Music playing... It can be easy for any of us to get caught up in the gory details of how Jesus suffered on the cross, but that clearly wasn't what the Gospel writers were focusing on. Today on Truth for Life, we'll examine the crucifixion story and learn why its purpose isn't to provoke our sympathy, but to demand a response. Alistair Begg is teaching from chapter 15 of Mark's Gospel. The soldiers are now entrusted with the responsibility of leading him away, and in verse 16 they decide that they will bring together the battalion.
Look at the way Mark just moves on. And when they had mocked him… You see, when children are unkind to other children at school, there's only so many names you can employ, there's only so many bad things you can do before it runs out of steam. And eventually, the mockery will stop, either because you're tired or you're bored or you're jaded, or perhaps you are ashamed—bearing shame and scoffing rude. In my place condemned he stood. What is Jesus doing there?
He is bearing the punishment that sinners deserve. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple cloak. That's verse 20. They put his own clothes back on him, and they led him out to crucify him. Whether it was on account of Jewish sensibilities that would not have been shared by the Romans that would demand that he would not then be paraded around in his nakedness, but his clothes are on him, and he's on his way to be crucified.
Now jump forward to verse 24. They led him out to crucify him, verse 24, and they crucified him. It's just three words in Greek, the most cruel form of execution devised in all of humanity, probably. The Roman writer Cicero says, Let it never come near the body of a Roman citizen, nay, not even near his thoughts, or his eyes, or his ears.
What the Romans devised was only used on non-Romans. It was a shame for even the Romans to think about how brutal was that which they did. The victim was nailed to a cross. That cross was then raised and dropped into a socket in the ground. The individual would then hang there, exposed, alone, dying an agonizing, slow death, with a tiny little piece for his feet so that every so often he may be able to push himself up to prevent asphyxiation.
All of the pressure on his chest cavity is squeezing the life out of him over a period of time. It's no surprise that our English word excruciating comes from the same root as that which gives to us the word crucifixion. With all that said, it ought to be striking to us that the Gospel writers spare us any of these details—that the Gospel writers do not go into a purple passage endeavoring to do what I have just done in summary fashion. They do not enter into the physicality of the sufferings of Jesus, that they are not preoccupied as in The Passion of the Christ, the Mel Gibson movie of some years ago. They are not preoccupied with a solid onslaught that reveals to us again and again and again the nature of these sufferings, what actually happened physically.
And you have to ask yourself the question, why is that? And the answer is straightforward—that the Gospel writers and the writers of the Epistles after them were not focused on the physical aspect of the suffering—not that it was irrelevant, it clearly wasn't—but they were focused on what the suffering was actually achieving. They're not describing what it was like for him to suffer. They are describing why it was he suffered. So, for example, 1 Peter 2.24, "'He himself,' says Peter, "'he himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree.'"
See, that language is so clear, isn't it? He himself. He himself.
Not somebody else. God dies in our place. God dies in our place. People say, Well, where is God in suffering? We do not have a God on a deck chair. We have a God on a cross. He himself bore our sins in his body on that tree.
And in the middle of all of that brutality, the mockery continues. Those who were crucified within, the robbers in verse 27, they were engaged in it, as you see from the parallel passages. The passersby in verse 28, you will notice, is missing in the ESV, because it's not in the oldest manuscripts.
Don't worry about it. You can find the verse in Luke's record. It doesn't add anything that isn't elsewhere in the Bible, and it doesn't remove anything that is elsewhere in the Bible.
So I shouldn't even have mentioned it, but I know someone will come and say, What happened to verse 28? So that's why. But you see that those who passed by also derided him wagging their heads. It's interesting, isn't it? Again, this eyewitness detail that was passed on to Mark, wagging their heads.
It's interesting what we do with our heads, isn't it? He said, Mm-mm. Do you know how annoying that is? When you go to the front of the line to take your passport, and you think you're nixed? The person goes, Mm-mm. You're like, Don't do that to me. Don't do that to me.
Or you trip, and you fall, and you look stupid, and you go, Mm. That's what I'm telling you. Yeah. That's the kind of thing that was going on. There are people at executions—I've seen it on the Western movies—there are people at executions, they show up for executions.
Right? There's going to be a hanging, don't want to miss it. Medieval England, we're going to chop a few heads off, we don't want to miss that. They're going to burn people, let's be there. So there are people like that. They like to go to that.
There were people there. They walk up and down, looking at it, wagging their heads, saying, You're no king of the Jews. You're no king. If you were a king, you wouldn't be up there. Yeah, that's what you get for saying those things. That's it.
That's it. And Jesus hangs up there and takes this? The king? The king takes this from his subjects? Why? Because he came to save.
To save. You see, we have immediately gone wrong if, in viewing this event, we say to ourselves, Oh, I get it, Jesus is the sufferer par excellence. Well, he suffers in an amazing way.
There's no question about that. But we've missed the point. He is not here revealed to us as simply an example of one who suffers. But he is revealed to us here as the one who saves. He is revealed to us here as the one who is a sacrifice for sin. He is revealed to us here as the one who is a substitute dying in the place of others.
Well, that then brings us to the other side of the equation, and I'll spend only a little time on this. But I'm suggesting to you that if you look carefully at the passage, you will see that it is marked not only by mockery and cruelty but also by majesty and by irony. These events are unfolding here just as Jesus had said they would. They had asked him previously, Prophesy, they said to him. And the irony of it was that the very things that were taking place were in fulfillment of what he had actually said. You can read that again, Mark chapter 9, 30 and following, as he once again explains to his disciples what is going to happen.
And what he says will happen back there in Mark 9 and in 8 and again in 10 is fulfilled to the letter in what we're discovering here. In the same way, you notice that Jesus offers the possibility—he rejects the offer of wine mixed with myrrh, verse 23—but he did not take it. That was a pain-dulling mixture. It was, if you like, a fledgling form of anesthetic potion.
But he is in control, and he remains in control. He refuses the offer of that which would mitigate his sufferings, because he has told his disciples, I have a cup to drink. It is the cup of suffering, and I am going to drink it in its entirety. And these people, in a gesture of kindness—perhaps the women who came to the cross—said, Maybe Jesus could have some of this that would help him. And Jesus says, No, I'm not gonna have any of that.
He had already told them at the Passover meal that he wouldn't drink the fruit of the vine until he drank it new in the kingdom of heaven. Perhaps that was in the back of his mind as well, but certainly his control in this circumstance made it possible for him to be alert to the need around him. If he had succumbed to the impact of this wine mingled with myrrh, he may have been unconscious when the robber on the one side to him said, Father, will you remember me when you come into your kingdom? He may have been less than alert to be able to look down from the cross and to see his mother and to ask the disciple whom he loved to look after his mother.
He may have been unavailable to make that great pronouncement, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they're doing. Now, if you look carefully here, you will see that Jesus is here in all of his majesty. They're dividing up his clothes.
What a picture. And they divided his garments among them, casting lots for them to decide what each should take. Well, you may want to read Psalm 22 in relationship to that, and you'll be amazed if you've never seen it before. For dogs encompass me. A company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and form my clothing.
They cast lots. Mark says, Oh, here's the prophetic passage from Psalm 22. Here is exactly what was taking place. You see, it's wrong for us to think that somehow or another Jesus has been caught up in a malevolent plan.
No. He is the King of the Jews. That's the irony of it—that his majesty is displayed in the inscription. The Romans like to have somebody walk in front of the person, the criminal, with a sign, or they nail that sign up for all to see, and Pilate, presumably in a little dig at the Jews, decides, This is a great title to put up here. This is the King of the Jews. In John's record, you'll find that the people came from the Jewish authorities and said, Don't write that, Pilate. Say, He said he was the King of the Jews, not, This is the King of the Jews. Pilate says, You just leave that to me.
What I've written, I have written. And so, he came to his own, and his own received him not. Even with a jolly sign right above his head declaring who he is, they could not, they would not see him. They said, Well, the reason that we can't believe is because we can't see. So why don't you, this king of Israel, come down from the cross, verse 32, that we may see and we may believe?
That's the wrong way around. In the New Testament, we believe in order that we might see. Well, if I don't see, I won't believe.
If we could see, we would believe. That isn't true. It wasn't true in their case. If you doubt that, you only need to read the end of Matthew's Gospel. And you remember that after the resurrection, when the soldiers who were responsible for the death of Jesus, who were able-bodied men presiding over these events all the time, who knew when somebody was dead and knew when somebody wasn't, who were struck visibly by the fact that Jesus died so quickly in comparison to others who lingered on, Jesus rises from the grave.
And while they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And they said, Really? That's what we were waiting for. That's what we said just the other day. A couple of days ago, we said, Look, why don't you come down from the cross, then we can see, and then we'll believe.
Isn't that what they said? You know, if you come down, then we'll see that you must be the king. The irony of it is, they see that he is the king because he doesn't come down. Why don't you save yourself? You saved other people, why don't you save yourself?
The irony is, he saves others because he doesn't save himself. And so, the guards tell them that Jesus has actually risen from the dead, and so they assembled with the elders, and they took counsel. And out they go with the money again. Thirty pieces of silver to seduce that Judas fellow. Thirty pieces of silver for him. What is it going to cost for hush money for the soldiers? A substantial sum of money. And they took counsel, and they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers.
Why? To tell the people his disciples came by night and stole them away while we were asleep. And if this comes to the governor's ears, we'll take care of the governor. Don't worry about Pilate. We'll keep you out of trouble.
So they took the money and did as they were directed, and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day, giving the lie to what they said. Our problem is an intellectual problem. We just can't see.
If we could see, then we believe. No. The problem is a moral problem, and your problem is a moral problem too. Oh, I don't doubt that you've got intellectual questions. I don't doubt that you can go to parts of the Bible as I can go to parts of the Bible and say, I'm not sure how this fits with that or how this works or whatever. There's no doubt about any of those things. We see through a glass darkly. But at the core, the reason that you don't believe in Jesus is not because you haven't seen. It's because you won't believe.
You won't believe. You won't become as a little child. You won't bow down before him. You won't acknowledge that he is king. You stand at the crossroads and say, I'm not gonna do that.
That's what they did. That's the irony in it. No, here we are at the very heart of the gospel story. He saved others, he can't save himself. It wasn't a physical impossibility for Jesus to come down from the cross.
He had already crossed that Rubicon, though, hadn't he? Father, not what I will, but what you will. I've come to be the Savior of all who put their trust in me. He's not there so that we might have sympathy for him as a perfect sufferer, but he is there in order that we might put our faith and trust in him as our only Savior. Christ also suffered for sins, says Peter later on. Once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous to bring us to God. Now, there's far more in this passage. I'm going to leave it to you, but let me finish in this way.
Little thoughts for, you know, homework and further discussion. What about this fellow Simon and these two guys, Rufus and Alexander? It's interesting how they just—and Rufus and Alexander are like, Who are Rufus and Alexander? Presumably Mark knew everybody—Mark figured everybody knew who Rufus and Alexander was.
You know, it's tough when you get introduced as the father of well-known children. Who's Simon? Oh, he's Alexander's dad. Oh, yes.
Who is Alexander? He's Rufus's brother. Really? Yeah. Why'd you mention that?
Well, I thought you would all know him. Cranfield in his commentary has a wonderful little sentence. This is what he says, The account of Simon does not encourage any speculation on the feelings of Simon. And then he has his own little speculation.
Comma. But it is natural to wonder whether this experience led to his conversion. So, we're not supposed to really speculate about how Simon was feeling, but while we're at it, I just wonder whether it might have led to his conversion.
Because if you think about it, it's quite remarkable. What did Jesus say? If anybody wants to be my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow me. Hey, Simon, excuse me.
We need your help here. Press-ganged into doing something. Did his boys say to him, Hey, Dad, that's what it means to be a follower of Jesus? Did he become a follower of Jesus then? I don't know. But we do know that the unlikely fellow, he became a follower of Jesus.
And during the week, while we've been in London, one of the things we've been doing is going out on the streets, giving out copies of Luke's Gospel. And in seeking to engage in conversation with people, there were a number of opening gambits that we used. One of them went like this. Excuse me, do you have a moment to hear about a bad man that went to heaven? And often the answer was, no.
Or worse than no. But every so often, the answer was, yeah, sure, I'd like to think about that. Because by and large, people have got the notion that if there is a good God, he rewards nice people, and they go to heaven. So good people go to heaven, and it's an amazing thing to discover that only bad people go to heaven. So he told them the story of a thief on the cross, who realized that he was getting punished because he deserved it, and then he figured that Jesus was getting punished, and he didn't deserve it. And then somehow, in a remarkable way, he put two and two together and realized he must be getting punished so that I don't have to bear the punishment.
And so he said, hey. And Jesus said, yes. Well, there's only two possibilities when you stand before this cross.
Either acceptance or rejection. I don't know if Simon Cyrene became a Christian that day. I don't know what day you became a Christian.
I don't know if you've ever become a Christian. But frankly, and you might as well know it, that the whole reason we exist as a church is to say to people, hey, stand at this cross and make your decision. You've got two options. Either that you bow before Jesus and acknowledge him to be the person that he claimed to be, that he is the only Lord and Savior, and you entrust your life to him, and you trust him. You turn to him in repentance and in faith. Or you walk out the door. You walk out the door as an infidel.
You can walk out the door as a religious maniac. It's your choice. And there's no time like the present. And the only moment you've got is this moment. And to quote the sign that I saw last night coming from the airport on 480, on the right-hand side as you're coming east, that big black and white sign, after you die, you will meet God.
And because he loves so much, he sent his only son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. That's good news. Believe it.
Share it. Thank you, Lord, for the Bible. Thank you. Thank you that we don't have to think up sermons. Thank you that it's there before us. It's clear.
All the cloudiness is on my side. So, Lord, I pray that you will help us to stand, as it were, before the cross of Christ, and then by your grace to take our place beneath that cross. For we pray in Christ's name, Amen.
You're listening to Truth for Life. That is Alistair Begg urging each of us to make the right choice and to trust in Christ as our Lord and Savior. Here at Truth for Life, we believe the Bible is as relevant today as ever before. We are passionate about helping people everywhere understand what the Bible says, what it means, and why it matters. We believe that as God's word goes forth to more and more people, God will apply it in people's hearts and bring them to saving faith in Jesus Christ. We're always looking for more ways that we can help you learn about Jesus or tell others about who he is and what he's done. And today, I want to tell you about a short seven-minute gospel film called The Man on the Middle Cross.
This is a dramatic video that depicts individuals in real-life situations, things like struggling with addiction or being imprisoned. It illustrates the power of the gospel to bring hope and salvation into our despair. This film makes it clear that we don't need to clean ourselves up before we come to Jesus. In fact, we are to bring only our sin. It is Christ's work alone that saves us. The Man on the Middle Cross film can be watched or shared for free. Go to truthforlife.org slash middlecross. Thanks for listening to Truth for Life this week. Hope you have a great weekend and are able to worship with your local church. On Monday, we'll find out why the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus isn't just a story for Christians, it's the pivotal event in all of human history. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
