Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1620
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, September 11, 1881
“Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? Behold and see if there is any sorrowlike unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, with which the Lord has afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger.” Lamentations 1:12.
On a night when the Tabernacle was thrown open to all comers, the ordinary hearers vacating their seats for the occasion.
SYMPATHY with suffering ones is never content to act her part alone. The man who is sorrowful for another is sure to invite others to join him in his sympathy. It seems to him so sad a thing that he would have all men weep over it with himself. It is so great a grief that he would hang the heavens with blackness and drape the world in sackcloth. Hence Jeremiah, when he saw the sorrows of Jerusalem, complained of all who dared to pass her by without a lamentation. He beheld that ancient and glorious city besieged by her adversaries, invaded by their fierce armies and given over to plunder, to murder, to fire and desolation. He beheld the streets running with the blood of her sons and daughters, her houses broken down and her glorious Temple defiled and laid in ashes.
Do you wonder that he wept and called upon others to weep with him? He pictured Jerusalem as sitting by the wayside, like a maiden who has been sorely wounded and is in bitter grief, crying out in her loveliness and anguish, “Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? Behold and see if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” In all the annals of history there never was sorrow equal to the fate of Jerusalem! Many cities have been destroyed, but none have fallen amid such a tempest of terrors. Some have been devoured with famine, wasted with pestilence, or broken down by war—but as for you, O Jerusalem—all these evils met upon you as when the vultures hasten from afar and meet upon the slain. Beautiful for situation, yet terrible for desolation! Joy of the whole earth and yet the queen of sorrow! How utterly were you spoiled! Had grape-gatherers gathered the grapes, they would have left, here and there, a cluster, but, O Jerusalem, you are thoroughly stripped—no fruit remains in you—your desolation is complete! How terrible was your lot and how grievous was your fault! Well did the Prophet, in the foresight of your tremendous doom, cry to all the nations, “Behold and see if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me?”
But, Friends, the fact of sympathy’s eager love of companionship is true in other instances. I, too, share the sympathetic avarice of Jeremiah’s pity. Do you ask what grief I have and for whose woes I am a mourner? I point you to the Cross and to the Man of Sorrows there. All faithful servants of Christ who love their Master would have their hearers mourn for Him, even as the Prophet foretold—“They shall look on Him whom they have pierced and shall mourn for Him.” When they think of Calvary and of their wounded, bleeding Lord, they cannot help imitating Jeremiah and picturing their Lord as crying from the Cross, “Behold and see if there is any sorrow like unto My sorrow.” Therefore in all ages of the Church this has been a favorite text—not as directly meaning what we shall say upon it, but as suggesting an adaptation and asking to be used in our case as Jeremiah used it in his own.
We apply to Jesus and His sufferings, tonight, the words which the Prophet wrote in reference to Judea and her national sorrow. We hear the Son of God saying in His death pangs to all this vast assembly, “Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? Behold and see if there is any sorrow like unto My sorrow.” And this is my first head tonight—the sufferings of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, are unparalleled. When we have dwelt enough upon this, we will proceed to note, secondly, that they have a deep interest to many. And we will conclude, thirdly, by enquiring whether they have not some interest for you?
O that God the Holy Spirit, whose office it is to bear witness to the Lord Jesus, would now bear His testimony in all your hearts for His mercy’s sake.
’ I. First, then, THE SUFFERINGS OF THE SON OF GOD UPON THE CROSS WERE ALTOGETHER UNPARALLELED. I tell no idle tale tonight! I draw no picture of romance, but the sorrows which we now relate are matters of fact! Out of the excellent Glory let the Lord confirm it tonight, if it is His truth, by the witness of His Spirit. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, came down in boundless pity among the sons of men and took upon Himself our human nature! Quitting the infinite honors of the skies, He came to the lowliness of the manger and the labor of the carpenter’s shop—and here He lived, suffering as a real man, all the sorrows and infirmities of our mortality.
In our nature He lived some 30 years or more, enduring much of poverty and labor. And at the end, thereof, He died, not amid the applause of all mankind, as He deserved, but nailed to the Cross—like a felon or a slave, a spectacle of scorn and infamy—the despised and rejected of men! The sufferings of this Divine One were unparalleled, first, because of the dignity of His Person which gave such point to the insult which He endured. Kings have died. Philosophers have died. Philanthropists have died, but never such a One as this, for He that bled on Calvary was King, Priest and Prophet—a right royal Man, and more—the Son of the Highest! God that made the heavens and earth was in personal union with that Man who died upon the Cross of Calvary.