The Crucifixion

Today on Renewing Your Mind, The Crucifixion.

They gave Him wine mingled with myrrh to drink, which was a narcotic to dull their senses, one of the very few humane elements that were accorded the executed. But Jesus did not take it. He suffered the full measure of this crucifixion without any painkillers. The horrors of the cross are impossible for us to imagine.

Rome had perfected cruelty, and the cross was the pinnacle of its torturous methods. Today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. R.C. Sproul is going to remind us of the enormous length our Triune God was willing to go to bring us to Himself. This morning as we turn our attention to the text of the gospel according to St. Mark, I'll begin at verse 16 in chapter 15 and read through verse 41. I'll ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God. And then the soldiers led Him away into the hall called Praetorium, and they called together the whole garrison. They clothed Him with purple, and they twisted a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and began to salute Him, hail, King of the Jews. And then they struck Him on the head with a reed and spat on Him, and bowing the knee they worshiped Him. And when they had mocked Him, they took the purple off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him out to crucify Him.

And then they compelled a certain man, Simon, a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by to bear His cross. And they brought Him to the place Golgotha, which is translated place of a skull. And then they gave Him wine mingled with myrrh to drink, but He did not take it. And when they crucified Him, they divided His garments, casting lots for them to determine what every man should take. Now that was the third hour, and they crucified Him. And the inscription of His accusation was written above, The King of the Jews. With Him they also crucified two robbers, one on His right and the other on His left, so that the Scripture was fulfilled which says, And He was numbered with the transgressors. Those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads, and saying, Aha, you who destroyed the temple and built it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross. Likewise the chief priests also, mocking among themselves with the scribes, said, He saved others, Himself He cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe.

And even those who were crucified with Him reviled Him. Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which is translated, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Some of those who stood by when they heard that said, Look, He's calling for Elijah. Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sire wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to him to drink, saying, Let him alone, let's see if Elijah will come to take him down. And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed his last. Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. So when the centurion who stood opposite him saw that, he cried out like this, and breathed his last, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God. There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the last, and of Joses and Salome, who also followed Him and ministered to Him when He was in Galilee, and many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem." This is the inspired record of the execution of our Lord. May God give us a deeper understanding of its significance for our lives.

Please be seated. I don't believe that it was immediately transparent to any of the bystanders that day that what was taking place in front of their very eyes was anything more than a matter of local geographical interest. They were watching the execution of a human being in the style of the Romans.

When the Romans used the execution form of crucifixion, they did not do it for Roman citizens, but only for slaves, for the most vile of criminals, and for captured prisoners of war. And yet what was going on in that place at that time was nothing less than the most momentous cosmic event imaginable, that these people were witnessing an atonement by which the wrath and justice of God were satisfied by a substitute would not have been immediately apparent to them. That we had to wait for the instruction of the epistles of the New Testament, which by divine revelation give to us the theological significance and interpretation of this naked event. For this reason I've decided to wait till next Sabbath morning to preach on the theological significance of the cross by examining the idea of atonement as it is set forth in the epistles of the New Testament and to restrict my comments this morning simply to the narrative that we have heard.

So let's look if we might at the story as Mark gives it to us. We remember that last Sunday morning at the end of Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate, verse 15, recorded that Pilate, wanting to gratify the crowd, released Barabbas to them, and he delivered Jesus after he had scourged him to be crucified. Some of you remember when we preached through the Gospel of John and looked at the passion narratives of that gospel that I spent some time speaking of the significance of the scourging that was the routine aspect of execution by crucifixion. Those who were to be scourged were tied to an upright post, their backs were bared, and then a guard used this leather braided thong that within the braids contained pieces of bone and pieces of metal, and then the prisoner was lashed until his skin came off his body, his bones were exposed, as well as his entrails. There were many, many prisoners of Rome who were sentenced to execution by the cross who never made it past the scourging. One of the reasons for the scourging was simply to humiliate the prisoner but also to make sure that the crucifixion itself would not have too long of a duration.

And so Jesus was subjected to this scourging and then was led away to the Praetorium Hall, which was probably a portion of the palace of Herod. And we're told they called together the whole garrison or the cohort, which would be one-tenth of a Roman legion, or to be specific, six hundred soldiers. So in the mockery that follows, it was not done by one or two people, but an entire cohort of Roman soldiers, six hundred of them had their fun with this prisoner.

We're told that they clothed him with purple, which was the specially valuable dye that was reserved for royalty. And so in their mockery they dressed him up like a king, and they made a makeshift crown of thorns from a plant that had exceedingly sharp spikes, and they put that on his head, and they began to salute him. In a mocking way, even as Caesar would be greeted by the words, Hail, Caesar, August one. So in a mocking tone, the soldiers saluted Jesus saying, Hail, King of the Jews. And they struck him on the head with a reed, and then they spat upon him.

Then they got down on their knees and feigned obeisance, again a mock worshiping of him. And when they had mocked him, they took the purple off him, put his own clothes on, and let him out to crucify him. Then Mark tells us in verse 21 that they compelled a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus as he was coming out of the country and passing by to bear his cross.

The language that is used here of compulsion is the way in which prisoners were compelled to be brought to their cells and in which animals were coerced and forced to go to their altar. Simon of Cyrene just happened to be passing by, and he was enlisted by the soldiers to carry the cross of Jesus. Now realize that normally the custom was that the prisoner who was to be executed was compelled to carry his own cross to the place of execution. Now it was not the full cross as some artists try to imagine, but it was simply the horizontal cross beam that after they got to the site of crucifixion would be affixed to the vertical post that was already there. And the point here is, is that Jesus had been so weakened by the scourging that He endured that He was not able to carry that cross piece Himself. And so they enlisted the aid of Simon of Cyrene, who Mark gives us an interesting detail here, which is a departure from his terse style and custom when he is identified as the father of Alexander and Rufus.

Now we have no other mention of Alexander in the New Testament, but there is a mention of Rufus who is mentioned in the church of Rome in the middle of the decade of the fifties, and scholars are pretty much convinced that the reason why he's mentioned here is that because when Mark wrote this gospel, he wrote it to the Christians at Rome, and they would know about Rufus and Alexander and their father Simon of Cyrene. The irony here is that Jesus had told His disciples that if they were to be His disciples, they were going to have to take up His cross and follow Him. And the first person in human history to do just that was Simon of Cyrene, who carried the cross of Jesus for Him. So they brought Him to the place of Golgotha, which is translated place of a skull. They gave Him wine mingled with myrrh to drink, which was a narcotic that was given for executed prisoners to dull their senses to the pain that they endured, one of the very few humane elements that were accorded the executed by Rome. But Jesus did not take it.

He suffered the full measure of this crucifixion without any painkillers. And when they crucified Him, they divided His garments, casting lots for them to determine what every man should take, exactly as was prophesied in the Old Testament, Psalm 22. And then we read by Mark that it was the third hour, which has Mark indicating that the crucifixion began at nine o'clock in the morning because the timing began at 6 AM. The third hour would be nine. The sixth hour would be noon.

And if your math is fine, you'd know that the ninth hour would be three o'clock in the afternoon, but it started at nine in the morning. And the inscription of His accusation was written above. Again, it was the custom of the Romans when they subjected someone to a public execution by crucifixion to tack up on the vertical beam of the cross the charges for which the prisoner was being executed. And in this case, the simple message was Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. With Him, they crucified two robbers, one on His right, the other on His left. So again, the Scripture was fulfilled which says that He was numbered with the transgressors according to the prophecy of Isaiah. Those who passed by, the public that were watching this spectacle as they walked by, they wagged their heads at Him.

And again they mocked Him saying, Aha! You are the one who are going to destroy the temple and build it up in three days. Well, let's see you save yourself. Save yourself and come down from the cross. But dear friends, Jesus wasn't about saving Himself. Jesus didn't need a Savior. He was about saving us.

And even those, like the chief priests, continued the mockery. He saved others Himself He cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross that we may see and believe. They saw the Christ, and they saw the King of Israel. They saw the Savior. But as long as He was attached to that cross, they had no exercise of faith whatsoever. Come on down, Jesus.

Step down now, and then maybe we'll begin to believe the claims that You have made. And even those who were crucified with Him reviled Him. We know according to the other gospel accounts that one of them changed that reviling into faith before He died that day, but initially both of them were mocking Jesus. Then when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land, until the ninth hour.

Amazing! From noon until three in the afternoon, the light of the sun was blotted out and darkness came upon the land. That must have terrified the people who were there.

The same kind of reaction that people of antiquity would have when a solar eclipse would come for fifteen or twenty minutes would scare them to death because they didn't know why it was happening. But here it was much more than a solar eclipse, where God Himself plunges the world into darkness, and there is significance to that, as I've indicated before and will try to develop more next week, that in this atoning death, the light of the countenance of God was turned off, and the Father turns His back on His Son, because what was hanging on the cross was the most grotesque, obscene thing in human history because it contained the fullness of the pollution of our wickedness. And God is too holy as to even behold sin.

And so the Father turned the lights out on the sun, which was part of the curse for sin. And when that happened, Jesus screamed, not at the agony of the thorns and of the spears and of the nails or of the cross, but of the forsakenness of God. God's own Son, who was with Him from eternity, willingly gave up His glory to become incarnate, who enjoyed the closest possible intimacy with the Father throughout His entire lifetime, now drinks the cup of the Father's wrath and must experience forsakenness. And when it happens, He screams, my God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Now the eyewitnesses are not only watching, but they're listening, and they hear this anguished cry from Jesus. And some said, He's calling for Elijah. Someone ran and felt a sponge full of sire wine, put it on a wreath, and offered to him to drink, saying, Let him alone. Let's see if Elijah will come and take him down. Elijah didn't come.

Nobody took him down until it was over. The spot on which this occurred, by the way, traditionally was the spot of Old Testament Mount Moriah where Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac on the altar. And when he bound his son and raised the knife to plunge it into the heart of his son at the last second, God called him, Abraham, Abraham, lay not thy hand upon thy son.

For now I know that you trust Me. And behold, Abraham looked, and off to the side there was a lamb caught by the horns in the thicket, and God who was Jehovah Jireh provided a substitute for Isaac. And so the son of Abraham was spared.

But two thousand years later on that same hill, on a different altar, it wasn't Abraham's son. It was God's son, and this time, beloved, nobody hollered, Stop. And so Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and He breathed His last. At that instant, the veil of the temple, that veil that separated fallen humanity from the sacred holy of holies in the temple, that veil of several strands of woven things that could not be penetrated, suddenly was torn from top to the bottom, and that wall of separation was ended.

That should have been a clue of the more than local significance of what was happening on this occasion. And the centurion who stood opposite him saw that, that he cried out like this and breathed his last. The custom of the Romans would have four soldiers guarding the prisoner during the execution, headed by a fifth who was a centurion who was a leader over a hundred soldiers, and the centurion maybe was the first to recognize something going on here beyond a local execution when he said, Truly, this man was the Son of God. And that should be the confession of everyone who looks upon Christ and sees His perfect life, His unjust death, and His miraculous resurrection.

The centurion believed that day. When you look upon Christ, do you believe He's the Son of God? We're glad you've joined us for this Lord's Day edition of Renewing Your Mind.

I'm Lee Webb. Each Sunday we hear a sermon from Dr. R.C. Sproul's series In the Gospel of Mark, and our resource offer today will allow you to study Mark's gospel in depth on your own. When you contact us with a donation of any amount, we will provide you a digital download of Dr. Sproul's commentary on Mark.

You can go online to request it at renewingyourmind.org. You may also enjoy listening to Dr. Stephen Nichols' podcast, Five Minutes in Church History. You'll travel back in time and take a look at the people, events, and places that have shaped Christianity. You can browse the archives at fiveminutesinchurchhistory.com, or you can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Just before Jesus died, He said, It is finished. That statement is loaded with meaning, and R.C. will explain it next Sunday in a message titled, The Atonement. You have been listening To The Atonement.