On the back page of the book, Bob Shuler Met These On the Trail (1955) there is an ad for the book, Some Dogs I Have Known (1953). In that ad it says, “Then there are
four other sermons – one by Dr. Shuler’s father, and one by each of the
preacher sons – Jack, Phil, and Bob, Jr. The sermon by Jack Shuler, ‘History’s
Horror Picture,’ won second prize in the Sword $1,000 Evangelistic Sermon
Contest. We think it is one of the greatest sermons printed in America in the
last dozen years.” [The sermon is 4500 words long. It quotes from Scripture at
least 60 times. Scripture references have been added.]
HISTORY'S
HORROR PICTURE
By Dr. Jack Shuler
"They crucified him"- Luke 23:33
They say that God is no respecter of Persons. [Acts 10:34] That is scripturally true.
They say further that He is no respecter of places, but
looks everywhere with the same esteem. I think in this they speak amiss. Earth
contains one spot that exceeds all others in its nearness to the heart of God.
It may be found just beyond the eastern wall of Jerusalem, chief city of
Judaea, where rises the hill called Calvary. [Luke
23:33]
I care not which of the evangelists you consult, whether
Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, each will take you to the same place. In your
thinking you will be transported far away to this hill. This is "the place
of a skull." [Matthew 27:33; Mark 15:22; John
19:17] Here tragic lives and murderous careers found an untimely end.
This is the setting for blood and of death. Calvary - the place of the cross!
All the glory and horror of six millenniums of human
history come to focus here. Hate and love reach their zenith together, as the
place of execution becomes the scene of sacrifice. While sin mounts to fill to
the brim earth's cup of wrath, Heaven is busy erecting a sacrificial altar upon
which the Lamb of God must be for sinners slain.
In my fancy I climb that mournful hill and stand upon the
summit. A wild, bloodthirsty multitude surrounds me and ushers me rudely into
the presence of three crosses of wood. One stands apart and rises in central
prominence against the lowering sky. A feeling of mixed wonder and terror
steals over me! That is His Cross!
Here dies the only
perfect Man who ever lived. His record is as pure as the driven snow. His
question, "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" [John 8:46] has remained unanswered. His lips spoke
the greatest sermons ever preached; the wisest lessons ever taught. No
physician ever effected more perfect cures. The blind received sight; deaf ears
heard; mute lips spoke at his command. He went about breaking up funeral
processions. The grave could not keep its prey when Jesus said, "Come
forth"! [John 11:43] Soldiers, sent out
to take Him, returned amazed, bearing with them nothing save the statement,
"Never man spake like this man." [John 7:46] When trying Him for His
life, the judge could only say, "I find in him no fault at all." [John 18:38]
Now He is a mangled form upon a rough-hewn cross. Against a
background of rabid jeers and frenzied howlings, a voice rises unmistakably.
Bruised and battered lips are forming a prayer. Hear the supplication: "Father,
forgive them; for they know not what they do"! [Luke
23:34] The world has had time to weigh the significance of that prayer,
and the heart experience of untold millions forbids its being attributed to a
martyr. It was the impassioned plea of earth's mighty Redeemer! Forth from His
regal veins that day flowed a fountain of cleansing for never-dying souls.
Heaven's purposes were being realized when the Representative of sinful man and
holy God bowed His head and died. The crown of thorns and the scarlet robe
could not hide the identity of the eternal One who became flesh and dwelt among
us. [John 1:14] "God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto Himself." [2
Corinthians 5:19]
The incarnation is a mystery of the greatest magnitude. The
Man Christ Jesus was God! Explain it? You can't. Believe it? You must! There is
no other explanation for Him who thirsted, [John
19:28] yet had authority to quiet troubled seas; [Mark 4:39] who hungered, [Mark
11:12] yet had power to feed thousands with a scant handful of food. [Matthew 15; Mark 6 & 8; Luke 9; John 6] Jesus
of Nazareth was older than His mother! Mary did not give birth to a personality
when the Christ child was born. She bore a body into which entered a
Personality that existed with God, and was God, before the worlds were framed.
"A body hast thou prepared me." [Hebrews
10:5] Jesus made the atmosphere Mary breathed and the earth on which she
lived. His hand fashioned the star that shone in the eastern sky on that first
Christmas night to guide the wise men from afar. He formed the trees felled by
men to build a rough stable, His first earthly shelter; and a crude manger, His
first terrestrial bed. The prophet's title was not misleading. He was
"Emmanuel. . . God with us"! [Matthew
1:23]
"Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When
as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was
found with child of the Holy Ghost." [Matthew
1:18] Oh, the depths of this mystery! God in finite form sleeping on the
bosom of Mary. God at the mercy of wicked Herod fleeing for His life into
Egypt. God with blistered feet trudging the road to Nazareth. God with
calloused hands wielding tools in a carpenter shop. God in an agony in
Gethsemane. God with torn, bleeding back in the judgment hall. God crushed
beneath a heavy cross with His face in the dirt on a mountainside. Heaven knew
it! Hell knew it! Earth will find it out! He whose dying lips gasped, "It
is finished" [John 19:30] atop dark
Calvary was the incarnate God, dying that men might live!
Some hold that Christ's greatest value is to be found in
His teachings. "He taught them as one having authority, and not as the
scribes," [Matthew 7:29] said His
countrymen. Certainly the teachings of Jesus eclipse those of all other
teachers of time. His code of ethics is flawless. His philosophy of love is
unexcelled. If the teachings of Jesus were owned and practiced by all the
world, they would effect the cessation of war and the inauguration of universal
peace. Yet Christ did not come primarily to teach.
Others insist that Christ left His greatest legacy in the
stellar example of His life and death. Certainly the pattern of Jesus' life and
death provides a high-water mark in humanity that has never been equaled. All
ages must look to Him as the solitary One who lived an exemplary life and died
an irreproachable death. Yet these facts remain minor in the face of His
supreme mission.
There are those who feel that Christ is best remembered for
His noble and unselfish works. Who will minimize charitable deeds and a
philanthropic spirit? Who will dare to slight the healing miracles? We stand in
awe when reminded of the broken bodies He restored, the lepers He cured, the
maimed and withered He made whole. But the miracles and teachings and noble
deeds of Jesus were only incidental to the main purpose of His advent to earth.
He came to die!
John the Baptist was preaching on the banks of the Jordan.
This "greatest prophet born of woman" [Matthew
11:11; Luke 7:28] did not lack for crowds. Interest never waned when the
mighty preacher of repentance unleashed his vitriolic attack on sin. But it was
not so on this occasion. The milling throng looked past him. Every eye was
riveted to one spot. John stopped in his preaching and turned to see who had
attracted the attention of his disciples. It was then his eyes beheld Him, and
he stood for a moment watching Jesus make His approach through the wilderness.
He marked the regal lines of His body, firm with courage and character. He saw
the rare beauty of His visage. He noticed the lines of concern and the haunting
trace of loneliness. He knew who He was! And from that moment something from
deep within kept repeating, "He must increase, but I must decrease"! [John 3:30]
John turned back to the people. He grasped for an
introduction. He might have called Him "The Christ." That's who He
was. He might have cried, "Receive your Messiah." Old Testament
prophecies were finding their fulfillment here. He might have borrowed the
language of Isaiah, and in a celestial tongue have acclaimed Him the
"Wonderful Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince
of Peace." [Isaiah 9:6] He would not
have spoken amiss. All these titles referred to Jesus.
But when the thundering preacher spoke, none of these was
heard. His introduction was mixed with blood and freighted with pain. It
shadowed a cruel cross upon a hill and the blotting out of the sun in the
heavens. It spoke of infinite loneliness, of untold agony. We who live on this
side of Calvary understand more perfectly the deep significance of John's words
than did those who stood close that day, yet the fact remains and endures. John
the Baptist's introduction was revealing and conclusive. "Behold the lamb
of God, which taketh away the sin of the world"! [John
1:29]
Jesus was born beneath the shadow of the cross. He lived
for the cross. Every step He took was toward the cross. Every sermon He
preached and every miracle He wrought looked to the cross. One day, staggering
up Golgotha, He felt His body pressed to the ground beneath the cross and knew
His supreme purpose was nearing fulfillment. Oh, day of darkest gloom, when the
sound of hammer-on-nail rang through the valley and across Jerusalem and the
bleeding body of our Lord was lifted up to die upon the cross! "For this
cause came I unto this hour," [John 12:27]
He said, "to pour out my life a ransom for many"! [Mark 10:45]
The Bible states that man is a sinful creature. He is
corrupt in character and in conduct. The evidence against him is accumulative
and final. Like a vile serpent, man's sins have left a horrid trail from Eden's
garden until now. Sin left its mark in the all-consuming flood. Its evidence
was found in the charred ruins of those proud Cities of the Plains. Currently,
its tracks may be discovered nationally and internationally in ceaseless wars,
broken moral laws, and unmitigated crime. The whole record supports Solomon in
his plain statement, "There is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good,
and sinneth not!" [Ecclesiastes 7:20] Again,
David queried, "If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who
shall stand?" [Psalm 130:3] Paul
writes, "There is none righteous, no, not one: [Romans
3:10] . . . for all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God." [Romans 3:23] Those who deny the
fact of sin meet with God's irrevocable reply, "If we say that we have no
sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." [1 John 1:8] Sin is everywhere. Observation adds
testimony to revelation. It is a fact of human experience. Man with dulled mind
and seared conscience must ever listen to the insistent voice of God's Holy
Spirit who has come into the world to "convince of sin"! [John 16:8]
Let us set the stage more completely. Two great morals
receive the spotlight in Scripture. One is sin; the other is holiness. As
surely as the Bible declares man's sinfulness, even so vehemently does it set
forth the fact of a holy God. The word means "separated." It implies
God's absolute isolation from all forms of evil and sin. God is holy! As a holy
God, He must delight only in purity and sanctity. Nothing sinful can make its
approach. He can have no company with
sin or with the sinner in his sins. As a matter of fact, the holiness of God
separates the sinner from His presence. "Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened,
that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy that it cannot hear: But your
iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his
face from you, that he will not hear." [Isaiah
59:1-2]
Here is Isaiah's declaration of fatal estrangement. Two
direct opposites are at work. Sinful man! Holy God! And herein lies the need of
atonement. The substitutionary death of Jesus Christ at Calvary had its deepest
demand in the combined facts of the sinfulness of man and the holiness of God!
The climaxing truth of all Scripture is the love of God.
God is holy; but God is love. God's hatred for sin is only matched by His love
for the sinner. I have tried to reason which of these attributes excels the
other in God's great Person. I must conclude that the two stand together in
their demands. True, the holiness of God created a great gulf between the
creature and his Creator. But the love of God bridged the chasm. What man could
not do for himself, God did for him. He formed an infinite system of redemption
whereby He might lift the fallen creature with just, yet justifying, hands and
grant him liberty and life. "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins,
the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God"! [1 Peter 3:18]
The system of redemption which Heaven devised has not met
with the wholehearted approval of earth. From the beginning of time some have
tried to come in by other doors and have found those doors locked and barred.
Man wants to effect his own salvation through culture, morality, achievement.
In short, he wants to merit it. But God's plan demanded an infinite ransom that
salvation might be offered by grace through faith! Upon the cross Jesus paid
sin's full price, affording grace so that man is saved by unmerited favor or not
at all. Even the Law was but a schoolmaster leading to Christ. [Galatians 3:24] Salvation is in Him, not
ourselves. Dispensationally, the Old Testament and the New met together at
Calvary! "It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul," [Leviticus 17:11] said the Old. "Without
shedding of blood is no remission." [Hebrews
9:22] reads the New, False prophets vie with one another to lure men to
disaster on the shoals of error, but let God be true and every man a liar. [Romans 3:4] The claims of God's holiness were not
satisfied until Christ died upon the cross. What the blood of bulls and of
goats could not do, He did. [Hebrews 10:4] He
took our sins away and buried them forever beneath His own blood. I care not
what men may say - God has established it! "The blood of Jesus Christ his
Son cleanseth us from all sin"! [1 John 1:7]
Oh, the cup, the torturous cup of Gethsemane!
A sinner spewed out blasphemy; it settled in the cup. A
rascal plucked the sweet flower of virtue from a woman's breast and watched it
wither in the hot blast of his lust; it stirred in the cup. A loving mother was
strangled by a drunken son; murder made its way to the cup. A degenerate
snatched away a wee babe and dashed it upon the rocks; depravity found its
place in the cup. Blackest deeds of nameless shame spawned in the pit of Hell,
all in the cup! Every breach of every law, every stain of every sin, all the
smear of corruption and stench of debauch now mingled in the odious contents of
the cup.
It is midnight, and the city has retired. But there is One
whose eyes shall close in death before they close in sleep. A solitary figure
in a garden of weird shadows, He kneels a stone's throw from those who are to
keep watch. His lips move in prayer. He prays earnestly. He prays with agony.
In such travail of soul does He pray that the chill of the night cannot absorb
the sweat upon His brow. A disciple, aroused from sleep, observes. Afterward it
was written, "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his
sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." [Luke 22:44] His brow gleams crimson in the
starlight that filters through the branches of the olives. A crimson flow
trickles through His beard and splashes upon His vesture. And what is the
prayer that throws the Son of God upon His face in such agony of soul? Listen
to it: "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless
not as I will, but as thou wilt"! [Matthew
26:39]
It seems almost I hear Him praying, "Father, I have
never sinned. I have never tasted of forbidden fruit. I have kept my record
clean and pure. I am one with Eternity and Thee. I stood upon the mountain of
infinity and looked down through the dark valley of space and said, 'Let there
be light!' Creation is the work of My fingers. I made the universe. I reached
out with the torch of My Omnipotence and set the sun ablaze, and it has never
gone out. I made this earth. I piled up all its mountains and carved out every
valley. I put the seas in their places, and sent the rivers hunting for them. I
am Holy as Thou art Holy!
"And now must I, who have never done wrong, drink this
cup, polluted and vile?
"Must I, who am sinless, become sin?"
The tears of white-winged seraphs must have descended like
rain over Judea when God's reply was given. "It is the only way to be Just
and the Justifier of them who believe! [Romans
3:26] You must drink it! Not part, but all of it."
Drink that awful cup, Lord Jesus! Drink it for poor
perishing souls! Drink it that sinners might have a Saviour! Drink it that
whosoever will may drink of the Fountain of Eternal Life!
His Gethsemane prayer was not the prayer of a coward. Jesus
fearful? Jesus afraid? No! A thousand times no! He was a Man among men. His
bravery and courage have never been equaled. But when you realize the
significance of the cup and analyze its contents; and when you learn of His
perfect sinlessness and holiness, then shall you know why He thus prayed. 'Take
this cup away'! [Mark 14:36] Oh, the
enormity of this occasion as the Christ reaches out to stay the hand of one who
would choose a different way! 'Put up the sword, Peter; the cup which my Father
hath given me, shall I not drink it?' [John 18:11]
Let not the mystery of His kenosis keep you from the truth. He had come to
learn the Father's will, and had found it revealed! Go, you rebel to grace,
learn the meaning of those glorious words, "For he hath made him to be sin
for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in
him." [2 Corinthians 5:21] The rebel is
at hand. With sticks and staves they come, but not before He drank the cup! I
see His head go back, the cup is to His lips and the contents slip away.
Long years before, a prophet's pen had written. "All
we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and
the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah 53:6]
O eternal hills, fall upon these ingrates! O oceans that
roll, drown within your depths these transgressors! They have your God in the
judgment hall, and the puny hands of men smite His cheek. They beat Him about
the head with reeds. They blindfold Him and shoot out the lip saying,
"Prophesy who it was that smote thee'! [Luke
22:64] Their spittle hangs in His beard and clings to His garment. They
plait a crown for Him, but not of gold. A wreath of long thorns is held above
His head and brought down into His temples until His whole head is gory with
blood. They strip Him naked and bind Him to be scourged. The scream of the lash
splits the air as stripe after stripe is laid upon His quivering back. They
drape Him with a purple robe of shame and place a wilted reed in His hand and
mock Him. "Hail, King of the Jews!" [Matthew
27:29] With curled lip they encircled Him like skinny-faced jackals with
razor teeth, seeking to prolong the suffering of their prey. His last friend
has fled and forsaken Him. Was it not foretold in the prophet’s book?
"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 oppressed,
and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth." [Isaiah 53:3, 7]
O marvelous silence! O holy calm! Scornful questions die
unanswered! Of what avail to add to the already perfect testimony? Had not the
prophet the answer to all men's questions of every age?
"But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him; and
with his stripes we are healed." [Isaiah 53:5]
Yet others spoke. A woman's muffled warning was heard
clearly, "Have thou nothing to do with this just man!" [Matthew 27:19] A voice cried out from the judge's bench,
"Why, what evil hath he done?" [Matthew
27:23; Mark 15:14; Luke 23:22] Later a centurion bowed his head at the
foot of a cross and exclaimed, "Truly this was the Son of God"! [Mark 15:39] It was all in the book of the
prophet:
"It pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to
grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. He shall see of the
travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied." [Isaiah
53:10-11]
"They crucified Him!" [Matthew
27:35; Mark 15:25; Luke 23:33]
Human execution is not a pretty sight. How gruesome to
watch a hooded figure drop through a scaffold; to see the hurtling body; to
hear the snap of the rope and observe the struggling form grow limp in death.
It is just as horrible to see a victim stiffen and burn beneath the tremendous
voltage of an electric chair. Spectators at lethal gas chambers have come away
with the sickening memory of spasmodic gasping for air; the widened nostrils;
the taut tendons of the neck; the bulging eyes. But no hangman's rope or
electric chair or gas chamber can deal a death as terrible as death by
crucifixion.
The cross is more than a trinket. No instrument of
execution ever dealt more terror to the hearts of those condemned. Its purpose
was human destruction. Don't wear a cross unless its power has changed your
life and brought you to God. Better to wear a small gallows around your neck,
ladies; or a miniature electric chair from your watch chain, men. These symbols
represent more merciful forms of death. Have pity! Don't wear a cross until you
have found, at Calvary, a Saviour for your guilty soul.
The cross of itself is not beautiful. It is splintered with
spikes! It is smeared with dried human blood. It is the emblem of the most
excruciating torment ever dealt to man. From its merciless crosspiece ascended
the weeping and wailing of culprits in dying agonies. Upon its cruel structures
lost souls were engulfed in a flaming Hell before the time.
Come, tread softly, mortal! The Prince of Glory dies upon
the cross!
See the aching fingers clenched over torn flesh and cold
spikes. See the eyelids quiver, the features twist and distort in gnawing pain.
Infinite in nature, His sufferings were never known among the sons of men. The
haggard face is drawn and white, giving greater contrast to the crimson still
oozing from jagged gashes in head and body. Was ever blood so rich a red?
Strength ebbs; anguish increases. The once magnificent body becomes a raging
inferno. Fever mounts to staggering proportions. Exhausted by unendurable
tortures, He lifts His bruised and battered face in one last plea:
"I thirst!" [John
19:28]
He begs for water!
O Judean skies, have you not one cloud to send or one
shower to dispatch to that wretched hill where moans your Maker for water? O
sweet fountains of Hermon, fresh streams and limpid pools of Lebanon, can you
not spare one single drop from all your vast reservoirs to cool the parched
tongue and fevered lips of your God? "I thirst!" O solemn tragedy,
that that cry should have to be hushed by the dry, cracked lips of death!
How Isaiah must have
felt the inadequacy of human vocabulary when he spanned seven hundred years
with prophetic glass and published his morbid findings. "His visage was so
marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men." [Isaiah 52:14] No beautiful pictures for me. There is no
physical enhancement here. "There is no beauty that we should desire
him." [Isaiah 53:2] Tongue cannot tell,
throat cannot sing, hand cannot paint the tragedy that was enacted on that
hill. Gather the wail of icy winds that howl through the frozen north; extract
the heart-despair of a mother watching wild beasts tear at the throat of her
babe; capture all the hopeless groans and helpless shrieks of the damned in the
land of shadows and unending doom; and with all this at your command, you will
still be unable to paint the picture that is Calvary!
I make one observation. Earth's sun has looked down through
the ages on countless tragedies. Wars have raged beneath it. Bodies have lain
in pools of blood in its scorching rays. Famine and pestilence have alike been
disclosed to it. Swollen, bloated bodies of sailors drowned at sea have been
revealed to it. Acts of infamy, pollution and filth have never made it to
blush. Murder and rape and pillage have never received its frown. Oh, the
lewdness and lawlessness the sun has gazed upon since first it was placed in
space by the creative hand of God! Yet it never ceased looking. Its
surveillance was uninterrupted. It kept right on gazing as though everything
were in order.
But on the day of the great atonement when, weighted with
the sins of all the world, the Lamb of God was nailed to the cross; when
suffering was infinite and God in Heaven turned His back upon His sinless Son,
now become sin; when the broken Messiah raised His bleeding, lacerated face to
the heavens and cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?" [Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34] - I
tell you when the sun beheld that sight, though it was high noon, it shuddered
and trembled - it blushed and frowned - it drew the curtain of darkness across
its face and drenched earth in the blackest night it has ever known! Here was a
scene which the sun itself could not endure!
It was History's Horror Picture!
How much He suffered, I cannot tell. A blanket of total
darkness shrouded all mankind, so earth does not know. God, estranged from sin,
could not look upon the Sin-bearer, so Heaven does not know. Only Christ knew
the combined pain of Hell's awful infinity that surged through His mighty
breast that day on which a cross of shame became the emblem of earth's greatest
glory!
But this I know, He drank the cup! He walked the burning
corridors of the damned! He plucked the sting from Death, and robbed the grave
of its victory! With sainted dead in grand procession, He led captivity captive
[Ephesians 4:8] and climbed the glittering
stairway of the stars. At last, with the golden pavements of the Capitol City
beneath His riven feet, He mounted to His throne, picked up His everlasting
scepter and received once more His eternal kingdom. There behold Him, the King
of kings! Adored of God! Blessed of angels! Worshipped of saints! He is man's
only Saviour!
The keys of death and Hell are at His side.
The gift of eternal life is in His hand!
From Shuler, Rev. Robert P. (Bob). Some Dogs I Have Known (Wheaton, IL: Sword of the Lord Publishers, 1953), 103-115.
