The Jew, whether in their largest colony in Babylon, or in Jerusalem, or in Rome, or Alexandria, or the smaller colonies everywhere, was full of the idea, the hope, of a kingdom.  He was absorbed with more or less confused and materialized, unspiritual ideas of a coming glory for his nation through a coming king.  But among the followers of this Jesus there is something else coming into being, a new organization never even hinted at in their Scriptures.  It is called the church.  It is given a name that indicates that it is to be made up of persons taken out from among all nations.

There comes to be now a three-fold division of all men.  There had been with the Jews, always, a two-fold division, the Jew and the Gentiles, or outside nations.  Now three, the Jew, the outsiders, and the church.  The church is an eclectic society, a chosen out body.  Its principle of organization is radically different from that of the Hebrew nation.  There membership was by birthright.  Here it is by individual choice and belief.

Foreigners coming in were not required to become Jews, as under the old, but remained essentially as they have been in all regards, except the one thing of relationship to Jesus in a wholly spiritual sense.  There is constant talk about “the gospel of the kingdom,” but the kingdom itself seems to have quite slipped away, and the church is in its place.  Such a situation must have been very puzzling to any Jew.  His horizon was full of a kingdom—­a Jew kingdom.  Anything else was unthinkable.  These intense Orientals could not conceive of anything else.  It had taken a set of visions to swing Peter and the other church leaders into line even on letting outsiders into the church.

This Jesus does not fill out this old Hebrew picture of a king and a kingdom.  How can He be the promised Messiah?  This was to thousands a most puzzling question, and a real hinderance to their acceptance of Jesus, even by those profoundly impressed with the divine power being seen.

This was the very question that had puzzled John the Baptist those weary months, till finally he sends to Jesus for some light on his puzzle.  Jesus fills out part of the plan, and splendidly, but only part, and may be what seems to some the smaller part.  Can it be, John asks, that there is to be another one coming to complete the picture?  To him Jesus does not give an answer, except that he must wait and trust.  He would not in words anticipate the nation’s final rejection, though so well He knew what was coming.  Their chance was not yet run out for the acceptance of Jesus that would fill out John’s picture.  God never lets His foreknowledge influence one whit man’s choice.  It was a most natural and perplexing difficulty, both for John and later for these thousands.