There is not in scripture a character that furnishes more solemn warning than that of king Saul. As we pass on from stage to stage through his history, it fills the soul with very awful thoughts of the treachery and corruption of the heart of man; and as we are sure that it has been written for our learning (Rom. 15:44For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. (Romans 15:4)), we may well be thankful to our God for the counsel that it gives us, and seek His grace that we may read the holy lesson to profit.
But this we should know-that though the Spirit of God may have thus graciously recorded these acts of the wicked for our learning, they were all executed by the hand and according to the heart of the man himself. God is to be known here and in similar histories, only in that holy sovereignty, which draws good out evil, and in that care for His saints, which records that evil for their admonition.
The 1st Book of Samuel has a very distinct character. It strikingly exhibits the removal of man and the bringing in of God.-It accordingly opens with the barren woman receiving a child from the Lord; this being, in scripture, the constant symbol of grace, and the pledge of divine power acting on the incompetency of the creature. It then shows us the Priesthood (which had been set in formal order and succession) corrupting itself and removed by judgment, and upon that God's Priest (who was to do according to his heart, and for whom he was to build a sure house) brought in. (2:35.) And then, in like manner, it shows us the. Kingdom (at first set according to man's desire) corrupting itself, and removed by judgment, and upon that God's king (who was also after His heart, and for whom He would also build a sure house) brought in. Thus, this Book exhibits everything, whether in the sanctuary or on the throne, while in man's hand coming to ruin, and the final committal of everything to the hand of God's anointed. And this anointed of God, we know, in the dispensation of the fullness of times, is to be none less than the Son of God Himself, God's king to hold the immoveable kingdom, and God's Priest to hold the untransferrable Priesthood.
The history of king Saul properly begins with the 8th chapter of this book. There we find the revolted Samuel, ever since He had brought them out of Egypt, seeking still greater distance from Him, and desiring a king in the stead of Him. The ill government of Samuel's sons at this time was their pretense, but it was only a pretense. There is no doubt that they did act corruptly, and Samuel may, have been at fault in making them judges, consulting perhaps, too much with flesh and blood, and too little with Israel's welfare, and the Lord's honor. But the Lord discloses the real source of this desire for a king, saying to Samuel, "they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them." Like Moses in such a case (Ex. 16:77And in the morning, then ye shall see the glory of the Lord; for that he heareth your murmurings against the Lord: and what are we, that ye murmur against us? (Exodus 16:7)), Samuel was nothing, that the people should murmur against him or his sons; their murmurings were not against him, but against the Lord.
" Israel would none of me," says the Lord, " so I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust, and they walked in their own counsels." (Psalm 81:1212So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels. (Psalm 81:12).) They shall have what their soul was now lusting after, but they shall find it to be their plague. Their own king shall be their sorrow and ruin, as all our own things are, if we will follow them and have them. " He feedeth on ashes, a deceived heart hath turned him aside." What but ashes (sorrow and death) does the labor of our own hands gather for us? So is it always, try it in what way we may, and so was Israel now to find it in their own king. (8:11-17.)
But, in wonted grace, the Lord here gives His people space to repent of this their evil choice before they reaped the bitter fruit of it. And this was just what he had done before at Mount Sinai. When they were there bent on accepting the fiery law, as though they could keep it, and live by it, Moses is made to pass and repass between them and the Lord, in order, as it seems, to give them space to turn and still trust in that grace which had redeemed them from Egypt, and not cast themselves on the terms of Mount Sinai. (See Ex. 19) And so here, I believe, with the same intent Samuel passes again and again between the Lord and the people. But as they there listened to their own heart in its confidence and self-sufficiency, so. here they will have a king in spite of all God's gracious warning. They take their own way again.
And I ask, dear Brethren, is not this His way, and, alas, too often our way still? Is He not often checking us by His Spirit, that we go not in the way of our own heart, and yet are we not like Israel, too often heedless of His Spirit? And what do we ever find the end of our own way to be, but grief and confusion? For the Lord has only to leave us to ourselves, if He would fain leave us for destruction. Legion is the fearful witness of this. (Mark 5) He presents man in his proper native condition, choosing the captivity of Satan, and, as such, being one whom nothing could relieve but that sovereign grace which does not stop to take counsel with man's own desire (for then it would never act), but which goes right onward with its own purpose to rescue and to bless.
But such was Israel now, knowing only their own will in this matter of the king. And this at once prepares us for the manner of person that we are to find in their forthcoming king. For the willful people must have a willful king..of none other could it be said that all the desire of Israel was on Him. Of none other could Samuel have said, " behold the king whom ye have chosen, and whom ye have desired." None other could have been the king of this people.
But all this forebodes fearful things in the king, and fearful days for Israel. And so shall we find it. In the divine order, such a time as the reign of King Saul has its appointed uses. Showing us the kingdom in man's hand, it serves to set off the kingdom in God's hand-mischief and corruption and disaster marking the one, honor and blessing and rest the other. The kingdom brought in by their own desire would let them see how unequal they were to provide for their own happiness, just as " this present. evil world," which our own lusts have formed and fashioned, is found unequal to satisfy, leaving us subject to vanity still. But with all this, God's workmanship will stand in blessed contrast. The kingdom under Saul in all its wretchedness and shame might set off the glorious and peaceful days of David and Solomon, as this world of ours will set off " the world to come," in the days of the Son of man.
But however the Lord may thus serve His own glory, and His people's comfort by this, it is Israel that now brings this season of shame and sorrow on thernselves. They sow the wind to reap the whirlwind. Saul comes forth, the chosen one of a willful and revolted nation, to do his evil work. And thus he stands in one rank with another more wicked than himself. He stands as the type and brother of that king in the latter day who is to do " according to his will"-the one who is to come " in His own name," and say in his heart " no God." Saul was now coming forth the first of that line of shepherds or rulers who were " to feed themselves and not the flock," to eat the fat, and clothe them with the wool, (Ezek. 34) and do all that evil work that is here prophesied of Israel's own king, and fill out all that character that is here drawn of Saul.
Into the hand of such shepherds, Israel is now cast, seeing they had rejected the Lord their good Shepherd, and desired one after their own heart. The first of them, as we here find, was of that tribe of which it had been said of old, "Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf, in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil." (Gen. 49:2727Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil. (Genesis 49:27).) And he was of that city in that tribe, which had already wrought such mischief in Israel, and been the occasion of nearly blotting out the memorial of one of the tribes from among the people of the Lord. (Judg. 19-21)
But we further learn of him, that though belonging to the least of all the families of his tribe, and that, too, the smallest tribe in Israel, his father Cis was "a mighty man of substance." And from this description, I gather that Saul and his father had prospered in this world, being men who were wise in their generation, people of that class who " will be rich," though nature and family and circumstances are all against them. And Saul is first shown to us searching his father's asses. Something of the family property was missing, and it must be searched for-their own ass had fallen into the, ditch and it must be taken out. But though thus careful of his own things, he seems, as yet at least, to have had no great care for the things of God, for he does not at this time know even the person of Samuel, who was now the great witness of God in the land; and soon after this, his neighbors, " who had known him aforetime," wonder with great wonder that he should be found among the prophets, so that to this day he is a proverb. All these are notices of what generation he was, telling us that though as yet in an humble sphere, he and his father's house had been formed rather by the low principles of the world, than by worthy thoughts of the Lord of Israel. And such an one was just fit to be directed to Samuel at the time when the worldly heart of the people was desiring a king. His mind was upon the asses, as Samuel seems to hint. The world was set in his heart, though from circumstances it had not as yet been developed in many of its proper fruits. And this is awful warning, beloved. Circumstances, as here, may indeed be needed in order to prove the ground of the heart, but it is the heart itself that determines the man before God (chap. 16:7), and sooner or later will determine the life before men. (Prov. 4:2323Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. (Proverbs 4:23). Matt. 15:1919For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: (Matthew 15:19).)
In accordance with all this, on being introduced to the intended king, we have no mention whatever of any moral qualifications that he had. All that we learn of him is this, " that he was a choice young man, and a goodly, and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he, from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people." Thus and thus only is he spoken of. He is judged of simply after the flesh, looked at drily in the outward man, and thus was suited to man who had desired him, for " man looketh on the outward appearance." Therefore when the people saw his stature, and nothing more, they cry, " God save the king." This was the king after their heart. He was of the world, and the world loved its own.
And here let me say, that if Saul be thus the man after man's heart, and David as we read afterward, the man after God's heart, we learn in the one what we are and in the other what God is. And the distinctive character of the two kings is this. Saul would have everything his own and be everything himself; David was willing to be nothing and to have nothing, but still in whatever state he was, to be the diligent unselfish servant of others. And thus man, to our shame, is presented in the narrow-heartedness of Saul, but God to our comfort, in the generous self-devotement of David.
All this character of Saul will be awfully disclosed in all the passages of his future history, but the same principles are even now early at work. It may be that the less practiced eye cannot discern this, and it is indeed well and happy to be " simple concerning evil." But heart will sometimes answer to heart; and make some of us, beloved, quicker to detect its treachery than others. Thus in Saul keeping back Samuel's words touching the kingdom, in hiding himself among the stuff when the lot had fallen upon him, and again in holding his peace when some would not give him their voices, there is in all this, I judge, only the show of virtue. For the love of the world and of its praise can afford to be humble and generous at times. It can even send forth those or any other virtues, taking care, however, to send them forth in such a direction, as to make them bring home, after a short journey, some rich revenues to the ruling lusts.
In the hand of such an one is the kingdom of Israel now vested, but such an one was not " God's king." To give them a king, however, appears to have been God's purpose from the beginning. The prophetic words of both Jacob and Moses upon Judah, as also the words by Balaam (Num. 24:1717I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth. (Numbers 24:17)), intimate this. As also Moses' title, " king in Jeshurun." And more than these, the ordinance touching the king in Deut. 17 and the fact that the Lord Jesus Himself sought the kingdom when He was here (Matt. 21:11And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, (Matthew 21:1)), and in the end, at His second coming, will take it (Psa. 2:66Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. (Psalm 2:6)), prove that God's first purpose was to give Israel a king.
But things were not ready for the king all at once; various previous courses must be accomplished, ere that top stone in the divine building could be brought forth. Israel at first had to be redeemed from bondage-then to be carried through the wilderness to learn the ways and secrets of God's love-then to get their promised inheritance delivered out of the hand of the usurper. Till these things were done, all was not in readiness for the king. Had these things been simply accomplished, the king without delay would have appeared to crown the whole work with the full beauty of the Lord. But each stage in this way of the Lord, Israel had sadly interrupted and delayed. After redemption from Egypt, they had given themselves through disobedience, forty years' travel in the wilderness; after taking the inheritance, they had again, through disobedience, brought pricks into their sides and thorns in their eyes; and now they forestal God's king, and through disobedience and willfulness again, bring their own king, as another plague upon them. But this is the way of man, beloved, the way of us all by nature. Through unbelief and willfulness we refuse to wait God's time, and we procure a Saul for ourselves. It was thus that Sarah brought Ishmael into her house, and Jacob his twenty-one years of exile and servitude upon himself. Our own crooked policy and unbelief must answer for these sorrows. God if waited for, would bring the blessing that maketh rich and which addeth no sorrow with it, but our own way only teaches us that he that soweth to the flesh must of the flesh reap corruption. To this day Israel is learning this, and reaping the fruit of the tree they planted, learning the service of the nations whom like Saul, they have set over themselves; and their only real joy lies in this, that God's counsel of grace, in spite of all is to stand, and his own king shall still sit on his holy hill of Zion.
But in spite of all this, and though Israel is now transferred into other hands, God will prove that nothing should be wanting on his part. He had not only signified Saul to Samuel, and Samuel had then signified Saul at the sacrificial Feast, and anointed and kissed him, (9, 10) but in the mouth of several witnesses the divine purpose had been established, and the spirit, as faculty for office, had been imparted, and an " occasion," as Samuel speaks (10:7) for proving that God was thus with the king, now arrives. The insult of Nahash the Ammonite towards Jabesh-Gilead was this "occasion," and the Lord gives Israel a complete victory over him by the hand of their king. For this battle was the Lord's inasmuch as the Lord would fulfill his part in this matter. We need not inquire where Israel got their instruments of war, if now there was " no smith found throughout all the land," for this day was won not by might nor by power, but " by my Spirit, saith the Lord." This victory might therefore have been gained as well with lamps and pitchers, or with the jawbones of asses, or with slings and stones from the brook, as with the battle-ax and bow.
Thus again, as in ancient days, the Lord approves Himself not wanting, however willful and stiff-necked His people may be found. And after this, the king is accepted again of the people; (12) and this chapter reminds us of the 20th of Exodus, as the 8th chapter reminded us of the 19th of Exodus. For in the 20th of Exodus, Moses transfers them into their new position, but convicts them of the terribleness of it; and here Samuel formally plants them under their king, but convicts them again as with the thunder and tempest of Mount Sinai. The thunder and rain came upon them here, as the fearful pledge and prelude of the end of their own kingdom, as the shaking of the earth at Sinai pledged the end of their own covenant. And under it they cry out in terror here, as they had done there. There they had said to Moses, " speak thou with us and we will hear, but let not God speak with us lest we die,"-and here they say to Samuel, " pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we die not, for we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask us a king." And in mercy Samuel here, as Moses there, encourages them still to hold fast by the Lord, who, in spite of all, was still graciously owning them as His people.
These two occasions are thus in strict moral analogy, and show us that king Saul was introduced into the Jewish system now, as the law had been at Mount Sinai, through the willfulness and unbelief of the people, Saul being no more God's Icing, than the law was God's covenant. Israel has again lost their peace by all this, and cast themselves into sorrows and difficulties that they little counted on; but the Lord pardons and accepts them, as He had done at Sinai, and now sets them in the way again in their new character.
And now comes the trial again. " Fear not," says Samuel to them, " ye have done all this wickedness, yet turn not aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart." But, ere the first scene in the kingdom closes, all is broken and forfeited, just as the covenant from Sinai was broken ere Aaron and the people had left the foot of the Mount. There the people grew impatient at the delay of Moses, and in violation of the very first article of the covenant, made a golden calf. So here Samuel had left Saul for awhile, telling him to go down to Gilgal, and wait for him there till he should come and offer the sacrifices, but now Saul offers the sacrifices himself. (13) He forsakes the word of the Lord. The first act of the king was thus again a violation of the first command he had received. And thus was it all again, as at Sinai so at Gilgal, the immediate breach of the covenant on the part of man. The Lord, it is true, had grace in store for Israel while they were thus destroying themselves; as at Sinai lie showed the witnesses of mercy on the top of the Mount, while Israel was sinning away all their present blessing at the foot of it. But still, in the king's hand now, as in the people's then, all was disaster and loss.
Speedy and yet fully ripe fruit was this of their own way. But beside this one great act of forfeiture, there are traits of character now displaying themselves in the people's king that strongly mark his generation. We see him acting now after the manner forewarned of Samuel. He chooses three thousand men of Israel to wait upon him, sending the rest to their tents, thus dealing with them as his property, having right to do what he would with his own. " When Saul saw any strong man, or any, valiant man, he took him unto him"-taking thus their sons and appointing them unto himself, as Samuel had said. And all his ways are in the same tone of self-will, fully opposed to the manner of God's king as prescribed by Moses. (Deut. 17) In the sovereignty of his own good pleasure, the people's king now does his own will, exalting himself above his brethren, blowing the trumpet throughout the land, speaking as with the voice of a god and not of a man, and saying, " let the Hebrews hear;" thus bringing, as it were, the people to his own door posts, and there boring their ears, that they might be his servants forever.
And he would be Priest as well as king. He would fain sit in the sanctuary as well as on the throne. In disobedience, he will himself offer the sacrifice; in all these things giving us awful pledges of the ways of him who is still to be more daring, magnifying himself above all, planting his tabernacles on the glorious holy mountain, and sitting in the temple of God.
Such was Saul, and such will be his elder brother or antitype in the latter day. But as in spite of all the trespass and breach of covenant at Mount Sinai, the Lord did not allow the enemy to triumph over Israel, but brought them into the good land that He had promised them; so here in spite of all this, He works deliverance for them from the Philistines as He had promised, and that, too, in a way that more marvelously displays His hand than the day of Gideon or of Samson. (14) This victory at Mich-mash, like the victories of Joshua, verified the faithfulness of the God of Israel. Not one good thing could fail. He had promised strength against the Philistines now, as He had promised the land of the Canaanites then, and this day of Michmash and that which follows fulfills the word of the Lord. (9:16; 14: 47, 48.)
But all this, as everything else, serves only to develop the people's king more and more. The ways of a willful one are strongly marked in all that he does. His course is uncertain and wayward, because it is just what his own will makes it. But in the midst of all the present gathering darkness, there is one object of relief to the eye,-the person and actions of Jonathan. He is the one in the apostate kingdom who owns God and is owned of Him, the remnant in the midst of the thousands of Israel, the one who stood in the secret of God, and knew where the strength of Israel lay. And thus he is in full readiness for all the openings of the divine purpose. We see him in immediate sympathy with David, as soon as David appears. (18:1.) His deeds in Israel before David is heard of, savor of the very spirit that animates David afterward; for the victory of Michmash which his hand won, was in full character with that in the valley of Elah, which David afterward achieved. God was trusted in both of them, as the only giver of victory. The spirit with which Jonathan entered the passages between Bozez and Seneh, carried David into the front of the battle against the giant. And this, I may say, is the character of every remnant-they walk in the spirit of the hope set before them, so that when it is manifested they are ready for it. As here, Jonathan was ready for David: Anna and Simeon waited for " the consolation of Israel," and embraced the child the moment they saw him. In the latter day, in like manner, the remnant will be looking for the Lord as an afflicted and poor people; and so, in the meanwhile, we should watch for the heavenly glory in the spirit of holy retirement from the world and the things of the world. In spirit and conversation we should be as "children of light and children of the day," thus signalizing our remnant character, though the night is still around us, so that when the light of the morning breaks, and the day of the kingdom comes, we may find our native place in it. The oil in the vessels of the wise virgins tells us this. It tells us that they had counted the cost of being wakeful to the end-that they knew themselves only as " prisoners of hope" in this world, and that it was still but night-time, which would need the lamp, till grace should be brought to them at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
And the character of the apostate is marked in the very opposite way. It is this remnant that they hate, and their hope that they are not preparing for. It is this righteous Jonathan who now moves Saul's envy. Saul it appears would now have sacrificed him to his lust, as we know he afterward sought to slay him. For envy, or the love of the world, cares not though it have even a child of our own bowels for its prey, as we know in the case of Joseph, it craved a brother for a sacrifice. In Saul it also hunted David like a partridge in the mountains, and even would have killed Samuel, to whom under God, Saul owed everything. (16:2) As says the divine proverb, " wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous, but who is able to stand before envy."
And with all this, he had no courage in the Lord's cause when the trial came. He makes a stir and bustles a good deal with his six hundred men behind him at Gilgal, but as we follow him to Gibeah, where the battle was at hand, he tarries in the uttermost part under a pomegranate tree, nor do we see him in the field till the day is won. He rages after the fight, but strikes no blow in it; and all that he does, is to sacrifice the honor of Israel to his own will, for in the mere exercise of his own good pleasure, he adjures the people not to touch any food till the evening, and that curse hinders the full overthrow of the Philistines.
Thus all that he really is, on this memorable day, is the Achan in the camp. Jonathan is the strength, and he but the troubler of Israel. But with all this, he can be very religious, when religion does not turn him out of his own way, or when, like Jehu, he can serve himself by it. After the offense of the people eating the blood with the flesh, he orders the table of the camp himself in due religious form. But this instead of crossing his own desire, only serves it, for by this he seems to take the honor of the priest-hood to him, and thus to exalt himself. He bustles again as though he were the one object of importance in the whole scene, thus gathering the thoughts of man to himself, and walking in the full light of the world's countenance, which was everything to him, the thing that he lived for.
All this is indeed darkness, but we have gloomier shades to penetrate still.
When Israel entered the land, they received a commission to destroy the nations, for the day of their visitation had come. But here I would observe, that it was not the whole earth that was thus to be destroyed, but only those nations which had been guilty of doing despite to God, and had filled up the measure of their sins. The Canaanites had had God's witnesses among them in old time, for Abraham Isaac and Jacob had been there, but they remained Canaanites still. The Egyptians had known Joseph and the grace and power of the God of Joseph, but they had ceased to remember him. And Amalek had seen the God of glory leading his hosts out of Egypt, with his cloud over them, and the water from the rock following them, but the hand of Amalek was at that moment raised against the throne of God. Of these three, Egypt, the Canaanites, and Amalek, Egypt and the Canaanites had been already judged, and the day of Amalek had now come; for surely when the Lord's cup was passing, they could not be forgotten.
(And I would further observe, that in the same way will be the judgment of the nations in the latter day. It is not all the earth that is then to be destroyed, but only those nations among whom God's witnesses have previously been, those who will then make up the confederacy against the Lord's anointed. The kingdoms of the world shall then become the Lord's, and not be destroyed; the isles afar off shall form the train of the earthly glory of Messiah, as the distant cities and people of old were to be left in order to become tributaries to Israel (Deut. 20:10-1810When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. 11And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. 12And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: 13And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: 14But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. 15Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. 16But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: 17But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee: 18That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 20:10‑18)), and those only to be cut off, as I have noticed above, who had filled up the measure of their sin, and done despite to God. (Gen. 15:1616But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. (Genesis 15:16).) )
But Israel had not been fully faithful to the commission which they had received against the Canaanites, as the 1st chapter of the book of Judges shows us; and now our 15th chapter is just that chapter again under the hand of king Saul. The kingdom was now received, as the land had then been, and the king gets his commission now, as the nation then did. "Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that he hath," says the Lord to Saul by Samuel. But Saul makes terms with Amalek, as the tribes before had done with the Canaanites. He spares Agag, as Benjamin had spared the Jebusites, Manasseh the people of Dor, Ephraim the people of Gezer, Zebulon the people of Karon, Asher the people of Accho, and Naphthali the people of Bethshemesh. (Judg. 1) And thus we have here with the king as there with the tribes, the disobedience of man, and the consequent forfeiture of all blessing and honor. " Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord," says Samuel to Saul, " he hath also rejected thee from being king." (15:23.)
And this was as the loss of Eden to the Lord. The land of Israel should have been the earthly rest, where God would have kept his sabbath. But now it was defiled, as paradise of old; and as of old God repented that he had made man on the earth (Gen. 6:66And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. (Genesis 6:6)), so now does he repent that he had made Saul king over Israel. (15:35.) Thorns and briars and sorrow of heart, the kingdom was now to yield, as the cursed earth did then. Samuel goes away to weep, and the Lord takes no pleasure in the kingdom.
Thus all is ruin under the hand of the people's king, and the lust of his heart is seen again to work in this scene with fearful power. For he seeks at once to turn this conquest of Amalek to his own profit and glory, careless as he was of the word and glory of the Lord. He first flies upon the spoil, and then sets him up a place (15:12), that is, erects some monument to his own name, thus seeking to make this victory serve both his pride and his covetousness. It is true, he says, "I have sinned"-but so said Balaam before him, and Judas after him. And even in that confession, the desire of his heart was not towards God's forgiveness and peace, but towards his own honor before men. For these are his words to Samuel, " I have sinned, yet honor me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel." This was his lust-he loved the praise of men. He would at all cost, have the honor that cometh from man, and Samuel now delivers him over to a reprobate mind. He turns for a moment with him towards the people, but then leaves him forever.
Thus the judgment of God lies upon him, and an evil spirit from the Lord comes to trouble him. (16) And now the time has arrived for revealing again "the secret of God." For in all the seasons of man's destruction of himself, there has been another thing going on in the plans of the blessed God. Thus of old, the promised seed is sown in man's field of briars and thorns, (Gen. 3)-while his brethren are filling up their sins and sorrows in Canaan, Joseph unknown to them, is growing up in Egypt for their help-while Israel is in the heat of the furnace, Moses is preparing to be their deliverer in the distant solitudes of Midian.- And again, while disasters follow sins in quick succession, the judges are brought forth as God's deliverers for the people; and at last when the priesthood was defiled, and the glory gone into the enemy's land, Samuel the child is brought forth to raise the stone of help.
Thus had it been before, and so is it now again. Saul and the kingdom are bringing ruin on themselves, but David, " the secret of God," is under preparation to set the throne in honor, and the kingdom in order and strength. And what are all these things but notices to us of Him who is the true secret of God. For, as such, the blessed Son of God is now, though flesh and blood decay, the hidden seed in the believer, that is to burst forth in the resurrection a plant of glory. And as such He will by-and-by bear up the pillars of the earth, when all things else are dissolving. He will then come forth out of His secret chambers, as Joseph or as Moses, as Samuel or as David, and shall be as the light of the morning, after a dark and dreary night, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds.
And this is always the way of grace-it comes into exercise after man has been convicted of entire insufficiency. It speaks on this wise-" except the Lord had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah." Man makes Jerusalem a Sodom, a filthy ruin, and then out of that ruin, God in His own grace and strength builds again "a city of righteousness." (Isa. 1) And this grace ever takes for its instrument the weak thing and the foolish thing of this world. Such was Jesus of Nazareth-such was Paul with a thorn in his flesh, and such is David now. " Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh upon the heart." Man had already, as we have seen, looked on the outward appearance, and found his object in Saul, who in person was the goodliest of the children of Israel. But God's choice was not to be ordered by such a measure. (Psa. 147:1010He delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man. (Psalm 147:10).) A rod out of the stem of Jesse is His object, a root out of a dry ground in which there was no comeliness before the eye of men, the one of whom his father, " according to the flesh," says in scorn, " there remaineth yet the youngest, and he keepeth the sheep"-the one, who like a greater than he, man was thus despising and the nation abhorring. (Isa. 49:77Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship, because of the Lord that is faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose thee. (Isaiah 49:7).) This one, this youngest son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, the keeper of a few sheep in the wilderness, is now God's object. " Arise, anoint him," says the Lord to Samuel, " for this is he."
And here again I must notice something that seems to me to have great moral value in it. I allude to what appears to have been the different condition of Saul's house and David's house, when they are severally brought before us. Saul's house, as we have seen, was of no repute in Israel, but had made a fortune as people speak. David's, on the other hand, had once been in honor, was of the tribe of Judah, and in its genealogy bore the distinguished name of Boaz, who had been perhaps, the first man in his generation. But now it seems to be otherwise with them, for David and his father and his father's house have no distinction now, but simply take their place among the many thousands of Israel. But what of all this? the world finds its object in Saul (" for man will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself"), and God, in. David. And these things teach us, beloved, that it is safer to be " going down," than " getting up," as the word is, in the world. And they tell us also that whom God will exalt, He first abases; whom He will glorify, He first humbles. He puts the sentence of death in the children of resurrection. But with the wicked there are no bands, their strength is firm. (Psa. 73) Saul went through no sorrow up to the throne, as David did. Esau, the man of the earth, had dukedoms in his family, while Jacob's children were still homeless strangers on the earth, (Gen. 36) yet it is written, "Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated."
God's way is according to this, hard indeed for flesh and blood to learn, and God's hand thus found its object in David, and we now have accordingly, a new feature in the scene before us. We have David, God's chosen, as well as Saul within, and the Philistine without. David is before us in the strength of the Spirit of God, and he soon gives proofs of his ministry both upon the rejected king and upon the uncircumcised. Both are made to own the power of the Lord that was in him. Whether it were the harp or the sling, his hand is skilled to use either. The king had an evil spirit in him, and the uncircumcised is breathing out slaughter, but David stands above both in the strength of the Lord. The unclean spirit goes out from the king at the bidding of his harp, and the Philistine giant falls under his sling. (16, 18) It might be thought that king Saul's evil course was interrupted by this, but it soon appears that this was rather only another stage in his downward way. The sow was to return to her mire. The unclean spirit goes out only to gather and bring in seven other spirits more wicked than himself. This quieting of the evil spirit was but a flattering of God with the mouth, for the king's heart was not thereby set right with Him. He- was not estranged from his lusts by it. His love of the world and its praise, his self-will, and hatred of the righteous, rule him still, and God and His word and His glory are as little regarded as ever.
And in all this we see Israel; for like prince, like people, Saul is the representative of Israel in apostasy, as he is the forerunner or type of their king in the latter day. This way of Saul under David's harp, has been the way of Israel under God's ministers. Elijah raised among them for a moment the cry, " the Lord He is God, the Lord He is God," but all was quickly " Baal" again. In the light of John the Baptist they afterward rejoiced, but it was only for a season; and when the hand of the Son of God Him-self was among them to heal them and bless them, for awhile they flocked to Him in thousands, and when He preached they wondered, (Luke 4) and when He entered their city they cried " Hosanna," (Matt. 21) but all soon ended in the cross. The evil spirit had been charmed, the unclean spirit had gone out, but the house was still ready for it, and for it only. And thus the harp of David and the grace and ministry of the Son of God, were only the same stage in the downward paths of the king and the people. They were both of them, disobedient and gainsaying still. And it was this case of David's harp, as I judge, which our Lord had especially in mind, when He said, " if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out"-thus likening that generation of Israel to whom He was preaching, to Saul, and making the power of David's harp the same as the power of that preaching. And the parable of the unclean spirit going out and returning with others more wicked than himself, which the Lord then delivers, (Luke 11) is thus a setting forth both of the history of Saul and of that generation. And so we shall find, that the spirit which now went out of Saul came into him again with in-creased strength, as the casting out of devils and cleansing the house of Israel for a time by the Son of God, ended only in his becoming the victim of their lusts and enmity. For Saul was the man after Israel's heart, the full representative of the revolted and unbelieving nation.
But Saul's sin is not to hinder God's mercy. David has a work to do with the Philistine, which must be done, be the king never so unworthy. And in this we still see the way of the Son of God. He came to destroy the power of the enemy, as well as to heal the daughter of Zion; and though she like Saul, may refuse to be healed, the Son of God must do His work upon the great Goliath. He must lead captivity captive. He must make an end of sin. He must break down the middle wall of partition and nail the hand-writing to His cross. He must slay the enmity and abolish death. He must accomplish all this glorious triumph over the full power of the enemy, though He find none in Israel, who were His own, to receive Him, nor any in the world, that He had made, to know Him.
This again is shame and comfort to us-shame, that we could thus treat his love; comfort that his love survived such treatment. And upon this, I would further notice (for it carries another lesson to ourselves), that though Saul knew the power of David's harp for a time, he never knew David himself. He had not learned David, if I may so speak-David was still a stranger to him. (17:56.) And how does this tell us of man and of Israel still. Man will -enjoy the rain from heaven, and the fruitful season; but remain ignorant of the Father who orders all this for him. Israel was healed of Jesus, but did not learn Jesus; many pressed on Him in the throng, who never touched Him. And all this is like Saul who could be refreshed by David's music, but still have to ask, " Abner whose son is this youth?"
And this, beloved brethren, is truly sad and solemn; and I think I can say that I never felt more awed, while meditating on scripture, with thoughts of what man is, than in this meditation on poor wretched miserable Saul. The subject is indeed very solemn. It gives us the way of man, the way of a child of this world, who goes on in self-will, with desperate purpose of heart, to take the world for his portion at all cost. And it is no theory, nor singular thing. It finds its counterpart in our world every day; and would in ourselves, but for the gracious keeping of our God. And I do pray, beloved, that neither may pen nor your eye may travel on through these dreary paths of man, without our heart feeling what a thing it is thus to live and thus to die a lover of this present evil world. "He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." (Prov. 29:11He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. (Proverbs 29:1).)
Through the next chapters (18-27) David becomes the principal object; and all that we see in Saul, is only the course of a vexed and disappointed man of the world, who by the goading of his own lusts rushes on to destruction, as a horse to the battle.
He feels that he is losing the world, and that is everything to him. He cared nothing for the kingdom, for its own sake; and valued its welfare, only so far as that served the world in his heart and his honor among men. The evil spirit now returns with others more wicked than himself. Before, it was a spirit that troubled him, but now it irritates his lusts, and is too strong for the harp of David. (16:14; 18:10.) He had now become one of that generation who will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely. (Psa. 58) The song of the women had, the rather, awakened all the evil passion of his soul; and envy and wounded pride and hatred of the righteous work, and express themselves fearfully through all these scenes. That fatal song was to Saul, what Joseph's dream had been to his brethren, and what the tidings of the wise men was afterward to Herod-it stirred up all his enmity, and David's first successes are, of course, only fresh irritations of his lust (19:8, 9); and nothing roots it out. Convictions, disappointments, resolutions, all fail. And the ruling passion is strong even in death; for while he confesses that David shall soon have everything, and he himself be laid in the grave; still he says, " swear now, therefore, unto me by the Lord, that thou wilt not cut off my seed after me, and that thou wilt not destroy my name out of my father's house." Truly this is all a solemn warning to us. Saul's eye was set on fire of hell, and he kept it fixed on the righteous as its prey. "Saul eyed David." And it is not in the power of the prospect, or the approach of death, to heal "the evil eye." The spirit of envy and of strife will work in us, even to the very last gasp; and the only divine cure for it is, to learn through the Holy Ghost, with enlarged hearts, to cease looking to our own personal honor or interest, and to take our place in God's interests; to know that we have our honor, our enduring honor, only in that mighty and glorious system to which the ten thousand of others; and our own thousand are all contributing. That will give divine victory over the world. But the world was Saul's end, and he must get it at all cost. Ile knew nothing beyond " his own," and had never learned the glorious and enlarging lesson, that all things are ours, if we are Christ's, for Christ is God's.
But Saul would have David fall by the hand of another, rather than by his own, for he had some stings of conscience in the business as it was; and beside that, he saw that David was " accepted in the sight of all the people." He plots against his life first by the Philistines, then by his daughter, and at last solicits even Jonathan to be the executioner. But these failing, and only forcing David out from the court and the camp, he then proclaims him a Traitor; and would have his people treat him as an outlaw. But no weapon formed against him can prosper. Every snare of the fowler is broken, no craft can surprise, no strength can overthrow him. When the officers of the Jews came to take Jesus they had to return, saying, " no man ever spake like this man;" and Saul himself and his officers are turned into prophets, that every baud that would bind this anointed of the Lord might be loosed also.
And David in the exile and shame of an outlaw, gathers round him a company, in the world's esteem, as dishonored as himself; but who prove the real strength and the only honor of the nation then, and who afterward shine in the brightest ranks of the people, when the kingdom is set up in righteousness. For it is to this David, this exiled David and his band of distressed and discontented ones, that Israel look in their trouble (23:1); and the enemy is made to know, that the presence of the God of Israel is with them. The Philistines are routed by them, and the Amelekites spoiled; but they defend and rescue their exposed and threatened brethren. (22, 25) Such and other famous deeds are done by them, and the priest and the prophet and the sword of Goliath (the symbol and the spoil of glorious war), are with them. As afterward with the greater than David, there was another dishonored company, who still were the " the holy seed" of the nation, the publicans and harlots, the Galilean women, and she out of whom He had cast seven devils. Saul and his friends kept court, it is true, and the Scribes and the Pharisees sat in Moses' seat, but these were whited sepulchers; and the only place of real honor was to go without the camp, and there meet David and Christ, and their dishonored bands. For this is the blessed way of Him who stains the pride of man, and lifts the beggar from the dunghill.
But because David was thus the Lord's chosen, Saul is his enemy, the victim that his envy lusted after; and the more wisely David carries himself, and shows that God is with him, the more with infatuated heart, Saul fears him and hates him and would fain kill him. In all this, going the way of Satan who, knowing the Son of God in his day, trembled before Him, and yet sought to destroy Him. So fully was Saul found to be of " the children of this world," and "the children of the wicked one," A suitable king for revolted Israel; his whole course showing us that nothing is too horrid for man, when God gives him up because of his wickedness. Does not the massacre at Nob by the hand of his Edomite, show us this? Does not the massacre at Bethlehem by another Saul, show us this? And these are but samples of the ways of that " violent man," in the latter day, who doing according " to His will" shall "go forth with great fury to destroy and utterly to make away many."
But Saul can weep when he meets David; but so did Esau when he met Jacob. There is however, no trusting these tears. They may but indicate the stony ground at best, while all the time the heart is not right with God. David could not trust Saul's tears, but turned away from them to his hold in the wilderness, and says, " I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul." (24, 27) So with the Son of God. When many were believing in Jesus, beholding the miracles which he did, he would not commit himself to them; (John 2) so unworthy is man, though he put forth his best, of the confidence of God.
And Saul can prophesy too. But so have others of the same generation. Balaam the prophet prophesied while he was loving the wages of unrighteousness. Caiaphas the priest prophesied, while he was thirsting for innocent blood. Judas the Apostle wrought miracles while he carried the heart of a traitor. And Balaam the prophet, Saul the king, Caiaphas the priest, and Judas the Apostle, are all of one generation. A new heart, or " another heart," as a gift for office, had been imparted to each of them, and in the Spirit they prophesied or wrought miracles. But all this tells us that it is not gifts that make us what we should be, and that nothing will do, if the heart be not right with God. My present business I will not forget is with Saul; but I can-not entirely pass by further notices, which these chapters suggest, of David and of Jonathan.—-In David we see much that is indeed beautiful and excellent, richly savoring of the Spirit of God. But still we see also the failing of man. Troubles prove temptations to him, and such temptations as are at times too strong for him. He lies to Abimelech, feigns madness before Achish, purposes vengeance on Nabal, and seeks a refuge among the uncircumcised. For such is man found to be even in this, one of his best samples. But such was not the Lord. He stood faultless, the author and finisher of faith. The faith of David at Nob or at Gath was not what it had -been in the valley of Elah, but all was full and equal brightness in Jesus from the manger to the tree.
In Jonathan also we see beautiful faith. His soul was knit to David the moment he saw him, and he empties himself in order to fill David-he strips himself that he may clothe David. For God gives Jonathan clearly to see the divine purpose touching David. But then the question is, this being so, did Jonathan go far enough? ought he not to have more fully left his father, and joined the little outcast band in the cave of Adullam? and is not his inglorious fall at Gilboa the wages of his unbelief? I judge that it is so; and thus Jonathan gives us another proof that there is none perfect but the Lord, that none but He has ever gone the walk of faith without some backward step, some error to the right hand or to the left.
But I must now hasten to the closing scenes of this solemn and affecting history. For the night of Israel is now setting in with many a dark and heavy cloud. (28) Samuel is dead, the Philistines as strong and threatening as ever, David the deliverer of the people, forced without the camp, and our poor king, the slave of his lusts, all fear and confusion. He inquires of God, but there is no answer, because it is written, " because I have called, and ye refused, I will mock when your fear cometh." The Lord was now building against him, and setting him in dark places-he was hedging him about, and making his chain heavy, and when he now cried, he shut out his prayer. It was indeed a day of darkness and trouble to Israel, as it will be, by and bye. There was now a forsaking of the living for the dead, and a seeking unto wizards that peep and that mutter, as there will be in the vexation of the latter day. The day of Israel's final iniquity is now anticipated-it is " trouble and darkness and dimness of' anguish," as it will be then. (Isa. 8:20-2220To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. 21And they shall pass through it, hardly bestead and hungry: and it shall come to pass, that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward. 22And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness. (Isaiah 8:20‑22).)
At different seasons of the ripening of man's iniquity, there has been a confederacy of kings and their counselors against the Lord and His Anointed. Thus Pharaoh took council with the magicians to withstand Moses. Balak sent for Balaam to curse Israel. The Jews with Caiaphas their counselor, rage against the Lord, and imagine evil. And so in the latter day, the confederacy of the beast and the false prophet will form itself against the power, and in despite of the glory and worship of God. And thus at the close of the iniquity, whether it be in Egypt, in Midian, in Israel or in Christendom, man puts forth his full strength, forms confederacies between the wise ones and the great ones of the earth, "the carpenter encourages the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smites the anvil;" but all this is only made to show forth the greater glory of Him who sits above all water-floods. His patience has then been despised, his waiting to be gracious has then been neglected, and "the grounded staff," the decreed vengeance, has only to take its course.
And now in our history, we get another instance of the same desperate effort of man at the consummation of his sin. Saul and the witch of Endor, is another apostate king in consultation with his evil counselor for the filling up the measure of his iniquity. (1 Chron. 10) The cup was now about to be full, and judgment at the doors, ready to enter.
Saul, I may here observe, had never set up an idol in the land, though that had been so much the way of Israel both before and after him. He had rather been moved with the desire of setting up himself, thus more clearly marking his brotherhood, as I have before observed, with that willful one of the last days, who is not to regard any God, but to magnify himself above all. And with this desire, he had already cleared the land of wizards and witches.
But even this light was darkness in him, for it was himself and not the God of Israel that he would fain bring in instead of the idol. But now that he is losing himself, and the world, as he fears, is departing from him, he will readily enough strike hands with any helper, and form confederacy with even the witch of Endor.
The way which the Lord now takes in hand to deal with this confederacy, is very striking. By his prophet Ezekiel he has said, "Every one that setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumbling-block of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him according to the multitude of his idols." (Ezek. 14:1-81Then came certain of the elders of Israel unto me, and sat before me. 2And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 3Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumblingblock of their iniquity before their face: should I be inquired of at all by them? 4Therefore speak unto them, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Every man of the house of Israel that setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumblingblock of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet; I the Lord will answer him that cometh according to the multitude of his idols; 5That I may take the house of Israel in their own heart, because they are all estranged from me through their idols. 6Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God; Repent, and turn yourselves from your idols; and turn away your faces from all your abominations. 7For every one of the house of Israel, or of the stranger that sojourneth in Israel, which separateth himself from me, and setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumblingblock of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to a prophet to inquire of him concerning me; I the Lord will answer him by myself: 8And I will set my face against that man, and will make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from the midst of my people; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. (Ezekiel 14:1‑8).) Now this, I judge, was just the way of the Lord in this case. Saul was a corrupt man, in whose heart, and before whose face, the world, as his idol and stumbling block, was set; and because of this, the Lord now answers him Himself. He takes the business out of the hand of the witch altogether, gives Samuel for a moment according to Saul's desire, but it is only in judgment, only " according to the multitudes of his idols," only to tell him of the vengeance that was now at the very doors prepared for him, his house, and his people. The witch is set aside, just indeed as Balaam had been. Balak, like Saul, had consulted the prophet; but the prophet, like the witch, had been overruled and disappointed. He could not go beyond the word of the Lord, but simply speaks as the Lord constrains him, as here the witch is confounded, and cries out in fear, not knowing what she saw, for the Lord had taken the business into His own hand according to the word of the prophet. And thus, this appearance and word of Samuel was another hand-writing upon the welt. marking judgment against another profane king with the finger of God himself.*
The Lord thus in Saul illustrates His own principle of acting as revealed by Ezekiel. It was too late now for anything but an answer in judgment. Like Esau, Saul might have had God for his portion. The birthright was his, but he sold it. For the honor that cometh from man, he sold it, as Esau did for a mess of pottage. And now there is no place of repentance for him. He beseeches Samuel, but the door was shut, and the master of the house had risen up.
And Saul was no more renewed by all this, than God was led to repentance by it. The prophet going from the dead will not persuade, where the living prophet has been refused. Esau might weep at the loss of the blessing, but he still hated his brother. So here, Saul for a while is amazed and troubled, lying on the earth and refusing to be comforted, but the trouble and amazement pass by, and he takes of the woman's hand, and is refreshed by her dainties. Thus all this is only another stage in his downward path, rather progress than interruption in his dark and evil way. Like Israel His people afterward, the raising of Lazarus did but strengthen the enmity against the Lord, and carried them onward only the more rapidly to finish their sin at Calvary. (John 11:4747Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. (John 11:47).)
And now we have only to follow our infatuated king to the place of judgment, the "day of visitation." He had rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord had rejected him. His sin had gone before unto judgment-no inquiry after it need now be made. Every passage of his evil reign had declared it, and now he has only to meet the judgment.. Accordingly in the strength of that food which he had received at the hand of his evil counselor, he goes out against the, uncircumcised, but it is only to fall before them. (31) But not the death of all men does he die. He dies as a fool dies, slain by his own sword; his sons fall with him, and his army is routed by the enemies of the Lord. "Saul died, and his three sons, and his armor-bearer, and all his men that same day together." For it was the Lord, and not the Philistines that had a controversy with him. The day was the Lord's, and in the day of the Lord, the apostate king and his host fall. " They lie uncircumcised with them that go down to the pit"-and he comes to his end, as another shall do, and there is none to help him. (Dan. 11:4545And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him. (Daniel 11:45).)
Thus all ends in the fearful day of Mount Gilboa. Our king bas presented us with a fearful pattern of the apostate and his end. He was one indeed who left his first estate. Chosen, anointed, gifted for office, he stood at first in the full title and exercise of the throne; but by transgression he fell, and his office another is to take. Lost, infatuated child of this world. Here was death the wages of sin again, here was the end of man's and of Israel's way, ruin and confusion and the full power of the enemy, the harvest of whirlwind from the wind which they had sown, the end of that storm of rain and thunder which they had been called to listen to at the beginning of their sin. (12)
Our Lord has said, "for judgment am I come into this world, that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind." So is it in these scenes (29-31) Here " the lame take the prey," and the stout ones " bow down under the prisoners." The poor outcast David with his little goodly band does mighty deeds which are still to be had in remembrance; but Saul, with the strength of his camp and the glory of his court perishes, the sport and reproach of the uncircumcised. The spoils of Amalek go among David's friends, while Saul's armor hangs in the house of Ashtaroth, and his head in the temple of Dagon. "This is David's spoil," was said over Amalek; while the Philistines had to publish every where among their people, that " Saul was dead."
Thus are the bows of the mighty broken, while they that stumbled are girded with strength. Because for judgment has the Lord come into the world, that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind.
Well, beloved brethren, surely we have reason to remember Saul, as we are charged by our blessed Master to remember Lot's wife. In him we see the man of the earth perishing in his own corruptions; and in his history we read the end of one whose inward thought was that his house should have continued forever, but whose way proved his folly. "Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness."
Can you and I sit down on the ruin of all that which Saul lived for, and still find that we have lost nothing? Can we look at the world failing us, and yet know that our real inheritance is untouched? Has "the God of glory" as yet led us out from the world? Have we as yet cast our anchor within the vail? Is our "good thing" with Jesus? 0 brethren, is there not a cause to sound the warning of the history of Saul in our ears? Does it not show us, that " the friendship of the world is enmity against God?" He sought its honor, and what it had to give; and that he might make sure of that, he gave up God. And are not we pressed and tempted by the same world that ruined him? 0 that our blessed, blessed Lord, may, by His grace, set our hearts upon Himself, and our eye upon His glory, so that we may stand on the wreck of all that can be wrecked, and still find that our portion is like the everlasting hills! Amen, Lord Jesus
Jesus. Do you not desire to be something in the world? Ah! you are not dead; the darkness which surrounded the Cross is still upon your hearts, you do not breathe the fresh air of the resurrection of Jesus, of the presence of your God. Oh, dull and senseless people of God-people ignorant of your real treasures, of your real liberfy. Yes, to be alive with Christ, is to be dead to all that the flesh desires.
But if the risen life of Christ, the joy of the light of His presence, the divine and tender love of which Jesus is the expression and the object, beam on you-if the beauty of holiness in the heavenly places-if the universal and perfect homage rendered to God by hearts which never tire, whose adorations serve but to renew their strength-if all things full of the glory of God, giving occasion to praises, whose.source never dries up, and whose subjects newel' fail-if these things please you, then mortify your members which are upon the earth. " Ye are come unto Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel." And think you that the honors, the glory, the greatness, the pleasures, the lusts of this world, of which Satan is the prince, can enter there? The gate is too narrow, the gate of death, the death of a crucified and rejected Christ-the gate of death, which if it be deliverance from the guilt of sin, is also deliverance from its yoke. By that gate sin enters not-there must be left all that pertains to the flesh. Those are things which cannot be hid with Christ in God, they have played their part by crucifying Him on earth.
The friendship of the world is enmity with God.-Christian, do you believe this? It is a new life which enters into those holy places, where all things are new, in order to be the joy and enjoyment of a risen people. Christian, christian, death has written its sentence on all things here; by cherishing them you only fill
re.r.sE INTERPRETATIONS. 53
his hand. The resurrection of Christ gives you a right to bury them, and to bury death itself with them in the grave, the grave of Christ; that " whether we live we may live unto God," inheritors with Him in a new life, of all the promises. Remember that if you are saved, you are risen with Christ.-May He from whom all grace and every perfect gift proceeds, grant you this!
FALSE INTERPRETATIONS.
IT is often profitable to examine errors out of which we have ourselves escaped; for in so doing we discover the false principle which was at the root of the error, which may still be at work in ourselves, though not now in the same way as formerly; and also we derive instruction as to the proper mode of treating the same error in others. Frequently the view which did once seem to us so unquestionably true, and so accordant with scripture, as to be accredited as " an axiom of interpretation," is in aftertimes found to be so entirely devoid of foundation, and so completely opposed to the scriptures, as for us to be convinced that the only thing proved by our past admission of it, is, that we were subject to tradition, and guilty of making the word of God of none effect thereby. This, I believe, to be fully the case in the view still so common, that " the Church," as set up at Pentecost, is the subject of the prophetic record of glory among the prophets of the Old Testament; that she is " the-Jerusalem," " the Zion," "the circumcision," "the Israel," to whom such glorious promises were given, as are recorded in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, &c.
I can find no authority for this opinion, after a careful research, of more antiquity or validity than the translators of our authorized version of the scripture. In the fac-simile of the English Bible,
as printed by king James 1 find " promises to the Church," " the authority of the Church," &c. given as headings to some chap-ters and Psalms; yet from the cha.racter of the testimony of the portions of scripture to which these headings are affixed, we might suppose that they were studiously selected as proof that the Church, with the translators, had some other meaning than that more precise and definite meaning, which attaches to it as the name of the present witness upon earth; the character of the privileges, and the nature of the authority vvhich such portions present, being for the most part, if not always, strictly speaking Jewish; and the very reverse of those proper to the present witness.
The evils of such an error I shall briefly consider presently; the inexcusableness of it will be evident, when we consider that any one,that reads the bible with ordinary attention, cannot fail to observe that hardly ever does a promise of glory occur in the Old Testament, to any of the parties represented by these names (if indeed ever) without the context containing upbraidings for sin and iniquity, to those who then bore the name; and in many such passages it is expressly said that the very same subject of rebellion shall be ashamed, by the mercy promised. (See Isaiah & Jer. 31 &c.)
On my asking whence arose the idea that the Church is the Je-rusalem of prophecy? I am told Cruden says, Jerusalem is put for the Church militant in Isa. 62:11For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth. (Isaiah 62:1). Well, let us look at the passage, " For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth." Certainly in this passage alone, there is no evidence that by Jeru-salem was meant the Church militant; and no mind that had not settled the question both upon other and very insufficient evidence could have adduced such a verse as evidence. The context is al-together Jewish, and the period is evidently not connected with that time of long-suffering of our God, under which we live, but with a time ofjudgment as we see by looking at verse 2 of chap. 61 and at chap. 63. The word in itself is a word of comfort to
Zion and Jerusalem, and we find this time thus introduced in chap. 61, verse 2, " and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all that mourn-to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, &c." Now when we consider the conduct of our Lord in the synagogue at Nazareth (see Luke 4:16-1916And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. 17And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, 18The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 19To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:16‑19)), how in quoting this 61st of Isaiah " to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God," how, I say, he closed the book and gave it to the minister after quoting the words, " to preach the accep-table year of the Lord"-to say that the rest of the verse should have been quoted, seems very like correcting him as well as proving a want of ability in hinn that makes the assertion, to understand the meaning of what is written, for the day of vengeance is not the time of long-suffering but the very opposite. Again in the same context-we have the Lord treading the wine-press alone; in His anger treading those of the people who would not help Him, yea, trampling them in His fury and sprinkling His garments and staining His raiment with their blood-for verse 4 " the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come."
I have been told also that the Church is called Jerusalem in the New Testament, I say where? The Church is NEVER, not even once so called, neither is there a single passage in which the word Jerusalem occurs, so ambiguously used as to admit the possibility of its being supposed to mean the Church. In the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, Jerusalem occurs about 70 times, of the city near which our Lord was crucified, and which was afterward over-thrown by the Romans. None of these passages can be supposed to mean the Church. The word is found also in Gal. 4:2626But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. (Galatians 4:26), " Jerusalem, which IS above;" and in Rev. 3:1212Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. (Revelation 3:12). xxi. 2, 10, " The New Jerusalem which cometh down from God out of heaven." Now to say that Jerusalem which is above, which is the mother of us all, is the Church militant on earth, is too plainly a contradiction to need refutation; for that which is above cannot be that which is below, and the mother and the children are also evidently distinct. The New Jerusalem also in Revelation is evidently not the name of the Church militant, inasmuch as
entrance into it is the reward, the still future reward of faithful service. From the New Testament then I find no warrant whatsoever for applying Jerusalem to the Church. As to the New Jerusalem, I would only remark it is evidently a place; the place as I judge, which Jesus has gone to make ready for us. (John 14) It is not heaven, for it descends out of heaven; as yet Jesus is not in it, for He is on the Father's throne-but He shall be there when it shall be the tabernacle of God with men-His bride there in all her beauteous attire, and Himself the light thereof.
Let us now consider the somewhat similar misapplication of the word " Zion." How constantly in prayer meetings do we hear " our Zion" and our "little Zion" prayed for! how frequently from the pulpit and by the press is Jesus announced as though He were now King in Zion 1 How many a hymn depends for its whole sense upon the false assumption that the Church or heaven is Zion. Now I can find nothing of the kind in scripture, no not even anything about a heavenly Zion-Zion in Palestine is all I can there read of. It is assumed that by Zion, God means the Church; I say assumed, for it certainly is not written, neither do I remember ever to have heard it said so, constantly as I have heard the assumption made. Now as to its use in the Old Testament, I would only say I cannot find one single passage which any one who had not assumed that Zion meant something else than the literal Zion, would ever venture to quote. In the New Testament the word occurs but seven times, and in each of these places nothing but the literal Zion is meant. In the two first, Matt. 21:55Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. (Matthew 21:5), and John 12:1515Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass's colt. (John 12:15), our Lord speaks of the inhabitants of the earthly Jerusalem as the daughter of Zion. In Rom. 9:3333As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. (Romans 9:33), and 1 Peter 2:66Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded. (1 Peter 2:6), the Holy Ghost speaks of the Lord Jesus as being laid in Zion a stumbling-block and rock of offense-these also I judge can refer to nothing but the same subject as the above. 1st.-Because in 1 Cor. 1:2323But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; (1 Corinthians 1:23), I find the same idea presented, and that in contrast with the aspect in which He appeared to the Gentiles. We preach Christ crucified unto the JEWS a stumbling-block, and unto the GREEKS foolishness; and these two different views of our Lord were natural to the peculiarities of the
two parties, and largely exemplified in scripture. The feelings of Peter, when our Lord was opening His approaching sufferings, and Peter's conduct in those sufferings and after, forcibly show how naturally the humiliation of Messiah was calculated to be a stumbling-block. While the cry of the Gentile philosophers, " hear what the vain babbler saith," fairly exemplifies the light in which the Cross appeared to them, as foolishness. 2ndly.-Because neither to the Church nor to those in heaven is He a stumbling-block. But (1 Cor. 1:2424But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:24)) unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. And 3 rdly.-Because the context whence the quotation is made, most emphatically binds the word upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The quotation seems to me to be made up from two different chapters in Isaiah-. In Isa. 28:1616Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. (Isaiah 28:16), " Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.-And (chap. viii.. 14) he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling, and for a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem," The humiliation of our Lord in Jerusalem is plainly marked here, and His rejection by its inhabitants; and our Lord Himself, in quoting the 118th Psalm in Matt. 21:4242Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? (Matthew 21:42), plainly gives us the outline of Israel's judgment for rejecting Him, as well as the yet future judgment of the Gentiles, on whom it shall fall and grind them to powder (v. 44), yea, broken to pieces together, and become like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carried them away. (Dan. 2:3535Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. (Daniel 2:35).) The word occurs again in Rom. 11:2626And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: (Romans 11:26), " there shall come out of Zion the deliverer." The force of this so much depends upon the meaning of " Israel," to which we shall have occasion to look presently, that I shall not rest upon it now, further than to notice that the context presents us with the Church, now in blessing, warned that by reason of unbelief, it will be rejected, cut off, and Israel the nation (at the time Paul wrote " enemies") brought into favor again, and purged from their then ungodliness. Now this prepares the mind at least to find the Zion here spoken of, no
VOL. VI.
other than the literal one; and if in addition, the question be asked, " In the latter-day glory, is Zion, in any way, mentioned as a point whence blessing shall flow," the answer might he given in these and similar quotations.
The Redeemer shall come to Zion (Isa. 59:2020And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord. (Isaiah 59:20)): The Lord will roar from Zion (Amos 1 t): The law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, &c. (Mic. 4:22And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Micah 4:2).)
The two remaining passages are Heb. 12:2222But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, (Hebrews 12:22), " Ye are come unto Mount Zion and unto the city of the living God and the heavenly Jerusalem," &c.; and Rev. 14:11And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads. (Revelation 14:1), "a lamb stood on Mount Zion." In both of these I believe the literal Zion and none other is meant. He who does not see this in the passage quoted from Hebrews, will I think, be in danger of overlooking the most blessed part of his privileges,-the knowing the glory to be given as ours now already., To faith and to the Spirit time is not, and thus we by the divine nature given to us, know and act upon things which are not as though they were. To me the same blessed fullness of grace is exhibited here, as in Rev. 21 where, after showing to John the new Jerusalem with all its blessed glory in prophetic vision, it is written, and he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Oh, wondrous God, with whom. we have to do! oh, wondrous world into which the revelation of thy glory in the face of Jesus bath ushered us! may we know the sweet power of this as the little ones dwelling in thy bosom, and gathered within the blessed range of thine own family, enjoying all that thou bast, as well what is not exhibited to sense as what is. In this passage (from Hebrews) I see just the same blessed grace, the Jerusalem which is above not presented in its present state (whose glory to us would be sadness, until Jesus be there; to Himself no pleasure till the whole bride is there), but as having coming down; and where is first to be displayed this tabernacle of God with men; this glorious dwelling-place of the King of kings and of His bride the Church? Surely where the kingdom is, over which they are jointly to reign: in Revelation it is seen " coming down from God out of heaven" and presented as being so, for the nations of them that are saved to walk in the light of it;
for the kings of the earth to bring their glory unto, &c.; and I do surely gather from Isa. 4:5, 65And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence. 6And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain. (Isaiah 4:5‑6), that there this glory is to be seen: and the Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of Mount Zion a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night, for upon all the glory shall be a defense; and there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the day time from the heat, and for a place of refuge, &c.
As to Rev. 14 a lamb stood on Mount Zion, and with Him an hundred and forty and four thousand-I believe this is the literal Mount Zion, simply because in chap. vii. I find the same hundred and forty four thousand are mentioned as being sealed upon the earth before God's judgments are allowed to be poured upon it; and secondly as contrasted verse 9, with the great multitude in heaven out of all nations, kindred, tongues, and people. I know it has been objected to the understanding of these, as of the twelve tribes of Israel, that it cannot be so because Dan is omitted. But this objection has no weight with me, until it has been shown why Simeon is omitted in the blessings of the twelve tribes by Moses in the last chapter of Deuteronomy. From none of these passages can I find any warrant for allowing myself to use Zion, as the name of the Church on earth.
I would now make a few remarks concerning the CIRCUMCISION. It has been broadly asserted by some, that " the faithful" now are, properly speaking, Jews-and, though not so boldly affirmed by all, I fear, the evil of this view is practically acted upon by all who see not the heavenly calling, and the strong contrast between its blessings and those of the Jews, the former altogether spiritual and heavenly; the latter altogether temporal and earthly. In conversing with the advocates of this statement, their argument, as far as I could gather it, was this, that after Israel's rejection of Messiah, the Holy Ghost had made known that He had a hidden meaning in circumcision, even purification from evil, and that it was those who had this, which were accounted the seed. The verses brought forward in defense of this, were such as the following: Rom. 2:2525For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. (Romans 2:25), for circumcision profiteth if thou keep the law, but if thou break the law, thy circumcision becomes uncircum-
cision; verse 28, nor is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh, but (verse 29) it is of the heart in the Spirit whose praise is not of men but of God (iii. 30)-one God shall justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith; iv. 11, he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness which he had, being yet uncircumcised; verse 12, a father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision;1 Cor. 7:1919Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God. (1 Corinthians 7:19), circumcision is the keeping the commandments of God; Gal. 5:66For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love. (Galatians 5:6), in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircmcision, but faith working by love; Eph. 2:1111Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; (Ephesians 2:11), called uncircumcision by that which is circumcised in the flesh; Phil. 3:2, 32Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. 3For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. (Philippians 3:2‑3), beware of the concision. For we are the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh; Col. 2:1111In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: (Colossians 2:11), ye are complete in Christ, circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, in whom (iii. 11) there is neither circumcision, nor uncircumcision. It has been said more than once to me, it is plain from these passages, that the Holy Ghost has said that His hidden meaning in circumcision was purification-He opened this after Israel's rejection of the Lord, and thus shows us that He has taken up a new line for blessing, and that we are to think no more of the old.
Now to this or any other deductions from these passages I object not, provided the following truths be borne in mind.
1st. That so far as purification was implied in circumcision, it was no new truth divulged in latter days'; in Deut. 10:16; 30:616Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked. (Deuteronomy 10:16)
6And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. (Deuteronomy 30:6), Lev. 26:4141And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity: (Leviticus 26:41), Isa. 52:11Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. (Isaiah 52:1), Jer. 6:1010To whom shall I speak, and give warning, that they may hear? behold, their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken: behold, the word of the Lord is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it. (Jeremiah 6:10), and we have the same truth taught us where circumcision of the heart and ear, &c. are enforced.
2nd. This did not at all interfere with the meaning of the outward ordinances as given in Gen. 17, and distinctly recognized I think,
the Gentiles he said, if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you
nothing; so chap. ii. 3, Titus being a Greek was not circumcised.
4th. At the present time certainly God acts not upon the out-
ward rite, but it could easily be proved from such passages as Isa. 1, Jer. 31:3131Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: (Jeremiah 31:31), that this will not continue always, but yet again He will remember the literal circumcision.
5th. What are the promises to the circumcision? [Circumcision is rather presented to us as one of God's boons and gifts to Israel, than " the circumcision" as those to whom are the promises.]
The same things I believe may justly be said on the use of Israel-the Holy Ghost certainly does call some of the faithful in the Apostle's day (Gal. 6:1616And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. (Galatians 6:16)) the Israel of God, and in Rom. 9:66Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: (Romans 9:6), he asserts that they are not all Israel who are called Israel; but this neither gives us the right to appropriate to ourselves the position and promises given to Israel in the Old Testament, nor does it prove that God has cast off for eve: his people-can anything be more plainly set forth, than this in the 11th of Romans? Let any one that doubts this read the passage substituting " the church" in place of Israel; verse 16, 17, the introduction of the Gentile wild olive into grace, is spoken of; verse 18-22, warning is given to the wild olive to remember its origin, and present standing by grace; verse 23 onward, he declares that what was broken out can and shall be grafted in again? What was this? Israel as a nation, for God had not rejected individual Israelites-Now I do say, let any one bear these things in mind, and also that the Apostle was writing to the Church of God at Rome, and they will see at once the folly of substituting the Church of God for Israel. Let any one read the passage and say had blindness in part happened to the Church of God till the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, and so all the Church of God shall be saved? Was the Church of God enemies for the Church of God at Rome's sakes? did the Church of God now, not believe? or was it concluded in unbelief? certainly not-and the assumption 'of a Jewish standing by the Church, can alone account for the currency of such thoughts.
The same remarks equally apply to the word Jew, as found in Rom. 2:2525For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. (Romans 2:25), Gal. 3:2828There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28), and Col. 3:1111Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. (Colossians 3:11).
The object of the adversary in these mis-interpretations is perfectly plain-the disastrous effect is already but too evident in
those that hold them. If the Church is now exhibited in the subject of the promises and predictions given to the nation Israel, then judgment is not before us, but a gradual increase of light and glory upon earth. This has proved an inclined plane into the world, to the heart and mind of many a saint: no man can hold it honestly but to his own injury.
, It is not the want of knowledge which most grieves me in these false interpretations-but the sad want of fellowship with the divine mind, and the ways of Him with whom we have do. Did God ever hold under continued chastening, so supporting that which was chastened as to hinder its consumption, and not give an end of mercy and blessing? Is not every principle on which God is dealing with us as individuals, laden with hopes for Israel? His truth, His grace, His faithfulness, His sovereigo power, His election and remembrance of the fathers-all pledged to the nation Israel. With one more remark I shall conclude.-In all His dealings with the earth, our God has ever kept the day of Christ before Him -its glory is twofold. There is a glory celestial, and a glory terrestrial in it, even a combination of all the glory of nature, providence, and grace, in heaven and on earth. To Abra-ham there were two promises; one of glory celestial in the,Spirit-the other of glory terrestrial in the flesh. The ministra-tion of condemnation by Moses typified the terrestrial glory; we live not properly speaking, in the antitype of this, but in the type and foretaste of the celestial glory.-And I am bold to say, that if any one will prayerfully study the Acts and the Epistles, taking nothing for granted, but proving all things, they will soon see, that, while after Israel's rejection of Messiah, the faith, and grace and Spirit, which were concerned in all the promises made to Abraham were acted upon, without any exclusive preeminence to the circumcised flesh-all this was done simply upon the assumption that that flesh would be again recognized and honored. When the Mediator, Priest, and King, was rejected, He went into a far country there to seek a bride; but this (the unlooked for actings of His love) no more interferes with His grace to His own nation after the flesh, than did Moses' journey into Midian, or Solomon's consort from Egypt-it all had respect therennto.
JONAH.
" The sign of Jonas the Prophet."
ALL that I desire to do upon the book of Jonah the Prophet is, to suggest a few things which have struck my own mind with interest, leaving the subject to the further meditations of my brethren, trusting withal that to whatever measure of knowledge we may, any of us, attain, it may prove to be the nurture and strength of the kingdom of God within us.
Jonah prophesied about the time of Jeroboam II. king of
Israel. He was the witness that " mercy rejoiceth against judgment," for he foretold of gracious things to Israel, though the people were still a guilty and rebellious people. As we read in 2 Kings 14:2323In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years. (2 Kings 14:23) -" in the 15th.year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty-one years; and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who made Israel to sin; he restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel which He spoke by the mouth of His servant Jonah the son of Amittai the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher."
But in the book which bears his name, there is no notice of this prophecy. It opens, however, with something that is in character with it. It opens with the Lord giving Jonah a commission to go to preach against Nineveh, and. Jonah's refusal to do so, because, as he tells us himself afterward, he knew that the Lord was " gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repented Him of the evil." (Jonah 4:11But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. (Jonah 4:1).) He had been taught to know that this was the way of the God of Israel, by his experience of His late doings in Samaria, and he thus suspected that such would he His way now in Nineveh. But his Jewish temper, so to call it, was strong in him. He could not consent to be the bearer of mercy and blessing to the Gentiles. He had, without reserve, published the good tidings in Samaria, but he could not consent to do the same now in Nineveh of the Gentiles.
All this disclosure of the hidden springs of the Prophet's disobedience is very significant. He had fled from the presence of the Lord, but enmity to the Gentiles was the real cause of it all. And thus we may say, like Prophet, like people. Jonah's sin is Israel's sin. Israel has always refused the thought, that the Gentiles could stand in the favor of God; and in delineating their sin, " forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles," is noticed by the Apostle as the last great feature in the full form of their sin. (1 Thess. 2:1616Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost. (1 Thessalonians 2:16).) Then the wrath came upon them to the utter-
most, as now upon their Prophet. He refuses to go to Nineveh, believing that God would turn the curse into a blessing; but turning his back upon the Lord, goes down to Joppa, and there takes a ship to Tarshish. The wrath, however, comes upon him to the uttermost. Vengeance suffers him not to live. A wind from the Lord lies heavily upon him, and upon those who sail with him, and the ship was like to be broken.
I need not here speak particularly of the excellent conduct of his shipmates towards him, or of his own indifference, for a time, to the fact that his back was now turned upon the Lord. Both however are remarkable. He was fast asleep, while they were crying out for fear. But he is soon made to hear not merely the roar of the wind, but the voice of God in the wind,—-the sentence of death against himself. It was the voice of the Lord that was then upon the waters, and the sleeper is awakened froni the sleep of a blunted conscience; he bows his head under the righteous judgment of the Lord, and will have himself offered as a sacrifice for the safety of those who were sailing with him. He takes the sentence of death into himself. He now knows that he was the Achan in the camp, the orcurErov, that which letted the mercy of God from reaching the mariners. They were suffering; but his sin, he now sees, was " the accursed thing" that caused it all, and must be taken away. " Take me up," says he, "and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea be calm unto you, for I know that.for my sake this great tempest is upon you." It was a sin unto death and must not be prayed for. The mariners, in their kindness, may row hard, and harder still, but all will not do. The sea cries " give, give." The fire on the altar demands the victim. A sin unto death has been committed, and all struggle or rowing for life is vain. Joshua in such a case may lie on the ground, and cry to the Lord'all the day long, but it will not do. (Josh. 7) The accursed thing must be taken away. Jonah must be cast overboard, into the belly of hell, as Achan must be stoned; and then, and not till then, Ai, the city of the enemy, shall fall, and the haven, the desire of the mariners shall be reached.
Accordingly our Prophet is now cast into the sea. But the sea
will not be allowed to be the pit of destruction to him, but lie shall find rather a city of refuge, or hiding place for a season there. The belly of a fish is prepared to receive him from the sea, and there he abides. Like every city of refuge, the whale's belly was Jonah's shelter in the midst of judgment,-the place of life to him in the region of the shadow of death. And there he talks of salvation. " Thou hast brought up my life from corruption," says he, " 0 Lord, my God-salvation is of the Lord." He had before, when in the ship, heard the thunder of judgment, but now in the fish's belly, the still small voice of mercy. He looks to God's temple, the appointed place, (2 Chron. 6) and he knows that grace and salvation are God's way in His sanctuary. There by faith he surveys the brazen altar for the guilty sinner, and the golden altar for the accepted sinner, and the mercy-seat for the Lord to sit on. And then lie knows that sacrifices of thanksgiving and the payment of his vows are before Him, and he can talk of life in the midst of death. " I am cast out of thy sight, yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains, the earth with her bars was about me forever, yet bast thou brought up my life from corruption, 0 Lord, my God." With as much certainty of heart, though not with the same comfort, lie knows salvation as well as though he were on dry land again. As secure he is, though not as happy, by this distant sight of the temple by faith, as though he had been in Jerusalem. " How say ye to my soul," in spirit he says, " flee as a bird to your mountain 1-The Lord is in his holy temple." (Psa. 11) This was his joy.
And this is the manslayer's joy in every city of refuge. The avenger of blood is on the foot, it is true, but the gates of the city have closed upon him, and there he tastes and knows his full salvation, with the sure prospect of his home and kindred again. And every city of refuge which we trace in scripture, has.thus its peculiar joy as well as safety.
Noah in the ark was in a city of refuge, and there he was as safe as though he had been in the new world. But he had his peculiar joy there also, as well as safety. He opened the window,
and let out the raven and the dove, and the dove returned to him with an olive-leaf, the pledge that the new earth should soon be his in peace and fruitfulness. He could not, it is true, go forth till the Lord gave him leave,-he could not open the door, but he might the window of the ark, and from thence he looked out and saw the uncovered land again; and this was his joy and the exercise of his heart, though still amid the desolations of judgment.-The blood-stained door was a city of refuge to the Israelite, while the angel of death was passing along Egypt. But there, he fed upon the Lamb, every morsel of which told him of his full. security; and he might have looked at the staff in his hand, and the shoe on his foot, as the token that the time was short.-The wilderness was another city of refuge to all Israel. For judgment was before and behind them. In the midst of death they were in life, as in every city of refuge. Egypt behind had just been judged, and the Amorites before were just about to be judged,-the waters were rising to cover the one land, as they had already covered the other. But Israel was in their refuge in the wilderness, as safe as though they had been in Canaan, and there learned wonders of grace and glory.-Rahab's house with the scarlet line in the window, was another blood-sprinkled door, or city of refuge; but there though Jericho were the accursed place, she knew her safety, and to the joy of her heart (for she had loved and counseled for them) she might have looked on her kindred and known them to be as safe as herself.-And so at the end. Their chambers will be a city of refuge to the remnant, while the indignation passes by. " Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee, hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast." (Isa. 26:2020Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. (Isaiah 26:20).) But then also they will have large exercise of heart. The Psalms give us much of this, I believe. In the 29th we see something of it. There the voice of the Lord is abroad, full of power and majesty, falling upon the waters and upon the cedars, and dividing the flames of fire. But the remnant all the while have found their sanctuary in God, and there in His temple, like Jonah, they thus in spirit sing" the Lord sitteth upon the flood, yea the Lord sitteth king for
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And so the believer now. He sojourns in a judged world, but he is in the Lord his refuge, and he can there talk of salvation. He dwells in the shadow of death, but he can sing of life. The Spirit.of God could enter where Jonah was, and teach him the ways of the temple; and so has the same Spirit, the Holy Ghost, come to abide in the saints, though still in the place of unclean-ness and death, to tell them of a far richer blessing, and of a more glorious love than ever Adam knew in the unsoiled walks of Eden.
It is the way of our God thus to do abundantly more than merely repair the breach. He makes the eater yield meat to us, and the strong man sweetness. That is God's riddle rather than Samsbn's. Jonah is now made to interpret it, as it were, for he is brought home to God with a new song in his mouth, and with richer experience of God's love than ever he had, and that too in the belly of the whale; and then when this revelation of grace is thus made his to the joy of his soul, he is cast out again on the dry land.
Thus was it with our Prophet, and all this judgment and mercy of God with him, this process of death and resurrection lead him out, not merely to deliverance, but to the obedience of faith also. " He arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord." And this it always does, whether in Jonah or in us. We rise to newness of life. " If we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection." We were simply born of the flesh before, but now we are joined to the Lord, and one Spirit with Him.
We have thus all of us our common interest in these Jonah mercies. Jonah is a sign to us all. But I am, of course, aware that our blessed Lord has claimed His likeness to Jonah also, saying in his doctrine, " for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." He thus found His type in our Prophet, as the one who died and was buried, and
rose again the third day. But He dwells much more on Jonah being a sign to others, than the type of Himself. He speaks of both Jonah, and the Son of man as signs; Jonah to the Ninevites, and both Jonah and the Son of man to that generation of Israel. (Matt. 12:39; 16:439But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: (Matthew 12:39)
4A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed. (Matthew 16:4), Luke 11:29, 3029And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. 30For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation. (Luke 11:29‑30).) And this is doctrine of great value. The death and resurrection of Jonah, was a sign to the Ninevites of what the Lord required from them, and of the way in which He would deal with them; and so the death and resurrection, whether of Jonah or the Son of man, is a sign to Israel of what the Lord expects from them, and of the manner in which He will deal with them.
For as one who had died and risen again, Jonah now goes and preaches against Nineveh; and as such a one he was a sign to them of what that preaching should lead them to, and of what it required of them. And we find that the sign was answered in them. On going to them, the Prophet at once puts them under sentence of death. " Within forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown." And at once they hear these words as the sentence of death against themselves, as Jonah had heard it in the roar of the wind before, and they bow the head under it as he did, accept-ing the punishment of their sins, and then, like Jonah, enter the grave, taking sack-cloth on them, from the least to the greatest of them, both man and beast-the king himself rising from his throne, and sitting in ashes, the place of death, and thus were they planted in the. likeness of His death. And not only so, but they break off their sins by righteousness, and.walk in newness of life, and thus were planted also in the likeness of His resurrection. This was repenting at the preaching of Jonah, or answering the sign of Jonah; and then the Lord bids mercy to rejoice against judgment in their behalf, as He had in Jonah's: He repents of the evil which He had said that He would do unto them, and He did it not, as He had brought Jonah again on the dry land out of the whale's belly.
Thus was " the sign of Jonah" answered in and by the Ninevites, and so must it be in Israel, that generation to which Jesus preached. And part of the sign is already witnessed in them.
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Sentence of death was, in principle, passed on them, when Jesus rose from the dead. But they have not yet heard it, and bowed their head under it. To this day they are buried out of sight, in the grave where there is no remembrance of them with God. (Isa. 26:19, Ezek. 37 Hos. 13) They are as dry hones in the valley, or as a tree in the dead and leafless winter season (Isa. 6:1313But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof. (Isaiah 6:13)), because they have not repented. And there is no hope for them, but the repentance of the Ninevites. They must bow their heads under the punishment of their sins as the Ninevites did. The sign of Jonah, or of the Son of man, must be fully answered in them, as the sign of Jonah was in the Ninevites. It is not as yet so answered, and thus the Ninevites still judge them. But we know that it will be by and bye. A s Jonah's sin has been the sign of Israel's sin, so will his repentance be of their repentance. They-will mourn every family apart, and their wives apart. In their affliction they will seek the Lord, and say, " come, and let us return to the Lord, for He hath torn, and he will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up; after two days He will revive us; in the third day He will raise us up and we shall live in His sight." They will thus identify themselves, in spirit, with the death and resurrection of their Lord; and then He will open their graves, and bring them up out of their graves, and say, " Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise, awake, and sing ye that dwell in dust." (Isa. 26 Ezek. 37 Hos. 6) And then will " the sign of Jonah" be answered also in Israel, as it was answered in Nineveh.
It is death and resurrection which both Jonah and the Son of man signify; and death and resurrection is God's principle in a world where the power of death has entered. The ancient penalty " in the day thou eatest thou shalt die," has never been respinded. Everything in some form or another has suffered it; and it has been met with infinite value for us by the Son of God. " It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment;" and Jesus has met this appointment. Death had its way against Him, and judgment, the judgment of sin, was upon Him. His soul was made an offering for sin; but by death He destroyed him that
had the power of death, and rose with new life for those who had been subject to his bondage.
This was glorious triumph over all the strength of the enemy; and this was also the entire vindication of God. And all now that has any rest, must rest on this death and resurrection of the Son of God; and all that has life to God, or that will have any place in His system of glory by and bye, must have both in the death and resurrection character. Death and resurrection may introduce to different orders and departments of glory, but it is the common entrance to them all. The leprous man and the leprous house in Israel were to be cleansed by the same ordinance of the slain and the living birds. Of course the man was more worthy than the house; but the Lord of Israel esteemed the house as well as the man a fit subject for the great reconciliation. Atonement was to be made for the one as well as for the other. (Lev. 14:5353But he shall let go the living bird out of the city into the open fields, and make an atonement for the house: and it shall be clean. (Leviticus 14:53).) Both were equally liable to the taint of leprosy; but the very same provision was made for the cleansing of both, and for the restoring of both to their several places in God's system in Israel. And that was an ordinance which vividly, and without controversy, sets forth the virtues of the death and resurrection of the Son of God.
This, I do judge, is very striking. God's care for the house as well as for the man. And here I may observe that the principle of the divine procedure is always the principle of the conduct of faith. As it is written, " be ye followers (imitators) of God as dear children.", (Eph. 5:11Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; (Ephesians 5:1).) It is, therefore, as thus being God's principle-His necessary principle, we may say to His praise, in a death-stained world, that death and resurrection is so often illustrated in the histories of God's servants. We find it more or less through all the line of the Old 'Testament worthies, as I may call them. Abel and Seth together present death and resurrection. Noah was carried through the region of death and judgment, into the place of life that lay beyond it. Abraham had the promises, and was heir of all the land; but he walked in the place as a stranger and pilgrim, not having so much as to set his foot on. Joseph was to stand above his brethren; but he is first cast into the pit and then into the dungeon, as under sentence of death, till at
length he rises into the glories of Egypt, which, mystically, were the heavenly and earthly glories of the kingdom. Moses was "drawn out" from the place of destruction, and afterward as a dead and risen man like our Jonah, preaches to his brethren (Ex. 2:1313And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? (Exodus 2:13)); and again after another burial as it were, in Midian, rises a second time to be the redeemer of Israel. David came forth from contempt and obscurity to be the slayer of the giant and the deliverer of Israel; and again, as from death in the wilderness, to rule the land as God's king in Zion.
And among all these, and others like them, we may especially notice Job among the patriarchs. Death and resurrection was the lesson he had to learn in his own soul, and to illustrate before us in his history. He had to take the sentence of death in himself, that he might not trust in himself, but in Him that raises the dead, and gives brighter glory at the end than at the beginning.
In all these distinguished witnesses of God and His ways, we see this principle exhibited as God's principle. And so it is, from the Son of God in the highest, down to the lowest orders in creation-all stand or are to stand before God as dead and risen, that the power of the enemy may be gloriously overthrown, and the holy honor of His own name, " the living God," be vindicated forever.-And scripture thus teaches us this.-
I.-The Lord Himself is to take all His glories, as the one that was dead and is alive again. He is the Head of the Church, the Heir of the sure mercies of David, and the Lord of creation as the Second Man, by this title. (Col. 1:1818And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. (Colossians 1:18), Acts 13:3434And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David. (Acts 13:34), Heb. 2:6 -96But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? 7Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honor, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: 8Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. 9But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. (Hebrews 2:6‑9).) The thought of this His title to everything, passed across the mind of Jesus when the Greeks, the Gentiles, came to the feast desiring to see Him. He then owned that but for His death He could take nothing. (John 12:2424Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. (John 12:24).)
IL-The Church has her peculiar life and glory in this way
also. The saints were all dead in trespasses and sins, but have also been quickened together with Christ and raised up, and seated on high in Him; and by and bye are, in body, to be fashioned after the likeness of His risen or glorious body. (Eph. 2 Phil. 3)
III.-Israel, as we have already noticed, is to stand in the same character, brought from their graves, and raised up as one that had slept in dust.
IV.-The nations will be, after Israel's revival, as " life from the dead" (Rom. 11:1515For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? (Romans 11:15)), as the Ninevites repent and come into blessing after Jonah himself is raised up. Indeed it is as the dead and risen one, that Jerusalem will be the mother of them all. The " barren," the " widow," the " desolate," is to have many more children than she which had a husband. (Isa. 54)
V.-The creation itself will, in the "world to come," return to rest and beauty, as after the dead and wintry season of "this present evil world." The world to come will in principle be a risen world, the risen Son of man having it all in subjection under Him. Now it is all groaning and travailing in pain, but it shall be delivered into glorious liberty. (Rom. 8)
Thus is death and resurrection the great rule of all blessing and glory; and this is the sign of Jonah and of the Son of man, and God's pervading principle through the ranks and departments of this death-tainted system of ours. And beloved, it was the Apostle's purpose, and should be ours, to know more and more of the power of this principle. (Phil. 3) In Christ we are already apprehended for the full fruit of His death and Resurrection, but we should be as though we had not ourselves apprehended it. Is Him we are complete and perfect, but we should be as though we had not attained, either were already perfect. Liberty and holiness, joy in the Lord, and life in the Spirit, would then flourish together in our souls, as well-watered gardens.
To teach this as God's great principle with everything, is the purpose I judge of this history of Jonah the Prophet. I have hitherto followed it to the close of the 3rd chapter, seeing the death and resurrection both of the Jewish Prophet and of the Gentile
city. And that is the formal close of the book. The 4th chapter then comes as a kind of moral or appendix.
But on opening this deeply interesting chapter, let me observe, beloved, that we have, each one of us, to do with the Lord as well in the secresy of his own presence within, as in the activities of his service abroad. We may have run the appointed course, and done the Lord's business, but this is not all. The Lord may still have many a personal question with us, and have to speak with usin the cool of the day. There may have been many a taint in the spirit of the service within, while without all may have seemed as splendid and devoted as the mission of a Prophet to the first city of the Gentiles. And these will have, at the end, to be brought before the Lord. Workings in the heart hidden from the eye of man, will then have to be brought fully under the eye and ear of God.
It is so now with our Prophet. Nineveh had been visited of Jonah, but Jonah must now be visited of the Lord. Not to destroy, we know full well, but to chasten and humble, and thus to make him more and more partaker of the divine holiness. He had done the service abroad. He had gone the way of Nineveh, and fulfilled the word of the Lord there. But there is still a question for the presence of God as yet unsettled. There were lustings within that must now be brought forth and made a show of openly. He is still as we find here, angry because of mercy to the Gentiles, and he goes outside the city Nineveh, and sits down there a homeless exposed stranger all in sorrow and displeasure, saying, " It is better for me to die than to live." There he makes himself a booth to sit under, and the Lord then comes, in the secret of His own presence, to talk with him of his sin. He prepares a gourd to come up over his head, and be a shadow to deliver.him from his grief; but He scarcely allows him to find comfort in the gourd, ere He prepares a worm to smite it and wither it, and then a vehement east wind and the sun to beat
upon the head of Jonah, till again in anger and displeasure he says as before, " it is better for me to die than to live."
Then the Lord catches him in the toils which He had now woven around him in consummate and divine skill. He convicts him out of his own mouth, and makes his own words correct him. He shows him that he cannot retain both his proud and angry sorrows. He must either cease to grieve for mercy to Nineveh, or for judgment on the gourd. If he will give up his anger because of the withered gourd, let him do so. But if he still judge it well to be angry on that account, as he says, he does even unto death, then he must cease to be angry, because of preserved Nineveh; for.Nineveh was to the Lord just what the gourd had been to the Prophet, and if the Prophet would fain spare the gourd, he must allow the Lord to spare Nineveh. "Thou hest had pity on the gourd," says the Lord to him, " for the which thou hest not labored, neither makest it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night, and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city wherein are more than six score thousand persons, that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle '?"
With these words the Lord ends, leaving that claim of His to Nineveh, its little ones and its cattle, upon the heart and conscience of Jonah. The echo, as it were, of those sweet words is left in our ears, as we close this beautiful little book.
But however these words may have wrought on the Prophet, as we may judge and hope they did with power, we have our blessed interest in them, and our exceeding great and precious comfort by them. For from this moral or parabolic action between the Lord and His servant, we learn that the Lord's desire is still to the works of His hands, that He would fain be refreshed and rest again in the creatures which He of old, fashioned and made. He made them at the beginning for His glory and delight. For a moment He was allowed so to speak, to rejoice in them. He looked on everything that lie had made, and beheld it to be all very good. (Gen. 1:3131And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31).) He took His sabbath in His creatures, and walked with man in a garden of delight that was in the midst of
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them. But all was soon beguiled from him. The worm at the root of God's own gourd withered it. He that had the power of death did this, and left the Lord, as it were, a homeless stranger in His own creation (like Jonah outside Nineveh), a wayfaring man that turns aside to tarry but for a night.
But they are still His creatures, and His desire is toward them. He seeks them all for himself, the little ones and the cattle, as well as the cities and their people. All form to him what the foliage of the gourd formed to the Prophet, a shade and refreshing, where without it all is homelessness and exposure. And He would fain take His rest, His sabbath in creation again, as He here would have Jonah and all of us know.
And He will do it. He will accomplish the desire of His heart, for who can let Him'? He will reconcile all things unto Himself by Jesus Christ. Israel and the nations shall revive and dwell in peace, the earth shall yield her increase, the hills, the floods, and the trees of the wood rejoicing before the Lord, the King, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air and the fish of the sea making His name excellent in all the earth. For He has said of them, when the branch grows out of Jesse's roots, " the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them, and the covv and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox." (Isa. 11:1-71And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: 2And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; 3And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: 4But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. 5And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. 6The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. 7And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. (Isaiah 11:1‑7).) Ile pronounced them all good at their creation, the living creatures which the waters brought forth, the winged fowl, the cattle and the creeping things, as well as man. As here He would have Jonah know that He valued them, and would spare them and have them, as well as Nineveh 'and its people.
And of this final redemption and joy of the creatures, we have had many pledges. Noah carried them, " two of every sort," with himself and his household through the waters into the new world; and the same covenant which settled him and his seed after him in it, provided equally for them. (Gen. 9:1010And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. (Genesis 9:10).) Joseph pur-chased all the cattle as well as the people of Egypt for Pharaoh.
(Gen. 31:1717Then Jacob rose up, and set his sons and his wives upon camels; (Genesis 31:17).) Moses redeemed them all out of Egypt after-wards, when it had corrupted itself, and was no longer the land of Joseph's glory (Ex. 10:26; 12:3826Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not an hoof be left behind; for thereof must we take to serve the Lord our God; and we know not with what we must serve the Lord, until we come thither. (Exodus 10:26)
38And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle. (Exodus 12:38)); and he sanctified them all, under the law, to Jehovah, the fruit of the land and of the cattle, as well as the fruit of man, thus showing us that Jehovah claimed the whole system as His own. (Ex. 22:28, 2928Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people. 29Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me. (Exodus 22:28‑29), Lev. 19:23- 2623And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of. 24But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the Lord withal. 25And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof: I am the Lord your God. 26Ye shall not eat any thing with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantment, nor observe times. (Leviticus 19:23‑26).) The first-born of beast as of man was sanctified to Himself. (Num. 8:1717For all the firstborn of the children of Israel are mine, both man and beast: on the day that I smote every firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them for myself. (Numbers 8:17).) Jesus claimed lordship of them all, the beasts of the field, and the fish of the sea, and they owned His dominion (Matt. 17 xxi), and in the coming kingdom, they shall still own Him, for all shall be in subjection to Him, and join in the joy of redetnption, beasts and all cattle praising the Lord. (Psa. 148:1010Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl: (Psalm 148:10), Heb. 8, Rev. 5:1313And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. (Revelation 5:13).)
These are sweet pledges of the Lord's value for His creatures, and that He will still clothe Himself with them all. And of this His care for them and His desire toward them, He here speaks to Jonah. And He does more than that. He lets Jonah further learn that He had labored for thern; that unlike Jonah and his gourd, He would bring back His creatures to Him at the cost of His own toil. (iv. 10.) And so we know it is. For " all things," are to be a part of that great reconciled system, for which the blood of His dear Son has been shed, as at the beginning they were all a part of that great created systetn, for which the six days' work vvas entered on.
It is our joy, beloved, to know this,-to know that the blessed God still values all His creatures, and has, so to speak, " labored" for them, and paid a price for them. The ancient scene of His delight and glory may be disturbed and defiled, as we know it is; but as He once rejoiced in the habitable parts of the earth, so will Ile again; and as He once had the image of His dominion and glory over them all, so will He again in the Son of man and in "the world to come." The Lord did indeed of old, take His joy in them, as I have noticed, and His glory was displayed by them. Every succeeding evening and morning witnessed His joy, for then He paused and lingered over His works, as they grew under His hand, that he might see them and pronounce thetn to be good, according
to the desire and good pleasure of His own will; and when all were made, He looked at them all together as good, and took His full sabbath in them. And the morning stars sang their joy and His praise. Then was His gourd a sweet and refreshing gourd to Him, as Jonah's at the first, But a worm began soon to work at the root. For all this rested on Adam, and Adam was beguiled by him that had the power of death. Tares were then sown in the Lord's fair field of fruits and flowers. An enemy did that. But so it was, and the Lord had to repent that He had made man in the earth. Then did He look a second time at the work of His hands, and behold, it was corrupt; and it repented Him that He had made it, and it grieved Him at His heart. (Gen. 6:66And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. (Genesis 6:6).) Then the gourd of the Lord became the withered gourd indeed. But His creatures are still His. The field does not belong to the enemy, though he may waste and defile it for a season; and the gourd must flourish and bud again to reward the toil of Him who has labored for it. And it will then put forth a more fragrant smell than ever. Creation shall return to the Lord, to give Him more joy and more praise than ever. He shall joy in it as in the hand of One in whom His soul delighteth, and by it not merely the skill of His hand, but the riches of His love shall be praised. To Him as well as to us shall the eater then yield meat, and the strong man sweetness. The blood of Jesus shall efface the trail of the serpent. That will give " all things" in " the reconciliation," a sweet smelling savor with our God, and over such a sacrifice, He can say, in the deep satisfaction of His heart, " I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake." (Gen. 8:2121And the Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. (Genesis 8:21).)
And of this we have had early notice in the history of Noah. When Adam was created, he received a command to replenish the earth and subdue it. But we do not read of the way in which he owned his Creator in the midst of all this blessing, nor did the Lord God then say, that He would not curse the ground which He had made. But when Noah came forth of the ark, as man redeemed (not like Adam merely created) for time earth, he at once takes the earth as debtor to the blood of Jesus for it. He
raises his altar and offers upon it of every clean beast and of every clean fowl; and the blood of these victims in type the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, the Lord smells as a savor of sweet smell, and it awakens in His heart thoughts of abiding complacency in the earth. The blood on the altar and not the evil of man governs His counsels, and they are all counsels of grace. (Gen. 8:2121And the Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. (Genesis 8:21).) And then He gives Noah dominion of the earth again, with the sign of this covenant of abiding complacency in the earth and its creatures, signifying that by the virtue of this blood, though not before in the hand of Adam, the creation could be established without fear of curse again. And then He gives Noah also, not only the herb of the field, but the flesh of everything that lived to be meat for him (Gen. 9:33Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. (Genesis 9:3)), in token that his life now rested on the flesh and blood of another, that it was no longer the life of a creature merely, but of a creature redeemed, and redeemed by blood. Thus both he and his inheritance now stood only in the value of the blood of Jesus, but standing in that, they stood secure.
All this was very significant, telling us of the character of that kingdom which is to arise in the last days, when the true Noah takes the dominion. Then shall the earth and its creatures be established in the covenant of abiding rest and certainty, the rainbow encircling the throne that is then to rule over all. And then shall the Lord God rest in His full complacency in it all, for it shall all stand in the sweet savor of the sacrifice which the Son of His love has offered, or in the great reconciliation. As it is written, " and having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, by Hint I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven." (Col. 1:2020And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. (Colossians 1:20).)
And thus will God's praise and delight spring from the same source which gives us sinners our everlasting security, and puts a richer and sweeter song into our lips than that which awakened the morning stars, when the foundations of the old creation were laid. Such is the divine skill, weaving God's glory and our security together, and His delights with our delights forever, His aim grace must account for this, for nothing else can, passing as it does, all the fondest thoughts of our hearts. And then this
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redeemed creation, this gourd of our God, shall bud again, and be still in its freshness before Him. The worm, the power of death, shall not touch it to wither it; but under its shadow will He find His sabbath again, as it is written " thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created, and thou renewest the face of the earth: The glory of the Lord shall endure forever, the Lord shall rejoice in His works." (Psa. 104:30, 3130Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth. 31The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works. (Psalm 104:30‑31).)
" Lord what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! the Son of man that thou makest account of Him l"
THE
CHRISTIAN WITNESS.
No. 23.] JULY, 1839. [Vox- 6.
THE GOSPEL BY ST. MARK.
IT is only by tracing the distinct character of each Of the four Gospels, that we can get a view of the Lord Jesus Christ in all His ways. But then we do, to our profit and delight; and find Him, surely, in each of them in equal perfectness; whether it be one relationship to us or another that He is seen to fill, whether it be this path or that which He takes before us, still all is perfec-tion. We may see Him in Jewish connection more especially in St. Matthew, or more abroad among men in St. Luke, as the solitary Son of God in St. John, or as the social Son of man, the servant of poor sinners, in St. Mark, but still all is perfection.
And all this is only variety and not incongruity. For even in drawing the history of the same individual this may be done. One biographer may present Him in His domestic, another in His public life, and to suit their different designs, they will not only at times take different facts, but different circumstances in the same facts; and both these things we see in the Gospels. We see different facts taken by each of the Evangelists at times, and at times different circumstances in the same facts, as suiting them-selves to the Lord in different aspects and relations. And how
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much more easily (if our minds needed any further help to the apprehending of this), may we discern and admit this, when He who was such an one as the Lord Jesus, God and man in one person, and not a mere individual of the human family, is the theme and object of the history.
And the Holy Ghost had done this before the time of the Evangelists.. In the Chronicles, for instance, we get David and Solomon in a different light from that in which we see them in Samuel and Kings. The Chronicles present them in a typical and not in an historical way. Many circumstances are omitted which an historian must have noticed, and which therefore we get in the books of Samuel and the Kings, but which it was not needful to notice as far as David and Solomon were types of Messiah.
And the wisdom of God in all this is perfect. The same things, are made to yield the Lord to us in various lights; and one instance of this has struck me very particularly. It is the prospect which the Lord takes of Jerusalem when going up there for the last time.
In St. Luke He is presented as looking at the city as the place of His glory,-" and it came to pass when the time was come that Ile should be received up (avaX/plitwe), He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem." (Luke 9:5151And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, (Luke 9:51).) He sees glory before Him there. He is to be " received up," and He acts in this mind. He sends forth messengers before His face to make His way ready, to challenge the everlasting gates to give entrance to the King of glory. And all this we know belonged to Him, and all this shall be His; and the occasion might warrant this thought of glory, for it as surely waited Him then, as the cross, and His soul could have entered into the prospect of the one as well as the other. The Spirit, therefore, in St. Luke, gives expression to that condition of His soul on that occasion.
But our Evangelist presents another thing. He shows the Lord's eye, in the distant sight of Jerusalem, resting on the cross. Equally true and real this was, for the cross as well as the glory was then before Him. And it might well have filled the vision of this chief of the prophets, as He looked toward that city out of which
a prophet could not perish. " And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus went before them: and they were amazed; and as they followed, they were afraid." (x. 32.) Here the mind of the Lord expresses itself as conscious of the cross-as conscious that the altar was waiting for the sacrifice. But all this was as true an expression of the mind of Jesus, in the distant sight of the city, as the other, for the cross as well as the glory waited Him there.
But again: He looks at Jerusalem as the scene of His royalty; and acts still in full character with that view of it, as all the Evangelists show us (Matt. 21 Mark 11 Luke 19 John 12), sending for the ass and riding into the city in all the style of the rightful Son of David.
Thus do we see these different expressions of His mind, as He looked toward the city for the last time. And indeed we had not had the whole truth, if all these expressions had not been given us. For Jesus entered into the full power of everything He had to do with. His Spirit knew the elevation which glory, though in the distance, could give Him; and it knew in equal power the chastened tone of self-devotement which the nearer sight of the cross could give Him; and He could act in the full power of the consciousness that He was Son of God, or Heir of David, as that He was the Lamb for the altar.
And indeed I might go into the further stages of this journey of the Lord, and get other illustrations of the same principle. For after He had reached the city, He passed through His sorrows there with different affections, fulfilling different conditions in which He stood, and displaying different glories that equally belonged to Him. In St. John's Gospel, the glory that was His as Son of God is made to shine out, as the Evangelist conducts Him from one stage to another of His last sufferings. (See vol. v. p. 362.) But in the others, it is rather the glory of the Son of man,-the spotless moral glory of Him who was obedient even unto death that we then see. For all was in Him. He was both the Son of God and the servant of God in the very same scene. The scene is one, because the history is true; but the Spirit who
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describes it to us, lets one feature of Him, who was passing through it, come forth after another, that we might know the richness and perfections of the ways of Him, who was at once " God over all blessed forever," and yet " found in fashion as a man," and in " the form of a servant" for us sinners.
Previous papers in the Christian Witness have given us a general view of the order and character of St. Matthew and St. John 1 would now suggest the same on St. Mark. But this labor has been in some measure anticipated, because the general contents of this Gospel are much the same, and preserve much the same order, as we get in St. Matthew. But still there will be found in it some features which show us that the Holy Ghost is designing to give a peculiar character to this Gospel, as well as to the others; and I judge that it will be found to be the special purpose' of our Gospel, to present our Lord Jesus Christ to us in ministry or service-not in the elevation and loneliness of the Son of God, as in St. John, but on the contrary, in the diligent paths of the servant of man's necessities, of Him who having come not to be ministered unto, but to minister, went about doing good.
And yet it is the same One who fills this wondrous interval. As in the 50th chapter of Isaiah, the One who once covered the Egyptian hea'ven with sackcloth, and divided a way through the sea, afterward came to receive direction as the servant, morning after morning, and to give His face to shame and spitting. The Jehovah God of Hosts who led Israel out of Egypt, was the Jesus of Nazareth who hung on the cursed tree. For all of glory in the highest He fills, and all of service and grace in the lowest He discharges. 'As almost at one glance we see Him the laborer in the harvest, and yet the Lord of the harvest. (Matt. 9:3535And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. (Matthew 9:35). x. 1.)
His personal ministry as Jesus was just in spirit, what as Jehovah He had been to Israel for centuries before. With what 'patience had He borne with their manners? How would He `have gathered them as a hen her chickens, and borne them as an 'eagle her young 7 How had He taught Ephraim to go, leading) Him by the hand? Had He not risen up betimes and sent His
prophets, and that for centuries, till there was no remedy? And was not the ministry of Jesus through the cities and villages of Judea, all this again? Were not the days of the Son of man there, all this patient and diligent love of the Jehovah of Israel in the days of old 7 And was not His yearning over them the same? Of old He had said, " 0 that my people had hearkened to my word;" and now He says, " 0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem." And was not His judgment about them also the same? Of old He had judged treacherous Judah more than backsliding Israel (Jen iii.), and so does He now judge between the harlots and the Pharisees.
But all the while he lies hid. Jesus of Nazareth conceals the God of Israel. " There was the hiding of His power," as in the cloud in the wilderness. But still Jehovah dwelt there; and at times He comes forth from behind this vail, from within this cloud, at the bidding of faith. The faith of the leper draws forth the Jehovah of Israel, and that of the centurion the Creator of the world-the Lord of all. (Matt. 8)
But this was only occasional, when faith rent the vail for a passing moment. His way was that of a servant, a rejected and disowned Nazarene, a poor and unlettered man. And as such servant, our Gospel especially presents Him to us.
And here let me observe, that the place which the penman of it holds in the history of the New Testament, is according to this. It is Mark, or Mark-John, whom Paul and Barnabas had " to their minister," and of whom Paul again says, "he is profitable unto me for the ministry." And as it has been elsewhere observed (see vol. v. p. 50), that John was a fit instrument to tell us of Him who lay in the Father's bosom, because he himself lay in the Lord's bosom, so we may observe the same fitness in the penman to the subject of this Gospel.
I would now shortly follow the chapters in their order; distinguishing the several parts into which they appear to arrange themselves, and noticing what is characteristic of our Gospel in each. May that blessed One, whose ways they trace, be still before us!
I-X.-These chapters give us the first part of our Gospel.
They are similar to a great extent, with Matt. 1-20, and there-fore I would, for the ends of interpretation generally, refer to the previous paper on that Gospel. (See vol. iv. p. 13.) But I must now notice what I judge to be peculiar in the tone and bearing of our Evangelist in these chapters, so as to know what it is into which the Holy Ghost would especially lead our minds by him. And I believe the opening of our Gospel at once gives us its character. But this need not surprise us, for it is so in each of the Gospels. St. Matthew begins with the Jewish genealogy of the Lord, for the Spirit by Him was about to bring Him forth in Jewish connection. St. Luke begins with His genealogy from Adam, for the Spirit by Him was about to show the Lord more in. connection with man generally. St. John begins with the Word who was with God and was God, for the Spirit by Him was to show the Lord as Son of God, Son of the Father. But here in our Gospel we get no notice of divine glory as in John; no gene-alogy, no birth in Bethlehem, no flight to Egypt, or childhood at Nazareth, as in Matthew or Luke, but Jesus is at once set before us in ministry; for in that character, as I have suggested already, it is the Spirit's purpose by Mark to exhibit Him. The words which open our Gospel are these: " The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God." His whole person is thus of course, verified, for it is the same Lord in whatever aspect we may see Him. But it is not so much His person as His Gospel or ministry, that is here at the beginning introduced to us. And according to this our Evangelist dwells for a little upon John the Baptist an-nouncing the Lord as the One who was coming to baptize with the Holy Ghost, that is, coming forth in ministry; not however adding (as he does in Matthew and Luke), " whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor," for that belonged to Him rather in His judicid than in His ministerial place, and thus was not according to the design of our Gospel.
We then get a passing notice of the baptism and temptation of the Lord, because those things also helped to usher Him forth in His ministry; for at His baptism He was owned and qualified for the service to which He had come, as we read 44 God anointed
But though we get these things here, we get them but briefly, and pass on quickly to John's imprisonment, for that was the mo-ment for the Lord beginning to run His course, for entering on actual service Himself, for saying to the people, as He does here, 46 the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye and believe the Gospel."
And from this onward through these chapters, it is ministry or service that we find Him occupied with. To be passing from action to action, and still doing good is His one purpose here, though it is true He was Lord of all. He was the One whom all creation owned. The elements bowed at His word and were still. The brute animals brought Him tribute and bore Him to His city as King of Israel and Lord of all. The devils trembled, and men felt the power of His word in their consciences, and at times the majesty of His presence. But it pleased Him withal to be a Servant. He put His ear to the lintel of the door that He might serve forever. And so we find Him. It is the Son of man in diligent waiting on the sorrows and neces-sities of others that we still have before us. And the service that He takes upon Him here is rather that of doz'ng than of teaching. Of course we see Him in both; but rather in the one than in the other, for doing is the humbler and more self-denying character of service. Thus we have but few parables here and no lengthened discourses, as we have in the corresponding chapters of either Matthew or Luke; while many of His doings are more detailed here than there, such as the case of legion, of the woman with the issue of blood, of the deaf man at Decapolis, and of the blind man at Bethsaida. For He is here the One that in patient, diligent love waited on the varied and trying need of men, that He might heal both their hearts and their sicknesses. His walk, however, is always in the house of the strong man, in some scene or other of the enemy's power, traveling there too in the strength of One that was stronger than He. It is the diligence of the servant of men,
but exercised in the power of the Jehovah of Israel. It was the constant spoiling of Satan's goods, and rifling of his house. Disease, and sorrow, and death, with which the strong man had filled his house, are turned out, and health and salvation brought in.
In all these records of his doings by our Evangelist, there are many touches and strokes that still show us the design of the divine hand. The human tones of the mind of Christ are more expressed here, and His course more marked with human graces, if I may so speak, than in the other Gospels. As in the healing of Peter's wife for instance, St. Mark is the only one who tells us that the Lord " took her by the hand," when raising her up from fever. So He alone tells us that Jesus took the children in His arms. And it is only here that we learn that the people called Him " the carpenter." Nor is there the same tone of severity in the rebukes of the Lord here, nor the same authority in His way of vindicating His glory against the unbelief and scorn of men. And He is at times called only "Master," where He is styled " Lord" in Matthew. In St. John He travels on as " the Light of the world," but here rather as " the Physician."
Nor do we see Him in the same elevation of spirit here, as •far instance in the xi. of Matthew, or in Luke 10:1919Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. (Luke 10:19). And though we read here of His looking round in anger (iii. 5), yet we soon learn that this was not the anger of one who had taken the seat of judgment, but of Him who was grieved at heart for the hardness and unbelief of men. It was rather the sensitiveness of the spirit of holiness, one feature of His moral perfectness as man, who is to " be angry and in not.'r
So the ordination of the twelve is not given us here so fully as in St. Matthew; and our Evangelist tells us that Jesus ordained them not merely that He might send them forth, as Matthew does, but also " that they might be with Him," His companions, as it were, as well as His Apostles, as though He were (which surely He was) their fellow-laborer in the Gospel.
These and such little strokes may be faint and pass notice at times, but they give character to the holy picture. They show the blessed Jesus in the valley, treading still in perfect grace the
ways of service and humiliation. He is ever the girded Servant. And these strokes and touches show us the girdle. For it is not merely that the Servant is ready when the exigency comes, but his girded loins keep Him always in waiting; His heart if not His hand being in attendance. And these little ways of Jesus show Him thus always girded, His eye and His ear attentive, and His heart in waiting, though the hand or the foot may for awhile be unoccupied. And they are what the art of one who is well practiced in chewing kindness, alone can supply, and which in this Gospel thus fill up the picture of this gracious and perfect Servant.
" He is beside Himself," was the language of some here. (iii. 21.) And it was true. He was wanting to Himself in that prudence that man has learned to value, for men will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself. For truly could he have said in reply to this, " if we be beside ourselves it is to God, or whether we be sober it is for your sakes." He would know no respite Himself while there was need or sorrow in others.
Thus was it with Him. He would be doing good as a servant for the sake of those who needed Him. Blessed Savior! He looks here simply at man and his necessities. His miracles, it is true, verified Him as the Son of David, and that is asserted in its proper place. (Matt. 12:2323And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David? (Matthew 12:23).) But they are not used here to that end. I do not find in this Gospel the same care in the Spirit to identify Jesus of Nazareth with the promised Messiah of the Jews. There is not the same constant application of the voices of the prophets to Him and His doings as in Matthew. For it is not so much His claims on the world that the Spirit, is here vindicating, as man's claims on His power and grace that He is ever waiting to answer.
And according to all this, we find the Lord's sympathies with our infirmities very much noticed here. His sensibilities seem to be all awake here; and while his hand gives relief His heart enters into the need. He does not stand apart, from us, but comes fully into the midst of us. As He says in the book of Psalms, "when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth-I behaved myself as though he had been my friend or brother." Like the
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prophets of old, he stretches himself, as it were upon us, or puts his mouth on our mouth, his eyes on our eyes, his hands on our hands (1 Kings 17:2121And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again. (1 Kings 17:21), 2 Kings 4:3434And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and he stretched himself upon the child; and the flesh of the child waxed warm. (2 Kings 4:34).) With the life that was in Himself, He touches the dead parts which He was ever finding in our poor ruined nature.
Thus at the sight of sorrow," He sighed;" and soon afterward at the sight of sin, "He sighed deeply in His spirit." (vii. 34. viii. 12.)* In the account of the rich young ruler we here read, that " Jesus beholding him loved him:" neither Matthew or Luke noticing this little exercise of the Lord's heart on this occasion. And in two striking instances of healing where the action is somewhat similar, one of which is recorded by St. John, and the other by our Evangelist, we still find the sympathy of Jesus marked only in 9ur Gospel. In the 9th of John, the Lord employs the spittle and applies his hand; but then, as in the simple sense of His power and authority, He says, " go to the pool of Siloam and wash." But in our 7th chapter, He enters into personal concern with the,whole case. He again employs the spittle and applies His hand, but He then looks up to heaven (as seeking the Father and owning the joy and rest that were in heaven), and afterward sighs (as at the thought of the sorrow that was on earth), and then, but not till then, not till He had thus entered personally into the sorrow, does He say the word, and the healing comes.
These are some of His sympathies with us, and our infirmities noticed by St. Mark. And these sympathies were among His ways as the Servant of His saints, for by them He was learning to become " a faithful and merciful High Priest," to enter into and exercise that gracious ministry of His heavenly priesthood, which He now ever liveth to render to us. (Heb. 4:1515For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15).)
And the Lord's sorrow in this Gospel, comes very much from this sympathy; for he is here the social man, and this gives us the character of his sorrow. John Baptist had been a man of sorrows
• This gives us an instance of the Lord's sympathy with sin-" He sighed deeply in spirit" at the sight of it. And we may all well assure ourselves that though the Spirit may be grieved, it cannot be defiled. It was in spirit only, He had sympathy with sin, and that must have been a sorrowing and undefiled sympathy.
before Him, but (as a brother once observed to me), his were the sorrows of the lonely witness of righteousness who refused to mingle with the darkness and evil of the world. And thus he knew this world as a houseless wilderness. (Matt. 3:11In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, (Matthew 3:1).) But Jesus was the minister of grace who sought to spend Himself on the sorrows and need and sin of others. And thus with wearied foot and disappointed love, He trod men's paths, and knew the world as a house of friends wherein He was wounded. And this was a deeper and more touching sorrow than ever John knew.
And being thus the Servant, the social Son of man, who was always at the disposal of others, when Jesus is here seen retiring, it is only to recruit Himself for fresh toil, always allowing His retirement to be interfered with, as one that did not claim His time for Himself.
Thus in the 1st chapter, after laboring in various toils from morning till evening in Capernaum, we see Him on the next morning rising before day for prayer (as though the day itself was to be given to work); but His retirement being interrupted, He at once allows it, and comes forth at the bidding of Peter, saying, " let us go into the next towns that I may preach there also, for therefore came I forth."
So again in the 4th chapter. He teaches by the seaside, being such an one as looked about for objects, and in so needy a world as this, could find them every where. And here in a ship, on the sea of Tiberias, close by the shore where the people were gathered, He began His day. But in the evening of it (for it had been a toilsome one to Him), He would fain retire, and His disciples accordingly put off from the shore, and doubtless perceiving His weariness, provide Him a pillow. And then His head is no sooner upon it than He falls asleep. Was it ever said with such an emphasis as now, " for so He giveth His beloved sleep." Blessed Servant of our necessities, blessed object of the Father's careful love! They take Him (as we read ver. 36), " just as He was," as a tired laboring man who had gone forth to his labor in the morning until the. evening. But again the interruption comes, and again it is at once attended to. For what sleep would He take
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but that which was to refresh Him for further service for man; and therefore man and his necessities must determine how long or how short that sleep shall be. He knew no other rule by which to measure it but that; and thus when His disciples' fears arise, He rises to calm them.
So also in the 6th chapter. His Apostles had returned from a mission on which He had sent them, and caring for their comfort, though not for his own, He takes them into a desert place that they might there rest and eat. And the words of the Lord to them on this occasion (so expressive of His tenderness and consideration), "come ye yourselves apart and rest awhile," are peculiar to our Evangelist. But the multitude who had watched them, surprise them in their retreat. It would have been a valued moment • to the Lord, thus to have been alone with the dear companions of His toil, hearing from them what they had done and what they had taught, while they refreshed themselves. But at this intrusion of the multitude, He at once turns Himself, and begins to teach them. But this was only one service giving place to another. The deeper necessity of the people calls Him off for awhile from that of His Apostles; but the scene does not close till. He has provided for both, teaching the people and feeding all. He acts as the common servant of both, so full were His hands, and so continually girded were His loins, that He might still wait upon us.
Thus was He at every one's call, and that at all times. But though thus open to the intrusions of others, I perceive a certain unobtrusiveness in His own ways in this Gospel. At Decapolis He draws the poor deaf man aside, and when He has- got him alone, He opens his ear, charging him to say nothing about it. (Chap. vii.) So, in the borders of Tire and Sidon, though the necessities of sinners there, as every where, might discover Him, yet " He would have no man know it."-And again at Bethsaida, He takes a blind man by the hand and leads him out of the town, and then in secret gives him sight, charging him not to go into the town, neither to tell it to any in the town. (Chap. viii.) For though as the witness of God in the world, He had to be con-
tinually aggressive, and thus to meet the hatred of the world as the Light that was ever rebuking its darkness (John 7:77The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil. (John 7:7)); yet as the servant of God, He might ever hide Himself. Indeed service is never perfect without that. A. servant is not to know himself but to know only his master, and to be willing that others in like manner should know and see only his master. And so is it with Jesus in this Gospel. He goes on with His work. His work, it is true, may gather notice, but His way is still to go on, and under fresh services, still to hide Himself. Thus when Simon and others followed Him saying, " all men seek thee," desiring that He should come forth and show Himself, He only hides Himself under other labors, saying, " let us go into the next town and preach there also, for therefore came I forth." (i. 38.)
And according to this, He more carefully veils His glory in this Gospel than in the others. Thus in reasoning with the Pharisees about the sabbath, He speaks of Himself in St. Matthew as " One greater than the temple," which was the assertion of His divine glory. But here that is passed by. And on the same occasion both in Matthew and Luke, His " Lordship of the sabbath" is pleaded in a style of conscious authority; but here it is grounded simply upon this, "that the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath," the Lord thus taking His place simply as man on the very level on which Adam stood at the beginning. (ii. 27.)
So though in this Gospel we have the vision on the Holy Mount, yet still even in such a scene as that, there is something of the same way of veiling His glory. The Spirit, let Him trace the Lord in what, character He may, could not well pass that scene by. For it was the one ray of heavenly glory that cheered the dreariness of His path along this earth, and without it all would have been an unbroken waste. But this light crossed His way for a moment, and it came to Jesus full of heaven. But our
• Jeremiah, who was the Lord's companion in the ministry and patience of a Jewish prophet, had his dreary path crossed for a moment by something of the same light. It is recorded in the 31st chapter. In his sleep he gets a vision of the good days of Israel that are still to come; and he tells us that his "sleep was sweet unto him." It was not so heavenly and glorious a light as
Evangelist has one thing connected with it which the others do not notice. He tells us that on the Lord's coming down from the Mount, " all the people were amazed, and running to Him, saluted Him." (ix. 15.) This might have brought the Lord into the place of notice and honor, but we here see Him using it only to pass it by, and again to veil Himself under fresh services, for He at once turns from the salutations of the people toward the sorrow of the poor dumb child; thus waiting so perfectly in the spirit of a servant, that neither the glory on the top of the Mount, nor the salutations at the foot of it, were able to weaken or interrupt it.
Such was our Lord in these chapters. These few notices serve to give the character of His ways in this Gospel. He is here before us as the servant who veils His glory and girds His loins, and still goes on the emptied and diligent minister of our bless-ings. And though He is more the doer than the teacher in this Gospel, as I have already observed, and we therefore get but few parables, and no lengthened discourses, yet there is one para-ble that is peculiar to it. But even there this character of the servant is strikingly preserved. I mean the parable of " the seed that grew secretly," in the 4th chapter. It occupies the same place in our Gospel, which the parable of the wheat and the tares does in Matthew, each following in each Gospel that of the sower. But the parable of the wheat and the tares in Matthew, gives us the Lord in the place of authority, having both His ser-vants and the angels at command. But the parable of " the seed which grows secretly," given to us by our Evangelist, exhibits Him still in the place of service. lt is He Himself who at the first is the Sower, and at the end the Harvestman. And thus this which might seetn at first an exception from the general bearing of our Gospel, which does not give us our Lord so fully as a teacher in parables, is exquisitely and perfectly in full keeping with the whole of it. Such was the skill of that divine hand that was moving the pen of our Evangelist.*
this, but it cheered the prophet's soul for a moment, as this light on the Mount cheered the Lord. And their path otherwise was much the same, the path of sorrowing love and suffering testimony.
XI. XII.-These chapters form the 2nd part of our Gospel.
The Lord is here seen coming forth to His own as their own, offering them the kingdom in His own person. But His own receive Him not. We have this scene in Matt. 21-23; and therefore as to the general interpretation of it, I would again refer to the previous paper on that Gospel, confining myself, as before, to what may be peculiar in St. Mark's account of it, and which is thus characteristic of his Gospel.
We get, of course, the same display of royalty here as in the others,-the king riding into the city amid the attending salutations of the people; for that was the material itself, that was the circum-stance which the Evangelist had now to do with. But there is still a chastened tone preserved by him even in such a scene as this.
Thus we find that on the Lord's entrance into the city, and on going up to the temple, though He was there in the full attitude of King of Israel, yet ere He acted as such, by casting out those who sold therein and by overthrowing the money tables, we read, " He looked round about upon all things-and went out to Bethany with the twelve." And this is still a little notice of the manner of His ways in this Gospel. In St. Matthew He is seen acting at once upon the defiled scene around Him, in the full sense of His holiness and dignity as Son of God and King of Israel. But here it is rather the calmness and even sorrow of one who would give time to the scene to affect his eye and his heart, ere his hand laid hold on judgment. Indeed this is another instance of the sym-pathy of Jesus, He was entering with personal feeling into the scene, ere He acted in it. And yet at the same time it was an action of a deeper expression than even that in Matthew. There
and the parable of "the grain of mustard seed," in chap. iv. gives us two very distinct views of " the kingdom of God." The first shows us the kingdom under the care of Christ; for there the seed grows till it becomes a harvest such a.s the Lord Himself can gather and delight in. The second shows us the kingdom as it appears in the world; for the grain rises into such a tree as "the fowl of the air" can use and enjoy-it is not meet for Him who planted it, like the other seed, but for " the fowl of the air," or the enemy. (See ver. 4.)
So t,hat these two parables give us two distinct views of the dispensation; for there is a portion in Christendom which " the Lord of the harvest" will gather for Himself, and another which will be left for the unclean.
was something of the divine patience in it, of the divine slowness to believe evil; as God had said, in old time, " I will go down and see whether, they have done altogether according to the cry of it." (Gen. 18:2121I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know. (Genesis 18:21).) It gives a subdued and hallowed expression to the mind of the Lord in the action, and thus distinguishes it from the tone of prompt authority and decision given by St. Matthew. But both are equally according to the truth, and without both we could not have had the full truth. For He was in this scene both as the conscious Son of God, the King of Israel, who had title to vindicate the honor of God's house at Jerusalem, and yet was He also the patient and interested witness of all that revolted Israel was presenting to Him there.
And again I observe a peculiar feature in the account which we get here of the Scribe who challenges the Lord about the first commandment, for we see the exercise of this man's soul, which we do not elsewhere. Matthew tells us that he came to " tempt" the Lord, as one of the representatives of the revolted and unbelieving nation; but Mark shows him to us more personally or individually, shows us what was going on within him, till he is led, as the Lord here allows, within a short way of the kingdom of God. No doubt both were equally the case. He came to tempt, but he went away repentant. Just like the thief afterward, who began to revile the Lord, but ended in trusting Him and calling on Him. But this is still characteristic of our Gospel. For this strange unlooked for softening of heart, which we here see in this poor sinner, must be accounted for by the grace and wisdom and power of the words of Him who was now talking with him, and whose goodness was thus leading him to repentance. And all this tells us that the Lord was still in ministry, still keeping his eye on this poor sinner for his good, though he had come to Him for evil. The Lord looks at him, as it were, personally, apart from the connection with his nation in which he then stood, and ministers to his soul.
And so again in closing this scene, the Lord does not here occupy the seat of judgment as He does in Matthew. The conviction of the nation fully entitled Him to take that place, but
here He goes through all that exercise of judgment very rapidly, not reading out as a swift witness against them the crimes of which the nation was guilty, and then as a judge passing sentence upon them. He rather refuses to take that elevation which He does in Matthew, and closes all the judgment in a verse or two, looking beyond it to see a poor widow casting her two mites, which was her whole fortune, into the treasury of God. Towards her He turns away from all that was surrounding Him beside. He has not an eye for the evil so much as for the good, though He might see a temple full of the one and only two mites of the other.
Thus in these things which distinguish this Gospel, we have still the traces of the same Spirit, and of the distinctive way of the Lord Jesus.
XIII.-This chapter gives us the third part of our Gospel.
Here the Lord, as the Prophet, instructs His people about the purposes of God concerning Israel. And still pursuing the order of St. Matthew, it is as chapters xxiv. xxv. of that Gospel, and, therefore, I again refer to the previous paper for general inter- pretation. But as to what is here peculiar to our Evangelist, Il observe that there is one strong mark of the Lord's emptied and humiliated condition which we do not get elsewhere. I allude to the expression in ver. 32 (speaking of knowledge of the times), " neither the Son." And this is quite according to this Gospel, for it savors of Him who had emptied Himself, becoming thoroughly a servant, as to a servant the confidence and knowledge of our secrets does not belong. (John 15:1515Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. (John 15:15).)
And yet, as I need not say, this is altogether true, for He did thus take on Him the form of a servant, and would take with it all its attributes. And thus as a servant He was not entitled to know this secret. But even beside that, the kingdom to which He was here referring, He receives as a servant, and not as the right of
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of them is given work, the porter being commanded to watch, which is not noticed there. But He had not, on the other hand, in this Gospel spoken of Peter's dignity in the Church, as He had in Matthew (xvi. 18), nor of the glory of the twelve Apostles seated on their thrones for the judgment of the twelve tribes of Israel. For while the place of service is specially noticed here, glory, whether theirs or His, is passed without the same notice by our Evangelist, as is given to it by the others.
These things are all of the Lord's ways in this Gospel. Humble these ways are, and gracious and serving,-the ways of Him who had laid aside His robes of state; and became the girded Servant, and would have His saints track the same ways after Him. And the end of such ways is found to be peace. They may be rough to the flesh as we tread them, but they lead assuredly to repose of heart, and the blessed consciousness of this, beloved, is that they were the very paths of Jesus Himself, when He trod this same earth over which we are now passing.
And I may just add that the judicial acts of Christ are not exhibited to us here as they are in St. Matthew. We have not the bridegroom's discerning between the wise and foolish virgins, nor the Lord judging the faithful and unprofitable servants, nor the King from His throne of glory separating the nations, the sheep and the goats. For these things savored of the honor. and authority of Christ, and have their memorial in their due place; but that place is not our Gospel. Just as in the preceding section, the arraignment of the nation, and the sentence of the law passed upon them, which are so largely given in St. Matthew, we saw were rapidly passed over by St. Mark. All these things telling us of the same design of the divine hand in this Gospel.
XIV. XV.-These chapters form the fourth part of our Gospel.
Here we see the patient, spotless Lamb of God in His sufferings, while passing onward to the deep sorrows of the three hours of darkness, after He had entered on the night of the last passover. The path of the Lord here is generally what it is in Matt. 26 xxvii. with some few peculiar marks as usual, of characteristic difference, which I will now as before notice. He appears to me to
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Him who in another respect was "God over all blessed forever." The kingdom is to be the reward of the toil of Him who was obedient to death; and therefore, all the circumstances of it wait not on His, but on the Father's good pleasure. The right hand and left hand glories of it thus wait, as the Lord speaking of them says " it is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father." The time of its appearing thus waits; as the Lord here says-" of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels, neither the Son, but my Father only." All this shows that the kingdom is the reward of service, the fruit of obedience unto death. Christ takes it as the kinsman of man; not by divine, but by human title. And thus He could most duly say, " neither the Son,"-words which thus apprehended do not qualify the person of the Son, but the character of the kingdom-as indeed we might easily know, for it was not His own person, but the introduction of HIS kingdom that the Lord was discoursing on. The kingdom is to be His as
0,.Son of man; it is to man that " the world to come" is to be subject. But it is God who is to make it thus subject to Him. God holds
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` the supreme place. Every tongue in it is to confess Jesus " Lord," but this is to be, "to the glory of God the Father."
Thus these words " neither the Son," gives us a great truth, as well as holds the distinctness of our Gospel still within our view. And so what the Lord again calls Himself in this passage-" the master of the house"-does the same. (Ver. 35.) This is a sweet title, it is true, as all that belongs to Him is precious and right in its season. But still it is a title not of so high a bearing, as "your Lord," by which the Savior calls Himself in the corresponding place in Matthew. And in connection with this, I may again observe, what I have hinted at before, that the Lord is called " Master" more generally in this Gospel than in the others; and occasionally when it is " Lord" there, it is but " Master" here. And this still preserves the design of the Spirit while inditing this Gospel.
So at the close He addresses His Apostles more in the place of service here, than in either Matthew or Luke. For here to each
be left more alone in this Gospel through these last scenes, than in either Matthew or Luke. The Spirit in St. Mark keeps our view of Jesus here, less distracted by the occasional acts and feelings of others. Thus we have neither the repentance of Judas, nor the purchase of the potter's field, nor the dream of Pilate's wife, nor the intercourse between Herod and Pilate, nor the lamentation of the daughters of Jerusalem. But it is still Himself that we see. There is however, one exception to this. There is one object which is allowed by our Evangelist for a moment to divide our attention, and which we do not see elsewhere. 1 mean the young man who followed the Lord with a linen cloth tied round his naked body, and who afterward fled away leaving his garment behind him, as the officers were laying hold on Jesus. But such an object as this only heightens the scene of wasteness and dreariness that was all around, so forlorn and forsaken as to man and the world, so exposed and left naked to His shame, was that emptied and humiliated Servant of our sin, who is seen here to be passing onward to death. In St. John, He is the lonely one it is true, but it is the • lonely one in the elevation and distance of the Son of God. But here He is the lonely one in the depths of the willing and self-emptied Servant of man, who had taken the lowest place for Himself.
And according to all this we have left unnoticed by our Evangelist, some touches of conscious dignity, some passing expressions of power which we get in the others. Thus before the cross there is here no healing of the servant's ear, nor vindication of His right, had He pleased to use it, to call for twelve legions of angels. Nor have we on the cross the Lord's owning of His Father, nor His pledging His own joy to His dying companion. Nor when the cross is over, have we here the same full and glorious testimony to the value of it from the earth, and the rocks, and the graves of the saints, as we have in St. Matthew. The progress here is that of a lonely one through the valley; and this is quite according to the general tone of this whole Gospel, being thus the Gospel of the servant of man's sin now, as it had been the Gospel of the servant of man's necessities and sorrows before.
But what perfection, dear brethren, in all His ways! And what a thought it is, that there was once in this world of ours, a Son of man who through His whole course from the beginning to the end, whether in labor or in suffering, before God or man, had never a word to recall, a step to retrace, or a single movement of His heart to regret! Such was the moral glory of the man Jesus, whose course we here finish,-a glory as perfect in its kind, as the glory which He had before the world was perfect in its kind, and the glory that He now has, or will have forever, are perfect in their kind! He was " the holy thing" at His birth; He was tried by the fire and found the spotless one fitted for God's altar, and then He was accepted upon it for us, and at last glorified in God, where now He is.
XVI.-This chapter gives us the fifth and closing part of our Gospel.
It shows us the same Jesus, but in resurrection, and is as Matt. 28 but still with some strikingly characteristic features.
Thus the descent of the angel to roll away the stone in the power of the resurrection (the witness of which He was), putting, the sentence of death in the keepers, is omitted here. For there was an expression of authority and judgment in that action, which would not so well have suited the more even and lowly tone of our Gospel. But we do get here the words of the same angel to the women, for that was an expression of the grace of the resurrection, and was the comforting of those who sought and loved Jesus. And they receive from Him the same message to the dis. ciples which He gives them in Matthew, with however this additional note of grace, that Peter is here expressed by name. And this was quite after the manner of the Lord's tenderness all through; for Peter might well have needed all that thoughtful and considerate kindness just at this time.
Our Evangelist passes by the counsel given by the chief priests and elders to the keepers of the sepulcher, for that led to what is " commonly reported among the Jews until this day," and therefore lay more within the scope of the Spirit in St. Matthew. But generally He notices the visits which the risen Lord paid to His dis-
ciples, and particularly the same slowness of heart in them to credit the resurrection. In the mouth of two sets of witnesses, it is here established. But they believed not; and then the Lord has to come Himself and rebuke them for their hardness of heart. And indeed it is only hardness of heart then can account for such unbelief. We do not think happily of God. We are indisposed to believe any good news of Him, or of His ways towards us. The resurrection of Jesus, the full fruit of divine grace, is published but not believed, just because our hearts are hard. The flesh may be unclean, as indeed it is, vicious and violent also. But the worst feature of it is, that it refuses to believe any message of love from God. And thus one of the sweetest marks of a repentant or re-newed mind, is the faculty to think well and happily of the blessed God. Then does the sinner yield the fruit of a mind that has turned from the erring ways of nature. And our life depends on this, on thus receiving and believing these good tidings from God. And therefore, surely the Lord must here rebuke them for their unbelief.
But though He rebukes, He more than pardons; for at once after the rebuke, as we here find, He commits the honor and power of His name to them, putting them into the ministry, with great endowments. For now we get in this Gospel, as we do in Matthew and Luke, the Lord's commission to His Apostles to go forth and preach. But this affords one of the most striking in-stances that we have, of the way in which each of the Gospels distinguishes itself from the others, and which has been already noticed in the paper on St. John. (See vol. v. p. 375.) And this commission, as recorded by St. Mark, is there thus spoken of. " The terms of the commission in Mark are these: Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to ever,y creature; he that believeth and IS baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. Here it is not the discipling of all nations that is contem-plated, but universal testimony with partial acceptance. For St. Mark presents the Lord in service or ministry, and thus the case of some receiving the word and some receiving it not, is here an-ticipated, for these we know are just the two results that have attended on all ministry of the word; as it is said in one place, " some believed the things that were spoken and some believed not."
I believe this is a just view of the character of the commission as recorded by St. Mark, and is thus according to the tenor of his Gospel. And I would only add, that the Lord is not here re-ported to have asserted His title to " all power in heaven and in earth," as He does in Matthew, but simply without such assertion, He gives His Apostles their work to do in all the world, this omission being still in full keeping with the whole current of this Gospel. And so after delivering this commission, it is said by our Evangelist (but by him only) that though the Lord was now received up to the right hand of God, yet still was he " working with them." (Ver. 20.) He takes His seat, it is true, in heaven, and on the right hand, and His Apostles go forth and serve in a defiled world. But here we read, He was still " working with them," this being still in full character with the whole Gospel, which, as we have again and again seen, is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus in ministry or service. And in like manner the very promise which He here gives to them who should believe, that in His name they should speak with tongues, cast out devils, take up serpents, recover the sick, and which promise is recorded only by St. Mark, is still an undertaking on His part to serve. For these signs were to follow, simply because He wtzs still working. with them-as we read, " the Lord working with them and confirming the word with signs following."
So that our Gospel closes strictly in the character with which it had opened, and which it had preserved throughout. It opened by introducing Him in service, " the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God;" and it now closes by declaring that "He was still working with the Apostles and confirming the word with signs following," every intermediate scene having been entered upon and traveled through in the same Spirit. And thus is He indeed in this Gospel the one who ever went about doing good, approving Himself to have come among us, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for
many." As such an one the Spirit in St. Mark first looked at Jesus, and as such does He keep Him in view unto the end.
Such I judge to be the character and order of this Gospel. And as it thus presents the Lord to us in service or ministry, I would here, in closing, just observe, that the view which we get in scripture of ministry down from God in the highest, to the saint who may be the very weakest in the ranks of the redeemed, is truly blessed and wonderful.
God is the great minister. He serves all is creatures in their place and according to their order. He serves out the rain and sunshine and fruitful seasons, filling the heart with food and gladness. And when the need came, He spared not the Son of His love.
The Lord, the Son, is the personal or manifested minister. In every passage of His life He was the servant of man's sorrows and necessity; and though now in heaven He is still the Servant of His people's interests, and will be the Servant of their joy in the coining glory. (Rev. 7:1717For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. (Revelation 7:17).)
The Holy Ghost is the hidden effectual minister. He is ever tending the Church, serving out to each saint the things of the Father and of Christ, and sustaining and comforting and teaching according to God and our infirmities. And thus we get a blessed display of ministry in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
The angels are in ministry. " Are they not all ministering spirits." And those of them who stand nearest the throne are perhaps the most abounding in ministry; as well they may be from their nearness to that source of goodness. For Gabriel again and again appears in ministry; and he could say of himself as being thus very near the throne, " I am Gabriel that stand in the presence of God."
The Church is in ministry, divine ministry, ministry in the grace and presence of the Spirit. And the nearer we stand to Christ, the brighter and more abundant that ministry is, as we have seen in the angels. Thus in Paul, who stood so near to Jesus, what do we see but one unbroken course of self-sacrifice and service
He is in sympathy with every infirmity of the saints. Who was offended without his burning? The care of the Churches came upon Him daily. If He were afflicted or comforted, it was for others. Death worked in Him, but life in them. But every saint has some office to fill. We are all to be found in the great divine ministry of reconciliation which the Lord is now conducting in this world of sinners. If we are not ambassadors, yet we are appointed to fill some place in the great ambassador's train, if it be but in washing a saint's foot, or being in any wise a fellow-helper of the truth. (2 Cor. 5:17-2117Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 18And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; 19To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. 20Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. 21For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:17‑21).)
And thus we have ministry down from God in the highest to the weakest and most distant companion in the ranks of the redeemed. And when the glory comes, where the kingdom is established, there will be ministry still. The Lamb shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; the Lord of the kingdom will gird Himself and wait on His people; the water of life shall flow forth, and the leaves of the tree for healing; and the heavens will hear the earth, and the earth will hear the corn and the wine and the oil, and they shall hear Jezreel. The less shall be blessed of the better even all through the kingdom.
It is thus, beloved, that we are called by our God and Father, into a blessed system of rich and enlarging and glorious beneficence, at the head of which He Himself stands, and which is to endure forever. The very contrast of the system of " this present evil world," which Satan has formed, where man is proud and selfish, hateful and hating. And it is the Gospel which I have now been faintly tracing, this Gospel by St. Mark, which gives us the loveliest and most touching picture of our Lord in ministry while He dwelt here on earth among us.
We should desire that this His lovely mantle might fall on each of us, that this oil might descend from the head to the skirts of the clothing-" the supply of the spirit of Jesus Christ."-Nature soon feels this mantle a burden. Let us watch that we give not nature her way, but wear it still, dear brethren! And our present joy in service is this-that it all flows from our being redeemed. God does not ask service from us, till He would have us know that
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He has fully ransomed us. The law did not properly ask for service. It exacted conformity with itself in righteousness, but service to God was not properly its claim. That claim the Gospel makes on the ground that God has redeemed us, and -made us heirs of everlasting liberty and joy. The Levites served in the ' temple, and they represented the first-born or redeemed also. (Num. 3) They represented Israel as redeemed and Israel as serving. And may we have more of this Levite character in both its jay and its power;-its joy as knowing our everlasting security and freedom in Christ,-its power as exhibiting constant service in the sanctuary where He has set us! Amen.
TI-1E
CHRISTIAN WITNESS.
No. 24.] OCTOBER, 1839. [VoL. 6.
ABSALOM. 2 SIIIVEL, Xi.—XViii.
" The fool hath said in his heaxt, no God."
DAVID is the principal object before the mind of the Spirit of God in both the 1st and 2nd book of Samuel. In the 1st book, we see him brought from obscurity into honor and praise, and there standing, by the good hand of God, in full righteousness amid the persecutions of the wicked. In the 2nd, we see him descending from honor, through sin, into degradation and ruin, but there learning the rich and marvelous ways of the grace of God. It is thus the sorrows of righteousness, or David the martyr," that we first see, and the shame of sin, or " David the penitent," that we next see.
And these things give us different characters in the Psalm In some of them we hear the breathings of a convicted conscience, a heart exercised in thoughts of transgression, searching after God again, and from thence rising into a blessed sense of grace and salvation. In others we hear the sorrows of conscious right-eousness suffering the reproach of the wicked, but knowing all the while its title to fullness of joy and strength in God.
These are the varied exercises knovvn to David's soul; and in all TOL. yr. 2 x
this he is the type of God's remnant in the latter time, who will have to pass through the shame and sorrows of afflicted and yet conscious integrity, and the shame also of convicted sin. For that remnant, though righteous in their own person and conduct, will identify themselves with their nation in all its blood-guiltiness,' and look on Him who was pierced, and mourn as though they had pierced Him themselves.
And wonderful, and yet blessed to tell it, David would not have known all that is in God, had he not passed through the sin of the 2nd Samuel, as well as the sorrow of the 1st, for it is sin that manifests God. And what a truth that is 1 I learn God in the darkness of mine own iniquity. For there was in God a deeper secret than all that His hand revealed in creation. There was the treasure of His bosom. There was grace in God, love for guilty ones, and Adam's sin drew that secret out; for " the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head," at once came forth to tell him that God had something better than all the fruit of His six days' work of creation.
A previous paper in the " CHRISTIAN WITNESS" has given us " Saul," with some general thoughts on the first book of Samuel. I desire grace and wisdom in like manner, now to present " Absalom," with the same general notice of the 2nd book.
The direct history of Absalom may be considered as beginning with 2 Sam. 11 In the previous chapters of this book, David had been advancing into power and the kingdom, approving himself to God and to the conscience of all men. In no scene in which he is called to take a part, does he seek himself, or eye his own advantages. He considers the sorrows and dishonor of others rather than his own gains, and will be serving others though at his own expense. Thus he weeps over Saul and over Abner, (i.-iv.) and it is his first concern, after he comes to the throne, to bring home the ark of God to Israel, and prepare it a worthy habitation; for which end he would be base in his own sight, and
* And as this unguilty remnant thus confess the sin of the nation, because they identify themselves with it, so dues Jesus in the Psalms, though without sin, confess it, because he has consented to be " made sin for us."
despise the shame of others. He,sught the greatness of God's house, and not his own wealth, and the Lord prospered him whithersoever he went. As David would be only a servant, the Lord would make him honorable and prosperous; and even his mistakes savor of his virtues. It is his impatience to be serving, that leads to his errors touching both the carriage of the ark, and the building of the house. No doubt he was to be blamed, for in those matters he had not waited on the counsel of the Lord, as he had been wont to do; but this came from his desire to be doing service for God. He thought, to be sure, that in these things he must be right. He trusted his heart in them, and therefore did foolishly (Prov. 28:2626He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered. (Proverbs 28:26)); but still his errors savor of that which was characteristically " David," being connected in his mind with desire to be in service for the Lord and His people. (v.-x.)
All this indeed is excellent, but all this does not make out a well fought fight, and a stainless victory for David. All is not over even yet; such holy beginnings as these are not everything. The strength of the summer sun is still to try this promise of the spring. He that girdeth on his armor, must not boast as he that putteth it off. " Ye have need of patience," is the word, and so we shall find it even here with David. (xi.)
It was the time, we read, when kings went forth to battle. (xi. 1.) But David the king tarries at Jerusalem, and that sets him at once in the flesh. He was not where the Spirit could own him, but has chosen his own way. It may seem to be a small thing, but it is enough for the enemy of his soul. It is only, one might say, a tarrying in the city when he should have been in the field of battle. But the little foxes spoil the vines, we read, " for the vines themselves are tender," and this beginning may account for any result. Soft relaxing habits quickly come in, for the next moment we see him, instead of having girded the sword upon his thigh, lying on his bed at eventide. The outposts had been left unguarded, and the very citadel becomes an easy spoil for the enemy. Nothing could do for him now but to arise and shake himself, like Samson, in the strength of Lord. But, like Samson, he appears as though he had already betrayed the secret of the
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Lord. And all because he got into the way of his own heart. He was drawn away by his own lusts and enticed; and lust was soon to conceive sin, and sin to bring forth death. Jerusalem, beloved, was David's place for himself, when the field of battle was God's place for him; and little as that may seem, it is enough to lead to adultery. " Lord," may we all say, "it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps."
But it is not merely one lust that enters by this door and riots in David's veins, for love of his fair name in the world now proves just as much a lust in him as the desire of his eye. The one led him to adultery with Bath-sheba, the other goads him to the murder of Uriah. He had no thirst after Uriah's blood, but rather con• trives expedients to preserve it, and to that end will do all but surrender his place and reputation among men. He sends to the field of battle to fetch him home to his wife, and thus to be a covert for his sin; and when that will not do, his subtle and uneasy heart devises to make Uriah drunk that he may still accomplish his end, and use him as a vail under which to hide his own iniquity. Nor is it till all these schemes were baffled, and righteousness in Uriah refuses to be so used in the service of sin in David, that David sacrifices him to his lust. To his love of the world he sacrifices Uriah now, as he had just before sacrificed Bath-sheba to the desire of his eye. And he will sacrifice even his nation to the same. He will so order it that the army of Israel may be defeated, as well as the blood of Uriah be shed before the walls of Rabbah, rather than that his good name should be made a scandal. All must go rather than David hazard that. Just as Pilate afterward. He was Cwsar's'friend, the world's friend, and rather than hazard any breach in that friendship Jesus must die. Sad thus to tell it, David and Pilate are found together. There was no more thirst for innocent blood in Pilate, than there was in David; but there was the same love of his credit in the world in David, as there was in Pilate. Pilate as well as David can try many devices to preserve the innocent blood and the world for himself at the same time, but David as well as Pilate will give up the one for the other if both cannot be retained together.
It is sad thus to class David and Pilate together. But flesh is flesh in whomsoever fout.d. But David had now to prove that " sin when it is perfected bringeth forth death." And well is it for us when we prove that here, through the Holy Ghost, and do not wait to prove it by the judgment of God by and bye. So was it now with David. Adultery, murder, and falsehood had perfected the sin, and now came the bitterness of his soul. He takes the sentence of death in himself. " His bones wax old, and his moisture is turned into the drought of summer." (Psa. 32) Death within was consuming him as a moth fretting a garment. There was no strength of grace as yet to confess the sin, but the life within was sensitive of the wound it had received. The spirit felt the grief it had been put to, but David kept silence and did not tell out his shame as yet, for guile was still in the spirit. (Psa. 32) The voice of a prophet must call forth confession; but when it does come forth it is indeed of a divine quality, for it is not merely the trespass against Uriah that his soul is conscious of, and his lips confess, but he sees his sin in the light of God's glory. And it is there, beloved, we always see it when we see it aright; it is there we divinely know what sin is. " I have sinned against the Lord," said David; and with this apprehension he utters, " against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." (Psa. 51) Before this confession the spirit had its wound within and it was intolerable. But this confession perfects his conversion, and then he was able to teach sinners the ways of the Lord, as Peter after he was converted could strengthen his brethren. When he had learned the blessedness of grace abounding over sin, he could present himself to all other poor sinners as the warrant of their confidence in the Lord. " For this," says he, " shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found." (Psa. 32) Like Paul he is set forth a pattern of all long-suffering, and like Peter he knows the restoring of a soul that had erred from the ways of righteousness.
In the striking style of scripture, we now read, after David had accomplished his sin, " the thing that David had done displeased the Lord." There is no long account of. God's anger, but this
tells us of his mind towards the sin of his servant. But if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive them, and so we find it here. " I have sinned against the Lord" says David. " The Lord has put away thy sin," answers the prophet. (xii.)
But acceptance into God's favor, always puts us into one interest with God's honor in the world; and from the moment of our accept-ance through His grace, we are to be the servants of His glory. The moment we rest as sinners, we begin our labor as saints. By faith, we rest as sinners, knowing the virtue of the blood of Jesus for the full repose of the conscience before God; but from thence we labor as only in the prospect of the rest that is ours as saints. We become the servants of God's glory when we are made free through God's grace. And so here. David had been just led to his rest as a sinner-" The Lord has put away thy sin;" but now he must serve God's glory as a sinner brought near. As the name of God had been reproached through David, David must now bear the reproach too; and God will show His entire separation from the sin of His servant, and before all men measure his former work into his bosom. The child that Bath-sheba had borne him must die; as his sword had slain Uriah, the sword now shall not depart from his house; and that which he had done to the shame of others, and done it secretly, others should now do to his shame in the sight of the sun.
It is in connection with all this, that Absalom is introduced to us. He is to be made the rod in the Lord's hand for the chasten-ing of David; a rod, too, taken out of his own stem, his own child; as the Lord by Nathan had just said to him, " behold I will raise up evil'against thee out of thine own house." Absalom meant not so, like the Assyrian afterward. (Isa. 10:77Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few. (Isaiah 10:7).) The Assyrian was to have a commission from the Lord against the hypocritical nation, but in his heart he thinks only of the spoil and the prey. Absalom is now to serve his own lusts, but God will use him for the renewing of His servant in holiness.
We need not particularly consider the circumstance which is made to introduce Absalom to us. The sin of Amnon, and the sorrows of Tamar, had their purpose, and could well have been
used in God's grace to keep poor David in lively recollection of his own sin and sorrow. It was a voice " in his own house" that must have spoken in thunder to him. Blood and uncleanness were staining his own children under his own eye. Tamar's virgin gar-ment was now rent, a sore remembrance of the stain upon him-self; and Amnon's blood was shed, awakening the voice of Uriah's blood in his ear from the earth. But we need not more particularly look at this. Absalom was Tamar's brother, and the son of David by a daughter of the king of Geshur (2 Sam. 3:33And his second, Chileab, of Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite; and the third, Absalom the son of Maacah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur; (2 Samuel 3:3)); but we have nothing of hirn till now, when he appears at once before us the subtle and willful one, whose heart and eye were full only of their own devices and objects, to reach which appears to be all his care. Amnon's wrong to his sister had raised a deadly fire in his heart, which two full years had no power to quench; but his crafty soul must find the happiest vvay to let out his rage on its victim. The fire burns as though it had been kindled but yester-day, and his subtlety devises a sure passage for it. It is all of Satan. The guile of the serpent ministers to the fury of the lion, and Absalom plots the matter of the sheepshearing that he may get the blood of Amnon. David has some misgivings. How indeed could it be otherwise? Must he not, after all that he had done, and all that the prophet had said to him, have feared every stir in the house? For one of his own house was to bring the evil upon him. He does not like this sheepshearing feast which Absalom proposes. But he is pressed about it, and Amnon then goes, and falls before the treachery and sword of his brother. (xiii.)
Absalom by this had defiled the land, and forfeited his life. (Num. 35:3333So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it. (Numbers 35:33).) All that he can now do is to fly to strangers, for the land had no city of refuge for such an one. The avenger of blood might claim him of Bezer or of Kedesh. Ile had shed his brother's blood, and that cried for vengeance. But David was a man of affection. He had a heart that sought its indulgence in the relations and sympathies of human life, and being the man after God's own heart, he would have found his joy rather in the ministrations of grace, than in the exactions of righteousness. But Absalom had fled, for he was now debtor to that law of which
David was the guardian, for David held his throne on the terms of reading the law continually. (Deut. 17) What then, can now be done? David may mourn for the son slain, and for the son banished, but are not both equally lost to him?
Now Joab was, in modern language, a consummate politician. He was nephew to the king, and thus the king's honor was in some sense his honor, and that he knew and valued, and sought to retain; and therefore never seeks to disturb the throne as now settled' in the house of Jesse, his grandfather. He was content to be the second in the kingdom, for that his worldly wisdom told him he might be in safety, but more than that, he knew he could not seek without hazard. He would get both Abner and Amasa out of his way, when he thought they were intruding into that place which he had eyed for himself, but the first place he would leave with David, and therefore never conspires against him, but is ever watchful of his interest, ever ready to let David take the principal post of honor (xii. 28), and is even quicker than David himself (xxiv.) to discern and provide for the stability of the throne.
Such an one could not but be busy at such a moment as this. He knew the softness of David's heart, and easily calculated that any device to help him to bring back his banished child, would be acceptable, and to do this acceptable service to the king, and thus to have a fresh claim to be the second round his throne, sets Joab in motion now. He did not much care for Absalom's exile, but in some sense " he carried the bag and bare what was put therein."
But the case was a very difficult one, for David, as I have said, might love his•son and desire his return, but David was guardian of that law to which his son had exposed himself, and it was hard for Joab to contrive a way whereby David might let " mercy rejoice against judgment," and thus bring back his banished one.
" A_ wise woman" of Tekoah is, therefore, provided, whom Joab instructs in this matter. Perhaps we may not know the proper sense of that description of her, but it will shortly appear that she was wise indeed, and that too in the secrets of God Himself. She' feigns herself a mourner, and comes to the king with just such a tale of sorrow as must at once have caught his affections,
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and brought his own sorrow fully to mind. She tells him of her two sons, how one had slain the other in a quarrel, in a field, and that the kinsman was out against the manslayer, threatening to leave her a withered stump in the earth. David is surprised. Such matters should lie with the proper judges to determine between the avenger and the manslayer. (Num. 35) But David is surprised-nature speaks in him too quickly-the yearnings of nature move him, and he gives her a pledge three times assured that nothing shall befal her son. Then armed with this pledge, she more distinctly assails the heart of the king. She is willing to let the pledge be to Absalom the king's son, and not to her son, and would have it known that she had been all the while pleading for David's sorrow and not for her own.
But " wise woman" as she was, she had deeper resources than even these. She had reached David's heart, and got a pledge from the desire and heat of human affection, but she seeks now to reconcile his conscience to all this, and to let him learn that he had a title in God Himself, to let "mercy rejoice against judgment" to the guilty, as his soul desired, and as his lips had pledged. For all would be imperfect without this, for the king, as we have seen, was debtor to the law, and none could set it aside but He who established it. Samson, it is true, may marry a Philistine harlot, though the law denied all such commerce with any Gentile, when he has a dispensation from the Lawgiver. Gideon or Manoah may sacrifice on a rock, though the ordained place is elsewhere, if the Angel-Jehovah will stand by, and David himself may forsake the altar at Gibeon even for the threshing-floor of a Jebusite, when the God of grace meets him there. Now it is this principle of truth which this " wise woman" now brings to bear on the conscience, as her tale of woe had lately borne on the heart of the king. She pleads with David in behalf of Absalom, the very mercy of God in the gospel. She tells the king that he should fetch home his banished one, for says she, " we must needs die, and are as water spilled on the ground (i.e. good for nothing. See 1 Sam. 7:66And they gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured it out before the Lord, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned against the Lord. And Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpeh. (1 Samuel 7:6)), which cannot be gathered up again, neither cloth God respect any person, yet doth He devise means that His banished be not ex-
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pelled from Him." Here she brings God's own way before David. She pleads that law of liberty (James 2:1212So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. (James 2:12)) which rules even the heart of God Himself, in His dealings with poor sinners, the gospel of God's grace in which He righteously refuses to hear the law, and is just while the justifier of the guilty, having devised a way by which his banished ones return to him. Thus she pleads with his conscience, as she had before pleaded with his affections, and what can David do? Must he not give an answer in peace? Is he not satisfied? If the light of the gospel be thus by this wise woman brought to shine on him, must he not walk, and act in the light of it? Can he refuse to reflect it? This seems to be the way of her wisdom, and indeed it is strange and blessed. What a testimony this is I What a telling of the mystery of grace'. That which is no better than water spilled on the ground, is gathered up to be brought home to God Himself. (xiv.)
This that we are meditating on, is somewhat a neglected scripture. But it shows us that we may oftimes find some stray and rich kidneys of wheat in the distant corners of the Lord's granary. And this gospel in the Mouth of this unknown widow, this " wise woman of Tekoah," further shows us that Israel, even in their infant dispensation, had sweet truths to feed upon. From the beginning indeed the joy has been but one. " The woman's seed" was the king's highway cast up under the eye of faith, the known and published mystery, whereby God had devised to fetch home
His banished ones.
The king, however, seems not to be quite at ease. The pleading of our wise woman was as wise as it could have been. Nothing in its season could have been more perfect. But the king was the guardian of the law, and the softness of his heart had betrayed him into an act of grace by which he had undertaken to set the law aside, hut the thought seems to be lurking there, that he was debtor to the law. However according to the king's word, Absalom is brought home, but it is on terms of not seeing the king's face, and so he dwells two full years in Jerusalem apart from
David.
But he is still Absalom; wherever or however we see him he
is himself. His taste remains in him, and his scent is not changed, even though he had now returned from captivity. (Jer. 48:1111Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity: therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent is not changed. (Jeremiah 48:11).) He comes home the willful Absalom still, the servant of his own passions and of them only. " Who is lord over us," is the language of all his actings. His tongue was his own. " No God," says he, in his heart continually. All that can be said in any way of commendation is, like Saul before him, of his comeliness in the flesh. " In all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head, there was no blemish in him." We have no account of him beyond this of his beauty. His acts from first to last are enough to give him his right name and place before us, for in his own personal character, and in all in which it displays itself, Absalom is still the willful one. He is the Saul of his day, or the apostate seed of the serpent, and the agent of the dragon, the usurper, the proud one who consults only his own will, which most surely carries him forth into full and constant resistance of God and His people. Even favors have but little claim on him. He may send to Joab to whom he owed everything a second time, but beyond that small courtesy his heart owns no debt to him.
But the heart that is thus dead to the claims of kindness, finds it easy to entertain anything that Satan would propose. Thus, having exercised the rude strength of the lion in the corn fields of his friend, he is quite prepared to practice the guile of the serpent in the kingdom of his father. The one or the other must be the way of Absalom. The child of him that was a liar and a murderer from the beginning, he knows no other master. lie is Absalom, " the father of peace." But it is the peace of a deceiver. He comes in peaceably and takes the kingdom by flatteries. By good words and fair speeches he deceives the simple. He steals the hearts of his father's subjects, the people of the Lord and His anointed. Nothing can be more corrupt than all his ways, for
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he is the mere slave of his own evil desires, let them urge him as they may, or set his heart on work with whatever device they may. And he will use any means for his own ends. lie pretends the payment of a vow at Hebron, and takes with him two hundred men out of Jerusalem, to furnish as it might seem, the table at the sacrificial feast; but all this was only to further his design upon the throne of his father. His slanders of his father, and flatteries of the people, had already prepared the nation for his pretensions; and now he sends out spies from Hebron to declare him through the land, and all was too well in readiness for him, and speedily, therefore, the conspiracy was strong, and the people increased continually with him.
The Absaloms of every day have had their evil counselors. This has been already noticed in the case of Saul, and some of these confederacies were then traced. (See p..25.) Now we see it in the case of this apostate son of David. He gets Ahithophel to be with him: one who had stood among David's counselors, as he himself had stood among David's children. But the counselor joins the child: one who had eaten of David's bread, and another with whom David had taken sweet counsel, none other or less than they, must now be found together against him.
But all this gives occasion to one of the most affecting scenes in the history of God's people. I mean the history of David as a penitent. We know not whether the more to admire the beautiful workmanship of the Spirit of God in David, when suffering for righteousness, or when suffering for transgression. This I have before touched upon. We see him the martyr in the days of Saul, but then as led by the Spirit, reading a sweet lesson of instruction to us, showing all patience and all holy confidence in God; consenting to be hunted as a partridge in the mountains day after day, rather than take vengeance into his own hands, or lift himself
come up, and shall become strong with a small people. He shall enter peaceably even upon the fattest place of the province." (Dan. 11:21-2421And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honor of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries. 22And with the arms of a flood shall they be overflown from before him, and shall be broken; yea, also the prince of the covenant. 23And after the league made with him he shall work deceitfully: for he shall come up, and shall become strong with a small people. 24He shall enter peaceably even upon the fattest places of the province; and he shall do that which his fathers have not done, nor his fathers' fathers; he shall scatter among them the prey, and spoil, and riches: yea, and he shall forecast his devices against the strong holds, even for a time. (Daniel 11:21‑24).) This is like Absalom and his deeds. The flatterer who prevails by his deceit against the anointed One, the Prince of the covenant, and overflows Jerusalem, the fattest place of the province. This just suits him as though the Spirit had taken him for his theme, such kindredness is there between Absalom and the last great enemy of the Lord's anointed.
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up against the. Lord's anointed. (1 Samuel.) And so now, though the scene be changed, and we have David the penitent rather than David the martyr, yet all is of equal interest and value to us, under the forming hand of the Spirit of God. (2 Samuel.)
Thus, when in 1 Samuel, the testimony of his conscience was for him, he would gird himself with all the gladness in God that he could get. He put on the ephod, he ate the bread of the sanctuary, he had the prophet and the priest with him in exile, and he carried the sword of Goliath, sweet pledge as it was that no weapon formed against him could prosper. All this was his then, and he claimed it all with confidence, carrying within him his title to rejoice in spirit, though circumstances were against him, knowing full well that he might have all in God, though nothing in man. He ate the fruit of an unwounded conscience, the glad feast of the Lord's unclouded countenance. Indeed he dared not then to have eaten the bread of mourners. Could he surround the altar of God with tears? Could he fast while the bridegroom was with him?
But now in 2 Samuel, it is otherwise, for the testimony of his conscience was against him. He is now a sinner. It is sin that has found him out, and has brought him into remembrance before God, and it is not for such an one to keep holy day. He must bow his head and accept his punishment. And so he does, and brings forth fruit that was as much in season, as his previous harvest of joy and confidence had been in season. And in the same spirit of true repentance, he would be alone in the trouble. He would have Ittai his friend go back, and leave him to meet the sorrow alone, for it was he alone that had sinned and drawn out the hand of the Lord; but what had those sheep done? And still in the same spirit he sends back the ark and its priests, as having a joy for him that it did not become him now to taste. The ark, the presence of God, was David's best joy, but he was not entitled now to have it, and therefore he sends it home. All this was just the sorrow that became him now. " Carry back the ark of God," says he, " into the city; if I shall find favor in the eyes of the Lord, He will bring me again and show me both it and
His habitation; but if He thus say, I have no delight in thee, behold here am I, let him do to me as seemeth good to him." Nothing of joy was his at present. Let the ark go back to the city, to shed the gladness of its presence there, he will go forward to Mount Olivet with tears, and barefooted. He will eat nothing but the bread of mourners, arid know nothing but the sorrow of the bride-groom's absence. Surely this was godly sorrow working repent-ance. And beside all this, he will allow even the wicked to reproach him. Another Benjamite comes out against him to plague him sorely; one too whom he had never wronged, or done despite to, any more than to his kinsman Saul of old. But Shirnei comes out against him in this the day of his calamity, and reviles him, casting stones at him, and cursing him still as he goes. But David reviles not again. He hears the righteous rebukes of God in all this, and bows his head. God had given Shimei a commission to do this. What could David suffer more than David deserved, was the thought of the heart of our penitent. Therefore let Shimei, the unworthy and injurious Shimei, do or speak as he may, with David it is not Shimei but the Lord. (xv. xvi.)
All this was fruit meet for repentance. It was all perfect in season. But though thus silent as towards Shirnei, David in spirit judges that he may plead against Ahithophel, arid he says " 0 Lord, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness." And this desire the Lord allows, for He answers it by speedily confounding that evil counselor.*
The counsel which this apostate friend, and companion of David, counseled in those days, was as if a man had inquired at the oracle of God. But the Lord had now appointed to overthrow him. Absalom rejects his counsel, his word is passed by, and as his re-putation for wisdom in the state was everything to him, his
• In connection with Shimei and Ahithophel, David utters Psa. 38 xxxix. lv. cix. and others. Ahithophel and Judas are both found in Psa. 109 Indeed Ahithophel was the Judas of his day, being the guide or counselor of them who were wronging David, and both of them " fall headlong in the midst," or meet judgment from the Lord in their death; and they are both the types of the false prophet, or evil counselor who is to wait on the beast, or the willful king, the true Absalom in the last days.
household gods are thus now stolen from him, his " good thing" is gone, and he sinks down a defiled dishonored ruin.
What a lesson to us all, beloved. What did anything avail Haman, while Mordecai sat at the gate? What would not Saul give up, if he could but be honored before the people? 0 the solemn lesson which all this reads to us. Have we, beloved, anything that if it were touched, our life would be touched, or is our life so bound up with Jesus, that we could stand the wreck of all beside? What treasures are they which we are laying up day by day? what vineyard is it that we are cultivating? Where is the ruling passion fixed, brethren? Where is the current of the heart flowing, what point is it basting towards? Does Jesus draw its desires, and awaken its intelligence, or what of this world is its master-spring? It is well, beloved, to put these challenges to our poor hearts, and try them thus in the presence of our blessed Lord. " When Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died." (xvii.)
And Absalom the king is soon to be like this counselor of his kingdom, for the beast and his false prophet perish together. But there was no prayer in the mouth of David against Absalom, as there had been against Ahithophel. How very striking is this, as indeed is every expression that we get of his heart all through these scenes. Nothing can be more perfect than this drawing by the divine hand. I have noticed this already in some features, and here again we trace it. He numbers the people, setting captains over hundreds and thousands of them, and rnaking Joab, Abishai, and lttai the chiefs. But he would fain go forth himself, for it was his sin which had brought all this mischief on the land, and David was of too noble a heart, to let the mischief find any in the foreground but himself; and beside, he has his desire on Absalom still, and judges that his presence might help to shield him, for David was of too soft a heart, to disown the feelings of a father even towards a rebel son.
But his people will not hear of this. What a loved man he
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was! And deservedly so, I am well assured: one, I judge, of the most attractive men that ever lived, who had qualities which could well command, and then detain beyond almost any other, the hearts and desires of all who knew him. " Thou shalt not go forth," the people answered, " for if we flee away they will not care for us, neither if half of us die will they care for us, but now thou art worth a thousand of us, therefore now it is better that thou succor us out of the city." As afterward, when he was hazarding his life in.battle with the Philistines, his men sware to him, saying "thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that thou quench not the light of Israel." (xxi-17.) And indeed he was their light their gladness, and their leader, the honored and loved one of his day, in favor with God and man. But he now bows to the word of his people, and though his heart is still towards Absalom, he goes not out, but, " deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with. Absalom," is the last command he gives his captains on sending them forth to the battle.
With a heart stored with such affections, " he sits between the gates to wait the solemn issue," and the captains and their armies go to the battle of the wood of Ephraim. Victory or defeat would be much the same to David. No result but must tell him whence it came, and be armed with a sad remembrance of that other battle in which another had fallen, fallen too, in the judgment of God, as one murdered by his hand, though he was all the while dallying in the city. But the Lord is but refining, and in no wise destroying him. His chastening, blessed be his name, is salvation. For though He, is jealous for his holy name, he pities His people. The battle is hot for a moment in the wood of Ephraim, but the Lord is in it, as before at Gibeon; and as there the hailstones, so here the wood, devours more than the sword. There was a great slaughter that day of more than two hundred thousand. All is confusion and utter destruction in the ranks of the apostate, and Absalom is caught in the boughs of a great oak, and is taken up between the heaven and the earth, a spectacle to both. He is made a show of openly, for " he that is hanged is accursed of God," " and cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." (xviii.)
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Here was the end of another apostate, a more fearful one even than Saul. The paper on " Saul," to which this is in some sort kindred, has shown us that that evil king of Israel was a type of the wicked one in the latter day, who is to do according to his will, to magnify himself above God, and hold nothing in honor or desire but himself and his own way. Absalom in his day, as I have already observed, is type of the same wicked one. They are different samples of the same last great enemy of God and His people, who is to fill up the measure of human iniquity, and then call down the penal fire of God on all the corruption of the earth. But there are features of all this self-will and wickedness in Absalom, that exceed even what we saw in Saul. Thus, Saul had been produced by the desire of the revolted heart of the nation. He was the man after the nation's heart. But Absalom generated his own evil preeminence. It was not the nation's, but his own desire that brings him forth. And there is more of the violation of all the laws of nature in Absalom than in Saul. Absalom is the profane as well as the wicked prince (Ezek. 21:2525And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end, (Ezekiel 21:25)). With him it is not simply unbridled wickedness, but that profane wickedness that could trample on all the claims even of nature. Heady, high-minded, disobedient to parents, unthankful, without natural affection, the very characteristics of the perilous times in the last days, are more awfully developed in Absalom, than perhaps in any other even of the same rank of persons in scripture.
It is not merely a corrupted, but an usurped kingdom that we see in the hand of Absalom; and that is another advance in iniquity upon the times of Saul. And still further I may observe, that Absalom seems entirely to disclaim the Lord all through the day of his usurpation. There is not one thought of God in the kingdom then. Ahithophel's counsel, but no counsel from the Lord,-the strength of his thousands, but no strength in the Lord, appears then. And as there is not one thought of God to stir his conscience, neither is there one thought or softening movement of heart because of his father's sorrow. Even the counsel to smite David alone pleased Absalom well (xvii). But Saul could weep at times, and confess righteousness in David; but Absalom's soul
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has nothing like a gracious visitation even for a single moment. He never, if I may so say, even thinks of saying, " I have sinned," as Saul does. For what does Absalom care for sin? " Tush, God does not see," that is the language of his uncircumcised heart and lips from beginning to end.
Nor is there one Jonathan to relieve the entire darkness of the scene, as there had been in the court and camp of Saul. There was not one single point of relief with Absalom, and all that was confederate with him. It is all the unmixed darkness of an evil and apostate hour. And the Lord can in no wise own him. He gives him no commission all through the days of his usurpation. He could not. He had entrusted Saul with the slaughter of the Amalekites, but Absalom is in no wise known to Him. He is his own, and none but his own, from beginning to end.
Such was Absalom,-one of the darkest pictures of human nature that we are given to look at in the word of God, and such is now his end. He hangs in the tree,-another Lot's wife to be had in constant remembrance. He had taken and reared up for himself a pillar in the king's dale, and called it after his own name, because he had no son to keep his memorial alive in the earth. But the Lord was now giving him another and a far different memorial-a memorial in shame and not in glory. His body was cast into a pit in the wood, and a great heap of stones was laid on him. All his glory was thus tarnished. He was hung by the hair of his head, which had been his boast in the flesh; and instead of a pillar to his own name, he is made a pillar to us-a witness of the shame and ruin of apostacy.-" The wise shall inherit glory, but shame shall be the promotion of fools."
This overthrow of Absalom was like the loss of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, or as the fall of Saul on Mount Gilboa, or as by and bye, the ruin of that man who having planted the tabernacle of his palaces in the glorious holy mountain shall then come to his end, and none shall help him.
But here let us mark it, that Moses and the congregation of Israel may sing " the Lord has triumphed gloriously; and Deborah and Barak in their turn may likewise sing, " so let all
thine enemies perish, 0 Lord," for songs belong to a merry heart, to those who have the testimony of their conscience with them. But there could be no music in David's heart now. That heart was no sanctuary of praise now. How could David at this time enter the gates, and praise the Lord? Those gates open only to the righteous nation that keep the truth. God had appointed salvation for walls and bulwarks, and praise for gates; but David must be silent there, because he had sinned against the Lord. 0 dear brethren, that we may be faithful to our own joys; that we may so carry ourselves before the Lord our God, as to be able to run along with the saints in their prosperity, and with the chosen in their gladness, and know no check in our spirit, as poor David now knows in this feast-day of the Lord.
No: David has no music at this time. Absalom had fallen, and the blood of Uriah was crying from the ground afresh in David's ears. It was not meet that he should make merry and be glad. He could not eat of the sacrifices, for such and such things had befallen him (Lev. 10:1919And Aaron said unto Moses, Behold, this day have they offered their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord; and such things have befallen me: and if I had eaten the sin offering to day, should it have been accepted in the sight of the Lord? (Leviticus 10:19)). Victory was defeat, and life was death, to David. His path is still the perfect path of the penitent; and thus he now goes to his chamber rather than to his throne; and as he goes, he weeps, and says, " 0 my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, 0 Absalom, my son, my son!"
Better is it to have our path ordered by the Spirit within, though it may be a path of heaviness, than allow it to be determined by mere circumstances around. Thus was it now with David. The Spirit of God was leading him along, and he shall find life and peace at the end, though his sin had made the way dark and dreary for the present. But his sorrow must be all his own. The people had earned a victory, and were entitled to its rewards, and the king's sorrow must not be allowed to tarnish their joy. Joab therefore recalls David to his people and his people's claims upon him, and David is awakened and goes forth to take his place in the scene again. He arises and sits in the gate; all the people come before him, and the tide of their desires return to him, and all his enemies are put to shame (xix).
Thus was the restoration in happy progress; but there arises even after this, a little delay and difficulty in setting all in order, for the mischief had been great. Hence the matter of Sheba, the son of Bichri, another Benjamite (xx).
But the Lord returns to him in full reconciliation. He is again inquired of by him; and in a day of public calamity, David learns that no sin of his was then in remembrance, but the sin of Saul and his bloody house. And this was for the healing of David's wounded spirit. The goodness of God had led him to repentance; and no sting was to be left behind, no remembrance of all that had now passed was to remain, save where our sin, beloved, is ever to be remembered, in the increased care and diligence and watchfulness of our own spirit (xxi).
This was very gracious. But even more than this, is preparing to witness to David what God was; for in the same grace and tender-kindness, the good Lord, in due season, prepares a song for David, wherein the Spirit leads him to forget all but the divine mercies,-" David spake the words of this song in the day that the Lord had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul." It is Saul that is here called to mind and not Absalom. Nothing is remembered but the injuries of an evil and unoffended enemy, and all the tale of sin and shame that followed is forgotten. David sings like a " virgin soul." The Spirit recalls nothing that could have checked the song, and the flow of his heart in the joy of it; for when the Lord forgives He forgets also. At the end of the wilderness (though the Lord had disciplined and rebuked Israel by the way), it was only this: " He bath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither bath he seen perverseness in Israel" (xxii).
There was something very gracious and exalted in the Lord putting this song into David's lips. But we are to see greater things than even these, for after this song which thus rehearses the goodness of God and his rich triumphant grace, we read " the last words of David." In them the Spirit leads him to trace the moral of his whole history. His commission as King of Israel had been, to rule "in the fear of God," and thus be as " the light of
the morning" to his people. But this had not been so, and therefore his house was for the present not to be established; but the Spirit leads him still onward, to look above present failure to One who should thus rule and thus establish his house forever, and in whom these mercies of God to him should be sure and abiding mercies, when also the sons of the alien, the sons of Belial, the seed of all evil doers, should be utterly consumed in the decreed place, thrust away as unprofitable pricking thorns. To this, as to his rest, the Spirit of God leads David, and these are his " last words" (xxiii).
Thus, in these three chapters, we get the full reconciliation between God and his servant, attested by three witnesses. The matter of the Gibeonites-the song-the last words of David-all tell us this. And thus we have seen the way of David, but also the end of the Lord. " The man who was raised up on high," " the anointed of the God of Jacob," " the sweet Psalmist of Israel," is set up to celebrate in his own person and history, the shining ways of God. Sin had reigned unto death, but grace had also reigned, through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord.
Here we end the path of David through the 1st and 2nd books of Samuel, or through the times of " Saul" and " Absalom." It is Grace which God has been exhibiting in this history, and exhibiting it in all its blessed fullness.-We see its early dawn in the election of David, when men were despising him (1 Sam. 16:1111And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him: for we will not sit down till he come hither. (1 Samuel 16:11)). -We then see its brighter and fuller shinings all through the days of the trial and sorrow of righteousness, for grace then was watching over its object, lest any fowler should hurt him, keeping him,
• Chapter xxiv. which comes after these "last words" of David, may be road as something supplemental to the history of David. But the scene that it records is in the most perfect harmony with all that we have been here looking at. For it shows that the house and worship of the God of Israel was to be established on the ground of "mercy rejoicing against judgment," just as we have now seen the person and throne of the king of Israel are established on that ground also (see vol. i. page 320); on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
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though hunted like a bird in the mountains, night and day (1 Sam. 18-31). Then, grace establishes this elect and favored one in honor and peace above the malice and power of all his foes (2 Sam. 5). At the end grace shows its brightest glory, and does its noblest and holiest work,-it restores this elect and honored one, when, in a dark and evil hour, he had turned, from the ways of righteousness and peace (2 Sam. 11-23). Then did it rise to its noon-day strength. Its early dawn had been sweet, the course which it then ran, as in the heavens, was bright and steady, I3ut its full glory now broke out, when tainted David, like a " virgin soul," sings his joys and triumphs in God.
These were the treasures of Grace;.and God was making a show of them, to His praise and our comfort, in David. Glory comes forth to shine afterward, in like manlier, in Solomon; but grace thus beforehand, had told of herself in David. It was grace electing, grace preserving, grace exalting, and grace restoring, that the lips of the sinner might be occupied with a theme of blissful and everlasting praise.
But there is one other thing that we have to notice still.-As grace was thus displayed towards David, so was it displayed in David. It was the great rule of his life, giving character to his dealings with others, as it had thus given character to God's deal-ings with him. Being called to inherit blessing, he renders bless-ing. Thus, when reviled, he reviled not again (1 Sam. 17:2929And David said, What have I now done? Is there not a cause? (1 Samuel 17:29)). Afterward when persecuted, he threatened not, but suffered it (1 Sam. 18.-xxxi). In every scene in which he is called to take a part, either in action or in suffering (save where he is turned aside by Satan for awhile, as we have been seeing), it is not himself that he is seeking or honoring, but others that he is serving in grace and kindness. The death of Saul and Jonathan make easy way for David to the throne; but his own advantage is not the circumstance in that event which governs his thoughts about it, he sees only the dishonor of the Lord's anointed in it, and therefore weeps, instead of triumphs, over the day of Mount Gilboa. So in the fall of Abner and Ishbosheth, which was the quenching of the last light of SauHn Israel, it is only the sorrow
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and fasting of David that we hear of. It was not his own honor or advantage, that even then determined the state of his mind. -And so, when fully settled in the throne, he is the man of grace and kindness still, remembering in that hour of glory those who had been the friends of his affliction and exile, and making it his care and business to find out some of the house of Saul to whom he might show " the kindness of God" (2 Sam. 1-10). He would be an imitator or follower of God, as a dear child; for what a God-like desire was that, " Is there not yet any of the house of Saul that I might show the kindness of God unto him?" Saul's house had deserved evil, and not good, from David; but this made David's kindness to them, God's kindness, for " God commendeth His love toward us, in that when we were yet sinners Christ died for us."-And in the same grace afterward, David refuses to judge Shitnei (2 Sam. 16 xix). The thought of the sons of Zeruiah was loathsome to David's soul. " What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah?" says he to them, when they were for exacting righteousness. They understood not grace, but David understood nothing else. Mercy had rejoiced over judgment towards himself in the heart of the Lord, and nothing but the same can or must be found in the heart of David towards Shimei or the worst of his enemies.
Thus the history of David, through these 1st and 2nd books of Samuel, or through these times of "Saul" and "Absalom," tells us beloved, vvhat God's ways are, and what our ways should be. As his ways to us are in grace, so should be our ways to one another and to all men. in " this present evil world" of sin and sorrow we are learning God's grace to perfection, in our own souls, daily, and should let others learn it in our walk and intercourses with them in like manner daily. By and bye in the shining " world to come," we shall learn glory in the same perfection. For David was fol-lowed by Solomon, and the God of all grace has called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, that He Himself may be our boast and song, and satisfying praise forever and ever.
Dearly beloved, in the joy and liberty of the precious and perfect love which is ours now, let us pray that we might abound
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in the hope of the kingdom that is to be ours also, and walk above a world in which our blessed Master could not rest.-Grant this to all thy saints, 0 Lord, for Jesus our Savior's sake! Amen.