'And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox,
Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and
to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.
33. Nevertheless I must walk to-day, and to-morrow,
and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet
perish out of Jerusalem.'--LUKE xiii. 32, 33.
Even a lamb might be suspicious if wolves were to show themselves
tenderly careful of its safety. Pharisees taking Christ's life under
their protection were enough to suggest a trick. These men came to
Christ desirous of posing as counterworking Herod's intention to
slay Him. Our Lord's answer, bidding them go and tell Herod what He
immediately communicates to them, shows that He regarded them as in
a plot with that crafty, capricious kinglet. And evidently there was
an understanding between them. For some reason or other, best known
to his own changeable and whimsical nature, the man who at one
moment was eagerly desirous to see Jesus, was at the next as eagerly
desirous to get Him out of his territories; just as he admired and
murdered John the Baptist. The Pharisees, on the other hand, desired
to draw Him to Jerusalem, where they would have Him in their power
more completely than in the northern district. If they had spoken
all their minds they would have said, 'Go hence, or else we cannot
kill Thee.' So Christ answers the hidden schemes, and not the
apparent solicitude, in the words that I have taken for my text.
They unmask the plot, they calmly put aside the threats of danger.
They declare that His course was influenced by far other
considerations. They show that He clearly saw what it was towards
which He was journeying. And then, with sad irony, they declare that
it, as it were, contrary to prophetic decorum and established usage
that a prophet should be slain anywhere but in the streets of the
bloody and sacred city.
There are many deep things in the words, which I cannot touch in the
course of a single sermon; but I wish now, at all events, to skim
their surface, and try to gather some of their obvious lessons.