The Green Tree and the Dry: Text: Luke 23:26-32
Introduction: The Road of Two Destinies
The road to Golgotha is the central road of all human history. All other paths either lead to it or away from it. It is the place where the wisdom of man is revealed as utter foolishness and the foolishness of God is revealed as the ultimate wisdom. The world sees a pathetic, beaten criminal being dragged to a common execution. Heaven sees a King marching to His throne. The world sees a tragedy. Heaven sees a triumph. The world sees the victory of Roman steel and Jewish envy. Heaven sees the conquest of sin, death, and the devil.
We must get this straight in our heads. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was not a sad accident that God had to salvage. It was not Plan B. It was the plan from before the foundation of the world. It was the linchpin of God's purpose to redeem a people for Himself and, through them, to redeem the entire cosmos. And so, everything that happens on this road, this Via Dolorosa, is freighted with covenantal significance. Every character we meet, every word that is spoken, is a lesson for us on whom the ends of the ages have come.
In this short passage, we encounter two very different groups of people responding to the Lord on His way to be crucified. We have a man who is conscripted into service, and we have a group of women who offer what appears to be pious sympathy. In the first, we see a picture of true discipleship. In the second, we see a picture of misdirected religious sentiment that is about to be swallowed by the judgment of God. This is a passage about the difference between carrying the cross and merely crying over it. And in the Lord's words to these women, we receive one of the most stark and terrifying prophecies of judgment in all the Gospels, a judgment that would fall on that very generation.
The Text
And when they led Him away, they took hold of a man, Simon of Cyrene, coming in from the country, and placed on him the cross to carry behind Jesus.
And following Him was a large multitude of the people, and of women who were mourning and lamenting Him. But Jesus, turning to them, said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, stop crying for Me, but cry for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin TO SAY TO THE MOUNTAINS, ‘FALL ON US,’ AND TO THE HILLS, ‘COVER US.’ For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
Now two others also, who were criminals, were being led away to be put to death with Him.
(Luke 23:26-32 LSB)
The Conscripted Disciple (v. 26)
We begin with the man who was pulled from the crowd.
"And when they led Him away, they took hold of a man, Simon of Cyrene, coming in from the country, and placed on him the cross to carry behind Jesus." (Luke 23:26)
Jesus, weakened from the scourging, is unable to carry the heavy patibulum, the crossbeam, all the way to the execution site. The Roman soldiers, who are masters of pragmatic cruelty, do not offer to help. Instead, they exercise their authority and conscript a bystander. His name is Simon, and he is from Cyrene in North Africa. He is simply "coming in from the country," likely for the Passover feast, minding his own business. And suddenly, he is seized. He is grabbed by Roman soldiers and forced into the most shameful, humiliating task imaginable: carrying the execution instrument for a condemned criminal.
Notice the details here. Simon does not volunteer. He does not raise his hand. He is compelled. He is pressed into service against his will. And in this, he is a perfect illustration of what true discipleship looks like. Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mark 8:34). We like to sanitize that statement. We treat "taking up our cross" as some metaphorical burden we choose, like a difficult job or a cranky neighbor. But a cross was not a metaphor; it was an instrument of agonizing death. It meant you were walking to your own execution. And the call to follow Christ is not an invitation to a self-improvement seminar; it is a summons to die.
And like Simon, we do not come to this death on our own terms. The natural man does not want to die to himself. He does not want to carry a cross. He is, like Simon, just coming in from the country, tending to his own affairs, when the sovereign call of God "takes hold" of him. The grace of God is an arresting grace. It interrupts our plans. It seizes us and places upon us a cross we did not ask for, and it commands us to carry it "behind Jesus." This is the position of every true disciple: following the Lord, bearing the instrument of our own death. Simon of Cyrene is the first man to literally do what Jesus commanded all of us to do spiritually. Mark's gospel tells us he was the father of Alexander and Rufus (Mark 15:21), men known to the early church, which strongly suggests that this compulsory humiliation was the instrument of Simon's salvation. The cross he was forced to carry led him to the Savior who was nailed to it.
Misplaced Tears and Impending Judgment (vv. 27-29)
Next, we see a very different response from a group of women in the crowd.
"And following Him was a large multitude of the people, and of women who were mourning and lamenting Him. But Jesus, turning to them, said, 'Daughters of Jerusalem, stop crying for Me, but cry for yourselves and for your children.'" (Luke 23:27-28 LSB)
At first glance, this seems like a pious and appropriate response. These women are moved by the sight of Jesus' suffering. They are mourning and lamenting. This is not the sneering contempt of the religious leaders or the cold indifference of the soldiers. This is human sympathy. And yet, Jesus rebukes it. He turns to them and essentially tells them to save their tears. "Stop crying for Me."
Why? Because their tears are misdirected. They are weeping for the physical suffering of the man, but they are blind to the cosmic significance of the event. They see a victim, not a victor. They see a martyr, not a king taking His throne. They are weeping at the very act that is accomplishing their only hope of salvation. To weep for Jesus on the cross is to misunderstand the cross entirely. We do not pity the Savior; we praise Him. We do not lament His suffering; we glory in it, for by His stripes we are healed.
Jesus redirects their grief. "Cry for yourselves and for your children." He is not being callous; He is being prophetic. He is turning their attention from His temporary suffering, which will end in resurrection, to their own impending and catastrophic judgment. He is speaking to them as "Daughters of Jerusalem," representatives of the covenant city that has rejected its King. And because of that rejection, a horror is coming upon them that will make their present sorrow seem trivial.
"For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.'" (Luke 23:29 LSB)
This is a terrifying reversal of all covenantal blessing. Throughout the Old Testament, children were the sign of God's favor. A full quiver was a blessing from the Lord (Psalm 127:3-5). Barrenness was a curse, a source of deep shame and sorrow. But Jesus says that in the coming judgment, this will be flipped completely on its head. The destruction will be so total, the suffering so ghastly, that women will count it a blessing to be childless. A woman who never had a child will be considered fortunate, because she will not have to watch her own children starve in a siege, or be slaughtered by Roman soldiers, or be sold into slavery. This is not hyperbole. This is a precise prophecy of what the historian Josephus describes in excruciating detail happening during the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
The Green Tree and the Dry (vv. 30-31)
Jesus then intensifies the warning, quoting the prophet Hosea.
"Then they will begin TO SAY TO THE MOUNTAINS, ‘FALL ON US,’ AND TO THE HILLS, ‘COVER US.’" (Genesis 23:30 LSB)
This is the cry of people so desperate to escape the wrath of God that they would prefer to be crushed by a landslide (Hosea 10:8). This is not a cry for mercy; it is a cry for annihilation. The judgment will be so severe that a quick death under tons of rock will seem preferable to enduring another moment of it. The book of Revelation uses this same language to describe the terror of those facing the wrath of the Lamb at the destruction of the old covenant order (Rev. 6:16). Jesus is making it clear: this judgment is not some distant, abstract event. It is coming upon this generation, upon their children.
And then He gives the reason, using a powerful proverb.
"For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?" (Genesis 23:31 LSB)
This is the heart of the passage. Jesus is the green tree. He is the verdant, living, fruit-bearing Son of God. He is innocent. He is life itself. "They" refers to the combined authority of the apostate Jewish leadership and the pagan Roman power. If this is what they do to the green wood, if this is how they treat the source of life, what do you think will happen to the dry wood? The dry tree is apostate Jerusalem, the fruitless, spiritually dead, combustible nation that has rejected its Messiah. It is a dead tree, fit only to be cut down and thrown into the fire (Matthew 3:10).
The logic is inescapable. If the Romans, at the instigation of the Jews, will crucify an innocent man in a time of relative peace, what kind of unrestrained fury will be unleashed when that nation finally rebels against Rome? If this is the injustice that happens to the Son of God, what will the fire of God's righteous judgment be like when it finally consumes the dead wood that is covenant-breaking Israel? The crucifixion was the spark. The firestorm would arrive forty years later, in A.D. 70, and it would burn that entire world to the ground.
Conclusion: The Two-Edged Cross
The passage ends by noting that two criminals were also being led away to be killed with Jesus. This is not an incidental detail. It places the innocent Green Tree squarely between two pieces of dry wood, a picture of His substitutionary work. He became a curse for us, numbered with the transgressors.
But the central lesson for us is found in the contrast between Simon and the women. The cross of Christ demands a response, and sentimentality is not the right one. Pity is not the right one. The cross is not a tragedy to be wept over. It is a throne and a judgment seat. It is the place where God's love and God's wrath meet. It is the instrument of our salvation and the standard by which the world is judged.
We are called, like Simon, to be conscripted. We are called to have the cross laid on us, to die to our own plans and our own righteousness, and to follow in the footsteps of the King. That is the path of life. The alternative is to stand by, weeping for the wrong reasons, blind to our own perilous state, like the daughters of Jerusalem. They saw the suffering of the green tree but failed to see that they were the dry tinder, piled up and waiting for a spark.
Do not weep for the cross. Bow before the cross. Do not pity the crucified; trust in Him. For that cross is either the instrument that kills your sin, or it is the righteous standard by which you will be judged. It is either the tree of life for you, or it is the fire that consumes the dry wood forever.