Matthew 11:11

Matthew 11:11

I. These words, as they were spoken, need very little explanation. We can well understand how they rose to the lips of our Lord as He looked back upon the past history of His race, and forward to the larger Church which He came to found. He came to set before men a new ideal, another standard, a higher rule of life, to make a new revelation of God to man; but not for this only. He came to plant a leaven in the world, that must spread and germinate and affect the world, or perish; and therefore, as He looked back on that earlier Church which had been laid step by step to the eve of this era, and forward to the new power and the new life which His own work was to bring alike to the spirit of the individual and the framework of society, He might well say that the humblest of those who were admitted into that new kingdom would enjoy greater privileges, stand on a higher vantage-ground, than even he who, like Moses, had led his race to the verge of the promised land, but had failed to enter.

II. The text may save us from refusing to honour all that justly claims our homage; it may guard us against doing violence to the Christian conscience by accepting a lower or un-Christian standard, by reverencing that which has no claim to reverence. It may remind us that we need not prostrate ourselves in unmanly hero-worship before the mingled clay and gold of mere human greatness; but that we may not refuse to acknowledge and to honour all that is high, all that is good, see it where we may. We cannot admire too fully or too cordially whatever in any age or on any scene is truly great, is truly noble; but we may still prize above all gifts for ourselves and for others the full surrender of the heart to God, the admission into the number of those who seek His voice and do His bidding, and are taught of Him, led by Him, and owned by Him. Verily, I say unto you, we may hear within our hearts that among those born of women there is none greater than this or that hero of this age or of another; yet "he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."

Dean Bradley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 289.

References: Matthew 11:11 . Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 89; S. Macnaughten, Real Religion and Real Life, p. 172; J. Brierley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiv., p. 53.