The Lamb of God
’ Behold the Lamb of God.” — Johx i. 36.
Bi/RN without taste, as others are without an ear for music, some have no sympathy with nature. In them, the earth “sown with orient pearl,” bush and tree hung with sparkling diamonds, the snow-crowned hills, valleys gaily robed in flowers and smiling in sunshine, the spacious sea, the star-spangled sky, breed no admiration; and leave them as unable to appreciate the beauties of a lovely landscape, as the cattle that browse ou its pastures. Yet there are scenes in nature that may disappoint one who has the keenest enjoyment in a beautiful landscape — the liveliest sympathy with whatever is grand or lovely. Such a man travels far, and, climbing rugged crag, or steep mountain, toils hard that he may feast his eyes on some famous prospect. His expectations are raised to the highest pitch. At length, pantirg, exhausted, he arrives at the summit; and at the cry of his guide. Behold! looks round to be disappointed. It does not repay the trouble; it was not worth the toil. Now, such disappointment awaits none who, responding to the call, Behold the Lamb of God, have turned their eyes on Christ. With a clear, unclouded view, the sight is ravishing. Hea-
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ven and earth, angels and men, to use Paul’s words, are “perfectly joined together in the same mi ad and judgment;” and Jesus, to quote the language of an old, holy song, is declared to be “the chiefest among ten thousand, and” — what none else are — “altogether lovely.”
Accustomed from childhood to see the starry host come forth, night by night, to march in silent grandeur above our heads, the scene attracts little attention; many walking beneath that spangled dome, nor ever, the whole year through, turning a look of wonder on it. And thus also, in those who have been born and bred up by its shores, familiarity with the ocean, whether its waves sleep in summer sunshine or foam and rage in wintry tempests, breeds a measure of indiiference.
But who, for the first time, has seen the Almighty’s band in the snowy Alps, or heard his voice in the thimders of Niagara, without dumb surprise? Our emotions are strange, new, and inexpressible; and we pronounce such sublime and surpassing grandeur to be beyond the power of words to describe; of colours to paint; of fancy to imagine. To appreciate, you must see them. And if the brightest colours of prose, or of poetry V glowing fancy, do no justice to such scenes, what words can set forth the graces and matchless merits of the Saviour? Put an angel — a seraph in the pulpit; and give him Christ for his theme! The subject is greater than his powers; the flight beyond his wing; the song above his compass. He were the fii’st to say, when called to describe the glories and beauty, the majesty and mercy, that meet in Jefnis, Who is sufficient for these things? To appreciate him, you must see and know him. Yes. You mig-ht sit there, and listen all 5’our life long to no other theme, you might hear every sermon that had been preached, you might read every hymn that had been sung, you might study every book that had been written about Christ, and after all, on arriving in heaven, you would stand before the throne to lift your hands in rapt, mute astonishment — on recovering speech, to exclaim with Sheba’s queen,” I had heard of thee in mine own land, of thy acts, and of thy wisdom; howbeit the half was not told me. Happy are thy men; happy thy servants ‘*’ — and happy I to be allowed to take rank with them.
Any view of Christ which the greatest preacher in the highest flight of genius ever set before his audience, must be feeble compared with the reality. Paint and canvas cannot give the hues of the rainbow, or the beams of the sun — unless by representations so poor as in many instances to excite contempt, and in all astonishment, that any artist could attempt wlT;it so far exceeds the powers of cold, dull paint. No more can words describe the Saviour s glory. Nay, what is the most glowing and ecstatic view that the highest faith of a soul, hovering on the borders of another world, ever obtained of Christ, compared with the reality? [t is like the sun changed by a frosty fog-bank into a dull, red, copper ball — shorn of the splendour that no mortal’s eyes can look on.
La dii’ecting your attention, therefore, to Jesus
Christ, I do not pretend to do my subject justice; but only attempt, with God’s blessing, to do you some good by directing your attention to one or two aspects of his life and character. By these, may the Holy Spirit of promise awaken faith in the unbelieving, and inflame the- love of Christ’s own, loving, chosen people.
I. Behold Christ before he came to this world.
The measure of our Lord’s humiliation is that of his original exaltation. Nor can we know how low he stooped to save us, till we know the height from whence he came. Came? Did he not come of humble parentage; and was not his birth-place a stable? That starting-point may satisfy those who have formed no higher idea of Jesus than as a man of rare perfections, the pattern and paragon of every human virtue. But we know better — see further into the “mystery of godliness.” God manifest in the flesh, he had a higher origin than Bethlehem. He was of a nobler descent than Mary; and sprung of an older and more royal ancestry than Judah’s kings. The lowly spring that wells up among the vineyards or green pastures of the Alpine valley, draws its waters from above — their source those inaccessible and eternal snows, whose spotless bosom bears no stain, nor print of human foot. So was it with Jesus.
To be sprung of humble parentage puts no shame on us. No man need blush for the mother that bore him, because, treading life’s lowly paths, she had to spin, or weave, or toil, to earn his bread. Who does so has cause to be ashamed, not of her, but of himself — his pridi) meaner than her lot could be. Claiming the highest ancestry, our Lord was not ashamed of Mary. She was his mother; and mother was a word as dear and sacred to him as to us. He honoured her; he met her wish with miracles: he owned her on his cross; true to nature, his dying look was turned on his mother; and though family relationships do not subsist in heaven as here, there he will acknowledge her his mother. Not that Mary is, as Papists call her, the mother of God, or queen of heaven, to whom we are to address our prayers, and pay an inferior worship, that we may secure her influence with her son. Still, though shrinking from such profanity, with angels we pronounce her blessed. Honour be to Mary’s memory! She was, and shall over be, the mother of the man Christ Jesus — the man of the cross that redeemed the world; the man on the throne who rules the uniyerse. “God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”
But it is to an older and higher than this mediatorial throne to which he has been exalted, that we are to look, if we would discoyer the heights from whence Jesus came to saye us. Unlike an earthly palace that holds but one king, the wide extent of heaven is crowded with thrones. They are filled by the saints; among whom, if Christ’s we shall take rank — kings and priests to God for ever. Amid these, though not far removed, rises the throne of the Mediator — spanned by a rainbow, and encircled by angel hosts, and occupied by him on whose glorious form all eyes are centered; to whose praise all harps are tuned; and at whose feet, once nailed to a cross, thousands of glittering crowns are cast, as the purchase of his blood and the gift of his grace. There Jesus sits among his saints, King in an assembly of kings. But above all these, high and lifted up, in the unsealed heights of Godhead, casting the shadow of its glory over the boundless universe, rises the throne of the Ancient of days; days that had no beginning, and years that shall have no end. Now, ere he assumed our nature, and descended on our world to save it, the Son of God was there — there before Mary bore him, or Mary herself was born — there before Adam was made — there before there was sin, or death, or life — there before worlds had begun to roll, or time had begun to run — there before sun ever shone, or bright angels sang. Here now we are at the fountain-head; if we can speak of having reached that, even on fancy’s wing which stretches away into the boundless mysteries of eternity. Hear how our Lord speaks of himself, —
“I was th’ Almighty’s chief delight
From everlasting days.
Ere yet his arm was stretched forth
The heav’ns and earth to raise.
“B’ifore the sea began to flow,
And leave the solid land,
Before the hills and mountains rose,
I dwelt at his riirht hand.
““When first lie rear’d the arch of beaVn,
And spread the clouds on air,
“When first the fountains of the deep
He open’d, I was there.
“There I was with him, when he stretch’d
His compass o’er the deep,
And charged the ocean’s swelling wavef
Within their bounds to keep.
““With joy I saw th’ abode prepared
“Which men were soon to fill:
Them from the first of days I loved,
Unchanged, I love them still.”
There are dark depths of ocean where man never dropped his sounding line; there are heights in the blue heavens where the air was never stirred by an eagle’s wing; and there are regions of truth which angels never explored — their eye never scanned, and their feet never trode. And such — the deepest of all doctrines, the profoundest of all mysteries, yet the strongest of all our confidences — is this, that He who expired for us on Calvary was, not as men and angels are, the created, but the Eternal Son of God. In this truth I see the love of God, brighter than a sun; by this line I measure the love of Christ, deeper than the sea. It was this, that he was co-equal with the Father, the brightness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of his person; that he was not less God than man; that under the garment of humanity, so rudely rent, divinity stood concealed; that the brow wounded by thorns, had worn the crown of heaven; that the hand nailed to the tree, had held the scales of fate, and swayed the sceptre of the universe; — it waa this that struck Paul with such astonishment, and called from his lips an expression that finds a ready echo in every believer’s heart, “The breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.”
II. Behold Christ on earth — in his humiliation.
Follow him in his descent from heaven on his mission of mercy. What a descent! Who has looked into a gulf so dark and profound? Philosophers expatiate with wonder on the inconceivable distances of the fixed stars; and we attempt in vain to fancy the space that stretches between our world and orbs so remote that, notwithstanding its speed, light takes six thousand years to perform its journey between some of them and us; so that, marvellous to tell, the rays of light which we saw last night left the star about the ame that man was made, or our world was shaken by the Fall. Still, that distance, though not to be conceived, may be measured. You can express it by numbers; but how immeasurable, as well as inconceivable, the distance between the throne of the Eternal and the stable of Bethlehem; the bosom of God and the breast of Mary!
People are fond of tracing rivers from their mouths to their distant sources; and Bruce, the traveller, pronounced it the proudest moment of his life, when he stood, as he fancied, at the lofty fountains of the Nile. But when we trace the waters of life to their earthly Fource, how lowly the spring where they well up into light! Would you see it? Bow thy head; enter this stable; and in this stall, whence beasts have been turned out to accommodate a woman in her lionr of sorrow, look into the manger; gently raise the i-ougli, swaddling cloth; and there, in a feeble creature that, disturbed, sends up an infant’s wail, Behold the Lamb of God — the Love of God — the Saviour of the world!
Look again! When times were hard, and work was scarce, and men had to leave their homes to seek about for bread, did you ever meet a houseless family; and see the mother, as they trudged along the wild moor, trying with scanty coverings to protect her infant from the pelting rain and storm? Li some such plight, Behold the Lamb of God! The holy family are flying to Egypt. Mary has seized her child; and, pressing it to her bosom, has rushed into the tempest, and the dark night, and on untravelled paths, to save its infant life from the massacre of Bethlehem — the bloody sword of Herod!
Look again! On some stormy night, when the wind howled in the chimney, and the rain beat on the window, and the wild beast was driven back to his lair and mothers that had boys at sea, trembling for their fate, betook themselves to prayer, did you ever, hastily summoned to the bed of the dying, pass some outcast crouching in the shelter of a doorway, or lying with weary head pillowed on a cold, stone step? Whatever you may have felt, Jesus, up in heaven, had a fellow-feeling for that houseless man. Lord of Glory! he had been such an outcast; an outcast from human kindness — every door he sought, shut in his face. What man ever uttered a more touching plaint than his: “The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not wheio to lay his head?” Stretched on the cold ground, no roof to shelter him, his locks wet with the dews of night. Behold the Lamb of God — an outcast frDm man, that you might cease to be outcast from God! Herein is love indeed.
These sorrows were but the muttering thunder, the first big drops that precede the bursting of the storm. It came roaring on; and would you behold the Lamb of God in the great suffering and work of sacrifice, look here! Pass into this garden: draw near with reverent step. Praying in an agony, sweating great drops of blood, prostrate on the ground, “see thy lover lowly laid, and hear the groans that rend his breast.” Follow the prisoner to the judgment-hall: blood streaks his face, trickling from a crown of thorns — the wreath our sins wove for his royal brow, and “the crown with which his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals.” Go out with him to the crowded street; he faints; louder now the wail of women, deeper nov,^ the curses of cruel men, as, disfigured with blood and dust, his blessed head lies on the hard stones — yet not so hard as pitiless hearts. With the procession, pass on to Calvary. They cast him roughly on the ground; they nail his quivering limbs to the tree; and now it rises slowly over the surging crowd that rend the as-Tonished air with shouts ?.nd savage yells of triumph.’ ^ow, Behold the Lamb of God! see the blood of re« demption streaming; see the cloud of desertion deepening; soe the tide of life departing as the glaze gathers on his eyes, and the sword in a Father’s hand is passed deeper and deeper into his heart! Heark to to the awful cry that rises, loud and clear, in the still* ness of the darkness, “Eli, Eli, lama sabaohthani!” ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Death has done his work; and when kind hands have taken down the body, and borne it slowly to the tomb, look there! You have looked on the face of the dead, but never on one that loved you half so well. You have kissed brows as icy cold, but death never stilled a heart so warm and true to you. No lips ever prayed for you like these; nor hand ever wrought for you like that from which the women wipe the clotted blood; nor eyes ever wept for you like those their fingers gently, tenderly, close amid a flood of tears. Behold the Lamb of God, slain for your sins! Mary bends over the dear body; kisses the cold feet; washes the bloody wounds; and spreads out a bed of spices. Well she may! He had been a kind Lord to her; but not kinder than he will prove to any, to all who kneel with that blessed woman at his feet — weeping, longing, loving suppliants for saving mercy. Behold, and believe! Herein is love indeed; not that we loved him, but that he loved us, and gave himself for us; suffering for sins — the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.
[II. Let this Lamb of God be the supreme object of our desires, and the sole object of our faith. Be this our language: —
“Jesus, my Lord! I know his name,
His name is all m j boast;
Nor will he put my soul to shame,
Nor let my hope be lost.”
To a sinner’s ear there is no music on earth, nor in the golden harps of heaven, like the name of Jesus. Music in its sound, there is ointment in its meaning. Fragrant as the spikenard of the alabaster box, “his name is as ointment poured forth.” If but his name be such a blessed thing, what must the sight of him be? To see Jesus clearly with the eye of faith, is to see the deep opening a way from Egypt’s to freedom’s shore; is to see the water gush, full and sparkling from the desert rock; is to see the serpent gleaming on its pole over a dying camp; is to see the life-boat coming when our bark is thumping on the bank, or ground on rocks by foaming breakers; is to see a pardon when the noose is round our neck and our foot is on the drop. No sight in the wide world like Jesus Christ, with forgiveness on his lips, and a crown in his blessed hand! This is worth laboring for; praying for; living for; suffering for; dying for. You remember how the prophet’s servant climbed the steeps of Carmel. Three years, and never cloud had dappled the burning sky — three long years, and never a dewdrop had glistened on the grass, or wet the lips of a dying flower; but the cloud came at last. No bigger than a man’s hand, it rose from the sea; it spread; and as he saw the first lightnings flash, and heard the first thunders roll, how did he forget all his toils! and would have climbed the hill, not seven, but seventy times seven times, to hail that welcome sight!
It is so with sinners so soon as their eyes are gladdened with a believing sight of Christ; when they have got Christ; and with him peace. Be it that you haTe to climb the hill of prayer, not seven, but seven thousand times, such a sight shall more than reward all your toil. Pray on; for it is not on their feet, but on their knees that men climb to heaven. What though, like good old Simeon, we have to wait for “consolation” till our eye is dim and our hair is grey? — a sight of Jesus lights up the dull eye, and warms up the oold blood of age. Are there any who have been long looking, waiting, praying; and yet cannot say with any confidence that they have found the Lord? Let them draw comfort from the case of him who waited in the temple for the “consolation of Israel” till his eyes grew dim, and his head turned white with age. Be assured that your prayers are not forgotten! They are in God’s books; and your tears are in his bottle. The vision may tarry, but come it will. The Saviour will come; hope will come; peace at length will come; the happy day shall come when, as Simeon took the babe in his aged arms to kiss it, and blessing, worshipping, rejoiced over it, thou also shall throw thy arms around thy Saviour, to exclaim, “Jesus, thou art all my salvation and all my desire — whom have I in heaven but thee? there is none on all the earth whom I desire besides thee.”
Holy Spirit, so reveal the Lamb of God to us that we shall long to be with him; and cry, like exiles on this earth, Oh to be where Jesus is! Not impatient, yet finding little to detain us here, may the old man’s wish hang on our lips: Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. When tlle sand burned their feet, and the hot sun scorched their heads, and the desert’s howling waste lay all around them, how did they, who saw the purple clusters of Eshcol, long to be where the vine-trees grew! And see, so soon as Simeon has the babe in his arms, how he wearies to leave (he earth and ascend to heaven! Till his eyes were gladdened with a sight of Jesus, perhaps he was afra id of death, and with his old palsied hands clung to the world; afraid to let go and drop. But with the in far t Saviour in his arms — and on a man in whom Christ is the hope of glory, what a change! In our Saviour’s presence Death lowers his colours; grounds his arms; drops his dart. As Jesus puts on his crown, Death mts off his; as Jesus stands arrayed in his glories, Dea th stands disrobed of his terrors, so that a saint, som itimes transported with the view, feels as if he could 3purn the earth, and soar to heaven on eagle’s wings — his opinion Paul’s. “To be absent from the body, and ^T^sent with the Lord, is far better.”