*For Chapter I., see " Help and Food," Vol., 1890.*
2. The Announcement of the King (Chap. 2:).
It is now happily familiar to many that, as we have seen, the four Gospels have four different stories to tell us of the Lord Jesus Christ – give us four different views of Him. In the Gospel of Matthew He is the King (in relation to Israel especially, still of the kingdom of heaven, therefore wider and higher far than merely Israel's King):in Mark He is the Servant, the minister to human need:in Luke, the Man; and in John, the divine Person, the Word made flesh. In saying this, of course, it is not meant but that we have all these four in every Gospel, more or less ; but we merely speak of what is emphasized in each one. Thus, for instance, while we have in the first chapter the Lord looked at as Son of God (John's theme), yet, at the same time, as there, this is in direct connection with the theme of Matthew, because God's kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, would not be fully that unless He who ruled was a divine Person. So again, when you take the Gospel of Mark, what you find is the Lord's humiliation in a most distinct way, beyond any other Gospel. He is not even called Lord by His disciples till the resurrection ; yet it opens with, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." And why? Because, surely, the very thing that makes His ministry so precious is the apprehension of who it is that came down to serve in such a way, and therefore, that expression, though not characteristic of the book, coming in the place it does, is not only consistent with, but deepens our apprehension of its character.
Now, looking back to the end of the first chapter before we pass on, let us notice afresh that the King here is no less than divine, the living link between God and men, Immanuel, "God with us." To be that, He must be "Jesus," and save His people from their sins; yet in His very Person, Godhead and manhood are bound together in an embrace that is eternal, and implies all that is revealed in the gospel.
The connection of this, of course, is with the first chapter, where we rightly find it. Yet there is a connection, alas, of a very different kind with the second, to which we are now come, and which gives us the announcement of this divine King in His own world, and to His own people, and the results of that announcement. He has not only as a stranger to be announced ; but more, if exceptionally there are found a few to welcome, the mass are only troubled at the announcement.
Not only so:we shall find as we go on that it is, above all, for this pre-eminent glory of His that He is rejected. What man most of all needs, he most emphatically refuses. God's most wonderful grace he most stubbornly disbelieves.
The people were, already crying out, so to speak, for a Christ, for Messiah, but not such a Christ as Christ was, the Son of God. This is what they would have stoned Him for, and for which they condemned Him in the high priest's palace; and only as the con-sequence of this was he delivered up to Pilate, the Roman governor, with the charge that He made Himself King in Israel. The rejection of the King was in truth the rejection of a divine Person come into their midst:as the Lord says of them, "Now they have both seen and hated both Me and My Father."
It is not, of course, inconsistent with this, when the apostle says, "Whom none of the princes of this world knew; for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory."
They would not have dared; nevertheless, they had, consciously or unconsciously, looked into the face of the Son of God, and had therefore "seen the Father;" and had seen Him only to hate Him. What an awful thing it is to realize that this is the world we are living in, and the same world to-day, except where grace has made a difference!
Aye, and have we – we who have in measure owned His grace, and the necessity of His work for our salvation-have we cleared ourselves altogether of this deepest sin, so as, looking upon the face of God's Beloved, to have opened our hearts and lives to Him according to what is implied in this tide, Immanuel, "God with us"? Would we have Him "with us" as His desire is to be with us? Do we keep back nothing from this glorious Visitant ? do we deliberately keep back nothing ? Have we flung the gates wide open, in joyous response to the wondrous condescension of the King ?
In the details of our life, which of us can answer for himself as to this ? The things that so much, and not in the way of duty but of choice, engage us, and crowd out the things in which He is interested;-the comparative occupation of our time with His word and perhaps a newspaper;-such things, and many like them, how do they speak in regard to the way in which we have accepted indeed this blessed title of His-"God with us"?
How He would fulfill it to us, if we would but permit it! "We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him." These are His own words; and what do they imply? Rather, may we say, what do they not imply ?
How solemn it is, too, to realize, beloved, that when the Lord of glory comes into the world, He comes into it in the most humble form ; not as a King at all, but disguised as the son of a carpenter, in the utmost poverty! But was it not, after all, that which became Him ? Think of the Son of God coming among us born in the "princes of this world's" purple ! Would not that be but the real disguise ? What another picture we would have had of Him, had He been brought up in kings' palaces, rather than where He was ! How blessed for Him to come down to the very lowest, so that there should not be one who cannot find Him, so to speak, in a place lower than himself! The world is upside down with sin; and this voluntary lowliness it is that proves and sets Him highest. It is the only thing suitable in Him, who, because the foundations of the world are out of course, is to bear up the pillars of it.
In this second chapter, then, we have the Lord announced, and having to be announced among His own people by men from afar-by Gentiles. Yet we know that not only by Daniel had God predicted almost the exact time of Messiah's coming, and by Micah, as the Scribes could unhesitatingly tell the place of His birth, but that heaven had given its witness to Him as actually come. Zecharias and Elizabeth had announced His forerunner. The angelic vision had brought the shepherds to the manger where He lay. Simeon had blessed God for His salvation come; and with Anna had spoken of Him in Jerusalem itself. And yet the city is only startled into recognition when "magi from the east" come with their inquiry, "Where is He that has been born King of the Jews ? for we have seen His star in the east, and have come to worship Him."
Upon the star itself it is perhaps useless to speculate. It naturally connects itself with Balaam's prophecy of the "Star to arise out of Jacob," and which was, as we know, the prophecy of a Gentile among Gentiles. Prophecy had evidently spoken to them, or they would hardly have so definitely understood the object of their search to be a King of the Jews. The magi were, as we know, the great natural observers of those days, and here we have the witness of nature to the Lord. Nature is not rebellious to her Maker, and still gives plentiful witness- few as they may be who realize or care to read it. The star may not have been in the strict sense miraculous, although a miracle would, after all, seem most consonant with the wonder of the time, and miracle is that in which God has reserved for Himself a sphere in which to show Himself outside and above those fixed natural laws which form the necessarily stable world through which our daily path is. The disappearance and reappearance of the star, and its guiding them to just where the young child was, look, spite of all attempted explanation, like something very different from an object in the far-off heavens. At any rate, the love in it was not far off, and it spoke in no uncertain way to these glad pilgrims journeying at its word.
They come to Jerusalem expecting, doubtless, to find all the city ready for the inquirer with a gospel message. They come to find the Edomite on the throne, and with all the old Edomite hatred in his heart, craftily though he may hide it, and gather the chief priests and elders together to hasten them on the way. Of course, these can tell all about Christ's birth textually; and how the words must have stricken the old blood-stained tyrant to the heart! "And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah; for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall be Shepherd to My people Israel."
Such, literally, are the words they use:and one might suppose that in using them they meant to inflict a wound that Herod should not be able to impute to them, but should come home to him as the voice of God Himself. And so it was, though the words are not found in Micah just as they quote them here. For Hebrew was not any more the language, even of Israel as a whole; and it was quite customary to paraphrase-rather than give literally a Scripture appealed to. The Hebrew, besides other differences, does not give "shepherd " in this passage, but simply "ruler." The Septuagint Greek follows the Hebrew:so that the variation is their own. And yet who can deny that the one word is God's thought as to the other? He who had sent Moses to the sheepfolds to learn how to guide His people in the wilderness-He who in the land had chosen David, and taken him '' from following the ewes great with young" to feed and guide with no less tenderness the flock of His pasture,-He had indeed consecrated the "shepherd " to be the picture of the Ruler whom He had appointed and would raise up. And we all know how the Lord has filled out this picture.
The scribes, then, show in their variation from the letter their acquaintance with the character of Messiah as prophecy reveals Him. But we hear no more of them. They cite the text for Herod; and they do it well; but they have no heart for the One they testify to. They are like sign-posts upon a road on which they do not move an inch. They pass on the word to those who value it; Herod himself, also, becoming the instrument in guiding worshipers to the feet of Jesus. They only, obedient to the Word, turn their faces toward Bethlehem; and as they do so, the star appears again, and goes before them. Nor does it leave them now till they are face to face with Him they seek.
Then they worship. It is but a humble house, we may be sure, and there are in it but a young mother and her babe. But they worship,-and worship, not the mother, but the babe. Divinely taught, they pour out their gifts at His feet, "gold and frankincense and myrrh:" gifts which, no doubt, have meaning. The Church of old seems almost unitedly to have interpreted them as, in the gold, the recognition of His royalty; in the frankincense, the acknowledgment of His Deity; while the myrrh, used afterward at His burial, is taken thus to be the anticipation of His death. To some of these things, as we know, His disciples were long after strangers; nor could we argue, if there were no doubt about the correctness of the symbolism, that the magi knew the whole significance of what they did. God governed all here in a peculiar way; a way which, indeed, in Scripture is the rule, however. Here there is nothing unmeaning. Here, if prophets searched their own writings to find how much the Spirit of Christ which was in them had guided them beyond their knowledge, so words and deeds speak commonly with a divine intelligence, quite apart from those who are the speakers and the doers.
It is the shadow of the future that is passing before us:the Gentiles worshiping while Israel rejects, -a dispensational picture quite in keeping with the character of Matthew. If we turn to the Gospel of Luke, and put it side by side with what we have here, worshipers though there may be in both cases, how many points of contrast we shall find! Luke is the gospel of the manhood of Christ; and with this, no wonder if we find a nearness, a meeting of God and man, which Matthew has very little of indeed. Be it that we have seen in Israel's King Immanuel, "God with us," this is at present more a prophecy than a real fulfillment, even as the salvation which He is come to effect is, all through, prevailingly a thing to be worked out before it can be plainly spoken into man's ear and heart. We shall see a fuller statement and proof of this as we go on. But in Luke, even from the beginning of it, salvation is come. Zacharias, before the birth of the Lord, testifies of it as at hand. Simeon, with the babe in his arms, sees it as already here. And instead of great men coming a long distance to find the King of the Jews, no star, but rejoicing hosts in an open heaven preach of a Savior which is Christ the Lord, of peace on earth, and God's delight in men.
Nor is it afar off, but nigh at hand-a gospel for the poor, free and available for all that come. Men need not to labor after it, but only to receive it-as in the offerings for atonement, where no wild nor hunted animal was used, but the sin-offerings couched at the door. Thus spoke God's grace before, as yet, it could be plainly uttered. Now the hidden things are gone, and God is in the light forevermore. F. W. G.