Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust.
The day of judgment is likened to a trial, and we learn that with every verdict there will be given reasons which shall satisfy the intelligent creation. When we read of books and witnesses, we may be sure there will be evidence we shall not be able to contradict.
1. Conscience will probably be the great accuser. This may now be torpid; but circumstances constantly occur to show that it is not dead.
2. Conscience now awakens with memory, and so it will be then; and so memory will reproduce every action, and conscience will determine its character. Addressing Himself to Jews, our Lord, notwithstanding the testimony of His miracles, avers that He will not accuse them for their infidelity. There were such clear attestations in the writings of Moses to Himself, that it would be sufficient only to produce them. And what a forgetfulness of the element of their religion, and what a stifling of conscience must there have been ere they could profess to trust in a lawgiver whose laws they set at nought!
I. Our Lord makes it A NECESSARY CONSEQUENCE ON MEN’S BELIEVING MOSES, THAT THEY SHOULD BELIEVE IN HIM.
1. The law and the gospel, therefore, must be parts of the same system.
(1) If you consider the law as a system of types, and compare it with the gospel as the antitype, it seems impossible to avoid being struck by the correspondence.
(2) The gospel furnishes us with the character in which the law is written, and thus enables us to decipher its hieroglyphics.
2. How can we account for this? Not by chance; for there is not here and there an accidental resemblance. But when it is the business of a lifetime to find out all the reciprocities, and the impossibility of a lifetime to detect one disagreement, we are compelled to believe that, whoever constructed the gospel, formed it for the purpose of adapting it to the law.
3. Let us see how the argument stands.
(1) The founders of Christianity must, if impostors, have laboured to give plausibility to their system by assimilating it to the law; but in order to success, they must have had unbounded familiarity with the Mosaic institution and unbounded ingenuity in giving substance to shadows.
(2) Had the apostles been learned rabbis, they would not have been equal to this; but they were unlearned peasants.
(3) The only theory on which we can account for this mutual adaptation, is that both come from God.
4. Consequently, to reject one is to reject both. The Jews, indeed, had no such acquaintance with the gospel as we have; but they had abundant opportunity of noting the correspondence of Christ with the Messianic prophecies. They rejected the former, and hence the latter also.
5. To follow the same line of thought further. The Bible, though composed in different ages and by different writers, is an uniform book, presenting throughout the same truths, though with a great variety of exhibition and marked by a surprising similarity of style. This is convincing alike of the unity and Divinity of its authorship, and to believe one part of it is to believe the whole.
II. THE FORCE OF THE REASONING THAT IF MOSES WERE NOT BELIEVED NEITHER WOULD CHRIST BE.
1. We are wont to think that were Christ to speak and work now as He did eighteen hundred years ago, that His ministry would result in widespread conviction of unbelievers and conversion of sinners. But if the fact that the Jews resisted the writings of Moses proved that there was no hope of them being overcome by the words of Christ, we might infer that those who reject the preaching of Christ’s ministers would reject Christ Himself. The amount of necessary resistance would not be greater in the one case than the other, except that the Jews had an incomplete, but Christians have a perfect Bible. But would not Divine eloquence and miracles be more powerful than the written Word? No.
(1) Because the Holy Spirit is the Agent of conversion in either case.
(2) Because there being no respect of persons with God, one generation is dealt with by the same laws as another; and we have no right to believe that in handling a miracle the Spirit would apply a greater effort than in handling the Word.
(3) In resisting the writings of Moses the Jews had resisted the Holy Spirit speaking in those writings, and henceforward, in resisting the word of Christ, they were to resist the Spirit speaking in those words. And so now the Spirit turns upon us sufficient evidence to convince, but not to compel.
(4) “To think that we should be converted by miracle who are unconverted by Scripture is to apologize for infidelity by throwing the blame upon God.” It holds good to-day, “If we will not hear Moses and the prophets, neither shall we be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Christ’s testimony to the Bible
There is much controversy about the Book. It will be interesting, amid the din and tumult, to find out what Christ thought of it. If He makes it out to be a good Book, I shall continue my faith in it. If He is hesitant or doubtful, I shall not hesitate to give it up.
I. IN REGARD TO OTHERS.
1. He commended it as an object of study.
(1) Without one word of caution. He points to it as you would point your child to a garden, where you give him liberty to roam where and eat what it may. If there was a pit there, or a poisonous serpent, and your child came to harm, you would be to blame. So Christ sends us to the Bible, and takes the entire responsibility.
(2) Authoritatively; not with a polite wish, but with a command. We want to do away with the imperative mood, and are inviting people to be courteous enough to let the sunlight into their chambers. If you have any doubt about your Bible, then go like a crouching dog and ask people to kindly listen to your tale. But if it be in your heart as the life of your life, then speak it boldly and lovingly.
(3) Completely. He does not say, “When you come upon anything that taxes your fancy, put that into the waste-paper basket, and go on; when you meet with a difficulty, pass it by, and accept what you can accept; when something appears incredible, reject it, and pass on to what you can accept.” Had there been anything wrong there I know, because I know His truth and nobleness, that He would have told me of it.
2. He declared its absolute integrity, and exactly as a truth-speaking man would do. Persons came to Him with a difficulty, and in His answer there is this parenthesis: “The Scriptures cannot be broken.” This was not special pleading. The subject had no reference to Scripture. The remark is casual and unstudied, and one on which those who examine witnesses place great reliance. He had the opportunity of making annotations, of saying, “I now refer to the moral parts,” or “I am speaking eclectically”; but His whole assumption, on the contrary, broadens out into an infinite confidence in the integrity of the Scriptures.
3. He taught that it contains the great answers to all the great questions of the soul
(1) As regards duty. A man came to Him, asking, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus instantly replied, “What is written in the law?” and showed that that great question had been answered from the beginning.
(2) As regards destiny. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus He showed that the men of olden time did not go down to hell without warning. “If they hear not Moses,” etc.
II. IN REGARD TO HIMSELF. He was not a mere lecturer about the Bible.
1. He fled Himself to it in the time of His temptation and agony. “It is written.” In His great crisis He goes to the Bible; He has it in His heart; He quotes it as if He had written it.
2. Coming out of the wilderness into society, we find Him even quoting it in self-vindication. Again and again He said to learned men, “Have ye never read?” To His own disciples, “How is it that ye do not understand?” And when He began to read, their hearts began to burn. They had been reading the Scriptures, and yet had made nothing of them, like many today. Read it with Christ, and you will find His person, claims, promises, vindicated everywhere.
3. Christ found Himself in the whole Bible. “Had ye believed Moses,” etc. “Beginning at Moses,” etc. And what is the Old Testament testimony to Him? That He is Creator, Preserver, Redeemer, Sovereign, Friend; “the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever.” Then search the Scriptures; read them through.
1. This alone will qualify you for criticizing it.
2. This alone will give you solid comfort and eternal life. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The unity of the Bible an argument for its Divinity
In reading the Bible I seem always to hear the same voice: whether the volume is informing me how the unshapen chaos resolved itself at the Creator’s bidding into symmetry and life--or men, who, familiar with the scenes, are gathering centuries into sentences; or the lawgiver is arranging the ceremonies of the mystic volume; or historians are discoursing of battles and captivities; or evangelists describing the institutions, and apostles unfolding the doctrines of Christianity--I seem always to hear the same voice, as though the words of John, the exile in Patmos, were the echo of those of Moses, the leader of Israel. There is vast difference in the subjects successively, touched on; but, notwithstanding, there is a tone which I always recognize, and which always impresses the feeling that I am hearkening to the same speaker. There seems no change in the instrument, though continual change in the sound; as if at one time the whirlwind swept the chords, that I may be astonished with the utterance of wrath and devastation, and at another they were touched by an angel’s hand, that I might be soothed by the melody of mercy. There is the same scheme carried on by the wanderings of patriarchs, the sacrifices of priests, the ambition of kings, and the sufferings of martyrs. The same style is preserved by the poet in his hymns, by the prophet in his visions, the lawgiver in his codes, the historian in his annals; so that, as though the Author never died, but appeared at one time in one character, and another in another, the Bible comes to me as the dictate of one mind, and the writing of one pen. Inspiration only accounts for this; but we cannot imagine any other solution. And if (for it is on this our text bids us fasten) there be such a sameness between the Jewish and Christian dispensations, that all the types in the one find exact antitypes in the other, and thus the two have such a relationship, that they compose one uniform system, we must receive both or reject both. If we believe Moses we must believe Christ, and if we believe Christ we must believe Moses; and this serves to vindicate what might otherwise seem difficult, that no Jew can truly believe his own religion and yet deny the Christian religion. “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me; for he wrote of Me.” (H. Melvill, B. D.)
The impossibility of inventing the correspondence between Moses’ testimony and Christ’s work
We should like to see a company of acute and scientific reasoners, but ignorant of Christianity, sit down to the study of the books of Leviticus and Exodus; they shall be told, “These books are full of types, and emblems, and figures, and ceremonies, and you must strive to devise a simple religious system, which shall give significance to every item of this symbolic array; there are mysterious intimations,” we will tell them, “in every page, couched in parabolic language, or under sacrificial institutions, and your endeavour must be to invent a scheme of theology which shall afford a plausible and rational explanation of all that is thus obscure.” Now do you honestly think that our company of ingenious and intelligent writers would make much way with their task? Can you believe that, as the result of their joint labours, there would be sent into the world any scheme of religion which should fix the plain meaning, or at least afford a clue, to all the mysteries of the books of Exodus and Leviticus? Yet this is precisely what is done by the system of Christianity; done with so unvarying a carefulness, that you cannot find a point to which there is nothing corresponding. The men, moreover, who effected this were ignorant and illiterate; so that the books were compiled when there was none of those human appliances which at best would but ensure the most limited success. What alternative, then, have we but that of admitting a supernatural interference, and ascribing to God the whole system of Christianity? (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Christ in the Old Testament and in the New
Christ was in the faith of the patriarchs like corn in the ear; in the faith of the law like corn grown into flower; but since the Incarnation He is in our faith completely as when corn is made into bread. (Bernard.)
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THE HISTORICAL CONNECTION BETWEEN Chapter S 5. AND 6.--Our Lord is in Galilee. It has been, perhaps, a year since the healing at Bethesda. His ministry in Galilee has gone forward, as described by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, including many miracles, the Sermon on the Mount, the early parables, and the mission of the twelve. Returning from this mission, on which they went two and two throughout Galilee, teaching and healing, the twelve were weary and worn, as Jesus Himself had been when He reclined beside Jacob’s well. So He compassionately said to them (Mark 6:31), “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile.” That project led to his feeding the five thousand. This is the first narrative in which John has been parallel to all three of the other Gospels (Matthew 14:13-33; Mark 6:31-52; Luke 9:10-17), and it will not be so again until the triumphal entry. John’s chief object is to present the Saviour’s discourses, and he probably gives this one Galilean event in common with the other Gospels only by way of introducing the great discourse on the Bread of life. (J. A. Broadus, D. D.)
The moral connection between Chapter s 5 and 6.
The record of a critical scene in Christ’s work in Galilee follows the record of the critical scene at Jerusalem. At Jerusalem Christ revealed Himself as the Giver of life; here He reveals Himself as the Support and Guide of life. In the former case the central teaching was upon the relation of the Son to the Father; in this case it is in the relation of Christ to the believer. The episode contains the whole essence of the Galilean ministry. It places in decisive contrast the true and false conceptions of the Messianic kingship, the one universal and spiritual, the other local and material. (Bp. Westcott.)