The Road To The Cross II

The road to the cross isn’t a vague religious idea. It’s a straight line Jesus chooses to walk, knowing it leads to rejection, humiliation, flogging and death and knowing his own friends will scatter when it gets real. We talk through why that matters, why the crowds loved the miracles yet missed the mission, and how Isaiah 53 paints a Messiah who suffers for others rather than a king who simply conquers. If you’ve ever wondered why Christians place so much weight on Good Friday, this is the heart of it. 

From there we go right to the claim Christianity can’t dodge: the resurrection. We unpack why the empty tomb isn’t a side detail but the confirmation of everything Jesus said and did, and we connect that to Romans 10:9 to 10 and what it means to put real trust in Christ, not just respect him as a teacher. We also use Jesus’ own picture from John 12:24, the seed that “dies” to produce many seeds, to show why death-before-life is built into the gospel story. 

Then we make it personal. The cross isn’t only history; it becomes a daily pattern for disciples, with Luke 9:23 and Galatians 2:20 challenging our ego and our need to be praised. We also tackle the hardest practical outworking: forgiveness, including a story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and why forgiving others can be part of your own freedom. If you’re weighing up faith, Easter, discipleship, or simply asking “Do I really know him?”, press play, share this with a mate, and leave a review with the question you’re still wrestling with.

Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are in the world - Welcome to Grapevine Ministries.

Transcript

Isaiah 53 And The Suffering Servant

Why Jesus Came To Die

The Resurrection As Proof

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Okay, now we come to the conclusion. This is the road to the cross, and it talks about the promised rejection and the pain that Jesus went through. Right. And uh remember we were talking about all the prophecies that were getting fulfilled. Okay, we're moving on from that. Otherwise, I'm never gonna finish this, and we'll be talking about Easter until Christmas gets here. Right? Jesus told disciples when they arrived in Jerusalem that he would be handed over to the Gentiles. Right? The Gentiles is another word for the Romans or those that are, you know, Jews, right? They will mock him, they will insult him, flog him, and they will kill him. Now, all the Jews were looking for a Messiah, but they imagined the Messiah would be a great king like David or Solomon. They envisaged the Messiah would come and lead a rebellion against the Roman Empire and set the Jews free. Somehow they missed Isaiah's predictions that the Messiah would be a suffering servant. Now, I I don't want to get bogged down here, but let me let me put this in a little bit more of a perspective, okay? And that's one of the reasons we have Jews and we have Messianic Jews, okay. Nobody was born again until after Jesus had been resurrected, alright? And um, and the other thing to to take into consideration here is that um if you read scripture, don't try and interpret it to what you think it believes. Do your research with other scriptures and other books written by pastors and and uh Christian leaders in in the in the industry or go to Bible college um because it says that we perish through lack of knowledge, and you can't assume anything when you're looking at the scriptures. But here it's clear that the Jews that were very devoted to the Old Testament, okay, uh interpreted the scriptures differently. That's all I'm gonna say on this, but God said this in Isaiah 53, 3 to 5. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that bought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. All right, Roman crucifixion was a common practice in his land where he lived in this time. It was a common sight to see criminals nailed to trees along the road, and even as a boy, Jesus was aware that he had to be about his father's business, and his father's business was redeeming mankind of sin. The only way sin could be forgiven was through a blood sacrifice, and Jesus offered himself as our sin sacrifice. So, as a child and as a teenager growing up in that region, right, Jesus saw many, many people crucified on crosses and just hung on the side of the road to rock. Not a pretty sight. So at the beginning of his ministry, large multitudes crowded around Jesus because they were amazed by his miracles and his wisdom, and that's his understanding of the scriptures, right? After all, when you see that a man can feed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fishes, you follow him because he's the fast food source. You know, who needs food trucks when Jesus is around, he could just pluck it out of the air. And when you see that he can heal any disease, you've got your own walking, talking, community services, and medical center all in one. And teaching, why go to college when you can go out into a beautiful grassy field and listen to this rabbi? But Jesus didn't come to heal, teach, or to do miracles, he actually came to die. But they all serve a purpose, and that's for another time and another series, I suppose. As Jesus peered down the road to the cross, his humanity must have shuddered within him. The anticipation of an unpleasant event is usually worse than the event itself. With getting flogged and crucifixion, I probably would beg to differ in that aspect, but most times it is. You think, wow. And as Jesus looked down the road, he not only saw rejection, he saw that all of his disciples were gonna do a runner. He saw the physical pain of having his back shredded with the catarine tails and whatever else they used. He visualized the searing pain of the nails being pounded into his flesh. He sensed the staggering agony of having a spear driven under his rib cage and a laboring heart as he was slowly dying. He saw it all and he kept walking down towards Jerusalem because the road to the cross had to happen for the resurrection to take place. It's scary and it's painful, but after seeing all the pain, agony, and suffering, he said, and I'll quote, and oh, by the way, on the third day I rise again. See, the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was such an important historical event that all the world paused at this time of the year to celebrate it. The death of Jesus was such a powerful event that to this day the cross is a symbol of peace and sacrifice. From the Red Cross to the Blue Cross to the Holy Cross to the Southern Cross, and even the cross pens and pencils, the world recognizes the power of that symbol, and that is why everybody should take a breath and reflect on this. But however, without the resurrection of Jesus, we wouldn't have Christmas, and the cross would have been robbed of its meaning in his birth. Jesus was the word that became flesh and dwelt amongst us. On the cross, Jesus became our Passover Lamb, bearing our sins. So when the judgment of God visits mankind, the sentence of eternal death will pass over us, but only in his resurrection was Jesus able to verify everything he did and said. Had there been no resurrection, Jesus would have just been a religious teacher like Moses, Buddha, Muhammad, or Confucius. I'm going into a lot of detail here because I think this is very, very important. Of all the ancient religions, Jesus is the only founder who is alive, and the only one that is adherent to other religions as they visit the grave sites of their founders and they honor their remains. So, out of all the other religions, they will still go to a grave site. But there's no corpse for Christians. So, I mean, I know some people just do it because they want to know where it's there, but they don't go uh to the uh the tomb where Jesus laid and laid flowers or anything like that because they know he's not there. If you dig up Moses, Buddha, Muhammad, or Confucius, you'll find even after all of these years, there'll be remnants of that person. You'll find bones or you'll find something in there. You go to where Jesus was laid to rest, there is nothing but an empty tomb. Rome 10:9 says this. You must believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead. If you are going to be saved, you can be, you can't just believe Jesus was a great man if you don't accept the resurrection. Since Jesus claimed he would come back from the dead, if it wasn't able to pull that trick off, he wouldn't be who he is. He'd just be a good man. He'd be a deceiver, a lunatic, or perhaps worse, he would have been a religious fake, a deceiver, just like the others. Romans 10, 9 and 10, that is where we get our salvation prayer if you want to lead someone to the Lord. The point I'm making here is that it doesn't matter how you look at it, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and nobody but nobody comes to the Father except through him. And he, see, we are still sinners, right? We have been redeemed in the afterlife, right? But now we have the ability to come into the throne room of grace, stand before the Father, who cannot look at sin because Jesus stands in the gap for us. All right, does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 13:32

But from the very start, he knew he had to die.

Death Before Resurrection Seed Picture

The Cross As Daily Discipleship

Joy Forgiveness And Bonhoeffer

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Because before there can be a resurrection, there must be a death. Here's how I described it. Uh well, I didn't describe it, but it was described in John twelve twenty four. This is what Jesus said. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. The death and resurrection of Jesus can be compared to a seed. A seed that remains a seed will never produce anything. But a seed that is planted literally dies, it ceases to be a seed, instead it becomes a creative force that produces a plant, and that plant produces many more seeds. Jesus was the original seed, he died, but that wasn't the end. He is alive, and as a result of his life, there are tens of millions of seeds in the world today. Let me put it this way. I heard a pastor say this when I was visiting my children in uh Melbourne, right? And I thought it was really, really good the way he put it. He had an apple and he cut that apple in half, right? And then he he showed everybody the seeds, right? So he was showing um the seeds of the apple, right? So he says you can count the seeds in an apple, but you can't count the apple in the seeds. Now, I got the I got the drift of that right right away, but others don't. See, just take one apple seed, right? Go and plant it in the ground, or better still, uh, do it this way. Plant it in uh like a nursery container, but actually make sure it's it's transparent and so you can see the seed, right? And as you're watering it, you'll see that seed die and then split open, and then the tree starts to grow. Now, if you've seen the size of an apple tree, okay, even to the visual eye, you can't count how many apples are on that tree, but you know that that's that tree comes from one seed, and that's why it also goes on and it talks about um we have uh faith the size of a mustard seed. It's it's another analogy. You you can plant a mustard seed and just see how big the mustard tree grows. See, the road to the cross passed through a dark valley of suffering and death, but it emerged on the other side of the cross into a brilliance of resurrection life. These three observations about the road to the cross have all been doctrinal in nature. This final observation is a practical application of the cross for each of us, all right. In other words, the other three were basically uh relating back to the Bible and to scriptures, but the road to the cross is also a pattern for every single one of us who's a disciple, and we are disciples because we choose to be, right? The theme around the gospels, these guys weren't the sharpest arrows in the quiver. If you know what I mean, I mean they're like, you know, mate, I mean, I wouldn't really say that I would have picked it up quicker, but I would have thought if I was one of the 12 disciples and had the knowledge I had now, I'd say, hey, mate, we get we get the drift here. But they were a little slow on the uptake. But you've also got to remember that they were everyday uh people, you know, they were uh fishermen, they uh were tax collectors, they did all sorts of things. But in Acts 1, 6, we see even on the day Jesus ascended back into heaven, the disciples were still playing dumb and dumber. You know? Uh what does this mean? What what what happens now? If you see someone standing in front of you slowly float up into the clouds while they're talking to you, I think that would be pretty convincing for me to go back, especially with Matthew, because Matthew uh he was one of the disciples, he was always writing notes. Uh, he was the tax collector. I'd be going back and grabbing that book and saying, hey, what did he say when he fed the fish? Uh, what did he say? Yeah, no, not when he fed the fish, when he when he actually took a coin out of the uh the the um fish's mouth, when he fed the 5,000, when he raised people from the dead. I mean, all of these sort of things. What did what was he saying when he said that? Give me your notebook, I want to have a look. That's what I would have been doing. But what do you think was the last thing the disciples did say to Jesus before he was taken up into heaven? Did they say, it's been great, Lord? Catch you on the flip side. Uh, you can count on us, spreading the message. We're good about that. Now remember, this was after the cross and after the resurrection, they'd seen the empty tomb. They observed Jesus passing through locked walls and making fish appear out of nowhere. And still, the very last thing the disciples said to Jesus was, Lord, are you now going to restore the kingdom of Israel? After all he had shown them, they were still looking for an earthly kingdom and an earthbound king. The fact that the first disciples weren't too bright, that gives me hope. Because there's still a lot about being a disciple I don't even understand. Most of us have a hard time understanding the full meaning of the cross. We must learn that the cross is not just an historical event, it is a present reality for every single one of us. I'm not talking about wearing a cross around your neck or carrying a cross in your pocket. Every born-again spiritual Christian or a disciple of Jesus must walk the road to the cross. It's our daily pattern, and our Bible must be read every day. Don't let it just collect dust or become a paperweight on your desk. The first scripture I learned when I was in Bible college many years ago was Luke 9 23. And this is what Jesus said if any man will come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. That verse is a lot easier to memorize than it is to actually practice. It means we must acknowledge that our ego, the big I, has been crucified. A verse I quote nearly every day in Galatians 2.20. It says, I have been crucified with Christ and no longer live, but Christ lives in me. If we don't allow I to remain at the center of our lives, I want to get all the attention. I like to boast and I love to be recognized and praised by the world. Every real disciple must embrace this attitude. For my part, I am going to boast in nothing but the cross of our Master, Jesus Christ, because of that cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into little patterns that they dictate. Galatians six fourteen. For years I thought carrying the cross was some kind of miserable experience in which the more I suffered, the holier I was. Some people even seek suffering, they crawl on their knees for miles or mutilate their bodies as a way of trying to be holy, miserable disciples. I kept reading about how the joy of the Lord is my strength, Nehemiah 8 10, and how I should rejoice in the Lord always. And I was confused. Was I supposed to suffer or reject? Simple. I was to rejoice in the suffering, remembering there is no. It says, For the joy that was set before me, that's Jesus, endured the cross and despised the shame. What was the joy set before Jesus? What enabled him to look through the pain? I believe it can be found in the very first thing that Jesus said from the cross, and that is Father, forgive them. That's the joy that was set before him, the joy of forgiveness. Dietrich von Hofner was a German pastor in World War II. He was arrested and died in a concentration camp for refusing to go along with Hitler's policies. While in prison, he came to understand the cost of discipleship and was able to experience joy in the midst of his suffering. And he wrote, When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

The cross is there, right? Right from the beginning. You have only got to pick it up.

Forgiveness For Your Own Freedom

A Jewish Family Finds The Messiah

Easter Devotionals And Personal Invitation

SPEAKER_01 26:30

There is no need for a disciple to go and to look for a cross, no need to deliberate, run after suffering. Our forgiveness came by the cross of Christ. Thus the call to follow Christ always means to share the work of forgiveness and men and their sins. Forgiveness is the Christ-like suffering, which is the Christian duty to bear. The cost of discipleship, and this is page 99 to 100, and you can get this. It's called the cost of discipleship. And this is Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this. He forgave the Nazi guards before they executed him. He told them, I forgive you for what you're about to do. But he had to die to himself because before he could forgive them. They didn't really hurt him when they executed him because he's already dead. Dead to himself, and he went to be with the Lord. Now I'm not telling you all guys to flip and be martyrs, but I'm just trying to put things into perspective. You may not like this talking about forgiveness because you've been hurt so deeply by someone you think it's impossible to forgive them. Remember, I'm talking about disciples of Jesus. If you aren't a disciple of Jesus, it would be much easier for you to kiss your elbow than to forgive another person. But if you are disciples of Jesus, you can can you can forgive anyone. I just want to clarify that last little bit, all right? If you have to die first to be born again, that's what it talks about. But the thing is, when you're when you're wanting to forgive people, you're not forgiving that person for the person you're forgiving. You are doing the forgiveness for yourself. So when you say, hey Joe, I forgive you, okay, irrespective of what his reaction is, the forgiveness that you're extending to that person is for you yourself, for the inner part of you. Right? Now, I just want to finish on this. I'll probably go a little bit over, but please bear with me. Okay. Otis Brad um no Brady. Otis Brady. Brady, I'll get this a third time later. Otis Brady and his wife Martha, they served in a Southern Baptist missionary uh and they were in Belize for many years. Once Otis wrote a story of a delightful young family that moved from New York City to Belize and became their neighbors, right? The man was an executive for an oil company, and the two families become very, very close. Persevere with me, would you, because this was a very, very profound thing that Brady says. The Brady's were like grandparents to the three children of that um family. The New York family, they were Jewish, right? And the the Brady's didn't pressure them to believe, they just loved them. During the holidays, the Brady's celebrated Hanukkah with their young neighbors, and they invited them to uh to celebrate Christmas. So Otis asked his neighbors if he could help with the Christmas devotionals by reading some of the Old Testament scriptures. Then Otis would read some New Testament scriptures, and his neighbors gladly agreed. Now, now picture this, right? You have, okay, Southern Baptist missionaries, so they're all about the word of God, and now you have some Jewish people which are all about the Old Testament. Now, Otis selected a number of Old Testament messianic prophecies for his guests to read, and then Otis read the corresponding verse from the New Testament that showed how Jesus fulfilled it. Now, Otis and Martha could tell their neighbor, we're amazed by the scriptures that you read. They're really good. For the next few weeks, they asked many, many questions about Jesus and the Bible, but they never committed themselves to become followers of Christ. Now they soon moved back to New York, but Brady's stayed in touch with this family. And one day Martha got a letter from the New York Friends, and on the outside of the envelope she found these words written in large letters. We have found the Messiah. Inside the letter, she read that their friends had recognized Jesus as the Messiah and trusted him for eternal life. Not long after the family moved to Israel to join a group of Messianic Jews there. Have you trusted Jesus? The evidence of the Bible is overwhelming, but it's not just the facts that are important. God loves you so much he sent you a personal Christmas present in the form of an infant. That child grew up and died on a cross for your sins. And God raised him from the dead. So today, if you will put your faith and trust in him, you can receive the greatest gift ever given anyone, which is eternal life. I say this because I have no doubt at all. I have spoken about on social media, and I post a seven-day Easter devotionals. Please feel free to look 'em up. And then trust your own research. Look up the scriptures and ask yourself, do you know him? And I mean, do you really know him? He is the same today, yesterday, and forever. And he's no respecter of persons. When he's done for one, he can do for another. And do not look at yourself and your past because that'll all be washed away once you become a follower of Jesus Christ. God bless you. Happy Easter. Talk to you soon. Bye for now.