The Ransom
by ALEXANDER WHYTE (1836-1921) "It was the Lord laying on Him the iniquities of us all. Every ransomed soul knows it. No wonder He loathed it. No wonder He put it away. For that cup was my sin."
“…To give his life a ransom for many.” —Matt. 20:28
Let us draw near this morning and join ourselves to our Lord when He is on His way up to the Passover for the last time. And let us abide near Him this morning till we see the end. And when we see the end, let us all say for ourselves what Paul said for himself: “He loved me and gave Himself for me.”
1. No sooner had our Lord entered Jerusalem in the beginning of that week than, in His own words, He began “to give His life a ransom.” As long as His time had not yet come, our Lord took great care of His life. His was the most precious life on the face of the earth, and He took corresponding care of it. But now that the work of His life was finished, He began at once to give His life away. All the beginning and middle of that Passover week our Lord was preaching all the daytime in the temple—and then at night He went out and abode in the Mount that is called the Mount of Olives.
All that week, our Lord preached all day and prayed all night. Now there is nothing so exhausting as preaching unless it is praying…Paul in one place speaks about preaching the “terror of the Lord.” And that terrible word best describes our Lord’s last sermons in Jerusalem. It is remarkable—and there must be a good reason for it—that the only sermons of our Lord that we have anything like a full report of are His first sermon and His last,—His Sermon on the Mount and His three days of farewell sermons in the temple. That preacher was simply throwing his life away who delivered the discourses that Matthew has preserved in the end of his Gospel. He was walking straight into the jaws of death who stood up in the temple—especially when there was not standing room in its passover-porches, and spoke the parable of “The Wicked Husbandman,” and the parable of “The Marriage Feast,” and the parable of ‘ “The Ten Virgins,” and the parable of “The Last Judgment.”
And then, to make it impossible that His meaning could be missed, He hurled out such bolts of judgment as these: ‘‘Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees: hypocrites!” Woe! Woe! Woe! For three whole days the terrible Preacher was permitted to anticipate the Last Day; and no man laid hands on Him. And then, all night in the Mount of Olives, our Lord, all that week, was seemingly squandering away what remained of His life. Unless, indeed, He was ransoming the lost lives of those preachers who would never measure up to the perfect standard He exhibited that week. The Son of Man gave His life for all of us who minister, in the temple and in the garden, as well as on the tree.
2. The calmness of mind and the careful deliberation with which our Lord goes about the Last Supper is very affecting and very impressive. The quiet and orderly way in which He gives his instructions about the Supper; the serene and stately way in which He performs His whole part in the Upper Room; the watchful solicitude He shows about the behavior of the disciples both to Himself and to one another, while all the time His own terrible death was just at the door,—it melts our hearts to see it all.
He dwells on the Supper. He lingers over the Supper. He lengthens it out. He takes it up, part after part. He looks back at Moses in Egypt. He looks forward to the marriage-supper of the Lamb. He legislates for the future of His ransomed Church and people. He takes the paschal lamb out of the Supper, and He puts Himself in its place. “Take, eat, this is My body broken for you. This is My blood of the New Testament,” said the Lamb of God, “shed for many, for the remission of sins: drink ye all of it. And do this till I come.” What a heart-melting sight! What nobleness! What peace! What beauty of holiness! What boundless love!
3. “Then cometh Jesus with them to a place called Gethsemane, and saith to the disciples, Sit ye there, while I go and pray yonder.’’ Our Lord is in no mood for mockery; but our hearts read their own bitterness into His departing words. He seeks out a seat for the disciples. He seeks out the best, the softest, and the most sheltered seat in the garden. He points them to the place, and He bids them sit down in it. He tells them to keep near one another, and to keep one another company. And before He has got to His place “yonder,” they are all fast asleep! He has not slept for a week. Night after night He has spent in that same spot, till even Judas “‘knew the place.’’
More than the city watchmen for the morning He had waited for God in that garden all that week; and He still waits. “Out of the depths have I cried to Thee, O Lord. Out of the belly of hell, O Lord. Then I said, I am cast out of Thy sight. The waters compassed me about even to the soul: the weeds were wrapped about my head.” And being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly; and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground. It was the wages of sin. It was the Lord laying on Him the iniquities of us all. Every ransomed soul knows it. ‘‘Yes; it was my cup,’ we say. No wonder He loathed it. No wonder He put it away. No wonder He sweat blood as He drank it. For that cup was sin. It was the wages of my sin. It was full of the red wine of the wrath of God against me.” And when He rose off His face and left the trampled-down and blood-soaked winepress, He found the disciples still sleeping. And again our hearts mock at us as He says, “Sleep on now, and take your rest.”
4. Were you ever false to your best friend? Did you ever take your unsuspecting friend by the hand and say, Welcome! or Farewell? Was there ever a Sweet smile on your face, while there was a dagger under your cloak? Did envy, or ambition, or revenge, or some such pure and downright devil ever enter your heart—till you almost went out and hanged yourself with horror at yourself? Then thou art the man that Jesus Christ ransomed from the halter and from hell when He submitted His cheek to the kiss of the traitor. It is because Jesus Christ has you and so many like you among His disciples that He took so meekly the diabolical embrace of the son of perdition.
“It was not an enemy that reproached me: then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me: then would I have hid myself from him. But it was thou, a man, mine equal, my guide and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked into the house of God in company. Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.” “For we ourselves were sometimes living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared—not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost: which He shed on us abundantly, through Jesus Christ our Saviour, that being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”’
5. “Then the band, and the captain and the officers of the Jews, took Jesus and bound Him.” It is a very bitter moment to a prisoner when the officers of justice are binding him. I have often thought that the pinioning before execution must be almost more dreadful than the very drop itself. And our Lord felt most acutely the shame and the disgrace of the prison shackles. For once He broke silence and spoke out and remonstrated. “Be ye come out as against a thief?” He turned upon the officers. He had no intention of trying to escape. He had come out to the garden to give Himself up. He had said just the moment before, “I am He: take Me; and let these go their way.”
But the officers were under the instructions of Judas. Their superiors in the city had told them that they were to look to Judas for all their orders that night. And Judas had said to the officers: ‘‘Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is He: take Him and lead Him away safely: that same is He, hold Him fast.” And they obeyed Judas; they held Him as fast and as safe as their best prison-cords could hold Him. O officers! officers! Judas must surely know; but it is impossible that you can know why it is that your prisoner walks with you so willingly! Did any of you Roman officers ever hear of “cords of love?” Well,—it is in the cords of everlasting love that you keep your man so safely to-night. O officers! officers! if you only knew who that is you are leading in cords into the city! O Judas, Judas! What are thy thoughts? O! Better never to have been born!
6. “And all His disciples forsook Him and fled. But Peter followed Him afar off, unto the high priest’s palace, and went in and sat with the servants to see the end.” Did you ever deny a friend? Did you ever sit still and hear a friend of yours slandered, witnessed against by hired witnesses, and condemned? Did you ever sit and warm yourself at some man’s fire; or more likely, at some man’s wine; and for fear, for cowardice, or for the sake of the company and the good cheer did you nod and smile and wink away your absent brother’s good name? Look! Look at thy dreadful ransom!
Look at Jesus Christ in the hard hands, and under the hired tongues of His assassins—and Peter, His sworn friend, washing his hands of all knowledge of the friendless Prisoner! Look! O dog in the shape of a man! All their sham charges, all their lying witnesses, all their judicial insults and brutalities are clean forgotten by Peter’s Master! He does not hear what they are saying, and He does not care. A loud voice out in the porch has stabbed our Lord’s heart to death. “I know not the Man!” I never saw Him till to-night! With oaths and with curses above all the babel—Peter’s loud voice rolls in on his Master: “I know not the Man!” And the cock crew. And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. And Peter went out and wept bitterly. And as the fine legend has it: Peter never heard a cock crow, day nor night, all his after days, that he did not remember the passover-porch of Caiaphas the High Priest that year in Jerusalem!
7. You have heard sometimes about hell being let loose. Yes, but hear this. Come to Caiaphas’ palace on the passover night, and look at this. “Then did they spit in His face, and buffeted Hi : they blindfolded Him and then they smote Him with the palms of their hands, saying : Prophesy to us, Thou Christ, who is it that smote Thee? And they stripped Him, and put on Him a scarlet robe. And when they had platted a crown of thorns”— I wonder in what sluggard’s garden it grew !— “they put it upon His head, and a reed in His right hand; and they bowed the knee before Him and mocked Him, saying: Hail! King of the Jews! And they spit upon Him again, and took the reed out of His hand, and smote Him upon the head. Then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. After which they brought Jesus forth wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And when the Chief Priests saw Jesus, they cried out, Crucify Him! crucify Him! Then Pilate delivered Him to them to be crucified.” My brethren,—these are dreadful, most dreadful, things.
And all the time, God Almighty, the God and Father of Jesus Christ, restrained Himself; He held Himself in, and sat as still as a stone, seeing and hearing all that. The arrest, the trial, the buffeting, the spitting, the jesting and the jeering, the bloody scourging, the crown of thorns, the reed, and the purple robe— Why? In the name of amazement, why did the Judge of all the earth sit still and see all that said and done? Do you know what made Him sit still? Did you ever think about it? And would you like to be told how it could be? God Almighty, my brethren, not only sat still, but He ordained ‘it all; and His Son endured it all,—in order to take away sin. In order to take away the curse of sin, to take away the very existence of sin for ever.
You will find the explanation of that terrible night’s work, and of the still more terrible morning just about to dawn,—you will find the explanation, the justification, and the complete key to it all in your own heart. Did you ever see yourself to be such a despicable creature that you wondered why all men did not spit upon you? Did you ever wonder that, not friendship and family life only, but very human society itself, did not dissolve, and fall in pieces, such is the meanness, the despicableness, the duplicity, the selfishness, the cruelty, and the diabolical wickedness of the human heart—but above all human hearts, of yours? You will understand the spitting-scene that night when God lets you see your own heart. There was no surplus shame; there was no scorn too much: the abuse was not one iota overdone that night. There was no unnecessary disgrace poured on Christ that night. They are in every congregation, at every Communion Table, and they are the salt and the ornament of it, who say as they sit down at the Table—He hid not His face from shame and from spitting for me! He loved me in my sin and my shame, and He gave Himself for me !
8. If all that will not melt your heart of stone, try the next thing that Pilate and his devils did. For Pilate scourged Him. I will leave the scourging to yourselves to picture, and to ask, What is scourging ? Who was it that was that morning scourged? And why was He scourged being innocent? And the crown of thorns, and all the awful scene to the end! O that mine head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears! But come out to Calvary at nine o’clock that morning if you would be absolutely glutted with sorrow and with love. All the shame, all the scorn, all the horror, all the agony due to our sin, and undertaken by our Surety—it all met on the Cross.
The Cross was the vilest, the cruellest, the most disgraceful, the most diabolical instrument of execution that ever hell had invented and set up on earth. Stand back and let the chiefest sinner in this house come forward. Give him the best place. Whoever sees the crucifixion, let him see it. Look, sinner, and see. They lay down the Cross on the ground. They then take the cords off our Lord’s pinioned arms, and the painted board off His breast. They then lay Him down on His back on the Cross; they stretch out His arms along the arms of the Cross. They then open out His hands; and with a hammer they drive a great nail of iron through His right hand with the blood spurting up in their faces; and another through His left hand, and another through His feet, placed the one above the other to save the nails. Five or six strong soldiers then lift up the Cross with its trembling, bleeding burden, and sink it down with a dash into the stone socket, set in the earth, till all His bones are out of joint. And “They know not what they do!” is all He says.
No; they know not, but the chief of sinners now looking on, he knows. Paul knew: “He loved me,” said Paul, “and gave Himself for me.” Cowper knew. “There is a fountam filled with blood—Drawn from Immanuel’s veins; And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.” We often pray that God would “ make the bed” of His dying saints; and He does it. But that was the death-bed God made for His dying Son! But all that, after all, was but the outer porch of death to our Lord. Gethsemane and Caiaphas and Pilate and Herod’s palace were but the outer court of the temple.
The Cross was the altar; and the sacrifice only began to be fully offered about the sixth hour when there was darkness over all the earth till the ninth hour. It passeth all understanding, and all the power of tongue and pen, what the Son of God suffered in body and in soul, during those three dark and silent hours. Only at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “My God, My God: why hast Thou forsaken Me?” And some time after, ‘‘It is finished,” when He bowed His head and gave up the ghost.
“It is finished—was His latest voice:
These sacred accents o’er,
He bowed His head, gave up the ghost,
And suffered pain no more.
’Tis finished: The Messiah dies
For sins, but not His own:
The great redemption is complete
And Satan’s power o’erthrown.”
‘So, after He had taken His garments and was set down again,
He said unto them: Know ye what I have done to you?”
Yea, Lord. Thou hast given Thy life a ransom for many.
Thou hast loved me and given Thyself for me!
“I am not worthy, holy Lord,
That Thou shouldst come to me;
Speak but the word; one gracious word
Can set the sinner free.
I am not worthy; cold and bare
The lodging of my soul;
How canst Thou deign to enter there?
Speak, Lord! and make me whole.
I am not worthy ; yet, my God,
How can I say Thee nay,—
Thee, Who didst give Thy flesh and blood
My ransom price to pay?
O come, in this sweet morning hour
Feed me with food Divine;
And fill with all Thy love and power
This worthless heart of mine.”
END
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