Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1543
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, June 20, 1880
“As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opens not His mouth.” Isaiah 53:7.
It is very suggestive of the way in which our Lord Jesus took the sinner’s place that we are here, in the context, compared to sheep—“All we like sheep have gone astray,” and then He who comes to take our place is also compared to a sheep—“As a sheep before her shearers is dumb.” It is wonderful how complete was the interchange of positions between Christ and His people so that what they were He became in order that what He is they may become! See how closely He became like His brethren? I can very well understand how we should be compared to the sheep and He to the shepherd, but I should never have dared to coin the comparison which likens Him to a sheep! I dare try to explain, but I should never have dared to utter it if I had not found it here.
To liken the Son of the Highest to a sheep would have been unpardonable presumption had not His own Spirit employed the condescending figure. Though the emblem is very gracious, it is by no means novel, for our Lord had been long before Isaiah’s day typified in the Lamb of the Passover. To call Him, “the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world,” is a very frequent mode of explaining to us how He made expiation for our transgressions and, indeed, even in His Glory He is the Lamb in the midst of the Throne before whom angels and the redeemed are bowing. I delight to bring before your minds the amazing communion between yourselves and Jesus—you “like sheep” and He “as a sheep”—you like sheep in your wanderings, He like a sheep in His patience. You more like sheep—I mean myself and you—more like sheep for foolishness, but He only like a sheep for the sweet submissiveness of His Spirit, so that beneath the shearer’s hand, “He opens not His mouth.”
I will not keep you with any preface, but invite you to consider, first, OUR SAVIOR’S PATIENCE under the figure of a sheep before her shearers. Let us view our Lord’s patience by the help of the Holy Spirit. I do not think I will preach to you, but I will set before you as open a window as I can and ask you to look in and behold the Lamb of God. Our Lord was brought to the slaughter and brought, in another sense, by another figure, to the shearers. He was brought to the slaughter that He might die—to the shearers that He might be shorn of His comfort and of His honors— shorn, even, of His good name and shorn, at last, of life itself.
While He was before the slaughterers He was quiet as a lamb that is led—when He was under the shearers He was as silent as a sheep that lies to be shorn. You know the story of how patient He was before Pilate and Herod and Caiaphas and on the Cross. You have no record of His groaning, or of His uttering any exclamation as though impatient of the pain and shame which He received at the hands of wicked men. You have not one bitter word, one hard speech. Pilate cries, “Answer You nothing? Behold how many things they witness against You!” And Herod is bitterly disappointed, for he expected to see some miracle worked by Jesus. All that He says is like the bleating of a sheep, only so infinitely more full of meaning. He utters sentences likes these—“For this purpose was I born and came into the world, that I might bear witness to the Truth” and, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He is all patience and silence.
Now remember, first, that our Lord was silent and opened not His mouth against His adversaries and did not accuse one of them of cruelty or injustice. They slandered Him, but He replied not. False witnesses arose, but He answered them not. He did not say, like Paul, “God shall smite you, you white wall.” I am not going to condemn Paul, but I certainly am not going to commend him, either. In contrast with the Master, how differently he behaves! Jesus lets not fall a word against anybody, though they are doing everything that malice can invent against Him. For Pilate He even makes a half apology, “He that delivered Me unto you has the greater sin.”
One would have thought He must have spoken when they spat in His face. Might He not have said, “Friend, why are you doing this? For which of all My works do you insult Me?” But the time for such expostulations was over. When they struck Him on the face with the palms of their hands, it would have been understandable if He had said, “Why do you strike Me so?” But no, He speaks not. He brings no accusation to His Father. He had only to have lifted His eyes to Heaven, or to have felt a wrathful wish and legions of angels would have chased out the ribald soldiers—one flash of a seraph’s wing and Herod had been eaten by worms and Pilate had died the death he well deserved as an unjust judge!
The hill of the Cross might have become a volcano’s mouth to swallow up the whole multitude who stood there jesting and jeering at Him. But no, nothing of the kind—there was no display of power, or rather there was so great a display of power over Himself that He did not use His might against His most bitter foes! He restrained Omnipotence, itself, with a strength which can never be measured, for His mighty love availed even to restrain Divine Wrath! He kept back the natural indignation which must have come over His spirit against the injustice, the lies, the shameful malice of His foes. He held it all back and was patient, meek, silent to the end.