Those Final, Dreadful Hours, Part 1

When were watching a scary movie hero story comes face-to-face with his worst enemy is our natural tendency to look away from the screen.

We can't bear to watch our favorite character punches today on Insight for living Chuck Swindoll asks us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus in order to witness the injustices that he suffered on our behalf. Our study in Matthew's Gospel brings us to the 27th chapter in this passage we read about the monitoring of Jesus titled today's message those final dreadful passages sure that we feel we can simply sit before in all, let the wonder in we come to one of those today in Matthew 27, 27 through 50. This represents the final dreadful hours, our Savior spent on earth before breathing. His last and releasing his spirit as he bore the sins yours and mine and those of the whole world after the father had turned away from him. Truly one of the most awesome scenes ever recorded, if not the most I'll be reading from the new living translation. Matthew 27 beginning at verse 27. Some of the governors soldiers took Jesus into their headquarters and called out the entire regiment.

They stripped him, but her scarlet robe on in. They will foreign branches into a crown and put it on his head.

They placed a read stick in his right hand is the scepter then they knelt before him in mockery and taunted King of the Jews and they spit on him, grabbed the stick and struck him on the head with a liver finally tired of mocking, they took off the road and put his own clothes on them again. They led him away to be crucified along the way they came across a man named Simon who was from Sirena.

The soldiers forced him to carry Jesus cross we went out to a place called Golgotha, which means place of the skull soldiers gave him wine mixed with bitter goal, but when he had tasted it.

He refused to drink it after they had nailed him to the cross. Soldiers gambled for his clothes by throwing dice, then the set around and kept guard as he hung there a sign was fastened above Jesus head announcing the charge against him. It read. This is Jesus, the King of the Jews to revolutionaries were crucified with him one on his right and one on his left. The people passing by shouted abuse shaking their heads in mockery.

Look at you now. They yelled at him. You said you were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. Well then you are the son of God, save yourself and come down from across the leading priests and teachers of right of religious wall and the elders also mocked Jesus. He saved others. They scoffed, but he can't save himself, so he is the king of Israel using linen come down from the cross.

Right now, and we will believe in him. He trusted God so let God rescue him now if he wants it for. He said I am the son of God, even the revolutionaries who were crucified with him, ridiculed him in the same way at noon, darkness fell across the whole land until 3 o'clock and about 3 o'clock. Jesus called out with a loud voice like something funny, which means my God, my God, why have you abandoned me. Some of the bystanders misunderstood and thought he was calling for the prophet Elijah. One of them ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, holding it up to him on a read stick so he could drink with the rest said wait and see whether Elijah comes to saving them.

Jesus shouted out again and he released his spirit to study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll. Be sure to download his searching the Scriptures. Studies by going to Insight world.org/studies. Now the message from Chuck titled those final dreadful hours, history has no shortage of cruel ways to kill a person say this ends sociopaths and psychopaths have occupied positions of power. Since civilization began and they have devised dozens of ways to execute their enemies all of them designed to bring death slowly and is humiliating. Lee and as painfully as possible. In his memoirs caravan passing rights of an ugly scene that reveals this as it was carried out by the Nazi storm troopers at the beginning of World War II. They had seized an elderly Jewish rabbi and dragged him into their private headquarters at the far end of the same room to other Nazis were beating another Jew today, but those who would seize the rabbi had decided to have some sadistic fun with him after stripping him naked. They commanded that he preach the sermon he had prepared for the synagogue, the coming Sabbath. The rabbi asked if he could wear his yarmulke. In doing so the Nazis with a cynical grin agreed to give it only added to the sick joke there he stood trembling with a raspy voice delivering a message on what it means to walk humbly before the Lord God, all the while being poked and prodded by the hooting and cursing Nazis and the same time while hearing the last cries and screams of his fellow to being beaten into oblivion at the other end of the room horrible scene horrible beyond description. As I read the sacred record of the unfair trials in the markings of a cynical risk treatment in the final execution of Jesus. I think about naked rabbis standing humiliated and forced to preach in front of those beastly brutes in that private place of horrors. I do my best to imagine the pain mixed with the brutality that our Savior received. It's all I can do to fathom the dignity, the absolute humiliation that he endured as he too was stripped naked, flogged kids in the phrases prattle on.

Bernard of Clairvaux comes the closest to giving me the words I need to read at times like that, or sacred head now wounded with with grief and shame way down now scornfully surrounded with thorns, but only crown what language shall I borrow to thank the dearest friend for this… Sorrow by pity without an + the words fall off our lips when we read of soldiers, taking Jesus into their into their headquarters.

The word is the Greek term predatory. I think of it as a barracks and there they call the entire regiment. The Greek reads the whole band. The new American Standard.

The whole cohort represents 11 10th of the Legion, so this would be 600 men jammed in the barracks for that spectacle. They would make of our Savior. What a sick blast they had together as they scourged him but dress them up like a Leica silly King putting a robot inputting a scepter in his hand. He needs a crown so they made one of thorns and jammed it on his head as the blood ran they taunted and mocked him King of the Jews and then they spit on him, took the scepter and struck him with it here him with their fists until as Isaiah writes his the old King James's visage no longer appearing as a man, swollen, great welts, and finally tired of the scourging they lead them out to the streets toward God. Let's not leave the scene to quickly not one of us has ever witnessed the crucifixion. Thank God we don't know the procedure we haven't even a mental image except from artists who can never do it service. How can you possibly put on canvas. Words like I'm going to read in those days there were two kinds of scourging or flogging Jewish and Roman.

The Jewish method is described in Deuteronomy 25, 123 where we are told that a person was not to be beaten more than 40 times because the Jew was afraid of breaking the law of God, he would commonly strike the victim 39 times making sure he counted meticulously so that he didn't go beyond 40. But in Roman scourging. There was no specified number of times that a victim could be beaten.

Think of that. Understandably, then the Romans commonly called their torturous active scourging halfway death before the scourging began. The victim was scriptable clothing and bent forward over low thick stop or post at the base of the posts were for metal rings the wrists and the ankles of the victim were shackled to the rings. Jesus was stripped of his garments bent low over the post with wrists and ankles shackled into that position.

The scourging was done by a man called a lick for LRC to your a professional in the grim part of torture. The instrument used for scourging was called a flagellum a piece of wood, 14 to 18 inches long, circular in shape, not unlike our own broom handle, only shorter. To which were attached long leather thongs into these leather thongs or straps worsen bits of glass, bone and pieces of metal. Jim Bishop in his work the day Christ died as these details the soldier who performed the flagellum of the flagellation's moved to a position about 6 feet behind the victim spread his legs before Jonathan was brought back all the way and whistled forward making a dog from sound as the strips of leather smacked against the back of the rib cage. The bits of bone and chain curled around the right side of the body and really small sub continuous hemorrhages on the chest.

The flagellum came back again aim slightly lower and again aim higher and began and began and again crashing against the skin and flesh the flagellum. The flagellum now moving in slow, heavy rhythm, it was designed to reduce the naked body to strips.

Overall place and inflamed bleeding wounds.

It was not uncommon for man to die on the stop I should add that it was not uncommon for the teeth to chatter like a death rattle in that horrible time of panic in the body shook uncontrollably. That's our Savior, scourged by brutal Roman soldiers who could care less about who he wants just another crucifixion criminal to them when I reread all of this. If the victim lived through it and Jesus did, which tells us something of his physical condition he was in great physical shape to endure such torture.

They leave him now along a path we read of it in verse 32 through 34. Along the way they come across or they came across a man named Simon situation aim. He was from styrene's agreed settlement located west of Alexandria in northern Africa on the coast of the Mediterranean had a large Jewish population. Simon being Jewish. No doubt was reared in this prosperous trade center. Quite likely had come to Jerusalem at the time of Passover. He's randomly chosen and to begin with. These forced into the scene, which he never expected as a visitor in the land of Israel. He's forced to carry Jesus cross verse 32 in not the entire cross.

No one could carry 450 pounds. Back then they carried only the cross beam which is the horizontal piece that weighed approximately 200.

It was heavy enough so heavy that part of it dragged on the ground as it was carried on the shoulder or under the arm as long as the victim could carry it so they brought him in and heated.

He carried the cross for Jesus and then we read they went out to a place called Golgotha, which means the place of the skull doesn't mean skulls were there.

It means it was the terrain shaped like a massive skull dog up as a Hebrew word that answers to training on in the Greek or Calvary, which is Latin standing for the same thing. The whole idea of a shape of the skull. How simply Matthew records it in the details are left out like I'm giving you because those in the first century are all familiar with crucifixion. They've all witnessed it is the most common form of Roman capital punishment, which they took delight in because it stated to everyone. Crime does not pay rebel against the Emperor. That's where you wind up. It also explains why Jesus was taken along this pathway to travel in Israel today is called with the popular name the Via Dolorosa and when you take that payment if it is a similar path for the one he literally took in the first century. It's narrow there are markets on either side sometime very close to one another. The path narrows so the marketplace where people are gathered with us would get public attention to the one dragging his cross beam. They all knew what it meant.

They all knew where he was going. They all knew what it represented.

So without a word as he goes through this may all see the one carrying the cross beam on his way to go when he gets there before they knew the mailing began Matthew Wrightson simple words there. They nailed him to across but before that noticed the soldiers gave him wine mixed bitter role is a mixture of oil with her a thick boil designed to stupefy the one about to be nailed the Lord to be to keep them from struggling, screaming violently, though unpleasant, it's absolutely crucial that we comprehend the extent of Jesus suffering on our behalf. This is insight for living, our Bible teacher Chuck Swindoll titled today's message those final dreadful hours and to learn more about this ministry.

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