>From that hour we find the definitive judgment of the nation, not indeed as
yet openly declared (that is in chapter 12), nor by the cessation of
Christ's ministry, which wrought, notwithstanding the opposition of the
nation, in gathering out the remnant, and in the still more important
effect of the manifestation of Emmanuel; but it is unfolded in the
character of His discourses, in the positive declarations which describe
the condition of the people, and in the Lord's conduct amid circumstances
which gave rise to the expression of the relations in which He stood
towards them.
Having sent His disciples away to preach, He continues the exercise of His
own ministry. The report of the works of Christ reaches John in prison. He,
in whose heart, notwithstanding his prophetic gift, there still remained
something of Jewish thoughts and hopes, sends by his disciples to ask Jesus
if He is the One who should come, or if they were still to look for
another.
[see note #30] God allowed this question in order to put everything in
its place. Christ, being the Word of God ought to be His own witness. He
ought to bear testimony to Himself as well as to John, and not to receive
testimony from the latter; and this He did in the presence of John's
disciples He healed all the diseases of men, and preached the gospel to the
poor; and John's messengers were to set before him this true testimony of
what Jesus was. John was to receive it. It was by these things men were
tested. Blessed was he who should not be offended at the lowly exterior of
the King of Israel. God manifest in the flesh did not come to seek the pomp
of royalty, although it was His due, but the deliverance of suffering men.
His work revealed a character much more profoundly divine, which had a
spring of action far more glorious than that which depended on the
possession of the throne of avid-than a deliverance which would have set
John at liberty, and put an end to the tyranny that had imprisoned him.
To undertake this ministry, to go down into the scene of its exercise, to
bear the sorrows and the burdens of His people might be an occasion of
stumbling to a carnal heart that was looking for the appearance of a
glorious kingdom which would satisfy the pride of Israel. But was it not
more truly divine more necessary to the condition of the people as seen of
God? The heart of each one therefore would be thus tested, to shew whether
he belonged to that repentant remnant, who discerned the ways of God, or to
the proud multitude, who only sought their own glory, possessing neither a
conscience exercised before God, nor a sense of their need and misery.
Having set John under the responsibility of receiving this testimony, which
put all Israel to the test, and distinguished the remnant from the nation
in general, the Lord then bears witness to John himself, addressing the
multitude, and reminding them how they had followed the preaching of John.
He shews them the exact point to which Israel had come in the ways of God.
The introduction, in testimony, of the kingdom made the difference between
that which preceded and that which followed. Among all that are born of
women there had been none greater than John the Baptist, none who had been
so near Jehovah, sent before His face, none who had rendered Him a more
exact and complete testimony, who had been so separate from all evil by the
power of the Spirit of God-a separation proper to the fulfilment of such a
mission among the people of God. Still he had not been in the kingdom: it
was not yet established; and to be in the presence of Christ in His
kingdom, enjoying the result of the establishment of His glory,
[see note #31] was
a greater thing than all testimony to the coming of the kingdom.
Nevertheless from the time of John the Baptist there was a notable change.
>From that time the kingdom was announced. It was not established, but it
was preached. This was a very different thing from the prophecies that
spoke of the kingdom for a yet distant period, while recalling the people
to the law as given by Moses. The Baptist went before the King, announcing
the nearness of the kingdom, and commanding the Jews to repent that they
might enter into it; Thus the law and the prophets spake on God's part
until John. The law was the rule; the prophets, maintaining the rule,
strengthened the hopes and the faith of the remnant. Now, the energy of the
Spirit impelled men to force their way through every difficulty and all the
opposition of the leaders of the nation and of a blinded people, that they
might at all costs attain the kingdom of a King rejected by the blind
unbelief of those who should have received Him. It needed-seeing that the
King had come in humiliation, and that He had been rejected-it needed this
violence to enter the kingdom. The strait gate was the only entrance.
If faith could really penetrate the mind of God therein, John was the Elias
who should come. He that had ears to hear, let him hear. It was in fact for
those only.
Had the kingdom appeared in the glory and in the power of its Head,
violence would not have been necessary; it would have been possessed as the
certain effect of that power; but it was the will of God that they should
morally be tested It was thus also that they ought to have received Elias
in spirit.
The result is given in the Lord's words which follow, that is, the true
character of this generation, and the ways of God in relation to the Person
of Jesus, manifested by His rejection itself. As a generation the
threatenings of justice, and the attractions of grace were equally lost
upon them. The children of wisdom, those whose consciences were taught of
God, acknowledged the truth of John's testimony, as against themselves, and
the grace, so necessary to the guilty, of the ways of Jesus.
John, separate from the iniquity of the nation, had, in their eyes, a
devil. Jesus, kind to the most wretched, they accused of falling in with
evil ways. Yet the evidence was powerful enough to have subdued the heart
of a Tyre or Sodom; and the righteous rebuke of the Lord warns the perverse
and unbelieving nation of a more terrible judgment than that which awaited
the pride of Tyre or the corruption of Sodom.
But this was a test for the most favoured of mankind. It might have been
said, Why was the message not sent to Tyre, ready to hearken? Why not to
Sodom, that that city might have escaped the fire that consumed it? It is
that man must be tested in every way; that the perfect counsels of God may
be developed. If Tyre or Sodom had abused the advantages which a God of
creation and of providence had heaped upon them, the Jews were to manifest
what was in the heart of man, when possessing all the promises and made the
depositaries of all the oracles of God.
They boasted of the gift, and departed from the Giver. Their blinded heart
acknowledged not and even rejected their God.
The Lord felt the contempt of His people whom He loved; but, as the
obedient man on earth, He submitted to the will of His Father, who, acting
in sovereignty, the Lord of heaven and earth, manifested, in the exercise
of this sovereignty, divine wisdom, and the perfection of His character.
Jesus accepts the will of His Father in its effects, and, thus subject,
sees its perfection.
It was befitting that God should reveal to the lowly all the gifts of His
grace in Jesus, this Emmanuel on earth; and that He should hide them from
the pride that sought to scrutinise and to judge them. But this opens the
door to the glory of God's counsels in it.
The truth was, that His Person was too glorious to be fathomed or
understood by man, although His words and His works left the nation without
excuse, in their refusal to come unto Him that they might know the Father.
Jesus, subject to His Father's will, although thoroughly sensible of all
that was painful to His heart in its effects, sees the whole extent of the
glory that should follow His rejection.
All things were delivered unto Him of His Father. It is the Son who is
revealed to our faith, the veil that covered His glory being taken away now
that He is rejected as Messiah. No one knoweth Him but the Father. Who
among the proud could fathom what He was? He who from all eternity was one
with the Father, become man, surpassed, in the deep mystery of His being,
all knowledge save that of the Father Himself. The impossibility of knowing
Him who had emptied Himself to become man, maintained the certainty, the
reality, of His divinity, which this self-renunciation might have hidden
from the eyes of unbelief. The incomprehensibility of a being in a finite
form revealed the infinite which was therein. His divinity was guaranteed
to faith, against the effect of His humanity on the mind of man. But if no
one knew the Son, except the Father only, the Son, who is truly God, was
able to reveal the Father. No man has ever seen God. The only begotten Son,
who is in the bosom of the Father, has revealed Him. No one knows the
Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him. Wretched
ignorance that in its pride rejects Him! It was thus according to the good
pleasure of the Son that this revelation was made. Distinctive attribute of
divine perfection! He came for this purpose; He did it according to His own
wisdom. Such was the truth of man's relations with Him, although He
submitted to the painful humiliation of being rejected by His own people,
as the final test of their, of man's state.
Observe also here, that this principle, this truth, with regard to Christ,
opens the door to the Gentiles, to all who should be called. He reveals the
Father to whomsoever He will. He always seeks the glory of His Father. He
alone can reveal Him-He to whomthe Father, the Lord of heaven and earth,
has delivered all things; The Gentiles are included in the rights conferred
by this title, even every family in heaven and earth. Christ exercises
these rights in grace, calling whom He will to the knowledge of the Father.
Thus we find here the perverse and faithless generation; a remnant of the
nation justifying the wisdom of God as manifested in John and in Jesus in
judgment and in grace; the sentence of judgment on the unbelievers; the
rejection of Jesus in the character in which He had presented Himself to
the nation; and His perfect submission, as man, to the will of His Father
in this rejection, giving occasion for the manifestation to His soul of the
glory proper to Him as Son of God-a glory which no man could know, even as
He alone could reveal that of the Father. So that the world who refused Him
was in total ignorance, save at the good pleasure of Him who delights in
revealing the Father.
We should also remark here, that the mission of the disciples to Israel who
rejected Christ continues (if Israel be in the land) until He comes as the
Son of man, His title of judgment and of glory as heir of all things (that
is to say, until the judgment by which He takes possession of the land of
Canaan, in a power that leaves no room for His enemies). This, His title of
judgment and glory as heir of all things, is mentioned in John 5, Daniel 7,
Psalms 8 and 80.
Observe too, that in chapter 11, the perverseness of the generation that
had rejected John's testimony, and that of the Son of man come in grace and
associating Himself in grace with the Jews, opens the door to the testimony
of the glory of the Son of God, and to the revelation of the Father by Him
in sovereign grace-a grace that could make Him known as efficaciously to a
poor Gentile as to a Jew. It was no longer a question of responsibility to
receive, but of sovereign grace that imparted to whomsoever it would. Jesus
knew man, the world, the generation which had enjoyed the greatest
advantages of all that were in the world. There was no place for the foot
to rest on in the miry slough of that which had departed from God. In the
midst of a world of evil Jesus remained the sole revealer of the Father,
the source of all good. Whom does He call? What does He bestow on those who
come? Only source of blessing and revealer of the Father, He calls all
those who are weary and heavy laden. Perhaps they did not know the spring
of all misery, namely, separation from God, sin. He knew, and He alone
could heal them. If it was the sense of sin which burdened them, so much
the better. Every way the world no longer satisfied their hearts; they were
miserable, and therefore the objects of the heart of Jesus. Moreover He
would give them rest; He does not here explain by what means; He simply
announces the fact. The love of the Father, which in grace, in the Person
of the Son, sought out the wretched, would bestow rest (not merely
alleviation or sympathy, but rest) on every one that came to Jesus. It was
the perfect revelation of the Father's name to the heart of those that
needed it; and that by the Son;-peace, peace with God. They had but to come
to Christ: He undertook all and gave rest. But there is a second element in
rest. There is more than peace through the knowledge of the Father in
Jesus. And more than that is needed; for, even when the soul is perfectly
at peace with God, this world presents many causes of trouble to the heart.
In these cases it is a question of submission or of self-will. Christ, in
the consciousness of His rejection, in the deep sorrow caused by the
unbelief of the cities in which He had wrought so many miracles, had just
manifested the most entire submission to His Father, and had found therein
perfect rest to His soul. To this He calls all that heard Him, all that
felt the need of rest to their own souls. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn
of me," that is to say, the yoke of entire submission to His Father's will,
learning of Him how to meet the troubles of life; for He was "meek and
lowly in heart," contentto be in the lowest place at the will of His God.
In fact nothing can overthrow one who is there. It is the place of perfect
rest to the heart.
