^ Browning's conception of Christ's supremacy does not rest on any morality He may have possessed or taught, though
Morality to the uttermost. Supreme in Christ we all confess,
but upon His own person, as He Himself claimed.
Does the precept run, "Believe in good, In justice, truth, now understood For the first time " ? — or, " Believe in me Who lived and died, yet essentially Am Lord of Life"?
And this carries with it the faith that the Gospel brings to man, not merely
A motive and injunction For practising what we know already, but
A new truth; no conviction gains Of an old one only, made intense, By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.
UL The Consummation of the Kingdom.
1. Though Christ reigns a King for ever, we have still to look forward to the time when all shall own His universal sway. " Weep not," said one of the Elders to St. John, " behold the Lion that is of the tribe of Judah hath overcome." In Genesis we read, " Judah is a lion's whelp : from the prey, my son, thou art gone up." And how does this describe the Saviour — that " Lion
' B. AV. fi*ndolph.
GENESIS xLix. lo ^57
of the tribe of Judah " — that strong and mighty Lion who entered into conflict with the lion of the pit and overcame him ? From the prey He has gone up again, up into His glory, gone up beyond the stars, up to the Eight Hand of the Infinite Majesty, there to sit in perpetual peaceful triumph. " He stooped down, he couched as a lion, as an old lion." The lion may have been an emblem that befitted the son of Jesse. The lion couchant might have been fitly chosen for his heraldic device, when the Lord had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies and of Saul. Yet with how much more propriety may this emblem be emblazoned on the arms of Prince Emmanuel ! Did He not stoop down ? Was ever such a stoop as His ? Let Him be crowned with majesty who bowed His head to death. It is for this that He deserves to conquer, because He was willing to submit to shame and death itself for the sake of His people. How glorious it is to think that He has gone up, seeing that He once came down !
2. What are the ideas associated with this title, " lion of the tribe of Judah ? " Chiefly these two — (1) Personal strength and courage, and (2) Deliverance.
(1) Take, first, the idea of personal strength and courage. You may search the annals of bravery through, and you will find no bravery comparable to that of Jesus Christ. Our Lord's gentle- ness was not weakness, and His love was not effeminacy. Beneath the gentleness and the love — nay, in it, there was a courage the like of which the world has never seen. And our Lord's courage displays itself most gloriously in the fact that He faced the Cross.
(2) And the other idea associated with the name "Lion of the tribe of Judah " is that of deliverance. That is perhaps the principal idea suggested by the title. The Lion of the tribe of Judah was to be a great Liberator, a great Emancipator. And though perhaps the Jews of our Lord's day did not realize it, all the prophets' predictions as to the liberating and emancipating side of Messiah's work were fulfilled in the Lamb slain. The Lamb slain was the Lion who delivered. Only it was a better and fuller deliverance than the Jews had expected. For the deliverance the Jew expected was merely a national and political deliverance. The emancipation he looked for was emancipation
GEN.-NUM. — 17
25S SHILOH
from the foreign yoke. But, as a matter of fact, the Jew suffered from a far more awful bondage than the bondage of Eome. He was in bondage to sin. Yes, and not he only, but all the wide world, lay groaning beneath this terrible burden of sin. And it was from this far more grievous burden and from this far more galling bondage that Jesus came to deliver men. You remember that it was as a Deliverer that He was announced. " Thou shalt call his name Jesus," said the angel to Joseph, " for it is he that shall save his people from their sins."
^ " The Lion and the Lamb." This illustrates more than the contrast between the Christ of Jewish expectation and the Christ of history ; it illustrates the contrast between Jewish expectation and the Divine purpose. The Jews looked to see power and force, whereby all their foes should be destroyed, and instead of that they saw gentleness and tenderness and sacrificial love. Their method of realizing the kingdom was, shall I say, "the mailed fist " ; God's method of realizing the kingdom was by the sacrifice of the Cross. While the whole nation was on the alert, waiting for some voice to announce the advent of the Deliverer and to say, " Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah," the voice of John the Baptist fell upon their ears with quite a different announce- ment. " Behold," he said, " the Lamb of God " — the Lamb of God's own providing. It was not God's purpose to subdue the world by force ; it was His purpose to win it by love.^