Buried: The Death of Jesus Christ

Review:

God is most ACTIVE when He seems most ABSENT .

1. He was PUNISHING sin. (Mk 15:33-34)



2. He was PROVIDING access. (Mk 15:38)



3. He was CHANGING lives. (Mk 15:39)

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
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• Audio Transcript

  00:00-00:06

  Once we go to our text today, I'd like to give you a quick review.

  00:06-00:29

  We saw that Jesus Christ entering Jerusalem for Passover was betrayed by a close friend, sold out to these Jewish religious leaders who hated Him, because Jesus exposed their money-grubbing attitudes towards temple worship.

  00:30-00:35

  Jesus arrested by the Jews, but the Jews didn't have the authority to execute anyone because they were under Roman occupation.

  00:36-00:49

  So they had to take Jesus to Rome and somehow convince the governor, Pontius Pilate, that Jesus was a dangerous criminal that needed to be executed, and that's exactly what happened.

  00:50-00:58

  Jesus Christ was executed in the most undignified form of execution possible, nailed to a cross.

  01:00-01:02

  Last week we talked about the physical pain.

  01:04-01:06

  Last week we talked about the public shame.

  01:08-01:13

  And we talked about the persistent mocking as Jesus hung on the cross.

  01:14-01:48

  As we pick up in our text today, we're going to start in verse 33, but I want you to jump on for one second and look at verse 40. It says, "There are also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James the younger," that's one of the disciples, "and of Joseph and Siloam." And as we go through the text today, I want us to look at this account of Jesus Christ on the cross. I want us to look at this from the perspective of these women.

  01:49-01:52

  Understand, as these events are going on, what does your Bible say?

  01:53-01:55

  It says there were women looking on from a distance.

  01:56-01:59

  Can we put ourselves in their perspective today?

  02:00-02:09

  Can we stand alongside them today and try to imagine how things looked as they were watching from a distance?

  02:11-02:14

  I imagine the thought crossed their mind several times.

  02:17-02:18

  "God, how could you let this happen?

  02:20-02:28

  Here's Jesus Christ, the perfect God -man, the sinless one.

  02:28-02:38

  Jesus who never did anything wrong and never hurt anyone and now was being publicly executed and mocked and these women are looking on.

  02:38-02:40

  Do you think they thought to themselves?

  02:40-02:41

  God, why don't you do something?

  02:42-02:45

  God, do something!

  02:47-02:50

  God, how can you sit in heaven and watch this happen?

  02:52-02:58

  This is a man who obviously is doing good works in your power and glorifying your name.

  02:58-03:04

  How could you cut this man's ministry so short and let this happen to him?

  03:04-03:05

  God, do something!

  03:06-03:08

  Let's look at the text, verse 33.

  03:08-03:18

  It says, picking up from last week, I want to make a couple of comments as we go through here just so we're all on the same page understanding what's going on in the text.

  03:18-03:21

  It says, "And when the sixth hour had come," what's the sixth hour?

  03:21-03:22

  That was noon, okay?

  03:23-03:23

  That was noon.

  03:23-03:28

  They started counting the hours from 6 a .m., so six hours.

  03:29-03:29

  This is high noon.

  03:30-04:07

  "And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. Think about that. It is high noon. Mark tells us that for three hours, starting at that point, darkness. Pitch black, darkness over the land at noon. We'll talk about why in a second. It says at the ninth hour, that's 3 p.m., at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with with a loud voice, "Eloi! Eloi!

  04:09-04:15

  (Speaking in tongues) Which means, "My God!

  04:17-04:23

  My God, why have You forsaken Me?" This was a quote actually from Psalm 22.

  04:23-04:25

  I believe it's the first verse.

  04:26-04:30

  So this is a fulfillment of prophecy, but it's also an honest heart cry.

  04:32-04:33

  Are you standing there with the women?

  04:34-04:36

  Do you hear Jesus crying out?

  04:37-04:42

  "God, why have You forsaken Me?" And like the women, we stand there and say, "God, why don't You do something?

  04:43-04:44

  Why don't You do something?

  04:45-04:48

  Come on, God, He's crying out to You!

  04:49-04:56

  This is the same Jesus who He prayed to You when Lazarus was dead and You raised Lazarus from the dead.

  04:56-05:40

  This is the same Jesus who prayed to You and thanked You for that little boy's lunch multitude. God, you've always answered him when he's prayed to you, and now he's at his lowest point. God, why don't you do something about this?" It says, "And some of the bystanders hearing it said, 'Behold, he is calling Elijah.' And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave it up to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down." What's going on with that?

  05:41-05:47

  Well, there was an Old Testament prophecy that Elijah would accompany the Messiah.

  05:48-05:50

  Okay, do you remember Elijah didn't die?

  05:53-05:54

  When he left the earth, how did he leave?

  05:54-05:54

  Anybody remember?

  05:55-05:57

  A chariot of fire, right?

  05:57-06:00

  Elijah was just transported to heaven.

  06:00-06:02

  Limousine service to heaven.

  06:04-06:11

  And there was this Jewish belief that when the Messiah shows up, Elijah was going to come back and stand with the Messiah.

  06:12-06:15

  And what you have here is just more ridicule.

  06:15-06:17

  Like come on, come on.

  06:17-06:18

  When does it end?

  06:20-06:22

  They were mocking him as they were beating him initially.

  06:26-06:30

  They were mocking Him as He was hung on the cross.

  06:32-06:34

  This is the King of the Jews mocking.

  06:35-06:43

  And here, six hours later, hanging on the cross, they're still mocking Him.

  06:44-06:45

  Let's see if Elijah comes for the Messiah.

  06:46-06:46

  Come on, everyone.

  06:47-06:51

  And as Jesus is crying out, they're still making fun of Him.

  06:52-06:53

  Like, you hear Him.

  06:53-06:55

  You hear the King of the Jews.

  06:55-06:56

  He's calling for Elijah.

  06:56-07:01

  Come on, let's give him, hey, how about a drink and we'll see if Elijah shows up and saves you, pal.

  07:02-07:03

  Like, come on.

  07:03-07:05

  When is the mocking end?

  07:05-07:09

  If the women that are watching this hear what's going on, do you think they're wondering?

  07:10-07:12

  God, why don't you do something about this?

  07:14-07:18

  He's crying out to you and they still can't stop making fun of him.

  07:19-07:21

  Why don't you do something about this, God?

  07:24-07:33

  It says, "And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last." Understand that Jesus was not killed.

  07:35-07:37

  Jesus laid down His life.

  07:37-07:38

  There's a difference.

  07:39-07:40

  It was not out of His control.

  07:41-07:43

  It didn't happen sooner than He wanted.

  07:43-07:45

  It didn't happen later than He wanted.

  07:45-07:47

  What did Jesus say in John chapter 10?

  07:47-07:48

  "I am the Good Shepherd." The Good Shepherd what?

  07:49-07:50

  Lays down His life for the sheep.

  07:51-07:56

  I have the authority to lay my life down, and I have the authority to take it up again.

  07:56-07:59

  This command I received from my Father.

  07:59-08:02

  So Jesus wasn't killed in the sense of, oh, they got Him.

  08:02-08:07

  Jesus, when He breathed His last, that was His choice.

  08:09-08:11

  To die at that moment.

  08:13-09:01

  And as Jesus breathed His last after that loud cry, do you think standing with the women, do you think there was - this. He's still crying out, "God, why don't you do something about this?" It says, "And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his at His last, He said, "Truly, this man was the Son of God." There were also women looking on from a distance among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James the Younger and of Joseph and Salome.

  09:02-09:06

  When He was in Galilee, they followed Him and ministered to Him.

  09:06-09:10

  And there were also many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem.

  09:12-09:14

  When evening had come, This was the day of preparation.

  09:15-09:17

  That is the day before the Sabbath.

  09:19-09:19

  Friday.

  09:21-09:22

  The Sabbath is Saturday.

  09:22-09:26

  It says, "Joseph of Arimathea..." Check this out.

  09:27-09:39

  "A respected member of the council who was also himself looking for the Kingdom of God took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus." I just want to stop here.

  09:40-09:42

  Just be careful when you generalize people.

  09:43-09:48

  Because we have a tendency to overgeneralize people.

  09:48-09:50

  These type of people always act this way.

  09:50-09:52

  And these type of people always act this way.

  09:53-09:55

  And Republicans are always like this.

  09:55-09:57

  And Democrats are always like that.

  09:59-10:00

  I think we need to be careful there.

  10:00-10:03

  Here's a guy who was a member of the Sanhedrin.

  10:03-10:04

  Do you remember the Sanhedrin?

  10:05-10:08

  The people that so viciously wanted Jesus dead?

  10:09-10:09

  Not this guy.

  10:10-10:19

  See, he was a member of that, that obviously wasn't for any of the circus that surrounded the execution of Jesus.

  10:19-10:25

  This was somebody that obviously had quite a different opinion of Jesus.

  10:25-10:27

  So much so, this is gutsy, honestly.

  10:28-10:28

  This is gutsy.

  10:29-10:31

  Here Jesus - dead.

  10:31-10:35

  And this man goes to the governor.

  10:37-10:48

  He says, "Can I have His body?" That is so gutsy, and I'm not going to get into all of the reasons that was such a bold move.

  10:48-10:49

  I think you can see that.

  10:50-10:51

  Bold move.

  10:52-11:02

  "Can I have His body?" Well, v. 44 says, "Pilate was surprised to hear that He should have already died." Oftentimes, people would be on the cross for days.

  11:04-11:15

  Pilate was like, "He's dead already." the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph.

  11:17-12:06

  Ok, the centurion would have known if somebody was dead or not. That was kind of his bread and butter. That was his livelihood. While you're punching in doing what you're doing at work, this is what the centurion did. Execution. The centurion said, "Yeah, he's dead." dead. And Joseph bought a linen shroud and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus saw where he was laid. Here Jesus breathed his last. God why don't you do something? Wait a minute, maybe Jesus is going to come back to life or something like Lazarus did, right on the cross and then the body is taken down.

  12:07-12:09

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, God, why don't you do something?

  12:11-12:13

  And then Joseph takes Jesus and lays him in a tomb.

  12:13-12:17

  Whoa, whoa, God, God, God, God, this doesn't make any sense.

  12:18-12:19

  Why don't you do something about this?

  12:19-12:27

  And in the tomb, stone rolled, game over.

  12:28-12:30

  I can't believe God just let that happen.

  12:31-12:38

  I can't believe God witnessed this and did not do anything about it.

  12:40-12:42

  Suffering always brings those kinds of questions.

  12:43-12:43

  How could God allow?

  12:44-12:48

  Why wasn't God preventing this from happening?

  12:48-12:49

  Why is this happening to me?

  12:49-12:51

  God, why is that happening to her?

  12:51-12:52

  And God, how long?

  12:54-12:56

  And how long are you gonna let this happen?

  12:56-13:09

  But the bottom line in any of these questions is the assumption that when suffering comes along, we have a tendency immediately to assume that that means that God isn't doing anything.

  13:10-13:24

  That's the assumption that our brains jump to when we suffer, whether it's cancer, or job loss, or relationship destroyed.

  13:25-13:29

  God, you're not doing anything about this?

  13:32-13:33

  Here's the truth.

  13:35-13:37

  During times of suffering, God is often doing the most.

  13:40-13:44

  God is often doing the most when He doesn't appear to be doing anything.

  13:45-13:49

  And this was a point in history where where God seemed the most absent.

  13:50-13:56

  I want to share with you church, at this point in history, God was actually doing the greatest work He would ever do in human history.

  13:56-13:58

  I want you to write this down on your outline today.

  13:58-14:00

  This is the thing that you have to leave with.

  14:00-14:04

  If you don't hear anything else, if you don't leave with anything else, you have to leave with this statement.

  14:05-14:08

  God is most active when He seems most absent.

  14:10-14:11

  God, why don't you do something about it?

  14:13-14:17

  God is most active when He seems most absent.

  14:18-14:21

  God is most active when He seems the most absent.

  14:23-14:24

  Like man, can you prove that?

  14:24-14:25

  Yes I can.

  14:25-14:26

  Jot these three things down.

  14:26-14:29

  Number one, what was God doing?

  14:29-14:33

  What was God doing while these women were watching and it looked like God wasn't doing anything?

  14:34-14:35

  And how do we know it looked like God wasn't doing anything?

  14:36-14:40

  How about because the Son of God said, "Why have you forsaken Me?" That was a pretty good clue.

  14:40-14:41

  God's not doing anything?

  14:43-14:47

  Actually, number one, He was punishing sin.

  14:49-14:50

  He was punishing sin.

  14:51-14:53

  I mentioned that there was darkness at noon.

  14:54-14:55

  And you study your Old Testament.

  14:55-14:58

  When the Lord shows up, how does He show up?

  14:58-15:01

  Well, many times in the Old Testament, the Lord shows up as light.

  15:01-15:02

  He shows up as light.

  15:02-15:04

  His Shekinah glory.

  15:04-15:05

  God is light.

  15:06-15:07

  But study your Old Testament.

  15:07-15:10

  many times the Lord shows up as darkness.

  15:12-15:18

  And when the Lord shows up as darkness, that always symbolizes the same thing, and that's judgment.

  15:21-15:24

  When the Lord shows up as darkness, it's righteous fury.

  15:25-15:27

  Remember we talked about Jesus praying in the garden.

  15:29-15:32

  What did Jesus ask would pass from him?

  15:33-15:38

  "Father, let this cup pass from me." And what was the cup?

  15:39-15:40

  The cup was God's judgment.

  15:41-15:42

  The cup was God's wrath.

  15:42-15:46

  This is the thing that Jesus was asking would pass from Him.

  15:46-15:51

  It wasn't just being nailed to two pieces of wood.

  15:53-15:59

  What Jesus was praying would pass was God's judgment on sin on Him.

  16:02-16:08

  I understand church, when Jesus was on the cross, He was experiencing God's wrath.

  16:08-16:10

  That's what this darkness is about.

  16:10-16:12

  He was experiencing God's wrath.

  16:12-16:23

  2 Corinthians 5:21 says that God took Jesus, who knew no sin, to become sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.

  16:23-16:29

  Understand that when Jesus was on the cross, listen, He was literally sin.

  16:31-16:33

  I thought Jesus was sinless.

  16:34-16:38

  That was what qualified Him to become sin.

  16:38-16:48

  You're like, "Well, what do you mean?" Because if Jesus sinned and He was crucified, we'd be sitting here today going, "Well, Jesus was a sinner like the rest of us.

  16:48-16:57

  I guess we all got it coming to us." But here's the thing, because Jesus was sinless, He was uniquely qualified to take our sin on Himself.

  16:57-17:00

  So when He was being punished, He wasn't being punished for something that He did.

  17:00-17:03

  He was being punished for what I did.

  17:05-17:07

  He was being punished for what you did.

  17:07-17:09

  He was being punished for what you did.

  17:09-17:14

  He was being punished for the sin of the world.

  17:16-17:20

  God took Jesus who knew no sin, who never sinned, to become sin.

  17:20-17:28

  When Jesus was on the cross, God the Father saw Jesus as if Jesus is literally sin.

  17:30-17:36

  As Jesus became sin for us on the cross, God was pouring out His wrath on sin.

  17:36-17:37

  Sin must be punished.

  17:38-17:38

  Sin must be punished.

  17:39-17:41

  God's not going to overlook sin.

  17:42-17:46

  His holiness and justice demands that sin is punished.

  17:48-17:50

  So Jesus took our sin upon Himself.

  17:51-17:55

  The rest of 2 Corinthians 5.21 says that we might become the righteousness of God.

  17:56-17:58

  He takes our sin and He gives us His righteousness.

  17:59-18:00

  That's what happened on the cross.

  18:01-18:03

  Jesus said I'll take the punishment for your sin.

  18:04-18:14

  All of those wicked, sinful, rebellious, perverted, evil things that you've done, said, thought - I'll take the guilt of that.

  18:15-18:17

  I'll let God punish me for that.

  18:19-18:29

  And many people, many believers, many followers of Christ still carry shame and guilt and regret with them wondering if they're truly forgiven.

  18:32-18:34

  Many Christians think that God is punishing them.

  18:37-18:42

  Now, and someday when they stand before God, God's going to punish them then too.

  18:44-18:47

  That is a lie.

  18:50-18:57

  God is not going to punish His Son for your sin and then turn around and punish you for it.

  18:58-18:59

  Understand that.

  19:00-19:04

  So when you get in this mindset that, I think God's punishing me, I want you to see Jesus on the cross.

  19:05-19:05

  Like, oh really?

  19:08-19:09

  That wasn't enough.

  19:12-19:15

  God poured out his vengeance on his son, but that wasn't enough.

  19:15-19:19

  Now God's going to turn around and he's got some for you too?

  19:19-19:20

  Now that's unbiblical.

  19:22-19:25

  When Jesus took your sin on Himself, He took all of it.

  19:26-19:27

  You're like, "Well, what if I sin tomorrow?

  19:28-19:32

  "Is that paid for?" Yeah, all of your sins were in the future when Jesus died on the cross, right?

  19:34-19:43

  So understand this, when you say, or you feel, "I don't know if God can forgive me," what you're doing is undermining what Jesus went through.

  19:44-19:47

  If you're saying, "Well, you don't understand, Pastor Jeff.

  19:47-19:53

  "I've done some bad things in my life." So here's the thing, which is greater?

  19:54-19:55

  God's grace or your sin?

  19:56-19:56

  Which is greater?

  19:57-20:09

  Are you going to stand there and tell me that you've committed some sin that was so evil that the death of the perfect Son of God wasn't enough to cover the thing that you did?

  20:10-20:11

  Wow, I want to hear that story.

  20:13-20:14

  Obviously not, right?

  20:14-20:17

  Are you saying that what happened on the cross wasn't enough?

  20:18-20:23

  "Jesus, that was a decent effort, but I need more than what you paid for.

  20:24-20:35

  The check that you wrote, Jesus, wasn't enough to cover me." I'm telling you this in love, that borderline's, I wouldn't even say borderline, that's blasphemous.

  20:36-20:41

  That's just, it's blasphemous to think that you've committed some sin that can't be forgiven.

  20:42-20:47

  The only sin that can't be forgiven is to reject the cure for your sin.

  20:49-20:50

  Does that have anything to do with Jesus?

  20:50-20:52

  Well, that puts you in a different category.

  20:53-20:54

  I don't care what you've done.

  20:56-20:57

  Is your sin greater?

  20:58-21:00

  Or is God's grace greater?

  21:01-21:10

  So while we stand beside these women saying, "God, do something," God's answering, "I am doing something." I'm punishing sin.

  21:10-21:11

  That's what He was doing.

  21:11-21:14

  God, you seem so absent at this moment.

  21:14-21:14

  God wasn't absent.

  21:15-21:16

  He was right there.

  21:17-21:19

  He was the darkness.

  21:19-21:21

  He says, "I'm doing plenty.

  21:21-21:22

  Do you know what I'm doing right now?

  21:22-21:25

  I'm punishing the sin of the world on my son.

  21:27-21:36

  I'm taking all of your sin and punishing Jesus Christ for it." God is most active when he seems most absent.

  21:37-21:38

  In this case, what was God doing?

  21:38-21:39

  He was punishing sin.

  21:40-21:43

  Secondly, write this down, he was providing access.

  21:44-21:45

  He was providing access.

  21:46-21:51

  Verse 38, it kind of looks like a throwaway verse, doesn't it?

  21:52-21:56

  Bible says when Jesus died, all these wild things happened.

  21:56-21:58

  Like there was darkness and there was an earthquake.

  21:58-22:03

  And the other gospels tell us, there were people in graves that resurrected and were walking around.

  22:03-22:05

  And there was all this stuff happening.

  22:05-22:06

  It's like, oh yeah.

  22:06-22:08

  And the curtain came down.

  22:08-22:09

  Like, why is that even in there?

  22:11-22:14

  But the truth is, that's the most significant thing of all that happened.

  22:15-22:35

  What do you mean? Well, in the temple, in God's temple, there was the holy place, and there was the holy of holies. And if you read your Bible in Leviticus chapter 16, in the holy of holies, one day a year, the high priest, the day of atonement, he would go into the holy of holies and offer a sacrifice for the entire nation of Israel.

  22:36-22:47

  That was one man the high priest could go in one time a year to offer that sacrifice on behalf of the entire nation.

  22:48-23:17

  And history tells us that they would actually tie a rope to that high priest's leg because there was this fear that as he stood before the awesomeness of God, he would drop over dead volunteers to go in after him? Anyone? Who wants to go in the Holy of Holies in the presence of the Almighty and drag the priest out? It was like, "Yeah, no, pass.

  23:17-23:26

  Thanks." So they would have this rope and that was their belief, like, if he dies in there, we're just gonna yank him out. True.

  23:27-23:38

  One day a year, behind this curtain and the Bible says that when Jesus died, that curtain came down from top to bottom.

  23:39-24:03

  That's so significant. It was torn from top to bottom. If a man was going to tear it, a man can only tear a curtain from bottom to top, right? You know, if you're going to tear one of these curtains, you can only start at the bottom. When God tore the curtain, He was tearing it from the top down. This was an act of God. That while Jesus Christ being crucified, God took that curtain and ripped it open.

  24:03-24:05

  And here's the significance of that.

  24:05-24:06

  Think about this.

  24:06-24:15

  As the Father was offering the Lamb of God, as He was taking away the sin of the world, He was providing full access to Himself.

  24:17-24:20

  And now, church, you don't need a sacrifice.

  24:23-24:27

  Like bring a goat to church or bring a sheep to church and we're going to kill it.

  24:28-24:36

  You don't need an animal sacrifice, but listen, you don't need a priest to go before the presence of God on your behalf.

  24:37-24:38

  You don't need that.

  24:39-24:41

  And I know that there are some religions that teach that you still do.

  24:42-24:45

  I need you, priest, to go to the Father on my behalf.

  24:45-24:46

  Would you go to God on my behalf?

  24:49-24:50

  Unnecessary.

  24:51-24:51

  Why?

  24:52-25:05

  Because this curtain being torn from top to bottom Because you have the exact same access to God that the Apostle Paul did, that Billy Graham does, that insert name of your favorite preacher.

  25:05-25:13

  You have the same access to God that anyone does.

  25:14-25:15

  That was why that curtain came down.

  25:16-25:19

  God says sin isn't blocking the relationship anymore.

  25:20-25:21

  There's no more guilt.

  25:21-25:22

  There's no shame.

  25:23-25:24

  There's nothing dividing us.

  25:24-25:26

  Because Jesus took your sin away.

  25:26-25:27

  The way is open.

  25:27-25:29

  God was opening the curtain.

  25:29-25:34

  He was opening the door for us to say, "Access." Isn't that awesome?

  25:35-25:44

  Anytime in your car, at the workplace, in your house, wherever you find yourself, you can go before the throne of God.

  25:45-25:46

  Anytime of day.

  25:48-25:50

  Early in the morning, late at night, lunch break at work.

  25:51-25:55

  The curtain is down and it's not being put back up.

  25:56-25:58

  You have full access to God.

  25:59-26:04

  So while we stand with the women and say, "God, do something," God was saying, "I am doing something.

  26:05-26:11

  I'm providing access to myself." And we're seeing that God is most active when He seems the most absent.

  26:12-26:12

  Where are you, God?

  26:14-26:14

  Hard at work.

  26:15-26:15

  That's where I am.

  26:16-26:19

  Taking care of your sin, providing access.

  26:19-26:21

  is most active when he seems most absent.

  26:22-26:25

  And finally, he was changing lives.

  26:27-26:28

  Did you see that?

  26:28-26:35

  In verse 39, the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last.

  26:35-26:54

  He said, "Truly this man was the Son of God." And you can read Bible scholars so much more intelligent, experienced, and learned than me that will tell you that this verse is like the mountaintop of the Gospel of Mark.

  26:55-27:28

  Because let's be honest, how many people through the Gospel of Mark said that Jesus was the Son of God? Actually, I think maybe the only testimony of that was when the demons called Him that. But in all the people that Jesus fed and healed and ministered to and taught, they didn't say, "Surely you are the Son of God." Finally, we get to this This point in the Gospel of Mark when Jesus laid down His life, and here's a centurion, here's this hardened government killer looking at the way Jesus died and recognized.

  27:29-27:34

  He recognized what looked like an end was really a beginning.

  27:36-27:38

  The centurion actually became the first New Covenant believer.

  27:38-27:39

  Did you know that?

  27:40-27:45

  the first post-cross follower of Jesus Christ was this guy right here.

  27:46-27:55

  And so it goes 2 ,000 years later that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is still changing lives.

  27:56-28:05

  2,000 years later, there are people that see Jesus on the cross and see the work that He accomplished and say surely, He is the Son of God.

  28:05-28:10

  And like the centurion, say, There's a change that takes place in me.

  28:12-28:13

  Do we have testimony of that?

  28:14-28:21

  We have people sitting in this room that are a testimony of the way that the cross of Jesus Christ is still changing lives today.

  28:22-28:38

  Why in the world would anybody get in front of hundreds of people and get into a giant bathtub on a stage and let me grab them and stuff them underwater?

  28:38-28:40

  Why in the world would anybody do that?

  28:41-28:42

  Get the camera.

  28:42-28:43

  This is going to be interesting.

  28:44-28:45

  Why would anybody do that?

  28:47-28:52

  Because they're identifying with the death of Jesus Christ.

  28:53-28:57

  These are people that are saying the crucifixion of Jesus has changed me.

  28:59-29:03

  I am not the same person because of what Jesus Christ has done.

  29:05-29:08

  If you understand Jesus on the cross, this wasn't some random tragedy.

  29:09-29:14

  This would be something that would change history because it changes people.

  29:16-29:20

  God is most active when He seems the most absent.

  29:20-29:31

  If I can get really personal, the way it changes people, our last prayer meeting, our prayer service rather, a couple Saturdays ago, I needed prayer.

  29:31-29:35

  My brother Mark came down and was praying with me.

  29:36-29:42

  I was really burdened because that particular week we had an exceptionally hard week with the kids.

  29:42-29:49

  And as many of you know we have two autistic children and my older son, it was a really rough week.

  29:50-30:05

  And as Mark came down to pray I was really stirred up and I said, I just don't, I said I said to Mark, "I don't understand, because I really feel like my ministry would be so much more effective if my children were healthier.

  30:06-30:19

  I think I could have such a much better impact if my children were healthy." And I said to Mark, I've really wrestled with why doesn't God do something?

  30:21-30:41

  And Mark, if you know Mark, in his shepherd way, put his arm around me and he said, "God is doing something. He's doing something in you." And you see the times in my life that I felt that God has been absent.

  30:42-30:42

  Like, "Where are you God?

  30:43-31:00

  Don't you see? Don't you see?" I'm reminded again, You're one of the shepherds of this church that God is most active when He seems the most absent.

  31:01-31:05

  So often when we get into these trials, we're looking for the outward to change.

  31:05-31:07

  I need the car.

  31:07-31:08

  I need the money.

  31:09-31:10

  I need these other things.

  31:11-31:12

  I need the cancer to go away.

  31:12-31:13

  I need all these things.

  31:14-31:19

  We're looking for the outward, but so often what God is doing is something on the inside.

  31:19-31:36

  and say, "I'm changing you. I'm not so concerned about your circumstances right now, I'm changing you, and I'm using these circumstances to change you." Church suffering doesn't mean that God is absent, it means that God is doing something big.

  31:38-31:51

  The cross of Jesus Christ is a reminder that if God can take the worst thing that ever happened and turn it into the best thing that ever happened, he can take this little trial that I'm going through and bring good out of that.

  31:53-31:59

  Think about that. The worst thing that ever happened in history was what? God visited us.

  32:00-32:07

  God came down, He showed up, He walked around. And we killed Him. We spit on Him.

  32:08-32:10

  We made fun of them.

  32:11-32:13

  That's the worst thing that's ever happened in history.

  32:14-32:28

  God took that and He turned it into the best thing that's ever happened in history because now, because of what happened with Jesus Christ, now our sin has been taken away.

  32:28-32:32

  Access to God has been provided and lives are being transformed.

  32:34-32:47

  So if God can take the worst thing and turn it into the best thing, you can have assurance that whatever thing you are going through now, God is going to use that to manifest His presence in you.

  32:48-32:53

  To glorify His name through you and ultimately bless you.

  32:54-32:55

  Will you bow your heads and pray with me please?

  32:56-33:02

  Father in Heaven, we thank You for everything that You accomplished on the cross.

  33:03-33:14

  Jesus Christ Himself at this moment didn't even call You "Father." He called You "God." The only time that happened, He called You "God." He felt distant from You.

  33:14-33:27

  He felt like You had abandoned Him when the truth is the thing that You were doing in Jesus right at that moment was the thing that would therefore Exalt Him to the name above all names.

  33:29-33:31

  As Philippians tells us.

  33:32-33:36

  So God, I pray that we would understand what You accomplished at the cross.

  33:38-33:43

  That we would truly understand what You've done with our sin and the way that You've provided access.

  33:43-33:50

  I pray that You would help us to never sell short what Jesus accomplished.

  33:53-34:11

  At the same time, Father, I also pray that as we're going through trials today, we would look at what happened here, and we would look at so many other testimonies in Scripture where it seems like you're not doing anything, when we find out later that you were doing so much.

  34:13-34:14

  Glorify your name, Father.

  34:16-34:18

  We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Mark 15:33-47

1. Tell of a time that God seemed silent during a trial, but later on you saw how He was working during His 'silence'.
    

2. Why did Jesus feel forsaken (Mk 15:34)? What does that mean concerning you and your sin?
    

3. Explain the significance of the curtain being torn (Mk 15:38). What does this say about your access to God? Can anything change that? 

Breakout Questions:

Has your testimony this week been faithful to the love you have for Jesus Christ in both your words and actions? How? Pray for one another.

Crucified: The Execution of Jesus Christ

Review:

The Humiliation of Jesus Christ:

1. PHYSICALLY beaten. (Mk 15:21-24)
   



2. PUBLICLY shamed. (Mk 15:25-28)



3. PERSISTENTLY mocked. (Mk 15:29-32)

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above with your cursor for answers!

• Audio Transcript

  00:01-00:06

  Open up your Bibles to the Gospel according to Mark, in chapter 15.

  00:07-00:08

  Mark chapter 15.

  00:11-00:16

  And just to review at Harvest Bible Chapel, the last two years we've been walking through the Gospel of Mark.

  00:16-00:19

  Remember, some of you have been with us through this whole journey.

  00:19-00:20

  We started with Mark 1.1.

  00:21-00:38

  Everything, everything we've been studying about the life of Jesus, every teaching, every miracle, every personal interaction, everything about Jesus Christ leads us to this moment that we're studying in this passage.

  00:39-00:48

  This moment that we're studying today is the thing that Jesus said, "This is the very reason that I came." This is the main event here.

  00:48-00:54

  This is the most important thing when we get to Mark chapter 15.

  00:55-01:01

  It's a quick review, we've been studying that Jesus is the Lord, that Jesus is the Lamb.

  01:04-01:06

  Jews because of envy wanted him dead.

  01:07-01:20

  Jesus had amassed a following and Jews out of envy wanted him dead, but the problem was the Jews, because they were under Roman occupation, were not permitted to execute anyone.

  01:21-01:32

  So the Jews had to figure out a way, if we can put Jesus on trial, and if we can determine when Jesus is worthy of execution, we can get them to the Romans and convince the Romans to execute them.

  01:32-01:34

  And that's exactly what happened.

  01:34-01:39

  The Jews took Jesus to Pilate, and Jesus was on trial before Pontius Pilate.

  01:39-01:45

  The Bible says, we studied this, this is just review, but the Bible says that the chief priest incited the crowd.

  01:46-01:52

  When Pilate says, "I don't see anything wrong with him, what should I do?" The chief priest got the crowd, riled up, "Crucify him!

  01:52-01:53

  Crucify him!

  01:53-01:58

  Crucify him!" And eventually that sentiment was catching on with everyone.

  01:58-02:04

  "Crucify him, kill him, get rid of him, kill him." You know, that's where we left off.

  02:06-02:20

  It says, verse 20, it says, "They let him out, "to crucify him." And as we get to this passage, this week and next week, we're going to be talking about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

  02:22-02:29

  I've mentioned this a couple of times before, but we always need to keep this in the front of our minds when we talk about the crucifixion of Jesus.

  02:30-02:33

  It's answering this question, who is responsible for this?

  02:34-02:36

  Right, somebody's responsible for this.

  02:36-02:41

  And when you look at all these events that we've been talking about, say, who's responsible for the death of Jesus?

  02:42-02:44

  Some would say, well, it's obvious who's responsible.

  02:44-02:47

  It was these chief priests, right?

  02:47-03:00

  They were threatened because Jesus, you know, overturned all the tables in the temple because they were trying to, they basically had turned religion into a money-making deal, and Jesus sort of did some housecleaning in the temple.

  03:01-03:01

  You're like, it's their fault.

  03:03-03:05

  Somebody might say, no, no, no, it's Judas's fault.

  03:07-03:08

  Judas sold him out.

  03:09-03:13

  Judas, one of Jesus's closest friends, one of the 12, sold him out.

  03:14-03:15

  This is Judas's fault.

  03:16-03:20

  And someone would say, well, no, it's not really their fault either, because they couldn't actually kill anybody.

  03:20-03:21

  It's Pilate's fault.

  03:22-03:25

  Pilate said, "I find no guilt in this man." Pilate should have let him go.

  03:25-03:28

  Pilate is responsible for Jesus being crucified.

  03:30-03:32

  I'm going to tell you what the right answer is.

  03:32-03:34

  Who's responsible for the death of Jesus?

  03:34-03:36

  The answer is none of the above.

  03:37-03:39

  The answer is God.

  03:40-03:42

  God's responsible for the death of Jesus.

  03:44-03:44

  Like, well, what do you mean?

  03:45-03:47

  Just write these references down.

  03:48-03:58

  You don't need to turn there, But Acts 2, verse 23, Peter, preaching at Pentecost, this is after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

  03:58-03:59

  Listen to what Peter said.

  03:59-04:05

  He said, "This Jesus delivered up according "to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

  04:07-04:14

  "You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." So in one sentence, Peter said two things.

  04:14-04:17

  He goes, the second part of that sentence, Peter says, "Yeah, it's your fault.

  04:18-04:24

  You killed Jesus, but the first part Peter said this was the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

  04:26-04:27

  What did he mean by that?

  04:27-04:31

  Well, drop this reference down to Isaiah 5310, all the way back to the Old Testament.

  04:33-04:35

  This is a verse that you should all know.

  04:36-04:43

  Isaiah 5310 says, Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him talking about the Messiah.

  04:44-04:49

  It was God's will that he would take his Messiah and crush him.

  04:52-04:55

  He has put him to grief.

  04:57-05:12

  So understand that we start looking horizontally, who's at fault? Remember when the passion of Christ came out and everybody was like, it's an anti Jewish movie because you know, the Jews killed Jesus and remember the anti Semitism everybody was claiming.

  05:12-05:14

  I'm like, that's ridiculous.

  05:14-05:17

  Like, Jesus was Jewish, okay?

  05:17-05:22

  So this anti-Semitic thing that you're trying to promote doesn't make any sense.

  05:23-05:25

  Jesus was Jewish and the disciples were Jewish.

  05:27-05:30

  No, it wasn't the Jews' fault, it wasn't Rome's fault.

  05:32-05:34

  Responsible for the death of Jesus was God.

  05:35-05:37

  It was the will of the Lord to crush him.

  05:37-05:39

  And why would he do that?

  05:40-05:42

  Why would God allow his son to be mistreated?

  05:43-05:45

  Why would God allow his son to be humiliated?

  05:46-05:49

  Well, this is the rest of Isaiah 5310, the next phrase, rather.

  05:50-05:54

  The next phrase says, when his soul makes an offering for guilt.

  05:56-05:58

  That's our theme this spring.

  05:59-06:02

  We had just sung the song, Jesus is the Lamb of God.

  06:02-06:08

  So understand that when Jesus was being crucified, he wasn't a criminal being executed.

  06:10-06:15

  From God's perspective, he was a sacrifice lamb being offered for sin.

  06:17-06:21

  That was God's will that Jesus suffered.

  06:23-06:26

  Your Bible says again, they led him away to crucify him.

  06:26-06:30

  Crucifixion was the Roman form of execution.

  06:32-06:39

  You know, when we think of forms of execution, we might think of lethal injection or the electric chair or the firing squad.

  06:41-06:47

  See, crucifixion was designed to be as cruel as possible.

  06:48-06:56

  Okay, it wasn't lethal injection where they sterilized the needle and let's execute painlessly.

  06:58-07:01

  You see, the Romans sort of had a different mindset when it came to crucifixion.

  07:01-07:02

  Their mindset was this.

  07:02-07:08

  Let's make this as painful and humiliating as possible.

  07:10-07:19

  And they would actually execute people in a public, hang them on the cross in a public place along the road, think like a billboard.

  07:20-07:26

  You know how people strategize, where can I put a billboard so that most people can see it?

  07:27-07:29

  That's the mindset that Rome had with crucifixion.

  07:30-07:37

  Where can we execute criminals in a place that other people are going to walk by and see and be like, "Man, I don't wanna cross Rome.

  07:37-07:39

  "I don't wanna cross Rome, that'll happen to me.

  07:40-07:54

  "I don't wanna be the guy beaten within an inch of my life "and hung in public shame to die a slow, painful death." You know, some people, some people hung on the cross for days before they died.

  07:56-08:00

  It was meant to be slow and agonizing.

  08:03-08:06

  It was meant to be a run, it was meant to be a show.

  08:08-08:12

  To understand that Jesus' death was not a quick execution.

  08:12-08:23

  Jesus didn't step down from heaven and say I'm going to offer myself as a sacrifice and it was as if, boom, somebody had shot him or executed him quickly.

  08:26-08:32

  He went through an extremely long and brutal ordeal as the Lamb of God.

  08:33-08:39

  Before he even got to the cross, we see that Jesus Christ was utterly broken.

  08:39-08:41

  I want you to just jot some notes down in your outline.

  08:42-08:44

  The humiliation of Jesus Christ.

  08:45-08:47

  Now understand that Jesus humbled himself, okay?

  08:47-08:53

  So when I say the humiliation of Jesus, this was something that Jesus did to himself.

  08:54-09:00

  This is something that Jesus allowed for himself because he knew this is why he came.

  09:01-09:10

  We're going to see this very clearly in the text, the way that Jesus humbled himself and was allowed to be completely broken and crushed.

  09:11-09:13

  Number one, write this down, physically beaten.

  09:15-09:16

  He was physically beaten.

  09:20-09:29

  Okay, so verse 20 says, "They let him out to crucify him." Well, you weren't allowed to crucify inside Jerusalem, so they had to take you beyond the city.

  09:31-09:37

  And when somebody was crucified, they would make them carry their cross outside of the city to be executed.

  09:37-09:38

  It couldn't happen within city limits.

  09:40-09:40

  Okay?

  09:40-09:45

  It says, "And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene," like, where's that at?

  09:45-09:46

  That's modern-day Libya.

  09:47-09:53

  "He was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.

  09:55-10:01

  Understand at this point, Mark 14, 65, Jesus was beaten in the Jewish trial.

  10:03-10:05

  Mark 15, 15, we saw that the Romans scourged him.

  10:06-10:10

  That was usually 39 lashes with a whip that had pieces of bone and metal.

  10:10-10:13

  It wasn't like getting hit with a belt.

  10:13-10:25

  It was getting hit with a whip that had these hard things embedded and woven into the strands so that when it hit you, and they pulled it off, it would actually take off pieces of your flesh with it.

  10:26-10:41

  In fact, many people that were crucified, or I'm sorry, many people that were supposed to be crucified, but were scourged before they were crucified, ended up dying just from the beating, because it was such a brutal beating.

  10:43-10:49

  So Jesus was scourged, and then after the scourging, after the scourging.

  10:51-10:55

  Mark 15, 19 says that Jesus was beaten in the head with a rod.

  10:56-10:57

  Remember when they were mocking him?

  10:57-11:00

  Hail the king of the Jews, oh let's all bow before the king, prophesy.

  11:01-11:08

  And they had some kind of a reed or a stick where as they were mocking him they were beating him over the head.

  11:10-11:18

  So at this point Jesus' physical body was as beat up as a human body can be beat up.

  11:18-11:23

  And then they put the cross on him and say, no, you have to carry this outside of the city.

  11:23-11:25

  And Jesus couldn't.

  11:28-11:35

  Or probably what happened is Jesus couldn't do it fast enough to their liking, what I really think happened.

  11:36-11:39

  You see Jesus carrying the cross and falling over.

  11:39-11:42

  And I think that the Roman guards just got impatient.

  11:42-11:43

  This is taking forever.

  11:44-11:50

  And a passerby, Joe Schmoe in the crowd, you, carry the cross.

  11:52-11:53

  Like why would he have to do that?

  11:54-11:58

  Because the police, the army, commissioned him on the spot.

  11:58-11:59

  Carry his cross for him.

  12:00-12:08

  Then verse 22 says, and they brought him to the place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull.

  12:09-12:12

  Golgotha in Latin is the word Calvary.

  12:13-12:14

  That's where that word comes from.

  12:14-12:16

  And it says it's the place of the skull.

  12:16-12:17

  Why is it called a place of the skull?

  12:17-12:22

  Some people say that it was a hill that actually looked like a skull from a distance.

  12:23-12:26

  Some people say, well, you know, a lot of times skulls are associated with death, right?

  12:28-12:29

  That's where it got its name.

  12:29-12:33

  People were killed there, and they associated that skull with death, with the hill.

  12:34-12:39

  We don't know exactly what the case is, but we do know that it was a public place.

  12:40-12:44

  We do know it's a place where a lot of people to walk by to see criminals executed.

  12:45-12:54

  Verse 23 says, "And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it." They offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it.

  12:54-12:55

  What's going on there?

  12:55-12:58

  Well, the wine mixed with myrrh actually was a sedative.

  12:59-13:17

  Okay, at this point, when somebody was beaten and about to be crucified, they did this little act of mercy where they would basically say, "I'm gonna give you an aspirin." It was this sedative to try to relieve some of the pain.

  13:17-13:18

  But what does it say?

  13:19-13:27

  Jesus, it says, "But he did not take it." Jesus wouldn't take the pain reliever.

  13:28-13:29

  Why is that?

  13:31-13:40

  You know, I was talking with someone last week whose wife, during the birth of one of their children, She said, "I don't want to take any pain meds at all.

  13:41-13:43

  I want this birth to be 100% natural.

  13:44-14:01

  I want to feel the entire experience of childbirth." I'm not going to ask ladies to raise your hand, like is that totally where you are, because I think my wife would fall in a different camp there as far as how much of that pain you want to experience.

  14:01-14:07

  But there are some ladies that are like, I don't want the experience to be dulled whatsoever.

  14:07-14:09

  I want to experience the full brunt of it.

  14:11-14:13

  That's sort of a picture of what was going on here with Jesus.

  14:14-14:29

  Jesus was saying, in essence, I don't want anything clouding my mind. I don't want anything to slightly diminish my, my faculties. I want to experience this. I want to experience the wrath of God.

  14:31-14:32

  Full force.

  14:34-14:35

  that he wouldn't take it.

  14:36-14:37

  He would not take it.

  14:37-14:41

  Jesus was saying, in essence, I'm not going to lessen this experience at all.

  14:41-14:45

  I'm going to take it, and I'm going to feel every last bit of it.

  14:47-15:07

  Verse 24 says, "And they crucified him, "and divided his garments among them, "casting lots for them to decide what each should take." That's a fulfillment to prophecy for sure, but that's also a very sad finish, isn't it?

  15:07-15:14

  Jesus only in last possession, the clothes on his back became a wager in a game.

  15:15-15:16

  Like what's casting lots, what is that?

  15:17-15:18

  It was like dice, okay?

  15:18-15:26

  They would take rocks or sometimes sticks and put markings on different side of them, and it was like throwing dice.

  15:26-15:27

  It was a gambling game.

  15:30-15:35

  So you know if somebody's gambling for your last set of clothes, you know there's no turning back at this point.

  15:35-15:37

  You're at the end of the road.

  15:39-15:41

  Jesus was at that point here.

  15:42-15:45

  But you know, interestingly, I've heard so many sermons.

  15:47-16:00

  In fact, I preached it a couple of times, talking about the physical pain that Jesus went through on the cross, people talking about the nerves that were pierced by the nails, and the blood loss and the dehydration and the asphyxiation.

  16:01-16:05

  Anybody heard a sermon like that where somebody talks about the pain, the pain, the pain, the pain?

  16:06-16:09

  You know, the Bible doesn't really talk about that at all.

  16:10-16:16

  The Bible doesn't say anything about the physical pain that Jesus went through.

  16:18-16:30

  But like we see in this passage, and we're going to see in these next verses we're looking at so much of the focus is on the humiliation, the mocking, the insults, the breaking down the person.

  16:32-16:33

  Not so much the physical.

  16:35-16:38

  And as Jesus was humbling himself, humbling himself, being the lamb.

  16:40-16:48

  The most amazing thing, really, in this passage, with all that he experienced, the most amazing thing is that Jesus let this happen. That's the most amazing thing.

  16:48-16:49

  He let this happen.

  16:50-16:54

  Don't think of Jesus as some poor victim that got overpowered.

  16:55-17:02

  Because if you ever have that idea that, you know, poor weak Jesus idea, if you ever have that idea, just turn to Revelation chapter 19.

  17:03-17:12

  Revelation 19 says when Jesus comes back, the world's going to wage war against him and a sword is going to come out of his mouth and annihilate them.

  17:13-17:14

  People call it the battle of Armageddon.

  17:15-17:16

  Armageddon is not a battle.

  17:16-17:19

  A battle implies that there's some kind of a struggle going on.

  17:21-17:26

  Revelation 19 describes Armageddon as Jesus returning and cleaning house.

  17:27-17:27

  Same Jesus.

  17:28-17:38

  Revelation 20, the next chapter, talks about at the end of the millennium, Satan makes his last hurrah with some people who don't receive Christ during the millennium, and Satan gathers all these people.

  17:39-17:41

  Uh-oh, looks like Jesus is in trouble, right?

  17:42-17:50

  The Bible says he calls down fire from heaven and melts them where they stand and takes Satan and pings him into the lake of fire.

  17:51-17:55

  Now, if you're thinking poor, weak Jesus, you are wrong.

  17:56-18:03

  What you need to see is almighty God willing to allow these people to do these things to him.

  18:04-18:05

  That's what's going on here.

  18:06-18:08

  And to me, that's the most amazing thing in this passage.

  18:11-18:18

  He endured this for you out of obedience to the Father, for God's glory, but for your benefit.

  18:19-18:23

  Let me ask you, how far would you have been willing to go if you were Jesus?

  18:24-18:26

  How far would you have been willing to go?

  18:29-18:31

  About when Judas betrayed you?

  18:33-18:35

  That have got you mad enough to say I'm done with this?

  18:36-18:42

  What about when the Jews smacked you around their silly little trial that they did.

  18:42-18:43

  Would that have been enough for you?

  18:46-18:53

  What about when they jammed the crown of thorns on his head and put the purple robe on him, and mocked him, and spit on him, and ripped his beard out?

  18:55-18:56

  Would that have been enough for you?

  18:58-19:12

  That's the amazing thing about this passage, is Jesus willingly subjected himself, Because he saw himself as God saw him, the Lamb.

  19:13-19:20

  I am here to bear the wrath of God on behalf of you.

  19:22-19:26

  So the physical, okay, number one, physically beaten.

  19:27-19:30

  Number two, just quickly, publicly shamed.

  19:30-19:31

  Publicly shamed.

  19:32-19:34

  Look at verses 25 through 28.

  19:36-19:41

  It says, "And it was the third hour when they crucified him." What's the third hour?

  19:41-19:45

  Well, they started counting at six, so the third hour is 9 AM.

  19:49-20:02

  It says, "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." Let's pause there for a second.

  20:03-20:08

  It says the inscription of the charge against Imred, the king of the Jews, what's going on there?

  20:08-20:11

  When people were crucified, like I said, it was a show, right?

  20:12-20:21

  So what the Romans would do is they would put the crime that they committed, they would post that on the cross above their head so that when people were walking by, they would see that.

  20:22-20:24

  "Oh, this guy's being executed because he murdered someone.

  20:25-20:28

  This guy's being executed because he led an insurrection against the Romans.

  20:28-20:31

  guys, they would put a label above them.

  20:31-20:39

  Well, when the Jews brought Jesus to Pilate, there were all these crazy accusations about destroying the temple and don't pay your taxes.

  20:39-20:42

  And they couldn't even agree on what the problem was.

  20:42-20:44

  What they settled on was blasphemy.

  20:44-20:47

  They're like, he says he's God.

  20:47-20:52

  And, you know, that's going to be a problem for Rome if you have this guy walking around saying he's a king.

  20:53-20:55

  So this inscription, honestly, is just Pilate.

  20:56-21:00

  Pilate was kind of being a jerk towards the Jews that brought Jesus to him.

  21:03-21:05

  See, Pilate knew that they were trying to force his hand.

  21:06-21:09

  Like, if you don't take care of Jesus, we're going to cause problems for you.

  21:09-21:11

  We're going to go over your head. You're going to lose your job.

  21:11-21:13

  I think Pilate was being a little passive-aggressive here.

  21:14-21:16

  Like, okay, I'll play your game.

  21:17-21:20

  We'll execute Jesus, even though I don't see anything wrong with him.

  21:21-21:23

  What crime shall we post?

  21:24-21:24

  Pilate said.

  21:26-21:27

  King of the Jews.

  21:28-21:29

  Here's the King of the Jews.

  21:31-21:34

  And actually the Gospel of John, they wanted him to change that.

  21:34-21:44

  They're like, "No, no, no, don't write that!" He said he was the King of the Jews, and Pilate was like, "Yeah, what I've written, I've written. I'm not changing it. It's already done. Forget it." He was just being a jerk.

  21:45-21:51

  "You guys wanted rid of this guy because I'm not even sure why now at this point, because your stories are so messed up.

  21:52-22:11

  All right This is Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews just to make his point pilot rooted three languages Aramaic and Latin Greek King of the Jews crucified with robbers Do you notice in your Bible goes from like verse 27 to verse 29? Did you notice that?

  22:12-22:19

  And the footnote of your Bible probably for most of you is verse 28 like why is verse 28 out of place?

  22:19-22:27

  Well, when they were putting the Bible together, comparing manuscripts with manuscripts, some manuscripts had verse 28 in there and some did not.

  22:28-22:42

  And verse 28 says, "And the Scripture was fulfilled," it says, "He was numbered with the transgressors." That is from Isaiah 53.12.

  22:43-22:46

  So does that belong in there or doesn't it belong in there?

  22:47-22:51

  The statement is true, whether it was in the original or not, right?

  22:52-22:53

  I mean, it's a true statement.

  22:53-22:58

  Jesus was numbered with transgressors, meaning Jesus was treated as if he was just a criminal.

  22:59-23:06

  That's a true statement, and that's a true fulfillment to Isaiah 53, 12, whether that was in the original or not.

  23:06-23:07

  So I hope that that doesn't...

  23:07-23:10

  That's not a stumbling block for anyone, right?

  23:12-23:20

  Here's the sinless one, Jesus Christ, number two, publicly shamed, willing to be treated like a common criminal.

  23:20-23:24

  Not just willing to be beaten, but willing to be treated like a criminal.

  23:27-23:35

  I think we lose the impact of what this truly means because every one of us in this room are guilty of something, right?

  23:35-23:36

  We've all committed sin.

  23:37-23:42

  We can all say in a sense, "Yeah, I've been guilty of doing wrong things." And here's the thing when it comes to Jesus, he never did.

  23:43-23:45

  Jesus never committed a sin.

  23:45-23:48

  In fact, in John chapter eight, in verse 46, I love this.

  23:48-23:51

  Jesus is standing before his enemies.

  23:53-23:54

  Jesus asks a question.

  23:56-24:05

  He says, "Which of you convict me of sin?" Basically, what he was saying was, "Okay, you show me where I'm a sinner." Now, let me tell you something.

  24:06-24:11

  If I stood in front of a bunch of people that didn't like me, like Jesus was standing of a bunch of people that didn't like him.

  24:11-24:25

  If I was standing in front of a bunch of people that didn't like me, and I said, tell me where I sinned, they would have a list of all of the sinful, wicked, stupid things that I've said or thought, or they'd have a list.

  24:26-24:28

  Like Jeff, here's the sins you've committed.

  24:28-24:32

  Jesus stood before his greatest enemies, said, what should you convict me of sin?

  24:32-24:33

  And they couldn't say anything.

  24:36-24:42

  I understand that Jesus was sinless, sinless, yet willing to be treated like a criminal.

  24:45-24:49

  Becoming a sin offerer, Jesus allowed himself to be treated as if he were a sinner.

  24:50-24:57

  In other words, Jesus, going through this, was allowing himself to be treated as if he were me.

  24:59-25:00

  I deserve that.

  25:00-25:03

  Everything that Jesus went through, I deserve that.

  25:04-25:06

  Everything that Jesus went through, you deserve that.

  25:07-25:14

  But Jesus was going through this saying, though I don't deserve it, I'm going to take it in your place.

  25:16-25:17

  Publicly shamed.

  25:19-25:22

  And finally, number three, persistently mocked.

  25:24-25:26

  Persistently mocked, look at verse 29.

  25:28-25:35

  It says, "And those who pass by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, "Aha!

  25:36-25:54

  "You who would destroy the temple "and rebuild it in three days, "save yourself and come down from the cross." So also the chief priest with the scribes mocked him to one another saying, "He saved others, he cannot save himself.

  25:55-26:06

  "Let the Christ, the King of Israel, "come down now from the cross that we may see and believe." Mocked, persistently mocked.

  26:07-26:08

  First of all, it says from passersby.

  26:09-26:14

  These people walking down the road had to stop, had to get their jabs in.

  26:17-26:24

  And the chief priests and the scribes, gosh, you would think at this point, don't you think the bloodlust would have been satisfied?

  26:25-26:31

  After watching everything he went through at this point, they still show up at the cross and still in Solomon's he's dying?

  26:33-26:34

  That's not even the worst.

  26:35-26:36

  Look at the last phrase.

  26:38-26:42

  It says those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

  26:44-26:45

  Does it get any lower than that?

  26:47-26:58

  Jesus was publicly hung on the cross and shaved, dying a slow death, while two other people going through the exact same thing were making fun of Jesus for it.

  27:00-27:04

  You see everybody just mocking Jesus, mocking Jesus, mocking Jesus.

  27:05-27:06

  "Ha, ha, ha, you're the king.

  27:07-27:08

  Oh, you're the big savior.

  27:09-27:10

  Oh, come on up the cross, savior.

  27:11-27:11

  Come on.

  27:11-27:12

  You're going to save everybody.

  27:13-27:15

  I thought you were supposed to be some kind of a king.

  27:16-27:17

  Oh, check out, hey, check out the king.

  27:18-27:19

  Hey, everybody, check out the king.

  27:19-27:21

  Look, he's even got his name up there.

  27:21-27:22

  The king of the Jews.

  27:22-27:23

  There he is, everybody.

  27:24-27:26

  Look at the king laughing at him.

  27:27-27:28

  Says they were wagging their heads.

  27:28-27:29

  that just means shaking hands.

  27:29-27:30

  Well, you can see that, right?

  27:30-27:35

  Just walking by, going, "There's the king." Do you see the king?

  27:35-27:36

  Do you see this?

  27:36-27:37

  This is the king.

  27:37-27:40

  This is the guy that Israel was so fired up about.

  27:41-27:43

  He looks like nothing to me.

  27:45-27:48

  He just looks like one of these other chumps on the cross.

  27:49-27:50

  That's what he looks like to me.

  27:51-27:52

  Persistently mocked.

  27:53-28:02

  As I close, I want to focus on one thing here in particular as they cried out, "Hey, save yourself!

  28:03-28:16

  He saved others, he can't save himself." I want you to see that there's an element of truth in this statement because we've seen the power of Christ since we started this journey.

  28:17-28:24

  As we've been walking through the Gospel of Mark, we have been seeing the power of Christ throughout his earthly ministry.

  28:24-28:25

  We've seen it, haven't we?

  28:26-28:34

  We have seen the power of Christ in you and hearing stories of the way Christ is at work in you.

  28:34-28:40

  We're seeing the power of Christ alive and manifested as he lives his life through you today.

  28:40-28:42

  We've been seeing it.

  28:43-28:45

  But understand this church, please hear this.

  28:47-28:56

  With all of his power and with all of his authority, there was one thing that Jesus could not do.

  29:00-29:01

  This sounds blasphemous.

  29:01-29:03

  I've never heard anybody say Jesus couldn't do anything.

  29:05-29:07

  There was one thing that Jesus could not do.

  29:09-29:10

  And that's this.

  29:11-29:19

  While Jesus was on the cross, he couldn't save himself and save you at the same time.

  29:21-29:22

  He couldn't do it.

  29:23-29:24

  Repeat that.

  29:24-29:35

  While Jesus was on the cross, he could not save himself and save you at the same time.

  29:37-29:38

  Do you understand that?

  29:39-29:41

  Do you understand the implications of that?

  29:43-29:48

  To save himself means that he would have used the power that he had to just walk off the cross.

  29:48-30:16

  don't think for a second that that couldn't have happened at any moment that he wanted to while people were mocking him and ridiculing him at any second he could have said you know what they're not worth it and he could have just walked up to heaven right there and if he would have done that you see if he didn't offer his life as a sacrifice for sin You would still be guilty of your sin.

  30:16-30:20

  You wouldn't have this substitute in Jesus Christ.

  30:21-30:24

  You wouldn't have somebody who bore God's wrath on your behalf.

  30:24-30:28

  You wouldn't have that if Jesus would have opted to save himself.

  30:31-30:35

  You wouldn't have the forgiveness of sin that he would have purchased with his death.

  30:37-30:42

  So the alternative meant this to save you meant that he had to be willing to go through with it.

  30:42-30:49

  The beating, the shame, the mocking, all the way up to his death that we're going to talk about next week.

  30:50-30:52

  So that his sacrifice would have paid the penalty for you.

  30:53-30:57

  And so that you can stand today being totally forgiven for your sin.

  30:58-31:10

  As our worship team makes their way back up, I just want to ask you, you know, have you ever wrestled with asking yourself, does God love me?

  31:11-31:13

  You ever wrestled with that? Does God really love me?

  31:16-31:22

  You know, circumstances seem to pile up in your life, and you can't get ahead financially, and you can't heal this relationship.

  31:23-31:28

  And you have this health issue that just doesn't seem to go away.

  31:28-31:36

  And you might just be tempted to throw your hands up and say, you know what, somebody up there must really hate me, for me to be going through the things that I'm going through.

  31:36-31:46

  Church, I'm telling you today, I'm telling you today that the cross of Jesus Christ settles the issue once and for all.

  31:46-31:47

  Does God love you?

  31:47-31:49

  Yes, He does.

  31:51-31:56

  Because it wasn't three nails that kept Jesus on that cross.

  31:58-32:05

  It was God's love for you that kept Jesus on that cross.

  32:05-32:07

  So does God love me?

  32:09-32:10

  Is God for me?

  32:12-32:14

  This is the demonstration of God's love.

  32:15-32:22

  This is what Jesus Christ was willing to endure so that we could have a relationship with Him.

Children's Questions:

Review with your child(ren) what happened to Jesus in this passage. Ask, "Why was Jesus treated like this? Why were the people so mean to Jesus? Why did He agree to die on the cross?" Tell them how God loves them and punished Jesus for all of the wrong things (sin) that we have done. Explain how Jesus took the punishment so we wouldn't have to.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Mark 15:21-32

1. Why do you think so little is mentioned of Jesus’ physical suffering and so much is mentioned of His humiliation/mocking/etc?
    

2. Why did Jesus refuse the wine (Mk 15:23)? What is the significance of the refusal?
    

3. Why did Pilate write the inscription above Jesus: "The King of the Jews"? Did Pilate believe Jesus was the King, or was there another reason?

Breakout Questions:

Have you been encouraging/exhorting other in their walk with Christ this week? In what circumstances? Pray for one another.

Pilate: Asking the Right Questions

YOU Answer Pilate's Questions!

1. Is Jesus the KING ? (Mk 15:2)


• You have options:



2. What shall I DO with Jesus? (Mk 15:12)


• You have options:

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above with your cursor for answers!

• Audio Transcript

  00:01-00:07

  Alright, open up your Bibles to the Gospel of Mark, in chapter 15.

  00:09-00:10

  Mark chapter 15.

  00:13-00:19

  While you're turning there, while you're turning there, I need to tell you the end of a story.

  00:21-00:41

  Because a few weeks ago, I told you about the time that my wife and I had these two foster children and their biological mother took us to court because the foster daughter who was in third grade said, "Is Santa Claus real?

  00:41-00:45

  Some kids at school said he's not real." And I told her the truth, "Santa Claus is like Batman.

  00:45-00:47

  He's not real, but it's okay to pretend." Remember that story?

  00:48-00:49

  How many people remember that story?

  00:49-00:56

  Well, like, we went to court over that and we're in the courthouse and in the courtroom and I'm on the stand in my little suit.

  00:56-01:02

  And they're like, did you or did you not tell her that there is no Santa Claus?

  01:02-01:06

  And I'm sitting there thinking this is the craziest thing I've ever experienced.

  01:07-01:08

  And well, I told that story.

  01:10-01:11

  And I didn't tell you how that story ended.

  01:13-01:19

  And I always have people come up to me like, hey, whatever happened with that Santa Claus thing and what did what did the judge say and what happened?

  01:20-01:23

  And there's a there's a reason that I don't finish that story.

  01:24-01:25

  You want to know what it is?

  01:27-01:28

  It's just not exciting.

  01:29-01:34

  Really the end of a story is kind of a, "Eh." I'll tell you what happened.

  01:35-01:51

  After everything was said and done, after all the accusations came, after I said, "Yes, I said there was no Santa Claus, no I did not buy the Passion of the Christ from a five-year-old foster kid." After all was said and done, the judge said, "This is ridiculous.

  01:53-01:54

  There's no case here.

  01:55-01:58

  I'm just throwing all this out." The end.

  01:59-02:01

  Now do you see why I don't tell the rest of the story?

  02:02-02:03

  That's what happened.

  02:04-02:07

  You're like, "So why are you telling us today?" Well, here's the point.

  02:07-02:11

  The reason I don't finish that story is because what happened is exactly what should happen.

  02:12-02:14

  There's nothing shocking, exciting, funny.

  02:14-02:16

  There's nothing about the end of that story that's even remarkable.

  02:17-02:28

  You have a judge that heard all the evidence, realized how idiotic the whole thing was, and just threw it all out.

  02:32-02:50

  We're going to get to a trial of Jesus where you have a judge that hears all of the idiotic evidence that should throw it all out, but doesn't.

  02:52-02:54

  That's why the story of Jesus is so remarkable.

  02:55-02:58

  In my story, you're like, "Yeah, that's exactly what should have happened, right, Bob?

  02:58-02:59

  They should have just thrown it out.

  02:59-03:01

  That was stupid." Same thing with Jesus.

  03:02-03:03

  The judge should have just said, "This is idiotic.

  03:03-03:13

  I'm not even entertaining this foolishness in the court." That's what Pilate should have said, but you're going to see that it ended up quite differently.

  03:15-03:22

  We've seen already at Mark that Jesus was betrayed and Jesus was arrested and He was tried by the Jews.

  03:23-03:39

  They took Him to Caiaphas' house and had this middle of the night trial that was a sham, and they decided, "We need to kill Him." Well, look at verse 1, Mark chapter 15, verse 1.

  03:39-03:50

  It says, "And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council." What's going on there?

  03:50-03:52

  This was actually the third Jewish trial.

  03:53-03:58

  They wanted something to look official, is what was going on here, okay, because you weren't allowed to do the middle of the night trial.

  03:59-04:09

  So they said, "Okay, as soon as day breaks, we're going to do this little, like, 'Oh, We convened and we had this little official thing and we put a stamp of authenticity on it.

  04:09-04:11

  It was a mockery, is what it was.

  04:12-04:13

  But they just wanted to look good.

  04:15-04:20

  It says that they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate.

  04:23-04:59

  I shared with you before the reason that the Jews sent Jesus to Pilate was because Israel, being under Roman occupation at the time, Israel did not have the right to execute a criminal. Only Rome could execute. John chapter 18 and verse 31 says that explicitly. Like why did you take him to Pilate? Because we can't kill him, that's why. We don't have the authority to execute. So the Jews had to somehow take Jesus before Rome and convince them that he was worthy of being executed.

  05:00-05:02

  That's why your Bible says that they took him to Pilate.

  05:04-05:05

  So who was Pilate?

  05:05-05:07

  Pilate was the Roman governor.

  05:08-05:10

  And so much can be said about Pilate.

  05:10-05:14

  I read so much about him this week and he's a fascinating character.

  05:15-05:17

  I really just want to give you the overview.

  05:17-05:19

  You can study him out for yourself.

  05:21-05:22

  Here's the gist of it.

  05:22-05:40

  was the commander of the military, he would oversee taxes coming in, and he would serve as judge. That's in a nutshell what this man did. He was a military leader, taxes, judge.

  05:41-05:54

  Jews weren't really interested in all of those job titles. The only thing that the Jews were concerned about is we need an executioner. We don't care about the other stuff. We just needs somebody who can legally kill Jesus.

  05:55-05:56

  You with me?

  05:57-06:02

  It says, "And Pilate asked him, are you the king of the Jews?

  06:04-06:07

  And he answered him, you have said so.

  06:09-06:11

  And the chief priest accused him of many things.

  06:12-06:16

  And Pilate again asked him, have you no answer to make?

  06:16-06:22

  See how many charges they bring against you?" But Jesus made no further answer.

  06:24-06:27

  So the pilot was amazed.

  06:29-06:35

  "Now at the feast, he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked.

  06:36-06:47

  And among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas." Do you know what his name means?

  06:48-06:53

  His name means "son of a father." I'm not making that up.

  06:53-07:01

  Son, Bar, son, Simon Bar-Jonah, Simon son of John, Bar, Abba, is dad, son of a dad.

  07:04-07:13

  You're like, "Why was he named that?" The answer is, "I was not consulted when he was named." The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do as he usually did for them.

  07:14-07:21

  And he answered them saying, Do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?

  07:23-07:31

  For he had perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up.

  07:33-07:34

  I want to pause there.

  07:36-07:43

  On your outline, you know, Pilate gets a bad rap for a lot of things, justifiably so.

  07:44-07:47

  But there's one thing that's true about Pilate in every gospel.

  07:49-07:51

  Pilate asked the best questions.

  07:51-07:53

  I did a study on this one time.

  07:53-08:00

  I just went through and wrote down, when you put all the gospels together, all the questions that Pilate asked, he asked the best questions.

  08:00-08:08

  And really there's a couple here in Mark that I want to highlight today, because these These are questions that you have to ask and you have to answer for yourself.

  08:09-08:15

  And the first question is this, "Is Jesus the King?" Is Jesus the King?

  08:15-08:18

  That was... Now, they brought all these accusations, right?

  08:19-08:23

  He's going to destroy a temple built with hands and make one, build one.

  08:24-08:26

  We're not quite sure what he said, but he said something about destroying the temple.

  08:27-08:28

  Remember that fiasco?

  08:28-08:28

  Remember that?

  08:29-08:29

  Crazy.

  08:31-08:34

  He's saying this and he's claiming that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

  08:35-08:39

  And they're like, "Oh yeah, he says he's the king." And Pilate's like, "Wait, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa.

  08:40-08:41

  He says he's a king.

  08:43-08:48

  In Caesar's kingdom, we get a guy saying he's a king." That was the thing that would have got Pilate's attention.

  08:48-08:49

  Do you get that?

  08:49-08:50

  That was the thing.

  08:50-08:51

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second.

  08:52-08:57

  You mean you Jews got a guy running around telling everybody that he's a king?" So that's what Pilate addresses.

  08:58-09:00

  You see that in verse two, he says, "Are you the king of the Jews?

  09:00-09:04

  This is what I need to know from you, Jewish guy.

  09:04-09:13

  Are you saying that you are the king of the Jews?" I want you to think here, put yourself in the story.

  09:14-09:15

  What do you think Jesus looked like at this point?

  09:17-09:19

  Keep in mind he'd already been beaten up.

  09:19-09:20

  Can you see him in your mind's eye?

  09:22-09:24

  Puffy cheeks, blood.

  09:24-09:27

  The Bible said that when he was praying in the garden, he sweat drops of blood.

  09:27-09:28

  He would have had blood on him.

  09:28-09:29

  He would have been sweaty.

  09:30-09:35

  He would have been dirty from getting beat up and slapped and kicked around earlier.

  09:37-09:45

  So you have this scene, you have here the Roman governor and you have this beat down young Jewish man in front of him.

  09:46-09:54

  The pilots like, "You, you're the one that they're saying is a king?

  09:55-09:55

  You?

  09:56-10:01

  Are you the king of the Jews?" I love this exchange so much.

  10:01-10:05

  I wish we could spend more time on it and even look at some of the other passages.

  10:06-10:15

  It says in verse 3, "Jesus was accused of so many things by the chief priests." Pilate says, "Have you no answer to make?

  10:15-10:24

  Look at all of this stuff they're accusing you of and you're not saying anything." Verse 5, "But Jesus made no further answer." Why is that?

  10:25-10:26

  We talked about this before, didn't we?

  10:27-10:30

  You see, Jesus didn't answer nonsense.

  10:31-10:34

  When Pilate said, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus answered him, right?

  10:34-10:35

  Did you catch that?

  10:36-10:38

  Because that was a legitimate question.

  10:39-10:40

  Yeah, that's a legitimate question.

  10:41-10:41

  You have said so.

  10:42-10:52

  With all these false accusations coming at Jesus from all sides, just like before, Jesus did not say a word.

  10:53-11:01

  He didn't need to justify foolishness and like a sheep before its shearers, Jesus was silent.

  11:03-11:04

  What do you think Pilate was expecting?

  11:06-11:13

  I kind of put myself in the story of, you know, here's the governor and here's this beat down young Jewish man.

  11:15-11:22

  And the Jews bring him before Pilate and say, "This man needs to die." They give this laundry list of accusations.

  11:23-11:25

  What do you think Pilate would have expected Jesus to do?

  11:27-11:29

  Probably lots of different things.

  11:29-11:33

  For one, you think maybe Pilate thought that Jesus, maybe he was crazy?

  11:34-11:35

  You think about that?

  11:36-11:40

  The Jews brought me this guy that says he's a king, but look at him, he's dirty and beat up and sweaty and bloody.

  11:42-11:43

  This guy must be insane.

  11:44-11:49

  Or do you think that at this point, Pilate might have expected Jesus to beg?

  11:50-11:58

  You know, the Jews throw this beat up man before Pilate and say, "He needs to die." Do you think Pilate was expecting Jesus to be like, "Oh, come on, man.

  11:59-11:59

  Come on, man.

  11:59-12:00

  Please, I'm begging you.

  12:00-12:01

  These people are crazy.

  12:01-12:03

  None of the stuff that they're accusing me of is even true.

  12:03-12:04

  I didn't do anything, man.

  12:04-12:08

  I don't deserve to die." I think that's what Pilate would have been expecting.

  12:10-12:18

  So when all these things were coming at Jesus, he just stood there.

  12:20-12:21

  What does your Bible say?

  12:22-12:22

  Pilate was what?

  12:23-12:23

  What does your Bible say?

  12:24-12:30

  Verse five, Pilate was, shout it out, Pilate was amazed.

  12:30-12:35

  All right, everybody make the face that you think Pontius Pilate made when Jesus didn't say anything.

  12:35-12:36

  Go ahead, make that face.

  12:37-12:38

  Yeah, right?

  12:39-12:40

  Seriously, nothing?

  12:41-12:42

  You don't have anything to say for yourself?

  12:43-12:47

  Pilate was completely blown away by Jesus.

  12:50-12:56

  So the question for you, the question that Pilate asked that you have to ask is this, is Jesus the King?

  12:57-12:59

  Is Jesus the King?

  13:00-13:02

  And on your outline you have options.

  13:02-13:14

  And just very quickly, I can't say it any better than C.S. Lewis said it, and I'm just I'm paraphrasing here, but he said when you consider the person of Jesus Christ, he falls under one of three categories.

  13:14-13:17

  He's either a liar or he's a lunatic or he's the Lord.

  13:17-13:18

  Three L words.

  13:18-13:20

  Those are your only options with Jesus.

  13:20-13:23

  He's either a liar or he's a lunatic or he's the Lord.

  13:24-13:26

  Very quickly I want to examine these.

  13:26-13:29

  First of all, some people think, "Well, Jesus was a liar.

  13:29-13:35

  He was a con artist." I have a couple problems with that theory.

  13:35-13:36

  You'd probably do too.

  13:36-13:40

  Number one, if Jesus was a con artist, he was the worst con artist of all time.

  13:41-13:43

  He didn't have a house, didn't have much money.

  13:44-13:51

  He traveled around his con with a bunch of fishermen and tax collectors and just like regular blue-collar Joes.

  13:51-13:53

  And like, what was he getting out of the con?

  13:55-13:57

  Like worst con artist ever.

  14:00-14:02

  There's even something deeper than that.

  14:03-14:13

  If Jesus were a con artist and he's playing this ruse out and getting everybody to buy what he's selling, and then all of a sudden his life was on the line, you think that's when the con stops?

  14:15-14:24

  You think if he's playing a joke on everybody, and all of a sudden they say, "You're about to die because of this joke that you're playing on people." Well, you know what, man?

  14:24-14:25

  I was just trying to make a few bucks.

  14:25-14:26

  None of that stuff's true.

  14:27-14:27

  I'm sorry.

  14:30-14:35

  Nobody's going to push a joke to the point that they're laying down their life for it.

  14:37-14:39

  If Jesus was a liar, that makes no sense.

  14:40-14:43

  Because at the point of standing before Pilate, "You got me.

  14:43-14:44

  You got me.

  14:45-14:47

  I've already been beaten up.

  14:49-14:50

  I've taken this a little too far.

  14:50-14:51

  You got me.

  14:51-15:00

  I don't want crucified because I'm a sham." So the whole liar thing doesn't fly.

  15:00-15:01

  What about lunatic?

  15:02-15:03

  What about lunatic?

  15:05-15:08

  Have you ever met somebody genuinely mentally ill?

  15:08-15:11

  I am not making fun because this is a serious thing.

  15:11-15:12

  But I've got to tell you this story.

  15:13-15:17

  Like years ago, I went to the hospital, to the psychiatric ward to visit this man.

  15:19-15:26

  The story he told was humorous on the surface and you'll see that, but when you really stop and think about it, it was sad.

  15:27-15:31

  But this guy was telling me that he's some kind of apostle.

  15:32-15:39

  And he told me this long story about he's this apostle and he went to this bar where all of these apostles hang out.

  15:40-15:44

  And he's sitting at the bar and he's drinking and he was spitting on the floor.

  15:44-15:52

  And one of the apostles came up and was like, "Hey man, you can't just be spitting on the floor of my bar, man." And we got into this big fight.

  15:52-15:54

  I'm not allowed back in that bar anymore.

  15:55-15:57

  And that was the short version.

  15:57-15:59

  He told me this story, probably took him an hour.

  16:00-16:07

  The full version, looked me in the eye and believed every word that he said.

  16:09-16:09

  He believed it.

  16:11-16:11

  Sad.

  16:12-16:13

  Very sad.

  16:14-16:25

  Here's a man who is locked up for his own safety, who thinks he's some kind of directly commissioned by God kind of guy.

  16:26-16:29

  You see some people want to put Jesus in that category.

  16:29-16:30

  Like, "Yeah, that's Jesus.

  16:30-16:31

  Jesus is just like that guy.

  16:31-16:37

  He was crazy." Crazy people don't teach like Jesus taught, okay?

  16:38-16:39

  Go back and look at the teachings of Jesus.

  16:39-16:41

  Crazy people don't teach like Jesus taught.

  16:42-16:46

  Crazy people don't manifest the type of miracles that Jesus did.

  16:48-16:51

  Many people don't love people the way Jesus loved people.

  16:53-16:58

  So the idea that Jesus was insane, that idea is insane.

  16:59-17:03

  Say that Jesus was crazy, do you know anything about Jesus?

  17:03-17:09

  Jesus manifests nothing of a person that has any kind of mental illness.

  17:12-17:15

  So He's either a liar or a lunatic, or what was the third thing?

  17:15-17:17

  Oh yeah, we've been kind of talking about that last fall.

  17:17-17:29

  the Lord. And really, I think that's our only option. Look at His power, look at His words, look at His authority, look at the impact that He's had on this earth.

  17:32-17:33

  Look at the impact that He's had.

  17:36-17:49

  Like what? Like how about, I know two people that were crazy enough to let me give them a bath in front of a church of hundreds of people because they said, "I'm following this Jesus who lived 2,000 years ago.

  17:50-18:00

  I believe he's still alive and at work today, and I believe he's alive and at work in me, and I'm going to publicly demonstrate that I'm dying to myself, and I'm allowing him to live through me.

  18:01-18:03

  Do you think Jesus is still having an impact?

  18:05-18:11

  When there's all these people from Northway coming alongside too, saying we are making the same declaration.

  18:11-18:22

  When we see people that are building a training center to equip people to go out through spiritually dead Europe to proclaim the living Christ, has Jesus had an impact?

  18:25-18:29

  So he's not a liar, and he's not a lunatic.

  18:30-18:39

  When I take a look at the evidence, even right now, at what he's doing in the world, I say, he is the Lord.

  18:40-18:41

  He is the Lord.

  18:42-18:52

  So when Pilate says, "Is Jesus the King?" The question you have to ask yourself is, "Is He my King?" Is Jesus the King?

  18:52-18:55

  Is that a fact that you acknowledge or is it a truth that you live by?

  18:56-18:57

  Like, what do you mean by that?

  18:58-19:06

  If we did a quick poll, I'm sure everybody in this room would say, "Yeah, Jesus is my King." Let me ask you, is Jesus King of every arena of your life?

  19:08-19:09

  Write these down.

  19:10-19:13

  First of all, write down the word "church." Is Jesus king of your church?

  19:14-19:20

  Whether this is your church or you're here visiting from another church or whatever, is Jesus the king of your church?

  19:22-19:22

  Is he?

  19:24-19:25

  What about home?

  19:26-19:33

  If I came and lived with you for a week, would I leave your house with a sense of, Jesus seems to be the king of that home.

  19:34-19:40

  Nobody in that home really seems as concerned about their own rights or their own thing as they are about glorifying Jesus Christ in their home.

  19:40-19:42

  Is Jesus king of your home?

  19:42-19:43

  Do you have evidence of that?

  19:44-19:45

  Is that obvious?

  19:46-19:48

  Who is king in your home?

  19:50-19:50

  What about work?

  19:51-19:52

  What if I followed you to work?

  19:53-19:55

  What if they're like, "Hey, I've got good news for you.

  19:55-19:59

  You're being job shadowed." You're like, "That's great," by Jeff Miller.

  20:00-20:05

  "That's not so great." Like if I job shadowed you, I'd be like, "You know what?

  20:05-20:14

  It seems like when he goes to work, Jesus is still his King, even when he's punching the time clock, even when it's time to make the doughnuts.

  20:15-20:21

  It's like he's making the doughnuts for Jesus, which is what the Bible tells you to do, by the way.

  20:22-20:24

  You're not working for your boss, you're working for Jesus.

  20:24-20:26

  Is there evidence that Jesus is King in your workplace?

  20:29-20:37

  I'm not going to embarrass the guy, but I've heard it said of somebody sitting in this church, at his workplace, at his particular workstation.

  20:37-20:38

  And they said, "It's like the chapel.

  20:39-20:52

  He's always like playing Christian music and telling people about the Lord and inviting people to church." So I know if I went to that guy's work, like, "Yeah, Jesus is obviously king here." How's that working out for you where you work?

  20:53-20:54

  Is Jesus king of your workplace?

  20:55-20:56

  What about leisure time?

  20:57-20:57

  What about leisure time?

  20:57-21:00

  And when it's time to kick back and relax, is Jesus king of that?

  21:02-21:04

  Like does that even really count?

  21:04-21:05

  Yes, it counts.

  21:06-21:09

  You glorify the Lord by the way that you spend your free time.

  21:10-21:19

  You glorify the Lord by the way that you play baseball, by the way you get on your boat, by the way that you go on date night with your wife.

  21:19-21:21

  Is Jesus king of those things?

  21:24-21:25

  What about your finances?

  21:25-21:26

  Is Jesus the king of your checkbook?

  21:28-21:31

  Here's the truth, if God doesn't have your money, He doesn't have you.

  21:33-21:35

  That's just the truth.

  21:35-21:42

  Jesus made an objective statement, He says, "Where your treasure is there, your heart will be also." Is Jesus the king of your checkbook?

  21:43-21:45

  But is Jesus the king of your finances?

  21:45-21:46

  We can say that safely, right?

  21:48-21:50

  The pilot asked a great question, you need to ask it.

  21:51-21:52

  Is Jesus the king?

  21:53-21:55

  He's either a lunatic liar or Lord.

  21:55-21:57

  And if He's the Lord, is He your Lord?

  21:57-22:00

  And if He's your Lord, is it obvious He's your Lord?

  22:02-22:05

  Second question, let's pick up in verse 11.

  22:07-22:16

  Verse 11 says, "But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Him released for them, Barabbas instead.

  22:17-22:23

  And Pilate again said to them, 'Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews.

  22:25-22:31

  And they cried out again, "Crucify Him!" And Pilate said to them, "Why?

  22:31-22:54

  What evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Crucify Him!" So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released from the Ember Abyss, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

  22:55-23:02

  And the soldiers led him away inside the palace, that is the governor's headquarters, and they called together the whole battalion.

  23:06-23:12

  And they clothed him with a purple cloak and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him.

  23:14-23:25

  They began to salute him, "Hail, King of the Jews." And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him.

  23:28-23:33

  When they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him.

  23:34-23:37

  And they let him out to crucify him.

  23:39-23:58

  The chief priests, the scribes, and the elders finally can sit back and say, "It took some doing, but mission accomplished. Not knowing that God in heaven at the same time was saying mission is being accomplished.

  24:01-24:06

  The second question you have to ask for yourself is a question that Pilate asked in verse 12.

  24:07-24:18

  We said that he's the Lord, right? He's the King. Is he the King? Is Jesus the King? Here's You see that?

  24:22-24:25

  Pilate scared to death of a riot breaking out.

  24:25-24:25

  Why?

  24:27-24:35

  Because at this point in Pilate's career, history tells us there were already two or three Jewish insurrections because of him.

  24:37-24:40

  Pilate was already in a little bit of hot water with the boss, so to speak.

  24:42-24:46

  One of them was because Pilate wanted to move the army's headquarters from Caesarea to Jerusalem.

  24:46-24:59

  Okay, so the army came into Jerusalem, but they all had Caesar's image on their shields, and the Jews were like, "That's idolatry, having Caesar's image." And the Jews had this big public protest, and Pilate surrounded them with the army.

  24:59-25:19

  And Pilate was like, "If you guys don't knock it off, we will slaughter you where you stand." And these Jews were like, "Bring it." And Pilate was like, "Yeah, I was thinking Jerusalem really isn't a great place for my army." So Pilate backed off.

  25:20-25:28

  You see, there were a few instances where Pilate caused some problems, caused some problems with his leadership, wasn't taking care of business in the appropriate way.

  25:28-25:36

  So now all of a sudden, here's Jesus standing before him, and here's this crowd screaming, and there are these Jews that don't like him.

  25:38-25:44

  So Pilate says, "What shall I do with this man that you call the King of the Jews?

  25:45-26:05

  What should I do with him?" You have to ask that question for yourself to say, "What should I do with Jesus?" Verse 15 says, "Pilate just wanted to satisfy the crowd." But when you ask yourself, "What shall I do with Jesus?" Understand that the Bible says that your eternity hinges on how you answer that question.

  26:06-26:07

  You have options.

  26:08-26:26

  he's done. You have options. What shall I do with Jesus? You can do what the chief priest did with Jesus. Jesus is too much of an intrusion. I'm afraid that if Jesus comes into my temple, he's going to drive some things out. He's going to turn some tables over. And guess what? He will. When Jesus shows up, he turned some tables over in your life.

  26:29-26:33

  And for some people, they say, like the chief priests, what What shall I do with Jesus?

  26:33-26:34

  I have to stand against Him.

  26:36-26:37

  I have to stand against Him.

  26:38-26:44

  You can do what Pilate did and understand that Pilate was a wicked guy.

  26:45-26:46

  There's no doubt about that.

  26:46-26:46

  Read the history.

  26:46-26:47

  He was a wicked man.

  26:49-26:56

  Jesus reminded us in Luke 13 that Pilate slaughtered a bunch of Jews in the temple, so much so that their blood mixed with the blood of the animal sacrifices.

  26:57-26:58

  Can you imagine?

  26:58-27:00

  That was the kind of guy Pilate was.

  27:00-27:04

  But honestly, I don't believe Pilate had any interest in Jesus at all.

  27:06-27:08

  I just mean I don't think Pilate cared.

  27:09-27:16

  For as evil as he was, here Jesus was standing before him, I don't think Pilate really cared at all.

  27:17-27:18

  No personal interest.

  27:20-27:32

  And in Pilate's mind, he was thinking, "Let's just make Jesus a non-issue." And there are some people, even sitting here, that ultimately that's what you want from Jesus.

  27:32-27:33

  I don't want Him to be an issue in my life.

  27:34-27:34

  Okay?

  27:34-27:35

  I don't hate Jesus.

  27:37-27:39

  But He's not my King.

  27:39-27:41

  Jesus is just a non-issue for me.

  27:43-27:51

  Yeah, I go to church because my family expects me to, or because I have friends there, or whatever, but...

  27:51-27:52

  I mean, come on.

  27:52-27:57

  I don't hate Jesus, but I'm not like, fired up about Him. That was Pilate.

  27:59-28:01

  Or you could do, what shall I do with Jesus?

  28:01-28:03

  You have options. You can do what the crowd did.

  28:04-28:05

  You can do what the crowd did.

  28:07-28:08

  Look again at verse 11.

  28:09-28:26

  It says, "The chief priest stirred up the crowd." This is how these same people that were cheering for Jesus during the triumphal entry are now screaming, "Crucify Him!" You know, these people that already tried Jesus, they were stirring up the crowd.

  28:26-28:37

  And you can see how this was happening as these Jews were spreading out through the crowd and just like grabbing people, you know, like, hey, we can't have Jesus running around and they're gonna release somebody.

  28:37-28:39

  We gotta get them to release Barabbas.

  28:39-28:41

  Barabbas is way safer than Jesus.

  28:41-28:41

  Come on, let's go.

  28:41-28:47

  And they're just running around getting people on their side, like, hey, you know, let's talk Pilate into releasing Barabbas.

  28:47-28:49

  And we gotta get rid of Jesus.

  28:49-28:50

  Jesus isn't good for our religion.

  28:50-28:52

  He's not good for our country.

  28:52-28:59

  ultimately is gonna cause, and they're just running around getting all of these people like, "Yeah, you know what?

  28:59-29:00

  I'm with you on that.

  29:00-29:00

  Yeah, you know what?

  29:00-29:01

  You're right.

  29:02-29:04

  Yeah, we shouldn't have Jesus running around.

  29:04-29:06

  We can't have a guy like that running around.

  29:06-29:07

  And yeah, you know what?

  29:09-29:17

  We shouldn't have somebody running around saying that he's God." And they got the crowd completely on their side.

  29:19-29:23

  So like the crowd, "What shall I do with Jesus?" You can be fickle.

  29:25-29:28

  The crowd just decided to go with somebody else's opinion.

  29:29-29:30

  Just be fickle.

  29:30-29:35

  Cheer for them on the "Triumph of the Holy Trinity" cry out for His crucifixion on Friday.

  29:36-29:37

  How did that happen?

  29:39-29:40

  That happens all the time.

  29:41-29:43

  That happens all the time.

  29:43-29:47

  There are people in church with their hands raised worshiping like, "We want Jesus!

  29:47-29:56

  Jesus, live in me!" Come Monday, I don't really want Jesus to be my Lord.

  29:56-29:59

  I don't really want Jesus to rule over me.

  30:00-30:04

  "Well dude, you just sang about it yesterday." Well, yeah, that was like so yesterday.

  30:05-30:16

  When it comes to affecting things in my life through the week, life change stuff, that's when we start to cry.

  30:18-30:24

  Barabbas. You want Jesus or do you want Barabbas?

  30:25-30:29

  Did you see what it said about Barabbas? He was with the people who'd committed murder in the insurrection.

  30:33-30:36

  Pilate says, "Do you want Jesus or do you want Barabbas?" Barabbas!

  30:38-30:48

  Do you want the holy, sinless Son of God? Or this robber/murderer/rebel Barabbas?

  30:48-30:49

  Barabbas!

  30:51-31:07

  Let me ask you, what did Barabbas do for any of them? Think about that. What did Barabbas do for any of them? Who in the crowd could stand up and say, "I have personally benefited from the ministry of Barabbas.

  31:07-31:09

  Who could say that?

  31:11-31:12

  This guy was a criminal.

  31:13-31:14

  This guy was a murderer.

  31:15-31:17

  And this crowd says, that's the guy we want.

  31:19-31:22

  Not this guy that teaches love.

  31:24-31:26

  Not this guy that heals people.

  31:28-31:31

  Not this guy that seems to genuinely care about people.

  31:31-31:35

  We'll take the guy that'll murder someone over the guy that would heal someone.

  31:37-31:38

  What did Barabbas ever do for them?

  31:40-31:50

  Understand when we get to this passage today, we have to ask ourselves, "What shall I do with Jesus?" Here's the thing, you have the same choice that the crowd did.

  31:52-31:54

  You want Jesus or do you want Barabbas?

  31:55-31:56

  Which one do you want?

  31:57-32:06

  Because if you're saying, "I want Jesus, I'd rather have Jesus, I'd rather you release Jesus, you're saying what I want is God.

  32:06-32:07

  I want God's best.

  32:07-32:09

  I want God's best for me.

  32:09-32:24

  But understand when you're saying, "I'd rather have Barabbas," you're saying exactly what the crowd is saying is, "I'd rather have anything but Jesus." Because I promise you, if there was somebody worse in prison that was offered to them, they would have taken that guy.

  32:25-32:26

  Anybody but Jesus.

  32:26-32:27

  Anybody but Jesus.

  32:30-32:31

  Please hear me.

  32:32-32:34

  Because you're like, oh, that's so not me.

  32:34-32:42

  I hear what you're saying, Pastor Jeff, but I guarantee you if I was in the crowd that day, I would have been cheering for Jesus to be released.

  32:42-32:43

  Well, hang on a second.

  32:45-32:49

  Because practically, practically, that's not always true.

  32:53-33:02

  Because saying that you want Barabbas The same as saying, "I prefer my sin over Jesus." Do you get that?

  33:02-33:03

  I'm going to say that again.

  33:03-33:09

  Saying that you want Barabbas is saying that you want your sin over you want Jesus.

  33:10-33:14

  And here's the thing, everybody in this room at times wishes that they had Barabbas released instead of Jesus.

  33:16-33:19

  Would you rather God's righteousness be displayed in your life?

  33:20-33:21

  Or would you rather have your sin?

  33:22-33:29

  And so many times, church, we say, I would rather have my sin than have God's righteousness released.

  33:29-33:31

  I'd rather have my sin.

  33:31-33:36

  And when we do that, we're right with the crowd saying give us Barabbas and crucify Jesus.

  33:38-33:44

  I would rather have my sin - and just like I asked you, what did Barabbas do for this crowd?

  33:44-33:46

  What did he do for anybody in the crowd?

  33:46-33:50

  I want to ask you this morning, church, what has your sin done for you?

  33:51-33:58

  What benefit has your sin brought in your life that you would choose your sin over choosing the righteousness of God.

  33:59-34:02

  You would choose your sin over choosing obedience to the Word of God.

  34:03-34:06

  What has sin done for you that has brought that appeal?

  34:09-34:09

  Think of your addiction.

  34:12-34:14

  We live in an addicted area, do you know that?

  34:16-34:25

  For people with addiction, it would rather choose their addiction over choosing worshiping the real God, what benefit has your addiction brought you?

  34:27-34:28

  Physical harm?

  34:29-34:30

  It's cost you a lot of money.

  34:30-34:32

  It's caused you to tell a lot of lies.

  34:32-34:34

  It's broken a lot of relationships.

  34:34-34:37

  And it's enslaved you to some sort of chemical substance.

  34:38-34:39

  That's what your addiction has brought you.

  34:40-34:42

  And that's what you would choose over Jesus.

  34:46-34:47

  What about unforgiveness?

  34:48-34:50

  There are people here that are holding grudges right now.

  34:51-34:52

  Refusing to forgive.

  34:52-34:54

  How has that helped you?

  34:54-34:58

  I want you to list all of the benefits that your unforgiveness has brought you.

  34:58-35:00

  Things like bitterness.

  35:00-35:01

  Things like resentment.

  35:02-35:04

  Things like relationship tension.

  35:07-35:12

  There are people here that struggle with looking at sensual images and videos on the internet.

  35:15-35:16

  What benefit has that brought you?

  35:18-35:25

  What benefit has that brought you that that's the Barabbas you'd rather release versus Jesus you'd rather release into your life?

  35:26-35:28

  What benefit has the pornography brought you?

  35:28-35:34

  Guilt, shame, depression, inability to see sexuality for what God intended it to be.

  35:34-35:35

  That's what you get from pornography.

  35:37-35:39

  And that's the Barabbas that many people choose.

  35:40-35:43

  What about your stuff, your possessions, your money?

  35:44-35:45

  It's not wrong to have stuff, okay?

  35:45-35:46

  It's not wrong to have stuff.

  35:47-35:48

  We all have stuff, right?

  35:48-35:49

  Everybody has stuff.

  35:49-35:50

  It's not wrong to have stuff.

  35:50-35:52

  It's wrong when stuff has you.

  35:55-36:06

  And when stuff becomes your drive, when you care more about the barabbas of stuff than the righteousness of Jesus, let me ask you, has your stuff ever satisfied you?

  36:06-36:08

  Has your stuff ever satisfied you?

  36:08-36:11

  Have you ever gotten something that you're like, "Oh man, I am so good now.

  36:12-36:13

  I have everything that I need.

  36:13-36:14

  I am perfectly content.

  36:15-36:17

  And that is nobody's testimony.

  36:20-36:25

  For a lot of people, that's the Barabbas they'd rather have than releasing Jesus.

  36:27-36:34

  Today, two thousand years later, the choice is put before you as it was before this crowd.

  36:35-36:36

  You want Jesus?

  36:38-36:39

  Or do you want Barabbas?

  36:41-36:45

  Because the custom says you can only have one.

  36:46-36:48

  And the spiritual truth of God's Word is the same.

  36:49-36:50

  You can only have one.

  36:50-36:51

  You're a slave to one or the other.

  36:53-36:56

  So would you rather have Jesus or would you rather have Barabbas?

  36:57-37:02

  I told you what Barabbas offered you, which is nothing but pain.

  37:03-37:05

  What does Jesus offer you?

  37:07-37:09

  Jesus offers you forgiveness of sin.

  37:11-37:19

  Jesus says I'm willing to take your guilt and your shame of your sin and eradicate it.

  37:21-37:22

  That's what Jesus offers.

  37:24-37:26

  Jesus offers eternal life.

  37:27-37:32

  Every one of us are just passing through the earth and you're heading somewhere for eternity.

  37:33-37:39

  Jesus offers a place in glory with Him for eternity.

  37:41-37:43

  Jesus offers strength.

  37:45-37:53

  The times in our lives that we think we can't make one more step, He's there offering the strength to carry us through.

  37:55-37:56

  Jesus offers us peace.

  37:58-38:10

  When the world is falling to pieces around us, a stand and say I know my God is in control. That's peace. Jesus offers us joy.

  38:12-38:35

  Say I don't need to be depressed or discouraged or despondent because of my condition or the condition of those around me. I know that my best days are ahead because Jesus offers me joy. And knowing the hope of his promise then gives me joy now knowing that things are going to be like this forever. He gives me joy.

  38:37-39:00

  Jesus gives me hope. As I said, this is not all there is. God has something so much better waiting for us. And Jesus says, "I'm giving you hope." So when you look at what Jesus offers and you look at what Barabbas and Sid offer in your life, the question is, which What do you want?

  39:01-39:02

  Would you like Jesus?

  39:04-39:05

  Or would you like Barabbas?

  39:08-39:13

  Father in Heaven, we stand with the crowd today.

  39:16-39:21

  And we stand with Pilate today, asking his question, saying, what should I do with Jesus?

  39:22-39:23

  Would I rather have Jesus?

  39:24-39:25

  Or would I rather have Barabbas?

  39:26-39:28

  Would I rather have the righteousness of God?

  39:30-39:33

  Or would I rather have sin?

  39:34-39:37

  And all of the destructive consequences of sin?

  39:39-39:40

  Father, I pray that today is a new day.

  39:40-39:43

  That there are some people here that are struggling with some things.

  39:43-39:45

  Maybe their attitudes. Maybe their actions.

  39:45-39:46

  Maybe their words.

  39:47-39:49

  Maybe their relationships. Whatever it is.

  39:49-39:52

  I pray God, in the name of Jesus, that today would be a new day.

  39:53-40:22

  That You would bring things to the light to come to the light, that you would grant repentance, and that the verdict is much different in our hearts than was different in the text that we read today. Instead of Barabbas being the one that is released and received, that we open ourselves up to the gracious invitation that you've given us in Jesus Christ. In His name that we pray, Amen.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Mark 15:1-20

Why did the crowd choose Barabbas over Jesus? What are some ways we choose "Barabbas" over "Jesus" today?

Breakout Questions:

Have you been patient, gentle, and forbearing in your relationships this week (spouse, children, friends, co-workers)? Where could you have done better? How will you improve? Pray for one another.

Failure: How the Mighty Fall

How to Completely Blow It:

1. Trust your own STRENGTH . (Mk 14:29, 31)



2. Disregard the WORD of God. (Mk 14:30-31)



3. Neglect PRAYER . (Mk 14:37, 40-41)



4. Worry about BLENDING in. (Mk 14:68, 70-71)

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above with your cursor for answers!

• Audio Transcript

  00:00-00:08

  Many, many, many years ago when my wife and I still got the newspaper, one of our favorite sections was the police reports.

  00:08-00:10

  How many people read the police reports in the newspaper?

  00:11-00:12

  Okay, many of you do.

  00:13-00:20

  And there was this story, I mean we read it several times because it almost didn't seem true.

  00:22-00:28

  But there was this story of this man who was out mowing his lawn and his tractor broke broke down.

  00:29-00:37

  Well, he went over to his neighbor's house and just stole his neighbor's tractor right out of his shed.

  00:38-00:44

  And the neighbor's wife was watching all of this take place as she's looking out the window and she calls the police.

  00:45-00:47

  Like, hey, there's some guy that just stole my tractor.

  00:48-01:03

  Well, the police respond immediately, and this man on the tractor leads the police on a chase He's on the mower driving down the road with the police in pursuit.

  01:05-01:09

  I imagine he had to shift from turtle to rabbit.

  01:09-01:11

  Is that how the tractor works?

  01:14-01:27

  Well, the police caught up with him, and here the man not only had stolen the tractor, but while he was in the neighbor's shed or garage or wherever he pulled the tractor out of, he had his pockets full of his neighbor's tools and had stolen those as well.

  01:27-01:41

  And the article said that when the police questioned the man, he simply put his head down and said, "I'm just having a really bad day." Have you ever had a bad day like that?

  01:43-01:45

  The truth is, we all.

  01:46-01:56

  You know, it's easy to make fun of something like that, but it's really a sad story because on the wrong day, that could be any one of us in this room.

  01:59-02:00

  You get frustrated.

  02:01-02:02

  You lose your patience.

  02:02-02:13

  And you start to make stupid decisions after stupid decisions, and the next thing you know, you're the one saying, "I can't believe what I just did!

  02:14-02:29

  I'm having a really bad day." The title of this message is "Failure - How the Mighty Fall." And if you've been with us, we've been walking through the Gospel of Mark in the fall.

  02:29-02:41

  We saw that Jesus is Lord, picking up in February, Act 2 of this three-part act as we head down the Gospel according to Mark.

  02:42-02:44

  We see that Jesus is the Lamb.

  02:45-02:56

  And we've been talking about how Jesus, during this Passover meal, instituted the Lord's Supper and we talked about how Jesus was betrayed by one of his best friends, Judas.

  02:57-02:59

  We talked about how Jesus was arrested.

  03:01-03:04

  And last week, if you recall, we talked about Jesus' trial.

  03:05-03:19

  Jesus' trial was an absolute circus, as they violated every rule of Jewish court of law in order to pass a death sentence on Jesus Christ.

  03:19-03:38

  Well, the passage that we're going to look at today is meanwhile, while Jesus was in Caiaphas' living room in trial, meanwhile, here's what was happening in the courtyard.

  03:39-03:42

  Now, back in these days, families often lived together.

  03:42-03:48

  Their houses would be joined oftentimes in a rectangular pattern, and there'd be a courtyard in the middle.

  03:49-04:00

  So understand when we're talking about the courtyard here, you'll see in a second as we set the scene, basically this scene moves from Caiaphas's living room to Caiaphas's patio.

  04:02-04:02

  Okay?

  04:02-04:06

  But we're going to actually start in verse 26.

  04:06-04:07

  I just want to read these verses.

  04:08-04:22

  If you go on our church's website, when we were going through the text, I blogged these is knowing that there are going to be some people that wanted the chronology of the verses, but I want to flash back to them because it ties in directly with what we're talking about today.

  04:23-04:25

  So, everybody with me?

  04:25-04:28

  Verse 26, Mark chapter 14 and verse 26.

  04:30-05:21

  "And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives," this was right after the institution of the Lord's Supper, verse 27 says, "and Jesus said to them, 'You "You will all fall away, for it is written, 'I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered, but after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.'" Peter said to Him, "Even though they all fall away, I will not." And Jesus said to him, "Truly, I tell you this very night before the rooster crows twice, You will deny Me three times." He, Peter, said emphatically, "If I must die with you, I will not deny you." And they all said the same.

  05:24-05:31

  And then we study Jesus goes to pray and Judas leads the temple guard and the Roman guard right to Jesus in the garden.

  05:31-05:32

  Jesus is arrested.

  05:32-05:34

  Jesus on trial.

  05:35-05:41

  Meanwhile, let's jump down to verse 66.

  05:43-05:52

  It says, "And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came.

  05:53-06:03

  And seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.

  06:05-06:18

  He denied it, saying, "I've neither known nor understand what you mean." And he went out into the gateway and the rooster crowed.

  06:21-06:23

  What does it mean he went out into the gateway?

  06:23-06:28

  He went out basically this rectangular setup of houses in the middle.

  06:28-06:39

  would be like tunnels or corridors from the outside leading into this inner courtyard. So what Peter did here, he was feeling a little heat coming on, so he kind of stepped into one of those little corridors. You can see the scene, right?

  06:40-07:38

  He's in this courtyard with all these people. A little girl comes up to him and "You were with Jesus, right?" "I don't know what you're talking about." And he just kind of steps away like, "You might be getting on to me here. Let's get away from the heat. Then it says, "a rooster crowed." Verse 69 says, "and the servant girl saw him and began again to say to the bystanders." Okay, so this wasn't even directed at Peter. Now she's saying to other people. Okay, trying to step away from the heat, right? The heat's getting ramped up. So the servant girl says to these other people, "this man is one of them!" But again, he denied it. And after a little while, the The bystanders again said to Peter, "Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean." Now, how did they know that Peter was a Galilean?

  07:39-07:44

  Actually, Matthew 26:73 tells us how they knew.

  07:45-07:49

  They said, "Your accent gives you away." Ok?

  07:49-07:50

  It was an accent.

  07:50-08:00

  And you know, Pittsburgh people, live in a place that has a very unique accent, and how many times have you been out of town that somebody's like, "Hey, you must be from Pittsburgh.

  08:01-08:04

  "I recognize your accent." Right, has that happened to anybody here?

  08:05-08:06

  I know, I call people out.

  08:07-08:12

  Like if I'm at Starbucks and the barista goes, "You know, what can I get y'all?" Or like, "Y'all, huh?

  08:13-08:23

  "Like you're not from around here." He's like, "How did you know that?" I say, "Because I'm psychic." No, I say, "Because if you're from Pittsburgh, you wouldn't say you all.

  08:24-08:28

  You would say, "Yins." Right, like you're not from around here.

  08:29-08:31

  Okay, so that was the kind of thing that was happening here.

  08:31-08:33

  They're like, "We can tell by the way you talk.

  08:34-08:35

  "You're from Galilee.

  08:35-08:39

  "And if you're from Galilee, "you must be with the Nazarene Jesus.

  08:40-08:42

  "Your accent is a giveaway, dude.

  08:43-09:01

  "The way you talk, we know you're with Jesus." Verse 71, "But he began to," look at this, invoke a curse on himself, and to swear, "I do not know this man of whom you speak." What does it mean he was cursing himself?

  09:01-09:07

  What that means, he was saying, "may God strike me dead if I know this man.

  09:07-09:08

  I don't know him.

  09:08-09:21

  I swear to you, on my mother's grave, I don't know this man." It says, verse 72, immediately the rooster crowed a second time.

  09:23-09:25

  What's the significance of the rooster crowing twice?

  09:26-09:29

  Well, what that shows us is that some time passes.

  09:30-09:30

  Okay?

  09:31-09:33

  It doesn't mean like the rooster crowed then five minutes later.

  09:34-09:38

  This would have taken place probably over the course of a couple of hours.

  09:40-09:58

  It says, after the rooster crowed a second time, it says, "And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, "Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times." And he broke down and wept.

  10:00-10:02

  Not Peter's finest hour, was it?

  10:04-10:07

  And you can look at this passage and say, how in the world did this happen?

  10:08-10:10

  This is the same Simon Peter, right?

  10:10-10:13

  The same one who walked on water with Jesus for a while?

  10:13-10:17

  The same Simon Peter who confessed Jesus is the Christ.

  10:17-10:18

  Remember that?

  10:19-10:37

  The same Simon Peter who said, "These guys will deny you Jesus, but I never will." The same Simon Peter who said, "I will die before I deny you." The same Simon Peter who, when the guards showed up, he grabbed his sword and started swinging and knocked a guy's ear off with it.

  10:37-10:38

  That guy?

  10:39-10:41

  This strong personality.

  10:42-10:53

  this bold man of conviction who was swinging his sword in the face of hundreds of guards, now all of a sudden is confronted by a little girl.

  10:54-10:58

  A little girl says, "Are you with Jesus?" And he's scared to death all of a sudden.

  10:59-11:00

  He's lying.

  11:02-11:03

  All of a sudden.

  11:05-11:06

  Not Peter's finest hour.

  11:09-11:19

  You'd say, "Well, Peter, you blew it." And church, let me ask you, do you have plans to blow it?

  11:21-11:28

  How many people here today would say, "You know what, I can identify with this passage because I have plans in my life to really blow it.

  11:28-11:31

  In fact, it's on my bucket list.

  11:31-11:33

  I want to make a complete train wreck in my life.

  11:33-11:36

  I want to set out, and I want to be like Peter.

  11:36-11:37

  I want to be like the guy on the tractor.

  11:38-11:42

  I want to be a guy that at the end of the day is like, wow, I made a mess of my life.

  11:42-11:44

  How many people have that on your to-do list?

  11:44-11:44

  Anybody?

  11:48-11:50

  How many people are like, you know what I'm going to do?

  11:50-11:51

  I'm going to have an affair.

  11:52-11:53

  I'm going to cheat on my spouse.

  11:54-11:55

  That's what I'm going to do.

  11:57-11:59

  There's nobody sitting here today thinking that.

  12:02-12:04

  Is there somebody here today thinking, you know what I'm going to do?

  12:04-12:06

  I'm going to steal from my employer.

  12:07-12:09

  Yeah, and I know just how I'm gonna do it.

  12:09-12:13

  I'm going to steal from my employer and I'm going to get away with it.

  12:14-12:19

  And eventually though, I'm going to get caught and I'm going to blow it.

  12:20-12:22

  You don't have plans for that, do you?

  12:23-12:32

  Is there anybody here that says, you know what's on my list today, Pastor Jeff, today, March the 8th, my plans are to lose my temper towards my children.

  12:32-12:34

  Those are my plans today.

  12:34-12:35

  Anybody have those kinds of plans?

  12:37-12:39

  Like, this is silliness.

  12:39-12:41

  Of course, I'm not going to have an affair.

  12:41-12:42

  I'm not going to steal.

  12:42-12:47

  I'm not going to lose my temper with my children and hurt that relationship.

  12:47-12:48

  I'm not going to do that.

  12:51-12:56

  I want to remind you that when Jesus told Peter, you're going to deny that you even know me.

  12:57-12:59

  Peter was like, oh, that's not in the plans.

  13:00-13:01

  That's not on my to-do list.

  13:01-13:02

  There's no way that's gonna happen.

  13:05-13:07

  So for you to sit here today and say, There's no way.

  13:08-13:10

  There's no way that I could have an affair.

  13:10-13:13

  There's no way that I would ever steal from work.

  13:14-13:16

  There's no way I would lose my temper with my kids.

  13:16-13:21

  If you're sitting here today saying that, you're standing beside Peter.

  13:23-13:26

  Because 1 Corinthians 10, 12, write that reference down.

  13:26-13:35

  1 Corinthians 10, 12 says, "Therefore, let anyone who thinks he stands "take heed lest he fall." I'm gonna read that again.

  13:36-13:41

  "Therefore, let anyone who thinks he stands take heed, lest he fall.

  13:44-13:52

  Who here today is capable of completely blowing it?" The answer is every one of us.

  13:52-13:54

  Bob, you're capable, man.

  13:54-13:56

  It can happen to you, Bob.

  13:57-13:57

  It can.

  13:58-13:59

  It could happen to you.

  14:01-14:02

  It could happen to me.

  14:04-14:05

  Every single one of us are capable.

  14:06-14:12

  Every single one of us are one bad decision away.

  14:13-14:17

  You know, little series of compromises here and there.

  14:17-14:18

  A couple of bad decisions.

  14:20-14:23

  Every one of us are capable of blowing it.

  14:24-14:27

  Like, wow, did I make a mess of my life.

  14:29-14:30

  Really quick.

  14:31-14:42

  I wish I could turn back the clock and go back to Sunday morning, March the 8th, when Pastor Jeff was talking about this stuff, because I blew it.

  14:43-14:43

  We're all capable.

  14:44-14:50

  You're like, "Well, how does that happen?" I want you to jot some notes down on your outline how to completely blow it.

  14:50-14:51

  Here's how you do it.

  14:52-14:59

  If this is on your to-do list, and I know it's not, but if you decided you were going to put, "I want to completely blow it," on your to-do list, here's how you do it.

  15:00-15:01

  This is the Simon Peter way, by the way.

  15:01-15:02

  That's what I have in my notes.

  15:02-15:05

  Here's how to completely blow it, the Simon Peter way.

  15:06-15:08

  Number one, trust your own strength.

  15:10-15:11

  Trust your own strength.

  15:11-15:13

  Look back at verse 29 with me.

  15:15-15:25

  After Jesus says, "You're all going to fall away," Peter said to him, "Even though they all fall away, I will not." Ouch.

  15:26-15:27

  How do you think that went over?

  15:29-16:00

  like Jesus and the disciples and Jesus is addressing all of me says you're you're all gonna fall away and Peter's like them maybe me no Judas yeah probably you know Matthew yeah more than likely James and John for sure me No way. No way. No way.

  16:03-16:12

  And even for those of us today sitting here who are born again, people who are spiritually alive, church, you are still living in fallen flesh.

  16:13-16:19

  And the Bible says - this is a whole theology lesson for another time, but understand this for our purposes today.

  16:19-16:27

  Understand that you, born again redeemed, you still live in fallen flesh that lures you and lures me making foolish choices.

  16:28-16:29

  James talks about this.

  16:30-16:34

  Every one of us are lured and enticed by our own desires.

  16:34-16:35

  God doesn't tempt us to sin.

  16:35-16:38

  James says we tempt ourselves to sin.

  16:38-16:46

  We live in this fallen flesh that still has a sin craving sort of built into it.

  16:46-16:47

  So we're born again.

  16:47-16:51

  We have the Spirit of Christ in us, but we're still living in this corrupt, fallen flesh.

  16:51-16:56

  Paul says in Romans 7, "We do not do the things that we wish." because of that.

  16:57-17:03

  And you and I have this temptation to trust in our own strength at times.

  17:04-17:05

  And that's called pride.

  17:06-17:07

  That's called pride.

  17:08-17:10

  When you start saying, "I'm strong enough.

  17:11-17:16

  I have the ability." That's pride.

  17:16-17:24

  When you think you're beyond temptation, you're in the greatest danger can possibly be in.

  17:25-17:46

  I went to a Bible college that taught this insane doctrine called entire sanctification, which meant that you-- OK, so you're living a pagan life, and you have this crisis of faith where you come to faith in Jesus Christ, and God dispenses this first act of grace where you're justified.

  17:46-18:42

  But then as you're a Christian, and you're growing as a Christian, you have this next dispensation of God's grace where you're entirely sanctified. And they would teach that during that second act of grace, temptation to sin is completely removed from you. That saved, justified, sanctified, the very presence of sin in your life is removed. The temptation has gone forever. Is that anybody's experience here? If you're like, "Dude, I'm entirely sanctified and I have not been tempted to sin at all, like since 1972 or whatever," please talk to me. I want to talk to you about that. Because, boy, they sure taught this doctrine but I have not met one person that can honestly say, "I'm beyond temptation." Because the people that I've met that have thought that are in for a fall just like Peter.

  18:44-19:34

  16, 18 says pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. And I did at this Bible college, I met people that believed that. They're like, "Yeah, I'm entirely sanctified. I'm entirely sanctified. I'm not even tempted to sin anymore." Wow. That guy is about to find his car upside down in a ditch with the wheel spinning. I'm not even tempted to sin. It is completely unbiblical. And I've shared with you before, I have a lot of pastor friends. A lot of pastor friends that are still friends but aren't pastors anymore. Because they thought They were a little too good to be tempted.

  19:37-19:50

  I've watched pastor friends throw away their ministry/vocation/marriage/family because of a little thing happening in a counseling appointment with a woman.

  19:53-20:00

  Pastors will be like, "Well, that would never happen to me." "Hey, pastor, do you plan on having an affair today?" "No, I would never do that.

  20:00-20:02

  I preach and teach about marriage.

  20:03-20:04

  I wrote a blog about marriage.

  20:04-20:06

  I've written books about marriage.

  20:06-20:08

  I would never have an affair with my wife.

  20:08-20:10

  I understand the biblical blueprints for marriage.

  20:10-20:12

  It can't happen to me.

  20:12-20:16

  Yeah, it did happen to you.

  20:17-20:22

  And see, I can look at all these pastor friends and think, wow, boy, that was really stupid.

  20:22-20:25

  He threw everything away for some woman.

  20:26-20:28

  Boy, that was really stupid of him.

  20:28-20:32

  and realizing that could happen to me.

  20:34-20:37

  So like Peter, if you want to completely blow it, what you need to do is trust your own strength.

  20:39-20:45

  If you're like, no, I don't want to blow it, Pastor Jeff, well, write these two things down under trust your own strength.

  20:46-20:50

  If you're like, I'm on the I don't want to blow it plan, here's two things I want you to write down.

  20:50-20:51

  Number one, don't overestimate yourself.

  20:54-20:55

  Don't overestimate yourself.

  20:55-20:56

  You are weak on your own.

  20:58-21:02

  I don't want to hear about, oh, my family, we're all stubborn.

  21:02-21:03

  We're all pig-headed.

  21:03-21:07

  I'm too pig-headed to ever do something foolish like that.

  21:08-21:08

  Save it.

  21:10-21:18

  You're capable of being tempted just like Peter was, just like I am, just like many other people I've seen make a shipwreck of the faith.

  21:19-21:21

  Don't overestimate yourself.

  21:21-21:23

  On your own, you are weak.

  21:24-21:26

  On your own, you are weak.

  21:28-21:30

  Apart from Jesus Christ, do you know what you are?

  21:32-21:32

  Nothing.

  21:34-21:35

  You have no strength.

  21:37-21:38

  On your own.

  21:40-21:42

  How many times did we sing about that just this morning?

  21:43-21:44

  You know, Christ is enough.

  21:44-21:45

  Christ is enough.

  21:45-21:47

  Jesus Christ is our very life.

  21:47-21:48

  He's our very strength.

  21:51-21:52

  from Him you don't have it.

  21:54-21:56

  So number one, don't overestimate yourself.

  21:56-21:58

  Number two, don't compare yourself with others.

  22:00-22:01

  That's what Peter did.

  22:02-22:03

  They might fall away, but not me.

  22:05-22:06

  Don't compare yourself with others.

  22:07-22:18

  As soon as I think that I'm stronger than the next guy, I'm smarter than the next guy, I'm better than the next guy, I'm just a little above that, I am setting myself wide open.

  22:21-22:22

  Pride goes before destruction.

  22:24-22:26

  So if you're self-confident, you're going to blow it.

  22:27-22:34

  You want to blow it to Simon Peter way, the first thing you need to do is to just have a healthy dose of self-confidence and you're going to blow it.

  22:37-22:39

  I am persuaded of better things for you.

  22:41-22:43

  Number two, how to completely blow it to Simon Peter way.

  22:43-22:47

  Number two, disregard the Word of God.

  22:47-22:49

  We saw that in verse 30.

  22:49-22:53

  Jesus knew what was going to happen with Peter.

  22:53-22:56

  He knew that Peter was going to trust his own strength.

  22:56-23:02

  He knew that Peter was going to ignore this very statement that he was making, because Peter did it immediately.

  23:05-23:10

  Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, this very night before the rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times." Here's Peter again.

  23:10-23:16

  "If I must die with you, I will not deny you." Jesus called it and Peter's answer was, "No way!

  23:16-23:23

  Not me!" And when we're faced with temptations, it's easy for us to disregard the Word of God.

  23:24-23:40

  I heard, I think it was David Jeremiah said, this is a great quote, he said, "Waiting until a crisis to decide your values is like trying to buckle your seatbelt as you are crashing." And maybe that illustration resonated with me because of totaling a car in January.

  23:41-23:46

  But yeah, when your car is crashing, that's not the time to try to figure out how to get Put your seatbelt on.

  23:48-23:51

  The issue of your identity in Jesus Christ is settled.

  23:53-23:59

  I don't have to wonder what to do if I know who I am in Jesus Christ.

  23:59-24:02

  That's why we have the Word of God to equip us ahead of time.

  24:04-24:17

  I just want to encourage you in this church, if your focus is to not sin as a Christian, you're going to start frustrating yourself.

  24:17-24:21

  You're going to say, "My goal is to not sin." I hear what you're saying, Pastor Jeff, and you're right.

  24:22-24:23

  My goal is I'm not going to have an affair.

  24:24-24:27

  My goal is I'm not going to steal from work.

  24:27-24:30

  My goal is I'm not...

  24:31-24:32

  What was the third thing?

  24:32-24:34

  Oh yeah, I'm not going to lose my temper with my kids.

  24:35-24:36

  I'm not going to do those things.

  24:39-24:44

  If you understand your identity in Christ, you should be saying things a little bit differently.

  24:44-24:53

  You should be saying things like, because of who I am in Christ, I understand what Christ has called me to in marriage.

  24:53-24:56

  I understand this beautiful gift that I have in my wife.

  24:56-25:02

  And I understand how it's my job to nurture that gift and to look after that gift.

  25:06-25:07

  I'm going to try not to have an affair.

  25:07-25:10

  I'm looking at things from Christ's perspective.

  25:10-25:11

  This is who I am in Christ.

  25:11-25:13

  He's called me to love my wife.

  25:13-25:16

  He's called me to love my wife as Christ loved the church.

  25:17-25:19

  You see how that puts a different perspective on it?

  25:20-25:22

  It's not that I'm trying not to sin.

  25:22-25:28

  It's I'm so focused on who I am in Christ, that I'm not even thinking about the sin.

  25:30-25:32

  Instead of saying, you know, I'm going to try not to steal at work.

  25:33-25:34

  Who am I in Christ?

  25:34-25:37

  I'm somebody that God has given every resource that I need.

  25:37-25:39

  God will provide every single thing that I need.

  25:41-25:43

  I don't even need to think about that.

  25:45-25:46

  Because God's going to give me what I need.

  25:48-25:57

  Instead of thinking, I'm going to try really hard today to not lose my temper with my kids, I'm going to instead focus on the fact that God's Spirit dwells in me and one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is patience.

  25:57-26:04

  And I should say instead, God, let the fruit of the patience of the Holy Spirit be made manifest in me today.

  26:05-26:06

  Do you see how that makes a difference?

  26:07-26:08

  Does that make sense?

  26:11-26:13

  Not doing that is disregarding the Word of God.

  26:15-26:16

  Peter ran into trouble there.

  26:17-26:19

  If you disregard the Word of God, you are going to blow it.

  26:20-26:22

  Let the Word of God equip you ahead of time.

  26:24-26:31

  Psalm 119, 111, "Your Word have I hidden in my heart, that I may not sin against you." You know, you want the Word of Christ to dwell in you richly.

  26:34-26:36

  Number three, neglect prayer.

  26:36-26:39

  You want to blow it the Simon Peter way, the third thing you need to do is neglect prayer.

  26:39-26:40

  We did a whole sermon on this.

  26:41-26:42

  It's on the website.

  26:43-26:47

  I'm not going to rehash all of that, but I do want to circle back very quickly.

  26:47-26:51

  I want to remind you that Jesus told the disciples to pray that they may not enter into temptation.

  26:52-26:53

  Temptation to what?

  26:53-26:55

  Temptation to sleep during prayer time.

  26:56-26:58

  Temptation to bail when things got rough.

  26:59-27:01

  Temptation to deny Jesus.

  27:02-27:05

  No prayer means no power over temptation.

  27:06-27:10

  I'm sure there are people here that can think back to times in their life that they have blown it.

  27:11-27:13

  Think back to a time in your life that you're like, "Man, I really messed up.

  27:13-27:15

  I really messed that up.

  27:15-27:23

  I really messed that up." Let me ask you, how was your prayer life during that season of your life before you really messed up?

  27:24-27:31

  Like, "Oh yeah, man, I was on my knees every day crying out to the Lord and then I messed up." That's typically not it.

  27:31-27:33

  It's during a season of prayerlessness.

  27:35-27:39

  You're not in communion with God consistently and constantly, and you're leaving yourself open.

  27:42-27:44

  You're not tapping into the power that you need.

  27:46-27:52

  And instead, when you're prayerless, you get back to what we talked about in point one.

  27:52-27:54

  You just start trusting your own strength.

  27:56-27:57

  Tapping into the power of God.

  27:59-28:03

  So, if you neglect prayer, you're going to blow it.

  28:04-28:10

  And finally, if you want to blow it the Simon Peter way, you've got to worry about blending in.

  28:12-28:14

  You've got to worry about blending in.

  28:14-28:15

  That's how you blow it.

  28:16-28:20

  Verse 54 says that Peter followed Jesus at a distance.

  28:22-28:24

  That's a temptation that we can all fall into.

  28:25-28:26

  Keep Jesus at a distance.

  28:28-28:29

  You see what happened with Peter here.

  28:29-28:40

  I'm going to follow Jesus at a distance, and these people that I'm around, they're not real big fans of Jesus, so I'm going to try to keep it a secret that I associate with Jesus.

  28:40-28:41

  Do you see that?

  28:43-28:45

  Because church, we have the same temptation.

  28:47-28:51

  You know, when we go to a workplace that is full of non-Christians.

  28:52-29:01

  You're like, well, I'm a follower of Jesus, but these people really aren't into the whole church thing, So, I'm still a follower, but I just want to blend in with these people that aren't fans of Jesus.

  29:03-29:06

  You're setting yourself up for problems when you're trying to blend in.

  29:09-29:13

  I hope people don't recognize that I associate with Jesus.

  29:15-29:16

  You're going to run into problems.

  29:16-29:19

  Did you notice Peter, he denied Jesus three times.

  29:19-29:41

  Mark doesn't give us the second quote, but I think you can see very plainly from the text how Peter's denials escalated. Did you see that? The first one was like, "I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about." By the time we get to the third denial, what did Peter do? Screaming and cursing, you know, swearing, calling down God's curses on himself.

  29:44-29:56

  You see how his denial quickly escalated? And if we're not careful, if we're more interested and blending in with the world, we have a tendency to ramp it up too.

  29:56-30:13

  "Oh yeah I go to church. Yeah, I go to church. I mean, I mean, I mean, my wife wants me to go to church, I mean, so I kind of go with her, and it' okay. I mean, the pastor's not great, or anything. I'm like, I mean, yeah, I mean, I mean, yeah, I guess I call myself Christian.

  30:14-30:26

  I guess I call myself a Christian, you know, but, you know, I"m not like radical about it, and It ramps up to the point of you don't want anybody associating you with Jesus.

  30:27-30:28

  Much like Peter did.

  30:29-30:34

  When you're looking for fellowship in the wrong place, you're going to find yourself doing all kinds of things you wouldn't do or say normally.

  30:35-30:40

  Young people, young people, listen up.

  30:40-30:42

  Because the old people, they're already sold on this.

  30:42-30:45

  The young people, you're not sold on it yet.

  30:45-30:49

  But you can ask any of the old people here and they will verify that this is true.

  30:50-30:53

  people are you listening? I want to see your eyes young people. Are you listening?

  30:55-31:11

  Young people, I'm like Santa Claus. I see you when you're sleeping and I know when you're awake. Young people, you act just like the people you hang around. Old people, true or false? True. You act like the people that you hang around.

  31:14-31:42

  And before we make this a public roast of Simon Peter, I like to try to give people the benefit of the doubt and I really think, I really think deep down Peter probably thought his motives were good. I just want to blend in. I just want to be close to Jesus but I can't really be close to Jesus if these people find out that I'm like one of his like most you know sincere followers so I'm just I'm just going to keep my distance.

  31:44-31:48

  You become like the people that you hang around.

  31:50-31:52

  1 Corinthians 15 says bad company corrupts good character.

  31:53-31:55

  That's why fellowship is so important.

  31:55-31:57

  That's why small group is so important.

  31:57-32:09

  That's why when Dan Thompson gets up here and says, young people, you need to come to this student ministry that we're starting, because you need to be around some people that love Jesus and are going to teach you about what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

  32:09-32:11

  That's why you need to make this a priority.

  32:11-32:12

  That's why Satan doesn't want you to be there.

  32:14-32:16

  Because you're going to become like the people you hang around.

  32:18-32:24

  Peter didn't have this problem of denying Jesus while he was with the other disciples.

  32:24-32:25

  Did you notice that?

  32:27-32:35

  He was always going over the top to show how he was so much more devoted to Jesus when the other disciples were around.

  32:36-32:52

  But you get him around a bunch of people of Jesus, Peter tried to act just like them. So if your primary concern is to appease those around you, you're going to blow it. The very last verse in chapter 14.

  32:54-33:09

  When that rooster crowed, that was a sign that brought the crushing reality home to Peter and your Bible says, "And he broke down and wept." You see that scene?

  33:10-33:13

  He heard that rooster crow and he immediately he remembered what Jesus said.

  33:16-33:24

  He wept. Why did he weep? I failed. I was so foolish.

  33:26-33:48

  Jesus was right. So we look at this passage I think we can all agree that Peter blew it. The sad reality is you will too. And so will I, but good news this was not the end of Peter's story. If you go to John chapter 21 you see that Jesus after his resurrection restored Peter.

  33:52-34:26

  And I want to close this message by reminding you that when you blow it, even after hearing a message like this, when you blow it, it's not the end of your story either. Our God is about grace. Our God is about restoration. Our God is not about you walking around the rest of your life with your head down saying, "I Jesus wouldn't let Peter live there, and He's not going to let you live there either.

  34:27-34:28

  He's a God of restoration.

  34:28-34:34

  So maybe there's somebody here today that says, "You know what, Pastor Jeff, I recently went through a bad season in my life.

  34:34-34:36

  I made some bad choices.

  34:38-34:48

  I just want to pray." Father in heaven, I pray for every single one of us this morning that we would not get this idea that we're better than the next guy or that we're above temptation.

  34:50-34:57

  This is a very sad account that we read in your Word today, Father, but I thank you so much that this wasn't the end of Peter.

  34:59-35:08

  Your Word doesn't tell us that after this event, Peter just went off by himself and lived a life of misery and shame.

  35:09-35:13

  Your Word tells us that Jesus Christ came and restored him.

  35:15-35:19

  Father, there are some people in this room right now who need to experience that.

  35:21-35:26

  People who have been feeling guilt and shame that you have dealt with once and for all on the cross.

  35:28-35:30

  People that don't need to walk around with their head down.

  35:31-35:34

  People that don't need to feel shame and guilt.

  35:35-35:42

  People that need to once again come to an understanding that Jesus took all of that away when he died on the cross for our sin.

  35:44-35:49

  Father, we thank You that You've given us the resources.

  35:51-36:03

  We thank You that You're the God of the second chance and the third chance, the fifth chance, the tenth chance, and it goes on.

  36:05-36:08

  Father, have Your way among us.

  36:10-36:12

  I pray that this would be a time of healing.

  36:13-36:15

  We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Mark 14:26-31, 66-72

1. Define pride (Mk 14:29, 31). Why do prideful people have such potential to "completely blow it" like Peter did?
    

2. "You become like the people you hang around." Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why? What would this mean for a Christian trying to blend in with worldly people (at work, school, etc)?

Breakout Questions:

Did you abide through prayer and Bible reading this week? What specifically are you moved to change or apply this week and how are you going to apply it? Pray for one another.

Facing Injustice Like Jesus

You Have the Right to a Fair Trial?
10 Laws Broken in the Trial of Jesus:

1. No trials allowed during FEASTS . (Mk 14:12)


2. Trials must be PUBLIC . (Mk 14:53)


3. No trials allowed at NIGHT . (Mk 14:53)


4. No convictions allowed at NIGHT . (Mk 14:53)


5. Sanhedrin could investigate an accusation, not INITIATE . (Mk 14:55)


6. Witnesses had to AGREE . (Mk 14:56, 59)


7. The judge could not act as PROSECUTOR . (Mk 14:60)


8. No self-incrimination ALLOWED . (Mk 14:61)


9. Accused was to have a WITNESS . (Mk 14:63)


10. No sentences passed without waiting 1 DAY . (Mk 14:64)

Handling Injustice Like Jesus:

1. When falsely accused, speak NOTHING . (Mk 14:61)


2. When questioned, speak BOLDLY . (Mk 14:62)


3. When mistreated, trust GOD . (Mk 14:65)

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above with your cursor for answers!

• Audio Transcript

  00:00-00:03

  Grab your Bibles, let's go to Mark chapter 14.

  00:05-00:06

  Mark chapter 14.

  00:08-00:26

  And I've shared this story with some of you before and it just seemed very appropriate to share it with you now and to be honest with you, every time I share this story with anyone they come back afterwards and say, "Did that really happen?" This story is absolutely true.

  00:27-01:30

  years ago my wife and I, before we had children, we were foster parents and we had a brother and a sister. And very long story very short, the children's parent or the children's mother rather, the children's mother took us to court because the little girl came home, she was seven at the time, turned eight while we had her, but she came home and she goes, "Jeff, the kids on the bus told me that there is no such thing as Santa Claus, is that true?" So I sat down with her and I said, "Honey, Santa Claus is like Batman. Like we know, we know he's not real, but if you want to watch a movie about him or have a coloring book or, you know, pretend, it's okay. It's okay." Well, the kid's mother took us to court over that. And what was the movie where that happened? Is that Miracle on 34th Street or whatever? Okay, well it was like a scene right out of that movie.

  01:31-02:19

  Okay, we're in the courthouse and there's a judge on a bench and there's lawyers and I'm sitting on the stand and the mother's attorney says, "Mr. Miller, did you or did you not tell this little girl that there is no Santa clause. And I will never, this absolutely true, I will never forget that moment in time sitting there going, "Is this really happening? Is this really happening?" And I explained to them, well, then more accusations started coming. They said, "Mr. Miller, did you or did you not buy the little boy, buy the Passion of the Christ for him on DVD for Christmas.

  02:21-02:24

  And you know I can be a little smart-alecky, especially at this point in time.

  02:25-02:29

  And in my mind I'm thinking, yeah, here's a little boy that can't read and he can't speak Aramaic.

  02:30-02:31

  So I thought, you know what would be a good gift for him?

  02:32-02:35

  Let's get him a movie where they speak nothing but Aramaic, but it's subtitled in English.

  02:35-02:37

  That'd be a perfect gift for a five-year-old.

  02:39-02:40

  I didn't say that.

  02:42-02:42

  I said no.

  02:45-02:47

  and the accusations kept coming.

  02:47-02:51

  Mr. Miller, did you or did you not baptize these children into your church?

  02:52-03:00

  No, I did not baptize these children and I got to teach the courtroom what we teach about baptism.

  03:01-03:07

  We believe that baptism is a response when Jesus Christ changes you.

  03:07-03:13

  When you give your life to Jesus Christ, baptism is the outward sign of that, the public profession of faith.

  03:13-03:15

  I get to preach a little sermon in the courtroom.

  03:16-03:23

  And even to this day, I think back, did that stuff really happen?

  03:24-03:36

  Sitting in a courtroom with all of these accusations, false accusations, I guess with the exception of the Santa Claus thing.

  03:38-03:41

  We're gonna be talking about injustice today.

  03:42-03:56

  And here's the thing, as crazy as my day in court was that day, as crazy as that day was, we're going to be looking at Jesus' day in court and it is 10,000 times crazier.

  03:58-04:07

  If you're walking with us through the Gospel of Mark, remember, we're Friday morning at this point, we're talking middle of the night and the religious leaders finally have Jesus.

  04:07-04:16

  Judas betrayed Jesus and led the chief priests, the scribes, the temple guard, Roman guards He led, Judas led them right to where Jesus would go to pray.

  04:17-04:20

  Jesus would go to the Garden of Gethsemane often to pray, and Judas knew that.

  04:20-04:21

  He goes, "Here's my chance.

  04:21-04:26

  I can lead them right to Him." And remember they paid Him, how much?

  04:26-04:27

  How much did they pay Him?

  04:29-04:30

  Right, right, 30 pieces of silver.

  04:31-04:39

  And Judas said, "Yeah, you give me a little money, I'll take you right to Him." That's exactly what happened.

  04:40-04:41

  But there's a problem.

  04:42-04:50

  The problem is this, I've shared with you before, that at this time in Israel's history, Israel was under Roman occupation, which meant they were living in their land.

  04:50-04:56

  They were allowed to govern themselves to a point, but one of the things that Israel could not do was execute someone.

  04:57-05:00

  Okay, they were not allowed to execute someone that they deemed a criminal.

  05:01-05:10

  So if Israel wanted to execute someone, they had to convince the Romans that this person needed to be executed, And the Romans did it.

  05:10-05:12

  How did the Jews execute people?

  05:12-05:13

  They did it by stoning.

  05:14-05:17

  Okay, but they weren't really allowed to do that.

  05:17-05:22

  So they had to convince the Romans to execute Jesus.

  05:24-05:28

  Bible students, Jesus actually went through two trials.

  05:28-05:32

  He went through a religious trial under Israel, under the high priest.

  05:32-05:36

  And Jesus went through a secular trial through Rome.

  05:37-05:40

  So each of those trials had three phases.

  05:40-05:55

  Okay, if you put all the Gospels together, you see first of all the Jews took Jesus through these three "religious" trials before Annas, who was the high priest, and Caiaphas, who was the current high priest, and then before the whole Sanhedrin.

  05:56-06:12

  And after Jesus went through those three phases under Israel, they took him to Rome where they took him to Pilate, and Pilate whisked him off before Herod, who sent him back to And Pilate, where Jesus was ultimately crucified under Pilate.

  06:14-06:19

  We're going to be looking at this passage, and I want to read it.

  06:19-06:20

  I'm going to make a couple of comments.

  06:21-06:30

  I hope that you have something to write some things down with, because I need to share with you some of the background so we understand what's really happening.

  06:32-06:35

  Mark is communicating to us under inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

  06:36-06:38

  So let's pick up, where are we going to pick up?

  06:38-06:39

  Verse 53.

  06:41-06:46

  It says, "And they led Jesus to the high priest." Okay, that's Caiaphas.

  06:48-06:58

  "And all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together." They actually went to Caiaphas' house, we find out in the Gospel of John.

  06:58-06:59

  I'm going to talk about that in a second.

  06:59-07:03

  They didn't go to like a courthouse, they went to the man's personal home.

  07:05-07:10

  It says, "And Peter had followed him at a distance right into the courtyard of the high priest.

  07:13-07:24

  And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire." We're going to be talking about Peter next week, but Mark's just reminding us that he's following the action here, okay?

  07:25-07:40

  It says, "Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they found none." Do you realize how backwards this is?

  07:41-07:42

  How does that phrase go?

  07:42-07:45

  "Innocent until what?" Presumed guilty, right?

  07:46-07:52

  And don't you go to the court and… Don't people usually like hear the evidence before reaching a verdict?

  07:53-07:53

  Isn't that how it works?

  07:54-07:57

  But you see, in Jesus' case, it was backwards.

  07:58-07:59

  They said, "We want to kill Him.

  08:01-08:03

  Let's figure out how we're going to make that happen.

  08:04-08:13

  We need to find something to charge Him so He can get the death sentence, so let's figure out what we can charge Him with." That's what your Bible says.

  08:14-08:16

  That was the fair trial that Jesus got.

  08:18-08:25

  Verse 56 says, "For many bore false witness against Him, but their testimony did not agree.

  08:27-08:43

  And some stood up and bore false witness against Him, saying, 'We heard Him say, "I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands."'" Wow.

  08:43-08:44

  Jesus so did not say that.

  08:45-08:48

  That actually is from John chapter 2, I believe verse 19.

  08:50-08:51

  Not even close.

  08:54-08:54

  False testimony.

  08:57-09:03

  Verse 59, Mark reminds us again, "Yet even about this, their testimony did not agree.

  09:05-09:10

  And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, 'Have you no answer to make?

  09:13-09:15

  What is it that these men testify against you?

  09:17-09:18

  This is so wicked.

  09:18-09:22

  This is so unbelievably wicked what Jesus was going through.

  09:23-09:24

  Do you see this scene?

  09:25-09:26

  Do you see what's going on here?

  09:27-09:32

  All these false witnesses were giving these reports, and none of them matched up.

  09:35-09:41

  And somehow the high priest is calling Jesus to the carpet for these… Do you realize how crazy that is?

  09:42-09:57

  That would be like if we took Ken to court and okay, we brought all these false witnesses in and one says, "Yeah, I saw Ken, he had a gun and he was at Target." And another witness was like, "No, no, no, no, he had a knife and he was standing on my front lawn with his knife.

  09:57-10:00

  That's what Ken was doing." And somebody else was like, "No, no, no, no, Ken wasn't doing it.

  10:01-10:04

  He was intoxicated and driving down McKnight Road.

  10:04-10:37

  That's what Ken was doing." And all of these false witnesses are giving all these reports and then the judge just and says, "Okay, Ken, what do you say about you? What do you have to say for yourself?" "Well, you know, give me an answer, Ken. What do you have to say amidst these accusations against you?" Like, what? Are you kidding me? He didn't do all that. He didn't do any of that. And that's exactly what was happening to Jesus. They're throwing out all these idiotic accusations against him. And the high priest was like, "Well, Jesus, what do you have to say for yourself?" Excuse me.

  10:38-10:38

  Crazy.

  10:40-11:11

  Verse 61 says, "He remained silent and made no answer." Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" And Jesus said, "I am." And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.

  11:13-11:19

  And the high priest tore his garments and said, "What further witnesses do we need?

  11:19-11:21

  You have heard his blasphemy.

  11:22-11:27

  What is your decision?" And they all condemned him as deserving death.

  11:29-11:40

  You know that sign of tearing your clothes, that was a sign of, in the Old Testament, a sign of repentance, or it was a sign of remorse, or it was a sign of anguish.

  11:40-11:47

  And actually the high priest was not allowed to do that, except in the case of blasphemy.

  11:48-11:51

  That's what he was doing here, putting on this show before Jesus.

  11:51-11:52

  He's committing blasphemy!

  11:53-11:54

  He's calling himself God.

  11:54-11:58

  I can't believe he's doing this." And they would just like rip their clothes.

  12:00-12:01

  What should we do with him?

  12:01-12:05

  And they said he deserves to die for his blasphemy.

  12:06-12:24

  Verse 65, "And some began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to strike him, saying to him, 'Prophesy!' And the guards received him with blows.

  12:25-12:27

  Covered his face so he couldn't see.

  12:28-12:33

  And then taking slaps and spitting on him and knocking him around with his face covered.

  12:33-12:35

  "Oh come on prophet, aren't you the prophet?

  12:36-12:44

  Who's hitting you?" And making a complete mockery of Jesus Christ.

  12:45-12:48

  I knew there were some shady things going on with this trial.

  12:49-13:04

  through my studies this week, I've come to realize that in this passage, Mark in writing this, wanted to communicate - in these verses we read, what Mark wanted to communicate above everything was the unfairness of this trial.

  13:06-13:08

  Because it's easy for us to miss.

  13:08-13:15

  In the United States of America, there are laws, there are rules about how court is conducted, right?

  13:15-13:16

  You know what I'm talking about.

  13:17-13:22

  For example, when you're arrested, you have the right to remain silent.

  13:24-13:25

  And what other rights are there?

  13:25-13:26

  Come on, help me out.

  13:27-13:29

  Okay, you have a right to an attorney.

  13:30-13:31

  And we have all these laws.

  13:32-13:34

  Like the Fifth Amendment is what?

  13:35-13:43

  I plead the fifth, meaning you don't have to incriminate yourself, meaning you don't have to say anything that would bring a charge against you.

  13:43-13:45

  You have the right to remain silent.

  13:45-13:46

  That's the Fifth Amendment.

  13:46-13:51

  And the sixth amendment is you have the right to a, what is it, a fair and speedy trial or something.

  13:51-13:51

  How's that go?

  13:52-13:53

  History was so not my thing.

  13:54-13:54

  Okay?

  13:54-13:56

  But I was trying to study that this week.

  13:56-14:02

  But you have, in the United States of America, you have all these rules about how court is to be conducted.

  14:02-14:10

  A jury of your peers and, you know, the judge and attorneys and we have all these rules.

  14:12-14:24

  And what Mark is doing in this passage, and I want you to jot some things down here in a second, he was showing that they broke all of Israel's rules when it came to court of law.

  14:25-14:32

  In other words, we were picking on Ken earlier, it would be like us saying, "Okay, so all these false witnesses came and they took Ken to court, but guess what?

  14:33-14:50

  The judge was also the prosecuting attorney, and he wasn't allowed a jury, and he wasn't a lot of witnesses to come to his defense, and the judge forced him to speak, and you'd be sitting there going, "What are you talking about? All that stuff's illegal that you're telling me that happened at Canaan Court." That's what Mark is doing in this passage.

  14:51-15:10

  Everything that happened, everything that happened to Jesus in this court hearing was illegal according to Israel's laws. Everything. You're like, "Was it really that bad?" Let's put it this way, I whittled it down to 10.

  15:11-15:13

  I'm going to go through these extremely quickly.

  15:14-15:20

  I whittled the list down to 10 of Israel's laws that they broke to do this.

  15:20-15:21

  You're like, what are you talking about?

  15:23-15:28

  If you're writing this down, number one, 10 laws broken in the trial of Jesus.

  15:29-15:32

  Number one, no trials were allowed during feasts.

  15:32-15:33

  That was one of Israel's laws.

  15:34-15:37

  No trials were allowed to take place during the feast.

  15:37-15:43

  And if you go back to Mark chapter 14 and verse 12, what was going on in Israel at the time of this?

  15:43-15:45

  The Passover, right Bob, the Passover.

  15:45-15:48

  They were not allowed to have a trial during the Passover.

  15:50-15:51

  Violated that.

  15:51-15:54

  Number two, trials must be public.

  15:56-15:57

  The trial must be public.

  15:58-16:28

  Okay, and as I said, when you study this, especially in John's gospel, they took him to Caiaphas's house. Okay, this wasn't at the courthouse, this was in like Caiaphas's living room where they tried Jesus, and that was illegal. Courts had to be, the trials rather, had to be public. Number three, you were not allowed to have trials, you're not allowed to have trials at night. You were not allowed to do that.

  16:28-16:56

  Trials had to happen during the day. None of this sneaky, in the dark, under the cover of night, we're going to… You were not allowed to do that. It was illegal to have a trial at night. And similarly, number four, you were not allowed to have a conviction handed down at night. Not only could you not have a trial at night, if you had a trial during the day, you weren't allowed to hand down the conviction at night. That was illegal.

  16:56-17:30

  And that happened in this passage. Did you see it? What should we do with him? He deserves to die. Done. Let's do it. All illegal. This is the middle of the night Friday. Illegal, illegal, illegal. Number five, the Sanhedrin, this Jewish ruling body of 71 members, the Sanhedrin could investigate an accusation, they could not initiate an accusation. Do you see the difference? Do you see the difference? This one's hard for us to understand because Do you watch those court shows on TV?

  17:31-17:33

  Who's your favorite TV judge?

  17:34-17:35

  Judge Judy?

  17:35-17:36

  How many people are like Judge Judy fans?

  17:37-17:38

  Okay, a couple of us.

  17:39-17:54

  Well, one of the problems with us liking these court shows is in these court shows you have the judge pushing the issue to get people to say something, sort of give enough rope and hang themselves kind of thing.

  17:54-18:05

  The judge leads these people down this path where they eventually are able to determine, "OK, you're lying and you're telling the truth, and here's how I'm going to rule." That's really not supposed to happen.

  18:05-18:10

  The judge is to make a determination, but it's the lawyers presenting the case and the jury and all that.

  18:10-18:23

  But under Israel's law, the Sanhedrin was allowed to investigate when an accusation came up, but the Sanhedrin was not allowed to initiate an investigation to say, "We're going after this person." That was illegal.

  18:25-18:25

  It was illegal.

  18:28-18:31

  Judge Judy might have been on the Sanhedrin board at this time.

  18:32-18:34

  I forgot to look that part up.

  18:35-18:38

  So on number six, the witnesses had to agree.

  18:39-18:39

  That was another law.

  18:40-18:42

  If you brought witnesses in, the witnesses had to agree.

  18:42-18:44

  Did you notice Mark said twice, the witnesses didn't agree.

  18:44-18:45

  Their testimonies didn't line up.

  18:46-18:47

  They had to agree.

  18:49-18:52

  Number seven, the judge could not act as a prosecutor.

  18:53-18:56

  Similarly to not initiating an accusation.

  18:57-19:03

  The judge couldn't all of a sudden act like he's a lawyer on the case.

  19:04-19:07

  Again Jesus was convicted before he was tried.

  19:07-19:08

  They had their minds made up.

  19:08-19:09

  Now let's find a reason to kill him.

  19:10-19:12

  Number eight, no self-incrimination.

  19:13-19:16

  Like our fifth amendment, no self-incrimination.

  19:16-19:20

  Verse 61 makes it very clear that that's exactly what the high priest was trying to do to Jesus.

  19:23-19:25

  Number nine, the accused was to have a witness.

  19:27-19:28

  And who was Jesus' witness again?

  19:30-19:33

  Who stood beside Jesus to testify on His behalf?

  19:34-19:34

  Who was that?

  19:35-19:36

  No one.

  19:36-19:38

  Where were the disciples at?

  19:38-19:42

  Well, Peter was like hanging outside on Caiaphas' patio.

  19:44-19:46

  And you know, just hanging out there.

  19:46-19:48

  All the other disciples took off.

  19:48-19:53

  And nobody was standing beside Jesus.

  19:55-19:56

  Illegal.

  19:58-20:02

  And then number ten, no sentences were passed without waiting one day.

  20:03-20:04

  That was their law.

  20:05-20:07

  So you had to trial.

  20:07-20:10

  You had to wait one day before you passed a sentence. Why?

  20:10-20:12

  So you didn't make any rash decisions.

  20:12-20:14

  It was to give an opportunity for mercy.

  20:14-20:24

  It was like, we're just going to sit on this for a day hand down a conviction. Did that happen for Jesus? Absolutely not. No, there's more.

  20:25-21:16

  But I'm going to stop there. The point is this. If any one of those would have happened, it would have been a mistrial and Jesus could have walked out the door legally. If any one of them would have happened. I whittled the list down to ten. And here's the point. Mark It wasn't just a little shady. It wasn't just, "Well, maybe protocol wasn't exactly done." He's like, "It was so obnoxiously, wickedly carried out that there is no way anybody, no matter what they had done, should be convicted in any circumstance." And here you have an innocent man who didn't really commit any crimes, except in the eyes of his accusers.

  21:18-21:19

  So what's the point here?

  21:20-21:21

  The point is injustice.

  21:22-21:33

  No one has ever faced worse injustice, and no one has ever handled it better than Jesus Christ.

  21:34-21:37

  So as we wrap up here, I want you to jot three things down.

  21:37-21:38

  Handling injustice like Jesus.

  21:40-21:44

  How to handle injustice like Jesus, because we're going to deal with injustice.

  21:44-21:45

  We're going to.

  21:45-21:53

  Maybe you're not going to be in court over Santa Claus, and maybe you're not going to be in court because you said you were God.

  21:53-21:54

  I certainly hope not.

  21:57-21:59

  But we're a people who deal with injustice.

  22:00-22:05

  There are people here, I know we've talked about it, we've prayed about it, there are people here that deal with injustice at work.

  22:07-22:18

  They deal with injustice at work, being wrongfully targeted and wrongfully accused and discriminated against and fired.

  22:19-22:27

  Somebody who was a prominent member of this church that had to move for work was wrongly fired.

  22:28-22:30

  I was fired up about that.

  22:31-22:36

  Good friends that wrongly terminated.

  22:37-22:38

  Maybe you deal with the injustice.

  22:40-22:41

  Maybe it's not from work.

  22:41-22:43

  Maybe it's family.

  22:44-22:45

  Maybe you have a family that mistreats you.

  22:46-22:49

  Maybe your family is unjust in the way that they act towards you.

  22:49-22:53

  Maybe your family has been falsely accusing you of something for years.

  22:56-22:57

  You're like, well, how do I handle that?

  22:58-22:58

  It's not fair.

  22:59-23:00

  It's not fair.

  23:00-23:01

  I should stand up for myself.

  23:01-23:02

  I shouldn't let this happen.

  23:03-23:03

  What should I do?

  23:04-23:12

  I just want to show you three things this passage very quickly, that Jesus did when He was facing the worst injustice.

  23:12-23:17

  Number one, when falsely accused, speak nothing.

  23:18-23:21

  When falsely accused, speak nothing.

  23:21-23:22

  That's what the Bible says.

  23:22-23:25

  When Jesus was accused, it says what?

  23:25-23:27

  But He remained silent and made no answer.

  23:27-23:29

  In the face of the accusations, Jesus didn't say a word.

  23:30-23:31

  For two reasons.

  23:31-23:33

  One, is it as a direct fulfillment of prophecy.

  23:34-23:39

  Isaiah 53, 7, "Like a sheep before its years, he was silent." That's a prophecy of the Messiah.

  23:39-23:43

  That's the main reason, I believe, that Jesus gave no answer.

  23:43-23:53

  He was fulfilling prophecy, but there's really another reason that Jesus gave no answer, and the reason is this, giving an answer when falsely accused is ultimately pointless.

  23:56-24:04

  You mean you've got 30 people telling you 35 different stories, and you think you're You're going to say something that's going to convince people that you're innocent?

  24:08-24:11

  Would it have really mattered what Jesus said in the face of these accusations?

  24:11-24:11

  No.

  24:12-24:17

  Their minds were made up that they were going to believe whatever lie came down about Jesus.

  24:19-24:23

  Even this misquote from John chapter 2 about destroying the temple.

  24:27-24:29

  When falsely accused, speak nothing.

  24:31-24:33

  How many people remember Deflategate?

  24:35-24:46

  Where the Patriots were accused of deflating the footballs because it made it easier to hold and to throw and they had these accusations.

  24:49-24:51

  Patriots got in trouble for cheating before, right?

  24:53-24:57

  Let me tell you why I think that they deflated those footballs.

  24:57-24:59

  Let me tell you why I think they did.

  25:00-25:04

  because they had like three immediate press conferences right after.

  25:05-25:06

  Did you see these things?

  25:06-25:18

  I was literally laughing out loud when Bill Belichick comes to the podium looking like he just rolled out of a dumpster and he's like, he starts giving this speech.

  25:19-25:41

  Well, we got these atmospheric conditions with the barometric pressure in the pigskin And thermodynamics and the fifth law of entropy would sometimes cause just one team's footballs to deflate, and that's why they appeared to register in a lesser...

  25:43-25:45

  And then he came out again and did it again.

  25:45-25:49

  Oh yeah, when you really study the science behind atmospheric, blah, blah, blah, blah.

  25:49-25:57

  I'm just like, dude, the more you talk, The more I'm convinced you're lying, right?

  25:59-26:01

  The more you talk, the more you look guilty, dude.

  26:04-26:04

  That's just how it is.

  26:06-26:09

  I was accused in Bible college of staggering out of a bar drunk at two in the morning.

  26:11-26:20

  I realized that the more I tried to track people down and convince them that that was so not the case, I was working at the time, okay?

  26:20-26:28

  I was a magazine vendor and I was at one of my stores and I had witnesses and I didn't.

  26:28-26:30

  The story was completely fabricated.

  26:32-26:37

  But do you see how doubt is cast if I start walking around like, "Justin, I wasn't drunk, man.

  26:37-26:38

  I wasn't drunk.

  26:38-26:40

  I didn't stay around that bar drunk.

  26:40-26:41

  I mean, come on, Bob.

  26:41-26:42

  You've got to believe me.

  26:42-26:42

  I wasn't.

  26:43-26:50

  I didn't." "Hmmm, me thinks thou dost protest too much." Right?

  26:51-26:57

  So, when falsely accused, if you're being accused of something that's not true, you don't have to say anything.

  26:59-27:07

  Because as much as you want the right thing to happen, as much as you want justice, there's somebody who loves justice a lot more than you, and that's God.

  27:08-27:16

  And all you need to say is, "God will be my defender." So when falsely accused, speak nothing.

  27:16-27:20

  Number two, when questioned, speak boldly.

  27:20-27:27

  Okay, so moving from the false accusations, you see Jesus was asked a direct theological question.

  27:27-27:37

  They moved from, "Jesus, what did you do?" to the high priest actually asked, "Jesus, who are you?" But notice his question.

  27:37-27:44

  He says, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" And that's really a two-part question, actually.

  27:44-27:53

  It's a two-part, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" What he was saying was, "Are you claiming to be the Messiah and God at the same time?

  27:53-27:53

  Is that what you're saying?

  27:54-27:55

  Are you the Christ, the Messiah?

  27:55-28:00

  Are you...to say you're the Son of God was the same as saying, 'Oh, you're telling people you're God in the flesh.

  28:00-28:01

  Is that what you're saying?' But they didn't say God.

  28:03-28:06

  That's why they said, "Son of the Blessed." they wouldn't even use God's name.

  28:08-28:09

  Same, they move from what you did to who you are.

  28:11-28:17

  Confess blasphemy, Jesus, because under Old Testament law, confessing blasphemy, that's a quick way to get a death sentence.

  28:17-28:24

  And the time for silence is not when it's time to speak up for the Lord.

  28:25-28:27

  Okay, under the false accusations, Jesus said nothing.

  28:27-28:31

  But when it came time to speak up for the Lord, you see what Jesus said.

  28:31-28:50

  He said, "I am." You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven." And Jesus' response, obviously from Psalm 110, from Daniel 7, Jesus was saying, "That's exactly who I am.

  28:52-29:05

  I am the Christ and I am God in the flesh." But notice Jesus jumps ahead, passed the cross, and what Jesus says to them is, "Here's what you're going to see next." Jesus said, "You know what you're going to see next?

  29:06-29:10

  Is my exaltation." And Jesus was saying, "Because here's the thing.

  29:13-29:14

  I'm on trial now.

  29:17-29:20

  The next trial, I'm going to be the judge.

  29:21-29:22

  And you're going to be on trial.

  29:24-29:25

  Do you see that?

  29:26-29:37

  understanding, unrighteously putting me on trial, and in like 10 minutes, I'm going to be righteously putting you on trial.

  29:38-29:41

  You are wrongly judging me.

  29:43-29:46

  I'm going to be rightly judging you.

  29:48-29:50

  Scale of 1 to 10, how inflammatory do you think that was?

  29:52-29:53

  Like, are you God?

  29:55-29:56

  are so close to finding out.

  29:59-29:59

  10?

  30:00-30:01

  Yeah, that's what I thought.

  30:03-30:06

  Notice Jesus, not obnoxious, but short and clear.

  30:07-30:12

  When it's time to speak for the Lord, when it's time to speak for the Lord, you do three things.

  30:13-30:15

  You stand up, you speak up, and then you shut up.

  30:16-30:16

  Okay?

  30:16-30:19

  When it's time to speak for the Lord, like Jesus here, that's what he did.

  30:20-30:21

  Stand up, you speak up, done.

  30:24-30:25

  Are you the Christ? Yeah.

  30:27-30:27

  I am.

  30:29-30:35

  And finally, what do we say when falsely accused speak nothing, when questioned speak boldly?

  30:35-30:37

  Number three, when mistreated, trust God.

  30:38-30:41

  When mistreated, trust God.

  30:43-30:47

  I get so bent out of shape if I think somebody's cheating at trivial pursuit.

  30:49-30:51

  You were reading the cards, man!

  30:51-30:54

  You had the game out and were reading the cards and studying.

  30:55-30:58

  I get bent out of shape if I think somebody's cheating in a stupid board game that means nothing.

  30:59-31:08

  So I'm studying this this week and I'm like, "How can the most righteous and holy person in the universe stand in the middle of such injustice?

  31:09-31:14

  Stand in the middle of such wickedness?" Well here's the answer.

  31:15-31:26

  First Peter chapter 2 verses 21 through 23 says, "For to this you have been called." Because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in His steps.

  31:28-31:29

  He committed no sin.

  31:30-31:31

  Neither was deceit found in His mouth.

  31:32-31:34

  When He was reviled, He did not revile in return.

  31:34-31:36

  When He suffered, He did not threaten.

  31:37-31:39

  Listen to this last phrase.

  31:40-31:46

  But continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly.

  31:46-31:47

  I want to read that again.

  31:48-31:51

  How did Jesus stand in the midst of this horrible injustice.

  31:52-31:58

  How can you at work or in your family or wherever you're facing unfairness or injustice, how can you stand?

  31:59-32:01

  Here's the example that Jesus gave, I'm gonna read it again.

  32:02-32:07

  He continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

  32:08-32:09

  Who is that?

  32:09-32:10

  Who judges justly?

  32:11-32:12

  Who judges justly?

  32:12-32:12

  God.

  32:14-32:18

  So the whole time Jesus was standing on trial, he was saying, "I trust my Father.

  32:19-32:20

  I trust my Father.

  32:20-32:21

  I trust my Father.

  32:22-32:22

  I trust my Father.

  32:23-32:24

  I trust my Father.

  32:25-32:27

  Jesus, this is looking pretty out of control right now.

  32:27-32:27

  I trust my Father.

  32:28-32:29

  I trust Him.

  32:30-32:30

  I trust my Father.

  32:31-32:33

  Can you follow Jesus' example?

  32:35-32:42

  Because you see, trusting Him who judges justly is not a one-time event, but it was a constant state of mind.

  32:43-32:44

  Can you follow His example?

  32:46-32:48

  Because in about ten minutes, Jesus will return to judge.

  32:49-32:53

  In righteousness, can you trust God in the meantime?

  32:55-32:59

  Can you say, "God, You know what I'm going through.

  33:00-33:03

  God, You're watching what I'm going through right now.

  33:04-33:12

  And God, I know, I know that the time is coming and you're going to set everything right.

  33:13-33:13

  Can you do that?

  33:16-33:17

  Follow Jesus' example.

  33:18-33:18

  Let's pray.

  33:19-33:30

  Father in Heaven, we are impatient, quick-tempered, quick to speak, slow to listen, slow to pray sometimes.

  33:32-33:41

  God, when we face injustice, we are a people who tend to jump up and down and insist that people hear us and that we get our way we get justice immediately.

  33:41-33:50

  And I pray, God, today, that there would be a turnaround for my brothers and sisters here who might be suffering unjustly.

  33:51-33:56

  I pray that Jesus' example would revolutionize our thinking.

  33:58-34:03

  That we would be a people who entrust ourselves to You.

  34:05-34:10

  So Father, we thank You for the example that Jesus gave, You didn't just give us an example.

  34:10-34:17

  Your Word tells us that He gives us the power that we might obey the things that You call us to.

  34:20-34:21

  Father, we thank You.

  34:23-34:30

  Every step in this journey that we've been studying is ultimately leading to the way that You purchased our salvation.

  34:31-34:33

  We thank You for Jesus' example along the way.

  34:35-34:37

  In Jesus' name, Amen.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Mark 14:53-65

1. Why did Jesus not answer the false accusations (Mk 14:61a)? What example does this give us when falsely accused? How should we handle it?
    

2. Explain the significance of Jesus' answer to the high priest in Mk 14:62. Why did He say that?
    

3. BONUS: See how many laws the Jewish leaders violated that your group can remember. (I gave 10 Sunday.)

Breakout Questions:

Has your testimony this week been faithful to the love you have for Jesus Christ in both your words and actions? How? Pray for one another.