The Sufferings of Christ

Matthew 20:17‑19

     We return again, this morning, to our gospel of Matthew which we've been studying for many years now with great blessing.  And we're not quite finished.  We're looking at the twentieth chapter of Matthew.  Three verses set in the middle of this great twentieth chapter, and I want to read them to you, verses 17, 18 and 19.

     And Jesus, going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples aside along the way and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes and they shall condemn Him to death and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge and to crucify.  And the third day He shall rise again.

     That is very clear.  There is no question about what He means.  The words are simple.  The thoughts are simple.  The terms are precise.  It's very clear exactly what He said.  And that's exactly the way He intends it.  This is the third and last prediction of our Lord regarding His death and resurrection.  The first one He gave to the disciples in chapter 16, verse 21.  The second one He gave them in chapter 17, verses 22 and 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 a fuller prediction than any of the others.

     Now it is obvious to anyone who knows anything about the Christian faith that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the center of biblical revelation.  That it is the most important Christian truth.  And so we are dealing with very crucial material here.  The theme of this particular announcement, however, takes us beyond the earlier two which simply talked about Him dying and rising and this one seems to stress the nature of His suffering and the details of it.  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 detail by 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.  Tremendous amount of detail is given.

     Now the theme of this particular prediction by our Lord is His sufferings.  And He details them out.  Some rejectors of the truth have tried to put Jesus Christ into a totally human category.  Some of them have been more generous than others 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 been less than generous to Him and said He was a self‑styled, would‑be conqueror who tried to pull off a coup of sorts only somewhere took a wrong turn and He wound up being a victim of His own revolution.

     And then there are all of those possibilities in the middle that are generous or not generous to one degree or another.  The fact is, however, that all of them are wrong.  The sufferings of Jesus Christ were no accident.  The sufferings of Jesus Christ were no miscalculation.  They were no surprise to Him.  They were no shock at all, but rather He gives here detail by detail precisely and exactly what is going to happen to Him.  In fact, the first recorded words we have spoken out of the mouth of Jesus were, "I must be about My Father's business," and the last words before His death, "It is finished."  It's very clear that He knew what He was about and He knew when He had finished it.  And He finished it in His death.

     He knew why He was on the earth.  He knew every detail of it.  And the fact that He knew every single detail of His sufferings indicates to me that He must have suffered through them a thousand times before He actually got there in the omniscience of being able to conceive all that that suffering would be.  

     Now I believe He wanted the disciples to understand this.  They were so honed in on the glory of the Kingdom, 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.  But Jesus knew that.  And so our Lord calls them aside for the third time and tells them this.

     Now I want us to look at the passage and just to consider several elements of what He said.  First, the plan of suffering, the plan.  "Jesus going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples aside along the way and said to them, Behold we go up to Jerusalem."  You can stop there.

     You get the feeling by His terms here that He knows what He's doing.  Behold indicates a certain amount of surprise.  It's an exclamation.  It may seem startling to you, it may seem shocking to you, it may seem surprising to you, you may not understand it but we are going to Jerusalem.  There's a resolution in His statement.  There's a conviction.

     It takes us back to Luke 9:51 where the text says, "And He set His face to go to Jerusalem."  He was resolute in that commitment.  He had while in the northern area of Galilee, finished His Galilean ministry, crossed the Jordan at a northern point, come to the east of the Jordan known as the Beyond called Peraea and He had been in Peraea coming south down the backside of the Jordan.  Chapter 19 in the early part of 20 give us incidents in that ministry.  Now He crosses the Jordan again, coming toward Jerusalem.  He will go through Jericho.  Chapter 20 verse 29 has Him departing from Jericho.  So He crosses about Jericho, comes to Jericho and starts the long ascent to Jerusalem.  It's only a matter of days really now until He faces the passion, the death and the resurrection.

     And you'll notice it says, "going up to Jerusalem."  They must have been already in motion that way.  Already on the move.  And when you go up, you really go up.  Jericho is about a thousand feet below sea level, Jerusalem is over 5,000 above and as the crow flies, they're fifteen miles apart.  So that's a very steep ascent.  That's why the Bible says they were going up.

     And you can imagine that they weren't alone, not Jesus and the disciples, because the Peraean ministry had no doubt congregated around them a mass of people.  Chapter 20 again verse 29 says there was a great multitude that followed Him.  And as this multitude is moving, it's Passover time, they're attracted because they would normally be on this journey anyway and as well they have now found themselves in the company of this wonder working Jesus, this astounding teacher and healer.  And so as typically in the Galilean ministry, so here we find Him surrounded by these people.  And He's moving toward Jerusalem.

     And on the way He again feels the need to communicate what's going on to His disciples.  And so He pulls them aside along the road.  Get's them off somewhere away from the crowd and speaks to them.  And what He says to them is "we go up to Jerusalem."  It may sound shocking, it may sound strange, but that is exactly where we're going.

     Now Mark 10:32 gives us the parallel account to this.  And Mark says the disciples were‑‑and he uses two words‑‑amazed and afraid.  They were amazed and afraid.  And the reason for this is because they knew the hostility of the Jerusalem aristocracy.  They knew that both the chief priests and the scribes were definitely enemies of Christ.  They had enough experience to know that.  They had already run into conflict with these people, the Pharisees namely, on several occasions.  And they really couldn't see any point in going right into Jerusalem.  They also knew that that's where the Roman seat was.  Maybe they felt that if you're going to pull off a revolution, it ought to start up in Galilee and become sort of an ascending sort of accumulative grass roots revolution.  You don't just walk a motley group of thirteen people into the city of Jerusalem and take over.  And so they were somewhat confused.  And I think really, in the negative side, they had...many of them had sort of given up on the Kingdom concept in its immediacy, at least emotionally if not intellectually.   And all they could see was we're going to go right in there and die.  In fact, in John 11:16, when Jesus said we're going to go to Jerusalem or to Bethany which is right in that proximity, Thomas who is called Didymus said, "We'll all go with You and die, too."  Very pessimistic.

     So, they are, says Mark, amazed and afraid.  And then Mark tells us that Jesus walked in front of them.  And they were in the back.  He's like a commander who's leading his troups into battle and he puts himself in the most dangerous and vulnerable position.  There are few pictures, really, in the gospels that are more interesting than that, more moving, more striking than that.  Jesus faced steadfast, moving toward His own death on behalf of these disciples and they're afraid and amazed, cowering in the back, dragging behind Him, mingling both the anticipation of the hope of the Kingdom with the fear of death and not really knowing what to expect.

     The word "amazed" by the way in Mark 10:32 is thambeo.  It's a very rare word, only used by Mark three times and once in the book of Acts chapter 9 verse 6, it's used of Paul on the road to Damascus.  And based on those four usages and the queries that come out of each time its used, it seems to me the best way to translate that word is "to be confused," or "to be baffled."  To be unable to understand the situation.  So it is that kind of amazement, it isn't the amazement of seeing something wonderful and awesome, it is the confusion and the chaos of the mind that comes when you can't make sense out of what's happening.  And it's exactly what Paul was experiencing when he went blind on the road to Damascus and was confronted by the resurrected Christ.  And that's how Mark uses it, I think, as well.

     So, they are because of their confusion afraid and the word Mark uses is phobos from which we get phobia.  They are having some real anxiety because of the confusion of wondering why in the world Jesus would be going to Jerusalem when He knows the people there hate Him and want to take His life.  But He is so resolute.  And the reason is because this is the plan, and that's what I want to get at.  This is the plan, we go to Jerusalem.  It has to be, folks.  It has to be.

     In fact, that's not all He said, that's just all the part that Matthew records.  Luke in the parallel passage in 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 He says we have to go because it's the prophetic plan.

     So, Jesus going to suffer is no accident.  It is not a bad turn in a nice revolution.  It is no shock.  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 not understand...do they not understand Jesus but they don't understand the Old Testament either.  And all they do is demonstrate their ignorance.  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, that His betrayal would be for 30 pieces of silver.  Psalm 22:16, that He would be pierced on the cross.  Exodus 12:46, 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'll be given vinegar to drink.  Psalm 22:1, He will cry out in the pain of distress.  Psalm 22:31 that He will cry out the victory cry, "It is finished."  Zechariah 12:10 says they'll pierce Him with a sphere.  And Psalm 16:10, that He will rise from the dead.  Psalm 1..10:1 even says He'll ascend into heaven.

     All of those things are part of the Old Testament prophets.  And you want a piece by piece detailed description of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in minute detail, you read Psalm 22, Isaiah 53 and Zechariah's prophecy and you'll have there explicitly a description of all the details of our Lord's death on the cross.  So when He's going to Jerusalem, He is on schedule, on target, on plan, no deviation at all.

     But as you go to the Old Testament, you know, it's interesting, there are not only...and I want to just talk about this for a moment...there are not only very explicit verbal predictions about Christ, but the whole sweep of the Old Testament, the whole flow of the Old Testament in its types and symbols and pictures demands that the Messiah die for the sins of the world.  It demands that.  Not only verbal predictions but the whole picture, the graphic of the Old Testament demands that. 

     Let me show you what I mean.  The death of Jesus Christ is the primary event in history and also the primary event in the Bible.  And as someone has said, it is the scarlet thread woven through the whole Scripture.  And I think it really comes into focus, first of all, in the third chapter of Genesis.  Because in Genesis chapter 3 you have Adam and Eve's sin.  And immediately when they sin, they feel cut off from God.  So the first thing they do is they hide themselves.  They're estranged from God.  There's a separation.

     The second thing that occurs is that they immediately become aware that they're what?  They're naked.  And God comes and clothes them.  And in order to clothe them with the skin of animals, there has to be death.  And so some animals are slain to make clothes for them.  Now that's a very important thought because if you listen very carefully to that account, you can hear the first soft sounds of what becomes an Old Testament symphony, that guilt and shame and separation are covered by sacrifice.  It's a very important truth.  And that's where that truth is introduced.  Sacrifice is the only way to deal with guilt and separation from God.  We find that not a verbal prediction of Jesus Christ but a setting in motion of truth that demands the ultimate Passover lamb.

     Now as you follow along a little further in the writings of Moses and you come to Genesis 22, you find a second great and 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.  An Abrahamic promise was bound up in Isaac.

     And as God comes to Abraham and says, "I want you to kill your son," you can see the slaying of all of his hopes and dreams and all of the things that God had promised and planned.  And yet Abraham is truly 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 Meriah.  They get up there and Isaac puts the sticks down and then Abraham puts Isaac down on top of the altar that's been prepared and lifts the knife to drive it into the heart of his own beloved son. And at that moment, God stops his arm and he hears a ram in the thicket and he goes over, takes the ram and sacrifices the ram and God spares his son.

     And the thing that sustained Abraham, Hebrews 11 says, and made him come to the point were he was 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 in his mind 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 was a God of His word so he was willing to take his son's life so that God could raise him from the dead.  But God held his hand and provided a ram.  That is the second profound truth of redemption taught in the book of Genesis and that is substitution.  God will provide a substitute.

     And it says in Genesis 22:14 that Abraham named that place "The Lord will Provide."  The Lord will provide.  In the Mount of the Lord, it says, it will be provided.  So then, we learn that sin can..and shame and guilt can only be dealt with by sacrifice and God will provide a sacrifice.

     Now as you move a little further in the story of God's unfolding redemptive plan, you come to the twelfth chapter of Exodus and you get the third great principle in relation to redemptive sacrifice.  God says I'm going to send the angel of death through Egypt and He's going to slay the first born of every house.  If you want to be protected, you have to sacrifice a lamb that is unblemished, without spot, a pure lamb.  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.

     Now that repeats what we learned in Genesis 3, that sin has to be dealt with by sacrifice.  It also repeats what we learned in Genesis 22, that a sacrifice can be substituted for the guilty person.  But then it adds a third and very important dimension to redemptive truth and that is this, that the sacrifice must be unblemished, must be pure.

     Now we go from there to the wanderings of Israel and we get into the wilderness at Sinai.  And God draws all the people together.  Moses goes up the mount. 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 a way of life.  They were giving bloody sacrifices day in, day out, year in and year out.

     Now you bring all these pictures together.  From Adam and Eve we learn that sacrifice covers the guilt of sin.  From Abraham we learn that that sacrifice can be a substitute which God will provide.  From the Passover, we learn that that sacrifice must be unblemished, without spot.  And finally, from the centrality of sacrifice in the law, we learn the importance of sacrifice in a worshiping life.  There will be no worship of God without sacrifice, none.  And that is why the first of the five offerings was the burnt offering and the burnt offering was all offered to God.  God needs to be offered the fullness of sacrifice in any act of worship. 

     So, God had to provide then a sacrifice to cover sin, who was a substitute, who was unblemished, who could redeem His people and provide the kind of sacrifice that could open up the way of worship forever.  And that's why, you see, when Jesus died on the cross, the veil of the temple was rent and the sacrificial system was over because He was the one final sacrifice that created an openness to God from which we could worship from then on without ever having to offer another sacrifice.

     So, you see, if you look at the Old Testament, it isn't just verbal prediction.  The whole flow of it, the whole sweep of it, the whole concept of it is that there is the need for a sacrifice.  That's what the Old Testament was saying.  And so, our Lord says we go to Jerusalem.  The disciples figure we're going there for the Passover, what they didn't know was that they were going there with the Passover lamb.  You see, they were looking lion, but He was thinking lamb.  They were thinking Kingdom, He was thinking sacrifice.  They were thinking glory, and He was thinking suffering and then glory.  I mean, on the mount of transfiguration in chapter 17, I'm sure they thought this was it, Peter, James and John.  And then He went down the mountain and now He's going to Jerusalem and they are confused about that and they are afraid. 

     But He's on schedule.  He says, particularly in the gospel of John and several places, I think at least six or seven different places, that I will do the will of My Father.  And even after His resurrection when He met those disciples on the road to Emmaus, it says in Luke 24, "Ought not Christ who have suffered these things and enter into His glory?"  He started at Moses, the prophets and I think He probably took them through a better lesson than I just gave you, but a similar one.  Maybe He went all the way to Genesis 3 and said why do you think God took a lamb there?  And Genesis 22, why do you think God provided a sacrificial offering there?  Maybe He took them to the Passover and maybe He just took them through the whole flow of Moses and then the prophets, gave them the verbal predictions.  Maybe they went to Isaiah 53, maybe they went to Zechariah.  And then in all the holy writings, maybe He took them to the Psalms and showed them 22 and others.  And said it's all there.  And later on in that twenty‑fourth chapter, it says in verse 46, "Thus it is written and thus it behooved Christ to suffer."

     See, they just couldn't get that through that He had to suffer.  But He was on schedule.  Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 says that He died, was buried and rose again according to the..what?  Scriptures.  And as 1 Peter 1:11 says, you know, they were...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 miss it.  That's why Jews even today have missed Jesus as their Messiah cause all they can see is the glory, they don't understand the suffering.  They don't know what in the world to do with Psalm 22, they haven't got a clue what to do with Isaiah 53 and they're lost in Zechariah also.  Because if you don't see the suffering, you can't understand Christ.

     But, you know, it wasn't anything new.  When that little child was taken to the temple by his mother and there they met that man of God who was devout, waiting for the conciliation of Israel, the coming of the Messiah by the name of Simeon.  And had asked the Lord that he would not die till he saw that Messiah.  You remember that child was brought in, he picked Him up in his arms and blessed Him and talked about how He would be for the falling and the rising of many, and all of this.  And then he said to Mary, "And your heart will be pierced through as with a sword."  In other words, it will not be without pain and it will not be without suffering.  And only a mother's heart could know the suffering that Mary knew.

     And so, from the very beginning it was that way.  And when He arrived and John the Baptist saw Him in John 1:29, the way he introduced His ministry, "Behold the...what?...the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world."  And when Revelation exalts Him, it says, "He was a lamb as though it had been slain and then He is the lion of the tribe of Judah."  So He's going to Jerusalem because it's on plan.  He's not going to have His plans go bad, I mean, He's on target.

     Now let me talk about a second point.  First the plan of His suffering; secondly, the predictions of His sufferings.  He adds to what the Old Testament prophets say, His own prophecies.  We go to Jerusalem.  The Son of Man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and the scribes.  Look at the detail.  They shall condemn Him to death, shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock, to scourge, to crucify, a third day He'll rise again.  I mean, He's predicting these things.  And only God knows that.  Only God can tell the story before it happens, right?  Only God can make history before it even occurs.  This is God in human flesh, who else knows all of that?  I mean, who else can give all these incredible details: betrayal, handing over to chief priests, scribes, condemned to death, handed over to the pagans where He will be mocked, Matthew and Luke add He will be spit on, He says I'll be spit on.  How did He know all of that?  And then I will be scourged and then crucified and then rise again. 

     Well, how does He know all of that?  I'll tell you, there's only one who knows that and that's God and that's who He is.  This is no ordinary man.  He knew how many husbands a strange woman he'd 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.  He calls Himself the Son of Man, that was His favorite term, He used it 80 times, or it's used 80 times, I should say, in the gospels.  It's a term of His humiliation, but it also incorporates His exaltation out of that humility. 

     But He says the Son of Man, first of all, shall be betrayed.  Now the verb betrayed is not here, it's simply the verb "to be handed over."  But it was obvious that it implied the betrayal and that's why the translators put it in here because it was Judas who turned Him over.  It was a betrayal. 

     And He was turned over the chief priests.  The chief priests among the priests, and there were thousands of them, the chief priests were the upper echelon ones.  There were the Levites, they were at the bottom of the priestly totem pole.  Then there were the normal course of priests.  And there was the guy who was the head of the daily course, the guy who's ahead of the weekly course, and then there was the sort of the captain of the temple, and then there was the high priest.  And the guys at the top of the ladder were known as the chief priests.  And so, these chief priests were the hereditary aristocracy.  They were in the priestly line, they got their rank by heredity. 

     They were also accompanied by the scribes who got their rank not by heredity but by knowledge.  They attained to knowledge by studying the law.  They were the lawyers and nobody could interpret anything without them.  Very much like today, if you want to interpret any kind of law, you get into any kind of legal situation, you have to have a lawyer.  Well it was that way then.  In trying to interpret the Mosaic economy, they had to have lawyers, quote/unquote, who really were the scribes who could come along side and explain the meaning of the law, interpret the law and so forth.

     So, you had the hereditary aristocracy and you had the knowledge aristocracy and they made this body of people who ultimately condemned Jesus Christ to death because He so threatened the security of their system.  Well, Jesus sees Himself being betrayed to them, to this executive body of the temple priesthood, being handed over.  And indeed that's what happened.  Judas betrayed Him.  The priests were simply Christ rejectors who were in a position to pull off a fake and mockery trial and condemn Him to death.  And that's what He saw happening and that is exactly what happened.  This is not a surprise.  This is exactly the way it was planned and He predicts the details.

     Now obviously they couldn't kill Him because the Romans had removed their right to do that.  And so they had to give Him over to the Gentiles, verse 19.  After the condemn Him to death in a false trial, said He should die for what He's done, trumped up charges against Him, ultimately the charge was that He speaks against Caesar and so forth cause they knew that the Romans wouldn't like that.  They delivered Him over to the pagans because the pagans, the Romans, had the right of execution and they alone could take His life.  And you remember the story, Pilate couldn't find anything wrong with Him.  But finally succumbed to crucifying Him because of blackmail.  They said they'd tell Caesar and he already had two strikes against him in his relations with the Jews and Caesar probably would have taken him out of there and maybe taken his life with one other mistake.  And so he succumbed.

     But in the meantime, you read the story of what happened when they took Him down into the fort Antoninus.  They mocked Him.  Remember they put a reed in His hand, crammed a crown of thorns on His head.  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 they did all of this because they were laughing to scorn at Him.  And ultimately they crucified Him.  And all the details are there and, of course, He rose from the dead.

     So, you have the plan of the sufferings and you have the prediction of His sufferings.  Now that takes me to the heart of this passage which I'd like to call "the proportion of sufferings."  I don't know that I've ever really thought this through to the extent that I did in looking at this passage, but the thing that hit me as I read over and over this little section of three verses was how in detail He talked about His suffering.  It seemed more detailed than any other time that Jesus ever spoke about this and I began to think about His sufferings and tried to look through the Word of God and see what I could learn.

     The first thing I found out was that when referring to sufferings, using that word, it appears in the plural.  For example, in 2 Corinthians 1:5 it means "the sufferings of Christ."  In Philippians 3:10, the