HOW THE LORD JESUS FELT SORROW AND JOY
[p. 98] HOW THE LORD JESUS FELT SORROW AND JOY
These scriptures speak to us of the holy feelings that moved our Lord Jesus Christ, and show us what a real Man He was. In John’s gospel it says that the Word was with God, and the Word was God. There is no change in His Person. He always remains a Person in the Godhead, yet He became a real Man, so that He is able to feel all things as man. I wish to speak about these two scriptures, but first I would refer to certain types in the Old Testament.
The Old Testament serves to make intelligible the truths about Christ presented in the New Testament. Our knowledge of Christ, and indeed of the truth, will be very deficient if we do not read and understand the Old Testament.
The eunuch on his way from Jerusalem to his country was reading the Old Testament, but it does not suffice to read, we need to understand also. There was one who had the Holy Spirit, and who was led by Him to follow the eunuch’s chariot; as getting alongside of the eunuch, he asked him if he understood what he was reading, to which he replied, “How should I then be able unless some one guide me? And he begged Philip to come up and sit with him”. We know that the Holy Spirit has now come here, a Person who can explain the Old Testament to us. It says in Luke 24 that the Lord [p. 99] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. It was by the Holy Spirit’s guidance and by His help that Philip beginning from that scripture announced the glad tidings of Jesus to the eunuch. It is obvious that he was not limited to this scripture; nor was the Lord limited to only one scripture when he interpreted the Old Testament to His disciples. He began from Moses and from all the prophets and “interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself”. This gives us an entirely new view of the Scriptures. When we understand that in the whole Scripture is found that which concerns Christ, we should, if we love Him, love to read all that which has been written of Him thousands of years before He became Man. The personal and public glories of Christ have in a wonderful way been depicted and foreshadowed all through the Old Testament. We can scarcely find any presentation of the Lord Jesus in the New Testament that is not typified in the Old.
Now to come to our subject we find in Joseph a type of the personal feelings of the Lord Jesus. Joseph’s brethren spoke to one another in his presence of the anguish of soul they had seen in him when they lifted him out of the pit and sold him to the Midianites. We read how Joseph turned away from them and wept when they said this. In this Joseph is a type of Christ, for He felt deeply that His brethren, the Jews, rejected him. We find even when Benjamin came to Joseph in Egypt that he went into the chamber to weep there when he saw him. This shows what a great love he had for his brother. These tears speak of deep love to a brother. We see here in a type the Lord’s joy in His people, and in each one of us as those who are His brethren. Then again we find in Genesis 45 how Joseph expressed his feelings when he made himself known to his brethren, and how he wept aloud so that the Egyptians and Pharaoh’s servants heard it. It says that he fell on his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, and that he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them.
In all this, dear brethren, we see the love of Christ presented in type for us several hundred years before He became Man. It is very touching to think of it. The apostle Paul says: “The love of the Christ constrains us”. He speaks of “The Son of God, who [p. 100] has loved me and given himself for me”. The Lord gave him an apprehension of His personal love to him, something like that when Joseph wept on Benjamin’s neck. It ought to appeal to our hearts, that the Lord, when He died, loved each one of us personally. He loves us now, but the apostle spoke of the love the Lord had to him, when He died on the cross, for he says, “Who has loved me”. It says nothing in Genesis 45 about Joseph’s brethren, that they wept. It is said of Joseph that he fell on his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept; and Benjamin wept on his neck. Benjamin, like the apostles Paul and John, responded to Joseph’s love, but Joseph’s love was for all his brethren.
We find also in the account of Moses that he wept when, as a little child, he lay in the ark of reeds in the sedge on the bank of the Nile. Both Joseph and David are types of Christ. In David we have not only a type of Christ, but even of a believer, and of what is working in his heart. We see how David wept when he came to Ziklag and found that the Amalekites had taken his and his men’s wives captives, and carried them off and all their belongings. Things may happen to us in our life which seem to overwhelm us; they may seem as if they happened by chance, but they are not to be so considered. God will speak to our souls through them; He will call forth deep soul feelings in us. It says of David and his men, that they wept until they had no more power to weep. God’s desire for us is, that we, as regards our experiences, should be in accord with Christ. He sometimes brings us very low, so that we do not see a way out; the difficulties seem to be overpowering, but this is God’s way of prospering us; he ploughs up the soil in our hearts. He is longing to see us feel like Christ felt. David and his men wept till they had no more power to weep. It was a time of learning for them. David was a great servant [p. 101] of God, and all this was in order to prepare him for his service. Paul says in one place that he even despaired of life, but he speaks of how God saved them (the apostle and Timothy) out of such a death, and he adds that he had the confidence that God in the future would save them as needed.
As regards David we see how he also strengthened himself in the Lord his God, and all that seemed lost was recovered. David was now a greater servant than he was before the event at Ziklag. He was to be prepared for other experiences; every testing was necessary for the presentation of the testimony of God. Everything that happens to us, great or small, is calculated to make us sober and humble, so that we feel all these things in fellowship with God. The result is that we can represent Him in relation to the testimony of the gospel and “encourage those who are in any tribulation whatever, through the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged of God”.
Later on we find in David, when he parted from Jonathan, a beautiful expression of love, the feelings of love in a man when he loses a friend whom he loves. If a brother or sister is taken from us through death we are not insensible or indifferent as to it but we feel it deeply, and this is what God wishes to produce in us. He wills that we should feel compassion for men around us, who have not the light that we have. The four leprous men in Samaria said: “We are not doing right”, to enjoy all this abundance whilst the people in Samaria are starving. And, dear brethren, if God gives to us so abundantly, it is only right that we should think of starving men and women around us. These leprous men said: “This day is a day of good tidings”. And they went back to the king and to those who were in the city. If we had the same feelings for men as God has, we should be evangelical. When David parted from Jonathan [p. 102] it says that they kissed each other and wept together, and David exceeded. The love of the Lord never abates. If we turn from Him He loves us still. David wept more than Jonathan.
We see from what I have said that there are numerous scriptures in the Old Testament that speak of the feelings of Christ, especially in the Psalms of David. The Lamentations even are an expression of this. We find in the book of Ezra, when the foundation of the temple was being laid, that the ancient men who remembered the first temple wept, but the younger ones shouted for joy, so that one could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people. We should even in our day, if we have God’s interests before us, feel the great difference between this time and the day of Pentecost. We should feel how very much smaller and weaker everything is than in the days of the apostles, but at the same time we should find our joy in all that which is of God at the present time; in other words, our hearts are not insensible, but we feel things and find our joy in what God works now.
Now I wish to speak of the two scriptures in John and Luke. The Lord Jesus says, “Now is my soul troubled”. We see what a real man He was both as to spirit, soul and body, as we say. He was troubled in His soul when He thought of the death He was about to die, for He was on His way to death. No one could take His life from Him. He said: “I lay it down of myself”. And He took it again according to the commandment He had received from His Father. But He was going to die, and He knew what death was, for as a divine Person He knew perfectly what the work of atonement involved. Therefore He says, “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say?”. If any great calamity was going to happen to me, and my soul was deeply distressed at it, what should I say? I should pray God to deliver me out of it. But He says: “Father, glorify thy name”. We see from this how the deep feelings in Jesus that were found in His soul, found an expression in His perfect subjection to His Father’s will, and here it was not only a question of His Father’s will, but even of the glorification of His Father. He was concerned about His Father’s name being glorified. Our desires as children of God ought to be that His name should be glorified first of all.
It says here, “There came therefore a voice out of heaven, I both have glorified and will glorify it again”. We see what perfect harmony was found in feelings between the Father and the Son. We might even say that all the holy feelings that are found in the hearts of the people of God are perfectly known to the Father. It says that He searches our hearts and knows what is the mind of the Spirit, for He intercedes for the saints according to God. He intercedes for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. These groanings find their expression in our innermost feelings, and that is why God searches our hearts. It says too that the Holy Spirit knows the depths of God, and God searches the depths of our hearts. And what is it that God finds in our hearts when He searches them? Does He find, I wonder, that we groan over conditions in christendom at the present time? God marks our groanings. In Ezekiel 9, as we remember, we find that God commanded a mark to be set upon the foreheads of the men that sighed and that cried for all the abominations that were done in Jerusalem. Then, dear brethren, every one of us, young or old, who sighs and who feels the condition of things in the same way as God feels it is marked by Him.
All that which I have said now stands in connection with the cross of Christ and with the sorrow which sin has brought into the world. We remember how the Lord wept at the grave of Lazarus. One of [p. 104] the most precious words in Scripture is this, “Jesus wept”. But Luke gives us another view. From John’s gospel we learn to feel things deeply; Luke too acknowledges this, but he will lift up our spirits. At the very beginning of Luke’s gospel we find a tone of rejoicing, of heavenly joy. We find a child, John the baptist, not yet born that “leaped” with joy at the thought of the Lord’s birth. We see Mary, the mother of the Lord, Elizabeth and Zacharias filled with joy; we find also Simeon and Anna blessing God, and above all we have a multitude of the heavenly host praising God. We have here the bright side. If we for a moment could look into heaven and see the place which Jesus has there, we could not but rejoice. While the shepherds were keeping watch by night over their flock, an angel of the Lord was there by them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them. And then there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest”. We find here in Luke 2 that the heavenly multitude comes down. It is as if heaven surrounds us, that we might apprehend what heaven is and not be downcast, but lifted up in our souls in the light of what heaven is.
In chapter 10 we see that Jesus rejoiced in spirit. Here He is not sorrowful, but He rejoices in spirit. And what is the cause of this holy joy of our Lord Jesus? He says, “I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes”. We see that we are the cause of this joy. The Lord of heaven and earth has hid certain things from the wise, but has revealed them to babes. What a place we have in His heart! He had told them just before not to rejoice in the spirits being subjected to them, but that they should rejoice that their names were written in heaven. The seventy [p. 105] that had been sent out had returned and told the Lord how the spirits were subject to them in His name; in other words they had been very successful in their service, but we must not have our life in our service or in the success we may have in it. It is very blessed to be in the service of Christ and to prosper in it, but the Lord tells us in so many words that we should rather rejoice that our names are written in the heavens.
How little we understand of this, that if our names were mentioned in heaven, they would be well known there already. If any one of our names should be mentioned in the royal palace in Stockholm tonight it would not at all be known there; but if our names were intimated in heaven, they are well known there, for they are written there. In Hebrews 12 it says, that we belong to the assembly of the firstborn who are registered in heaven. This gives us a place there, and we rejoice at it. As those who are faithful followers of Christ, we have no name in this world; our name is cast away, as if it were an evil thing, but our names are written in the book of life, in heaven. Not only are we looked upon as being among the living, but we are reckoned as those who belong to the most elevated family in the universe. I am not saying this in a boasting spirit, but under the impression of how great all this is.
As faithful and devoted followers of Christ we have no name in the world; it will not acknowledge us. “Away with such a one as that from the earth”, they said of Paul, “for it was not fit he should live”. They had said the same of the Lord Jesus. “Take him away, take him away, crucify him”. When His name is mentioned in the world, we notice how He is rejected, but if you just then were able to look into heaven, you would see how He is regarded there. Paul was so highly esteemed in heaven, that one day he was caught up into paradise; he says, “caught up to the third heaven”, 2 Corinthians 12: 2. It was not as an apostle but as “a man in Christ” that he was caught up. We see that heaven knew him and esteemed him highly. And in connection with this the apostle says, “Of such a one I will boast”. Why should not we boast of the dignity God has given us in heaven? Therefore the Lord says in Luke 10, “Rejoice that your names are written in the heavens”. And the Lord Himself rejoices in spirit at this thought. The very thought to have us, to have the assembly with Himself in heavenly glory and dignity, made Him rejoice in His holy spirit.
May God speak to our hearts, so that we are exercised, feeling deeply the state of things around us, and at the same time apprehending more what a place we have in heaven.