The Gospel Of Mark | For People Like Us (November 25th, 2018) - Mike Armstrong

Alright, well, you can turn in your Bibles to uh Mark's gospel.

We are in uh Mark uh chapter 15 today, and uh again, just so great uh to see uh so many uh new faces and always love baptism service and just the clarity of the gospel being proclaimed and uh seeing that our salvation is in Jesus Christ uh alone and seeing what he is doing uh to save people and transform them.

And uh so uh hopefully you are uh getting your Bibles, got a copy of it.

If you need a copy of God's word, if you don't have a Bible with you, you didn't bring one, we do have some on the back table back there.

Feel free to go back there and grab one, or ushers can get you one.

And if you don't own one, feel free to take that as uh as a gift uh from us to you.

All right, well, uh, don't you love it, really?

I think we all do, when you meet somebody, maybe for the first time, and you know, as you're getting to know that person, uh you you're able to like establish uh like a deep connection with them kind of right off the hop.

Have you ever experienced that before?

You know, maybe for you it's you you know you chat with the person, you realize, oh yeah, I'm from that that same small town.

You know, I grew up in that same uh town as well.

For me, I grew up, I spent a lot of years out in Saskatchewan.

So whenever I you know meet somebody and like, oh yeah, I live in Saskatchewan too, it's like immediate connection, right?

And you and I and we both give each other that knowing look of like, yeah, I can totally see why you moved away from that place.

Right?

Maybe for you though, you're chatting with people and you realize, oh yeah, we know we know a lot of the same people, and yeah, they we go way back, and our families are connected, and it's that instant bond, uh, maybe shared around you know that a unique common interest that you guys uh might have.

And you don't know a lot of people who you know share that same hobby or whatever it is.

So when you have those conversations, again, it's just uh it's just a connection, and maybe it was even with somebody who you didn't initially think that you would share a connection with.

Well, in Mark chapter 15, we're gonna see here that we share a deep connection with uh some of the characters uh in the scene here.

Mark 15 · chapter mention

Only, only listen, it's not for good reasons.

It's not.

The connection that we share with the folks, with the players here, is our immense brokenness.

It's our deep sinfulness and our shared need for forgiveness and salvation.

And so in Mark chapter 15, we are entering into the you know the climactic moments of Jesus' earthly ministry.

Mark 15 · chapter mention

And so today it brings us to the cross.

It brings us to the crucifixion at the hands of these very people we're gonna be looking at.

And as we get into this here today, I want to encourage us and urge us really to um really insert ourselves into the story here.

Okay?

Think about these different people that we're gonna be looking at and and identify with which ones are you most like, right?

We're all like these people because as ugly as the actions and the intentions of these people were, um, as ugly as as our own are, uh, Jesus died for people like us.

Right?

He did.

And as we recognize the the depth of our sin and our brokenness, and I mean you just heard it in the tank with a bunch of people, as they realize, whoa, like I like I'm lost, right?

I am empty.

I need Jesus Christ, as we start to realize that uh more and more, it just becomes that much more remarkable that Jesus was Jesus would would suffer and endure the way that he did, as we're gonna read here today.

All right, but before we get into that, why don't you join me and we'll give this time to the Lord in prayer.

God, we thank you.

Again, this is a great day for for us as a church, and we just rejoice in uh what you have done with uh these six uh individuals, Lord, and and God, I pray that you would continue to do more, Lord.

We pray for your protection on them, Lord, as I know that you know, getting up in front of people and and standing and proclaiming, planting their their flag in the ground, saying, I am, I'm gonna follow Jesus for the rest of my life.

I know, Lord, that gets the attention of the enemy.

And so, Lord, I pray that you would protect them uh here today.

Lord, and going forward, I pray that they would find uh new and increasing and and and and a greater depth of joy in following you.

And so, Lord, we uh we rejoice with them.

We're excited to see uh not only what you have done, but what you continue to do in them, Lord.

And as we get into uh this great passage here today, Lord, uh teach us, instruct us, Lord, open up our hearts, Lord, I pray that you would remove the the blind the blindness that we often have towards our true state and our true need.

And so, God, would you do that work here today, Lord?

Would you help us to just uh glory in, rejoice in the fact that that you died uh for people like us?

And so, God, um, we pray all of these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, here we go.

First thing, if you've got notes or you like to jot down notes, it'll be on the screen for you as uh as well.

Uh but here it is Jesus died for people like me.

Okay, whether I'm the self-righteous, religious hypocrite, okay, that's maybe the type of person that's um that maybe that's how you identify today.

That maybe that's more kind of your leaning and your bend, or these are your your tendencies and and all of that.

And that would be the case for me.

I think I grew up you know that way, and I'm kind of wrestling through some of this myself.

Um, but maybe this is us and this is who you are.

But take a look.

We see this in verse one.

It says this as we follow along.

It says, and as soon as it was morning, all right, so you remember last week we talked about how you know Jesus had been led away by the soldiers, been betrayed by Judas, and then uh kind of in the last verses there, Peter, one of his disciples, one of the closest uh people to him, uh, betrayed him.

And so Peter had just denied knowing Christ.

And so it was just after that, as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and the scribes and the whole council.

And so what we see here is that the entire Sanhedrin, so the Jewish religious leaders of the day, they they put their collective heads together, so to speak, and they they're scheming, right?

They're coming up with uh with a plan of attack because they want to silence, they want to put an end to Jesus once and for all.

They're sick, sick and tired of him.

Keep going, it says, and they bound Jesus when they led him away and delivered him over to Pilate.

They might be thinking, well, who's Pilate?

You know, it's usually the guy we talk about once a year on Good Friday when we go through this passage, but Pilate was uh the Roman governor at the time, and he had been sent to Jerusalem, where this was all taking place, uh, to oversee and ensure that Roman rule was being followed, okay?

And so he was the governor and kind of the main guy uh in town from a Roman perspective.

And so you might be thinking, well, why take Jesus to him?

Like, what does he have to do with with any of this?

Well, because they they wanted the religious leaders, the chief priests, the Sanhedrin, they wanted to put Jesus to death, right?

Because they believed wrongly, they believed that he had committed blasphemy, because we talked about that last week, how he claimed to be the Messiah, and they didn't think that he was, and so they wanted to put him to death according to their Jewish law, okay?

But here's the thing they didn't have the legal right to actually do that according to Roman law.

Okay, they weren't, they weren't able to just go and do that, and so they they're like, we gotta figure this out.

How are we gonna make this work?

And so uh here's the thing, though.

They also know, okay, that Pilate and Rome wouldn't care at all about their Jewish religious law.

If we come to him and we bring this charge of uh of blasphemy against Jesus, Pilate's not gonna care.

He's gonna say, get out of here, beat it, I've got other things to deal with.

And so instead of going down that road, what they do is they take advantage of something that had happened earlier.

And you might remember when people hailed the uh the Jews hailed Jesus as king.

You remember back in chapter 11, verse 10, Jesus was entering into Jerusalem for the very first time, and I remember it was all the Hosanna's, right?

And it's the it's the triumphal entry, and he enters in on the on the colt, and they're putting down their cloaks and it's and it's palm branches, and they're saying, they said this in chapter 11, verse 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David, Hosanna in the highest.

And so the chief priests, they're not, you know, they're pretty sharp here.

They're realizing now that's something that the Romans would consider a direct, a direct threat to Caesar's rule.

We've got this guy proclaiming to be king, and they're they're proclaiming him.

He's not gonna like that.

And so they come in from at it from that angle.

Now look at verse 2.

Okay, and Pilate asked him, Are you the king of the Jews?

And he answered him, You have said so.

And then look at this.

And the chief priests accused him of many things.

And Pilate again asked him, Have you no answer to make?

See how many charges they bring against you.

But Jesus made, it says, no further answer.

So that Pilate was amazed.

Now, this is actually all in fulfillment of Isaiah 53, verse 7.

Isaiah 53:7

A lot of what takes place here at the crucifixion scene is fulfillment of a number of different passages in the Old Testament here.

And all of this, of course, is going over the head of the people involved at the scene in this day.

But this is in fulfillment of Isaiah 53, verse 7.

Isaiah 53:7

It says that he was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.

Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

And so, right there in this moment, as he's being accused by the chief priests, and even by Pilate, he doesn't say uh anything.

I mean, as we've witnessed all throughout Mark's gospel uh so far, the the Jewish religious leaders, they just become increasingly more difficult, don't they?

Right?

They're they're they're more you know antagonistic and and they just become more venomous and cruel towards Jesus.

Right?

And as as time goes on, the you know, the the ugliness of their self-righteous, religious hypocrisy, you know, it just becomes more and more apparent.

It just rises to the surface, and we've talked about that a lot along the way.

Right, and how they have, you know, they have claimed to be experts in the scriptures.

Right?

We we know it all, and we've got so much of it memorized, and and we get it and all of that, but how how they're so blind, they miss the fact that that Jesus is the Messiah that the scriptures point to.

Right?

And the whole thing just goes over their head uh entirely.

They're big-time rule followers.

Right?

You got you gotta follow it perfectly to the to the letter of the law.

And and they're they're all about the religion and and doing a bunch of stuff externally.

But listen, it's it's we see that it's mechanical.

Right?

It's legalistic.

They're trying to earn God's favor when the reality is we can't, we're too broken.

And their their religious action, it's not motivated for uh by love of uh love of God, right?

The Lord loves me and therefore I want to serve him and I want to live for him.

No, they're they're doing it as a way to kind of puff themselves up.

Look how great I am, and they they love accolades from other people, but at the same time, what do they do?

They they hypocritically harshly judge other people for not being as good as them.

And this is what this is what's happening.

And the thing is, they they they on one hand, they kind of look like good people, at least on the outside.

Okay, but on the inside, they're they're cold.

They're harsh, they're they're super unloving, and and they're certainly distant from God.

But here's the thing, they don't see it.

It's spiritual blindness that that makes them oblivious to their need for a savior, to their to their need for repentance.

And I mean, we just see it even here in this moment, right?

In this in this text, we see it just like spilling out of them, and they become, you know, even more blind.

It's just over and over again, it says the text says that they they accuse Jesus.

Did Jesus ever sin?

No.

And yet they're like pointing out like the perceived flaws in him, they're getting it so wrong.

They accuse him, they charge him of many things.

The text doesn't give us the details in this moment, but we've seen it all the way along through Mark's gospel.

But I think what really comes out and what's really clear is just the outrageous nature of their of their attack and their murderous intent.

Now, I think we would all agree that that type of attitude that we see here in the scribes and the religious leaders is, you know, it's toxic.

Right?

It's toxic certainly, you know, to the health of any professing Christ follower, right?

If we've got some of that attitude, it's it's absolutely toxic in the life of a church.

Okay, but what exactly is so dangerous about it is that it often goes unnoticed.

And even beyond that, it goes undealt with in the church and in a believer's life.

And what happens, the more self-righteous and the more arrogant and the more proud we are, and the more we want everyone's accolades, and we want, we want to be puffed up, and the more we go down that road, the more subtly it just begins to eat away at our spiritual vitality.

It eats away at the relationships that we have going on here.

Because we're judgmental.

We're not very gracious when other people are a mess and the Lord is working in them in different ways than he's working in us.

And so we write people off really quickly.

And we're too demanding of them, and not don't we don't understand that sanctification and growing in Christ is a lifelong process that's that's really messy.

So the spiritual vitality of a person starts to starts to kind of break down, the relationships begin to break down, and as that's breaking down, unity in the church begins to break down.

And pretty soon we're not on the same page together because we're backbiting and we're judging and we're being harsh and all of this, and so what ends up what ends up shutting down completely?

The mission God gave us.

Right?

Discipleship, sharing the gospel, telling a lost world that there's an answer for all of this.

And his name is Jesus, and that's why he went to the cross to forgive us our sin.

And so this self-righteous, religious hypocrisy, if we don't see it, if we don't deal with it, it just gets more and more dangerous to everything we are and everything that we're about as Christians and as the church.

And again, as we noticed, it's it tends to be one of those things that's a little bit more subtle optically.

Meaning it's it's a little bit harder to see if a person is judging me.

It's hard to see if a person is being hypocritical.

Because we know how to cast a certain version of ourselves.

We know how to wear the mask, we know how to pretend like everything is fine.

We know all the Christianese, all of the language of all the you know, glory to God's and all of those kind of phrases that make us look like we're super spiritual or whatever.

But meanwhile, our hearts are like just a mess.

Right?

So it's really hard to see with our own eyes, more so than than the really you know obvious, licentious living of people who have want nothing to do with Christ, right?

The way that the world lives.

That's more obvious.

Those sins are usually way more external, and we can see those kinds of things.

I mean, think about the prodigal son story.

Okay, if I had to like boil down one area of the scripture that's probably my favorite, I have so many, but this might be at the top of it, right?

It's the parable of the prodigal son.

And what have we done?

We've often told that story as the prodigal son singular.

He's the guy that asks his father for all of the inheritance, all of his money now up front, which is super uh it was just a huge slap in the face to his father, right?

But Lord, or father, give me that now, and I'm gonna go.

And what did he do?

He went and took it and he wasted it on sinful living.

It was prostitutes, it was it was all of these external things that are quite obvious.

Immoral living.

The thing we forget or we don't realize is that that parable is actually about two brothers, two prodigal sons.

The older brother, he stays at home.

On the outside, he looks like the perfect, the perfect son.

Right?

He stays home, he he works for his dad, he he toils, he doesn't run off and do all of those external sins.

But what we find out near the end of the story is that guy is just as lost as the re as his younger brother.

Actually, maybe even worse, because he is blind to his hypocrisy.

He doesn't like it at all.

His brother got, you know, in his in his brokenness, he comes back and he repents before his dad.

He says, I'm not worthy to be your son anymore.

The father representing God invites him back into the home.

He has a feast for him.

The older brother, is he like pumped about that?

No.

Like, all these days I have served you.

Where's my feast?

The story ends with him and his younger brother not getting right.

And worse of all, the older brother not getting right with his father.

He's blind to it.

On the outside, he did it all right, but his heart was a mess.

Now, maybe you've never really thought of yourself as you know the self-righteous, you know, religious hypocrite type person.

Maybe you've thought of other people as that, but but maybe, just maybe, you've got more of that in you than you think.

You know, and again, as as hard as it is to see, there are there definitely are signs, and and I'm gonna go through a couple of them here, but these are some signs that show that this could be more of a struggle for you than you realize.

Here's one.

This is a sign that you might be, you know, the religious, self-righteous hypocrite.

Right?

This here it is.

There's a firm belief that I'm definitely not that type of person.

Right?

You look at other people and you're like on my level.

Right?

I don't have that.

You read, you read the gospels and you're like fools.

When you look at how tax collectors lived, you're you're you know, you look down on the disciples, you you look down on you know the the religious leaders and and you and you don't you definitely think you don't have any of that in you.

That's that's a sign, right?

That you might have a little bit more than you think.

Listen, we all have some of this.

Okay?

Any of us to claim that we have zero is just nonsense.

We all like to think of ourselves as better than we really are.

We're all, we all play the comparison game.

It's so dangerous with other people, right?

And we think, and in a lot of cases, well, I'm better than him or her or whatever.

But that's one sign, thinking that maybe, or definitely, I'm not that person.

How about this one?

Here's another sign: robotic work walk with Christ.

Do you have a really robotic walk with him?

Your relationship with the Lord, it's like super mechanical.

Like I am waking up now and I will read this book.

Now I am closing said book and going along with my day.

Right?

And now you know I will go to church because it is Sunday and this is what I do.

But there's no like there's no heart in this, right?

There's no like passion about this.

It's just this robotic kind of you know, approach to reading the scriptures, or more likely you don't read it at all.

Right?

Or it's robotic, mechanical prayer life.

Do you pray?

Yeah, I do.

Before dinner with my family, and it's the same prayer every time.

Right?

But it's not like you're inviting the Lord into your life and the messiness and trying to work through some of the difficulties and all of that.

Maybe there's no real gospel joy in your life, you're just going through the motions.

Or maybe for you it's a robotic walk with the Lord, that's a sign that we're heading down the road of self-righteousness and hypocrisy.

How about this?

Thinking others are the real sinners.

Right?

They're the ones.

Man, if only the Lord get a hold of their life.

You ever do this?

In marriages?

Maybe a little.

Right?

If only my my spouse figured this out, then our marriage would be better.

Right?

If only the church leadership figured out a thing or two.

If only other people in the church gave me more attention and loved me better, they're the real problem.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Hun, I do believe I'm the real problem in our marriage.

Let me just say that.

You know, maybe sometimes the issue is that we're the problem.

Or maybe a lot of the problem lies with us and we become too blind, we're self righteous.

How about this lack of true authenticity, transparency, vulnerability in your relationships?

And we all love relationships.

Talking about can we love making connections with people.

Do you love the service?

Surfacy connections?

Like, man, he's just so into golf, like I am.

But like we never go deeper.

You know, a lot of people want community at the church, and we can even be very critical that it's not the way that we want it to be.

But how are you, how are you in in your small groups?

How are you in your relationships?

Are you actually opening up the hood so that people can see into your heart?

Are you inviting the Lord into that?

Are you praying for real change and real growth in you?

Not just in other people.

Are you authentic about what's going on?

Are you transparent?

Man, that person needs to open up.

No, you need to open up.

Are you vulnerable?

Maybe for you, it's like you've got like one sin or something that's kind of your hobby horse sin, and I'm pretty comfortable talking about that.

Yeah, I'm not perfect in that.

But you've got like a plethora of others that no one knows about.

If we've got a lack of true authenticity, transparency, vulnerability, that might be a sign that we're a we're a hypocrite.

The Lord calls us to be honest and open.

The gospel shows us that we can we can just bear our souls.

We are broken, that's okay.

The Lord is an amazing savior.

He died for all of it.

Every single little nitty, awful part.

How about this sign?

You're different in public than you are in private.

Integrity, like that's the word for that, right?

You know, in church or with people or at work or whatever, I you know, I kind of convey myself a certain way, but but on my own, or maybe it's with the people that I I love, my family, my my my wife or my husband, or with my kids, I'm I'm a different animal.

And I don't want anyone seeing that because it's ugly.

But you continue to kind of live this double life.

That's hypocrisy.

There's no room for it in the Christian's life.

How about this?

Lack of teachability.

Lack of teachability.

I've noticed this is one of those things, it just becomes this sort of dangerous, dangerous thing in the life of growing believers.

You get to the point where you've kind of grown and I've been to church a lot and I've read the scriptures and I have a pretty good understanding of how that works, and and and be really careful of the guy who's been to Bible college or seminary.

Right?

That guy really thinks he's arrived now because he's you know taken a class on spiritual formation.

Right?

And now I'm, you know, I should be the one teaching people.

And in small groups, people are coming, people are coming to me for advice, and that kind of makes me feel pretty good.

And but you're unteachable and you're smug about it.

You're self-righteous.

You're a religious hypocrite.

How about this one?

Two more, real quick.

This is a sign of all of that.

It's it's a growing trail of dead bodies behind you.

What's that all about?

Meaning you keep burning bridges in relationships.

You keep hurting people.

And you, you know, because you are you're self-righteous and you don't understand that you too are a work in progress and you've got sin in your life, that the Lord is working in you, and he still loves you, and he's still forgiven you, and he's doing all of that, but because you don't see that, you're hard on other people, and you just obliterate them, and you're you're harsh, and you are cold, and you are demanding, and and you've chalked it up to no, they're just too sensitive.

Right?

They just need to toughen up and they need to hear a hard word.

No, it's that you're an awful person to deal with.

Right?

And all you need to do is look back, and there's just a trail of people who want nothing to do with you.

And it's one church to the next, and you just you wear out your welcome, and and you and you left one, you didn't leave on really good terms, and and you come into another one, maybe this one right here.

And you're like, already, it's critical, it's pointing out everyone else's flaws, you're unwilling to see your own.

It's blindness, it's wrong.

And if you don't deal with it, in another month, two months, a year, whatever the time frame may be, you'll be leaving here and it'll be more burned bridges, more dead bodies.

Last one, here's the last sign.

Self-righteous, religious hypocrite.

Do we have this in us?

Just a lack of heartfelt repentance.

Are you thinking, well, I repent?

Like I say those things.

I do that all the time.

Every time I sin, I give it over to the Lord.

Okay, well, maybe you're technically saying the words, but is it coming from the heart?

Are you bearing fruit in keeping with repentance, as the scriptures talk about?

Are you doing that?

Are you seeing change?

Are you seeing the grace of God starting to transform you?

Listen, this stuff, I understand it, guys.

It is hard to face.

But here's the good news Jesus died for people like you.

That's why he went to the cross.

If you're that self-righteous, religious hypocrite, it's okay.

It's okay if you bring it to the Lord.

It's okay if you turn from it, it's okay if you repent.

That's why Christ died.

If you're starting to see the presence of some of these things in your life, listen, consider that God's grace to you.

I talk to believers and I hear them sometimes talking about, man, my life is so hard and it's so difficult.

And we heard that in some of the testimonies here this morning, and they're like, man, I can't believe this is happening, and I'm seeing this brokenness and all that.

I'm like, that's awesome.

That's the Lord in his grace pointing out the areas of brokenness so that he can begin to transform it.

Continue to confess these things, continue to give these things over to him.

In his grace, in his power, in the power of the Spirit, he'll begin to transform you.

Be patient in that, but that's what he does, that's his game plan.

Appreciate that he has been so good to open your eyes and not leave you in a state of blindness.

Welcome his forgiveness.

Lean into that, right?

Embrace the humility that God wants to and needs to forge in your life, in your heart.

Right?

Because I think it's just so easy to hate the religious counsel here.

I can't believe the blindness of these guys.

They're accusing Jesus, they're charging him.

Maybe we're just like it.

Well, Jesus died for people like me.

Whether I'm the self-righteous, religious hypocrite or the blatantly vile evildoer.

Okay, that's the second thing.

Begin to see that starting in verse 6.

Take a look.

It says, now at the feast, okay, remember they're celebrating Passover.

So at the feast, he, this is Pilate, he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked.

Okay, so apparently Pilate had some kind of tradition, some kind of practice of releasing a prisoner.

Why would he do that?

Well, to gain favor with the crowd.

He's just trying to win brownie points here.

And so it says there that, keep going, he says, and among the, listen to this, rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man named, or a man called Barabbas.

Okay, this guy seems like a real treat, doesn't he?

Just lovely.

Okay, he was known as a rebellious, murdering insurrectionist.

Okay, now we we don't know the details of of what that insurrection was exactly, but the fact that it's called the insurrection suggests that Mark's readers, his original readers, would have known exactly what he was referring to.

Okay?

So understand here.

Barabbas, he is like, he is the complete opposite now of the self-righteous, religious hypocrite that we've been talking about.

All right?

He's not that guy at all.

He's not he's not interested in religion, right?

He's not like, he's not a church kind of guy.

He doesn't care about, you know, God honoring morality or or anything like that.

No, no.

He's dedicated his life to going against all of that.

Right?

It says that he's committed, he's committed murder, right?

It's it's obvious, heinous acts of obvious of and clear wickedness and evil against his fellow man, against against the Roman government for sure.

That's what the insurrection implies.

And ultimately, though, it's it's all against God.

Right?

This guy was clearly, clearly one of the worst criminals ever.

And listen, if I had to, if I had to guess, I would say he probably doesn't care.

Right?

He's like, Yeah, like that's that's what I am.

I'm not trying to be anything different.

I mean, he's not trying to impress anyone, he's not trying to impress God.

You know, keep going, verse 8.

And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them.

And he answered them, saying, Do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?

For he perceived, this is interesting, for he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priest had delivered him up.

So Pilate, even Pilate can see through their charges.

He knows that this is a farce, their charges are bogus.

It says there, though, but but the chief priest, look what they do.

They stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead.

Think about how dark that is.

Right?

We know, we just described who Barabbas is, we know who who Jesus is, and they're like, no, we'd rather have that guy go free than Jesus.

That's how much, that's how much blindness they had.

That's how much hatred that turned into towards the Lord.

Keep going.

And Pilate again said to them, And what shall I do with the man that you call the king of the Jews?

And they cried out again, Crucify him.

And Pilate said to him, Why?

What evil has he done?

But they shouted all the more, Crucify him.

So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, okay, so he just caves, released for them Barabbas of all people, and having scourged Jesus, okay, so scourging was a just a brutal, it was a whipping that they would do, this awful whip that would tear apart flesh.

This is what they subjected Jesus to very often when criminals or or people were scourged, they would actually, they would, they would die from that alone.

Okay, so after scourging Jesus, it says, he delivered him to be crucified.

Crucifixion was reserved for the most awful people who had committed or guilty of high treason against Rome.

This is where Jesus was headed.

Now, verse 16.

And the soldiers, okay, so the spot lace spotlight now shifts on to the soldiers from Barabbas and Pilate.

Okay, the soldiers led him away inside the palace.

That is the governor's headquarters, and they called together the whole battalion.

So this was like 600 soldiers that they would bring.

600 guys that they would bring.

This is a show of force against people who were considered traitors against Rome.

It says, and they clothed him in purple cloak.

Purple was a royal color, right?

Reserved for royalty.

Purple cloak.

And twisting together a crown of thorns, they they put it on him and they began to salute him.

So this is all sarcasm.

Right?

Hail, king of the Jews, they say.

And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him.

When they had mocked him, they stripped him, stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him, and then they led him away to crucify him.

Now, verse 21.

And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.

You know, Alexander and Rufus, we don't know a ton about them, but but they were likely uh known believers in the early church here and known to Mark's uh early readers here.

And so Alex, uh Alexander and Rufus's father Simon gets called in to you know to carry the cross, right?

Because Jesus is so weak from his scourging, his beating, and the shameful treatment that he's been, that he's received.

And it says there, keep going, and they brought him to the place called uh Gogotha, which means place of the skull.

And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh.

So this would have, this would have dulled the pain that he was enduring here as he was hanging on the cross.

And they might be thinking, well, that's that they're showing him some kindness there, some mercy.

Well, they're actually not, because uh they were ultimately hoping that, you know, as it would dull the pain for him now, it would actually prolong it and he would endure even more in the long run.

Okay, so it's another cruel act.

But it says there that he did not take it, and they crucified him, and they divided his garments among them, casting lots for them to decide which each should take.

This is what the soldiers do.

This is all uh in fulfillment.

Remember, there's a lot of scripture being fulfilled here.

Psalm uh 22.

You want to write down Psalm 22, Psalm 69, a lot of imagery in there that comes to fruition and fulfillment here in what we're reading.

You can also jot down Isaiah 53.

Okay, keep going here in our passage.

It says, and it was the third hour, meaning 9 a.m., when they crucified him.

In the inscription of the charge against him read the king of the Jews.

And with him they crucified two robbers.

Okay, so now these two guys, one on his right and one on his left.

Again, this is fulfillment of Isaiah 53, verse 12.

Isaiah 53:12

He was numbered with transgressors.

Okay?

So again, continue.

One on his right, one on his left, and those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, Aha! You know, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself.

And come down from the cross.

So also the chief priests with the scribes, they're all there, mocked him to one another, saying, He saved others, he cannot save himself.

Now understand this.

Did he come to save himself?

No.

He came to save us.

He's accomplishing a much greater purpose here.

But of course, they don't get it.

They continue.

It says, Let the Christ, the king of Israel, come down from the cross that we may see and believe.

So they kind of mockingly ask for another sign.

He's given them so many already.

It says, Those who were crucified with him also revile them.

This is the robbers now.

Okay, so they're giving him a hard time.

Now, in Luke's gospel, Luke mentions that one of them actually repents at some point here and gives his life to the Lord.

Pretty awesome.

Now, verse 33.

And when the sixth hour had come, so we're talking lunchtime, noon, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

So until 3 p.m.

Now, the darkness here, some people have thought of that as just kind of a natural phenomenon, right?

It's like it's the solar eclipse.

Okay, but that's that's not what this was.

Well, how do we know that?

Well, we know that because this is happening at Passover, and Passover would happen at a full moon, which is not when solar eclipses uh happen.

Okay?

And so the three hours of darkness here, how are we to understand that?

Well, we need to see that.

That's that's a supernatural act of God.

God's judgment on mankind for the for the murder of his son.

And so there's like kind of two major things happening here in this moment along the way.

And maybe you've noticed it.

You've got you've got the act of sinful men, right, leading Jesus to his death.

They were absolutely responsible for that before God.

They have sinned.

This was wrong.

But at the same time, you've got the sovereign act of a loving God also carrying out his purposes.

Something that has been proclaimed and prophesied about from the very beginning.

So you've got the the act of sinful people and and the act of a sovereign, righteous, holy God kind of colliding, converging here in these moments.

It'd be challenging to sort of, again, wrap our minds around all of that, but that's what's happening.

God is judging them for what they're doing.

That's what this darkness here is.

But at the same time, this is going according to plan.

Okay, keep going, it says, and at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, Lemma Sabakhtini.

Pretty sure I didn't pronounce that properly.

That's Aramaic.

It says, which means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Now understand, this is not Jesus expressing some kind of bewilderment.

Like, what is happening right now?

Like, I can't believe this.

Why are you why are you forsaking me, oh God?

No, that's not what he's doing.

Rather, he's he's identifying with or or as the suffering servant that we see in Psalm 22.

Did you jot that down already?

He he's he's fulfilling the scriptures in that, and at the at the end of all of that, it actually talks about the great salvation that God is going to accomplish.

And so he's saying, like, this is this is what's happening right now.

And in this moment, Jesus also, you know, seems to sense the you know his separation from God as he receives and and even probably to some degree feels just the full weight of God's wrath poured out on him, leveled towards him for the sins of all mankind for all time.

Man, what a moment.

Now, verse 35.

And some of the bystanders, hearing it said, Behold, he is calling Elijah.

And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave it to him to drink, saying, Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.

And so obviously they kind of mishear, misunderstand what he's what he's saying here.

It says that in Jesus, Jesus uttered a loud cry and and he breathed his last.

Listen, I was thinking about it this week.

There are simply no none, no comparisons to the sacrifice that Jesus made here.

There's none.

You can't say, well, it's kind of like no, it's not.

It's it's immense.

This act of love is it's unquestionably unparalleled.

And then when you when you think about the kinds of people that that he's done this for, it just makes it that much more like jaw-dropping, right?

We talked about how he died for self-righteous, religious hypocrites.

I mean, that's shocking.

That he died for the chief priests and all of that.

But listen, he also died for blatantly vile, outwardly evil people, right?

Just the other end of the spectrum from the religious hypocrite type.

Right?

The criminals hanging next to him on the cross, he died for them.

Right?

The soldiers who shamefully torture him and carry out his execution.

Barabbas.

That is like that's a picture of the gospel right there.

That's us.

We're him.

And some of us, I think, we we identify more with kind of that gritty crowd, don't we?

You know, we think about our own story and our in our own testimony.

It's, you know, we recount and we heard some of it today.

Right?

Some of the years of rebellion, it's it's it was antagonistic, you know, mockery of God.

It was maybe it was atheism, you know, it was it was just willful sinfulness, chasing after of the world, going after our flesh, following it wherever those twisted desires took us.

No matter who in our path got hurt along the way, no matter how much it hurt God, we didn't care.

We only cared about ourselves.

And in that, we just became more, I don't know, more empty, more miserable, and even more damaged.

Now, when you stop and think about this here, okay, whether you know the blatantly you know vile evildoer, that's kind of how we're framing that up, you know, you know, and the self-righteous religious hypocrite, if you think about this, they're they're really just two sides of the same coin.

Right?

Do you see that?

Both are lost.

Both sinful, both rebellious, both so wrong in their approach to what life is all about.

They just it's just kind of packaged differently.

It's expressed a little bit differently.

Yet both types are exactly who Jesus died for.

People like you.

People like me.

So that we'll respond.

How?

Well, so that we'll respond with faith and devotion.

That's the final thing here.

And that's absolutely what we see here starting in verse 38.

Pick it up there.

Okay, Jesus breathes last, we know that, and it says this, and the curtain, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

What's that all about?

Well, this is referring to the curtain to the to the holy of holies.

It was like the central area of the temple uh for worship, right?

This is this was considered, you know, the place where God's God's presence dwelt with his people, uh, Israel.

Okay, and it was the place where only one man, the the chief priest, the high priest, could enter.

And and and that only once a year.

And it was to make atonement for the sins of the people.

And he had to go through a very rigorous cleansing ritual and all of that.

And sacrifices to make sure that he was, his sins were forgiven, and he could enter into this place.

It was the curtain that separated all of this.

And so the curtain tearing at the moment of Christ's death.

And also notice what does it say there?

How did it tear from top to bottom or bottom to top?

Top to bottom.

Right?

Showing that it wasn't like some person climbing up a ladder to tear it.

This is another act of God, right?

Supernatural act.

Right?

And it's it's signifying that Jesus' sacrifice was pleasing to the Father.

And now Jesus gives us direct access to God.

No need for the high priest to do it once a year.

Now a relationship with God is available to all of us.

How?

Through faith.

Through trusting in what Jesus Christ did on that cross in that moment.

Right?

And that's exactly, look, we see this happen right here, verse 39.

It says, and when the centurion, okay, who is this guy?

He was the captain of the kill squad.

Right?

He's like this grizzled, you know, professional executioner.

Right?

Look at this guy.

It says it says, when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, This is remarkable, truly this man was the son of God.

Amazing moment.

This is the very first confession that Jesus Christ is in fact the Son of God.

This is a profession of faith.

This centurion, okay, ironically, not a disciple, not a friend of Jesus.

This is the vile evildoer type guy.

An enemy.

He professes saving faith in Jesus Christ by witnessing his death on the cross and having a hand in it.

Now, verse 40, keep going.

There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James, and the younger, and of Joseph and Salome.

Okay, so there's a bunch of women that had been following him as well, and they were friends of him, and they're following along, albeit at a distance here, but they're tracking with what's happening here.

It says there when he was in Galilee, they followed him and administered to him.

And there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

And when evening had come, since it was the day of the preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, we're introduced to this guy, Joseph of Arimathea.

Well, who's he?

He says that he was a respected member of the council.

So you've got Joseph of Arimathea, he's a religious type.

He's a churchy guy, right?

Kind of probably leaning more towards, probably struggling with hypocrisy, if anything.

We're not given a lot of insight into his life.

Right?

But what does it say?

It says that he himself was looking for the kingdom of God.

How cool is that?

Matthew and John's Gospels identify him actually clearly as a disciple of Christ.

It says that he took courage here and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died.

And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead.

And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph.

And Joseph bought a linen shroud and taking him down, wrapped him in a linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock.

And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.

Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph's word there, saw where he was laid.

Now, what I find so striking here is that we see these two types of people that we've been talking about all morning here, right?

Reveal their faith in the saving work and person of Jesus Christ.

In the centurion, we see him actually confess and profess Jesus as Lord.

We see that there.

In Joseph of Arimathea, we see evidence of his saving faith through his radical devotion to Christ.

We see it right there.

He risks his, think about this, he's on the religious council.

He risks his comfort.

He risks being ostracized.

He risks, who knows what other kind of treatment.

Because he wants to follow, he wants to honor the Lord.

He wants to follow him.

He wants to express his allegiance, his love.

What we see in Joseph of Arimathea, and maybe to a lesser degree, but we see it also in the women who follow.

We see that their heartfelt devotion.

This is exactly what God calls you and I to as well.

Now, whether you relate more to the lifestyle, you know, the track record, the sordid details of the blatantly vile evildoer type.

You know, maybe you're, you know, you look, you read this and you're like, I'm more like the centurion, I'm more like the criminals, I'm more like Barabbas, more like Pilate.

Or, or maybe you relate more to the self-righteous, religious, hypocrite type.

You're like, Mark, I know I struggle with being more like a Pharisee and Sadducee and scribes, I'm more like the chief priest.

Maybe for you you have more of a Joseph of Airmathea type story.

Right?

You're the person who grew up in the church your whole life and you started, you know, you stopped kind of sensing the awesomeness of the gospel, and it's kind of you've grown kind of dull to it, and you're not all that fired up about your faith and all of those things.

Maybe you relate to all of that.

Or, listen, maybe for all of us, there is like a mixture of both.

Right?

Some of us, you know, I don't think any of us are 100% one or the other.

We've all committed vile acts, we've all been hypocrites.

We've all kind of done all of it.

But either way, our the you know, the call to action here is the same.

Right?

It's realize your need for a savior.

And then recognize that Jesus is that savior.

He died for you.

And the call, the response to all of that is to place your faith in him, your trust in him, and then devote your life to him.

Because I don't want to challenge you if you have not done this to do that today.

You know, we've got, again, we've got a lot of friends and family and people that are in our church, maybe for the first time, maybe you haven't been to church in years or ever, and we just think it's so amazing that you would come today.

That's incredible.

And I would really strongly say, really consider where are you at with God.

And understand that the timing of you coming to our church, the Lord knew that.

And he knew that you were gonna come on a day where we're talking about the crucifixion, coming on a day where we're talking about the death of Christ, coming on a day where you're starting to realize this is that wow, that was for me.

It was.

It is.

And so if you kind of sense a tugging, if you sense maybe the Lord is kind of kind of pushing on you and kind of you know pushing some buttons a little bit, here's what it comes down to.

It comes down to just admitting your sin, realizing that it's it's against the Lord, it's against God, and then inviting Him to save you, inviting Him to forgive you, inviting Him to be your Lord.

It's exactly what these folks who got baptized here this morning have done.

That's what many people in this room have done.

And from that moment on, giving your life to the Lord, finding forgiveness, finding new life, it's it's now about a life of heartfelt devotion to him.

Just like we see in these women, just like we see in Joseph, pursuing him, going after him from the heart.

Because that's exactly what Jesus did for us.

He pursued us, he went to the cross for us.

His devotion to us is crystal clear.