In glancing backward along the line which has marked the course of man from the, fall, it is evident how immense is the power of evil. Nothing surpasses it, save the patience of God that bears with it. From the expulsion of Adam from Eden to the cross of Christ, one word gives the character of each age of wickedness, as compared with the preceding—worse. Evil as nature is, does it account for all the perversity and rebellion which the Bible records? Nay, the flesh is not the sole reason. There is not one good thing in it, and therefore a most fitting means for Satan to show his enmity against God, which took the shape of hindering, if possible, the coming of the Seed of the woman, which was to bruise his head. This is the arch-foe, and man, haying become his captive, is a well-adapted instrument in Satan's hand to carry out his plans, Satan not more willing to tempt than man to be tempted—indeed, this antagonism of Satan against God is the key to the continued opposition of man to God. He was first the tempter, now the master, of man, and ever since he has tried to nullify the sentence pronounced upon him by God in the garden. When there were but two sons, he made one murder the other, as if he would destroy the race at the beginning. Who the Seed was, or when He might appear, Satan knew not; so he begins at once: Abel is killed—would God permit the murderer to live? Yea, though a special curse came upon him; men multiplied. His next great attempt was to contaminate the whole race, which of necessity caused the deluge. There was one righteous man found, and he became a fresh starting-point for the race. If the flood had cleansed the earth from the defilement of the antediluvian world, it did not change or purge the heart. The tide of iniquity still rushed onward. At Satan's suggestion, man, to exalt himself, began to build Babel. It was Satan's craft, that himself might be worshipped, and then, or soon after, the debasing slavery of Satan was seen in man making, and then worshipping, idols.
When God called out Abram, and separated him from his old associations, then Satan knew that the One who was to bruise his head would be in that line, for God had given Abraham the promise that in his seed the earth should be blessed. Hence the special effort of Satan was always against this race, and the nations outside are comparatively left alone, save that, as in Sodom, he took pleasure in stirring up the vilest abominations. Where God worked for the accomplishment of His purposes of grace, there Satan put forth his energy to hinder. No doubt he well knew the meaning of the promise made to Abraham. To corrupt the seed, he seduced Abraham to go down into Egypt, to tell a lie about his wife, and thus be brought Sarah into Pharaoh's house. He attempted this again, and for the third time tried it upon Isaac. God, in His watchful care, frustrated the aim of Satan. When he learns that Jacob is the chosen one, lie stirs up Esau with murderous resolve. It was his constant aim to make that people forfeit the promised blessing. This is seen in Dinah's case, first to mingle the chosen race with the idolatrous Gentile; then, that failing, to extirpate them by the Gentile's sword, through revenge for the treachery of Simeon and Levi. We know how God made them a means for greater blessing for Jacob, and Satan is again foiled in his purpose. When the family are in Egypt, he forms a master-plan to destroy them all. God overrules this, and makes it an immense step toward the accomplishment of His purpose. Satan attempts to crown all his previous efforts by causing the king to command all the male children to be cast into the river. “Let us deal wisely with them,” said the blinded king. It was very shortsighted wisdom on Pharaoh's part, to plan the destruction of a nation of laborers. How manifest that it was not even human policy! for by it he would impoverish his own nation. It was Satanic wisdom, his attempt to render abortive the declared purpose of God. It was a grand, consummately skilful device. If he could have succeeded then! There was only one reason why it did not, could not, succeed: Satan pitted himself against God, and, whatever the wisdom of Satan, or the folly of man, not one of the words of God can fail. God made Pharaoh's suicidal decree subservient to His will. His wise and controlling hand held both the motive and the action, and made the wickedness of man to praise Him. Satan blinded the king to his own interest, but Satan himself was blind, and, as always, his malice defeats his own end.
So, all through the subsequent history of the people, the hand of Satan is visible. When all was grace, they murmured; when under law, they were disobedient; when in the land, they worshipped the gods of the surrounding nations. They rejected God as their King, and they had one according to their desire. This is Matthew's second period, and is as marked by their perversity as the previous; for very soon ten tribes rebel, and refuse Rehoboam, and the kingdom, as such, is ruined. A remnant is preserved to the house of David, which exceed in iniquity those who had been carried away by the Assyrian, and they are carried to Babylon. Then begins Matthew's third period. At the appointed time a remnant returns, and a new aspect is given to their trial. This returned remnant sink deeper in iniquity, and thus prove that, after all the warning they have had, they have not learned righteousness. Tested in every way, under priest, under prophet, under king, as an independent nation, then as tributary to a Gentile, the only result is a deeper evil. No exhibition of patience, no expostulation of love, no difference of circumstances availed for them. As hypocrites, they were worse than idolaters; and we find them more and more guilty as we follow their course from the beginning—from the calf at Sinai to the cross on Calvary.
Was all this the outbursts of a rebellious nature merely? We know that there is no evil of which man is incapable, but there is more in this than the in subjection of man's will to God, or of his heart's enmity. It presents one consistent whole, from first to last, of Satan's opposition to God, and his effort to prevent the fulfillment of God's promise. Whatever differences are seen in the form of man's sin, the endeavor of Satan is uniform. Men, both ancient and modern, have ignorantly talked of the eternal battle between the principles of good and evil. In the East, their Ormuzd and Ahriman; in the West, the eternity of matter, which was so evil that the principle of good could not overcome it. A vain attempt to account for the evil they could not get rid of. That otherwise insoluble enigma to man is plainly resolved in the book of God. There we learn that there is not only a principle of evil; there is an evil one, the primary cause of every evil. And though he is allowed for a season to work his will, and apparently delay the purpose of God's mercy, it is but for a time, it is only apparently; for God uses Him and his enmity to fulfill His own word. In spite of the communication given to the Gentile that there was a God in heaven, notwithstanding the revelation to Israel that He was Governor of the earth, and, as such, blessing the righteous and judging the guilty, the whole world had sunk into the darkest ignorance. The true God was ignored, and, where outwardly owned as among the Jews, so much hypocrisy and sin were found, that their outward confession was worse than Gentile ignorance.
Such was man when the Lord Jesus came, the greatest and final test, which brings out in yet deeper shade man's incurable evil, and, more, his ineradicable hatred of God. This is the fourth epoch in Matthew's Gospel, and given in the first twelve chapters. It is the presentation of Messiah. Jesus, the King, is born in Bethlehem, and the kingdom announced. He came to His own, and they rejected Him—more guilty than the world that knew Him not. How awful the manner of His rejection! His holy Person scorned, His works of love and mercy, delivering from demoniacal possession, ascribed to Beelzebub! Their day closed, and the children of the kingdom were cast out. But there and then a new work commences, not a new form of trial—all trial is over. It would be an impeachment of God's righteousness if another trial took place after the slaying of His Son. There was no more sending to the husbandmen for the fruit of the vineyard when they had killed the Heir. Nothing now remained for these guilty men but the judgment forced from their own lips— “He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard to other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.” The effect of the Jews' rejection of their Lord was to open the door to admit strangers and foreigners. And this was the purpose of God, which is unassailable. If man will be evil, then God will use his evil for His own purpose. Redemption was God's purpose, but that man's evil should be used to be the cause of slaying Him, whose blood thus shed paid the ransom even for His murderers, is a display of divine wisdom which overwhelms the soul. The greatest crime that man committed provides the divine remedy for every crime for all sin, and opens the door for God's free grace to be preached to all men—not for the Jew only, but for the Gentile also, for the whole world. Hence the reason why Gentile and Jew are found united. Both are in arms against the Lord's Anointed. The nations rage, and the people imagine a vain thing. But there is more than the world becoming most guilty—the prince of it is also judged. He and the promised Seed had at last met; Satan is overcome, his prey taken from him, his well-barred house broken open by the stronger Man, and he is judged by and in that very act which he thought secured to him the eternal bondage of man.
If the difference between Jew and Gentile is lost in their common guilt, sovereign grace has provided a common salvation, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, but all are one in Christ Jesus. To Him all the past pointed, and now bears witness to Him. In Him every type meets, every shadow finds its substance. But in receiving Him, every believer receives more than the fullest type ever shadowed forth, for no type in the old economy ever intimated the fact that we should have the place of children. Now it is declared, To as many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become the children of God. On the unbelieving world sentence is pronounced, and the present time is but the interval between the sentence and the execution. God delays the execution, and His long-suffering is salvation. For now He is causing the dead to hear the quickening voice of the Son of God, and leading those that hear and live through this world on to a place of heavenly glory. Yet, not that those so quickened, and so led, are untested. Every branch is purged, every son is disciplined; then why, if possessed of life, are they tried? They are not tried to see whether they can obtain life, but to prove its reality, and that all found to be inconsistent with eternal life might be judged. And herein is manifest one of the great differences between law and grace—the process of law discovers the evil, that of grace is to put it away. So the gold is put into a crucible, not to see if it be gold, but to burn up the dross.
One great part of God's moral process with man is now ended; the result is, he is proved to be worthless, guilty, and therefore he is now condemned. Trial is over. There is an essential distinction between being under trial, and being condemned. Man's trial terminated in the cross; then sentence of condemnation was passed upon him; by the cross the condition of the natural man was fixed and determined. But it did more, for it cleared the arena for the full action of grace on God's part. So long as law was in force, and responsibility on that ground, grace was hindered. There were gracious dealings, there were tender mercies, but grace as the sole principle marking God's dealings could not be till law was set aside. It would have been unrighteous. Now God is righteous in setting law aside, in acting towards man solely on the principle of grace; and as law can in nowise answer to grace, it is set aside, and faith—divinely given—takes its place, as the only fitting response to the grace of God. That marvelous grace, which reaches down to the lowest and raises to the highest, and that faith which never sees but always believes, produces what the law never could—holiness. The law commanded it, and dealt death to the disobedient. The thunders of Sinai said, Do. The cross of Christ, in accents of infinite love, calls to all, Come, and to all coming gives life and power. In revealing Himself to man through the cross God proclaims Himself a Savior-God. After He has saved us, He makes us obedient. Where His grace unhinderedly acts, the result is the answer to His own heart. To display the riches of grace, to have an object of delight before Him, God called the church into being. No other creation can so declare the Savior-God as His church. It is creative power in a more wondrous way than Gen. 1 tells of: a body so united, that they are members one of another by the one Spirit, and each by the same Spirit a member of Christ; each one an heir of God, and joint-heir with Christ; and the whole is the habitation of God by the Spirit, who is both the bond of unity and the power of testimony. It was the purpose of God when our names were written in the book of life of the slain Lamb, that by the church the riches and the glory of His grace should be displayed to an admiring universe. When the new Jerusalem appears from heaven, what a sight will be presented to the eyes of the millennial nations! The most precious things that men value are the symbols used to describe its brightness and glory. There will be nothing like it in the whole universe, neither in heaven, nor on the earth.
Beside the calling and formation of the church of God, this present age has a dispensational aspect. The church itself is above and beyond all dispensation; but for man, the present time is the dispensation of faith in contrast with law. It was ushered in as the dispensation of the kingdom of heaven, heralded by the Baptist, proclaimed by the Lord; but when Christ was rejected, the dispensation of the kingdom of heaven changed its character, and became the dispensation of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; that is, such a form as necessarily resulted from the rejection of Christ—no other aspect was possible. For when the Son of God humbled Himself to become a man, there was immediately a necessity that He should as risen Man have the kingdom. Even had there been no church formed, there must be space left for the gathering of true and obedient disciples, and therefore judgment is deferred until such are gathered; otherwise the purpose of God concerning Christ and the world would have been frustrated. God's decree had gone forth (Psa. 2), His King was set upon the holy hill of Zion, and not only Israel, but the heathen, were to be the King's inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth His possession. There will, of course, be judgment; but where would be the inheritance and the possession, if all were consumed, if there were no preserved remnant? And then, upon what principle are true disciples to be made, when the utter failure of law-works to make them such had been so clearly demonstrated The past failure, the present dominancy of iniquity, and the absence of the King, prove that only upon one principle could man be brought into the kingdom, and enjoy its blessings when manifested in power. That one principle is faith. Hence “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” suppose pre-eminently a dispensation of faith. The grace, the wisdom, and the power of God have so controlled the world in its sin and rebellion, as to provide both place and season where the energy and the endurance of faith may have free scope, and reap all the blessedness that God has indissolubly joined to it; and the Christian can now say, in face of every trial, and all suffering, “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places, yea, I have a goodly heritage;” for now is the season of victory, and of such sort as is peculiar to the saints of the church; now is the special application of the promise, in its sevenfold character, to the overcomer. (Rev. 2; 3)
The inbringing of the present dispensation was a momentous change from the former, which demanded and sought for fruit. This present is marked by sowing seed. There is nothing in the ground, nothing can be had from it save the evidence of its own badness. Therefore the Lord Jesus sows good seed. He will put that in it which, if unhindered, will produce fruit unto God. But it is God giving, not man repaying. The parable of the sower is given in the three synoptical Gospels. It is the commencement of this age, so widely distinguished from the preceding. The dispensation of law was necessary to prove the hopeless condition of man, and to prepare the ground for the sowing of the good seed. It was as necessarily set aside when the gospel of grace was preached, and another—a dispensational necessity—resulted indirectly from grace, that man should be left seemingly to himself. Would he accept mercy, after having been proved hopelessly bad, and now under condemnation?