The Spurgeon Series 1859 & 1860. Charles H. Spurgeon

the worms. He commit treason? It was far enough from the character of Jesus, the gentle and the mild to stir up sedition or set man against man. Ah no, he was a lover of his country, and a lover of his race; he would never provoke a civil war, and yet this charge was brought against him. What would you think good citizens and good Christians, if you were charged with such a crime as this, with the clamours of your own people behind you, crying out against you as so vile an offender that you must be executed. Would you not be abashed? Ah! but your Master had to endure this as well as the other. He despised the shameful indictments, and was numbered with the transgressors.

      12. 2. But next, Christ not only endured shameful accusation but he endured shameful mocking. When Christ was taken away to Herod, Herod set him at naught. The original word means he made nothing of him. It is an amazing thing to find that man should make nothing of the Son of God, who is all in all. He had made himself nothing, he had declared that he was a worm, and not a man; but what a sin was that, and what a shame was that when Herod made him nothing! He had only to look Herod in the face, and he could have withered him with one glance of his fire-darting eyes. But yet Herod may mock him, and Jesus will not speak, and men of arms may come around him, and break their cruel jests upon his tender heart; but not a word has he to say, but “is led as a lamb to the slaughter, and like a sheep before her shearers is dumb.”

      13. You will observe that in Christ’s mocking, from Herod’s own hall, on to the time when he was taken from Pilate’s hall of judgment to his crucifixion, and then onward to his death, the mockers were of many kinds. In the first place, they mocked the Saviour’s person. One of those things about which we may say only a little, but of which we ought often to think, is the fact that our Saviour was stripped in the midst of a vulgar soldiery, of all the garments that he had. It is a shame even for us to speak of this which was done by our own flesh and blood toward him who was our Redeemer. Those holy limbs which were the casket of the precious jewel of his soul were exposed to the shame and open contempt of men — coarse minded men who were utterly destitute of every particle of delicacy. The person of Christ was stripped twice; and although our painters, for obvious reasons, cover Christ upon the cross, there he hung — the naked Saviour of a naked race. He who clothed the lilies had nothing with which to clothe himself; he who had clothed the earth with jewels and made for it robes of emeralds, had not so much as a rag to conceal his nakedness from a staring, gazing, mocking, hard hearted crowd. He had made coats of skins for Adam and Eve when they were naked in the garden; he had taken from them those poor fig leaves with which they tried to hide their nakedness, given them something by which they might wrap themselves in from the cold; but now they part his garments among them, and for his vesture they cast lots, while he himself, exposed to the pitiless storm of contempt, has no cloak with which to cover his shame. They mocked his person, — Jesus Christ declared himself to be the Son of God; — they mocked his divine person as well as his human — when he hung upon the cross; they said, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross, and we will believe on you.” Frequently they challenge him to prove his divinity by turning aside from the work which he had undertaken. They asked him to do the very thing which would have disproved his divinity, in order that they might then, as they declared, acknowledge and confess that he was the Son of God. And now can you think of it? Christ was mocked as man, we can conceive him as yielding to this. But to be mocked as God! A challenge thrown to manhood, manhood would easily take up and fight the duel. Christian manhood would allow the gauntlet to lie there, or tread it beneath its feet in contempt, bearing all things, and enduring all things for Christ’s sake. But can you think of God being challenged by his creature — the eternal Jehovah provoked by the creature which his own hand has made; the Infinite despised by the finite; he who fills all things, by whom all things exist, laughed at, mocked, despised by the creature of an hour, who is crushed before the moth! This was contempt indeed, a contempt of his complex person, of his manhood, and of his divinity.

      14. But note next, they mocked all his offices, as well as his person. Christ was a king, and there never was such a king as he. He is Israel’s David; all the hearts of his people are knit to him. He is Israel’s Solomon; he shall reign from sea to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth. He was one of royal race. We have some called kings on earth, children of Nimrod; these are called kings, but they are not kings. They borrow their dignity from him who is King of kings and Lord of lords. But here was one of the true blood, one of the right royal race, who had lost his way, and was mingled with the common mob of men. What did they do? Did they bring crowns with which to honour him, and did the nobility of earth cast their robes beneath his feet to carpet his footsteps? See, what they do? He is delivered up to rough and brutal soldiery. They find for him a mimic throne, and having put him on it, they strip him of his own robes, and find some old soldier’s cloak of scarlet or of purple, and put it around his loins. They plait a crown of thorns, and put it upon his brow — a brow that was of old bedecked with stars, and then they fix in his hand — a hand that will not resent an insult, a sceptre of reed, and then bowing the knee, they pay their mimic homage before him, making him a May Day king. Now, perhaps there is nothing so heart rending as royalty despised. You have read the story of an English king, who was taken out by his cruel enemies to a ditch. They seated him on an anthill, telling him that was his throne, and then they washed his face in the filthiest puddle they could find; and the tears running down his cheeks, he said, “he should yet be washed in clean water”; though he was bitterly mistaken. But think of the King of kings and Lord of lords, having for his adoration the spittle of guilty mouths, for homage the smitings of filthy hands, for tribute the jests of brutal tongues! Was there ever shame like yours, oh King of kings, oh emperor of all worlds, flouted by the soldiery, and struck by their menial hands? Oh earth! how could you endure this iniquity? Oh you heavens! why did you not fall in very indignation to crush the men who thus blasphemed your Maker? Here was a shame indeed, — the king mocked by his own subjects.

      15. He was a prophet, too, as we all know, and what did they do so that they might mock him as a prophet? Why they blindfolded him; shut out the light of heaven from his eyes, and then they struck him, and buffeted him with their hands, and they said, “Prophecy to us who it is that struck you.” The prophet must make a prophecy to those who taunted him to tell them who it was that struck him. We love prophets; it is only the nature of mankind, that if we believe in a prophet we should love him. We believe that Jesus was the first and the last of prophets; by him all others are sent; we bow before him with reverential adoration. We count it to be our highest honour to sit at his feet like Mary; we only wish that we might have the comfort to wash his feet with our tears, and wipe them with the hairs of our head; we feel that like John the Baptist, we are not worthy to untie his shoelace, and can we therefore bear the spectacle of Jesus the prophet, blindfolded and buffeted with insults and blows?

      16. But they also mocked his priesthood; Jesus Christ had come into the world to be a priest to offer sacrifice, and his priesthood must be mocked too. All salvation lay in the hands of the priests, and now they say to him, “If you are the Christ save yourself and us.” Ah! he saved others, himself he could not save. But oh, what mystery of scorn is here, what unutterable depths of shame that the great High Priest of our profession, he who is himself the Paschal Lamb, the altar, the priest, the sacrifice, that he, the Son of God incarnate, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, should thus be despised, and thus be mocked.

      17. He was mocked, still further, in his sufferings. I cannot venture to describe the sufferings of our Saviour under the lash of the scourge. St. Bernard, and many of the early fathers of the Church, give such a picture of Christ’s scourging, that I could not endure to repeat it again. Whether they had sufficient data for what they say, I do not know; but this much I know, — “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.” I know it must have been a terrible scourging, to be called wounding, bruising, chastisement, and stripes; and, remember, that every time the lash fell on his shoulders, the laugh of him who used the lash was mingled with the stripe, and every time the blood poured out afresh, and the flesh was torn off his bones, there was a jest and a jeer, to make his pain yet more poignant and terrible. And when he came at last to his cross, and they nailed him upon it, how they continued the mockery