FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
November 24
THE SANCTUARY DOCTRINE EXPLAINS THE WAY OF SALVATION OF THE GOSPEL (Part 53)
A Stranger Helps Bear Christ’s Literal Cross
The New Testament identifies him simply as “Simon of Cyrene.” (Matt. 27:32; Mark 15:21; Luke 23: 26). He was one of the eight other better-known “Simons” in the Bible, none of whom and neither did any of the Twelve disciples, bear that singular distinction throughout eternity that this “Simon” perform for Jesus in His very last bloody steps to the cross!
“The crowd that followed the Savior saw His weak and staggering steps, but they MANIFESTED NO COMPASSION [ a crowd made up of the “chosen people”]. They taunted and reviled Him because HE COULD NOT CARRY THE HEAVY CROSS.
Again the burden was laid upon Him, and again He fell fainting to the ground. His PERSECUTORS saw that it was IMPOSSIBLE for Him to carry His burden further. They were PUZZLED to find no one who would bear the humiliating load.
The JEWS themselves could not do this [why?] because the DEFILEMENT would prevent them from keeping the Passover [what gross spiritual blindness of worshipping the form and rejecting its substance!]. None even of the mob that followed Him would STOOP TO BEAR THE CROSS [of and with Jesus, the Creator and Savior of the world!].
“At this time a STRANGER, Simon a Cyrenean, coming in from the country, meets the throng. He hears the taunts and ribaldry of the crowd; he hears the words CONTEMPTUOUSLY repeated, ‘Make way for the KING Of THE JEWS!’ He stops in astonishment at the scene; and as HE EXPRESSES HIS COMPASSION, they [the crowd] seize him and place the cross upon his shoulders.
“Simon had HEARD about Jesus. His sons were BELIEVERS in the Savior, but he himself was NOT a disciple.” [What became of Simon after this unforeseen, sudden, and mob-enforced cross-bearing]?
The bearing of the cross was BLESSING to Simon, and he WAS EVER AFTER GRATEFUL FOR THIS PROVIDENCE.
[Here’s why!] It led him [thereafter] to ‘take upon himself the cross of Christ FROM CHOICE and ever CHEERFULLY stand beneath its BURDEN.” – E. G. White, Desire of Ages, p. 742.
Jesus said, “If any man will come after Me, let him DENY HIMSELF and TAKE UP HIS CROSS and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). The heavy burden that all must take up and bear who voluntarily and willingly “follow the Lamb withersoever He goeth” is the crucifixion of the flesh and self; self-denial and self-sacrifice; it is resisting temptation, and “overcoming even as Christ overcame” “the love and things of the world,” the “lusts of the eye and of the flesh” and the devil “by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony” (Rev. 3:21; 12:11).
The carnal “old man” must die and the “new man” or “new creature in Christ’s” be born again “of water and the Spirit” to “walk thereafter “in the newness of life in the Spirit.”
(To be continued). Bless all, NMF.