One who had been crucified, we can understand afresh how brutal the scene of crucifixion was.
It was gory and it was bloody.
It was a scene that was horrific for anyone who watched it, but all the more so for those who had sympathy for one being crucified.
Of the eleven apostles who were left of Jesus, only one came to the scene of the cross that we know of.
But there were numerous other people there who had been followers of Jesus.
They were a number of women who had followed with the disciples, had cared for their needs, and had supported them, in the case of some, out of their financial ability.
All of the Gospel writers tell us of the group of women who were there at varying distances from the cross, apparently.
John gives us the list of those who had eventually moved in closest to the cross.
He says, near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, that of course being John, who was Jesus' dearest friend, and more as we'll see in a moment,
he said to his mother, Dear woman, here is your son, and to the disciple, here is your mother.
From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
And so we see the names, or the identities at least, of four women who were near the cross as Jesus was dying.
One of them was Mary, his mother.
Another was her sister, whom we presume to be Salome, the mother of James and John, and the wife of Zebedee.
Now if you're thinking with me, you understand that the John who was his apostle and who wrote this book,
and who is identified in this very story as the one whom Jesus loved, was also Jesus' cousin therefore.
If this assumption is true, Mary and Salome being sisters, then John was Jesus' cousin.
In addition, there was one there named Mary, the wife of Clopas.
She was a writer in the second century in Palestine by the name of Hegesippus,
who tells us that this Clopas was the brother of Joseph the carpenter.
Now we have no evidence to prove it other than his statement 150 years later.
It's reasonable, is it not, that were this Mary, the wife of Clopas, the aunt of Jesus, and the sister-in-law of Mary,
she would have been there in support of Mary.
And then there is another Mary who is mentioned, this one called Mary Magdalene, Mary from the town of Magdala.
She was the one whom Jesus delivered of seven demons.
We have no information as to how she got into that predicament, only that she was demonized.
And during his ministry, Jesus cast out the seven demons.
From that time forward, she followed Jesus and his disciples,
and apparently out of her earthly goods helped to support them in their itinerant ministry.
By the way, she is not the immoral woman who is mentioned in Luke chapter 7.
There is no evidence that Mary was an immoral woman, but she had been demon-possessed, as we sometimes call it,
and Jesus had delivered her.
And so you can see that most of these women who were close by the cross were related in some way to Jesus,
and certainly with the apostles.
And they were among the most loyal and brave of all of Christ's followers.
Standing with the four women whom we've identified was John.
But immediately our attention focuses on one person in this little group at the foot of the cross,
and that one person is Mary.
Can you begin to understand the anguish and the grief in the heart of Mary?
The stories that must have been hers, and the horror now of seeing her son not only dying,
but executed in such a brutal fashion.
It is one thing to lose a child, and some of you have had that experience,
and to lose an adult child, but to lose one to execution that he did not deserve, and which was so cruel.
She must have wondered how she could ever be the same again.
She must have wondered how life could go on.
She must have asked herself how her heart could ever be consoled from this time of sorrow and grief.
Perhaps you've asked yourself that same question.
How can my life continue?
How can I ever be the same again?
Wherever can I find comfort for the hurt that I feel?
Well, I have good news for you.
At the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is comfort for those who are unconcealed.
And we see that in Mary.
Perhaps your grief is different than Mary's today.
Certainly it is.
But nonetheless, there is disappointment that you feel or sorrow.
Perhaps it is loneliness or worry that eats away at you inside,
and you say, how can I ever get through this?
How can I ever be comforted?
How will my life go on from here?
I want you to notice that life went on for Mary.
Because at the cross, she found the comfort she needed.
And that comfort came from three assurances that we see in our text.
The first assurance she found, which we can observe, is that the Savior feels the anguish of your heart.
He did hers.
We have suggested how she might have felt, what emotions must have been coursing through her mind
as she stood there at the foot of this cross and looked up at her son.
But for just a moment, try to put yourself in Jesus' place.
As he looked down in the midst of his agony, and John says,
he saw his mother there.
Let me ask you, if you were being executed, would you want your mother there?
If you were dying on a cross, would you want your mother standing there watching you in such agony?
He looked down and saw his mother there.
And even in the great agony of his own soul and body, he nonetheless had sympathy in his heart toward her suffering.
The Savior felt the anguish that was Mary's and had compassion on her.
And I want you to know today that whatever your predicament and circumstance may be,
he likewise feels the anguish of your heart.
As Mary stood there, undoubtedly the words of Simeon came to her mind.
She and Joseph had walked into the temple with their little baby in the arms,
and Simeon greeted them with words of joy and blessing.
And then, turning to Mary, he said, and a sword will pierce your heart also.
What strange words at the dedication of a baby.
Mary did not understand that, but Luke tells us that she remembered it, she treasured it in her heart,
she stored it away, and now on this day,
the sword is there, and it has pierced her heart.
And Jesus knows it. He knows it.
Frank Grafe wrote the words, Does Jesus care when my heart is pained too deeply for mirth and song?
As the burdens press and cares distress and the way grows weary and long, oh yes,
He cares, I know He cares, His heart is touched with my grief.
When the days are weary, the long nights dreary, I know my Savior cares.
He cares for you in the midst of your night, in the midst of the long weary day you're walking through right now.
He cares. He feels the anguish of your heart.
Come with me to the book of Hebrews in the second chapter to a very significant paragraph
that tells us that God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, became one of us.
He became one of us in our humanity, in flesh and blood, and He became one of us in the experiences of life.
Hebrews 9 of Hebrews 2 says, But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels,
now crowned with glory and honor, because He suffered death, so that by the grace of God
He might taste death or experience death for everyone.
Bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.
Someone says, wait a minute, I thought Jesus was already perfect. I thought He was already sinless. Indeed He was.
When the writer says that Jesus was made perfect through His sufferings, he is saying that Jesus was made equipped,
that He was completed in every necessary detail to be our Savior.
It wasn't that somehow He was made more perfect or sinless than He was. You cannot improve perfection in that sense.
But what it's saying is that He became fully equipped to be our priest, our high priest,
because He fully experienced what we experience in this world.
Not only because He is God does He understand your pain, but my friend, He knows your pain because He has been there.
He has suffered. And because He has suffered, He has been made fully equipped to identify with you, as it says in verse 17.
For this reason He had to be made like His brothers in every way in order that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest.
The word merciful means sympathetic. The Lord Jesus Christ is sympathetic with your pain and your loneliness and your disappointment.
How do I know that? Because He suffered. He knows it because He has experienced it.
And someone says, well, but He doesn't know the temptations that I face. Yes, He does.
In chapter 4 it says that He was tempted in every way, like as we are, but without sinning.
He knows every temptation you face in your suffering.
Look again in chapter 5 of the book as the writer presses home this point, verse 7.
Burning the days of Jesus' life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save Him from death.
And He was heard because of His reverent submission.
Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered and once made perfect.
That means completely prepared to identify with us in our sufferings.
He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
In other words, our Lord Jesus Christ today feels the anguish of your heart.
There is no sense in which He is blocked or limited.
There is no way in which only as God does He know, as man He understands your suffering.
And it was as man as well as God that He hung on that cross and looked down at His mother and saw her there and understood
and felt with her the anguish that was in her heart.
The second observation I make is that the Savior understands the nature of your need.
My, that can be an assurance when you need comfort.
To know that not only does He feel with you what you feel, but He knows what you really need.
He understands that.
Now Mary may have thought that her need at that moment was to get up there and pull those nails out of His hands
and that nail out of His feet and lower His body to the ground and stop the bleeding and save His life.
Wouldn't that sound reasonable to you?
Through my son on the cross, that's what I thought I would think the need would be.
But Jesus understood the nature of Mary's real need.
Maybe that's what she wanted, what we've described, but Jesus knew the real needs that she had.
In the first place, what her need was, was to have another perspective on her sorrow.
You see, as she looked at Him, her sorrow was that of a mother for her son.
And that's deep.
And there's no way that you or I can really fully understand that.
Because we've not experienced what she did.
You see, what she really needed was to have another perspective on that.
And so when Jesus saw her there, He said to her,
Dear woman, notice He did not call her mother.
Had He uttered that word, the sword would have been driven only deeper into her soul.
She needs to gain another perspective.
She needs to understand that while this is her son on the cross, it's also her Savior.
And so Jesus uses a word that is a word of dearness.
It is a word of affection, but it's a step back from mother.
He says to her, Dear woman, that must have caught Mary's attention.
It had to, as He spoke to her that way.
And perhaps it did bring to her in that instant a new perspective.
And she realized that this one on the cross was not only her son, but it was her Savior.
And that as He was dying for the world's sins, He was dying for her sins too.
Jesus understood the nature of her real need.
She needed the Savior.
And even then, in the word that He chose, He was trying to get her attention away from the mother-son relationship to the Savior-servant relationship.
And then she had a need at that moment for the assurance of future care.
She had other children with Joseph.
Brothers and sisters had been born to their family before Joseph apparently died.
These were up in Galilee, for all we know.
The text doesn't tell us.
But they were not with her.
Other family members were gathered around, but the children were not.
Jesus wanted to assure her of future care.
What an example He sets here for all of us.
As He looks at this one who had born Him and nurtured Him, and He says to her,
Here is your son.
Now how He did that, we don't know.
His hands were nailed.
Maybe it was a glance, a movement of the head.
In some way, He made it clear to Mary as He was speaking to her,
Here is your son standing beside you.
He knew her need.
The Lord Jesus feels the anguish of our hearts in the times of suffering.
The Lord Jesus understands the nature of our need.
There may be times when you have prayed and said, Oh God, do this for me.
I'm hurting, and God has not done that.
Why?
Because He knows what our real needs are.
He answers our prayers much more wisely than we usually ask them.
Mary may have prayed, Oh God, get my son off that cross.
God couldn't answer that prayer the way that she wanted Him to.
He answered it in a much more glorious way so that this one who died became Mary's Savior.
My friend, God understands the nature of your need this morning.
And if God seems far away or if He seems uncaring to you or He hasn't answered the prayer that you've prayed,
please trust Him.
He knows what He's doing.
But there's a third observation that gives us assurance of comfort at the cross.
It is that the Savior provides the resource for your deliverance.
He did for Mary.
He said to her, Dear woman, here is your son.
And then turning to John, this disciple whom He loved, He said, Here is your mother.
And so He provided for Mary what she needed at that moment, the arm, the strong arm of her nephew around her.
And again, the text doesn't say this, but the language could lead us to this understanding that John at that moment,
Jesus having spoken those words, John put his arm around her and led her away from the cross.
She didn't need to be there anymore.
And He took her to that place where He had rented as a lodging in Jerusalem.
My friend, the Savior who died on the cross provides for you too all of the resources you need for deliverance.
From the hurts and the pains of the past or the present, the fears, the anxieties of the future, He provides what you need.
It all comes from Him.
He not only cares and understands, He provides, He gives.
Ephesians 1, 7 says, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us.
You say, but you don't understand my sin.
I don't, but God does, and He's the one who said, Sin may abound, but grace much more abounds.
Sin, cover the bottom of your cup, God's grace overflows the cup.
Is your sin up to here?
God's grace is over your head.
God's grace is like a flood.
It comes from Calvary to you and to me.
It is the resource that provides for our needs.
Dr. F.W. Borum used to tell the story of a sailor, the name of Sam Duncanen.
Sam had retired from his work and decided that he would spend out his days working at the little mission where he had been converted some years before.
He determined that one of the things people in the neighborhood needed was a little joy in their lives. They were very poor.
And so, besides sharing the Savior with them, he decided to collect pictures.
And he would put a little motto or a scripture verse on the picture and give it to someone as a gift so they could put that up in their impoverished home as a piece of joy and delight.
Borum says that one night, Sam was in a service at the mission, and they were singing a hymn that was popular at that time.
And one of the lines said, Have you on the Lord believed, still there's more to follow?
You can almost hear the lilt in the tune, though I don't know what the tune is.
Have you on the Lord believed, still there's more to follow?
And that phrase got his imagination going. He said, I'm going to use that.
And so the next morning, he went to his collection of pictures until he found one that he thought would be appropriate for the phrase.
And he found one of Niagara Falls.
He pulled that one out, beautiful photograph of Niagara Falls.
And then at the bottom of it, he put the phrase, he pasted it on the picture, and it said, More to Follow.
If you've ever been to Niagara Falls, you know there's a whole lot more to follow.
The millions of gallons that pour over the falls every second and more to follow.
A few years ago, you may remember that they diverted the river up from the falls so that they could dry up one side.
I think it was the American side, if I remember correctly.
The rock was beginning to crumble and the falls were being destroyed.
It was about to become a rapids.
And so they dammed up the water, and that side of the falls was bone dry.
Pictures of it were shown in magazines.
And then one day, they opened it up again, and the water began to flow once more over the falls.
Well, just in your mind for a moment, in the fancy of your imagination, if you've been there and you have heard the thundering roar of the falls,
and you felt that mist cover your body, just imagine for a moment that the water was all cut off.
And that all of Niagara Falls was just dry.
There were just cliffs of rock that were there.
No water coming over it at all.
And then, suddenly, you begin to hear a noise.
It's off in the distance, but it's getting closer and closer and closer, and it's a roar.
It becomes a loud roar.
And finally, you see this wall of water gushing down the riverbed and coming to that cliff and falling over it.
And suddenly, Niagara is Niagara the way it's supposed to be.
My friend, when the Lord Jesus Christ died on that cross, he started the waters flowing.
The waters of God's grace begin to cascade toward humanity.
And through the centuries, God's grace has poured forth, and there's more to follow.
Throughout all of eternity, a vast, measureless store of grace toward those who come to the cross.
This Savior, this one that we've talked about this morning,
provides all the resources you need for your deliverance.
Whatever your circumstances, whatever your situation in Him,
you'll find all you need, and there's more to follow.
Let's pray.
The Lord Jesus looked down from His cross.
And after addressing the whole multitude and saying, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,
in His succeeding statements, He began to narrow His focus.
Until finally, in this statement, you see Him speaking to those right at the foot of His cross.
And then He concludes His time of suffering, speaking just to the Father,
into Thy hands I commit my spirit.
It is finished.
And friend, when He died, the grace of God burst forth.
And in this Savior, there's all you need.
As He looks down from His cross, as it were this morning, He looks beyond Mary and the others,
and He sees that other one at the foot of His cross.
He sees you.
And you're the focus of His vision. His eyes look upon you.
He waits for your response.
Will it be to trust Him, to love Him?
Oh, how can you do anything else?
Is it to give yourself to Him? Of course.
Does He not deserve more than that?
Give Him your heart this morning.
Let Him care and understand and provide for your needs.
Oh Father, may the hearts that are broken, that are weary, that are sinful, that are tired, that are oppressed,
find at the cross today what they need for Jesus' sake. Amen.
I invite you to take your hymnal and turn with me to a closing hymn as we sing about the Lamb of God
and the fact that our faith looks up to Him, the Lamb of Calvary.
And if today you would trust the Savior as your own,
and receive Him into your heart to forgive your sins and to bring to you the gift of eternal life,
would you slip out from where you're seated and come?
Our elders and staff will be here waiting to pray with you, to talk with you.
Maybe your need lies elsewhere than salvation.
Perhaps as a child of God, you're in need today of someone to pray with you regarding that burden you've borne.
Or your heart is aching and lonely and distressed.
And oh, if someone could pray with you, there are people who will be here to pray with you this morning.
We invite you to come quickly at the very first word and the first verse.
Slip out from where you are. Pay attention to no one but to Jesus.
As we sing about Him, let your faith look up to Him, the Lamb of Calvary. Come now.
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