24 - Matthew 11:11

’Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.’ -Matthew 11:11. As one star differeth from another star in glory, so prophet differeth from prophet in respect to the fulness of the revelation made to them and through them. Some had but a single message to deliver, delivered it and their lives with it, and a few words contain their record in the Bible; others fill sixty chapters with their prophecies. In admiring the grace bestowed upon them, the measure of the Spirit vouchsafed, we pass from one to another, till we come to him who actually looked upon the Messiah, touched his sacred person, conversed with him, baptized him. What kings and prophets had desired to see and died without the sight of, he saw. He stood where Moses and Elijah had desired to stand; Moses, who was with God in the mount, Elijah, who was caught up to heaven in a chariot of fire, these were not so highly privileged as John the Baptist, who saw God manifest in the flesh. After our mental vision has got a little used to the contemplation of this lofty and heaven-lit pinnacle of privilege, let us endeavour to comprehend the fact that he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he; that this dispensation of ours begins where the other ends. As Joel had predicted: "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit." The very Spirit that gave the ancient prophets all that distinguished them from others should be poured out upon all classes, even upon the least in the kingdom of heaven.

Accordingly the humblest believer has in these days a fulness of knowledge concerning the suffering and risen and glorified Saviour, concerning the way of salvation, the relation of faith and works, the method of sanctification, the walking with God, the Church of the living God, our oneness in Christ and with Christ, the meaning of all Scripture, the world to come, the New Jerusalem, etc. etc., immeasurably beyond anything that was revealed to the Old Testament prophets. The sermon that seems to many in these days stale, flat, and unprofitable, would have overwhelmed with wonder and filled with questions the minds of the most highly favoured of ancient prophets. The privileges of this dispensation are to be estimated not by the actual experiences of those called Christians, for these are limited by their want of faith, but by the promises, declarations, and invitations of the word of God. We find them in that Magna Charta, the prayer of Christ contained in John 17:1-26.; we find them in the closing conversations of Christ with his disciples; in the Acts of the Apostles, which describe the Spirit of glory and of God that rested on the first disciples; in the Epistles; in the Epistles to the seven Churches; in the account of the New Jerusalem. For no one can compare the description of the New Jerusalem which cometh down from God out of heaven, having the glory of God and a light like unto a stone most precious, with the promises and invitations of Revelation 2:1-29. and Revelation 3:1-22., without perceiving that the privileges and glorious distinctions of the New Jerusalem are now potentially ours. We are joint-heirs with Christ; all things are ours; all things pertaining to life and godliness. The 3rd chapter of 2nd Corinthians is full of instruction, and well calculated to give us an exalted idea of what is placed within our reach by the death and resurrection of Christ. "For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory." "We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." We all; even the least in the kingdom of heaven; according to our faith. The believer enters into the greatness which Christ has purchased for him, by giving up all futile and fatuous thoughts of his own greatness and goodness; by recognising his own utter demeritoriousness; his moral and spiritual beggarliness. But what shall he do for strength and wisdom and righteousness? Christ becomes to him everything. The mighty chasm that separated his polluted soul from God is bridged over by Christ; in Christ all the fulness of the Godhead, all treasures of wisdom and knowledge and power and holiness become his. Christ is his life; for he is dead, and his life is hid with Christ in God; not I, but Christ liveth in me. Invested with Christ’s own worthiness and loveliness, he draws nigh to the Father, and all the Father’s love to Christ becomes his. He puts on the whole armour of God, and overcomes not such enemies as were vanquished (partly, briefly) by Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, not armies of mere flesh and blood, but the god of this world; overcomes him where he is enthroned, in the heart of unbelief; quenches all those fiery darts whereby he would persuade the young soldier that he has no part or lot in Christ, that God hears not his prayer, that sin is invincible, that the wrath of man is unendurable, that faith is mere imagination, that the kingdom of heaven is only so much tinted vapour hanging unreally in the beams of a setting sun. He learns to say, ’I can do all things through Christ who strengthened me, and who will never leave me nor forsake me. I can win victories that the great men of earth never dreamed of winning, - over unbelief, evil habit, evil desire, selfishness, over prosperity and adversity, over the smiles and the frowns of men, over privation and affluence. I can not merely defend myself from the armies of the enemy, I can make successful assaults upon their camp, and carry off captives. The overthrow and destruction of all those hosts in the great day of the Lord God Almighty shall be accomplished by the same Word that is now with me.’ By that same Word shall the new heavens and the new earth appear, wherein dwelleth righteousness.