Matthew 11:20

JUDGMENT AND MERCY. -- Matthew 11:20-30.

GOLDEN TEXT. -- Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and. will give you rest. -- Matthew 11:28. TIME. --Same as the date of the last lesson. PLACE. --Somewhere in Galilee. HELPFUL READINGS. -- Matthew 11:16-19; Luke 10:6-13. LESSON ANALYSIS. --1. Judgment Pronounced; 2. The Father's Revelation; 3. Rest for the Heavy Laden.

INTRODUCTION.

The judgment pronounced upon these cities of Galilee is recorded by Matthew and Luke. It has been thought that the record of Luke 10:6-13, belongs to. later period, when his ministry was withdrawn from them, or when the seventy disciples were sent forth. Concerning the cities denounced Schaff says: "The woe has been fearfully fulfilled. Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum have utterly disappeared, and their very sites are disputed. The shores of the lake of Genessareth, once flourishing as. garden, are. wilderness with only two miserable places, Tiberias and Mejdel (the ancient Magdala), remaining. On the lake once white with sails there only remain. few rough fishing-boats."

The very generation that rejected Christ was doomed to see, in bitter agony, these very words fulfilled. It was not thirty years before the Romans swept in over those beautiful cities, leaving them only heaps of ruins. Any one who reads in the Jewish War of Josephus the sickening details of the slaughter and destruction which fell upon the whole district of Galilee will not wonder that the Jewish historian Josephus, himself exclaimed, "It was God who brought the Romans to punish the Galileans."

I. JUDGMENT PRONOUNCED.

20. Then began he to upbraid the cities.

The cities in the vicinity of the Sea of Galilee had, thus far, heard and seen the most of the Lord and had the least excuse for rejecting him. "In all the reproofs of Jesus there is an exaltation and. calmness which renders them more terrible than if they were the outburst of sudden passion. It is not angered ambition, but repulsed kindness that speaks. There is sadness in the severity. The very denunciations seem to mourn."

Wherein most of his mighty works were done.

We know of. number of miracles which had been wrought in these cities, the healing of the centurion's servant, of the son of the nobleman, of the diseased woman, of two blind men, and the raising of the daughter of Jairus. The Scriptures assure us that these were only. very small part of the mighty works he did. See Matthew 9:35.

Because they repented not.

The object of his teaching and miracles was to produce faith, and faith was sought as an essential to repentance. The great end proposed by the gospel is repentance and. new life. Faith must lead to these, or it is dead.