Matthew 26:38

FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIST

‘Then saith He unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with Me.’

Matthew 26:38

The subject of our thoughts is our Lord’s appeal to the sympathy of His disciples in this the hour of His soul-sorrow.

I. Fellowship with Christ.—From whom did He ask this sympathy? Was it from the world? Oh no! He had never received aught from the world but a thorn-crown and a cross! It was to His beloved disciples. None but the holy were admitted to share the loneliness, the solitude, the sorrow of that hour. And still He permits us to have ‘fellowship with Him in His sufferings,’ and to feel the ‘power of His resurrection.’ If this be so, see that you cultivate a tender, holy sympathy with Christ in His soul-sorrow for your sins.

II. Watching with Christ.—And what was the nature of the sympathy which our Lord now asked? ‘ Tarry ye here, and watch with me.’ He only asked for their silent presence, yet how painful was His disappointment. Yet His reproof was so considerate. The Lord Jesus is not only cognisant of our shortcomings, but He remembers that we are dust.

III. Sympathy one with another.—It cannot involve either a charge of weakness or sin, our felt reliance upon the sympathy, compassion, and help of our fellow-Christians. Yet sometimes it disappoints us. To what did Jesus resort when, sad and disappointed, He turned from this dried stream of human sympathy? He gave Himself again to prayer—He returned a third time to His Father. O blessed lesson He would thus teach us! We shall find in prayer all, and infinitely more, than we sought, and failed to find, in the holy watchers around us.

—Dr. Octavius Winslow.

Illustrations

(1) ‘Alexander the Great slept on the field of Arbela, and Napoleon on that of Austerlitz. Homer, in the Iliad, represents sleep as overcoming all men, even the gods, except Jupiter alone.’

(2)‘Oh, ask not, hope thou not, too much

Of sympathy below;

Few are the hearts whence one sure touch

Bids the sweet fountains flow;

Few—and, by still conflicting powers,

Forbidden here to meet;

Such ties would make this life of ours

Too fair for aught so fleet.’

‘Yet scorn thou not, for this, the true

And steadfast love of years;

The kindly, that from childhood grew,

The faithful to thy tears!

If there he one that o’er the dead,

Hath in thy grief home part;

And watch’d through sickness by thy bed,

Call his a kindred heart.’