The Gathering of the Nations
I. This text is a prophecy of the very widest scope. Christ is not so much addressing a few Jews as the whole world when He says: "Ye shall know that I am He." Christ is represented as the centre of attraction, towards which should be drawn from the whole community, the material of that Church which is to be for ever the great trophy of Omnipotence.
It would not be true that Christ is the Saviour of all men and specially of them that believe, if there were other names besides His under heaven by and through which the guilty might be pardoned; but now that there is deliverance-through this Mediator for all of every land, who are willing to receive Him as the free gift of God, and none except through that Mediator for a solitary individual in a single district of the earth, we can affirm that by a Divine and irreversible appointment, the weary and the heavy-laden must be brought to Christ, or remain for ever burdened and laden with the weight of their iniquities. And they are brought to Christ; He is sending out His ministers to every section of the habitable globe, and Hit Spirit is everywhere accompanying the message, and making it mighty to the casting down the strongholds of ignorance and unbelief. In one quarter and another one of this family and two of that the nations are being subdued to the Messiah: there is enough, abundantly enough, to prove that all of which the prophets have spoken shall yet be gloriously exhibited on the stage of this creation.
II. But if we can plead that the prophecy before us has already received, and is constantly receiving, a partial accomplishment, are not coming days charged with its unrestricted fulfilment? It is possible that the thoughts of the Saviour, when uttering this prediction, were on the glorious and palmy days of the Church days for which the faithful from the beginning have earnestly longed, and on which inspired writers have lavished the majesty of their loftiest descriptions. When the men of every age and of every land, linked in indissoluble brotherhood, shall crowd towards the Mediator as their common deliverer, their all in all, and cast their crowns at His feet, and sweep their harps to His praise, then will the prophecy receive its last and its noblest accomplishment; and all orders of intelligence, connecting the crucifixion, as a cause, with the magnificent gathering as an effect, will bear its enraptured witness to the thorough verification of the words, "When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am He."
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1699.
References: John 8:29. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xx., No. 1165; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 264; F. D. Maurice, The Gospel of St. John,p. 226. John 8:31. F. F. Goe, Penny Pulpit,No. 930. John 8:31; John 8:32. Contemporary Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 318; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 80. John 8:31-35. J. Caird, Christian world Pulpit,vol. x., p. 376.