MATTHEW 22 AND 23
CAC They were discussing the Scriptures but utterly blind as to who was before them in Him.
Ques As to verse 40.
CAC Was it not the summing up of all that had been required of men?
Rem The first commandment of all is not mentioned here, “Hear, O Israel”.
CAC That is, the spirit of obedience is required which is most important. They were face to face with the wisdom of God. There was power with His words; they did not venture to say it was not so. It must have seemed dreadful to the Lord to see men playing with the Scriptures and having no eyes to see God coming in in the Messiah. The first question really was, ‘What is the great promise?’. If they had asked that, I think the Lord would have been very interested. Scripture would have turned all their thoughts and hopes to the promised One. The law showed how they had utterly failed. If they had remembered the golden calf they would have said, ‘What did we do when the commandment first came to us?’. It is astonishing how the religious man leaves out Christ. People read the Bible today as if it was all on the line of commandment, and do not see that on that line it shows that all is hopeless. But there is another principle which is on the line of promise and which comes out of the heart of God. I believe the Lord would have been delighted if they had asked Him which was the great promise. We should like to have heard His answer. The word of God has power in the conscience, so we never hear anyone answering the Lord back.
[p. 148] Rem We see the wisdom in God giving the promise before the law, so that He could fall back on that.
CAC And He fell back on it in the garden of Eden, that is, on what He Himself would do. The second commandment becomes a greater test than the first. Some will say they love God. There is no test as to loving God. I cannot get into a man’s heart. Man must admit that he does not love his neighbour as himself; they all felt it. The Lord was astonished that they thought so little of the line of promise which all centres in the Christ. Man is very slow to think of God coming in Himself. He is bent on doing it for Messiah was God coming in, where there was no goodness or strength or even desire. They had no thought of God coming in in the Messiah, but only looked for a descendant from David according to the flesh as a deliverer. There is nothing more difficult to the human thought than that God has come here as Man. The question of all questions is to know what kind of Man was here when God came here as becoming Man. Where that is understood it takes possession of the heart and everything else disappears, as on the holy mount Moses and Elias disappeared.
Rem The glad tidings are “concerning his Son (come of David’s seed according to flesh, marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead)”, Romans 1: 3, 4.
CAC The great mystery of the incarnation is brought out there, and it is important to see that above everything else. It is not that He is God and Man (which makes a dual personality) but God in Manhood. He was God before becoming Man, and a servant when He became Man; and He is in glorified Manhood in eternity; but He is one Person from eternity to eternity. He does not ‘return to’ the glory of Deity; it would not be right to say so. He never left Deity; He was as much I AM “before Abraham”
[p. 149] as when here on earth. He is the Eternal One, having come in the most marvellous grace in manhood. Everything sinks into insignificance in the sense of it. This knowledge is what makes a believer.
Rem And in this is the solution of every problem.
CAC And we are brought so blessedly near to God. Nothing makes us so near to God as seeing how near God has come to us. We are brought to Himself in the grace of what He is and what He has done.
The chief object of interest in the Old Testament is the wonderful mass of promises found there and they are all “yea” in the Son of God; they are full of blessing for Jew and Gentile.
Rem “Whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the lawgiving, and the service, and the promises; whose are the fathers; and of whom, as according to flesh, is the Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen”, Romans 9: 4, 5.
CAC That is a very beautiful scripture in reference to what we are speaking of. It sums it all up.
Ques If Scripture had had its proper weight with them, here was their opportunity to close in with God’s promise.
CAC But that is very distasteful if I want to be called “Rabbi”, and be known as a religious man with the external marks of one; it comes out here. All that goes overboard if you admit that everything comes in in the Person of Christ. That is the man that does not want to be displaced! There is a rival.
Rem I suppose they could have said from Psalm 2 that He was the Son of God?
CAC So Nathaniel could say, “Thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel”, John 1: 49. He had been talking to God about things which no one else knew of. He finds someone who knows all about it; well, that is a divine Person. But then, he has been under the fig-tree.
[p. 150] There is no answer to that question except to admit He was a divine Person come in manhood, and so greater than all His ancestors according to the flesh. He is the root and the fruit of the tree of promise; He is the ground as well as the fulfilment of all the promises. So the soul discovers an object of worship. There is not only a sense of the benefit but there is a worshipful sense of who the Person is. In the light of this everything of the religious man shrivels up — the Lord shrivels him up; the hollowness and rottenness of the whole thing is exposed.
Rem David could sing; he had God as his object.
CAC And so Christ has come in, not only to produce the blessing but the response. So He is the chief Singer on the stringed instruments. I suppose every note that an earthly people will be qualified to sing in a future day has all been sounded in the Psalms by David.
It is sad to see the conditions here which are a great contrast to the revival under Ezra. The Lord is occupied here with the best representatives of religion. Everything was turned to self-righteousness and hypocrisy. It was burdensome to those who feared God and bolstered up the flesh in those who did not. But some beautiful touches come out amidst it all, that is, the place of Christ as Teacher and Guide, and the relation of brethren. What a contrast the little company round the Lord was to the whole system of self-righteousness and hypocrisy which was round about! They not only refused grace for themselves but hindered others, poor sinners, from being enriched by all the blessed grace of God. Nothing could be worse in the sight of God than that. Moses could take the burdens of the people on himself when they broke down; he was not a Pharisee, he could not only teach but pray. This was the last stage of Israel’s history before they were cut off, very like the last stage of the church’s history, that of Laodicea, boasting and the true state not felt. If we give Christ His [p. 151] place as Instructor we shall get light, and in no other way. “One is your instructor”, and we have that blessed Instructor still. To serve others is true greatness; the Lord set the example as to that. Imposing burdens on people does no good, but if we could bear burdens it would be some good. Here it is to preserve us from a kind of officialism so that we can move together as brethren. It is a greater thing to be together as brethren than the exercise of any gift we can have. There is no greater honour than to be one of the brethren.
This discourse of the Lord’s tended to set people free from what was worthless. They were really playing with divine things and taking them out of their divine setting. Well, it is very liberating to get free of all that.
Ques What answers to the gold and the temple today (verse 17)?
CAC To attach importance to what is unimportant. The temple was the great thing; it sanctified the gold. To be part of the temple was greater than being a gift at Corinth. That God dwells amongst His people and makes them His temple is a wonderful thing. You can get light about anything because God is in His temple. It was the Lord’s summing up of the situation; the Lord weighs it up thoroughly, and it will come out in any of us. The Lord thoroughly exposes it right down to the root.
Ques Is there a moral thought in the phylacteries?
CAC Making it all outward and not inward; the latter is our real concern. And that is the way of liberty, to have divine Persons before us, and how They have acted to have us fully blessed. That would preserve us from all this. We have really nothing apart from what the blessed God has shown Himself to be and acting in His Son. We do not want to be dressing up the flesh, which has been ended in the cross. It is right to wish for glory but glory that comes from God. They loved the glory that men could [p. 152] give them. It is right that we should wish to be exalted in a spiritual sense, not left base and low down but lifted up. But then, that must be done by God.
Rem In the second giving of the law it is written in the mind first.
CAC In Hebrews 8 the mind comes first and in chapter 10 the heart comes first; that is, if it is a question of learning the mind of God in relation to us it must come first into the mind. But when it is a question of approach to God the movement must come first in the heart. If it is a question of instruction it must be the mind first. Paul says, “We ought not to think” so and so. It is important then that the mind should be put first. When it is a question of the new covenant the mind comes first, but when it is a question of approach to the holiest the heart does, because all movement Godward must begin with the heart.
This chapter is one of instructions and, if we get away from these principles, we shall go wrong. It is a mark of a fleshly mind to attach importance to little things. All turns upon God being brought into the matter; it settles a thousand things at once. They left God out, so the Lord says, ‘You must see the kingdom first’; so He brings in the mind first. The gospel throws the light of God on the whole situation. When it is preached we all sit there as witnesses; that is why we come. Paul said, “The things thou hast heard of me in the presence of many witnesses”, 2 Timothy 2: 2. Every one should be ready to sign his name to the preaching. It is a great privilege to be amongst a people who will not let anything pass that is not according to Scripture. And there is the support given to the preaching; we all publicly identify ourselves with what is said. There was an old sister who never let anything pass, when I first preached. I remember after my first preaching an old brother asking me how I could tell people, ‘Christ died for our sins; and that if they did not believe they would die in their sins’, as they were contrary statements. That man gave me a lesson in theology that I never forgot!