THE DEATH OF THE PASSOVER-KING
(or, “Christ died for our sins, according to the
Scriptures…”)
Mark 15:33-37
Introduction: James Kennedy told the story from the days of the
Great Depression, when a Missouri man, named John Griffith, was the controller
of a great drawbridge across the Mississippi river. One day in the summer of
1937 he decided to take his eight-year-old son, Greg, with him to work…
…At noon, John Griffith put the bridge
up to allow ships to pass and sat on the observation deck with his son to eat
lunch. Time passed quickly… Suddenly he was startled to hear the shrieking of a
train whistle in the distance. He quickly looked at his watch, and noticed that
it was 1:07—the Memphis express, with four hundred passengers on board was
roaring toward the raised bridge! He leapt from the observation deck and ran
back to the control tower. Just before throwing the lever he glanced down for
any ships below. There a sight caught his eye that caused his pounding heart to
leap into his throat. [His son] Greg had slipped from the observation deck
and had fallen into the massive gears that operate the bridge! His left leg was
caught between the two main gears. Desperately his mind whirled to devise a
rescue plan. But as soon as he thought of a possibility he knew there was no
way it could be done—there was not time!
Again, and
with alarming closeness, the train whistle shrieked in the air. He could [already] hear
the clicking of the locomotive wheels over the tracks. That was his son down
there—yet there were four hundred passengers on the train. John knew what he
had to do, so he buried his head in his left arm and pushed the master switch
forward. That great massive bridge lowered into place just as the Memphis
Express began to roar across the river…
Any analogy of the redemptive work of Christ falls
short, but as Paul said, “…He spared not
the Son, but delivered Him up for us all…” God’s plan to save us reached
its climax in these verses… The disciples had been scattered, Peter has denied
him, the leaders had violated their own traditions with a mock trial at night,
Pilate gave in to their requests and ordered him flogged in the morning, and
then after releasing Barabbas at their insistence, he sends the Son to be
crucified. In all of this Jesus has been silent, except in affirming that
yes, He is in fact the King of the Jews. Their rejection of Him, and His
cruel treatment at the hands of the Romans, actually fulfills Scripture,
particularly Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22, ironically proving Him to the promised
Messiah. The brings us to...
The Maine* Idea: The Cross was the place of divine judgement against
sin, and the death of the Son, as our substitute, is the only way to
forgiveness and reconciliation with God.
I. Darkness: Jesus endured the darkness of judgment, so we could
see the light of life (33).
33 And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land
until the ninth hour.
The
first word of God recorded in the Bible is spoken in the context of creation: “Let there be light!” God shined light
over the universe, and it was good. Throughout the Bible light and darkness are
used to describe life and blessing and the presence of God on the one hand, and
separation, judgement, and death on the other. This imagery is so ingrained in
Scripture that John could describe the coming of Jesus into the world as the
coming of light:
The true light,
which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the
world was made through him, yet the world did not know him… (John 1:9-10).
Later John describes believing in Jesus as “coming to the light” and unbelief
in terms of loving the darkness (3:18-21). But remember that the context is the
Passover. And remember that this is Passover week.
The people are hearing and reciting the story of the Exodus from Egypt,
including the ten plagues which culminated in the Passover, and the death of
the firstborn in the homes of the Egyptians. Before that final plague there
were nine others. The ninth is described in Exodus 10:21-23,
…the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand
toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to
be felt." 22 So Moses
stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was pitch darkness in all the
land of Egypt three days. 23
They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three
days, but all the people of Israel had light where they lived.
Pharaoh’s unbelief and refusal to obey the Lord had
brought a series of devastating plagues on Egypt, but until the final plague, this
was perhaps the most terrifying. Pitch dark, a darkness to be felt. And it occurred in all the land except where
the Jews were! That darkness continued for three days, and Mark tells us that
darkness came upon the whole land for three hours, from noon to 3.
The prophets also spoke of the coming
judgement in terms of “darkness.” Joel chapter 2 begins and ends with a
reference to the coming Day of the Lord…
Joel 2:1-2 …for the day of the LORD is coming; it is
near, 2 a day of darkness
and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness there
is spread upon the mountains a great and powerful people; their like has never
been before, nor will be again...
Then in a passage, quoted in part by Peter on the day
of Pentecost, we read in Joel 2:31, “The
sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and
awesome day of the LORD comes.” Darkness and judgment together! In fact
hell is described as “outer darkness” as in the parable of the wicked servant.
Joel also
describes the coming “Day of the Lord” as darkness in 5:18-20, and then we read
an intriguing statement in Amos 8:9, "And
on that day," declares the Lord GOD, "I will make the sun go down at
noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.” That is pretty specific! And
here in Mark 15, at the height of day, the 6th hour—noon—until the
ninth hour (3 PM) there is darkness. The Light of the World, shrouded in the
darkness, the complete absence of light! John Calvin said, “Our Lord Jesus… was denied the light of the
sun, when He was in His sufferings, to signify the withdrawing of the light of
God’s countenance…” Derek Thomas alluded to this when he called this moment
the opposite of the Aaronic benediction that we have in Numbers 6:24-26. In that blessing it says,
“The LORD bless you and keep you; 25 the LORD make his face to shine
upon you and be gracious to you; 26
the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
Instead of the described blessing, Christ, though
holy, became a curse for us… It is as though God said, “May the Lord
curse you and reject you, and hide His face from you, and give you His wrath!”
Darkness came on the whole land as the
Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all, He bore our sins, He was made a
curse for us!
The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:6,
“For God, who said ‘Let light shine out
of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts…” He endured the darkness that we
deserved, so that we could receive the light of life. The Cross was the
place of divine judgement against sin, and the death of the Son, as our
substitute, is the only way to forgiveness and reconciliation with God. Yes,
Jesus endured the darkness of judgment, so that we could see the light … He
also experienced…
II. Desertion: He was forsaken, so that we never would be (34-36).
34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud
voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?" 35
And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling
Elijah." 36 And someone
ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to
drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him
down."
Mark
tells us that Jesus cried out, citing Psalm 22:1 in its Aramaic form, and then Mark
gives us the translation, “My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?” We need to preface our struggle to
understand how this could be and what it means, by acknowledging that there is
mystery in the Godhead, one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father,
Son, and Spirit. There is also mystery in the incarnation, the Eternal Son
taking on a human nature, so that He now has two natures, human and divine, without
mixture, but also without division, in the One Person, the God-Man, Jesus
Christ. Theologians call this the hypostatic union. Somehow, during this
time on the Cross, after three hours of darkness, Jesus cries out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
R.C. Sproul says that,
“At the climax of that period of darkness,
Jesus cried in agony—not the agony of the scourging or the agony of the thorns
and nails, but the agony of forsakenness.”
The giving of some sour wine on a sponge itself
fulfills Scripture – “They gave me
vinegar [sour wine] for my drink…”
(Psalm 69:21). But, why did the bystanders not understand Jesus’ words? It
could be that though they are still thinking in Messianic categories, so that even
in their rejection of Jesus’ messianic claim, what they hear is different than
what Jesus said. They spoke Aramaic and would have understood biblical Hebrew,
at least the Jews who were present surely would have. And most would have known
the Psalms well, especially the first verse of the psalms would have been
recognizable. But it seems they catch part of what Jesus said, and “fill in”
what made sense to them. Elijah was to come and usher in the Messianic kingdom after
all, so if Jesus is expecting the kingdom to start, “let’s see what happens.”
That fit their messianic understanding better than reading Psalm 22 as
referring to the Messiah. Their minds just wouldn’t go there, that picture
didn’t make sense, it didn’t fit. A suffering Messiah? A Messiah was a Rescuer,
a Savior, not someone who would suffer such an ignoble death!
So,
they may have misunderstood, or misheard what was said. But some, like John
MacArthur, think that they understood perfectly well what Jesus said, and they
intentionally twist His words to be a reference to “Elijah.” It was a way of further
mocking His messianic claim. “My God? No,
he’s calling Elijah! Ha!” It could be there was mixture, some who heard
wrongly, and some who continued to mock Him.
They didn’t understand that this was God’s plan, and that Jesus, the
Son, experienced separation from the Father, so that we would not have to. Tim
Keller said that when Jesus asked, “Why
have you forsaken me?” that
“…It wasn’t a rhetorical question. [Why?] ...the answer is: For you, for me, for us.
Jesus was forsaken by God so that we would never have to be. The judgment that
should have fallen on us fell instead on Jesus.”
And so, because of what He did for us, after the
resurrection He would say “…I will never
leave you or forsake you…” (Heb
13:5) and “..Lo, I am with you always,
even to the end of the age…” (Mt 28:20).
We will never be forsaken!
The Cross
was the place of divine judgement, wrath against sin, and the death of the Son as
our substitute is the only way to forgiveness and reconciliation with God.
Jesus endured the darkness of God’s wrath against sin so that we could see the
light of life, He was forsaken, so that we never would be, and finally came…
III. Death: He laid down His life, so that we
could live eternally (37). When the Apostle Paul summarized the Gospel message,
he said, “Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures…” This scene expresses that moment.
Notice
how Mark tells the story: “And Jesus
uttered a loud cry and breathed his last.” To “cry
out in a loud voice” [we get the word megaphone
from this phrase] would have been physically impossible after scourging and
six hours on the cross, yet here we see Him do it twice. The only word of Christ from the Cross that
Mark gives us is that in v.34, the quotation of Psalm 22:1. But now, a second
time, in a “great voice” he cries out before He breathes his last. We know from the other Gospels that among His
last words on the Cross He said, “It is
finished” and “Into your hands I
commit my spirit…” Whichever Mark refers to, His work was done, and the
implication is, that He willfully and willingly laid down His life. The
suffering He endured, as horrific as it must have been, was not enough. He had
to die. The wages of sin is death...
(Rom 6:23a). And so, “Christ died for
our sins, according the Scriptures…”
All of
human history, since the time of the Fall, awaited this moment. Since Adam disobeyed
and brought the curse on humanity and all creation, creation was “groaning,”
waiting for the Redeemer, the only one who, by his obedience, could make it
possible for sinners to be reconciled to a holy God. Listen to the “before and
after” as Paul describes it in Ephesians 2:1-7…
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked,
following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the
air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience- 3 among whom we all once lived in
the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind,
and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind [We were all deserving of wrath, without hope and without
God].
4 But God, [Thank God for that contrast!] being rich in mercy, because of the great
love with which he loved us, 5
even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-
by grace you have been saved- 6
and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in
Christ Jesus, 7 so that in
the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness
toward us in Christ Jesus.
Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe! It happened here,
in this scene, on the Cross.
What is God
saying to me in this passage?
Do you see that the Cross was the place of divine judgement against sin, and that
the death of the Son, as our substitute, is the only way to forgiveness and
reconciliation with God? Jesus endured the darkness of God’s wrath against sin
so that we could see the light of life, He was forsaken, so that we never would
be, and finally He died, He laid down His life, so that we could live
eternally.
What would
God have me to do in response to this passage? The cross helps us to know God better, it displays
both His holiness and justice on the one hand; and His love, expressed in the
amazing grace He extended toward us, on the other. Holiness, and love. Justice,
and mercy. No conflict, it is His nature. We’ve already spent several weeks
looking at the passion of Christ. Remember, it was the plan of God to
accomplish the redemption of all who would believe—this is how God could be
just, and still justify sinners. If
you know Him, you can be assured of forgiveness, because he bore your sins in
His body on the tree. He took your sin, so that you could receive His
righteousness. He died, so that you could live. That is how He showed us His
love. Has that truth touched your heart? Are you still astonished by the Cross?
God so loved you, that He gave His only Son…
After John
Griffith threw the lever to lower the bridge, knowing that he had just sacrificed
his son, Dr. Kennedy tells us the bridge closed, just as the train reached the span…
When John Griffith lifted his head with his face
smeared with tears, he looked into the passing windows of the train. There were
businessmen casually reading their afternoon papers, finely dressed ladies in
the dining car sipping coffee, and children pushing long spoons into their
dishes of ice cream. No one looked at the control house, and no one looked at
the great gear box. With wrenching agony, John Griffith cried out at the steel
train: “I sacrificed my son for you people! Don’t you care?” The train rushed
by, but nobody heard the father’s words…
The Father
gave the Son, but think of this: Jesus willingly gave himself for us. In
light of what He has done for you, will you follow Him? AMEN.
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