Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1683
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, October 8, 1882
“And when they had mocked Him, they took off the purple from Him, and put His own clothes on Him, and led Him out to crucify Him.” Mark 15:20.
“And He, bearing His Cross, went forth.” John 19:17.
“And they compelled one Simon, a Cyrenian who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear the Cross.” Mark 15:21.
WHEN our Lord had been condemned to die, the execution of His sentence was hurried. The Jews were in great haste to shed His blood. So intense was the enmity of the chief priests and Pharisees, that every moment of delay was wearisome to them. Besides, it was the day of the Passover and they wished to have this matter finished before they went, with hypocritical piety, to celebrate the festival of Israel’s deliverance! We do not wonder at their eagerness, for they could not bear themselves while He lived, since His very Presence reproved them for their falsehood and hypocrisy.
But at Pilate, we do wonder, and herein he is much to be blamed. In all civilized countries there is usually an interval between the sentencing of the prisoner and the time of his being put to death. As the capital sentence is irreversible, it is well to have a little space in which possible evidence may be forthcoming which may prevent the fatal stroke. In some countries we have thought that there has been a cruelly long delay between the sentence and the execution, but with the Romans it was usual to allow the reasonable respite of 10 days.
Now, I do not say that it was incumbent upon Pilate, according to Roman Law, to have allowed 10 days to a Jew, who had not the rights of Roman citizenship, but I do say that he might have pleaded the custom of his country and so have secured a delay—and afterwards he might have released his prisoner. It was within his reach to have done so and he was blameworthy, as he was all along, in thus yielding to the clamor for an immediate execution for no other reason than that he was “willing to content the people.”
When once we begin to make the wishes of other men our law, we know not to what extremity of criminality we may be led. And so the Savior’s hasty execution is due to Pilate’s vacillating spirit and to the insatiable blood-thirstiness of the scribes and Pharisees. Being given over to death, our Savior was led away and, I suppose, the painters are right when they put a rope about His neck or His loins, for the idea of being led in an open street would seem to imply some sort of bond—“He was led as a sheep to the slaughter.” Alas, that the Emancipator of our race should be led forth as a captive to die!
The direction in which He is led is outside the city. He must not die in Jerusalem, though multitudes of Prophets had perished there. Though the Temple was the central place of sacrifice, yet the Son of God must not be offered there, for He was an offering of another kind and must not lie upon their altars. He must be led outside the city because, by the Jews, He was treated as a flagrant offender who must be executed at the Tyburn of the city, in the appointed place of doom known as Calvary or Golgotha. When Naboth was unjustly condemned for blasphemy, they carried him forth out of the city and stoned him with stones that he died. And afterwards Stephen—when they cried out against him as a blasphemer, they cast him out of the city and there they stoned him.
Our Savior, therefore, must die in the ordinary place of execution, that in all respects He might be numbered with the transgressors. The rulers of the city so loathed and detested their great Reprover that they rejected Him and would not suffer Him to die within their city walls! Alas, poor Jerusalem, in casting out the Son of David, you did cast out your
last hope—now are you bound over to desolation! He was led outside of the city because, from that time on, no acceptable sacrifice could be offered there. They might go on with their offering of daily lambs and they might sacrifice their bullocks and burn the fat of fed beasts—but from that day the substance of the sacrifice had gone away from them and Israel’s offerings were vain oblations.
Because the true Sacrifice is rejected of them, the Lord leaves them nothing but a vain show. Still more forcible is the fact that our Lord must die outside the city because He was to be consumed as a sin-offering. It is written in the Law, “And the skin of the bullock, and all his flesh, with his head, and with his legs, and his inwards, and his dung, even the whole bullock shall he carry forth outside the camp unto a clean place, where the ashes are poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire.” There were several sorts of offerings under the Law—the sweet-savor offerings were presented upon the altar and were accepted of God, but sin-offerings were burnt outside the camp, or gate, because God can have no fellowship with sin.