[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Expound, our verse
by verse study of God's word. Our goal is to expand your
knowledge of the truth of God by explaining the Word of God
in a way that is interactive, enjoyable, and congregational. [MUSIC PLAYING] And let's prepare our hearts. Let's just pray,
come before the Lord and purposely,
intentionally, still, calm those hearts, our
thoughts before God, making a determination
that we're not going to let anything distract
us, disturb us, steal away those thoughts of Him and the
concentration on His Word. Let's just pray. Father, we do bring
our bodies before You as living sacrifices. That's what Paul
told us we should do. And so we bring them to You. We bring our thoughts,
our minds to You. And we pray that we
wouldn't be disturbed, that there wouldn't be
anything competing with them, that we wouldn't be giving
attention to communications from anyone else,
or the need for us to communicate during this time. We're communicating with You. And You're
communicating with us. This is Your text message
from heaven to earth. This is Your inerrant
Word given through someone who lived close to
Jesus, the Apostle John. And as we open up our Bibles,
we open up our hearts. We pray, Father, that You
would form impressions upon us, You would help us
to understand, You would help us to grow
in our knowledge of You because that is important. We remember the prophet
said, "my people perish for lack of knowledge." But, Lord, not just
knowledge about You, but truly knowledge of
You on a personal level, that we would come to know
You as the Lord Jesus prayed, we would come to know You, the
only true God and Lord Jesus Christ whom You have sent. Lord, I thank You
for this flock. Many, we've grown up together,
raised children together, walked through storms together. And Lord, as You
have taken us back, now take us forward
into the future, Lord, with Your strength,
with Your power. It's the same Holy Spirit
that did an incredible work in our midst and in our lives. You still want to do an
incredible work yet to come. So we just say, do it. Do it, Lord. We want to see it. We want to be a part of it. We don't want to manufacture
it because we're not manufacturers. We're just distributors. Help us to be faithful. In Jesus' name, Amen. As we think back-- I was thinking back
today to my mother. Now we all have, or I
should say most of us, have fond memories
of our mothers. I can't say all because
inevitably somebody's going to come back and unload
about all the bad memories and things their mom did wrong. But I have really good
memories of my mom. And the only negative
ones I have of my mother is when I did something
deserving of her wrath. She was a little
lady, as the Scots would say, a wee little lady. She was barely five foot tall. But she could pack a punch. And I remember that punch. And I learned early not
to cross lines with her. But of all the memories I have
of her life that are fond, there is a memory that sticks
with me that is sweet to me. It was the very end of
her life, her last breath. I had the privilege of sitting
with my mom on her deathbed. And I say it's a
privilege-- it really was. It was a holy moment because
the thought came to me, here is this woman who
was there, obviously, when I took my first breath. When I came into the world,
she brought me into the world. And then I thought, what a
privilege to see the tables turned. As I hold her hand, she's
taking her final breath. And I read a Psalm to her. And I said, "mom, you know
God really loves you?" And she couldn't speak,
but she nodded her head. What a privilege that was,
though, for me to be there with her in that moment. The Apostle John
wants us to know what a privilege it was
for him to stand there at the foot of the cross
while his Savior, his Lord, and his personal friend,
Jesus Christ, was dying. He takes us there. He takes us to the
foot of the cross. He describes the event
we call the crucifixion. Whenever Jesus fed people,
thousands followed Him. When Jesus taught people,
preached the gospel to people, hundreds followed Him. There were 12, only 12, really
close associates with Jesus. And one turned out to be a
rat, a deceiver, a traitor. Three of those 12
were His most intimate of friends, Peter, James,
and John, an inner circle. They show up at very
specific times when Jesus took just them alone. But when it comes to
the death of Jesus, only one, only one apostle,
is at the foot of the cross. And it's this one, John. There are more women friends
of Jesus at the cross than men friends. There are five of
His followers there. Four of them are women. One's a guy. Guys are outnumbered. Can I say they've always been. It shouldn't be that way. When it comes to the
things of Christ, I would love to see more men
take an interest than women. But typically, traditionally--
ask pastors, do a little work in Church history
and you will discover when it comes to starting
something, volunteering for stuff, you will
find a quicker response among women than men. You could chalk it up to a
number of reasons I suppose, busyness. But it doesn't need
to be that way. We're going to look at
the foot of the cross. And we're going to notice
the people who were there. But it is John and
none of the others. The others were scared. They had fled, including
Peter who denied the Lord and walked away
feeling shameful. But John the Apostle is there. And he will make
note of his presence. Now as we're getting
into chapter 19, I want you to know something. Early church leaders
saw a parallel between the crucifixion
of Jesus Christ, the sacrifice of
Jesus on Calvary, and the sacrifice of
Isaac on the same mountain thousands of years earlier. They made note of it. They remarked about it. They saw the parallel. They could see that there
was a similarity, that wood was placed on Isaac's
shoulder and he marched toward a mountain
called Mount Moriah. And they took note of the
fact that God said to Abram, "take now your son, your only
son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to a place where
you will sacrifice him." I have noted on
several occasions the very first time
the word love is used in all of the Bible, it
is in that passage, Genesis 22. And it's the love of a father
for his son, his only son, as God calls it, even
though Abraham had two boys. God regarded one, unique,
only begotten son. "Take your son, your only
son, Isaac, whom you love." The first time
love is used, it's the love of a father
for his son as he goes to sacrifice him on a mountain. And the early church
leaders noted that parallel. And well they should
because you know the story. Abraham was stopped
from plunging the knife. And the revelation
came to Abraham, the Lord will provide
Himself a sacrifice. In the mountain of the
Lord, it shall be seen. That was a prophecy. The Lord will provide
Himself a sacrifice. That's what we're seeing
happen in this chapter. The Lord is providing
Himself a sacrifice. He's providing a
sacrifice for Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ. But because we know Jesus
to be God in human flesh, God is providing Himself
as the sacrifice. It is God incarnate. He is the sacrifice. God will provide
Himself the sacrifice. And then that phrase, "in
the mountain of the Lord it shall be seen." It's interesting. And those leaders noted
it, and so should we. That on the very mountain where
Isaac was almost sacrificed, Jesus Christ, years later,
was sacrificed, same mountain, same hill. What mountain was that? Mount Moriah, also called
Mount Zion later on. Mount Mariah was settled
in the time of David in just a little
outcropping of rock known as the City of David. It was a Jebusite city. If I could stand at the
City of David with you now, I would point to the
north because we would see the hill rising to the north. And to the north of us,
as the mountain rises, you would see a flat area
with a mosque on it, today. But 2,000 years ago, you would
have seen a temple on it. That's the Temple Mount-- 35 acres and that stone
pavement still exists-- the Temple Mount. And so you can see the
mountain rising to the north. And if I were to take
you on top of that Temple Mount and pointed
north, you would see the mountain still rising. So down at the City of David
and down at the Temple Mount, we're not yet on the
peak of the mountain yet. The peak of the mountain is
just to the north at a place the Hebrews called Golgotha,
the place of the skull. It's the very pinnacle
of Mount Moriah. So in Abraham's time,
there was no temple. There was no City of David. He would have gone
to Mount Moriah. And he would have looked at
the very top of the mountain and would have moved his son
toward the top of the mountain to kill him as a
sacrifice to the Lord. The Lord stopped him but said,
"in the mountain of the Lord it shall be seen." The lambs were sacrificed
down in the temple area, but the Lamb was slain
on the top, on Golgotha. All of that comes
into play here. All of that comes
into play here. And the fact that the early
church made that parallel, they took comfort in the fact
that this was all planned. The cross was never an oops
or uh-oh moment for God. It was not like, "oh no. What do I do now?" God never says oops. Aren't you glad that in running
the universe God never on any day goes, "uh-oh. Bummer. What do I do now?" Everything is planned. And Jesus knew
this was His hour. He has been through the
trials of the Sanhedrin, including Caiaphas and Annas. And now He stands
before Pontius Pilate who has already delivered
the verdict, not guilty, not guilty. But the crowd wants blood. They're not satisfied. They've made false
charges against Him. But they can't
substantiate them. Pilate, being a governor
and a judge, needs evidence. He needs a crime committed. And so the trial continues
in verse 1 of chapter 19. "And so then Pilate took
Jesus and scourged Him." To scourge means to whip. The Romans had a very precise
way of meting out punishment on criminals. And one of the ways that
they punished a criminal were three different
forms of a scourging. Now a scourge was a whip
made out of leather strings, or leather thongs,
a wooden handle, and attached to the leather
were little jagged metal balls and pieces of sheep bone. On either side of the victim,
who would be tied to a pillar so that his back was
tight, his skin was tight, the two men who
were called lictors would take a weapon each-- each one would have a
whip-- and they would strike diagonal blows on the victim. That's the scourging. But as I mentioned, there were
three levels of scourging. The most mild form of
scourging was called, in Latin, the fustigatio. It was a way of saying,
we know what you've done. We're going to let
you off the hook. But we're going to rough you
up a little bit before we let you go. That was the fustigatio. That's level one. Level two was called
the flagellatio. Now this was for
more serious crimes. And it was a brutal punishment. But there was a third. And this is the one
Jesus underwent. Because the third, called
the verberatio in Latin, was reserved for capital crimes. It was always associated
with capital punishment. It was always associated
with a crucifixion. A prisoner would go
through this beating of 40 strikes of the whip,
minus one, 39 lashes. One is taken away
as an act of mercy. And the purpose
of it was twofold, to weaken the victim so that his
death wouldn't last very long. Death by crucifixion could
sometimes last four days. So to weaken, to almost
kill-- and in some cases it did kill the victim. But to weaken the
victim sufficiently, enormous amount of
bloodletting took place. And number two, to
get a confession. So those who had
the whip would whip and first they
would say "confess" in the Latin language, then
they would bring down the whip. And then the other
would say "confess" and bring down the whip. Now the idea is, eventually,
if you've done a crime, you spit it out. You confess your crime. And at that point, they'll
ease up on the beating before they kill you. But it was to
elicit a confession. Jesus was not guilty. There was no confession. So He took every one
of those stripes. Now the stripes, the
beating, was quite brutal. In Church history, there is
a man by the name of Eusebius who wrote a book called
Ecclesiastical History. And he says that
the Roman scourging would expose the deep veins
and arteries in the back. And sometimes the viscera-- the organs and the trails--
were exposed to sight. So it would leave the back
in ribbons of bleeding flesh and then pull apart the muscle
down to the organs, themselves, sometimes. That's why I say many
did not survive it. So when you read
that He was scourged, this is what Jesus went
through, this brutal beating. "And the soldiers
twisted a crown of thorns and put it on His head. And they put on
Him a purple robe." This is a military robe. There were many in
the Antonia Fortress. One of the soldiers took
another soldier's or perhaps His own robe and put it on Him. This will add to the
suffering of Jesus later on. Because as the
robe is put on Him and the blood soaks through the
robe and begins to coagulate, by the time He gets to
the place of crucifixion, and they rip the
robe off of Him, it'll open up those
wounds afresh. Now a crown of thorns
is put upon His head. Now thorns, I think,
are significant. They're emblematic of the curse. After Adam sinned in the
garden, God pronounced a curse. He said, "cursed is the
ground for your sake. Thorns and thistles
they will bring forth." So this emblem of the
curse put on the one who came to
eradicate the curse-- the one who would one day take
away the curse of the earth all together as we all live in
a millennial kingdom, a paradise on earth-- is now taking the
punishment for the curse brought upon mankind by sin. And verse 3, "then they said,
'hail, King of the Jews.' And they struck Him
with their hands." There was a game,
a very cruel Roman game played by the soldiers. Keep in mind, Roman
soldiers were bored. They gathered in Jerusalem
at the Antonia Fortress just to put down any
riot that might start. So they just sort of sat around
all day waiting for action. And if no action came their
way, they would create a little. So whenever they
got a prisoner, they would take their
aggressions out, their boredom out,
on a prisoner. And one of the games
was called hot hand. They would blindfold a prisoner. And they would
take turns punching in the face that
prisoner, and then telling the prisoner to guess
which soldier it was that struck the blow. Now why this was
unusually cruel is because if I were to throw a
jab at your face-- and trust me I won't do that, unless
you really bother me. No, I'm just kidding. I won't do it. But if I were to
do that, you would have the advantage of sight. You'd be able to duck,
move your body with it and lessen the impact. But when you're
blindfolded and you get struck, you get cold-cocked
without being able to see it, you will take the full
brunt of that impact. So they struck Him
with their hand. They played that cruel game. "Pilate, then, went out
again and said to them, 'behold, I am bringing
Him out to you, that you may know that I
find no fault in Him'." The second time we read--
and there are many times, if you put Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John together-- there were several times that Pilate
was trying to get Jesus off. He knew He was innocent. He has come to a
verdict, not guilty. After the scourging it's
like, "OK, let this man go. I find no fault in Him. I'm the judge here. You brought Him to me. He's clear." "Then Jesus came out
wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them,
'behold, the man'." It's a very famous phrase. You've read it. You've heard it-- in Latin,
ecce homo, behold, the man. There's an arch in Jerusalem
called the Ecce Homo Arch that is believed to be the spot, the
area of the Antonia Fortress, where Pilate brought Jesus
out and said these words. When Pilate said, "behold, the
man," this is a cry of pity, like, "look at this
poor creature." I believe Pilate, trying to
appeal to their compassion, said, "look at Him." Isaiah predicted this. Isaiah said that
He will be beaten with stripes, for by His
stripes we are healed. His visage, His
face, Isaiah said, is marred more than any
other man, and His form more than the sons of man. "Behold, the man." "Therefore when the chief
priests and the officers saw Him, they cried out
saying, 'crucify Him. Crucify Him.'
Pilate said to them, 'you take Him and crucify
Him, for I find no fault'." Third time Pilate has declared
by his own lips not guilty. "The Jews answered
him, 'we have a law. And according to our law, He
ought to die because He made Himself the Son of God'." Now they're showing their hand. Now they're revealing
their true motive. They made up charges. And they tried to
get Jesus killed based on those false charges. They said, "he's
an insurrectionist. He commands us to avoid
paying taxes to Caesar." Those charges didn't
stick because they were false charges. There was no evidence of that. Even bringing in false
witnesses didn't stick. So now, they're revealing
their true motive. We want to kill Him
because He is a blasphemer. He claims that He is deity. He claims to be God. Leviticus 24 is the reference. When they say we have a law and
our law commands that He die, Leviticus 24 says, "if
there's somebody among you that blasphemes, you are to
take him, throw him down, and stone him to death." That was their law. The problem was the Jews had
no right to execute anyone. The Romans took that right away. Capital punishment was removed. Only the Romans could
lay down the law. So they bring Him to Pilate. They want a guilty verdict. But there's nothing in Roman
law that would implicate Him. So they say, "'we have a law. And according to our law,
He must die because He made Himself the Son of God'." Now I want you to think of
that phrase, Son of God, for a moment. I want you to think
of it because you may meet someone
who will say to you, Jesus never claimed to be God. He only claimed to
be the Son of God. The term the Son
of God is a term of deity, an expression
of being God. I have a son. He has my DNA. We're two separate beings. But as my son, he is
a man like I am a man. The son of a man is a man. The son of a dog is a dog. The son of a shark is a shark,
same DNA, two separate entities but same substance. The Son of God is God. It's a term of deity
used in the Old Testament and applied to Jesus Christ. And they wouldn't kill somebody
who says, I'm a child of God. Like everybody else,
I'm a child of God. You don't get killed for that. That's not a capital crime. The reason the Jews
wanted to kill Him is because He claimed
to be equal with God. We read that in
the Gospel of John. We have noted on
several occasions. Jesus said to them
on one occasion-- they tried to pick up
stones to kill Him. "I've done many good works. Which good work do you
want to stone me for?" And they said, "not
for a good work, but because you, being a
man, are making yourself out to be God." And they said,
"that's blasphemy. You claim to be deity." So now they're just cutting down
to the core and they're saying, "look, according to
our law, He needs to die because of blasphemy. He makes Himself
the Son of God." Now notice what happens next. "Therefore, when Pilate
heard that saying, he was more afraid." Pilate immediately
thinks, "uh oh. He's what?" They keep using that
term, Son of God. Pilate, being a Roman,
had a Roman worldview. The Roman worldview
is very superstitious. They believe that a person may
be a representative of a divine being. And if you mess
with that person, they might bring damage on you. They might kill you. They might hurt you. Well Pilate just
had Jesus beaten up. "Uh, you called Him what? And I just did what?" Not only that, but
Pilate's wife-- remember had that dream-- said, "have nothing to do
with that righteous man." "Uh oh, he's the what? Son of God?" "Therefore, when Pilate
heard that saying, he was more afraid." We don't have time to look
back, but in Matthew's gospel, the Gospel of Matthew, it
says, "Pilate marveled at Him." Marveled at Him. The word is thaumazo
in the Greek. It means to be shaken
and astonished-- shaken and astonished. He marveled at Him. Now watch this. "And went again into the
Praetorian and said to Jesus, 'where are you from?'" Now
remember, in our last chapter, Jesus said, "my kingdom
is not of this world." And then He said, "I came into
this world for that purpose as a King." So He has already
said and intimated that He comes from
another realm and that He is a King but not of this world,
but from a heavenly realm. So now Pilate just
comes and point blank says, "where are you from?" "But Jesus gave him no answer. Then Pilate said to Him--" Oh
you could just see him raising his eyebrow, "'are you
not speaking to me? Do you not know that I have
power to crucify you and power to release you?'" Now at this saying, Jesus
is going to pipe up. Now Jesus is going to speak. Pilate has appealed
to authority. "Don't you know who I am? I have power. I have authority. I can give you the
death sentence. Don't you realize who I am?" "Jesus answered, 'you could
have no power at all against me unless it had been
given you from above. Therefore, the one who delivered
me to you has greater sin'." Now something struck me as
I was reading this verse. Jesus said, "you would
have no power at all unless it was given
to you from above." Do you believe that
leaders, good or bad, are put in their
position by God? I hope you do. If you believe
Romans chapter 13, you may not like the judge
who hands you the sentence, or the police officer who
writes you the ticket, or the president who
is in the White House, but nobody has the
right, as a Christian, to ever say, well,
that's not my judge, or that's not my governor,
or that's not my president. Because that
person, whether it's the current president,
or the former president, or the president
last generation, is put in that position by God. And so Paul's point in
Romans 13 is give honor to whom honor is due. Pray for them. Honor them. Because if you don't, you're
dishonoring God in heaven. It leaves the Christian
with absolutely no option except to honor
those in authority, whether you agree
or not, whether you voted for that person or not. Here is Pontius Pilate, a
cruel dictator as a governor. And Jesus acknowledges him. You have power. But you've been put in power
for this season by God. "From then on, Pilate
sought to release Him." See, Pilate knows He's innocent. "But the Jews cried out saying,
'if you let this man go, you are not Caesar's friend. Whoever makes himself a King
speaks against Caesar'." Now these guys hate Caesar. They hate him with a passion. They hate the Roman government. But all of a sudden they
get suddenly patriotic. Suddenly, they're all
worried about Caesar and being buddies with Caesar. "When Pilate, therefore,
heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat
down in the judgment seat in a place that is
called the Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha." That saying really bothered him. And you need to know why. Shall we say Pilate was on thin
ice with the Emperor in Rome. That was Tiberius Caesar. Let me tell you why. Pontius Pilate had
been the governor of Judea for five years,
so far, at this point. He had made mistakes. He had made three
very bad mistakes. But this isn't baseball,
so he's not out yet. But he's on thin ice. Strike number one came when
Pontius Pilate was first placed in that position. And he came into Jerusalem
with the banners, the ensigns of the Roman army. Those were those
tall vertical poles. And on top of the poles,
on top of the banner, on top of the standard,
was a little bust of Caesar because Caesar was
worshiped as deity. So on top of those little poles
is this little bust of Caesar. On all the soldiers
poles had them. Well you know in Judaism,
it's against Jewish law to have an image of
any kind, of any kind-- anything in heaven or on earth. Second commandment says,
"I want no images." They took it very seriously. Because there's images in
Jerusalem, they rebelled. How'd they rebel? They went to Caesarea
by the sea, which is where Pilate's
headquarters were, and said, "we demand you take those little
busts away, those poles out-- no images in Jerusalem." Pilate responded by herding
them all in the amphitheater in Caesarea and said,
"now my soldiers are going to come by and cut
your heads off unless you stop your protest." What happened next,
Pilate was not ready for. The Jewish leaders
fell to the ground, pulled their shirts down,
and bared their neck to the Roman sword and
said, "please, cut here, along this line. We would rather die
than break our law." Well at that point,
Pilate knew he lost. He had never seen people
willing to die for such a law. So he recanted. He thought this would be a mess. He pulled back. And he pulled those ensigns out. That got all the way to Rome. Second mistake,
Pontius Pilate wanted to build an aqueduct to bring
more water into Jerusalem because the sacrifices in the
temple required a lot of water to wash away the blood. And they just needed
more water in that city. It was a growing city. Well he didn't have the
money in the coffers of Rome to pay for it. So by force, he
invaded the temple and took from the
temple treasury money to pay for the aqueduct. People protested. Pilate sent soldiers in
among the protesting crowd with swords and clubs
hidden in their robe. And at the certain signal,
he told his soldiers-- dressed like regular people-- to kill them. So several were murdered
and the crowd was dispersed. That God back to Rome. Third mistake, he
brought tribute shields with an embossed image
of Tiberius Caesar to the Antonia Fortress. These were just
decorative shields. And they were only placed
inside the Antonia Fortress where soldiers could see
them, not the Jewish public. But they found out about it. And they protested. And they complained and
appealed to Caesar in Rome. Caesar, himself, said, "you
take those shields out." So he's on thin ice. So you can understand,
now, the threat when they say, "whoever does
this is not Caesar's friend." Uh oh. He knew what that meant. It was a veiled threat,
or not so veiled. We're going to tell on you. We're going to tell mom
on you, or daddy on you. Daddy Caesar's going
to find out about this. "When Pilate, therefore,
heard that saying, he brought Jesus out
and sat in the judgment in that place that is
called the Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. Now it was the preparation
day of the Passover. And it was about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews,
'behold, your King.' But they cried out,
'away with Him. Away with Him. Crucify Him.' Pilate said,
'shall I crucify your King?' The chief priest answered--"
Now this is going to seal it. The chief priest, who
hated Caesar, answered, "'we have no King but Caesar'." Again, suddenly
they wax patriotic. Suddenly they love Caesar. And in rejecting
Jesus as their King and saying, "we want
Caesar as our King" you know what will happen? In just a few years from
now, at Caesar's orders-- their King, Caesar, will
order Titus in 70 AD to destroy the temple,
destroy the city, and slaughter 1.5 million Jews. You really want
Caesar as your King because that's what your
King is going to do to you. I do want to make note of
something in this verse that you might just pass over. But I think it will help
you in understanding the chronology of the New
Testament and especially this crucifixion. It says in verse 14,
"it was the preparation day of the Passover--"
it was Friday-- "and it was about
the sixth hour." Now John is using Roman time,
the reckoning of time by Rome. And according to
Rome, the Romans began their day at midnight. So it was 6 AM. The sixth hour was
6:00 in the morning. The preparation day was
the day that the lambs would be, in the afternoon, for
a two hour period, slaughtered in the temple. And it was that day
that the Jews would eat the Passover in Jerusalem. They're going to
go home and take that lamb that was slaughtered. And they're going to have
a meal, the Passover meal. That's the preparation day. And we read in the
previous chapter that when they brought
Jesus before Pontius Pilate, they didn't want to go into
Pontius Pilate's headquarters lest they become-- remember the word--
defiled, so that they could eat the Passover. They hadn't eaten it yet. That's going to come
later on that night. The day of preparation, the
lambs are going to be slain. They're going to take one home. They're going to eat
the Passover that night. So now we have a
bit of a problem because Jesus and his
disciples the night before have eaten the Passover. So people will read
this and they'll go, see there's a problem in
the Bible, another one. There's this discrepancy. They're all over the place. And here's one. And that's because they
don't know their history. And so they just
want to chalk it up to being a discrepancy,
or a contradiction. It's not a contradiction at all. And let me explain to you why. In Galilee, the Galileans,
the Northerners, began their day-- they looked
at the day from sunrise to sunrise. In Jerusalem, down
south in Judea, the more Orthodox Jews reckoned
time from sunset to sunset, which means Galileans-- this
is according to Josephus, the Jewish historian, and the
Jewish writings in the Mishnah, and a couple of other sources-- the Galileans, because of
their reckoning of the day, would eat the Passover on
one night and the next night the Judeans would eat it. Clears it up, doesn't it? Makes sense. That also helped in Jerusalem
with the volume problem. Remember, Josephus said 30 years
after this Passover 256,000 lambs were slaughtered
in the temple. That's hard to do in two hours. That's the period, that's
the window they have to kill the lambs, two hours. So if you can divide that
up for all the northerners that come to Jerusalem
to celebrate it by doing it in one shift on-- in this case-- Thursday and the next
shift on Friday, you've mitigated the crowd problem. And you've solved the time
problems for the Galileans and the Judeans. So Jesus, being Galilean, with
his disciples had already, in the upper room,
celebrated Passover. The Jews, now, down south
must still eat the Passover. It's their preparation day. So that means while
Jesus is on the cross, the lambs in the temple are
being slaughtered at Passover. Very significant,
Jesus died on Passover. While the lambs
were being slain, the Lamb was being
slain on Golgotha. So I thought that was important
to get the chronology. So they shout out, "'we
have no King but Caesar.' Then--" because of
that statement-- "then he delivered Him
to them to be crucified." Luke offers us a sentence that
is not in the Gospel of John. It tells us what is going on in
the mind and heart of Pilate. It says, "the voices of the
people and the chief priests prevailed. And he said, 'crucify Him'." Moved by the crowd-- crowd pressure has made
people do more stupid things. Peer pressure--
everybody's doing it, man. You ought to do it. So the voices of
the people prevail. He knew Jesus was innocent. He kept saying, "he's not
guilty, not guilty, not guilty." Finally, he gives
up because they say we have no King but Caesar. And you're really going
to tick Caesar off. And we're going to tell him. And so, "he delivered Him
to them to be crucified. And so they took Jesus
and led Him away. And He, bearing
His cross, went out to a place called the
place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha." Golgotha is Hebrew. The Greek name would
have been kranion. If you've taken biology
or medical studies you know that the bones of the
skull are called the cranium. And that's from the Greek,
kranion, the skull bones. That's the skull. So Golgotha is Hebrew. Kranion is the Greek. The Latin equivalent
of those two words is calvarium, calvarium,
Place of the Skull. So Calvery of
Albuquerque, Calvery is named after the
place where Jesus died, the Place of the Skull. That is because if you were to
stand on the Damascus Gate-- let's just, for a minute, say
that I could transport you all right now to the ramparts
on top of the Damascus Gate. I would point to the north. Remember, from the City of
David, I pointed to the north, to the Temple Mount,
and then to the peak? So now I'm standing with
you toward the north at the Damascus Gate. And I'm showing you the
rock that continues. And you would see it if
you looked at it today. It looks like a skull in that
hill, very plainly visible. Now there's nothing
in the Bible that says Jesus was
crucified on a hill, even though the song says
"on a hill far away." And we have all these songs
and cards and paintings of Jesus dying on a hill. Most probably, Jesus died
in front of that skull hill on ground level,
at street level, off the main road
toward Damascus because the Romans were
into showing the population their gruesome punishments. They wanted people
to see this is what we do if you mess with us. And they crucified
people on main roads. There are many
stories of thousands of crosses lining the
roadways in the Middle East. So the travelers would
see crucified person after crucified person. So that people would
realize, you know, I don't think I'm going to ever
say anything bad about Rome. So Jesus was probably
placed in an open flat area on the other side of the gate
of Damascus, main entrance to the city. And He was crucified there. If you go there today, you have
to get on the Damascus Gate to look down to see the skull. In the ancient times, you
could just, at the road level, look right up and see it. Today it's hidden. And it's hidden
by a bus station. An Arab bus station is there. On top of the hill is an Arab
cemetery, a Muslim cemetery. You go there and it's
busy and smelly and noisy. But if you get
back behind there, you can see it plainly,
the Place of the Skull. And then next to this is a
tomb, called the Garden Tomb. And that's where we take
our groups every time we go. We take them to the
Place of the Skull. Then we have
communion right there at the tomb, called
the Garden Tomb. And so Jesus was taken to
this place of execution "where they crucified Him
and two others with Him, one on either side, and
Jesus in the center." Now that's significant. The person in the center was
always regarded as the worst. If there were five
people or seven people, the one in the middle, or
the ones in the middle, were considered the worst. If you've got three
people on crosses, the one in the middle-- to put him in the middle
is the place of disgrace. But Isaiah the Prophet
said, "He was numbered with the transgressors." They really did
deserve crucifixion. On the cross one of
them will say, "we are getting what we deserve. But this man is not
deserving of death." So Jesus is placed in
that center position, the position of disgrace. And now Pilate wrote a title. And he put it
there on the cross. And the writing was "Jesus of
Nazareth the King of the Jews." The Romans did not
invent crucifixion. They did, however, perfect it. It was invented years
before them by the Persians. It was a form of
death intended to lift a person off the ground. And we are told that the
reason Pilate got involved is because if the
Jews had their way, they would kill
by stoning, right? The Jewish form,
the Levitical form, is to throw a person down on
the ground and stone the person on the ground. So they went to
Pilate that it might be fulfilled what kind of death
He would die, we are told. He's not going to be killed
by being thrown to the ground, but being lifted up off
the ground on a cross. The Persians believed
the earth was sacred. They were into Mother Earth. They worship their environment. They worship the earth. They worship the ground. And so they thought to
kill a person on the ground is to defile him. If a person is worthy
of capital punishment, we will lift that
person off the ground. And they will die on a post,
a pole, a tree, a stake, a vertical stake, sometimes
just a single pole. At other times there was a
crossbeam called a patibulum. And that is the kind
of cross Jesus died on. A patibulum was the
crossbeam, as I mentioned. It weighed between
75 and 100 pounds. When we're told
that Jesus carried the cross toward Golgotha,
He only carried that part. It's heavy enough. 75 to 100 pounds is a
load on your shoulders, especially after you have
sweat great drops of blood, after a crown of thorns
is placed on your head, after you have been beaten
to a pulp by Roman lictors. Now to have that
patibulum put on-- is what Jesus carried. The saying was,
"Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Notice what happens. "Many of the Jews
read this title, for the place where Jesus was
crucified was near the city. And it was written in
Hebrew, in Greek, and Latin." Why three languages? Because Jerusalem-- the
Middle East for that matter-- but Jerusalem, especially,
was very multilingual, multicultural. You had Jews, Hebrews. And the language of
religion is Hebrew. So it is written in Hebrew,
the language of religion. Greek was the
language of the world. It was the lingua
franca of the world ever since Alexander
the Great took over. Greek culture spread everywhere. Greek was the language
of education and culture. So you have the
language of religion. You have the language of
culture and education. Latin was the Roman language. It was the language
of law and order-- three different languages. The idea is here is Jesus. He's for everyone. He's for all people,
all ethnic backgrounds, all linguistic backgrounds,
people of all the world. He's the Savior of all. In three languages
that was placed. "Therefore, the chief priests
of the Jews said to Pilate, 'do not write "the King of
the Jews," but, "he said, I am the King of the Jews"'." Now these guys have gall. They're pretty bold. Now they're being
Pilate's editor. "Hey let me edit that
sentence for you. Write, 'he said that'." And Pilate basically
said, it's too late. "He answered, 'what I have
written, I have written'." Most people who were crucified
stayed on a cross for days. I say the Romans perfected it-- back in 1968 they discovered
the only archaeological evidence that we have of crucifixion
from the time of Jesus. But it shows the skeletal
remains of a man on a cross. And they show him
with his legs bent and off to one side with
a little piece of wood so that he could sit on it and
be placed in a position where he would have to
pull up on the spikes in order to catch a breath. But it changes a little bit
of the artist's depiction of showing Jesus standing there
on a cross, when, actually, the way it was done-- and that's
the archaeological evidence, the only piece that we have, the
only description that we have-- is it was in a seated position. It was intentionally
done to delay death so maximum torture could
take place for days. Until the person died,
usually of asphyxiation. On that piece of evidence
that I told you about, that archaeological
dig, they show that the spikes, the nails,
were large tapered spikes that went through the wrist. All of this area was
called-- in ancient times, this is the hand. So a lot of people go, Bible
says it went through his hands, so it has to be here. If it was here, it
would tear very easily. There's not enough to hold. But here, you have a
little bit of a hook. You have two bones called
the radius and the ulna. And tightly wrapped with
tendons, they form a hook. And a person can
easily hang his weight and pull up on those spikes in
order to take and let air out. And so a person was beaten
to weaken that person so that death
wouldn't take so long. And in this case,
the soldiers are going to go out and try to
break the legs of those-- they will do it to those two
on the side, but not to Jesus. Because they're going to
discover that Jesus died earlier than they expected. He was already dead. He lasted on the
cross only six hours. Now that's horrible. That's long. The sins of the world
were placed on Him. But in terms of the history
of antiquity and crucifixion, six hours was short. And it says the
soldiers marveled that Jesus was already dead. Why was he already dead? Well unfortunately, we
don't have enough time to answer that question. But we will next time. Father, when we pray, Lord, take
us back, Lord, take me back, we have been taken back by
John 2,000 years to that place that some would say
is a place of shame. But for us, it's a
place of victory. It's where the battle was won. It's where the battle cry was
uttered, "it is finished." And the work that Jesus did
that day, in those six hours, from 9 o'clock in the morning
to 3 o'clock in the afternoon, is done. It's enough. It's finished. It's completed. We can't add anything to it. We can't take anything from it. If a person looks
to Jesus by faith, believes in Jesus by
faith, confesses their sins by faith, because of that
one act, that one work, it's enough. We will live forever
if we believe. So Lord, you've made a way. As shameful, as painful, as
sorrowful as that day was, we look back to the cross
with a sense of dignity. And we just say,
thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus,
for being numbered among the transgressors, for
healing us with Your stripes, for taking our pain, our
punishment, our sin, so that, as Paul said, we might become
the righteousness of God in Him. Lord, Pilate marveled. We marvel. We are astonished that You
love us, that You chose us. And no matter what happens
between here and heaven, no matter what heartache
we're going to go through, whatever pain we're
going to experience, or are experiencing, we're
going to go to heaven. One day the pain is going
to end and the glory begins, all because of
that one obedient act. So we thank You, Jesus. And we give You glory. In the powerful, strong, mighty,
wonderful name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen. [MUSIC PLAYING]
