He is despised and rejected of men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief:
and we hid as it were our faces from him;
he was despised,
and we esteemed him not.
Isaiah 53:3
These are parts from a sermon by Charles Spurgeon:
"We Esteemed Him Not"
This must be the universal confession of the human race. From the highest monarch to the meanest peasant, from the loftiest intellect to the most degraded mind, from the admired of all men to the unknown and insignificant, this one confession must come—"We esteemed Him not."
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| Charles Spurgeon |
And the brightest saints still upon the earth, those who are most earnestly and faithfully serving the Savior, at one time "esteemed Him not."
I am going, first, to prove that this was true.
Next, to dive deeper and try to find out the reasons why we esteemed not Jesus.
And, afterwards, I want to remind you of the emotions which this fact ought to create in our minds—the fact that at one time—and in the case of many of us it was true not many years ago that "we esteemed Him not."
1:
You have fought the good fight ever since you enlisted under the bloodstained banner of the Cross, yet you can never forget some things that happened before that happy day when you first sang from your heart— There are others of you who were, either by your early associations, or by the restraints of Sovereign Grace, kept from openly sinning against God as many others did, yet you know that your lives were not in accordance with the Law of God. You were, in comparison with many of your fellows, moral, upright, amiable, yet, as far as Christ was concerned, you "esteemed Him not." Your friends and companions could find no fault with your character, but you know, now, that all the while there was a fatal flaw which was plainly manifest to the eyes of God. In the case of some, the apparent excellence was all on the surface, but, underneath there was a mass of rottenness and sin of which they can only think now with shame and sorrow.
....there was further evidence that you did not esteem Christ in the fact that you did not esteem His Word as you should have done. Possible, just to quiet your conscience, you read a chapter from it in the morning and another in the evening, or you listened to it while your parents read it at family prayer. But how dull and dry it seemed to you! You could revel in a novel and be completely fascinated with fiction, but the Inspired Truth of God was a weariness and a burden to you. I must honestly confess that before I knew the Lord, or was seriously seeking Him, although I found the historical parts of the Bible interesting, a great portion of the Scriptures appeared to me to be dull and meaningless.
"We esteemed Him not, for we did not hold in proper esteem the Sacred Scriptures in which He had been revealed to us."
Another proof that we did not esteem Christ was the fact that we did not esteem His people. If I could, by any means, bring the Truth of the text home to your hearts. If the Holy Spirit were but poured upon you so that you would all inwardly confess, even if you did not audibly say, "We esteemed Him not," my objective would be gained and I would have proved the Truth of Isaiah's utterance.
2:
The first reason that I would mention why we esteemed not Jesus is because we esteemed ourselves so highly. Self-esteem naturally keeps Jesus out of the heart. If you had been informed that all your good works were but varnished sins and that the very best of them were foul and full of faults, would not your blood have boiled with indignation? But as for the rest of our journey, we thought we could get on very well by ourselves, though we might be glad for Christ to help us into Heaven at the last.
Another reason why we esteemed not Jesus was because we esteemed the world so highly. "We esteemed Him not" because we loved the earth and all its follies, because we were so busy gathering its poisoned dust into heaps, or delighting ourselves in its unsatisfying pleasures.
A third reason why we did not esteem Christ was because we did not know Him. It is true that we knew a great deal about Him, but we did not know HIM. We had read what the Evangelists had recorded concerning Him. We knew much concerning His doctrines. Perhaps we had even tried to keep some of His precepts, yet we did not personally and savingly know Him. There is a great distinction between knowing about Christ and knowing Christ Himself—And Rutherford said, "Surely, my Lord, if the whole world could see You, the whole world must love You. If You would but open only one of Your eyes and look upon them, they must run unto You, ravished with delight, for You are so fair, my precious Jesus, that You only need to be seen to be loved." But the worldling has never seen Christ, so he does not know Christ and does not love Christ! Ah, poor worldling!
And, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, though the Holy Spirit has quickened us, there was a time when we were "dead in trespasses and sins" and, like Lazarus in his grave, we were becoming more and more corrupt as every moment passed!
3:
I cannot understand that Christian who can look back upon his past life without a tear. If he can turn to the black pages of his history, which not only have no record of goodness, but are full of entries concerning his sins against his present Lord and Master, and yet not weep at the remembrance of them, surely he can never have learned the true nature of sin!
Yet we have much more reason to adore the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of that love of Christ which passes knowledge and which carried out to completion the wondrous plan whereby all our iniquities have been blotted out and we have become "accepted in the Beloved!"
There is one other emotion which every true Christian should feel— that is hope for his fellows. If I feel sorrow for my sin and joy for my deliverance, I ought also to have hope for other people!
