The Passion of Christ: Compassion Amidst Chaos: The Voices of the Afflicted

Bible Passage: Luke 23:26–31

We have been studying the passion of Christ from the gospel of Luke. Passion meaning suffering, is recorded during the week of the Passover during Jesus’ final days on earth before his crucifixion. The week begins with the triumphal entry where Jesus fulfills what the prophet Zechariah spoke of long ago. Zechariah 9:9 “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

The people knew the prophesy and rejoiced Luke 19:38 saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”” The people received Jesus waving palm branches and rejoicing.

Traditionally this would have been the day the Passover Lamb was selected for the sacrifice. And Jesus rode into Jerusalem to celebrate Passover with His disciples. By coming into Jerusalem on Lamb Selection Day, Jesus was saying in an unbelievably symbolic way, ”I am going to be your Passover Lamb” Paul records 1 Corinthians 5:7 “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.”

As the week continues we see Jesus in the temple and he begins to drive out the money changers. God’s house was meant to be a house of prayer, ‘but you have made it a den of robbers.” Luke 19:46 This infuriates the religious leaders and they begin to challenge Jesus and his authority. Tension continues to grow as Jesus continues teaching in the temple. The religious leaders were seeking how to put him to death, because they feared the people. Luke 22:1 They wanted to hang on to their power and authority which Jesus and his teaching conflicted against. They needed one of his disciples to betray him and when Satan entered Judas called Iscariot he consented and sought an opportunity to betray him into the hands of men. All the while Gods perfect plan to bring about the salvation of many Genesis 50:20 was working toward fruition.

The day of Unleavened Bread came on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed Luke 22:7. Passover was meant to be a joyous time when Jews celebrated God delivering them from the hand of the Egyptian Pharaoh who had kept them in bondage and slavery for 400 years. God had caused the angel of death to “Passover” all who had lambs blood spread on their doors to show Gods chosen people. As Jesus and his disciples gathered, Jesus began to talk about leaving and going where he would go they couldn’t follow him. He talked about That there was one among them who would deny him 3x and another who would betray him. Strange talk for a night which was meant to look back at the slavery God had delivered them from.

Finishing the meal, Jesus as was his custom went to pray to his father as was his custom. His disciples followed him to the Mount of Olives and this is where our study picks up with Christ praying Luke 22:42 “saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”” We talked about the cup which is Gods wrath, his anger toward sin. We talked about the betrayal of Jesus by Judas and his false arrest by the chief priests and officers of the temple and elders who had come out against him. We talked about Peter denying Jesus 3 times that night before the rooster crowed and how Peter experienced Godly sorrow. We looked at how Jesus was mocked even before being found guilty and his unjust trial which condemned him to death. Lacking the ability to carry out their sentence the Jewish leaders took Jesus to the Roman Pontus Pilate who released an condemned man and sent Jesus to the cross after scourging Jesus.

Tonight we are going to look at the Compassion Amidst Chaos: The Voices of the Afflicted we will see Simon Summoned to Serve Unexpectedly, the Daughters Shift of Focus from Sorrow, and a Prophetic Compassion's Call. Let’s dive in together!

Luke 23:26–31 “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?””

Pray

1. Summoned to Serve Unexpectedly

Luke 23:26 “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.”

As we are working through our passage, the first thing we see is Jesus being led away. What we need to remember is Jesus had been beaten and scourged. He was bleeding and bloody. The cat of nine tails used to beat him was a multi-tailed whip traditionally made of nine knotted cords or thongs, often made from leather. Sometimes pieces of metal, bone, or glass were tied into the ends to increase the severity of the injury. We know not one of his bones were broken Psalm 34:20 “He (Jesus)keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.” But his flesh looked like hamburger meat from each of the knotted cords as they struck him repeatedly. John 19:1–3 “Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands.” He truely was Isaiah 53:7 “oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”

Roman soldiers were good at pain and punishment and they knew how to get the most bang for their buck so those whom they crucified would carry the patibulum(horizontal piece) through the streets to execution site where the vertical part of the cross was buried in the ground. It served two purposes, for the one to be crucified it served as a very harsh punishment. For those who were looking on, they quickly learned that if they stood against Rome the same would become true of them. Crucifixion is still known as one of the most inhumane ways to die.

Simon was from Cyrene where the Gospel writer Mark was from. Mark’s Mark 15:21 records of Simon and adds that he was the father of Alexander and Rufus. The gospel writers in the Holy Spirit labored hard to maintain the eyewitness account so that we would be able to know the facts. They wanted us to know that this Simon from Cyrene was the one who carried our Lord’s cross and Mark adds that its not just the one from Cyrene but the one who is father to Alexander and Rufus.

Its not recorded of any conversations between Jesus and Simon, but what happened that day must have really affected Simon because when he went home he told his family, specifically his son’s about what happened. Paul records when he wrote to the church at Rome to Romans 16:13 “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well.” Rufus was chosen in the Lord?! What happened to Simon that day not only impacted Simon but it impacted his son’s and his wife so much so that Paul records Rufus being chosen in the Lord and his mother as having been a mother to Paul.

2. Shift Focus From Sorrow

Luke 23:27–28 “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.”

What we see here is a bunch of people following Jesus and Simon. Some of them were women who were mourning and lamenting for him. If you were to search the New Testament to find a woman that is hostile toward Jesus you would find none. Women were much more positive than men toward Jesus and they were the ones who were mourning. The idea here is to beat the breast, to cut, or to wail loudly in grief often associated with public expressions of physical sorrow. Were as, lamenting means to wail or chant a dirge associated with formal mourning such as a funeral. The women here are deeply grieved and even suffering seeing what is happening to Jesus. They looked at him and received his message well and are likely in disbelief that these things are even occurring because having received Jesus’ message they knew him to be innocent of any crime but yet he stands unjustly convicted and is being led toward the cross.

Jesus can barely walk from the beatings and yet he is still teaching. He says a word that surely gets their attention, calling these women the Daughters of Jerusalem. This term is poetic and yet prophetic. Its seen often in the Old Testament in books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Song of Songs. Jesus using this term isn’t just referring to his disciples some of who were women but local women who saw what was happening and were mourning.

What does he tell them? “Do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. What an odd thing to say. Here Jesus stands cursed and will soon be hung on a tree Deuteronomy 21:23 an he tells the women, mothers to weep for yourselves and for your children. Why would he say such a thing? If you think back were we have been Jesus prayed at the Mount of Olives Luke 22:42 “saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”” He knew this was coming and he knew it was the good and perfect will of the Father. He knew that Sin must be atoned for and they only way for sin to be defeated was for him to be the perfect spotless lamb who would redeem his people from their sins.

3. Prophetic Compassion's Call

Luke 23:29–31 “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?””

Jesus continuing his lesson now tells the Daughters of Jerusalem why they shouldn’t mourn for him. He tells them “the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breast that never nursed!” For the Daughters of Jerusalem, these women, it was a reversal of the normal order of Jewish culture. Women were considered blessed in childbearing and cursed when they were barren.

Jesus in saying harder days are coming as judgement comes to a head. For the people in that time it directly meant the destruction of the temple in 70AD when tens of thousands would be massacred by the Romans as well as those who would starve in the city siege. Jesus is saying judgment is coming! Get ready! It will make our life difficult. So difficult that something that seems so normal now like childbearing which is a blessing will no longer be a blessing.

Bearing children is one of the biggest blessings any woman can be given and as we see Jesus says there will be a day which that will no longer be true, but not only he raises the idea of the coming judgement and quotes Hosea 10:8 “they shall say to the mountains, “Cover us,” and to the hills, “Fall on us.””

The prophesy in Hosea had already come to pass when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom in 722BC and exiled the people. The judgement being spoken of was so terrible that the people would rather die than face it.

Revelation 6:16 “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,” is a direct prophesy that will come to fruition in time to come. John is speaking of the last of days when their great day of wrath comes. John says, who can stand?

Continuing in our passage Jesus says, “For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”” What is he trying to get across here?

The Green Tree: The term "green" signifies vitality, innocence, and undeserved suffering.  While being led to the cross, Jesus is referred to as the "green tree". He is considered innocent, righteous, and full of life and grace. 

The Dry Tree symbolizes those who are spiritually dead, hardened in their sin, and reject God's message. They are like dry wood, ready to be consumed by God's judgment. 

This is a warning about the consequences of rejecting God's offer of salvation. It says that all those who reject Jesus will face far greater judgment than the suffering he is currently enduring. 

There is a day of judgement coming on the earth which will be worse than anything you can imagine. In Noah’s time, Noah preached for a 120 years that people would turn from their unfaithfulness and turn to the Lord, in the end 8 people endured the flood in the protection of the Lord’s ark. The rest of man kind drown in their unfaithfulness and perished in the flood waters. God gave us a promise to never flood the world again in judgement and He gave us a the rainbow as a sign. But judgement will come again for those who reject Jesus and this time it will be of fire.

Revelation is a prophesy of the last days which John recorded as he was carried along by the Holy Spirit. John records this of the last judgement to come, Revelation 20:11–15 “Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

The book of life contains those who belong to the lamb. Jesus became the sacrificial lamb on the cross. He paid the price of our sin which is death. He died so that we might live! He was raised on the third day defeating both death and sin. If we are born again then our name is in the book of life and to all the father has given the son none will ever fall away. Do you belong to the lamb? Have you been born from above?