Luke 23:16 Note: I. That the trials and sufferings of Jesus Christ were essential to the perfection of His character as our Great Example. There have been in the world examples of patience and resignation and submission to the will of God, but there have been none like that of Jesus Christ. II. Th... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 23:21 The Cross the expression of man's unbelief. Crucifixion was the death of the outcast only, the _Gentile_outcast. "Crucify Him," then, meant, "Let Him die the worst of deaths, the Gentile death, the death that is so specially connected with the curse; the death that proclaims Him to be no... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 23:25 I. What was this will? What was the moving spring of their fierce resolution that Jesus of Nazareth should die? (1) It was their will that this stern censor of their manners and morals should die. This was, perhaps, the first and broadest reason of their hate. They writhed under His vehem... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 23:28 Lessons of the Passion. We have in this passage two lessons before us. I. The first is the right and wrong view of Christ's Passion: "Weep not over Me, weep for yourselves." These women were indulging the emotion, the sentiment, the luxury of weeping. They wept as all that is human in u... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 23:34 I. Jesus prays. It is something to be capable of prayer in acute anguish of body. He prays, not for Himself. That is more. A cry for pity, for relief, for mitigation, for death a cry for patience, for faith, for grace, for heaven this might be. But to forget self altogether in suffering,... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 23:42 Faith's Language. Note: I. The circumstances of this prayer. They were surely as unpropitious as any in which a heavy-laden sinner ever sought the Lord. How terribly short is the time he has left to devote to the business of eternity! Then think how hard it must have been to fix his th... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 23:42 I. We see here an illustration of the Cross in its power of drawing men to itself, II. We have here the Cross as pointing to and foretelling the kingdom. III. Here is the Cross as revealing and opening the true Paradise. A. Maclaren, _Sermons preached in Manchester,_p. 153. I. It is n... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 23:43 I. There was something of prophecy even in the word _today._For crucifixion ended not, commonly, with the twelve hours, or the twenty-four; it was protracted often, in its horrors and its anguish, till the second day, the third, the fourth. There was a sound of mercy in the very _today,_p... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 23:46 These words have two aspects, and the first of these is towards our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. I. In the one week of the year in which we commemorate His Cross and Passion, it ought to be the foremost thought of each of us how we can honour Him in the appreciation of what He did and suff... [ Continue Reading ]