by J. C. Philpot
We have already seen that Jesus was consecrated to the service of his heavenly Father from the womb, that every grace and gift of the Spirit rested upon and filled his pure humanity, and that thus initially he was Priest, Prophet, and King from his miraculous conception and birth. But it was at his baptism, as we have already pointed out, that he was peculiarly consecrated and set apart for the work which his Father had given him to do. When found in the temple by his sorrowing parents, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions, he said unto them, "How is it that you sought me? Know you not that I must be about my Father's business?" (Luke 2:46, 49;) but it was after his baptism that he could more specially say, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work." (John 4:34.) i. The first step towards doing this will and finishing this work which we shall notice is, his receiving words from his heavenly Father, that he might speak them in his name. In our introductory remarks on the nature of the prophetic office, we showed that its peculiar and most prominent feature was, that the prophet was, as it were, the very mouth by which God spoke. "Thus says the Lord,"--not "I his prophet," was not only his only title to be heard, but the only message with which he came. Now this "Thus says the Lord" involved the necessity that whatever he uttered in the name of the Lord should be the very words which God spoke unto him; for if they were in the least degree modified or altered, there would be no certainty that they were the full and exact expression of the mind and will of the Lord of hosts. We all know that if a messenger be allowed to put the words of him who sent him into his own language, they cannot be fully relied on. Thus our blessed Lord, as the anointed Prophet of the Father, had words given to him, which words he spoke exactly as the Father gave them to him. As this is to our mind a point of deep importance, yet one which we have rarely if ever seen touched upon, we shall devote a few minutes' attention to it. When Moses went up into the mount, the whole pattern of the tabernacle was set before him, and the injunction was given him, "Be sure that you make them after their pattern, which was showed you in the mount." (Exod. 25:40.) Not a loop, therefore, or pin could Moses put in or leave out in the construction of the tabernacle to make it swerve one item from the pattern set before him. Had there been the least deviation or alteration from the exact pattern, it would not have been the Lord's own tabernacle. The additional loop would have been not the Lord's, but man's, and therefore an ungodly intrusion into the sanctuary; and the deficient pin would have taken from the fullness of the Lord's house, and made it imperfect. (How far this is applicable to the service of the Christian sanctuary, and condemnatory of all additions not commanded, and of all deficiencies not supplied, let our readers judge.) Thus, in a similar way, our blessed Lord, as the Prophet of the Most High, received words from his heavenly Father, full in number, and exact in nature; and these words he spoke in his name and by his authority, no more and no fewer than they were given him. How plain are his words on this point--"For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting. Whatever I speak, therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak." (John 12:49, 50.) These words were "the words of eternal life," (John 6:68,) and as such were "spirit and life" (John 6:63) to those who received them with power from his lips. But, as we shall presently show, they were in a more especial manner given by him to his disciples, according to his own divine language in his intercessory prayer--"I have given unto them the words which you gave me." (John 17:8.) And that those were the exact words given him by his heavenly Father is plain from what he also elsewhere testified--"Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work." (John 14:10.) But the question may arise as an objection to this view, "If the Lord Jesus were indeed God, possessing, as such, all the perfections of Deity, if, as you have so much insisted upon, the Son of the Father in truth and love, and as such intimately acquainted with his mind and will, what need was there that express words should be given him? Could he not have spoken them in his own name, and by his own authority, as he said to the roaring sea, 'Peace be still?"' (Mark 4:39.) Such questions are not very reverent, as we should receive the truth in the simplicity and humility of little children, and believe where we cannot comprehend; but as we cannot always still the objections of our reasoning mind, and this question admits a sufficient and satisfactory answer, we have anticipated it, and shall reply to it. When our blessed Lord took our nature into union with his own divine Person, it was to become the Father's servant--"Behold my servant," etc. (Isa. 42:1.) A servant, in his character as a servant, does his master's will, and speaks his master's words. For a servant, then, in the highest and fullest sense of the word, to have a will different from his master's will, and to speak words different from his master's words, would be not obedience but disobedience, not service but rebellion. As, then, the blessed Lord came as the most obedient and devoted of all servants to do his Father's will and his Father's work, (Heb. 10:7; Matt. 26:39; John 17:4,) and as his deepest grace and highest glory were to do both perfectly, so when he came as a servant to speak his Father's words, it was to him no degradation, but, on the contrary, a most gracious and blessed humbling of himself to speak them just as they were given him, without addition, diminishing, or alteration. He was as perfect as a prophet to speak for God, as a priest to die unto God. It no more, then, detracts from his Deity and divine Sonship that he did not speak his own words than it detracts from them that he did not do his own will. Will and words, doing and dying, obedience and suffering, death and resurrection, grace and glory, were all determined on in the eternal Covenant, and were as fixed, certain, and unalterable as the stars in their courses or the sun in the sky. Fixed as these, do we say? Aye, much more, for the Covenant will stand when the stars fall from their places, and the sun, like a weary giant, pales and faints in his daily race. We do not think, however, that we should have dwelt so long upon this point were there not this peculiar blessedness in the words of Jesus as Prophet being the words of the Father, that 1, they thereby perfectly reveal the mind and will of God; 2, that, as spoken by the Mediator between God and man, they are words of peace and reconciliation from that just and holy God against and before whom we have so grievously sinned; 3, that, as applied to the heart by the power of God, they are spirit and life. We much wish that our limits allowed us to dwell more on this peculiar feature of the Lord's ministry, as it formed its chief power and glory, but we must pass on to the second step of the execution of his prophetical office, which we consider to have been, ii. The choice of disciples. Our blessed Lord had to found a church on earth. The grain of wheat had to fall into the ground and die, that it might bring forth much fruit. (John 12:24.) And after this grain of wheat had fallen into the earth and risen out of it--in other words, after the Lord Jesus had put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, had risen from the dead, and gone up on high, it was the will of God that his death and resurrection should issue in a glorious crop of redeemed sinners. But that this crop might be gathered, laborers were needed; and that these laborers might go forth fully commissioned by the Lord of the harvest, they themselves must first be taught to plough, sow, and reap. Our Lord, then, for this purpose chose disciples, "whom also he named apostles, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils." (Mark 3:14; Luke 6:13.) In unfolding this part of our subject, it may, perhaps, be well to bear in mind that the Lord's calling and ordaining of his twelve disciples were distinct events, and took place at different periods of his ministry. He first drew disciples unto himself by those secret cords of his grace whereby, as made willing in the day of his power, they forsook all and followed him. It was at Bethany beyond Jordan, when John was baptizing, that the Lord thus drew to himself his first disciples. "Behold the Lamb of God" was the word of power which, as it fell from John's lips, the Holy Spirit applied to the heart of two of his own disciples, and made them follow Jesus. One of the two was Andrew, who, having found for himself the Messiah, the Christ, must needs, in the overflowing of his heart, tell his brother Peter the good news,** and bring him to the same blessed Lord. Philip is the next whom Jesus finds as a poor, lost, wandering sheep, and whose heart he touches and subdues with the word of power, "Follow me." Philip finds Nathanael, the Israelite without deceit; and the omniscient eye which saw him under the fig-tree wins him to believe that not only good, but the Giver of all good, could come out of Nazareth. (John 1:35-51.) These disciples followed the Lord into Galilee, and were present with him at Cana, where he wrought his first miracle, in turning water into wine, to manifest forth his glory and to confirm their faith. (John 2:11.) We need not, however, particularize the call of the disciples by their gracious Master. It is sufficient for our purpose to show that to call, ordain, and commission them was a leading feature of the execution of his prophetical office. We may therefore divide this branch of his earthly ministry into three distinct periods--1. The call of the disciples, which took place at different times in the first year of his ministry; 2. Their ordination in a more special and solemn manner to be apostles, which seems to have occurred in the first quarter of the second year of his ministry; and 3. Their final commission after the resurrection, when he breathed on them the Holy Spirit, as the foretaste and pledge of the full effusion of that sacred Comforter on the day of Pentecost. It was to the disciples thus called and ordained that he gave the words which the Father had given him. These words they received with power from his lips; and by this reception of them a spiritual knowledge of him, and a divine faith in him, were raised up in their hearts, according to his own testimony--"For I have given unto them the words which you gave me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from you, and they have believed that you did send me." (John 17:8.) iii. This introduces us to another leading feature of our Lord's ministry, that is, the peculiar character of his teaching. This we may view under three different aspects--1. Its general bearing on the people at large; 2. Its peculiar reference to his own immediate disciples; 3. Its character toward the afflicted family of God. 1. As regards the people, it was with authority, and not as the scribes. At the time of our Lord's appearance on the earth, the pure word of God, the living oracles which had been committed to the trust of the Jewish church, (Acts 7:38; Rom. 3:2,) had become overlaid by the traditions of the elders. Such pure and holy breathings towards the word of truth, and such an insight into, and experience of its spirituality and power as we find described in Psalm 119, and enforced by the prophets, were no longer known or taught by those who sat in Moses's seat. The tithing of mint, anise, and cummin; the washing of cups and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables; and a frivolous and burdensome code of traditions had, as it were, smothered the true knowledge of God and the worship of him in spirit and in truth. Formality and ceremony, long robes and broad phylacteries, praying in the market-place and at the corners of the streets, were substituted for justice and the love of God; and as this mere formal religion was to some a mask of hypocrisy, and to others a cloak of covetousness, the scribe and the pharisee ruled over an ignorant people. To beat down, then, this corrupt pharisaism, to show the spirituality of the law, and how the precepts of God had been overlaid and perverted by the traditions of men, formed one leading feature of the Lord's prophetical ministry. It must be borne in mind that the Lord Jesus, as the promised prophet, was "a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God." (Rom. 15:8.) The Jewish people being in outward covenant the people of God, to them was Jesus sent, and to them he preached. Our limits will not allow us to enter further on this branch of the Lord's personal ministry; but it will be found the animating breath of many of his parables, his discourses, John 6, 8, 10, and especially of his Sermon on the Mount. But though our space does not admit of our entering more fully into this branch of our Lord's ministry, yet we would earnestly call our readers' attention to the wisdom, power, and authority with which he spoke. This was felt and acknowledged even by the people themselves, though they derived no personal benefit from it, for we read that "they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." (Matt. 7:28, 29.) But with whatever power or wisdom he spoke, none received his words as the words of eternal life but the elect remnant, for it was with the rest as the apostle speaks--"What then? What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened. As the Scriptures say--God has put them into a deep sleep. To this very day he has shut their eyes so they do not see, and closed their ears so they do not hear." (Rom. 11:7, 8) 2. In order, then, that his words should not wholly fall to the ground, God gave him a few disciples, who would receive them, and be saved and sanctified by them. There is something peculiarly emphatic in the language of Peter, when the Lord said unto the twelve, "Will you go away?" It seems as if at his Master's voice faith immediately sprang up in his heart. "Lord," was his answer, in the name of them all, "to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." He might find words elsewhere. The scribes and pharisees had them in abundance. But where could he find words which dropped eternal life into his soul but those which fell from the lips of the Son of the living God? Thus, apart from the wisdom and authority with which he spoke, there was a power, a special power, which attended his words to the heart of his disciples. Others might say, "Never man spoke like this man;" others might hang upon his lips, (Luke 19:48) and wonder at "the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth." But all this astonishment and admiration passed away as the morning cloud and the early dew. Eternal life was not communicated thereby. But as the distinguishing feature of his words, as spoken with power to the hearts of his disciples, eternal life gushed with them into their souls. 3. But besides our Lord's peculiar and personal ministry to his disciples, there was a scattered remnant to which his words were made words of power. Look, for instance, at the Syrophenician woman; (Mark 7:26;) the man sick of the palsy; (Matt. 9:2;) the woman with the issue of blood; (Matt. 9:22;) the woman who was a sinner; (Luke 7:47;) Zaccheus; (Luke 19:9;) Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. (John 11:5.) These are all instances of believing, pardoned, and saved sinners, to whom the Lord's words were words of power as distinct from those which were given to his disciples. This peculiar feature of the Lord's ministry is blessedly opened up in that portion of the word of truth which he read in the synagogue of Nazareth, and claimed as his own--"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." (Luke 4:18, 19.) Thus, as distinct from his public preaching, when "he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all," (Luke 4:15,) and from his private ministry, when, after he had spoken to the multitude in parables, "when they were alone he expounded all things to his disciples," (Mark 4:34,) the Lord had a peculiar ministration for the afflicted remnant--the lost sheep of the house of Israel, whom he was sent to seek and save. (Matt. 15:24; Luke 19:10.) These were the poor to whom he preached the gospel, (Matt. 11:5,) the broken-hearted whom he came to heal, the captives to whom he proclaimed deliverance, the blind to whom he gave recovering of sight, and the bruised whom he set at liberty. In sweet harmony with this peculiar ministry of our gracious Lord are the opening sentences of the Sermon on the Mount the invitations, "Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden," etc.; "If any man thirsts, let him come unto me and drink;" the promises, "My sheep shall never perish;" "Him who comes unto me I will never cast out;" and the gracious declarations contained in John 6 and similar passages. There is, indeed, this peculiar blessedness stamped on the whole personal ministry of the adorable Lord, that grace being poured into his lips, all that he spoke is full of profit and instruction to the Church of God. Take, for instance, his conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. Here was a poor sinful creature, dark as midnight, and dead as the dust of Adam, who comes to draw water, as she had often done before, little thinking whom she was that day to meet--the Son of God in the guise of a weary traveler. But mark how, in his conversation with this guilty daughter of sin, the blessed Lord, as the anointed Prophet of God, put forth truths of the deepest import to the Church of the living God. That God is a Spirit; that those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth; that the water which Jesus gives is a well of water springing up into everlasting life--what a power and influence have these living truths had on the Church of Christ, and will have while there is a Church on earth. And yet to whom were they spoken? To a Samaritan--to one so hated by the Jew, that he would not, were he half dead with thirst, have taken a cup of cold water from the hands of any one of the abhorred race. To a sinful woman, living at the very time in immoral adultery with one who was not her husband. This is but one instance to show that this Prophet never spoke, but grace and truth dropped from his lips. Another instance is his conversation with the carnal multitude which sought him not because they saw the miracles, but because they ate of the loaves, and were filled. (John 6:26.) What holy and sublime truths did he discourse in their hearing! What a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined--not for them who strove among themselves, and murmured out, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" but for his believing saints who eat his flesh and drink his blood, and experimentally know that his flesh is meat indeed and his blood drink indeed. That carnal, unbelieving, murmuring multitude passed away, dying in their sins; but the truths spoken in their hearing, and recorded by the Holy Spirit in the pages of John, live forever. John 8 affords another instance of the deepest and most blessed truths dropped by our Lord in the presence of his enemies. They called him a Samaritan, and said that he had a devil--no, took up stones to cast at him; but those words, which to them were a savor of death unto death, have been to thousands a savor of life unto life. Blessed be his holy name that such gracious words fell from his lips and blessed be the eternal Spirit, the Comforter, who has recorded them in the inspired page! When, too, we pass on to the closing scene, and are admitted to hear those heavenly discourses whereby our gracious Lord consoled the hearts of his sorrowing disciples, (John 14, 15, 16,) well may we long to sit at his foot, and drink in the rich contents of that legacy of peace which he there left, not for them only but for all who would believe on him through their word. Dear friends, friends of truth, friends of the Friend of sinners, lovers of the Son of God, can we believe too firmly, prize too highly, love too dearly, the words that dropped from the lips of the Redeemer as the Prophet sent by the Father? It is by believing them that we feel their power and sweetness, and experience their liberating and sanctifying influence. * The Sermon on the Mount may be considered as embodying and illustrating the three distinct features of the Lord's personal ministry which we have pointed out. Thus in its opening sentences it is addressed to the afflicted remnant; in those parts where the spirituality of the law and its opposition to the interpretation put upon it by the traditions of the elders are enforced, it is addressed to the people; and in those passages where the Lord says, "You are the salt of the earth," etc., it is spoken to the disciples. But in the warmth of our heart we are anticipating a future subject of meditation--the bearing which the prophetical office of the Lord Jesus has on the experience of a believer. We have not yet finished the mode of its execution. Next to the "unspeakable gift" of his dear Son, the greatest blessing which God has bestowed upon the Church is the gift of that holy word which testifies of him. And if this be true of the Scripture generally, as a divine revelation of the mind and will of God and of his testimony to the Person and work of the Son of his love, it is especially so of that portion of the inspired record which contains the words actually spoken by the Lord himself, when tabernacling here below. What indeed would the Church of Christ have fully and clearly known of the gracious words which the Lord Jesus spoke when on earth, as the Prophet of the Most High, had they not been stored up, and thus, as it were, forever embalmed in the four inspired Gospels? Memory, it is true, at first, and tradition afterwards, might for a season, have retained a small remnant of them; but what with the frailty and treachery of the one, and the corrupting tendency of the other, nothing certain, nothing pure could have been preserved for the benefit of the Church in the succeeding periods of time. But the Holy Spirit having inspired the four evangelists to commit to writing the exact words and actions of the blessed Redeemer as they were spoken and performed, the faith of the Church has a solid ground on which to rest, and each successive generation of believers can sit at his feet and hear his words almost as if they were still dropping from his gracious lips. But as we are still engaged with the execution of his office here below, another feature of our Lord's prophetical ministry demands a few moments' consideration. iv. The miracles by which the Lord authenticated his divine mission. These were essential to prove that he was sent by God as the promised Prophet. Had he not wrought miracles, there would not only have been no open proof of his divine mission, but he would have been inferior to Moses who gave the law, and to Elijah who restored the law--both of whom proved their commission of God by the wondrous deeds which they wrought in his name. The subject is too wide for us to enter into in our limited space. It will be sufficient to show from two passages the connection between our Lord's miracles and the belief that he was the promised Prophet. The first is in connection with the miracle of feeding the five thousand--"When the people saw this miraculous sign, they exclaimed, "Surely, he is the Prophet we have been expecting!" (John 6:14.) The other is the Lord's answer to John, when he sent two of his disciples to Jesus with the inquiry, "Are you he who should come," (that is, the promised Prophet,) "or do we look for another?" "Jesus told them--Go back to John and tell him about what you have heard and seen--the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Gospel is being preached to the poor." (Matt. 11:4, 5.) There the Lord appealed to his miracles, that he was "he who would come," the Shiloh, the Prophet of whom Moses spoke. But though our limits preclude us from dwelling further on the Lord's miracles as a proof of his divine mission, yet we cannot but make upon them, as viewed in connection with the execution of his prophetical office, the following observations: 1. They were so vast, so numerous, and so well authenticated, that one would think that only infidelity itself would try to deny or explain them away. When five thousand men, for instance, were fed with five barley loaves and two small fish, there were five thousand witnesses to the truth and reality of the miracle, besides the disciples, who distributed them to the people, and afterwards filled twelve baskets with the fragments which remained over and above unto them that had eaten. Could all these have been deceived? Take five thousand hungry people now at some national gathering. To feed such a number, what an apparatus of provisions would be requisite! Did not, then, each man of this hungry multitude know for himself that there was no such apparatus to feed them? They were in "a desert place," (Matt. 14:15,) far from any human habitation, and were faint for lack of food. Now, how could provisions in sufficient amount to feed such a famished crowd have been brought into this wilderness, and the people thus abundantly fed--not see or know it? Where were their eyes, not to see the camels loaded with loaves, or the boats on the shore of the lake filled with glittering fish? The large amount of provision needed and consumed precluded all collusion or mistake on the part of the disciples; and there could have been no deception of the senses on the part of the famished multitude, when each hungry man ate the broad and tasted the fish, and found and felt his hunger and faintness gone. These observations are indeed obvious enough, but the deep-seated infidelity of our wretched heart sometimes needs a seasonable check, and faith itself may occasionally need confirming by taking a closer view of the solid grounds on which it rests. We have, therefore, purposely selected this one miracle to show how clear the proof that it was wrought by a divine power; but the same train of reasoning, a little modified according to the circumstances of each, may be applied to them all. They were too open, too palpable, too vast, too supernatural, to be anything but real manifestations of divine power. 2. They were almost all miracles of mercy. The only exceptions that we can call to mind were, the permission given to the unclean spirits to enter into the herd of swine, and the denunciation of the barren fig-tree; of which the first was a just punishment for keeping for profit a herd of unclean animals, contrary to the law; and the other a standing warning against all barren professors.* Contrast with the beneficent miracles of Jesus, some of those wrought by Moses and Elisha, and it will at once be seen what compassion for suffering, and what power to relieve it, met in his tender, loving heart. * As the fig-tree stood by the way-side, and was therefore no man's property, no one was injured by its destruction; and being barren, no one would have been benefited by its continuance. 3. Our Lord's miracles were wrought immediately by his own power, and not like those of Moses, mediately by the power of God. In other words, Moses and the prophets only wrought miracles instrumentally by the power of the Almighty; the Lord Jesus wrought them by his own power as himself the mighty God. Moses could do nothing without his rod; Jesus had but to say, "I will; be clean," and the leprosy departed; "Lazarus, come forth," and the dead man issued out of the tomb. v. But while treating of the execution of his prophetical office, we must not omit another noticeable point; that the Lord, as a Prophet, predicted events that would come to pass. Thus he prophesied his own sufferings, death, and resurrection, the treachery of Judas, the fall and recovery of Peter, the destruction of Jerusalem, the spread of the gospel among all nations, and his own second coming. To work miracles and to predict future events are the two grand credentials of a prophet. Both of them, therefore, were in an eminent degree possessed and manifested by our blessed Lord as the anointed Prophet of the Father. vi. One more feature will close this branch of our subject. Jesus sealed the truth of his prophetic mission by his sufferings and death. Persecution and death was the frequent if not the usual treatment of the prophets. How pathetically does the Lord apostrophize Jerusalem--"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets." (Matt. 23:37.) As a prophet, then, he too must suffer persecution and death, and that at Jerusalem--"Nevertheless, I must walk today and tomorrow, and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." (Luke 13:33.) He sealed his mission with his blood. Faithful unto God, faithful unto man, he laid down his life not only as a sacrificing Priest, but as an attesting Prophet; and as by dying on the cross he fulfilled that part of his priestly office which his heavenly Father gave him to do, which was to be executed on earth, so, by the same precious death, he accomplished that part of his prophetical office which he was to perform in the flesh to the glory of God. |