Matthew 22

Matthew 22:1-14

MATTHEW XXI.45 - XXII.14 (Matthew 21:45 - Matthew 22:1-14) IN our previous study we found the solemn words of the King in which He declared the Hebrew nation to be rejected: “Therefore say I unto you, The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” There is the most intimate connection between that declaration and the parable which we have now to study.

There is a difference between this parable and those already considered which we must notice at the outset. In the former two the King was dealing with the rulers’ responsibility concerning the Kingdom of God in the world. In this it is no longer responsibility, but privilege which is under consideration. The figure changes from that of a vineyard into which labourers are sent, to that of a marriage feast to which guests are bidden; and if we interpret the figures from the Eastern view point, we at once see the contrast. On the one hand, we have toil and service; and on the other, rejoicing, and gladness, and merriment

Then notice that running through all these parables there is an identity, not declared, but most evidently claimed, between Christ and His Father. Whatever we may think of the meaning of these parables, it is quite evident, as Matthew tells us, that the chief priests and the Pharisees knew that He was applying them to themselves. It is quite evident that our Lord intended to teach the proprietorship of God, the fact that these men owed allegiance to Him. Moreover, by the second parable it was perfectly evident that He intended to teach that He had come as the Sent of the Father; they having refused the messengers, He had come with the final message as the Son. In the three parables there is a growing movement. In the first He showed what the attitude of these rulers had been toward God.

They had said, I go, and had failed to go; the attitude of disobedience and disloyalty. In the second He showed what their attitude would be toward Himself, “This is the heir; come, let us kill Him, and take His inheritance;” His inheritance of rule and authority and influence shall be ours. In the third parable He revealed to them what their attitude would be toward His messengers, those who are sent to bid them to the privileges. So long as He was dealing with their attitude to the Father, and to Himself, the parables moved in the realm of responsibility. When He began to deal with their attitude toward His messengers, His parable moved in the realm of privilege.

There are three distinct movements in the particular parable we have now to consider, indicated by the three invitations sent out. The King was very near the end of His ministry, and was in Jerusalem for the specific purpose of casting out from privilege and responsibility the people that had refused His Kingship. Thus all His parables become more intensely suggestive, and need examination in the light of that fact. To take this parable, and to preach the Gospel from it, is to strain its meaning. There is not a word here concerning the preaching of the Gospel.

Remembering that our Lord was in Jerusalem definitely for the purpose of dealing with the rulers and the nation, notice how these three invitations exactly cover the fact of His ministry in the world, concerning the Kingdom of God. In the first invitation He was referring to the call already given by Himself and His disciples in their journeyings throughout that whole district. By the second invitation He was referring to the work which His disciples would do from that moment until, the nation rejecting the message for the second time, God would send His armies and destroy their city, a definite prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem. We have therefore in the second movement, a reference to the call to the Kingdom, from the point of His rejection, until, rejecting not merely Jesus, but the ministry of the Holy Spirit, Jerusalem was destroyed. That took place a generation afterwards. Thirdly, we have in the parable a movement which follows that.

After the destruction of Jerusalem the messengers would be sent forth into the highways; that is, beyond the places of covenant, beyond the people of privilege, beyond those who were originally bidden; and they were to go forth with the same message. But the difference is that, instead of bringing to the marriage feast the bidden ones, they were to bring bad and good together, in order that the house might be filled, in order that the ideal might be realized. In that third invitation, then, we have a picture of the call which His messengers were to utter after the destruction of Jerusalem until this time. It is a reference to work which we have to do.

Turn, then, to the first of these invitations, “The Kingdom of heaven is likened unto a certain king, who made a marriage feast for his son.” What is the Kingdom of heaven? Exactly what this Gospel has revealed. In order to understand the phrase here, we must first, behold the King; secondly, listen to the laws which are in His Manifesto ; thirdly, observe the facts of His Kingship as revealed in His authority in the realms of the material, mental, and moral. If we would know the claims of the Kingdom, let us listen to the King as He demanded of men that they should submit and obey, and yield to Him their allegiance. If it were possible for us to lift out of this Gospel the great ideal which Jesus presented; if it were possible for us for a moment to forget these particular men that crowded about Him; and if it were possible for us to forget popular interpretations of the meaning of the Gospel; and if we could appreciate the ideal of the Kingdom, apart from the refusal, and apart from the local circumstances, what would it be? God absolutely enthroned.

It is the Kingdom of God. Under His enthronement character is the supreme thing.

Individualism consists of the realization of character that harmonizes with the character of God. People of character, harmonizing with the Kingdom of God, living in mutual interrelationship, would constitute a great theocracy of souls loyal to the Throne of God, and serving each other, and thus bearing testimony to those outside, concerning the graciousness and goodness of the government of God. That was the ideal that filled the heart and mind of Jesus. When He taught us to pray the prayer, Thy Kingdom come on earth, He saw the ideal conditions of life in the world. It is not a prayer that anything may come in Heaven; it is a prayer that things may be here as they are there. Wherever we take the words of Jesus, and apply them simply, we see that to have been His ideal. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, . . . and . . . thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets.”

Now said the Master, the Kingdom of heaven is likened unto a marriage feast. As our Lord, in dealing with responsibility, chose the figure of the Old Testament, the vineyard, so here, in dealing with the privileges of His Kingship, He employed the prophetic figure; “I will betroth thee unto Me for ever.” That was the word of God to the people whom He had chosen to represent Him in the world. And yet Hosea uttered those awful prophecies of his! He charged Israel with having broken the relationship between herself and God, between husband and betrothed. Spiritual adultery and harlotry, said Hosea, is the sin of the chosen people. That figure of the Old Testament, Christ now employed, and said, God has made a marriage feast for His Son, a day of gladness and rejoicing. But this is Christ’s picture of the Kingdom of God as to its righteousness and peace and joy. “The Kingdom of God is … righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

The first call to the Kingdom went out “to them that were bidden,” to those who were under authority, to those who ought to have heard, and understood, and answered. With what result? They would not come. Jesus and His twelve disciples had through that whole neighbourhood, for about three years, preached that Kingdom, preached its principles, preached its privileges, preached its responsibilities, and the people would have none of it. They had, as His previous parables revealed, declined the responsibilities, and so they had rejected the privileges. They would not come to the marriage feast. That was His first charge against them.

Then He told them that there was another invitation. First, the figurative description of the King’s preparation; “Again He sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them that are bidden, Behold, I have made ready my dinner: my oxen and my failings are killed, and all things are ready: come to the marriage feast.” Very quaint, and very beautiful, and very solemn, are some of the Puritan writings upon that passage. They draw attention to the fact that the way in which the King spread the great feast, whereby men should come into the Kingdom realization, was a costly way. When Jesus uttered those words, and said, “All things are ready,” He knew at what infinite cost God was preparing for the possibility of the realizing of that great Kingdom which He had preached, and which men had rejected. This declaration that all things are ready so far as God is concerned, was a new call to men to come into the privileges of the Kingdom.

How did they respond? There were two classes, the indifferent, and the rebellious. The indifferent turned every one to his own farm; and there is a special emphasis there. “His own farm.” Christ had preached the Kingdom, God’s Kingdom, in which men should seek, not their own, but His and each other’s good; a Kingdom in which the first passion of the individual life should be the glory of God; and the necessary sequence of that passion the good of other men; but they would not come. They went back to the self-centered life that sought for personal enrichment and comfort, without regard to the Kingdom of God, or the good of their fellow men. Others were definitely rebellious. They treated the messengers ill, they beat and flung them out, and killed them.

And all that actually happened in those days succeeding the ministry of Jesus. In the Acts of the Apostles we find the story. We must not forget that in those early days of Christian preaching, they preached the Kingdom of God, not nebulously as we do, as though the Kingdom of God only meant that a man should submit to God; but socially, as we do not, realizing that they came, not merely for the saving of their own soul, but for His glory, and for the realization of the ideal national communal life.

But they killed the messengers and at last the King was wroth, and He sent His own armies. He Who girded Cyrus long before, led and guided the Roman armies, sweeping the city out, burning and destroying it, and irrevocably scattering to the winds His people who would not have His Kingdom because His Kingdom interfered with their own self-centered interest.

Then said Christ in this parable, “The wedding is ready, but they that were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore unto the partings of the highways,” go and gather in the bad and the good; which does not mean that He was inviting into His Kingdom a promiscuous crowd both bad and good, but that no longer was the invitation to be confined to a people of a certain order. Our Lord was not minimizing the importance of character, as we see by the final reference to the man without a wedding garment. This is one of the cases where one is bound to confess that no translation can quite accurately carry the sense of the method by which Jesus said that the King addressed that man; “He saith unto him, Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?” The word not in verse eleven is a different word from the not in verse twelve, and it is impossible to translate the different meaning by any equivalent in our language. Dr. Vincent stated the matter in the simplest form when he said, In the Greek language the first not was always used when referring to a matter of fact, while the second was always used in reference to a matter of thought.

By that he means, and this is certainly the intention of the passage, there came in a man not having a wedding garment; that is the fact. But when the king looked at him and said, “How earnest thou in hither not having” that is, deliberately not having, with determination not having, it is the not of thought-you did not mean to have a wedding garment, you have dared to come without a wedding garment. And so by that Jesus revealed to us that, even though the bad and good were to be called into the Kingdom, the question of character did matter.

Let us now go back to that statement in the previous chapter, not so much now for its application to the Hebrew people as for its principle. “The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” How does this apply to us as to responsibility? What is the fruit of the Kingdom of God? The fruit of the Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of heaven. They are intimately related. The greatest word of all is the Kingdom of God, which means the Kingship of God, which means the Kingship of God recognized and obeyed; and the Kingdom of God in some senses includes the whole universe over which He governs. Hell itself is in that Kingdom.

The Kingdom of God, if we understand the phrase in all its breadth, and length, and height, and depth of meaning, describes His ultimate and final and present authority everywhere. The immanence of God, and the transcendence of God, are not contradictory ideas, but mutually expository ideas; and whether it be far or near, near or far, God is, and rules, and governs all.

He has created in the great mystery of His universe, beings with will, and to certain of these people, in a fallen world, and in the midst of a fallen race, He has committed the Kingdom of God; He has made them responsible to reveal it, to let other men see what it means. If we can find a community realizing the Kingdom of God in its own life, that is the Kingdom of heaven; it is the fruit of the Kingdom of God. There was a time, a little time in the history of the Hebrew people when they realized it, when they were a theocracy purely and simply; no King interfering but lie one King Jehovah; all their life centered about Him. That was the Kingdom of heaven. There were a few fleeting months in Florence when the world saw the coming of the Kingdom of God in power and judgment, when in answer to the preaching of Savonarola people woke, and broke the chain of Lorenzo de Medici. There was a moment in our English history when we had a glimpse of the Kingdom of God-it was never a perfect glimpse-when men called Ironsides held sword and Bible, and tramped to the music of the declarations of Holy Writ.

We had one gleam when Oliver Cromwell saved us all from the evil of a decadent age. They were never lasting.

They could not last because, even though there was a gleam of the glory of the Kingdom, the conditions were not established by the methods of the King. The Kingdom of heaven is realization in actual human life of the fact of the Kingship of God. The King coming up to Jerusalem, said to the people who had been made the depository of the holy and sacred truth, “The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof;” that is, to a people who will exhibit all that is meant by the Kingdom of God. And what was the nation to whom it was given? The Church.

Peter, to whom our Lord first spoke concerning the Church, said in his letter, “Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession.” That does not exhaust the Divine intention. It will never be exhausted until the whole world realizes the Kingdom of God. From then until now the world is only able to know the meaning of the Kingdom of God as it sees it realized in the Church of Jesus Christ. But the Church has failed to reveal the Kingdom of God in all its earthly meaning and glory as the Hebrew people did. That is why we are being broken up, and scattered abroad; that is why our work has become largely individualistic. There have been some attempts; some stately and magnificent, and yet terrible; some full of marvellous power, yet always failing; and some grotesque.

One of the greatest attempts to realize it has been that of the Roman Catholic Church; that great and massive structure, boastfully one o’er all the face of the earth. But Rome has failed because she has allowed the Christian ideal to be paganized, and thus has ruined the testimony to the Kingdom of God.

The movement of the Plymouth Brethren was a great one. They had the vision of a great ideal, but their testimony is a ruined and spoiled testimony, because they became Romanized with a popery more severe than that of Rome, a popery that tracked a man from village to village if perchance he did not quite agree with some view of truth, until he was ostracized and hounded almost out of existence. More recently another attempt at the manifestation was seen in Dowieism. But Dowie’s ministry was that of taking his community, and putting it into a city by itself. Jesus Christ would have His people scattered, for His salt must live next door to the corruption; His light must shine in the darkness. Outside the borders of the Church, there are men to-day who are seeing at least the Divine intention though they have not discovered the Divine dynamic; and perhaps, presently, we shall be surprised to see God moving toward a realization through people we thought could not be used for it, and all because His Church has not been true to Him in this matter.

What is our responsibility? What shall we do? Attempt to re-unite Christendom? In the name of God, no. There is no time to waste; life is all too brief. What shall we do?

At least we ought, wherever there is a Christian fellowship, to realize the Kingdom of God within it. Every Church ought to find out how, in that local fellowship, there may be at least a centre of light, a revelation to the men outside, of the love, and the light, and the life, which come to men inside the Kingdom of God. It is not enough that in our personal life we reveal to the world what Christ can do for us. The world is waiting to see, not merely what Christ can do for a man, but what Christ can do for the community of souls who, having come to Him individually, are now living within His Kingdom. And if He has committed to us the Kingdom, and we do not bring forth the fruits of it, so surely as He cast His Hebrew people away from service-not from salvation, but from service-so surely will God move outside the churches and do His work beyond it in ways that will astonish us. This is the message of His Kingship, and unless we realize what He means, and obey Him, we also will be cast away from service, and from helping to fulfill His great ideals in the world.

Matthew 22:15-46

The Gospel According to Matthew Chapter 22:15-46 MATTHEW XXII.15-46 (Matthew 22:15-46) THE King is still seen in the Temple. In this section we have a radiant display of His wisdom. All that we read concerning the Pharisees and Sadducees is background, and serves to throw up into clear relief the matchless wisdom of the King.

The Pharisees now gathered themselves together for a new attack by the most despicable of methods; they descended to the meanness of attempting to lay traps for Him, to bring such problems to Him, or questions, or difficulties, as would involve Him in complications with regard to His own teaching, His own claim; or, far more to their satisfaction, which might involve Him in conflict with the civil authorities. The Sadducees somewhat flippantly suggested a problem to Him, and when He had muzzled them-using that word quite accurately, it is the word in the New Testament-a lawyer, perhaps sincerely, so far as his question was concerned, and yet with unbelief in his heart, asked Him a question. Finally, the King propounded a question, which flashed its light upon all their questions, and upon them.

Examining this series of pictures, we have four groups, and four happenings. The coming of the Pharisees; then that of the Sadducees; then that of the lawyer; and finally Christ’s question.

Examining them one after the other, taking picture by picture, these are the things which impress the mind; first, that these men did not know Him; and, secondly, that they did not understand the very problems which they themselves suggested to Him. By contrast to that, one cannot read these four stories, or look at these four pictures, without seeing how perfectly He knew them, and how absolutely He was Master of all the problems which they suggested to Him.

There came to Him first the Pharisees and Herodians. This was a coalition. The Pharisees and Herodians represented opposing political views, and their question was distinctly a political one. They came together in order to entrap Him in His talk; and the very fact that this was a coalition created the subtlety of their approach, and the difficulty of Christ.

How little they knew Him! They attempted to fling about Him the mist of their flattery. Reading the story carefully we find that these men had come to challenge His authority as evidently as the official deputation from the Sanhedrim, the leading Pharisees, had come on a previous occasion. These men were not leading Pharisees, but disciples of the Pharisees; that is to say, the leaders, having been answered, were in the background; but they sent up some young men, some of their disciples, with a new method of attack; not with the official dignity that challenged authority, but with the civil manner that suggested a belief in Christ’s integrity.

How little they knew Him, and how very surprised they must have been when, before attempting to answer their question, He looked back into their faces and said, “Why make ye trial of Me, ye hypocrites?” They thought that He might be moved or at least mystified by flattery. Praise is a graver peril than blame to a strong soul. Blame a man, challenge him, and if he stands upon a bed-rock of certainty and conviction, he will win; but it is a trying moment when a man is told that he is quite perfect and upright, and knows the way of God. Jesus ruthlessly tore the veil away, as He said, “ye hypocrites.”

What was their problem? Its blindness is self-evident, but it was a very subtle one. The question was of the simplest, “Is it lawful?” There is no meaning in this, save as we remember that they understood that He had made Messianic claims. They were not referring to Roman law, but Hebrew law, Messianic law. “Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?” The subtlety of the question lay in the dilemma into which they intended to put Him. If He had said, Yes, it is lawful, then, according to their idea, He would have abandoned His claim to be Messiah and Deliverer; for the Messiah could never consent that the Hebrew people should put their neck under a yoke. If, on the other hand, He had said, It is not lawful, then they would have been able to report Him to Rome, and have Him arrested.

Mark the answer. He said to these men, “Shew Me the tribute money.” In that very request, and in the fact that He proffered that request to them, we see His method. If the King had Himself produced a penny, or asked one of His own followers for the denarius, the silver Roman coin with the Hebrew inscription, intended for the specific purpose of paying tribute-it was the amount and coin for that purpose-He still might have said all He said, but His declaration would have lost something of weight. The penny was immediately produced, perhaps handed to Him; and then He looked into their faces, and said, “Whose is this image and superscription?” Without a moment’s hesitation, they replied: “Czesar’s.”

That settled it; the penny was theirs, and the image Caesar’s. They were using Caesar’s coinage. Let them be honest enough to pay Caesar his due; but let them not forget that there is a higher law than the law of Caesar; let them “Render unto God the things that are God’s.”

The second part of the answer led them into the inner secret of how they were to fulfill the first part. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s;” but while you do it, in the doing of it, “render to God the things that are God’s.” When you pay tribute-and you must pay tribute-do not forget that the final Throne to which you owe allegiance, is the Divine Throne.

What is the principle? The King recognized man’s place in the State, and his obligation to the State; and declared that if men be in the State, it is their business to pay tribute to the State. He does not take men out of the State, and put them as separate from it; but He does say, that the deepest and the final thing in the life of men who are supposed to represent the Kingdom of God in the world, is the Kingdom of God. Such men are to be in the State, recognizing its responsibilities, fulfilling their obligations, but all the while they are to act under the one master-passion and principle of loyalty to the Throne of God.

This was a political problem, and in it we see the King’s relation to politics for all time. He reveals the principles which bind the State to the Throne of God. He declares that the Throne of God is final and supreme; and a man in the State is to pay his tribute, and do his duty to the State; but always under the guidance and inspiration of his loyalty to the Throne of God. No man can interfere with what any other man does in that respect. We have no business to tell each other what we ought to do. It is by individual loyalty, and not by an association or resolution of crowds that we affect the State. The Church affects the State toward God in no other way than by the individual conscience; and its absolute freedom to God.

Next there came to Him the Sadducees, the rationalists in religion. The Sadducee denied angel and spirit and resurrection; that is to say, he attempted to be religious without any reference to what people speak of as supernatural things. They came to Christ and first of all quoted to Him the Mosaic command, that if a man die, his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed. Then they gave Him an illustration, a grotesque illustration. We can almost see the self-satisfied air with which they said: “In the resurrection therefore, whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.” And yet notice when our Lord answered these men there was an utter absence of the severity which characterized His answer to the Pharisees. He did not speak to them as hypocrites, and it may be that if their illustration was grotesque, and their method was flippant, they were yet stating an actual difficulty in their thinking.

First of all He answered their illustration by declaring to them that they were ignorant of the Scriptures. But further, He answered their philosophy by declaring that they were ignorant of the power of God.

He answered their illustration. They were ignorant of their Scriptures, and in one quiet dignified sentence He declared to them, “In the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven;” you are imagining a condition of affairs that cannot, and will not exist. In a moment their illustration was swept on one side as being not applicable to their argument or their philosophy.

But He did not so leave them. “But,” said He, “as touching the resurrection of the dead.” By that phrase He touched the underlying philosophy that had made the difficulty and suggested the illustration. Not ruthlessly, not with the severity which characterized His answer to the Pharisees, but quite as surely, He stripped them of all disguises. He said to them in effect, Your difficulty is this difficulty concerning resurrection. Your difficulty is the difficulty concerning the supernatural in religion. You are rationalists concerning resurrection; “Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying” do not miss the apparently trivial things in reading your New Testament, they said, “Moses said;” He said, “spoken unto you by God”-“I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

This answer of Jesus was a most remarkable one. He went beneath the surface to the underlying fact of God. “God is not the God of the dead.” The difficulty as to the bodily resurrection of a man is no difficulty at all when the question concerning God is settled. When a man understands the truth that the Bible reveals concerning God, the difficulties that the Bible presents concerning man, and what we call the supernatural, melt into thin air. He said to these rationalists in effect, You are building your view of the impossibility of resurrection upon a misconception of God. Ye neither know the Scriptures, nor the power of God; which does not merely mean God’s power to do this one thing, but God’s essential power, the truth concerning God. God is the God of the living.

In that great word of Jesus we have a declaration of the immortality of the soul. He is not the God of the dead. These men are not dead. Christ did not say a word about a bodily resurrection, but He affirmed that these men were alive. He declared that the God, Who is the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, is the God of the living; and what He said, indicates the fact that through all ages He is their God, and that they are living still. If we once recognize the truth of the immortality of the soul, the question of the bodily resurrection is very simple.

Just as in the mysteries of the original economy of God a man who is a spirit and not a body, is clothed in a body by certain processes, some little of which we understand; so that selfsame man, that spirit, can presently be clothed in a body again, and it will not be the body that was, but a new body, yet in some mystery beyond our comprehension fashioned out of the old body. An actual resurrection is in this way conceivable when we believe in God, as to His power, and His relation to all souls who put their trust in Him.

So, not answering their difficulty concerning bodily resurrection, but by declaring the true philosophy of God, new to them, He corrected their rationalistic speculations. This was a rationalistic problem, and the King’s answer was clear, as it revealed the fact that the degradation of human thinking about man, is due to a degraded conception of God,

The third questioner was a lawyer, a Pharisee lawyer. He came, as we have seen, with a sincere question. “Which is the great commandment in the law?” This does not mean, Name one of the commandments which is greater than the rest. The particular word translated “which” is qualitative; and therefore the meaning of the lawyer was, What is the principle which makes any commandment great? In that day men were teaching the relative importance of the commandments. There was a school of interpretation which taught that the third commandment in the Decalogue was the supreme commandment, and that all the rest were minor ones; and so this particular question grew out of the differences of opinion concerning which commandments were greatest, and they asked Christ to decide what was the real principle by which they might test the greatness of a commandment.

When He gave the answer He did not name one of the commandments in the Decalogue, but went outside them. Both of the passages that He gave are to be found in the Pentateuch. The one is in the book of Deuteronomy, and the other is in Leviticus. First, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment.” The man had asked the Master to tell him the principle of greatness in a commandment. “This is the great;” and it is great because first, great because fundamental, great because underlying all the others. “This is the great and first commandment.” The article is emphatic. “And a second”-not the second-“a second,” a something coming out of the first, related to the first, not standing even in distinction from it. Then He declared: “On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets.” The principle of greatness is the recognition of the fundamental law which includes the whole. This is great and first, and these two are the strength of all the rest.

This was a problem of conduct. It was the King’s revelation of His understanding of the meaning of law. What is law? Relation to God, expressed toward the neighbour. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.” The second is like it, kin to it, belonging to it, the outward expression of it, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” John afterwards wrote about love, and unfolded this great philosophy of Jesus Christ, teaching us that if a man say he love his brother, and leave him hungry, he is a liar. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The principle in law is love.

Notice the words introducing the last picture, “Now while the Pharisees were gathered together.” That is, when the Pharisees had done, when He had muzzled the Sadducees, when the lawyer had gone. Probably that had been a concerted movement and these men had come one after another by arrangement. The Pharisees were still there, and for a moment Jesus arrested them, and asked them two questions.

The first was” startling, “What think ye of Christ?” Let us understand that. He was not saying to them directly, What do you think of Me? If we change the word Christ to Messiah, we find the meaning. What is your opinion, your conception of Messiah? He asked their opinion of Messiah in one particular only: Whose Son is He? Their answer was ready and accurate, “David’s.” That He did not deny. He asked the question in order to receive that answer. He knew that would be the answer. It was the only answer possible. It was true, absolutely true, according to all prophecy, according to the inspired expectation of the nation.

Then He asked His second question: “How then doth David in the Spirit call Him Lord?” Christ was quoting from Psalm ex. He said three things about that psalm. He said David wrote it. We are told to-day that he did not. He said in the second place he wrote it by the Spirit. We are told it is not inspired. He said in the third place He wrote it about the Messiah. We are told it is not Messianic. Let us stand with Christ, and maintain that David wrote Psalm ex. by the inspiration of the Spirit, and concerning Messiah.

What He asked these men was; If Messiah was David’s Lord, how was He also his Son? They were silent. The silence is a revelation. This question of Christ was a revealing question. Their conception of Messiah was a wrong conception. Moreover, the bearing of His question on all their questions is a very interesting one.

They came to Him about their politics, they expected a Messiah who would lead an army, and break the yoke and set them free; but He said, You do not know your Messiah. You think of Him as coming in David’s line, but He is more than David’s Son, He is David’s Lord. Account for that, and if you do, you will have all your political problems solved. He comes for the interpretation of a spiritual Kingdom, which is not to be powerless, but which is to be an inward dynamic, correcting all things from the centre.

In the next place, if the Messiah is David’s Lord, His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and the doctrine of resurrection is not a difficult one. If the Ruler that was to come, of Whom David sang in the Psalm long ago, is his Lord, Son of God as well as Son of David, then all your difficulty about those who have passed on, as to whether there is to be resurrection, is solved.

And once again, your wrong conception of your Messiah has meant the materialization of your ideals concerning greatness in law. Realize that when Messiah comes, He will be, not merely son of David, but David’s Lord, and you will understand the abiding authority and supremacy in law.

Take that word of Christ and examine it more carefully. We have only touched upon the outlying truths, attempting to reveal the structure of the argument in all its delicacy of application. Here is His problem, Who is Messiah? David’s Son? Then why does David call Him Lord? If He is only David’s Son, He cannot be David’s Lord.

The inferential claim of Christ is that He is David’s Lord, as well as his son, descended through the flesh from David, yet before David. If you cut out the first part of your Gospel, the story of a. virgin birth, you must cut out this also, for they are intimately related. As in the beginning we saw Him coming through the line of the flesh, yet not by the act of the flesh; so here we find Him claiming that His Messiahship is based, not merely upon His Davidic descent, but upon His absolute supremacy and Lordship, as David had long ago foreseen.