They came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby was lying in the feeding trough.
Parallel Translations
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They came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby was lying in the feeding trough.
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And they cam with haste and founde Mary and Ioseph and the babe layde in a manger.
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So they came with haste, and founde both Marie and Ioseph, and the babe laid in the cratch.
Cross-references (6)
Passages linked to Luke 2:16 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Luke 2:12 This is the sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a feeding trough.”
- Luke 19:32 Those who were sent went away, and found things just as he had told them.
- Luke 2:7 She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a feeding trough, because there was no room for them in the inn.
- Luke 1:39 Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah,
- Luke 22:13 They went, found things as Jesus had told them, and they prepared the Passover.
- Ecclesiastes 9:10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work, nor plan, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in Sheol, where you are going.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 16 And they came with haste, and found Mary,…
16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.
Ver. 16. Found Mary and Joseph, &c.] They, though of the royal blood, yet lay obscured, not thrusting themselves into observation, but well content with a low condition. Beata Virgo in vili stabulo sedet, et iacet; sed quod homines negligunt, coelestes cives honorant et inquirunt, saith Stella. The humble person is like the violet, which grows low, hangs the head downwards, and hides itself with its own leaves. And were it not that the fragrant smell of his many virtues betrays him to the world, he would choose to live and die in his self-contenting secrecy. Bernard.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And they came with haste,.... In the night, leaving…
And they came with haste,.... In the night, leaving their flocks, to see their incarnate Lord, as Zacchaeus hastened down from the tree to receive the Saviour. The wonderfulness of the vision, the importance of the thing related, the eagerness of their spirits to see the thing that was told them, put them on making quick dispatch, and hastening to the city with all speed:
and found Mary and Joseph; as they had been directed by the angel, in the city of Bethlehem, in an inn there, and in a stable in the inn:
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and the babe lying in a manger: where Mary had put it as soon as born, and had wrapped it in swaddling clothes; because there was no room in the inn, and as the angel had told them they should find it,
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain with haste--Compare Luk 1:39; Mat 28:8 ("did run"); Joh…
with haste--Compare Luk 1:39; Mat 28:8 ("did run"); Joh 4:28 ("left her water-pot," as they do their flocks, in a transport).
found Mary, &c.--"mysteriously guided by the Spirit to the right place through the obscurity of the night" [OLSHAUSEN].
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a manger--"the manger," as before.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 16. found] The word is not merely εὗρον but…
16. found] The word is not merely εὗρον but ἀνεῦρον, discovered after search. The lamp hung from the centre of a rope would guide them to the khan, but among a crowd it would not be easy to find the new-born babe of the humble travellers.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (16) They came with haste.—The scene has naturally been…
(16) They came with haste.—The scene has naturally been a favourite subject of Christian art, and the adoration of the shepherds is, perhaps, implied, though not stated, in the narrative. The conventional accessories, however, of the ox and the ass, and the bright light glowing forth from the cradle, belong only to the legends of the Apocryphal Gospels. (See Notes on Luk_2:7.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain And they came with haste.
Luk_2:16-18
And they came with haste.
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The course pursued by the shepherds is vividly typical of that which should be pursued by all Christian inquirers.
1. A process of inquiry.
2. The joy of distinct confirmation.
3. A bold proclamation of the truth which has been realized.
The gospel is self-propagating. Wherever it makes a convert it makes a preacher. Have we made known abroad what we ourselves have experienced of the power and love of Christ? Would that all the Lords people were prophets! We want more than the formal sermon. We need the simple personal testimony of every believing heart. In the case of Mary, it is plain that silence must not always be regarded as a sign of indifference. Her joy and her wonder were too great for speech. She had, indeed, had her period of exultation, and the calmness which followed was but the natural expression of a chastened feeling. (J1. Parker, D. D.)
Birthday contrasts
On the 5th of September, 1639, in the faubourg St. Germain, of Paris, then a little village surrounding the palace of King Louis XIII., was crowded the blue blood of France. Around that royal home of the kings of France had gathered all that was noble, all that was great in the land, in honour of the birth of a child to the king. In an antechamber within the palace the bishops of the Church were waiting to christen the child on its birth. Soon a nurse entered the room, bearing the child upon a pillow, and kneeling, she said, Sire, it is my honour to bring you this son and heir. The proud king carried the babe to an open window, and, addressing the waiting multitudes, exclaimed, My son, gentlemen, my son! The bells rang, the people shouted, and for a week France was wild with joy. The 19th of March, 1812, 173 years later, was the eve of another great birthday in France. The little Corsican, the man of destiny, was on the throne. He had put away one wife and taken another, and the birth of a child was expected. Twenty-one guns were to be fired if a daughter was born, a hundred if the child was a boy. On the 20th of March, at six oclock in the morning, the booming of cannon was heard. All Paris waited and listened. When the twenty-second gun was heard a mighty shout arose, and there was great rejoicing in every part of France. The dynasty of Bonaparte had a son and heir. It is impossible, men and brethren, as we come together this morning to celebrate the anniversary of another birth that the contrast between that one and these should be overlooked. There was no royalty in Bethlehem; the palace was a stable, the cradle was a manger, but what a contrast paid to Him born at that time by a whole world for eighteen centuries. The child born in St. Germain was Louis XIV., the Grand King, who ruled for many years, who first said, I am the State. But he lived to see that the sun of his dynasty was setting. The other son died ere he had reached mans estate, obscure and neglected. Five years after the guns had fired in honour of his birth his father was a prisoner of war. Looking back to that manger in Bethlehem, we see stepping from it a royalty which has governed the world. What a conquest, what a history is His! It is told in one of the apocryphal books that when Jesus was born in Bethlehem the earth stopped on its axis, and movement upon it suddenly ceased. A great light, an ineffable joy, had come upon the world, and that light, that joy, eighteen crowded busy centuries has not diminished. (Bishop H. C. Potter.)
The gospel a source of wonder
Many are set a-wondering by the gospel. They are content to hear it, pleased to hear it; if not in itself something new, yet there are new ways of putting it, and they are glad to be refreshed with the variety. The preachers voice is unto them as the sound of one that giveth a goodly tune upon an instrument. They are glad to listen. They are not sceptics, they do not cavil, they raise no difficulties; they just say to themselves, It is an excellent gospel, it is a wonderful plan of salvation. Here is most astonishing love, most extraordinary condescension. Sometimes they marvel that these things should be told them by shepherds; they can hardly understand how unlearned and ignorant men should speak of these things. But after holding up their hands and opening their mouths for about nine days, the wonder subsides, and they go their way and think no more about it. There are many of you who are set a-wondering whenever you see a work of God in your district. You hear of somebody converted who was a very extraordinary sinner, and you say, It is very wonderful! There is a revival; you happen to be present at one of the meetings when the Spirit of God is working gloriously: you say, Well, this is a singular thing! very astonishing! Even the newspapers can afford a corner at times for very great and extraordinary works of God the Holy Spirit; but there all emotion ends; it is all wondering, and nothing more. Now, I trust it will not be so with any of us; that we shall not think of the Saviour and of the doctrines of the gospel which He came to preach simply with amazement and astonishment, for this will work us but little good. On the other hand, there is another mode of wondering which is akin to adoration, if it be not adoration. Let me suggest to you that holy wonder at what God has done should be very natural to you. That God should consider His fallen creature, man, and instead of sweeping him away with the bosom of destruction, should devise a wonderful scheme for his redemption, and that he should Himself undertake to be mans Redeemer, and to pay his ransom price, is, indeed, marvellous! Holy wonder will lead you to grateful worship; being astonished at what God has done, you will pour out your soul with astonishment at the foot of the golden throne with the song, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and majesty, and power, and dominion, and might be unto Him who sitteth on the throne and doeth these great things to me. Filled with this wonder, it will cause you a godly watchfulness; you will be afraid to sin against such love as this. You will be moved at the same time to a glorious hope. If Jesus has given Himself to you, if He has done this marvellous thing on your behalf, you will feel that heaven itself is not too great for your expectation, and that the rivers of pleasure at Gods right hand are not too sweet or too deep for you to drink thereof. Who can be astonished at anything when he has once been astonished at the manger and the cross? What is there wonderful left after one has seen the Saviour? The nine wonders of the world! Why, you may put them all into a nutshell--machinery and modern art can excel them all; but this one wonder is not the wonder of earth only, but of heaven and earth, and even hell itself. It is not the wonder of the olden time, but the wonder of all time and the wonder of eternity. They who see human wonders a few times, at last cease to be astonished; the noblest pile that architect ever raised, at last fails to impress the onlooker; but not so this marvellous temple of incarnate Deity; the more we look the more we are astonished, the more we become accustomed to it the more have we a sense of its surpassing splendour of love and grace. There is more of God, let us say, to be seen in the manger and the cross, than in the sparkling stars above, the rolling deep below, the towering mountain, the teeming valleys, the abodes of life, or the abyss of death. Let us then spend some choice hours of this festive season in holy wonder, such as will produce gratitude, worship, love, and confidence. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Holy work for Christmas
This text seems to indicate four ways of serving God, four methods of executing holy work and exercising Christian thought. Each of the verses sets before us a different way of sacred service. I know not which of these four did God best service, but, I think, if we could combine all these mental emotions and outward exercises, we should be sure to praise God after a most godly and acceptable fashion.
I. SOME PUBLISHED ABROAD THE NEWS.
1. They had something to rehearse in mens ears well worth the telling. They had found out the answer to the perpetual riddle.
2. That something had in it the inimitable blending which is the secret sign and royal mark of Divine authorship; a peerless marrying of sublimity and simplicity; angels singing!--singing to shepherds! Heaven bright with glory!--bright at midnight! God--a Babe! The Infinite--an Infant a span long! The Ancient of Days--born of a woman! What more simple than the inn, the manger, a carpenter, a carpenters wife, a child? What more sublime than a multitude of the heavenly host waking the midnight with their joyous chorales, and God Himself in human flesh made manifest?
3. The shepherds needed no excuse for publishing their news, for what they told they had first received from heaven. When heaven entrusts a man with a merciful revelation, he is bound to deliver the good tidings to others.
4. They spoke of what they had seen below. They had, by observation, made those truths most surely their own which had first been spoken to them by revelation. No man can speak of the things of God with any success until the doctrine which he finds in the Book he finds also in his heart.
II. SOME KEPT CHRISTMAS BY HOLY WONDER, ADMIRATION, AND ADORATION.
III. ONE, AT LEAST, PONDERED, MEDITATED, THOUGHT UPON THESE THINGS.
1. An exercise of memory.
2. An exercise of the affections.
3. An exercise of the intellect.
IV. OTHERS GLORIFIED GOD, AND GAVE HIM PRAISE.
1. They praised God for what they had heard.
2. They praised God for what they had seen.
3. They praised God for the agreement between what they had heard and what they had seen. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Many ways of serving God
Some people get the notion into their heals that the only way in which they can live for God is by becoming ministers, missionaries, or Bible women. Alas! how many of us would be shut out from any opportunity of magnifying the Most High if this were the case. Tile shepherds went back to the sheep-pens glorifying and praising God. Beloved, it is not office, it is earnestness; it is not position, it is grace which will enable us to glorify God. God is most surely glorified in that cobblers stall where the godly worker, as he plies the awl, sings of the Saviours love, ay, glorified far more than in many a prebendal stall where official religiousness performs its scanty duties. The name of Jesus is glorified by yonder carter as he drives his horse and blesses his God, or speaks to his fellow-labourer by the roadside, as much as by yonder divine who, throughout the country like Boanerges, is thundering out the gospel. God is glorified by our abiding in our vocation. Take care you do not fall out of the path of duty by leaving your calling, and take care you do not dishonour your profession while in it; think not much of yourselves, but do not think too little of your callings. There is no trade which is not sanctified by the gospel. If you turn to the Bible, you will find the most menial forms of labour have been in some way or other connected either with the most daring deeds of faith, or else with persons whose lives have been otherwise illustrious; keep to your calling, brother, keep to your calling! Whatever God has made thee, when He calls thee abide in that, unless thou art quite sure, mind that, unless thou art quite sure that He calls thee to something else. The shepherds glorified God though they went to their trade. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Christmas work
Every season has its own proper fruit: apples for autumn, holly berries for Christmas. The earth brings forth according to the period of the year, and with man there is a time for every purpose under heaven. At this season the world is engaged in congratulating itself and in expressing its complimentary wishes for the good of its citizens; let me suggest extra and more solid work for Christians. As we think to-day of the birth of the Saviour, let us aspire after a fresh birth of the Saviour in our hearts; that as He is already formed in us the hope of glory, we may be renewed in the spirit of our minds; that we may go again to the Bethlehem of our spiritual nativity and do our first works, enjoy our first loves, and feast with Jesus as we did in the holy, happy, heavenly days of our espousals. Let us go to Jesus with something of that youthful freshness and excessive delight which was so manifest in us when we looked to Him at the first; let Him be crowned anew by us, for He is still adorned with the dew of His youth, and remains the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. The citizens of Durham, though they dwell not far from the Scotch border, and consequently in the olden times were frequently liable to be attacked, were exempted from the toils of war because there was a cathedral within their walls, and they were set aside to the bishops service, being called hi the olden times by the name of holy work-folk. Now, we citizens of the New Jerusalem, having the Lord Jesus in our midst, may well excuse ourselves from the ordinary ways of celebrating this season; and, considering ourselves to be holy work-folk, we may keep it after a different sort from other men, in holy contemplation and in blessed service of that gracious God whose unspeakable gift the new-born King is to us. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Second Christmas Day
And what can better befit us than to do as these shepherds did?
I. THEY RECEIVED THE HEAVENLY MANIFESTATION WITH BECOMING REVERENCE AND AWE. When the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, they were sore afraid. They instantly thought of God, and referred the whole thing to its proper Divine source. A right mind and a right learning sees God in everything, and beholds in the commonest ongoings of the universe the manifestations of eternal Power and Godhead, as energetic in character, and as wonderful in results, as the setting up of the stars on high, or the calling forth of the world from its nothingness. It sees in every light that shines from heaven the herald of present Deity, and is ready to fall down in holy reverence at every new signal from the sky, as verily the forthcoming of the Almighty Creator and King of the universe, before whom every knee should bow, and every tongue confess, with trembling adoration. But we need especially to know and feel that it is the same dreadful Majesty that approaches us in the proclamation of the Christ. For where the gospel speaks, there God and His angels are.
II. THE SHEPHERDS RELIEVED WHAT THE HEAVENLY MESSENGER TOLD THEM. Their ready persuasion in this respect also serves to show how self-evidencing the true gospel is to minds that are unprejudiced and really open to it. Its obstructions are ethical. Its absence in those to whom the gospel is faithfully preached is not the result of the absence of sufficient demonstration, but of the absence of heart and will to be convinced, and to own allegiance to the truth. Men have intuition enough on this subject to do away with dialectics.
III. THE SHEPHERDS DILIGENTLY IMPROVED THE LIGHT THEY RECEIVED. They were not satisfied with the mere hearing of the new-born Saviour, but must needs go and see what had occurred. Faith is an active principle. It cannot know of a Saviour and not go in search of Him. Let the impediments be what they may, it will on. There is a most important sense in which He is still here. He is in His word, in His sacraments, in His Church. This is now the Bethlehem to which we must go to seek Him.
IV. THE SHEPHERDS WERE AMPLY REWARDED FOR THEIR PAINS. They found the Saviour whom the angel announced. Earnestly seeking, they also joyfully find.
V. THE SHEPHERDS, HAVING FOUND THE CHRIST THEMSELVES, FREELY CONFESSED HIM BEFORE THE WORLD. When they had seen, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. Christianity deals with men as individuals. But man is a social being, and social results must necessarily follow from the intense impulses which faith kindles in the individual soul. And as our existence must needs affect others, so our personal experiences also have relations, and are meant to have effects, beyond our individual selves.
VI. THE SHEPHERDS RETURNED TO THEIR FLOCKS GLORIFYING GOD. True religion was not meant to take men away from the ordinary pursuits of life, but to go with us into them to consecrate them, and to give us new comforts in them. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 16. Came with haste. Mark the prompt obedience to…
16. Came with haste. Mark the prompt obedience to the heavenly vision displayed by the shepherds. We see in them no doubts, or questionings, or hesitations.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Luke
SHEPHERDS AND ANGELS
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WAS, IS, IS TO COME
Luk 2:16. - Luk 24:51. - Act 1:11.
These three fragments, which I have ventured to isolate and bring together, are all found in one author’s writings. Luke’s biography of Jesus stretches from the cradle in Bethlehem to the Ascension from Olivet. He narrates the Ascension twice, because it has two aspects. In one it looks backward, and is necessary as the completion of what was begun in the birth. In one it looks forward, and makes necessary, as its completion, that coming which still lies in the future. These three stand up, like linked summits in a mountain. We can understand none of them unless we embrace them all. If the story of the birth is true, a life so begun cannot end in an undistinguished death like that of all men. And if the Ascension from Olivet is true, that cannot close the history of His relations to men. The creed which proclaims He was ‘born of the Virgin Mary’ must go on to say ‘. . . He ascended up into heaven’; and cannot pause till it adds ‘. . . From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.’ So we have then three points to consider in this sermon.
I. Note first, the three great moments.
The thing that befell at Bethlehem, in the stable of the inn, was a commonplace and insignificant enough event looked at from the outside: the birth of a child to a young mother. It had its elements of pathos in its occurring at a distance from home, among the publicity and discomforts of an inn stable, and with some cloud of suspicion over the mother’s fair fame. But the outside of a fact is the least part of it. A little film of sea-weed floats upon the surface, but there are fathoms of it below the water. Men said, ‘A child is born.’ Angels said, and bowed their faces in adoration, ‘The Word has become flesh’. The eternal, self-communicating personality in the Godhead, passed voluntarily into the condition of humanity. Jesus was born, the Son of God came. Only when we hold fast by that great truth do we pierce to the centre of what was done in that poor stable, and possess the key to all the wonders of His life and death.
From the manger we pass to the mountain. A life begun by such a birth cannot be ended, as I have said, by a mere ordinary death. The Alpha and the Omega of that alphabet must belong to the same fount of type. A divine conformity forbids that He who was born of the Virgin Mary should have His body laid to rest in an undistinguished grave. And so what Bethlehem began, Olivet carries on.
Note the circumstances of this second of these great moments. The place is significant. Almost within sight of the city, a stone’s throw probably from the home where He had lodged, and where He had conquered death in the person of Lazarus; not far from the turn of the road where the tears had come into His eyes amidst the shouting of the rustic procession, as He had looked across the valley; just above Gethsemane, where He had agonised on that bare hillside to which He had often gone for communion with the Father in heaven. There, in some dimple of the hill, and unseen but by the little group that surrounded Him, He passed from their midst. The manner of the departure is yet more significant than the place. Here were no whirlwind, no chariots and horses of fire, no sudden rapture; but, as the narrative makes emphatic, a slow, leisurely, self-originated floating upwards. He was borne up from them, and no outward vehicle or help was needed; but by His own volition and power He rose towards the heavens. ‘And a cloud received Him out of their sight’-the Shechinah cloud, the bright symbol of the Divine Presence which had shone round the shepherds on the pastures of Bethlehem, and enwrapped Him and the three disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. It came not to lift Him on its soft folds to the heavens, but in order that, first, He might be plainly seen till the moment that He ceased to be seen, and might not dwindle into a speck by reason of distance; and secondly, that it might teach the truth, that, as His body was received into the cloud, so He entered into the glory which He ‘had with the Father before the world was.’ Such was the second of these moments.
The third great moment corresponds to these, is required by them, and crowns them. The Ascension was not only the close of Christ’s earthly life which would preserve congruity with its beginning, but it was also the clear manifestation that, as He came of His own will, so He departed by His own volition. ‘I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go unto the Father.’ Thus the earthly life is, as it were, islanded in a sea of glory, and that which stretches away beyond the last moment of visibility, is like that which stretched away beyond the first moment of corporeity; the eternal union with the eternal Father. But such an entrance on and departure from earth, and such a career on earth, can only end in that coming again of which the angels spoke to the gazing eleven.
Mark the emphasis of their words. ‘This same Jesus,’ the same in His manhood, ‘shall so come, in like manner, as ye have seen Him go.’ How much the ‘in like manner’ may mean we can scarcely dogmatically affirm. But this, at least, is clear, that it cannot mean less than corporeally visible, locally surrounded by angel-guards, and perhaps, according to a mysterious prophecy, to the same spot from which He ascended. But, at all events, there are the three moments in the manifestation of the Son of God.
II. Look, in the second place, at the threefold phases of our Lord’s activity which are thus suggested.
I need not dwell, in more than a sentence or two, on the first of these. Each of these three moments is the inauguration of a form of activity which lasts till the emergence of the next of the triad.
The birth at Bethlehem had, for its consequence and purpose, a threefold end: the revelation of God in humanity, the manifestation of perfect manhood to men, and the rendering of the great sacrifice for the sins of the world. These three-showing us God; showing ourselves as we are and as we may be; as we ought to be, and, blessed be His name, as we shall be, if we observe the conditions; and the making reconciliation for the sins of the whole world-these are the things for which the Babe lying in the manger was born and came under the limitations of humanity.
Turn to the second of the three, and what shall we say of it? That Ascension has for its great purpose the application to men of the results of the Incarnation. He was born that He might show us God and ourselves, and that He might die for us. He ascended up on high in order that the benefits of that Revelation and Atonement might be extended through, and appropriated by, the whole world.
One chief thought which is enforced by the narrative of the Ascension is the permanence, the eternity of the humanity of Jesus Christ. He ascended up where He was before, but He who ascended is not altogether the same as He who had been there before, for He has taken up with Him our nature to the centre of the universe and the throne of God, and there, ‘bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh,’ a true man in body, soul, and spirit, He lives and reigns. The cradle at Bethlehem assumes even greater solemnity when we think of it as the beginning of a humanity that is never laid aside. So we can look confidently to all that blaze of light where He sits, and feel that, howsoever the body of His humiliation may have been changed into the body of His glory, He still remains corporeally and spiritually a true Son of man. Thus the face that looks down from amidst the blaze, though it be ‘as the sun shineth in his strength,’ is the old face; and the breast which is girded with the golden girdle is the same breast on which the seer had leaned his happy head; and the hand that holds the sceptre is the hand that was pierced with the nails; and the Christ that is ascended up on high is the Christ that loved and pitied adulteresses and publicans, and took the little child in His gracious arms-’The same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.’
Christ’s Ascension is as the broad seal of heaven attesting the completeness of His work on earth. It inaugurates His repose which is not the sign of His weariness, but of His having finished all which He was born to do. But that repose is not idleness. Rather it is full of activity.
On the Cross He shouted with a great voice ere He died, ‘It is finished.’ But centuries, perhaps millenniums, yet will have to elapse before the choirs of angels shall be able to chant, ‘It is done: the kingdoms of the world are the kingdoms of God and of His Christ.’ All the interval is filled by the working of that ascended Lord whose session at the right hand of God is not only symbolical of perfect repose and a completed sacrifice, but also of perfect activity in and with His servants.
He has gone-to rest, to reign, to work, to intercede, and to prepare a place for us. For if our Brother be indeed at the right hand of God, then our faltering feet may travel to the Throne, and our sinful selves may be at home there. The living Christ, working to-day, is that of which the Ascension from Olivet gives us the guarantee.
The third great moment will inaugurate yet another form of activity as necessary and certain as either of the two preceding. For if His cradle was what we believe it to have been, and if His sacrifice was what Scripture tells us it is, and if through all the ages He, crowned and regnant, is working for the diffusion of the powers of His Cross and the benefits of His Incarnation, there can be no end to that course except the one which is expressed for us by the angels’ message to the gazing disciples: He shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go. He will come to manifest Himself as the King of the world and its Lord and Redeemer. He will come to inaugurate the great act of Judgment, which His great act of Redemption necessarily draws after it, and Himself be the Arbiter of the fates of men, the determining factor in whose fates has been their relation to Him. No doubt many who never heard His name upon earth will, in that day be, by His clear eye and perfect judgment, discerned to have visited the sick and the imprisoned, and to have done many acts for His sake. And for us who know Him, and have heard His name, the way in which we stand affected in heart and will to Christ reveals and settles our whole character, shapes our whole being, and will determine our whole destiny. He comes, not only to manifest Himself so as that ‘every eye shall see Him,’ and to divide the sheep from the goats, but also in order that He may reign for ever and gather into the fellowship of His love and the community of His joys all who love and trust Him here. These are the triple phases of our Lord’s activity suggested by the three great moments.
III. Lastly, notice the triple attitude which we should assume to Him and to them.
For the first, the cradle, with its consequence of the Cross, our response is clinging faith, grateful memory, earnest following, and close conformity. For the second, the Ascension, with its consequence of a Christ that lives and labours for us, and is with us, our attitude ought to be an intense realisation of the fact of His present working and of His present abode with us. The centre of Christian doctrine has, amongst average Christians, been far too exclusively fixed within the limits of the earthly life, and in the interests of a true and comprehensive grasp of all the blessedness that Christianity is capable of bringing to men, I would protest against that type of thought, earnest and true as it may be within its narrow limits, which is always pointing men to the past fact of a Cross, and slurs over and obscures the present fact of a living Christ who is with us, and in us. One difference between Him and all other benefactors and teachers and helpers is this, that, as ages go on, thicker and ever-thickening folds of misty oblivion wrap them, and their influence diminishes as new circumstances emerge, but this Christ’s power laughs at the centuries, and is untinged by oblivion, and is never out of date. For all others we have to say-’having served his generation,’ or a generation or two more, ‘according to the will of God, he fell on sleep.’ But Christ knows no corruption, and is for ever more the Leader, and the Companion, and the Friend, of each new age.
Brethren! the Cross is incomplete without the throne. We are told to go back to the historical Christ. Yes, Amen, I say! But do not let that make us lose our grasp of the living Christ who is with us to-day. Whilst we rejoice over the ‘Christ that died,’ let us go on with Paul to say, ‘Yea! rather, that is risen again, and is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.’
For that future, discredited as the thought of the second corporeal coming of the Lord Jesus in visible fashion and to a locality has been by the fancies and the vagaries of so-called Apocalyptic expositors, let us not forget that it is the hope of Christ’s Church, and that ‘they who love His appearing’ is, by the Apostle, used as the description and definition of the Christian character. We have to look forwards as well as backwards and upwards, and to rejoice in the sure and certain confidence that the Christ who has come is the Christ who will come.
For us the past should be full of Him, and memory and faith should cling to His Incarnation and His Cross. The present should be full of Him, and our hearts should commune with Him amidst the toils of earth. The future should be full of Him, and our hopes should be based upon no vague anticipations of a perfectibility of humanity, nor upon any dim dreams of what may lie beyond the grave; but upon the concrete fact that Jesus Christ has risen, and that Jesus Christ is glorified. Does my faith grasp the Christ that was-who died for me? Does my heart cling to the Christ who is-who lives and reigns, and with whom my life is hid in God? Do my hopes crystallise round, and anchor upon, the Christ that is to come, and pierce the dimness of the future and the gloom of the grave, looking onwards to that day of days when He, who is our life, shall appear, and we shall appear also with Him in glory?
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.