The Cross Pt.5 - esus Crucified

In this passionate sermon the speaker walks listeners through the events of Good Friday, emphasizing the physical and spiritual dimensions of Christ’s crucifixion. He begins by recalling how Jesus, a young man of thirty‑three, was nailed to the cross, describing the mockery of the soldiers, the seamless robe, the crown of thorns, and the brutal scourging that left thirty‑nine wounds. The preacher highlights the legal irregularities of the three trials before Pilate, the indifference of the crowd, and the prophetic fulfillment of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and other Scriptures, pointing out that the crucifixion was a divine plan rather than a random act of cruelty. The sermon then shifts to the meaning of the suffering: each wound represents the sins of humanity, and the physical agony—blood, sweat, strangulation, the spear thrust—conveys the price paid for redemption. The speaker paints vivid images of Golgotha, the heavy cross, the nail placements, and the final declaration, “It is finished,” echoing the cosmic response of nature and angels. He concludes by urging listeners to see themselves in the scene, to recognize their own sins as the spears that pierce the cross, and to respond with gratitude and faith in the finished work of Christ, inviting personal reflection and worship.

What is Houston's First Baptist Church?

Houston's First Baptist Church is a relevant biblical community where we gather our hearts, grow our souls and give our lives as we seek to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20). This podcast provides weekly messages from Pastor Gregg Matte and others. Visit us at HoustonsFirst.org to learn more about HFBC, and visit us in person the next time you're in Houston!

On Friday morning, they crucified him. He was crucified while still a very young man. At the zenith of his life, with most of his living before him, at only age 33. He is a god over 30, you can trust. He was crucified naked. The artists have been kind through the years. The Quaternion Guard was responsible for the execution. When they came to the time of the parting of the garments, one having taken the sandals, one having taken the inner garment, one the outer, and one the girdle. When they came to the robe, they found that it was seamless. And so they decided to gamble for it. The covetous sat down and gambled at the cross. Some walked by and cast in his teeth the imagery of the superscription that was written above him in jest and mockery. This is Jesus, the king of the Jews. Some swagged back and forth and mocked him, saying, So you're the Christ. Well, you don't look much like a Christ to us. If you're the Savior, why don't you come down from the cross and save yourself? And while you be about it, you can just save us as well. But I think those that broke his heart the most were those who just stood there in stolid indifference and did nothing, as though to say, so what? Little wonder that Jeremiah's prophecy hundreds of years before would be speak that death and say, Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? He was crucified about a mile from the place where he was tried the last time. For he was tried not once but thrice on that day before the crucifixion, and at least three other trials are alluded to before that. He was crucified between two thieves as a thief on the city garbage dump where he was to be cast, they rather imagined, as some of the rest of the worthless refused from the city of Jerusalem. It was a Roman holiday, and so that there might be a large crowd, that it had become the custom that they would always bring men to be crucified from different sections of the country, so that someone would be there watching their boy get it. But Jesus Christ was there because God so loved the world. The day before he was crucified, he had been tried at least three times on that day. Once to Pilate, back to Herod, again to Pilate. No one was willing to touch the hot potato that the theological and legal ramifications entailed in the innocence and guilt of the King of Kings. Always the verdict was the same. I find no fault in this Jesus Christ. And yet, to please and appease the barbarous crowd, for one must of necessity die on the holiday, the verdict was the same. Nevertheless, let him be crucified. The trial, the main trial, was erroneous in at least 50 points of the Roman law. He was tried without prior notification. He was tried without witness. He was tried without advocate, without the privilege of a lawyer. He was tried under the cover of night. And on and on goes the sordid story. It was the custom that the people could give vent to their expression of judgment and disdain for the one that was being tried. All through the night they came, one after another, to strike him, to smite him, to hit him. The literal rendition is that on the cross, when he had borne all that could be borne, he screamed with a loud voice, But the trial began long before the foundation of the world, when Jesus Christ stepped forward, the innocent for the guilty, and announced that he would come to the earth through the womb of the virgin, And him that had known no sin would have himself willingly die on the cross and be made sin for us. Isaiah's rendition, again his visage, his facial countenance, was marred and that beyond that of any man, such that we esteemed him not. But the literal rendition is this. The facial expression of Jesus was inhumane. It was ghastly. It was almost beastly. And we could not stand to look at what we had done. It was the custom that men could come and hit him and strike blows to his face. And as the face began to swell, and the bones were out of socket, and Jesus Christ, the manly specimen that he was experienced the blows of judgment of man that rejected him, that had created the world that came unto his own, and yet the world knew him not. It was indeed the Lamb slain long before the first blow was smitten upon his precious brow from the foundation of the world. Well, he is a king, and a king must have a crown. Thusly, they go to the berry trees and begin to weave a crown, but a crown of thorns. We have been there. We have stood in the garden. We have touched that tree. We have picked of those thorns, and they are piercing and long and devastating and filled with poisonous pain on the end of them, sticking assuredly their own fingers and writhing in their own agony again and again. They weave finally a crown of thorns and crush it, not gently, but forcibly crush it on the brow of Jesus, and blood and sweat mingle together and trickle down the throat of a thrice holy God. Later on, he was to cry, I thirst, I thirst. But it was only the taste of his own blood and perspiration, as him that had known no sin was becoming sin for us, that would find its way to give relief to the parched lips of the Son of God. Thirty -nine times, for forty was supposed to bring death, and they would stop once short of death, for the death must come on the cross. Thirty -nine times, the cat of nine tails, with the little balls of steel in the end of the leather threads, bore into his back, and emaciated the back of Jesus again and again. Steel bites flesh, and he coughs great gasps of air as he is paying the penalty for my sin. Jeremiah says, Then shall one say in that day, What are these wounds in thy hands? And he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Medical science tells us that there are five wounds known to medicine. There is the contusion, the blow with which he was hit, the laceration, the tearing on the back. There is the shredding of the flesh. There is the incised wound, the contusion, the blow, the laceration, the internal wound, the incised wound, the puncture wound, that he felt in his hands. All of them, Jesus Christ bore. Every wound, every sin, every pain, all of the crime, all of the death, all of the punishment of the world, was placed to the lips of a thrice holy God. And him that had known no sin, in one fell swoop, when in six hours on the cross, he became sin for us, that God in Christ might punish him, in our behalf, was experienced by the faultless, spotless, perfect Son of God, in whom there is no guile. When it was time for the crucifixion, they led him to the foot of the cross. Galgatha is not a large hill. There are two eyes, seemingly, sockets, as though in a skull, a place for a nose, and a mouth. And when you stand in the garden, where he was buried, you can see, just about 20 feet, from the base of that skull, the appearance of a dead face. Thus, the word Galgatha, the hill of the skull, means, the place of death. He would have come, up the backside, of that little mountain. It is the north end, of Mount Moriah. A mountain, where in foreshadow preview, centuries before, Abraham was to offer, his son, in death. Though God stayed his hand, yet he would not stay the hand, the death that took the life, of his own son. Coming down the rough, cobblestone streets, and mountainous roads over which Jesus would tread. He bore on his back, lacerated, emaciated by the judgment and pain of the whip, a rough, rugged cross. It was a cross that weighed about 300 pounds. In the middle of the cross, there was a device, a device which arched the back and most often would rip the lungs from their mooring such that a person could exhale but not inhale. For as they would inhale, they would strangle on their own blood. And many times, one that died the death of crucifixion would die not from the pain, not from the loss of the blood, but would first die of strangulation. But it was impossible. He was just as much man as though he were not God. He was just as much God as though he was not man. And yet, he was still a man, identifying with man that he might pay for the sins of man. And finally, this specimen of a man was exhausted. I've never liked the pictures of Jesus that show him with lily white hands and a sweet, soft, near effeminate face. I believe him to have been the strongest, most perfect, physical human specimen the world ever knew with rippling muscles and bronze features and steel -like piercing eyes. When Jesus' strength gave out and he stumbled, his knees, his shims, his feet falling again and again beneath the load of the rugged cross on those jagged streets up the mountainous path and could go no more, the physical exhaustion had become too much. Thusly, they compel a man from Cyrene, a man from Libya to come and to bear his cross. Perhaps he was a businessman. Perhaps he was there in merchandising. Perhaps he had come to buy and to sell and to trade. Perhaps he did not know why he had come. But he was there in fulfillment of prophecy. He was there because God had sent him up that coast of Africa. He was there taking the place and identifying with every Christian in the world in that experience that every one of us should covet to have that must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world go free. No, there's a cross for everyone and there is a cross for me. When they came to the top of the mountain, they laid Jesus Christ down on his cross. Looking for the last time in the face of his father, as his arms spread eagled on the crossbow, his arch back arched, he prepared to receive the first blow of the spike. There are many who say it was perhaps a wooden spike, a spike of perhaps an inch and a half square, and one that would have been driven not through the middle of the hand as much probably as through the wrist. And when they speak of the hand, the Jews mean from the middle of the forearm down all the way. This they call the hand. It could have been anywhere and was probably in what we would call the wrist because there would have not have been enough strength to have held in the palm of the hand. They raised the middle of the spot whence the blow would be struck. And they raise a hammer and metal and flesh meet as Jesus receives the first blow of the hammer that crucifies him. And he writhes in agony and pain. He said, Don't you know in the garden, if I would, I could call down legions of angels and they would come and fight for me. But what shall I pray? Save me from this hour. Nay, Father, for this cause came I into the world. And Jesus said, I could have called legions of angels by the flick of his eye, by the gesture of a raised eyebrow, by a glanced heavenward, by an unspoken prayer. The angels of glory would have come and saved him. But he bought all for my sin. And then stretching the other hand as tightly as the head of a drum down the beam of the cross. Again, the blow and the other hand is nailed to the Roman gibbet. His feet were crossed in death, and symbol of the hands that one day would be crossed, symbolic of the departure of the leaving of the soul from the body. Now the hands dead, now the feet crucified, and a 15 to 18 inch spike would have been driven through the middle of both of them with one spike together. There was a cross whole, probably six feet deep and two feet in diameter, looking for the last time until he would see him in resurrected body in the glory of his father's face. Jesus Christ is raised, and now looks again at those as the cross is Lord, for whom he was crucified, and by whom his death became reality. The bottom of the cross slipped over the lip of a hole, and into the bottom of the cross, and was dropped with a thud, but no bones were broken. In the event that a man lived through crucifixion, they broke his legs, so he could not walk away. But when they came to Jesus, they found no bones, they found him dead, and in fulfillment of prophecy, broke no bones. And yet, when they crucified him, the weight of the body as it fell, when the cross bottom hit the base of the hole, pulled every bone from its socket, and the tendons broke, and the body was stretched as he supported himself for long hours on the cross. When Jesus Christ looked yonder, all he could say was, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And they come with a spear to make sure he is dead, and take a spear and thrust it at a 45 degree angle, neath the left, the right side of the ribcage, that it would come toward the left, and pierce the heart, and pierce the side, and blood and water erupt simultaneously from the wound. Doctors tell us the only time that happens is when the heart has been ruptured. We literally, with our sins, broke the body of the heart of Jesus in his body on the cross. Isaiah said the Lord had laid on him the iniquity of us all. The literal Hebrew word means smashed. For you see, at noon, the skies turned black, and the bowels of the earth began to rumble, and perhaps the lightning flashed and the wind blew. For the Father had turned his back on the Son. For there must be for those hours total identity with the guilt of sin, of my sin and yours. And God smashed and judged on him the iniquity of us all. For there was no other way to provide for the sins of the world. And Jesus, having done his work of salvation, bowed his head, and his chin fell upon his breast, and he whispered, It is finished. It is finished. It is finished. And the skies turned still, and the wind ceased to blow, and the birds stopped their singing, and men stand in rapt attention, cognizant of the fact of the testimony which would bespeak the heartthrob of all who were there that day, verbalized in the captain of the quaternion guard, This man did not die like any other man, not reviling, not swearing, not blaspheming, not cursing his tormentors, but praying, Father, forgive him, and saying, Surely this was the Son of God. And the blood fell from his side, dropped from his precious feet, and touched the dust beneath the cross, and said, It is finished. And the cross was there, and all of the universe stood in rapt attention, angels that had died and strained at the precipice of heaven, whose hearts must have been bursting, Let us save him! Let us go! Let us save him from this hour. And they too said, it is finished. And the dust said to the flowers, it is finished. And the flowers whisper to the grass, it is finished. And the cross and the grass and the flowers take up the restrain and say to the trees, it is finished. And the trees, dipping their burry fowls from heaven, look down and say, yes, it is finished. And raising in an anthem of praise, echo as all of nature responds, it is finished. And angels laying aside their royal diadems, listen from the edge of heaven and cry, it is finished. And the blood is sprinkled on the mercy seat and the heart of the Father is satisfied. And the fulfillment of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, pictured from Genesis to Exodus, all through Revelation, cry as well, it is finished. It is finished. It is finished. What is that cry? Is it the cry of failure? Is it the shriek of disappointment? No, it is the hero's cry. It is the cry of the captain of our salvation, who was to go into death and hell and sin and the grave and come back with the key to them swinging at his belt and say, I have conquered death. I have paid the price. I have paid for sin. Hallelujah. It is finished. All can go free, just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, O Lamb of God. I too can come, for I believe. If I believe anything in this world that had I been the only sinner in the world, Jesus Christ would have died anyway, just for me and just for you. What is this experience? What do we see? What do we see when we pass by and stand at the foot of the cross? Is it just another great historic event? Just like the death of Julius Caesar or the assassination of Abraham Lincoln or John Kennedy? What is this thing that causes the graves to split and the skies to be more black than a thousand hells? The angels to shriek in horror and the power to come over the earth when she crucified her Savior that caused men to stand and know that God has forsaken this planet. And as he turns his head, a death like a thousand knights falls across the earth. What is this? Is it just another dramatic tragedy like the drinking of the hemlock or a King Lear or the Agamemnum of Aeschylus? What is this thing that causes the birds to stop to sing and all of creation to respond? What is this? This is the body prepared by the Holy Spirit from the foundation of the world. This is God's answer to Adam's cry. I have sinned. I have sinned. What shall I do? What shall I do? But who did it? Who did that? A recent Roman Catholic conclave attempted to determine the guilt. Some said the Jews did it. The Jews fought. They crucified Jesus. But I hear them say his blood be not upon us. Others say it is responsibility of the Roman government. Pilate crucified him. Pilate did it. Lord, Pilate take the blame. Tradition has it that Pilate was found, a raving maniac, 12 years later in the desert, picking up the sand and wringing his hands and throwing it down, saying, I wash my hands in the blood of Jesus. I wash my hands in the blood of Jesus. Never able to get the sin and the guilt off of what had happened from him. But Pilate didn't do it. There are those who say, God did it. That's one of the latest theological jags. It is God's fault. And they reasoned thusly. They say that God is either not good or he's not all -powerful, not omnipotent. Because if he is good, then he would have stopped it. But he didn't. Therefore, he is not all -powerful. And if he's all -powerful, he could have stopped it. But he wouldn't stop it. Therefore, he's not a good God. Albert Feitzer, contemporary liberal theologian, says that Jesus Christ looked for the immediate, imminent, apocalyptic descent of the kingdom. And when it didn't happen, he died in frustration and found out for the first time that he was not the Son of God after all. Who did that? Who's responsible? You did it. I did it. It's for my sin that he died. For your sin. For our sin. That Jesus paid it all. Those hands that were raised only in love, as he said, Suffer the little children to come unto me. Now still and lifeless and pale and limpid in death. Those eyes that had looked into the heart of the fallen woman and said, I forgive you. Now glazed in death. Those lips that had preached the gospel of the peace to the poor. Now cracked and parched in death. I did that. That was my sin. And your sin. Many people know the story of John Moody, D .L. Moody, the great preacher, but they don't know the story of John Vassar, his forerunner. Every time the great preacher came to town, this on -fire layman would come in ahead of him and go to every home in town witnessing, saying, The great preacher is coming. Moody is coming. Get ready. Be saved. Be ready to come and hear him. One atheist woman hearing about it said, If he comes here, I'll slam the door in his face. Well, he did. And she did. Two nights later, when she told about her conversion, she said, When I slammed the door in his face, Vassar just sat down on the steps and put his head in his hands and began to cry for me and to sing softly. But drops of grief can ne 'er repay the debt of love I owe. Dear Lord, I give myself away. Tis all that I can do. Can we do less? I don't know about you, but that which compels me, that which motivates me, that which has called from me my fondest devotion, my deepest loyalties, is the constant, vivid imagery of who Jesus is and what he did for me on that cross in that day. Now, as I finish, I want us to paint a picture in our hearts and see Jesus dying in our stead. And imagine that we may see ourselves before him and hear his voice saying, Is it nothing to you? What will you do with me? When I have given so much for you, I want us to bar heads, please. Let us close our eyes and bar heads as every head is bowed and every eye closed. I want to ask each person, please, just keep your eyes tightly closed. Place your hand over your eyes and don't look around. I want you to try to see a hill in the distance, a silhouette, an ugly hill that looks like a skull and three blackened crosses silhouetted against it and see Jesus dying. And you're there in the crowd. That's you, the one in the front row with the spear in your hand. What's that in your left hand? That's all of your sins, your pride, your lust, your lies, your selfishness, your pride, everything that you've drug up there to that cross where that man on that middle cross is paying a price for you. Can you see? Look. Can you see it? There's a hill lone and gray in a land far away, in a country beyond the blue sea, where beneath that fair sky went a man forth to die for the world and for you and for me. Behold, faint on the road neath the world's weary load comes a thorn -laden man on the way. With a cross He has bowed, but still on through that crowd, He's descending that hill lone and gray. Can you see Him? Hark! I hear the dull blow of the hammer swung low. They are nailing my Lord to the tree. But though lonely and faint, not a word of complaint from Him on dark Calvary. Then the darkness came down, and the rocks rent around, and a cry pierced the grief -laden air. It was the voice of our King who received death's dark sting, all to save us from endless despair. Oh, it bows down my heart, and the teardrops will start when in memory that gray hill I see. For it was there on its side, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, suffered and died for the world, and for you, and for me. Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small, love so demanding, love so amazing, love so divine, demands and shall have my soul, my best, my all, my all. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.