Chaps. 2:19-3:1-17
The great point where we begin is to bring before the Jews that the King thus presented to them fulfills many leading prophecies. Some judging humanly say that the Lord Jesus was taken to Egypt to escape the sword of Herod; whereas it was for the fulfillment of prophecy, as is stated in verse 15. Joseph comes up out of Egypt, and it was so arranged that the door was shut for him to dwell in Judea, so he goes to Nazareth. God's hand was in it, for it was a place of ill repute, and the testimony of the prophets was that He should be despised. There are many Old Testament prophecies which speak of Him as “despised and rejected of men.” It is interesting to notice that the Holy Ghost is perfectly free in the way He quotes Scripture. The very words were given to these writers by the Holy Ghost. He indited them all. There may be, and indeed it is so, that what is given takes its form from the individual through whom it comes to us, just as water flowing through a square pipe comes forth square, and from a round one, round; but 1 Cor. tells us that even the words were given by the Holy Spirit. So in this chap. 2, He is bringing out the fulfillment of well-known Scriptures. He Who gave them is showing us the very One of Whom they spake.
In chap. 3 we get the Forerunner. As we said last week it would be impossible for the Lord Jesus to reign over the world as it is. There must be a moral fitness in His subjects. God had said in the closing words of the Old Testament, that He would send Elijah; but here it is Isaiah 40 that is referred to. Repentance is required from man; in his fallen condition he is not a fit subject for the kingdom—repentance must be wrought. In Acts 2:3838Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. (Acts 2:38) Peter says, “Repent.” God is waiting still for Israel's repentance. It will be wrought. There will be very real repentance. Repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ are for us now. Here we have the preparation for the coming King. It was a moral wilderness He came to, but the wilderness was better than the city with its temple, where they were all spiritually wrong. The Psalmist says, “Oh that I had wings like a dove” —to get from the city to the wilderness. Luke says, “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low,” with great moral beauty, because there the Gentiles are contemplated. We ought to think a good deal of John the Baptist. Moses had special honor as a ministering servant, but none born of women was greater than John; nevertheless, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
It is not a question of comparing a saint now with an Old Testament believer, but what God is pleased to do in honor of His Son. It is not an exalting of ourselves, but we are called to bow to and accept what He has revealed, and there is abundant evidence to show that those saved from Pentecost to the Rapture have the most blessed place of any saints. I was talking once to a Wesleyan who thought that the world would be converted through the preaching of the gospel, so I put a little dispensational truth before him, and then spoke of the blessedness of the millennium. As I went on quoting Scriptures describing it, he exclaimed, “I should like to be living then!” I would not prefer it, i.e., to be there in my natural body, but glorified I shall not enjoy that day the less, for as members of the body of Christ we have now a higher place. “In that day (after Pentecost) ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me and I in you” —the truth of Ephesians and Colossians. This is a far greater blessing than we could have had before the Lord Jesus was glorified and the Holy Spirit given to indwell the believer. The Lord did not say, “I will send you a Paraclete,” but “another Paraclete.” Himself when here on earth a Paraclete, He does not cease to be one in heaven, Who comforts and takes charge of us and our affairs. A solicitor taking care of a minor and guarding his interests may serve as an illustration. In the Lord's prayer, so called, there is nothing asked in His name. Now we are to ask “in His Name.” Going before God with our petitions in all the acceptance of Christ is asking in His Name.
“The kingdom of heaven” is a dispensational phrase. The kingdom of God in Mark, Luke, and John, would cover what we get in the kingdom of heaven, but the two are not synonymous. “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink,” could not be applied to the kingdom of heaven. You get hints of the kingdom of heaven in the prophets, as in the expression “the heavens do rule,” but the kingdom of heaven could not exist till Christ was gone to heaven. Israel was the center of God's government on the earth. Christ is never called the King of the Church. Such an expression is quite contrary to the teaching of the Bible, He is our Lord. Continually in the Psalms Jehovah is called their King. We can think of Him as “the King eternal,” “the King of kings,” “the King of glory,” etc. If we look at ourselves as the church, Christ is the Head of the church, but He is Lord of the individuals that compose it. Mary said, “Rabboni,” i.e., Master, or Teacher. John came in the way of righteousness— severe. The Lord Jesus came eating and drinking. But that is not brought in here. John's testimony had effect (vers. 5 and 6). The baptism of John was
the baptism of repentance, and they were baptized to a living Christ. Christian baptism is to His death. It is not a life-giving ordinance at all. Now, there is the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and this is “into one body.” It is strange how people put one thing against another and deny water-baptism because of the baptism of the Spirit. Jews were baptized by water before receiving the Holy Ghost. The Samaritans did not receive the Spirit, though baptized, till the apostles had come down to them. Gentiles received the Holy Ghost while Peter spoke, and baptism followed. Suppose a Jew heard the gospel and confessed the name of the Lord, but refused to be baptized, you have no title to acknowledge him as a Christian. For he is bidden to “Repent and be baptized” for the remission of sins, and then it is that he receives the gift of the Spirit (Acts 2:3838Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. (Acts 2:38)) and so becomes a Christian. For us Gentiles, having the Spirit before baptism (Acts 11:44, 47) it is not presented as a command to be baptized, for obedience to an ordinance—but as a privilege rather—an answer to His grace Who has saved us. And its place is at the beginning, not in the middle, much less is it at the end, of the Christian life. “Buried with Him by baptism into death, that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father; even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6.). This walk in newness of life is then entered upon, and never to be given up.
The “command,” therefore, is to the baptizer to baptize (to the evangelist, or teacher, etc.), not to the convert to be baptized; except in the case of the Jews, as we have seen. If Romans presents our burial with Christ by baptism, and walk of a new life, Col. 2 goes further and brings in our being risen with Him (ver. 12), with its necessary obligation to “seek the things above” (.chap. 3.).
The Pharisees were the Ritualists, and the Sadducees the Rationalists Of that day. The Pharisees were particular about little things, taking mint and anise and cummin, but they were careless of the weighty matters of the law. But there is wrath, and always “wrath to come.” He who refuses to be subject to the Son, the wrath of God abideth on him.
To show the reality of repentance there must be fruit. If I am a subject of God's saving grace, I must also be of His teaching grace. If there is faith, there are works. In Luke 3 the Lord draws Simon's attention to the woman's deeds, not so to the woman. To her he speaks of her faith; to him of the results of that faith. The Sadducees would say, “we have Abraham to our father.” Yet, “ye go about to kill me.” But there the Lord exposes, and so John here, the emptiness of resting on natural relationship. “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” These stones are what we were, stones without life, inanimate, but now we are children of Abraham, children of promise, accounted for a seed. If I want to find my inanimate condition I go to Ephesians 2, but in Romans 4 Abraham is the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised.
The ax is laid to the root of the tree for judgment; thank God it does not say by your fruits ye shall know yourself. But we are right to form our judgments of people by what we see of their ways—to know the power and not the speech. The whole argument here is that if there is not repentance there is judgment-fire. In ver. 2 we have baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire, as also in Luke—with the Holy Ghost alone in Mark and John. As Messiah He will pour out His Spirit in the millennial day, but He will also judge. In Mark He is the servant; in Luke He is Son of man, and as such He judges. As Son of God in John He quickens. The thing is now to believe that He who is Son of man is Son of God. It is very sweet to see this one (John the Baptist) of whom it could be said none greater, born of women, now in presence of Messiah confessing himself not worthy to undo His shoes, or even carry them. This word “fan” is a winnowing fan—discriminating, dealing with wheat and with chaff; and He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire at the harvest in the coming day. Meanwhile, the Christian is called to judge whatever he finds in himself to have been grieving to the Holy Spirit of God by whom he is sealed. Thus repentance goes right through a Christian's life. We have not to eat carrion. Self-judgment is not comparing ourselves with others, but with Christ. We ought to have a good conscience in all things, but we are not thereby justified.
“Gather His wheat into the garner,” not a grain will be lost. All is of grace and on the ground of redemption. This is what the Lord does. He will make no mistakes. The chaff is for judgment. Their worm dieth not, man's conscience—and the fire is not quenched. Man had no conscience till he fell, then he knew good without the power to do it; he knew evil and was enslaved in it. When Jesus came to be baptized, John urgently forbad Him. No repentance could be for Him. He “knew no sin"; “in Him is no sin"; “He did no sin.” He could say “I have set the Lord always before me, etc.”
Very blessed truth is brought out here in connection with His baptism. It is the fulfillment of Psalm 16 The Lord is the truster there. He goes down into death trusting. To the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, He says, “In them is all my delight” (vers. 2, 3). In Proverbs 8 we are taken back into eternity (there are very few places in the O.T. where we are; Psalm 40 is one). “My delights were with the sons of men” (ver. 31). Who? Adam unfallen? He was no son of man. Who then are these? These who have found out how bad they are, in whom God had wrought repentance. The Lord had no trust but in Jehovah. How often we fail here!
When is there joy in heaven? Over a sinner made happy? Well, no doubt there is —but here it is on the first right step taken, repentance, for there can be no true blessedness to the soul without this. What infinite grace in the Lord to say “us” (ver. 15). They had done the right thing, and the Lord takes up the case of repentant sinners. They were fit subjects of His kingdom. There had been a time of silence for just thirty years. The Lord was walking in seclusion, but what was that life to the Father? —a continual meat offering! He looks back over those thirty years and He bears testimony to it. These very people had owned their sins, and some of them were very bad, and yet He will identify Himself with them; but what does God think? “My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Heavens were only once opened in the Old Testament, and that in judgment; but here God's heart finds a resting-place. You don't get the Trinity definitely brought out in the Old Testament; with the light of the New you can see it in such passages as: “Let us make man;” or Isaiah 6; or Zechariah 3 The Lord Jesus is the Holy One, the Harmless One, the Undefiled One, etc. When the Holy Ghost came down at Pentecost it was as a rushing, mighty, wind; but here it is, “as a dove"- emblem of purity—coming on One who needed not redemption as we, for He was holy. Now, we, having redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, can be, and are, sealed with the Spirit, and so are called to be harmless as doves: “Oh, that I had wings as a dove,” separate from sinners.
(To be continued)