All right, it's very absolutely true that telling people about Jesus is the most important thing we get to do So I want to talk about that a little bit too The passage we're going to look at this morning is in mark 15 as we continue our sermon series through the gospel of Mark so you can turn there in your Bible mark 15 You can look on page 184 if you can use one of the Bibles that we have underneath the chair in front of you before We jump into the scripture that I want to talk about two things that are coming up that I really really want You guys to be thinking about and taking advantage of one if you look on the back of your Bulletin you'll see under the women's ministry the women's retreat is coming up April 17 through 19th and Registration you can it's already open you can already register. There's a table out there So I just want to really really encourage Every single woman to go to the marriage or not to the marriage retreat, but well that's you But go to the women's retreat Do whatever you can to go to the women's retreat. Ruthie Delk is an author and a member of our church And she's going to be teaching and Has she has such a wonderful handle on grace the grace of God and so I think it would be a fantastic opportunity ladies for you to go and just See a fresh the gospel and experience the richness of the gospel Men husbands in particular. I want to challenge you to make it as easy as possible for your wife to go To this retreat now means we got to watch the kids and and do all the things around the house and all that stuff And I want you to know that I will be home alone with my four children the oldest of which is five So I'm going to need some help I was thinking men we could just kind of clear out the chairs bring all the kids put them in the center kind of Lord of the fly style Which kind of like hang back make sure they don't kill each other um Whatever it takes It's uh it's gonna be a really outstanding opportunity ladies for you to Experience the richness of the gospel in community with other women of the church under the excellent teaching of Ruthie Delk Uh Number two, I want everybody to be aware if you got the email then you know about our pick three plan We the pastors and the ministry staff have have come up with this little plan We're excited about Easter approaching and if you are familiar with the fact that um around Christmas and around Easter Unchurched people are much more likely to attend some sort of event at a church and so inviting them as a huge thing um And so we want to take advantage of that time of year and so we've got this plan We want you to pick three people and then PiC pick those people and what that is take your bulletin and look inside There's this 21 days of prayer for our neighbors guide and what I want to challenge each of you to do is to begin to pray for three friends co-workers neighbors who are currently unchurched Uh or and or don't know the gospel don't understand it or don't believe And this is going to start next Sunday and we'll pray every day for 21 days in a row as a church and uh we have a guide prepared for you so that each day You'll have some scripture and a prayer that you can offer as you pray for the three people that God has laid upon your heart and then also not only praying for them, but inviting them We're going to challenge each of you to reach out and try to invite one two or three of the people you've been praying for And you can invite them to our good Friday service. You can invite them to Easter Sunday. You can invite them to The following week when we are having our big community Cook out where we're using that big giant grill that cooks like hundreds of burgers at a time. Have you seen that thing? It's awesome. Okay, so um you can you can invite them to all those things and then Lord willing some of the people that we invite Will come and then we want to try to connect them connect them to something That you're involved in maybe you connect them to your life group or maybe you connect them to the Sunday school class You attend who knows whatever it is whatever connections you have where you are finding your fellowship in your community Uh try to connect them So that's what we're hoping to see happen that we would all pick three people and then Pick those three people that we would pray for them every day for 21 days And that we'd invite them and then Lord willing if they come we'll try to connect them Don't cool All right, let's plan on doing that. Uh, and now let's uh Let's get into the word Continuing our sermon series through the gospel of mark. We're getting close to the cross and resurrection So we don't have much longer in our series on mark um Let's read mark chapter 151 through 15 This is God's holy and true word
And as soon as it was morning the chief priest held a consultation with the elders And scribes and the whole council and the bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to pilot And pilot asked him are you the king of the Jews And he answered him you have said so And the chief priest accused him of many things and pilot again asked him have you no answer to make See how many charges they bring against you But Jesus made no further answer So that pilot was amazed Now the feast now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked and among the rebels in prison Who had committed murder in the insurrection there was a man called barabbas And the crowd came up and began to ask pilot to do as he usually did for them And he answered them saying do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priest said delivered him up But the chief priest stirred up the crowd to have him release for them barabbas instead And pilot said to them then what shall I do with the man you call the king of the Jews And they cried out again crucify him And pilot said to them why What evil has he done but they shouted all the more crucify him
So pilot wishing to satisfy the crowd released For them barabbas and having scourged Jesus He delivered him To be crucified. This is the word of the Lord You pray with me Father, we do thank you for your grace and your love and acceptance that you lavish upon us as your children Because of the finished work of Christ Thank you for giving us the gift of faith Thank you for giving us the gift of repentance And we pray now Lord that you would use our time together in the word this morning To transform us, to make us new, to help us to trust you more And we ask Lord that you would use this time to equip us to run to our neighbors and to the nations with the gospel For it is in Jesus' name that we pray Amen We've been in the book of mark for a long time and we're coming to the end We started about a year and a half ago it will finish on Easter Sunday And I recently heard about a pastor named George Ketter who in the 1600s spent a little longer in the book of mark 25 years So we've been doing the abridged version And one of the themes in the book of mark One of the actually one of the reasons I should say That mark wrote from the perspective that he did Each of the gospel authors help us understand different perspectives of the story of Christ And one of the main things that mark was thinking about as he wrote was Christians who were being persecuted for their faith His original audience was Christians in Rome who were under persecution at the time And so so much of what he says is so helpful for people who are experiencing persecution Because of what they believe about Jesus and I don't know it's I would imagine some of us have experienced some real live You know at least emotionally painful maybe physically painful persecution In a church at our of our size and a church with as many missionaries as we have here Some of us may have really actually experienced some some pretty heavy persecution The rest of us have probably experienced some level Maybe you've lost friends because of your faith or maybe you've experienced ridicule Because you believe that this ancient book that seems so outdated is true and Maybe maybe you've at least experienced some of the frustration or even fear that comes when you see the culture the broader culture around us Saying things about us Saying that we are bigots or that we are hateful because we believe what the Bible teaches About sexuality or about gender or about sanctity of human life And the reality is we're we're going to experience that we live in a broken world where there is an actual hatred for God And so we're going to experience that as his children and so we need to know where to look and what to think when we do experience persecution and that's one of the things that we can really draw from in this passage saying Jesus being persecuted here Because the reality is the persecution of Jesus is a tremendous source of hope for believers As we see him persecuted here It is a tremendous source of hope for you and I and it is the one thing we should be thinking about when we experience it Whether it's a dirty look or somebody seeking to take our life So that's what we're going to talk about this morning this this hope that we have in in looking at the persecution of Jesus And we'll talk about two things that we want to look at in this passage two things one the suffering Servant Jesus is the suffering servant. We'll see that once again And then the suffering substitute One of the sweetest aspects of the gospel will look at there So so let's jump in and I want to encourage you all to keep your bibles open We're going to move through this passage and I'd love for you to be looking at you the word of God as we do that So let's begin looking at verses one through five first thing we want to just think about here is that Jesus suffered for doing the will of God Okay, Jesus suffered for doing what God had sent him to do and the reality is not only did Jesus suffer for doing the will of God But we do too Let's take a look so verse one we get back into the story now It's morning after they have had their trial among the Jewish leaders and convicted him of blasphemy We saw last week that while that was happening Peter was in the courtyard denying that he knew Jesus and now the morning has come And they the Jews are taking him to pilot who is the governor of the region basically He's the the top person in charge as far as the Roman government is concerned and there The once in authority over the Jews at this time and so they bring Jesus to Pontius pilot Primarily because they have no authority to execute criminals The Roman government very jealously guarded their right and their authority to execute criminals So they had to bring Jesus before pilot and when they did they told pilot that this man says he's our Messiah And so the way that that would translate in pilots mind it'd be that that means Jesus is saying that he's their king And if that's true, that's a really big problem because There's no way that he could allow somebody to consider themselves the king of the Jews because the emperor of Rome was still in his mind the one who was in charge and so that's why he asks him into are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus says you have said so Which is a very interesting response because really what he's doing is he's saying yes But not in the way you think Because in pilot's mind if Jesus is the king of the Jews then he's a political leader very likely planning to lead some Insurrection and liberate the Jews from Roman rule And so obviously that would be a really big problem, but Jesus is the king of the Jews, but that's not what he had come to do As we know and as we shall see so look at the verse three So so the chief priests are accusing him of all these things saying all these false things against him Mark doesn't give us examples But there are examples in the other gospels But marks keeps us focused here on other things and and pilot again asked him in verse four Have you no answer to make see how many charges they bring against you, but Jesus verse five Made no further answer and pilot was amazed and it is amazing To think that Jesus is standing there while they're leveling all these false charges against him and he's Standing there silent not defending himself He's just letting it take place Now he's never done anything wrong now one thing is whole life Yet he sits there silent now in in the other gospels We do get some examples of some of the other dialogue that took place over the length of this or deal But Mark really wants us to focus on the portions in which Jesus stood silent Why two reasons one once again he wants us to make sure that we make that connection That he is the suffering servant that Isaiah said would come hundreds of years before this point That Jesus is indeed that suffering servant. We've been pointed to the book of Isaiah so many times through the book of Mark and here's one more Look at Isaiah 53 five through seven got it on the screen here for you But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace And with his wounds we are healed all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all And then verse seven referring to the silence we're talking about here He was oppressed and afflicted yet he opened not his mouth Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before it's sure is his silent. He Opened not his mouth So one of the things that Mark wants us to see and really emphasizing Jesus silence is that he is indeed our suffering servant. This is what he came to do So he could bear my iniquity and your iniquity The other thing about this is the fact that it wouldn't have made any difference If Jesus had given a full defense it doesn't matter it wouldn't matter because they were not after justice They wanted to kill him. They wanted to destroy him He'd never done anything wrong in his whole life lived a complete life of perfect obedience to God Compassion love kindness to everyone There's a song there's an old hymn. You may be familiar with it's called my song his love unknown And one of the verses is why what hath my lord done what makes this rage and spite he made the lame to run He gave the blind their sight and it's just Thinking about the fact that how could they be so determined to kill him when he was The perfect human being And that's the thing is Jesus lived this perfect life of perfect love compassion truth faithfulness you name it And the self righteous religious leaders they couldn't stand that they didn't they couldn't stand looking at him and his Righteousness because what it did is exposed their lack of righteousness their lack of holiness And that caused them to hate him if you if you think back to all the back to chapter three we talked about this a couple times In chapter three We see the first time that the Pharisees are determined to destroy Jesus And it's right after Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath And so the Pharisees are You know they're mad about this because God said that that the Sabbath should be a day of rest But he never said you shouldn't help somebody in need on the Sabbath and but they had made all these rules Because they think they're good and they want to do things their way So they'd made all these rules and they didn't they didn't think you should help somebody even on the Sabbath And so Jesus comes and he breaks their man-made rules And does what God obviously would want him to do to help somebody in need and in that the Pharisees are looking and they're seeing That's what real holiness is Which was a phenomenal challenge to them because they think they are holy they think they're righteous They think they're good on their own merit and so they begin to hate him And it said they began to plan how they might destroy him Self-righteousness feeling like you're good because of what you do Hates hates the holiness of God It's like there's a there's a story you might be familiar with us of some missionaries who are on mission field They're working with the tribe. I don't know where but They had been there for some time and after a while the chiefden of this tribe wanted to visit the camp of the missionaries So he comes into their camp and they had a mirror hanging on a tree to shave and do things like that and he walks by this tree and looks over He'd never seen a mirror before he looks over and he sees his own face and He's he's reacting and pretty soon he kind of screams and he says who is this man making faces at me who he must stop And they explain to him that it's it's not Someone else it's actually him. It's a it's a mirror and they show him What it is and he says I must have this I need this mirror. I want this mirror How much will you sell me this mirror for and they didn't really want to give up their mirror But they also didn't want to offend him so they they sold it to him And so he takes the mirror and as soon as it's in his hands he smashed it on the ground
And he said that man will never make those faces at me again
And the reality is When he saw things about himself that were not What he thought he wanted to destroy the thing That was revealing that to him That's what's happening When self-righteous people when the self-righteous religious Leaders people who think they're good because of the things that they do When they would look at Jesus true holiness true righteousness Was in their face and the reflection of themselves being not holy not righteous made them want to destroy him
So they did and the the reality is Jesus the whole time he's simply doing the will of God He's revealing the holiness and righteousness of God with every act and breath And so The bottom line is this you see this that that they hated him because they could because he Revealed the holiness of God to them and the wickedness of humankind and being self-righteous They couldn't stand that and the bottom line is it's the same for you and me These these are the same reason that people who think they're good
Hate us and have and even will persecute us And Jesus said that this would happen as we follow him as he was hated We're going to be hated look at this John 15 18 He said if the world hates you know that it has hated me before it hated you
when the world sees The holiness of Christ through us It's nothing good in us, but the holiness of Christ is revealed through us as we obey him The world the self-righteous of the world are going to hate us Matthew 5 very famous from the sermon in the mount look which Jesus says blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness Say for there's is the kingdom of heaven blessed are you and others revolue and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil Against you falsely on my account rejoice and be glad your award is great in heaven for so they've persecuted the profits Who were before you Paul in second Timothy 312 says something that we should all take to heart and to believe Indeed, he says all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted First Peter 314 Peter says but even if you should suffer for righteousness sake You will be blessed have no fear of them nor be troubled And the bottom line is if we if we're following Jesus who suffered for doing the will of God And he's empowering us by his spirit to do the will of God and we too are going to experience persecution and it may be as light as a dirty look It may be as terrible as outright slander and it may be That we are murdered for our faith as many people are all around the world Self-righteousness can't that cannot stand the holiness of God
First Peter 419 Peter says therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful creator While doing good so that's the answer right that's what we need to do we need to trust in trust ourselves to God To the faithful creator trust what well one that he is going to get us through it But even if we die we can trust him through the process through the persecution Knowing that he is using it for a very glorious purpose in fact look at this This is acts 540 and 42 is shocking when you think about this Some of the apostles get beat up and then they're excited about it Verse 40 says and when they had called the apostles they beat them and charged them not to speak The name of Jesus and let them go then they left the presence of the council rejoicing That they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name and every day in the temple and from House to House They did not cease teaching and preaching that Christ is Jesus Paul and Philippians 3 says something that's kind of shocking He's talking about being found in Christ 3 9 and 10 being found in Christ not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law But that which comes through faith in Christ the righteousness from God that depends on faith that I may know him And the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings Becoming like him in his death now how do you say that how do you get beat up and then walk away rejoicing that you were considered worthy of suffering dishonor for the name How do you say that you want to experience the sufferings of Jesus unless you know
That there is a phenomenal purpose in our suffering Um And that's the answer that there is That we can know for sure that when we experience persecution whether light or heavy It's got an incredible purpose and it makes us very much like Jesus Let's talk about Jesus as the suffering substitute look at 6 through 15 The suffering substitute and what we want to focus here is that Jesus suffering prevents the suffering of others Okay, that's the picture right Jesus the innocent goes free in Barabbas the guilty good or I'm sorry Jesus the innocent is taken away for crucifixion and Barabbas the guilty person goes free So that's what we see ultimately that Jesus suffering prevents the suffering of others And so does ours We look at what the scripture teaches about this. We'll see that through our suffering to people are Are saved. Let's look at six now at the feast pilot used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked And so uh one of the people that was in prison at this time is Barabbas He was a murderer and he had been involved in an insurrection Barabbas interestingly enough you've probably heard this before Barabbas name is bar of us which really means son of the father And it's pretty recognized that his given name was Jesus and that his real name was Jesus Barabbas and so you've got these two men You've got Jesus the son of God Uh, who's innocent and perfect and you've got Jesus son of the father who is wicked and guilty and And And they're standing there and the the crowd verse eight crowd came up and began to ask pilot to do as he usually did and so pilot thinks they want Jesus He says you want me to uh release for you the king of the Jews for he perceived that it was out of envy That the chief priest had delivered him up and he nails it But the chief priest stirred up the crowd to have him release barabbas instead Now it makes perfect sense why Pilate would want Jesus released and not barabbas Jesus in Pilate's mind is just all talk. He's never done anything violent Barabbas, meanwhile he's murdered people murdered Romans in an insurrection So obviously he would want to keep barabbas behind bars Uh, so pilot uh says to them again Well, what should I do with the man you call the king of the Jews and they cry out crucify him which is shocking because it's the Punishment reserved for the worst of the worst criminals Pilate doesn't make sense to pilot so 14 he says why What evil has he done And but they shouted all the more crucify him so pilot wishing to satisfy the crowd released for them barabbas And having scourged Jesus he delivered him To be crucified so pilot gives in to the will of the crowd what a interesting contrast right Pilate who is supposed to be in control of things is losing control To the crowd Jesus who appears to be completely out of control is right on track Everything's going according to plan because he came To serve and to give his life as a ransom
So they Take him and scourge him and you probably know what that is You know, they have the the long whip. It's got metal and glass sometimes and bone in it And so as they whip your back it just opens your flesh Very often the your entrails begin to spill out through your back most of the time or some of the time I should say people who were being scourged on the way to being crucified would die from being scourged and never actually get to the cross Jesus does survive the scourging and does go to the cross praise the Lord We'll talk about that in the coming weeks But here's this situation right you got Jesus and barabbas who they're going to ask for And they they cannot stand Jesus they can't ask for Jesus why because Jesus is holy and perfect and in Jesus I see that I'm wicked and I see that I deserve punishment I can't stand that I want barabbas because he's a horrible person and he makes me feel better about myself
So they choose the wicked release the wicked so that the one who reveals Their wickedness can be done away with in their minds and so Jesus suffering then Is the reason that barabbas the wicked the guilty gets to go free And It's such an amazing thing it really gives us the real heart of the gospel And then at the same time this this why it's such a source of hope to see the persecution of Jesus for doing the will of God And so the heart of the gospel is what we call substitutionary atonement Phenomenal part of the gospel substitutionary atonement and that is that that we are the guilty ones right we are the wicked ones We are the ones who have sinned we are the ones who have not obey God's law We may not all be murders, but we are like barabbas in this scenario We deserve punishment we deserve to suffer the wrath of God in hell for what we've done, but substitutionary atonement God So love the world that he sent his only son to to take our place to be our substitute in suffering so that God could pour out all his wrath onto him So that he can turn to us and pour out nothing but love and acceptance And the promise of eternal life with him and so That's Jesus our substitutionary atonement. He reconciles us to God. He atones for our sin We were at war with God, but he brings us at one that's what a tone it means at one meant so we're we're reconciled substitutionary atonement, but the other thing we see is then that when we suffer for our faith Our suffering also prevents the suffering of others Because we look at what we see in the New Testament What we can see is that somehow the gospel always goes forth When God's people are suffering for their faith The gospel always goes forth to people who have not heard it When God's people are suffering for their faith think about how many people were just exposed to Christianity and the gospel because 21 Egyptians Christians were beheaded by ISIS How many pastors got to be interviewed on CNN or Fox News because of that How many times did people have a way to talk about the gospel? right And see our suffering a persecution for our faith it actually plays a role in the lost Receiving the hearing the gospel and then receiving Christ by faith and being promised the forgiveness and the eternal life that we have and so as we are persecuted knowing that the gospel goes forth through that it makes suffering for our faith an incredible honor
Look at this first Peter 20 and 24 Peter says, but if we if when you do good and suffer for it you endure this is a gracious thing in the side of God 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 he committed no sin neither was deceit found in his mouth when he was reviled He did not revile in return when he suffered He did not threaten but continued in trusting himself to him who judges justly He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness by his wounds You have been healed how do we follow in his steps? We can't atone for anyone sin at all, but When we suffer for our faith the gospel goes forth when people believe the gospel they will not suffer for eternity and hell for their sins like we all deserve I think Paul says this very clearly and concisely in 2nd Timothy 210 look at this And he's talking about persecutions that he's been through here and there in this book and he says therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect That they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory The elect the people that God is redeeming through faith in Christ through the gift of faith in Christ And so he's saying that I'm going through everything. I'm going through all these challenges I'm going through all the times I've been whipped and shipwrecked and and beaten I endure everything for the sake of those who will hear the gospel Believe and be saved and so the question that we got to ask ourselves is are we willing to suffer temporarily So that other people can escape an eternity of suffering in hell like they deserve like I deserve And escape that through faith in Christ. Are we willing to suffer now So that others may not suffer for eternity and when you put it that way When you put it that way if we know for certain that the gospel will advance When we suffer persecution whether light or heavy Then it you can see why the apostles rejoiced when they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor For the name If you know That going through something horrendous Will save people You are so strengthened to do it There's a man named Henry Red Irwin they called him red Henry was in the army air corps he enlisted in 1943 And he eventually became a radio operator on a B-29 bomber and on April 12th 45 his B-29 bomber was flying in the lead out of Guam And They there was about 75 or 80 B-29 bombers following And so what they would do is It was his job to open this little hatch and drop down these phosphorus bombs Which as soon as they left the plane they would explode and they burned at about 2,000 degrees and put off a tremendous amount of smoke So if you've ever seen you know world war two videos and stuff That as the as the plane is flying the lead plane so that all these other planes can see where they're going You know the the bomb falls and poof big thing a smoke a little further Big thing a smoke a little further Big thing a smoke and it's also that all the planes can keep their eyes on the leader And what happened was Red was doing this and suddenly one of those phosphorus bombs Goes off too early it exploded before it got past the plane it came back up into his plane And so he was severely burned immediately, but also these things are designed to give off tremendous amounts of smoke So immediately the entire airplane is filled with smoke and while it was hard to breathe The biggest problem was the pilot could no longer see his instruments And so they could tell that the plane was beginning to go down But there was nothing they could do nobody could see anything
So red In a moment of I'm sure Sheer tear he Realizes that he's got to do something If these guys are going to make it And so for the sake of his crew members he goes over to this bomb that he can see because it's burning and he picks it up with his bare hands It's burning somewhere between 1500 and 2000 degrees. It is literally burning the flesh off of his fingers as he's walking To the window one of the other crew members is able to get through the get the window open they push This phosphorus bomb out into the sky where it continues to smoke Red falls over When they finally were able to get to safety they were pretty certain that red was going to die I mean he had unbelievable severe burns but by the grace of god red did not die And a week after the incident he was awarded the Medal of Honor As he deserves So you see he knew He knew that if I will do something that's going to hurt Unbelievably The the other guys that I'm with Will will be saved And so he was willing to suffer tremendously And even to the day he died considered an honor to have suffered to save Those men and in the same way that you and I when we see how god works And when we see the promise that if we're being persecuted The gospel will advance through that If we know that and believe that that means that we know that whenever we experience persecution Whether it's light or heavy a dirty look or somebody taking our head off whatever we experience because of our faith We know that god is using it to advance the gospel and therefore like christ our suffering will result in others not suffering For eternity and hell because they will hear the gospel and believe lord willing And and they will be saved as well So if we'll believe that then we like the apostles can rejoice
When we suffer dishonor for the name And as bad as it hurts we can say I know you're using this for your glory and to save people and we can say what an honor We can say if ever I loved the my Jesus to is now Let's pray bother you have placed us in a time and a context in which uh There has been a seeming rise and hostility towards your word your son
And I know that in my heart I feel angry at the things that are said about My brothers and sisters in Christ or myself And I ask you father we ask you father would you give us grace to help us endure this suffering Uh, that we might have at whatever level it is would you help us to believe deeply that You will advance the gospel through everything that we experience Would you help us consider it an honor And help us stand firm in the faith The shut our mouths when it will glorify you and to open them when it will glorify you Now thank you for The people that you gather here every week Thank you that you have redeemed us in your son And that we can be here with no fear of your condemnation And even by the power of your Holy Spirit and because of the glory of your son we can have a willingness to suffer because The good news is just Vap Good In Jesus name we pray Amen