There are going to be times in your life when you are doing your normal thing and God intervenes in a strange and mysterious way and interrupts your life in order to set it on a new course. Often times these divine interruptions by God are inconvenient and frustrating. They are not what you planned or anticipated, but it is exactly what God intended for you at that time. We are going to see a divine interruption in a man’s life name Simon right in the middle of the Lord’s crucifixion.
If you haven’t already, open your Bibles to Mark 15:21. We have entered a section in Mark that begins to address the most important events in the history of the world. Today, we are looking at the crucifixion of Jesus. Then we will look at the death of Jesus. After that we will examine the burial of Jesus. Finally, we will look at the resurrection of Jesus. Nothing is more important than Jesus’ death and resurrection. Everything in the Gospel of Mark leads up to these events.
Let’s read about the crucifixion and then unpack it and see what God has for us today.
A passerby named Simon, who was from Cyrene, was coming in from the countryside just then, and the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus’ cross. (Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus.) 22 And they brought Jesus to a place called Golgotha (which means “Place of the Skull”). 23 They offered him wine drugged with myrrh, but he refused it. 24 Then the soldiers nailed him to the cross. They divided his clothes and threw dice to decide who would get each piece. 25 It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. 26 A sign announced the charge against him. It read, “The King of the Jews.” 27 Two revolutionaries were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 29 The people passing by shouted abuse, shaking their heads in mockery. “Ha! Look at you now!” they yelled at him. “You said you were going to destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days. 30 Well then, save yourself and come down from the cross!” 31 The leading priests and teachers of religious law also mocked Jesus. “He saved others,” they scoffed, “but he can’t save himself! 32 Let this Messiah, this King of Israel, come down from the cross so we can see it and believe him!” Even the men who were crucified with Jesus ridiculed him. (NLT)
Here’s what we are going to do. We are going to unpack this verse by verse and pick up some valuable lessons for life as we go.
Verse 21
Let’s start with verse 21 which says, A passerby named Simon, who was from Cyrene, was coming in from the countryside just then, and the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus’ cross. (Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus.) Remember, what has happened to Jesus up to this point. Jesus’ face has already been slapped repeatedly. They have punched Jesus in the mouth. They placed a blindfold over his eyes and beat him in the face. They spat in his face. They have placed a crown of thorns on his head. They hit him on the head with a bamboo reed. They mocked him by pretending to worship him. They also whipped his back with a cat-o-nine tails. It was a wooden handle with several leather straps that had hooks at the end of them. The hooks would fasten in the flesh then tear the flesh off the back down to the bone. What was not torn off the bone was shredded.
The cross beam
After Jesus was whipped, he was forced to carry his cross to his place of execution. He didn’t carry the full cross. Traditionally, he would have only carried the cross beam. The main post was usually left at the site of execution. It was often too large for even a healthy man to carry. The cross beam would have weight around 100 lbs. He would have carried it on his back and shoulders where he had been severely whipped.
The route through the city
The route taken to the site of execution was usually not direct. It typically involved a long, winding walk through the city. It would be similar to a parade. That long winding walk through the city by the criminal carrying the cross beam and looking beat up, bruised, bloody, and swollen was used to serve as a deterrent to others so nobody would ever think of rebelling against Rome lest he also end up crucified. Typically, the person to be crucified also had a plaque hung around his neck detailing the crime that brought about his execution.
We are told in John 19:17 that Jesus started off carrying his cross. It may have been because the route chosen by the executioners was especially long. It may have been that after Jesus’ back was shredded in his whipping, he was especially weak. Maybe Jesus simply wasn’t walking fast enough. Whatever the reason, we know Jesus was not making fast enough progress for the Roman soldiers in getting to the place where he would be executed.
Romans making people do things
So they grabbed someone from the crowd to help Jesus. Taking people off the street and making them do various tasks was a common Roman practice. It is one of the reasons Roman soldiers were hated. If there was a task to be done, they could grab someone off the street and force them to do it for them. In this case, Simon was tasked with carrying Jesus’ cross beam.
Mark tells us they grabbed a passerby named Simon… who was coming from the countryside just then…. Here’s what that tells us.
Simon was not there to watch Jesus be executed. He was literally trying to make his way through to get wherever he was going, but the soldiers stopped him and forced him to carry Jesus’ cross. That was a sudden and unexpected change to his plans that morning. For Simon, being grabbed out of a crowd and forced to carry the crossbeam of a man condemned to death was a strange and unexpected way to meet Jesus.
Alexander and Rufus
Then we are told this piece of information, Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus. Why would Mark tell us that? He tells us this without any information about them. When that happens in the Bible, the original readers would have known who they were without explanation. In other words, Alexander and Rufus were well known among the believers by the time Mark wrote his gospel.
Is it possible, that after Simon carried the Lord’s cross through the city that sometime after the Lord’s resurrection Simon became a follower of Jesus and led his two sons, Alexander and Rufus, to the Lord? The reason why I’m thinking this is because at the end of Romans, Paul tells the believers in Rome to “Greet Rufus, whom the Lord picked out to be his very own; and also his dear mother, who has been a mother to me” (Romans 16:13, NLT). Since Paul did not mention Simon or Alexander, it’s probable that they are both dead. What all this tells me is that Simon and his family became influencers on Paul’s life and the life of the church.
This all started with a random and inconvenient moment where Simon was pulled out of the crowd and told to carry the cross beam for Jesus through the town. While this looks like something that happened by chance, and being forced to carry Jesus’ cross-beam was a great inconvenience in Simon’s life, it was actually God’s grace at work in his life. If Simon hadn’t suddenly found himself forced into carrying Jesus’ cross, he may never have paid any attention to Jesus. If he had never paid attention to Jesus, he may have never trusted in Jesus as his savior after the resurrection of Jesus. If he had never become a Christian, he would have never shared the gospel with his children. His children wouldn’t have become leaders in the early church. In reality, that sudden change of Simon’s plans that led to him carrying Jesus’ cross was an act of God’s grace in his life. The sudden inconvenience and change of his plans that morning was not what it seemed.
Isn’t this the way God often works? The unexpected inconveniences and sudden changes in our plans are the ways God works in our lives?
- A change of job
- A death of a loved one
- A health crisis
This week, if you face a sudden or painful change in your plans, rather than grumbling about that change, start looking to see how God is at work in that change. Just like he was at work in Simon’s life, he is at work in yours.
Verse 22
And this brings us to verse 22 which says, And they brought Jesus to a place called Golgotha (which means “Place of the Skull”). The word Golgotha is a transliteration of the Aramaic word for skull. Golgotha is an Aramaic word. Later, some Bibles would use the Latin word for skull which is calvary. So, the words Golgotha and calvary both mean skull. They mean the same thing.
We often picture Golgotha or calvary as a hill. However, there is nothing in the Bible that tells us this was a hill. The Romans usually crucified people along main highways or roads so the maximum number of people would see the dying victims. That served as a deterrent to crime. The rough equivalent would be crucifying Jesus outside of a Wal-Mart so the most people would see him. The point is that everyone saw Jesus die. This did not take place behind closed doors or upon a hill away from people.
Verse 23
Now comes verse 23 which says, They offered him wine drugged with myrrh, but he refused it. Everything Mark told us about Jesus’ crucifixion up to this point highlights the mockery of Jesus and the insulting of Jesus. Everything done to Jesus was meant to demean and destroy him. It would be completely out of the character for a sudden act of mercy and kindness by the soldiers if they offered Jesus an alcoholic beverage to deaden the pain of the cross. There was no mercy toward Jesus in his crucifixion at any time. What was happening?
This was not regular wine. It was wine mixed with myrrh. The word myrrh means bitter. This was not good wine. It was wine mixed with something that made it bitter and disgusting.
Matthew commented on this when he wrote, “The soldiers gave Jesus wine mixed with bitter gall, but when he had tasted it, he refused to drink it” (Matthew 27:34, NLT). Gall can mean a variety of things but generally it means bitter. This wine was mixed with a bitter substance or a bitter herb.
Luke also commented about his when he wrote, “The soldiers mocked him, too, by offering him a drink of sour wine” (Luke 23:36, NLT). The wine was mixed with something that made it bitter, that made it sour, that made it rotten. Put yourself in Jesus’ situation. Jesus was sweating blood. He was now also whipped and had lost a large amount of blood. Jesus was tired and majorly dehydrated. Jesus had nothing to drink for hours. The soldiers, pretending to be compassionate, offered Jesus wine. Most prisoners that were dehydrated would guzzle it down only to find they were drinking something that was disgusting. I think this was intended as a trick to get Jesus nauseated while he hung dying on the cross. It was a way they tried to make Jesus’ agony even worse. This was not an act of compassion. It was just another way to mock, ridicule, and cause more pain on Jesus.
None of this happened by accident. Even that offer of disgusting, rotten wine was spoken about prophetically in Scripture long before it happened. Psalm 69:21 prophesying about this event says, “They offer me sour wine for my thirst” (NLT).
Conclusion
There are two things I want you to take away from all this.
- First, God often interrupts your life in order to get you where you need to be and to become the person you were meant to be. It will be unexpected and inconvenient first. We see that in Simon.
- Secondly, I want you to admire Jesus. I want you to be in awe of Him. I want you to be thankful for Him and what He has done for you during His crucifixion. He loves you and that’s why He went through all the ridicule, mockery, and torture for you.
