Luke 12:32

Luke 12:32

The Kingdom for the Children.

It is to comfort and assure "the little flock" that our Lord means when He says these words. And you will observe that His argument is twofold one in the nature of their Father, and the other in the character of the Father's gift.

I. You cannot observe the workings of any mind without seeing that there is a strong tendency to treat God as if He were anything else rather than a Father, as if He were a God unwilling to love us and save us. Because we are or at least, were once unwilling to come to God, by a strange confusion of ideas we begin to speak and act as if God were the reluctant party. As if to meet and contradict that, Christ says, "It is your Father's good pleasure." You will never have got the secret of Christ's teaching till you take more loving views of God the Father. In the original, this is a very full expression, "Your Father's good pleasure." It means this: He has considered it, He has approved it, and it is now His delight. All the forgiving and kind and fond thoughts that ever were in the world to sweeten life, they are only drops out of that deep spring of the Father's breast. What must the Fountain be? Therefore, "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."

II. Turn next from the Giver to the gift. Our Saviour evidently intends it to be a reasoning from the whole to the part. Shall the heir of an empire, the child of a King, nurtured in his Father's court, be anxious every day about little crumbs? What is the kingdom which the Father loves to give? That kingdom is inward. It lies in deep, secret places: it has no pageant. Its condition is humility; its gold, good works; its royalties, the chaste and simple services and sacraments of the Church; its diadem, love. It is "not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost" righteousness its throne, peace its diadem, joy its dazzling crown. And that kingdom in a man's heart is what it is, a kingdom, because self-government is begun. In the heart, which is a kingdom, feelings are in their proper place, affections are subordinated, there is a harmony. Christ is in His right place; His pleasure is at the top, and all things are in subjection and dominion to Him.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,7th series, p. 72.

References: Luke 12:32. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. v., p. 20; R. B. Isaac, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 227; J. Vaughan, Children's Sermons(1875), p. 290; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ix., p. 122.Luke 12:35. G. Macdonald, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxii., p. 149. Luke 12:35. Expositor,1st series, vol. viii., p. 44.Luke 12:35. S. Greg, A Layman's Legacy,p. 176.