Well, once again, thank you to everybody who, uh, is here this morning, especially those of you for whom this is your first time. We've been going through the Gospel of John for, uh, I guess a few years now, uh, and we are finally at, uh, John chapter 17, uh, John chapter 19. We've been going through Jesus's trials before, um, uh, Pontius Pilate and Herod, and back to Pontius Pilate, and the Jewish ones before that, and Jesus's scourging, and, uh, Jesus being made to carry his cross beam out of the city.
That's where we're picking back up, uh, this morning. Here we might think that, uh, well, that doesn't seem very Christmassy, uh, but isn't that the real meaning of what Christmas is all about? It is Jesus ultimately paying for our sin and winning our salvation for us.
From a couple of different informational sites in the early 2000s, a renowned professor of seismology at Japan's Kobe University named Katsu Hiku Ishibashi had been warning the Japanese government that several of their nuclear power plants were built on fault lines and were earthquake-prone areas. Because of that, the government set up a committee in 2006 to investigate potential vulnerabilities in those areas. However, even as Ishibashi insisted that more safety protocols and shoring up of the defenses needed to take place, the scientists who had done the initial calculations remained confident that everything was okay.
"Don't worry about it. " Ishibashi resigned from the committee, citing that it favored the interests of the association overseeing the power plants. Ishibashi is once quoted as saying during that time, "I think the situation right now is very scary.
It's like a kamikaze terrorist wrapped in bombs just waiting to explode. " On March 11, 2011, a 9. 0 on the Richter scale earthquake erupted offshore, creating a catastrophic tsunami with waves as high as a 12-story building that slammed into the main Japan island and its Daiichi Fukushima nuclear power plant, triggering a level seven on the International Nuclear Event Scale disaster—the highest level of potential nuclear disaster.
Many of us remember this. As soon as I said the name, 12 out of the 13 backup generators were wiped off the face of the Earth, shutting down all of the cooling mechanisms for the reactors, and the nuclear plant began to melt down. 50,000 people were evacuated, never to return to their homes again.
The rapid displacement of people resulted in much sickness, mental issues, and death, and large amounts of radiation were spewed into the surrounding air, water, and ground, contaminating the ocean, the water supply, and the food supply. Ishibashi said in May of 2011, following this event, "If Japan had faced up to the dangers earlier, we could have prevented Fukushima. " Ishibashi gave a warning—actually several warnings—that went unheeded and resulted in a man-made disaster with tragic ramifications.
All right, I guess that's where it stands today. In our passage this morning, there is Ishibashi. Uh, Jesus gives a warning—one that resulted in catastrophic death tolls in history, another that is still ongoing and yet future, and one that we must heed if we don't want to face eternal destruction.
We mostly covered John 19:17, our verse this morning, last week, with its description of Jesus bearing his cross beam out of the praetorium, which was here at Herod's old palace in the upper city of Jerusalem, out from there, out through the Gath gate. Right here, this is the traditional location of Golgotha. Here we went through the evidence as to why that's still the best location for this because it's right at the crossroads.
Here, up on this hill, Jesus took his cross beam out from the praetorium, out through the Gath gate here, and that's where we sort of left Jesus last week. He took his cross beam out of the Gath gate and just outside the city until his body physically couldn't take it anymore and he collapsed. The Roman soldiers driving Jesus out of the city forced Simon of Cyrene, only there for the, uh, to observe the Passover, to carry the cross beam the rest of the way up to Golgotha.
Today, we will be covering John 19:17 again, but mostly adding the supplemental information from Matthew, Mark, and Luke in order to give us as thorough an understanding of this event as possible. Furthermore, we'll see what Jesus bearing his cross beam across his shredded-up back must mean for us today. So if you brought your Bible with you today, please turn to John 19, verse 17.
If you didn't, that's okay; there should be one located in the pew in front of you. Please also turn to John 19:17 or look this up on your favorite Bible app on your smartphone. This is what we read: "They took Jesus therefore, and he went out bearing his own cross to the place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha.
" Remember from last week that while Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record by the Holy Spirit that Simon of Cyrene ended up carrying the cross beam for Jesus for a portion of the journey, John simply chooses to omit that detail, again through the Holy Spirit, and summarizes that Jesus was made to carry his cross beam, as was protocol for crucifixion victims, and ended up at Golgotha. So, what else happened on the road to Golgotha and before Jesus's wrists and feet were driven through with nails to his cross? Luke tells us that, following Jesus's collapse and Simon being forced to carry it the rest of the way, a large group of the people were following behind Jesus.
And of women who were mourning and grieving for him now. Who are these women? We might be tempted to think that these are the same women who would go to Jesus's tomb only a short while after this, with the intention of applying oil and spices to his buried body, and then finding the tomb empty instead.
But these aren't the same women. We might be tempted to think that these were at least the women who had followed and helped in Jesus's ministry, some of the same ones who took care of feeding and monetarily supporting Jesus and his disciples during those three and a half years. But these women also are not the ones who followed Jesus in his ministry.
Who these women are that Luke 23 is describing are professional mourners. How would you like to have that job? Answer that one on Indeed.
com: professional mourners. As has been noted, it was customary back in Jesus's day and for hundreds of years before that, that when a loved one died, the family would hire professional mourners to wail and play songs related to death. This is the same occupation of those who were in Jairus's house a few years before this when Jesus, Peter, James, and John went inside, Jesus intending to bring Jairus's daughter, who had died, back to life.
And there were those who were already inside when Jesus came into the official's house and saw the flute players and the crowd in noisy disorder. That's what these are, the type of people that Matthew 9 is describing here. These were professional mourners hired to mourn the death of Jairus's daughter, and it's the same occupation of these women following Jesus in Luke 23:27.
We don't know who hired them; perhaps it was Jesus's mother, who we know was at the foot of the cross along with the Apostle John and who customarily would have been the one to hire these mourners for her son, who she knew was going to die very soon. But we don't know. In any case, as has been noted, this is the point: these women were only there for the money.
As such, they were apathetic towards Jesus and his impending death, and really didn't care about what he had been and would be going through. Jesus knows it; their apathy towards him is what even in his state at death's door prompts Jesus to say what he says to them next. But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for me, but weep for yourselves and your children.
For behold, days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are those who cannot bear and the wombs that have not given birth and the breasts that have not 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 tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?
” How many of us ever think about these words? Have you ever thought about these words spoken while Jesus is on death's door, on the way to Golgotha? Jesus knows that what these women are doing around him is meaningless, but he takes it as an opportunity to give them something meaningful.
As has been pointed out, Jesus rebukes these women in the surrounding crowd who would listen to him to stop mourning for him and to mourn for themselves in what was to come. He quotes two Old Testament passages here, one from Hosea and one from Isaiah, giving them both their ultimate fulfillment. When you study Old Testament prophecy, as we'll talk about more next week, what we have to do is use a method known as telescoping interpretation.
Can you imagine an old-school pirate’s telescope? He pulls it out of his pocket, and he extends it, and then he can look through. That's what we're talking about here.
Take that image: there are both now and not-yet fulfillments. There are both immediate and future fulfillments to each Old Testament prophecy; like expanding a telescope, there are several instances in Old Testament prophecy about Israel being restored to her land that are both somewhat fulfilled when Judah is allowed to return after the Babylonian exile but won't fully be fulfilled until Jesus returns at his second coming and sets up his Millennial Kingdom on Earth. As such, as has been noted, the same principle can be applied to Jesus's words that we just read in Luke 23.
Firstly, there are quotes here to Hosea 10:8 and Isaiah 2:19 that both refer to God's judgment on Israel and Judah by destroying them with Assyria and Babylon, but they won't have their ultimate fulfillment until the future seven-year Great Tribulation period. We see the exact same language show up in Revelation 6: “Then the kings of the earth and the eminent people and the commanders and the wealthy and the strong and every slave and free person hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, and they said to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the sight of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?
’” Very similar to what Jesus just said in Luke 23. In Luke, Jesus isn't referring to something that had already happened; he’s referring to it in the future tense. He's referring to their ultimate fulfillment, which the Apostle John records in what Jesus tells him to record in Revelation, that we just read about 45 to 55 years after Jesus.
Bring them back up here again on the road to Golgotha. Likewise, As has been pointed out, we can apply the exact same telescoping interpretation to what Jesus says before he quotes Hosea and Isaiah, especially poignant to the women he's speaking to and women in general. As has been noted, Jesus makes a shocking statement about it being a blessing to not be able to give birth or nurse babies in the coming days.
Those are some very strong words. This is not the first time Jesus has uttered these words. This is both a reference to Matthew 24 and Luke 21.
Matthew 24:19 says, "But woe to those women who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days," and Luke 21 says, "Woe to those women who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! For there will be a great distress upon the land and wrath to this people. And they will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led captive into all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
" Keep that last part in mind. Like we talked about last week, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem 40 years after Jesus spoke these words in Luke 23, in 70 AD, during the same Passover week, in God's judgment for the crowd screaming that Jesus's blood would be upon them and the next generation, the destruction and slaughter were indeed catastrophic. The Jewish historian Josephus records that about 1.
1 million Jewish people were killed and another 97,000 were captured and led into captivity by the Romans. As has been noted, Josephus also records horrific stories of the starvation in the city due to the Roman siege of Jerusalem. I'm not going to describe those stories this morning because they're so heartbreaking, but suffice it to say Jesus's words about it being better for women to not have had children and feed them during that time period indeed came true.
However, Jesus's words in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 are not only relegated to the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem. As one scholar points out, both of these passages refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, which was directly related to the disciples' question about Jesus's statement regarding there not being one Temple stone left on another. Both passages are talking about having the ultimate fulfillment of them at Jesus's Second Coming, which is still future.
There are references in Matthew 24 that don't fully line up with the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem and can only come to pass in end times events. There will be a second destruction of Jerusalem during the tail end of the Great Tribulation, which Zechariah 14 describes, in which it will again be seen as a blessing for women to not have children and need to feed them when the Antichrist's armies attack Jerusalem. The Antichrist's armies will be partially successful, and countless of Jerusalem's inhabitants will be slaughtered and violated.
But it will be when the Antichrist believes himself completely victorious that Jesus will burst out of heaven with us raptured disciples at his back. He will only need to utter one word, and that word will come hurtling out of his mouth like a sword and obliterate every single soldier in that vast and global army. We can easily see that understanding in Jesus's words in Luke 21:24 again: "And they will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led captive into all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
" As has been noted, the time period this is describing actually began in 586 BC when the inhabitants were first killed by the sword and led into captivity to Babylon. It includes the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD when the inhabitants of Jerusalem were again killed by the sword and led into captivity by the Romans, and it will continue through the time of the Gentiles. When is that?
We're living in it right now—the time period we're still living in, known as the Church Age, dominated by Gentiles coming to the faith in Jesus, culminating in the Great Tribulation, during which the majority of those coming to faith in Jesus will be Jewish. Jerusalem, dominated by the Gentile Antichrist, will be attacked and mostly destroyed by that Antichrist, and then saved by Jesus himself at the Battle of Armageddon. As has been referenced, Jesus's point in both telescoping fulfillments of his words in Luke 23 to these women on the road to Golgotha—the partial fulfillment of 70 AD and the ultimate fulfillment at the end of the Great Tribulation and Jesus's Second Coming—is the exact same.
It's the exact same point. That point is a warning, like we opened up our time with this morning. That warning is this: stop rejecting Jesus as the Messianic Deliverer King now and accept him as such, or face destruction.
As has been pointed out, as Jesus references in Luke 23:31, his own people won't heed that warning while he was physically present with them (aka when the tree branch is green) and will be destroyed in 70 AD. How much less will they heed his warning in the future when the tree branches dry out and are ready to ignite in a blaze of destruction? The same warning is still in force today to us as well: stop rejecting Jesus as the Messianic Deliverer King now and accept him as such, or face destruction.
Although originally directed to his own people, who both at that point and in the end times make up the majority of Jerusalem's inhabitants, since we're still talking about end times events—which are looking closer than ever—we can look all around us and see that this can still apply. To us as well, the only way to avoid the cataclysmic destruction of the wrath of God poured out on the world, known as the Great Tribulation, is to be rescued from it beforehand. The only way to be rescued from it beforehand is by way of Jesus's partial return for His church at the Rapture, and the only way to be raptured is to repent of your sins based on Jesus saving you from them and surrendering to Him as King.
Now, the last thing we can be, in direct connection to the women hired to mourn Jesus on the way to Calvary, is to be apathetic about any and all of it. Heed Jesus's warning to be rescued from God's destructive judgment today; we have no clue about the timing of two things: number one, our own death; number two, Jesus's Rapture of His church. If either one of them happens before you repent of your sins and accept Jesus as both your Savior and King, it's too late.
Like in 70 AD, in the period of the Great Tribulation, the slaughter will be great of those non-believers left behind at the moment of the Rapture. Let's think about that for a second: when millions of people just disappear off the face of the planet, what's going to happen? We've talked about this before, but when surgeons mid-surgery, airplane pilots, air traffic controllers, train and subway operators, and millions of those driving cars, trucks, and 18-wheelers at high speeds down highways all around the world suddenly disappear all at once, we can't even imagine how much slaughter will immediately follow.
So, my question is: do you really, really want to risk the ridiculously minuscule chance that you'll survive all of that and have one last chance to accept Jesus as Savior and Lord, or should you just do it right now? Again, just like now, if you die before doing that, it will be too late. All those whose names are not found in the Lamb's Book of Life, as Revelation describes, that is, all those who never took Jesus personally for themselves as Savior and King and repented of their sins, will at the end of all things, it's promised in the Book of Revelation, be thrown into the Lake of Fire in darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth—two phrases to describe the unspeakable emotional, psychological, and physical torture of the Lake of Fire for all of eternity.
Furthermore, being a disciple of Jesus does not mean that we get to throw up a prayer asking for forgiveness of our sin and then go and live our lives the rest of the way that we want to, rarely giving thought to God and the standards for righteous living He's commanded us to live by in His Word. Going back to the original context of this morning's passage, John 19:17, which again we mostly covered last week, Jesus has first left the Praetorium and has come up to and just out of the gate, doing what? And He wasn't even here last week, carrying His cross.
This isn't the first time we see this action talked about; in fact, in foreshadowing this very event, Jesus uttered these words, as has been noted, only one year prior to this to His disciples: He was saying to them all, "If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me. " As has been referenced, these words are said in the context of Jesus prophesying about His own death that He's walking down the road towards in this morning's passage. In fact, He said right before this: "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised on the third day.
" If one wants to be a disciple of Jesus, both then and now, it's the same. Just as Jesus picked up and carried His cross of death, leading directly to and resulting in His death—as has been pointed out—we must make the same commitment to Him. To be a true follower of Jesus is to surrender to Him fully, even if it means our own deaths and persecution.
He is infinitely worth more to us, and so be it. That's what Jesus meant when He said we, as His followers, must daily bear our own crosses. Ultimately, it's daily bearing the surrender and commitment to even dying for our faith in Him.
So let me ask you, brothers and sisters: have you surrendered that to Jesus yet? As such, are you truly one of His followers, or are you only pretending until it becomes dangerous? We have no clue if someone bent on killing us because we hold to the truth of God's Word will make good on that.
Attacks on Bible-believing churches and Christian schools are rising sharply; it's shocking. Satan is using his children to attempt to silence Bible-believing churches. Who will we stand for if we're staring down the barrel of a gun?
Will we also bear Jesus's cross, even unto death? This truth is carried through into the very next verse, and this is a warning to all those who are like, "Nah, it's not worth it. " For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; take it to the bank.
But whoever loses his life for My sake—this is the one who will save it. For what good does it do a person if he gains the whole world but loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in His glory and the glory of the Father and the holy angels.
You've been warned. Don't ever say you haven't been warned. been warned even before death.
However, how loyal are we to living to please Jesus and following his commands for righteous living in his word? Just like how we can't be apathetic to the death our faith may lead to, we can't be apathetic in the way we live our lives now. Who are we really following with the way we live our daily lives?
Are we living any differently from the way the rest of the world lives and the standards they hold to? Or are we living the hard, painful life of putting to death daily the sin in our lives? As Paul writes in Romans 6, are we daily bearing the cross of putting to death the old self, its sins, its desires, its dreams, and its selfishness—aka denying ourselves, as Jesus said in Luke 9—and putting on the new self, ruled by the leading of the Holy Spirit, in accordance with the commands and instruction of God's word?
Who are we living as? Why would anyone want to hold on to this earthly life, especially when it meant giving up loyalty to the one who suffered immeasurably to pay for our sin and win for us our salvation with his annihilated body and poured-out blood? This world's not worth it!
Living for ourselves is not worth it, and the price for giving up on Jesus in the face of death is not worth it. God will preserve His children—those who Jesus bought with His blood—and we don't need to worry about what we'll say to the one about to kill us. God's word promises that His Holy Spirit will preserve our soul in that moment and will give us the words to say.
So don't worry about that, brothers and sisters. There is no middle ground! I hope that's come across abundantly clear: there is no middle ground; there is no room for apathy.
There is no room for being nominal in your Christianity or being cultural in your Christianity. You're either sold out for and fully surrendered to Jesus as your King, no matter what end of life that may include, or you're not; those are the only two options here. That's what we see clearly in God's word, as we just read in Luke 9:26.
King Jesus is coming back; nothing will ever change that truth. He will come back first to rescue His church out of this evil world, and then He will fully come back to stand on the Mount of Olives, destroy the world's armies at Armageddon, rule the earth for a millennium, and then dwell with us forever in His new heavens and new earth. Brothers and sisters, why trade any of that for the paltry garbage the world can only offer?
I hope all of us, if it came down to it, will remember these words: do not be afraid of those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul. Don't be afraid of them, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Jesus's words: are we apathetic towards Jesus and living according to His word, or are we picking up the cross of surrender, living for King Jesus daily—even to the possibility of death for it?
As the Apostle Paul was staring at his impending execution in martyrdom at the hands of the Romans for his faith in Jesus and ministry work of sharing that gospel message, he wrote these words to his beloved son in the faith, Pastor Timothy: "Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me, His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works. Our works have nothing to do with it; we can never do enough good works to earn our way into heaven. It's only faith in Jesus and Him paying for the price for our sin on the cross.
But according to His own purpose and grace, which was granted to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity and has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher. For this reason, I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to protect what I have entrusted to Him—our soul—until that day. " Please pray with me.
Heavenly Father, we thank You for this oft-forgotten passage in the gospels, but still so crucial to our understanding of You going to the cross for us. You said these words as You were on the road to the cross, to pay for our sin. Lord, I pray that we would not be apathetic.
I pray that if there's anybody here who's straddling the fence and who has still been deceived into thinking that agnosticism is an option, they would wake up to the fact that that's just a lie and that they have to make a choice: to put their faith and trust in Jesus for paying for their salvation, providing the basis for forgiveness of their sin, and surrendering to Him as King, or not, and suffering eternal torment in hell for it. Lord, I pray that if there's anybody here who has not yet made that decision, they would do so right now. They would come to You, repent of their sin, ask for forgiveness, recognize that You took their place on the cross to save them from their sin, and commit to live the.
. . Rest of their lives to please you as king, that they would do so right now.
And those of us who have done that, I pray that we would take a hard look at ourselves and ask ourselves honestly—ask ourselves the question: Am I apathetic? If I was staring down the barrel of a gun, who would I stand for? Where is my loyalty?
Who am I actually living for? Who am I actually following? And then pick up that cross of surrender and daily follow you.
I pray that you would give us the power to do these things through your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name, amen.
