I. Where did the Son of God by anticipation rejoice? “Habitable part ofHis earth.” “Sons of men.”
1. The simple fact in itself. Of all creation this insignificant globe of earth is singled out. And of this globe its habitable part. It is with souls He would have to do. It was the empire of mind upon the earth that He in time expected to assume. This puts an honour and dignity upon our poor human nature which it is impossible fully to estimate.
2. Certain circumstances connected with this fact. What claims had earth’s inhabitants upon His regard? We can think of none. Man is an insignificant being and a sinner.
II. Why did the eternal joy of the Son of God centre in this earth? This joy could not have arisen from contemplation of our misery, and far less of our guilt. When He cast a glance down to this earth, what did His mind’s eye discover in its habitable parts? He saw men ruined, and purposed to save them. His atonement was the chief ground of joy to Himself, because the great occasion of glory to His Father and of good to His people. Lessons--
1. Of reproof to careless and Christless sinners.
2. Of consolation to believers. (N. Morren, M. A.)
Christ’s joy in the Church before His incarnation
Wisdom here is a real, not an allegorical person. It is the Eternal Word. Our Saviour informs us that, as soon as the world was made, the habitable parts of it became the scene and subject of His rejoicing. His delights were with men rather than angels. Yet He knew that the world would be wet with His tears and stained with His blood. Why, then, did He rejoice in the human inhabitants of the earth? It could not be on account of man’s intellectual or moral excellency. It must be because in the world the plan of redemption was to be executed, and because men were the objects of it. Our Redeemer rejoiced in the world because--
I. It was destined to be the place in which He should perform the most wonderful of His works. There He would obtain His greatest victory, make the most glorious display of His moral perfections, and in the most signal manner glorify the Father.
II. Because the habitable parts of the earth were the destined residence of His then future Church. They are all destined to be filled with His disciples. Everywhere Churches are to be established.
III. Our Redeemer’s chief delights and pleasures were with men.
1. Because He intended Himself tobecome a man.
2. To many the Divine Redeemer was to become still more nearly related. As His Church.
3. His delights partly lay in its being more blessed to give than to receive. How ungrateful and inexcusable does the treatment which Christ has received from men appear when viewed in the light of this subject! (E. Payson, D. D.)
The voice of God’s eternal Wisdom
I. From the beginning the welfare of man engaged the complacent regard of God our Saviour.
1. He represents Himself here as deriving delight from the spectacle even of the material creation, because it was subservient to man. He looked on material objects as visible realisations of eternal types. On comparing them with the originals in His owninfinite mind He beheld the perfect resemblance, and was satisfied. He beheld them in their prospective application, serving as indexes or intimations of His infinite greatness to myriads of minds which He purposed to create. He looked on these objects as the first in an endless series yet to come. In His first acts of creation the Great Architect was laying the foundation of an all-comprehending and eternal temple. And it was all present in His mind, and He rejoiced in the glorious prospect.
2. There was the happiness of prospectively beholding the activity, enlargement, and progress of the whole system of creation and providence. The prospect of this development of His great plan afforded Him profound satisfaction. This is evident because He has sought at times to throw His Church into an ecstasy of delight by affording them glimpses of its onward course; for the disclosures of prophecy are such glimpses.
3. There was the happiness of prospectively beholding the effects arising from His gratuitous interposition for human salvation.
4. Then there was the happiness derivable from knowing that, important as the recovery of man is, in attaining it He should be attaining an end greater still--attaining the greatest of all ends--the manifestation of the Divine glory.
II. All the Mediator’s communications and intercourse with us are made to harmonise with our welfare also. Tell us the distinguishing wants of human nature, and we will tell you the distinguishing excellences of Divine revelation.
1. From their eager inquiries and their signs of reflection you infer that they are intelligent beings, and from other signs you infer that the subjects which most deeply interest them are those which refer to their origin, their character, and their relation to the invisible and the future. Man’s solution of these problems is puerile, contradictory, and absurd. What is the Divine explanation of the mystery?
2. Man is manifestly a sufferer. Sorrow has but two places of refuge--the sanctuary and the grave.
3. Man is a personally sinful being. The Mediator has made special provision for the necessities thus arising. The vicarious sacrifice of Christ, while providing a complete satisfaction for human guilt, provides that which we equally require--means for the renovation of our sinful nature and motives to a constant progress in holiness. So wonderfully adapted to the susceptibilities, so exquisitely adjusted to all the springs of our nature is the Cross of Christ, that in the hand of the Spirit it relieves our apprehensions, while it quickens our sensibility--gives peace to the conscience while it increases its activity and power--inspires hope while it produces humility, by the very magnitude and splendour of the objects which inspire it--demands perfection, by presenting the affections with an object calculated to produce it.
4. But man is not only a rational, suffering, sinful being. He is groaning and travailing together in pain, casting anxious looks on the future, gazing on the distant darkness, invoking the dead. The burden of his great anxiety is this, “If a man die, shall he live again?” Answering that, Jesus is “the Resurrection and the Life.” Such are parts of that great system of saving truth by which the Saviour seeks to realise those purposes of mercy toward us, the bare contemplation of which filled Him with delight.
III. The Saviour rejoices in such parts of the earth as are set apart for the diffusion of His truth and the promotion of His designs. Man was to have moved over the face of the earth as amidst the types and symbolic services of a temple, where everything was adapted to remind Him of God. Sin has disturbed this adjustment and thrown it in confusion. If this is to be remedied, some counter-force must be employed.
IV. What does Christ expect from a place thus distinguished?
1. He expects you to sympathise with Him in His regard for human happiness.
2. He expects you to aim at results and to look for them.
3. Not only expect the results, but anticipate the consequences of those results. (J. Harris, D. D.)
And My delights were with the sons of men.
Christ’s delight in the sons of men
1. “Rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth.”
(1) “The habitable parts of His earth” are such places where the gospel comes, bringing the good tidings of Jesus Christ and His salvation for lost sinners.
(2) “The habitable part of His earth” is especially intended of such as are, through grace, become “the habitation of God through the Spirit” (Eph_2:22; Eph_3:17; Joh_4:13). The Lord Jesus Christ rejoiced in this habitable part of this earth from everlasting, before there was an earth to be inhabited.
2. The delights of Jesus Christ, from all eternity, were “with the sons of men.”
(1) He knew that by standing as a Surety for His people, and bearing their guilt and punishment, He should also bear away their sins.
(2) He knew that in saving His people, through His obedience in life and death, all the Divine perfections would be more remarkably displayed and glorified than in all the other works of God.
(3) His delight proceeded from the pleasing prospect that He had of men being united to Himself by faith.
(4) He delighted in the prospect of conveying the riches of grace to their souls.
(5) He delighted in the prospect of their sincere services done in faith and love.
(6) He delighted in the prospect of His acting towards them, as the Prophet of His Church, to teach them the mind and will of God for their salvation.
(7) He delighted in the prospect that He hadfrom everlasting, of His people being all brought home to glory, to be for ever with Him. The greatest honour that Jesus Christ can do to men upon earth is to delight in them. “Such honour have all His saints” (Isa_62:4). This implies--
1. His interest in them.
2. His continual remembrance of them.
3. His readiness to bestow His best favours upon them. Did Jesus Christ delight in His people from everlasting; then all the disciples of Christ should delight in Him (1Pe_2:7; Son_5:10). (W. Notcutt.)
Wisdom resident in the world
Wisdom rejoices in the habitable parts of the earth, not in the monastic retreats of a dreary desert orwilderness. Wisdom’s delights are among the sons of men, not in the midst of books. The inestimable advantages gained in those places, only become wisdom as they are used among men, just as the wheat, growing on some distant prairie, where few eyes ever rest upon its beauties, becomes food only as it reaches the crowded city, where men are longing for it and would die without it. Wisdom is in the world where men are; she delights to be there; we need not leave the world to find her if we will only hear the voice of God just where we are. The sins and failings of men can speak warnings to us; the needs of men can stir our activities; the kindness and goodness of men can point to God’s greater love. Everywhere hands point up to God and our true relations to Him, if only we will let Him be as real, as truly personal, as the rest of the world is to us . . . Wisdom delights in the habitable parts of the earth, and rejoices to be among the sons of men. Can it always be so? How often we tire of the very noise of our fellow-men, and wish to flee afar off and be at rest! Wisdom cannot feel that exhaustion. But how often the most habitable parts of the earth are the very homes of the foolishness of sin! We see their wickedness and foolishness: must not Wisdom itself see it much more? Are the social regulations of our life to-day likely to please the heart of Wisdom and make her long to be among them? How much true wisdom do they cultivate among those who are devoted to them? Wisdom may be in our streets, but it must be as a very sorrowful resident, as she sees soul after soul that she loves lost in the desire of gain, associating with its fellow-man only for selfish purposes. The souls might delight her and make her stay, but would the lives which she saw those souls leading do so? What can we do to make society and life generally worthy of this great presence which is ever in it? No laws, no customs, no institutions that we can establish for business or the State, no prescriptions that we may make for social life, will do the work; for those are impersonal, and what we have seen to be valuable to the world is the personal presence of Wisdom. And that must find its expression in our personal lives. All that makes society attractive or city life prosperous to-day came from God, and in that fact has its power for us. For that reason it cannot be ignored or put out of sight. But why, then, is it so dangerous to us? Because it destroys our sense of personal responsibility, which is the great thing by which we are to show forth the true character of God’s wisdom. Be followers of Christ, personal friends of Jesus. Recognise the fact that Christ is in all that is good, and that by being true to Him you cannot possibly get out of the stream of the world’s true life. You will have to leave some things that are false, you will have to condemn them by leaving them; but all which truly belongs to men must ultimately be the possession of those who have the Wisdom whose delights are among the sons of men. (Arthur Brooks.)
Divine Wisdom
I.The joy of god in this material world. The Divine Wisdom approved the result of the Divine power and skill.
II. His delights were with the sons of men. Humanity has always held a foremost place in the thoughts of God.
1. Man as a creature of God. The noblest work that God has placed upon the earth; he is the crown and glory of this terrestrial creation.
2. Man has sinned. The prescient eye of God from eternity looked upon man, not only as a creature endowed with high capabilities, and as an offender against law and a sufferer because of sin, but He looked upon him as a transgressor redeemed. He looked on men not only in their connection with the first Adam, but also in their connection with the second Adam. He foresaw the success which should crown the mission and sacrifice of His well-beloved Son. (T. Stephens.)
On the benevolence of Christ to the human race
I. Our blessed Lord rejoiced in the habitable part of the earth because He foresaw that the perfections of God would be manifested and glorified. The human race appears to have been created for a twofold purpose.
1. To glorify God upon the earth.
2. That our Lord might defeat the infernal purposes of the malicious spirits, destroy the works of the devil.
II. His delights were with the sons of men, that He might minister to the comfort and happiness of their bodies. What an amazing constellation of virtues did He exhibit, and how boundless must have been that love which led Him day after day, amidst hunger, and thirst, and fatigue, and suffering, and sorrow, to relieve the wants of the needy and restore to the soundness of health and activity the miserable and forlorn sufferers of calamity and woe!
III. His delights were with the sons of men, that He might enlighten their minds by His Word and Spirit. Many theories have been propounded to solve the mystery of the introduction of moral evil into the world, but no hypothesis is so credible or intelligible as that of the Scripture account of the fall of man. Our blessed Lord interposed on our behalf, and generously undertook to redeem us from the curse of the law and regain that immortal life which we had forfeited by our disobedience. How can we account for such a display of unparalleled benevolence but from His ardent desire to promote the best interests of men?
IV. His delights were with the sons of men, that He might sanctify their souls and prepare them for the enjoyments of heaven. We ought to be extremely solicitous for the salvation of our souls, and never dare to imagine that, because Christ has died for our sins, we shall be saved without that holiness of heart and life which are the fruits of the Spirit in all them that believe. (D. Davidson.)
Wisdom’s delights with the sons of men
Inthese words are revealed things concerning the personal, substantial, and self-existent Wisdom.
I. “My delights were with the sons of men.” Wisdom, then, has her delights; and where does she find them? The prime of these delights is that which He finds in Himself. He has complacential delight in Himself, for He only is perfection, independent, and eternal. The communications of His glorious attributes are also His delight. These rest on the sinful sons of men. The words include the idea of dwelling with the sons of men. What led the Saviour to such condescension? It was purely of His tender love towards mankind. Whence originates this love? In His own bosom, and we can say no more and see no farther.
II. Rejoicing in the habitable parts of God’s earth. The Hebrew is forcible and poetical--“playing or disporting on the orb of God’s earth.” God formed the earth and the world with wisdom, but also with love, and not only for the benefit, but also for the happiness of His creatures, and with a special view to the pleasure of the sons of men. In Christ, the Wisdom of God, the same wonderful condescension continues still. He adapts Himself to our human conceptions; brings His mysteries near to us in a most gracious manner; and the same graciousness is seen in God’s everyday communion with His beloved children. The word “rejoicing” reminds of sweet music, and all the music on earth is made by Christ or for Him. (F. W. Krummacher, D. D.)
