THIS chapter opens with the fact that the people pressed on Him to hear the Word; so much so, that He entered into a ship which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land, and He sat down and taught the people. It could not be then from want of hearing that Israel refused the Son, the only Son. But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the world, and their words unto the ends of the earth. “Now, when He left speaking,” He gives another proof of His devoted service to Israel. If He is the messenger from God, He will increase the materials for service, by drawing to Himself, out of the mass, men whom He will endue with His own power, in order that they might labor with Him, and if by any means, save some. “How often would He have gathered them as a hen Both gather her chickens under her wing” is the assured conviction every one must rise up with, on reading this gracious history of His services towards Israel.
Simon Peter is now to be delivered and borne across the barrier that separated his people from the mercy so pressed on them. All the night he had toiled, and like his nation, had taken nothing; but at the word of the Lord, he was ready to let down the net. And now he is taught the vanity of earthly accumulations, for such a multitude of fishes does he enclose, that “the net brake;” and so little does the help of the partners avail, that when they came and filled the ships, “ they began to sink.” Dread eternity now opens before them. Of what value is this multitude of fishes? What gain to a man to secure the whole world, and lose his own soul? In this dismal hour he would look to Jesus; but sins which before could be borne with, now rise in awful contemplation before him, and he would escape the presence of Jesus, for the majesty of His holiness glared on his awakened conscience. For me Jesus came, so that all Peter’s woe is met with “Fear not,” and that from henceforth his occupation would be a higher one, even to catch men; to catch some of the wandering sheep of the house of Israel, and witness to them of the great Shepherd who, alone and unassisted, traversed this valley of Baca, to seek and to save that which was lost. The Jew cannot excuse himself that none received Christ; for Simon and his partners, James and John, “left all and followed Him;” on every side he must be left without excuse. We next see the Lord Jesus ready to identify Himself with Israel in its lowest physical condition: he touches the leper, and heals one whom all others would shrink from as loathsome and contaminating. And little therefore was the wonder that great multitudes came together to hear and to be healed by Him of their infirmities. But He cannot commit Himself unto them. He withdraws into the wilderness and prays.
The next scene discloses how little the doctors of the law, and the great professionists of religion, really understood the blessedness of His mission. When the palsied man, whose total inability portrayed the Jew in his real estate, heard from the lips of Jesus the first and fondest desire of God— “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee” —the scribes and Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this that speaketh blasphemies? In vain had they come from Galileo, and Judea, and Jerusalem, if their eyes were so blind, and their ears so dull of hearing, that they so think and speak of the Lord of glory. But He who can dry up the springs of evil and weakness within, and then originate now life and power, can also invigorate the nerveless members of the body, and make it, instead of a burden, a burden-bearer; at this the lesser blessing, but suited to their carnal expectations, they were amazed, and glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, “We have seen strange things today.” But they were in nowise convinced; for when, immediately afterwards, Jesus is found in the company of publicans and sinners, the scribes and Pharisees murmured against His disciples, saying, Why do ye eat with publicans and sinners? How blind to their own condition! Jesus meekly and blessedly replies, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” They can neither understand His power to forgive sin, nor His grace to associate with sinners. The natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit of God, and hence the parable of putting a piece of a new garment on an old. It would be but labor in vain; the rent would be made worse, and no unity, for the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. New wine also must be put into new bottles, and both are preserved. Deeply painful as it was to this gracious Missionary from God to discover how vain it was with the present materials to build again the tabernacle of David that was fallen down—nay, that the builders would refuse Him who ought to be the head of the corner—yet He can bear to see it, and, better still, though affected by it, to continue faithful to His mission, only letting drop now and again that He was prepared for rejection, and that His rejection might turn Him aside, yet it would never estrange His heart from the children of His people.