THESE words were uttered in connection with one of the most impressive and arresting incidents recorded in the Gospels. The hour when God’s Great Sacrifice was to lay Himself willingly on the altar was fast approaching. Things were going on in their accustomed course in the Temple services. The people had gathered to the Feast of Tabernacles—the most joyous of all the Feasts of the Jews—everything went on as usual until the last day, the great day of the Feast, when the stillness of the Temple was broken by the message of the Son of God: “If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink.” The place in which it was delivered, the circumstances, the occasion and above all the Person who delivered the message were all fitted to arrest the attention and make the profoundest impression on the hearers. That it did so is evident from the effect it had on the people—“Many of the people therefore, when they heard this saying, said, ‘Of a truth this is the Prophet.’ Others said, ‘This is the Christ.’” Among the audience who listened to the divine words were officers who had been sent by the chief priests and Pharisees to apprehend Jesus. The message had produced such a profound effect upon them that they were diverted from their mission and they returned without Him. “Why have ye not brought Him?” they were asked. Their answer was: “Never man spake like this man.” Such was the impression made on the mind of the officers sent to apprehend the Lord Jesus. The words in their true historical setting have reference to the utterance of the Lord on the last day of the Feast and the testimony of men who could not by any means be regarded as His friends. This is not the only instance recorded in the Gospels where the utterances of the Saviour produced such effects upon hearers who were not friends. We read when the Lord answered the ensnaring question put to Him as to whether tribute should be paid to Caesar or not that “they marvelled and left Him, and went their way.” From the standpoint as an acknowledgment made to the Son of God by those who were not His friends much might be written on the officers’ testimony—”Never man spake like this man.” The heavenliness of His utterances as the holiness of His character have impressed men who never owned Him as their God and Saviour. The field opened up by these words in their historical connection is a wide and fruitful one but we purpose looking at the words in their most general application. When we think of the gracious words which fell from those lips into which grace was poured does not every reverent mind instinctively appropriate the words of the officers as the most suitable expression of the effect produced—”Never man spake like this man.” This holds true whether we consider the question from the standpoint of the uniqueness of His teaching, the graciousness of His invitations, the awful solemnity of His warnings or the tenderness with which He spoke to those who were to be His forever.
1. In His teaching about God and His relation to the Father as the Eternal Son
The Lord Jesus made claims of the most extraordinary nature—claims which if they were not just would demand a verdict from which every reverent mind would shudder. The only satisfactory solution to the whole matter is that our Saviour was what He claimed to be—God, equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Herein the people of God find true rest and satisfaction that the One who came in God’s great name to save was none other than the Great God and their Saviour Jesus Christ. In a brief article like this it is impossible to touch even the fringe of such a stupendous subject as the teaching of the Lord Jesus concerning the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; we can only deal with a point here and there. He speaks not as one who has limited knowledge but as one whose knowledge was co-equal with the Father’s—”No man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him”—“As the Father knoweth me so know I the Father”—“I and the Father are one.” He is the perfect revelation of God—“the brightness of His glory and the express image of His Person.” As the eternal Word He is the living expression to men of the thoughts that were in the mind of the eternal God for the salvation of all that were to be saved. In all His teaching how jealous He is for the glory of the Father. What an impressive sermon he preached in His life of obedience in all things doing the Father’s will even suffering unto death on Calvary’s accursed tree—it was His meat and drink to do the Father’s will. What new views He gave of God’s righteous claims on men and the spirituality of His holy law. So too in His teaching about Himself and the Holy Spirit what wonderful utterances fell from His lips. We have already referred to the extraordinary claims He made on His own behalf. We have become so accustomed to read these and our familiarity with them has dulled, if not deadened, the sense of wonder that they are fitted to produce. Who is this that claims equality with God, who says He is the light of the world and the true bread which came down from heaven? Again, who is this promising rest to earth’s heavy laden ones through all the centuries of time? The only satisfactory answer is that it is God’s eternal Son and that all He claims to be and do are in keeping with what He is and what He has done. The same may be said about His teaching on the work of the Holy Spirit—“Never man spake like this man.”
2. Think again of the graciousness of His invitations.
Take, to begin with, the invitation that produced such an effect upon the officers as they heard it from the lips of Jesus: “If any man thirst let him come unto me.” How many since that ever-memorable day have heard these words as the words of one who spake as never man spake—turning the darkness of the night into the light of morning and filling their hearts with a hope which would never put them to shame. In the Great Invitation; already referred to—“Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest,” we have what in many respects may be called the most wonderful of all His invitations. It is an invitation thrown out as wide as the world is wide to weary and heavy laden sinners and has He ever disappointed any who were enabled to come? Has He said to the multitudes that have come to Him through all the ages of time—I cannot help you as my resources are now exhausted? No, for all things were delivered to Him by His Father—He has quite sufficient to meet the needs of all that will ever come. When He gave His invitation it was as One possessed with a knowledge that was not simply super-human but divine. He knew the state and condition of all that would come laden with numberless cares, anxieties and perplexities and He made provision for them. Will not these multitudes one day testify with one voice He never promised anything that He did not fulfil—“never man spake like this man.” Take, again, His words as He looked down on the doomed city of Jerusalem—how heart-appealing they are—“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings but ye would not” (Luke, xiii., 34). There is a tenderness in that appeal which one would think would have melted hearts of stone but alas! the hearts were hard to melt. Still, as we read that appeal two thousand years after it was uttered may we not say—“Never man spake like this man.” Could not Paul, the woman of Samaria, and multitudes of others say who heard His voice—“never man spake like this man?”
3. But “never man spake like this man” in the unspeakably solemn pronouncements He made concerning the doom of the finally impenitent.
Desperate attempts have been made to rob these utterances of their awful solemnity but they stand as graven in the rock. No effort on the part of Judge Rutherford or any of his school can erase these pronouncements from the sacred record. Let us read the words once again and as we read them do we not feel “never man spake as this man”—“Depart from me ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” The man who dares to rob these words of their solemn import is engaged in a Satanic work. The Lord never gave utterance to them simply to terrify men. It was not an imaginary evil against which He warned them but a dread reality.
4. Finally, all the dead shall bear witness as they hear at the resurrection that voice of majesty summoning mankind to the Judgment Seat.
Lazarus heard that voice in the stillness of the grave and countless millions of the human race will hear it when the angel with uplifted hand has sworn that time is no more. In that day it will not strike terror into the hearts of His redeemed. It will be the voice of their Beloved saying: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world” and as these gracious words so full of the everlasting consolation of heaven fall on the ears of many weak, struggling heirs of glory will they not say as they never could say before—”never man spake like this man.”