Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, once again we thank You for what today is, and it is the Lord's Day. It is the day You have created as a gift.
By You rising again from the dead on the first day of the week, You've given this day as a gift to us as Your church—to gather together, to be with one another as fellow Holy Spirit-indwelled brothers and sisters; to derive strength from that; to soak up the truth and power of Your word; to commune with You through prayer; to serve You in giving back to You that which is already Yours to begin with; and another form of worship to You. Lord, I pray that You would be with us this morning as Your church. We may be grieving loss in our church family, but You are still Sovereign.
You still have Your plan. Your word remains forever; the grass and the flowers will fade, but the word of God remains forever. We thank You for that.
We thank You for our eternal hope. We thank You for the salvation that You purchased for us through such unbearable suffering on the cross. And I pray all these things in Jesus' name.
Amen. I know we'll be getting into some pretty heavy stuff this morning, so I want to start off with a little bit of light-heartedness before we get into that. Take a sort of a little bit of a deep breath here.
I'm going to show you a few logos without the names they represent, and I want you to shout out what the brand name of each logo is. All of these were taken from a BuzzFeed article entitled "Most People Can't Identify These 12 Logos," but I believe in you guys—I think you guys are a lot smarter than most people. So, like I said, I believe in you.
So, everybody ready? Okay, here we go. We'll start with what I think are some pretty easy ones.
Here we go. All right, see? I told you!
I told you you guys were smart; I knew you would get them. All right, this one might be a little bit harder. Okay, and one for those who work with computers.
Uh-huh. And lastly, this one for those who use apps. Ah, okay!
See, I—I don't even know why these were on this. ARG! You guys are very good with that.
When you see the golden arches, you know exactly what's coming up on the next exit off the highway. There are many, many more logos that have been designed and advertised to us so much that we can see them without the words, and there's instant brand recognition. They did their job well.
But there's one symbol that is recognizable across the entire world, across all cultures, societies, and languages, and across thousands of years—that most recognizable symbol, of course, is the cross. And for eternally good reason. What happened thousands of years ago to make the cross held so dear?
Therefore, what does the cross represent? Why does what happened with a cross thousands of years ago hold so much crucial significance to us as believers in Jesus Christ? And how must it change our lives?
About a month ago, we left Jesus on the road to Golgotha after Jesus collapsed under the weight of the crossbeam that the Romans customarily forced on those sentenced to crucifixion. Due to the tremendous loss of blood and shock His body already endured during the Roman scourging, the Romans forced a random passerby—there for Passover, Simon of Cyrene—to turn around and carry the cross the rest of the way up to the hill of Golgotha. You remember from when we covered this that the traditional location—and once again, here's a topographical map showing Jerusalem here.
Uh, this is the Praetorium where Jesus was with Pilate; this is the Gath Gate right here in this wall; and this is the traditional location right here, up on this hill. And you can see that topographically as well—at the crossroads of a major route into Jerusalem where it would be seen by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people there pouring into Jerusalem for Passover. The Romans wanted everyone to see this gruesome sight.
Here, the traditional location fits all the descriptions from Scripture and history as to where this most likely was—pretty close to right outside of the city. The Gath Gate, right outside of Pilate's Praetorium, is where Jesus exited after His sentence and then walked this road from the Gath Gate to Golgotha here, giving that cryptic prophecy about the future and end times events to the women hired to mourn for Him until He reached the top of the hill of Golgotha. That's where we're picking back up this morning.
Before we get to this morning's verse, I want to add some supplemental information from the Synoptic Gospels. Mark tells us, "Then they brought Him to the place Golgotha, which is translated 'place of a skull,' and they tried to give Him wine mixed with myrrh, but He did not take it. " Now, as a side note, we just came out of the season where we hear the word "myrrh" quite a bit, haven't we?
What was that context? The gifts that the Magi brought to the baby Jesus; they were gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold meant to signify Jesus's kingship; frankincense was commonly used by priests in the temple and thus signified Jesus as high priest and mediator between God and man.
But what was myrrh? As has been noted, myrrh is a resin or a sap derived from a certain plant, and it had two common uses: it was used both in anointing oils when you would anoint someone, and in embalming the bodies of the recently dead. Both, as we well know, hold tremendous significance to Jesus.
My inclusion in anointing oils was meant to signify him as being anointed as the prophet—the fulfillment of the prophecy to Moses all the way back in Deuteronomy—and myrrh foreshadowed Jesus's death and burial. But here, myrrh took on another significance in connection with Jesus's imminent death. As has been pointed out, the Romans would allow for women in Jerusalem to create a concoction of wine mixed with myrrh to give to those about to be crucified.
This was their rare act of mercy on the Romans' part. Another reason is that another quality of myrrh is that it's a natural anesthetic and pain duller. But did Jesus actually drink it?
No, we just read that he refuses it. Why? Not only was myrrh a natural anesthetic for physical pain, but it dulled the mind as well.
Again, this meant that the brain receiving the nerve's pain signals was dulled and the pain not felt as much as with a completely sober mind. But Jesus refused the pain reliever because he wanted his mind 100% absolutely clear for the epitome of what his mission on Earth ultimately was. He knew he must experience the full and complete weight—great burden and unbearable pain—of taking our sins upon himself to put to death.
Again, whose sins? Our sins. Let's keep that in mind as we continue to work our way through this.
Now we come to the actual crucifixion. John Chapter 19, Verse 18. If you brought your Bible with you today, please turn there.
If you didn't, that's okay. There should be one located in a pew in front of you. Please also turn there into the New Testament or look this up on your favorite Bible app on your smartphone: John Chapter 19, Verse 18.
This was also our scripture reading: "There they crucified him, and with him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between. " John records how Jesus was crucified between two other men. Luke specifies that these two men were criminals.
We'll get more into the meaning of these two criminals—the two other men crucified on either side of Jesus—down the road. For now, I simply want us to focus on the crucifixion of the Messianic deliverer and the meaning that has been passed down to us through God's word over thousands of years. Similar to the Roman scourging, the apostles who wrote the New Testament knew that their recipients knew exactly what Roman crucifixion was, and they only needed to write the word "crucified" to convey what happened to Jesus without including every single grisly detail.
But for us, thousands of years removed from this, we need to know exactly what Jesus willingly put himself through again so we know all that he endured to pay for our sin and open the way up for us to be reconciled to God and be given eternal life. Similar to our message on Roman scourging, this is my warning: this will be pretty graphic, but something we need to know as we look at the research and study of this done by biblical scholarship. Firstly, the act of crucifixion was not invented by the Romans; they inherited it.
It was invented by the Assyrians hundreds of years before the Romans arrived on the scene. However, what the Romans did was take what they thought was a good idea and perfect it to be the most humiliating and torturous form of execution that could exist. Why?
To be a graphic, stomach-turning deterrent for everybody else against breaking Roman laws and committing crimes. In fact, crucifixion was only reserved for the worst criminals and insurrectionists against the empire. Because it was so horrific, the sentence of crucifixion had been outlawed by the Roman Empire for Roman citizens well before this point.
One of Rome's own poets, Quintilian, wrote of crucifixion, "The very word cross should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen but from his thoughts, his eyes, and his ears. " That's how indescribably disgusting and abhorrent it was. Like I mentioned before, Roman scourging in and of itself was so destructive to the human body that some would die simply from that act of torture.
Thus, scourging was only reserved for those sentenced to crucifixion anyway, as it was purposely designed to tear as much flesh from bone and expose internal organs as possible. It accomplished much of the killing part already, especially in Jesus's case, so that crucifixion was the last part of finishing off a life. There were four types of crosses the Romans would use for crucifixion.
The first was called the Crux simplex, and it was called Simplex because it was the simplest form. It only consisted of a single vertical beam, like a letter "I," where the victim's hands were pulled above and nailed to it above his head, and his feet were nailed on either side of the beam. The second was called the Crux commissa, shaped like a "T," with the victim's arms outstretched on a horizontal beam and nailed on either side of him, and again, feet nailed on either side of the vertical beam.
The third was called the Crux immissa, the bottom part being immersed into the ground, known today as the Latin cross, and the traditional one we think of—similar to the "T"-shaped cross but with an additional head space above it. The fourth was called the Crux decussata, shaped like an "X" or a railroad crossing sign, with both the arms and legs outstretched from the body and nailed to the forearms. Which type was Jesus nailed to?
Well, we can't be 100% certain. There are people who are going to argue with me on this, and this is not the hill I'm going to die on, but. .
. The evidence points to him being nailed to the camissa, or Latin, or traditional shape that's been recognized by the Church for thousands of years. This is why we read later that Pilate had a sign that the criminal's charges were written on, and Matthew describes that it was fixed above Jesus's head.
The only types of crosses where this would be possible are the eye-shaped and traditional Latin crosses. Furthermore, the eye-shaped cross was only primarily used in Italy, which leaves us with the traditional Latin cross that's been used to symbolize Jesus's crucifixion for thousands of years. Why did I go through all of that?
Well, as we go through the rest of the description of crucifixion, it helps to be able to visualize what this looked like on a specific shape of the cross. Once Jesus reached Golgotha, the Gospels describe how the soldiers gambled for his clothes after he was crucified, which means he was stripped of his clothes and most likely entirely naked before he was nailed to the cross. Again, this was to bring humiliation and shame on the victim.
He was offered wine mixed with myrrh, which he refused. The crossbeam that Jesus and then Simon of Cyrene was forced to carry was laid upon and nailed to the vertical beam that would be raised up. The Roman soldiers, most likely some of the same legionnaires who had scourged Jesus previously, then laid Jesus on the cross while it was still on the ground.
The arms would have been outstretched on either side across the horizontal crossbeam and nailed first. Obviously, these were not nails you would buy in a pack of 50 at Home Depot; these were nails about 4 to 6 inches long and thick enough to support a full-grown man's upper body. I'll describe them again: these were nails about 4 to 6 inches long and thick enough to support a full-grown man's upper body.
Think maybe a little thinner, but about the size of railroad spikes. We’ve all seen paintings or sculptures of Jesus with the nails through his hands, but that most likely was not where the nails impaled his body. The bones in the hand are not strong enough to bear the weight of a full-grown man, and the nails would have simply torn through had it been done that way.
Remember, the Romans perfected crucifixion to be the most torturous form of execution possible, and so both for pragmatic purposes of bearing a man's weight and for the purpose of horrific torture, the nails would have been hammered through each of Jesus's wrists. In a person's forearm, there are two bones, the ulna and the radius. Right in the space between these two bones, that's where the nail would have gone.
And right in the space between these two bones is what is called the median nerve, which connects the hand to the elbow. If a person's median nerve is torn into by, say, a railroad spike, it sends convulsions of agonizing pain radiating throughout that person's arms. Again, we've all seen paintings where Jesus's feet were crossed over one another and a single nail hammered through the center of both feet, but again, that's not most likely what happened.
Before 1968, if you can believe it, there was no archaeological evidence for crucifixion, and many historians doubted it ever happened. But in 1968, archaeologists discovered a bone box, or what's called an ossuary, in Jerusalem, which contained the bones of a man named Johanan, son of Haggle. From the inscription on the box, within the box, amongst the other bones, an ankle bone with the nail still in it—a clear and obvious evidence that corroborated the crucifixion—was also found in this box.
What happened to all the bones of everyone else who had been crucified? Well, upon death, the nails would be removed. But do you see what happened to the tip of this particular nail here?
If this is the head, this is the head because it's clearly shaped here. This is the other side. What happened here?
It got bent, didn't it? What apparently happened was that when this nail was driven in, it hit a knot in the wood of that vertical beam, got bent, and could not be removed from the bone. What that did is it preserved the only archaeological evidence that we have to this day for crucifixion.
What this also tells us is how Jesus's feet were nailed to the cross. These are obviously both models here. This is a model of what was found; this is a model of what it would look like with a human foot here, and here is a wooden washer that would make sure the nails stayed in the ankle.
His feet were placed on either side of the vertical beam and had nails hammered through the ankle bones with a wooden washer to secure the nail, similar to the wrists. The nails would have torn through the fibular nerve at the ankle, connecting the feet to the lower back and sending shocks of unbearable pain radiating throughout Jesus's legs and up to his back—all through his back. When his ankles were nailed into the sides of the cross, however, his legs were not kept straight but kept bent at the knees a little bit, and we'll come back to that in a second.
Once Jesus's wrists and ankles were nailed to the cross, while still lying on the ground, the soldiers would have picked up the entire cross, raising Jesus up on it, and then the vertical beam was bone-jarringly dropped into the post hole already dug into the ground. When the vertical beam was dropped into the post hole with all his weight on his. .
. Impaled wrists on a flat cross beam, Jesus's shoulder and elbow joints would have violently been wrenched out of joint, throwing Jesus's body into deeper and deeper levels of horrific pain. The way the cross was designed and perfected by the Romans to end with the death of its victims was either one of two things: dehydration in the hot Middle Eastern sun, or asphyxiation or suffocation, depending on the amount of scourging, if there was any at all.
Victims could last for a few days on the cross. How were they expected to stay alive for those few days? This is where we come back to Jesus's legs being slightly bent by pushing up on their arms and legs to be able to breathe.
This, in and of itself, was a tremendous task, beyond the weight being borne on impaled arms and legs. The way the victim was positioned on the cross with arms wrenched out of joint restricted his chest cavity and diaphragm, forcing the victim to expand the lungs himself, bearing his own weight. When the arm and leg muscles were tired and the victim needed to take a break, he couldn't just drop himself down; however, that would cause even more agonizing pain.
He would have to lower himself gingerly and slowly, which would require more energy, gradually exhausting the person more and more. If it wasn't through dehydration, then a person simply died from exhaustion, no longer able to lift himself up to breathe, and his chest cavity would collapse, causing death by suffocation. But remember the state of Jesus's back at this point: hamburger meat.
Even in that state, to stay alive, Jesus had to lift himself up on his impaled wrists and ankles, median and fibular nerves screaming in pain, dragging his shredded back up and down the rough, splintery cross as the wood dug into his already deep gashes and lacerations. It was with each act of that laborious and tortuous breathing that he would vocalize the impactful and meaningful statements while hanging on that cross, which we'll get into as we continue to work our way through Jesus's time on the cross. Finally, after hours of enduring this relentless, excruciating pain, one physician describes that Jesus's chest began to sink into a deep, imploding pain as the pericardium, or sack around his heart, began to fill with serum that started to crush his heart.
As Jesus is dehydrated beyond belief, his heart is fighting to push the incredibly thick blood anywhere, but failing to do so. At that point, Jesus would have felt a chilling sensation start creeping across his body as his body entered the final state before death. Jesus would give up his spirit, committing it into the Father's hands, and would succumb to death.
As we've already referenced in the past and will reference again in the future, the day that Jesus was crucified, by our reckoning, was a Friday, the high holy day of preparation for the Sabbath of the Passover and subsequent Feast of Unleavened Bread week. The very next day was the Sabbath, which we see recorded for us in John 19:31. The Jewish officials didn't want the grotesque display of crucifixion victims still up on that Sabbath, so they asked Pilate to hasten the death of those still alive on those crosses.
The quickest way to bring about death was to break the legs of those still alive so they couldn't lift themselves up anymore to breathe; their chest cavities would collapse, and they would die very quickly by suffocation. Pilate granted their request and ordered his soldiers to do just that with those who were still alive on their crosses. However, when the legionnaire arrived at Jesus's cross, it looked like the Nazarene had already died.
Just to make sure, however, upon pain of death for himself, the legionnaire thrust his spear in between a certain point in the ribs and into Jesus's heart. John, an eyewitness at the foot of the cross, records this: "Yet one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. " This is undeniable proof that Jesus was physically dead.
He didn't pass out; he wasn't just unconscious; he was physically 100% dead. This only occurs postmortem. According to one physician, it tells us exactly how Jesus died.
Jesus did not die by the common form of suffocation; Jesus died from heart failure, as the watery fluid serum that filled the sack around his heart ultimately crushed his heart to death and then was released, witnessed by John as the legionnaire's spear tore into his heart. According to this physician, Jesus quite literally died from a broken heart. As has been noted, many of these aspects of Jesus's crucifixion were prophesied about hundreds of years earlier regarding the Messianic suffering servant.
Isaiah 53:5 says, "But he was pierced for our offenses; he was crushed for our wrongdoings. " In Psalm 22:16, it says, "A band of evildoers has encompassed me; they pierced my hands and my feet. " In most people's understanding in the first century, the hand included the whole hand and forearm; feet included feet up to the knee.
The first common form of Jewish execution was by stoning, but these references to piercing, and specifically of the hands and feet, describe execution by crucifixion, something that was common by the Romans. Psalm 22:14 prophesies, "All my bones are out of joint," and in 22:17, "I can count all my bones; they look; they stare at me. " Here we see descriptions of Jesus's shoulders and elbows being wrenched out of joint on the cross to the point that Jesus could look across and see his disjointed shoulder and elbow bones pushing out under the skin and grotesquely staring back at him.
Psalm 22:14 also says, "I am. " Poured out like water, my heart is like wax; it is melted within me. And here we have a description of Jesus's life being poured out as blood has been spilling out of Him in copious amounts since the scourging, and a poetic description of Jesus's heart melting away as it was being crushed by fluid in the pericardium just before, and as, His cause of death.
Lastly, for now, we have but the Lord desired to crush Him, causing Him grief: if He renders Himself as a guilt offering, as a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied. By His knowledge, the righteous one, My servant, will justify the many, for He will bear their wrongdoings. Because He poured out His life unto death and was counted with wrongdoers, yet He Himself bore the sin of many and interceded for the wrongdoers, that is why Jesus suffered as unspeakably as He did—from the scourging to the Cross.
He was not put to death by His own people; He was not put to death by the Romans; He willingly put Himself to death to bear our sins as the sinless and perfect guilt offering sacrifice, and legally justify us before Himself as the holy judge. All of that is wrapped up many times by the apostles simply referring to the Cross and the message of the Cross. Remember, Jesus refused the myrrh and purposely dealt with the full brunt of torture with no pain relief whatsoever.
All that Jesus suffered through, from His scourging to His last agonizing breath on the Cross, was to show how desperately hideous our sin really is before most holy God, and how desperately wicked our hearts really are before most holy God. As scripture says, there is no righteous person, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks out God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; completely and thoroughly corrupt; there is no one who does good; there is not even one.
Brothers and sisters, you are not a good person; I am not a good person; you have never been a good person; you are not automatically, by default, a good person, and you can never make yourself a better person. You do not go to Heaven by default; by default, every single one of us is bound for eternal physical and spiritual torment in the Lake of Fire. That’s what we’re automatically defaulted to.
Furthermore, there’s a prevailing belief mantra today of just "follow your heart," but in reality, the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? So you can follow your heart if you really want to, but you’ll just be following your heart into the middle of Hell. The revolting ugliness of who we really are by default in our sinful state is mirrored perfectly by all the torture Jesus endured to pay for that sin on the Cross.
Never take lightly any of our sin, but there’s good news; there’s extraordinarily awesome news. The Apostle Peter writes, "He Himself brought our sins in His body up on the Cross so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness. By His wounds you were healed, for you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.
" All of His wounds, from the deep gashes and lacerations in His back to the pounding of the nails through His wrists and ankles, to all the torment He endured just to take a simple breath, to the imploding of His heart, was to take our sins upon His crushed body on the Cross—to pay for them as a substitute sacrifice on our behalf, to reconcile us to most holy God, to offer us forgiveness for our sin if we turn from living for it and turn to living for Jesus as King, and to seal us with His Holy Spirit to give us 100% assurance we'll spend our eternity with Him, and in the presence of His joy and His peace. We went through some pretty heavy stuff today, but it was to either point out to us for the first time, or to give us a reminder of the indescribable nightmare Jesus experienced on the Cross for our sin, so that we could be adopted into His family and be given His forgiveness, His salvation, and His eternal life as a gift—we don’t deserve any of it. But thank You, Lord Jesus, for enduring all that You endured so that our sin debt could be covered, and You could open our spiritual eyes to see it and enable us to take that faith for ourselves.
Brothers and sisters, let us not belittle, or justify, or excuse away sin we continue to harbor in our lives. Repent of it. Repent of it and surrender it to God on a daily basis, doing what we need to, to get it right with Him and to seek His strength to overcome it.
Jesus already won the victory over sin and death when He breathed His last on the Cross. Let us fully live in that victory and the power the indwelling Holy Spirit gives to us and grows in us on a daily basis. Jesus already endured the Cross so He could give us the salvation, forgiveness, power, strength, fearlessness, boldness, joy, excitement, and peace to live the life He’s called each and every one of us to, as His followers in this dark, hopeless, temptation-filled, fearful world ruled in limited fashion, and for the time being, by the Prince of Darkness and his kingdom.
The Cross crushed His power. The Cross crushed the power of sin and death. The Cross killed our sin, fear, depression, anxiety, faithlessness, and hopelessness.
The Cross won for us our victory. The cross won for us true peace, hope, and joy for the rest of this life, and eternal peace, hope, and joy in the next. In short, as Scripture says, the cross turned our death into life in the truest definition of irony.
Jesus took what was so despised as shameful and excruciating death and turned it into a symbol of salvation, of forgiveness, of victory, and of eternal life. We know the cross is not the end of the story and that His resurrected life is the proof of our resurrected life—spiritually now and physically in the future. Our hope of life began at the death on the cross.
So, brothers and sisters, therefore, since we also have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let's rid ourselves of every obstacle and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let's run with endurance the race that was set before us, looking only at Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith, who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank You for all that is wrapped up in one word: crucified. All that it was, all that it shows to us about the hideousness of our sin, and that's what nailed You to the cross. It shows us the overwhelming love You have for us—that You would endure such a nightmare so that we could repent of our sins, be reconciled to You, and be given eternal life by You.
Lord, I pray that if there's anybody here who's not yet done that, who has not yet come to You in prayer and said, "Lord, I know I fall short and I could never meet Your righteous standard. I know that it's my sin that separates me from You. I know that You paid for it as a substitute on the cross instead of me, to take my place and pay for it, so that I could be restored to You.
I could have forgiveness from it. I take You as the Savior for my sin. I repent of my sin, and I lovingly and joyfully commit the rest of my life to serving You, to wanting to please You according to Your standards of righteousness and Your work, because You are the King.
You are the King; everyone will bow their knee one day before You. I do it now to be sealed for my eternal life. " I pray that if there's anybody here who's not yet prayed something similar to it with a sincere heart, that they would do so right now and receive the eternal joy that only comes from that.
If there's anybody here who is a believer, a follower of Jesus, but there is something that they continually refuse to get right with You—something they know is sin, something they know is in disobedience to Your Word, but they just won't get rid of it—I pray that they would be shocked and shaken to their very core because of everything that You went through to put to death that very sin, and that they would get that right with You right now. I pray they would take whatever steps they need to in order to fix that and get it right. Lord, You've shown us two tremendous images: first, the grotesque ugliness of our sin—just how disgusting it is and how dark it is; and You have shown us Your overwhelming and the highest form of love that could ever exist to restore us to You.
Lord, fill us with Your joy; fill us with Your peace. We look forward to You coming back for us, and we live out the rest of our days in service to You as Your body of Christ. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, the exalted One.
Amen.
