Robert D Painter
John 16: 28-33
Mark 15: 33-39
John 5: 1-9
Psalm 68: 4-6
The Lord Jesus knew what it was to be lonely. I want to speak tonight to those who may be feeling lonely, about the Lord Jesus as One who understands and has the answer to the loneliness of the heart that is without salvation. A few weeks back we had a preaching here reading from Isaiah 53, about the Man of sorrows. The verse that speaks of that says, “He is despised and left alone of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, v 3. What loneliness the Lord Jesus knew in His pathway here! We have twice today had reference made to the words:
Love in thy lonely life
Of sorrow here below
(Hymn 235).
It has encouraged me to speak of the loneliness of Jesus, and how it results in the blessing of those that are lonely.
You might think that you are not lonely. There are plenty of persons around you and a lot going on, and so on. You may not realise where you stand in relation to your soul and God. In relation to the salvation of your soul, you are very much on your own, because it is only you that can receive the Lord Jesus to be your Saviour. We are very privileged to be surrounded by those that love the Lord Jesus and that would encourage us to look to Him as the answer for all our need, but, in order for us to receive blessing from Him, it means that we have to be alone, and alone with Him.
Humanly, I do not think anybody has ever been as alone as the Lord Jesus has been. He knew what true loneliness was, and that is what I want to start with. He was on a pathway here on this earth; He had persons around Him, crowds followed Him, and yet there was none, no man, with whom He could have true, close companionship. The reason for it is that He was a Man of a different order from every one of us, a blessed sinless Man. He was truly unique; He took part in flesh and blood in a unique way, as sin apart; and no other man could be associated with that perfection of the Person of the Lord Jesus.
Every one of us is marked by sin. In a certain way there is companionship with every other man, because we have all sinned. We all come into the same category because we are sinners. The Lord Jesus was never in that category. He could not be. "In him sin is not" (1 John 3: 5); so He was alone. No other man could understand the feelings of Jesus; no one could fully enter into them because He felt them in a way that no other man could feel them. His feelings in relation to sin, His feelings in relation to the condition in which men were, He was alone in them. None could enter into those feelings of His in relation to the state of man as away from God, and the feelings of God in relation to it. He alone could enter into those feelings because they were from the heart of God Himself, and no one else could touch that.
When He was here He was separate from everything that was marked by sin. He could not be contaminated by it. He could not be associated with it. He was by necessity separated from it. But not only that, men did not want Him. As referred to in Isaiah, it speaks of “left alone of men”. There was one time when He had healed a man: you will remember that there was a herd of swine feeding there on the mountain, and the demons that had been in this man went and entered into the swine, and the swine rushed down the slope into the sea and were drowned. The persons they belonged to, and the persons of that country, came to the Lord Jesus and they begged Him to go away. They did not want Him in their country; they did not have room for Him, Matt 8: 30-34. That is just how the world is now. It has no room for Jesus; they have no room for One who can bring in blessing through His perfection and power because it exposes what man is. It deprives him of what he puts all his confidence in, like man’s commercial system, and his independence of God, and all these things that man takes such pride in. He may not necessarily put a name to it in that way, but man has no room for the Lord Jesus. He has no room for God. If the Lord Jesus were here now, as far as this world is concerned, He would be as lonely as He was before as “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”. It is no different now, and you are no different either. If you do not know the Lord Jesus as Saviour, you are no different from the world that will have nothing to do with Him. The Lord Jesus went through - we would speak very carefully - supreme testing in His circumstances, alone. There were those that had been with Him, as I said, and although they were gladly with Him, there was still that distance that marked Him off, separate from everything else.
He tells them, where we read in John, that they would be “scattered, each to his own”, and leave Him alone. What was going to happen was that the matter of sin was going to be taken up by this One who was the lonely Man of sorrows, and He says, “ye … shall leave me alone”. The hymn says:
None could follow there, blest Saviour,
When Thou didst for sins atone
(Hymn 298).
There was none that could follow Him. Peter, we read of; he would have followed but he would have followed in a way that was neither for his own blessing nor for the glory of God. He could not follow. None of us could have followed. None of us in our own strength could follow Jesus, even now. But at that time the Lord Jesus was going a way that no one else could go. He must go alone. He was going on to Calvary’s cross. We have read of Calvary’s cross, and we have sung-
On that cross alone, forsaken,
Where no pitying eye was found
(Hymn 302).
Think of that! This was that lonely Man of sorrows, now to be the Victim, the Sacrifice for sins before God. Only He could go that way and He must be alone. He was going to be alone before God, and He feels those circumstances in a way that we could never enter into. He gives this cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He was left entirely alone. Our hymn says:
Did Thy God e’en then forsake Thee,
Hide His face from Thy deep need!
Oh the loneliness of Calvary! Jesus was there, alone, bearing my sins “in his body on the tree” (1 Pet 2: 24), alone, such loneliness as you and I would never need to know, to be without God. He knew the awfulness of being alone under the judgment of God, when God drew a veil of darkness over that scene. He anticipated it in Gethsemane, the awfulness of what it would mean to be alone under the judgment of God, and yet He said, “not my will, but thine be done” (Luke 22: 42). It was obedience full, unquestioned. I believe that there was a joy in the heart of the Lord Jesus despite that, because it was “in view of the joy lying before him” that He “endured the cross”, Heb 12: 2. He had in view not loneliness but companionship; He had in view the securing of persons that were sinners but, as redeemed by His precious blood, were being made suitable to be the “companions of the Christ”, Heb 3: 14. He had that joy lying before Him and He “endured the cross, having despised the shame”, but the reality of it was He was there on that cross alone. He went that way and He bore that judgment; He took it all upon Himself. Oh, the loneliness of Calvary! I do not think we can understand it. We cannot dwell on it enough in one sense, but He is not there now. We sang in our hymn:
Gazing on Thee, Lord, in glory,
That is where He is now He is no longer alone in the darkness of Calvary’s cross; He has come through triumphant. He bore the judgment and He expired: as it says, “Jesus ... gave up the ghost”, Matt 27: 50. He can speak to His Father (Luke 23: 46), and so lay down His life in communion with Him (see JND’s Letters vol 3 p196). The forsaking is passed; now He has been through death, and He has come out the other side victorious; and tonight He would seek those who are lonely and lost, those who have no hope and no helper. He has come to be the Helper. He is the Hope; He is the way of salvation.
Think of that man lying by the pool of Bethesda; thirty-eight years he had been there on his own. He knew loneliness to an extent perhaps that none of us have. Sometimes when we are away on business, and maybe in a foreign country, and there is no one around that we know, we can be quite lonely, but this man for thirty-eight years had been there with nobody to help him. The Lord Jesus knew he was there. The Lord Jesus knew his loneliness and his helplessness and He came in to help him, to bless him. Now, this man is a picture of what every one of us is like. We do not have any strength. It is interesting to think that he was in this place where there were five porches. I think that that would suggest the weakness of man, human weakness, our inability to do anything for ourselves, and certainly it was true of this man. What drew me to the scripture was that he said, “I have not a man”. ‘I have no-one; I am on my own; I am lonely’. Well, the Lord Jesus came to save just such. We used to have a hymn -
Art thou lonely, heavy laden?
Has thy heart despondent grown?
Seems thy path to lead in darkness,
Where no ray of hope is known?
That man would probably have felt like that. There was no hope for him and a Friend appears, a Man who is prepared to be a help to him. The Lord Jesus would come into your life like that at the present time. Maybe you are feeling very lonely. Maybe you feel that no one is there to help, no one knows, but Jesus knows, and Jesus comes, and He would help dispel the loneliness.
Do you know what He does? He not only blesses you, and forgives your sins, but He sets you with others who love Him. The psalmist speaks of God setting the solitary in families, Ps 68: 6 AV. God has no intention whatsoever that persons who are saved by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus should be left alone, but that they should be set together, they should be sharing together in the great things of the One that has died to save them; so “God setteth the solitary in families”. They are persons of that character, solitary persons, but they are brought together, and that is just like the saints are at the present time, persons that have been brought together by God. The word of God comes to each one of us individually, and it meets us in our need, and God would have us set together as those that can share the great things of God. There is no thought at all of a lonely Christian in divine things. Even if you are on your own, by the Spirit you can touch something of the fellowship of God’s Son. It is a wonderful thing that God has this in mind, and in a day to come He will have all those that have been redeemed set together in His presence, to be occupied with Him eternally.
I would just ask you, dear hearer, have you started on the road? Have you come to know the One who would meet you in your loneliness, meet your need, and then set you together with those that love Him? May each one of us know what it is to have our sins forgiven, and may we know too what it is to be set together in families, and enjoy the blessings and the great things of the God who has come out in this wonderful way, who has sent His only begotten Son into the world, to actually taste the awfulness of what it was to be totally alone, in order that you may never have to be alone! May you come to know Him as your Saviour, for His Name’s sake!
Taunton
8th April 2012