In Luke 23:33 we read, "They crucified Him." They say that God is no respecter of persons; I suppose that is true scripturally. They say further that He is no respecter of places, but in this they err. Earth contains one spot that exceeds all others to the heart of God. It is found just outside the ancient waif of Jerusalem, a place called "Calvary."
No matter which of the Gospels you read, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, they all take you to that same place, Golgotha. In your mind's eye you are-transported to the top of that lonely hilt, the "place of the skull." Here, tragic lives and murderous careers found an untimely end. The place was a setting for blood and death.
The horror and the glory of six millenniums of human history came to focus here. Hate and love reach their zenith together as the place of execution becomes a place of sacrifice While sin mounts to fill to the brim earth's cup of wrath, Heaven is busy erecting a sacrificial altar upon which the Lamb of God must for sinners be slain.
In our mind's eye we climb that hill. A wild, blood-thirsty multitude surrounds us and ushers us rudely into the presence of three crosses of wood. One stands in the middle in central prominence against a lowering sky. A feeling of mixed wonder and terror steals over us, that is HIS cross.
Here is dying the most perfect man who ever lived. His question to the authorities was "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" That question was not, nor has it ever been, answered. His lips spoke the greatest truths ever proclaimed. No doctor perfected more cures than did He. The blind received back their sight. Deaf ears were made to hear. The lame walked and the dead came to life at His command.
Soldiers sent to take Him prisoner, returned amazed, bearing only these words, "Never man spake like this man." The judge, when trying Him for His life, said, "I find no fault in Him." Yet here He is, mangled on a tree. Against the background of all the mocking voices and the rabble of it all, there is a voice lifted up which says, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.
The incarnation of Christ is a great mystery. Explain it you cannot, but believe it you must. He who thirsted had the power to quiet the waves. He who hungered had power to feed the multitudes. Jesus was older than His mother. Mary did not give birth to a personality when the Christ child was born. She merely brought forth a body, and a personality that existed with God before the world was ever created, entered that body and became our Jesus. Hebrews 10:5 bears this out: "A body hast thou prepared for me." Jesus helped create the very atmosphere His mother breathed and the earth on which she walked. His hand helped form the star that shined on the night of His birth. He helped form the trees from which the lumber was made that formed His cradle and later the cross on which He died.
"Now the birth of Jesus was on this wise. When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with “child of the Holy Ghost" (Matthew 1:18). Oh, the depths of that mystery! God infinite form sleeping on the bosom of Mary. God fleeing for His life into Egypt to escape Herod. God with blistered feet trudging the roads of Nazareth. God with calloused hands slinging a hammer in a carpenter's shop in Nazareth. God in agony in Gethsemane. God with torn, bleeding back in Pilate's judgment hall. God crushed under the weight of a heavy cross going up a mountainside. Heaven knew it, and earth found it out. He whose lips gasped "it is finished" atop dark Calvary, was the incarnate God dying that men might be saved.
Some say His greatest works are to be found in His teachings. Certainly these eclipse those of all other men. If His teachings were practiced in all the world, wars would cease and the world would become a paradise overnight. Yet His teachings were not His primary mission.
Some say, “His great example was the greatest legacy He left us.” Certainly He did show forth a perfect example and died an irreproachable death. Yet those facts remain minor to His supreme mission.
There are those who feel that He is best remembered by His noble and unselfish works. We cannot minimize His charitable and philanthropic spirit or His healing miracles. However, these were incidental to the main purpose of His coming to earth.
Then why did He come? He came to die. John, preaching on the banks of Jordan, labeled as the greatest prophet born to woman, did not lack for crowds. When he unleashed his attack on sin, every eye must have been fixed upon Him. However, one day all eyes turned in another direction, and John looked to see what the attraction was; and He saw Jesus coming! John recognized Him from that moment and said, "He must increase and I must decrease."
Grasping for a title, John turns back to his crowd. He could have called Him the "Messiah" in accord with the Old Testament prophesies. He might have borrowed from Isaiah and called Him "Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." He could not have spoken amiss by using these terms. He might have said, "Behold the Christ," for that is who He was. However, John said, "Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." The shadow of the cross always loomed over Jesus' life. Untold loneliness and agony would be His lot. On that darkest day of gloom when the sound of hammer upon nails rang through the valley and across Jerusalem, the bleeding body of our Savior was lifted up to die on a cross. "For this cause came I into the world," He declared.
Man is a sinful creature. He is corrupt in character and conduct. The evidence is accumulative and final. Like a vile serpent, man's sins have left a horrid trail from Eden's Garden ‘till now. Solomon summed it up when he said, "There is not a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not." Again David asked, "If thou Lord shouldest mark our iniquities, 0 Lord, who shall stand?" As surely as the Bible declares man's sinfulness, with equal strength does it declare God's holiness. Sinful man and a holy God Two opposites at work, and herein lies the need for the atonement.
Oh that bitter cup that He drank. The cursing and blasphemies spued out by sinners was in that cup. A rascal plucks the virtue from a woman's life to satisfy his lust: adultery and fornication was in that cup. An innocent wife was murdered by a drunken husband: murder was in that cup. A degenerate snatches a baby from its crib and demands a ransom: kidnapping was in that cup. The blackest deeds of nameless shame spawned in the pit of hell was in that cup.
It is midnight now and the dwellers of the city have retired, yet there is one set of eyes that will close in death before they close in sleep. He is a lonely, solitary figure in a garden just east of the city. Only a few yards away are those who are supposed to be watching with Him, but they have gone to sleep. He prays, and even the chill of the night cannot absorb the sweat upon His brow. Afterward it was written, "And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."
What is the agony that torments Him so? Hear Him again: "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will but as thou wilt." It seems we almost hear Him saying, "Father, must I drink this cup?" "Father, I was with you in Creation. I have never sinned. I have never fasted the forbidden fruit. My record is clean and pure I am one with thee in eternity and I stood with you that day on the mountain of infinity and looked down that dark valley of space and heard you say, "Let there be light." I am holy as thou art holy, and must I, who have never done any wrong, drink this polluted cup of vileness? Must I who am sinless, become sin?"
The tears of white-winged seraphs must have fallen like rain over Judea when God gave. His answer, He said in essence: "This is the only way to be just and the justifier of them who believe. You must drink it, not just a part, but all
His Garden prayer was not that of a coward. Jesus fearful? Jesus afraid? No, a thousand times no! He was a man among 'men. He was not some long-haired, effeminate-looking sissy as the silly pictures hanging on your walls make Him appear. Jesus was a total "He-man." I believe He could have roped branded, vaccinated and dehorned a steer at one operation and by only His strength. I believe He could have mounted the wildest bronc that ever pawed the dust and rode him to a finish Yes, He was a man - not some sissy. It is only when we learn the significance of the cup, analyze its contents and learn of His perfect sinlessness, that we understand why He prayed thus, "Take this cup away."
The rebels have arrived now with sticks and staves; they have come to lead Him away. Now He is in the judgment hail and the puney hands of men smite His cheeks. They beat Him with reeds, they blindfold Him and shoot out their lips at Him, "Prophesy who it was that smote thee." They plat a crown of thorns, not of gold. They lay the lash upon Him and put a robe of shame upon Him and say, "Hail, King of the Jews." Isaiah 53:3 describes it thus: "He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth."
'What marvelous silence! Why add anything to His already perfect testimony? Had not the prophets of old summed it all up when they said, "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed"
Though Jesus did not answer them, others did speak. The muffled voice of a woman is heard' as she says, "Have thou nothing to do with this just man" (Matthew 27:19). A voice cries out from the judge's bench, "Why, what evil hath he done?" (Matthew 27:23). Later, a Centurion bows his head at the foot of the cross and says, "Truly this was the Son of God" (Matthew 27:54). They crucified Him.
It was not a pretty sight. No hangman's noose, no electric chair or gas chamber can deal as terrible a death as crucifixion. No instrument of death ever dealt more terror to the hearts of the condemned. The -cross is not a mere trinket as some try to make it. Don't wear it around your neck, ladies, or on your lapel, men, unless its power has changed your life and brought you to God Better to wear a small gallows around your neck or a miniature electric chair on your lapel —for these symbols represent a more merciful form of death than does a cross. Isaiah describes it thus: "His visage was so marred, more than any man and his form more than the sons of men" (Isaiah 52:14).
The old sun has looked down on many tragic scenes through the years. Wars have raged beneath it. Bodies have lain in pools of scorching blood under its rays. Famine and pestilence alike have been viewed by it. Acts of infamy, pollution, etc, yet none of these have ever made it blush. Murder, rape and pillage have never made it frown. Through it all it has continued to look, its surveillance has gone on uninterrupted. But on this day of which we speak, the day of the great atonement, it was different. Weighted down with all the sins of all the world, the broken, lacerated Son of God raised His bleeding, lacerated face to heaven and cried, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" When the sun beheld that sight, though it was high noon, it shuddered and trembled, it blushed and frowned, it drew its curtain of darkness over its face and drenched the earth in the darkest night it had ever known. Here was a scene that made the sun hide its face; it was earth's greatest horror picture.
How much He suffered I do not know. This I do know: He drank the cup, He walked the burning corridors of death, and robbed the grave of its victory. He led captivity captive, and finally He climbed the golden stairways of the stars back to His Father's home. At last, with the golden pavement under His feet, He sat down at the right hand of the Father. There behold Him, the King of Kings, adored by angels, adored by God, worshipped by saints. He is man's only Savior. The keys of death and hell are at His side; the gift of eternal life is in His hand.
Hallelujah!
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