April 11

Morning

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. — Ps 22:14

Did earth or heaven ever behold a sadder spectacle of woe! In soul and body, our Lord felt Himself to be weak as water poured upon the ground. The placing of the cross in its socket had shaken Him with great violence, had strained all the ligaments, pained every nerve, and more or less dislocated His bones. Burdened with His own weight, the grand sufferer felt the strain increasing every moment of those six long hours. His sense of faintness and general weakness were overpowering; while to His own consciousness He became nothing but a mass of misery and swooning sickness.

When Daniel saw the great vision, he thus describes his sensations, “There remained no strength in me, for my vigor was turned into corruption, and I retained no strength.” How much more faint must have been our greater Prophet—when He saw the dread vision of the wrath of God, and felt it in His own soul!

To us, sensations such as our Lord endured would have been insupportable, and kind unconsciousness would have come to our rescue; but in His case, He was wounded, and felt the sword—He drained the cup and tasted every drop!

O King of grief! O King of wounds—how shall I grieve for You! As we kneel before our now ascended Savior’s throne, let us well remember the way by which He prepared it as a throne of grace for us; let us in spirit drink of His cup, that we may be strengthened for our hour of heaviness whenever it may come. In His natural body every member suffered, and so must it be in the spiritual; but as out of all His griefs and woes—His body came forth uninjured to glory and power, even so shall His mystical body come through the furnace with not so much as the smell of fire upon it.

Evening

Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins. — Ps 25:18

It is well for us when prayers about our sorrows are linked with pleas concerning our sins—when, being under God’s hand, we are not wholly taken up with our pain but remember our offences against God. It is well, also, to take both sorrow and sin to the same place. It was to God that David carried his sorrow—it was to God that David confessed his sin.

We must take our sorrows to God. Even your little sorrows you may roll upon God—for He counts the hairs of your head. And your great sorrows you may commit to Him—for He holds the ocean in the hollow of His hand. Go to Him, whatever your present trouble may be and you shall find Him able and willing to relieve you.

But we must also take our sins to God. We must carry them to the cross, that the blood may fall upon them, to purge away their guilt, and to destroy their defiling power.

The special lesson of the text is this—that we are to go to the Lord with sorrows and with sins in the right frame of heart. Note that all David asks concerning his sorrow is, “Look upon my affliction and my pain.” But the next petition is vastly more express, definite, decided, and plain, “Forgive all my sins!”

Many sufferers would have put it, “Remove my affliction and my pain and look at my sins.” But David does not say so—he cries, “Lord, as for my affliction and my pain, I will not dictate to Your wisdom. Lord, look at them, I will leave them to You. I would be glad to have my pain removed but do as You will. But as for my sins, Lord, I know what I want with them—I must have them forgiven! I cannot endure to lie under their curse for a moment!”

A Christian counts his sorrow lighter in the scale than his sin. He can bear that his troubles should continue but he cannot support the burden of his transgressions.