(This is based on a message preached Easter Sunday, April 09, 2023 at First Baptist Church of Chamois, MO but is not an exact transcription.)
Introduction: It’s Easter Sunday today, and I’m grateful for everyone who’s here. This is the day we celebrate the Lord Jesus Christ rising from the dead in order to provide salvation for everyone who believes. I hope everyone has done that.
This message is a little different from most that I preach. Today, instead of expounding on a single text, I’m using an “acrostic”, or using each letter of the word Easter, E-A-S-T-E-R, and using that as a starting point. I won’t be reading much text except this passage here, but please let me encourage you to read the last chapters, especially, of each Gospel. I’ll use this passage in John 19 as a starting point and we’ll go from there. Here’s the text:
John 19:16-30, NASV: 16 So he then handed Him over to them to be crucified. 17 They took Jesus, therefore, and He went out, carrying His own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which in Hebrew is called, Golgotha. 18 There they crucified Him, and with Him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between. 19 Now Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It was written: “JESUS THE NAZARENE, THE KING OF THE JEWS.” 20 Therefore many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and in Greek. 21 So the chief priests of the Jews were saying to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews’; rather, write that He said, ‘I am King of the Jews.’”22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
23 Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His outer garments and made four parts: a part to each soldier, and the tunic also; but the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece. 24 So they said to one another, “Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it, to decide whose it shall be.” This happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled: “THEY DIVIDED MY GARMENTS AMONG THEMSELVES, AND THEY CAST LOTS FOR MY CLOTHING.” Therefore the soldiers did these things.
25 Now beside the cross of Jesus stood His mother, His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 So when Jesus saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He *said to His mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” 27 Then He *said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own household. 28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, in order that the Scripture would be fulfilled, *said, “I am thirsty.” 29 A jar full of sour wine was standing there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a branch of hyssop and brought it up to His mouth. 30 Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.
<Opening prayer>
E-Expectations
I mentioned that this is an “acrostic”, where each letter of “Easter” is one point of the message. Let’s take a look at the first letter, E, standing here for “Expectations”.
Reading the Gospels, there were plenty of expectations, all right, especially when Jesus had come into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, fulfilling prophecy (Zechariah 9:9, to name one). The people had shouted “Hosanna!”, cut down tree branches, and not just limbs, either. I think these were branches you had to cut with an axe. These folks had also thrown their clothes where Jesus and the donkey were traveling. They did all this and maybe even more because they really believed their King was coming!
But those expectations didn’t last long, did they? Any number of things can happen to have expectations wither away to nothing. Here’s one example: when my daughter was 10, we bought her a pretty white dress, gloves, shoes, tights, and so one. Hey, she was gorgeous even then! We thought she was going to be so pretty in that white outfit.
That expectation lasted maybe five minutes! Just after she was dressed and ready to go, she came back in the house with my youngest son. My daughter was in tears, her dress was dirty, her tights were torn, and her gloves—yeah, ruined. I asked what had just happened and my youngest said, “We were having a race”.
There were maybe ten steps from the house door to the car door! No need for a “race” of any kind! Well, we got her a different set of clothes and, incredibly, still made it to church on time on that Easter Sunday. This just goes to show that expectations, sometimes, don’t happen.
And I doubt the people of Jerusalem ever forgot how that Jesus didn’t meet their expectations. Oh, sure, they knew and probably cherished the hope of the King returning, and putting Israel back where they had been in the “good old days” of David and Solomon—and, truly, God is not done with Israel, no, not by a long shot. One day the Lord will make good on every promise left unfulfilled in the Old Testament.
But the people didn’t want to wait. They wanted the King and the Kingdom, a conquering Messiah, not what they thought Jesus was. They either didn’t know or didn’t care about a SUFFERING Messiah, fulfilling other prophecies like Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. They wanted the CONQUERING Messiah, as I’ve mentioned. And since Jesus didn’t give them what they wanted, I believe they lost faith in anything He could say or do.
Well, the ride into Jerusalem took place early in that week and several other things happened, also. The Gospels tell how Jesus preached, taught, and spoke with various people and groups, climaxing in the Upper Room where they celebrated the Passover and Last Supper. Afterwards, they left the Upper Room and went to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed. Intensely. He was in such physical distress that His sweat was like drops of blood falling on the ground (see Luke 22 for the whole story).
But very soon, something worse was about to happen.
A-Arrest
Judas had led the group of soldiers to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus and the disciples had gone after they left the Upper Room. Every time I read this, it reminds me of how low Judas had sunk, from being a disciple (although he was never saved) to a betrayer or traitor. Judas had made arrangements to deliver Jesus (unharmed?) to the chief priests and as a reward or gift, he was given “thirty pieces of silver.” That may or may not sound like a lot of money to us, but a “piece of silver” or “penny” in the King James Version was the standard pay for a 12-hour day of work. Judas, then, sold the Son of God for a month’s pay.
And part of that pay was to lead the group of soldiers to Jesus. Sure enough, the soldiers had various weapons, plus lanterns and torches (John 18:3), as they searched for Jesus. Judas knew the place where Jesus was likely to go and soon enough found Him.
The texts don’t say much as to whether or not Jesus was abused physically, here in the garden, only that He was bound and led away. Well, Judas had done his job: he had led the crowd to Jesus, he had identified Jesus by kissing Him on the cheek—a mark of friendship in those days—and now he was free to enjoy the pay he had received for this job. Oh, sure, we all think how evil Judas was, and how he literally betrayed Jesus for a month’s worth of money, but let’s be honest, the same thing can happen, and has, to any number of people who claim(ed) to believe in Jesus but somehow stopped.
All I can say is this: if I don’t stay true to Jesus or fail to stand up for Him, then I’m a worse traitor than Judas ever thought of being.
Jesus had now been arrested and was being led away to various places, all in the dead of night, but the suffering He had endured was just beginning. And it was going to get much worse.
S-Suffering
This leads us to the “S” in Easter, which I’m using to stand for Suffering. It’s easy to forget, as some do, that the suffering Messiah was just as much a part of God’s plan as the conquering hero Messiah. Isaiah 53 has a lot of this but that passage seems to be overlooked a lot, then as now. But let’s see what some of our Lord suffered before He went to Calvary.
First, Jesus was taken to Caiaphas, high priest at the time. Jesus had to feel He was suffering because of the constant false witnesses, lying about Him, and there is no record He was even given the chance to defend Himself! Then, when Jesus was questioned directly, “Are You the Son of God?” Jesus of course replied “Yes” and that prompted the high priest to exclaim, “Blasphemy!” When that happened, it became open season on Jesus while He was still, technically, under arrest. Matthew stated that those near Jesus began to spit in His face, and then “buffet” Him and smite Him with the palms of their hands. What a way to make “protective custody” none of the above!
To make matters worse, Jesus also was shuttled between several different places, standing trial (if you can call it that) before Annas, Herod, and Pilate—twice—all during the night, and all in violation of any number of laws. Each gospel documents this. That didn’t matter, though: the important thing was getting rid of Jesus once and for all.
By any means necessary.
Now, some of the suffering took place before the trials, and some during; there was even more that took place after the trials were over. Let’s move on now to the “T” in Easter, standing for the trials Jesus went through.
T-Trials
Most of us think a trial is to examine evidence and decide who’s guilty or innocent in a given case or situation. We’ve seen plenty of TV shows, from “Perry Mason” to the “Law and Order” series and others that show some of what takes place, right?
Well, nothing like that happened for Jesus. He was taken before a “judge” or some kind of official, but humanly speaking, He didn’t have a chance. In each of these “trials”, the fix was in. They were going to find Him guilty of something, no matter how low they had to go or how long it took to get it done.
The Jewish leaders would have been glad to have Jesus executed—destroyed—but they didn’t have the power to sentence people to death in some cases. They would have had to get the Roman officials to agree to this, especially in a case like this. So, after Annas and Caiaphas had “tried” Jesus, they sent Him to Pontius Pilate. For another trial, of course, but note how they changed the charges. Any leader with a backbone of any kind would have laughed the others out of his office.
That didn’t happen, of course, and Pilate wound up having Jesus scourged or flogged. The Jews had a limit of 39 lashes, but the Romans didn’t, and it’s anybody’s guess how many times Jesus was whipped. Maybe you’ve heard of the “cat of nine tails?” This was a whip with nine leather strands and on each strand was something to cut or wound human flesh. Jesus endured this, by the way, at the end of his second trial.
And still that wasn’t all. Sometime before this, there was a group of soldiers, we might say, who played a game of “Name My Fist” or something like that. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record that people hit Jesus in the face, asking Him to guess which one did it. Some of the commentators say that this was kind of like “blind man’s bluff”—a game I’ve never played, by the way, so I don’t know the rules—and the object was to guess which man hit you in the face. If not, the story goes, the hitters get to play again and the victim got to guess again. For example, if Jesus had been blindfolded, and Soldier 1 hit Him in the face, he could say, “Oh, no, it was someone else. I guess you get another chance. Here we go!”
So with all the beatings and other physical abuse Jesus endured, He was humanly almost at the end of His endurance. After all, He was completely human and felt everything you and I could possibly go through. No doubt He was in pain, but the suffering wasn’t over just yet.
Calvary was still in His future, along with the worst form of death ever: crucifixion.
Execution was just moments ahead for our Lord. But He didn’t shrink back from anything, and He knew what He had to do. Best of all, He did it!
E-Execution
This next letter, E, stands for Execution. We don’t need to go into too much detail about how people were crucified; I’m sure we’ve seen pictures, or even images, called crucifixes, in certain churches. The theory, if you want to call it that, was that a condemned person (mostly men) would have his arms nailed to a cross bar and then his feet would be fastened to the upright piece. And that was that, with the crucified person remaining attached to the cross until death took over. Sometimes he or she would remain on the cross for 2 to 3 days.
Jesus was physically in bad shape from all the suffering and abuse He had gone through long before He reached Calvary. After Pilate had passed sentence, Jesus was led away to be crucified. Years ago, Dr. John MacArthur of the “Grace to You” radio broadcasts had a series about these last days of our Lord’s life. He gave a lot of information about the process before a person was ever crucified. In brief, the condemned person was led through the city, with another individual holding a board with the crime painted on it. This is also quoted or mentioned in a commentary on Mark (New International Commentary on the New Testament: Mark, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974, Dr. William Lane, chapter 15)
Anyone who had information to clear the person had the chance to do so. How often a condemned person was cleared as a result of that process is not known but it does show a glimpse of Roman justice. Here, at any rate, Jesus stood a better chance with them than He ever would with the Jewish leaders.
But He didn’t get any support except from the women who wept for Him. Nobody had anything to help Him be cleared of the charges, or if they did, they never came forward. What a change from just a few days before, when the crowds were shouting “Hosanna!” Now, they’re saying nothing and doing nothing to help Jesus.
Eventually Jesus reached the site of the Crucifixion. On the way, He had simply reached the end of His endurance and fell under the cross beam. That piece of lumber, by the way, was a good sized item, long enough to hold both arms of the crucified person. Some estimate this to be in the neighborhood of six by six inches by about five feet long. One can only imagine the weight of this log, even more so when the condemned man was in the shape Jesus was in at the time.
He made His last steps, lay down, and allowed Himself to be crucified (this is hard to type, by the way). He did this for us—for me, and for everyone who believes the Gospel, how that Jesus died for our sins. No, there was no doubt He was dead: the soldiers who supervised this were professional killers (executioners) and they knew exactly what to do.
And they did it. They may have thought, oh, just one more Jew to crucify, so let’s get this over with so we can get back to the barracks or something like that. But no one had ever lived as Jesus had, and no one had died like Jesus died. After just six hours, He was gone, He had dismissed His spirit and had cried out, “It is finished!” or
paid in full!
His dead body was taken to Joseph’s tomb. Most people thought, “That’s all, folks; this Jesus won’t be bothering us anymore” or something similar. Matthew’s gospel adds that there was a seal placed on the tomb, meaning if anyone tried to bother the grave or anything inside, they’d be in serious trouble. Now the only thing for the people to do was go home and wait.
But they were about to encounter one of the greatest events in history!
R-Resurrection
This last R in Easter stands for the Resurrection! Very quickly, most of us, I’m sure, know about the empty tomb and how Jesus spoke to several different people that day. Read the last couple chapters in each Gospel to get the news. The fact is that many people, over 500 at one time, saw Him, Jesus, alive after He rose from the dead—and some of them were still living when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 30 years later. (More omitted to save space).
So Easter is more than baskets, bonnets, and bunnies! It’s the story of how Jesus came, lived, died, but most importantly came back from the dead to bring us salvation and everlasting life. Oh, sure, candy and other goodies are great, but they don’t last long, do they? But what Jesus gives lasts forever! I hope you’ve all received the gift of salvation, but if not, what better day than today? Jesus loves you and me enough that He gave His life and came back from the dead to prove HE IS GOD and HE IS ALIVE! Hallelujah!
Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Version of the Bible (NASV).
