Matthew 1:1-25

Review of the Whole Chapter

You will find it a delightful and profitable study to look at the first chapter of Genesis and the first chapter of Matthew together. I have found it useful to read the one chapter immediately after the other. The contrast between Genesis and Matthew is most vivid, and in some points most startling. In both cases you have what is termed the Beginning a term that cannot be defined. There are compasses, one point of which we can lay upon these terms, but the other point cannot be stretched to the full extent of their meaning. Both chapters, with a most startling audacity, give us a point to begin at: they create history, they draw a line and say, "History begins here." How far the beginning is right has to be ascertained by long continued investigation. No answer can be immediately given to the bold assumption: it must be found in the course of persistent and enlightend inquiry. Let us, having read both the chapters, look at some of the points of contrast and some of the points of union, and learn as the result of our study how with completeness the Bible confirms itself and challenges attention to points which lie below the surface and are likely to elude the most watchful criticism that is not inspired by the purest desires of the heart.

In the first chapter of Genesis, we see how order and beauty were brought out of confusion, and in the other how spiritual harmony was brought out of infinite discord. In Genesis you have chaos turned into cosmos, in Matthew you have a tumultuous, fierce, rebellious humanity, shaped into dignity and worship, and blessed with the completeness of rest. If these chapters were mere poetry, I should be struck with the manner in which both the conceptions are expressed. The manner is, in this case, nothing less than an argument. This to my mind is one of the most beautiful of the incidental illustrations of the truth of the Bible. In the first instance we have to deal with matter. What is the tone in which matter is dealt with? It is a tone of command, it is a fiat. Put into words, the words would be Let it be done. There is no consultation, there is no entreaty, there is no persuasion, there is no remonstrance. The fiat is omnific. As a mere question of poetic conception this manner is equal to the occasion. When we go into the region of matter, we do not say "If you please;" we stand above it, we command it. This is a fact of our own consciousness and experience. When you want to shape that long stretch of iron into an arch, what do you say? You say precisely what is said in the first chapter of Genesis. You cannot get away from this biblical tether, you say "Let it be done." Is your tone one of beseeching entreaty do you ask the iron to be kind enough to allow itself to be moulded into an arch? When you want the quarry to yield you stones wherewith to build a temple, what say you? You copy the first chapter of the book of Genesis: you are biblical without the Bible, the tone cannot be changed, you say "Let it be done," and therein you echo the fiat that rounded the heavens and populated the seas.

This then is true to our own consciousness and experience. I say, "Let my house be built, let it be decorated, let it be richly furnished, let it be thus and so." Why is my tone so dogmatic and positive? Because I am within a region where the human will is supreme. You may remind me of incidental circumstances, and I am not oblivious of them, but their being in the case as details does not for one moment alter the principle which I am endeavouring to elucidate, namely, that wherever mere matter is concerned, our will determines its uses. There shall be a bridge across that river, there shall stand a temple on that site, there shall be a picture on that wall. So far as the matter is one purely materialistic, the will is supreme, the word creates, the word determines.

In the second case, it is not matter that is dealt with, but manhood. How different is the process, how long the delay, how intricate the method, how innumerable and subtle the perils. Instead of commanding, we have persuasion, entreaty, nurture, encouragement, even the whole ministry of long-suffering patience and all-hoping love. Looking at this also as a mere conception of manner, how true it is to our own consciousness and experience and method. You can order a coat for your child you cannot order a character. You can command a dress to be fashioned, you cannot command an education to be received, except in the only sense, namely, the mechanical, which proves, by a still broader illustration, the very principle on which I am insisting. You can decorate your house with a word, you cannot decorate your child's intellectual nature nay, you cannot decorate his back without his consent. He tears your jewelled rags from his shoulders, throws them on the ground, steps on them and defies you.

Look, therefore, at both the chapters as indicating a wide contrast of manner, a contrast arising from the fact that in the one case it is matter that is being treated, and in the other case it is manhood that is being created and trained and completed. Can you amend this method? You give orders for a building, you cannot give orders for a soul. You will goto your desk tomorrow morning, and with one scratch of your pen you will order work for a thousand pounds, or ten thousand, to be done, and you properly say you have given the order. If you understood the meaning of your own music, you would be taken back to the first chapter of Genesis and set down there repeating the first words you have never got beyond that liberty! You will come home after having given your order, and you will have, with your children round about you, to ask their consent to kiss them. It is no kiss upon the child's lip that is given by force a kiss of the flesh, not a kiss of the soul. Then you will come into the first chapter of Matthew, and find how, by wondrous processes, too subtle to be caught in iron speech, hearts are won, characters are formed, and destinies are determined.

It is by these practical illustrations that I find, again and again, how unexpectedly and wondrously the Bible is confirmed, and how our liberty is restricted by a history thousands of years old. We think we do some things by our own ingenuity and by our own strength, and again and again we are reminded that our originality is stale and our wit a borrowed dart.

If we look at these two chapters side by side from another point of view, we shall find that in both cases the events spread themselves, as to their execution, over vast periods of time. As for the creation, the date is "in the beginning." Search your calendar for that line, or put a better line in its place. Man likes to know details simply because he is himself a detail. But as he grows in the knowledge of God, and in the completeness of his purposed character, viewed in the light of the divine will, he finds that detail is but a momentary convenience. Observe how profoundly true this is also to our own consciousness and experience. Time represents value. We have a saying amongst ourselves to the effect that time is money. Time is more, time represents value: the political economist says that money is nothing, a mere token or symbol, of that which money can purchase the value is not in the money, it is in the production. And a greater teacher than the political economist tells us that time is nothing; I must look at what time represents: a day is not the same thing to the idle man that it is to the man who is busy.

Lay it down broadly that time represents value. "Why," said an artist no sooner born than dead, to a great painter, "do you spend so much time upon your pictures?" The profound and courteous answer was, "Because I paint for immortality." And as a man soweth so shall he also reap. "And why," said one who looked upon a great sculptor, "are you spending so much time over that face? I saw it a month ago, and it seemed to be as far advanced in its formation as it is now." "No," said Angelo, "I have been rounding that cheek, and giving a little additional expression to that nostril, and bringing out that under part of the eye more clearly." Said the observer, "These are but trifles." "True," answered the great man of the chisel, "these are trifles, but trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." Thus to the wise time represents value. We say of some buildings that they have been run up in the night time, and when we pass that commentary upon them, we mean it as a sneer, or as an indication of the estimate we place upon the value of the thing done. We call such buildings shells, we say they will need repair in a month or two no time has been spent upon them, and for no time will they endure.

The expenditure of time, therefore, must have a moral value yet to be discovered. What time was spent on building the universe! Men who have made the universe from that point of view a special study, say that the earth must have taken tens of thousands of ages to build. They ridicule the notion of a six thousand-years-old globe: they take me down as far as they can to the roots of the rocks and show me the stony registers, pile on pile, where the ages are buried under unsculptured stone. When I compare these wondrous things with what I know to be true in my own consciousness and experience, I reason thus: Time represents value: a man spends time upon the outworking of a purpose according to the value he sets upon it: if thousands of ages have been sown upon these barren fields, God's meaning in that scattering of the ages upon a rocky surface must be profound and is not now to be understood or explained.

Yet to one test I can put this expenditure of time. It is a common test: it is in use amongst ourselves; we apply it to all things, perhaps even to the most sacred. I can stand on the green surface of the earth and look up into the starry roof, and ask what has come of all this time, what is the success which has attended this infinite delay? Then comes to my waiting mind and heart the great answer: "Canst thou amend anything that is within thy reach, O man? Stoop down and pluck thee a grass-blade from thy feet, look at it and say whether thou couldst sharpen it to a finer point, fill it with more delicate blood, clothe it with a tenderer bloom, make it in any respect more beautiful? Look at the sun: canst thou sphere him out into a more perfect circle, or add one ray to his effulgence, or suggest a supplement to his infinitude of light?" These questions are put to me with courteousness, yet reading between the lines I feel that they mock me like a defiant thunder. Then I come to the conclusion that time represents value. I cannot paint the lily without painting upon it my own folly. I cannot suggest a single re-adaptation of any of the functions of my body, I cannot add a healthier colour to my blood, I cannot fix my eyes so as to see better than they now see the wonders of this gallery and museum of things infinite and grand. I cannot amend God's work. It is to this little test, yet not useless, that I can bring this marvellous fact of the expenditure of what to us is an eternity, in the building up of a globe that holds upon its face all that is beautiful of summer, and hides in its kind heart all that is ghastly in death.

The Lord having thus made me a universe says, "My child, this is a symbol: this is not made for its own sake, this is meant to teach thee great lessons; it is my board of illustration; I have inscribed the heavens and the earth with innumerable sermons, and lessons, and poems and parables go thou and find them out, write them in thine own speech, and make thyself glad in this deep and gracious study." He is also building a spiritual universe, and it takes him a long time to construct it. He is making Man, and man takes more making than all the stars that throw their light on space. Why, this is true at home: you made your carpet, and your table, and your pictures, and your china in no time; you sent them back and had them altered: but your child, the son that has never yet stooped in filial worship at your knee; that daughter, bad with a fire your love has been unable to quench; that will that seems to hold you at its cruel mercy there your efforts appear to have been wasted.

I might argue that as it has taken God a long time to build creation, so it takes Him a long time to build the higher creation of manhood. I set up no such contention, nor dare I avail myself of any such illustration. The rocks require long time, but they cannot be damned. What care I if we pile eternities upon them? They cannot suffer. But man dies and goes to hell! To me, therefore, some tenderer and deeper argument must be addressed than the argument of analogy from the long periods required for physical formations, and the spaces and periods of time required for the development of moral harmony and beauty. I find the necessity for the expenditure of long time, in myself, in my moral nature. I will not let God. complete his work. I find the reason of the delay in me, not in him.

Nor need this be considered as a piece of theological metaphysics. It is a piece of matter-of-fact life. Every one now hearing me I could summon as a witness to bear testimony to the fact that to do right is not pleasant to any of us. If the religion of Jesus Christ is to be discounted or set aside simply because it takes a long time to make itself universally felt in the world, then with it, by parity of reasoning, must go down everything that is beautiful and noble in human education, morals, and progress. Do not suppose that your blow terminates upon the faith of Jesus Christ when you say that if that faith were divine it would make more rapid progress in the world. That blow, if it have any effect at all, shatters the entire temple of beauty, morals, and all that goes to make up completeness of human character. We all agree, for example, that honesty is right and good. Not one dissentient voice is raised to that proposition. But, according to the reasoning by which you wish to upset the divinity of Christ's religion, honesty cannot be good, otherwise every man would be honest. We are all further agreed that temperance is excellent, self-control, personal moderation, having all our faculties, passions, fires of our nature under our entire dominion and sway. To that proposition not one single dissentient voice is raised. But, according to the reasoning referred to, temperance cannot be a good thing, otherwise every man would practise it. The very fact that it is rejected, would, according to the reasoning now in question, upset the claim of temperance to be a virtue at all. We are all agreed that cleanliness is beneficial to health: we say properly that without cleanliness there can be no permanent health. That proposition is unanimously carried in every intelligent assembly; but if I am to avail myself of the reasoning which is now levelled against the divinity of Christ's religion, then I reply, cleanliness cannot be beneficial, otherwise every man, woman, and child would instantly be cleanly. Every man, woman, and child is not cleanly, therefore cleanliness cannot be the excellent thing you try to prove it to be.

So with the pleas of God, the expostulations of the Most High, and the offers of the gospel they all fall into the ruck of these common reasonings, and I, who have been convicted on every point of the former indictment, am convicted with a ten thousand fold conviction upon the supreme point of all, namely, that God waits to be gracious, and I keep him waiting.

But as in the former case of the creation, so in this latter case of the completeness of the human character, the result will be worthy of him who has been conducting the process. I cannot amend his heavens, add a deeper tint of blue to his sky, increase the richness of the green which he has spread over the earth, suggest an improvement to a single sporule of moss or blade of grass, or feather on bird's wing. In all these things I have to say "It is very good." If amendment might be possible, not on my side has the possibility been realized. So he will build this other creation, the great house of Manhood, the infinite temple of redeemed and sanctified humanity, and when it is done he will say, "It is very good, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, complete, rhythmic, restful, majestic, immortal." I must, therefore, make right use of the material symbol, and translate it into its highest spiritual meanings. I look for new heavens and a new earth and a new Jerusalem, a church beautiful as the Lamb that redeemed it.

This brings me to the last point of contrast which I can now notice, namely, that in the first chapter of Genesis the endeavour, the process rather, is to make man, in Matthew the object is to REDEEM man. In the first instance, we had no part or lot. If you will search into this matter, you will find how at all points you are restricted and humbled, so far as your birth is concerned. For a moment look at this matter. You are born without your own will, configured without, your own consent: whether you were to be dark or fair, tall or short, strong or weak not a word had you in that solemn covenant. You were nationalised without your own consent; you were not asked, "Will you be born in the temperate zone, or in the torrid zone? Will you be born in a little island or in a broad continent? Will you prefer to be an Englishman or a Turk an Indian or an African?" In that destiny you had neither part nor lot. Why, your consent was not asked even to the name you bear! You were born, nationalised, named, and over these things you had no control whatsoever. How wondrously we are limited on that side of our nature, yet on the other what marvellous freedom we have! We who can curse God to his face, cannot add one cubit to our stature. We who can say "No" to all the eloquence of the divine love, cannot make one hair white or black. Calvinism is true, and Arminianism is true, and they are both in the Bible, and they are both in your life. Limit and liberty, law and freedom, you find everywhere. You are pinned down and cannot break the pin. Yet you have tether enough to give you the notion of infinite freedom.

We were no parties to our being made, we are asked to be parties to our being redeemed. Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Whosoever believeth shall not perish but have everlasting life. Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life. How often would I have gathered thee, but thou wouldst not.

I have spoken of two beginnings, yet the two are but one, Jesus Christ is not a point in history, he is the point which antedates all history. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us. He is the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. He created all things, and he is before all things and by him all things consist. When, therefore, we speak of the beginning of the gospel as subsequent to the beginning of creation, we only use a phrase for human convenience. The divine meaning is that all things begin in God, and that God never began.