I invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Mark chapter 15. That's the second book of the New Testament. Mark, we are fast approaching the end of this book. And this morning we come to verses 21 through 32. 21 through 32. This is the word of the Lord beginning at verse 21. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull. And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, The King of the Jews. And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, Aha, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross. So also the chief priests and the scribes mocked Him to one another saying, He saved others, He cannot save Himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe. Those who were crucified with Him also reviled Him. There ends the reading of God's Word this morning. I remember having a call recently from a Bounding Grace listener. and they asked the question. We've aired a lot of this stuff over the radio, and a question from one of the listeners, and he asked the question, he said, is there anything that you can send me? And I said, what are you after? And he says, I want to know more about the cross. And I said to him, I said, oh, are you a non-believer? Is this all new to you? He says, no, no, I've been in church all my life, but I've never heard anyone explain to me what Jesus went through. Huh. What an interesting moment on the phone. He then goes on to say, I'm just, I'm burnt out on all of the entertainment stuff. I just, I can't do it anymore. I just have to have substance. Somebody who explains to me what the Bible says. My heart sunk as he expressed these things to me. And I thought about it a little more in preparation for this and the scripture passage that we're considering that we've heard this message our entire life. We ask people when they come for a profession of faith, when we give a witness to the gospel, what is the Christianity all about? And people will say, well, it's about Jesus dying on a cross. He came on a cross to pay for my sins. And we say this, we say this all the time and we say it and it becomes one of the most common things that we say. We say it so loosely and so freely that I wonder anymore if we understand what's behind all of that. Do we understand what we're saying when we say these things? Do we make clear to people what we're saying and what we believe when we say such a thing? Or has it just become something so common? Are we like the mortician? who, when it comes to the subject of Christ's death, the mortician is the guy who constantly has bodies pass in front of them all the time. You ever notice what happens to a mortician? I've met a few of these guys along the way. There are so many bodies that pass through their hands, they lose all sensitivity to death. You should see the hardness and the coldness of the mortician. he's become one of the most cold individuals to the very thing that he needs the most sensitivity to to be effective in his occupation. We're like that. Jesus died. Jesus died. We yawn. Every Sunday night, we say in the Apostles' Creed that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. What does that mean? What do these things mean? You know, our Lord wants us to give serious reflection to this. He has given us a whole testimony in these records, in these four gospels, and detailed about what He went through. And you know the message to fulfill, right? Dying on the cross, to pay for our sins, we say. Well, this morning I want to look at this and consider it from Mark's perspective and have us think a little bit about what Mark is doing in his particular revelation and revealing of these events. You know that Mark was written to Roman Christians. And some of those to whom he is writing are about themselves to be brought to tribunals and themselves to face persecution. Mark is thinking about these things as he's recording these events. Mark has an aim in who he's writing to. and in this mark has a specific purpose of helping these roman christians that's why there's names mentioned here did you catch that it's focused directly on the act of the roman crucifixion and the events that surround it to tell and help them think through what happened as they begin to face persecution in carrying the cross of christ and bearing that cross and we have to have some understanding of it this morning to appreciate what Mark was doing and explaining for them. Death by crucifixion was one of the most humiliating and degrading forms of capital punishment ever practiced by human beings. It had the effect in Rome of providing one of the greatest deterrence against insurrections and rebellions. It was meant to scare people. You don't want to mess with us. This is what's going to happen to you. And it worked. It was designed to strike absolute fear into everyone. You didn't want to die this way. You got to die in some way. This is not the way you want to die. Tacitus said of it from a Roman point of view, People were so deterred from rebellion. By the time Tiberius became the emperor, nothing anymore happened. This was absolutely scary to have to go through. It's important because Mark is capturing for us that Jesus has been specifically numbered, and he's using Isaiah to show it, specifically numbered among the insurrectionists. He's hung with Barabbas' buddies here. And that's exactly what the Jews would later do to the Christians. What's happening here is what, I mean, we studied this with the church in Smyrna last time where Jesus said to those Roman Christians, I see what the Jews who call themselves Jews but are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. I see what they're doing to you. I see it. They did it to me. It's the same thing. So this matters because this morning as we're considering this and he's writing to these Roman Christians, even though Jesus would suffer the cruel death on the cross with the charge of being an insurrectionist to the imperial crown in Rome, the larger truth that Mark is showing here is that Jesus took a form of death that is directly accursed by God. So you'll see what he's doing here. That even though Jesus was delivered up by malicious intent and crucified as a common criminal for something he did not do, and we've been considering how strong the testimony of the Scriptures are on that point, he was perfect and sinless. God, in the midst of all this, was working out a bigger plan, wasn't he? To make him the curse and provide him as an answer for all of humanity that has lived in insurrection and rebellion against God. And that's the marvel of this whole event. He took our place and became what we are. So that as we charged him with what we are, we would receive instead an eternal release. And what a motivation for these Roman Christians to take up the cross. Take up the cross. We'll come back to that. What I want to do here this morning is fairly simple. Look at the crucifixion from a Roman point of view and then from a scriptural point of view, from the revelation of the whole story. That's why we sing the Psalms and we look at Psalm 109 that's telling this whole story. And the goal is to let it be an encouragement for us to see what He did and bore for us so that we know what we bear and are called to carry as followers of Him. This is Mark's intent. So as we pick up where we left off and consider putting this all together, we begin by saying what our Lord had to endure is shocking. We know that. They have at this point taken Him and they have scourged Him. They have put big whips with bone attached to the end, striking his back, splitting him open, making him a public ridicule and a public shame. They have twisted a crown of thorns and they have struck him with a reed that we know of mockery would ultimately be set in his hand as a purple robe of mockery was draped from his bloody body to ridicule his supposed kingship. It's all mockery. The soldiers of the praetorium, as we considered last time, have all taken turns, given him blows to the face. They get in rakes, hail to the king of the Jews, and they start striking him with their fists. Bloody, beaten, whipped, covered in blood, Pilate brings him out on the patio or terrace where the judgment hall faced a big street and all the people would gather around and watch these many court cases where Pilate would sit on a throne and render a judgment. Although no charge could be made against him, Pilate is working hard six times. He says, I find nothing wrong with him. We gather this from the gospel's accounts. Yet when presented with the opportunity to free him and to release Him as was the custom of the Jews during the Passover, an ironic twist in the narrative that they would release a prisoner to celebrate their own release from Egypt by Yahweh's deliverance. They won't afford Him the same deliverance. They won't let Him go. They won't give Him release. But they release the rebel instead. All chanting against Jesus of Nazareth, crucify him, crucify him. It's a marvel, the whole thing. As we left off last time, Pilate has taken his seat on the judgment seat and has rendered a verdict. There was only one thing the Jews needed to say. After all of Pilate's attempts to take him back to the praetorium, to dress him up, to beat him, to put him back on the street and say, is this enough? Is this enough? Have I done enough to him? After all that, there was only one thing that the chief priest stirring up the crowds needed to do. And it was to pitch him as a seditious rebel to Caesar. If Pilate would do nothing about that, he's done. He's already had a tumultuous reign in his position, been removed once before. He's at the end of it. He just wants to wash his hands of this whole thing and be done with it. So out came the verdict. Guilty. He's guilty. He's a seditious rebel against Caesar. That's the charge by Rome. That's what God had put on the cross. So we read that they led him out to crucify him. I'm going to spend a little bit of time here on the physical aspect of this, but it's important to understand it and then look at it from the scriptural point of view. Mark is having these Christians think about the Roman crucifixion and the details of this are important. Verse 22, verse 21, we'll notice we start getting into what happens here with Simon Sirene. But in verse 22, we are told that they brought him to a place called Golgotha, which is translator, which means place of a skull. Full of dehydration and bleeding, he has to go around a half a mile. We know this as he gets to the gate, his physical capacities are exhausted. He's tired, he stumbles, and he falls. He's just physically weakened and wearied to the point of exhaustion. The soldiers are ready to expedite this and get it done. So they call one Simon the Cyrenian of Cyrene to carry the cross. I'm going to end with that, verse 21. I believe that's so important to this. He's gone to a place that is full of dead bones. It was a place of Roman execution outside of the camp, outside of the city, full of corpses and bones. It was known by the earliest writers and described by the earliest writers as a hill that had the formation of a skull. That's why it's called the place of a skull. It looked like a skull. Somewhere outside the Jerusalem Gate so that passers-by could see. You'd see this was the Roman way of saying don't mess with the crown. So he's brought there and these dark, ominous words are given in Mark's Gospel and they crucified him. This is exactly what the caller wanted to know about. This is what he wanted to think about. why the gospels revealed these things and what this was and all these things that we hear I never knew for the longest of of times as a matter of fact in my um in my coming on 13 years now of ministry I you know I consider how many times have I gone through the whole crucifixion narrative in my pastorates and and you know it's just it's just two it's my second time we think we know this but uh it's really not as common to us as we think in 1968 they um they actually dug up a jewish tomb and they found a man who had been crucified by rome and the cross uh they said uh they know at least the height of the cross was no higher than a man but putting together what they did is they gave a description of what they found with this man is where we have the best understanding of it. The soldiers took Jesus and they pushed him backwards against the cross and they drove a heavy square iron 18 centimeter nail right through his forearm into the wood and did it with both arms. They took the left foot and they pushed it backwards against the right foot, and both were facing down, and drive another of these nails through both, in both cases, it's done to leave some kind of flexibility of the body for movement. The criminal is then said to be crucified. This was the Roman crucifixion. How does he die? Well, when a person was crucified, he would hang there for hours in excruciating pain. The more you drop, the more you have to push yourself up from the stretching. But you have to raise yourself up to get air. This is how you breathe. So hours of this until you are asphyxiated and your heart compresses until you have little air. Finally, after hours of this, you die of the torment, ultimately of sheer exhaustion. you just can no longer handle it your body gives out mark and the details around this are are are shocking and fascinating in verse 24 and mark john gives a lot more detail with regard to this but in verse 24 we read that they divided his garments mark doesn't want us to miss that in roman executions the victims were the criminals were left hanging naked on the cross and it was meant to have the effect of total degradation and shame they're naked on the cross jews would ask for some kind of dignity they'd ask for a loincloth but john tells us in great detail that they stripped all of this what a scene crucified in this kind of shame Pilate takes a big sign and he puts it up and we know that it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek king of the Jews right over they would put your crime what you were crucified for right over but notice what Pilate did king of the Jews pilot doesn't write claim to be pilot writes king of the jews he did this to take a direct shot at the jews as a matter of fact we know they would complain about this don't don't put that there don't put that there he's not that don't put that there what i wrote i wrote it's an interesting moment for the verdict pilot agreed to was that jesus was a seditious rebel against the imperial crown, right? But Pilate, never believing that himself, takes a dig at the Jews. Here is your king. We're crucifying your king. Thus, make sure that the guilt of this is not past. There he was nailed next to two common criminals, most likely Barabbas' fellow accomplices in the insurrection that Mark had already mentioned. Jesus is put right in the middle and then comes the mockery. The people who were false witnesses in his trial and others begin to walk by and wag their heads at him. They begin to shake their heads at him. Aha, you destroyed the temple and said you'd raise it up in three days. Get down from the cross now. Let's see that. Got any power to get out of this? I remember years ago, a man dying from cancer. And on his deathbed, he said to me as I sat there, Pastor, that rotten devil, he kicks you hardest in life when you're down. I've never been kicked like this right now. Here I am rotting away. And the things I'm going through, the spiritual struggle I'm going through. Let's see you, Messiah, get down from the cross. Come on, get down. Hear the devil, can't you? What a sad scene. I quote Spurgeon here because I think he does so well at these moments. Believer in Jesus, can you gaze upon him without tears? As he stands before you, the mirror of agonizing love. He is at once fair as the lily for innocence and red as the rose with the crimson of His own blood. As we feel the sure and blessed healing which His stripes have wrought in us, does not our heart melt at once with love and grief? If ever we have loved our Lord Jesus, surely we must feel that affection glowing now within our bosoms. See the patient Jesus stands, insulted in His lowest case. Sinners have bound the Almighty's hands and spit in their Creator's face. With thorns His temples gored and gashed, send streams of blood from every part. His backs with knotted scourges lashed, but sharper scourges tear His heart. And Mark, in this, wanted Roman Christians to look at all of this with wider eyes. He was, we know, delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God. And Acts would make that so very clear that there is a greater story here that Mark wants us to consider. And the greater story here is to have us all remember that this death was accursed by God. From the moment the Passion was inaugurated in Mark's Gospel, Isaiah 53 has been on Mark's mind. He keeps thinking about Isaiah 53. And in verse 27, you'll notice that that little phrase here comes out in the midst of this to say, Keep it there. Keep it there. Remember this. Dear Roman Christians, remember this. He was numbered with the transgressors. You know that verse in Isaiah 53 says, He was numbered with the transgressors, yet He bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. Who was? Who was? This is what Mark has been saying from the beginning when he said the beginning of the gospel of God. The Son of God. And he said that the kingdom of God was at hand. This is God's King. This is the King who's come. This is the Son of God. And here it is. In the midst of all this, here is the gospel of God's Son. This is why the whole thing began with repent and believe in this King. This King went there for you. Marcus is thinking about the bigger story here. Outside of the wicked display of wicked, ruthless, lawless rulers crucifying the Lord of glory and such shame, is the Father working out His plan of good for you. It's the ultimate message of what we've learned from the Scriptures from the beginning when Joseph was handed over and treated so terribly by his own brothers and thrown in the pit and stripped naked and had his robe removed and beaten and sold into slavery when he was put in the dungeon. All of that, Joseph would look back and say, remember, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. Here's the ultimate understanding of it. What the devil has meant for evil, God has meant for good. What the devil meant for evil in destroying the Son of God at the cross, thinking He even won at the cross. Aha! Aha! Get down now! Gotcha! God, the Father, is working out His whole plan for you. That's how we handle everything in life, isn't it? How much has that truth helped you in every kind of circumstance? it. But most of all, in the greatest problem of your rebellious hearts, when you can't understand any of this and you don't understand life and it's all a big enigma and you're perplexed by it all, you can come to this truth. What everyone meant for evil, God meant for good for you. And look at it unfold. Go over it one more time now with the eyes of Pilate here as he takes his seat on the throne. I want you to go through this one more time and now look at it how Mark is having us think about it using Isaiah 53. If we had the ability to be there that day, and see this horrid event. And God were to open our eyes, just like Elisha's servant. Look, you would have looked up and seen above Pilate's throne another throne and a greater taking his seat where the true judge resided and presided. And what's happening here is God's Son taking His place of our judgment. What imagery do you have? What is the story that is unfolding? You know it. Take your Son. And I could remove names here. Take now your Son. Your only Son, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains. So he rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and his son. And he split the wood for the burnt offering. And he arose and he went to the place of which God had told him. And on the third day, he lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off and said to his young men, stay here with the donkey. The lad and I will go yonder and worship and we'll come back. So he took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on the back of his son. And he took fire in his hand and a knife. And the two of them went up together and he laid them on the altar. Fire in hand. Up. Stop. Stop. Take your son down. I'll put my son there. I'll put my son there for you. You know this story. You know this story. Jesus takes our place, intercedes for the transgressors. Isaiah 53. God the Father did not spare His own Son, but gave Him freely for us all. He has put on His head a crown of what? Thorns. He's taken to Golgotha, place of the skull, announcing that Genesis 3 is being fulfilled. When He spoke to the woman, you remember the curse that came down at creation, That with thorns, thorns was always the symbol of the curse. He's wearing it. He's become the curse. And then he goes to the place where in the promise made in Genesis 3, that this one, the seed of the woman, would crush the head of the serpent. He goes to the place of the skull. Come on. It's all here. It's here that He ultimately secures and wins the victory. The shame. They strip Him bare. Why? He has to go to the cross in complete shame, naked, in front of everyone. You ever thought that we're all dressed up today and clothed for a reason? When Adam and Eve sinned, what do we read? The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. After they sinned, they went running and dashing for clothes, didn't they? Your very common experience of wearing clothes is to cover your nakedness. To tell you a greater story, you should realize by now we're all desperately trying to cover our own shame before God. And you have an appointment with Him that one day every thought you know in word and deed is open and naked, says Hebrew, before the eyes of your life, of the one to whom you must give an account everything you want your secret stuff brought out and God took Adam and Eve and he shed an animal's blood and he took skins and covered them himself and has proclaimed a covering you need all throughout the scriptures but not one you create not one you put on not this judgment in the bible is often depicted as the lord uncovering and making bare naked job complained about this you strip men of their clothing leaving them naked job 22 6 you understand this what i've said before judgment day is uncovering and making naked all of your life every thought, word, and deed. You want to tackle that? Jesus is stripped naked for you. And this experience of the clothes taken off is telling you something about what He bore open and naked before the justice and the bar of God's justice. He's taking on the full measure of your shame. that all of what your sin deserved, He's bearing it. What a thought. He who had no sin became it for us. Became naked and open before the judgment seat without a covering, bearing every single sin you've ever done. Thereby, Heidelberg 38, That when we look at the judgment under Pilate, we're looking at something greater, says Heidelberg 38. We're looking at He thereby delivered us from the severe judgment of God to which we were exposed. And the mockery? He fulfills the Psalms for you. He fulfills them. All these cries that you have a hard time identifying with when we sing the Psalms, you're like, I just don't seem to experience that. Yeah. Not to this degree. Psalm 22 is all about Him. They shoot out the lip. They shake the head. Saying, He trusted in the Lord. Let Him rescue Him. Let Him deliver Him since He delights in Him. They gape at me with their mouths like a raging and roaring lion. I'm poured out like water. They look at me and stare at me. They divide my garments among them. And for my clothing, they cast lots. Psalm 22. It's not you. Psalm 109. I have become a reproach to them. When they look at me, they wag their heads. Here's the fulfillment. Here's the fulfillment. A vicious challenge at the last minute. Listen, listen. A vicious challenge at the last minute to abandon this to get off so he doesn't have to face what we're going to consider next time my god my god why have you forsaken me that's good friday night by the way i didn't plan that you know what i'm going to say in god's providence a vicious challenge get off get off the cross get off the cross come on you can do it all you had to do is one call myriads of angels would have come down. One call! Isaiah 53, yet he opened not his mouth. You struggle with your sin? I do. You doubt God's love? I do. But that's stupid. Believe him. He was the lamb offered and God's wrath was satisfied. You can't add to it. You never will be able to simply receive it that's the gospel the gospel of the son of god i want to close with this thought mark has his mind on his mind these roman christians in a unique revelation he mentions simon of cyrene i'm interested also that he mentions his sons alexander and rufus you know they were believers in rome in fact did you know rufus is mentioned at the end of romans 16 in all the greeting what did simon do he carried his cross i've often wondered and that's somewhat perplexed me what why is what why common criminals never got that privilege. Insurrectionists even more. You had to bear your cross yourself. We typically say that Jesus was from sheer exhaustion unable to do it. I believe there's more to that. I don't doubt He's facing sheer exhaustion. I believe this act was a gift. I believe this act was a gift. It was a gift to God's people and the church throughout all generations. How so? It's a cross we deserve, but we would never be hung on it. But we do carry it. In other words, this is your identification. What had Jesus been saying the whole time in Mark's Gospel. If you want to be a follower, Elizabeth, take up your cross and follow. It's a visual for all of them and for us to say, I see what the cross really is. It's my identity here in what He did for me. There's an identity in this. This is why Paul says, woe is us if we don't preach it. That's why we're not doing short stories and all that stuff. It's not going to save anyone. This is your identity. It's what Hebrews says. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify a people through his own blood. Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. The Roman Christians needed that. You need that. I need that. lest we become ashamed in all the weariness of this. Here's a reason the New Testament constantly says don't be ashamed of the cross. Don't be ashamed of the cross. Don't be ashamed of it. On that cross, Jesus paid for your sins. Through His sufferings, we're called to carry and partake in them. What that means is you identify with Him in what He did. He was put there for you. you're called in belonging to Him as a disciple of Him to carry a cross. Now I close with the question. We begin with, what do you understand now when we run around saying, Jesus died for me? Think about all He did to set you free today. He is simply saying to you today, Believe Me. Trust Me. You don't have to face this judgment. I went through it all for you. You have a complete Savior given to you from the very love of the Father. Remember what Jesus said to Thomas. I won't believe unless. I won't believe unless. I can't be sure unless. All that. And Jesus' words were, do not be unbelieving, but believing. He went through all of this. so that you would have assurance and that you, by faith, would be justified and have peace with God and enjoy it. I know this is bloody and gruesome at this point, but just remember, a resurrection's coming. And on that day when we get there, Mark 16 in a few weeks, we'll be able to say what this sermon was all about. What all these people meant for evil, what the devil meant for evil, God meant for good. For there we see our salvation. Let's thank Him. Heavenly Father, thank You for a wonderful text and encouraging us this morning of all that was done and accomplished for us. We never say so casually that Jesus died for us. We say it in such a way with understanding of all that was given and now what we identify with. A people identified with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus so that we can say, no longer I who live, I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me. And the life I live, I live now by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave His life for me. Give us believing hearts. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.