2. Because He would keep His part of the covenant. Before the world was He entered into covenant with His Father, that He would stand as a substitute for sinners; and therefore when He did come to suffer, His very righteousness sustained and restrained Him. 3. Because of His love. Love to perishing sinners made the Son of God enter into covenant with His Father to bear wrath in their stead. The same love made Him keep the covenant He had made. It was love that tied His tongue, &c. 4. Because He sought His Father's glory. It is more glorifying to God when sin is punished in His own Son than when it is punished in the poor worms that committed it. III. The broken bread represents the silent sufferings of Christ. I set before you the plainest and simplest picture of the silent sufferings of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. In that night in which He was betrayed He took bread. Why bread? 1. Because of its plainness and commonness. He did not take silver, or gold, or jewels, to represent His body, but plain bread, to show you that when He became a surety for sinners, He did not come in His original glory, with His Father's angels (Heb. ii. 16). 2. He chose bread to show you that He was dumb, and opened not His mouth. When I break the bread it resists not-it complains not-it yields to my hand. So it was with Christ. Some of you believe not. You do not consent to take this silent Lamb as a sin-offering for your soul. Either you do not feel your need of Him, or you have not faith to look to Him. But if you do not truly look to Him, be not so rash, so daring, so inconsistent as to take the bread and wine. You say: It was my sin that lay so heavy on His heart, &c. Come, then, to the broken bread and poured-out wine; feed on them; appropriate Christ in them; and whilst you feed on the emblems of the silent Lamb, do this in remembrance of Jesus.-R. M. M'Cheyne. I. There never was such a sufferer. II. There never were such sufferings. III. There never was such conduct under suffering.-I. E. Page. THE SHEEP BEFORE THE SHEARERS. liii. 7. As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, &c I. Consider our Saviour's patience under the figure of a sheep before her shearers. Our Lord was dumb and opened not his mouth-1. Against his adversaries. He did not accuse one of them of cruelty or injustice. 2. Against any one of us. No doubt he looked across the ages; for that eye of His was not dim, even when bloodshot on the tree, and He might have looked at your indifference and mine, at our coldness of heart and unfaithfulness, and He might have left on record some such words as these: "I am suffering for those who are utterly unworthy of my regard; their love will be a very poor return for mine," &c. But there is not a hint of such a feeling, not a trace of it. 3. Against His Father. 4. Against the severity of the punishment of our sins. I see in this complete submission; a complete absorp tion in His work (a). II. View our own case under the same metaphor. We can go, and do go, as sheep under the shearers' hands. Just as a sheep is taken by the shearer, and its wool is all cut off, so doth the Lord take His people and shear them, taking away all their earthly comforts at times, and leaving them bare as shorn sheep. I wish when it came to our turn to undergo this shearing operation it could be said of us as of our Lord. I fear that we open our mouths a great deal, and make no end of complaint. 1. A sheep rewards its owner for all his care and trouble by being shorn. There is nothing else that I know of that a sheep can do. Some of God's people can give to Christ a tribute of gratitude by active service, and they should do so gladly every day of their lives; but many others cannot do much in active service, and about the only reward they can give to their Lord is to give up their fleece by suffering when He calls upon them to suffer; submissively yielding to be shorn of their personal comfort when the time comes for patient endurance (H. E. I. 157, 158). 2. The sheep is itself benefited by the operation of shearing. So when the Lord shears us, we do not like the operation any more than the sheep do ; but it is for His glory, and for our benefit, and therefore we are bound most willingly to submit (H. E. I. 204-212). 3. Before sheep are shorn they are always washed. Whenever a trial threatens to overtake you, before it actually arrives you should ask the Lord to sanctify you. If He is going to clip the wool, ask Him to wash it before He takes it off; ask to be cleansed in spirit, soul, and body. 4. After the washing, and the sheep has dried, it actually loses what was its comfort. It is thrown down, and you see the shearers; you wonder at them, and pity the poor sheep. It will happen to you that you shall lose what is your comfort. Will you recollect this? Because the next time you receive a fresh comfort you must say, this is a loan. 5. The shearers, when they are taking the wool off the sheep, take care not to hurt the sheep. They clip as close as they can, but they do not cut the skin. Be ye sure that when the Lord is clipping and shearing us He will not hurt us; He will take our comforts away, but He will not really injure us, or cause a wound to our spirits. If ever the shears do make us bleed, it is because we kick, because we struggle. 6. The shearers always shear at a suitable time. It would be a very wicked, cruel, and unwise thing to begin sheep-shearing in winter time. Whenever the Lord afflicts us He selects the best possible time. 7. When God takes away our mercies He is ready to supply us with more. It is with us as with the sheep, there is new wool coming. Whenever the Lord takes away our earthly comforts with one hand, one, two, three, He restores with the other hand six, twelve, scores, a hundred; He takes away by spoonfuls, and He gives by cartloads; we are crying and whining about the little loss, and yet it is necessary in order that we may be able to receive the great mercy. III. Imitate the example of our blessed Lord when our turn comes to be shorn. Let us be dumb before the shearers-submissive, quiescent, even as He was.-C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 1543. (a.) He had never been slow of speech when He could bless the sons of men, but He would not say a single word for Himself. "Never man spake like this Man," and never man was silent like Him. Was this singular silence the index of His perfect self-sacrifice? Did it show that He would not utter a word to stay the slaughter of His sacred person, which he had dedicated as an offering for us? Had He so entirely surrendered Himself that He would not interfere in His own behalf, even in the minutest degree, but be bound and slain an unstruggling, uncomplaining victim. Was this silence a type of the defencelessness of sin? Nothing can be said in palliation or excuse of human guilt; and, therefore, He who bore its whole weight stood speechless before His judge. Is not patient silence the best reply to a gainsaying world? Calm endurance answers some questions infinitely more conclusively than the loftiest eloquence. The best apologists for Christianity in the early days were martyrs. The anvil breaks a host of hammers by quietly bearing their blows. Did not the silent Lamb of God furnish us with a grand example of wisdom? Where every word was occasion for new blasphemy, it was the line of duty to afford no fuel for the flame of sin. The ambiguous and the false, the unworthy and the mean, will ere long overthrow and confute themselves, and therefore the true can afford to be quiet, and finds silence to be its wisdom. Evidently our Lord, by His silence, furnished a remarkable fulfilment of prophecy. A long defence of Himself would have been contrary to Isaiah's prediction. By His quiet He conclusively proved Himself to be the true Lamb of God.-Spurgeon. CHRIST STRICKEN. (Sacramental Service.) liii. 8. For the transgression of my people was He stricken. The general doctrine of the text is that of an expiation for sinners, made by an innocent victim substituted in their place. In the substitution of an innocent being to suffer in the room of the guilty (and especially such a being as Jesus Christ), and in pardoning and accepting the guilty into favour on that account, there appears a departure from all our common ideas of justice and propriety, &c. We have no disposition to diminish this singularity. It stands alone. But we certainly shall fail of the just and real essence of the Christian religion in our hearts, if we do not have faith in this expiation; and if our minds cannot compass the whole amazing matter, we may hope at least to have some gleams of illumination, like the lightning's flash on the dark bosom of the storm. Let us see: I. The wonder of this punishment for sin laid upon an innocent and Divine Being accords with our best conceptions of God. The most just conception of God that we have ever had is that of an incomprehensible Being. The high wonder of this expiation agrees with the infinitude of God. A suffering Christ is an infinite wonder; and, therefore, the wonder of the doctrine of an expiation for sinners by the sufferings of the innocent, instead of being a reason for our incredulity, is really a reason for our faith. The innocence, the person, and the expiation of the Victim, all accord with the incomprehensible God, &c. yond us, and peculiar in everything else, He is beyond us and peculiar in the great atonement. Be II. Our God has different modes of giving intimations of Himself. We cannot learn all that we are able to know of Him in any one spot, or by any one transaction. To lead us on He has employed grades, and built one scaffolding above another. There is matter which came from nothing at His bidding; and in this world we may learn something of His control over matter. We may lift our eyes beyond this world, and as we look out upon the stars, we may add to our knowledge of God's government over material things. Beyond matter is mind. Beyond mere intelligence there is a kingdom of sensibilities. Still beyond there is a moral kingdom. The world of grace is still higher. Redemption the salvation of sinners -is not a matter of mere creation, or mere government or recovery from ruin merely; it is a matter of mercy to the sinning and the punishment of sin. This matter evidently lies beyond all others. "Stricken for my people" is just the amazing thing which the rising gradations of the revelations of God demand. III. The mystery, the wonder of this redemption of sinners, by "stripes" laid on Christ, accords with us, as well as it accords with God. We are sinners. See what sin hath done. Some symbols of its mischief are visible. It blasted paradise, &c.! Sin has broken up our relations with God. Our Creator, our final Judge, is against us! The law which sin has broken is God's law-the law for the immortal spirit-the law for eternity to come! Eternity! The mind staggers under the weight of that idea. To last on for ever, a sinner cut off from God, and no more at peace with myself than with Him; to feel eternally the gnawings of "the worm that dieth not" and the wrath of God! Sooner come annihilation! Now, in the presence of these wants, this sin which has no analogy, which has broken up our peace relations with God, this conscience, these agonies of a fearing spirit, and this dreadful eternitywhat shall God do for us? What do we want Him to do? Just what He has done. We want Him to meet our infinite fears with His infinite offers, our worst foes with His ineffable grace; to show us while we stand trembling before His justice, that something has been done which that justice cannot find fault with-something which shall wave the peace. branch over the door into eternity! He has done it. It is His own work, on His own authority, like Him, and just because it has such wonders about it as the innocence and mysterious person of a suffering Christ, our faith can trust it. Where we most fear, God is most wonderful. The excellence and the innocence of the sacrifice as the ground of our peace, shows us that the august redemption perfectly assorts with the ineffable woes and wants of our sinful condition. 4. The uses we ought to make of this subject are not trivial. There are those who have no living faith in this atonement, and who will not come to the memorial of it. Why? Simply because of two things. (1.) They have low and grovelling ideas of God-ideas very much confined to His earthly things and His natural attributes. (2.) They do not justly realise their condition and necessities as sinners. If men have inadequate notions of God, they will have inadequate notions of sin. If they have inadequate notions of sin, they will have inadequate notions of Christ; and then there will be nothing seen in their condition to drive them, and nothing in His character to draw them, to His infinite sacrifice. If they had anything like a just idea of what it is to be a sinner, they would look to the sacrifice of Christ with amazing gladness and gratitude.-Ichabod S. Spencer, D.D.: Sermons, vol. ii. pp. 412-431. THE BURIAL OF JESUS. liii. 9. And He made His grave with the wicked, &c. The death and resurrection of Christ are frequently dwelt upon by preachers and writers; but His burial is seldom distinctly alluded to. Yet it is spoken of in Scripture as a most important fact (Acts xiii. 29; 1 Cor. xv. 4; Eph. iv. 9, 10). BURIAL I. THE HONOURABLE GRANTED TO JESUS WHO HAD BEEN SO IGNOMINIOUSLY PUT TO DEATH. 1. He was to have been buried with criminals. "They appointed Him His grave with criminals" (Dr. Calkins). Not satisfied with His sufferings and death, they sought to insult Him even in death by wishing to bury His corpse with criminals (Matt. xxvii. 38; John xix. 31). They intended to heap the highest possible indignity upon Him, denying him the privilege of an honourable burial (1 Kings xxi. 19; Isa. xiv. 19; Jer. xxvi. 23). As a matter of course, since He was put to death with wicked men, He would naturally have been buried with them, unless there had been some special interposition in His case. He was given up to be treated as a criminal; He was made to take the place of a murderer, Barabbas, on the cross; He was subjected to the same indignity and cruelty to which the two malefactors were, and it was evidently designed also that He should be buried in the same manner, and probably in the same grave (John xix. 31). Who can but wonder at the striking accuracy of the prediction ? 2. He was really buried in a grave that was intended for the corpse of a rich man. "With a rich man after His death." The purpose which had been cherished in regard to His burial was not accomplished. He was buried by persons of distinction : Joseph and Nicodemus-men of rank -secret disciples now emboldened. How different this from the interment of malefactors! How striking and accurate the fulfilment of prophecy! (Matt. xxvii. 57-60; John xix. 39, 40). "He who died as a malefactor was buried as a king." All the more remarkable because during His life He was associated with the poor, and was Himself poor. The humiliation was over, and the exaltation was begun! II. THE REASON WHY JESUS RECEIVED SUCH HONOURABLE TREATMENT. It was found in the fact 1. That He had done no wrong. "Because," rather, although "He had done no violence"-had not by harsh and injurious conduct provoked such treatment, or in any way deserved it at their hands. He was perfectly innocent-suffered without having committed any crime. To none did He do wrong. He was charged with perverting the nation and sowing sedition, but the charge was utterly false. He had done no violence, but "went about doing good." His actions were always prompted by purest benevolence. Evidently with this passage in view, the Apostle Peter says of the Lord Jesus: "Who did no sin," &c. (1 Pet. ii. 20). Those who knew Him best spake thus. Well did Peter remember the unsullied purity, the loving gentleness, the high principles of our Lord. As he looked back on that life, it must have seemed like a pure pellucid stream flowing amid charred unsightly rocks. 2. That there was no deceit in His mouth. He was no deceiver, though He was regarded and treated as one. He was perfectly candid and sincere, true and holy. He was in all respects what He professed to be, and He imposed on no one by any false and unfounded claim (Heb. vii. 26; 1 Pet. ii. 22). Duplicity, craft, and deceit are the accustomed methods of false teachers. He neither pandered to the rich nor flattered the poor. When in the greatest peril, He adopts no ingenious arguments nor methods for escape. All He said was plain, undisguised, unclouded, bold. He never disguised His abhorrence of falsehood. He did not promise more than He intended to perform. He did not hide from His followers the consequences of their position: "Ye must be hated," &c. None of His enemies could take up that challenge of His, Which of you convicteth me of sin?" The judge that tried Him declared, "I find no fault in Him," and the centurion that executed Him professed that "certainly He was a righteous man." Thus, by Divine arrangement, Jesus received such honourable treatment immediately after His ignominious death as a vindication of His spotless character. III. PRACTICAL LESSONS SUGGESTED BY THE HONOURABLE BURIAL OF JESUS. man. 1. The character of Jesus is unique. He stands alone among men. He was spotlessly pure in the midst of universal pollution. Then He must be something more than a mere "Truly this is THE SON OF GOD." How admirably qualified is He to act as our substitute, and to present a sacrifice for our sin! Had He been guilty of a single sin, what could He have done for us of what merit His obedience? of what value His death? of what efficacy His intercession? 2. The purity of Jesus in word and deed should be sought by us. Here on earth, in flesh and blood, and under the conditions to which men in general are subject, He exhibited a perfect character, and so stands before us as a true, complete, and universal pattern and example. We are commanded to be imitators of Him (Eph. v. 1; 1 Pet. ii. 21). Let us follow Him as if we trod exactly behind Him. Let there be the closest imitation. Take heed to your deceitful heart (Ps. xxxii. 2). Guard against deceit of mouth (Ps. cxx. 3), and deceit in practice, &c. If we suffer, let us be careful that it shall not be on account of our faults. Let us seek grace so to live as not to deserve the reproaches of others, and to be able to bear them with patience if we are called to suffer them. The purity of Jesus can never be congenial to us until our hearts are regenerated. 3. The burial of Jesus should divest the grave of its terror. These bodies of ours must fail and faint and die, and go down to the cold grave to return to their native dust. What then? Shall we who are "risen with Christ," dread to rest where He Him |