Matthew 11:16 AV
But whereunto shall I liken this generation?
It is like unto children sitting in the markets,
and calling unto their fellows,
Study
The Christ was praising John the Baptist and his ministry, but here stops suddenly, and turns to the reproach of those who enjoyed both John’s ministry, and the ministry of the Christ and his apostles, in vain.
We may observe to whom He compares that generation (Matthew 11:16-19),
That generation, pointed to the body of the Jewish people alive at that time.
There were many indeed that pressed into the kingdom of heaven but the majority of the people continued in unbelief and obstinacy.
John was a great and good man, but the generation in which his lot was cast was as barren and unprofitable as could be, and unworthy of him.
Note that the badness of the places where good ministers live, serves for a foil to their beauty. So it was Noah’s praise that he was righteous in his generation.
Having commended John, he condemns those who had him among them, and did not profit by his ministry.
Our Lord Jesus continues with a parable, yet speaks as if He were at a loss to find out a similitude proper to represent that generation. Whereunto shall I liken this generation?
Note that there is not a greater absurdity, than that which they are guilty of, who have good preaching among them, and are never the better for it.
It is hard to say what they are like.
The similitude is taken from some common custom among the Jewish children at their play, who, as is usual with children, imitated the fashions of grown people at their marriages and funerals, rejoicing and lamenting but being all a jest, it made no impression no more did the ministry either of John the Baptist or of the Christ upon that generation.
He especially reflects on the scribes and Pharisees, who had a proud conceit of themselves therefore to humble them he compares them to children, and their behaviour to children’s play.
The parable will be best explained by opening it, and the illustration of it, together in these five observations.
Observation 1
Observe that the God of heaven uses a variety of proper means and methods for the conversion and salvation of poor souls He would have all men to be saved, and therefore leaves no stone unturned in order to it.
The great thing He aims at, is the melting of our wills into a compliance with the will of God, and in order to this the affecting of us with the discoveries he has made of himself.
Having various affections to be wrought upon, He uses various ways of working upon them, which though differing one from another, all tend to the same thing, and God is in them all carrying on the same design.
In the parable, this is called His piping to us, and His mourning to us.
▪︎ He has piped to us in the precious promises of the gospel, proper to work upon hope,
▪︎ and He has mourned to us in the dreadful threatenings of the law, proper to work upon fear, that He might frighten us out of our sins and allure us to Himself.
▪︎ He has piped to us in gracious and merciful providences,
▪︎ He has mourned to us in calamitous, afflicting providences,
▪︎ and He has set the one over against the other.
He has taught His ministers to change their voice (Galatians 4:20)
▪︎ sometimes to speak in thunder from mount Sinai,
▪︎ sometimes in a still small voice from mount Sion.
In the explanation of the parable is shown the different temper of John’s ministry and of Christ’s ministry, who were the two great lights of that generation.
- On the one hand, John came mourning to them, neither eating nor drinking not conversing familiarly with people, nor ordinarily eating in company, but alone, in his cell in the wilderness, where his meat was locusts and wild honey. Now this, one would think, should work upon them for such an austere, mortified life as this, was very agreeable to the doctrine he preached: and that minister is most likely to do good, whose conversation is according to his doctrine and yet the preaching even of such a minister is not always effectual.
- On the other hand, the Son of man came eating and drinking, and so he piped unto them. The Christ conversed familiarly with all sorts of people, not affecting any peculiar strictness or austerity He was affable and easy of access, not shy of any company, was often at feasts, both with Pharisees and publicans, to try if this would win upon those who were not wrought upon by John’s reservedness: those who were not awed by John’s frowns, would be allured by the Christ’s smiles from whom Paul learned to be come all things to all men (1 Corinthians 9:22).
Now our Lord Jesus, by his freedom, did not at all condemn John, any more than John did condemn Him, though their deportment was so very different.
Note that though we are never so clear in the goodness of our own practice, yet we must not judge of others by it.
There may be a great diversity of operations, where it is the same God that worketh all in all (1 Corinthians 12:6), and various manifestations of the Spirit are given to every man to profit from from them.
Observe especially, that God’s ministers are variously gifted:
the ability and genius of some lie one way, of others, another way:
some are Boanerges — sons of thunder — others, Barnabeses — sons of consolation — yet all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:11).
And therefore we ought not to condemn either, but to praise both, and praise God for both, who thus tries various ways of dealing with persons of various tempers, that sinners may be either made pliable or left inexcusable, so that, whatever the issue is, God will be glorified.
Observation 2
Observe the various methods which God takes for the conversion of sinners, are with many fruitless and ineffectual: “Ye have not danced, ye have not lamented you have not been suitably affected either with the one or with the other”.
Particular means have, as in medicine, their particular intentions, which must be answered, particular impressions, which must be submitted to, in order to the success of the great and general design now if people will be
- neither bound by laws,
- nor invited by promises,
- nor frightened by threatenings,
- will neither be awakened by the greatest things,
- nor allured by the sweetest things,
- nor startled by the most terrible things,
- nor be made sensible by the plainest things if they will hear to the voice
- neither of scripture,
- nor reason,
- nor experience,
- nor providence,
- nor conscience,
- nor interest, what more can be done?
The bellows are burned,
the lead is consumed,
the founder melteth in vain reprobate silver shall men call them (Jeremiah 6:29).
Ministers’ labour is bestowed in vain (Isaiah 49:4),
and, which is a much greater loss, the grace of God received in vain (2 Corinthians 6:1).
Note that it is some comfort to faithful ministers, when they see little success of their labours, that it is no new thing for the best preachers and the best preaching in the world to come short of the desired end.
Who has believed our report?
If from the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of those great commanders, Christ and John, returned so often empty (2 Samuel 1:22), no marvel if ours do so, and we prophecy to so little purpose upon dry bones.
Observation 3
Observe that commonly those persons who do not profit by the means of grace, are perverse, and reflect upon the ministers by whom they enjoy those means and because they do not get good themselves, they do all the hurt they can to others, by raising and propagating prejudices against the word, and the faithful preachers of it.
Those who will not comply with God, and walk after Him, but confront Him, and walk contrary to Him. So this generation did because they were resolved not to believe Christ and John, and to own them, as they ought to have done, for the best of men, they set themselves to abuse them, and to represent them as the worst
- As for John the Baptist, they say, He has a devil. They imputed his strictness and reservedness to melancholy, and some kind or degree of a possession of Satan “Why should we heed him? he is a poor hypochondriacal man, full of fancies, and under the power of a crazed imagination”
- As for Jesus Christ, they imputed His free and obliging conversation to the more vicious habit of luxury and flesh-pleasing: Behold a gluttonous man and a wine drinker. No reflection could be more foul and invidious it is the charge against the rebellious son (Deuteronomy 21:20), He is a glutton and a drunkard yet none could be more false and unjust for Christ pleased not himself (Romans 15:3), nor did ever any man live such a life of self-denial, mortification, and contempt of the world, as the Christ lived: He that was undefiled, and separate from sinners, is here represented as in league with them, and polluted by them.
Note that the most unspotted innocency, and the most unparalleled excellency, will not always be a fence against the reproach of tongues.
- A man’s best gifts and best actions, which are both well intended and well calculated for edification, may be made the matter of his reproach.
- The best of our actions may become the worst of our accusations, as David’s fasting, Psalms 69:10.
It was true in some sense, that Christ was a Friend to publicans and sinners, the best Friend they ever had, for He came into the world to save sinners, great sinners, even the chief so He said very feelingly, who had been himself not a publican and sinner, but a Pharisee and sinner but this is, and will be to eternity, Christ’s praise, and they forfeited the benefit of it who thus turned it to his reproach.
Observation 4
Observe that the cause of this great unfruitfulness and perverseness of people under the means of grace, is that …
▪︎ they are like children sitting in the markets
▪︎ they are foolish as children,
▪︎ froward as children,
▪︎ mindless as children,
▪︎ and playful as children,
would they but show themselves men in understanding, there would be some hopes of them.
The market-place they sit in is
▪︎ to some a place of idleness (Matthew 20:3)
▪︎ to others a place of worldly business (James 4:13)
▪︎ to all a place of noise or diversion.
So that if you ask the reason why people get so little good by the means of grace, you will find it is
▪︎ because they are slothful
▪︎ because they are trifling,
▪︎ and because they do not love to take pains
or …
▪︎ because their heads are full of the world
▪︎ because their hands are full of the world
▪︎ and because their hearts are full of the world
The cares which choke the word, and choke their souls at last (Ezekiel 33:31; Amos 8:5) and they study to divert their own thoughts from every thing that is serious.
Thus in the markets they are, and there they sit in these things their hearts rest, and by them they resolve to abide.
Observation 5
Observe that though the means of grace be thus slighted and abused by many, by the most, yet there is a remnant that through grace do improve them, and answer the designs of them, to the glory of God, and the good of their own souls.
But wisdom is justified of her children.
Christ is Wisdom in Him are hid treasures of wisdom the saints are the children God has given him (Hebrews 2:13).
The gospel is wisdom, it is the wisdom from above: true believers are begotten again by it, and born from above too they are wise children, wise for themselves, and their true interests not like the foolish children that sat in the markets.
These children of wisdom justify wisdom they comply with the designs of Christ’s grace, answer the intentions of it, and are suitably affected with, and impressed by, the various methods it takes, and so evidence the wisdom of Christ in taking these methods.
This is explained (Luke 7:29).
The publicans justified by God, being baptized with the baptism of John, and afterwards embracing the gospel of Christ.
Note that the success of the means of grace justifies the wisdom of God in the choice of these means, against those who charge Him with folly therein.
The cure of every patient, that observes the physician’s orders, justifies the wisdom of the physician: and therefore Paul is not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because, whatever it is to others, to them that believe it, it is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16).
When the cross of Christ, which to others is foolishness and a stumbling-block, is to them that are called, the wisdom of God, and the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:23,24), so that they make the knowledge of that the summit of their ambition (1 Corinthians 2:2), and the efficacy of that the crown of their glorying (Galatians 6:14), here is wisdom justified of her children.
Wisdom’s children are wisdom’s witnesses in the world (Isaiah 43:10), and shall be produced as witnesses in that day, when wisdom, that is now justified by the saints, shall be glorified in the saints, and admired in all them that believe (2 Thessalonians 1:10).
If the unbelief of some reproach Christ by giving Him the lie, the faith of others shall honour Him by setting to its seal that He is true, and that he also is wise (1 Corinthians 1:25.
Whether we do it or not, it will be done not only God’s equity, but His wisdom, will be justified when He speaks, when He judges.
Well, this is the account Christ gives of that generation, and that generation is not passed away, but remains in a succession of the like for as it was then, it has been since and still is.
Some believe the things which are spoken, and some believe it not (Acts 28:24).
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