"And, behold, there talked with Him two men, which were Moses and Elias: 31. Who appeared in glory, and spake of His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem."--LUKE ix. 30, 31.
The mysterious incident which is commonly called the Transfiguration contained three distinct portions, each having its own special significance and lesson. The first was that supernatural change in the face and garments of our Lord from which the whole incident derives its name. The second was the appearance by His side of these two mighty dead partic.i.p.ating in the strange l.u.s.tre in which He walked, and communing with Him of His death. And the last was the descent of the bright cloud, visible as bright even amidst the blazing sunshine on the lone hillside, and the mysterious attesting Voice that spoke from out of its depths.
I leave untouched altogether the first and the last of these three portions, and desire briefly to fix our attention on this central one. Now it is to be observed that whilst all the three Synoptic Evangelists tell us of the Transfiguration, of the appearance of Moses and Elias, and of the Cloud and the Voice, only Luke knows, or at least records, and therefore alone probably knows, what it was that they spoke of. Peter and James and John, the only human witnesses, were lying dazed and drunken with sleep, whilst Christ"s countenance was changed; and during all the earlier portion at all events of His converse with Moses and Elias. And it was only when these were about to depart that the mortals awoke from their slumber. So they probably neither heard the voices nor knew their theme, and it was reserved for this Evangelist to tell us the precious truth that the thing about which Lawgiver, Prophet, and the Greater than both spake in that mysterious communion was none other than the Cross.
I think, then, that if we look at this incident from the point of view which our Evangelist enables us to take, we shall get large and important lessons as to the significance of the death of Jesus Christ, in many aspects, and in reference to very many different persons. I see at least four of these. This incident teaches us what Christ"s death was to Himself; what it was in reference to previous revelation; what it was in reference to past generations; and what it may be in reference to His servants" death. And upon these four points I desire briefly to touch now.
I. First, then, I see here teaching as to what the death of the Lord Jesus Christ was in reference to Himself.
What was it that brought these men--the one who had pa.s.sed in a whirlwind to heaven, and the other who had been led by a mysterious death to slumber in an unknown grave--what was it that brought these men to stand there upon the side of the slopes of Hermon? It was not to teach Christ of the impending Cross. For, not to touch upon other points, eight days before this mysterious interview He had foretold it in the minutest details to His disciples. It was not for the sake of Peter and James and John, lying coiled in slumber there, that they broke the bands of death, and came back from "that bourne from which no traveller returns," but it was for Christ, or for themselves, or perhaps for both, that they stood there.
You remember that in Gethsemane "there appeared an angel from heaven strengthening Him." And one of the old devout painters has marvellously embraced the deepest meaning of that vision when he has painted for us the strengthening angel displaying in the heavens the Cross on which He must die, as if the holding of it up before Him as the divine will gave the strength that He needed. And I think in some a.n.a.logous way we are to regard the mission and message to Jesus of these two men in our text. We know that clear before Him, all His life long, there stood the certainty of the Cross. We know that He came, not merely to teach, to minister, to bless, to guide, but that He came to give His life a ransom for many. But we know, too, that from about this point of time in His life the Cross stood more distinctly, if that may be, before Him; or at all events, that it pressed more upon His vision and upon His spirit. And doubtless after that time when He spoke to the disciples so plainly and clearly of what was coming upon Him, His human nature needed the retirement of the mountain-side and prayer which preceded and occasioned this mysterious incident. Christ shrank from His Cross with sinless, natural, human shrinking of the flesh. That never altered His purpose nor shook His will, but He needed, and He got, strength from the Father, ministered once by an angel from heaven, and ministered, as I suppose, another time by two men who looked at death from the other side, and "who spoke to Him of His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem."
And now it is to be noticed that the words which our Evangelist employs are remarkable, and one of them, at least, is all but unique. The expression translated in my text "decease" is the same Greek word which, untranslated, names the second book of the Old Testament--_Exodus_. And it literally means neither more nor less than a departure or "going out." It is only employed in this one pa.s.sage and in another one to which I shall have occasion to refer presently, which is evidently based and moulded upon this one, to signify _death_. And the employment of it, perhaps upon these undying tongues of the sainted dead--or, at all events, in reference to the subject of their colloquy--seems to us to suggest that part of what they had to say to the Master and what they had to hear from Him was that His death was His departure in an altogether unique, solitary, and blessed sense. "I came forth from the Father, and I am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father." Not dragged by any necessity, but of His own sovereign will, He pa.s.ses from earth to the state where He was before. And as He stands there on the mountain with His radiant face and His white robes, this thought as to His death brings to Him comfort and strength, even whilst He thinks of the suffering of the Cross.
But, still further, the other word which is here employed helps us to understand what our Lord"s death was to Him; "He should _accomplish_" it as a thing to be fulfilled. And that involves two ideas, the one that Christ in His death was consciously submitting to a gladly accepted divine _must_, and was accomplishing the purpose of Love which dwelt in the heavens and sent Him, as well as His own purpose of love which would redeem and save. The necessity of the death of Christ if sin is to be put away, if we are ever to have a hope of immortality, the necessity of the death of Christ if the mercy of G.o.d is to pour out upon a sinful and rebellious world, the necessity of the death of Christ, if the deep purposes of the divine heart are ever to be realised, and the yearning compa.s.sion of the Saviour"s soul is ever to reach its purpose--all lie in that great word that "His decease" was by Him to be "accomplished." This is the fulfilling of the heart of G.o.d, this is the fulfilling of the compa.s.sion of the Christ. It is the accomplishment of the divine purpose from eternity.
Still further, the word, as I think, suggests another kind of fulfilment. He was to "accomplish" His death. That is to say, every drop of that bitter cup, drop by drop, bitterness by bitterness, pang by pang, desolation by desolation, He was to drink; and He drank it. Every step of that road sown with ploughshares and live coals He was to tread, with bleeding, blistered, slow, unshrinking feet. And He trod it. He _accomplished_ it; hurrying over none of the sorrow, perfunctorily doing none of the tasks. And after the weary moments had ticked themselves away, and the six hours of agony, when the minutes were as drops of blood falling slowly to the ground, were pa.s.sed, He inverted the cup, and it was empty, and He said "It is finished"; and He gave up the ghost, having accomplished His decease in Jerusalem."
II. Further, note in this incident what that death is in regard to previous revelation.
I need not remind you, I suppose, that we have here the two great representative figures of the past history of Israel--the Lawgiver, who, according to the Old Testament, was not only the medium of declaring the divine will, but the medium of establishing Sacrifice as well as Law, and the Prophet, who, though no written words of his have been preserved, and nothing of a predictive and Messianic character seems to have dropped from His lips, yet stood as the representative and head of the great prophetic order to which so much of the earlier revelation was entrusted. And now here they two stand with Christ on the mountain; and the theme about which they spake with Him there is the theme of which the former revelation had spoken in type and shadow, in stammering words, "at sundry times and in divers manners," to the former generations--viz. the coming of the great Sacrifice and the offering of the great Propitiation. All the past of Israel pointed onwards to the Cross, and in that Cross its highest word was transcended, its faintest emblems were explained and expressed, its unsolved problems which it had raised in order that they might be felt to be unsolved, were all answered, and that which had been set forth but in shadow and symbol was given to the world in reality for evermore. In Moses Law and Sacrifice, and in Elijah the prophetic function, met by the side of Christ, "and spake of His decease."
Now, dear friends, let me say one word here before I pa.s.s on. There is a great deal being said nowadays about the position of the Old Testament, the origin of its ritual, and other critical, and, to some extent, historical, questions. I have no doubt that we have much to learn upon these subjects; but what I would now insist upon is this, that all these subjects, about which people are getting so excited, and some of them so angry, stand, and may be dealt with, altogether apart from this central thought, that the purpose and meaning, the end and object of the whole preliminary and progressive revelation of G.o.d from the beginning, are to lead straight up to Jesus Christ and to His Cross. And if we understand that, and feel that "the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy," and that law and sacrifice, commandments and altar, Sinai and Zion, the fiery words that were spoken in the wilderness, and the perpetual burnt-offering that went up in the Temple, had one mission--viz. to "prepare the way of the Lord"--we have grasped the essential truth as to the Old Revelation; and if we do not understand that, we may be as scholarly and erudite and original as we please, but we miss the one truth which is worth grasping. The relation between the Old revelation and the New is this, that Christ was pointed to by it all, and that in Himself He sums up and surpa.s.ses and antiquates, because He fulfils, all the past.
Therefore Moses and Elijah came to witness as well as to encourage.
Their presence proclaimed that Christ was the meaning of all the past, and the crown of the divine revelation. And they faded away, and Jesus was found alone standing there, as He stands for ever before all generations and all lands, the sole, the perfect, the eternal Revealer of the heart and will of G.o.d. "G.o.d, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son."
III. Again, we have here set before us the death of Christ in its relation to past generations.
I need not dwell upon anything that was mysterious or anomalous in the last moments upon earth of either Moses or Elijah. I do not suppose that there is any reference to the undoubted peculiarities which existed in the case of both. But they came from that dim region where the dead were waiting for the coming of the Saviour, and by some means, we know not how, were clothed with something that was like an immortal body, and capable of entering into this material universe. There they stood, witnesses that Christ"s death was of interest to all those sleeping generations in the past. We know not anything, or scarcely anything, of the condition of the sainted dead who died before Christ came. But this is clear, that these two came from the land where silent expectancy had ruled, and came perhaps to carry back to their brethren the tidings that the hour was ready to strike, and that soon amongst them there would stand the Eternal Life.
But, be that as it may, does not that group on the mountain-side teach us this, that the Cross of Jesus Christ had a backward as well as a forward power, and that for all the generations who had died, "not having received the promises, but having seen them and saluted them from afar," the influence of that Sacrifice had opened the gates of the Kingdom where they were gathered in hope, even as it opens for us, and all subsequent generations, the gates of the paradise of G.o.d?
I know not whether there be truth in the ancient idea that when the Master died He pa.s.sed into that _Hades_ where were a.s.sembled the disembodied spirits of the righteous dead, and led captivity captive, taking them with Him into a loftier Paradise. But this I am sure of, that Christ"s Cross has always been the means and channel whereby forgiveness and hope and heaven have been given to men, and that the old dream of the devout painter which he has breathed upon the walls of the convent in Florence is true in spirit whatever it may be in letter, that the Christ who died went down into the dark regions, burst the bars and broke the gates of iron, and crushed the demon porter beneath the shattered portal, and that out of the dark rock-hewn caverns there came streaming the crowds of the sainted dead, with Adam at their head, and many another who had seen His day afar off and been glad, stretching out eager hands to grasp the life-giving hand of the Redeemer that had come to them too.
Moses and Elias were the "first-fruits of them that slept," and there were others, when the bodies of the saints rose from the grave and appeared in the Holy City unto many. And their presence, and the presence of these two there, typified for us the great fact that the Cross of Christ is the redemption of pre-Christian as well as of Christian ages; and that He is the Lord both of the dead and of the living.
IV. And so, lastly, this incident may suggest also what that death of Jesus Christ may be in reference to the deaths of His servants.
I do not find that thought in the words of our text, but in the reference to them which is made in the second epistle attributed to Peter, who was present at the Transfiguration. There is a very remarkable pa.s.sage in that Epistle, in the context of which there are distinct verbal allusions to the narrative of the Transfiguration, and in it the writer employs the same word to describe his own death which is employed here. It is the only other instance in Scripture of its use in that sense. And so I draw this simple lesson; that mighty death which was accomplished upon Calvary, which is the crown and summit of all Revelation, beyond which G.o.d has nothing that He can say or do to make men sure of His heart and recipients of forgiveness, which was the channel of pardon for all past ages, and the hope of the sainted dead--that death may turn for us our departure into its own likeness. For us, too, all the grimness, all the darkness, all the terror, may pa.s.s away, and it may become simply a change of place, and a going home to G.o.d. If we believe that Jesus died, we believe that He has thereby smoothed and softened and lessened our death into a sleep in Him.
Nor need we forget the special meaning of the word. If we have set our hopes upon Christ, and, as sinful men and women, have cast the burden of our sins, and the weight of our salvation, on His strong arm, then life will be blessed, and death, when it comes, will be a true Exodus, the going out of the slaves from the land of bondage, and pa.s.sing through the divided sea, not into a weary wilderness, but into the light of the love and the blessedness of the land where our Brother is King, and where we shall share His reign.
I have been speaking to you of what Christ"s death is in many regions of the universe, in many eras of time. My brother, what is Christ"s death to you? Can you say, "The life that I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of G.o.d, who loved me, and gave Himself for me?"
CHRIST HASTENING TO THE CROSS
"And it came to pa.s.s, when the time was come that He should be received up, He stedfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem."--LUKE ix. 51.
There are some difficulties, with which I need not trouble you here, as to bringing the section of this Gospel to which these words are the introduction, into its proper chronological place in relation to the narratives; but, putting these on one side for the present, there seems no doubt that the Evangelist"s intention here is to represent the beginning of our Lord"s last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem--a journey which was protracted and devious, and the narrative of which in this Gospel, as you will perceive, occupies a very large portion of its whole contents.
The picture that is given in my text is that of a clear knowledge of what waited Him, of a steadfast resolve to accomplish the purpose of the divine love, and that resolve not without such a shrinking of some part of His nature that He had "to _set_ His face to go to Jerusalem."
The words come into parallelism very strikingly with a great prophecy of the Messiah in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, where we read, "The Lord G.o.d will help me, therefore shall I not be confounded"--or, as the words have been rendered, "shall not suffer myself to be overcome by mockery"--"therefore have I set my face like a flint." In the words both of the Prophet and of the Evangelist there is the same idea of a resolved will, as the result of a conscious effort directed to prevent circ.u.mstances which tended to draw Him back, from producing their effect. The graphic narrative of the Evangelist Mark adds one more striking point to that picture of high resolve. He tells us, speaking of what appears to be the final epoch in this long journey to the Cross, "They were in the way, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went before them; and they were amazed: and as they followed, they were afraid." What a picture that is, Christ striding along the steep mountain path far in advance--impelled by that same longing which sighs so wonderfully in His words, "How am I straitened till it be accomplished,"--with solemn determination in the gentle face, and His feet making haste to run in the way of the Father"s commandments! And lagging behind, the little group, awed into almost stupor, and shrinking in uncomprehending terror from that light of unconquerable resolve and more than mortal heroism that blazed in His eyes!
If we fix, then, on this picture, and as we are warranted in doing, regard it as giving us a glimpse of the very heart of Christ, I think it may well suggest to us considerations that may tend to make more real to us that sacrifice that He made, more deep to us that love by which He was impelled, and may perhaps tend to make our love more true and our resolve more fixed. "He set His face to go to Jerusalem."
I. First, then, we may take, I think, from these words, the thought of the perfect clearness with which all through Christ"s life He foresaw the inevitable and purposed end.
Here, indeed, the Evangelist leaps over the suffering of the Cross, and thinks only of the time when He shall be lifted up upon the throne; but in that calm and certain prevision which, in His manhood, the Divine Son of G.o.d did exercise concerning His own earthly life, between Him and the glory there ever stood the black shadow thrown by Calvary. When He spoke of being "lifted up," He ever meant by that pregnant and comprehensive word, at once man"s elevation of Him on the accursed tree, and the Father"s elevation of Him upon the throne at His right hand! The future was, if I may so say, in His eye so foreshortened that the two things ran into one, and the ambiguous expression did truly connote the one undivided act of prescient consciousness in which He at once recognised the Cross and the throne. And so, when the time was come that He should be received up, He "steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem."
Now, there is another thing to be noticed. That vision of the certain end which here fills His mind and impels His conduct, was by no means new with Him. Modern unbelieving commentators and critics upon the Gospels have tried their best to represent Christ"s life as, at a certain point in it, being modified by His recognition of the fact that His mission was a failure, and that there was nothing left for Him but martyrdom! I believe that that is as untrue to the facts of the Gospel story upon any interpretation of them, as it is repulsive to the instincts of devout hearts; and without troubling you with thoughts about it I need only refer to two words of His.
When was it that He said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up"? When was it that He said, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up"? The one saying was uttered at the very beginning of His public work, and the other in His conversation with Nicodemus. On the testimony of these two sayings, if there were none else, I think there is no option but to believe that from the first there stood clear before Him the necessity and the certainty of the Cross, and that it was no discovery made at a certain point of His course.
And then, remember that we are not to think of Him as, like many an earthly hero and martyr, regarding a violent and b.l.o.o.d.y death as being the very probable result of faithful boldness, but to believe that He, looking on from the beginning to that end, regarded it always as being laid upon Him by a certain divine necessity, into which necessity He entered with the full submission and acquiescence of His own will, and from the beginning knew that Calvary was the work for which He had come, and that His love would fail of its expression, and the divine purpose would fail of its realisation, and His whole mission would fail of all its meaning, unless He died for men. The martyr looks to the scaffold and says, "It stands in my way, and I must either be untrue to conscience or I must go there, and so I will go." Christ said, "The Cross is in My path, and on it and from it I shall exercise the influence, to exercise which I have come into the world, and there I shall _do_ the thing which I came forth from the Father to do." He thought of His death not as the end of His work, but as the centre-point of it; not as the termination of His activity, but as its climax, to which all the rest was subordinated, and without which all the rest was nought. He does not die, and so seal a faithful life by an heroic death,--but dies, so bearing and bearing away man"s sin. He regarded from the beginning "the glory that should follow," and the suffering through which He had to wade to reach it, in one and the same act of prescience, and said, "Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of Me."
And I think, dear friends, if we carried with us more distinctly than we do that one simple thought, that in all the human joys, in all the apparently self-forgetting tenderness, of that Lord who had a heart for every sorrow and an ear for every complaint, and a hand open as day and full of melting charity for every need--that in every moment of that life, in the boyhood, in the dawning manhood, in the maturity of His growing human powers--there was always present one black shadow, towards which He ever went straight with the consent of His will and with the clearest eye, we should understand something more of how His life as well as His death was a sacrifice for us sinful men!
We honour and love men who crush down their own sorrows in order to help their fellows. We wonder with almost reverence when we see some martyr, in sight of the f.a.ggots, pause to do a kindness to some weeping heart in the crowd, or to speak a cheering word. We admire the leisure and calm of spirit which he displays. But all these pale, and the very comparison may become an insult, before that heart which ever discerned Calvary, and never let the sight hinder one deed of kindness, nor silence one gracious word, nor check one throb of sympathy.
II. Still further, the words before us lead to a second consideration, which I have just suggested in my last sentence--Our Lord"s perfect willingness for the sacrifice which He saw before Him.
We have here brought into the narrowest compa.s.s, and most clearly set forth, the great standing puzzle of all thought, which can only be solved by action. On the one side there is the distinctest knowledge of a divine purpose that _will_ be executed; on the other side there is the distinctest consciousness that at each step towards the execution of it He is constrained by no foreign and imposed necessity, but is going to the Cross by His own will. "The Son of Man must be lifted up." "It _became_ Him to make the Captain of salvation perfect through sufferings." "It _behoved_ Him to be made in all points like His brethren." The Eternal Will of the Father, the purpose purposed before the foundation of the world, the solemn prophecies from the beginning of time, const.i.tuted the necessity, and involved the certainty, of His death on the Cross.
But are we, therefore, to think that Jesus Christ was led along the path that ended there, by a force which overbore and paralysed His human will? Was not His life, and especially His death, _obedience_? Was there not, therefore, in Him, as in us all, the human will that could cheerfully submit; and must there not, then, have been, at each step towards the certain end, a fresh act of submission and acceptance of the will of the Father that had sent Him?
"Clear knowledge of the end as divinely appointed and certain"; yes, one might say, and if so, there could have been no voluntariness in treading the path that leads to it. "Voluntariness in treading the path that leads to it, and if so, there could have been no divine ordination of the end." Not so! When human thought comes, if I may so say, full b.u.t.t against a stark, staring contradiction like that, it is no proof that either of the propositions is false. It is only like the sign-boards that the iceman puts upon the thin ice, "dangerous!" a warning that that is not a place for us to tread. We have to keep a firm hold of what is certified to us, on either side, by its appropriate evidence, and leave the reconciliation, if it can ever be given to finite beings, to a higher wisdom, and, perchance, to another world!
But that is a digression from my more immediate purpose, which is simply to bring before our minds, as clearly as I can, that perfect, continuous, ever-repeated willingness, expressing itself in a chain of constant acts that touch one upon the other, which Christ manifested to embrace the Cross, and to accomplish what was at once the purpose of the Father"s will and the purpose of His own.
And it may be worth while, just for a moment, to touch lightly upon some of the many points which bring out so clearly in these Gospel narratives the wholly and purely voluntary character of Christ"s death.
Take, for instance, the very journey which I am speaking of now. Christ went up to Jerusalem, says my text. What did He go there for? He went, as you will see, if you look at the previous circ.u.mstance,--He went in order, if I might use such a word, to precipitate the collision, and to make His Crucifixion certain. He was under the ban of the Sanhedrim; but perfectly safe as long as He had stopped up among the hills of Galilee. He was as unsafe when He went up to Jerusalem as John Huss when he went to the Council of Constance with the Emperor"s safe-conduct in his belt; or as a condemned heretic would have been in the old days, if he had gone and stood in that little dingy square outside the palace of the Inquisition at Rome, and there, below the obelisk, preached his heresies! Christ had been condemned in the council of the nation; but there were plenty of hiding-places among the Galilean hills, and the frontier was close at hand, and it needed a long arm to reach from Jerusalem all the way across Samaria to the far north. Knowing that, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, and, if I might use the expression, went straight into the lion"s mouth. Why? Because He chose to die.
And, then, take another circ.u.mstance. If you will look carefully at the Scripture narrative, you will find that from about this point in His life onwards there comes a distinct change in one very important respect. Before this He shunned publicity; after this He courted it.
Before this, when He spoke in veiled words of His sufferings, He said to His disciples, "Tell no man till the Son of man be risen from the dead." Hereafter though there are frequent prophecies of His sufferings, there is no repet.i.tion of that prohibition. He goes up to Jerusalem, and His triumphal entry adds fuel to the fire. His language at the last moment appeals to the publicity of His final visit to that city--"Was I not daily with you in the Temple and ye laid no hands upon Me?" Everything that He could do He does to draw attention to Himself--everything, that is to say, within the limits of the divine decorum, which was ever observed in His life, of whom it was written long, long ago, "He shall not strive, nor cry, nor cause His voice to be heard in the streets." There is, then, a most unmistakable change to be felt by any who will carefully read the narratives in their bearing upon this one point--a resolve to draw the eyes of the enemy upon Himself.
And to the same purpose, did you ever notice how calmly, with full self-consciousness, distinctly understanding what He is doing, distinctly knowing to what it will lead, He makes His words ever heavier and heavier, and more and more sharply pointed with denunciations, as the last loving wrestle between Himself and the scribes and Pharisees draws near to its b.l.o.o.d.y close? Instead of softening He hardens His tones--if I dare use the word, where all is the result of love--at any rate He keeps no terms; but as the danger increases His words become plainer and sterner, and approach as near as ever _His_ words could do to bitterness and rebuke. It was then, whilst pa.s.sionate hate was raging round Him, and eager eyes were gleaming revenge, that He poured out His sevenfold woes upon the "hypocrites," the "blind guides," the "fools," the "whited sepulchres," the "serpents," the "generation of vipers," whom He sees filling up the measure of their fathers in shedding His righteous blood.
And again, the question recurs--Why? And again, besides other reasons, which I have not time to touch upon here, the answer, as it seems to me, must unmistakably be, Because He willed to die, and He willed to die because He loved us.
The same lesson is taught, too, by that remarkable incident preserved for us by the Gospel of John, of the strange power which accompanied His avowal of Himself to the rude soldiers who had come to seize Him, and which struck them to the ground in terror and impotence. One flash comes forth to tell of the sleeping lightning that He will not use, and then having revealed the might that could have delivered Him from their puny arms, He returns to His att.i.tude of self-surrender for our sakes, with those wonderful words which tell how He gave up Himself that we might be free, "If ye seek Me, let these go their way." The scene is a parable of the whole work of Jesus; it reveals His power to have shaken off every hand laid upon Him, His voluntary submission to His else impotent murderers, and the love which moved Him to the surrender.