Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Matthew 9:36

But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.

36. fainted ] The word in the received text has no MS. authority; read harassed.

scattered abroad ] Rather, perhaps, neglected, set at nought, rejected by the national teachers.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

But when he saw the multitudes – That followed him from place to place. When he saw their anxiety to be instructed and saved.

He was moved with compassion on them – He pitied them.

Because they fainted – The word used here refers to the weariness and fatigue which results from labor and being burdened. He saw the people burdened with the rites of religion and the doctrines of the Pharisees; sinking down under their ignorance and the weight of their traditions; neglected by those who ought to have been enlightened teachers; and scattered and driven out without care and attention. With great beauty he compares them to sheep wandering without a shepherd. Judea was a land of flocks and herds. The faithful shepherd, by day and night, was with his flock. He defended it, made it to lie down in green pastures, and led it beside the still waters, Psa 23:2. Without his care the sheep would stray away. They were in danger of wild beasts. They panted in the summer sun, and they did not know where the cooling shade and stream was. So, said the Saviour, is it with this people. No wonder that the compassionate Redeemer was moved with pity.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Mat 9:36

But when He saw the multitudes.

Christs look of sympathy

I. What he saw.

1. Not reasons for admiration.

2. Not grounds for discouragement.

3. But a call for pity.

II. The condition of the people.

1. Faint.

2. Scattered.

3. Shepherdless.

III. His compassion enlisted for their succour.

1. The grace of the Father.

2. His own prevailing intercession.

3. The gifts of the Spirit.

4. The service of His messengers. (H. A. Cornell.)

Compassion for souls

I. The sight which presented itself to our Lord. Christ was moved with the sight of physical suffering; here it was spiritual disease.

1. The number of the sheep.

2. The condition of the sheep.

3. The reason of their condition-their having no shepherd.

II. The effect which this sight had upon our Lord. The fact that our Lord felt compassion when He saw the fearful sight. Unless there is a feeling of compassion there will be no spiritual effort. (E. Bayley, M. A.)

Partied views of humanity

There are men who take partial views and come to partial and, therefore, erroneous conclusions about everything. There are those who seat themselves within some vernal enclosure or summer paradise, and say, with a foolish chuckle, that the earth is not so bad a place after all. They see a bed of blooming flowers, fiery-hued or gentle-tinted, and they hear birds in the branches twittering, trilling, singing, and making melody in their hearts, and they say the earth is a very lovely place, notwithstanding all the croakers say to the contrary. Now observe how they confound the partial term with the larger word. They see a garden and then speak of the earth, they see a bed of geraniums and then speak of the globe; there is no balance in their sentences, their words do not correspond with one another at both ends of their declarations. The garden is beautiful, the flowers are lovely beyond all that it is possible for the colouring of human heart fully to represent. The painter paints the form, but he cannot touch the fragrance. We admire their poetical sympathy within given limits, but go beyond the garden wall, go into the rough streets, go into the desolate places, take in the wilderness, throw the line around the entirety, bring the whole elements within your purview, and then say what it is. The angel sees it, and says, Mourning and lamentation and woe. Jesus sees it, and cannot cease His prayer; Jesus looks upon it, and is moved with compassion. (Dr. Parker.)

A Christ-like judgment of men

I. Christ teaching us how to look at men.

II. Christ teaching us how to peel at such a sight.

III. Christ teaching us what to do with the emotion.

1. Personal work.

2. Prayer.

3. Help. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

A portrait of Jesus

His compassion manifested in-

I. The great transactions of His life.

II. The foresights of compassion.

1. The Bible for our guidance.

2. The minister to speak to man.

3. The Holy Spirit to comfort.

4. The mercy-seat as our resort.

5. The promises as our food.

6. The ordinances.

III. Our personal recollections prove this compassion.

1. He tempered our convictions with intervals of hope.

2. He has moderated our afflictions.

3. He has put us to graduated tasks. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Emotion leading to action

You cannot indulge in the luxury of feeling (if you will excuse a Lancashire metaphor), that you do not use to drive your spindles, without doing yourselves harm; it is never intended to be blown off as waste steam and allowed to vanish into the air. It is meant to be conserved and guided, and to have something done with it. Therefore, do not get into the habit of indulging in that sentimental contemplation of the missionaries and heathenism. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Compassion sustains service

Nothing but compassion will carry you through any tragedy in life; you cannot go through it merely for its own sake. The hireling will fall asleep over the sick child, but the mother will drive sleep away from her dwelling-place till she has rescued her little one from the power of the enemy, if it be within the scope of her endurance and skill to win so great a triumph. Her compassion keeps her awake, her love makes the night as the day, her pity stops the clock, so that she takes no note of time. Every other emotion grows dumb; wonder must sometimes close its eyes, admiration palls upon itself, sates its appetite and dies of the satiety, but compassion grows by what it feeds on, and is of the very nature of the love of God. He grows in the development of his compassion; he will-succeed yet. (J. Parker, D. D.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 36. Moved with compassion] , from a bowel. The Jews esteemed the bowels to be the seat of sympathy and the tender passions, and so applied the organ to the sense.

signifies, says Mintert, “to be moved with pity from the very inmost bowels. It is an emphatic word, signifying a vehement affection of commiseration, by which the bowels and especially the heart is moved.” Both this verb and the noun seem to be derived from , to draw; the whole intestinal canal, in the peristaltic motion of the bowels, being drawn, affected, and agitated with the sight of a distressed or miserable object. Pity increases this motion of the bowels, and produces considerable pain: hence , to have the bowels moved, signifies to feel pity or compassion at seeing the miseries of others.

They fainted] Instead of , fainted, all the best MSS., versions, and fathers, read , grieved and melancholy. Kypke says properly signifies, to pluck off the hair, as persons do in extreme sorrow or distress. The margin says, They were tired and lay down.

And were scattered abroad] , thrown down, or, all along. They were utterly neglected as to the interests of their souls, and rejected by the proud and disdained Pharisees. This people (, this mob) that knoweth not the law, is accursed, Joh 7:49. Thus those execrable men spoke of the souls that God had made, and of whom they should have been the instructers.

Those teachers, in name, have left their successors behind them; but, as in the days of Christ, so now, God has in his mercy rescued the flock out of the hands of those who only fed upon their flesh, and clothed themselves with their wool. The days in which a man was obliged to give his property to what was called THE Church, for the salvation of his soul, Christ being left out of the question, are, thank God, nearly over and gone. Jesus is the true Shepherd; without him there is nothing but fainting, fatigue, vexation, and dispersion. O that we may be led out and in by him, and find pasture!

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Mark hath something of this, Mar 6:34. It pitied him, who came down from heaven to earth to seek and to save lost souls, to see what a company of people followed him, willing to be instructed, because they were , or, as some read it, , tired and wearied with running after him to hear the gospel, and ,

scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Had then the Jews at this time no ministry? They had the temple at Jerusalem, scribes, and Pharisees, and priests; synagogues in other places, where the law was read and interpreted. Christ accounts those people to have no ministers who have no good ones; but either dumb dogs, that cannot bark, or lazy ones, that will not. Such was the generality of the Jewish ministry at this time. This moved the bowels of Christ (so the word signifies). It is a great misery when the congregation of the Lord are as sheep which have no shepherd, Num 27:17; and so they are when they have no true prophets of the Lord to instruct them, 1Ki 22:17.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

36. But when he saw the multitudes,he was moved with compassion on them, because they faintedThisreading, however, has hardly any authority at all. The true readingdoubtless is, “were harassed.”

and were scatteredabroadrather, “lying about,” “abandoned,”or “neglected.”

as sheep, having noshepherdtheir pitiable condition as wearied under bodilyfatigue, a vast disorganized mass, being but a faint picture of theirwretchedness as the victims of pharisaic guidance; their soulsuncared for, yet drawn after and hanging upon Him. This moved theRedeemer’s compassion.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

But when he saw the multitudes,…. As he took his circuit through the several cities, towns, and villages, he made his observations upon the large numbers that flocked to his ministry, and seemed to be desirous of spiritual instructions, in what an unhappy and melancholy situation they were; and

he was moved with compassion on them: his bowels yearned for them, he was touched with a feeling of their infirmities, as the merciful high priest, the good shepherd, and faithful prophet; being heartily concerned for the souls of men, their comfort here, and everlasting happiness hereafter:

because they fainted; being fatigued and tired, not in their bodies, through journeying from place to place, to hear the word, but in their minds; being burdened and wearied with the various traditions and doctrines of the Scribes and Pharisees:

and were scattered abroad; thrown and tossed about, and divided through the different sects of religion among them; no due care was taken of them, to gather and keep them together, and feed them with wholesome doctrine; but were as abjects, outcasts, that no man regarded, and in great danger of the loss and ruin of their immortal souls: being

as sheep without a shepherd; that was good for anything, or did the office and duty of a shepherd to them: the Scribes and Pharisees were shepherds indeed, such as they were, but very bad ones; like the shepherds of Israel of old, who fed themselves, and not the flock; who strengthened not the diseased, nor healed the sick, nor bound up that which was broken; nor brought again that which was driven away, nor sought that which was lost: but on the contrary, caused them to go astray from mountain to hill; whereby they forgot their resting place, in the Messiah promised them, and who was now come.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Were distressed and scattered ( ). Periphrastic past perfect indicative passive. A sad and pitiful state the crowds were in. Rent or mangled as if by wild beasts. occurs in the papyri in sense of plunder, concern, vexation. “Used here of the common people, it describes their religious condition. They were harassed, importuned, bewildered by those who should have taught them; hindered from entering into the kingdom of heaven (23:13), laden with the burdens which the Pharisees laid upon them (23:3). denotes men cast down and prostrate on the ground, whether from drunkenness, Polyb. v. 48.2, or from mortal wounds” (Allen): This perfect passive participle from , to throw down. The masses were in a state of mental dejection. No wonder that Jesus was moved with compassion ().

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Fainted [ ] . Rev., better, were distressed. Note the verb with the participle, denoting their habitual condition. The word originally means to flay, rend, or mangle. Aeschylus uses it of the tearing of dead bodies by fish (” Persae, ” 577). As appropriate to the figure of sheep, it might be rendered here fleeced. Wyc., they were travailed.

Scattered [] . So A. V. and Rev. The word is the perfect participle passive of rJiptw, to throw or cast, and means thrown down, prostrated. So Wyc., lying. It is not the dispersion one from another, but their prostration in themselves that is meant. They have cast themselves down for very weariness.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “But when he saw the multitudes,” (idon de tous ochlous) “Then upon seeing the crowds,” wherever He went, He reflects two views of them: 1) As an harvest going unreaped, and 2) As a flock neglected of or without a shepherd. Both danger lurked for the people and judgment waited the duty neglecting shepherd and harvester.

2) “He was moved with compassion on them,” (esplagchnisthe peri auton) “He was filled with tenderness of emotion or compassion concerning them;” His fruitful ministry was in showing compassion, an exemplary lesson for every Christian to follow.

3) “Because they fainted,” (hoti errimmenoi) “Because they were prostrate,” fainted, fell by the wayside of life, disheartened by the selfish, heartless treatment of the pious Jewish leaders who should have been their spiritual shepherds.

4) “And were scattered abroad,” (esan eskulmenoi kai) “And they were distressed,” or they were burdened, harassed, depressed, and cast down emotionally. They were destitute of a knowledge of Christ because of their blind leaders.

5) “As sheep having no shepherd.” (hosie probata me echonta poimena) “As sheep that have no shepherd,” lacking needed spiritual guidance, exposed to the varmints of sin that preyed upon their lives, Mat 15:24; 1Pe 2:25. Sheep left alone wander, become feet-sore, hunted, trailed by predators, fleece-torn, and exhausted. A sheep gets in this condition when it has no one to guide it. Even so, sinners need someone to guide them to Jesus, Act 8:31.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

36. He was moved with compassion towards them Hence we infer, first, how great was the indolence of the priests, who, though they were scattered over the whole country, in order to enlighten the people with heavenly doctrine, were slow-bellies, ( Titus 1:12.) True, they boasted that they were superintendents of the people; and the number of those who gloried in that title was not small. Yet not one of them does Christ own to be a pastor. A similar confusion may now be observed in Popery, though it is full of persons who are called pastors: for there is a prodigious crowd of those who under the name of clergy, eat up the flock. They are dumb dogs, (Isa 56:10,) and yet are not ashamed to make a vehement sound about their hierarchy. But we must listen to the voice of Christ, who declares, that where there are no laborers there are no shepherds, and that those sheep are wandering and scattered which are not collected into the fold of God by the doctrine of the gospel. His being moved with compassion proves him to be the faithful servant of the Father in promoting the salvation of his people, for whose sake he had clothed himself with our flesh. Now that he has been received into heaven, he does not retain the same feelings to which he chose to be liable in this mortal life: yet he has not left off the care of his church, but looks after his wandering sheep, or rather, he gathers his flock which had been cruelly chased and torn by the wolves.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

THE CALL COMMISSION AND CONFLICT OF THE TWELVE

Mat 9:36 to Mat 10:42

ONCE more, we have Christ looking at the multitudes, and once again, being

moved with compassion toward them because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then said He unto His disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest(Mat 9:36-38).

How naturally the tenth chapter opens:

And when He had called unto Him His twelve disciples, He gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.

The best way in the world to fit any man for an actual appointment to a definite spiritual duty is to get him interested in the sameinterested to the point where he prays about it, for prayer is not only a medium of deeper interest, but equally so of the revelation of needs. It was the haystack prayer that revealed to three young men the whole foreign mission field and demand. It was after a prayer meeting that Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people. It was out from that same prayer meeting that Philip went to realize the needs of Samaria, and to see one of the most extensive and revolutionizing revivals known to the New Testament record.

We imagine that the Book of Acts records the first missionary movement in the early church. Not at all so. The tenth chapter of Matthew is a complete record of the great initial missionary movement. The origination of missions was not left to the Holy Ghost; it originated with Christ. It was the privilege of the spirit to illumine men concerning missions to the Gentiles. It was the thought of Jesus that both sent evangelists to Israel and paved the way for the crumbling of the middle wall of partition, that the Gospel might be eventually extended to all men.

Will you think, with me, of this chapter under three heads

The Commission of the Twelve; the Courage Incident to Trial, and the Character of the Coming Contest!

THE COMMISSION OF THE TWELVE

This is recorded in Mat 10:1-15.

Their commission was from the Lord Christ. It was He who called them unto Him. It was He who gave them power against unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease. It was He who commanded them and sent them forth saying,

Go not unto the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

It was He who said,

As ye go, preach, saying, The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils; freely ye have received, freely give.

It was He who commanded

Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses. Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves; for the workman is worthy of his meat, and into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence.

It was He who enjoined them,

And when ye come into an house, salute it. And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it: but if it be not worthy let your peace return to you.

It was He who said,

And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.

The twelve in the order of their naming in Matthew are: 1. Simon Peter, 2. Andrew, 3. James, 4. John, 5. Philip, 6. Bartholomew, 7. Thomas, 8. Matthew, 9. James, the son of Alphaeus, 10. Thaddeus, 11. Simon, the Canaanite, 12. Judas Iscariot. In Mar 3:16-19 we have the same list, but not the identical order; and in Luk 6:14-16, the same list but a third order, and in Act 1:13 the same list minus Judas, who had already betrayed his Lord and committed suicide.

The most instant and permanent impression received when one reads this Scripture comes from the imperious character of this call and commission.

Christ does not persuade, He calls; He does not argue, He commands. Deity is in His deportment! Never was a human leader more gracious and brotherly to his fellow-laborers than was Jesus, and never a captain so considerate of his associates as was Christ. And yet never for one moment did He assume or even suggest that their lives were on a level with His, that their minds were equally to be consulted, their judgments to be counselled before any new step was taken! On the contrary, He assumed Lordship; He spake with authority; He commanded and it stood fast. If His enemies were compelled to say, Never man spake like this Man, and to remark, He speaks as one having authority, more surely still must His disciples have often reflected upon the same.

But the text contains also another suggestion of the Divine right of this KING, yea, even of His Godhead,

He gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease.

Who can do this but God? Who else dare to defy Satan in his special realm and to declare him impotent against His will, and incompetent against His command save the Christ, the anointed of God? Yes, the commission of the twelve was from the Lord Christ.

It involves certain important commands. Mat 10:5-15. The commission of the missionary from the first has been in one word, and a marvelously little word, the shortest word in human speech, save the personal pronounGO! He limited for the time their territory to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He determined absolutely the primary duty,

Preach, saying the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

He put into His command promise of power such as mortals had never found possible of themselves, Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. He reduced evangelism to the simplest basis, and yet strange to say, to the only sufficient basis,

Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves, for the workman is worthy of his meat.

The Northwestern Bible Training School of Minneapolis put out 170 workers during the summer of 1925 on practically this basis. Not one of them went hungry for a sufficient time to weaken him; nor lacked for a bed. when sleeping time had come, and each of them returned at the end of the summer to give glad and glowing report of what God had wrought, for houses had opened, the spirit of God had come upon them, and it was seldom necessary to shake off the dust of their feet against even a single village. Boys and girls were instructed in the things of Christ and many of them yielded their hearts to Him. Strong men and women wept at the preaching of the Word, and hundreds of them were converted; and when the lads and lassies returned to school it was found not only had provision and travel expense been met, but there was something above, and friends from near and far had been moved to show sympathy for their endeavor and to assist in the same.

One of Our city pastors recently said, In America it is the custom with us to get a word and ride it to death. Our great word just now is challenge. A challenge is an appeal to meet some opposing foe. It may be accepted or rejected. There is no obligation attached. Challenge is not adequate for us. We are not challenged to do the Masters work. We are commanded to do it. Christianity has a King. The King has commands! And certainly those words of a pastor find illustration in this Scripture. To the early Church, His word GO! was an end of discussion, and the beginning of missions!

Furthermore, it was associated with definite assurances. These are intimated rather than expressed. When in verse eight, He says, Heal the sick, the command is associated with the assurance of power, and all power in heaven and on earth belongs unto Him. He, and He alone could give it against unclean spirits, and all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease. When in verses nine and ten He says,

Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves, for the workman is worthy of his meat.

He practically assures them of a Divine provision. Bread and meat are at His command. The great prayer in which He taught us to voice ourselves, Give us this day our daily bread, is a delightful, yea, even a Divine discovery, when one comes to see and know that meat is with Him, and that when we have sought first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness, bread, meat and clothing are all pledged us. In fact when we remember the great commission recorded in this same Gospel (Mat 28:19-20) we cannot forget His concluding phrase, And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.

Can we suffer lack when the King is with us? Israel ran short of bread in the wilderness, but the King was with them and gave them manna to eat. She lacked meat, but the King was with them and the quails came. She lacked water, but the King was with them, and the dry rock gushed forth a living stream. She lacked clothing, but her garments through forty years waxed not old (Neh 9:21).

How far we have come from the original thought of missions and commission! How strangely we go about the whole procedure now! How much fussing and fuming over it all! We must have a certain kind of education, and, even now, with denominationalism in the ascendant, and modernism striving for the mastery, that education must be taken in certain schools, or we wont even be permitted to go on a mission for Christ. We must sit before certain committees and they must pass upon our fitness. We must find people who are willing to provide us an outfit, and, if possible, to pay our transportation, and then, when once we have reached our destination, we must meet a local committee and our special place must be assigned, and we are told what we are to do and what we cant do; whether we can teach; whether we can preach; what particular service we shall render, and, above all, what rules we must regard.

For some reasons, one is glad to have been born more than half a century ago; born at a time when his inner conviction was the Divine call, and when he did not have to consult with flesh and blood to discover whether he dare yield himself to a divinely-appointed service; glad to have been ordained in a day when the great fundamental things were foremost; when he was asked whether he had been regenerated; why he believed that he was called to preach, and what Gospel he proposed to preach. He was permitted to enter upon a ministry with open and unprejudiced pulpits, or preach from the top of a dry-goods box as he might decide, without having to go before the state commission and affirm solemnly that he would be loyal to the denominational program, whether or not it was loyal to Christ; that he would back up, with voice and purse, every denominational movement, even though he was absolutely convinced that it was away from Christ, unto Unitarianism, and was heading the denomination itself hellward.

We therefore, declare our profound conviction that modernism in message is no more a sad departure from the New Testament commission, than is modernism, in method. Christs missionaries were not made after such a manner; and missionaries will never be made after that manner. You can make your social service workers after that manner, but they are not missionaries of Christ. You can commission your civilizing agents after that manner, but they are not necessarily missionaries of the Cross. You can send out your school-teachers after that manner, but they are not always the agents of salvation. Gods method changeth not, and the commission of the first century is the only Christian commission for any century. But to the next point in our text

THE COURAGE INCIDENT TO TRIAL

Mat 10:16-31

Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues.

And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.

But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.

For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.

And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father, the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.

And ye shall be hated of all men for My Names sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.

But when they persecute you in this city, flee to another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come.

The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his Lord.

It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his Lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?

Fear not them therefore: For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.

What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in the light; and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell. .

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall to the ground, without your Father.

But the very hairs of your head are numbered.

Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Having read this Scripture, let us return to its study to face the following plain facts:

Common sense is fundamental to Christian courage.

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves (Mat 10:16).

We do well to dwell upon both subjects of this verse. Christ never called His disciples to a soft berth. Christ never commissioned His disciples to a hospitable community. Christ never promised His disciples exemption from trial. On the contrary, His very commission involved the exercise of the highest courage. A missionary is one sent, and the Word of the Lord is, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves! Is there much safety there? Even a wolf in the midst of sheep doesnt promise any individual of the flock perfect safety; but a sheep in the midst of wolves, it is a hopeless prospect! A sheep has no power against a wolf. Thats why He didnt tell them, Gird yourselves with swords and fight; why He didnt say to His sheep, Sharpen your teeth and gnash; use your feet to trample and bruise! Such exercises are impossible to sheep!

What is the way then? It is the way of wisdom and the way of discretion. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves. Dont start unnecessary trouble! Dont play the fool and invite attack. You will have enough of both without bantering them. Thats what Christ meant! Would God that men who are truly called and commissioned might regard the counsel. I know a great many evangelists today, who through the exercise of foolishness, have brought themselves into disfavor, and almost without exception they are saying they are discarded because they are Fundamentalists, and appealing for positions, open fields, and ethical and financial backing. It is all as impossible as undesirable. The true evangelist is divinely called. Back of him is the Head of the Church Himself, and before him the whole world field is open; and if he doesnt so far play the fool, that the Christ who commissioned him cant continue to abide with him, he will have an abundance to do. Friends will multiply as fast as enemies, and open doors that no man can shut will beckon him in every direction.

Kindred remarks would apply concerning many pastors. They have neither been harmless as doves nor wise as serpents, but sometimes wicked and foolish, and complications have come in consequence of a wrong course. They want to move to a new field and if it so happens that they have stood for the fundamentals of the faith, then they say they are discredited on that account. I speak this as one who has never stood for anything else, and from the day that the ordaining hands were laid upon me until this goodly hour, I have absolutely refused to compromise with modernism in any form. I have fought it in private and in public, with pen and with tongue. I have sought to smite it hip and thigh, and I declare my deliberate intention to continue in that conflict while breath shall be found in my body. But while it has closed some pulpits to me (on account of my conservatism) ten others have opened. While it has brought me enemies, it has far more multiplied my friends; and while it has denied me a few opportunities, there have been ten times as many awaiting as I could possibly employ.

Wisdom is justified of her children, and a righteous course has never had a disastrous ending. Serpents commonly escape their enemies and doves are never responsible for battle, wounds or death. Exercise common sense; that is the fundamental of Christian courage.

A conscientious course will bring certain conflict.

But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues.

And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.

But when they deliver you up, take no thought of how or what ye shall speak: for it shall he given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.

For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.

And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death.

And ye shall be hated of all men for My Names sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.

But when they persecute you, in this city, flee ye to another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come (Mat 10:17-23).

Christ isnt promising that wisdom will always make a way of escape. The serpent is very careful not to produce an unnecessary conflict. He glides away from every prospective one, but his enemies are multiplied and his head is often bruised. The doves never provoke a fight, but ofttimes they are wounded, bleeding, yea, and utterly consumed, for their enemies are both many and voracious. So it is with a man commissioned by Christ. They will call ex-parte councils to sit in his case. They will seek to scourge him from the synagogue. They will bring him up before high ecclesiastical dignitaries. That all sounds like a page from yesterdays denominational organ, for it occurs daily.

But what of it? The Christ, who is with you, will give to the courageous man what he should speak. In fact the Spirit speaketh in him. Though your denominational brother shall deliver you up to an ecclesiastical anathema or your denominational father shall prove your bitterest enemy, and though through the press they make your name a hissing, and though they unsettle your people and compel you to quit a loved pastorate, upon the great fact, and fact it is, the disciple is not above his master nor the servant above his Lord, rest yourself! They have called the Master of the house, Beelzebub; how much more shall they call them of his household. Fear them not. God is a marvelous vindicator. There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, or hid, that shall not be known.

Christ may seem to be working in secret, but His counsel will finally come abroad. What He whispers to you in the silent place, preach upon the housetop; and though your body perish in consequence, praise Him that the soul is untouched.

The greatest single need of the hour is men who can endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ, who can take blows without moaning, and listen to lying criticism, and laugh at it. If I had my life to live over again, knowing as I know how God can make the most pointed dart to blunt against the shield of faith, the keenest edged sword to glance from the helmet of salvation, I would laugh opposition to scorn; and lay me down to sleep at night asking but one promise, and that already made, upon which to pillow my head for the soundest sleep, the most undisturbed spirit, viz., I am with you alway.

Christ well knows and defends His own.

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your father? The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Of all possible illustrations, not one could convey it to us more clearly than does this. The Divine knowledge, the Divine sympathy, the Divine care.

What, of living things, is of much less value than a sparrow? In the market he will not bring a penny if his true name and nature is known. They say that he is sometimes sold as a reed bird, and consumed as a tasty morsel at high class hotels, but that is because the fastidious do not happen to know the fowl. His nature known, his name called, he is worth nothing! His number is such the world over that one sparrow makes no difference. There are millions, yea billions, and possibly trillions, still chattering under the edges of roofs and feeding from the middle of the roads. Does God care for them? So the Son said. Then He cares for me; then He cares for you. Yea, He numbers the very hairs of your head. Think you that harm can come to one of them without His presence or even without His permission? Who then shall fear? The man who knows this cant be a coward! Courage rises in exact proportion as one links his life with Him, loves Him, and truly trusts Him. Trials will only test such affection and enhance the personal devotion. Let them come! Let them sweep, with all their fury, over you! Let their thunders roll about you! Let their keenest lightning flashes cleave the sky. You can still afford to be as calm as the disciples ought to have been in that stormy night, on Gennesaret, when Christ was on board. One word from Him and a calm was on, the storm was laid, the danger was past, the solid shore was nigh, the silver moon was shining, the quiet of sleep itself was come.

THE CHARACTER OF THE COMING CONTEST

Mat 10:32-42.

These verses reveal rather clearly some definite facts, such, for instance, as the open confession of Christ, invites conflict; that conflict disregards the most sacred relations, and in that conflict the disciple is identified with his Lord.

The open confession of Christ invites conflict!

Whosoever therefore shall confess Me before men, him will I confess also before My Father which is in Heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in Heaven.

It was very natural that that should be so in Christs day. He had not as yet been generally accepted. His outstanding disciples were but a dozen, and even one of them will forsake him. His friends were few, and his enemies a multitude. The proofs of His Deity were only partially in; the prejudices of Judaism were not at all broken down, and the infidelity of Gentiles was practically complete. But how strange to find that in the twentieth century, with His Church the largest single institution in the world, His followers exceeding any number that ever combined in any single name under Gods heaven, the proofs of His Deity, many and infallible, the evidences of His redemption found in millions of faces and in every land, and yet, we come to a time when the true confession of Christ, the very God of very God, invites a conflict. Modernism retains His name but denies His Deity; modernism remains in the Church, but disputes the inspiration of its commission. Modernism professes loyalty, but preaches another gospel! Rollin Lynde Hartt, in the November Forum 1925, rightly and distinctly says, Two religions, so different that if the one is true the other must be false, exist side by side within the confines of Protestantism. And further, Had these two religions developed independently, no one would think, for a moment, of combining them.

It is becoming increasingly evident that we cannot combine them; that they are so separate, so distinct, so utterly remote, yea, even so opposed one to the other, that their continuance within the same body is not only impossible, but inconceivable!

I hold in my hand the report of the Commission of Seven, appointed at Milwaukee in 1924, on our foreign affairs. It says: That certain missionaries have laid themselves liable to just criticism and necessary investigation by the Board, seems to us to be clear from quotations which we now make. These are extracts from statements of certain of the missionaries about whose beliefs, formal complaint has been made:

Dealing with the subject of the Person of Christ, one writes: But the unique element of Jesus nature does not lie in His being the Only Begotten Son of God. He is not that by His own teaching. Rather He is the only perfect one among the countless millions of the sons of God who have been born into our Heavenly Fathers earthly home. Jesus owes many a debt to men who had not obtained the perfection that He had in His relation to God.

In dealing with the person of Christ as related to His death, he writes: In setting an unbridgable gulf between the glory of Jesus and our own possibilities, it seems to me that men are opposing themselves diametrically to His teaching and desires, and are to a large degree rendering His sacrificial life and death vain.

On the inspiration of the Scriptures and in arguing to show that they are not infallible, he writes: Surely it is clear that the Bible, part for part, is not an infallible Book. There is many a book, many a sermon, many a poem of our day as God-inspired and as God-filled and helpful as many of the Books of the Bible and more so than some. God is still speaking to His children through the voice of His prophets.

Of sin, he writes: Today we have come to look upon wrong-doers not so much as sinners as unfortunates.

Of atonement he writes: When we see ourselves in our true position as the growing, erring children of God, is it not clear that such a thing as an atonement, a making good for us by another, could not possibly be acceptable to our Father, or even considered by Him? Seeing that we are a family together, not only is it not derogatory of God and Jesus to abandon the idea of the atonement, but it is testifying to the perfect quality of Gods fatherliness. It is not primarily the death of Jesus that saves us. It would not have been necessary under all circumstances.

Of final salvation he writes: But what about those children who desert the Heavenly Home? Who, when they know their Fathers desire is otherwise, deliberately turn away and follow the demands of their lower natures? Is there any hope for them? (In a later paragraph his answer is found): Jesus will keep on and never give up until every last one is found. There is no man, no matter how vile, without some solid good, some of the stuff of God in him. There is some invitation of God to which he will respond, although he may have to hear it in the next world. God will never turn His back upon His children, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.

Another writes: I wish I might say that I have a firm faith in eternal life. It would be a comfortable belief. I have resolved to live as though life were eternal, but I have failed to find convincing evidence that such is the case, or that such is not the case. I must regard Pauls teaching in 1Co 15:19 as contrary to Jesus own ideals. If we have only hope in Christ in this life we are of all men most pitiable. Also 1Co 15:32 of the same, If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. That is not my philosophy. Whether we are to be raised or whether death ends all, it is still worth while to live the Christ lifeto love God and men, to suffer for others, to serve and sacrifice. If death be the end, then we have lived as sons of God; if death be, as I hope, the entrance to a new life, it is well.

We have noted in a number of instances also, .a hesitant and negative attitude on vital truths; for example, a missionary, when asked this question, Was Jesus Christ a man, unique man, but man only, or was He something more than a man? writes, I was not prepared to answer with a categorical yes or no for it is one of those questions that cannot be answered in that way.

This same missionary when later questioned before the Board is quoted as saying in response to the question as to whether or not he believed in the Virgin Birth: I think not. His reply when asked if he believed in the miracles, I think not. When asked if he believed in the bodily resurrection, his final answer was I think not, and when asked if he believed in the inspiration of the Scriptures, he said I think not .

Can you imagine loyal Christians continuing to support missionaries who hold such positions? To be sure, the cleaving edge of modernism is now sought to be blunted by a persistent report that there were only six or eight such found on the foreign field by this Commissiona report that has no consonance with fact.

Years ago native students in the Shanghai Baptist University, China, protested against the teaching they were receiving from our American missionaries, particularly against their adoption and defense of the evolutionary hypothesis, and some of the students appealed to American friends for relief; while certain native churches declared their unwillingness to accept graduates of that University, as pastors, because they had departed from the faith of the New Testament. In other words, the newly saved heathen had risen to resent the lying impositions of modernistic teachers. Any man who cares to assure himself of these facts can look over the list of the Shanghai faculty and find that they come out of such schools as Union Theological Seminary, long since justly discredited; Chicago University Divinity School, known to be deep-dyed in modernism; Rochester and Crozer, open defenders of another gospel which is no gospel, and he will know that such teachers can have harmony among themselves solely because practically the entire company of them, if not the last man, on the faculty of that University are modernists of one mind. At Suifu another representative of the same society split the forces of this mission into factions by blatant modernism.

From India one of our greatest missionaries has written again and again pleading against majoring 011 education, increasing 1500 per cent, while evangelism is increased 51 per cent., or thirty educators sent out for one evangelist. The Commission of Seven joined in that complaint, and made an appeal for a reform at that point also!

Our missionary at home from China declared a few Christian Fundamentals an intolerable yoke, while a school in Japan largely built up by money from my own church is now reputed as under a Modernist.

That conflict disregards the most sacred relations.

I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a mans foes shall be they of his own household.

Prophecy is the mould of history! The greatest evangelist that the United States of America has produced in her entire human history, has two sons today, set to the tearing down of what their father built up. One of them for ten to fifteen years has been an out and out modernist, and the other has recently turned the great conference and school-born in answer to that fathers prayersinto a conference and school of modernism.

The greatest single homilitician that the theological seminaries of America have ever known, the man whose text book outshines all others on this side of the sea, has today a shallow son who repudiates the faith that was dear to his father. The greatest Greek scholar, and among the greatest of Hebrew scholars, that America has known, has now a successor in office who is increasingly yielding to the skeptical tendencies of so-called modern scholarship.

The best informed layman that Minneapolis has ever known, has a son, an outstanding Seminary professor, who opposes every feature of the faith that was dear to his own father. In a great University in the East, one of Gods noblemen lives now in the advanced years that ought to bring serenity to a life of such high attainments and character, and yet, is heart-broken over two boys, both of whom have repudiated the faith in which he instructed them. The saintliest Baptist that American history has known has one son who is a pulpit doubter; while no less than six theological seminaries in my own denomination, and at least fifteen colleges in the same are today presided over by modernist presidents, and. filled with modernist instructors, who repudiate the basal principles on which those schools were founded. Again the son has set against his father, and the daughter against the mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

It is all an appeal! Remember the text He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And He that taketh not up his cross, and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me.

The hour has struck! The day is on when we are compelled to decide whether we will cleave to Christ or to our own flesh and blood, retain His Gospel or accept that insufficient and shallow substitutesocial service.

Finally, In this conflict the disciple is identified with his Lord.

Mat 10:40-42.

He that receiveth you, receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me receiveth him that sent Me. He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophets reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous mans reward. And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.

The true Christian will not seek a way of avoiding the cross; but neither will he forget, when it presses heavily upon him, that it rested first upon the shoulders of his Lord; and Christ is with Him to bear it even now, and in Him, to give him the adequate strength. Men forget when they insult a prophet of God, or any representative of Jesus Christ, that they are insulting the Son Himself rather than His servant, but the servant should not forget it. Men may not know that when they reject a prophet they are rejecting Jesus, but the prophet should never forget it. To recognize the fact that Christ identifies Himself with us is to feel that infinity of power and wisdom is with us, and to know that the slightest service rendered in His Name and for His sake cannot fail of its reward.

I am concluding this exposition with an appeal, that I know you, my people, will heed. Let us decide here and now, and declare the same to the world that no mission nor board, nor institution, nor individual, can have our support, save it or he be found utterly loyal to the Biblethe Book Divine, and its Christour Coming King.

Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Mat. 9:36-38

Preparing for change.We seem here to be like men arriving at a new stage on their journey. At such a juncture they naturally ask, on the one hand, how far they have reached; and, on the other, what is required by them more. With regard to our Saviours ministry, we shall find that both these questions are answered for us in the passage before us.

I. The nature of the position arrived at.This was a position in which, on the one hand, there were great evidences of success. Twice before we have had special mention of such evidences. One (Mat. 4:25) just before the delivery of the Sermon on the Mount. One (Mat. 8:18) before leaving Capernaum for the other side. So also here, as it were, we see the Saviour stirred by like evidence of success on seeing the multitudes at His feet. To a feeling heart it is always affecting to see a vast assemblage of souls. Still more to know that they have assembled together to hear what can be said to them by that heart. Much must have been done by it already, very much, before they were brought to that point. A position, on the other hand, in which there were still greater evidences of necessity. For what, in fact, and as they were were these vast multitudes like? They were like those who had already received very much; but who also, on that very account, were in need of still more. They were like unnumbered sheep, who, just because of their numbers, needed tending the more. They were like plenteous crops which, because of their plenteousness, needed reaping the more. If it was affecting, therefore, to see their abundance, it was still more so to see their condition. So many sheep waiting to be tended, and no one to do it! So many harvests asking to be reaped, and no one to reply! No one at any rate, in such way as that Master-shepherd desired; and desired so because only His wisdom knew as well the depth as the reality of their need. Oh! for more and better means of following up this success!

II. The nature of the requirements thus brought into view.These are shown by reverting again to the nature of the comparisons which are here employed by our Lord. To what, e.g. are we pointed, on the one hand, by the figure of sheep? What do sheep need but to be shepherded? To be under pastoral care? Also to be so in such degree as both their condition and their numbers demand? Being so many, and being so exposed, and being also so recently found and acquired, as it were, and not having as yet gone very much fartherif all so faras to know the voice of their shepherd, they required attention, so to speak, at every moment and side. Instead of which, as things were, the Saviour beheld them fainting and scattered abroadfainting (so some) because fleeced (?)deprived of support rather than supplied with itscattered from the fold, not gathered into it. Under that aspect the great need was that of pastors and teachers (Eph. 4:11) to labour under the Saviour. On the other side what are we pointed to by the similitude of the harvest? Is it not to the fact that amongst those vast multitudes gathered together before the Saviour (representatives of others beside) there were very many who could hardly yet be rightly described as His sheep. They were rather ready to hear than hearers already; disciples rather in desire than in attainments; souls that had need of being made acquainted with the first principles of the kingdom of God (Heb. 5:12). Little was possessed by such but the desire to possess. If they were to be taught, there must be some to teach them. If they were to be gathered in, there must be those to do it. Under this head, therefore, the great need was that of evangelists and preachers of Christreapers rather than shepherdsthe men of the sickle rather than those of the crook.

This being so, what ought to be done? What ought first to be done? The close of this passage teaches to pray. Pray ye, thereforebecause of these thingsbefore anything else. This is the first lesson taught by this Scripture. In all your necessities begin with prayer. Too often too many of us only bring it in last. There is nothing left but to praywe sometimes hear said of the sick. I am sure I have tried all and every one. I see nothing now but to pray. Observe here, therefore, how exactly different was the way of our Lord. Whether, on the one hand, with His counsel, in teaching His disciples. Whether, on the other hand, with Himself as we find at this very time from Luk. 6:12-13. Why go to prayer first? Because it takes us at once to the right quarters. Who so certain to know about the harvest and all its needs as the Lord of the harvest? Who so likely to be interested in them? Who so able to help? Who so able, especially in this case where the need of help is extreme; where labourers have to be even thrust forth (Mat. 9:38) to this work? Who so able to do this as He who sent Saul of Tarsus into His harvest? Also, because it is not only worse than idle to begin anywhere else; but self-sufficient and presumptuous and distrustful also in an equal degree.

HOMILIES ON THE VERSES

Mat. 9:36-38. Motives to missionary work.The two emblems Christ uses present most strikingly the great motives to missionary work.

I. Compassion for the lost.

II. Zeal for the Divine glory.Sheep having no shepherdthis appeals to our human sympathies; the Lord of the harvest deprived of His harvest for want of labourers to gather it inthis appeals to our love and loyalty to God.J. M. Gibson, D.D.

Compassion for the multitude.Under two aspects the state of the people appeared to the Saviours eye and affected His heart.

I. As scattered sheep having no shepherd.In all antiquity, both heathen and Hebrew, it was usual to speak of nations as flocks and their rulers as shepherds. A people without instruction, guidance, and motive, were sheep without a shepherd. The Old Testament uses this mode of speech frequently. In the time of our Saviours sojourn in Galilee the rulers, priests, and scribes were bound to shepherd the people, to watch over them, and feed them with knowledge, disclosing to them the love of the Divine Shepherd of Israel. But these men went about to establish their own righteousness, exalting and pleasing themselves, while the people were perishing for lack of knowledge.

1. The eye of Christ, while fixed on mens outward condition, is fastened most earnestly on their moral and spiritual condition.So should ours be.

2. The Lord spoke of the fault of the shepherds rather than of the sheep.i.e. He will reckon most strictly with men that have positions of trust and opportunities of usefulness.

3. The cure of moral and spiritual neglect must be gradual.Why did not the Son of God, at one stroke, with Divine power, remedy all that was wrong? Conversions may be in the twinkling of an eye, but much has to be done and taught before, and much after.

II. As a plenteous harvest spoiling for want of reapers.

1. Labourers are needed.

2. The Spirit of God blesses the pains we take to bring our instruments to the best efficiency.

3. But men are demanded sent by the Lord of the harvest Himself.How to get them is clearly indicated in Mat. 9:38. There is another array of reapers coming for whom you do not need to pray (Mat. 13:41).Donald Fraser, D.D.

Mat. 9:36. Compassion for the multitude.This compassion is:

I. The incident of brotherhood.The one great mark of the humanity of Jesus is the perfect naturalness of the feeling which it expresses the moment the scene calls it forth. Nothing is ever arranged for. Nothing is ever got up. As He goes, that happens which sets the fountain playing. That is Christs brotherhood, and Christs brotherhood is not a thing of yesterday, it is to-day too. He is what He was. I am He that liveth and was dead. Wherever there is the Christ-spirit there is the sense of kinship with the struggling, with the weary, with the restless, with the ever moving multitudes.

II. The mainspring of action.Human action, like human life, is very complex. Motives are various. There is a man who does kind things now and again. He does generous things even now and again, but it is by a sort of fluke. He is, perhaps, religious in a sense, but he is essentially selfish. The mainspring is self. And the multitudeswhy, they are only to him what he can get out of them! His interest does not really travel beyond that. There is another man. Occasionally he does a hard thing; occasionally he speaks a harsh word and his judgment is harsh, but it is a mistake. In the core of his being he is a really generous-souled man. And yet, because Christ loved the multitudes so well, He never pandered to them. That is what a great many people are doing in this day. It is very very difficult to find persons who will speak honestly and deal faithfully and truly with the multitudes.

III. The revelation of God.He who is thus moved is the very brightness of the Fathers glory. All love in us is a reflection of a love that is greater than ours. But Christ is more than a reflection; He is the exact likeness. He is God in our very flesh. What you behold in Him is the sign of that which God eternal is.J. M. Lang, D.D.

Multitudes.A right view of a multitude cannot but deeply affect a right-hearted man.

1. Diversified histories.
2. Conflicting emotions.
3. Opposite relations to God and truth.
4. Different destinies.J. Parker, D.D.

Pity.Balzac, in The Alchemist, in depicting an ideally perfect love, makes the object of it deformed, thus profoundly indicating that love is not at its height and perfection without the element of pity (T. T. Munger). Nothing but the infinite Pity is sufficient for the infinite pathos of human life.Shorthouses John Inglesant.

Mat. 9:37-38. The abundance of the harvest and the scarcity of the labourers.

I. The harvest.
II. The labourers.

III. The Saviours plan for increasing the number of the labourers.

1. Where persons offer this prayer in sincerity, they make a solemn acknowledgment that God must do all the work.

2. They mean that, when God raises up men, they will furnish the means to convey them to the heathen, and support them when they get there.

3. When young men utter this prayer, they mean that, if it is the will of God, they are ready to become labourers.

4. When Christian parents offer up this prayer they express their willingness that their children should go.Richard Knill.

Mat. 9:38. The Lord of the harvest.

I. The seed is His.

II. The field is His.

III. The harvest is His.J. P. Lange, D.D.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

(36) He was moved with compassion.The words that follow are so vivid and emphatic that we may well believe them to have had their starting-point in our Lords own expression of His feelings. We find Him using the identical words in Mat. 15:32, and Mar. 8:2 : I have compassion on the multitude.

They fainted.The English represents the received printed text of the Greek Testament at the beginning of the seventeenth century. There is, however, an immense preponderance of authority in favour of another reading, which gives the passive participle of the verb translated trouble in Mar. 5:35, Luk. 7:6, and meaning literally flayed, and thence figuratively tormented, worried, vexed. They were not merely as sheep that have grown weary and faint, hungry, looking up and yet not fed, but were as those that have been harassed by the wolfthe prey of thieves and robbers. (Comp. Joh. 10:8-12.)

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

36. When he saw the multitudes That is, whenever, during his circuit, he saw the vast congregations attracted by the fame of his works and listening with ready ear to his words. He was moved with compassion A tender pity would arise in his heart, day after day, at the sight of the successive crowds. Because they fainted The epithet fainted is applied to them in their character of sheep, who are worried and exhausted in the way.

Having no shepherd Even Moses is no shepherd to them, for the Galileans were half Gentile in their views. Their professed religious teachers were rather wolves than shepherds, who fed upon rather than fed the flock. The words of truth and mercy from the lips of Jesus were new to their ears and hearts. Doubtless the evangelist, in this verse, expresses the feeling of the Saviour in the very words which fell from his own lips.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘But when he saw the crowds, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd.’

The great crowds that gathered around Jesus had touched His heart. He was ‘moved with compassion’ towards them. The word for compassion used here is a word solely used of Jesus in the Gospels apart from when He uses it in His own parables. It is at the heart of the Kingly Rule of Heaven. For He saw these people as distressed and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd. This description of sheep without a shepherd is firmly based on the Old Testament (Num 27:17; 1Ki 22:17 ; 1Ch 18:16; Eze 34:6; Eze 34:12 compare Jer 50:17). And the description of Israel as sheep is even more common (2Sa 24:17; 1Ch 21:17; Psalms 23; Psa 44:11; Psa 44:22; Psa 74:1; Psa 78:52; Psa 79:13; Psa 95:7; Psa 100:3; Psa 119:176; Isa 53:6; Jer 23:1; Jer 50:6; Mic 2:12). Without a shepherd sheep are in a hopeless condition.

The scattering of sheep was a picture of the exile (Psa 44:11; Jer 50:17; Eze 34:6; Eze 34:12) and of persecution (Zec 13:7). Thus Jesus looked on these people as in their own kind of exile, an exile from which He had Himself come in order to deliver them (Mat 2:15). A group of scattered sheep without a shepherd would soon have found themselves in great distress in Palestine, especially in the dry summers. Unlike goats they were not good at looking after themselves. And what with thorn bushes, and predators, and scavenging dogs, and a disinclination to forage, and shortage of water, their situation if left to themselves would be desperate. In a similar way that was how Jesus saw these people, as scattered and distressed sheep, because their shepherds had failed them. It was because of their spiritual hunger and thirst that they had flocked to John and were now flocking to Him.

‘Distressed and scattered.’ Various alternative translations have been suggested, ‘worried and helpless’, ‘harassed and helpless’, ‘distressed and downcast’, ‘harassed and dejected’, ‘bullied and unable to escape’, ‘mishandled and lying helpless’, partly depending on whether we are thinking primarily of the sheep, or of the people that they represent. But in the end they are all saying the same thing.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Christ’s compassion:

v. 36. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.

v. 37. Then saith He unto His disciples, The harvest, truly, is plenteous, but the laborers are few.

v. 38. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth laborers into His harvest.

Christ’s ministry brought Him into the most intimate touch with the people, gave Him the clearest insight into their moral and religious condition. Two pictures were suggested to His mind: A flock of sheep neglected in the desert, and a harvest going to waste for lack of reapers. The people whom He met were faint, overdriven, afflicted, beaten down, exhausted by long, aimless driving, completely worn out and scattered about. They had no faithful shepherds. The Pharisees and scribes vexed, worried their souls with their legal flaying, gave them thousands of precepts regulating the very minutest details of their lives, but neither taught them where to get the strength nor gave them the comfort of the Gospel. Most of the people were in the direst spiritual distress. A pitiful spectacle! But this is to arouse them to action. The harvest of God is always great, since He wants all men to be saved. When the souls have grown weary and surfeited with the husks of human doctrines and traditions of men, they are more apt to feel and realize their need of the Gospel of Jesus, as in the case of many of the Jewish nation, The laborers, that are in full sympathy with the Gospel-teachings, that are willing to work for Christ, are few. At that time only the Lord and here and there a true Israelite were laboring for the Kingdom. There is needed some of Christ’s compassion, some of that divine commiseration which moved the heart of Christ; there is needed some of that willingness to work and, if need be, to suffer, which characterized the ministry of Christ; and there is needed, lastly, the force of heaven-storming prayers to the Lord of the harvest, to the great Lord of the Kingdom, that He Himself would thrust out, that He will urge and make willing the hearts of the laborers as He sends them forth to reap the souls for His eternal kingdom.

Summary. Jesus heals a paralytic, calls Matthew, takes dinner with him, and gives a lesson on humility and fasting, raises the daughter of Jairus, heals the woman with the issue of blood, gives sight to two blind men, drives out a dumb demon, and draws a lesson from His ministry

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Mat 9:36. Because they fainted The original , denotes here a kind of faintness; the weakness which is caused by hunger and weariness. See ch. Mat 15:32. Heb 12:3. Thereare notwithstanding several Greek manuscripts which read, as does also the Vulgate, weary, fatigued. These multitudes came not only from the several parts of Galilee, but also from Judaea and Idumea, from beyond Jordan, and the borders of Tyre and Sidon. Elsner seems to have proved beyond dispute, that the original word , rendered scattered abroad, signifies properly “exposed to every invading danger,” as sheep are when thrown up and abandoned by the shepherd. Dr. Heylin reads, with the margin of our bible, were tired and laid down. As the people were utterly neglected by their Scribes and Pharisees, the appointed public teachers, who ought to have instructed them, the indefatigable zeal with which our Lord now spread the knowledge of divine things, was most seasonable and acceptable. The teachers just now mentioned were blind, perverse, lazyguides, who every day discovered more and more their ignorance and wickedness. They either neglected the office of teaching altogether, or they filled the people’s minds with high notions of ritual observances and traditions, to the utter disparagement of moral duties, which in a manner they trampled under foot; so that instead of serving God, theyserved their own glory, their gain, and their belly; wherefore, any appearance of religion which theyhad, was wholly feigned and hypocritical, insomuch that they rather did hurt by it, than were of real service to the interests of holiness and virtue. Besides, the common people, being distracted by the disagreeing factions of the Pharisees and Sadducees, knew not what to choose or refuse; their case therefore called loudly for the compassion of Jesus, which indeed was never wanting to them at any time; for he always cherished the tenderest affections towards his countrymen: but it flowed particularly on this occasion, when he considered that they were in great distress for want of spiritual food. See the next chapter, Mat 9:6. Elsner, Wolfius, and Macknight. It may be proper just to observe, that the 10th chapter should begin at the 35th verse; for the connection is absolutely and entirely broken by the present division.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Mat 9:36 . ] in the course of this journey.

] who were following Him

] What is meant is not a herd torn by wolves (Bretschneider), which would neither suit the words nor be a fitting illustration of the crowds that followed Him; but a dense flock of sheep which, from having no shepherd , and consequently no protection, help, pasture, and guidance, are in a distressing, painful condition ( vexati , Vulg.); and , not scattered (Luther, Beza, Kuinoel, Baumgarten-Crusius, Bleek), which is not the meaning of , nor even neglecti (Soph. Aj. 1250), like the German weggeworfen (castaway), (Kypke, Fritzsche, de Wette), which would be too feeble , coming after .; but prostrati, thrown down, stretched upon the ground (frequently in the LXX. and Apocrypha), like sheep exhausted, that are unable to walk any farther (Vulg.: jacentes ). Comp. Xenoph. Mem . iii. 1. 7; Herodian, iii. 12. 18, vi. 8. 15; Polyb. v. 48. 2. Jesus was moved with compassion for them, because they happened to be in such a plight ( essent; notice how He has expressed His pity in this illustration), and then utters what follows about the harvest and the labourers. We have therefore to regard . and . as illustrations of spiritual misery, which are naturally suggested by the sight of the exhausted and prostrate multitudes (that had followed Him for a long distance).

The form (Lachm. with spir. len .) is found only in D. See Lobeck, Paral . p. 13; Khner, I. p. 508; and for the usual spir. asp. , Gttling, Accentl . p. 205. On the form , adopted by Tischendorf after B C , etc., consult Khner, I. p. 903.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 1340
OUR DUTY TO THE BENIGHTED WORLD

Mat 9:36-38. when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scatteredm abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.

IT is an honour to the present age, that religion has assumed her true character of diffusive benevolence. There is much going forward in the circulation of the Scriptures in the different languages of the world, and in the sending out of missions to every quarter of the globe. But, when I say that there is much going forward, I speak only comparatively with what has been done for ages past: for, in truth, all that is done at present is little more than a drop in the ocean. It is a comfort, however, to know, that the proper office of religion is better understood; and that piety, which, till lately, has been circumscribed within the narrow limits of a mans own family, now comprehends in its efforts the whole family of mankind. This was the religion which our Lord inculcated on his first disciples, and which, from the words before us, I will take occasion to recommend to you.
Let us then consider,

I.

The state of the world at large

Doubtless our Lord spake primarily of the Jews, whose condition, in respect of piety, was truly deplorable. The authorized teachers were altogether intent on their own temporal minterests, whilst they forgot entirely the spiritual and eternal interests of the people: so that the people were really as sheep without a shepherd. Happy would it be if there were not but too much occasion for similar complaints in the present day; and that not only amongst other churches, but our own. However, it is of heathens rather that I propose at this time to speak. They, as my text intimates, are in a state,

1.

Of destitution

[The people fainted through their want of that nourishment which their priests ought to have administered. And amongst the heathen world there are multitudes who feel their need of mercy, but know not how to attain it. Nothing can be more clear, than that the most uncivilized savages have an idea of some Superior Being, whom they conceive themselves to have offended, and whom they wish to propitiate. For this end, they have recourse to penances, and pilgrimages, and self- inflicted tortures. It is quite afflictive to read of the rites prescribed by the priests of different religions for the obtaining of favour with their deities. They seem to have exhausted their ingenuity in searching out modes the most painful, the most odious, the most absurd. And what is the effect? The people, after all their self-denying efforts, faint as much as ever, under a sense of the fruitlessness of their endeavours, and with fearful anticipations of their future doom. Like Hagar, when her little stock of water was consumed, they see no prospect before them, but to lie down and die. No angel have they at hand to point out the fountain; which, though hidden, is close at hand. And this is the state of many hundreds of millions of our unhappy fellow-creatures, even of the whole heathen world. Would to God it were not also the state of millions amongst ourselves!]

2.

Of danger

[Sheep, without a shepherd are exposed to dogs and wolves, who may tear them to pieces at their will: and, in like manner, are the heathen world exposed to the assaults of that roaring lion, who is never satiated with his prey; even with Satan, who prowls throughout the world, seeking whom he may devour. By temptations too on every side, as well as by their own in-dwelling lusts, are they assailed; so that there is indeed no hope of escape for them: for no shepherd have they, to warn them of their danger, or to point out to them a place of refuge. A Deliverer, indeed, is at hand with them, if they did but know where to find him, and how to make their application to him. But they have no man to care for their souls, or to give them the information which they stand in need of. Hence they perish for lack of knowledge: not indeed like sheep, by a mere bodily destruction, but under a load of guilt, that sinks them into everlasting perdition; even into that lake of fire and brimstone, where they shall lie down in everlasting burnings.]
And can we doubt what is,

II.

Our duty towards them?

Our blessed Lord has taught it us: has taught it,

1.

By his own example

[He had compassion on the multitudes. And whence is it that we are so unfeeling towards them? Is it that the heathen are in so much better state than the Jews who attended the ministry of our Lord? Were they who had God in the midst of them by his word and ordinances, such objects of compassion; and are not they who are altogether without God in the world? I say then, again, Whence is it that we perhaps, in the course of our whole lives, have never spent one hour in mourning over their unhappy condition, or in praying to God for them? Had the smallest interest of our own been in jeopardy, we should have thought of it, and devised means to avert the impending calamity. But for their souls we have felt no anxiety; nor have we put forth any exertions for their welfare. Truly, we have lain in more than brutish apathy, when we ought to have wept over them, as our Lord over Jerusalem: and to have had great heaviness and continual sorrow in our hearts, as Paul had for his Jewish brethren.]

2.

By a particular command

[Pray ye, says he, to the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest. And who is the Lord of the harvest, but Jehovah? for all souls are his. And who but He can thrust forth labourers into his harvest [Note: .]? For ministration at home, where ease, and honour, and emolument, are found, multitudes are ready to obtrude themselves, and to solicit employment in the sacred office: but when God inquires for labourers in the heathen world, and says, Who will go for us? how few are found who are ready to reply, Here am I; send me [Note: Isa 6:8.]! No, in truth: there are excuses enough then: one, like Moses, has not the qualifications for so great a work: another has some temporal occupation inconsistent with it: and another has married a wife, or intends to do so, and therefore cannot go. Much labour and little pay, is not the preferment which the generality of us affect: a thousand difficulties rise up to view; and every mole-hill becomes a mountain. And who but God can overcome this sad reluctance? Who can inspire men with zeal sufficient for this holy undertaking? None but He who formed the universe: none but He who called Andrew and Peter from their nets, and Matthew from the receipt of custom. He has all hearts in his hands, and turneth them whithersoever he will; and can convert a proud and persecuting Saul into a humble, loving, and laborious servant of Christ. We should therefore pray to him to effect this. He is a prayer-hearing God, and will not suffer us to seek his face in vain. The whole night did Jesus spend in prayer, previous to his calling to himself his twelve disciples [Note: Luk 6:12-13.]. And who can tell, if we were alike earnest in prayer, what might be effected in behalf of the heathen world? At all events, we are bound to use the means: and we have every reason to believe, that if we would give no rest to our God, agreeably to his direction [Note: Isa 62:6-7.], he would arise for our help, and get himself praise throughout the earth.]

Improvement
1.

Be thankful for the blessings which you yourselves enjoy

[Are you faint, from a sense of your own guilt and helplessness? You have those at hand who are ready to offer you the cup of salvation. Are you exposed to danger? You have shepherds to warn you of it, and to point out to you that Saviour who is both able and willing to deliver. It may be that some of you understand, by painful experience, what it is to feel a sense of Gods wrath upon the soul, and to be harassed with a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation. O, what thanks do you owe to God, that the way of life is so plainly opened to you, and that you are so urgently called to walk in it! Be thankful, then, and avail yourselves of the privileges which you enjoy, and which many prophets and kings have sought in vain.]

2.

Endeavour to extend them to the whole world

[This is the bounden duty of all, to whom the Gospel comes. Ministers and people are alike bound to use the efforts which are within their power: and the poorest and weakest in the universe may lift up his soul in prayer. I call upon you, then; on you especially who are sensible of your own privileges; surely it will be strange indeed if you do not shew a zeal for God. who has so distinguished you; and if you do not endeavour to impart to others the blessings which you yourselves enjoy. To you who are educating for the ministry I would particularly commend this subject and say. Not only pray that God would send forth others into his harvest. but beg him to give you grace. that you may be ready to go yourselves.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

Chapter 41

Prayer

Almighty God, now that thou hast brought us to this our closing day, so that we shall be separated the one from the other for a while, we desire to look back with gratitude, and to bless thee with fervent hearts for all thy lovingkindness and thy tender mercy. To-day we set up our stone of memorial, and we write upon it “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.” When the wind was cold and high, thou didst draw us very closely to thyself and screen us from the bitter blast; when the hill was high and rugged, thou didst either break it down into dust and throw it upon the wind, or thou didst lead us up with ever increasing strength until its very ascent became a new inspiration. Through much land of beauty hast thou led us, through the cornfields on the Sabbath day, and we have plentifully plucked the ripe ears and have rubbed out the corn in our hands, and have eaten it and called it the bread of heaven; yea, again and again hast thou called us to the wedding festival, and thyself hast broken the bread for us and poured out the wine that refreshed our hearts. Wondrous even to the point of miracle, an infinite surprise, has been thy patience, thy care, thy resource; as for thy grace, no hymn of ours is sweet enough to touch the ineffable theme. We unite now, as teacher, as taught, as pastor and people, and in all the various relations we sustain to one another, in blessing thee for the year which closes this day, and in commending one another to thy tender care during the separation immediately to ensue. Let this be the brightest of ail the Sabbaths, let the benediction of this day sink deeply into every heart. As for the shadows, may they be driven away with a great light, and our whole temple-life be filled with thy presence and be resonant with thy praises.

Wherein we have been unkind or thoughtless towards one another, the Lord have pity upon us and altogether forgive every soul. Wherein we have thought one wrong thought or uttered one word lacking in nobleness and in the fire of a true charity, the Lord pity our infirmity and forgive our sin. Wherein we have studied thy word with clearness and insight and with all the power and appropriation of high and illuminating sympathy, the Lord give us a keen memory of everything we have studied, and enable us to treasure the same in thoughtful hearts, and to repronounce it in noble and useful lives.

We commend one another day by day to thy care and blessing. Save us every one, may no wanderer be lost, may no hard heart maintain its obduracy until the very last, may the hammer of the Lord smite it with effect, may the most stubborn of souls offer the hospitality of its love to the redeeming Christ. For Christ we bless thee: he is our Lamb, our Sacrifice, our Priest, our All in All, beginning before the beginning, stretching his duration throughout all eternity, the very origin and source and purpose of the everlasting. O bind us to Christ, cleanse us with his blood, fill us with his spirit, and make us all ministers of his, seen and felt afar like flames of fire.

Let this house be dear unto thee; thou wilt not neglect this as one of thy dwelling-places; here we have set up thine altar, and laid thy Book open wide before our eyes; here we have endeavoured to magnify thee in hymn, and psalm, and anthem, and in the word of exposition and doctrine of truth. O dwell here keep thou the house, be thou the preacher, be thou thyself the Paraclete, and enable thy people who shall come hither from time to time to see more and more clearly this is none other than the house of God. As for our dwelling-places, we give them all to thee; thou only art King of men and Saviour of souls; make our habitations homes indeed, light thou the fire in the winter time and give thou the message to the flowers that grow richly around in the time of summer.

Bless the old man in his weakness, the little child in its opening dream, the busy man amid all his honourable industry, the patient woman and mother in all her domestic ministry; heal the sick, lead the blind by a way that they know not, bid the husbandman be of good heart when he cometh forth to cut the field and throw into its open heart the seed which shall bring forth the staff of life.

The Lord hear all our prayers: the Lord winnow them himself that the chaff may not be answered, but the wheat only; thus have us in thy holy keeping day by day till the little life wears itself quite out and becomes part of thine own eternity. The Lord comfort his people, the Lord’s hand dry every tear from the eyes of sorrow, and the Lord’s almightiness be placed at the disposal of those who have lost their strength and are feeling the pain of feebleness. Amen.

Mat 9:36-38

Christ’s View of the World

When we read that he was moved with compassion, we feel that it did not require much to move the pity of such a heart. It was not moved now for the first time. Again and again as we come along the line of the sacred narrative we have seen his tears, we have heard the piteousness of many of his tones, and have been, touched by the pathos of many of his deeds. The key-word of this divine life is Compassion. If you do not seize that word in its true meaning, the life of Jesus Christ will be to you little more than either a romantic surprise or a dead letter. It is not a life of genius, it is not a display of literary power, it is pre-eminently yet inclusively, a life of love, a history of compassion, an exemplification of the tenderest aspects of the infinite mercy of God. Begin at that point and read the history in that light, and you will see the right proportion of things and their right colour, and you will hear their sweetest and richest music. Again and again, therefore, would I repeat, the master-word of this divine life is the sweet and all-inclusive word Compassion.

Observe what the word means. It means “feeling with ” “feeling for, ” sympathy, a right view of human want and human distress, and a taking upon oneself all the pain, the feebleness, the poverty, and the anguish of those who suffer most. He bare our sins, he carried our iniquities, and himself took our infirmities and sustained our afflictions. You have been reading the life of Christ as if he were one of twenty men, leaders of human thought; we have lectured upon him as if he belonged to a gallery of heroes. Therein have we done him injustice, and therein, too, have we done ourselves injustice, for we have not viewed the great occasion from the right standpoint; therefore have we missed its majesty, its perspective, its subtlest relations, and its deepest significances. He is not one of many, he is many in one. Therein is that singular utterance most true he is All in All multitudinous Man, as great a host as the throng on which he looked; they were detailed humanity, he was our totalised nature. He felt every pang, he responded to every emotion. He is not a priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, he knows us through and through, and he is every one of us, because he is the Son of Man.

“When he saw the multitudes.” Let us lay the emphasis upon the last word for a moment, for it will enable us to seize a new meaning and occupy a novel standpoint. When he saw the multitudes he was moved with compassion; when we see the multitudes we are moved with wonder or with admiration. See if that be not so in matter as well as in humanity. When I see multitudinous matter, a mountain, I am moved with surprise, my wonder arises; I call attention to the infinite mass, and we stand before it with wide-open eyes, and the whole posture is one of amazement. We are wonderstruck that the rubbish should be so infinite, for it is only rubbish the greatest mountain in Europe; no man of you would care for any spadeful of it, no man would be touched by any ten feet of it, no man would go fifty yards to see twenty feet of it; it is when it multiplies itself, foot on foot, pile on pile, mile on mile, until it cools itself in snow, high up in the rarefied air then we run excursion trains to look at it, then we build villas near it and gaze on it with admiration, then we write about it in the public journals; it acquires fame by its vastness, not by intrinsic and detailed value, but by hugeness, by what we should term, in relation to human throngs, multitudinousness.

Now when Jesus saw the multitudes he was not moved with wonder, which is a partial emotion, or with admiration, which is an incomplete and babyish feeling. He was moved with compassion, and therein He differed from every other observer of great things. We know what it is to look at great things ourselves. If you see one soldier, you care but little for the sight; you may point out the intensity of the colour which he displays, or the splendour of his metal, but one passing remark will suffice for that occasion. You see an army, and you are filled with wonder, admiration, delight; it brings to you a sense of power, grandeur, and grandeur never touches compassion, it seems rather to rebuke it. If I see a mighty throng of men, the very last feeling that would come into my heart as an observer would be a feeling of compassion. Multitudinousness means power, multitudinousness means greatness, resource, all kinds of energy, amplitude of strength. Who dare pity a multitude? It could overpower you, run you down, trample you to death why pity it? Pity yourself, little creature, run away from the ever-multiplying throng that marches with the strength of an army and with the pomp of a nation.

Yet here is a man who looks upon a multitude and his heart is filled with pity. He did not say, “How great, what force, what wondrous resources of genius, and strength, and money, and power of every degree!” His heart filled with tears; he said, “It is a sad sight.” If he could have taken any other view of the multitude he never would have been the Saviour of the world. There you see the meaning of his life: it touches you now. This must end in fainting or in sacrifice, must terminate in shrinking from the infinite task, or in heroic conquest in the infinite tragedy.

Those tears have great meaning, those larger emotions than any we have yet seen have a remote and infinite significance. If he had been touched with wonder only he would have failed, if he had been moved with admiration he would have lost his power; but, moved with compassion, he includes every other worthy emotion, and sets himself in a right relation to his task. Nothing but compassion will carry you through any tragedy in life; you cannot go through it merely for its own sake. The hireling will fall asleep over the sick child, but the mother will drive sleep away from her dwelling-place till she has rescued her little one from the power of the enemy, if it be within the scope of her endurance and skill to win so great a triumph. Her compassion keeps her awake, her love makes the night as the day, her pity stops the clock, so that she takes no note of time. Every other emotion grows dumb; wonder must sometimes close its eyes, admiration falls upon itself, sates its appetite and dies of the satiety, but compassion grows by what it feeds on, and is of the very nature of the love of God. He grows in the development of his compassion; he will succeed yet. Beaten back at a hundred points, he will yet win. He shall see of the travail of his soul, which is really but another word for compassion, and shall be satisfied.

It does us good to come into contact with a teacher who sees the whole of his case. We are cursed by partial views. We elect twelve men to judge a case that we may bring twelve different minds to bear upon it and a twelvefold power to grasp it fully. We have to multiply ourselves when we would be great; Jesus Christ always saw the end from the beginning, the entire situation, took the comprehensive view, excluded no aspect of the case with which he had to heal. As judges, we are ruined by our partial cleverness; if we could see more we should feel more and do more.

Take a view of a Christian congregation. What lovelier sight can the earth present? Many men, women, children, gathered together in one house sanctified to the highest uses, sweet hymn, noble psalm, penetrating, triumphant anthem, rich and pathetic prayer, reading of the divine word, exposition of the holy mysteries, exhortation, explanation poured from a loving heart and from an eloquent tongue, the spirit of peace in the house what nobler sight is there upon the earth? I look upon it, and say, “All is well; the old earth is renewing its youth, and all is bright in prospect.” Am I right? I am as far wrong as I can well be within such limits; I am deceived by appearances. I may be right as to the mere literal facts of the occasion, within the four walls of any Christian building; I have only to look outside the window, and I see that in this great metropolis today the majority of men are not in the house of God, nor do they care for its worship and service. You have only to go off the broad thoroughfare, and look down certain passages and openings on the side ways, to see festering humanity, children that were never taught to clasp their little hands in prayer, houses in which there is no word of God, men imbruted, women stripped of their divinity, and the whole human name befouled, cursed, degraded into what is practically perdition. Jesus Christ would not take the view presented by any Christian congregation only, he would see the congregation within and the multitude without; he would take in the whole situation, and seeing it, his tears would drop from our hymns, and great heart-breaking agony would mingle with our broadest and most hopeful prayers.

There are men who take partial views and come to partial and, therefore, erroneous conclusions about everything. There are those who seat themselves within some vernal enclosure or summer paradise, and say, with a foolish chuckle, that the earth is not so bad a place after all. They see a bed of blooming flowers, fiery-hued or gentle-tinted, and they hear birds in the branches twittering, trilling, singing, and making melody in their hearts, and they say the earth is a very lovely place, notwithstanding all the croakers say to the contrary. Now observe how they confound the partial term with the larger word. They see a garden and then speak of the earth, they see a bed of geraniums and then speak of the globe; there is no balance in their sentences, their words do not correspond with one another at both ends of their declarations. The garden is beautiful, the flowers are lovely beyond all that it is possible for the colouring of human heart fully to represent. The painter paints the form, but he cannot touch the fragrance. We admire their poetical sympathy within given limits, but go beyond the garden wall, go into the rough streets, go into the desolate places, take in the wilderness, throw the line around the entirety, bring the whole elements within your purview, and then say what it is. The angel sees it, and says, “Mourning and lamentation and woe.” Jesus sees it and cannot cease his prayer, Jesus looks upon it and is moved with compassion. Do not shut yourselves within your churches and say, “All is well;” do not shut the garden door and rejoice upon the verdant lawn and under the drooping tree, and say, “This is paradise regained.” See every point of beauty, be thankful for every mercy given to you of the divine providence, but always endeavour to take in not a roof but a sky, not a circumference drawn by human compasses, but a horizon that required the sweep of the divine arm to form it, and when you see the entire scene you will be moved with compassion.

“But when he saw the multitudes he was moved with compassion because they fainted” literally because they were vexed, and disturbed, and fretted, and chafed as sheep when the wolf comes into the fold. They hear his panting, they see his eye of fire and his pitiless teeth, and they hear him as he prowls and snuffs and throbs in his cruel desire and design. Jesus not only saw the sheep, he saw the wolf; he not only sees humanity, he sees the devil and his angels, he sees how we are vexed, fretted, torn, disturbed, frightened by ten thousand black spirits that darken the day, and through whose black wings the hot sun can scarcely dart one living beam. He sees men, devils, angels, earth, heaven, and whilst the whole thing sums itself up before his comprehensive and penetrating vision his eyes darken with tears.

He noted that the people were as sheep having no shepherd. This figure of shepherdliness is most beautiful. He himself had the shepherdly heart. He is called the Good Shepherd: he knows his sheep, and many sheep he has that are not of this fold. He lays down his life for the sheep. The hireling fleeth because he is a hireling and careth not for the sheep. All these figures by which Jesus represents himself are figures of tenderness, sympathy, sometimes of weakness, by way of accommodation, to our human infirmities. He could blow the trumpet of thunder, and stand upon the platform of the wind and roar with the tempest blowing from every point of the compass in one fierce blast; but he sees that would overpower and affright them, so he speaks in a still small voice, thunder reduced to a whisper, and therefore not an utterance of feebleness, but a sigh of suppressed and condensed power. He is the gentle Shepherd, the good Shepherd. He made himself of no reputation, he took up our forms of endearment and service and our whole nomenclature of fellowship, sympathy, and love, and he made his tabernacle in our little words, giving them infinite enlargement according to his own purpose and motive. Observe how he comes from the multitude to the shepherd, from the many to the one. It is possible to have one man who can rule and guide and bless a countless host. I am longing for that one Man; I would speak with him a long while. He would be my preacher, my teacher; he would understand me wholly, and would speak to me in great breadths of knowledge and sympathy, and if I had any bitter shameful tale to tell, I could tell him every word of it, and he would answer me in gospels and not in condemnation. Any wolf can bite, any bigot can judge and condemn, any little detestable Pharisee can sit upon the judgment-seat and pronounce upon men whose shoe-latchet he is not worthy to unloose. It takes the great Christ and the Christly heart to judge with large judgment. Show me a man that can take in the large view, who knows all the languages of the heart, all the emotions of the wondrous human spirit, and he shall teach me and shepherd me, and I will fall asleep upon his breast; I will ask no better environment on earth than his strong and tender arm. Save me from the bigot, the literalist, the sectarian, the mean soul, and if ye know where the shepherd is show me his dwelling-place, and he will make my heart bright and young with a new hope.

“Then saith he to his disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous, the labourers are few.” The figure changes. He has been speaking about a shepherd, and now he speaks about labourers. He has been speaking about a fold of sheep, and now he speaks about a harvest-field, and he speaks about both in the same breath. We are punctilious about the consistency of our figures; we dare not risk our reputation by the use of a mixed metaphor; no man dare utter these words as if they were his own. He would be heard of again, he would be laughed at by the last boy that left the school, he would be left by men who may have their weaknesses if you could only find them, but who could never by any possibility perpetrate the unutterable crime of uttering a mixed metaphor.

Both the figures are right: never mind about their juxtaposition. The world is a great sheepfold and a great harvest-field: it is both; it wants shepherds, wants labourers, wants compassion, wants attention. This is the great view of the great Christ; he saw the whole occasion, and saw the figures that were appropriate to it. So we can come into the text when we please. If Jesus Christ had compassion on us, ought we not to have compassion on ourselves? Is it a time for us to be flattering our heart and saying “It is all right” when Jesus Christ is crying great, bitter, hot tears? If he is uneasy for us, even to the point of agony, is it a time for us to be lying on a soft couch and to be saying “All is well”? I would rather take this view of my life than I would take my own.

And then, again, some of us are fit for bringing into the garner. I have come to seek you today as one of the labourers of God. You must not stand out there too long. Already you are golden, mellow, ripened corn, and we now want to take you into the garner will you come? This is a harvest that cannot be cut down against its own will, and garnered against its own consent. It is a great mystery, and the mystery is larger than the figure, the figure only helping us to a very partial treatment of the mystery. You are fifty years of age, and you have been out long enough; you are seventy years of age, and we want to bring you into the garner this very morning. You have ripened and ripened; there is a point after which you will rot and rot. With all the love of my heart no love at all compared with the love of Christ I would ask those of you who are yet outside the fold to hear the shepherd’s voice bidding you come in, and ask those of you who are as mellow corn bowing your heads under the blessing of the summer breeze, or the autumnal wind, to allow yourselves to be garnered in the church and heart of God.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

36 But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.

Ver. 36. He was moved with compassion ] His eye so affected his heart, that it even yearned ( ) towards these silly souls. Ingemuit miserans graviter dextramque tetendit. (Virgil.)

As sheep without a shepherd ] Their pastors were impostors, as Bernard complained of those in his time their Episcopi; Aposcopi (as Espencaeus hath it), their overseers, attendants. That judgment was now befallen them that Moses of old deprecated, Num 27:17 . And this troubled our Saviour more than their bodily bondage to the Romans, which yet was very grievous.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

36. ] Wherever He went, in all the cities.

] ‘ Vexati ,’ harassed, plagued, viz. literally, with weariness in following Him; or spiritually, with the tyranny of the Scribes and Pharisees, their , ch. Mat 23:4 .

] ‘ Temere projecti,’ ‘abjecti,’ ‘neglecti ,’ as sheep would be who had wandered from their pasture. The context shews that our Lord’s compassion was excited by their being without competent spiritual leaders and teachers.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Mat 9:36 . : in the course of His wanderings Jesus had opportunities of observing the condition of the people, and at length arrived at a clear, definite view as to the moral and religious situation . It was very sombre, such as to move His compassion ( , post classical, in Gospels only). The state of things suggested two pictures to His mind: a neglected flock of sheep, and a harvest going to waste for lack of reapers. Both imply, not only a pitiful plight of the people, but a blameworthy neglect of duty on the part of their religious guides the shepherds by profession without the shepherd heart, the spiritual husbandmen without an eye for the whitening fields and skill to handle the sickle. The Pharisaic comments on the Capernaum mission festival (Mat 9:11 ) were sufficient to justify the adverse judgment. Their question on that occasion meant much, and would not be forgotten by Jesus. , , graphic words, clear as to general import, though variously understood as to their precise meaning. The former may mean “flayed” (from , Holtz., H. C.), or “hunted” and tired out (Weiss-Meyer), the practical sense is “exhausted by long, aimless wandering, foot-sore and fleece-torn”. The other points to the natural sequel lying down, scattered about ( ), here one, there another, on the hill side, just where they found themselves unable to go a step further. A flock can get into such a condition only when it has no shepherd to care for it and guide it to the pastures.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Matthew

A CHRISTLIKE JUDGMENT OF MEN

Mat 9:36 .

In the course of our Lord’s wandering life of teaching and healing, there had naturally gathered around Him a large number of persons who followed Him from place to place, and we have here cast into a symbol the impression produced upon Him by their outward condition. That is to say, He sees them lying there weary, and footsore, and travel-stained. They have flung themselves down by the wayside. There is no leader or guide, no Joshua or director to order their march; they are a worn-out, tired, unregulated mob, and the sight smites upon His eye, and it smites upon His heart. He says to Himself, if I may venture to put words into His lips, ‘There are a worse weariness, and a worse wandering, and a worse anarchy, and a worse disorder afflicting men than that poor mob of tired pedestrians shows.’ Matthew, who was always fond of showing the links and connections between the Old Testament and the New, casts our Lord’s impression of what He then saw into language borrowed from the prophecy of Ezekiel Eze 34:12, which tells of a flock that is scattered in a dark and cloudy day, that is broken, and torn, and driven away. I venture to see in the text three points: 1 Christ teaching us how to look at men; 2 Christ teaching us how to feel at such a sight; and 3 Christ teaching us what to do with the feeling. ‘When He saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion, because they fainted and were scattered abroad.’ ‘Then He said unto His disciples, the harvest is plenteous, the labourers are few, pray ye the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers unto the harvest.’ And then there follows, ‘And when He had called unto Him His twelve disciples, He gave them power against unclean spirits to cast them out.’ There are, then, these three points;-just a word or two about each of them.

I. Here we have our Lord teaching us how to look at men.

The picture of my text is, of course, in its broad outlines, very clear and intelligible, but there may be a little difficulty as to the precise force of the language. The obscurity of it is in some degree reflected in the margin of our Bibles; so, perhaps, you will permit one word of an expository nature. The description of the flock, ‘Because they fainted and were scattered abroad,’ is couched in the original in a couple of words, one of which means properly ‘torn’ or ‘fainting,’ according as one or other of two readings of the text is adopted, and the other means ‘lying down.’ Now, the former of these gives a very pathetic picture if we apply it to the individuals that made up the flock. We have then the image of the poor sheep that has lost its way, struggling through briars and thorns, getting out of them with its fleece all torn and hanging in strips dangling at its heels, or of it as lacerated by the beasts of the field to whom it is a prey. If we take the metaphor, as seems more probably to be intended, as applying not so much to the individuals as to the flock, then it comes to mean ‘torn asunder,’ ‘thrown apart,’ and gives us the notion of anarchic confusion into which the flock comes if there be no shepherd to lead it. Then the other word, which our Bible translates ‘were scattered abroad,’ seems to mean more properly ‘lying down,’ and it gives the idea of the poor, wearied creature, after all its struggles and wanderings, utterly beaten and dejected, having lost its way, at its wits’ end and resourceless, flinging itself down there in despair, and panting its timid life out anywhere where it finds itself. So it comes to be a picture of the utter weariness and hopelessness of all men’s efforts apart from that Guide and Shepherd, who alone can lead them in the way. And then both of these miserable states, the laceration if you take the one explanation, the disintegration and casting apart if you take the other, the weariness and exhaustion, are traced to their source, they are ‘as sheep having no shepherd.’ He has gone, and so all this comes. With this explanation we may take the points of view that are thus suggested simply as they lie before us.

First of all, notice how here, as always to Jesus Christ, the outward was nothing, except as a symbol and manifestation of the inward; how the thing that He saw in a man was not the external accidents of circumstance or position, for His true, clear gaze and His loving, wise heart went straight to the essence of the matter, and dealt with the man not according to what he might happen to be in the categories of earth, but to what he was in the categories of heaven. All the same to Him whether it was some poor harlot, or a rabbi; all the same to Him whether it was Pilate on the judgment-seat, or the penitent thief hanging at His side. These gauds and shows were nothing; sheer away He cut them all, and went down to the hidden heart of the man, and He allocated and ranged them according to that. Christian men and women, do you try to do the same thing, and to get rid of all these superficial veils and curtains with which we drape ourselves and attitudinise in the world, and to see men as Christ saw them, both in regard to your judgment of them, and in regard to your judgment of yourselves? ‘I am a scholar and a wise man; a great thinker; a rich merchant; a man of rising importance and influence.’ Very well; what does that matter? ‘I am ignorant or a pauper’; be it so. Let us get below all that. The one question worth asking and worth answering is, ‘How am I affected towards Him?’ There are many temporary and local principles of arrangement and order among men; but they will all vanish some day, and there will be one regulating and arranging principle, and it is this: ‘Do I love God in Jesus Christ, or do I not?’ Oh! for myself, for yourself, and for all our outlook towards others, let us not forget that the inmost, deepest, hidden man of the heart is the man, and that all else is naught, and that its whole character is absolutely determined by its relation to Jesus Christ.

But this is somewhat aside from my main purpose, which is rather briefly to expand the various phases which, as I have already suggested, are included in such an emblem. The first of them is this: Try to think for yourselves of the condition of humanity as apart from Christ-shepherdless. That old metaphor of a shepherd which comes out of the Old Testament is there sometimes used to indicate a prophet, and sometimes to indicate a king. I suppose we may put both of these uses together, as far as our present purposes are concerned; and this is what I want to insist upon. I dare say some people here will think it is very old-fashioned, very narrow in these broad and liberal days; but what I would say is this, that unless Jesus Christ is both Guide and Teacher, we have neither guide nor teacher but are shepherdless without Him. There are plenty of rulers. There was no lack of other authority in the days of His flesh. There were crowds of rabbis, guides, and directors. The life of the nation was throttled by the authorities that had planted themselves upon its back, and yet Christ saw that there were none of those who were fit for the work, or afforded the adequate guidance. And so it is, now and always. There have been hosts of men who have sought to impose their authority upon an era. Where is there one that has swayed passion, that has ruled hearts, that has impressed his own image on the will, that has made obedience an honour, and absolute, abject devotion to his command a very patent of nobility? Here, and nowhere beside. Besides that Christ there is no ruler amongst men who can come to them and say to his servant, ‘Go,’ and he goeth, and to this man, ‘Do this,’ and he doeth it. Obedience to any besides is treason against the dignity of our own nature; disobedience to Him is both treason against our nature and blasphemy against God. ‘Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ, Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.’ There is the deepest reason for His rule.

And as for ‘teacher,’ whom are we to put up beside Him? Is it to be these dim figures of religious reformers that are gliding, ghostlike, to their doom, being wrapped round and round about by ever thicker and thicker folds of the inevitable oblivion that swallows all that is human? Brethren, by common consent it is Christ or nobody. Aaron dies upon Hor; Moses dies upon Pisgah; the teachers, the leaders, the guides, the under-shepherds, pass away one by one; and if this Christ be but a Man and a Teacher, He too will pass away. Shall I be thought very blind to the signs of the times if I say that I see no sign of His dominion being exhausted, of His influence being diminished, of His guidance being capable of being dispensed with? You may say, ‘Oh, we do not want any teacher or guide; we do not want a shepherd.’ I am not going to enter upon that question now at all, except just to say this, that the instincts of humanity rise up in contradiction, as it seems to me, of that cold and cheerless creed, and that we have this fact staring us in the face, that men are made capable of a devotion and submission the most passionate, the most absolute, the most mighty force in their lives, to human guides and ensamples, and that it is all wasted unless there be somewhere a Man, our Brother, who shall come to us and say, ‘All that ever went before Me are thieves and robbers; I am the Good Shepherd; follow Me, and ye shall not walk in darkness,’ ‘He saw the multitudes as sheep having no shepherd.’

Still further, take that other phase of the metaphor which, as I suggested, the text includes, namely, the idea of disintegration, the rending apart of social ties and union, unless there be the centre of unity in the shepherd of the flock. ‘I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered,’ says the old prophecy. Of course, for what is there to hold them together unless it be their guide and their director? So we are brought face to face with this plain prosaic rendering of the metaphor-that but for the centre of unity provided for mankind in the person and work of Jesus Christ, there is no satisfaction of the deep hunger for unity and society with which in that case God would have cursed mankind. For whilst there are many other bonds most true, most blessed, God-given, and mighty, such as that of the sacred unity of the family, and that of the nation and many others of which we need not speak, yet all these are constantly being disintegrated by the unresting waves of that gnawing sea of selfishness, if I may so say, which, like the waters upon our eastern coasts, eats and eats for ever at the base of the cliffs, so that society in all its forms, whether it be built upon identity of opinion, which is perhaps the shabbiest bond of all, or whether it be built upon purposes of mutual action, which is a great deal better, or whether it be built upon hatred of other people, which is the modern form of patriotism, or whether it be built upon the domestic affections, which are the purest and highest of all-all the other bonds of society, such as creeds, schools, nations, associations, leagues, families, denominations, all go sooner or later. The base is eaten out of them, because every man that belongs to them has in him that tyrannous, dominant self, which is ever seeking to assert its own supremacy. Here is Babel, with its half-finished tower, built on slime; and there is Pentecost, with its great Spirit; here is the confusion, there is the unifying; here the disintegration, there the power that draws them all together. ‘They were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd,’ and one looks out over the world and sees great tracts of country and long dismal generations of time, in which the very thought of unity and charity and human bonds knitting men together has faded from the consciousness of the race, and then one turns to blessed, sweet, simple words that say, ‘there shall be one flock and one shepherd,’ and ‘I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.’ Drawing thus, He will draw them into the eternal, mighty bond of union that shall never be broken, and is all the more precious and all the more true because it is not a unity like the vulgar unities that express themselves in external associations. You know, of course or if you do not know it will be a good thing that you should know, that that verse in John’s Gospel which I have quoted has been terribly mangled by a little slip of our translators. Christ said, ‘Other sheep I must bring which are not of this fold,’ the fold being the external unity of the Jewish church-an enclosure made of hurdles that you can stick in the ground. ‘I shall bring them,’ says He, ‘and there shall be one’-not, as our Bible says, ‘fold,’-but something far better-’there shall be one flock’; which becomes a unity not by wattling round about it on the outside, but by a shepherd standing in the middle. ‘There shall be one flock and one shepherd’-a unity which is neither the destruction of the variety of the churches, nor the crushing of men, nationalities, and types of character all down into one dead level beneath the heel of a conqueror, but the unity which subsists in the many operations of the one Spirit, and is expressed by all the forms of the one inspired grace.

Then passing by altogether the other idea which I said was only doubtfully suggested by the words-namely, that of laceration and wounding-let me say a word about the last of the aspects of humanity when Christless, which is set forth in this text, and that is, the dejected weariness arising from the fruitless wanderings wherewith men are cursed. As a verse in the Book of Proverbs puts it, ‘The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them, because they know not how to go to the city.’ Putting aside the metaphor, the plain truth which it embodies is just this, that there is in all men’s souls a deep longing after peace and rest, after goodness and beauty and truth, and that all the strenuous efforts to satisfy these longings, either by social reforms or by individual culture and discipline, are pathetically vain and profitless, because there is none to guide them. The sheep go wandering in any direction, and with no goal; and wherever one has jumped, a dozen others will go after him, and so they are wearied out long before the day’s journey is ended, and they never reach the goal. Put that into less vivid, and, therefore, as people generally suppose, more accurate, language, and it is a statement of the universal law of human history that, after any epoch of great aspirations and strong excitement of the noblest parts of human nature, there has always come a reaction of corruption and a collapse from weariness. What did ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ end in? A guillotine. What do all similar epochs end in, when they do not take the Christ to march ahead of them? An utter disgust and disillusion, and a despair of all progress. That is why wild revolutionists in their youth are always obstinate Conservatives in their old age. The wandering sheep are footsore, and they fling themselves down by the wayside. That is why heathenism presents to us the aspect that it does. There is nothing about it that seems to me more tragical than the weary languor that besets it. Do you ever think of the depth of pathetic, tragic meaning that there is in that verse in one of the Psalms, ‘Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death’? There they sit, because there is no hope in rising and moving. They would have to grope if they arose, and so with folded hands they sit like the Buddha, which one great section of heathenism has taken as being the true emblem and ideal of the noblest life. Absolute passivity lays hold upon them all-torpor, stagnation, no dream of advance or progress. The sheep are dejected, despairing, anarchic, disintegrated, lacerated, guideless, and shepherdless-away from Christ. So He thought them. God give you and me grace, dear brethren, to see, as Christ saw, the condition of humanity and our own apart from Him.

II. And now let me say a word in the next place as to the second movement of His mind and heart here. He teaches us not only how to think of men, but how that sight should touch us.

‘He was moved with compassion on them when He saw the multitude’-with the eye of a god, I was going to say, and the heart of a man. Pity belongs to the idea of divinity; compassion belongs to the idea of divinity incarnate; and the motion that passed across His heart is the motion that I would seek may pass, with its sweet and healing breath, across yours and mine. The right emotion for a Christian looking on the Christless crowds is pity, not aversion; pity, not anger; pity, not curiosity; pity, not indifference. How many of us walk the streets of the towns in which our lot is cast, and never know one touch of that emotion, when we look at these people here in England torn, and anarchic, and wearied, and shepherdless, within sound of our psalm-singing in our chapels? Why, on any Sunday there are thousands of men and women standing about the streets who, we may be sure, have not seen the inside of a church or a chapel since they were married, and that not one in five hundred of all the good people that are going with their prayer-books and hymn-books to church and chapel ever think anything about them as they pass them by; and some of them, perhaps, if they come to any especially disreputable one, will gather up their skirts and keep on the safe side of the pavement, and there an end of it. But Jesus Christ had no aversions. His white purity was a great deal nearer to the blackness of the woman that was a sinner, than was the leprous whiteness of the whited sepulchre of the self-righteous Pharisee. He had neither aversion, nor anger, nor indifference.

And, if I might venture to touch upon another matter, compassion and not curiosity is an especial lesson for the day to the more thoughtful and cultivated amongst our congregations. I have just said that the appropriate Christian feeling in contemplating the state of the sheep without the Shepherd is compassion, not curiosity. That reminder is particularly needful in view of the prominence to-day of investigations into the new science of Comparative Religion. I speak with most unfeigned respect of it and of its teachers, and gratefully hail the wonderful light that it is casting upon ideas underlying the strange and often savage and obscene rites of heathenism; but it has a side of danger in it against which I would warn you all, especially young, reading men and women. The time has not yet come when we can afford to let such investigations be our principal occupation in the face of heathenism. If idolatry was dead we could afford to do that, but it is alive-the more’s the pity; and it is not only a curious instance of the workings of man’s intelligence, and a great apocalypse of earlier stages of society, but, besides that, it is a lie that is deceiving and damning our brethren, and we have got to kill it first and dissect it afterwards. So I say, do not only think of heathenism in its various forms as a subject for speculation and analysis; as much as you like of that, only do not let it drive out the other thing, and after you have tried to understand it, then come back to my text, ‘He was moved with compassion.’ And so pity, and neither anger, nor aversion, nor curiosity, nor indifference is what I urge as the Christian emotion.

III. Let us take this text as teaching us how Christ would have us act, after such emotion built and based upon such a look.

It is perfectly legitimate, although it is by no means the highest motive, to appeal to feeling as a stimulus to action. We have a right to base our urging of Christian men and women to missionary work either at home or abroad, upon the ground of the condition of the men to whom the Gospel has to be carried. I know that if taken alone it is a very inadequate motive. I believe that any failure that may be manifest in the interest of Christian people in missionary work is largely traceable to the blunder we have made in dwelling on superficial motives more than we ought to have done, in proportion to the degree in which we have dwelt on the deepest. We have been gathering the surface-water instead of going right down to the green sand, to which the artesian well must be sunk if the stream is to come up without pumping or wasting. So I say that a deeper reason than the sorrow and darkness of the heathen is-’the love of Christ constraineth me’; but yet the first is a legitimate one. Only remember this, that Bishop Butler taught us long ago, that if you excite emotions which are intended to lead to action, and the action does not follow, the excitation of the emotion without its appropriate action makes the heart a great deal harder than it was before. That is why it is playing with edged tools to speak so much to our Christian audiences, as we sometimes hear done, about the condition of the heathen as a stimulus to missionary work. If a man does not respond and do something, some crust of callousness and coldness comes over his own heart. You cannot indulge in the luxury of emotion which you do not use to drive your spindles, without doing yourselves harm. It is never intended to be blown off as waste steam and allowed to vanish into the air. It is meant to be conserved and guided, and to have something done with it. Therefore beware of sentimental contemplation of the sad condition of the shepherdless sheep which does not move you to do anything to help them.

One word more. Take my text as a guide to the form of action into which we are to cast the emotions that should spring from this gaze upon the world. I will only name three points. Christ opened His mouth and spake to them, and taught them many things; Christ said to His disciples, ‘Pray ye the Lord of the harvest’; and Christ sent out His apostles to preach the Kingdom. These three things in their bearing upon us are-personal work, prayer, help to send forth Christ’s messengers. There is nothing like personal work for making a man understand and feel the miseries of his fellows. Christian men and women, it is your first business everywhere to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ, and no prayers and no subscriptions absolve you from that. In this army a man cannot buy himself off and send in a substitute at the cost of an annual guinea. If Christ sent the apostles, do you hold up the hands of the apostles’ successors, and so by God’s grace you and I may help on the coming of that blessed day when there shall be one flock and one Shepherd, and when ‘the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne’-for the Shepherd is Himself a lamb-’shall feed them and lead them, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

on = concerning. Greek. peri. fainted = were wearied. All the texts (App-94.) read “were harassed”.

as. Figure of speech Simile. App-6.

no. Greek. me. App-105. Read this with having = feeling as if they had, &c.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

36. ] Wherever He went, in all the cities.

] Vexati,-harassed,-plagued,-viz. literally, with weariness in following Him; or spiritually, with the tyranny of the Scribes and Pharisees, their , ch. Mat 23:4.

] Temere projecti, abjecti, neglecti, as sheep would be who had wandered from their pasture. The context shews that our Lords compassion was excited by their being without competent spiritual leaders and teachers.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Mat 9:36. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.

The sight that Christ saw with his eye, deeply affected his heart: He was moved with compassion on them. The expression is a very strong one indicating that his whole being was stirred with an emotion which put every faculty into forceful movement.

Mat 9:37-38. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he well send forth labourers into his harvest.

Pretenders were many, but real labourers were few. God only can thrust out or send forth labourers. Man-made ministers are useless, yet they abound all around us; but where are the instructive soul-winning ministries? Let us plead with the Lord of the harvest to care for his own harvest, and to thrust out his own harvestmen.

This exposition consisted of readings from Psalms 80; and Mat 9:36-38; Matthew , 10.

Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible

Mat 9:36. , He was moved with compassion) The disposition of Jesus was most fruitful in works of mercy.[433]-, tired out) walking with difficulty; a word especially suitable to this passage, concerning which see the Gnomon Mar 5:35. The reading, , is clearly deficient in authority.[434]-, cast down) i.e. lying down. A further step in the path of misery,[435] and yet such a condition is already the prelude of approaching help. Cf. concerning the harvest, Joh 4:35.- , as sheep not having a shepherd) Cf. Num 27:17, S. V.- , as sheep for whom there is not a shepherd.- is properly a shepherd of sheep. Concerning sheep, cf. ch. Mat 10:6.

[433] It was a striking work of mercy to bring wretched souls to a state of spiritual soundness by praying or teaching.-V. g.

[434] E.M. .-(I. B.)

[435] In this condition properly are those, who are destitute of the knowledge of Christ.-V. g.

BCDabc (vexati) Vulg. Hil. read : d, fatigati. Rec. Text has , evidently a marginal gloss to get rid of the strange expression, . Th. , torn off skin, as exuvi from exuo. Here, worn out, as tired sheep, with the of the Pharisees.-ED.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Mat 9:36-38

Section VII.

First Commission of the Apostles, Mat 9:35 to Mat 10:42

J.W. McGarvey

Occasion of the Commission, Mat 9:36-38

36. moved with compassion.-The masses of the people in Galilee had now been deeply stirred by the teaching and miracles of Jesus, but they knew not as yet what direction was to be given to this popular movement. Jesus very aptly compares them, in their bewildered state, to a flock of sheep without a shepherd, scattered over the hills, and faint from fright and running. He has compassion on them, and is moved by this to provide for their relief by appointing twelve men who shall assist him in teaching them now, and shall be shepherds to them hereafter. Men are still like sheep-they must have shepherds to lead them.

37. The harvest.-The figure is here changed from that of a flock to that of a harvest. The condition of the people, as represented in the previous comparison, rendered them like an abundant harvest ready to be gathered in for the master’s use. But as Jesus contemplates it, he laments the absence of laborers, as he has lamented the want of a shepherd. Shepherds to gather them into the fold, and laborers to reap an abundant harvest, are two figures to represent the one want of the unhappy people.

38. pray ye.-When any want is realized, the first impulse of a worshiping soul, and rightly so, is to pray. Jesus here teaches us to pray for more laborers to reap the world’s great harvest, and so long as the laborers continue to remain few in proportion to the harvest, the disciples must continue to offer this prayer. Our compassion should be moved, like his, toward a scattered and distracted world. Like him, too, we must not be content with praying, but we must act. Having told his disciples to pray that laborers be sent, he proceeded in the same discourse to command them to go. (Mat 10:5-7.) It is in vain that we pray God to send laborers unless we go ourselves, or co-operate in finding and sending those whom God makes willing to go.

The Workers Are Few – Mat 9:35-38

Open It

1. In what situations do you tend to feel compassion?

2. What missionaries do you know personally?

3. What do you pray about on a regular basis?

Explore It

4. Where did Jesus go? To do what? (Mat 9:35)

5. Where did Jesus teach? (Mat 9:35)

6. What did Jesus preach about? (Mat 9:35)

7. What kinds of disease and sickness did Jesus heal? (Mat 9:35)

8. What emotion did Jesus feel when He saw the crowds of people around Him? (Mat 9:36)

9. Why did Jesus feel as He did? (Mat 9:36)

10. What helpless animals were the people compared to? (Mat 9:36)

11. In what terms did Jesus describe the situation He and His disciples were observing? (Mat 9:37)

12. How did Jesus describe the number of people helping others come to Him? (Mat 9:37)

13. Who did Jesus tell His disciples to discuss the lack of workers with? (Mat 9:37)

14. For whom did Jesus tell His disciples to pray? (Mat 9:37)

Get It

15. For what non-Christians do you feel compassion?

16. How would you describe the spiritual and moral state of the majority of the people in your town or on your campus?

17. Who are the non-Christians in your life?

18. What can you do to help people see their need for Christ?

19. What skills, gifts, abilities, or talents can you use to help others come to Christ?

20. What barriers stand in the way of people you know listening to the gospel?

21. What can you do to overcome your friends and neighbors objections or reservations about following Jesus?

Apply It

22. For what non-Christians will you pray regularly from now on?

23. What missionaries can you pray for this week?

24. How can you make a difference today in the life of someone who is “harassed and helpless”?

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

The King pitying the Multitudes

Mat 9:36. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.

A great crowd is a demand upon compassion, for it suggests so much sin and need. In this case, the great want was instruction: ” they fainted” for want of comfort; they “were scattered abroad” for lack of guidance. They were eager to learn, but they had no fit teachers. “Sheep having no shepherd” are in an ill plight. Unfed, unfolded, unguarded, what will become of them? Our Lord was stirred with a feeling which agitated his inmost soul. “He was moved with compassion.” What he saw affected not his eye only, but his heart. He was overcome by sympathy. His whole frame was stirred with an emotion which put every faculty into forceful movement. He is even now affected towards our people in the same manner. He is moved with compassion if we are not.

Mat 9:37-38. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the

Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.

His heavy heart sought solace among “his disciples”, and he spake to them. He mourned the scantiness of workers. Pretenders were many, but real “labourers” in the harvest were few. The sheaves were spoiling. The crowds were ready to be taught, even as ripe wheat is ready for the sickle; but there were few to instruct them, and where could more teaching men be found?

God only can thrust out, or “send forth labourers.” Man-made ministers are useless. Still are the fields encumbered with gentlemen who cannot use the sickle. Still the real in-gatherers are few and far between. Where are the instructive, soul-winning ministries? Where are those who travail in birth for their hearers’ salvation? Let us plead with the Lord of the harvest to care for his own harvest, and send out his own men. May many a true heart bo moved by the question, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? “to answer, “Here am I! Send me.”

Fuente: Spurgeon’s The Gospel of the Kingdom

when: Mat 14:14, Mat 15:32, Mar 6:34, Heb 4:15, Heb 5:2

fainted: etc. or, were tired and lay down

as: Mat 10:6, Mat 15:24, Num 27:17, 1Ki 22:17, 2Ch 18:16, Isa 56:9-11, Jer 50:6, Eze 34:3-6, Zec 10:2, Zec 11:16, Zec 13:7, Zec 13:8

Reciprocal: Pro 29:18 – there Isa 51:18 – none Jer 23:1 – pastors Jer 50:17 – a scattered Eze 34:4 – diseased Eze 34:5 – they were Amo 8:11 – but Mat 19:2 – General Mat 20:34 – Jesus Mar 1:41 – moved Mar 8:2 – compassion Luk 6:13 – when Luk 10:2 – are 1Pe 2:25 – ye

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

SHEEP WITHOUT A SHEPHERD

When He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.

Mat 9:36

The bearing of the Lords compassion and command here upon heathendom is divinely weighty. But its directest incidence lies another way. Its first message is for Christendom.

I. A religious country.Our Lord, when He thus spoke out His great compassion, stood in the midst of a religious country. It was a land where the synagogue was everywhere.

II. Externals of religion.To the Lord assuredly the mechanism and externals of religion were momentous things. He was Himself, in His sinless human humiliation, wonderful as the thought always is, a worshipper in the order of the Church of Israel. He opened His Messianic ministry in a synagogue. He was jealous for the sanctity of even the outermost precincts of the Temple. Church, Sacrament, Ministrythese are things as holy, as reverend, as precious in their essentials, as the direct institution of the Lord can make them. But all this must never becloud the Christians recollection of his Lords opinion of mechanism, even where it is Divine, without the Divine breath.

III. Religionism without God.In our Masters view, nothing was so deplorable, so repellent, so formidable, as religionism without the living God. He has nothing but a sacred disgust for the spirit which puts sacrifice before mercy, the traditional detail before the Word of God, the ecclesiastical subterfuge from affection and duty before the plain Divine command, the prerogatives of even a divinely-originated institution before equity and self-forgetting love. To Him, the shepherd void of living love is so little a shepherd that the flock, for all he is to them, is in a profound sense derelict.

IV. The message for to-day.What is the message of all this to ourselves, in our dear Church to-day? God forbid that I should even seem to forget the noble evidences among us in a thousand quarters of the workings, in and through our Anglican ministry, of the Holy Spirit in His living power. But none the lessyea, all the moreit must lie upon the very heart of all of us to see to it that all this leaves us solemnly on the watch against religionism without the living God. For His power and presence in the wills and lives of His ministers, and in the wills and lives of the flock, there is no substitute, there is no second best. It will be still a shepherdless wilderness and a deserted harvest field without the life of Christ beating in our hearts, speaking in our witness, shining in our lives, and so winning living souls to the living God.

Bishop H. C. G. Moule.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

SERVICEPRAYERMETHOD

The Ministry of the Church must correspond to that of her Lord. Difficulties not greater now than then. See how He dealt with them. Take only one problem which is vexing the Church to-daythe spiritual destitution of the masses. It was a problem in our Lords day: how did He deal with it? He was moved with compassion, and His compassion crystallised into action. He went amongst them Himself; He bade His disciples pray for more labourers; He sent out the Twelve. These methods should be ours to-day.

I. Personal service (St. Mat 9:35).This the great need of the Church. We give our money; we need to give ourselves. Never will the masses be won until every Christian is a worker.

II. United prayer.He stirred up His disciples to pray. When the Church prays for men, men will be sent.

III. Method (St. Mat 10:1-5).He sent forth the Twelve. In this development of our Lords ministry there are four great principles which should guide the Church in all time.

(a) Selection. The Twelve were chosen and trained before being sent forth.

(b) Association. Two and two (St. Mar 6:7). We must mass our workers, not isolate them.

(c) Self-sacrifice (St. Mat 10:9-10). This is a strong instinct in the Christian heart, and we err because we do not use it. Work amongst the masses needs men who will forgo the pleasures of life.

(d) Philanthropy. The Twelve were to heal the sick as well as preach the kingdom. Gifts of healing withdrawn, but the principle of caring for mens bodies as well as souls remains.

Bishop F. J. Chavasse.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

9:36

The multitudes were worn out by foot travel in their quest for the favors they hoped to get from Jesus. Their condition caused him to be moved with pity, which fulfilled the many predictions that he was to be a man who could “be touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Heb 4:15).

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Mat 9:36. But when he saw the multitudes. The original indicates that this was on a particular occasion.

He was moved with compassion. Popularity called forth pity. Our Lords sympathy, like ours, was called forth by particular, passing events.

Because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd. A figure, showing the spiritual condition of the people. They were suffering (distressed) from the burdens put on them by those who pretended to be their shepherds, the scribes and Pharisees, and uncared for by these, they wandered (scattered) as sheep left to stray from the pasture. Their physical condition as He looked upon them doubtless made the figure especially apt. All who are without the good Shepherd are thus Spiritually vexed and abandoned.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Mat 9:36 to Mat 10:4. The Sending of the Twelve.Jesus sees the people distressed and scatteredbetter, mishandled and lying helplessutterly unprepared, through lack of spiritual guidance and succour, for the Advent of the Kingdom. It was the hour of opportunity, and if there were enough heralds of the Kingdom, the flock could be folded, the ripe harvest garnered (cf. Luk 10:2the charge to the Seventy; Joh 4:35). He has already chosen twelve disciples (Mt. assumes Mar 3:14), a number corresponding to that of the tribes of Israel (Mat 19:28); now He endows them with authority like His own over demons and disease. On the names see Mar 3:13 ff.* and Swete in loc. Andrew and Philip are pure Gr. names Simon, the first, holds a prominent place in Mt.s Jewish-Chris tian gospel. Mt. groups the twelve in pairs. The Alphus who was father of James is not necessarily the same as the father of Levi (Mar 2:14) or Matthew. Thaddus is a better reading than Lebbus (which is a gloss; it connotes heart, while Thaddus was thought to connote breast); in other lists he appears as Judas (son) of James (cf. Joh 14:22), which suggests that Thaddus is a variant form of Judah or Judas. In Mat 9:4 follow mg.; the evangelists, knowing that the delivering up (paradidomi) was part of Gods plan, never use of Judas the verb that specifically denotes treachery (prodidomi).

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

Verse 36

Fainted; were exhausted with fasting and fatigue.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

9:36 {8} But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.

(8) Although the ordinary pastors cease, yet Christ has not cast off the care of his Church.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

Until now, Matthew presented the crowds as those Galileans who listened to and observed Jesus with wonder. Now they become the objects of Jesus’ concern. His compassion for the multitudes recalls Ezekiel’s description of God’s compassion for Israel (Ezekiel 34). "Distressed" (NASB) really means "harassed" (NIV). It pictures the Jews bullied and oppressed by their religious leaders. They were "downcast" (NASB) because they were "helpless" (NIV). No one was able to deliver them. They lacked effective leadership, as sheep without a shepherd (cf. Num 27:17; 1Ki 22:17; 2Ch 18:16; Isa 53:6; Eze 34:23-24; Eze 37:24). The Old Testament describes both God and Messiah as shepherds of their people (cf. Mat 2:6; Mat 10:6; Mat 10:16; Mat 15:24; Mat 25:31-46; Mat 26:31).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Chapter 9

The King’s Ambassadors – Mat 9:36-38; Mat 10:1-42

I – THE MISSION. {Mat 9:36-38 – Mat 10:1-5}

So far the King Himself has done all the work of the kingdom. But it has grown upon Him, so that He can no longer do it without assistance; He must therefore provide Himself with deputies. His doing so will be the first step in the organisation of His world-wide kingdom. He reveals, however, no plan laid down to meet all possible emergencies. It is enough to provide for necessities as they develop themselves. He constructs no mechanism beforehand into the different parts of which life may be afterwards guided or forced; His only care is about the life, knowing well that if only this be full and strong, the appropriate organization will be ready when it is needed.

In conformity with this principle He does not make His arrangements, necessary as they manifestly are, without first providing that they shall not be mechanical, but vital, that they shall originate, not as a contrivance of mind, but as an outflow of soul. First, we are informed by the Evangelist that the soul of the Master Himself was stirred with compassion as He looked upon the multitude, and thought how much they needed in the way of shepherding, and how little it was possible for them to have. It was no matter of planning for the extension of His kingdom; it was a great yearning over the sheep that were scattered, and torn, {Mat 9:36, Gk. of oldest MSS.} and lost. {Mat 10:6} But it is not enough that the Masters heart should be touched: the disciples also must be moved. So He turns their thoughts in the same direction, urging them to observe how plenteous the harvest, how few the labourers; and therefore to pray that the lack may be speedily supplied. He sets them thinking and praying about it-the only way to lay foundations for that which shall be true and lasting. Let it be observed further, that the two emblems He uses present most strikingly the great motives to missionary work: compassion for the lost, and zeal for the Divine glory. “Sheep having no shepherd,”-this appeals to our human sympathies; the Lord of the harvest deprived of His harvest for want of labourers to gather it in, -this appeals to our love and loyalty to God.

The result of their thought and prayer presently appears; for we read in the next sentence of the setting apart of the twelve disciples to the work. It does not follow, because the narrative is continuous, that the events recorded were; it is probable that an interval elapsed which would be largely spent in prayer, according to the word of the Master.

This is the first mention of the Twelve in this Gospel; but it is evident that the number had been already made up, for they are spoken of as “His twelve disciples.” It would appear from the second and third gospels that, immediately before the delivery of the Sermon on the Mount, the Twelve were chosen from the whole number of disciples to be constantly with Him, as witnesses of His works and learners of His doctrine. By this time they had been so far instructed and trained by their companionship with Christ, that they could be safely intrusted with a mission by themselves; accordingly, He for the first time gives them power to do deeds of mercy of the same sort as those which He Himself had been doing, as signs of the kingdom of heaven.

As the apostles have not been mentioned before, their names are appropriately given here. The number “twelve” was no doubt significant, as suggestive of the twelve tribes of Israel; but there was plainly no attempt to have the tribes represented separately. It would seem as if all were Galileans, except one, and that one was Judas Iscariot (i.e., the man of Kerioth, supposed to be a town in Judea). The reason of this almost exclusive choice of Galileans is in all probability to be found in the simple fact that there were none other available. There had been those, in the course of His Judean ministry, who had after a certain fashion believed on Him; but there was not one of them whom He could trust with such work as this. {Joh 2:23-25} It may be thought, indeed, that surely there might have been some better representative-at least, than Judas proved himself to be-of the southern tribes; but why should we think so? We have no reason to suppose that Judas was a traitor at heart when he was chosen. Perhaps there was in him at that time the making of as grand an apostle as the best of them. It was not long, indeed, before the demon in him began to betray itself to the searching glance of the Master {Joh 6:70} but had he only in the power of the Master he followed, cast that demon out of his own heart, as possibly enough he may have helped in this very mission to cast demons out of others, all would have been well. The subsequent fall of the traitor does not by any means show that Christ now made a mistaken choice; it only shows that the highest privileges and opportunities may, by the tolerance of sin in the heart, be not only all in vain, but may lead to a condemnation and ruin more terrible by far than would have been possible without them.

Not only was the apostolate Galilean, – it was plebeian, and that without a solitary exception. It seems to include not a single person of recognised rank or position. Again, we believe that this is to be accounted for by the simple fact that there were none of these available. We cannot suppose that if there had been a disciple like Paul in the ranks, the Master would have hesitated to give him a place in the sacred college; but, seeing there was none, He would not go out of His way to secure a representative of the learned or the great. Had Nicodemus been bold enough to come out decidedly on the Lords side, or had Joseph of Arimathea developed earlier that splendid courage which he showed when the Masters work on earth was done, we can scarcely doubt that their names might have been included in the roll. But there is no such name; and now, as we look back, was it not better so? Otherwise there could not have been such a wonderful illustration of the great fact that “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty”; there could not otherwise have been the same invincible evidence that the work these men did was not the work of men, but was indeed and in truth the doing of God.

Though they were all from the lower ranks of life, they were characterised by great varieties of gifts and dispositions. Some of them, indeed, are scarcely known to us at all. It may be that they were more or less ordinary men, who made no special mark; but it would be rash to set this down as certain, or even as probable, seeing that our records of the time are so scanty, and are manifestly constructed with the idea, not of giving to every man his due-as would be the poor ideal of a mere writer of history-but of making nothing of the men, and everything of the cause and of the Master in Whose great Personality theirs was merged. But those of them who do appear in the records are men of such varied dispositions and powers that the Twelve might after all have been a fair miniature of the Church at large. Some of the selections seem very strange. We have already referred to Judas the traitor. But there were those among them who must have been far less likely men than he. There were two in particular, the choice of whom seemed to violate all dictates of wisdom and prudence. These were Matthew the publican and Simon the Cananean or Zealot. To have a publican, hated as the whole class was, among the apostles, was apparently to invite the hostility and contempt of the great majority of the nation, and especially of those who were strongly national in feeling. On the other hand, to invite one who was known as a Zealot a radical and revolutionist in politics, a man who had identified himself with the wildest schemes for the overthrow of the Government, was to provoke the opposition of all the law-abiding and peace-loving people of the time. Yet how could the heavenly King have more effectually shown that His kingdom was not of this world, that the petty party spirit of the day had no place in it whatever, that it mattered not what a man had been, if now he was renewed in the spirit of his mind, and consecrated in heart and soul and life to do the will of God and serve his Master Christ?

So it has come to pass that, though these twelve men had nothing at all to recommend them to the favour of the world, and though there was very much from every worldly point of view to create the strongest prejudices against them and to militate against their influence, yet they have, by the grace of their Divine Master, so triumphed over all, that when we think of them now, it is not as fishermen, nor as publican or Zealot-even the traitor has simply dropped out of sight-we see before us only “the glorious company of the apostles”!

II-THE COMMISSION. {Mat 10:5-42}

“These twelve Jesus sent forth” (in pairs, as we learn elsewhere, and as is indicated here, perhaps, by the grouping in the list), “and charged them.” This leads us to look at their commission. It begins with a limitation, which, however, was only to be temporary. The time had not yet come for the opening of the door to the Gentiles. Besides this, we must remember that the Saviours heart was yearning over His own people. This appears in the tender way He speaks of them as “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Moreover, the apostles were by no means ready, with all their national prejudices still rank in them, to be intrusted with so delicate and difficult a duty as getting into communication with an alien race. Accordingly their field is strictly limited to their own countrymen.

There seems to have been a limitation also in their message. They had themselves been to some extent instructed in regard to the nature of the kingdom, its blessedness, its righteousness, its leading principles and features; but, though they may have begun to get some glimpse of the truth in regard to these great matters, they certainly had not yet made it their own; accordingly they are given, as the substance of their preaching, only the simple announcement, with which the Baptist had also begun his ministry, and with which Christ commenced His: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Though there seems to have been a limitation on the teaching side, there was none on the side of healing, for their Lord empowers them to do the very same things for the relief of their suffering fellow-countrymen as they had seen Himself doing. We have already seen how much teaching there was in these signs of the kingdom; and we can well believe that it was far better, considering the stage of advancement the apostles had reached, that reliance should be placed on the light such deeds of mercy would necessarily throw on the nature of the kingdom, than on any exposition which, apart from their Master, they could at that time have been able to give. Above all it is to be clear that the privileges of the kingdom are free to all; its blessings are to be dispensed without money and without price: “Freely ye have received, freely give.”

How, then, were they to be supported? About this they were to give themselves no concern. They were now to put in practice the great command, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness,” relying on the promise, “all these things shall be added unto you.” But in no miraculous way are they to look for the provision of their wants. They are to be maintained by those among whom and for whom they labour. This was to be no burden, but a privilege, reserved for those who were found “worthy.” {Mat 10:11} Nor was it to be divided among as many as possible. They were to stay on with the same person who first received them, as the one whom the Master had chosen for the honour; while, if any refused to recognise it as a privilege, there was to be no weak solicitation, but a dignified withdrawal. The regulations throughout are manifestly intended to keep most vividly before their minds that they went not in their own names, nor in their own strength, nor at their own charges, -that they were ambassadors of a King, clothed with His authority, armed with His power, vested with His rights; so that there is a manifest appropriateness in the solemn words with which this part of the commission closes: “Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city” which rejects you. {Mat 10:15}

The part of the charge which follows, and which the limitation of our plan will not allow us to illustrate point by point, bears not so much on the work more immediately before them as on the whole work of their apostolate. It may have been spoken, as some suppose, later on, and only put here as germane to the occasion; for, as we have seen, the arrangement of this gospel is not chronological, but is largely topical. Still there seems no very strong reason for supposing that the entire discourse was not spoken at this very time; for why should not the apostles in the very beginning of their way have some idea of what it would cost them to accept the work to which they were now called?

The leading thoughts are these: They must expect to be exposed to trial and suffering in the prosecution of their mission. The Master Himself was sorely tried, and the servant must not expect exemption. He is not indeed to court trials, or to submit to persecutions which are not inevitable: “When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another.” On the other hand, when the path of duty lies evidently through trial or danger, he must not shirk it, but face it boldly; and in all emergencies he is to place implicit confidence in Him Whose servant he is: “When they deliver you up, be not anxious how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak” (R.V.). “The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not, therefore.” There is no way of avoiding the cross; and they would be quite unworthy of their Master should they seek to avoid it. Yet there is a great reward for those who bravely take it up and patiently bear it to the end. It is the way to higher honour, {Mat 10:32} and to the only life that is worthy of the name; {Mat 10:39} while to turn away from it is to choose a path which leads to shame {Mat 10:33} and death. {Mat 10:39}

The passage, taken up, as so much of it has been, with the anticipations of ill-treatment which the apostles will receive in setting out as sheep in the midst of wolves, closes most appropriately and beautifully with a series of blessings on those who will treat them well, ending with the encouraging assurance that even a cup of cold water given to a thirsty disciple will not be forgotten of God.

The lessons on Christian work with which this passage abounds are so numerous that it would be vain to attempt to unfold them. It is not merely a record of facts; it is an embodiment of great principles which are to govern the disciples of Christ in their service to the end of the world. If only the Church as a whole were to think and pray as Christ taught His disciples to think and pray before this great event; and then if the labourers whom God has sent, or would, in answer to the prayers of the Church, immediately send, into His harvest were to act-not necessarily according to the letter, but in every part according to the spirit of these instructions, – using their own faculties with all the wisdom of the serpent, and trusting to Divine grace and power with all the simplicity of the dove-it would not be long before all the scattered sheep were gathered into the fold, all the ripe sheaves garnered for the Lord of the harvest!

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary