V.-Jehovah's Servant Preaching
“Now after that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel“ (1:14, 15, R.V.).
At the appointed moment, the anointed Servant of Jehovah commenced His public service by announcing the good news that God's promised kingdom was imminent. And who shall ever know with what ineffable joy the obedient Son whose ears had been “digged” for service (Psalm 40:6, margin) performed in this as in all else the will of Him who sent Him? We are, however, permitted to know some of the intimacies of the Father and the incarnate Son, wherein this mutual satisfaction is expressed. We are, for instance, made privy to the Father's declaration from heaven, “Thou art my dearly-beloved Son, in whom is my delight.” This personal complacency was fully reciprocated by Jehovah's Servant, who, entering into the world, says, “Lo, I am come; in the roll it is written of me: I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart. I have published [preached] righteousness in the great congregation; lo, I will not refrain my lips, O Lord, thou knowest. I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation; 1 have not concealed thy lovingkindness and thy truth from the great congregation” (Psalm 40:7-10).
And this delight thus expressed in regard of the service of preaching in the great assemblies of Israel was maintained even when His obedience led Him to lay down His life (John 10:17; Hebrews 10:5-7), thereby fulfilling to the uttermost, as He had previously made known, God's will. We have a notable example of His joy in the path of service on that memorable occasion when the obdurate unbelief of Capernaum, the center of His Galilean ministry, was brought before Him. We read, “In that hour Jesus rejoiced [exulted] in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes; even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight” (Luke 10:21). Such a spirit in the moment of apparent failure was the perfection of service, and how contrasted it was with that of the preacher to the Ninevites, seeking first to escape from the path of duty, and then angry that the repentant citizens believing his message were spared. Jesus, who rejoiced in presence of the unbelief of Capernaum, rejoiced also over one sinner who repented. For He was the good Shepherd seeking the lost sheep of the house of Israel. “And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and his neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost” (Luke 15:5, 6). Blessed Savior, in any service of ours, feeble and unworthy as it must ever be, may a like joy possess us and bring us in our measure with like equanimity through victory or what seems defeat!
It is proposed to group some fragmentary thoughts relating to this passage under one of the following heads—(1) The signal for the preaching to begin; (2) the scene of the preaching; (3) the subject of the preaching; (4) the declarations of the Preacher.
(1) The signal for the commencement of Christ's preaching. There is “a time to keep silence and a time to speak” —a precept never exemplified so perfectly as by the Lord of all. The time for Jesus to come forth into the way of public service was indicated by the imprisonment of John the Forerunner and Baptist.” Now when he heard that John was delivered up, he withdrew into Galilee; and leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum” (Matthew 4:12, 13, R.V.). There had previously been blessed ministry by the Lord to individuals in Judaea and Samaria, as the early chapters of the Gospel of John show (chap. 3:24). But this ministry was the manifestation of His personal grace and glory which is above all the limitations of the times and dispensations which mark the ordered government of the world, and such manifestations form the special subject of the Fourth Gospel. Mark, however, like the other Synoptists, sets before us the beginning of His official service in introducing the promised kingdom, and this initial act synchronized with the removal of John, who was a witness to Jesus as the Christ, from the sphere of public testimony.
John had preached of Jesus as the One who was about to come, and after baptizing Him in Jordan, had testified to Him as being then present in Israel. This work of the prophet of the Most High, the messenger of Jehovah, the herald of the Messiah, was now accomplished. And what distinguished service was his! His was the unique distinction of being the first to own the coming Savior and King (Luke 1:41), and this by divine prompting of altogether a special nature, while his was the first voice to call the sinful sons of men to “behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The Lord said of him, “Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11). So powerfully did his work and testimony, though unaccompanied by miraculous sign, work in the hearts of men, that many seemed to be prepared to accept John himself as the Messiah (Luke 3:15), in spite of his utter repudiation of any such claim, and his clear testimony to Jesus: “He must increase, and I must decrease.”
While men were thus ready to be misled as to the personality of the Christ, we may be sure that Satan, failing to destroy the royal Seed in the massacre of Bethlehem's babes (Revelation 12:1-5), and foiled in his temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, would welcome such an opportunity to set up a rival to Jesus, Israel's promised King and Savior. He who would use Simon Peter, the honored witness to Jesus as the Son of the living God as a stumbling-block in His way to the cross (Matthew 16:23), would seek to use the Baptist as a counter attraction when Jesus should offer Himself to the people as the sent One of God. If Satan had such a malevolent intention, it was frustrated by the shutting up of John in prison.
The prophets of old had their contemporaries. The voice of Jehovah came to Israel through Micah the Morasthite as well as through the more brilliant son of Amoz of his day; while subsequently God spake simultaneously through Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. But He who had spoken in days past in many measures and in many manners to the fathers by His prophets was about to speak to them by a Son, the only-begotten. No prophet, not even an angel, can for a moment be compared with God's spokesman in His unapproachable dignity as the Son. And John, the last of the prophets, though himself more than a prophet, was withdrawn by God from the scene of public testimony, that the Son might stand alone, an Object supremely worthy and sufficient to engross the hearts of all mankind. How could God have a servant contemporary with His Son? As He has no peer, so this Servant needs no coadjutor. Even Moses and Elias must vanish directly Simon Peter seeks to class them with Jesus; so that he and his astonished companions may see “no one save Jesus only,” teaching them and all men that the Son is incomparable.
John then, having borne faithful witness to the truth, was removed to make way for Him who is the Faithful and True Witness. When the Light of the world shines forth, no place is found for the burning and shining lamp (John 5:35, R.V.), welcome as it was in the dawning. He was not, however, like his prototype Elijah, carried up to heaven by a whirlwind. He was carried to a prison and to death under the power of a dissolute Idumean king. He had preached that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. But it was not for him to know in his own experience the beneficent sway of the scepter of righteousness. For him the earthly throne was one of iniquity, and its sword was the sword of cruelty and revenge. Truly his eyes saw the King of Israel in the beauty of His grace, but notwithstanding, his headless corpse was soon to lie martyred in the kingdom of “this world.” This was a fitting prelude to the coming tragedy when “the kings of the earth set themselves in array, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed” (Acts 4:25-27).
(2) The scene of the preaching. The Lord began His service of preaching in Galilee, not in Judea. Bethlehem, the birthplace of Messiah, had its favors according to the prophet— “Thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall One come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting” (Micah 5:2, R.V.). But there is no record of any visit by the Lord to Bethlehem during His ministry. Galilee, the despised region in the north of the land, was privileged to have more than any other place His gracious and marvelous service by word and sign. This, too, was in accordance with the prophecy of olden time, as the Evangelist Matthew shows: “He came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, toward the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; the people which sat in darkness saw a great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, to them did light spring up” (Matthew 4:13-17, R.V.).
This prophetic promise (Isaiah 9:1, 2) was one of comfort for the faithful remnant in a day when Gentile powers should oppress the land and Messiah should be a “stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel.” It was promised that in such circumstances a bright and glorious light should shine forth in the most obscure and despised part of the land. And so it came about, for into Galilee Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God; and this was a reason with the Pharisees of Jerusalem for despising Him. Ignoring Jonah, who was of the land of Zebulun, they said, “Search and see; for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet” (John 7:52).
Galilee “seems to have been originally confined to a little ‘circuit ' of country round Kedesh-Naphtali, in which were situated the twenty towns given by Solomon to Hiram, king of Tire, as payment for his work in conveying timber from Lebanon to Jerusalem (Joshua 20:7; 1 Kings 9:11). They were then, or subsequently, occupied by strangers, and for this reason Isaiah gives to the district the name ‘Galilee of the Gentiles ' (Isaiah 9:1). It is probable that the strangers increased in number, and became during the captivity the great body of the inhabitants; extending themselves over the surrounding country, they gave to their new territories the old name, until at length Galilee became one of the largest provinces of Palestine.”
“It was outside the regular allotment of Israel, in that part of it which is yet to belong to Israel, which certain of the tribes had taken possession of, though, strictly speaking, it was beyond the proper limits of the promised land. The Lord goes through Galilee of the Gentiles; and in all that He fulfilled the prophecy [of Isaiah]. The Jews ought surely to have known it.”
“It is shown afterward in this prophecy that (while the Gentile affliction upon the nation would he heavier than ever, and the Roman oppression far exceed the Chaldean of old), the Messiah would be there, despised and rejected of men, nay, of the Jews, and that at this very time, when thus set at naught by the people that ought to have known His glory, great light would spring up in the most despised place, in Galilee of the nations, among the poorest of the Jews, where Gentiles were mixed up with them—people who could not even speak their own tongue properly. There should this bright and heavenly light spring up; there the Messiah would be owned and received.”
It was therefore appointed of God that in the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas, who had shut up John the Baptist in prison, the Lord Himself should begin to teach and to preach. And this He accordingly did.
[W. J. H.]