Man of Sorrows

Open your Bibles to Isaiah 53:3 and keep your place there please.

Time does’n not permit me to speak of all the tragedies that caused Spurgeon’s sorrows, but I’ll speak about just two significant ones.

The Fire at Surry gardens music hall...

On October 19, 1856, He was 22-year-old and preaching to a crowd of 12,000 people. The hall was chosen because there were no other venues that could accommodate the numbers that wanted to hear the preaching of the word from this young man.

At 22 years old you’ve barely figured out life, let alone have the responsibility Spurgeon was holding at this time.

He began to preach, and somewhere in the back of the hall hundreds of people began to rush for the exit. Spurgeon did not know this at the time, but later found out that 7 people were killed from trampling and 28 injured.

It was a setup. There was no fire. There was no emergency. Enemies of Spurgeon and the Gospel planted themselves in the packed hall to claim that there was a fire, provoke the chaos, and ruin the reputation of this young preacher.

Spurgeon later recalls it in his autobiography.

"On a night which time will never erase from my memory, large numbers of my congregation were scattered, many of them wounded and some killed, by the malicious act of wicked men. Strong amid danger, I battled against the storm; nor did my spirit yield to the overwhelming pressure while my courage could reassure the wavering, or confirm the bold; but when, like a whirlwind, the destruction was overpast, when the whole of its devastation was visible to my eye, who can conceive the anguish of my sad spirit? I refused to be comforted; tears were my meat by day, and dreams my terror by night. I felt as I had never felt before. My mind lay, like a wreck upon the sand, incapable of its usual motion. I was in a strange land, and a stranger in it. My Bible, once my daily food, was but a hand to lift the sluices of my woe. . . . Then came 'the slander of many'--barefaced fabrications, libelous insinuations, and barbarous accusations, These alone might have scooped out the last drop of consolation from my cup of happiness; but the worst had come to the worst, and the utmost malice of the enemy could do no more. Lower they cannot sink who are already in the nethermost depths.

Spurgeon’s Sorrows, at least in terms of his ministry, may have begun here, but it was not the end.

His Wife, Suzannah wrote...“My beloved’s anguish was so deep and violent, that reason seemed to totter in her throne, and we sometimes feared that he would never preach again.”

Beginning at age 33, Spurgeon would suffer from a burning kidney inflammation called Bright’s Disease, as well as gout, rheumatism, and neuritis.

So we have emotional pain and physical pain.

Being a man with a high view of God and Scripture, and inspired by men like John Bunyan, and John Gill, both of whom were strong Calvinists, and Bunyan, a man who suffered greatly for Christ, Spurgeon was not afraid to stand for the truth even if it would cause him pain.

One example of this would be what resulted from what might have been most popular sermon he preached, at least in terms of its distribution. From the title alone you’ll be set back in your seat by the raw power and truth. The sermon was called “Baptismal Regeneration”.

But what you need to know is that this was a direct attack on the Anglican Church of England. The predominant denomination at the time believed that when an infant was baptized there was regenerating power in the baptismal, and no faith necessary....and here was this preacher, bringing in 10 to 15,000 people to hear the Word of God, and publishing 25,000 copies of his sermons each week in London. This was no small threat to the state church.

So you can imagine the attacks launched against Spurgeon from all around, countrymen, church leaders, government, the immense pressure on his family, his marriage, children, and his own soul.

In 1887 Spurgeon wrote what became a bombshell in England. In the Sword and the Trowel publication, three anonymous letters had be written by a friend of Spurgeon’s calling our the downgrade and the slippage of the Baptist Union, a union of churches the he had proudly been a part of. Spurgeon put his name on the 4th article that was published, entitled “Another Word on the Downgrade.”

Spurgeon wrote…”No lover of the gospel can conceal from himself the fact that the days are evil. We are willing to make a large discount from our apprehensions on the score of natural timidity, the caution of age, and the weakness produced by pain; but yet our solemn conviction is that things are much worse in many churches than they seem to be, and are rapidly tending downward. Read those newspapers which represent the Broad School of Dissent, and ask yourself, How much farther could they go? What doctrine remains to be abandoned? What other truth to be the object of contempt? A new religion has been initiated, which is no more Christianity than chalk is cheese; and this religion, being destitute of moral honesty, palms itself off as the old faith with slight improvements, and on this plea usurps pulpits which were erected for gospel preaching. The Atonement is scouted, the inspiration of Scripture is derided, the Holy Spirit is degraded into an influence, the punishment of sin is turned into fiction, and the resurrection into a myth, and yet these enemies of our faith expect us to call them brethren, and maintain a confederacy with them!”

5 years later he died at the age of 57.

The Baptist Union had turned on him, students from his pastor’s college turned on him, he lost friends, and even his own brother turned on him. His brother, James Spurgeon, seconded the motion made by the Baptist Union to pass through a compromised doctrinal statement, which in essence was a vote against Spurgeon.

These were some of Spurgeon’s Sorrows. Consider the Apostle Paul’s words after he recounted his many sorrows.... 2 Corinthians 11:28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.

Spurgeon said in an early sermon on Job, as he taught his flock about suffering...

“Hast thou never thought that none can be like the Man of Sorrow unless they have sorrows too?”

And so we take an important turn here in my talk, having looked through Spurgeon, we set our eyes to the all important Christ. In Isaiah’s prophesy of the coming Messiah, he gives us a title that is like no other, and few titles are as inviting.

He is King, and we worship him. He is Creator, and we are in awe. He is provider, and we thank Him.

But he is the Man of Sorrows, and what is our response to this? Because we know why He sorrowed, we are all able to approach him with hearts swelling with comfort, and strength, and peace.

Jesus is not simply a man who had sorrows, or a even sorrowful man, but the text calls him a MAN OF SORROWS, as though it were an intended and essential part of his being in order to redeem those who bear grief. Read it with me in Isaiah 53:3...

Isaiah 53:3 ... “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

v4. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5  But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

As Spurgeon preached a message on this passage in 1873, he looked out over his flock and said “There are heart-breaks in this house this morning, which, could they find a tongue, would fill our heart with agony.”

If our heart-breaks could find a tongue.

Nobody here has the power to give your pains and griefs that voice, but God’s Word declares to us that the Christian has a King who can, and who is a high priest for us, baring our griefs, relating to them perfectly in his incarnation, so that he might bring us to the Father. At one time alienated because of sin, but now brought near because of His righteousness imputed to us by faith.

And this one, this Savior we come to for salvation, is who we can still come to today, and He is this.

Can I just remind your heart, that at whatever level you are facing sorrow, and what it has caused you, and the many things you have done to cope and to heal, that Isaiah 53 is still true. Can we just rejoice in that, and thank God in our hearts for this?

What were a few of Christ’s sorrows?

Let’s begin with His taking on human flesh....what was that like? To leave the glory of perfection and Heaven where there is no wrong. He did not just appear one day as a full grown man ready to conquer the world, (though he could have) but chose to do what all of us had to do, and be born through a mother…a sinful mother. Not to perfect parents, but parents who made mistakes, and failed, and had their own needs.

“Born in a stable, sorrows recieved him, and only on the cross at His last breath did sorrows part with him.”

““a man of sorrows,” for the variety of his woes; he was a man not of sorrow only, but of “sorrows” All the sufferings of the body and of the soul were known to him; the sorrows of the man who actively struggles to obey; the sorrows of the man who sits still, and passively endures. The sorrows of the lofty he knew, for he was the King of Israel; the sorrows of the poor he knew, for he “had not where to lay his head.” Sorrows relative, and sorrows personal; sorrows mental, and sorrows spiritual; sorrows of all kinds and degrees assailed him. Affliction emptied his quiver upon him, making his heart the target for all conceivable woes”

So that we do not simply hang our heads in grief, it is important that we look at the reason for it all, the reason for His grief, and be reminded that it was Christ’s acquaintance with grief that shows us the depth of God’s love for us.

You will see it right there in the text, that for every pang of sorrow laid upon Christ, we receive blessing and benefit.

In v1, Isaiah began by announcing the true absurdity of it all… “Who has believed this?”

and then in v2. The unlikely hope of the gospel, that out of the dry and barren ground of the worlds sin, and Israel’s long rejection of God, would grow up this young plant - life amid barrenness.

But He wasn’t anything wonderful to look upon. His majesty and glory on earth would not be in how he looked…NOT the outward beauty that so often draws our materialistic hearts, but a beauty revealed in the mystery of the redemption of sinners like us.

v4 Do we esteem him? What do we do for Christ? Apart from His grace we reject him…Psalm 22:7 prophesied that “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;”

Look at the list we see building before us...

Pierced - transgressions forgiven

Crushed - our iniquities covered

Chastised by the Father - and we have peace with God through Jesus our lord.

We go astray like wandering sheep, loving our way more than His way, and even that iniquity, the iniquity of us all was laid upon him.

Did he complain? No, he opened not His mouth.

Silent, like a sheep before its shearers, like a lamb led to the slaughter - He did not open his mouth.

We could go on and on, but what is it that we need to learn from this - both the Sorrows of Spurgeon, this man who, by his own mouth said… “I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me against the Rock of Ages.”

What we learn afresh this morning is how much he loves us, and how much we ought to love Him.

All the griefs you bare, or have born, or will ever bare… you did not volunteer for. Not so with Jesus…Spurgeon said “He could have returned in an instant to the royalties of Heaven and to the bliss of the upper world…But he would not. He remained to the end, out of love for us, grief’s acquaintance.”