“AND they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honor God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?” What a picture of man and his ways is brought to our remembrance by the invitation “Reign thou over us”! As we saw last month, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, of feeding five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, they would “fain come and take him by force, to make him King.” It was so suited to their carnal thoughts to have One for King who could feed them by his power, that, could he have stooped to meet the desires of the flesh and of the mind (a thing, it is needless to say, impossible to him), they would gladly, nay, by force if needful, have exalted him over themselves. Nor was it altogether without some show of religiousness. “This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.” To own him the prophet that should come, because he had fed them, satisfied their natural hunger, given them a meal, was just like man. But as the sent One of God, as divinely presented to Israel as their Messiah, proving his claim in every gracious way, and manifesting Him who sent him fully, he was rejected. “We will not have this man to reign over us.” Not all the divine perfection and glory of his walk and ways could win their hearts. To these they were blind, or, forced to see them, hated him. A solitary meal outweighed all his moral beauty in their estimation; that could stir them up to make him King, this to crucify him! How utterly base! And yet it was for such that Jesus came to die “for this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation” —as assuredly it is, and the more we consider what it involves, the more our hearts will love him — “that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” It was for this he came: “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.” Most gracious will! most blessed subjection!
But first he must be presented to Israel as Messiah, only to bring out in result the utter depravity of man’s heart and nature, and his enmity against God. For surely the bare fact that men would have made him King by force for a meal of bread, yet cast him out, revile, and crucify him for his divine perfections, needs no comment. He would not, in the words of the parable, “leave his fatness,” wherewith by him God and man were honored, “to go and be promoted” in man’s way, and by human hands for human ends, and so the cry is, “Crucify him, crucify him! “It does the heart good to contrast man’s ways with HIS; it humbles us, and wins the soul to him. We can never dwell too much upon himself. To linger round the path he trod, and note each blessed footprint of the way he walked so patiently, is an employment those who have learned to love him for himself delight in. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” And what a tale it tells — that man, seeing this, and because of it, cast him out, and killed the Prince of life! Yet so it was, although willing for a single meal, and in hope of more, to make him King, and trying to hide even from himself the utter baseness of the motive, by that rag of religiousness, “his is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world”! Fain would he in his gracious love have been as an olive tree to them — pouring forth from his own fullness that abounding grace and blessing which is as the “oil that makes man’s face to shine” (Psa. 104:1515And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart. (Psalm 104:15)). But they had no heart for it. Yet he cannot give them up. He will maintain love’s strife to do them good, although it be an unceasing struggle between love and hatred to the end. In spite of themselves, in face of all opposition, opprobrium, contempt, and violence, he will not only present, but again and again bestow, the oil of gladness. From end to end of the land of Israel, from one side of Jordan to the other; from Phoenicia to Gadara he went, in untiring grace, to do them good. Rejected in one place, he does but go to another. If sane men, or those who think themselves so, will not have the divine unction, he will seek the furious demoniac on the desolate shores of Gadara, draw him by his power to his feet, and, while he with mad lips cries, “What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not “he will cast out the legion, deliver the racked and wretched subject of their malignant power, and set him at his own feet,” clothed, and in his right mind. If the owners of the lost swine will drive him from them, he will not leave them without a witness of his grace; love lingers round them yet, though they prefer their swine to all he had to give so lavishly: “Go home,” says he to the happy object of his delivering power, “Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.” Blessing yet may come upon them, though they pray him to depart, and expel him from their coasts. And who shall tell how many will in “that day” rise from the tombs of ruined Gadara to bless his name?
Offering the first-fruits of his victory over Satan to the despised Nazarenes, he is led to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong; yet in unwearying patience he goes again, and, if he can there do no mighty work because of their unbelief, he will thrust blessing on a few sick folk who cannot get out of his way.
Lingering near his beloved Jerusalem, to pour out the oil of gladness there to the utmost, he arouses the enmity and opposition of the pharisees, and, because he would in meekest grace avoid occasion of offense to them, he departs into Galilee. But how terrible the truth which this brings out! The manifestation of divine grace to men gives occasion of offense! They will not have God Yet, if compelled to leave them for awhile, he must needs return again and again, although they seek to kill him on each occasion (John 5:16 7:1, 25; 8:59; 10:31-3959Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by. (John 8:59)
31Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. 32Jesus answered them, Many good works have I showed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? 33The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. 34Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? 35If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; 36Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? 37If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. 38But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him. 39Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped out of their hand, (John 10:31‑39)). Meanwhile, driven from his beloved people, he seeks the lonely outcast by Sychar’s well. If Israel will not have the “oil that makes man’s face to shine,” he will seek the utterly wretched — perchance such an one will not refuse the precious gift. He must pour out blessing somewhere, though it should cost him a weary journey of many a mile beneath a burning sun to attain his gracious purpose, and reach the place of meeting at the right moment, when one who sought to shun all eyes would creep to the well at the hottest hour of noon. Yes, “he must needs go through Samaria.” But who shall tell out all that is conveyed in that one little sentence, “needs must,” and the mingled joy and sorrow of that long weary journey? Who shall express the love and yearning compassion of his heart for his beloved city, on which now his back perforce was turned, and the anguish of such love rejected? A mother who has left an only and beloved son, with whom she has vainly pleaded to save him from a course of ruin, which she well knows will speedily bring him body and soul to destruction, may go on her weary way with bowed head and bleeding heart, and find her sorrow grow heavier as the distance lengthens but even a mother’s heart cannot feel for an only son as his heart felt for Israel. He could truly say, “There is no sorrow like my sorrow.” For must not infinite love rejected, be an infinite pang? But if he must needs go from the people that he loved, because they would not have the divine fullness that dwelt in him, there was one poor sinner whose heart knew what rejection was, and he, the rejected One, would seek her out. That she had had five husbands, does not necessarily imply that she had been five times a widow: that would have been no fault. The practice of putting away was, and still is, common in that country and, from the way in which the Lord alludes to her five husbands, and the effect the allusion has upon her, the implication is that she had been five times rejected in succession. And now, degraded to the miserable position of a concubine, a shame and dishonor to her sex, without one heart to feel for her, one arm to lean upon, lonesome and despised by all (for the very men led by her instrumentality to Christ, express contempt for her, verse 42), she creeps to the well in the noontide heat, when, as she hoped, none would see her. But there was an omniscient eye of infinite compassion upon her that she knew not of, a heart of love which, sinner as she was, yearned over her, and, wonderful to tell, could sympathize. But from what opposite causes — opposite as the poles, antagonistic as light and darkness, good and evil, holiness and sin! If she were rejected, an outcast, and despised, it was without doubt for some grievous fault, perchance some persistent vice or vices. But he was “despised, and rejected of men” for his divine perfections, because he was “God manifest in the flesh” —because man” would not have God. What a meeting this by Sychar’s well! Two hearts were there — the One all purity and grace, light, love, and holiness, divine, yet truly human; the other — who shall paint its blackness and defilement? And he, the rejected One, had sought her out, that the very cause of his rejection might become to her the wellspring of eternal consolation. She was in the dust; but, vile as she was, he would raise her up, and pour upon her head and heart that “oil of gladness” Israel had despised. For him indeed she had no more heart than those from whom he had been driven; but, while they were well content with their condition, and felt no need of that which he so yearned to lavish on them, she was wretched.; deserved shame had covered her face. Her misery had a voice for him — a voice that reached his tender heart, even in Judea, so that “he must needs go through Samaria,” that he might lift her from her self-wrought degradation, and “make her face to shine.” And so it was. And when at last his patient grace had wrought its blessed work, and he had revealed himself to her, she who once shunned her fellows by the well, could go before all Sychar, and say, “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” Occupied with him, she can afford to lose sight of man’s judgment; it is enough for her heart that HE has received her, though knowing all. God owns her confession of his Christ, and the oil of gladness poured on her is made a source of blessing to those around her. “Many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did.” “And many more believed because of his own word,” and thus, though driven from Judea, and rejected by his own, he found a way to pour out blessing, and a “meat to eat” that even his disciples knew not of. For it was his meat to do his Father’s will; and the joy of it so filled his gracious heart, that he forgot to eat his necessary food.