THE MANGER, THE CROSS, THE GRAVE, AND THE THRONE
Luke 2:8-16; 23:33-34 (to “they do”),44-47,52-53;
24:1-3; Hebrews 12:2
I picked up a notebook earlier this week in which someone had noted down impressions, and on one page of it was written, ‘The manger is empty, the cross is bare, the grave is vacant but the throne is filled’. That is what I have in mind to speak of tonight, beloved.
The glad tidings come to you because there was a time when the manger was occupied – we read about that in Luke 2. There was one time when all the starkness that a cross involves was endured by Christ the crucified One as He hung there. There was a time when a grave contained the body of the Lord Jesus, and indeed there were times when there was room on the throne. The gospel comes to you because the Lord Jesus is on the throne, having been here, and having taken His place in these other places instead of men. How blessed that we can sing:
‘He fills the throne – the throne above’ (Hymn 451).
I would like to refer to another passage in a hymn that speaks about this, Hymn 53:
‘Triumphant His present position,
Ascended at God’s own right hand,
Attesting God’s full satisfaction …’
How wonderful to think that God is satisfied with that Person, so satisfied with Jesus that He has given Him the place at His right hand. Then it goes on to say:-
‘Accepted in Him now we stand’.
How thankful we are if everyone here can sing that and mean it. The gospel depends on these matters being grasped in faith, so you must have faith in this Person, the Man at God’s right hand, and then you will be able to say that you are accepted before God in Him. How thankful I am that there are persons here that I know are accepted before God, and I know for myself through grace that I am accepted, despite all that attaches to me as a sinner, because I am accepted in Him, the Man who is at God’s right hand.
But I want to go back to think about the manger. There Jesus was; there was a Babe lying in a manger. It was an extraordinary matter in the history of this world that there was a manger, a trough that they used for feeding cattle, and there was a Babe lying in it, not put there carelessly, but wrapped in swaddling clothes. Heaven was interested; it was so interested that the angels announced it as a great sign: “ye shall find a babe”. There have been many babes born in this world, how many billions we cannot count, but here was One who was distinct, different from any other, because heaven was so interested, and was announcing His birth. Despite the fact that heaven was so interested, Jesus was in that humble and lowly position as being laid in a manger, in that cattle trough. It is a marvellous fact that this Babe was there, born in ”the likeness of men” (Phil.2:7), grew up to be a Man, a real Man having been born in this scene, but He was not an ordinary Man. It was not a mere man who was there, because the angels could announce even as He was born, “to-day a Saviour has been born to you in David’s city, who is Christ the Lord”. What glory belonged to the Babe who lay in that manger! How wonderful, how marvellous that there should be a Babe in a manger, and heaven was so interested that it would acclaim the glory of that Child.
Do you know Him? Is it just a marvellous story to you, a story that is gone over time and time again? People wonder at it, and some embellish it; they add things to it that are not in the Scriptures. They do much to celebrate the supposed time of Jesus’ birth, and you can do all that without knowing the Person who was there in the manger. He is who you need. The gospel tells you that you need to know this Person as Saviour. There was a Man who came in as a Saviour.
Is He your Saviour? I can speak because He is my Saviour; “a Saviour .... who is Christ the Lord”. But then you would have to accept that He is not a mere man; this is God who has come in. God has come near to us, and He has come near to us in such a way as that – to become a Babe and to lie there. In one sense you could say He was unable to help Himself, because He was a real Babe, but there were those who cared; His mother Mary wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger. In that smallness there was the infinite compression of greatness; God Himself had come in, God come near to man. Why had He come near? Because of man’s need. He came in because you need a Saviour! He came in because I need a Saviour, and He has come close and in nearness in this Babe. How marvellous! Jesus is not there now, the manger is empty, but He has been there, in all that it meant. What compression there was for One who is in His person God Himself, to come near, to lie in that manger and to become available to you. There was a man in Jerusalem and when Jesus was brought to him shortly afterwards, it says, “he received him into his arms”. How wonderful that Simeon could receive this Babe into his arms, receive Him in the knowledge of who He was. He says, “Lord, now thou lettest thy bondman go, according to thy word, in peace; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation” (vv.28,29). Where did Simeon see the salvation? Not in any great work, not in anything yet accomplished, yet he saw salvation in that Child who had come in, and who would take up everything that was chargeable to mankind. Simeon could see it, and he received Jesus into his arms.
Well, Jesus is in glory now, and we do not have the opportunity that Simeon had. In a way, you can have something that is greater than that, because in faith you can receive the same Person now. You can receive Jesus into your heart, and you can give Him the place there that belongs to the One who is the “Saviour … who is Christ the Lord”. He is not in the manger now, but His pathway was in accord with what it meant to be born in a manger, because He was the despised One, the lowly One. That meant He was One who did not have any place of prominence in this world. Think of the pathway of Jesus for thirty years without anything about Him being recorded, without anything that attracted the world’s attention to Him, without anything that distinguished Him. Heaven itself distinguished Him; the secret came out later in this chapter, when He said, “I ought to be occupied in my Father’s business” (v.49). Here was One who knew God as His Father. He was a real Man, active in His life here, and He knew God as His Father. Everything He was and did was in His Father’s business and for His Father’s delight. Think of what a Man Jesus was, who walked in this way. Every step that He took was a pleasure to God the Father; every word that He spoke was a pleasure to God the Father; every movement, not only of His body, but of His heart and soul, was delightful to God the Father. What perfection in a Man!
In one view that blessedness could have continued for ever because there was no reason in Himself for Jesus to die. You and I have the sentence of death upon us because we are sinners. You and I have that end: “it is the portion of men once to die” (Heb.9:27), the scriptures says, and also “the wages of sin is death”, Rom.6:23. That is because of what we have done for the harm of others selfishly, or for our own pleasure and against God and His word rather than for the pleasure of God. We are all conscious of these things at some time in our lives, and they are so different from Jesus. He is distinguished; it speaks in the Scriptures about Him being “holy, harmless, undefiled” (Heb.7:26): that is Him now, that is Him always! Think of His pathway of harmlessness, suited to One who was laid in a manger, and the path that He went was from the manger to the cross because men did not want a Man like that. The fact He was there touched their consciences.
If I talk about His glory and perfection, that shows the difference between Jesus and you and me, that He was perfect, He was according to the glory of God. That is not like you or me, it is not like the Pharisees or the scribes or the Romans, not like all those that surrounded Him in this scene. In Luke 23, there came a point when they cried out, “Crucify, crucify him” (v.21). He was not crucified simply because the Roman governors did not want Him; He was crucified because there was an outcry. You can sometimes see how mobs can gather and there is an outcry, storms of various kinds against a person, and that is what the Lord’s position was like. Here was Someone in the centre of this storm of opinion against Him. Why? Because He was doing the Father’s will. Why? Because He was sinless. Why? Because they preferred themselves, preferred their own way, preferred that they should go on in a pathway of sin rather than having anything to do with this Man. So they rejected Him, and if you know your heart, you will know that there is in you that which rejects Jesus. They said, “We will not that this man should reign over us” (Luke 19:14), and that is what His people said ultimately; that is the characteristic of every heart. They cried out and demanded that He should be crucified.
Is that the whole story? No! There is another side to it. Read what it says in the Acts in the first preaching of this dispensation of grace: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus the Nazaræan, a man borne witness to by God to you by works of power and wonders and signs, which God wrought by him in your midst, as yourselves know”. That is the history of His pathway; that is what they had seen, and then it says, “him”, that Person who is before our hearts now, “given up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye, by the hand of lawless men, have crucified and slain”, Acts 2:22,23. So the responsibility lies on mankind as having rejected the Saviour who came to be with them. Although they crucified Him, we see that God was working through this; God had it all in His determinate counsel and foreknowledge that everything would be worked out for His glory and for blessing for man. If they had simply rejected Him, God would have been entirely within His rights to clear this scene in judgment on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, and indeed before it, when they had rejected Jesus: God, who judges everything, would not have been unrighteous to do so. But God is a God of grace, He has approached man in Christ, and although men rejected Jesus, God had His eye on the whole scene. He was taking into account that you are a sinner and that you need a Saviour. If you are going to escape the judgment of hell and all its horror, you need someone to take your place, and there is only one Person who could do it.
Jesus has taken that place on the cross: He was crucified so that every one who trusts in Him can say, “who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Pet.2:24. That cross on which He was crucified was occupied by the Sufferer, the Lord Jesus as suffering. For these three hours that we read about, He was suffering because of my sins. All the eternal punishment that was due to me for my sins was borne there, borne on the cross. I know there are many others here who can say the same. But it is necessary for each one of us to come to it for himself or herself, that He was the One who was the Sin-bearer, and that was why He was there. Yes, Jesus was there because of man’s rejection, but more than that, He was there to be the Sin-bearer, the perfect Sacrifice that God could accept. The heart of God is expanded towards all men because of what Jesus did at the cross. Not only that, but there is also a penalty for sin: we have seen that the wages of sin is death, and that is upon mankind. Men do not die just because of the breakdown of our bodies. We die, and the whole question of death has come in, because sin has come into this world. The Lord Jesus endured death too, so that we come to the point when there is this amazing and simple statement, “he expired”. The One who had come in His perfection and beauty in the manger, the One who lived in perfection according to the sight of God, “he expired”. He died for you. He died for you!
What does it mean to you, that a Man has died for you? I met an old man once, and he told the story of how, when he was young, he had risked his life to rescue someone from drowning; he pulled the person out. He was over ninety years old when he was telling me that, and he said: ‘He never thanked me!’. Think of that! To the end of his life, that was something that hurt him. He had saved someone’s life and they had never thanked him despite the risk he took. But there is Someone who has gone further than that for you; the Lord Jesus has actually gone into death for you. Have you thanked Him? Have you thanked Him for what He has done? Have you trusted Him for what He has done? Have you given Him that satisfaction? You can do it, because not only has He been to the cross, but the cross is empty.
Jesus was taken down from the cross; God provided the tenderness of this disciple Joseph and others to take His body down from the cross. What a task – to take the dead body of the Saviour down from the cross. Joseph gave Him his own grave, and the Lord Jesus lay in that grave. What was it for Him to be in that grave. Someone said that it was ‘a prison indeed’ 1. The Lord Jesus could not move any more than any other dead person. There He was. His spirit was with the Father, but His body was in the tomb. Why was that? Well, that was for you as well. Jesus lay there to take out of sight all that there is in me that is offensive to God; He took His place there in the grave for me.
But that grave is empty too! That grave is empty – how blessed that is. There were persons there who loved Jesus. How thankful we are that there were those who loved Him, the women especially. How much sympathy the women who are mentioned in Luke’s account had for Jesus. They were sympathetic to Him, they came and looked, and they wanted to do what they could for that precious body. There had been a great stone there, but now the stone had been rolled away from the tomb. There is an empty tomb! They went into the tomb, and “found not the body of the Lord Jesus”. Where is He? He is not in the tomb: the tomb is empty now. We sing;
‘We love to look within the tomb,
Robbed by Thy death of all its gloom;
The stone for ever rolled away:
Thy death the power of death did slay.’ Hymn 216.
It is an empty tomb, so believers do not need to fear the tomb, because they know the Saviour has been there.
But He is not there now. Where is He? He is risen! He is risen, He is glorified, and He is on the Father’s throne now. Think of that; there is a Man there. What does that prove to you? Well, it is in the hymn referred to earlier, Hymn 53:
‘attesting God’s full satisfaction’.
That is the witness, in the place where Jesus is, that God is entirely satisfied with His work. God is entirely satisfied. I suppose there was witness to it in the very fact that He was raised because He was “raised … by the glory of the Father”, Rom.6:4. The Father was so pleased with all these thirty-three and a half years during which Jesus was here in this scene, the Father was so delighted by the Son and what He had completed, that at the very earliest possible moment after the three days and three nights that the Lord Jesus lay in that tomb, the Father came there. It says that these women went “very early indeed”, but there was Someone earlier. The Father had been there to raise Jesus because of His delight in Him, and now He is ascended at the right hand of God. He is on the Father’s throne now, and because He is on the Father’s throne, there is a whole dispensation, a whole period of blessing, a whole distribution, a whole administration of blessing which has lasted about two thousand years. Think of the many who have come to know the Saviour in these years, the many who have come into the riches of blessing. They know Him, and have a link with Him; they can speak to Him because they can pray to Him. There He is; He fills the throne.
The Lord Jesus is going to take His own throne soon, but for the moment He is on the Father’s throne, and there is a whole area of blessing. The blessing includes that as a risen Man, He has made known to us the fact that God can be known as our Father. That is one of the blessings which we can know. He is a Saviour; He will save you from your sins, but not only will He do that but He will introduce you into the fulness of blessing. There could barely be a blessing greater than that He could say to His own that God is your Father, and that the Father has affection for you. The Father would care for you, the Father would introduce you into so many blessings, including the blessing that you are one of the sons of God. How wonderful it is! But it is all dependent on the work of Christ and dependent on you accepting the Saviour. You may say that is a good story, a good word; or you may have other views of it, but you have to receive Him, you have to trust this Saviour and say that the Lord Jesus is your own Saviour, and your own Lord. According to the word that is used in Luke 24, He is the “Lord Jesus”. It says, “they found not the body of the Lord Jesus”. The scripture introduces the Lord Jesus as the One who is a risen Man, the One who can be the answer to the affections of your heart, because God not only gives you salvation and blessing but He gives you a Man for the heart.
That is why we have that Man before us: “looking stedfastly on Jesus”. How wonderful it is that you can have such an occupation for your sight. We were speaking in the reading about your eye, how your eye might be a snare to you. That is possible; you might look at the wrong things. We have all done that, but here you have an occupation. Believers have an Object to occupy their sight; “looking stedfastly on Jesus the leader and completer of faith: who, in view of the joy lying before him, endured the cross, having despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God”. Can I ask if you have any idea what the “joy lying before him” was? You may get better answers than the one I am going to give you, but do you know what joy there is in Luke’s gospel? It tells you in chapter 15 that there is “joy before the angels of God for one repenting sinner” (v.10). Each one of us has to accept and acknowledge that we are sinners in the sight of God, but then there is joy in heaven. There is joy in heaven today. Why? Because of sinners repenting. It has been said that the angels know that sinners have repented by the look on Jesus’ face 2. How wonderful to think of the joy that there is which the angels can perceive in heaven because of repenting sinners. There are persons here who have caused that joy in heaven because they have repented and accepted the Saviour. If you have not trusted the Saviour, then today, this very moment, you can make heaven joyful. You can cause joy for the Lord Jesus by repenting, and accepting Him as Saviour. What a wonderful thing to have such influence in heaven that you can cause joy in heaven now. You will have joy in your own heart, you will have joy in your own soul, there will be joy to God’s people to whom you confess the name of the Lord Jesus. What delight there is to every one who knows the Lord Jesus for themselves when someone says, ‘He is my Saviour too’. But greater than that, there is joy in heaven.
So take advantage of the fact that the Lord Jesus is now on the Father’s throne in this period of grace. Soon He will leave that throne, and He will take His own throne. He is entitled to His own throne because He has overcome. One of the other scriptures about the throne is when God says, “Sit at my right hand, until I put thine enemies as footstool of thy feet”, Ps.110:1. The Lord Jesus is waiting until His enemies are suppressed, and He is going to take His own throne, He is going to reign and this world will know perfect administration. The concerns in governments and the turmoil will be past for ever; everything that people are concerned about – such as the environment, or mental damage – will be restored. Everything that persons are concerned about in this scene, the degradation of man and all the social problems – everything will be resolved. The Lord Jesus will reign, and believers will reign with Him: those who have trusted Him will reign with Him. But those who have not trusted in Him by that point will find the door closed; they will not be able to come into blessing then, they will not be able to come to know Him. How sad and serious and severe that is! They will be for ever locked out. Oh, let no one here be in that position. There is every opportunity, the door is open for blessing, and the fulness of blessing is available because of the Man on the Father’s throne. Take advantage of it today. I commend it all to you, in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Preaching of the gospel, Dundee
17 November 2019
David C Brown
CIRCUMSTANCES OF PRESSURE
Matthew 11:23-26; John 12:27,28; Mark 14:33,34;
These passages refer to circumstances of pressure into which Christ came in His pathway here, and it is unnecessary to say that such pressure has never been the lot of anyone else. The Lord remains gloriously unique in this. I trust that the Spirit will engage us with Him in this way, so that, as we sang, grateful praises may flow. I suppose we are more and more affected, as we go on, by any and every presentation of Christ.
The chapter in Matthew relates to a very testing time in the Lord’s life. In His ministry there was no lack on His part, no occasion in the ministry that caused it to be not received. That, of course, cannot always be said with ourselves, so that, if failure occurs, we are always safe in tracing the fault back to ourselves. With the Lord Jesus, however, no fault can be attached to Him. In His spirit, in His delivery, in His movements, in His ministry, all was perfect. The Lord was brought into these extreme circumstances of pressure in His life here and in His ministry, and His moral glory lights up to our souls in the midst of them, for we have the Lord’s own indictment against the cities in which He had served and in which His mighty works had been done. There was the failure of John the baptist too in this chapter; he is overcome in some measure by his circumstances in prison and needs to query as to the Lord Jesus, “Art thou the coming one, or are we to wait for another?”. How the Lord must have felt that from such a servant and from such a friend, too, as John the baptist! He rises in His own glory above it and speaks worthily and freely in commendation of John – another point that we should notice, just as Paul rises above all the unlovely thoughts of the Corinthians as to himself and still loves them and is not a bit affected by their disposition towards him. Paul may have contemplated this incident; he would consider how the Lord could remain gloriously unchanged and dignified in spite of all the current circumstances that are in this chapter, in regard to Israel and even in regard to John the baptist and then to the cities where most of His mighty works had been done. He had remained unchanged by it, except to turn His heart and His spirit to the Father. So the Lord shines pre-eminently.
All this is given, no doubt, to help us to contemplate the Lord and to observe the kind of manhood that provides pleasure and delight to God in all the circumstances it may pass through. This is His own indictment of Capernaum and the other cities in which His mighty works had been done. He is speaking, too, of the judgment-day, and He Himself will be the Judge in that day; but He is not judging now. All was in His hands; yet He does not execute judgment, but turns in calm and holy dignity and serenity to the Father; “I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes”. That is, He sees that the Father is operating, and thanks Him for the direction in which He is operating. He has not operated, you might say, in the field of His ministerial service; it has not pleased the Father to operate there. How comforting that is, dear brethren, at the present time, to be with the Father and with the Lord in their operations, whatever the direction in which they are operating! We might be discouraged in our gospel preachings that there is so little result, but to be able to retire into the presence of the Father and into the sphere in which the Father is operating – how comforting it is! He is operating in relation to the babes, not in relation to the great men in Jerusalem, not in relation to the scribes and Pharisees and the doctors of the law. They are not impressionable; they are not moved by Christ or by His ministry. How amazing it is! The flesh is not moved by any presentation of Christ, however gloriously it might be presented, and no one could present ministry more gloriously than Jesus, yet there they are, unmoved and unaffected. But what about the babes? They are affected. They are the persons who can be affected and take in impressions of Christ and be moved in relation to Himself and the presentation of Himself by the Spirit. So how comforting it is that we ourselves should come into this class of the babes. How glad we are that we have not been brought up in the great political positions, or the great religious positions, where man according to the flesh is always in view in his greatness and in his exploits, and in which he is eulogised for his characteristics. We are not in the presence of that, but we are just babes, those whom the Father has been pleased to operate in and upon, and to give us an impression of the kind of man that is according to Himself, the kind that will remain when every other kind of man is gone. Before God, they have all disappeared in the death of Christ and they are intended to disappear from before our eyes too, so that one Man should remain before us in His beauty and all His glory, the Father operating thus. It is a great thing to retire into the sovereignty of the Father and the area that He selects and the persons that He selects to operate in, for He has His own mind about it and His own will too, and He is the Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, and He has hid these things from the wise and the prudent. Is there anyone who is not getting on, who has got away from the Lord, away from the light, not positionally but morally, who is out of communion with the Lord? We have to be careful, for it relates to a state; it does not always relate to actions. We can judge actions, but we want to look after our state too, to see that we do not fall into an unimpressionable state.
So the Father is acting. You say, He does not seem to be acting in the great circles of men. No, He does not. He has His hand over all those affairs and over all authorities too, but He is not acting or operating in the great circles of men. He seems to be passing them by and selecting persons like ourselves, just babes. That is where the Father is operating. The Lord is with the Father too, co-operating with the Father. What unity there is with the Persons of the Godhead! Never have they been out of accord with one another. They have always acted together joyfully, co-ordinately, as one in all their matters.
So the Lord says, “thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes”, and in these circumstances the Lord is at rest. How ashamed we are of ourselves – the confusion, unrest and depression which often come over us in circumstances of pressure. And yet the Lord Jesus is presented in this way for our contemplation, for our appreciation, for our appropriation, that we might become like Him and act like Him too in our circumstances, though no one has ever been in such circumstances of pressure as the Lord Jesus.
Now I refer to John’s gospel. These passages are holy and profound, for they attach to One who is in Person God, yet here in lowly manhood. The scripture in John presents one of the greatest times of the Lord’s pressure, for He is anticipating Calvary, He is anticipating the abandonment. We do well to consider that, to sit down quietly and adoringly in the presence of God and in the presence of Christ, and think about the abandonment: “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us”, 2 Cor.5:21. He who knew not sin was made sin, made that which He abhorred. So at this time He says, “Now is my soul troubled”. How much better it is to contemplate that than to speak about it! “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But on account of this have I come to this hour”. John does not give us Gethsemane, but I suppose this passage in John’s gospel agrees with that and especially with the presentation that Mark gives us of Gethsemane, the intense feeling portrayed as the Lord speaks to the Father in Gethsemane about saving Him from this hour. In Mark we have the condensed thought of sufferings, the compression of them. Think of the compression of suffering on the soul of Jesus at this moment, the awfulness of what was pressing in upon His soul at this time as He anticipated the abandonment, as He anticipated being made sin, as He anticipated the wrath of God falling upon Him in its entirety. “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But on account of this have I come to this hour”. That is, He became Man to die. That is what this passage in John helps us to see. He says, “on account of this have I come to· this hour”. Think of the awfulness to the soul of Jesus of what the abandonment meant – for God to abandon Him for three hours! Never had He experienced it before, never had He experienced one moment of being out of the enjoyment of the cloudless favour of God. As Man, He lived in the cloudless favour of God, in the enjoyment of His love, in the enjoyment of His presence, in the enjoyment of His shining. Here, however, He anticipates a moment when God would abandon Him and He would be made sin, and the judgment of God would fall upon Him in all its weight and awfulness. No one can measure what God’s judgment against sin was, but Jesus was facing it, and facing it in absolute submission to the will of God, in the absolute necessity of His coming to this hour. If sin was to be dealt with, God’s judgment must be borne, and no one else could bear it, no one else could exhaust it. Everyone else was sinful, so no one could be made sin – only one, that is Jesus: He is the only sinless One. He became Man to die, that the terrible thing which had come into God’s fair creation might be dealt with once, finally and effectively. That is sin, dear brethren, and God’s judgment in relation to sin and death, and here is One who stands before us in all His glory as great enough to submit to the will of God if that required it. It did require it, and we would not be here if He had not gone that way.
What glory shines in Him! How our praises flow as we think of what we owe to Him. The great matter of sin and death and God’s judgment has been dealt with by Himself in totality and God is pleased to be shining upon us in the full radiancy of the revelation of Himself, and we are to be in the joy and consciousness of it. What words they were: “what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour”. He answers it Himself: “But on account of this have I come to this hour” – this supreme hour.
Now I refer to the passage in Mark’s gospel. Coupled with the circumstances of Gethsemane is the matter of the Lord taking three disciples with Him to watch with Him – not to share in Calvary’s woe and suffering, for no one can share in that; only He Himself could go that way. But as He faces these circumstances in Gethsemane, He takes Peter, James and John, three trusted ones. Are we trusted ones, dear brethren? If the Lord made a selection of trusted ones, would we be in the selection? What did the Lord require? Just a little comfort, just a little support in what He was passing through in His spirit. So He said, “watch with me” (Matt.26:38) while He entered anticipatively into the circumstances that He was just about to enter into actually, all coming before His holy soul, before His holy mind, and pressing upon His holy spirit. Would there be some comfort, just a little comfort? Calvary must be alone, Gethsemane not necessarily; someone to watch with Him – three trusted ones to watch with Him one hour. Yet no one watches! Did He give up? No, He did not give up. Did He cease from His prayer when He first comes and finds them sleeping? No, He goes on with His prayer and comes again and finds them sleeping. Does He give up now? No, He does not give up; He goes through. He carries all the sorrow Himself, alone; alone, without one scrap of sympathy, without any support in watchfulness; for while He is in His passion, they are sleeping. Oh, what glory! What heaven must have thought of this occasion. Heavenly beings must have come as near as possible to see Him, such a glorious sight, holy, spotless, but in the midst of grief, in His passion, taking three trusted ones for them to watch with Him one hour. That was all; not a day, not a long time, just a little time in which so much pressure was going to enter into His spirit, so that He might have a little support from those for whom He had done so much, but He found them sleeping. It is like ourselves, dear brethren: the Lord says, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh weak”, Mark 14:38. Yes, the flesh is weak. Have we ever tried to enter into Gethsemane? It is one of the places where we feel the weakest. Think of entering into some appreciation of the Lord’s grief and suffering. We cannot enter into Calvary, but there seems to be a place in Gethsemane where we can have just a faint understanding of some of the grief of Jesus, and yet, as I said, it is where we feel our weakest. It is in the presence of the passion of Jesus, in Gethsemane, where manhood according to God is surely built up and on which too, as it is built up, the praises of God will be sure and will sound in their sweetness and power and excellency.
Now I turn to the scripture in Luke’s gospel. Here is another passage in the Lord’s life – not Calvary as abandoned by God, but the hour that the devil had looked for. He says, “this is your hour and the power of darkness”. The Lord is to be exposed to the hands of men – all kinds of men, the power of darkness, the devil himself actuating men in absolute hatred to Christ, and in this hour to be able to do to Him as they wished. Have we ever thought what the Lord Jesus was exposed to and what He endured as the hour came in which men could do with Him as they wished – all kinds of men, the religious the most hateful? They would have done it before; they would have cut short His life, cut short His ministry. Indeed, at His first address at Nazareth they would have thrown Him over the precipice if they could, but they could not. Now in Luke’s gospel, which deals with the Lord’s sufferings from the hands of men, and for righteousness, we have not the abandonment, for Luke does not give us the abandonment. Matthew and Mark give us that, but I have selected Luke because of the character of his gospel. It is the gospel that presents Christ in grace and service to men, unremitting service and abundance of grace which He brings to men, His ministry of healing and grace. Yet what would men do to Him when their hour comes? What but show all the hatred, and express without mitigation all the hatred that the devil could arouse in their hearts towards Christ? How submissive He was, the lowly, subject, submissive One. He says, “I was day by day with you in the temple”, a day by day ministration, day by day teaching, day by day bringing grace and favour from God to men. “But this is your hour”, He says, “and the power of darkness”. Think of Jesus, think of His holy, sensitive spirit, think of His tenderness, think of His compassion, and yet exposed and subjected to every kind of hateful device that unrestrained and wicked men could mete out to Him. “But this is your hour”, He says, “and the power of darkness”. Mark is unique in his record of the cross, for he gives us two periods. He says it was about the third hour when Jesus was crucified, and then he says, “from the sixth hour”, like the other evangelists. Matthew, Mark and Luke say it was the sixth hour, but Mark says also it was about the third hour when they crucified Him, meaning that for three hours on the cross, Jesus was exposed to every ridicule. Every taunt, every sneer that could possibly be hurled against Him, was hurled for three hours as He hung on Calvary’s cross. That was their hour and that was the power of darkness.
Think of the glory that shines in Jesus as He endured all in holy submission to the will of God! Will we bear His reproach? Will we bear our share of the reproach of the Christ or will we turn away? Will we evade it? Jesus never evaded it. The time came for Him to be taken. Not taken straight to Calvary; no, but taken, as Luke tells us, before the Sanhedrim, for the religious man to vent all his spite and hatred against Him. Then before Pilate the governor; before Herod too, a man that could be hateful indeed. Herod sent Him back to Pilate with scorn. That was what Jesus was subjected to, and He remains in all His glory and submission, all His excellence and worth, before our souls in His time of pressure, in order that He might gain our affections undividedly, and that our praises might flow to Him and to the God who gave Him that His will might be effected, that the work might be finished and the counsels of God come into fruition. The Spirit has been given in order that we might contemplate our Lord Jesus, and so enter into something of the severity of the pressure that was His in His life here below, and thus our hearts be drawn more adoringly to Himself, and divided more and more from this hateful world out of which He was cast with scorn, and in which He was subjected to every taunt and ridicule and derision that it was possible for the devil to conceive in the mind of man.
Such is our Lord Jesus Christ, dear brethren. Such is what He went through, such is the glory of His manhood, such is the glory that surrounds the circumstances in which He is referred to in the gospels.
London
4 July 1953.
F W Trussler
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