soul the deadly cancer which is festering within you. You are on the sure road to healing, if you are on the way to wounding. God wounds before he heals; he strikes a man dead in his own esteem before he makes him alive. “Ah,” one cries, “but can I hope that I ever shall be delivered?” Yes, my brother, if you now look to Christ. I do not care about your sin nor about your despair of heart; if you will only turn your eye to him who bled upon the tree, there is not only hope for you, but there is a certainty of salvation. I myself, while thinking over this subject, felt a horror of great darkness rush over my spirit, as I thought what danger I was in lest I should be defeated, and I could not get a glimpse of light into my burdened spirit, until I turned my eye, and saw my Master hanging on the tree. I saw the blood still flowing; faith laid hold upon the sacrifice, and I said, “This cross is the instrument of Jesus’ victory, and shall be the means of mine.” I looked to his blood; I remembered that I was triumphant in that blood, and I arose from my meditations, humbled, but yet rejoicing; cast down, but not in despair; looking for the victory. Do likewise. “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners: believe that.” You are an awakened, conscious and penitent sinner; therefore, he came to save you. Believe his word; trust him. Do nothing for your own salvation, but trust him to do it. Cast yourself simply and only on him; and, just as this Bible is true, you shall not find the promise fail you — “He who seeks finds; to him who knocks it shall be opened.”
22. May God help you, by giving you this new life within! May he help you to look to Jesus, and though long and hard is the conflict, sweet shall be the victory.
The Shameful Sufferer
No. 236-5:89. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, January 30, 1859, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.
Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and now has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. {Hebrews 12:2}
1. “Oh what shall I do, my Saviour to praise?” Where shall language be found which shall describe his matchless, his unparalleled love towards the children of men. Upon any ordinary subject one may find liberty of speech and fulness of utterance, but this subject lies beyond the reach of all oratory, and eloquence cannot attain to it. This is one of the unutterable things — unutterable, because it surpasses thought, and defies the power of words. How, then, can we deal with what is unutterable? I am conscious that all I can say concerning the sufferings of Jesus, this morning, will be only like a drop in the bucket. None of us knows the half of the agony which he endured; none of us have ever fully comprehended the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. Philosophers have probed the earth to its very centre, threaded the spheres, measured the skies, weighed the hills — no, weighed the world itself; but this is one of those vast, boundless things, which to measure surpasses all except the Infinite himself. Just as the swallow only skims the water, and does not dive into its depths, so all the descriptions of the preacher only skim the surface, while depths immeasurable must lie far beneath our observation. Well might a poet say —
Oh love, you fathomless abyss!
for this love of Christ is indeed measureless and fathomless. None of us can attain to it. In speaking of it we feel our own weakness, we cast ourselves upon the strength of the Spirit, but, even then, we feel that we can never attain to the majesty of this subject. Before we can ever have a proper idea of the love of Jesus, we must understand his previous glory in its height of majesty, and his incarnation upon the earth in all its depths of shame. Now, who can describe the majesty of Christ? When he was enthroned in the highest heavens he was very God of very God; by him were the heavens made, and all its hosts, by his power he hung the earth upon nothing; his own almighty arm upheld the spheres; the pillars of the heavens rested upon him; the praises of angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim, perpetually surrounded him; the full chorus of the Hallelujahs of the universe unceasingly flowed to the foot of his throne: he reigned supreme above all his creatures, God over all, blessed for ever. Who can measure his height, then? And yet this must be attained before we can measure the length of that mighty stoop which he took when he came to earth to redeem our souls. And who, on the other hand, can tell us how low he descended? To be a man was something, but to be a man of sorrows was far more; to bleed, and die, and suffer, these were much for him who was the Son of God; but to suffer as he did — such unparalleled agony — to endure, as he did, a death of shame and a death of desertion by his God, this is a lower depth of condescending love which the most inspired mind must utterly fail to fathom. And yet we must first understand infinite height, and then, infinite depth; we must measure, in fact, the infinite distance that is between heaven and hell, before we can understand the love of Jesus Christ.
2. Yet because we cannot understand shall we therefore neglect, and because we cannot measure shall we therefore despise? Ah! no; let us go to Calvary this morning, and see this great sight. Jesus Christ, for the joy that was set before him, enduring the cross, despising the shame.
3. I shall endeavour to show you, first, the shameful sufferer; secondly, we shall endeavour to dwell upon his glorious motive; and then in the third place, we shall offer him to you as an admirable example.
4. I. Beloved, I wish to show you the SHAMEFUL SUFFERER. The text speaks of shame, and therefore before discussing his suffering, I shall endeavour to say a word or two about his shame.
5. Perhaps there is nothing which men so much abhor as shame. We find that death itself has often been preferable in the minds of men to shame; and even the most wicked and callous hearted have dreaded the shame and contempt of their fellow creatures far more than any tortures to which they could have been exposed. We find Abimelech, a man who murdered his own brothers without compunction; we find even him overcome by shame, when “a certain woman dropped a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and crushed his skull. Then he called quickly to the young man his armourbearer, and said to him, Draw your sword and kill me, lest men say of me, A woman killed him. And his young man thrust him through, and he died.” {Judges 9:57} Shame was too much for him. He would far rather meet the suicide’s death — for such it was — than he should be convicted of the shame of being killed by a woman. It was so with Saul also — a man who was not ashamed of breaking his oath, and of hunting his own son-in-law like a partridge upon the mountains — even he fell upon his own sword rather than it should be said of him that he fell by the Philistines. And we read of an ancient king, Zedekiah, that albeit he seemed reckless enough, he was afraid to fall into the hands of the Chaldeans, lest the Jews who had fallen away to Nebuchadnezzar should mock him.
6. These instances are only a few of many. It is well known that criminals and malefactors have often had a greater fear of public contempt than of anything else. Nothing can so break down the human spirit as to be subject continually to contempt, the visible and obvious contempt of one’s fellows; in fact to go further, shame is so frightful to man that it is one of the ingredients of hell itself; it is one of the bitterest drops in that awful cup of misery. The shame of everlasting contempt to which wicked men awake in the day of their resurrection; to be despised by men, despised by angels, despised by God, is one of the depths of hell. Shame, then, is a terrible thing to endure; and many of the proudest natures have been subdued when once they have been subjected to it. In the Saviour’s case, shame would be peculiarly shameful; the nobler a man’s nature, the more readily he perceives the slightest contempt, and the more acutely he feels it. That contempt which an ordinary man might bear without suffering, he who has been bred to be obeyed, and who has all his lifelong been honoured, would feel most bitterly. Beggared princes and despised monarchs are among the most miserable of men; but here was our glorious Redeemer, in whose face was the nobility of Godhead itself, despised and spit upon, and mocked. Therefore, you may think what such a noble nature as his had to endure. The mere kite can bear to have its feathers plucked, but the eagle cannot bear to be hooded and blindfolded; he has a nobler spirit than that. The eye that has faced the sun, cannot endure
