Bible Commentaries
Luke 10

Verses 1-24

VI

THE SENDING OUT OF THE SEVENTY

Harmony, pages 110-111 and Luke 10:1-24.

This passage of Scripture at times impresses my own mind more than any other passage except Luke 15. I am never able to read it without being deeply and solemnly impressed. There are in it the solutions of more difficult questions than in I any similar amount of statement ever compacted into so small a space. There are more texts for revival preaching in it than in any similar space of scripture in the Bible. After such fashion as I am able I will try to impress upon the reader its import – its deep, high, and wide import. It contains the foundation principles underlying the spread of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1. The great destitution. – "The harvest is plenteous." On several momentous occasions in his life, and with every possible emphasis of solemnity, our Lord called the attention of his disciples to this fact. The destitution pressed on his spirit at the well of Jacob, near Sychar, so that he had no appetite to eat earthly food. He says, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of." And while they were concerned about what kind of a dinner they would have, he pointed to the great crowd of lost and uninstructed people that were pouring out of that city to approach them and said, "Say not ye, there are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest? Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, that they are white already unto harvest." And before he sent out the twelve apostles we are told that he looked out over the vast destitution – I mean spiritual destitution – of the masses of the people – the common people, the poor people, the sick people, the sad people. He stood there alone and he wanted help. And when he saw that destitution, he appointed the twelve and sent them out. And we have here another sight of destitution and he appoints seventy more and sends them out. Now do let us impress upon our minds the nature of this destitution among the just as it appears in the United States, the most enlightened country of the world, and where we have greater religious privileges than any other country in the world. The destitution is appalling: People that do not hear the word of God preached; people that are without God and without hope in the world; people that are dying by thousands, unforgiven; a dearth of the word of God; a dearth of the promise of eternal life. In the vicinity of the strongest churches that destitution lurks. The light that shines from the brightest church of God’s kindling in the world today does not illumine the darkness thoroughly one square from that church building. It is not merely a destitution of privation, a privation of life, not merely that, but it is a privation enhanced by the fact of false teachers, of wolves in sheep’s clothing, of those who claim to be guides and are themselves blind; of those who go in and out among these people ignorant of the teachings of God’s Word and kindling the hot and blasting fires of prejudice and strife and malice, making every poor little church an arena of contention and of shame in the sight of God. Men claiming to be preachers men claiming to be sent out by the Holy Spirit, who will, to serve some selfish purpose, see the light put out, the only light that shines in a vast circumference of darkness. A destitution not merely of being harried by wolves in sheep’s clothing, but a destitution of shepherds.

Our Saviour saw the people scattered like sheep without a shepherd, no safe guides, no unselfish God-loving, prayerful, pious, God-fearing men, to stand among these scattered and dying masses of people and shepherd them as the flock of God. O the destitution – the destitution! Look at it, church of God. Look at it, ye grumblers, ye growlers, ye kickers, ye splitters, ye cavilers – look at it and remember the judgment to come. Look at it and ask your souls what emotions should be excited by it. This leads to our next thought.

2. The great compassion. – Of course I mean the Lord’s compassion. Here are the very words of the touching record concerning the occasion of sending out the twelve: "But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers unto his harvest" (Matthew 9:36-38).

Who that is converted, who that himself has experienced the grace of God, who that himself has rejoiced in the glory of God, who that has tasted for himself the Bread of Life and quenched his own burning thirst in the cool waters of life, can be without concern and without deep anguish of spirit when he looks out over this destitution?

I would be willing, God being my judge, this day to renounce all my claim or title to any mansion in the skies; I would count myself an exile from God’s favor; I would reckon myself to be among the reprobate, if I did not have something of the compassion that was in the heart of Christ when he looked out over this destitution. If I could eat and drink and be merry; if I could be absorbed in the pleasures of this world; if I could follow the bent of a worldly mind, without concern, without anguish of soul, concerning the appalling destitution that there is in the world, I would be willing to say, "It is certain that my own name is not written in heaven."

Having adverted to the appalling destitution and noted the divine compassion excited by it and the human pity and prayer that ought to be excited by it, let us now be amazed as we consider

3. The simplicity of the means for supplying the destitute – Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to establish a world empire; he wanted to be the dominant spirit in the world; over Spain, over Portugal, over Holland, over the German Confederation, over Austria, over Prussia, over Turkey, over Egypt, and on into India, where Alexander halted, and he wanted to unfurl his flag, though it froze, over Moscow, the ancient capital of the Czars. Wanting such an empire, what means did he deem necessary for its establishment? How much money? What treasure? What systems of taxation? What sources of revenue? He thought it necessary to lay the resources of the entire world under an exhaustive tribute in order to establish it, so far as money could do it. And so far as men were concerned, he called out every able-bodied man in France. He anticipated the conscription two years in advance. He not only robbed the cradle of its youth, but he robbed the tomb of tottering old age. By the side of his hoary-headed veterans who ought to have been in the hospital, were boys that ought to have been in school. And then he called upon Portugal for its contribution of men, and Spain for hers under the Marquis of Romano; Holland for her contingent; Bavaria for hers, and a vast army corps from Prussia after he conquered it; and Saxony for hers and Poland for hers. He said to the world, "Give me men," and he took them. And what else? He wanted artillery that could not be numbered; not twenty pieces, nor a hundred, nor a thousand, but many thousand pieces of field and siege artillery. And what number of horses? Horses by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the ten thousand, by the hundred thousand, by the million. And what arms? The sword, the bayonet, gunpowder, and every means of destruction. These were the means he employed – and failed.

We see the Son of God looking out on a world over which he purposes to establish an empire, and with a view that he shall not reign a few short years, as did Napoleon and then, before the close of an ordinary lifetime meet his Waterloo; but reign while the sun rises and sets and ocean tides beat against the shores; reign until the moon waxes and wanes no more and the heavens are melted and rolled together as a scroll; reign one hundred, one thousand, two thousand years, forever, over the whole world.

And what means? "Shall I send to the universities and call the learned professors from their chairs? Shall I gather about me the philosophers who have inquired touching the secrets of life? Shall I gather about me metaphysicians who can spin webs so fine spun that they are transparent? Shall I gather about me men who in logic and argument or in oratory surpass all other men? Shall I do this? Not that; not any of it. I do not want the wise, nor the great, nor the noble. I gather a few fishermen together. I will not reach up to what is called the upper crust of society and take some man of lordly intellect or of colossal wealth. No, I will go down here next to the mud-sills, in the haunts of poverty, where men are sickening and dying, and there from among the people, I will gather me a lot of simple folk, and I will say to them, ’Carry no sword; beat no drum; unfurl no flag; carry no purse; do not carry even an extra pair of shoes; but go out and take the world.’ " This is the thing that caused profound astonishment to Napoleon Bonaparte in his exile. Over and over again at St. Helena he looked at it and thought about it and compared it with his method of establishing a world empire. "My empire is gone. I am in exile; and two thousand years in passing away have added only to the glory and power of the Galilean." How wonderful the simplicity of the means!

4. How were these men educated for their work? – Mighty question! The question of ministerial education! What is a school for the prophets? We readily understand the necessity of preparation, of training, of disciplining in order to attain great success in any work. There is West Point for training army officers. See the West Pointers under Taylor and Scott in the Mexican war and doubt, if you can and dare, their value at Palo Alta, Resca, Monterey, Buena Vista, Cerro Gordo, Cherubusco. There is the naval academy in Annapolis. What thoughtful student of naval warfare will have the hardihood to deny the value of that school? But a school of prophets – what is that? Did Jesus send out uneducated men? As the destitution was so great why did he not send out 12,000 instead of twelve? Why not 70,000 instead of seventy? Be- cause only twelve were ready first, and only seventy later. But how were they made ready? That is the supreme question – the vital inquiry. I answer, by patient training under Jesus himself. They had no need to sit at Gamaliel’s feet. What Paul learned there, he had to forget and count it loss and refuse when compared to the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus. But it does not follow that ignorance of human learning means knowledge of Christ. Let not ignorance so presume. Training under Jesus implies hard and long continued study of what God has revealed, lesson after lesson, here a little, there a little, as they are able to bear the light. It implies a subordination of the passions, a bringing of every thought, desire, and imagination into the subjection of Christ, a crucifixion of self, of cowardice, and a patient and persistent cross-bearing. Therefore before he would send out anyone he took the selected ones near to himself. "Stay close to me. Let me teach you. Imbibe my spirit. Learn my methods. See how I endure. See the spirit of self-sacrifice that prompts me in what I do. Learn from me the revelation from heaven, so that men may take knowledge of you when you go out that you have been with Jesus, and then when you are instructed I will put you in this field."

But though the destitution was vast, and the darkness intense, and the wailings and the sobs and sighing of the perishing were like the dirges of a lost world, he would send no man until that man was ready. Better not send anybody if) he is not qualified to teach, if he does not know what to preach, if he has not the spirit of the Master, if he will not go to de- liver the people from their ignorance and prejudice. If he go out simply to stir up and excite parties for selfish ends, better never send him. And so he waited until he had instructed twelve, and sent them, and now having instructed seventy, he sends them. Now when he has instructed these men and they are ready to be sent out the question comes up

5. "What were they to do?" – He says, "You are to do this: Heal the sick and preach the gospel. Say unto every city you visit, The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye and believe the gospel." That is the whole of it. But, says one who assumes to be a critic and who would check the benevolence of the people of God, "Our Lord sends men out simply to preach the gospel. Why attempt in missionary lands to heal the sick and care for the poor? Why tax missionary money to have the bodies of these people attended to in their suffering?" And they think they have raised quite a question. I ask them to go back and look at Jesus. Go and see him who never could have filled the prophecy that he was the Messiah if the lame man did not leap at his coming, if the blind did not receive their sight, if the sick were not visited and healed. What commission of our Lord Jesus Christ was ever given that did not enjoin it upon his disciples to give heed to the sufferings of the body? Where is there one? I challenge any man to find one.

And he who would try and put the church so supernally and spiritually high as to put it out of contact with suffering humanity, just as it is, with its poverty and its cold and its hunger and its groanings and its fever, that man has a sublimated view of the subject that is foreign to his Saviour. "As you go, heal the sick, remember the poor." Paul had that solemn charge given to him, "Do not forget the poor." And if we were to take off of the brow of Christianity today its crown of benevolence, what it has done for asylums, for orphanages, for the amelioration of human sufferings, for the relief of the destitute, we would deprive it of the characteristic of the New Testament, and we would sap its power with the people to whom the gospel is to be preached. And why? Because our Lord came to save the body as well as the soul; because he suffered in the body; because he purposed to redeem the body; because the consummation of salvation is a glorification of the body as well as a sanctification of the spirit.

6. Other amazing things. – I stand amazed when I look at these men. We see two of them coming along down a dusty road, walking with staves in their hands, coming to a city, a great city, without a letter of recommendation, no bank account, no armies back of them; coming up to a house and saying, "Peace be to this house," accepting just what hospitality was accorded them; if a crust of bread, taking it and making no complaint; if better fare, eating that without comment; not running around from house to house eating big dinners and to be entertained. They were sent out on a message of life and death – sent to redeem the world, to minister unto others and not to be ministered unto; not to be the pets, the pampered pets of the sickly sentimentalism of a community, but the vitalized exponents of the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ in the community they visit. I stand amazed at their authority: "We come not to argue anything. We come not to indulge in metaphysical speculation. We come as heralds – we come with a proclamation, a proclamation from heaven. It is our business to herald it and let God take care of it. He did not appoint us to prop it up with our feeble strength. He sent us in his name to say, ’The kingdom of God is come; the kingdom of God, the power to forgive sins here on earth, is come. And we offer to you people the peace of God.’ "

I have a picture in my mind of that peace of God going out from them to the unworthy, and returning, as Noah’s dove went out from the ark, to find a resting place for its feet, and after long and weary flight, coming back again to the window of the ark. "If there be no son of peace in that house, your peace shall return unto you"; and yet in eternity it will be true that in that house – that house that had so little thought of God and so much thought of the world – it would be eternally true that one time the dove of God’s peace, the white dove of that peace that passeth all understanding, came to that house and tried to get in; tried to find a resting place for its feet, and was rejected and returned and no more reappeared at that place. And the same way with the cities. They were to go to that city and say, "The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you"; you bankers, you merchants, you rich people, you poor people, you lawyers, the kingdom of God, the power on earth to forgive sin, is come among you, and you are commanded to repent of your sins and believe the gospel. And if they rejected it, then they were to shake the dust off their feet. Shake it off! What does it mean? It means two things: That there is upon that preacher a responsibility for the sins of that community and there rests upon him blood guiltiness until he does faithfully and courageously preach the gospel. But when he cries aloud and spares not, and seeing the sword coming he blows his trumpet, though the people perish, yet he can shake off the dust. He can shake it off of his feet and say, "You die in your sins, but your blood can not be required at my hands. You are lost. You go down to death and hell. Lost forever, but O Lord, I was faithful. I stood in that city and preached to you. I did not preach philosophy. I did not preach an empty, indefinite morality. I preached life, eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, and every grain of your dust I shake from my feet. I am clean from the blood of you men."

It means that and it means more than that. It means that when that dust is shaken from that man’s feet it becomes a witness, an imperishable evidence of the fact that the kingdom of God had once come nigh to that soul and been rejected. And when the great day of account rolls around and that convicted soul stands in the presence of its Master and would attempt to proffer before God’s bar the empty pretenses that fell so glibly from his lips here upon the earth, the grains of sand upon which apostolic feet stood and testified that life had come right to his door, they become vocal and Bay, "Your excuses are false. Remember, on us poor grains of sand, stood the feet of the messengers of the Son of God, and preached peace to you and you rejected it." Just as the prophet describes it, the rafter in the roof and the beam of timber in the wall, cry out against the man. So even on the very verge of the final and eternal separation there will be a demonstration for that man: "I might have repented. I had an opportunity to repent. The dove hovered over my house once. The waters came to my door once. The minister of God approached my vicinity once. To me, now lost, to me, now without hope, to me, doomed to a prayerless, hopeless, merciless, and eternal condemnation; to me is the conviction that I might have obtained eternal life by just holding out my hands, but I would not do it."

7. The great victory. – In looking at this scripture another thought presses on my mind and it should certainly teach a solemn lesson to every preacher, and that is, the astounding victory that resulted from sending out these seventy men. It eclipsed their own conception. They did not understand it. The means seem to be so utterly disproportionate to the result! Not only blindness saw; not only the halt were made to stand erect and walk with ease; not only the deaf heard and the dead were quickened; not only did hoary-headed sinners find forgiveness of sin and peace with God; not only did these fall before them, but even the very devils, at the name of Jesus, the principalities and powers in high places, fell before them at the first stroke of the gospel sword. "Oh Jesus; even the devils were subject to us through thy name." And Jesus says, "I know it; I saw it. My spirit was with you. I saw you go to that town and I saw Satan fall as you preached." Fall how? Fall struggling? Fall after stubborn resistance? No! "Have you ever been out when clouds were gathering and have you seen the lightning fall from heaven so swift the eye could scarcely see it before it was gone? Well, I saw Satan fall that way."

He does not mean, "I saw Satan in heaven fall from heaven, but when you preachers went to a community and preached in that earthly community, I saw the devil fall as suddenly while you were preaching as the lightning falls from heaven." And it has no other meaning than that. We know when people, who never amounted to much in themselves (and I frankly say that preachers do not amount to much, I mean the very best of them, and some of them are a terrible lot), whenever instrumentalities thus weak, thus powerless, see such a mighty result as that, it is an easy thing for them to be puffed up; it is an easy thing for each of them to say, "I came; I saw; I conquered." It is an easy thing for them to begin to lay the flattering unction to their souls that by their own might and power this was accomplished, and to rejoice that they are conquerors of the devil. But our Lord said, "I would not stop to rejoice over that. You did not do it. I would not stop to glory over that. I will tell you something that ought to make you glad, even in the darkest sorrow and the blackest night that this earth, with its vicissitudes of trial, ever brings upon a soul." "Well, what is it?" "Rejoice because your names are written in heaven." By the power of God a Judas might cast out devils, but Judas’ name is not written in heaven, and there will come a time when it would be better for him that he had never been born. Balaam had prophetic power and Balaam is lost.

Gifts are not graces, and in the world to come there will be something of such a nature that when the mind reflects upon it joy will spring up in the heart like an unsealed fountain, that will spontaneously bubble and outflow and glow and sparkle and sing as it goes. And what is it? "My name is written in heaven. I am sick, but my name is written up yonder, and sickness shall not have eternal dominion over me. I am slandered, but my name is written up yonder and slander’s foul stain shall not forever spot my good name. My name is written up yonder. I am dying, but death shall not have eternal dominion over me. My name is written up yonder. The Judgment Day is coming. The heavens are on fire and the earth is in blaze. Graves open and hell yawns, and the white throne looms up, but, ah me! on that throne a book called the Lamb’s Book of Life, and whosoever’s name is written there need never fear the second death, which means to be cast into the lake of fire with the devil and his angels. Now, I rejoice in that."

8. The strange joy of Jesus. – "At that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit." I do not say that Jesus rejoiced in spirit on account of the report made by these missionaries. I know we sometimes grow jubilant over the report made by our missionaries. He rejoices not at that. Here is the ground of his joy: He rejoiced because the Father was well pleased to reveal these things to babes and not to wise men. That caused him to rejoice. Often I have considered that joy of Jesus and philosophized. And when men would say, "Come here now and get a gospel out of geology; go to Chicago University and get a gospel out of higher criticism; go to Yale, go to Oxford, and get a gospel out of the speculations of the very learned few.’" I don’t want to do it, because it would give no joy to Jesus. Our Saviour saw that any way of salvation that let in only great people, would be a very limited way of salvation, for there were a very few great people; and he saw that a way of salvation that would only let in rich people who already have the earth, why, that would make a very small heaven. And he saw that a way of life that could be found out only by a college and a post-graduate course, would be a very limited road, and he wanted a wider road. He wanted a way that the masses could find, for it was their destitution that touched his heart. It was their condition that excited his compassion. “O Father, I thank thee that thou hast made the way so plain and so simple that the weak and the poor and the suffering and the untutored can enter in." I am glad of that. That saves the millions. That saves those who are hemmed up by cruel circumstances and ever narrowing environment; that saves the prisoner in the dungeon; that saves the sailor on the plank in mid-ocean; that saves the thief on the cross; that saves the man whose time is but a few gasping moments ere he is gone. “O God, I do thank thee that thou hast revealed these things to babes I"

There are some great cities almost utterly lost because they have only worldly great preachers. Every preacher there is a great man; every one of them a graduate and a postgraduate; every one of them is learned in philosophy and nearly every one of them preaches more politics than religion; and the proportion of the saved to the total population gets smaller all the time. Yet there one may hear the most unanswerable arguments on mere morality. He may hear the most beautiful essays on philosophy to which the world ever listened, but ah me! it does not save a man and it does not awaken a conscience; and it continually diminishes the crowd that hears it, and there is no saving power in it. The sooner the last one of such sermons is forgotten the better for the world.

Let a preacher preach Christ to the lost and not Epicurus; preach salvation through the blood of the Lamb instead of the miserable subterfuge of speculative vagaries and unverified hypotheses of conceited so-called philosophers, that cannot kindle a glow worm’s spark, much less make a sun to dispel the darkness. There is no contempt so deserving as the contempt for the idea that all good men ought to pour out upon the people are the miserable, sickly, frivolous, drivelling things they substitute for the gospel.

Hasn’t it been tried? Where did it reform a nation? Where did it save a soul? Where did it quicken a conscience? O my soul, come thou not into such traitorous counsel! Oh, let us keep the gospel of the blessed God, that causes the mother to die in peace and with heaven-lighted face to say, "My boy, meet me in heaven." O God, let us keep that! What is to become of these people when such stuff as that is commended for preaching? Why should one man preach that more than another? What right has any man to claim to be a minister of that? What right has any man to demand of an audience a support for talking such stuff as that? Why, you do not need any church for that. Tear your churches down. Pull down your altars. Tear down your religious schools and join the dizzy walk down to death. I could give some samples. I have in my mind passages of Genesis and other portions of the Old Testament, that even within my time were held up as absolute, scientific demonstrations that the book was not from God.

I have seen that chameleon, Science, that forty years ago was one thing, and thirty years ago was another, and twenty years ago was still another, and ten years ago another, and today is another – have seen Science come with her spade and dig up from the ruins of buried cities the conviction of the falsity of what she taught ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago. Why, it doesn’t stand still long enough to believe in it. It doesn’t stand still long enough to put your finger on it. A man would have to be swifter than Atalanta; yea, he would have to have the wings and heels of Mercury, or ride upon Pegasus, to be able to keep near enough to it to be orthodox, and then he would have to go on the supposition, "I hold myself prepared to denounce as false tomorrow everything I bold sacred today."

I think we had better wait until it settles in one place long enough to know "where it is at" before we give up religion for it. I went out on all of those tracks in my early life. I was a fool, a downright fool. I laughed at the religion of my father and my mother, and like many another young man, half-fledged, imagined that I was wiser than those whose souls had been converted by the Spirit of God, and whose feet rested upon the everlasting Rock. I was a fool. But God delivered me from my follies. And now I would not give one ray of light that shines from this blessed Book for all the fox-fire light that emanantes from decaying philosophies. If the whole world was Egyptian darkness, whose opaqueness was penetrated in only one place, through which one flicker of light from that Book would come, do you think that I would exchange that ray of heavenly light for all the dim glow the lightning bugs of science could kindle by holding their phosphorescent tails together?

To the young preachers who are concerned about a support, I do not say, "Trust the brethren." I do not. But I do say to you that if you will trust Jesus Christ, and rely upon his word, for he cannot deny himself – the heavens will fall before one of his words shall fail to come to pass – 1 say that if you will just rely on the word of Jesus Christ and go out and preach the pure, simple gospel of eternal life, God will take care of you. He will feed you and he will clothe you; don’t you be uneasy about that. Go out where wolves are raven, I admit. Go out in danger, I know. Go out to face contradiction and slander, is conceded. Go out to be spoken against by men. I know that. But I do know here on earth Jesus will make your heart sing with happiness, and give you plenty of food to eat and clothing to wear, and in the world to come eternal life. O thou doubting heart; thou hesitating foot, that will not step out on the promises of God; thou palsied hand of incertitude that will not lay hold of the promises of God with a grip that never turns loose, have faith in God and preach his word and leave the results to him.

QUESTIONS

1. How does the author show the importance of section 80 (Luke 10:1-24)?

2. What can you say of the great destitution? Give other similar experiences of our Lord.

3. What of our Lord’s great compassion and its relation, to the Christian experience?

4. What can you say of the simplicity of the means used by our Saviour? Contrast with Napoleon Bonaparte.

5. How were these men trained and what is the bearing on theological schools for preachers?

6. What were they to do and what is the bearing on the benevolent work of Christianity?

7. What are some of the amazing things in this connection?

8. How is the return of their peace illustrated from the Old Testament?

9. What two things signified by shaking off the dust of their feet?

10. How does the prophet describe the second thought?

11. How is the lost soul represented as reflecting on this opportunity?

12. What can you say of the victory of this movement?

13. What is the meaning of Satan falling as lightning?

14. What is the danger of a preacher in such a time of victory?

15. What was the real cause for rejoicing noted by our Lord here? Discuss.

16. What can you say of the joy of Jesus on this occasion?

17. How does the author here philosophize on this joy of Jesus?

18. What has the author to say of chameleon Science?

19. What was the author’s experience with these speculative philosophies?

20. What is the author’s final word to preachers?

Verses 25-42

VII

THE PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN; JESUS, THE GUEST OF MARTHA AND MARY

Harmony, pages 111-112 and Luke 10:25-42.

We commence this chapter with section 81 of the Harmony. Taking up Luke 10:25, we have this statement: "And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tempted Jesus." "Lawyer" here does not mean a pleader before a court, but an expounder of the Jewish law, which was both civil and ecclesiastical. The word “tempt” may have a good or a bad sense. May judgment is that the sense here is good. It means to try. "And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tempted Jesus, saying, Master [that means teacher], what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, What is written in the law?" i.e., You are a lawyer. Your business is to expound the law. "What is written in the law? How readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself." Well, that is written in the law. It is a summary of the Ten Commandments. Not a New Testament summary, but the synopsis given by Moses himself, not all in one place, but in two different books of the Pentateuch. Here it is a quotation: "It is written in the law that thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind and thy neighbor as thyself." "And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast answered right. Do this and thou shalt live." Mark the answer: "Do this and thou shalt live." "But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, Who is my neighbor? Jesus made answer and said, A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers who both stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead."

That road from Jerusalem to Jericho was down hill all the way, the grade very steep and in certain parts of it almost a canyon through the mountains; a very narrow passway, with porous rocks on each side, honeycombed with caves. From time immemorial robbers have harbored in those caves and attacked travelers passing over that road from Jerusalem to Jericho and from Jericho to Jerusalem. In the time of the Crusaders an organization was formed called the "Knights Templars," for the sole purpose of establishing their headquarters on that road and protecting travelers, keeping robbers off. That organization of the Knights Templars increased and changed its original form until it became the mightiest organized power of chivalry at one period, and of rascality at a later period. Kings found it necessary to the peace of their realms to banish them. Romance readers will recall Scott’s vivid description in Ivanhoe of their expulsion from England by Richard the Lion-hearted. In modern times we have the Knights Templars, a continuation of the old organization, only with different objects. Here it is well to note in passing that the illustrations of Jesus, while always supposititious, are always natural. His illustration is always a verisimilitude of real life; the thing could have naturally happened Just as he stated. "And by chance a certain priest was going down that way; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And in like manner a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was; and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion, and came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on them oil and wine; and he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow he took out two-pence and gave them to the host, and said, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, I, when I come back again will repay thee. Which of these three, thinkest thou, proved neighbor to him that fell among the robbers? And he said he that showed mercy on him. And Jesus said unto him, Go and do thou likewise."

I ask the reader to note, first, our Lord’s method of dealing with men. He always addressed himself to the man’s standpoint in such a way as to awaken thought and produce self-conviction. Here was an expounder of the law relying upon his conformity to the law for eternal life; an expounder of the law who wanted to call out and try Jesus on this standard. Hence he comes with this most important of all questions: "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Oh, what a question! What a question for you, for me, for anybody, for everybody! "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Or, "What shall I do to escape eternal death?" Jesus says to him, "What does the law say?" "Well, the law says this: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy strength and with all thy mind and with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." Jesus replied to the man, "You have answered right. That is what the law says. That covers the scope of all the Commandments. That summary comprehends every detail, not only of the decalogue, but of every other statute, civil, ecclesiastical, ceremonial, or of any other kind. That is the whole of it. "On these two hang all the law and the prophets." What was the question? "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Mark the answer: The law says, "Thou shalt love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself. Do this and thou shalt live. You are standing in the law. You are an expounder of the law. You are seeking justification before the law, from your standpoint. Here is your chance. Do this and thou shalt live. Fail to do this and thou shalt die."

Just here comes up a question. As men now are – am not talking about Adam and how he was, but as men now are, – is this a practical way of life? That is, is it possible for eternal life to be obtained this way? And the answer to it is prompt and clear: "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in the sight of God." That makes it absolutely impracticable. There is God’s inspired declaration that while it remains true if a man will do what the law requires, he shall inherit eternal life, yet under present conditions it cannot be done; no man can obtain eternal life that way. And here arises a question in morality. Why then did Jesus say, "Do this and thou shalt live?" Why did be answer the question that way? For this reason: It was the object of Jesus to convict that man. That man did not think he was a sinner. Jesus knew he was. The Bible says, "By the law is the knowledge of sin." And Paul says, "I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came sin revived and I died." Now that man stood before Jesus without any consciousness that he was a lost soul, and there in that delusion, he was going along a road that he thought would certainly land him in heaven, and the only way on the earth to cause him to turn from his hopeless and doomed path was to produce the conviction in his mind that he was a lost sinner. Hence Jesus says, "This is what the law says: Do it. Come and look in this mirror and let it, as you look, reflect back yourself to your sight, that you may see that you are not loving God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your mind, and that you are not loving your neighbor as yourself." In other words, he turned Mount Sinai, trembling with the touch of God’s foot and crested with the fire that shows his presence and throbbing with the thunders of his power, over on this man, not to save him, but to bring him to Calvary. Moses was a schoolmaster unto Christ. This lawyer stood there and said: "I am for the law. I am going to stand on my own record. I am going before the bar of God, at the last, and according to what I have done I will seek justification. Now, the sooner Jesus got that man to see what was the heart, the spirit, as well as the exceeding broadness of the divine commandment, the better it was for him. That was the object that Jesus had.

Pursuing the discussion our next question is: What is the constant attitude of the mind of a man who is trying to get to heaven that way? This passage says of the lawyer, "He, desiring to justify himself." There it is. The constant attitude is a desire to justify himself. But what does that desire to justify himself prompt him to do? Here is that high, broad commandment of God: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself," and here is a man trying to save himself by obedience to that law, and very anxious to justify himself. What result follows? He lowers that law to suit the grades of his obedience. How does this lawyer manifest that? By the question, "Who is my neighbor? “Oh, yes, I am seeking salvation by the law. The law says I must love my neighbor as myself. Now in order for my obedience to that law to be practicable, I must so limit I the meaning of that word ’neighbor’ as that my obedience will be co-extensive with it." The very first thing that it induces is the lowering of the divine commandment to suit the grade of the obedience. The lawyer in his mind was saying, "My neighbor is a Jew, and a Jew of my own sect, a Pharisee; of course not a Sadducee. He is not a neighbor of mine; an Essene, he is not a neighbor of mine; a Samaritan, pah! I would not even look toward a Samaritan. I love my neighbor as myself, but you must let me say who my neighbor is, that it means my brother Pharisee." Now we can see why Jesus gave him that answer, and to expose that man’s profanation of the divine commandment and the sophistry with which he sought to justify himself, he gives the parable of the good Samaritan. As if he had said, "I will throw a side light on that subject of neighbor, and I will throw such a side light as you yourself with your own mouth shall condemn yourself." Didn’t he condemn himself? What does the record say? When Christ got through with that story of the good Samaritan he puts the question to this lawyer: "Which of these three thinkest thou proved neighbor to him that fell among the robbers?" And out from his very lips the answer had to come, "He that showed mercy to him." But where does this answer land his law-righteousness? "If that is what the word ’neighbor’ means, looking back over your past life, O Pharisee, where is your Justification? How have you loved your neighbor as yourself? You that seek to be justified by the law, in the light of this parable defining neighbor, you are a lost soul and you know it. You know you hate a Samaritan. You know you hate a Sadducee. You know you hate the Gentile. You know that you have wrapt the mantle of your exclusiveness about you, lest you should come in contact, and by contact receive defilement, from other men, and you have kept narrowing the law, narrowing it until you have got a little bit of a circle here, described by the word ’neighbor,’ that confines only you and your wife and your son and his wife, and nobody else in the world."

I never saw a man on the face of this earth that stood on the basis of his morality, that stood on his own record, either before or after his conversion, that did not lower the divine law in order to make his obedience fill what the law required. A sliding scale! A sliding scale! I can keep the law perfectly if I may reach up and slide it down to fit what I do. So the parable of the good Samaritan disposes of the lawyer’s quibble on the Second Commandment.

Let us now take up section 82 (Luke 10:38-42), our Lord’s first visit to the home of Mary and Martha. Perhaps no part of the Bible has attracted more quiet, pleasing attention than the part which tells of the relation of Jesus Christ to this Bethany family, consisting of two sisters and a brother. We have four special accounts of it. This is the first one, where Jesus makes the acquaintance of the family, and Martha, who seems to be the head of the house, the elder sister, invites him to be her guest. The second account is when they send him a message that their brother is sick, and his coming after the brother dies, and raising him to life again. The third account is later, six days before his last Passover, when he visits Bethany again. The fourth is still later, when, in this very village, a certain man, once a leper, gives him a feast and invites to meet him his friends and his disciples. In this case, as in the first, Martha characteristically serves the outer man while Mary ministers to the spiritual nature of Jesus.

The first question that called for solution in my own mind as I began to study this passage, was this: What object had Christ in view in entering into this or any other house while he was here upon earth? If we once understand his purpose, the great reason prompting him to come, we can understand then what reception of him would be most consistent with that purpose and hence would best please him. He himself tells his purpose. He says, "I come not to be ministered unto, but to minister." He did not come into the world to be made much of as a guest, to receive a stranger’s hospitality. He came to save the world, to minister to them. That purpose never left his mind. It follows that when he accepted this invitation he would approve as the better reception of him, that which best accorded with his object in going there.

The two sisters seem to have formed separate ideas of the kind of reception to tender Jesus. One of them, as we infer from what is said of her every time she is mentioned in the Bible, was a very careful housekeeper, with much pride in her housekeeping, and who, when she received a guest, thought that the best thing she could do would be to prepare a very sumptuous meal for him, and so she put herself to a vast deal of trouble in the preparation of this meal. She counted it a big thing, something well worthy of thought and anxiety and preparation. And so highly did she emphasize this part of hospitality that it drove everything else out of her mind. "Now the way I am to receive this guest who comes to my house this day is to spread before him such a table as he has not seen in a long time." This involved a great deal of work. The other sister had this idea of hospitality – that to receive a guest properly implies that he be given her company; that it did not suffice to feed him, for he could provide food elsewhere, but if he came to that house he came to enjoy the companionship of those who were there. So, while the one concluded to give him a dinner, the other decided to give him her company, to entertain him personally. This view of it would strike any thoughtful mind at once as being the best attention a thoughtful hostess could possibly pay to a guest; to show by her presence, by the delicate manner in which she listens to what he says, is the best way to receive him, far higher in the scale of hospitality than to so busy herself about less important matters as to allow no opportunity for personal conversation or communion with him. On this point then, all good judges of hospitality will say that Mary’s method was the better method.

But I pass to something very much higher than this. As was stated, our Lord came to minister to other people. He came to do them good. He was the great teacher of the way of life. He came to open up to them a plan of reconciliation to God. He came to save the souls of the people with whom he came in contact. Mary seemed to understand that: "Now as that is his mission, as his heart is on that, as he is thinking more of saving my soul than of eating a fine dinner in this house, I will receive him, not to my table but to my heart. Come and reign in my soul forever, Lord Jesus." And I submit that the reception of Jesus into the soul, to give him a welcome into the heart, is far higher than simply to give him a welcome at the table. A great many people have kind thoughts about the Son of God and his kingdom who are ready enough at times to minister, with some degree of thoughtfulness, to what are called the external wants of the kingdom of God, and yet these people are very slow to welcome that kingdom into their own souls, very reluctant to say, "I will not only give a portion of my time, of my money, and of my best skill to attend to the external parts of the Christian religion, but independent of all this, and higher than all of this infinitely, I will give myself, and let the Lord Jesus Christ be the King of my soul."

It is important next to observe that when he came to that house these two ways were optional. Martha chose one. Mary chose the other. I am not now discussing that high and mysterious and great doctrine of God’s election, God’s choosing us from before the foundation of the world, but I am speaking of the choice that we make. Here was a necessity of choice put upon these two women: "Jesus is coming to this house today. He will be a guest under this roof, and to both of us is an opportunity of election, as to the better method of receiving him." Martha chose one way and Mary chose the other way. Let us see then what this choice was. It is said that, "Mary sat at his feet." What does it mean? Does it mean that he occupied a high chair and that she took a stool or low chair, and literally and actually sat at his feet? There is not the slightest reference to that. Painters indeed catch that thought and so represent it in the great masterpieces given to the world on canvas, concerning this scene. But the expression "sitting at the feet” is what is called a Hebrew idiom. Paul refers to it. He says he sat at the feet of Gamaliel. What does it mean there? It means that Gamaliel was the teacher and Paul was the pupil. To sit at one’s feet then, in all the sense meant here, is to put one’s self under the instruction of another, to become a pupil, to be taught. Behold then, the scene! The great Teacher has come to this house. His object is to teach and to teach the greatest thing. He comes to teach as no other can teach. Now, if the Teacher is coming, which is the better, to be no more than an ordinary cook to furnish him a dinner, or to receive instruction from him, to put the life under his direction? Note this point: To submit one’s self to the tuition of Jesus is to become the disci- ple of Jesus. Jesus is the Master, the Teacher. Mary became the disciple or pupil. Approach that thought through a lower form. Suppose such a man as Socrates, the great teacher of philosophy, has come to the marketplace in Athens; and two services are there offered to him. First, a friendly huckster in the marketplace arranges for him a sumptuous repast, which is confessedly a very thoughtful, pleasant kindness; second, Alcibiades comes with lordly intellect, and princely form, and mighty influence to say, “O Socrates, teach me; impart to me thy wisdom. Let me receive thy familiar instruction." Which service would please the great philosopher most? And when we consider that our Lord’s teaching was infinitely higher than the teaching of any earthly philosopher, that it involved a gathering back of all the clouds of darkness that hide the other world from human sight, that it revealed to the clear eye of faith the great hereafter, eternity and judgment and salvation and glory, and that this is the first time that this Teacher comes to that house, why did it not occur to Martha: "The supreme thing that I can do this day is to place myself at Jesus’ feet, saying, ’O Lord, instruct me.’ "

The question recurs, Which would he like the better? Fortunately we have some examples from the Bible that show us which he liked best. On one occasion when traveling through Samaria, he stopped at Jacob’s well near Sychar. They were tired and hungry; Jesus was very weary; they had walked a long way, and the minds of the disciples were very much concerned about dinner and what they should eat. For this they left him. But there came a woman to this well, and instantly Jesus forgot the hunger of his body and began the joyous work of leading a soul to salvation and making that soul the instrument of leading many others to salvation. And when the disciples return with their baskets of dinner he waves them aside and says, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of. You ask me which I prefer, which I would esteem as the greater joy, for you to bring me food to minister to temporal and physical hunger, or for God my Father to open up a way for me to show a lost soul how to find salvation." No wonder that his worldly minded brothers thought he was crazy on this very point, for we are told that on one occasion when word was brought to them that he was so much absorbed in teaching, in reaching out the hand to lead souls to eternal life, that he would not so much as eat, they said, "He is out of his mind." They wanted to get out a writ of lunacy against him and apprehend him, to lay violent hands upon the one who was so crazy as to prefer teaching the plan of salvation and the way of eternal life to the satisfaction of temporal hunger.

These two cases show how much more the Son of God appreciated the reception that Mary gave him than the reception that Martha gave him. She sat at his feet and heard his words. He says, "Mary hath chosen that good part. Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about a great many things. There is only one thing in this world that it is needful to be anxious about, just one, and that is the obtaining of that good part which can never be taken away." It is a waste of human energy; it is a degradation of human dignity; it is a reflection upon the majesty of the image of God in which a human being is made, that we should have distracting cares and anxieties about infinitesimally small things, the millions of them, when if they were all put together they would not weigh even as a particle of fine dust in the balance of God’s judgment, and that too, when the great question of eternal life is not solved. Look at the Sermon on the Mount. See how he addresses himself to this question. He says, "Be not anxious about what ye shall eat nor what ye shall drink, nor what ye shall put on. The life is more than the raiment, than the food of the body, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and afterward all these things shall be added to you."

There was the wisdom of Mary; she chose the chief thing first. She made the great thing paramount. And there was the folly of Martha, that she disturbed her mind and fretted and fumed and took cares and burdens on her soul when that supreme question with her had not been settled. Here is a comparison between many things and one thing. "Martha, Martha, thou art disturbed about many things, but one thing is worth anxiety, only one thing in this world that you need to be deeply concerned about, and when that thing is settled, everything is settled, and when that is unsettled, all things are unsettled." It is only another instance of our Lord’s manner of impressing upon his audience, whether that audience was a great crowd of people or a single individual, that we should first settle our relation with God, that we should fix our thoughts on the great need of the soul, and never allow anything else to be accounted as worthy of consideration until that supreme question was thoroughly and effectually settled. He gives as a reason for this that the good part that Mary chose could not be taken away from her.

This is the doctrinal point and I will discuss is briefly.

Our Saviour here certainly teaches that if one does choose God and eternal life, it can never be taken away from him.. I know there are some who teach that one may have that good part today and may lose it tomorrow. That puts it on an equality with the dinner that Martha made, with the perishable things, sweet to the taste and gladsome to the sight, here now and gone tomorrow, and the same hunger crying out to be appeased as if we had never stood at that feast. Over against the perishable in sublime contrast Christ puts the imperishable. Over against the things which slip through our fingers even while we grasp them, and the robes which fade even while we wear them, he puts the crown of eternal life, and predicates the wisdom of choice upon the fact that no change of season, no vicissitudes of life, no emergency that can arise under the sun, can ever jeopardize what we have gained when our souls once get that good part.

The psalmist refers to this in that precious division of the book of Songs that has always been a favorite with me, Psalm 73. After staling that God will guide him on earth with his counsel and afterward receive him into glory, he bursts into this rapture: "Though my heart fail, though my flesh fail, O God, thou art my portion forever." "Mary hath chosen that good portion which shall not be taken away from her." And in talking with his disciples about it he says, "I give unto them eternal life [mark the nature of it, eternal], and they shall never perish." "None shall pluck them out of my hand." "I am persuaded that neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus." The value then of this good part consists in that when we once get it, it is ours forever. It is inalienable.

There are no destroying forces of wind or wave, or fire or persecution, that can eliminate one grain of substance from the solid and enduring gift of God, but in its fulness and in its entirety it is ours forever and ever.

"Mary hath chosen that good part which can never be taken away from her."

Let us notice in the next place that when we make an election of the good thing first that it shows the highest wisdom in this, that we secure the other things also. The apostle Paul referring to this says, "All things are yours. Is Peter a gifted apostle? If you are Christ’s, Peter is yours. Is Apollos, that great rhetorician from Alexandria, who being converted to God turned all of the powers of his cultured mind to the ministry of God, desirable? Then Apollos is yours, and life is yours, and death is yours, and heaven is yours." All things are ours if we get the main thing, which is God.

We are so constituted, God made us so, that we can never be satisfied if we do not get that lasting portion that never can be taken away from us. The prophet Isaiah compares what are ordinarily called the good things of this world to a cistern. The cistern is a vessel limited, and a broken cistern can not hold any water. Not only is it limited in its capacity, while our cravings are unlimited on account of the eternity of our being, because we have a deathless soul, but even as a cistern it is cracked and lets the water out, whereas God, he says, is an unfailing fountain that is not wasted by its outgushing fulness and its overflowing, a fountain which comes from such deep reservoirs and such a great volume of accumulated waters that it commenced to sparkle and sing when the earth was created, and when the last day dawns on the world that fountain is still flowing. He says, "My people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have hewed out for themselves broken cisterns which can hold no water."

Hear the words of a great and good man. Patrick Henry thus closed his last will and testament: "I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing I wish that I could give them and that is the Christian religion. If they had that (and I had not given them one shilling) they would be rich; and if they have not that (and I had given them all the world) they would be poor." Whoever has God and nothing else is rich indeed. Whoever has everything else and not God, is poor indeed. Then we see why one is called the good part. We see how there is no necessity to have any undue cares and anxieties about the little things. They are not worth it. The human soul ought not to vex itself over the nonattainable. Let them go if they do not come of themselves. Now we can understand what our Saviour meant when the disciples, the seventy that were sent out, came back rejoicing. "What are you so glad about?" "Lord, the devils are subject unto us." "Rejoice not that the devils are subject unto you. Why? Because there is only one thing in which the soul should rejoice. Rather rejoice that your names are written in heaven. Rejoice that the good portion is yours; rejoice that the great question of salvation has been settled and settled forever, and can never become unsettled." And that is why also those preachers who go out among the people, whose minds are so possessed with the value of a soul, who can enter into the depths of that question of Jesus, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul when it is once lost?" why the preachers who go out with that great ruling thought in their heart and address themselves to saving men, become such grand preachers. It is a nice thing to get up in the pulpit and sometimes, if we do not take too much time for it, a profitable thing to tell how many miles it is from Dan to Beersheba, and what is the grade of the fall of the river Jordan, and how much lower the Dead Sea is than the Mediterranean. These are good points, but if a preacher’s mind is fixed on them, if he stops to look at landscapes, if his fancy is carried away with the height and blueness of mountains, if he stops to gaze at the trees and the flowers as he goes and forgets that souls are perishing, his ministry is barren, and the world could well do without him.

QUESTIONS

1. Recite the story of the good Samaritan.

2. What is the meaning of "lawyer" in this connection?

3. What are the two meanings of the word "tempt" and what its meaning here?

4. What question did the lawyer ask Jesus and how did Jesus turn the question upon him?

5. What was the lawyer’s reply and where do we find this teaching in the Old Testament?

6. What was Jesus’ reply to the lawyer’s statement?

7. How did the lawyer then try to evade the proposition and what was Jesus’ reply?

8. Describe the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.

9. What organization was formed as a result of such conditions as herein described and what of their later history?

10. What can you say of the illustrations of Jesus and what does this parable illustrate?

11. Who then is your neighbor?

12. What can you say of Jesus’ method of dealing with men, what our Lord’s purpose here and how is it here demonstrated?

13. What use does Jesus make of the law here and how does it con- form to the New Testament teaching on the same point? Discuss.

14. What is the constant attitude of a man who is trying to get to heaven by the works of the law and what result follows?

15. How does the parable of the good Samaritan explode the lawyer’s theory of "Who is my neighbor"?

16. What can you say of the Bible accounts of the relation of Jesus to the Bethany family? Recite these accounts.

17. What was the purpose of our Lord in entering this or any other house in his earthly ministry?

18. What were the different ideas of the two sisters respecting the entertainment of our Lord and which must have pleased him the better?

19. How do these two women illustrate the relative importance of the externals and internals of the kingdom?

20. What can you say of the freedom in the choice of Martha and Mary and what is meant by "Mary sat at the Lord’s feet?" Illustrate.

21. What illustrations from Christ’s ministry showing his appreciation of the spiritual over the temporal?

22. What of the teaching of our Lord here touching anxieties and how does it correspond to his teaching elsewhere?

23. How is Mary’s wisdom here seen above her sister Martha’s?

24. What is the doctrinal point here? Discuss.

25. How is the highest wisdom shown in the election of the "good thing" first?

26. Why is this called the "good part"? Discuss and illustrate.