The reaction to Christ’s death, Luke 23:44-49

One of the more popular news stories that we always see at the end of the holiday season is something along the lines of people who passed away during the last year.  It’s a way of remembering people that have died, perhaps prematurely, or perhaps tragically.  And I can think of a few this year; Robin Williams, Joan Rivers, and Jay Adams come to mind.  But unfortunately, as time goes on, the memory of many of those who have passed away will grow dimmer for most of us, if not altogether forgotten with the passage of time.

There are some people though that when they died they left an indelible mark on society and in some cases upon history.  There are pop icons such as Elvis, or Michael Jackson, or John Lennon that continue to be mourned in some circles.  But only time will tell how much their deaths really affected history.  However, I can think of at least a couple of people whose deaths did impact history in a significant way.  Abraham Lincoln’s death was certainly a momentous event, as well as the death of John F. Kennedy. 

However, no celebrity, or personality, or historical figure has ever had their death affect the world to the extent of the death of Jesus Christ.  He was only 33 years of age.  He lived most of His life in a small region called Galilee in Israel, which at that time was under Roman occupation.  And yet His death literally turned the world upside down. The most widely used calendar era in the world (abbreviated as "AD", or after death), was established in medieval times from an estimate of the birth year of Jesus.  More literature, more poetry, more songs have been written about Jesus of Nazareth than any other person that ever lived.  Two thousand years later and counting, His life has impacted untold millions of lives in ways that cannot be calculated. And two thousand years later, the world is still reacting to the death of Christ.  No death of any person who ever lived has ever had anything close to the impact that Christ’s death has had on the world.

And so as we look at this next section of scripture I want to point out three divine reactions to the death of Christ, and three human reactions, as illustrative of the impact that Christ’s death has on the world. First let’s look at the divine reactions.  The first divine reaction to the crucifixion of the  Light of the World was that God caused total darkness to come upon the earth.

Jesus said in John 9:5, "While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world."  And yet the world rejected that Light, so God turned off the light of the sun in the middle of the day.  Vs. 44 says that it was the 6^th hour of the day.  That would be high noon, 12 o’clock.  Luke says that total darkness fell over the earth until the 9^th hour, so that would be three hours of total darkness. 

Interestingly, a Roman historian named Phlegon wrote that "In the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad, there was an extraordinary eclipse of the sun: at the sixth hour, the day turned into dark night, so that the stars in heaven were seen; and there was an earthquake." His dating of this eclipse would put the death of Christ at 33AD. And yet since the Passover always coincides with a full moon in the spring, there is no way for a normal eclipse of the sun to occur at that time.  However, it is interesting that a pagan historian wrote of a full eclipse of the sun occurring at exactly the same time as indicated in the gospels.  Matthew’s gospel also gives an account of an earthquake happening at that time as well. 

Now some of you may remember that Jesus said when they arrested Him the night before that this hour had been given to the power of darkness.  And so we see that  spiritual reality culminating in a physical darkness which fell on the earth for three hours.  But there was also a historical symbolism to the darkness.  Remember that this is the Passover.  And the Passover was a Jewish festival that celebrated the night in Egypt when God passed over the houses marked with blood on the doorposts and visited death upon the first born of all the people in Egypt. 

And if you will recall, the final plague that God visited upon the Egyptians before the death of the first born was total darkness over the land.  In the historical event in Egypt the darkness lasted 3 days.  At the cross, the darkness lasted 3 hours.  But the correlation is obvious.  The judgment of God was about to be poured out on sin, just as the judgment of God was poured out on the Egyptians in the death of their first born sons.  However now, it is not  that the wrath of God is poured out on sinners, but the wrath of God is poured out on His Son, killing the Son of God so that men’s sins might be forgiven.  Rather than God pouring out His wrath on men and killing them as they deserved for rejecting His Son, God pours out His wrath on Jesus Christ, punishing Him for the sins we committed. 

Isaiah 53 says it this way, “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.”

I would take this opportunity to point out something else.  In last week’s message I pointed to all the references in this passage to Jesus as the King.  That kingship is a thread that is woven through Luke’s account of the crucifixion that point to Christ’s divinity.  But there is another thread woven into Luke’s account as well, and that is the sinlessness of Jesus.  His righteousness is also a testament to His divinity, and Luke illustrates that in several comments.  Pilate states repeatedly that he found no guilt in Jesus.  The thief on the cross says that “we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.”  And then in the centurion’s comments we read, “he began praising God, saying, ‘Certainly this man was innocent.’” Three witnesses to His innocence.

That innocence of Christ needs to be emphasized, because unless He was the spotless, sinless, Son of God, He could never be the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world.  2 Cor. 5:21 says, “[God] made [Jesus] who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”  So God illustrates the pouring out of His wrath on sin by this total blackout for three hours.

The second divine reaction to the death of Christ was to tear the veil of the temple in two.  If you will recall, the common area of the temple was separated from the Holy of Holies by a curtain.  Only once a year was the high priest allowed to enter it in order to make atonement for the sins of the people.  Hebrews 9:6 tells us that the high priests could only enter there by the blood of a sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people.  And so God was illustrating by tearing this wall of separation in two from top to bottom, that a new way has been made to be reconciled to God through a better High Priest, and through a better, final sacrifice.

Heb. 9:11-15 “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation;  and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.”

So God tore the Holy of Holies veil from top to bottom, signifying that Christ’s death had torn down the wall of separation between Jews and Gentiles, and between God and man, that Jesus had instituted a new way to be reconciled to God for all men, that all who believe in Him might be saved.  According to Ephesians 2:15, “by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.”

Now lest you think that God tearing the veil into was a minor thing to mark such a momentous occasion, you should realize that this signified the total destruction of the system of Judaism as practiced at that time.  Sacrifices and offerings have been discontinued ever since.  Just 35 years later the temple was completely destroyed, set on fire and not one stone left standing upon another.  The whole legalistic system of Judaism was overturned and has never recovered in 2000 years. By tearing the veil in two God made that announcement that afternoon, disrupting the priests who were trying to fulfill their Passover obligations, by slaughtering thousands of lambs that could never take away sins.  But Jesus by one sacrifice took away the sins of millions of people who would come after Him.

The third divine event that happened that afternoon on the cross was what might be called the final breath.  I don’t know how many of you have witnessed the final moments of death of someone.  But if you have, you might have noticed how a person often seems to slip away; the breathing becomes more shallow, the organs and functions of the body began to shut down, and soon the breaths begin to become spaced further and further apart until the last breath is not repeated any more.  Their life ebbs away from consciousness to unconsciousness to finally gone.

That is not the way Jesus died. Death on a cross was expected to be a long drawn out affair.  It was designed to be tortuous, painful even to breathe.  And as the hours go on, the body grows so weak that it cannot push itself up enough to speak, or even to gasp for air.  It becomes a sort of suffocation.  Many years ago as a lifeguard, I was once trained that suffocation whether in the water or on land usually was indicated by a person being unable to speak or cry out.  And so the guards and everyone familiar with the process would have expected after a few hours the victim would be hardly able to breathe, much less able to speak, and their body would shut down to the point where eventually they would expire. 

But what we see depicted here is not Jesus succumbing to death by strangulation or suffocation or even his faculties shutting down, but He voluntarily gives up His Spirit, and God takes His life from Him.  Don’t forget, the soldiers and the priests might have been the human agents that carried out the crucifixion, but it was the plan and purpose of God to give His life as a sacrifice for sin. In John 10:17-18  Jesus said, "For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father."

Jesus wasn’t put to death, He rendered Himself to death.  He submitted Himself to the purpose and will of God by offering Himself as a sacrifice for sin.  Look at vs. 46, “And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, "Father, INTO YOUR HANDS I COMMIT MY SPIRIT." Having said this, He breathed His last.”  I believe God took Jesus in that moment, just as Abraham had depicted in the offering of Isaac on the altar, raising up the knife to slay his only son, and being saved by a ram placed there by God in the thicket.  Now in this hour, Jesus who had the power to save His own life, who no nails could possibly hold on a cross if He did not allow it, submitted His Spirit to God the Father, to do His will, and the hand of God came down at that instant and pierced His only begotten Son in His heart and killed Him, so that He might demonstrate His love for us, even while we were yet sinners. 

So in that context, consider the final cry of Jesus on the cross. Vs. 46, He called out with a loud voice, going out not with a whimper, but with a cry of victory. John 19:30 tells us more of what He said.  He cried out “It is finished!” which is one word in the Greek; tetelestai- which literally means paid in full. This wasn’t the cry of a defeated victim of a failed Messiah, this is the cry of a winner, victorious because He had lived a sinless life, submitted in all things to the Father, in obedience even unto death, and by that death paid in full the debt of sin we owed.  And having said that, He breathed His last breath.  He relinquished His life to death.

Now those are the three divine responses to the death of Christ presented here.  Let’s look briefly at three human responses which are also depicted in this passage.  And perhaps it would be appropriate to consider them as representative responses of all men to the death of Christ.  The first response is that of the centurion.  Luke tells us in vs. 47 that “when the centurion saw what had happened, he began praising God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent.”  Now that is not all that he said, as we will soon see.  This centurion would have been the officer in charge of the crucifixion squad that had taken Jesus from Pilate’s court, through the city streets, laid hold of Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross, and then nailed Jesus to the cross.  These soldiers would have been the very ones who gambled over the division of His clothing while He suffered on the cross.  They would have been the very ones that Jesus prayed for as they were pounding nails through His hands and feet, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

And I will suggest that Jesus’ prayers are always answered as evidenced by the centurion’s remark.  Jesus prayed that they would be forgiven, and the only way for forgiveness of sins is to recognize that Jesus Christ is the righteous Son of God and confess Him as Lord.  And I think that is what is seen here.  It’s interesting that this man, if he was saved, and I think he was, was a Gentile.  The temple veil had just been rent in two, signifying that the way to God was made possible for all men, not just Jews.  And now here is this Gentile, announcing that Jesus was an innocent man, even a righteous man.  But as I said, there was more that was said by this man and the other soldiers. Matt. 27:54 tells us “Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!"

I think this man and possibly the other soldiers who crucified Jesus were saved in response to the prayer of Jesus for them.  And the evidence for that claim is that they said He was the Son of God.  If you remember when Jesus asked the disciples some time earlier, whom do men say that I am?  Simon Peter answered Him and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of God.” And remember Jesus said unto Him in Matt. 16:17, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” 

I believe these pagan soldiers, cruel, heartless men that nailed the hands and feet of Jesus to the cross were convicted by God through the events of this day that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God.  And believing in that fact, they received life in His name.  They heard His words, they heard His prayers, they saw the darkness from God and the earthquake that accompanied it, and they saw the way He gave up His life of His own volition, and they believed that He was the Son of God, the Christ, the Messiah. 

I believe these cruel soldiers are set first as an example of God’s desire for all that are exposed to the testimony of the cross. God is not willing for any to perish.  Jesus said, If I am lifted up, I will draw all men to me.  If these men could be saved - Gentiles, cruel soldiers, pagans – then anyone can be saved.  In those hours by the cross of Jesus they were transformed by the power of God to believe and be saved.  This is what Christ died for.  This is God’s purpose for everyone who is impacted by the cross.  Even 2000 years later the salvation of Christ is still effective, still available for you and everyone that hears the gospel so that they may be saved.

But there is a second group of people also there that day that witnessed the cross.  They saw what the soldiers saw.  They are described in vs. 48, which says, “And all the crowds who came together for this spectacle, when they observed what had happened, began to return, beating their breasts.” Beating the breast was a common ritual associated with grieving.  I cannot help but think of the people represented by the crowds, without thinking of the millions of people who have some sort of intellectual comprehension of the historicity of the cross, perhaps even sense the tragedy of the death of an innocent man, and yet they fall short of salvation offered through the cross.  It is possible to be impacted by the cross in some way but not accept the gift of salvation offered through the cross.  The people in this crowd went away beating their breasts.  They were mourning the death of a good man, even an innocent man.  But they failed to understand that this Son of God died on the cross in their place, so that they might be saved. 

There is a difference between the reaction of the centurion and the crowds.  The centurion saw the death of Christ and said, surely this was the Son of God.  And then very significantly in vs. 47 it says he began glorifying God.  He began praising God. Why?  Because God revealed to Him that Jesus was dying for him.  I don’t know how.  But I know that a pagan would not normally praise God that the Son of God was just killed unless God showed him that it was for his benefit.  Because Jesus died, he was made righteous through faith in Christ. That is the reason to praise God about the death of Christ. But this crowd, they see that Jesus has died and they lament perhaps the cruelty of Rome, they lament that a good man in whom they had once hoped for social reform was now dead.  They go away sad.  But they aren’t changed by His death. They don’t praise God for it.  They see nothing to rejoice in. They go back home sad.  They go back to their lives without any hope. 

I’m afraid that there are a lot of people today that believe that Jesus lived, believe that He died on the cross, that may participate in certain rituals commemorating His death, and yet they remain unsaved.  They have no hope of their salvation.  They continue to work at their religion, continue to confess their sins to priests, to try to appeal to dead saints for help, yet ultimately they die without a real hope, a real assurance of their salvation because they never understood the finished work that Jesus did on the cross for them and appropriated that salvation for themselves.  They have seen this spectacle of the gospel, and yet left the greatest gift of all unopened under the Christmas tree, the robe of righteousness that Jesus bought for them with His own blood.  They left it there, and never put it on by faith in what Jesus had done for them. 

And that leaves us with the final group of people depicted there at the cross in this passage.  And that is the women and acquaintances of Jesus who stood off at a distance.   First, I would point out that they were standing at a distance.  You know what’s sad about these people?  I think that they are believers.  I think they are Christians.  But I think they are put off by the cross.  They are put off by the suffering that is there.  And so they stand as far away as they can and still be able to see what is going on.

I think a lot of modern day disciples are like these folks.  They stand as far away as possible and still be able to say that they are there.  They want the least amount of Christianity possible and still be saved. They don’t want to come all the way to the cross. They appreciate what Christ did for them there, but they want nothing of the cross for themselves.  I feel confident though that as those true believers continued in their discipleship after the resurrection  they become familiar with the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ.  Because I think that is the path to maturity that all believers must trod if they are going to follow Christ.  Jesus said in Luke 9:23, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”

So their association with the sufferings of Christ would come in time.  But on this day, they wanted to stand as far away as possible.  I wonder how many of us might have our discipleship characterized like that?  We want to do as little as possible and still be in.  We trust in the grace of God but then presume upon that grace to do little or nothing in service to the God who saved us.  Our lives are never characterized by any sacrifice of our own.  We are more than content to let Jesus do all the suffering alone, while attempting to reap the benefits of both heaven and the world.

There is one small clue in Luke’s description that portends what God will do with these people, these acquaintances that stand far away from the suffering of the cross.  Luke says that they were “seeing  these things.”  They were eyewitnesses of His suffering.  Peter would say many years later in his epistle, in 2 Pet. 1:16, “For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”

I think God used the eyewitness of these hesitant disciples to ultimately turn the world upside down.  They were hesitant then, fearful even, but when they witnessed not only the death of Christ but His resurrection, then they received confidence in their own immortality.  They surrendered their grip on the present world and in that new found confidence in the next they went out in the power of the Holy Spirit as witnesses to their communities, their cities, their countries and to the ends of the earth proclaiming the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

And I think that is what God intends for all of us hesitant disciples who are fearful of associating with the cross of Christ.  I think God wants to impact first of all your life with the vision of the cross, so that by your consecrated life you can impact others with the message of the cross.  But to do that I think that you have to surrender your life to the cross, taking up your cross daily and following Jesus.  How do you do that, you ask?  Romans 12:1-2 “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” 

That is what it means to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.  To join in the fellowship of His suffering.  That we might use our bodies for the sake of the gospel, just as Jesus did, submitting Himself to the will of God, even through His death.  That we might be holy, even as He is holy. That we might  live righteously, so that others might not stumble over us, but rather see the light of Christ in us. 

This world is in darkness, held in the power of darkness. But through the power of the cross we can live our lives in such as way as to fulfill the command of Jesus found in Matt. 5:16;  “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” 

What is your response today to the death of Christ?  Are you saved by the power of the cross as the centurion?  Can you praise God for the death of Christ as a substitute for your sins?  That is God’s purpose for all men, that they would be saved by the death of Christ. 

Or is your response to Christ’s death like the second group?  Have you turned away from the sacrifice made there?  Have you seen this spectacle of the gospel and turned back to the way of the world.  Have you no hope in life after death?  What a tragedy that would be, to see all of this great love of God for you manifested on the cross and yet walk away without the salvation purchased there by Christ’s death.

Or are you one of His followers, but standing as far away as possible from the suffering of the cross?  Are you trying to hold onto the best of both worlds, neither in or out, perhaps a secret disciple, or a fearful disciple?  I hope that the impact of Christ’s death on the cross will compel you to love God with all your heart and soul and strength, forsaking the world and present your body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service of worship.  Let us pray.

The King Rejected and Received, Luke 23:32-43

As we look at this familiar passage today which deals with the crucifixion of Jesus, there is a temptation for a preacher to try to present something which is very familiar in a fresh way.  And so often the way that is done is to dramatize the story by adding all sorts of details concerning the method of crucifixion, or the torture of crucifixion, or other details that might make the story more interesting. 

But the gospel writers do not expend much effort attempting to dramatize the physical act of the crucifixion.  Luke just states it as simply as possible in vs.33, saying “there they crucified Him.”  No gory details of how that was accomplished, or how painful or horrific crucifixion was.  And so I think it’s appropriate for us today to be mindful of the way the writer presents this event, so as not to unnecessarily dramatize it.  Not that we want to minimize the pain and suffering of the cross, but to see first and foremost the purpose of the cross.  To focus too much on the mechanics of the torture of the cross is to possibly miss the doctrine of the cross and that would be the greater tragedy.

So our goal today is not to give  a dramatic description of the crucifixion, but the doctrine of the crucifixion. 1 Peter 3:18 states simply the doctrine of the crucifixion, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God.”  

Now in this passage today we will just consider a portion of the crucifixion, and in so doing we will discover first what qualifies Jesus to bring men to God, then man’s rejection of that qualification, and finally the salvation of one man who accepted Christ.  And the key component of this salvation is the principle that Christ is King.  Christ is King.  I think that is what Luke is presenting here.  The whole chapter up to this point has been predicated on the charge his accusers made about Him before Pilate.  Their charge in vs. 2 was that He claimed to be a king, and that was deserving of death. 

Notice that the chief priests accuse Him of being Christ, a King.  They state it in such a way as to make the two synonymous.  Christ is the Greek word which was translated from the title Messiah.  Christos means Anointed One, the Messiah, the Son of God.  He was anointed to be the Ruler who would sit on the throne of David, who would rule the world with a rod of iron.  The chief priests and scribes would have been very familiar with the Messianic prophecy found in Isaiah 9:6, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.”  So there was a correct understanding on the part of the Jews concerning the Messiah that He would also be a King, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.

So that is the primary charge which the Jews made concerning Jesus, which they used to have Him put to death.  And since that is the charge, Pilate tries Jesus on those grounds.  In vs. 3, Pilate asked Him, saying, “Are You the King of the Jews?” And He answered him and said, “It is as you say.”  And yet Pilate finds no guilt in Him. He sees no evidence for His kingdom.  He is looking at the physical evidence of a kingdom or a kingship and he doesn’t see it.  And even Jesus Himself tells Pilate in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”

So the central issue then is the kingship, or lordship of Jesus.  Was He the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, the anointed One who would set up His kingdom on earth?  That is the central issue of that day, and it is the central issue of the ages.  There is no disputing the fact that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died 2000 years ago.  But there is much dispute as to the nature of this man.  Was He in fact God incarnate, God in the flesh, or was He just a man?  Was He just a kind man, perhaps a bit deluded, but a good teacher, a Gandhi like figure that taught peace through passivity?  Or was He the Messiah, the anointed King of God in human form?  And if He was indeed the King of Kings, as He claimed, then what should be our response to Him?

There can be but two possible responses; either reject Him as King, or worship Him as King.  And in this passage we see those two responses depicted.  First let’s look at several examples which Luke presents of the King rejected.  We have already seen how Pilate acquiesced to the voices calling for Jesus to be crucified.  We heard him ask if Jesus was indeed a King, and we heard Jesus tell him that it was so.  And yet, ultimately Pilate rejects Jesus as King.  He probably knew nothing of Jesus as Messiah, he cared nothing for Jewish religion.  But he understood what it meant to be a king.  It was what he desired for himself, it was his aspiration.  And there was no way that he would bow to a Jewish prophet who claimed to be a king.  That would mean he would have to relinquish his throne and bow to Jesus, to serve Him.  And there was no way that Pilate would do that.  So he agreed to crucify Jesus as the chief priests and the people demanded.  He did what so many politicians do, he acquiesced to popular demand in order to preserve his position of power. 

And in vs. 38 we read Pilate’s proclamation which he had written for the soldiers to place upon the head of the cross. “Now there was also an inscription above Him, ‘THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.’”  The chief priests had argued with Pilate, saying don’t write that this is the King of the Jews, but write that he said he was the King of the Jews.  But Pilate refused to change it, saying, what I have written, I have written.  And so by his own words he will be judged.  He proclaimed that Jesus was the King of the Jews, and yet he rejected Him and had Him crucified.

So he consented to crucify Jesus.  He handed him over to the Roman soldiers who led Him away to Golgotha, which means the Place of the Skull.  And there they crucified Him, along with two criminals, one on either side.  Little could they know that this fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 53:12, which says that He was numbered with the transgressors. 

The second group then that we see who reject Jesus was the soldiers.  As they throw Jesus’ lacerated body onto the cross and pound the nails in His hands and feet, Jesus prays aloud, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”  Oh, the soldiers knew what they were doing all right.  They had undoubtedly done this sort of work many times before.  But what they could not understand was that they were pounding nails into the very Son of God.  They thought it was some sort of joke.  Pilate had written this sign to put on His cross announcing that Jesus was King of the Jews, and they began to make fun of Jesus because of it. 

Vs. 36 “The soldiers also mocked Him, coming up to Him, offering Him sour wine,  and saying, ‘If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself!’"  But obviously, this demand for Jesus to save Himself as evidence of His Kingship, or His Messiahship, shows that even these soldiers understood that there was something more implied in His Kingship than mere political power.  They understood that it implied a supernatural power. Kings didn’t have power of immortality, but gods did. So if you were really God, they said, then save yourself from death.  That is what they demanded.  Even these pagan soldiers understood the connection between God and King that was implicit in His title.  In fact, this theme is common to all those that reject Christ that day, in their minds the criteria for the Messiah was that He had to save Himself.  And that is what they could not understand.  That is why Jesus said that they did not know what they were doing.  None of them understood that Christ came to die on the cross.  It was His mission.  Not to save Himself, but to die for them so that they might be saved.   

This prayer for their forgiveness exemplified a love for His enemies that we are also told to show for those that hate us.  To forgive those that hurt us, even as Christ forgave those that were crucifying Him.  He recognized that they were lost, and they were the ones that He had come to save.  As Jesus said in Luke 19:10  "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost."  These soldiers for the most part rejected Him as King, the reviled Him and mocked Him, though there is one that is identified in vs. 47, the centurion, whom we will look at next time who did eventually respond to that prayer and praised God after witnessing Jesus on the cross.  We should learn from Jesus’ example that how we respond to people’s attacks on us can bring glory to God in spite of how painful it may seem to us in the meantime.

Luke says that these soldiers cast lots for His clothing. They saw the death of Christ as a means of gaining material things, and yet they missed completely the inestimable value of what Christ was accomplishing in His death.  They gambled for His clothes, while He purchased for them a robe of righteousness with His blood.  That act was prophesied in Psalm 22, by the way, as were many of the events of the crucifixion.

The other category of Christ rejecters that day was the crowd mentioned in vs. 35, “And the people stood by, looking on. And even the rulers were sneering at Him, saying, ‘He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One.’  Once again you see the demand for Christ to validate His kingship by saving Himself.  They could not understand the cross.  It didn’t fit into their idea of what the Messiah/King was supposed to do. And the world today doesn’t appreciate the need for the cross either.  1Cor. 1:18 says, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

The world isn’t really interested in a cross centered gospel.  They don’t want to hear that they are sinners and God has poured out His wrath against sin by putting His Son on the cross.  But they do want a gospel of deliverance.  The world’s response to the offer of a Messiah is to say,   “get me out of this mess and then I will believe in You.”  Christ is only beneficial to those in a dilemma.  Those in a crisis.  Don’t preach the message of the cross, instead preach the message of the crisis.  That will sell.  But don’t preach take up your cross and follow Me.  That isn’t a popular message.

There was one other category of those that rejected Christ that day, and that was the two thieves on the cross on either side of Jesus.  Even they were hurling abuse at Him.  The other gospels tell us that initially they both began to pick up on the crowd and soldier’s rejection and mock Jesus.  But Luke is the only gospel writer to show that there begins to be a distinction between the two criminals behavior.   And so Luke describes one criminal as saying in vs. 39, “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!”   He too shows a certain understanding of theology.  He knows Jesus claimed to be the Christ.  He knows that involves some sort of salvation.  But he is obviously only interested in physical salvation from his suffering.  He is mocking Jesus.  And yet by his own words he too condemns himself.  He admits Jesus is the Christ and that Jesus came to save, and yet he is only interested in physical salvation. 

I’m afraid that a lot of people fall into this category.  They are not sorry for their sins.  They have no interest in repentance.  They refuse to bow to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  But they think that they have a certain understanding of theology.  I’m often amazed at how unsaved people are quick to point out what errors there are in the Bible or in the church.  They dismiss the need for their salvation by what they perceive to be the hypocrisy of others.  And yet they are guilty of the very thing that they accuse Christians of.  They do not do what they believe is the right thing to do.  But in finding fault in another they somehow think that they can excuse themselves.  But the Bible tells us that every man will give an account to God for the things that he did himself.  And as James tells us in James 4:17 “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.”  We are all guilty of sin.  Romans 3:10 says, “There is none righteous, no not one.” None of us have an excuse.

And that leads us to the last character that we will look at this morning, and the only one of this group for whom the crucifixion was efficacious.  That would be the other thief that was hanging on a cross on the opposite side of Jesus.  Though this man was a guilty criminal, though his sins so serious that he was punished with crucifixion, and though he too initially mocked Jesus, yet something has happened in his time on the cross to change his heart.  And that change is apparent in his response to the other criminal’s mocking challenge to Jesus. 

Starting in vs. 40 we read,  “But the other answered, and rebuking him said, ‘Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ And he was saying, ‘Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!’”   And Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.”  This dying criminal was saved in the last hour by faith in Christ Jesus.  Everyone else said Jesus if you are the Christ save yourself.  This man called out for Jesus to save him, and Jesus said that today he would be with Him in Paradise.  Jesus doesn’t answer all the taunts of the crowd and the priests and the soldiers, but he answers the call of the penitent sinner.

And so I would like to look at this sinner and his response to Jesus as an illustration of what encompasses saving faith.  At first glance we might look at the brief response of this man and wonder how it qualifies this man for salvation.  But in spite of his economy of words Luke  provides us with a full description of the doctrine of salvation if we look closely. 

First of all, as he hangs on the cross, a witness to the crucifixion of the Messiah, he becomes  very aware of God and the fear of God. He said to the other thief, “Do you not even fear God?”  Listen,  the first evidence that God is doing the work of conversion in a person’s life is a realization of the fear of God.  I’m afraid the gospel of God is done a great disservice and possibly many well intentioned people are not saved because we substitute teaching the fear of God with the love of God. We are afraid that teaching the fear of God will scare people away and hope that teaching the love of God will seduce them to salvation. But I believe the Bible teaches both the fear of God and the love of God. However, 3 times, in Psalm 111:10, in Prov. 9:10 and in Prov. 1:7, the scriptures say that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

In Romans 3 which I quoted from while ago in vs. 10 it states that there is no one righteous, not even one, and then that section ends in vs. 18 with a culminating statement;  “there is no fear of God before their eyes.”  We sin because it is our nature to sin, but we continue in our sin, and progress in our sin, and harden our hearts toward God because we don’t fear God.  We don’t fear judgment.  We don’t fear the righteousness and holiness of God.  We don’t care that our sin is an affront to a holy, righteous God and that He cannot abide sin.

But this thief on the cross, how exactly he came about it I don’t know, feared God.  Maybe as the reality of his impending death sank in, he began to remember the scriptures his mother read to him as a boy.  Maybe he remembered lessons he had been taught about hell and the judgment to come.  But the beginning of wisdom for this man is the fear of God.  He may not have thought much about God when he was embarking on a life of crime.  He thought he could push such thoughts out of his mind.  But now he is dying, and he realizes that he is going to have to face God at the judgment. And it’s going to happen sooner rather than later. So he comes to fear God.

The second essential element of his salvation came in the realization of his sinfulness.  A proper fear of God usually results in a proper sense of one’s guilt.  Verse 41 "And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong."  He says I know I’m a lawbreaker. It’s a true assessment of his condition. He’s guilty, he’s aware of his sinfulness, he’s in a sense saying I am a sinner.  I deserve to die.  I am receiving what I deserve for my deeds.  This is the attitude of  true repentance.

You know, only when you agree with the law of God that you deserve to die for your sins are you willing to die TO your sins.  Repentance is simply dying to your sins.  Crucifying the flesh and it’s sinful passions. Gal. 5:24 “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”  Those who continue in their sins show a disregard for the fear of God and they prove they have not truly repented of their sins.

The third essential element of his salvation that is evidenced in his confession that he believed in the righteousness of Christ.   Jesus was the spotless lamb of God that came to take away the sins of the earth.  He was tempted in all points like we are, yet without sin.  His sinlessness was evidence that He was the anointed Son of God. If He wasn’t without sin, then He could not atone for sin.  Jesus said in John 8:46  "Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me?”  His sinlessness was a greater witness to His divinity than His miracles.  2Cor. 5:11 says, “God made Jesus who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”  Salvation is only possible because Jesus was righteous, and because He was righteous, therefore Jesus was God.

 When we talk about salvation we talk about the necessity for repentance and faith.  And we see in this dying thief both of these attributes; repentance under the fear of divine wrath and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  And there is one final expression of that saving faith that I am so glad that Luke incorporates for us here in this passage.   And that is the thief shows saving submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  This principle is what ties all this passage together.  As I have been saying, every skeptic, every scoffer, from Pilate, to the priests, to the soldiers and even the other thief on the cross all scoff and reject the Kingship of Christ.  It’s been the constant theme of  their mocking of Him.  But this dying thief on the cross understands that Jesus is King.  He understands that if Jesus is the Christ, then He must be King. 

Look at what he says in vs. 42, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!”  You can’t have a kingdom unless you are a king.  And so this dying thief sees what all these others could not see; that Jesus was the Christ, the King.  The only way that happened was Jesus gave him eyes to see and a heart to understand. 

I’m afraid that far too often the Lordship of Jesus Christ is a message that is lost in today’s modern version of Christianity; where Jesus died on the cross to deliver us from some sort of personal mediocrity, or some sort of crisis, so that we can have a more successful, happy life here on earth.  I believe Luke includes this conversion to show us that the doctrine of Lordship is not an ancillary doctrine that can be added or ignored after conversion, but it is a necessary and vital part of salvation.  We must be willing to acknowledge who Jesus is and then be willing to surrender our lives and will to Him to be used for His glory and for His kingdom.  

If the other principles such as  a proper fear of God, and true repentance, and a right understanding of the righteousness and holiness of Christ are in full effect, then the doctrine of the Lordship of Christ is a non issue.  It naturally follows those things.  It is a product of repentance and faith.  And this man showed that he had the right kind of theology, producing  saving faith.

Hey, and get this.  He even has an understanding of the resurrection as well.  Now that’s really incredible, isn’t it.  You say, how do you know that?  Well, he would have known that no one survived crucifixion, so he had to have believed that Jesus would die and then rise again and bring about his kingdom.  Furthermore, I think you could even argue that he had an understanding that it was a spiritual kingdom. 

And Jesus responds to this man’s faith with an affirmation and encouragement which is the hope that he would be with Christ in Paradise.  Vs. 43, “And [Jesus] said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.”  Now I would love to run down a rabbit trail with this statement and give you my version of eschatology, but I will leave that for another day.  However, understand this; Paradise is wherever Jesus is.  He says you will be with Me….in Paradise.  Wherever Paradise is, Jesus is.  It literally means the Garden of the Lord.  It doesn’t mean the Garden of Eden, I think it will be better than that.  But it does mean that there is no sin there.  And as in the Garden of Eden man walked with God and talked with God so we that are saved as this man was saved will be with God in Paradise, in the presence of God, communing with God.

And finally, one last thing.  Jesus said, “Today.”  There is no separation from the love of God.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Rom. 8:38-39 “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

Paul said in 2 Cor. 5:8 that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.  It’s instantaneous.  Listen, Jesus and the thief that day both died in the flesh, their bodies were placed in the ground, but they were alive in the Spirit. 1Pet. 3:18  “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.” 

Listen, for those who repent and have faith as this thief on the cross did, Jesus promised in John 11:25-26, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,  and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?"

Do you believe this?  Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords?  Do you repent and turn from your sins and in faith in Christ confess Him as your Lord and King?  If you do this, you will live.  You will never die.  Christ came to die for you so that you might be saved.  I pray that you won’t reject Him, but confess Him as your Lord and Savior. 

The old hymn writer puts it well; “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins; and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day; and there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away.”

The reason for the season; Luke 23: 26-31

It’s amazing that in spite of Christmas being a celebration of the birth of Christ, essentially celebrating Jesus’ birthday, the enemy is doing everything he can to detract from the true meaning and diminish people’s recognition of what it is all about.  I can’t imagine that our culture would tolerate the kind of animosity that is happening today towards Christmas if it were a celebration of any other historical or religious figure’s birthday.

But even so, Christmas is still a very popular holiday celebrated the world over.  However, I’m afraid that even when we recognize Christmas for what it truly is, the birth of Jesus, we still often fall short of understanding the real reason for the season. It’s not too difficult to be sympathetic towards a little baby being born on a cold night in a manger because there is no room for them in the inn.  It’s somewhat easy to be sentimental about young mother and father taking refuge in a stable and having a baby and lying him in a manger.  It’s a beautiful story, a story that evokes compassion and sympathy and sentimentality.  And if we leave it there, then that is all that it is.  A sentimental story.  A story that has a sad ending.  A poor baby who grew into an innocent man who went around doing good, who died as a martyr at 33 years of age.

The fact is though that the story may begin in sympathy, but it ends in triumph.  What seemed to be the untimely, sad end of Christ’s life as we look at chapter 23, is actually the triumph of the ages.  It is the greatest victory of all time. .  The real reason for Christmas, the reason that Jesus came to earth as a baby in a manger, was to go to the cross. Jesus came to earth to die on the cross, to defeat the enemy, to take away the sting of death, to purchase reconciliation for man with God by offering Himself as a sacrifice at Calvary.

There is no doubt that Jesus was an actual, historical figure who walked the earth 2000 years ago.  Historians agree that this is an undeniable fact.  And yet simply believing this fact will not save you.  And to the same extent, there is no saving grace in having a sentimental feeling towards Jesus as a baby in a manger.  There is no saving grace in having sympathy for an innocent man being put to death on a cross.

And today’s passage illustrates that fact very well.  As we look at Jesus walking through Jerusalem to the hill outside the city called Calvary, the Place of the Skull, there is a crowd following Him.  It is made up of Roman soldiers, the high priests and scribes, members of the Sanhedrin, and the mob that called for His crucifixion before Pilate.  But as this crowd winds through the narrow city streets, it attracts a large crowd of what we might call sympathizers. People that may have been attracted to Jesus at some point during His ministry.  Many of them may have been there when He came into town just a week before riding on a donkey, and offered up their voices to cry “Hosanna!” along with the rest of the multitude.  And included in this crowd, Luke tells us in vs. 27, are some women who were mourning and lamenting for Him.

Now at first glance this could be viewed in a positive light.  These women obviously had some sense of the injustice of this act perpetrated on an innocent man.  They must have had a certain fondness for the person of Jesus.  They were sympathetic towards His suffering.  After all, I’m sure they had heard of the kind things He had done in healing the sick.  They had some sort of sentimental feelings towards Him as a person.  They had compassion for the fact that this kind, gentle man who had done such good things had been arrested and wrongfully accused, sentenced to die and was now beaten and bruised and bloodied, walking through the city on His way to the cross.

These women were sympathetic to Jesus’ condition.  They were feeling sorry for Him.  They had sentimental feelings about Him and so they mourned for Him.  They were wailing as was the custom of that day to wail for the dead or dying.  Their emotions were running high.  Their tears were flowing.  And I would think that many of us if we were there that day would have thought such sentimental expressions  of sympathy were appropriate.  I suspect that very similar emotional expressions are a part of many contemporary worship services even today and might be considered to be honoring to Christ.

But Jesus does something extraordinarily unexpected in response to their sympathy.  He rebukes them.  Even though He has been beaten repeatedly in His face, lashed 39 times with a barb tipped whip until He is literally at the point of death, hasn’t eaten or drank in many hours and suffered a sleepless night at the hands of His enemies, He turns around to these women that are mourning and lamenting for Him and rather than thanking them for their sympathy or acknowledging their sentiments, He uses what little strength He has left to rebuke them.  Now that is an extraordinary thing and worthy of our consideration.

Let’s look at what He says in vs. 28, “But Jesus turning to them said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.’”  Now how are we to understand this?  Is Jesus just snapping at these poor women because He is under a  lot of stress and their wailing is getting on His nerves?  Or rather is Jesus is still teaching, still concerned about the needs of others, even in this moment of agony?  I would have to say it was the latter.  Jesus uses this opportunity to teach one final lesson before the cross.  Even in the midst of all the anguish that He is going through at that moment, He is not thinking of Himself, but of them.

So we must ask ourselves, why does Jesus tell the women not to weep for Him? Well first of all, Jesus tells them not to weep for Him because He had come into the world to go to the cross. They did not understand what was happening.  This wasn’t a tragedy that required their sympathy.  He was fulfilling His purpose.  When Jesus prayed the night before in the upper room He prayed as recorded in John 12:27 "Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, 'Father, save Me from this hour'? But for this purpose I came to this hour.”  Jesus suffered the humility of coming to earth as a baby in a manger so that one day He would deliberately  make that walk to Calvary to die on the cross.  It was the purpose of His incarnation. Hebrews 2:9 says,  “But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.”  Jesus tells these women not to weep for Him because this is no unfortunate circumstance, but rather He is deliberately going to His death to die in our place so that we might live.

Secondly, Jesus says do not weep for Me because He knows what is actually happening.  The women think that this is some sort of tragic coincidence and so they wail and mourn.  But Jesus knows that what is happening is not some cosmic accident, but the divine plan of God.  Not just the crazed actions of angry men, but the predetermined plan of God.  Peter would later characterize this day as fulfilling the plan of God when He preached on the day of Pentecost, saying in Acts 2:23 “this [Jesus], delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.”

Thirdly, Jesus tells them not to weep for Him because He knows that what He does will glorify the Father as nothing else can ever do.  His sacrifice for our sins glorifies the Father, because it manifests God’s love for the world in the most exquisite way possible.  John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him shall have eternal life.”  The love of God for sinners required Him to offer up His only Son on a cruel cross so that He might save us from death.

Jesus understood what love meant.  Those women along the road that day did not understand love.  They understood sentimentality.  They understood emotionalism.  They understood sympathy.  But they did not understand love.  However, God understood love and He demonstrated agape love to the fullest expression by offering up Jesus on the cross for us. Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  God does not demonstrate sentimental or superficial love for us, but sacrificial love, by offering His only Son to die in our place.   That is how we are to understand love.  Not in terms of emotion, or in terms of sentiment, but in terms of sacrifice. 1John 4:19 “We love, (we understand love) because He first loved us.”

Fourthly, Jesus tells them not to weep for Him because He knows the consequences of the cross.  For Him, the joy set before Him was more than worth the sacrifice. In John 12:31 Jesus said concerning His impending death, “Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.  And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”  The consequence of the cross is that sin is defeated, Satan is thrown down and the sting of death is taken away.  He knows what the victory means.  That if He is lifted up on the cross on Calvary’s hill, He will draw all men to Himself that they might be saved.  The sacrifice is well worth the victory.

Col. 2:13-15 “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,  having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.”  That is a reference to the rulers, the powers of darkness, the  spiritual forces of wickedness in high places spoken of in Ephesians 6.  Jesus triumphed over them at the cross, shouting out in victory “It is finished!”  Jesus knows the consequences of the cross, therefore He tells the women not to weep for Him.  This is no accident, this is His destiny, the divine plan of God set before the foundation of the world so that men might be reconciled to God and nothing will stop Him from completing His mission.

So Jesus says to the women who were lamenting Him, “Don’t weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your children.”  Why such a rebuke?  Why does Jesus take what precious little energy He has left to offer this stirring rebuke to these well meaning women?  Well, the answer is simple. He says weep for yourselves because you don’t really know who I am.  Weep for yourselves because of your ignorance concerning Me.  And weep because of your ignorance for your own condition.  Weep for your sins, for your own guilty condition before God.

James 4:8-10 says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.  Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.”  Jesus tells these women to weep for themselves and for their children because that is the way of repentance, and the way of repentance is the path to righteousness before God.  Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.

Secondly, weep for yourselves and your children because you don’t understand the judgment of God is coming upon you.  Jesus had warned the citizens of Jerusalem in Luke 13:34-35 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it! Behold, your house is left to you desolate; and I say to you, you will not see Me until the time comes when you say, 'BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!'"

They did not understand that they were putting to death the very Son of God.  They did not understand that God would pour out His wrath upon them for their rejection of His Son, just as Jesus had prophesied, that the kingdom would be taken away from them and given to others who would make good use of it.  And in AD 70, we know that Rome entered Jerusalem and massacred hundreds of thousands in one day and burned the city and the temple.  Children were dashed to the ground as their mothers watched in horror as the day of judgment came upon Israel for it’s rejection of the Messiah.

Jesus says weep for yourselves and for your children, for the days are coming as prophesied when such a horror will fall upon Jerusalem that they will say “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed. Then they will begin TO SAY TO THE MOUNTAINS, ‘FALL ON US,’ AND TO THE HILLS, ‘COVER US.’ It would be better to be barren in those coming days of judgment than to see the destruction of your children.  And the terror of those days would be such that men and women would call out for the mountains to fall on them and destroy them, rather than fall into the hands of the soldiers.

Jesus says weep for yourselves and your children, because if they do these things when the tree is green, what will they do in the dry.  That means that if they do this to the innocent, meaning Himself, then what will they do to the impenitent and rebellious?  What will happen to you who reject the Savior of the world?  If they crucify the Holy Son of God, then what punishment is deserved by those that rejected Him?  Listen, if you die in your sins, after so magnificent a sacrifice was offered for you, then you deserve to suffer the terrors of hell for eternity.  Jesus suffered and died such a horrible death so that He might taste death for us.  But if we reject Him and His offer of salvation, then the cross is of no use to us.  It merely condemns us to a greater condemnation, because we trampled underfoot the blood of Jesus Christ.  We considered it worthless.

So weep for yourselves because of the ignorance of the world who doesn’t understand that they are lost and will perish for eternity without Christ. Weep for yourselves and for your children because they did not understand their need for the cross.  Listen, the sentimentality and sympathy of men can be a detriment to your discipleship if you believe that suffering and sacrifice are not part of God’s plan for you.  Not understanding how God uses suffering to conform us to the image of Jesus, will impede your discipleship and cause you to question the purpose of God.

Probably the greatest skateboarder of the 1970’s, which was really when skateboarding started to become popular, was a guy named Jay Adams. I remember seeing him in the skateboarding magazines when I was a teenager. He rose to world wide fame at a young age as part of the Zephyr skateboard team which was from Dogtown, an area near Venice, Ca.  Jay was a natural talent and a real innovator of what has became modern skateboarding.  But like a lot of people from that era, Jay became involved in drugs and partying from a young age.  As he got older, that lifestyle led him into crime and street gang violence and he ended up spending a lot of time in prison.  But the amazing thing was about 10 or 12 years ago Jay Adams became saved.  I remember hearing about it when my son and I were in Hawaii at the time.  Jay showed up at a Bible study and some of our friends were there and they heard his testimony.

But not long after that I heard that Jay was arrested and put in prison again, presumably from an old outstanding warrant.  I must say even though I really wanted to believe Jay was truly saved, I wondered about his salvation.  From time to time though I ran across something in a magazine or on the internet that he said or did which gave me hope.  Eventually he got out of prison, and he seemed to be doing ok.  He was married, had a family and he experienced a resurgence in his career.  Hollywood even made a movie about Dogtown and he was featured prominently in the story.  But then in August of this year, just as it seemed Jay’s life was finally getting together and things were working out, he died of a heart attack while surfing in Mexico on vacation with his wife.  He was 53 years old.  It seemed like such a tragedy.

Then just the other day I happened to come across a video of Jay’s memorial service.  It was held at a large church in Los Angeles.  Hundreds of people were in attendance which included a large number of older skaters who had been his friends.  These guys were some of the most hard core looking guys you could imagine.  All tattooed up and a lot of them with pretty gnarly backgrounds.  And there were two pastors that preached at that service as well as a testimony given by another professional skater named Christian Hosoi, who was also a born again Christian.  It was really amazing to hear their stories about the Jay Adams that they knew that had been transformed by the power of Christ.  One pastor read several letters written by Jay while in prison in which he talked at length about how God was changing him daily as he studied his Bible.  And as I heard these three men’s testimonies, I was happy to be confirmed in my hope that Jay Adams was truly a man of God.  He wasn’t perfect, and he did stumble on more than one occasion, but he had been saved and transformed by the power of the gospel.

But there was still the nagging question of why would God take this man, just when his life seemed to be getting on track, especially considering how his life could have been effective at reaching a lot of people.  Why did God take him now?  And the answer came in a couple of verses from one of the messages; Isaiah 53:10-11 “But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities.”  What that says in a nutshell was this; by the death of One, many were made righteous.  And though that verse is talking about Jesus, it also applies to Jay’s life.  By his death, many were made righteous.  At the conclusion of that service, the preacher gave a simple invitation and a dozen old friends of Jay’s came up to the altar to receive Christ.  God often uses suffering and trials which seem incomprehensible to us, for the good of the kingdom of God.  Our part is to trust Him that He knows what is best and yield ourselves to be used by Him.

Now there was one other person on the road to Calvary that morning that did see the value of the cross.  And I believe that person is given here as an illustration of what it means to understand the significance of the cross.  That person was Simon of Cyrene.  Luke doesn’t tell us a lot about this man, but we can find mention of Him in other scriptures which helps us to understand who he was.  He was probably a Jew, living in what is now known as Libya, in Northern Africa.  He was undoubtedly in Jerusalem for the celebration of the Passover.  So he would have been a God fearing Jew that had come from the country into Jerusalem to worship God.

And though we are not told a lot about this man at this point, we do know that he was pressed into service by the Roman soldiers to carry the cross of Christ.  This happened just before Jesus spoke to the women along the road.  Perhaps Jesus was so weakened by the flogging and the beatings that he had endured, along with a sleepless night and the loss of blood and so forth, that they wanted to be sure that Jesus made it to the cross without dying along the way.  Or maybe they wanted to get there quicker and so they picked out a strong looking passerby to carry the cross of Jesus so they could get along with their business.

But the scripture is careful to tell us that after taking up the cross Simon followed behind Jesus.  And here we have a picture of what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. This guy is following his own plan and purpose, and then one day he is suddenly face to face with Jesus Christ, and he takes up his cross and follows Him to Calvary.  Jesus made the cost of discipleship clear earlier in Luke 9:23, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” He said in Luke 14:27 "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”  And again in Matt. 10:38, "And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.”

Listen, Jesus never offered a cross-less salvation.  He never offered a blood-less Christianity.  Modern Christianity today wants to present a blood-less, cross-less Christianity where all the sacrifice was done by Christ so that we can be forgiven and then get on with our life. Come as you are and stay as you are.  Get your get out of hell card and carry on.  But Jesus never teaches that. He teaches that just as He went to the cross, so we are to take up our cross and follow Him.  Faith in Christ’s death on the cross produces our justification, which in turn produces our sanctification which requires  crucifying our flesh and it’s desires and obeying the Spirit of God. Gal. 5:24 “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

Gal. 2:20  tells us what that looks like; "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” In other words, I no longer live for myself, no longer live like my flesh, my passions tell me to live, but I live now as the Spirit tells me to live.  I crucify the passions of my flesh and let Christ live through my body.  That is the picture that we see in Simon the Cyrene leaving the path that he was following,  and picking up the cross and following Jesus.

Now I’m sure someone will say, “well Roy, that’s a nice illustration, but how do we know that Simon the Cyrene became a believer? He’s just some poor guy who carried the cross of Christ, but we don’t really know what became of him.”  Well, actually there are a couple of indications that he was a believer, and furthermore his family came to believe in Christ.  When Mark writes his account of this event, he includes the information in Mark 15:21 that Simon was the father of Rufus and Alexander.  The point being that the church Mark was writing to would have known these two brothers as they were a part of their congregation.  Furthermore, Paul mentions Rufus in Romans 16 and his mother who also was a Christian and esteemed by the apostle.  So we can be sure that this experience on the road to Calvary was a life changing experience for Simon as he followed Jesus, carrying His cross.

Unlike the superficial women that lamented Jesus on that walk, Simon undoubtedly came to say, as the centurion did when witnessing Christ at the cross, “truly this was the Son of God.” He came to understand the purpose of Christ’s crucifixion as he shouldered the cross of Christ and followed after Him.  And as such he is a great illustration for us of someone who has entered into the fellowship of His sufferings.

Paul, talking about the fellowship we have in the sufferings of Christ describes what it means to take up your cross and follow Jesus in Phil. 3:8-11, “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

I will close today by asking you a question.  What effect has the cross of Christ had on you?  Does it just evoke a feeling of sympathy?  Does the person of Christ, or the birth of Christ produce only sentimental feelings?  Listen, Jesus Christ doesn’t ask for, nor does He desire our sympathy.  The cross of Christ is designed to produce in us repentance.  Weep for yourselves and for your children.  Let His example of love for us become our expression of love for Him.  Not a superficial sentimentality, but a sacrificial love for Christ which considers everything that I once considered gain as loss, in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus.

What use is it to gain the whole world and lose your own soul?  What shall a man give in exchange for His soul?  The answer is everything.  I surrender all.  I completely surrender my heart to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  He is worth it all.  Whatever loss I have to surrender in this life is worth it for the sake of Christ.  Can you say that this morning?  Have you wept over your sinfulness?  Have you trusted in Christ as your Savior?  Have you experienced forgiveness for your sins?  I pray that today is the day of your salvation and that no one here would reject the offer of salvation purchased by the blood of the Son of God.