The Sufferings of Christ
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2014 · 13 July 2014
We return this evening to Matthew 20:17-19, “Now Jesus, going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples aside on the road and said to them, 18 “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death, 19 and deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge and to crucify. And the third day He will rise again.”
It is very clear exactly what Jesus said. This is the third and last prediction of our Lord regarding His death and resurrection. The first one He gave to the disciples in Matthew 16:21. The second one He gave them in Matthew 17:22-23. And this is the third and final prediction. The second adds detail to the first and the third adds detail to the second. This is the most complete prediction of what was going to happen.
People who know the Christian faith realize that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the center of all biblical revelation. He doesn't just say He will die and rise. He doesn't just say He will be crucified and rise. But rather He explains in detail that He will be betrayed, He will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes. They will condemn Him to death, then hand Him over to the pagans where He will be mocked, scourged and finally crucified. And following that, He will rise from the dead.
Now the theme of this particular prediction by our Lord is His sufferings. Some rejectors of the truth have tried to put Jesus Christ into a totally human category. Some of them have been more generous and said He was a well-meaning, loving, gentle, peaceful kind of individual who somehow got caught in a very hostile world and accidentally wound up getting crucified. Others have said that He was a self-styled, would-be conqueror who tried to pull off a coup of sorts only He wound up being a victim of His own revolution.
However, they are all wrong. The sufferings of Jesus Christ were no accident, no miscalculation and they were no surprise to Him. Jesus gives here detail by detail precisely and exactly what is going to happen to Him. In fact, the first recorded words that were spoken out of the mouth of Lord Jesus were, "I must be about My Father's business," and the last words were, "It is finished." And He finished it in His death.
Now Jesus wanted the disciples to understand this. They were so in tune with the glories of the Messiah, those prophecies they seemed well to understand. It was the suffering Messiah they didn't understand. And we don't want to be too hard on them because Jews today with all that they know still don't understand that. You see, the disciples were looking for a lion, they didn't know they needed a lamb.
Now let us look at the passage just to consider several elements of what He said. First, the plan of suffering, Verse 17, "Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples aside on the road and said to them, 18 behold we are going up to Jerusalem." By the way He speaks here we know what He is doing. Behold is an exclamation, it may seem shocking to you, it may not be what you want to do, but we are going to Jerusalem. There is resolution and conviction in His statement.
And you'll notice it says, "going up to Jerusalem." They were already going that way. And when you go up, you really go up. Jericho is about a thousand feet below sea level, Jerusalem is over 5,000 feet above and in a straight line they are fifteen miles apart. That is very steep and that is why the Bible says they were going up. And they were not alone. Matthew 20:29 says there was a great multitude that followed Him.
And as this is Passover time they are attracted because they would normally be on this journey anyway and they have now found themselves in the company of this wonder working Jesus, this astounding teacher and healer. And so here we find Him surrounded by all these people as He is moving toward Jerusalem.
Now Mark 10:32 gives us the parallel account to this, and Mark says the disciples were amazed and afraid because they knew the hostility of the Jerusalem chief priests and the scribes. They had already run into conflict with these Pharisees on several occasions. And they really couldn't see any point in going right into Jerusalem. And so they were somewhat confused.
And many of the disciples had given up on the concept of an immediate Kingdom, at least emotionally if not intellectually. And all they could see was we are going to go right in there and die. In fact, in John 11:16, when Jesus said we are going to go to Jerusalem or to Bethany which is right in that proximity, Thomas who is called Didymus said, "We will all go with You and die too."
Then Mark tells us that Jesus walked in front of them and they followed in the back. He is like a commander who is leading his troups into battle while putting himself in the most dangerous and vulnerable position. Jesus was steadfast in moving toward His own death on behalf of these disciples and they are afraid and amazed, dragging behind Him, feeling both the anticipation of the Kingdom with the fear of death and not knowing what to expect.
Luke in the parallel passage of Luke 18:31 says, "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished." So Jesus says that we have to go because this is the prophetic plan. This is no accident. This was foretold by myriads of prophets. And people who accuse Jesus of being some misguided patriot or some well-meaning peacemaker whose revolution went array, not only do they not understand Jesus but they do not understand the Old Testament either.
This is the culmination of the redemptive plan of God. And you can go back into the Old Testament and you will find passage upon passage upon passage predicting all of the factors of Jesus Christ's life. Zechariah 9:9 says that He would enter into Jerusalem. Psalm 2, that He would know the fury and rage of His enemies. Zechariah 13:7, that He would be deserted by His friends. Zechariah 11:12 says that His betrayal would be for 30 pieces of silver. Psalm 22:16 says that He would be pierced on the cross.
Exodus 12:46 says that none of His bones would be broken, also Psalm 34:20. Psalm 22:18 says that His garments will be parted by casting of lots. Psalm 69:21 says He will be given vinegar to drink. Psalm 22:1 says He will cry out in the pain of distress. Zechariah 12:10 says they will pierce Him with a spear. And Psalm 16:10 says that He will rise from the dead. Psalm 110:1 even says He will ascend to heaven.
All of those things are part of the Old Testament prophets. And if you want a detailed description of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, read Psalm 22, Isaiah 53 and Zechariah's prophecies and you will have all the details of our Lord's death on the cross. So when He is going to Jerusalem, He is on schedule, on target, on plan, no deviation at all.
The death of Jesus Christ is the primary event in history and the primary event in the Bible. This really comes into focus, first, in Genesis 3 because of Adam and Eve's sin. And immediately when they sin, they feel cut off from God. They immediately become aware is that they are naked. And God comes and clothes them with the skin of animals, so there has to be death. And so some animals are slain to make clothes for them. The Old Testament teaches that guilt and separation are covered by sacrifice.
Sacrifice is the only way to deal with guilt and separation from God. This is setting in motion the truth that demands the ultimate Passover lamb. In Genesis 22, a second profound element of sacrificial truth is taught. God gave Abraham a son by the name of Isaac in whom all his hopes resided. He was to be the seed out of whose loins would come a generation of people who would number as the sand of the sea and the stars of heaven.
And as God comes to Abraham and says, "I want you to kill your son," we can see the slaying of all the things that God had promised and planned. And yet Abraham is faithful and committed to do what God says so he packs a bunch of wood on Isaac's back and they start for the hill of sacrifice known as Mount Moriah. They get up there and Abraham puts Isaac down on top of the altar that has been prepared and lifts the knife to kill his own beloved son. And at that moment, God stops his arm and provides a ram in the thicket and he sacrifices the ram and God spares his son.
What sustained Abraham, Hebrews 11 says, and made him willing to do that is that he believed God would raise Isaac from the dead. So committed was he to God keeping His promise that he figured if God says kill him, then God's going to have to raise him from the dead to fulfill His own word. And he believed God would always keep His word. But God held his hand and provided a ram. So the second truth of redemption taught in Genesis is that God will provide a substitute.
Now we see more of God's unfolding redemptive plan, look at Exodus 12 and we get the third principle in relation to redemptive sacrifice. God says that He is going to send the angel of death through Egypt and He is going to slay the first born of every house. If you want to be protected, you have to sacrifice a lamb that is unblemished. Put the blood on the doorposts and the lintel, the angel of death seeing that will pass by you. In other words, you will be delivered from judgment by making a blood sacrifice that is pure.
Now we go from there to the wanderings of Israel in the wilderness at Sinai. God gives the law. And then God begins to unfold through Moses all of the intricate complex elements of the sacrificial system so that sacrifice for those people became a way of living. Every day, every national feast, every act of worship, every approach to God, every day of every year was based on sacrifice. So sacrifice became their way of life.
Now let us bring it all together. From Adam and Eve we learn that sacrifice covers the guilt of sin. From Abraham we learn that that sacrifice can be paid by a substitute which God will provide. From the Passover, we learn that that sacrifice must be unblemished. And finally, from the sacrifice in the law, we learn the importance of sacrifice in a worshiping life. There will be no worship of God without sacrifice.
So God had to provide then a sacrifice to cover sin, through a substitute, who was unblemished, who could redeem His people and provide a special sacrifice that could open up the way of worship forever. And that's why, when Jesus died on the cross, the veil of the temple was torn and the sacrificial system was over because Jesus was the one final sacrifice that created access to God so we could worship from then on without ever having to offer another sacrifice.
So, if you look at the Old Testament, the whole concept of it is that there is the need for a sacrifice. And so, our Lord says we have to go to Jerusalem. The disciples figured we are going there for the Passover, what they didn't know was that they were going there with the Passover lamb. They were thinking Kingdom, Jesus was thinking sacrifice. They were thinking glory, and He was thinking suffering and then glory.
But Jesus is on schedule. He says, particularly in John and at least seven different places, that He will do the will of His Father. And even after His resurrection when He met those disciples on the road to Emmaus, it says in Luke 24:26, "Ought not Christ who have suffered these things and enter into His glory?" Jesus surely took them through a better lesson than we just discussed, but basically a similar one.
They just couldn't comprehend that He had to suffer. 1 Peter 1:11 says, the prophets were looking at what they wrote and they saw two things, they saw the sufferings and the glory that should follow. And if you don't see both of those, you will not understand it. That's why Jews even today have missed Jesus as their Messiah because all they can see is the glory, they don't understand the suffering.
Jesus adds His own prophecies to what the Old Testament prophets say. The Son of Man shall be betrayed to the chief priests and the scribes. They shall condemn Him to death, shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock, to scourge, to crucify, and the third day He will rise again. Jesus is predicting all these things. And only God can tell the story before it happens, right? This is God in human flesh, who else knows all that?
This is no ordinary man. He knew how many husbands a strange woman He had never met had and the one she was living with wasn't her husband. And He knew a conversation before a conversation occurred. He told His disciples to go get the colt, the foal of an ass and He told them the conversation that would happen when they asked the guy for the animal, before the guy even was asked. He forecast the fall of Jerusalem in Matthew 21. I mean, this is God!
But in the meantime, they mocked Him. Remember they put a reed in His hand, crammed a crown of thorns on His head and spit all over Him. And they jeered at Him. And all of that kind of mockery He describes. Then they scourged Him. They lacerated His back with leather thongs in which there were bits of bone and metal in the end. And ultimately they crucified Him. And all the details are there and, of course, He rose from the dead.
Now let us look at the amount of His suffering. Look at Isaiah 53, verse 2 says there's no beauty that we should desire Him. That is the suffering of being rejected. And then you have the suffering in verse 4 of bearing other peoples griefs and sorrows. Then you have the pain of betrayal and humiliation and unjust guilt. But the greatest suffering is the suffering of the soul being stricken and afflicted by God Himself, where He cries out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?"
Well, we have seen the plan, the prediction, the amount and now let us see the power of sufferings at the end of verse 19, "The third day He shall rise again." Suffering is not the end. And as it said in Psalm 16:10, God would never leave His soul in the grave, He would never let His holy one see corruption. Jesus burst out of that grave and is alive to this very day and that is the power over His sufferings. Bless God for that. Jesus conquered death. Let’s pray.