Sunday 03 • 22 • 20

Well, this morning, we will be continuing our sermon series on the witnesses of the cross. We're tracing the path of Christ from the garden where he prayed and was arrested, moving into his trial. We've looked at his trial extensively. There's a big chunk that looks at him before the chief priest, before Pilate, before Herod, before Pilate again, before the crowds, and now we're moving from the trial essentially to the execution. This morning, we're going to be looking at the path of Christ marching from the trial to the cross.

A lot of people have asked us this week, in light of recent events, why not forego this series? Why not stop and do something that specifically addresses the crisis that we're in? I wanted to take a second before we look into these verses to address that. Honestly, I can think of nothing better for us to do during this time than to look upon the suffering of Christ. There's a couple reasons for that. First of all, I don't think anything displays more beautifully the value and care and compassion of our father than the sufferings of our savior. And so as we look at this passage today, I want you to bring to bear fully the situation that we find ourselves in. I know that there are many of you who are suffering, who are in really hard situations right now. And I want you to gaze upon the sufferings of our savior and find hope.

So, with that in mind, let's go to God's word. We're looking at Luke chapter 23 verses 26 through 43.

And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country and they 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? Two others who were criminals were led away to be put to death with him. And when they came to the place that is called the Skull, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. And Jesus said, father, forgive them. For they know not what they do. And they cast lots to divide his garments, and the people stood by watching, but the rulers scoffed at him saying, he saved others. Let him save himself. If he is the Christ of God, his chosen one, the soldiers also mocked him. Coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. There was also an inscription over him. This is the king of the Jews. One of the criminals who hanged railed at him saying, are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us. But the other rebuked him saying, do you not fear God? Since you are under the same sentence of condemnation, we are. And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. And he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And he said to him, truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. — Luke 23:26-43

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for your word. We desperately need it in this time. We need to be reminded of just how much you love us. Lord, we pray that you would work through this time, that you would meet us in your word as it's being distributed across the internet. Lord, this is uncharted territory for us as a church and for me as a preacher. Lord, I feel disoriented and uncomfortable—not just in this preaching but in all of life. Everything has been upended. Lord, we pray that in this time, you would become our north star, that we would be able to fix our eyes upon you, be reminded of who you are and how much you love us, and that we would find our orientation and we would find hope. Would you do that in us this morning, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.

The Two Groups of Witnesses

This morning, we're going to look at essentially two groups of witnesses that we find in this story. The first group of witnesses, they don't properly see Jesus and there are three of them. We're going to look at all three of them. Luke wants us to see what they don't see. So they're going to be interesting to look at. The second set of witnesses that we look at, they do actually properly see Jesus. And so Luke wants us to see them and to see what they see and wants us to be encouraged by that.

So we're going to look at those two groups of witnesses. That's our outline for this morning. The first group is the three who don't see. The second group is the two who do.

People who were walking by the church right now would look in here and they would see a sparse crowd of about 10 people and they would see me standing in front of some lights talking to an almost empty room. And the impression that they might get is that this isn't a very impressive gathering. And in fact, the impression that I get as someone who does a lot of public speaking is that this is really weird, right? I didn't go to seminary for this. They didn't train us to stand in front of cameras. There was no televangelism class at RTS. And this feels very different. The face value of this feels like I'm more like practicing in my bedroom than I'm actually preaching a sermon.

The witnesses that see Jesus, the three who don't see him properly, right? They probably had a similar sense. There's a sense in which the skin deep reality of what they were seeing felt very different than what was actually happening. And so, as we walk through this, I want you to have incredible sympathy for them because I think if we were there, we probably would be more tempted to fall into this group than the other group.

The Women Who Followed After Jesus

I want to begin by looking at the women who followed after Jesus. If you look, that's in verses 27 through 31. Essentially, here's what's going on. Jesus has been sentenced to die and he's marching to the cross. All of these women have gathered around behind him and they're mourning. Morning was a big deal in ancient culture. It was something that accompanied death. Sometimes, you hired people to mourn for the dead ones, because nobody wanted to die without those expressions of sorrow and sadness. And so Jesus has an incredible crowd of women coming behind him, mourning, weeping, wailing. They're looking at him and they see him essentially as what we would call a dead man walking. He's been sentenced to die, right? But he hasn't yet died. He's on his path to the grave. And it's appropriate, they think, to mourn him. And yet, Jesus rebukes him and it's a very interesting passage.

Notice what he says:

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 breast 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? — Luke 23:28-31

Why is Jesus rebuking these women for mourning him? After all, I mean, this is perhaps the most lamentable event of human history. Isn't it appropriate for these women to bemoan and wail against what is happening to the Son of God? Jesus says, no. Jesus says, no because there's a stark difference between how he sees these events and how they see the events and Luke wants you to see the difference.

Jesus quotes in this section, Hosea chapter 10 verse eight. The section that talks about the mountains falling on us and the hills covering us. If you look back at Hosea 10, that's a section that very significantly points to the day of the Lord, the day of judgement, the day when God would pour out his wrath on all of the sins of mankind. In fact, in Revelation chapter six, John picks up on these verses, these very verses when he starts talking about the seals being opened.

Listen to Revelation six twelve through 17:

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked and behold, there was a great earthquake and the sun became black as sackcloth and the moon became like blood and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 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, hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb for the great day of their wrath has come and who can stand? — Revelation 6:12-17

Jesus says, the lamentable thing isn't what's going on with him at that moment. It's what's happened to all of mankind and to the ultimate wrath that would be poured out upon mankind for their sin. You see, the women saw Jesus as a dead man walking but Jesus saw all of mankind as dead men and women walking. And so he says to them very tenderly. Notice the tenderness. Daughters of Jerusalem. Jesus almost pleading with them. See the true tragedy here. Not me but you. Not what's happening to me but what's happened to you that is requiring me to do this. See the lamentable state of your souls and your lives. Jesus is witnessing to them even as he's going to the cross.

He's pleading with them to see their need for what he's about to do and more than that, he wants them to see the beauty of what he's doing. He wants them to see this not as a dead man walking. He wants them to see this as his coronation procession because that's how he views it. He is coming and conquering the powers of sin and death and his parade to the cross isn't some lamentable thing. For those of us who are in Christ, this is a beautiful thing. Each step that he takes brings us a step closer to salvation, brings us a step closer to realizing his full kingship.

This morning, we need to see ourselves and our state in sin as the lamentable thing. Not the work of Christ. We need to shift from seeing what happened to Jesus as lamentable even though it is. To seeing it as something beautiful that he suffered for our sake so that we might be saved. Jesus didn't see him going to the cross as a tragedy. He saw it as a coronation parade. Something to be celebrated.

This morning, as we're suffering in all sorts of different ways as a result of the spread of this coronavirus, it's easy for us to see now—maybe it wasn't so easy a couple weeks ago—but it's easy for us to see the lamentable state of mankind. We're just scratching the surface. Jesus saw it from a cosmic perspective of just how tragic our sin and our demise really was. That's the thing that he wanted us to lament. That is what we can lament but we can also, brothers and sisters who are in Jesus Christ, we can rejoice in his work on the cross, his suffering, and his dying for us. And as we walk through these dark times, we can remember that even though he walked through dark times, he saw hope and beauty in the work that he was doing.

The Crowds' Mockery

The second group of people that Luke wants us to look at that don't properly see Jesus is the crowds. You can see this in verses thirty five and thirty six. I'll read it again real quickly.

And the people stood by watching but the ruler scoffed at him saying, "He saved others. Let him save himself. If he is the Christ of God, his chosen one." And then the soldiers mocked him coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, "If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself." — Luke 23:35-36

There's two groups in the crowd. We see there's the chief priest and there's the Romans. There's the Jews and the Gentiles and all alike are mocking Jesus.

Past couple weeks, we've looked at Jesus being mocked kind of extensively. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this but I do want you to catch what they're doing. Do you see the joke? Do you see the joke that they're playing on Jesus, right?

Here he is nailed to the cross, up on the cross, having been beaten, having been bruised, bleeding, suffering, on the verge of dying. He's up on a cross. And do you hear the joke? Come on, big shot. Let's see what you got. Let's see what you got, Jesus. How big are you now, mister king of the Jews, chosen one of God? What can you do? Show us. Save yourself. Right? Because the joke of course is that from their perspective, he's pathetic. He can't save himself. There's no way, right? That's what's funny to them in a sick way. It's a sick, dark humor. This man is dying on a cross and they've got jokes about him suffering and dying and him supposedly being this big shot. So show us, right? Save yourself. And the punchline is he can't.

But what's the real joke? What's the joke they don't see that Luke wants you to see? Here it is. Who is it that can't save themselves? It's not Jesus. We know from looking at past stories of Jesus, his miracles, all the things that he's done, the fact that we know from reading the gospels, those of us who are believers, that he's the Son of God. We know that he could have just winked an eye, uttered a word, blown his breath—who knows what—just even thought about it and he would have been off that cross. Right? He could have summoned armies of angels to deal with those Roman soldiers. He could have summoned all kinds of earthquakes and tremors and windstorms. He could have done whatever was necessary in order to get him off of the cross just as easily as you please.

But could the people that were mocking him save themselves from the coming wrath of God that he just described to the women? The reality is that they had no hope. They were the lamentable ones. They were the ones who couldn't save themselves. Salvation is a huge theme in the gospel of Luke and he wants us to see the irony of this mocking. That it's truly them that can't save themselves.

This week, or really the past couple weeks, I've enjoyed the internet or I did at least initially when this started rolling out. There were all the memes. Have you guys been following the coronavirus memes? Please tell me you have. There's some great ones out there.

My favorite coronavirus meme so far is a picture of characters from Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome with their spiked shoulder pads and leather pants. The meme says, "So do we start dressing like this now or do we have to wait a couple weeks? What's the protocol?" That was my favorite one.

Until about a week or a week and a half ago. You remember when Tom Hanks got coronavirus? That's when it got real for me. It was like, all of a sudden, Mr. Rogers—the guy who played Mr. Rogers, Forrest Gump, all these endearing characters—someone whom I kind of feel close to because I've watched his movies pretty much my whole life, he had coronavirus. And I started to think, man, if he could get coronavirus, I could get coronavirus. It came home.

There was another meme I saw around the same time. It was a meme of five different pictures of Kanye West. In the first picture, he's smiling, and then his smile kind of fades through the subsequent pictures, and he starts looking more and more concerned with each one. And the meme caption reads, "My reaction to coronavirus memes be like." It's like, they were funny at first, but now all of a sudden, they're starting to not be so funny.

Understanding the Reality

We're starting to feel the reality of what Luke wants us to understand—what these people in this crowd can't see. Several weeks ago, we probably didn't see it. We weren't thinking about our need. We felt very self-sufficient, very safe. But now, suddenly, we don't.

These people felt very safe. It was Christ on the cross, not them. And yet Luke wants you to see that it was them who were heading towards an execution. It was them who were at risk. It was them who could not save themselves. And their pleas, their request for Jesus to save himself—ironically—if he comes off that cross, they have no hope of salvation. Jesus is staying on the cross not to save himself but to save them.

The First Thief: Cynicism in Hopelessness

I want to look at the last person who couldn't see Jesus properly, and that's the first thief. If you look at verse 9, it says this:

"One of the criminals who were hanging railed at him saying, 'Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.'" — Luke 23:39

One of the thieves gets caught up in the action—all the jokes, all the cynical jokes, all the dark humor. And he's sitting there dying. What an incredibly hard place to be. He sees the hopelessness of his situation. Unlike the crowd, he at least sees that. He knows he's going to die. And yet, in the face of hopelessness, instead of being humble, instead of being saddened, he responds with cynicism. He gets caught up in the humor. He mocks Jesus—not just for his inability to save himself but also for his inability to save him.

Do you see the cynicism of the thief? The joke being: you can't save me. And in his dying moments, he chooses to use that to mock Christ as just another expression of false hope on his way to dying.

There are many of you that feel that kind of hopelessness and respond with cynicism. I'm one of those people. When I have pain, I've got lots of jokes to hide that pain. When I have hopelessness, I have lots of jokes to hide that hopelessness. I have all kinds of ways in which to make fun of that hopelessness and make it feel like it's not real. That's what he's doing.

And there are all kinds of non-Christians—and if you're a non-Christian listening to this—that just mock Jesus as this false hope. He can't save himself. He can't save us. But what I want you to see is that that's not the proper way to respond to Christ. And there are many of us who are Christians that even in the midst of hard situations, we turn to hopelessness and to jokes rather than to Jesus. That's not the way we're called to respond as Christians.

The Second Thief: Proper Response to Jesus

Luke thankfully gives us some examples of what it does look like to rightly respond to Jesus. Let's look at the two that did properly see Jesus. The first one is the second thief.

"But the other thief rebuked him saying, 'Do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we are indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.' And he said to him, 'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.' And Jesus said to him, 'Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.'" — Luke 23:40-43

The second thief is amazing.

I hope you can take just a moment and be amazed at the second thief and his response because I'll tell you, I think most of us would more easily identify with the first thief than with this guy. Even those of you who are Christians, right? Even me who's preaching this sermon, I identify more with the first thief than the second. Let me show you why.

First of all, there are all sorts of things that the second thief sees that nobody else in this passage sees, or sees clearly at least. First of all, he sees his own guilt, right? He sees his need. The second thief did see that but the women and the crowd, they didn't see it. He sees his guilt. He sees the fact that he's condemned just like Jesus to the same sentence that he's dying. He sees the end. The veil between this world and the next world is thin for him. And he knows he has no room to stand, that he will cry like those people in Revelation. Lord, who can stand if he's asked to stand before the throne of judgement? He knows that. He sees his guilt.

Secondly, he sees Jesus's innocence. That's something that all of the rulers who tried Jesus, they didn't see that—at least they didn't admit that they saw it. They saw him as all kinds of wrong. They wanted to kill him. They wanted to murder him. They didn't see the value of him. They dismissed him, right? They judged him lacking. This man sees Jesus as not only innocent but valuable, right? Do you hear that plea? At the end, all he wants is to be with Jesus. Just remember me. Remember me, right? You're so valuable. Just remember me.

And notice too, he sees Jesus's power and Jesus's future. Now, this is the remarkable part. Here's a guy hanging on a cross with another guy. And how well does he know him? Presumably, not that well, right? They've marched to the cross together maybe, right? Maybe he's heard Jesus' teachings or he's heard about Jesus. It doesn't tell us any of that. All we know is that he comes into contact with Jesus at the moment that they're both dying on the cross. So what does he have access to that allows him to see the fact that Jesus is going to come into a kingdom, right? Everybody else just sees a man dying on a cross. Everybody else sees the end. But this man sees Jesus coming into his kingdom. He sees Jesus for who he is. This is remarkable. This is otherworldly.

And at the same time, it's kind of amazing that we have this story. You know, Christians whenever they debate like, "Hey, what exactly do you have to do to be saved?" Right? Like, what exactly do you have to do to be saved? I mean, there's all kinds of things like, do you have to be baptized? Right? Do you have to go to church? Do you have to be good? What do you have to do? Right? No matter what those conversations kind of go like, they almost always end with this guy. You know why? Because what did he do? Almost nothing. Almost nothing. All he did was ask Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. All he did was kind of at one point show some sort of dignity and respect to Jesus and long to be with him when he comes into his kingdom. That's it. That's all he did, right?

But I want to say to you, that's a lot. In this moment when he's dying on the cross, that's phenomenal. That, brothers and sisters, is what faith looks like. It looks like in the face of suffering and adversity, in the face of challenge and trial, in the face of hopelessness, because of Christ, you see a doorway into hope. And not just hope. But incredible hope of being with Jesus. And that's what Jesus shows him.

In response to the statement of faith, Jesus tells him very firmly:

Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. — Luke 23:43

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is our hope. We need to hang on to this as we walk through these dark and challenging times. We need to remember that our hope is not in our circumstances. Our hope is not in like the playtime that we send our kids out to play because we're just exhausted from trying to do homeschool. Our hope is not in whatever it is that we're clinging to for hope. Our hope is not in our circumstances. It is in Jesus himself. In his sacrifice. We need to thin the veil and see the beauty of what he did for us on the cross and allow that to motivate us.

Simon of Cyrene

The last person to look at is maybe kind of subtle and kind of weird. You might have missed him. I brushed past him to get to the others. He's right at the beginning.

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. — Luke 23:26

What a weird, little, quirky thing to include. Even non-Christians who study the Bible are kind of like, that must have actually happened. Because why would that be included in here if it didn't happen, right? Like Christians are supposed to be all about showing the sufficiency of the suffering of Christ.

So why didn't Jesus carry his own cross? I mean, if you're making this stuff up and you're guided by our theological principles, that's what you would make up. Jesus carried the cross because he carried all of our suffering. And yet we have this weird guy, Simon of Cyrene who just pops in and carries his cross for a little bit at the beginning. What is that all about?

Even non-Christians think this guy is a historical figure. In Mark's gospel, we get a little bit more information about him. Mark 15:21 has this little side note: "Simon of Cyrene, father of Alexander and Rufus." Mark's like, yeah, you know this guy. You know his kids, Rufus and Alexander. It's almost like Simon and his family were part of the early church. In fact, that's what most scholars think—that probably this experience of picking up the cross of Christ and carrying it, and actually witnessing the crucifixion of Christ, gave him a veil-thinning experience similar to the thief. He probably became a Christian, and that's why him and his sons were so well known by the gospel writers.

I want you to think for just a minute. What would it have been like to be Simon? He comes into the story from Cyrene, which is in Libya. He's an African outsider, a guy from outside of Jerusalem, coming into the city for who knows what business. All of a sudden some Roman soldiers come up to him and say, "Hey, carry this cross." Say what? Like, no, thank you. I have business. I don't care. We're Romans. You're not. So carry the cross. That's kind of how it went. He probably was like, man, I don't want to do that.

But let's assume—and I am making some assumptions here; the text isn't explicit, I understand—but let's assume for a moment that he did become a believer. Years later, when Peter or Paul are preaching, or Apollos or any early church preacher, and they're preaching about that famous teaching of Jesus, in Luke's gospel, it comes in chapter 9, verse 23:

If anyone would come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me. — Luke 9:23

Imagine being Simon sitting in the pews listening to that. Like, I did that. I literally did that. I literally carried the cross of Christ. Luke is the only gospel that denotes this in verse 26. He makes a point of pointing out that Simon carried it behind Jesus. I think Luke is very subtly nodding to the reality that Simon not only owned what he did in that moment but he saw it as an incredible privilege.

Similar to Paul. Paul writes in Philippians 3:10:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings becoming like him in death. — Philippians 3:10

Simon must have been ecstatic if he became a believer. I would have been. I'll be honest. If I was walking there and the Roman said carry this cross, I would have said, no. I don't want to do this. It would not have been a labor of love. I would not have been excited about it. I would not have done it lovingly. The only reason I would have done it is because the Romans compelled me.

But then if I found out that it was the cross of the Savior and it was the instrument that brought about the salvation of all mankind, do you know how ecstatic I would be that I was woven into the story of Jesus's suffering and death for our behalf?

But here's the thing: those of us who are in Christ, all of us are woven into the suffering and death of Christ, aren't we? All of us are. And that suffering comes sometimes suddenly, sometimes in unexpected ways, sometimes in ways we would never welcome. And yet all of it represents an opportunity to take on the posture of Christ, to follow his path up to Golgotha, up to the cross, and to offer ourselves in a pattern similar to his suffering so that the watching world can see our Savior.

The Now

Normally when ending a sermon, I like to end with a really inspiring illustration. I don't have a really inspiring illustration today. Here's why: I think the coronavirus has totally upended all of the ways in which we think about what it looks like to carry the cross of Christ like here and now. It looks very different than it did a month ago. I don't have any story in my back pocket of, "Hey, here's this amazing story of someone." I could tell you stories of what it looked like in other times, in other places, but here's what I want to end with today.

I want you to be the closing illustration.

I want you to approach this situation as an opportunity to carry the cross of Christ. To show forth his love through his suffering and dying to a watching world who desperately right now needs to see Jesus.

Not an incomplete picture of Jesus. Not a completely wrong picture of Jesus. But the right one.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.