the Greeks, and were willing to be fools among " the princes of this world" (1 Cor. 2) He speaks also of a godliness for the perfect, for those who in like manner had renounced the righteousness of the flesh (Phil. 3) And this is the believer's perfection, thus to renounce all that is short of God himself, whether wisdom, or strength, or righteousness, to have done with all by treating them as dead things, which have no claims upon us, who have found our happy way in Christ to God himself.
And it is faith alone that does this. That is the transcendent excellency of faith, doing what nothing else can do. Love is exalted among the virtues to the chief place (1 Cor. 13) But faith does what it was never committed to love to do. It is that which lays hold on the salvation of the sinner. And till we get into God, our best thing only keeps us the further from him. Paul's zeal, a good thing in the flesh, led him to persecute the Church. The wisdom of the princes of this world led them into darkness and ignorance of the mystery of God (1 Cor. 2:88Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1 Corinthians 2:8)). They were princes it is true, the most exalted of their generation, but they were princes of the world; and therefore their being princes there, only strengthened them against the Lord of the true glory. For with such the world is the object, with God the world is judged.
May the gracious hand that has redeemed us as sinners, beloved, still lead us safely onward as saints; and the good Shepherd who once laid down his life for us, feed us in the pastures of his holy word for his name sake!