Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2616
“If, therefore, you seek Me, let these go their way.” John 18:8.
WE need but hint at the circumstances under which these words were uttered. Our Savior was in the Garden of Geth-semane with His disciples when a multitude came with the officers commissioned by the High Priest to seize Him. He went boldly towards them and asked, “Whom do you seek?” They answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” At His words, “I am He,” “they drew back and fell to the ground,” and then Jesus said to them, “I have told you that I am He. If, therefore, you seek Me, let these go their way.”
Now, in a very simple manner, I shall try, first of all, to draw a few lessons from this occurrence and then, secondly, to bring out a great Truth of God which I think is foreshadowed in this utterance of our Redeemer.
I. First, let us CONSIDER THE LESSONS OF THE OCCURRENCE ITSELF. Our Savior said to these people, “If, therefore, you seek Me, let these go their way.”
In this incident, our Master proved His own willingness to die. This word of His was a mandate so powerful that none of the disciples were seized, much less put to death. There was Peter, who had drawn his sword and cut off the ear of the High Priest’s servant. We should naturally have expected that he would have been arrested, or smitten to the earth, but so powerful was the command of Christ that not a finger was laid upon His hasty-tempered disciple. Peter and John later went into the judgment hall—into the very teeth of our Lord’s enemies—but, with the exception of a few jeers, they were allowed to go their way. John did even more than that, for he went within the range of the spears of the Roman soldiers and stood at the foot of Christ’s Cross and wept—yet not a finger was laid on him, nor on any of Christ’s disciples—not for lack of will, for, you remember, they seized a young man who left his garment in their hands, and fled naked—evidently supposing him to have been a disciple of Christ. This shows, then, the power of Christ’s mandate that, in that hour of darkness, not so much as one of His disciples was maltreated, but all were allowed to go their way. If Christ, then, by His simple word, delivered His disciples, how much more could He have delivered Himself? And in His not doing so, you cannot fail to see how willing He was to die. One word threw them to the ground. Another word would have hurled them into the arms of death! But our Savior would not speak the word which might have saved Himself, for He came to save others, not Himself.
There is something very courageous in the Savior’s saying, “If you seek Me.” You know that when Adam sinned, God had to seek the culprit, but, in this case, when Christ stood as the Surety for His people, instead of being sought, He seemed to seek His executioners! “If you seek Me,” He said—and He put in an, “if,” as though it were not so much their seeking Him as His seeking them—for He had come into their very midst to die. Our blessed Lord was well acquainted with the circumstances of His own death. He sat at the table, at the institution of the Lord’s Supper on that memorable evening—why could He not wait and be seized there? But no, dauntless, “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” steps out and boldly faces His enemy! He does not wait to be attacked, but goes forth to meet death, to give Himself up for us. Scarcely any martyr has done such a deed as this! God has helped them to die when they have been delivered into the hands of their enemies, but our Savior goes to His enemies and says, “Here I am. If you seek Me, I have come to give Myself up. I will put you to no trouble in searching for Me. There is no necessity to hunt through the length and breadth of Jerusalem to find Me. Here I am. If you seek Me, I am ready to die. Take Me, I have no opposition to make. ‘If you seek Me,’ all I have to say is, ‘Let these go their way.’ As for Myself, I am willing enough to die!”
Learn, then, Christian, the readiness of your Master to suffer for you. He was no unwilling Savior. You have, sometimes, borrowed money from a friend and when you have taken it from him, it was a grief to you to accept it, for he looked upon you as a beggar, or even as a robber who had demanded spoil of him. But when you take Christ’s favors, there is this sweet consideration with them, that they are all given willingly! The blood that you drink and the flesh that you eat, spiritually, is no dole of a strained benevolence, but the voluntary, munificent gift from the heart of Jesus to you and to your brethren. Rejoice, then, in the willingness of Christ to suffer for you!
In the second place, upon the very face of our text we read the care of Christ towards His people. “If, therefore, you seek Me, let these go their way.” Oh, the agony of the Savior’s heart at that moment! A friend in trouble is frequently forgetful—expect not a man in great grief to remember you—the heart is then so full of its own bitterness it has no time to think of others. I would pardon any man for not noticing me in the street if he were ill. I would easily forgive anyone for forgetting anything when loaded with pain and sorrow and surely, Beloved, we might have thought it not hard of Jesus if He had forgotten His disciples in His hour of grief! But mark how kind His heart is—“‘If you seek Me’—I say nothing about how you should treat Me—but ‘let these’—these disciples were the only ones He cared about. He cared not for Himself—‘let these go their way.’”