The Sepulcher In The Garden

The Sepulcher in The Garden

"In the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden was a sepulcher, in which no one had ever been laid." (John 19:4).

1. Sin obtrudes itself in the fairest scenes.   You see around a cross a multitude come together to perform the foulest act ever perpetrated. The object of their hatred has never wronged them; but, on the contrary, has ever blessed them. His character presented an assemblage of graces such as the world had never witnessed. And now He hangs on a Cross in a garden! What a place for the perpetration of such a crime! A garden! where nature seems best fitted to exert a soothing influence on the angry passions! Surely nature cannot have her sanctuary violated by such an outrage.

Thus the text contains a most emphatic refutation of the fiction that by giving them access to natural beauty you may restrain the wickedness, if not transform the character of men. True, there is nothing in what is beautiful, whether in nature or art, unfavorable to religion - but very much by which religious feelings may be induced and fostered. And, certainly, they are not the worst Christians who have the most extensive and loving acquaintance with nature's works.

But nevertheless the influence which these things exert depends entirely on the state of mind with which they are surveyed. They may foster and strengthen feelings which already exist; but they have no power to produce feelings which are not there. They have no power to change the heart, so as to make bad men good.

One of the loveliest scenes in the world is the site of Pompeii, but it would seem that God has preserved her ruins that she might testify to the nineteenth century, that she resembled Sodom in the depth of her wickedness before she resembled her in the terribleness of her overthrow. Man fell in Eden angels sinned in Heaven.

"In the place where He was crucified there was a garden."

2. Sorrow mingles with all earthly enjoyment. "In the garden was a sepulcher." How emblematical of human life in which every joy is marred by some sorrow, and the presence or the memory or the prospect of death casts its shadow over all. It is a good thing to be reminded that there is no such thing here as pleasure without drawback or alloy.

Of Naaman the Syrian, it is said that "he was captain of the host," but he was a leper! Of Haman we read how he told his wife and friends of his good fortune, and then, "Yet all this avails me nothing so long as I see Mrordecai," 

There is no rose without a thorn. In every garden there is a sepulcher.

3. The presence of Christ converts death into Life, and sorrow into joy. It was fit that the sepulcher should be placed in a garden, seeing it was to contain the body of our Lord. His presence there gave to the grave a significance which it had never possed before. The tomb which Christ lies, is a seed plot of immortality from which radiant and glorious forms shall spring; "for that which you sow is not quickened unless it dies."

4. As symbolic of how the presence of Jesus tends to change our sorrow into joy - Christ in the sepulcher transforms the receptacle of death into the source of higher life. And therefore have no sepulcher without a Saiour in it no trouble in which you do not seek to have the presence of your Lord. A life of pleasure would neither be so desirable nor so profitable, as a life whose sorrows are sanctified by fellowship with Christ.

Nor should you seek, as is sometimes done, to have the sepulcher of your own fashioning, saying, "If I had only such-and-such trials, I could bear them well: I should not complain if I were only like so-and-so." No man ever got to choose his own trials. He who gives the garden, gives the sepulcher with it; and determines at once his position and its form. All that you need is to have Christ in it!

~W. Landells~

(The End)