Jesus Christ -- Biography -- Sermons; Lazarus, of Bethany, Saint
Yes! we can only understand the full import of these tears of Jesus, as
we imagine to ourselves His Godlike eye penetrating at that moment every
churchyard and every grave: the mausoleums of the great--the grassy sods
of the poor; the marble cenotaph of the noble and illustrious slumbering
under fretted aisle and cathedral canopy--the myriads whose requiem is
chanted by the bleak winds of the desert or the chimes of the ocean! The
child carried away in the twinkling of an eye--the blossom just opening,
and then frost-blighted; the aged sire, cut down like a shock of corn in
its season, falling withered and seared like the leaves of autumn; the
young exulting in the prime of manhood; the pious and benevolent, the
great and good, succumbing indiscriminately to the same inexorable
decree; the erring and thoughtless, reckless of all warning, hurried
away in the midst of scorned mercy--Oh! as He beheld this ghastly
funeral procession moving before Him, the whole world going to the same
long home, and He Himself alone left the survivor, can we wonder that
_Jesus wept_?
(3.) Once more, JESUS WEPT _when He thought of the impenitence and
obduracy of the human heart_.
This may not be at first sight patent as a cause of the tears of Jesus,
but we may well believe it entered largely as an element into this
strange flood of sorrow.
He was about to perform a great (His greatest) miracle; but while He
knew that, in consequence of this manifestation of His mighty power,
many of those who now stood around Lazarus' tomb would _believe_, He
knew also that others would only "despise, and wonder, and perish;" that
while some, as we shall afterwards find, acknowledged Him as the
Messiah, others went straightway into Jerusalem to concert with the
Pharisees in plotting His murder. When He observed the impenitence of
these obdurate hearts at His side, He could not subdue His tenderest
emotion. We read that, when He saw the sisters weeping, _and the Jews
that were with them weeping_, Jesus wept. These Jews could weep for a
fellow-mortal, but they could not weep for _themselves_, and therefore
_for them, Jesus wept_!
One soul was precious to Him. He who alone can estimate alike the worth
and the loss of the soul, might have wept, even had there been but one
then present found to resist His claims and forfeit His salvation. But
these tears extended far beyond that lonely spot in a Jewish village,
and the few impenitent hearts that were then flocking around. These
obdurate Jews were types of the world's impenitency. There was at that
moment summoned before Him a mournful picture of the hardened hearts in
every age--those who would read His gospel, and hear of His miracles,
and listen to the story of His love all unmoved--who would die as they
had lived, uncheered by His grace and unmeet for His presence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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