Why God reveals to babes. The babe is the representative of the receptive spirit. Its characteristic is trust, openness to impression, and freedom from prejudice. Childlike men may be powerful in intellect and capable of a bold initiative quite as much as those of a contrary character, but they possess, above all, the capacity of surrendering themselves to an influence outside of them, and letting it work its effects upon them unhindered by theory or questioning.
I. To reveal to babes harmonizes with God's character as a Father, and illustrates it. "Babe" is the counterpart to "Father;" "wise and understanding" has no such relation. A father's heart is not attracted to the brilliance or power in his family, but to the want. The open, clinging heart appeals to him. This is the advantage of the babe over the wise and understanding he recognizes and claims relationship to God, and receives.
II. It glorifies God as Lord of heaven and earth to reveal to babes. Had God shown a preference for the elevated, had He touched mainly the hill-tops, what an impoverishing of the world it would have been! How the whole conception of God would have been lowered by the absence of lowliness! But how near God comes; how dear He is to us by His frequent close relationship to the poor and lowly! We are drawn to the mighty God who is drawn to the babes. This is the greatness that cheers us, and binds us to God. This makes us rich and great.
III. By revealing to babes the Father and Lord of heaven and earth manifests the supremacy of the moral element. When God passes by the soaring imagination, the lofty intellect, the keen understanding, and puts His main blessing into the lowly heart and open spirit, when He comes down to the very lowest form of the moral and spiritual the mere sense of want, the mere hunger for better things and gives infinite wealth to that, what a rebuke He conveys to pride of intellect! what honour. He confers upon plain heart and conscience!
IV. It glorifies God as Father and Lord of heaven and earth to reveal to babes, for it shows His desire to reveal as much as possible, and to as many as possible.
V. The appointment of a personal Saviour glorifies God as Father and Lord of heaven and earth, and is peculiarly adapted to babes.
J. Leckie, Sermons preached in Ibrox,p. 1.
Note:
I. the apparent paradox involved in these words, "Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." (1) All revelation is to some extent a concealment. The veil is ever being drawn aside, but it is never taken away. Wherever we take our stand, our own shadow will fall on the glorious countenance. (2) The special revelation which God has made to some individuals is the very process by which He has concealed Himself from others. If God's revelation has been made to certain nations, and if He is educating our race by conferring special and peculiar functions on different nations of men, then the process has been one of election on the grand scale, and He whose love has revealed itself to some has concealed itself from others. (3) The revelation, though made, needed special eyes, ears, minds, to receive it.
II. The Redeemer's judgment and gratitude concerning it. (1) He attributes the arrangement to the universal Lord. The great fact and apparent paradox is a Divine arrangement, not an unfortunate accident. (2) The Saviour acquiesces in this arrangement, not simply as an act of universal sovereignty, but as most merciful and good, as the Father's good pleasure. (3) Christ deliberately thanks God that it is so. Instead of being narrow or restricted in its range, the principle of discrimination was the widest and noblest that can be conceived. The babes may never become wise and prudent, but the greatest mind may and can humble itself, and become as a little child. Hence, this is the noblest and broadest offer of mercy.
H. R. Reynolds, Notes of the Christian Life,p. 67.
I. "Thou hast hid these things." What things? The facts that the Apostles had cast out devils, that they had healed the sick, that they had given antidotes for poison? Not at all. You must follow the inward thought of the Saviour. Here was the power of unlearned, untaught men. They were not equipped for speaking or for acting before the public, and yet there was a secret hidden power in their souls which was more than a match for the temple, and the synagogue, and the forum. It was not continuous at first, but it became so. The whole drift of the New Testament is to create in men the Divine element, or to let it loose if it be captive, or to develop it if it be yet in the germ. The hidden kingdom of the soul, this depth which no man can reveal in language, recognized by the Lord Jesus Christ, was the state into which the Apostles came, and is the state into which a great many have entered in every age and throughout the world.
II. Faith, hope, and love are the three things which the Apostle says will survive time and the changes of death. He declares that all our intellectual states are merely approximations. Knowledge, comprehensive with its relativities, subject to the light and to the disclosures of a new condition these shall pass away. When the Apostle says that faith, hope, and love survive, can any man out of these three words give any conception of that vast kingdom which shall come by these disclosures, and combinations, and developments? No man can do it. And yet it is the power of this inward, hidden soul-life which is revealed to these babes, these unwashed fishermen, these uneducated peasants.
III. This hidden life of the soul is the most powerful life. It gives a man courage. It imparts light and gladness. It dissipates fear. It takes away doubt. He is luminous that dwells in the secret of God.
H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 227; see also Sermons,2nd series, p. 25.