The great central truth of the religion of sinners relates to the person, character, work, sufferings, offices, and glory of Jesus Christ. These are vital in Christianity. As one is sound or corrupt here, so is he substantially right or wrong in the main. Both now and in the Last Day, the great question in determining character and destiny is the same: “What think ye of Christ?” (Matt. 22:42).
Men hear so much regarding pardon that, by a strange fallacy, they are prone to conclude that they are pardoned. They hear so much of a Saviour that they hasten to the soothing conclusion that they are saved. It is as if a dying man were to conclude that he is not dying, merely because he hears of life, or a beggar that he is not starving, merely because he hears of bread. And so in regard to faith.
During the middle part of last century, the parish of Resolis was blessed with one of the most eminently useful and laborious ministers that the church of Christ has ever seen. When the name of Mr. Hector M’Phail meets the eye of the more northern reader, it will recall to memory not a few of those striking anecdotes current among the older inhabitants of the district in which his labours were best known, and which may be stated generally as lying along the shores of the Beauly and Cromarty Firths.
All over the Highlands the name of Hector M’Phail is mentioned with peculiar veneration. Tradition has handed down many striking illustrations of the zeal for salvation of souls that consumed him. But for seven long years his ministry proved unedifying. “The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed.” The elders and others soon found out that they had simply an amiable formalist for a minister, and they “spoke often one to another” and to God at prayer-meetings for the conversion of their blind leader.
The children of the new birth come to understand that, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh.” There is no virtue in circumcision, as in Paul’s case. They must hear the voice of Christ, there is then a change of heart and a change of fruit.
The subject of the text is a remedy prescribed by Christ for certain fears which had sprung up in the mind of his Apostle. The occasion of these fears was (as we find by the context) a sight of the glory of Christ in his state of exaltation. This is a sight which all believers behold on earth.
In further illustrating the interesting fact stated in the text, viz., that the sufferings of Messiah, and the glories which resulted from his sufferings, are a subject which strongly engages the attention of angels, it may be proper in the first place, to advert shortly to some things respecting the nature, character, and employments of these celestial spirits; and then, in the second place, to inquire what in the mysteries of redemption, as a manifestation of divine glory, makes the subject so deeply interesting to angels.
The pride and self-sufficiency of the natural heart of man in considering a passage such as this, are ever prone to wrest it to his own destruction, and to convert that which, when rightly understood, contains a most glorious truth, into a poisonous and deadly error. Men of legal and Arminian spirits contend that we are hereby taught that, in the great work of conversion, the first effective movement is and must be on the part of man—that the sinner first, of his own free will, returns unto God, and that then, but not till then, does the grace of God take effect upon his soul.
Wisdom continues still to cry unto men with the affectionate authority of a parent. The incarnation of the Son is God’s grand utterance to mankind. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. He came to make known the Father. “No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared him.”
In the opening verses of the chapter, God had pronounced a woe on unfaithful pastors—referring probably to rulers, both civil and ecclesiastical—who had destroyed and scattered the sheep of his pasture. He had promised to gather his flock in due time together, and set up faithful shepherds over them. Then he passes, at the fifth verse, by a natural and beautiful transition, to that prediction of Messiah, the great Shepherd of the sheep—King and Priest of his church both—of which the text forms a part: “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD”—(Jehovah)—“OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.”
