I have already shown, from various instances, that there was, through all the stages of the history of Israel, the occasional putting forth of a special energy of the Spirit, by which, and not by the resources of their own system, the Lord was sustaining Israel, and teaching them to know where their final hope lay. From the call of Abraham to the throne of David, we saw this.
Now I judge that Bethesda was a witness of the same thing. Bethesda was not that which the system itself provided. It was opened in Jerusalem, as a fountain of healing, by the sovereign grace of Jehovah (as indeed, its name imports). Neither was it an abiding, but only an occasional relief, as the judges and prophets had been. Like them, it was a testimony to the grace and power which were in God himself for Israel, and had, perhaps, yielded this. its testimony at certain seasons all through the dark age which had passed since the days of the last of their prophets. But it must now be set aside. Its waters are to be no more troubled. He to whom all these witnesses of grace pointed had appeared. As the true fountain of health, the Son of God had now come to the daughter of Zion, and was showing himself to her.
It was a feast time, we are told (verse 1). All was going on at Jerusalem, as though all were right before God. The feasts were duly observed; the time was one of exact religious services. But Bethesda alone might have told the daughter of Zion that she needed a physician, and was not in that rest which faithfulness to Jehovah would have preserved to her. And the Lord would now tell her the same truth. He
heals the impotent man, thus taking the place of Bethesda; but he does so in a way that tells Israel of their loss of the Sabbath—the loss of their own proper glory. “The same day was the Sabbath.”
The nation is at once sensitive of this. It touched the place of their pride; for the Sabbath was the sign of all their national distinction; and they resent it—” they sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the Sabbath-day.”
The Lord answered them, “ My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;”—words which again told them of their loss of this Sabbath in which they boasted, yea, that they had long lost it, lost it from the beginning; for that in every stage of their history God had been working in grace among them, working as “his Father,” of which this Bethesda was the sign, and that he himself had now come, just in the same way, to work in grace among them, of which this poor restored cripple was the sign. This was the voice of these words, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;” referring to the act of grace all through Israel’s history, which I have noticed. But on this the Jews resent him the more; and not being in the secret of his glory, they charge him’ with blasphemy, for calling God his father.
To this he again answers (still, as before, speaking of himself as Son, but taking a place of subjection also), “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself.”
(*Without the knowledge of the divine dignity of his person, we cannot discover the place which the Lord here takes to be the place of willing subjection, as it was. For it would not have been such in any mere creature, however exalted, to have said, “I can of mine own self do nothing.” But in this the Son was subjection.)
But all this is most blessed. One who came into this world on behalf of God and his honor could take no other place. It was the only place of righteousness here. “He that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” Man had, through pride, dishonored God. Man did an affront to the Majesty of God, when he listened to the words, “Ye shall be as God.” And the Son, who came to honor God, must humble himself. Though in the form of God; he must empty himself here. God’s praise, in a world that had departed from him in pride, must have this sacrifice. And this sacrifice the Son offered. But this did not suit man; this was not according to man; and man could not receive or sanction such a one. “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not; if ‘another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”
This is a deep and holy matter, beloved. By his humiliation and subjection, the Son was at once honoring God and testing man; giving the “only Potentate” his due right in, this world, but thus becoming himself a sign for the making manifest the thoughts, of the heart. And the Jew, the favored Jew, was found in this common atheism of man; for to disclose this hidden spring of unbelief in Israel, our Lord’s discourse this chapter was tending. It was not for want of light and testimony. They had the works of Christ, the Father’s voice, their own scriptures, and the testimony of John. But withal they had the love of the world in them, and not the love of God; and were thus unprepared for the Son of God.
“How can ye believe who receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only” (ver. 44). Surely this has a voice for our ears, beloved! Does it not tell us that the heart and its hidden motions have to be watched? “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” There may strong and dangerous currents running under the surface. Job was a godly man: None like him in his generation. But in his soul, there was flowing a rapid current. He valued his character and his circumstances. Not that he was, in the common way, either self-righteous or worldly. He was truly a believer, and a generous friend and benefactor. But he valued his circumstances in life, and his estimation among men. In the hidden exercises of his heart, he was wont to survey his goodly condition with complacency. (chapter 29.) That was a strong under-current. His neighbors had not traced the course of that stream; but his heavenly Father had; and because he loved him, and would have him partaker of his holiness, with which all this was inconsistent, he put him into his own school to exercise him.
What a gracious warning does this afford us, to keep the ebbings and flowings of the heart under watch. “What are we thinking of?” we may ask ourselves again and again through the day. Whereon are we spending our diligence? What are the secret calculations of our minds in moments of relaxation? Is it the spirit or the flesh that is providing food for us? Do our affections which stir within savor of heaven or of hell?
These are healthful inquiries for us, and suggested by the strong moral thought of the Lord here, “How can ye believe, which receive honor one of another?”
How could man, apostate in pride, brook the lowly San of man, the emptied Son of God? This was the source whence their unbelief took its rise. There was no association between them and the one who stood for God’s honor before men. His form of humiliation was now disallowed, as his work and grace at Bethesda had before been refused. His brethren should have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them; but they understood not; they believed not Moses, and were thus, in principle, still in Egypt, still in the flesh, still unredeemed. Had they believed Moses, they would have believed Christ, and been led out by him, as at this time, from under the hand of Pharaoh, the power of the flesh and the world. But under all that, through unbelief, this chapter finds them and leaves them.
A new scene opens here—it was the Passover; but God’s mercy, which that season celebrated, Israel had slighted. They had still to learn the lesson of Egypt and the wilderness; and in patient love, after so many provocations, the Lord would even now teach them.
Accordingly, he feeds the multitude in a desert place thus showing the grace and power of him who for forty years had fed their fathers in another desert. The disciples, like Moses, wonder through unbelief, and say, as it were, “Shall the flocks and the herds be slain for them to suffice them?” But his hand is not shortened. He feeds them; and this awakens zeal in the multitude, and they would fain come and by force make him a king. But the Lord could not take the kingdom from zeal like this. This could not be the source of the kingdom of the Son of man. The beasts may, take their kingdoms from the winds striving upon the great sea; but Jesus cannot. (Dan. 7:2525And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time. (Daniel 7:25).) This was not his mother crowning him in the day of his espousals. (Cant. 3.) This was not, in his ear, the shouting of the people bringing in the head-stone of the corner; nor the symptom of his people made willing in the day of his power. This would have been an appointment to the throne of Israel, on scarcely better principles than those on which Saul had been appointed of old. His kingdom would have been the fruit of a heated desire of the people, as Saul’s had been the fruit of their revolted heart. But this could not be. And beside this, ere the Lord could take his seat on mount Zion, he must ascend the solitary mount; and ere the people could enter the kingdom, they must go down to the stormy sea. And these things we see reflected here, as in a glass. The Lord is seen on high for a while, and they are buffeting the winds and waves; but in due season he descends from his elevation, makes the storm a calm, and brings them to their desired haven. And so, it will be by and by. He will come down in the power of the heaven to which he has now ascended, for the deliverance of his afflicted ones. Then shall they see his wonders, as in the deep, and praise him for his goodness, for the works that he doeth for the children of men. (Psalms 107:23-3223They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; 24These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. 25For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. 26They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. 27They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits' end. 28Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. 29He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. 30Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven. 31Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! 32Let them exalt him also in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders. (Psalm 107:23‑32).)
The Lord therefore has only to retire from all this popular awakening in his favor. How must the mind of the heavenly Stranger have felt entire dissociation from it all He retires from it, and on the following day enters on other work altogether. Reopens the mystery of the true Passover and the manna of the wilderness, which they had still to learn. They had still to learn the virtue of the Cross, the true Passover which delivers from Egypt, from the bondage of the flesh, and the judgment of the law; enabling the sinner to say, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.” The wages of sin is death; and sin in the Cross had its wages. Death had its sway, and the law can return to the throne of God with its own vindication; for it has executed its commission. Christ has died, and died for us. This is the true Passover—the power of redemption; in the grace of which we leave Egypt, or the place of bondage, and come forth with the Son of God into the wilderness, there to feed on manna, there to live by every word that has proceeded out of the mouth of God.
And though thus in some sense distinct, the Lord in this discourse seems to combine the mysteries of the Passover and the manna. It was in the time of the Passover that he thus preached to them on the manna; for both pertained to the same Israel, the same life. The Paschal blood was upon the lintels for redemption, while the Lamb was fed upon Within the house. The Israelite was in living communion with that which gave him security. And this was the beginning of life to him, in the strength of which he came forth to feed on the manna in the wilderness.
But Israel, as we here find, had not as yet so come forth out of the bondage of Egypt into God’s pastures in the wilderness. They prove that as yet they knew not this life; that as yet they had never really kept the Passover, or fed on the manna. They murmured at him. Their thoughts were too full of Moses: “He gave them bread from heaven to eat,” said they. But ere, they could indeed eat of the manna, they must fall into the paths of love, into thoughts of the Father, and not of Moses; for it is love that leads us to the Cross. Moses never gave that bread. The law never spread the feast. It is love that does that; and love must be apprehended as we sit at it. And this is the reason why so few guests are there; for man has hard thoughts of God, and proud thoughts of himself. But to keep the feast, we must have happy thoughts of God, and humblest self-renouncing thoughts of ourselves— communion with the Father and with the Son, on the ground of the great salvation of sinners. Communion with God in love is life.
But Israel was not in this communion. They “go back,” they thrust him from them, and in their hearts turn back again into Egypt: their carcasses fall in the wilderness, and a remnant only feed on “the words of eternal life,” and live—a remnant who look round on all as a barren waste yielding no bread without him, as “a dry and thirsty land” from one end to the other, save for the Rock that follows them; and they say, “ To whom shall we go?”
And whence this remnant? “According to the election of grace,” as the Lord here further teaches, showing us the acts of the Father in the mystery of our life, —that it is he who gives to the Son, and draws to the Son, all who come to him; that his teachings and drawings are the hidden channels through which this life is reaching us. “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life; and we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” This is the faith and utterance of that elect remnant, who, coming out of Egypt, live by faith on the Son of God; but only in the Son of God as crucified; for our life lies in his death, and through the faith which feeds on that death. No acceptance of Christ but as crucified avails for life. It is not his virtues, his instructions, his example, or the like; but his death, his flesh and blood, that must be fed upon. His death accomplished, singly and alone, what all together and beside never did and never could. The blessed Lord died, gave up the ghost, or surrendered the life which he had, and which none had title to take from him. But the moment that was done, results broke forth which all his previous life had never produced. It was then, but not till then, that the veil of the temple was rent, the rocks were riven, the graves opened. Heaven, earth, and hell felt a power they had never owned before. The life of Jesus, his charities to man, his subjection to God, the savor of his spotless human nature, the holiness of that which had been born of the Virgin, —none of these, nor all of them together, nor everything in him and about him, by him or through him, short of the surrender of life, would ever have rent the vail or broken up the graves. God would still have been at a distance, hell been still unconquered, and he that has the power of death still undestroyed. The blood of the dear Son has done what all beside never did, never could do. And over him thus preached and set forth it is still to be said, “He that bath the Son bath life.”
This leads me to pause for a little over a subject connected with our life, of which this chapter treats: I mean the eating of blood. Here our Lord commands us to eat blood, even his own blood; but under the law blood was forbidden. Under the law all slain beasts were to be brought to the door of the tabernacle, and their blood offered on the altar, and by no means to be eaten. (Leviticus 17) This was a confession that the life had reverted to God, and was not in man’s power. To eat blood under the law would have been an attempt to regain life in our own strength; —an attempt by man to reach that which he had forfeited. But now under the Gospel the ordinance is changed. Blood must be eaten” Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, there is no life in you.” For the life that had reverted to God, God has given to make atonement. The blood of the New Testament has been shed for the remission of sins, and life, through that blood, is now given to sinners in the Son of God. “In him was life.” He came from God with the life for us. “He that hath the Son bath life.” And we are commanded, as well as besought, to take life from him. And truly we may say, our God has thus perfected our comfort and our assurance before him, making it to be as simple disobedience in us not to take life from him as his gift, as it would be simple pride and arrogancy of heart to assume to take it by our own works. What a pleading of love is this with our souls! We are disobedient if we are not saved! Death is God’s enemy as well as ours.; and if we do not take life from the Son, we join the enemy of God. “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life,” says the aggrieved Son of God.” And when asked by certain persons in this very chapter, “What shall we do that we may work the works of God?” he has but to reply, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” To believe, and take life as the gift of God through his Son, is the only act of obedience that the blessed God claims from a ‘sinner—the only thing that a sinner, till he is reconciled, can do to please him.
This is grace wondrously and blessedly revealed. This ordinance, that forbad the eating of blood, was as the flaming sword of the cherubim in the garden. Both that sword and this ordinance told the sinner that there was no recovery of forfeited life by any effort of his own.” And Adam’s faith most sweetly displays itself here. He did not seek to put back that sword, as though he could regain the tree of life himself. But what did he? He took life from God, through grace, and the gift by grace. He believed the promise about the woman’s seed; and in that faith called the woman “the mother of all living.” He took life as the gift of God through Christ, and sought it not by works of the law, nor through the flaming sword.
All this mystery in the sinner’s life was thus illustrated from the very beginning, even in the faith of Adam, and is blessedly unfolded in our Lord’s discourse to the people in this chapter. That life begins in the power of redemption by the paschal Lamb slain in Egypt, and by the manna of the wilderness. But our chapter shows us that Israel was still a stranger to it; that they had not learned the lesson of Egypt and the wilderness, in the knowledge of the redemption and life that is in Christ Jesus.
7. A new scene again opens here. It was the time of the Feast of Tabernacles; as the preceding scene had been laid in the time of the Passover.
This was the most joyous season in the Jewish year. It was the great annual festival at Jerusalem; the grand commemoration of Israel’s past sojourn in the wilderness, and of their present rest in Canaan; the type also of Messiah’s coming glory and joy as king of Israel. His brethren urge the Lord to take advantage ‘of this season; to leave Galilee and go up to Jerusalem, there to exhibit his power, and get himself a name in the world. But they did not understand him. They were of the world; he was not of the world. The Son of God was a stranger here; but they were at home. They might go up and meet the world at the feast, but he was for God against the world. He, to whom it bore witness, could not go up and claim his own there, because the world was there, because the god of this world had usurped and was corrupting the scene of his glory and joy.
But how fallen was Israel when this was so! And what was their boasted festival, when the spring of its joy and the heir of its glory must stand estranged from it!
The gold had become dim. The ways to Zion were still solitary; none were really coming to the solemn feast. In spirit the prophet was still weeping. (Lam. 1:44The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness. (Lamentations 1:4).) The Lord goes up, it is true, but not in his glory. He does not go as his brethren would have had him; but in obedience merely, to take the place of the humbled, and not of the great one of the earth. And when arrived at the city of solemnities, we see him only in the same character, for he goes to the temple and teaches; but when this attracts notice, he hides himself, saying, “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.” He hides himself, that not he, but the Father who had sent him, might be seen. Like the one who had emptied himself, and taken the form of a servant, he is willing to be nothing. They who were at the feast manifested their utter apostasy from the principle of the feast, and say, “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” In their pride, they acknowledged no source of knowledge or wisdom above man. They would have the creature in honor; but the feast celebrated Jehovah, and was for the setting forth the honors of him who now in righteousness had to hide his glory, and separate himself from it all. Israel and the feast, Israel and the Son of God, were utterly dissociated. They had nothing in each other. And thus, whether we listen to the Jews, or to the men of Jerusalem, or to the Pharisees, in this chapter, all tell us of their rejection of him: and he has in the end to say to them, “Where I am, thither ye cannot come.”
Jesus thus refuses to sanction the Feast. He tells Israel that they had now no title to the rest and glory which it pledged to them—that they were not really in Canaan, and had never yet drawn water out of the wells of salvation; that their land, instead of being watered by the river of God, was but a barren and thirsty portion of the accursed earth; that they had forsaken the fountain of living waters, and all their own cisterns were but broken. And accordingly, as the Feast was closing, Jesus puts the living water into other vessels, and dries up the wells which were in Jerusalem. He turns the fruitful land into barrenness for the wickedness of them that dwelt therein, and opens the river of God in other places. “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink: he that believeth on me, as the scripture bath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”
And in connection with this, I would shortly trace “the river of God” through scripture; and we shall see it flowing in different channels according to different dispensations.
In Eden it took it’s rise in the earth to water the garden, and from thence to wander in divers streams over the earth. For the dispensation was one of earthly good. Man knew no source of blessing or streams of joy than such as were connected with creation. In the wilderness the smitten rock was its source, and every path of the camp of God its channel. It followed them; for at that time they only were the redeemed of the Lord whom his eye rested on in the World. In Canaan, afterward, the waters of Shiloah flowed softly; Jehovah watered the land from his own buckets, and made it to drink of the rain of heaven; and for the souls of the people every feast and every sacrifice was as a well of this water; and the current of the yearly service of the sanctuary was its constant channel. For Israel was, then, the people of the Lord, and their land his dwelling-place. But the time had now come, as we have just seen, for leaving Canaan a dry land, and for opening the river of God elsewhere. It was now to take its rise, as the Lord here teaches us, in the glorified Son of man in heaven; and the channels, through which it was to flow, were to be the bellies of his members on earth. The dispensation was to be one of “spiritual blessings in heavenly places;” the earth was not for the present to be watered, but only the Church of God. But, by and by, in the kingdom, when the present age, like others, has fulfilled its course, and other dispensations arise, this same river will own other channels and springs. It will rise in the throne of God and the Lamb, and flow through the golden street of the city, for the gladdening of the multitude before the throne (Revelation 7:17;22: 1, 217For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. (Revelation 7:17)); and it will also rise under the sanctuary in the earthly Zion, for the watering of Jerusalem and the whole earth. (Ezekiel 47; Joel 3; Zechariah 14) For then will be the time of the two-fold blessing, the time of the heavenly and the earthly glory. All things will have the grace and power of God dispensed among Them, all will then be visited by “the river of God, which is full of water.” The Feast of Tabernacles will then be duly kept in Jerusalem, and that nation of the earth which will not go up to keep it there shall have no gracious visitation of this fruitful river of God, but shall be left to know the sterility of that soul that refuses to drink of the water which the Son of God giveth.
Upon all this, I would only further notice the connection that there is between our thirst and the outflow of this living water (see verses 37, 38). The saint thirsts, then goes to Jesus for the water that he has to give, and afterward comes with the river of God, the water of life, the flowing of the Spirit, in him, for his own refreshing and that of the weary. His thirst receives the abounding presence of the Holy Ghost, and opens in him a channel for the river of life, which now rises in the ascended head of the church, to flow through him to others. O that we panted more after God, as the hart after the water-brooks! that we longed more for the courts of the Lord! Then would the Spirit fill our souls, and we should Comfort and refresh one another. And this is indeed the power of all ministry. Ministry is but the out-flowing of this living water, the expression of this hidden abounding presence of the Spirit within us. The head has received the gifts for us; and from the head, all the body, by joints and bands having nourishment ministered and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. And this is our only Feast of Tabernacles, till we celebrate a still happier one with the palmy multitude before the throne. For this feast cannot now be kept in Jerusalem; the. saints must have it in its only present form, by walking together in the liberty and refreshing of the Holy Ghost.
This feast, this “joy in the Holy Ghost,” is something more than either the Passover of Egypt, or the manna of the wilderness. Those were for redemption and life, but this is for joy and the foretaste of glory; those were of the flesh and blood of the Son of man, broken and shed here; but this is of the Son of man glorified in heaven. It savors more of Canaan than of the wilderness, though for comfort in the wilderness: as the Feast of Tabernacles was not a wilderness feast, but a feast in Canaan, the land of rest and glory after the wilderness.
But Israel, as yet, knew nothing of these things, as is here shown to us. In the fifth chapter, the Lord had met them, as in Egypt, with redeeming grace and power: witness the restored cripple, which was like, Moses casting down his rod in the sight of Israel in proof of his embassy. But it only ended in proving that they would remain in Egypt; for they refuse to believe Moses, believing not him of whom Moses wrote; and what redemption from Egypt was there for Israel, if Moses were refused? In the sixth, he had met them, as in the wilderness, with the manna; but only in like manner to prove that they were not feeding there, as the camp of God, upon the bread of God. In this chapter, he had met them as in Canaan; but all had shown that Canaan was still the land of the uncircumcised, the land of drought, and not of the river of God. He, therefore, now stands outside the city of solemnities, and in spirit ascends to heaven, as head of his body the church; to feed the thirsty from thence. He says, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” The Jews may reason about him among themselves, and then go every man “to his own house;” but he, owning his present estrangement from Israel, and consequent homeless condition, on the earth, goes to the Mount of Olives.
8. Thus was it with Israel now. They knew not that they were still in bonds, and needed his hand to dead them out and feed them again. They knew not that they had still to reach the true Canaan, Immanuel’s land. They had been rejecting the grace of the Son of God, and were making their boast of the law; and now, in the confidence that it was theirs, and that they could use it, and by it entangle the Lord, they bring forward the adulteress.
They had, to be sure, noticed his grace to sinners. All his ways must have told them that. And they judge it, of course, an easy matter to show him to be the enemy of Moses and the law. But he gains a holy and glorious victory. Grace is made to shout a triumph over sin, and the sinner over every accuser. The Lord does not impugn the law. He could not; for it was holy; and he had come, not to destroy, but to fulfill it. He does not acquit the guilty. He could not; for he had come into the world, with full certainty as to the sinner’s guilt. It was that which had brought him among us; and, therefore, in the present case, he does not pretend to raise such questions. The sinner is convicted, and the law righteously lies against her. But who—can execute it? Who can cast the stone? That question he may and does—raise. Satan may accuse, the sinner may be guilty, and the law may condemn: but where is the executioner? Who can handle the fiery power of the law? None but himself. None can avenge the quarrel of divine righteousness upon the sinner; none have hands clean enough to take up the stone and cast it, but Jesus himself; and he refuses. He refuses to act He refuses to entertain the case. He stooped down and wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. He was not presiding in any court for the trying of such matters. He came not to judge. But they persist and then the Lord, in effect, replies, that if they will have Mount Sinai they shall; if, like Israel of old, they will challenge the law, and undertake the terms of the fiery hill, why they shall have the law, and again hear the voice of that hill; and, accordingly, he lets out something of the genuine heat of that place, and they soon find that it reaches them, as well as the poor convicted one, and the place becomes too hot for them.
They had not reckoned on this. They had not thought that the thunders of that hill would have made them to quake, or its horrible darkness have enwrapped them as completely as the open and shamed sinner, whom their own hand had dragged there. But as they had chosen the fiery hill, they must take it for better or worse, and just as they find it.
The Lord, however, in giving the law this character, in causing it to reach the judges as well as their prisoner, proved that he was the Lord of that hill. He let, as I said, some of its genuine heat out. He marshalled its thunder, and directed its lightning, and spread out its horrible darkness, as the Lord of it. He made the hosts of that hill take their march, and address themselves to their proper work; and then, on this being done, exactly as of old at the same place, this is found to be intolerable. “Let not God speak to us,” said Israel then (Exodus 20); as now these Pharisees, “being convicted by their own conscience, go out one by one.” They can no more stand under that place, which they themselves had challenged, than Israel of old, when that mount let them know what it really was.
All this has a very great character in it. The Lord is greatly glorified. They designed to expose him as Moses’ enemy, but he displays himself as Moses’ Lord, or the conductor of that lightning which had once made the heart of even that stoutest Israelite exceedingly to fear and quake. I read all this as something very excellent indeed. But further if this be his glory, it is equally our blessing. If the Lord Jesus be honored as the conductor of the fiery power of the law, we find that he does this for us. He lets this poor sinner know this. While the Pharisees accuse her, he is deaf to all they were saying; and when they still urge him, he gives her to see him turning the hot thunderbolt on the head of her accusers, so that they are forced to leave her alone with him who had proved himself the Lord of Sinai and her deliverer.
Could she desire more? Could she leave the place where she now found herself? Impossible. She was as able to stand it as the very Lord of the hill himself. Sinai had no more terror for her than for him. Not a bit. Need she leave that place? She was free to do so, if she pleased. They who had forced her there were gone. The passage was open. She had nothing to do but to go out after the rest, if she desired it. If she would fain hide her shame, and make the best of her case, she may. Now is the time. Let her go out. The Lord knows her sin in all its magnitude, and she need not think of remaining where she is, and be accounted guiltless. If this be her hope, let her follow her convicted accusers, and hide her shame outside. But no; she had learned the tale of delivering grace from the words and the acts of Jesus, and she need not go out. Nature would have retired; flesh and blood, or the mere moral principles of man, would have sent her after the rest. But the faith which had read the story of redemption acts above nature, or the judgment of the moral man. She remains were she was. This mount Sinai (as her accusers had made that place) was not too much for her. The still small voice of mercy which once answered Moses, and again answered Elijah there, had now answered her. The pledges of salvation were there exposed to her, as of old time to the fathers, and the spot was green and fresh and sunny to her spirit. It had become “the gate of heaven” to her. The darkness of death had been turned into “the light of life.” She need not go—she would not go—she could not go. She will not leave the presence of Jesus, who had so gloriously approved himself the Lord of Sinai, and yet her deliverer. She was a sinner. Yes—and she knew it, and he knew it before whom in solitude she now stood. And so was Adam, as he came forth naked from the trees of the garden. But she is willing and able to stand naked or detected before him. She could no more retire to a thicket than Adam could continue in a thicket, or wear his apron of fig-leaves, after such a voice. Jesus had confounded all her accusers. They had roared of the evil she had done, but he had deeply and forever silenced them. In the light of life she now walked. Her conscience, in a little moment, had taken a long and eventful journey. She had passed from the region of darkness and death into the realms of liberty, safety, and joy, led by the light of the Lord of life.
This is the triumph of grace; and this is the joy of the sinner. This is the song of victory on the banks of the Red Sea, the enemy lying dead on its shores. She has but to call him “Lord;” and he has but to say, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”
This was full deliverance. And the same deliverance awaits every sinner who, like the poor adulteress here, will come and be alone with Jesus. As sinners (as I have observed before), we have to do only with God. We may do offense or wrong to others, and they may complain and challenge us; but as sinners, God must deal with us alone, and the discovery of this is the way of blessing. David discovered it, and got blessing at once. His act, it is true, had been a wrong to another. He had taken the poor man’s one little ewe lamb; but he had in all this sinned against God also. And in the discovery and sense of this he says, “I have sinned against the Lord.” But the effect of this was, to leave him alone with God. As a wrong-doer, Uriah might have to do with him; but as a sinner, he had not. God must deal with him alone; and the moment his sin thus casts him alone with God, he, like the poor adulteress here, listens to the voice of mercy: “The Lord bath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.” He suffers chastening for the wrong he had done, but the wages of sin are remitted.
It is ever the sinner’s victory, when he can thus by faith claim to be alone with Jesus. The priest and the Levite have then passed by; for what could they do? What heart or ability had the law to meet the sinner’s case? It is grace—the Stranger from heaven —that must help. The poor wounded sinner is lying in the way, and the good Samaritan must meet him. And truly blessed is it, when all through its further way, the soul still remembers how it thus began in solitude with Jesus the Savior.
And he is glorified in all this, as surely as we are comforted; glorified with his brightest glory, his, glory as the Savior of the guilty. A vial is prepared for redeemed sinners, which is to bear an incense, the like to which can be found nowhere else. (Exodus 30:3737And as for the perfume which thou shalt make, ye shall not make to yourselves according to the composition thereof: it shall be unto thee holy for the Lord. (Exodus 30:37).) Even the vials of angels do not carry such perfume. They praise the Lamb, it is true; but not in such lofty strains as the Church of redeemed sinners. They ascribe to him “power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing;” but the Church has a song before the throne, and sings, “Thou art worthy, for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.”
All this blessing for the sinner, and this glory for the Savior, we see here. The sinner is hid from her accuser, and the Savior silences him. The officers had been lately disarmed by the holy attraction of his words, and now the Scribes are rebuked by the convicting light of his words. (7:46; 8:9.) These were not carnal weapons, but weapons of heavenly temper. Their enmity had exhausted all its resources. They had assayed the force of the lion, and the guile of the serpent; and, all having passed, the Son of God at once takes his elevation, and shows himself in his place of entire separation and distance from them. He raises the pillar of light and darkness in the present wilderness of Canaan, and puts Israel, like the Egyptians of old, on the dark side of it. “I am the light of the world,” says Jesus; “he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness.”
Such was Israel now, spiritually called Egypt. They had no association with Abraham or with God, though they boasted in them; for they had no faculty to discern Abraham’s joy, or the sent of God. They must take their place of atheistic darkness and alienation. The Lord gives them the place of Ishmael, the very place which Paul afterward put them in. (See v. 35; Galatians 4) As the child of the bondwoman Israel still is and will be, till “they turn to the Lord,” till “they know the truth, and the truth make them free,” make them as Isaac. The Jews assert that they had never been in bondage. (v. 33.) Jesus might have called for a penny, and by its image and superscription have proved their falsehood. But, according to the high and divine thoughts of this Gospel, he takes other ground with them, and convicts them of deadlier bondage than that to Rome, a bondage to flesh and to sin.
Mark also their low and mistaken thoughts about him and his plainest words. He had said, “Abraham rejoiced to see my day;” but they reply as though he had said, he had seen Abraham. The difference, however, was infinite, though they perceived it not. By the words he had used, the Lord was challenging the highest glories for himself. He was making himself the great object from the beginning, the One who had been filling the thoughts, engaging the hopes, and answering the need of all the elect of God in all ages. It was not he that had seen Abraham, but it was Abraham that had seen him: and without contradiction I may say, the better is seen of the less. “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” That is Christ’s place. He was Adam’s object as he went forth from Eden. He was the confidence of Abel, and of Noah. He was seen and rejoiced in by Abraham and the Patriarchs. He Was the substance of the shadows, and the end of the law. He was the Lamb and the light under the eye of the Baptist. He is now the confidence of every saved sinner, and he will be through eternity the praise and the center of the creation of God.
All this is a strong discovery of the state of Israel through this chapter. And this was a solemn moment for them. In Matthew the Lord tested the Jews by his Messiahship, and in the end convicted them of rejecting him in that character. But in this Gospel, he tests them by other and higher proposals of himself—as the light, the truth, the doer of the works and the speaker of the words of God, as the Son of the Father; and thus convicts them, not of mere unbelief in Messiah, but of the common atheism of man. In this character Israel is here made to stand, Cain-like, in the land of Nod, in the place of the common departure of man from God. He had spoken the words of the Father; but they understood not, they believed not. As the sent of the Father he had come (as such an one must have come) in grace to them; but they refused him. And so is it among men to this day. The Gospel is a message of goodness; but man receives it not. Man will not think well of God. This is the secret of unbelief. The Gospel is “goodness” (Romans 11:2222Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. (Romans 11:22)); and man still asks, Is it from God? for man has, hard thoughts of God, and Satan is persuading him still to have them. He does what he can to obscure the sinner’s title to God, that the sinner may look for some inheritance elsewhere.
So here with Israel. Jesus judged no man, but spake the word of the Father, which was freedom and life to them. But they understood not his speech, as he says to them. Their minds were formed by their father, who was a liar and a murderer; and “grace and truth,” which came to them by Jesus Christ, they had no ears to hear. And now, as the disallowed witness of the Father, as the hated light of the world, he has no place in the land, no certain paths of this earth, to go forth into. He “passes by,” as knowing no spot or person here; but still, as the light of the world, shining, wherever his beams may reach, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.
9. 10. Accordingly, in this character, he is separated from Israel. Israel is left in darkness, and the pillar of God moves onward. Jesus, “the light of the world,” goes forth and meets one who had been blind from his birth; and in such a one his works could well be manifested.
The Lord God, it is most true, is a great King, and acts as a Sovereign. He is the potter that has power over the clay. “Who hath made the seeing or the blind? Have not I the Lord?” But the Son came not from the throne of the king, but from the bosom of the Father. He came to manifest the Father. The blind may be in the world; but the Son came only as the light of the world; and accordingly, as such alone, he applies himself to his blessed labor of grace and power, and opens the eyes of this blind beggar.
But what was this to Jerusalem? There was darkness there, and the light may shine; but it will not be comprehended. Instead of that, as we read here, “they brought to the Pharisees him that aforetime was blind.” There was a high court of inquisition at Jerusalem, and it must try the ways of the Son of God. Instead of welcoming him as of old, when the pillar of God was raised, and saying, “Rise, Lord, let thine enemies be scattered,” they love their own darkness, and will walk in it.
At first, they question the man himself; but not finding him quite to their purpose, they commit the case to witnesses, who, they judge, were in their own power. They call his parents; but again, they fail. The fact that the light had shone among them cannot be gainsaid. They then seek to divert the whole matter into such a channel as would leave untouched their own pride and worldliness; and they say, “Give God the glory; we know that this man is a sinner.” But this will not do either. The poor soul maintains his integrity, and then they alarm him by separating him from all acknowledged ground of safety. “Thou art his disciple,” say they; “but we are Moses’ disciples.” But he is kept still; and not only kept, but led on from strength to strength. He hath, and more is given him He follows as the light leads, till at length it so shines as to reprove the darkness of the Pharisees; and they hurl against him the thunders of the Church, and cast him forth without the camp.
But where do they cast him? Just where every lonely outcast sinner may find himself, where the unclean Samaritan and convicted adulteress had before found themselves—into the presence and across the solitudes of the Son of God, which is the very gate of heaven; for the Lord had gone without the camp before him. This sheep of the flock was now “put forth;” but it was only to meet the shepherd, who had “gone before.” In that place of shame and exposure they embrace each other. “There was he found by one who had himself been shot by the archers.” The meeting there was a meeting indeed. This poor Israelite, while he was within the camp, had met Jesus as his healer; but now that he is put without, he meets him as the Son of God. He meets him to know him as the One who, when he was blind, had opened his eyes, and now that he is cast out talks with him. And, beloved, this is ever the way of our meeting Jesus—as sinners and as outcasts—in the unclean place. If he takes us up there, it must be in the full grace of the Son of God, the Savior.
And thus, our character as sinners leads us into the sweetest and dearest intimacies of the Lord of life and glory. As creatures, we know the strength of his hand, his Godhead, and wisdom, and goodness; but as sinners, we know the love of his heart, and all the treasures of his grace and glory.
And I notice the changed tone of this poor beggar in the presence of the Pharisees he was firm and unbending. He does not abate the tone of conscious righteousness and truth all through. He set his face as a flint, and endured hardness. But the moment he comes into the presence of the Lord, he is all humility and gentleness. He melts, as it were, at the feet of Jesus. Oh, what a sweet sample is this of the workmanship of the Spirit of God! courage before man, but the meltings of love, and the bowings of worship, before the Lord who has loved and redeemed us.
But this unclean place without the camp, where the Lord of heaven and earth now stood with this poor sinner, was not only the place of liberty and joy to the sinner, but the wide field of observation to the Lord. From this place he surveys himself, the beggar, and the whole camp of Israel, outside of which he had gone with his elect one; and in the parable of “the good shepherd” he draws the moral of it all. In the scene of the ninth chapter, he had shown that he had entered by the door into the sheepfold; for be had come, working the works of the Father, and had in that way approved himself to be in the confidence of the owner of the fold, the sanctioned Shepherd of his flock. He was estranged from Israel; but, like Moses in such a case, he was to keep the flock of his Father in other pastures, near the mount of God. The Pharisees, because they were resisting him, must therefore needs be “thieves and robbers,” climbing into the fold some other way. And the poor blind beggar was a sample of the ‘flock, who, while they refuse the voice of strangers, hear and know the voice of him that had entered by the door; and, entering by him, “the door of the sheep,” find safety, rest, and pasture.
All this had been set out in the scene before us, and is expressed in the parable. The parable thus passes a blessed commentary on the present condition of this poor outcast. The Jews, no doubt, judged (and would have had him judge so likewise) that he had now been cut off from safety, being cut off from themselves. But Jesus shows, that not until now was he in safety; that had he been left where he was, he would have become a prey to those who were stealing, and killing, and destroying; but that now he was found and taken up of One who, to give him life, would lay down his own.
All this we have, both in the narrative and in the parable. And it is at this point in our Gospel that the Lord and the remnant meet together; “the poor of the flock” are here manifested, their own shepherds pitying them not; and the Shepherd from heaven takes them up as all his care, to guard and to feed them. (Zechariah 11)
But the love and care of him who said to him, “Feed the flock of slaughter” (Zechariah 11:44Thus saith the Lord my God; Feed the flock of the slaughter; (Zechariah 11:4)), is also seen here most blessedly. It is, perhaps, the sweetest thing in the parable. We learn the mind of the Father towards the flock. For the Lord says, “As the Father knoweth me, so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep;” letting us know that one of the deepest secrets of the Father’s heart was his love and care for the Church. The flock, indeed, was the Father’s before it was committed to Christ the Shepherd. “Thine they were, and thou gavest them me.” They lay in the Father’s hand, before they were put into Christ’s hand. They were the Father’s by election before the world was, and became Christ’s by the gift of the Father, and by purchase of blood. And all the tenderness and diligent care of the Shepherd do but express the mind of the Owner towards his flock. The Shepherd and the owner of the flock are one. As the Lord says, “I and my Father are one.” One, it is true, in glory, but one also in their love and carefulness about their poor flock of redeemed sinners. Christ met the Father’s mind, when he loved the Church and gave himself for it; and they rest forever one in that love, as surely as they rest one in their own glory. This is truth of precious comfort to us. “Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” We learn, indeed, that God is love; and the moment we discover this, we get our rest in God; for the wearied broken heart of the sinner may rest in love, though nowhere else. “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”
Here, then, “the poor of the flock” feed and he down. But Beauty and Bands are to be broken. The shepherd’s staves, that would have led and kept Israel, must now be cast away. It was only a remnant that knew his voice. Who can hear the voice of a Savior, but a sinner? The whole need not the physician. And thus, in this place our Lord’s dealings with Israel close. He refuses to feed them any more: “That that dieth, let it die; and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off” (Zechariah 11:99Then said I, I will not feed you: that that dieth, let it die; and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let the rest eat every one the flesh of another. (Zechariah 11:9).)
And I may notice that his dealing with Israel closes here, in a way fully characteristic of this Gospel by John. They seek to stone him, as we read, because that “he being a man had made himself God.” In the other Gospels, the soul of Israel loathes him (as Zechariah speaks) for other reasons; because, for instance, he received sinners, or impugned their traditions, or touched their sabbath. But, in this Gospel, it is his assertion of Sonship of the Father, the assertion of the divine honors of his person, which chiefly raises the conflict. (See chapters 5 and 8) In this place, we observe that the Lord, in answer to the Jews, pleads the manifestation which he had now given of himself, as others had done in Israel before him. Others, set in authority, had been called “gods,” because they had manifested God in his place of authority and judgment, and were the powers whom God had ordained. And he, in like manner, had now manifested the Father. The judges and kings could have shown that the word of God had come to them, committing to them the sword of God. And Jesus had shown himself the sent of the Father, full of grace and truth, working among them now, as the Father had hitherto worked, in the exercise of grace, restoring, and healing, and blessing poor sinners. Thus, had he shown that the Father was in him, and he in the Father. But their hearts were hardened. The darkness could not comprehend the light, and he has but to escape out of their hands, and take up again a position in the earth apart from the revolted nation.
Here the second section of our Gospel ends. It has presented to us our Lord’s controversies with the Jews, in the course of which he set aside one Jewish thing after another, and brought in himself in the place of it. In the 5th chapter, he set aside Bethesda, the last witness of the Father’s working in Israel, and took its place, as minister of grace. In the 6th and 7th chapters, he set aside the feasts; the passover and the tabernacles (the first of which opened the Jewish year with the life of the nation, while the second closed it with their glory), taking the place of these ordinances himself, sliming that he was the only source of life and glory. In the 8th, after exposing the utter unsuitableness of the law to man, because of the evil and weakness of man, he takes his place as “the light of the world,” as the One by whom alone, and not by the law, sinners were to find their way into truth and liberty, and home to God. And then, in the 9th chapter, in this character of the light of the World, he goes out from Israel. He had been casting his beams on that people, but they comprehended him not. He goes forth, therefore, and draws the poor of the flock after him; and, in the 10th, exhibits himself and them outside the camp, leaving the land of Israel, as the prophet had spoken, a chaos without form and void. The Word of the Lord, that would have called it into beauty and order, was refused; and now the place of Jehovah’s ancient husbandry, on which his eyes rested from one end of the year to the other, and which he watered with the rain of his own heavens, is given over to become the wilderness and the shadow of death.
11. 12. Thus, was it with Israel. They were left in unbelief and darkness, having refused the proposals of the Son of God. But these chapters show, that though Israel may delay their mercy, they shall not disappoint it. God’s purpose—is to bless, and he will bless. In the way of his own covenant, that is, in resurrection—power and grace, he will bring the blessing to Israel. It was as the quickener of the dead that too had of old entered into covenant with their father Abraham. It was thus that he appeared to Moses, as the hope of the nation at Horeb. (Exodus 3; Luke 20:3737Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. (Luke 20:37).) It was by resurrection that he was to give to Israel the promised prophet, like unto Moses. (Deuteronomy 18; Acts 3) It is in this character that all the prophets speak of him, as acting for the seed of Abraham in the latter day. And our own apostle tells us, that the resurrection of Jesus is the pledge of all the blessing promised to the fathers. (Acts 33.) Jehovah will restore life and glory to Israel in resurrection-power and grace. When all their own strength is gone, he will himself arise for their help. He will plant glory in the land of the living. The barren woman shall keep house. The Lord will call them from their graves, and make the dry bones live. And that he will accomplish all this for Israel is here, in these two chapters, pledged and foreshown. The previous chapters had shown Israel to be in ruins and distance from God; but here, ere the Lord entirely hides himself from them, he gives them, in the raising of Lazarus and its results, full pledges of final life and glory.
This, I doubt not, is the general bearing of these two chapters; and thus, they form a kind of appendix to the previous section, rather than a distinct portion of the Gospel.
The Lord had left Judea, and was in retirement beyond Jordan, when a message came to him that one in, Judea whom he loved was sick. He abides in the place where he was, till this sickness had taken its course and ended in death. Then he addresses himself to his journey; for he could then take it as the Son of God, the quickener of the dead: and in the full consciousness that he was about to act as such, he sets forward, saying, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep.” He also consciously bore the day along with him; for “the life is the light of men;”—and thus he, says also, in answer to the fears of his disciples, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.” He not only saw the light, but he was the light, of the world—not merely a child of light, but the fountain of light. His disciples, however, are dull of hearing. They neither discern the voice of the Son of God, nor see the path of the light of life. They judge that death to himself, rather than life to others, was before him, and they say, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
There might have been human affection in this, but there was sad ignorance of his glory. The disciples now, like the women afterward, would fain take their spices to the Savior’s tomb; but both should have known that he was not there.
Onward he goes, the Son of God, the quickener of the dead; and his path lies to the grave of Lazarus, his friend, in Judea. There he stands in the full vision of the triumphs of sin; for “sin hath reigned unto death;” and, had all ended here, Satan had prevailed. Jesus wept. The Son of the living God wept over the vision of death. In another Gospel, he had wept, as the Son of David, over the city which he had chosen to put his name there, because she had refused him. But here, as the Son of God who had life in himself, he weeps over the vision of death. But he groaned in himself also; and he that searcheth the hearts knew that groan; and Jesus, in full assurance that it was heard, had only to acknowledge the answer with thanksgiving, and, in the power of that answer, to say, “Lazarus, come forth;”—and he that was dead did come forth, the witness that “as the Father hath life in himself, so had he given to the Son to have life in himself.”
Here did the path of the Son, of God end. He had met the power of sin at its height, and had shown. that he was above it—the resurrection and the life. But this was not the destruction of him that had the power of death; for it was not the death and resurrection of the Captain of salvation himself nor was it properly a pledge to the saints of their resurrection in glorious bodies; for Lazarus came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, to walk again in flesh and blood. It was rather a pledge to Israel of the quickening power of the Son of God on their behalf, showing them that the promised resurrection or revival of the nation rested on him, and that he would in due, time accomplish it.
But Israel had no eyes to read this sign of their mercy, nor heart to understand it. Instead of it becoming the ground of their faith, it is made the occasion of the working of full enmity. “From that day forth they took counsel together, to put him to death.” The husbandmen set themselves to cast out the heir of the vineyard. And their entire departure from their father Abraham, their complete apostasy from God, is manifested. Israel had been separated out of the nation’s unto God; but they now deliberate, and take their place among the nations again. Unlike Abraham, they take riches from the king of Sodom, instead of blessing from the hand of Melchisedek. They choose the patronage of Rome, rather than know the resurrection-power of the Son of God. “If we let him thus alone,” say they, “all will believe on him, and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.”
(Continued from page 72.)