TEXT: MATT. xxi. 10-16.
WE have lately seen from several examples that what is properly to be regarded as the suffering of the Saviour, that is, His pain on account of sin, and of the opposition which it offered to His divine work, did not begin merely with the time which, in a stricter sense, we indicate as His period of suffering, but accompanied Him from the beginning of His earthly life, and more especially during His public career. We shall consider this to-day more closely in connection with those events which immediately preceded the sufferings of the Saviour, specially so called. Now, if a meditation of this kind is to be really profitable to us, we must have regard to two things. On the one hand, as we are called and chosen as members of the consecrated body, the Church, of which Christ is the head, to devote our selves to the work of Christ in order to carry it on according to the measure which God has dealt to each; so in the same warfare against sin, we must also meet with the same opposition which He experienced, and Christ’s pain must be come ours; and by what He showed Himself to be in the days of His life on earth, He is set forth as the shining example which we are to follow. And on the other hand, as we are invited, with all who are weary and heavy-laden, to enjoy the fruits of His redemption; and as we can only enjoy these with the humble feeling that, mighty as His strength may be in us who are weak, yet sin is never quite eradicated in us, and that the remainder of it in us opposes His work, thus making us the cause of sufferings to Him and His people such as He met with at that time; so, those who caused Him pain in the days of His earthly life must stand before us as a warning and alarming example, lest we sit down idly and indulge that which is like them, in ourselves; causing rather to burn increasingly in us a holy anger against evil, that thereby there may be more and more room for the Holy Spirit to work in us and by us.
The words of our text show us the Saviour in His last entry into the capital of His nation, at the summit of His popularity among men, and at the highest stage of His influence. He is no longer called simply Jesus of Nazareth; His disciples, and after them the people, and, following their example, the children in the temple, cried, Hosanna to the Son of David! the very name by which the expected deliverer of the nation was designated, We see Him exercise magisterial authority, as it were, in the temple, as, besides the existing rulers, it became Him alone to do, who was called to institute a new and higher order of divine things. But how soon, my friends, how unexpectedly soon do we see the whole state of things change! How easily are all the people who have just been shouting their applause around Him, turned away from Him! How soon do we find the Lord, who seemed so lately to have everything at His command, a prisoner and bound in the hands of His enemies! How soon is He who but now had been hailed as the Son of David that cometh in the name of the Lord, brought forward and accused as a malefactor! If we ask the reason of this, we meet, no doubt, on the one hand, the unhappy disciple who betrayed Him; on the other, the enmity of the niters, restrained only by fear of the enthusiastic people; but how would they have ventured to lay hands on Him, how would hatred and treachery have dared to approach Him, if this enthusiasm of the people had been less evanescent, if the fickle disposition of the people had not favoured their purpose? And the Saviour knew this disposition, even when they were all strewing palms before Him and greeting Him as the Deliverer; we can trace this sting in His heart through all His sayings; and this suffering of soul was present with Him even in the height of His popularity. This then is the subject on which I wish to speak,—the fickle disposition of men as a source of suffering to our Saviour, and in the order that I have already indicated; namely, considering first, how our Saviour bore Himself in regard to this, and how, therefore, we also are to act; and secondly, setting before us, as a warning example, those who prepared this suffering for our Saviour.
I. Yes, my devout friends, we cannot and dare not conceal it from ourselves, the position of those who seek to promote what is good, who are in earnest in labouring at the work of redemption, is still the same as that of the Saviour Himself. They are a little handful—each one of them alone—but, still more where they would like to work in union, beset by enemies and traitors. They meet, no doubt, on the other hand, with much admiration; much enthusiasm is aroused by their courage, their self-sacrifice, their constancy; but often in the most decisive moment this enthusiasm fails to stand the test, and they see themselves forsaken and thrown back upon themselves. Under these circumstances then, surrounded by people of this fickle disposition, what can we learn from the conduct of the Saviour? In the first place, He knew the fickleness of the populace, and hence did not allow himself to be deluded by their ebullition of kindly feeling. Who among us, my friends, in the Saviour’s position, if at that feast which drew together many thousands from all parts of the country into Jerusalem, he had been met with such universal favour by the populace—if on every side so much willingness to accept his help had been manifested, so much eagerness to commit themselves to his guidance—who would not have formed the most flattering hopes, which yet no results would have justified; who would not have allowed himself to be seduced into schemes which would have had no relation to the actually existing means that were to be put in operation! Very far was the Saviour from this! Though we do not find that He expressed aloud His suspicion of the real import of these marks of honour, or that He rejected them, yet all His discourses between this brilliant moment and the time of His being seized, of which the evangelists have preserved for us so great an abundance, show plainly how correctly He estimated His position. How many hints there are that the people would, notwithstanding all this, refuse and reject Him; how many open and more private warnings to those who led others astray or suffered themselves to be so led; how many words of comfort because all the good that He had planned for men would not be spread abroad until future generations. He even saw plainly beforehand the temporary painful timidity of His disciples, and foretold that when the Shepherd should be smitten the flock would be scattered. And so He did not allow Himself to be misled into building any far-reaching project on those utterances of the multitudes that poured around Him with their plaudits; no open war against those who, to their own condemnation and the ruin of the people, sat in Moses seat; no attempt to give to the kingdom of truth a striking, outward form, and put it in the place of the worn-out, dead priesthood; only all kinds of precautions that it might be brought safely, in its unseen form, through all the coming storms. Oh, my friends, that we might learn this from the Saviour! For there is nothing more bitter than hopes and plans for good that have proved vain, and of which we are obliged afterwards to confess that they had not been so well-founded as we thought, and that we might easily have foreseen their unsuccessful issue. But we shall only acquire this wisdom by keeping our zeal for the kingdom of God pure from all culpable thoughtlessness, and by letting the deepest earnestness rule our lives; we shall only learn it if in our judgment of men’s state of mind, vanity has no part whatever, and if, in order to estimate it, we always look into the inmost recesses and the former history of our own hearts.