THAT we would but turn back to the simplicity of God’s Word!
It is so clearly put, it is so emphatically stated by Jesus Himself: everything must be accomplished, that is written concerning Him in the Old Testament. Only a moment before on the cross He gave up the ghost, John tells us, that “Jesus” knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst! (19:28). And on the way to Emmaus, all along, Jesus’ talk was a reproof of the slowness of mind and lack of understanding, by which the disciples had failed to discover in Moses and all the prophets, i. e. in all the Old Testament, the program of His suffering and dying.
Take nothing away from this!
Do not say, that, through all the Old Testament a lamentation is sounded of the “suffering that awaits the pious”, and that in an eminent sense this has been verified in the Messiah.
Do not try to water this down to the symbolic thought, that all the Old Covenant is one lamentation about Israel’s suffering, and that from the nature of the case Israel’s lot was bound to reflect itself in the Messiah.
And seek far less still, from an amphibious standpoint, to give currency to the idea, that a “suffering Messiah” has truly been prophesied, in connection with the extirpation of our guilt, but, that this is no warrant that from this majestic idea you should come down to the “particulars which in Gethsemane, which at Gabbatha and on Golgotha” are fulfilled.
Understand well, that by such assertions (by one as well as by the other) you contradict no one less than Jesus Himself.
To Jesus prophecy was truly in a very real sense a passion-program. A “program” in which His never wavering eye with absolute certainty has read before, seen and scrutinized the whole process of His sorrows and His revilings and His death, in the fixed colors and with the accurate outlines of the most awful reality.
Upon that prophetic page He saw Himself portrayed, as He was to be thrown down, trodden upon and crushed.
From that prophecy, after having made it plain to His own soul and with His own soul having willed and accepted it, He showed His disciples, not merely that He should suffer, but that He should suffer of the high priests; that they would deliver Him unto the Gentiles; that they would mock Him; spitefully entreat Him; spit on Him; scourge Him; and put Him to death; thus to clear the way to His resurrection the third day (Luke 18:31-33).
At every part of this majestic “passion-program”, which in His tears and blood has been suffered and endured, He Himself declares or His disciples say, “that this also was done, that the prophecy might be fulfilled, in which it was foretold”.
And when at length all the stations of the way of the cross have been trodden, and all these streams of most unending sorrows have been waded through, and all the parts of this Divine tragedy have been played to the end, with entire clear and transparent consciousness, knowing that “all things were now accomplished”, the Lord drinks the last drop also from that cup of suffering, which had been so scrupulously measured out to Him, and having done this, He gives up the ghost.
So it is! So it is written! Is it now so also by you confessed and believed?
“In the counsel and foreknowledge of God”, not merely the general passion-idea, but everything that should happen, to the smallest detail was determined beforehand.
“Determined”, that there should be no appearance even, that the Son of God’s good pleasure for one moment, at one single reviling, or at one single stripe had been abandoned to the arbitrariness of sinners.
“Determined”, that in Golgotha you should never suspect a power of corruption, which is superior to the Holy One, and that nothing should present itself there save an exhibition of the most dreadful evil serving as organ in the mightiness of the counsel of God.
“Determined”, that instead of perplexing and confusing our souls, the cross of the Son of God should on the contrary be in our eyes a ratification of the Word of God.
“Determined”, not least, that living through all this beforehand Christ should die a thousand deaths before He died, and thereby with clear consciousness, i. e., with moral will-power and surrender should struggle through a suffering, that was not haphazardly poured out upon Him, but one that had soberly and clearly been foreseen.
Is this too wonderful for God?
But, pray you, shall a mother, whose son is doomed to the martyrfire, be able in her fancies by day and in her dreams by night, to live through everything that faces her child; be able and permitted to live through it and see as it were in advance the chains, the procession, the pyre, the fire and the stake, the executioners and the convulsions—and shall God Almighty, when He gives His only Beloved up unto death, not be permitted to be busy with it even to its particulars; not be allowed to see it in advance; to think it through; and shall He be obliged to satisfy Himself with a rough, outlineless image of the hour of darkness to come?
And if this is not so, and you realize that already at the creation and in the making of the covenant, for the sake of the love of the Divine good pleasure, Golgotha was the center of God’s thoughts; that it could not fail but that God the Father should be busy with the suffering of His Son; yea, that with all His holy creating and animating activities ever and always again that cross in all its somber tints was bound to loom up before His holy eye—then, my brother, confess why should you still hesitate?
Does the Lord, according to your smallness, see only the “great outlines”, without observing “the small”? I thought each hair of your head was numbered! And if so, are the thorns, that wounded that blessed Head unto blood, not numbered?
Has the Father in His foreknowledge seen all this sorrow and reviling, and was He forbidden or unable to speak of it?
And if He, speaking to and through His prophets, as you yourself confess, could not be silent regarding the Son, far less still regarding the “Lamb that is led to the slaughter”, is it strange to you, that that Son, having become man, and opening that book of prophecy, should have found and read therein what His Father in heaven in His eternal love, had suffered for Him beforehand, had planned regarding Him, had spoken of Him,—and do you not perceive with what full draughts, before He suffered, the Son drank in so tender a love, which especially in these small particulars shone forth so divinely, addressed Him so tenderly, and at His sinking caught Him underneath.
O, view it in this light: The passion-prophecy in the Old Testament is a page from the sacred history of the love of the Father for the Son of His good pleasure, and you see, all barrenness falls away, and you understand how Jesus was bound to cleave unto that Old Testament with His whole soul, and saw what stood written there, literally written there altogether coincide with the “will of God”, so that “to accomplish everything”, that the Scripture, and “to accomplish everything” that God’s counsel might be fulfilled, was bound to be to His soul’s perception one and the self-same thing!
And is it then not this to you?
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