Matthew 10:19-20

5. Care about their Defence. Matthew 10:19-20

19But when they deliver you up,23 take no [anxious]24 thought how or what ye shall speak: for25 it shall be given you in that same hour [in that hour] what ye shall speak. 20For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Matthew 10:19. How or what.—The form and the substance; πῶςἥ τί.—We might have expected that the latter would have been first mentioned; but, in planning an address, the first care is always about the form. [Bengel: “Ubi τὸ quid obtigit, τὸ quomodo non deest.… Spiritus non loquitur sine verbis. Dabo vobis os et sapientiam, Luke 21:15.”—P. S.]

Matthew 10:20. [It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father, etc.—An indirect argument for the inspiration of the apostolic writings. For if the Holy Spirit suggested their oral testimony of Christ, He filled them still more in the act of writing, since books are permanent, and can be read by all. Comp. John 15:26-27.—Your Father.—It is remarkable that our Lord never says our Father, except in the Lord’s Prayer, which He taught His disciples, but My Father, or your Father; for He is the eternal and only begotten Son of the Father, we are children by adoption through faith in Him.—P. S.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. In captivity, a person would naturally feel anxious how to defend himself, especially if he were to appear before the great, the learned, or the powerful of this world. The desire to speak well would be all the stronger, that they were deeply conscious of their innocence, and hence felt no concern on that point. But Christ knew better than any other how studied eloquence restrains and obstructs, perhaps even suppresses, the warm outgushings of the heart; how anxiety to hit upon the right word may suppress the faith from which alone that right word can flow; and how deep spiritual life quickens and calls into being appropriate exercises of the mind, so that, in every situation of life, we shall find both the right thought and the right word. Compare the speech of Paul against Tertullus in Acts 25:0.

2. It shall be given you. This is further explained by, “for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father.” The contrast is absolute, and so is the doctrine of inspiration which results from it. All personal anxiety must disappear in the anticipation of the Spirit of the Father, who overrules all the events of life, and can not only fill His people with joy and peace, but elevate them to moral heroism. But when we say that all self and self-seeking are completely to cease, we do not mean that our intellectual faculties are to be overpowered and bound by a foreign influence (as in Montanism), but only that they are to be set free from all lower motives, and to be spiritually raised and quickened. Hence the inspiration promised will be of a moral rather than of a psychical character. For the removal of all selfishness and self-seeking implies, at the same time, the full development of the deepest spiritual motives and views. The Lord presents these future events as immediately impending, because the conduct of the disciples, when imprisoned, depends on their general relationship to the Father, which had already commenced at that time. Comp. Calvin’s reply to the confessors of the gospel imprisoned at Paris, in Henry’s Calvin, 1:467.

3. The inference of the inspiration of Scripture, derived from this and similar passages, is quite legitimate. Only, that the great point in inspiration is the τί, to which the πῶς is quite subordinate. Hence, in the promise given, we read only of the τί, not of the πῶς. Similarly, the promise is simply δοθήσεται τί λαλήσετε, not λαλήσητε.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The prohibition of carefulness about answering before councils, in its relation to the general prohibition of carefulness, Matthew 6:34.—Carefulness may reappear, even in the Christian life, in the guise of piety, or in that of official zeal.—Take no thought for the how and the what, and the what shall supply the how.—Carefulness about rhetorical ornaments,26 in its dangers: 1. It springs from anxiety, and restrains the spiritual life; 2. it manifests itself by excitement and excess, and adulterates the spiritual life; 3. it leads to weariness or self-seeking, and destroys the spiritual life.—The putting aside of every false preparation, as giving place to true preparation: prayer, meditation, and inward conflict (oratio, meditatio, tentatio). For it is not you, etc. 1. An instruction as to the inspiration of the word by the Spirit of God; 2. an admonition not to put in our own word; 3. a promise that the Lord will speak by us.—When the orator has wholly disappeared, the True Orator shall appear.

Heubner:—Consciousness of innocence, and of the goodness of the cause in which we are engaged, is the best defence.—A Christian will leave his defence to God.—A Christian must not shape his own course, but leave himself to the guidance of God; there should always be quietness and Sabbath-rest in his soul.—The Holy Ghost the Comforter of the simple.—Proper sermons are they which are given by the Holy Ghost, not those which are artificially constructed.