At that time Jesus answered and said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes (Matthew 11:25).
“These things” of which Jesus speaks, are His teachings, the truth of the Gospel. That as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.[1] These things are the things which Jesus heard from His Father.[2] Jesus’ teachings are not something new. They have always been God’s teachings. Jesus demonstrates this in the synagogue, when he took up the scroll of Isaiah to read: The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.” Then He closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”[3] His proclamation was met with anger, and the people tried to throw Jesus off a cliff. It was unacceptable and ridiculous to them that Jesus, the carpenter’s son, the son of Mary, the brother of James, Joses, Simon, and Judas, could be the fulfillment of God’s promise to redeem mankind.[4]
From before the foundation of the world, God the Father decided to save man in Christ. Indeed, God the Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.[5] He revealed His plan to save mankind from sin, death, and the devil, after Adam and Eve transgressed in the Garden. He told them that the serpent would strike the heel of the woman’s seed; but He, the promised Seed, would crush the serpents head; the Seed would be injured, but He would deal Satan a mortal wound. Then, God killed animals and clothed Adam and Eve with the skins, showing them that only the shedding of blood could cover the shame of their sin. Adam and Eve believed God’s promise of redemption and ultimate victory. They faithfully looked for the promised Seed who would defeat the devil and set everything right. They taught their children this promise as well; some continued in it, some rejected it. Those who were faithful looked forward, though they didn’t know it, to that which would be fulfilled in Jesus, His birth, death, and resurrection.
And God chose to preserve and transmit His Gospel in the lowly, foolish, and despised things of this world. He hid them from the wise, that is, those who are wise according to their own imaginings; He revealed it to babes, those who are helpless, have no knowledge of their own, and are generally viewed by the world as weak and unimportant – not kings and princes, but shepherds, criminals, and fishermen. He chose Abraham, a pagan nomad, to become the father of Israel, the people out of whom the promised Seed would come. He chose as His prophet, not a king, but Moses, a slave and a murderer. When the time came for the promise to be fulfilled, Jesus, the promised seed of the woman, and of Abraham, wasn’t born in a king’s palace, as the Magi expected.[6] He was born in a humble house, and laid in a manger. Though His earthly parents were of the line of David the king, that royal glory had faded. They were a lowly maiden and a humble carpenter, not royalty. We call His time on earth His state of humiliation, but it is better described by Paul, as he calls us to emulate Christ’s self-sacrificial nature: Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not, consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking on the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
He comes to us today in humble ways, to bring us the promise. He has bound His promise of forgiveness and eternal life to the preaching of His word, which creates faith in men, who are dead in trespasses, and who are by nature children of wrath. He has bound His promise to the waters of baptism, through which we are buried with Christ; He has bound His promise to bread and wine by which means we eat His body and drink His blood, as He tells us to do, for the remission of sins. Along with Jesus, and His mother Mary, we give thanks to God for the salvation He has given to men in Christ; we marvel with Mary that He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, that He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly.[7]
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