"THE FIRST CRY FROM THE CROSS"

 DELIVERED ON OCTOBER 24TH, 1869, BY C. H. SPURGEON.

“Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” —Luke 23:34.

OUR Lord was at that moment enduring the first pains of crucifixion; the executioners had just then driven the nails through his hands and feet. He must have been, moreover, greatly depressed, and brought into a condition of extreme weakness by the agony of the night in Gethsemane, and by the scourgings and cruel mockings which he had endured all through the morning, from Caiaphas, Pilate, Herod, and the Praetorian guards.

          Yet neither the weakness of the past, nor the pain of the present, could prevent him from continuing in prayer. The lamb of God was silent to men, but he was not silent to God. Dumb as a sheep before her shearers, he had not a word to say in his own defense to man, but he continues in his heart crying unto his Father, and no pain and no weakness can silence his holy supplications. Beloved, what an example our Lord herein presents to us! Let us continue in prayer so long as our heart beats; let no excess of suffering drive us away from the throne of grace, but rather let it drive us closer to it....Our blessed Redeemer persevered in prayer even when the cruel iron rent his tender nerves, and blow after blow of the hammer jarred his whole frame with anguish;"

"In Gethsemane, when the bloody sweat fell fast upon the ground, his bitterest cry commenced with,“My Father,” asking that if it were possible the cup of gall might pass from him; he pleaded with the Lord as his Father, even as he over and over again had called him on that dark and doleful night. Here, again, in this, the first of his seven expiring cries, it is “Father.” O that the Spirit that makes us cry, “Abba, Father,” may never cease his operations.  May we never be brought into spiritual bondage by the suggestion, “If thou be the Son of God;” or if the tempter should so assail us, may we triumph as Jesus did in the hungry wilderness. May the Spirit which crieth, “Abba, Father,” repel each unbelieving fear."

"We could not marvel, if any man here were fastened to the stake, or fixed to a cross, if his first, and even his last and all his prayers, were for support under so arduous a trial. But see, the Lord Jesus began his prayer by pleading for others. See ye not what a great heart is here revealed! What a soul of compassion was in the Crucified! How Godlike, how divine! Was there ever such a one before him, who, even in the very pangs of death, offers as his first prayer an intercession for others?....It was not a prayer for enemies who had done him an ill deed years before, but for those who were there and then murdering him. Not in cold blood did the Savior pray, after he had forgotten the injury, and could the more easily forgive it, but while the first red drops of blood were spurting on the hands which drove the nails; while yet the hammer was bestained with crimson gore, his blessed mouth poured out the fresh warm prayer, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I say, not that that prayer was confined to his immediate executioners.

(Who nailed Jesus to the Cross and for whom was he praying "Father, forgive them?) The whole human race in a certain sense, since we were all concerned in that murder; but certainly the immediate persons, upon whom that prayer was poured like precious nard, were those who there and then were committing the brutal act of fastening him to the accursed tree.

From the CROSS Jesus cried out...“...Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” — Luke 23:34.

"I must adore him, for that one matchless plea for mercy convinces me most overwhelmingly of the deity of him who offered it, and fills my heart with reverent affection."

"They had crucified him, crucified him wantonly and malignantly; they were even then taking away his innocent life. His clients were persons who, so far from being meritorious, were utterly undeserving of a single good wish from the Savior’s heart."

"I admit that it seems to be too severe upon humanity to suppose it possible that such a prayer could have been the theme for laughter, and yet there were other things enacted around the cross which were quite as brutal, and I can imagine that this also might have happened. Yet our Savior prayed for persons who did not deserve the prayer, but, on the contrary, merited a curse — persons who did not ask for the prayer, and even scoffed at it when they heard it."

Christ is no careless advocate for his people. He knows your precise condition at this moment, and the exact state of your heart with regard to the temptation through which you are passing; more than that, he foresees the temptation which is awaiting you, and in his intercession he takes note of the future event which his prescient eye beholds. “Satan hath desired to have thee, that he may sift thee as wheat; but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.”

"With bleeding hands, he yet won the day; with feet fastened to the wood, he was yet victorious; forsaken of God and despised of the people, he was yet triumphant in his pleas;"

"A church in London, which does not exist to do good in the slums, and dens, and kennels of the city, is a church that has no reason to justify its longer existing.... a church that does not exist to take the side of the poor, to denounce injustice and to hold up righteousness, is a church that has no right to be. Not for thyself, O church, dost thou exist, any more than Christ existed for himself....I believe that the more the church of God strains after, before God, the forgiveness of sinners, and the more she seeks in her life prayer to teach sinners what sin is, and what the blood of Christ is, and what the hell that must follow is if sin be not washed out, and what the heaven is which will be ensured to all those who are cleansed from sin, the more she keeps to this the better. This is your one business. Tell to sinners that sin will damn them, that Christ alone can take away sin, and make this the one passion of your souls, “Father, forgive them, forgive them! Let them know how to be forgiven. Let them be actually forgiven, and let me never rest except, as I am the means of bringing sinners to be forgiven, even the guiltiest of them.”

"Christ prayed for the wicked, what if I say the most wicked of the wicked, that ribald crew that had surrounded his cross!"  

  "Church of God, your mission is not to the respectable few who will gather about you to listen respectfully to your words; your mission is not to the elite and the eclectic, the intelligent who will criticize your words and pass judgment upon every syllable of your teaching; your mission is not to those who treat you kindly, generously, affectionately..... but your great errand is to the harlot, to the thief, to the swearer and the drunkard, to the most depraved and debauched."

  "It is not enough for the preacher that he preaches so that those instructed from their youth up can understand him; he must think of those to whom the commonest phrases of theological truth are as meaningless as the jargon of an unknown tongue; he must preach so as to reach the meanest comprehension; and if the ignorant many come not to hear him, he must use such means as best he may to induce them, nay, compel them to hear the good news."

"The gospel .... aims its arrows of love against the hearts of its foes. If there be any whom we should first seek to bring to Jesus, it should be just these who are the farthest off and most opposed to the gospel of Christ. It is the church’s business to seek after the most fallen and the most ignorant, and to seek them perseveringly.....I wish I could speak words that were as loud as thunder, with a sense and earnestness as mighty as the lightning. I would fain excite every Christian here, and kindle in him a right idea of what his work is as a part of Christ’s church.

"THE BELIEVING THIEF"

DELIVERED ON APRIL 7TH, 1 889, BY C. H. SPURGEON,

“And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” — Luke 23:42, 43.

"Stripped of his garments, and nailed to the cross, our Lord was mocked by a ribald crowd, and was dying in agony: then was he “numbered with the transgressors,” and made as the offscouring of all things. Yet, while in that condition, he achieved this marvelous deed of grace. Behold the wonder wrought by the Savior when emptied of all his glory, and hanged up a spectacle of shame upon the brinkof death!"

"If the apostle Paul were here, and wanted to add a New Testament chapter to the eleventh of Hebrews, he might certainly commence his instances of remarkable faith with this thief, who believed in a crucified, derided, and dying Christ, and cried to him as to one whose kingdom would surely come. The thief’s faith was the more remarkable because he was himself in great pain, and bound to die. It is not easy to exercise confidence when you are tortured with deadly anguish. .... This man, suffering as he did, and seeing the Savior in so sad a state, nevertheless believed unto life eternal. Herein was such faith as is seldom seen.....but he, dying thief as he was, made sure his confidence. Like a jutting rock, standing out in the midst of a torrent, he declared the innocence of the Christ whom others blasphemed. His faith is worthy of our imitation in its fruits. He had no member that was free except his tongue, and he used that member wisely to rebuke his brother malefactor, and defend his Lord. His faith brought forth a brave testimony..."

"I want you to notice that the last companion of Christ on earth was a sinner, and no ordinary sinner. He had broken even the laws of man, for he was a robber. One calls him “a brigand”; and I suppose it is likely to have been the case. The brigands of those days mixed murder with their robberies."

“The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.” Yet, now, on a sudden, he wakes up to the conviction that the man who is dying at his side is something more than a man. He reads the title over his head, and believes it to be true — “This is Jesus the King of the Jews.”

"I desire to put this case very plainly: this man, who was the last companion of Christ upon earth, was a sinner in misery. His sins had found him out: he was now enduring the reward of his deeds. I constantly meet with persons in this condition: they have lived a life of wantonness, excess, and carelessness, and they begin to feel the fire-flakes of the tempest of wrath falling upon their flesh; they dwell in an earthly hell, a prelude of eternal woe. Remorse, like an asp, has stung them, and set their blood on fire: they cannot rest, they are troubled day and night. “Be sure your sin will find you out.” It has found them out, and arrested them, and they feel the strong grip of conviction."

 “LAMA SABACHTHANI?”

 A SERMON DELIVERED ON MARCH 2ND, 1890, C. H. SPURGEON,

 “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, crying, Eli, Eli, lame sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” — Matthew 27:46.

 “THERE was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour”: this cry came out of that darkness.. . . there is a center of impenetrable gloom, where the soul is ready to faint because of the terrible darkness. Our Lord was then in the darkest part of his way... He had reached the culminating point of his anguish. This is his dolorous lament from the lowest pit of misery — “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” I do not think that the records of time, or even of eternity, contain a sentence more full of anguish. Here the wormwood and the gall, and all the other bitternesses, are outdone. Here you may look as into a vast abyss; and though you strain your eyes, and gaze till sight fails you, yet you perceive no bottom; it is measureless, unfathomable, inconceivable. This anguish of the Savior on your behalf and mine is no more to be measured and weighed than the sin which needed it, or the love which endured it. We will adore where we cannot comprehend.

“He shall bear their iniquities.” Then was it true, “He hath made him to be sin for us.” Peter puts it, “He his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” Sin, sin, sin was everywhere around and about Christ. He had no sin of his own; but the Lord had “laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

He was hung up as an accursed thing upon the cross; for he was “made a curse for us, as it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”; and the Lord his God did not own him before men. If it had pleased the Father, he might have sent him twelve legions of angels; but not an angel came after the Christ had quitted Gethsemane. His despises might spit in his face, but no swift seraph came to avenge the indignity. They might bind him, and scourge him, but none of all the heavenly host would interpose to screen his shoulders from the lash. They might fasten him to the tree with nails, and lift him up, and scoff at him; but no cohort of ministering spirits hastened to drive back the rabble, and release the Prince of life. No, he appeared to be forsaken, “smitten of God, and afflicted,” delivered into the hands of cruel men, whose wicked hands worked him misery without stint. Well might he ask, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”