The Highest Hill in the World
Matthew 27:31-43
http://gbcdecatur.org/sermons/HighestHill.html
In Latin it is called Calvary. In Hebrew, Golgotha, or “place of the skull.” If you look carefully you can see it...an eerie image...a symbol of death. It’s not a very high hill geographically, but spiritually speaking, I believe it to be the highest hill in the world. For it was on this hill that God’s justice was affected by God’s grace. Man’s sin intersected with God’s sovereignty. History meets eternity on the highest hill in the world! No event in history is as significant as the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
We left off last time with Jesus standing before Pontius Pilate and being condemned to death. His scourging was bad enough, but He still had a long way remaining in His journey to that hill.
1. Calvary’s Simon.
v. 31-32 It was required that a prisoner carry his own cross to the place of execution. Not only has Jesus already been scourged, His body lacerated and hanging in ribbons, but He is already wearing the crown of thorns, driven deep into His scalp. He has been repeatedly beaten for hours now, and it was simply more than His physical human nature could bear. Though He was all God, He was all man, and He collapsed under the load. But there would be no delay. They wanted Him dead, and now!
So the Roman soldiers quickly drafted the first able bodied man they could find. Simon by name, from the country of Cyrene, which was a country in northern Africa, what we would today call Libya. It is possible that he was a black man, but that region had been settled mostly by Palestinian Jews at that time, so it is more likely that he was one of these who had returned to Jerusalem for Passover.
They “compelled” him to carry the cross. They made him do it against his will. The cross was the ultimate form of degradation. Crucifixion originated from the practice of nailing rats to the wall, and when it became the supreme method of killing the worst of the worst criminals, you didn’t even talk about it in polite company. You can imagine his humiliation and resentment at having to do this, and being associated with the ‘criminal.’
Mark refers to Simon as though the early church would know whom he was talking about.
Mark 15:21
And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross.
In Romans 16 Paul mentions a saint named Rufus. Many Bible scholars believe this experience of Simon’s may have led to his salvation and his whole household. Perhaps he went to Jerusalem to sacrifice a Passover Lamb, and he wound up meeting the Lamb of God!
He’s an example of those who come to church because they are made to, and end up meeting the Savior face to face. Every week we have some here who don’t really want to be here. In some cases they are a child or teen, and they have been ‘compelled’ to come. Maybe it’s a spouse who has been begged repeatedly, or a friend or relative. And if you are one of those who have been ‘compelled’ to be here today, you ought to thank God that somebody cared enough about you to bring you.
Ill.—raise your hand if you were raised w/ a drug problem...you know, you were drug [dragged!] to church. Look around! Keep your hand up if you are glad you were compelled to go to church. Raise your hand if you got saved as an end result of going to a church you didn’t at first want to attend.
It doesn’t matter how you get here, the Word of God is still sharper than a two edged Sword. So bring them in from the fields of sin, and after they get here, the music melts their heart, the friendliness of this family warms their heart, the Bible convicts their heart, and chances are, God will come into their heart and they will live to see the day that they thank God they were ever compelled to come!
Parents, don’t buy into the lie of the devil that if you make your kids come to church you will turn them off. We all meet people who say they don’t go to church because they were made to as a child. It’s baloney.
Ill.—what if I said to you that I’m giving up bathing, and eating vegetables, because I was made to as a child. If this philosophy was really true that we quit things our parents made us do, then I’ve got a sister who is 30 years old who would be walking around naked today! She hated to wear clothes as a kid, and would dart out of the bathroom and run around like a nudist colony! I can just see her getting arrested today at her church for indecent exposure, and she explains to the judge how it’s her parent’s fault for making her dress all those years!
They need to just be honest about how they never believed what they heard there, how they never submitted themselves to Christ, and how they rebelled against their parents wishes in this matter. The Bible says to train up a child in the way they should go. Joshua said, me and my house are going to serve the Lord! If they want to go a different direction after they leave your house, that’s their decision. Some may have had some bad experiences at a church, but they shouldn’t blame God for that...they shouldn’t punish God for what somebody said or did...God didn’t do it, so don’t use them or anybody else as your excuse for not obeying God!
Calvary’s Simon...
2. Calvary’s Soldiers.
v. 35-36 When you see the soldiers you see calloused, hardened, cursing men who were apparently unmoved by what they were witnessing. They came to actually enjoy the sport of their trade, and they even gambled for his clothing at the foot of the cross. It was customary for the soldiers to share in the loot at an execution. The Son of God is dying for them and their sins they are presently committing, and they are hoping to win something in their crude game.
This was routine for them...they had seen hundreds of crucifixions. Maybe one chomped on an apple, another told a joke, or stretched out for a nap. Well, today we are a little too much like these soldiers. We have heard the story of the cross so much that we have become desensitized...it no longer stirs us. We can sing the precious words to these songs of the season and they go right over our heads. Our hearts should be stirred, and our hands should be motivated. WE should be compelled by this story.
I stand up and preach on the cross, and some in the room have trouble just staying awake! Or they are thinking about lunch, or the week ahead. We have a problem! Our eyes are dry, our faith is old, our hearts are hard, our prayers are cold. We are calloused...the frozen chosen...and God help us to light a fire, and find a passion for the Passion of Jesus!
Do we not realize that we should have been crucified? That it was our sins laid on Him there? That we are the soldiers in this scenario? That we are the ones who drove the nails?!
We need a fresh look at and a fresh love for the cross of Calvary. The cross reveals what is in the heart of a person. It was in the light of the cross that we saw Pilate’s cowardice / the chief priests hypocrisy / the disciples lack of faithfulness / the soldiers callousness. What does the cross reveal about YOUR heart. If it does not call you to a higher level of consecration then something is desperately wrong!
Calvary’s Simon, Calvary’s soldiers...
3. Calvary’s Suffering.
v. 39-43 The Gospel writers show great restraint as they write about the crucifixion. They didn’t depict for us the graphic detail of what a crucifixion is like. Perhaps because words simply aren’t adequate to convey it. In those days they said to be crucified was to die 1,000 deaths, and truly Jesus was dying a death for each and every one of us! It is agony beyond description. Isaiah said you couldn’t even recognize Him as a man. Perhaps the only word that begins to tell the story is a word we used 2 weeks ago when talking about hell: excruciating. The word comes from 2 latin words meaning ‘out of the cross’, and truly Jesus was taking our hell for us in excruciating pain.
The hours on the cross after all He’d been thru, the scourging, the beatings the thorns, the nails – those hours were excruciating because all His weight was on those nails. In crucifixion, the diaphragm collapses and you have to lift yourself up in order to take a breath. He pushes up on that nail out of necessity, and the nail tears thru muscles and tendons, and wedges between bones in the feet.
In v. 34 we see a narcotic offered to Him by some women on a mission of mercy, but He refused to accept anything that would dull the pain and hell that He wanted to save us from! He was determined that His senses be fully intact...He didn’t turn down an easier path.
This is not a private room like Saddam had, and not a quick nor easy death. This was a public highway, and He was mocked and ridiculed, and dared to come down off that cross if He was really God. I don’t know about you, but I imagine if I was Jesus [who could have come down at any time if He wanted to] I would have come down and started mopping the floor w/ backsides and taking names...but thank God He didn’t come down, He stayed with purpose, and suffered the shame to save me! It wasn’t that He could not come down...He would not come down! What kept Him on that cross? It wasn’t the nails. He created the material they were made of. It wasn’t the soldiers...He spoke one word in the garden of Gethsemane when they came to arrest Him and they fell down as dead! If it wasn’t the nails or the soldiers that kept Him there then what was it? I’ll tell you—it was love! Cords of love bound Him there. His love compelled Him to go all the way for us. Shouldn’t this story compel us to go all the way for Him? Don’t be satisfied being a Sunday Christian. Don’t be a person who just happens to be saved. Make Him your everything, and give Him everything!
Ill.—a preacher studied late into the night, preparing to preach about the cross. He fell asleep at his desk and dreamed about the crucifixion. It was vivid, like he was really there...the sights, the sounds, the smell in the air. He said he watched as a soldier drove the nails into the hand of Jesus, and he winced at each blow. He wanted to put a stop to it, so he said “in my dream I approached the soldier and grabbed his shoulder, spinning him around so I could get a look at him, and when I saw his face I realized, it was me!”
“Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Sometimes it causes me to tremble!” Yes, we were all there!
Don’t allow the death of Jesus to be in vain. If you’ve never been saved, get saved today. Don’t be one spitting in the loving face of the One who hung there for you.
Don’t be one of the soldiers, taking it lightly. Be Simon. Allow yourself to be compelled to carry the cross and follow Him, to give Him all, to have a passion for the Passion of Christ!
http://gbcdecatur.org/sermons/HighestHill.html
