Matthew 26:36-38
The Pain of the Cross
INTRODUCTION
In his book titled, Systematic Theology, writer Wayne Grudem outlines four aspects of Jesus’ pain on the cross that I would like to share with you today. I want us to turn our hearts and thoughts to the sacrifice that Jesus made for each of us those many years ago. He told his early church on that Passover night before He was crucified that they were to continue in observance of His supper until He returned, and that they were to do so as a continual reminder of what He was going to do for them. The Scriptures say…
"…the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, this cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come." (1 Co. 11:23-36)
Jesus intended that we as believers, those of us who have placed our faith in Him, remember what He has done for us. He knew far better than we that our tendency would be to forget the sacrifice He made for us, so He said to keep observing His supper until His return lest we forget, lest we take for granted the precious blood that was shed on our behalf. Jesus died for you and for me. He died for every man and woman, every boy and girl that ever has lived, that is living today, and ever will live in the future. His death was universal, it was unconditional, and it is incomparable to anything anyone or any thing could ever do on your behalf. How great is the love of Christ!
In our text, Jesus has already observed the Passover meal with his disciples, and He had been teaching them about His coming death that would occur only hours from then. Remember that Jesus has told them that He was going to a place to which they could not come, and Peter told the Lord that He would give His life for Jesus sake. Jesus told Peter that not only would he not die that night for Jesus, but would instead deny Him three times. Jesus went on to tell His followers that they would be hated and severely persecuted for giving their lives to Him.
After much discussion about this subject of His death and preparing the men for it, Jesus retired to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. Our text reveals something very personal and intimate about our Lord only hours before His death. Matthew 26:36-38 says,
"Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me."
It is obvious from our reading that the sufferings of Jesus intensified as He drew near to the cross. We cannot know the agony He endured as the climax of the coming sacrifice drew near. Let’s notice four different aspects of the pain that Jesus experienced for you and me according to the Scriptures.
PHYSICAL PAIN AND DEATH
I have heard many times that Jesus endured more physical pain than any other human, and probably have preached it, but it isn’t really right for us to suppose that He did, because the Bible nowhere asserts that He did. We do know from Isaiah something about His suffering though, for he wrote in Isaiah 52:14,
"As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men."
One modern version says it this way,
"Many were amazed, appalled when they saw him - beaten and bloodied, so disfigured one would scarcely know he was a person."
The crucifixion was a common form of punishment and execution in the ancient world and was widely used during the Roman Empire’s rule. Those of Jesus’ day would have been all too familiar with the practice, and now our Lord and Savior had to endure this most shameful form of humiliation and death.
Consider the physical pain Jesus suffered and endured for you and me as one medical doctor described it:
As Jesus prayed in the garden, his body had already began to exhaust itself as His capillaries began to burst under His skin and He sweated drops of blood to the ground. The crowd then came to arrest Jesus, after which he was bound and led around from ruler to ruler to decide what should be done with this criminal.
As Jesus stood before the high priest, on of the officers struck Jesus on the face, beginning the physical abuse that would escalate hours later. The soldiers blindfolded Jesus, covered His face and eyes and, as they circled Him, began to punch Him in the head and mock Him. Later the soldiers were ordered to scourge, or whip the Lord, which peeled the skin from His back and caused Him to ooze with blood. With His back bloodied from the whipping, a purple robe was placed upon Jesus and a crown of thorns was put on His head, opening new wounds on the easy bleeding part of the forehead. The blood in His back by now is drying and adhering to the robe He wore, and the soldiers began to beat Jesus in the head with a rod while spitting on Him. Later on again, they took the robe from Jesus, reopening the wounds on His back, and He was made to walk to the place of the crucifixion carrying the rough cut cross to which He would later be nailed. As He walked, the cross dug into His already beaten and bleeding back, until He could go no more and Simon of Cyrene was made to carry it for Him.
Once at Golgotha, the cross was placed on the ground and the exhausted Jesus was made to lie stretched out. The soldier moved quickly to find the depression at the front of the wrist, where he drove a heavy, square wrought iron nail through the wrist and deep into the wood. He would then move to the over side and repeat the action before moving to the feet. The left foot was pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail was driven through the arch of both feet, leaving the knees flexed. The cross was then raised and dropped into a socket in the ground, and the crucifixion was begun. With His arms outstretched and fastened by the nails, Jesus had to support most of the weight of his body with His arms. The chest cavity would be pulled upward and outward, making it difficult to exhale in order to be able to draw a fresh breath. But when His longing for oxygen became unbearable, he would have to push Himself up with His feet, thus giving more natural support to the weight of His body, releasing some of the weight from His arms, and enabling His chest cavity to contract more normally. By pushing Himself upward in this way He could fend of suffocation, but it was extremely painful because it required putting the body’s weight on the nails holding the feet, and bending the elbows and pulling upward on the nails driven through the wrists. Jesus’ back, which had been torn open by the whipping, would scrape against the wooden cross with each breath. As muscle cramps and partial paralysis took over, endured an agonizing death.
Crucifixion was a slow, agonizing death by asphyxia, and in some cases the crucified men would survive for several days, nearly suffocating, but not quite dying. This was why the executioners would sometimes break the legs of the criminal, so that death would come quickly. It was a physically painful sacrifice that Jesus made for us on the cross, but as painful as it was, that wasn’t the worst part.
THE PAIN OF BEARING SIN
More awful than the pain of physical suffering that Jesus endured was the pain of bearing the guilt for our sin. You know how sin affects you. When we sin against God and His Word, the weight of that sin is heavy on our hearts, and there is a bitter sense of separation from God and that something is not right in our lives. You’ll find that the more you grow in holiness as a child of God, the more intensely you will feel this instinctive repulsiveness about sin. If you can sin and continue in it and there’s no remorse about that sin - it doesn’t bother you - then you ought to seriously question your present relationship with Christ. Either you don’t have one or you aren’t growing in it.
Now, Jesus was perfectly holy. He hated sin with His entire being. The thought of evil, of sin, contradicted everything in His character. Far more than we do, Jesus hated sin. Yet in obedience to the Father, and out of love for us, Jesus took on Himself all the sins of those who would someday be saved. All that He hated most deeply was poured out fully upon Him.
Consider what the Scriptures say,
· Isaiah 53:6 "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."
· Isaiah 53:12 "Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."
· John 1:29 "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world."
· 2 Co. 5:21 "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
Perhaps one of the most beautiful verses in all of Scripture is 1 Peter 2:24, which says, "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed."
In the same way that Adam’s sin was imputed to us, that is, his sin was considered as belonging to us, our sin was imputed to Christ - God considered it to belong to Him. God didn’t just consider it to be so, it was so, for He became sin for us, took on the guilt of sin for us, and paid the ultimate sacrifice for sin because He loved us. Jesus, who was perfect and holy and righteous in every way - the God-man who knew no sin, who never committed a sin, who never once did anything wrong or failed to do anything that was required of Him, paid for your sins and mine. It was us who deserved to suffer death. It was you and me who deserved to die for our sin - we are guilty! Yet in His great love Jesus suffered the pain of the cross and paid a sin debt that we could never pay.
THE PAIN OF ABANDONMENT
In a very real way, Jesus illustrated for us the truth of Romans 6:23, which says, "For the wages of sin is death…" Death is separation, and when Jesus was crucified He suffered the pain of separation, complete abandonment like none have ever suffered. Even before He was crucified, the men who had just professed that they would lay down their lives for Jesus abandoned Him. He was betrayed by one of the twelve and was taken and arrested by the crowd who only days before had shouted "Hosanna, praise be to God!" only days before. While He was being beaten and whipped and about to die for them, the Bible tells us that "all the disciples forsook him, and fled."
Well that was the human abandonment, but there was more and worse to come on the cross. When Jesus was hanging there paying our sin debt, He was deprived of the closeness to the Father that had been the deepest joy of His heart for all His earthly life. In Matthew 27:46 it is recorded that Jesus cried out,
"Eli, Eli, lama sabach-thani, which is translated, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
As Jesus was crucified, He was cut off from fellowship with His Father. Jesus had told people repeatedly, "I and the Father are one…" On the cross that oneness was broken. There was no fellowship. There was oneness - only the pain of abandonment because of our sin which He had taken upon Himself. He faced the guilt of millions of sins, your sins and mine, alone.
THE PAIN OF BEARING THE WRATH OF GOD
Isaiah 53:10-11 says,
"Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief; when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his see, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities."
The physical pain Jesus suffered was intense, the pain of bearing our sin must have been overwhelming, the complete abandonment that he experienced torturous, but even more difficult must have been bearing our sins alone as God the Father, the mighty Creator, the Lord of the universe, poured out on Jesus the fury of His fierce wrath. In that one act, Jesus became the object of the intense hatred of sin and vengeance against sin which God had patiently stored up since the beginning of the world.
Although the comparisons are really very weak, we can all think back to times when we experienced wrath or anger of a human father when we did wrong, or perhaps from some other authority figure. We were inwardly shaken, disturbed by the crashing of another personality who was filled with displeasure and we as the result of their anger we feared the consequences. Imagine for a moment what it would be like to stand in the face of the wrath of God in all His fierceness! How we would disintegrate in His very presence! If even the presence of God when he does not display His anger and wrath brings great fear and trembling, how terrible it must be to face the presence of a wrathful God!
With this in mind, we might better understand Jesus’ cry of desolation when He said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus knew that God had not left Him forever. He knew that when He left this world He was going to the Father, for He had just explained this to the disciples only hours earlier. We find in the letter to the Hebrews,
"Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."
Jesus knew full well what He was doing and knew why He was doing it. He knew He was dying for our sins and that He was paying for them on our behalf. Yet in his human consciousness we might wonder if He knew how long the pain of bearing our sin might last. To bear the guilt of millions of sins even for a moment would cause the greatest anguish of soul. To face the deep and furious wrath of God for even an instant would cause the most profound of fears. But Jesus’ suffering was not over in a minute, or two, or even ten. The Scriptures indicate that Jesus hung for hours, and from the sixth hour to the ninth hour there was darkness all over the land. Hour after hour the dark weight of sin and the deep wrath of God was poured out on the Savior until He cried out in anguish the question about God having forsaken Him. "My God, my God, will you ever bring it to an end? Why must this suffering go on so long?"
It wasn’t until the pouring out of God’s wrath upon Jesus was finished that Jesus was able to lift Himself up on the cross, forcing the weight of His body on those nails in His hands and feet and cry out, "It is finished. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."
Here was the perfect, sinless Savior, who voluntarily endured the agony and pain of the cross, giving up the life that He said no man could take from Him, and He died. As Isaiah had prophesied, "he poured out his soul to death" and "bore the sin of many." God the Father saw "the fruit of the travail of his soul" and was "satisfied."
CONCLUSION
The hymnist F. Whitfield wrote,
I saw the cross of Jesus, when burdened with my sin:
I sought the cross of Jesus, to give me peace within;
I brought my soul to Jesus, He cleansed it in His blood;
And in the cross of Jesus I found my peace with God.
I love the cross of Jesus, it tells me what I am -
A vile and guilty creature, saved only through the Lamb;
No righteousness, nor merit, no beauty can I plead;
Yet in the cross I glory, my title there I read.
I clasp the cross of Jesus in every trying hour,
My sure and certain refuge, my never failing tower;
In every fear and conflict, I more than conqueror am;
Living I’m safe, or dying, through Christ, the risen Lamb.
Sweet is the cross of Jesus! There let my weary heart,
Still rest in peace unshaken, till with Him, ne’er to part;
And then in strains of glory I’ll sing His wondrous power,
Where sin can never enter, and death is known no more.
It is no wonder that the Apostle Paul found it such a great joy to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ! He said, "may you have the power to understand how wide, how long, how high and how deep the love of Christ really is! May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it!"
Paul was right! What kind of love is it that could endure the physical pain of the cross, that would take on the sin of the world, that could endure the complete abandonment that He did, and to suffer the outpouring of the fierce wrath of God for those who don’t deserve it?
"For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
Christ died for everyone in this room, those of you who have accepted Him and those who have not. What a sad thing for a man to die and go to Hell because he was so hardhearted and stubborn that he would not accept what Jesus has done for him. If you do not know the Lord as your Savior, you have heard clearly today what He has done for you. There is nothing you can do about your sin. It was a debt you could not pay, and it is a debt that you would not want to pay. Why not accept that Jesus paid it for you? Repent of your sin of unbelief, your sin of not having trusted Christ before and do that today? Would you be saved?
For the many who are saved today - you know the Lord Jesus and you have remembered today what He endured for you - will you continue to take for granted His love? During our invitation, some of you need to repent of sin that you’ve been holding on to, sin for which Jesus died. You should use this time to thank the Lord for what He has done, and all of us ought to determine in our hearts to live lives that are worthy of the pain Jesus endured for us.
