Never did God have such honour and glory as He obtained through the sufferings of Jesus. Oh, they thought to scorn Him, but they lifted His Name on high! They thought that God was dishonoured when He was most glorified . . .Charles Spurgeon, "Mourning at the Sight of the Crucified," from Twelve Sermons on the Passion and Death of Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1971), 54-55.
O nature, adoring God with thine ancient and priestly mountains, extolling Him with thy trees, which clap their hands, and worshipping with thy seas, which in their fulness roar out Jehovah's praise; with all thy tempests and flames of fire, thy dragons and thy deeps, thy snow and thy hail, thou cannot not glorify God as Jesus glorified Him when He became obedient unto death.
O heaven, with all thy jubilant angels, thine ever chanting cherubim and seraphim, thy thrice holy hymns, thy streets of gold and endless harmonies, thou cannot not reveal the Deity as Jesus Christ revealed it on the cross.
O hell, with all thine infinite horrors and flames unquenchable, and pains and griefs and shrieks of tortured ghosts, even thou cannot not reveal the justice of God as Christ revealed it in His riven heart upon the bloody tree.
O earth and heaven and hell! O time and eternity, things present and things to come, visible and invisible, ye are dim mirrors of the Godhead compared with the bleeding Lamb.
O heart of God, I see Thee nowhere as at Golgotha, where the Word incarnate reveals the justice and the love, the holiness and the tenderness of God in one blaze of glory.
If any created mind would fain see the glory of God, he need not gaze upon the starry skies, nor soar into the heaven of heavens, he has but to bow at the cross foot and watch the crimson streams which gush from Immanuel’s wounds.
If you would behold the glory of God, you need not gaze between the gates of pearls, you have but to look beyond the gates of Jerusalem and see the Prince of Peace expire.
If you would receive the noblest conception that ever filled the human mind of the lovingkindness and the greatness and the pity, and yet the justice and the severity and the wrath of God, you need not lift up your eyes, nor cast them down, nor look to paradise, nor gaze on hell, you have but to look into the heart of Christ all crushed and broken and bruised, and you have seen it all.
Oh, the joy that springs from the fact that God has triumphed after all! Death is not the victor. Evil is not master. There are not two rival kingdoms, one governed by the God of good, and the other by the God of evil.
No, evil is bound, chained, and led captive. Its sinews are cut, its head is broken. Its king is bound to the dread chariot of Jehovah-Jesus, and as the white horses of triumph drag the Conqueror up the everlasting hills in splendour of glory, the monster of the pit cringe at His chariot wheels.
Therefore, beloved, we close this discourse with this sentence of humble yet joyful worship: "Glory be unto the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost: as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."
HT: Tolle Lege
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