The Public Humiliation of Jesus, Matthew 27:31-35

Matthew 27:31-35 is our base passage. I've been going through this final period in our Lord's life on the earth during the time of the incarnation. I had slowed down to give us a full picture of what He was going through by combining the accounts that we have in the four Gospels. That gives us a full picture and it helps us to put all of these parts together so that we can understand it a little better. As we have covered this in the previous lessons we have seen that Jesus has now gone through the six trials—the three religious trials and in the three civil or criminal trials. He has finished the sixth trial by Pilate, and Pilate has now acquiesced to the pressure of the religious leaders and the multitudes that have been ginned up by the religious leaders to oppose anything less than crucifixion, and we hear the crowd screaming for crucifixion. Their bloodlust is up and they will be happy with nothing less then the death of our Lord.

The Roman soldiers have begun to beat him and to scourge him, first with the Roman flagrant which would have ripped the skin off of His back and dug deeply into the muscles of His back and his sides as the straps of leather with stone and metal embedded in them would have wrapped around his body and just ripped the flesh and produced a significant amount of bleeding at this particular point as they have scourged Him.

Then they have ridiculed Him. They have mocked Him and derided Him, and they have made a crown of thorns that they have forced down on His head, which would have again brought more bleeding. Their beatings have left his face unrecognizable. He has been brutally punished and tortured as they prepare to lead him away to crucifixion.

In John 19:6 we saw that when the chief priests and officers saw Him, they cried out, saying, "Crucify Him, crucify Him!" And Pilate who has washed his hands of this is you take Him and crucify Him, I find no fault in Him. He is faultless. Even Pilate saw that He was without sin. He was being taken to the cross with no legal basis whatsoever, but the religious leaders claimed that He had committed blasphemy by claiming to be the Son of God, claiming to be the King of the Jews. Indeed He was the Son of God; He was the King of the Jews. He is the Son of God today and the King of the Jews, and He went to the cross for what He is.

In John 19:15 the crowds cry out—scream out, literally: "Crucify Him, Crucify him!" They reject His claim to be the King, which has been the theme in Matthew, that Jesus is presented as the King of the Jews, and they reject that saying, "We have no king but Caesar", and then were told in verse 16 Pilate delivered Him to them to be crucified. Then they took Jesus and led him away.

Have you ever given much time to just reflecting upon what is going on, step-by-step, stage-by-stage, during this time and throughout this particular day? Here we have Jesus. He is the Son of Man and is also called the second Adam. He is everything that a human being was designed to be by God. He was designated the one who would receive the kingdom and be given the kingdom, according to Daniel chapter 7; and yet, He has been rejected by His people. As John says in John chapter one, "He came to His own, but His own received Him not". He was rejected by most of them, accepted by only a few, but He is also the Son of God, the eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God who rules over the universe. He holds it together in His deity and He had come to the earth to demonstrate His love for mankind and to pay for the sins of the world. Yet He is rejected; He is maligned; He is beaten; He is tortured; He is ridiculed, and He is sentenced to one of the most torturous and painful deaths ever devised in human history—all to pay for your sins and mine.

So this morning, what I want to do is begin to walk step-by-step through the different stages of the crucifixion.

As we look at the accounts in Matthew and Mark and Luke and in John we see certain similarities, but each author in relation to their own purposes will focus in on different things, different aspects, add different perspectives related to their particular focus and their particular purpose. Often as we read through these accounts we think there might be some contradictions. Things are little different, sometimes they're told in different order. Some of these events happened simultaneously and so one writer might list them in one order, another writer may list them in another order, but actually they're just saying this happened, this happened, and this happened, and they're not giving a chronological sequence. They are simply describing what has happened.

I was impressed many years ago when we had Dr. Fruchtenbaum here and he taught through the life of Messiah from a Jewish perspective. He identified 32 different stages in this period from the time they lead Jesus away from Pilate until the completion of the crucifixion. I sat down in Kiev about four days ago and started reading through the Gospel accounts and started making my own list of the stages, and I got through about the first 20 (I haven't completed it) and compared those with his, and was surprised that they are pretty much identical. The only difference is that he tends to focus on Mark as a priority Gospel; I focus on Matthew and Luke to give the chronology. So our order is a little different, but the events or are still basically the same.

This morning is the first part of this, which is the procession to Golgotha, stages one through five. Pictures we often see of Jesus carrying His cross are not accurate. In a crucifixion the criminal, the one who was charged, carried the crosspiece. He didn't carry the whole cross. The vertical piece was already in place, so they just carried the crosspiece. The streets were lined with people. There were the women who are weeping and wailing and lamenting for Jesus, as well as the two other criminals there in this procession as well. These probably were professional mourners and we will look at that because Luke is the only one who brings that element out. But we must understand how weak our Lord was at this point, having gone through the beatings and the whippings and everything else so that He would not have been able to carry that cross for very long.

In the first stage we simply read in each Gospel account the simple sentence: "They led Jesus out to be crucified". They don't embellish it; they don't go into any sort of detail, it's very simple. As I read the accounts again and again I'm impressed at the economy of words used by the Holy Spirit, how simple the description is, because the content of it is what becomes so powerful. In Matthew 27:31, they led Him away to be crucified. Mark 15:20 uses a little different word, same base: "They let Him out to be crucified". That is, out from the Praetorium. John 19:16, "Then they took Jesus and led Him away". He uses the same verb that Mark uses, apago in the Greek.

Here we are going to have to take a few moments to get adjusted to the geography of the city of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. We will come back to this time and again dealing with different aspects of this of this event. The map itself is facing north. To the east there is the temple complex. Just to the northeast of the temple complex is the Antonio fortress, the scene of all of our action is on the western side of what is now the old city of Jerusalem, and then just to the north of that just if you follow this yellow line here, it describes this wall that is called Josephus's second north wall that he speaks about. It comes from the north to the south here makes a corner here—this is very important to determining the location of Golgotha—and then comes south, and then it joins Josephus's first north wall. That's important. This purple wall is the Josephus's third wall, not built until 41. Not realizing that has caused a lot of confusion down through the centuries, and it wasn't determined until about the 1970s that this purple wall was not the wall at the time of Jesus. So, as the Scripture says Jesus was crucified outside the wall, which is this wall that is outlined in yellow. So this action is taking place here.

Now if you come from a Roman Catholic background you're familiar with the way of tears, the Via Dolorosa built on the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. And on that tradition Jesus is brought to the Antonio fortress where that they identified that, and that was an older identification. Many people agreed with that, that this is where the Praetorium was located where Pilate would have tried Jesus. That is not the view anymore. It has been discovered that the Praetorium was located near Herod's fortress.

This is near the Joppa gate on the on the west side of Jerusalem so the Via Dolorosa has Jesus coming from the Antonio fortress. In fact, if you walk the Via Dolorosa and Jerusalem there is an archway there and embedded in that are the words, "Behold, the man", marking the site where they believe is where Pilate made this statement to the crowd. I don't think any of that is accurate. I believe that on the basis of what I've been reading in recent years. From the Praetorium to Golgotha is probably 200 to 300 yards at the most, probably closer to 200 yards, so this is the area we are going to zero in on right now. Jesus would have been taken out from the Praetorium and then He would walk north to the location of Golgotha where He was crucified.

We learn from Plutarch that it was the standard procedure for every criminal was to be executed to carry his own cross on his back. That wasn't the full cross, just the cross beam, and that would be the instrument of his own punishment, according to according to the Plutarch. Usually it was laid across the back of the neck or shoulders. According to one writer that they would carry it bent over like carrying a sack of potatoes on their back. Then there are others and you will see artist depictions where it's high, going across the shoulders. I'm not sure there's going to ever be any consensus on just exactly how that transpired.

But Jesus could not carry it for long; He was physically too weak. So in the second stage we learn that the soldiers grabbed a man from the crowd named Simon of Cyrene, and they conscripted him to carry Jesus' cross. Luke 23:26 tells us: "When they led Him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, coming in from the country, and placed on him the cross to carry behind Jesus."

See if you remember what I showed you on the map, outside of that wall there is a gate, and there was a road that came in from the west. So as travelers came into the city they would be walking by this place of execution, and the whole point in the Roman system was to crucify those who are threats to the power of Rome and to make their execution, as horrible as it possibly could be, and do it in a place where people would see it. It would be a lesson to them.

Simon was a Cyrenian, from an area of Libya today, located on the coast. It was a Roman colony, a Roman city. He was a Jew from that area and he had come to Jerusalem to worship at Passover. There is interesting statement made by Mark in relation to him, that he is the father of Alexander and Rufus. That wouldn't make a whole lot of difference for most of us, but Mark is writing to the church in Rome. Most people believe, and I think accurately, he is writing for Peter, writing down Peter's account of the life of Jesus, and so he mentions Alexander and Rufus because they would have had meaning to his audience. And if we read in Romans 16:13 we read a statement by Paul at the end of the epistle, "Greet Rufus, a choice man in the Lord, also his mother and mine".

There are many who believe that that this statement by Mark indicates that this is the same Rufus, and if so then he was the son of Simon and would indicate that Simon had become a believer. Although we can't say that with certainty, it certainly makes sense that one who had helped the Lord carry His cross to Golgotha would have seen something different, just as the centurion did, that this was not a man who screamed and resisted and yelled and wept as the others did, but one who was calm and relaxed all the way to His death.

The third step on the way to Golgotha is Jesus' comments to a group of women that are mourners. We learned that there is a multitude of women, probably professional mourners. Some may have been women from among His own followers, but I believe there they were professional mourners. You also have the other two who were crucified with Jesus, who were being taken to Golgotha at the same time. These professional mourners are weeping and wailing. According to Luke 23:27, they mourned and they lamented Him, so they are wailing, they are weeping, they are beating their breasts. They are going through all of the external motions of those who were deeply grieved, whether they were actually or not is not the point of this episode. The point of this episode is what Jesus says to them.

Luke 23:28 ^NASB But Jesus turning to them said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children".

I think it is fascinating that as our Lord is going through all of this physical torment, as He has been tortured, as He has been beaten, as He has attempted to carry the cross-beam to the site of the execution, that He pauses along the way, and you see this statement of grace and compassion; genuine compassion to these women as He addresses them. He warns them of that which will come. He addresses them as the daughters of Jerusalem, not as women but as the daughters of Jerusalem. These are women of Jerusalem, and He is to warning them of the coming assault and destruction of Jerusalem in this statement.

Jerusalem will bear the brunt of the Roman wrath in the Jewish revolt of 66 to 70. Jerusalem will be finally destroyed after months of siege and so many thousands, hundreds of thousands, will be killed at that time. And so Jesus says don't weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. He goes on to say, "For indeed, the days are coming …" And this statement, "Behold, the days are coming", is as it were lifted out of the prophets. It indicates that a key period of God's wrath is coming, and it is a warning that "days are coming, in which they will say", and so this is stated as a proverb, but it's a proverb that is the reverse of what would normally be said. Normally there would be a statement of blessing. "Blessed are those whose wombs are fruitful; blessed are those who have many children; blessed are those who are fruitful and who multiply"; but in this coming time of judgment, everything will be turned backwards and upside down, everything is turned over because of the horrors of what will take place.

What He says here is three things. He says, "Blessed are the barren", that is, those who were never able to have children. Secondly, He reinforces that with a synonymous ideal, "wombs that never bore", and third, "breasts which never nourished". He is emphasizing through this threefold repetition, blessing on those who have no children because of the horrors that are going to come at this time. Then in Luke 23:30 He states, “Then they will begin TO SAY TO THE MOUNTAINS, ‘FALL ON US,’ AND TO THE HILLS, ‘COVER US.’"

What is going on here? This is a quotation from Hosea chapter 10 verse eight. It is a statement of a historical event that is a picture of a future time of judgment. We've gone through this before. We talked about the different ways that the Old Testament is used and quoted in the New Testament, that sometimes it's a literal prophecy and with a literal fulfillment such as in Micah 5:2 where the prophecy is that Bethlehem would be the birthplace of the Messiah. It's a literal prophecy, literal fulfillment. But then there are other examples where you have a historical statement. For example, in Hosea, where it states that out of Egypt I will call my son that's talking about something that happened historically at the time of the Exodus and that but that is a picture or a type of something that will happen in the time of the Messiah.

This is being quoted that way by the Lord, that the this event that happened in the Old Testament is a picture of also of future judgment, and at that future judgment will call upon the mountains to cover us, to hide us, to protect us, from the wrath that is coming. The historical event relates to the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel, known as Samaria. The northern kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 BC. And the statement goes on to say, "As for Samaria, her king is cut off like a twig on the water. Also the high places …" That is the high places where they worship the false idols. "… the sin of Israel shall be destroyed. The thorn in the thistle shall grow on their altars." Where else do we read of thorn and thistle combined? Go back to Genesis chapter 3, and the judgment. So this is a picture of judgment on their sin, and what they say as they are being surrounded and defeated by the Assyrians is they will call to the mountains to cover them and to the hills to fall on them. This is a vivid metaphorical expression as they are expressing how horrific this judgment is, and their desire just to crawl into the ground and to be protected.

We also see the same imagery in Revelation chapter 6 with the sixth seal judgment, as there is this horrific asteroid shower that that is slaughtering thousands upon the earth, that the Kings and the leaders of the earth are crawling into the caves, shaking their fists in God and seeking calling upon the mountains to protect them and to cover them. So this is clearly a statement that is used to describe the horrors of divine judgment. Luke 23:30 uses an Old Testament passage talking about judgment upon Israel to depict the horrors that will come again in AD 70, when the Romans will come and destroy Jerusalem. He says that it is better for them to mourn for themselves than to mourn for Him.

In the next verse we read a statement that seems somewhat little bit obscure to us. Luke 23:31 “For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

This was a statement that was made in the Old Testament, in Ezekiel 20:47, and what this statement of Jesus is saying basically is: "If I suffered this much and I am innocent, how much more are you going to suffer because you are guilty?" That's the idea there in that statement. It emphasizes that if they do these things in the Greenwood when everything is right, when everything is good and green and prosperous, if they will destroy the King at that time, what then will happen when things are dry?"

David Flusser, who was a Jewish scholar at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and wrote a number of large works dealing with Jesus and the New Testament, states regarding this verse, "The Greenwood is difficult kindle while the dry is easy to burn. If the life of the pious Jesus ends with a tragedy, what will happen to sinful Jerusalem? The disaster becomes inevitable, but there is hope for Jerusalem in a distant future when the times of the Gentiles will be completed". This is an excellent understanding of the meaning of this passage.

Jesus is warning about what will come because of their rejection of Him, because of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit that was announced in Matthew chapter 12, that unforgivable sin; not that it wasn't forgivable for eternity, but that in time that generation would go through the divine judgment of AD 70.

This brings us to the fourth stage, the arrival at Golgotha called the place of the skull. So we need to ask a couple of questions. What exactly is the meaning of this word Golgotha, and what is the meaning of the word Calvary? What does that refer to when it says it's the place of the skull? Does that mean that this place looks like the skull, that the rock wall there which is actually an abandoned quarry, that it if you looked at it, it would look like a skull, or as some suggest, does it mean that there were skulls of the dead scattered on the ground? Or as others suggest, does it just simply mean that there were graves there and, of course, skulls inside of the grades?

Let's look at the meaning of the word for Golgotha and Calvary. Matthew, Mark and Luke use the word Golgotha. If it is an Aramaic term, that indicates the place of a skull. That's what it means. Each of the Gospel accounts uses the word "place". Luke uses the Latin phrase when they came to the place called Calvary. John in his Gospel says, "He, bearing a cross went out to a place called the place of a skull which is called in Hebrew Golgotha". The term Golgotha is the Aramaic word, which means skull, so this is characteristic in some way of this location. The Latin phrase for the place of the skull is calvaria locus as it is in the Latin Vulgate. This is where we get our English word Calvary and it is simply the Latin equivalent of Golgotha, the place of the skull.

There are these two basic views. One is that some topographical feature looked like a skull and so it was named after that. Dwight Pentecost, longtime professor Dallas seminary, wrote an excellent book called The Words and Works of Jesus Christ, states that the name cannot have been derived from the skulls which lay about since such exposure would have been unlawful, and hence must've been due to the skull-like shape and appearance of the place.

I think he makes a mistake there in thinking there are only two options, i.e. it either looked like a skull or there were skulls on the ground. He misses the third option. Others who have taken that view, that it was called the place of the skull because of a topographical feature are such as Charles Gordon. Charles Gordon was known as Gordon of Khartoum. I found always have found him interesting. I saw his Bible at the British Museum one time and you could barely read the text because of all of the notes that he wrote everywhere. He was considered a military genius. He had served in the British Army and then was hired as sort of a mercenary general to put down a Chinese rebellion called the Taiping Rebellion, which he did, and which earned him another nickname, which was Chinese Gordon after his adventures in China. He came back and toured the Middle East. He had his own view of where things were, he had his own location for Ararat, he had his own location for where Golgotha was located, and he had his own location for where the tomb was located.

This is a depiction of Gordon's Calvary. As you can see it looks something like there might have been at one time only two of these holes there, looking like a skull. But there are pictures of this 100 years ago where the erosion wasn't as severe as it is today, and it doesn't look quite as much. So if you extrapolate back about 2000 years you would wonder if it look anything like a skull, but this is the location of what is today called, not Gordon's tomb are Gordon's Calvary, but the garden tomb. They were able to shift the language there just a little bit. It still sounds alike and this is located on the north side of Jerusalem. This is a place that many evangelicals love to visit. I love to take my tour groups there when we go because it has more of the feel of what the area where Jesus was crucified was actually like. When you go to where many believe Jesus was crucified there is a church there. It is a Greek Orthodox Church and it has all of the smells and bells associated with Eastern orthodoxy, and this really turns off a lot of American evangelicals. However that is almost without a doubt the accurate location where Jesus was crucified.

One of the biggest weaknesses of this view is that the identification Gordon's Calvary or the garden tomb only goes back to 1883. From 33 until 1883 there was no alternative location ever suggested for the crucifixion other than the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. In fact, Arnold Fruchtenbaum states that 13 consecutive Jewish bishops of Jerusalem all identified that as the location of the crucifixion. In the 1970s two Jewish archaeologists in Jerusalem made the following discoveries. They pointed out that the garden tomb property is right next door to the French school of archaeology. All 0of the tombs there in that area are first temple tombs that go back to the eighth and ninth centuries BC. Jesus was laid, the Scripture says, in a new tomb where nobody had ever been laid before, according to John, 19:41.

But when we come to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, there are a number of tombs there and in that surrounding area, that have been discovered and they are all second temple, late second temple period tombs, right at the time of Jesus. Excavations in the 1970s discovered in the northeast part of the church the foundations of Hadrian's Roman forum on which he built the temple of Aphrodite in 135 after the bar Kokbar rebellion. What Hadrian did, because he hated the Jews so much, they were so rebellious—there had been this rebellion in 66 to 70 and another rebellion in 135—that he wanted to blot out all memory of the Jews, so he renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, and he built pagan temples on the holy sites where Christians and Jews would worship. He built a temple to Jupiter and Aphrodite, and another temple on the Temple Mount, and he built another temple on the site of the Church of the Nativity, which is probably the site where Jesus was born. He didn't build them in other places, he put them right there in those locations, so we can thank Hadrian for marking those locations for us for subsequent generations.

But right here you have the first century tombs and you can go in there, and this indicates that at in the first century this area was the location of tombs, which is fits the biblical description.

In this area here is a large lot tent-like structure which covers the location of the of the tomb of Jesus, and it surprises people because just across here you see the exposed rock, which is the rock of Calvary or the rock of Golgotha. The distance between these two is about 60 yards. Jesus was laid into a tomb that was right nearby, and today all of that is under one church.

Jesus has arrived and they're going to give Him some something to dull the pain. They offer Him wine with gall, the Scripture says, but He did not drink it. He tasted it, according to Matthew, but He wouldn't drink it because it knew that it would numb His senses and He knew he needed to fully be fully present with all of his faculties present to fight the spiritual battle that was going to take place on the cross. Matthew says they mingled gall, Marks says they mingled myrrh with it. They would have some different things that they would mix in with the wine that would function as an anesthetic in order to numb the pain. This is documented by the Babylonian Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin: "

“Again, what of R. Hiyya b. Ashi’s dictum in R. Hisda’s name: When one is led out to execution, he is given a goblet of wine containing a grain of frankincense, in order to benumb his senses, for it is written, Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto the bitter in soul.”

Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin, Folio 43a

This was the normal procedure. And then as we conclude today I want to get into the first stage of the next section, the first three hours. The wrath of men as they continue to ridicule and mock the Lord on the on the cross—the first three hours. The second three hours is when God will pour out His wrath upon Jesus.

The crucifixion takes place. As they arrived at the crucifixion site Simon has been carrying the cross on his back. He lowers it to the ground. Jesus has been walking along. The Roman soldiers now must nail His hands to the cross-beam. I don't think they did this gently. I don't think they asked. Well, Jesus, would you lie down on the ground and put your hands on the beam. They have abused him and beaten him. They probably knocked Him down (which wouldn't take much force), forced Him down on the ground, and held His hands down. He did not resist; He didn't fight; He didn't protest his innocence, because "like a lamb before his shearers is dumb", so Isaiah says, "He opened not His mouth". Then they would have taken the spikes and nailed them through, just below the base of the hand. The reason it wouldn't go into the Palm is because the palms would not support the weight because of the way the bones radiate out from the wrist. The word in the Greek describing the hand really covers everything from the forearm out to the hand. And so they began to crucify him.

There were four stages to the crucifixion. First of all, as we've already said the criminal would carry the particular him to the execution site. Second, he would be tied or nailed to the cross beam. Third, the beam would then be raised by forked holes. They would have these strong poles that soldiers on either side would hook them under the cross beam and lift that up and set it on top of the vertical post.

Here is a diagram there were different types of crosses that were used. Here is the T shape where they could still affix a title above it, or it's actually the indictment against the criminal. This is the shape that were often used to, a T type of shape, and then this was when they would just use a tree or post, more common in Italy than it was in the Middle East. The two on the left were the most common ones on the Middle East, and I think the majority opinion today is that it was the capital T shape that we have here, and down below you can see a picture of someone being crucified on the cross, where the sign listing the indictment that he was the Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews is posted just above Him.

This would conclude the fourth stage of the crucifixion where a tablet or some other sign would be that specified the crime that was the indictment would be nailed to the top of the cross or hung around his neck. And then the real suffering, the physical suffering intensified, leading eventually to that last three hours on the cross. First Peter 2:24 tells us, "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed".

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