Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1928
“Who has gone into Hea ven and is at the right hand of God; angels and authorities and po wers being made subject to Him.” 1 Peter 3:22.
LAST Lord’s Day morning [#1927—Our Sympathizing High Priest] we considered the humiliation of our Divine Lord and, I think, if one may speak for the rest, that we consciously and deeply felt how very near He came to us in His suffering condition and how very near He still is to us as truly Man. On that happy occasion we had fellowship with Him of the truest kind. The sympathy of His soul toward us awoke our sympathies towards Him. We felt it exceedingly profitable to sit and weep with Him who not only wept but bled for us.
This morning, in considering our Lord’s Glorification, I hope we shall feel quite as near to Him as we did on the former occasion, for if He was humiliated for us, He is also exalted for us. If He, Himself, once stooped to come near to us, He now lifts us up from our low estate and brings us near to Himself in His Glory. It is not only that He is partaker of our lowliness, but we are partakers of His exaltation. The fellowship is full and complete, for while He takes upon Himself our fall, we, on the other hand, partake in His rising again! He comes down to us in His Incarnation, but He calls us up to Him in His Ascension. He wears our garb of poverty by bearing our flesh, but He robes us in His splendor as He bears our nature into Heaven. Remember, it is “this same Jesus” whom they saw on earth who also is gone into Heaven and who is to come again a second time. Yes, it is “this same Jesus” and He is no less Man on the Throne of God than He was on the Cross—He is as truly our Brother, now, amid the acclaim of angels as among the weeping women of Jerusalem.
I beseech you, do not let the change of His estate create any distance in your hearts, since there is no distance in His heart, but rather ask for Grace that you may rise up unto Him, to joy in His joy and triumph in His triumph! Let us behold our Lord’s glories today, not as a blaze of intolerable splendor, driving us back with fear, but as a radiance of peace, drawing us near with hope! Let us go to the land where our greater Joseph is Lord of all! Let us go into His palace, let us sit at His table with Him, there, as He once sat at our table with us here! We went to David in the cave, let us not fear to approach Him now that He is King! Yes, let us rejoice that we share His royalty, for He has made us kings and priests, and we shall reign with Him forever and ever.
The history of our Lord after His death is as simple as it is sublime and I shall not try to set it forth with garnishing of human speech. When a renowned warrior writes home after great victories, his dispatches are short and to the point. The brilliance of the news is sufficient without the light of sparkling sentences. His words are few; he has so much to tell that he does not waste a letter! His achievements are so great that they do not require the aid of poetry or oratory. A dash from the conqueror’s pen is enough to set a nation rejoicing. “I came, I saw, I conquered,” is a line which will be quoted to the end of time! Such is the life of our Lord Jesus from the Cross onward. If I seem to preach very plainly and even baldly, this morning, you will understand that my theme forbids the adornments which other subjects invite.
Our Savior died, but He rose again. It is a sort of courtesy to death to speak of the period of our Lord’s entombment as three days. The victory of death was so short that Scripture can afford to let it be reckoned in the roughest manner, to give to death the utmost it could claim by the broadest method of reckoning. Give Death his three days—that is the outside of all his victory! Let Death and Hell make the best they can of it—the bruised heel of the Seed of the woman soon ceases to be lame!
When the first day of the week began to dawn, before yet the sun had gleamed through the veil of the olives and lit up the garden of Joseph of Arimathaea, our Lord arose from His slumber and began to disrobe Himself of His grave clothes. In orderly manner He folded them up and divided them with intent of instruction. He left the grave clothes for us, that our last chamber may be fitly furnished when we shall come to lie in it—and then He put the napkin by itself, that our friends may dry their tears thereon when they remember that there is now a glorious hope in death for all who are in Christ! The living Lord waited a while and then the messenger from the courts of Heaven descended to set Him free. The angel touched the stone which shut the mouth of the grave—the stone removed—the Risen One came forth from the dampness of the vault into the freshness of the morning air, frightening the watchmen and causing the solid earth to quake with fear! He was as truly risen as He had been truly dead! He was no apparition or phantom—that body which had most certainly given up the ghost now received life again!