Matthew 15 has struck me as a chapter in which this perfection, in much of its various beauty and excellency may be seen.

• In the course of it, the Lord is called to answer the Pharisees, the multitude, the poor afflicted stranger from the coasts of Tyre,

• and His own disciples, again and again, in their different exposure of either their stupidity or their selfishness;
  • and we may notice His different style of rebuke and of reasoning, of calm, patient teaching, and of faithful, wise, and gracious training of the soul:

• and we cannot but feel how fitting all this variety was to the place or occasion that called it forth.

• And such was the beauty and the fitness of His neither teaching nor learning, in Luke 2, but only hearing and asking questions.

• To have taught then would not have been in season, a child as He was in the midst of His elders.

• To have learnt would not have been in full fidelity to the light, the eminent and bright light, which He knew He carried in Himself; for we may surely say of Him,
  • "He was wiser than the ancients, and had more understanding than His teachers".

• I do not mean as God, but as One "filled with wisdom", as was then said of Him.

• But He knew in the perfection of grace how to use this fulness of wisdom, and He is, therefore, not presented to us by the evangelist in the midst of the doctors in the temple at the age of twelve, either teaching or learning; but it is simply said of Him, that
  • He was "hearing and asking questions".

    "Strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God upon Him",

• is the description of Him then, as He grew up in tender years; and when a Man, conversing in the world, His speech was always with grace, seasoned with salt, as of one who knew how to answer every man.

• What perfection and beauty suited to the different seasons of childhood and manhood!

And further. We find Him, besides this, also in various other conditions.

• At times He is slighted and scorned, watched and hated by adversaries, retiring, as it were, to save His life from their attempts and purposes.

• At times He is weak, followed only by the poorest of the people; wearied, too, and hungry and athirst, debtor to the service of some loving women, who felt as though they owed Him everything.

• At times He is compassionating the multitude in all gentleness, or companying with His disciples in their repasts or in their journeying, conversing with them as a man would with his friends.

• At times He is in strength and honour before us, doing wonders, letting out some rays of glory;
  • and though in His person and circumstances nothing and nobody in the world, a carpenter's son, without learning or fortune,

• yet making a greater stir among men, and that, too, at times in the thoughts of the ruling ones on earth, than man ever made.

Childhood, and manhood, and human life in all its variousness, thus gives Him to us. Would that the heart could hold Him!

• There is a perfection in some of the minute features that tell of the Divine hand that was delineating them.

• Awkward work would any penman, unkept, unguided by the Spirit, have made of certain occasions where these strokes and touches are seen.

• As when the Lord wanted to comment on the current money of the land, He asked to be shown it, and does not find it about Himself. Indeed, we may be sure He carried none of it.

• Thus, the moral beauties of the action, flowed from the moral perfection of His condition within.

He asked His disciples in the hour of Gethsemane, to watch with Him; but He did not ask them to pray for Him.

• He would claim sympathy. He prized it in the hour of weakness and pressure, and would have the hearts of His companions bound to Him then.

• Such a desire was of the moral glory that formed the human perfection that was in Him; but while He felt this and did this, He could not ask them to stand as in the Divine presence on His behalf.

• He would have them give themselves to Him, but He could not seek them to give themselves to God for Him.

• Thus, He asked them again, I say, to watch with Him, but He did not ask them to pray for Him.

• When shortly or immediately afterwards, He linked praying and watching together, it was of themselves and for themselves He spoke, saying,
  • "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation".

• Paul could say to his fellow-saints,
  • "Ye also helping together by prayer to God for us: pray for us, for we trust we have a good conscience".

• But such was not the language of Jesus. I need not say, it could not have been; but the pen that writes for us such a life, and delineates for us such a character, is held by the Spirit of God. None other than the Spirit could write thus.

He did good, and lent, hoping for nothing again. He gave, and His left hand did not know what His right hand was doing.

• Never in one single instance, as I believe, did He claim either the person or the service of those whom He restored and delivered.

• He never made the deliverance He wrought, a title to service. Jesus loved, and healed, and saved, looking for nothing again.
  • He would not let Legion, the Gadarene, be with Him.

  • The child at the foot of the mount, He delivered back to his father.

  • The daughter of Jairus He left in the bosom of her family.

  • The widow's son at Nain He restores to his mother. He claims none of them.

• Does Christ give, in order that He may receive again? Does He not – perfect Master! – illustrate His own principle –
  • "Do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again"?

• The nature of grace is to impart to others, not to enrich itself: and He came, that in Him and His ways, it might shine in all the exceeding riches and glory that belong to it.

• He found servants in this world; but He did not first heal them, and then claim them. He called them, and endowed them.

• They were the fruit of the energy of His Spirit, and of affections kindled in hearts constrained by His love. And sending them forth, He said to them,
  • "Freely ye have received, freely give".

• Surely there is something beyond human conception in the delineation of such a character. One repeats that thought again and again.

• And very happy it is to add, that it is – in the very simplest forms this moral glory of the Lord shines forth at times – such forms as are at once intelligible to all the perceptions and sympathies of the heart.

• Thus He never refused the feeblest faith, though He accepted and answered, and that too with delight, the approaches and demands of the boldest.

The strong faith, which drew upon Him without ceremony or apology, in full immediate assurance, was ever welcome to Him;

• while the timid soul, that approached Him, as one that was ashamed and would excuse itself, was encouraged and blessed.

• His lips at once bore away from the heart of the poor leper the one only thing that hung over that heart as a cloud.
  • "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean", said he.

    "I will; be thou clean", said Jesus.

• But immediately afterwards the same lips uttered the fulness of the heart, when the clear, unquestioning faith of the Gentile centurion was witnessed,
  • and when the bold, earnest faith of a family in Israel broke up the roof of the house where He was, that they might let down their sick one before Him.

When a weak faith appealed to the Lord, He granted the blessing it sought, but He rebuked the seeker.

• But even this rebuke is full of comfort to us; for it seems to say,
  • 'Why did you not make freer, fuller, happier use of me?'

• Did we value the Giver, as we do the gift, – the heart of Christ as well as His hand, this rebuke of weak faith would be just as welcome as the answer to it.

And if little faith be thus reproved, strong faith must be grateful.

• And therefore we have reason to know what a fine sight was under the eye of the Lord, when, in that case already looked at, they broke up the roof of the house in order to reach Him.

• It was indeed, right sure I am, a grand spectacle for the eye of the Divine and bounteous Jesus.

• His Heart was entered by that action, as surely as the house in Capernaum was entered by it.

We see glories and humilities in our Redeemer; we do indeed; for we need each.

The One who sat on the well in Sychar, is He who now sits on high in heaven. He that ascended is He that descended.

• Dignities and condescensions are with Him; – a seat at the right hand of God, and yet a stooping to wash the feet of His saints here. What a combination!

• No abatement of His honours, though suiting Himself to our poverty: nothing wanting that can serve us, though glorious, and stainless, and complete in Himself.

Selfishness is wearied by trespass and importunity.

• "He will not rise because he is his friend; but because of his importunity he will rise and give him as much as he needeth".

• Thus it is with man, or selfishness; it is otherwise with God, or love; for God, in Isaiah 7, is the contradiction of man in Luke 11.

It is the unbelief, that would not draw on Him, that refused to ask a blessing, and get it with a seal and a witness, that wearies God – not importunity, but, as I may say, the absence of it.

• And all this divine blessedness and excellency, which is thus seen in the Jehovah of the house of David in Isaiah 7 reappears in the Lord Jesus Christ of the Evangelists, and in His different dealing with weak faith and full faith.

All these things that we are able to discover, bespeak His perfections; but how small a part of them do we reach!

We are aware in how many different ways our fellow-disciples try and tempt us, as, no doubt, we do them.

• We see, or we fancy we see, some bad quality in them, and we find it hard to go on in further company with them.

• And yet in all this, or in much of it, the fault may be with ourselves, mistaking a want of conformity of taste or judgment with ourselves, for something to be condemned in them.

But the Lord could not be thus mistaken; and yet He was never "overcome of evil", but was ever "overcoming evil with good", – the evil that was in them with the good that was in Himself.

• Vanity, ill-temper, indifference about others, and carefulness about themselves, ignorance after painstaking to instruct, were of the things in them which He had to suffer continually.

• His walk with them, in its ways and measure, was a day of provocation, as the forty years in the wilderness had been. Israel again tempted the Lord, I may say, but again proved Him.

• Blessed to tell it; they provoked Him, but by this they proved Him. He suffered, but He took it patiently. He never gave them up.

• He warned and taught, rebuked and condemned them, but never gave them up. Nay; at the end of their walk together, He is nearer to them than ever.

Perfect and excellent this is, and comforting to us. The Lord's dealing with the conscience never touches His heart. We lose nothing by His rebukes.

• And He who does not withdraw His heart from us when He is dealing with our conscience, is quick to restore our souls,
  • that the conscience, so to express it, may be enabled soon to leave His school,

    and the heart find its happy freedom in His presence again.

• As expressed in that hymn which some of us know –

I would further notice, that in the characters which, in the course of His ministry, He is called to take up – it may be for only an occasion, or a passing moment –

• we see the same perfection, the same moral glory, as in the path He treads daily.

• As, for instance, that of a Judge, as in Matthew 23, and that of an Advocate or Pleader in Matthew 22. But I only suggest this: the theme is too abundant.

• Every step, word, and action, carries with it a ray of this glory; and the eye of God had more to fill it in the life of Jesus, than it would have had in all eternity of Adam's innocence.

• It was in the midst of our moral ruin Jesus walked; and from such a region as that, He has sent up to the throne on high,
  • a richer sacrifice of sweet-smelling savour than Eden, and the Adam of Eden,

• had it continued unsoiled for ever, would or could have rendered.
  • Time made no change in the Lord.

• Kindred instances of grace and character in Him, before and after His resurrection, give us possession of this truth which is of such importance to us.

• We know what He is this moment, and what He will be for ever from what He has already been – in character as in nature – in relationship to us, as well as in Himself,
  • "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever".

• The very mention of this is blessed.

• Sometimes we may be grieved at changes, sometimes we may desire them. In different ways we all prove the fickle, uncertain nature of that which constitutes human life.

• Not only circumstances, which are changeful to a proverb, but associations, friendships, affections, characters, continually undergo variations which surprise and sadden us.

• We are hurried from stage to stage of life; but unchilled affections and unsullied principles are rarely borne along with us, either in ourselves or our companions.

• But Jesus was the same after His resurrection as He had been before, though late events had put Him and His disciples at a greater distance than companions had ever known, or could ever know.

• They had betrayed their unfaithful hearts, forsaking Him and fleeing in the hour of His weakness and need:
  • while He for their sakes had gone through death – such a death as never could have been borne by another, as would have crushed the creature itself.

• They were still but poor, feeble Galileans – He was glorified with all power in heaven and on earth.

But these things worked no change;

• "nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature",

• as the apostle speaks, could do that.

• Love defies them all, and He returns to them the Jesus whom they had known before.

• He is their companion in labour after His resurrection, nay, after His ascension, as He had been in the days of His ministry and sojourn with them. This we learn in the last verse of Mark.

• On the sea, in the day of Matthew 14, they thought that they saw a spirit, and cried out for fear; but the Lord gave them to know that it was He Himself that was there, near to them, and in grace, though in Divine strength and sovereignty over nature.

• And so in Luke 24, or after He was risen, He takes the honey-comb and the fish, and eats before them, that with like certainty and ease of heart they might know it was He Himself.

• And He would have them handle Him, and see; telling them, that a spirit had not flesh and bones, as they might then prove that He had.

In John 3 He led a slow-hearted Rabbi into the light and way of truth, bearing with him in all patient grace.

• And thus did He again in Luke 24, after that He was risen, with the two slow-hearted ones who were finding their way home to Emmaus.

In Mark 4 He allayed the fears of His people ere He rebuked their unbelief. He said to the winds and the waves,

• "Peace, be still",

• before He said to the disciples,
  • "How is it that ye have no faith?"

• And thus did He, as the risen One, in John 21. He sits and dines with Peter, in full and free fellowship, as without a breach in the spirit, ere He challenges him and awakens his conscience by the words,
  • "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?"

The risen Jesus, who appeared to Mary Magdalene, the evangelist takes care to tell us, was He who in other days had cast seven devils out of her –

• and she herself knew the voice that then called her by her name, as a voice that her ear had long been familiar with.

• What identity between the humbled and the glorified One, the healer of sinners and the Lord of the world to come!

• How all tell us, that in character as in divine personal glory, He that descended is the same also that ascended.

• John, too, in company with his risen Lord, is recognized as the one who had leaned on His bosom at the supper.
  • "I am Jesus",

• was the answer from the ascended place, the very highest place in heaven, the right hand of the throne of the majesty there, when Saul of Tarsus demanded,
  • "Who art thou, Lord?", Acts 9.

• And all this is so individual and personal in its application to us. It is our own very selves that are interested in this.

• Peter, for himself, knows his Master, the same to him before and after the resurrection.

• In Matthew 16 the Lord rebukes him; but shortly after takes him up to the hill with Him, with as full freedom of heart as if nothing had happened.

• And so with the same Peter – in John 21 he is again rebuked. He had been busy, as was his way, meddling with what was beyond him.
  • "Lord, what shall this man do?"

• says he, looking at John, – and his Master has again to rebuke him
  • "What is that to thee?"

• But again, as in the face of this rebuke, sharp and peremptory as it was, the Lord immediately afterwards has him, together with John in His train, or in His company up to heaven.

• It was a rebuked Peter who had once gone with the Lord to the holy mount: and it is a rebuked Peter, the same rebuked Peter, who now goes with the Lord to heaven;
  • or, if we please, to the hill of glory the mount of transfiguration, a second time. *
    [* Some seem to judge that it was deep love in Peter to John, that led him to ask the Lord about him. I deny that.]

Full indeed of strong consolation is all this. This is Jesus our Lord, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever;

• the same in the day of His ministry, after His resurrection, now in the ascended heavens, and so for ever.

• And as He sustains the same character, and approves Himself by the same grace after as before the resurrection, so does He redeem all His pledges left with His disciples.

Whether it be on His own lips, or on the lips of His angels, it is still now as then, since He rose as before He suffered,

• "Fear not".

• He had spoken to His disciples before of giving them His peace; and we find He does this afterwards in the most emphatic manner.

• He pronounces "peace" upon them in the day of John 20; and having done so, shows them His hands and His side;
  • where, as in symbolic language, they might read their title to a peace wrought out and purchased for them by Himself,

• His peace, entirely His own, as procured only by Himself, and now theirs by indefeasible, unchangeable title.

In earlier days, the Lord said to them,

• "Because I live, ye shall live also;"

• and now in risen days, in the days of the risen Man, in possession of victorious life, He imparts that life to them in the most full and perfect measure of it, breathing on them, and saying,
  • "Receive ye the Holy Ghost".

The world was not to see Him again, as He had also said to them; but they were to see Him. And so it comes to pass.

• He was seen of them for forty days, and He spake to them of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

• But this was all in secret: the world has not seen Him since the hour of Calvary, nor will they, till they see Him in judgement.

As a humbler, lowlier witness of His full fidelity to all His pledges, we may observe, He meets His people in Galilee, as He had promised them.

• As a larger expression of the same, I may also observe, He takes them to the Father in heaven, as He had also promised them, sending a message to them,
  • that He was ascending to His Father and to their Father, to His God and to their God.

• And thus, whether it was in our Galilee on earth, or in His own home in heaven, that His presence had been pledged to them, both are alike made good to them.

• And well may we meditate on the condescendings, the faithfulness, the fulness, the simplicity, the greatness, the elevation, of all that forms and marks His path before us.

• The Lord had very much to do with Peter, beyond any of the disciples while He was ministering in the midst of them, and we find it the same after He rose from the dead.

• Peter is the one to occupy, as I may say, the whole of the last chapter in John.

• There the Lord carries on with him the gracious work He had begun ere He left him, and carries it on exactly from the point where He left it.

• Peter had betrayed special self-confidence. Though all should be offended, yet would not he, he said; and though he should die with his Master, he would not deny Him.

• But his Master had told him of the vanity of such boasts, and had told him also of His prayer for him, so that his faith should not fail.

• And when the boast was found to have been indeed a vanity, and Peter denied his Lord, even with an oath, his Lord looked on him, and this look had its blessed operation.

• The prayer and the look had availed. The prayer had kept his faith from failing, but the look had broken his heart.
  • Peter did not "go away", but Peter wept, and "wept bitterly".

• At the opening of this chapter, we find Peter in this condition – in the condition in which the prayer and the look had put him.

• That his faith had not failed, he is enabled to give very sweet proof; for as soon as he learns that it was his Lord who was on the shore, he threw himself into the water to reach Him;
  • not, however, as a penitent, as though he had not already wept, but as one that could trust himself to His presence in full assurance of heart.

• And in that character his most blessed and gracious Lord accepts him, and they dine together on the shore.

• The prayer and the look had thus already done their work with Peter, and they are not to be repeated. The Lord simply goes on with His work thus begun, to conduct it to its perfection.

• Accordingly, the prayer and the look are now followed by the word. Restoration follows conviction and tears.

• Peter is put into the place of strengthening his brethren, as his Lord had once said to him; and also into the place of glorifying God by his death, a privilege he had forfeited by his unbelief and denial.

This was the word of restoration, following the prayer which had already sustained Peter's faith, and the look which had already broken his heart.

• He had in the day of John 13 taught this same loved Peter, that a washed man need not be washed again, save only his feet;
  • and exactly in this way He now deals with him.

• He does not put him again through the process of Luke 5, when the draught of fishes overwhelmed him, and he found out that he was a sinner;
  • but He does wash his soiled feet.

• He restores him, and puts Himself in His due place again. John 21: 15-17.

Perfect Master! the same to us yesterday, to-day and for ever; the same in gracious, perfect skill of love, going on with the work He had already begun,

• resuming, as the risen Lord, the service which He had left unfinished when He was taken from them,

• resuming it at the very point, knitting the past to the present service, in the fullest grace and skill!

And a little further still, as to His redeeming His pledges and promises.

• There was a very distinguished one which He gave them after He had risen. I mean, what He calls
  • "the promise of the Father", and

    "power from on high".

• This promise was made to them in the day of Luke 24, after He had risen, and it was fulfilled to them in the day of Acts 2, after He had ascended and was glorified.

Surely this only continues the story and the testimony of His faithfulness.

• All witness for Him – His life ere He suffered, His resurrection intercourses with His disciples, and now what He has done since He ascended – that no variableness neither shadow of turning is found in Him.

And I would not pass another instance of this, which we get again in Luke 24. The risen Lord there recognises the very place in which He had left His disciples in His earlier instructions.

• "These are the words", says He, "which I spake unto you when I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me".

• He thus reminds them that He had already told them, that Scripture was the great witness of the Divine mind, that all found written there must surely be accomplished here.

• And now what does He do? That which is the simple, consistent following out of this His previous teaching.
  • "Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures".

• His power now knits itself with His instructions before. He is making good in them what He had already communicated to them. *
  [* To our comfort, I may add, that after He had risen, He never once reminded His disciples of their late desertion of Him in the hour of His sorrow.]

But even further, in some sense, the very style and spirit of this intercourse with His disciples during that interval of forty days is still the same.

• He knows them then by name, as He had before. He manifests Himself to them by the same methods.

• He was the host at the table, though bidden there only as a guest, a second time, or after, as before, His resurrection – John 2; Luke 24 –
  • and in the deep sense and apprehension of their souls they treat His presence as the same.

• On returning to Him at the well of Sychar in John 4, they would not intrude, but tread softly.

• And so on their reaching Him after the draught of fishes, in John 21, they tread softly again, judging a second time, from the character of the moment,
  • that their words must be few, though their hearts were filled with wonder and joy.

What links, tender and yet strong, are thus formed between Him who has been already known to us in the daily walks of human life, and Him who is to be known to us for ever!

• He came down first into our circumstances, and then He takes us unto His.
  • But in ours we have learnt Him, and learnt Him for ever.

• This is a very happy truth. Peter witnesses it to us. I have looked at this scene already with another intent. I must now give it a second look.

At the draught of fishes in Luke 5, or before the resurrection, Peter was convicted. The fisherman Peter, in his own eyes, became the sinner Peter.

• "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord".

• The draught of fishes – giving proof that the stranger who had asked for the loan of his boat was the Lord of the fulness of the sea – had brought Peter, in spirit, into the presence of God, and there he learnt himself.

• We never, indeed, learn that lesson anywhere else. But the Lord at that moment, as from the glory, spoke comfortably to him.
  • He had said, "Fear not", and Peter was at ease.

• The glory or the presence of God had now a home for him as well as conviction, and Peter is in full quietness of heart before the Lord. And accordingly,
  • at the second draught of fishes, in John 21, after the resurrection, Peter was still at ease, and had only to practice the lesson which he had already learnt.

• And he does so. He experiences the presence of the Lord of glory to be a home for him. He proves in himself, and witnesses to us, that what he had learnt of Jesus he had learnt for ever.

• He did not know the Stranger on the shore to be Jesus; but when John revealed that fact to him, the Stranger was a stranger to him no more but the sooner and the nearer he could get to Him the better.

What further consolation is this! If it be joy to know that He is the same, whether here or there,

• – whether in our world or in His own world, – in our ruined circumstances, or in His own glorious circumstances, –

• what further joy is it to see one of ourselves, as Peter was, experiencing the blessedness of such a fact in his own spirits.

Jesus – the same, indeed – faithful and true! All the pledges He had given them ere He suffered, He makes good after He rose: all the character He had sustained in the midst of them then, He sustains now.

The Lord was continually giving, but He was rarely assenting. He made great communications where He found but little communion.

• This magnifies or illustrates His goodness.

• There was, as it were, nothing to draw Him forth, and yet He was ever imparting.

• He was as the Father in heaven, of whom He Himself spoke, making His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sending His rain on the just and the unjust.

• This tells us what He is, to His praise – what we are, to our shame.

But He was not only thus, as the Father in heaven, the reflection of such a One in His doings, but He was also in this world as "the unknown God", as St. Paul speaks.

• The darkness did not comprehend Him; the world, neither by its religion nor its wisdom, knew Him.

• The rich aboundings of His grace, the purity of His kingdom, the foundation and title upon which the glory He sought in such a world as this alone could rest, were all strangers to the thoughts of the children of men.

• All this is seen in the deep moral mistakes they were continually making. When, for instance, the multitude was exceedingly hailing the King and the kingdom in His person, in Luke 19, "Master, rebuke thy disciples", the Pharisees say.

• They would not brook the thought of the throne belonging to such a one. It was presumption in Him, Jesus of Nazareth as He was, to allow the royal joy to surround Him.

• They knew not – they had not learnt – the secret of true honour in this false, fallen world of ours. They had not learnt the mystery of
  • "a root out of a dry ground",

• nor had they in spirit perceived"
  • the arm of the Lord", Isaiah 53.

• It was where His Own Spirit led, that discoveries were made of Him, and such are very sweet, and various, too, in their measure.

In Mark 1 His ministry, in its grace and power, is used by many.

• People under all kinds of diseases come to Him, congregations listen to Him, and own the authority with which He spake.

• A leper brings his leprosy to Him, thereby apprehending Him as the God of Israel.

• In different measures, there was then some knowledge of Him, either who He was, or what He had;
  • but when we enter Mark 2, we get knowledge of Him expressing itself in a brighter, richer way:

• we get samples of the faith that understood Him; and this is the deeper thing.

The company at Capernaum, who bring their palsied friend to Him, understand Him, as well as use Him;

• understand Him, I mean, in Himself, in His character, in the habits and tastes of His mind.

• The very style in which they reach Him to get at Him tells us this. It was not approaching as though they were reserved, and doubtful, and overawed. It was more:
  • "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me"

• – a thing more welcome to Him, more according to the way that love would have us take.

• They ask no leave, they use no ceremony, but they break up the roof of the house, that they may reach Him; all this telling us that they knew Him as well as used Him;
  • knew that He delighted in having His grace trusted and His power used by our necessities without reserve.

• So Levi, shortly afterwards, in the same chapter. He makes a feast and seats publicans and others at it, in company with Jesus.

• And this, in like manner, tells us that Levi knew Him. He knew whom he entertained as Paul tells us he knew whom he believed.

This knowledge of the Lord is truly blessed! It is divine!

• Flesh and blood does not give it, His kinsfolk had it not. They said of Him, when He was spending Himself in service, "He is beside himself".

• But faith makes great discoveries of Him, and acts upon such discoveries.

• It may seem to carry us beyond due bounds at times, beyond the things that are orderly and well measured; but in God's esteem it never does.

• The multitude tell Bartimeus to hold his peace, but he will not; for he knows Jesus as Levi knows Him.

It is His full work that we are not prepared for, and yet therein is its glory.

• He meets us in all our need, but, at the same time, He brings God in. He healed the sick, but He preached the kingdom also.

• This, however, did not suit man, Strange ethic may appear, for man knows full well how to value his own advantages. He knows the joy of the restored nature.

• But such is the enmity of the carnal mind against God, that if blessing come in company with the presence of God, it will not receive a welcome.

• And from Christ, it could not come in any other way. He will glorify God as well as relieve the sinner.

• God has been dishonoured in this world, as man has been ruined in it – self-ruined; and the Lord, the repairer of the breach, is doing a perfect work –
  • vindicating the Name and truth of God, declaring His kingdom and its rights, and manifesting His glory,

• just as much as He is redeeming and quickening the lost, dead sinner.

This will not do for man. He would be well taken care of himself, and let the glory of God fare as it may. Such is man.

• But when, through faith, any poor sinner is otherwise minded, and can indeed rejoice in the glory of God, very beautiful is the sight.

• And we see such a one in the Syro- Phcenician. The glory of the ministry of Christ addressed itself to her soul brightly and powerfully.

• Apparently, in spite of her grief, the Lord Jesus asserts God's principles, and, as a stranger, He passes her by.
  • "I am not sent", He says, "but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel … It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs".

• But she bows, she owns the Lord as the steward of the truth of God, and would not for a moment suppose that He would surrender that trust – the truth and principles of God – to her and her necessities.

• She would have God be glorified according to His own counsels, and the servant of the divine good pleasure, be it to herself as it may.
  • "Truth, Lord",

• she answers, vindicating all that He had said; but, in full consistency with it, she adds,
  • "yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs".

All this is lovely – the fruit of divine light in her soul.

• The mother in Luke 2 is quite below this Gentile woman in Mark 7.

• She did not know that Jesus was to be about His Father's business, but this stranger knew that that was the very business He was always to be about.

• She would let God's way, in the faithful hand of Christ, be exalted, though she herself were thereby set aside, even in her sorrows.

This was knowledge of Him indeed; this was accepting Him in His full work,

• as One who stood for God in a world that had rebelled against Him,

• as well as for the poor worthless sinner that had destroyed himself.

It is not well to be always understood. Our ways and habits should be those of strangers, citizens of a foreign country,

• whose language and laws, and customs are but poorly known here.

• Flesh and blood cannot appreciate them, and therefore it is not well with the saints of God when the world understands them.

His kinsfolk were ignorant of Jesus. Did the mother know Him when she wanted Him to display His power, and provide wine for the feast?

• Did His brethren know Him when they said to Him,
  • "If thou do these things, show thyself to the world".

• What a thought! an endeavour to lead the Lord Jesus to make Himself, as we say, 'a man of the world!' Could there have been knowledge of Him in the hearts which indited such a thought as that?

• Most distant, indeed, from such knowledge they were, and therefore it is immediately added by the evangelist,
  • "for neither did his brethren believe in him", John 7: 5.

• They understood His power, by not His principles; for, after the manner of men, they connect the possession of power or talents with the serving of a man's interest in the world.

But Jesus was the contradiction of this, as I need not say;

• and the worldly-minded kindred in the flesh could not understand Him.

• His principles were foreign to such a world. They were despised, as was David's dancing before the ark in the thoughts of a daughter of king Saul.

But what attractiveness there would have been in Him for any eye or heart that had been opened by the Spirit!

• This is witnessed to us by the apostles. They knew but little about Him doctrinally, and they got nothing by remaining with Him – I mean nothing in this world.

• Their condition in the world was anything but improved by their walking with Him; and it cannot be said that they availed themselves of His miraculous power. Indeed, they questioned it rather than used it.

• And yet they clung to Him. They did not company with Him, because they eyed Him as the full and ready storehouse of all provisions for them.

• On no one occasion, I believe we may say, did they use the power that was in Him for themselves.

• And yet, there they were with Him, – troubled when He talked of leaving, and found weeping when they thought they had indeed lost Him.

Surely, we may again say, What attractiveness there must have been in Him, for any eye or heart that had been opened by the Spirit or drawn by the Father!

• And with what authority one look or one word from Him would enter at times!

• We see this in Matthew. That one word on the Lord's lips,
  • "Follow me!" was enough.

• And this authority and this attractiveness was felt by men of the most opposite temperaments.

• The slow-hearted, reasoning Thomas, and the ardent, uncalculating Peter, were alike kept near and around this wondrous Centre.

• Even Thomas would breathe in that presence the spirit of the earnest Peter, and say under force of this attraction,
  • "Let us also go, that we may die with him".

Shall we not say, What will it be to see and feel all this by and by in its perfection! when

• all gathered from every clime, and colour, and character, of the wide-spread human family – all nations, kindreds, peoples, and tongues, are with Him and around Him in a world worthy of Him!

• We may dwell, in memory, on these samples of His preciousness to hearts like our own, and welcome them as pledges of that which, in hope, is ours as well as theirs.

The light of God shines at times before us, leaving us, as we may have power,

• to discern it, to enjoy it, to use it, to follow it.

• It does not so much challenge us or exact of us; but, as I said, it shines before us, that we may reflect it, if we have grace.

• We see it doing its work after this manner in the early church at Jerusalem.

• The light of God there exacted nothing. It shone brightly and powerfully; but that was all.

• Peter spoke the language of that light, when he said to Ananias,
  • "While it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thy power?"

• It had made no demands upon Ananias, it simply shone in its beauty beside him or before him, that he might walk in it according to his measure.

• And such, in a great sense, is the moral glory of the Lord Jesus. Our first duty to that light is to learn from it what He is.

• We are not to begin by anxiously and painfully measuring ourselves by it,
  • but by calmly, and happily, and thankfully learning Him in all His perfect moral humanity.

• And surely this glory is departed! There is no living image of it here. We have its record in the evangelists, but not its reflection anywhere.

But having its record, we may say, as one of our own poets has said,

But though not here, beloved, He is just what He was. We are to know Him as it were by memory;

• and memory has no capacity to weave fictions; memory can only turn over living truthful pages. And thus we know Him for His own eternity.

• In an eminent sense, the disciples knew Him personally. It was His person, His presence, Himself, that was their attraction.
  • And if one may speak for others, it is more of this we need.

• We may be busy in acquainting ourselves with truths about Him, and we may make proficiency that way;
  • but with all our knowledge, and with all the disciples' ignorance, they may leave us far behind in the power of a commanding affection towards Himself.

• And surely, beloved, we will not refuse to say, that it is well when the heart is drawn by Him beyond what the knowledge we have of Him may account for.

• It tells us that He Himself has been rightly apprehended. And there are simple souls still that exhibit this; but generally it is not so.

• Now-a-days, our light, our acquaintance with truth, is beyond the measure of the answer of our heart to Himself.
  • And it is painful to us, if we have any just sensibilities at all, to discover this.

'The prerogative of our christian faith', says one, 'the secret of its strength is this, that all which it has, and all which it offers, is laid up in a Person. 'This is what has made it strong, while so much else has proved weak; that it has a Christ as its middle point, that it has not a circumference without a centre; that it has not merely deliverance, but a Deliverer; not redemption only, but a Redeemer as well. 'This is what makes it fit for wayfaring men. This is what makes it sunlight, and all else, when compared with it, but as moonlight; fair it may be, but cold and ineffectual, while here the light and the life are one'. And again he says, 'And, oh, how great the difference between submitting ourselves to a complex of rules, and casting ourselves upon a beating heart, between accepting a system, and cleaving to a Person. 'Our blessedness – and let us not miss it – is, that our treasures are treasured in a Person, who is not for one generation a present Teacher and a living Lord, and then for all succeeding generations a past and a dead one, but who is present and living for all'. Quoted by JGB, source unknown.

Good words, and seasonable words, I judge indeed, I may say these are.

A great combination of like moral glories in the Lord's ministry may be traced, as well as in His character.

• And in ministry we may look at Him in relation to God, to Satan, and to man.

• As to God, the Lord Jesus, in His own Person and ways, was always representing man to God, as God would have him.

• He was rendering back human nature as a sacrifice of rest, or of sweet savour, as incense pure and fragrant, as a sheaf of untainted firstfruits out of the human soil.

• He restored to God His complacency in man, which sin or Adam had taken from Him.

• God's repentance that He had made man – Gen. 6: 6 – was exchanged for delight and glory in man again.

• And this offering was made to God in the midst of all contradictions, all opposing circumstances, sorrows, fatigues, necessities, and heart-breaking disappointments.

• Wondrous altar! wondrous offering! A richer sacrifice it infinitely was, than an eternity of Adam's innocency would have been.

• And as He was thus representing man to God, so was He representing God to man.

Through Adam's apostaSy, God had been left without an image here;

• but now He gets a fuller, brighter image of Himself than Adam could ever have presented.

• Jesus was letting, not a fair creation, but a ruined, worthless world – know what God was, representing Him in grace, and saying,
  • "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father".

• He declared God. All that is of God, all that can be known of "the light" which no man can approach unto, has now passed before us in Jesus.

And again, in the ministry of Christ, looked at in relation to God, we find Him

• ever mindful of God's rights, ever faithful to God's truth and principles,

• while in the daily, unwearied actions of relieving man's necessities.

• Let human sorrow address Him with what appeal it may, He never sacrificed or surrendered any thing that was God's to it.
  • "Glory to God in the highest", was heard over Him at His birth, as well as, "on earth goodwill to man";

• and according to this, God's glory, all through His ministry, was as jealously consulted, as the sinner's need and blessing were diligently served.

• The echo of those voices,
  • "Glory to God", and "Peace on earth",

• was, as I may express it, heard on every occasion.

• The Syro-phoenician's case, already noticed, is a vivid sample of this. Till she took her place in relation to God's purposes and dispensations, He could do nothing for her; but then, everything.

Surely these are glories in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, in the relations of that ministry to God.

Then as to Satan In the first place, and seasonably and properly so, the Lord meets him as a tempter.

• Satan sought in the wilderness to impregnate Him with those moral corruptions which he had succeeded in implanting in Adam and the human nature.

• This victory over the tempter was the needed righteous introduction to all His works and doings touching him.

• It was, therefore, the Spirit that led Him up to this action. As we read,
  • "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil".

• Ere the Son of God could go forth and spoil the house of the strong man, he must bind him. Matthew. 12: 29.

• Ere he could "reprove" the works of darkness, he must show that He had no fellowship with them. Eph. 5: 2.

• He must withstand the enemy, and keep him outside Himself, ere He could enter his kingdom to destroy his works.

Jesus thus silenced Satan. He bound him. Satan had to withdraw as a thoroughly defeated tempter.

• He could not get anything of his into Him; he rather found that all that was there was of God.

• Christ kept outside all that which Adam, under a like temptation, had let inside; and having thus stood the clean thing, He can go, under a perfect moral title, to reprove the unclean.

"Skin for skin", the accuser may have to say of another, and like words that charge and challenge the common corrupted nature;

• but he had nothing to do, as an accuser of Jesus, before the throne of God. He was silenced.

Thus His relationship to Satan begins. Upon this, He enters his house and spoils his goods.

• This world is that house, and there the Lord, in ministry, is seen effacing various and deep expressions of the enemy's strength.

• Every deaf or blind one healed, every leper cleansed, every work under His repairing hand, of whatsoever sort it was, was this. It was a spoiling of the goods of the strong man in his own house.

• Having already bound him, He now spoiled his goods.

• At last He yields to him as the one that had "the power of death".

• Calvary was the hour of the power of darkness. All Satan's resources were brought up there, and all his subtlety put forth; but he was overthrown. His captive was his conqueror.

• By death, He destroyed him that had the power of it. He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

• The head of the serpent was bruised; as another has said, that 'death and not man was without strength'.

Thus Jesus the Son of God was the bruiser of Satan, as before He had been his binder and his spoiler.

• But there is another moral glory that is seen to shine in the ministry of Christ, in the relation it bears to Satan. I mean this:
  • He never allows him to bear witness to Him.

• The testimony may be true, and, as we say, flattering, good words and fair words, such as,
  • "I know thee who thou art, the holy One of God",

• but Jesus suffered him not to speak.

• For His ministry was as pure as it was gracious. He would not be helped in His ministry by that which He came to destroy.

• He could have no fellowship with darkness, in His service, any more than in His nature.

• He could not act on expediency, therefore rebuke and silencing of him was the answer he got to his testimony.*

* As far as the Lord's ministry in the gospel goes in relation to Satan, He is simply, as we have now seen, his binder, his spoiler, his bruiser. In the Apocalypse, we follow Him in further relations to the same adversary. There we see Him "casting him down from heaven"; then, in due season, "putting him in the bottomless pit"; and afterwards leaving him in "the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone", Revelation 12: 20. We thus track His conquest over him, from the wilderness of the temptation to the lake of fire.     JGB

Then as to man, the moral glories which show themselves in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, are bright and excellent indeed.

• He was constantly relieving and serving man in all the variety of his misery;
  • but He was as surely exposing him, showing him to have a nature fully departed from God in revolt and apostacy.

• But further; He was exercising him. This is much to be considered, though perhaps not so commonly noticed.

• In His teaching, He exercised people in whatever relation to Himself they stood; disciples or the multitude, or those who brought their sorrows to Him, or those who were friendly, as I may call them, or those who as enemies were withstanding Him.

• The disciples He was continually putting through exercises of heart or conscience, as He walked with them and taught them. This is so common that it need not be instanced.

• The multitude who followed Him He would treat otherwise.
  • "Hear and understand",

• He would say to them, thus exercising their own minds, as He was teaching them.

To some who brought their sorrows to Him He would say,

• "Believe ye that I can do this?" or such like words.

• The Syro-phoenician is an eminent witness to us how He exercised this class of persons.

Addressing the friendly Simon in Luke 7, after telling him the story of the man who had two debtors,

• "Tell me", says He, "therefore, which of them will love him most".

The Pharisees, His unwearied opposers, He was in like manner constantly calling into exercise.

• And there is such a voice in this, such a witness of what He is.

• It tells us that He was not performing summary judgment for them, but would fain lead them to repentance: and so, in calling disciples into exercise,
  • He tells us that we learn His lessons only in a due manner, as far as we are drawn out, in some activity of understanding, heart, or conscience, over them.

This exercising of those He was either leading or teaching is surely another of the moral glories which marked His ministry.

But further: in His ministry towards man we see Him frequently as a reprover, needfully so, in the midst of such a thing as the human family;

• but His way in reproving shines with excellency that we may well admire.

• While He was rebuking the Pharisees, whom worldliness had set in opposition to Him, He uses a very solemn form of words:
  • "He that is not with me is against me".

• But when He is alluding to those who owned Him and loved Him, but who needed further strength of faith or measure of light, so as to be in full company with Him, He spake in other terms:
  • "He that is not against us is for us".

We notice Him again in this character in Matthew 20, in the case of the ten and the two brethren.

• How does He temper His rebuke because of the good and the right that were in those whom He had to rebuke?

• And in this He takes a place apart from His heated disciples, who would not have had their two brethren spared in any measure.

• He patiently, sifts over the whole material, and separates the precious from the vile that was in it.

So He is heard again as a reprover in the case of John, forbidding any to cast out devils in His name, if they would not walk with them.

• But at that moment John's spirit had been under chastening.

• In the light of the Lord's preceding words, he had been making discovery of the mistake he had committed, and he refers to that mistake, though the Lord Himself had in no way alluded to it.

• But this being so, John having already a sense of his mistake, and artlessly letting it tell itself out, the Lord deals with it in the greatest gentleness. Luke 9: 46-50.

So as to the Baptist: the Lord rebukes him with marked consideration.

• He was in prison then. What a fact that must have been in the esteem of the Lord at that moment!

• But he was to be rebuked for having sent a message to his Lord that reproached Him. But the delicacy of the rebuke is beautiful.

• He returns a message to John which none but John himself could estimate:
  • "Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me".

• Even John's disciples, who carried the message between him and the Lord, could not have understood this.

• Jesus would expose John to himself, but neither to His disciples nor to the world.

So further, His rebuke of the two of Emmaus, and of Thomas after the resurrection, each had its own excellency.

• Peter, both in Matthew 16 and 17, has to meet rebuke; but the rebuke is very differently ministered on each occasion.

But all this variety is full of moral beauty; and we may surely say,

• whether His style be peremptory or gentle, sharp or considerate;

  whether rebuke on His lips be so reduced as to be scarcely rebuke at all,

  or so heightened as almost to be the language of repulse and disclaimer;

• still, when the occasion is weighed, all this variety will be found to be but various perfections.

• All these His reproofs were
  • "earrings of gold, and ornaments of fine gold", whether hung or not upon "obedient ears", Proverbs 25: 12.

    "Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head", Psalm 141: 5.

• Surely the Lord gave His disciples to prove this.

CONCLUSION

I have now traced some of the features of the moral glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. He represented man to God – man as he ought to be, and God rested in him.

This moral perfectness of the Man Christ Jesus, and God's acceptance of Him, was signified by the meat-offering,

• that cake of fine flour, which was baked either in oven, pan, or frying-pan, with its oil and its frankincense. Leviticus 2.

When the Lord Jesus was here, and thus manifested as Man to God, God's delight in Him was ever expressing itself.

• He grew up before Him in human nature, and in the exhibition of all human virtues;
  • and He needed nothing at any one moment to commend Him but Himself, just as He was.

• In His Person and ways, man was morally glorified, so that when the end or perfection of His course came,
  • He could go "straightway" to God,

• as the sheaf of first-fruits of old was taken directly and immediately, just as it was, out of the field, needing no process to fit it for the presence and acceptance of God. Leviticus 23: 10.

• The title of Jesus to glory was a moral one. He had a moral right to be glorified; His title was in Himself. John 13: 31-32, is the blessed setting forth of this in its due connection.
  • "Now is the Son of Man glorified",

• the Lord there says, just as Judas had left the table;
  • for that action of Judas was the sure precursor of the Lord's being taken by the Jews,

  • and that was the sure precursor of His being put to death by the Gentiles.

• And the cross being the completeness and perfection of the full form of moral glory in Him, it was at this moment He utters these words,
  • "Now is the Son of Man glorified".

    Then He adds, "and God is glorified in him".

God was as perfectly glorified then as the Son of Man was, though the glory was another glory.

• The Son of Man was glorified then, by His completing that full form of moral beauty which had been shining in Him all through His life.

• Nothing of it was then to be wanting, as nothing from the beginning up to that late hour had ever mingled with it that was unworthy of it.

• The hour was then at hand when it was to shine out in the very last ray that was to give it its full brightness.

• But God was also glorified then, because all that was of Him was either maintained or displayed.
  • His rights were maintained, His goodness displayed.

• Mercy and truth, righteousness and peace, were alike and equally either satisfied or gratified.

• God's truth, holiness, love, majesty, and all beside, were magnified in a way, and illustrated in a light, beyond all that could ever have been known of them elsewhere.

• 'The cross', as one has said, 'is the moral wonder of the universe'.

But then again the Lord adds,

• "If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself; and shall straightway glorify Him".

• This is His recognition of His own title to personal glory.

• He had already perfected the full form of moral glory through life and in death. He had also vindicated God's glory, as we have seen.

• Therefore it was but a righteous thing that if He should now enter on His own personal glory.

• And this He did when He took His place in heaven, at the right hand of the Majesty there, as in company with God Himself, and all that at once, or "straightway".

God's work as Creator had been quickly soiled in man's hand. Man had ruined himself; so that it is written:

• "God repented that He had made man", Gen. 6.

• A terrible change in the Divine mind, since the day when God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was "very good"! Genesis 1.

• But in the Lord Jesus, the Divine complacency in man was restored.

This was blessed! and the more acceptable, as we may say, from the previous repentance.

• It was more than first enjoyment, it was recovery after loss and disappointment; and that, too, in a way exceeding the first.

• And as the first man, upon his sin, had been put outside creation as I may say,
  • this Second Man – being, as He also was, "the Lord from heaven"

• – upon His glorifying of God, was seated at the head of creation, as at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

• Jesus is in heaven as a glorified Man, because here on earth God had been glorified in Him as the obedient One in life and death.

• He is there indeed in other characters. Surely we know that.
  • He is there as a Conqueror, as an Expectant, as the High Priest in the tabernacle, which God has pitched, as our Forerunner, and as the Purger of our sins.

• But He is there also, in the highest heavens glorified, because in Him God had been here on earth glorified.

Life and glory were His by personal right, and by moral title.

• One delights to dwell on such a truth, to repeat it again and again.
  • He never forfeited the garden of Eden.

• Truly indeed did He walk outside it all His days, or amid the thorns and briers, the sorrows and privations of a ruined world. But this He did in grace.

• He took such a condition upon Him; but He was not exposed to it. He was not, like Adam, like us all, on one side of the cherubim and the flaming sword, and the tree of life and the garden of Eden, on the other.

• In His history, instead of angels keeping Him outside or beyond the gate, when He had gone through His temptation, they come and minister to Him.
  • For He stood where Adam failed and fell.

• Therefore, Man as He was, verily and simply Man, He was this distinguished Man.

• God was glorified in Him, as in all beside He had been dishonoured and disappointed.

In one sense, this perfectness of the Son of Man, this moral perfectness, is all for us.

• It lends its savour to the blood which atones for our sins.

• It was as the cloud of incense, which went in to the presence of God, together with the blood, on the day of atonement. Leviticus 16.

But, in another sense, this perfection is too much for us. It is high, we cannot attain to it.

• It overwhelms the moral sense, as far as we look at it in the recollection of what we ourselves are,
  • while it fills us with admiration, as far as we look at it as telling us what He is.

• The personal judicial glory, when displayed of old, was overwhelming.

• The most favoured of the children of men could not stand before it, as Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel; and Peter and John experienced the same.

• And this moral glory, in like manner exposing us, is overwhelming.

Faith, however, is at home in the presence of it.

• The god of this world blinds the mind to the apprehension and joy of it; but faith welcomes it. Such are the histories of it here among men.

• In the presence of it, Pharisees and Sadducees together asked for a sign from heaven.

• The mother, through vanity, mistakes it, and the brethren of the Lord through worldliness. John 2: 7.

• Disciples themselves are under constant rebuke from it.
  • The oil olive beaten for this light was too pure for any; but it was ever burning in the sanctuary, or "before the Lord".

• The synagogue at Nazareth strikingly lets us learn the unpreparedness of man for it. They owned the gracious words which proceeded out of the Lord's lips; they felt the power of them.
  • But quickly a strong current of nature's corruption set in and withstood this movement in their hearts, and overcame it.

• God's humbled, self-emptied witness, in the midst of a proud, revolted world, was discovered; and this would not do for them.

• Let "Joseph's son" speak as He may, good words and comfortable words, He will not be accepted – He is a carpenter's son. Luke 4.

• It is wonderful – wonderful witness of the deep inlaid corruption.

• Man has his amiabilities, his taste, his virtues, his sensibilities, as this scene at Nazareth in Luke 4 may tell us.

• The "gracious words" of Jesus raised a current of good feeling for a moment; but what was it all, and where was it all, when God tested it?

• Ah! beloved, we may still say, in spite of this, our amiability and respectability, our taste and emotions, that in us – that is, in our flesh – "dwelleth no good thing".

But again, I say, faith is at home with Jesus. Can we, I ask, treat such an One with fear or suspicion? Can we doubt Him?

• Could we have taken a distant place from Him who sat at the well with the woman of Sychar? Did she herself take such a place?

• Surely, beloved, we should seek intimacy with Him.

• The disciples, who companied with Him, have to learn their lessons again and again. We know something of this.

• They had to make discovery of Him afresh, instead of enjoying Him as already discovered. In the 14th of Matthew they had to cry out,
  • "Of a truth, thou art the Son of God".

• This was discovering Him afresh. Had their faith been simple, they would have slept in the boat with Him.

• What a scene it was, to their shame and His glory! They spoke insultingly or reproachfully to the Lord, as though He was indifferent to their danger:
  • "Master, carest Thou not that we perish?"

• He awoke at the sound of their voice, and at once set them in safety.

• But then, He rebukes them, not however for the injustice their hard words had done Him, but for their want of faith.

How perfect was this! How perfect, surely, was everything; and each in its generation! – the human virtues, the fruits of the anointing that was on Him, and His divine glories.

• The natures in the One Person are unconfused; but the effulgence of the divine is chastened, the homeliness of the human is elevated.

• There is nothing like this, there could be nothing like this, in the whole creation.

• And yet the human was human, and the divine was divine,
  • Jesus slept in the boat: He was Man.

    Jesus quelled the winds and the waves: He was God.

This moral glory must shine. Other glories must give place till this is done.

• The Greeks, who had come to worship in Jerusalem at the feast, enquire after Jesus, desiring to see Him. This savoured of the kingdom, or of the royal glory of the Messiah.

• It was a sample of that day, when the nations shall come up to the city of the Jews, to keep holy day; and when, as King in Zion, He shall be Lord of all, and God of the whole earth.

But there was a secret deeper than this. It needs a juster sense of God's way, than simply to be expecting a kingdom.

• The Pharisees needed that, when in Luke 17, they asked the Lord when the kingdom should appear.

• He had to tell them of another kingdom, which they did not apprehend – a kingdom within,
  • a present kingdom, which had to be entered and known, ere the glorious manifested kingdom could appear.

• The disciples needed it in Acts 1, when they asked their Lord if He would at that time restore the kingdom to Israel.

• He had to tell them also of another thing, ere the restoration could take place; that they were to be gifted by the Spirit, for testimony to Him all the world over.

So here in John 12. The Lord lets us know that moral glory must precede the kingdom.

• He will surely shine in the glory of the throne by and by, and the Gentiles shall then come to Zion, and see the King in His beauty;
  • but ere that could be, the moral beauty must be displayed in all its fulness and unsulliedness.

• And this was His thought now, when the Gentiles had inquired after Him.
  • "The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified".

• This was His moral glory, as we have said before, in John 13: 31-32.

• It had been shining all through His ways, from His birth hitherto; His death was to be the completeness of it; and
  • therefore the hour was then at hand, when it was to shine out in the last ray that was to form it, and give it perfection.

• The Lord thus supplies or introduces on this occasion, as He did, as we have seen, in Luke 17 and in Acts 1, the truth, the additional truth, which needs the richer, juster sense of God's ways to apprehend.

• The moral glory must be fully displayed, ere Messiah can show Himself in royal glory to the ends of the earth.

It is, however, His and His only. How infinitely distant from one's heart is any other thought!

• When the heavens opened, in Acts 10, the sheet was seen descending ere Peter was commanded to have fellowship with it, or ere it ascended and was lost or hid again on high.

• The contents of it had to be cleansed or sanctified.

• But when the heaven was opened in Matthew 3, Jesus on earth needed not to be taken up to be approved there, but voices and visions from on high, sealed and attested Him just as He was.
  • "This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased".

And when the heavens were opened again, as in Matthew 27, that is, when the vail of the temple was rent in twain, all was finished, nothing more was needed,

• the work of Jesus was sealed and attested just as it then was.

• An opened heaven at the beginning, shone out in full acceptance of His Person; an opened heaven at the end, shone out in acceptance of His work.

And let me close in saying, that it is blessed and happy, as well as part of our worship,

• to mark the characteristics of the Lord's way and ministry here on the earth, as I have been seeking in measure to do in this paper;

• for all that He did and said, all His service, whether in the substance or the style of it, is the witness of what He was, and He is the witness to us of what God is.

• And thus we reach God, the blessed One, through the paths of the Lord Jesus, in the pages of the evangelists. Every step of that way becomes important to us.

• All that He did and said was a real, truthful expression of Himself, as He Himself was a real, truthful expression of God.

• And if we can understand the character of His ministry, or read the moral glory that attaches to each moment and each particular of His walk and service here on earth, and so
  • learn what He is, and thus learn what God is,

• we reach God, in certain and unclouded knowledge of Him, through the ordinary paths and activities of the life of this divine Son of Man.