Mark 7:34

WHY DID CHRIST SIGH?

‘Looking up to heaven, He sighed.’

Mark 7:34

It may be that Christ sighed because there was some struggle or exhaustion in His human nature, and whenever He exerted His omnipotence He felt the virtue to go out of Him. But, passing by this consideration, may we not suppose that the sigh was occasioned by His foreknowledge of the abuse of that good gift He was about to bestow—an abuse which could scarcely fail to happen when the blessing was conferred upon a fallen man?

I. Good clogged with evil.—It is a cause of sadness at all times that no good can be done without its being mingled and clogged with evil. When, for instance, a child is baptized, there is joy and gladness in the Church. But, alas! that very child may, in after years, sin away baptismal grace, may crucify afresh the Lord of Life, and become twofold more the child of hell than before. This man had an impediment in his speech; not that which afflicts stammerers, but such as prevented him from uttering articulate sounds, so that he was, in effect, ‘dumb’; and our Lord was about to give him the gift of speech.

II. Precious and perilous.—And what a precious gift is this; but yet what a perilous gift! Is there any one here present who has thought earnestly of the Day of Judgment, and reckoned at all the account he will have to render, and not felt his heart sink within him, as he recalls the solemn text, ‘By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned’? I speak not of the liar. Neither will I pause to consider profane swearing, licentious jests, filthy conversation. But setting these aside, the awful text recurs, ‘Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account thereof in the Day of Judgment.’ Alas! how often do we find honourable business men still acting dishonestly with their tongues; robbing their neighbour of that good name which is dearer to him than the property of his calumniators.

III. Out of the abundance of the heart.—Here, then, we come to the point: ‘Out of the abundance of the heart,’ saith He Who made the heart, ‘the mouth speaketh.’ ‘A good man bringeth forth good things’ (Matthew 12:34). And is it not so? Do we not see this exemplified whenever we look into our own hearts, or make inquiry into the spiritual condition of others? What says the heart of the blasphemer, of the filthy jester, of the scandalmonger? What—but this—that not only has he not the love of God within him, but that he has altogether ceased to fear God. Never forget that for our words, as well as for our works, we shall have to give an account at the Day of Judgment. The thought is one which may well solemnise the best of us.

Our Saviour sighed, then, to think how the gift He was conferring might be abused. But He looked to Heaven, to have the comfort of seeing there the joys awaiting all the blessed, who, having been redeemed by His blood, shall have passed faithfully the time of their probation here, and so, through much tribulation, have entered into glory.

—Dean Hook.

Illustration

‘Mr. Ruskin has spoken of truth as “that golden and narrow line which the very powers and virtues that lean upon it bend, which policy and prudence conceal, which kindness and courtesy modify, which courage overshadows with its shield, imagination covers with her wings, and charity dims with her tears.… There are some faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in the estimate of wisdom; but truth forgives no insult, and endures no stain.” Lord Bacon, on the other hand, speaks quaintly of the indignity of falsehood: “There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious, and therefore Montaigne said prettily, when he inquires the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge, saith he, ‘If it be well weighed to say that a man lieth is as much as to say as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God and shrinks from man.’ ” ’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE SIGH OF SYMPATHY

There was something in the sigh of Christ profoundly significant in its meaning, inexpressibly touching in its character.

I. The sigh of compassion.—Why did Christ sigh? It was an outgush of sympathy bursting from a humanity kindred to our own. It was a sigh of compassion. As He benignantly bent over this suffering form, the hidden spring of emotion was moved, and it gave vent in a deep upbreathed sigh.

II. The sigh of sorrow.—The sigh of Jesus was awakened, too, by a view of the ravages of sin. In that spectacle He beheld the humanity He had originally cast into a perfect, peerless mould, and had pronounced ‘very good,’ bruised and crushed—its organs impaired, its beauty marred, its nature tainted—and, Himself lovely and sinless, He could not look upon that wretched, defaced, paralysed specimen of our nature without emotion—without a sigh.

III. The sigh of practical benevolence.—Have we not remarked upon the hollow, vapid nature of human pity and compassion? How much of it evaporates in thin air! Not so was the emotion of Christ. His was a real, tangible, practical principle. It was always connected with some sorrow comforted, some want supplied, some burden unclasped, some help needed, some blessing bestowed.

—Rev. Octavius Winslow, d.d.

Illustration

‘Learn from this what should be your true attitude when the pressure upon your emotional nature forces the deep-drawn sigh from your lips. We sigh, and look within—Jesus sighed, and looked without. We sigh, and look down—Jesus sighed, and looked up. We sigh, and look to earth—Jesus sighed, and looked to heaven. We sigh, and look to man—Jesus sighed, and looked to God!’

(THIRD OUTLINE)

THE SIGH INTERPRETED

The sigh of Jesus has been made to speak many languages. I will arrange them under four heads.

I. The sigh of earnestness.—Because it says that ‘looking up to heaven, He sighed,’ some connect the two words, and account that the sigh is a part of the prayer. If the Son of God sighed when He prayed, surely they have most of the spirit of adoption—not who offer up an apathetic form, but they who have such a sense of what communion with God is, that they bring their whole concentrated powers to the great work.

II. The sigh of beneficence.—But it has been said again, that He who never gave us anything but what was bought by His own suffering—so that every pleasure is a spoil purchased by His blood—did now by the sigh, and under the feeling that He sighed, indicate that He purchased the privilege to restore to that poor man the senses he had lost.

III. The sigh of brotherhood.—The scene before our Lord would be to His mind but a representative of thousands of thousands. And yet He did not do (as we too often act)—He did not do nothing, because He could not do all. He sighed—and He saved one. That is true brotherhood.

IV. The sigh of holiness.—All this still lay on the surface. Do you suppose that our Saviour’s mind could think of all the physical evil, and not go on to the deeper moral causes from which it sprang?

Illustration

‘How much of the real force of prayer was concentrated in this one sigh! Let us not measure the power of prayer by the time it occupies, or by the noise it makes. Sad to see the liberties which some take with the great God in prayer. They pray as though they imagined He was to be influenced by happy turns of thought, by fine rhetorical periods, or by loud, boisterous, or chattering appeal! How different from all this that gentle sigh of Christ’s!’

(FOURTH OUTLINE)

THE SYMPATHIES OF CHRIST

The sigh of Christ is full of sacred and instructive meaning.

I. It reveals the reality and intensity of the Saviour’s love to individual sufferers.—There are many philanthropists whose benevolence takes the form of liberal money-giving, but which never comes into direct contact with the suffering it is intended to relieve.

II. It shows the keenness with which the Saviour felt the evil of sin.—He could not be called upon to do even a small service to an individual sufferer without finding Himself face to face with the universal curse.

III. The sigh reminds us of the essential central principle of ‘the philosophy of salvation.’—Christ never relieves a man of any curse the misery of which He does not appropriate to Himself. ‘In all our afflictions, He is afflicted.’ He takes the affliction in order the more effectually to work the cure.

IV. That sigh may well suggest to us the holy sadness of doing good.—The law of Christ’s life ought, as far as possible, to be the law of ours—the genius of His experience that of ours.

Illustration

‘Some professors of Christ’s religion can only be stigmatised as lackadaisical, epicurean, luxurious people. They like to lap themselves up in spiritual blankets, and to loll themselves to sleep on spiritual feather beds. What know they, what care they about the sublime solicitudes which moved the heart of Him Whom they call Saviour and Lord, but of Whom they forget that He “suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps”?’