Jn. 19:17 They took Jesus, therefore, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha.
Is. 53:7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He did not open His mouth;
Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
So He did not open His mouth.
Jer. 11:19-20; 19 But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter;
And I did not know that they had devised plots against me, saying,
“Let us destroy the tree with its fruit,
And let us cut him off from the land of the living,
That his name be remembered no more.” 11:20, But, O LORD of hosts, who judges righteously, Who tries the feelings and the heart, Let me see Your vengeance on them, For to You have I committed my cause.
When sacrificial sheep were led to the slaughter there was a rope put around their neck, as they were led to the place of death. Many early artists depicted Jesus carrying the cross with a rope around His neck being led by a Roman soldier.
In verse 20 of Jeremiah 11 it says that the God who judges righteously, tries the feelings of the heart. The word “feelings,” is a Hebrew word that actually means the “depths of the heart, and passions.”
Even though Jesus in His humanity struggled the night before in the garden of Gethsemane, as He faced the Cross, in the end, He three times wholeheartedly surrendered with the words, “Thy will be done.” In His suffering on that Friday, the Father found His heart, at its very depths, delighting in Gods will. Jesus’s deepest passion was to follow His Fathers will, as He was being led along the Via Dolorosa. Even in this, Jesus was teaching us about following Him as He had followed His Father. Look at His conversation with Peter in John 21.
“18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old (mature in your walk, with me) you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.” 19 Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He *said to him, “Follow Me!”
Christian maturity is when we’ve learned to follow Christ from the depths of our heart, and with our deepest passion, when we are led into situations, that we wouldn’t choose, or that we have little or no control of; surrendering to wholeheartedly, and trusting completely, His leadership.
