If you will, please join me in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 23. Our reading is from Luke 23 beginning at verse 23, continuing through verse 31. You hold in your hands the very words of God. But with loud shouts, they insistently demanded that He be crucified and their shouts prevail. So Pilate decided to grant their demand. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will. As they led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, blessed are the barren women, the wounds that never bore and the breasts that never nursed. Then they will say to the mountains, fall on us and to the hills, cover us for if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry? The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the words of our God stand forever. Let's return to Luke 23, the passage we read with John just a few moments ago. I saw one of you last night at a wedding reception yesterday, and they asked me, if I was ready to preach, and I looked at the person and said, you got any ideas?
He said, I got one great idea, try Luke, if you're visiting with us this morning, we're glad you're here. We have been in a study in the Gospel of Luke for the last two and a half years. We've come to the crucifixion, to the trial, we've been in the last three weeks looking at the trial of Jesus. In the time that we came to the upper room through the passage just morning, and this is more than me than at any other time that I've studied this portion of the Gospel, those few days around the cross of Jesus Christ, and as I will tell you in a few minutes, we're going to slow down and just take this one little episode at a time, as a new person's introduced or as he addresses a group, we're going to stomp and look hard. This is such a crucial time in the Gospel, that time around the cross, and let's take time together to look at in depth at how profound and how even though it is so, this is not something you would go and see, you would not have wanted to see someone crucified, it was an awful thing, and yet there's a beauty about it, and a profound theology about it that just makes one stand and wonder, and so in these next few weeks, we're going to take our time and look at it closely, if you are visiting and you don't have a church home, even though you can say, well I'll wait till they start their next study, we're going to be here while you come and you look at the crucifixion with us, and you might see it as you've never seen it before, before we look at this passage and we look at this man, Simon, before we do that, let's pray and ask the Lord Jesus who was there, let's ask him to speak to us, let's pray. Our Father, I cannot know and none of us can know what happened with you as you judged your son guilty, our Father, none of us can know what horror he suffered, our Father, we can't even come close, but we can know more than we know, we can see more than we've seen, and I pray for myself that you will open my eyes to see more and open my heart to know more than I've ever seen or known about this, I pray that you would open all of our hearts, open all of our eyes to know and see more than we have seen before this time. Father, I can't teach like that, but Jesus can and we pray that we would hear His voice in His name and for His glory. Amen. Simon's two crosses, sometimes in movies when the action is crucial and taking place too fast to assimilate, the movie you've seen it, the movie will go into slow motion and you're able to look around and see what is happening and that explosive action, in that explosive scene, you're able to see in detail, from the time Jesus met with the disciples in the upper room through the resurrection is one huge fast-paced scene. We forget it was one just one long weekend, the gospel writers apply us with a detailed record of what was happening around Jesus in those few hours. They take time to mission the details, so we're taking our time, we're hitting the slow motion button and looking at every part of the scene as Jesus takes on the cross. This morning we meet a man that has not been mentioned in the gospels before now. He seemed to have played only a bit part yet Matthew, Mark, and Luke all mentioned him and mentioned him by name. We'll hit the slow motion button and take time to look at this brief encounter, but we'll also hit the slow motion button to again look at Jesus because the story is not about Simon of Cyrene, the story, the gospel, and everything in it is about Jesus. And that brings us to our first point. I want you to see in this passage an awful, awful suffering. Why did Jesus stumble? Why did the soldiers press Simon of Cyrene into carrying Jesus cross? The answer is back in verse 22. For the third time he spoke to them, why, what crime is this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Now look, therefore I will have him punished and then release him. He didn't release him, but he did have him punished him. What was the punishment? In John 191, we read this, then pallet took Jesus and had him flogged as easy to read. It's easy to imagine well he endured the whip. Folks, scourging and crucifixion were so humiliating, so cruel, not just crucifixion, but the scourging were so humiliating and so cruel that a citizen of Rome could not be crucified and could not be flogged. It was beneath a Roman's station. Flaggulation was so brutal that sometimes it cheated the cross, men died from the beating, never making it to the crucifixion. The Roman scourge was made by attaching several leather stront thongs or strips to a wooden handle. Pieces of brass, lead, and sharp pieces of bone were embedded into the ends of those leather thongs. As the criminal's body was lashed by the thongs, the flesh of his backside stomachs and legs would be ripped. Gashes could be so deep that veins and arteries would be opened and sometimes even organs would be exposed. Jesus had been up all night. Endured three trials and several beatings. The trials and the beatings were culminated by that this last severe flogging. He was after this flogging that pilot brought a beaten bloody Jesus before the crowd. The Latin words would have been, echo the hold, the man. This flogging, the whole ordeal of the cross should not be understated. I have made a mistake in my preaching and teaching and I must tell you about this morning. We often say that the pain of the cross and the flogging was nothing compared to the suffering Jesus endured before God as he carried our sins. For years I've separated the physical suffering of the cross from the suffering of Jesus as he took our hell upon himself. Thanks, you look at this. Our sin had already fallen on Jesus. The lamb was already on the altar. The sacrifice was already being made. The physical suffering from the flogging and the pain of the cross was not the total suffering Christ did for our sin. However, it was a part of God's judgment on him as he took our sin. While he was on the cross, while he was still alive, what did he cry? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That was just not for the moment. It was the flogging. It was the trial. It was the flogging. It was the suffering on the way to the cross. It was the cross.
Jesus was the Son of God, body and soul. At the resurrection, think about it. All men, all men, God's people and pagans alike will receive resurrected bodies. Some will be resurrected to eternal life and some to eternal death. That's what we read in Revelation. Men will suffer God's judgment, body and soul. Jesus suffered God's judgment, body and soul in our place. Jesus was beaten. That's the reason he was unable to bear the weight of the cross beam. Remember the words of the prophet? He was fierce for our transgression. He was crushed for our iniquities. Even there in the flogging, he was already being pierced by God's justice. He was already falling. He was already being crushed by his judgment. Does he fell into the way of the cross beam? He was already being crushed. This week, the rant now we're talking about this. In the rant spoke of how the whole ordeal of pallet and the flogging and the crucifixion were a part of that Roman-killing machine,
had not thought about it before. The Roman-killing machine, that's what this was, the flogging, the crucifixion. If folks inside that machine there was no mercy. They had no ears to hear cries of suffering or cries for mercy in this machine and that killing machine was a whip in the hand of God to punish his own son. So as we see the flogging, as we see the crown of thorns, push down on his head, as we see the taunting and the teasing, as we see Jesus stumble under the load, know this, that he was flawed in our place. He was crowned with thorns in our place. He was taunted in our place. He stumbled under the load of the cross beam in our place. Somehow we've gotten the idea that Jesus suffered just in that one moment maybe as he died on the cross,
he died quickly, stood before God, easily took our punishment, that somehow our redemption was easy to him. He's suffering all of it. From the flogging right through to his death, body and soul, more was happening than we can imagine. Look at this offering, look at it. All of it was for us. Look at this awful suffering. And listen, fear God, fear God, if indeed that Roman-killing machine was a whip in the hand of God to punish his own son. He is a God to be feared. Jesus said to himself, the one who felt that whip said this. And he was speaking and I've never realized this before this week. He was speaking. I've realized it, of course, but I didn't apply it to this verse. He was speaking from personal experience. What did he say? Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. We've lost that in our day. Fear of God, fear of his judgment. That sentence was exactly what was happening to Jesus that day in Jerusalem. His body and soul, suffering under the whip, suffering death, suffering hell. Jesus said fear him who kills body and soul. His body and soul, Jesus body and soul were under God's sentence of death. Folks, I want to tell you, we would have turned our heads away as a bloody and beaten Jesus went through the gates of the city on the way to Gagatha. That's why those women were crying. They couldn't stand to look. It was so horrible. If you had been there, you would have not only turned away. You would have covered the eyes of your children as Jesus went through the gates of the city on his way to Gagatha. Folks, it was an ugly, ugly scene. He was repulsed. He was an offensive sight hell always is. Today in evangelical circles, people won't believe in hell. And truthfully, the subject is avoided even in churches where they say they do. For years, I've wondered why. Why do people who want justice on earth, who really, really want a just government? Why do they not want cosmic justice? Why do they not want God to be just? At first, I thought it was just because we're all guilty
in that in reality is why one reason why people don't want to believe in hell because we are all guilty. However, I want you to think with me a minute, especially in the modern, sophisticated West, there's another reason. We don't like the ugly in this of it. We don't like to see the beaten Jesus. We don't like to see a God who would sentence people to hell. We like to say, I have a God that wouldn't do that. My world is not that ugly. And the reason many people say that is because they don't think they live in a fallen, brutal, really, really bad, bad world. We spend a lot of money and effort setting up walls and buffer zones so that we don't see the ghetto, so that we don't see the ugliness, so that we don't see the starving children when a little starving child comes on television. What do we do? We move the channel. We set up buffer zones so that we don't see the addicts. We don't see the people of the sedan who are still being sold into slavery. Or babies left in the dump of Calcutta. We don't want to say, or we want to say, that doesn't happen in my world. My world is beautiful, but it does happen. Did the people in Germany see the horror of the concentration camps? They had set up a buffer. They were saying, right, during that time, nothing like that could happen here. Read the record. But did they know they were there? Absolutely. We make every effort. Think about it. We do just the same thing. We build a buffer zone to keep from seeing our concentration camp. We make every effort to make the corpse look really good and to make the grave look good so that we're not faced with the awfulness and the ugliness of death. Folks, sin has ripped a deep, deep life taking dash into God's creation. Life is not always beautiful and peaceful and kind and lovely. I celebrated two marriages. Yesterday, and as I wrote this message, I thought, you know, half of all marriages. You know, we rejoice at the, we have a party, we have receptions, we have rehearsal dinners, we have engagement parties, half of all marriages, the ending divorce. One million babies a year are aborted in our advanced society. Yet how many of us have ever seen what an abortion does to a baby in a womb? Abortion with the end overnight. If everyone in the country were forced to watch an abortion on ultrasound, we run to see our child on that ultrasound. See our first picture. Watching abortion on ultrasound, today all over the world, people are starving to death, people are making war, and people are planning devastation. That's the kind of world in which we live. It's a harsh, harsh, hard world where everyone dies. Death claims 100% of everyone ever born.
Now folks, it takes radical action to fix a world that's in that condition. At Calvary, Jesus was down in the trenches in that blogging with that crown of thorns on the cross. He was down in the trenches, fighting to redeem a world gone bad. It was a bloody battle. That was the only kind it could have been.
I was in a dressing room getting ready to play golf. The man with whom I was playing was changing shirts. Now it's all scarred down the length of these chests. He had been through heart surgery. I asked him when wearing the particulars. I had not known this. After he answered those questions, I asked him one more. How does that large scar affect you? You see it every day when you shake. When you see that scar, what do you think? His answer surprised me. He always said, he said, I love that scar, John. He reminds me that I could already be dead. He reminds me that I had something so serious in me that a doctor had to rip my chest open to get me well. It reminds me to be careful with my diet. It reminds me of how mortal and frail I really am. Seeing Jesus suffer is like seeing that scar. When the world was as sick and as dead as it was as it was, what did the man say? It reminds me that I had something so serious in me that a doctor had to rip my chest open. To make me well. When the world was as sick and as dead as it was, only radical action would repair it. Knowing it was a part, as we look at Jesus and we see Him flagged and we see the crown of thorns and we see the awful suffering body and we now deepen to the soul. We know it was a part of God's judgment on Him for our sin. We know it was a part of the hell He suffered and it reminds us of how ugly sin really is, that it ripped a gash, a life-taking gash through all of creation and it reminds me that hell is real, that God preached sin with what it deserves. So what happened to Jesus that day was not pretty? It was ugly. It was really ugly. Death always is. In the movie, Sating Private Ryan, remember? The scene from the D-Day beaches on Normandy was horrific. It was so horrific that when I heard about it, I said, I'm not going to go see that show. I just don't need that. Folks, my world is all too real. People used to say to me, I had hard-nosed businessmen used to say, you don't live in the world, I live in. And I used to, for two or three years, I would hear that and not say anything. And no one asked, says that to me anymore, because I said, let me tell you, you want to see a world, you want to see a hard world of cruel, you come spend a week in my office and you watch what comes through there. And I get enough of it. I don't need to go see a movie where people are slaughtered on the beach. But someone persuaded me to see it, reminding me that that's what my father went through at Iwojima. And all the veterans who were at Normandy who saw the Sating of Private Ryan said the beach scene was so very real, but still didn't capture the horror. Nothing could capture how horrible it really was. The movie didn't sugarcoat it. But think about it when something as evil as Hitler and he's not seen show up in history. They rip at the soul of mankind. The damage they do is dreadful. However, the battles that are followed to uproot such evil are just as dreadful and just as horrific. The evil was so terrible and death so powerful. The world under such condemnation, someone had to go and whether this, someone had to go into the face and whether the storm of God's wrath. Someone had to walk into God's courtroom and take the scene and take the judgment and endure the sentence. Folks, it takes radical action to fix a world that's in bad condition. At Calvary Jesus was down in the trenches fighting to redeem a world gone bad. Why is Calvary beautiful to us? It's beautiful to us because the world is so, so ugly
and Calvary in a way. I don't like to see the blood. I don't like to see the gore. I don't like to see the flogging, but that was the only way that the world could be saved. It was a bloody battle that was the only kind it could have been. It was an awful suffering. It had to be seen, had to answer to God and it still does. Either Jesus took our sin and he answered to God, or you will take your sin and you will answer to God. There's only two ways. That first one was an awful, awful suffering and so will the next be. It will be an awful suffering to show up before God and account to him for your own sin. Look at this and see an awful suffering. Secondly, I want you to see a forced service. Look at verse 26, as they led him away, they see Simon from Cyrene who was on his way in from the country. Part of the shame of the criminal under the dreaded sentence of crucifixion was having to carry the cross to the place of execution. Most scholars believe that the vertical beam was already in place, that vertical beam was already in place and that the criminal carried the horizontal beam. Whatever Jesus carried was too much for him. He was too near physical death, too near exhaustion, the soldiers saw the physical suffering and they forced this man, Simon, into carrying Jesus cross. What do we know? Simon was from Cyrene. The minute we read his name, we know there's got to be a story there. One verse, that's all he's got. There's grow great miracle there. In other episodes, we have seen Jesus wonderfully heal a man or woman and no name was given. We've seen Jesus raise folks from the dead. No name given and yet here, this brief encounter and name is given. This obscure man from the crowd, his name was recorded, not only his name, but also his address. Cyrene was a well-known town in North Africa. He was located in what is now called Libya. He was on a beautiful plateau about 10 miles from the Mediterranean. There was a very large Jewish community in Cyrene. He was coming in from the country, he was probably in Jerusalem to the Passover. He was not a disciple. Look at the words. He was seized. They made him carry it. Did he volunteer? No. Do you want to carry the cross? No. Crucifixion was a shameful thing. It had the connotation of degradation. It was degrading. It was no honor to carry the cross beam in a place of a criminal. How many of us are like this as church members? Our religious life, our Christian life or so-called Christian life is a forced burdened service. That's the way many of us feel as we come to church. We feel that somehow we've been pressed into service. We've been forced into this religious activity, even many evangelicals. They won't ever admit it. But they're Christianity. Their membership in churches is a gigantic burden and they would love to be without it. That's your question this morning. Is your Christian life a burden? You're here this morning because you feel guilt if you were. You're keeping the laws and trying to be a good person, but very deep. You hardly admit it to yourself. You just hate it. That's the Pharisees. The Pharisees hate. Read the Pharisees. The Pharisees were unhappy. People, they hated their faith. They didn't work so hard. It was a drudgery. When someone joined the church, they told me about how long they'd been out of church. Then he said he grew up hating it. It was all legalism. There was no joy in it at all. He said, when they got away at college, he said, I swore I would never go to church again. That's the way Simon carried the cross. He didn't want to carry it. He hated it. How different was Paul's comment about the Christian life in Corinthians? He had been a Pharisee. He had been a Pharisee who carried his religion like a burden and later only talked about it. And yet, after he met Christ, you know what he wrote? He said, I am compelled by the love of Christ. What drove Paul was the love of Christ. A minister's job is hard. You wouldn't think so, but after he moved to a new church, the job of being a pastor is hard because he's among people in his pastoring people that he's only known a month or two or a few months. He goes to visit them. He listens. He goes to the hospital because of his job, but come back 10 years later. And after he's been through the dark valleys and hard places with these folks, and after they've been through the dark valleys and hard places with him, and he's come to love them and going to the hospital is no longer a burden and getting out of bed at 2 a.m., but he doesn't even think about it. Folks, if you're not motivated by love for Christ, by love for God, by love for his grace, and I tell you, the Christian life is going to be a burden. This morning, you look at this Jesus. Do you love Him? Do you love Him? It's the difference between a forced service and a service that just loves to pick up the cross. You look at this and you see an awful suffering. You see a forced service. Thirdly, you see a limited support. Look at verse 26. They're letting the way. They see Simon of Saudi who is on his way in from the community, from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. Now look at verse 33, when they came to the place, call the skull, there they crucified him. Who? Simon? No. Jesus. That burden was lifted from Jesus. The physical burden Jesus carried was put on Simon. Simon could forever say that no other man could say, not the disciples, not anyone, not John the Baptist, he could say, I carried the cross for Jesus. However, the relief for Jesus was only temporary. Simon carried it only a little way and then he stepped back and he watched as they nailed Jesus to the cross beam. He could not do what Jesus was doing. He could not be a substitute for the substitute. All he could do was carry the beam a short distance. In a way, Simon represents us. We know what Jesus was doing. We know what was really happening in that flagging and what was happening in that rejection and what was happening in that crucifixion. Yet, if we could go back in time, what could we do? We might carry the cross beam a short distance. We might give him a drink. But there was nothing to be done. He had a mission that only he could do. This was God's awful judgment in order that he might show grace. There would be no grace for us today without the judgment of that day. We still try. We want to be able to do something for our salvation. We want to earn it. We want, but we can't. You know, we think we could have done something if we had been Simon and carried the cross beam. Think about it. What if that? What if you had been Simon? What if we had been Simon and if we had known what was happening? How would we feel when we put down that awful piece of wood? We've carried the cross for Jesus and we bring it to God off of that and we lay it down. What would we feel? We would just have to watch. What could we do when they drove the nails? He was dying under the sentence of God for our sin. No one could do that. No one else could do that. There's a gospel song. Must Jesus bear the cross alone? The answer is yes, Jesus paid it all. He had to. We're in the same predicament as Simon this morning. He must take our sin. He must take our punishment. We cannot attune for sin. We can't help Jesus save us. We just have to watch him die
and say that's for me. An awful suffering, a forced service, a limited support, and finally an ironic salvation. Hey, remember back a few minutes ago when you were saying in the end of that first point an awful suffering. He said, I came to church to hear that this morning. Well, because we heard that, we can hear this, an ironic salvation. Over in Mark, you don't have to look at this, just write it down in Mark 1521. This is corresponding verse. It's very interesting. Listen to what Mark said. A certain man from Sireen, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country and they forced him to carry the cross. How did Mark, Matthew and Luke, almost Simon. He had just been a face in the crowd who welcomed Jerusalem as the mob was going out. They could not have known him unless he later became a player. They could not have known him unless they later knew him as a disciple. We know from the first letter of Peter that Mark was in Rome with Peter when Peter wrote that letter. He probably wrote his gospel in Rome. Wherever he wrote his gospel, we know this. They knew Alexander and Rufus because when he came to this part of the gospel, I love this. It's so real. And he mentioned Simon Sireen and Mark says, hey, you know, you may not remember. He's probably dead and gone now. You may not have remembered Simon and Sireen, but he's the father of Alexander of our own, Alexander and Rufus. Simon and Sireen, you see, was converted. He became known by the apostles and his boys were well known in the early church. I came to this point. I'd been wondering how he was going to close this message and I just began to laugh, the irony of it. He carried the cross of Jesus and because of meeting Jesus that day eventually, he took up another cross, his own. What was it? Jesus said, how does a man become a follower of Jesus? How does a man say from sin? We read it earlier in Luke and Luke 9. 22, just listen to it. And he said, the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders chief priest and teachers of the law. And he must be killed and on the third day be raised in life. And then he said to them all, if anyone would come after me, if anyone would follow me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and daily follow me. Whoever wants to save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for me will save it. When Jesus first introduced the idea that he would be crucified, the first time they heard about the cross that the Messiah would be killed by crucifixion that his disciples were appalled. Messiah's don't kill killed especially by crucifixion. And then Jesus said something more appalling. He said, I not only have a cross, but you have a cross. If you're going to be my disciple, Peter, you want to be my disciple, it's not only that I must die by crucifixion, but you must take up your cross. Jesus was referring to the custom we observed in the episode in Luke 23, the episode we observed this morning, the condemn man had to carry his own cross to the place of execution. Jesus was saying you must take up your own cross, you must deny yourself, deny your will, deny your claims, deny your own claims on your life, take up your cross and die, die to self, die to sin, die to your own claims on your own life. Simon had carried the cross of Christ and one day he came to a point where he picked up another cross, his own cross. And he died, he died to himself. If Simon had not picked up the second cross, his own cross, that first cross would have been no benefit. As much folks as we marvel at the cross of Jesus, it won't mean a thing to us
unless we're like Simon and we pick up our own cross and go into it. But when we do that,
that scourgey and that crown of thorns and that first cross means everything.