and they smote him on the head
with a reed and did spit upon him. They mocked him. They took off
the purple from him and put his own clothes on him. The Lord is careful in His
Word to reveal to us the depth of our depravity. This is a horrible, horrible
thing, even on the very surface of it. This could be any man
and it would be horrible. It would be barbaric and inhumane
to treat anyone like this, even if it was an animal. It would
be a carnal mind is enmity against
God. And that's, this is what that
looks like. People read that, that scripture and others like
them and say, I agree with that. I agree. I believe in the doctrine
of total depravity. It's not a statement on a wall
or in a book. This is what it looks like right
here. It looks like the son of God being spit on and beaten
and mocked by me and by you. And this is the worst act, this
is an understatement to say this is the worst act ever perpetrated
by evil man in a long, long history of horrible acts. This is man's
crowning achievement. You know this is what man is
all about and always has been? This is the fulfillment Tried to kill him the day he
was born. Sought his death all throughout his life, but he didn't
die. To do came. This is the hour he
said as he prayed his high priestly prayer into his father. The hour
is come. And this is what he was talking
about, the hour that he would be despised. Because thou wast slain. It was his accomplishment. This
is man's crowning achievement in his depravity and hatred of
God. Yes, this is God's work. It pleased the Lord to bruise
His Son. But He's just allowing us to
do, they would have killed Him in Luke chapter 7, but He passed
through the midst of them as He preached in the synagogue.
They despised His doctrine, His Expression of your depravity.
If he hadn't prevented you graciously. From doing that. Surely the wrath
of man shall praise the Lord and the remain. Text is God not restraining our
wrath. Why? Because it praised him.
He glorified him. And whenever I wrath is not going
to glorify him, it's not going to happen. that Dee read a while ago revealed
his worthiness and his glory in that he was slain for sinners.
But remember how it started? I saw a throne and the Lamb was
on it. He's on the throne. Why do people
hate God and His Christ? revealed in the text. And we
could say many things about that, but let's look at what's in our
text about this. Notice the first thing they did.
They put a scarlet robe on him first, and then a crown of thorns,
a mock scepter in his hand, a reed in his hand, and then they mocked
him and spit on him. because of who he is, and particularly
because he's sovereign, because he is a rival to them. There
are other reasons, but this is primary. No God, the fool hath
said in his heart, no God. Let me read you the language
in Daniel 4.35. Now, think about this. epitome of what it is to be God
is that God does as He pleases. Isn't that what David said in
answer? They said, where is your God? He said, He's in the heavens
doing what He wants to do. That's where He is. Daniel 4,
and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing,
and He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven and
among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay His
hand or say unto Him what doest thou? That's God. That's a pretty good definition
of God. And so what does man do? He insists on man's free
will. God can't do according to his
will because he can't violate my will. Is that right? Your God may not be able to.
But my God's been violating man's will for a long time. And he
ain't done yet. Do you know what the latest expression
of man's rebellion against God's Godhood is? I've just seen this
recently in the news. Now, according to man, God doesn't
even have the right to determine what sex you are, whether you're
a boy or a girl. Have you noticed that in the
news lately? We're not going to let God determine that. Parents
are now leaving it up to their children to decide whether they
want to be male or female. Oh, your body may be predisposed
one way or another, but you can change that when you get ready.
God doesn't get to make me what He wants to be, I'll be what
I want to be. Utter rebellion and... effort to do that or an
abomination even to other men, even to other depraved people,
a disgusting bunch of freaks, a circus sideshow exhibit. But we're not going to and shame and confusion and ultimately
destruction. Men also hate him because of
his holiness. And this is in the context of
our text. Pilate said in verse 14, he said, will I, will you
that I release him unto you? And of course they weren't having
that. And he said, why, what evil has he done? He hadn't done
anything evil. He hadn't committed any crime.
He hadn't done anything wrong. He's the innocent blood. And
you know what they said? It says they cried out the more
exceedingly crucified. Why did they cry out the more
exceedingly? Because his holiness, his innocence,
his purity reveals man's sinfulness. If he's innocent, man don't like to see what he
is. Jot down John 15, 20 through 25. But here in our text this is
an utter rejection of Him. Can you imagine anything else
that they could have done to express utter rejection and denial
and refusal of the Son of God? To beat Him, to mock Him, to
spit on Him, to punish Him for being perfect. And ultimately I'll just give you the references
again. I don't want to spend a lot of time this morning because
I want you to remember. Look right down to Luke 19, 12-14
and Matthew our Lord told us what we were
going to do, and what we've always done to Him. So we look at what
our Lord endured here in this text, and not just to feel sorry
for Him in some shallow way, you know, we get sentimental
and weepy over things like that, and And you're not going to see your
sin anywhere else like it is. There's not a thing wrong with
that. But you know what I'm talking about. He said to those who wept
as he went to Calvary with his cry, he said, don't weep for
me. Weep for yourselves. Weep for the problem, not the
remedy. And so we don't get sentimental and emotional in a shallow way,
but we see this to understand the truth of our depravity and
of His love. God's so loved. This is what
that looks like, too. God's so loved. What does that
mean? That He gave His Son. And there will be sorrow. There
will be sorrow. condition by nature before God,
to understand what our will is, and to understand what His love
is. He asked in Lamentation 112, Is it nothing to you all ye that
pass by? Behold, and see if there be any
sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me. And listen to
this, Wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me, in the day of his
fierce anger. Men want to argue about who killed
Jesus of Nazareth, the Jews or the Gentiles. It was God that
killed him. That's the best answer. And then, of course, it was all
of us. There was no sorrow like his
before or since. His sorrow was supernatural.
It was infinitely beyond these physical torments that he suffered.
His very soul was made an offering for sin. And if we could fathom
the anguish with which he cried, my God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? Then we would understand something
of his sorrow that's not like any other. And we might understand
something of our sin. That's what it took to put my
sin away. God forsaking his son. When he
bore my sin in his own body on the tree, his own father turned
his back on him. And to understand his love in
that. I can't imagine even just the
physical pain. He was scourged, verse 15. And
let's talk about this. Not just trying to imagine the
pain and to enter into it somehow. But let's see what this teaches
us. He wasn't the only one that was
scourged. That was the punishment of the law. And this picture
is something for us now. We have to look beyond this Roman
punishment for crimes and contemplate the punishment of God for sin
that it pictures. The scourging was punishment.
And that reminds us that He bore the punishment for my sin. That's
just a picture. The scourging was the punishment
of the law. But God's law He who spoke the law, he whose
will is the law, he whose law it is was made under the law
that he might redeem them who were under the law, you and I. And he was subject here to the
law of the land at that time, but more than that, he was made
under the law of God and subject to the law of God. And when he
bore my sin, guilty, Condemned by that law, he bore the punishment. This is the vicarious nature
of his death. In the place of another, he bore
the punishment. And I have to mention about him
being stripped. Now this is another aspect. That
wasn't according to the law, the Roman law. He suffered something
else though. Not just the punishment, he suffered
the shame of my sins. What was the first consequence
of the fall of Adam that Adam and Eve realized? I'm naked. I don't have any covering. that
they were naked and didn't care. But sin, sin is what causes this
to be shameful. This picture is the shame of
sin that my Savior bore for me. Hebrews 12, 2, looking unto Jesus
the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was
set before Him endured the cross despising the shame and is set
down at the right hand of the throne of God. The word despising
in this verse means to think little of, to think nothing of
it. He thought little of the shame. It doesn't mean that it
was a small thing, but he endured it as though it was little or
nothing because of the joy of honoring his father and redeeming
his people. And because he bore my shame,
I'm clothed. I'm never gonna be naked again,
not before God, because he was. Not just before those soldiers,
but before God, he was stripped. And now I'm clothed in his everlasting
righteousness, never to be ashamed. He that puts their trust in him
will never be ashamed. Well, we already talked some
about the crown of thorns, the reed, the scarlet robe, and what
that signifies, but think about this too. Why a crown of thorns? would be painful certainly because
it put Him in the character in which they particularly rejected
Him. But there is more to it even
than that. Why a crown of thorns? Do you remember what happened
to the earth when it was cursed by God? It brought forth thorns. The emblem of the curse symbolic
of the curse of God upon us because of our sin. Christ hath redeemed
us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us. For
it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. And then
in verse 19, this is the expression of utter contempt. This is a
third aspect now of his suffering, contempt. It's the epitome of
what Isaiah said in Isaiah 53, 3, pictured. He is despised and
rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And
we hid as it were our faces from him, despised and rejected of
men. And what do we do? We hid our
face. But that's just a picture. He cried, my God, my God, why
hast thou hid thy face from me? Why hast thou forsaken of men? Sure. Oh, there's so much more
than that. That's just a picture now. And
you see in these sufferings, these different aspects of what
he bore spiritually, in his soul, in his spirit. When he said,
I thirst, it wasn't just that he needed some water. We hid, as it were, our faces
from him. He was despised, and we esteemed him not. And this truth is displayed throughout
this whole scene, of course, but what a picture is presented
by man spitting on God. Can you imagine that? Buffeting
him on the head with a stick. And there was a whole band of
soldiers there. Isaiah 52, 14 says, as many were
astonished at thee, his visage was so marred more than any man
in his form more than the sons of men. Utter contempt could
not have been more fully expressed than it was there. They spit on the face. of Him who never did anything
but good and Him who is altogether lovely
in all that He is and all that He did. They spit on Him. I've thought about this and I
think we talked about this when we were going through the book
of Matthew or maybe John. He said, when Peter drew his
sword, you know, I could call on my father and he would send
more than 12 legions of angels. And you know, those angels were
just waiting. Can you imagine when these dogs
spit in the face of the Son of God? Do you suppose the angels
were waiting for the signal? If Peter, now think about it
this way. Well, you're just speculating now, Chris. Let me, I don't know
about that. If Peter was compelled to draw
his sword and cut off an ear when they came to arrest the
innocent one, then what were the angels doing here in our
day? You think about that. Even Peter
couldn't stand by and just watch. And he was a sinner like us. The carnal mind is enmity against
God. We learn that here and surely
we learn here also that God so loved. That should have been Barabbas.
On that cross. Should have been me. Barabbas
is me. Suffering the wrath of God for
sin, but he took my place. He bore my wrath. This is my
punishment, my payment for sin. Isaiah 40 verse 2, speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished.
We've won? We've won the victory? How? Well,
your iniquity is pardoned. Well, how in the world does that
happen? She hath received of the Lord's hand double for all
of her sins. God is satisfied for them. That's
how they're pardoned. God's got to have satisfaction.
And that's what we see in here. So you see in these key words
and phrases, Christ bearing my punishment, my shame, and my
reproach, the loathing that I deserved. And this is the one thing that
I want us to take away from this study today, if nothing else.
He suffered, pictured by these things, the penalty of the law,
we see that in the scourging, the shame of bearing my sin,
we see that in the stripping, and the reproach and rejection
of his own father, seen in the utter contempt that these men
had for him. We turn, we hid as it were our
faces from him, but he wouldn't cry, my God, my God, because
of that. Oh no. And this is simple substitution.
It's Christ in my place. Where do you think Barabbas was?
Then when my Lord was being so mistreated. Where do you think
Barabbas was? You reckon he was celebrating? I reckon he was. He was set free. And that, in a sense, is what
we do. We who know who it was that died in our place and why,
what are we gonna do now that we're set free, now that he's
died in our place? We're gonna celebrate. That's what we do
at the table, among other things. We celebrate his death, show
it forth, rejoice in it, in him, in his perfect sacrifice for
sin, his perfect redeeming, sin-atoning work on the cross. We celebrate. The fact that the Lord of glory
died in our stead. The just for the unjust that
he might bring us. Why did he do it that he might
bring us? To God. The likes of us ain't
getting to God any other way. Why would he even want to bring
us to God? I don't know, but I know that he did. And he did
so much that he gave himself. We sing this song, and I pray
that this is our prayer this morning. King of my life, I crown
thee now. Thine, thine shall the glory
be. God forbid that I should glow
receiving this. Christ crucified. Lest I forget
thy thorn-crowned brow, lead me to Calvary. We sang this morning,
keep me near the cross. Keep me near the cross, lest
I forget Gethsemane, lest I forget thine agony, lest I forget thy love for me. Lead me to Calvary. That's what Paul's talking about
when he says, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's not talking about a geometric
shape or a piece of wood or an article of jewelry. He's saying
all of my boasting and my praise belongs unto the Lord Jesus Christ,
who was wounded for my transgressions, bruised for my iniquities, and
died for my sins according to the scriptures. If we can read
and study and expound and contemplate the text that we just did and
not glory alone. In Christ crucified. Then may God save our wretched
souls. That's what needs to happen. May we grow in his grace and
knowledge until we glory in nothing and no one else. And are determined
not to even know anything else. Save Jesus Christ and him crucified.
And may we soon. Depart this place to be with
him. And be conformed to his image. And where our eternal occupation
will be to praise the lamb that was slain. Our brother just read
it while ago. We're going to praise him. May we praise Him now with all of our hearts. Let's pray together.