'Having yet therefore one son, his well-beloved, he sent him also last unto them.'--Mark xii. 6.
Reference to Isaiah v. There are differences in detail here which need not trouble us.
Isaiah's parable is a review of the theocratic history of Israel, and clearly the messengers are the prophets; here Christ speaks of Himself and His own mission to Israel, and goes on to tell of His death as already accomplished.
I. The Son who follows and surpasses the servants.
(a) Our Lord here places Himself in the line of the prophets as coming for a similar purpose. The mission _to Israel_ was the same. The mission _of His life_ was the same.
The last words of the lawgiver certainly point to a person (Deut. xviii. 18): 'A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you like unto me. Him shall ye hear.' How ridiculous the cool superciliousness with which modern historical criticism 'pooh-poohs' that interpretation! But the contrast is quite as prominent as the resemblance. This saying is one which occurs in all the Synoptics, and is as full a declaration of Sonship as any in John's Gospel. It reposes on the scene at the baptism (Matt, iii.): 'This is My beloved Son!' Such a saying was well enough understood by the Jews to mean more than the 'Messiah.' It clearly involves kindred to the divine in a far other and higher sense than any prophet ever had it. It involves pre-existence. It asserts that He was the special object of the divine love, the 'heir.'
You cannot relieve the New Testament Christ of the responsibility of having made such assertions. There they are! He did deliberately declare that He was, in a unique sense, '_the_ Son' on whom the love and complacency of the Father rested continually.
II. The aggravation of men's sins as tending to the enhancement of the divine efforts.
The terrible Nemesis of evil is that it ever tends to reproduce itself in aggravated forms. Think of the influence of habit; the searing of conscience, so that we become able to do things that we would have shrunk from at an earlier stage. Remember how impunity leads to greater sin. So here the first servant is merely sent away empty, the second is wounded and disgraced, the third is killed. All evil is an inclined plane, a steady, downward progress. How beautifully the opposite principle of the divine love and patience is represented as striving with the increasing hate and resistance! According to Matthew, the householder sent other servants '_more than_ the first,' and the climax was that he sent his son. Mightier forces are brought to bear. This attraction _increases_ as the square of the distance. The blacker the cloud, the brighter the sun; the thicker the ice, the hotter the flame; the harder the soil, the stronger the ploughshare. Note, too, the undertone of sacrifice and of yearning for the son which may be discerned in the 'householder's' words. The son is his 'dearest treasure,' his mightiest gift, than which is nothing higher.
The mission of Christ is the ultimate appeal of God to men.
In the primary sense of the parable Jesus does close the history of the divine strivings with Israel. After Christ, the last of the prophets, the divine voice ceases; after the blaze of that light all is dark. There is nothing more remarkable in the whole history of the world than that cessation in an instant, as it were, of the long, august series of divine efforts for Israel. Henceforward there is an awful silence. 'Forsaken Israel wanders lone.'
And the principle involved for us is the same.
'Christ crucified' is more than Christ miracle-working. That 'more' we have, as the Jews had. But if that avails not, then nothing else will.
He is 'last' because highest, strongest, and all-sufficient.
He is 'last' inasmuch as all since are but echoes of His voice and proclaimers of His grace.