The Redeemer's Tears

“Jesus wept.” — John xi. 35.

Christ is the Revelation of God, and the Scriptures are the Revelation of Christ. We need Christ as the Mediator to show us the Father, and the Spirit in the Word to show ns Christ. Himself has spoken both these truths: They, the Scriptures, testify of me; I am the way to the Father.

In this short text the Spirit gives testimony to Jesus. Here shines a glory of the Lord. It is a wonder greater than that which Moses saw in Midian. Here is sorrow without sin. Here is human weakness wedded to divine power. This is God our Saviour; and yet this man is weeping by the grave of his dead friend. We have not yet found out all the meaning that lies in these tears. A sign from heaven did they ask? Here it is. It marks the meeting of God and man. How dreadful is this place! Divine power touches human weakness here, and human weakness is linked to divine power. Look unto Jesus as he weeps; here the sinful may see God and live.

In our meditation upon this tender theme, we shall not be able to frame and follow out exact logical definitions. The various constituent elements fuse in our hands, and fiow in one channel. Some distinction, however, may be made and maintained between the “human

THE redeemee’s teahs. 225

Want implied, and the divine Supply provided for it in the Redeemer’s tears.

In the main, therefore, we shall consider, —

I. The ailment in man which requires as a salve the Redeemer’s tears.

II. The suitableness of this specific for the ailment to which it is applied.

I. The ailment in man, which requires as a salve the tears of Jesus.

The word is sent to heal. Every part of the healing word is specifically provided for a corresponding feature of the patient’s disease. The meaning of the medicine, when discovered, throws light on the symptoms of the sick; and, reciprocally, the symptoms of the sick, when understood, go far to explain the meaning of the medicine which the great Physician ha prescribed. Revealing a peculiar and distinctive feature of the remedy, the text suggests a corresponding aspect of the patient’s case. Let us endeavour to find out -; nd fix the specific human want which this divine prescription anticipates and supplies.

In the religious history of mankind errors rank under two great heads or classes. Although the spring of all evil is one, the stream that flows from it parts asunder soon. The two main constituents diverge into opposite channels. One class, believing that God is just, seek peace by hiding from his presence; another make for themselves a god who is not terrible to sinners, and then fondly worship their own creature. Those adopt

226 THE kedeemer’s tears.

theoretically a religion which proves difficult, and then practically live without their religion; these, having chosen an easy religion, can afford to be very religious.

These two principles are practically exemplified in the conduct respectively of those Protestants and Papists who are alike alienated from God in their hearts. “What the Protestant has heard about God leaves on his mind the impression of a just judge; the unreconciled heart, knowing this, and knowing no more, answers. No God, by a life of actual atheism. The Papist, on the contrary, has been taught to reverence various idols, departed spirits in the unseen world, or pictures hanging on a wall; and these are not terrible in righteousness. Finding that to deal with them is not difficult, he deals with them much. Hence, while a Christless Protestant forgets God, and lives practically without religion, an equally Christless Papist spends much of his time in confession to priests and prayer to saints.

For both forms of the disease the Scriptures prescribe the appropriate remedies. Where the word of truth is rightly divided, there is a portion for each. Our text contains the specific, not for Papists who find their God so easy to meet, that they can meet him without apprehension in their sins, but for Protestants who find it so hard to meet their God that they avoid the meeting altogether. For the one class the word in season is the terribleness of the living and true God; for the other class the word in season is the tenderness of the one Mediator between God and man. To those who furnish themselves with false mediators we must proclaim the true God; to those who know only to dread the true God we must make known the one Mediator.

The persons, then, who specially need this word are those who forget God, because the remembrance makes them afraid. For the sake of prodigals who will not arise and go to the Father the Redeemer’s tears were shed. Jesus reveals himself by doing and suffering as well as by words. He does nothing in vain. There is meaning in every look and every sigh. He was as much “about the Father’s business” when he wept beside the grave at Bethany, as when, in the last great day of the feast, he cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.”’ You must look unto Jesus as well as hear him. You may learn as much of his salvation from the miracles of his power and the sufferings of his weakness as from his teaching, when he spake as never man spake. There is doctrine in his life. All his miracles teem with saving truth. All the acts of this wondrous man were wonderful. “Jesus wept;” might not this be counted a miracle too?

Come near all ye who complain that religion slips from your grasp; this is the place to hold it by. No man hath seen God at any time. “It is a terrible “thing to faU into the hands of the living God.” “His wrath makes us afraid.” By the mysterious unsearchableness of the invisible God, and the awful justice of the Supreme Judge as dimly outlined in the conscience, you have, in point of fact, been all your days kept at a distance. Your religion has sometimes made itself known as a power by taking the pleasure out of time, but never by taking the terror out of eternity. The pain which religion inflicts is with you a sad reality; but its consolations hitherto have flitted past like shadows. You may have chimed in more or less passively with the orthodox sentiment that godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and also of that which is to come; but your real experience has been that, though necessary for the future, it is bitter now. You have heard with your ears, “Blessed is the man whom thou choosest and causest to approach unto thee” (Ps. lxv. 4); and felt at the same moment in youi* inmost heart that nearness to God is the chief misery of man. When your spirit momentarily awakes you see nothing but the terrors of the Lord, and therefore you contrive to lie in a dormant state. When any measure of religious thoughtfulness comes on, it takes all the daylight out of your life. As this visitor uniformly proves the disturber of your peace, you instinctively and tacitly watch his approach and shut the door against him. The biography of such a Christian has been written in few words: Without God in the world.

For such a case the Redeemer’s tears are a sovereign remedy.

II. The suitableness of the specific for the ailment to which it is applied. Such an High Priest became us. This is truly God with us. Jesus wept that he might get close to us, we close to him. Through that opening his compassion comes out, our confidence goes in.

I believe that religion with many in this favoured land wants life and power, because we do not make enough of the manhood of the Mediator. We think of him as Almighty God, but we do not feel sure whether he is disposed to save or to destroy. His Godhead will, indeed, hold up for ever all who are in his favour; but we cannot take hold of him by his Godhead. He found this want in man. The display of his omnipotence drew from Peter the distrustful cry, “Depart from me, for I am a einful man, 0 Lord.” When the Church was young, — when its few disciples were like little children, he led them by the manifestation of his manhood. When for needful evidence of his mission he permitted the divinity to glance through the veil, the glory dazzled and paralyzed those little ones. The favoured three on the Mount of Transfiguration were thrown upon the ground in terror, and Peter, their spokesman, wist not what he said. When he appeared in vision after his resurrection, not only Saul his enemy, but also John, his bosom friend, “fell at his feet as dead.’’ Such is the weakness of man; and the methods of Jesus are adapted to the case. Of the eternal Son of God we cannot lay hold; and therefore he shows himself to us as the Son of man. He has bowed very low that he might come very near. He thirsted on the well-side; he wept at the grave’s mouth; he cried aloud upon the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” At all these openings he manifests his manhood, that we may be encouraged and enabled to take hold of him for eternal life.

Let us examine now more particularly why Jesus wept. The cause of the fact is as wonderful and instructive as the fact itself. The scene is entirely intensely human througlioufc. This is a brother born for our adversity. At Bethany dwelt a family, the intimate friends of the man Christ Jesus. He was accustomed to turn aside and rest in their house, when wearied with his walk from Jerusalem, or his work in it. In process of time the brother of that house fell sick and died. When Jesus, some days afterwards, came to Bethany, he found the surviving sisters enduring one of the sorest, yet commonest sorrows of humanity. A feeble woman stood and gazed into the ground beside her brother’s grave. As he looked on the veiled statue, and saw, perhaps, a shiver of convulsive agony beneath the mourner’s drapery, he knew all the grief which rent that tender heart, and felt it at his own. At the sight of her suffering he suffered; seeing her tears falling, he wept too.

Mark, I beseech you, the commonness of the suffering which then drew forth the sympathy of Jesus. It was heavy, but it was not strange. We are too apt to conceive of the Saviour as concerned only about our souls and our sins. Thus we keep him distant. By a mistake as to the character of his sympathy, we keep the true Comforter at arm’s length when our hearts most need him near. Men think of his divinity, and cry, in some way, for the pardon of their sins; but do not realize his humanity, so as to count on his sympathy in their sorrows. Nor is this the measure of the loss; by failing to accept the less, we sacrifice also the greater. If we do not grasp his humanity for sympathy in common grief, we cannot get hold of his Godhead for the saving of our souls.

It is the incarnation of Emmanuel that affords a point of contact between God and man. It is in his human nature that he reaches us — that we reach him. He fed the hungry in the desert; but the bodily appetite, and its supply, he meant to use as an avenue of access for divine mercy into human spirits. He healed the ten lepers, but he complained of the ungrateful nine, that the act had not opened a way for himself into their hearts. When the paralytic lay before him, a compassion that was at once divine and human wrought in his bosom and flowed from his lips. Thy sins be forgiven thee, and, Take up thy bed and walk, clung together like the deity and manhood in Christ.

When we put him far from us, we then and thereby keep ourselves far from him. You may have observed that when you come near the mirror on the one side, the image within it approaches nearer on the other; but that as far as you retire on this side, so far the image retires on that. A similar process goes on, according to a similar law, in the intercourse between Christians and Christ. When you count him distant, you feel yourself distant; when he is near to you, you are near to him. In particular, when you feel that your Redeemer has come down through all spiritual and eternal things, in order that he may lay his human heart along yours, and share its smallest, secretest sorrows, you get very near him, not only with these sorrows which come first in contact, but also near him — into his heart, and up to his heaven, for all the treasures of his grace, and all the hopes of his glory.

To a mind outwardly instructed, but not inwardly taught of the Spirit, God, our just judge, seems to stand at an inaccessible distance in the highest heaven. From that height Christ the mediator seems to descend on our behalf, and take up his position on an intermediate stage, half way between heaven and earth. Thence he beckons us to come, and promises to save. But though he seems nearer to us than heaven, and willing to receive us when we reach his standing-place, there is still between him and us a great gulf which we cannot pass. We have not the wings of a dove, ^“hereon we might fly to him and be at rest. Although .3 engages to carry us all the way to heaven after we hsve climbed up to him, we cannot climb up to him, and so lie down despairing. Clogged by the body, and sticking fast in the thick clay of earthly cares, we never once get up into that region where Jesus seems to stand, — where we keep him standing. What then? The dupes of the Romish priesthood call upon Mary and Peter, and other more doubtful saints, to come and help them over and up to Christ. As the poor shivering child stands on the gulf’s brim, and sees Jesus at a hopeless distance on the other side, saints of various name and character approach, and undertake to bear the trembler over. Those who throw themselves into these outstretched arms sink through into the pit. The saint was nothing but a shadow, — the shadow of a name. But what of us who know full well that these manifold mediators are unsubstantial phantoms? What of us who intelligently demand credentials, and refuse to leap for life into the embrace of deceivers? We detect and distrust the false offer of help; but without help we cannot lift ourselves up to a lofty, distant Saviour. What then? Then, stand still, and see the salvation of God. Lo! he comes, — he comes over and down to us. He stands where we stand; he looks into our faces; he stretches out his arms; he clasps us to his breast. He does not remain distant, ready to receive us after we have by our own energy raised ourselves to yonder height of spiritual attainment., He comes near to bear us first from our low estate up to that height, and afterwards beyond it, all the way to heaven. He will work the first part of our redemption, and the last. He will do all. He does not wait for those who can escape from the trammels of earth, and arise into the region of the spiritual; he descends to the level of mere humanity, and folds in his everlasting love those who lie groaning there.” Jesus wept! “I could not spare that word from my Bible any more than I could spare the incarnation or the intercession. What although he had done divinely all the work, except a little portion at the lower end; unable to do that little for myself, the greater, higher part accomplished would have be on of no avail to me. What although he had come, and come to save, all the way from the Godhead down to the spiritual regions in the higher strata of humanity; sunk and loaded as I was, I could not have soared thither to meet him there. He has come the whole way down to us. “Lo, I am with you always!’’ Look unto Jesus. Behold, he weeps, and weeps with a sister at a brother’s grave. He does not reserve all his concern for our sin; he lavishes his sympathy also upon our Bjrrows. No chasm remains which we must pass alone on our way to Christ. He is God with us.

In the life of Jesus as recorded for us by the Spirit, there are two weepings. Twice in the body, and on the earth the man Christ Jesus shed tears; but in neither case were they shed for himself. Not in Gethsemane, not on the cross, did Jesus weep. Both the sorrows were for our sakes; but they differed widely from each other. “When he drew near Jerusalem, and beheld the city, he wept over it; when he saw a bereaved sister mourning for a dead brother, he wept with her. The one weeping was for human guilt; the other was for human sorrow. The one marks his divine compassion for the sinful; the other his human sympathy with the sufferer. Each is precious in its own place, but the places are widely diverse. The two examples exhibit different qualities of the Saviour, and meet different necessities of men. His compassion for sinners, manifested in his tears over Jerusalem, is a link in the chain by which we are saved, but it is an upper link; his sorrow with a sister beside a brother’s grave is a link lower down, and therefore nearer us. His pity for me as a sinner shows that he is great and good; his weeping with me in my sorrow shows that his greatness and goodness are within my reach. “When I could not arise to meet him in the region of his own spiritual compassion, he has bowed down to meet me in my natural weakness. I could not rise to lay hold of him, but he bends to take hold of me. Standing where I stand, and weeping when I weep, he enters by the openings which grief has made into my heart, and gently

makes it all his own. My brother, he insinuates himself into me through the emotions of our common nature, that so I may be borne up with him into the regions of spiritual light and liberty. He takes hold of me by my sorrow, that I may get hold of him for deliverance from my sin.

The lesson which I desire to take and give in the close is this: Do not separate yourselves from Christ in the numberless joys and griefs of human life, striving to get near him only in the great affairs that pertain to eternity. To act thus is to throw away some of the sweetest provisions of the covenant. Nor is the sympathy of the Saviour limited to one side of human experience. While he is a brother born specially for adversity, he is equally near and equally welcome in the day of joy. He reclined at a wedding in Cana before he stood by a grave in Bethany. He is man, and touches man with equal tenderness on both sides of his being. If Christians lie open at all points for Christ’s sympathy, his sympathy at all points will stream in.

Christians, twine your heart round the love of Christ in little common earthly things; this will test whether you possess spiritual life, and nourish the regenerate into greater strength. To realize the Kedeemer’s manhood, and nearness, and brotherliness, will make religion more easy to the single-eyed, but more difficult to the double-minded. To those who love the presence of the Lord, no news can be more welcome than that he is near; to those who do not, no news can be more dreadful. God with us, in our own nature, compassing our being about, and touching our life at every point, as the air bathes every outspread leaf, and enters for the tree’s sustenance at every pore, — this intelligence comes to a living Christian like cold waters to a thirsty soul. An Israelite, indeed, leaps with joy when he learns that his Kedeemer will be to him “as the dew,”

Open your mouth wide and he will fill it. Keep all your being open to all the sympathy of Christ. Do not banish him from your earth, and he will not shut you out from his heaven.