How powerful is the cross?
So powerful that those who were there at the time blaspheming Jesus in his face were. Redeemed. And Acts 6:7 says, Many of the priests later came to faith in Christ. They were forgiven. And we'll see that the centurion who was in charge of the execution and some of his soldiers said, This is the Son of God.
Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. They were some of the worst members of society to have deserved execution by the Romans. Yet one of these two criminals hanging on a cross next to Jesus received God's pardon, and the other didn't. What made the difference?
Find out today on Grace to You as John MacArthur continues a study that looks at critical and yet often overlooked details from Calvary. It's titled The Divine Drama of Redemption. And now with today's lesson, here's John.
Now we are in Mark chapter 15, and I want to read to you verses 22 down through verse 39. Then they brought him to the place Galgotha, which is translated place of a skull. They tried to give him wine mixed with myrrh. But he did not take it. And they crucified him.
and divided up his garments among themselves, casting lots for them to decide what each man should take. It was the third hour when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, The king of the Jews. They crucified two robbers with him. one on his right and one on his left.
And the scripture was fulfilled which says, And he was numbered with transgressors. Those passing by were hurling abuse at him, and wagging their heads and saying, Ha You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross. In the same way, The chief priests also, along with the scribes, were mocking him among themselves and saying, He saved others, he cannot save himself. Let this Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, so that we may see and believe. Those who were crucified with him.
were also insulting him. When the sixth hour came, darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour. At the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, Lama, Sabaktani. Which is translated, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? When some of the bystanders heard it, they began saying, Behold, he is calling for Elijah.
Someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave him a drink, saying, Let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down. And Jesus uttered a loud cry. and breathed his last. And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. When the centurion who was standing right in front of him saw the way he breathed his last.
He said Truly this man was The sun. of God. As we have learned In our study of the previous portions of scripture A stunning Unparalleled Blasphemous Farce. is being perpetrated on Jesus Christ. He is viewed by the people as a joke.
There's a ludicrous Claimant. to being the king. God's king, God's Messiah. God's Son. The chosen one.
It is all a joke. As far as the Jews are concerned. It is ridiculous. Thus Starting with the treatment of the Sanhedrin in the trial in Caiaphas' house. Jesus is ridiculed.
He is being treated with scorn and mockery, and as much cruel disdain. as can possibly be imagined or unimagined. It is that Sanhedrin. That started the entire mocking abuse. It was they who first punched him, slapped him, and spit in his face, and mocked the idea that he could be the Son of God.
or the messiah or the king. Theirs is the severest apostasy, for they have defected from Holy Scripture. They have defected from the revelation of the Old Testament in which the details of Christ are prophesied so as to make the Christ who did appear recognizable to them, for he in fact fulfilled all that the prophets anticipated. They have therefore rejected their own holy scriptures, which they purport to uphold and to know. Theirs is a defection from God.
Theirs is a defection from Scripture. Theirs is an apostasy from righteousness. Theirs is an unparalleled, unequalled blasphemy. Here you see sin at its apex. They are mocking the Son of God.
Sneering at God Himself. Spitting scorn. is blasted on the face of their Creator. And their Redeemer and their Saviour. Blasphemy cannot exceed this.
And one might ask the question at this point: how does God hold back? How does God restrain himself? For this is his beloved Son, the Son of His love, in whom he is well pleased. Shouldn't such blasphemy be instantly responded to by? God Wouldn't we expect that These people carrying out this sneering scorn.
At the expense of the blessed Son of God would be instantly annihilated and catapulted into hell? Shouldn't fire fall from heaven and burn them up? Shouldn't the ground open and swallow them whole into sheol? Shouldn't they be hit by God out of heaven and eaten by worms and died? We would expect our God, true and holy.
to do that to these Merciless, compassionless. Wicked, sarcastic blasphemers. Of his Beloved, adored. magnificent, perfect sun. What Is God Doing It appears as if he's Doing nothing.
And by the way, God, the Old Testament is pretty clear on the penalty for blasphemy. Leviticus 24:16, it is death. God required Death as a penalty for blasphemy. Here is the ultimate blasphemy ever. Why isn't God acting?
God repeated again and again and again through the Old Testament prophets that he would bring judgment and death and eternal punishment on blasphemers, impenitent blasphemers. What's he doing? Nothing? If any have ever been guilty of blasphemy, it is these. And in a very deranged way, in a very ironic way.
The blasphemers are accusing the one day blaspheme. of blasphemy. God had every holy right. to kill them, to judge them at that moment. Maybe if the uh Prophet Habakkuk had been there, he would have said what he wrote in the beginning of his prophecy: How long, O Lord?
How long? How long? Or maybe if the souls under the altar in Revelation 6, 10 had been there, they would have cried what they cry in that passage. How long, O Lord, how long, how long are you going to allow wickedness to go on before you step in in judgment? Or if Moses had been there, maybe Moses would have said, Lord, in Exodus 19, you said that the mountain was so holy that if anybody touched the mountain, they would die.
How is it that to touch the mountain is to bring about divine judgment and death, but to spit in the face of your son? brings no such judgment. What's going on here? How can this be? Let's go back to the text.
The outline that we gave you, just some little points to kind of keep you Involved in the process of going through this text. The first was the soldier's parody. We saw that in verses 16 to 20.
Now, today we look at the Savior's punishment. First of all, the Savior's punishment. Verse twenty two, Then they brought him to the place Golgotha. which is translated place of a skull. Why it's called the place of a skull, which is a translation of the Aramaic.
We don't know.
Some say because it was a place where people died. And it was associated with death, and skulls are associated with death. And people were left on the cross in the blazing sun long after they were dead on occasion, and the carrion birds would tear at their flesh, and skulls would be revealed. You can see the connection there. We don't know where the place is.
The traditional place is inside the city in modern times. It would have been outside the city then, but it's inside the city in modern times, and many churches have been built on it. Could be that that is the actual place. The tradition goes back. A long way.
It doesn't matter, but it is a historical location known to people, which reinforces the reality of this event. Then it says in verse 23, they tried to give him wine mixed with myrrh. But he did not take it. Matthew 27, 34, in Matthew's parallel account, Matthew says. He tasted it.
and did not take it. He tasted it and did not take it. What was this for? The combination of the wounding through scourging and the wounding through the nails. And then suspending a person who's basically hanging on the wounds, and to breathe, has to push himself up by his feet or pull himself up by his arm, and thereby rub his back up the rough-hewn cross.
would make the pain so excruciating That there was at least a small dose of human compassion. This would be a mild analgesic, some kind of a sedative, some kind of mild narcotic that could help. ease the agonizing pain. They wanted to mitigate Sum of the horrendous suffering. By the way, that fulfills Psalm 69, 21.
which says that this would be offered to him. He did not take it. He would drink the cup of the Father's wrath. with full awareness. full consciousness.
And then verse 24 says this, and they crucified him. That's it. No adjectives. and no descriptions. And they crucified him.
Much has been written about that. I've told you just a few things, and that's really all you need to know. It was death by asphyxiation. Because eventually without any kind of relief, Without any Water. without any kind of protection.
With bugs flying in to your eyes and your ears and your mouth. And you fighting and wrestling against the wounds, exaggerating the bleeding. and unable to finally pull yourself up or push yourself up. the weight of the body. Drove the lungs to empty and One couldn't breathed and died a horrible death.
That was what was. intended Another thing that happened to people who were crucified is indicated in this verse. And they divided up his garments among themselves. casting lots for them to decide what each man should take. Mark just gives us a general reference to that.
That's what the soldiers did. That was kind of compensation for having such a very ugly duty. To be the execution squad in a really gory, horrific kind of execution. Verse 25 says it was the third hour. when they crucified him.
9 in the morning.
Now remember this has happened so fast, hasn't it? It was Thursday night, they were still in the upper room and they sang a hymn and they went out. And they went to the Familiar Mount of Olives in the Garden of Gethsemane, owned by a believer in the city, where they frequently went and they were there praying, or at least Jesus was praying while the disciples were sleeping. Judas shows up with a huge entourage that could have been as large as a thousand people because they feared reprisals that the Jews knew they were going to arrest the one that they had been hailing all week. They arrest Jesus.
Judas discloses himself. And that's all sometime in the early hours of Friday morning. He's arrested. He's taken before Annas for an indictment. They couldn't find one.
He's taken before Caivas and the Sanhedrin for a trial. There's still no crime, but they decide they're going to kill him anyway. They um They send him to Pilate. Pilate sends him to Herod. He comes back.
There's a mock trial in the daylight to give some legitimacy to it for the Jews. Six different phases of his trial: three with the Jews, three with the Gentiles. All that has happened, and they have him on the cross by 9 in the morning. But God is really in charge of all of this. Because it is in the plan of God that Jesus will die at three or around three in the afternoon at the very moment when they're slaughtering all the Passover lambs.
Then he will be the one true Lamb. This horrible form of execution. was invented as best we can tell by Darius the Mede. The Medo-Persian Empire conquered the Babylonian Empire. And history says that Darius crucified 3,000 Babylonians.
And he's credited with sort of inventing this, or at least doing it on a large scale. It's a horrific Horrific way. to die.
Now we've looked at the soldier's parody. We've looked for a moment at the Savior's punishment crucifixion. I want you to look for just a moment, kind of flipping the first letters to Pilate's sarcasm. Pilot's sarcasm.
Now remember, this is being carried off as a farce. A joke. And so, verse 26 says, The inscription of the charge against him read: The King of the Jews. That was not the actual crime. That placard was written by the Romans.
And that was really not... The charge. that the Jews wanted over his head? When they first came to Pilate, you remember they had a whole list of possible crimes? perverting the nation.
They tried that one and it didn't fly. Uh an evildoer, kind of a generic one? Uh a rebel?
Somebody leading the Jews to not pay their taxes. And all of that disintegrated in a chaotic cacophony of false witnesses who couldn't get their story right. And what they finally came up with in Caiaphas Hall was. Blasphemy. Remember that?
Because he claimed to be the Son of God, thus making himself equal with God.
So the real crime, he's a blasphemer. And they finally said that to Pilate. He is a blasphemer, and by our law, he has to die. They were right. Leviticus 24, 16, blasphemers.
Are deserving of the death penalty. That's what they would have wanted over his head. Blasphemer. But Pilate gets his petty revenge. And he puts this and drags it out in three languages.
This is Jesus of Nazareth. That's a joke in itself because nothing good comes out of. Nazareth, the king of the Jews. They hated that. John tells us in John 19.
Pilate wrote an inscription, put it on the cross. Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. Verse 20: Therefore, many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.
So the chief priests of the Jews were, they came to Pilate, they were saying to Pilate, Do not write the king of the Jews. You can't have that stated as a fact. But That he said, I am king of the Jews, and then everybody will know it's a joke. You have to put it as a Bizarre Profession, not as a fact. Pilate said.
These are his famous words. What I have written I have I have ridden. That's Pilate's petty revenge. His way to mock the Jews. He hates the Jews.
He's hated them since the day he arrived in town with his banners flying. And he hates them more now, and his little petty revenge is to slap on this man's cross. This is the King of the Jews. He will join the joke. himself.
We come then to the sneering participants, the soldier's parody, the Savior's punishment, pilot's sarcasm, and then the sneering participants. the sneering participants. I think it You have to start really with verse 31. But I want to back it up first. Verse 31 says, The chief priests also, along with the scribes, were mocking him.
They actually here are mentioned after the others. But in point of fact, they start the mocking. If you read Luke 23, Verse 35, it says, The rulers were sneering at him. And Matthew 27, 41 says the same thing, that the ridicule and the mockery and the sneering was led by the Sanhedrin. They're still at it.
They are still doing this that they started hours before in the deep early. Darkness of night. They're still in the same mode. And we'll get to them in a minute. Verse 27, however, says they crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left.
Likely, these two robbers were involved in the rebellion that was led by Barabbas and therefore guilty of murder, and that's why they were being given the death penalty. There's one on each side. They are There to add another Mocking element. To this parody. They put Jesus Between two thieves.
And may I hasten to say, I don't think his cross was bigger and stood up higher. That wasn't the point. The point Was to say, your king is no better than a common criminal. Verse 28. draws back to Isaiah 53, 12.
The Scripture was fulfilled which says, And he was numbered with transgressors.
Some of the manuscripts have that, some don't. That's why it's in brackets in the NAS. But it's certainly in Isaiah. That he would be numbered with the transgressors in his crucifixion, and in fact, he was. It is a fulfillment.
of prophecy. Go down to the end of verse 32 quickly. Those who were crucified with him, meaning those two thieves, were also insulting him.
So the sneering participants. Are the thieves to start with? This is amazing, isn't it? I mean, this has now reached them. These are guys Being executed in the same way.
We can assume they had been scourged, we can assume they had been nailed, we can assume the same agonies are going on, and they join the fun. That's how this wretchedness is contagious. Those who pass by add another gesture. They start wagging their heads. And by the way, Psalm 22, I just read to you says they will do that.
they will wag their heads at him, shaking their heads, Acknowledging that this is all a joke. Out of their mouth, He saved others himself he cannot save, and it's the gesture that cancels out the words to show that it's all scorn, sarcasm, and mockery. And you keep looking for mercy somewhere, but there isn't any. To show you that the gesture was tied to what they were saying. It says ha You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days.
Sarcasm. Save yourself and come down from the cross. That's all mockery. He never said he would destroy the temple. In John 2:19, he said he would destroy the temple of his body, and he would raise it in three days.
But they came up with this ridiculous idea that he had said he was going to destroy the temple in three days. They mock that. Verse 31: In the same way, the chief priests.
Now, they started it and they're still in it, along with the scribes. That's the Sanhedrin again. We're mocking him among themselves and saying, He saved others, he cannot save himself. They don't mean that as an affirmation, that's pure sarcasm. He doesn't save anybody.
He saved others. Huh. How about that? Claim to be a Savior. It's all scorn, and it's all sarcasm, and it's all mockery.
Verse 32: Let this Christ, say the Sanhedrin members, the king of Israel. You can see the sarcasm there. They don't believe that. They don't believe anything they said. It's all hypocrisy.
Let him now come down from the cross so that we may see and believe. Would they believe?
Well, he did come down. They took him down, they put him in a grave three days later. He came out of the grave. Did they believe? When it was reported to them that he rose from the dead, what did they do?
Did they believe? No, they bribed the soldiers to lie. It's all mockery, all of it. They wouldn't believe. If they didn't believe Moses and the prophets, they wouldn't believe the one rose from the dead.
This little section ends. With a statement we read earlier, those who were crucified with him were also insulting him. And that's back to the thieves. And this is my final point. The sinner's plea.
The thieves are in on the joke. In fact, Luke says One of the thieves said Echoing the Sanhedrin. Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us? It's all mockery.
They joined in on, they just took whatever was said, they were parrots. They were caught up in their ridicule. even in the midst of imminent death. But then something very dramatic happened. One of those thieves was literally taken captive by the power of God.
And in a moment... That thief said to the other thief, why are you doing that? This is a righteous man. We're getting what we deserve. This man's done nothing.
Then he says, remember me when you come into your kingdom, and he affirms a belief in Christ and a belief in Christ's future life on the other side of death. And that he's the king. And the conversion takes place. And you have in that moment, listen to me, a conversion of a blasphemer. How powerful is the cross?
So powerful that those who were there at the time blaspheming Jesus in his face. We're Redeemed. In Acts 6:7 says, Many of the priests later came to faith in Christ, they were forgiven. And we'll see that the centurion who was in charge of the execution and some of his soldiers said, This is the Son of God. And you'll meet them in heaven.
The whole purpose of redemption was for God to give to Christ a redeemed humanity, an offspring. People saved out of every generation of history. That was to be God's gift of love to his son, redeemed people who would spend forever with him loving him, serving him, praising him, honoring him, reflecting his glory throughout all eternity. That's the father's love gift to the son. In order for the father to be able to give that gift to the son, the son had to bear the punishment for those who make up that gift on the cross.
So it pleased the father to crush the one who pleased him so that he could forgive the ones who displeased him. Not just for their sake, but for the Son's sake, so that he could give them to the Son as his eternal inheritance. And the evidence of the meaning of the cross is there. He became sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him, Paul says. Peter says he bore in his own body our sins on the tree.
Paul says he took the curse for us. God punishes him.
so that the blasphemers can be forgiven. and shows us that with one teeth. Uh You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. The title of John's current series from the Gospel of Mark is The Divine Drama of Redemption. It's a sweeping look at the cross, the resurrection, and important related details, a fast-paced view of the final days of Jesus' earthly ministry.
Now, friend, if you would like to dig deeper into the amazing story of Jesus' work on behalf of sinners like you and me, let me suggest John's book called The Murder of Jesus. It will show you why Christ had to die for sinners and who is responsible for his death and what the hours from Gethsemane to Calvary mean for your life today and for eternity. To order John's book, The Murder of Jesus, get in touch with us today. Call 800-55-GRACE or visit our website gty.org. With its focus on how the death and resurrection of Christ makes salvation a reality for those who believe, the murder of Jesus is ideal to give to an unbeliever that you've been evangelizing.
The price is $15 and shipping is free. Again, to order the murder of Jesus, call 80055 GRACE or go to gty.org. And for even more teaching that can prepare you for a meaningful celebration this weekend, I would encourage you to go to our website, download some of Grace to U's other Easter-themed studies, such as Condemned and Crucified. The Crucifixion Chronicle. and the empty tomb.
These studies and all of John's 3,600 sermons are available free of charge at our website, gty.org. You'll also find daily devotionals, articles from the Grace to You blog, and much more, all free at gty.org.
Now for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today. Be back tomorrow when John MacArthur zooms in on the turning point of all history, the day that God visited Calvary. It's another 30 minutes of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
