Here is a song we’ll be introducing at church just a little bit later today. Written by James Montgomery, it is titled “Go to Dark Gethsemane.”

What I love about this hymn is the progression from Gethsemane all the way to the resurrection, from watching Christ be tempted in the Garden all the way to watching him rise. In just four short verses, the hymnwriter has managed to capture the gospel. With Good Friday and Easter fast approaching, the words especially relevant.

Go to dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter’s power;
Your Redeemer’s conflict see, watch with Him one bitter hour,
Turn not from His griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray.

See Him at the judgment hall, beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned;
O the wormwood and the gall! O the pangs His soul sustained!
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss; learn of Christ to bear the cross.

Calvary’s mournful mountain climb; there, adoring at His feet,
Mark that miracle of time, God’s own sacrifice complete.
“It is finished!” hear Him cry; learn of Jesus Christ to die.

Early hasten to the tomb where they laid His breathless clay;
All is solitude and gloom. Who has taken Him away?
Christ is risen! He meets our eyes; Savior, teach us so to rise.

We’ll be singing it to the tune written by Indelible Grace’s Kevin Twit.

If you’re interested in giving it a listen, take a look at Wake Thy Slumbering Children:Indelible Grace V.

Rooting around through some old files today I found a great quote by Charles Spurgeon just doing what Spurgeon did so well—exposing the heart. Here is what he had to say about weeping for Jesus as we picture him hanging upon the cross, suffering for our sake.

You need not weep because Christ died one-tenth so much as because your sins rendered it necessary that He should die. You need not weep over the crucifixion, but weep over your transgression, for your sins nailed the Redeemer to the accursed tree. To weep over a dying Saviour is to lament the remedy; it were wiser to bewail the disease. To weep over the dying Saviour is to wet the surgeon’s knife with tears; it were better to bewail the spreading polyps which that knife must cut away. To weep over the Lord Jesus as He goes to the cross is to weep over that which is the subject of the highest joy that ever heaven and earth have known; your tears are scarcely needed there; they are unnatural, but a deeper wisdom will make you brush them all away and chant with joy His victory over death and the grave. If we must continue our sad emotions, let us lament that we should have broken the law which He thus painfully vindicated; let us mourn that we should have incurred the penalty which He even to the death was made to endure … O brethren and sisters, this is the reason why we souls weep: because we have broken the divine law and rendered it impossible that we should be saved except Jesus Christ should die.

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