They Crucified Him

I invite you to turn with me to the Gospel of Mark and to chapter 15, where we’ll read from the sixteenth verse to the thirty-second verse:

“And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And 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. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.

“And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, ‘The King of the Jews.’ And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, ‘Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!’ So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, ‘He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.’ Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.”

Thanks be to God for his Word.

Father, we pray now that with our Bibles before us, you will help us, so that we might look into your Word and discover that it uncovers us and reveals to us your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. May we learn afresh just who he is and what he’s come to do, and then live in the light of that truth. For we pray in his name. Amen.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have [everlasting] life.”[1] “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have [everlasting] life.” Those words that are in the heart of John chapter 3 are perhaps the most memorable words in all of the New Testament record, affirming for us the essential truth of the love of God for sinners. John is referred to as the disciple of love; he is the one who seems captured by it, commissioned by it, as much as any of his friends and colleagues. And certainly, when we read not only his Gospel but also the letters that he wrote, this theme of the love of God for sinful men and women comes through again and again.

So, for example, “God is love,” writes John. “In this the love of God [is demonstrated].” How is the love of God demonstrated? In that he “sent his only Son into the world [to give us life through him].” We see real love not in the fact that we “loved God but that he loved us” and that he “sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”[2] That’s a big word, and we’ll come back to it. But I want to begin this morning with this overwhelming, overarching thought in mind: that God loves us, that God loved the world, and that when we read the verses that we’ve read in Mark chapter 15, we must read them in light of this revelation of God himself.

Augustine, in the fourth century, remarked that the cross is the pulpit from which God preached his love to the world.[3] That’s why we sang the hymn we’ve just sung, so that we could have in mind the two lines “Inscribed upon the cross we see in shining letters, ‘God is love.’”[4] In the old hymn “Beneath the cross of Jesus I fain would take my stand,” it has the lines in it “O trysting place where heaven’s love and heaven’s justice meet!”[5] Quiz: define tryst. T-r-y-s-t. Don’t go for your phone. What is a tryst? Have you made a tryst? It’s a meeting place. But it is more than simply a meeting place. It is an appointed meeting place, and it has particularly to do with a meeting between lovers, so that you may in your past have a trysting place that is known to you and the one who is now your companion in life. Perhaps it was a place by the river. Perhaps it was a tree in the woods. Perhaps you even went there and took out your penknife, and you carved into that trysting place your initials and her initials: “AB loves SMJ.”

It is that picture which the hymn writer picks up, and he says, “Here in the cross of Jesus Christ he has inscribed, as it were, a display of his love, and he meets everybody at that place.” If you want to meet God, if you want to find out where God is, if you want to know God, if you are wondering about who God is, then the cross is the place to which you go. And we sing about it all the time. Kendrick’s words:

My Lord, what love is this
That pays so dearly
That I, the guilty one,
May go free![6]

And it really is the privilege and responsibility of a Christian minister, of a pastor-teacher, to seek to persuade men and women about God’s love. I wonder, are you persuaded about God’s love? Are you persuaded that the love of God for you is entirely undeserved? That the love of God for you proceeds from the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ himself—these sufferings described for us now as we come to these final verses in Mark chapter 15 in preparation for Easter?

I was thinking about this very much, because the mission that I had the privilege of being part of in London for the last while was entitled the Crossroads Mission. And so again and again and again, I find myself saying to people, “Jesus brings you to a crossroads. And as you stand at that crossroads, you have to make a decision: either you accept this Jesus and all that he has provided, or you reject this Jesus and all that he has done. But neutrality is not an option.” And when we were last together, we were thinking about the way in which the question posed by Pilate, a rhetorical question in many ways, is the question of the ages. You remember, he asks, “What then am I supposed to do with Jesus, who is called the Christ?”[7] What am I going to do with Jesus? That is the great question.

This time last Sunday morning, I was at the first of four different churches in which I spoke last Sunday. And in the first of these services, an evangelical Anglican church, as we had coffee afterwards, I met a number of people. And one lady that I met was from Turkey. I met her son, and I asked her how she’d come to church, and what had drawn her there. “Well,” she said, “I’m a Muslim by birth and by background, and we moved to this area, and I found out that in the church building there was a place that you could bring your children for a playgroup.” And so she said, “I came to the playgroup, but I wasn’t sure what my children would be exposed to when I brought them, so I decided I would stay and make sure that what they were being told was okay. Little did I know,” she said, “that I would discover, in listening to my children being taught, that God actually loves me.” She said, “I lived my whole life, and I had no concept of God ever loving me. I knew that God had every legitimate right to judge me. I knew that God had every proper reason to punish me for my sins, but it had never once occurred to me that God loved me. And as I listened to that story being told to the children, it opened up a whole vista in my mind.” And she said, “I then began to come to this church, and for five years I came and listened to the story being told. I listened to the pastor telling about the love of God. And I listened and listened and listened.” And then she said, “And on the twenty-first of June last year, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and my friend. And I am now an unashamed follower of Jesus.”

What happened to her? She was brought to the crossroads. She discovered that in the cross, the love of God is made clear. She realized that although she deserved punishment, that that was a punishment that this Jesus had borne—a concept that was unbelievable to her mind. And as these thoughts finally coalesced, she became a follower of Jesus.

Are you a follower of Jesus? Have you discovered the love of God like this? Have you been persuaded of God’s love? Well, I hope if not that you will be this morning.

Now, what Mark is doing, as we’ve noted all the way through, in writing his Gospel is making a couple of things very, very clear—first of all, who Jesus is and what Jesus does. You could say that’s the story of the gospel. That’s the story of all the Gospels. They’re telling us who Jesus is—that he is the Son of God—and what he does: he saves sinners. He saves sinners. That’s why when you read this story at Christmastime, the announcement concerning the name of Jesus is “Yeshua.” It is “Jesus.” It is the “Savior.” “You will give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”[8]

And the story of the Bible is the wonderful story about how Jesus saves us, and we don’t save ourselves—which ought to be a great relief for many of us, because we’ve been trying desperately to save ourselves and making a royal hash of it. We could never be sure that we’d done enough to finally tip the scales in our favor, and we might always wonder about that dreadful thing that we did in the past, or those seven hundred dreadful things we’d done in the past, as they keep coming back and invading our minds. And what are we ever going to do with those things? And then we make the wonderful discovery that in the cross, Jesus Christ has dealt with all of our despair, and he’s dealt with all of our pride. Well, that’s the story that Mark is telling.

And the identity of Jesus has been revealed earlier in the Gospel in a private context. You remember back in chapter 8—and if you don’t, you can turn to it—but in chapter 8, Jesus is asking the question of his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”[9] “What are people saying about me when you’re around and about?” Because after all, he was making quite an impact. His miracles were undeniable, and so people were beginning to make decisions about his identity. And the response of his disciples was to tell him that some were saying that he was actually John the Baptist; others said he was Elijah; others said he was one of the prophets. And then he said to them, “But what I really am interested in is who do you say that I am?” And Peter said, “Well, you’re the Christ. You’re the Messiah.”[10] And Jesus said, “Fantastic! Now, get out on the streets, and tell everybody that that is the case.”

Now, this is where, you see, you need to follow along in your Bible. Because if you don’t have your Bible open, you’re going to go away, and you’re going to say, “Alistair said that after Peter made his great declaration, Jesus said, ‘Go out, and tell everybody.’” And unless your Bible is open and you’re looking at it, you’ll know that that is a rhetorical device employed by me in order for you to understand that he said the very reverse of that: “And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.”[11] How remarkable is that? The whole thing is building up to a discovery of the identity of Jesus. “Who do people say I am?” “This, this, and this.” “Yes, but who am I?” “You are the Christ.” “Good. I’m glad you’ve got that. I don’t want you to tell anybody about my identity.”

Why was that? Well, it becomes very apparent. It becomes immediately apparent. Because Jesus explains that he’s going to go up to Jerusalem and suffer at the hands of cruel people and be nailed to a cross and die and on the third day to rise again. And Peter, the one who has made the great declaration, he starts to explain to Jesus, “No, that’s not what it means to be a messiah. That’s not messiah, Jesus. You know, I just told you you’re the Messiah, and now you’re telling me what you’re going to do; that’s not what messiahs do. Messiahs don’t die.”[12] So Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!”[13] Which is remarkable. One minute he’s at the top of the class, and in the second minute he’s expelled from the entire high school. And that ought to be a great encouragement to many of us.

No. What was revealed privately was kept private until Jesus was able to make clear to people what it meant for him to say he was the Messiah. They understood his identity as Messiah, but they didn’t know what Messiah meant. “How could you have a messiah who dies on the cross? Why do you have a king who rides on a donkey? Why do you have such a strange person when we’re oppressed by all these things, and he’s not doing anything about it? We need these Romans off our backs. We need to be established in our own place. We need to have a nice little kingdom where we are free from every kind of invasion.” And then, of course, Jesus is saying again and again as he goes through, “If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re going to be horribly disappointed. No, my kingdom is not of this world; otherwise, my followers would be fighting to establish it.”[14] It’s a quite radical thought. And it’s only in the last few verses that what had been previously made known privately has now been acknowledged publicly.

We’re still actually in chapter 14 to get this, but the chief priest was speaking to the folks around him. He “stood up in the midst”—this is 14:60—“in the midst and [he] asked Jesus, ‘[Don’t] you [have an] answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?’” Jesus “remained silent … made no answer. … The high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ And Jesus said, ‘I am, and [furthermore],’” he said, “‘you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.’” And the high priest said, “That is absolutely super!” No, “the high priest tore his garments … said, ‘What further witnesses do we need? [He is a blasphemer.] What is your decision?’”

There we go again: “What is your decision?” It’s the crossroads time. “What am I going to do with Jesus, who is called the Christ? You’ve heard that he’s a blasphemer.” What is your decision? What is your decision? This is a crossroads. This is not a roundabout. Some of us, our spiritual experience is just that we’re going round and round and round. As Americans, we’re not very good at roundabouts. You can see that up at Lander Circle. We’ve only got a couple of them in the entire place. Nobody knows how to get on or how to get off. It’s so crazy that they even have a stop sign on the roundabout. That’s the whole point of a roundabout: you don’t have stop signs. You know, if you don’t like our roundabouts, leave them alone. But if you’re going to have them, have them. And so there the people go. Sometimes I’m sure I followed a lady around it a couple of times; she doesn’t know what she’s doing, where she’s going. So, we’re going up Shaker? No, no, here we go.

That’s some of you, I think. You come to church. I’ve seen you for years, some of you now. I know you by name, many of you. You talk to me—oh, religious questions! You’ve got all kinds of ideas. But you’re banking on the notion of neutrality. Listen: an abstention is a no vote when it comes to Jesus. “What is your decision?” he asks them. That’s what I’m asking you today.

Why would Jesus take this brutality, this mockery? Why would he undergo these scourgings? Because he loves sinners. Because he loves to save.

You say, “Well, fair enough, but let’s get to the passage.” Okay, I agree with that. Let’s summarize the passage by noticing that it is marked on the one hand by mockery and cruelty and from another perspective by majesty and irony. Mockery, cruelty, majesty, irony. We’ll spend longer on the first than we will on the second.

Mockery and Cruelty

The soldiers are now entrusted with the responsibility of leading him away, and in verse 16, they decide that they will bring together the “battalion.” How many that is is questionable, but it’s certainly not an individual sport that they’re engaging in; it’s a community event. He has already been scourged by those under the jurisdiction of Pilate, and now the soldiers have a responsibility now to take him away so that he might be crucified. And what we have described for us here is this cruel sport where Jesus is the object of their derision.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, how such well-trained soldiers can engage in such grotesque pursuits? I don’t want to incur the ire of those of you who have served bravely and effectively and honestly in the forces of our country, but let us not forget that some of the filthiest graffiti, some of the most horrible charges leveled against individuals, are charges leveled against those who have committed themselves to the highest forms of service and personal discipline and yet who engage in some of the most grotesque forms of inhumanity. That’s not a blanket condemnation. It is an observation about the peculiar psychology that is represented in individuals who are trained to be under control, under self-control, and yet who, in a moment such as this, are able to unleash the most disgusting and disdainful dimensions of their humanity on a [helpless] victim who has no possibility of self-defense. That’s what is described for us here. Look at it!

“You’re a king?” they’re saying. “If you’re a king, you should look like a king. Let us help you. Here is a robe. Put it on. This is the color of majesty. Here is a crown. You may find it hurts just a little. It may twist your face as we crush it into your brow. You may find that the blood gets in your eyes. But every king must have a crown! And every king should have a scepter. Here, take this reed. And let us bow before you as we bow before Caesar. Ave Caesar! Hail the King of the Jews! Give me that reed, that I may strike you with it.” What a picture! What a picture! And they spat on him, and they knelt before him in a cruel parody of worship.

He could have called ten thousand angels.[15] When they arrested him in the garden and he stepped forward, they fell back before his majesty and his power.[16] He is not to be observed as a pathetic victim here. He has already explained that no one can take his life from him. He has the power to lay it down, and he has the power to take it up again.[17] So what is he doing here? Why does he endure this? Why would he take this brutality? Why would he take this mockery? Why would he undergo these scourgings? Because he loves sinners. Because he loves to save.

Look at the way Mark just moves on: “And when they had mocked him…” “When they had mocked him…” You see, when children are unkind to other children at school, there’s only so many names you can employ, there’s only so many bad things you can do, before it runs out of steam. And eventually, the mockery will stop, either because you’re tired, or you’re bored, or you’re jaded, or perhaps you are ashamed. “Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood.”[18] What is Jesus doing there? He is bearing the punishment that sinners deserve.

“And when they had mocked him,” they [took off] the purple cloak”—that’s verse 20—they “put his own clothes [back] on him. And they led him out to crucify him”—whether it was on account of Jewish sensibilities, that would not have been shared by the Romans, that would demand that he would not then be paraded around in his nakedness, but his clothes are on him, and he’s on his way to be crucified.

Now jump forward to verse 24. “They led him out to crucify him”—verse 20. And verse 24: “And they crucified him.” It’s just three words in Greek—the most cruel form of execution devised in all of humanity, probably. The Roman writer Cicero says, “Let it never come near the body of a Roman citizen; nay, not even near his thoughts or his eyes or his ears.”[19] What the Romans devised was only used on non-Romans. It was a shame for even the Romans to think about how brutal was that which they did. The victim was nailed to a cross. That cross was then raised and dropped into a socket in the ground. The individual would then hang there, exposed, alone, dying an agonizing, slow death, with a tiny little piece for his feet so that every so often he may be able to push himself up to prevent asphyxiation—all of the pressure on his chest cavity squeezing the life out of him over a period of time. It’s no surprise that our English word excruciating comes from the same root as that which gives to us the word crucifixion.

With all that said—and that is enough that needs to be said there—it ought to be striking to us that the Gospel writers spare us any of these details, that the Gospel writers do not go into a purple passage endeavoring to do what I have just done in summary fashion. They do not enter into the physicality of the sufferings of Jesus. They are not preoccupied—as in The Passion of the Christ, the Mel Gibson movie of some years ago—they are not preoccupied with a solid onslaught that reveals to us again and again and again the nature of these sufferings, what actually happened physically. And you have to ask yourself the question: Why is that?

And the answer is straightforward: that the Gospel writers and the writers of the Epistles after them were not focused on the physical aspect of the suffering. Not that it was irrelevant; it clearly wasn’t. But they were focused on what the suffering was actually achieving. They’re not describing what it was like for him to suffer. They are describing why it was he suffered.

So, for example, 1 Peter 2:24: “He himself,” says Peter, “he himself bore our sins in his [own] body on the tree.” You see, the language is so clear, isn’t it? “He himself.” “He himself.” Not somebody else. God dies in our place. God dies in our place. People will say, “Well, where is God in suffering?” We do not have a God on a deck chair; we have a God on a cross. “He himself bore our sins in his body on [that] tree.”

And in the middle of all of that brutality, the mockery continues. Those who are crucified with him, the robbers in verse 27, they were engaged in it, as you see from the parallel passages. The passersby, in verse 29. Verse 28, you will notice, is missing in the ESV, because it’s not in the oldest manuscripts. Don’t worry about it; you can find the verse in Luke’s record. It doesn’t add anything that isn’t elsewhere in the Bible, and it doesn’t remove anything that is elsewhere in the Bible—so I shouldn’t even have mentioned it, but I know someone will come and say, “What happened to verse 28?” So that’s why.

But you see that “those who passed by” also “derided him, wagging their heads.” It’s interesting, isn’t it? Again, this eyewitness detail that was passed on to Mark, “wagging their heads.” It’s interesting what we do with our heads, isn’t it? Said, “Uh-uh.” Do you know how annoying that is? When you go to the front of the line to take your passport, and you think you’re next, the person goes, “Uh-uh.” You’re like, “Don’t do that to me. Don’t do that to me.” Or you trip, and you fall, and you look stupid, and they go …. “That’s what I’m telling you. Yeah.” That’s the kind of thing that was going on.

There are people at executions. I’ve seen it on the western movies. There are people at executions. They show up for executions, right? “There’s going to be a hanging? Don’t want to miss it.” Medieval England: “We’re going to chop a few heads off? We don’t want to miss that. They’re going to burn people? Let’s be there.” So there’re people like that. They like to go to that. There were people there. They walk up and down, looking at him, “wagging their heads,” saying, “You’re no king of the Jews. You’re no king. If you were a king, you wouldn’t be up there. Yep. That’s what you get for saying those things! That’s it. That’s it.” Jesus hangs up there and takes this? The King? The King takes this from his subjects? Why? Because he came to save. To save!

You see, we have immediately gone wrong if in viewing this event we say to ourselves, “Oh, I get it. Jesus is the sufferer par excellence.” Well, he suffers in an amazing way; there’s no question about that. But we’ve missed the point. He is not here revealed to us as simply an example of one who suffers, but he is revealed to us here as the one who saves. He is revealed to us here as the one who is a sacrifice for sin. He is revealed to us here as the one who is a substitute, dying in the place of others.

Majesty and Irony

Well, that then brings us to the other side of the equation, and I’ll spend only a little time on this. But I’m suggesting to you that if you look carefully at the passage, you will see that it is marked not only by mockery and cruelty but also by majesty and by irony. These events are unfolding here just as Jesus had said they would. They had asked him previously, “Prophesy,” they said to him.[20] The irony of it was that the very things that were taking place were in fulfillment of what he had actually said. You can read that again—Mark 9:30 and following—as he once again explains to his disciples what is going to happen. And what he says will happen back there in Mark 9 and in 8 and again in 10 is fulfilled to the letter in what we’re discovering here.[21]

Jesus is not here revealed to us simply as an example of one who suffers, but he is revealed to us as the one who saves.

In the same way, you notice that Jesus rejects the offer of “wine mixed with myrrh.” Verse 23: “But he did not take it.” That was a pain-dulling mixture. It was, if you like, a fledgling form of anesthetic potion. But he is in control, and he remains in control. He refuses the offer of that which would mitigate his sufferings, because he has told his disciples, “I have a cup to drink. It is the cup of suffering, and I am going to drink it in its entirety.” And these people in a gesture of kindness—perhaps the women who came to the cross—said, “Maybe Jesus could have some of this. It would help him.” And Jesus says, “No, I’m not going to have any of that.” He’d already told them at the Passover meal that he wouldn’t drink the fruit of the vine until he drank it new in the kingdom of heaven.[22] Perhaps that was in the back of his mind as well. But certainly his control in the circumstance made it possible for him to be alert to the need around him.

If he had succumbed to the impact of this wine mingled with myrrh, he may have been unconscious when the robber on the one side to him said, “[Will you] remember me when you come into your kingdom[?]”[23] He may have been less than alert to be able to look down from the cross and to see his mother and to ask the disciple whom he loved to look after his mother.[24] He may have been unavailable to make that great pronouncement, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they[’re] [doing].”[25]

No, if you look carefully here, you will see that Jesus is here in all of his majesty. They’re dividing up his clothes. What a picture! “And they … divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take.” Well, you may want to read Psalm 22 in relationship to that, and you’ll be amazed if you’ve never seen it before:

For dogs encompass me;
 a company of evildoers encircles me;
They have pierced my hands and feet—
I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me;
they divide my garments among them,
 and for my clothing they cast lots.[26]

Mark says, “Oh, here’s the prophetic passage from Psalm 22. Here is exactly what was taking place.”

You see, it’s wrong for us to think that somehow or another, Jesus has been caught up in a malevolent plan. No. He is the King of the Jews. That’s the irony of it: that his majesty is displayed in the inscription. The Romans liked to have somebody walk in front of the person, the criminal, with a sign, or they nailed that sign up for all to see. And Pilate, presumably in a little dig at the Jews, decides, “This is a great title to put up here: ‘This is the King of the Jews.’” In John’s record, you find that the people came from the Jewish authorities and said, “Don’t write that, Pilate. Say ‘He said he was the King of the Jews,’ not ‘This is the King of the Jews.’” Pilate says, “You just leave that to me. What I’ve written I have written.”[27] And so “he came [to] his own, and his own received him not.”[28] Even with a jolly sign right above his head declaring who he is, they could not, they would not see him. They said, “Well, the reason that we can’t believe is because we can’t see. So why don’t you, this King of Israel, come down from the cross,” verse 32, “that we may see and we may believe?” That’s the wrong way around. In the New Testament, we believe in order that we might see. “Well, if I don’t see, I won’t believe. If we could see, we would believe.” That isn’t true. It wasn’t true in their case.

If you doubt that, you only need to read the end of Matthew’s Gospel. And you remember that after the resurrection, when the soldiers who were responsible for the death of Jesus—who were able-bodied men presiding over these events all the time, who knew when somebody was dead and knew when somebody wasn’t, who were struck visibly by the fact that Jesus died so quickly in comparison to others who lingered on—Jesus rises from the grave, and “while they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place.”[29] And they said, “Really? That’s what we were waiting for. That’s what we said just the other day. A couple of days ago, we said, ‘Look, why don’t you come down from the cross? Then we can see, and then we’ll believe.’” Isn’t that what they said? “You know, if you come down, then we’ll see that you must be the King.”

The irony of it is, they see that he is the King because he doesn’t come down. “Why don’t you save yourself? You saved other people. Why don’t you save yourself?”[30] The irony is, he saves others because he doesn’t save himself. And so the guards tell them that Jesus has actually risen from the dead, and so they “assembled with the elders,” and they took counsel.[31] And out they go with the money again: thirty pieces of silver to seduce that Judas fellow—whose name I almost forgot. Thirty pieces of silver for him. What is it going to cost for hush money for the soldiers? A substantial sum of money. And they took counsel, and “they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers.” Why? “Tell the people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we’ll take care of the governor. Don’t worry about Pilate. We’ll keep you out of trouble.”[32] “So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day”[33]—giving the lie to what they said: “Our problem is an intellectual problem. We just can’t see. If we could see, then we’d believe.” No! The problem was a moral problem.

And your problem is a moral problem too. Oh, I don’t doubt that you’ve got intellectual questions. I don’t doubt that you can go to parts of the Bible, as I could go to parts of the Bible, and say, “I’m not sure how this fits with that or how this works” or whatever. There’s no doubt about any of those things. “We see through a glass, darkly.”[34] But at the core, the reason that you don’t believe in Jesus is not because you haven’t seen. It’s because you won’t believe. You won’t believe. You won’t become as a little child.[35] You won’t bow down before him. You won’t acknowledge that he is King. You stand at the crossroads and say, “I’m not going to do that.” That’s what they did. That’s the irony in it.

No, here we are at the very heart of the gospel story: “He saved others; he can’t save himself.” It wasn’t a physical impossibility for Jesus to come down from the cross. He had already crossed that Rubicon, though, hadn’t he? “[Father,] not what I will, but what you will.”[36] “I’ve come to be the Savior of all who put their trust in me.” He’s not there so that we might have sympathy for him as a perfect sufferer, but he is there in order that we might put our faith and trust in him as our only Savior. “Christ also suffered,” says Peter later on, “once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous,” to “bring us to God.”[37]

Now, there’s far more in this passage. I’m going to leave it to you. But let me finish in this way. Little thoughts for, you know, homework and for other discussion.

What about this fellow Simon and these two guys Rufus and Alexander? It’s interesting how they just, “And Rufus and Alexander…” We’re like, “Who are Rufus and Alexander?” Presumably, Mark figured everybody knew who Rufus and Alexander was. You know, it’s tough when you get introduced as the father of well-known children.

“Who’s Simon?”

“Oh, he’s Alexander’s dad.”

“Oh, he is? Who is Alexander?”

“He’s Rufus’s brother.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Why’d you mention that?”

“Well, I thought you would all know him.”

Cranfield in his commentary has a wonderful little sentence. This is what he says: “The account [of Simon] does not encourage any speculation on the feelings of Simon.” And then he has his own little speculation: “But it is natural to wonder whether this experience led to his conversion.”[38] So, “We’re not supposed to really speculate about how Simon was feeling, but while we’re at it, I just wonder whether it might have led to his conversion.”

Because if you think about it, it’s quite remarkable. What had Jesus said? “If anybody wants to be my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow me.”[39] “Hey, Simon, excuse me? We need your help here.” Press-ganged into doing something. Did his boys say to him, “Hey, Dad, that’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus.” Did he become a follower of Jesus then? I don’t know. But we do know that the unlikely fellow, he became a follower of Jesus.

And during the week while we’ve been in London, one of the things we’ve been doing is going out on the streets, giving out copies of Luke’s Gospel. And in seeking to engage in conversation with people, there were a number of opening gambits that we used. One of them went like this: “’Scuse me? Do you have a moment to hear about a bad man that went to heaven?” And often the answer was “No,” or worse than no. But every so often, the answer was “Yeah, sure, I’d like to think about that.” Because by and large, people have got the notion that if there is a good God, he rewards nice people, and they go to heaven. So good people go to heaven, and it’s an amazing thing to discover that only bad people go to heaven. And so we told them the story of the thief on the cross, who realized that he was getting punished because he deserved it, and then he figured that the Jesus was getting punished and he didn’t deserve it.[40] And then somehow, in a remarkable way, he put two and two together and realized, “He must be getting punished so that I don’t have to bear the punishment.” And so he said, “Hey,” and Jesus said, “Yes.”

Well, there’s only two possibilities when you stand before this cross: either acceptance or rejection. I don’t know if Simon of Cyrene became a Christian that day. I don’t know what day you became a Christian. I don’t know if you’ve ever become a Christian. But frankly—and you might as well know it, that the whole reason we exist as a church is to say to people, “Hey, stand at this cross, and make your decision. You’ve got two options: either that you bow before Jesus and acknowledge him to be the person that he claimed to be, that he is the only Lord and Savior, and you entrust your life to him, and you trust him, you turn to him in repentance and in faith; or you walk out the door.” You walk out the door as an infidel. You can walk out the door as a religious maniac. It’s your choice. And there’s no time like the present, and the only moment you’ve got is this moment. And to quote the sign that I saw last night, coming from the airport on 480, on the right-hand side as you’re coming east, that big black and white sign: “After you die, you will meet God.” And because he loves so much, he sent his only Son, so that “whoever”—whoever—“believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”[41] That’s good news. That’s fantastic news! Believe it. Share it.

Thank you, Lord, for the Bible. Thank you. Thank you that we don’t have to think up sermons. Thank you that it’s there before us. It’s clear. All the cloudiness is on my side. So, Lord, I pray that you will help us to stand, as it were, before the cross of Christ, and then, by your grace, to take our place beneath that cross. For we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] John 3:16 (ESV).

[2] 1 John 4:8–10 (ESV).

[3] Augustine, quoted in Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity (1962; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2015), 175.

[4] Thomas Kelly, “We Sing the Praise of Him Who Died” (1815).

[5] Elizabeth C. Clephane, “Beneath the Cross of Jesus” (1868).

[6] Graham Kendrick, “Amazing Love (My Lord, What Love Is This)” (1989).

[7] Mark 15:12 (paraphrased). See also Matthew 27:22.

[8] Matthew 1:21 (paraphrased).

[9] Mark 8:27 (ESV).

[10] Mark 8:28–29 (paraphrased).

[11] Mark 8:30 (ESV).

[12] Mark 8:31–32 (paraphrased).

[13] Mark 8:33 (ESV).

[14] John 18:36 (paraphrased).

[15] See Matthew 26:53.

[16] See John 18:6.

[17] See John 10:18.

[18] Philip Paul Bliss, “Hallelujah! What a Savior!” (1875).

[19] Cicero, quoted in Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Victor, 1989), 1:382.

[20] Matthew 26:68 (ESV).

[21] See Mark 8:31; 9:30–32; 10:32–34.

[22] See Matthew 26:29; Luke 22:18.

[23] Luke 23:42 (ESV).

[24] See John 19:26.

[25] Luke 23:34 (ESV).

[26] Psalm 22:16–18 (ESV).

[27] John 19:21–22 (paraphrased).

[28] John 1:11 (KJV).

[29] Matthew 28:11 (ESV).

[30] Luke 23:39 (paraphrased). See also Matthew 27:42.

[31] Matthew 28:12 (ESV).

[32] Matthew 28:13–14 (paraphrased).

[33] Matthew 28:15 (ESV).

[34] 1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV).

[35] See Matthew 18:3.

[36] Mark 14:36 (ESV).

[37] 1 Peter 3:18 (ESV).

[38] C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to Saint Mark, Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 454.

[39] Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23 (paraphrased).

[40] See Luke 23:41.

[41] John 3:16 (ESV).