Circumstances Of Pressure
CIRCUMSTANCES OF PRESSURE
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, the souls that can be affected and take in impression 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 His Person God, yet here in lowly manhood. The scripture in John presents another and 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”. He who knew no 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 is 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 that 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”, 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. O, 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”. 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! “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.
Willesden, London
4th July 1953
From ‘Words of Grace & Comfort’ 1954
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