to the glory of God. We're now at the point of no return in the real-life drama of the most astounding act in the history of the world. About 33 years before this very day, God inserted Himself into the world through a miracle that should take your breath away. The Owner and the Creator of the universe overshadowed a scared and insignificant young virgin And she became with child. And at that moment, Almighty God took on flesh and became man. And for 33 years now, the world has had the honor and the privilege of having deity walk on it. For 33 years, a single man has not committed any act of sin. He has never lusted a single time. He has never coveted a single time. He has never had a bad attitude even for a single second. For 33 years now, a man born of woman has loved God with all of his heart, all his soul, all his mind, and with all his strength. And that had never happened before. And it will never happen again until this same man bursts the clouds of glory and comes back. Our love for God may be growing. I pray that it is growing, but it is not perfect. We do not love God perfectly or fully. We love Him with fault. We love Him frailly. We love Him partially. We love Him on occasion and by times. And that is to our shame. For thirty-three years now, this one man has loved his neighbor to the very same extent and with the same urgency that he loves himself. And that had never happened before either. Every single day for 33 years, this one man has carried out the Father's will perfectly. This one man has been perfectly led by God the Holy Spirit. He has been perfectly and continuously submitted to God and he has perfectly obeyed every second of every minute of every hour. He has always kept every aspect of the law of God without fault, every second of every minute of every hour of every day for thirty-three years. This man has had total and complete command over every aspect of God's creation. And so he has walked on water. He has commanded fish to be caught in a net. He has calmed the waves in the wind. He has cursed the fig tree. This one man has created fish and bread and opened blind eyes and unstopped deaf ears and straightened out withered arms and caused crippled people to walk and lepers to be cleansed. And this man but spoke and dead people rose to life again. This one man has had total authority over the fallen angels and he would simply speak and the demons would beg him not to throw them into the pit. And this man has the ability to forgive sins and save souls. Jesus was and is the single most unique person who ever lived. Nobody is like Him. Nobody even comes close. He was truly, in every aspect, an exclusive, the one and only of the Father. In the words of the 3rd century preacher John Chrysostom, Jesus was fully God and fully man, in the same body at the same time, without conflict or contradiction. And in the words of the early leaders of the Christian church, Jesus was God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of the very same substance of the Father. Jesus is the only person who always spoke perfect truth. He had full command of God's will and Word. At 12, He silenced the doctors and lawyers. At 30, He baffled the religious elite. And at 33, He amazed even His enemies. When the officers came back empty-handed, the Pharisees asked them, Why did you not bring Him? And they answered, Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks. Nobody talks like Jesus. And now the most amazing act in the history of the world is about to happen. Sinful rebels are going to murder God. Evil men are going to crucify the immortal King of the universe. And this one act is so astounding, so strange, so out of the ordinary, so unbelievable, that right this moment, every Muslim on earth categorically rejects it. There is not a single practicing Jew on the face of the earth that believes that human beings kill God. I mean, that's ridiculous. How could human beings kill God? And so every single genuine Hindu and Buddhist rejects this. And every agnostic refuses the notion that people could kill God. But that is exactly what the infallible Word of the living God says happened. Jesus was not replaced by someone else, as the Gnostics and Muslims teach. There was no substitute. Jesus didn't take a potion that put Him into a coma, so He appeared to die, as Henry Schoenfeld wrote in his 1965 book, The Passover Plot. Now the Bible is crystal clear about this. The immortal Word of God took on flesh and became man. The second person of the Godhead, God the Son, the darling of the Trinity, draped Himself in human flesh and became a part of His own creation. And now His initial earthly ministry is reaching its zenith and He is going to allow wicked rebels to murder Him. But before He goes to the cross, there is one more beating to go through. One more time of torture that He must endure. Now keep in mind, it's now mid-morning on Friday. Jesus has now been up over 24 hours, and aside from the Last Supper, Jesus has undergone prayer so intense that He literally sweat blood. Jesus has endured non-stop and relentless interrogation and brutality that is almost unspeakable. But there is every reason to suggest that this final beating will be even more brutal, more inhuman, more torturous than anything He has experienced so far. Remember Pontius Pilate has now done the politically expedient thing and has turned Jesus over to those who will execute Him. Dr. Luke wrote in verses 24 and 25 of chapter 23, And Pilate pronounced sentence that their demand be granted. And he released the man they were asking for, who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, but he delivered Jesus to their will. And this means that Jesus has been turned over to the Roman soldiers, whose specialty it was to torture people unmercifully before they are crucified. These are the most hard-hearted men in the Roman army. They have developed special skills and tools to deliver the most inhumane treatment while keeping the condemned people just above the threshold of death. And to get an idea of just what Jesus is going to face next, we need to read the Apostle Levi's account from Matthew 27. If you would turn there with me, the Gospel of Matthew, the first book of the New Testament, Matthew 27. And I want you to look at verses 24-31. Matthew 27, verses 24-31. And let's look at verses 24, 25, and 26 first. Matthew 27, 24, 25, and 26 right now. When the Pilate saw that he was accomplished nothing, but rather that a riot was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, saying, I am innocent of this man's blood. See to that yourselves. And all the people said, his blood shall be on us and on our children. What a thing to say. Then he released Barabbas for them. Or as we learned, it's Bar-abbas. But after having Jesus scourged, he handed Him over to be crucified. So after Pilate saw that he could not release Jesus without risking his own position, Pilate did what all worldly people do. He chose his career over Jesus. He chose his fortune, his prestige, and his position over Jesus. And this is the great distinction between those who are religious and those who were saved. between those who know about Jesus and who may even think or say nice things about Jesus, and those who actually follow and serve Him. Jesus refuses to be second. You are not going to put Jesus at the back of the bus. He will not go there. Jesus will not become a part of your life. He's not even going to become an important part of your life. He's not even going to become the most important part of your life. You will not add Jesus to your already planned out life. No, Jesus will be your entire life. He will have preeminence over everyone and everything. He will be first, or you can have your entire life all to yourself. So do not come to Jesus so you can have a better life down here. Do not come to Jesus so you can hit more home runs, or make more money, or drive a nicer car, or so you can win the big awards, or so that the lost pagan world can make much of you. That isn't Christianity. And the motivational speakers who masquerade as preachers and teachers who teach that are false. No, you come to Jesus to die. You come to Jesus and that is the end of your life as you know it. You come to Jesus as a wicked sinner who deserves nothing but the wrath of God and as you are so ashamed of your wretched life that you cannot even look into heaven, you beg God for forgiveness and salvation or you remain in your sins. And if you are so blessed that God hears your prayers and you are forgiven and you are saved, then from that very second until the day you cross Jordan and stand in His presence, you live every moment to God's glory. Hallelujah. You make every decision to the betterment of Jesus Christ. What will bring Jesus glory? I can do this or I can do that. Which one of these things will exalt my Savior? And that's how you make your decisions. You want to know what, and your prayer should be, Lord take out of my life anything that doesn't honor you and add to my life whatever you see that I need that will bring you glory. Because now you're changed, you're saved, you belong to Jesus Christ. Right? Three of you believe that. That's awesome. You make every decision to the betterment of Jesus Christ so that He will look magnificent. You devote every fiber of your being to the success of the Gospel and you exist now as a bought and paid for bond slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't that just offensive? Isn't that just great on your soul? Some podunk preacher is up here talking about you're a bond slave of Jesus. But that's what it means to be forgiven. That's what it means to be saved. And that's what it means for Jesus to be Lord. I want you to notice that Romans 10 verse 9 does not say that we are to confess Jesus as Savior. That's not what it says. That's not what we are to confess, even though Jesus is absolutely the Savior. We do not confess Jesus as our Savior, or as our best friend, or as our co-pilot, or the man upstairs, or our lover. No, the Holy Spirit moved upon the Apostle Paul to say that in order to be saved, we must confess Jesus as Lord, as God, as Master, as Father, as King. Huh? And because Jesus is Lord, as you grow in both the grace and the knowledge of God, you begin to learn the language and the function of slavery. You learn what it means to live as a slave and to function as a slave. You learn what it means to live your life as someone who has been purchased outright, as someone who has been redeemed and rescued. And a slave has no personal agenda. A slave makes no individual plans. A slave makes no decisions by himself. No, a slave, a human being who has been bought, lives only for the agenda of his master. He works for his master. His plans are intertwined with his master's plans. The master tells him what to do, what to wear, what to eat, how to speak, what job he will carry out. The master tells the slave who he will marry, how to raise his children. The master is in complete control over whether the slave lives or dies. So humility, biblical humility, is the life of slavery. Arrogance, on the other hand, is the rebellion against slavery. So we must understand that at no time is the individual ever in charge. Now many times we collectively say that people out in the world are, quote, doing their own thing, when that's actually not true. Lost and unsaved people are not in charge of their lives either. The Bible teaches that lost people are cruelly being driven by their carnal lusts and they're slaves to sin. Lost people serve their father, the devil, and they do his bidding even when they don't want to, even when it brings destruction to them. How many of you know that sin will take you where you never dreamed you would ever go? Sin will keep you longer than you ever wanted to stay. And sin will cost you more than you're willing to pay. Sin is horrible. Sin isn't funny. And so any television program that makes adultery or fornication homosexuality, or cursing God, or blasphemy, or lying, or cheating, or stealing, any program, any music, any song, any body, any person that makes those things look attractive, or that makes them acceptable, or makes them funny, or makes them cute, they're of the devil. Those things will take you to hell. That's not funny. I never forget in 1991 I was reading the New York Times and the head executives of ABC CBS and NBC and had gotten together back then that's all there was really and they had made a determination to they had an agenda. To make homosexuality acceptable in mainstream America. And they kept saying it's impossible. It'll never happen. People will never acquiesce to this. They're repulsed by it. It's disgusting. It'll never happen. They said it will happen. We will make it happen. We'll put them in comedies. And we'll get Christians to laugh at homosexuality. Because when they're laughing, they're not repulsed by it. And within three years, every major network had a prominent homosexual character in a prime time comedy series and it became cute and funny and it became acceptable and now look where we are now. So understand. Understand this and I'm not trying to get you not to watch television. Say brother Blair wants you to throw your TV out in the yard. Some people might need to do that better to do that than to die and go to hell. But. Understand that as you watch a program as you're listening to a song. as you're reading a book. It's a sermon. Whoever wrote it, whoever produced it, whoever directed it, they've got the camera angle just right, they've got the background music just right, they've got the expression on the face, they have several takes so they can get it right. They're trying to make a point. They're preaching a sermon to you. And they're either promoting what is holy and godly or they're promoting what is wicked and evil. And you're sitting there paying money that God blessed you with to be indoctrinated by what they're feeding you. Now understand, that's what's going on. So it is a battle. They say, golly, Brother Blair, you're taking all the fun out of Friday nights for us. Then go ahead and watch whatever you want to watch. But don't be mystified as to why we've gone so far so fast in this country and why we're almost abandoning all biblical morality whatsoever. It's not accidental, it's on purpose. And so we need to understand this. Lost people are powerless to resist Satan long term. Because sin cruelly dominates them. And the only thing that breaks that cruel domination of sin is salvation. But understand this, when you are saved, you're still not in charge. Noah's a redeemed, blood-bought, born-again, spirit-filled, heaven-bound, sin-hating child of the living God. The cruel domination of sin has been broken, and you are now free! Hallelujah! But you're not autonomous! Uh-uh! You are now free to be a purchased bond slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are now free to love and serve God. You are free to treasure Jesus Christ, to obey Him with joy. You are now free to delight yourself in His commandments where before you were not free to do that. So the poet is wrong. William Ernest Henley wrote Invictus in 1888, and in the poem Henley said, quote, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. Well, no you're not, Mr. Henley. You're either a slave of sin or a bond slave of Jesus Christ, but at no time were you ever the master and at no time are you ever the captain. But lost people see no value in being a bought and paid for slave of Jesus Christ. Lost people consider devotion to God as being hopelessly naive and they see glad obedience as entirely unworkable in keeping with the myth that they themselves are in charge. So when Pilate saw that he had to either continue with his career or worship Jesus, his unconverted mind would not allow him to love Jesus and he washed his hands as a symbolic gesture that was going that what was going to happen to Jesus next was not His fault. So look at what happened next in verse 26. But after having Jesus scourged, He handed Him over to be crucified. This is after He had beat Him personally Himself. This is after He presented Jesus and said, Behold the man This is after a whole night of interrogation and beating. After he condemned him to die, Pilate had Jesus scourged. So in verse 26, the Apostle Levi says that Pilate had Jesus scourged. Now the scourging was called by the Romans verbaratio, and it was possibly the worst kind of flogging administered by ancient courts. While the Jews administered whippings in the synagogues for certain offenses, these were mild in comparison to Roman scourging. Scourging was not normally a form of execution, but it certainly was brutal enough to be fatal in many cases. A person certainly could be beaten to death by the scourge if that was desired. Its purpose was not only to cause great pain, but to humiliate as well. To scourge a man was to beat him worse than one would beat an animal. It was belittling, debasing and demeaning. It was considered such a degrading form of punishment that according to the Portian and Semporian laws, Roman citizens were exempt from it. It was therefore the punishment appropriate only for slaves and non-Romans, those who were viewed as the lesser elements in Roman society. And to make it as humiliating as possible, scourging was carried out in public. Now the instrument used to deliver this form of punishment was called in Latin the flagellum or the flagrum. And this was much different from the bull whip that is more common in our culture. It was instead more like the British cat-o'-nine-tails, except that the flagellum was not designed merely to bruise or leave welts on the victim. The flagellum was a whip with several, at least three, leather thongs or strands, each perhaps as much as three feet long. The strands were weighted with lead balls and pieces of bone. The lead balls were designed to give deep-seated and painful bruises. The pieces of bone were designed to tear the skin and rip it into shreds. The weighed thongs struck the skin so violently that the skin just broke open. The church historian Eusebius of Caesarea recounts with vivid, horrible detail a scene of scourging. He said, quote, For they say that the bystanders were struck with amazement, when they saw them lacerated with scourges even to the innermost veins and arteries, so that the hidden inward parts of the body, both their bowels and their members, were exposed to view." The victim of a scourging was bound to a post or frame, stripped of his clothing, and beaten with a flagellum from the shoulders to the loins. The beating left the victim bloody and weak, in unimaginable pain, and near the point of death. Unlike what many teach today, Jesus was not beaten with 39 stripes. That was reserved only for Roman citizens. The Prince of Peace, the most kind and loving man the world has ever known, was beaten by these men until they got tired. They beat Him, and beat Him, and beat Him, and beat Him. No doubt driven by demons. And if it had not been the will of God, Jesus would have died from this beating. But as horrific as this was, it was God's will for Jesus to endure something much worse than demon-possessed torturers. It was God's will to pour out the full fury of His wrath on His own Son. Isaiah tells us the Lord was pleased to crush Him. No one will rescue Jesus now. Not a single soul will say, stop this. That's enough. Jesus is all alone. His disciples have forsaken Him. Peter and John are at a safe distance. The crowds that cried out, have mercy, Son of David, as He walked through their midst, healing them and feeding them and blessing them and forgiving them are all crying for Him to be crucified. Pilate has washed his hands and is back inside eating lunch. There has never been a moment like this in all of recorded history. And soon as He places on His trembling Son all of the sins of all of God's elect, even God the Father will depart from Jesus. And as Jesus hangs between earth and heaven, the only sinless man who ever lived will scream out in agony as for the first time His Father will withdraw His presence from His own Son. And all that Jesus will have at that moment is the Father's just damnation. And then to add insult to injury, look what Matthew says happened next. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the praetorium and gathered the whole Roman cohort around Him. And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. And after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and a reed in his right hand. And they knelt down before him and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews. They spat on him and took the reed and began to beat him on the head. And after they had mocked him, they took the scarlet robe off him and put his own garments back on him and led him away to crucify him." By the time they finished with Jesus, he was completely unrecognizable. His face disfigured by the beatings, blood running everywhere, His eyes swollen, His garments covered in sweat and dirt with spit running down His face. Saints, behold your King. Behold your Redeemer. Look at your Savior. See Christ in His glory. Look at Him. Let the image of this beaten, tortured man burn into your very soul. So the next time you have an urge to sin against God, the next time you feel as though God has forsaken you, the next time you think that God doesn't care, remember Jesus in His scourgings. Isaiah said, Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him. And by His scourgings, we are healed. And they laughed at Him, and they spit on Him, and they mocked Him. Jesus just looked at them. He could have eviscerated them in a moment because He had the power to stop this. But Jesus loved His Father so much that He was fully committed to obey His Father's will and go to the cross. This is astounding. If they beat you like this, you can't do anything about it. You just get beat. Jesus could have stopped it, and He didn't. After this scourging, as Jesus could barely stand, they forced Him to carry the crossbeam of His own cross through the streets of Jerusalem. Now, there is some controversy as to just how much of the cross Jesus was actually carrying. Many godly men teach that Jesus only carried the cross piece. And that may be true. I need to also tell you something else. Most crosses that we see in our America look like that. They look like a small T with a pretty good part above it. All right, there's also reason to believe that the cross could have been a capital T where there was no piece above it. There's only the only reason that we would think that it's like this rather than like this is because over his head they nailed a sign. And when you're up like that, your head, even though your head is bowed, it would have been hard for the sign to be seen. And so it may be true. We don't know for sure, but it may be true that the cross was indeed like that many guy and I went to about fourteen different commentators and I did it before they these all these guys all live before nineteen hundred and seven and seven seven said he carried the entire cross seven said he carried the cross being so flip a quarter we don't I don't know he could have carried just the cross being he could have carried the whole cross but here's what I want you to remember about Dr. Dr. Luke was a highly educated and trained medical doctor and his gospel account is meticulous. It's in great detail. We have more in Luke than in any other gospel account. There's more parables. There's more evidence. The first couple of chapters is only found in Luke. No other record has Zacharias and Elizabeth and all of these. I mean, it's just amazing the detail. And this is what Luke said about this in verse 26. When they led him away, that's Jesus, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, coming in from the country and placed on him the cross. So they gave Simon the whole cross, which meant they took it from Jesus. So that's evidence that Jesus was actually carrying the entire cross, not just the cross piece. I was amazed to find out I didn't know this because I've never understood why this would be a problem but some people make a fuss about the fact that some records say that Jesus carried his own cross while Dr. Luke says that Simon of Cyrene carried his carry Jesus cross and they point to this as supposedly a contradiction in the Bible your buddy that that developed Star Trek Gene Roddenberry said that Gene Roddenberry was a Sicilian he was a heretic and science fiction was created. I'm going to ruin your evening television. The only reason science fiction exists is to make you believe that the development of technology and the continual evolution of man can solve all of the problems in the world. That's what science fiction is for according to the people who write it, not according to me. So go figure that the best science fiction writers in the world Isaac Asimov Gene Roddenberry H.G. Wells were all Sassanians. They denied the deity of Jesus Christ. By the way there's a new. I want to commence I'll tell you what's bad a lot let me tell you what's good. There's a magazine one. It's called World Magazine. It's like Time or Newsweek. It talks about what's going on in the world and in the country. But everybody that works there has to sign a piece of paper that they believe the Bible is the word of God. So you're getting a biblical worldview of the events. I'm sure they're not perfect and I don't have a clue what else they make them sign up to but they do that. Now there's an app you can get. I don't know. Ask Kurt. how you get it on your phone somehow you do something and it gets on your phone and there's a week of a daily thing called the world and everything in it and it's about thirty minutes of of what's going on I think it's as of yesterday so it's daylight not a dollar short but it's a day late and in that I found out that there was a guy wrote a book Christian wrote a book and he tried to enter and he tried to get into the science fiction genre with Christianity. So. The main two characters and they're living in the in the future and the main two characters are both Bible believing Christians and they pray over their food and they're you know they have sanitized food from the robot but they pray over it and and and they read the Bible together and they pray together and they love each other and they're monogamous and they're faithful to one another even though they're on the planet Zion are and And so somebody bought the rights to the book and they made a TV show out of it. It's called Oblivion. And the first thing the producers did is they took the Christian part out of it and they killed off the wife and the guy's a pagan and it just fits in just real nicely with all the rest of the science fiction stuff. But it's fascinating that they would go to such length to change all this because that's what bothered them. They're not bothered by nudity or blasphemy or anything else. They're bothered by a man and his wife staying faithful and praying and reading the Bible. So it's fascinating how this is a war going on, isn't it? So somebody's upset about this and they point to this as supposedly a contradiction in the Bible. That's just nonsense. So who carried Jesus' cross? Did Jesus carry His own cross? Or did Simon? And the answer is yes! Jesus carried it until He collapsed because He was so weak from the beatings and it was then that the Romans forced Simon to carry it. There's no contradictions about this. But notice that Luke says that Simon carried the cross. He didn't say the cross piece. He wrote that Simon carried the cross. All of it. And that meant that Jesus was carrying the entire cross as well. Now it is true that this would have been unusual. But everything about Jesus was unusual. And we can't be dogmatic about it, but it does seem to suggest that it was the entire cross. And so as Jesus stumbled from being so weak from the beatings, the Romans grabbed this man who was in the crowd to finish the job. It just so happened that they grabbed this guy. I mean, nobody planned this. Simon didn't plan it. The Romans didn't plan it. He just happened to be there when they grabbed him and compelled him to take the cross. Just random accident chance. Or not. Now, Dr. Luke says the man who was chosen by the Romans to carry the cross of Jesus to Golgotha was named Simon. And Simon was a very common Jewish name. And he'd come from Cyrene, which is a region in what is today modern Libya. And Simon was there in Jerusalem during this time. And so you can put two and two together to surmise that Simon was a faithful Jew who loved God and was in Jerusalem to keep the Feast of the Passover. During this time, there was over a million Jews who would travel great distances to come to Jerusalem for the Passover. and these guys were just like everybody else there's a wreck on Highway forty nine and the traffic is backed up thirty eight miles because everybody has to go slow past the wreck so they could take pictures and see and look at all of it and say oh my goodness and call Aunt Mary and tell her and then they drive by so the traffic's all backed up and that's what these people were in Jerusalem to keep the feast the Passover and all of a sudden it was time for some guy to get crucified and they all ran out to see it, and they're standing on the side of the street while Jesus is struggling with this cross. Most of them don't have a clue who this is. They don't know what He did. They know He's in trouble, obviously. And they're either jeering Him and mocking Him and throwing stuff at Him, or they're getting madder and madder and madder at the Romans for persecuting their fellow Jew. Both of that was going on with this crowd. But the streets were lined with people. And one of these people was Simon. And it's possible that Simon was curious about all the commotion that was going on, and he went to see what the fuss was all about. And as he got close, he saw that this was a procession for a crucifixion, and the crowds had lined the streets to shout insults and throw things at the condemned man. Now, it's possible that Simon was just watching all of this. It is also possible that as a devout Jew, he was horrified at what he saw the Romans doing to his fellow Jews. He may not have known anything that had happened up to this point, and all he saw was another example of Roman cruelty against another Jew. And he may even have been angry about it. But, we have to hold out the possibility that Simon was with the crowd who was screaming insults at Jesus. He could very well have been throwing things at Jesus Himself, joining in with the others. We simply don't know, but it could have been either way. What we do know is that the Romans compelled Simon to carry the cross. But John Mark, the Apostle Peter's disciple, gave us some deeper insight into this man from Mark chapter 15 verse 21 that says this. They pressed into service. Now that means he wasn't volunteering. Huh? Pressed into service? Yeah. Come here! You! Come here! A passer-by coming from the country, Simon of Cyrene, and look what John Mark says, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross. John Mark tells us that this man named Simon was the father of two boys named Alexander and Rufus. Now why did he do that? Why did Mark put that in the Bible? Why did the Holy Spirit move upon Mark to write that? This is inspired. This is not just gee whiz facts. This has to do with your eternal salvation. All those boring lists that's in the Old Testament. Amenadab is the son of Abugabuga and you're doing your best and you're just butchering the language, right? How'd I know? But I'm butchering it too, right? And you're doing your best, and then you read somebody that knows what they're doing, or you listen to them, and they pronounce it, you would have never got that out of that. How did they, half the time the vowels are silent, the other time the CH is, sometimes CH is, who knows, right? You gotta learn it. You just gotta learn it. And so I listen to those guys all the time, because they don't even, they don't even take a breath. If you notice that, they just go, and they just pronounce it just flawlessly. I just wonder if they're making it up. Because I'd say Mike, Bob, Tom, Joe. That's what I do when I'm reading it. But that's inspired. Why did God the Holy Spirit go to that length to put a bunch of lists of names that you don't even know who they are in the Bible? Here's the answer. It has to do with your eternal soul's salvation. And when I do that, and when I butcher it, and when I skip it, that's wrong. You're just crediting the Bible. It's in the Bible on purpose. And so we need to spend time with it. Figure it out. I'm trying. I've only been at this 45 years. So, the Holy Spirit of the living God compelled Mark to write this? Really? He doesn't say anything else about it. That's it. Rufus and Alexander. So why did he do this? Well, there's a few choices. And one choice is that since everybody that was going to initially read Mark's gospel record was very familiar with the entire life and ministry of Jesus, there was no need to further identify these two boys because everybody would have known them. We don't know. We're the ones that don't know 20 centuries later, but Mark knew. And we can be sure that others knew who these guys were too. What we have to remember is that the Apostle Peter commissioned John Mark to write his Gospel record very early on. Records suggest that the Gospel of Mark was written about A.D. 50. Which would mean that if Jesus was born about 4 B.C. He was 33 years old. That means he died around A.D. 29 at 33 years of age. And so Mark was written just 21 years after the resurrection. We also know that Mark wrote his Gospel when he was in the city of Rome. And so the Roman believers would have been familiar with Mark's Gospel. We also know that the Apostle Paul was moved along by God the Holy Spirit to pin down his masterpiece called Romans around A.D. 56. And in Romans 16, verse 13, this is what Paul wrote. Greet Rufus. A choice man in the Lord, also his mother and mine." Now is this the same Rufus that Mark was talking about? We don't know for sure, but it would answer why Mark didn't need to say anything else about Simon's two sons. Because if 21 years had transpired since Rufus was a boy, and Mark wrote his Gospel record from the same city where Rufus and his mother lived, and Paul acknowledged them both here in his epistle, it would all tie in together. So behold the sovereignty and the providence of God. Here is a complete stranger who had traveled many miles to keep the feast of the Passover, who may or may not have been initially antagonistic toward Jesus, who is seemingly randomly picked out of the crowd by vicious and pagan Romans to help Jesus carry the cross. And even though he did not know anything else about Jesus, the fact that he was forced to carry the cross would mean that it would have been very hard for Simon to just walk off as soon as they got to Golgotha. And so he probably stayed there and watched Jesus die. And it would have been very hard for Simon to just forget about all this. And so he might have stayed in Jerusalem and come to know about the resurrection. Maybe he was with the 120 who went to the upper room. Maybe he was with the 500 who watched Jesus ascend into heaven. And then he goes back home trying to sort it all out. And when he gets home, he relates to his family all that happened. And so I'm telling you that it's very possible that this Simon of Cyrene became a believer. And that means that his wife and at least one son, Rufus, became believers. And Simon may have died, and Rufus and his mother migrated to Rome where they came into contact with the apostle Paul. And Rufus bore so much godly fruit that Paul classified him as a choice man in the Lord. And Simon's wife, Rufus' mother, was so godly that this great apostle called her, My mother. And then, it ain't over. In Acts 11, verses 20 and 21, look what Dr. Luke wrote. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks, also preaching the Lord Jesus. The hand of the Lord was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord. So within 30 years of the resurrection, there was a church established in the nation of Cyrene. And Luke said this church was growing and developing, and out of that church came preachers who preached the Lord Jesus. And they were sent as missionaries over to Antioch, from North Africa to Antioch. And at least one of those preachers who came to preach the Lord Jesus from Cyrene all the way to Antioch stayed in Antioch and became one of the pastors in the church in Antioch. And they were the ones who sent Paul on his missionary journeys. Acts 13 verses 1-3 says this, Now there were at Antioch in the church that were there prophets and teachers, Barnabas and Simeon, who was called Niger and Lucius of Cyrene. and Maanan who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch and Saul. While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Set apart from me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have called them. Then when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away." So, what appears to be a totally random event, The Roman soldiers just grabbing the first person that they see and compelling him to carry Jesus' cross was actually the providence of a totally sovereign God to not only help Jesus die for the sins of the world, but also to save a family and connect them to the Apostle Paul. Now look what Luke wrote next in Luke 23, 27-31. Following Him was a large crowd of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting Him. But Jesus turning to them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me. Weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, Blessed are the barren and the wounds that never bore and the breasts that never nursed. Then they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do those things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry? This scene is not at all what is usually taught. This has nothing to do with what I was taught when I was first saved. Most people think this is Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of the Lord and some other women. This is exactly what Mel Gibson said in his movie The Passion of the Christ. That's false. Those women, the Bible says, were quite a distance from Jesus. This is not Jesus giving a final blessing to grieving women who loved Him. That is not what's happening here. These women are paid criers. People who were paid money to weep and wail and mourn and throw themselves down on the ground and make a big fuss. And this is Jesus giving a final prophecy about the utter annihilation of the old covenant, the destruction of the temple, and the judgment of God against unbelieving Jews. Remember, the Jews utterly despised the Romans. And even though Jesus has been falsely accused as being a blasphemer, He was a Jew who was being put to death by pagan Romans. And so the Jews always gave another Jew a proper send-off, even though it was the Sanhedrin that had wanted Jesus to die. And part of that proper send-off was appropriate mourning and weeping. Now, it is very possible that these women were sincere and that their crying was genuine. But wait a minute. But they would have gone through this mourning if they hadn't been sincere because they were paid to mourn. This is the same crowd that you see at Lazarus' funeral. Turn with me to John 11. I want to show you something. John 11, verses 33 through 37. The Gospel of John chapter 11 verses 33-37. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled, and said, Where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. So the Jews were saying, See how he loved him. And that's what most worldly preachers teach about this. But some of them said could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind men have kept this man also from dying? Now Jesus absolutely loved this family. The Bible says he did. John tells us that he did. But Jesus did not weep because he loved this family so much. That just is not true. And He didn't weep to show us a side of His humanity at the death of Lazarus either. That's not what's happening here. Back in verse 11, look what Jesus said. John 11, verse 11. Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go that I may awaken him out of sleep. Huh? So as of verse 11, He already knows what He's going to do when He gets there. Right? Now we weep at a death because we are finite humans and no matter how much we trust God, we have a sense of loss when a loved one dies. There was no sense of loss here. Not with Jesus. Because Jesus already knew that He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead before He ever went down to Bethany. And He said in verses 14 and 15, Lazarus is dead. The first time he said, Lazarus is asleep. And the disciples said, great, because we are worn out following you. And if Lazarus is asleep, he's doing well. Leave him alone. And Jesus is going, ah! He said, Lazarus is dead. Look what he said in v. 15. I am glad for your sakes that I was not there. What? If he'd have been there, Lazarus wouldn't have died. I'm glad I wasn't there. I'm glad Lazarus died. That don't sound like good loving to me. Why? So that you may believe. But let us go to it. So this entire exercise was carried out so that the disciples would believe. Now I am sorry to tell you that when you use the word believe in modern America, you got to explain what you're talking about. This is not about the faith to perform signs and wonders so they could raise people from the dead and show everybody how spiritual they were, as is so commonly taught in our day. No, no. It is not generic faith. It's not when Ray Lewis walks on the sidelines at Baltimore Ravens games and said, just believe and we'll win. Just believe and we'll win. You've got to believe. You've got to believe. That's not Christianity. That's Gnosticism. Belief in the Bible has an object. You believe in Jesus. In who He is and what He did. Not just believe for sake of believing. Huh? This was so these men would believe that Jesus was God and had the authority to bring somebody back from the dead. And so as Jesus looked around and saw that nobody believed, His disciples didn't believe, Mary and Martha didn't believe, these professional mourners didn't believe, Jesus wept. So Jesus wept over their lack of belief in who He was. And this was the same paid mourners at Jesus' journey to the cross as it was here with Lazarus. Now even though these women are official mourners, and even though they are doing their official duty, it is very possible that they are very sincere about grieving over Jesus, if for no other reason than He is pitiful, as He is so weak and struggling and so dirty and bloody, and the Romans are so cruel and heartless. I mean, you'd have to be a monster not to be moved by that scene, right? And so just human pity alone, may have contributed to their weeping. But however sincere these professional mourners may or may not have been, we need to remember that even now, Jesus is in full command. Jesus is not dependent on His mother or Simon or anybody else to accomplish God's will. He is at this very moment issuing out both mercy and judgment. Mercy to Simon and judgment to the unbelieving Jews. This is a very powerful moment. A very important moment. A very serious and profound moment. But it is not a sentimental moment. Jesus hears and sees them weeping. Some may be serious. Some may be just going through the motions. But He is not at this moment trying to help people become sentimental. He is here in His weakened and bloody condition to die for their sins. He is at this moment trying to satisfy God's justice against unworthy rebels by absorbing all of God's wrath against all of the sins of all of God's people. So notice that Jesus doesn't say to these women, thank you ladies for your sympathy. I appreciate your compassion. He is not being rude. He is not here to garner sympathy. He doesn't want compassion for Himself. He wants people to understand who He is and what He is doing so they will repent and trust in Him for salvation. So what does Jesus tell these professional mourners? He says, daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they shall say, Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed. Then they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, cover us. For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?" And I read that as fast as I could and I hadn't been beat. This took a while. We must understand that these women were not Jesus' disciples. They were not saved. They did not love Him. They did not believe in Him. They were Jewish women who had lived their entire lives under the old covenant, and it was their job to mourn at Jewish funerals and processions toward death at the hands of the despised Romans. And even though some of them might have been sincere in showing Jesus pity, they didn't have a clue as to what was going on here with this man. And if these women would have had their way, Jesus would have never died. So even though he is close to death, Jesus issues a divine command to them. Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. In their eyes, Jesus was nothing but a pitiful victim of Roman abuse. And if their mourning was in any way sincere, it was completely off base. In other words, these women were mourning for the wrong reason. Jesus is God. And Him going to the cross is right and good and is the will of God. They were mourning out of human pity and sympathy over what they perceived to be a condemned man and because they were paid. So Jesus commands them to stop weeping for Him as though He is a victim. And to start weeping for themselves and for their children. Now this is so strange to hear a condemned man talk like this. He is the one about to be crucified. Why is He worried about them and their children? Well, why would He be? Well, He tells us why. Why should they stop weeping for Him and start weeping for themselves? Look what He said. For behold, the word for means because. Because behold, the days are coming when they will say, blessed are the barren and the wounds that never bore and the breasts that never nursed. Then they will begin to say to the mountains, fall on us and the hills cover us. There is a judgment coming to this city like the likes of which you have never seen. This is just another way of Jesus telling these women to repent. He is calling all of these people to a place of weeping and repentance before the annihilation comes. We need to remember that the greatest sin since the fall of Adam is being carried out right before them. Evil people are murdering God. Wicked creatures are killing the Creator. Fallen men are assassinating the immortal God. I wrote this on purpose to stir you up. Is it working? Okay. So now I'm going to get all kinds of people in my room. You can't kill God. You can't kill God. Was Jesus God? Did He die? They killed God. They came back alive. How does that work? I don't have a clue. I don't know. That's God. That's why we call Him God. Right? Why do you bow your knee? That's why I bow my knee. He's bigger than me. Yeah? Amen. He's stronger than me. He's smarter than me. Amen to that. Alright. And even though it is God's will for Jesus to die, woe to them by whom this death comes. But once Jesus dies and rises, the partial and inferior revelation of God that He gave to the Jews in the Old Covenant will not be enough. It will no longer be enough for people to simply believe in God. They must now believe in Jesus Christ. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, temple worship will no longer be tolerated. Animal sacrifices will be an abomination. And the litical priesthood will be a farce. After Jesus finishes God's plan and rises from the dead, all who will be saved will be saved by and through Jesus Christ and to His glory, or they will not be saved at all. And so if these faithful Jews do not repent and trust in Jesus Christ, they will perish forever in hell alongside of the hated Romans. If these professional mourners do not weep over their own sins, they will die and spend eternity in a devil's hell. For over three years, Israel had perfect truth, perfect love and perfect grace, perfect obedience, and their response was to reject Him and beat Him and lead Him to die. And if they do not weep over their sins and the sins of their children, they have no hope. Jesus is telling these mourning Jewish women, the day will come upon you when your enemies will surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground, and you and your children will both perish. The fury of the Lord will visit you, and God will raise up a pagan army to become the hammer of God. And when they finish, there will not be one stone upon another, because you didn't recognize the time of your visitation. Now earlier in this same week, before all the beatings, Jesus had already told them, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, recognize that her desolation is at hand. Let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Those in the midst of the city depart. Let not those in the country enter the city, because these are the days of vengeance. And look what He said. And woe to those who are with child, and to those who nurse babies in those days. But there will be great distress on the land and wrath to this people, and they will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive into all the nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. These are prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem that started in A.D. 66 and ended in A.D. 70. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were slaughtered, men, women, and children. And following that, hundreds of thousands more were slaughtered as the Romans massacred Jews in 985 towns throughout the land of Israel. And the ones they didn't kill, they scattered, just like the prophecy said. So weep for yourself if you're not ready for this judgment. And then our Lord's final words as He walks to the cross. A proverb in verse 31. For if they do these things in the green tree, what will happen in the dry? This was a way of saying if everything goes bad when all is well, what's going to happen when it's not? In other words, the green tree symbolizes life, flourishing, fruitfulness, blessing, goodness, happiness, all that's good and rich and well. And if what you see in Jesus is what happens in the case of what is full of life and flourishing, what do you think is going to happen in the day when Jesus is gone back into heaven? A way to interpret this is simply like this. If this is what the Romans can do to the green tree, meaning Jesus, what are they going to do to the dry, meaning Israel? If this brutality is what's happening to the one who is full of life, full of flourishing fruitfulness, if they did this to Him, what in the world is going to happen after Jesus ascends back into heaven? So you professional mourners better weep. You better weep for yourself, not for me. So there's no desire here for self-pity with Jesus. There is immense pity that Jesus has. Tremendous compassion that this beaten and bloody man has for the souls who are lost and are facing not only Roman annihilation, but also the wrath of God. So in this crowd are those who hate Him. In this crowd watching Him stumble and agonize are those who are simply curious and somewhat indifferent. And there are those who, like the weeping women, have certain human sympathy and compassion toward a beaten and bloody Jesus. But know this, Jesus does not want or need your sympathy. Jesus does not want or need your apathy any more than He wants your hatred. Jesus is in this condition by the will of God. Jesus is stumbling through the streets of Jerusalem on His way to die by crucifixion so that every sin, that every single one of God's elect has ever committed or ever will commit, may be paid for, so that we may be saved. So those who are merely sympathetic toward Christ are no better off than the curious crowd, and they are no better off than those who crucified Him. Because salvation does not come by having sympathy for Jesus. Forgiveness of sin does not come by way of human pity that might produce some degree of weeping. No, salvation comes by embracing this beaten and bloody man. By coming to Him and acknowledging that this is what it took to save your wretched soul. Unlike us, Jesus never hesitated. He never flinched. He accomplished His Father's will with joy, even now. And the only way we can be saved is to embrace this horrific scene. And the one that is yet to come on the cross, and the one that sees this same man rise from the dead, absolutely victorious over hell, death, and the grave. So do not issue pity toward Jesus here. Weep, yes, but not for Him. What you see here in this tortured man is part of the glory of God's grace. So weep for yourselves and for your children. Rise early. Stay up late. Pray. Fast. Cry out to God. Not only that God will have mercy on you and save your own soul, but pray and weep for your children that they may run to Jesus and find rest for their souls. Amen. Let's pray.