CRITICAL NOTES
Matthew 22:44. Sit thou on My right hand.—As having gloriously finished the work which was given Thee to do, and in which I rest satisfied and well pleased (Morison). As My co-regent, having power equal to Mine (Carr).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Matthew 22:41-46
A counter-attack.—Hitherto various bodies of conspirators have put their questions to Christ. Now the case is reversed. Before the discomfited Pharisees have retired—whilst they still remain gathered together—in the deep silence which follows—He puts a question, or rather, two questions, to them. In the passage before us we see:
1. The basis these questions stood on.
2. The difficulties they presented.
3. The effects they produced.
I. The basis they stood on.—This was to be found in the common convictions of both the Pharisees and the Saviour. Their convictions, on the one hand, as to the scope of those Scriptures which they held in those days in their hands. Both sides believed that these pointed unmistakably to the Messias or Christ. Some thirty years before, when these same or other scribes and Pharisees had been asked by Herod the Great to tell him where this Christ should be born, they had referred him at once to the Scriptures in question (Matthew 2:4-5). Just the same, here, tacitly, in asking like information about this Messias or Christ, the Saviour’s first question assumes. Just so here, is assumed also, in the reply of the Pharisees to it. It is taken for granted by both that that question can only be answered by a reference to the writings of the prophets. It is to them alone you must go if you want to know what to believe of the Christ. Their convictions, on the other hand, as to the correctness of the Scriptures in question. On this point, also, we find the Saviour and the Pharisees to be absolutely of one mind. Whatever those Scriptures can be shown to teach must be accepted as true. Clearly, on either side, there is no idea here of anything else. It is just as certain to both that the Scriptures are true as that they speak about Christ. No one cares to prove this because it is what no one denies. No one ever goes so far as to assert it. It is already believed.
II. Hence therefore, next, the peculiar difficulty of the second question propounded.—The authorities referred to had spoken in more places than one on the matter in hand. In some of these places they had spoken of the Christ (as already acknowledged) as the “Son of David.” In another place they are found speaking of Him in a variant way. In words which were believed by all to be those of David himself speaking under the direct influence of the Spirit of God, he speaks of Christ as his Lord. “The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on my right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool” (Matthew 22:44). The difficulty, therefore, is patent and great. “If David call Him Lord, how is He then his Son?” How can the same person be both at one time; both above and below; both Son and Lord; both subject and sovereign; both under another man and on a level with God? The difficulty is not to be solved by a supposed misinterpretation of either Scriptures referred to. The language of both is too plain. Neither is it to be got rid of by attributing incorrectness to either. From any supposition of that kind, as we have seen already, all are wholly debarred.
III. The effects of these questions.—Or, rather, of this latter one—were of two principal kinds. One was on the spot and immediate. The men that heard it had nothing to say. They could not suggest any explanation of the difficulty propounded. They could not think even of any pretext to offer in lieu. Practised in evasion, skilled in subterfuge, masters in concealment, they could not conceal the true state of the case. They said nothing because they had nothing to say. The other effect was subsequent and remote. The men who heard of this question were affected by it in the same manner and to the same extent as those on the spot. They also had nothing to say to it in the way of reply. Not only so, they had nothing further, so far as this Man was concerned, to propound. Taken in conjunction with the wonderful ease and success with which He had previously answered their subtlest inquiries, this insoluble question of His silenced all of them all the rest of His days (Matthew 22:46). As an “attacking” army they had ceased to exist.
So complete a reversement may teach us much as to the difficulties of Scripture. It may teach us:—
1. To expect them.—The more truly Scripture is Holy Scripture, the more likely it is, in the nature of things, to present difficulties sometimes to our minds. The more truly it is above man in its origin the more certain it is to be occasionally above man in its thoughts. How could so deep a truth as that which we know to have lain at the root of the difficulty here presented to the Pharisees, have been presented to their shallow human intelligences so as not to perplex them at first, and in part? It is impossible for an eye accustomed to the darkness of earth to see at first quite clearly in the noon-light of heaven! At first, at any rate, it is simply “blinded” with “excess of light.”
2. To endure them.—If thus things must be we must simply let them be, as reasonable inquirers. Never, in any case, must we regard any of them, as being calls to despair. Not even these Pharisees, in their imperfect faith, appear to have been tempted to this. Because they could not possibly account for what they found foretold about the Messias, they did not therefore say there was none. What we ought rather to learn here, therefore, with our fuller knowledge, is a lesson in hope. What was perplexity to those Pharisees has become confirmation to us! What was darkness to them is a pillar of light to us! Believing, as we do, in a Christ who is both perfect God and perfect man, we see easily how He could be both David’s Lord and David’s Son, and have learned to rejoice, therefore, in the juxtaposition of those very Scriptures which were such utter bewilderment in their eyes. So let us learn to hope, therefore, of other like sources of bewilderment in their turn. Time and truth will know how to transform them also into sources of light!
HOMILIES ON THE VERSES
Matthew 22:41-45. David’s Son and David’s Lord.—
1. As it is good to be zealous of the law, so it is necessary to know the Messiah, who redeemeth men from the curse of the law. So our Lord, having answered the Pharisees’ question about the law, asketh them, “What think ye of Christ?”
2. Christ is a very man, lineally descended of David, for He is David’s Son; so say even the Pharisees.
3. Christ is also very God, for He is David’s Lord, equal with the Father.
4. The Son of David and David’s Lord, distinguished from the Father, as one of the persons of the Godhead, is but one person; for David’s God and David’s Son is here spoken of as one person.
5. Christ is fellow-partner of Divine glory with the Father, for “Sit Thou at My right hand” saith the Father.
6. Christ shall not want enemies who shall oppose His kingdom.
7. Christ’s enemies shall be put under His power.
8. There is but one Divine power of the Son and Father, for as the Son reigneth in majesty over His enemies, so the Father putteth them down also; for “Sit Thou till I put them down” is “Reign Thou” till this be done.
9. None can reconcile the speeches in Scripture concerning Christ, except he who believeth and acknowledgeth Him to be God and man in one person; for if David call Him Lord, how is He then his Son? hath no answer but He is both God and man.—David Dickson.
Matthew 22:42. The Mediator, the Guarantee of religious life.—Jesus Christ is a name around which a vast accumulation of histories, ideas, beliefs have gathered. Christianity has many aspects; literary, philosophical, moral, historical, political, theological, spiritual, practical. What is the religious aspect of Christianity and of Christ? What is the aspect which exhibits our Lord’s relation to religion, considered as the bond between God and the human soul?
I. Nothing is more certain in the annals of mankind than this, that Jesus Christ lived in Palestine, and was put to death eighteen centuries and a half ago. If this be admitted, His life and death must possess for any intelligent man the highest possible degree of interest. No doubt, at the time, the Cæsar Tiberius was everywhere on the lips and in the minds of men; while the retired religious Teacher, as He seemed to be, in Palestine, was by His teaching, His acts, and the opposition which they aroused, only furnishing a little conversation and excitement to the peasantry and to the officials of a remote province. But if the importance of a life is to be measured by its results in history and to civilization, even although we should put all religious and even moral considerations aside, who would think most of the emperor? Who can deny that, at this moment, explain it how he will, Jesus Christ lives in the hearts of multitudes as the object of most cherished and devoted homage; that He governs the ideas, the aspirations, the social and political action of millions of mankind; that the most active and enterprising section of the human family, still, in various senses, places itself under the shadow of His name and patronage; and that, if He has many opponents, there is no serious probability of His being spiritually or intellectually dethroned?
II. But the question must occur, What was it in Jesus Christ which gave Him, in spite of social and political insignificance, so commanding, so unrivalled a position in history? The least answer that can be given is that His character made a profound, an ineffaceable impression upon His contemporaries; an impression so deep and abiding that it moved them, peasants and paupers as they were, to achieve the moral revolution of the civilised world. But the bearing of Jesus Christ is that of One who claims to be the First of all, the Centre of all, with entire simplicity indeed, but also with, unhesitating decision. His words are familiar to our ears; but do we dwell upon their real and awful meaning? What should we think of a religious teacher now who could permit himself to say that eternal life consisted in the knowledge of himself as well as in the knowledge of the Father, etc.? The question arises, how to account for this earnest self-assertion on the part of Jesus Christ? Is our Lord’s language imposture? The suggestion can only be mentioned to be condemned by the entire drift and atmosphere of His life. Is it the hallucination of an enthusiast? “That a Jew should fancy himself the Messiah, and at the same time should strip that character of all the attributes that fired his youthful imagination and heart; that he should start aside from all the feelings and hopes of His age, and should acquire a consciousness of being destined to a wholly new career, and one as unbounded as it was new—this is exceedingly improbable” (Channing.). Was it, then, only the natural manner of an Oriental mind; the habit of seizing truth intuitively and enunciating it authoritatively, in contrast with our western methods of demonstration and argument? But this explanation, even if on other accounts it could be admitted, does not cover the ground required. It does not justify the actual substance and contents of our Lord’s language about Himself. It does not explain the fact that His language about Himself is unlike anything which we find in the Hebrew prophets. The prophets, if you will, announce truth in the intuitive manner; but they do not make themselves the subjects and centres of the truth which they announce. The relation in which Christ claims to stand, both towards the Father and towards mankind, is utterly unanticipated by anything that can be traced in the prophetic literature of Israel. Our Lord’s language about Himself is entirely in harmony with the character of His miracles of power. Also with another phenomenon. He was sinless. The most startling moral feature in this life is that we can trace nowhere in it any, the faintest consciousness of guilt. If we bow before the general impression produced by Christ’s character, and He be taken at His word, He must be believed to be, in the absolute sense, Divine.
III. In Jesus Christ, then, we have the guarantee or bond of religion. He is the means of an actual communication between the soul of man and the Eternal God.—Canon Liddon.
Matthew 22:42. Jesus: what do we think of Him? (For children).—
I. Jesus ought not to be despised.—It is said of Handel, the great musician, that while composing the well-known oratorio of “The Messiah,” he was frequently found in tears, and that one day, while sobbing bitterly, it was found that the words which had broken down his spirit were these three words of the prophet Isaiah, “He was despised.” And yet this short saying was abundantly fulfilled when Jesus came to show us His great love. Bishop Villiers tells us the following story: “I once,” says he, “happened to be on a visit to a great castle, situate on the top of a hill. There was a steep cliff, at the bottom of which was a rapid river. Late one night there was a person anxious to get home from that castle, in the midst of a thunderstorm. The night was blackness itself. The woman was asked to wait till the storm was over, but she declined. Next they begged her to take a lantern, that she might be able to keep upon the road from the castle to her home. She said she did not require a lantern, but could do very well without one. She left. Perhaps she was frightened by the storm, but in the midst of the darkness she wandered from the path and fell over the cliff. The next day the swollen river washed to the shore the poor lifeless body of that foolish woman.” Even so there are many persons in our beautiful island home to-day who refuse the Lord Jesus Christ and perish.
II. Jesus ought not to be received with coldness or delay.—Jesus complains very much that many persons do so receive Him. Have you ever read those tender words in Revelation 3:20, “Behold I stand at the door and knock”? Learned men tell us that it means, “I have been long standing at the door.” Jesus is kept waiting What a difference there is in the way we go to answer knocks at the door. The postman’s loud double knock makes us run, for who is not pleased to receive letters from friends? And sometimes there comes a timid knock at the back door, which nobody cares to answer. “It’s only a beggar!” some one says, and if the door is not opened, the footsteps turn sadly away. How differently we welcome those we love.
III. Jesus is worthy of our highest reverence and of our best love and obedience.—There are two words uttered by the patriarch Job a great many years ago, that we may all use in reference to Jesus Christ. The words are, “My Redeemer” (Job 19:25). Will you each say of Him just now, “Jesus is my Redeemer.” Ah! that is why I feel that I ought to love Him. “He loved me, and gave Himself for me.”—Robert Brewin.
“What think ye of Christ?”—
I. As to His origin.
1. Son of man.—The ideal of humanity.
2. Son of God.—The Divine essence.
II. As to His character.—
1. Absolutely perfect as human.—Immaculate, unique, complete.
2. The embodiment of the Divine perfections.
III. As to His offices.—
1. Teacher.
2. Saviour.
3. King.—W. W. Whythe.
Admiration of Christ.—Cyrus, in one of his wars, captured an Armenian princess, and, according to the cruel laws of ancient warfare, condemned her to death. Her husband, hearing of her peril, came at once into the camp of the conqueror, and offered to redeem her life with his own. Cyrus was so struck with the man’s magnanimity that he released them both, and declared his purpose to re-instate them, with great power and riches, in their own country. And now, while all the courtiers and captains are praising the generosity of the great king, the woman stands silent and weeping. And when the question was asked of her, “And what do you think of Cyrus?” “I was not thinking of him at all,” she replied. “Of whom were you thinking?” “I was thinking,” said she, fixing her eyes all lustrous with love, shining through her tears, upon her husband, “of the noble man who redeemed my life by offering to sacrifice his own.” Is not this the true attitude of a Christian? Amid the adulation of the world, should we not think most tearfully and tenderly of the Divine Man who redeemed our lives, not by the offer, but by the actual sacrifice of Himself?—Christian World Pulpit.
Matthew 22:46. Silenced!—The issue of this disputation is set down to teach us:
1. That all Christ’s enemies will be beaten in disputation and put to silence. The force of Divine truth prudently put forth, is irresistible.
2. The conviction of God’s enemies may be expected, but the conversion of all the convicted can hardly be expected; for they could not answer, and they durst ask no more questions; there is all; we hear of no good use they made of this.—David Dickson.