Great Themes of the Bible (continued)
Christ 37 were the beautiful ones worn on thanksgiving days. Thus there will be open joys for secret mournings. Where God gives the oil of joy, He gives the garment of praise. Those comforts which come from God dispose the heart to, and enlarge the heart in, thanksgivings to God. Whatever we have the joy of, God must have the praise and glory for.
(e) He was to be a planter. The Church of God is His husbandry. Therefore He will do all for His people—cure their wounds, release them out of bondage, comfort them in their sorrows—''that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord''. All that Christ does for us is to make us
God's people, and in some way serviceable to Him, as living trees, planted in the house of the Lord, and flourishing in the courts of our God.
3. THE UNIQUE OFFICE OF CHRIST The contempt in which the Christ would be held by the Jews because of the meanness of His appearance is foreshadowed in Isaiah hu. 'This comes in as a reason why they neglected His doctrine, because they were prejudiced against His person. When he was on earth many who heard Him preach, and could not but approve of what they heard, yet would not give it any regard or entertainment, because it came from one who made so small a figure, and had no external advantages to recommend Him but quite the reverse.
(a) There was His low condition to which He submitted in becoming man. He abased and emptied Himself. The entry He made into the world, and the character He wore in it, were in no way agreeable to the ideas which the Jews had formed of the Messiah, and their expectations concerning Him, but quite the reverse.
It was expected that His extraction should be very great and noble. He was to be the son of David, of a family that had a 'name like unto the name of the great men that are in the earth" (2 Sam. vii. 9). But He sprang out of this royal and illustrious family when it was reduced and sunk. Joseph, that Son of David who was His supposed father, was but a poor carpenter, perhaps a shop-carpenter, for most of His relations were fishermen. This is what is meant in Isaiah by "'a root out of a dry ground". His being born of a mean and despicable family in the north, in Galilee; of a family which, like a dry and desert ground, nothing green, nothing great was expected; in a country of such small repute, that it was thought no good thing could come out of it. His mother being a virgin was as dry ground, yet from her He sprung who is not only fruit but root; the seed on the stony ground had no root.
(b) Then it was expected He should make a public entry and come in pomp and with observation. But instead of that He grew up before God, not before men. God had His eye upon Him, but men regarded Him not. He grew up as a tender plant, silently and insensibly, and without any noise; as a corn, that tender plant grows up, we know not how (Mark iv. 27). Christ rose as a tender plant, which one would have thought might easily have been crushed and that one frosty night would have nipped it.
(c) Then it was expected that He should have some uncommon beauty in His face and person, which should charm the eye, attract the heart, and raise the expectations of all who saw Him. But there was nothing of that in Him. Not that He was the least deformed or misshapen, but He had "'no form or comeliness", nothing extraordinary, which one might have thought to meet with in the countenance of an incarnate Deity. Moses when he was born was exceeding fair. This was regarded as a happy presage. David when he was anointed was of beautiful countenance and goodly to look to (1 Sam. xvi. 12). But our Lord Jesus had nothing of that to reeommend Him.
(d) Finally, it was expected that He should live a pleasant life and have full enjoyment of all the delights of the sons and daughters of men. But, quite contrary, He was ''a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief'. It was not only His last scene that was tragical, but His whole life was so; not only mean, but miserable—
But one continued chain Of labour, sorrow, and consuming pain.
His condition was, upon many accounts, sorrowful. He was unsettled, had not where to lay His head, lived upon alms, was opposed and menaced, and "endured the contradiction of sinners against himself''. We never read that He laughed but often that He wept. Lentulus, in his epistle to the Roman senate concerning Jesus, said He was never seen to laugh; and so worn and macerated was He with continual grief that when