Focal Point

Pastor Mike Fabarez: How bizarre that this place where Christ would die, the head of all things, is dying at a place called the skull. His head that should be glorified and honored, it’s despised, beaten and marred more than any man, to quote Isaiah. This is a horrific scene of the perfect one, the head of all things, dying at the place of a skull.

Dave Drewery: Welcome to Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez. I'm Dave Drewery. Of all the names scripture uses to describe where Christ was crucified, one phrase stands out the most: the place of the skull. Why would that detail matter 2,000 years later?

Today, Pastor Mike unpacks the profound significance of Golgotha and reveals how this grim location became the gateway to eternal life. After today's message, if you want to share this important lesson with someone you care about, just go online to focalpointradio.org. Now, here's Pastor Mike with "The Truth about Golgotha."

Pastor Mike Fabarez: If we're going to think about the death of Christ on Good Friday 2,000 years later, it’d be good for us to think about Jesus dying at a place called the skull. I spent some time speculating on what the Bible says that would mean some kind of importance to the idea of this being named Golgotha, Calvary, the skull.

It was so frequently used in the Gospels here; we recognize that most people would know exactly where it is. It could be found on a map, and the map would say, at least in the verbal map if not on a physical map, here’s where the place of the skull is. The Bible says that’s where Jesus died.

I think Carson puts it well when we think about the reality of it being a particular place in time. He writes this: "The naming of Golgotha roots the crucifixion in history. The Gospel is not mere symbolism or abstraction. It is real blood on real dirt."

In our day, that's probably more important than it's ever been in Christianity, except maybe in the period of the Gnostics when we have a new Gnosticism going on in our day. It’s good for us to stop and say our religion, our trust in Jesus Christ, is about a real person in time and space, living a life in real time in the first century on the other side of the planet in the Middle East.

He dies at a place that can be located on the coordinates on a map. It’s real. It happened in history, and we’re trusting the events that unfolded and what God did in those events in real history. We’re not arguing, as people like to think in discussing religion, we’re not arguing things that are just mere abstractions or allegories or principles or theories or ways to live or philosophies of life.

It may trickle down into how to live your life, but we’re really talking about our trust in a person who put on flesh, dwelt among us, and died in a real place in space and time on a map. That’s very important for us to stop and say the historicity of this all is important.

So, without argument and without much elucidation on it, let’s at least just say, let’s all start with that. Certainly, having a place that’s described four times over in the Bible clearly reminds me this is a historic event. It happens in real history.

Number two, which is probably the first thing that popped into your mind if I ask why is the place that Jesus died called the skull, well, it certainly reminds us of our problem that goes all the way back to Genesis chapter three. In Genesis chapter three, Jesus said, "Adam and Eve, you can eat of any of these trees you want, except for that one. That particular tree you can't eat from, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because the day you eat of it, you will surely die."

Instantly we have, in a place full of life created by the living God, a couple of people that are going to reach out, transgress God’s rules, and be subject now to death. The interesting thing about biological death, which reminds us of a cranium, skulls usually make us think about dying and death.

If you know your Bible, it was at least 950 years after their transgression that they physically died and their bodies turned into skeletons. That’s 950 years later. So what’s this about "the day you eat of it, you’ll surely die"?

Clearly, it did mean that they would physically die if they transgressed the law of God because the wages of sin is death. But we learn immediately in the garden that they’re hiding themselves from God because they’re ashamed of the sin and the rebellion that they’ve just done in a very simple act of disobeying God.

They realized that they were sinners. It broke their fellowship with God. Just like their spirit is going to break loose from their bodies and their bodies are going to die, their connection with God, their relationship had just died with God. God had to do things to show that He was willing to restore that relationship.

But it couldn't be restored until this event at Golgotha, at the place of the skull. And we are reminded that the problem that we have as human beings, as is said so well here by Origen, is really about the death of Christ dying for us. In the reality of what He dies for is the problem that started in Genesis three.

This little quote that I’m about to read will take you to one of the earliest reminders of the people trying to research the place of where Jesus died that people had said. This is Origen. He’s in the second and third century after Christ.

He’s now talking about a tradition he’d heard of, and many people had said the legend of it all, even though this is way long time ago before the flood of Noah, that this was the place that was actually the place where Adam had died and Adam was buried.

Note this quote. Origen says in the middle of the third century, "I have received a tradition to the effect that the body of Adam, the first man, was buried upon the spot where Christ was crucified, so that as in Adam all die, both Adam and Christ should die in the same spot at the very place that is called the skull."

He goes on to talk about how Christ died on a place where Adam's skull was ultimately buried. Now, that was the legend or, as Origen puts it, the tradition. But you can look through the early church fathers, and he’s not the only one in the second, third, and fourth centuries that talked about knowing that people had said in the area it’s called the place of the skull because Adam was buried there.

Now, there’s no way to verify that, and who knows, but that’s what people were saying. Even if it was the legend that was believed that here is the place that we commemorate the death of Adam, that is where Christ died.

It reminds us that the problem of sin is death. You know that verse from childhood: the wages of sin is death. And the wages of Adam and Eve’s sin was not only their death, but according to Romans chapter five, they brought death into all of humanity, and people have been dying ever since.

What we need to remember is it’s not just the physical death we should worry about in this life; it’s the thing the Bible calls the second death. That’s the real problem. In this world, we can all live enjoying a lot of God’s gifts and blessings, but one day the Bible says if you don't get made right with God through the death of Christ, your death is going to be met with something called the second death where God takes all of His blessings away.

You’ll have to live in a place that is away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power. That problem is the real problem that none of us want to face. The skull certainly reminds us that the wages of sin is death. It should remind us of that. That’s the problem.

And we should say what was our problem? Our problem is death. Our problem is fatal. Our problem is one that should make us think, not only am I going to die, but as Hamlet mused, I’m worried about what comes after this life. I’m going to meet my maker as a sinner and it’s going to be even worse because He’s going to cast us out of His presence.

When we're away from His presence, we're also away from the glory of His power. That is all of His gifts, all of His blessings, all the sustaining work of the God who made us and sustains us. The place is historic; no one would argue with that. The problem, I think, is clearly depicted that we are people that are subject to death because of our sin.

But what it cost Him there is, I think, what most people would say, "Wow, that is the biggest travesty of all, that the righteous would die for the unrighteous." To continue to quote Romans chapter five, the amazing thing, the extent of God’s love: "This is love, that Christ would die for us even though we are sinners."

To have Him die for the enemies because we continue in our sin, as we meet the Gospel, we recognize this is an amazing thing that the righteous one would die for the unrighteous. This picture might help us get the idea of how horrific this all is.

Back in the book of Numbers, you might remember as Moses leads the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, God’s going to lead them into the Promised Land, and they start complaining. But it’s more than complaining; it’s really blaspheming God’s whole plan, and they start rebelling against God and they start rebelling against Moses.

God says, "I’m done with all this and I’m done with these people complaining." He takes these complainers and He sends snakes into their camp and they start to get bit. Then a weird thing takes place, and I’ve depicted that here on Good Fridays in years past.

Moses is instructed by God to get a pole and to put a snake on it, bronze it, and hold it up before the people. If they want to be healed from the venom of the snake bites that these people are being bitten by, as they swell up and sweat and have fever, He says, "You look at the snake on the pole."

I’m not making this comparison; Jesus made this comparison. He says, "Just as Moses lifted up that serpent in the wilderness, so I’m going to be lifted up." People are going to see me and I’m going to draw people to my side. It’s a weird comparison.

But it’s a comparison that should make us think. The idea of death is that the innocent one is dying. The whole point of the sacrificial system is bringing the blemishless lamb, the one without defect, and having that lamb substitute for us who are feeling guilty and sinful.

Here’s John the Baptist meeting Jesus on the baptismal shores of the Jordan River and he says, "Here’s the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world." Here is the one who’s done nothing wrong. There’s no deceit in his mouth. He’s never lied to his mom. He never did anything wrong, and he is being killed on a cross.

Now, when you look at Jesus dying on the cross, having been beaten by the Romans, having a crown of thorns around his head, having his back lacerated, hanging there naked on a cross by a highway, a footpath where people are walking and jeering at him, you think to yourself, "Who is this that he should die this way?"

As a sinner, if you look upon Christ on a cross and if you understand your problem of sin, you might look at that and say, "Well, that’s what I deserve. I deserve that." Picture you being bitten by a snake. The last thing you want to look at raised up on a pole is a picture of a snake.

But that’s precisely what God does as Moses is lifting up the problem and saying, "Look at the problem. Look at this thing causing you such pain. Look at the wages of your rebellion and your complaining. The wages of sin is death. Look at it."

So now it’s not just that we are dying, and we look at the cross and say it’s called the place of the skull because we have a problem of death. Now the perfect one, the author of life, is now dying, which is an oxymoronic thing to even think of.

How can the one who gives life, who is life himself, who has life in himself as the Gospel of John says, how can he die? How can God die? Here is the one who in the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, and he’s dying on a cross.

We’re looking at the cross and saying, "Here is the problem of sin." So many people through church history have made much of this. Here’s Cyril of Jerusalem in the fourth century. He says, "Now Golgotha is interpreted the place of the skull."

Look at this poetic, sermonic gold here. He says, "Who were they then, who prophetically named this spot Golgotha in which Christ, the true head, had endured the cross? The apostles call him the image of the invisible God and a little after that, the head of the body, the church, and after that, the head of every man is Christ."

He’s quoting Colossians and he’s quoting Ephesians and he’s quoting First Corinthians eleven. He is head over all things, over all principalities and powers. The head suffered at the place of the skull.

The ultimate head who has all glory and should be glorified is now wrapped around his forehead a crown of thorns as blood is streaming down his face after being beaten and swollen by Roman fists. Here is the perfect one being treated as a criminal, being treated as one who deserves the wrath of God.

Then he breaks out with this wondrous prophetic appellation. Appellation being the name. "Man, how bizarre that this place where Christ would die, the head of all things, is dying at a place called the skull. His head that should be glorified and honored, it’s despised, beaten and marred more than any man," to quote Isaiah.

This is a horrific scene of the perfect one, the head of all things, dying at the place of a skull. It’s an unimaginable price. It’s a price that makes no sense. "No greater love has anyone than this that he would lay down his life for his friends. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son."

To see Christ die, who deserves only life and honor and glory, is the most unimaginable price to be paid to save sinners like us. Well, the real aspect of what we come to celebrate and why we can put the adjective "good" in front of "Friday" where Christ was crucified, a horrific death at a place called the skull, is because there’s a benefit to us.

That benefit to us might take our minds back to Genesis chapter 22 when God had told Abraham to do something that seems just unthinkable. God had always said there’s no place for human sacrifice. There’s no time that you should take your kids in Canaan and follow their examples and toss your kid into the fire for the god Molech. That makes no sense. It does nothing.

God doesn't want your human sacrifice, and yet here He is in Genesis 22 saying, "Abraham, take your son, your only son, the son of the promise by the way, the son of the covenant. Take your son whom you love and go to the place that I will show you."

If you study biblical geography, He’s taking them to a place that’s very near, if not exactly where Christ is going to be crucified centuries later, 4,000 years ago, 2,000 years before Christ. He says, "Take your son there and build an altar and sacrifice him on that altar."

You know that story, which doesn't make much sense unless you start thinking about the fact that the thing that saves us is a human sacrifice of the perfect one, the Son of God. Here is a picture of it, and Abraham was just so filled with faith, Romans four says, that he trusts Him and he does what He says.

From the beginning, he’s going to obey God. Hebrews 11 says he so trusted God, even though he was the child of the promise and this command made no sense, he thought, "Well, maybe God will raise him from the dead." He goes and he does this.

As he’s lifting up that knife to kill his own son, it was probably 12, 13 years old, the angel stops him and says, "Look, look at the ram caught in the bush." He says, "Go over there, take that ram and sacrifice that on the altar."

That’s an amazing thing because here is this boy who was about to be killed who gets to return and walk shoulder to shoulder back to his tent with Abraham, and the ram gets to die in the place of the son. That substitution is the price. Life for Isaac for the death of an animal, which goes all the way into the Levitical sacrificial system.

Put your hand on the head of the lamb, Leviticus chapter one, verse four, and that lamb will be accepted for you. You get to go home feeling forgiven; the lamb becomes food for the Levites. It dies, you live.

That’s the substitution that was depicted 2,000 years before Christ, 4,000 years ago from our perspective, where here you had someone who gets to gain their life because someone, in this case something, an animal, died in the place of Isaac.

F.F. Bruce puts it well. Christ was led to be crucified to the place of a skull. The death he died was a bloody one, and we may see him, the slaughtered lamb at Golgotha, bearing the sin of the world. The sin that we deserved the punishment for, he has taken that sin upon himself.

To put it in the words of Second Corinthians five, God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. So He takes the place of the sinner and we get to go free.

As Matthew Henry so well put it, "By his sufferings and death, Christ destroyed him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and it was the bruising of Christ’s heel. It sure was that he was crucified and slain."

But in the very act of that, he gave a fatal blow to Satan’s kingdom, a wound to the head of this serpent that cannot be healed. Back to Genesis chapter three: the crushing of the head of the enemy who held the power of death, who was the tempter that led people into sin that caused their death penalty.

All of a sudden now, Christ comes and says, "Your prize is you don't have to die. You don't have to incur this death." Therefore, this whole problem of you looking at the cross and remembering death, at least your death has been taken care of in that exchange. Why? Because it was the righteous for the unrighteous. It was the sinner getting his sin forgiven by the perfect one.

J.C. Ryle two generations ago said it’s no small thing that the name of the place where Jesus died should be repeatedly recorded. It was in all four Gospels. Calvary, the place of the skull, becomes the mount of victory. There, death was swallowed up in death. There, Satan was openly defeated.

Puritans love that phrase: the death of death. The death of death in the death of Christ. And here because Christ suffers and dies, we all of a sudden now can look to our own death, as it says in Hebrews, and no longer be enslaved to sin.

We should be able to say, "You know what? We are forgiven." Because of our forgiveness, we don't fear what Hamlet feared in looking at the other side of the threshold of this life thinking, "What is God going to do to me, a sinner?" because we know our sin is completely absolved.

It is all completely forgiven and we are fully accepted. This is more than just getting out of jail and going about our business. This is us returning, it's called reconciliation, to our maker and being brought in as Luke 15 depicts in that great parable, having the Father say to us, "Now you're my child. You were lost, now you're found. Put a ring on him, put a robe on him, put sandals on his feet. Let’s kill the fatted calf, let’s celebrate, let’s have a party, because now the family has been rejoined."

This is a picture of us being fully accepted because we’re fully forgiven. We’re fully exonerated. All of the sin that I’ve committed, all the sin that you've committed, as we trust in Christ and we cry out, "Have mercy on me a sinner," here God is saying now, "You’re part of the family. You will never bear the sin. There’s no condemnation for you now in Christ because what happened on the cross."

To live is Christ, to die is gain. All of a sudden now I can look forward to the fact that when I’m done with this life, not only will I not have the second death, but I’ll step into something that is qualitatively and quantitatively eternal: eternal life.

This is a great line. D.A. Carson again: "The name Golgotha served not only to identify a location, but also to underline the grim reality of what took place. Yet, in this place of the skull, the Son of God turned the valley of death into the gateway of life."

That’s a good way to put it. What was the prize? That I can look at my death and see life on the other side. A life not just of consciousness away from the presence of God, but into the kingdom where He says, "Enter into the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

This is an amazing thing. You may not think about the cross of Christ in relation to a skull, but you ought to. As a matter of fact, look at these works of art. I think you should look back at these art pieces that you've looked at so many times and maybe think to yourself, "I haven't seen it, but it’s been there in so many famous paintings."

You see the cross, there’s a skull. Think that through. I mean, as odd as it is to think about a skull in relation to the cross, it’s always there. I mean, not in every painting, but so many from so many genres and so many periods.

Whenever there was a picture here of the cross, thoughtful painters and leaders who were commissioning these paintings said, "Oh, don't forget the skull because when it comes to Christ's death, it’s the place of the skull." It certainly reminds us of a legitimate place, but it also reminds us of our problem.

It also reminds us of the price of Christ to die in our place. But most importantly, it’s a Good Friday because it reminds us that death has been conquered, that my death is no longer something to fear, that Christ has completed for us our complete forgiveness. He says on Good Friday, "It is finished."

Dave Drewery: This is Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez and a special Easter message called "The Truth about Golgotha." You can listen again or share this message with someone you know by going online to focalpointradio.org. We hope today's teaching from Pastor Mike has been a meaningful part of your Easter weekend, giving you something solid to carry into Sunday celebration and beyond.

To go even deeper behind the story of Resurrection Sunday, we want to put this month's featured resource in your hands. It's titled "The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament" by Edmund Clowney. What makes the Easter story so staggering is that it didn't begin in the New Testament; it was in motion from the very first pages of the Bible.

Clowney traces that redemptive thread all the way through the Old Testament, showing how its figures, events, and promises were never just history. They were always pointing forward to Christ. Request your copy of "The Unfolding Mystery" when you make a donation to Focal Point today. Call 888-320-5885 or donate online at focalpointradio.org.

And here's something worth putting on your radar. Pastor Mike is inviting you to join him from September 19th through the 26th for an unforgettable fall cruise through New England and Canada. Imagine taking in the stunning autumn coastline while sitting under thoughtful Bible teaching. With port stops in historic cities like Boston, Halifax, and Quebec City along the way.

Grammy-winning worship artists Keith and Kristyn Getty will also be on board, and you'll have the chance to build lasting friendships with fellow believers throughout the trip. Cabins are going fast, so don't wait. Reserve yours today online at focalpointradio.org.

Reaching out to Focal Point for the first time? We'd like to welcome you with a free copy of Pastor Mike's brand-new booklet called "Why Did We Need a New Covenant Anyway?" Simply call 888-320-5885 or reach out online at focalpointradio.org. I'm Dave Drewery, wishing you a wonderful Easter weekend. We'll see you again next time right here on Focal Point.

Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.