Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3465
Delivered by C. H. Spurgeon, on Lord’s-Day Evening, March 29, 1888
“He stall see ofthe travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. By His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many.” Isaiah 53:11.
IN these words we have God the Father speaking concerning His Son and declaring that since He had endured a soul travail, He would guarantee to Him a satisfactory reward. How delightful it is to observe the co-working of the various Persons of the sacred Trinity in the matter of salvation! It was so in the Creation. It was the Father who said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. But we read concerning the Eternal Son that, “without Him was not anything made which was made,” and we find express mention of the Spirit of God, who moved upon the face of the waters and created order out of chaos. Father, Son and Spirit worked together to make the world and, in the making of man, we all remember that gracious word, “Let Us make man in Our own image with Our own likeness.” Even so is it in our salvation. The Father has chosen a people unto Himself. These people He has given unto the Son. To these people He has also given the Only-Begotten to be their salvation. It is through the abounding Grace of the Father that salvation comes to the chosen, but only through Jesus Christ, for everywhere He is the Savior. We are redeemed by His precious blood. He it is that will bring the many sons unto glory and is the Author and the Finisher of their faith. Yet not without the Holy Spirit, for the blessed Spirit graciously condescends to take of the things of Christ and show them unto us. What God ordains, the Spirit executes. What the Son purchases, the Holy Spirit bestows. ‘Tis He who makes us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light—and when we are so meet—we are introduced to the inheritance by the hand of the glorious Son, and are led up to the Throne of the Eternal Father. Christians, live much in contemplation upon the God of your salvation! Magnify Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Shun that ministry which dishonors either of these blessed Persons and seek to be fully built up and instructed in the Gospel teaching which glorifies Father, Son and Spirit in Divine equality, and leads your own hearts into “the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.”
With that by way of preface, we shall now come to the text at once, taking the words as well as the sense of them.
The Father says of the Son that, “He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied.” The first point of consideration, very briefly, is—
I. Our Lord’s Pains and Sufferings, by Which He Made an Atonement for Our Sins
These are described in the text as “the travail of His soul.” You know the meaning of the word, “travail.” I will not explain it—I will the rather do with it as the painter who drew the picture of Agamemnon and the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia. He painted Agamemnon, but he threw a veil over his face, for he felt he could not express the grief that was in the father’s face and, therefore, the face was delicately concealed. Let us do the same. It may suffice for us to say that whenever in Holy Scripture a forcible word is needed to express fear, overwhelming pain, distraction and confusion, the word, “travail,” is used. For instance, when the kings looked upon Mount Zion and saw how safe it was from their attacks, “fear took hold upon them, there, and pain as of a woman in travail.” And in the description which is given by the Prophet of the men of Babylon when their city was overthrown—he represents them as being “full of pain as if they were in travail.” It is an unutterable amount of inward grief and trouble and a swelling of the inner man until it seems as if the whole fabric of nature, being delicately convulsed, would be utterly broken up to its ruin.
Observe the text says, “The travail of His soul.” We are not to depreciate the bodily sufferings of Christ, but still it has been well said that “the soul-sufferings of Christ were the soul of His sufferings.” Brothers and Sisters, there was so much in the outward agony of Christ, that my ears have tingled and my heart burned with wrath when I have heard certain theologians speak lightly of it! Speak lightly of the sweat of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane? Speak lightly of the flagellations by Herod and Pilate when the bloody scourges made the sacred drops to roll? Think lightly of the
shame, spitting and the crown of thorns? Oh, Sirs, dare you think and speak lightly of the piercing of His hands and of His feet, and of the fever which those wounds engendered, and that thirst which the fever and the broiling sun together brought on, and the rending of those hands when the feet could no longer support the body and the iron tore through the nerves? Is nothing or little to be said of all this? God forbid, Brothers and Sisters! We believe that the body of Christ took its full share of the chastisement. By His stripes we are healed! By His scourging and bodily chastisements we get at least a portion of the healing balm which cures the disease of sin! Our sin was with the body and Christ’s Atonement was with the body. Our flesh was sinful and, therefore, His flesh must suffer. Had we been simply spirits and as spirits, alone, had sinned, a spirit might have made atonement for us—and a soul bereft of a body might have been a perfect substitute—but we are Sons of Adam and still wear this red earth about us! And as we sin in the body, so must the Savior, with hands, feet, brow and every member of His blessed frame, be made to suffer to make atonement for our guilt! Still, still, the travail of His soul was the chief matter and it is that the text speaks about! Where shall I find a golden reed with which to measure this city, or where shall I find a plumb line with which to fathom the depths of agony which I now see before me? Jesus Christ suffered so that I despair of conceiving His sufferings, or of conveying them to you by any form of words.