Spurgeon: April AM
* 04/11/AM
"I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint."
--Psalm 22:14
Did earth or heaven ever behold a sadder spectacle of woe! In
soul and body, our Lord felt Himself to be weak as water poured
upon the ground. The placing of the cross in its socket had
shaken Him with great violence, had strained all the ligaments,
pained every nerve, and more or less dislocated all His bones.
Burdened with His own weight, the august sufferer felt the
strain increasing every moment of those six long hours. His
sense of faintness and general weakness were overpowering; while
to His own consciousness He became nothing but a mass of misery
and swooning sickness. When Daniel saw the great vision, he thus
describes his sensations, "There remained no strength in me, for
my vigour was turned into corruption, and I retained no
strength:" how much more faint must have been our greater
Prophet when He saw the dread vision of the wrath of God, and
felt it in His own soul! To us, sensations such as our Lord
endured would have been insupportable, and kind unconsciousness
would have come to our rescue; but in His case, He was wounded,
and felt the sword; He drained the cup and tasted every
drop.
"O King of Grief! (a title strange, yet true
To Thee of all kings only due)
O King of Wounds! how shall I grieve for Thee,
Who in all grief preventest me!"
As we kneel before our now ascended Saviour's throne, let us
remember well the way by which He prepared it as a throne of
grace for us; let us in spirit drink of His cup, that we may be
strengthened for our hour of heaviness whenever it may come. In
His natural body every member suffered, and so must it be in the
spiritual; but as out of all His griefs and woes His body came
forth uninjured to glory and power, even so shall His mystical
body come through the furnace with not so much as the smell of
fire upon it.