Matthew 12:14-21
¹⁴But the Pharisees went out and conspired against Him, as to how they might destroy Him. ¹⁵But Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there.
Many followed Him, and He healed them all, ¹⁶and warned them not to tell who He was. ¹⁷This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet:
¹⁸Behold, My Servant whom I have chosen; My Beloved in whom My soul is well-pleased; I will put My Spirit upon Him, And He shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles.
¹⁹He will not quarrel, nor cry out; Nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets. ²⁰A battered reed He will not break off, And a smoldering wick He will not put out, Until He leads justice to victory. ²¹And in His name the Gentiles will hope.”
Illustration
The forces of physical nature around us might serve to teach us that those things are not always the most precious that make the most noise.
▪︎ The common air and dew, the rain of heaven.
▪︎ The light that falls upon us day by day.
Influences like these work silently and without any ostentation.
And yet no one will doubt that they are far more precious to us than the noisy forces of nature,
▪︎ the earthquake,
▪︎ the hurricane, or the wild tornado.
- What comparison, for instance, can you draw between the lightning and the light?
- The lightning may attract our attention more, demanding as it does that attention in imperious thunder tones, and yet who will venture to say that there is any comparison between the daily sunlight so beautiful to the eye, so essential to vegetation, so necessary to all the beautiful variety of colour in the world, and that noisy, and occasional flash, which may indeed purify the atmosphere for a moment, but which can do but little more, unless it is sent on some errand of destruction.
And even in respect to power:
- What comparison can be drawn between the earthquake, the most powerful perhaps of the ostentatious forces of nature; the earthquake which can rend a continent, or swallow up a whole city.
- What comparison can be drawn between that and the great silent law of gravitation, that law which guides the flight of every bird, and the fall of every pebble, that law which leads the sea in its ebb and flow, which holds this world and all the mighty orbs of the firmament in the hollow of its silent but mighty hand?
And so it is in social life:
- We think a great deal of the matters that astonish and dazzle us; of the outbreak of passionate feeling in a noble cause, of the hearts that inflame the multitude, of the deed of superhuman daring that makes a man the hero of an hour, of some noble work in rescuing life from flood or fire — these things occupy our thoughts, and we think very little of the thousand names, and deeds, and looks of kindness, by which God is honoured, and humanity is blessed, and the world is made like heaven.
- And yet who will venture to say that the aggregate of the world’s happiness is as much promoted by that public deed, however noble and illustrious, as by the silent stay-at-home virtues of multitudes of persons whose names will never be known until the great day shall declare them?
(F. Greeves.)
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