CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 11
In verses 1 - 10 you get a momentary sample of the Lord’s rule on earth, of the millennial day, when He will command everything. He claims the colt. He comes as King. Bethany is that which supersedes the kingdom. Bethany is the house of grace. What a wonderful day it will be when everything answers to the claims of Christ!
I do not know that they knew Him; but they owned His authority, they could not resist. Whereon never man sat - a new seat of power. It is only a sample of the kingdom. He is presenting Himself to Jerusalem for the last time. He enters into the temple. What marks the Lord is that He was always thinking of God’s interests. It ought to mark us. A person is never right in service who does not make the church his first object, because that is the centre of God’s interests on the earth now, as the temple was in Israel’s day. You are marked by your object. You have no clear judgment about anything if the church, that is Christ’s chief interest on earth, is not your chief interest. It is on the principle of David, who, after Saul’s death, sent to ask if there were any of Saul’s children to show kindness to, or, as the Lord says to Peter, “Feed my sheep”.
In service we must have His interests first, even in preaching the gospel. It is not what I like, but what He likes.
It was the difference between Mary and Martha. Mary consulted His mind. Martha followed her own. If you begin with Himself you go from Him to His interests - His own, who are on the earth, and from thence it runs down all along that line to your own family and to every circle. This we see in the epistles. Where people fail is in trying to begin — not where the circle of power begins. You must begin above and go from thence to every lower circle. Everything goes in circles.
There are two ministries, as we see in Colossians 2, the church and the gospel; but all things are for the elect’s sake. No one was a greater minister of the gospel than the one who was the minister of the church - that was Paul. The question is, where do I begin? Is it with Christ’s interests? Can I join a worldly man in his so-called works of charity? No. I have to begin with Christ’s interests and go out from them to serve men - then I shall serve men better because His interest for them is in my heart. You get the order in Revelation 22: 17. My heart is set on Himself, then on His people, then whosoever will, let him come!
[p. 178] That is evangelisation in its fulness and in its divine order. All is now connected with the place where Christ is, at the right hand of God. He looked round on everything and went away. You get His sense of the moral state of the nation. He sees that state, figuratively, in the fig-tree. There were three emblems of the nation: the fig-tree (the natural one), the vine and the olive. You do not find believers represented by the fig-tree or the vine. You do by the olive. It was a final judgment on the tree because, when they get favour, it will be through grace and not as a right. It is a great thing to get the fear of God, the sense of having to do with Him. He never overlooks anything. If you do a good thing you may forget, but God remembers; the same when you do wrong.
Nothing so wonderful as the Lord’s path here; He never looked to anything but God - never did a thing for Himself, carrying divine light through the corruption here, a beautiful moral path (verses 22 - 24). Have faith in God! People desire and ask often without faith. In Psalm 3, David stayed in the valley, and he laid him down and slept. He had confidence in God and He kept him in safety, defeating the counsel of Ahithophel. “Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart”. If I am walking with Him I only desire what is suited to Him. I could not have faith for what He would not do. You cannot talk of your faith. You lose it if you are out of communion, for it is not a thing in nature. If the natural mind gets hold of it you have lost it. You have it in His presence. We sometimes look for the answer to come in some particular way. Habakkuk’s desire was: “Revive thy work”. The glory was the answer to it. Paul’s desire was to serve the church and he was kept in prison, but how he served the church there! Tempting or trying God is not faith. I need not try Him when I am already sure of it by faith. The prayer of faith carries you to God;
[p. 179] looking at circumstances makes you dry. Two things went together, the cloud and the manna. People look for guidance to easy places, but am I in the right place? Am I where the Lord will supply me? All may look very nice, but am I getting food - manna, there? If not, there is something wrong. We may start wrong though the desire be right, but God brings us down and then says, This is the way. I will bring you to the desired haven. Paul had manna in the prison, but if he had gone there himself he would not have had it!
Verse 25. I am not in the enjoyment of forgiveness unless I can forgive. If I am enjoying grace I act in grace. I am too happy in being a recipient of mercy to myself to make a demand from others. If I do not help the needy I cannot turn to God in my need; 1 John 3: 17 - 22. If our heart condemn us not then have we confidence toward God. The Lord’s prayer is a very interesting waymark as to where they were at that time. A person may use it honestly now, but if he does he is not beyond it. People’s souls get clouded when they insist on their rights - the principle is the same.
Verse 27. He does not satisfy mere curiosity. If you do not know the least gift in a place you would not know the higher one. They would not have John the baptist. It was no desire for the truth that led them to ask as to His authority. The Lord respected authority. He would not let the people make Him king because they were not the authority.
How little we meditate on what the Lord was down here! The books that are written about it only give man’s view, not what He was to the eye of God. It is instructive to see Him go through all things as the Servant. You get a great many incidents in regard to a servant.
‘Each passage in Thy life shall be
A little between my soul and Thee.’