I. Most persons know something of the feeling of suspens and anxious curiosity, when they are looking forward to anything very serious, anything which they think will greatly affect their happiness; especially when they have been a long time kept in expectation of it. The hours, days, months, years, of waiting appear to them more and more tedious; they are more and more alive and awake with curiosity to know what sort of a thing it will be when present, which now at a distance occupies their mind so much. Now, our Blessed Lord, as one of us in all things, sin only excepted, had His share of this feeling so far as it is natural and innocent; at least, so we may understand His saying in the text. Instead of shrinking from His death He was the more eager to begin; so high, so courageous was His love for us, and His zeal for His Father's glory; so complete the condescension with which He entered into this and all other innocent feelings of ours.
II. Thus, as He in His merciful and infinite condescension, limited Himself as His creatures are limited He who is the God of Eternity limited Himself to a certain time so He set us an example, who are all of us so limited, which way our thoughts should tend. Men are apt to think they shall die contented when they have satisfied this or that wish, when they have done this or that work, when they have made so much money, when they have obtained such and such an advantage for those whom they leave behind them; and that favourite object, whatever it be, haunts them night and day, and colours in a manner almost all their thoughts and words. So were our blessed Master's sayings tinged all over with the longing expectation of the Cross. And when the Cross itself came, His disciples, and we after them, might see the meaning of very many words and deeds which could not be understood at the first. As Christ was straitened, until His painful baptism of blood and sorrow was accomplished, so St. Paul, and all who resemble Him, are straitened, until they can find some way of giving themselves up more entirely, body and soul, life and death, to Him who thought nothing at all, not even heavenly and Divine glory, too dear to give up for them. Instead of planning restlessly and wearily what we have to do next, and what after that, in some pursuit which happens just now to be interesting, we shall be straitened and anxious, thinking how little we have done yet, and what we may and ought to do, for Christ and the Church's sake.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. vi., p. 66.
Christ's Baptism of Suffering.
I. The whole structure of this sentence is in exact keeping with the common notion of baptism, seeing that a condition of greater freedom is evidently looked forward to by Christ as certain to result from those waves of fire through which He had to pass. He laboured under a species of bondage prior to His agony and death; and the consequence of the agony and death would, He knew, be deliverance from this bondage. There is, therefore, peculiar fitness in His describing that agony and death as a baptism with which He should be baptized. A change was to take place, and for the bringing about of that change immersion in a deep ocean of trouble was absolutely indispensable. Baptism denotes what is both temporary and refreshing. In respect to our blessed Saviour, both as to the time of endurance for He was but plunged in the raging waters and then quickly withdrawn and as to the undoubted change; for He went down with transgression and came up having made full expiation in both particulars the imagery is most perfect.
II. "How am I straitened till it be accomplished!" (1) It was one consequence of our Saviour's sufferings and death that the gift of the Holy Spirit should be poured forth on His disciples. Until, therefore, the baptism was accomplished there could be little or none of that preparation of heart on the part of His followers which was indispensable to the reception of the spiritual magnificence and majesty of the Gospel. Thus our Lord was brought into the position of a constant restraint, like a man charged with news that would gladden an empire, while the rocks were the only audience to which he could have access. (2) Although the Spirit was given without measure to the Saviour, He was nevertheless hemmed round by spiritual adversaries, and He had continually before Him a task overwhelming in its difficulties the keeping our nature free from every taint of corruption, the contending therein against the assaults of the devil. Is not the contrast of the state which preceded, and that which succeeded, the baptism of agony sufficient in itself to account for expressions even more sternly descriptive of bondage than that of our text? (3) Christ had not yet won the headship over all things, and therefore He was straitened by being circumscribed in Himself, in place of expanding into myriads. These, with like reason, serve to explain, in a degree, the expression of our text; though we frankly confess that so awful and inscrutable is everything connected with the anguish of the Mediator that we can only be said to catch glimmerings of a fulness which would overwhelm us, we may suppose, with amazement and dread.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2,047.
In this awful utterance of our Substitute, as He looked forward to the Cross, we have,
I. A longing for the baptism. He desired its accomplishment. He knew the results depending on it, and these were so Divinely glorious, so eternally blessed, that He could not but long for it He could not but be straitened until it was accomplished.
II. The consciousness of fear and bitter anguish in contemplating it. He was truly man both in body and soul. As man He shrank from pain, He was weighed down with burdens, He was subject to sorrow; He looked on death as His enemy, and He made supplication with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death. His Divine nature did not relieve Him of one grief, or make His sufferings mere shadows.
III. The straitening in regard to its accomplishment. Like St. Paul, He was in a strait between things which pressed in opposite ways, and which must continue to press till the work was done. (1) He was straitened between the anticipated pain, and the thought of the result of that pain. (2) He was straitened between grace and righteousness. Between His love to the sinner and His love to the Father there was conflict; between His desire to save the former and His zeal to glorify the latter there was something wanting to produce harmony. He knew that this something was at hand, that His baptism of suffering was to be the reconciliation; and He pressed forward to the Cross as one that could not rest till the discordance were removed, as one straitened in spirit till the great reconciliation should be effected. "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!"
H. Bonar, Short Sermons,p. 96.
I. What was the secret of the Saviour's earnestness? (1) His belief in a Divine commission. (2) His belief in the solemnity of time.
II. If these convictions possessed our souls (1) they would dispel the delusions of time; (2) they would overcome the hindrances to submission; (3) they would break down the impediments of fear.
E. L. Hull, Sermons,3rd series, p. 70.
References: Luke 12:50. J. Keble, Sermons for Holy Week,p. 24; G. Davis, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvii., p. 88. Luke 12:51. Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. iv., p. 217. Luke 12:52. R. Thomas, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvi., p. 235.Luke 12:54-57. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xix., No. 1135.