WE have now to trace the sad, sorrowful path, which this blessed servant traversed from the close of His mission to Israel to the right hand of the Father, where there are pleasures for evermore. The path to the glory is through the cross. It is a holy path. It commences with the feast of unleavened bread. “Now the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh." The chief priests and scribes sought how they might kill him, but still the people are opposed. "They feared the people." But now a confederacy is formed against the Lamb of God. Satan and Judas, “the chief priests and captains," (ecclesiastical and worldly power,) are leagued in one. “The passover must be killed." Jesus is ready to spend all for the blessing of His people. He sends two of His disciples to prepare the Passover. He will take His place as a Jew at that feast, which in His own person He was about to furnish with divine solemnities and everlasting cheer. "A man bearing a pitcher of water “in this dry and barren land, where no water is, is the guide now and then to the guest chamber. "He sat down and the twelve apostles with Him." They who had seen all His service to Israel and were to be by and bye witnesses of it, are partakers with Him in all the fruits of it. The sorrow is His own.
It is necessary to distinguish here between the Passover and the breaking of bread, which is properly subsequent to the Passover. The Lord says: "With desire have I desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." From this it is plain that He observed this feast as a Jew in the company of Jews, and that in doing so He was anticipating the time when it would be fulfilled, for He adds: "I will not any more cat of it until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God; " and also, that "the cup " which follows is the fruit of the vine, the moral condition of Israel, of which He will not drink (or, in other words, have no communion with) till the kingdom of God is come. I think, it very important to notice how the Spirit in this book is so careful to describe Israel's share in the blessings, in order that the Church may distinctly, and without confusion, understand its own. And so here. Israel's blessing from the Passover is first secured, and then that to the Church. Our feast is the feast of unleavened bread, and hence it is the bread which He breaks for us, for His body is broken for us, and we are His body, built up into it by strength and sustenance flowing to us from His broken body and shed blood. We are to keep the feast, not with old (Jewish) leaven, nor with the leaven of nature, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Popery inculcates a grievous error in asserting that “the mass is a repetition of the sacrifice of Christ." The argument of the apostle is, (1 Cor. 5.) that the Passover is sacrificed in the person of Christ, and, therefore, it only remains for us to keep the feast consequent on it. Popery has gone back to the “old leaven," and probably was confirmed in this fatal error by construing what is here observed during the solemnization of the Passover for that feast which followed it.
The remainder of this chapter mainly discloses the elements and causes of the various disorders in the absence of Christ.
The first is, betrayal by a professed friend, from love of gain.
The second is, a strife for pre-eminence.
The remedy for this is, that the Gentiles now are the channels of power and dominion; so, to assume either now is a Gentile standing. But they are to have a kingdom, and “to sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel," though not in a moment. Grievous trials await them here. The most forward and zealous of them shall be sifted of Satan, and shall so quail before a woman, that ere the night is passed he shall three times deny his Lord; and this is the third form in which failure will appear.
In Christ's presence “nothing” was lacked; in Christ's absence, we must part with everything, to stand in the same power. It is not the question of swords, but of standing in the blessing which Christ's presence bestowed: swords cannot accomplish this. “The mount of Olives " is the place to prepare for trial. There a heavenly messenger comforts our Lord. If we sleep on the eve of trial, we cannot meet it as Christ did when it comes. We sacrifice the ear of our antagonist when we encounter him with carnal weapons. Jesus nevertheless repairs our injuries.
Jesus—in the hands of enemies, His own who would not receive Him, through "the power of darkness,"—Jesus—buffeted and slandered before the "council," which assumed to be gods, His own disciple within His hearing having denied Him—proclaims what is His own joy and the glory of the nation, though they now condemn Him for it: " Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God." Alas! the more fully He revealed Himself, the more fully was He rejected. "His own mouth” is the fullest witness against Him!
Chapter. 23.
TIM chapter details the combination of every earthly power, in spite of the remonstrance of conscience, and, at the sacrifice of all judicial honesty, to crucify the Lord of glory. "The whole multitude (of Jews) led Him to Pilate," the Gentile governor. He sends Him to Herod, and though “nothing worthy of death is done unto Him," yet the governor, contrary to his convictions and all justice, is overborne by the "loud voices requiring that He might be crucified." "And the voices of them and the chief priests prevailed." "He delivered Jesus to their will.”
"Jesus is led away!” "And there followed Him a great company of people and of women, which also bewailed and lamented Him." To these, who are the types of the Jewish remnant, the Lord announces the still greater sorrows which will visit their people; for, if their sorrow is genuine in a day of such apparent prosperity,—" in the green tree,"—what shall it be in the dry, when every hope is withered and gone? Jesus is now at Calvary. He is placed between two malefactors. Human enmity and malice have done their worst! His last company on earth, its off-scouring!! From the cradle to the cross there was no room for Him on it!!! The people and the rulers may “deride” and the soldiers may "mock," but Jesus, amidst the company to which He is reduced, discloses the treasures of His grace to faith. To one beyond earthly hope or human aid are revealed the glories of a heavenly kingdom. His eye was fast closing on all earthly objects; in faith he sought (according to Jewish hope) a place in the future kingdom, but " to-day," we may say the day of salvation, shall paradise be opened to one of the poor of the flock, and as a first sample of the family who should be gathered there. The other thief represents Israel in unbelief. Jesus goes unto the Father. His blessed course is ended. A Gentile, a Roman centurion, glorifies God, and witnesses, (let it affect his place and station as it may,) “Certainly this was a righteous man." He condemns the act which, as a commander of Roman soldiery, he had been the instrument to perpetrate. The Jew planned, the Gentile executed, the crucifixion of Jesus.
The Jew had the law; the Gentile, power: ill was the use both made of them.
The net and language of this centurion is such as every faithful Gentile must now adopt. The power vested in the Gentile crucified Jesus; it perpetrated an unrighteous act. Can I consistently glory in and enrich myself by such power? It is the times of the Gentiles, and the power given to them is not yet re-assumed; so that he who accepts part of it, accepts it as part of Nebuchadnezzar's image, and as that which under sufficient pressure, as with Pilate, would again crucify Christ. The virus of that iniquity is in it; for, surely, no soldier in the execution of his duty could have prevented it, or attempted to do so.
When does invested power serve Christ? My personal exertions may be used of Him, but not delegated authority. Joseph of Arimathea effects nothing in the council; his attempt to serve there was vain; but, divested of official power, he begs from the Roman governor the body of Jesus. Those who "wait for the kingdom of God " now, will follow his example; they will, without the assertion of power, as a suppliant, remove the body of Christ from Gentile domination, and endue it with its proper character, as "wrapped in linen," that is, its appearance unto men, and laid in a sepulcher, testifying that we are not alive unto this world, that we are set " wherein never man before was laid; " for the Church's place is no common one. But they who add “spices and ointments " to give it an earthly fragrance, know not its calling, and their labor is in vain, for it is in resurrection; and this the next chapter opens out.
Chapter. 24.
"ON the first day of the week," the morning of the resurrection, the loving followers of Christ are taught the needlessness of earthly attractions. Two men in “shining garments” witness unto them that " Christ is not here, but is risen." In all this scene we are taught the tardiness and reluctance with which we learn the resurrection; the apostles will not believe the testimony of the women. Peter visits the sepulcher himself; he beholds nothing but the “linen clothes," (all that should be visible if resurrection was in spirit enjoyed,) and he only departs, "wondering in himself at that which was come to pass."
The disciples going to Emmaus, and the occurrences connected with it, describe to us the progress from Jewish thoughts and hopes to happy communion with Christ himself. The highest enjoyment, the most honored place on earth, is the knowing the presence of Christ in breaking of bread here was the fulfillment of that word: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst." Their hearts practically learned the blessed effects of the broken body and shed blood of Jesus; they passed from every thought to the one grand absorbing one of the presence of the living Jesus; and it is evident that the revelation of Christ, as the living head of the Church, is here in type, as the manner of it to the Jew is foreshown in His manifestation to "the eleven and them that were with them," though the testimony of " the two," which is the Church's testimony, is previously declared.
But Israel is not yet abandoned; all the blessings must flow out to Jerusalem first; all must begin there; but yet they will not be confined to it, for they shall be proclaimed among "all nations." (or Gentiles.) And though the disciples must. continue in Jerusalem, they, as it became witnesses of the grace of Jesus, are seen " continually in the temple, praising and blessing God," for God had not yet cast it of While God owned it, so must they; yet I say, though they are thus righteously so to act, are they taught, by the place and manner of His parting scene, the true place and manner of blessing on earth. He led them out as far as Bethany, i.e. the house of the grace of the Lord. With hands directed upwards, He blessed them. How they are practically led in the same path with Christ, as is foreshown here, namely, from Jerusalem to Bethany, will be our inquiry while meditating on the Acts of the Apostles, which, if the Lord will, I propose to pursue in the next part.