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Then said Jesus, Father forgive them; for they
know not what they do.”— Luke 23:34.
S you know we are considering now on Sun
day evenings “The Place and Power of
Prayer;” and for the time bein g we are con
sidering the Prayer Life of Jesus, hoping
[A]
upon this to lay a foundation for some more prac
tical consideration of the subject of praver.
. I must say to you, before I begin the considera
tion of this prayer of Jesus for His enemies, that I
do not feel that lam at all able to deal with it. The
moie I think of it, the more I am overwhelmed with
the depth of it, and the more I feel myself unworthy
to deal with it. There is not much of it, but it goes
deeper than anything perhaps that we have in the
experience of Jesus. “Then said Jesus, Father for
give them; for they know not what they do.”
Just awhile ago, you remember, Jesus was in the
Garden of Gethsemane, where, prostrate on the
ground beneath the olive trees, his heart bursting
with sorrow, he prayed that memorable prayer, “Fath
er, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, never
theless not my will, but Thine be done.” Since that
time Jesus has passed through some very trying ex
periences. The first of these was his betrayal by
Judas Iscariot, the treasurer of his company. The
second was the denial of Peter, the disciple who
boasted so loudly and declared so firmly that he would
never forsake him. Following this was the sham
trial through which he has to pass; and finally his
unparalleled experience on the cross. It is with ref
erence to his experience upon the cross that we wish
to speak tonight.
In the company that stood around the cross were
some of his disciples; and the faithful women who
had not turned their backs upon him, through all the
various experiences through which he had passed in
his eventful life, they had stood faithful and true,
and are now standing by his side while he hangs
upon the cross. In that company there is one that
stands out more conspicuously than all the rest, a
loving, lovable character, our Lord’s own dear mother.
She is there to witness the awful agony of her son
upon the cross, and as far as it is possible for a
mother’s love and sympathy and tenderness to sup
port him, she gave it all. And there is a man in the
crowd who was pressed into service against his will
to carry his cross up the slopes of Calvary. There
are also the Roman soldiers, and the men and wom
en of the streets, who have, by reason of the sen
sation that has spread throughout the city, come to
gether to see the Son of God die. As they stand
there about the cross, Jesus beholds the multitude
and, beholding them, he utters these significant and
deeply pathetic words, “Father, forgive them; for
they know not what they do.”
I want that we shall remember at the outset that
this prayer was made just before Jesus died. The
last words of our friends and loved ones are always
to us the most significant; they are the words that
linger and live with us longer than all the rest of
the words spoken by them.
. I remember a few years ago standing by the bed
side of a good mother, and seeing her pass away.
Just before she passed she called me to her bedside,
and said, “I have a message that I want to give, but
I cannot give it until they are all present.” They
were all hurried into her chamber, and she said, with
out a tear in her eye or even a tremor in her voice,
“My message is that I am assured that I am going
to heaven, and I want each one of you to so live
that when you come to die you will feel as I feel.”
That mother spoke many a word in her life time
that was worth remembering, but she never spoke
a word in all her life that weighed as much as that
last word.
So it is with this prayer that we are now con
sidering. It was our Lord’s last word. Words
spoken just before his spirit went back to the Father.
It is because of this that I feel that I am so unworthy
and so unable to expound them. But more than this
THE GOLDEN AGE FOR WEEK OF JULY 23, 1914
JESUS AND HIS ENEMIES
By BEV. LEN G. BBOUGHTON, D.D., of Christ Church, London.
Reported for The Golden Age by M. I. H. —Copyright Applied for.
still, it was a prayer made in the very moment of
his death. It would seem that his spirit already be
gun its ascent. Under such circumstances it would
have been perfectly natural for him to have prayed
for his fond mother, ever faithful and true. It would
have been natural for him to have remembered in
that last prayer his family for they were all about
him, his brothers and his sisters. It would have
been perfectly natural for him to have remembered
just at that time the faithful women who had fol
lowed him all along and been true to him to the last.
It 'would have been natural for him to have remem
bered just at that time the faithful women who had
followed him all along and been true to him to the
last. It would have been natural for him to have
remembered his disciples for he loved them and they
loved him, and he knew their need of him. But in
stead of this he drops his eyes down and over this an
gry, howling mob of his enemies and prays for them.
But who are these enemies of Jesus gathered about
his cross? In the first place, there are the scholars
of the day, they are there. There are the priests,
and the Scribes and Pharisees, and the Sadducees,
magistrates of the law, armed soldiers, thieves and
thugs; they are all there in the company that stand
around the cross while Jesus hangs his head and
gasps for berath. It was a mob made up of all kinds
and classes and conditions of humanity. In it were
men whose eyes were red with the fire of hell; scof
fing and ridiculing and swearing every time he gasp
ed for breath. I have seen a picture in the Dresden
Art Gallery of the Crucifixion of our Lord, with
a great crowd of angry looking men standing around
in front of the cross. In the midst of that angry
crowd that looks into the face of the dying Christ,
there is a slave with his hands tied and shackles
upon his feet, leaning forward with a scowl on his
face as he endeavors to spit upon him. A slave in
shackles spitting upon th? Son of God! It was just
such a picture as that that the eyes of Jesus looked
down upon as he hung there upon the cross and ut
tered these words.
I want us now to understand the nature of this
prayer for these enemies.
First of all, let me call your attention to the fact
that it was a prayer for their forgiveness. “Father,
forgive them.” This leads us to study of the word
“forgiveness.” The more we study it the more we
see that there is in it and the more we feel like
blessing God that Jesus ever used the word with ref
erence to ourselves. There are two words from which
we get our word “forgiveness.” One' signifies the
forgiveness of condonation; the other signifies the
forgiveness of dismissal. There is a vast difference
between the forgiveness of condonation is human; the
forgiveness of dismissal is divine: That is the differ
ence. The forgiveness of condonation is the for
giveness that man exercises to his fellow man, alas,
too often. The forgiveness of dismissal is the for
givenes of God to a poor repentant sinner.
We have a splendid example of this in the Old
Testament Scriptures; the example of the scapegoat.
On the day of atonement, one goat was brought in
and sacrificed, and the other was brought in and the
sins were confessed over his head, and then, in the
hands of a fit man, he was led away to the wilder
ness. I have seen a picture somewhere in some art
gallery, I do not know where, of that scapegoat
wandering about in the wilderness without food,
starving. Wherever it was, I remember feeling at
the time I would like to destroy it. It is false; the
whole conception is false. No man ever saw the
scapegoat he left with the sins of the people upon
him. He was lost in the wilderness, never to be
seen by mortal eye. So dt is with the forgiveness of
dismissal. It is the forgiveness of Christ, it is the
forgiveness that Jesus prays for in this prayer for
His enemies. It is the forgiveness of dismissal, the
sin is lost never to be discovered by the eye of
mortal man, not even to be reproduced by God Him
self; lost in the wilderness even of God’s forgetful
ness.
But we do not have to go to the Greek in order to
find a simple definition of the word forgiveness,
Our own Anglo Saxon word itself is sufficient. It is
the word ‘forth give’ or ‘give forth.’ We see it also
illustrated in the Bible picture. It is the picture of
Lazarus. You remember him after he was raised
from the dead. He was at first bound with grave
clothes. A napkin was over his face so that he
could not talk like a live man; his hands were bound
together so that he could not work like a live man;
and his feet were bound together so that he could not
wark like a live man. So we find Lazrus, though
raised from the dead, helpless. Jesus said, “Loose
him, and let him go.” Forgive him —“forth give
him; let him go forth: it is the same thought.”
Loose him, free him, so that he may work and talk
and walk in the exercise of the life that he has.
But I think that I have an illustration that will
convey my idea more than anything that I have yet
said. It is a little chapter out of my boyhood days;
I shall never forget it. I was taken by my father to
the nearest town, for we then were country people,
to see a balloon. Such a thing had never been heard
of in our section of the world up to that time and
the whole of that part of the country was ablaze
with expectation concerning it. For weeks we had
been seeing pictures on boards and in papers and
the like about how the thing looked, and how it
would sail and fly, and how a man would go up in
the parachute. We got to the ground where this
thing was to take place, this wonderful thing, so
wonderful, especially to this brain of mine and in
my boyish eyes. We got there before the crack of
dawn and camped during hte rest of the night so
that we might see the thing from the beginning.
When the sun got up I was up; the fact is I was
up before I was down. I saw the men begin to work
upon it, stretching the canvas out, putting the ropes
in place, then lifting it, then pouring gas into it
till it began to stretch the canvas and tug the ropes
that held it fast to stakes driven in the ground. I saw
the thing thump, and throb and sway a bit, and
more and more I could hear the canvas stretching
and the ropes likewise. After a while I began to
get so anxious to see that thing turned loose I could
hardly contain myself. It seems to me as I think
back over it I must have lived about a month that
morning. After a while men went round cutting the
ropes, and as they cut a rope this side the thing
would leap over on the other side and tug at the
rope. Then they would cut a rope on the other side
and we would have the same experience. At last
they were all cut but one center rope, and I looked
and looked at that great house built of canvas as it
swayed to and fro, and begged, as it seemed to me,
to be let go, and nobody would let it go, and if I
had not been afraid I would have cut it with my
pocket knife. It seemed to me to be hours, I suppose
it was minutes, that thing tugged and pulled and beg
ged to be free, to be “forth given,” and nobody
would “forth give” it. After a while a man came
and cut that center rope, and when he did, it sailed
up and on, and on, and on through the clouds, that
had lowered, carrying the man in his parachute until
’it was out of sight, and the fun was all over. But the
lesson was not, for the lesson has abided and is with
me this night. This is Jesus’ forgiveness in a picture.
Forth given, given forth, free for higher and holier
and purer air. That is the forgiveness of Jesus that
He prays for on this occasion for his enemies.
But again, I want us to note the ground on which
He bases this remarkable prayer for the forgiveness
of His enemies. “Father forgive them; for they
know not what they do.” There are four attributes of
God which we need perpetually to keep in our minds
—His love, His mercy, His justice and His judge
ment. Also we need to keep perpetually in mind the
fact that these four attributes are inseparably linked
together. No man ever receives divine judgment
without divine love and mercy. It is in keeping with
this that Jesus makes His prayer for the forgiveness
of these cruel men —“they know not what thev do.”
(Continued on page 14.)