IT is quite evident, from the closing verse of the preceding chapter, that Israel’s rejection of Christ as their King was already full and manifest; consequently, we should be prepared to find in this chapter larger revelations of the characteristics of anybody which might succeed them. And not only so, but we are warranted to expect here a fuller exposure of the prejudices which led to this rejection. The chapter opens with spewing us our Lord in social intercourse with one of the highest professors— “a chief Pharisee,” one of the class in which the true lines of Judaism were deeply and broadly marked. In them it was magnified, and, as the best specimen of the Jews’ religion, it became our Lord, as was ever His practice, not only to test them in their best and most boasted estate, but also to give utterance to His first warnings from the same ground, and with them the characters and principles He would henceforth seek after. “The Sabbath day” is also chosen, because it had been a pledge to Israel of God’s purpose to set them in unbroken rest, of which the day was in itself an oatmeal,; but if the earnest was lost and the pledge forfeited, then the formal keeping of the day would give rise to painful and humiliating thoughts, rather than happy and self-satisfied ones. But not so with them. Nay, rather their sin was that they regarded the pledge more than; the purpose, and the shadow than the substance; they were contented with form without power. Hence the Lord continually brings before them types of their varied infirmities on that day, at once slowing them the imperfectness of their boasting, and that He was alone able to effect and establish a real Sabbath.
The infirmity here is that of “a certain man which had a dropsy; “the peculiarities of that disease are plainly descriptive of an insatiable desire for any acquisition which, while momentarily allaying it, really aggravates it, and in the end destroys the system subject to such conflicts. The thirst, the burning thirst of Israel for carnal blessings, was aptly pictured in this dropsical man. Every acquisition, as each drink with him, only increased their malady; temporary reliefs eventuated in fatal reactions. The hand of Christ can arrest this grievous disorder; and what He here so graciously effects for this poor sufferer, He is ready to do for the whole Israel of God. “He took and healed him.” God’s Sabbath will be a day of rest from many a deadly desire, and then no proud religionist will “hold his peace,” from owning the beneficence and grace of the mighty hand which achieved it.
The Lord now enunciates a fundamental characteristic of those really blessed. He denounces the ruling passion, the aspiration of the Jew, “when He marked how they chose out the chief rooms,” and shows them the uncertainty of unauthorized elevation, and then enforces the new and grand basis of all blessing: “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted”—lay claim to nothing on the ground of merit—have no confidence in flesh— “be not high-minded, but fear” —were now the strange and unwelcome doctrines sounded in the ears of a people whom natural blessings and glory in the flesh had alienated from, instead of attaching to, God; and to a class without claim, or pretension, or ability to recompense, should the Pharisee (if duly consistent to his profession) extend his hospitality. God was about to do so. Instead of priests, without maim or imperfection, to minister before Him, now “the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind,” are to be His guests, in all the familiarity of social intercourse, not on the ground of merit, but simply their need commanding His grace and favors. One of the company is evidently interested at our Lord’s allusion to the day of recompense, the resurrection of the just, and exclaims with all the earnestness of conviction: “Blessed is he that shall cat bread in the kingdom of God.” But the Lord’s reply declares how few will appreciate the offer of it, and how none of those who have earthly interests to engage them will accept of it. It is not the question whether they are lawful or not; they satisfy the heart, and, therefore, the feast of God is disregarded. But though the Jew, the recipient of many blessings from God, may disregard the larger and highest blessing He can offer; nay, may forget Himself while they revel in His gifts; yet God’s grace will find recipients for its exhaustless glories. “The streets and the lanes,” the thoroughfares of “the city,” must be “quickly” searched for; “the poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind,” the destitute sons of earth, are suited guests for a heavenly feast;—the way-worn, homeless, friendless Jacob, with a pillow of stone his only repose, can appreciate heavenly glories, and truly estimate the marvelousness of the scene which was exhibited to him. Such were the class God would now seek; and not only should the city be searched for guests, not only should the poor of Israel be gathered in, but also, from “the highways and hedges,” from all the nations of the earth, should a company be pressed, numerous enough to fill the house of God. Let them be found where they may, there must be no limit to their numbers, till that house, as large as the heart of God, shall be filled.
But upon the “bidden” who rejected the invitation, upon them is this condemnation: “They shall not taste of my supper.” This, doubtless, is the present condition nationally of Israel.
We now see the natural effects of these doctrines of grace upon the multitude. There went great multitudes with Him. The marvelousness and adaptation to our need of God’s grace is deeply attractive, and as long as the fullness and freeness of it are alone proclaimed, so long will the multitude be ready hearers; but our Lord, who knows how to sow the seed, turns to them and announces the path each soul must traverse that will be His disciple or learner of Him. “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Every natural tie must be severed if any will be a true learner of the rejected Jesus; and not only so, but he must “daily,” every day he tarries here, endure sufferings like his Master, and following wherever He may lead, not expecting rest here, but where He has found it. A disciple has two objects to accomplish: the first is represented by building a tower—a tower is a safe and secure retreat from surrounding danger. A disciple will require no ordinary zeal and expenditure to acquire a place of safety and defense from the inroads of the world, the flesh, and the devil. He must maintain a bold, uncompromising, determined front against them; this can only be at great personal sacrifice and devotedness, and one does well to count the cost ere he enters on an object he is not prepared to complete, for unfinished undertakings always expose us to reproach, as attempting things too great for us and above our ability to accomplish. In an attempt when one stakes everything, a miscarriage is fatal. You assume a power which facts deny you.
The second object is not defense, but aggression. A disciple should not only be safe from attack, but able to make successful sallies against the enemy—he must be a warrior as well as a tower; but if a successful one, he must consult whether he, with a limited force, is able to encounter an adversary with a superior one; but if not, ere any collision has occurred, when the enemy is a great ways off he sendeth an embassage and desireth conditions of peace. How inglorious and ineffectual his effort and pretension! Yet so likewise, “whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” No other preventive against such fearful and humiliating failures but entire self-renunciation in devotedness of heart and soul unto Christ. The only good in salt is its savor; let it lose that, and it is good for nothing. Let disciples fail in their objects; and they are worthless. Israel is not “fit for the land nor for the dunghill,” the lowest place of the earth, (see 1 Sam. 2:88He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he hath set the world upon them. (1 Samuel 2:8),) but they “cast it out;” and let this be a warning to all. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”