Isaiah 53:7

Isaiah 53:7

St. Peter makes it almost a description of the Christian, that he loves Him whom he has not seen; speaking of Christ, he says, "Whom having not seen, ye love." Unless we have a true love of Christ, we are not His true disciples; and we cannot love Him unless we have heartfelt gratitude to Him; and we cannot duly feel gratitude unless we feel keenly what He suffered for us. No one who will but solemnly think over the history of those sufferings, as drawn out for us in the Gospels, but will gradually gain, through God's grace, a sense of them, will in a measure realise them, will in a measure be as if he saw them, will feel towards them as being not merely a tale written in a book, but as a true history, as a series of events which took place.

I. Our Lord is called a lamb in the text, that is, He was as defenceless and as innocent as a lamb is. Since, then, Scripture compares Him to this inoffensive and unprotected animal, we may, without presumption or irreverence, take the image as a means of conveying to our minds those feelings which our Lord's sufferings should excite in us. Consider how very horrible it is to read the accounts which sometimes meet us of cruelties exercised on brute animals. What is it that moves our very hearts and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? (1) They have done no harm; (2) they have no power of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their sufferings so especially touching. He who is higher than the angels deigned to humble Himself even to the state of the brute creation, as the Psalm says, "I am a worm, and no man; a very scorn of men, and the outcast of the people."

II. Take another example, and you will see the same thing still more strikingly. How overpowered should we be, not at the sight only, but at the very hearing, of cruelties shown to a little child and why so? For the same two reasons, because it was so innocent, and because it was so unable to defend itself. We feel the horror of this, and yet we can bear to read of Christ's sufferings without horror. There is an additional circumstance of cruelty to affect us in Christ's history, which no instance of a brute animal's or of a child's sufferings can have; our Lord was not only guiltless and defenceless, but He had come among His persecutors in love.

III. Suppose that some aged and venerable person whom we have known as long as we could recollect anything, and loved and reverenced, suppose such a one rudely seized by fierce men, made a laughing-stock, struck, spit on, scourged, and at last exposed with all his wounds to the gaze of a rude multitude who came and jeered him: what would be our feelings? But what is all this to the suffering of the holy Jesus, which we can bear to read of as a matter of course. A spirit of grief and lamentation is expressly mentioned in Scripture as a characteristic of those who turn to Christ. If then we do not sorrow, have we turned to Him?

Plain Sermons by Contributors to " Tracts for the Times" vol. v., p. 86 (see also J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. vii., p. 133).

References: Isaiah 53:7. Outline Sermons to Children,p. 94; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvi., No. 1543; G. S. Barrett, Old Testament Outlines,p. 221.Isaiah 53:7; Isaiah 53:8. C. Clemance, To the Light Through the Cross,p. 57. Isaiah 53:9. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xiv., p. 286. Isaiah 53:10. J. Parsons, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 440; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iv., No. 173, vol. x., No. 561; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 93; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. x., p. 147; Preacher's Monthly,vol. x., p. 352; H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1966; C. Clemance, To the Light Through the Cross,pp. 100, 106,115, 123, 130.