The other two outlaws, they did not, they were not subjected to all of this other scourging perhaps, but they weren't treated like this. Throughout it all, he endures the sufferings head on in his humanity. In other words, he takes it as you or I would have had to have taken it. He doesn't say, okay, I'm going to call upon a miracle. And sum up more strength. He doesn't do that.
We have information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will continue with his study called, They Crucified Him, in Mark Chapter 15. You know, just a, just a scintilla of kindness. Still to come was the wrath of the Father. Still to come, yeah, the crucifixion, but the wrath of God would be upon him. He earned those thorns on his brow because of his love for us.
The one person in history that could wipe out all of humanity with less than a blink does not do it. Isaiah, again, Chapter 53. He was taken from prison and from judgment for he was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgressions of my people, he was stricken. They beat him for the sins of my people, Isaiah is saying. God expands that and says, my people are the people of earth, those who live. And in a sense, not of the sense of a relationship, right relationship with God, but in the sense of the sins of the people in that lesser sense. The cross they laid on him had everyone else's name on it except him. Very interesting.
It should be very interesting, challenging. So you younger Christians, have you ever read Isaiah Chapter 53? And if you have, have you said to yourself, here's a man that wrote this 800 years before these events and Christ finished them, followed every one of them. They are prophecies that have been fulfilled only by Jesus Christ. No one on earth comes close to fulfilling Isaiah 53, leaving us with no excuse to reject him.
But every reason to accept him. Just Isaiah 53, for example. There are others.
I'm just pointing out that one. Verse 21 now. And they compelled a certain man, Simon the Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by to bear his cross.
Well, there's a lot here. I think, I don't, I remember doing a character study on this Simon the Cyrenian. Well, coming back to this and we'll open it up some about the man. A Roman soldier compelled Simon to carry the cross of Christ.
All right, we get that. The love of Christ compelled him to never put that cross down. This man becomes a believer. It would be pointless to mention his children here if the church at that time didn't know who those children were. And at that time, when you had a testimony like that, you were serving God. You were not just a church goer. And for them to say, his sons are with us to this day.
And remember, Mark is writing at least 20 years after these events. And still, the children of Simon the Cyrenian are in the Gentile church. Alexander is a Gentile name. And there is Rufus who is mentioned again in Romans 16. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord. And Paul says, his mother and mine.
What a powerful testimony. The aged apostle Paul, many years later, writing to the church at Rome, 30 years after this at least, he's talking about this man's son and this man's wife. And he's saying, make sure you say hello to Rufus.
And his mother, who's like a mom to me also. This is, you know, we were just singing one of the most challenging Christian songs that there is. They'll know that we are Christians by our love. Oh yeah?
Will they really? What a challenge. Challenges me. Simon the Cyrenian. Now that's in North Africa. And it goes back, the Jews have been there over 300 years since the days of Ptolemy.
And they had a substantial community. He is a convert, a proselyte to Judaism. He's a Gentile that has become a Jew. They had their own church in Jerusalem. Because they were pretty, no question, knowing how people are, knowing how the Jews were in Jerusalem in Jesus' day, they were sort of, you know, B-class believers.
Hopefully we don't have that view of one another. But anyway, carrying the cross of Christ was something Simon can do. Personally, I'm convinced he was a dark-skinned African, which would contribute to him standing out in the crowd. And, you know, here he is, minding his business.
And he singled out. Simon the Cyrenian, in the place of Simon Peter. I wonder if Peter ever put that together.
I would hope not for his sake, but you know, we see it. His carriage of the cross was by appointment. He didn't know it until afterwards, much, I'm sure, long afterwards. That cross never belonged to guiltless Christ. If anybody should carry it, it would be anybody. Anybody was fit to carry that cross. And of course, those crosses, they were just logs, pretty much. You cut down a tree that was just thick enough, you know, the girth was enough to hold a man's body on it. And there was no, you know, finished carpenter coming in to make sure the splinters were sanded out or anything like that. Probably still a bark still on it. They just chop it down, put a cross beam on it, and impale the prisoner. And likely use it for firewood when it was all said and done.
And we'll be glad about that. I might cover that moment here. I know I say I may cover a lot of things, because there's just so much stuff.
And you can't see inside my head flying around, bumping all over the place. Anyway, everybody, if you just walked up after Simon was picked to carry the cross, and he is lugging the cross of Christ, and you just walked up, you'd think he was the felon. You know how sensitive we are for people having a wrong opinion about us. They said, what?
I mean, none of us like to have people slander us, say something about us especially negative that is not true. No man before or since Simon can claim to have carried the cross of Christ. Abraham can't say it, Moses, what a distinction that we cannot look at this man carrying the cross of Christ and say, boy, I missed my opportunity. I have a chance every day to carry the cross of Christ, not the cross he died on, but the cross he assigned me.
Take up your cross and follow me. There's no cross like this. Only Christ could die on this piece of wood. That's why Peter said they crucified him on a tree, because that still looked like a tree. When you looked at the cross, it wasn't, again, this nice block of wood that someone had shaped and smoothed out. And when they crucified them, they put them at face level, so you could see into their face the horrors of what crucifixion was.
It was to be a deterrent. Rome knew how to do it. They crucified so many of those with Spartacus.
They crucified so many Jews after the destruction of the temple, they ran out of wood. The father of Alexander and Rufus, that's who Simon is, and clearly Mark understood that his audience was familiar with these men. And I think that is what we call testimony. Men are people of Christian reputation. Now there's no direct evidence in the scripture to equate Simon the Cyrenian with Simon Niger, who was later one of the early deacons or servants of the church in Acts chapter 13. Simon, who was called Niger, and the Latin for black, and likely a reference, and they didn't have the hang-ups we encounter today about these things, but they did specify, made the distinctions.
They were meaningful to them. I believe it is the same man, but if you said, well prove it from the Bible, I could not do it unless I lied. I could do it that way. I wouldn't do it that way. I don't know, do you like serious Rick or do you like humorous Rick?
Am I putting you to sleep with all the points and every now and then you need an injection of humor? So this man Simon, his first look at Jesus, it wasn't a pleasant one. He did not see him standing up teaching or sitting down teaching. He did not see him healing the blind or forgiving some woman caught in adultery or removing the hideous leprosy. He didn't see him that way. His first look is looking at an exhausted Jesus who's out of adrenaline.
That's his first look. Christ under the sentence of death and the weight of his cross. Again Isaiah 53, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken. That's how Simon saw him. He esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. I mean what was his initial response other than, why me? He gets past that, his look at Christ, how much ministry was in that.
Christ is still able to speak. He tells the women who are watching all this take place. He said, don't wait for me. If they do this to the Greenwood, think what's going to happen to you.
If they do this to the innocent, then the guilty don't stand a chance. It says, and he was coming out of the country and passing by. Apparently, as I mentioned, minding his own business, going off. You know, he's probably seen these processions before and he's just heading to where he's going. Maybe he's going to the temple for morning worship because it is about the time of the morning sacrifice.
He seems to have no intention of stopping to watch what is going on. He stumbles upon Christ, smitten, and it says, as he was coming by out of the country and passing by to bear his cross. Well, at first Christ was carrying his own cross. That was the standard procedure for the Romans.
You get to carry the object you're going to be killed on. John's Gospel, chapter 19, verse 17. And he, that's Christ, bearing his cross, went out to a place called the place of the skull, which is called, in Hebrew, Golgotha, Skull Hill. He's exhausted. He's dehydrated.
He had that intense prayer in Gethsemane where his sweat became like drops of blood. He endured two beatings for sure, a scourging, six trials, and his body is beginning to fail. The other two, the outlaws, they did not, they were not subjected to all of this.
They're scourging perhaps, but they weren't treated like this. Throughout it all, he endures the sufferings head on in his humanity. In other words, he takes it as you or I would have had to have taken it. He doesn't say, okay, I'm going to call upon a miracle and sum up more strength.
He doesn't do that. Philippians, chapter 2, speaking of Jesus, Paul says, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God. In other words, there's no crime for him to say, I and the Father are one. You and I can't say that.
No one can say that except him. He continues, Paul does, but made himself of no reputation. He made himself, this is God planned, not an accident, taking the form of a bondservant.
A bondservant is a willing servant versus one who is enslaved against their will. He continues in coming in the likeness of men. Well, there it is. That's how he came to earth, in the likeness of man. That's his humanity. When he did not eat food, he got hungry. When he fasted, he felt hunger. When he was cut, he would bleed. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. So what we're looking at here is him facing the cross with the same physical strength as other men. And he's out of gas. He's been abused to the point he's got nothing left. The Roman soldiers know they're not going to get to the place, to Skull Hill if they wait for him to carry the cross.
And that's why they tag Simon. All of us need help from time to time carrying our cross. That's the message that Christ is saying to us. If I needed help in my humanity, you're going to need help in yours too. Of course, he dismissed his humanity on the cross when he says, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
That was it. No more humanity. From that point on, Jesus glorified.
The apostles didn't even recognize him. It was such a thorough transition. Well, that's going to happen to us too. This body of the flesh, we're going to jettison one day.
It's going to be gone. But until then, we're human. We're flesh and blood. And we better understand that. Life will teach us that. You younger Christians are learning it.
You older Christians have learned it. The cross, the cross of Christ, tubular shaped. And yet, we do so many things with crosses to make them look nice.
Well, that's no crime. As long as we don't forget, it is the emblem of sin and condemnation of sin and hope for the sinner. That is what the cross is supposed to symbolize in just a flash.
You know, a picture paints a thousand words or says a thousand words. The emblem of the cross in a flash is supposed to say sin and sinners. I condemn, God says, I condemn all sin.
I invite all sinners because of what my son did. Galatians chapter 2. Paul writing, you know, Paul went around what is now modern Asia, Turkey, southern Turkey. And he moved inland and he's ministering to all of these churches there. He's making, establishing churches. And he writes to these churches because there would be those that would go behind Paul to undo his work.
And his weapon against them was prayer and the pen, the letter. And he talks about himself and he says, you know, I see all these people talking about, you got to do this to be right with Jesus Christ. If you want to benefit from the cross of Christ, you've got to become a Jew and you've got to follow these rites and rituals.
Also, you won't benefit from the cross of Christ. And Paul said, that's nonsense. He says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith.
The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Here's this old saint never losing sight of what is so special about our faith. Even though he caught so much hardship, so many beat downs, he never loses sight. He never says, as I am prone to say, why didn't you do more? Why didn't you bless my ministry more?
Why is this all you're doing? Paul just, if he had those bowels, he maybe did. The flesh is like that.
He wouldn't let anybody see it. Don't devalue that. You parents with children, how important it is at times to not let your children know you are afraid of something. That's fighting. That is with, you're looking out for them.
I didn't want to panic the kids. And so we move to verse 22. And they brought him to the place Golgotha, which is translated place of the skull. The skull, it's a, you know, it's a, it's a, the word escapes me.
It's a paradox. It's this dark sockets where eyes once were and that ghastly grin. That's what goes, you look at a skull and why are they grinning at me? Well, why is it, you know, it's death and visitors to Jerusalem. You can still see the, you know, there are two sites that are claimed, that are said to be the place of Christ's crucifixion.
Most maps will have the traditional one. That ain't it. It doesn't meet any of the criteria from scripture. It's inside the city. The scripture clearly says it was outside the city. There was a garden next to it.
They're just these things that the Bible makes. It was to the north of the city. Well, there's also a bus station just outside the city walls of old Jerusalem.
And it's got the two sockets for the eyes and the nose. It's not as deep as it once were because they built it up for the bus station, laying asphalt and things. It's about, it's lost a few feet, but it's still there right next to the garden tomb. And it is quite remarkable to say that. And you say, that's the place.
Well, if it was or was not, it's not that critical, but that's the place. Verse 23, Then they gave him wine mingled with myrrh to drink, but he did not take it. Again, this is, well, not again, but this is one human concession the Romans allowed the condemned soul to be crucified. They would give him this concoction with myrrh that would sort of get them a little, alter their senses, their feelings, a little drunk, you could even say, to numb the nerves before they began.
How come they didn't offer this before their scourging? That would have been helpful, but the Lord refused to drink it. He did not, as I mentioned earlier, want his senses muddled.
He was going to drink the dregs of this cup. His mind was not going to be stupefied. He still had work to do in dying for us. His seven teachings that come from the cross, you know, the seven words of Christ, which are teachings, seven of them, they're not under the influence of any substance. He had a clear mind.
Just because he was impaled did not mean that he was not clearly thinking. For just one, for example, when he says to Mary about John, the apostle, John's going to take care of you now. John, you're going to take care of her now. Woman, behold your son.
Son, behold your mother. I mean, he just said, listen, look out for her, John. He did that with a clear mind. He couldn't go back and say, yeah, well, it was under the influence of that myrrh concoction.
No, he was not. Verse 24, And when they crucified him, they divided his garments, casting lots for them to determine what every man should take. All four gospels rush over this.
They simply say they crucified him. Not daring to emotionally work into the story with graphics, our feelings of pathos or sorrow. We don't need the graphics to know what's happening here, to feel it. When you first read this as a Christian, did you need anybody to illustrate this to you on the screen?
Or did you get it through the power of the Holy Spirit? Did you weep? When I first read this, I wept, and sometimes after.
I have a hard time just, you know, standing up reading, and I'm saying I don't want to lose my self-control over what is going on here. Those men that recorded this event, all four of them, had no interest in detailing the horrors of it all. They loved the Lord Jesus so much, it hurt them still to write. John, over 40 years later writing, his gospels still hurt.
They were not going to dwell on it. They crucified him. They crucified him, okay? That's how it is given.
Twice it's said that way in this section. They crucified him, they crucified him twice, okay? Hollywood makes money daring to illustrate what the disciples dared not to remember or record. May we remember that.
You know, emotions are useful, but they can be quite a problem, and they can mess things up. Anyway, they divided his garments, it says here in verse 25. The only material possession that we know that he owned, is clothes, the clothes on his back. The birds of the hare have nests, the foxes have holes, the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. These men, they felt that they were entitled to his clothing, not his family, but they were entitled for all the hard work that was going into killing him. Depravity is sin's work. Psalm 22, all written before Isaiah, a thousand years before these events. The psalmist writes, they divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. They gambled for my clothing.
You know, pick a straw, pick a card, some means of trying to find out who's going to be the winner. He did not only have the seamless robe that says to Christians, seamless ministry is a good thing. You just get ministered to, you don't see where all the joints and everything is just seamless.
No distractions are reduced. Be impressed with that. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-07-13 12:02:42 / 2023-07-13 12:11:55 / 9