We think about what it was that
they saw. Isaiah 52 says, he was disfigured
more than any man. His visage was so marred more
than any man in his form more than the sons of men in so much
that they were astonished at him. And in any other situation, People would say that's enough. Even if it was some villain,
likely it would be enough. And Pilate says here, behold
the man, as if to say, look at what he's suffered already. And
that being someone that I find no fault in, and he's the governor.
He says, I find no fault in him. The law represented there considered
him blameless. In those words, behold the man,
maybe he was saying this too. You accuse him of being a threat
to Caesar, but it's clear that he's no such thing. Behold the
man. And I suspect that Pilate really
had no idea what he was really saying, what God was saying. When Pilate said, behold the
man, God was saying that Christ is the only man that ever has
lived. Behold the man. The idiot men of this earth,
me and all of us, are always trying to prove who's more of
a man. And we don't have no idea that every one of us are utter
failures and miserable failures to be anything close to what
a man really is. God created man for a purpose.
Who's fulfilled that purpose? for why we even exist, just one,
just the man. And religious man is the most
cruel and merciless and ruthless creature on God's earth. Even
seeing him there, bloody and broken, they're not satisfied.
We're not satisfied, but they cry, crucify him. Crucify him,
apparently taking it up as a chant Religious man gets a religious
smile on his religious face and sings, oh how I love Jesus. But when they're confronted with
the man Christ Jesus, the God man, the real song comes from our
hearts, crucify him. And here's the issue. One issue
on Calvary and one in salvation. People don't mind a sweet little
Jesus laying his sweet head down in a manger and they don't mind
bread breaking and fish handing out Jesus, giving them something
to eat. They don't mind him performing
miracles. In fact, they love the idea of a Jesus who came
down here to teach and be cruelly mistreated
by bad people, you know, in order to make salvation available to
man. They don't mind these things because these things appeal to
man's notion of themselves being the one worthy of honor and glory.
He did that for us because we were so important, you know. Appeals to man's false sense
of godhood to think that God would go to so much trouble to
save them, but they'll even call him God, as long as he's the
God who serves them and not the one that they are required to
serve. Notice they said, we have a law
and by our law, he ought to die. Only God can say that. By God's law, we ought to die.
But in our minds, we're God, and that's the issue. Here's who people hate. They
always have, and they always will, until he first loves them
and reveals himself in the heart as he is in his glory and honor
They hate King Jesus, the sovereign of the universe. They hate what
he did there, and they'll distort it and pervert it in every way
that they can to obscure what he accomplished
there on that cross. Because the Christ who gives
life to whom he will and damns whom he will is repugnant to
man. You see, that's the prerogative
of God. and we want to be God. The reason men hate effectual
atonement so much, and they do, an effectual atonement, simply,
you know what that means. It's just that whoever Christ
died for, he redeemed them. It's pretty simple, isn't it? But they hate that because when
you acknowledge the truth of effectual atonement, you're shut
up to the fact that God is sovereign, Christ is sovereign, that he
chooses. If his blood atones for all for whom he died and
only them, and it did, then it's assumed, and necessarily so,
that he died for certain individuals, not for mankind in general. He
didn't die to give people a chance, he died to save them. It pleased him to redeem his
people. It just simply makes it impossible
to misunderstand his own clear testimony when he said, I lay
down my life for my sheep. John 10, 15. So even in the matter
of the atonement, it is the sovereignty, the kingly right and authority
of Christ to do with his own what he will. that causes man
to despise himself. That's why they killed him. That's
the character in which they killed him. Why did they put a crown
of thorns on his head? Why did they put a purple robe
on him? Why did they put a reed in his
hand, a scepter of authority? Why did they cry, hail King of
the Jews? Why did they put it over his
cross? This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. We know why God
did that. And we know why they did it too,
don't we? Turn with me to Hebrews chapter one, if you would please. Hebrews 1 Verse 3 Who being the brightness of God's
glory and the express image of his person I and upholding all
things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged
our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. There's a lot of sovereignty
in that verse. Listen to what he did. He is the brightness of the glory
of God, the express image of his person. God the Father could
look in a mirror the reflection would be Jesus Christ And upholding as he was dying
there He was upholding all things In the universe on the earth
in heaven and by the word of his power, his authority, his
might. And when he had done what he
came down here to do, when he had by himself, without you,
without your cooperation, without you even caring whether he did
or not, by himself, he purged our sins. He put him away. He washed us from our sins, as
John put it, in his own precious blood, and then sat down on the
throne. Every phrase of that tells us
what was happening on Calvary. God Almighty, it was showing
us what Jonah learned in the belly of hell as he described
it. Salvation is of the Lord, of the Lord. And when I die, if you don't
remember anything else about me, I want it to be me tell you
over and over what the definition of Lord is in the scriptures
because nobody knows it. Nobody talks about it. Look up
the word Lord in your concordance. It means the owner of a thing
and the one who has the power of deciding. That's who died on Calvary. And
that's who they hated. That's why they killed him. And I wanna be very brief. This
is one of the longest messages I've ever written on paper, but
I wanna be brief tonight. So if I pause here and there,
it's because I'm skipping over parts of it, but I wanna be very
clear about this. It's the only issue on the cross
and the issue when God saves you in time. You're gonna find
out who he is. If thou shalt confess the Lord
Jesus, if you confess that he will do as he pleases with you.
And whatever he does with you is right. He'll save you. He'll save you. That's what Paul
said. The character in which he was
rejected of men. That's who they wanted to, Pilate
said, shall I crucify your king? And that's exactly who they wanted
crucified. In Luke 19, 14, our Lord told
a parable that says, it says, his citizens hated him
and sent a message after him saying, we will not have this
man to reign over us. That's the issue now. The parable
ends with verse 27, which says, but those mine enemies, which
would not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay
them before me. It doesn't skip that phrase.
It's not just that because they're my enemies now, you slay them
in front, no. It's because they wouldn't have
me to reign over them. In Matthew's account of Christ's
arrest and his interrogation, Christ told the high priest in
Matthew 26, 64, Jesus saith unto him, thou hast said, Nevertheless, I say unto you,
hereafter you shall see the son of man sitting on the right hand
of power and coming in the clouds of heaven. You're gonna see me
on the throne. You're not gonna see me like
you see me now, where you think I'm in your hands. You're gonna
see then that you're in my hands. And it says three verses later,
then did they spit in his face and buffet him. They sat there
and punched him in the face. over and over because he said,
I'm gonna reign over you. We see him in Joseph, don't we?
He told his brothers, I'm gonna reign over you. That's just the
way it is. I've seen it. The Lord showed
it to me and what they did. They sold him into slavery and
went and told his father that he was dead. In Luke chapter four, we have
the account of when the Lord Jesus preached the things concerning
himself in the synagogue. He preached from Isaiah and they
were enjoying the message. It says every eye was fastened
upon him. And then he told them who he
was in Luke 4, 16 through 29. Write that down if you want some
homework for tonight. He told them who he was, that
he's the Christ, the son of the living God. And they tried to
kill him. It was the Lord Jesus Christ
that they were talking about when they said, crucify him,
crucify him. If you tell people this morning,
anywhere, religious people, whatever, that Christ came to this earth
to redeem a chosen people, whom God loved, elected, and predestinated
in eternity, and that he redeemed every one of them and only them
with his precious blood on Calvary, referred them to John 10, where
the Savior said of his disciples, I lay down my life for them,
and they're never gonna perish. But you're not my sheep. You
don't believe on me because you're not my sheep, he said to the
Pharisees. You tell them that we are predestinated
according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after
the counsel of his own will, Ephesians 1.11. You tell them
that he hath mercy on whom he will have mercy and whom he will
he hardeneth, Romans 9.18. You tell them that before Jacob
or Esau were ever born or had done any good or evil, God said,
I love you, Jacob. And I hate Esau. Romans 9.13. You tell them that this God whom
we preach is such that when it pleases him, he separates a sinner
even in his own mother's womb and calls that sinner by his
grace and reveals his son. And that sinner, when it pleases
him, he does all these things. Galatians 1.15 and 16. When it
pleased God, he showed me who he was. He put his son in my
heart. You tell religious people that
or any people that, and you'll get the same reaction that Pilate
got when he said, shall I crucify your king? Men have not changed. The Lord Jesus Christ has not
changed. The issue has not changed. What depravity that we would
try to oppose our law on the lawgiver. and say he ought to die when
it's us who are the monsters. How truly did the Lord say, your
thoughts are not my thoughts, nor your ways according to my
ways. According to God's law, which is the only law that there
is, the Lord Jesus Christ was and is perfect, holy, sinless,
and we don't even know what that is. The very law of God found no
fault in him. Not just Pilate, it was God Almighty
that said, this is my beloved son. In him, I'm well pleased. That's the man, that's the man. But then we say we have a law,
really? What law is that? What right
do we have to make and impose laws? Do you know what our law
is? Here's our law by nature. Judges
1760, in those days, there was no king in Israel. There was
no authority, no accountability, but every man did that which
was right in his own eyes. That's our law. There was no
law of man that condemned the Savior. It was us doing that which was
right in our own eyes. We wanted him dead because we're
not God if he is. It's that simple. It seemed right
for us for the prince of life to die.
It seemed good for us for the only one who could ever be good
to be punished and murdered. The one who went about everywhere
doing nothing but good, who did always those things that please
the Father, who was holy and harmless and
undefiled by our law. He ought to die. That says pretty
much everything about us. And our will is revealed, is
it not, in the crucifixion of the Savior? Pilate released,
The Lord Jesus, under their will, and what was our will, no God, no God for me. And you think about that, that's
the kind of sinner. I lied to my mama a couple of times,
I've done some bad things. We're talking about a sinner. We're talking about hating God,
the God who made us. But that's who our Lord was speaking
of. As we were in the very act of
mocking Him and murdering Him, He said, Father, forgive them. Forgive them. I often have wondered over the
years why He said, forgive them for they know not what they do.
Is that exculpatory, the fact that we're ignorant? No, because
we're willfully ignorant, aren't we? We know better than that.
What our Lord is saying there, Father forgives them, for they
don't even know how wretched they are. They have but one hope,
and that's your forgiveness. We're so evil, we don't even
know. So there's one hope for us. And we give our reason, don't
we? Is this not what we're talking about? What was our reason that
he ought to die? Because he made himself the son
of God. Doesn't he know that that's us,
that we're the ones that it's up to, that we're the ones who
have the power of will to decide eternity. We want a benefactor, we want
a martyr. We want a miracle worker, that's fine. Everybody loves
a savior. But the fool has said in his
heart, no God, no God. And let me make a clear statement
in closing. The broken, beaten, bloody man
who stood on the porch of Pilate's hall in our text is your God. Whether you own him as such or
not, he is your God. Behold the man, the God man,
the Christ of God, the man. And he allowed mankind to have
their way with him on this earth for a little while. That even
when it was, even when they were doing that, we were doing that,
it was him having his way with us. And he always does, and will
ultimately have his way with us. I've always liked that song,
have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way, not because The matter of whether he will
or not is in question at all. Because I agree that that's the
right thing. Lord, have that away. Not our
will, Lord, but thine. Be done. We've all bowed the knee in mocking
the Lord Jesus. And there's just no getting around
that. We're all guilty of it. But here's the question tonight.
Have you and I ever bowed like Thomas did and owned him as our
Lord and our God by his sovereign grace? It's
the issue in the matter of salvation. Let's close with Romans 10, verse
one. Romans 10, one. Brethren, my
heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might
be saved. The apostle Paul understood that
the difference was not just, you know, we all have a little
difference in doctrine, but we're all serving the same God. No,
no, there's one God, there's one doctrine, the doctrine of
Christ, who is God. He said, it's not just a difference
of opinion. It's not just a different way of worshiping the same God.
What Israel needs is for God to save them. That's what they
need. For I bear them record that they
have a zeal of God. Isn't that what Paul said? We talked about it this morning.
A zeal of God. He expressed that in persecuting
God's people. Everybody that has a zeal of
God that's not according to knowledge Their zeal of God is not it's
not common What's the word I'm looking for? It's not commendable
It's evil Just like Paul's was His zeal of God was persecuting
God's people The zeal of God of the religion of our age. It's
not commendable. Well, they they're they're You
know, they don't really believe what we believe but but you know,
at least they're zealous for God. No, that's evil Not according to knowledge in
other words, they're zealous for a God that they don't know
they don't know who he is For they being ignorant of God's
righteousness and and going about to establish their own righteousness
have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. The only way a sinner is going
to go about trying to establish a righteousness before God, justify
themselves before God, is if they have no idea what God's
righteousness is. Perfect in thought, word, and
deed. That's when you bow, when you
understand that. That's when you come to his feet
for mercy, when you realize what righteousness is. Mercy, Lord. And don't miss that word submitted.
It's the issue on the cross. It's the issue at the moment
of salvation of your soul, who's God and who's not. They haven't submitted themselves. unto the righteousness of God.
And what are we really talking about when we're talking about
the righteousness of God? Is that just some ethereal theory,
some sort of doctrine on paper that, you know, somebody that
can write 10 pages and say less than a sentence worth details
out? No, it's real simple, Christ. is the purpose of the law for
salvation. The reason God gave a law was
not to make you better, not so you'd know right from wrong,
not so we'd have a goal to strive. No, the law pronounces us guilty,
and that's why he gave it. The law is a schoolmaster to
bring us where? Christ is the purpose of the
law. Christ is the goal of the law. God gave a law to expose
our sin. There's no remission of sins
by the law, but just the understanding of sin, the revelation of sin. And that drives us to Christ.
Christ is the purpose of the law. And he's the end of the
law in a sense of the termination of the law for righteousness.
He's the end of the law for righteousness. The law has nothing to do with
my righteousness except that Christ is the fulfillment of
that law. By the deeds of the law shall
no flesh be justified in God's sight. That's over. When Paul says sin
revived and I died, that's the Paul that died. The one who could
ever again look to the law for righteousness. Termination right
there. Never again, never again. That's
the end of that. To everyone that believeth. Thank
God for faith in his son that never looks anywhere else
but to him. Faith that submits, faith that
bows, faith that comes to his feet and says, my Lord and my
God, and says, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. Amen, let's pray together.