Today we are going to spend time remembering Jesus’ willing sacrifice of Himself on the cross for us. We have the bread and the cup, instituted by Jesus Himself as a way for us to continually remember Him. Now, this month we have been going full speed into our Broken Vessels series, examining the lives of a number of the personalities in Genesis who are also described as people commended for their faith in Hebrews 11. Today I want to start with a familiar passage from Hebrews 12.
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. – Hebrews 12:2
What does it mean that Jesus is the author of our faith? In addition to author, the word also means chief leader, or prince, as well as one that takes the lead in something and becomes an example. I believe all of these meanings apply here. The same word is used in Hebrews 2:10, where Jesus is called the author of salvation.
So Jesus is the author of our faith: He wrote it. He brought it into being. And He is the prince, or captain, of our faith. He commands it; He makes it follow Him. And He is the example of our faith, because Jesus, Himself, lived by faith. Yes, there were the countless miracles He performed, there was His wisdom, there were the many supernatural events in His life like His baptism and transfiguration, but when it came to the cross, Jesus truly had to live by faith. He had to choose to subject Himself to death, to the separation from God the Father, believing by faith that God would do the impossible, to resurrect Him from the dead after three days.
Jesus is also the perfecter of our faith; He refines it, makes it deeper and truer. What does faith look like as it becomes more and more “perfect”? I believe Hebrews 11 gives us many examples. It was a deep, mature faith that enabled Noah to undertake such an enormous task, building the ark, despite experiencing doubts and likely ridicule. It was a deep, true faith that led Abraham to pick up the knife to slay his own son. In Jacob we saw a faith being refined from a very shallow starting point to something much deeper. At first he was a man who continually took matters into his own hands and lived by the phrase “the ends justify the means.” But at the reconciliation with his brother Esau, he had become a man who no longer cared about the ends; all he cared about was repenting before his brother, whom he had repeatedly tricked and taken advantage of. Genuine repentance and not caring about the ends are sure signs of a deeper and truer faith.
Now, a number of years ago, Fred gave a powerful teaching on the phrase “for the joy set before Him” – I cannot begin to reproduce that here, but understand that Jesus saw the cross as joy because He saw what it would accomplish: the redeeming and rescue of man, those whom He loved with a love so great that we cannot begin to really understand it. In this too, Jesus was an example of faith that has never been deeper or truer.
What does it mean that Jesus “scorned its shame?” The Greek word, kataphroneo, means to think little or nothing of. Jesus thought nothing of the shame of the cross. What shame? To answer this I am going to invite a guest “speaker” – C. H. Spurgeon. He spoke on this topic in a message entitled “The Shameful Sufferer” given in 1859. About once a year I have chosen to quote at length from Spurgeon, because there was and is no one like him. Here is what he said 150 years ago:
"And now come and let us behold the pitiful spectacle of Jesus put to shame. He was put to shame in three ways—by shameful accusation, shameful mockery, and shameful crucifixion.
"First, behold the Savior's shame in his shameful accusation. He in whom was no sin, and who had done no ill, was charged with sin of the blackest kind. He was first arraigned before the Sanhedrim on no less a charge than that of blasphemy. And could He blaspheme?—He who said "It is My meat and My drink to do the will of Him that sent Me." Could He blaspheme? He who in the depths of His agony, when He sweat as it were great drops of blood at last cried, "My Father, not My will, but Thine be done,"—could He blaspheme? No. And it is just because it was so contrary to His character, that He felt the accusation. […] We wonder that He did not fall to the ground, even as His betrayers did when they came to lay hold upon Him. […]
"Nor did this content them. Having charged Him with breaking the first tablet, they then charged him with violating the second: they said He was guilty of sedition; they declared that He was a traitor to the government of Caesar, that He stirred up the people, declaring that He Himself was a king. And could He commit treason? He who said "My kingdom is not of this world, else would My servants fight;" He who when they would have taken Him by force, to make Him a king withdrew Himself into the wilderness and prayed—could He commit treason? It was impossible. Did He not pay tribute, and sent to the fish, when His poverty had not wherewith to pay the tax. Could He commit treason? He could not sin against Caesar, for He was Caesar's lord; He was King of kings, and Lord of lords. If He had chosen He could have taken the purple from the shoulders of Caesar and at a word have given Caesar to be a prey to the worms. He commit treason? 'Twas far enough from Jesus, the gentle and the mild to stir up sedition or set man against man. Ah no, He was a lover of His country, and a lover of His race; He would never provoke a civil war, and yet this charge was brought against him. What would you think good citizens and good Christians, if you were charged with such a crime as this, with the clamors of your own people behind you crying out against you as so execrable an offender that you must die the death. Would not that abash you? Ah! but your Master had to endure this as well as the other. He despised the shameful indictments, and was numbered with the transgressors.
"But next, Christ not only endured shameful accusation but He endured shameful mocking. When Christ was taken away to Herod, Herod set Him at nought. The original word signifies made nothing of Him. It is an amazing thing to find that man should make nothing of the Son of God, who is all in all. He had made Himself nothing, He had declared that He was a worm, and no man; but what a sin was that, and what a shame was that when Herod made Him nothing! He had but to look Herod in the face, and He could have withered him with one glance of His fire-darting eyes. But yet Herod may meek Him, and Jesus will not speak, and men of arms may come about Him, and break their cruel jests upon His tender heart, but not a word has He to say, but "is led as a lamb to the slaughter, and like a sheep before her shearers is dumb."
"You will observe that in Christ's mocking, from Herod's own hall, on to the time when He was taken from Pilate's hall of judgment to his crucifixion, and then onward to His death, the mockers were of many kinds. In the first place they mocked the Savior's person. One of those things about which we may say but little, but of which we ought often to think, is the fact that our Savior was stripped in the midst of a ribald soldiery, of all the garments that He had. It is a shame even for us to speak of this which was done by our own flesh and blood toward Him who was our Redeemer. Those holy limbs which were the casket of the precious jewel of His soul were exposed to the shame and open contempt of men, coarse-minded men who were utterly destitute of every particle of delicacy. The person of Christ was stripped twice; and although our painters, for obvious reasons, cover Christ upon the cross, there He hung—the naked Savior of a naked race. He who clothed the lilies had not wherewith to clothe Himself; He who had clothed the earth with jewels and made for it robes of emeralds, had not so much as a rag to conceal His nakedness from a staring, gazing, mocking, hard-hearted crowd. He had made coats of skins for Adam and Eve when they were naked in the garden; He had taken from them those poor fig leaves with which they sought to hide their nakedness, given them something wherewith they might wrap themselves from the cold; but now they part His garments among them, and for His vesture do they cast lots, while He Himself, exposed to the pitiless storm of contempt, hath no cloak with which to cover His shame. They mocked His person,—Jesus Christ declared Himself to be the Son of God;—they mocked His divine person as well as His human—when He hung upon the cross, they said. "If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross, and we will believe on Thee." Frequently they challenge Him to prove His divinity by turning aside from the work which He had undertaken. They asked Him to do the very thing which would have disproved His divinity, in order that they might then, as they declared, acknowledge and confess that He was the Son of God. And now can you think of it? Christ was mocked as man, we can conceive Him as yielding to this. But to be mocked as God! A challenge thrown to manhood, manhood would easily take up and fight the duel. Christian manhood would allow the gauntlet to lie there, or tread it beneath its foot in contempt, bearing all things, and enduring all things for Christ's sake. But can you think of God being challenged by His creature—the eternal Jehovah provoked by the creature which His own hated hath made; the Infinite despised by the finite; He who fills all things, by whom all things exist, laughed at, mocked, despised by the creature of an hour, who is crushed before the moth! This was contempt indeed, a contempt of His complex person, of His manhood, and of His divinity.
"But note next, they mocked all His offices, as well as His person. Christ was a king, and never such a king as He. He is Israel's David; all the hearts of His people are knit unto Him. He is Israel's Solomon; He shall reign from sea to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth. He was one of royal race. We have some called kings on earth, children of Nimrod, these are called kings, but kings they are not. They borrow their dignity of Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords. But here was one of the true blood, one of the right royal race, who had lost His way, and was mingled with the common herd of men. What did they do? Did they bring crowns with which to honor Him, and did the nobility of earth cast their robes beneath His feet to carpet His footsteps? See, what they do? He is delivered up to rough and brutal soldiery. They find for Him a mimic throne, and having put Him on it, they strip Him of His own robes, and find some old soldier's cloak of scarlet or of purple, and put it about His loins. They plait a crown of thorns, and put it about His brow—a brow that was of old bedight with stars, and then they fix in His hand—a hand that will not resent an insult, a secptre of reed, and then bowing the knee, they pay their mimic homage before Him, making Him a May-day king. […] Think of the King of kings and Lord of lords, having for His adoration the spittle of guilty mouths, for homage the smitings of filthy hands, for tribute the jests of brutal tongues! Was ever shame like Thine, Thou King of kings, Thou emperor of all worlds, flouted by the soldiery, and smitten by their menial hands? O earth! How couldst thou endure this iniquity? O ye heavens! Why did ye not fall in very indignation to crush the men who thus blasphemed your Maker? Here was a shame indeed,—the king mocked by his own subjects.
"He was a prophet, too, as we all know, and what did they that they might mock Him as a prophet? Why they blindfolded Him; shut out the light of heaven from His eyes, and then they smote Him, and did buffet Him with their hands, and they said, "Prophecy unto us who it is that smote thee." The prophet must make a prophecy to those who taunted Him to tell them who it was that smote Him. We believe that Jesus was the first and the last of prophets; by Him all others are sent; we bow before Him with reverential adoration. We count it to be our highest honor to sit at His feet like Mary; we only wish that we might have the comfort to wash His feet with our tears, and wipe them with the hairs of our head. We feel that like John the Baptist, His shoe latchet we are not worthy to unloose, and can we therefore bear the spectacle of Jesus the prophet, blindfolded and buffeted with insult and blows?
"But they also mocked His priesthood, Jesus Christ had come into the world to be a priest to offer sacrifice, and His priesthood must be mocked too. All salvation lay in the hands of the priests, and now they say unto Him, "It thou be the Christ save thyself and us," Ah! He saved others, Himself He could not save. But oh, what mystery of scorn is here, what unutterable depths of shame that the great High Priest of our profession, He who is Himself the Paschal Lamb, the Altar, the Priest, the Sacrifice, that He, the Son of God incarnate, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, should thus be despised, and thus be mocked.
"He was mocked, still further, in his sufferings. I cannot venture to describe the sufferings of our Saviour under the lash of the scourge. St. Bernard, and many of the early fathers of the Church, give such a picture of Christ's scourging, that I could not endure to tell it over again. Whether they had sufficient data for what they say, I do not know; but this much I know,—"He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed." I know it must have been a terrible scourging, to be called wounding, bruising, chastisement, and stripes; and, remember, that every time the lash fell on His shoulders, the laugh of him who used the lash was mingled with the stripe, and every time the blood poured out afresh, and the flesh was torn off His bones, there was a jest and a jeer, to make His pain yet more poignant and terrible. And when He came at last to His cross, and they nailed Him upon it, how they continued the mockery of His sufferings! We are told that the high priests and the scribes stood, and at length sat and watched him there. When they saw his head fall upon his breast, they would, no doubt, make some bitter remark about it, and say, "Ah! He will never lift his head again among the multitude;" and when they saw his hands bleeding they would say, "Ha, ha, these were the hands that touched the lepers, and that raised the dead, they will never do this again;" and when they saw his feet, they would say, "Ah, those feet will never tread this land again, and journey on his pilgrimages of mercy;" and then some coarse, some villainous, some brutal, perhaps some beastly jest would be made concerning every part of His person. They mocked Him, and, at last, He called for drink, and they gave Him vinegar—mocking His thirst, while they pretended to allay it.
"But worst of all, I have one more thing to notice, they mocked His prayers. Did you ever read in all the annals of executions, or of murders, that ever men mocked their fellow-creatures’ prayers? I have read stories of some dastardly villains who have sought to slay their enemies, and seeing their death approaching the victims have said, "give me a moment or two for prayer"—and rare has been the cases when this has been disallowed. But I never read of a case in which when the prayer was uttered it has been laughed at, and made the object of a jest. But here hangs the Savior, and every word He speaks becomes the subject of a pun, the motto of a jest. And when at the last he utters the most thrilling death-shriek that ever startled earth and hell, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani," even then they must pun upon it, and say, "he calleth for Elias, let us see whether Elias will come and take Him down." He was mocked even in His prayer. O Jesus! never was love like Thine; never patience that could be compared with Thy endurance when Thou didst endure the cross, despising the shame.
"The cross! the cross! When you hear that word it wakens in your hearts no thoughts of shame. There are other forms of capital punishment in the present day far more disgraceful than the cross. Connected with the guillotine there is much with the block as much, with the gallows, most of all. But, remember, that although to speak of the gallows is to utter a word of ignominy, yet there is nothing of shame in the term "gallows," compared with the shame of the cross, as it was understood in the days of Christ. We are told that crucifixion was a punishment to which none could be put but a slave, and, even then, the crime must have been of the most frightful character—such as the betrayal of a master, the plotting his death, or murdering him—only such offenses would have brought crucifixion, even, upon a slave. It was looked upon as the most terrible and frightful of all punishments. All the deaths in the world are preferable to this; they have all some slight alleviating circumstance, either their rapidity or their glory. But this is the death of a villain, of a murderer, of an assassin,—a death painfully protracted, one which cannot be equaled in all inventions of human cruelty, for suffering and ignominy. Christ himself endured this. And we are unable at this day, I believe, fully to understand the shame of the cross; but the Jew knew it, the Roman knew it, and Christ knew what a frightful thing, what a shameful thing it was to be put to the death of crucifixion.
"Remember, too, that in the Savior's case, there were special aggravations of this shame. He had to carry his own cross; He was crucified, too, at the common place of execution, Calvary. He was put to death, too, at a time when Jerusalem was full of people. It was at the feast of the Passover, when the crowd had greatly increased, and when the representatives of all nations would be present to behold the spectacle. All were there to unite in this scoffing, and to increase the shame. And He was crucified between two thieves, as if to teach that He was viler than they. Was ever shame like this?
"Let me conduct you to the cross. The cross, the cross! Tears begin to flow at the very thoughts of it. The rough wood is laid upon the ground, Christ is flung upon His back, four soldiers seize His hands and feet, His blessed flesh is rent with the accursed iron; He begins to bleed, He is lifted into mid-air, the cross is dashed into the place prepared for it, every limb is dislocated, every bone put out of joint by that terrific jerk; He hangs there naked to His shame, gazed upon by all beholders, the sun shines Hot upon Him, fever begins to burn, the tongue is dried up like a potsherd, it cleaves to the roof of His mouth, He has not wherewith to nourish nature with moisture. His body has been long emaciated by fasting, He has been brought near the brink of death by flagellation in the hall of Pilate. There He hangs, the tenderest part of His body, His hands and feet are pierced, and where the nerves are most numerous and tender, there is the iron rending and tearing its fearful way. The weight of his body drags the iron up His foot, and when His knees are so weary that they cannot hold Him, then the iron begins to drag through His hands. Terrible spectacle indeed! But you have seen only the outward, there was an inward, you cannot see that: if you could see it though your eyes were like the angels, you would be smitten with eternal blindness. Then there was the soul. The soul dying. Can you guess what must be the pangs of a soul dying? A soul never died on earth yet. Hell is the place of dying souls, where they die everlastingly the second death. And there was within the ribs of Christ's body, hell itself poured out. Christ's soul was enduring the conflict with all the powers of hell, whose malice was aggravated by the fact, that it was the last battle they should ever be able to fight with him. Nay, worse than that. He had lost that which is the martyr's strength and shield, he had lost the presence of his God, God himself was putting His hand upon Him; it pleased the Father to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief, He hath made His soul a sacrifice for sin. God, in whose countenance Christ had everlastingly seen Himself, basking in delight, concealed His face. And there was Jesus forsaken of God and man, left alone to tread the winepress, nay, to be trodden in the wine-press, and dip His vesture in His own blood. Oh, was there ever grief like this! No love can picture it. If I had a thought in my heart concerning the suffering of Christ, it should excoriate my lips ere I uttered it. The agonies of Jesus were like the furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, heated seven times hotter than ever human suffering was heated before. Every vein was a road for the hot feet of pain to travel in; every nerve a string in a harp of agony that thrilled with the discordant wail of hell. All the agonies that the damned themselves can endure were thrust into the soul of Christ. He was a target for the arrows of the Almighty, arrows dipped in the poison of our sin; all the billows of the Eternal dashed upon this rock of our salvation. He must be bruised, trodden, crushed, destroyed, His soul must be exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.
"But I must pause, I cannot describe it. I can creep over it, and you can too. The rocks rent when Jesus died, our hearts must be made of harder marble than the rocks themselves if they do not feel. The temple rent its gorgeous veil of tapestry, and will not ye be mourners too? The sun itself had one big tear in its own burning eye, which quenched its light; and shall not we weep; we for whom the Savior died? Shall not we feel an agony of heart that He should thus have endured for us?
"Mark, my friends, that all the shame that came on Christ, He despised. He counted it so light compared with the joy which was set before Him, that He is said to have despised it. As for His sufferings, He could not despise them, that word could not be used in connection with the cross for the cross was too awful for even Christ Himself to despise. That, He endured; the shame He could cast off, but the cross He must carry, and to it He must be nailed. "He endured the cross, despising the shame."
And so, with those awful words and images freshly in your minds, spend time before the Lord. If it helps you, picture Jacob’s repentant posture, bowing down to the ground again and again, running towards the brother he had sinned so terribly against. Recall how Esau welcomed Jacob with open arms, and how there were many tears. Like the picture of the return of the prodigal son, I find this a powerful picture of how we come to Christ. When you are ready, come up and take the bread and cup to your seat, and again, when you are ready, partake these elements in remembrance of Him.
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. – Hebrews 12:2
What does it mean that Jesus is the author of our faith? In addition to author, the word also means chief leader, or prince, as well as one that takes the lead in something and becomes an example. I believe all of these meanings apply here. The same word is used in Hebrews 2:10, where Jesus is called the author of salvation.
So Jesus is the author of our faith: He wrote it. He brought it into being. And He is the prince, or captain, of our faith. He commands it; He makes it follow Him. And He is the example of our faith, because Jesus, Himself, lived by faith. Yes, there were the countless miracles He performed, there was His wisdom, there were the many supernatural events in His life like His baptism and transfiguration, but when it came to the cross, Jesus truly had to live by faith. He had to choose to subject Himself to death, to the separation from God the Father, believing by faith that God would do the impossible, to resurrect Him from the dead after three days.
Jesus is also the perfecter of our faith; He refines it, makes it deeper and truer. What does faith look like as it becomes more and more “perfect”? I believe Hebrews 11 gives us many examples. It was a deep, mature faith that enabled Noah to undertake such an enormous task, building the ark, despite experiencing doubts and likely ridicule. It was a deep, true faith that led Abraham to pick up the knife to slay his own son. In Jacob we saw a faith being refined from a very shallow starting point to something much deeper. At first he was a man who continually took matters into his own hands and lived by the phrase “the ends justify the means.” But at the reconciliation with his brother Esau, he had become a man who no longer cared about the ends; all he cared about was repenting before his brother, whom he had repeatedly tricked and taken advantage of. Genuine repentance and not caring about the ends are sure signs of a deeper and truer faith.
Now, a number of years ago, Fred gave a powerful teaching on the phrase “for the joy set before Him” – I cannot begin to reproduce that here, but understand that Jesus saw the cross as joy because He saw what it would accomplish: the redeeming and rescue of man, those whom He loved with a love so great that we cannot begin to really understand it. In this too, Jesus was an example of faith that has never been deeper or truer.
What does it mean that Jesus “scorned its shame?” The Greek word, kataphroneo, means to think little or nothing of. Jesus thought nothing of the shame of the cross. What shame? To answer this I am going to invite a guest “speaker” – C. H. Spurgeon. He spoke on this topic in a message entitled “The Shameful Sufferer” given in 1859. About once a year I have chosen to quote at length from Spurgeon, because there was and is no one like him. Here is what he said 150 years ago:
"And now come and let us behold the pitiful spectacle of Jesus put to shame. He was put to shame in three ways—by shameful accusation, shameful mockery, and shameful crucifixion.
"First, behold the Savior's shame in his shameful accusation. He in whom was no sin, and who had done no ill, was charged with sin of the blackest kind. He was first arraigned before the Sanhedrim on no less a charge than that of blasphemy. And could He blaspheme?—He who said "It is My meat and My drink to do the will of Him that sent Me." Could He blaspheme? He who in the depths of His agony, when He sweat as it were great drops of blood at last cried, "My Father, not My will, but Thine be done,"—could He blaspheme? No. And it is just because it was so contrary to His character, that He felt the accusation. […] We wonder that He did not fall to the ground, even as His betrayers did when they came to lay hold upon Him. […]
"Nor did this content them. Having charged Him with breaking the first tablet, they then charged him with violating the second: they said He was guilty of sedition; they declared that He was a traitor to the government of Caesar, that He stirred up the people, declaring that He Himself was a king. And could He commit treason? He who said "My kingdom is not of this world, else would My servants fight;" He who when they would have taken Him by force, to make Him a king withdrew Himself into the wilderness and prayed—could He commit treason? It was impossible. Did He not pay tribute, and sent to the fish, when His poverty had not wherewith to pay the tax. Could He commit treason? He could not sin against Caesar, for He was Caesar's lord; He was King of kings, and Lord of lords. If He had chosen He could have taken the purple from the shoulders of Caesar and at a word have given Caesar to be a prey to the worms. He commit treason? 'Twas far enough from Jesus, the gentle and the mild to stir up sedition or set man against man. Ah no, He was a lover of His country, and a lover of His race; He would never provoke a civil war, and yet this charge was brought against him. What would you think good citizens and good Christians, if you were charged with such a crime as this, with the clamors of your own people behind you crying out against you as so execrable an offender that you must die the death. Would not that abash you? Ah! but your Master had to endure this as well as the other. He despised the shameful indictments, and was numbered with the transgressors.
"But next, Christ not only endured shameful accusation but He endured shameful mocking. When Christ was taken away to Herod, Herod set Him at nought. The original word signifies made nothing of Him. It is an amazing thing to find that man should make nothing of the Son of God, who is all in all. He had made Himself nothing, He had declared that He was a worm, and no man; but what a sin was that, and what a shame was that when Herod made Him nothing! He had but to look Herod in the face, and He could have withered him with one glance of His fire-darting eyes. But yet Herod may meek Him, and Jesus will not speak, and men of arms may come about Him, and break their cruel jests upon His tender heart, but not a word has He to say, but "is led as a lamb to the slaughter, and like a sheep before her shearers is dumb."
"You will observe that in Christ's mocking, from Herod's own hall, on to the time when He was taken from Pilate's hall of judgment to his crucifixion, and then onward to His death, the mockers were of many kinds. In the first place they mocked the Savior's person. One of those things about which we may say but little, but of which we ought often to think, is the fact that our Savior was stripped in the midst of a ribald soldiery, of all the garments that He had. It is a shame even for us to speak of this which was done by our own flesh and blood toward Him who was our Redeemer. Those holy limbs which were the casket of the precious jewel of His soul were exposed to the shame and open contempt of men, coarse-minded men who were utterly destitute of every particle of delicacy. The person of Christ was stripped twice; and although our painters, for obvious reasons, cover Christ upon the cross, there He hung—the naked Savior of a naked race. He who clothed the lilies had not wherewith to clothe Himself; He who had clothed the earth with jewels and made for it robes of emeralds, had not so much as a rag to conceal His nakedness from a staring, gazing, mocking, hard-hearted crowd. He had made coats of skins for Adam and Eve when they were naked in the garden; He had taken from them those poor fig leaves with which they sought to hide their nakedness, given them something wherewith they might wrap themselves from the cold; but now they part His garments among them, and for His vesture do they cast lots, while He Himself, exposed to the pitiless storm of contempt, hath no cloak with which to cover His shame. They mocked His person,—Jesus Christ declared Himself to be the Son of God;—they mocked His divine person as well as His human—when He hung upon the cross, they said. "If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross, and we will believe on Thee." Frequently they challenge Him to prove His divinity by turning aside from the work which He had undertaken. They asked Him to do the very thing which would have disproved His divinity, in order that they might then, as they declared, acknowledge and confess that He was the Son of God. And now can you think of it? Christ was mocked as man, we can conceive Him as yielding to this. But to be mocked as God! A challenge thrown to manhood, manhood would easily take up and fight the duel. Christian manhood would allow the gauntlet to lie there, or tread it beneath its foot in contempt, bearing all things, and enduring all things for Christ's sake. But can you think of God being challenged by His creature—the eternal Jehovah provoked by the creature which His own hated hath made; the Infinite despised by the finite; He who fills all things, by whom all things exist, laughed at, mocked, despised by the creature of an hour, who is crushed before the moth! This was contempt indeed, a contempt of His complex person, of His manhood, and of His divinity.
"But note next, they mocked all His offices, as well as His person. Christ was a king, and never such a king as He. He is Israel's David; all the hearts of His people are knit unto Him. He is Israel's Solomon; He shall reign from sea to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth. He was one of royal race. We have some called kings on earth, children of Nimrod, these are called kings, but kings they are not. They borrow their dignity of Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords. But here was one of the true blood, one of the right royal race, who had lost His way, and was mingled with the common herd of men. What did they do? Did they bring crowns with which to honor Him, and did the nobility of earth cast their robes beneath His feet to carpet His footsteps? See, what they do? He is delivered up to rough and brutal soldiery. They find for Him a mimic throne, and having put Him on it, they strip Him of His own robes, and find some old soldier's cloak of scarlet or of purple, and put it about His loins. They plait a crown of thorns, and put it about His brow—a brow that was of old bedight with stars, and then they fix in His hand—a hand that will not resent an insult, a secptre of reed, and then bowing the knee, they pay their mimic homage before Him, making Him a May-day king. […] Think of the King of kings and Lord of lords, having for His adoration the spittle of guilty mouths, for homage the smitings of filthy hands, for tribute the jests of brutal tongues! Was ever shame like Thine, Thou King of kings, Thou emperor of all worlds, flouted by the soldiery, and smitten by their menial hands? O earth! How couldst thou endure this iniquity? O ye heavens! Why did ye not fall in very indignation to crush the men who thus blasphemed your Maker? Here was a shame indeed,—the king mocked by his own subjects.
"He was a prophet, too, as we all know, and what did they that they might mock Him as a prophet? Why they blindfolded Him; shut out the light of heaven from His eyes, and then they smote Him, and did buffet Him with their hands, and they said, "Prophecy unto us who it is that smote thee." The prophet must make a prophecy to those who taunted Him to tell them who it was that smote Him. We believe that Jesus was the first and the last of prophets; by Him all others are sent; we bow before Him with reverential adoration. We count it to be our highest honor to sit at His feet like Mary; we only wish that we might have the comfort to wash His feet with our tears, and wipe them with the hairs of our head. We feel that like John the Baptist, His shoe latchet we are not worthy to unloose, and can we therefore bear the spectacle of Jesus the prophet, blindfolded and buffeted with insult and blows?
"But they also mocked His priesthood, Jesus Christ had come into the world to be a priest to offer sacrifice, and His priesthood must be mocked too. All salvation lay in the hands of the priests, and now they say unto Him, "It thou be the Christ save thyself and us," Ah! He saved others, Himself He could not save. But oh, what mystery of scorn is here, what unutterable depths of shame that the great High Priest of our profession, He who is Himself the Paschal Lamb, the Altar, the Priest, the Sacrifice, that He, the Son of God incarnate, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, should thus be despised, and thus be mocked.
"He was mocked, still further, in his sufferings. I cannot venture to describe the sufferings of our Saviour under the lash of the scourge. St. Bernard, and many of the early fathers of the Church, give such a picture of Christ's scourging, that I could not endure to tell it over again. Whether they had sufficient data for what they say, I do not know; but this much I know,—"He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed." I know it must have been a terrible scourging, to be called wounding, bruising, chastisement, and stripes; and, remember, that every time the lash fell on His shoulders, the laugh of him who used the lash was mingled with the stripe, and every time the blood poured out afresh, and the flesh was torn off His bones, there was a jest and a jeer, to make His pain yet more poignant and terrible. And when He came at last to His cross, and they nailed Him upon it, how they continued the mockery of His sufferings! We are told that the high priests and the scribes stood, and at length sat and watched him there. When they saw his head fall upon his breast, they would, no doubt, make some bitter remark about it, and say, "Ah! He will never lift his head again among the multitude;" and when they saw his hands bleeding they would say, "Ha, ha, these were the hands that touched the lepers, and that raised the dead, they will never do this again;" and when they saw his feet, they would say, "Ah, those feet will never tread this land again, and journey on his pilgrimages of mercy;" and then some coarse, some villainous, some brutal, perhaps some beastly jest would be made concerning every part of His person. They mocked Him, and, at last, He called for drink, and they gave Him vinegar—mocking His thirst, while they pretended to allay it.
"But worst of all, I have one more thing to notice, they mocked His prayers. Did you ever read in all the annals of executions, or of murders, that ever men mocked their fellow-creatures’ prayers? I have read stories of some dastardly villains who have sought to slay their enemies, and seeing their death approaching the victims have said, "give me a moment or two for prayer"—and rare has been the cases when this has been disallowed. But I never read of a case in which when the prayer was uttered it has been laughed at, and made the object of a jest. But here hangs the Savior, and every word He speaks becomes the subject of a pun, the motto of a jest. And when at the last he utters the most thrilling death-shriek that ever startled earth and hell, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani," even then they must pun upon it, and say, "he calleth for Elias, let us see whether Elias will come and take Him down." He was mocked even in His prayer. O Jesus! never was love like Thine; never patience that could be compared with Thy endurance when Thou didst endure the cross, despising the shame.
"The cross! the cross! When you hear that word it wakens in your hearts no thoughts of shame. There are other forms of capital punishment in the present day far more disgraceful than the cross. Connected with the guillotine there is much with the block as much, with the gallows, most of all. But, remember, that although to speak of the gallows is to utter a word of ignominy, yet there is nothing of shame in the term "gallows," compared with the shame of the cross, as it was understood in the days of Christ. We are told that crucifixion was a punishment to which none could be put but a slave, and, even then, the crime must have been of the most frightful character—such as the betrayal of a master, the plotting his death, or murdering him—only such offenses would have brought crucifixion, even, upon a slave. It was looked upon as the most terrible and frightful of all punishments. All the deaths in the world are preferable to this; they have all some slight alleviating circumstance, either their rapidity or their glory. But this is the death of a villain, of a murderer, of an assassin,—a death painfully protracted, one which cannot be equaled in all inventions of human cruelty, for suffering and ignominy. Christ himself endured this. And we are unable at this day, I believe, fully to understand the shame of the cross; but the Jew knew it, the Roman knew it, and Christ knew what a frightful thing, what a shameful thing it was to be put to the death of crucifixion.
"Remember, too, that in the Savior's case, there were special aggravations of this shame. He had to carry his own cross; He was crucified, too, at the common place of execution, Calvary. He was put to death, too, at a time when Jerusalem was full of people. It was at the feast of the Passover, when the crowd had greatly increased, and when the representatives of all nations would be present to behold the spectacle. All were there to unite in this scoffing, and to increase the shame. And He was crucified between two thieves, as if to teach that He was viler than they. Was ever shame like this?
"Let me conduct you to the cross. The cross, the cross! Tears begin to flow at the very thoughts of it. The rough wood is laid upon the ground, Christ is flung upon His back, four soldiers seize His hands and feet, His blessed flesh is rent with the accursed iron; He begins to bleed, He is lifted into mid-air, the cross is dashed into the place prepared for it, every limb is dislocated, every bone put out of joint by that terrific jerk; He hangs there naked to His shame, gazed upon by all beholders, the sun shines Hot upon Him, fever begins to burn, the tongue is dried up like a potsherd, it cleaves to the roof of His mouth, He has not wherewith to nourish nature with moisture. His body has been long emaciated by fasting, He has been brought near the brink of death by flagellation in the hall of Pilate. There He hangs, the tenderest part of His body, His hands and feet are pierced, and where the nerves are most numerous and tender, there is the iron rending and tearing its fearful way. The weight of his body drags the iron up His foot, and when His knees are so weary that they cannot hold Him, then the iron begins to drag through His hands. Terrible spectacle indeed! But you have seen only the outward, there was an inward, you cannot see that: if you could see it though your eyes were like the angels, you would be smitten with eternal blindness. Then there was the soul. The soul dying. Can you guess what must be the pangs of a soul dying? A soul never died on earth yet. Hell is the place of dying souls, where they die everlastingly the second death. And there was within the ribs of Christ's body, hell itself poured out. Christ's soul was enduring the conflict with all the powers of hell, whose malice was aggravated by the fact, that it was the last battle they should ever be able to fight with him. Nay, worse than that. He had lost that which is the martyr's strength and shield, he had lost the presence of his God, God himself was putting His hand upon Him; it pleased the Father to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief, He hath made His soul a sacrifice for sin. God, in whose countenance Christ had everlastingly seen Himself, basking in delight, concealed His face. And there was Jesus forsaken of God and man, left alone to tread the winepress, nay, to be trodden in the wine-press, and dip His vesture in His own blood. Oh, was there ever grief like this! No love can picture it. If I had a thought in my heart concerning the suffering of Christ, it should excoriate my lips ere I uttered it. The agonies of Jesus were like the furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, heated seven times hotter than ever human suffering was heated before. Every vein was a road for the hot feet of pain to travel in; every nerve a string in a harp of agony that thrilled with the discordant wail of hell. All the agonies that the damned themselves can endure were thrust into the soul of Christ. He was a target for the arrows of the Almighty, arrows dipped in the poison of our sin; all the billows of the Eternal dashed upon this rock of our salvation. He must be bruised, trodden, crushed, destroyed, His soul must be exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.
"But I must pause, I cannot describe it. I can creep over it, and you can too. The rocks rent when Jesus died, our hearts must be made of harder marble than the rocks themselves if they do not feel. The temple rent its gorgeous veil of tapestry, and will not ye be mourners too? The sun itself had one big tear in its own burning eye, which quenched its light; and shall not we weep; we for whom the Savior died? Shall not we feel an agony of heart that He should thus have endured for us?
"Mark, my friends, that all the shame that came on Christ, He despised. He counted it so light compared with the joy which was set before Him, that He is said to have despised it. As for His sufferings, He could not despise them, that word could not be used in connection with the cross for the cross was too awful for even Christ Himself to despise. That, He endured; the shame He could cast off, but the cross He must carry, and to it He must be nailed. "He endured the cross, despising the shame."
And so, with those awful words and images freshly in your minds, spend time before the Lord. If it helps you, picture Jacob’s repentant posture, bowing down to the ground again and again, running towards the brother he had sinned so terribly against. Recall how Esau welcomed Jacob with open arms, and how there were many tears. Like the picture of the return of the prodigal son, I find this a powerful picture of how we come to Christ. When you are ready, come up and take the bread and cup to your seat, and again, when you are ready, partake these elements in remembrance of Him.
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