Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 23:26-56
Go ahead. Grab a Bible this morning and find Luke, chapter 23. Luke 23, we're down to just about the very end of Luke. Our passage this morning is Luke 23, verse 26 to 56. And there is an outline in your bulletin. You can follow along as we work our way through this passage, Luke 23. I'm going to start this morning just by giving you the big idea of the passage and then we're going to jump in and read it. So here we go, the big idea. Even in apparent defeat and humiliating death, the Son of Man accomplished everything that He came to accomplish. Even in apparent defeat and humiliating death, the Son of Man accomplished everything that He came to accomplish. Luke 19, 10 has been our theme verse throughout our study of this gospel. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. And he's been doing that, but this is really the culmination. This is when it happens in our verses this morning. It looked like defeat and most certainly was a humiliating death, but Jesus is accomplishing everything that He set out to accomplish. And we're going to talk about a few examples of that this morning. So first we're going to read the passage. Look with me, follow along as I read, Luke 23 beginning in verse 26. Word of God says that as they led Him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene who was coming in from the country and they laid on Him the cross to carry it behind Jesus. And there followed Him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for Him. But turning to them, Jesus said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breast that never nursed.' Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us into the hills, cover us.' Or if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it's dry? Two others who were criminals were led away to be put to death with Him. When they came to the place that is called the skull, there they crucified Him. And the criminals, one on His right and one on His left. Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' The cast lots to divide His garments and the people stood by watching, but the rulers scoffed at Him, saying, 'He saved others, let Him save Himself.' If He's the Christ of God, His chosen one, the soldiers also mocked Him, coming up and offering Him sour wine, and saying, 'If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.' There was also an inscription over Him, 'This is the King of the Jews.' One of the criminals who were hanged railed at Him, saying, 'Are you not the Christ, save yourself and us?' But the other rebuked Him, saying, 'Do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?' And we indeed, justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. And He said to Jesus, 'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.' And He said to Him, 'Truly I say to you, today, you will be with me in paradise.' There was about the sixth hour, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun's light failed and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.' Having said this, He breathed His last. When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, 'Certainly this man was innocent.' And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home, beating their breasts. And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance watching these things. Now, there was a man named Joseph from the Jewish town of Arimathea. He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man, who had not consented to their decision in action, and he was looking for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus, he took it down, wrapped it in a linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb cut in stone where no one had yet been laid. It was the day of preparation and the Sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment, let's pray. Father, we come to this passage that is at the heart of what we believe as Christians. This story that defines what we believe about reality, what we believe about life and eternal life, what we believe about you, what we believe about ourselves. Father, very simply this morning I ask that you help us to see us for who we are and to see you and your son Jesus Christ for who he is. I pray for the people in this room, for those who are confused about the reality of sin, for those who are confused about the reality and the truth of Jesus Christ, and I pray that today you would make it plain to them and that you would convict them and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. There's a lot of characters in this passage and it's too long of a passage to take every detail apart, some of the details that are of interest gone passage by passage and verse by verse is good but sometimes when you go verse by verse in a long book you spend years just sort of trudging through and you feel like you never make any progress and our approach has not been to ignore things or skip over things but to say let's take a chunk and let's see what the big idea of that section is. We've done that with the gospel itself, the big idea of the gospel is Luke 19-10 and then each week we've tried to sort of pull out the big important truths and we're going to do the same thing this morning and so we're working off this one big idea. In apparent defeat and in humiliating death the Son of Man Jesus accomplished everything he came to accomplish and just in the details that Luke gives us I want you to see three things he accomplished, okay? Number one, the Son of Man came to teach the truth. He came to teach the truth. He's done this for several years now and this is the culmination but my point here and I want you to see is that he's teaching the truth right down to the very last minute. Right down to the moment he dies he's teaching people. Verse 28, 29, 30 and 31, Jesus says some strange things to a group of women and if you don't know who these women are you read the things that Jesus said and it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense and so first of all let's just be clear about who are the daughters of Jerusalem. These are not Jesus' friends, these are not his family members, these are not his close acquaintances. This is a group of professional mourners, a group of women who would go to every public execution and they would mourn, they would grieve. Maybe they had children or family members or different folks in their past who had been executed by Rome and they did this sort of as a remembrance to them, part of it was cultural but this is a group of ladies, they go to every public execution and they mourn and they see Jesus being taken out and so they're there, Jesus and these criminals are being crucified, they're being executed and they're there to mourn, to grieve, to wail, to make a big public show of the whole deal. Here's the thing about Jesus, we talk about this a lot when we take the Lord's Supper, he doesn't want you to feel sorry for him, never has he asked you to pity him or to feel sorry for him and he looks at these women who are having pity on him and in effect what he's saying and we're going to break it down is you're upset about the wrong thing. I've chosen to do this, I came to do this, Luke 19, 10 to seek and to save the lost but something is coming that you should grieve about and so look what he says, sort of a strange statement, blessed are the childless, blessed are those who don't have children, why? Because in just one generation Jerusalem's going to be overrun, there's going to be a rebellion from within the city and Rome is going to come and put it down and put it down fiercely, we talked about that a few weeks ago in 70 AD, Titus came marching into this city and it was a bloodbath and Jesus says the day is coming where you will say I'm glad that I don't have children who had to live to experience this. He says the day's coming when you'll ask the mountains and the hills to fall on you to cover you up, that's a phrase you read in the book of Revelation when Jesus comes back and when quote unquote those who dwell on the earth, unbelievers see him coming and realize that it's too late, what they say in the book of Revelation is would the rocks please fall on us and cover us up? Jesus says that day is coming. He makes a statement about wood, the green wood, the dry wood and it's sort of an idiomatic statement, it doesn't translate exactly right but what he's saying is if you think it's bad now they're doing this to me just wait and see what they're going to do later. If you think it's bad now it's going to be worse and his point in all of it to these women is look you don't need to be upset and wail and grieve and mourn for me. I'm not asking you to do that, something is coming to this city because you've rejected me, judgment is coming on this city that's something you ought to be upset about because it's going to be terrible, he's warning them, he's teaching them, down to the very last minute of his life he's teaching people the truth. So we've talked about Luke 19 10 and several times along the way I've mentioned to you that if we were going through the gospel of Mark this would be our theme verse, Mark 10 45, even the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life is a ransom for many, just the parallel verse to Luke 19 10. But there's also an interesting verse I want you to see in Mark chapter 1, look what he says here. This is Jesus speaking, let's go to the other towns, the next towns that I may preach there also for that is why I came out. He was on a mission to preach and to teach. This is part of what it means in John 14 6 when he says I am the way and the truth and the life. I didn't only come to die for you also came to tell you what's true and you need to listen to me and he says it right here in Mark I'm on a mission, yes I'm going to lay down my life for many, I'm going to serve by laying down my life. Yes I'm going to seek and save the lost, Luke 19 10, but I'm also here to teach the truth and he's doing that in Luke 23, down to the last moment of his life he came to teach the truth. Here's the second thing he came to do, he came to forgive sinners, the son of man came to forgive sinners. In my Sunday school class I don't know exactly, a lot of our Sunday school classes are doing the gospel project and I'm not exactly sure where you're at, but in my class we looked at this verse last week, it's Numbers 14, 18, says the Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty. Good luck wrapping your brain around that verse. And on the one hand it says he's forgiving, he forgives iniquity, and then it turns around in the same breath and he says, but he's not going to clear the guilty, he won't clear the guilty. And you look at that and you say, well who else needs to be forgiven except the guilty? It says he's forgiving, but he won't forgive the guilty. When you read this in the Old Testament it's like you've put an entire jigsaw puzzle together and you're missing one piece and you look at it and you say it's missing something and the missing piece is Christ. In Christ God punishes sin and he forgives his people. And Jesus is on a mission to accomplish that. Look at verse 34, Jesus prays from the cross and he says, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." I think all my life I've read that verse as if Jesus was praying only for the people who crucified him at that moment. And as I read and I studied this week, I sort of had my eyes open, not like from a message straight from heaven, but just from the wisdom of books that I was reading, that this is more of an open-ended prayer and the debate is who are the them? It's never defined, it's never explained, it's never set forth exactly. This is a broad prayer Jesus is praying based on what I'm doing now on this cross, forgive your people, forgive them. Don't just take sin and sweep it under the rug and forget about it. That's not what he's asking God to do. He's asking God to forgive on the basis that the debt, the penalty, the price has been paid. He's paying it at that moment. This is the answer to Numbers 14-18 where you say how can he be both? This is how. This is how he forgives. Jesus takes the punishment, he really takes it so that we can really be forgiven. And so he's praying for these men, he's praying this broad prayer, he's praying for us, I believe, and he's also doing what he commanded his people to do. We're not going to look at it, but you can look at Luke 6 and Luke 6, Jesus prays, tells us to pray things like this, love your enemies and pray for those who abuse you. And he's doing that. He's doing what he asked us to do. So he came to forgive sinners. And there's several individuals in this passage who experienced that forgiveness, and I just want to point them out to you. One is Simon in verse 26. Look at verse 26, it says that Simon is from Cyrene. I know that you guys spent the week brushing up on your Middle Eastern geography, so this is going to be simple review for you, but let me just show you where Cyrene is. It's really close to the modern-day city of Benghazi, if you want to know where it's at. It's in Libya, and it's just right down the road. And when you look at the top of Africa and Europe and the Middle East there, that doesn't look like a terrible distance, but in the ancient world where you don't have planes or trains or automobiles, that's a pretty good trek. More than likely, Simon, who lives in Cyrene, has saved a good portion of his life to make this one pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover. Maybe he went every year, but more than likely, this is something he'd been planning and saving up for. So he's put a lot of thought into it, he's put a lot of work into it, he's put a lot of sweat into saving the money up. He makes it this one trip he's been looking forward to, the most important trip a Jew could take, and he gets there, he's ready to celebrate the Passover, and he feels a tap on his shoulder, and the tap is the broad side of a Roman spear, and if a Roman soldier approached you, and you lived in the Roman Empire, and he tapped you on the shoulder with the flat side of that spear, that meant you just got drafted. Whatever he wanted you to do, you had to do it. Go an extra mile, Jesus says, give him your cloak, Jesus says, the tap comes down, Simon turns around and they lay on him this cross, and they ask him to help a criminal carry a cross outside of town. That's a damper on your vacation. You've been saving and planning, and all of a sudden you get conscripted into the military, the Bible beam through the streets of Jerusalem up a hill. The Bible doesn't tell us what he thought about it all, but you can imagine what you and I would think about it all. This isn't fair. I've been planning this trip my entire life, not even from here, I don't even know this guy. I live a thousand miles away. Are you kidding me right now? How did this happen? God, why would I have saved so that I could come worship you, God? This one Passover, and this is how you repay me. After my faithfulness to come and to do what you say to do in your word and to make a sacrifice to come, you repay me and I have to carry this cross beam. In the moment, he probably didn't get it. When we take a bunch of pieces from the rest of the New Testament, eventually the lightbulb went off for Simon and he got it, and he realized that even as he was coming to worship God in this Passover, he had no clue. He had no clue, but Jesus was seeking him and saving him. He was doing something to forgive him. And God had their paths crossed, not as a coincidence, but as part of his plan. And so when you piece together Mark 15, 21 and Romans 16 and Acts 2, here's the story that emerges. More than likely, you take a journey this far. You're not only going to come for Passover, but you're going to stay for Pentecost. And Luke tells us in Luke 2, 10 that on the day of Pentecost, he lists all these people who were present. Guess what? There were men from Cyrene there at Pentecost. And at some point in between the cross and Pentecost, the lightbulb goes off, maybe at Pentecost, we don't know. But when you read other passages in the New Testament, you read that this man's wife became a believer in Jesus Christ. This man's children became a believer in Jesus Christ. How in the world are they ever going to learn about Jesus a thousand miles away from him in Cyrene? Well, God had a plan for that. And because of what Jesus did on the cross, as Simon helped him to carry it out of town, Jesus offers forgiveness to this man. Then there's the thief, verse 29 to 43, the thief on the cross is a story you're familiar with. In his dying moments, he saw the light, he saw the truth about Jesus. The thief reminded me of a quote today, one of my favorite quotes from a guy named John Calvin. He had a great beard, and this is what John Calvin said. This is a true statement. This is the first line in his magnum opus. It recognizes one of the greatest theological books ever written. This is how he starts off. Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. He's saying, if you want to get it, you want to get this, there's really two things you need to know. You need to know who you are, and you need to know who God is. And if you get those two things nailed down, everything else is going to fall into place. But you got to get those two things. So you look at the thief on the cross and you say, did he get it? He got it. He knows who Jesus is. He acknowledges him as a king. He's being executed by Caesar, but he looks at Jesus and he calls him a king. And he also knows who he is, a sinner. There's no excuses, there's no trying to justify his behavior. He just says to the guy over on the other side, hey, buddy, we deserve this. He's basically quoting the book of Romans when it says the wages of sin is death. He said, this is the due penalty for what we've done. We've earned it. He knows who he is, and he knows who Jesus is. And Jesus responds to him as what? You will be with me in paradise today. The only true deathbed conversion in the Bible. The wise person said, there's one of them in there so that you and I won't despair. It is possible, but there's only one so we don't presume. We don't presume on God's grace. You don't make this your life plan that at the last minute I'll do what the thief did. But he finds forgiveness just like Simon, just like the centurion in verse 47. Look what we read in verse 47. He saw that had taken place, he praised God, and he said, certainly this man was innocent. You understand that when a centurion presiding over the execution of a criminal publicly says the guy we just killed was innocent, he's saying, I just murdered an innocent man. He knows who he is, and he knows who Jesus is. He was innocent, and I just messed up. He admits that freely. Matthew tells us in his gospel that he looks at Jesus and he calls him the Son of God. He got it. He's forgiven. Lastly, you have Joseph, verse 50, and following this man from Arimathea. Matthew tells us, Luke doesn't mention this, but Matthew says he was actually a disciple of Jesus. What Luke tells us is that he was part of the council. You remember we talked about the great Sanhedrin, this Jewish Supreme Court in Jerusalem. He sat on that council. There was 70 men on it, and Joseph was one of them. Interesting detail, we know that when they try Jesus and they come up with the charges that they're going to charge Jesus with blasphemy in this, in this, in this. The decision is unanimous. Luke tells us that he did not consent with their decision, which means when they get this last minute illegal trial together and they gather the Sanhedrin, somebody is thinking and they say, hey, don't wake up Joseph. We know how he's going to vote. We don't want him here. Don't tell him about the meeting. Don't invite him. So he doesn't come. And this unanimous vote among the Sanhedrin minus Joseph. I just want you to understand, when he publicly goes to Pilate and asks for Jesus' body and willingly takes him and cleans him and puts him in his own tomb, he's publicly saying to Pilate, to Anas, to Caiaphas, to the whole Sanhedrin, I'm with Jesus. I'm not with you. You did something stupid. You did something wrong. And I'm a disciple to the point that I'll take care of him even in his death, another man who experienced forgiveness. All of this possible because of what's actually happening on the cross, and that's the heart of the passage. So here's the third thing Jesus comes to accomplish. The Son of Man came to bear the curse. Came to bear the curse. This is weighty stuff. And we're not going to look at these verses. I just want you to think through them with me and I'll put them on your outline so you can go read them later. Genesis 3, Adam and Eve decide to rebel against their Creator and to team up with the serpent. They listen to him instead of God. God comes and there's consequence for their sin. There's death, the first death ever in this animal that slaughtered. There's a curse placed on creation itself. There's a curse placed on Adam and Eve and in their work and the process of having children and all of it. God says, "It's not going to be the same." And the biggest consequence of that curse was a separation. God said, "You can't stay here with me. You've got to go. You have to go into exile. You have to leave." And the picture of that or the symbol of that in Genesis 3, 24 you remember is that God puts a cherubim with a flaming sword guarding the way saying, "There's no coming back. You can't come back on your own." There's a consequence and the consequence is that your sin has led to a separation between you and God. So then you fast forward to Exodus 36. Moses brought the people out from Egypt and they're out in the desert and they're building the tabernacle. And one of the things they're building in the tabernacle is a curtain that separates the most holy place from every other part of the tabernacle and from the people. And it's this strange dichotomy where God says at the tabernacle, "I'm going to come live with you. I'm going to be with you, but there's still a separation and you don't cross this line." And you look it up later, Exodus 36, 35, on that curtain, guess what they weave into the curtain? A cherubim, just randomly, just because they thought it would look cool? No. It's because they're acknowledging, back in Genesis 3, there's a separation here. We can't come back across that line on our own. You fast forward to first Kings, a guy named Solomon who's building a temple, a permanent tabernacle in Jerusalem. They're doing all the decorations and they're putting up fruit and pomegranates and leaves and all these things. You say, "Why are they putting up all these things? It's a picture of Eden." And in the holy of holies, guess what they put on the walls, cherubim, why? Not just because they thought it would be cool, it's not because angels were popular at the time, it's because they're saying there's a separation here. Yes, God is with us, but there's still a separation. We can't cross that line on our own. We can't come back to God on our own. Look what Isaiah 59 2 says, this is real. Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, a separation. People in the United States don't get this. People in the United States are more than happy to admit a lack of perfection. I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. But there's zero understanding or zero recognition that as sinners, we have separated ourselves from God and that there's nothing we can do to come back across that line, nothing. That's why Galatians 3 is good news. Look what Paul says in Galatians 3, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. Jesus has taken you all the way back to the temple, all the way back to the tabernacle, all the way back to Eden. And Paul's saying, look, when he hangs on the cross, he becomes the curse. What was the consequence of the curse? Separation between you and God. Jesus becomes the curse and he redeems you. He buys you back. He brings you back across that separation that you created. And so just look quickly how Luke describes it. It's very restrained. It's not how we would describe it today. Luke 23, 33, when they came to the place that is called the skull, there they crucified him. No gory details. We like the gory details. We like CSI and horror movies and all the sort of crazy things we watch today. No gory details here just says they crucified him. On the one hand you could say they knew all the gory details because they saw it all the time. They didn't need Luke to spell it out for them. And that's true. They didn't need Luke to spell it out for them. But we've talked about this. The gory details aren't the point. Luke could go on and on about this is how the nails went in. This is how the thorns went on. This is how they lifted him up. It's not the point. You focus on all those physical things. You're missing the fact that Galatians 3.13 says he became the curse for us. That's the worst part of the cross. It's not the nails. It's not the thorns. It's not the spear. It's not any of that stuff. It's the curse of God on Jesus Christ so that we could be redeemed. So Luke just simply says they crucified him. Verse 35 and 36 and 37 and 38, I thought this week, how do I explain the depravity of these men mocking Jesus? I cannot explain it, I don't have any words. Other than Romans one that says sometimes God gives people over to their sin, to the full extent, for sin to run its natural course in somebody's life. And that's what's happened with these men. They've been given over to their depravity, so they mocked Jesus. Verse 44, 44 says that for about three hours it was dark. It's astronomically impossible for there to be a solar eclipse during the Passover. It can't happen. Even if it was a solar eclipse that lasts a few minutes. Luke says this was three hours. Interesting that several ancient historians, a man named Phlegen, a man named Tertullian record that during the Roman Empire, about 30 AD, one day on a Friday, there was a strange darkness that no one could explain. There was a supernatural sign, scholars and theologians debate exactly what it means. But it takes place when Jesus is bearing the curse, when he becomes the curse. Verse 46, Jesus says, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." That reminds me of John 10. You can look it up later, but in John 10 Jesus says, "I'm the good shepherd because I laid down my life for the sheep. Nobody takes it from me. I lay it down of my own accord. No one takes my life from me." That goes all the way back to the daughters of Jerusalem when Jesus says, "You're upset about the wrong thing. I'm not asking you to throw a pity party for me. I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me. I am laying my life down of my own accord. No one takes it from me." Verse 45, the best part. The curtain in the temple, and you remember what they drew on the curtain, the chair of him, the separation gets split in half. One last time, this is what Calvin said, I just want you to think about this. All the wisdom we possess, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. Two simple questions for you this morning to ask yourself and to answer yourself. And one, who are you? Who are you? Maybe you're sort of like Simon. Maybe you came to church today because it's the Sunday before Easter and you're not really looking for anything in particular, you're just sort of doing a church thing. And maybe you're not really seeking anything, but maybe Jesus is seeking you, just like he was seeking Simon. Maybe this morning you read this story and you say, "No, I'm kind of like the daughters of Jerusalem. I'm upset about a lot of things in this world, but I think I'm upset about the wrong stuff. I think I'm given too much emotional energy and mental thought to the wrong things. I need to refocus." Maybe you're sort of like the soldier in this story. This is a guy just sort of going through life, right? The centurion. He's just punching a clock. He's doing his job. He's trying to earn a living to take care of his family. He doesn't really know the significance of what's happening around him, but at the end of the whole event when Jesus dies and he sees all the things that happen, he says, "I get it now." And just out of nowhere, maybe you're sitting here this morning and you say, "I've just been going through life. It's like I'm on autopilot." And then all of a sudden I read this story that I've heard about a thousand times and I just, I get it. I hope that you're like the thief on the cross, at least in the sense that you can say this morning, death and judgment and destruction is the just reward for what I've done. I know I'm a sinner. I admit that. I'm not making excuses for it. That's what it means to repent of your sin, to change your mind about sin. It means you stop justifying it and you stop explaining it away and you stop pretending like it's not that big a deal and you see it and confess it for what it really is. Question number two that you need to ask is, "Who is Jesus?" My prayer for you this morning is really simple. I pray that you look to Him and you know Him as the one who came to give you truth. I hope you look to Him as the only one who can forgive your sins and I hope you look to Him as the one who came to bear the curse for you. I hope you know that He's the one that came to seek you and to save you when you were lost. Let me pray for you. Father, I pray this morning that if we leave with nothing else, we leave with a true biblical right understanding of who we are and of who Jesus is. I pray that we would this morning, whether it's for the millionth time or for the first time, that we would confess our sin, we would repent of it, we would turn from it, we would run from it. I pray, Father, that we would run to the cross where Jesus bore the curse for us so that we could be forgiven. To help us to sense and understand and feel the weight of what happened when Jesus gave His life for ours on the cross, when He was separated and cut off from you so that we could be bought back, we could be redeemed, we could be restored. Father, everything that we hope in, everything that we trust in, everything that gives us confidence in this life goes back to Jesus Christ into who He is and what He did for us on the cross. And we want to celebrate that. So as we lift our voices, as we sing, as we reflect on your word, we pray that you would be honored and that Jesus Christ would be lifted up. We pray in His name, amen.