What’s the Significance of Simon Carrying Jesus’s Cross?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Happy Good Friday, or so we call it.
00:00:06.520 | It is a joyful day, even if it is the most solemn day
00:00:09.920 | in the church calendar.
00:00:11.660 | And we talked about reckoning the repulsion
00:00:14.500 | and the delight of the cross last time.
00:00:17.480 | Today we talk about one of the little stories
00:00:19.840 | of the crucifixion narrative, Pastor John,
00:00:21.460 | specifically the figure of Simon of Cyrene.
00:00:24.500 | A listener to the podcast writes us about it.
00:00:26.720 | Hello, Pastor John, reading through the story
00:00:28.320 | of the crucifixion this week.
00:00:29.320 | Something caught my attention
00:00:30.760 | that I'd read over many times.
00:00:33.320 | In Luke 23, 26, in the midst of the crucifixion event,
00:00:36.960 | we read this, "And as they led Jesus away,
00:00:39.880 | they seized one Simon of Cyrene,
00:00:42.720 | who was coming in from the country
00:00:44.320 | and laid on him the cross to carry it behind Jesus."
00:00:49.200 | I know that God is sovereign,
00:00:50.640 | and therefore this was not an accident
00:00:52.880 | or a random detail added into the story.
00:00:55.720 | What's the significance of Simon carrying Jesus' cross?
00:00:59.060 | What does God want us to see here?
00:01:01.440 | This was really good for me to think about
00:01:04.720 | because I've read that a hundred times
00:01:07.400 | and have not paused like so many of these questions
00:01:11.380 | force me to do, and that's really valuable.
00:01:14.440 | Sometimes when authors are reporting facts,
00:01:19.180 | like this is a fact,
00:01:21.120 | sometimes when they report facts in their narrative,
00:01:24.420 | they give us clear clues and pointers
00:01:28.760 | why they are including those facts
00:01:32.280 | and what they want us to learn from them.
00:01:35.200 | I don't see really clear, decisive clues here
00:01:40.200 | or in any of the gospels
00:01:42.240 | for why the gospel writers include this fact.
00:01:45.800 | One of the reasons for that
00:01:47.900 | may be that Simon, who carried the cross,
00:01:52.680 | may have become a well-known presence in the early church
00:01:57.260 | so that the mere reference to his name
00:02:00.200 | functions as just another historical evidence.
00:02:04.560 | This man right there that you know,
00:02:06.240 | he carried the cross.
00:02:08.280 | And the reason I say that is because in Mark 15, 21,
00:02:12.000 | Simon is called the father of Alexander and Rufus.
00:02:15.880 | Like, that's an unusual piece of information.
00:02:19.560 | I mean, it would be very odd for Mark to put that in
00:02:22.760 | unless he expected his readers
00:02:25.000 | to know who Alexander and Rufus was.
00:02:27.860 | And Mark is sometimes associated with Peter
00:02:31.820 | as a gospel writer,
00:02:34.060 | and Peter is associated with Rome,
00:02:37.560 | and in Romans 16, there's a man named Rufus.
00:02:40.900 | So there are little things like that
00:02:42.660 | that cause people to say,
00:02:44.460 | okay, this is an allusion to a man
00:02:47.780 | that everybody in the church knew.
00:02:50.020 | He had become something of a known person,
00:02:53.300 | and so you didn't have to say anything about him.
00:02:56.040 | You said, he's the one who carried the cross.
00:02:58.240 | Isn't that amazing?
00:02:59.080 | You can go talk to him and ask him what it was like.
00:03:01.960 | But I suspect that in Luke's mind,
00:03:06.880 | there was more going on than merely a historical link
00:03:11.880 | between the crucifixion and a person
00:03:15.100 | who was known as the father of Alexander and Rufus.
00:03:19.280 | So let me make some suggestions,
00:03:21.920 | and that's really all they are,
00:03:23.600 | and I'm willing to make them as suggestions
00:03:26.100 | rather than pronouncements of certainties that I see,
00:03:29.960 | because it may be that those who listen to me
00:03:33.120 | could see more than I see
00:03:35.140 | and make one of these suggestions move towards,
00:03:37.940 | oh, that really was intended by Luke.
00:03:41.360 | So I'm giving you homework to do, kind of.
00:03:45.080 | So number one suggestion.
00:03:47.240 | Simon is described as from Cyrene.
00:03:52.040 | That's a city in North Africa, today's Libya.
00:03:56.360 | We don't know if he was Jewish or Gentile
00:03:59.000 | because the name Simon was common for Greeks and Jews.
00:04:02.080 | We don't know if he was visiting Jerusalem or lived there,
00:04:06.560 | but what we know is that the gospel draw attention
00:04:11.160 | to this man's got a foreign origin.
00:04:14.160 | He's an African.
00:04:15.960 | So Luke might say, let it be noted
00:04:20.760 | that a foreigner served Jesus in his final hour,
00:04:25.760 | indeed an African.
00:04:28.240 | There's suggestion number one.
00:04:29.280 | Number two, Luke is the only one of the gospels
00:04:33.680 | that says Simon carried the cross behind Jesus.
00:04:38.480 | All the other gospels that mention this
00:04:40.560 | say he just carried it.
00:04:42.460 | Does Luke want us to remember Luke 9.23,
00:04:47.320 | where he said, "If anyone would come after me,
00:04:51.360 | let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."
00:04:56.360 | In other words, is Luke suggesting to us
00:05:00.240 | this is a picture of what discipleship is.
00:05:03.520 | Number three, if we think that Luke was pointing
00:05:08.080 | to this event as a parable of discipleship,
00:05:11.080 | like I just suggested,
00:05:13.280 | could the fact that Joseph was chosen so suddenly
00:05:17.640 | and unexpectedly for the heavy task
00:05:22.240 | be Luke's way of teaching us
00:05:24.680 | that we don't always choose the moment of our cross bearing.
00:05:29.280 | We don't always choose the moment of our suffering.
00:05:31.600 | They come upon us in unexpected ways,
00:05:34.440 | frightening ways, heavy ways, painful ways,
00:05:37.800 | seemingly random ways.
00:05:40.080 | In other words, the fact that Simon
00:05:43.180 | was chosen seemingly randomly,
00:05:45.400 | I mean, it just says he was coming in from the field.
00:05:48.240 | He was coming in from the country.
00:05:49.600 | That little added note seems to say,
00:05:51.920 | "This is random, you think."
00:05:55.240 | A lesson that every moment of our lives,
00:05:58.560 | coming in from the country,
00:06:00.480 | we should be ready to be snatched into the service of Jesus
00:06:04.240 | in a painful way, and we just don't know when, maybe.
00:06:07.880 | Number four suggestion.
00:06:10.120 | I think most people would assume
00:06:13.340 | that demanding someone else to carry Jesus' cross
00:06:16.740 | means he was at the breaking point,
00:06:20.160 | too weak to finish the trek on his own.
00:06:25.160 | But what we may not think about as quickly
00:06:29.100 | is whether this act by the authorities,
00:06:33.020 | maybe the soldiers, this decision to get Simon to help
00:06:37.220 | was an act of compassion or cruelty or simple expediency.
00:06:42.220 | Here's what I mean.
00:06:46.460 | If he couldn't carry his cross,
00:06:49.040 | somebody had to because these soldiers are charged,
00:06:53.520 | "Crucify him."
00:06:55.360 | And if they let him die on the way,
00:06:57.620 | somebody's gonna be ticked, right?
00:06:59.760 | So maybe just pure expediency,
00:07:02.640 | "Gotta get this man up there to get him crucified."
00:07:06.000 | Or it might have been a moment of compassion
00:07:09.720 | from one of the Roman soldiers.
00:07:11.700 | Or, this is what I had not realized,
00:07:14.500 | Matthew Henry suggests it may be that they saw
00:07:18.980 | Jesus was about to die under the burden
00:07:22.560 | and they were so bloodthirsty
00:07:25.100 | or fearful of punishment from Pilate
00:07:27.620 | that they wanted to make sure he survived
00:07:30.320 | for the remaining torture.
00:07:32.000 | In other words, just the opposite of compassion.
00:07:35.660 | We've gotta get nails through his hands
00:07:38.020 | and nails through his feet.
00:07:40.100 | We can't let this man just die here of exhaustion
00:07:43.940 | under his cross.
00:07:46.460 | Number five, fifth suggestion, one more.
00:07:50.060 | Only Luke tells us that in the Garden of Gethsemane,
00:07:54.860 | Jesus is in agony and was helped by an angel as he prayed.
00:08:02.740 | In Luke 22, 43, an angel came and helped him,
00:08:06.220 | sustained him, gave him strength.
00:08:08.100 | In Hebrews 5, 7, it says,
00:08:10.100 | "Jesus offered up prayers and supplications
00:08:12.380 | "with loud cries and tears to him
00:08:15.400 | "who was able to save him from death."
00:08:18.980 | And he was heard, he was heard because of his reverence,
00:08:23.900 | his godly fear.
00:08:25.900 | Now, how does that work?
00:08:28.120 | He prayed that God would save him from death
00:08:30.460 | and he was heard.
00:08:31.540 | Well, he died.
00:08:32.980 | So I've argued in an article at Desiring God
00:08:36.900 | that Jesus was saved from death in answer to his cry,
00:08:41.900 | not in the sense that he didn't die,
00:08:44.940 | but in the sense that he was saved
00:08:47.060 | from the faith-destroying powers of death.
00:08:50.140 | In other words, death loomed in front of him
00:08:52.220 | and he was a human being and death was so horrible
00:08:55.460 | that it could have deterred him from obedience.
00:08:58.620 | And he pleaded with his father,
00:09:00.180 | "Don't let death destroy me like that."
00:09:04.020 | And an angel came and helped him.
00:09:08.020 | So what he was praying was not that he wouldn't die,
00:09:13.020 | but that the horrors of suffering and death
00:09:16.860 | wouldn't deter him from his obedience
00:09:20.300 | and his saving mission.
00:09:22.380 | Could it be then that Simon's stepping in to help Jesus
00:09:28.380 | make it to the cross, help Jesus just at that moment
00:09:33.100 | was like the angel showing up at the perfect moment
00:09:37.860 | just when the humanly weak Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane
00:09:42.860 | and now on the road to the cross
00:09:45.460 | needed help to finish his mission.
00:09:49.300 | So whichever of these five, six suggestions,
00:09:54.420 | whatever are part of Luke's intention as he writes,
00:09:58.540 | what we know is this.
00:10:00.220 | Number one, Simon was a real historical person
00:10:03.460 | and he was there at a real historical moment.
00:10:06.180 | Number two, he was a foreigner, an African,
00:10:09.940 | who served Jesus in his final hour.
00:10:12.020 | Three, carrying the cross behind Jesus
00:10:15.180 | is a beautiful and painful picture of our calling
00:10:19.380 | as disciples according to Luke 9.
00:10:21.460 | Whether Luke intended us to see that or not, it's true.
00:10:25.100 | Four, the call to suffer for Jesus is often sudden
00:10:29.820 | and costly and seemingly random.
00:10:32.860 | Five, Simon's help proved to be both a relief temporarily,
00:10:37.860 | but also added suffering because it sustained Jesus
00:10:42.980 | to get to the cross and have the horrible experience
00:10:46.220 | of crucifixion for us.
00:10:48.820 | And six, we know that Jesus cried out to his heavenly father
00:10:53.820 | in Gethsemane that he be given help.
00:10:56.260 | He needed help so that his obedience would not falter
00:11:00.300 | and God answered his prayers.
00:11:03.740 | These were the hardest hours of Jesus' life.
00:11:08.740 | And as we meditate on all these details,
00:11:13.980 | oh, what love, what thankfulness should rise in our hearts.
00:11:18.980 | - Yeah, amen to that.
00:11:23.060 | Lots of rich connections here for our reflection.
00:11:25.940 | Pastor John, thank you.
00:11:27.740 | And thank you for listening to search our several years
00:11:30.100 | of archives to read transcripts of episodes
00:11:32.220 | or to ask a question of your own,
00:11:33.460 | go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:11:38.460 | Well, what an incredible weekend ahead for us.
00:11:41.420 | Friday, we celebrate the cross of Christ.
00:11:44.140 | Sunday, we celebrate the resurrection of Christ.
00:11:46.820 | And then of course we return to our normal lives
00:11:49.740 | and our daily routines on Monday.
00:11:51.860 | For many of us, we return back to those normal daily
00:11:55.340 | routines, so how do we carry the joy of Easter Sunday
00:11:58.500 | into our Monday mornings?
00:12:00.940 | That question is on Monday.
00:12:02.540 | When we return, I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:12:04.620 | Have a wonderful Easter weekend celebrating
00:12:06.980 | our glorious savior.
00:12:08.600 | (upbeat music)
00:12:11.180 | (upbeat music)
00:12:13.760 | [BLANK_AUDIO]