LUKE 22
In this chapter the Lord seems to pass to what is inward and connected with the circle of which He is the centre, that with which He would engage the hearts of His saints. He intimates that there is a place reserved which He calls His guest-chamber; certain things have their place there, things that are in His heart and which He would put in the hearts of His lovers. It is more private than public.
All the sweetness of His wondrous love came out in the private circle, although the traitor was there. We find Judas in the inner circle, for he was one of the twelve, yet that does not affect the character of what was before the Lord. It shows that there may be movements of hostility even in the circle that is nearest to Him. We need not be surprised if there are [p. 258] treacherous movements of hostility in the inner circle. Satan selects instruments that are suitable for His purpose; it was more to Satan’s purpose to have the betrayer in the circle of the twelve than to awaken all the hostility of the scribes and Pharisees. It was a more deadly move of Satan to secure a tool or vessel in the inner circle.
The introduction of the passover intimated the holy conditions in which alone the Lord’s death could be understood. The whole subject is introduced as being connected with the feast of unleavened bread; that is the character of it. It is called the Passover, but the prominent thought before the mind of the Spirit is the feast of unleavened bread; that is, it raises the question of condition on our side. The feast of unleavened bread involves that everything that Satan can act upon is to be excluded. Leaven would represent the corrupting and inflating principle of evil in the heart of man. It takes different forms: malice, wickedness, hypocrisy, and many other forms.
Paul says, “For also our Passover, Christ, has been sacrificed; so that let us celebrate the feast”, 1 Corinthians 5: 7. This shows the conditions in which we can alone take up the Passover. We can only take it up in holy conditions; the first day of unleavened bread was when the passover was to be killed. We can only contemplate the death of Christ in passover aspect as having entered upon this period which is marked by unleavened character. It is presented thus in this gospel as showing how important it is for us to have these conditions of holiness. The thought of the passover being killed arouses intense feelings and emotions in the souls of the saints; and if the feast of unleavened bread is not kept we shall not know these holy moments.
Unless we know what it is to keep the passover assembly-wise we shall not reach the Lord’s supper. At Corinth they were professing to take up the Lord’s supper without the Passover, and it opened the door to every kind of moral disorder; in result they were not eating the Supper at all. While professing to carry on the institution they were not eating the Lord’s supper. The real secret was that they were not keeping the passover or the feast of unleavened bread. It shows how important the exercise is as to ourselves. The apostle is writing to the assembly of God in Corinth, and he is speaking of the passover in an assembly setting.
In Egypt the passover was presented in a household setting — [p. 259] there was a lamb for a house; but in the land it is looked at from the assembly standpoint, because they were expressly told not to eat it in their own gates but in the place where Jehovah would set His name. That clearly gives it assembly character. But if we contemplate the people of God in Egypt, we do not get beyond the household thought; they had light in their dwellings. The people of God are viewed there as in the world, household-wise, not exactly assembly-wise. God introduces the household idea in the gospel: “thou shalt be saved and thy house”. No one has the gospel only for himself, but for himself and his house.
In Egypt the great thought connected with the passover was that they were going out; it was to be eaten in haste, their shoes on their feet and their staff in their hand. The first eating of the passover is taken up in that connection; we are going out. The youngest child in the household is impressed with the fact that we are going out to be for God in the value of redemption; we do not belong to this world at all. That is a good start. The passover was also kept in the wilderness; things were taken up there in relation to the tabernacle of testimony, so the first thing they did was to set up the tabernacle and keep the Passover. They ate the Passover, not merely household-wise, but as identified with the testimony of God in wilderness conditions.
In the land the passover was connected with the place where Jehovah had set His name, where all His people were unified in their approach to Him; it is clearly on assembly ground. The entering into the thought of the death of Christ in passover aspect is infinitely great, too great in its fulness to be taken up individually; it requires the assembly to take it up — that is how it is put typically.
Every time the passover is presented something is added to what was before, and the final touch is in this chapter where the Lord adds an element which had no place in the Old Testament. He puts the crowning touch to the passover in introducing the cup. In Egypt the blood is prominent; in the wilderness the fat; and in the land it is connected with the unity of the people of God in their approach to God — it is expanding all the time. When Hezekiah takes it up he has a very enlarged apprehension of the purification requisite to the Passover, so he prays for the people on the ground that they had not been prepared according to the purification of the [p. 260] sanctuary. He asks God to pardon them because they had not touched it in the exalted holiness that belonged to it, which was nothing less than the purification of the sanctuary. That is the development of the unleavened idea.
The Lord takes the initiative here; He sends Peter and John and put things in motion; He lays down all the conditions in which the passover was to be prepared, and then He tells them in the most affecting way how deeply His own heart was moved in regard to it. Finally He brings in this thought of the cup, which suggests the full joy of the kingdom of God. The passover to the Lord was the ground on which the full blessedness of the kingdom of God should be established. The passover was never eaten according to the full thought of God until this occasion. The Lord Jesus was the only One who knew what the passover was, and all that was involved in it and that would be secured by it. There was a full answer upon this earth in the heart of a Man to all that was in the mind of God when He instituted the Passover — it is most blessed. We lose much by the idea that the main thought in the passover was shelter from judgment. The main thought is that God was coming in according to His purpose to take a people out of the whole condition of evil that belongs to this world that He might have them entirely for His own pleasure; He was doing it all in the value of the death of Christ. So, as I understand it, the passover is greater than any of the sacrificial types in Exodus or Leviticus.
The Lord says, “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer”. It was much to the Lord to have a company that He could carry with Him in His own appreciation of all it meant. All this in its bearing on us intimates how the Lord would carry us with Him in the appreciation and appropriation of Himself in passover aspect. The passover is the great power of God in redemption to take a people out of the world to be for His own pleasure. Anyone understanding the passover would know that he was no more of the world than Christ; it would give complete deliverance from the world in spirit. You could find a great many scriptures referring to the Passover, and you would find that the great thought in all of them was God taking His people out of Egypt to have them for Himself. It is in view of sonship. Before God said a word about the lamb of the Passover, He said, “Israel is my son, my firstborn ... let my son go that he may serve me”, Exodus 4: 23. The passover is the ground on which God secures His firstborn for Himself. The firstborn of Egypt was the strength and pride of the natural man which was under the judgment of God, but the firstborn that God secures is for His pleasure in virtue of the Passover. “Let my son go that he may serve me” — the service of God depends on our being on the ground of redemption. The firstborn is hallowed, so holiness is connected with the passover; that is why unleavened bread is insisted on. In Exodus 12, where the instruction is given as to the Passover, we find there is much more about the feast of unleavened bread than there is about the passover lamb. God must have holy conditions. Peter connects holiness with redemption; it is holiness according to the divine measure. “Be ye holy, for I am holy”. Why? Because you have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, who was “fore-ordained before the foundation of the world” — that is the Passover. The passover comes in on the line of divine purpose; the passover lamb was in purpose before the foundation of the world. Paul brings this in correctively to the Corinthians to insist on these holy conditions. How are we going to apprehend the greatness of the death of Christ except in holy conditions? God had put His wing over the people in the power of redemption, so He says, “Hallow unto me every firstborn”.
Peter and John were sent to prepare the Passover, and they are the two men who tell us about it. Paul says, “Christ our passover”; but he does not speak about the lamb. Peter and John speak about the lamb; they tell us about Christ in passover character. The passover is great enough to remove sin out of God’s world altogether for God’s pleasure; the Lamb of God is the taker-away of the sin of the world. He is great enough to remove sin out of God’s world, so that everything that remains is in a character that is suitable to the holiness of God.
The burnt-offering is more the ground of acceptance for a people upon the earth, as Israel will be in the millennium. The burnt-offering never takes anyone into the sanctuary; the blood of the burnt-offering never went beyond the brazen altar, but the blood of the sin-offering went into the holiest. The sin-offering is more in keeping with the passover than the burnt-offering.
The holiness of the setting of the passover is what impresses me, so the Lord indicates that there would be a man with an [p. 262] earthen pitcher of water. There will be purification. Here is a man concerned about purification; he has a pitcher of water. Now the Lord says, Follow a man like that. A man like that is very safe to follow.
I am inclined to think that this pitcher of water was what the Lord used to wash the disciples’ feet; purification was in it as well as refreshment. The Lord gave Himself for the assembly that He might sanctify it and purify it by the washing of water. There is a purifying character about water. The Lord indicated that where that water was carried in was the place suited to Him. There is a place reserved there for the Lord because there are exercises there in regard to purifying; the man would not have gone for his pitcher of water otherwise. The Lord never loses sight of the need of purifying, and if we do we are at a distance from Him. What a preparation this is for assembly privileges! The great exercise is the purification that suits God. If I am redeemed it is for God, and that necessitates holy conditions which require continual exercise as to purifying. All this is the moral basis for the truth of the Lord’s supper.
God could not be served by any but a hallowed people. The thought of hallowing fills the book of Exodus. Righteousness is the subject of Genesis; we find the thought of righteousness in Abel, Noah, Abraham and others. Exodus takes up the thought of holiness; the subject constantly recurs because it is a question of God coming down. If God comes down, where He comes to is holy ground — we must take off our shoes. Exodus finishes with the glory coming down and filling the tabernacle; it requires holy conditions. I wish we were more exercised about holiness. I think if we observe the exercises which the Spirit gives us in secret, we shall find that He leads us greatly to desire holy conditions. The real exercise is that we find so much in ourselves not according to holiness, and the Spirit is the Spirit of holiness. David says prophetically, “Take not the spirit of thy holiness from me”, Psalm 51: 11. No greater loss can be sustained by anyone than to lose the spirit of holiness. It is true that a Christian can never lose the sealing of the Holy Spirit, but I may grieve Him and practically lose the sense of His presence if I cease earnestly and prayerfully to pursue the thought of holiness and inward purity according to God. Without holiness we shall never see the Lord.
The passover introduces the thought of holiness, so that the [p. 263] holiness of God is celebrated in the song of Exodus 15. He has glorified Himself in holiness, and on that ground He brings His redeemed people to the abode of His holiness. It is in that abode that we can eat the Supper. The assembly viewed in the Corinthian aspect is the abode of God’s holiness in this world, but then it requires an unleavened people. From the side of God’s thoughts He could say to the Corinthians, “Ye are unleavened”. Now let that appear practically. All that is a passover exercise.
The bearing of the passover is wider than the Lord’s supper. My impression is that the Supper is an apprehension of Christ that will never be shared by any other company; it is taken up by those who are the body of Christ. I should doubt whether this particular character of the Lord’s love expressed in death will ever be entered into by any other family; whereas the passover will have its place in the millennium for Israel.
The furnishing is very necessary. The Lord had so influenced a man in Jerusalem that He could count upon him to maintain the conditions that were suitable for the passover; he represents the overcomer. The man, the master of the house, represents the responsible element, but he had been affected by the Teacher. “Say to him that the Teacher says..”.. He had been affected by the Teacher, and the Lord knew all about it. I dare say none of the disciples knew this man, but the Lord did, and He could say, ‘That man has been so affected by My teaching that I can rely upon him to have everything suitable for the passover according to My thought of it’. The master of the house had a man with a pitcher of water; he was actively preparing conditions of purifying, and the Lord says, That is the man to follow. He must have been reading about Hezekiah thinking of the purification of the sanctuary in connection with the Passover.
What a unique man this must have been in Jerusalem! Everything was going on in the tide of religiousness, keeping the Passover, but here was a man who had been influenced by the Teacher. It is not the Lord or the Head, but the Teacher, and this man had impressions of Christ; not commandments but impressions. I understand that to be through the Teacher. We have to work this out individually first and then assembly-wise. How far have we impressions of Christ so that we shall have what answers to furnishing? This man had the room furnished. I have often thought how he must [p. 264] have looked round again and again to see if everything was in accord with the impressions he had got from Christ as the Teacher. I like the thought of the Teacher; we do not think enough of it. It is not lordship, not authority, and it is not exactly headship, but teaching, that is, bringing the mind of God to bear on us influentially so that we get impressions of what is suitable. It would do away with everything uncomely; if there is any uncomely conduct with any of us individually or assembly-wise it is for want of impressions from Christ as Teacher.
In the two previous chapters we see the Lord teaching in the temple and we have the characteristic features of temple light developed under the teaching of Christ. That would help us in regard to the furniture; we should have impressions of all that was suitable without a text of Scripture. A man who wants a text of Scripture for everything is missing something, for I believe there is such a thing as getting impressions from Christ, and we can check them by Scripture. The furniture would have a bearing on the order in which things are done. We could not say that in Christendom there is much furniture suitable to Christ. We have to learn to get an entirely new idea of His pleasure. What separated saints from the disorder of Christendom was that they got impressions of what is suitable to Christ. The air is full of impressions which have not come from God and practically it takes a long time to escape from them. In suitable moral conditions the affectionate emotions of the saints can be liberated in the remembrance of the Lord. The Supper is personal: “my body which is given for you” — there is a direct personal touch, an affectionate touch.
For the first time the great and precious thoughts of God were known in the heart of a Man on this earth. Before the public result, before the kingdom comes or the passover is fulfilled in the kingdom of God, it was all known in the heart of a blessed Man on this earth, and He says “with you”. As if He would say, ‘I affectionately desire to share with you all that is in My heart as to My own death as the Passover’.
The Lord adding the cup to the passover seems to be the last element that is needed to complete the passover idea. It was not seen in the Old Testament, but the Lord added it here. The crowning touch in connection with the passover is brought in in the thought of the joy that would fill the kingdom of God in the knowledge of God. The Lord takes [p. 265] the opportunity of remarking on the peculiar character of the interval; there was going to be an interval in which the Lord would not drink the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God came. It indicates the Nazariteship proper to saints; that is, we do not take up joy now after a millennial pattern. We must take it up as bearing in mind the position of Nazariteship in which the Lord was as apart from all the joys of earth.
The Lord says, “before I suffer”, to emphasise the thought that suffering was to be His portion here; not the glory of the kingdom, but suffering and, along with that, a detachment from the joys that are proper to the earth. The death of Christ has invalidated many natural joys for those who know its meaning. People say, What harm is there in this or that? There are what people call innocent pleasures, and I believe Christians are more submerged by things of that kind than by actual wickedness. They say, What is the harm? Well, is it consistent with the death of Christ? Is it consistent with His present position of Nazariteship at the right hand of God? There are many things that we cannot say are wrong, but they are not consistent with the position of Christ, and they would hinder us from moving on to the Supper. We could not touch the Supper if we are finding a source of pleasure in things which Christ at the present time has no part or place in. It is a question of where He lives; He has died to sin and He lives to God now, and He says, “reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” — that is the whole Christian position. The joy of the Nazarite was that he was wholly devoted to God. In Numbers 6 the words “unto Jehovah” occur over and over; that is the idea. It is not a man setting out to be an ascetic, or distinguishing himself by a peculiar character of separation, but he is commanded from first to last by Jehovah. It was a privilege vouchsafed to lovers of Jehovah so that they might take this exceptional and extraordinary position “unto Jehovah”, and that was the joy of the Nazarite that he was peculiarly dedicated. The Nazarite idea is distinctly suggested in the Lord’s saying that He would not drink again of the fruit of the vine. This is the time of the Nazariteship of Christ. People say, You are too narrow and too separate, but how could separation to the Lord be too intense? Can anyone tell me I have gone too far in being wholly devoted to Him?
There is a tendency with us to be negative and think of what [p. 266] the Lord has removed rather than what He has brought in. The thought of His body for us is, as far as I understand it, a question of what He has brought in. The passover is what He has removed, but His body is Himself, what He has brought in from heaven. It is to be taken according to Mark and eaten according to Matthew, and if this is done the Lord can be the subject of affectionate remembrance. Luke is the only gospel that gives us the remembrance and the institution of the Supper. There is no institution in Matthew or Mark; one would not gather from them that it was ever to be done again. Luke gives the aspect of it which is in line with Paul’s presentation in I Corinthians. Neither of these men saw the Lord on earth, so they could present it in a way which we can take up. We can never remember the Lord as the disciples did who saw Him on earth. Our character of remembrance is quite different because we have never seen Him. The disciples who had seen Him and walked with Him, heard His words and seen His acts, had a personal recollection of the Lord; we never did. The remembrance spoken of by the Lord in Luke and by Paul in Corinthians is a character of remembrance that can be taken up by people who never saw Him, people such as Peter speaks of who can say, “whom having not seen ye love”, 1 Peter 1: 8.
The Lord instituted the Supper of remembrance, indicating to us how He would have the assembly think of Him. It is not only individuals cherishing His memory, but that He would be thought of in church affections. The Lord had been educating His disciples in regard to that figure which He was pleased to take up — “having taken a loaf”. He had been previously educating them as to this particular figure of Himself; He had allowed them to see what He could do with five loaves, and what He could do with seven loaves, and He had also called attention to the thought of one loaf. In each case the loaves were figurative of Himself; He was the great source of supply.
I suppose the five loaves of the first feeding of the multitude would speak of the supply of grace that was in Him to meet all human need. Five is the human number and the number of grace; there was sufficient in Him to meet all human need, so the five thousand were all fed, and there was a surplus over for another day. In the second feeding of the multitude the seven loaves would rather indicate the spiritual completeness [p. 267] of what was there in Him. All that was of God as revealed in grace was there in absolute perfection, and perfection that never grows any less, because after the feeding of the four thousand, which indicates the universality of the provision, there were seven baskets taken un; the seven — perfection — remains. It is more the spiritual side of the supply, God’s side of it, not only what met man’s need, but what was perfectly adequate to set forth the grace of God that never diminishes.
Then there was another occasion when there was only one loaf in the ship with them; it was not a lesson for the multitude but for the little company in the ship. The thought of one loaf is exclusive; Corinthians gives us the one loaf, and in that connection the Lord bids them beware of the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees and of Herod. We do not want the leaven of the religious man after the flesh, or of the scheming of the man of the world. The thought of the one loaf is as if the Lord would say, Now I am to be exclusive of every other man; you want nothing but Me. All this was educative, to prepare the disciples for the figure which the Lord used when He took a loaf, His chosen simile of Himself as incarnate. The Lord presents Himself to the affections of the assembly in His unique blessedness, and He intimates that all that subsisted in Himself in manhood is for the assembly. It is not at all a question of what He removes but what He brings in, and what He sets before the assembly for appropriation. “This is my body which is given for you”. It is a comprehensive word that would cover all the saints of the assembly. The Lord had in view the whole assembly, because Paul in giving the account of it which he had from the Lord in glory, says, “until he come”, so that what the Lord instituted, what is “for you”, covers the whole period till He comes.
The word “given” is omitted in Corinthians. I think it is characteristic of Luke’s presentation. Luke does not say, like Mark, “take” or, like Matthew, “eat”, but he dwells on the Lord’s side of it; He gives us the Lord’s act. We are told that He broke it and gave it to them; it is what the Lord does, and He says, “This is my body which is given for you”. It is the giving of love that is emphasised, but it is to be appropriated. When Paul speaks of it he leaves out the word ‘given’ but says it is “for you”, because the Spirit would emphasise the subsisting character of the thing; it is not merely that it is given but what is given subsists “for you”.
[p. 268] Luke emphasises the giving as bringing out the Lord’s own action in love, but then all the Lord has given in His body subsists for the assembly, so we can say at all times that it is for us. It has been given and it now subsists for us.
His body given brings out the greatness of what is given to us in Him as having become incarnate and having died. The reference to His body indicates the most marvellous thing that ever happened according to the eternal purpose of God — “in the volume of the book it is written of me”. A divine Person has come into manhood and has taken a prepared body, and every feature that is delightful to God in man has been seen in that body, and that body has been given in love for the assembly.
There is a particular way in which He would be remembered, and it would not only minister great delight to His own heart but it would form the affections of the assembly. The Lord is bent on forming the affections of the assembly. The Lord wants a companion that He can present to Himself glorious, because she has every feature in moral suitability and in developed affections that are satisfying to His heart. One great means the Lord takes to bring about this development is His Supper; that is why it is of such great importance. It is not just an ordinance, something that we do because we have to do it, but it is what ministers to the satisfaction of the Lord.
It is possible that some who have been breaking bread a long time have never eaten the Lord’s supper; we might never have taken it up according to the Lord’s thought of it any more than they did at Corinth. They did not at Corinth though they had the elements and the service. Eating the Lord’s supper is really entering into it as it was in the Lord’s mind. The Lord took a loaf and gave thanks. I cannot imagine that anyone present on that occasion could ever forget that thanksgiving. I expect every word was engraved in the affections of those who heard it. I would desire that our thanksgiving should be in harmony with His. He understood perfectly what His love was binding up in that institution and He gave thanks according to His own perfect apprehension of it. The Lord gave thanks as Head; He had the perfect, intelligent apprehension of all that there was in His precious and holy body, which has been devoted in love for the assembly. I do not know any type that comes nearer to it than that of the Hebrew servant; I think that is why brethren are so often led to refer to the one who said, “I love my master, my wife, and my children”. We are told in Exodus 21 that he comes in “with his body”, a remarkable expression; the Spirit of God puts it that way. The wife and children are not represented as needing to be delivered from anything; they are represented as given to him by his master. His master furnishes him with objects of affection. How is he going to stand in relation to those objects of affection? He dedicates himself altogether; he says, “I will not go out free”. What could have been the effect on wife or children? Could they have looked on that bored ear without being moved to the lowest depths of their emotional being? They could never forget the character of His love, how he devoted himself. That is how the Lord would have the assembly to remember Him as dedicated in love. He might have retained all His greatness, His manifold excellence and perfection as here in flesh, but He gave all up; He gave His body for the assembly. He came into that body to devote it in love to the assembly. The assembly lives in the appropriation of it; that is the very life of the assembly. His devotion to the assembly is scripturally secondary to His devotion to His Master; that is, He comes in at all cost to Himself as dedicated to the will of God, so it is as viewing Him in relation to the will of God that we get the right apprehension of His devotion to the assembly. He gives Himself for the assembly because it is His Father’s will that He should. It was His Father’s commandment that He did it — this gives a peculiar touch to the whole thing.
My impression is that the type of the Hebrew servant does not go beyond the present time. It is a peculiar moment when the devotion of Christ to His God is being witnessed spiritually in a remarkable way. The assembly at the present time is the witness, the spectator, of His devotion to God; that is a wonderful thing. Before the Lord takes up His place of supremacy, He comes into His household; that is the thought of the wife and children. The Lord’s supper is for the household. Mr. Darby said in reference to Luke 24 that He took the housefather’s place and broke the bread. Now we are His household; we are in the peculiar intimacy of a circle of affections which God has secured for Him before the day of His public rights.
One brother breaks the bread, but he does it as representing all and serving all. He does it in the spirit of what the Lord says here: “I am among you as the one who serves”. He does it as an act of lowly service to the brethren, but it is the act of all; we come together to break the bread.
We ought to take account of the cup as well as the loaf; we must not miss the great thoughts bound up in the institution. To see the place of the loaf, as setting forth the Lord’s body devoted in love, helps us to apprehend the character of the cup; it is what is conveyed in the thought of the new covenant.
The force of “after having supped” is to stress that this was after the passover supper. It is another aspect of things that must not be confounded with the cup of the Passover. We are told a verse or two before that He took a cup which was connected with the Passover, but what He now speaks of is after the passover supper; it is another character of things. In the other gospels there is not the distinction, but in Luke there is the thought of doing it for remembrance.
Now the Lord would have us to think of Him in His mediatorial glory; that is what I connect with the cup. In giving the cup He is taking the place of Mediator. The reference is clearly to Exodus 24, where Moses takes the blood and sprinkles it upon the altar and the book and all the people, and says, “This is the blood of the covenant”. That is the scriptural basis of the reference to the blood of the covenant. What follows upon that is that Moses and Aaron and the elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel and the sapphire pavement under His feet as the body of heaven in its clearness. They went up into the very presence of the glory of God; they saw the God of Israel. The idea of the blood is that there is nothing at all to hinder; such a basis has been made that God can bring out everything that is in His own heart, and His people can go up. The effect of their going up into this scene of glory was that Moses came down and gave all the instruction about the tabernacle. The whole structure of the tabernacle was set up in the power of the blood of the covenant, so that all that the assembly is as the tabernacle of God, as the shrine of the ark of the covenant, stands in the power of the blood. “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” — the Lord opens this out to us if we have hearts to appreciate the immensity of it.
The cup is not a descent; we do not come down from the loaf to the cup. It is the way up, “That way is upward still”. We find the thought repeatedly in the Old Testament of going
[p. 271] up to worship. We come into a system of glory known mediatorially; glory that shines, not with a splendour that blinds us, but with holy attractiveness shining in the Man at the gate of the city of Nain, and at Sychar’s well, and at Bethany. Glory shines in the Mediator and attracts us.
The Lord, having instituted the remembrance of Himself in all its precious import, would have us to know the conditions which would be found in the actual history of things until the moment of His coming again. It is necessary for us to be sobered and steadied by the consideration of what we may expect to find in the actual history of things. In the circle where His love is known intimately there may be found a treachery more dreadful than anything that could be found outside. The Lord could calmly take account of things, not that He did not feel them, for John tells us He was troubled in spirit. He was conscious of that being present which had the character of the darkest treachery. The Lord raises the question with the disciples that it was one of them. Which of them would do this thing? It is like Paul saying to the Ephesian elders, “from among your own selves shall rise up men speaking perverted things”, Acts 20: 30. That is the exercising thing. Among those who know the Lord and have been intimate with all the expressions of His love there may arise a treachery that is more dreadful than anything that could be found outside. No doubt that is an element which has been present more or less ever since the Supper has been instituted. There have been those who have given themselves up to Satan and who have used the knowledge they have obtained in the place of intimacy in order to further the designs of Satan. It is terrible to contemplate, but very necessary for us, so that we may not be surprised or dismayed at things which may actually come up. John speaks of the peculiar character of antichrists; they are characteristic antichrists, not personal, and what is characteristic of them is that they arise in the bosom of the assembly — he says, “They went out from us”.
We read in the Psalms, “For it is not an enemy ... then could I have borne it”, Psalm 55: 12. The Lord felt it very much as arising with one whom He regarded as His familiar friend. I think the Lord feels things in proportion to the circle in which they arise. The more intimate our relations with the Lord — and the relations of Judas with the Lord were very [p. 272] intimate — the more He feels what is untrue to Himself, and what is utterly wanting in love. He says, “the hand of him, who will deliver me up is with me on the table” (verse 21), but He did not send him away till the Supper was over. The Lord allowed it in order to show that the flesh in the most wonderful privileges, in the greatest intimacy and in the most touching circumstances, is not at all affected by the love of Christ. That is my flesh, for Judas is in every one of us, a man who is unaffected by the most precious and most tender disclosures of the love of Christ. I suppose the real character of the flesh is a tool readily surrendered to Satan; it is never seen so fully as in Judas. This chapter is in keeping with 1 Corinthians 11, where we see all the blessedness of the Supper, and then it says, “let a man examine himself”. You must not only go up but you must go down. Here the Lord is taking us down. It seems as if He said, ‘That is what I am and what God is, but you must not let even that lead you to forget what you are’. This comes out in different ways; here it comes out in the most intimate circle of divine love — the treachery of Judas, the self-importance that was striving as to who should be greatest, and the self-confidence of Simon — all these elements were there and the Lord lets us know that He knew it, but it is to bring us into complete harmony with Himself. It is not to discourage us; the object of it is to encourage us and to put our joy on a solid foundation, so that we do not lose our confidence and do not get any intrusion of the man of failure; we learn to judge that man in every phase of his activities. This is essential to our rightly taking up the Supper.
Peter had to come back to what he began with. The Lord says, “When thou hast returned back” — that is the real word. He began with the consciousness that he was a sinful man, and in chapter 9 he said of the Lord that He was the Christ of God. These two things settle the whole thing, and Peter as brought back to that could confirm his brethren, All this is given us to confirm us, not to dishearten us. The darkest treachery that Satan can introduce into the inner circle of the Lord’s love cannot interfere for a moment with God’s designs: “the Son of man goes as it was determined”. The full weight of the responsibility is left on the head of the one who yields himself as a tool of Satan, but the determinate counsel of God goes on.
Judas was never truly of the disciples; he was there and he [p. 273] was one of the twelve, but he was never a partaker of the divine nature; he had never any affectionate appreciation of Christ. Those who are like that will assuredly go out, and they carry a principle out with them into the world that is worse and has more of the spirit of apostasy in it than ever was in the world before; it makes the world worse than it ever was before. This is sobering and exercising. The present moment is the night of His betrayal; the Lord would never have us to forget that that is the character of the moment. Judas has given character to it. We can never eat the Supper without being reminded, not only of all set forth in the Supper, but that it was the same night in which He was delivered up. We are never allowed to forget it, and it would give a subduedness and sobriety to the occasion that would be very becoming.
The disciples striving who should be greatest was a much less grave character of evil; it came out in them all, for they seem all to have been engaged in this most unholy strife. But it is most touching how gently the Lord handles them; we might have expected Him to rebuke them most severely, but He does not. The Lord’s way of dealing with things was so like Himself; their strife was far removed from the spirit of the One who had dedicated His body for service, and it was altogether out of keeping with the Supper. I believe the Supper is intended to be corrective and adjusting; we should not merely look at it as a privilege. We may eat the Supper and go away the same as we come, but the Lord intends that we should be spiritually adjusted, and that we should be deeply exercised to be in accord with the loaf and the cup. The very action of eating and drinking means that the thing enters into us inwardly, so as to bring us into correspondence with it. That would effectually lead us to the judgment of any desire to be greater than our brethren.
In Corinthians it is remarkable that we hardly get away from the corrective aspect of the Supper; there is not a word of the privilege side, not a word about the presence of the Lord in the midst, or of Christ singing praises to the Father. All would have been unknown to the Corinthians; they were not in a condition for it, but Paul gives them the Lord’s table and the Supper correctively. My impression is that in the mind of the Lord we are never expected to eat the Supper without a very great change being brought about in our spirits and whole bearing. He gave Himself for the assembly that He might [p. 274] sanctify and purify it by the washing of water by the word, and there is no moment when He does it more than at the moment when His own love is so distinctly brought before us. He reminds us that His is a sanctifying and purifying love, as well as a nourishing and cherishing love.
The Lord shows here that He was prepared to serve. That is true greatness. Another man may be more thought of than I am, and probably deservedly so, but, even if unjustly so, that does not hinder me from serving. “I am among you as he that serveth” — that is the spirit of service. We judge that self-important man who would like to be great, and would like to have a place and rule and be in authority. There will never come a time when the most matured saint can afford to come and eat the Supper without examining himself. We can never be so matured and sanctified that we need not do that. How beautifully the Lord puts Himself before us! He never works on negative lines; He does not simply hold up the mirror for me to look at and see what a wretched creature I am, but He always displaces what I am by what He is. He shows Himself and there is positive gain; He displaces me and I love Him more than myself I look at myself and see hideous deformity; I look at Him and see surpassing excellence, glory and perfection that exceed my power to compass. He calls attention to Himself; He says, “I am among you as the one that serves”, and the greater is to be as the younger. There is to be a spirit of deference. A man does not say, ‘I have been breaking bread for forty years and you must listen to me’; he is as the younger. How beautifully Paul exemplifies this when he spoke about the Lord’s table! He said, “I speak as to intelligent persons; do ye judge what I say”, 1 Corinthians 10: 15. That is a very happy way to bring one’s exercises before the brethren — I have this exercise and I submit it to your judgment. It shows the beautiful spirit that belongs to a great one, as he tells us he did not care to use apostolic authority; he would rather reach things morally. Paul was greater than his gift. So the leader leads, not in the spirit of being better than the rest, but in the spirit of service and in the spirit of Christ. In faithfulness Paul deals with conditions as they were, but one can see that all the time in the mind of Paul he was thinking of the greatness of the saints. He begins by speaking of their greatness, and all through his epistles where he has so much to say of an admonitory nature we see the greatness of the people,
as if he said, ‘Do you not know how great you are? Do you not know you are the temple of God, that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, that you are members of Christ?’ He is seeking to bring them to realise their greatness as he did. If I think of the brethren as a poor low-down lot that want a tremendous lot of pulling up to make them what they should be, I could not serve them very well. We are to serve in the sense of the greatness of the people we serve. God’s people are a great people; there is no such august company in the heavens or the earth as the assembly of God; one of the greatest privileges we can have is to serve them, and the servant is a servant, not a master. Moses, though he had to speak with great severity at times, and justly so, yet never forgot what a great people the children of Israel were. Moses could even stand in God’s way and check Him from proceeding on account of what the people were. The people had an extraordinary place with God, and Moses reminds Him of it. The Lord regards the saints here in the highest possible character; He says in the next verse, “Ye are they which have persevered with me in my temptations”. The Lord is the model here; the whole spirit of a servant is exemplified in Him; He regards the saints in the most favourable light possible. He serves them in the sense of their greatness; they were “the excellent” to Him. That is the spirit in which we are to regard the saints.
I have often felt how good it is to take note of the perseverance of the saints. We may say that they are a poor, feeble lot, and that there is not much spiritual power with them, and that they do not seem to take in divine thoughts as they ought to; but see their perseverance! They go on year after year; they do not miss any opportunities that come their way for getting the ministry of Christ and the fellowship of the brethren; they have pleasure in the word and in prayer. They go on, some of them, thirty or forty and perhaps sixty years; they might have been all that time in the world and had a place in many circles, but they have deliberately persevered in a path that has involved more or less trials, and difficulties, and exercises. They have persevered. Is that nothing to the Lord? It is a great thing to Him.
Another feature comes to light in Simon, an element of self-confidence. I suppose Satan had been observing Simon, and what was in Simon was in them all. Satan had observed it, and demanded to have them — “to have you”. The thought [p. 276] that Satan observed us would strike terror into us if we did not know the Lord as Intercessor. Satan observes us and knows what tendencies there are in our flesh, but the Lord knows it all perfectly. The Lord in His love saw that it was necessary for Simon to be put into Satan’s sieve and sifted, and He prayed for him. It was the flesh in its finest form, very different from Judas. In Judas we see the flesh in its vilest form, but in Simon in its best form, assuming to be able and willing to die for the Lord. The Lord prays for him that his faith fail not. It is very touching that the very tendencies in my flesh become the occasion for the Lord’s intercession. I may be allowed to fall into Satan’s hands, but I am the subject of the Lord’s intercession, and Satan cannot give the sieve one shake more than he is allowed to. Peter is recovered and he makes it clear in his epistles that the divine nature is the only thing that comes through. No part of Scripture is more confirmatory than Peter’s epistles; they are the result of what he went through under the intercession of Christ. All this is most sobering for us in relation to the holy things of God. We have to do with them as those who have acquired in the ways of God a real knowledge of ourselves.
It was a severe test for Peter, but he was recovered through the prayer of the Lord. The Lord’s service continues: “He ever liveth to make intercession for us”. The Lord will not allow us to go through any sifting without praying for us. He prays that our faith may not fail; the flesh is going to be exposed; its utter untrustworthiness must be brought to light, but faith is there as well as flesh. There was faith in Peter and the Lord was set on sustaining the faith. The Lord may allow us to go through deep humiliation, but it is to expose what the flesh is in order that we may have done with it. The sifting is necessary. The Lord says to Peter, “Satan has demanded to have you”. Satan had been taking account of Simon; he had been observing that there was something in him that he had never seen in the Lord. Satan had never been able to observe any self-confidence in the Lord, but he observed it in Peter and he demanded to have him. The Lord allowed Satan to sift him, and bring to light all the chaff that was there, but the work of God remained for the Lord’s service, and for the strengthening of the brethren. Peter was busy strengthening the brethren when he wrote his two epistles.
[p. 277] The Lord addressed him as Simon in verse 31 and as Peter in verse 34. I suppose Simon would have more in view what he was naturally, but Peter would remind him of what he was according to divine calling. It was very sad that Peter should have to be told that he would three times deny the Lord. It was intended to bring home to him what a terrible defection it was, how contrary to what should have marked a stone. Peter means a stone, and what should have marked a stone was stability, but he showed himself to be the most unstable of all of them. “I have prayed for thee” comes before the temptation — that is a great part of our service amongst the brethren. It is a very blessed form of service. If we see weakness or defect in the brethren, does it lead us to criticise them or to pray for them? Flesh can criticise but faith prays for them. If we saw any mark of infirmity or defect in a brother and it led us to pray for him, the poorest brother might be elevated. We do not want to notice the brethren’s defects except as a reason why we should serve them. The spirit of service does not take up any place of superiority. Every sister can serve as well as every brother, and a very great feature of the service is that ye pray.
If we are to be commissioned we have to learn the character of the moment. That comes out in verses 35 - 38. A great change has taken place through the Lord not being here. When the Lord was here He could send them out without purse, scrip or sandals; they went out without a single resource other than His own word; they simply had to go in obedience to Him. The Lord was here on earth, and He was their sufficiency; to have had anything else, even a purse, scrip or sandals, would have detracted from the testimony of the Lord’s sufficiency. He said, Did you lack anything, and they said, Nothing. But now, He says, it is all different. We have now to take up the exercises of having resources; the Lord is not here, and we need to have resources in ourselves. The Lord says, “The things concerning me have an end” — now we are going to be cast on our own resources. It is a complete change; the Lord is numbered with the lawless. He is going into death; the things concerning Him have an end, and now the service is to be carried on on a different principle. I have no doubt that when the Lord spoke in verse 28 of purse, scrip and sandals, He was not referring to such things literally, but with a spiritual significance. I believe He was referring to that [p. 278] which the saints would have in the Holy Spirit; the resources which they would acquire through their own exercises so that they are furnished. We talk about empty vessels; sometimes we say we have not anything. That is not a spiritual exercise. The Lord is turning their attention to what they must acquire through exercise. I do not think anybody is any good for service if he is not furnished. What is the good of moving about amongst the saints if you have nothing to give them? You want a purse, a scrip, and a sword.
The scrip is the food supply, the vessel in which the food is carried. The Lord suggests that if you are to serve you need to be furnished with spiritual wealth, and with food, and with power for conflict; and we have to see to it that we get it. You may say, Everything is in Christ, but the Lord says, ‘That will not do for you now; it has been like that in the past but now you must have it’. There are wonderful resources available now in the Spirit by which the Lord’s people can be enriched. What a big purse Paul had! How often he speaks of riches in connection with the ministry! He had a large purse and he tells us how he came by it in Ephesians 3; he says, ‘I have written that you might understand how I came to be so wealthy; I have a commission to minister to the nations the unsearchable riches of the Christ’.
The food supply is very varied; there is milk for babes, and meat for grown up people; there is a measure of corn in season, and pasturage for the lambs and sheep. A great deal of service lies in the way of having some food for the people of God.
The sword has to do with conflict. The disciples did not enter into what the Lord was bringing before them; they were looking at it in a material way. Peter used the sword when he ought not to have used it; the Lord is speaking here of a spiritual sword. Paul speaks about the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s word; we need that. The enriching of the people of God and the feeding of the people of God can never be carried on without conflict. There never was a time when the possession of a sword was more needed than now. These three things go on together: the ministry of wealth and food on the one hand, and the ability to engage in conflict on the other. The Lord is speaking of spiritual equipment; it is His closing word before going to the garden and the cross, so there is great importance attached to it. The Lord would leave [p. 279] behind Him a company provided with everything necessary to carry on the service.
“He that has none let him sell his garment and buy a sword”, verse 36. The garment suggests what might give us some kind of advantage; there is to be a readiness to surrender it. I do not think anyone can really be in conflict without being prepared for a good deal of humiliation. Conflict involves humiliation; you are prepared to be of no account so that the truth is maintained. Paul did not mind what the Corinthians thought about him; he was prepared to be regarded as a reprobate so long as they were right. Power for conflict involves readiness to pay the price, to sell your garment — that is, something you would naturally value very much.
“The things concerning me have an end”, verse 37. All connected with Christ after the flesh was coming to an end. It was a unique period when the Lord was here on earth; there never was anything like it, nor ever would be again. It was not intended to continue; it came to an end, but there are resources in the Spirit which we must make our own or we shall not be equal to the demands of the service.
The mount of Olives has a great place in this gospel. The Lord does not seek here that His disciples, should watch with Him; His thoughts with regard to them were thoughts of grace and thoughts for their preservation, and we might say, for ours. The Lord twice says, “Pray that ye enter not into temptation”. He had in mind that there was a time of supreme testing coming, and that nothing would qualify the disciples or us for such a moment but being with God. It was for want of being with God that they said, “Shall we smite with the sword?” It was distance from the Lord that led one of them to cut off a man’s ear. It is said that one of them did it, as much as to say that they were all minded to have done it. They had gone beyond a stone’s throw; it is a terrible thing to go beyond a stone’s throw from the Lord.
The Lord intimated that He was not altogether out of man’s range even at such a moment as that. There was a distance between Himself and them; the intensity of His conflict and prayers and the strengthening ministry from heaven were peculiar to Himself. There was a distance, a stone’s throw between Himself and them, but it was not a distance that put Him altogether out of their range. A stone’s throw is the measure of a man’s range. I think the Lord had placed Himself near enough to them to be a model for them, and He was a model in prayer. In presence of the power of darkness His whole resource was prayer; He was with God. We see in the blessed Lord a Man with God, and therefore an absolute overcomer; the Father’s will determined everything. The Lord’s mind was that none of His disciples should go beyond a stone’s throw from that; that was the secret of safety, and especially in man’s hour and the power of darkness.
The Lord gives the disciples the secret of preservation; the secret for them and for us is nearness to God. Prayer, if it means anything, means being with God; if not, prayer is of very little worth. The habit of prayer is to be cultivated; otherwise, when the moment of pressure comes, it is too late to begin to pray. That is often the mistake with us; we think we can begin to pray when the pressure comes, but that will not do. He went as His custom was to the mount of Olives. It must be a customary thing to retire into the nearness of heaven and the presence of God — that is the only preservation in man’s hour and the power of darkness. It is a very solemn word for us.
The disciples slept; they were not with God. The Lord was with God; we see a Man with God — that is the wonderful sight — and a Man strengthened from heaven. The Lord held perfectly the place into which He had come; He came into man’s place and He held it and was strengthened from heaven. Now we are never to get at a distance from that; if we do, the power of darkness will test us. The power of darkness is a terrible thing. The moment I give up the thought of Christ as a model and of being like Him I drop to my own level; that applies from the first thing in the morning to the last thing at night. We must hold to the thought of a model; nothing will do but being like Christ.
The Lord had pressure that will never come upon us. There was an intensity about it that we shall never know — that is why the stone’s throw comes in. It is not like the two thousand cubits between the ark and the people as they crossed the Jordan — that was a great distance. It was a question there of the power of His Person when He met and annulled the power of death; He is not a model for us there. All is effected there in the power of His Person. I can pass over in the strength of His victory, but He is no model for me there. But the stone’s [p. 281] throw brings in the thought of model. The disciples were far off morally; they had gone beyond the length of a stone’s throw. Peter was far beyond it when he sat in the house and warmed himself and denied the Lord. The Lord says, “rise up and pray”. Sleep here is contrasted with prayer; a praying saint is never asleep. The only way to keep awake is to pray; if we do not pray we go to sleep. We become indifferent the moment we give up the thought of the Lord as our model. It is not simply a privilege but a necessity that I should be like Him; it is my only safety. It is possible for us to be strengthened from heaven as He was, and we need to be when the power of darkness is permitted to act upon us. There is nothing more blessed than to be strengthened from heaven, to feel that there is such an overwhelming power assailing you that you are certain to go under if you are not with God. That makes you pray intensely, and then you find that you are strengthened from heaven; instead of going under you are an overcomer.
The angel brings in the ministration of supplies from heaven. It is not exactly the Spirit, for He is already here, but an angel coming is a fresh contribution of supplies from heaven. That is a blessed reality. Not only am I sustained by the Spirit who abides here, but at the moment of pressure there is an angel sent, a direct messenger from heaven. If we had that we should never think of resorting to any carnal means of defending the Lord. If He could appreciate a strengthening from heaven by an angel it must be a wonderful thing.
We should know how to meet things; the disciples did not know, so they began to talk about smiting with the sword, and Peter actually cut a man’s ear off. They did not know how to meet things; they were not with God, and when we are not with God we use altogether wrong means to promote the Lord’s interests. The disciples thought they were promoting the Lord’s interests, but they used wrong means.
In Matthew and Mark Gethsemane is named; these gospels present the actual dealing of God with sin; they refer to the forsaking of the Lord, That is not brought out in this gospel. Here it is rather the tremendous power of evil that is opposed to the manifestation of God in grace. Luke does not speak of the judicial dealing of God with sin in the Lord’s atoning sufferings. The aspect of the death of Jesus in Luke is that by the grace of God He tasted death for everything. His death [p. 282] in Luke is a widening out of His personal glory as the exponent of divine grace; it is not a straitening but an enlarging, In this chapter we see in the presence of the power of darkness the personal glory of Christ in ever increasing fulness. We see His personal glory widening out. He is the Christ, the Son of man, the Son of God; all this comes out in the council. That council chamber was illuminated with the whole splendour of His personal glory; it had never shone out in such effulgence before. What a wonderful scene! It was a spectacle for angels and men, and everyone was made to feel it.
The Lord is instructing us in grace; He has put the overcomer’s key into our hands — would we not all like to have it? The Lord gives us the overcomer’s key and it is prayer; and then He shows us the lamentable results of sleeping instead of praying. The result is that we adopt carnal means to further the Lord’s interests, and we cut people’s ears off. The Lord shows here how to overcome opposition; it is not by using human or carnal means but by bringing grace into evidence, so He says, “Suffer thus far”, and He heals the man. He is our model. I should like to be more skilful in touching needy persons in grace. The Lord never did anything with us except in pure grace. We do not touch the power of darkness with grace, but men have been misled by the power of darkness, and it is a wonderful thing to be able to touch a man’s ear who had never had any interest in the things of God, to touch him so that from that moment he begins to listen to the precious story of grace. If we use any natural means to further the Lord’s work, we only come down to the level of men, and there we find Peter. Peter was found using the sword, and he was found sitting with men on a level with them.
The disciples were “sleeping from grief”; they really loved Him, but they were not with God, and the very fact that they loved Him brought them into danger. If Peter had not loved the Lord he would not have followed Him at all. It was Peter’s genuine love for the Lord that brought him into danger, because he was not with God. It is possible so to feel the pressure that we give up and go to sleep; we find a way out of it in forgetting it. I have heard a saint say, If I do not put it all out of my head I shall go out of my mind. That is not taking it to God; if you take it to God you will not go out of your mind but you will get God’s mind. But such is the weakness of nature that we may really sleep out of genuine [p. 283] sorrow. We feel for the Lord and His interests, but we have not a sense of nearness to God, and we sleep. Distance from God is the secret of all weakness. A Christian is the biggest piece of inconsistency that one can think of! I do not think any one of us loves the Lord as much as Peter did, and yet he denied Him three times. The Lord looked at Peter, and that saved the situation. The Lord overcame in grace; He overcame the power of darkness and all the weakness in Peter.
The grace of God continues to be livingly expressed in those who are after the model of Christ. The moment I give up in my heart the thought of Christ as model and that I must be like Him, that moment I drop to the level of what I am, and then there is no testimony. We may continue to come to the meetings and take part, but there is no testimony; it is only people who are like Christ who are in the testimony. The grace of God is really all modelled in Christ. It is a blessed reality that there is the substance of Christ in every saint — one delights to think of that. Now the thing is to let that have liberty; to put the sharp knife on what is of the flesh and nature and to let that which is the substance of Christ come into evidence. That is the law of liberty.
The Lord was now brought into the presence of the assembly of Israel. It was no longer the crowd or the individual rejection of Him, but in His being brought into the presence of the elderhood of the people, the chief priest and those interested in the law, the whole nation was there officially and representatively. The assembly of Israel was convened, and it was convened for the purpose of condemning to death God’s Anointed. It was a question of His Person. It was the anointed Vessel of grace, whose course has been delineated before our eyes in this gospel by the Spirit of God. How little reason they had for saying, “If thou art the Christ, tell us”? He had been telling it for three and a half years in unmistakable tones, There was determined purpose to get rid of God’s Anointed, and that on the part of the most enlightened assembly that could then be convened on the face of the earth. It is exceedingly solemn. It served to bring out that all that had been expressed in Him produced no effect save to arouse hatred in those led by the power of darkness. The full compass of divine light was in His Person; He is the Christ, God’s Anointed, and He is the Son of man destined for universal dominion, and the Son of God, a divine Person in manhood — the whole light was concentrated [p. 284] in His Person and the whole power of darkness was concentrated in what was officially the assembly of Israel.
It says in another gospel that they sought witnesses to put Him to death; their whole object was that. There were many witnesses who might have been called: cleansed lepers, blind men who had their eyes opened, dead men who were raised, thousands who were healed. There were plenty of witnesses that He was the Christ, yet the elders could say, “tell us”. This Person is the great test, not religious beliefs or knowledge of Scripture. I suppose every man in that council was fully conversant with Scripture, but that Person was the test. No one who ever came in contact with Him had failed to be convinced that all that He said and did was of God. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him”, Acts 10: 38. There was no possibility of question, and yet they say, “tell us”. It was too late to ask such a question. The position was now definitive; there was no hope of any change being produced either in His judgment of them or their judgment of Him. He had declared His judgment of them in chapters 11 and 20 and they are now gathered together in solemn assembly to declare publicly their judgment of Him. There is not a single feature in God’s Anointed that commends itself to the religious man; we have to accept that fact in all its solemn reality. So the more we could demonstrate that Jesus was the Christ, the more definite and deadly would be the opposition aroused in the natural and religious man. People do not need to be convinced; we think if we could only present truth convincingly it would be all right, but the more convincingly it is presented the more hatred comes out. There was never truth more convincingly presented than in God’s anointed Vessel; His works and His teaching set forth the truth in word and deed, and set it forth convincingly, but the fact that it was set forth so convincingly brought out the enmity of the human heart. We speak of man as fallen and lost and at enmity with God, but I wonder how far we believe it.
The rejection of the Christ does not obstruct God in His wonderful designs; it does not frustrate God in any way, so the Lord could say definitely of them that they would not believe, or let Him go; they would not desist from the course they were pursuing. On the other hand God would not desist [p. 285] from His course; if the Son of God was rejected, the Son of man would move into a wider sphere of universal dominion.
We shall not read this scripture aright if we do not see it is a dark background, but we see God’s purpose and counsel moving on to its blessed end in spite of all. The testimony of grace as regards Israel officially is at an end; they had defined their position; the assembly was convened for condemning God’s Anointed. What marks the Lord in this scene is silence; His words were extremely few. “He was oppressed and he was afflicted, but he opened not his mouth; he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and was as a sheep dumb before her shearers, and he opened not his mouth”, Isaiah 53: 7. It is striking how little He has to say; His silence in man’s hour and in presence of the power of darkness was an expression of divine grace. He had expressed it in word and in deed and now He expresses it in silence. In the presence of hatred, injustice and violence, grace would take the place of silent suffering. He stands in that attitude as model for us, and as we contemplate it we learn grace in the suffering Lamb. As we do so we become qualified in nature and affection to form part of the bride of the Lamb. We are soon to be in the most intimate union with that blessed One, and nothing could be united to Him that was not in keeping with Him; His bride must be His counterpart. His words were few, but they are just the confession of the truth of His Person; He would be the Son of man at the right hand of power. No doubt the Lord’s words (verse 69) were a reference to Daniel 7, which every man in that assembly would know. “I beheld till thrones were set, and the Ancient of days did sit: his raiment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was flames of fire, and its wheels burning fire. A stream of fire issued and came forth from before him; thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened” (verses 9 and 10), and then “I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man, and he came up even to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed”, verses 13 and 14.
[p. 286] Now everyone in the council knew that scripture and knew that the Lord was referring to it. The Ancient of days is one of the most majestic titles of God that Scripture contains, and it says of the Son of man that he was brought to the Ancient of days. It is strictly, as the margin reads, “he reached unto the Ancient of days”, that is, the Son of man is Jehovah’s Fellow. He reaches to the Ancient of days; there is no disparity, no inferiority, between the Son of man and the Ancient of days. The Son of man claims, as to the rights of His Person, equality with God. They knew it well. He is going to have universal dominion. No middle course is possible; if we think of the rights of the Lord’s Person it is impossible for any human being to be neutral. If we could bring home to men the truth of the Lord’s Person, they would either have to fall at His feet and worship or gnash on Him with their teeth; men must either submit or reject Him. In preaching it is important to press the rights of His Person, to assert the dignity, majesty, and universal dominion that attach to His Person. Every man is tested by this Person. Is He God’s Anointed? Is He the Son of man? These people quite understood that, if He were the Christ and the Son of man, He was Son of God, a divine Person in manhood. No one could reach to the Ancient of days but a Man who was His Fellow; it meant to these people that He was the Son of God. The presentation of the greatness of His Person is of vital importance in these days when He is being unclothed of every glory that attaches to Him.
“The Christ” involves the testimony of grace, that testimony which had been sounding forth, echoing through the whole land from the Dead Sea to Lebanon. He was God’s Anointed, the Vessel full of divine grace and blessing, available to all. The rejection of Him as God’s Anointed is the complete rejection of grace. But the Son of man involves the glorious supremacy which attaches to Him; He will have universal dominion, and every knee will have to bow to Him. We must present that with the other. A man hearing the gospel and having it brought home in the power of the Spirit could never say, I will think about it. He must either worship or reject the Son of man. So the Lord asserts absolutely His place of dominion, authority and power as Son of man. They had rejected Him as Christ, so it was folly to ask Him who He was; and then they rejected Him as Son of man. They realised that [p. 287] no one could be Son of man who was not Son of God. Christ and Son of man are official titles, but behind that lies His personal glory as Son of God.