Let's take our Bibles now and
turn to Matthew chapter 27. There's so much happening in
these last chapters in the book of Matthew which deal with our
Lord's suffering and death that it may seem like I'm over laboring
in this chapter, but I assure you I'm not. It's just that there's
so many major things going on all at the same time. that I
don't want to just breeze through here and miss what's really the
climax of this whole book, and that is the death of Christ.
But my subject this morning is the sufferings of Christ. Now
let's read here in Matthew 27 beginning with verse 26. Then
released he, that is Pilate released Barabbas unto them, and when
he had scourged Jesus. Now this is kind of, this is
why we need to go and read the other Gospels. Because when you
read this, it seems like Pilate, the decisions had already been
made, and then just out of meanness, Pilate scourged the Lord and
turned Him loose. And you might wonder, because
Pilate all along wanted to release Him. He knew He was innocent.
And so when you read this, it looks like a contradiction of
what's going on. And it's not that he doesn't
say that this is the proper order. It's just the way it's worded.
But if you go back and you read the other gospel writers, you'll
find out that Pilate scourged Christ first. And this scourging
was 39 stripes save one. which 40 killed a man. They had
it down to a science. And this was leather, what they call a cat-of-nine-tails.
It had leather pieces down just like a regular whip except on
the end of it was pieces of bone. And those bone fragments would
plow the flesh. And if you'll go back and read
in the Old Testament, it talks about Him as our Savior, His
flesh being plowed, His back being plowed. And that's what
they're talking about. But Pilate had already done this,
hoping that when they seen Him, that would be sufficient to satisfy
Him, and then He could turn them loose. But they didn't do it.
So, he scourged Jesus and then he delivered him to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor
took Jesus into the common hall. This was a huge place, this hall. It was a place where the common
criminals were brought and judged and it was a huge, like a big
auditorium. And they took Christ into this
great hall called the Common Hall and gathered unto Him the
whole band of soldiers. Now, there was a minimum here
of 500 soldiers. This ain't a handful of soldiers
that took Christ back there and five or six of them stood around
Him and mocked Him and slapped Him and did all this. There was
a minimum of 500 and some think as many as 1,200 or 1,300. soldiers
in this great hall. And they just made sport of him
when they got him back there. They just made sport of him.
Because to them he was a total contradiction of their religion.
They despised the Jewish religion to start with. And here's one
now that the Jews despise, and they despised him as much as
they did the Jews. And they took him back there
and they made sport of him. And it says, they stripped him,
verse 28. I'm reading from Matthew 27 and
verse 28. And they stripped him. And they
put upon him a scarlet robe. And when they had plaited a crown
of thorns, they put it upon his head and a reed in his hand,
and they bowed the knee before him and mocked him, saying, Hail,
King of the Jews. And they spit upon him. and took
the reed and smote him on the head. And after that, they had
mocked him. They took the robe off from him
and put his own raiment on him and led him away to crucify him. And as they came out, they found
a man of Cyrene, Simon by name, him they compelled to bear his
cross. Now, in our Wednesday night Bible
study, we looked at the holy anointing oil of the priesthood.
And it was used to consecrate the priest, but not just the
priest. They were sprinkled with this
oil. The tabernacle was sprinkled with this oil. The altar, the
altar of burnt offering, the laver and its foot and all the
furnishings of the tabernacle, everything concerned with the
worship of God and the priesthood had to be sprinkled with this
holy anointing oil. And there were five ingredients
in this holy oil, and the first was what typified the Holy Spirit,
which was olive oil. And I don't have time this morning
to take you through the scriptures, but just hold that thought in
your mind. And this picture is the Holy
Spirit of God, this oil. This oil of consecration. How
is the church consecrated before God? They can't consecrate themselves. And they must be consecrated.
God's holy. We can't serve Him without being
consecrated. So they're consecrated by the
anointing of the Holy Spirit. He washes us in regeneration. In one place, the old prophet,
the old psalmist said, He has given us the oil of gladness. That's that holy oil, and that
olive oil pictures that. And then there was four principal
spices mixed in with this oil. And these are the things of Christ. This stands for the person and
work of Christ, which the Holy Spirit uses in our consecration. That's what He reveals to us,
is the sufferings of Christ and the death of Christ. And Christ
is our propitiation, and Christ as the Messiah and the sin-offerer.
He takes those things, the Holy Spirit of God does, and He anoints
us in such a way as to sprinkle that blood upon our consciences
and clear that guilt away. Take away those sins. Put them
behind His back. Bury them in the deepest part
of the sea. And the first of these spices
was myrrh. And this myrrh was gathered from
a tree by making incisions in it, something like you do when
you get maple syrup. You drive a thing into the tree,
you make an incision in it and you hang a bucket on the end
of that little spout and that sap flows out into the bucket
and then they work on that and prepare it and boil it and it
comes down and makes sugar or syrup or whatever it is they
intend to make from it, candies. And the word myrrh means bitterness. Bitterness. And when you think
about the sufferings of Christ, we think how bitter were these
sufferings. How bitter. As I read through
those things a few minutes ago, is anything impressed on your
mind more than that word bitter? How bitter it must have been
for those soldiers to have mocked him, the son of God, and lashed
his precious back, and spit in his face, and all those things
that they did. But how sweet and how fragrant
is the fulfillment and accomplishment of those things. You see that
in that spice? And then sweet cinnamon called
the building spice used to build pies and rolls and candies and
all sorts of things. It was mixed in there and stands
for the graces of God which are given to us. And this cinnamon,
They take the bark, the outer covering of the tree, and they
grind it into a fine powder. And here we see, and have been
reading this morning in these sufferings of Christ, how His
outward flesh, He suffered in His outward flesh. I know His
sufferings were inward. I know that. I know that when
He prayed in the garden, that his sweat becomes great drops
of blood. I know that there was inward
sufferings that we can't even enter into. But there was outward
sufferings and bodily sufferings, and this too had to be done.
This was all a part of our redemption. And this sentiment speaks of
the bodily sufferings of Christ. And then there was sweet calamus,
and it comes from sweet cane. Some of you grew up out in the
country. We did up in Kentucky. We had cane mills and they'd
take this sweet cane and cut it up and they'd put it in that
mill and they'd grind it and crush it and it gave forth this
liquid and that liquid was boiled down and that's where sorghum
molasses comes from. And that's where cane sugar comes
from. They crush that cane. But there is a spice that comes
from the sweet cane called calamus. And it comes from that thing
being crushed. And then cassia was the last
ingredient in that holy anointing oil. And it's named after its
habit, means to bow down, to stoop down. And then again, the
bark from the cassia tree or whatever that tree is called,
it's ground into a powder and then made into a spice. So it's
the Holy Spirit of God that always brings into focus all these excellent
values of Christ. And that's what He's showing
us back here in these Old Testament types. So let's keep these things
in mind as we go through the sufferings of our Lord here in
Matthew. What took place here after Pilate had scourged Him
within one lash of His life was that he was taken into this common
hall in a very large room and some 500 to 1300 soldiers made
sport of it. Now let's just briefly look at
each one of these things they did and let's see if we can smell
some of those precious spices that I told you about in this
holy anointing oil. First of all, it says they stripped
him. They stripped him. Why would
God cause our substitute to be stripped? They did what God's hand and
God's counsel determined before to be done. I know wicked hands
did it. I know evil men did it. But in
the end, they did what God's hand and God's counsel determined
before to be done. So what is God showing us? in
this stripping of our substitute as he stands before these men.
Well, I believe it's just this, because the shame of nakedness
came into this world because of sin, because of sin. And to see this nakedness and
the sin which brought about the shame of it, our great substitute
must himself suffer the humiliation of being stripped. I just, in my mind, I don't know
what to say about these things. They're so, I can't enter into
them. They're so deep and so immense. This is the son of God in human
form standing before a bunch of soldiers and they stripped
him, stripped him. When Adam and Eve were called
before God, called before Him, they stood before Him in their
fig leaf aprons, those aprons that they made to hide their
nakedness. And God removed their aprons,
didn't He? He didn't leave them wearing
their aprons. He took those aprons from them. And as they stood
there naked, He clothed them with the covering of the substitute.
He put that typical righteousness, that which Christ would give
to His church, that righteous covering, and He put it upon
them and covered their nakedness. And that's what's going on here
at the cross. He's showing us what we are. What we are. And because of sin, we're naked. Naked. No covering. And then
secondly, They mockingly put upon him a scarlet robe. Now their intention was to mock
his claims as the king of the Jews. But you remember this,
he was here as our representative. And this is, in fact, all of
God's elect in him standing before God. Can you see yourself in
him? And this scarlet robe being put
upon you. This act by the Roman guards
was meant to make a public mockery of His claims to the throne. But are not all man's claims
to rule mocked by God? Did He not say in Psalm chapter
2, the Lord shall have them in derision? Why do they fuss? Why do they
get together, God said, against Me and against Mine anointing?
I'll have them in derision." What's that word mean? It means
a public mockery. I'll make a public mockery out
of them. And since all of God's elect
are firstborn of Adam, they must suffer this derision, this public
mockery, and they suffer it in their substitute. We see Him
stripped in our stead. And we see Him with the purple
robe put upon Him, this revelation of ourselves and our taking that
rule from God and shaking our fist in the face of God. That's
what's going on here and God's exposing it for what it is. He's
making a public mockery out of it. And then thirdly, they plaited
a crown of thorns and they twisted that crown down upon his head.
What's this crown of thorns all about? Well, the Scriptures tell
us that they did what God's hand determined before to be done.
So what was God's intention in permitting these ungodly men
to cause the Lord of glory to wear such a thing, to wear a
crown of thorns? Well, are not thorns the sign
of God's curse upon men? Isn't that what He tells us back
there in Genesis 3, verses 17 and 18? That's the sign of the curse,
these thorns. It tells us of man's curse being
of endless works among thorns and thistles. And even this torturous
crown was according to the purpose of God being a sign of our curse
when Christ was made a curse. Isn't that what it says over
there in Galatians? He was made a curse for us, for it is written,
Cursed is every man who hangeth upon a tree. He was made a curse,
and when He was, he wore the sign of the curse on his head. And if you'll give it some thought, this is the fulfillment of Isaac's
ram that was caught in the thicket. You remember what Isaac said. He'd been with his father many
times when he worshipped God. And he knew that there had to
be fire, and there had to be wood, and then there had to be
a lamb. He knew that. And he said, I see the fire and
I see the wood, but where's the lamb? You remember what Abraham
told him? God will provide Himself a lamb. Here's the fulfillment right
here. Caught in the thicket. Caught in the curse of God's
elect. And now we see him as Isaac saw
him. And this is the myrrh, if you
will, of the Holy Ghost revelation to his church. Bitter coming
out of those incisions, but fragrant in its accomplishment. And then
fourthly, they put a reed in his right hand as a scepter.
That reed was meant to be a mockery of his kingship, and it was a
symbol of commonness and weakness. You can get a reed anywhere.
Anywhere, especially around here where there is nothing but swamps
and water everywhere, you can go get a reed about any time.
You can go there and pluck it off. Let me point something out
to you. Not only are we represented here
by the Lord, but we are also represented here by these wicked
men. who despised him. And in our Savior, God is showing
us the futility of Adam's attempt to take the scepter from God's
King. Man, in all his rebellion and
pride and resistance and all that he does, he hates the gospel. He hears the gospel and he closes
his eyes and like those old priests, When the more Stephen began to
press that truth home to them, the madder they got, the more
that rebellion came out and finally they couldn't take it anymore
and they went and gnashed on him with their teeth. They couldn't
stand to hear it anymore. Well, man at the pit of his rebellion,
in the pit of his self-made rule, And nowhere is that example in
this world more than it is in what men call free will religion. Now all that means is man is
trying to take the scepter from God. That's all that means. And
God shows him as he really is, standing there with a reed. That's
all he's got. He's got a crown of thorns, an
old dirty red jacket draped on him, and a reed in his hand. His anger and enmity against
God, His rebellion and self-glory is here put upon display in the
suffering Savior. It's my heart's desire this morning
that God will let somebody here who has never known this, never
known his or her sin, to see that rebellion displayed against
the Savior in his hour of humiliation. And then, fifthly, rising up
from their pretended worship. These men all bowed the knee
before Him and said, Hail, King of the Jews. And rising up from
that pretended worship, each one came by and spit in his face. Now, some of the old commentators
said this spitting was designed to manifest a Jew's highest contempt,
his highest contempt and indignation against someone. You remember
an unruly daughter in Israel was to be taken by her father
before the people and spit in her face. And then she was to
be shut outside the camp, out there with the lepers. Out there
with all the unclean, all those who were not permitted inside
the camp. She was to be shut out there
for seven days. Let me tell you a little story
here. Moses married a black woman. An Ethiopian. Now, I don't know
if you've ever seen any pictures of the Ethiopians, but they are
black. And his sister and his brother Aaron just couldn't stand
the thought. They just could not stand it.
It was the most repulsive thing in the world to them. And immediately,
this man that God had chosen and anointed through Moses, Aaron
his brother, and Moses' own sister, And these are very influential
people in Israel. They stood up and began to denounce
Moses as God's deliverer. We don't really believe that
God will just speak through him. We don't really believe that. Will God surely just speak through
this one man? Well, what happened? They believed
he was speaking to them all along. What happened? He did something
that crossed them, crossed their evil imaginations, crossed their
evil minds. He did something contrary to
what they liked. And immediately they began to
denounce him as God's messenger. And God smoked Miriam with leprosy. And immediately Aaron saw the
error of his ways. And he knew he couldn't come
to God. Here's the high priest. He couldn't come to God. He ran
to Moses and he said, intercede for her, lest she be like one
of these out here dead while she's still living. And Moses
did. He went in there and he interceded. Now listen to what God tells
him here in Numbers 12, verse 14. He said, if her father had
but spit in her face, Should she not be ashamed seven days? Should she not be shut outside
the camp seven days if her father spit in her face for her rebellion?
Let her be shut out of the camp seven days, and after that, let
her be received in again. Now, before this bunch of rebel
soldiers, our God spit in the face of His rebellious church,
but He did it in the face of their substitute. You see that?
Paul said, Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with
His own blood, suffered without the gate. Hebrews 13, verse 12. Now He said, let us go forth
therefore unto Him without the camp bearing His reproach. He bore our shame. He says, I
hid not my face from shame and spitting. And because He did,
Isaiah said, for your shame, for your shame, because He did, you shall receive double. Double. You shall have double. We look unto Him, the Author
and Finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before
Him endured the cross and despised the shame, and is now set down
at the right hand of God. Brother Don made this comment
on this verse of Scripture. I thought it was pretty good.
He said, it's hard to say which of these two things are the most
shocking. that men should have spit in
the face of the Lord of glory, or that the Lord of glory should
stoop so low to save his people that he would suffer a man to
spit in his face." Hard to say which one, isn't it? And then, sixthly, they took
the reed from his hand and smote him on the head. And they did
this while that crown of thorns was still on his head. And it
was done to evidence the enmity of carnal man against God. Now, there's three things manifested
in the death and suffering of our substitute. First of all,
the exceeding sinfulness of sin. I want you to turn with me to
Romans chapter 8. When we look at these sufferings,
they teach us three things. We ought to see these things,
and in their proper light, we ought to be taught three things.
Number one, we ought to be taught the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Now watch this here in Romans
8, verse 3. For what the law could not do,
in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in
the flesh. Now, if you want to know how
God feels about the sinner, you study the sufferings of Christ
and you calculate His death. You stand back there on the hill
and you watch the Son of God die as you read it in the Scripture. And you'll learn something about
the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Our Lord did no sin. He had no
sin of His own. He thought no sin, nor could
even His enemies find anything to charge Him with. They had
to pay folks to be false witnesses because there was no sin in Him. Satan tempted Him for 40 days
and found nothing in Me. That's what our Lord said. He
found nothing in Me. Yet never a man died such an
ignominious death and suffered as he did. And he is our substitute. Our substitute was sin condemned
in the flesh. And the exceeding sinfulness
of sin is perceived in the death of the sinner's substitute. And
so horrible is sin in the eyes of God that none but the Son
of God could bear the wrath against Him. None but the Son of God
could righteously despise it. And if you truly know what sin
is, you must look upon Him who was made sin for us. And to look
upon the cross with spiritual eyes is to peek into hell itself. I've heard a lot of talk and
read a lot of things about hell and speculations about what hell
is. Well, if you want to peek into
hell, you look at the cross. Because whatever it was He suffered,
He suffered our hell on that cross and in His death. And then
secondly, God's justice and righteousness is manifested. That's where we're
going to learn something about God's justice. Will God punish
sin? He spared not His own Son. Will
God compromise His law? He didn't to save His own Son.
You reckon He's going to do it for you? He said, the soul that sinneth
shall surely die, and die at will. There's no hope anywhere
except in the sinner's substitute. Every sin, all sins, sins of
ignorance, sins of anger, past sins, present sins, and future
sins, all sins shall receive a due recompense of reward. And
Romans 3, verse 25, tells us of God's propitiation in Christ
And it was accomplished to declare His righteousness in His free
justification of all them that believe. And then thirdly, we
see in His death and in His sufferings the love of God. The Scripture
said God manifested His love toward us in that while we were
yet sinners, Christ died for us. That's the love of God. He was wounded for our transgressions
and bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. Isaiah said, The
Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. But oh, what a sweet
smell when you see what He accomplished in those sufferings and death.
The justice of God satisfied for all His elect. The love of
God manifested in the hearts of all them who see this by the
revelation of the Holy Spirit. Oh, what a sweet fragrance it
is to see the accomplishments of that bitter sufferings of
Christ. May the Holy Spirit cause us to enter into that and to
continue entering into it the rest of our days. Thank you.