the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
The Poor Man's Morning and Evening Portions
April 4—Morning—Matthew 25:36
"A place called Gethsemane. "—Matthew 26:36.
My soul, let thy morning meditation be directed to the garden of Gethsemane, that memorable spot, sacred to the believer, because so much beloved and resorted to by Jesus. Here Jesus oft came with his disciples. And here, my soul, do thou often take the wing of faith, and flee in devout contemplation. Was this place dear to thee, thou precious Redeemer? And was it not because here thou didst enjoy the sweetest refreshing in communion with the Father? Was it not because here thou knewest would begin the conflict and the agony, in which the great business for which thou camest on earth would be accomplished. Didst thou abide here, Lord, a whole night, after a day’s constant preaching to the people, the week only before thy crucifixion. (See Luke 21:37.) And when the night was past, didst thou again repair to the temple to the same employ? Was Gethsemane dear to Jesus! Was here his favourite haunt? And shall not my soul delight to be oft here in solemn meditation? Will not my Lord lead me there, and go with me there, and sweetly speak to me there; that while, in imagination, I tread the sacred ground, my soul may view the several spots, and say—Here it was, perhaps, my Redeemer was withdrawn a stone’s cast from his disciples, that the powers of darkness might more furiously assault his holy soul; and here stood the angel sent from heaven to strengthen him; and here the Lord Jesus was in his agony, when the sweat of his body forced through all the pores great drops of blood, falling down to the ground! Is this Gethsemane? And why Gethsemane? The Jews call it Ge-hennom, or hell; for here it was that Josiah burnt the idol vessels. 2 Kings 23:4-10. And it is the same as Tophet, the only word the Jews used for hell after their return from the Babylonish captivity. The field of Cedron was indeed a dark and gloomy place; and by its side ran the foul and black brook which Jesus passed over when he went into Gethsemane. Here David, of old, went mourning and lamenting, when Ahitophel, like another Judas, betrayed him, and his life was sought after. 2 Samuel 15:23. And here the Son of David passed also, when the man of whom David by the spirit of prophecy spake, (Psalms 41:9.) which eat bread with Jesus, lifted up his heel against him. And was this Gethsemane the favoured spot of Jesus, because here he had so sweetly enjoyed communion with his Father, and because he here should encounter the powers of darkness? Learn then, my soul, from thy Jesus where thou oughtest to seek grace in a refreshing hour, to comfort a trying hour. Say, my soul, where should be thy dying place, but where thy God hath most blessed thy living place? There, Jesus, make my seasons (if needs be) of conflict, where thou hast sanctified and made blessed by thy Bethel visits. And was a garden the favoured spot of Jesus? Yes, it was in a garden the first Adam lost himself and his posterity; there, then, Jesus will recover the forfeited inheritance. Did the devil begin in heaven to ruin man? Why, then, in Gethsemane Jesus will begin to conquer hell for man’s recovery. Did Satan, from the garden, bind and carry captive the first Adam? Then from a garden also shall he cause to be bound, and carried away to the cross, the second Adam," that he, by death, might destroy him that had the power of death—that is, the devil; and deliver them who, through fear of death, are all their life-time subject to bondage. "Solemn Gethsemane! awful, but hallowed spot! Here would I often come here contemplate Jesus, my blessed Surety, groaning, yet! conquering; pressed under all the hellish malice of the devil, yet triumphing over all; deserted by his disciples, sweating a bloody sweet, sustaining the wrath of offended justice, drinking the cup of trembling! Is this Gethsemane? Oh, thou Lamb of God, thou paschal Lamb! here oft bring me; here shew me thy loves: and as thy joys were here turned into sorrows, give me to see how the curses which I deserved, but which thou didst endure, were converted into blessings; and that by thy stripes I am healed. Hail sacred Gethsemane!
April 4—Evening—Psalms 69:20
"Thy rebuke hath broken my heart."—Psalms 69:20.
Hast thou, my soul, still upon thee the solemn savour of thy morning meditation? Surely Gethsemane is not forgotten by thee! Pause over the subject; and from the whole mass of the soul sufferings of thy Lord, behold what crowned the whole: "Thy rebuke, (saith Jesus to the Father,) thy rebuke hath broken my heart. "To search into the depths of this mediation is impossible; for who shall describe it? What human, or even angelic intellect can fathom the profound subject? That this was the greatest and heaviest weight in the whole curse, we may venture to suppose: because we read of nothing which bore so hard upon the holy Jesus, amidst all his agonies, as the Father’s rebuke. It was this which "broke his heart. "My soul! repeat the solemn scripture, as if Jesus was in the moment uttering the words: "Thy rebuke hath broken my heart. "Precious Lord! could not this have been spared thee?—Pause, my soul!—Lamb of God! must the rebuke of thy Father be also in the curse?—Pause again, my soul! When Jesus made his soul an offering for sin, would not the Father of mercies, and God of all consolation, shew the least portion of favour to his dear, his beloved, his only begotten Son?—Pause, my soul, yet once again, and ponder over the solemn subject! "It pleased the Father to bruise him, to put him to grief."—But, my soul! though neither thou, nor perhaps angels of light, can explain the extremity of the Redeemer’s sufferings, in the rebuke of the Father for sin, which broke his heart; yet in the contemplation of the lesser sorrows of the curse which Jesus endured, thou wilt be led to form some faint idea, however small, in comparison of the real state of it, to induce a train of the most solemn meditations. When the Son of God assumed our nature, though in a holy portion of that nature, untainted by the fall, being not derived by ordinary generation, yet coming as the sinner’s surety, he took upon him the curse for sin; he was first made sin, (2 Corinthians 5:21.) and then a curse for us (Galatians 3:13); as such, he was invested with every thing belonging to the frailties of our nature, which might expose that nature to sorrow, and suffering, and death. The sentence of the fall was, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return;"Genesis 3:19: so that the curse, then seizing the human nature of Christ, at once tended to waste all the animal spirits, and to induce a state of mind peculiarly low and dejected. Agreeably to this, we find, that the holy Jesus, though it is once said of him, that in that hour "he rejoiced in spirit," when the devils were subject to his name (Luke 10:18-21.) yet is it never said of him, that he was once seen to laugh. As the sinner’s surety, he sustained every thing of sorrow which belonged to God’s curse against sin; and became eminently marked with affliction; and in a way which none but himself ever waded through; yea, to make the horrors of death more tremendous and bitter, the very sun became darkened at mid-day; not so much, I humbly conceive, as some have thought, to intimate, by the miracle, God’s displeasure at the act of the Jews in the crucifixion of Christ, as to manifest the Father’s rebuke of sin, which Jesus then stood as the sinner’s surety to answer for, and which Christ, as if summing up the whole of his misery, declared to be the finishing stroke, which had "broken his heart. "My soul! look up, and thus behold the Lamb of God! Oh! thou precious, precious Redeemer! the sons of thy Zion, but for this blessed undertaking of thine," would have fainted for ever!" They would have lain "at the head of all the streets as a wild bull in a net; they would have been full of the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of thy God." But now, Lord, thou hast swallowed up death in victory: "the Lord God hath wiped away tears from off all faces: and the rebuke of thy people thou hast taken away from off all the earth: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."
