How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." Sermons
I. TO VANQUISH MALIGNITY. 1. Malignity was embodied in the Pharisees. (1) They sought to accuse the Son of God of profanity. This was to convert the highest virtue into the deepest vice, and to confound all moral order. Note: Matthew says, "And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? that they might accuse him." According to Luke (Luke 6:8), Jesus read the question in their thoughts. Learn that in the Lord's sight speech and thought are one. (2) They sought to murder the Saviour of the world. This was, as far as in them lay, to destroy God and man at a stroke. This was the expression of their vexation, because the doctrine of Christ mortified their pride, exposed their hypocrisy, and crossed their worldly interests, and their honour was eclipsed by his life and miracles. (3) Their malignity was deliberate. It was not the sudden ebullition of unthinking passion. They evidently agreed, in the first instance, to tempt him. Then, certainly, they "took counsel against him, how they might destroy him." (4) This was all done under the mask of religion. The pretext was zeal for the sanctity of the sabbath. The wicked have no objection to the holiness of things; it is the holiness of persons that offends them. If they could convict Jesus of blasphemy in his saying that he was greater than the temple, or of profanity in breaking the sabbath, death would be the penalty (see Exodus 35:2). Note: There is a religion of Satan as well as a religion of God. The religion of Satan is a parody upon the religion of God. As love is the essence of the religion of God, malignity is the spirit of the religion of Satan. 2. Malignity is vanquished by exposure. (1) The case of the sheep was a home-thrust. The ritualists allowed the exception, not out of mercy to the animal, but from selfishness. "Take tender care of the goods of an Israelite" was with the Jews a cherished canon. Self-interest is a casuist first consulted, decisive in the removal of scruples, and readily obeyed. (2) Ritualism had no mercy for the withered hand in which the Pharisee had no property. Our Lord invaded a heartless superstition when he established the principle that it is lawful to do good on the sabbath day. (3) But the question returns, "How much is a man of more value than a sheep?" Yet are there many called Christians who do more for the beast of burden or pleasure than they will for a man. They spend that upon hunters, coursers, spaniels, and hounds of which many followers of Christ are destitute. (4) The spiritual nature of man - his faculties for knowing, loving, and serving God - invest him with his vast superiority. How much better, then, is the philanthropy which blesses the soul even than that which terminates in the body! 3. Malignity is left to its own punishment. (1) "The Pharisees went out," viz. from the presence of Christ. Evil shuns the goodness that rebukes it. Falsehood shuns the truth that exposes it. (2) They went out, not like Peter to weep bitter tears of repentance, but to take evil counsel. (3) Jesus "withdrew" when they "went out." He "perceived" their purpose by his Divine faculty of reading hearts. He left them in the desperation of their obstinacy. They were abandoned to themselves - murderers to murderers, human and infernal. (4) The withdrawal of Jesus is the presage of vengeance. So it was when he left the temple and the city of Jerusalem. At his second coming be will send forth judgment unto victory. II. TO MAGNIFY MERCY. 1. He vindicates the spirit of the Law. (1) The spirit of the Law is love. The Law was given in love to man. Its end is to foster in him grateful and obedient love to God. The spirit of the Law is another name for the gospel. (2) Through excessive zeal for the letter, the Jewish ritualists lost sight of this. The Law was in consequence converted into an intolerable burden. (3) Jesus came not to destroy but to fulfil the Law, which he did by bringing out its spirit. In order to this he assailed the traditions which the ritualists had confounded with the Law. 2. He sets a high value upon man. (1) "How much is a man better than a sheep?" Under the Law sheep were offered in sacrifice for the sin of man; but they could not take it away. Hence they appeared again and again upon the altar. The utmost they could do was to call sin to remembrance, and point to a more worthy sacrifice. (2) Jesus himself became that more worthy Sacrifice. "He hath put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." So completely did he effect this "once for all," that there is now "no more remembrance of sin." The price he paid was the precious blood of the Son of God. (3) He freely dispenses healing power. He "restored whole as the other" the withered hand with a word. He did not even give the pretext of the touch to those who would accuse him of breaking the sabbath law. So did he heal "all" that followed him when he withdrew from the Pharisees. (4) But he required the faith of the suppliant. "Stretch forth thine hand." The poor man had often tried to do this in his own strength, and failed. The effort to believe is often that faith by which the soul is healed. 3. He shows compassion to the Gentiles. (1) His question is not, "How much is the Jew better than a sheep?" He took hold of the "seed of Abraham," but in doing so he was "made in the likeness of men," without limitation. (2) His action in withdrawing from the unbelieving Pharisees was parabolic as well as prudential; for it is noteworthy that in his following now we find many of the Gentiles (see Mark 3:6-8). The portent was that when the nation of the Jews should reject the gospel, then the gospel would leave them and offer its blessings to the Gentiles (cf. Acts 13:46; Acts 18:6; Acts 28:28). (3) The justness of this remark appears in the citation from Isaiah in which Messiah is predicted as coming to declare judgment to the Gentiles, and to give them "hope" in his Name (vers. 18, 22). For this prediction is here mentioned as now fulfilled. "He charged" those he healed "that they should not make him known," viz. as their Healer, to the unbelievers, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah. (4) Considering the Gentiles is in other prophecies likewise made a mark of Messiah (see Genesis 49:10; Psalm 2:8; Zechariah 9:10; Isaiah 2:3). 4. He is gentle with the frail. (1) Gentleness is natural to him. His voice is not heard in clamour. The Jews looked for a Messiah wielding the sword. Matthew shows how Jesus fulfils the prophecies in his non-resistance to evil and injury. (2) The timid may hope in his mercy. A bruised reed" is a remarkable emblem of extreme frailty and weakness (see Ezekiel 29:6, 7). One bruised by the weight of sin "he will not break." He will not terrify the penitent by a frown. "A smoking flax shall he not quench." Rather will he cherish the feeblest fire of holy desire. (3) "Till he send forth judgment unto victory." For "mercy rejoices upon judgment." - J.A.M.
How much then is a man better than a sheep! This is not a question, but an exclamation, and it is so punctuated in the Revised Version. Exclamation rare with our Lord; He can say great things without becoming perturbed. "How much, then, is a man better than a sheep?"1. Our reading of this exclamation is not appreciative till we realize that in it the Son of Man was not propounding a theory, but uncovering an experience. He is hinting here at what He knew. "He knew what was in man" — was conscious of Himself; we are not. I do not know what we should say if we could understand all that it means to be a man. Almost every one has times when he stands in awe of himself. Christ utters no word that cheapens man. He exhorts to humility, but humility is a symptom of dignity. Conceit one thing; sense of worth another. 2. Even sin, too, has about it something that in this matter is pleasantly suggestive. It is better to be a man that sins than a sheep that cannot. A man's moral corruption is index of the native moral grandeur. It is important that men should be saved, because there is so much for them to be saved to as well as from. 3. There is in man, also, a certain power to transcend limitations that gives him just a flavour of infinitude. The spirit chafes under restraints; has a sense continually of something outside that it has not yet gotten to; makes for itself a larger and larger world; stretches itself back in memory, and forward in surmise. 4. It is rather in the line of this to say that we are persuaded how great a thing it is to be a man, by observing the ease with which man can receive a Divine revelation. Man and God will have to be understood as standing to one another within intelligent reach. It is not the fact that there can be a Divine revelation so much as what it contains that convinces us of the dignity inherent in our nature. The cross proves God's esteem for the sinner. Man's worth explains redemption; not redemption man's worth. (C. H. Parkhurst.) The two take cognizance of different matters. My conceit occupies itself with what I have that is different from others; my sense of worth occupies itself with what I am in common with others. Conceit therefore separates men, while just sense of worth only draws them more closely together. Hence where there is the largest self-respect there will be always the largest and gentlest respect for other people. Once in a while we are a surprise to ourselves; are stirred at times by what we seem to get upon the track of when we take deep, quiet counsel with our own hearts. We appear to be upon the edge of something. Every soul has what it calls its grand moments. A sort of refraction appears for an instant to throw above our horizon lights that are not yet risen.(C. H. Parkhurst.) Men's estimate of God will maintain a certain proportion with their estimate of themselves. Even shadows keep a certain ratio with the objects that cast them. Christianity gives us a deepening sense of human worth, and through that deepened sense of human worth we reach a higher sense of God's worth, and theology is bound to expand along the brightening lines of the human self-consciousness; and the gospel and humanity play backward and forward upon one another, like the sun which brightens the eye so that it can see the sun; like the stars which wake up the eye so that it can find more of the stars.(C. H. Parkhurst.) A man's moral corruption is index of the native moral grandeur of the man; just as the wealth of weeds in a field, equally with the wealth of wheat in the same field, measures the potency and richness of the soil. The strength of the spring can be calculated as well by the distance which the pendulum swings to the left of the perpendicular, as by the distance of its swing to the right. There is the same degree of sinfulness in a sin as there is of personal worth in the man that commits it. Here, too, the shadow keeps a ratio with the object that casts it; and the blackness of the shadow will vary with the brightness of the sunshine that gets excluded.(C. H. Parkhurst.) We are like the bird in the cage that is kept inside the bars, but lives in continuous communication with the air and light without, as though animated still with a sense of freedom that has been forgotten. The Shinarites built into the air. The giants piled Ossa on Pelion. Everything is to us small because there is a larger; everything partial because there is a whole. Assurance continually runs ahead of verification. Everything that gets in our way is felt by us almost as an impropriety and an indignity. In one way the earth is larger than we, in others it is a great deal smaller. It is compelled to loan itself to our service. Mind masters matter. We tame and harness the forces of nature and put them to our work. The sea that separates the continents is made over into a highway to connect them. 'We play off the energies of nature upon each other, and set the mountain torrent to boring a roadway through the very mountain it flows off from. "We rub out distance and talk through the air to Chicago, and tie our letters to the lightning and post them under the sea to London, Constantinople, and Calcutta. Pent in the body we are, and yet domiciled in all the earth; a sort of adumbration of omnipresence. In the same way thought gets into the sky, slips around upon the ocean of space from star to star as easily as a birch canoe among the islands of any mundane archipelago; finds out what has been transpiring in the heavens for a million years; fixes latitudes and longitudes of suns a thousand years away as the light flies; learns their secrets, weighs them, measures them, exacts from them their biography and their kinships; reads in the star-beams the story of stellar composition; finds the unity that pervades the whole; translates the phenomena of the heavens into terms of terrestrial event; gets at the language in which all the worlds unconsciously think, the lines along which they instinctively act. It is grander to think a world than to be a world. To be able to conceive of a universe is fraught with richer sublimity than to be a universe. We rejoice in the great created world. It pleased God when He had made it, and it pleases us because our tastes are like His. We can discover the laws which work in it. A natural law is a Divine thought. In detecting and threading those laws then we are following where God's mind has gone on before. Mind can construe only what mind constructs, and only when the mind that construes matches the mind that constructs. In this way nature is a mirror that shows both God's face and our own; and scientific truth is only religious truth secularly conceived.(C. H. Parkhurst.) American Homiletic Review. I. MAN IS BETTER THAN THE ANIMAL.1. In origin. 2. In endowments. 3. In destiny. II. PRACTICAL LESSONS. 1. He ought to live better than an animal. 2. He is better worth saving. (American Homiletic Review.) I. THAT A SHEEP IS WORTH SOMETHING, AND IS VERY USEFUL.II. How MUCH ARE YOU BETTER THAN A SHEEP? 1. YOU can use God's Word. Every child can read the Bible. 2. You are better than a sheep, because you are to be praised or blamed for what you do. 3. Because you can grow better than you are now. III. BECAUSE WE ARE SO MUCH BETTER THAN SHEEP JESUS CHRIST CAME TO SEEK AND SAVE US, IV. BECAUSE WE ARE BETTER, THAN SHEEP GOD AND HIS ANGELS ARE GLAD OVER EVERY ONE THAT REPENTS OF SIN. (W. Harris.) People Beelzebub, David, Isaiah, Jesus, Jonah, Jonas, Ninevites, SolomonPlaces Galilee, NinevehTopics Better, However, Lawful, Reason, Sabbath, Sabbaths, Sheep, Superior, Valuable, Value, WhereforeOutline 1. Jesus reproves the blindness of the Pharisees concerning the Sabbath,3. by scripture, 9. by reason, 13. and by a miracle. 22. He heals a man possessed that was blind and mute; 24. and confronting the absurd charge of casting out demons by Beelzebub, 32. he shows that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall never be forgiven. 36. Account shall be made of idle words. 38. He rebukes the unfaithful, who seek after a sign, 46. and shows who is his brother, sister, and mother. Dictionary of Bible Themes Matthew 12:12 1194 glory, divine and human Library An Attempt to Account for Jesus'But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man doth not cast out demons, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons.'--MATT. xii. 24. Mark's Gospel tells us that this astonishing explanation of Christ and His work was due to the ingenious malice of an ecclesiastical deputation, sent down from Jerusalem to prevent the simple folk in Galilee from being led away by this new Teacher. They must have been very hard put to it to explain undeniable but unwelcome facts, when they hazarded such a preposterous … Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture 'Make the Tree Good' 'A Greater than Jonas' 'A Greater than Solomon' The Pharisees' Sabbath and Christ's On the Words of the Gospel, Matt. xii. 32, "Whosoever Shall Speak a Word against the Holy Spirit, it Shall not be Forgiven Him, Neither In On the Words of the Gospel, Matt. xii. 33, "Either Make the Tree Good, and Its Fruit Good," Etc. Sweet Comfort for Feeble Saints How to Read the Bible Strength in the Weak. Identity of Christ's Character. What are Evidences of Backsliding in Heart. Lesser and Fuller Forms. Jesus Defends Disciples who Pluck Grain on the Sabbath. Jesus Heals Multitudes Beside the Sea of Galilee. Blasphemous Accusations of the Jews. Sign Seekers, and the Enthusiast Reproved. Christ's Teaching as to his Mother and Brethren. Jesus Defends Healing a Withered Hand on the Sabbath. The Acceptance of the Christian Conception of Life Will Emancipate Men from the Miseries of Our Pagan Life. The Two Sabbath-Controversies - the Plucking of the Ears of Corn by the Disciples, and the Healing of the Man with the Withered Hand The First Peræan Discourses - to the Pharisees Concerning the Two Kingdoms - their Contest - what Qualifies a Disciple for the Kingdom of God, And Opposition to Jesus. The Cardinal was Seated, -- He Rose as Moretti Appeared. ... Links Matthew 12:12 NIVMatthew 12:12 NLT Matthew 12:12 ESV Matthew 12:12 NASB Matthew 12:12 KJV Matthew 12:12 Bible Apps Matthew 12:12 Parallel Matthew 12:12 Biblia Paralela Matthew 12:12 Chinese Bible Matthew 12:12 French Bible Matthew 12:12 German Bible Matthew 12:12 Commentaries Bible Hub |