# commentaries

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 If your hand proves a stumbling-block to you, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than to go away to Gehenna with two hands, to the fire that can never be quenched. And if your foot is a stumbling-block to you, cut it off. For it is better for you to enter life lame than to be cast into Gehenna with two feet. And if your eye proves a stumbling-block to you, cast it away. For it is better for you to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye than to be cast into Gehenna with two eyes, where their worm does not die and the fire is never quenched.<p/></i><p/>This passage lays down in vivid eastern language the basic truth that there is one goal in life worth any sacrifice. In physical matters it may be that a man may have to part with a limb or with some part of the body to preserve the life of the whole body. The amputation of some limb or the excision of some part of the body by surgical means is sometimes the only way to preserve the life of the whole body. In the spiritual life the same kind of thing can happen.<p/>The Jewish Rabbis had sayings based on the way in which some parts of the body can lend themselves to sin. "The eye and the heart are the two brokers of sin." "The eye and the heart are the two handmaids of sin." "Passions lodge only in him who sees." "Woe to him who goes after his eyes for the eyes are adulterous." There are certain instincts in man, and certain parts of man's physical constitution, which minister to sin. This saying of Jesus is not to be taken literally, but is a vivid eastern way of saying that there is a goal in life worth any sacrifice to attain it.<p/>There are in this passage repeated references to Gehenna. Gehenna is spoken of in the New Testament in <a href='B:470 5:22'>Mat 5:22</a>; <a href='B:470 5:29-30'>Mat 5:29-30</a>; <a href='B:470 10:28'>Mat 10:28</a>; <a href='B:470 18:9'>Mat 18:9</a>; <a href='B:470 23:15'>Mat 23:15</a>; <a href='B:470 23:33'>Mat 23:33</a>; <a href='B:490 12:5'>Luk 12:5</a>; <a href='B:660 3:6'>Jas 3:6</a>. The word is regularly translated Hell. It is a word with a history. It is a form of the word Hinnom. The valley of Hinnom was a ravine outside Jerusalem. It had an evil past.<p/>It was the valley in which Ahaz, in the old days, had instituted fire worship and the sacrifice of little children in the fire. "He burned incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burned his sons as an offering." (<a href='B:140 28:3'>2Ch 28:3</a>). That terrible heathen worship was also followed by Manasseh (<a href='B:140 33:6'>2Ch 33:6</a>). The valley of Hinnom, Gehenna, therefore, was the scene of one of Israel's most terrible lapses into heathen customs. In his reformations Josiah declared it an unclean place. "He defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech." (<a href='B:120 23:10'>2Ki 23:10</a>).<p/>When the valley had been so declared unclean and had been so desecrated it was set apart as the place where the refuse of Jerusalem was burned. The consequence was that it was a foul, unclean place, where loathsome worms bred on the refuse, and which smoked and smouldered at all times like some vast incinerator. The actual phrase about the worm which does not die, and the fire which is not quenched, comes from a description of the fate of Israel's evil enemies in <a href='B:290 66:24'>Isa 66:24</a>.<p/>Because of all this Gehenna had become a kind of type or symbol of Hell, the place where the souls of the wicked would be tortured and destroyed. It is so used in the Talmud. "The sinner who desists from the words of the Law will in the end inherit Gehenna." So then Gehenna stands as the place of punishment, and the word roused in the mind of every Israelite the grimmest and most terrible pictures.<p/>But what was the goal for which everything must be sacrificed? It is described in two ways. Twice it is called life, and once it is called the Kingdom of God. How may we define the Kingdom of God? We may take our definition from the Lord's Prayer. In that prayer two petitions are set beside each other. "Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." There is no literary device so characteristic of Jewish style as parallelism. In parallelism two phrases are set side by side, the one of which either restates the other, or amplifies, explains and develops it. Any verse of the Psalms will show this device in action. So, then, we may take it that in the Lord's Prayer the one petition is an explanation and amplification of the other. When we set the two together we get the definition that, "The Kingdom of Heaven is a society upon earth in which God's will is as perfectly done in earth as it is in heaven."<p/>We may then go on to say quite simply that perfectly to do God's will is to be a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. And if we take that and apply it to the passage we are now studying it will mean that it is worth any sacrifice and any discipline and any self-denial to do the will of God and only in doing that will is there real life and ultimate and completely satisfying peace.<p/>Origen takes this symbolically. He says that it may be necessary to excise some heretic or some evil person from the fellowship of the Church in order to keep the body of the Church pure. But this saying is meant to be taken very personally. It means that it may be necessary to excise some habit, to abandon some pleasure, to give up some friendship, to cut out some thing which has become very dear to us, in order to be fully obedient to the will of God. This is not a matter with which anyone can deal for anyone else. It is solely a matter of a man's individual conscience, and it means that, if there is anything in our lives which is coming between us and a perfect obedience to the will of God, however much habit and custom may have made it part of our lives, it must be rooted out. The rooting out may be as painful as a surgical operation, it may seem like cutting out part of our own body, but if we are to know real life, real happiness and real peace it must go. This may sound bleak and stern, but in reality it is only facing the facts of life.<p/><b>THE SALT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE</b> (<a href='B:480 9:49-50'>Mar 9:49-50</a>)


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 Everyone must be salted with fire, Salt is good, but, if the salt has become saltless, with what will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and so live at peace with each other.<p/></i><p/>These three verses are amongst the most difficult in the New Testament. The commentators produce scores of different interpretations. The interpretation will become easier if we remember something we have already had cause to note. Often Jesus dropped pithy sayings which stuck in men's minds because they could not possibly forget them. But often, although men remembered the saying, they did not remember the occasion on which it was said. The result is that we often get a series of quite disconnected sayings of Jesus set together because they stuck in the writer's mind in that order.<p/>Here is an instance of this. We will not make sense of these two verses at all unless we recognize that here we have three quite separate sayings of Jesus which have nothing to do with each other. They came together in the compiler's mind and stuck there together in this order because they all contain the word salt. They are a little collection of sayings of Jesus in which he used salt in various ways as metaphor or illustration. AD this is to say that we must not try to find some remote connection between these sayings. We must take them individually and interpret each as it comes.<p/>(i) Everyone must be salted by fire. According to the Jewish Law every sacrifice must be salted with salt before it was offered to God on the altar (<a href='B:30 2:13'>Lev 2:13</a>). That sacrificial salt was called the salt of the covenant (<a href='B:40 18:19'>Num 18:19</a>; <a href='B:140 13:5'>2Ch 13:5</a>). It was the addition of that salt which made the sacrifice acceptable to God, and which his covenant law laid down as necessary. This saying of Jesus will then mean, "Before a Christian life becomes acceptable to God it must be treated with fire just as every sacrifice is treated with salt." The fire is the salt which makes the life acceptable to God.<p/>What does that mean? In ordinary New Testament language, fire has two connections.<p/>(a) It is connected with purification. It is the fire which purifies the base metal; the alloy is separated and the metal left pure. Fire then will mean everything which purifies life, the discipline by which a man conquers his sin, the experiences of life which purify and strengthen the sinews of the soul. In that case this will mean, "The life which is acceptable to God is the life which has been cleansed and purified by the discipline of Christian obedience and Christian acceptance of the guiding hand of God."<p/>(b) Fire is connected with destruction. In that case this saying will have to do with persecution. It will mean that the life which has undergone the trials and hardships and perils of persecution is the life which is acceptable to God. The man who has voluntarily faced the danger of the destruction of his goods and the destruction of his own life because of his loyalty to Jesus Christ is the man who is dear to God.<p/>We may take this first saying of Jesus to mean that the life which is purified by discipline and has faced the danger of persecution because of its loyalty is the sacrifice which is precious to God.<p/>(ii) Salt is good, but if the salt has become saltless, with what will you season it? This is an even harder saying to interpret. We would not say that there are no other possible interpretations, but we would suggest that it may be understood on the following lines. Salt has two characteristic virtues. First, it lends flavour to things. An egg without salt is an insipid thing. Anyone knows how unpleasant many a dish is when the salt which should have been included is accidentally omitted in the preparation. Second, salt was the earliest of all preservatives. To keep a thing from going rotten salt was used. The Greeks used to say that salt acted like a soul in a dead body. Dead meat left to itself went bad, but, pickled in salt, it retained its freshness. The salt seemed to put a kind of life into it. Salt defended against corruption.<p/>Now the Christian was sent into a heathen society to do something for it. Heathen society had two characteristics. First, it was bored and world-weary. The very luxuries and excesses of that ancient world were a proof that in its bored weariness it was looking for some thrill in a life from which all thrill had gone. As Matthew Arnold wrote,<p/>"On that hard pagan world, disgust<p/>And secret loathing fell;<p/>Deep weariness and sated lust<p/>Made human life a hell.<p/>In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,<p/>The Roman noble lay;<p/>He drove abroad in furious guise<p/>Along the Appian Way;<p/>He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,<p/>And crowned his hair with flowers--<p/>No easier nor no quicker passed<p/>The impracticable hours."<p/>Into that bored and weary world Christianity came, and it was the task of the Christian to impart to society a new flavour and a new thrill as salt does to the dish with which it is used.<p/>Second, that ancient world was corrupt. No one knew that better than the ancients themselves. Juvenal likened Rome to a filthy sewer. Purity was gone and chastity was unknown. Into that corrupt world Christianity came, and it was the task of the Christian to bring an antiseptic to the poison of life, to bring a cleansing influence into that corruption. Just as salt defeated the corruption which inevitably attacked dead meat, so Christianity was to attack the corruption of the world.<p/>So then in this saying Jesus was challenging the Christian. "The world, he said, "needs the flavour and the purity that only the Christian can bring. And if the Christian himself has lost the thrill and the purity of the Christian life, where will the world ever get these things?" Unless the Christian, in the power of Christ, defeats world-weariness and world corruption, these things must flourish unchecked.<p/>(iii) Have salt in yourselves and live at peace with each other. Here we must take salt in the sense of purity. The ancients declared that there was nothing in the world purer than salt because it came from the two purest things, the sun and the sea. The very glistening whiteness of salt was a picture of purity. So this will mean, "Have within yourselves the purifying influence of the Spirit of Christ. Be purified from selfishness and self-seeking, from bitterness and anger and grudge-bearing. Be cleansed from irritation and moodiness and self-centredness, and then, and then only, you will be able to live in peace with your fellow men." In other words, Jesus is saying that it is only the life that is cleansed of self and filled with Christ which can live in real fellowship with men. 


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 Leaving there, Jesus came into the hill-country of Judaea and to the district across the Jordan, and once again crowds came together to him. As his custom was, he again continued to teach them. Some Pharisees came to him and asked him if it was lawful for a man to put away his wife. They asked this question to test him. He asked them, "What commandment did Moses lay down for you?" They answered, "Moses allowed a man to write a bill of divorcement and then to put her away." Jesus said to them, "It was to meet the hardness of your heart that he wrote this commandment for you. From the beginning of creation male and female he created them. For this cause a man will leave his father and his mother and will cleave to his wife. And the two will become one flesh, so that they are no longer two but one flesh. So then what God has joined together let not man separate." In the house his disciples again asked him about this. He said to them, "Whoever puts away his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."<p/></i><p/>Jesus was pursuing his way south. He had left Galilee and had come into Judaea. He had not yet entered Jerusalem, but step by step and stage by stage he was approaching the final scene.<p/>Certain Pharisees came with a question about divorce, by which they hoped to test him. There may have been more than one motive behind their question. Divorce was a burning question, a crux of rabbinic discussion, and it may well be that they honestly wished for Jesus' opinion on it. They may have wished to test his orthodoxy. It may well be that Jesus had already had something to say on this matter. <a href='B:470 5:31-32'>Mat 5:31-32</a>, shows us Jesus speaking about marriage and re-marriage, and it may be that these Pharisees had the hope that he might contradict himself and entangle himself in his own words. It may be that they knew what he would answer and wished to involve him in enmity with Herod who had in fact divorced his wife and married another. It may well be that they wished to hear Jesus contradict the law of Moses, as indeed he did, and thereby to formulate a charge of heresy against him. One thing is certain--the question they asked Jesus was no academic one of interest only to the rabbinic schools. It was a question which dealt with one of the acutest issues of the time.<p/>In theory nothing could be higher than the Jewish ideal of marriage. Chastity was held to be the greatest of all the virtues. "We find that God is long-suffering to every sin except the sin of unchastity." "Unchastity causes the glory of God to depart." "Every Jew must surrender his life rather than commit idolatry, murder or adultery." "The very altar sheds tears when a man divorces the wife of his youth." The ideal was there but practice fell very far short.<p/>The basic fact that vitiated the whole situation was that in Jewish law a woman was regarded as a thing. She had no legal rights whatever but was at the complete disposal of the male head of the family. The result was that a man could divorce his wife on almost any grounds, while there were very few on which a woman could seek divorce. At best she could only ask her husband to divorce her. "A woman may be divorced with or without her will, but a man only with his will." The only grounds on which a woman could claim a divorce were if her husband became a leper, if he engaged in a disgusting trade such as that of a tanner, if he ravished a virgin, or if he falsely accused her of prenuptial sin.<p/>The law of Jewish divorce goes back to <a href='B:50 24:1'>Deu 24:1</a>. That passage was the foundation of the whole matter. It runs thus: "When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favour in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house."<p/>At first the bill of divorcement was very simple. It read like this: "Let this be from me thy writ of divorce and letter of dismissal and deed of liberation, that thou mayest marry whatsoever man thou wilt." In later days the bill became more elaborate: "On the........ day, of the........ week, of the........ month, year........ of the world, according to the calculation in use in the town of......... situated by the river........ I, A.B., son of C.D., and by whatsoever name I am called here, present this day......... native of the town of........ I acting of my free-will, and without any coercion, do repudiate, send back, and put away thee E.F., daughter of G.H., and by whatsoever name thou art called, and until this present time my wife. I send thee away now E.F., daughter of G.H., so that thou art free and thou canst at thy pleasure marry whom thou wilt and no one will hinder thee. This is thy letter of divorce, act of repudiation, certificate of separation, according to the law of Moses and of Israel." In New Testament times this document took a skilled Rabbi to draw it up. It was afterwards proved by a court of three rabbis, and then lodged with the Sanhedrin. But the process of divorce remained on the whole exceedingly easy, and at the entire discretion of the man.<p/>But the real crux of the problem was the interpretation of the law as it is in <a href='B:50 24:1'>Deu 24:1</a>. There it is laid down that a man can divorce his wife if he finds in her some indecency. How was that phrase to be interpreted? There were in this matter two schools of thought.<p/>There was the school of Shammai. They interpreted the matter with utter strictness. A matter of indecency was adultery and adultery alone. Let a woman be as bad as Jezebel, unless she was guilty of adultery there could be no divorce.<p/>The other school was the school of Hillel. They interpreted that crucial phrase as widely as possible. They said that it could mean if the wife spoiled a dish of food, if she spun in the streets, if she talked to a strange man, if she spoke disrespectfully of her husband's relations in his hearing, if she was a brawling woman, (who was defined as a woman whose voice could be heard in the next house). Rabbi Akiba even went the length of saying that it meant if a man found a woman who was fairer in his eyes than his wife was.<p/>Human nature being as it is, it was the laxer view which prevailed. The result was that divorce for the most trivial reasons, or for no reason at all, was tragically common. To such a pass had things come that, in the time of Jesus, women hesitated to marry at all because marriage was so insecure. When Jesus spoke as he did he was speaking on a subject which was a burning issue, and he was striking a blow for women by seeking to restore marriage to the position it ought to have.<p/>Certain things are to be noted. Jesus quoted the Mosaic regulation, and then he said that Moses laid that down only "to meet the hardness of your hearts." That may mean one of two things. It may mean that Moses laid it down because it was the best that could be expected from people such as those for whom he was legislating. Or, it may mean that Moses laid it down in order to try to control a situation which even then was degenerating, that in fact it was not so much a permission to divorce as it was in the beginning an attempt to control divorce, to reduce it to some kind of law, and to make it more difficult.<p/>In any event Jesus made it quite clear that he regarded <a href='B:50 24:1'>Deu 24:1</a>, as being laid down for a definite situation and being in no sense permanently binding. The authorities which he quoted went much further back. For his authorities he went right back to the Creation story and quoted <a href='B:10 1:27'>Gen 1:27</a> and <a href='B:10 2:24'>Gen 2:24</a>. It was his view that in the very nature of things marriage was a permanency which indissolubly united two people in such a way that the bond could never be broken by any human laws and regulations. It was his belief that in the very constitution of the universe marriage is meant to be an absolute permanency and unity, and no Mosaic regulation dealing with a temporary situation could alter that.<p/>The difficulty is that in the parallel account in Matthew there is a difference. In Mark, Jesus' prohibition of divorce and remarriage is absolute. In <a href='B:470 19:3-9'>Mat 19:3-9</a>, he is shown as absolutely forbidding remarriage, but as permitting divorce on one ground--adultery. Almost certainly the Matthew version is correct, and it is indeed implied in Mark. It was Jewish law that adultery did in fact compulsorily dissolve any marriage. And the truth is that infidelity does in fact dissolve the bond of marriage. Once adultery has been committed the unity is in any case destroyed and divorce merely attests the fact.<p/>The real essence of the passage is that Jesus insisted that the loose sexual morality of his day must be mended. Those who sought marriage only for pleasure must be reminded that marriage is also for responsibility. Those who regarded marriage simply as a means of gratifying their physical passions must be reminded that it was also a spiritual unity. Jesus was building a rampart round the home.<p/><b>OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN</b> (<a href='B:480 10:13-16'>Mar 10:13-16</a>)


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 They brought little children to Jesus that he might touch them. But the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw what they were doing he was vexed and said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and don't try to stop them for of such is the Kingdom of God. This is the truth I tell you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will not enter into it." And he took them up in the crook of his arm and blessed them and laid his hands upon them.<p/></i><p/>It was natural that Jewish mothers should wish their children to be blessed by a great and distinguished Rabbi. Especially they brought their children to such a person on their first birthday. It was in this way that they brought the children to Jesus on this day.<p/>We will fully understand the almost poignant beauty of this passage only if we remember when it happened. Jesus was on the way to the Cross--and he knew it. Its cruel shadow can never have been far from his mind. It was at such a time that he had time for the children. Even with such a tension in his mind as that he had time to take them in his arms and he had the heart to smile into their faces and maybe to play with them awhile.<p/>The disciples were not boorish and ungracious men. They simply wanted to protect Jesus. They did not quite know what was going on, but they knew quite clearly that tragedy lay ahead and they could see the tension under which Jesus laboured. They did not want him to be bothered. They could not conceive that he could want the children about him at such a time as that. But Jesus said, "Let the children come to me."<p/>Incidentally, this tells us a great deal about Jesus. It tells us that he was the kind of person who cared for children and for whom children cared. He could not have been a stern and gloomy and joyless person. There must have been a kindly sunshine on him. He must have smiled easily and laughed joyously. Somewhere George Macdonald says that he does not believe in a man's Christianity if the children are never to be found playing around his door. This little, precious incident throws a flood of light on the human kind of person Jesus was.<p/>"Of such," said Jesus "is the Kingdom of God." What is it about the child that Jesus liked and valued so much?<p/>(i) There is the child's humility. There is the child who is an exhibitionist, but such a child is rare and almost always the product of misguided adult treatment. Ordinarily the child is embarrassed by prominence and publicity. He has not yet learned to think in terms of place and pride and prestige. He has not yet learned to discover the importance of himself.<p/>(ii) There is the child's obedience. True, a child is often disobedient, but, paradox though it may seem, his natural instinct is to obey. He has not yet learned the pride and the false independence which separate a man from his fellow-men and from God.<p/>(iii) There is the child's trust. That is seen in two things.<p/>(a) It is seen in the child's acceptance of authority. There is a time when he thinks his father knows everything and that his father is always right. To our shame, he soon grows out of that. But instinctively the child realizes his own ignorance and his own helplessness and trusts the one who, as he thinks, knows.<p/>(b) It is seen in the child's confidence in other people. He does not expect any person to be bad. He will make friends with a perfect stranger. A great man once said that the greatest compliment ever paid him was when a little boy came up to him, a complete stranger, and asked him to tie his shoelace. The child has not yet learned to suspect the world. He still believes the best about others. Sometimes that very trust leads him into danger for there are those who are totally unworthy of it and who abuse it, but that trust is a lovely thing.<p/>(iv) The child has a short memory. He has not yet learned to bear grudges and nourish bitterness. Even when he is unjustly treated--and who among us is not sometimes unjust to his children?--he forgets, and forgets so completely that he does not even need to forgive.<p/>Indeed, of such is the Kingdom of God.<p/><b>HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT GOODNESS?</b> (<a href='B:480 10:17-22'>Mar 10:17-22</a>)


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 As Jesus was going along the road, a man came running to him and threw himself at his feet and asked him, "Good teacher, what am I to do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? There is no one who is good, except one--God. You know the commandments. You must not kin, you must not commit adultery, you must not steal, you must not bear false witness, you must not defraud anyone, you must honour your father and mother." He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these from my youth." When Jesus looked at him he loved him, and he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have, and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. And come! Follow me!" But he was grieved at this saying, and he went away in sadness, for he had many possessions.<p/></i><p/>Here is one of the most vivid stories in the gospels.<p/>(i) We must note how the man came and how Jesus met him. He came running. He flung himself at Jesus' feet. There is something amazing in the sight of this rich, young aristocrat falling at the feet of the penniless prophet from Nazareth, who was on the way to being an outlaw. "Good teacher!" he began. And straight away Jesus answered back, "No flattery! Don't call me good! Keep that word for God!" It looks almost as if Jesus was trying to freeze him and to pour cold water on that young enthusiasm.<p/>There is a lesson here. It is clear that this man came to Jesus in a moment of overflowing emotion. It is also clear that Jesus exercised a personal fascination over him. Jesus did two things that every evangelist and every preacher and every teacher ought to remember and to copy.<p/>First, he said in effect, "Stop and think! You are all wrought up and palpitating with emotion! I don't want you swept to me by a moment of emotion. Think calmly what you are doing." Jesus was not freezing the man. He was telling him even at the very outset to count the cost.<p/>Second, he said in effect, "You cannot become a Christian by a sentimental passion for me. you must look at God." Preaching and teaching always mean the conveying of truth through personality, and thereby lies the greatest danger of the greatest teachers. The danger is that the pupil, the scholar, the young person may form a personal attachment to the teacher or the preacher and think that it is an attachment to God. The teacher and preacher must never point to himself. He must always point to God. There is in all true teaching a certain self-obliteration. True, we cannot keep personality and warm personal loyalty out of it altogether, and we would not if we could. But the matter must not stop there. The teacher and the preacher are in the last analysis only finger-posts to God.<p/>(ii) Never did any story so lay down the essential Christian truth that respectability is not enough. Jesus quoted the commandments which were the basis of the decent life. Without hesitation the man said he had kept them all. Note one thing--with one exception they were all negative commandments, and that one exception operated only in the family circle. In effect the man was saying, "I never in my life did anyone any harm." That was perfectly true. But the real question is, "What good have you done?" And the question to this man was even more pointed, "With all your possessions, with your wealth, with all that you could give away, what positive good have you done to others? How much have you gone out of your way to help and comfort and strengthen others as you might have done?" Respectability, on the whole, consists in not doing things; Christianity consists in doing things. That was precisely where this man--like so many of us--fell down.<p/>(iii) So Jesus confronted him with a challenge. In effect he said, "Get out of this moral respectability. Stop looking at goodness as consisting in not doing things. Take yourself and all that you have, and spend everything on others. Then you will find true happiness in time and in eternity." The man could not do it. He had great possessions, which it had never entered his head to give away and when it was suggested to him he could not. True, he had never stolen, and he had never defrauded anyone--but neither had he ever been, nor could he compel himself to be, positively and sacrificially generous.<p/>It may be respectable never to take away from anyone. It is Christian to give to someone. In reality Jesus was confronting this man with a basic and essential question--"How much do you want real Christianity? Do you want it enough to give your possessions away?" And the man had to answer in effect, "I want it--but I don't want it as much as all that."<p/>Robert Louis Stevenson in The Master of Ballantrae draws a picture of the master leaving the ancestral home of Durrisdeer for the last time. Even he is sad. He is talking to the faithful family steward. "Ah! M'Kellar, he said, "Do you think I have never a regret." "I do not think, said M'Kellar, "that you could be so bad a man unless you had all the machinery for being a good one." "Not all, said the master, "not all. It is there you are in error. The malady of not wanting."<p/>It was the malady of not wanting enough which meant tragedy for the man who came running to Jesus. It is the malady from which most of us suffer. We all want goodness, but so few of us want it enough to pay the price.<p/>Jesus, looking at him, loved him. There were many things in that look of Jesus.<p/>(a) There was the appeal of love. Jesus was not angry with him. He loved him too much for that. It was not the look of anger but the appeal of love.<p/>(b) There was the challenge to chivalry. It was a look which sought to pull the man out of his comfortable, respectable, settled life into the adventure of being a real Christian.<p/>(c) It was the look of grief. And that grief was the sorest grief of all--the grief of seeing a man deliberately choose not to be what he might have been and had it in him to be.<p/>Jesus looks at us with the appeal of love and with the challenge to the knightliness of the Christian way. God grant that he may never have to look at us with sorrow for a loved one who refuser to be what he might have been and could have been.<p/><b>THE PERIL OF RICHES</b> (<a href='B:480 10:23-27'>Mar 10:23-27</a>)


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 Jesus looked round and said to his disciples, "With what difficulty will those who have money enter into the Kingdom of God!" His disciples were amazed at his words. Jesus repeated, "Children, how difficult it is for those who trust in money to enter into the Kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." They were exceedingly astonished. "Who then, they said to him, "can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man it is impossible, but not with God. All things are possible with God."<p/></i><p/>The ruler who had refused the challenge of Jesus had walked sorrowfully away, and, no doubt the eyes of Jesus and the company of the apostles followed him until his figure receded into the distance. Then Jesus turned and looked round his own men. "How very difficult it is, he said, "for a man who has money to enter into the Kingdom of God." The word used for money is chremata (<a href='S:G5536'>G5536</a>), which is defined by Aristotle as, "All those things of which the value is measured by coinage."<p/>We may perhaps wonder why this saying so astonished the disciples. Twice their amazement is stressed. The reason for their amazement was that Jesus was turning accepted Jewish standards completely upside down. Popular Jewish morality was simple. It believed that prosperity was the sign of a good man. If a man was rich, God must have honoured and blessed him. Wealth was proof of excellence of character and of favour with God. The Psalmist sums it up, "I have been young and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging bread." (<a href='B:230 37:25'>Psa 37:25</a>.)<p/>No wonder the disciples were surprised! They would have argued that the more prosperous a man was the more certain he was of entry into the Kingdom. So Jesus repeated his saying in a slightly different way to make clearer what he meant. "How difficult it is, he said, "for those who have put their trust in riches to enter the Kingdom."<p/>No one ever saw the dangers of prosperity and of material things more clearly than Jesus did. What are these dangers?<p/>(i) Material possessions tend to fix a man's heart to this world. He has so large a stake in it, he has so great an interest in it, that it is difficult for him to think beyond it, and it is specially difficult for him to contemplate leaving it. Dr. Johnson was once shown round a famous castle and its lovely grounds. After he had seen it all, he turned to his friends and said, "These are the things that make it difficult to die." The danger of possessions is that they fix a man's thoughts and interests to this world.<p/>(ii) If a man's main interest is in material possessions it tends to make him think of everything in terms of price. A hill shepherd's wife wrote a most interesting letter to a newspaper. Her children had been brought up in the loneliness of the hills. They were simple and unsophisticated. Then her husband got a position in a town and the children were introduced to the town. They changed very considerably--and they changed for the worse. The last paragraph of her letter read--"Which is preferable for a child's upbringing--a lack of worldliness, but with better manners and sincere and simple thoughts, or worldliness and its present-day habit of knowing the price of everything and the true value of nothing?"<p/>If a man's main interest is in material things, he will think in terms, of price and not in terms of value. He will think in terms of what money can get. And he may well forget that there are values in this world far beyond money, that there are things which have no price, and that there are precious things that money cannot buy. It is fatal when a man begins to think that everything worth having has a money price.<p/>(iii) Jesus would have said that the possession of material things is two things.<p/>(a) It is an acid test of a man. For a hundred men who can stand adversity only one can stand prosperity. Prosperity can so very easily make a man arrogant, proud, self-satisfied, worldly. It takes a really big and good man to bear it worthily.<p/>(b) It is a responsibility. A man will always be judged by two standards how he got his possessions and how he uses them. The more he has, the greater the responsibility that rests upon him. Will he use what he has selfishly or generously? Will he use it as if he had undisputed possession of it, or remembering that he holds it in stewardship from God.<p/>The reaction of the disciples was that, if what Jesus was saying was true, to be saved at all was well-nigh impossible. Then Jesus stated the whole doctrine of salvation in a nutshell. "If, he said, "salvation depended on a man's own efforts it would be impossible for anyone. But salvation is the gift of God and all things are possible to him." The man who trusts in himself and in his possessions can never be saved. The man who trusts in the saving power and the redeeming love of God can enter freely into salvation. This is the thought that Jesus stated. This is the thought that Paul wrote in letter after letter. And this is the thought which is still for us the very foundation of the Christian faith.<p/><b>CHRIST IS NO MAN'S DEBTOR</b> (<a href='B:480 10:28-31'>Mar 10:28-31</a>)


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 Peter began to say to him, "Look now! We have left everything and have become your followers." Jesus said, "This is the truth I tell you--there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the good news who will not get it back a hundred times over in this present time--homes and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands--with persecutions, and in the world to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first."<p/></i><p/>Peter's mind had been working, and, characteristically, his tongue could not stay still. He had just seen a man deliberately refuse Jesus' "Follow me!" He had just heard Jesus say in effect that that man by his action had shut himself out from the Kingdom of God. Peter could not help drawing the contrast between that man and himself and his friends. Just as the man had refused Jesus' "Follow me!" he and his friends had accepted it, and Peter with that almost crude honesty of his wanted to know what he and his friends were to get out of it. Jesus' answer falls into three sections.<p/>(i) He said that no man ever gave up anything for the sake of himself and of his good news without getting it back a hundredfold. It so happened that in the early Church that was literally true. A man's Christianity might involve the loss of home and friends and loved ones, but his entry into the Christian Church brought him into a far greater and wider family than ever he had left, a family who were all spiritually kin to him.<p/>We see the thing actually happening in the life of Paul. No doubt, when Paul became a Christian the door of his home slammed in his face and his family disowned him. But equally without doubt there was city upon city, town upon town, village upon village in Europe and in Asia Minor where he could find a home waiting for him and a family in Christ to welcome him. It is strange how he uses the very family terms. In <a href='B:520 16:13'>Rom 16:13</a>, he tells how the mother of Rufus was as good as a mother to him. In <a href='B:640 1:10'>Phm 1:10</a>, he speaks of Onesimus as the son whom he had begotten in his bonds.<p/>It would be so of every Christian in the early days. When his own family rejected him he entered into the wider family of Christ.<p/>When Egerton Young first preached the gospel to the Red Indians in Saskatchewan the idea of the fatherhood of God fascinated men who had hitherto seen God only in the thunder and the lightning and the storm blast. An old chief said to Egerton Young, "Did I hear you say to God 'Our Father'?" "I did, said Egerton Young. "God is your Father?" asked the chief. "Yes, said Egerton Young. "And, went on the chief, "He is also my Father?" "He certainly is, said Egerton Young. Suddenly the chief's face lit up with a new radiance. His hand went out. "Then, he said like a man making a dazzling discovery, "you and I are brothers."<p/>A man may have to sacrifice ties that are very dear in order to become a Christian, but when he does he becomes a member of a family and a brotherhood as wide as earth and heaven.<p/>(ii) Jesus added two things. First, he added the simple words and persecutions. Straightaway these words remove the whole matter from the world of quid pro quo. They take away the idea of a material reward for a material sacrifice. They tell us of two things. They speak of the utter honesty of Jesus. He never offered an easy way. He told men straight that to be a Christian is a costly thing. Second, they tell us that Jesus never used a bribe to make men follow him. He used a challenge. It is as if he said, "Certainly you will get your reward, but you will have to show yourself a big enough man and a gallant enough adventurer to get it." The second thing that Jesus added was the idea of the world to come. He never promised that within this world of space and time there would be a kind of squaring up of the balance sheet and settlement of accounts. He did not call men to win the rewards of time. He called men to earn the blessings of eternity. God has not only this world in which to repay.<p/>(iii) Then Jesus added one warning epigram--"Many who are first shall be last, and the last first." This was in reality a warning to Peter. It may well be that by this time Peter was estimating his own worth and his own reward and assessing them high. What Jesus was saying was, "The final standard of judgment is with God. Many a man may stand well in the judgment of the world, but the judgment of God may upset the world's judgment. Still more many a man may stand well in his own judgment, and find that God's evaluation of him is very different." It is a warning against all pride. It is a warning that the ultimate judgments belong to God who alone knows the motives of men's hearts. It is a warning that the judgments of heaven may well upset the reputations of earth.<p/><b>THE APPROACHING END</b> (<a href='B:480 10:32-34'>Mar 10:32-34</a>)


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 They were on the road, on their way up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. They were in a state of astonished bewilderment, and, as they followed him, they were afraid. Once again he took the Twelve to him, and began to tell them what was going to happen to him. "Look you!" He said, "We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and experts in the law, and they will condemn him to death, and they will hand him over to the Gentiles, and they will make a jest of him, and they will spit on him, and they will scourge him and they will kill him. And after three days he will rise again."<p/></i><p/>Here is a vivid picture, all the more vivid because of the stark economy of words with which it is painted. Jesus and his men were entering upon the last scene. Jesus had set his course definitely and irrevocably to Jerusalem and the Cross. Mark marks the stages very definitely. There had been the withdrawal to the north, to the territory round Caesarea Phillipi. there had been the journey south, and the brief halt in Galilee. There had been the way to Judaea and the time in the hill-country and beyond Jordan. And now there is the final stage, the road to Jerusalem.<p/>This picture tells us something about Jesus.<p/>(i) It tells us of the loneliness of Jesus. They were going along the road and he was out ahead of them--alone. And they were so amazed and bewildered, so conscious of the sense of impending tragedy, that they were afraid to go up to him. There are certain decisions which a man must take alone. Had Jesus tried to share this decision with the Twelve their only contribution would have been to try to stop him. There are certain things which a man must face alone. Matthew Arnold, in his poem Isolation, speaks of,<p/>"This truth--to prove and make thine own:<p/>'Thou hast been, shalt be, art alone'."<p/>There are certain decisions which must be taken and certain roads that must be walked in the awful loneliness of a man's own soul. And yet, in the deepest sense of all, even in these times a man is not alone, for never is God nearer to him. Whittier writes of such a time,<p/>"Nothing before, nothing behind.<p/>The steps of faith<p/>Fall on the seeming void, and find<p/>The rock beneath."<p/>Here we see the essential loneliness of Jesus, a loneliness that was comforted by God.<p/>(ii) It tells us of the courage of Jesus. Three times Jesus foretold the things that were to happen to him in Jerusalem, and as Mark tells of these warnings, each time they grow grimmer and some further detail of horror is included. At first (<a href='B:480 8:31'>Mar 8:31</a>) it is the bare announcement. At the second time the hint of betrayal is there (<a href='B:480 9:31'>Mar 9:31</a>). And now at the third time the jesting, the mocking and the scourging appear. It would seem as if the picture became ever clearer in the mind of Jesus as he became more and more aware of the cost of redemption.<p/>There are two kinds of courage. There is the courage which is a kind of instinctive reaction, almost a reflex action, the courage of the man confronted out of the blue with a crisis to which he instinctively reacts with gallantry, scarcely having time to think. Many a man has become a hero in the heat of the moment. There is also the courage of the man who sees the grim thing approaching far ahead, who has plenty of time to turn back, who could, if he chose, evade the issue, and who yet goes on. There is no doubt which is the higher courage--this known deliberate facing of the future. That is the courage Jesus showed. If no higher verdict was possible, it would still be true to say of Jesus that he ranks with the heroes of the world.<p/>(iii) It tells us of the personal magnetism of Jesus. It is quite clear that by this time the disciples did not know what was going on. They were sure that Jesus was the Messiah. They were equally sure that he was going to die. To them these two facts did not make sense when put together. They were completely bewildered, and yet they followed To them everything was dark except one thing--they loved Jesus, and, however much they wished to, they could not leave him. They had learned something which is of the very essence of life and faith--they loved so much that they were compelled to accept what they could not understand.<p/><b>THE REQUEST OF AMBITION</b> (<a href='B:480 10:35-40'>Mar 10:35-40</a>)


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 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus. "Teacher, they said, "we want you to do for us whatever we ask you." "What do you want me to do for you?" he said to them. They said to him, "Grant to us that, in your glory, we may sit one on your right hand and one on your left." "You do not know what you ask, Jesus said to them. "Can you drink the cup which I am drinking? Or, can you go through the experience through which I am going?" "We can, they said to him. Jesus said to them, "You will drink the cup which I am drinking. You will go through the experience through which I am going. But to sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give you. That place belongs to those for whom it has been prepared."<p/></i><p/>This is a very revealing story.<p/>(i) It tells us something about Mark. Matthew retells this story (<a href='B:470 20:20-23'>Mat 20:20-23</a>), but in his version the request for the first places is made not by James and John, but by their mother Salome. Matthew must have felt that such a request was unworthy of an apostle, and, to save the reputation of James and John, he attributed it to the natural ambition of their mother. This story shows us the honesty of Mark. It is told that a court painter painted the portrait of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was afflicted with warts on the face. Thinking to please him, the painter omitted the warts in the painting. When Cromwell saw it, he said, "Take it away! and paint me warts and all!" Mark's aim is to show us the disciples, warts and all. And Mark was right, because the Twelve were not a company of saints. They were ordinary men. It was with people like ourselves Jesus set out to change the world--and did it.<p/>(ii) It tells us something about James and John.<p/>(a) It tells us that they were ambitious. When the victory was won and the triumph was complete, they aimed at being Jesus? chief ministers of state. Maybe their ambition was kindled because more than once Jesus had made them part of his inner circle, the chosen three. Maybe they were a little better off than the others. Their father was well enough off to employ hired servants (<a href='B:480 1:20'>Mar 1:20</a>), and it may be that they rather snobbishly thought that their social superiority entitled them to the first place. In any event they show themselves as men in whose hearts there was ambition for the first place in an earthly kingdom.<p/>(b) It tells us that they had completely failed to understand Jesus. The amazing thing is not the fact that this incident happened, but the time at which it happened. It is the juxtaposition of Jesus' most definite and detailed forecast of his death and this request that is staggering. It shows, as nothing else could, how little they understood what Jesus was saying to them. Words were powerless to rid them of the idea of a Messiah of earthly power and glory. Only the Cross could do that.<p/>(c) But when we have said all that is to be said against James and John, this story tells us one shining thing about them--bewildered as they might be, they still believed in Jesus. It is amazing that they could still connect glory with a Galilaean carpenter who had incurred the enmity and the bitter opposition of the orthodox religious leaders and who was apparently heading for a cross. There is amazing confidence and amazing loyalty there. Misguided James and John might be but their hearts were in the right place. They never doubted Jesus' ultimate triumph.<p/>(iii) It tells us something of Jesus' standard of greatness. The Revised Standard Version gives a literally accurate reading of what Jesus said--"Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" Jesus uses two Jewish metaphors here.<p/>It was the custom at a royal banquet for the king to hand the cup to his guests. The cup therefore became a metaphor for the life and experience that God handed out to men. "My cup overflows, said the Psalmist (<a href='B:230 23:5'>Psa 23:5</a>), when he spoke of a life and experience of happiness given to him by God. "In the hand of the Lord there is a cup, said the Psalmist (<a href='B:230 75:8'>Psa 75:8</a>), when he was thinking of the fate in store for the wicked and the disobedient. Isaiah, thinking of the disasters which had come upon the people of Israel, describes them as having drunk "at the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath." (<a href='B:290 51:17'>Isa 51:17</a>.) The cup speaks of the experience allotted to men by God.<p/>The other phrase which Jesus uses is actually misleading in the literal English version. He speaks of the baptism with which he was baptized. The Greek verb baptizein (<a href='S:G907'>G907</a>) means to dip. Its past participle (bebaptismenos, <a href='S:G907'>G907</a>) means submerged, and it is regularly used of being submerged in any experience. For instance, a spendthrift is said to be submerged in debt. A drunk man is said to be submerged in drink. A grief-stricken person is said to be submerged in sorrow. A lad before a cross-examining teacher is said to be submerged in questions. The word is regularly used for a ship that has been wrecked and submerged beneath the waves. The metaphor is very closely related to a metaphor which the Psalmist often uses. In <a href='B:230 42:7'>Psa 42:7</a> we read, "All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me." In <a href='B:230 124:4'>Psa 124:4</a> we read, "Then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us." The expression, as Jesus used it here, had nothing to do with technical baptism. What he is saying is, "Can you bear to go through the terrible experience which I have to go through? Can you face being submerged in hatred and pain and death, as I have to be?" He was telling these two disciples that without a cross there can never be a crown. The standard of greatness in the Kingdom is the standard of the Cross. It was true that in the days to come they did go through the experience of their Master, for James was beheaded by Herod Agrippa (<a href='B:510 12:2'>Act 12:2</a>), and, though John was probably not martyred, he suffered much for Christ. They accepted the challenge of their Master--even if they did so blindly.<p/>(iv) Jesus told them that the ultimate issue of things belonged to God. The final assignment of destiny was his prerogative. Jesus never usurped the place of God. His own whole life was one long act of submission to his will and he knew that in the end that will was supreme.<p/><b>THE PRICE OF MAN'S SALVATION</b> (<a href='B:480 10:41-45'>Mar 10:41-45</a>)


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 When the ten heard about this, they began to be vexed about the action of James and John. Jesus called them to him. "You are well aware, he said, "that those who are esteemed good enough to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It is not so amongst you, but, amongst you, whoever wishes to be great will be your servant, and amongst you, whoever wishes to be first will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."<p/></i><p/>Inevitably the action of James and John aroused deep resentment amongst the other ten. It seemed to them that they had tried to steal a march and to take an unfair advantage. Immediately the old controversy about who was to be greatest began to rage again.<p/>This was a serious situation. The fellowship of the apostolic band might well have been wrecked, had Jesus not taken immediate action. He called them to him, and made quite clear the different standards of greatness in his Kingdom and in the kingdoms of the world. In the kingdoms of the world the standard of greatness was power. The test was: How many people does a man control? How great an army of servants has he at his beck and call? On how many people can he impose his will? Not very much later than this, Galba was to sum up the heathen idea of kingship and greatness when he said that now he was emperor he could do what he liked and do it to anyone. In the Kingdom of Jesus the standard was that of service. Greatness consisted, not in reducing other men to one's service, but in reducing oneself to their service. The test was not, What service can I extract?, but, What service can I give?<p/>We tend to think this is an ideal state of affairs, but, in point of fact, it is the soundest common sense. It is in fact the first principle of ordinary everyday business life. Bruce Barton points out that the basis on which a motor company will claim the patronage of prospective customers is that they will crawl under your car oftener and get themselves dirtier than any of their competitors. They are in other words prepared to give more service. He points out that although the ordinary clerk may go home at 5:30 p.m., the light will be seen burning in the office of the chief executive long into the night. It is his willingness to give the extra service that makes him head of the firm.<p/>The basic trouble in the human situation is that men wish to do as little as possible and to get as much as possible. It is only when they are filled with the desire to put into life more than they take out, that life for themselves and for others will be happy and prosperous. Kipling has a poem called Mary's Son which is advice on the spirit in which a man must work:<p/>"If you stop to find out what your wages will be<p/>And how they will clothe and feed you,<p/>Willie, my son, don't you go to the Sea,<p/>For the Sea will never need you.<p/>"If you ask for the reason of every command,<p/>And argue with people about you,<p/>Willie, my son, don't you go on the Land,<p/>For the Land will do better without you.<p/>If you stop to consider the work that you've done<p/>And to boast what your labour is worth, dear,<p/>Angels may come for you, Willie, my son,<p/>But you'll never be wanted on earth dear!"<p/>The world needs people whose ideal is service--that is to say it needs people who have realized what sound sense Jesus spoke.<p/>To clinch his words Jesus pointed to his own example. With such powers as he had, he could have arranged life entirely to suit himself, but he had spent himself and all his powers in the service of others. He had come, he said, to give his life a ransom for many. This is one of the great phrases of the gospel, and yet it has been sadly mishandled and maltreated. People have tried to erect a theory of the atonement on what is a saying of love.<p/>It was not long until people were asking to whom this ransom of the life of Christ had been paid? Origen asked the question. "To whom did he give his life a ransom for many? It was not to God. Was it not then to the Evil One? For the devil was holding us fast until the ransom should be given to him, even the life of Jesus, for he was deceived with the idea that he could have dominion over it and did not see that he could not bear the torture involved in retaining it." It is an odd conception that the life of Jesus was paid as a ransom to the devil so that he should release men from the bondage in which he held them, but that the devil found that in demanding and accepting that ransom, he had, so to speak, bitten off more than he could chew.<p/>Gregory of Nyssa saw the flaw in that theory, namely that it really puts the devil on an equality with God. It allows him to make a bargain with God on equal terms. So Gregory of Nyssa conceived of the extraordinary idea of a trick played by God. The devil was tricked by the seeming weakness of the incarnation. He mistook Jesus for a mere man. He tried to exert his authority over him and, by trying to do so, lost it. Again it is an odd idea--that God should conquer the devil by a trick.<p/>Another two hundred years passed and Gregory the Great took up the idea. He used a fantastic metaphor. The incarnation was a divine stratagem to catch the great leviathan. The deity of Christ was the hook, his flesh was the bait. When the bait was dangled before Leviathan, the devil, he swallowed it, and tried to swallow the hook, too, and so was overcome forever.<p/>Finally Peter the Lombard brings this idea to its most grotesque and repulsive. "The Cross, he said, "was a mouse-trap to catch the devil, baited with the blood of Christ." All this simply shows what happens when men take a lovely and precious picture and try to make a cold theology out of it.<p/>Suppose we say, "Sorrow is the price of love, we mean that love cannot exist without the possibility of sorrow, but we never even think of trying to explain to whom that price is paid. Suppose we say that freedom can be obtained only at the price of blood, toil, tears and sweat, we never think of investigating to whom that price is paid. This saying of Jesus is a simple and pictorial way of saying that it cost the life of Jesus to bring men back from their sin into the love of God. It means that the cost of our salvation was the Cross of Christ. Beyond that we cannot go, and beyond that we do not need to go. We know only that something happened on the Cross which opened for us the way to God.<p/><b>A MIRACLE BY THE WAYSIDE</b> (<a href='B:480 10:46-52'>Mar 10:46-52</a>)


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 They went to Jericho. As Jesus was passing through Jericho, on his way out of the city--his disciples and a great crowd were with him--Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was there he began to shout. "Son of David!" he cried, "Jesus! Have pity on me!" Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet. But he shouted all the more, "Son of David! Have pity on me!" Jesus came to a stop. "Call him here!" he said. They called the blind man. "Courage!" they said to him. "Get up! He is calling you!" He threw off his cloak and leapt up and came to Jesus. Jesus said to him, "What do you want me to do for you?" The blind man said to him, "Master teacher! My prayer is that I might see again." Jesus said to him, "Go! Your faith has cured you." Immediately he saw again, and he followed him upon the road.<p/></i><p/>For Jesus the end of the road was not far away. Jericho was only about 15 miles from Jerusalem. We must try to visualize the scene. The main road ran right through Jericho. Jesus was on his way to the Passover. When a distinguished Rabbi or teacher was on such a journey it was the custom that he was surrounded by a crowd of people, disciples and learners, who listened to him as he discoursed while he walked. That was one of the commonest ways of teaching.<p/>It was the law that every male Jew over twelve years of age who lived within 15 miles of Jerusalem must attend the Passover. It was clearly impossible that such a law should be fulfilled and that everyone should go. Those who were unable to go were in the habit of lining the streets of towns and villages through which groups of Passover pilgrims must pass to bid them godspeed on their way. So then the streets of Jericho would be lined with people, and there would be even more than usual, for there would be many eager and curious to catch a glimpse of this audacious young Galilaean who had pitted himself against the assembled might of orthodoxy.<p/>Jericho had one special characteristic. There were attached to the Temple over 20,000 priests and as many levites. Obviously they could not all serve at the one time. They were therefore divided into twenty-six courses which served in rotation. Very many of these priests and levites resided in Jericho when they were not on actual temple duty. There must have been many of them in the crowd that day. At the Passover all were on duty for all were needed. It was one of the rare occasions when all did serve. But many would not have started yet. They would be doubly eager to see this rebel who was about to invade Jerusalem. There would be many cold and bleak and hostile eyes in the crowd that day, because it was clear that if Jesus was right, the whole Temple worship was one vast irrelevancy.<p/>At the northern gate sat a beggar, Bartimaeus by name. He heard the tramp of feet. He asked what was happening and who was passing. He was told that it was Jesus. There and then he set up an uproar to attract Jesus' attention to him. To those listening to Jesus' teaching as he walked the uproar was an offence. They tried to silence Bartimaeus, but no one was going to take from him his chance to escape from his world of darkness, and he cried with such violence and importunity that the procession stopped, and he was brought to Jesus.<p/>This is a most illuminating story. In it we can see many of the things which we might call the conditions of miracle.<p/>(i) There is the sheer persistence of Bartimaeus. Nothing would stop his clamour to come face to face with Jesus. He was utterly determined to meet the one person whom he longed to confront with his trouble. In the mind of Bartimaeus there was not just a nebulous, wistful, sentimental wish to see Jesus. It was a desperate desire, and it is that desperate desire that gets things done.<p/>(ii) His response to the call of Jesus was immediate and eager, so eager that he cast off his hindering cloak to run to Jesus the more quickly. Many a man hears the call of Jesus, but says in effect, "Wait until I have done this, or "Wait until I have finished that." Bartimaeus came like a shot when Jesus called. Certain chances happen only once. Bartimaeus instinctively knew that. Sometimes we have a wave of longing to abandon some habit, to purify life of some wrong thing, to give ourselves more completely to Jesus. So very often we do not act on it on the moment--and the chance is gone, perhaps never to come back.<p/>(iii) He knew precisely what he wanted--his sight. Too often our admiration for Jesus is a vague attraction. When we go to the doctor we want him to deal with some definite situation. When we go to the dentist we do not ask him to extract any tooth, but the one that is diseased. It should be so with us and Jesus. And that involves the one thing that so few people wish to face--self-examination. When we go to Jesus, if we are as desperately definite as Bartimaeus, things will happen.<p/>(iv) Bartimaeus had a quite inadequate conception of Jesus. Son of David he insisted on calling him. Now that was a Messianic title, but it has in it all the thought of a conquering Messiah, a king of David's line who would lead Israel to national greatness. That was a very inadequate idea of Jesus. But, in spite of that, Bartimaeus had faith, and faith made up a hundredfold for the inadequacy of his theology. The demand is not that we should fully understand Jesus. That, in any event, we can never do. The demand is for faith. A wise writer has said, "We must ask people to think, but we should not expect them to become theologians before they are Christians." Christianity begins with a personal reaction to Jesus, a reaction of love, feeling that here is the one person who can meet our need. Even if we are never able to think things out theologically, that response of the human heart is enough.<p/>(v) In the end there is a precious touch. Bartimaeus may have been a beggar by the wayside but he was a man of gratitude. Having received his sight, he followed Jesus. He did not selfishly go on his way when his need was met. He began with need, went on to gratitude, and finished with loyalty--and that is a perfect summary of the stages of discipleship. 


text:
 When they were coming near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and to Bethany, Jesus despatched two of his disciples, and said to them, "Go into the village opposite you, and as soon as you come into it, you will find tethered there a colt, on which no man has ever yet sat. Loose it and bring it to me. And if anyone says to you, 'Why are you doing this?' say, 'The Lord needs it,' and immediately he will send it." And they went away and they found the colt tethered, outside a door, on the open street, and they loosed it. And some of those who were standing by said to them, "What are you doing loosing this colt?" They said to them what Jesus had told them to say, and they let them go.<p/></i><p/>We have come to the last stage of the journey. There had been the time of withdrawal around Caesarea Philippi in the far north. There had been the time in Galilee. There had been the stay in the hill-country of Judaea and in the regions beyond Jordan. There had been the road through Jericho. Now comes Jerusalem.<p/>We have to note something without which the story is almost unintelligible. When we read the first three gospels we get the idea that this was actually Jesus' first visit to Jerusalem. They are concerned to tell the story of Jesus' work in Galilee. We must remember that the gospels are very short. Into their short compass is crammed the work of three years, and the writers were bound to select the things in which they were interested and of which they had special knowledge. And when we read the fourth gospel we find Jesus frequently in Jerusalem. (<a href='B:500 2:13'>Joh 2:13</a>; <a href='B:500 5:1'>Joh 5:1</a>; <a href='B:500 7:10'>Joh 7:10</a>.) We find in fact that he regularly went up to Jerusalem for the great feasts.<p/>There is no real contradiction here. The first three gospels are specially interested in the Galilaean ministry, and the fourth in the Judaean. In fact, moreover, even the first three have indications that Jesus was not infrequently in Jerusalem. There is his close friendship with Martha and Mary and Lazarus at Bethany, a friendship which speaks of many visits. There is the fact that Joseph of Arimathaea was his secret friend. And above all there is Jesus' saying in <a href='B:470 23:37'>Mat 23:37</a> that often he would have gathered together the people of Jerusalem as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings but they were unwilling. Jesus could not have said that unless there had previously been more than one appeal which had met with a cold response.<p/>This explains the incident of the colt. Jesus did not leave things until the last moment. He knew what he was going to do and long ago he had made arrangements with a friend. When he sent forward his disciples, he sent them with a pass-word that had been pre-arranged--"The Lord needs it now." This was not a sudden, reckless decision of Jesus. It was something to which all his life had been budding up.<p/>Bethphage and Bethany were villages near Jerusalem. Very probably Bethphage means house of figs and Bethany means house of dates. They must have been very close because we know from the Jewish law that Bethphage was one of the circle of villages which marked the limit of a Sabbath day's journey, that is, less than a mile, while Bethany was one of the recognized lodging--places for pilgrims to the Passover when Jerusalem was full.<p/>The prophets of Israel had always had a very distinctive method of getting their message across. When words failed to move people they did something dramatic, as if to say, "If you will not hear, you must be compelled to see." (compare specially <a href='B:110 11:30-32'>1Ki 11:30-32</a>.) These dramatic actions were what we might call acted warnings or dramatic sermons. That method was what Jesus was employing here. His action was a deliberate dramatic claim to be Messiah.<p/>But we must be careful to note just what he was doing. There was a saying of the prophet Zechariah (<a href='B:450 9:9'>Zec 9:9</a>), "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, and riding on an ass and upon a colt the foal of an ass." The whole impact is that the King was coming in peace. In Palestine the ass was not a despised beast, but a noble one. When a king went to war he rode on a horse, when he came in peace he rode on an ass.<p/>G. K. Chesterton has a poem in which he makes the modem donkey speak:<p/>"When fishes flew ind forests walk'd<p/>And figs grew upon thorn,<p/>Some moment when the moon was blood<p/>Then surely I was born.<p/>"With monstrous head and sickening cry<p/>And ears like errant wings,<p/>The devil's walking parody<p/>Of all four-footed things.<p/>"The tatter'd outlaw of the earth<p/>Of ancient crooked will;<p/>Starve, scourge, deride me, I am dumb,<p/>I keep my secret still.<p/>"Fools! For I also had my hour,<p/>One far fierce hour and sweet;<p/>There was a shout about my ears,<p/>And palms before my feet."<p/>It is a wonderful poem. Nowadays the ass is a beast of amused contempt, but in the time of Jesus it was the beast of kings. But we must note what kind of a king Jesus was claiming to be. He came meek and lowly. He came in peace and for peace. They greeted him as the Son of David, but they did not understand.<p/>It was just at this time that the Hebrew poems, The Psalms of Solomon, were written. They represent the kind of Son of David whom people expected. Here is their description of him:<p/>"Behold, O Lord, and raise up unto them their king, the son of<p/>David,<p/>At the time, in the which thou seest, O God, that he may<p/>reign over Israel, thy servant.<p/>And gird him with strength that he may shatter unrighteous rulers,<p/>And that he may purge Jerusalem from nations that trample<p/>her down to destruction.<p/>Wisely, righteously he shall thrust out sinners from the<p/>inheritance,<p/>He shall destroy the pride of sinners as a potter's vessel.<p/>With a rod of iron he shall break in pieces all their substance.<p/>He shall destroy the godless nations with the word of his<p/>mouth.<p/>At his rebuke nations shall flee before him,<p/>And he shall reprove sinners for the thoughts of their<p/>hearts.<p/>"All nations shall be in fear before him,<p/>For he will smite the earth with the word of his mouth forever."<p/>(Wis 17:21-25, 39:)<p/>That was the kind of poem on which the people nourished their hearts. They were looking for a king who would shatter and smash and break. Jesus knew it--and he came meek and lowly, riding upon an ass.<p/>When Jesus rode into Jerusalem that day, he claimed to be king, but he claimed to be King of peace. His action was a contradiction of all that men hoped for and expected.<p/><b>HE THAT COMETH</b> (<a href='B:480 11:7-10'>Mar 11:7-10</a>)


text:
 They brought the colt to Jesus, and they put their garments on it, and mounted him on it. Many of them spread their garments on the road. Others cut branches from the fields and spread them on the road. And those who were going before and those who were following kept shouting, "Save now! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Send thy salvation from the heights of heaven!"<p/></i><p/>The colt they brought had never been ridden upon. That was fitting, for a beast to be used for a sacred purpose must never have been used for any other purpose. It was so with the red heifer whose ashes cleansed from pollution (<a href='B:40 19:2'>Num 19:2</a>; <a href='B:50 21:3'>Deu 21:3</a>).<p/>The whole picture is of a populace who misunderstood. It shows us a crowd of people thinking of kingship in the terms of conquest in which they had thought of it for so long. It is oddly reminiscent of how Simon Maccabaeus entered Jerusalem a hundred and fifty years before, after he had blasted Israel's enemies in battle. "And he entered into it the three and twentieth day of the seventh month, in the hundred, seventy and first year, with thanksgiving and branches of palm trees, and with harps, and cymbals, and viols, and hymns and songs, because there was destroyed a great enemy out of Israel." (1Ma_13:51.) It was a conqueror's welcome they sought to give to Jesus, but they never dreamed of the kind of conqueror he wished to be.<p/>The very shouts which the crowd raised to Jesus showed how their thoughts were running. When they spread their garments on the ground before him, they did exactly what the crowd did when that man of blood Jehu was anointed king. (<a href='B:120 9:13'>2Ki 9:13</a>.) They shouted, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" That is a quotation from <a href='B:230 118:26'>Psa 118:26</a>, and should really read a little differently, "Blessed in the name of the Lord is he who comes!"<p/>There are three things to note about that shout.<p/>(i) It was the regular greeting with which pilgrims were addressed when they reached the Temple on the occasion of the great feasts.<p/>(ii) "He who comes" was another name for the Messiah. When the Jews spoke about the Messiah, they talked of him as the One who is Coming.<p/>(iii) But it is the whole origin of the Psalm from which the words come that makes them supremely suggestive. In 167 B.C. there had arisen an extraordinary king in Syria called Antiocheius. He had conceived it his duty to be a missionary of Hellenism and to introduce Greek ways of life, Greek thought and Greek religion wherever he could, even, if necessary, by force. He tried to do so in Palestine.<p/>For a time he conquered Palestine. To possess a copy of the law or to circumcise a child were crimes punishable by death. He desecrated the Temple courts. He actually instituted the worship of Zeus where Jehovah had been worshipped. With deliberate insult he offered swine's flesh on the great altar of the burnt-offering. He made the chambers round the Temple courts into brothels. He did everything he could to wipe out the Jewish faith.<p/>It was then that Judas Maccabaeus arose, and after an amazing career of conquest, in 163 B.C. he drove Antiocheius out and re-purified and re-consecrated the temple, an event which the Feast of the Dedication, or the Feast of Hanukah, still commemorates. And in all probability <a href='B:230 118:1-29'>Psa 118:1-29</a> was written to commemorate that great day of purification and the battle which Judas Maccabaeus won. It is a conqueror's psalm.<p/>Again and again we see the same thing happening in this incident. Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah, but in such a way as to try to show that the popular ideas of the Messiah were misguided. But the people did not see it. Their welcome was one which befitted, not the King of love, but the conqueror who would shatter the enemies of Israel.<p/>In <a href='B:480 11:9-10'>Mar 11:9-10</a> there is the word Hosanna. The word is consistently misunderstood. It is quoted and used as if it meant Praise; but it is a simple transliteration of the Hebrew for Save now! it occurs in exactly the same form in <a href='B:100 14:4'>2Sa 14:4</a> and <a href='B:120 6:26'>2Ki 6:26</a>, where it is used by people seeking for help and protection at the hands of the king. When the people shouted Hosanna it was not a cry of praise to Jesus, which it often sounds like when we quote it. It was a cry to God to break in and save his people now that the Messiah had come.<p/>No incident so shows the sheer courage of Jesus as this does. In the circumstances one might have expected him to enter Jerusalem secretly and to keep hidden from the authorities who were out to destroy him. Instead he entered in such a way that the attention of every eye was focussed upon him. One of the most dangerous things a man can do is to go to people and tell them that all their accepted ideas are wrong. Any man who tries to tear up by the roots a people's nationalistic dreams is in for trouble. But that is what Jesus deliberately was doing. Here we see Jesus making the last appeal of love and making it with a courage that is heroic.<p/><b>THE QUIET BEFORE THE STORM</b> (<a href='B:480 11:11'>Mar 11:11</a>)<p/><i> 11:11 And he came into Jerusalem into the Temple. After he had looked round everything, when it was now late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.<p/></i><p/>This simple verse shows us two things about Jesus which were typical of him.<p/>(i) It shows us Jesus deliberately summing up his task. The whole atmosphere of the last days was one of deliberation. Jesus was not recklessly plunging into unknown dangers. He was doing everything with his eyes wide open. When he looked round everything, he was like a commander summing up the strength of the opposition and his own resources preparatory to the decisive battle.<p/>(ii) It shows us where Jesus got his strength. He went back to the peace of Bethany. Before he joined battle with men he sought the presence of God. It was only because each day he faced God that he could face men with such courage.<p/>This brief passage also shows us something about the Twelve. They were still with him. By this time it must have been quite plain to them that Jesus was committing suicide, as it seemed to them. Sometimes we criticize them for their lack of loyalty in the last days, but it says something for them, that, little as they understood what was happening, they still stood by him.<p/><b>THE FRUITLESS FIG-TREE</b> (<a href='B:480 11:12-14'>Mar 11:12-14</a> <b>;</b> <a href='B:480 11:20-21'>Mar 11:20-21</a>)


text:
,20-21 When, on the next day, they were coming out from Bethany, Jesus was hungry. From a distance he saw a fig-tree in leaf, and he went to it to see if he would find anything on it. When he came to it he found nothing except leaves, for it was not yet the season of figs. He said to it, "Let no one eat fruit from you for ever." And the disciples heard him say it.... When they were going along the road early in the morning, they saw the fig-tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered what Jesus had said the day before and said, "Teacher! Look! The fig-tree which you cursed has withered away!"<p/></i><p/>Although the story of the fig-tree is in Mark's gospel divided into two we take it as one. The first part of the story happened on the morning of one day, and the second part on the morning of the next day, and, chronologically, the cleansing of the Temple came in between. But, when we are trying to see the meaning of the story, we are better to take it as one.<p/>There can be no doubt that this, without exception, is the most difficult story in the gospel narrative. To take it as literal history presents difficulties which are well-nigh insuperable.<p/>(i) The story does not ring true. To be frank, the whole incident does not seem worthy of Jesus. There seems a certain petulance in it. it is just the kind of story that is told of other wonder-workers but never of Jesus. Further, we have this basic difficulty. Jesus had always refused to use his miraculous powers for his own sake. He would not turn the stones into bread to satisfy his own hunger. He would not use his miraculous powers to escape from his enemies. He never used his power for his own sake. And yet here he uses his power to blast a tree which had disappointed him when he was hungry.<p/>(ii) Worse, the whole action was unreasonable. This was the Passover Season, that is, the middle of April. The fig-tree in a sheltered spot may bear leaves as early as March, but never did a fig-tree bear figs until late May or June. Mark says that it was not the season for figs. Why blast the tree for failing to do what it was not possible for it to do? It was both unreasonable and unjust. Some commentators, to save the situation, say that what Jesus was looking for was green figs, half-ripe figs in their early stages, but such unripe fruit was unpleasant and was never eaten.<p/>The whole story does not seem to fit Jesus at all. What are we to say about it?<p/>If we are to take this as the story of something which actually happened, we must take it as an enacted parable. We must in fact take it as one of those prophetic, symbolic, dramatic actions. If we take it that way, it may be interpreted as the condemnation of two things.<p/>(i) It is the condemnation of promise without fulfillment. The leaves on the tree might be taken as the promise of fruit, but there was no fruit there. It is the condemnation especially of the people of Israel. All their history was a preparation for the coming of God's Chosen One. The whole promise of their national record was that when the Chosen One came they would be eager to receive him. But when he did come, that promise was tragically unfulfilled.<p/>Charles Lamb tells of a certain man called Samuel le Grice. In his life there were three stages. When he was young, people said of him, "He will do something." As he grew older and did nothing, they said of him, "He could do something if he tried." Towards the end they said of him, "He might have done something if he had tried." His life was the tale of a promise that was never fulfilled. If this incident is an enacted parable it is the condemnation of unfulfilled promise.<p/>(ii) It is the condemnation of profession without practice. It might be taken that the tree with its leaves professed to offer something and did not. The whole cry of the New Testament is that a man can be known only by the fruits of his life. "You will know them by their fruits." (<a href='B:470 7:16'>Mat 7:16</a>.) "Bear fruits that befit repentance." (<a href='B:490 3:8'>Luk 3:8</a>.) It is not the man who piously says, "Lord, Lord," who will enter into the Kingdom but the man who does God's will. (<a href='B:470 7:21'>Mat 7:21</a>.) Unless a man's religion makes him a better and more useful man, makes his home happier, makes life better and easier for those with whom he is brought into contact, it is not religion at all. No man can claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ and remain entirely unlike the Master whom he professes to love.<p/>If this incident is to be taken literally and is an enacted parable, that must be the meaning. But, relevant as these lessons may be, it seems difficult to extract them from the incident, because it was quite unreasonable to expect the fig-tree to bear figs when the time for figs was still six weeks away.<p/>What then are we to say? Luke does not relate this incident at all, but he has the parable of the fruitless fig-tree (<a href='B:490 13:6-9'>Luk 13:6-9</a>). Now that parable ends indecisively. The master of the vineyard wished to root up the tree. The gardener pled for another chance. The last chance was given; and it was agreed that if the tree bore fruit it should be spared, and if not it should be destroyed. May it not be that this incident is a kind of continuation of that parable? The people of Israel had had their chance. They had failed to bear fruit. And now was the time for their destruction. It has been suggested--and it is quite possible--that on the road from Bethany to Jerusalem there was a lonely blasted fig-tree. It may well be that Jesus said to his disciples, "You remember the parable I told you about the fruitless fig-tree? Israel is still fruitless and will be blasted as that tree." It may well be that that lonely tree became associated in men's minds with a saying of Jesus about the fate of fruitlessness, and so the story arose.<p/>Let the reader take it as he will. To us there seem insuperable difficulties in taking it literally. It seems to us to be in some way connected with the parable of the fruitless tree. But in any event the whole lesson of the incident is that uselessness invites disaster.<p/><b>THE WRATH OF JESUS</b> (<a href='B:480 11:15-19'>Mar 11:15-19</a>)


text:
 They came into Jerusalem, and when Jesus had come into the sacred precincts, he began to cast out those who sold and bought in the sacred place, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves, and he would not allow that anyone should carry their gear through the sacred precincts. The burden of his teaching and speaking was, "Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a brigands' cave?" The chief priests and the experts in the law heard him, and they sought a way to destroy him, for they were afraid of him, for the whole crowd was astonished at his teaching.<p/>And when evening came he went out of the city.<p/></i><p/>We will visualize this far better if we have in our mind's eye a picture of the lay-out of the Temple precincts. There are two closely connected words used in the New Testament. The first is hieron (<a href='S:G2411'>G2411</a>), which means the sacred place. This included the whole temple area. The temple area covered the top of Mount Zion and was about thirty acres in extent. It was surrounded by great walls which varied on each side, 1,300 to 1,000 feet in length. There was a wide outer space called the Court of the Gentiles. Into it anyone, Jew or Gentile, might come. At the inner edge of the Court of the Gentiles was a low wall with tablets set into it which said that if a Gentile passed that point the penalty was death. The next court was called the Court of the Women. It was so called because unless women had come actually to offer sacrifice they might not proceed farther. Next was the Court of the Israelites. In it the congregation gathered on great occasions, and from it the offerings were handed by the worshippers to the priests. The inmost court was the Court of the Priests.<p/>The other important word is naos (<a href='S:G3485'>G3485</a>), which means the Temple proper, and it was in the Court of the Priests that the Temple stood. The whole area, including all the different Courts, was the sacred precincts (hieron, <a href='S:G2411'>G2411</a>)). The special building within the Court of the Priests was the Temple (naos, <a href='S:G3485'>G3485</a>).<p/>This incident took place in the Court of the Gentiles. Bit by bit the Court of the Gentiles had become almost entirely secularised. It had been meant to be a place of prayer and preparation, but there was in the time of Jesus a commercialised atmosphere of buying and selling which made prayer and meditation impossible. What made it worse was that the business which went on there was sheer exploitation of the pilgrims.<p/>Every Jew had to pay a temple tax of one half shekel a year. That was a sum of 6p. It does not seem much but it has to be evaluated against the fact that the standard day's wage for a working man was 3p. That tax had to be paid in one particular kind of coinage. For ordinary purposes Greek, Roman, Syrian, Egyptian, Phoenician, Tyrian coinages were an equally valid. But this tax had to be paid in shekels of the sanctuary. It was paid at the Passover time. Jews came from an over the world to the Passover and with all kinds of currencies. When they went to have their money changed they had to pay a fee of lp., and should their coin exceed the tax, they had to pay another lp. before they got their change. Most pilgrims had to pay this extra 2p. before they could pay their tax. We must remember that that was half a day's wage, which for most men was a great deal of money.<p/>As for the sellers of doves--doves entered largely into the sacrificial system (<a href='B:30 12:8'>Lev 12:8</a>; <a href='B:30 14:22'>Lev 14:22</a>; <a href='B:30 15:14'>Lev 15:14</a>). A sacrificial victim had to be without blemish. Doves could be bought cheaply enough outside, but the temple inspectors would be sure to find something wrong with them, and worshippers were advised to buy them at the temple stalls. Outside doves cost as little as 3p a pair, inside they cost as much as 75p. Again it was sheer imposition, and what made matters worse was that this business of buying and selling belonged to the family of Annas who had been High Priest.<p/>The Jews themselves were well aware of this abuse. The Talmud tells us that Rabbi Simon ben Gamaliel, on hearing that a pair of doves inside the temple cost a gold piece, insisted that the price be reduced to a silver piece. It was the fact that poor, humble pilgrims were being swindled which moved Jesus to wrath. Lagrange, the great scholar, who knew the East so well, tells us that precisely the same situation still obtains in Mecca. The pilgrim, seeking the divine presence, finds himself in the middle of a noisy uproar, where the one aim of the sellers is to exact as high a price as possible and where the pilgrims argue and defend themselves with equal fierceness.<p/>Jesus used a vivid metaphor to describe the temple court. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was notorious for its robbers. It was a narrow winding road, passing between rocky defiles. Amidst the rocks were caves where the brigands lay in wait, and Jesus said, "There are worse brigands in the temple courts than ever there are in the caves of the Jericho road."<p/><a href='B:480 11:16'>Mar 11:16</a> has the odd statement that Jesus would not allow anyone to carry his gear through the temple court. In point of fact the temple court provided a short cut from the eastern part of the city to the Mount of Olives. The Mishnah itself lays down, "A man may not enter into the temple mount with his staff or his sandal or his wallet, or with the dust upon his feet, nor may he make of it a short by-path." Jesus was reminding the Jews of their own laws. In his time the Jews thought so little of the sanctity of the outer court of the temple that they used it as a thoroughfare on their business errands. It was to their own laws that Jesus directed their attention, and it was their own prophets that he quoted to them. (<a href='B:290 56:7'>Isa 56:7</a> and <a href='B:300 7:11'>Jer 7:11</a>.)<p/>What moved Jesus to such wrath?<p/>(i) He was angry at the exploitation of the pilgrims. The Temple authorities were treating them not as worshippers, not even as human beings, but as things to be exploited for their own ends. Man's exploitation of man always provokes the wrath of God, and doubly so when it is made under the cloak of religion.<p/>(ii) He was angry at the desecration of God's holy place. Men had lost the sense of the presence of God in the house of God. By commercialising the sacred they were violating it.<p/>(iii) Is it possible that Jesus had an even deeper anger? He quoted <a href='B:290 56:7'>Isa 56:7</a>, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples." Yet in that very same house there was a wall beyond which to pass was for the Gentile death. It may well be that Jesus was moved to anger by the exclusiveness of Jewish worship and that he wished to remind them that God loved, not the Jews, but the world.<p/><b>THE LAWS OF PRAYER</b> (<a href='B:480 11:22-26'>Mar 11:22-26</a>)


text:
 Jesus answered, "Have faith in God. This is the truth I tell you--whoever will say to this mountain, 'Be lifted up and be cast into the sea,' and who in his heart does not doubt, but believes that what he says is happening, it will be done for him. So then I tell you, believe that you have received everything for which you pray and ask, and it will be done for you. And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive it, so that your Father who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses."<p/></i><p/>We return now to sayings which Mark attaches to the story of the blasting of the fig-tree. We have noticed more than once how certain sayings of Jesus stuck in men's minds although the occasion on which he said them had been forgotten. It is so here. The saying about the faith which can remove mountains also occurs in <a href='B:470 17:20'>Mat 17:20</a> and in <a href='B:490 17:6'>Luk 17:6</a>, and in each of the gospels it occurs in a quite different context. The reason is that Jesus said it more than once and its real context had often been forgotten. The saying about the necessity of forgiving our fellow-men occurs in <a href='B:470 6:12'>Mat 6:12</a>; <a href='B:470 6:14'>Mat 6:14</a> again in a quite different context. We must approach these sayings as not so much having to do with particular incidents, but as general rules which Jesus repeatedly laid down.<p/>This passage gives us three rules for prayer.<p/>(i) It must be the prayer of faith. The phrase about removing mountains was a quite common Jewish phrase. It was a regular, vivid phrase for removing difficulties. It was specially used of wise teachers. A good teacher who could remove the difficulties which the minds of his scholars encountered was called a mountain-remover. One who heard a famous Rabbi teach said that "he saw Resh Lachish as if he were plucking up mountains." So the phrase means that if we have real faith, prayer is a power which can solve any problem and make us able to deal with any difficulty. That sounds very simple, but it involves two things.<p/>First, it involves that we should be willing to take our problems and our difficulties to God. That in itself is a very real test. Sometimes our problems are that we wish to obtain something we should not desire at all, that we wish to find a way to do something we should not even think of doing, that we wish to justify ourselves for doing something to which we should never lay our hands or apply our minds. One of the greatest tests of any problem is simply to say, "Can I take it to God and can I ask his help?"; Second, it involves that we should be ready to accept God's guidance when he gives it. It is the commonest thing in the world for a person to ask for advice when all he really wants is approval for some action that he is already determined to take. It is useless to go to God and to ask for his guidance unless we are willing to be obedient enough to accept it. But if we do take our problems to God and are humble enough and brave enough to accept his guidance, there does come the power which can conquer the difficulties of thought and of action.<p/>(ii) It must be the prayer of expectation. It is the universal fact that anything tried in the spirit of confident expectation has a more than double chance of success. The patient who goes to a doctor and has no confidence in the prescribed remedies has far less chance of recovery than the patient who is confident that the doctor can cure him. When we pray, it must never be a mere formality. It must never be a ritual without hope.<p/>James Burns quotes a scene from Leonard Merrick's book, Conrad in Quest of His Youth. "Do you think prayers are ever answered?" inquired Conrad. "In my life I have sent up many prayers, and always with the attempt to persuade myself that some former prayer had been fulfilled. But I knew. I knew in my heart none ever had been. Things that I wanted have come to me, but--I say it with all reverence--too late...." Mr. Irquetson's fine hand wandered across his brow. "Once, he began conversationally, "I was passing with a friend through Grosvenor Street. It was when in the spring the tenant's fancy lightly turns to coats of paint, and we came to a ladder leaning against a house that was being redecorated. In stepping to the outer side of it my friend lifted his hat to it. You may know the superstition. He was a 'Varsity man, a man of considerable attainments. I said, 'Is it possible you believe in that nonsense?' He said, 'N-no, I don't exactly believe in it, but I never throw away a chance'." On a sudden the vicar's inflexion changed, his utterance was solemn, stirring, devout, "I think, sir, that most people pray on my friend's principle--they don't believe in it, but they never throw away a chance."<p/>There is much truth in that. For many people prayer is either a pious ritual or a forlorn hope. It should be a thing of burning expectation. Maybe our trouble is that what we want from God is our answer, and we do not recognize his answer when it comes.<p/>(iii) It must be the prayer of charity. The prayer of a bitter man cannot penetrate the wall of his own bitterness. Why? If we are to speak with God there must be some bond between two people who have nothing in common. The principle of God is love, for he is love. If the ruling principle of a man's heart is bitterness, he has erected a barrier between himself and God. If ever the prayer of such a man is to be answered he must first ask God to cleanse his heart from the bitter spirit and put into it the spirit of love. Then he can speak to God and God can speak to him.<p/><b>A CUNNING QUESTION AND A PIERCING ANSWER</b> (<a href='B:480 11:27-33'>Mar 11:27-33</a>)


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 Once again they came to Jerusalem, and, when Jesus was walking in the Temple, the chief priests and the experts in the law and the elders came to him, and said to him, "By what kind of authority do you do these things? Or, who gave you authority to do these things?" Jesus said, "I will put one point to you, and, if you answer me, I will tell you by what kind of authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven? or was it from men? Answer me!" They discussed the matter among themselves. "If, they said, "we say, 'From heaven,' he will say, 'Why did you not believe in it?' But, are we to say, 'From men'?"--for they were afraid of the people, for all truly held that John was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, "We do not know." So Jesus said to them, "Neither do I tell you by what kind of authority I do these things."<p/></i><p/>In the sacred precincts there were two famous cloisters, one on the east and one on the south side of the Court of the Gentiles. The one on the east was called Solomon's Porch. It was a magnificent arcade made by Corinthian columns 35 feet high. The one on the south was even more splendid. It was called the Royal Cloister. It was formed by four rows of white marble columns, each 6 feet in diameter and 30 feet high. There were 162 of them. It was common for Rabbis and teachers to stroll in these columns and to teach as they walked. Most of the great cities of ancient times had these cloisters. They gave shelter from the sun and the wind and the rain, and, in point of fact, it was in these places that most of the religious and philosophic teaching was done. One of the most famous schools of ancient thought was that of the Stoics. They received their name from the fact that Zeno, their founder, taught as he walked in the Stoa Poikile, the Painted Porch, in Athens. The word stoa (<a href='S:G4745'>G4745</a>) means porch or arcade and the Stoics were the school of the porch. It was in these cloisters in the Temple that Jesus was walking and teaching.<p/>To him there came a deputation of the chief priests and the experts in the law, that is the scribes, rabbis and elders. This was in reality a deputation from the Sanhedrin, of which these three groups formed the component parts. They asked a most natural question. For a private individual, all on his own, to clear the Court of the Gentiles of its accustomed and official traders was a staggering thing. So they asked Jesus, "By what kind of authority do you act like that?"<p/>They hoped to put Jesus into a dilemma. If he said he was acting under his own authority they might well arrest him as a megalomaniac before he did any further damage. If he said that he was acting on the authority of God they might well arrest him on an obvious charge of blasphemy, on the grounds that God would never give any man authority to create a disturbance in the courts of his own house. Jesus saw quite clearly the dilemma in which they sought to involve him, and his reply put them into a dilemma which was still worse. He said that he would answer on condition that they would answer one question for him, "Was John the Baptist's work, in your opinion, human or divine?"<p/>This impaled them on the horns of a dilemma. If they said it was divine, they knew that Jesus would ask why they had stood out against it. Worse than that--if they said it was divine, Jesus could reply that John had in fact pointed all men to him, and that therefore he was divinely attested and needed no further authority. If these members of the Sanhedrin agreed that John's work was divine, they would be compelled to accept Jesus as the Messiah. On the other hand, if they said that John's work was merely human, now that John had the added distinction of being a martyr, they knew quite well that the listening people would cause a riot. So they were compelled to say weakly that they did not know, and thereby Jesus escaped the need to give them any answer to their question.<p/>The whole story is a vivid example of what happens to men who will not face the truth. They have to twist and wriggle and in the end get themselves into a position in which they are so helplessly involved that they have nothing to say. The man who faces the truth may have the humiliation of saying that he was wrong, or the peril of standing by it, but at least the future for him is strong and bright. The man who will not face the truth has nothing but the prospect of deeper and deeper involvement in a situation which renders him helpless and ineffective. 


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 Jesus began to speak to them in parables. A man planted a vineyard. He put a hedge round about it, and dug a wine vat, and built a tower. He let it out to cultivators and went abroad. At the right time he sent a servant to the cultivators that he might receive from the cultivators his share of the fruits of the vineyard. They took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent another servant to them. They wounded him in the head, and treated him shamefully. He sent yet another. They killed him. So they treated many others, beating some and killing others. He had still one person left to send, his beloved son. Last of all he sent him to them. "They will respect my son," he said. But these cultivators said to each other, "This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours." So they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. What, then. will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and he will destroy the cultivators and he will give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this passage of scripture, "The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the headstone of the comer. This came from God, and it is in our eyes an amazing thing?" They tried to find a way to get hold of Jesus, for they feared the crowd, for they were well aware that he spoke this parable against them. So they let him alone and went away.<p/></i><p/>We said that a parable must never be treated as an allegory, and that a meaning must not be sought for every detail. Originally Jesus' parables were not meant to be read but to be spoken and their meaning was that which flashed out when first they were heard. But to some extent this parable is an exception. It is a kind of hybrid, a cross between an allegory and a parable. Not all the details have an inner meaning, but more than usual have. And this is because Jesus was talking in pictures which were part and parcel of Jewish thought and imagery.<p/>The owner of the vineyard is God; the vineyard itself is the people of Israel. This was a picture with which the Jews were perfectly familiar. In the Old Testament it is vividly used in <a href='B:290 5:1-7'>Isa 5:1-7</a>, a passage from which some of the details and the language of this passage are taken. This vineyard was given every equipment. There was a wall to mark out its boundaries, to keep out robbers and to defend it from the assaults of the wild boars. There was a wine vat. In a vineyard there was a wine press in which the grapes were trodden down with the feet. Beneath the wine press was a wine vat into which the pressed-out juice flowed. There was a tower. In this the wine was stored, the cultivators had their lodging, and from this watch was kept for robbers at harvest time. The cultivators stand for the rulers of Israel throughout the history of the nation. The servants whom the owner sent stand for the prophets. Servant or slave of God is a regular title. So Moses was called (<a href='B:60 14:7'>Jos 14:7</a>). So David was called (<a href='B:100 3:18'>2Sa 3:18</a>). And the title occurs regularly in the books of the prophets (<a href='B:370 3:7'>Amo 3:7</a>; <a href='B:300 7:25'>Jer 7:25</a>; <a href='B:450 1:6'>Zec 1:6</a>). The son is Jesus himself. Even on the spur of the moment the hearers could have made these identifications because the thoughts and the pictures were all so familiar to them.<p/>The story itself is of what might well happen in Palestine in the time of Jesus. The country had much labour unrest and many absentee landlords. The owner of such a vineyard might be a Jew who had sought a more comfortable land than Palestine, or he might be a Roman who regarded the vineyard as an investment for his money. If the owner followed the law, the first time for collecting the rental would be five years after the planting of the vineyard (<a href='B:30 19:23-25'>Lev 19:23-25</a>). In such a case the rental was paid in kind. It might be a fixed and agreed percentage of the crop, or it might be a stated amount, irrespective of what the crop came to. The story is by no means improbable and tells of the kind of thing which did actually happen.<p/>The parable is so full of truths that we can note them only in the briefest way.<p/>It tells us certain things about God.<p/>(i) It tells us of the generosity of God. The vineyard was equipped with everything that was necessary to make the work of the cultivators easy and profitable. God is generous in the life and in the world that he gives to men.<p/>(ii) It tells us of the trust of God. The owner went away and left the cultivators to run the vineyard themselves. God trusts us enough to give us freedom to run life as we choose. As someone has said, "The lovely thing about God is that he allows us to do so much for ourselves."<p/>(iii) It tells us of the patience of God. Not once or twice but many times the master gave the cultivators the chance to pay the debt they owed. He treated them with a patience they little deserved.<p/>(iv) It tells us of the ultimate triumph of the justice of God. Men might take advantage of the patience of God, but in the end comes judgment and justice. God may bear long with disobedience and rebellion but in the end he acts.<p/>This parable tells us something about Jesus.<p/>(i) It tells us that Jesus regarded himself not as a servant but as a son. He deliberately removes himself from the succession of the prophets. They were servants. He was son. In him God's last and final word was being spoken. This parable was a deliberate challenge to the Jewish authorities because it contains the unmistakable claim of Jesus to be Messiah.<p/>(ii) It tells us that Jesus knew that he was to die. The Cross did not come to him as a surprise. He knew that the way he had chosen could have no other ending. It is the greatness of his courage that he knew that and still went on.<p/>(iii) It tells us that Jesus was sure of his ultimate triumph. He also knew that he would be maltreated and killed, but he also knew that would not be the end, that after the rejection would come the glory.<p/>This parable tells us something about man.<p/>(i) There could be only one reason why the cultivators thought they could kill the son and then enter into possession of the vineyard. They must have thought that the owner was too far away to act, or that he was dead and out of the reckoning. Men still think they can act against God and get away with it. But God is very much alive. Men seek to trade on their own freedom and his patience, but the day of reckoning comes.<p/>(ii) If a man refuses his privileges and his responsibilities, they pass on to someone else. The parable has in it the whole germ of what was to come--the rejection of the Jews and the passing of their privileges and responsibilities to the Gentiles.<p/>The parable closes with an Old Testament quotation which became very dear to the Church. The quotation about the stone that was rejected is from <a href='B:230 118:22-23'>Psa 118:22-23</a>. The rejected stone had become the stone that bound the corners of the building together, the keystone of the arch, the most important stone of all. This passage fascinated the early Christian writers. It is quoted or referred to in <a href='B:510 4:11'>Act 4:11</a>; <a href='B:670 2:4'>1Pe 2:4</a>; <a href='B:670 2:7'>1Pe 2:7</a>; <a href='B:520 9:32-33'>Rom 9:32-33</a>; <a href='B:560 2:20'>Eph 2:20</a>. Originally, in the Psalm, the reference was to the people of Israel. The great nations which had thought of themselves as architects of the structure of the world had regarded the people of Israel as unimportant and unhonoured. But, as the Psalmist saw it, the nation which had been regarded as of no importance would, some day, in God's economy, become the greatest nation in the world. The Christian writers saw in the Psalmist's dream something which was perfectly fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus.<p/><b>CAESAR AND GOD</b> (<a href='B:480 12:13-17'>Mar 12:13-17</a>)


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 They sent to Jesus some of the Pharisees and Herodians to try to trap him in his speech. They came to him and said, "Teacher, we know that you are genuine, and that you do not allow yourself to be influenced by anyone, for you are no respecter of persons, and you teach the way of God in truth. Is it right to pay tax to Caesar? Or not? Are we to pay? Or, are we not to pay?" Jesus knew well that they were acting a part. "Why are you trying to test me?" he said, "Bring me a denarius and let me see it." So they brought him one. He said to them, "Whose portrait is this, and whose inscription is on it?" "Caesar's, they said to him. Jesus said to them, "Render to Caesar the things which belong to Caesar, and to God the things that belong to God." And they were completely astonished at him.<p/></i><p/>There is history behind this shrewd question, and bitter history too. Herod the Great had ruled all Palestine as a Roman tributary king. He had been loyal to the Romans and they had respected him and given him a great deal of freedom. When he died in 4 B.C. he divided his kingdom into three. To Herod Antipas he gave Galilee and Peraea. To Herod Philip he gave the wild district up in the north-east round Trachonitis and Ituraea and Abilene. To Archelaus he gave the south country including Judaea and Samaria.<p/>Antipas and Philip soon settled in and on the whole ruled wisely and well. But Archelaus was a complete failure. The result was that in A.D. 6 the Romans had to step in and introduce direct rule. Things were so unsatisfactory that southern Palestine could no longer be left as a semi-independent tributary kingdom. It had to become a province governed by a procurator.<p/>Roman provinces fell into two classes. Those which were peaceful and required no troops were governed by the senate and ruled by proconsuls. Those which were trouble-centres and required troops were the direct sphere of the Emperor and were governed by procurators. Southern Palestine fell naturally into the second category and tribute was in fact paid direct to the Emperor.<p/>The first act of the governor, Cyrenius, was to take a census of the country, in order that he might make proper provision for fair taxation and general administration. The calmer section of the people accepted this as an inevitable necessity. But one Judas the Gaulonite raised violent opposition. He thundered that "taxation was no better than an introduction to slavery." He called on the people to rise, and said that God would favour them only if they resorted to all the violence they could muster. He took the high ground that for the Jews God was the only ruler. The Romans dealt with Judas with their customary efficiency, but his battle-cry never died out. "No tribute to the Romans, became a rallying cry of the more fanatical Jewish patriots.<p/>The actual taxes imposed were three.<p/>(i) A ground tax, which consisted of one-tenth of all the grain and one-fifth of the wine and fruit produced. This was paid partly in kind and partly in money.<p/>(ii) An income tax which amounted to one per cent of a man's income.<p/>(iii) A poll tax, which was levied on all men from fourteen to sixty-five and on all women from twelve to sixty-five. This poll tax was one denarius, roughly 31 pence per head. It was the tax which everyone had to pay simply for the privilege of existing.<p/>The approach of the Pharisees and Herodians was very subtle. They began with flattery. That flattery was designed to do two things. It was designed to disarm the suspicions that Jesus might have had; and to make it impossible for him to avoid giving an answer without losing his reputation completely.<p/>In view of all the circumstances the question which the Pharisees and Herodians put to Jesus was a masterpiece of cunning. They must have thought that they had him impaled on the horns of a completely inescapable dilemma. If he said that it was lawful to pay tribute, his influence with the populace would be gone forever, and he would be regarded as a traitor and a coward. If he said that it was not lawful to pay tribute, they could report him to the Romans and have him arrested as a revolutionary. They must have been sure that they had Jesus in a trap from which there was no escape.<p/>Jesus said, "Show me a denarius." We may note in the passing that he himself did not possess even one coin of his own. He asked whose image was on it. The image would be that of Tiberius, the reigning emperor. All the emperors were. called Caesar. Round the coin there would be the title which declared that this was the coin "of Tiberius Caesar, the divine Augustus, son of Augustus, and on the reverse would be the title "pontifex maximus, "the high priest of the Roman nation."<p/>We must understand the ancient view of coinage if this incident is to be intelligible. In regard to coinage the ancient peoples held three consistent principles.<p/>(i) Coinage is the sign of power. When anyone conquered a nation or was a successful rebel, the first thing he did was to issue his own coinage. That and that alone was the final guarantee of kingship and power.<p/>(ii) Where the coin was valid the king's power held good. A king's sway was measurable by the area in which his coins were valid currency.<p/>(iii) Because a coin had the king's head and inscription on it, it was held, at least in some sense, to be his personal property. Jesus' answer therefore was, "By using the coinage of Tiberius you in any event recognize his political power in Palestine. Apart altogether from that, the coinage is his own because it has his name on it. By giving it to him you give him what is in any event his own. Give it to him but remember that there is a sphere in life which belongs to God and not to Caesar."<p/>Never did any man lay down a more influential principle. It conserved at one and the same time the civil and the religious power. Rawlinson reminds us that Lord Acton, the great historian, said of this, "Those words...gave to the civil power, under the protection of conscience, a sacredness it had never enjoyed and bounds it had never acknowledged, and they were the repudiation of absolutism and the inauguration of freedom." At one and the same time these words asserted the rights of the state and the liberty of conscience.<p/>On the whole the New Testament lays down three great principles with regard to the individual Christian and the state.<p/>(i) The state is ordained by God. Without the laws of the state life would be chaos. Men cannot live together unless they agree to obey the laws of living together. Without the state there is many a valuable service no man could enjoy. No individual man could have his own water supply, his own sewage system, his own transport system, his own social security organization. The state is the origin of many of the things which make life livable.<p/>(ii) No man can accept all the benefits which the state gives him and then opt out of all the responsibilities. It is beyond question that the Roman government brought to the ancient world a sense of security it never had before. For the most part, except in certain notorious areas, the seas were cleared of pirates and the roads of brigands, civil wars were changed for peace and capricious tyranny for Roman impartial justice. As E. J. Goodspeed wrote, "It was the glory of the Roman Empire that it brought peace to a troubled world. Under its sway the regions of Asia Minor and the East enjoyed tranquillity and security to an extent and for a length of time unknown before and probably since. This was the pax Romana. The provincial, under Roman sway, found himself in a position to conduct his business, provide for his family, send his letters, and make his journeys in security, thanks to the strong hand of Rome." It is still true that no man can honourably receive all the benefits which living in a state confers upon him and then opt out of all the responsibilities of citizenship.<p/>(iii) But there is a limit. E. A. Abbott has a suggestive thought. The coin had Caesar's image upon it, and therefore belonged to Caesar. Man has God's image upon him--God created man in his own image (<a href='B:10 1:26-27'>Gen 1:26-27</a>)--and therefore belongs to God. The inevitable conclusion is that, if the state remains within its proper boundaries and makes its proper demands, the individual must give it his loyalty and his service; but in the last analysis both state and man belong to God, and therefore, should their claims conflict, loyalty to God comes first. But it remains true, that, in all ordinary circumstances, a man's Christianity should make him a better citizen than any other man.<p/><b>THE WRONG IDEA OF THE LIFE TO COME</b> (<a href='B:480 12:18-27'>Mar 12:18-27</a>)


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 There came to Jesus Sadducees, who are a party who say that the resurrection of the dead does not exist. They put the following problem to him. "Teacher, they said, "Moses wrote the law for us, that, if a man's brother dies and leaves behind him a wife, and does not leave a family, the law is that the brother should take his wife, and should raise up a family to his brother. There were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died, and left no family. The second took her, and he died, and left behind no family. The third did the same. The seven left no family. Last of all, the woman died. At the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife." Jesus said to them, "Are you not in error and for this reason--because you do not know the scriptures, nor do you know the power of God? When people rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are they given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven. With regard to the dead, and the fact that they do rise, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, '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 the God of the living. You are far wrong."<p/></i><p/>This is the only time in Mark's gospel that the Sadducees appear, and their appearance is entirely characteristic of them. The Sadducees were not a large Jewish party. They were aristocratic and wealthy. They included most of the priests; the office of high priest was regularly held by a Sadducee. Being the wealthy and aristocratic party, they were not unnaturally collaborationist, for they wished to retain their comforts and their privileges. It was from them came those who were prepared to collaborate with the Romans in the government of the country.<p/>They differed very widely from the Pharisees in certain matters. First, they accepted only the written scriptures and attached more importance to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, than to all the rest. They did not accept the mass of oral law and tradition, the rules and regulations which were so dear to the Pharisees. It was on the written Mosaic Law that they took their stand. Second, they did not believe in immortality, nor in spirits and angels. They said that in the early books of the Bible there was no evidence for immortality, and they did not accept it.<p/>So the Sadducees came to Jesus with a test question designed to make the belief in individual resurrection look ridiculous. The Jewish Law had an institution called levirate marriage. Its regulations are laid down in <a href='B:50 25:5-10'>Deu 25:5-10</a>. If a group of brothers lived together--that is a point that is omitted in the Sadducees' quotation of the law--and if one of them died and left no issue, it was the duty of the next to take his brother's widow as wife and to raise up issue to his brother. Theoretically this would go on so long as there were brothers left and so long as no child was born. When a child was born, the child was held to be the offspring of the original husband.<p/>It is clear that the whole point of this law was to ensure two things--first, that the family name continued, and second, that the property remained within the family. As a matter of fact, strange as the matter seems to us, there were certain not dissimilar regulations in Greek law. If a Greek father had a considerable estate and had only a daughter, she, being a woman, could not inherit direct. Either her husband or her son would be the direct heir. But if the daughter was unmarried the father could leave his property and his daughter to anyone he chose. Such a person, in order to inherit the property, had to marry the heiress, even if he had to divorce an already existing wife to do so. And, if in such circumstances, a father died without making a will, the nearest relation could claim the heiress daughter as his wife. It is the same principle again. The whole thing is designed to maintain the family and to retain the property within the family.<p/>The question that the Sadducees asked, therefore, may have presented an exaggerated case, with the story of the seven brothers, but it was a question founded on a well-known Jewish law.<p/>The question of the Sadducees was simply this--if, in accordance with the regulations governing levirate marriage, one woman has been married in turn to seven brothers, if there is a resurrection of the dead, whose wife is she when that resurrection comes? They thought that by asking that question they rendered the idea of resurrection completely ridiculous.<p/>Jesus' answer really falls into two parts.<p/>First, he deals with what we might call the manner of the resurrection. He lays it down that when a person rises again, the old laws of physical life no longer obtain. The risen are like the angels and physical things like marrying and being married no longer enter into the case. Jesus was saying nothing new. In Enoch the promise is, "Ye shall have great joy as the angels of heaven." In the Apocalypse of Baruch it is said that the righteous shall be made "like unto the angels." And the rabbinic writings themselves said that in the life to come "there is no eating and drinking, no begetting of children, no bargaining, jealousy, hatred and strife, but that the righteous sit with crowns on their heads, and are satisfied with the glory of God." It is Jesus' point that the life to come cannot be thought of in terms of this life at all.<p/>Second, he deals with the fact of the resurrection. Here he meets the Sadducees on their own ground. They insisted that in the Pentateuch, by which they set so much store, there was no evidence for immortality. From the Pentateuch Jesus draws his proof. In <a href='B:20 3:6'>Exo 3:6</a>, God call himself the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. If God is the God of these patriarchs even yet, it means that they must still be alive, for the living God must be the God of living people, and not of of those who are dead. And if the patriarchs are alive then the resurrection is proved. On their own grounds, and with an argument to which they could find no answer, Jesus defeated the Sadducees.<p/>This passage may seem to deal with a matter which is recondite and remote. It is an argument on terms which are out of the orbit of our experience. In spite of that two eternally valid truths emerge.<p/>(i) The Sadducees made the mistake of creating heaven in the image of earth. Men have always done so. The Red Indians, who were by nature hunters, conceived of a heaven which was a happy hunting ground. The Vikings, who were by nature warriors, thought of a Valhalla where they would fight all day, where at night the dead would be raised and the wounded made whole again, and they would spend the evening in banquets, drinking wine from cups made from the skulls of their conquered foes. The Mohammedans were a desert people living in circumstances where luxury was unknown. They conceived of heaven as a place where men would live a life replete with every sensual and bodily pleasure. The Jews hated the sea and thought of heaven as a place where there would be no more sea. All men shrank from sorrow and from pain, and heaven would be a place where the tears were wiped from every eye and there would be no more pain.<p/>Always men have tended to create in thought a heaven to suit themselves. Sometimes that idea can be poignantly beautiful. During the 1914-18 war The Westminster Gazette printed a lovely little poem about those who had died for their country:<p/>"They left the fury of the fight,<p/>And they were tired.<p/>The gates of heaven were open quite,<p/>Unguarded and unwired.<p/>There was no sound of any gun,<p/>The land was still and green,<p/>Wide hills lay silent in the sun,<p/>Blue valleys slept between.<p/>They saw far off a little wood<p/>Stand up against the sky.<p/>Knee deep in grass a great tree stood,<p/>Some lazy cows went by.<p/>There were some rooks sailed overhead,<p/>And once a church ben pealed.<p/>'God, but it's England!' someone said,<p/>'And there's a cricket field'."<p/>There is wistful beauty there and real truth. But we do well to remember that Paul was right (<a href='B:530 2:9'>1Co 2:9</a>) when he took the words of the prophet (<a href='B:290 64:4'>Isa 64:4</a>) and made them his own, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him." The life of the heavenly places will be greater than any conception this life can supply.<p/>(ii) In the end Jesus based his conviction of the resurrection on the fact that the relationship between God and a good man is one that nothing can break. God was the friend of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when they lived. That friendship could not cease with death. "God, as Loisy said, "cannot cease to be the God of those who served him and loved him." As the Psalmist said, "I am continually with thee. Thou dost hold my right hand. Thou dost guide me with thy counsel and afterward thou wilt receive me to glory." (<a href='B:230 73:23-24'>Psa 73:23-24</a>.) He cannot conceive of his relationship with God ever being broken.<p/>In a word, there is only one immortal thing--and that is love.<p/><b>LOVE FOR GOD AND LOVE FOR MEN</b> (<a href='B:480 12:28-34'>Mar 12:28-34</a>)


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 One of the experts in the law, who had listened to the discussion, and who realized that Jesus had answered them well, approached him and asked him, "What is the first commandment of all?" Jesus answered, "'The Lord thy God is one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and your whole soul, and your whole mind, and your whole strength.' This is the second, 'You must love your neighbour as yourself.' There is no other commandment which is greater than these." The expert in the law said to him, "Teacher, you have in truth spoken well, because God is one, and there is no other except him, and to love him with your whole heart, and your whole understanding, and your whole strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself is better than all burnt-offerings of whole victims and sacrifices." When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God." And no one any longer dared to ask him any questions.<p/></i><p/>No love was lost between the expert in the law and the Sadducees. The profession of the scribes was to interpret the law in all its many rules and regulations. Their trade was to know and to apply the oral law, while, as we have seen, the Sadducee did not accept the oral law at all. The expert in the law would no doubt be well satisfied with the discomfiture of the Sadducees.<p/>This scribe came to Jesus with a question which was often a matter of debate in the rabbinic schools. In Judaism there was a kind of double tendency. There was the tendency to expand the law limitlessly into hundreds and thousands of rules and regulations. But there was also the tendency to try to gather up the law into one sentence, one general statement which would be a compendium of its whole message. Hillel was once asked by a proselyte to instruct him in the whole law while he stood on one leg. Hillel's answer was, "What thou hatest for thyself, do not to thy neighbour. This is the whole law, the rest is commentary. Go and learn." Akiba had already said, "'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself'--this is the greatest, general principle in the law." Simon the Righteous had said, "On three things stands the world--on the law, on the worship, and on works of love."<p/>Sammlai had taught that Moses received 613 precepts on Mount Sinai, 365 according to the days of the sun year, and 248 according to the generations of men. David reduced the 613 to 11 in <a href='B:230 15:1-5'>Psa 15:1-5</a>.<p/>Lord, who shall sojourn in thy tent? who shall dwell on thy holy<p/>hill?<p/>1: He who walks blamelessly.<p/>2: And does what is right.<p/>3: And speaks truth from his heart.<p/>4: Who does not slander with his tongue.<p/>5: And does no evil to his friend.<p/>6: Nor takes up a reproach against his neighbour.<p/>7: In whose eyes a reprobate is despised.<p/>8: But who honours those who fear the Lord.<p/>9: Who swears to his own heart and does not change.<p/>10: Who does not put out his money at interest.<p/>11: And does not take a bribe against the innocent.<p/>Isaiah reduced them to 6: (<a href='B:290 33:15'>Isa 33:15</a>.)<p/>1: He who walks righteously.<p/>2: And speaks uprightly.<p/>3: Who despises the gain of oppressions.<p/>4: Who shakes his hands, lest they hold a bribe.<p/>5: Who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed.<p/>6: And shuts his eyes from looking upon evil.<p/>He shall dwell on high.<p/>Micah reduced the 6 to 3: (<a href='B:400 6:8'>Mic 6:8</a>.)<p/>He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the<p/>Lord require of thee?<p/>1: To do justice.<p/>2: To love kindness.<p/>3: To walk humbly with your God.<p/>Once again Isaiah brought the 3 down to 2: (<a href='B:290 56:1'>Isa 56:1</a>.)<p/>1: Keep justice.<p/>2: Do righteousness.<p/>Finally Habakkuk reduced them all to one. (<a href='B:420 2:4'>Hab 2:4</a>.)<p/>The righteous shall live by his faith.<p/>It can be seen that rabbinic ingenuity did try to contract as well as to expand the law. There were really two schools of thought. There were those who believed that there were lighter and weightier matters of the law, that there were great principles which were all-important to grasp. As Augustine later said, "Love God--and do what you like." But there were others who were much against this, who held that every smallest principle was equally binding and that to try to distinguish between their relative importance was highly dangerous. The expert who asked Jesus this question was asking about something which was a living issue in Jewish thought and discussion.<p/>For answer Jesus took two great commandments and put them together.<p/>(i) "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." That single sentence is the real creed of Judaism (<a href='B:50 6:4'>Deu 6:4</a>). It had three uses. It is called the Shema. Shema is the imperative of the Hebrew verb to hear (compare <a href='S:H8085'>H8085</a>), and it is so called from the first word in the sentence.<p/>(a) It was the sentence with which the service of the synagogue always began and still begins. The full Shema is <a href='B:50 6:4-9'>Deu 6:4-9</a>; <a href='B:50 11:13-21'>Deu 11:13-21</a>; <a href='B:40 15:37-41'>Num 15:37-41</a>. It is the declaration that God is the only God, the foundation of Jewish monotheism.<p/>(b) The three passages of the Shema were contained in the phylacteries (<a href='B:470 23:5'>Mat 23:5</a>), little leather boxes which the devout Jew wore on his forehead and on his wrist when he was at prayer. As he prayed he reminded himself of his creed. His warrant for wearing phylacteries he found in <a href='B:50 6:8'>Deu 6:8</a>.<p/>(c) The Shema was contained in a little cylindrical box called the Mezuzah (compare <a href='S:H4201'>H4201</a>) which was and still is affixed to the door of every Jewish house and the door of every room within it, to remind the Jew of God in his going out and his coming in.<p/>When Jesus quoted this sentence as the first commandment, every devout Jew would agree with him.<p/>(ii) "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." That is a quotation from <a href='B:30 19:18'>Lev 19:18</a>. Jesus did one thing with it. In its original context it has to do with a man's fellow Jew. It would not have included the Gentile, whom it was quite permissible to hate. But Jesus quoted it without qualification and without limiting boundaries. He took an old law and fined it with a new meaning.<p/>The new thing that Jesus did was to put these two commandments together. No rabbi had ever done that before. There is only one suggestion of connection previously. Round about 100 B.C. there was composed a series of tractates called The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, in which an unknown writer put into the mouths of the patriarchs some very fine teaching. In The Testament of Issachar (5:2) we read:<p/>"Love the Lord and love your neighbour,<p/>Have compassion on the poor and weak."<p/>In the same testament (7:6) we read:<p/>"I loved the Lord,<p/>Likewise also every man with my whole heart."<p/>In The Testament of Dan (<a href='B:340 5:3'>Dan 5:3</a>) we read:<p/>"Love the Lord through all your life,<p/>And one another with a true heart"<p/>But no one until Jesus put the two commandments together and made them one. Religion to him was loving God and loving men. He would have said that the only way in which a man can prove that he loves God is by showing that he loves men.<p/>The scribe willingly accepted this, and went on to say that such a love was better than all sacrifices. In that he was in line with the highest thought of his people. Long, long ago Samuel had said, "Has the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." (<a href='B:90 15:22'>1Sa 15:22</a>.) Hosea had heard God say, "I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice." (<a href='B:350 6:6'>Hos 6:6</a>.)<p/>But it is always easy to let ritual take the place of love. It is always easy to let worship become a matter of the Church building instead of a matter of the whole life. The priest and the levite could pass by the wounded traveller because they were eager to get on with the ritual of the temple. This scribe had risen beyond his contemporaries and that is why he found himself in sympathy with Jesus.<p/>There must have been a look of love in Jesus' eyes, and a look of appeal as he said to him, "You have gone so far. Will you not come further and accept my way of things? Then you will be a true citizen of the Kingdom."<p/><b>THE SON OF DAVID</b> (<a href='B:480 12:35-37'>Mar 12:35-37</a> <b>a)</b>


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a While Jesus was teaching in the sacred precincts, he said, "How can the experts in the law say that God's Anointed One is the Son of David? David himself, moved by the Holy Spirit, said, 'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.' David himself calls him Lord. And how then can he be his son?"<p/></i><p/>For us this is a difficult passage to understand, because it uses thoughts and methods of argument which are strange to us. But it would not be at all difficult for the crowd who heard it in the Temple precincts in Jerusalem, for they were well accustomed to just such ways of arguing and of using scripture.<p/>We may begin by noting one thing which helps to make the passage clearer. The Revised Standard Version translates <a href='B:480 12:35'>Mar 12:35</a>, "How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David." In the early parts of the New Testament Christ is never a proper name, as nowadays it has come to be. It has in fact in this passage the definite article before it and so is translated the Christ. Christos (<a href='S:G5547'>G5547</a>) and Messiah (<a href='S:H4899'>H4899</a>, compare <a href='S:G3323'>G3323</a>) are the Greek and the Hebrew for the same word, and both mean the Anointed One. The reason for the use of the title is that in ancient times a man was made king by being anointed with oil--still a part of our own coronation ceremony. Christos (<a href='S:G5547'>G5547</a>) and Messiah (<a href='S:H4899'>H4899</a>) then both mean God's Anointed King, the great one who is to come from God to save his people. So when Jesus asks, "How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?" he is not directly referring to himself. He is really saying, "How can the scribes say that God's Anointed King who is to come is the Son of David?"<p/>The argument which Jesus puts forward in support is this. He quotes <a href='B:230 110:1'>Psa 110:1</a> --"The Lord says to my Lord sit at my right hand." The Jews at this time assumed that all the Psalms came from the hand of David. They also held that this Psalm referred to the coming Messiah. In this verse David refers to this coming one as his Lord. How, asks Jesus, if he be his son can David address him by the title of Lord?<p/>What is Jesus seeking to teach here? Of all titles for the Messiah the commonest was Son of David. At all times the Jews looked forward to a God-sent deliverer who would be of David's line. (<a href='B:290 9:2-7'>Isa 9:2-7</a>; <a href='B:290 11:1-9'>Isa 11:1-9</a>; <a href='B:300 23:5'>Jer 23:5</a> ff, <a href='B:300 33:14-18'>Jer 33:14-18</a>; <a href='B:330 34:23'>Eze 34:23</a> ff, <a href='B:330 37:24'>Eze 37:24</a>; <a href='B:230 89:20'>Psa 89:20</a> ff.) It was by that title that Jesus himself was often addressed, especially by the crowds (<a href='B:480 10:47'>Mar 10:47</a> ff, <a href='B:470 9:27'>Mat 9:27</a>; <a href='B:470 12:23'>Mat 12:23</a>; <a href='B:470 15:22'>Mat 15:22</a>; <a href='B:470 21:9'>Mat 21:9</a>; <a href='B:470 21:15'>Mat 21:15</a>). All through the New Testament the conviction that Jesus was in fact the son of David in his physical descent occurs (<a href='B:520 1:3'>Rom 1:3</a>; <a href='B:620 2:8'>2Ti 2:8</a>; <a href='B:470 1:1-17'>Mat 1:1-17</a>; <a href='B:490 3:23-38'>Luk 3:23-38</a>). The genealogies of Jesus given in the passages from Matthew and Luke which we have cited are to show that Jesus was in fact of the lineage of David. What Jesus is doing is this--he is not denying that the Messiah is the Son of David, nor is he saying that he himself is not the Son of David. What he is saying is that he is the Son of David--and far more, not only David's son but David's Lord.<p/>The trouble was that the title Son of David had got itself inextricably entangled with the idea of a conquering Messiah. It had got involved in political and nationalistic hopes and dreams, aims and ambitions. Jesus was saying that the title Son of David, as it was popularly used, is a quite inadequate description of himself. He was Lord. This word Lord (the Greek kurios, <a href='S:G2962'>G2962</a>) is the regular translation of Yahweh (<a href='S:H3068'>H3068</a>; <a href='S:H3069'>H3069</a>) (Jehovah) in the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures. Always its use would turn men's thoughts to God. What Jesus was saying was that he came not to found any earthly kingdom but to bring men God.<p/>Jesus is doing here what he so constantly tried to do. He is trying to take from men's minds their idea of a conquering warrior Messiah who would found an earthly empire, and seeking to put into them the idea of a Messiah who would be the servant of God and bring to men the love of God.<p/><b>THE WRONG KIND OF RELIGION</b> (<a href='B:480 12:37'>Mar 12:37</a> <b>b-40)</b><p/><i> 12:37b-40 The mass of the people listened to him with pleasure. And in his teaching he said, "Beware of the experts in the law, who like to walk about in flowing robes, and who like greetings in the market-places, and the front seats in the synagogue, and the places of highest honour at meals, men who devour widows' houses, and who, in pretence, pray at great length. These will receive a more abundant condemnation."<p/></i><p/>The first sentence of this passage most probably goes with this section and not, as in the Revised Standard Version, with the passage which goes before. The verse divisions of the New Testament were first inserted by Stephanus in the sixteenth century. It was said that he put them in while riding from his house to his printing factory. They are by no means always the most suitable divisions, and this seems to be one requiring change. It is far more likely that the mass of the people listened with pleasure to a denunciation of the scribes than they did to a theological argument. There are certain minds to which invective is always attractive.<p/>In this passage Jesus makes a series of charges against the scribes. They liked to walk about in flowing robes. A long robe which swept the ground was the sign of a notable. It was the kind of robe in which no one could either hurry or work, and was the sign of the leisured man of honour. It may be that the phrase has another meaning. In obedience to <a href='B:40 15:38'>Num 15:38</a> the Jews wore tassels at the edge of their outer robe. These tassels were to remind them that they were the people of God. Quite possibly these legal experts wore outsize tassels for special prominence (compare <a href='B:470 23:5'>Mat 23:5</a>). At all events they liked to dress in such a way that it drew attention to themselves and to the honour they enjoyed.<p/>They liked greetings in the market-place. The scribes loved to be greeted with honour and with respect. The very title Rabbi means "My great one." To be so addressed was agreeable to their vanity.<p/>They liked the front seats in the synagogue. In the synagogue, in front of the ark where the sacred volumes were kept and facing the congregation, there was a bench where the specially distinguished sat. It had the advantage that no one who sat there could possibly be missed, being in full view of the admiring congregation.<p/>They liked the highest places at feasts. At feasts precedence was strictly fixed. The first place was that on the right of the host, the second that on the left of the host, and so on, alternating right and left, round the table. It was easy to tell the honour in which a man was held by the place at which he sat.<p/>They devoured widows' houses. This is a savage charge. Josephus, who was himself a Pharisee, says of certain times of intrigue in Jewish history, that "the Pharisees valued themselves highly upon their exact skill in the law of their fathers, and made men believe that they (the Pharisees) were highly favoured by God, and that "they inveigled" certain women into their schemes and plottings. The idea behind this seems to be this. An expert in the law could take no pay for his teaching. He was supposed to have a trade by which he earned his daily bread. But these legal experts had managed to convey to people that there was no higher duty and privilege than to support a rabbi in comfort, that, in fact such support would undoubtedly entitle him or her who gave it to a high place in the heavenly academy. It is a sad fact that women have always been imposed upon by religious charlatans, and it would seem that these scribes and Pharisees imposed on simple people who could ill afford to support them.<p/>The long prayers of the scribes and Pharisees were notorious. It has been said that the prayers were not so much offered to God as offered to men. They were offered in such a place and in such a way that no one could fail to see how pious they were who offered them.<p/>This passage, as stern as Jesus ever spoke, warns against three things.<p/>(i) It warns against the desire for prominence. It is still true that many a man accepts office in the church because he thinks he has earned it, rather than because he desires to render selfless service to the house and the people of God. Men may still regard office in the church as a privilege rather than a responsibility.<p/>(ii) It warns against the desire for deference. Almost everyone likes to be treated with respect. And yet a basic fact of Christianity is that it ought to make a man wish to obliterate self rather than to exalt it. There is a story of a monk in the old days, a very holy man, who was sent to take up office as abbot in a monastery. He looked so humble a person that, when he arrived, he was sent to work in the kitchen as a scullion, because no one recognized him. Without a word of protest and with no attempt to take his position, he went and washed the dishes and did the most menial tasks. It was only when the bishop arrived a considerable time later that the mistake was discovered and the humble monk took up his true position. The man who enters upon office for the respect which will be given to him has begun in the wrong way, and cannot, unless he changes, ever be in any sense the servant of Christ and of his fellow-men.<p/>(iii) It warns against the attempt to make a traffic of religion. It is still possible to use religious connections for self-gain and self-advancement. But this is a warning to all who are in the church for what they can get out of it and not for what they can put into it.<p/><b>THE GREATEST GIFT</b> (<a href='B:480 12:41-44'>Mar 12:41-44</a>)


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 When Jesus had sat down opposite the treasury, he was watching how the crowd threw their money into the treasury, and many rich people threw in large sums. A poor widow woman came and threw in two mites which make up half a farthing. He called his disciples and said to them, "This is the truth I tell you--this poor widow woman has thrown in more than an the people who threw money into the treasury, for all of them threw their contributions in out of their abundance, but she out of her lack has thrown in everything that she had, all she had to live on."<p/></i><p/>Between the Court of the Gentiles and the Court of the Women there was the Gate Beautiful. It may well be that Jesus had gone to sit quietly there after the argument and the tension of the Court of the Gentiles and the discussions in the cloisters. In the Court of the Women there were thirteen collecting boxes called "The Trumpets, because they were so shaped. Each of them was for a special purpose, for instance to buy corn or wine or off for the sacrifices. They were for contributions for the daily sacrifices and expenses of the Temple. Many people threw in quite considerable contributions. Then came a widow. She flung in two mites. The coin so called was a lepton (<a href='S:G3016'>G3016</a>), which literally means a thin one. It was the smallest of all coins and was worth one fortieth of one pence. And yet Jesus said that her tiny contribution was greater than all the others, for the others had thrown in what they could spare easily enough and still have plenty left, while the widow had flung in everything she had.<p/>Here is a lesson in giving:<p/>(i) Real giving must be sacrificial. The amount of the gift never matters so much as its cost to the giver, not the size of the gift, but the sacrifice. Real generosity gives until it hurts. For many of us it is a real question if ever our giving to God's work is any sacrifice at all. Few people will do without their pleasures to give a little more to the work of God. It may well be a sign of the decadence of the church and the failure of our Christianity that gifts have to be coaxed out of church people, and that often they will not give at all unless they get something back in the way of entertainment or of goods. There can, be few of us who read this story without shame.<p/>(ii) Real giving has a certain recklessness in it. The woman might have kept one coin. It would not have been much but it would have been something, yet she gave everything she had. There is a great symbolic truth here. It is our tragedy that there is so often some part of our lives, some part of our activities, some part of ourselves which we do not give to Christ. Somehow there is nearly always something we hold back. We rarely make the final sacrifice and the final surrender.<p/>(iii) It is a strange and lovely thing that the person whom the New Testament and Jesus hand down to history as a pattern of generosity was a person who gave a gift of half a farthing. We may feel that we have not much in the way of material gifts or personal gifts to give to Christ, but, if we put all that we have and are at his disposal, he can do things with it and with us that are beyond our imaginings. 


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<b>THE THINGS TO COME</b> (<a href='B:480 13:1-37'>Mar 13:1-37</a>)<p/> <a href='B:480 13:1-37'>Mar 13:1-37</a> is one of the most difficult chapters in the New Testament for a modern reader to understand. That is because it is one of the most Jewish chapters in the Bible. From beginning to end it is thinking in terms of Jewish history and Jewish ideas. All through it Jesus is using categories and pictures which were very familiar to the Jews of his day, but which are very strange, and indeed, unknown, to many modern readers. Even so, it is not possible to disregard this chapter because it is the source of many ideas about the second coming of Jesus. The difficulty about the doctrine of the second coming is that nowadays people are apt either completely to disregard it or to be so completely unbalanced about it that it becomes for them practically the only doctrine of the Christian faith. It may be that if we study this chapter with some care we shall come to a sane and correct view about this doctrine.<p/>We will first of all glance at the Jewish background against which this chapter must be read. We will then try to make an analysis of the various elements which go to make it up. We will then study it section by section in the usual way. Finally, we will try to extract from it the great truths which are permanently valid.<p/>The Day Of The Lord (<a href='B:480 13:1-37'>Mar 13:1-37</a>)<p/>This whole chapter must read with one thing in mind. Again and again we have to return to this matter because there is so much of the New Testament which is not intelligible without it. The Jews never doubted that they were the chosen people, and they never doubted that one day they would occupy the place in the world which the chosen people, as they saw it, deserved and were bound to have in the end. They had long since abandoned the idea that they could ever win that place by human means and they were confident that in the end God would directly intervene in history and win it for them. The day of God's intervention was the day of the Lord. Before that day of the Lord there would be a time of terror and trouble when the world would be shaken to its foundations and judgment would come. But it would be followed by the new world and the new age and the new glory.<p/>In one sense this idea is the product of unconquerable optimism. The Jew was quite certain that God would break in. In another sense it was the product of bleak pessimism, because it was based on the idea that this world was so utterly bad that only its complete destruction and the emergence of a new world would suffice. They did not look for reformation. They looked for a re-creating of the entire scheme of things.<p/>Let us look at some of the Old Testament passages about the day of the Lord. Amos writes (<a href='B:370 5:16-20'>Amo 5:16-20</a>):<p/>"In all the squares there shall be wailing; and in all the streets<p/>they shall say, 'Alas! Alas!'. They shall call the farmers to<p/>mourning and to wailing those who are skilled in lamentations, and<p/>in all vineyards there shall be wailing, for I will pass through<p/>the midst of you, says the Lord. Woe to you who desire the day of<p/>the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness,<p/>and not light... gloom with no brightness in it."<p/>Isaiah (<a href='B:290 13:6-16'>Isa 13:6-16</a>) has a terrible passage about the day of the Lord:<p/>"Wail! for the day of the Lord is near. As destruction from the<p/>Almighty it will come.... Behold the day of the Lord comes, cruel<p/>with wrath and fierce anger, to make the earth a desolation, and<p/>to destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of the heavens and<p/>their constellations will not give their light. The sun will be<p/>dark at its rising and the moon will not shed its light....<p/>Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be<p/>shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the Lord of Hosts, in the<p/>day of his fierce anger...."<p/>The second and third chapters of Joel (<a href='B:360 2:1-32'>Joe 2:1-32</a>; <a href='B:360 3:1-21'>Joe 3:1-21</a>) are full of terrible<p/>descriptions of the day of the Lord:<p/>"The day of the Lord is coming... a day of darkness and gloom, a<p/>day of clouds and thick darkness.... I will give portents in the<p/>heavens and on the earth, blood and fire, and columns of smoke.<p/>The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before<p/>the great and terrible day of the Lord comes."<p/>Again and again such passages of terror meet us in the Old Testament. The day of the Lord will be sudden, shattering, terrifying. The world will reel with destruction. The very course of nature will be uprooted, and God, the judge, will come.<p/>Between the Old and the New Testaments there was a time when the Jews knew no freedom. It was therefore only natural that their hopes and dreams of the day of the Lord would become even more vivid. In that time a kind of popular religious literature grew up. Jesus would know it. AH the Jews would be familiar with its picture. The writings of which this literature consisted were called Apocalypses. Apokalupsis (<a href='S:G602'>G602</a>) means an unveiling. These books were dreams and visions of what would happen when the day of the Lord came and in the terrible time immediately before it. They continued to use the Old Testament imagery, and to supplement it with new details. But, it must be noted, all these books were dreams and visions. They were attempts to paint the unpaintable and to speak the unspeakable. They were poetry, not prose. They were visions, not science. They were dreams, not history. They were never meant to be taken prosaically as maps of the future and timetables of events to come.<p/>We will see that every single detail in this chapter can be parallelled in the visions of the Old Testament and of the literature between the Testaments. Jesus was taking the language, the imagery, the apparatus of apocalyptic literature, and using it to try to make people understand. He was working with the only ideas that people knew. But he knew, as they knew, that these things were only pictures, for no man could really tell what would happen when God broke in.<p/>The Different Strands (<a href='B:480 13:1-37'>Mar 13:1-37</a>)<p/>Further, in this chapter there are various strands of thought. The gospel writers had a way of collecting Jesus' sayings on any subject. It was a wise way to write and excellent for teaching purposes. Here Mark, as it were, collects Jesus' sayings about the future. Now even a cursory reading, with no special knowledge, shows that, though all these sayings were about the future, they were not all about the same things. There are in fact in this chapter five different strands.<p/>(i) There are prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem. We get them in <a href='B:480 13:1-2'>Mar 13:1-2</a>; <a href='B:480 13:14-20'>Mar 13:14-20</a>. Jesus foresaw the end of the holy city. As we shall see, Jesus was right. Jerusalem fell in A.D. 70: The Temple was destroyed and the most terrible things happened.<p/>(ii) There is warning of persecution to come. We get that in <a href='B:480 13:9-13'>Mar 13:9-13</a>. Jesus foresaw that his followers would have to go through the most heart-breaking and soul-searing experiences, and he warned them in advance.<p/>(iii) There are warnings of the dangers of the last days. We get them in <a href='B:480 13:3-6'>Mar 13:3-6</a> and <a href='B:480 13:21-22'>Mar 13:21-22</a>. Jesus saw quite clearly that men would come who would twist and adulterate the Christian faith. It was bound to be so, for men are always inclined to listen to their own proud minds rather than to the voice of God. He wished to defend his people in advance from the heresies and lies which would invade the Church.<p/>(iv) There are warnings of the Second Coming. Now, these warnings of the Second Coming are dressed in the language which has to do with the day of the Lord. We get them in <a href='B:480 13:7-8'>Mar 13:7-8</a> and <a href='B:480 13:24-27'>Mar 13:24-27</a>. The imagery of the day of the Lord and of the Second Coming are inextricably mixed up. It had to be so, because no man could possibly know what would happen in either case. It is with visions and dreams that we have to deal. The only pictures Jesus could use about his Second Coming were those which prophets and apocalyptists had already used about the day of the Lord. They are not meant to be taken literally. They are meant as impressionistic pictures, as seer's visions, designed to impress upon men the greatness of that event when it should come.<p/>(v) There are warnings of the necessity to be on the watch. We get them in <a href='B:480 13:28-37'>Mar 13:28-37</a>. If men live in the shadow of eternity, if they live with the constant possibility of the intervention of God, if they live with the prospect of the consummation of the coming of Christ ever before them, if the times and the seasons are known only to God, there is the necessity ever to be ready.<p/>This chapter will make far more sense if we remember these various strands in it and remember that every strand is unfolded in language and imagery which go back to the Old Testament and apocalyptic pictures of the day of the Lord.<p/>Because that is so, we will study the chapter not in consecutive verses, but in the various passages of which the various strands consist.<p/>A City's Doom (<a href='B:480 13:1-2'>Mar 13:1-2</a>)


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 As they were going out of the sacred precincts, one of his disciples said to Jesus, "Teacher, see! What stones and what buildings!" Jesus said to him, "You see this great budding? Not one stone will be left on another which will not be thrown down!"<p/></i><p/>We begin with the prophecies of Jesus which foretold the doom of Jerusalem. The Temple which Herod butt was one of the wonders of the world. It was begun in 20-19 B.C. and in the time of Jesus was not yet completely finished. It was built on the top of Mount Moriah. instead of levelling off the summit of the mountain a kind of vast platform was formed by raising up walls of massive masonry and enclosing the whole area. On these walls a platform was laid, strengthened by piers which distributed the weight of the superstructure. Josephus tells us that some of these stones were forty feet long by twelve feet high by eighteen feet wide. It would be some of these vast stones that moved the Galilaean disciples to such wondering amazement.<p/>The most magnificent entrance to the Temple was at the south-west angle. Here between the city and the Temple hill there stretched the Tyropoeon Valley. A marvellous bridge spanned the valley. Each arch was forty-one and a half feet and there were stones used in the building of it which measured twenty-four feet long. The Tyropoeon valley was no less than two hundred and twenty-five feet below. The breadth of the cleft that the bridge spanned was three hundred and fifty-four feet, and the bridge itself was fifty feet in breadth. The bridge led straight into the Royal Porch. The porch consisted of a double row of Corinthian pillars all thirty-seven and a half feet high and each one cut out of one solid block of marble.<p/>Of the actual Temple building itself, the holy place, Josephus writes, "Now the outward face of the Temple in its front wanted nothing that was likely to surprise men's minds or their eyes, for it was covered all over with plates of gold of great weight, and, at the first rising of the sun, reflected back a very fiery splendour, and made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away, just as they would have done at the sun's own rays. But this Temple appeared to strangers, when they were at a distance, like a mountain covered with snow, for, as to those parts of it which were not gilt, they were exceeding white.... Of its stones, some of them were forty-five cubits in length, five in height and six in breadth." (A cubit was eighteen inches.)<p/>It was all this splendour that so impressed the disciples. The Temple seemed the summit of human art and achievement, and seemed so vast and solid that it would stand for ever. But Jesus made the astonishing statement that the day was coming when not one of these stones would stand upon another. In less then fifty years his prophecy came tragically true.<p/>"Pride of man and earthly glory,<p/>Sword and crown betray his trust;<p/>What with care and toil he buildeth,<p/>Tower and temple, fall to dust.<p/>But God's power,<p/>Hour by hour,<p/>Is my temple and my tower."<p/>A City's Agony (<a href='B:480 13:14-20'>Mar 13:14-20</a>)


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 When you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not (let him who reads understand), then let those who are in Judaea flee to the mountains. Let him who is on the house-top not come down, nor let him go in to take anything out of his house. And let him who is working in the field not turn back to pick up his cloak. Woe to women who are with child and to those whose babes are at their breasts in these days! Pray that it may not happen in the stormy weather. These days will be a tribulation such as has never happened from the beginning of the creation which God has created until now, and such as will never happen again. Unless the Lord had shortened the days no living creature could have survived. But, for the sake of the chosen ones whom he chose, he shortened the days.<p/></i><p/>Jesus forecasts some of the awful terror of the siege and the final fall of Jerusalem. It is his warning that when the first signs of it came people ought to flee, not even waiting to pick up their clothes or to try to save their goods. In fact the people did precisely the opposite. They crowded into Jerusalem, and death came in ways that are almost too terrible to think about.<p/>The phrase the abomination of desolation has its origin in the book of Daniel (<a href='B:340 9:27'>Dan 9:27</a>; <a href='B:340 11:31'>Dan 11:31</a>; <a href='B:340 12:11'>Dan 12:11</a>). The Hebrew expression literally means the profanation that appals. The origin of the phrase was in connection with Antiocheius. We have already seen that he tried to stamp out the Jewish religion and introduce Greek thought and Greek ways. He desecrated the Temple by offering swine's flesh on the great altar and by setting up public brothels in the sacred courts. Before the very Holy Place itself he set up a great statue of Olympian Zeus and ordered the Jews to worship it. In connection with that the writer of First Maccabees says (1Ma_1:54) "Now the fifteenth day of the month Casleu, in the hundred and forty-fifth year, they set up the abomination of desolation upon the altar and builded idol altars throughout the cities of Juda on every side." The phrase the abomination of desolation, the profanation that appals, originally described the heathen image and all that accompanied it with which Antiocheius desecrated the Temple. Jesus prophesies that the same kind of thing is going to happen again. It very nearly happened in the year A.D. 40: Caligula was then Roman Emperor. He was an epileptic and mad. But he insisted that he was a god. He heard of the imageless worship of the Temple of Jerusalem and planned to set up his own statue in the Holy Place. His advisers besought him not to do so, for they knew that, if he did, a bloody civil war would result. He was obstinate, but fortunately he died in A.D. 41 before he could carry out his plan of desecration.<p/>What does Jesus mean when he speaks about the abomination of desolation? Men expected not only a Messiah, but also the emergence of a power who would be the vary incarnation of evil and who would gather up into himself everything that was against God. Paul called that power the Man of Lawlessness (<a href='B:600 2:3'>2Th 2:3</a>). John of the Revelation identified that power with Rome (<a href='B:730 17:1-18'>Rev 17:1-18</a>). Jesus is saying "Some day, quite soon, you will see the very incarnate power of evil rise up in a deliberate attempt to destroy the people and the Holy Place of God." He takes the old phrase and uses it to describe the terrible things that are about to happen.<p/>It was in A.D. 70 that Jerusalem finally fell to the besieging army of Titus, who was to be Emperor of Rome. The horrors of that siege form one of the grimmest pages in history. The people crowded into Jerusalem from the countryside. Titus had no alternative but to starve the city into subjection. The matter was complicated by the fact that even at that terrible time there were sects and factions inside the city itself. Jerusalem was torn without and within.<p/>Josephus tells the story of that terrible siege in the fifth book of The Wars of the Jews. He tells us that 97,000 were taken captive and 1,100,000 perished by slow starvation and the sword. He tells us, "Then did the famine widen its progress and devoured the people by whole houses and families. The upper rooms were full of women and children dying of starvation. The lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged. The children and the young men wandered about the market places like shadows, all swelled with famine, and fell down dead wheresoever their misery seized them. As for burying them, those that were sick themselves were not able to do it. And those that were hearty and well were deterred by the great multitude of the dead, and the uncertainty when they would die themselves, for many died as they were burying others, and many went to their own coffins before the fatal hour. There was no lamentation made under these calamities...the famine confounded all natural passions.... A deep silence and a kind of deadly night had seized upon the city."<p/>To make it still grimmer there were the inevitable ghouls who plundered the dead bodies. Josephus tells grimly how when not even any herbs were available "some persons were driven to such terrible distress as to search the common sewers and old dung-hills of cattle, and to eat the dung which they got there, and what they could not endure so much as to see, they now used for food." He paints a grim picture of men gnawing the leather of straps and shoes, and tells a terrible story of a woman who killed and roasted her child, and offered a share of that terrible meal to those who came seeking food.<p/>The prophecy that Jesus made of terrible days ahead for Jerusalem came most abundantly true. Those who crowded into the city for safety died by the hundred thousand, and only those who took his advice and fled to the hills were saved.<p/>The Hard Way (<a href='B:480 13:9-13'>Mar 13:9-13</a>)


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 Take heed to yourselves, for they will hand you over to councils, and they will scourge you in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, and it will be your opportunity to bear your witness to them. The gospel must first be preached to all nations. And when they hand you over and bring you before authorities, do not worry beforehand about what you will say, but speak whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak but the Holy Spirit. Brother shall hand over brother to death, and father child. All children will rise up against parents, and will kill them. And you will be hated of all for the sake of my name. But the man who has endured to the end, he will be saved;<p/></i><p/>Now we come to the warnings of persecution to come. Jesus never left his followers in any doubt that they had chosen a hard way. No man could say that he had not known the conditions of Christ's service in advance.<p/>The handing over to councils and the scourging in synagogues refer to Jewish persecution. In Jerusalem there was the great Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the Jews, but every town and village had its local Sanhedrin. Before such local Sanhedrins the self-confessed heretics would be tried, and in the synagogues they would be publicly scourged. The governors and kings refer to trials before the Roman courts, such as Paul faced before Felix and Festus and Agrippa.<p/>It was a fact that the Christians were wonderfully strengthened in their trials. When we read of the trials of the martyrs, even though they were often ignorant and unlettered men, the impression often is that it was the judges and not the Christians who were on trial. Their Christian faith enabled the simplest folk to fear God so much that they never feared the face of any man.<p/>It was true that even those of a man's own family sometimes betrayed him. In the early Roman Empire one of the curses was the informer (delator). There were those who, in their attempts to curry favour with the authorities, would not hesitate to betray their own kith and kin. That must have been the sorest blow of all.<p/>In Hitler's Germany a man was arrested because he stood for freedom. He endured imprisonment and torture with stoic and uncomplaining fortitude. Finally, with spirit still unbroken, he was released. Some short time afterwards he committed suicide. Many wondered why. Those who knew him well knew the reason--he had discovered that his own son was the person who had informed against him. The treachery of his own broke him in a way that the cruelty of his enemies was unable to achieve.<p/>This family and domestic hostility was one of the regular items in the catalogue of terror of the last and terrible days, "Friends shall attack one another suddenly" (4 <a href='B:150 5:9'>Ezr 5:9</a>). "And they shall hate one another and provoke one another to fight" (Baruch 70:3). "And they shall strive with one another, the young with the old, and the old with the young, the poor with the rich, the lowly with the great, the beggar with the prince" (Jubilees 23:19). "Children shall shame the elders, and the elders shall rise up before the children" (The Mishnah, Sotah 9:15). "For the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man's enemies are the men of his own house" (<a href='B:400 7:6'>Mic 7:6</a>).<p/>Life becomes a hell upon earth when personal loyalties are destroyed and when there is no love which a man may trust.<p/>It was true that the Christians were hated. Tacitus talked of Christianity as an accursed superstition; Suetonius called it a new and evil superstition. The main reason for the hatred was the way in which Christianity cut across family ties. The fact was that a man had to love Christ more than father or mother, or son or daughter. And the matter was complicated by the way that the Christians were much slandered. It is beyond doubt that the Jews did much to encourage these slanders. The most serious was the charge that the Christians were cannibals, a charge supported by the words of the sacrament which speak of eating Christ's body and drinking his blood.<p/>In this, as in all other things, it is the man who endures to the end who is saved. Life is not a short, sharp sprint; it is a marathon race. Life is not a single battle; it is a long campaign. Dr. G.J. Jeffrey tells of a famous man who refused to have his biography written when he was still alive. "I have seen too many men fall out on the last lap of the race," he said. Life is never safe until it reaches journey's end. It was Bunyan who, in his dream, saw that from the very gates of heaven there was a way to hell. It is the man who endures to the end who will be saved.<p/>The Dangers Of The Last Days (<a href='B:480 13:3-6'>Mar 13:3-6</a>; <a href='B:480 13:21-23'>Mar 13:21-23</a>)


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,21-23 As he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, opposite the sacred precincts of the Temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew privately asked Jesus, "Tell us, when shall these things be? And what sign will there be when these things are going to be completed?" Jesus began to say to them, "See that no one misleads you. Many will come in my name, and say, 'I am he' and they will lead many astray."<p/>"And if some one then says to you, 'See! Here is the Messiah!' or, 'See! There he is!' do not believe them. For false Messiahs and false prophets will arise, and they will produce signs and wonders to lead the elect astray, if it is possible. But do you look to yourselves! See! I have told you beforehand all that will happen."<p/></i><p/>Jesus was well aware that, before the end, heretics would arise; and, indeed it was not long before the church had its heretics. Heresy arises from five main causes.<p/>(i) It arises from constructing doctrine to suit oneself. The human mind has an infinite capacity for wishful thinking. In a famous sentence, the Psalmist said, "The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God.'" The fool about whom the Psalmist was speaking was not a fool in the sense that he had no intelligence. He was a moral fool. His statement that there was no God was made because he did not wish God to be. If God existed so much the worse for him; therefore he eliminated him from his doctrine and from his universe.<p/>One particular heresy has always been with us, that is antinomianism. The antinomian begins with the principle that law has been abolished--and in a sense he is right. He goes on to say that there is nothing but grace--and again in a sense he is right. He then goes on to argue--as Paul shows us in <a href='B:520 6:1-23'>Rom 6:1-23</a> -- on lines like these. "You say that God's grace is wide enough to cover every sin?" "Yes." "You say that God's grace can forgive any sin?" "Yes." "You say that God's grace is the greatest and the most wonderful thing in the universe?" "Yes." "Then, the antinomian concludes, "let us go on sinning to our hearts' content, for the more we sin, the more chances we give to God's amazing grace to operate. Sin is a good thing for sin gives grace a chance to work. Therefore, let us do whatever we like." The grace of God has been twisted to suit the man who wants to sin.<p/>The same kind of argument is used by the man who declares that the only important thing in life is the soul and that a man's body does not matter. If that is so, the argument runs, then a man can do what he likes with his body. If he is so inclined he can sate its desires.<p/>One of the commonest ways to arrive in heresy is to mould Christian truth to suit ourselves. Can it be that the doctrine of hell and the doctrine of the Second Coming have dropped out of much religious thought because they are both uncomfortable doctrines? No one would wish to bring either back in its crude form, but can it be that they have dropped too far out of Christian thought because it does not suit us to believe in them?<p/>(ii) Heresy arises from overstressing one part of the truth. It is, for instance, always wrong to overstress one attribute of God. If we think only of God's holiness, we can never attain to any intimacy with him, but rather tend to a deism in which he is entirely remote from the world. If we think only of God's justice, we can never be free of the fear of God. We become haunted and not helped by our religion. If we think only of God's love, religion can become a very easy-going sentimental thing. There is more in the New Testament than <a href='B:490 15:1-32'>Luk 15:1-32</a>.<p/>Always there is paradox in Christianity. God is love, yet God is justice. Man is free, yet God is in control. Man is a creature of time, yet also a creature of eternity. G. K. Chesterton said that orthodoxy was like a man walking along a knife-edge ridge with a yawning chasm on either side. One step too much to right or left and disaster follows. We must, as the Greeks insisted, see life steady and see it whole.<p/>(iii) Heresy arises from trying to produce a religion which will suit people, one which will be popular and attractive. To do that it has to be watered down. The sting, the condemnation, the humiliation, the moral demand, have to be taken out of it. It is not our job to alter Christianity to suit people, but to alter people to suit Christianity.<p/>(iv) Heresy arises from divorcing oneself from the Christian fellowship. When a man thinks alone he runs a grave danger of thinking astray. There is such a thing as the tradition of the church. There is such a conception as the church being the guardian of truth. If a man finds that his thinking separates himself from the fellowship of men, the chances are that there is something wrong with his thinking. It is the Roman Catholic principle that a man cannot have God for his Father unless he has the church for his mother--and there is truth there.<p/>(v) Heresy arises from the attempt to be completely intelligible. Here is one of the great paradoxes. We are under the bounden duty of trying to understand our faith. But because we are finite and God is infinite we can never fully understand. For that very reason a faith that can be neatly stated in a series of propositions and neatly proved in a series of logical steps like a geometrical theorem is a contradiction in terms. As G. K. Chesterton said, "It is only the fool who tries to get the heavens inside his head, and not unnaturally his head bursts. The wise man is content to get his head inside the heavens." Even at our most intellectual we must remember that there is a place for the ultimate mystery before which we can only worship, wonder and adore.<p/>"How could I praise,<p/>If such as I could understand?"<p/>"I believe, as Tertullian said, "because it is impossible."<p/>His Coming Again (<a href='B:480 13:7-8'>Mar 13:7-8</a>; <a href='B:480 13:24-27'>Mar 13:24-27</a>)


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,24-27 Jesus said, "When you hear of wars and reports of wars, do not be disturbed. These things must happen. But the end is not yet. Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. In certain places there will be earthquakes. There will be famines. These things are the beginning of the birth-pangs of the new age."<p/>"And in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with much power and glory. And then he will send his angels and they will gather the chosen ones from the four winds, from the edge of the earth to the edge of the heaven."<p/></i><p/>Here Jesus unmistakably speaks of his coming again. But--and this is important--he clothes the idea in three pictures which are part and parcel of the apparatus connected with the day of the Lord.<p/>(i) The day of the Lord was to be preceded by a time of wars. 4Ezra declares that before the day of the Lord there will be,<p/>"Quakings of places<p/>Tumult of peoples,<p/>Scheming of nations,<p/>Confusion of leaders,<p/>Disquietude of princes." (4 <a href='B:150 9:3'>Ezr 9:3</a>).<p/>The same book says,<p/>"And there shall come astonishment of mind upon the dwellers on<p/>earth. And they shall plan to war one against another, city<p/>against city, place against place, people against people, and<p/>kingdom against kingdom." (4Ezra 13:31).<p/>The Sibylline Oracles foresee that,<p/>"King captures king and takes his land, and nations ravage nations<p/>and potentates people, and rulers all flee to another land, and<p/>the land is changed in men and a barbarian empire ravages Hellas<p/>and drains the rich land of its wealth, and men come face to face<p/>in strife." (4Ezra 3:633-647).<p/>Second Baruch has the same ideas. In Baruch 27:5-13 this book singles out twelve things which will precede the new age.<p/>"In the first part there will be the beginning of commotions. In<p/>the second part there shall be the slayings of great ones. In the<p/>third part the fall of many by death. In the fourth part the<p/>sending of the sword. In the fifth part famine and withholding of<p/>rain. In the sixth part earthquakes and terrors...(there is a<p/>blank in the manuscript here).... In the eighth part a multitude<p/>of spectres and attacks of the evil spirits. In the ninth part the<p/>fall of fire. In the tenth part rapine and much oppression. In the<p/>eleventh part wickedness and unchastity. In the twelfth part<p/>confusion from the mingling together of all those things<p/>aforesaid."<p/>"All the inhabitants of the earth shall be moved against one<p/>another." (Baruch 48:32:)<p/>"And they shall hate one another,<p/>And provoke one another to fight.<p/>And it shall come to pass that whosoever comes safe out of the<p/>war shall die in the earthquake,<p/>And whosoever gets safe out of the earthquake shall be burned by<p/>the fire,<p/>And whosoever gets safe out of the fire shag be destroyed by<p/>famine."<p/>It is abundantly clear that when Jesus spoke of wars and rumours of wars he was using pictures which were part and parcel of Jewish dreams of the future.<p/>(ii) The day of the Lord was to be preceded by the darkening of sun and moon. The Old Testament itself is full of that (<a href='B:370 8:9'>Amo 8:9</a>; <a href='B:360 2:10'>Joe 2:10</a>; <a href='B:360 3:15'>Joe 3:15</a>; <a href='B:330 32:7-8'>Eze 32:7-8</a>; <a href='B:290 13:10'>Isa 13:10</a>; <a href='B:290 34:4'>Isa 34:4</a>); again the popular literature of Jesus' day is full of it, too.<p/>"Then shall the sun suddenly shine forth by night,<p/>And the moon by day.<p/>The outgoings of the stars shall change."<p/>(4 <a href='B:150 5:4-7'>Ezr 5:4-7</a>.)<p/>2 Bar_4:1-37 Ezra 32:1 speaks of "the time in which the mighty one is to shake the whole creation." The Sibylline Oracles (3:796-806) talk of a time when "swords in the star-lit heaven appear by night towards dusk and towards dawn...and all the brightness of the sun fails at midday from the heaven, and the moon's rays shine forth and come back to earth, and a sign comes from the rocks with dripping streams of blood." The Assumption of Moses foresees a time when:<p/>"The horns of the sun shall be broken and he shall be turned into<p/>darkness,<p/>And the moon shall not give her light, and be turned wholly into<p/>blood,<p/>And the circle of the stars shall be disturbed." (10:5:)<p/>Once again it is clear that Jesus is using the popular language which everyone knew.<p/>(iii) It was a regular part of the imagery that the Jews were to be gathered back to Palestine from the four corners of the earth. The Old Testament itself is full of that idea (<a href='B:290 27:13'>Isa 27:13</a>; <a href='B:290 35:8-10'>Isa 35:8-10</a>; <a href='B:400 7:12'>Mic 7:12</a>; <a href='B:450 10:6-11'>Zec 10:6-11</a>); once more the popular literature loves the idea:<p/>"Blow ye in Zion on the trumpet to summon the saints,<p/>Cause ye to be heard in Jerusalem the voice of him that<p/>bringeth good tidings,<p/>For God hath had pity on Israel in visiting them.<p/>Stand on the height, O Jerusalem, and behold thy children,<p/>From the East and the West gathered together by the Lord."<p/>(Wis_11:1-3.)<p/>"The Lord will gather you together in faith through His tender<p/>mercy, and for the sake of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob."<p/>(The Testament of Asher 7:5-7:)<p/>When we read the pictorial words of Jesus about the Second Coming we must remember that he is giving us neither a map of eternity nor a timetable to the future, but that he is simply using the language and the pictures that many a Jew knew and used for centuries before him.<p/>But it is extremely interesting to note that the things Jesus prophesied were in fact happening. He prophesied wars and the dreaded Parthians were in fact pressing in on the Roman frontiers. He prophesied earthquakes and within forty years the Roman world was aghast at the earthquake which devastated Laodicaea and by the eruption of Vesuvius which buried Pompeii in lava. He prophesied famines, and there was famine in Rome in the days of Claudius. It was in fact such a time of terror in the near future that when Tacitus began his histories he said that everything happening seemed to prove that the gods were seeking, not salvation, but vengeance on the Roman Empire.<p/>In this passage the one thing that we must retain is the fact that Jesus did foretell that he would come again. The imagery we can disregard.<p/>Be On The Watch (<a href='B:480 13:28-37'>Mar 13:28-37</a>)


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 Jesus said, "Learn the lesson the fig-tree offers you. As soon as its branches become tender, and it puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So must you too know, when you see these things happening, that the end is near at the doors. This is the truth I tell you--this generation will not pass away until these things happen. Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away. But no man knows about that day and that hour, not even the angels in heaven, not even the Son, no one except the Father. Be watchful, be wakeful, be praying, for you do not know when the time is. It is like when a man goes abroad, and leaves his home, and puts his servants in charge, and orders the door-keeper to be on the watch. So then be watchful! For you do not know when the master of the house comes, late in the evening, at midnight, at cockcrow, or in the early day. Watch! in case he comes suddenly and finds you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all--be on the watch!"<p/></i><p/>There are three special things to note in this passage.<p/>(i) It is sometimes held that when Jesus said that these things were to happen within this generation he was in error. But Jesus was right, for this sentence does not refer to the Second Coming. It could not when the next sentence says he does not know when that day will be. It refers to Jesus' prophecies about the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple and they were abundantly fulfilled.<p/>(ii) Jesus says that he does not know the day or the hour when he will come again. There were things which even he left without questioning in the hand of God. There can be no greater warning and rebuke to those who work out dates and timetables as to when he will come again. Surely it is nothing less than blasphemy for us to enquire into that of which our Lord consented to be ignorant.<p/>(iii) Jesus draws a practical conclusion. We are like men who know that their master will come, but who do not know when. We live in the shadow of eternity. That is no reason for fearful and hysterical expectation. But it means that day by day our work must be completed. It means that we must so live that it does not matter when he comes. It gives us the great task of making every day fit for him to see and being at any moment ready to meet him face to face. AH life becomes a preparation to meet the King.<p/>-----------------------------------------<p/>We began by saying that this was a very difficult chapter, but that in the end it had permanent truth to tell us.<p/>(i) It tells us that only the man of God can see into the secrets of history. Jesus saw the fate of Jerusalem although others were blind to it. A real statesman must be a man of God. To guide his country a man must be himself God-guided. Only the man who knows God can enter into something of the plan of God.<p/>(ii) It tells us two things about the doctrine of the Second Coming.<p/>(a) It tells us that it contains a fact we forget or disregard at our peril.<p/>(b) It tells us that the imagery in which it is clothed is the imagery of Jesus' own time, and that to speculate on it is useless, when Jesus himself was content not to know. The one thing of which we can be sure is that history is going somewhere; there is a consummation to come.<p/>(iii) It tells us that of all things to forget God and to become immersed in earth is most foolish. The wise man is he who never forgets that he must be ready when the summons comes. If he lives in that memory, for him the end will not be terror, but eternal joy. 


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 The Feast of the Passover and of Unleavened Bread was due in two days' time. And the chief priests and experts in the law were trying to find some way to seize Jesus by some stratagem and to kill him, for they said, "This must not be done at the Feast itself in case there should be a disturbance of the people."<p/></i><p/>The last crowded act of Jesus' life was now about to open. The Feast of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were really two different things. The Feast of the Passover fell on 14th Nisan, that is, about 14th April. The Feast of Unleavened Bread consisted of the seven days following the Passover. The Passover itself was a major feast and was kept like a sabbath. The Feast of Unleavened Bread was called a minor festival, and, although no new work could be begun during it, such work as was "necessary for public interest or to provide against private loss" was allowable. The really great day was Passover Day.<p/>The Passover was one of the three compulsory feasts. The others were the Feast of Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles. To these feasts every male adult Jew who lived within 15 miles of Jerusalem was bound to come.<p/>The Passover had a double significance.<p/>(a) It had an historical significance (<a href='B:20 12:1-51'>Exo 12:1-51</a>). It commemorated the deliverance of the children of Israel from their bondage in Egypt. God had sent plague after plague on Egypt, and, as each plague came, Pharaoh promised to let the people go. But, when each plague abated, he hardened his heart and went back on his word. Finally there came a terrible night when the angel of death was to walk through the land of Egypt and slay every first-born son in every home. The Israelites were to slay a lamb. Using a bunch of hyssop they were to smear the lintel of the door-post with the blood of the lamb, and when the angel of death saw the door-post so marked, he would pass over that house and its occupants would be safe. Before they went upon their way the Israelites were to eat a meal of a roasted lamb and unleavened bread. It was that "passover," that deliverance and that meal that the Feast of the Passover commemorated.<p/>(b) It had an agricultural significance. It marked the ingathering of the barley harvest. On that day a sheaf of barley had to be waved before the Lord (<a href='B:30 23:10-11'>Lev 23:10-11</a>). Not till after that had been done could the barley of the new crop be sold in the shops or bread made with the new flour be eaten.<p/>Every possible preparation was made for the Passover. For a month beforehand its meaning was expounded in the synagogue, and its lesson was taught daily in the schools. The aim was that no one should come ignorant and unprepared to the feast. the roads were all put in order, the bridges repaired. One special thing was done. It was very common to bury people beside the road. Now if any pilgrim had touched one of these wayside tombs he would technically have been in contact with a dead body and so rendered unclean and unable to take part in the feast. So, before the Passover, all the wayside tombs were white-washed so that they would stand out and the pilgrims could avoid them. <a href='B:230 120:1-7'>Psa 120:1-7</a>; <a href='B:230 121:1-8'>Psa 121:1-8</a>; <a href='B:230 122:1-9'>Psa 122:1-9</a>; <a href='B:230 123:1-4'>Psa 123:1-4</a>; <a href='B:230 124:1-8'>Psa 124:1-8</a>; <a href='B:230 125:1-5'>Psa 125:1-5</a>; <a href='B:230 126:1-6'>Psa 126:1-6</a>; <a href='B:230 127:1-5'>Psa 127:1-5</a>; <a href='B:230 128:1-6'>Psa 128:1-6</a>; <a href='B:230 129:1-8'>Psa 129:1-8</a>; <a href='B:230 130:1-8'>Psa 130:1-8</a>; <a href='B:230 131:1-3'>Psa 131:1-3</a>; <a href='B:230 132:1-18'>Psa 132:1-18</a>; <a href='B:230 133:1-3'>Psa 133:1-3</a>; <a href='B:230 134:1-3'>Psa 134:1-3</a> are entitled Psalms of Degree, and it may well be that these were the psalms which the pilgrims sang on their way to the feast, as they sought to lighten the road with their music. It is said that <a href='B:230 122:1-9'>Psa 122:1-9</a> was the one which they actually sang as they climbed the hill to the Temple on the last lap of their journey.<p/>As we have already seen, it was compulsory for every adult male Jew who lived within 15 miles of Jerusalem to come to the Passover, but far more than these came. It was the one ambition of every Jew to eat at least one Passover in Jerusalem before he died. Therefore from every country in the world pilgrims came flocking to the Passover Feast. During the Passover all lodging was free. Jerusalem could not hold the crowds, and Bethany and Bethphage were two of the outlying villages where pilgrims lodged.<p/>A passage in Josephus gives us an idea of how many pilgrims actually came. He tells that Cestius, governor of Palestine round about A.D. 65, had some difficulty in persuading Nero of the great importance of the Jewish religion. To impress him, he asked the then High Priest to take a census of the lambs slain at the Passover in one year. The number, according to Josephus, was 256,500: The law was that there must be a minimum party of ten people to one lamb, so that there must have been close on 3,000,000 pilgrims in Jerusalem.<p/>It was just there that the problem of the Jewish authorities lay. During the Passover, feeling ran very high. The remembrance of the old deliverance from Egypt made the people long for a new deliverance from Rome. At no time was nationalist feeling so intense. Jerusalem was not the Roman headquarters in Judaea. The governor had his residence and the soldiers were stationed in Caesarea. During the Passover time special detachments of troops were drafted into Jerusalem and quartered in the Tower of Antonia which overlooked the Temple. The Romans knew that at Passover anything might happen and they were taking no chances. The Jewish authorities knew that in an inflammable atmosphere like that, the arrest of Jesus might well provoke a riot. That is why they sought some secret stratagem to arrest him and have him in their power before the populace knew anything about it.<p/>The last act of Jesus' life was to be played out in a city crammed with Jews who had come from the ends of the earth. They had come to commemorate the event whereby their nation was delivered from slavery in Egypt long ago. It was at that very time that God's deliverer of mankind was crucified upon his Cross.<p/><b>LOVE'S EXTRAVAGANCE</b> (<a href='B:480 14:3-9'>Mar 14:3-9</a>)


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 While Jesus was in Bethany, while he was reclining at a table in the house of Simon the leper, there came a woman who had a phial of ointment of pure nard. She broke the phial and poured it over his head. Some of them said indignantly to each other, "To what purpose is the waste of this ointment? This ointment could have been sold for more than ten pounds, and the money could have been given to the poor." And they were angry at her. Jesus said, "Let her be! Why do you trouble her? It is a lovely thing that she has done to me. You have always got the poor with you, and you can do something for them any time you like, but you have not got me always. She has done what she could. She has taken my body and anointed it beforehand against my burial. This is the truth I tell you--wherever the good news shall be proclaimed throughout the whole world, the story of what she has done will be told, so that she will always be remembered."<p/></i><p/>The poignancy of this story lies in the fact that it tells us of almost the last kindness that Jesus had done to him.<p/>He was in the house of a man called Simon the leper, in the village of Bethany. People did not sit to eat; they reclined on low couches. They lay on the couch resting on the left elbow and using the right hand to take their food. Anyone coming up to someone lying like this would stand well above him. To Jesus there came a woman with an alabaster phial of ointment. It was the custom to pour a few drops of perfume on a guest when he arrived at a house or when he sat down to a meal. This phial held nard which was a very precious ointment made from a rare plant that came from far-off India. But it was not a few drops that this woman poured on the head of Jesus. She broke the flask and anointed him with the whole contents.<p/>There may be more than one reason why she broke the flask. Maybe she broke it as a sign that all was to be used. There was a custom in the East that if a glass was used by a distinguished guest, it was broken so that it would never again be touched by the hand of any lesser person. Maybe there was something of that in the woman's mind. But there was one thing not in her mind which Jesus saw. It was the custom in the East, first to bathe, then to anoint the bodies of the dead. After the body had been anointed, the flask in which the perfume had been contained was broken and the fragments were laid with the dead body in the tomb. Although she did not mean it so, that was the very thing this woman was doing.<p/>Her action provoked the grudging criticism of some of the bystanders. The flask was worth more than 300 denarii. A denarius was a Roman coin worth about 3 p which was a working man's daily wage. It would have cost an ordinary man almost a year's pay to buy the flask of ointment. To some it seemed a shameful waste; the money might have been given to the poor. But Jesus understood. He quoted their own scriptures to them. "The poor will never cease out of the land." (<a href='B:50 15:11'>Deu 15:11</a>.) "You can help the poor any time, Jesus said, "but you have not long to do anything for me now." "This, he said, "is like anointing my body beforehand for its burial."<p/>This story shows the action of love.<p/>(i) Jesus said that it was a lovely thing the woman had done. In Greek there are two words for good. There is agathos (<a href='S:G18'>G18</a>) which describes a thing which is morally good; and there is kalos (<a href='S:G2570'>G2570</a>) which describes a thing which is not only good but lovely. A thing might be agathos (<a href='S:G18'>G18</a>), and yet be hard, stern, austere, unattractive. But a thing which is kalos (<a href='S:G2570'>G2570</a>) is winsome and lovely, with a certain bloom of charm upon it. Struthers of Greenock used to say that it would do the church more good than anything else if Christians would sometimes "do a bonnie thing." That is exactly what kalos (<a href='S:G2570'>G2570</a>) means; and that is exactly what this woman did. Love does not do only good things. Love does lovely things.<p/>(ii) If love is true, there must always be a certain extravagance in it. It does not nicely calculate the less or more. It is not concerned to see how little it can decently give. If it gave all it had, the gift would still be too little. There is a recklessness in love which refuses to count the cost.<p/>(iii) Love can see that there are things, the chance to do which comes only once. It is one of the tragedies of life that often we are moved to do something fine and do not do it. It may be that we are too shy and feel awkward about it. It may be that second thoughts suggest a more prudent course. It occurs in the simplest things--the impulse to send a letter of thanks, the impulse to tell someone of our love or gratitude, the impulse to give some special gift or speak some special word. The tragedy is that the impulse is so often strangled at birth. This world would be so much lovelier if there were more people like this woman, who acted on her impulse of love because she knew in her heart of hearts that if she did not do it then she would never do it at all. How that last extravagant, impulsive kindness must have uplifted Jesus' heart.<p/>(iv) Once again we see the invincible confidence of Jesus. The Cross loomed close ahead now but he never believed that it would be the end. He believed that the good news would go all round the world. And with the good news would go the story of this lovely thing, done with reckless extravagance, done on the impulse of the moment, done out of a heart of love.<p/><b>THE TRAITOR</b> (<a href='B:480 14:10-11'>Mar 14:10-11</a>)


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 Judas Iscariot, the man who was one of the Twelve, went away to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. When they had listened to his offer, they were delighted, and they promised to give him money. So he began to search for a convenient method of betraying him.<p/></i><p/>It is with consummate artistry that Mark sets side by side the anointing at Bethany and the betrayal by Judas--the act of generous love and the act of terrible treachery.<p/>There is always a shudder of the heart as we think of Judas. Dante sets him in the lowest of all hells, a hell of cold and ice, a hell designed for those who were not hot sinners swept away by angry passions, but cold, calculating, deliberate offenders against the love of God.<p/>Mark tells the story with such economy of words that he leaves us no material for speculation. But at the back of Judas' action we can distinguish certain things.<p/>(i) There was covetousness. <a href='B:470 26:15'>Mat 26:15</a> actually tells us that Judas went to the authorities and asked what price they were prepared to pay and drove a bargain with them for thirty pieces of silver. <a href='B:500 11:57'>Joh 11:57</a> drops a hint. That verse tells us that the authorities had asked for information as to where Jesus could be found so as to arrest him. It may well be that by this time Jesus was to all intents and purposes an outlaw with a price upon his head, and that Judas knew it and wished to acquire the offered reward. John is quite definite. He tells us that Judas was the treasurer of the apostolic band and used his position to pilfer from the common purse (<a href='B:500 12:6'>Joh 12:6</a>).<p/>It may be so. The desire for money can be a terrible thing. It can make a man blind to decency and honesty and honour. It can make him have no care how he gets so long as he gets. Judas discovered too late that some things cost too much.<p/>(ii) There was jealousy. Klopstock, the German poet, thought that Judas, when he joined the Twelve, had every gift and every virtue which might have made him great, but that bit by bit he became consumed with jealousy of John, the beloved disciple, and that this jealousy drove him to his terrible act. It is easy to see that there were tensions in the Twelve. The rest were able to overcome them, but it may well be that Judas had an unconquerable and uncontrollable demon of jealousy within his heart. Few things can wreck life for ourselves and for others as jealousy can.<p/>(iii) There was ambition. Again and again we see how the Twelve thought of the Kingdom in earthly terms and dreamed of high position in it. Judas must have been like that. It may well be that, while the others still clung to them, he came to see how far wrong these dreams were and how little chance they ever had of any earthly fulfilment. And it may well be that in his disillusionment the love he once bore to Jesus turned to hate. In Henry the Eighth Shakespeare makes Wolsey say to Thomas Cromwell:<p/>"Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition;<p/>By that sin fee the angels; how can man then,<p/>The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?<p/>Love thyself last."<p/>There is an ambition which will trample on love and honour and all lovely things to gain the end it has set its heart upon.<p/>(iv) Minds have been fascinated by the idea that it may be that Judas did not want Jesus to die at all. It is almost certain that Judas was a fanatical nationalist and that he had seen in Jesus the one person who could make his dreams of national power and glory come true. But now he saw Jesus drifting to death on a cross. So it may be that in one last attempt to make his dream come true, he betrayed Jesus in order to force his hand. He delivered him to the authorities with the idea that now Jesus would be compelled to act in order to save himself, and that action would be the beginning of the victorious campaign he dreamed of. It may be that this theory is supported by the fact that when Judas saw what he had done he flung the accursed money at the feet of the Jewish authorities and went out and hanged himself. (<a href='B:470 27:3-5'>Mat 27:3-5</a>). If that is so, the tragedy of Judas is the greatest in history.<p/>(v) Both Luke and John say quite simply that the devil entered into Judas (<a href='B:490 22:3'>Luk 22:3</a>; <a href='B:500 13:27'>Joh 13:27</a>). In the last analysis that is what happened. Judas wanted Jesus to be what he wanted him to be and not what Jesus wanted to be. In reality Judas attached himself to Jesus, not so much to become a follower as to use Jesus to work out the plans and desires of his own ambitious heart. So far from surrendering to Jesus, he wanted Jesus to surrender to him; and when Jesus took his own way, the way of the Cross, Judas was so incensed that he betrayed him. The essence of sin is pride; the core of sin is independence; the heart of sin is the desire to do what we like and not what God likes. That is what the devil, satan, the evil one stands for. He stands for everything which is against God and will not bow to him. That is the spirit which was incarnate in Judas.<p/>We shudder at Judas. But let us think again--covetousness, jealousy, ambition, the dominant desire to have our own way of things. Are we so very different? These are the things which made Judas betray Jesus, and these are the things which still make men betray him.<p/><b>PREPARING FOR THE FEAST</b> (<a href='B:480 14:12-16'>Mar 14:12-16</a>)


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 On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when they were sacrificing the Passover Lamb, Jesus' disciples said to him, "Where do you wish us to go and make the necessary preparations for you to eat the Passover?" He despatched two of his disciples, and said to them. "Go into the city, and there will meet you a man carrying an earthen pitcher of water. Follow him, and wherever he enters in, say to the householder, 'The teacher says, "Where is my room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?"' He will show you a large upper room, furnished and prepared. There get things ready for us." So the disciples went away, and they came into the city, and found everything just as he had told them. And they got everything ready for the Passover Feast.<p/></i><p/>It may seem an unusual word to use in connection with Jesus, but, as we read the narrative of the last week of his life, we cannot help being struck with his efficiency of arrangement. Again and again we see that he did not leave things until the last moment. Long before, he had arranged that the colt should be ready for his ride into Jerusalem; and here again we see that all his arrangements had been made long beforehand.<p/>His disciples wished to know where they would eat the Passover. Jesus sent them into Jerusalem with instructions to look for a man carrying an earthen pitcher of water. That was a prearranged signal. To carry a water-pot was a woman's duty. It was a thing that no man ever did. A man with a water-pot on his shoulder would stand out in any crowd as much as, say, a man on a wet day with a lady's umbrella. Jesus did not leave things until the last minute. Long ago he had arranged a last meeting-place for himself and for his disciples, and had arranged just how it was to be found.<p/>The larger Jewish houses had upper rooms. Such houses looked exactly like a smaller box placed on top of a bigger box. The smaller box was the upper room, and it was approached by an outside stair, making it unnecessary to go through the main room. The upper room had many uses. It was a storeroom, it was a place for quiet and meditation, it was a guest-room for visitors. But in particular it was the place where a Rabbi taught his chosen band of intimate disciples. Jesus was following the custom that any Jewish Rabbi might follow.<p/>We must remember the Jewish way of reckoning days. The new day began at 6 p.m. in the evening. Up until 6 p.m. it was 13th Nisan, the day of the preparation for the Passover. But 14th Nisan, the Passover day itself, began at 6 p.m. To put it in English terms, Friday the 14th began at 6 p.m. on Thursday the 13th.<p/>What were the preparations that a Jew made for The Passover?<p/>First was the ceremonial search for leaven. Before the Passover every particle, of leaven must be banished from the house. That was because the first Passover in Egypt (<a href='B:20 12:1-51'>Exo 12:1-51</a>) had been eaten with unleavened bread. (Unleavened bread is not like bread at all. It is like a water-biscuit.) It had been used in Egypt because it can be baked much more quickly than a loaf baked with leaven, and the first Passover, the Passover of escape from Egypt, had been eaten in haste, with everyone ready for the road. In addition leaven was the symbol of corruption. Leaven is fermented dough, and the Jew identified fermentation with putrefaction, and so leaven stood for rottenness. The day before the Passover the master of the house took a lighted candle and ceremonially searched the house for leaven. Before the search he prayed,<p/>"Blessed art thou, Jehovah, our God, King of the Universe, who<p/>hast sanctified us by thy commandments, and commanded us to<p/>remove the leaven."<p/>At the end of the search the householder said,<p/>"All the leaven that is in my possession, that which I have seen<p/>and that which I have not seen, be it null, be it accounted as the<p/>dust of the earth."<p/>Next, on the afternoon before the Passover evening, came the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb. All the people came to the Temple. The worshipper must slay his own lamb, thereby, as it were, making his own sacrifice. But in Jewish eyes all blood was sacred to God, because the Jew equated the blood and the life. It was quite natural to do so because, if a person or an animal is wounded, as the blood flows away, so does life. So in the Temple the worshipper slew his own lamb. Between the worshippers and the altar were two long lines of priests, each with a gold or silver bowl. As the lamb's throat was slit the blood was caught in one of these bowls, and passed up the line, until the priest at the end of the line dashed it upon the altar. The carcase was then flayed, the entrails and the fat extracted, because they were part of the necessary sacrifice, and the carcass handed back to the worshipper. If the figures of Josephus are anywhere nearly correct, and there were more than a quarter of a million lambs slain, the scene in the Temple courts and the blood-stained condition of the altar can hardly be imagined. The lamb was carried home to be roasted. It must not be boiled. Nothing must touch it, not even the sides of a pot. It had to be roasted over an open fire on a spit made of pomegranate wood. The spit went right through the lamb from mouth to vent, and the lamb had to be roasted entire with head and legs and tail still attached to the body.<p/>The table itself was shaped like a square with one side open. It was low and the guests reclined on couches, resting on their left arms with their right arms free for eating.<p/>Certain things were necessary and these were the things the disciples would have to get ready.<p/>(i) There was the lamb, to remind them of how their houses had been protected by the badge of blood when the angel of death passed through Egypt.<p/>(ii) There was the unleavened bread to remind them of the bread they had eaten in haste when they escaped from slavery.<p/>(iii) There was a bowl of salt water, to remind them of the tears they had shed in Egypt and of the waters of the Red Sea through which they had miraculously passed to safety.<p/>(iv) There was a collection of bitter herbs--horse radish, chicory, endive, lettuce, horehound--to remind them of the bitterness of slavery in Egypt.<p/>(v) There was a paste called Charosheth, a mixture of apples, dates, pomegranates and nuts, to remind them of the clay of which they had made bricks in Egypt. Through it there were sticks of cinnamon to remind them of the straw with which the bricks had been made.<p/>(vi) There were four cups of wine. The cups contained a little more than half a pint of wine, but three parts of wine were mixed with two of water. The four cups, which were drunk at different stages of the meal, were to remind them of the four promises in <a href='B:20 6:6-7'>Exo 6:6-7</a>,<p/>"I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.<p/>I will rid you of their bondage.<p/>I will redeem you with an outstretched arm.<p/>I will take you to me for a people, and I will be your God."<p/>Such were the preparations which had to be made for the Passover. Every detail spoke of that great day of deliverance when God liberated his people from their bondage in Egypt. It was at that feast that he who liberated the world from sin was to sit at his last meal with his disciples.<p/><b>LOVE'S LAST APPEAL</b> (<a href='B:480 14:17-21'>Mar 14:17-21</a>)


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 When it was evening, Jesus came with the Twelve. As they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, "This is the truth I tell you--one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me, They began to be grieved, and to say to him, one by one, "Surely it cannot be I?" He said to them, "One of the Twelve, one who dips his hand with me into the dish. The Son of Man goes as it stands written about him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It had been good for him, if that man had not been born."<p/></i><p/>The new day began at 6 p.m., and when the Passover evening had come, Jesus sat down with the Twelve. There was only one change in the old ritual which had been observed so many centuries ago in Egypt. At the first Passover Feast in Egypt, the meal had been eaten standing (<a href='B:20 12:11'>Exo 12:11</a>). But that had been a sign of haste, a sign that they were slaves escaping from slavery. In the time of Jesus the regulation was that the meal should be eaten reclining, for that was the sign of a free man, with a home and a country of his own.<p/>This is a poignant passage. All the time there was a text running in Jesus' head. "Even my bosom friend in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted his heel against me." (<a href='B:230 41:9'>Psa 41:9</a>.) These words were in his mind all the time. We can see certain great things here.<p/>(i) Jesus knew what was going to happen. That is his supreme courage, especially in the last days. It would have been easy for him to escape, and yet undeterred he went on. Homer relates how the great warrior Achilles was told that if he went out to his last battle he would surely be killed. His answer was, "Nevertheless I am for going on." With a full knowledge of what lay ahead, Jesus was for going on.<p/>(ii) Jesus could see into the heart of Judas. The curious thing is that the other disciples seem to have had no suspicions. If they had known what Judas was engaged on, it is certain that they would have stopped him even by violence. Here is something to remember. There may be things we succeed in hiding from our fellow-men. But we cannot hide them from Jesus Christ. He is the searcher of the hearts of men. He knows what is in man.<p/>"Our thoughts lie open to thy sight;<p/>And naked to thy glance.<p/>Our secret sins are in the light<p/>Of thy pure countenance."<p/>Blessed indeed are the pure in heart.<p/>(iii) In this passage we see Jesus offering two things to Judas.<p/>(a) He is making love's last appeal. It is as if he is saying to Judas, "I know what you are going to do. Will you not stop even yet?"<p/>(b) He is offering Judas a last warning. He is telling him in advance of the consequences of the thing that it is in his heart to do. But we must note this, for it is of the essence of the way in which God deals with us--there is no compulsion. Without a doubt Jesus could have stopped Judas. All he had to do was tell the other eleven what Judas was planning, and Judas would never have left that room alive.<p/>Here is the whole human situation. God has given us wills that are free. His love appeals to us. His truth warns us. But there is no compulsion. It is the awful responsibility of man that he can spurn the appeal of God's love and disregard the warning of his voice. In the end there is no one but ourselves responsible for our sins.<p/>In Greek legend two famous travellers passed the rocks where the Sirens sang. The Sirens sat on these rocks and sang with such sweetness that they lured mariners irresistibly to their doom. Ulysses sailed past these rocks. His method was to stop the sailors' ears so that they could not hear and order them to bind himself to the mast with ropes so that, however much he struggled, he would not be able to answer to that seductive sweetness. He resisted by compulsion. The other traveller was Orpheus, the sweetest musician of all. His method was to play and sing with such surpassing sweetness as his ship passed the rocks where the Sirens were, that the attraction of the song of the Sirens was never even felt because of the attraction of the song he sang. His method was to answer the appeal of seduction with a still greater appeal.<p/>God's is the second way. He does not stop us whether we like it or not, from sin. He seeks to make us love him so much that his voice is more sweetly insistent to us than all the voices which call us away from him.<p/><b>THE SYMBOL OF SALVATION</b> (<a href='B:480 14:22-26'>Mar 14:22-26</a>)


text:
 As they were eating, Jesus took a loaf and gave thanks for it, and broke it and gave it to them and said, "Take this. This is my body." And, after he had given thanks, he took a cup and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And he said to them, "This is the blood of the new covenant which is being shed for many. Truly I tell you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God." And, after they had sung the Psalm, they went out to the Mount of Olives.<p/></i><p/>We must first set out the various steps of the Passover Feast, so that in our mind's eye we can follow what Jesus and his disciples were doing. The steps came in this order.<p/>(i) The cup of the Kiddush. Kiddush means sanctification or separation. This was the act which, as it were, separated this meal from all other common meals. The head of the family took the cup and prayed over it, and then all drank of it.<p/>(ii) The first hand washing. This was carried out only by the person who was to celebrate the feast. Three times he had to wash his hands in the prescribed way which we have already described when studying <a href='B:480 7:1-37'>Mar 7:1-37</a>.<p/>(iii) A piece of parsley or lettuce was then taken and dipped in the bowl of salt water and eaten. This was an appetizer to the meal, but the parsley stood for the hyssop with which the lintel had been smeared with blood, and the salt stood for the tears of Egypt and for the waters of the Red Sea through which Israel had been brought in safety.<p/>(iv) The breaking of bread. Two blessings were used at the breaking of bread. "Blessed be thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who bringest forth from the earth." Or, "Blessed art thou, our Father in heaven, who givest us to-day the bread necessary for us." On the table lay three circles of unleavened bread. The middle one was taken and broken. At this point only a little was eaten. It was to remind the Jews of the bread of affliction that they ate in Egypt and it was broken to remind them that slaves had never a whole loaf, but only broken crusts to eat. As it was broken, the head of the family said, "This is the bread of affliction which our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whosoever is hungry let him come and eat. Whosoever is in need let him come and keep the Passover with us." (In the modern celebration in strange lands, here is added the famous prayer, "This year we keep it here, next year in the land of Israel. This year as slaves, next year as free.")<p/>(v) Next came the relating of the story of deliverance. The youngest person present had to ask what made this day different from all other days and why all this was being done. And the head of the house had thereupon to tell the whole story of the history of Israel down to the great deliverance which the Passover commemorated. The Passover could never become a ritual. It was always a commemoration of the power and the mercy of God.<p/>(vi) <a href='B:230 113:1-9'>Psa 113:1-9</a>; <a href='B:230 114:1-8'>Psa 114:1-8</a> were sung. <a href='B:230 113:1-9'>Psa 113:1-9</a>; <a href='B:230 114:1-8'>Psa 114:1-8</a>; <a href='B:230 115:1-18'>Psa 115:1-18</a>; <a href='B:230 116:1-19'>Psa 116:1-19</a>; <a href='B:230 117:1-2'>Psa 117:1-2</a>; <a href='B:230 118:1-29'>Psa 118:1-29</a> are known as the Hallel (<a href='S:H1984'>H1984</a>), which means the praise of God. All these psalms are praising psalms. They were part of the very earliest material which a Jewish boy had to commit to memory.<p/>(vii) The second cup was drunk. It was called the cup of Haggadah (compare <a href='S:H5046'>H5046</a>), which means the cup of explaining or proclaiming.<p/>(viii) All those present now washed their hands in preparation for the meal.<p/>(ix) A grace was said. "Blessed art thou, O Lord, our God, who bringest forth fruit from the earth. Blessed art thou, O God, who has sanctified us with thy commandment and enjoined us to eat unleavened cakes." Thereafter small pieces of the unleavened bread were distributed.<p/>(x) Some of the bitter herbs were placed between two pieces of unleavened bread, dipped in the Charosheth and eaten. This was called the sop. It was the reminder of slavery and of the bricks that once they had been compelled to make.<p/>(xi) Then followed the meal proper. The whole lamb must be eaten. Anything left over must be destroyed and not used for any common meal.<p/>(xii) The hands were cleansed again.<p/>(xiii) The remainder of the unleavened bread was eaten.<p/>(xiv) There was a prayer of thanksgiving, containing a petition for the coming of Elijah to herald the Messiah. Then the third cup was drunk, called the cup of thanksgiving. The blessing over the cup was, "Blessed art thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who hast created the fruit of the vine."<p/>(xv) The second part of The Hallel (<a href='S:H1984'>H1984</a>) -- <a href='B:230 115:1-18'>Psa 115:1-18</a>; <a href='B:230 116:1-19'>Psa 116:1-19</a>; <a href='B:230 117:1-2'>Psa 117:1-2</a>; <a href='B:230 118:1-29'>Psa 118:1-29</a> --was sung.<p/>(xvi) The fourth cup was drunk, and <a href='B:230 136:1-26'>Psa 136:1-26</a>, known as the great Hallel (<a href='S:H1984'>H1984</a>), was sung.<p/>(xvii) Two short prayers were said:<p/>"All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord, our God. And thy saints,<p/>the righteous, who do thy good pleasure, and all thy people, the<p/>house of Israel, with joyous song, let them praise and bless and<p/>magnify and glorify and exalt and reverence and sanctify and<p/>scribe the Kingdom to thy name, O God, our King. For it is good<p/>to praise thee, and pleasure to sing praises to thy name, for from<p/>everlasting unto everlasting thou art God."<p/>"The breath of all that lives shall praise thy name, O Lord, our<p/>God. And the spirit of all flesh shall continually glorify and<p/>exalt thy memorial, O God, our King. For from everlasting unto<p/>everlasting thou art God, and beside thee we have no king,<p/>redeemer or saviour."<p/>Thus ended the Passover Feast. If the feast that Jesus and his disciples sat at was the Passover it must have been items (xiii) and (xiv) that Jesus made his own, and (xvi) must have been the hymn they sang before they went out to the Mount of Olives.<p/>Now let us see what Jesus was doing, and what he was seeking to impress upon his men. More than once we have seen that the prophets of Israel resorted to symbolic, dramatic actions when they felt that words were not enough. That is what Ahijah did when he rent the robe into twelve pieces and gave ten to Jeroboam in token that ten of the tribes would make him king (<a href='B:110 11:29-32'>1Ki 11:29-32</a>). That is what Jeremiah did when he made bonds and yokes and wore them in token of the coming servitude (<a href='B:300 27:1-22'>Jer 27:1-22</a>). That is what the prophet Hananiah did when he broke the yokes that Jeremiah wore (<a href='B:300 28:10-11'>Jer 28:10-11</a>). That is the kind of thing that Ezekiel was continually doing (<a href='B:330 4:1-8'>Eze 4:1-8</a>; <a href='B:330 5:1-4'>Eze 5:1-4</a>). It was as if words were easily forgotten, but a dramatic action would print itself on the memory.<p/>That is what Jesus did, and he allied this dramatic action with the ancient feast of his people so that it would be the more imprinted on the minds of his men. He said, "Look! Just as this bread is broken my body is broken for you! Just as this cup of red wine is poured out my blood is shed for you."<p/>What did he mean when he said that the cup stood for a new covenant? The word covenant is a common word in the Jewish religion. The basis of that religion was that God had entered into a covenant with Israel. The word means something like an arrangement, a bargain, a relationship. The acceptance of the old covenant is set out in <a href='B:20 24:3-8'>Exo 24:3-8</a>; and from that passage we see that the covenant was entirely dependent on Israel keeping the law. If the law was broken, the covenant was broken and the relationship between God and the nation shattered. It was a relationship entirely dependent on law and on obedience to law. God was judge. And since no man can keep the law the people were ever in default. But Jesus says, "I am introducing and ratifying a new covenant, a new kind of relationship between God and man. And it is not dependent on law, it is dependent on the blood that I will shed." That is to say, it is dependent solely on love. The new covenant was a relationship between man and God not dependent on law but on love. In other words Jesus says, "I am doing what I am doing to show you how much God loves you." Men are no longer simply under the law of God. Because of what Jesus did, they are forever within the love of God. That is the essence of what the sacrament says to us.<p/>We note one thing more. In the last sentence we see again the two things we have so often seen. Jesus was sure of two things. He knew he was to die, and he knew his Kingdom would come. He was certain of the Cross, but just as certain of the glory. And the reason was that he was just as certain of the love of God as he was of the sin of man; and he knew that in the end that love would conquer that sin.<p/><b>THE FAILURE OF FRIENDS</b> (<a href='B:480 14:27-31'>Mar 14:27-31</a>)


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 Jesus said to them, "You will all fall away from me, for it stands written, 'I will smite the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.' But after I have been raised to life again, I will go before you into Galilee." Peter said to him, "All the others may fail away from you, but I will not." Jesus said to him, "This is the truth I tell you--today, this night, before the cock crows twice you will deny me three times." Peter began to insist vehemently, "If I must die with you I will not deny you." So, too, they all said.<p/></i><p/>It is a tremendous thing about Jesus that there was nothing for which he was not prepared. The opposition, the misunderstanding, the enmity of the orthodox religious people, the betrayal by one of his own inner circle, the pain and the agony of the Cross--he was prepared for them all. But perhaps what hurt him most was the failure of his friends. It is when a man is up against it that he needs his friends most, and that was exactly when Jesus' friends left him all alone and let him down. There was nothing in the whole gamut of physical pain and mental torture that Jesus did not pass through.<p/>Sir Hugh Walpole wrote a great novel called Fortitude. It is the story of one called Peter, whose creed was, "It isn't life that matters, but the courage you bring to it." Life did everything that it possibly could to him. At the end, on his own mountain top, he heard a voice, "Blessed be pain and torment and every torture of the body. Blessed be all loss and the failure of friends and the sacrifice of love. Blessed be all failure and the ruin of every earthly hope. Blessed be all sorrow and torment, hardships, and endurances that demand courage. Blessed be these things--for of these things cometh the making of a man." Peter fell to praying, "Make of me a man...to be afraid of nothing, to be ready for everything. Love, friendship, success...to take it if it comes, to care nothing if these things are not for me. Make me brave. Make me brave."<p/>Jesus had supremely, more than anyone who ever lived, this quality of fortitude, this ability to remain erect no matter with what blows life assaulted him, this serenity when there was nothing but heartbreak behind and torture in front. Inevitably every now and then we find ourselves catching our breath at his sheer heroism.<p/>When Jesus foretold this tragic failure of loyalty, Peter could not believe that it would happen. In the days of the Stewart troubles they captured the Cock of the North, the Marquis of Huntly. They pointed at the block and the axe and told him that unless he abandoned his loyalty he would be executed then and there. His answer was, "You can take my head from my shoulders but you will never take my heart from my king." That is what Peter said that night.<p/>There is a lesson in the word that Jesus used for "fall away." The Greek verb is skandalizein (<a href='S:G4624'>G4624</a>), from skandalon (<a href='S:G4625'>G4625</a>) or skandalethron which meant the bait in a trap, the stick on to which the animal was lured and which snapped the trap when the animal stepped on it. So the word skandalizein (<a href='S:G4624'>G4624</a>) came to mean to entrap, or to trip up by some trick or guile. Peter was too sure. He had forgotten the traps that life can lay for the best of men. He had forgotten that the best of men can step on a slippery place and fall. He had forgotten his own human weakness and the strength of the devil's temptations. But there is one thing to be remembered about Peter--his heart was in the right place. Better a Peter with a flaming heart of love, even if that love did for a moment fail most shamefully, than a Judas with a cold heart of hate. Let that man condemn Peter who never broke a promise, who never was disloyal in thought or action to a pledge. Peter loved Jesus, and even if his love failed, it rose again.<p/><b>THY WILL BE DONE</b> (<a href='B:480 14:32-42'>Mar 14:32-42</a>)


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 They came to a place the name of which is Gethsemane. Jesus said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." He took Peter and James and John with him, and began to be in great distress and trouble of mind. He said to them, "My soul is sore grieved even to death. Stay here and watch." He went on a little farther and fell on the ground and prayed that, if it was possible, this hour might pass from him. He said, "Abba, Father, everything is possible to you. Take this cup from me--but not what I wish, but what you wish." He came and found them sleeping and he said to Peter, "Simon, are you sleeping? Could you not stay awake for one hour? Watch and pray lest you enter into some testing time. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." And again he went away and prayed in the same words. And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were weighed down with sleep. And they did not know how to answer him. And he came the third time and said to them, "Sleep on now. Take your rest. It is enough. The hour has come. See! The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us be going! He who betrays me has come!"<p/></i><p/>This is a passage we almost fear to read, for it seems to intrude into the private agony of Jesus.<p/>To have stayed in the upper room would have been dangerous. With the authorities on the watch for him, and with Judas bent on treachery, the upper room might have been raided at any time. But Jesus had another place to which to go. The fact that Judas knew to look for him in Gethsemane shows that Jesus was in the habit of going there. In Jerusalem itself there were no gardens. The city was too crowded, and there was a strange law that the city's sacred soil might not be polluted with manure for the gardens. But some of the rich people possessed private gardens out on the Mount of Olives where they took their rest. Jesus must have had some wealthy friend who gave him the privilege of using his garden at night.<p/>When Jesus went to Gethsemane there were two things he sorely desired. He wanted human fellowship and he wanted God's fellowship. "It is not good that the man should be alone, God said in the beginning. (<a href='B:10 2:18'>Gen 2:18</a>.) In time of trouble we want someone with us. We do not necessarily want him to do anything. We do not necessarily even want to talk to him or have him talk to us. We only want him there. Jesus was like that. It was strange that men who so short a time before had been protesting that they would die for him, could not stay awake for him one single hour. But none can blame them, for the excitement and the tension had drained their strength and their resistance.<p/>Certain things are clear about Jesus in this passage.<p/>(i) He did not want to die. He was thirty-three and no one wants to die with life just opening on to the best of the years. He had done so little and there was a world waiting to be saved. He knew what crucifixion was like and he shuddered away from it. He had to compel himself to go on--just as we have so often to do.<p/>(ii) He did not fully understand why this had to be. He only knew beyond a doubt that this was the will of God and that he must go on. Jesus, too, had to make the great venture of faith, he had to accept--as we so often have to do--what he could not understand.<p/>(iii) He submitted to the will of God. Abba (<a href='S:G5'>G5</a>) is the Aramaic for my father. It is that one word which made all the difference. Jesus was not submitting to a God who made a cynical sport of men. Hardy finishes his novel Tess, after telling of her tragic life, with the terrible sentence, "The President of the Immortals had finished his sport with Tess." But Jesus was not submitting to a God who was an iron fate.<p/>"But helpless pieces of the game he plays,<p/>Upon this chequer board of nights and days,<p/>Hither and thither moves and checks and slays--<p/>And one by one back in the closet lays."<p/>God was not like that. Even in this terrible hour, when he was making this terrible demand, God was father. When Richard Cameron, the covenanter, was killed, his head and hands were cut off by one Murray and taken to Edinburgh. "His father being in prison for the same cause, the enemy carried them to him, to add grief unto his former sorrow, and inquired if he knew them. Taking his son's head and hands, which were very fair (being a man of a fair complexion like himself) he kissed them and said, 'I know them--I know them. They are my son's--my own dear son's. It is the Lord. Good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me nor mine, but hath made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days.'" If we can call God father everything becomes bearable. Time and again we will not understand, but always we will be certain that "The Father's hand will never cause his child a needless tear." That is what Jesus knew. That is why he could go on--and it can be so with us.<p/>We must note how the passage ends. The traitor and his gang had arrived. What was Jesus' reaction? Not to run away, although even yet, in the night, it would have been easy to escape. His reaction was to face them. To the end he would neither turn aside nor turn back.<p/><b>THE ARREST</b> (<a href='B:480 14:43-50'>Mar 14:43-50</a>)


text:
 And immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve arrived, and with him a crowd with swords and cudgels from the chief priests, and the experts in the law, and the elders. The betrayer had given them this sign. "Whom I shall kiss, he said, "that is he. Seize him and take him away securely." So when he had come, immediately he stepped forward. "Rabbi!" he said--and kissed him as a lover would. They laid hands on him and seized him. One of those standing by drew his sword and struck the High Priest's servant and cut off his ear. Jesus said to them, "Have you come out with swords and cudgels to arrest me as you would come against a brigand? Daily I was with you teaching in the Temple precincts, and you did not seize me--but, let it be, that the scriptures may be fulfilled." And they all left him and fled.<p/></i><p/>Here is sheer drama and, even in Mark's economy of words, the characters stand out before us.<p/>(i) There is Judas, the traitor. He was aware that the people knew Jesus well enough by sight. But he felt that in the dim light of the garden, with the darkness of the trees lit in pools of light by the flare of the torches, they needed a definite indication of who they were to arrest. And so he chose that most terrible of signs--a kiss. It was customary to greet a Rabbi with a kiss. It was a sign of respect and affection for a well-loved teacher. But there is a dreadful thing here. When Judas says, "Whom I shall kiss, that is he, he uses the word philein (<a href='S:G5368'>G5368</a>) which is the ordinary word. But when it is said that he came forward and kissed Jesus the word is kataphilein (<a href='S:G2705'>G2705</a>). The kata- (<a href='S:G2596'>G2596</a>) is intensive and kataphilein (<a href='S:G2705'>G2705</a>) means to kiss as a lover kisses his beloved. The sign of the betrayal was not a mere formal kiss of respectful greeting. It was a lover's kiss. That is the grimmest and most awful thing in all the gospel story.<p/>(ii) There is the arresting mob. They came from the chief priests, the scribes and the elders. These were the three sections of the Sanhedrin and Mark means that they came from the Sanhedrin. Even under Roman jurisdiction the Sanhedrin had certain police rights and duties in Jerusalem and had its own police force. No doubt an assorted rabble had attached itself to them on the way. Somehow Mark manages to convey the wrought-up excitement of those who came to make the arrest. Maybe they had come prepared for bloodshed with nerves taut and tense. It is they who emanate terror--not Jesus.<p/>(iii) There is the man of the forlorn hope who drew his sword and struck one blow. John (<a href='B:500 18:10'>Joh 18:10</a>) tells us that it was Peter. It sounds like Peter, and Mark very likely omitted the name because it was not yet safe to write it down. In the scuffle no one saw who struck the blow; it was better that no one should know. But when John wrote forty years later it was then quite safe to write it down. It may be wrong to draw a sword and hack at a man, but somehow we are glad that there was one man there who, at least on the impulse of the moment, was prepared to strike a blow for Jesus.<p/>(iv) There are the disciples. Their nerve cracked. They could not face it. They were afraid that they too would share the fate of Jesus; and so they fled.<p/>(v) There is Jesus himself. The strange thing is that in ill this disordered scene Jesus was the one oasis of serenity. As we read the story it reads as if he, not the Sanhedrin police, was directing affairs. For him the struggle in the garden was over, and now there was the peace of the man who knows that he is following the will of God.<p/><b>A CERTAIN YOUNG MAN</b> (<a href='B:480 14:51-52'>Mar 14:51-52</a>)


text:
 And a certain young man was following him, clothed in a linen sheet over his naked body. And they tried to seize him, but he left the linen sheet and escaped naked.<p/></i><p/>These are two strange and fascinating verses. At first sight they seem completely irrelevant. They seem to add nothing to the narrative and yet there must be some reason for them being there.<p/>We saw in the introduction that Matthew and Luke used Mark as the basis of their work and that they include in their gospels practically everything that is in Mark. But they do not include these two verses. That would seem to show that this incident was interesting to Mark and not really interesting to anyone else. Why then was this incident so interesting to Mark that he felt he must include it? The most probable answer is that the young man was Mark himself, and that this is his way of saying, "I was there, without mentioning his own name at all.<p/>When we read Acts we find that the meeting place and head-quarters of the Jerusalem church was apparently in the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark (<a href='B:510 12:12'>Act 12:12</a>). If that be so, it is at least probable that the upper room in which the Last Supper was eaten was in that same house. There could be no more natural place than that to be the centre of the church. If we can assume that there are two possibilities.<p/>(i) It may be that Mark was actually present at the Last Supper. He was young, just a boy, and maybe no one really noticed him. But he was fascinated with Jesus and when the company went out into the dark, he slipped out after them when he ought to have been in bed, with only the linen sheet over his naked body. It may be that all the time Mark was there in the shadows listening and watching. That would explain where the Gethsemane narrative came from. If the disciples were all asleep how did anyone know about the struggle of soul that Jesus had there? It may be that the one witness was Mark as he stood silent in the shadows, watching with a boy's reverence the greatest hero he had ever known.<p/>(ii) From John's narrative we know that Judas left the company before the meal was fully ended (<a href='B:500 13:30'>Joh 13:30</a>). It may be that it was to the upper room that Judas meant to lead the Temple police so that they might secretly arrest Jesus. But when Judas came back with the police, Jesus and his disciples were gone. Naturally there was recrimination and argument. The uproar wakened Mark. He heard Judas propose that they should try the garden of Gethsemane. Quickly Mark wrapped his bed-sheet about him and sped through the night to the garden to warn Jesus. But he arrived too late, and in the scuffle that followed was very nearly arrested himself.<p/>Whatever may be true, we may take it as fairly certain that Mark put in these two verses because they were about himself He could never forget that night. He was too humble to put his own name in but in this way he wrote his signature, and said, to him who could read between the lines, "I, too, when I was a boy, was there."<p/><b>THE TRIAL</b> (<a href='B:480 14:53'>Mar 14:53</a> <b>;</b> <a href='B:480 14:55-65'>Mar 14:55-65</a>)<p/><i> 14:53,55-65 They took Jesus away to the High Priest, and all the chief priests and experts in the law and elders assembled with him.... The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were trying to find some evidence against Jesus, in order to put him to death, and they could not find any, for there were many who bore false witness against him, but their evidence did not agree. Some stood up and bore false witness against him. "We heard him saying, they said, "'I will destroy this Temple made with hands and in three days' time I will build another not made with hands'." But not even so did their evidence agree. So the High Priest stood up in the midst and questioned Jesus. "Do you give no answer?" he said. "What is the evidence that these men are alleging against you?" Jesus remained silent and gave no answer. Again the High Priest questioned him, and said to him, "Are you God's Anointed One, the Son of the Blessed One?" Jesus said, "I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated on the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven." The High Priest rent his garments. "What need, he said, "have we of witnesses? You have listened to blasphemy. How does it seem to you?" And they all adjudged him to be liable to death. And some began to spit upon him, and to cover his face, and to buffet him, and to say to him, "Prophesy!" And the servants received him with blows.<p/></i><p/>Things were moving quickly to their inevitable end.<p/>At this time the powers of the Sanhedrin were limited because the Romans were the rulers of the country. The Sanhedrin had full power over religious matters. It seems also to have had a certain amount of police court power. But it had no power to inflict the death penalty. If what Mark describes was a meeting of the Sanhedrin it must be compared to a Grand Jury. Its function was not to condemn, but to prepare a charge on which the criminal could be tried before the Roman governor.<p/>There is no doubt that in the trial of Jesus the Sanhedrin broke all its own laws. The regulations for the procedure of the Sanhedrin are in one of the tractates of the Mishnah. Naturally enough some of these regulations are rather ideals than actual practices but, even allowing for that, the whole procedure of this night was a series of flagrant injustices.<p/>The Sanhedrin was the supreme court of the Jews and was composed of seventy-one members. Within its membership there were Sadducees--the priestly classes were all Sadducees--Pharisees and Scribes, who were experts in the law, and respected men who were elders. It appears that any vacancies in the court were filled by co-option. The High Priest presided over the court. The court sat in a semi-circle in such a way that any member could see any other member. Facing it sat the students of the Rabbis. They were allowed to speak on behalf of the person on trial but not against him. The official meeting place of the Sanhedrin was the Hall of Hewn Stone which was within the Temple precincts, and the decisions of the Sanhedrin were not valid unless reached at a meeting held in that place. The court could not meet at night, nor could it meet at any of the great feasts. When evidence was taken, witnesses were examined separately and their evidence to be valid must agree in every detail. Each individual member of the Sanhedrin must give his verdict separately, beginning from the youngest and going on to the eldest. If the verdict was a verdict of death, a night must elapse before it was carried out, so that the court might have a chance to change its mind and its decision towards mercy.<p/>It can be seen that on point after point the Sanhedrin broke its own rules. It was not meeting in its own building. It was meeting at night. There is no word of individually given verdicts. A night was not allowed to elapse before the penalty of death was inflicted. In their eagerness to eliminate Jesus, the Jewish authorities did not hesitate to break their own laws.<p/>At first the court could not get even false witnesses to agree. The false witnesses accused Jesus of having said that he would destroy the Temple. It may well be that someone had overheard him speaking as he did in <a href='B:480 13:2'>Mar 13:2</a>, and had maliciously twisted the saying into a threat to destroy the Temple. There is an old legend which tells how the Sanhedrin could get plenty of the kind of evidence they did not want, for man after man came forward saying, "I was a leper and he cleansed me. I was blind and he made me able to see. I was deaf and he made me able to hear. I was lame and he made me able to walk. I was paralysed and he gave me back my strength."<p/>At last the High Priest took the matter into his own hands. When he did, he asked the very kind of question that the law completely forbade. He asked a leading question. It was forbidden to ask questions by answering which the person on trial might incriminate himself. No man could be asked to condemn himself, but that was the very question the High Priest asked. Bluntly he asked Jesus if he was the Messiah. Clearly Jesus felt that it was time that the whole wretched business was ended. Without hesitation he answered that he was. Here was a charge of blasphemy, insult against God. The Sanhedrin had what it wanted, a charge which merited the death penalty, and they were savagely content.<p/>Once again we see the two great characteristics of Jesus emerge.<p/>(i) We see his courage. He knew that to make that answer was to die, and yet unhesitatingly he made it. Had he denied the charges they would have been powerless to touch him.<p/>(ii) We see his confidence. Even with the Cross now a certainty, he still continued to speak with complete confidence of his ultimate triumph.<p/>Surely it is the most terrible of tragedies to see him who came to offer men love denied even bare justice, and humiliated by the crude and cruel horse-play of the Sanhedrin servants and guards.<p/><b>COURAGE AND COWARDICE</b> (<a href='B:480 14:54'>Mar 14:54</a> <b>;</b> <a href='B:480 14:66-72'>Mar 14:66-72</a>)<p/><i> 14:54,66-72 And Peter followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the High Priest's house, and he was sitting there with the servants, warming himself at the fire.... When Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the maidservants of the High Priest came up, and when she saw Peter warming himself, she looked closely at him. "You, too, she said, "were with the Nazarene, with Jesus." He denied it. "I do not know, he said, "or understand what you are saying." He went out into the porch, and the cock crew. The maidservant saw him and again began to say to the bystanders, "This man was one of them." But he again denied it. Soon afterwards the bystanders said to Peter, "In truth you are one of them, for you are a Galilaean." He began to curse and to swear, "I do not know the man you are talking about." And immediately cockcrow sounded. And Peter remembered the word, how Jesus had said to him, "Before the cock crow twice you will deny me three times." And he flung his cloak about his head and wept.<p/></i><p/>Sometimes we tell this story in such a way as to do Peter far less than justice. The thing we so often fail to recognize is that up to the very last Peter's career this night had been one of fantastically reckless courage. He had begun by drawing his sword in the garden with the reckless courage of a man prepared to take on a whole mob by himself. In that scuffle he had wounded the servant of the High Priest. Common prudence would have urged that Peter should lie very low. The last place anyone would have dreamed that he would go to would be the courtyard of the High Priest's house--yet that is precisely where he did go. That in itself was sheer audacity. It may be that the others had fled, but Peter was keeping his word. Even if the others had gone he would stick to Jesus.<p/>Then the queer mixture of human nature emerged. he was sitting by the fire, for the night was cold. No doubt he was huddled in his cloak. Maybe someone poked the fire or flung a fresh log upon it, and it flared up with a fitful flame and Peter was recognized. Straightway he denied all connection with Jesus. But--and here is the forgotten point--any prudent man would then have left that courtyard as fast as his legs could carry him--but not Peter. The same thing happened again. Again Peter denied Jesus and again he would not go. It happened once more. Again Peter denied Jesus, Peter did not curse Jesus' name. What he did was to swear he did not know Jesus and to call down curses on himself if he was not telling the truth. Still it seems he did not mean to move. But something else happened.<p/>Very probably it was this. The Roman night was divided into four watches from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. At the end of the third watch, at three o'clock in the morning, the guard was changed. When the guard was changed there was a bugle call which was called the gallicinium, which is the Latin for the cockcrow. Most likely what happened was that as Peter spoke his third denial, the clear note of the bugle call rang out over the silent city and smote on Peter's ear. He remembered and his heart broke.<p/>Make no mistake--Peter fell to a temptation which would have come only to a man of fantastic courage. It ill becomes prudent and safety-seeking men to criticize Peter for falling to a temptation which would never, in the same circumstances, have come to them at all. Every man has his breaking-point. Peter reached his here, but nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of every thousand would have reached theirs long before. We would do well to be amazed at Peter's courage rather than to be shocked at his fall.<p/>But there is another thing. There is only one source from which this story could have come--and that is Peter himself. We saw in the introduction that Mark's gospel is the preaching material of Peter. That is to say, over and over again Peter must have told the story of his own denial. "That is what I did, he must have said, "and this amazing Jesus never stopped loving me."<p/>There was an evangelist called Brownlow North. He was a man of God, but in his youth he had lived a wild life. One Sunday he was to preach in Aberdeen. Before he entered the pulpit a letter was handed to him. The writer recounted a shameful incident in Brownlow North's life before he became a Christian and stated that if he dared to preach he would rise in the church and publicly proclaim what once he had done. Brownlow North took the letter into the pulpit with him. He read it to the congregation. He told them that it was perfectly true. Then he told them how through Christ he had been forgiven, how he had been enabled to overcome himself and put the past behind him, how through Christ he was a new creature. He used his own shame as a magnet to draw men to Christ. That is what Peter did. He told men, "I hurt him and I let him down like that, and still he loved and forgave me--and he can do the same for you."<p/>When we read this passage with understanding, the story of Peter's cowardice becomes an epic of courage and the story of his shame becomes a tale of glory, 


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 Immediately, early in the morning, the chief priests, together with the elders and the experts in the law--that is to say, the whole Sanhedrin--held a consultation. They bound Jesus and took him away and handed him over to Pilate. Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "It is you who say so." The chief priests made many accusations against him. Pilate again questioned him, "Have you no answer to make?" he said. "See how many accusations they have made against you." Jesus answered nothing further, and Pilate was amazed.<p/></i><p/>As soon as it was light, the Sanhedrin met to confirm the conclusions they had arrived at during their meeting in the night. They themselves had no power to carry out the death penalty. That had to be imposed by the Roman governor and carried out by the Roman authorities.<p/>It is from Luke that we learn how deep and determined the bitter malice of the Jews was. As we have seen, the charge at which they had arrived was one of blasphemy, of insulting God. But that was not the charge on which they brought Jesus before Pilate. They knew well that Pilate would have had nothing to do with what he would have considered a Jewish religious argument. When they brought Jesus to him they charged him with perverting the people, forbidding them to give tribute to Caesar and calling himself a king (<a href='B:490 23:1-2'>Luk 23:1-2</a>). They had to evolve a political charge or Pilate would not have listened. They knew the charge was a lie--and so did Pilate.<p/>Pilate asked Jesus, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus gave him a strange answer. he said, "It is you who say so." Jesus did not say yes or no. What he did say was, "I may have claimed to be the King of the Jews, but you know very well that the interpretation that my accusers are putting on that claim is not my interpretation. I am no political revolutionary. My kingdom is a kingdom of love." Pirate knew that perfectly well. Pilate went on to question Jesus more, and the Jewish authorities went on to multiply their charges--and Jesus remained completely silent.<p/>There is a time when silence is more eloquent than words, for silence can say things that words can never say.<p/>(i) There is the silence of wondering admiration. It is a compliment for any performance or oration to be greeted with thunderous applause, but it is a still greater compliment for it to be greeted with a hushed silence which knows that applause would be out of place. It is a compliment to be praised or thanked in words, but it is a still greater compliment to receive a look of the eyes which plainly says there are no words to be found.<p/>(ii) There is the silence of contempt. It is possible to greet someone's statements or arguments or excuses with a silence which shows they are not worth answering. Instead of answering someone's protestations the listener may turn on his heel and contemptuously leave them be.<p/>(iii) There is the silence of fear. A man may remain silent for no other reason than that he is afraid to speak. The cowardice of his soul may stop him saying the things he knows he ought to say. Fear may gag him into a shameful silence.<p/>(iv) There is the silence of the heart that is hurt. When a person has been really wounded he does not break into protests and recriminations and angry words. The deepest sorrow is a dumb sorrow, which is past anger and past rebuke and past anything that speech can say, and which can only silently look its grief.<p/>(v) There is the silence of tragedy, and that is silent because there is nothing to be said. That was why Jesus was silent. He knew there could be no bridge between himself and the Jewish leaders. He knew that there was nothing in Pilate to which he could ultimately appeal. He knew that the lines of communication were broken. The hatred of the Jews was an iron curtain which no words could penetrate. The cowardice of Pilate in face of the mob was a barrier no words could pierce. It is a terrible thing when a man's heart is such that even Jesus knows it is hopeless to speak. God save us from that!<p/><b>THE CHOICE OF THE MOB</b> (<a href='B:480 15:6-15'>Mar 15:6-15</a>)


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 At the time of the Feast, it was the custom for the governor to release to the people a prisoner, whom they were accustomed to choose. There was a man called Barabbas, confined with the revolutionaries, who had committed murder during the insurrection. The crowd approached Pilate's judgment seat and began to request that he should carry out the customary procedure for them. Pilate answered, "Do you wish me to release to you the King of the Jews?" For he knew that the chief priests had handed him over to him through sheer malice. The chief priests stirred up the mob to demand the release of Barabbas all the more. Pilate again asked them, "What shall I do to the man you call the King of the Jews?" Again they shrieked, "Crucify him!" Pilate said to them, "What harm has he done?" They shrieked the more vehemently, "Crucify him!" Pilate wished to please the mob, and he released Barabbas for them, and, when he had scourged Jesus, he handed him over to them to be crucified.<p/></i><p/>Of Barabbas we know nothing other than what we read in the gospel story. He was not a thief, he was a brigand. He was no petty pilferer but a bandit, and there must have been a rough audacity about him that appealed to the crowd. Perhaps we may guess what he was. Palestine was filled with insurrections. It was an inflammable land. In particular there was one group of Jews called the Sicarii (<a href='S:G4607'>G4607</a>), which means the dagger-bearers, who were violent, fanatical nationalists. They were pledged to murder and assassination. They carried their daggers beneath their cloaks and used them as they could. It is very likely that Barabbas was a man like that, and, thug though he was, he was a brave man, a patriot according to his lights, and it is understandable that he was popular with the mob.<p/>People have always felt it a mystery that less than a week after the crowd were shouting a welcome when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, they were now shrieking for his crucifixion. There is no real mystery. The reason is quite simply that this was a different crowd. Think of the arrest. It was deliberately secret. True, the disciples fled and must have spread the news, but they could not have known that the Sanhedrin was going to violate its own laws and carry out a travesty of a trial by night. There can have been very few of Jesus' supporters in that crowd.<p/>Who then were there? Think again. The crowd knew that there was this custom whereby a prisoner was released at the Passover time. It may well be that this was a crowd which had assembled with the deliberate intention of demanding the release of Barabbas. They were in fact a mob of Barabbas' supporters. When they saw the possibility that Jesus might be released and not Barabbas they went mad. To the chief priests this was a heaven-sent opportunity. Circumstances had played into their hands. They fanned the popular clamour for Barabbas and found it easy, for it was the release of Barabbas that that crowd had come to claim. It was not that the crowd was fickle. It was that it was a different crowd.<p/>Nonetheless, they had a choice to make. Confronted with Jesus and Barabbas, they chose Barabbas.<p/>(i) They chose lawlessness instead of law. They chose the law-breaker instead of Jesus. One of the New Testament words for sin is anomia (<a href='S:G458'>G458</a>), which means lawlessness. In the human heart there is a streak which resents law, which desires to do as it likes, which wants to smash the confining barriers and kick over the traces and refuse all discipline. There is something of that in every man. Kipling makes the old soldier say in Mandalay:<p/>"Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the<p/>worst,<p/>Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a<p/>thirst."<p/>There are times when most of us wish there were no Ten Commandments. The mob was the representative of men when it chose lawlessness instead of law.<p/>(ii) They chose war instead of peace. they chose the man of blood instead of the Prince of Peace. In almost three thousand years of history there have been less than one hundred and thirty years where there has not been a war raging somewhere. Men in their incredible folly have persisted in trying to settle things by war which settles nothing. The mob were doing what men have so often done when they chose the warrior and rejected the man of peace.<p/>(iii) They chose hatred and violence instead of love. Barabbas and Jesus stood for two different ways. Barabbas stood for the heart of hate, the stab of the dagger, the violence of bitterness. Jesus stood for the way of love. As so often has happened, hate reigned supreme in the hearts of men, and love was rejected. Men insisted on taking their own way to conquest, and refused to see that the only true conquest was the conquest of love.<p/>There can be hidden tragedy in a word. "When he had scourged him" is one word in the Greek. The Roman scourge was a terrible thing. The criminal was bent and bound in such a way that his back was exposed. The scourge was a long leathern thong, studded here and there with sharpened pieces of lead and bits of bone. It literally tore a man's back to ribbons. Sometimes it tore a man's eye out. Some men died under it. Some men emerged from the ordeal raving mad. Few retained consciousness through it. That is what they inflicted on Jesus.<p/><b>THE SOLDIERS' MOCKERY</b> (<a href='B:480 15:16-20'>Mar 15:16-20</a>)


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 The soldiers led Jesus away into the hall, which is the Praetorium, and they called together the whole company. They clad him in a purple robe, and they plaited a crown of thorns and put it on him, and they began to salute him, "Hail! King of the Jews!" And they struck his head with a reed, and they spat on him, and they knelt down before him and worshipped him. And after they had made sport of him, they took off the purple robe, and clad him in his own clothes. And they led him away to crucify him.<p/></i><p/>The Roman ritual of condemnation was fixed. The judge said Illum duci ad crucem placet), "The sentence is that this man should be taken to a cross." Then he turned to the guard and said, I, miles, expedi crucem, "Go, soldier, and prepare the cross." It was when the cross was being prepared that Jesus was in the hands of the soldiers. The Praetorium was the residence of the governor, his headquarters, and the soldiers involved would be the headquarters cohort of the guard. We would do well to remember that Jesus had already undergone the agony of scourging before this horse-play of the soldiers began.<p/>It may well be that of all that happened to him this hurt Jesus least. The actions of the Jews had been venomous with hatred. The consent of Pilate had been a cowardly evasion of responsibility. There was cruelty in the action of the soldiers but no malice. To them Jesus was only another man for a cross, and they carried out their barrack-room pantomime of royalty and worship, not with any malice, but as a coarse jest.<p/>It was the beginning of much mockery to come. Always the Christian was liable to be regarded as a jest. Scribbled on the walls of Pompeii, whose walls are still chalked with coarse jests to-day, there is a picture of a Christian kneeling before an ass and below it is scrawled the words, "Anaximenes worships his God." If ever people make a jest of our Christianity, it will help to remember that they did it to Jesus in a way that is worse than anything likely to happen to us.<p/><b>THE CROSS</b> (<a href='B:480 15:21-28'>Mar 15:21-28</a>)


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 And they impressed into service a man called Simon of Cyrene, who was passing by, on his way in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, and they made him carry his Cross. So they brought him to the place Golgotha, which means the place of a skull. They offered him wine mingled with myrrh, but he would not take it. They crucified him. And they divided out his garments, throwing dice for them to decide who should take what. It was nine o'clock in the morning when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him was written on the Cross--"The King of the Jews." With him they crucified two brigands, one on his right hand and one on his left.<p/></i><p/>The routine of crucifixion did not alter. When the cross was prepared the criminal had himself to carry it to the place of execution. He was placed in the middle of a hollow square of four soldiers. In front marched a soldier carrying a board stating the crime of which the prisoner was guilty. The board was afterwards affixed to the cross. They took not the shortest but the longest way to the place of execution. They followed every possible street and lane so that as many as possible should see and take warning. When they reached the place of crucifixion, the cross was laid flat on the ground. The prisoner was stretched upon it and his hands nailed to it. The feet were not nailed but only loosely bound. Between the prisoner's legs projected a ledge of wood called the saddle, to take his weight when the cross was raised upright--otherwise the nails would have torn through the flesh of the hands. The cross was then lifted upright and set in its socket--and the criminal was left to die. The cross was not tall. It was shaped like the letter T, and had no top piece at all. Sometimes prisoners hung for as long as a week, slowly dying of hunger and of thirst, suffering sometimes to the point of actual madness.<p/>This must have been a grim day for Simon of Cyrene. Palestine was an occupied country and any man might be impressed into the Roman service for any task. The sign of impressment was a tap on the shoulder with the flat of a Roman spear. Simon was from Cyrene in Africa. No doubt he had come from that far off land for the Passover. No doubt he had scraped and saved for many years in order to come. No doubt he was gratifying the ambition of a lifetime to eat one Passover in Jerusalem. Then this happened to him.<p/>At the moment Simon must have bitterly resented it. He must have hated the Romans, and hated this criminal whose cross he was being forced to carry. But we may legitimately speculate what happened to Simon. It may be that it was his intention when he got to Golgotha to fling the cross down on the ground and hasten as quickly as he could from the scene. But perhaps it did not turn out that way. Perhaps he lingered on because something about Jesus fascinated him.<p/>He is described as the father of Alexander and Rufus. The people for whom the gospel was written must have been meant to recognize him by this description. It is most likely that Mark's gospel was first written for the Church at Rome. Now let us turn to Paul's letter to Rome and read <a href='B:520 16:13'>Rom 16:13</a>. "Greet Rufus, eminent in the Lord, also his mother and mine." Rufus was so choice a Christian that he was eminent in the Lord. The mother of Rufus was so dear to Paul that he could call her his own mother. Things must have happened to Simon on Golgotha.<p/>Now turn to <a href='B:510 13:1'>Act 13:1</a>. There is a list of the men of Antioch who sent Paul and Barnabas out on that epoch-making first mission to the Gentiles. The name of one is Simeon that was called Niger. Simeon is another form of Simon. Niger was the regular name for a man of swarthy skin who came from Africa, and Cyrene is in Africa. Here it may well be that we are meeting Simon again. Maybe Simon's experience on the way to Golgotha bound his heart forever to Jesus. Maybe it made him a Christian. Maybe in the after days he was a leader in Antioch and instrumental in the first mission to the Gentiles. Maybe it was because Simon was compelled to carry the Cross of Jesus that the first mission to the Gentiles took place. That would mean that we are Christians because one day a Passover pilgrim from Cyrene, to his bitter resentment at the moment, was impressed by a nameless Roman officer to carry his cross for Jesus.<p/>They offered Jesus drugged wine and he would not drink it. A company of pious and merciful women in Jerusalem came to every crucifixion and gave the criminals a drink of drugged wine to ease the terrible pain. They offered this to Jesus--and he refused it. When Dr. Johnson was ill with his last illness he asked his doctor to tell him honestly if he could recover. The doctor said he could not without a miracle. "Then," said Johnson, "I will take no more physic, not even opiates, for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded." Jesus was resolved to taste death at its bitterest and to go to God with open eyes.<p/>The soldiers diced for his clothes. We have seen how the prisoner was marched to the place of crucifixion amid the four soldiers. These soldiers had as their perquisite the clothes of the criminal. Now a Jew wore five articles of clothing--the inner robe, the outer robe, the sandals, the girdle and the turban. When the four lesser things had been assigned, that left the great outer robe. It would have been useless to cut it up, and so the soldiers gambled for it in the shadow of the Cross.<p/>Jesus was crucified between two thieves. It was a symbol of his whole life that even at the end he companied with sinners.<p/><b>THE LIMITLESS LOVE</b> (<a href='B:480 15:29-32'>Mar 15:29-32</a>)


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 Those who were passing by hurled their insults at him, wagging their heads at him. "Aha!" they said, "you who are going to pull down the Temple and build it in three days, come down from the Cross and save yourself!" Even so the chief priests jested with each other, with the experts in the law. "He saved others, they said, "He cannot save himself. Let this Anointed One of God, this King of Israel, come down from the Cross, so that we may see it and believe." And those who were crucified with him flung their taunts at him.<p/></i><p/>The Jewish leaders flung one last challenge at Jesus. "Come down from the Cross, they said, "and we will believe in you." It was precisely the wrong challenge. As General Booth said long ago, "It is because Jesus did not come down from the Cross that we believe in him." The death of Jesus was absolutely necessary and the reason was this. Jesus came to tell men of the love of God; more, he was himself the incarnate love of God. If he had refused the Cross or if in the end he had come down from the Cross, it would have meant that there was a limit to God's love, that there was something which that love was not prepared to suffer for men, that there was a line beyond which it would not go. But, Jesus went the whole way and died on the Cross and this means that there is literally no limit to God's love, that there is nothing in all the universe which that love is not prepared to suffer for men, that there is nothing, not even death on a cross, which it will refuse to bear for men.<p/>When we look at the Cross, Jesus is saying to us, "God loves you like that, with a love that is limitless, a love that will bear every suffering earth has to offer."<p/><b>TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH</b> (<a href='B:480 15:33-41'>Mar 15:33-41</a>)


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 When it was twelve o'clock midday, there came a darkness over the whole earth, and it lasted until three o'clock in the afternoon. And at three o'clock Jesus cried with a great voice, "Eloi, Eloi lama sabachthani?" which means, "My God! My God! Why have you abandoned me?" When certain of the bystanders heard it, they said, "See! He is calling for Elijah!" Someone ran and soaked a sponge in vinegar and gave him a drink. "Let be!" he said, "till we see if Elijah is going to come and take him down." Jesus uttered a great shout--and died. And the veil of the Temple was rent in two from top to bottom. When the centurion who was standing opposite him saw that he died like this, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God." There were some women watching from a distance, amongst whom were Mary of Magdala, and Mary the mother of James the little and of Joses, and Salome. They had accompanied him in Galilee and had attended to his needs. And there were many others who had come up with him to Jerusalem.<p/></i><p/>Here comes the last scene of all, a scene so terrible that the sky was unnaturally darkened and it seemed that even nature could not bear to look upon what was happening. Let us look at the various people in this scene.<p/>(i) There was Jesus. Two things Jesus said.<p/>(a) He uttered the terrible cry, "My God! My God! Why have you abandoned me?" There is a mystery behind that cry which we cannot penetrate. Maybe it was like this. Jesus had taken this life of ours upon him. He had done our work and faced our temptations and borne our trials. He had suffered all that life could bring. He had known the failure of friends, the hatred of foes, the malice of enemies. He had known the most searing pain that life could offer. Up to this moment Jesus had gone through every experience of life except one--he had never known the consequence of sin. Now if there is one thing sin does, it separates us from God. It puts between us and God a barrier like an unscalable wall. That was the one human experience through which Jesus had never passed, because he was without sin.<p/>It may be that at this moment that experience came upon him--not because he had sinned, but because in order to be identified completely with our humanity he had to go through it. In this terrible, grim, bleak moment Jesus really and truly identified himself with the sin of man. Here we have the divine paradox--Jesus knew what it was to be a sinner. And this experience must have been doubly agonizing for Jesus, because he had never known what it was to be separated by this barrier from God.<p/>That is why he can understand our situation so well. That is why we need never fear to go to him when sin cuts us off from God. Because he has gone through it, he can help others who are going through it. There is no depth of human experience which Christ has not plumbed.<p/>(b) There was the great shout. Both Matthew (<a href='B:470 27:50'>Mat 27:50</a>) and Luke (<a href='B:490 23:46'>Luk 23:46</a>) tell of it. John does not mention the shout but he tells us that Jesus died having said, "It is finished." (<a href='B:500 19:30'>Joh 19:30</a>.) In the original that would be one word; and that one word was the great shout. "Finished!" Jesus died with the cry of triumph on his lips, his task accomplished, his work completed, his victory won. After the terrible dark there came the light again, and he went home to God a victor triumphant.<p/>(ii) There was the bystander who wished to see if Elijah would come. He had a kind of morbid curiosity in the face of the Cross. The whole terrible scene did not move him to awe or reverence or even pity. He wanted to experiment while Jesus died.<p/>(iii) There was the centurion. A hard-bitten Roman soldier, he was the equivalent of a regimental sergeant-major. He had fought in many a campaign and he had seen many a man die. But he had never seen a man die like this and he was sure that Jesus was the Son of God. If Jesus had lived on and taught and healed he might have attracted many, but it is the Cross which speaks straight to the hearts of men.<p/>(iv) There were the women in the distance. They were bewildered, heart-broken, drenched in sorrow--but they were there. They loved so much that they could not leave him. Love clings to Christ even when the intellect cannot understand. It is only love which can give us a hold on Christ that even the most bewildering experiences can not break.<p/>There is one other thing to note. "The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom." This was the curtain which shut off the Holy of Holies, into which no man might go. Symbolically that tells us two things.<p/>(a) The way to God was now wide open. Into the Holy of Holies only the High Priest could go, and he only once a year on the day of Atonement. But now, the curtain was torn and the way to God was wide open to every man.<p/>(b) Within the Holy of Holies dwelt the very essence of God. Now with the death of Jesus the curtain which hid God was torn and men could see him face to face. No longer was God hidden. No longer need men guess and grope. Men could look at Jesus and say, "That is what God is like. God loves me like that."<p/><b>THE MAN WHO GAVE JESUS A TOMB</b> (<a href='B:480 15:42-47'>Mar 15:42-47</a>)


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 When it was now evening, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathaea, a respected member of the council, and a man who was himself waiting for the Kingdom of God, ventured to go to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was amazed that he was already dead. He summoned the centurion, and asked if he had been long dead. And when he had learned the facts from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph. And Joseph bought fine linen, and be took him down from the Cross and wrapped him in the linen, and put him in a tomb which had been hewn out of rock, and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. And Mary of Magdala and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he had been laid.<p/></i><p/>Jesus died at three o'clock on the Friday afternoon and the next day was the Sabbath. We have already seen that the new day started at 6 p.m. Therefore when Jesus died, it was already the time of preparation for the Sabbath, and there was very little time to waste, for after 6 p.m. the Sabbath law would operate and no work could be done.<p/>Joseph of Arimathaea acted quickly. It frequently happened that the bodies of criminals were never buried at all, but were simply taken down and left for the vultures and the scavenging wild dogs to deal with. In fact it has been suggested that Golgotha may have been called the place of a skull because it was littered with skulls from previous crucifixions. Joseph went to Pilate. It often happened that criminals hung for days on their crosses before they died, and Pilate was amazed that Jesus was dead only six hours after he had been crucified. But when he had checked the facts with the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph.<p/>Joseph is a curious study.<p/>(i) It may well be that it is from Joseph that all the information came about the trial before the Sanhedrin. Certainly none of the disciples was there. The information must have come from some member of the Sanhedrin, and it is probable that Joseph was the one. If that is so he had a very real share in the writing of the gospel story.<p/>(ii) There is a certain tragedy about Joseph. He was a member of the Sanhedrin and yet we have no hint that he spoke one word in Jesus' favour or intervened in any way on his behalf. Joseph is the man who gave Jesus a tomb when he was dead but was silent when he was alive. It is one of the commonest tragedies of life that we keep our wreaths for people's graves and our praises until they are dead. It would the infinitely better to give them some of these flowers and some of these words of gratitude when they are still alive.<p/>(iii) But we cannot blame Joseph overmuch, for he was another of those people for whom the Cross did what not even the life of Jesus could do. When he had seen Jesus alive, he had felt his attraction but had gone no further. But when he saw Jesus die--and he must have been present at the crucifixion--his heart was broken in love. First the centurion, then Joseph--it is an amazing thing how soon Jesus' words came true that when he was lifted up from the earth he would draw all men to himself. (<a href='B:500 12:32'>Joh 12:32</a>.) 


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 When the Sabbath had passed, Mary of Magdala and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices to go and anoint his body. Very early in the morning on the first day of the week, when the sun was rising, they went to the tomb. They kept saying to each other, "Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?" They looked up and they saw that the stone had been rolled away, for it was very large. And they went into the tomb, and they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long, white robe. They were utterly amazed. He said to them, "Do not be amazed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He is risen. He is not here. See! There is the place where they laid him. But go! Tell his disciples and Peter, 'He goes before you into Galilee. There you will see him as he told you'." And they went out and fled from the tomb, for fear and astonishment gripped them. And they told no one anything for they were afraid.<p/></i><p/>There had not been time to render the last services to the body of Jesus. The Sabbath had intervened and the women who wished to anoint the body had not been able to do so. As early as possible after the Sabbath had passed, they set out to perform this sad task.<p/>They were worried about one thing. Tombs had no doors. When the word door is mentioned it really means opening. In front of the opening was a groove, and in the groove ran a circular stone as big as a cart-wheel; and the women knew that it was quite beyond their strength to move a stone like that. But when they reached the tomb, the stone was rolled away, and inside was a messenger who gave them the unbelievable news that Jesus had risen from the dead.<p/>One thing is certain--if Jesus had not risen from the dead, we would never have heard of him. The attitude of the women was that they had come to pay the last tribute to a dead body. The attitude of the disciples was that everything had finished in tragedy. By far the best proof of the Resurrection is the existence of the Christian church. Nothing else could have changed sad and despairing men and women into people radiant with joy and flaming with courage. The Resurrection is the central fact of the whole Christian faith. Because we believe in the Resurrection certain things follow.<p/>(i) Jesus is not a figure in a book but a living presence. It is not enough to study the story of Jesus like the life of any other great historical figure. We may begin that way but we must end by meeting him.<p/>(ii) Jesus is not a memory but a presence. The dearest memory fades. The Greeks had a word to describe time meaning time which wipes all things out. Long since, time would have wiped out the memory of Jesus unless he had been a living presence forever with us.<p/>"And warm, sweet, tender, even yet<p/>A present help is he;<p/>And faith has still its Olivet,<p/>And love its Galilee."<p/>Jesus is not someone to discuss so much as someone to meet.<p/>(iii) The Christian life is not the life of a man who knows about Jesus, but the life of a man who knows Jesus. There is all the difference in the world between knowing about a person and knowing a person. Most people know about Queen Elizabeth or the President of the United States but not so many know them. The greatest scholar in the world who knows everything about Jesus is less than the humblest Christian who knows him.<p/>(iv) There is an endless quality about the Christian faith. It should never stand still. Because our Lord is a living Lord there are new wonders and new truths waiting to be discovered all the time.<p/>But the most precious thing in this passage is in two words which are in no other gospel. "Go," said the messenger. "Tell his disciples and Peter." How that message must have cheered Peter's heart when he received it! He must have been tortured with the memory of his disloyalty, and suddenly there came a special message for him. It was characteristic of Jesus that he thought, not of the wrong Peter had done him but of the remorse he was undergoing. Jesus was far more eager to comfort the penitent sinner than to punish the sin. Someone has said, "The most precious thing about Jesus is the way in which he trusts us on the field of our defeat."<p/><b>THE COMMISSION OF THE CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:480 16:9-20'>Mar 16:9-20</a>)


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 When he had risen early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary of Magdala, out of whom he had cast seven devils. She went and told the news to those who had been with him, who were mourning and weeping. When they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe.<p/>After that he appeared in another form to two of them as they walked, as they were on their way to the country. And they went away and told the news to the rest, but they did not believe it.<p/>Later he appeared to the eleven as they were sitting at meat and rebuked them for their disbelief and the obtuseness of their minds, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. He said to them, "Go into the whole world and preach the goodness. He who believes and is baptized will be saved. He who does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe. By my name they will cast out devils. They will speak with new tongues. They will lift serpents, and even if they drink any deadly thing it will not hurt them. They will place their hands on the infirm and they will be well."<p/>So the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.<p/>They went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them, and confirmed their message by the signs that accompanied it.<p/></i><p/>As we saw in the introduction, Mark's gospel really stops at <a href='B:480 16:8'>Mar 16:8</a>. We have only to read this passage to see how different it is from the rest of the gospel and it appears in none of the great manuscripts of the gospel. It is a later summary which replaces the ending which either Mark did not live to write or which at some time went astray.<p/>Its great interest is the picture of the duty of the church that it gives to us. The man who wrote this concluding section obviously believed that the church had certain tasks committed to it by Jesus.<p/>(i) The church has a preaching task. It is the duty of the church, and that means that it is the duty of every Christian, to tell the story of the good news of Jesus to those who have never heard it. The Christian duty is to be the herald of Jesus.<p/>(ii) The church has a healing task. Here is a fact we have seen again and again. Christianity is concerned with men's bodies as well as men's minds. Jesus wished to bring health to the body and health to the soul.<p/>(iii) The church has a source of power. We need not take everything literally. We need not think that the Christian is literally to have the power to lift venomous snakes and drink poisonous liquids and take no harm. But at the back of this picturesque language is the conviction that the Christian is filled with a power to cope with life that others do not possess.<p/>(iv) The church is never left alone to do its work. Always Christ works with it and in it and through it. The Lord of the church is still in the church and is still the Lord of power.<p/>And so the gospel finishes with the message that the Christian life is lived in the presence and the power of him who was crucified and rose again.<p/>FURTHER READING<p/>Mark<p/>P. Carrington, According to Mark (E)<p/>R. A. Cole, The Gospel According to St Mark (TC; E)<p/>C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to St. Mark (CGT; G)<p/>F. C. Grant, The Earliest Gospel (E)<p/>A. M. Hunter, St Mark (Tch; E)<p/>Sherman E. Johnson, The Gospel According to St Mark (ACB; E)<p/>R. H. Lightfoot, The Gospel Message of St Mark (E)<p/>A. Menzies, The Earliest Gospel (G)<p/>D. E. Nineham, The Gospel of St Mark (PC; E)<p/>A. E. J. Rawlinson, The Gospel According to St Mark (WC; E)<p/>H. B. Swete, The Gospel According to St Mark (MmC; G)<p/>V. Taylor, The Gospel According to St Mark (MmC; G)<p/>C. H. Turner, St Mark (E)<p/>Abbreviations<p/>ACB: A. and C. Black New Testament Commentary<p/>CGT: Cambridge Greek Text<p/>MmC: Macmillan Commentary<p/>PC: Pelican New Testament Commentary<p/>TC: Tyndale Commentary<p/>Tch: Torch Commentary<p/>WC: Westminster Commentary<p/>E: English Text<p/>G: Greek Text 


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 Since many have set their hands to the task of drawing up an account of the events which were completed amongst us, telling the story just as those who were the original eye-witnesses and who became the servants of the word handed it down to us, I too made up my mind to carry out a careful investigation of all things from the beginning, and to write to you, Theophilus, your excellency, an orderly account of them, so that you might have in your mind a full and reliable account of the things in which you have been instructed.<p/></i><p/>Luke's introduction is unique in the first three gospels because it is the only place where the author steps out upon the stage and uses the pronoun "I." There are three things to note in this passage.<p/>(i) It is the best bit of Greek in the New Testament. Luke uses here the very form of introduction which the great Greek historians all used. Herodotus begins, "These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus." A much later historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, tells us at the beginning of his history, "Before beginning to write I gathered information, partly from the lips of the most learned men with whom I came into contact, and partly from histories written by Romans of whom they spoke with praise." So Luke, as he began his story in the most sonorous Greek, followed the highest models he could find.<p/>It is as if Luke said to himself, "I am writing the greatest story in the world and nothing but the best is good enough for it." Some of the ancient manuscripts are very beautiful productions, written in silver ink on purple vellum; and often the scribe, when he came to the name of God or of Jesus, wrote it in gold. Dr. Boreham tells of an old workman who, every Friday night, took the newest and shiniest coins out of his pay packet for Sunday's offering in church. The historian, the scribe and the workman were all filled with the same idea--only the best is good enough for Jesus. They always gave their utmost for the highest.<p/>(ii) It is most significant that Luke was not satisfied with anyone else's story of Christ. He must have his own. Real religion is never a second-hand thing. It is a personal discovery. Professor Arthur Gossip of Trinity College, Glasgow used to say that the four gospels were important, but beyond them all came the gospel of personal experience. Luke had to rediscover Jesus Christ for himself.<p/>(iii) There is no passage of the Bible which sheds such a floodlight on the doctrine of the inspiration of scripture. No one would deny that the gospel of Luke is an inspired document; and yet Luke begins by affirming that it is the product of the most careful historical research. God's inspiration does not come to the man who sits with folded hands and lazy mind and only waits, but to the man who thinks and seeks and searches. True inspiration comes when the seeking mind of man joins with the revealing Spirit of God. The word of God is given, but it is given to the man who is seeking for it. "Seek and you shall find" (<a href='B:470 7:7'>Mat 7:7</a>).<p/><b>A SON IS PROMISED</b> (<a href='B:490 1:5-25'>Luk 1:5-25</a>)


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 In the time of Herod, the king of Judaea, there was a priest called Zacharias, who belonged to the section of Abia. His wife was also a direct descendant of Aaron and her name was Elizabeth. Both of them were good people before God, for they walked blamelessly in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord. They had no child because Elizabeth was barren and both of them were far advanced in years. When he was acting as priest before God, when his section was on duty, in accordance with the custom of priestly duty, it fell to him by lot to go into the Temple of the Lord to burn the incense. The whole congregation of the people was praying outside at the hour when incense was offered. The angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zacharias saw him he was deeply moved and awe fell upon him. The angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zacharias, because your request has been heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you must call him by the name of John. You will have joy and exultation and many will rejoice at his birth. He will be great in God's sight; he must not drink wine or strong drink and, even from the time he is in his mother's womb, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many sons of Israel to the Lord their God; and he himself will go before his face in the spirit and the power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to get ready a people prepared for the Lord." Zacharias said to the angel, "How will I know that this is going to happen? For I am an old man and my wife is far advanced in years." "I am Gabriel," the angel answered, "who stands before God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And--look you--you will be silent and unable to speak until the day these things happen, because you did not believe my words which will be fulfilled in their own time." The people were waiting for Zacharias and they were surprised that he was lingering so long in the Temple. When he came out he was not able to speak to them and they realized that he had seen a vision in the Temple. He kept making signs to them but he remained unable to speak. When the days of his time of service were completed he went away to his own home. After these days Elizabeth his wife conceived; and she hid herself for five months. "This is God's doing for me, she said, when he looked upon me to take away my shame among men.<p/></i><p/>Zacharias, the central character in this scene, was a priest. He belonged to the section of Abia. Every direct descendant of Aaron was automatically a priest. That meant that for all ordinary purposes there were far too many priests. They were therefore divided into twenty-four sections. Only at the Passover, at Pentecost and at the Feast of Tabernacles did all the priests serve. For the rest of the year each course served two periods of one week each. Priests who loved their work looked forward to that week of service above all things; it was the highlight of their lives.<p/>A priest might marry only a woman of absolutely pure Jewish lineage. It was specially meritorious to marry a woman who was also a descendant of Aaron, as was Elizabeth, the wife of Zacharias.<p/>There was as many as twenty thousand priests altogether and so there were not far short of a thousand in each section. Within the sections all the duties were allocated by lot. Every morning and evening sacrifice was made for the whole nation. A burnt offering of a male lamb, one year old, without spot or blemish was offered, together with a meat offering of flour and oil and a drink offering of wine. Before the morning sacrifice and after the evening sacrifice incense was burned on the altar of incense so that, as it were, the sacrifices might go up to God wrapped in an envelope of sweet-smelling incense. It was quite possible that many a priest would never have the privilege of burning incense all his life; but if the lot did fall on any priest that day was the greatest day in all his life, the day he longed for and dreamed of. On this day the lot fell on Zacharias and he would be thrilled to the core of his being.<p/>But in Zacharias's life there was tragedy. He and Elizabeth were childless. The Jewish Rabbis said that seven people were excommunicated from God and the list began, "A Jew who has no wife, or a Jew who has a wife and who has no child." Childlessness was a valid ground for divorce. Not unnaturally Zacharias, even on his great day, was thinking of his personal and domestic tragedy and was praying about it. Then the wondrous vision came and the glad message that, even when hope was dead, a son would be born to him.<p/>The incense was burned and the offering made in the inmost court of the Temple, the Court of the Priests. While the sacrifice was being made, the congregation thronged the next court, the Court of the Israelites. It was the privilege of the priest at the evening sacrifice to come to the rail between the two courts after the incense had been burned in order to bless the people. The people marvelled that Zacharias was so long delayed. When he came he could not speak and the people knew that he had seen a vision. So in a wordless daze of joy Zacharias finished his week's duty and went home; and then the message of God came true and Elizabeth knew she was going to have a child.<p/>One thing stands out here. It was in God's house that God's message came to Zacharias. We may often wish that a message from God would come to us. In Shaw's play, Saint Joan, Joan hears voices from God. The Dauphin is annoyed. "Oh, your voices, your voices, he said, "Why don't the voices come to me? I am king not you." "They do come to you, said Joan, "but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the evening listening for them. When the angelus rings you cross yourself and have done with it; but if you prayed from your heart, and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stop ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do." Joan gave herself the chance to hear God's voice. Zacharias was in the Temple waiting on God. God's voice comes to those who listen for it--as Zacharias did--in God's house.<p/><b>GOD'S MESSAGE TO MARY</b> (<a href='B:490 1:26-38'>Luk 1:26-38</a>)


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 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a maiden who was betrothed to a man called Joseph, who belonged to the house of David. The maiden's name was Mary. He came in to her and said, "Greetings, most favoured one. The Lord is with you." She was deeply moved at this word and wondered what a greeting like that could mean. The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour in God's sight. Look you--you will conceive and you will bear a son and you must call him by the name of Jesus. He will be great and he will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father; and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom." Mary said to the angel, "How can this be since I do not know a man?" The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the Spirit of the Most High will overshadow you, and so the child who will be born will be called holy, the Son of God, and--look you--Elizabeth, too, your kinswoman has also conceived in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who is called barren, because there is nothing which is impossible with God." Mary said, "I am the Lord's servant. Whatever he says, I accept." And the angel went away from her.<p/></i><p/>Mary was betrothed to Joseph. Betrothal lasted for a year and was quite as binding as marriage. It could be dissolved only by divorce. Should the man to whom a girl was betrothed die, in the eyes of the law she was a widow. In the law there occurs the strange-sounding phrase, "a virgin who is a widow."<p/>In this passage we are face to face with one of the great controversial doctrines of the Christian faith--the Virgin Birth. The church does not insist that we believe in this doctrine. Let us look at the reasons for and against believing in it, and then we may make our own decision.<p/>There are two great reasons for accepting it.<p/>(i) The literal meaning of this passage, and still more of <a href='B:470 1:18-25'>Mat 1:18-25</a>, clearly is that Jesus was to be born of Mary without a human father.<p/>(ii) It is natural to argue that if Jesus was, as we believe, a very special person, he would have a special entry into the world.<p/>Now let us look at the things which may make us wonder if the story of the virgin birth is to be taken as literally as all that.<p/>(i) The genealogies of Jesus both in Luke and in Matthew (<a href='B:490 3:23-38'>Luk 3:23-38</a>; <a href='B:470 1:1-17'>Mat 1:1-17</a>) trace the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, which is strange if Joseph was not his real father.<p/>(ii) When Mary was looking for Jesus on the occasion that he lingered behind in the Temple, she said, "Your father and I have been looking for you anxiously" (<a href='B:490 2:48'>Luk 2:48</a>). The name father is definitely given by Mary to Joseph.<p/>(iii) Repeatedly Jesus is referred to as Joseph's son (<a href='B:470 13:55'>Mat 13:55</a>; <a href='B:500 6:42'>Joh 6:42</a>).<p/>(iv) The rest of the New Testament knows nothing of the virgin birth. True, in <a href='B:550 4:4'>Gal 4:4</a> Paul speaks of Jesus as "born of woman." But this is the natural phrase for any mortal man. (compare <a href='B:220 14:1'>Job 14:1</a>; <a href='B:220 15:14'>Job 15:14</a>; <a href='B:220 25:4'>Job 25:4</a>).<p/>But let us ask, "If we do not take the story of the virgin birth literally, how did it arise?" The Jews had a saying that in the birth of every child there are three partners--the father, the mother and the Spirit of God. They believed that no child could ever be born without the Spirit. And it may well be that the New Testament stories of the birth of Jesus are lovely, poetical ways of saying that, even if he had a human father, the Holy Spirit of God was operative in his birth in a unique way.<p/>In this matter we may make our own decision. It may be that we will desire to cling to the literal doctrine of the virgin birth; it may be that we will prefer to think of it as a beautiful way of stressing the presence of the Spirit of God in family life.<p/>Mary's submission is a very lovely thing. "Whatever God says, I accept." Mary had learned to forget the world's commonest prayer--"Thy will be changed"--and to pray the world's greatest prayer--"Thy will be done."<p/><b>THE PARADOX OF BLESSEDNESS</b> (<a href='B:490 1:39-45'>Luk 1:39-45</a>)


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 In those days Mary arose and went eagerly to the hill country, to a city of Judah, and went into the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting the babe leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she lifted up her voice with a great cry and said, "Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why has this been granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For--look you--when the voice of your greeting came to my ears the babe in my womb leaped with exultation. Blessed is she who believed that the things spoken to her from the Lord would find their fulfilment."<p/></i><p/>This is a kind of lyrical song on the blessedness of Mary. Nowhere can we better see the paradox of blessedness than in her life. To Mary was granted the blessedness of being the mother of the Son of God. Well might her heart be filled with a wondering, tremulous joy at so great a privilege. Yet that very blessedness was to be a sword to pierce her heart. It meant that some day she would see her son hanging on a cross.<p/>To be chosen by God so often means at one and the same time a crown of joy and cross of sorrow. The piercing truth is that God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy but for a task that will take all that head and heart and hand can bring to it. God chooses a man in order to use him. When Joan of Arc knew that her time was short she prayed, "I shall only last a year; use me as you can." When that is realized, the sorrows and hardships that serving God may bring are not matters for lamentation; they are our glory, for all is suffered for God.<p/>When Richard Cameron, the Covenanter, was caught by the dragoons they killed him. He had very beautiful hands and they cut them off and sent them to his father with a message asking if he recognized them. "They are my son's, he said, "my own dear son's. Good is the will of the Lord who can never wrong me or mine." The shadows of life were lit by the sense that they, too, were in the plan of God. A great Spanish saint prayed for his people, "May God deny you peace and give you glory." A great modern preacher said, "Jesus Christ came not to make life easy but to make men great."<p/>It is the paradox of blessedness that it confers on a person at one and the same time the greatest joy and the greatest task in all the world.<p/><b>A WONDROUS HYMN</b> (<a href='B:490 1:46-56'>Luk 1:46-56</a>)


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 And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has exulted in God, my Saviour, because he looked graciously on the humble estate of his servant. For--look you--from now on all generations shall call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me and his name is holy. His mercy is from generation to generation to those who fear him. He demonstrates his power with his arm. He scatters the proud in the plans of their hearts. He casts down the mighty from their seats of power. He exalts the humble. He fills those who are hungry with good things and he sends away empty those who are rich. He has helped Israel, his son, in that he has remembered his mercy--as he said to our fathers that he would--to Abraham and to his descendants forever."<p/></i><p/>Here we have a passage which has become one of the great hymns of the church--the Magnificat. It is saturated in the Old Testament; and is specially kin to Hannah's song of praise in <a href='B:90 2:1-10'>1Sa 2:1-10</a>. It has been said that religion is the opiate of the people; but, as Stanley Jones said, "the Magnificat is the most revolutionary document in the world."<p/>It speaks of three of the revolutions of God.<p/>(i) He scatters the proud in the plans of their hearts. That is a moral revolution. Christianity is the death of pride. Why? Because if a man sets his life beside that of Christ it tears the last vestiges of pride from him.<p/>Sometimes something happens to a man which with a vivid, revealing light shames him. O. Henry has a short story about a lad who was brought up in a village. In school he used to sit beside a girl and they were fond of each other. He went to the city and fell into evil ways. He became a pickpocket and a petty thief. One day he snatched an old lady's purse. It was clever work and he was pleased. And then he saw coming down the street the girl whom he used to know, still sweet with the radiance of innocence. Suddenly he saw himself for the cheap, vile thing he really was. Burning with shame, he leaned his head against the cool iron of a lamp standard. "God, he said, "I wish I could die." He saw himself.<p/>Christ enables a man to see himself. It is the deathblow to pride. The moral revolution has begun.<p/>(ii) He casts down the mighty--he exalts the humble. That is a social revolution. Christianity puts an end to the world's labels and prestige.<p/>Muretus was a wandering scholar of the middle ages. He was poor. In an Italian town he took ill and was taken to a hospital for waifs and strays. The doctors were discussing his case in Latin, never dreaming he could understand. They suggested that since he was such a worthless wanderer they might use him for medical experiments. He looked up and answered them in their own learned tongue, "Call no man worthless for whom Christ died!"<p/>When we have realized what Christ did for all men, it is no longer possible to speak about a common man. The social grades are gone.<p/>(iii) He has filled those who are hungry... those who are rich he has sent empty away. That is an economic revolution. A non-Christian society is an acquisitive society where each man is out to amass as much as he can get. A Christian society is a society where no man dares to have too much while others have too little, where every man must get only to give away.<p/>There is loveliness in the Magnificat but in that loveliness there is dynamite. Christianity begets a revolution in each man and revolution in the world.<p/><b>HIS NAME IS JOHN</b> (<a href='B:490 1:57-66'>Luk 1:57-66</a>)


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 When Elizabeth's time to bear the child was completed she brought forth a son. When her neighbours and kinsfolk heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her they rejoiced with her. On the eighth day they went to circumcise the child and it was their intention to call him Zacharias after his father. But his mother said, "No; he must be called John." They said to her, "There is no one in your connection who is called by this name." They asked his father by signs by what name he wished him to be called. He asked for a writing tablet and wrote, "John is his name." Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed and he kept on praising God. And great awe fell upon all the neighbours, and all these events were talked about in all the hill country of Judaea; and all those who heard them kept them in their hearts and said, "What will this child turn out to be, for the hand of the Lord is with him?"<p/></i><p/>In Palestine the birth of a boy was an occasion of great joy. When the time of the birth was near at hand, friends and local musicians gathered near the house. When the birth was announced and it was a boy, the musicians broke into music and song, and there was universal congratulation and rejoicing. If it was a girl the musicians went silently and regretfully away! There was a saying, "The birth of a male child causes universal joy, but the birth of a female child causes universal sorrow." So in Elizabeth's house there was double joy. At last she had a child and that child was a son.<p/>On the eighth day the boy was circumcised and received his name. Girls could be named any time within thirty days of their birth. In Palestine names were descriptive. They sometimes described a circumstance attending the birth as Esau and Jacob do (<a href='B:10 25:25-26'>Gen 25:25-26</a>). They sometimes described the child. Laban, for instance, means white or blonde. Sometimes the child received the parental name. Often the name described the parents' joy. Saul and Samuel, for instance, both mean "asked for." Sometimes the name was a declaration of the parents' faith. Elijah for instance, means "Jehovah is my God." Thus, in a time of Baal-worship, Elijah's parents asserted their faith in the true God.<p/>Elizabeth, to the neighbours' surprise, said that her son must be called John and Zacharias indicated that that was also his desire. John is a shorter form of the name Jehohanan, which means "Jehovah's gift" or "God is gracious." It was the name which God had ordered to be given to the child and it described the parents' gratitude for an unexpected joy.<p/>It was the question of the neighbours and of all who had heard the amazing story, "What will this child turn out to be?" Every child is a bundle of possibilities. There was an old Latin schoolmaster who always bowed gravely to his class before he taught them. When he was asked why, he answered, "Because you never know what one of these lads will turn out to be." The entry of a child into a family is two things. First, it is the greatest privilege which life can offer a man and wife. It is something for which to thank God. Second, it is one of life's supreme responsibilities, for that child is a bundle of possibilities, and on parents and teachers depends how these possibilities will or will not be realized.<p/><b>A FATHER'S JOY</b> (<a href='B:490 1:67-80'>Luk 1:67-80</a>)


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 His father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied like this: "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has graciously visited his people and wrought deliverance for them. He has raised the horn of salvation for us in the house of David, his servant--as long ago he said he would through the mouth of his holy prophets--even deliverance from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, in that he has shown mercy to us as he did to our fathers and has remembered his holy covenant, the pledge which he gave to Abraham our father, to grant to us that we, being delivered from the hands of our enemies, should fearlessly serve him, in holiness and righteousness before him, all our days. And you, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will walk before the Lord to prepare his ways, in order to give the knowledge of salvation to his people together with forgiveness of their sins, through the mercy of our God, in which the dawn from on high has graciously visited us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to direct our feet in the way of peace."<p/>And the child grew and was strengthened by the Spirit; and he lived in the desert places until the day when he was displayed to Israel.<p/></i><p/>Zacharias had a great vision for his son. He thought of him as the prophet and the forerunner who would prepare the way of the Lord. All devout Jews hoped and longed for the day when the Messiah, God's anointed king, would come. Most of them believed that, before he came, a forerunner would announce his coming and prepare his way. The usual belief was that Elijah would return to do so (<a href='B:460 4:5'>Mal 4:5</a>). Zacharias saw in his son the one who would prepare the way for the coming of God's king.<p/><a href='B:490 1:75-77'>Luk 1:75-77</a> give a great picture of the steps of the Christian way.<p/>(i) There is preparation. All life is a preparation to lead us to Christ. When Sir Walter Scott was young his aim was to be a soldier. An accident made him slightly lame and that dream had to be abandoned. He took to reading the old Scottish histories and romances and so became the master novelist. An old man said of him, "He was makin' himself a' the time; but he didna ken maybe what he was about till years had passed." In life God is working all things together to bring us to Christ.<p/>(ii) There is knowledge. It is the simple fact that men did not know what God was like until Jesus came. The Greeks thought of a passionless God, beyond all joy and sorrow, looking on men in calm unmoved detachment--no help there. The Jews thought of a demanding God, whose name was law and whose function was that of judge--nothing but terror there. Jesus came to tell that God was love, and in staggered amazement men could only say, "We never knew that God was like that." One of the great functions of the incarnation was to bring to men the knowledge of God.<p/>(iii) There is forgiveness. We must be clear about one thing regarding forgiveness. It is not so much the remission of penalty as the restoration of a relationship. Nothing can deliver us from certain consequences of our sins; the clock cannot be put back; but estrangement from God is turned to friendship. The distant God has become near and the God we feared has become the lover of the souls of men.<p/>(iv) There is walking in the ways of peace. Peace in Hebrew does not mean merely freedom from trouble; it means all that makes for a man's highest good; and through Christ a man is enabled to walk in the ways that lead to everything that means life, and no longer to all that means death. 


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 In these days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census should be taken of all the world. The census first took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria; and everyone went to enroll himself, each man to his own town. So Joseph went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judaea, to David's town, which is called Bethlehem, because he belonged to the house and the line of David, to enrol himself with Mary who was betrothed to him and she was with child. When they arrived there her time to bear the child was completed; and she bore her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the place where they had meant to lodge.<p/></i><p/>In the Roman Empire periodical censuses were taken with the double object of assessing taxation and of discovering those who were liable for compulsory military service. The Jews were exempt from military service, and, therefore, in Palestine a census would be predominantly for taxation purposes. Regarding these censuses, we have definite information as to what happened in Egypt; and almost certainly what happened in Egypt happened in Syria, too, and Judaea was part of the province of Syria. The information we have comes from actual census documents written on papyrus and then discovered in the dust-heaps of Egyptian towns and villages and in the sands of the desert.<p/>Such censuses were taken every fourteen years. And from A.D. 20 until about A.D. 270 we possess actual documents from every census taken. If the fourteen-year cycle held good in Syria this census must have been in 8 B.C. and that was the year in which Jesus was born. It may be that Luke has made one slight mistake. Quirinius did not actually become governor of Syria until A.D. 6; but he held an official post previously in those regions from 10 B.C. until 7 B.C. and it was during that first period that this census must have been taken.<p/>Critics used to question the fact that every man had to go to his own city to be enrolled; but here is an actual government edict from Egypt:<p/>"Gaius Vibius Maximus, Prefect of Egypt orders: 'Seeing that the<p/>time has come for the house-to-house census, it is necessary to<p/>compel all those who for any cause whatsoever are residing<p/>outside their districts to return to their own homes, that they<p/>may both carry out the regular order of the census, and may also<p/>diligently attend to the cultivation of their allotments.'"<p/>If that was the case in Egypt, it may well be that in Judaea, where the old tribal ancestries still held good, men had to go to the headquarters of their tribe. Here is an instance where further knowledge has shown the accuracy of the New Testament.<p/>The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was 80 miles. The accommodation for travellers was most primitive. The eastern khan was like a series of stalls opening off a common courtyard. Travellers brought their own food; all that the innkeeper provided was fodder for the animals and a fire to cook. The town was crowded and there was no room for Joseph and Mary. So it was in the common courtyard that Mary's child was born. Swaddling clothes consisted of a square of cloth with a long bandage-like strip coming diagonally off from one corner. The child was first wrapped in the square of cloth and then the long strip was wound round and round about him. The word translated "manger" means a place where animals feed; and therefore it can be either the stable or the manger which is meant.<p/>That there was no room in the inn was symbolic of what was to happen to Jesus. The only place where there was room for him was on a cross. He sought an entry to the over-crowded hearts of men; he could not find it; and still his search--and his rejection--go on.<p/><b>SHEPHERDS AND ANGELS</b> (<a href='B:490 2:8-20'>Luk 2:8-20</a>)


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 In this country there were shepherds who were in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were much afraid. The angel said to them. "Do not be afraid; for--look you--I am bringing you good news of great joy, which will be to every people, for today a Saviour has been born for you, in David's town, who is Christ the Lord. You will recognize him by this sign. You will find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger." And suddenly with the angel there was a crowd of heaven's host, praising God and saying, "In the highest heights glory to God; and on earth peace to the men whose welfare he ever seeks." When the angels had left them and gone away to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, "Come! Let us go across, to Bethlehem and let us see this thing which has happened which the Lord has made known to us." So they hurried on and they discovered Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. When they had seen him they told everyone about the word which had been spoken to them about this child; and all who heard were amazed at what was told them by the shepherds. But Mary stored up these things in her memory and in her heart kept wondering what they meant. So the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all that they had seen just as it had been told to them.<p/></i><p/>It is a wonderful thing that the story should tell that the first announcement of God came to some shepherds. Shepherds were despised by the orthodox good people of the day. They were quite unable to keep the details of the ceremonial law; they could not observe all the meticulous hand-washings and rules and regulations. Their flocks made far too constant demands on them; and so the orthodox looked down on them. It was to simple men of the fields that God's message first came.<p/>But these were in all likelihood very special shepherds. We have already seen how in the Temple, morning and evening, an unblemished lamb was offered as a sacrifice to God. To see that the supply of perfect offerings was always available the Temple authorities had their own private sheep flocks; and we know that these flocks were pastured near Bethlehem. It is most likely that these shepherds were in charge of the flocks from which the Temple offerings were chosen. It is a lovely thought that the shepherds who looked after the Temple lambs were the first to see the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.<p/>We have already seen that when a boy was born, the local musicians congregated at the house to greet him with simple music. Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem and therefore that ceremony could not be carried out. It is a lovely thought that the minstrelsy of heaven took the place of the minstrelsy of earth, and angels sang the songs for Jesus that the earthly singers could not sing.<p/>All through these readings we must have been thinking of the rough simplicity of the birth of the Son of God. We might have expected that, if he had to be born into this world at all, it would be in a palace or a mansion. There was a European monarch who worried his court by often disappearing and walking incognito amongst his people. When he was asked not to do so for security's sake, he answered, "I cannot rule my people unless I know how they live." It is the great thought of the Christian faith that we have a God who knows the life we live because he too lived it and claimed no special advantage over common men.<p/><b>THE ANCIENT CEREMONIES ARE OBSERVED</b> (<a href='B:490 2:21-24'>Luk 2:21-24</a>)


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 When the eight days necessarily prior to circumcision had elapsed, he was called by the name of Jesus, the name by which he had been called by the angel before he had been conceived in the womb. When the time which, according to the law of Moses, must precede the ceremony of purification had elapsed, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (in accordance with the regulation in the Lord's law, "Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord") and to make the sacrifice which the regulation in the Lord's law lays down, that is, a pair of doves or two young pigeons.<p/></i><p/>In this passage we see Jesus undergoing three ancient ceremonies which every Jewish boy had to undergo.<p/>(i) Circumcision. Every Jewish boy was circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. So sacred was that ceremony that it could be carried out even on a Sabbath when the law forbade almost every other act which was not absolutely essential; and on that day a boy received his name.<p/>(ii) The Redemption of the First-born. According to the law (<a href='B:20 13:2'>Exo 13:2</a>) every firstborn male. both of human beings and of cattle, was sacred to God. That law may have been a recognition of the gracious power of God in giving human life, or it may even have been a relic of the day when children were sacrificed Lo the gods. Clearly if it had been carried out literally life would have been disrupted. There was therefore a ceremony called the Redemption of the Firstborn (<a href='B:40 18:16'>Num 18:16</a>). It is laid down that for the sum of five shekels--approximately 75 pence--parents could, as it were, buy back their son from God. The sum had to be paid to the priests. It could not be paid sooner than thirty-one days after the birth of the child and it might not be long delayed after that.<p/>(iii) The Purification after Childbirth. When a woman had borne a child, if it was a boy, she was unclean for forty days, if it was a girl, for eighty days. She could go about her household and her daily business but she could not enter the Temple or share in any religious ceremony (<a href='B:30 12:1-8'>Lev 12:1-8</a>). At the end of that time she had to bring to the Temple a lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon for a sin offering. That was a somewhat expensive sacrifice, and so the law laid it down (<a href='B:30 12:8'>Lev 12:8</a>) that if she could not afford the lamb she might bring another pigeon. The offering of the two pigeons instead of the lamb and the pigeon was technically called The Offering of the Poor. It was the offering of the poor which Mary brought. Again we see that it was into an ordinary home that Jesus was born, a home where there were no luxuries, a home where every penny had to be looked at twice, a home where the members of the family knew all about the difficulties of making a living and the haunting insecurity of life. When life is worrying for us we must remember that Jesus knew what the difficulties of making ends meet can be.<p/>These three ceremonies are strange old ceremonies; but all three have at the back of them the conviction that a child is a gift of God. The Stoics used to say that a child was not given to a parent but only lent. Of all God's gifts there is none for which we shall be so answerable as the gift of a child.<p/><b>A DREAM REALIZED</b> (<a href='B:490 2:25-35'>Luk 2:25-35</a>)


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 Now--look you--there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon. This man was good and pious. He was waiting for the comforting of Israel and the Holy Spirit was upon him. He had received a message from the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he had seen the Lord's Anointed One. So he came in the Spirit to the Temple precincts. When his parents brought in the child Jesus, to do regarding him the customary ceremonies laid down by the law, he took him into his arms and blessed God and said, "Now O Lord, as you said, let your servant depart in peace, because my eyes have seen your instrument of salvation, which you have prepared before all the people, a light to bring your revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel." His father and mother were amazed at what was said about him. Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, "Look you, this child is appointed to be the cause whereby many in Israel will fall and many rise and for a sign which will meet with much opposition. As for you--a sword will pierce your soul--and all this will happen that the inner thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."<p/></i><p/>There was no Jew who did not regard his own nation as the chosen people. But the Jews saw quite clearly that by human means their nation could never attain to the supreme world greatness which they believed their destiny involved. By far the greater number of them believed that because the Jews were the chosen people they were bound some day to become masters of the world and lords of all the nations. To bring in that day some believed that some great, celestial champion would descend upon the earth; some believed that there would arise another king of David's line and that all the old glories would revive; some believed that God himself would break directly into history by supernatural means. But in contrast to all that there were some few people who were known as the Quiet in the Land. They had no dreams of violence and of power and of armies with banners; they believed in a life of constant prayer and quiet watchfulness until God should come. All their lives they waited quietly and patiently upon God. Simeon was like that; in prayer, in worship, in humble and faithful expectation he was waiting for the day when God would comfort his people. God had promised him through the Holy Spirit that his life would not end before he had seen God's own Anointed King. In the baby Jesus he recognized that King and was glad. Now he was ready to depart in peace and his words have become the Nunc Dimittis, another of the great and precious hymns of the Church.<p/>In <a href='B:490 2:34'>Luk 2:34</a> Simeon gives a kind of summary of the work and fate of Jesus.<p/>(i) He will be the cause whereby many will fall. This is a strange and a hard saying but it is true. It is not so much God who judges a man; a man judges himself; and his judgment is his reaction to Jesus Christ. If, when he is confronted with that goodness and that loveliness, his heart runs out in answering love, he is within the Kingdom. If, when so confronted, he remains coldly unmoved or actively hostile, he is condemned. There is a great refusal just as there is a great acceptance.<p/>(ii) He will be the cause whereby many will rise. Long ago Seneca said that what men needed above all was a hand let down to lift them up. It is the hand of Jesus which lifts a man out of the old life and into the new, out of the sin into the goodness, out of the shame into the glory.<p/>(iii) He will meet with much opposition. Towards Jesus Christ there can be no neutrality. We either surrender to him or are at war with him. And it is the tragedy of life that our pride often keeps us from making that surrender which leads to victory.<p/><b>A LOVELY OLD AGE</b> (<a href='B:490 2:36-40'>Luk 2:36-40</a>)


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 There was a prophetess called Anna. She was the daughter of Phanuel and she belonged to the tribe of Asher. She was far advanced in years. She had lived with her husband ever since seven years after she came to womanhood; and now she was a widow of eighty-four years of age. She never left the Temple and day and night she worshipped with fastings and with prayers. At that very time she came up and she began to give thanks to God and she kept speaking about him to all those who were waiting expectantly for the deliverance of Jerusalem. When they had completed everything which the Lord's law lays down they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew bigger and stronger and he was filled with wisdom, and God's grace was on him.<p/></i><p/>Anna, too, was one of the Quiet in the Land. We know nothing about her except what these verses tell but even in this brief compass Luke has drawn us a complete character sketch.<p/>(i) Anna was a widow. She had known sorrow and she had not grown bitter. Sorrow can do one of two things to us. It can make us hard, bitter, resentful, rebellious against God. Or it can make us kinder, softer, more sympathetic. It can despoil us of our faith; or it can root faith ever deeper. It all depends how we think of God. If we think of him as a tyrant we will resent him. If we think of him as Father we too will be sure that<p/>A Father's hand will never cause<p/>His child a needless tear.<p/>(ii) She was eighty-four years of age. She was old and she had never ceased to hope. Age can take away the bloom and the strength of our bodies; but age can do worse--the years can take away the life of our hearts until the hopes that once we cherished die and we become dully content and grimly resigned to things as they are. Again it all depends on how we think of God. If we think of him as distant and detached we may well despair; but if we think of him as intimately connected with life, as having his hand on the helm, we too will be sure that the best is yet to be and the years will never kill our hope.<p/>How then was Anna such as she was?<p/>(i) She never ceased to worship. She spent her life in God's house with God's people. God gave us his church to be our mother in the faith. We rob ourselves of a priceless treasure when we neglect to be one with his worshipping people.<p/>(ii) She never ceased to pray. Public worship is great; but private worship is also great. As someone has truly said, "They pray best together who first pray alone." The years had left Anna without bitterness and in unshakable hope because day by day she kept her contact with him who is the source of strength and in whose strength our weakness is made perfect.<p/><b>THE DAWNING REALIZATION</b> (<a href='B:490 2:41-52'>Luk 2:41-52</a> <b>Continued)</b>


text:
 Every year his parents used to go to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years of age, they went up according to the custom of the feast, and when they had completed the days of the feast and returned home, the child Jesus stayed on in Jerusalem. His parents were not aware of this. They thought he was in the caravan and when they had gone a day's journey they looked for him amongst their kinsfolk and acquaintances. When they did not find him they turned back to Jerusalem, looking for him all the time. After three days they found him in the Temple precincts, sitting in the middle of the rabbis, listening to them and asking them questions. All who were listening were astonished at his understanding and at his answers. When they saw him they were amazed. His mother said to him, "Child, why did you do this to us? Look you, your father and I have been looking for you and we have been very worried." He said to them, "Why were You looking for me? Did you not know that I was bound to be in my Father's house?" They did not understand the meaning of what he said to them. So he came home with them and went to Nazareth and he was obedient to them. His mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew wise and grew bigger and increased in favour with God and man.<p/></i><p/>This is a supremely important passage in the gospel story. it was laid down by law that every adult male Jew who lived within fifteen miles of Jerusalem must attend the Passover. In point of fact it was the aim of every Jew in all the world at least once in a lifetime to attend that feast.<p/>A Jewish boy became a man when he was twelve years of age. Then he became a son of the law and had to take the obligations of the law upon him. So at twelve Jesus for the first time went to the Passover. We may well imagine how the holy city and the Temple and the sacred ritual fascinated him.<p/>When his parents returned he lingered behind. It was not through carelessness that they did not miss him. Usually the women in a caravan started out much earlier than the men for they travelled more slowly. The men started later and travelled faster and the two sections would not meet until the evening encampment was reached. It was Jesus' first Passover. No doubt Joseph thought he was with Mary, Mary thought that he was with Joseph and not till the evening camp did they miss him.<p/>They returned to Jerusalem to search for him. For the Passover season it was the custom for the Sanhedrin to meet in public in the Temple court to discuss, in the presence of all who would listen, religious and theological questions. It was there they found Jesus. We must not think of it as a scene where a precocious boy was dominating a crowd of his seniors. Hearing and asking questions is the regular Jewish phrase for a student learning from his teachers. Jesus was listening to the discussions and eagerly searching for knowledge like an avid student.<p/>And now comes one of the key passages in the life of Jesus. "Your father and I," said Mary, "have been looking for you anxiously." "Did you not know, said Jesus, "that I must be in my Father's house"? See how very gently but very definitely Jesus takes the name "father" from Joseph and gives it to God. At some time Jesus must have discovered his own unique relationship to God. He cannot have known it when he was a child in the manger and a baby at his mother's breast or he would be a monstrosity. As the years went on he must have had thoughts; and then at this first Passover, with manhood dawning, there came in a sudden blaze of realization the consciousness that he was in a unique sense the Son of God.<p/>Here we have the story of the day when Jesus discovered who he was. And mark this--the discovery did not make him proud. It did not make him look down on his humble parents, the gentle Mary and the hard-working Joseph. He went home and he was obedient to them. The fact that he was God's Son made him the perfect son of his human parents. The real man of God does not despise earthly ties; just because he is God's man he discharges human duties with supreme fidelity. 


text:
 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, and when Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and the district of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, when he was in the desert. So he came into the territory around Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance whereby sins might be forgiven--as it stands written in the book of the words of Isaiah, the prophet, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'Get ready the road of the Lord, make his paths straight; every ravine shall be filled up; every mountain and hill will be made low; the twisted places will be made into straight roads and the rough places into smooth; and all flesh shall see God's instrument of salvation.'"<p/></i><p/>To Luke the emergence of John the Baptist was one of the hinges on which history turned. So much so is that the case that he dates it in no fewer than six different ways.<p/>(i) Tiberius was the successor of Augustus and therefore the second of the Roman emperors. As early as A.D. 11 or 12 Augustus had made him his colleague in the imperial power but he did not become sole emperor until A.D. 14: The fifteenth year of his reign would therefore be A.D. 28-29: Luke begins by setting the emergence of John against a world background, the background of the Roman Empire.<p/>(ii) The next three dates Luke gives are connected with the political organization of Palestine. The title tetrarch (see <a href='S:G5075'>G5075</a> and <a href='S:G5076'>G5076</a>) literally means governor of a fourth part. In such provinces as Thessaly and Galatia, which were divided into four sections or areas, the governor of each part was known as a tetrarch; but later the word widened its meaning and came to mean the governor of any part. Herod the Great died in 4 B.C. after the reign of about forty years. He divided his kingdom between three of his sons and in the first instance the Romans approved the decision.<p/>(a) To Herod Antipas were left Galilee and Peraea. He reigned from 4 B.C. to A.D. 39 and therefore Jesus' life was lived in Herod's reign and very largely in Herod's dominions in Galilee.<p/>(b) To Herod Philip were left Ituraea and Trachonitis. He reigned from 4 B.C. to A.D. 33: Caesarea Philippi was called after him and was actually built by him.<p/>(c) To Archelaus were left Judaea, Samaria and Edom. He was a thoroughly bad king. The Jews in the end actually petitioned Rome for his removal; and Rome, impatient of the continual troubles in Judaea, installed a procurator or governor. That is how the Romans came directly to rule Judaea. At this time Pilate, who was in power from A.D. 25 until A.D. 37, was the Roman governor. So in this one sentence Luke gives us a panoramic view of the division of the kingdom which had once belonged to Herod the Great.<p/>(iii) Of Lysanias we know practically nothing.<p/>(iv) Having dealt with the world situation and the Palestinian political situation, Luke turns to the religious situation and dates John's emergence as being in the priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas. There never at any time were two high-priests at the one tine. What then does Luke mean by giving these two names? The high-priest was at one and the same time the civil and the religious head of the community. In the old days the office of high-priest had been hereditary and for life. But with the coining of the Romans the office was the object of all kinds of intrigue. The result was that between 37 B.C. and A.D. 26 there were no fewer than twenty-eight different high-priests. Now Annas was actually high-priest from A.D. 7 until A.D. 14: He was therefore at this time out of office; but he was succeeded by no fewer than four of his sons and Caiaphas was his son-in-law. Therefore, although Caiaphas was the reigning high-priest, Annas was the power behind the throne. That is in fact why Jesus was brought first to aim after his arrest (<a href='B:500 18:13'>Joh 18:13</a>) although at that time he was not in office. Luke associates his name with Caiaphas because, although Caiaphas was the actual high-priest, Annas was still the most influential priestly figure in the land.<p/><a href='B:490 3:4-6'>Luk 3:4-6</a> are a quotation from <a href='B:290 40:3-5'>Isa 40:3-5</a>. When a king proposed to tour a part of his dominions in the east, he sent a courier before him to tell the people to prepare the roads. So John is regarded as the courier of the king. But the preparation on which he insisted was a preparation of heart and of life. "The king is coming," he said. "Mend, not your roads, but your lives." There is laid on everyone of us the duty to make life fit for the King to see.<p/><b>JOHN'S SUMMONS TO REPENTANCE</b> (<a href='B:490 3:7-18'>Luk 3:7-18</a>)


text:
 To the crowds who came out to be baptized by him, John used to say, "You spawn of vipers, who put it into your heads to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruits to match repentance. Do not begin to say among yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the axe is laid at the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." The crowds asked him, "What are we to do?" He answered them, "Let him who has two robes give one to one who has none and let him who has food do likewise." The tax-collectors came to be baptized and said to him, "Teacher, what are we to do?" He said to them, "Exact no more beyond what your instructions lay down." The soldiers, too, asked him, "What are we to do?" He said to them, "Treat no man with violence and do not play the false informer and be content with your pay."<p/>When the people were in a state of expectancy and when they were all wondering in their hearts about John, as to whether he could be the Anointed One, John answered them all, "I baptize you with water, but the One who is stronger than I is coming, the latchet of whose sandals I am not worthy to unloose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to cleanse his threshing floor and he will gather the corn into his store but he will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire."<p/></i><p/>Here we have the message of John to the people. Nowhere does the difference between John and Jesus stand out so clearly because, whatever the message of John was, it was not a gospel. It was not good news; it was news of terror.<p/>John had lived in the desert. The face of the desert was covered with stubble and brushwood, as dry as tinder. Sometimes a spark set the face of the desert alight and out from their crannies came the vipers, scurrying in terror from the menacing flames. It was to them John likened the people who came to be baptized.<p/>The Jews had not the slightest doubt that in God's economy there was a favoured nation clause. They held that God would judge other nations with one standard but the Jews with another. They, in fact, held that a man was safe from judgment simply in virtue of the fact that he was a Jew. A son of Abraham was exempt from judgment. John told them that racial privilege meant nothing; that life, not lineage, was God's standard of judgment.<p/>There are three outstanding things about John's message.<p/>(i) It began by demanding that men should share with one another. It was a social gospel which laid it down that God will never absolve the man who is content to have too much while others have too little.<p/>(ii) It ordered a man, not to leave his job, but to work out his own salvation by doing that job as it should be done. Let the tax-collector be a good tax-collector; let the soldier be a good soldier. It was a man's duty to serve God where God had set him.<p/>A negro spiritual says:<p/>There's a king and captain high,<p/>And he's coming by and by,<p/>And he'll find me hoeing cotton when he comes,<p/>You can hear his legions charging in the regions of the sky,<p/>And he'll find me hoeing cotton when he comes.<p/>There's a man they thrust aside,<p/>Who was tortured till he died,<p/>And he'll find me hoeing cotton when he comes.<p/>He was hated and rejected,<p/>He was scorned and crucified,<p/>And he'll find me hoeing cotton when he comes.<p/>When he comes! when he comes!<p/>He'll be crowned by saints and angels when he comes,<p/>They'll be shouting out Hosanna! to the man that men denied,<p/>And I'll kneel among my cotton when he comes.<p/>It was John's conviction that nowhere can a man serve God better than in his day's work.<p/>(iii) John was quite sure that he himself was only the forerunner. The King was still to come and with him would come judgment. The winnowing fan was a great flat wooden shovel; with it the grain was tossed into the air; the heavy grain fell to the ground and the chaff was blown away. And just as the chaff was separated from the grain so the King would separate the good and bad.<p/>So John painted a picture of judgment, but it was a judgment which a man could meet with confidence if he had discharged his duty to his neighbour and if he had faithfully done his day's work.<p/>John was one of the world's supremely effective preachers. Once Chalmers was congratulated on a sermon. "Yes, he said, "but what did it do?" It is clear that John preached for action and produced it. He did not deal in theological subtleties but in life.<p/><b>THE ARREST OF JOHN</b> (<a href='B:490 3:19-20'>Luk 3:19-20</a>)


text:
 So then, urging the people with many other pleas, John preached the gospel to them. But, when Herod the tetrarch was rebuked by him concerning the matter of Herodias, his brother's wife, and concerning all the other wicked things he had done, he added this also to them all--he shut up John in prison.<p/></i><p/>John was so plain and blunt a preacher of righteousness that he was bound to run into trouble. In the end Herod arrested him. Josephus says that the reason for the arrest was that Herod "feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it in his power and inclination to raise a rebellion; for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise." That is no doubt true but the New Testament writers give a much more personal and immediate cause. Herod Antipas had married Herodias and John rebuked him for it.<p/>The relationships involved in this marriage are extremely complicated. Herod the Great was a much-married man. Herod Antipas, who married Herodias and who arrested John, was the son of Herod the Great by a woman called Malthake. Herodias herself was the daughter of Aristobulus, who was the son of Herod the Great by Mariamne, commonly called the Hasmonean. As we have seen, Herod had divided up his realm between Archelaus, Herod Antipas and Herod Philip. He had another son, also called Herod, who was his son by another Mariamne, the daughter of a high priest. This Herod had no share in his father's realms and lived as a private citizen in Rome; he married Herodias. He was in fact her half-uncle, because her father (Aristobulus) and he were both sons of Herod by different wives. Herod Antipas, on a visit to Rome, seduced her from his half-brother and married her. She was at one and the same time his sister-in-law, because she was married to his half-brother, and his niece because she was the daughter of Aristobulus, another half-brother.<p/>The whole proceeding was utterly revolting to Jewish opinion and quite contrary to Jewish law, and indeed improper by any standard. It was a dangerous thing to rebuke an eastern tyrant, but John did so. The result was that he was arrested and imprisoned in the dungeon castle of Machaerus on the shores of the Dead Sea. There could be no greater cruelty than to take this child of the desert and shut him up in a dungeon cell. Ultimately he was beheaded to gratify the resentment of Herodias (<a href='B:470 14:5-12'>Mat 14:5-12</a>; <a href='B:480 6:17-29'>Mar 6:17-29</a>).<p/>It is always dangerous to speak the truth; and yet although the man who allies himself with the truth may end in jail or on the scaffold, in the final count he is the victor. Once the Earl of Morton, who was regent of Scotland, threatened Andrew Melville, the reformer. "There will never, he slid menacingly. "be quietness in this country till half a dozen of you be hanged or banished." Melville answered him, "Tush! sir. Threaten not your courtiers in that fashion. It is the same to me whether I rot in the air or in the ground... God be glorified, it will not lie in your power to hang nor exile his truth." Plato once said that the wise man will always choose to suffer wrong rather than to do wrong. We need only ask ourselves whether in the last analysis and at the final assize we would prefer to be Herod Antipas or John the Baptist.<p/><b>THE HOUR STRIKES FOR JESUS</b> (<a href='B:490 3:21-22'>Luk 3:21-22</a>)


text:
 When all the people had been baptized and when Jesus too had been baptized, as he was praying, the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit in bodily form like a dove came down upon him and there was a voice from heaven. "You are my beloved son; in you I am well pleased."<p/></i><p/>The thinkers of the church have always sought an answer to the problem, "Why did Jesus go to John to be baptized?" The baptism of John was a baptism of repentance and it is our conviction that Jesus was without sin. Why then did he offer himself for this baptism? In the early church it was sometimes suggested, with a homely touch, that he did it to please Mary, his mother, and in answer to her entreaties; but we need a better reason than that.<p/>In the life of every man there are certain definite stages, certain hinges on which his whole life turns. It was so with Jesus and every now and again we must stop and try to see his life as a whole. The first great hinge was the visit to the Temple when he was twelve, when he discovered his unique relationship to God. By the time of the emergence of John, Jesus was about thirty (<a href='B:490 3:23'>Luk 3:23</a>). That is to say at least eighteen years had passed. All through these years he must have been realizing more and more his own uniqueness. But still he remained the village carpenter of Nazareth. He must have known that a day must come when he must say good-bye to Nazareth and go out upon his larger task. He must have waited for some sign.<p/>When John emerged the people flocked out to hear him and to be baptized. Throughout the whole country there was an unprecedented movement towards God. And Jesus knew that his hour had struck. It was not that he was conscious of sin and of the need of repentance. It was that he knew that he too must identify himself with this movement towards God. For Jesus the emergence of John was God's call to action; and his first step was to identify himself with the people in their search for God.<p/>But in Jesus' baptism something happened. Before he could take this tremendous step he had to be sure that he was right; and in the moment of baptism God spoke to him. Make no mistake, what happened in the baptism was an experience personal to Jesus. The voice of God came to him and told him that he had taken the right decision. But more--far more--that very same voice mapped out all his course for him.<p/>God said to him, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased." That saying is composed of two texts. You are my beloved Son--that is from <a href='B:230 2:7'>Psa 2:7</a> and was always accepted as a description of the Messianic King. In whom I am well pleased--that is part of <a href='B:290 42:1'>Isa 42:1</a> and is from a description of the servant of the Lord whose portrait culminates in the sufferings of <a href='B:290 53:1-12'>Isa 53:1-12</a>. Therefore in his baptism Jesus realized, first, that he was the Messiah, God's Anointed King; and, second, that this involved not power and glory, but suffering and a cross. The cross did not come on Jesus unawares; from the first moment of realization he saw it ahead. The baptism shows us Jesus asking for God's approval and receiving the destiny of the cross.<p/><b>THE LINEAGE OF JESUS</b> (<a href='B:490 3:23-38'>Luk 3:23-38</a>)


text:
 When Jesus began his ministry he was about thirty years of age. He was the son (as it was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son of Josech, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of Jesus, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Symeon, the son of Judas, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Salmon, the son of Nashon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Ami, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Pelag, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.<p/></i><p/>This passage begins with the most suggestive statement. It tens us that when Jesus began his ministry he was no less than about thirty years of age. Why did he spend thirty years in Nazareth when he had come to be the saviour of the world? It is commonly said that Joseph died fairly young and that Jesus had to take upon himself the support of Mary and of his younger brothers and sisters, and that not until they were old enough to take the business on their own shoulders, did he feel free to leave Nazareth and go into the wider world. Whether that be so or not, three things are true.<p/>(i) It was essential that Jesus should carry out with the utmost fidelity the more limited tasks of family duty before he could take up the universal task of saving the world. It was by his conscientiousness in the performance of the narrow duties of home that Jesus fitted himself for the great task he had to do. When he told the parable of the talents, the word to the faithful servants was, "Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much" (<a href='B:470 25:21'>Mat 25:21</a>; <a href='B:470 25:23'>Mat 25:23</a>). Beyond a doubt he was putting his own experience into words when he said that. When Sir James Barries mother died, he said, "I can look back and I cannot see the smallest thing undone." It was because Jesus faithfully performed the smallest duties that the greatest task in all the world was given him.<p/>(ii) It gave him the opportunity to live out his own teaching. Had he always been a homeless, wandering teacher with no human ties or obligations, men might have said to him, "What right have you to talk about human duties and human relationships, you, who never fulfilled them?" But Jesus was able to say, not, "Do as I say, but, "Do as I have done." Tolstoi was the man who always talked about living the way of love; but his wife wrote poignantly of him, "There is so little genuine warmth about him; his kindness does not come from the heart, but merely from his principles. His biographies will tell of how he helped the labourers to carry buckets of water, but no one will ever know that he never gave his wife a rest and never--in all these thirty-two years--gave his child a drink of water or spent five minutes by his bedside to give me a chance to rest a little from all my labours." No one could ever speak like that of Jesus. He lived at home what he preached abroad.<p/>(iii) If Jesus was to help men he had to know how men lived. And because he spent these thirty years in Nazareth, he knew the problems of making a living, the haunting insecurity of the life of the working man, the ill-natured customer, the man who would not pay his debts. It is the glory of the incarnation that we face no problem of life and living which Jesus did not also face.<p/>Here we have Luke's genealogy of Jesus. The Jews were interested in genealogies. Genealogies, especially of the priests, who had to prove unbroken descent from Aaron, were kept amongst the public records. In the time of Ezra and Nehemiah we read of priests who lost their office because they could not produce their genealogy (<a href='B:150 2:61-63'>Ezr 2:61-63</a>; <a href='B:160 7:63-65'>Neh 7:63-65</a>).<p/>But the problem of this genealogy is its relationship with that in <a href='B:470 1:1-17'>Mat 1:1-17</a>. The facts are these--only Luke gives the section from Adam to Abraham; the section from Abraham to David is the same in both; but the section from David to Joseph is almost completely different. Ever since men studied the New Testament they have tried to explain the differences.<p/>(i) It is said that both genealogies are symbolic and that Matthew gives the royal descent of Jesus and Luke the priestly descent.<p/>(ii) One of the earliest suggestions was that Matthew in fact gives the genealogy of Joseph and Luke of Mary.<p/>(iii) The most ingenious explanation is as follows. In <a href='B:470 1:16'>Mat 1:16</a> Joseph's father is Jacob; in <a href='B:490 3:23'>Luk 3:23</a> it is Heli. According to the Jewish law of levirate marriage (<a href='B:50 25:5'>Deu 25:5</a> f) if a man died childless his brother must, if free to do so, marry the widow and ensure the continuance of the line. When that happened a son of such a marriage could be called the son either of the first or of the second husband. It is suggested that Joseph's mother married twice. Joseph was in actual fact the son of Heli, the second husband, but he was in the eyes of the law the son of Jacob, the first husband who had died. It is then suggested that while Heli and Jacob had the same mother they had different fathers and that Jacob's father was descended from David through Solomon and Heli's father was descended from David through Nathan. This ingenious theory would mean that both genealogies are correct. In fact, all we can say is that we do not know.<p/>Two things, however, are to be noted about the genealogy of Jesus which Luke gives.<p/>(i) It stresses the real humanity of Jesus. It stresses the fact that he was a man amongst men. He was no phantom or demigod. To save men he became in the most real sense a man.<p/>(ii) Matthew stops at Abraham; Luke goes right back to Adam. To Matthew, Jesus was the possession of the Jews; to Luke, he was the possession of all mankind, because his line is traced back not to the founder of the Jewish nation but to the founder of the human race. Luke removes the national and racial boundaries even from the ancestry of Jesus. 


text:
 Jesus came back from the Jordan full of the Holy Spirit. He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, and for forty days he was tempted by the devil; and in those days he ate nothing, and when they were completed he was hungry. The devil said to him, "If you really are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." Jesus answered him, "It stands written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone.'" He took him up and showed him in an instant of time all the kingdoms of the inhabited world. The devil said to him, "I will give you all this power and the glory of them, because it has been handed over to me, and I can give it to whomsoever I wish. If then you worship me all of it will be yours." Jesus answered him, "It stands written, 'You must worship the Lord God and him only must you serve.'" He brought him to Jerusalem and set him on a pinnacle of the Temple, and said to him, "If you really are the Son of God throw yourself down from here, for it stands written, 'He has given his angels instructions concerning you, to take care of you, and they will bear you up in their hands lest you dash your foot against a stone.'" Jesus answered him, "It has been said, 'You must not try to test the Lord your God.'" So when he had gone through the whole gamut of temptation, the devil left him for a time.<p/></i><p/>We have already seen how there were certain great milestones in the life of Jesus and here is one of the greatest. In the Temple when he was twelve there had come the realization that God was his Father in a unique way. In the emergence of John, the hour had struck and in his baptism God's approval had come. At this time Jesus was just about to begin his campaign. Before a man begins a campaign he must choose his methods. The temptation story shows us Jesus choosing once and for all the method by which he proposed to win men to God. It shows him rejecting the way of power and glory and accepting the way of suffering and the cross.<p/>Before we go on to think of this story in detail there are two general points we must note.<p/>(i) This is the most sacred of stories, for it can have come from no other source than his own lips. At some time he must have himself told his disciples about this most intimate experience of his soul.<p/>(ii) Even at this time Jesus must have been conscious of quite exceptional powers. The whole point of the temptations is that they could have come only to a man who could do astonishing things. It is no temptation to us to turn stones into bread or leap from a Temple pinnacle, for the simple reason that it is impossible for us to do such things. These are temptations which could have come only to a man whose powers were unique and who had to decide how to use them.<p/>First of all let us think of the scene, namely, the wilderness. The inhabited part of Judaea stood on the central plateau which was the backbone of Southern Palestine. Between it and the Dead Sea stretched a terrible wilderness, thirty-five by fifteen miles. It was called Jeshimmon, which means "The Devastation." The hills were like dust heaps; the limestone looked blistered and peeling; the rocks were bare and jagged; the ground sounded hollow to the horses' hooves; it glowed with heat like a vast furnace and ran out to the precipices, 1,200 feet high, which swooped down to the Dead Sea. It was in that awesome devastation that Jesus was tempted.<p/>We must not think that the three temptations came and went like scenes in a play. We must rather think of Jesus deliberately retiring to this lonely place and for forty days wrestling with the problem of how he could win men. It was a long battle which never ceased until the cross and the story ends by saying that the tempter left Jesus--for a season.<p/>(i) The first temptation was to turn stones into bread. This wilderness was not a wilderness of sand. It was covered by little bits of limestone exactly like loaves. The tempter said to Jesus, "If you want people to follow you, use your wonderful powers to give them material things." He was suggesting that Jesus should bribe people into following him. Back came Jesus' answer in a quotation of <a href='B:50 8:3'>Deu 8:3</a>. "A man," he said, "will never find life in material things."<p/>The task of Christianity is not to produce new conditions, although the weight and voice of the church must be behind all efforts to make life better for men. Its real task is to produce new men; and given the new men, the new conditions will follow.<p/>(ii) In the second temptation Jesus in imagination stood upon a mountain from which the whole civilized world could be seen. The tempter said, "Worship me, and all will be yours." This is the temptation to compromise. The devil said, "I have got people in my grip. Don't set your standards so high. Strike a bargain with me. Just compromise a little with evil and men will follow you." Back came Jesus' answer, "God is God, right is right and wrong is wrong. There can be no compromise in the war on evil." Once again Jesus quotes scripture (<a href='B:50 6:13'>Deu 6:13</a>; <a href='B:50 10:1-22'>Deu 10:1-22</a>; <a href='B:50 20:1-20'>Deu 20:1-20</a>).<p/>It is a constant temptation to seek to win men by compromising with the standards of the world. G. K. Chesterton said that the tendency of the world is to see things in terms of an indeterminate grey; but the duty of the Christian is to see things in terms of black and white. As Carlyle said, "The Christian must be consumed by the conviction of the infinite beauty of holiness and the infinite damnability of sin."<p/>(iii) In the third temptation Jesus in imagination saw himself on the pinnacle of the Temple where Solomon's Porch and the Royal Porch met. There was a sheer drop of 450 feet down into the Kedron Valley below. This was the temptation to give the people sensations. "No, said Jesus, "you must not make senseless experiments with the power of God" (<a href='B:50 6:16'>Deu 6:16</a>). Jesus saw quite clearly that if he produced sensations he could be a nine days' wonder: but he also saw that sensationalism would never last.<p/>The hard way of service and of suffering leads to the cross, but after the cross to the crown.<p/><b>THE GALILAEAN SPRINGTIME</b> (<a href='B:490 4:14-15'>Luk 4:14-15</a>)


text:
 So Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee; and the story of him spread throughout the whole countryside. He kept on teaching in their synagogues; and he was held in high reputation by all.<p/></i><p/>No sooner had Jesus left the wilderness than he was faced with another decision. He knew that for him the hour had struck; he had settled once and for all the method he was going to take. Now he had to decide where he would start.<p/>(i) He began in Galilee. Galilee was an area in the north of Palestine about fifty miles from north to south and twenty-five miles from east to west. The name itself means a circle and comes from the Hebrew word galiyl (<a href='S:H1551'>H1551</a>). It was so called because it was encircled by non-Jewish nations. Because of that, new influences had always played upon Galilee and it was the most forward-looking and least conservative part of Palestine. It was extraordinarily densely populated. Josephus, who was himself at one time governor of the area, says that it had 204 villages or towns, none with a population less than 15,000: It seems incredible that there could be some 3,000,000 people congregated in Galilee.<p/>It was a land of extraordinary fertility. There was a proverb which said that, "It is easier to raise a legion of olive trees in Galilee than to bring up one child in Judaea." The wonderful climate and the superb water supply made it the garden of Palestine. The very list of trees which grew there shows how amazingly fertile it was--the vine, the olive, the fig, the oak, the walnut, the terebinth, the palm, the cedar, the cypress, the balsam, the firtree, the pine, the sycamore, the baytree, the myrtle. the almond, the pomegranate, the citron and the oleander.<p/>The Galilaeans themselves were the Highlanders of Palestine. Josephus says of them, "They were ever fond of innovations and by nature disposed to changes, and delighted in seditions. They were ever ready to follow a leader who would begin an insurrection. They were quick in temper and given to quarrelling." "The Galilaeans, it was said, "have never been destitute of courage." "They were ever more anxious for honour than for gain."<p/>That is the land in which Jesus began. It was his own land; and it would give him, at least at the beginning, an audience who would listen and kindle at his message.<p/>(ii) He began in the synagogue. The synagogue was the real centre of religious life in Palestine. There was only one Temple; but the law said that wherever there were ten Jewish families there must be a synagogue; and so in every town and village it was in the synagogue that the people met to worship. There were no sacrifices in the synagogue. The Temple was designed for sacrifice; the synagogue for teaching. But how could Jesus gain an entry into the synagogue and how could he, a layman, the carpenter from Nazareth, deliver his message there?<p/>In the synagogue service there were three parts.<p/>(a) The worship part in which prayer was offered.<p/>(b) The reading of the scriptures. Seven people from the congregation read. As they read, the ancient Hebrew, which was no longer widely understood, was translated by the Targumist into Aramaic or Greek, in the case of the Law, one verse at a time, in the case of the prophets, three verses at a time.<p/>(c) The teaching part. In the synagogue there was no professional ministry nor any one person to give the address; the president would invite any distinguished person present to speak and discussion and talk would follow. That is how Jesus got his chance. The synagogue and its platform were open to him at this stage.<p/>(iii) The passage ends by saying that he was held in high reputation by all. This period of Jesus' ministry has been called the Galilaean springtime. He had come like a breath of the very wind of God. The opposition had not yet crystallized. Men's hearts were hungry for the word of life, and they had not yet realized what a blow he was to strike at the orthodoxy of his time. A man with a message will always command an audience.<p/><b>WITHOUT HONOUR IN HIS OWN COUNTRY</b> (<a href='B:490 4:16-30'>Luk 4:16-30</a>)


text:
 So Jesus came to Nazareth where he had been brought up; and, as was his habit, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read the lesson. The roll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He opened the roll and found the passage where it is written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring the Good News to the poor. He has sent me to announce release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who have been bruised, to proclaim that the year which everyone is waiting for has come." And he folded up the roll and handed it back to the officer and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed intently on him. He began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your ears." And all witnessed to him and were amazed at the words of grace that came from his mouth. And they said, "Is this not the son of Joseph?" He said to them, "You are bound to quote the proverb to me, 'Physician, heal yourself; we have heard about all that happened in Capernaum; do the same kind of things in your own home country.'" He said, "This is the truth that I tell you. No prophet is accepted in his own home country. In truth I tell you there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months and when there was a great famine all over the earth. And to none of them was Elijah sent but he was sent to Zarephath, to a widow of Sidon. There were many lepers in Israel in the times of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was healed; but Naaman the Syrian was." And the people in the synagogue were filled with anger as they listened to these things; and they rose up and hustled him out of the town. They took him to the brow of the hill on which their town is built, to throw him down; but he passed through the midst of them and went upon his way.<p/></i><p/>One of Jesus' very early visits was to Nazareth, his home town. Nazareth was not a village. It is called a polis (<a href='S:G4172'>G4172</a>) which means a town or city; and it may well have had as many as 20,000 inhabitants. It stood in a little hollow in the hills on the lower slopes of Galilee near the Plain of Jezreel. But a boy had only to climb to the hilltop above the town and he could see an amazing panorama for miles around.<p/>Sir George Adam Smith described the scene from the hilltop. The history of Israel stretched out before the watcher's eye. There was the plain of Esdraelon where Deborah and Barak had fought; where Gideon had won his victories; where Saul had crashed to disaster and Josiah had been killed in battle; there was Naboth's vineyard and the place where Jehu slaughtered Jezebel; there was Shunem where Elisha had lived; there was Carmel where Elijah had fought his epic battle with the prophets of Baal; and, blue in the distance, there was the Mediterranean and the isles of the sea.<p/>Not only the history of Israel was there; the world unfolded itself from the hilltop above Nazareth. Three great roads skirted it. There was the road from the south carrying pilgrims to Jerusalem. There was the great Way of the Sea which led from Egypt to Damascus with laden caravans moving along it. There was the great road to the east bearing caravans from Arabia and Roman legions marching out to the eastern frontiers of the Empire. It is wrong to think of Jesus as being brought up in a backwater; he was brought up in a town in sight of history and with the traffic of the world almost at its doors.<p/>We have already described the synagogue service and this passage gives us a vivid picture of it in action. It was not a book which Jesus took, for at this time everything was written on rolls. It was from <a href='B:290 61:1-11'>Isa 61:1-11</a> that he read. In <a href='B:490 4:20'>Luk 4:20</a> the King James Version speaks misleadingly of the minister. The official in question was the Chazzan. He had many duties. He had to take out and put back the sacred rolls of scripture; he had to keep the synagogue clean; he had to announce the coming of the Sabbath with three blasts of the silver trumpet from the synagogue roof; and he was also the teacher in the village school. <a href='B:490 4:20'>Luk 4:20</a> says that Jesus sat down. That gives us the impression that he was finished. In point of fact it means that he was about to start, because the speaker gave the address seated and Rabbis taught sitting down. (compare our own phrase, a professor's chair).<p/>What angered the people was the apparent compliment that Jesus paid to gentiles. The Jews were so sure that they were God's people that they utterly despised all others. They believed that "God had created the gentiles to be fuel for the fires of hell." And here was this young Jesus, whom they all knew, preaching as if the gentiles were specially favoured by God. It was beginning to dawn upon them that there were things in this new message the like of which they had never dreamed.<p/>We must note two other things.<p/>(i) It was Jesus' habit to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath. There must have been many things with which he radically disagreed and which grated on him--yet he went. The worship of the synagogue might be far from perfect; yet Jesus never omitted to join himself to God's worshipping people on God's day.<p/>(ii) We have only to read the passage of Isaiah that Jesus read to see the difference between Jesus and John the Baptist. John was the preacher of doom and at his message men must have shuddered with terror. It was a gospel--Good News--which Jesus brought. Jesus, too, knew the wrath of God but it was always the wrath of love.<p/><b>THE SPIRIT OF AN UNCLEAN DEVIL</b> (<a href='B:490 4:31-37'>Luk 4:31-37</a>)


text:
 Jesus came down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and he was teaching them on the Sabbath day; and they were astonished at his teaching because his speech was with authority. There was in the synagogue a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon and he cried out with a loud voice, "What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are--the Holy One of God." So Jesus rebuked it. "Be muzzled, he said, "and come out of him." And after the demon had thrown him into the midst of them, it came out of him and it did him no harm. Astonishment fell on them all and they kept saying to each other, "What word is this? because he gives orders to unclean spirits with authority and with power and they come out." And the story of him went out to every place in the surrounding district.<p/></i><p/>We would have liked to know as much about Capernaum as we do about Nazareth, but the strange fact is that there is even doubt as to the site of this lake-side town where so much of Jesus' mighty work was done.<p/>This passage is specially interesting because it is the first in Luke where we encounter demon possession. The ancient world believed that the air was thickly populated with evil spirits which sought entry into men. Often they did enter a man through food or drink. All illness was caused by them. The Egyptians believed there were thirty-six different parts of the human body and any of them could be entered and controlled by one of these evil spirits. There were spirits of deafness, of dumbness, of fever; spirits which took a man's sanity and wits away; spirits of lying and of deceit and of uncleanness. It was such a spirit that Jesus exorcised here.<p/>To many people this is a problem. On the whole, modern thought regards belief in spirits as something primitive and superstitious which men have outgrown. Yet Jesus seemed to believe in them. There are three possibilities.<p/>(i) Jesus actually did believe in them. If that is so, as far as scientific knowledge went he was not in advance of his own age but under all the limitations of contemporary medical thought. There is no need to refuse such a conclusion for, if Jesus was really a man, in scientific things he must have had the knowledge then open to men.<p/>(ii) Jesus did not believe in them. But the sufferer did believe intensely and Jesus could cure people only by assuming their beliefs about themselves to be true. If a person is ill and someone says to him, "There's nothing wrong with you, that is no help. The reality of the pain has to be admitted before a cure can follow. The people believed they were possessed of devils and Jesus, like a wise doctor, knew he could not heal them unless he assumed that their view of their trouble was real.<p/>(iii) Modern thought has been swinging round to the admission that perhaps there is something in demons after all. There are certain troubles which have no bodily cause as far as can be discovered. There is no reason why the man is ill, but he is ill. Since there is no physical explanation some now think there must be a spiritual one and that demons may not be so unreal after all.<p/>The people were astonished at Jesus' power--and no wonder. The east was full of people who could exorcise demons. But their methods were weird and wonderful. An exorcist would put a ring under the afflicted person's nose; he would recite a long spell; and then all of a sudden there would be a splash in a basin of water which he had put near to hand--and the demon was out! A magical root called Baaras was specially effective. When a man approached it, it shrank into the ground unless gripped, and to grip it was certain death. So the ground round it was dug away; a dog was tied to it; the struggles of the dog tore up the root; and when the root was torn up the dog died, as a substitute for a man. What a difference between all this hysterical paraphernalia and the calm single word of command of Jesus! It was his sheer authority which staggered them.<p/>Jesus' authority was something quite new. When the Rabbis taught they supported every statement with quotations. They always said, "There is a saying that..." "Rabbi so and so said that..." They always appealed to authority. When the prophets spoke, they said, "Thus saith the Lord." Theirs was a delegated authority. When Jesus spoke, he said, "I say to you." He needed no authorities to buttress him; his was not a delegated authority; he was authority incarnate. Here was a man who spoke as one who knew.<p/>In every sphere of life the expert bears an air of authority. A musician tells how when Toscanini mounted the rostrum authority flowed from him and the orchestra felt it. When we need technical advice we call in the expert. Jesus is the expert in life. He speaks and men know that this is beyond human argument--this is God.<p/><b>A MIRACLE IN A COTTAGE</b> (<a href='B:490 4:38-39'>Luk 4:38-39</a>)


text:
 Jesus left the synagogue and came into Simon's house; and Simon's mother-in-law was in the grip of a major fever. They asked him to do something for her. He stood over her and rebuked the fever and it left her. Immediately she got up and began to serve them.<p/></i><p/>Here Luke the doctor writes. In the grip of a major fever--every word is a medical term. In the grip of is the medical Greek for someone definitely laid up with an illness. The Greek medical writers divided fevers into two classes--major and minor. Luke knew just how to describe this illness.<p/>There are three great truths in this short incident.<p/>(i) Jesus was always ready to serve. He had just left the synagogue. Every preacher knows what it is like after a service. Virtue is gone out of him; he has need of rest. The last thing he wants is a crowd of people and a fresh call upon him. But no sooner had Jesus left the synagogue and entered Peter's house than the insistent cry of human need was at him. He did not claim that he was tired and must rest; he answered it without complaint.<p/>The Salvation Army people tell of a Mrs. Berwick in the days of the London blitzes. She had been in charge of the Salvation Army's social work in Liverpool and had retired to London. People had strange ideas during the blitzes and they had the idea that somehow Mrs Berwick's house was safe; and so they gathered there. Though she had retired, the instinct to help was still with her. She got together a simple first-aid box and then put a notice in her window, "If you need help, knock here." Always Jesus was ready to help; his followers must be the same.<p/>(ii) Jesus did not need a crowd to work a miracle. Many a man will put out an effort in a crowd that he will not make among his own private circle. Many a man is at his best in society and at his worst at home. All too commonly we are gracious, courteous, obliging to strangers and the very opposite when there is no one but our own folk to see. But Jesus was prepared to put out all his power in a village cottage in Capernaum when the crowds were gone.<p/>(iii) When Peter's mother-in-law was cured immediately she began to serve them. She realized that she had been given back her health to spend it in the service of others. She wanted no fussing and no petting; she wanted to get on with cooking and serving her own folk and Jesus. Mothers are always like that. We would do well to remember that if God gave us the priceless gift of health and strength, he gave it that we might use it always in the service of others.<p/><b>THE INSISTENT CROWDS</b> (<a href='B:490 4:40-44'>Luk 4:40-44</a>)


text:
 When the sun was setting all who had friends who were ill with all kinds of sicknesses brought them to Jesus; and he laid his hands upon each one of them and cured them. Out of many there came demons, shouting out and saying, "You are the Son of God." And he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Anointed One. When day came, he went out and went to a desert place; and the crowds kept looking for him and they tried to restrain him so that he would not go away from them; but he said to them, "I must tell the Good News of the Kingdom of God to other towns too, because that is what I was sent to do."<p/></i><p/>(i) Early in the morning Jesus went out to be alone. He was able to meet the insistent needs of men only because he first companied with God. Once, in the 1914-18 war, a staff conference was due to begin. All were present except Marshal Foch, the commander-in-chief. An officer who knew him well said, "I think I know where we may find him." He led them round to a ruined chapel close beside General Headquarters and there, before the shattered altar, the great soldier was kneeling in prayer. Before he met men he must first meet God.<p/>(ii) There is no word of complaint or resentment when Jesus' privacy was invaded by the crowds. Prayer is great but in the last analysis human need is greater. Florence Allshorn, the great missionary teacher, used to run a training college for missionaries. She knew human nature and she had little time for people who suddenly discovered that their quiet hour was due just when the dishes were to be washed! Pray we must; but prayer must never be an escape from reality. Prayer cannot preserve a man from the insistent cry of human need. It must prepare him for it; and sometimes he will need to rise from his knees too soon and get to work--even when he does not want to.<p/>(iii) Jesus would not let the demons speak. Over and over again we get on Jesus' lips this injunction to silence. Why? For this very good reason--the Jews had their own popular ideas of the Messiah. To them the Messiah was to be a conquering king who would set his foot upon the eagle's neck and sweep the Romans from Palestine. Palestine was in an inflammable condition. Rebellion was always just below the surface and often broke out. Jesus knew that if the report went out that he was the Messiah the revolutionaries would be ready to flare up. Before men could call him Messiah, he had to teach them that Messiah meant not a conquering king but a suffering servant. His injunctions to silence were given because people did not yet know what Messiahship meant, and if they started out with the wrong ideas death and destruction would surely follow.<p/>(iv) Here is the first mention of the kingdom of God in Luke's gospel. Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God (<a href='B:480 1:15'>Mar 1:15</a>). That was the essence of his message. What did he mean by the kingdom of God? For Jesus the kingdom was three things at the same time.<p/>(a) It was past. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were in the kingdom and they had lived centuries ago (<a href='B:490 13:28'>Luk 13:28</a>).<p/>(b) It was present. "The kingdom, he said, "is within you, or among you" (<a href='B:490 17:21'>Luk 17:21</a>).<p/>(c) It was future. It was something which God was still to give and for which men must ever pray.<p/>How can the kingdom be all these things at the same time? Turn to the Lord's Prayer. There are two petitions in it side by side. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven (<a href='B:470 6:10'>Mat 6:10</a>). Now the Hebrews, as any verse of the psalms will show, had a way of saying things twice; and always the second way explained, or developed, or amplified the first way. Put these two phrases together--Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. The second explains the first; therefore, the kingdom of God is a society upon earth where Gods will is as perfectly done as it is in heaven. If any man in the past has perfectly done God's will, he is in the kingdom; if any man does it now, he is in the kingdom; but the day when all men will do that will is still far distant, therefore the consummation is still to come; and so the kingdom is past and present and future all at the same time.<p/>Other men do that will spasmodically, sometimes obeying, sometimes disobeying. Only Jesus always did it perfectly. That is why he is the foundation and the incarnation of the kingdom. He came to enable all men to do the same. To do God's will is to be a citizen of the kingdom of God. We may well pray-- "Lord, bring in thy kingdom, beginning with me." 


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 Jesus was standing on the shore of the Lake of Gennesaret while the crowds pressed in upon him to listen to the word of God. He saw two boats riding close to the shore. the fishermen had disembarked from them and were washing their nets. He embarked on one of the boats, which belonged to Simon, and asked him to push out a little from the land. He sat down and continued to teach the crowds from the boat. When he stopped speaking, he said to Simon, "Push out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Simon answered, "Master, we have toiled all night long and we caught nothing; but, if you say so, I will let down the nets." When they had done so they enclosed a great crowd of fishes; their nets were torn with the numbers; so they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They came and they rifled both the boats so that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this he fell at Jesus' knees. "Leave me, Lord," he said, "because I am a sinful man." Wonder gripped him and all who were with him at the number of fishes they had caught. It was the same with James and John, Zebedee's sons, who were partners with Simon. Jesus said to Simon, "From now on you will be catching men." So they brought the boats to land and they left everything and followed him.<p/></i><p/>The famous sheet of water in Galilee is called by three names--the Sea of Galilee, the Sea of Tiberias and the Lake of Gennesaret. It is thirteen miles long by eight miles wide. It lies in a dip in the earth's surface and is 680 feet below sea level. That fact gives it an almost tropical climate. Nowadays it is not very populous but in the days of Jesus it had nine townships clustered round its shores, none of fewer than 15,000 people.<p/>Gennesaret is really the name of the lovely plain on the west side of the lake, a most fertile piece of land. The Jews loved to play with derivations, and they had three derivations for Gennesaret all of which show how beautiful it was.<p/>(i) From kinnowr (<a href='S:H3658'>H3658</a>), which means a harp, either because "its fruit is as sweet as the sound of a harp" or because "the voice of its waves is pleasant as the voice of the harp,<p/>(ii) From gan (<a href='S:H1588'>H1588</a>), a garden, and sar (<a href='S:H8269'>H8269</a>), a prince--hence "the prince of gardens."<p/>(iii) From gan (<a href='S:H1588'>H1588</a>), a garden, and 'osher (<a href='S:H6239'>H6239</a>), riches--hence "the garden of riches."<p/>We are here confronted with a turning point in the career of Jesus. Last time we heard him preach he was in the synagogue; now he is at the lakeside. True, he will be back in the synagogue again; but the time is coming when the door of the synagogue will be shut to him and his church will be the lakeside and the open road, and his pulpit a boat. He would go anywhere where men would listen to him. "Our societies, said John Wesley, "were formed from those who were wandering upon the dark mountains, that belonged to no Christian church; but were awakened by the preaching of the Methodists, who had pursued them through the wilderness of this world to the High-ways and the Hedges--to the Markets and the Fairs--to the Hills and the Dales--who set up the Standard of the Cross in the Streets and Lanes of the Cities, in the Villages, in the Barns, and Farmers' Kitchens, etc.--and all this done in such a way, and to such an extent, as never had been done before since the Apostolic age." "I love a commodious room, said Wesley, "a soft cushion and a handsome pulpit, but field preaching saves souls." When the synagogue was shut Jesus took to the open road.<p/>There is in this story what we might call a list of the conditions of a miracle.<p/>(i) There is the eye that sees. There is no need to think that Jesus created a shoal of fishes for the occasion. In the Sea of Galilee there were phenomenal shoals which covered the sea as if it was solid for as much as an acre. Most likely Jesus' keen eye saw just such a shoal and his keen sight made it look like a miracle. We need the eye that really sees. Many people saw steam raise the lid of a kettle; only James Watt went on to think of a steam engine. Many people saw an apple fall; only Isaac Newton went on to think out the law of gravity. The earth is full of miracles for the eye that sees.<p/>(ii) There is the spirit that will make an effort. If Jesus said it, tired as he was Peter was prepared to try again. For most people the disaster of life is that they give up just one effort too soon.<p/>(iii) There is the spirit which will attempt what seems hopeless. The night was past and that was the time for fishing. All the circumstances were unfavourable, but Peter said, "Let circumstances be what they may, if you say so, we will try again." Too often we wait because the time is not opportune. If we wait for a perfect set of circumstances, we will never begin at all. If we want a miracle, we must take Jesus at his word when he bids us attempt the impossible.<p/><b>TOUCHING THE UNTOUCHABLE</b> (<a href='B:490 5:12-15'>Luk 5:12-15</a>)


