Alright brethren, we're going
to get started. And our text is going to be Mark
15. Mark 15. And we're roughly going to be
looking at verses 15 through 39. Mark 15, 15 through 39, but let
me just begin before we get to that text. Let me just say a
few things. On Wednesday, we saw how that
our God is ever in control of all things. He's in control.
We don't have to worry. And what we saw is that even
the wicked who are fighting and rebelling against the Lord, he's
yet in control. He's using everything that they
do and he's still in control and he's implementing his will
perfectly as it pleases him. Now in Isaiah 46, we didn't look
at this last week on Wednesday, but if you look at Isaiah 46
verses 9 through 11, there we see an example of this where
the Lord tells us In Isaiah 46, 9, he says, remember the former
things of old, for I am God, and there is none else. I am
God, and there is none like me. How so? Well, declaring the end
from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that
are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will
do all my pleasure. as an example calling a ravenous
bird right he's referring to a swift bird that's what it what
it means is a swift bird from the east the man that executed
my counsel from a far country He's talking there in the context
of Cyrus that he raised up as a type of Christ who delivered
the people and brought them back to the city of God. And he says,
yea, I have spoken it. I will also bring it to pass.
I have purposed it. I will also do it. So we see
there how, just as an example, the Lord is able to raise up
men to do his will. And just as he was able to take
Cyrus, who wasn't even thinking about Babylonia or anything like
that, he raised him up, brought him to power and had him execute
his will and declared it long before ever it was done. And
what we see here is that our God is in complete control. He's ruling and reigning and
doing whatsoever He pleases. And as we saw last week, even
in the midst of rebellion, even taking wicked men, wicked people
who are doing what they want to do, and yet it's all being
directed and purposed by God to fulfill His will and purpose
for His people. So, the Lord, as we'll see this
morning, He's able to use even ungodly men to declare the truth
of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he's able to use them to
declare the gospel even to us so that we see Christ's accomplished
work of salvation even at the mouth of wicked people who don't
know and don't believe the true and living God. And one of the
things why this is so is because no man, no woman is going to
have an excuse when they stand before God trusting in their
own works, and they're not going to be able to say to the Lord,
well, I never heard this, I didn't know this, and He'll be able
to show them, by your own mouth you said these things. You do
know these things, you said them, whether you understand them or
not, you did say these things, and they declare the truth of
my salvation in Christ. And so I've titled this message,
Words of Truth. Words of truth. All right, so
let's begin here. I want to start actually with
the verse in Luke 19. Luke 19, verse 40. This is where
the Pharisees, when Christ was coming into Jerusalem, and the
disciples were shouting Hosanna to Christ, and they were laying
down the palms as he came in on the donkey, as was foretold
in the scriptures. And they said, master, you need
to, or teacher, you need to silence your disciples. They're calling
you the Christ. And he said, verse 40, I tell
you that if these should hold their peace, the stones would
immediately cry out. Right? The stones would immediately
cry out and declare these things. And that's what we see is that
even when there are those who are hateful of God, who don't
believe God, who don't who aren't looking to serve the true and
living God, that are looking to do their own will and their
own purpose, God is able to use them to declare the truth. And so Christ said, if my disciples,
if my people are silent, God will take the stones that are
dead and cold and lifeless and cause them to cry out. And that's
what we'll see here in some passages this morning. And so, there's
a comfort in that. There's a comfort. The Lord's
always going to send his word forth for his people that are
hungering and thirsting and those that need to hear the truth.
He'll make sure that they hear it and are delivered from death
and destruction and the coming wrath of God. One of the earliest
examples that we have of this is with Balaam. Balaam was hired
as a prophet by Balak, and Balak was an enemy of Israel. He hired
Balaam, this prophet, to curse Israel, to bring a curse upon
them so that Israel would be troubled and brought into destruction,
so that he didn't have to worry about them anymore. And Balaam,
as you know, this was the man who who was actually rebuked
by the ass that he rode in on. He came in on a donkey, and he
was rebuked by that donkey. So the Lord can use anything
to declare the truth. And so here's Balaam, and he's
gonna curse Israel, but the Lord tells him, don't you dare curse
Israel. You can't curse Israel. This
is what you're to declare what I tell you to declare. And so
he said in Numbers 23, 21, He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob. Rather than pronouncing a curse,
he pronounced a blessing. He declared the truth. And he
didn't believe the truth. He wanted to receive money of
Balak. He wanted to do what Balak hired
him to do, but he wasn't able to. And he says, he hath not
beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in
Israel. So here's this man, without even
understanding, declares the accomplished salvation for the people of God
in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's declaring that his people
have no sin and iniquity before him. Why? Because they're righteous
in themselves? No, because God has blessed them. He's provided the propitiation,
the salvation in the Son, Jesus Christ. And it says, the Lord
is God is with them, and the shout of a king is among them.
He's declaring Christ. Christ is our king. He's our
head. And he's among his people, walking
in the midst of his people, dwelling with his people. This man who
doesn't love the Lord is declaring Christ before he came. So there's
one example there. Then we're given another one. Look over in John 11. John chapter
11 in verse 47. Here it says, Then gathered the
chief priests and the Pharisees a council and said, What do we?
For this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all
men will believe on him, and the Romans shall come and take
away both our place and nation." So far, these men are forced
to declare and state the truth that this man, Jesus of Nazareth,
is doing many miracles, and there were some among them that confessed
no man can do these things except God were with him. He's dwelling among the people
and doing the miracles that he's doing by the power of God and
glorifying God. So they saw this, but now the
Lord brings a gospel truth to light. Now he's going to declare
the gospel in their midst. They see he's doing miracles
and now they're going to hear the gospel. And it says, verse
49, And one of them named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same
year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, nor consider
that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people
and that the whole nation perish not." He just declared the hope
of you brethren. He declared our hope which is
Christ. He just said one man is going
to die for the people. One man as the substitute for
his people will perish and deliver them so that they perish not
under the wrath of God. And I know that that's what he
said because John interprets it for us in verse 51 and 52.
He says, this spake he not of himself, but being high priest
that year. He prophesied that Jesus should
die for that nation and not for that nation only, but that also
he should gather together in one the children of God that
were scattered abroad. So do you see how the Lord is
able to take even wicked men who don't believe and use them
to declare the gospel. And someone heard it because
they went and later told the apostles after the Lord brought
it home to their heart and they believed, they went and told
the apostles what was said. And the apostles understood.
He just prophesied. A wicked man who doesn't believe
the truth prophesied and declared Christ. And so God is able. We see that God is able. All
right, so those are a couple of examples. And now I wanna
look at chapter 15 in Mark, and as we see, there's a few other
examples that are given to us of how the Lord is able to do
this and what truths they declare. So look at Mark 15, verse 15.
Mark 15, 15. And so Pilate, willing to content
the people, released Barabbas unto them and delivered Jesus
when he had scourged him to be crucified. All right, verse 16
now is going to describe to us that scourging that our Savior
bore for us. And the soldiers led him away
into the hall called Praetorium, and they called together the
whole band. I just, I can't even imagine
if I was turned over for faith and believing God and having
done nothing wrong and then on top of that they bring over a
whole band of people to come and mock me and treat me shamefully. It's incredible what our Lord
went through for his people. And it says, they clothed him
with purple and plaited a crown of thorns and put it about his
head. That means that they wove together
some branches of thorns, plaiting the hair, you know, braiding
your hair. That's what it is. It's weaving together branches
of thorns together to make a crown for him, and they began to salute
him. Hail King of the Jews! Right? Without even knowing what they're
doing, they're declaring to us, this is your king. This is the
promised Christ. This is the one whom the Lord
promised back in the garden that he would send and deliver his
people by the sacrifice of himself as their substitute to lay down
his life for them. This is that coming king. This
is the one whom the Lord told us of. Here he is. Here he is. And one of the things that the
Lord does in that is when they wove that crown together, It
recalls to our mind the picture of substitution that we see with
Abraham and Isaac. If you remember what Abraham
was doing, he was taking his son up and he had no lamb. He was trusting that the Lord
would provide a sacrifice. And he was going up there to
sacrifice his son. And as he had his knife lifted
up and was about to plunge it into the heart of his son, that
he loved his only darling son, the Lord stayed his hand and
he said, Abraham, well he said, Abraham don't do this. And then
Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold behind him
a ram caught in a thicket by his horns and Abraham went and
took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the
stead, in the place, as a substitute of his son. And so there we see
substitution there, right? But the thing that draws us in
of what the soldiers did for Christ is that thicket That very
word thicket means interwoven branches. It calls to our mind
that this is that Christ who's there caught in the thicket for
us, put himself right there as our substitute to take our place
so that he bore that beating and that punishment. It says
here as we go on, they smote him on the head with a reed and
did spit upon him bowing their knees, worshipped Him. When they
had mocked Him, they took off the purple from Him and put on
His own clothes and led Him out to crucify Him." So we see there
how Christ bore our chastening. The stripes that He bore there
at that time were our stripes. The bruises that He took when
they beat Him and punched Him and smacked Him and kicked Him
and treated Him shamefully, that was ours. Isaiah says in Isaiah
53, And that was done there, when they plated that crown of
thorns, it brings us back to remember, I remember something
about that, when that lamb was caught in the thicket, in those
woven branches, for that very purpose. To picture and show
us substitution, and here he is, our substitute, and these
men did all this. They didn't even know what they
were doing and yet they're fulfilling all these types, these pictures
to draw us in and to remind us, here's the substitute, this is
your king, bow before him. Don't reject him like they did.
Don't reject him the way they did. They treated him shamefully
and yet even in their treatment, it was all picturing that which
was spoken of our Savior by Isaiah when they beat him and chastised
him and and pulled out his beard. All that was done for you, brethren. You who hope in him and hope
in the mercy of our God. Now, then they led him out to
crucify him and this brings us to the time where he's hanging
on the cross, bearing the judgment of God, bearing the wrath of
God. At that time, they still weren't
done. These wicked men were still not
done in how they were treating our Savior who stood in our place
bearing the shameful treatment that we rightfully deserve for
our sin. Look at Mark 15 verse 31. Here in their mockery of Christ
they still declare more truth to us concerning Christ. Mark
15 verse 31. Likewise also the chief priests,
mocking, said among themselves with the scribes, He saved others. himself he cannot save." And
so there they are declaring again the hope of our salvation. He
wasn't there because he wanted to be there in the sense that
he didn't have a need in himself to be there. He didn't have to
take on flesh. He didn't have to leave his throne
in glory with the Father in his bosom. He didn't have to do any
of that. He was there for us who are sinners
who cannot save themselves. Yet we are the chosen people
of God, a people whom he loved from eternity and determined
to come and to save them. So that's why he's there. So
that's exactly right. He saved others, but himself
he cannot save because if he saves himself, then you and me
can't be saved. If he prevented this from happening,
if he just displayed his glory and his power, they would have
let him go. They would have said, wait, this
is not, this is no ordinary man. We can't do this. He could have
delivered himself from that. He could have taken himself down
off the cross, if not before the cross, but he didn't do that
because he came for this very purpose, to save his people from
their sins. He came for that very purpose.
And he came to save us from the just wrath of God. So he cannot
himself save. He has to stay there, bearing
the wrath of God, making atonement for our sins, to put them away
forever. So in our Lord's death, he satisfied
the law of God. He satisfied the justice of God
by the obedience unto death. He was obedient unto God, even
unto death. even unto a shameful death on
the cross that we might be delivered by our substitute, so that in
this we see and understand this is the love and the grace of
God for us who are sinners, who are unworthy. We're no better
than those people who didn't even understand what they were
saying and how they were being used to declare the glory of
God, to declare His gospel, and yet they had no light or understanding
of what they were saying. But you who hear it, by the grace
and glory of God, you have understanding, and you rejoice in these things,
and you rejoice in your Savior. So, in his death, when he put
away our sin, he's honoring the law of God. He's honoring the
justice of God. He's honoring the name of his
Father. Turn over in Romans 3. Romans
3, and look at verse 23 with me. The reason why our Savior died
for us is because we're all sinners, every one of us. It says in verse
23, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We
cannot save ourselves. There's no law that we can keep
that can make us righteous before God. so we all came short of
the glory of God but yet being justified freely apart from any
works that we do by his grace through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus that is through the purchase price of Christ
who shed his blood I mean you think about that you know, what
he went through and endured in the midst of the soldiers, he
was up all night. And you know when you've been
up all night just how exhausted you are the next day and how
it just comes upon you. He went before that, he endured
what he endured for us in the garden, tempted as he was in
the garden, when the sins of his people was laid upon him,
when he saw and understood what he was going to do fully, praying
to the Father, That had to be a heavy, heavy burden and the
Lord strengthened him though. He strengthened him and then
he goes and endures the false trial by the Jews and then again
he's still up and he's brought to Pilate and then Pilate, he
endures the rejection of the people and the accusations and
being turned over to be crucified. And then he's turned over to
the Roman soldiers who beat him and bloodied him, made him even
weaker, right? When you lose a lot of blood,
he must have lost a lot of blood. When you lose blood, you don't
even have strength. Just physically he was exhausted.
And now here he is bearing all that for his people. He redeemed
his people by the shedding of his own blood whom God had set
forth to be a propitiation, to be the very means of our forgiveness,
the reason why we are forgiven of God, the reason why we're
freed from sin and death, through faith in His blood to declare
His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through
the forbearance of God so that we stop talking about and boasting
of what we've done for the Lord and we rejoice in and boast in
what He's done for us unworthy sinners who don't deserve His
grace and His favor and we see the forbearance of God who endured
all that time in history, all the wickedness of man, not only
of their wickedness, but even our wickedness and folly and
foolishness. God endured with all that time
to bring forth the promise of salvation that he foretold us
of back in the garden. And he did all that. He endured
with all that law, keeping that they tried to do and still came
up short of the glory of God, even under the law. And it's
to declare, verse 26, Romans 3, 26, I say at this time, his
righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of him
which believe it in Jesus. So we see that God is just in
what he's done. He's provided the substitute.
He's provided everything that we need for deliverance, that
we might go free. So he could not save himself,
that we would be saved. And so here in this, again, we
see the love of Christ our Savior, who willingly, voluntarily came
and did this for you and me, who have nothing to boast of,
no works. We didn't do anything for the
Lord. This is all His grace. It's all His free gift, His unspeakable
gift for us, who can't even fathom or understand why God would do
this for us. why he would do this. So this
is what Christ did. And if you think about it, it
describes Christ as drinking the cup of the wrath of God.
And that cup Every drop in that cup was filled up in that cup
by your sin and my sin. Like, every sin that we've done,
we should never think, well, the Lord paid for this and I'm
just going to go ahead and do it. No, if He shows you that
it's sinful, remember that Christ paid for that sin. He paid, He
drank that drop of that sin, He drank that, all bound up in
the wrath and fury of God. against our sin and unrighteousness,
that debt of sin that we owe to the Lord, He willingly drank
that cup of wrath dry to put away our sin once and for all.
And so John writes it this way, in 1 John 3, 16, he says, Hereby
perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life
for us. He's communicating to us the love of God. He's making
sure that we know and understand that's his love, that's the love
of God hanging there on that cursed tree for you and me, to
put that sin away. Then he says, we ought to lay
down our lives for the brethren. Seeing, perceiving the love of
God for us and laying his life down, we ought now to lay down
our lives for the brethren as Christ laid down his life for
us. And I bring that up because that's
another picture that we see here traced out for us in our text
in Mark 15. Look down with me at verse 15. Because again, remember Christ
is weak in here. And now they're laying on him
the cross that he's made to bear himself and take it up to the
mount where he's to be crucified there. He's gonna be crucified
and he's weak and he's tired and he can't bear that burden.
And so when they come out in Mark 15 verse 21, it says, they
compel one Simon, a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of
the country, just happened to be coming by, so to speak. The
Lord had purposed it. And this is the father of Alexander
and Rufus to bear his cross. These men all were believers.
They were saved, not at the time necessarily, but they were brought
to hear the gospel and believe the gospel. The Lord saved them,
but at this time, In a picture, here is Simon bearing the cross
of Christ by the power and glory of the Holy Spirit. And that's
what we're to do. We're to bear the burden for
one another. That is, we're to take up the
cross of the Gospel of the Cross of Jesus Christ and bear that
to one another and preach and declare what God has done for
us freely by His Son Jesus Christ who freely laid down His life,
voluntarily gave His blood to put away your sins, to make payment
for our sins and to deliver us from the wrath of God that we
shouldn't That shameful death, that beating and chastising and
whipping and mocking, that's what we deserve. That's what
we deserve in standing before God, is that, being bound up
and cast into outer darkness. But Christ bore that, so that
we'll never know that. We won't know that, brethren.
We'll know nothing but a warm welcome into the arms of our
Savior. We're to take up that picture
there of Simon, the Cyrenium, is what we're to do for our brethren.
To pick up that cross, that gospel cross, and bear it out into the
world seeking our brethren. Because we don't know who they
are, but they'll be revealed in the preaching of the cross
because they'll hear it and they'll believe. And they'll join themselves
to us just as Simon and his sons Alexander and Rufus joined themselves
to the church later on. They're written of in the epistles.
Alright, so When these things are declared to sinners by the
power of God, then sinners will declare just as we see in the
last verse of our text, verse 39. They'll declare like that
centurion who declared the truth. I'm certain that this centurion
was among that band of soldiers that whipped and beat and shamefully
treated Christ. Now here he is standing at the
cross. He sees the faithfulness of Christ who didn't say a word.
When they mocked him and treated him, he didn't say a word and
he didn't try to get out of it, didn't do anything that was wrong
or anything that betrayed the work that he was faithfully doing
for you and me. Verse 39, when the centurion
which stood over against him saw that he so cried out and
gave up the ghost, he said, truly, this man was the son of God. And so that's the power of God
who can draw from the mouths of sinful men and women and have
them declare the truth of God even though they don't know what
they're saying. And so I pray that the Lord brings forth praises
from us who know the truth and rejoice in what Christ has done
for us and that he bless that word to your hearts. All right,
let's pray. our gracious and faithful Heavenly
Father. Lord, we are so thankful for
the gracious work which you've done for your people and your
Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, that from eternity you
determined to save a people and you never turned or deviated
from that purpose, and that your Son loves us so, that he willingly
and faithfully laid down his life for us. And Lord, we stand
amazed at how you're able to bring forth the truth of the
Gospel, even from hardened stones that know not the truth. Even
when there's none to declare the truth of God, Lord, you're
able to bring it forth, the confession from sinful men who have no light
in themselves. But Lord, you'll send that Gospel
out any way that it pleases you. Father, we pray that you would
indeed make us to rejoice in the Son of God and in the gospel
of our salvation, and that we too would be made to carry the
burden of the gospel of the cross to others, and that we would
faithfully declare what Christ has done, and that by your power,
as it pleases you, you would strike the hearts of your people
and cause them to hear, being purged of their sins by the blood
of Christ, that we may hear and rejoice in the glorious gospel
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It's in His name that
we pray and give thanks. Amen.