Behold, in Bethlehem’s manger Emmanuel is born, God is with us. Before your eyes He lies who was both the Son of Mary, and the Son of the Blessed, an infant, and yet infinite, of a span long, and yet filling all eternity, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and yet too great for space to hold Him. Thirty and more years He lived on earth: the latter part of His life was spent in a ministry full of suffering to Himself, but filled with good to others. “We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Never man spoke like that man; He was a man on fire with love; a man without human imperfections, but with all human sympathies; a man without the sins of manhood, but with something more than the sorrows of common manhood piled upon Him. There was never such a man as He, so great, so glorious in His life, and yet He is the pattern and type of manhood. He reached His greatest when He stooped to the lowest. He was seized by His enemies one night when wrestling in prayer, betrayed by the man who had eaten bread with Him; He was dragged before tribunal after tribunal, through that long and sorrowful night, and wrongfully accused of blasphemy and sedition. They scourged Him; though none of His works deserved a blow, yet the plowers made deep furrows on His back. They mocked Him; though He merited the homage of all intelligent beings, yet they spat in His face, and struck Him with their mailed fists, and said, “Prophesy, who is he that struck You?”

He was made lower than a slave; even the abject opened their mouths with laughter at Him, and the slaves scoffed at Him. To end the scene, they took Him through the streets of Jerusalem over which He had wept; they hounded Him along the Via Dolorosa, out through the gate, to the mount of doom I think I see Him, with eyes all red with weeping He turns to the matrons of Salem, and cries, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but for yourselves, and for your children.” Can you see Him bearing that heavy cross, ready to faint beneath the burden? Can you endure to see Him, when, having reached the little mound outside the city, they hurl Him on His back, and drive the cruel iron through His hands and feet? Can you bear to see the spectacle of blood and anguish as they lift Him up between heaven and earth, made a sacrifice for the sin of His people? My words shall be few, for the vision is too sad for language to depict. He bleeds, He thirsts, He groans, He cries – at last He dies – a death whose unknown griefs are not to be imagined, and were they known would be beyond expression by human tongue.

Charles Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon #745 – “The Unsearchable Riches of Christ”

The sermon is available here: https://www.spurgeongems.org/sermon/chs745.pdf