SEVERAL times in Scripture it is recorded that the Son of God raised His voice and cried aloud, and to six of His cries I would seek to draw your attention. First at the opened grave. Lazarus had been buried four days. Corruption was doing its deadly work—already his body was stinking. His sisters were sorrowing. Divine sympathy was also there, for “Jesus wept.”
As He stood at the mouth of the grave, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.” Why did He raise His voice? Was not His whisper omnipotent? Methinks His heart was stirred.
He loved to relieve the sorrow of Mary and Martha. He rejoiced to bring His friend Lazarus back to His and their company. But more than that, did, it not give Him positive delight to use anticipatively the power that was His, through His own death and resurrection?
He was the Resurrection and the Life. If righteousness was not to be perfectly satisfied by the work He was about to do, love must have remained dumb in the presence of sin’s havoc―death and corruption.
So He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.” Death gave up its prey―the dead man came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes―a fit picture of man’s state, “dead in trespasses and in sins”; while Jesus stands declared as the only One who can come in and bless as Victor over death.
Again Jesus was at Jerusalem. The great crowds had come, and were about to go. The feast, days had almost run their course. There He stood in the presence of the gorgeous temple―the One whom all the magnificent ritual pointed on to― the more than fulfiller of the types, and sacrifices, and shadows.
But the great crowd of unsatisfied worshippers—for religion, however magnificent and ornate, can never satisfy the soul—knew Him not.
His heart was moved once more. He stood forth―nothing to distinguish Him outwardly from the crowd―yet He cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto ME, and drink”; and He prophesied not only satisfaction of heart, but overflowing rivers of blessing to others, to the one who stooped and drank.
Ah! nothing can satisfy your deep, deep need but coming to Christ. “Let him come unto ME.” How gracious and unencumbered with terms, is the invitation! Solomon, with all his great efforts to find an earth-born happiness, had to cry, “Vanity, vanity, saith the preacher, all is vanity.”
Reader, if unsatisfied and troubled, fly to Christ. You will find rest and satisfaction and peace in Him.
Yet a third scene. The matchless ministry of grace in the person of Jesus is about to close. Ere He withdraws Himself from the world around Him, that so utterly failed to recognize Him; ere He speaks such words as we read in John 13-17, words every child of God loves and prizes beyond measure, ―He turns to the unresponsive world, and gives them His last sad, solemn, yearning warning. They little thought as the words died away on His lips, that it was the close of His ministry on earth, ―that the next they would see of Him would be in Pilate’s judgment hall. Yet so it was.
And His heart again found vent in crying aloud. He told them in disbelieving Him they disbelieved in God. He told them He was come a light into a world of moral darkness; that His mission was one of grace, and not of judgment; that He came to save the world; that He did not speak of Himself, but as the Father commanded Him; that His words would judge them in the last day (John 12). And so the message closes. It fell upon dull ears; the light shone upon darkened eyes; there was no beauty, that they should desire Him.
And oh! how awfully solemn to think that these sweet, tender, gracious words of loving entreaty will start up in judgment on the souls of the impenitent at the last day (John 12:4848He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. (John 12:48).)
Will it be possible, as the guilt of the sinner rises black and hideous before his dazzled eyes at the great white throne, that such words as “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” will fall like a death-knell upon his troubled soul? Will that be sadly possible?
And methinks when the damned soul tosses about “weary and heavy laden” in the lake of fire and wanting “rest” as never before, that these gracious, tender words, once rung in his ears on earth, will sting his conscience and memory like scorpions. God save you from such a doom. His love desires to do it, and pursues you with the warning even now.
But, again. Christ once cried aloud in deepest, darkest agony. Wicked hands had scornfully crucified Him. God had come in and cleared the cross of the crowds of jeering, cowardly fanatics by throwing around it at mid-day a pall of darkness.
He put to the holy lips of Jesus the cup of judgment and forsook Him―left Him to sink in the waters, in which there was no standing!
For three hours the holy Jesus was drinking that awful cup till He drained it to its last, dark drop; and as it fell forever from His lips, He cried with a loud voice, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Reader, if ever I was convinced of the eternal hell my sins deserved, it was when I gazed, and gazed, and gazed with awe and wonder upon that scene. He was forsaken because my sins were upon Him. Blessed be His holy name there is no death, no hell for me.
Then His lips parted again, and He cried with a loud voice, “IT IS FINISHED!” The veil was rent. The darkness vanished. Nature witnessed to the value of the work in the rent rocks and the quaking earth. Satan’s dominion immediately had to yield its trophies to the efficacy of that work, in the open graves and the risen saints. But Jesus died. He died in all the sunshine of God’s infinite favor. Blessedly does He cry with a loud voice, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit; and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.”
He lay in the grave the whole paschal Sabbath day, and then triumphantly rose from the dead—the standing proof of the satisfaction of God Himself in His work. The throne of the eternal God was covered with a fresh glory. God could now “be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Rom. 3:2626To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. (Romans 3:26)).
Ah! that old woman, when dying, had got this in her soul. She said she was trusting in the justice of God.
“No, no,” replied her visitor, “surely you mean His mercy.”
“No, it is HIS JUSTICE I am trusting to. If He fails His word to me, a believer in Jesus, why, I would lose my soul, but God would lose His character.”
Yes, God can now righteously bless, and delights to do it; and sooner will the precious blood of Christ lose its efficacy, and the word of God its value, than the vilest sinner, trusting Christ, be lost.
Dear fellow-believer, let me remind you, that the blessed Saviour has not uttered His last cry. “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we be ever with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:16,1716For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16‑17)).
Happy, hourly prospect! Again His heart will delight to break this time the silence, not of the grave, but of the heavens. We shall hear His voice and be with Him forever.
In the little interval may you and I, read Christian reader, be seeking by voice and pen, by tract and Gospel magazine―as the Lord enables us―to make these blessed tidings known.
To the unbeliever, I would say, do not lay this paper down till you have come to Christ as a poor, lost, hell-deserving sinner. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:3131And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (Acts 16:31)).
A. J. P.