490. The Ransomed

The Ransomed

1Co_6:20 : ’93Ye are bought with a price.’94

Your friend takes you through his valuable house. You examine the arches, the frescoes, the grass-plats, the fish-ponds, the conservatories, the parks of deer, and you say within yourself or you say aloud: ’93What did all this cost?’94 You see costly apparel, or you see a high-mettled span of horses harnessed with silver and gold, and you begin to make an estimate of the value. The man who owns a large estate cannot instantly tell you what it is all worth. He says: ’93I will estimate so much for the house, so much for the furniture, so much for laying out the grounds, so much for the stock, so much for the barn, so much for the equipage’97adding up, in all making this aggregate.’94

Well, I hear so much about our mansion in heaven, about its furniture and the grand surroundings, that I want to know how much it is all worth and what has actually been paid for it. I cannot complete in a month or a year the magnificent calculation; but before I get through today I hope to give you the figures, ’93Ye are bought with a price.’94

With some friends I went into London Tower to look at the crown jewels of England. We walked around, caught one glimpse of them, and being in the procession were compelled to pass out. I wish that I could take you into the tower of God’92s mercy and strength, that you might walk around just once at least and see the crown jewels of eternity, behold their lustre and estimate their value. ’93Ye are bought with a price.’94 Now, if you have a large amount of money to pay, you do not pay it all at once, but you pay it by instalments’97so much the first of January, so much the first of April, so much the first of July, so much the first of October, until the entire amount is paid. And I have to tell this audience that ’93You have been bought with a price,’94 and that that price was paid in different instalments.

The first instalment paid for the clearance of our souls was the ignominious birth of Christ in Bethlehem. Though we may never be carefully looked after afterward, our advent into the world is tenderly guarded. We come into the world amid kindly attentions. Privacy and silence are afforded when God launches an immortal soul into the world. Even the roughest of men know enough to stand back. But I have to tell you that in the village on the side of the hill, there was a very bedlam of uproar when Jesus was born. In a village capable of accommodating only a few hundred people, many thousand people were crowded; and amid ostlers and muleteers, and camel-drivers yelling at stupid beasts of burden, the Messiah appeared. No silence. No privacy. A better adapted place hath the eaglet in the eyrie, the whelp in the lion’92s lair. The exile of heaven lieth down upon the straw. The first night out from the palace of heaven spent in an outhouse! One hour after laying aside the robes of heaven, dressed in a wrapper of coarse linen. One would have supposed that Christ would have made a more gradual descent, coming from heaven first to a half-way world of great magnitude, then to C’e6sar’92s palace, then to a merchant’92s castle in Galilee, then to a private home in Bethany, then, last of all, to the stable. No! It was one leap from the top to the bottom.

Let us open the door of the caravansary in Bethlehem and drive away the camels. Press on through the group of idlers and loungers. What, Mary; no light? ’93No light,’94 she says, ’93save that which comes through the door.’94 What, Mary; no food? ’93None,’94 she says, ’93only that which we brought in the sack on the journey.’94 Let the Bethlehem woman who has come in here with kindly affections put back the covering from the babe that we may look upon it. Look! Look! Uncover your head. Let us kneel. Let all voices be hushed. Son of Mary! Son of God! Child of a day’97monarch of eternity! In that eye the glance of a God. Omnipotence sheathed in that babe’92s arm. That voice to be changed from the feeble plaint to the tone that shall wake the dead. Hosanna! Hosanna! Glory be to God that Jesus came from the throne to manger that we might rise from manger to throne and that all the gates are open and that the door of heaven that once swung this way to let Jesus out, now swings the other way to let us in. ’93Behold I bring you glad tidings of great joy which shall be to all people; for today is born in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.’94

The second instalment paid for our soul’92s clearance was the scene in Quarantania, a mountainous region full of caverns, where there are to this day panthers and wild beasts of all sorts; so that you must now go there armed with knife or gun or pistol. It was there that Jesus went to think and pray, and it was there that this monster of hell, more sly, more terrific than anything that prowled in that country’97Satan himself’97met Christ. Abstinence from food must have thrown Christ into emaciation. The longest abstinence from food recorded in profane history is that of the crew of the ship Juno; for twenty-three days they had nothing to eat. But this sufferer had fasted a month and ten days before he broke fast. Hunger must have agonized every fibre of the body and gnawed on the stomach with teeth of death. The thought of a morsel of bread or meat must have thrilled the body with something like ferocity. Turn out a pack of men hungry as Christ was a-hungered, and, if they had strength, with one yell they would devour you as a lion a kid. It was in that pang of hunger that Jesus was accosted, and Satan said: ’93Now change these stones, which look like bread, into an actual supply of bread.’94 Had the temptation come to you or me under those circumstances, we would have cried: ’93Bread it shall be!’94 and been almost impatient at the time taken for mastication; but Christ with one hand beat back the hunger and with the other hand beat back the monarch of darkness. Oh, ye tempted ones! Christ was tempted.

We are told that Napoleon ordered a coat of mail made; but he was not quite certain that it was impenetrable, so he said to the manufacturer of that coat of mail: ’93Put it on now yourself and let us try it’94; and with shot after shot from his own pistol the Emperor found out that it was just what it pretended to be’97a good coat of mail. Then the man received a large reward. I bless God that the same coat of mail that struck back the weapons of temptation from the heart of Christ we may all now wear; for Jesus comes and says: ’93I have been tempted, and I know what it is to be tempted. Take this robe that defended me and wear it for yourselves. I will see you through all trials and I will see you through all temptation.’94

’93But,’94 says Satan, still further to Jesus, ’93come and I will show you something worth looking at,’94 and after a half-day’92s journey they came to Jerusalem and to the top of the Temple. Just as one might go up in the tower of Antwerp and look off upon Belgium, so Satan brought Christ to the top of the Temple. Some people at a great height feel dizzy and have a strange disposition to jump; so Satan comes to Christ with a powerful temptation in that very crisis. Standing there at the top of the Temple they look off. A magnificent reach of country. Grain fields, vineyards, olive groves, forests and streams, cattle in the valley, flocks on the hills, and villages and cities and realms. ’93Now,’94 says Satan, ’93I’92ll make a bargain. Just jump off. I know it is a great way from the top of the Temple to the valley, but if you are divine you can fly. Jump off. It will not hurt you. Angels will catch you. Your Father will hold you. But Christ resisted the temptation. Then he took him to a high mountain and showed him the glory and wealth of many kingdoms, and said: ’93Now we are alone and no one will see. Just bow your head to me. I’92ll make you a large present if you will. I’92ll give you Asia Minor; I’92ll give you India; I’92ll give you China; I’92ll give you Ethiopia; I’92ll give you Italy; I’92ll give you Spain; I’92ll give you Germany; I’92ll give you Britain; I’92ll give you all the world.’94

What a humiliation it must have been. Go tomorrow morning and get in an altercation with some wretch crawling up from a gin-cellar in the Fourth Ward, New York. ’93No,’94 you say, ’93I would not bemean myself by getting in such a contest.’94 Then think of what the King of heaven and earth endured when he came down and fought that great wretch of hell, and fought him in the wilderness and on the mountain and on the top of the Temple. But I bless God that in that triumph over temptation Christ gives us the assurance that we also shall triumph. Having himself been tempted, he is able to succor all those who are tempted.

In a violent storm at sea the mate told a boy’97for the rigging had become entangled in the mast’97to go up and right it. A gentleman standing on the deck said: ’93Don’92t send that boy up; he will be dashed to death.’94 The mate said: ’93I know what I am about.’94 The boy raised his hat in recognition of the order, and then rose, hand over hand, and went to work; and as he swung in the storm the passengers wrung their hands and expected to see him fall. The work done, he came down in safety, and a Christian man said to him: ’93Why did you go down in the forecastle before you went up?’94 ’93Ah,’94 said the boy, ’93I went down to pray. My mother always taught me before I undertook anything great to pray.’94 ’93What is that you have in your vest?’94 said the man. ’93Oh, that is the New Testament,’94 he said; ’93I thought I would carry it with me if I really did go overboard.’94 How well that boy was protected! I care not how great the height or how vast the depth, with Christ within us and Christ beneath us and Christ above us and Christ all around us, nothing shall befall us in the way of harm. Christ himself, having been in the tempest, will deliver all those who put their trust in him. Blessed be his glorious name forever.

The third instalment paid for redemption was the Saviour’92s sham trial. I call it a sham trial’97there has never been anything so indecent or unfair in the Tombs Court of New York as was witnessed at the trial of Christ. Why, they hustled him into the courtroom at two o’92clock in the morning. They gave him no time for counsel. They gave him no opportunity for subpoenaing witnesses. The ruffians who were wandering around through the midnight, of course saw the arrest and went into the courtroom. But Jesus’92 friends were sober men, were respectable men, and at that hour, two o’92clock in the morning, of course they were at home asleep. Consequently, Christ entered the courtroom with the ruffians. Look at him! No one to speak a word for him. I lift the lantern until I can look into his face, and as my heart beats in sympathy for this, the best friend the world ever had, himself now utterly friendless, an officer of the courtroom comes up and smites him in the mouth, and I see the blood stealing from gum and lip. Oh, it was a farce of a trial, lasting only perhaps an hour, and then the judge rises for the sentence! It is against the law to give sentence unless there has been an adjournment of the court between condemnation and sentence; but what cares this judge for the law? ’93The man has no friends’97let him die,’94 says the judge, and the ruffians outside the rail cry: ’93Aha! aha! that’92s what we want’97his blood. Hand him out here to us. Away with him! away with him!’94 I bless God that amid all the injustice that may be inflicted upon us in this world we have a divine sympathizer. The world cannot lie about you nor abuse you as much as they did Christ, and Jesus stands today in every courtroom, in every home, in every store, and says: ’93Courage! By all my hours of maltreatment, I will protect those who are trampled on.’94 And when Christ forgets that two o’92clock morning scene, and the stroke of the ruffian on the mouth and the howling of the unwashed crowd, then he will forget you and me in the injustices of life.

Some of you want deliverance from your troubles; God knows you have enough of them. Physical troubles, domestic troubles, spiritual troubles, financial troubles. You have been gathering them up, some perhaps for five or six or seven years, and you have divided them into two classes: Those you can talk about and those you cannot talk about; and as those griefs are the most grinding and depressing which you cannot mention, you get condolence for the things you can speak of, while you get no condolence for the things that you cannot. In your school days you learned how to bound the States and could tell what rivers and lakes and mountains ran through them. If you were asked today to bound your worldly estate you would say it is bounded on the north by trouble and on the south by trouble and on the east by trouble and on the west by trouble, while rivers of tears and lakes of woe and mountains of disaster run through it. What are you going to do with your troubles? Why do you not go to the theatre and have your mind absorbed in some tragedy? ’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93everything I have seen on the boards of the stage is tame compared with the tragedy of my own life!’94 Well, then, why do you not go to your trunks and closets and gather up all the mementoes of your departed friends and put them out of sight, and take down their pictures from the wall and put in the frame a harvest scene or some bright and gay spectacle? ’93Ah,’94 you say, ’93if I should remove all these mementoes of my departed friends, that would not take away the killing pictures that are hanging in the gallery of my own heart.’94 Well, if that does not help you, why do you not plunge into society and try to wash off in worldly gayeties all these assoilments of the soul? ’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93I have tried that! but how can I hear other children laugh when my children are silent? How can I see other happy families when my own happy family is broken up? Trouble, trouble!’94 But do you gain anything by brooding over your misfortunes, by sitting down in a dark room, by a comparison of the sweet past with the bitter present? ’93No; that makes things worse.’94 But I have to tell you today that the Christ of all sympathy presents himself.

Is there any among us who can get along without sympathy? I do not think I would live a day without it. And yet there are a great many who seem to get along without any divine sympathy. Their fortune in the counting-room or in the store or in the insurance company, takes wings and flies away. They button up a penniless pocket. They sit down in penury where once they had affluence, and yet there is no Jesus to stand by them and say: ’93O man, there are treasures that never fail, in banks that never break! I will take care of you. I own the cattle on a thousand hills, and you shall never want.’94 They have no such divine Saviour to say that to them. I do not know how they get along. Death comes to the nursery. One voice less in the household. One less fountain of joy and laughter. Two hands less to be busy all day. Two feet less to bound through the hall. Shadow after shadow following through that household, yet no Jesus to stand there and say: ’93I am the Shepherd. That lamb is not lost. I took it off the cold mountains. All’92s well.’94 Oh, can you tell me the mystery? Can you solve it? Tell me how it is that men and women with aches and pains and sorrows and losses and exasperations and bereavements can get along without a sympathizing Christ? I cannot understand it.

There was a chaplain in the army wounded unto death. While lying there on the field he heard at a great distance off some one crying out in great pain: ’93Oh, my God!’94 and he said to himself: ’93I am dying, but I think, perhaps, I could help that man. Although I cannot walk I will just roll over to where he is.’94 So he rolled over in his own blood and rolled over the bodies of the slain and rolled on until he came to where the other man was dying, and put, as it were, his wound against that wound and his sorrow against that sorrow and helped to alleviate it. And so it seems to me that Jesus Christ hears the groan of our sorrow, the groan of our poverty, the groan of our wretchedness, and comes to the relief. He comes rolling over sin and sorrow to the place where we lie on the battlefield, and he puts over us the arm of his everlasting love; and I see that arm and hand are wounded; and as. he puts that arm over us I can hear him say: ’93I have loved thee with an everlasting love.’94 Oh, that you might feel this moment the power of a sympathizing Jesus!

Further, I remark the last great instalment paid for our redemption was the demise of Christ. The world has seen many dark days. Many summers ago there was a very dark day when the sun was eclipsed. The fowl at noonday went to their perch and we felt a gloom as we looked at the astronomical wonder. It was a dark day in London when the plague was at its height and the dead with uncovered faces were taken in open carts and dumped in the trenches. It was a dark day when the earth opened and Lisbon sank; but the darkest day since the creation of the world was the day when the carnage of Calvary was enacted. It was about noon when the curtain began to be drawn. It was not the coming on of a night that soothes and refreshes; it was the swinging of a great gloom all around the heavens. God hung it. As when there is a dead one in the house you bow the shutters or turn the lattice, so God in the afternoon shut the windows of the world. As it is appropriate to throw a black pall upon the coffin as it passes along, so it was appropriate that everything should be sombre that day as the great hearse of the earth rolled on, bearing the corpse of the King.

A man’92s last hours are ordinarily kept sacred. However you may have hated or caricatured a man, when you hear he is dying, silence puts its hand on your lips, and you would have a loathing for the man who could stand by a deathbed making faces and scoffing. But Christ in his last hour cannot be left alone. What! pursuing him yet after so long a pursuit? You have been drinking his tears; do you want to drink his blood? They came up closely, so that, notwithstanding the darkness, they can glut their revenge with the contortions of his countenance. They examine his feet. They want to feel for themselves whether those feet are really spiked. They put out their hands and touch the spikes and bring them back wet with blood and wipe them on their garments. Women stand there and weep, but can do no good. It is no place for tender-hearted women. It would rend a heart that crime has turned into granite. The waves of man’92s hatred and of hell’92s vengeance dash up against the mangled feet, and the hands of sin and pain and torture clutch for his holy heart. Had he not been thoroughly fastened to the cross, they would have torn him down and trampled him with both feet. How the cavalry horses arched their necks and champed their bits and reared and snuffed at the blood. Had a Roman officer called out for a light his voice would not have been heard in the tumult, but louder than the clash of the spears and the wailing of womanhood and the neighing of the chargers and the bellowing of the crucifiers, there comes a voice crashing through, loud, clear, overwhelming, terrific. It is the groan of the dying Son of God. Look! What a scene! Look, O world, at what you have done! I lift the covering from that maltreated Christ to let you count the wounds and estimate the cost. Oh, when the nails went through Christ’92s right hand and Christ’92s left hand’97that bought both your hands with all their power to work and lift and write. When the nail went through Christ’92s right foot and Christ’92s left foot’97that bought your feet with all their power to walk or run or climb. When the thorn went into Christ’92s temple’97that bought your brain with all its power to think and plan. When the spear cleft Christ’92s side’97that bought your heart with all its power to love and repent and pray.

If a man is in no pain, if he is prosperous, if he is well, and he asks you to come, you take your time and you say: ’93I can’92t come now. I’92ll come after a while. There is no haste.’94 But if he is in want and trouble, you say: ’93I must go right away. I must go now.’94 To-day Jesus stretches out before you two wounded hands and he begs you to come. Oh, that to him who bought us, we might give all our time and all our prayers and all our successes! He is so fair; he is so loving; he is so sympathizing; he is so good; I wish we could put our arms around his neck and say: ’93Thine, Lord, will I be forever.’94 Would that I could take you all and wreathe you around the heart of my Lord.

When the Atlantic cable was lost in 1865, do you remember that the Great Eastern and the Medway and the Albany went out to find it? Thirty times they sank the grapnel two and a half miles deep in the water. After a while they found the cable and brought it to the surface. No sooner had it been brought to the surface than they lifted a shout of exultation, but the cable slipped back again into the water and was lost. Then for two weeks more they swept the sea with the grappling hooks, and at last they found the cable and they brought it up in silence. They fastened it this time. Then with great excitement they took one end of the cable to the electricians’92 room to see if there were really any life in it, and when they saw a spark and knew that a message could be sent, then every hat was lifted and the rockets flew and the guns sounded until all the vessels on the expedition knew the work was done and the continents were lashed together. Well, Sabbath after Sabbath, we have come searching down for your soul. We have swept the sea with the grappling hook of Christ’92s Gospel. Again and again we have thought you were at the surface, and began to rejoice over your redemption; but at the moment of our gladness you sank back again into the world and back again into sin. To-day we come again with this Gospel searching for your soul. We apply the cross of Christ first to see whether there is any life left in you, while all around the people stand, looking to see whether the work will be done, and the angels of God bend down and witness, and oh, if now we could see only one spark of love and hope and faith, we would send up a shout that would be heard on the battlements of heaven, and two worlds would keep jubilee because communication is open between Christ and the soul and your nature that has been sunken in sin has been lifted into the light and the joy of the Gospel!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage