THE LEARNED

Today’s reading provides one of the most precious and moving prophecies of the Lord Jesus in the whole of Scripture. We are reminded of those private times when, ‘rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed’, Mark 1. 35. Communion with His Father, before He undertook the challenge of each new day, is an example to us all, from One who for more than thirty-three years never wasted a moment!

In John chapter 5 verses 17-32, the Lord Jesus sets out very clearly His absolute equality with the Father. ‘The Son can do nothing of himself’, v. 19, He cannot act independently, He must do and say those things which He has seen and heard of the Father. So, through the prophet, He rightly claims both the tongue and the ear of the learned, the instructed One.

‘Morning by morning’ this lovely, dependent Man filled His heart with the richness of heaven. We are not surprised that ‘gracious words’ came from His lips, ‘a word in season’ to the weary, words of compassion, comfort and encouragement. How ignorant were those who said of Him, ‘How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?’, John 7.15. Had they but known it, He who stood in their midst was the One ‘in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’, Col. 2. 3, whose delight, day and night, was ‘in the law of the Lord’, Ps. 1. 2.

In verse 5 of our chapter, we reach that ‘morning’ when He must ‘steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem’; cf. v. 7. The thought conveyed in the verse is that the matter communicated to the opened ear made great demands on the hearer; something from which one may be expected to draw back. Can we imagine the Divine conversation that day as, alone with the Father, no doubt as often before, He contemplated Calvary? Then, with assurance and satisfaction, as though looking back on a work already completed, He will say ‘I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave my back to the smiters ...I hid not my face from shame and spitting’, v. 6.

Confident of His Father’s approval, v. 7, He turned His face toward Calvary.