Turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter
15. We have been following the Lord
Jesus on His path to Calvary. It's our path to Calvary. It's God's path of installing
His Son as King on His holy hill. It is the triumph of the Lord
Jesus. It is the triumph of all believers. As the Lord says, I have chosen
you in the furnace of affliction. We have seen the Lord Jesus in
His suffering, the sufferings of His soul, the sufferings emotional,
the sufferings where He had the props of life, the things that
we would normally look to be support, taken one after the
other. Betrayal, denial, removed from
any recourse to justice. by religious people or by the
pagan Romans who prided themselves, both lots, on their justice. The charges against him were
made because of envy. He was lied about. The people
who were his judges were manipulated And the crowd who called out
for him to be crucified were manipulated again. And in this
passage in Mark 15 and following we have the verses where the
Lord Jesus is handed over into the hands of a Roman garrison. Let's read verse 15. So Pilate,
wanting to gratify the crowd, released Barabbas to them, and
he delivered Jesus after he had scourged him, to be crucified. Then the soldiers led him away
into the hall called Praetorium, and they called together the
whole garrison. And they clothed him with purple. They twisted
a crown of thorns, put it on his head, and began to salute
him, Hail, King of the Jews. Then they struck him on the head
with a reed, and spat on him. Bowing the knee, they worshipped
him. And when they had mocked him,
they took the purple off him, put his own clothes on him, and
led him out to crucify him. We have seen his suffering. We
have seen in that suffering a remarkable picture of substitution and salvation. Barabbas typifies what salvation
is. Barabbas was justly condemned
by the law. Barabbas was on death row. One of the best pictures I can
think of of what it is to be saved is to be in prison, justly
condemned and on death row. And you hear the wails of people
as the guillotine or the rope sends them to eternity. And you
know that your time has come. You know that this is what you
have earned for yourself by your sin and rebellion. And then remarkably,
like Barabbas, on a day when you are to be let out and justly
executed, The prison doors are opened and you are set free,
and another dies in your place. God's children who are saved
have experienced something of that themselves. For the Lord to save His people,
He must satisfy and must magnify all of his attributes. There's a remarkable verse in
Psalm 51 which refers to David after he had done that wickedness
against Bathsheba. In verse 17 it's remarkable because
you would think It would say, the sacrifices of these people
who have been set free, or the sacrifices of penitent people,
are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart,
these, O God, you will not despise. But what does the Holy Spirit
describe these sacrifices as? He says, they are the sacrifices
of God. We saw last week that the Lord
Jesus' suffering is our suffering. And our sufferings are His sufferings. And today we see Him suffering
again as a substitute on behalf of His people. We must, as we look at all of
these things, as we hear of these soldiers who led him away and
then led him out in verse 20, we must remember what the scriptures
plainly declare everywhere, is that this is the Lord Jesus'
triumph and He gave He gave His back to the smiters. He gave
and He gave. And one of my favorite verses
in all the scripture is in Galatians 2.20. It said, the life I live,
I've been crucified with Christ. The life I live, I live by the
faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me. and gave himself
for me." God's children are compelled and constrained and motivated
by love. Law never produces these things. As we look at our Saviour taking
our place yet again, it's love that bound him. bind the sacrifice
with cords to the horns of the altar. He was bound and led,
bound and led, and treated with extraordinary shame. But he was
bound, as I've said so often, bound by cords of love for his
father. bound by cords of love for his
bride. He was a willing sacrifice. He did everything he did for
the joy set before him. So let's read what these men
did. has acted with extraordinary cowardice. A man who proclaims
justice on the one hand says that this is an innocent man,
but you take him away and crucify him. And he hands him over to
this cruel band of Roman soldiers. Verse 16, and the soldiers led
him away. into the hall corporatorium and
they called together the whole garrison. There was a crowd of
men. He says in Psalm 22 that they
are like wild dogs. A man in his natural state. lives and acts in a way that
causes us to be embarrassed about how honourable the animals are
compared to us. So what do they do? They clothe
him in purple. Purple is the cloth of the wealthy
and royalty. In Luke 16, the rich man lived
sumptuously and he was clothed in purple. But to clothe the
Lord Jesus in purple, they must again strip him naked. They must again expose his shame. They must again expose the scourging,
the stripes that he wore, the stripes which are our healing. But they do it to mock him. to mock the fact that this man,
by the testimony of his Jewish enemies, claims to be a king. And he is a king. Then they twist a crown of thorns. They mock royalty again. If you're going to be a king
and we're going to dress you in purple, then a king must have
a crown. And they take as a crown the
emblem of the curse. Simon read it to us earlier out
of Genesis 3.18. Thorns and thistles should the
earth bring forth. And they put it on his head. And they began to salute him. Hail, King of the Jews. If you are a king, then we will
honor you as a king. We'll put a purple robe on you,
and we'll put a crown on you. And they gave him a reed. which is a sign of a scepter,
the king's scepter, the reed, the scepter of authority. But
they took this scepter, and instead of giving it to him as an honour,
they struck him on the head with it. And those cruel thorns were
driven and then they spat on him. It is remarkable, isn't it, that
this most vile of things. In Numbers 12, 14, if a father
ever spat on his daughter, she would be shamed for seven days
and shut outside of the camp. He was treated as the lowest
of the low, only worthy of receiving human excrement. You've got to
remember where these Roman soldiers learnt to do these things. The man who put the purple robe
on him was Herod. The men who first spat on him
were the chief priests and members of the Sanhedrin. And they bowed
the knee and pretended to worship him. And when they had mocked him,
when they'd finished what they thought was enough mocking, They
took the purple off him. They again made him naked. They exposed his wounds and his
shame. They put his own clothes on him. They dressed him just as a common
man, with no honour, with no esteem. Also to make sure that
those like the one billion plus Muslims in the world who want
to say that Jesus wasn't crucified, God, according to the Muslims,
made Judas to look like the Lord Jesus. It's extraordinary, isn't it,
how so many people can be deceived by religious manipulation. And
then they led him out. They led him as if they were
ruling. We need to think in lots of ways
about these things. This humiliation of the Lord
Jesus was something that he deserved. as he became what we are. He suffered what we deserved. He was the sacrifice. Jen put in the bulletin this
week a wonderful little article by J.C. Philpott. Sin has thoroughly
diseased us and poisoned our very blood. Sin has diseased
our understanding so that it is unable to receive the truth. Sin has diseased our conscience
so as to make it dull and heavy, undiscerning of right and wrong.
Sin has diseased our imagination, polluting it with every idle,
foolish, licentious fancy. Sin has diseased our memory,
making it swift to retain what is evil and slow to retain what
is good. Sin has diseased our affections,
perverting them from all that is heavenly and holy, and fixing
them all on that is earthly and vile. But he was pierced for
our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us
peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. There are two things that I'd
like us to see before we look at this sacrifice of the Lord
Jesus. One is that the Lord Jesus was
taken through these events by the manipulation of religious
people, by people who began that morning saying their prayers,
began that morning and continued that day thinking that they had
done God's work, thinking that when they had Barabbas released
to them and Jesus condemned to be crucified, that they had done
a good thing, that they as the guardians of the religion of
Israel had achieved something wonderful. Imagine one of these
men going home to their wives and saying, we've done a good
work this morning. She said, what's happened? Well,
we've managed to get that Jesus crucified. Do you mean the Jesus
who heals the blind and raises the dead and cares for the children? That Jesus who speaks such wonderful
words? Yes, says this fine, upstanding
religious member of the Sanhedrin, and we've got Barabbas released
to us. Do you mean that Barabbas who
is a murderer? that Barabbas. It'd be like someone
today saying we've managed to get a good man, innocent man
condemned to death and we've got Ivan Milat released to us
and if you can just cook dinner for him he's out taking the kids
for a bushwalk at the moment. We do as sinners make shocking
exchanges, don't we? Shocking, shocking exchanges. You see, we deserved all of what
caused the Lord Jesus to be mocked. You see, we want by our clinging
to our righteousness. We want to be clothed in purple
before this world. We want this world to see how
good we are, how religious we are, how moral we are. We take the things like the crown
of thorns, that which came to us as a curse from God, and we
wear our cursedness as a crown. We now glory in shameful nakedness. We delight in the things that
God hates. We love to be saluted. Hail King is how we want others
to treat us. I am worthy of your obedience
and your respect. I'm worthy of having other people
worship me, to bow the knee down to me. How much fallen man takes
pride in his outward shows of religion? And what is our pride
but the desire that we be worshipped? And how much do we, as unregenerate
people, act like these soldiers? You see, we can take the crown
off Jesus and we can put the crown on him. We can take the
robes of kingship, the purple robes, off Jesus and we can put
them on him as we see fit. This is what the religious people
did. This is what the religious people
of our world want. a Jesus that they can manipulate,
a Jesus who will sit on a throne at their behest, a Jesus who
will wear royal robes when they want him to, a Jesus who is like
a plasticine Jesus, that each person can make and mould him
to be as they want, ultimately for Him to serve their lordship
and their kingship. We turn, as the psalmist said
in Psalm 4, we turn the glory of God into shame. The Lord Jesus is blasphemed
in this world because of the way religious people parade our
Lord Jesus before this pagan world as someone who is a try-hard
failure who does his best but can't succeed unless man by His
activities puts a crown on Jesus' head, and man by His will and
worth puts a royal robe on Jesus. They mocked Him. They still mock
Him. You see, the mocking of these
pagan people, the mocking of the pagan people in our world
today, has its genesis in the churches of our land. This mocking and spitting on
him began in the Sanhedrin and what we see is that religion
that wants to please men will gather together with other religion
that wants to please men. And the Herodians will gather
with the Sadducees, and the Sadducees will gather with the Pharisees,
and all of them, ultimately, will gather together against
the Lord Jesus and mock Him. and lie about him and have him
held up in derision. They led our Saviour out. Fallen man thinks that he can
lead God and have him submit to our sovereign will. But this Jesus, according to
God, was triumphing at this time. And all these forces like Gog
and Magog had gathered together against the Lord Jesus. It was
His victory. He was triumphing over Satan,
who was the hand behind all of these activities. He became what we are, objects
of scorn, the offscouring of the world. He became what we
are, without sin, that we might become as he is. He put himself willingly and
voluntarily into the very situation which our fallen nature had and
would have everlastingly fallen, but for His eternal and infinite
love for His people. We see the love of the Lord Jesus,
His humility, versus the proud hearts of men. He was, in this
degradation according to God, the brightness of his father's
glory. He was a king set on God's holy
hill. As Philippians 2 says, he humbled
himself. he voluntarily, willingly, out
of love for his people, who, being in the form of God, did
not consider it robbery to be equal to God, but made himself
of no reputation. Taking the form of a bond-servant
and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in the appearance
of man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the
death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly
exalted him and given him the name which is above every name. Yahweh, God, is his name. Therefore God has given him this
name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those
in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth.
and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord to the glory of God the Father. We look in the wrong
places for exaltation in this world. He was exalted by His
humility. He honoured His Father. He was tested in the fires of
affliction and suffering. Earthly comforts were taken from
Him and Heaven's comforts were taken from Him. He had no justice,
no companions, no one who had any feelings for Him and what
He was going through. But all through this, He was
our faithfulness. The faithfulness that you need
is His faithfulness. All through this, just think
of what He's gone through and not one sinful thought. Not one hint of revenge. Just faithfully submitting to
His Father. It seems like men had triumphed
over him, but in fact what a remarkable triumph of faithfulness our Lord
Jesus showed. The events seemed as if they
were out of his control, and yet he was the one who gave the
breath to these men to scourge him. He's the one that gave them
the life to spit on Him. He's the one who that day was
making the sun shine on them so they could stay alive. He gave His back. He gave His
back. It's written to me in the volume
of the book, I come to do your will. and for this joy that was set
before Him. This joy that was set before
Him. Hebrews 12, all this shame that
men had poured on Him. He endured the cross. He despised the shame and has
sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. The Lord Jesus
did all this on that great day of sacrifice, a great day called the Day of
Atonement. Two fundamental things were required
for that sacrifice to be efficacious. One was you needed a perfectly
spotless sacrifice. You needed a willing sacrifice,
like a lamb. And you needed a spotless sacrificer. If you read in Leviticus, you'll
see the elaborate preparations that the priest, the high priest
had to go through on that one day of the year, that one great
day of the year, that day of atonement. The Lord Jesus was both of these, wasn't he? He was the willing sacrifice
and he gave himself for us. He says in Mark 9.49, a fascinating
verse, where the Lord Jesus says that every sacrifice will be salted, seasoned with salt, for everyone
will be seasoned with fire. The context of this sacrifice
is, of course, that there is an eternity of hell before humanity. Three times he says, the worm
does not die and the fire is not quenched. The worm typifying
the corruption, that ongoing corruption of those in hell,
where their guilty consciences, the worms gnawing away at a guilty
conscience, never dies. That fire, the anger of God,
who is a consuming fire, is never quenched. And the sacrifices
were to be salted. Every sacrifice was to be salted. And salt typifies two things
in the scriptures. One is that it is a preservative
from corruption. And the other one is that it
adds a savour and a flavour to our daily food. And it's representative
of that eternal covenant that Simon has been talking about.
David was given the kingdom in 2 Chronicles 13.5, a kingdom
forever. Whose kingdom is that kingdom? That kingdom was given by a covenant
of salt. a covenant that cannot be broken. And salt represents peace with
one another. We need protecting and we need
preserving from that fire that is never quenched. The only protection
and preservation from that fire that is never to be quenched,
from that worm that never is to die, is in the doing and the
dying of the Lord Jesus. We need to replace that savour
that flavour of ourselves which infects everything that we do
with a savour and a flavour of the Lord. A flavour and a savour
for the Lord and a savour from the Lord. It was a fiery law. It came in fire and it burns
up the conscience when it's applied by God to people. And it burns
up our sinful passions. And it's a fiery trial that God's
children go through. A fiery trial that the Lord Jesus
goes through with us. Think it not strange concerning
the fiery trial, which is to try you, says Peter. I have chosen you in the furnace
of affliction. We are partakers of Christ's
sufferings. The Lord's word is like a fire. It's a fire shut up in our bones. See, the Lord's work Lord's successful
and glorious work is to take people like us and take them
through that furnace of affliction where He goes with us because
He has taken our sins away and we are to be a holy priesthood
offering up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. And 2 Peter 2.9, 1 Peter 2.9
tells us what that is, isn't it? That you may proclaim the
praises of Him who called you out of that darkness that we've
been talking about and into His marvellous light. You see, He
was crowned with thorns, that we might have Him as our crown. So the ransomed of the Lord shall
return and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy
on their heads. That's the crown that God's children
wear. The Lord Jesus in Isaiah 28 is
our crown. They shall obtain joy and gladness. Sorrow and sighing shall flee
away. The Lord Jesus now is our God
in our humanity in heaven. And there are two wonderful characteristics
of His emotions. One is now that he's satisfied,
according to Isaiah 53. He's satisfied right now with
all of his children. Right now there is no condemnation. God has accepted that sacrifice. And we are accepted in the Beloved. And now he arrays us with those
wonderful robes. We are clothed right now with
that robe, that white robe. Revelation 7 says that we are
arrayed in white robes. Where did they come from, says
John? And I said to him, Sir, you know. And he said to me, these are
the ones who have come out of the great tribulation and washed
their robes. and made them white in the blood
of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the
throne of God, and they serve him day and night in his temple. And he who sits on the throne
will dwell among them. They shall neither hunger any
more, nor thirst any more. The sun shall not strike them,
nor any heat. For the Lamb this sacrifice that
we've been looking at, this lamb who is in the midst of the throne,
what a wonderful promise in Revelation 7, 17. This lamb will shepherd
them. This lamb will lead them to living
fountain of waters. This lamb who is God will wipe
away every tear from their eyes. Deliver him, says Job. The graciousness of God says
deliver him. Deliver my children from going
down to the pit. I have found a ransom. I have found a sacrifice. I have found a substitute. I will shepherd them. I will
lead them to living fountains of water. Not just one fountain,
but living fountains of water. And after our brief and tiny
trials on this earth, God will wipe away all the tears from
our eyes. It's just for a little while. Our king reigns triumphant. Hell and all the demons look
as if they have God where they want Him and look as if they
can manipulate Him to do their will. Our God reigns. Our God shepherds us right now. Let's have the Lord's table together
as we think about that blood. that blood that washes our robes,
that they are white, Heaven's white, right now. That's our
glorious dress. Let's remember our Saviour, remember
what He did, and remember what He's doing right now. Amen.