12 Our Lord's First Text
XII OUR LORD’S FIRST TEXT
I shall leave you all to read at your leisure the interesting descriptions that Farrar, and Geikie, and Edersheim, and Stalker will all give you of the synagogue in Israel, and of its Sabbath-day services. It is most interesting reading, and it will well repay all your time and attention. Dr. Bruce, in his extraordinarily graphic commentary, calls this passage now open before us Luke’s "frontispiece" to all our Lord’s preaching. This evangelist, in placing this picture of our Lord at the opening of His preaching life, as good as says to us that if we study this preliminary passage well we shall have in it the best possible preface to the whole pulpit-life of our Lord. And a very vivid and life-like picture it is that Luke here gives us. For as we read this chapter of his we are taken back into the synagogue of Nazareth that Sabbath morning, till we see, as it were with our own eyes, all that goes on in that synagogue. We see Joseph’s Son standing up for to read. We see the book of the prophet Esaias delivered unto Him. And when He had found the place we hear Him reading the text that we know so well ever since He read it that Sabbath morning. How I wish that we had His sermon as well as His text. What would I not give to be able to read His own sermon on this text to you to-night? Shorthand had been invented by Cicero just the century before. And no doubt by this time some of his well-trained reporters had found their way to Galilee, where so many Roman lawyers and Roman officers were carrying on Roman business. And it is not irreverent; it is not in any way wrong in us to express a wish that one of those early stenographers of Cicero’s had found his way into that Jewish synagogue that morning. For, if he had, sure I am that the instinct of his art would have compelled him to take out his pencil. But in the absence of our Lord’s very sermon that morning on this text, I must do my best to make such a sermon on it as I am able this evening. And I set about that task not wholly without hope, depending on His promise that the Holy Ghost shall teach me in this same hour what I shall say. To begin with. If we would enter truly into any of our Lord’s texts, and would really and truly take home to ourselves any of our Lord’s sermons, we must continually keep in mind what, exactly and exclusively, His errand was in this world. Sin was His errand in this world, and it was His only errand. He would never have been in this world at all, either preaching sermons, or doing anything else, but for sin. He could have done everything else for us without coming down into this world at all; everything else but take away our sin. And thus it is that our sin is the true key wherewith to open up all He ever said, and all He ever did, while He was with us in this world. And thus it is also that unless your sin is ever before you, neither Jesus Christ Himself, nor His coming, nor any of His texts, nor any of His sermons, will ever be understood by you. You will not understand or comprehend one single clause of His first text, nor one single sentence of my present sermon upon His first text, unless you attend all the time as a sinner, and as nothing else but a sinner. You must be poor, as only a sinner is poor. And you must be broken-hearted, as only a sinner is broken-hearted. And you must be in captivity, as only a sinner is in captivity. And you must be blind, as only a sinner is blind. And you must be bruised, as only a sinner is bruised; first by, he fall of Adam, and then by all your own falls. Then, and then only, and thus and thus only, will all your eyes be fastened on Him. Then, and then only, will you bear Him witness, and will wonder at the gracious words which proceed out of His mouth. As thus: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; or to the meek, as Esaias originally has it. But the poor and the meek are both the same thing. The poor and the meek are one and the same class of men in this special classification of men. Now, there is no poverty in all this world for one moment to compare with the squalid poverty of a sinner. And there is no meekness in all this world like the meekness of a prostrate sinner. You can do anything that your wicked heart prompts you to do to a truly prostrate sinner. You are quite safe to trample on him as much as you like. You can maltreat him as much as Aaron and Miriam maltreated Moses. And the trodden worm will never once turn on you till God turns on you. And God’s turning on you till you are a leper as white as snow, will only make your meek victim to charge himself with having brought all that evil upon you. Now, it was out of His pure pity and compassion for such poor and meek-hearted and maltreated sinners as Moses was that God sent His Son to save them from all their sins and miseries. Their sins having had sin’s perfect work in producing such spiritual poverty and such spiritual meekness, God looked down and saw their affliction, till He sent His own Son to find the place where it was written concerning them, and to say,--This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears. And all the poor in spirit and all the meek in heart to the end of time, will wonder at the gracious words which that day proceeded, and still proceed, out of His mouth.
Again; there are broken hearts, and broken hearts, as we say. And it is not by any means any and every broken heart that God has sent His Son to heal. He comes to heal those hearts only that no one else can heal. If it is in the power of man or woman to heal the break in your heart, then you do not need to go to Christ, and He does not need to come to you. He is this kind of a healer that He only hems what you cannot heal for yourself, and what no one else can heal for you. You will continually come on this kind of case in this world. You will come on a heart so broken by this world that you are not able to administer so much as one word of comfort to the inconsolable sufferer. But you come back to-morrow, and behold you are confounded, all is in such sunshine. The hopelessly broken heart of yesterday is healed and all its past breaks and bruises are forgotten. But if sin has broken your heart, and sin only, then yours is a clear case for Christ, and for Christ alone. Miserable comforters to a sin-broken heart are all other comforters but Christ. He alone can treat a case like yours. And it is sin, and the heart-fractures of sin alone, that He condescends to deal with. Skin-deep wounds, and surface scratches, do not bring the carriages of the great doctors to your door. But heart-diseases and secret cancers that mock at all their medicines; things like these fascinate our best physicians till they can think of no other patient but you. They will sit at your bedside all night covered with shame at their ignorance and their utter inability to minister to such a deep disease as is your disease. Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.
Stier thinks that Esaias was such a real and literal prophet that he penned this passage intending it exclusively as a text for our Lord. And he holds that this text lay shut down and silent on the prophet’s page till that Sabbath morning when our Lord discovered it, and said, This day is this Scripture fulfilled to every broken heart. And Stier is right. This great text was prophetically penned for that morning in Nazareth, and for this evening ill Edinburgh. And especially for this evening in Edinburgh. For sure I am that there were no such broken hearts in all that Jewish synagogue that morning as there are in this Christian church this evening. There could not be. And accordingly Christ Himself could not command such a hearing that morning as I myself am commanding here this evening. For-- A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him who makes it. And so it is with a sermon. A sermon’s prosperity comes under the same law as a jest’s prosperity. And it is your sin-broken hearts that give even to my poor sermon this evening a prosperity that my Lord’s sermon did not experience in Nazareth that morning. For some reason or other, and very unlike himself, the evangelist has left out several essential clauses of the original text as Esaias wrote it. And clauses, I feel as sure as if I had been there, that Christ did not leave out that morning. When I turned, just for curiosity’s sake, to compare the evangelist’s report with the prophet’s own page, my heart gave a great leap of joy, as your heart will give immediately. For, what did I read that Luke had unaccountably left out? I read this. And I have now the joy of reading it to you. "To comfort all that mourn. To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." I, for one, cannot believe that Jesus Christ closed the book and gave it to the minister, and sat down, and left these wonderful words unread. No. His omission of these golden words is to me inconceivable and impossible. You may depend upon it, God’s Anointed did not dismiss that congregation that morning till He had spoken some never-to-be-forgotten words to those who mourned in that Nazareth-Zion that Sabbath morning. "Blessed are they that mourn," He would say, "for they shall be comforted." And he would go on to comfort them Himself, and on the spot. Those, that is, who came under the prophet’s description of mourners in Zion. For there would be many mourners in that synagogue that morning, as there are in this church this evening, who did not, and do not, come under this description. You yourselves can comfort all outside mourners: all mourners who have fallen into their mourning outside of Zion. There are whole heaps of ashes for which you yourselves can give beauty. And there are whole worlds of mourning for which you can give one another the oil of joy. But there is a kind of heaviness in Zion that none of you can touch. Peter put his finger on it in these words-"In heaviness, if need be, through manifold temptation." Christ alone can alleviate that heaviness. And even He can only alleviate it. Even He cannot entirely remove it, as long as there is a need be for it. But He can mightily alleviate it, if not yet wholly remove it. As He does; the most tempted of you being witnesses, by such other Scriptures of His as these: Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. These things have I spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. My meditation of Him shall be sweet, said the Psalmist. Now, my meditation on all these things leaves these three deep and sweet impressions on my mind and my heart this evening--
1. The free grace and the rich grace of it all. He does it all for us, and we receive it all from Him. We bring the sin, and He brings the salvation. We bring the poverty, and He brings the riches. We bring the broken heart, and He brings the healing. We bring the captivity, and He brings the deliverance. We bring the prison, and He brings the opening of the prison. We bring the mourning, and He brings the joy. We bring the ashes, and He brings the beauty. We bring the spirit of heaviness, and He brings the garment of praise. The short and the long of it is this — it is all sin and misery on our side, and it is all free grace and a full salvation on His side. Till no wonder that all your eyes are fastened on Him. No wonder that you are all bearing Him witness, and are wondering at the gracious words which proceed to you out of His mouth.
2. And this impression is deep in my mind also, that all your ministers should read their Master’s first text the first thing every new Sabbath morning, till they set out to their work anointed afresh with the self-same Spirit as that with which He was anointed that Sabbath morning. And if they did, what a ministry they would have all their days down to the very end! What comforters would they be made to those who mourn in the Zion where they minister! And what a crown of glory would they be surprised with when the Chief Shepherd shall appear! Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God.
3. And with all that, this reflection arises in my own heart as I close. "God had only one Son," says Dr. Thomas Goodwin, "and He made Him a minister." And this text and this sermon leave me in this matter in the same mind with God. For, if I had ten sons; if I had a hundred sons; I would make them all ministers if I could, and every one of them a far better preacher on this text than their father.