The boldness of Jesus in breaking the Pharisees’ traditions had brought their growing suspicion and opposition to a head, and they determined to seize Him. Petty officers were sent to arrest him when he was present in Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles (Jn. 7), and the appearance of these policemen led Jesus to say to the Jews, “Yet a little while am I with you, and I go unto Him that sent Me. Ye shall seek Me, and shall not find Me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come.”
These strange words drew from the Jews the wondering exclamation, “Whither will He go?…will He go unto the Dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles?”
Thus Jesus warned the Jews that He was going away from them and would leave them behind. They were the chosen people who had been trained for generations to receive the promised Messiah. Moses and the law, prophet and priest, temple and sacrifice, had been given to them as schoolmasters to educate them into such spiritual preparation that they would be fit scholars for the coming Teacher or good soil into which to drop the precious Corn of Wheat that was to produce the Bread of Life for the world.
But the children of a rich inheritance often fail to appreciate their privilege. The superior means and opportunities bestowed on them swell them to pride in themselves and haughtiness over less richly gifted ones, blind them to their dependence and their duty, and lead them to misuse their inheritance and turn it into a means of destruction to themselves.
The Jews illustrated these fatal tendencies above any other people in the world. Carried up to the highest mount of spiritual privilege, their pride blinded them to their glorious opportunity and cast them down to the lowest depth of ruin and dishonor.
Yet their blindness could not stop the shining of the Light of the world. Jesus, their own Messiah, could not let the wheels of His chariot be blocked by their unbelief. If He could not go on with them, He must go on without them. The path of His duty and destiny was plain. The cross stood with outstretched arms just before Him, but beyond it opened the gates into the City of God and home of His Father, and through those portals He would pass, though His unfaithful people could not follow. The same fateful law still operates in every field of life. Our inheritance will not save us if we are false to it; we may turn our very privilege to a curse, and Christ will leave the proud and disobedient behind in His onward march.
“Will He go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles?” Unwittingly they hit on the very truth. The Dispersion was the body of Jews then scattered abroad in the Gentile world, and these Jews wondered if Jesus might go to them and thereby teach the Greeks themselves. They despised all Gentiles, as a less favored breed, and yet they could not have been wholly blind to the intellectual superiority of the Greeks. Might it be possible that this strange Prophet would leave them and go to Athens and Corinth and teach those brilliant people? Already they felt their special privileges slipping out of their own into other hands.
The judgment was frequently flung in the face of self-righteous Jews that publicans and harlots, the most despised and degraded classes, would pass into the kingdom of God and they themselves be shut out. This judgment still awaits all those that are unfaithful.
“Will He teach the Gentiles?” they asked. This is just what He did. The gospel could not be bound by Jewish unbelief and unfaithfulness, and immediately crossed the narrow confines of the Holy Land into the regions round about.
No sooner had it passed the border than it was among the Greeks, then the most gifted people of the world. Paul himself, the first apostle to the Gentiles, was born in a Greek city and was at home in the Greek language and literature and civilization. He passed through Asia Minor, populous with Greek cities, into Europe, and was soon standing in Athens and Corinth, and in these commanding centers of Greek culture and art was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. He commented on the many religious altars in Athens and quoted Greek poets and adapted the gospel to the Greek mind.
It is true that some hearers scoffed, but others believed, and the gospel took root and began to grow on that soil. What a rich soil it was and what fruitage it bore! In a short time a circle of Greek Christian churches shone like points of light around the eastern Mediterranean. These were the first victories that led to the conquest of the empire.
Mightier still were the contributions of the Greeks to the spread and development of the gospel. It was largely on Greek soil and wholly in the Greek language that the New Testament was written. This most wonderful book in all the literature of the world began when Paul put his pen to parchment in Corinth to write his First Epistle to the Thessalonians, and it was ended in a Greek city when John finished his Gospel.
Thus the Jews were denied the privilege of putting a single book into the New Testament in their own language, and this immortal honor went to the despised Greeks. The Greek tongue, then the universal language of the world and the most beautiful language ever written, with its marvelous flexibility and facility for expressing every shape and shade of thought, and its mellifluous fluency and music and charm, became the wings that carried the gospel far and wide over that ancient world and brought it down to us.
The Greeks also made important theological and philosophical contributions to the development of the gospel and became powerful advocates and eloquent preachers of it. Thus the Jews spoke better than they knew when they said, “Will He go among the Greeks…?” He did teach the Greeks and through them has taught the world.
“Whither will this man go?” Still the question confronts us and still it is fraught with immense possibilities. Jesus Christ, having gone from the Jews to the Greeks, went on to the Romans, and by similar steps passed down through the centuries and out over the world. He marched through the mighty Roman Empire and brought every part of it more or less under His influence. He threaded German forests, and crossed Russian steppes, English moors, and Scottish highlands. He leaped the Atlantic and seized the Americas. He has been in the van in every enlargement of the world through exploration and discovery and through the spread of population.
Where is He going today? He is striding across the scorching plains of India, invading the populous provinces of China, seizing the islands of the sea, and penetrating the vast forests and densest jungles of Africa. He is going everywhere around the globe, and no mountain fastness or most obscure valley or remotest island can escape His presence. He is indifferent to all continents and climates, tropic heat and arctic ice, all racial lines and social classes–He is after human hearts and will go to the ends of the earth for a single soul.
This Man has in Him boundless powers, a mighty passion of love, and will go wherever He will. Yet His divine sovereignty awaits human choice, and the question with everyone is whether He will come unobstructed and welcomed into our hearts, or leave us in our unbelief.