by his father in order to turn you to God : " Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts."
In discoursing on these words we shall consider,
I. The commission given to Jehovah's sword —
It is bidden to " awake and smite :" but here two questions arise ;
1. Whom was it to smite ?
[It was assuredly the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone an- swers to the character here described. He is the Shepherd of Israel," appointed to that office by God himself0. He desig- nates himself by that very name, and as the person to be smitten under that very character d. Moreover, he alone can be called " Jehovah's fellow :" for he was God as well as mane, even the true Godf, the mighty Gods, altogether One with the Father himself11, " God over all, blessed for ever;" and, being- God in his own nature, and therefore incapable of suffering, he assumed our nature on purpose that he might suffer1.]
2. In whose hand was it to inflict the stroke ?
[It was the Father himself who was to wield it, even he who here calls upon it to arise and smite. True it was that men and devils were the more immediate agents k ; but they were only instruments in the Father's hands : " they could have had no power at all against him, if it had not been given them from above." They were willing agents, no doubt, and executed what their own malignant dispositions dictated : but God overruled their designs for the accomplishment of his own eternal purposes1. There was not one thing done by them which had not been foretold ; nor one thing predicted, which they did not unwittingly and exactly perform™.
But even without the intervention either of men or devils, the Father himself smote him. What was it but a sense of God's wrath upon his soul that made him sweat great drops of blood in the garden ? It was the Father himself who put that bitter cup into his hands. Upon the cross too, when Jesus uttered no complaints respecting inferior agents, he bitterly bewailed the hidings of his Father's face : " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " Thus was verified that awful prediction of the prophet, " It pleased the Lord, even Jehovah himself, to bruise him11."]
c Ps. lxxx. 1. Ezek. xxxiv. 23. d John x. 11.
e John i. 1. f 1 John v. 20. s Isai. ix. 6.
h John x. 30. • Phil. ii. 6—8. k Luke xxii. 53.
1 Acts ii. 23. and iv. 38. m John xix. 28, 30. n Isai. liii. 10. vol. X. M M