Consider one or two circumstances which rendered Jesus solitary in His sufferings.
I. One of the most obvious of these is, that all His sorrowings and sufferings were, long ere their actual occurrence, clearly and fully foreseen. They were anticipated sorrows. The ignorance of futurity, which mercifully tempers the severity of all human ills, was an alleviation of sorrow unknown to Jesus. Even the smiles of infancy, may we not almost say, were darkened by the anticipated anguish of death, and in the very slumbers of the cradle, He already in fancy hung upon the cross. From the very dawn of his earthly ministry, Jesus looked forward to its dreadful close.
II. Another circumstance which distinguishes the sorrows of Jesus from those of all ordinary men, and which gives to this greatest of sufferers an aspect of solitariness in their endurance, is this that they were the sorrows of an infinitely pure and perfect mind. No ordinary human being could ever suffer as Jesus did, for His soul was greater than all other souls; and the mind that is of largest compass, or that is cast in the finest mould, is ever the most susceptible of suffering. A little, narrow, selfish, uncultured mind is liable to comparatively few troubles. The range alike of its joys and sorrows is limited and contracted. It presents but a narrow target to the arrows of misfortune, and it escapes uninjured where a broader spirit would be "pierced through with many sorrows."
III. But the feelings of Jesus in contemplating the sin and wretchedness of humanity, the mournful prevalence of evil in the world, were not those merely of a most holy and tenderhearted human being. His sorrow was the sorrow of a Creator amid His ruined works. (1) Such views of the sufferings of Jesus are suggestive of gratitude for His marvellous self-devotion on our behalf. (2) The subject is fraught with a most solemn warning to all who are living in carelessness or indifference to the spiritual interests of themselves and others. (3) Such views of the sufferings of Jesus afford to every penitent soul the strongest encouragement to rely on the Saviour's love.
J. Caird, Sermons,p. 134.
There is a loneliness in death for all men. There is a mysterious something which makes the bystanders feel that before the last breath the embarkation has begun. There is a silence of the soul to earth and earth's thoughts which seems to enter its protest alike against sobs and words seems to bespeak the forbearance of the surviving towards the solemn, the mysterious act of stepping across the threshold of sense, into the very presence of the invisible God. There was this loneliness then, as of course, in the death, of our Lord. In Him it was deepened and aggravated by the foregoing loneliness of His life. But we have not reached theloneliness yet. The context will give us one clue.
I. "I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with Me." There could not be. "I looked, and there was none to help." If there had been, this particular death had not been died. Christ was doing something in which He could have no assistance. His was a death not with sinners, but for sin; a death, therefore, which none else could die, in that which made it what it was in its truth and in its essence.
II. The divinity, the deity of Christ was another cause of the loneliness. Deity is loneliness, not in heaven, but on earth. If Christ was very God, He must live alone and He must die alone upon earth. It accounts for everything. His Divine Spirit, His soul indwelt of the Holy Ghost, must have been a solitude.
III. Loneliness often is isolation. Lonely men and women lonely by circumstance or by disposition or by choice are commonly selfish. Neither atonement nor deity made a solitary, in this sense, of Jesus Christ. He died that we might never be lonely no, not in death. Though He trod the winepress alone, yet He was not alone in this sense. He trod it for us. The loneliness was His; the sympathy is ours. The cross was His desolation: it is our comfort; it is our ornament; it is our "joy and hope and crown of rejoicing."
C. J. Vaughan, Temple Sermons,p. 176.
Loneliness has many senses, inward and outward.
I. There is first the loneliness of simple solitude. Solitude which is, first, voluntary, and, secondly, occasional, is but half solitude. Solitude which we fly to as a rest, and can exchange at will for society which we love, is a widely different thing from that solitude which is either the consequence of bereavement or the punishment of crime that solitude from which we cannot escape, and which is perhaps associated with bitter, remorseful recollections. Solitude reveals to us, as in a moment, what manner of spirit we are of; whether we have any root, any vitality in ourselves, or are only the creatures of society and of circumstance, found out and convicted by the application of the individual touchstone.
II. Again, there is the loneliness of sorrow. Is not loneliness the prominent feeling in all deep sorrow? Is it not this which deprives all after-joy of its chief zest, and reduces life itself to a colourless and level landscape?
III. Again, there is the loneliness of a sense of sin. Whatever duties may lie upon us towards other men, in our innermost relations to God we are and must be alone. Repentance is loneliness; remorse is desolation. Repentance makes us lonely towards man; remorse makes us desolate towards God.
IV. There is the loneliness of death. We all speak of death familiarly, as if we knew what it was, as if we had taken its measure and weighed its import. But who amongst the living can tell us what it is? In death we shall be alone, and shall feel ourselves to be so.
V. In the judgment we shall be alone. Every one of us shall give account of himself to God.
VI. There are two senses in which we ought all to practise being alone. (1) One of these is being alone in prayer. (2) If we are to die alone and be judged alone, do not let us be afraid to think alone, and, if necessary, to act alone.
C. J. Vaughan, Memorials of Harrow Sundays,p. 197.
I. Consider what Scripture reveals to us in regard to Christ's second advent. There is a time appointed in the history of our world, when that very Jesus who appeared on earth, "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," shall reappear with all the circumstances of majesty and power, "King of kings and Lord of lords." We are led to expect a day when Christ shall find a home in the remotest hearts and families, and the earth in all its circumference be covered with the knowledge and the power of the Lord. In effecting this sublime revolution, we are taught that the Jews shall be God's mightiest instruments. But it shall not be without opposition, nor without convulsion, that Satan is driven from his usurped dominion. Previously to this great consummation, and in order to the production of this, is to be what Scripture calls the second advent of Christ; and the judgments with which this second coming shall be attended and followed constitute that tremendous visitation which prophecy associates with the last times, and delineates under every figure of woe, of terror, and of wrath.
II. The Redeemer, as exhibited in our text, is returning from the slaughter of His enemies, and He describes Himself as "speaking in righteousness, mighty to save." His actions have just proved Him mighty to destroy, and His words now announce Him mighty to save; so that He is able to confound every foe and uphold every friend. The two grand principles which we expect to see maintained in every righteous government are that none of the guilty shall escape, and that none of the innocent shall perish. And in the reply given to the challenge of the prophet there is a distinct assertion that He who comes with the dyed garments from Bozrah maintains these principles of government, which cannot be maintained but by an Infinite Judge. This agrees admirably with Christ's second advent; for that is the only season at which men living on the earth shall be accurately divided into the evil and the good into those who are to be consumed, and those who are to be untouched by the visitations of wrath.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1817.
References: Isaiah 63:3. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 92.Isaiah 63:7. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xix., No. 1126; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 25; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. x., p. 144.Isaiah 63:7-10. Ibid.,vol. xvi., p. 141.