Luke 17

Luke 17:1-18

Section 4. (Luke 17:1-37; Luke 18:1-8.)The Ways which result from the Experimental Knowledge of this manifestation, and from the world’s rejection of it.

1. God then has manifested Himself: no lost soul from its far off place of misery shall ever be able to challenge Him in this respect. He swears it even: “As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth.” But while His word remains to testify for Him, how often, alas, are even His people found false witnesses! And among the ranks of professing disciples how many causes of stumbling arise! The Lord goes on now to speak of these in a way that shows His earnestness to have all stumbling-blocks removed from before the feet of the least of all. Whom men despise for their littleness, of these His tender compassion would have special care, and this He presses now upon His disciples. Occasions of stumbling will indeed come: these are sad certainties in so sad a world; but that does not make them less grave, or easier to be passed over: nay, “woe unto those through whom they come.” Better were it for one of these to have a mill-stone hung about his neck, and so to be cast head first into the sea, than to be a stumbling to one of these little ones. But whence do occasions of stumbling most arise? To answer that, must we not ask, to what, then; above all are we witnesses? Failure here will surely be the gravest, as it will be that also of which men will most take note, and which the arch-plotter will seek most of all to get us into. Scripture, then, teaches us that we are to “show forth,” even “in the ages to come the exceeding riches of God’s grace.” Grace characterizes the dispensation; as in contrast with law, the rule of the schoolmaster which preceded this (Galatians 3:24-25). What, then, can be so great a failure as to fail in grace? It is to this, then; that the Lord goes on with an emphatic “take heed to yourselves:” “If thy brother sin against thee, reprove him; and if he repent, forgive him.” Some of the earliest MSS. omit “against thee,” with several of the earliest versions; and yet it seems plain that it should be at least understood: for it is only a personal offence that we can individually forgive; and it is just these personal offences that we most betray inability to deal with aright. Love is to act in the reproof; and this is cared for by the spirit of forgiveness enjoined; while the holiness of grace is seen in the condition of repentance. But if it were seven times a day he sinned, and seven times a day he turned, saying, I repent, he must be forgiven. This, of course, could not happen in a case of discipline in the assembly, where fitness for the table and the fellowship of the whole are involved, and where the authority of the Lord in the assembly is to be maintained. Individually we have no such authority over one another, and the service of love is the best constraint that can be used.
2. In view of the difficulties of the path which the certainty of such causes of stumbling would imply, the apostles -named as such, as those to represent the Lord in a special way as leaders of His people -ask Him to increase their faith. He replies that to faith, small as a grain of mustard-seed, the sycamine tree with its strong spreading roots would yield obediently, and plant itself in the sea. But they must be servants in all this, not masters, nor thinking to take their ease and satisfy themselves before their Master was fully served. Having done all, they were still to confess themselves those who had done no work of supererogation; but their duty only. And this is the way, in fact, in which increase of faith surely will be found. When we are doers of Christ’s work, and not our own, -not valuing ourselves upon the doing it, but lowly in spirit -then will the needed faith for all the way be found: faith is for God’s way and will: we cannot expect it for our own.
3. The story of the cleansed worshipper follows this. Ten lepers, standing afar off, beseech Him to have mercy. He bids them show themselves to the priests, and on their way they are cleansed. One, and one alone, turns back to glorify God and give thanks for his healing; and he is a stranger, a Samaritan. It is evident he is not hampered by the law that carries the others away from Christ, although belonging to a like system. But Christ has by the deliverance realized become an object for his heart: he returns to Him a worshipper; the others remain in the dead ritualism centering in an empty temple, while he obtains open recognition of a faith in which God is glorified. In fact these cleansed worshippers, worshipping neither at Samaria nor Jerusalem, and not in temples made with hands, but in the presence of God revealed in the Man Christ Jesus, are typical of the new dispensation coming in; indeed the heart of it. The mere human priests are gone: there is access through grace by faith, -a faith owned of God openly, all distance done away. Of course, it is not meant that the cleansed leper knew all this; but he foreshadowed it, Gentile as he was also, the nine Israelites having turned their back on Christ. It is to these, as one may say, that we now turn; to a people that have rejected Him, and that are now in the evils springing out of that rejection.
4. He is asked by the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God shall come. He tells them that it has in fact come, and without being perceived by them. It was there, presented to them in the Person of the King, in their midst. But as rejected, He says no more to them of this; but turns to His disciples, to tell them of the days of His absence: not of Christian times, but carrying them on to when Israel’s long night would be hastening to its close; days when there would be disciples longing to see one of the days of the Son of man, but not seeing it. Rumors there would be that He was here or there, but they were not to heed them. The Son of man would come, but manifestly to all, as when the lightning lightens the whole breadth of the heavens. But first He would have to suffer and be rejected. Again He passes on to the time of the end, comparing it to the careless days before the flood, and the similar days before Sodom was destroyed. Judgment came sudden; sweeping, irresistible, and so it would be when the Son of man should be revealed. The warning to one upon the house-top not to come down into the house is given, as in Matthew 24:17, but not the events with which it is there connected. Only we see from the next admonition not to seek to save their lives that enemies are in question. The final judgment would be as discriminative as sudden: one man taken in bed, and his fellow left; one woman taken away by it at the mill, and another left. They ask, where? and He answers, wherever the carcase is, the eagles (or vultures) will assemble; wherever the corruption is, the judgment which is to purify the earth will find it out.
5. That judgment will be the complete settlement of the long reckoning for the persecuted saints who have been so long crying to God under it, and as yet without the full answer which will surely come. The Lord illustrates by the parable of the unjust judge the good of importunity with God, and presses on all under all circumstances that men should always pray and never faint. God’s patience is not slowness nor indifference, as the event will show. Faith may count upon Him. In fact, when the Son of man comes, the darkness is such as to suggest the question; Will He find faith upon earth?