[0:00] Take your Bibles, if you would, and turn with me to the book of Mark, chapter 14 and 15, if you would. Mark, chapter 14 and 15. You know that way back, 6,000 more years, human beings were created by the great God of heaven, and they offended him.
[0:23] They chose to do what they wanted and not what he wanted. They chose to rebel against him. And the God of heaven that could have destroyed his own creation, instead of destroying it, decided to rescue it, to save it.
[0:36] And so the human race, all of us in this room, we were part of a fallen race of people that chose to rebel against God and do what we shouldn't.
[0:47] And we have sinned because that's who we are. We have sinned because that's what we like. We've chosen to go away from God. But God loved us so much that God took on human flesh.
[1:00] He came to earth, was born of a virgin, and he lived among us as a human being, one of us. And we have been through his story in the book of Mark, and we come to, I think, one of the most precious passages of Scripture in the Bible.
[1:17] I am honestly nervous about talking to you about it because it's too precious. It's too special. It's something I know I will fail at getting you to understand.
[1:28] I want you to take your Bible and walk through it with me. But as you do, the Bible says in Romans 5.8, But God committed his love toward us, and while we were yet sinners, here's the key words, Christ died for us.
[1:43] God, in human flesh, Christ died for us. Father, I love you, and I thank you so much. I thank you for the three men and the wonderful testimonies this morning.
[1:54] I thank you for everybody else's testimony in this room that has also come to know you in some similar way. Now, I pray to your God today as I try to take your precious word and to talk a little bit about it that I would not stumble or mess it up or cause your people not to see the magnitude of your love and mercy and how wonderful you are.
[2:15] And Jesus, we thank you for dying. We thank you for all you bore on the cross. God, we thank you that you loved us enough that you gave your only begotten Son. And we thank you, Holy Spirit, that you have loved us and pursued us and found us and convicted us and saved us.
[2:33] And we give you great honor and glory today. Help me, Lord, as we do this. Help your people to listen. Help them to let their hearts and minds go back and see what you did and let it be real to us today.
[2:44] And I'll give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, starting back over in Mark chapter 14 and verse 27, Jesus is doing the Lord's Supper. We do the Lord's Supper today to remember what happened on Calvary, what happened when Jesus died for us.
[2:59] But Jesus is doing it prior to the supper, and he's telling them this is about to happen. He's about to die, and his body's about to be broken, and his blood's about to be shed, and he is going to die so that all humans can be saved.
[3:11] And when he was doing it, he told the guys, the following him, his disciples, his main students, his preachers that he was working with, he said in verse 27, you're all going to get offended. You're all going to be scandalized.
[3:24] You're all going to run from me. You're all going to disassociate yourselves with me because I'm fixing to take a blow. I will be smitten. I will be hurt. And the sheep will all run and all be scattered.
[3:38] And then after he got through talking to them about that, he went to the garden, and he said, guys, I'd like to have you pray with me, and let's ask God to help me. And so the guys go off to pray, and in Mark chapter 14, in verse 36, he uses the term Abba, which is the term for daddy.
[3:53] It's a sweet, tender, personal, intimate term. And he says, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee. Take this cup away from me. But not what I want, but what you want.
[4:10] His disciples don't pray with him. He asks them three times, and they don't pray. They sleep. And he says, finally, just go ahead and keep on sleeping, guys. It's about over. And about that time, Judas comes with a big army.
[4:22] In Mark chapter 14, in verse 43, and he comes up to, Judas comes up to him, and they're carrying swords and sticks, and they come to grab Jesus and take him, and Judas kisses him.
[4:37] The sign of ultimate betrayal. I love you as I condemn you to die. It is a scary time. It is so scary. In Mark chapter 14, in verse 51, there's a young man there who had heard all the ruckus outside, evidently, and jumped up and just wrapped a linen cloth around his naked body, and he had rushed out.
[4:55] And when all this happened, he got scared, and the scuffle, and the melee that follows. In Mark chapter 14, in verse 51, he runs off naked, leaving the garment. Most people believe that was Mark, the guy writing this story.
[5:09] And so they take, and Peter denies Jesus three times. By the end of the time that he's denying him, he is cursing and saying, I do not know him.
[5:20] I have nothing to do with him. It's all come true. In Mark chapter 14, in verse 55, he is taken by the religious crowd. It's the religious crowd. It's not even the real government that's grabbed him.
[5:32] It's basically a shadow government. It's an allowed and permitted government. It's the religious government. They don't have the power to put anybody to death, but they grab Jesus and take him, and they go looking for witnesses after they grab him.
[5:48] After they grab him in the garden, after they drag him off, they start saying, now we need to do something to this guy, so let's see if we can find some witnesses. And they found none. They could find no one who had anything negative to say about Jesus, except this ugly crowd.
[6:04] In Mark chapter 14, in verse 62, they finally ask him, well, are you? Are you God in human flesh? Are you the Messiah? Are you the one?
[6:15] And he answered and said, I am. Those two words, I am, were very powerful words. A Jew would never say that. It was like saying, I am God, because he is God, and he was God, and the son of man, coming in the right hand of the power, coming in the clouds.
[6:33] And so they grabbed him, in Mark chapter 14, in verse 65, and they took him off, and they began to spit on him. There's not a society in the world that I know of that finds spitting in your face, or spitting on your person, to be acceptable, or permissible, or enjoyable, and they spit on him.
[6:50] These are religious people. These are those Pharisees, and Sadducees, and those scribes, that had been around him. They covered up his face, and they began to hit him, and they would punch him, or slap him, and they would make him say, who is it that's hitting you?
[7:05] You're supposed to be so almighty. You're supposed to know so much. Why don't you do that? The religious crowd hates Jesus, because he is truth. They have found no real reason, to crucify him, they just need to get rid of him, because his light shows their sin, and their darkness.
[7:26] This is religion at its best, or worst. Using people, and twisting truth. They can't go any further. They're allowed to beat him up, they're allowed to whip him, they're allowed to mistreat him, but they have no power to kill him, for that they need the government.
[7:44] So they basically call for another trial. And in Mark chapter 15 and verse 1, as the morning, they've had him up all night, slapping him, spitting on him, beating him, and mocking him.
[7:57] And in the morning, Mark chapter 15 and verse 1, the chief priests, they got together with all their big shots, and they turned him over, to a guy named Pilate. And when he got before Pilate, in Mark chapter 15 and verse 2, Pilate said, well, are you the king of the Jews?
[8:14] And he answered and said unto them, well, you're the one saying that, not me. I didn't say that. You said it. And Jesus wouldn't defend himself.
[8:24] Jesus wasn't calling for a lawyer. Jesus wasn't trying to get out of it. Jesus wasn't trying to see what he could do. He didn't defend himself. In Mark 15, 3, the priest, the chief priest accused him, but he didn't say anything.
[8:38] Mark 15, 4, Pilate said, well, are you going to answer them or not? And Jesus didn't say anything. In Mark 15, 5, Pilate was shocked, marveled. Here's a man, knows I can take his life, knows his life hangs in the balance.
[8:54] He's being accused. And it's obviously a very false accusal. And Jesus says nothing. So Pilate began to think about it. And he thought, you know, how do you get this guy off?
[9:06] He's obviously innocent. He hasn't done anything wrong. They're obviously being ugly to him. They're just being mean. They're using me. And I'd like to get him off. And so they had a custom in the country where they would allow one prisoner to be released.
[9:20] In Mark 15, in verse 6, they were allowed. He gave them a choice. He had two guys there on trial. In Mark 15, verse 7, there's Jesus, and there's a guy named Barabbas.
[9:32] Barabbas is a murderer. In the last riot against the government, the last time he tried to cause an insurrection, a rebellion against the government, he killed a man.
[9:45] And Pilate says, this will be good. No one would choose Barabbas. No one would choose a murderer. No one would choose a terrorist that raised itself up against the government.
[9:58] So I'll offer him the really rotten bad guy and this Jesus. And they'll have to choose Jesus and let him go. So in Mark chapter 15, in verse 9, Pilate answered and said, will you that I release to you the king of the Jews?
[10:14] Obviously, you know, you guys can't even find anything wrong with him. Surely, you would let him go. Because in Mark chapter 15, in verse 10, Pilate knew that it was jealousy was the reason that they delivered him.
[10:26] Mark chapter 15, in verse 10, they delivered him for envy. But in Mark chapter 15, in verse 11, the religious crowd starts getting everybody motivated to scream, crucify Jesus and give us Barabbas.
[10:41] And they called for Barabbas. When they called for Barabbas in Mark 15, 12, Pilate says, well, what do you all want me to do with the king of the Jews? I mean, you want me to release the murderer?
[10:52] And you want me, what do you want me to do with the king of the Jews? And in Mark 15, 13, they began to cry out, crucify him, crucify him.
[11:03] And so Pilate says, well, what did he do wrong? What evil has he done? And that just made them madder. And they cried out more exceedingly in verse 14, crucify him, crucify him.
[11:17] Pilate's a politician. He doesn't have much of a spine. And in verse 15, he just wants to get him by the calm down and be happy. And so he let Barabbas go.
[11:32] And he took Jesus and he gave him to him to be crucified. But before he did, he scourged him. You can mark that down in verse 15. He scourged him.
[11:43] Now you read that word and you slide on by and you don't pay attention to it. But basically, that was to give him the beating of a lifetime that was almost capital punishment. It was to beat him so much that his skin would be left in ribbons and his guts would nearly be hanging out.
[12:01] Oftentimes, people's eyes were no longer inside their body because they didn't care where the whip fell on his body. So to appease his conscience and to please the people, he beats Jesus and lets him go.
[12:15] But Pilate knows Jesus did nothing wrong. And Jesus is not worthy of death. Now he's been beaten. His scourging often killed people.
[12:28] But he lived through it. But by now, his body is probably beyond recognition. He has been punched in the face. He has been spit on. He has been mocked.
[12:40] He has now been beaten. So in chapter 15 and verse 16, he got all the soldiers together, the whole group of them, and said, you guys take him now. Y'all go play with him.
[12:54] In verse 17, they put a purple robe on him and they made him a crown of thorns. They shoved that down on his head. They began to make fun of him.
[13:05] And they would holler, hail, king of the Jews. Hail, king of the Jews. You're the king, huh? And they pretend to worship him.
[13:16] In Mark 15, 19, they hit him on the head where there's a crown of thorns. They spit on him and they bow their knees and pretend to worship him, mocking the very creator of the universe.
[13:33] God in human flesh. They mocked him. And the torture games are coming to an end. Verse 20, they mock him.
[13:44] They take the robe off of him. After they've, he's been up all night with the Jewish people picking on him and making fun of him and beating on him. Now he's been taken by a bunch. He's been beaten until he's probably mostly dead.
[13:56] Now the soldiers have had fun mocking him and playing with him. They take his clothes off and they lead him out to be crucified. I really can't go on without thinking, do you mock him by pretending he's your king?
[14:13] When you know you're not really going to honor him? In Mark chapter 15, as they're coming out, they compel one Simon of Cyrenian and he has two boys named Alexander and Rufus and they tell him, you're going to carry his cross.
[14:30] Now that's an insult. A Jew would have never wanted to carry a cross because it's an instrument of death. It would have gone very much against their religion. But no one wants to be associated with a criminal.
[14:42] No one wants to be a part of the death. But they walk Jesus away to a place called Golgotha in verse 22 and that's the place of the skull. And they arrive at the scene.
[14:54] They're now ready to crucify Jesus. They offer him some wine mingled with myrrh. It's a painkiller. Most people say that they didn't give it to him to help them with the pain as much as it was to dumb them down enough to make it easy to nail them to a cross.
[15:12] Because you can imagine as he would struggle and fight not to be nailed. But Jesus said, I don't need your wine. I don't need your painkiller. I'll take all the pain.
[15:23] I'll take all the pain. I'll take all the suffering. He's dying for us. His suffering or your suffering.
[15:35] It's his suffering or eternity in hell forever in hell for you in a place of torment. And they killed him. And as he's dying, they're gambling over his clothes and his personal effects.
[15:47] At the foot of the cross, he's hanging there and he's naked. Now he's been mistreated all night long and then he's been beaten to within an inch of his life. Literally, many people came out of that beating crippled or dead.
[16:02] He's still living. And then they have mocked him and spit on him and punched him and bowed down to him and said, oh, you're the king, huh? Now they've walked him out and they've nailed him to a cross and he's still alive.
[16:15] And they're down at the bottom casting lots, rolling dice, drawing straws to see what part of his personal effects they get to take home. They get him on the cross at about 9 a.m.
[16:28] Mark chapter 15 and verse 25. It's about 9 a.m. in the morning. It's the third hour of the day. The day starts at 6 o'clock and they have nothing they can write above his head because he's done nothing wrong.
[16:40] And when they kill a man, what they always do is they put above his head a list of his crimes. This man will be dying for murder. This man will be dying for lying and cheating and stealing and insurrection and rape or whatever it's all above his head.
[16:53] But Jesus has been through trial after trial and no one knows anything they can put up there. So they put up there the king of the Jews. He's dying with criminals.
[17:06] He is the God of all eternity. He is holiness and purity. He is everything clean while he is dying with everything dirty. In verse 27, they crucify him with two thieves, one on the right hand and one on the left hand.
[17:22] Because all the way back from in the Old Testament in the Bible in verse 28 it tells us that God had already said his son would die with criminals, with thieves because he loved you enough that he took the holiest of the holiest, the cleanest of the cleanest and put him with the dirtiest of the dirty.
[17:40] He took cleanliness and purity and put it with filth so you could be rescued, so I could be rescued. And Jesus was numbered with the transgressors.
[17:51] You need to understand he was so powerful that within six days he had been able to create the entire world. All he needed was a word.
[18:02] Now he's hanging on a cross and in verse 29 the spectators just walking down the street, those that just came out to look at the crucifixion, they began making fun of him. In verse 29 he said, Oh, so you're the one that can destroy the temple and build it back in three days.
[18:18] Huh, obviously not. You're the one that's dying. Why don't you save yourself? You're so big and so powerful. The father could have let him off. Jesus could have gotten off the cross.
[18:31] He could have called 10,000 angels. But he had to pay our sin debt. And he was a man on a mission. He was there on purpose, dying. Verse 31, The religious people now come out.
[18:44] The religious people come out, the chief priests are mocking him and saying, Oh, he can't save. He said he saved others, but he can't save himself. Huh? He's the king of the cross, the king of Israel.
[18:57] Well, if you are, won't you get out off the cross? If you do, maybe we'll see and believe. And then the very criminals by his side, in verse 32, begin to mock him.
[19:13] People that are dying, filthy criminals, that have been found guilty of a crime worthy of death, now mock Jesus. Pastors by religious people and criminals are all having fun, laughing at Jesus.
[19:28] darkness. And in Mark 15, 32, at the sixth hour, which is noon, darkness comes over the whole land. For the next three hours, Jesus will hang there in complete darkness.
[19:49] He's hanging there alive. You've got to imagine, people are nervous and scared. Why is it dark like that? And while he's hanging there, in verse 34, he feels the loneliness and the weight of sin falling on him.
[20:03] And he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because while he's there, my sin, and your sin, and the sin of all the human race from the very beginning, from Adam until the last human being, was placed on Jesus.
[20:24] And he cries out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Some of the people think he's calling for help in verse 35. They think he wants Elijah to come help him, but that's not what's going on at all.
[20:35] They try to give him some painkiller. And as Jesus dies, in verse 37, a most precious thing happens. The veil in the temple is torn from the top to the bottom.
[20:49] Jesus cries in a loud voice in verse 37, and he gives up the ghost. Now you have to understand that this temple is a very magnificent, specially built building. And between where the most holy Jews could go and the holy of holies, there was this veil there that no one could go through, only one man one time a year.
[21:11] And when Jesus died, access to the Father was granted as God ripped that veil in two and separated it and said, through Jesus dying on the cross, you can be saved.
[21:26] And we have access to the Father. Now he's died. He is dead. He is literally dead. And in chapter 15 and verse 39, the centurion, the guy in charge of at least 100 soldiers, like a commander, he saw him and as he cried out and he gave up the ghost and the Roman soldier who would have witnessed death after death, who was a man of blood, said, truly, really, this man was the Son of God.
[22:01] He really is who he said he was. There are some women who are standing there watching. They've been faithful to Jesus in verse 40. The women looking on from a distance, there was Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, the lesson of Joseph and Salome, and they've been with him when he was in Galilee and a lot of other women were there.
[22:25] Jesus is now dead. Probably like the darkest moment you can imagine. Jesus has died. In Mark chapter 15 and verse 42, it's time to take Jesus off the cross because there's a special religious holy day among the Jews and they definitely don't want Jesus hanging on a cross even though they put him there.
[22:50] They don't want to make their holiday look bad with a dead person, a dead Jew hanging there. And a man named Joseph of Arimathea in verse 43, he's an honorable man and he comes in and goes boldly into Pilate and said, I want his body and he took the body of Jesus.
[23:09] And Pilate was shocked. He couldn't believe that Jesus was already dead. And so he actually said, wait a minute, I've got to find out if that's true and he sends people to find out could he have already died?
[23:21] Because after all that death, their bodies hanging there raw after beatings or whatever, sometimes people took a week to die. he found out he was dead and he gave the body to Joseph.
[23:35] And Joseph took that body and verse 45, he wrapped it in fine linen and he laid it in his own tomb. And the ladies were there and saw what had happened. And Jesus had died for the sins of others.
[23:50] I think the most beautiful part of all this is that back up in that very first verse when he started talking he said, y'all are going to be embarrassed of me tonight and you're going to run.
[24:02] He said, the shepherd will be smitten, the sheep will scatter and then he said, but I'll see you in Galilee. And God, the God-man, Jesus, died a horrible death rejected by all.
[24:22] The crowd walking by, the religious people, the criminals, Judas had denied him or had betrayed him, Peter had denied him, his men had run and he felt forsaken even by the Father as he carried our sin.
[24:40] He was severely tortured for our sin. Jesus was dying in our place. Apostle Paul sums that up in Romans chapter 5 and verse 8 when he said, God showed you his love.
[24:58] But God commended his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus didn't die for a person that obeyed the rules, got perfect, lived up to it.
[25:13] He didn't die for a person that ate right, walked right, talked right, dressed right, and lived right. He didn't die for a guy who said, I'm not a sinner anymore.
[25:25] He died for a guy who was still a sinner. Romans 5.8 says in that while we were yet sinners, Romans chapter 5 and verse 6 it said, when we were unable to fix ourselves, he didn't die for good people, he died for bad people.
[25:40] Ungodly, the Bible says. And Jesus died so you could be saved. Every service, every church service we have at this church, we are talking about him.
[25:51] It was Jesus who died for us. It was God loving you. You didn't deserve it, you didn't earn it, and there's no reason he should have died for you except this. He's a good God. Peter, just a minute ago, said he was going to talk to us about how he found the Lord and then he said how he saved me because the truth is nobody in this room went looking for him.
[26:16] Nobody in this room, you say, the Bible says none seek after him for all of sin and come short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, not a one. So Peter said, no, he came and got me.
[26:27] We love him because he first loved us. You're here this morning, I want you to know he loves you and everything that Mark 15 said, he said that because of you.
[26:39] He died for you. Religion won't fix your problem. Religion killed him. You can say, well, I've done everything I've ever been told to do.
[26:51] That won't get you to heaven. Your church didn't die on a cross for you. Your religion didn't die on a cross for you. Your morality didn't die on a cross for you.
[27:02] But Jesus died on a cross for you. Jesus died so you could be saved, so you could be rescued, so you could have your sins forgiven, so you could know you were going to heaven.
[27:17] Some of you may want to continue in your pride thinking you're good enough without all that. Some of you might want to continue saying, but I'm not a sinner. I haven't done anything that wrong. I'm not that bad a person.
[27:29] But believe me, God would have never paid such a price if it wasn't necessary. And I ask you to receive the gift. Here's what the Bible says in Romans 6.23. For the wages of sin, the payment for sin is death.
[27:44] But then it says, but the gift of God is eternal life, the gift. You don't earn it, you don't pay for it, you don't deserve it. It's given to you when you don't deserve it.
[27:57] The gift of God. It's not a bonus, it's not something you earn, not something you merit. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
[28:09] I ask you to trust Him today. God by God. And here's what God will be here.
[28:21] 山 man sung that was when we deserve it, fabulous witch. We do here. Mother encourage you to this God support democracy that Messiah