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(see Matthew 4:6): — Just as Christ, in His ascension, was taken from them whilst His hands were lifted up in the act of blessing, so it is fitting that the revelation of which He is the centre and the theme should part from us as He did, shedding with its final words the dew of benediction on our upturned heads.

I. THE APPARENT CONTRAST AND THE REAL HARMONY AND UNITY OF THESE TWO TEXTS. "Lest I come and smite the land with a curse." If instead of the word "curse" we were to substitute the word "destruction," we should get the true idea of the passage. And the thought that I want to insist upon is this, that here we have distinctly gathered up the whole spirit of milleniums of Divine revelation, all of which declare this one thing, that as certainly as there is a God, every transgression and disobedience receives, and must receive, its just recompense of reward. That is the spirit of law, for law has nothing to say, except, "Do this, and thou shalt live; do not this, and thou shalt die." And then turn to the other. "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all." What has become of the thunder? All melted into dewy rain of love and pity and compassion. Grace is love that stoops; grace is love that foregoes its claims, and forgives sins against itself. Grace is love that imparts, and this grace, thus stooping, thus pardoning, thus bestowing, is a universal gift. So there is a very real and significant contrast. "I come and smite the earth with a curse" sounds strangely unlike "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all." So I want you to notice that beneath this apparent contrast there is a real harmony, and that these two utterances, though they seem to be so diverse, are quite consistent at bottom, and must both be taken into account if we would grasp the whole truth. For, as a matter of fact, nowhere are there more tender utterances and sweeter revelations of a Divine mercy than in that ancient law with its attendant prophets. And, as a matter of fact, nowhere, through all the thunderings and lightnings of Sinai, are there such solemn words of retribution as dropped from the lips of the Incarnate Love. There is nothing anywhere so dreadful as Christ's own words about what comes, and must come, to sinful men.

II. THE RELATION OF THE GRACE TO THE PUNISHMENT. Is it not love which proclaims judgment? Are not the words of my first text, if you take them all, merciful, however they wear a surface of threatening? "Lest I come." Then He speaks that He may not come, and declares the issue of sin in order that that issue may never need to be experienced by us that listen to Him. It is love that threatens; it is mercy to tell us that the wrath will come. And just as one relation between the grace and the retribution is that the proclamation of the retribution is the work of the grace, so there is another relation — the grace is manifested in bearing the punishment, and in bearing it away by bearing it. He has come between every one of us, if we will, and that certain incidence of retribution for our evil, taking upon Himself the whole burden of our sin and of our guilt, and bearing that awful death which consists not in the mere dissolution of the tie between soul and body, but in the separation of the conscious spirit from God, in order that we may stand peaceful, serene, untouched, when the hail and the fire of the Divine judgment are falling from the heavens and running along the earth. The grace depends for all our conceptions of its glory, its tenderness, and its depth on our estimate of the wrath from which it delivers.

III. THE ALTERNATIVE which these texts open for us. You must have either the destruction or the grace. And, more wonderful still, the same coming of the same Lord will be to one man the destruction, and to another the manifestation and reception of His perfect grace. As it was in the Lord's first coming, "He is set for the rise and the fall of many in Israel." The same heat softens some substances and bakes others into hardness. The same gospel is "a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death," by the giving forth of the same influences killing the one and reviving the other; the same Christ is a Stone to build upon or a Stone of stumbling; and when He cometh at the last, Prince, King, Judge, to you and me, His coming shall be prepared as the morning; and ye "shall have a song as in the night as when one cometh with a pipe to the mountain of the Lord"; or else it shall be a day of darkness and not of light.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

WEB: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all the saints. Amen.