What does does a scene of Jesus enduring excruciating when being NAILED to a CROSS have to do with us?
At the urging of a beloved brother in Christ I will once again witness the ANSWER to my opening question in this UPDATED post ABOUT GOOD FRIDAY from A.D. 2014.
What happened April 18, Good Friday, 2014?
As for Good Friday ~30 years ago (a guess in recalling that eventful year):
I could NOT find any more significant event than this..
Born again in the Holy Spirit!
I am witness that God filled me with His Holy Spirit of new Life in Christ Jesus twenty years ago on Good Friday.
Roger@talkofJesus.com
The convicting evidence of my sin and Christ’s Sacrifice was given to me by the Holy Spirit as I prayerfully walked through the Stations of the Cross, when “Jesus is nailed to the Cross.”
NOTE: YouTube labels the LINK ABOVE (same link below)
Age-restricted video (based on Community Guidelines)
I recommend it for any TEEN and adult who wants to see a 'Passion of The Christ' violent representation of NAILING JESUS TO THE CROSS FOR OUR SINS!
WE deserve what you see Christ enduring.
Christ’s suffering for my sins was excruciating!
Our conviction for HIS trial in darkness and swift execution of injustice ought to point toward the darkness of our own souls as we consider the Sacrifice of this innocent Son of Man on a Cross for us.
The Trial of Jesus
IF you dare to look into the shadows of the dark mirror of your mortal soul consider the accounts of the trial, torture and excruciating death of Jesus Christ!
Mark 14: … Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders…
And they led Jesus to the high priest. And all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together.
And they all condemned him as deserving death.
65 And some began to spit on him and to cover his face and to strike him, saying to him, “Prophesy!”
And the guards received him with blows.
ALL this took place during the darkness of night.
However because of Rome, their captive government and Herod their King did not have the authority to execute a man… no death sentence.
And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate.
Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”
And he answered him, “You have said so.”
… But the chief priests stirred up the crowd…
And Pilate again said to them, “Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?”
And they cried out again, “Crucify him.”
Pilate said to them, “Why, what evil has he done?”
But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him.”
(Is that not what the crowds of these last days shout at mention of the Name of Jesus Christ?)
So Pilate (politician & diplomat), wishing to satisfy the crowd…
Understand the excruciating pain JESUS our Lord and Sacrifice suffered for our sins. From the Vine's Expository DictionaryPICTURE IT (even if you couldn't watch the video)
Scourge (Noun and Verb):
(akin to A: Latin, flagello; Eng., “flagellate”), is the word used in Mat 27:26; Mar 15:15, of the “scourging” endured by Christ and administered by the order of Pilate. Under the Roman method of “scourging,” the person was stripped and tied in a bending posture to a pillar, or stretched on a frame. The “scourge” was made of leather thongs, weighted with sharp pieces of bone or lead, which tore the flesh of both the back and the breast (cp. Psa 22:17). Eusebius (Chron.) records his having witnessed the suffering of martyrs who died under this treatment. Note: In Jhn 19:1 the “scourging” of Christ is described by Verb No. 2, as also in His prophecy of His sufferings, Mat 20:19; Mar 10:34; Luk 18:33. In Act 22:25 the similar punishment about to be administered to Paul is described by Verb No. 3 (the “scourging” of Roman citizens was prohibited by the Porcian law of 197, B.C.).
.. he [Pilate] delivered him [the unjustly scourged Jesus] to be crucified.
16 And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion.
17 And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. 18 And they began to salute him,
“Hail, King of the Jews!”
19 And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. 20 And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him.
Then they led him out to crucify him.
Truly, don’t you sometimes think that this is what you deserve for some of your sins?
Shouldn’t a Holy God punish ALL true sin?
How will we escape the wrath of God for so many sins of our past?
So they took Jesus, 17 and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.
18 There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.
19 Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read,
“Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”
XI Jesus is Nailed to the Cross
Any Christian familiar with the stations of the Cross will recognize this moment commemorated.
It was the moment on a Good Friday about 30 years ago I was born again in the Spirit!
At the conclusion of my updated GOOD FRIDAY post in the year of our Lord 2023 on TalkofJESUS.com I will include a text for you to prayerfully READ as if you walked through all of the excruciating agony Jesus suffered prior to being NAILED to the CROSS.
Roger@talkofJesus.com
Jesus stands in the most human of places. He has already experienced profound solidarity with so many on this earth, by being beaten and tortured. Now he is wrongfully condemned to punishment by death. His commitment to entering our lives completely begins its final steps. He has said “yes” to God and placed his life in God’s hands. We follow him in this final surrender, and contemplate with reverence each place along the way, as he is broken and given for us…
THE FOLLOWING IS AN UPDATED POST ABOUT JERUSALEM by Roger Harned originally published on
TALK OF JESUS .COM
APRIL 14, A.D. 2014
about Palm Sunday in Jerusalem
Do you with eyes to see Jerusalem as it is and was in the time of Jesus see it?
Hosanna to the Son of David:
It is not unlike today.
Jerusalem is no longer Holy to the Lord!
The dome of the false prophet boasts victory over the Jesus of the Jews.
Christ did not claim the city or the mount or the Temple.
The Messiah King of the Jews did not win the battle of the day.
AND thus far, JESUS has not won the battle of this day!
Peter, Philip and many others have encountered false teachers and false prophets from the very earliest days of Christ’s Church.
~ A.D. 30
Jerusalem had been taken by Rome, as it once had been conquered by Babylon.
The enemies of the Jews have their own gods. Stone idols, Myths, false prophets who are mere mortals from their cultural past, men and women who are and will remain dead.
The enemies of the Jews of Jerusalem have their own cities with their own gods.
For two millennia since that notable kingly entry of the Son of Man worshiped as He approached Jerusalem, anti-Christs have opposed their own Savior, the Messiah and Eternal King of not only the Jews but a KING of KINGS over all of the world for all of time into eternity.
You must understand that these are battles for God.
These are battles AGAINST God in every generation until the last.
CLAIM to Jerusalem is important
Is it an international island of Palestine?
Does Jerusalem legitimately reclaim its nation of Israel bequeathed once more to it by a United writ of the Nations which had opposed Zion’s rule for millennia?
Not even David ruled in Jerusalem for many years of his reign.
Yet as it is now, and in certain prescribed seasons, the hills of Jerusalem rise into a yearly international spotlight of the world. It was during one of these great feasts that the Messiah of Israel approached its gate on what Christians now call Palm Sunday.
פֶּסַח
pesaḥ [Passover]
Why do the Jews make pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover?
What were all the Jews commemorating?
And let us not forget that Jesus was a Jew - a son of man born to the line of David - the Messiah Savior of Israel making His way there on Palm Sunday.
God had saved the Hebrew people from Egypt and led them by His promise to Israel. Jerusalem was Holy to the Lord for the chosen people of the Lord.
Moses did not build the Temple.
THE TEMPLE
Built by Solomon and completed ~957 Before Christ,
King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed Solomon’s temple around 586 or 587 B.C.
Putting aside the false claims of the false prophet (that Jerusalem was not given to the Jews, but belongs to Arabs), God had a personal relationship with the Hebrew people. Moses had met with God in the Tabernacle — a tent of worship and forerunner of the Temple.
God would make His Presence known at various times… in the Tabernacle and in the Temple.
King David brought the Tabernacle to Jerusalem.
Yet the LORD commanded that The Temple would be built by King Solomon. This was at a time when the Lord blessed Israel with great power and might for His own glory.
AND of course no good Jew would neglect a reverence and respect for:
Moses who had led them from slavery in Egypt,
David who had conquered most of the people and lands of Canaan (Palestine) and
Solomon, who not only built the TEMPLE but conquered vast surrounding lands, nations and peoples who then sent great riches to Israel.
(But all that had been before great division and disobedience to the LORD by generations of Kings who mostly did ‘what was evil in the sight of the LORD.)
Therefore the LORD’s Temple built by Solomon had been destroyed, Jerusalem captured and then both eventually restored on a much smaller scale.
Israel’s false client Kings, The Herod’s
The Temple itself (we ought to remind ourselves) is NOT the Temple Solomon built which was completely destroyed.
The Temple also was NOT the Temple Nehemiah rebuilt, but a prideful project of Herod to build back bigger than the LORD’s intention.
A.D. 70
Herod’s Temple would be destroyed by the Romans just 40 years after Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, crucifixion and resurrection.
Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and history remain controversial even to this day in the year of our Lord, 2023.
Jesus had been rumored to have fed thousands in the wilderness just like Moses had fed the Hebrew people by the hand of God for forty years.
Word on the street had it that Jesus was approaching Jerusalem, again. AND, as always, the crowds gathered.. this time along the road from Bethany where rumor has it that this JESUS, the Galilean of Nazareth and Capernaum, had raised a man from the dead and told him to follow with the funeral crowds to Jerusalem’s Passover feast.
This time the crowds (under the watchful eyes of their Roman captors) would pour into the city as Jesus would enter like the conquering King David, look around (doing nothing) — and then leave.
But the overall purpose of the LORD God (which no mortal man understood at the time) was worship through a NEW COVENANT of grace and a personal filling of the Holy Spirit of God.
Jesus brought not the Tabernacle of God to Jerusalem, but the Very Presence of God.
Jesus was coming into Jerusalem for the Passover feast. Everyone would be there… waiting for their King and Savior.
Did He really have the power of God?
Is He the promised one, as John the Baptizer had preached?
One more thing about Jerusalem and its buildings:
Llike any city, people lived there, people worked there, people visited there.
(Tourism was and still is big, especially during the big religious holidays. And of course the out-of-town tourists here for the festival are NOT all acceptable to our ‘religion‘ which celebrates this feast.)
Like anywhere else, the rich ran things and the poor just got by.
The rulers of the city were the leading Jews: Priests, Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Temple guards and Temple police, officials of Herod’s household and officials of Herod’s governments of the city and of the region.
All of these had their role to play. And not so unlike today the religious establishment managed the money of their patrons well.
The King IS here. He IS in the Temple.
This particular Temple was built by Herod, grandfather of this King Herod. With Rome’s help the Great King Herod had been the great builder of many great buildings in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.
As a point of fact, the Temple (of any era) was just another Grande building used as a place of worship.
Imagine the grandeur of the present-day Vatican and you will have an image of Herod’s Third Temple, where Jesus would soon make a scene after riding triumphantly to the Gate of Jerusalem on a donkey.
Vatican City
Yet a church or Cathedral without Jesus is just a building.
The Temple without God was just a building.
BUT THIS WAS NEVER GOD’S INTENTION! THE LORD’S VICTORY IN JERUSALEM WAS NEVER INTENDED FOR A PALM SUNDAY PARADE. For this Celebration of Christ’s Holy Presence Was just a prelude to His victory Of the Cross.
1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way,
3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”
Before John the messenger of the Messiah, prior to Isaiah and the Prophets calling us to repentance and announcing the coming of the Lord;
Before David and the Kingdom of Israel, before Moses and the exodus of God’s chosen from captivity;
Thus, God IS and did send unto mankind Himself His only Son, a babe in a humble manger, born of a humble woman betrothed of a humble man, for the work of our redemption, a sheep of sacrifice on the Cross for our salvation. He IS the resurrection and the life.
Are we not prisoners of our many sins? Do our hearts not suffer in the dungeons of our darkness. Is God not distant from our difficulties and silent in our sufferings?
It was no different 2013 years ago. Yet the beginning of the story of the babe in the manger begins before the beginning.
In the beginning, the Holy Spirit was with God. The Holy Spirit descended on Christ Jesus, Son of God and He, a man with us, taught us once more the surpassing love and grace of God our Father in heaven.
Before Jesus’ ministry and teaching in the Holy Spirit, before the Son of Man was born in a manger in Bethlehem, He IS God in creation. Now a savior is come. He IS God with man: like every man, a babe, a child, a youth, a young man, and finally a mature man teaching the very word of God. He IS the very word of God! Jesus’ teaching IS the only truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Yet by His own love and the great grace of God our Father, He IS the Lamb of sacrifice for our sins.
Think of Jesus descended into the womb of Mary and born to be worshiped in a lowly manger in this way:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.
Jesus, Son of Man, born of Mary, the Incarnate spoken Word of God the Father. He was with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit in the beginning.
3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
Genesis 1:
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
The Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Jesus speaks to creation as the Word taught us.
4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
Genesis 1: 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
In the image and likeness of Jesus we were made. In the beginning, adam (man) was without sin, as Jesus, as God: Holy and separated from sin, like the darkness is divided from the light.
5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Here is revealed the identity of the babe in the manger: Jesus, heralded by angels and worshiped by shepherds and wise kings; Jesus, the babe smuggled into Egypt by Joseph to escape the sword of Herod; Jesus who would return to Nazareth of Galilee announced by John the Baptist, greatest of all Prophets.
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.
11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
By His Light and the cloud of His glory He led His own people from the slavery of Egypt to His land of promise. By His own Word He proclaimed His Law of holiness and light for the people of His promise.
God’s own rejected God as a people of God; therefore God came unto His own and also to those who were not His own as a light to the gentiles, to all nations and all peoples.
All who will believe in the only Son of God and truly follow the will of God have become sons and daughters of God, adopted into the household and heart of His eternal life and overflowing love.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Unto us a child is born, a son of man, the Son of God. His glory was again witnessed by His Apostles and His righteousness seen by all.
15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”)
16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
6 And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths andlaid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
The Shepherds and the Angels
8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
15 When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”
Thirty-three years later near Golgotha, then departed from Jerusalem:
Luke 24:
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. 2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
4 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. 5 And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? 6 He is not here, but has risen.
12 But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.
13 That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14 and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them.
Acts 1: 9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, 11 and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Christ Jesus, from the beginning to the manger, to the cross, to the tomb, to the resurrection, to walking and witness with men fifty more days, to His ascension, to the heavens above, to return on the clouds.
Do you have a relationship with the greatest love of all, that of God our Father in Heaven, Christ Jesus the Lamb of sacrifice for our sins, and the Holy Spirit counselor of the Most High?
The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John 1:8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
Bow down and worship the Lord our God, Who IS and was and will be: God With Us; Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.
May the peace of God’s love dwell in your hearts through the grace of our Lord Christ Jesus, who came to a lowly manger that we might bow even lower to worship His Holy Name in this Holy time: Christ Mass, 2013
The Crucifixion
Here is revealed the identity of the babe in the manger: Jesus, heralded by angels and worshiped by shepherds and wise kings; Jesus, the babe smuggled into Egypt by Joseph to escape the sword of Herod; Jesus who would return to Nazareth of Galilee announced by John the Baptist, greatest of all Prophets.
