479. The Hero of the Ages
The Hero of the Ages
Rom_8:34 : ’93Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.’94
’93This is the last sermon I shall ever preach,’94 said Christmas Evans on the thirteenth of June, 1838. Three days after he died. I do not know what his text was, but I do know that no man could choose a better theme’97though he knew it was the last time he should ever preach’97than the subject I now present.
Paul flung his challenge of the text to the feet of all ecclesiastical and civil authority’97synagogues and Neros. He feared neither swords nor lions, earth nor hell. Diocletian slew seventeen thousand under his administration, and the world has been full of persecution; but all the persecutors of the world could not affright Paul. Was it because he was physically strong? Oh, no! I suppose he was very much weakened by exposure and maltreatment. Was it because he was lacking in sensitiveness?, No; you find the most delicate shades of feeling playing in and out his letters and his sermons. Some of his communications burst into tears. What was it that lifted Paul into this triumphant mood? The thought of a Saviour dead, a Saviour risen, a Saviour exalted, a Saviour interceding.
All the world has sung the praise of Princess Alice. One child having died of a contagious disease’97she was in the room where another was dying, and the court physician said to her, ’93You must not breathe the breath of this child, or you yourself will die.’94 But seeing the child mourning because of the death of her brother, the mother stooped down, and in sympathy kissed the little one, caught the disease, and perished. All the world sings the heroism and the self-sacrifice of Princess Alice, but I have to tell you that when our race was dying the Lord Jesus stooped down and gave us the kiss of his everlasting love, and perished that we might live. ’93It is Christ that died.’94
Can you tell me how tender-hearted Paul could find anything to rejoice at in the horrible death scene of Calvary? We weep at funerals, we are sympathetic when we see a stranger die; when a murderer steps upon the scaffold we pray for his departing spirit; and how could Paul’97the great-hearted Paul’97find anything to be pleased with at the funeral of a God? Beside that, Christ had only recently died, and the sorrow was fresh in the memory of the world, and how in the fresh memory of a Saviour’92s death could Paul be exultant? It was because Paul saw in that death his own deliverance, and the deliverance of a race from still worse disaster; he saw the gap into which the race must plunge, and he saw the bleeding hands Christ close it. The glittering steel on the top of the executioner’92s spear in his sight kindled into a torch to light men heavenward. The persecutors saw over the cross five words written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; but Paul saw over the cross of Christ only one word’97’94expiation!’94 He heard in the dying groan of Christ his own groan of eternal torture taken by another. Paul said to himself, ’93Had it not been that Christ volunteered in my behalf, those would have been my mauled hands and feet, my gashed side, my crimson temples.’94
Men of great physical endurance have sometimes carried very heavy burdens’97three hundred pounds, four hundred pounds’97and they have still said, ’93My strength is not yet tested; put on more weight.’94 But after a while they were compelled to cry out, ’93Stop! I can carry no more.’94 But the burden of Christ was illimitable. First, there was his own burden of hunger and thirst and bereavement, and a thousand outrages that have been heaped upon him, and on top of that burden were the sorrows of his poor old mother, and on the top of those burdens the crimes of the ruffians who were executing him. ’93Stop!’94 you cry, ’93it is enough; Christ can bear no more.’94 And Christ says, ’93Roll on more burdens; roll on me the sins of this entire Jewish nation, and after that, roll on me the sins of the inhabited earth, and then roll on me the sins of the four thousand years past, so far as those sins have been forgiven.’94 And the angels of God, seeing the awful pressure, cry, ’93Stop! He can bear no more.’94 And the blood rushing to the nostril and lip seems to cry out, ’93Enough! He can endure no more.’94 But Christ says, ’93Roll on a greater burden’97roll on the sins of the next nineteen hundred years, roll on me the sins of all the succeeding ages, roll on me the agonies of hell, ages on ages, the furnaces and the prison-houses and the tortures.’94 That is what the Bible means when it says, ’93He bore our sins, and carried our sorrows.’94
’93Now,’94 says Paul, ’93I am free; that suffering purchased my deliverance; God never collects a debt twice; I have a receipt in full; if God is satisfied with me, then what do all the threats of earth and hell amount to?’94 ’93Bring on all your witnesses,’94 says Paul; ’93show all your force; do your worst against my soul; I defy you; I dare you; I challenge you. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died.’94 What a strong argument that puts in the hand of every Christian man! Some day all the past sins of his life come down on him in fiery troop, and they pound away at the gate of his soul, and they say, ’93We have come for your arrest. Any one of us could overcome you; we are ten thousand strong; surrender!’94 And you open the door, and single-handed and alone you contend against that troop; you fling this divine weapon into their midst, you scatter those sins as quick as you can think it. ’93It is Christ that died.’94 Why, then, bring up to us the sins of our past life? What have we to do with those obsolete things?
You know how hard it is for a wrecker to bring up anything that is lost near the shore of the sea; but suppose something be lost half-way between Liverpool and New York; it cannot be found, it cannot be fetched up. ’93Now,’94 says God, ’93your sins I have cast into the depths of the sea.’94 Mid-Atlantic! All the machinery ever fashioned in foundries of darkness, and launched from the doors of eternal death, working for ten thousand years, cannot bring up one of our sins forgiven and forgotten and sunken into the depths of the sea. When a sin is pardoned, it is gone’97it is gone out of the books, it is gone out of the memory, it is gone out of existence. ’93Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.’94
From other tragedies men have come away exhausted and nervous and sleepless; but there is one tragedy that soothes and calms and saves. Calvary was the stage on which it was enacted, the curtain of the night falling at midnoon was the drop scene, the thunder of falling rocks the orchestra, angels in galleries and devils in the pit the spectators, the tragedy a crucifixion. ’93It is Christ that died.’94 Oh, triumphant thought!
If you go through the picture galleries of Versailles you will find a great change there. I once said to a friend who had been through those galleries, ’93Are they as they were before the French war?’94 and I was told there was a great change there; that all that multitude of pictures which represented Napoleonic triumphs had been taken away, and in the frames were other pictures representative of Germanic triumph and victory. Would that all the scenes of Satanic triumph in our world might be blotted out, and that the whole world might be a picture-gallery representing the triumphant Jesus! Down with the monarchy of transgression! Up with the monarchy of our King! Hail! Jesus, Hail!
But I must give you the second cause of Paul’92s exhilaration. If Christ had stayed in that grave we never would have gotten out of it. The grave would have been dark and dismal as the Conciergerie during the Reign of Terror, where the carts came up only to take the victims out to the scaffold. I do not wonder that the ancients tried by embalmment of the body to resist the dissolution of death. The grave is the darkest, deepest, ghastliest chasm that was ever opened if there be no light from the resurrection throne streaming into it; but Christ stayed in the tomb all Friday night and all Saturday, all Saturday night, and a part of Sunday morning. He stayed so long in the tomb that he might fit it for us when we go there. He tarried two whole nights in the grave, so that he saw how important it was to have plenty of light, and he has flooded it with his own glory.
It is early Sunday morning, and we start up to find the grave of Christ. We find the morning sun gilding the dew, and the shrubs are sweet as the foot crushes them. What a beautiful place to be buried in! Wonder they did not treat Christ as well when he was alive as they do now that he is dead. Give the military salute to the soldiers who stand guarding the dead. But hark to the crash! an earthquake! The soldiers fall back as though they were dead, and the stone at the door of Christ’92s tomb spins down the hill, flung by the arm of an angel. Come forth, O Jesus! from the darkness into the sunlight. Come forth, and breathe the perfume of Joseph’92s garden. Christ comes forth radiant, and as he steps out of the excavation of the rock, I look down into the excavation, and in the distance I see others coming hand-in-hand, and troop after troop, and I find it is a long procession of the precious dead. Among them are our own loved ones’97father, mother, brother, sister, companion, children’97coming up out of the excavation of the rock until the last one has stepped out into the light, and I am bewildered, and I cannot understand the scene until I see Christ wave his hand over the advancing procession from the rock, and hear him cry, ’93I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’94 And then I notice that the long dirge of the world’92s woe suddenly stops at the archangelic shout of ’93Come forth!’94
My friends, if Christ had not broken out of the grave you and I would never came out of it. It would have been another case of Charlotte Corday attempting to slay a tyrant, herself slain. It would have been another case of John Brown attempting to free the slaves, himself hanged. It would have been Death and Christ in a grapple, Death the victor. The black flag would have floated on all the graves and mausoleums of the dead, and hell would have conquered the forces of Heaven, and captured the ramparts of God, and Satan would have come to coronation in the palaces of Heaven, and it would have been devils on the throne and sons of God in the dungeon. No, no! When that stone was rolled from the door of Christ’92s grave, it was hurled with such a force that it crashed in all the grave-doors of Christendom, and now the tomb is only a bower where God’92s children take a siesta, an afternoon nap, to wake up in mighty invigoration. ’93Christ is risen.’94 Hang that lamp among all the tombs of my dead. Hang it over my own resting-place. Christ’92s suffering is ended; his work is done. The darkest afternoon of the world’92s history becomes the brightest Sunday morning of its resurrection joy. The Good Friday of bitter memories becomes the Easter of glorious transformation and resurrection.
Ye mourning saints, dry every tear
For your departed Lord.
Behold the place: he is not here;
The tomb is all unbarred.
The gates of death were closed in vain,
The Lord is risen, he lives again.
I give you the third cause of Paul’92s exhilaration. We honor the right hand more than we do the left. If in accident or battle we must lose one hand, let it be the left. The left hand being nearer the heart, we may not do much of the violent works of life with that hand without physical danger; but he who has the right arm in full play has the mightiest of all earthly weapons. In all ages and in all languages the right hand is the symbol of strength and power and honor. Hiram sat at the right hand of Solomon. Then we have the term, ’93He is a right-hand man.’94 Lafayette was Washington’92s right-hand man; Marshal Ney was Napoleon’92s right-hand man; and now you have the meaning of Paul when speaks of Christ, who is at the right hand of God. That means He is the first guest of Heaven. He has a right to sit there. The Hero of the universe! Count his wounds; two in the feet, two in the hands, one in the side’97five wounds. Oh! you have counted wrong. These are not half the wounds. Look at the severer wounds in the temples; each thorn an excruciation.
If a hero come back from battle, and he take off his hat, or roll up his sleeve, and show you the scar of a wound gotten at Ball’92s Bluff or at South Mountain, you stand in admiration at his heroism and patriotism; but if Christ should make conspicuous the five wounds gotten on Calvary’97that Waterloo of all the ages’97he would display only a small part of his wounds. Wounded all over, let him sit at the right hand of God. He has a right to sit there. By the request of God, the Father, and the unanimous suffrage of all heaven, let him sit there. In the grand review, when the redeemed pass by in cohorts of splendor, they will look at him and shout ’93Victory!’94
The oldest inhabitant of heaven never saw a grander day than the one when Christ took the right hand of God. Hosanna! With lips of clay I may not appropriately utter it, but let the martyrs under the altar throw the cry to the elders before the throne, and they can toss it to the choir on the sea of glass until all heaven shall lift it’97some on point of scepter, and some on string of harp, and some on the tip of the green branches. Hosanna! hosanna!
A fourth cause of Paul’92s exhilaration. Oh! my friends, there will be so many things going on in heaven, I have sometimes wondered if the Lord would not forget you and me! Perhaps Paul said sometimes: ’93I wonder God don’92t forget me down here in Antioch and in the prison and in the shipwreck. There are so many sailors, so many wayfarers, so many prisoners, so many heart-broken men,’94 says Paul, ’93perhaps God may forget me. And then I am so vile a sinner. How I whipped those Christians! with what vengeance I mounted that cavalry horse and dashed down to Damascus! Oh! it will take a mighty attorney to plead my cause and get me free.’94 But just at that moment there came in upon Paul’92s soul something mightier than the surges that dashed his ship into Melita, swifter than the horse he rode down to Damascus. It was the swift and overwhelming thought of Christ’92s intercession.
My friends, we must have an advocate. A poor lawyer is worse than no lawyer at all. We must have one who is able successfully to present our cause before God. Where is he? Who is he? There is only one advocate in all the universe that can plead our cause in the last judgment, that can plead our cause before God in the great tribunal. Sometimes in earthly courts attorneys have specialties, and one man succeeds better in patent cases, another in insurance cases, another in criminal cases, another in land cases, another in will cases, and his success generally depends upon his sticking to that specialty. I have to tell you that Christ can do many things; but it seems to me that his specialty is to take the bad case of the sinner and plead it before God until he gets eternal acquittal. Yes! we must have him for our advocate.
But what plea can he make? Sometimes an attorney in court will plead the innocence of the prisoner. That would be inappropriate for us; we are all guilty! guilty! Unclean! unclean! Christ, our advocate, will not dare to plead our innocence. Sometimes the attorney in court tries to prove an alibi.He says: ’93This prisoner was not at the scene; he was in some other place at the time.’94 Such a plea will not do in our case. The Lord found us in all our sins, and in the very place of our iniquity. It is impossible to prove an alibi.Sometimes an attorney will plead the insanity of the prisoner, and say he is irresponsible on that account. That plea will never do in our case. We sinned against light, against knowledge, against the dictates of our own consciences; we knew what we were doing. What, then, shall the plea be? The plea for our eternal deliverance will be Christ’92s own martyrdom. He will say: ’93Look at all these wounds. By all these sufferings I demand the rescue of this man from sin and death and hell. Constable, knock off the shackles’97let the prisoner go free.’94 ’93Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.’94
But why all this gladness on the faces of these sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty? I know what you are thinking of. A Saviour dead, a Saviour risen, a Saviour exalted, a Saviour interceding. ’93What,’94 say you, ’93is all that for me?’94 All! all! Never let me hear you complaining about anything again. With your pardoned sin behind you, and a successful Christ pleading above you, and a glorious heaven before you, how can you be despondent about anything? ’93But,’94 says some man in the audience, ’93all that is very good and very true for those who are inside the kingdom; but how about those of us who are outside?’94 Then I say, Come into the kingdom, come out of the prison-house into the glorious sunlight of God’92s mercy and pardon, and come now. It was in the last days of the Reign of Terror, the year 1793. Hundreds and thousands had perished under the French guillotine. France groaned with the tyrannies of Robespierre and the Jacobin Club. The last group of sufferers had had their locks shorn by Monchotte, the prison barber, so that the neck might be bare to the keen knife of the guillotine. The carts came up to the prison, the poor wretches were placed in the carts and driven off toward the scaffold; but while they were going toward the scaffold there was an outcry in the street, and then the shock of firearms, and then the cry, ’93Robespierre has fallen! Down with the Jacobins! Let France be free!’94 But the armed soldiers rode in upon these rescuers, so that the poor wretches in the carts were taken on to the scaffold, and horribly died. But that very night these monsters of persecution were seized, and Robespierre perished under the very guillotine that he had reared for others, all France clapping their hands with joy as his head rolled into the executioner’92s basket. Then the axes of the excited populace were heard pounding against the gates of the prison, and the poor prisoners walked out free. My friends, sin is the worst of all Robespierres; it is the tyrant of tyrants; it has built a prison house for our soul; it plots our death; it has shorn us for the sacrifice, but, blessed be God, this morning we hear the axes of God’92s gracious deliverance pounding against the door of our prison. Deliverance has come. Light breaks through all the wards of the prison. Revolution! Revolution! ’93Where sin abounded, grace does much more abound, that whereas sin reigned unto death, even so grace may reign unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’94 Glorious truth! A Saviour dead, a Saviour risen, a Saviour exalted, a Saviour interceding!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage