Well, there are probably many contenders for which verses in the Bible could be rightly labeled as the saddest verses in the Bible. The passage that we're studying this morning in Mark 15 are some of the saddest verses in the Bible. And I think they're made even sadder when considered in connection with something such as John chapter 1 verses 9 through 11. If you turn there in your Bible just briefly, and as you're turning there, I'll say that not my goal to just make everyone sad this morning, to get an emotional response, but if we are going to understand the depth of Jesus' suffering, we should try to understand the context of His suffering. Who this is that is suffering to this extent. In John 1, verses 9-11, As there was the true light, which coming into the world enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him. I want to emphasize that phrase right there. The world was made through Him. And the world did not know Him. In verse 11, He came to His own. And those who were His own did not receive Him. I want to emphasize that again. He came to His own. The people of Israel. who He had blessed so much, He had worked with so much, He had shown so much patience and love toward. And those who were His own did not receive Him. So think of Jesus. Willingly, graciously came into a world that has been darkened because of sin. And He is the true light the light who came to shine into this darkness, to give the light of life. Every intention He had was for good. To show grace and love in His coming. The world that He came into was the world that He created. He owns it. Everything that it produces to support physical life, it's His. He has provided graciously the air that we breathe. the food that we eat, the water we drink, all the materials that are necessary to make the clothes we wear and the shelter that we dwell in. It's all His. Graciously on loan to the inhabitants of His world. Those inhabitants are also His creation. He made people. He therefore owns all the people. And because it's all His and we are His, He is owed gratitude. He is owed obedience. He is owed honor and praise. And not only does He own it all, He is holy. He is perfect. He is eternal. He is God. He is worthy of all those things I said in every way. And yet, as we read there in John chapter 1, from what we know in Scripture, He came into His creation, and the reason He came into His creation was because His people, the humans, were in trouble because of our own sin. He came to rescue us from the consequences of our own sin. When He came, no one knew Him. As we read on through the Gospels, as He made Himself known, most of the people didn't want to know Him. Most of the people rejected Him. They didn't want Him and even killed Him. And when we consider who Jesus is, God in human flesh, holy, perfect, loving, gracious, when we consider the fact that everything rightfully belongs to Him, when we consider the reason He came, It makes the verses that we're looking at this morning in Mark 15 all the worse, even sadder. There was a Puritan, I don't know who it was. It was recorded in the Valley of Vision. It's a book of prayers prayed by Puritans, but it doesn't say which ones or who it was. He prayed this, let me never forget that the heinousness of sin lies not so much in the nature of the sin committed as in the greatness of the person sinned against. The severity of sin, not so much because of just how severe the sin is, but because of who is sinned against. Now what we see in these verses we're looking at this morning would be bad if they were done to anyone. anyone who is innocent of the crime they were accused of. But this wasn't just anyone. This is Jesus. Perfect, holy, creator, Messiah, Savior, the owner of everyone and everything. This was Jesus. Again, as we look at these verses, this is another piece in understanding what it cost Jesus to forgive your sin. If you are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, that salvation was given to you at no cost. A free gift. But it came at a very high price to Jesus. Now, because that salvation, that gift is given freely to all who repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, sometimes we might start to have the idea that sin is not really that big of a deal. We can sin freely because our sins are freely forgiven. We may sometimes begin to think. We can begin to think that obeying God is not really that big of a deal. Our relationship with God is not really that big of a deal because we came by this relationship freely. It didn't cost me. Now if you were wearing your favorite shirt, you get a stain on it, we'd probably find it easier to say, oh well, no big deal, if it was a free t-shirt that was your favorite shirt that just got a stain on it, compared to one that you maybe spent a lot of money on. Sometimes the gospel and salvation and our relationship with God can be treated like that free t-shirt It's just not that big of a deal And that's why some have wanted to Put some cost in there on it You need to do a little something for your salvation. So that means something to you You've got to do something to earn it so that you appreciate it. You can take it so lightly We may see salvation, because it's given to us as a free gift, as something that will come in handy one day when we die, but it's not all that important for today. When we consider and see in God's Word how much our forgiveness, our salvation, cost Jesus, it should be a very big deal to us. Our relationship with God through Jesus Christ should be of utmost importance to us. Our thankfulness, our obedience toward God should be a top priority because of how much it cost Jesus to provide our salvation. So we've been looking in these later parts of the Gospel of Mark at the ways that Jesus humbled himself as part of that cost to pay for our sin. From all the glories of heaven, the perfect relationship that he had enjoyed with God the Father, unhindered in any way from all of eternity, he needed nothing that was completely sufficient in himself. But then coming into this earth as man, taking on all the weaknesses of human flesh, humbling himself, all the way to the cross. As we've been seeing Him walking that path toward the cross, we've been seeing Him humble Himself more and more with every verse we read. We're in Mark 15, and we looked last week at Jesus on trial before Pilate. We made it through verse 15, and Jesus has been sentenced to death. But before He gets to the cross, He's going to be humbled and humiliated even more. So far, just to recap a few of those steps that Jesus has taken in His humiliation. He's been betrayed by one of His friends. Pointed out one of the twelve, one of the closest people to Jesus, Judas. He's been forsaken by the other eleven disciples. They all left him. One of his closest friends, Peter, has denied him three times. Peter swore oaths. He called God as his witness. He didn't even know who Jesus was. Jesus has been tried by the religious leaders of Israel illegally in all kinds of ways. He's been charged with a crime of blasphemy. He's been spit on. He's been beaten. He's been mocked by the Sanhedrin and then brought to Pilate, the Roman governor of that region. He was there during that time, during the Passover, to try to maintain peace during that feast. Well, the leaders of Israel and the representative cross-section of the nation of Israel, who was all there that day at the palace where where Pilate was staying. They've made the rejection of Jesus official. They want Him dead. But not just dead. They want Him to suffer and be cursed by God. And so they want Him to be crucified. Scripture says, cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree. They want that for Jesus. Now Pilate, as we saw last week, he found no real reason to do this. He wasn't guilty of anything. But the people who had rejected him were persistent. And Pilate thought his job was more important than saving Jesus. And so he and they, everyone who was present that day, chose the world over Jesus. Now Jesus is standing there alone. He's been beaten. He's bloody. He's bruised. He's condemned to die by crucifixion. We read about this in verse 15 last time. We didn't really have time to get into it. We saw that Pilate had Jesus scourged. Some commentators point out, and it seems to be consistent with the narrative of the Gospel of John and the order that he arranges things there, that the scourging was probably immediately followed by what we're looking at today in verses 16 to 19. And then Pilate brings Jesus out once more to give the people one more opportunity to let Jesus go. And yet they reject him again. And then he's sentenced to the cross. And we'll look at that a little more in a while. So that's scourging in verse 15. You may notice there in verse 15, there aren't really any details or description about what happened there. That's actually consistent with all of the ways that Jesus suffers physically. It's kind of just stated, as he did, there's not a lot of emphasis that's put on the physical suffering. And part of the reason for that is because there was so much more to Jesus' suffering than just the physical. Physical is bad, but there's so much more to it than just that. As torturous as that physical suffering may have been, That's not what bothered Jesus so much in the Garden of Gethsemane. That He almost died from knowing what was coming. It wasn't the physical suffering that bothered Him so much. It was drinking the cup of God's wrath. It was facing God's wrath that bothered Him so much that He almost died knowing it was coming. This physical suffering, that's facing man's wrath. That's bad. It's not nearly as bad. as what was to come in facing God's wrath. Another part of the reason that the physical aspects of Jesus' suffering don't get a lot of explanation is that Mark's first audience, the believers in Rome that first received this letter, they already knew. They've been there. They've seen it. Scourging people was not uncommon. They knew how it worked. They've seen people die on crosses before. They knew. It was bad. To scourge Jesus, they would have taken at least his outer garments from him, bent him over a beam to stretch out his skin and his muscles of his back. And then two soldiers with short whips made of several strips of leather with sharp pieces of bone or metal in the ends of the strips of leather took turns whipping Jesus across the back with all their might. Now the Jews had laws about how many times that could be done. Or the number of lashes a person could be given in that way. It couldn't be more than 40. So they would go to 39 and stop there just in case they miscounted somewhere. The Romans did not have such a law. They stopped when the soldiers wore themselves out or the prisoner died. That happens sometimes from this scourging. They didn't survive it. Jesus did. He lived through it. This kind of scourging with these whips, with these sharp pieces of bone or metal or whatever it was at the ends, it would tear the skin. It would expose the bone. Jesus was bleeding. profusely by this time. But since Jesus survived it, then we go on in verse 16. The soldiers took him away into the palace, that is the praetorium, and they called together the whole Roman cohort. Now a whole Roman cohort would normally be 600 soldiers. Now there's a possible interpretation that would make it just 200 soldiers. But either way, we're talking about hundreds of soldiers. From 200 to 600, the whole cohort took Jesus away. Now these were some of the best and the mightiest who were there to protect and serve this Roman governor. Now something we have talked about often is how the Jews hated the Romans. Something we haven't talked about quite as much is that the Romans returned the favor. The Romans hated the Jews. So to these hundreds of soldiers, Jesus was just some Jew that they had no use for. He was a problem for them. And He was one who made them earn their pay that day. So they didn't like Him very much. His claims of being a Messiah, Son of God, that didn't really mean anything to them. They had their own religion, they had their own gods that they worshipped and served. All that considered, they're just going to have some fun with Jesus. by mocking Him, by humiliating Him, along with causing Him a lot more physical pain. They did this for fun, to Jesus. Verse 17, they dressed Him up in purple, and after twisting a crown of thorns, they put it on Him. Now remember when Jesus had been tried before the Sanhedrin and found guilty of blasphemy, they mocked Jesus' claims of deity by commanding him to prophesy. Who was it who hit you? Or if you're God, you should be able to see these swings coming. You should be able to duck and miss them. Prophesy if you are who you say you are. Prophesy, God. Well, these soldiers are playing games with Jesus. They're using props. to mock his claim of being the Messiah King. So they have this purple robe they put on him. Purple was the color of royalty and luxury in that day. It was a very difficult dye to come by and it was very expensive. If you're reading the parallel account in Matthew, you'll see that Matthew says it was a scarlet robe. Well, the word for purple as Mark uses here, it was a broad enough word or color that it could include shades of kind of reddish, kind of purplish. This is an inspired word of God. God used the author's personalities. Matthew and Mark are men. Men see colors differently than women, right? Something a man would describe as kind of red or purple. I don't know. One of those, somewhere in that area. Some ladies might want some more specific details. Every shade in between has a different name. But to Matthew and Mark, well, to Matthew it was reddish. To Mark it was purplish. We're talking about the same robe, same color. seeing it a little different. It's likely what they used was an old faded worn out robe or a cloak that had been worn by a Roman soldier. A piece of their uniform was a red robe or a cloak. Over time, they would fade, become more of a purplish color. So there again, that's probably what they were using, what they referred to. It was kind of reddish, kind of purplish. And they're saying, oh, so you're a king. Well, here's your royal robe, your majesty. And they make a crown and put it on his head. Now this would have been to mimic the golden laurel wreath you've probably seen in pictures of Caesar. This gold leafy thing he has on his head. Well, they made this crown for Jesus from a thorn bush. Now, we don't know exactly which kind of thorn bush it was, so we don't know exactly how long the thorns were. When you think about this being on his head, the skin on everyone's head is very thin. Everyone has a lot of pain receptors on your head, and you've noticed that when you've bumped your head on something You tried to walk under and forgot to duck. Any crown of any thorns is going to hurt. And any crown of thorns will make you bleed. And you will bleed a lot when it's beaten onto your head with a stick. Which is what happens in verse 19. There was a new song that came out this past Christmas season. The Gettys were co-authors and seniors of it and it was called Thorn and Thistle. The song is about Jesus, the perfect son of God, coming into the world that he created. But then he cursed the ground to grow thorns and thistles because of man's sin. That song has got me thinking about how Jesus came into this world and how he suffered during the time that he lived here because of the curse that God had to put on his creation because of man's sin. And Jesus put himself under that curse to come and identify with us. He suffered all of that. Well, this past Wednesday, there was a song that was requested. We sang it Wednesday. We sang it again this morning. Number 300, the last song we sang. I wasn't real familiar with it before Wednesday. The same kind of idea in that song and relates it more so to this crown of thorns that Jesus wore on that Friday. The first verse, My Jesus fair was pierced by thorns, by thorns grown from the fall. Thus he who gave the curse was torn to end that curse for all. You think about the reason those thorns were there growing in that courtyard so easily available because of the curse. They probably weren't planted there. They were weed that grew there because of the curse. Those soldiers could use those thorns for this wickedness because of man's sin. Because of the curse that was put on the ground. And Jesus is here because of man's sin. All the suffering that Jesus had to go through, including that crown of thorns, it was our fault. It's our sin that put that crown of thorns on Jesus. And yet He came to take that curse for us. That crown of thorns is a part of that curse because of our sin. It wasn't supposed to be that way. God didn't create the world to be that way. They cursed the ground because of our sin. The mocking continues in verse 18. They began to acclaim Him, Hail King of the Jews. Remember I said how much the Romans hate the Jews. This was so much fun for these soldiers because this was exactly the kind of king they thought the Jews should have. A king with no army. A king with no power that they could see. A king with no respect and a king that's been rejected by his own people. A king who they could do whatever they wanted to with. That's exactly the kind of king the Jews should have. But considering everything that's going on here, this is so much more than just playground teasing. They were mocking everything that was true about Jesus. but everyone had rejected about Jesus. They were rubbing this in Jesus' face and mocking Him because, you've been rejected by everyone. You say you're a king, everyone has rejected you. What a loser you are. Some king you have turned out to be. Verse 19, they kept beating His head with a reed and spitting on Him and kneeling and bowing before Him. Of this, after the scourging that he's already received, the physical pain would have been almost unbearable. Some people wouldn't even be alive by this point. You consider the culture that these Roman soldiers lived in, what they were used to. For entertainment, in that day, people in Rome, they'd go to the Colosseum to watch people fight to the death. That was a fun afternoon event for them. They would watch prisoners get torn to pieces by wild animals. They did that for enjoyment. This was nothing to them, doing this to Jesus. This was great fun. No big deal. It's interesting that the soldiers who were with Herod did the same kind of thing to Jesus when Pilate sent Him to Herod. They mocked Him by dressing Him up and pretending to treat Him as a king. pilot soldiers did the same. I came across another account where there were some bored children, they were probably teenagers, and they were out roaming the streets. This was back during that time, somewhere in the first century or close to, I think. They came across a homeless man. He was just out on the street and he apparently had some kind of a mental disability. He was someone who in that day was considered a fool. These children did the same thing to that poor man. They dressed him up with a robe, they made him a crown, and they mocked him, playing as though he was Caesar. Apparently, these children got in trouble for what they did, not because it was such a mean thing to do to that poor man, but because they disrespected Caesar. Now that tells us that this was the kind of thing that sinners did for fun back in that day. You see that kind of thing happening in the news still today in cities at times. This didn't just happen to Jesus, but this was Jesus. Let me never forget that the heinousness of sin lies not so much in the nature of the sin committed, as in the greatness of the person sinned against. This is Jesus. And He really is the King who should be revered by all. He is a loving and benevolent King who came to save the lost. He really should be praised. But they treated Him just as they would treat someone who they considered a fool. They thought Jesus was a fool. He lost his mind. Just think about them doing this to Jesus. Driving those thorns deeper into his head. Just along with the pain of being repeatedly beaten in the head with a long stiff stick. And remember this is hundreds of soldiers. They take their turns coming by to bow before Jesus. They spit in His face. Hundreds of them doing this. There's probably no greater way of showing disrespect to someone you hate than to spit on them. You think about these hundreds of soldiers doing this to Jesus. Now it was probably somewhere around here then that what John records happened in John 19 verses 14 and 15. It says, Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, Behold your king! So they cried out, Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him! Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. Pilate brought Jesus back to stand before the people of Israel. And this time he was wearing this crown of thorns. He was wearing this purplish robe. The blood was running down his face even more than it had been before. He probably could barely stand at all after the scourging and the beatings. He was probably almost unrecognizable as he came back out to barely stand before the people of Israel. And Pilate is basically saying there in John, is this the guy you are trying to tell me is such a threat to the throne of Caesar? Is this the guy you are trying to tell me needs to be crucified because he is such a menace to society? Just look at him. He is nothing. He is of no consequence. This is how much Jesus has humbled himself so far. He has made Himself nothing before men's eyes. He has allowed these sinners to do this to Him. He didn't fight back. He didn't say a word. I remember a more innocent man has never walked this earth. A more undeserving man of this treatment has never lived. But Jesus let this happen without fighting back. He didn't defend Himself. Because this is why He came. As we read in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. All this suffering that we are seeing is what we deserve for our sin. But Jesus identified Himself with our sin. He became sin for us so He could take the suffering that we deserve. And so that we, by His grace through faith in Him alone, could identify with Him and His righteousness to be made right with God. Through His suffering, we contributed nothing but deserving that suffering. 2 Corinthians 8, verse 9 says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you, through His poverty, might become rich." Now we've been talking about this, how poor did Jesus become for us? And we still haven't gotten to the bottom of just how poor He became. We're getting closer. He humbled Himself so much, so that we who believe in Him could share in the riches of salvation the glories of heaven with him by grace. None of it deserved at all. After this final rejection by his own people, we read this in Mark 15 verse 20. After they had mocked him, they took the purple robe off him and put his own garments on him and they led him out to be crucified. They thought They had power over Jesus. They thought Jesus was a problem, and this was going to get rid of the problem. But remember who they're doing this to. This is Jesus. And while this is so sad, remember what is being accomplished. Remember what will be the outcome of this suffering of Jesus. Paul explains it to us in Philippians 2 verses 5 through 11. Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of man, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted him, and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Now remember those mocking soldiers. They will bow to Jesus for real one day. if not as their Lord and Savior, because they believed in Him before they died, they will bow before Him as their Judge. Everyone will bow. The Jews who were there that day that rejected Jesus will bow. Pilate will bow. Herod will bow. Everyone from any time period will bow before Jesus. At this point here in Mark, it looks like Jesus is losing. And it's going to get even worse as we go on. But the victory is coming. Jesus wins. Everyone will bow. We'll continue on with that, Lord willing, next week.