CHAPTERS 21 TO 23
CHAPTERS 21 TO 23
FER I think the section begins with chapter 20: 17 and continues to the end of chapter 23. It gives us the Lord going up to Jerusalem and judging the whole state of things which He found there. You see Him in a very different character from that which He has in the rest of the gospel. In these chapters He [p. 140] takes up the character of judge, not in sessional judgment but in moral. We have had His position with regard to the church, the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom in glory, and the ordering of the kingdom. Now we have the account of His entry into Jerusalem and His stay there right down to the last supper. He enters in as judge of the whole state of things which existed there. He first judges the fig tree, then silences the opposers, and then He has the last word, the last word is chapter 23. He judges the husband-men, silences the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees, and when no man durst ask Him a question or answer Him, He has the last word in the denouncement of the scribes and Pharisees. In the two parables at the end of chapter 21 and beginning of chapter 22, we have the responsibility of the Jewish leaders, first in regard to fruit-bearing and then in regard to the gospel — the latter is seen in the marriage supper. The parable of the labourers (chapter 20) closes up that part of the instruction; after that it is the Lord going up to Jerusalem and His entry into it.
Ques When do you think the labourers were hired? I mean is the thought that the Lord is in glory?
FER It says a certain man went out early in the morning, it has reference to the kingdom. The Lord is now dispensing His own things. The great point in the parable is that you do not look at any other labourer, the mistake was that some compared themselves with others. In the Lord’s things you do not compare yourself with others as though you had a greater claim than anyone else. The disciples thought that they had, but the Lord would not admit it. But the starting point of the progress to Jerusalem is in verse 17, “And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them — Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the [p. 141] scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again”. Then you see an important point, the Lord enters through testimony, that is, you get first the blind men, and then the coming in according to prophecy. The blind men say, “Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David”. And then the scripture, “Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass”. But Jesus does not enter as Saviour, He enters as Judge, and He enters through testimony. It is two blind men, it is adequate testimony. An important point is in the quotation from Zechariah. The words “Just and having salvation” are omitted here. You will find the passage in Zechariah is connected with His coming for the deliverance of the people; here the moral characteristics are quoted, but He comes to judge not to save. The omission of two or three words in a quotation is most significant, like in Luke 4: 18, 19.
Ques Is this a kind of picture of the future day?
FER He will come having salvation then.
Rem But He will judge what is contrary to God.
FER Yes, but He will come for the salvation of the remnant and reign, not to suffer in that day.
Ques Will the remnant be with Him?
FER He will find them in the land.
Rem They are with Him here.
FER Yes, in this passage.
Rem The remnant will receive Him.
FER There are three positions in which the Lord is seen here very distinctly marked; in the beginning of chapter 21 He enters Jerusalem; at the end of chapter 22 we have, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool”. That is the place which Christ has provisionally; and then at the end of chapter 23,
“[p. 142] Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord”. You get the whole period beginning with the time of His entry into Jerusalem until He comes again; meanwhile He sits at the right hand of God. The entry into Jerusalem has an important place, He goes there to suffer, He does not go up to reign. He enters through testimony according to prophecy, as Zion’s King. David’s son and Zion’s King.
Rem Going into any other city or place would not be so important. Jerusalem was the city of the great King.
Ques What do you get in chapter 21 after His entry?
FER First He cleanses the temple, then He curses the fig tree, then the priests and elders come and ask by what authority He did these things, and the Lord exposes them. They had no power to judge for themselves, they were incompetent. The curse on the fig tree is the one miracle of judgment which the Lord did, all the rest were miracles of blessing; it just shows the character in which the Lord was acting at that moment. The fig tree represents man under culture. Israel was man under culture. They had utterly broken down in all that was committed to them, they had made the house of God a den of thieves, it had been committed to them and they had turned it into this. This is the second time the Lord cleansed the temple, the position which the cleansing occupies in the gospel of John is before the Lord’s public ministry properly. It appears to me that the state of the temple was the greatest possible proof of the unfaithfulness of the husbandmen, and fruit is no longer to grow on the fig tree.
Ques Why does the first cleansing come in John?
FER John begins where the other gospels end.
[p. 143] Man is set aside in John from the outset; the other gospels take up the responsibility of man; but in John you see what man is from the outset, and the counsels of God are brought in, it is another line of things entirely.
Rem It is not until John 10 that Jesus calls His sheep out of the sheepfold.
FER In chapter 10 He shows what He had been doing all along.
Ques What does the mountain signify (verse 21)?
FER The power connected with Jerusalem, a mountain is a prominent thing in the eyes of men. Jerusalem was to lose its privileged place and be merged among the Gentiles.
Ques But this was to be done by faith, “If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done” (verse 21). How do you make that out?
FER Well, I question whether the twelve ever did it; I think Paul did, he seems to have had faith to do it. The mountain represents the prestige and everything that belonged to the Jews properly. It was all carried out among the Gentiles. In the epistle to the Corinthians you will find that the Gentiles have all that belonged to the Jew; the temple of God, the Christ, and victory over death; properly all these things were connected with Jerusalem, but instead of their being centred at Jerusalem they are gone out among the Gentiles.
Ques But how do you understand all this brought in in connection with faith and prayer?
FER Well, the faith of Paul did it; God gave him faith for it. So the faith of Peter brought in Cornelius, though he was rather reluctant at first. Faith is, that man has got light as to the mind of God;
[p. 144] you could not have faith without some basis in the way of light from God.
Rem It is the old order after the flesh that man loves.
FER The truth as to that really came out by Paul. In the cross God condemned sin in the flesh, the state was condemned.
Rem Peter seems to have allowed the old order, as we see from Galatians 2.
FER Even Paul clung to the Jews a good bit, went up to Jerusalem at the last, seemed reluctant to go to the Gentiles at first; it was not a change wrought in a moment. I do not think that the disciples understood much at this time of what was meant, not effectively until the Holy Spirit came. He brought all the things that the Lord had spoken to them to their remembrance; but casting a mountain into the sea was not a new thought, in Psalm 46 we have it, “though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea”.
Rem If a mountain is cast into the sea you do not see much of it. God’s centre is no longer at Jerusalem.
Ques Is the sea the Gentile nations?
FER The sea generally represents the unformed peoples.
Ques Does the goodness and severity of God come out in this?
FER That is not quite the idea, for in Romans 11 the subject is the tree of promise, the natural branches are broken off and the Gentiles grafted in, then eventually the Gentile branches broken off and the natural branches restored. That refers to the bringing together of Israel in the future.
Ques Do you get the Jew and Gentile in the parable of the two sons?
FER It represents rather two classes in Israel: the scribes and Pharisees formed one class, the publicans and harlots another. At first the ground the latter [p. 145] took was that they would not go, but afterwards they repented and went. After that you get two parables, the husbandmen and the marriage feast. The Jews were judged upon the ground of law and upon the ground of the gospel.
Ques Did the parable of the marriage feast begin with the Lord’s ministry?
FER No; it began rather with the Lord in glory, “my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready”. They are invited to come in on the ground of the glory of the Son, God made overtures to them through the apostles. They had lost everything in the vineyard, and then God makes overtures; he calls them to the celebration of grace. He deals with them on that ground. I think it was a most wonderful thing, to present to them the celebration of grace in the exaltation of Christ, the judgment of God had been met and the power of the enemy destroyed in his stronghold. The Jews are the first invited. That is what is meant by “beginning at Jerusalem”. The servants go out and invite, and the wedding ultimately was furnished with guests, both bad and good. The servants do not trouble themselves about the character of the guests, but gather them in; the great point is the wedding garment. You must first look at the parable in connection with the Jew, they would not come in on that ground; they had failed on the ground of fruit-bearing and they would not come in on the ground of the gospel, they were perverse.
Ques What do you understand by the wedding garment?
FER Christ for your righteousness, it is viewed as a necessity, the man had no business to be at the feast without it. We get the thought of this parable carried out in the Acts, first by the apostles, and then by men raised up, like Stephen and Philip, men that did not belong to the twelve. The prophets come in in the parable of the husbandmen, they are the servants [p. 146] there; here the servants are the witnesses to the marriage supper, which the prophets were not, they could not say what these say. I think that if a man is coming to the marriage supper he cannot come in according to God if he does not recognise his true position according to God. He cannot come to the festivity which God provides without recognising his true position. If he accepts the invitation he must come in according to the truth, he must admit that death is upon him and that he is liable to judgment.
Rem The parable gives more prominence to the responsibility side than Luke 14 does.
Ques Is the wedding garment that which grace provides, or is it what the Spirit works in a man?
FER It is what grace provides, but that is not apart from the Spirit’s work which is true of every believer; you could not talk about Christ for righteousness and leave out the Spirit’s work. They are two very distinct things, but united in the same individual. It is an unreasonable thing to think that a man is coming to a feast that God provides without recognising his true position in regard to God, it seems to me to be an insult to God. No man has any title to come unless he recognises that death is upon him, and that he is liable to judgment.
Rem Going back to what was said just now, it was not failure on the servants’ part in gathering in both bad and good, they were told to bring in as many as they found and they did so, they could not judge of people.
FER After this the Lord silences all classes, the different classes come up to judge Him, and He judges them; the Pharisees and the Herodians and the Sadducees, all come up, but only to be silenced.
Ques What about the king coming in?
Answer. He comes in to see the guests, and his eye detects the man without the wedding garment, and he is [p. 147] cast forth.
FER The man no doubt represents a class. I do not think that the wedding garment goes quite so far as 2 Corinthians 5: 21, “the righteousness of God in him”. Well, then, after answering all the questions and silencing every opposer, in the following chapter (chapter 23) the Lord leaves Moses’ seat where it was, but pronounces woes upon the scribes and Pharisees who sat in it. There is no public change in the dispensation, it is still the age of law, as regards the public dealings of God, and this goes on until the Lord comes. Faith gets an outlet from these things, but at the same time the dispensation, in God’s public dealings, will not be set aside until Christ comes; if people sit in Moses’ seat and lay down Moses, I do not reject Moses.
Ques But do not they reject Christ?
FER They do, but I do not; if they bid me observe Moses, I do.
Rem But not on their line.
FER The righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who walk after the Spirit. Love is the fulness of the law, it is remarkable that the law should be regarded as the rule for the man down here in the epistle to the Romans. “God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”, Romans 8: 3, 4. I do not set Moses aside, I do not fulfil him in the letter, but I fulfil him in the Spirit. Love is the great point in Romans. If I love God and my neighbour, I fulfil the law. In the preceding chapter (chapter 22) the Lord has given you the great moral principles of the law. You need have no fear of breaking the law if you love, you may not have kept it in detail, but you do in principle. I think the whole chapter is most solemn, the Lord goes to sit on Jehovah’s throne until His foes are made His footstool, and He leaves Moses’ seat [p. 148] untouched, and the scribes and Pharisees in it, and He charges His disciples to do what they bid, but not after their works. He really has the last word. Their house was left desolate, and they would not see Him again until they should say, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord”.
Ques Why were the disciples not to be called Rabbi?
FER There was a disposition to give men a place, and the disciples were not to do so or to take such a place. The Jewish house was left desolate, it was their house, not the Lord’s. I do not think anything can be more dreadful than the exaltation of man, be it religious or political; the way in which men are invested with honour today and all that sort of thing. In this chapter you see how they exalted themselves, but the greatest gift never made a man anything more than a servant (verses 11, 12). Priesthood, the priesthood of Christians, is common to all. The greatest gift, that was an apostle’s, only made a man a Levite, it never made him a priest. Chapter 23 is really the exposure of what man is; the leading classes in Israel are specially in view, but do you not think that if the Lord were here He would denounce the leaders in Christendom in quite as strong terms? The present leaders of the people, it seems to me, are not a whit better than these; I think the Lord if here would denounce things just as strongly.
Rem Cain comes in here morally, the Lord speaks of the blood of Abel.
FER Cain is applied to Christendom in the epistle of Jude. I think it is wonderful to see the Lord doing all this, when He had no kind of support, for the disciples were no support to Him; you find the Lord perfectly alone and yet able to hold this power of evil at bay, able to silence the gainsayers, and then to have the last word. It is just one man. He cleanses the temple, curses the fig tree, each thing was done in [p. 149] power; silences everybody — no one can resist Him, no other voice is heard.
Rem Finally you get the grief of the Lord over it all, and His looking forward to the time when they would say, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord”, they would see Him again, and Jerusalem should be restored.