THE EASTER STORY PART ONE: UP CALARY’S MOUNTAiN
1. Mocked by the Soldiers
Matthew 27:27-30; Mark 15:16-19
1) The Suffering
Jesus, having already been scourged earlier (?), was mocked once more by the soldiers. After this came more suffering. Crucifixion was the most horrible execution known to man. The Persians began using it around 400 BC to instill fear in conquered people motivating them to obey. The victim was stripped, nailed to a cross of wood, placed close to the road for all to see, and left alive, screaming, because of the pain, the hot sun, the insects and the birds. It took about 36 hours for most to die, but some lived as long as six days. Crucifixions were common in the First Century and Jesus, says William Barclay, not doubt witnessed this many times.
2) The Shadow
The Bible Jesus read as a boy and heard preached in the synagogue was full of the cross. It did not surprise Him. He knew it was coming. All the Old Testament sacrifices Jesus read about as a boy were a “shadow” of this (Hebrews 10:1).
In Genesis 3, God covered the nakedness of Adam and Eve by slaughtering an animal to make them coats. There too He told Satan he would do battle with a man born of woman. He would reach out and strike him (the cross), but in so doing, he would be crushed in defeat (3:15).
At some point in His young life, while reading his Bible and praying to His Father, He read Genesis 3:15, Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53 and realized all this was coming; even the shameful, unnecessary treatment by the soldiers (Isaiah 50:6). He told His disciples in Luke 18:31 that He would be mocked, insulted, spit on and scourged. When He read this, is it possible that as a little boy or teen ager, that He cried in the presence of God asking if there might be some other way?
There is a picture of Jesus, as a boy in the carpenter shop.
He is stretching His arms to relieve tension. But the sun shining
through the door, places His silhouette on the wall behind Him in the shape of a cross.
3) The Sadistic Cruelty
In what could be the hardest part of that day’s events, Jesus allows Himself to be shamefully mistreated by the soldiers and made to look like a fool. They took the greatest, strongest man who ever lived and made him their clown.
The soldiers had a job to do. He had already been scourged. Now they could assign four soldiers for the death squad; give Him His crossbeam; take Him through the streets; and crucify Him. But they wanted to have some fun.
They stripped him, exposing His already beaten body, covered with bruises and open wounds from the scourging. Then they began their torment.
A king needs a robe so they found one lying around and put it on Him. “A king needs a scepter so they put a stick in His hand. A king needs a crown so they cut and shaped some thorns and pressed it down on His head as the spikes dug into His head, neck and face. A king needs some subjects. So one by one they bowed down before Him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Isaiah 50:6 says they jerked His beard out of His face.
Jesus was silent so they began to hit Him with their fists and with a stick and since He was a prophet, they asked Him to tell them which one of them hit Him.
4) The Silence
In all this Jesus said nothing. Isaiah 53 says:
“He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. As a sheep before its shearers is silent; so He opened not His mouth.”
Isaiah 50:6 says:
“I offered my back to those who beat me and my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard. I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting.”
Few men can resist striking back when taunted and laughed at and slapped by other men; but Jesus did. Brave Peter, the least likely to take insults like this was so impressed by it that he wrote:
“When He was reviled He did not revile back and when He suffered He did not make any threats because He entrusted Himself to Him, the One who will judge fairly.” (1 Peter 2:23)
We are to be like flowers. When they are crushed their beautiful scent is released.
5) The Shield
After 39 lashes that often jerked out pieces of bone, not one bone was broken because the Passover Lamb had no broken bones (John 19:36; Exodus 12). God was there shielding His Son and Jesus knew it. No matter how bad things get; no matter how much we are tempted to believe God has deserted us;
2. The Short Journey (9AM)
Matthew 27:31-32; Mark 15:20-21 Luke 23:26-32; John 19:16-17
1) The Crowds
The route to Calvary is called the “via dolorosa” – the way of sorrow. The three victims went out carrying their own crosses (probably the cross beam). To make the crucifixion visible to as many people as possible, victims were paraded through the streets by the longest route. There were four soldiers; a Centurion in charge; and a herald walking in front with a sign listing their crimes. Jesus was innocent so Pilate had them write:
“This is Jesus of Nazareth, The King of the Jews.”
It was about 9 AM, the time for prayer at the Temple, so with millions in town for Passover; a “huge crowd” began to gather around the procession.
2) The Compulsion
Many people died from scourging. The bits of bone, metal and stone on the whip often jerked internal organs to the surface. Isaiah 52:1 said people were horrified when they saw Him because He didn’t liik like a human being. This is why Jesus either fell down or was unable to carry His cross (beam) any further.
Roman law known as “Conscription” allowed the Centurion to compel a stranger to carry it the rest of the way. His chose a man named Simon, who was probably a Jews from North Africa in town for Passover.
An interesting question is whether or not Simon was converted later. Some Church traditions say he was the Simon mentioned in the church at Antioch. (Acts 13:1). “Simon” was a Jewish name but he was also called “niger” – a person with a dark complexion.
If so, he found Christ because he was where he was supposed to be and was doing what he was supposed to be doing --attending Passover as the Old Testament demanded (Leviticus 23). Attendance by those as far away as Africa was optional in the first century, but God impressed him to go and he went.
I never liked Sunday School but my first year in Seminary God impressed on me that to prepare myself for the Pastorate, I needed to attend both church and Sunday School. Reluctantly, I obeyed. One day, in a boring Sunday School class in Fort Worth, Texas, a beautiful girl walked in. I went back to Church Training that night to get a second look, and the rest is history. We have been married for 53 years.
3) The Crying and the Compassion (Luke 23:27-33)
In an ocean of cruelty we see the beautiful virtue of sympathy and compassion. Luke, the Gentile who appreciates the role of women, is the only one who tells us some WOMEN were weeping over what was going on.
Sometimes we cannot do anything to alleviate someone’s pain, but we can be “there to care”. A young soldier wanted to go into the line of fire to rescue a friend but his commander told him not to because he saw his wounds and said he was probably already dead.
The soldier disobeyed and came back dragging his friend’s lifeless body. The commander told him, “I told you it would do no good for you to go.” The boy answered, “It did a lot of good. He was alive when I got to him and just before he died he said, ‘Jimmy, I knew you would come to get me.’”
JESUS showed compassion in a strange way. He told them not to cry for Him; but for themselves. Quoting Hosea 10:8, which pictures people running in fear for cover beneath the mountains; He no doubt was pointing forty years into the future when Jerusalem would be destroyed by the Romans. The lucky ones, He said, would be those who never had children. They would not have to see them suffer.
Josephus described the awful horrors of Jerusalem’s fall, especially for women and children. The picture is too horrible to repeat or write down here. All I will say is that inside the walls, during the long siege, many resorted to cannibalism. Jesus added:
“If men do this when the tree is green, what will they do
when it is dry?”
This symbol probably means that if all this suffering is falling on Him to pay our sins; and if horrible suffering falls on Jerusalem because of its people’s sins; then how much more horrible will it be after death, at the Judgment for anyone who does not accept His sacrifice as payment for their sins and ends up in hell?
Spurgeon said:
“O you unsaved people. When God saw Christ in the sinner’s
place, He did not spare Him; and when He sees you without Christ, He will not spare you.”
Pollsters estimate that only 20 percent of the people in America, born after 1986, known as “millennials”, have a Biblical world view. They believe in God and in some kind of loving place for most people after death. They don’t get upset over Christians mentioning things like belief in the Bible; Judgment day; forgiveness through faith in Christ and hell. They say if that’s how we feel it is fine, they just don’t happen to agree. They are “nice” but “not interested”.
I am 81 years old and I never thought I would say this; but I believe the church should put a larger emphasis on preaching of Judgment Day and hell. In our culture, this is about the only thing I see that will get the attention of people who do not have a Biblical world view.
I am a person who wishes there will be no hell for anyone who is not right with God through Jesus Christ after death. I hope when they close their eyes in death that their conscious life will end immediately.
C.S. Lewis said the same thing and then added, “I cannot give the teaching on hell because I would have to give up Jesus as my authority in religion because He said more about it than anyone else in the Bible.”
What started me to thinking about this is a story I heard told by a young woman in her early thirties, who had been a child star on TV.
In her early teens, she and her “rock star” father began an improper sexual relationship. In her twenties she lived with him and one day, walked up to him and said, “Daddy, you and I are going to hell for what we have been doing.” And she stopped it then and there.
All the glimmer and glamour of Hollywood could not shut out the still small voice of God that tells us there will be judgment and some kind of payday after death for the things we do wrong in this life.
Felix was a pagan ruler north of Palestine, but when Paul stood before him the Bible says, “When Paul preached to him about righteousness, self control and the Judgment, Felix trembled.” (Acts 24)
But we must preach hell in the right way. Before I was converted it seemed to me that some “fire and brimstone” preachers were almost glad people like me were going there.
Two preachers met on the street and one asked the other what he preached the previous Sunday. When he said “hell”, the one who asked the question, said, “I hope you did it with tears in your eyes.” I believe Jesus, here, and everywhere else, did that.
