'I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.'
--MATT. xi. 25.
When Jesus was about to cure one dumb man, He lifted up His eyes to
heaven and sighed. Sorrow filled His soul in the act of working
deliverance. The thought of the depth of the miseries He had come to
heal, and of the ocean of them which He was then diminishing but by
one poor drop, saddened Him. When Jesus thought of the woes that had
fallen on the impenitent Sodom, and of the worse that still remained
to be revealed at the day of judgment, He rejoiced in spirit.
Strange! and yet all in harmony with His depth of love. This once,
and this once only, do we read that His heart filled with joy. Did
He lift up His solemn thanksgiving to God, for the woes that had
fallen on Chorazin? Oh no! For the blinding of the wise and prudent?
Oh no! For the revelation to babes? Yes, and not only for that, but
for that full and universal offer and possibility of salvation,
which forms the reason for both the revelation to babes and the
hiding from the wise. If we attend to the connection of this passage
we get light on its force. It begins with a clear prophecy of
endless woe and sorrow upon the rejecters. Then comes my text,
alleviating the terror of that thought of destruction by showing the
principles on which the reception and rejection are especially
based, the sort of people who receive and who reject. Then follows
the reason why the wise are shut out and the babes let in. That
reason is not only God's inscrutable decree, but something in the
very nature of the Gospel. God is hidden from all human sight. There
is one divine Revealer apart from whom all is darkness. 'Neither
doth any man know the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son willeth to reveal Him.' That is the characteristic which shuts
out the wise and lets in the simple.
Then follows the great call to all to come to Him. The practical
issue of all these solemn thoughts is that the Gospel is a Gospel
for all the world, and that the one qualification for coming within
the terms of its offer is to be 'weary and heavy laden.' Thus all
ends in the broad universality of the message, in its adaptation to
all, in its offer to all; and thus it is shown that every apparent
exclusion of any is but the result of its free offer to all, and
that to say 'Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent'
is but to say, 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the
waters.' Well then might joy fill the heart of the Man of Sorrows.
Well might He lift up His solemn thanksgiving to God and say, 'I
thank Thee, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth.'