In reading the Holy Scriptures we should remember that they do not simply contain a rule of life and conduct, but that they are a revelation of God, so as to lead us into the knowledge of Him in Jesus Christ, and thus into life eternal. He that was “in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” “I have manifested Thy name,” says the Lord, “unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world.” They do assuredly exhibit a rule of life; and as such not a jot or tittle of them is to be disregarded (Matt. 5:18); but if they be received merely as such, our souls will not come into contact with the great purpose of God in giving them forth. We are renewed in knowledge—knowledge of God in Christ, through the Spirit; and therefore the effort of the god of this world is to hinder the light of the gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, from shining into us; and, on the other hand, the prayer of the apostle, for the church, is that they might receive the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, and that they might increase in the knowledge of God (Eph. 1:1'7; Col. 1:10). Oh that all saints may find their happiest occupation in searching out the ways of their faithful God, redeeming their time from the vain pursuits of the world thus to converse with Him! Let us remember however, that it is the willing and obedient heart, and not the acute intellect, that makes safe and profitable progress in this knowledge. “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him” (Psa. 25:14). “The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein” (Psa. 111:2).
The sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow, form, as we are told, the great burthen of the scriptures. The Spirit in the prophets testified of these; and surely they do constitute the center of the blessed, wondrous, and gracious purpose or plan of our God in His dealings with us.
Concerning this glory, which was thus to follow the sufferings of Christ, 1 desire to trace two portions or characters of it signified to us by two of His many titles—
SON OF DAVID; SON OF GOD.
And oh, for more of the mind of Christ—more too of the sweet power of friendship with Jesus, that we all may thus be more apt to learn from Him the things which He has heard from the Father (John 15:15)!
The purpose of God, in His election of Israel as His nation, was the assertion of His own right to all power on earth; or, in other words, for the manifestation of Christ, as the heir and holder of all earthly glory and dominion.
His dispensation, by means of Israel no doubt, was made to answer other purposes; as for instance, it answered the purpose of drawing out, in still broader and brighter lines, the evidences of man's weakness and degradation through the fall; that though favored, as man was among the Jews, in the most special ways of providence, yet was he found to be without strength, unable to stand unrebukeable before God; and thus it gave us further to know, that God Himself must sustain us, and work in and for us. And then it answered the other purpose of witnessing that God could, in grace, thus sustain us, and thus work in and for us Himself; for it presented shadows of good things to come: the law, as well as the prophets of Israel, prophesied of Jesus (Matt. 11:13). But the characteristic purpose of God in the dispensation of Israel, appears to have been to vindicate His own name—the name of Jehovah, as the only God of the whole earth, the only Lord of the lower parts of the earth. For in Israel, Christ or Jehovah was economically or virtually on the throne. A theocracy, as it is commonly admitted, was established among them; and the history of Israel was to have shown, and but for their unbelief and rebellion, would have shown, that “blessed were the people who had the Lord for their God.” They were “set on high above all nations of the earth.” “What nation is there,” said Moses, “so great, that hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all that we call upon Him for” (Deut. 4:7)? And so Joshua could afterward stand before Israel, and witness, in like manner, the mercy of Jehovah to them as His nation: “the Lord hath driven out from before you great nations and strong; but as for you no man hath been able to stand before you unto this day” (Josh. 23:9).
Thus was Israel established to be God's witness on earth; they were His people, politically united with Him as their King. And being thus the earthly people of God, their blessings were blessings of the earth, blessings of providence, as it is written, “all these blessings shall come upon them” (Deut. xxviii. 1-14).
And they should have continued thus to flourish as God's nation, “their time should have remained forever” (Psa. 81:15). But the children of Israel revolted from their King, they rejected Jehovah, as Christ, that He should not reign over them (1 Sam. 8:7).
When Israel, thus with revolted heart, would have a king, after the Lord had made trial of the son of Cis (the mystical import of whose reign, though deeply interesting and instructive, I need not here consider), He gave them David to be their king, a man after His own heart. By the arms of David the enemies of God and of His Israel were all reduced; and then, full of honor and as established to the furthest limits of the promised land, the throne and kingdom of David are delivered over to his son Solomon, that he might hold them as glorious in the eyes of the nations; and thus was the throne of David constituted a second witness of God's authority and power on earth. But the house of David, like Israel before, speedily corrupted itself, and after long patience, God removed them from their place, taking power from them, and allowing it to pass over to the heathen who were not His people; and there it has been ever since, passing from one to another of the four Beasts of the prophets. And thus has the Lord been left without a due or appointed witness to His glory as Lord of the earth. But scripture very largely tells us that Israel is to revive as from their present state of death, and be established by Christ and under Christ (Who is the Faithful Witness to the glory of the Father) in the person, and with all the rights, of “Son of David:” and to His hand earthly power and glory shall be found to be securely committed, to the glory of God the Father.
I have thus anticipated what I understand from scripture to be the special characteristic glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, as “Son of David;” it presents Him to us as the restorer and holder of power on earth. This name or title appears to have its origin in the words of Nathan, the prophet of God, to David (see 2 Sam. 7:8-16).
This word of Nathan distinctly appoints the son of David to be the head of that house and kingdom which the Lord would Himself establish in the earth forever. Psa. 89 celebrates the same grace of God to David's seed. Now a comparative view of 2 Sam. 7:14 with Heb. 1:5, of Psa. 132:11 with Acts 2:30, and of Isa. 4:3 with Acts 13:34, will at once assure us that Christ, and not Solomon, is really and substantially the Son of David, both in the oracle of Nathan and in the Psalm I have referred to. And I would add just this—that our Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of David, not as Head of His mystical body the church, but as Head of the restored tribes of Israel; for the church never has been, and indeed never could be forsaken of her God as the prophet there threatens, and the psalmist there complains (Psa. 89); but Zion is now really the Forsaken, and her land the Desolate (Isa. 62:4). Besides, the Lord Jesus often admitted His claim to this title, and, when He stood before the Roman governor, confessed Himself to be the King of the Jews. And the Angel, announcing His birth, spake of David as His Father, and David's throne as His. In this character of the Son of David the Lord offered Himself to Israel at His first coming; but Israel cast Him out then, as they had done before in the days of Samuel. We learn this from the parable of the wicked Husbandmen. For we learn there distinctly that the mission of the Son of God to earth was designed, among its many blessed purposes, to prove whether Israel could still be continued in possession of the vineyard under the care and government of Him Who was the heir of it, for the disallowing of Whose title to which was the vineyard taken from them.
So the Lord's last solemn entry into Jerusalem was in the character of the Son of David; and therefore was He accompanied on that occasion with the suitable acclamations—Hosanna to the Son of David, God save the king. But the rulers and representatives of the people, being then offended in Him, not discerning the glory of the kingdom in the person of the lowly Jesus of Nazareth, He left them as ripe for present judgment (and which judgment they have ever since been suffering), giving them to know that they should not see Him till in the spirit of repentance and faith they had learned to welcome Him, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” (see Matt. 21-23). These words of welcome the Lord advisedly takes from Psa. 118, this being the song of Israel in the joyous and triumphant day, when they shall bring in Jesus as the Head Stone with shoutings of “Grace, grace,” to Him; and the shout of a king, according to the prophecy, shall be eminently among them (Num. 23:21).
So that beautiful prophecy contained in Isa. 7-9 instructs us in the same truth. When the prophecy was delivered, Syria and Ephraim were confederated against Judah; and Isaiah was commissioned to sustain the courage of the house of David, by an assurance to it that the confederacy should not prevail; and by more than that. For the discomfiture of the then present confederacy was made a pledge of the discomfiture of all succeeding confederacies, at least so as to secure to the house of David in the end rest and glory, though for a season it might lie in ruins and dishonor; and that “a Child” in due time should be “born,” and “a Son” be “given,” Whose right it was, and Whose right should be asserted, on that throne of David to sit, and his kingdom and government to order and establish forever. And how splendidly do the hopes of Israel sparkle on that page of scripture! “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace: of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end; upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it, and to establish it with judgment, and with justice from henceforth forever and ever.”
Psa. 72 is another beautiful exhibition of the doings and glories of Christ in the character of the Son of David: and Isa. 25 presents us, as it were, with a sample of the peaceable fruit from the reign of His scepter of righteousness.
This title of “Son of David” was indeed the highest in which Christ was made known to the faith of the Jews, merely as Jews (see Matt. 22:42); and therefore as we have already seen, it was as the Son of David that the multitude congratulated Him on His royal visitation to Jerusalem (Matt. 21). So we may observe that Bartimaeus manifested his faith in contrast with the ignorance of the multitude; for while Jesus was known to them merely as “Jesus of Nazareth” (being thus distinguished, just as all men are by a specified place, parentage, or other circumstance), He was known to Bartimaeus as “Son of David,” and appealed to as such for mercy. And justly so; for, according to the Jews themselves, the Son of David was to bring the mercy which Bartimaeus needed (Matt. 12:23); and also according to the prophets. For as Son of David, the restorer of the human earthly system, He is to come with a recompence, He is to come and save the people; and the eyes of the blind are to be opened, and the ears of the deaf to be unstopped (Isa. 35:3, 4). In like manner the woman, who came to Jesus from the coasts of Tire and Sidon, appealed to Him for mercy, as the Son of David. Now she presents to us a sample of the faith in which the nations are to stand, in the day when the tabernacle of David, which is now in ruins, shall be set up, and the residue of men shall shall seek after the Lord. For the Gentiles will then acknowledge Israel as the “children,” the “natural branches,” and will acquiesce in God's appointment of the “first dominion,” to the daughter of Zion—in the Lord's settling of everything in favor of the Jew first. So this woman commends her faith to the Son of David, in the same spirit, really taking a place under the children's table (Matt. 15:28).
(To be continued.)