Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3228
“Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him!” John 11:36.
IT was at the grave of Lazarus that Jesus wept and His grief was so manifest to the onlookers that they said, “Behold how He loved him!” Most of us here, I trust, are not mere onlookers, but we have a share in the special love of Jesus. We see evidences of that love, not in His tears, but in the precious blood that He so freely shed for us—and so we ought to see further into His heart than they did—and to know more of Him than they could in the brief interval in which they had become acquainted with Him. When we think of His love to us, we may well cry, “Behold how He has loved us!”
These Jews expressed their wonder at the love that Jesus had for His friend, Lazarus. They did not keep that wonder to themselves, but they said, “Behold how He loved him!” In these days, we are too apt to repress our emotions. I cannot say that I greatly admire the way in which some enthusiastic folk shout, “Glory!” “Hallelujah!” “Amen,” and so on, in the midst of sermons and prayers. Yet I would sooner have a measure of that enthusiastic noise than have you constantly stifling your natural emotions and checking yourself from giving utterance to your heart’s truer feelings. If we were in a right state of mind and heart, we would often say to one another, “How wondrous has the love of Jesus been to us!” Our conversation with one another as Brothers and Sisters in Chris, would often be upon this blessed subject. We waste far too much of our time upon trifles—it would be well if the love of Jesus so engrossed our thoughts that it engrossed our conversation, too! I fear that many who profess to be Christians go for a whole year, or even longer, without telling to others what they are supposed to have experienced of the love of Jesus. Yet this ought not to be the case. If we were as we should be, one would frequently say to another, “How great is Christ’s love to me, my Brother! Do you also say that it is great to you?” Such talk as that between the saints on earth would help us to anticipate the time when we shall need no other theme for conversation in the land beyond the river!
I am going to remind you of some very simple Truths of God in order to excite the hearts of those of you who are coming to the Communion Table. My objective is to increase your love to the dear Lord and Savior who has loved you so intensely as to die for you. And first, Beloved, let us think of what the love of Christ has done for us. Secondly, of what His love has done to us. And then, thirdly, I need to say that I am afraid our love to Christ will never cause any wonder except on account of the littleness of it
I. So first, let us quietly think over WHAT THE LOVE OF CHRIST HAS DONE FOR US.
When did Christ’s love begin to work for us? It was long before we were born—long before the world was created! Far, far back in eternity, our Savior gave the first proof of His love to us by espousing our cause. By His Divine foresight, He looked upon human nature as a palace that had been plundered, broken down and in its ruins He perceived the owl, the bittern, the dragon and all manner of unclean things. Who was there to undertake the great work of restoring that ruined palace? No one but the Word, who was with God, and who was God. “He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor. Therefore His own arm brought salvation unto him, and His righteousness, it sustained him.” Before the angels began to sing, or the sun, moon and stars threw their first beams across primeval darkness, Christ espoused the cause of His people and resolved not only to restore to them all the blessings that He foresaw that they would lose, but also to add to them richer favors than could ever have been theirs except through Him. Even from eternity His delights were with the sons of men! And when I think of Him in that far-distant past of which we can
form so slight a conception, becoming “the Head over all things to the Church” which then existed only in the mind of God, my very soul cries out in a rapture of delight, “Behold how He loved us!”
Remember, too, that in that eternal secret council, the Lord Jesus Christ became the Representative and Surety of His chosen people. There was to be in what was then the far remote future, a Covenant between God and man. But who was there who was both able and willing to sign that Covenant on man’sbehalf and to give a guarantee that men’s part of that Covenant should be fulfilled? Then it was that the Son of God, well knowing all that such a Suretyship would involve, undertook to be the Surety for His people to fulfill the Covenant on their behalf, and to meet all its demands which He foresaw that they would be unable to meet! Then the Eternal Father gave into Christ’s charge, the souls that He had chosen unto eternal life though ages, of which we can have so faint an idea, were to elapse before those souls were to be created! And the Eternal Son covenanted to redeem all those souls after they had fallen through sin—to keep them by His Grace and to present them “faultless” before the Presence of His Father with exceeding joy! Thus, as Jacob became accountable to Laban for the whole flock committed to his charge, Jesus Christ, “that Great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the “Everlasting Covenant,” undertook to redeem and guard the whole flock entrusted to His care, so that when, at the last great muster, they should pass under the hand of Him that counts them, not one of them would be missing and the blessed Shepherd-Son would be able to say to His Father, “Those that You gave Me I have kept, and not one of them is lost.” It was in the Everlasting Covenant that our Lord Jesus Christ became our Representative and Surety, and engaged on our behalf to fulfill all His Father’s will! And as we think of this great mystery of mercy, surely all of us who are truly His must exclaim with grateful adoration, “Behold how He loved us!”