Treading the Winepress Alone

​I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments,
​and I will stain all my raiment. Isa 63:3
We Behold the Redeemer

DESERTED BY HUMAN FRIENDS. No human friends could understand or sympathize in the work of Christ. It is the fate of many men to go through life alone. They may have many relatives, acquaintances, companions, and derive much pleasure from their society; but they may never meet with a truly “kindred spirit. Them are two kinds of loneliness—the isolation of distance and the loneliness of the heart; and the latter is the far more complete and sad of the two. The fisherman, alone at night upon the sea, with no other living being near, no sound but the plashing of the wavelets, no sight but of the occasional struggling of a star through the clouds, may be in spirit at his cottage home upon the beach, and space and time are annihilated, and his heart peopled with many a dear familiar form. But far different is the loneliness of the heart! What solitude is there comparable to the spiritual loneliness of him who, with a soul filled with sadness, finds himself jostled in the midst of a gay and pleasure-seeking crowd? So is it with the man of transcendent goodness or genius. Such a one must, to a greater or less extent, be lonely. This it was which constituted the peculiar bitterness of the trial of Elijah (1Ki_19:14). It has often been said that the possession of a real and truehearted friend is at once the greatest and the rarest of earthly blessings; such a friend as was Jonathan to David. But if such friendships are rare among men, how utterly impossible was it that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, should find a friend and sympathizer, in the truest sense of those words, among the sons of men. Twelve chosen associates, indeed, He had, but they were utterly incapable, as long as He lived below, even of understanding Him, much less could they enter into, and sympathize with, the great work of His life and death. That work was essentially a lonely one. For--
1. He alone could accomplish our redemption.
2. Christ was alone in His foreknowledge. We often hear those who have passed through some heavy trial say, “ If I had known beforehand what I had to endure, I could not have borne it; I should have sunk under the appalling prospect!” So mercifully has our Heavenly Father, knowing our frame, hidden the things that are to be from our eyes. But there was this ineffable aggravation of the grief of the “Man of sorrows, that, to the suffering of the present, there was superadded the heavier prospect of the future.
3. Then, too, from the Divine purity and loftiness of His soul, Christ suffered far more than any mere man could suffer. The more refined and elevated a man’s nature is, the more sensitive he is apt to be; the keener are his sorrows, and the more ecstatic his joys. But sin, and death its punishment, the whole world’s burden of which rested upon the pure soul of the Redeemer, had for Him a dark and dreadful reality of horror, inconceivable by any of us whose innermost heart has been tainted with the love of sin.
4. Moreover, in another way, the grief of the Lord Jesus Christ in this world was what the sorrow of no mere man could be, the sorrow of the Creator in the midst of His mined works.
5. Yet again, in His power of omniscience He stood “alone.” “He that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.” If we could discern the secrets of all hearts, if the thoughts and desires of a crowd could be rendered audible to us, how continually should we be overwhelmed with shame and horror. But Christ knew all men.
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LEFT ALONE BY GOD. When He foretold to the disciples their desertion, He added, “And yet I am not alone, because My Father is with Me.” But in the hour of His deepest agony there was an exception even to that companionship of eternity. Far otherwise has it been with the martyrs of Jesus, and with all His faithful people since, in the “article of death.”
Conclusion:
1. Christ “trod the winepress alone” for you. Mourn, therefore, and rejoice.
2. Christ will “tread the winepress alone” again: the winepress of the wrath of God.
3. It is oftentimes the lot of God’s people to be called upon in some degree to “tread the winepress alone.” Daniel had to do so. But remember for your encouragement that, in the highest sense, you never can be alone in the conflict. Your Savior met the world, the flesh, and the devil alone, that you might never have to wage a single-handed warfare, never be left without a higher Presence in the good fight of faith. (H. E. Nolloth, M. A.)

“Why Are Your Clothes Red?”

"Why is Your apparel red, and Your garments like one who treads in the winepress? “I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples, no one was with Me. For I have trodden them in My anger, and trampled them in My fury; their blood is sprinkled upon My garments, and I have stained all My robes. For the day of vengeance is in My heart, and the year of My redeemed has come. I looked, but there was no one to help, and I wondered that there was no one to uphold; therefore My own arm brought salvation for Me; and My own fury, it sustained Me. I have trodden down the peoples in My anger, made them drunk in My fury, and brought down their strength to the earth.”
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Why is Your apparel red: The prophet asks why the garment of the LORD is red, and the LORD answers, “I have trodden the winepress alone . . . their blood is sprinkled upon My garments.” This promise is fulfilled when Jesus returns to the earth, and this passage is clearly behind passages like Rev_19:13; Rev_19:15 : He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God . . . Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

I have trodden the winepress alone reminds us that this work of judgment belongs to Jesus Christ and He alone. Though we will be part of the heavenly armies that accompany Jesus (Rev_19:14), the work of judgment belongs to Him alone. The point is even emphasized by Isaiah: From the peoples no one was with Me . . . My own arm brought salvation for Me; and My own fury, it sustained Me.

In God’s great plan of the Ages, Jesus will accomplish two things alone. First, He atones for our sin alone. He alone hung on the cross, bearing the weight of all our guilt. Second, He judges the world alone. God does not need us to execute His ultimate judgment; we leave that to Him.

“You will hear one say, that such-and-such a good man was punished for his transgressions; and I have known believers who think that their afflictions were punishments sent from God on account of their sins. The thing is impossible; God has punished us, who are his people, once for all in Christ, and he never will punish us again. He cannot do it, seeing he is a just God. Afflictions are chastisements from a Father’s hand, but they are not judicial punishments. Jesus has trodden the wine-press, and he has trodden it alone: so we cannot tread it.” (Charles Spurgeon)

​Rev 19:13  And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. 
Rev 19:14  And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. 
Rev 19:15  And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. 
Rev 19:16  And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.