3. "A Voice" rather than "The Voice." But it is immaterial, it is a sudden arrest—to the voice heard.
7. Pharisees and Sadducees are here thrown together as one unrighteous class. " Generations," or " progenies," but is it not individuals, each a gennema (offspring, product)? "Generation " does not convey it.
9. Sovereignty of grace and real righteousness go together—fleshly privilege and the want of it; but " already " (v. 10).
11. “To repentance”—“To the Name of Jesus." Was baptism on ascertained faith, or on profession? Manifest hypocrisy prevented it.
12. There is a difference between the ax and the fan. “Already" (ede) the ax was at the root of the useless trees, but the good ones, it might be supposed, would be left there. But when the Lord came, He would thoroughly purge His floor. The floor was dealt with, so to speak, the wheat gathered into a garner of His own, and the chaff burned with unquenchable fire. It cleared the floor, and disposed otherwise of its contents.
16, 17. The way in which the blessed Lord, having gone with His poor humbled ones in their first right step, then is owned with an opened heaven in the accepted place which He has obtained for us, I have noted elsewhere. I add here that, on His entering into it as Man in grace, the whole Trinity is revealed in it, the Son Himself in Manhood. It is a wonderful scene, and then in our conflict overcoming for us!