Matthew 17

Chapter 17. The Crown of ThornsAnd then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they said. (Matthew 27:29)Our present study will lead us through the scenes of the garden, the judgment hall, the cross and the tomb. But true to the great design of the Gospel of Matthew to reveal the Lord Jesus continually as the King, we shall not see in these scenes the signs of weakness and defeat, but rather the still more signal evidence of victory and power. Even in His bitterest sorrows and His darkest hours, we shall find that Jesus Christ is still the Son of David and the Son of God. The loftiest greatness is not achieved by mere gifts of power; it needs the touch of suffering to add the supreme glory of heroism in the hour of His shame and agony and death. It has been said in language most striking and yet most true: “Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus died like a God.” With this as our underlying thought, let us gather up the scenes of His final sufferings and the light that shines from the “crown of thorns” (Matthew 27:29). His Dedication

1. The Shadow of the Cross (26:2) It has been said most truly of human ignorance of the fixture that “The veil which hides our future is woven by the hand of mercy.” It would multiply tenfold all our trials if we could see them before they come, but with Jesus Christ it was entirely different. The shadow of the cross overhung all His earthly life. Day by day He saw it drawing nearer as He passed on, exclaiming: “But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!” (Luke 12:50). So we find Him in this passage saying to His disciples: “As you know, the Passover is two days away—and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified” (Matthew 26:2). His death, therefore, was no mere accident, which came to Him through the superior power of His enemies, but a foreordained result which He had known from the beginning and toward which all His earthly life had been converging. What a dignity and a glory this adds to His voluntary sufferings. He had come to the world to die, and now death could bring Him no surprise and no defeat. Caiaphas
2. The Plot of His Enemies (26:3-5) Next we see the conspiracy of His murderers. It was led by the religious rulers of the people and was hatched in the very palace of Caiaphas, the high priest. The ancient Levitical types had provided that the sin offering should be presented by the leaders of the people for the whole nation. In exact fulfillment of this, it was thus divinely ordered that the death of Jesus Christ should be the official act of the Jewish rulers. Not only so, in the narrative given us in the Gospel of John we are even told it was revealed to Caiaphas that it was necessary that “one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish” (John 11:50), and in gathering the council together to plan for the arrest and condemnation of Christ this was the very reason that he alleged for so doing. The death of Christ thus becomes the exact fulfillment of God’s ancient plan and the men that brought it about to gratify their own personal vindictiveness were unconsciously fulfilling “God’s set purpose and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23). Thus again the death of Jesus Christ is lifted above any mere accident or human aspect and placed in the divine program of redemption. Mary
3. The Anointing of Mary (Matthew 26:6-13) This beautiful incident in the house of Simon, the leper, who was probably the husband of Martha at Bethany, was more than a sentimental expression of Mary’s love to her Teacher and Lord. It was an act of faith, a faith which had already detected the great purpose of His life and understood as none other had that He had come to die. The Lord expressed this very delicately and yet distinctly as He vindicated her from the unworthy and harsh criticism of Judas and the others and claimed her personal gift as a service accepted for Himself, and added: “She has done a beautiful thing to me…. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial” (Acts 26:10, Acts 26:12). Here again, we have the hand of God above the hand of man and we see the divine purpose moving calmly on and choosing every instrument and every incident to set it forth and work it out as God’s great purpose of love and grace in spite of man’s purpose of cruel hatred. How impressively this incident reminds us that there are ministries our Lord asks for Himself alone which are higher far than all our works of charity and gifts for the poor and the church. Our highest service should be for Him. Are we pouring the incense of our love and worship at His feet? Still again, we are reminded that there are gifts which may be kept too late. Mary had purposed reserving this until after His death and then using it to anoint His lifeless body, but an opportunity came to give it to Him while He was still alive, and her act of timely love was lifted to the dignity of an eternal priesthood and a ministry of which even the Master said: “I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her” (Acts 26:13). Judas
4. The Shadow of the Betrayer (26:14-16, 27:3-8) Over against the beauty and glory of Mary’s love falls the dark shadow of Judas Iscariot. But even Judas’ treachery is made to rebound to the honor of Christ. His very act was but the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy from Zechariah (Zechariah 11:12) specifying the very amount that was paid for his crime. Even Judas was compelled, before the tragedy was over, to come back in a fit of remorse and despair and throw his ill-gotten silver at the feet of the rulers and bear a testimony to the innocence of Christ: “I have sinned… for I have betrayed innocent blood” (Matthew 27:4). As he went out into the darkness that was never to end and hurled himself to destruction, even Judas became one of the long array of witnesses that gather around the cross of Jesus Christ and add to its eternal glory. The Paschal Iamb
5. The Passover Feast (26:17-25) This ancient ordinance, the most sacred of all the national feasts of Israel, had for its central figure the slaying of a lamb and the sprinkling of its blood on the door posts of their homes, followed by the eating of the flesh of the lamb. This also must bear witness to Jesus Christ. In the providence of God, it was so ordered that His sacrificial death should come during the Paschal Feast, and thus He is set forth as Himself the Paschal Lamb, to whose shed and sprinkled blood all the types of Judaism had looked forward for more than a thousand years. What a testimony to that cross which to the eyes of men seemed a badge of shame and failure, but which stands out as the very glory of the Old Testament as well as the New. The Lord’s Supper
6. The Memorial Feast of the Lord’s Supper (26:26-30) The Passover supper blended with a new ordinance which was henceforth to perpetuate the memory of His death among His followers and to be known in the future as “The Lord’s Supper.” The very object of this ordinance is to set forth, not His life, nor His works, nor His miraculous power, but His suffering and dying love. “You proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26) is the apostle’s description of the deep and sacred meaning of the Lord’s Supper. Other earthly names are remembered and celebrated by the day of their birth; the day of our Savior’s birth is uncertain, and our Christmas celebration is but a guess as to the time, and certainly claims no divine authority for its observance, but the commemoration of Christ’s death is the most sacred duty of every Christian and lifts the Cross of Christ so high that it stands: “Towering o’er the rocks of time.” Gethsemane
7. The Cup That Passed (Matthew 26:36-46) The agony in Gethsemane has usually been regarded wholly in the light of a tragedy. It is customary for preachers to quote it as the deepest and saddest evidence of the Savior’s humiliation and sorrow. But there is another aspect in which it is raised to the height of a great and glorious victory. There is a passage in Hebrews (Hebrews 5:7) which tells of some occasion when “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” There is no occasion to which this can reasonably apply except that hour of agony in Gethsemane. If it applies to that, then it is certain that Christ’s prayer in the garden that night was heard and the cup did pass from Him. We have been accustomed to tell people that the Lord Jesus prayed in vain, and that, like Him, we must submit to the will of God even when our prayers are not answered. But if this passage in Hebrews be true, His prayer was answered and the thing He dreaded did not come. How are we to explain it? What was the thing He dreaded and escaped? It seems very plain that it was the fear that He should die then and there under the pressure and agony and through the power of Satan; that He should be crushed by the intolerable burden that He was unable to bear and should be hindered from accomplishing His sacrifice in the true order of God’s time and plan. Satan resolved to crush Him and kill Him before the time, and it was against this that the Lord struggled and prayed and won the victory, for there appeared an angel strengthening Him; and He rose up from the conflict and went forth in the power of God to pass through the scenes of the judgment hall and the protracted sufferings of the cross. Then, in due time, after every Scripture had been fulfilled, He laid down His life voluntarily as He Himself had said: “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father” (John 10:18). In this view, the agony in Gethsemane is one of the most glorious victories of the Master’s life, and encourages us to claim a similar triumph when Satan would kill us before our work is done. By entering into His faith and triumph, we can live on and labor on until we “finish the race and complete the task” (Acts 20:24) and have “nothing to do but to die.” Legions of Angels
8. His Refusal of Angelic Succor (Matthew 26:47-56) Even His arrest would have been impossible but for His own consent. Another evangelist tells how the men that came to take Him were prostrated at first by His glance and could not have touched Him if He had not voluntarily surrendered (John 18:6). Matthew tells us how He forbade His followers to fight for Him, telling them that He had only to pray to the Father and He should presently give Him “more than twelve legions of angels” (Matthew 26:53). Twelve legions of angels would have been an army of over 60,000 angelic soldiers. Now we know that one angel was sufficient to slay in a single night an army of 175,000 Assyrians. What would 60,000 angels have meant for Christ’s safeguarding? And He had only to breathe a single word and that army would have been around Him and His enemies stricken with swift destruction. But that word was never spoken, and the self-restraint of Jesus Christ in this hour of peril is one of the mightiest proofs of His deity and gives to His arrest the glory rather of a triumphal march than a shameful defeat. Alone
9. The Forsaking and Denial of Peter and the Disciples (26:56, 58, 69-75) When at last His arrest had really come, and they saw Him bound and apparently helpless in the hands of His enemies, then His disciples utterly broke down. Of the others it is said: “Then all the disciples deserted him and fled” (Matthew 26:56), but Peter’s was a still worse treachery, for he not only fled, but under the pressure of that night of panic, he openly and repeatedly denied Him. Surely, this at least was an evidence of weakness on the Master’s part that the very men who had stood nearest to Him should so easily give up their Master and testify against Him. On the contrary, it is one of the strongest and grandest testimonies to the Lord. In one of the old prophetic pictures of the Messiah, it is this very feature that is brought into prominence: “Who is this coming from Edom, from Bozrah, with his garments stained crimson?” and the answer comes, “I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me” (Isaiah 63:1, Isaiah 63:3). The very solitariness of Christ’s sorrow is the most majestic touch. There are times in every great and noble life when it must stand alone and even the sympathy and support of the dearest friends appear to be withdrawn. This is the very test of fortitude and heroism, and in this hour of solitary ignominy and desertion Jesus stood supreme, sublime. His Own Confession
10. Confessing Judgment (Matthew 26:59-66) He is now arraigned before the court of Caiaphas, but they are helpless to convict Him. At last they appeal to the Lord Himself, and He comes to their aid and makes a confession on which they are able to base His condemnation. He acknowledges all that they have been unable to prove against Him respecting His divine claim that He is Christ, the Son of God, and adds: “You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64). With great delight they listen. He has put into their hands the weapon they had sought in vain, and they cry, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses?” (Matthew 26:65). So even the condemnation of Jesus was brought about by His own act. His death was a voluntary sacrifice all the way through and the accomplishment of that great purpose for which He had come from heaven, “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). Barabbas
11. The Substitution of Barabbas (Matthew 27:16-21) Brought before the tribunal of Pilate, that shrewd Roman could find no cause for His condemnation. But seeing that His accusers were bent on blood, he ventured on a compromise and suggested to them that he should release, as was the custom at the feast, some one person as a concession to the multitude and an act of clemency. In order to compel them, for decency’s sake, to consent to the release of Jesus, he puts as the alternative the release of Barabbas, who is called “a notorious prisoner” (Matthew 27:16). This man seems to have been a very paragon of wickedness and his name was in the mouths of all as the most desperate of criminals. Pilate reckoned that they would not dare to ask for his life and so, with what he thought great adroitness, he placed the two horns of the dilemma before them and said, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” (Matthew 27:17). To his consternation, the cry came back, “Barabbas” (Matthew 27:21). Rather would they set free the vilest of men than give up their hold upon Jesus Christ. Was there ever such a testimony to His innocence and to the spirit of His murderers? But back of all this story of substitution there lies the deepest, sweetest secret of redeeming love, namely, that Jesus Christ becomes the substitute from age to age for just such men as Barabbas; that He bore that day the shame, the wrath, the cross that the vilest of men deserved in order that the sinner might go free through His vicarious suffering. That is why we, as we read these lines, are saved from condemnation and accepted by the Father as fully as if we had never sinned, because one day our blessed Substitute took our place and we were released from judgment and are now “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). Pilate and His Wife
12. Pilate’s Testimony to Christ (Matthew 27:18-24) Both Pilate and his wife are compelled to give their testimony for the innocence of the Sufferer. From the very beginning Pilate knew that “it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over to him” (Matthew 27:18). But his perplexity was still greater when there came from his wife a pressing message: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him” (Matthew 27:19). This was a solemn warning from the very heavens. Pilate longed to yield to all these appeals to his sense of right and justice, but at heart he was a coward. At last he yielded to pressure, vainly thinking that he could shift the responsibility to their shoulders as he washed his hands before them and added one more testimony to the Lord, “I am innocent of this man’s blood…. It is your responsibility!” (Matthew 27:24). So from the very judgment seat of His enemies, the testimony comes: Jesus Christ was righteous and died not for His own sins but for the sins of men. His Blood Be On Us
13. The Testimony of Israel’s Punishment (27:25) “All the people answered, ‘Let his blood be on us and on our children!’” (Matthew 27:25). That was an awful imprecation. Had Jesus Christ been guilty, it would have fallen lightly on Israel’s head. Has it fallen lightly? What is the story of these 19 centuries? The saddest and most terrible of human tragedies. Witness the sufferings of Israel’s sons and daughters in every country and every clime. Recall the horrors of the siege and fall of Jerusalem under the Romans, think of the cruel persecutions of the race all through the Middle Ages, remember the latest scenes from Kishinev and Rumania, and ask what does all this mean if it is not the fulfillment of their own self-inflicted curse. Does it not declare like the voice of many waters, “Surely we are being punished because of our brother” (Genesis 42:21)? It is the very fulfillment of the curse which Israel accepted, for His blood was shed in innocency and shed for them. The King of the Jews
14. The Testimony of the Title On His Cross (Matthew 27:37) Over the cross of Jesus, Pilate ordered this inscription fastened: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:37). Another evangelist tells that they were very much displeased with this and tried to have it changed so as to read, “this man claimed to be king of the Jews” (John 19:21), but Pilate rudely answered, “What I have written, I have written” (John 19:22); and the record remained and stands forever as the very echo of Matthew’s Gospel and God’s decree that Jesus was indeed the Son of David and the King of Israel. Refused the Myrrh
15. The Unmixed Cup of Agony (Matthew 27:34) “There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it” (Matthew 27:34). This was intended as an anodyne to deaden His sufferings, a merciful provision of the executioners, but Jesus would have none of it. Not one drop of woe would He abate. He was bearing our cross and He insisted on bearing it to the full. He has done so and there is nothing left for you and me to do. “Jesus paid it all.” Their Taunts
16. His Self-Restraint in the Face of Their Taunts (27:39-44) This verse tells how they challenged Him, if He were indeed divine, to come down from the cross and show it. How easily He could have done so, but not for one moment did He attempt His own vindication. All the humiliation and shame He bore in full and left His honor and His dignity to His Father’s vindication. What but the power of His divine nature could have ever held Him in such self-restraint, knowing, as He did, how easily He might have stricken down the insulting crowd before Him and answered their bufferings with the lightness of His power? There is no strength so great as the strength of self-restraint and oh, how this shines out from the cross of Calvary. “My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”
17. The Cup of Wrath (27:46) At last there comes, from out of the darkness which had now fallen upon the scene, a strange and bitter cry. It was a quotation from the 22nd Psalm (Psalms 150:1), a prophetic psalm describing the Messiah’s sufferings. It was a cry extorted by the wrath of God that was now ruling over His head. Deeper and harder than all the cruelties of men was the hiding of His Father’s face, but even this was but part of the program of prophecy. That cry was but another testimony to His Messiahship as He fulfilled to the letter all that God had said should come to pass. Even that bitter cup of God’s curse against sin He drank to the full, and now “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). The Earthquake
18. The Testimony of Nature to Christ (Matthew 27:45; Matthew 27:51) “From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land…. The earth shook and the rocks split” (Matthew 27:45, Matthew 27:51). The very sun refused to look upon the agony of its Maker, and the earth shuddered at His dying pain. History and tradition tell us that in other lands at this very time the attention of observers was directed to the preternatural disturbance of the material world and the fact that some great tragedy must be taking place somewhere. The Rent Veil
19. The Testimony of Judaism (27:51) “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51). That veil, we know, was suspended between great columns about 70 feet high. It would have been impossible for any human hand to reach the top. It might have been torn from the bottom to the top by powerful hands, but when we read that is was “torn… from top to bottom” we know it must have been the hand of God. And so Judaism, from its most sacred shrine, bore witness that the great mystery which that sacred veil had covered, namely, the intercession of the Great High Priest, was now about to be accomplished, and the way into the holiest of all was opened by the death of Jesus. The Centurion
20. The Testimony of the Centurion (27:54) “When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, ‘Surely he was the Son of God!’” (Matthew 27:54). This cold and unsympathizing Roman soldier, with no prejudice in favor of the suffering Victim on that cross, had taken in the whole situation—His own demeanor, His silent majesty and the portents of nature on every side. As he comprehended it all, this was his testimony: “Surely he was the Son of God.” Truly of such a scene we might well say, “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54). Joseph
21. The Testimony of Joseph, the Counselor One of the most remarkable testimonies to Christ was the coming of this man, a member of the Sanhedrin which had condemned Him, to ask the privilege of burying the body of Jesus in his own tomb. Thus the very council of the nation, through Joseph, bore witness to His innocence, and the old prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled: “He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth” (Isaiah 53:9). His grave had been prepared among the thieves, but instead His body was laid in the tomb of this rich friend. The Women
22. The Testimony of the Watching Women Finally, there is no testimony to the death of Christ so deep and strong as that which comes from the hearts that love Him and that have found in His precious blood the source of their cleansing and salvation. This was represented by that company of women who were “watching from a distance” (Matthew 27:55), and who represent that mighty crowd who, through all these ages, have stood beholding with sacred grace, until before the vision guilt and sin and sorrow fled away and faith could blend their voices in the song: Here I’ll stand forever viewing Mercy’s streams in streams of blood, Plenteous drops my soul renewing Plead and claim my peace with God. The Power of the CrossThe following allegory from the pen of Mark Guy Pearse, finely expresses the power of that cross: Once I went forth to look for Repentance. I sought her day and night in the City of Mansoul. I asked many if they knew where she dwelt, and they said they had never seen her. I met one, grave and scholarly, who told me what she was like, and bade me seek her earnestly, but he did not tell me where she was to be found. Then, all sad at heart, I went forth without the city walls and climbed a lonely hill, and up a steep and rugged way, until I came in sight of the Cross, and of Him who hung thereon. And lo, as I looked upon Him, there came one and touched me. Then instantly my heart was melted, and all the great deeps of my soul were broken up. “Ah, Repentance, I have been looking everywhere for you,” I said. “Thou wilt always find me here,” said Repentance; “here, in sight of my crucified Lord. I tarry ever at His feet.” Again I went forth to look for Forgiveness. I knocked at many a door in the City of Mansoul and asked for her. And some said they thought she did live there sometimes; and some said she used to once and some said she came there occasionally when the weather was fine, to spend Sunday. Then up came one whom I knew by name as Unbelief, with a voice like a croaking of a raven, and he said that Forgiveness never was there and never could be, that she was much too fine a lady to live in so low a place as that and among such a set as they were. So I came forth wearied and sad: and as I reached the city gate I met again the grave scholar, and he gave me much account of her birth and parentage and showed me her portrait, and told me of her gracious works, and he bade me seek her earnestly; but he did not tell me where I could find her. So I went along my way, looking, but wellnigh in despair, when it chanced that I found myself again upon the high hill, climbing again the steep and rugged path. And I lifted my eyes and saw once more the Cross and Him who hanged thereon, and lo, at the first sight of my dear Lord, Forgiveness met me and filled my poor soul with holy peace and rest like Heaven itself. “Oh, I have had a weary search for you,” I said. “I am always here,” said Forgiveness; “here at my Master’s feet.” Long afterwards I wondered within myself where Holiness dwelt, but I feared to go in search of her. I knew she would never be at home in the low lands and busy streets of Mansoul. All whom I asked about her answered doubtfully. One said she had died long ago; indeed was buried in Eden before Adam came out. One said that she lived away at the end of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, her house was on the brink of the river, and that I must hope to meet with her just before I crossed it. Another argued almost angrily against this notion. “Nay,” said he, “She lives farther on still; search as thou wilt, thou shalt never find her till thou art safely across the river and landed on the shores of the Celestial City.” Then I remembered how well I have fared aforetime on that Holy Hill and went forth again. So up the lonely way I went and reached the top of it and looked once more upon my blessed Savior. And lo! there was Holiness sitting at the Master’s feet. I feared to say that I had been looking for her, but as I gazed upon the Crucified, and felt the greatness of His love to me, and as all my heart went out in love and adoration, Holiness rose up, and came to me all graciously, and said, “I’ve been waiting for thee ever since my first coming.” “Waiting where?” I asked, wondering. “At His feet,” said Holiness. “I am always there.”