3327. Our Lord’s Heroic Endurance

A Sermon Published On Thursday, November 7, 1912.

For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you be weary, and faint in your minds. {Heb 12:3}

For other sermons on this text:

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1073, “Honeycomb, A” 1064}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3327, “Our Lord’s Heroic Endurance” 3329}

   Exposition on Heb 12:1-17 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3260, “Spiritual Convalescence” 3262 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Heb 12:1-17 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3327, “Our Lord’s Heroic Endurance” 3329 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Heb 12 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3111, “Warning and Encouragement” 3112 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Heb 12 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3206, “Church of the First-born, The” 3207 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Heb 12 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3492, “God’s Word Not to be Refused” 3494 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Isa 35; Heb 12:1-6 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3545, “Our Glorious Leader” 3547 @@ "Exposition"}

1. If we regard the Christian as a racer contending in the great race, we see that he is subject to several dangers. He may give up the race and turn back unless everlasting mercy shall prevent so dreadful a calamity. He may leap out of the track, and leave for a time the only path that leads to victory and reward. Or he may be so clogged and hampered with weights that though he may run, he may run altogether in vain. Or he may be tripped up and fall, and so others may pass him and take the prize of his high calling. But even if he shall carefully have avoided all those dangers, if he shall keep to the course, if he shall be kept on his feet, and if his racing should be of the best kind, yet there is still the possibility — for the best Christian is still flesh and blood — that he may faint.

2. A man when running for a prize exerts every nerve and sinew and muscle: he throws his whole being into the effort; if he may not pass his rival by several lengths, he will at least seek to pass him by a neck, and to this end he strains and strives even to the point of agony, if by any means he may attain to the first place, and so win the reward. Now, while the body is in such a state of tension as that, it is possible that it may suddenly give way: that the overworked frame may not be able to endure the toil and stress, and the man, with the best of intentions, may yet lack the power to carry them out. He may grow weary, and though just now he almost grasped the prize in the fond anticipation of hope, he may fall dead on the ground like a stone through sheer faintness. The apostle knew this, for I do not doubt that even he in his great fight with afflictions, when he had fought with beasts at Ephesus, and when he had passed through trials of every shape and form, he sometimes felt as if he might faint, and might after all be unsuccessful. Hence it is that, instead of merely exhorting us not to faint and telling us not to be weary, he does what is far better and more helpful, he supplies us with a double restorative by which our strength may be recruited. Just as Antaeus is said to have recovered his strength when he touched mother earth, and therefore he could not be killed until Hercules held him in the air and strangled him there, so the Christian is strengthened by the act which the apostle Paul speaks of here — by touching Christ, by looking again to Jesus, by considering him: and the only possibility for the destruction of the Christian would be to separate him from Christ so that he would not be able to derive any strength from considering the great Apostle and High Priest of his profession. The apostle as good as says this to us: “You are very likely to faint in your minds, and to grow weary in your spirits; so if you wish to prevent this, I recommend you to consider the Lord Jesus Christ, to think much of him, to have him constantly before your mind’s eye.” And he is very precise about this, for he not only tells us to consider Christ, but he exhorts us to consider him under a very special aspect, that is, as a sufferer, and from one particular form of trial, namely, “suffering the hostility from sinners against himself.”

3. It seems to me, as if the apostle felt that one of the most likely things to make Christians faint, would be the hostility which they receive from sinners. The persecution, the slander, bad usage, bad return and punishment which they get from an ungodly world; and this would be likely to make them weary at heart in well-doing.

4. So he tells them to look away to the Saviour, bravely enduring the same trials. “Consider him,” he says, “who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you be weary and faint in your minds.”

5. I am not able to speak to you this evening as I gladly would speak. I scarcely feel in the condition either of body or of mind suitable to the study and proclamation of so gracious a topic as the one before us, but in my weakness I desire also to consider him who was wearied and sat on the well, and in speaking to you I would ask his help so that my weakness may not rob you of the blessing.

6. I shall introduce the theme to your attention in this way: first, let us consider the hostility from sinners which Christ endured; secondly, let us for a minute or two consider his endurance of it; and then, thirdly, coming to the fulness of the text, let us consider him who endured such hostility.

7. I. The particular form of trial of which we are invited to think is, THE HOSTILITY FROM UNGODLY MEN WHICH THE SAVIOUR ENDURED.

8. Even early in his ministry he had to endure this. At the very first sermon which he preached in the synagogue of his own town, was he received with joy? No acclamations awaited him who spoke as never a man spoke, but the whole congregation gnashed on him with their teeth, and had it not been for his supernatural escape, they would have taken him to the brow of the hill on which the city was built, and have cast him down headlong. And yet it was not that he had said anything bitter against the town. It was not that he had inveighed against their favourite vices. It was only that he had committed that most unpardonable of all sins, namely, that he had preached the doctrine of divine predestination. They listened to him well enough until he said, “Yes, and many widows were in Israel, but to not one of them was the prophet sent except to the widow of Zarephath,” and when he declared the doctrine of divine sovereignty, when he spoke of the giving of the blessing to the Gentiles, who were the most unlikely individuals, then it was that they gnashed their teeth, and would have cast him down headlong from the brow of the hill. Nothing, it seems, arouses some men’s envy like the doctrines of grace. Throughout our Saviour’s entire life this, which was at the beginning, followed him. His speech teems with wisdom. He pre-eminently carried out his own teaching, “Be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” It is true his teaching was very bold, but at the same time it need not have irritated anyone. Those who took his teaching to themselves, and perceived that he spoke of them, might be irritated apart from that. I suppose that never did man put the truth in a better form, or after a fashion less likely to provoke prejudice, but the Pharisees were always opposing him. They endeavoured to catch him in his speech. Sometimes it is puzzling questions about the law with some woman in the midst. At another time it is something about the government of the country. The Herodians joined with the Pharisees in the endeavour to embarrass, to perplex him, to catch him in his talk, to make him an offender for a word. They plotted to draw him out in speech, somehow or other, so that they might get some sentence they could use against him. Never did they listen with candour, never regarded him with any honesty, but dogging his footsteps like bloodhounds, waiting for the first opportunity when they might tear him to pieces. So, during his lifetime, he endured such hostility from sinners against himself.

9. And you know, besides this, how men of the baser kind, were hostile to Christ’s life. They said he was a drunken man and a wine-bibber, a friend of Publicans and sinners. Those who sat in the gates spoke against him, and he became the song of the drunkard. Reproaches fell on him, the reproaches of those who reproached without a cause. Our Lord Jesus Christ was perpetually, constantly, and entirely the butt of slander and of scorn. He was permanently standing in the pillory to be badly treated by the hands of those whom his power had created, and whom his own love had spared! What a “hostility from sinners against himself!”

10. But I think what was in the apostle’s mind especially, was what came at the time when he was betrayed by Judas. Then, brethren, the old serpent vented his worst venom. They could not find witnesses that agreed together, though they found many false witnesses, yet even then, none of them agreed together, until they had at last bribed two, their evidence being words which the Saviour had used in a certain sense wrested to another sense in order to try to get it to be strong enough to sustain the charge which they brought against him, which was neither more nor less than this: In Pilate’s court, the civil court, treason; in the court of Annas and Caiaphas, the ecclesiastical court, blasphemy. What hostility from sinners against himself was this: being Almighty God to be accused of blasphemy, and being truly the King of the Jews to be accused of treason! I do not wonder that the apostle should have said, “Such hostility from sinners!”

11. Just let us look, then, at this hostility from sinners which happened to him at the last, and I think you will see its grievousness when you observe, first, the grossness of the charges alleged against him. Before Pilate’s court it was no minor offence with which he was charged. It was treason — the highest offence in the category of the Roman law. He had made himself to be another king in opposition to Caesar, who was the world’s monarch! This was a very gross charge to bring against the Saviour, and more especially because he, of all men, must be acquitted of anything like sedition. How often did he hide himself when multitudes who had been fed by his bounty would have made him a king. And how often when his own disciples were anticipating the coming of a great earthly kingdom, did he set himself directly in opposition to all their ideas, and taught them that he came to suffer rather than to reign, and that his kingdom was not of this world, not a kingdom that would touch Caesar’s kingdom, nor an empire that would interfere with the kings of the earth. He was not only free from treason, but, was throughout his life such an opponent of it, such an abstainer from interfering with the politics of men at all, that to charge him with this was a gross and deliberately wicked charge.

12. As for blasphemy, his reverence of God was supreme, he had laid aside his own glory as Deity in order to honour his Father in man’s redemption, and was even now, when so vilely slandered, ready to be obedient even to death. “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” is God’s witness to him, and yet his enemies say that he blasphemed the Infinite Jehovah!

13. Now, dear friends, I can conceive that some of you have been pure and unblemished in your lives, and yet suddenly you might find yourselves accused, not of a minor and trivial offence, and you say, “Oh! what a trial to be accused of this!” Well, consider him who endured just such hostility, who was accused of a capital crime, and of blasphemy, in the same breath! Who are we who we should not be called Beelzebub when the Master of the house has been so named? Consider the hostility towards Christ in this respect, and it may give you comfort.

14. Let me say further, while speaking of this hostility from sinners, that it was not only a very gross charge, but we are sometimes apt to think that a charge which is unfounded is very cruel to us. I have heard people say sometimes, and I have laughed when I have heard them say it, “Sir, Mr. So-and-so has charged me with such and such a thing, but I am quite innocent. I should not have minded if I had been guilty.” Then I have thought, Ah! then you ought to have minded it, but being innocent you have no reason to mind it at all. But is it not so, that the more unfounded a charge is the more deeply does it seem to cut us from the very insolence of its cruelty? Well, then, you know how innocent the Saviour was: the next time you feel innocent when you are accused like this “consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself,” and who had to suffer both gross charges and unfounded ones.

15. Moreover, these charges were sustained by words which had been deliberately wrested. And sometimes a man has to say to himself, “Now, I never said anything of the kind, and my enemies know I did not; they have left a word out here, and added another word in there, and have cruelly misrepresent me; they have made me say what I did not even think, and what I did think, and what I did say, they have so utterly altered that it is no longer mine.” Now, you are apt to grow very faint in your mind after such a thing as this occurs, but you will remember that just such hostility from sinners the Saviour endured. The only ground or presence on which they brought these charges against him, was that he had uttered certain words concerning his body which were construed to relate to the temple. So, dear friends, do not be greatly troubled, as though it were a strange thing that had happened to you. If your good words are taken out of your mouth, and mischief is made of them, still bear it without bitterness or retaliation, for so he also suffered the “hostility from sinners against himself.”

16. There was too, certainly, a sting about these hostilities arising from the place where they were brought. They were brought before the court of judicature. It is not likely that any of us have had to smart in this direction, but we may have had to feel this: “I should not have minded if this hostility had come against me at home in the family, but it has come in my business where it will injure me.” Or it may have been the opposite. Perhaps you have had to say: “I would not care if this man had said such and such in the outward world, but he has poisoned the very home of my joy and my peace.” Well, dear friends, the Saviour had this hostility brought against him, and in a worse place, it seems to me, than home, or any of the places of commerce, for he was actually brought before the courts of his own native land, as well as before the courts of the foreign invader who was then dominating the country.

17. It is not likely that this will come to you in these times as God’s people, but, in the olden times the saints had to often attend before kings and princes for Christ’s sake, but if ever this should be your lot, you will then fall back on this as your invigoration, and consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself.

18. Above and beyond all this, however, in the hostility which Christ endured was the malice which suggested it. They did not falsely accuse him out of mere error, but it was out of malice that had determined the destruction of this innocent man. “Whether we can accuse him honestly or not,” they said, “it is not fitting that such a fellow should live.” It was malice against one who had never done them a wrong, one who had healed their sick, and raised their dead; one who had scattered bounties with both his hands along their streets, and who had made their wilderness like Eden, and their desert like the garden of the Lord; who had gathered together the sheep without a shepherd that were scattered on every hill; had fed the hungry, had comforted the mourner, had proclaimed liberty to the captive; had shone on the Holy Land and made it truly whole; had shone on Palestine like a newly-risen sun, the Sun of Righteousness with healing beneath his wings. He might well say, “For which of these works do you stone me? You have hated me without a cause.” Well, now, suppose that to be your case. Suppose you have to say, “I should not mind this charge, but I can see deliberate malice in it; my enemies seek to destroy me, and to pervert my way out of a diabolical hatred for my soul; they attack me to eat up my flesh; they surround me like dogs to devour me; oh! how hard is my lot!” Come, Christian, come, consider him; consider him! You are in the same plight as your Master. It always gives comfort to a common soldier to see the officers in the same position and enduring the same hardships as himself; with the shots flying everywhere all around them. And when I see the arrows of wicked hostility flying around our blessed Lord and King, I feel it would be a shame for me to have an easier or safer position than he knew.

19. So I might dwell, for it is a very tempting subject, on the hostility from sinners which the Saviour endured, and I think a consideration of this would save us from being weary and faint in our minds. But we must pass on to the second point.

20. II. Now we have to consider — THE SAVIOUR’S ENDURANCE of the hostility from sinners against himself.

21. How did he endure this severe trouble? Brethren, he endured it with exceptional courage and holy equanimity. It is wonderful to see him in the first conflicts which he experienced during his ministry — how calm he is. If we are made warm in temper, we are off our guard, and are only half men. The Saviour was never taken like that. You observe him. They spin their webs like spiders, and they think to entangle him. So they would such poor flies as we are; but he looks on and sees it all, and then sweeps every cobweb away before him, and yet he answers no angry word.

22. Sometimes he makes them answer themselves, but then he turns it against themselves. Sometimes he makes them confess themselves defeated, and then with a solemn emphasis, as on the occasion when he said, “He who is without fault among you, let him cast the first stone,” and they, being condemned by their own consciences, went out, beginning at the oldest even to the youngest. Everyone left and went their way. At the last, however, you perceive that the hostility from sinners is borne by the Saviour in this way — with entire silence! Never was there such silence as that — the grandest silence ever known. It is an awful silence! It seems to have in it something of contempt, but yet more of omnipotent patience. He will not answer. Why should he answer such as they are? He will not answer; if he answered it might be their doom, and therefore he spares them. “He is led as a lamb to the slaughter, and just as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he did not open his mouth!” Brethren, we are generally too fast with our tongues when anyone accuses us. I am afraid we are not always so quick to defend our Master, as we are to defend ourselves. If there is a false accusation in the newspapers one’s finger wants to be at the pen to answer it, which of all things is the most foolish. Let them write; let them write who wish, until they have used up their ink, but the wise man does not answer them a word. But we are always so ready if anyone brings a false accusation against us to say, “It is not so; you lie,” or to make some sharp reply like that. Oh, that we could consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, and endured it with the holy patience of silence! There was a crest and motto which some of the old Reformers used to use, and which I commend to any of you who are under this trial. It was an anvil with a number of hammers, all broken, lying around; and this was the motto when translated, “The anvil breaks many hammers.” And how does it do this? Not by striking again: oh, no! the anvil simply endures the blows: just keeps its place, and lets the hammers fall, fall, fall until they are broken on their handles. And this is exactly what the Saviour did. They, the accusers, were the hammers, he was the anvil; and who shall say that the anvil did not break the hammers in pieces, that the silence of the Saviour was not far more eloquent than all the clamour of the evil multitude? “He held his peace,” it is said of him. May it also be said of you and of me, and when we have to suffer the similar trials, may we bear them, like the Saviour, in silence.

23. Yet the silence of the Saviour is not all. We ought to admire the patient serenity with which he so beautifully held his peace, but ought we not also to admire the way in which he unswervingly kept his course? Many a man would have turned either to the right hand or to the left, but the heroic Saviour keeps right on. Ah, beloved, how many of us would have given up the work altogether! We might have said, “I came to bless these men, and they reject me; they despise me; they mistreat me; let them go then, unblessed; these graceless people shall receive no blessing from me.” But not so, our brave Lord. He came into the world to save sinners, and he kept on just at that one thing, and let no rebuffs turn him aside. The zeal of God’s house had eaten him up, and he kept straight on in the saving of sinners, and never turned back, let sinners do what they wish in the way of opposing him. He never wavered for one moment from his one life-object, the saving of their souls.

24. Now, let it be so with you so that you may be kept from growing weary. If in the Sunday School, a class seems unmanageable; if the boys cannot be taught; if the girls seem so giddy; if in the little village station the hearers seem so dull, so inattentive, so careless, and so forgetful; if in any other sphere of labour you do not seem to be appreciated, but to have very serious rebuffs, never mind. These are nothing compared with the hostility which the Saviour endured, and yet he never swerved, and therefore do not swerve either. Let the divine life that is in you urge you constantly onwards. Make no provision for the flesh nor for its ease. If indeed it is your life-work go and complete it; if you feel that God has called you to be the stern advocate of the right, go onward, and vow still to go onward by the love of Christ, and let nothing stop you. If hunger can break through stone walls, much more shall a hunger to do the Master’s will. To a man who can dare and do because he feels that he is consecrated and destined to work, nothing is impossible. You, too, shall break through a wall. You, too, shall dash through a host. A man who believes that God has called him to work would tunnel through the globe itself before he would be turned from his purpose, and would thread the stars on strings before he would be disappointed in his great life-work. Only feel this, and never turn aside, but remember how Christ endured such hostility from sinners against himself.

25. And, once more, I think it is worth while to notice, that while the Saviour did not swerve, he did not even seem to pause. He did not stop to take a breath. All these people came rushing around him, and tried to push him out of his course, but he did not even stop, I say, to take a breath. All that they did, only rather quickened his pace, if possible, and made him even more set on his great purpose. So let it be with us. We take far too much notice, I think, of some of our troubles and oppositions. I sometimes quote in your hearing those brave lines of Anne Askew. {a} Poor soul! after having been racked to torture, many times, you still hear her singing, —

   I am not she to lyst

      My ancher to let fall:

   For every drizzling myst;

      My shipe’s substantiall.

Such a substantial vessel did she seem to ride in that she was not going to let her anchor out. The being racked, as she cruelly was, was no “drizzling myst,” I think, but a very horrible tempest which might well make some of us afraid, even to death. But then, we make so much of little things. Our forefathers pulled up sycamore trees by the roots, but we are afraid if only one or two sere leaves blow wildly across our path. They spoke to mountains and said, “Be moved from here, and be cast into the midst of the sea”; but we sit down and murmur over molehills as though they were Alps, the summits of which we should never to able to reach. We are a puny race, I fear, but may the Lord feed us and we shall then grow stronger, and though it does not add a cubit to our stature yet we shall grow spiritually, and we shall grow in this way if we consider how Christ bore the mighty trials which happened to him. He was bowed down, he staggered, and sweat great drops of blood when he was under the deep depression of his own spirit, caused by our sins being laid on him. Even a strong man may quail there, but before Herod or Pilate, or his Jewish accusers, or ribald and mocking men, he never showed a sign of faltering. No, not he; but he “endured such hostility from sinners against himself.”

26. Consider Christ like this, then, and you need not be, and never will be, weary.

27. III. But now, lastly; the great thing is — TO CONSIDER HIM.

28. There is the point of the text. We are not only to consider the hostility, and his endurance of it, but to consider him. To consider his endurance is good, but the striking point should be to consider the dignity of him who endured like this. We are told by the historians of Alexander the Great that it very much cheered and assisted the troops in their long and weary marches from Persia, sometimes without food and water, for many hours under a burning sun, that they always saw Alexander walking on foot, too. The Persian monarch would have been riding in some dainty chariot, or in the royal palanquin, {b} reclining on beds of down, fanned by hands unknown, and attended by his many fair damsels; but there was Alexander, covered with dust and splashed with mire, going through the ditches, climbing the hills, with his face all bronzed and browned. He would suffer hunger and thirst like the rest of them, and when the bowl of water is brought to the mighty monarch he passes it on to some common soldier who is even more thirsty than himself. It was said that one Macedonian was worth ten thousand Persians because the king was with them, and they would dash to battle and to death for such a monarch as that! Now consider Christ your King — the King of earth, before whom all other kings should renounce their diadems! Consider him, the King of heaven, whom to serve is the seraph’s highest glory. The King of Hell, before whom the fiends and dragons of the pit gnash their teeth in fear! He, even he, “endured such hostility from sinners against himself!”

   Christ leads us through no darker rooms

   Than he went through before.

The dignity of the Saviour has invested suffering, and especially brave endurance, with great honour and glory. There is a halo all around our griefs since Jesus Christ endured them first.

29. It is not only in his greatness that I think he should impress us, but also in the perfection of his nature. He endured, and yet he was perfect. How then ought I to endure, who am so imperfect? He without a fault, smarts; a Son without sin, but not without the scourge. Consider him, then, you imperfect one. When the coals are hot, you mass of ore with so much of alloy in you, consider that the pure gold felt the fire, and how much more should you? Consider, you vessel defiled and filthy, the alabaster vase was washed in a sea of trouble, and how much more shall such a one as you are be washed. If he who was all gold needed go through the flame, how much more shall you?

30. Now, there is yet a further point out of which the apostle, I think, would have us dig some delight, namely, that we are to consider him, not only in his character, but now, in his present position. It is true he endured such hostility from sinners against himself. It is true he was delivered to be crucified. It is true, sorrowfully true, that he was despised and rejected by men. But what of it now? What of it now? Oh, see him up there! But your poor eyes cannot bear this dazzling sight! Brighter than the sun is his glory! Grander than heaven itself is his splendour! There he sits, King of kings and Lord of lords! Where is the mockery now? The shame and the spittle — where are they now? The crown of thorns, the vinegar, the sponge, the nails — where are they now? Our Lord is glorious all over. Now crowns become the victor’s brow, and on his head are many crowns. Christian, as he was, so are you also in this world, and as he is, so shall you also be. Christ’s triumph is the triumph of every true and right principle; it is the triumph of every true and right heart. You will have to suffer for it. There is no victory to be achieved nowadays except in the same way as the Saviour achieved it, namely, by suffering. But is that not Christ’s greatest triumph which he achieved on Golgotha? The triumphal chariot in which he subdued sin and death, and hell, was none other than his own cross. So, beloved, we must expect to conquer, but it must be by shame. You must expect to triumph, but it must be by being made to suffer, and by being despised. But you shall triumph after all. In the day when the trumpet sounds, when —

   From beds of dust and silent clay,

   To realms of everlasting day,

every obscure and despised child of God shall awaken; then it shall be seen whom God delights to honour. You are in the minority now: you stand alone: you are mocked by cruel enemies, and the ribald world asks you, “Where is your God?”

31. You are by yourself now, a solitary protester in the midst of a multitude who are going astray. But the tables shall soon be turned. You shall not be in a minority then, but in a great majority, in the day when shouts of triumph shall be heard for the truth and for the right, and when shame and confusion of face shall be the portion of those who are now the despisers. They shall then wonder and perish and ask the rocks to hide them and the hills to cover their confusion. He endured, and yet he mounted to his throne amid the shouts of angels and acclamations of heaven. So also shall you, and therefore consider him in this light lest you be weary and faint in your minds.

32. And then, last of all, you must consider that he who went through this to get to his crown is very man akin to us all. He loves us tenderly. He considers us now. He knows all the sorrows that tempt men, for he has felt the same. You are not alone: HE is with you. Are there three of you in the furnace? No, there is a fourth, and that fourth is the Son of God. Into your griefs he enters, for his own griefs have put into his hand a master-key to fit the locks of every human grief that ever can be known. He can comfort us with all consolation since he himself has passed through all tribulation. He is never forgetful of you. He is with you now. If you smart he smarts. If you are despised, he suffers. “Paul, Paul, why do you persecute me?” he cried. Why, it was only a few poor men and women being haled away to prison or to be scourged in the synagogue, but Christ takes it as being done to himself. “Why do you persecute me?” Oh, Christian, with such nearness to Christ, and such sympathy flowing from him, still be of good courage; then hear him say, “In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them.” So may you lift up the hands that hang down, and confirm the feeble knees, and go on your way rejoicing in him!

33. I wish you could all take this text home, but some of you cannot, and here is the sorrow of it, that you should live and die with such rare comforts at your door, but you cannot take them! Oh, sinners, flee to Christ. Put your trust in him, and you shall soon be able to find consolation in every part of his life and in every trait of his death-pang. May God bless you very graciously, for his name’s sake. Amen.

{a} Anne Askew: (1520/1521-July 16, 1546) was an English poet and Protestant who was persecuted as a heretic. She is the only woman on record to have been tortured in the Tower of London before being burnt at the stake. See Explorer "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Askew"
{b} Palanquin: A covered litter or conveyance, usually for one person, used in India and other Eastern countries, consisting of a large box with wooden shutters like Venetian blinds, carried by four or six (rarely two) men by means of poles projecting before and behind. OED.

Exposition By C. H. Spurgeon {Heb 12:1-17}

1, 2. Therefore since we are also surrounded with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

We can have no doubt about the great truths which we believe, for we are surrounded with a cloud of witnesses. The former chapter gives us the names of many of these glorious bearers of testimony, who all by faith achieved great wonders and so bore witness to the truth of God. Having therefore no room for doubt let us throw our whole strength into our high calling, and run with patience, having our eyes always fixed on him, the beginner and finisher of our faith, who has run the race himself and won the prize, and now sits down on the right hand of the throne of God.

3, 4. For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds. You have not yet resisted to blood, striving against sin.

It has never come to a bloody sweat with you as with him, nor to death on a cross, as in his case. Shall the disciple be above his master or the servant above his lord?

5, 6. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to children, “My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked by him: for whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives.”

With doting parents it is not so: often him whom his mother loves is allowed to do as he pleases and to escape chastening; but this is folly. The love of God is higher and wiser than the partialities of parents. “Whom the Lord loves he chastens”; it is a sign of his favour to us that he takes the trouble to remove our love for sin by sharp and bitter pain.

7-10. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father does not chasten? But if you are without chastisement, of which all are partakers, then you are bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live? For they truly for a few days chastened as seemed best to them; but he for our profit, so that we might be partakers of his holiness.

What a bright light this sheds on all affliction, that it is for our profit, that by it we are made partakers of the holiness of God. Oh, blessed result from a little smart and bitter.

11-13. Now no chastening for the present seems to be joyful, but grievous: nevertheless afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are exercised by it. Therefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest what is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.

Look at chastisement then in the divine light, and be comforted, be strengthened, be healed of the infirmity of your weakness; be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

14. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:

“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” A man’s god is like himself, and until he becomes like God we cannot see God; we misunderstand God until we have been trained to imitate him.

15-17. Looking diligently lest any man fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and many are defiled by it; lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For you know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.

It was done and could not be undone. Does it not seem strange that after speaking to us about being God’s sons and favoured with his love, yet even then, in that clear blaze of light, there comes in this caution against fornication and profanity. Ah me! how near a foul spot may be to lily-like whiteness. How Judas may sit side by side with favoured and true-hearted disciples, indeed, and may be near the Master, too. “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” And, oh, friends, if at any time the pottage should seem very sweet and we should be very hungry, if the world’s gain should be almost necessary for our livelihood, and we are tempted to do an unrighteous thing to get it, let us take care, for Esau could not undo the terrible act of selling his birthright, neither could we if we were permitted to do so. May God grant we may be spared from such a dreadful crime!