And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it.— St. Luke xix. 41.
I. How the Son of David was discovered by the blind Bartimeeus; how He was invoked by that name to heal a wayside beggar, we considered last week. As He enters into Jericho, we hear of a rich man who bows before Him as the poor man had bowed. But Zaccheus, though rich, is a tax-gatherer. All the odium of his class belongs to him. Probably he has deserved it. The complaint, ‘He is gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner,’ taken in connection with his own words, has struck most readers as implying more than that Zaccheus had gained his wealth in an unpopular occupation. But if it was so, there had been awakened in him a craving for that which riches, well or ill-gotten, could not buy; yes, for a deliverance from that which they had bought. The money-getter climbs into a sycamore-tree, that he may get sight of one who, he is told, is a Galilean Peasant. There is a witness in his heart that this Peasant can do for him what no one else can do. His King speaks to him in that Peasant. ‘Zaccheus, make haste and come down, For to-day I must abide in thy house.’ He does not ask, as Bartimeeus did, that he may receive his sight; but scales fall from his inward eyes. The curse of riches and the use of riches are revealed to him. He starts from a money-getter and a money-worshipper into a man. He does not repent of some vague general sin. He repents of that which has been besetting him. He casts that off in the strength of the friend whom he has found so near to him. ‘Behold,’ he says, ‘Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.’ Is he answered, ‘Yes; that resolution, if it is well kept, will procure the pardon of thy sins; that surrender of thy goods may buy heaven for thee in spite of thy past wrong-doings?’ No; but he hears words immeasurably more assuring and elevating than those. ‘This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham.’ To be saved out of that money-worship which has degraded thee, enslaved thee, made thee incapable of entering into the glory of thy race, into thy citizenship as an Israelite, this is the highest gift which thy Prince can confer on thee. Now thou mayst walk the earth and look up to the heavens as a freeman. To give that freedom, I have come into the world. ‘The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.’
II. They are approaching Jerusalem. There is a strange awe on the minds of the disciples. All these acts of royalty done on behalf of men who lie quite out of the path of ordinary teachers, whom the religious men of the land utterly scorn, increase their feeling that a revolution is at hand; that the Kingdom of God is about to displace the kingdom of the Sanhedrim and the kingdom of the Romans. Therefore we are told, He added and spake a parable to them.
‘He said, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.’ The case might have occurred recently. It was one which they all knew had occurred, and was likely to occur. A member of the Herodian family, unable to maintain himself in the tetrarchy or kingdom which had been committed to him against his refractory subjects, travels to Rome that he may obtain a confirmation of it from the Caesar, may strengthen and establish himself in it. He is a ruler, then, already. He leaves behind him a number of persons who acknowledge his authority, and wait for his return. To these he entrusts a certain treasure, bidding them make the most of it, and give him an account whenever he should call for it. The incidents which concern this kingdom cannot be detached from the parable; they belong to the very essence of it. The disciples had thought that the Kingdom of God would immediately appear. Our Lord does not say now—He did not say before—It will not appear. He had said to the Pharisees, ‘The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.’ He illustrates those words to the disciples in reference to their own conduct. They would be shortly called to tell the House of Israel that the Son of David had come; that God had established Him on His throne. But there would be no appearance of a throne. The King would seem to be away in a far country. His citizens would seem to have effectually banished Him. They who acknowledged His dominion would learn its reality by a deposit which He would entrust to them. It would not be a dead deposit, a treasure to be hoarded. It must be used; it must be traded with. He would expect to find when He called for it, that they had laid it out to advantage. If it was kept hidden in a napkin; He would know that they were not faithful to Him; that they did not really care for Him; that their loyalty was the loyalty of fear, not of trust.
You know that there are two different forms in which this parable is told in the Evangelists. In St. Matthew, various sums are given to the stewards. ‘One has five talents, another two, another one. Here all have the same. I believe the observation of this diversity is very instructive and very helpful to the understanding of our Lord’s purpose. When we read the Acts of the Apostles, we find the gift of the Spirit described as the great gift to the Church, the witness of the dominion of the Son of Man, the power by which His Apostles could show forth His Resurrection and His final triumph over His enemies. We also hear of gifts of the Spirit distributed variously to men according to the good pleasure of His will: the word of wisdom being entrusted to one, the word of knowledge to another, powers of healing to a third. The parable in St. Matthew, I apprehend, points to these last, and to the use which is made of them; the parable before us to the Divine Spirit itself, the endowment upon which all the others depended, which must be represented as one though its manifestations are manifold. When this spirit came upon the Apostles, they spoke with undoubted confidence of a Divine Kingdom. They knew that they were the subjects of one. They could call every man to confess himself a subject of the same. Every power and faculty within them was aroused, that they might fill their position. That which was torpid became active; that which had been bound with the ice of winter felt the breath and warmth of spring. Those who yielded to the stirrings of this life were raised out of themselves. It came forth in human sympathies. It drew their hearts to the Son of Man, from whom it was derived. To think of such a talent as intended to lie idle in a miser’s chest was to deny its nature. It was made to grow, to become greater by exercise, to send its virtue abroad. The cultivation of it would be different. In one the pound would increase to ten pounds. There would be such an unfolding of spiritual energies, such a vigorous concentration and application of all the forces within, that every day would multiply them and the benefits accruing from them. In another, the results would be weaker; still there would be the expansion which betokens the presence of life. In each case, the reward would be proportionate to the power which had been acquired. For the reward is not repose, but fresh work, a larger sphere of usefulness and influence. The command over ten cities is given to the man whose pound had grown to ten pounds; the command of five cities to the man whose pound had grown to five pounds. The faculty of doing good, by an eternal law, is multiplied and magnified according to the use which is made of it. And then follows the deepest and most solemn moral of the story. Whenever this gift is not stirred up in the man, whenever it goes to waste, the cause is this. He suspects the Giver. He thinks of Him as ’a hard master, reaping where he has not sown, gathering where he has not strawed.’ The heathens called the Divine nature an envious nature. They supposed that the powers above grudged the prosperity of men below. This is a more subtle form of the same falsehood. The man who has been taught that God has bestowed His Spirit upon him dwells not on the grandeur of the trust, nor on the love of Him who has called him to be His fellow-worker, but on the peril of offending a Judge whom it is impossible to satisfy, who may crush him to atoms if he fails. All the time a voice, speaking to his conscience, is reminding him of his inconsistency. ‘If thou hast such an inexorable ’Master, why dost thou not work more diligently to content Him?’ He cannot; his limbs are palsied. Some power must move them, and the power is wanting, for trust is wanting, love is wanting.
The parable is two-edged. Those Jews who said, ‘We will not have the Son of Man to reign over us,’ were themselves exhibiting the temper which our Lord attributes to the man who hid his talent in a napkin. They would not use the mighty trust which God had committed to them for the good of the nations, because they thought of God as a hard Master. They first persuaded themselves that He frowned on the world and only smiled on them. Then, by a just retribution, His smiles to them had the effect of terrible frowns. They felt that they ought to be doing something which they were not doing. They thought Him more hard and exacting to them than to the rest of the world, though that was doomed to perdition.
But this story was especially to remind the disciples that this temper would appear in them, the stewards of His more perfect covenant, of His highest treasure. The cause would be the same; the result would be the same. They would think of God as a hard Master first to mankind, then to themselves; consequently they would let the divine gift rust. They would suppose it a dead thing, to be returned to the owner, as if He had only endowed them with some words written in stones or in a book, not with a living Spirit capable of continually receiving fresh life, and of communicating it.
In both these applications the words which follow are very awful. ‘For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.’ They are translated for the Jewish people into these. ‘But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.’ They were left to their enemies because they would not believe in a friend; they found the hardest of all masters because they would not serve the most gracious. It is added significantly, ‘And when he had thus spoken, he went before, ascending up to Jerusalem.’ For now the time was approaching when there should be a formal declaration in that city. ‘This is not the ’King we choose; we want one as nearly as possible the reverse of him.’
III. ’And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying, Go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied whereon yet never man sat: loose him and bring him hither. And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him. And they that were sent went their way, and found even as he had said unto them. And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And they said, The Lord hath need of him. And they brought him to Jesus: and they cast their garments upon the colt, and they sat Jesus thereon. And as he went, they spread their clothes in the way.
And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen; saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.’
In every one of the Gospels the descent from the Mount of Olives, and the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, is recorded as if it were a critical point in the narrative. Clearly it could not be so if the object of the Evangelists had been to present Him primarily as a Teacher or a Prophet. There is nothing in the circumstances of that act which is characteristic of the Prophet; you cannot conceive Elijah, Isaiah, or Ezekiel taking that method of asserting his mission, if it had been ever so much denied. It recalls at once the Judge or the Monarch. The command to fetch the ass, ‘The Lord hath need of him,’ has a special air of authority and royalty. The people could not have raised any cry but, ‘Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord,’ or, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David.’ The garments spread in the way, however simple an expression of reverence, could have but one signification. If the shouts were from feeble voices, they were yet felt by the Pharisees to be ominous of a new dynasty. They said, ‘Rebuke thy disciples.’ And His answer, ‘I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out,’ was an emphatic declaration that when there were none left to be witnesses of the real Head of the city, the Corner-stone of the living temple, the material stones would be found to have no cohesion; they would fall to pieces.
This thought was surely in His mind as He looked down upon that dear and venerable city, and wept over it. Preachers have chosen to paraphrase the words, and to talk of the ‘Redeemer’s tears over lost souls.’ When Jesus speaks of the Son of Man as coming to seek and save that which was lost, I adhere to His language; I take it to be the best. When it is said, ‘He beheld the city, and wept over it,’ I understand that the City is meant, and not something else. It seems to us an unworthy subject of Christ’s sorrow, that a divine polity which had lasted so many generations-which God, and not man, had set up-which had been the witness to the world that it is God, and not man, who binds the societies of men into one, should be about to pass away with its temple, its sacrifices, all the outward signs of what it was within, -I think we can have read sacred history to very little purpose. See whether every page of the Old Testament is not setting forth to us the glory of national life. See whether it was not through their national life that patriarchs and prophets were led to believe in Him who is, and was, and is to come-who would be with the children as He had been with the fathers-who would reveal Himself more to each generation, till at last the earth should be filled with His glory. And now the Jew was deliberately casting aside this marvellous education. He was exalting a Mammon God into the throne of Jehovah. His religion was becoming another name for a selfish calculation of his individual interests. Sects were rending the commonwealth in pieces. Do we want more than this to account for Christ’s tears, and for the words, ‘If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace.’ ‘Oh! that you would have owned Him, who would have healed your savage religious strifes, who would have bound you into one family, who would have shewn you that the God of ’Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, is as truly your God as He was theirs.’ ‘But now these things are hid from thine eyes.’ A thick impenetrable blindness is coming upon you. You are cut off from the vision of the past. The brightness of the ages to come will be lost upon you. For when God’s light is changed into darkness, when your desire is to conceal yourselves from Him, what else can look beautiful to you—what is there for you but ever-deepening gloom over heaven and over earth?
IV. ‘For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.’
Surely these are direct words; they cannot be reduced into figures. We cannot talk of casting a trench about ‘lost souls,’ or laying them even with the ground. The language belongs, if there is any truth in it, to a city and a temple. And therefore we read immediately after:
‘And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought; saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves. And he taught daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the scribes, and the chief of the people sought to destroy him, and could not find what they might do: for all the people were very attentive to hear him.’
So Christ carried the war with Mammon into the very place where he was affronting the majesty of the Father. So He testified, that if Mammon was not cast out, God would depart from that place and leave it desolate.
The chief priests and the Pharisees felt that the battle was to be a deadly one. The Galilean was confronting them in their own capital. If He was the King He had found them out; He was calling them to answer for their government over the people. He might destroy them. First they would try if they could not destroy him. The experiment must be made cautiously. ‘The people were very attentive to hear him.’ Their influence was trembling. There might be an insurrection. Who could say where it would end?.
Oh, my friends! we cannot afford to divert this history from its direct purpose. Is not England a nation which Christ has cared for as much as He ever cared for Palestine? Is not London a city which He may weep over as much as He wept over Jerusalem? Have we known the things that belong to our peace? Have we asked Him to put down our factions, to give us His love for our hatred? Are there none that sell and buy in our temples? Must not they be purged?