Matthew 26:47-75

Chapter 90

Prayer

Almighty God, grant us thy peace. The peace of God passeth all understanding. Great peace have they that love thy law. O that we had hearkened unto thy commandments, then had our peace flowed like a river, and our righteousness had been as the waves of the sea. Jesus, Lamb of God, Saviour of the world, grant us thy peace. Not as the world giveth dost thou give say unto us, "Peace be unto you," and there shall be a great calm. Thou art the Prince of peace, the Son of peace, the Spirit of peace: may we know that thou art present in the soul by the peace that reigns there. Deliver us from all quietness that is deceitful, save us from lulling our souls into unholy slumber, and grant us thy peace, thine only, too deep to be measured, too calm to be expressed in words.

We have sinned against thee, and therein has our peace been destroyed. Truly we can say, there is no peace unto the wicked. We have felt the sting of conscience, the torment of remorse, the gloom of guilt and despair, but in the night of our sorrow and woe thou hast sent unto us angels of light with promises of pardon, and we have been led to the cross on which there died thine only-begotten Son, our Saviour and Priest and Surety. He is our Peace, he hath made both one. He is our Daysman, and he has laid his hand upon thee and upon us, and has made reconciliation. Great is the mystery of godliness; we cannot penetrate it with our understanding, we cannot receive it into our minds, but we can feel it in the heart, our love answers it, and the appeal of thy grace is replied to by the cry of our penitence.

We have come to worship God and to eat bread at his table. He establishes the feet of his saints, and watches the outgoings of them that are his. Behold we have in our hearts the sacred vow, upon our tongues is the holy word, and in our understanding is the conviction of thy presence and grace. We have done the things we ought not to have done, we have left undone the things that we ought to have done, and when we say there is no health in us, we feel how dead we are. We do not interrupt our confession with excuses and pleas; we fall down before thee, infirm, broken, shattered, without one word of self-defence. Thou knowest our frame, thou rememberest that we are dust, a wind that cometh for a little time and then passeth away. Thou wilt not thunder upon us with thy great power, thou wilt not magnify thine almightiness in our destruction, thou wilt rather lift up thine omnipotence in pledge of thy pity, and in the great power of God shall we find the tabernacle of his grace. In wrath remember mercy: remember how frail we are, remember that we are of yesterday and know nothing: see how few are our years, a handful at the most, and pity us and love us with continual compassion.

We bless thee for the year now closing around us as a church and people. Thou hast brought us to the day of temporary farewell: looking back upon all the past we bless thee with full heart, we thank thee for every revelation of thy truth, for all the light which has gleamed upon us from the upper places, and for all the comfort that has strengthened and encouraged our life. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. Thou wilt conduct us to the end, thine hand of defence will never be withdrawn; when heart and flesh do fail, thou wilt be the strength of our heart and our portion for ever.

Pity all that has been amiss. Come with thine infinite forgiveness upon every guilty deed, and from the cross of thy Son our Saviour, absolve us from all sin. Wherein we have been good and have done good, to thy name alone be the praise.

Help us to resume our work with all thankfulness of energy and of hope, with invincible strength, with perfect consecration of mind and heart. Thus may we spend the years and prepare for the great eternity.

Comfort all that are sore of heart, speak a message of encouragement to those who need to be touched gently, or they will surely die. To the stranger within our gate speak home words that shall touch the heart and comfort the life with a new solace.

Pardon our sins, forgive our enemies, include within thy love our friends who are absent from us but who are longing to hasten back. Take up the lambs in thine arms, thou Shepherd of Israel; save with thine almightiness those who cannot save themselves, and when the discipline of life is perfected, may we begin the study and the service of immortality. Amen.

Mat 26:47-75

47. And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.

48. Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast.

49. And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him.

50. And Jesus said unto him, Friend (comrade), wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him.

51. And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear.

52. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

53. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels (the possible and the impossible)?

54. But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?

55. In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a thief (as against a robber with swords and clubs) with swords and staves for to take me? I sat (a sign of authority) daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me.

56. But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled.

57. And they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas (already committed to the policy of condemnation, Joh 11:49 ) the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were assembled.

58. But Peter followed him afar off unto the high priest's palace, and went in, and sat with the servants, to see the end.

59. Now the chief priests and elders, and all the council, sought (a word which implies a continued process of seeking) false witness against Jesus, to put him to death;

60. But found none: yea, though many false witnesses came, yet found they none. At the last came two false witnesses,

61. And said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.

62. And the high priest arose, and said unto him, Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee?

63. But Jesus held his peace. And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.

64. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power ( the power), and coming in the clouds of heaven.

65. Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy: what further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have hard his blasphemy.

66. What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of death.

67. Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands,

68. Saying, Prophecy unto us, thou Christ, Who is he that smote thee?

69. Now Peter sat without in the palace: and a damsel came unto him, saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee.

70. But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest.

71. And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth.

72. And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man.

73. And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewayeth thee (the Galilean patois was probably stronger when he spoke under the influence of strong excitement).

74. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the (the Greek has no article) cock crew.

75. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly.

The Arrest of Christ

Our concern is to know the spirit and conduct of Jesus in this transaction. How does he hold himself, by what spirit is he animated, how does he stand the stress of his infinite trial? We have little to do with the rabble gathered around him: we have only to do with the ruffian band in so far as it shows, in luminous contrast, the spirit and service of Jesus Christ. Observe what a grasp of principles Jesus Christ displayed in this culminating hour of his life. There are crises in which men are obliged to look about them for their principles. There are occasions upon which men of wit can answer surprising assault; there are other days and nights wherein a man has no wealth if he be not rich in doctrine, principle, and conviction. Riches of an earthly kind make themselves wings and flee away, but there are unsearchable riches that reveal themselves in glittering brightness when the soul would otherwise be in its poorest and most painful condition.

There was one impetuous man on the side of Christ, who stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck a servant of the high priest and smote off his ear. That was a little man: he mistook the range and scope of energy he was the victim of the continual sophism which debases our thinking and causes our action to palpitate with vicious life, that it is necessary to do something. Jesus found a place in life for Simon. Jesus Christ showed what could be done by submission. Peter was anxious to meet force with force, a sophism so plausible that statesmen have been victimised by it, and men of every age have fallen down to worship that golden calf. It seems to be born in us, does the feeling that force must be met by force. There is a force of passiveness, there is an energy of silence, there is the magnificent retort of non-resistance, which puzzles men of common mind and ordinary heart, the very mystery of heroism to those who mistake noise for music and tumult for power.

The answer which Jesus Christ made upon the occasion showed that he was not too absorbed to neglect even the trifling incidents connected with the infinite tragedy. "Put up again thy sword into his place." That would have been a mere instruction, but following that instruction is the philosophy of civilization, the key of all definite and lasting progress, the very glory of human statesmanship and political and spiritual security. Who then could have expected another gospel? who could have said that even upon so trifling an occasion Christ would have interjected a revelation that would gleam in ever-growing brightness upon the mind of the ages? Yet that was exactly what he did. Not only did he give the instruction, "Put up again thy sword into his place," but he gave the reason for the instruction, namely, "For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." If he had never said anything in his life but that one word, he would have laid down a rule that the world would have grown up lo in all its education, disappointment, falling, and failure which it has experienced. We pass over the words lightly as we pass over all the grandest words ever spoken by the human tongue. We are so occupied with the anecdote, the moving panorama, the startling incident, that we overlook the philosophy of the grand, moral revelation, and hasten on, like impetuous Peter, to "see the end."

Jesus Christ did not attempt to snatch a transient victory. "Suppose you, Peter, could cut down all these men to the ground, it would amount to nothing: their progeny will come up: evil has an indestructible posterity, if it be encountered only by force. There must be another method of attacking this disease: it cannot be cut down with cold steel, it must be met by heavenly ministries, by spiritual and regenerative influences put up again thy sword into his place." It could do nothing in the spiritual kingdom; when force meets force, death falls upon all who use it. There are triumphs, there are defeats, and there are failures that are successes: do not suppose that to smite down an enemy is to overcome the enmity. One wonders that men, reading these great sentences, so great yet so small that they do not instantly un-cover in the presence of a Peasant who laid down in terms so luminous and definite the philosophy which underlies every beneficent and stable civilization.

Jesus Christ reminded Peter that all that was happening was in fulfilment of the Scriptures. "But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" Connect yourself with Destiny if you would be calm: do not live in the spluttering and dying anecdotes of the passing day. Consider that all things are elect of God, and move you in the current of His foreknowledge and forearrangement of things. You will be troubled, tossed about with every wind of doctrine, if you are living only from day to day, and upon the breath which is breathed from the human mouth. We must live in the eternity of God if we would be quiet amid all the storm and stress of life. There are some who resent the idea of a supreme will, or must boast of the predominance of Fate. This is a doctrine you cannot escape: your life is either gripped and driven by Fate, or must be ruled and blessed and sanctified by a Supreme Will.

But observe how evilly do they think and speak, who suppose that, having ignored the reigning will of God, they can rush into the cold and chilling sanctuary of impassable and inexorable Fate. Life, come upon me as thou wilt, I live in the will of the Father; whatever happens to me happens that the Scriptures must be fulfilled. The writing is old, and is rewritten every day every life is a revelation, every breath is a miracle. Stand thou, O living man, in this sanctuary, and no fool shall be able to throw a stone into the depths of thy peace. Do not suppose that men come around you accidentally with swords and staves: they know not what they do: if your purpose is right, if your prayer is pure, if your face is set steadfastly, even with hardness, towards the Jerusalem of your destiny, you will be an ever-quiet and all-quieting presence in life.

The mistaken thinker is always caught in his own snare. Those who would escape from Will, fall into the arms of iron Fate, and those who decline to be guided by the Scriptures, which were fulfilled in the case of Christ, go straight over to another revelation which is incomplete without the written one. You cannot escape from prayer. You can run away from the altar of the church, red with blood glowing with fire, but you go to an altar of ice, and breathe out your soul's wish into a dead ear. Still you pray. You run away from the living paternal beneficent will, and try to quiet yourself with such narcotics as are handed to you by the iron hand of unpitying Fate.

One of the ablest minds that ever led the sceptical thinking of his time I do not hesitate to say that I refer to Thomas Paine, a resolute and energetic thinker, and a man not without beneficence of purpose and patriotism of heart has laid down the sophistical and monstrous proposition, that a revelation can only be made to one man, that no revelation has been made to us, therefore the revelation which Christ claimed to be fulfilled in his history was no revelation to after ages. How truly has every Achilles a vulnerable heel! A revelation granted only to one man? But there is a daily revelation, there is a lasting revelation of nature, providence, history, law, and when this lasting revelation, which comes to repeat its story every day, confirms the revelation that was given to minds and hearts in the ancient time, the revelation of today repeats in modern tones, and with present-day applications, all that was true in the immemorial time.

But the Scriptures must be fulfilled. Fulfilment of Scripture is the rewriting of Scripture. No promise can be realized without being written over again in its very realization. It is because human life takes up and repronounces divine words that the Bible keeps its hold upon human confidence and human love. Were it an old book, in the sense of speaking terms that have no immediate meaning, it would by mere lapse and effusion of time disable itself from holding supremacy over human thinking. It is because its words are old as eternity, yet new as the present morning, that the Bible is what it is and where it is.

So Jesus Christ rested in the fulfilment of Scripture. He laid his hand upon Destiny as ruled by a personal Will, and getting such hold of such principles, he was calm to apparent passionless-ness. Once indeed there was a ripple upon his placidity: said he, "Are ye come out as against a thief?" His soul was stung there. He knew that was the way thieves were taken, and to be thought a thief, to have all evil names fastened upon him, did seem to sting him into a question that might have in it one spark of sacred resentment. Or was he mocking the fools, was he showing them to what an unnecessary expenditure of strength and force they were going? Was he a man who would run away? Judas indeed said to those who were with him, "Hold him fast," probably not through any spirit of cruelty, but where a man lays hold upon the lightning he must hold it fast if he would keep it. Was there not some subtle tribute in this very exhortation addressed by Judas to the ruffian band? Did he not in this one exhortation seem to say, "I know his strength: I have seen his power: there is no limit to his resource. This is no ordinary culprit or criminal, if so we may describe him. Having touched him, surround him, draw a cordon round his life, or he will surely elude you?"

Sometimes men pay compliments unconsciously, as many men pray to a God they profess to ignore. Instinct may be relied upon more than argument: the inborn impulse of the heart will assert itself above all controversy and logic and intellectual creed. So the time will come when even Judas shall add a laurel to the chaplet which binds the temples of the Saviour, and therein shall the word be fulfilled, "His enemies will I clothe with shame, but upon himself shall the crown flourish." I know not but that when Judas himself will yet come to write the epitaph of Christ, we may find that grim monster of iniquity carving upon the marble rock "INNOCENT BLOOD."

Then how grandly does Christ move between the possible and the impossible. When he said, "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? I can, and yet I cannot. The possible is impossible." Have we not lived that strange experience? To the man who lives only in the letter the statement that the possible is the impossible will appear to be a contradiction in terms. It is the very key of life! you can do things which you cannot do: you cannot do things which you can do. Learn that lesson and life will have new aspects, and every day will have new experience. As a mere matter of " can," you could do the most outrageous and monstrous things this very day, and yet you could not do anything of the sort. You can burn your property, insult your friends, dismiss your servants, if it were a mere matter of literal ability, and yet you could not do one of these things! What keeps you back? Not force, not a sword an invisible principle, a conviction, common sense, thought all unknowable, unnamable, immeasurable qualities. As a mere matter of literal ability there is no length of absurdity to which you could not go, and yet you cannot take a single step in that direction cannot, because of will, thought, sense of the fitness of things, because of the inspiration of righteousness, the dictation of justice and the regulation of common sense. So Jesus Christ says, "I could pray for angels and yet I cannot: there is a pressure upon me which I will not resist: how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" How they tried to kill him: they wanted to be murderers without having the remorse of murder in their souls. That is what many men wish to be; if there were no hot blood in the case they would kill so quickly: it is the stain they cannot rub out, that they fear. Blood spouts out of the veins and splashes things that are a long way off; it is difficult to erase, it tells its burning story to scientific inquiry, falls in unlikely places, and comes up with speech of horrible eloquence to those who are in quest of the murderer.

How the Saviour was watched, malignly watched, always watched, watched with eyes theological, eyes political, eyes of envy, eyes of passion. No wonder. He opposed himself to the religion of his times whoever does that, dies. He opposed himself to the orthodoxy, the respectability, and the self-security of his age, and whoever does that, dies!

When they urged him, and sought to drive him to extremities, we read these wonderful words, "But Jesus held his peace." That was probably the crowning miracle this side the cross. The great Speaker dumb, the Man of eloquence without a word upon his lips silence was then truly golden. What made him so quiet? The struggle in Gethsemane. There was nothing more to be said: the Man who had passed through such experience was bound to be quiet. This is no arrangement or trick or expedient: it comes up out of the philosophy of the case. When we return from some grave-sides we cannot speak. When we leave some altars after all-night prayer, we cannot speak for the next three days. We seem to our friends to be distrait, absent, lost, with a singular shining in the face, a new gentleness in the hand: it is not derangement, it is the fulfilment of the unwritten Scripture that sorrow conquered must be followed by eloquent silence. Have we not sat together when the favorite child has been taken out of the house to come back no more, and have spoken to one another never a word? Have we not sat down with our smitten friends seven days at a time and never said a syllable because their grief was very great?

The battle was won in Gethsemane: to have spoken after that would have been to degrade the grandeur of all that made the life of Christ sublime. Yet when he did speak, under the pressure of the High Priest, he spoke in a fitting tone. "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven." What could you do to a man who talked so? You cannot smite that man to his hurt: he is above your touch. You smite, and he does not feel the smiting: the soul in that hour is so much greater and grander than the body, that the body is but as a dead surface to the hand that ill uses it. Live in heaven, live in the actual possession of God's blessing, have your tabernacle and your pavilion in Eternity, and not a hair of your head shall perish. What could death be to a man who talked so? He had abolished death: they met, they caught one another in their terrific arms, and Death was left where the blood-sweat fell!

Now the hounds of hell have their turn. Who could find such reading as this "Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him, and others smote him with the palms of their hands?" six fists fell on him in a shower, and the villains said, "Who smote thee, thou Christ?" Then all spat together, and asked him to name them one by one. But they touched him not! All bad men do this selfsame thing. This is not an old villainy, it is a daily crime. We sit in church and shudder at the old Pharisees and Romans and Jews, and therein do we put the Scriptures eighteen hundred years away from us and make them a storybook, whereas we all live in this sixty-seventh verse.

Something did grieve Christ more than the enemy. Peter cut his heart in two. The enemy cannot hurt a man: if it had been an enemy that had done this, he could have borne it, but it was thou, a man mine equal, my acquaintance; we went to the house of God together, and together kept holy day. That is the sting! Peter said, "I know not what thou sayest." Then he added, "I do not know the man." In the third instance he began to curse and to swear, saying, "I know not the man." That surely is an ancient anecdote? so it is yet it is not a day old: it was done this morning, we do it in some instances day by day. We are orthodox in conviction, we are heterodox in spirit and action. No enemy can hurt Christ as a friend can hurt him. The enemy does not get at his heart, the friend does. Peter is living now, he is living perhaps in the very most of us not in this rough* and violent form, but in some mood more subtle yet not less deadly in its expression. O Searcher of hearts, have I denied the Saviour have I made light of his name in order to avoid the mocking sneer of some enemy? Have I pledged his name in order to sanctify some bad transaction? Yet there was one thing about Peter that gives one hope: this was the weakness of violence, and therefore it will have suitable reaction. When he began to curse and to swear, I began to have hope of him. If he had coldly said, "I know not what thou sayest," he might never have been recovered. The violence of some cases is their hope. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, "I know not the man." The lips now foaming with such madness will presently pray. We say it is never so dark as before the dawn. Have hope of your worst ones: they may come back yet. Backsliders return. Do not give up those who have left you as if they would never, never be seen at home again. You tell me their last words were so violent and so severe. That is my very hope of them. It is very dark just now: let us go to the door open it and perhaps, there in the darkness, we shall find the violent one, "weeping bitterly."

Note

At the end of this volume In the separate Reference Library Book, will be found a special examination of the character of Judas Iscariot. The line of thought which is there pursued may be novel to some readers.