Luke chapter 23. Luke chapter
23. Our text is verse 33, and when
they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they
crucified him. William Newell wrote the hymn
at Calvary, years I spent in vanity and pride. Caring not,
my Lord was crucified. Knowing not it was for me, he
died on Calvary. Mercy there was great, and grace
was free. Pardon there was multiplied to
me. There my burdened soul found
liberty at Calvary. at Calvary. The scripture says,
and when they were come to the place which is called Calvary,
there they crucified him. In thinking and praying about
a message for us tonight, I thought it would be good that we consider
our Lord's crucifixion again as we are observing in this ordinance
his death. were showing forth his death
as we, in a little while, partake of the bread and the cup. And
what better way to be mindful of our Lord's death and to study
once again what took place here. And I have five points I'm going
to speak to us from. First of all, the place. The
place. It was Calvary. Calvary was a
small hill, a very small hill outside the city of Jerusalem. The word Calvary actually means
skull. And some say it was called Calvary
or a skull because it somewhat resembled a skull. As you looked at the hill, it
seemed like a skull or looked like a skull. But others say,
no, it was called a skull or calvary because of the number
of skulls that were around the hill. The number of people who
had been crucified, who'd been executed by crucifixion and their
bodies just left to waste away on that hill. The other three
gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, and John, they used the word
Golgotha, or Golgotha. And Golgotha is a Hebrew word,
which means the same, the skull. Calvary is a Latin word, and
it came, of course, from the Latin vulgate, I'm sure, into
English. We talk about Calvary, the hill. The second point of my message
is the crowd. So the place was a place of a
skull, a place where men were executed. It wasn't a lovely
place. It wasn't a green hill, a lovely
green hill or anything like that. It was a place where many men
had been executed. But second, I want us to think
about the crowd. In verse 27 we read, and there
followed him a great company of people. A great company of
people. And let's just break that down.
Let's break that statement down into who all was in that great
company of people. Well, first of all, the Lord
Jesus Christ. He would be in the center, and
we know that he had his head crowned with thorns. It would
have been quite a spectacle to see this man on his way to execution
carrying his cross and with a very unusual crown, and that is a
crown made of thorns. The second group of people that
would make up this crowd were the Roman soldiers. And the Roman
soldiers, I'm sure they were dressed in their military attire,
their military clothes. And all they were there for was
to carry out the governor's order. The governor's order was to crucify
Jesus. And they were there to make sure
that there wasn't a riot that took place and that the execution,
the crucifixion was accomplished. And then there were in this crowd
the Jewish priest, and I'm sure they had a great big smile on
their face thinking, at last, at last, we are rid of this Jesus
of Nazareth. The women would also make up
this company of people. The women who followed in the
scriptures tell us that they were weeping. They were weeping
at a sight of a human being being treated in such an inhuman way. And our Lord, of course, turned
to them and said, weep not for me. Notice that in verse 28,
but Jesus turning unto them said, daughters of Jerusalem, weep
not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold,
the days are coming, and we know those days that he speaks of,
they did come, when the nation of Israel was inside the walls
of Jerusalem, and the Roman soldiers were outside, and there was no
way of escape. Weep not for me, but weep for
yourselves, for the day will come when you will say, blessed
Happy are those who never had children, those women who never
had children, who never nursed a child. Because at that time,
people will begin to say to the mountains, fall on us, and to
the hills, cover us. For if they do these things in
a green tree, in a living tree, what shall be done in a dry tree? And we know that the sufferings,
the trouble of Jacob at that time was such that had never
been before. The tribulation that the nation
of Israel went through. But you know, thank God, all
the believers, the Lord Jesus gave them a sign, didn't he?
He said, when you see the abomination of desolation where it should
not be, In other words, the flag of the Roman soldiers. When you
see that encompassing Jerusalem, flee. And the believers did flee. Those who believed Christ, they
fled from Jerusalem and fled to a city called Petra, and they
escaped. But those who were deceived,
who believed that Jesus was a deceiver himself, they experienced the
greatest of all tragedy and tribulation that had ever come upon a people. People began to betray one another,
and that's what made it so awful. They began to betray one another
and the blood flowed so freely there in Jerusalem. So the women,
first of all, in this company of people, I want you to get
this again, is the Lord Jesus Christ. If you can just picture
Him in your mind, weak and so weak that here's another person,
this Simon, the Cyrenian. who they compel to help the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now the reason they did that
They did not want the Lord Jesus Christ to die on the way to Calvary. And he had been beaten and mistreated
in such a way and was so weak in body, that was a real possibility. It wasn't because they had any
pity on him that they had someone to help him bear his cross, but
they wanted to make sure that he was crucified. He was put
to death by crucifixion. And then in this great company
of people, not only the Lord Jesus Christ, not only the Roman
soldiers, not only the Jewish priest, not only the women of
Jerusalem, but there was two malfactors. There were two thieves. They were in this great company
of people and they too were going out to be executed, to be crucified. Think about that one man. He
was going out to be put to death. He didn't know. He didn't know
what God had in store for him, did he? He didn't know that that day
God was going to save him. That God of all grace was going
to be gracious to him and cause him to Ask the master, when thou
comest into thy kingdom, remember me. Today, thou shalt be with
me in paradise. So those two were in the crowd.
And then there was, of course, that man that I've already mentioned
by the name of Simon. So we've got the place, Calvary. We've got the crowd. Third, the
process. I want us to think just a moment
about the process of crucifixion. When they came to this place
of Calvary, they would, of course, strip the Lord Jesus Christ of
his robe. And when they did that, they
revealed his body that was bleeding from the scourging that his judge,
Pilate, had ordered him to experience. You know, in Mark's gospel, he
says, Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas
unto them and delivered Jesus when he had scourged him to be
crucified. Scourging, of course, was when
they took the, what is called a cat of nine tails, I believe
it was a whip, and in the leather whip there was bones, and so
when they They came down with a whip upon the body of the Lord
Jesus Christ. It would cut the flesh. It would
break the flesh. Then they threw him down. The
cross, they already had laid there, and they threw him down
on the tree, and with spikes, we call them nails, but actually
they were spikes because they had to be large enough to support
his weight. That would support the weight
of his body. And then they took the cross
and put it in the hole where they had already prepared for
it. And there he is. If you could
just imagine, if we could just think tonight, as we partake
of this table, the bread and the wine, there he is, the son
of God, naked and bleeding. and dying for his people, for
his people. The death of the cross was distinguished
by two things. First of all, it was the most
shameful death known to man. The most shameful death known
to man. It was so shameful that only
slaves According to Roman law, only slaves and only slaves who
were criminals could be crucified. I read the report of Cicero,
a Roman senator, and he was speaking about what a disgrace it was
that a Roman citizen had been, not speaking about Christ, but
speaking about someone else who had been crucified. What a shame
it was that no Roman citizen should ever be crucified. Such a shameful death it was. Why? A Roman citizen being crucified
was like a slave, a criminal being crucified. But that's the
death the Lord Jesus Christ experienced, the death of a slave, the death
of a criminal. That's the first thing that distinguishes
crucifixion. The second thing is it was extremely
painful. It was doubtless a death painful
in the extreme. Think about how extreme the pain
was, as one writer said, so much so that the strongest term, the
strongest term that we have in the English language of expressing
intense agony, that term came from Crucifixion, the term is
excruciating, excruciating pain. Those two things is what distinguished
crucifixion. It was a shameful death and it
was the most painful death. I assume that men came up with
it. It wasn't a practice of the Jewish
people under the law. Criminals were executed by stoning. But this is something that the
Romans used to execute a criminal, and that was by crucifixion.
And I assume that people got together, fallen men, they got
together and they thought, how? How can we put someone to death
and make it the most painful death possible? And they came
up with death by crucifixion. You know, I'm sure you've heard
this, but in Huntsville, when a prisoner, when a criminal is
executed, a man who's been tried and found guilty of an awful
crime and been sentenced to death, they put him on that gurney.
And you know, before they put the needle in his veins, that's
going to administer the the medicine that's going to put him to sleep,
put him to death. They'll always, just like when
you go to the doctor before they take a blood sample or give you
a shot, what do they do? They take a little piece of gauze
and alcohol and clean that off. Can you imagine that? There's
a criminal being executed and they're so careful that they
even do that. Well, this death, the death of
Christ, was certainly the worst of deaths. The fourth thing I want us to
think about is the outward and the inward sufferings of Christ. The outward sufferings would
include all the mocking, all the mocking and scorn that was
cast upon him. As the priests would cry, you
who destroyed the temple and built it in three days, save
yourself. If you be the son of God, come
down from the cross. He saved others, himself he cannot
save. If he is the king of Israel,
let him come down from the cross and we will believe in him. He
trusted in God. Let him deliver him now, if he
will have him. For he said, I am the son of
God. And you know, the scripture tells
us that the two thieves at the beginning of this, they too both
cast their teeth, cast the same in his teeth, rather, these two
criminals. What a picture of God's grace,
isn't it? That one that was saved? When
the crucifixion began that day, those two thieves, they were
lost and they were entering in to the ridicule and the taunting
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet, what a God of mercy.
You know, as I was reading some comments on this this past week,
I thought to myself, I know all of God's attributes are brought
forth at the cross. His justice, His righteousness,
His love, His mercy. But you know what came into my
mind? His power. His power. Every parent here, if you saw one of your children
being so mistreated, not nearly like Christ, you couldn't restrain
yourself. I couldn't restrain, even if
you knew you're going to be eliminated if you try to help your child.
But you would do it anyway. You couldn't help yourself. And God, the Father, witnessing
this, and yet His power. that he refrained why you and
I, we would have struck lightning down, wouldn't we? I remember
a few times when our children were small and I saw someone
do something to one of them that upset me. I mean, you're going
to do something, every parent. The power of God and restraining
from just casting the whole world into hell. A world that would
do something like this to his darling son. The outward sufferings, we can
understand a little of that. But when we come to his inward
sufferings, we can't really enter into this. It's often been said
the soul of his sufferings were his soul's sufferings. We don't have the ability, man
doesn't have the ability to describe what was going on in his soul
as he was being so mistreated. We can describe, as one writer
said, we can describe the cup of vinegar that he was offered,
but the cup of wrath that he drank dry, we can't describe
that. We may be able to describe the
pain of the nails piercing his flesh, but not the pain of the
justice of God piercing his soul. We can explain those things. The Lord Jesus Christ is a perfect
Savior. You cannot, as a child of God,
you cannot experience anything, no matter how great the suffering
may be, that Jesus cannot enter in to that suffering. He was at all points tempted
like as we are, yet without sin. Is it pain? Is it being forsaken? He was forsaken. Well, the fifth point is the
results. We've looked at the other four
things, the results. Calvary, we know, was a place
of unspeakable suffering on the part of Jesus Christ. But we
dare not miss the fact that it was a place of the greatest victory,
the greatest victory of all, because it was here that he by
himself spoiled principalities and powers and made a show of
them openly and triumphing over them in it. At Calvary, years
I spent in vanity and pride, caring not my Lord was crucified,
knowing not it was for me he died on Calvary. Mercy there was great, and grace
was free. There my burdened soul found
liberty. Have you been to Calvary? Have you been to Calvary? Have
you? You know, John Bunyan's pilgrim, that's where he lost
his burden, wasn't he, when he came to the cross? And the burden of sin rolled
off his back. and rolled into that sepulchre.
And the truth is the Lord Jesus Christ was weighted with the
sins of you and me and all of his people. And he bore those sins in his
own body on the tree. And he carried those sins away.
And they will never be brought up against you or me. When we
close our eyes here, and open them in eternity in the presence
of God. There's one thing that will never
be mentioned against us, and that is our sins. Aren't you
thankful? I know you are. I know you are.
Well, we're going to observe the Lord's table now, and I pray
the Lord would help each one of us to rightly discern the
Lord's body.