Our reading will be from Mark 15, starting in verse 22, and we'll read through to verse 41. Mark 15, starting in the 22nd verse. 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 didn't 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. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, behold, he is calling Elijah. 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. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God. There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the Younger, and of Joseph and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. And thus ends the reading of God's life-giving word. Let us pray. O Lord, I pray that you would be with me and with my mouth and with my thoughts and also with your people, that you would be with their ears and with their hearts cause both of these things to work together, my speaking and their hearing, so that this might ultimately redound to your praise and in your people produce much fruit for the glory of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. Well, many years ago, I was on a campus in Nevada, in the University of Nevada Las Vegas campus with a group of friends attempting to evangelize a number of the students in the general quad area as people were passing through, going to classes. And at one point I ended up alone somehow. My friends had wandered off in different directions either having a side conversation or going to the cafeteria or whatever it might have been. And I was out there and I saw a Muslim that was approaching me that ended up being, I think this was the second time I saw this gentleman, but he was the first Muslim I had ever spoken with. And apparently he was very upset from the previous conversation. In the previous conversation, I pointed him to the clear testimony of Scripture from beginning to end regarding the person of the Lord Jesus and the work that he was going to perform in the world. And of the necessity of believing in him for salvation and that there's no other hope apart from trusting in him and his person and work. And so, angered and upset by that discussion, before he even got within 20 feet of me, he began to yell. And he began to say a number of things that were very derogatory of the Lord Jesus. And I won't be as crude as he was, but I want you to have some idea of what he was saying. But among other things, he was saying, your God came out of a woman. A woman who was then considered unclean and who had to go to the temple to offer sacrifices for her purification. Your God had his diapers changed. Your God breastfed. Your God was bound, dragged off to the authorities, was subjected to a number of trials, first Caiaphas, then Annas, and then several times with Pilate, and ultimately condemned, and then mocked and ridiculed. They shoved a crown of thorns on His head, threw a purple robe around Him, and began to call Him the King of the Jews, mockingly. They blindfolded Him. They spit on Him. According to Isaiah, they even plucked out his beard. We don't read that in the Gospels, but that's one of the things that Isaiah prophesied. And they ultimately, they whipped him and then nailed him to a cross. And then that's what this man was throwing in my face. That's your God. You know, Allah is majestic. Allah is glorious. He basically was talking about the things I was talking about this morning in reference to Jesus in Mark 9. Remember, we looked and we saw that Jesus' glory was revealed to the disciples. But what was interesting to me as I heard this, my temptation, first of all, was to push back against that. I wanted to reiterate all those things that I had told him earlier, the other day, about Jesus being the Son of God. I wanted to point him to the miracles of Jesus, how he had authority over the winds and the waves, how he could walk on the water, how he could command the demons, the demons were subject to him, how he had authority over diseases. I wanted to point him to all those evidences, but I had already done that. That's why he was angry. And he wanted to throw in my face all of these things in the Gospels that I hadn't told him. So my temptation was to sort of push back against this, and to kind of pare down the rough edges of what was so offensive to him. But as he was saying it, I realized a number of things. Well, first of all, I realized that he was yelling, and I wasn't trying to draw attention. And so people began to turn and look at us. But as he was talking, I began to realize, you know what? He just gave the other half of the gospel message, which I neglected to tell him, because I made no real point of pushing that second part of it. And so as he was speaking, and I was tempted to go in a different direction, and I see everybody looking around, and it occurred to me, he just gave the other half of the gospel. And so I took a step back while he was angrily approaching me, and I said, preach it, brother! Preach it! And immediately his face flushed red and people began looking at him as if he were a gospel preacher. And I remember thinking as I left there, you know, there's a good possibility that more people were saved that day because of his message than anything I had done. he had effectively preached the gospel. But what I want to show you this morning is essentially that what I took at that point to be so, what I thought was something of a roadblock to believing in Christ as the Son of God, and what he was presenting as a stumbling block to that, is actually what the biblical authors in Mark, as we're going to see today, consider to be the very proof, the climactic proof of Christ's Sonship. Now, before I even go very far into this, you can already see that there's something going on here, right? For some reason, in the midst of Jesus being crucified, mocked, reviled, dying on the cross, crying out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That something's going on because at the conclusion of this, a centurion, a pagan, a non-Jew cries out, surely this was the Son of God. There was something that was so significant that this man came to the conclusion that this Jesus who is being crucified is the Son of God. Well, to see this point, to see what's going on, we really need to get a perspective on what's going on in Mark's gospel as a whole, and also have in mind what's going on throughout the Old Testament leading up to this. Remember, the Apostle Paul told us that the law is a schoolmaster that leads us to Christ. It's preparing us for him. And that's part of the problem, by the way, when it comes to this Muslim that I was speaking to, as well as many other people. They haven't learned the lesson of the Old Testament, which prepared God's people to recognize Jesus when he comes. And because Muslims reject the Old Testament, at least they don't accept it as uncorrupted. They often have not learned its message. But remember, that's what Jesus said when he talked to the man, the rich man, when he died, who had mistreated a gentleman named Lazarus. Remember, the rich man died, and he said, let me go back and warn my brothers. And what does Jesus tell him? That's not going to matter. If they don't believe Moses and the prophets, they won't even believe if somebody rises from the dead. And that's God's plan. That's His way of bringing it about that people will come to recognize and believe in His Son. That's how God revealed Himself over time, and that's how people ultimately are led by the hand to Jesus. Well, when we look at Mark's Gospel, and maybe you've never noticed this, but it's interesting, while Mark's Gospel refers to Jesus as the Son of God over and over and over again, there's something that it never does. It never shows you any human being confessing Christ's Sonship. That's never anywhere in the Gospel of Mark until you get to the words of the Centurion. That should also tell you that something significant is going on. But as an example, you recall that this morning we looked at the transfiguration, and the Father speaking from heaven in Mark 9, 7 said what? This is my beloved Son, hear Him. So the disciples, Peter, James, and John, heard this from God the Father Himself. And even earlier than that, at the baptism of Jesus, we see the same thing. At the baptism of Jesus, the Father speaks from heaven and says, This is my beloved Son. So, God the Father testifies to Christ's sonship. More than that, you could virtually turn to any page on the Gospels, or in the Gospel of Mark, and you'll see the demons crying out that Jesus is the Son of God. Whenever the demons encountered Jesus, we're told that they ran up and threw themselves down on the ground before him because they knew who he was. They'd cry out, what do you want with us, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Are you here to destroy us? See, their concern was that Jesus, as the Son of God, had come there to bring about the final day. And so, upon seeing Him, they cry out. And we see this over and over again in Mark's Gospel. And they give Jesus all these titles. They call Him the Holy One. They call Him the Son of God. And they cry out in fear. But for all of that, as I said, we don't see anybody confessing Jesus as the Son of God. Not even in a place where you might expect it. I don't know if you noticed earlier, when we looked at Mark 8, where we had Peter's confession. Remember when Jesus said to Peter, who do you say that I am? You might remember that in Matthew's account, Matthew records Peter saying, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Well, in Mark's gospel, he doesn't tell us that further detail. That's not because Mark disagrees with Matthew. The gospels are in complete agreement. But the point is that Matthew has left this out because he wants you to see the sonship of Christ, especially in light of what's going on at the crucifixion. This is the great event that reveals Jesus to be the Son of God. It surpasses everything else that can be pointed to. His miracles, His control of nature, His authority over the demons. It's the cross that is ultimately the great revelation and proof of Christ's Sonship. In fact, we can see, just going back to the confession of Peter for a moment, you can see that there's something lacking in all of the accounts, right? When you go to Matthew, when you go to Luke, Peter immediately after confessing Jesus as the Christ doesn't want him to go to the cross. So he obviously doesn't have a full understanding at this point. And so, this is the way that Mark brings this out. He just refrains from mentioning that Peter had confessed his sonship here because he knew that ultimately what brought this all into focus for people was the cross. And just one other point on that before I go to the Old Testament to fill this out a bit more. Right before Peter makes his great confession in Mark 8, you have this unique miracle recounted in Mark chapter 8. You'll recall this, I think, because it's, again, it's something that only Mark tells us. And it's unlike other miracles. In other cases, when Jesus heals somebody, it's instantaneous. Right? He speaks the word, the person is healed. And it's complete. Complete and instantaneous. But in Mark 8, if you look at verse 22, we have the story of a man who's healed in stages of his blindness. And I'll read that, it's starting in verse 22. They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. And when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, Do you see anything? And he looked up and said, I see men, but they look like trees walking. Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes. His sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home, saying, Do not enter the village." The point of this is not simply to give us another miracle of Jesus, but there are many miracles they could have told, many reports they could have given to remember what John said. Jesus did so many things that if we recounted them all, we wouldn't have enough room for them. They would fill the entire world. Well, so Mark is choosing this miracle account for a reason. And it's right before Peter's confession and then Peter's failure to understand the implications of it. And so what Mark is doing is he's dramatizing the accurate historical event, but he's using this to dramatize the spiritual condition of the disciples. They see, but not yet as clearly as they ought to see. In fact, you can see the disciples all over the Gospel of Mark missing the point, right? Over and over again we hear them not quite coming to terms with what's going on. We saw that in Mark 9, right? Peter out of fear, let's build three tabernacles. So what Jesus is doing through the Gospel is he's leading them steadily towards Jerusalem and closer then to the great event that's going to ultimately remove the scales from their eyes. Well, switching gears here just a little bit to fill out the picture, Pastor Roddy mentioned to me that he preached already, and I don't remember how long ago this was, but on Genesis 22, and no doubt in your reading of Scripture, you've come across it many times, and hopefully have reflected upon it often, because it really is one of the great Old Testament events that point to the Lord Jesus. It's one of the clearest pictures of the Lord Jesus and what he would do. What's interesting about the story, as you might recall, is that Abraham is not just being told to take one of his servants to offer as a sacrifice, but his son. And not just any son, but the son that he loves, his only son, Isaac. And to really understand that we have to understand not only that this is the true heir of Abraham, the one who came from his loins, but for Abraham and other people in the Old Testament, Isaac, in Isaac, all the hopes of the world were bound up. God made a promise to our first parents in the garden upon the sin of Adam and Eve. And he said that he would give the woman a seed through whom God would defeat the tempter. He would undo the work of Satan and deliver mankind. And then that promise was passed on through Seth, through Noah, through Abraham. And so when Abraham is told to take his son and offer him as a sacrifice, he realizes he's not just cutting off his lineage by doing this. He's cutting off his only hope and the hope of the world. that Abraham obeyed God and were told by the author of Hebrews that Abraham reasoned by faith. He recognized that if God promised to bless the world through my seed, Isaac, and has commanded me to sacrifice him, then somehow God has got to work this all out. Perhaps even by raising him from the dead, right? The author of Hebrews is a bit more pointed and he says that Abraham knew by faith that if he crucified or killed Isaac that God would raise him from the dead because God has to keep his promise. But here's the point that I was driving at. Perhaps you caught it even though I went beyond it. The son that Abraham is told to sacrifice is called his only son, his son whom he loves. Now that term there is a very interesting term. It's only used about a dozen times in the Old Testament. The Hebrew term is Yahid, not something you need to remember, but what's interesting about it is when that word was rendered into Greek by Jews before the coming of Jesus, they chose two different Greek words to represent it. One is the term from which you get only begotten, which is the term that John uses in his gospel to talk about Jesus. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. That's the term that John uses, and it comes from that same Hebrew word that was used for Isaac. But Mark uses the other term, the term agapitos, which means beloved. beloved son. And in all 12 instances, I believe it's exactly 12, it's somewhere around there, in every instance, every occurrence of that word in the Old Testament, it always refers to an only son who has either died or is about to die. A son who is especially going to be mourned over by his father. One of the ways that Jews in the ancient world, at least a father who lost his only son, would react to this is by tearing his clothes and putting the lights out in the house, and he would mourn for many days. The loss of a son was the greatest loss in the eyes of a father in those days. Well, how is all of this relevant to Mark 15? Well, first, look at Mark 1, because I want you to notice something. In Mark 1, at the baptism of Jesus, We're told that Jesus came to be baptized in verse 9 by John. And remember that in context, John has been described as an Elijah-like figure. He's dressed in clothing just like John. He has a diet like John's. And so here's this character like John who comes to baptize Jesus. And we're told that as Jesus was baptized, when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove, and a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved Son, with whom, or with you I am well pleased." The term that John uses here for the heavens being opened, it's literally the word for tearing. He saw the heavens being torn open. It's as if heaven has been opened up now for the Father to speak with mankind. There's now this opening, so there's communication taking place from heaven to earth. And the reason this is interesting is because the other gospel writers choose to use a different term to speak of this. It means the same thing, but they use a different term than Mark. And Mark uses this term twice. And he's the only author, by the way, who uses this term in the entire New Testament. He uses it once at the baptism of Jesus and once at the crucifixion of Jesus. At the baptism of Jesus, the heavens are torn. At the crucifixion of Jesus, the heavens are torn. I mean, the veil of the temple is torn. And Josephus tells us that on that veil, this is the outer veil, there were two veils on the temple. There was the inner veil that goes into the Holy of Holies, and then there was the outer veil that they put on the outside of the door so that the sun wasn't blinding them as it reflected off of the gold of the temple. Well, Josephus tells us that on this tapestry, on the curtain, was a picture of the heavens. And so you had a visible picture of the heavens being torn at the crucifixion of Jesus. And by the way, how does Mark refer to Jesus' crucifixion? In Mark 10, he refers to it as Jesus' baptism, or at least Jesus does, right? Jesus said to his disciples, can you be baptized with the baptism I'm going to be baptized with? So you have in Mark's gospel these two great baptisms taking place. And two great events where something is being torn. Both of which represent the heavens. What Mark is doing in this is he's showing that at the crucifixion, Jesus is being revealed as the Son of God and is opening the way into the temple. And this is what the centurion is responding to. Recall in Mark 15, the centurion sees something. There's a confluence of events here. He sees the veil of the temple torn. What else happens? The sky goes dark. Remember what I said happens when a first century Jew lost his only son? He would tear his clothing and put out the lights. Well, imagine, put yourself in the shoes of the centurion in first century culture. If the lights of the heavens go out and the veil of the temple is torn, the natural question is, whose son must this be? And the only answer can be, this must be the son of God. And that's ultimately what's going on in Mark 15. Jesus is being revealed as the Son of God. Now, how does it do this? Well, first of all, it does this because the Old Testament has already prepared for that. In fact, let me give you just a couple more passages to reinforce this point that I've made about Jesus as the only begotten, one being the sacrifice for sins. If you look at Zechariah 12.10, well-known messianic prophecy. This is the last occurrence of that word, beloved, in the Old Testament. In Zechariah 12.10, this is what the Lord says, I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only son. That's the term. the Hebrew term that Mark uses, agapitos, beloved son. But notice who it is that's being pierced here. The Lord says they're going to look on me, on him whom they've pierced, and they're going to mourn as one mourns for an only son. So the first occurrence of this term in the Old Testament is a type of the coming crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, God the Father's only Son. And the last use of this term is in Zechariah 12.10, where God says that they're going to look upon Me whom they have pierced. Now one other thing I want you to look at, turn now back to Amos, Amos 8.9, This is just one other reference to this term in the Old Testament. The Lord says, on that day, declares the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. Remember, we just read it in the crucifixion account. It goes dark at noon. Remember, we're told that at the third hour, and that's Roman reckoning for this same time period. That's how they reckon time. It was at noon, according to Roman reckoning. And here, Amos 8, 9 says, on that day, I'll make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. And then look at the next verse. I will turn your feast into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head. I will make it like the morning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day. And so repeatedly in the Old Testament, people are prepared for this idea that the Son of God would suffer and die for the sins of God's people. And so when Jesus was dying on the cross, This should have been, to them, an eye-opening experience, and we see, at least in the case of the centurion, that it was. As Jesus was dying on the cross, the centurion would have been familiar, among other things, with the Old Testament in Greek, and he would have heard these things, and he could have seen them playing out before them. Remember, Jesus is quoting scripture from the cross repeatedly. In fact, I'll leave it to you to go find this, but one of the passages that Jesus quotes is Psalm 22. Remember, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He's quoting Psalm 22. If you read through that psalm, you'll see the same term being used at one point in that psalm. The term for which we get beloved. Now how does the cross, I don't want to just leave you with this nice little historical account, as encouraging as I hope it is to you, to see that the cross is not the great disproof of Christ's Sonship, it's the great proof of it. But I want to leave you with a clear understanding of some of the implications of it for you personally in terms of your walk with Christ and your sanctification. One of the reasons that this shows Jesus to be the Son of God is because the very thing that disqualified others prior to Jesus from that title, at least in its full and true sense, is that everyone who came before Jesus was not perfect, was not perfectly obedient. Jesus, by being perfectly obedient to the point of death, was showing that he is the true son of his father. And one of the implications for us is, that's what it means for us to be children of God. If we are in Him, if we believe in Him, if we follow Him, and through Him consider ourselves children of our Heavenly Father, then that certainly should be reflected in our lives. It should be reflected in our conduct. We should be willing to submit to the Father, even to the point of death, no matter what the circumstances are. And if to the point of death, then certainly anything less than that. It amazes me sometimes when we act like we would die for the Lord Jesus, and then there's some small thing that's too much for us. The other day I heard a really good sermon on Mark 10.45, where Jesus said, I didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give my life is a ransom for many. And he points out, and this should be a very basic point, Christianity 101, but he points out if Jesus was willing to come and suffer and die, how could there be any task too menial for us? And this was a precursor to say that this was prior to the GPT, we were having a conference at the GPTS event and They wanted to make sure the students were all ready to support. Whatever came along, whenever they asked us to do something, they wanted to make sure we were quick and ready to help. There's often the occasion when people think, I'm more important than this. Why are you asking me to watch the bathrooms or whatever it is, or wash the bathrooms? But the point is that if the Lord Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the ever-glorious Son of God, stooped down for us men and for our salvation and gave himself to be ridiculed and crucified, how could we be unwilling to do anything greater than that? In other words, anything that doesn't go to that extent of humiliation. The Lord Jesus went to the extremities of humiliation. He suffered and died, and he suffered the most cruel death that's possible. Crucifixion, maybe you don't know, and I'll wind up with this, but the word excruciating, that comes from the word for crucifixion. Because crucifixion was one of the most cruel forms of death imaginable. Well, in conclusion, the next time somebody, maybe you don't hear this often as I do, but the next time somebody throws in your face those things that are supposed to undermine the truth that Christ is the Son of God, or perhaps those things that might well up in your own mind, that seem to speak against His Sonship, recognize that the cross, the crucifixion, the humiliation of Christ isn't the great disproof of His Sonship, it's the great proof of it. The God the Father gave testimony from heaven, not only at the transfiguration, but at Christ's crucifixion, that that was his Son. He put the lights of the heavens out and he tore the veil of the temple. And all of us with the centurions cry out, surely that was the Son of God. Surely that is the Son of God. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for the Old Testament that You've given to so thoroughly prepare us for His coming. We pray that we would learn His lesson well. We pray that we would look to Christ, even as the centurion, and confess Him as Son of God and follow Him. Follow Him in being perfectly obedient even to the point of death. And it's in His name we pray. Amen. Brothers and sisters, let's respond to the Word of God by turning for a final hymn to number 252 in your hymnal, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, number 252. And if you're able, let's stand to sing.