Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3457
“Pilate said unto them…’Let Him be crucified.’” Matthew 27:22,23.
THIS morning we heard the shouts of “Hosanna!” It was very delightful to us to behold the multitude marching with the King of Zion through the streets of Jerusalem, welcoming Him with glad acclaim. But the shouts of “Hosanna” had hardly died away before they were followed by the cruel note, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Or, as the text puts it, “Let Him be crucified!” Clearly in this case the Vox populi was not the Vox Dei. The one is fickle and shifting, the other is fixed and steadfast. The voice of the people is changeable as the wind. The Word of the Lord is firm as a rock, and it endures forever. The multitude will always be found fitful and vacillating. They will enthrone a man, today, and chase him from the streets tomorrow. Take but small account of human applause. The breath of fame’s trumpet is a poor reward for a life of toil to serve one’s generation. Care not for it, O you of noble spirit! Heed not the world’s frowns and court not its smiles. When you are flattered by its approbation, or calumniated by its persecution, remember that men’s temper and disposition vary like the climate and change like the weather! Hosannas turn into execrations. The idol of one hour is the aversion of another.
The point, however, to which I shall endeavor to draw your attention tonight (and may the Holy Spirit assist us) is of far more importance than the prattling gossip of the vulgar crowd. In this sad and brutal cry, “Let Him be crucified,” I observe—
I. A Very Strange Illustration of the Asserted Dignity of Human Nature
I have heard till I have been sick of hearing. I have read till I am weary of reading, all sorts of praise passed upon it. I know not what a grand and noble being the creature man is in the estimation of certain lackadaisical divines. They seem to make this their chief end—to laud and magnify their own species! The drift of all their preaching is to please men’s ears with their rhetoric and to delude men’s judgment with their flattery. And as for their logic, it exalts the ideal of man, while it ignores the actual sinner. It sets up the image and says, “Behold what a splendid intellectual creature man is!” We look around and fail to catch a sight of the individuals they portray! I hesitate not to say that he who praises man does the opposite to glorifying God and is as far as the poles asunder from testifying to the Truth of God. The Truth, as we learn it in the Word of God, is most uncomplimentary to man—it rolls him in the very dust, ranks him with the worms, makes nothing of him—yes, less than nothing! So desperate is his moral condition that it adjudges him as his only fit place, the lowest pit of Hell as the due reward of his deeds. But inasmuch as they thus praise human nature, I would like the admirers of it to look a little while on this scene—where humanity gathers around the Savior, Christ the Lord, and cries, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”
And, first, what do you say to this dignity of human nature, in that it does not know God This is taking the sin at the lowest point, for had they known Him, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. Through ignorance they did it—ignorance, alike, on the part of the rabble and their rulers. It is the best excuse that can possibly be afforded for their cry, their cruelty and their crime. But what an excuse! How humiliating! Here were men who did not know the God that made them! Why boast of intellect—the keen perception of the human mind—in the face of such imbecility? They did not know the God that fed them! “The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master’s crib,” but Israel did not know her Lord, her King, her God! He came with a thousand prophecies to herald Him, and He answered to them all! The simplest Sunday school child reading through the Old Testament can see that the Christ of the New Testament is He of whom the
Seers and the Prophets spoke in vision by the power of the Spirit! But here was human nature left to itself with the Book in its hand, and totally unable to decipher the evidences or recognize the Messiah! He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. You call this “bright-eyed human nature,” and it cannot see the sun! You talk about its superior intelligence and yet that which was an axiom to angels, theycould not discern! Angels knew Him—how could they fail to know Him? But these eyes of men are so blinded with the mire of prejudice and the love of sin, that though the Godhead shone gloriously through the Manhood of Jesus, they could not—they would not perceive Him to be the Christ! And they put the Son of God, the Heir of Heaven, to an ignominious death! Talk no more of wisdom! Boast not of your sages! Cry not up your philosophy and your deep knowledge! Oh, the bat has brighter eyes than you, and moles see more than do those men who, groveling in the earth, fail to perceive the Lord! Men knew not God, Himself, when He was Incarnate in human flesh!