If you'll take your Bibles and turn with me to Matthew chapter 27. Matthew chapter 27, this morning we are going to consider verses 27 through 31. Matthew 27, 27 through 31, we've been working our way now for quite some time through the gospel according to Matthew and now we are coming to the place in the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ when he was mocked by the Roman soldiers and scourged by the Roman soldiers. This morning, in my opinion, We come to the point in Jesus's life and ministry in which his sufferings, which already in the hours leading up to this point were absolutely terrible. I believe those sufferings at this point went from being terrible to absolutely unbearable. The Lord Jesus Christ, by the end of this passage, by the end of this suffering, he would, as the prophet Isaiah wrote about him in Isaiah 53, he would be as one from whom men hide their faces. You would have hidden your face from this one after these things were done to him. Before we consider these things, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning in the name of your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, asking you to be gracious to us, to reveal to us the sufferings that the Lord Jesus Christ experienced on behalf of each and every one of his chosen people. Oh Father, I pray that you would cause us to have our eyes wide opened and our minds opened so that you could fill and flood them with your word, that we might be conformed all the more to the image of your Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ. And it's in his name that we pray, amen. Beginning at verse 27, we read this. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. And twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him saying, hail, king of the Jews. And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. I mentioned at the outset that in the hours leading up to this, the Lord Jesus Christ had already experienced horrific suffering. It began, you recall, in the garden of Gethsemane as the Lord Jesus contemplated the prospect of the cup. The cup that his heavenly father was extending to him which was filled with all of the physical torture that would soon be afflicted upon his body, filled with all of the sins of all of God's people that would soon be imputed to his soul, filled with all of the wrath of God that would soon be poured out upon his whole person for those sins. And as Jesus contemplated that, He recoiled from the prospect of it, so much so that He prayed to His Father in sweat blood as He did, My Father, if there's any other way, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me. And yet for our good and by the strength of the Holy Spirit and out of love for us, He said, yet not as I will, but as you will. As soon as that was done, who came up to him and kissed him on the cheek. But Judas Iscariot, so after contemplating the cup, he was betrayed by one of his very own, the betrayer Judas. He was kissed, Jesus was identified to the soldiers and to the guards of the Jewish officials. He was accosted and as his eleven remaining apostles beheld that, they deserted him. And so he was all alone. And then they took him all alone to the leaders of Israel where he was put on trial all night throughout the wee hours of the morning that Friday morning. And all night those leaders lied about him and they slandered him. And they broke many of their own trial laws to do so until finally they condemned him to death for blasphemy because they did not believe his claim to be the son of God and the Messiah. Then they concluded that ordeal by spitting in his face, striking him and slapping him. After that was done, what happened? But his boldest apostle completed his three-fold denial of him. Jesus locked eyes with the Apostle Peter, right as Peter was saying over and over again, I do not know the man. And the rooster crowed. After that was completed, Jesus was taken again alone and delivered to the Gentiles. He was taken before Pilate. As I've mentioned before several times as of recent, they had to get him into the hands of the Romans because only the Romans had the authority to execute convicted criminals. The Jews did not have that authority. And so the Jewish leaders dragged the Lord Jesus Christ, bound feet, bound hands to Pilate. And Pilate, who knew that Jesus was innocent, Pilate, who knew that the only reason Jesus was standing before him was because of the envy of the leaders concerning Jesus, he nevertheless capitulated to the crowd that cried out for Barabbas instead of Jesus. All Pilate had to do, all he had to do, was exert his authority, was exert his prerogative, and free Christ. But as we talked about last week, he was a man pleaser and not a God pleaser, and so he capitulated to the people. And so all throughout the night, the Lord Jesus Christ has experienced suffering after suffering after terrible suffering. But as I mentioned earlier, in my opinion, this is where his suffering became absolutely unbearable. Now why do I say his suffering here became absolutely unbearable? Well, I didn't read it as part of our passage. But in the verse right before it, which we did not dig into last week, but we're going to dig into it this morning, verse 26, Jesus was scourged. We're going to get into what scourging involved in just a moment, but for now let me just say this. I highly doubt that any person in this room has ever in his or her life come even remotely close to experiencing the kind and experiencing the degree of pain that was brought to the body of the Lord Jesus as he was scourged. The Lord Jesus Christ, when he was scourged, felt an intensity of pain that few people in this world ever have, ever will. experience. The feeling, the sensation that came upon the flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he had real human flesh, and so he was capable of feeling real human pain, physical pain, was arguably one of the greatest pains, if not the greatest pain that Christ ever experienced, even worse than his crucifixion. We need to understand that the Lord Jesus Christ had not only to suffer spiritually for our sins. I think we forget that at times. He had to suffer spiritually. Our sins had to be imputed to him and the wrath of God had to be poured out upon him. That happened on the cross. At some point on the cross, we don't know when it happened, but it happened. Our sins were transferred to the God man. And he suffered. And the wrath of God was poured out upon him then. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It was then. But he also had to suffer physically. Because sin affects not just our souls, but our bodies. We are body-soul units. Our sin, therefore, finds its way not just to the soul, but to the body. It's why we physically die. The effects of sin bring forth death, physical death, not only spiritual, not only eternal death for those who don't know Christ. Not only that, but for all those who never come to Christ through faith. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit will not only in hell punish those in soul, but it will be a bodily punishment. A resurrection will be of all bodies, the Lord Jesus says in John chapter 5. The resurrection of the dead will encompass everybody. Some to everlasting life, some to everlasting death. Hell's not just spiritual, it's physical, and so the Lord Jesus Christ naturally, and by necessity, had to suffer physically. And this is where his physical sufferings really became horrible. There are eight sufferings here, including verse 26. We're gonna go through all eight. The first one, scourging, is going to be the longest. Why? Because we don't know what scourging involved. We know what it means to be spit on. We know what it means to be struck. We know what it means to be dressed up like a king. We don't know what it means to be scourged. And so, we're going to plumb the depths of scourging, and we're going to hit on each of these other Sufferings as we do I want you to keep this at the forefront of your minds the Lord Jesus Christ endured all of these sufferings Because he loves his people The only reason he came and Suffered like this and died Because he loves If he didn't love us His elect, He would not have come. The Father would not have sent Him. So I want you to know that as we consider these things, these are testaments of the saving love of the Lord Jesus Christ for each and every one of His elect. And so the suffering that I want to begin with is, as I mentioned earlier, scourging. Scourging. Before we get into the details of scourging, I wanna make sure that we have a right understanding of the circumstances of Jesus's scourging. Because if all we had was Matthew's gospel, or for that matter, Mark's gospel, or Luke's gospel, then we would probably conclude that Jesus was scourged after the end of his Roman trial. After Pilate said, Barabbas, not Jesus. For instance, verses 22 and 23, We're told that the crowd shouted for Jesus' crucifixion. Then verse 24, Pilate washes his hands, says to the crowd, I'm innocent of the man's blood, see to it yourselves. Then verse 25, the crowd answered Pilate, his blood be on us and on our children. An amazing statement. Then, verse 26, Pilate released for them Barabbas, and having Jesus scourged, delivered him to be crucified. And so, it might seem to us that after all of the trial, then Jesus was scourged and then hoisted off to his crucifixion. That's not the way it went down. Matthew, Mark, and Luke give us, as it were, a condensed version of the story. John gives us a fuller version. And John makes it clear, as we read earlier in the service from John 19, that Jesus was scourged not after the end of his trial, but before the end of his trial. Because prior to agreeing to the sentence of crucifixion, what happened? Pilate had Jesus brought back out on the stage, as it were, for display. Remember what he said. He said, behold the man. The reason Pilate did this is because he was hoping that the people upon seeing the mutilated body of Christ would call for Jesus' release and not Barabbas'. It was one of the best tactics that Pilate had. Look at this battered man. He hasn't done anything. You can't say that he's done anything. I've asked you what evil has he done. You're not answering my question. So let me beat him almost to death. So that you're going to call for his release and not Barabbas'. Now, it didn't go the way Pilate had hoped. But Pilate had every reason because of the viciousness and brutality of scourging to think that it would go his way. Let's get into scourging. There was two kinds of scourging. There was the Roman kind and the Jewish kind. The Roman kind was known as the halfway death. The reason it was called the halfway death is because it would bring a person close to death, but was supposed to stop before he died. It was so severe that it was not administered in addition to any other punishment. Did you hear that? It was so severe that if you got it, that's all you got. Those two thieves that were crucified later that day on Jesus' right hand and left, guess what? They were only crucified. They were not scourged. Why was Jesus scourged? Again, purely tactic on Pilate's part. It was only to get him out of being crucified. Jewish scourging was awful. Roman scourging was Far worse. When the Jews would scourge a criminal, they would use a long rod. Like a cane. And they would strike the man's body. They would strike only two places on the body. The shoulders and the loins. The loins are that soft area of tissue right below the ribs and right above the pelvis. They were only permitted to strike you 39 times. 13 times on the right shoulder, 13 times on the left shoulder, and 13 times on the loins. Did it feel good? No. Did it hurt? Like nothing you've ever felt. It was basically a caning. A brutal caning. When Paul received the 39 lashes at the hands of the Romans five times, that's what he got. He got the Jewish scourging. Jesus got the Roman one. The Roman scourging was far, far worse. Number one, they didn't use a rod. They used an instrument called a flagellum. This was a short, circular piece of wood that had several strips of leather attached to it. At the end of those strips were sewn chunks of bone and small pieces of iron chain. When this strap would hit the flesh of a human being, not only would it sting the flesh, but it would, for the most part, skin you alive. Whenever the trained man who administered the scourging, he was called the lictor. Whenever the lictor drew the instrument back after having brought it down upon the back or the chest or the legs or the arms of the man, he would bring with it literally ribbons of flesh. There was no limit to the number of times you could be struck. There was no body part that was off limits. And so when the Lord Jesus was given this punishment, here's what happened. He was taken by the soldiers from where he was at the time, which was the judgment hall of Pilate's headquarters at the fortress Antonia in Jerusalem. He was taken from that judgment hall into what was a small enclosed courtyard that had three short thick stone pillars in it. The pillars were about three feet tall and each of them were embedded with two big iron rings. They walked Jesus up to the nearest pillar. They stripped him of all his clothing. They bent him forward, pulling both of his wrists down the far side of the pillar and tying them together to the rings. And the lictor then would grab that flagellum. As he did, the entire battalion of soldiers. We are talking here of not just a handful of soldiers, we are talking about 600 men. They all gathered around the perimeter of the courtyard to watch the scene. The lictor, he stood about six feet behind the Lord Jesus. And with the instrument in his hand, he drew it all the way back and then came down upon the body of the Lord Jesus as fast and as hard as he could. It whistled through the air as it went, digging into his flesh and Jesus absolutely gasped. when it did. Jesus probably not only gasped because he was a man, he probably collapsed from the sheer pain of it. It shocked his body like a bolt of lightning. The beating wasn't over. Again, another strike, a pull back of the flesh, and then again, and again, and again, in a slow heavy rhythm. His body was torn to smithereens. His neck, his back, his shoulders, his arms, his legs, his feet. Then they untied him, rolled him over on those cold stones so that he was chest up and the lictor went to work on his front side. Neck, chest, stomach, thighs, shins, feet, and even probably his face. And so, when Pilate brought Jesus out, he'd been robed in that phony robe. He'd been crowned with those thorns. When Pilate brought Jesus out and he said, behold the man. Not only was Pilate saying, this guy's no king as you claim him to be. Not only was Pilate saying, there's nothing to be envious of here, let him go free. But Pilate was saying this, this is the same man that you saw brought to me this morning. Why? Because brothers and sisters, you probably couldn't recognize that it was Jesus. That's why. We're talking about disfigurement. We're talking about mutilation of a human being. Behold the man, he's the same man. Had those Jews only believed that Jesus was the Messiah, they would have immediately recalled the words of the prophet Isaiah. His appearance was so marred that it was beyond human semblance. What do you think Isaiah is talking about? His appearance, his body, his face was so disfigured that he was difficult to recognize. But we know, don't we, that as Isaiah goes on to say, the chastisement that was upon him would bring us peace and with his stripes We are healed. What stripes? What stripes? You don't get stripes from being crucified. You get stripes from being scourged. Those stripes. Isaiah, by the Spirit of God, was prophesying not only about the crucifixion of Christ, but the suffering that Christ endured by scourging. Well, that was the worst of it. Everything from here on out is just icing on the cake. Number two, after scourging him, they stripped him. They stripped him. Verse 28, and they stripped him. What they would do with criminals after they scourged him is they would put their, actually they would wash them first, which was, by the way, excruciatingly painful. Then they would put their clothes on him and let him go. Remember, once you were scourged, you were done. Then your family or your friends would come and get you. They'd bring a cot with them because you ain't walking home. They'd put you on the cot and take you home. But with Jesus, that's not what they did. They stripped him, scourged him, washed him, clothed him, and then ripped his clothes off of him again. Have you ever had a bandage that was ripped off of a wound too soon? What happens? Well right, the blood begins to meld with the bandage and then you rip the bandage off and it tears the wound all over again. Now put yourself in the shoes of Jesus here. Put yourself in His situation. He has just been ravaged to where He is a wreck of a man. Skin off of His body. washed, clothed, and then this angry mob of soldiers mockingly yanks the clothes off of his body. The excruciation of that and the humiliation of that, he's now again completely naked, not before one or two, but before 600 Roman soldiers. They scourged him. They stripped him third, they suited him. Verse 28, and they put a scarlet robe on him. This is where the dress up party began. If you want to make fun of these Roman soldiers, think of them as little girls playing with a doll. They're playing dress up with Christ, like little girls. And they dress him up as this comical king. They begin with this robe. A few minutes before this, Jesus had confessed to Pilate that he was a king. Pilate had asked him, are you the king of the Jews? Jesus had responded, my kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would be right here fighting, but it's not, so they're not. Pilate, my kingdom's not even from this world. He was saying, I am the King, capital K King, the King of kings and Lord of lords. And so the soldiers thought it would be very funny to dress Jesus up as this king. The first piece of his costume was the robe. This robe was not a long, luxurious robe, so get that out of your mind. This was a short, dingy robe. This was a soldier's robe. The Romans would wear these short, scarlet robes that would be faded by the sun. They were tucked into their shoulders around their armor, and the robes would flow down their backs. And so what happened here is that one of the soldiers got the idea, I'm just going to take off my robe, and I'm going to drape it around the bloody shoulders of Jesus Christ. They scourged Him, they stripped Him, they suited Him forth, they sanctioned Him. Verse 29, twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on His head. You can see the soldiers here, they are really getting a kick out of this. They are laughing, they are enjoying themselves as this bloody mess of a man is standing in front of them now with this short dingy robe around his bloody shoulders and back. There were these thorns and piles of thorns all around the courtyard of this headquarters because they used these thorns to start fires. And so again, one or two of them, they had this idea, let's go make a crown. And so they walked over to this pile, they grabbed these thorns, they were probably one or two inches long, the thorns themselves, sharp as knives, and they weaved them together in the shape of a crown. They braided them. Then they paraded it right back to the Lord Jesus Christ. One of them lifted it up and set it down on his scalp. So you can see the mockery continue. The costume, however, was not complete. There was one more piece that needed to be added. And so having scourged him and stripped him and suited him and sanctioned him, they proceeded to scepter him. Verse 29, they put a reed in his right hand. You cannot be a king without the emblem of your authority. which is what this reed served as. This reed was probably no more than a couple of feet long. It was spotted evidently nearby the soldiers. And so one of the soldiers walked over, picked it up, brought it over to Christ, pried open his bloody hand, put it in there, and then took his bloody fingers and wrapped it around the reed. Now he was a king. Now he was a king. He has the robe, he has the crown, and now he's got his scepter. It was the make-believe symbol of what these soldiers believed to be the make-believe sovereignty of Jesus. Then they did what everybody does before a king. What's that? They saluted him. They saluted him. That's the next thing, verse 29. And kneeling before him, you get the picture, we're not talking again about a couple of men, we're talking about 600 guys. I mean, this is quite a scene. Kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews. One of the things, as I read through this passage, that always comes to my mind, is I wonder if any of these soldiers ever became believers in Christ. We know that it seems that at least one or a few of the soldiers that nailed him to the cross who saw the things that happened as he died, that truly this was, truly this is the Son of God. Maybe it was one of these soldiers, maybe not, but I just wonder. Because of course if any of them did become believers in Christ, they would have become familiar with the words of the Apostle Paul from Philippians chapter 2. Where Paul writes that though Jesus Christ was in very nature God, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. And because of that, God has highly exalted him. And bestowed on him the name that is above every name, So that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And so I just, I wonder and indeed I hope that at least some of these soldiers by the grace of God went from kneeling before Jesus in mockery and ridicule to eventually by God's grace kneeling before Jesus in worship. worship, because this was no comic king. This was the king of kings that they were kneeling before. He scourged him, stripped him, suited him, sanctioned him, sceptered him, saluted him. Seventhly, they spit on him. They spit on him. I don't know how many of them did that. Maybe every man did. Like a long train, a single file line, one by one by one by one, all 600 walking up to Christ, spitting in his face, spitting all over his body, so that when they were done, he was covered with their spit. Covered. He'd been spit on earlier in the night, right, by the chief priests and the elders in the Sanhedrin. 71 of those guys, now 600 more. They spit on the Lord. Eighthly and lastly, they struck Him. Verse 30, they took the reed and they struck Him on the head. Two or three feet long, a firm piece of wood. They took it back out of his bloody hand, and I don't know how many of them did it, but they crushed his skull with it. Not only would that have damaged his head severely and his brain, but remember the crown of thorns that just went deeper and deeper into our Lord's scalp. I mean, he was now profusely dripping blood down his face. Now, when that was all over, when the soldiers had had their fun, verse 31, they mocked him. After that, they stripped him of the robe, put his own clothes on him, and led him away to crucify him. Of course you've got the picture in your mind now from John. After they did this, Pilate brought him out. Behold the man! Give us Barabbas! Crucify Jesus! Then they took him away. Now again. This is what the Lord Jesus Christ endured for us. There are many takeaways from these things that we've just considered. Many takeaways. One of the takeaways, just very quickly, did Jesus ever make a peep here? I mean, did Jesus strike back at these guys? Did Jesus ever say, why God, why? Why is this happening to me? No. As the Apostle Peter tells us in 1 Peter, he says, when he was reviled, he did not revile. When he was struck, he didn't struck, but he entrusted himself to the Father who judges justly. What's the application of course? When suffering comes into your life, and let's be honest, when it comes to physical pain, no one holds a candle to this. Not even close. Not even close. Some of us have gone to the hospitals and things have gone bad to us, and they say, what's the pain level? Some of us have said 10, and maybe you think it is a 10. Well, after feeling this, you'd probably say it's a one. It's a one. Whatever suffering comes into your life, whether it be a direct result of your obedience to Christ, or whether it be just living in this fallen world, which is rife with suffering, You think of the Lord Jesus Christ and you suffer silently. You suffer patiently. You suffer trustingly, just as Jesus did, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that all things good and miserable will be caused by God to work for your eternal good. They cannot but work that way because God is good, and He is sovereign, and He loves you, and He's promised it. Another takeaway, just briefly. Hebrews 5.8, although Jesus was a son, He learned obedience through what He suffered. He learned obedience through what he suffered. Was Jesus ever disobedient? No. But the writer of the Hebrews said he learned obedience. That's to say his sufferings were the testing ground in which his obedience became full grown. Now, do we disobey? Yes, we do as Christians. How much more, frankly, do we need to suffer to become mature in Christ than Jesus needed to suffer? Isn't that the case? Don't view your sufferings, in other words, as, why me, God? Rather, as James commands us to do, he says, count it all joy. when various trials come into your life because you know that these trials are going to be used by the Spirit to produce in you steadfastness. The strongest Christians in the world, the most mature Christians in the world are those who have suffered the most. That's just characteristically, that's undeniable. Many more takeaways. But the one takeaway that I really wanted to stress to you this morning, is that these all were testaments of Christ's love for you. In other words, it was as he was scourged, as he was being stripped of his skin by that instrument, as that was going on, and then stripped, and suited, and sanctioned, and sceptered, and saluted, and spit on, and struck, he was thinking of us! He's a sovereign God! Fully man, fully divine, capable of thinking things that you cannot think. His brain was 100% effective and he had foreknowledge, omniscience, all of it. He had us on his mind even though we hadn't even been born yet. And even though after being born we would be opposed to him. And yet he had us on his mind because before the foundation of the world, the Father had given us to him. And as he says in John 10, I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. He's talking about his elect. I know my sheep, my sheep know me. And I lay my life down for them. This is what our Lord Jesus Christ did because of his inestimable love for you. How can we not lovingly obey him now? How can we not? When you're tempted to disobey the Lord, when it's difficult for you to love him and obey him, make a beeline to that courtyard and remember his scourgings, and remember that you were on his mind as he took it, right? Heavenly Father, we thank you for the great love with which you have so clearly demonstrated to us in the person and work, the suffering and dying, the bleeding and agony of your Son and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray, oh God, that we would respond as we must respond by loving you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the way we love you, Jesus says, is by keeping your commandments, by walking in your ways with gratitude and thanksgiving. And it's because we are now the children of God. This is our very natures now to obey you. I pray, Father, that we would remember this and live by grace in the light of all of it. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.