The Final Road to the Cross
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
This morning, we see Jesus on the final road to the Cross.
Way back in Luke 9:51, Luke said:
“When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”
Jesus has now arrived at the moment that He has been trekking toward since Luke 9.
He is a walk to Golgotha away from bearing the sins of His people and receiving the wrath they deserve.
We will see Jesus on what has come to be known at the Via Dolorosa.
“The Way of Suffering”
And as He walks toward Calvary, we see two different pictures.
And they say something to us about discipleship and the nature of this Christian life where we follow Jesus and walk in His footsteps.
Let’s take a look at the text:
And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus. And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him. But turning to them Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when 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.’ For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
SIMON OF CYRENE (v. 26)
SIMON OF CYRENE (v. 26)
Verse 26 says, “As they led Him away...”
Let’s stop here to talk about the state of Jesus’ physical body at this point and to talk about the task ahead of Him—one that would be challenging for someone who physically fresh and rested
At the end of Jesus’ political trial before Pilate, He was beaten. Scourged.
Mark 15:15 “So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.”
Scourging was executed with a whip that was deviously constructed. It was engineered to produce as much human suffering as possible without actually killing someone.
The whip had leather tails with pieces of bone and metal woven into it.
The historian Eusebius said that when the Romans used it on Christian martyrs, the martyrs “…were torn by scourges down to deep seated veins and arteries, so that the hidden contents of the recesses of their bodies, their entrails and organs, were exposed to sight.”
It is likely that the scourging left Jesus bloodied. It is possible that He has bone and cartilage exposed by the horror of the whip.
All of this fulfills what was written by Isaiah:
Isaiah 52:14 “As many were astonished at you— his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—”
After Jesus is scourged, He is mocked by the Romans.
And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.
Once it is time for the final walk to the Cross, the customs would take over.
As the condemned, Jesus would be placed in the center of a quarterion—a company of four Roman soldiers.
Then, a crossbeam, weighing about 100 pounds, was placed on His shoulders
And then, Jesus would have to carry that beam half a mile, to Golgotha, the place of execution
A hill outside the city because it was unlawful to crucify Him inside the city.
To carry a crossbeam half-a-mile and up a hill is a challenge for most people.
But Jesus was a blue-collar worker in the prime of His life, so on a normal day, this would likely not be an issue
However, this is no normal day.
He has not slept. He has been under insane spiritual, physical and emotional stress.
He has stood multiple trials.
And He has been beaten within an inch of His life
And He is unable to carry the crossbeam.
What will the soldiers do?
They did what they had the right to do by Roman law—they involved someone from the crowd.
Luke tells us that they seize Simon of Cyrene (v. 26)
Simon was a common Jewish name. Even just within the 12 disciples, we have two Simons.
Cyrene is modern-day Libya in Northern Africa
The historian Josephus tells us that it had a significant Jewish population
Simon will carry the crossbeam for Jesus all the way the place of execution
And amazingly enough, we think that this experience was so life-altering for Simon, that he became a brother in the Lord.
We think this because of how Mark write in Mark 15:21
And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.
If this was just some random stranger never to be heard from again, we would not know the names of his sons.
We might know his name, since he has been involuntarily involved in the most important moment in world history, but we wouldn’t know his sons.
But there is even more to it than that.
Traditionally, we have understood Mark’s Gospel to be Peter’s biographical account of Jesus’ life, as dictated to Mark. And we have understood it to be directed to Gentile believers—initially the Gentile believers at the church in Rome.
So it seems like Mark includes this note about Rufus and Alexander because Rufus and Alexander are well-known in the Roman church.
And Paul confirms this in Romans 16
Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well.
And as far as Cyrene goes, the Gospel took off there and the local church in the city played a big role in the early mission work of the church
Acts 11:20 “But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus.”
How involved was Simon in that work? Maybe we will find out in heaven
But the bottom line is that while the Romans thought they were picking a random guy out of the crowd, that wasn’t the case in God’s plan.
According to God’s sovereign grace, He had Simon picked out so that Simon would not just carry the cross of Christ. He picked Simon out so that Simon and his household could meet their Lord, if our historical puzzle piece work is correct.
THE MOURNERS (v. 27-31)
THE MOURNERS (v. 27-31)
We move on to verse 27 and see that a large crowd is following Jesus. A great multitude of people.
Some of His committed followers would have been in the crowd. Horrified and perplexed.
Some would have been confused, manipulated by the religious leadership into lending their voice to the chants for crucifixion.
Some were the corrupt leaders who had concocted this whole thing
But we see there are also these women who are mourning and lamenting (v. 27).
These are not followers of Christ. These are professional mourners.
They would show up to scenes like this and beat on their chest and weep and wail.
This is similar to the group that shows up in Luke 8:52-54
And all were weeping and mourning for her, but he said, “Do not weep, for she is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But taking her by the hand he called, saying, “Child, arise.”
They have probably shown up here because Jesus has gained prominence
While these woman are professional, there is no reason to think they are not sympathetic to Christ.
But sympathy is not devotion.
They are not His followers. They are not His disciples.
But He speaks to them and issues them a warning. A merciful alarm regarding what is to come.
But turning to them Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when 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.’ For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
A merciful warning in the form of a brutal prophecy.
He is saying that they should not weep for Him, but for themselves because a judgment is going to come down on Jerusalem that will be so terrible that people who usually call themselves cursed (women who can’t bear children) will call themselves blessed.
Things will be so bad that they will be relieved to have not brought children into the world.
What are these days that that are coming that Jesus speaks of in verse 29?
It is 70 AD. It is the judgment that will come down on Jerusalem for how they treated the Son of God.
And it will come in the form of the Romans laying waste to the city
Jesus warned of this especially in His Olivet Discourse.
“But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it, for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written. Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people. They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
When we were walking through that text, I shared about the atrocities that occurred and what Rome did to the Jewish people in and around Jerusalem during that time.
They starved them out.
They locked them in the city and let them starve.
The historian Josephus reported that 1.1 million Jewish people died and 100,000 more were taken captive
Jesus tells the mourners that in those days, the people will cry out for the mountains and hills to fall on them and cover them, in hopes of avoiding God’s wrath.
We first see language like that in Hosea, as the prophet warns of what will happen when the Assyrians come and take the Northern Kingdom of Israel captive in 722 BC:
Hosea 10:8 “The high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed. Thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, “Cover us,” and to the hills, “Fall on us.””
The same is said of how people will respond to Final Judgment in Revelation 6:15-16
Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb,
It is described in the same language because what happened in the judgment of the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC and what happens in Jerusalem in 70 AD was a preview of how things will be when Jesus returns and comes again
Jesus ends His warning with some of the most haunting words I think we ever hear Him utter.
Luke 23:31 “For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?””
Jesus is the green wood. He is not dead in sin. He is the Life and Light of Men.
If this is what Rome does to green wood, which does not easily burn, what will it be like when God allows them to get their hands on the dry wood of Israel?
The point is that Jesus is not a natural object of wrath, just like green wood is not a natural choice for fire.
He is an unnatural object of wrath, who is willingly laying His life down in sacrificial death.
But the nation of Israel—filled with sin and rejecting the Messiah—they are dry wood.
They are a natural object of wrath.
What will happen when God subjects them to His judgment?
We already know. We stand on the other side of history looking back at 70 AD and we can say that Jesus was absolutely right.
But we would do well to take His warning in general.
In the same way that Israel was dry wood, so is this world that we live in.
Apart from Christ, so are we
We are dry wood in terrible danger of fiery, final judgment
We should weep for our sin and repent while there is still time
A PICTURE OF DISCIPLESHIP
A PICTURE OF DISCIPLESHIP
We will stop there in the text for today, but before we are done, I don’t think we can miss the picture that we get in this passage. It is an important picture in the story of Christ and we know that because Matthew, Mark and Luke all record it.
It is the picture of Simon, walking under the weight of Jesus’ Cross, in the shadow of the suffering Savior.
He is not merely a sympathetic mourner on the sidelines, lamenting the harsh end to Jesus’ life
He is literally participating in the suffering of Christ.
This is an unmistakable picture of Christian discipleship. It is the moving illustration of Jesus’ teaching in Luke 9:23
And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
So in Luke 9, He look at this and tells them that He is going to be rejected by religious Israel and He is going to be killed.
And then, in the same breath, He says, “Take up your cross and follow Me.”
He was letting His disciples know that His suffering won’t just save their souls, it gives them a pattern for what saved life looks like.
A redeemed life renounces its own plans and purposes and daily takes up their cross.
Thom Schreiner says it this way:
Matthew–Luke (Comment)
When Jesus takes up his cross, he bears it to the place of execution. So too disciples of Jesus are to follow Jesus to death, so to speak, every day.
The Romans made the condemned carry their crossbeams to their place of death
And we must do the same. We carry the crossbeam of discipleship.
But as we do it, we do not do it separated from our Savior.
Instead, we do what Simon does in this passage—we bear our crossbeam in the shadow of the Suffering Christ.
And in doing so, we are participating in Christ’s sufferings.
In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer says:
Suffering, then, is the true badge of discipleship. The disciple is not above his master.
There are two main forms of suffering that are unique to the disciple of Christ.
The first suffering that any disciple experiences is the suffering of renouncing the world and our former way of life.
That is the suffering of self-denial.
The war with the flesh.
That war begins when we come to know Christ, but it continues on each day of our Christian lives.
Each day we have to wake up and walk the Via Dolorosa with Christ again—crucifying our sinful desires and boasting and pride and obsession with self.
The great Christian duty is self-denial, which consists in two things: first, in denying worldly inclinations and its enjoyments, and second, in denying self-exultation and renouncing one’s self-significance by being empty of self.
Jonathan Edwards
This is the suffering of battling with sin in a world of death. The daily war.
But there is another form of Christian suffering and that is the suffering of persecution.
As you wage war against sin in your flesh, you are also waging war against sin in the world by identifying with Christ and proclaiming the Gospel.
Praying before the Thanksgiving meal at your house and including the Gospel in your prayer in front of your lost family members
Talking about what you are learning at church with your co-worker over lunch
Sharing a Bible verse with a friend who is struggling
There are a thousand ways each and every day to work for the fulfillment of the Great Commission by evangelizing lost people with the spoken Word of God
And sometimes, as we seek to make a Kingdom impact, the world rejects us. Rejection alone brings pain.
But if that rejection has emotional physical consequences, it ramps the suffering up to another level.
ILLUSTRATION: Like Jelem, a Fulani believer in West Africa who gave her life to Christ in 2020. Here is what Voice of the Martyrs says about Jelem:
When her family discovered her newfound faith, they harassed her, beat her and eventually disowned her. Jelem has now moved in with an uncle, and a local pastor is helping her finish school. Jelem shared with front-line workers that, though sometimes she struggles to get by, she hopes to attend Bible college after finishing school.
By the way, you should pray for Jelem. Voice of the Martyrs says we can pray for her in this way:
Pray for Jelem to remain firm in her faith amid the suffering and rejection she has experienced.
Pray that she can show the love of Christ to her Fulani family members, and that they may come to know Jesus as their Savior and Lord.
The days of tribulation don’t touch us with as much danger and threat as they do our brothers and sisters around the world.
No need to feel guilty about that. It is just reality. I am thankful for our religious freedom.
But we are not exempt. There is still plenty of rejection to go around in the states if you are faithful to be a witness. Satan will see to it.
Certainly there are other forms of suffering the Christian experiences, like physical ailments and financial hardship. But unless they come at the hands of self-denial and persecution, we wouldn’t say those sufferings are uniquely Christians.
We would say that about self-denial and persecution.
So what the picture of Simon and Jesus does is it sobers us up to reality.
This isn’t the smiley, greeting card version of Christianity that exists to raise your self-esteem and help you overcome your bad habits.
This isn’t boy scout civic religion where you adopt the teachings of Christ for the sake of having some good old Bible-belt morality in your home and in your politics.
This isn’t academic religion, devoid of miracles and the supernatural—reducing Jesus to an ethical guru of sorts
This is authentic blood and bone Christianity on display as we see Simon carry the weight of Jesus’ cross with the suffering Messiah swaying in His sights, setting the pace and providing the example.
It is a clear reminder that this will cost us something. In fact, it will cost us everything.
Christ gave it all and if we want what we gave, we must surrender all we have and all we are. No matter the cost.
This is what it means to follow Him.
We have seen the picture of the Gospel as Barabbas the murdering insurrectionist goes free and Jesus, the innocent King is carried off to death.
And now, we see a picture of what life will be like if we are going to be followers of this King.
We will walk in His shadow, suffering with Him.
Paul understood this to be what the Christian life is—suffering with Jesus.
Philippians 3:10 “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,”
If we are to know Him in His resurrection, we must share in His sufferings and become like Him in His death
2 Corinthians 1:5 “For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”
Similarly, if we are to be partakers of His comfort, we will also have to partake in His suffering.
2 Timothy 2:3 “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”
You might hear all of this and think, “For what?” What is all this suffering about?
It is to become more like Jesus.
Because as we suffer with Him, we are taught to depend on Him. To cling to Him. To love what He loves. To hate what He hates. To want what He wants.
The end that God wants to bring you to is an end where you look like Christ.
This is everything God wants for you. To be who Adam failed to be. To be like Christ—a servant surrendered to His will
And the Lord uses the heat of suffering to draw us closer to Him and conform us to the image of His Son.
Romans 8:29 “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
So what then? Are we meant to see this picture of Simon as an illustration of discipleship and seek out misery so we can be faithful? So we can be more like Jesus?
Of course not. You don’t need to seek it out. If you are faithful to pursue Christlikeness, the suffering will find you.
Or some might say, “Well even so—is the Christian life just a life of sad miserable events that we feign happiness about because apparently we are becoming more like Christ and heaven will be better?”
Well no—that isn’t it either. The New Testament paints the Christian life as a suffering life, but not as a miserable life.
In fact, Bonhoeffer argued that Christian suffering is not true suffering at all.
He said that to truly suffer is to be cut off from God.
This is why suffering apart from hope in Christ is so unbearable.
I have seen terminal diseases in the lives of Christians. I cannot imagine someone facing it without Christ and His promises.
But if that is the true definition of suffering—to be cut off from God—then the Christian is never truly suffering.
Christ has died and made a way for us to be made right with God. We are eternally in relationship with the Father through the Son. Nothing will change that.
Therefore our suffering still brings real pain, but that pain is endured in relationship with the Father.
In fact, the Father uses that pain to draw us in and separate us from the world and bring us closer to Him.
So whereas true suffering means to be cut off from God, now we can say that in Christian suffering, we commune with God.
That led Bonhoeffer to say:
For God is a God who bears. The Son of God bore our flesh, he bore the cross, he bore our sins, thus making atonement for us. In the same way his followers are also called upon to bear, and that is precisely what it means to be a Christian. Just as Christ maintained his communion with the Father by his endurance, so his followers are to maintain their communion with Christ by their endurance. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
In other words, God is using the suffering of being His disciple to draw you into intimacy with Him. So when you do not run and you endure, you are communing with God.
To endure is to commune with God, because as you endure the suffering, He accelerates your spiritual growth and establishes a greater closeness with your heart.
This is how God uses suffering to sanctify us.
THE MOTIVATION FOR ENDURANCE
THE MOTIVATION FOR ENDURANCE
I have gone through situations where I am suffering for doing the right thing.
It is not easy business.
I have heard people say that receiving opposition lets you know you are in the right place.
There is some truth to that, but it doesn’t necessarily motivate me to endure.
The idea that opposition means I am in the right place or doing something right, doesn’t stop me from looking at everyone else and thinking, “What if I didn’t have to bear this Cross?”
No—the thing that keeps us from looking around and wishing we had someone else’s plot is to look at Jesus.
Bone and cartilage exposed.
Crown of thorns on His head.
Beaten beyond recognition
But He is placing one foot in front of the other—pressing on toward the Cross
He is not turning back
Because He knows that glory will comes, but the Cross must come first.
And so it is with us.
We press on toward the Cross with Him, knowing that glory is coming. Knowing that eternal reward is on the other side of eternity.
And we know that those who endure will receive that great reward
Revelation 2:10 “Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.”
As Jesus wrote to the Christian in Smyrna, He warned them that they are about to be tossed into prison. But they do not need to fear suffering because this tribulation will be limited. Ten days. A symbolic way of saying that it will not be forever.
And if they are faithful unto death—they will get the reward of the crown of life
We see a similar idea in Matthew 10...
Matthew 10:22 “and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”
Enduring persecution to the end is the fruit of a well-lived Christian life.
In fact, we can go further and say enduring any and all suffering faithfully to the end for the glory of Christ is the fruit of a Christian life well-lived.
And this order of things was patterned by Jesus as much as the suffering itself.
He had to die before He was resurrected and ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father with the name of Lord—a name above every name
Similarly, we will suffer now in order that we reign later.
So that is our great motivation to press on. We have already seen Jesus run the circuit.
He has suffered.
He has completed the mission of His first coming
And His faithfulness has been rewarded with the victory of rising again, a resurrected body, a place at the right hand of the Father and a name that is above every name.
So as we seek to pattern our steps after Him in suffering discipleship, we are motivated to press on, knowing that His own steps went through the valley of the Cross to the peak of being seated at the right hand of the Father.
We are compelled to continue on in faithfulness with all confidence that God will deliver to us our own eternal reward, secured by Christ and given to us to enjoy forever on the New Earth.
Hebrews 12:2 “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
We look to Christ. He gave us this faith and He is perfecting it.
But more than that—He is the Model for our lives.
He didn’t run from the suffering of obedience. He endured it.
If we are to be like Him, then we must endure in His strength as well.
Sympathizing with His suffering from the sidelines won’t do it. That isn’t the Christian life.
We must share in it, trusting Him as He makes us more like Christ in the communion of trials and waiting on the reward that He has promised to us.
Joyfully pressing on, cross on our backs, with our Suffering Lord in our sights.
My Cross I’ll carry, till I see Jesus; My Cross I’ll carry, till I see Jesus; My Cross I’ll carry, till I see Jesus; No turning back. No turning back.
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