Friends, if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to the Gospel of Mark 15, Mark 15. We will begin our reading at verse 15 and read through verse 32. As we consider the sufferings of our Lord. Last week we looked at the unjust trial or trials that Jesus experienced tonight.
We look at the hurt and humiliation he experienced. If you have ever been and who hasn't been hurt or humiliated by others, then you can relate to Jesus and Jesus can relate to you. And so we want to consider this because Jesus was not just simply killed. He was tortured, he was mocked, he was insulted and taunted and shamed and then crucified.
We want to ponder that this evening. From Mark 15, beginning at verse 15, here now the word of God. So Pilate wishing to satisfy the crowd released for them Baravas and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. The soldiers led him away inside the palace, that is the governor's headquarters.
And they called together the whole battalion and they clothed him in a purple cloak. Twisting together a crown of thorns they put in on him and he began to salute him. Hell, King of the Jews. And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him.
And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him and they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled to pass her by, Simon of Cyrene who was coming in from the country. The father of Alexander and Rufus to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull.
And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, the King of the Jews.
And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by, derided him, lagging their heads and saying, aha, you who were destroyed the temple and we build it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross. So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, he saved others, he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.
Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. Amen. This is God's Word. Let's pray.
Our Father in Heaven, oh, write this on our hearts. Show us Jesus and be merciful to us in His name, we pray. Amen. It is a terrible story of suffering.
And it is in many ways unique among all the leaders of the world's great religions, whether you think of Abraham, Moses, and David, or Muhammad, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus alone died young and violently. And it really happened. Mark, in telling you this story, throws in some strange details that are otherwise entirely superfluous, but they aid in helping anyone who would have heard. It aids us in knowing that this really happened.
He writes it in history when he tells you, for instance, in verse 21 that they had to have Simon help carry the cross. And oh, by the way, Simon, sons, Rufus, and Alexander were there. It's rooting that. And those who understand and study these things in literature will tell you that this otherwise entirely superfluous information, this little detail about the names of some boys, is a way of saying, you know, there were eyewitnesses to this account.
And if you don't believe me, well, there's Rufus and Alexander, you could just ask them. For this really happened, this terrible story of suffering and hurts. And I want you to consider how it was that Jesus was hurt and why it was that he was hurt. And finally, what difference does that make us?
We follow him. In the first place, how was it that Jesus was hurt? I want to highlight three things. He's paying the insults and the humiliation.
Notice beginning in verse 15 that he endured physical torture that was absolutely brutal. At the end of the trial before Pilate, Pilate has him flog. And what we know about Roman flogging is that they would strip the victim, tie the hands together and two up post over the head with the back bent in such a way that it was fully exposed and two men would take these whips with multiple pieces of leather with rock or other sharp shards, even pieces of bone tied to the ends. And they would take turns pounding on the back side of the victim.
And while the Jews mercifully flogged only to 40 stripes, the Romans had no such limitations. Flesh and muscle would have been torn. The ribs might have been exposed. Even the internal organs might have been exposed.
The victim of a Roman flogging rarely survived. It was absolutely brutal. And then after that, think of it, they hand him over to the military who in the midst of mocking him, they put on him a cloak. And then what we know is that they had him for likely hours before he actually gets to the cross and undoubtedly time for his blood to begin the clock.
And then they stripped that cloak off of him. Can you imagine how painful the nerve endings of his back would have been? Absolutely horrendous. Then they crucified from which we get the word from crucifixion, we get the word excruciating.
It was considered the most painful form of execution known in the ancient world. The one man described it like this, the way that you actually die in crucifixion, having been nailed to a post, is that you die through strangulation and suffocation. You through weakness and exhaustion begin to sink down and find it impossible to gather your breath unless you push up on the foot that has a nail running through it. In order to lift the diaphragm and to breathe freely.
And so you normally expired of suffocation, absolutely a horrendous way to die. And what I want you to see about all this pain is that Jesus willingly embraced it. Absolutely willing. In verse 23, it says that Jesus was offered some drug, why, why mixed with myrrh?
Why that would have been given to numb the pain that he refused it. Why? Because he wanted to drink deeply of this pain out of his love for you. Because he wanted in his right mind consciously to drink fully the cup of God's wrath.
He chose the maximal experience of pain, in other words. He didn't want his faculties impaired when he suffered for you. He wanted to be clear minded so that he was able to think, so that he was able to pray. So that he was able to, in his own right mind, trust God through the entire experience to be able to offer those words at the very end, Father forgive them.
They do not know what they are doing. And so he embraced the maximum amount of pain out of his love for you. He was also insulted horribly. And I want you to see that in verse 16 through 20, first by the military, a battalion would have been about a tenth of a legion.
And he went from two to six hundred hardened soldiers accustomed to death and to killing people. He's placed into their hands for their entertainment. And you can see how entertaining this was for them. Oh, Kingsware robes, do they?
Let's put on Jesus the purple robe of authority. Doesn't he look really keenly? You can hear them saying. And then Kingsware crowns, let's get him a crown.
And they put on his head a crown of thorns and they press it into his skull. Now, I don't know if you've ever had the experience of getting nicked, even just in the head. But the flow of blood is amazing. I worked in junior high youth ministry back in Jackson, Mississippi.
And we would take kids on mission projects into neighborhoods where they were demolishing homes so that Habitat could build a new one. We didn't let the junior high build the new one, but we let them tear down the old one. So you give these 12, 13, 14-year old kids hammers, sledge hammers, crowbars, so many years of youth ministers, sports nightmare. And it happened.
He was fleeing up to us, just absolutely drenched in blood on his face. And we're thinking, did he get a sledge hammer to the head? Or what happened here? But he's not feeling a lot of pain.
We get him wiped off. And what we discovered was this. The tiniest little nick. He had been working when a friend had just tapped the button on his baseball cap.
And it created just the tiniest little nick at the very top of his head. And it gushed forth blood. Now, you understand, Jesus would have been covered in blood unrecognizable to people. And then they received him with acclimation.
Oh, kings received the pledge of allegiance from their people. Don't they? Well, they kneel before this king. Hell, king of the Jews, they say.
And kings are kissed. Kissed on the hand by their people. And they don't kiss them. They stand up and they spit in his face.
You can almost imagine a row of 10 soldiers in columns 20, 40, 60 feet deep, coming forth, column by column to come past this king and spit in his face. This is how they mocked him. But it's not just them, friends. Pilot himself in verse 26 has a sign, a statement of his crime placed over his head, king of the Jews.
Now, Pilate means to mock the Jews. We're in authority around here, Pilate is saying, the Roman government has you under its thumb. This is what we do to your king. But it would have been mocking Jesus too.
You're a king, are you? Well, look what we can do to you. And more than that, in verse 32, the other criminals hung on his left and his right reviled him. It says, now, you know, Luke will tell you something happens at the end to change one man's mind.
And in concert, reviling Jesus. And in verse 29, through 32, the bystanders and the religious leaders mock him. Oh, you who can destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. Well, why don't you do that and save yourself, they say.
And the religious leaders who know that that's not really what Jesus had said, they know that's not true. They don't take that same language, but they do say, well, he saved others, but he can't save himself. If he's the Christ, why doesn't he do that? They mock him to his face.
And what are they mocking him for friends? They're not mocking him for his wives teaching. They're not mocking him for the healing he gave to people. They're not mocking him for being a friend to sinners.
Another mocking him for his incredible claim to be God, to be the Messiah, the anointed one, the long-promised Redeemer, the Savior. They're mocking him for being, as he says, not the temple made with hands, but the temple, the true temple where people meet with God and God meets with people in himself. This is what they mock him for. And this is what Jesus is hated for.
As we write in the book of Acts, there is no other name given among them by which we must be saved. There is no other Savior. And we don't like that. We don't like that because it forces us to either embrace it or reject it.
You cannot remain neutral here, either cast a region on him with those who mock, or become his disciple and follow him. They're being ironic in their insults. They're saying, well, you're a king, you're the Savior, scornfully. They say, you know, prove your lofty claim and come down from the cross.
They're saying, basically, you know, Jesus really, it's weakness that keeps you there. But you understand that it's strength that keeps him there. The strength of his love for sinners. It was exactly because Jesus is strong and remained on the cross, that he is our Savior.
The ironic here is ironic. They're mocking. The ironic thing is they're saying God can't be saving the world through you and the irony is that God is saving the world through him, through the weakness and death of King Jesus. And so you and I cannot and must not ignore him.
But then he's humiliated as well. You know, that he's been stripped naked, then he's been re-clothed and then upon the cross to be crucified, he'll be stripped naked and hung up publicly for all to see. The cross was not only the most painful, brutal form of execution known in the ancient world, but it was also the most humiliating form of execution. And for the Jew, especially, to be hung naked, to be uncovered publicly was regarded by them to be the most shameful thing.
Going all the way back to that time in the Garden of Eve, when Adam and Eve had been naked and unashamed until sin end of the world. And then all they wanted to do was hide from each other and hide from God. The Jews have always felt that this was a humiliation. And here, Jesus is hung upon this cross naked.
And as one commentator put it, unable to restrain the excretion of his waste as he hangs before them. Now we know they stripped him naked in fulfillment of prophecy. I mean, they had their own purposes to divide his clothing, make some money. But they fulfilled Psalm 22, verses 16 through 18, which says, a company of evil doers and circles me, they pierced my hands and feet.
I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them. And for my clothing, they cast lots.
That is wonderfully fulfilled by God the Father's design in the life of our Lord Jesus. O friends, nothing here is happening out of control. God is off his throne. The shame and the pain are part of God's plan for Jesus.
He was made to be hung out publicly like this. Why? Hebrews 12 says, for the joy that was set before him. He endured the cross.
Why did he do it? He despised the shame of the cross and during the cross. Why? To bring many sons and daughters to glory.
He did it for you. He was exposed to the shame of Adam and Eve before sinning it into the world. They were naked in unashamed with sin came the desire to hide and have Jesus is here unable in any way, but laid bare. And he despised its shame and he bore its shame so much so that the Bible says about you who feels shame that he has taken it away and that he is not ashamed to be called your elder brother.
He is not ashamed to own you as his own. He is not ashamed of you. But he makes you welcome before the father that you might never need to hide. Now why was he hurt?
If this was how he was hurt. Why? Why? Friends, was he hurt like this?
And I want you to consider it. The answer to the why is actually in the where. Where was he hurt? That will tell you the why.
I want you to think of this. It's called Golgotha, the place of the skull. His execution here is in the Latin Calvary and in the Greek Golgotha. According to long custom, crucifixions took place outside of the city.
But it would have occurred right on the city, still on the mountain near the wall. The location is inside the present city of Jerusalem. The location itself is packed with redemptive historical significance. But if you go back in ancient history to the story of Abraham and Genesis, chapter 22, you remember that God had told Abraham, take your son, your one and only, your beloved son, take him to the land of Mariah and there, sacrifice him to me.
And you know that father and son went up on the mountain. And just as Abraham was going to strike, the Lord intervened and angel stopped him. And Abraham looked in a thicket and saw there trapped a ram which he substituted with his son and he called that place, the Lord will provide. The Lord provided a substitute in death for his son.
Now listen, that's Mount Mariah. Later King David, when he takes a census of God's people, he counts the fighting ban and the horses and in pride against the Lord. He does what he should not have done. The avenging angel of the Lord comes and exercises punishment on the whole nation and 70,000 die under the hand of the angel.
But God spares David and David says, let your hand be against me. And the Lord says, build an altar. And so David goes out and he purchases from Ornan the Jebusite. He purchases a field that Ornan wanted to give to him and David says, well, I will not offer a sacrifice that costs me nothing.
And on the threshing floor in that field, David builds an altar to the Lord and he offers a burnt offering to the Lord. And a burnt offering is a substitute in death. And in 2 Chronicles chapter 3 verse 1 we're told by the chronicleer that Solomon builds the temple on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite on Mount Mariah. So here it is, in that temple, thousands upon thousands, hundreds of thousands of sacrifices are offered to God.
And there on that mountain Jerusalem on Mount Mariah, the same place where the angel of death had withheld his hand from Jerusalem, the same place where Abraham had received a substitute for his son Isaac. It is there that Jesus is hung to die. Why as a substitute for you every Christian can say, he loved me and he gave himself for me. You can say the Father loved me and gave his son for my soul.
The love of God set the Son of God to bear the wrath of God for the people of God that you might be saved. That is his reason for being on that cross. Now how does this help? What difference does this make?
Just a few things briefly. I want you to consider the first place of the advance of pain. Have you ever been and surely you have been the butt of somebody's joke, picked on, looked down on, mocked for what you are, mistreated, abused, humiliated publicly? It isn't right.
It isn't right when it's happened to you. It wasn't right when it happened to Jesus that evil men should do such a thing to Jesus the innocent one. It isn't right when people made an image of God. People designed by God to represent God on the earth.
That is your glory. That is your dignity. It isn't right when these people are degraded by others. It is never right.
But if you have tasted that, you have been right where Jesus is. Jesus has been right where you are. You have a Savior who can sympathize with you, whatever the pain. And the Bible says about Jesus that He is not there just for you and in your place.
But He is there for your example. That when He was reviled, Peter says, He did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten but continued entrusting Himself to one who judges justly. And friends, I want to say to you, if you are in a circumstance where you are being degraded, it is appropriate for you to seek refuge and flee.
But you need to understand that under God's sovereignty, you have tasted what Jesus has tasted. And Jesus did not revile in return, interpersonally in His relationship. He says to you, safety of course, if you can. But do not take justice into your own hand.
Wait for me. This is what Jesus says. This is what the Apostle Paul teaches us. That Jesus knew He was coming back and He was going to set all things right.
And you and I in our own relationships are not to take personal vengeance against those who have hurt us. But we are to let vengeance be where it belongs and where it is in the Lord's hand. And in the Lord He is sovereign. We are to rest in Him.
The second thing I want you to think about though is not the offense of other sins against us but the offense of our own sin. Look, we don't think sin is a big deal. I know the man standing in front of you doesn't think sin is that big deal. He certainly doesn't think it's that big deal when he's doing it.
Very few of us think much about how awful sin is. That God hates sin. But would you look at what God did to His Son on account of sin? Had there been any other way for God to remain just and good and accept you the unjust in His presence?
He would have taken it any other way but the sufferings of His own Son but there was no other way. So we ought to take a good long look at how badly our sins offend Him. And we need to learn in a way that we never had to hate our own sin in proportion to the severity of the punishment which Jesus endured for it. But that is not where the story ends friends.
And I care but I don't care in a sense how badly you've offended Him. I know that I'm sure that I have offended Him more than you. What you have got to see is this that the offense of sin can be forgiven. You know those two criminals who reviled Him, who mocked Him.
You know the end of the story. What happened? Luke tells you that one of them having seen Jesus on that cross for hours at the very end he realizes he is the King and he turns to Jesus and he says remember me when you come into your kingdom. He says to Jesus basically Jesus I know that you're the true King.
I know that you're going to live beyond the grave. I know that you're coming into your inheritance. Oh won't you have mercy on me and Jesus says to him today you will be with me. He imparidized.
Because there is mercy on this cross for those who revile Jesus. Let it melt your heart friends. The King's forgiveness is for all who look to Him. Let's do so.
Let's pray. Oh Father in Heaven we bless you for your gift. Oh Jesus we exalt you and thank you. We pray that you have mercy on us.
Oh forgive us our rebellions and soften our hearts and teach us to walk with you in your name we pray. Amen. Amen.