The Spurgeon Series 1859 & 1860. Charles H. Spurgeon

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 darkness without a tear. But Christ who was more than noble, matchlessly noble, something more than of a royal race, for him to be shamed, and mocked, must have been dreadful indeed.

      7. Besides some minds are of such a delicate and sensitive disposition that they feel things far more than others. There are some of us who do not so readily perceive an affront, or when we do perceive it, are totally indifferent to it. But there are others of a loving and tender heart; they have so long wept for others’ woes, that their hearts have become tender, and they therefore feel the slightest brush of ingratitude from those they love, and if those for whom they are willing to suffer should utter words of blasphemy and rebuke against them, their souls would be pierced to the very quick. A man in armour would walk through thorns and briars without feeling, but a man who is naked feels the smallest of the thorns; now Christ was so to speak a naked spirit, he had stripped himself of all for manhood; he said, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” He stripped himself of everything that could make him callous, for he loved with all his soul; his strong passionate heart was fixed upon the welfare of the human race; he loved them even to death, and to be mocked by those for whom he died, to be spit upon by the creatures whom he came to save, to come to his own, and to find that his own did not receive him, but actually cast him out, this was pain indeed. You tender hearts that can weep for others’ woes, and you who love with a love as strong as death, and with a jealousy as cruel as the grave, you can guess, but only you, what the Saviour must have endured, when all mocked him, all scorned him, and he found no one to pity him, no one to take his part.

      8. To go back to the point with which we started — shame is peculiarly abhorrent to manhood, and far more to such a manhood as what Christ carried about with him — a noble, sensitive, loving nature, such as no other manhood had ever possessed.

      9. And now come and let us behold the pitiful spectacle of Jesus put to shame. He was put to shame in three ways — by shameful accusation, shameful mockery, and shameful crucifixion.

      10. 1. And, first, behold the Saviour’s shame in his shameful accusation. He in whom was no sin, and who had done nothing wrong, was charged with sin of the blackest kind. He was first arraigned before the Sanhedrin on no less a charge than that of blasphemy. And could he blaspheme? — he who said “It is my food and my drink to do the will of him who sent me.” Could he blaspheme? He who in the depths of his agony, when he sweat as it were great drops of blood, at last cried, “My Father, not my will, but yours be done,” — could he blaspheme? No. And it is just because it was so contrary to his character, that he felt the accusation. To charge some of you here present with having blasphemed God, would not startle you, for you have done it, and have done it so often as almost to forget that God abhors blasphemers, and that he “will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” But for one who loved as Jesus loved, and obeyed as he obeyed, for him to be charged with blasphemy, the accusation must have caused him peculiar suffering. We wonder that he did not fall to the ground, even as his betrayers did when they came to lay hold upon him. Such an accusation as that might blight an angel’s spirit. Such a calumny might wither the courage of a cherub. Do not marvel, then, that Jesus felt the shame of being accused of such a crime as this.

      11. Nor were they content with this. Having charged him with breaking the first table, they then charged him with violating the second: they said he was guilty of sedition; they declared that he was a traitor to the government of Caesar, that he stirred up the people, declaring that he himself was a king. And could he commit treason? he who said “my kingdom is not of this world, or else my servants would fight”; he who when they would have taken him by force, to make him a king withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed — could he commit treason? It would be impossible. Did he not pay tribute, and send Peter to catch a fish, when he was so poor he could not pay the tax. Could he commit treason? He could not sin against Caesar, for he was Caesar’s lord; he was King of kings, and Lord of lords. If he had chosen he could have taken the purple from the shoulders