-1. This verse marks the connection, as indeed is plain, of this instruction of repentance with what goes before in its moral application. The Spirit of God takes occasion through another circumstance, occurring about the same time, to give further of the Lord's testimony directly on the same subject. A like judgment would come on the whole nation as on the victims of Pilate's wrath, or the judgment of God in the tower of Siloam. Unless they repented, they should "All perish in like manner." He adds the parable of the fig-tree. It seems to me that this includes the work of the Holy Ghost by the twelve apostles up to Stephen, as well as the Lord's, it was the ministry of the blessed Spirit, the "This year also" afforded by the intercession of Jesus. The Lord looked for fruit three years, and there was none. It only cumbered the ground, rendered the ground useless, and unprofitable, and inactive. God could do nothing with it, nor man, for so is a fruitless, nominal people of God, unjudged. It turns to nothing neither the accomplishment of providence, nor the manifestation of grace. Judgment was pronounced upon: " Why does it also render the ground useless? " But the Vinedresser, the Lord Jesus, intercedes that He may use all means. If these failed: " After that." It is not merely " Then." It was given up to judgment as the Lord: " Let there be never more fruit of thee forever." For it was by a new covenant, and a new name that Israel is introduced to blossom, and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. Now it was to be cut down. Such was the judgment of God, the issue of His patient long suffering and mercy.
to. The Sabbath was the sign of the old covenant. But hypocrisy, which always takes form instead of holiness and power, had taken possession of the nation and its rulers, and the Lord pursues His way of power in mercy despite their forms, putting forward, though righteously always as in mercy and asserting the reality of the privileges in grace, the breaking down these signs, and impliedly their existing relationship with God, while He confirmed the basis which really they despised; they loosed their ox and their ass. Satan had bound a daughter of Abraham; should not He loose her? Note here with what condemnatory authority in the matter the Lord now speaks. He introduces power in deliverance in favor of Abraham's children, but He slights the form in which it stood, and denouncingly condemns those who now held it in that shape. In that sense this is very important. It had a strong active transition character.
11. Christ shows the hypocrisy of their maintenance of the old covenant, and thereon shows the new character of the kingdom, the King not being there, as a great power and dissemination of doctrine. On the question if the Remnant was numerous, shows the cross-character of the path-people must count the cost of building and overcoming; the multitudes who had taken up with Him He would not own when Abraham and Gentiles from all parts would be in the kingdom. He was in the hands of God till His time came, but a prophet could not perish out of Jerusalem; the guilt was all found there; her house was desolate, and she would not see Him till she repented in the last day, according to Psa. 118 But the Jehovah who had loved her bewailed her self-earned doom.
Evidently equally the setting aside Israel all would perish, the fig-tree be removed after every effort-hypocrisy in ceremonial observances contrasted with the power of God. The kingdom not now in power but as a mustard seed and leaven. The Remnant marked by earnest effort to enter at the strait gate, workers of iniquity rejected (no peace to the wicked) and the Gentiles let into the kingdom. But it was not in Galilee by man's power and wickedness, but in judgment on Jerusalem that the Lord would now be perfected, nor see Him again who had visited it in love until they through grace repented, and were ready to receive Him coming in the name of Jehovah-till Psa. 118.
20. My impression is that when the dative is used for time it is always as one whole, point, or object, when the accusative it is a space during which. Thus, taking the common reading, Judges characterized the period of 450 years; He nourished them during forty years-He was going on doing it all the time. So " For a long time " (hikano chrono, Acts 8: 11); so Rom. 16:2525Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, (Romans 16:25). Thus trite hemera (" the third day," dative) and triten hemeran (" the third day," accusative) would not have the same force, though in result the sense would be the same. In the first I should think of that one day. so characterized; with triten I think of two days elapsed before. In a word, the accusative is duration, the dative epoch, though in sense they often run into one another. Thus according to the common reading, the statement would not be " during 450 years," but ' up to,' as far as,' i.e., counting from the end of Desert. So that Joshua, Elders, and Cushanrishathaim, would have to be deducted, say some 45 years. I have supposed in computing, 48 and 402 to Saul. So that the chronology is in no way changed. I hold clearly that the building the temple dates from the settlement in the land, as if I said: In England from the time the Saxons came from Germany, they have had elective kings.' This would certainly mean as to since the settlement in England. 402 supposes each period given to be a whole year, which is surely not to be so taken, and to make up the 480, there are 84-Saul 40, David 40, Solomon 4. So that the ten years allowed to Elders in the 45 may well be cut down to next to nothing. But I suspect the 25 given by Josephus to Joshua is too short.
-17. " And all the crowd." How remarkable and uniform a circumstance this is.
-18-21. These two paragraphs are, as it were, supplemental paragraphs to the long paragraph which we have been considering.
This appears to me our Lord's instructions as to the place the Sabbath bore in His kingdom as manifested. But there is another point in it, the way in which love overlooks circumstances which superstition and unbelief looks to take its credit from. Therefore our Lord shows the reality of the thing by showing that they did the same things, or worse, as to the day when selfishness was concerned, and the only difference was He did it out of love. In verse 16 the contrast in moral rectitude and their own principles is perfectly strongly put. There is then the contrast between false and true religion in this-with their formal character and detected character-true needs no detection, it stands before the world such as it is, and has no object to act for but to show its principles by using them. This action of truth the people will generally receive. The moral estimate of things is a great criterion of true and false religion. False religion can have nothing but what is competent to those who have none. True consists in what none but those who have it can have, for it is of God. The rest is acquiesced in as occasion requires. Wherever forms have the place of mercy, there we may be assured there is no true religion. The importance of that which has not moral communion with God, and seeks its own importance, is lost when form is lost of which it is the head, and things are estimated as they affect God and man. The real character of the gospel is developed then in this. The character of its progress is next marked.
I suspect myself that it is stated under two characters, as planted amongst the Jews, and yet the very heathen kings finding their repose under its influence, no matter how; and this as a tree. Secondly, in its general pervasion of that, into which it was put, as a system according to the purpose of God, as the leaven leavens all, but all is not leaven, or indeed then there is none at all; but here merely its pervading the limits assigned to it by God, i.e., filling generally the (Gentile) Church in its ordinary sense.
Thereon the Lord pursues what the dispensation and His labor results into. It is not a kingdom set up in power in the midst of the people who were children of the kingdom, but a seed Sower. Still the Jewish people were God's own garden; He has His own right whatever men may have done there. It was " Like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and cast into his own garden," and it increased so that other powers and strangers came and lodged in the branches. Such its formal character. Sown, then it became a great tree, a public power of influence in the world. Next, it was a doctrinal influence not having any relation to Israel, but which, by the ministration of the service of the Church, would spread itself in the given measure of God's assigned providence. Such would the dispensation be. The internal character and judgment was not in question here, but the replacing of the old economy by this-and how? Not by the Son of man in power then.
The Lord, in what follows, still pursues this subject in this change. If this be true in Israel, are the Remnant to be saved few? He was on His way to the final catastrophe of the nation in the rejection of Him at Jerusalem. The question therefore came to be important, perhaps put in curiosity not with intelligence, but on the vague traditions drawn, without application, from the prophets. But the Lord, as so timely ordered, answers it in its full power, still His rejection in view, for He was naturally in the way then.
-24. " Strive to enter in at the strait gate, for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in " (not at the strait gate) " and shall not be able "; but so it will be. " When once " (and now He proceeds to give it direct application) " the Master is risen up and shut to the door." Then from verse 26, the Lord gives it its full and direct application to them and their circumstances, and the judgment of the nation, and the introduction of the Gentiles in general terms, and full accomplishment yet of all the promises to the saints. They should come from East, and West, and North, and South, and sit down in the kingdom of God. But it was on new principles, and under order of supreme righteousness-there would be last first, and first last. Meanwhile those who claimed local association with Him lost all title: " I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, workers of iniquity." It was moral association now, and the power of the kingdom new and heavenly. As this was grace, the Lord says here: " There are last who shall be first." The rejected Remnant, cast out as evil and rebellious, became followers of the mind of God and of Jesus the despised and rejected of men from whom the nation hid their face.
-31, et seq. But Jerusalem must accomplish her iniquity though judgment was to be passed on all. For the Lord now speaks in plain terms as to what they were. It is not the gentleness which conciliates the most opposed, but the plain denouncement of the ungodly. As He had denounced those who held the form of power in the synagogue, and declared the ruler hypocrite before the congregation, so now the Lord speaks equally plain as to him who, not as son of David nor according to God, possessed the throne of Israel nominally. The Lord now went to His death, and had only to give it its full character and form. He denounces this false shepherd who held the flock, but it is not he who is to kill Him. He was perfectly safe, for the full accomplishment of the counsels of God, and of the guilt of His beloved Jerusalem. When it was the iniquity of another, the Pharisees could easily use the form of interest and kindness, but the Lord passes it by as He judges Herod, and rests in the sureness of divine counsels. He feared not the one, the other was needless. They might return and communicate to Herod the real course and mind of God. It was the full expression of the now ripened counsel of God. If wickedness was on this side, and rejection had now reached its height, it was merely that the counsels of God had now come to the full, and in blessed assurance and calmness of Spirit Jesus pursued His course till they were accomplished, till He was " perfected " (teleioumai). It was not Herod's enmity nor the Pharisees' care which could destroy or preserve him. He was safe in the center of divine purposes to be perfected for the center of fuller glory than fallen Israel could afford, even the perfect glory of all the divine counsels. He entered into these now. The mind of God rested not on Herod; he was naught in the question-a fox pursuing his own interests in the flock of God; nor on the hypocritical pretenses and favor of reckless Pharisees. His mind, and heart, and eye were on Jerusalem, the beloved city, now to accomplish her unfaithfulness. Till this moment came Jesus walked in the security of the divine counsels. Blessed calmness! He who feels deeply is always calm, as viewing things in the Lord. It is not the eager obtrusion of circumstances which affect his mind; he sees deeper, he is more deeply occupied with things as they are before the Lord. What depth in the expression: " But I must needs walk to-day! " My course of mercy will proceed without the Lord's regarding Herod, till beloved Jerusalem, beloved in spite of all, have accomplished her guilt. Then the scene is closed; all is closed here below, no more room for this work on the earth where her guilt is to the full. " I shall be perfected," for other counsels, and for deeper joys, joys which in persevering mercy and purpose shall rise upon Jerusalem, beloved Jerusalem herself, in spite of and in pardon of the sins-What a heart had the Lord! How divine then for us! Indeed we have God's heart and ways, and brought into all our circumstances and sins.
The great object of this passage is the distinctive judgment of Jerusalem. In this the Lord reveals Himself as Jehovah, her of old time Protector and Cherisher-her whom He had now at last visited in this extraordinary care and condescension of grace, trying all things but in vain. It was man, and man favored, and therefore man rebellious and scornful. She would now be left to the effects of her ways till they owned Him, saying, as in Psa. 118, in the latter day: " Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord." Their house was left to them till then, as they would not have Him. The whole of this chapter 13 is a distinct and definite comment, and application to Jerusalem of the question raised on His rejection in chapter 12, and the parabolic exposition of their circumstances at the close of it. The Lord here resumes, in the general train of circumstances, one or two great principles connected with His rejection, and the moral principles involved therein, of which this gospel is so full, and then passes on to the gospel as contrasted with their state and principles. Repeating, under another parabolic form, the rejection of the nation, not here under the form of seeking fruit but of rejected grace which was a further step, the refusal of invited guests. Israel sinned in this double character—she bore no fruit to Him by whom she was dressed, and they refused the invitation to the kingdom of God.