The Significance of Jesus' Journey to the Cross

You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk

about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Hey, Jeff, good morning.

Was that a late intro? Did we wait like a second too long?

I think we did? It was the mystery, Yeah, it was

just mysterious. People like, what what what's going on? We were short

there? We're actually talking to we're talking during the role, which is a

no, no, yes, we should. We should be engaged. Okay,

by the way, I am engaged. You are the well congratulations,

thank you very much. You're going on a date with your wife tonight.

I am We's date night tonight. We're going to see The Chosen. Oh

nice, Part three release. It's not really part three, it's whatever season

we're in. Was it for I don't know. It's a third part of

season four? Yeah, oh good for you. Yeah. Tons of fun,

a lot of fun. Hey, well today Jeff free Wow, yeah,

Jeff, Only my mom calls me Jeffrey, and that's when I'm in

trouble. Okay, well, Jeffrey, Michael, it just came out.

Yep. We're going to start with a game, a segment called law or

Flaw. Oh, those are fun. But this is the Old Testament version.

Remember when you did the Old Testament version of me. Yes, so

Desiree has got some questions for you. Okay, here, so here here

it is. Is it an Old Testament law or is it a flaw?

A flaw? Okay, okay, are you ready? Yes? Number one,

if a thief breaks in at night, the owner has the right to

use lethal force law to defend their homes. The law it is a lot.

Yeah, Exodus twenty two, that's correct. Okay. Number two,

yep, you're allowed to defend yourself. Number two you cannot wear clothing made

from wool and linen. That's a law. That is a law that is

true. Leviticus nineteen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, those Yes, I

don't know why. To be fair, those were two pretty easy ones.

Yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't know why you're not allowed

to do that back then, right, you're not. You weren't. It

had been symbolic, right something, because blending God did so many things that

were It might have been about comfort. It might have been a comfort thing

too. You think you think it's practical. Yeah, when when back then,

when you mixed different fabrics that made those fabrics heavier and they didn't breathe

as well, so like, so it could have been I want what's best

for you. If you go pure cotton, you're going to be more comfortable,

or I should not be uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah, I should not

be uncomfortable. All right? Well, you know, hey, who knows?

Number three? Homeowners are not allowed to have strangers falling onto their roofs.

That's a flaw. That's a law, onto their roofs, onto their

roofs. Now, it's supposed to be falling off of their roofs. I

think that that was a mistake. You want to look it up. Let's

do it. Yeah, okay, just like google it all right, deuteronomy

or you know, yeah, use version yeah, version Deuteronomy twenty two Bible.

You don't use Deuteronomy. What twenty two twenty two, verse verse eight?

Yeah, what does it say? It's gonna be about falling off?

I tell you, when you build a new house, you must build a

railing around the edge of its flat roof that you will not be considered guilty

and murder if someone falls from the roof. I knew that's what it was.

So they build flat roofs, right, and then they would go up

on there and use the flat roof like a living room, like you and

I did when we were in the islands. That palmetal bug climbed up and

bit you on the neck, that's right. But they would use those those

flat roofs as because we could go up on the roof looking over top of

the mangroves and see the ocean from where we were at. So they would

do the same thing because what was up there besides the pal metal bug that

bit you, what else was up there? It was a breeze. Oh

yeah, sure, right right, So you get up above the town,

you go there, And so they would use their flat roofs like a like

a living room. And so you were required by God's law to put a

railing around the flat roof so that if somebody fell and died off your roof,

you weren't guilty because you put up some prevention. Well look at you.

So I knew it. So the way she worded it was a flaw.

Yeah, there you go, you'll fall onto your roof. They fell

off of your roof, right right right? Yeah? And well, hey,

is it possible that somebody can fall off a roof and land on another

all right, number four, Number four, you should not have in your

bag two kinds of weights, a large and a smethsala. That is a

low. Yeah, that is a lot. You'donomy twenty five, that's correct.

And then finally last one a man. And by the way, that

means you're four for four. Yeah. And that was a business thing.

What they would do is they weight out gold to pay for things, and

so crooks would have lighter weights for like for one hundred dollars, you'd have

the heavy weight for when they paid you. So that way, I mean

a lightweight, so that when they paid you, they paid you less.

But then when you paid them, they'd pull out of their bag the weight

again, but it'd be a heavier weight. And that way, when you

paid them on the scale, you had to put more gold on to pay

them back. And and it looked like the same It looked like the same

weight, but they were filling it full of lead or whatever to make it

heavier on the scales of justice, yes, yeah, yeah, And so

that's that's what that now that one I had no idea of why the two

weights. That totally makes sense. All right, Number five here it is,

and again just as a reminder, you're four for four. There's no

pressure here, jet all right, no pressure, okay, because you're you're

about to get an A plus or nothing. That one five one out of

five is B B minus four out of five or one out of five,

meaning can you miss it? I'm not going to miss it, though.

Okay, here we go. A man shall pour oil onto his offering of

barley flower. That's a law. It says, it's a flaw, is

it really? It says, which, by the way, what a clever

thing for for offering barley oil. But she did four and then one.

It was a gotcha at the end. Uh huh. A man I'll pour

oil onto his offering of barley flower. Huh, he's saying. She's saying,

no way. There were pouring offerings over top of other things, but

I guess not barley flowers. She says, no way. But well she

knows because she's the one who picked it. Of course, I don't know.

Can we trust a person who says fall onto a roof and that was

just you know what, That wasn't a mind thing. That was probably a

keyboard typing thing, right, that's where that was. Okay, Well,

I'm just saying, all right, well I'll take four for five. Hey,

wouldn't it be funny if she copied and pasted it from some website and

it was actually the person who did the website's fault or AI or AI's fault.

Yeah, you can't trust everything that happens on the internet. No,

yeah, we'll not true anyways, so we're giving desra the benefit of doubt.

Yeah, good job, Desrae. All Right, buddy, Well today

we are launching into Jesus being led away to be crucified. Yeah, so

we don't have a lot of verses to read today, right, but uh,

this is kind of packed with a lot of interesting things. So from

a devotional standpoint, this should be a movie moment because the event itself is

heading towards the most significant thing that's ever happened in human history. Right,

and John is the only one that doesn't include this portion of chronological events.

Yeah, Matthew, Mark and Luke are doing their thing together again. Right,

Okay, so we will read Matthew chapter twenty seven, Mark fifteen,

and Luke twenty three and Matthew twenty seven. It says along the way they

came across a man named Simon who was from Syrene, and the soldiers forced

him to carry jesus cross all in one verse. There you go. In

Mark chapter fifteen, verse twenty one, it says a passer by named Simon,

who was from Syrene, was coming from in from the countryside just then,

and the soldiers forced him to carry the cross. Simon was the father

of Alexander and Rufus. And then in Luke chapter twenty three, verses twenty

six through thirty one, it says as they led Jesus away, a man

named Simon, who was from Syrene, happened to be coming in from the

countryside. The soldiers seized him and put the cross on him and made him

carry it behind Jesus. A large crowd trailed behind, including many grief stricken

women. But Jesus turned and said to them, daughters of Jerusalem, don't

weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the

days are coming when they will say fortunate. Indeed are the women who are

childless, the wombs that have not born a child, and the breasts that

have never nursed. People will beg the mountains fall on us and plead with

us, plead with the hills Bury us for if these things are done when

the green For if these things are done when the tree is green, what

will happen when it is dry? Wow? So a lot of things.

One, hey, shout out for North Africa, right, because that's where

that's where Simon was from. So that's kind of cool. And do you

know where side what country Sirreene was in a modern day country? I do

not know. But have you ever heard have you ever Billy Graham talked about

this? No? Are you kidding me? No, I'm not kidding.

I'm just kidding. No, I don't know Simon of Syene, Simon of

Sirene. Excuse me, look at us. We're both on our phones.

I know we're looking stuff up. Oh Libya, Sirene is in modern day

Libya. So Billy Graham talks about the man carrying his cross? Tell you

what? Why don't you give me like twenty seconds just a little bit?

So so riff what had other things to say? And to make it up,

scoopy doop. I don't know what you want me to do, scoopy,

scoopy. So anyways, the uh uh, the tradition or the rule

for Romans when they were going to crucify somebody, is that they would take

the cross beam and they would they would make that the the person who's going

to be crucified carry that through the streets. And it was a sign of

shame. It's very heavy, it was very difficult to do. And then

you add to the fact that in Jesus' case, this would not normally be

the case. But in Jesus case, he'd been beat thirty nine times with

what the Bible would describes as a cat of nine tails and lethal. Forty

was considered lethal, and so thirty nine lashings, he's almost beat to death,

and then they put this crossbeam on him to walk through the city.

It's inconvenient, it's uncomfortable, it's shameful. The crowds are big, everybody's

bumping around on him, and he just couldn't carry it all the way.

And so it's in that case that then finally the Roman soldiers turned to Simon,

because they can compel anybody to do anything, right just about Roman soldiers

compel Simon to carry this thing. So Roman soldiers could compel you to carry

a burden for a specific distance valent of like not a mile, but in

our minds, you know, like a mile, so you couldn't go.

They couldn't compel you to go more than a mile, and but they could

compel you to go. That's one of the reasons why they believe that the

Golgatha was right barely outside the city walls, because the distance from where you

would have had to walk from Pilot's palace to any of those places where they

would have been crucifying was just inside those limits on distance. So yeah,

so they stopped the way, make this African man carry the cross, which

is why Jesus said, if anybody forces you to go one mile, go

to Yeah. Yeah, that's that lines up, by the way. So

this this scene, by the way, is it is very popular. It's

just a very quick I mean, it's just a few seconds. But I

figured why not play an audio Billy Graham because it is extremely inspiring and and

and and and he says, don't you He starts off by saying, and

don't you black people forget one thing? And then at first you're like,

what what is he saying? Right? And then you listen to it and

you're like, this is amazing. Okay, all right, so let me

see when you get here. And don't you black people ever forget one thing.

The man that helped Jesus carry that cross was a black man. And

don't ever forget another thing. Jesus belongs to Africa as much as he does

to Europe and Asia. He was born in that part of the world that

touches Africa and Asia and Europe. And Jesus was not a white man like

me, nor was he as black as some of you. We don't know

what the color of his skin, but it must have been a dark color

like the people of his day, because he was a man like them.

Don't ever say it's a white man's religion or a black man's religion. It's

a world religion. He belongs to the world. And isn't that unbelievably inspired.

I have heard that he pre sat in Chicago, did he? Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's just incredibly inspiring. It's like only

Billy Craham could deliver like a statement. And you're like, that is one

of the best statements ever. Yeah, yeah, Well that is always an

amazing thing to me. That Israel is right there on the edge of the

three major global continents, right, and so the only ones you're missing would

be down towards Australia and over in South America, but for the mass majority

of humanity throughout history, Jesus came from the crossroads of those three continents,

right, So anyways, the Bible also mentions here only in Mark, that

Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus, which is kind of an interesting

thing. Alexander, that's kind of a cool name. Sure, you know,

Alexander conquered the whole world, not that Alexander, but clearly he was

not well because this is substantially after Alexander the Great. But he was probably

named after Alexander the Great, right, So that city, Sirene in Libya

was a major city for the Greek Empire and then for the Roman Empire,

so it was a trading city right on the coast. So that's probably why

he got the name Alexander. But can you imagine having your brother have the

name of one of the coolest people in history, the conqueror of the world,

and then your dad goes, I ran out of the names. We're

gonna call you Rufus, right right, But by the way, Rufus is

mentioned in Romans, So I think the reason why Mark includes Simon was a

father of Alexander. Rufus was because we know Alexander and Rufus are famous in

the church. Later on, so in they're mentioned a couple of times,

but Rufus specifically is mentioned in Romans sixteen. Well, it would make sense

that the reason why they would be standing by, yeah and watching Jesus,

Yeah yeah, followers of his you know, believers in Christ. Yeah.

Well, they had just come in from the country side. So I don't

know that they were Christians then, right, they had just come in from

the countryside. They're with their dad. Well, perhaps this might have been

if it is the same, this might have been that moment. This might

have been that moment, right, yeah, right, which is so they

followed let's play this out a bit so, so Simon then carries the cross

the rest of the way. They find themselves at the location of the Crucifixion,

which then included the shaking that were you know, obviously we're about to

read them all the things that are going to all the things that are going

to come in the next few days. But but the earthquake and then the

Roman centurion. Surely this is the son of God, all these different things,

Maybe perhaps standing around hearing the stories and yeah, this could definitely be

a major conversion moment for that. So you got to remember, you know,

there was no TV back then, and so while it seems gruesome to

us, it was a common thing. Executions were public entertainment. Right.

So here's their dad, who seems to be perhaps a devout Jew. He's

coming to Rusalem to celebrate Passover. He brings his sons. And how important

is it for us to remember how pivotal different moments are in the lives of

our children as we bring them along in our faith. A lot of times,

you know, parents will say, oh, I'm gonna, you know,

not bring my kids to this church thing, or I'm not going to

expect them to be a part of what I'm doing here. It was expected

of a good Jewish dad to bring his Jewish sons, and it was expected

of the sons to go along with the dad. It was just an expected

thing. And it was in that moment when dad was going for a religious

event in his life that he had an encounter with Jesus, and so did

his sons. His sons were there, and you know, that's my story.

My dad came to faith in Christ as a result of somebody left a

little track to a little Bible message on a piece of paper in a restroom

at General Motors. And over the next couple of weeks, God just convicted

my dad. He gave his life to Christ. My dad started taking us

to church, and then not long after I became a follower of Jesus.

I just wonder about that that in this moment, whatever soldier turns to Simon

and says, hey, you carry the cross from here on, What an

impact that had on his sons. Right with this encounter with Jesus, that

Simon had transformed his sons, and then his sons become pivotal leaders in the

church to where Paul mentions them later on in the church. It's kind of

a neat moment to see, and it's just one of those little tiny details.

It's incidental, but it's just in passing it's mentioned. So there's a

note in the Life Application Study Bible that says Luke alone mentions the teams of

Jewish women while Jesus was being led through the streets to his execution, he

just told them not to weep for him, but for themselves, because he

knew in about forty years Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed by the Romans.

Then in Versi Nuber thirty one, where it says you know you already

read it, it says, for if these things are done when the tree

is green, what will happen when it is dry? Then it also says

right here about that, it says this proverb difficult to interpret. Some feel

it means that if the innocent Jesus, which is representative of the green tree,

suffered at the hands of the Romans, what would happen to the guilty

Jews or the dry tree. That's interesting, isn't it. Yeah, because

when I heard it at face value, I was like, I don't know

what that means. Yeah, I don't know what that means. Yeah,

I've always heard that it's talking about the fact that there was life in Jerusalem

while Jesus was there, right, he was the last life, the last

opportunity to step a step up to God in Jerusalem like this, and when

he left Jerusalem for the most part, rejected the religious system based out of

Jerusalem rejected Jesus. So we know that there's an explosion of faith. But

the religious system rose up and attacked those Christians persecuted those Christians, and so

it was live while Jesus was there, And then it was how much worse

is it going to be if, if while all this life is here,

if while God's presence on earth is here, the Romans can kill me?

How bad is it going to be for you when I leave and this place

dries up? And of course we know just a few years later, forty

years later, they just the Romans come through and obliterate. Yes, seventy

AD they tore it down, and only a wall, the foundation of the

wall remains. And the number of people that were murdered was in the tens

of thousands, right it was. I can't remember the exact number, but

it was tens of thousands of citizens of Jerusalem were just wiped out by the

Romans in that moment. So that's why he's saying, after he's gone,

the days are coming on to say fortunate indeed of the women who are childless,

right is because the only thing worse than being massacred by a Roman guy,

a Roman soldier, would be watching your children being massacred. That's what

Jesus is saying there right, So here he is and they're weeping for him.

Oh, how sad it is that they're killing Jesus, and he said,

hey, ladies, it's going to get way worse here. So that's

what happened there. But what an amazing thing. I mean, it's a

sad time, but it's also even in this time he's heading to his own

death, and he has compassion for the people who are crying for him right

right and by the way, as a side note, some people may think

that we planned this perfectly to end at Easter. It definitely we didn't know

that was happening. We knew that was going to happen. But when we

were looking for a series, and you know, we said, hey,

what sort of you know theme should we you know, pursue in the Bible?

Guys, we were just considering all types of themes and the one that

jumped out of us was, let's cover the two hundred and fifty events of

Jesus's life, which gave us almost two hundred and fifty episodes. So we've

been in this series for like over a year A long time, yeah,

a long time, and here it is coming to an end, and it's

appropriate that it ends here atas Yah. Yeah, it's just crazy. So

well, hey, that is our time, and so hopefully we will continue

and pick up you know, where we left off, and we'll see then

on the Bible guys. Mm hmmmmh mh