THE HEART OF THE LORD JESUS AT THE MOMENT OF ENTIRE REJECTION
In the first three words of verse 25 the Spirit of God calls our attention to this wonderful moment in connection with our Lord’s path and ministry down here. Generally speaking, what marked the moment on the part of man was the utter refusal and rejection of our Lord Jesus Christ; indeed, speaking morally (not quite actually), I think we get, “At that time” the climax of the rejection of our Lord by the inhabitants of the land of Palestine. Confining ourselves to this chapter, there are three things that marked the moment. The first is the sorrowful and painful breakdown and failure of John Baptist. We must not allow ourselves to lower our thoughts or estimation of him, because in this very chapter the Lord in His grace bears a most wonderful testimony as to him. He says: “Verily I say to you, that there is not arisen among the born of women a greater than John the baptist” (v 11), nevertheless, it is a sorrowful breakdown on the part of that wonderful man. He was no other than the forerunner of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who had been appointed of God to introduce publicly the Son of God to Israel, and yet it is evident that there is a breakdown. Just fancy that man, John Baptist, sending a message—“Art thou the coming one? or are we to wait for another?” (v 3)—the man who, on the banks of Jordan, in the presence of those assembled thousands of Israel, had borne that beautiful testimony, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”; then the next day, not publicly, but privately, there had burst from his lips that spontaneous testimony as he looked upon Jesus as He walked, “Behold the Lamb of God”; and the effect of that testimony on two of John’s disciples was that they immediately turned and began to follow the One of whom John had just borne this wonderful testimony. Now he is in prison; it is no longer Jordan—no longer the assembled thousands of Israel, and, I would say it sadly, it is no longer with John the energy of the Holy Ghost by which he bore that testimony. He is shut up in prison alone, and having heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent by his disciples and said to Him: “Art thou the coming one? or are we to wait for another?”
Then in the second case we have a very solemn picture of the moral insensibility and indifference that characterised that generation who were here when the Lord was here, for the language the Lord used—the simile He introduced, emphasises in a most solemn way their utter indifference and insensibility. There was absolutely no repentance. There were the sweet ‘pipings’ of grace in the ministry of the Lord, but no responsive dancing; there was the ‘mourning’ in the ministry of John Baptist, but no responsive wailing. Hence He says: “But to whom shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the markets, which, calling to their companions, say, We have piped to you, and ye have not danced: we have mourned to you, and ye have not wailed”, Matt 11: 16, 17.
Then lastly we have the Lord’s reproach to these cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida particularly, and then Capernaum. In these cities they had been privileged to witness the mighty works of power wrought by the Lord Jesus Christ, and there was no repentance, no evidence of any work of God in their souls, no evidence of any proper sense of their responsibility in regard to God. God had sent that blessed One, and in the midst of these cities, on the behalf of God, He had wrought these mighty works of power, and there was no repentance.
I do not dwell in detail upon the solemn language which came from the lips of the Lord Jesus concerning these cities, but I want to show you that these things marked that moment, and it was: “At that time, Jesus answering said, I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes. Yea, Father, for thus has it been well-pleasing in thy sight”. I hardly know how to speak of this as I should. How glorious the Lord appears! how glorious morally, spiritually! Many of us have eyes and ears and hearts for that which is merely material and external, but there is nothing of that sort here: what characterises the Lord “at that time” is like a sunburst on a very dark, cloudy and stormy day. I cannot refrain from saying I have a sense of how little I am like Him; how easily we succumb to discouraging circumstances. Many of us can manage a hymn of praise when things are bright and fair, but how many of us could manage a note of praise at a time like this? It is an ascending note of praise, and I am sure it filled the ears and heart of the Father with the sweetest music that had ever risen up from this world; the music of that note of praise not only filled the Father’s heart with delight and pleasure, but it has been sounding down through the intervening centuries, and I feel that all of us here tonight need is to come under the power of the Spirit of God that we may know something of the music of it.
The “Lord of the heaven and of the earth”, I understand, expresses the thought of sovereign Ruler. The Father is the sovereign Ruler of the heaven and the earth. No matter who breaks down, no matter what indifference or insensibility or impenitence may be in evidence, He, the eternal Father, sits upon the eternal throne, and He is the sovereign Ruler of the heaven and of the earth. Do not give up in discouragement, do not get under the power of any breakdown here, the Father is the sovereign Ruler of the heaven and of the earth. It was just the suited moment for the Lord Jesus.
You know, speaking generally, the way the Spirit of God presents the Lord to us, especially in the first three gospels. He is “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, Isa 53: 3. The record of the notes of praise are very rare; but how sweet this note is; what a contrast to the words that have just left His lips—sorrowful, solemn words, announcing the gathering clouds of divine judgment. But the moment His heart turns to the Father there leaps out from His lips this note of praise: “I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes. Yea, Father, for thus has it been well-pleasing in thy sight”.
Then let me note another thing. There is, as He turns to the Father, the ascending note of praise as we have seen, and then as He turns to all those about Him—what do we find? The outflowing streams of divine grace! I am afraid if you and I had been there at that time it might have been a sound of murmuring, a note of discouragement, and perhaps we should have closed our hearts against those about us. We might have said, Everything is in vain; there is no use going on with men. Not so the Lord. You know what the Lord Himself says: “For of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks”, and He stands before us the perfect example, the perfect illustration of that. From that heart, beloved, that was filled with the eternal sunshine of the Father’s love there leaped this blessed note of praise, and from that same heart He turns to men and says: “Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest”. How it makes one long to be a little more like Him!
Well now, let me say, the conditions that are expressed in the three things mentioned in this chapter have obtained from that day to this. They obtain all around us tonight. There is plenty of failure; there is even the questioning, in the spirit of it, “Art thou the coming one? or are we to wait for another?” and there is still the indifference, the impenitence all about us; but the music of that note of praise may still be heard and felt in our hearts, and those precious streams of divine grace that burst from His lips are still flowing, so that tonight we may still catch the tones of that voice, we may still hear Him saying: “Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened”.
Someone has said that in this passage (the end of Matthew 11) Matthew and John coalesce. I do not think it is too much to say that what comes out in these wonderful utterances, whether it be the note of praise to the Father, or the expression of His grace, and what precedes it, is not exactly characteristic of Matthew, it would be rather more characteristic of John; but in saying this you understand it is not calling in question the absolute perfection of scripture; you may depend upon it that it is set in the right place; the Spirit of God has put it just where it should be, and the very darkness of the moment, the breakdown of John, the indifference, the insensibility, and the impenitence that formed the background of it only make it shine out the more brilliantly.
Now divine Persons are mentioned here, and let me say it is around the revelation of divine Persons that all the interest, the value and importance of scripture centre; and surely we have that revelation here. There is first the note of praise to the Father, and then He says: “All things have been delivered to me by my Father”. The Lord Jesus never speaks from the standpoint of circumstances. Underneath all the circumstances of His path and ministry here there ever was that wonderful divine circle of holy heavenly relationship between Himself and the Father. It is not always seen, it does not always come out, but it is always there. If we speak for a moment of the circumstances surrounding the Lord—did it look as if all things had been delivered to Him of the Father? Indeed, it did not. I do not think I should be exceeding the scripture if I said that so far as the external look of things went at that time it looked as if the whole ministry and miracles of the Lord Jesus were a complete failure—it looked that way. But the Lord had a heavenly and out-of-the-world view; He was not looking at circumstances only. He does look at circumstances in His previous utterances, and His utterances are absolutely perfect; but when He turns to the Father He retires in spirit from all external circumstances of His path, and retreats into that holy, heavenly circle of relationship and affection between Himself and the Father, and retiring there He can not only send up the note of praise and express His most perfect and absolute acquiescence in, and subjection as a Man to, the Father’s will, but He can go on to say: “All things have been delivered to me by my Father”. He is standing there amidst all this rejection, and indifference, and impenitence, and if the Father is brought before us as the sovereign Ruler of the heaven and of the earth, that sovereign Ruler of the heaven and of the earth has put “all things” (and who would dare to limit it?—I would say the language of the context would require that we should keep to the scope of the Father’s sovereignty; He is sovereign; He—the Lord of the heaven and of the earth), has delivered “all things” into the hands of Him who is the Son—He speaks of Himself as the Son, as a divine Person in relationship with the Father—nevertheless, He speaks as Man down here; it is to my mind one of the most lovely—indescribably lovely pictures of that blessed One as Man down here.
Now He goes on—“All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son but the Father”. That remains in all its unchanged force of meaning as true tonight as when those words left His blessed lips. That has not been brought into revelation; it lies beyond the scope of revelation, and lying beyond that scope, it lies outside what we know; though I think it would not be too much to say that at that time the Son even viewed as Man was not known by any one; not that that is the force of the expression; the expression is to be left in its proper force and meaning. “Nor does any one know the Father, but the Son” (that is the same word—real knowledge, not a mere objective acquaintance with the Person), “and he to whom the Son may be pleased to reveal him”. From all eternity the Son had His home, and has His home in the bosom of the Father; and when He, the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, was pleased to take up a condition as Man down here, He brought into that, morally, all that belonged to Him as the only-begotten Son in the Father’s bosom; He brought that intimate knowledge of the Father. And, further, it marked Him, it distinguished Him pre-eminently as a Man while He was here. Hence in the gospels, as it has often been said, He always spoke to God not as God, but to the Father as such; the only departure that scripture gives us is in connection with the cross when He cried; “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Now can you conceive what it would have been if a period had been placed after “Nor does any one know the Father, but the Son”, and if the rest of the sentence had not been there? To my mind it would have been like the blotting out of Christianity. It remains true; “Nor does any one know the Father, but the Son”; but for what reason has the Son, the only-begotten Son in the Father’s bosom, come into manhood? In other words, why the incarnation? That the Father might be morally revealed and known by men down here. So He adds the words, “and he to whom the Son may be pleased to reveal him”. There stand those precious words. One may say that is, in a sense, Christianity. It is the revelation of the Father in the Son as Man down here, and when He is pleased to reveal Him it becomes on our side the knowledge of the Father as revealed in the Son, and there is one lovely word that expresses what that means. Do you know what it means? It means REST. I can remember in days gone by that they used to sing: ‘There is sweet rest in heaven’; I have no doubt about that, but let me tell you there is rest down here; there is rest in the midst of and in spite of all the conditions that obtain here. He has come to give that rest. He alone could give it. He alone is competent to reveal the Father. We are shut up to that blessed One as Man down here. There is no knowledge of the Father possible in any other way, but He has come to reveal the Father; so this is the proper connection of verse 28: “Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest”. How? By revealing the Father in Himself. He gives rest. Has it come to your soul? Oh, the rest of knowing the Father revealed in the Son! My beloved brethren, let me say, it is involved in the proper knowledge of Himself. The apostle Paul in Ephesians 4: 13, speaking of the gifts from the ascended Christ and of their end, says: “until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God”. It is wonderful how it is put in scripture; it is not said, ‘He that hath the Father hath the Son’; no, it is, “He that hath the Son hath the Father”. You could not have the Father any other way.
Let me venture a little further. The force of the expression—“the Father” here, is not the common apprehension of it. It is the Father in His relation to the Son—in His love for the Son. We have in John 3: 16, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son”. We have the new covenant in that way, the blessed expression of God’s love toward us; but we have more than that; we have in the end of chapter 17: 17 in the Lord’s utterance to the Father, “And I have made known to them thy name, and will make it known; that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them”. Do you not delight to think of Him as the one and only adequate object of the Father’s love? By-and-by you and I and all the saints of God shall behold His glory, and that glory will be the adequate expression of the love with which the Father loved Him from before the foundation of the world. Do not lower scripture; if you do, you will lower your own blessing.
He says: “Come to me ... and I will give you rest”—and how? By revealing the Father. Now that revelation of the Father is once and for all. But there is our pathway here; we have not yet reached the prepared place in the Father’s house, we have a few more days, perchance a few more months or years still to go on through this scene down here; and what about that? The Lord says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest to your souls; for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”. You will find rest right along your path here, no matter what your circumstances are, no matter what happens: up, down, dark, light, joyful, sorrowful, tears or anguish (for Christianity never makes stoics of us), you shall find rest to your souls. And now think of that expression, which He uses about Himself—“for I am meek and lowly in heart”. That is what the Lord was as a Man down here; that is what marked Him, what pre-eminently characterised Him. He was meek, and He was lowly. We bump pretty hard against the rocks sometimes; and we even bump against one another, and we bump against what we call our adverse circumstances; but do you know why? We are not like Him, meek and lowly. It would not be justifiable for me to speak of myself, but it was perfectly justifiable for Him to speak of Himself, and it is perfectly beautiful the way He speaks of Himself, and we may be wonderfully helped and instructed by considering the way He speaks of Himself.
But what is His prescription? “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me”. Does a “yoke” speak of service—of something imposed? Yes. Peter, you know, when up at Jerusalem, said, speaking of Judaism: “why tempt ye God, by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?” You could not say of that yoke that it was easy, nor of the burden it imposed that it was light. There must be something in the yoke, beloved—His yoke, that makes it easy. Do you know what it is? May I attempt to express it in a word?
It is sonship. The Lord Jesus is so variously presented in the scriptures; He was the perfect embodiment and expression of all that a man ought to be in relation to God. He is not only the only one competent to reveal the Father, though that is true (no one knows the Father intimately but Himself); but He was the perfect embodiment and expression of all that a man ought to be for God. And what is His yoke? It is sonship. And what is sonship?
It is love. “Take my yoke”. Did you ever try it? Who introduced sonship? He brought it in. Jehovah, of course, had spoken of Israel in that sort of way; but the reality of sonship, as what is proper to man before God, or in relation to God, never was here till the Son came; He brought it in ... Peter, in the way of contrast, in the opening of his first letter says “Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, to ... elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by sanctification of the Spirit, unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ”. Jesus Christ characterises the obedience as well as the sprinkling, and so it is the obedience of Jesus Christ—the obedience of sonship. What makes it easy? Because in the spirit of sonship you only have to do the things you like to do. That is the way it works. Look at the expression of sonship in the Lord: “I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes. Yea, Father, for thus has it been well-pleasing in thy sight” ... To Him God’s will was perfectly right; He was not only subject to the Father’s will, but He acquiesced in it. He delighted in it. You would not learn sonship by studying me, nor could I learn it by studying you; but I know where you can learn it as you can learn it nowhere else—that is, from Him: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me”. We are too busy, I am afraid, in these days; we do not take time to sit down and look at Him; we do not take time for the spiritual contemplation of that blessed One. He is not only the perfect expression of God to man, but the perfect expression of man to God. You can “learn” from Him. And it stands out here in a very marked way. He is not only the Son whom no one knows but the Father; but He is as we see Him here that lowly, meek, patient Man, and I am sure when that note of praise went up, with those accompanying words from His blessed lips, that it was a perfect delight to the heart of the Father.
Well, I cannot say more now ... but whether rich or poor, sick or well, whatever tomorrow may bring, if you take His yoke upon you and learn from Him you will find rest to your souls. You will find it right along your pathway ... and the longer you wear the yoke, and the more you learn from Him, the more you will prove “for my yoke is easy, and my burden, is light”.
May the Lord be pleased to add His blessing!