Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1643
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, February 5, 1882
“And they all condemned Him to be guilty of death.” Mark 14:64.
THIS one sentence is selected because custom demands a text. But in reality we shall follow the entire narrative of our Lord’s trial before the High Priests. We shall see how the Sanhedrin arrived at their unrighteous sentence and what they did afterwards, and so, in a sense, we shall be keeping to our text. We have just been reading three passages—John 23:12- 24; Mark 14:53-65 and Luke 22:66-71. Please carry these in your minds while I rehearse the mournful story. The narrative of our Lord’s grief, if it is carefully studied, is harrowing in the extreme. One cannot long think of it without tears. In fact, I have personally known what it is to be compelled to leave my meditations upon it from excess of emotion.
It is enough to make one’s heart fully break to realize the sufferings of such an One, so lovely in Himself and so loving toward us. Yet this harrowing of the feelings is exceedingly useful and the after result of it is truly admirable. After mourning for Jesus we are raised above our mourning! There is no consolation under Heaven at all like it, for the sorrows of Christ seem to take the sting out of our own sorrows till they become harmless and endurable. A sympathetic contemplation of our Lord’s grief so dwarfs our griefs that they are reckoned to be but light afflictions, too petty, too insignificant to be mentioned in the same day. We dare not write ourselves down in the list of the sorrowful at all when we have just seen the sharp pains of the Man of Sorrows. The wounds of Jesus distil a balm which heals all mortal ills.
Nor is this all, though that were much in a world of woe like this, but there is a matchless stimulus about the passion of the Lord. Though you have been almost crushed by the sight of yours Lord’s agonies, you have risen from them strong, resolute, fervent, consecrated. Nothing stirs our hearts’ depths like His heart’s anguish. Nothing is too hard for us to attempt or to endure for One who sacrificed Himself for us. To be reviled for His dear sake who suffered such shame for us becomes no great affliction—even reproach, itself, when borne for Him, becomes greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt! To suffer in body and in mind, even unto death, for Him, were rather a privilege than an exaction—such love so swells our hearts that we vehemently pant for some way of expressing our indebtedness. We are grieved to think that our best will be so little, but we are solemnly resolved to give nothing less than our best to Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.
I believe, also, that full often careless hearts have been greatly affected by the sufferings of Jesus. They have been disturbed in their indifference, convinced of their ingratitude, weaned from their love of sin and attracted to Christ by hearing what He bore on their behalf. No loadstone can draw human hearts like the Cross of Christ. His wounds cause even hearts of stone to bleed! His shame makes obstinacy, itself, ashamed. Men never so plentifully fall before the great bow of God as when its arrows are dipped in the blood of Jesus. Those darts which are armed with His agonies cause wounds such as never can be healed except by His own pierced hands. These are the weapons which slay the sin and save the sinner—killing, at one stroke, both his self-confidence and his despair—and leaving him a captive to that Conqueror whose glory it is to make men free!
This morning I would not only preach the doctrines that come out of the Cross, but the Cross, itself. I suppose that was one of the great differences between the first preaching of all and the preaching after the Reformation. After the Reformation we had clearly ringing out from all pulpits the Doctrine of Justification by Faith and other glorious Truths of God which I hope will be made more and more prominent. But the first fathers of the Church set forth the same Truths in a less theological fashion. If they dwell little upon Justification by Faith they were wonderfully full upon the blood and its cleansing power, the wounds and their healing efficacy, the death of Jesus and our eternal life.
We will go back to their style for a while and preach the facts about our Lord Jesus Christ rather than the doctrinal inferences from them. Oh, that the Holy Spirit would so bring the sorrows of our Lord near to each heart, that every one of us may know the fellowship of His sufferings and possess faith in His salvation and reverent love for Him!
I. We will begin our narrative, this morning, by first asking you to think of THE PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION OF OUR BLESSED LORD AND MASTER BY THE HIGH PRIESTS. They brought in our Lord from the garden, bound, but they also kept fast hold upon Him, for we read of, “the men that held Him.” They were evidently afraid of their prisoner, even when they had Him entirely in their power. He was all gentleness and submission, but conscience made cowards of them all and they, therefore, took all a coward’s care to hold Him in their grasp. As the court had not yet gathered in sufficient numbers for a general examination, the High Priest resolved that he would fill up the time by personally interrogating his prisoner.