Both in substance and in circumstances these words are unusually profound, even among the profound sayings of our Lord.
I. First, they mark the almost solitary exception to the pervading gravity, not to say sorrowfulness, of His demeanour and life. In prophetic anticipation He looked onward to the final triumph, when the processes of His salvation should be completed, when the moral influences of His Cross should subdue men's hearts, and He, the Crucified, should "draw all men unto Him." And to the spiritual Jesus there was in this an unutterable satisfaction. Breakings in of millennial glory would irradiate His sorrow, so touchingly indicated by this one solitary record of His joy.
II. The occasion which elicited this expression of spiritual joy from our Lord is also very remarkable. The lower adulterated joy of the Seventy suggests to our Lord a higher and purer spiritual joy. Their miracle over the external phenomena of demoniacal possession suggests afresh to their Lord His spiritual triumph over the moral power of evil. "You," He says, "see the devils subject to you: I see Satan as lightning fall from heaven." "In that hour" He began to see the "travail of His soul." He first realised the spiritual satisfaction that was to comfort and sustain Him amid outward discouragement, rejection, and infliction.
III. It is worthy of notice that our Lord's most piercing spiritual visions, and His most profound words of spiritual wisdom occur in connection with His acts of devotion. More than once our Lord permitted His disciples to overhear His communings with His Father. His prayers are ever the utterances of His greatest thoughts, of His deepest feelings.
IV. The sentiment itself is one of the many expressions of the great Christian paradox that the kingdom of God is accessible, not to men of great intellectual power, as such,but to men of childlike hearts.
H. Allon, Penny Pulpit,new series, No. 326.
The Simplicity of Mystery.
I. "In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit." What hour was that? When He saw, humanly speaking, a glimpse of God's method of unfolding His governmental purposes, and His beneficent plans and designs. It is always so. Now and then God seems to lift the veil, and we are allowed for one moment to see whatHe is doing, and howHe is doing things; and I have never yet had one of these revelation glimpses without saying afterwards, "This is Divine; this is sufficient; this is infinite in beauty. God is doing all things well."
II. Religion, as propounded to us by Jesus Christ, is not a riddle to be solved by the intellectually great. It is a revelation to the heart; it is a word spoken to sin; it is a Gospel breathed upon sorrow; it is a word of liberty delivered to those that are bound, a subtle sympathy, something not to be named in high-sounding phrases, or to be wrought out in pomp of words. "And hast revealed them unto babes." It will be found that simplicity itself is the chief mystery of God. The fact of the matter is, that things are so simple that we will not believe them. We look for mystery, and therefore we miss the thing that is close at hand. The notion of the day would seem to be the notion of intellectual power, intellectual efficiency, intellectual culture. If we are babes what may we expect from the world? Ridicule. Let us understand the terms under which we go into this kingdom, and that is, that we return to babyhood. The greater the man, the greater the simplicity; the greater his acquisitions, the more beautiful his modesty; the more wonderful his power and influence, the greater his readiness to consider, and oblige, and do good. From the greatest expect the best; from the master more than from the servant; from the disciple expect rudeness and rejection; from the Master "Forbid them not, let them come." As thou dost increase in gentleness, thou wilt increase in modesty, and the increase of thy manfulness and valour shall be an increase of gentleness, and thou shalt find thy highest joys in succouring many, in blessing all.
Parker, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 72.
References: Luke 10:21. Homiletic Magazine,vol. vii., p. 265; Ibid.,vol. xi., p. 206; Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p. 222; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 85.Luke 10:21; Luke 10:22. Ibid., Sermons,vol. xxvi., No. 1,571; W. Wilson, Christ setting His Face to go to Jerusalem,p. 421.Luke 10:22. W. Dorling, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 142.