CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 11
FER I think down to the end of chapter 10 there is nothing that goes beyond Israel: in chapter 8 it is the Servant, in chapter 9 the service, and in chapter 10 the administration, but nothing that goes beyond Israel, even when you come to chapter 11 there is nothing that goes beyond Israel for the moment, but the two great points of the chapter are, that the kingdom of heaven takes the place of John the baptist’s ministry, and Christianity takes the place of the mighty works of the Son of man.
Rem And in the next chapter He becomes the hope of the Gentiles, and breaks the link with Israel formed by His coming in the flesh.
Ques Where do you see Christianity in this chapter?
FER In the revelation of the Father. This supersedes His mighty works. The Lord acknowledges the Baptist’s ministry, but adds that the least in the kingdom was greater than he; that is, has greater privilege. Chapter 12 brings in the thought of the Gentiles in connection with that. He speaks of the trust of the Gentiles, and He breaks the covenant with Israel, and at the close of the chapter He says, “Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?”
Ques You refer to the sabbath?
FER I think that was the beginning of it. At the close of the chapter He brings it out plainly.
Rem The Lord bears witness to Himself in chapter 11, instead of John bearing witness.
FER [p. 73] Yes; it was all for conviction to John.
Ques I suppose John himself breaks down, does he not?
FER Yes; I think so. The Lord gives the largest place to John and his ministry, but another thing had come in, “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence”, etc.
Ques Is the violence the energy of faith?
FER Yes; I suppose so.
Ques Would you say the latter part of the chapter is like the gospel of John?
FER Well, it is part of Christianity. It is brought in to show what was coming in, the revelation of the Father.
Ques Is the idea of the kingdom here association with the king during the period of His rejection? And it is a greater privilege to be in that than to deliver even John’s testimony.
FER Yes, I think so, because what the kingdom means is power acting in grace. John the baptist was recalling the people, convicting them. The kingdom is power acting in grace.
Ques John did not bring the people into anything, did he?
FER No; he told them what was coming.
Rem John broke down in view of the complete rejection of the Messiah.
FER Yes; you would not naturally expect the forerunner of the Messiah to be in prison, the fact is everything that came out was consequent upon the state of Israel.
Rem “Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me” was a gracious message to John.
FER Yes; and couched in language that John probably understood, and no one else.
Ques Does not chapter 11: 28 take in the Gentiles?
FER I do not think for the moment it did, it [p. 74] was the labouring and heavy laden in Israel particularly in view.
Rem I thought the moment He takes the place of Son the Gentiles come in.
FER Well, for us it is so.
Rem The question is the interpretation of it in the chapter before us, no one would deny its application now to any who are heavy laden.
FER What strikes me and is interesting to me more than anything in the chapter is the wonderful resources the Lord had. He is not baffled by anything, John the baptist in prison, and His own mighty works rejected; but there are resources for Him, greater things come in, Christianity is greater than law. I have felt in reading the scripture that God is never baffled. Take the case of Babel, there was a sort of crisis in the history of the world, there might have been a fear that everything for God would be annulled, but God comes out with something new.
Ques Do you mean resources in spite of Israel’s state?
FER Yes.
Ques And John was not in the secret of those resources?
FER That is it exactly, apparently all had ended in nothing, but something far greater than John’s testimony or the Lord’s mighty works was to be brought in. It was the intervention of God. Take again Christ crucified, you might have thought that everything was over, what is God going to do now? Well, if He sets forward the testimony of Christ crucified it is to subvert the pretension of the Jew and the wisdom of the Greek. To me it is most wonderful, the princes of this world crucified Christ, they could not have done a worse thing for themselves, the cross is not the subverting of something in the future but something in the present, and the only way in which [p. 75] Satan spoiled it was by perverting the testimony to it, that was the tactics of Satan.
Rem And that is the wisdom of God in a mystery.
Rem John was not in the secret of Isaiah 49.
FER No, I should not think he was.
Rem But no one seems to have had the slightest apprehension of the rejection of the Messiah.
FER The disciples evidently did not understand it.
Ques Do those two things of which you speak, the kingdom of heaven and Christianity, run on together?
FER Yes. Christianity is the inner and the kingdom is the outer. The kingdom of heaven is the light and rule of heaven, that is the much greater thing than the testimony of John the baptist. A man can be here in the light and rule of what God has established in heaven. The other thing is the knowledge of the Father.
Rem As to the one there is no overthrow. When Peter confessed the Lord as Son of the living God it was declared that the gates of hell should not prevail against the assembly.
FER Nor is there as to the other, if we only knew it; people just turn anywhere and everywhere in their troubles but to where they ought to.
Ques. Where is that?
FER Heaven. People look to one another, just let anything come in amongst us and see how we look to one another.
Rem A man who knows the resources for himself is able to help others.
FER I do not believe you will be able to help others unless you save yourself first. I think a true motto for servants is, “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine”, etc.
Rem We really lack true independency of character in not thus looking to [p. 76] the Lord.
FER See how different things would be if when a difficulty comes along, we turned to the Lord instead of being swayed by this person and the other. People do not see that the kingdom of heaven is really the Lord. God has established nothing in heaven but the Lord, the church is not established in heaven though it will be.
Ques I suppose we get a wider thing in John 7, “If any man thirst let him come unto me”?
FER It is the power of the Spirit the Lord is speaking of there, what should come in in the power of the Spirit. The kingdom of heaven is the sway of what God has been pleased to establish in heaven. You get it from Genesis 1. God sets in heaven what is to bear rule upon earth, He has set Christ in heaven to bear rule upon earth. I believe He will set the church in heaven by-and-by. If you have a sense of what God has established in heaven you do not look anywhere else.
Ques Are we children of the kingdom as well as children of the Father?
FER I suppose so, although the expression is used of those who were the natural children. The thought of the kingdom is power, but power acting in grace.
Rem But grace reigning through righteousness.
Rem By-and-by there will be the purging out of the kingdom.
FER That is only for the more perfectly establishing of it. You do not root out the tares now.
Ques I thought one great feature was righteousness?
FER No doubt you get that, too, coming out in the parable of the debtor; chapter 18. You have to act as you have been acted to. The sin of the servant was that he exacted from his fellow what his master had not exacted from him.
Rem [p. 77] He had not the spirit of the kingdom.
FER Exactly, he had not the spirit of the kingdom. The Lord says in the same chapter, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven”.
Ques I suppose the kingdom began in Acts 2?
FER Yes, the moment the Lord was seated in heaven it began. I think the first part of Matthew goes on the ground of the presentation of Christ after the flesh, and the second part on the ground of Christ exalted. Evidently the application of all the parables of the latter part of the gospel is to the present time, the ten virgins, for instance, and the king that made a marriage feast. The division is about chapter 17. The Lord takes pains to detail what His coming again would mean to Israel, and Christendom and the nations.
Ques What is the difference between the kingdom of heaven and the church?
FER In the kingdom we are individuals but in the church we are brought into the fellowship of the Spirit. You are brought into the kingdom by the word, that there may be a sphere where Christ is owned as Lord, but it contemplates saints in their individuality. By-and-by you will not be a subject in the kingdom, but will have part in the rule, the church will bear part in the rule.
Ques I suppose a Quaker is not in the church?
FER He is not properly in the house because he has not gone through the act initiatory to it, and if he wanted to come into the fellowship we would not have him, at least not until he had.
Ques What is the force of Jesus “answering”? Is it the answer His heart gave to the circumstances?
FER Yes, I think so, but there was not a single soul upon earth at that moment that took in what the Lord brought out, it is good for us today.
Rem It was the comfort of His own heart.
Rem I have heard that some rationalists consider [p. 78] this passage (verses 25 - 27) as a piece of John’s gospel put in here. It is so different to the rest of Matthew. They cannot understand it otherwise. They have perceived a difference.
FER They do not understand anything really, they have no weight with me with their way of handling Scripture, we can understand the difference for a spiritual reason. They say because the two parts of Isaiah are different, therefore it must be the work of two persons.
Rem I think a great many Christians do not understand these differences, leaving out the rationalist.
FER The wonderful thing to me is that I can look up to heaven and be perfectly certain of getting light and guidance, that is the effect of the kingdom of heaven. If a man wants to walk he seeks to be in the light of the sun, and if he walks in the light of the sun he will not stumble. I see light and guidance for me, and in that light I am to go about.
Ques If you baptise anyone do you do it in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
FER Yes; you baptise people now in the light of the full revelation of God as He is.
Ques In the Acts they baptised in the name of the Lord?
FER Yes; whosoever was baptised was committed to the lordship of Christ — “One Lord, one faith, one baptism”.
Ques Why does the Lord speak in the past tense, “Wisdom has been justified by her children”?
FER I think the children of wisdom always justify her.
Rem Whatever has been done by God has always been misunderstood by man, but it has always been justified by wisdom’s children.
FER It is a general statement. The testimony of John the baptist might seem to be different from Christ’s. The one mourned, the other piped, but wisdom was in both.
Rem But one of the first things a soul does when light breaks in is to justify God.
Ques Was John the baptist one of wisdom’s children?
FER I do not think that is quite the idea. God presented something by John, wisdom’s children were those who apprehended what God had presented.
Rem Everything is settled, whether for heaven or for earth.
FER God brings out His resources; when John the baptist’s testimony and the Lord’s mighty works were rejected you would have thought all was at a standstill, but the kingdom of heaven and Christianity come in. How wonderfully God answers men, it is one of the studies of Scripture.
Ques How do you understand “more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment”, etc.?
FER The people of Sodom had much less light, and judgment takes into account the light people have; privilege and opportunity form a large part of the ground taken in judgment.
Rem It would not be righteous otherwise.
FER Judgment was governmental at Sodom, but it leads to what is final. Wrath from heaven is now revealed, God reveals His wrath contemporaneously with His righteousness. People now have an opportunity of learning His righteousness apart from judgment on them; if they will not learn it in that way there is nothing but judgment for them.
Rem Both judgment and grace are perfectly righteous.
FER If God had cut man off it would have been perfectly righteous. The first principle of the gospel is that He makes known His righteousness and does not judge; the first idea is not that He justifies, but that He is righteous in grace.
[p. 80] Rem The righteousness of God is the backbone of the gospel.
FER I believe it is the first great lesson anyone has to learn. The first thing that God must impress upon man is that He is righteous.
Ques That He must deal with sin?
FER That He has dealt with it, the blood that witnesses that God is righteous witnesses that sin is put away.
Rem Otherwise there would be no gospel.
Ques Do you think it would be helpful if we preached righteousness more?
FER Yes, I do.
Ques Does not one go forth to preach grace in the gospel?
FER Righteousness is made known in two ways, in judgment and in grace, you cannot avoid preaching grace if you preach righteousness. You go and tell people that the blood of Christ is the witness that God is righteous, and also the witness that sin has been dealt with, and you will profit souls, no one can doubt that.
Rem You will never establish souls if you preach grace apart from righteousness.
Ques What is the meaning of verse 27 of our chapter, “no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him”?
FER Divine Persons simply as divine Persons are unknowable save by divine Persons. It is true in Ephesians we have to come to the knowledge of the Son of God, but to think that we will know the Son as the Father knows Him would be to bring the Lord down to the level of the creature. Son of God is spoken of as a name inherited, but Son is a name of divine personality, it is a correlative term to Father; if you deny the Son, you deny the Father. I do not think we know the Father as the Son knows Him,
[p. 81] though the Son reveals Him to us. That has to be weighed. “Babes” of verse 25 are those who have no pretension to righteousness or strength.
Ques Why is the Father spoken of as Lord of heaven and earth?
FER Because the Lord had taken the place of man on earth, and recognises the Father as such. You might in one sense say the Lord was Lord of heaven and earth, but it is all in connection with the place He had taken.
Rem There is the thought, too, of heaven coming into prominence.
FER He reveals the Father. That is the great thing for me, if He reveals the Father to you, you are in company with the Son. He puts you in the presence of the Father’s love. You are rejected on earth, but you are put in the presence of the Father’s love.
Rem I think harm has been done to souls by the way “Come unto me” has been used, severing it from its context, so that the real point of the passage is lost, and what is often presented is not in the scripture.
FER If there were any heavy laden ones in Israel, I think there was a deal for them in this invitation.
Rem It is in view of the collapse of everything in Israel.
Ques What is “Take my yoke”?
FER It is association with Christ.
Ques And is it not connected with being in the secret of the resources?
FER Yes; I do not think you ought to expect fine times down here where Christ has been rejected. People want to get the best of everything, they are very cautious for fear of losing things here, very much afraid of losing any present advantage.
Rem The knowledge of the Father was the resource [p. 82] the Lord had.
FER In John 17 He says, “that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them”. I think you are uncommonly well off to be partners of Christ’s rejection. God rests in love, and it is only in love you can rest.
Ques What is “for I am meek and lowly”?
FER He was adapted to the necessities of saints down here, it is wonderful to me to see in the Lord what was essentially divine adapted to the circumstances of man down here in a scene of evil, in a kind of way it was not proper to Him as a divine Person.
Ques Is there not the idea of no self-assertion, no asserting of your rights, in meekness?
FER Yes; and the title to inherit the earth is meekness, so we read, “Behold thy King cometh unto thee, meek”, etc. The meek shall inherit the earth, not the proud and arrogant. We are to be all in lowliness in regard to God, and meekness in regard to men.