that passage open. We'll be considering various verses from it. At this communion season, we're looking at people that encountered Jesus at the cross. And on Thursday evening, we considered Simon of Cyrene that we read about there in verse 21. In many ways, in the wrong place at the wrong time, this man had come up to Jerusalem, most likely for the feast, and he was seized by the Roman soldiers and compelled to carry the cross of Jesus. And on Thursday evening, we gave some time to considering the fact that, yes, Jesus bore his own cross, but he was so weakened that someone had to come and assist him in that, to carry that cross to Golgotha, and that was Simon of Cyrene. And there are two pictures there that we see. First, Jesus bearing his own cross, Jesus bearing the sins of his people, bearing the guilt of his people, the just suffering in the place of the unjust. but also the picture of disciples. We deny ourselves, we take up our cross, and we follow after Jesus. And this morning, as we continue with this theme, I want us to consider various groups of people who were found at the cross mocking Jesus. Jesus is the Lord of glory. Jesus is the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God. He has always existed in glory in that fellowship in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He was willing to come to earth. He was willing to come down and take to himself a human body and a reasonable soul. And he deserved that everyone should worship him. Do you remember when Jesus was born? God says, as his firstborn enters into the world, let all the angels of God worship him. And the activity of all the angels of heaven at that moment in time is expressed towards a baby lying in a manger, worshiping him. You see, the angels who do the bidding of God, they know their duty to worship this one who is born. And yet, how few there were in the world that worshiped Jesus. You have Mary, his mother, who treasured up many things in her heart as she considered these strange events that were happening. You have the shepherds who come, later on the wise men bearing gifts. But throughout Jesus' life, there are not many who recognize him for who he is, and how few give him the glory he deserves. You have his disciples who followed him and who continued to follow him even when the going got tough. But you had the crowds of people who followed him as long as he gave them food. And then when the difficult sayings came, they turned away from him. And even those fickle crowds could at one moment, one day, be crying out, Hosanna, the King of David, the one who comes to save, and then to later on cry out, crucify him, crucify him. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, should have been worshiped. And yet, as we see in this passage, he was rather mocked. This was predicted. Isaiah 53 verse three tells us, He was despised and rejected by men. Or Psalm 22 that we'll sing later on, verses six and seven, the words of Christ himself, written many, many years beforehand. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me. They make mouths at me. They wag their heads. Jesus was the object of mockery, scorned, ridiculed, laughed at. There has been no one in the history of the world who has been mocked and ridiculed as much as the Lord Jesus was. I want us to consider now the various groups of people who mocked him. We'll begin first of all with the Romans. Verses 17 to 20, we have exactly what these Romans did. Jesus had already been scourged by Pilate, not literally by Pilate. Pilate had him scourged. He would have got Roman soldiers to do the work for him. And that scourging would have been a whip that would have had all sorts of bits and pieces in it to tear up the flesh, bits of metal or bone or whatever it would have been. And so it's not just that Jesus got whipped, which would be sore enough, but he got whipped with an implement that tore up his back and made him a bloodied mess. So Jesus has experienced that after being up all night, having been tried by the various courts of Sanhedrin and by Herod and by Pilate. And now they lead him to the governor's headquarters where he is going to be mocked. If you look at the end of verse 16, you see they call together the whole battalion. Now we don't know how many soldiers were involved in this mockery, but it was not just a mere few. It's not just that there were four soldiers mocking him at this time. We know that there were four soldiers at the cross dividing up his garments amongst them. That's not what we have here. The whole battalion of verse 16 could be up to 600 men. Now, we don't know exactly how many it was, how many men were on duty, how many men were out doing various jobs, particularly security in this Passover feast when so many people have come into Jerusalem. but certainly a large number of soldiers that are in the governor's headquarters are going to take their part in mocking the Lord of Glory. First of all, they put on him a purple cloth, or as some gospel writers tell us, scarlet. It was one of these in that range of colors. Perhaps it was a Roman tunic, and they put it on him as if it's a royal robe. They put on his head a crown of thorns. They give him a reed as a mock scepter. And this whole event here is really a mock coronation. I don't know if you watched the coronation of Charles III. You would have seen pictures of it, no doubt. But you think of that and think about the pump and the ceremony involved in that day. Think of how many millions of pounds that event would cost. The Lord Jesus Christ here is given a coronation, but it's all in mockery. Friends, even if Jesus were given a sincere coronation on the same level as what Charles received, that would still not be enough to worship him as the Lord of Glory. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and he deserves better than Charles received. He deserves better than any king or queen in the history of this world has ever received. And yet instead of that, he receives this, a mock coronation, to have a crown of thorns put on his head. And for them, these soldiers, one by one, to salute him, hail, King of the Jews, to bow and mock homage to him. They despise him. They're using the right words, but they don't mean it. It's interesting, isn't it? and in the whole course of this narrative, how people are doing things that have great significance, but they don't even realize they're doing it. These Roman soldiers think that Jesus is just like any other criminal that they've executed before. And yet, when they proclaim him a king, how true they are. They don't believe he's a king, but they are right in what they're saying. He is the king of the Jews. And when they put the crown of thorns on his head, How interesting that is theologically. Because remember where the thorns come from. In the Garden of Eden, there were no thorns. Gardening would have been a pleasure there. But when Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying God, and all mankind has been plunged into sin and misery, then the thorns came. The thorns are a symbol of the curse. And these Roman soldiers have got the symbol of the curse, these thorns, and they've placed it upon the head of the Savior. He is bearing the curse. There's rich theological significance in that. Now, we all know what it's like to get a thorn, to get stabbed by a thorn. We had Knox during the week stood on a couple of thorns, and it went through his sock. It was out in the socks, of course, right into his foot. It was so sore. We all hate that. But to have thorns pressing down into your head, and the thorns that they would have had in Israel were much, much bigger than the little thorns that we have. For this to be tearing into Jesus's temple, all around his head, the blood would have been flowing down on his face. This would have been painful. Never mind the fact that the purple cloth, the robe is put upon a back that is lacerated and torn up Physically, Jesus would have been in pain. But then they take this reed, which is the mock scepter, a symbol of authority, and they use it to strike Jesus. Look at verse 19. You see it. They strike Jesus with it and they spit on him and they kneel down in homage to him. I didn't watch the coronation. I was in the Gambia at the time, but I, I think it was the same as Queen Elizabeth's coronation, that they come and they kneel before the king one by one and so on. I imagine that's what they did here. This battalion of soldiers would have come and knelt before him and taken their turn to strike him with this reed, to spit in his face and to mock him as king. How long this lasts, we don't know. But they each take their turn and they each bear their guilt. They spat in the face of God. Friends, I want you to remember that every time any human being sins, in a sense they're spitting in the face of God. That's what sin is. It's an affront. To have someone spit on you is a horrible thing. To spit in the face of God is a desperately wicked thing. And it was all done out of mockery. They're just laughing at Jesus. And friends, as we'll see the same theme throughout all of this, Jesus submits himself to it. Here is the one who had created the world. This is the one that had parted the Red Sea and destroyed Pharaoh and his armies. This is the one that could make the sun stand still in the sky. This is the one that had done miracles upon miracles in the days of his flesh on the earth. And he could have stopped them. He had destroyed armies bigger than this army before. And yet he submits to what they do to him. And then one further thing that the Romans did in verse 26, really it's Pilate who's guilty of this. He has an inscription of the charge placed above Jesus on the cross. Here it says, the King of the Jews, of course we know from The other gospel accounts that the full text of it was, this is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Now the Jewish leaders wanted that edited. Don't put that. Instead say, this man claimed to be the King of the Jews. They didn't want that up there because it would mock them as the Jewish people. But Pilate says, what I have written, I have written. But again, it's interesting, isn't it, that Pilate puts that up to mock, and yet how true it was. This is the king of the Jews. In fact, he is. He may not be recognized by them, but he is, in fact, their king. And he's dying on the cross. This is his throne. Pilate had this written in three different languages. In Aramaic, which was the language spoken, a form of Hebrew, in Greek and in Latin. And that meant that everyone who was at the cross would have been able to understand what was on this inscription. We don't necessarily know what it's like to be so often in a place where English isn't understood. Often when you go on holiday somewhere, you can make yourself understood with English, because English is the lingua franca in many ways. It is a common language that many people Although they have their own language, they learn English as their next language. And that's really what Greek was in those days. If you didn't understand Greek, you would have understood Latin. And certainly all the people there would have understood the Aramaic if they were Jews. And so everyone at the foot of the cross saw and read the inscription of the charge against this man, the king of the Jews. It was all done out of mockery. The second group of people who mocked Jesus were the passers-by. In verses 29 and 30, Jerusalem was very busy at this time. Remember, it's a time of year in which all the Jewish males, wherever you were in the world, you were told to go up to Jerusalem for the feast. And so people had traveled from the diaspora, the spread of all the Jews in this part of the world. Then they come towards Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. Jerusalem was heaving. And yet these passersby are coming, and they joined in in this mockery of the Lord of glory. Verse 29, 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 Quite literally there in verse 29 when it says they derided him in the Greek that is they blasphemed him and that is true That's what they're doing. Remember that blasphemy is speaking evil particularly evil against God It's using your words To tear down the glory of God and to speak evil against against him. And this is the Son of God, at this stage now, on the cross. And those who pass by can't just ignore him. They can't just go on their way. They can't just get on with their business of the day. They have to turn and look at Jesus, and mock him, and blaspheme him, and bring guilt upon themselves. As they cry out here, Aha! It's an exclamation of scorn. It's a way of belittling people. It's a way of saying, we are so much better than you. Aha, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it. They make use of the false charges that had been brought against Jesus. Those of you that were in the Bible class, we were talking about bearing false witness. If you turn back to chapter 14, verse 57, when Jesus had been tried by the Sanhedrin, Verse 57, and some stood up and bore false witness against him saying, we heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands. And in three days I will build another not made with hands. We were talking about this in the Bible class, how often words are taken out of context or twisted. And that's what they did here with Jesus's words. Jesus had said something that was similar to this. In John chapter two, verse 19, Jesus had said this, destroy this temple. And in three days, I will raise it up. Jesus was talking about the temple of his body. If you destroy me, if you kill me in three days, it will be raised up. He wasn't talking about the temple, tear the temple down and it will be built up in three days. That's an impossibility, isn't it? In three days, his body would be raised. the dead. But these people come before the Sanhedrin and they're prepared on oath. They're prepared to take an oath to the truthfulness of what they're saying, to say that before God who judges. And they say, I heard him say this. I heard it with my own ears that Jesus said, I will destroy this temple. This man, he himself said he was going to rip down our holy temple. He was going to use his own hands and destroy it. You see the lies that these people were prepared to utter against Jesus, the man of truth. We saw again in the Bible class, Jesus said, I've done everything openly. I've been honest in everything I've done. You could have come to me at any point because I preached publicly in the synagogues and in the temple. Everything has been open, nothing hidden. And yet all they can bring against them are false charges. And here these passers-by are taking the false charges and presenting them as if they are fact. Look again at verse 29, you who would destroy the temple. That's who they think Jesus is, someone who would destroy the temple. And they're saying, save yourself and come down from the cross. Of course, they believe Jesus can't save himself. That's why they're delighting in his crucifixion. This man can do nothing to save himself, not realizing that Jesus is the one who has authority to lay down his life, and Jesus has the authority to lift it up again. The third group who mock Jesus are the chief priests and scribes, verses 31 and 32. They join in. They're talking amongst themselves. These are the religious leaders of the day. And you can see they mock him saying, he saved others, he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down from the cross that we may see and believe him. Now this mockery in many ways is the worst of all, because born out of that hatred from the Son of God, it's that envious rivalry that they had. They couldn't bear that people were following Jesus. They couldn't bear the fact that crowds were hanging upon the words of Christ. No, they hated him because he taught the gospel and it was taking people away from their traditions and their laws and commandments of men. And so they hate Jesus and they want him destroyed. But notice how pernicious it is what they say. Because they admit, verse 31, he saved others. Let that sink in. These words are so familiar to us, we sometimes just skim past them. He saved others. They admit that Jesus saved others. They admit that Jesus had done miracles. That Jesus had healed the sick, raised the dead, opened the eyes of the blind, cleansed the lepers. They're admitting that Jesus was able to do mighty deeds. He saved others. And yet they say, we will not believe in him. That's why it's wicked. He saved others. We'll only believe in him if he saves himself, if he gives us this sign that he is the Christ. Let the Christ, if he is the Christ, this so-called Christ, let him come down from the cross, and then, and only then, we will believe in him. Do you see what they're doing? They're saying, this man has done mighty things, but he's not the Christ. This man has done mighty things, but he's not done them by the power of God. As Mark 3, verse 22 shows us, they admit that he was doing mighty things. He's casting out demons, but he's doing it by the power of demons. They believe that there was demonic activity going on inside Jesus, and it's by that, by the prince of demons, that he casts out demons. In that section, Mark 3, Jesus goes on to show them this is a sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Every sin will be forgiven man except for this sin. It's of looking at Jesus Christ and being convinced that what he does is true and right and powerful and yet to reject him and despise him and attribute that work to the devils. That's what these Chief priests and scribes are doing. They're admitting on the one hand that Jesus is powerful and can save, and yet they're saying, I will not believe it. It's an evil and an adulterous generation that seeks after a sign, isn't it? Jesus had said already, no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah, which was a sign that he would be raised from the dead. And here, verse 32, they're demanding a sign. Come down from the cross, and on that condition, We will believe. It was in one of those apologetic debates, Greg Banson on the one hand, and I can't remember who the other person was at the time. But the challenge, what will it take for you to believe? And people make their own demands. If this podium were to rise up in the air and float, then I would believe. People, they say, if this happens, then I will believe. This is the proof it will take. in order to convince me that the Bible is true and that Jesus is the son of God. Friends, Jesus is not in the business of giving us signs gratuitously like that. Jesus has given us the sign, his death and his resurrection, the sign of Jonah, as he spoke to the chief priests and scribes. But they're quite happy here to blaspheme the Holy Spirit of God, a wicked and adulterous generation. And then finally, the final group of people who mocked Jesus are the robbers. Verse 32 at the very end, those who were crucified with him also reviled him. We know that there were two men guilty of robbery. That is not simply a theft, but a violent robbery, probably involved in the same insurrection that Barabbas had been involved in. and they are condemned to die and they deserve to die under Roman law. These men are not humbled by the fact that they're approaching death. These men are not humbled by the fact that very soon they will be cast into eternity to stand before the judge of all, but they are prepared to revile Jesus. Now we do know from Luke's gospel that one of them would go on to be converted, which is an extraordinary story. of how he would listen to what Jesus was saying and observe how much Jesus suffered and the spirit of it, and then he would go on to say to Jesus, remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom. But at this moment, he is still with the scoffers, and he mocks Jesus. The other robber, the one who would not repent, He is hardened in his sin to the very end. Although he himself must suffer this fate of being starved of oxygen, of having that excruciating death on the cross, he is using precious breath to mock the Lord of glory. That's what's going on here. And friends, what a barrage of attacks our Savior faced as he was on the cross. But as the apostle Peter shows us in 1 Peter 2, When Jesus was reviled, he did not revile in return. Peter uses it as an opportunity to tell us how we should respond to the attacks that come upon us because of the gospel, because of what we suffer for Christ's sake. When we are reviled, we are not to revile back in return. We commit ourselves, like Jesus did, to the one who judges righteously. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered these things. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was despised and rejected by men. Although all the angels of God worshipped him, men rejected him. And that brings us to consider ourselves. What do we do with the Lord Jesus Christ who died upon the cross? It's an historic fact that Jesus died in this way. What do you do with him? 1 Corinthians 1 verse 18 says, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. And that divides us into two camps, doesn't it? It divides us, but amongst those who despise the cross, and those who embrace the cross. It divides us between those who mock Jesus and what he came to do and those who go to him in faith and cling to him. It's what you do with the word of the cross. And that word of the cross that embraces the preaching of the cross. You're listening to the word of the cross right now, the preaching. I stand here and preach Christ and him crucified. That's the word of the cross that's in your hearing It includes also the doctrine of the cross, the significance of that, the theological facts of the atonement, of substitutionary atonement, of the just in the place of the unjust. What do you do with the word of the cross? What do you do with the preaching of the cross? What do you do with the doctrine of the cross? What do you do with the man who was upon the cross? Is it folly or is it the power of God? To many people, What Jesus did is folly, a thing to be mocked. We had the Romans, we had passersby, we had the religious chief priests and scribes, we had the robbers. And what joins them all together, this disparate group of people, what joins them all together is the fact that they all mock Jesus. There are those who are wicked, these robbers, they mock Jesus. There are those who outwardly are righteous, the chief priests, and they mock Jesus. And there's a wide range of people in this world, religious people and people who have no religion, people who are outwardly good and people who are outwardly wicked, and yet what joins them together is that they mock Jesus and his cross. They laugh at the cross. When the cross is preached, When a minister shows them that the cross is the only sufficient way of salvation, they refuse to admit that they need a savior. They refuse to admit the doctrine of the cross that substitutes are necessary because of our guilt and our unrighteousness. They refuse that. They don't believe in Jesus, and they despise him. To the Jews, the cross is a stumbling block. To the Greeks, the enlightened people, it is folly. And you get that still today. People mock what Jesus did. The word of the cross is folly, but it's only folly to those who are perishing. There was one robber who was converted. The word of the cross was folly to him as long as he remained unconverted. But as soon as the power of God came to him, and as soon as he was saved, he appreciated the cross, didn't he? To those who are being saved, the word of the cross is the power of God. And we're not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We're not ashamed of this cross. We're not ashamed of coming here as members of this church and to come and eat and drink publicly. Not ashamed to say, I need this. Not ashamed to say, I believe in Jesus and I trust in him and I cling to him. I'm not ashamed to say that without Jesus and his broken body and shed blood, I couldn't get to heaven. I'm not ashamed. I don't have to pretend like I'm better than I am. I don't have to try to be an outwardly righteous person so that I deserve heaven. I admit my sin and I say I need Jesus. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. The word of the cross is the power of God. And this gives us hope, doesn't it? And that's what really distinguishes us today, isn't it? That's really what divides us. Those who embrace Jesus and those who don't. Those who are mockers and those who are not. Friends, what Jesus did at the cross is so crucial. Because as we're told in Isaiah, by his stripes we are healed. What he suffered, how he died, it's by this that we are healed. And so go to Jesus at the cross. Go to him and believe in him. Go to him and trust in him. Don't think you can deserve anything by yourself. Don't think that you can get to God by your own human effort. Embrace the doctrine of the cross, which proclaims that we are sinners. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The wages of sin is death. but that Jesus Christ has come into the world to save sinners. And he has done so in a way that God is both just and a justifier. God is just to punish sin at the cross. Believer, God punished your sin at the cross, and he showed his terrible justice. Because of his holiness, God could not tolerate your sin to come with you into heaven. You could not enter in to the holy Jerusalem, the new Jerusalem above, while you're still guilty of sin. And so your guilt needs to be punished. But at the cross, the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. Isn't that the glorious truth of the gospel? Go to Jesus, contemplate what he has done, and be determined not to be a mocker of Jesus. but to believe in his name, because by that you will have life in his name. Amen.