Matthew 3:1-17

Review of the Whole Chapter

Now, looking at the third chapter as a whole, having already gone through it in detail, we seem to see in this brief chapter the history of a whole dispensation, the dispensation of John the Baptist. It begins and ends in these seventeen short verses. In this chapter I read, "Then cometh John," and I also read, "Then cometh JESUS." God thus condenses much into brief space. Sometimes he takes a long line, and we say he has gone into a far country, and we know not when he will return. Sometimes he seems to work with urgency and suddenness, and in a moment to begin and complete a whole dispensation. He is not to be measured by our lines or described by our terms: we cannot tell what he will do he may take ages countless in which to build a rock, he may take a short night-time in which to begin and complete a whole dispensation of his providence. Thus he baffles all our statistical tables. We have no calculus by which we can tell when he will come, or where he will be at a given period; we cannot take him within our sweep and line. He loves to baffle the ingenuity of man. We have reduced everything now to a law of averages, but God stands out of our reckoning, and no man can say whether he will not come to-night to judge the world. Thus are we kept in continual expectation, thus there is ever near us a ghost that alarms or comforts, according to the mood of our heart. Let us learn that our business is to rest in the Lord and to wait patiently for him, so that whether he come to-night or do not come for long ages yet to elapse, we may be found doing our little best, cultivating our tiny corner, watching, waiting, praying, hoping, suffering with a hero's confidence, toiling with a son's delight, and then, come when he may, it will be summer for our souls, release and freedom for all that makes us mean.

Looking again at this chapter as a whole, we see that it introduces a new name into human history. May I pause a moment to ask you what that new name is? As we have read the chapter over several times together, did you hear one name that struck you as music strikes an attentive soul? It is a short name, it is Son. "This is my beloved Son." We have made ourselves so familiar with that word that we read it as though it did not mark a new epoch in human history; but if we could have read the Bible through at one long sitting, we should have seen that the line of development moves in this form, Man Servant Prophet Messenger Son. Last of all he sent his Son also. It is infinitely exciting to see how these new words came into human speech. All the time we felt something was wanting: Man was a great name, Servant a high office, Prophet a marvellous function, Messenger a high ministry SON takes them up and rounds them into completeness, and lights them with ineffable splendour.

The divine movement is always climacteric, the divine progress is an ascension. God does not begin with Son and work down to servant, nor with man and work down to some insignificant molecule: he begins at the other end, and always the better day is to come. Prophecy meant that the day of light was to dawn upon the hills and valleys of time, and that music was to take the place of groaning. That is the thread or line of the Bible, and because it is so I find in that very movement of ascension a confirmatory illustration, not to say an original and complete argument, on behalf of the divinity and authority of the Book which we worship as divinely inspired and final in its moral revelations.

Then, looking again at the chapter as a whole, we see that it completes what other dispensations only began. The proofs upon this, point are several and brilliant. What is the first word we hear in connection with human history, or with the formation of man? It is make. "Let us make man." In connection with Jesus Christ, "This is my only begotten Son." A Creator, a Father, an Artist, a God. Still the line heightens itself in the same direction. What is the description of the character of man in the first instance? Upright. God made man upright. What is the word used in connection with the Son? Beloved: See how God rises, and how his revelation brightens broadly. Upright an experiment in moral mechanics: upright an attitude: upright negative. Beloved kindred, sympathetic, approved, complete. It is thus that the Bible grows from root to flower; this is development. We claim that word as a Christian term, we cannot do without it in the church; the whole scheme of the divine administration of human affairs is a development, a progress, an upward marching: see it in the blade, the ear, the full corn in the ear: we would have God's Book judged by that law or science of development, and so judged we are brought from Make to Begotten, from Upright to Beloved, and from Very Good to Well Pleased. Hear ye not the same old, rich voice? "God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good." "Lo, a voice from heaven saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." In both cases he sets himself in a relation of satisfaction to what is before him. Man, standing there, fashioned in his own image, upright, faultless, inexperienced, with a great destiny to work out on him is written "Very good." The last outcome of this human growth and mystery stands before him on Jordan's banks, and a voice says "Well pleased," and when God is pleased law is satisfied and grace is triumphant.

Then we come further still, from the Us of the creating Trinity to the My of the approving Father. Thus in the creation of man we read, "Let us make man." In the inauguration of the Son we read, "This is my beloved Son." Examine still further, and in other fields and relationships, this suggestion of the continuous, ever-culminating development of the divine purpose, and say if there be not in it a rich fund of spiritual instruction and satisfaction. There has been a divine ideal in the rest towards which God has been slowly moving, through revolution, and war, and distress, and manifold experiences of every human kind, but never did he say "Well pleased" until there stood before him his only begotten Son. Five hundred years before he was not at rest. A century before, his purpose was still a hundred years ahead, but steadily, surely, grandly he moved on, the line now dipping into deep pits, now starting up high hills still on he moved. You cannot turn God back, though now the ancestral line is lost in a harlot, and now it is put to risk in a wayward king. Still he moves on, and presently he says, "It is finished: this is my beloved SON."

So shall it be in the culmination and upgathering of all things. Jesus Christ must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, and when death lies below his feet, he will deliver up the kingdom to God and his Father, and God shall be all in all. Haste thee, calm morning a flame with every colour of beauty, peaceful with the divine benediction O, come. The old earth is torn with pain and distressed with intolerable pangs but that morning cometh. Watchman, what of the night? The night cometh, and also the morning. We are in sad case just now. England was never baser in her morals in many public aspects of her history than she is at this moment. She never more foully debased her journalism, or poured out of her history streams more revolting and pestilential. But God is moving on; it is his old movement; he knows every knot in the line, every twist in the road, every difficulty in the path but if you could see his eye, it never moves from the point he has set before him, and he will bring in all his purposes and decrees, his completed oaths and covenants fulfilled, for his own mouth hath spoken it.

Are we now to bid farewell to John the Baptist? Are you still in John's baptism? He was a burning and a shining light, but you ought to have left him long ago. Are you still down by Jordan's banks, wanting to take the plunge? Verily I say unto you, amongst them that are born of women there hath not appeared a greater than John the Baptist; nevertheless, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. You ought, therefore, to take the step from the initial baptism into the inner and Christian one. You ought to leave the letter and pass into the spirit. You ought now to be able to enjoy the large, calm, sweet liberty of the gospel, and not be bound by ordinances, and observances, and divers ceremonies. We have left these behind us: they were useful in their time, they were elements which God used for the further broadening and illumination of his righteousness, so far as our vision was concerned, but now I know nothing of any ceremony: I have outlived it; if I do anything, it is merely to remind me, merely as a suggestion; not as a necessity, but as a help to some higher spiritual blessing.

Do you say you have been baptized, and therefore you are all right? All the water in all the seas and firmaments of heaven would not cleanse you. Do you say you sit down regularly to the Lord's supper? All the wine in all the vineyards of creation would not contain one drop of blood to you, if you are not already hidden in the very heart of the Son of God. Do you say you regularly come to church and observe religious fasts and festivals? Away with all these externals, if they do not indicate contrition, self-renunciation, trust in a living Christ, identification with the Son of God. We are not saved by the outward, but by the inward. All the outward is but symbolical the inward baptism is a shedding abroad in the heart of the Holy Ghost.

The Lord's peace be in our souls, and the Lord help us to see beyond the letter into all the brightness and beauty of the spirit.