Project Gutenberg's Expositions of Holy Scripture, by Alexander Maclaren #2 in our series by Alexander MaclarenCopyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloadingor redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do notchange or edit the header without written permission.Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of thisfile. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can alsofind out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts****eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971*******These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIIIAuthor: Alexander MaclarenRelease Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7351] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was firstposted on April 19, 2003]Edition: 10Language: English*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***Produced by Anne Folland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading TeamEXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTUREALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.ST. ...
Project Gutenberg's Expositions of Holy Scripture, by Alexander Maclaren #2 in our series by Alexander Maclaren
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading
or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not
change or edit the header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this
file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also
find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII
Author: Alexander Maclaren
Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7351] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first
posted on April 19, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***
Produced by Anne Folland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading TeamEXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
ST. MATTHEW
Chaps. IX to XXVIIIEXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
ST. MATTHEW
Chaps. IX to XVIICONTENTS
CHRIST'S ENCOURAGEMENTS (Matt. ix. 2)
SOUL-HEALING FIRST: BODY-HEALING SECOND (Matt. ix. 6)
THE CALL OF MATTHEW (Matt. ix. 9-17)
THE TOUCH OF FAITH AND THE TOUCH OF CHRIST (Matt. ix. 18-31)
A CHRISTLIKE JUDGMENT OF MEN (MATT. ix. 36)
THE OBSCURE APOSTLES (Matt. x. 5)
CHRIST'S CHARGE TO HIS HERALDS (Matt. x. 5-16)
THE WIDENED MISSION, ITS PERILS AND DEFENCES (Matt. x. 16-31)
LIKE TEACHER, LIKE SCHOLAR (Matt x. 24, 25)
THE KING'S CHARGE TO HIS AMBASSADORS (Matt. x. 32-42)
A LIFE LOST AND FOUND (Matt. x. 39)
THE GREATEST IN THE KINGDOM, AND THEIR REWARD (Matt. x. 41, 42)
JOHN'S DOUBTS OF JESUS, AND JESUS' PRAISE OF JOHN (Matt. xi. 2-15)
THE FRIEND OF PUBLICANS AND SINNERS (Matt. xi. 19)
SODOM, CAPERNAUM, MANCHESTER (Matt. xi. 20)
CHRIST'S STRANGE THANKSGIVING (Matt. xi. 25)
THE REST GIVER (Matt. xi. 28, 29)
THE PHARISEES' SABBATH AND CHRIST'S (Matt. xii. 1-14)
AN ATTEMPT TO ACCOUNT FOR JESUS (Matt. xii. 24)
'MAKE THE TREE GOOD' (Matt. xii. 33)
'A GREATER THAN JONAS' (Matt. xii. 41)
'A GREATER THAN SOLOMON' (Matt. xii. 42)
FOUR SOWINGS AND ONE RIPENING (Matt. xiii. 1-9)
EARS AND NO EARS (Matt. xiii. 9)
'TO HIM THAT HATH SHALL BE GIVEN' (Matt. xiii. 12)
SEEING AND BLIND (Matt. xiii. 13)
MINGLED IN GROWTH, SEPARATED IN MATURITY (Matt. xiii. 24-30)
LEAVEN (Matt. xiii. 33)
TREASURE AND PEARL (Matt. xiii. 44-46)
THE MARTYRDOM OF JOHN (Matt. xiv. 1-12)
THE GRAVE OF THE DEAD JOHN AND THE GRAVE OF THE LIVING JESUS (Matt. xiv. 12; xxviii. 8)
THE FOOD OF THE WORLD (Matt. xiv. 19, 20)
THE KING'S HIGHWAY (Matt. xiv. 22-36)
PETER ON THE WAVES (Matt. xiv. 28)
THB CRUMBS AND THE BREAD (Matt. xv. 21-31)
THE DIVINE CHRIST CONFESSED, THE SUFFERING CHRIST DENIED (Matt. xvi. 13-28)CHRIST FORESEEING THE CROSS (Matt. xvi. 21)
THE KING IN HIS BEAUTY (Matt. xvii, 1-13)
THE SECRET OF POWER. (Matt. xvii. 19, 20)
THE COIN IN THE FISH'S MOUTH (Matt. xvii. 25, 26)CHRIST'S ENCOURAGEMENTS
'Son, be of good cheer.'—MATT. ix. 2.
This word of encouragement, which exhorts to both cheerfulness and courage, is often upon Christ's lips. It is only once
employed in the Gospels by any other than He. If we throw together the various instances in which He thus speaks, we
may get a somewhat striking view of the hindrances to such a temper of bold, buoyant cheerfulness which the world
presents, and of the means for securing it which Christ provides.
But before I consider these individually, let me point you to this thought, that such a disposition, facing the inevitable
sorrows, evils, and toilsome tasks of life with glad and courageous buoyancy, is a Christian duty, and is a temper not
merely to be longed for, but consciously and definitely to be striven after.
We have a great deal more in our power, in the regulation of moods and tempers and dispositions, than we often are
willing to acknowledge to ourselves. Our 'low' times—when we fret and are dull, and all things seem wrapped in gloom,
and we are ready to sit down and bewail ourselves, like Job on his dunghill—are often quite as much the results of our
own imperfect Christianity as the response of our feelings to external circumstances. It is by no means an unnecessary
reminder for us, who have heavy tasks set us, which often seem too heavy, and are surrounded, as we all are, with
crowding temptations to be bitter and melancholy and sad, that Christ commands us to be, and therefore we ought to be,
'of good cheer.'
Another observation may be made as preliminary, and that is that Jesus Christ never tells people to cheer up without
giving them reason to do so. We shall see presently that in all cases where the words occur they are immediately
followed by words or deeds of His which hold forth something on which, if the hearer's faith lay hold, darkness and gloom
will fly like morning mists before the rising sun. The world comes to us and says, in the midst of our sorrows and our
difficulties, 'Be of good cheer,' and says it in vain, and generally only rubs salt into the sore by saying it. Jesus Christ
never thus vainly preaches the duty of encouraging ourselves without giving us ample reasons for the cheerfulness which
He enjoins.
With these two remarks to begin with—that we ought to make it a part of our Christian discipline of ourselves to seek to
cultivate a continuous and equable temperament of calm, courageous good cheer; and that Jesus Christ never
commands such a temper without showing cause for our obedience—let us turn for a few moments to the various
instances in which this expression falls from His lips.
I. Now the first of them is this of my text, and from it we learn this truth, that Christ's first contribution to our temper of
equable, courageous cheerfulness is the assurance that all our sins are forgiven.
'Son, be of good cheer,' said He to that poor palsied sufferer lying there upon the little light bed in front of Him. He had
been brought to Christ to be cured of his palsy. Our Lord seems to offer him a very irrelevant blessing when, instead of
the healing of his limbs, He offers him the forgiveness of his sins. That was possibly not what he wanted most, certainly it
was not what the friends who had brought him wanted for him, but Jesus knew better than they what the man suffered
most from and most needed to have cured. They would have said 'Palsy.' He said, 'Yes! but palsy that comes from sin.'
For, no doubt, the sick man's disease was 'a sin of flesh avenged in kind,' and so Christ went to the fountain-head when
He said, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee.' He therein implied, not only that the man was longing for something more than his
four kindly but ignorant bearers there knew, but also that the root of his disease was extirpated when his sins were
forgiven.
And so, in like manner, 'thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.' There is nothing that so drapes a soul with
darkness as either the consciousness of unforgiven sin or the want of consciousness of forgiven sin. There may be plenty
of superficial cheerfulness. I know that; and I know what the bitter wise man called it, 'the crackling of thorns under the
pot,' which, the more they crackle, the faster they turn into powdery ash and lose all their warmth. For stable, deep,
lifelong, reliable courage and cheerfulness, there must be thorough work made with the black spot in the heart, and the
black lines in the history. And unless our comforters can come to us and say, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee,' they are only
chattering nonsense, and singing songs to a heavy heart which will make an effervescence 'like vinegar on nitre,' when
they say to us, 'Be of good cheer.' How can I be glad if there lie coiled in my heart that consciousness of alienation and
disorder in my relations to God, which all men carry with them, though they overlay it and try to forget it? There is no basis
for a peaceful gladness worthy of a man except that which digs deep down into the very secrets of the heart, and lays the
first course of the building in the consciousness of pardoned sin. 'Son, be of good cheer!' Lift up thy head. Face smaller
evils without discomposure, and with quietly throbbing pulses, for the fountain of possible terrors and calamities is
stanched and stayed with, 'Thy sins are forgiven thee.'
Side by side with this first instance, illustrating the same general thought, though from a somewhat different point of view,
I may put another of the instances in which the same phrase was soothingly on our Lord's lips. 'Daughter,' said He to the
poor woman with the issue of blood, 'be of good cheer. Thy faith hath saved thee.' The consciousness of a living union
with God through Christ by faith, which results in the present possession of a real, though it may be a partial, salvation, is
indispensable to the temper of equable cheerfulness of which I have been speaking. Apart from that consciousness, you
may have plenty of excitement, but no lasting calm. The contrast between the drugged and effervescent potion which the
world gives as a cup of gladness, and the pure tonic which Jesus Christ administers for the same purpose, is infinite. Hesays to us, 'I forgive thy sins; by thy faith I save thee; go in peace.' Then the burdened heart is freed from its oppression,
and the downcast face is lifted up, and all things around change, as when the sunshine comes out on the wintry
landscape, and the very snow sparkles into diamonds. So much, then, for the first of the instanc