Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1754
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, August 12, 1883
“Jesus answered, Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night comes, when no man can work.” John 9:3,4.
OBSERVE, dear Friends, how little disconcerted our Lord Jesus Christ was by the most violent opposition of His enemies. The Jews took up stones to stone Him and He hid Himself from them. But almost the moment after, when He had passed, perhaps, through a single court and was sufficiently out of range to be unobserved by them, He stood still and fixed His eyes upon a blind beggar who had been sitting near the Temple gate. I am afraid that the most of us would have had no heart to help even the most needy while we were escaping from a shower of stones! And if we had attempted the work, moved by supreme compassion, we would have gone about it blunderingly, in a great hurry and certainly would not have talked calmly and wisely, as the Savior did when He answered His disciples’ question and went on to talk with them.
One of the things worthy to be noticed in our Lord’s Character is His wonderful quiet spirit, especially His marvelous calmness in the presence of those who misjudged, insulted and slandered Him. He is reviled often, but never ruffled. He is often in deaths but always full of life. No doubt He felt keenly all the contradictions of sinners against Himself, for in a passage in the Psalms which refers to the Messiah, we read, “Reproach has broken My heart,” yet the Lord Jesus did not permit His feelings to overcome Him—He was quiet and self-possessed, acting with a profound disregard of the calumnies and assaults of His bitter enemies.
One reason, I take it, for His being so self-contained was that He was never elated by the praise of men. Take my word for it, for I know, that if you ever allow yourself to be pleased by those who speak well of you, to that extent you will be capable of being grieved by those who speak ill of you! But if you have learned (and it is a hard lesson for the most of us) that you are not the servant of men, but of God and that, therefore, you will not live upon the breath of men’s nostrils if they praise you—and you will not die if they denounce you—then you will be strong and show that you have come to the stature of a man in Christ Jesus. If the great Master’s head had been turned by the hosannas of the multitude, then His heart would have sunk within Him when they cried, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” But He was neither lifted up nor cast down by men—He committed Himself unto no man because He knew what was in man!
The innermost reason for this quiet of heart was His unbroken communion with the Father. Jesus dwelt apart, for He lived with God—the Son of Man who came down from Heaven still dwelt in Heaven, serenely patient because He was raised above earthly things in the holy contemplations of His perfect mind. Because His heart was with His Father, the Father made Him strong to bear anything that might come from men. Oh, that we all could wear this armor of the Light of God, the celestial panoply of communion with the High Eternal One! Then we would not be afraid of evil tidings, or of evil occurrences, for our hearts would be fixed on the sure Rock of Jehovah’s unchanging love!
There was, perhaps, another reason for our Savior’s wonderful composure when He was attacked with stones, namely, that His heart was so set upon His work that He could not be turned away from it whatever the unbelieving Jews might do. The ruling passion bore Him on through danger and suffering—and made Him calmly defy all opposition. He had come into the world to bless men and He must bless men. The Jews might oppose Him for this reason and for that, but they could not turn the current of His soul from the riverbed of mercy along which it rushed like a torrent. He must do good to the suffering and the poor! He could not help it—His face was set like flint towards His lifework!
It had become His meat and His drink to do the will of Him that sent Him and so, when they took up stones, although He withdrew Himself a little, yet as He only wished to preserve His life to do good, He returned to His lifework
without a moment’s delay! Stones cannot drive Him from His gracious pursuits. As we have seen a parent bird, chased away, for a moment, from its nest, return to it the instant the intruder has withdrawn, so do we see our Lord come back to His holy work almost before He is out of the sight of His would-be murderers!
Yonder sits a blind man and Jesus is at once at his side to heal him. They will overtake You, O Christ! They will seek to slay You! There are more stones in their cruel hands! Your haters hurl their missiles fiercely and they will be upon You in a moment! What cares He for that? No coward spirit can make Him overlook an occasion for glorifying the Father! That blind man must be attended to and at all hazards. He stops to deal with Him in love. If you and I become completely taken up with zeal for God and with the desire to win souls, then nothing will daunt us. We shall bear anything and not seem to have anything to bear! We shall hear slander as though we heard it not and endure hardship as though there were none to endure.