Sermon #1168 Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit 1 THE CROWN OF THORNS NO. 1168 A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 12, 1874, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. “And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon His head.” Matthew 27:29. BEFORE we enter the common hall of the soldiers and gaze upon “the sacred head once wounded,” it will be well to consider who and what He was who was thus cruelly put to shame. Forget not the in- trinsic excellence of His person, for He is the brightness of the Father’s glory, and the express image of His person. He is in Himself God over all, blessed forever, the eternal Word by whom all things were made and by whom all things consist. Though heir of all things, the Prince of the kings of the earth, He was despised and rejected of men, “a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.” His head was scorn- fully surrounded with thorns for a crown; His body was bedecked with a faded purple robe; a poor reed was put into His hand for a scepter, and then the ribald soldiers dared to spit in His face, and worry Him with their filthy jests!— “The soldiers also spit upon that face Which angels did desire to have the grace, And prophets once to see, but found no place. Was ever grief like Mine?” Forget not the glory to which He had been accustomed, for before He came to earth He had been in the bosom of the Father, adored of cherubim and seraphim, obeyed by every angel, worshipped by every principality and power in the heavenly places! Yet here He sits, treated worse than a felon, made the center of a comedy before He became the victim of a tragedy! They sat Him down in some broken chair, covered Him with an old soldier’s cloak, and then insulted Him as a mimic monarch— “They bow their knees to Me, and cry, hail king! Whatever scoffs and scornfulness can bring, I am the floor, the sink, where they’d fling! Was ever grief like Mine?” What a descent His love to us compelled Him to make! See how He fell to lift us from our Fall! Do not, also, fail to remember that at the very time when they were thus mocking Him, He was still the Lord of all and could have summoned 12 legions of angels to His rescue. There was Majesty in His misery! He had laid aside, it is true, the glorious imperial pomp of His Father’s courts, and He was now the lowly man of Nazareth, but for all that, had He willed it, one glance of those eyes would have withered up the Roman cohorts; one word from those silent lips would have shaken Pilate’s palace from roof to founda- tion—and had He willed it—the vacillating governor and the malicious crowd would, together, have gone down alive into the pit of hell, even as Korah, Dathan, and Abiram of old! Lo, God’s own Son, heaven’s darling and earth’s prince, sits there and wears the cruel chaplet which wounds both mind and body at once—the mind with insult, and the body with piercing pain! His royal face was marred with “wounds which could not cease to bleed, trickling faint and slow.” Yet that “no- blest brow and dearest head” had once been fairer than the children of men, and was even, then, the countenance of Immanuel, God with us! Remember these things, and you will gaze upon Him with en- lightened eyes and tender hearts—and you will be able, the more fully, to enter into fellowship with Him in His griefs. Remember from where He came, and it will astound you more that He should have stooped so low! Remember what He was, and it will be the more marvelous that He should become our substitute! And now let us press into the guard room and look at our Savior wearing His crown of thorns. I will not detain you long with any guesses as to what kind of thorns He wore. According to the Rabbis and the botanists, there would seem to have been from 20 to 25 different species of thorny plants growing in Palestine. And different writers have, according to their own judgments or fancies, selected one and an- Volume 20 Tell someone today how much you love Jesus Christ 1 2 The Crown of Thorns Sermon #1168 other of these plants as the peculiar thorns which were used upon this occasion. But why select one thorn out of many? He bore not one grief, but all —any and every thorn will suffice. The very dubious- ness as to the peculiar species yields us instruction. It may well be that more than one kind of thorn was platted in that crown; at any rate sin has so thickly strewn the earth with thorns and thistles that there was no difficulty in finding the materials, even as there was no scarcity of griefs with which to chasten Him every morning, and make Him a mourner all His days! The soldiers may have used pliant boughs of the acacia, or shittimwood tree, that unrotting wood of which many of the sacred tables and vessels of the sanctuary were made—and, therefore, significantly used if such were the case. It may have been true as the old writers generally consider that the plant was the spina Christi, for it has many small and sharp spines. And its green leaves would have made a wreath such as those with which generals and emperors were crowned after a battle. But we will leave the matter. It was a crown of thorns which pierced His head and caused Him suffering as well as shame, and that suffices us. Our inquiry, now, is—what do we see when our eyes behold Jesus Christ crowned with thorns? There are six things which strike me most. And as I lift the curtain, I pray you watch with me and may the Holy Spirit pour forth His divine illumi- nation and light up the scene before our wondering souls. I. The first thing which is seen by the most casual observer, before he looks beneath the surface, is A SORROWFUL SPECTACLE. Here is the Christ, the generous, loving, tender Christ, treated with indig- nity and scorn! Here is the Prince of life and glory made an object of derision by ribald soldiers! Behold, today, the lily among thorns, Purity, itself, in the midst of opposing sin! See here the sacrifice caught in the thicket, and held fast there, as a victim in our place to fulfill the ancient type of the ram held by the bushes which Abraham slew instead of Isaac! Three things are to be carefully noted in this spectacle of sorrow. Here is Christ’s lowliness and weakness triumphed over by the lusty soldiers. When they brought Jesus into the guard room they felt that He was entirely in their power, and that His claims to be a king were so absurd as to be only a theme for contemptuous jest. He was but meanly dressed, for He wore only the smock frock of a peasant—was He a claimant of the purple? He held His peace—was He the man to stir a nation to sedition? He was all wounds and bruises, fresh from the scourger’s lash—was He the hero to inspire an army’s enthusiasm and overturn old Rome? It seemed rare mirth for them, and as wild beasts sport with their victims, so did they. Many, I war- rant you, were the jibes and jeers of the Roman soldiers at His expense, and loud was the laughter amid their ranks. Look at His face, how meek He appears! How different from the haughty countenances of tyrants! To mock His royal claims seemed but natural to rough soldiers; He was gentle as a child, tender as a woman! His dignity was that of calm quiet endurance, and this was not a dignity whose force these semi-barbarous men could feel, and therefore they poured contempt upon Him. Let us remember that our Lord’s weakness was undertaken for our sakes; for us He became a Lamb; for us He laid aside His glory, and therefore it is the more painful for us to see that this voluntary humiliation of Himself must be made the object of so much derision and scorn, though worthy of the utmost praise! He stoops to save us, and we laugh at Him as He stoops! He leaves the truth of God that He may lift us up to it, but while He is graciously descending, the hoarse laughter of an ungodly world is His only reward! Ah, me, was ever love treated after so unlovely a sort? Surely the cruelty it received was proportioned to the honor it deserved, so perverse are the sons of men— “O head so full of bruises! Brow that its lifeblood loses! Oh great humility, Upon His face are falling Indignities most galling! He bears them all for me.” It was not merely that they mocked His humility, but they mocked His claims to be a king. “Aha,” they seemed to say, “Is this a king? It must be after some uncouth Jewish fashion, surely, that this poor peasant claims to wear a crown! Is this the Son of David? When will He drive Caesar and his armies into the sea and set up a new state, and reign at Rome? This Jew, this peasant—is He to fulfill His nation’s dream and rule over all mankind? Wonderfully did they ridicule this idea, and we do not wonder that they did, for they could not perceive His true glory.