Turn your Bibles to Mark's Gospel
as we continue on this journey that we spoke about earlier in
Psalm 85. It's his journey, but it is our
journey. Righteousness will go before
him, and he shall make his footsteps our pathway. and they brought
him to the place Golgotha, which is translated place of a skull. Then they gave him wine mingled
with myrrh to drink, but he did not take it. And when they crucified
him, they divided his garments, casting lots for them to determine
what every man should take. Now it was the third hour, and
they crucified him. and the inscription of his accusation
was written above, The King of the Jews. With him they also
crucified two robbers, one on his right and the other on his
left. So the scripture was fulfilled,
which says, and he was numbered with the transgressors. And those
who passed by blasphemed him, wagging their heads and saying,
aha, you who destroyed the temple and built it in three days, save
yourself and come down from the cross. Likewise, the chief priests
also, mocking among themselves with the scribes, said, He saved
others, he himself he cannot save. Let the Christ, the King
of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe,
even those who were crucified with him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you
for the truthfulness of your word and we pray, Heavenly Father,
that your word would become spirit and life in our lives this morning. And through the lens of your
word, Heavenly Father, we will see the glories of your dear
son, the wonders of who you are and what you have done for rebel
sinners like us. in the perfect person and work
of our dear Saviour. Lift Him up in our midst before
our eyes this morning, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Last week we saw that God has
a place and a time for the salvation of His people. and he compelled
Simon the Cyrenian, who became a leader in the early church
along with his sons and his wife. And he was like all humanity. He was passing by, but he was
compelled and constrained by sovereign grace and mercy. There is a time and there is
a place. Before we go too far, let's just
look at those words in verse 22. And they brought him to the
place, Golgotha. The place. Salvation is worshipping the
true and living God. in the person of the Lord Jesus,
in the truth of who He is, by the Spirit's work in our life,
in the way that He ordains worship, and in the place that He will
be worshipped. This place is not an insignificant
place. the Lord determined before the
foundation of the world that this place would be there. The
reason for the existence of the universe is that the whole history
of the universe and all of humanity would centre on this place at
this time and on this particular person. You see, people think
that they can worship God where they wish to, and in their own
ways. And God, from the beginning of
scripture to the end, says you cannot. You will worship God
as God prescribes, or you will be worshiping yourself. You see,
on this mountain, was the place where Abraham took that son his
first born son and he's to go to the place on the mountains
which I tell you he went to the place which God had told him
and then verse 9 of Genesis 22 when they came to the place of
which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and placed
the wood in order. And he bound Isaac, his son,
and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched
out his son and took the knife to slay his son. It was on that place when God
in sovereign mercy had redeemed his people from Israel and they
were then taken as His people into that land to worship Him. They were to worship God in the
place which the Lord chooses. It's in Deuteronomy chapter 12,
if you can turn there. Just so often, God says, there
is this place. you shall seek, verse 5, the
place where the Lord your God chooses out of all your tribes,
the place to put His name for His dwelling place. There you
shall go. Verse 11, there will be the place
where the Lord your God chooses to make His name abide. Verse 14, but in the place which
the Lord chooses in your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt
offerings and there you shall do what I command you. Verse 18, the Lord your God in
the place which the Lord your God chooses you, eat them before
him in a place of his choosing. and it goes on in verse 21 and
26. See, all eternity's innumerable
streams run to this place, to this time. God had slain His Son from before
the foundation of the world. And all of what came to pass
in creation is but the unfolding and the revealing. And so when
Adam was clothed and saved by a blood sacrifice. God had this
place and this person in mind. Abel brought a blood sacrifice. Noah was saved by covenant grace. Abraham went to a place, this
same place that we are looking at today. David bought that land. to build a temple on this place. Solomon built a temple on this
place. Isaiah met with the Lord Jesus
and had his glory revealed to him on this place. In Mark, we have just followed
the Lord Jesus for three years on a journey to this place. He came and he stopped on the
way to this place to proclaim the gospel, to call out his own,
to choose them and to protect them, to carry their infirmities,
to bear their griefs, to carry their sorrows. And he stopped
on the way with a paralyzed man and a leper. and a bleeding woman,
grief-stricken parents, the blind, the hungry, outcasts and sinners,
and all of them are part of this triumphal march of King Jesus
Christ. just a week earlier from these
events. He'd accepted their acclamation. He'd accepted their hosannas. Blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord. Blessed is the kingdom of our
father, David. This is the place where God's
glory is revealed. As the psalmist said, for His
glory is great in your salvation. God the Father was at this place,
sacrificing His Son. God the Son was there, obeying
His Father's will, perfectly as a lamb before her shearers
is silent, It's extraordinary the silence of the Lord Jesus
in the midst of all of this. God the Spirit was there sustaining
that holy humanity as this man, our substitute. Our God and our
substitute bore the wrath of God. And as I said earlier, we, Believers were there. It was
our journey. It was our road from Gethsemane
to Golgotha. We were really there. We were
in Him. He bore our griefs. He carried
our sorrows. The shame that He bore was my
shame. The sin that he bore was my sin. The righteous, holy wrath of
God was mine. It was what I deserved. Ultimately, the death he died There is a place, and I pray
the Lord will take us to this place again and again. And it would be a marker in our
lives. George Whitfield was a student
at Oxford, I think it was, and under the care of the Wesleys
became a legalist, an extraordinarily zealous legalist. And they were
so I was so zealous! for putting to death the misdeeds
of the body by their own activities. They did serious damage to their
health, a number of those people. And then George Whitefield read
a book by Henry Schugle called The Life of God in the Soul of
Man. And God used that book written
by a young man, Henry Schugle, to release George Whitefield
from the captivity of the legalism. of the Wesleys and what they
called the Holy Club. They were so methodical that
that's how they got their name Methodists. And George Whitfield
was wonderfully, wonderfully rescued. The more he tried to
be holy, the more he saw how unholy he was. The more he worked,
the further away he worked himself from God. And he had an encounter
with God after reading that little book on the lawns of that university. And when he had opportunity to
go back there, he went back to that very spot where God had
set him free, had set him free from religion, had set him free
from his own righteousness and shown him the Lord Jesus. There is a place believers, isn't
there? There is a place and there is
a time in the lives of God's people. And in some sense we
can put markers up for them. Times when God comes and does
what he sees you do and deals personally with our souls. Those people who've had those
encounters go back to the realities of what happened on this day
again and again. It's a good place for us to set
up our tabernacles in this world under the shadow of the cross. And by the grace of God, As we
look there we will find again and again the healing that those
outcast sinners found as the Lord Jesus took that journey
to the cross. And here in these verses we have
another testimony to what it is that man is when he is left
to himself. In Luke 23, 25, Pilate delivered
Jesus to their will. We want to see what free will
religion is like. We want to see what free will
activities that men will lead to when they encounter the real
God. Just read, we have seen in these
last few weeks how they schemed and plotted with great wickedness
to kill the Son of God, betraying any sense of honour and loyalty
they had to their own professed righteousness. Just read it with
me. It was they, verse 22, brought
Him to that place Golgotha. they gave him wine, mingled with
myrrh to drink. Verse 24, they crucified him. They divided his garments. Verse 25, as if the Holy Spirit
wants us to be reminded again, they crucified him. They also crucified two robbers,
one on his left and the other on his right. They passed by, blaspheming him,
wagging their heads. They mocking among themselves
with the scribes. And verse 32, even those who
were crucified with him, they reviled him. All of this is man unmasked and
man exposed. And man has the opportunity to
do with God what his heart unregenerated really wants to do. They had
no care for Him, for God or His honour. The children of God we need to
remember. They did their will. They did their wicked will, and
if we turn in Acts, we will see that they did exactly what God
had ordained and promised beforehand. Peter on that great day of Pentecost
reminds them. Men of Israel, hear these words.
Jesus of Nazareth, the man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders,
and signs which God did through him in your midst. As you yourselves
also know, him being delivered by the determined purpose and
foreknowledge of God. You have taken by lawless hands,
have crucified and put to death. And after the first hint of persecution
of the early church, the believers come together in Acts chapter
4 and they quote those words from Psalm 2. Why did the nations
rage, and the people plot vain things? The kings of the earth
took their stand. The rulers were gathered together
against the Lord and against His Christ. For truly, against
your holy servant whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate,
with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together. They did their will, verse 28,
God's children know. They were gathered together to
do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to
be done. We have seen that the activities
of this week were as if These men had mined the Old Testament
to find exactly what they should do, and as if they had a script. Here's your script, Pilate. Here's
your script, Caiaphas. Here's your script, the Roman
soldiers. Here's your script, the thieves.
Now, let's get this together and do it, and that's exactly
what happened. God's Word is true. God's Word is true in every
little tiny detail. What a blessing for believers
that it's true. Psalm 41.9, He was betrayed by
a friend. My own familiar friend betrayed
me. He was sold for 30 pieces of
silver, Zechariah 11, 12. Psalm 27, 12, false witnesses
have risen up against me, such as breathe out cruelty. As we've seen so much of what's
happened, in this time is actually just an amazing outworking of
those words in Isaiah 50. He comes as a servant. The Lord
God has opened my ear. I was not rebellious. I did not
turn away. I gave my back to those who struck
me and my cheeks to those who plucked out the beard. I did
not hide my face from shame and spitting. Psalm 22, as we know, is another
extraordinarily exact and detailed description of what happened
to the Lord Jesus. What was happening as they did
it. In fact, the Lord Jesus on the cross leads these people
to recite it with him while they do it. Verse 6, Psalm 22, he
says, but I am a worm and no man, a reproach of men and despised
by the people. All those who see me ridicule
me, they shoot out the lip, they shake the head saying, he trusted
in the Lord. Let him rescue him, let him deliver
him since he delights in him. They pierced his hands and his
feet. Psalm 22, 16. I can count on
my bones. They look out, look and stare
at me. Verse 18. They divide my garments among
them. And for my clothing, they cast
lots. And wonderfully for God's children,
according to Isaiah 53, 12. He was numbered with the transgressors. He was counted with us, counted
as a transgressor. And over all of these things,
God sovereignly rules for the salvation of His people and the
revealing of His glory. Even the words of wicked men
who hate God are actually used by God to proclaim Himself. was paid to curse Israel. And yet Balaam prophesied and
preached the most wonderful sermons about God. God is not a man that
he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent. He
has said, will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he
not make it good? Behold, I have received a command
to bless. He has blessed and I cannot reverse
it. He has not observed iniquity
in Jacob. Balaam was seeking for iniquity
and would seek to lead the people of God astray, and yet he declares
beforehand, God has not observed iniquity in Jacob, in the shifty
one. the lying one, the deceiving
one. God has not observed iniquity,
nor has he seen wickedness in Israel. The Lord his God is with
him. Caiaphas, who no doubt was there,
they delayed their duties. At this hour of the morning,
these high priests were supposed to be in meeting as the great
Sanhedrin. And like every other form of
religion that they had, they tossed it all aside that they
could be there to mock the Lord Jesus. But Caiaphas, Caiaphas,
was used by God to say these wonderful things. Caiaphas, being
high priest that year, said to them, you know nothing at all,
nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man
should die for the people. That's a description of God's
elect. Read Hebrews. It's all through
Hebrews. The people, the people, the people
of God. And not that the whole nation should perish. Now, he did not say this on his
own authority, but being high priest that year, he prophesied
that Jesus would die for the nation. And not only for that
nation only, but also that he would gather together in one
the children of God who were scattered abroad. Gather them together as one. Caiaphas proclaiming the gospel
to us. We often get concerned and sometimes
fearful of the enemies of God. They are. responsible for their
wickedness, but they never ever do anything outside of God's
sovereign hand of good for His people and proclaiming His glory. So these men proclaimed glorious
truths as if they were God's chosen prophets. Pilate put this
sign up, King of the Jews. who defended the religious leaders
enormously, and he who had said, I find no fault in him, made
sure that everyone could read it. It was written in Latin and
Greek and Aramaic. He said, I find they have fought
in him three times. He made sure that three times
it was written above the cross. This is the King of the Jews. What I have written, I have written,
said Pilate. And then they say wonderful things
about the Lord Jesus and his temple. He said, Aha, in verse 29, you who destroy
the temple, you who destroy this magnificent temple that we inherited,
labored for 40 odd years to build, you destroy this place. You destroy this meeting place
between God and man. See, they asked for a sign in
John chapter 2. And they quote the Lord Jesus'
words back to him. You see, the Jews said to him,
what sign do you show to us? He wants a sign. They want to
see evidence. Jesus answered and said, destroy
this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Destroy this
temple, this earthly temple. You destroy this body and I will
raise it up in three days. Throughout the scriptures, three
days are markers. that they are particularly relevant
to the words of Hosea. You don't have to turn there,
I can read them to you. Hosea chapter 6. Come, let us return to the Lord,
for He has torn, but He will heal us. He has stricken, but
He will bind us up. After two days, He will revive
us. On the third day, He will raise
us up. Where did He raise us up to? He raised us up to heaven. He raised us up. out of sin and
death, and a tomb. And Ephesians says that we are
seated with Him in heavenly realms. He raised us to newness of life
here, but He raised us to glory in eternity. That, what's the
purpose of this? That we may live in His sight. that we may live face to face
with God Almighty. With a holy God we will live
face to face. He must tear, He must cause us
to be stricken so that He will heal and He will bind. and he must kill us, or he'll
make us alive again. That's what baptism's about,
isn't it? It's declaring the gospel. I've died with my Saviour. I've been raised to newness of
life. That we may live in his sight. Verse 30. These men say to our
Savior, save yourself and come down from the cross. And what a remarkable declaration
of the gospel. He saved others. Himself, he cannot save. Isn't it wonderful that God caused
these murderers of our Saviour to proclaim such glorious truth? He saved others. So you have,
according to Psalm 85, you have been favourable to your land. You have brought back the captivity
of Jacob, you have forgiven the iniquity of your people." How
much did he forgive? He perfectly forgave all of the
iniquity of all of His people. We cannot declare the gospel
unless we declare the words that God says about God's salvation. You have covered all their sin. You have taken away all your
wrath. So often when we stumble and
sin, it is easy for me, maybe easy for you too, to think that
God now frowns upon me when I stumble and fall, and that God is like
a schoolmaster with a big stick. He's taken away all His wrath from us. What remains
between God and us? His children? Love. Perfect, infinite love. Untainted by our sin. Untainted by the things that
we do. He saved others. himself he could
not save. And he did it with justice. Mercy and truth have met together. God will be merciful, but he
will not be merciful at the expense of truth. Righteousness and peace
have kissed. He will not bring peace until
his righteousness is satisfied. The law of God is satisfied,
perfectly satisfied. And these men who had seen more than they had warrant to receive
from the Lord Jesus for three years. Mock Him again. Let the Christ, the King of Israel,
descend now from the cross that we may see and believe. He did descend from the cross. And he did rise again from it
in such a way that there was no shadow of a doubt. They put
their own guard on the turn to prove to themselves that he did
rise again. See, believing is a grace, gift
of God. Seeing is not seeing with physical
eyes. C is seen with spiritual eyes. The man in Luke 16, who was in
hell, pleaded with Abraham to send someone back from the dead. I have five brothers. Send someone to testify to them.
Abraham said to him, they have Moses and the prophets, let them
hear them. And he said, no father Abraham,
if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent. But he said to him, if they do
not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded
that one rise from the dead. Seeing the Lord Jesus in His
glory is a gift from God. Believing is a grace gift from
God. Like Simon of Cyrene, we need
to be arrested from passing by. We need to be compelled by a
force greater than ourselves and constrained and overwhelmed
by God, born again with new eyes and a new heart and a new life. King Jesus marches in triumph. What seems like ignominy before
men is called his triumph. He triumphed over Satan. Now the prince of this world is cast out. Now is the judgment of this world. You see, he's hung there. They
hung him between two thieves as if to portray him as the chief
of sinners. And yet there he was with his
arms stretched out, dividing humanity to those on his left
and those on his right. One that morning, remarkably
saved by sovereign grace, not allowed to pass his own way and
do his own will. The other one left, to his blasphemies
and his ridicule. See, at the cross we have that
great answer to that question that we looked at on Thursday
night. Lord, who may dwell in your tabernacle? Who may abide
on your holy hill? Justice must be satisfied. The law honoured and silenced. Righteousness established. Sin
must be taken away. Wrath must be taken away. This, as Simon said, is our consolation
and our assurance. The realities of what happened
this morning, that morning, is that God will punish sin. When our sin was found on his
son, holy justice demanded its punishment. But we also know
that God will save sinners. We also know that no one who
trusts Christ can ever be punished for their sin. It is gone and
taken away. And we know that none for whom
Christ died will ever perish. At the third hour of the morning,
is the time of the morning sacrifice. They sacrificed a lamb every
morning, saying, extraordinarily, that I deserve to have happen
to me what is happening to this lamb. And yet, for the self-righteous
religionists, Instead of it being something that humbled them,
it was something that caused them to be proud. Religion without
the Lord Jesus is a deadly, deadly, hardening thing. Why did it all
happen? This everlasting, infinite love
for eternity. As John said, who may have been
the only apostle there, by this we know love. By this. Because he laid down his life
for us. And there is no other way. We
come to this Word and we see its truth lived out before us. We come again to this Word and
see its fulfilment that we might walk away knowing that when we
come to it, we have God's truth. And the purpose of this book
is to shine a light on the Lord Jesus when he comes and the Holy Spirit
who wrote these words comes to a believer he will glorify me
says the Lord Jesus for he will take what is mine and declare
it to you he'll take all that the Lord Jesus is and all that
he has done all that He is for us now, all of Him, and He'll
declare it to us. See, this book is about this
event, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And if we look through those
lens to see Him in this book, we'll see Him gloriously lifted
up before us. And He will go forward in righteousness,
as we read in Psalm 85. And He shall make His footsteps
our pathway. in all of the aspects that we've
looked at. The world won't understand what
we're doing and why we're doing it. And the religious world,
most of all, won't understand what we say about our God. See, it's not our way, but it's
His way. a way of holiness, a way of grace,
a way of mercy, a way of truth, a way of justice and compassion,
a way of infinite love and infinite holiness and purity. And in this section of Mark's
Gospel, we see the Lord Jesus silent as history unfolds before
us, exactly as God has ordained. No wonder Moses was told to say
to the people in Exodus at that Red Sea, when there is no hope
before them, no hope of salvation, there is no hope of salvation
behind them, and there is this Egyptian army, this mighty army,
bent on destruction. And the instruction of God is
to be still. Stand, be still, and see the
salvation of our God. He seems silent. It seems as if things are somewhat
out of His control. But they're not. Not ever. We can trust Him. But now we can trust Him forever,
forgiven, justified, loved, accepted, reconciled, sanctified and kept
by Him. May God, may our gracious God
help us all to come and live beneath the cross. The place,
at the time, the man. As Peter said, where else have
we to go? Let's pray before we have the
Lord's Supper.