This chapter (20.) is closely connected with what has gone before. Strange as, at first sight, it may appear, there may be a danger of making too much of what the Lord gives in His grace to encourage us. Those that are rewarded in chap. 25 wonder at what He says to them. Their minds had evidently not been set on the reward. The great point here is unmistakably the goodness and sovereignty of God. His ways and his thoughts are not as ours, He is always right. We must ever hold on to this. Every saint will get righteousness from God, but if He gives you what is above righteousness, that is another thing! Look at the Lord sitting over against the treasury. The word of God is full of undesigned coincidences; here is one. In Mark, He looks up; in another Gospel we are told He sat. He sees a poor widow, and she cast in two mites. In the Proverbs it says, “A false balance is abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight.” He weighs all up in the balances of the sanctuary, and as He does so He says, “This poor widow hath cast in more than they all.”
In Luke you get three widows that may be said to correspond with the “widow indeed” in 1 Tim. 5. Anna continued in “prayer, night and day"; this widow “trusted in God,” and the widow of Nain was indeed “desolate.”
I have no doubt that Martha compared herself very favorably with Mary, but the Lord shows us that His way of thinking is different from our own. Martha was not commended, but Mary was. If the Lord puts a certain thing in your heart to do, do it, for it is ever right to do His bidding.
The householder agrees with the first lot for a penny a day (i.e., 8d.). The Roman denarius, or “penny” was a fair equivalent for a day's work throughout the empire in N.T. times. In Rev. 6:6, where the time is clearly “straitened,” the purchasing power of the “penny,” is only one “measure of wheat” instead of from eight to fifteen, showing a then time of awful scarcity. The good Samaritan took out “two pence” and gave to the host, and said, “Take care of him, and when I come again, I will repay thee,” for he was not going to be away long. To the other laborers the householder said, “Whatsoever is right,” etc. It is remarkable that he should say to the murmurer “Friend.” The man that had not on the wedding garment is also addressed, “Friend,” and so was Judas. But these instances are not the word of affection as in John 15:14, 15, etc. The Lord would not do any one any “wrong.” “The righteous Lord loveth righteousness.” Abraham held that very strongly when he said “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right"?
Ver. 15 is very sweet. The contrast is between mine and thine “Take what thine is... is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” It is a practical lesson for us not to think we are worthy of anything. What is produced of good, is entirely of the Holy Ghost. Paul could say, “I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” And when he speaks at the end, “I have kept the faith” — “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (he had been faithful to his stewardship) —how beautifully he brings in the grace of God! “Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous judge shall give me at that day: and not to me only but unto all them also that love His appearing.” He had labored more than all, but all who look for the Lord, when He shall have His rights, though they may have done very little, the Lord will not forget. I fear many of us have different feelings from those of the apostle Paul. Those of us who are older ought to rejoice that we are nearing the end of our journey, and by the grace of God should seek to finish our course with joy. To Paul it was revealed, “Bonds and afflictions abide me"; yet he held on to his course, steadfastly, and never turned away from “this one thing I do.” “Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” “Good” goes beyond “righteousness.” “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet for, the good man some would even dare to die.” It is interesting to see what the Spirit calls a good man in Psa. 112. In that way we are called, as dear children, to imitate God.
Ver. 16: There are two callings in the word, a general call, and an effectual call. “Because I have called, and ye refused,” etc., that is a general call; but “they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful” —this is an effectual call.
It was when Peter said, they had “left all and followed Him” that the Lord spoke of His death. We Must remember his following was the result of a call, not like that of the young man who said, “Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.” We should never call on sinners unsaved to follow Jesus. They must know forgiveness first. It is worse than putting them under law. If the Lord is denied His rights as Messiah, He gets the wider glory as Son of man. Here we see that both Jew and Gentile are guilty of His rejection and death. But the Lord also indicates that everything that man could do to Him would be disallowed and reversed by God. “The third day He shall rise again.” God is bent on honoring His Son. If Simon refuses Him the honors of the east, God brings in a woman to whom His Christ is everything. Further on in this Gospel, when the rulers consult to put Him to death, it is a woman who anoints Him for His burial.
It seems remarkable how the incident of James and John should be brought in immediately after. It would seem what He had said had had but little effect on them, that they regarded it as a kind of mystery. The great thing is to have before our souls the love that led Him to Calvary. That “the third day He should rise again,” and also as more general that “God raised Him from the dead” are each of them true. In John's Gospel where He is more particularly presented as a divine person, He raises Himself. So in Hebrews “After making purgation for sins He sits down": He is there seen as a divine person. J.G.B. once said, that the Gospels have a singular place in the revelation God has given, and he considered the Gospel of John bore the same relation to the other three, as the four together do, to the whole of Scripture. In the Gospels we get personal redemption accomplished, the work of the person who did it; in the Epistles, we get the doctrine of it.
I would not like to say anything hard about the mother of Zebedee's children. How limited we are, and how much selfishness there is in all of us! The apostle could say of Timothy, “I have no man like minded who will genuinely care for your state. For all seek their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ's.” I quite believe that Luke and the others were away just then, and that no one then with him was like Timothy. Of course grace teaches us to prefer others to ourselves, and nothing but grace enables us to do that, and to seek, not our own, but others' wealth. The Lord Himself delights to serve, and even in glory “He will gird Himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them"; He will be a servant forever! Salome had her sons, and she paid Him homage and desired for them a certain thing of Him. Hers was a Jewish hope. Psa. 72 and Luke 1 show us the blessed anticipations of Israel's blessedness in Messiah's days, while in Luke 24 the two disciples tell the Lord, “We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel.”
We get very little about the eternal state in the difference between Peter and Paul, that Peter was O.T., and he who sees the different character of the “a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a N.T. can recognize the reason why. The O.T. is partaker of the glory about to be revealed,” whilst full of the Lord's millennial kingdom, and that is Paul was a witness of the glory, and a partaker of really what every pious Jew was looking for. But now, we who form the church—composed of all saints from Pentecost to the Lord's coming for His own—we shall have part in the heavenly department of the kingdom. This woman was bent on a good place for her sons. The Lord had said of both these sons that they should sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, but she wanted her sons to have a special place among the twelve. Even now, I do not walk on earth to make me fit for heaven, but we enter the holies as worshippers, and thus to walk on earth; and this is the only way by which we can walk as heavenly ones
“Can ye drink of the cup” etc.? (ver. 22). The Lord does not dispute this. He says “Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, but to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give but to them for whom it is prepared of my Father.” The Lord will dominate everything, but He will administer it according to the Father’s will: He takes the subject place. There was a cup He alone could drink; when it is a question of atonement He is all alone in that. His cup was beyond the power of all created intelligences to share. One only, Himself alone, could drink it. He suffered for sins at the hands of God. He suffered for righteousness at the hands of man. The atoning sufferings of Christ must ever be kept distinct. He suffered at the hands of “God” —not of the “Father.”
There is a precision in scripture we must ever be mindful of. He was never more the delight of the Father’s heart than as the Holy Sufferer on the cross. In His non-atoning sufferings we may share. Paul says, “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.” He did know Him as His Saviour, and could speak of the surpassing knowledge, yet he wanted to know Him more, and the fellowship of his sufferings! Suffering with Christ is the portion of every true child of God in this world; but suffering for Christ is a gift. There is this difference between Peter and Paul, that Peter was “a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the gory about to be revealed,” whilst Paul was a witness of the glory, and a partaker of the sufferings.
The ten were not any better than the two. Oh, that wretched self! It is a wonderful thing to be emptied of it. The Lord here is bringing out the principles of His kingdom (Vers. 25, 26). God has given us liberty to serve in contrast to law. A minister is a servant, but not necessarily a slave, as most of the servants then were. Several words are used in the N. T. for servant; of the two here he that would be greatest or chief let him be “slave.” What the Lord says about Himself is sufficient motive. All human pretensions are disowned. He came to minister. When the question is asked the disciples, “Who do man say that I the Son of Man am?” some said, “Elijah, or John the Baptist, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets”; but there was no saving knowledge in all that.
“But who say ye?” “Thou are the Christ the Son of the living God.” It was a blessed confession, and then for the first time in the inspired word the church is spoken of. Simon Bar-jona was blessed; his confession was never learnt of human intelligence, it was revealed to him. Another scripture comes to mind, speaking of the work wrought by the Son of man on the cross. As Son of man He is spoken of in two ways—as the suffering One, or as the exalted One. But before He speaks of His sufferings, He speaks of His divine attributes. If He is speaking to Nicodemus, yet was he the Son of man in heaven. Never separate those two verses John 3:13 and 14. It is the glory of the person that gives efficacy to the work.
Nathaneel brings out His glories in John 1. Christ is there the Omniscient One. I believe “under the fig tree” was a place of absolute secrecy, and that he had to do with the Lord about his sins there, because no one can be without guile until he knows his sins forgiven. “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile.”
Here is the perfect Servant. And after His service had been completed He had the opportunity of going out free. The Hebrew servant in Ex. 21 is taken to the door—inside was this service, outside was liberty. And he says, “I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free.” The Lord has deliberately taken that place in His wondrous love. I think you get the ear digged (Psa. 40) in “a body hast Thou prepared Me.” That only could be said of One, for in becoming a man there was perfect ability to do the will of God. Then “morning by morning mine ear hast Thou opened.” The first thing He heard when he woke was the voice of Him whom he came to serve. Then at the end the ear is bored. What a Savior! There is the price paid down. His life, that life of infinite value, the price and holy life laid down—a ransom for many!
Vers. 29-34. In the three Synoptic Gospels this journey to Jerusalem begins at Jericho. It is different in John where the Lord begins His ministry as the rejected One. We have two blind men in chap. 9 of our Gospel: these connect with the Lord's Galilean ministry; here it is in Judea. “In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established,” so Matthew, writing to his countrymen, the Jews, tells us of two, while the other Gospels only give one, the son of Timaeus. The giving of sight was one of the things specially mentioned as what Messiah would do— “then the eyes of the blind shall be opened (Isa. 35:5) etc.” That is in Messiah's day, so you get it fulfilled in testimony to Israel. In the early chapters of the Acts the lame man leaps as a hart. Here its connection is with Judea and the Lord's public final testimony. He left Galilee never to return to it (in chap. 19.). The blind man of John 9, and the two here teach lessons that are quite different. Here is seen the Messiah; in John the Son of God. There is beautiful design in scripture; not only a selection of events from the Lord's ministry, but a divine arrangement of them. It is God who is acting here: He is dealing with these blind men and ordaining a testimony to His Son. If Israel refuses Him at the beginning, Gentiles come to worship Him as born King of the Jews; and here at the end there are these blind men, a testimony to the nation. Thus is the wisdom of the Spirit. Nationally they had forfeited everything. In the dispensational part of the Epistle to the Romans, Paul shows us this, and at the end he has to burst out: “O the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” God will fulfill His word. Now He is blessing the Gentiles, exercising His sovereignty. The Jews were making much of being the natural descendants of Abraham; so was Ishmael. Then when you come to Isaac and Jacob, the two sons of the same mother and father, God's sovereignty again comes out. And when Israel gets the blessings unconditionally promised to Abraham, they will get them solely on the ground of unmerited mercy; and on that same ground we also come in. The very One who at the word of a man made the sun stand still, stood still Himself at the cry of a beggar! After Israel had forfeited everything by taking deliberately the ground of law (for, ignorant of themselves they did not value the grace so blessedly brought out in the early chapters of Exodus), then God tells them, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy"; He retreats into Himself. “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.” And so here, “Jesus had compassion on them.” They follow Him, and so become His disciples. From disciples it was that Jesus choose the twelve that they might be with Him, and whom He sent forth to preach the kingdom of God, to heal the sick, and cast out demons.
MATT. 20:27-34; MK. 10:46-52; Luke 18:35-43.
Luke 18:35, does not say more than “He was nigh” (not “come” nigh) and so agrees with Matthew and Mark who represent the scene as after the Lord's departure from Jericho. Luke 19:1, states that Jesus passed through Jericho, and verse 2 allows the reversion of the mind to what took place in the city, giving us the incident of Zacchaeus.
Thus all three accounts of the healing of the blind men, of which Timaeus was one, agree.