Required reading
The Works (Vol 4) of John Newton (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Sermon XXIII (No sorrow like Messiah's sorrow).
My summary
This week Newton preaches on 'Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow' (Lam 1:12).
After justifying his use of the text, Newton's gives his main doctrine: sin has blinded our understandings and hardened our hearts so that we have naturally no feeling, either for the Messiah or for ourselves.
Thus firstly Newton demonstrates that the passage is applicable to Jesus as someone who experienced great sorrow yet people do not grieve for him.
Secondly Newton shows us that never was the suffering of the Messiah endured by anyone else.
Then Newton looks at how the unknown sorrows of the redeemer are a continual source of support and consolation to his believing people.
What grabbed me
I appreciated Newton's point about the hardness of hearts toward Christ's sufferings: 'If you were to read in the common newspapers, that a benevolent and excellent person had fallen into the bands of murderers, who had put him to death in the most cruel manner, would it not be something to you ? Could you avoid impressions of surprise, indignation, and grief? Surely if this transaction were news to you, it would engross your thoughts. But, alas ! you have rather heard of it too often, till it has become to you as a worn-out tale. I am willing to take it for granted that you allow the fact. You believe that Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, was condemned by the Jews, and crucified by the Romans. And is it possible this should be nothing to you ? Is it too insignificant to engage or deserve your attention ? And yet, perhaps, you have wept at a representation or a narrative which you knew was wholly founded in fiction. How strange ! what ! the sorrows of Jesus nothing to you ! when you admit that he suffered for sinners, and will probably admit that you are a sinner. No longer, then, boast of your sensibility ; your heart must be a heart of stone. Yet thus it is with too many ; your tempers, your conduct, give evidence that hitherto the death of Jesus has been nothing to you. You would not have acted otherwise, at least you would not have acted worse, if you had never heard of his name. Were his sufferings any thing to you, is it possible, that you would live in the practice of those sins, for which no atonement could suffice but his blood? Were you duly affected by the thought of his crucifixion, is it possible that you could crucify him afresh, and put him to open shame, by bearing the name of a Christian, and yet living in a course unsuitable to the spirit and precepts of his Gospel ? But if you are indifferent to his grief, is it nothing to you on your own account ? What ! is it nothing to you whether you are saved or perish ; whether you are found at his right or his left hand in the great day of his appearance ; or whether he shall then say to you, * Come, ye blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared for you :' or, 'Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire ?' There is no medium, no alternative. If you refuse this, there remaineth no other sacrifice for sin. This lamentable indifference to the Redeemer's sorrows, is a full proof of the baseness and wickedness of the human heart ; and it is felt as such, when the Holy Spirit convinces of sin. Natural conscience may excite a painful conviction of the sinfulness of many actions. But this stupid unbelief of the heart is, if I may so speak, the sin of sins, it is the root and source of every evil, and yet so congenial to our very frame, as we are depraved creatures, that God alone can make the sinner feel it ; and when he does feel it, the sense of it wounds and grieves him more than all his other sins. '
The indifference we often show to Christ's sufferings is astonishing.
Next week's reading
Read Sermon XXIV (Messiah's innocence vindicated).
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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