Come to Matthew chapter 27 and we're reading today verses 27 through 37. Today is when crucifixion, the actual crucifixion begins. It doesn't end here, but it begins here and we'll be reading these 11 verses. here very difficult words to read in some sense because they're just in so many ways so awful. But we see the power of Christ's redemption and Christ's kingship through them. So I charge you to listen to them as the word of God for that is what they are. Matthew 27, 27 through 37. And the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the praetorium and gathered the whole garrison around him. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. And when they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and a reed in his right hand. And they bowed the knee before him and locked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews. And they spat on him and they took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they took the robe off him, put his own clothes on him, and led him away to be crucified. And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name, him they compelled to bear his cross. And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say a place of a skull, they gave him sour wine mingled with gall to drink. You see, I have kids, they drink milk all the time. That's what's in my mind. But when he had tasted it, he would not drink. Then they crucified him and divided his garments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets. They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. Sitting down, they kept watch over him there. And they put up over his head the accusation written against him, This is Jesus, the King of the Jews." These chilling words are the word of God, and we pray that he would bless them to our hearts. Amen. One of my favorite Disney movies growing up was Robin Hood. for many reasons, Robin Hood. I love Prince John was just a great character. He was one of the people who was a bad guy. He was awful and he was wicked. You couldn't hate him because he was so stupid and he was so funny. And then his little sidekick, Hiss the snake, who was much smarter, but also just totally incompetent. And it was just really fun to watch them, especially as bad guys. And it was just, that's why we really liked it. We loved the music. And one of my favorite parts of the movie is right in the middle when All the villagers come around and they go to a secluded area and they sing about the phony king of England. They have their nice little, they have their puppets and they have this whole scenario where they are singing about Prince John, because Prince John wasn't the rightful king. Richard, of course, was on a crusade. He was Richard's brother, and he was just there for a time. And they loved singing about the phony king of England. They said a pox or a curse upon this phony king of England. And it's all in good fun, because Prince John really is the phony king of England. And he was a wicked king and the villagers have fun doing this at his expense. Of course, he finds out and raises their taxes and puts them all in jail. And that's how the awful occurrence happens when they all go to jail. But they have fun there dealing with Prince John and making fun of him, of the king. The soldiers probably thought they were doing something similar. Who is this imposter, they thought to themselves, most likely? This imposter who hails himself as the king of the Jews. What a pathetic king he makes. He has no scepter. He has no crown. He has no power. He has no nothing. And so they make fun of him. Of course, the difference is it's right before his own face, because he's powerless. They mock him. And they spit at him. The big problem, of course, is that he truly is the king. And not just the king of England or the king of Israel, but the king of kings and the lord of lords. And nowhere more clearly than here is Jesus portrayed as the great king. We've been looking through the Gospel of Matthew, and time after time after time, Jesus is shown to be the true king of Israel by Matthew. And here he is hailed as such. And we learn very clearly what it means for Jesus to be the king of the Jews. This morning, we'll break down the sermon into three parts, all dealing with Christ and his kingship. The first one is simply called Christ the King. I'm going to try to show how this passage teaches clearly that Jesus is the king, even if in a very ironic way. Second, Christ the accursed, the one who bears God's curse. It almost is difficult to put those words together, but here it is, and it's very clear. And thirdly, Christ the conqueror, the one who ends up conquering and defeating his enemies. Christ the King, and we learn that Christ the King here through irony and through actually through the guard. So we read here in verses 27 through 31 about Christ's kingship and the guards, the soldiers or the soldiers of the governor that his pilot took Jesus into the praetorium, verse 27 reads, and gathered the whole garrison around him. And they stripped him and they put a scarlet robe on him. And when they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and a reed in his right hand. And they bowed the knee before him and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews. And they spat on him and took the reed and struck him on his head. And when they had mocked him, they took the robe off and put his own clothes on him and led him away to be crucified. The guards here are clearly mocking Christ and his claim that he is a king. We know from the Gospels that Jesus, in a way that it wasn't extremely explicit, but he clearly said that he is the king of the Jews, and this is a title that he assumes. The title was first used way back when Jesus was talking to the Magi, and it was only used again a far time later in dealing with Pilate, so that particular title is not used of Jesus often throughout the Gospel. But Matthew's clear insinuation throughout the whole book is that Jesus is the King, and he has different names. In the very beginning, he is called the Christ, which of course means that he is the King, the Anointed One, the One who was to come. He's also called the son of David, which means he fulfills the prophecy in the covenant, which God gave to David, that one of his descendants would sit on the throne forever. That's a king. That's just in the first verse. But throughout the whole gospel, we see Jesus's kingship. We see his sovereignty over nature. We see his sovereignty over the demonic powers. We see his power and his words and his authority throughout the whole gospel. And then when he's dealing with and discussing with the Pharisees, and he comes up then with a question, whose son is the Messiah? The David's son. And Jesus there is clearly indicating that he is the king, and even greater than David the king, the one who was before him. And this is clear throughout scripture. And yet here in this passage, it is ever the more clear, although in an ironic way. Jesus is led to this place, this praetorium, which is just basically the governor's headquarters. And there's a whole garrison. That might be a bit of an exaggeration or just a use of language that is not precise or technical because the garrison is 600 people. There may have been less than that. But Matthew's point is that there is a lot of people there around him. And they're all mocking him. And they're mocking his statement that he is the king. And you can tell they're mocking them by what they give him. First, they give him a scarlet robe. Now, it's probably scarlet because they didn't have anything that was purple. But the other Gospels say it was purple. And of course, scarlet and purple run into one another. So that's not a contradiction. It's just that it's probably the scarlet-purple type of robe. And purple and scarlet are both associated with royalty. These types of robes are something that kings wear. Even to this day, purple is the color of royals. I remember when I was in college, one of my good friends there was a Baltimore Ravens fan, and they won the Super Bowl one year when I was in college. And he kept going around and saying, purple is the color of royalty. We are the kings. And we thought that was pretty silly. But the idea was there. Purple is still the color of royalty. It's also the color of the Ravens. That's why he was doing that. But anyway, that's, to this day, an association that we make And scarlet, purple, is something that is associated with royalty, and so the guards mockingly give him this robe and say, you are the king. But it's not just the robe, it's also the scepter. Now, it's translated here as a reed, and sometimes we get the idea of a reed as a little pathetic little twig, and that might be the case, but it could just be a branch. The word is just a branch, something that they found around the area, and they gave it to him. And they put it in his right hand, and this is a mocking way to give Jesus a scepter. All kings had their royal scepter, something that was made out of some kind of metal in their right hand. And it was a symbol of their power and their authority. And when the Jewish prophets spoke about the king to come, he had a scepter. Psalm 2 comes to mind, where his golden scepter, many will bow down to it, and he will break the nations into pieces of pottery. That is the idea and the imagery of a king, is that of a scepter. And Jesus here is given one, but a branch, a weak one, and it signifies what they perceive to be the ridiculous nature of his claim to be the king. And so these soldiers continue to mock him. And of course, above all is the crown. What is a king without a crown? Jesus here is given a crown of thorns, verse 29. When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. Some have speculated as to what kind of thorns these are. People get into these speculations. And Palestine, that area, the Near East, is actually known for its pretty brutal thorns. And people say that this was because it hurt him. And that, of course, is the idea. They do want to hurt him. But it's a crown of thorns, and that's mocking him. Because who wears crowns? Kings wear crowns. And so they're mocking him with his apparel, saying that he is a king. Now, these soldiers here, the Roman soldiers, but they're probably not from Rome. Pilate probably hired them from the surrounding area, perhaps in what is modern day Syria or that area. They probably spoke Aramaic quite well and fluently, so they were able to communicate with Jesus. And they probably knew of the Jews and their customs. Maybe not well, but they probably at least knew of them. They probably knew that there were many false messiahs before Jesus. That time period was ripe with false messiahs and with revolutions. And they talked about the guy in Acts, about the guy going to Egypt and brought people into the desert. Gamaliel brings that up. There's something in the air at that time. They felt that it was the end of a long, their long period of exile, and they knew that the Messiah was supposed to come at that time. So many false messiahs were brought forth. And of course, these soldiers here just assumed that Jesus was one of them. And so they mock him. How pathetic. You think you're a king. Look what we can do to you. And they mocked him. But not only do they mock him with the clothes that he wears, they mock him with a title. Verse 29, again, but this time the end of it. And they bowed the knee before him and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews. They bowed the knee. Of course, that's a posture of prostration, bowing before the king. And they mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews. Of course, they don't mean this literally, but they're saying clearly that he is a fraud. If he certainly is the king of the Jews. The king here because of his garments and because of his title. And what? Interestingly, this happens a lot in scripture. What the guards mean mockingly, God in his providence and his orchestration of things means truly. We saw it earlier. Again, when we talked about in the Gospel of John, Pilate says, behold, the man is prophesying even greater than he knows. That's the man. That's the Adam. That's the second man. We've seen it throughout in John's gospel when he talks about the high priest prophesying that it's better for one man to die than the whole nation. John makes the comment that while he didn't mean to, he was prophesying that year as high priest. And I can't help but think that's what's going on here. I mean, the irony is clearly apparent. They don't mean that he is the king. They're mocking him. But Matthew wants us to see that He is the King, and wearing the royal clothes, and even being hailed as the King. And they're coming before Him and prostrating themselves. He is the King. But here, it's in an ironic way, isn't it? Because they are mocking Him. Christ is the King, as we've seen throughout the Gospels and as we see here. But also, as we see here clearly, Christ is the accursed or the one who bears the curse. And I want to bring out four ways in which we see in this passage that Christ is bearing the curse. Now, before we get into that, before I'm misunderstood, Christ is not bearing the curse because he himself sinned and therefore is worthy of it. He is bearing it, as we shall see a little bit later, because he is the representative. And as the king, he represents the people, and he's representing a sinful people. And therefore, he is bearing their curse. Nonetheless, he himself bears it in his body. And there are four ways in which we can see here how Christ is the cursed one. Verse 29, we see the crown of thorns. They had twisted a crown of thorns on him. Now, it's a crown, so therefore it signifies his kingship, but it's also a crown of thorns. And if you look at the Old Testament, and we understand the way it understands thorns, we recognize that it is a symbol of the curse. This goes way back to Genesis chapter 3. In Genesis chapter 3, in verse 17 and 18, we read, and this is God speaking to Adam and cursing him after Adam sinned and disobeyed against him. Then to Adam he, God, said, Because ye have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. We see thorns here being associated with Adam's curse. They come up from the ground. Instead of beautiful fruit, instead of nice trees, we get thorns and thistles. And we're still dealing with that to this day. And as we continue to see throughout scripture, how the idea or concept or theme of thorns is used, they continue to be associated with God's curse, particularly God's curse on Israel for their disobedience. One instance of this is in Isaiah's chapter on the vineyard. Isaiah and Isaiah chapter five, verses one through seven gives a beautiful, he calls it a song of the vineyard. And it's a It's a poetic depiction or poetic representation of God in His relationship with His people Israel. And because of their sin, God finally says in the end, He will cast them off and He will make them bear the curse. And exile is what Isaiah here is prophesying. But let me read to you how this is depicted in a poetic type of way. This is verses 6 and 7 of Isaiah chapter 5. I will lay it waste, speaking of the land. It shall not be pruned or dug. But there shall come up briars and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it. And then the whole metaphor is interpreted in verse seven for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts, the house of Israel and the men of Judah are his pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression for righteousness, but behold, outcry. And that is symbolized by thorns and thistles, the bearing of God's curse, Adam and Israel. And here Jesus bears it himself. He wears the crown of thorns, signifying the curse of God upon him. Yet Jesus does it a little bit differently than Adam and Israel. Adam and Israel had to deal with it. But none of them had to deal with it in such a way as Christ. They penetrated his own skin. They caused bleeding to occur. He dealt with it to its fullest. He exhausted that curse. And the curse came upon him and he himself exhausted it, took it to its completion. The crown of thorns symbolizes the curse. Secondly, I'm calling here the cup of bitterness, the cup of bitterness, verses 32 through 34. At this point, Jesus is being led to be crucified. Now, as they came out, they found the man of Cyrene, Simon by name, him they compelled to bear his cross. And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say a place of a skull, they gave him sour wine mingled with gall to drink. But when he had tasted it, he would not drink. They gave him a cup of bitterness, sour Sour wine People are actually divided and why they're doing this some say it's just a mock and some say it's sort of a pain reliever But the importance of this is it's connected To a prophecy about Jesus in the Psalms in Psalms chapter 69 the 69th Psalm We've actually gone over this a few sermons back when Jesus is clearly fulfilling this We read these words You know my reproach. This is the psalmist speaking to God, my shame and my dishonor. My adversaries are all before you. Reproach has broken my heart and I am full of heaviness. I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none. And for comforters, but I found none. They also gave me gall for my food and for my thirst. They gave me vinegar to drink. Notice the surroundings of this of the psalmist in the words about him drinking sour wine or vinegar It's a person whose heart is broken literally. It says here. It's a person who's Has no friends. He has no comforters. There's no one around them and we see Jesus this happening to him We see his best friends leaving him Peter particularly deserting him denying him in his time of need we see Jesus being led and and mocked and and full of shame and how this reproach has broken his heart and how he is full of heaviness. And then he is given vinegar to drink, clearly indicating that he is fulfilling this prophecy here. Shame, reproach, dishonor. These are things connected with God's curse. Not only was it pain in a physical sense, but it was shame. well. And of course to be mocked as Jesus was mocked is certainly a matter of shame. Jesus here drinks the cup of bitterness. We saw it before when he was giving the Lord's Supper and Jesus gives to his disciples the cup of blessing. But for him it wasn't a cup of blessing, it was a cup of bitterness. It was a cup of It was a cup of wrath, and here he is given again this cup and he takes it. He doesn't drink the wine, but he takes the cup, the experience of it, God's curse and the wrath that came upon him. He experiences God's curse, the cup of bitterness. Thirdly, the third way we can tell that he is receiving God's curse is the fact that his clothes are divided. versus thirty five B and thirty six. And they crucified him and divided his garments, casting lots that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophet. They divided my garments among them and for my clothing, they cast lots sitting down. They kept watch over him there. Speaking of the guards. What does this mean? Why? Does this apply to Jesus? And what is the point? When a king comes and when an army comes and they conquer another army, they take the spoil, right? The plunder. And those who are defeated, if they are still alive, they can do nothing about it and everything is taken from them. And it's a cause not only of great pain, but also of great shame. And here, in these words, we see the guards taking Jesus's clothes. Not something that is unnecessary to his well-being, but his very clothes, the very last thing that he has, they're taking that away from him. And he's there defeated by the enemy, or so it seems. Importantly, as Matthew notes, this is to fulfill what was written by the psalmist. And he's referring there to Psalm chapter 22. We read it earlier or we sang it earlier in verse 18. They divided my garments among them And for my clothing they cast lots. And the point of the psalm is the same as the point of what's happening with Christ. He is in a situation of utter distress, defeat, and shame. This is the psalm which begins with the words, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And we'll look into that phrase and how Jesus uses it in the coming weeks. And it's a psalm of defeat, it seems, in a time of distress and great shame. Israel too bore this. We don't see it in English, but if we look back into Hebrew, we can understand what's going on here as well. The word for being naked or nakedness or nudity is the same as the word for exile. In Hebrew. And the way they conceive of nudity is different than we do it today. It's a matter of lust, it seems, for us in these days. But it's a matter of shame in the ancient world. To be without clothes means you're poor, you're left alone, you're destitute. And that's the idea there of the exile, being destitute utterly. But Jesus bears it even more. Because not only is he taken off to exile, but he has absolutely nothing. And he's hanging on a cross. He's bearing Israel's curse, but he's bearing it to its fullest. His very clothes from his back are taken away from him, from his beaten back. Fourthly, and probably most vividly, Christ not only has a crown of thorns, a cup of bitterness, and his clothes are divided, but he also has a cross to bear. Now, we know from the other Gospels that Jesus did bear his cross for a while, but then he was too weak to bear it. So this man, Simon of Cyrene, in verses 32 and 33, we read about him, helps him. Now, why is this here? Why is Simon even brought up? Well, the point is that we learn from Mark that Simon had two children, Rufus and Alexander, and we learn from Paul that probably from Romans chapter 16, Rufus was a member or was a Christian. He became a Christian. And from Paul's greetings, we read that in Romans chapter 16. And so most likely what's going on here is that Simon, or perhaps his son Rufus, is the one who related this story. We've known and we've explained why Certain names are in the gospel and they function sort of as footnotes or eyewitness Testimonies and he's in here because either he or his son Rufus was probably the basis for this story It was probably the eyewitness account given and this shows that what Jesus is going through here is not a myth. It's not embellishment It's not just literary style, but this happened in history Simon is a real person who related these events and And what's going on here with Jesus is not just a vague abstraction or an idea. It's Jesus himself going through this. And Simon, this man, is helping him and he's bearing his cross. And then we read in verse 35, they crucified him. So the crucifixion has occurred. Now we know from the Hebrew scriptures that anyone who's hanged on a tree is cursed. In Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 23, we read this. And we read all over in the book of Joshua the account of these pagan kings who God placed a curse on. When the kings were defeated, their bodies were exposed on a tree overnight, symbolizing God's curse upon these people. Who would have thought that the son of God himself would have had to bear this very curse? Notice, too, how Jesus is bearing the curse, not within the confines of Jerusalem, but outside of Jerusalem. This is important because all of the sacrifices occurred outside of the camp. In the Old Testament, to give an example, in Exodus chapter 29, we read, this is verse 14, but the flesh of the bull, with its skin and its offal, you shall burn with fire outside the camp. That is a sin offering. And the significance of being outside the camp was this is now defiled, it's polluted, it's bearing sin, and therefore it must be burned, not within the confines where the Lord dwells, but outside the camp. Jesus here is the true sin offering, and he is bearing the curse, not within the confines of the holy city, but outside the camp, bearing the curse of God as those sin offerings did. And Matthew wants to instruct us clearly that both Christ is the King, but also that he is the king who bears the curse. He wears the crown of thorns, he drinks the cup of bitterness, he has his clothes divided, and he bears his cross outside the camp, outside of Jerusalem. The curse that he bore was necessary. The curse he bore was necessary because he was the king. The king in the ancient world represented the people. The king was the people. Whatever the king did, that's what happened to the people. A good example of this is in 2 Kings. It's particularly for the sin of Manasseh that Israel went into exile. Now, of course, Israel was complicit in that. I'm not saying that. But the king was more than himself. He represented the whole people. And the king of the Jews was a special place had a special place because the Jews were the representatives of all nations. They were the kingdom of priests. They were the light to the nations. And so to be the king of the Jews means more than just the king of Israel. It means the king of the world. And so Jesus, as the king of the world, had to bear the curse of Israel and therefore the curse of the world. And so he went outside the camp and he bore it. He wore the crown of thorns, drank the cup of wrath to its dregs. He had his clothes, his last possessions taken from him, and he bore his cross and he was crucified. This is what Matthew is teaching us in this passage. Christ is the king, but he's also the one who is accursed. And finally, we only get a glimmer of it here, but it will be developed later. We see Christ, the conqueror. We see this in verse 33. And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, place of a skull, and they gave him the sour wine, etc. place of a skull. Skulls, of course, represent death. Even today, in our day and age, if you see a skull, it's not a good thing. It's what pirates have on their flags. It's not a good thing to be taken in by pirates. It means death. It symbolizes it. The early church had a symbol. They had a symbol of a cross. on top of a skull. And it seems like a morbid symbol, but it's not. What does it represent? It represents the death of death, the conquering of the curse by the cross. Christ himself is crucified on the hill called the skull, is crucified on the place where death is represented. And Christ is on top of it. He is over it. He is conquering it. And it's through his death, ironically, that death is defeated. It's through his bearing of the curse that the curse is exhausted and that blessing could finally come. It's through his shame that God's people are brought in to a place of honor, to a place of sonship. Jesus, through his death on the cross, finally fulfills what the gospel of Matthew has been teaching us throughout, that he is the true king. He is the son of Abraham, and therefore the blessing which God promised Abraham is coming through him. He is the son of David, and therefore he sits on the throne. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul talks about how Jesus is sitting at God's right hand on the throne. and how all the enemies of God are being made a footstool for him. And he says the last and the greatest enemy is death itself. And through his own death, he has defeated death. And through the power of the resurrection, his resurrection, God's people have also defeated death as well. He defeated death through death, through suffering. And we can stand back and we can ask ourselves, what does this mean for us? And apply it to our lives. And in many ways, this passage is not about us. This passage is about the Lord Jesus Christ and his defeat of death. But if we look at it, if we look at the way he did it, if we look at how we are to do it as we are followers of Christ, we can gain some pretty clear and pretty profound applications. Christ achieved his victory. not through inflicting God's curse, but by bearing God's curse through suffering. This is revolutionary in the thinking of humans. I just read the other day someone saying that in Islam, the goal is not to suffer, but to inflict suffering in one way or another. And that's not something that is partial to Islam. That's pretty much how empires function, too. The last thing you want is to suffer. You want to inflict suffering, because it's either you or them. That's the thinking. Jesus introduced a new way of thinking. Suffering is the way to glory, not because there's any redemptive value in suffering in itself, like maybe Buddha taught or something like that, but because God has ordained that obedience to his will is what causes Christ to be exalted, and that obedience meant going to the cross. And we who follow Christ are not little redeemers. We don't redeem anyone, but we are called to follow in His footsteps. And that is our path, too. It is suffering and then glory. And as we think and reflect upon Jesus bearing the curse here, let us also think how we are to be Christians, that is, followers of Christ, As we suffer in our lives, as we keep our mouths silent, as Isaiah chapter 50 said, as we think to ourselves, our Lord is here. God is for us. Who can possibly condemn us? Because it is God who justifies. There's no need to be vindictive or no need to repay evil for evil, but leave that to the justice of God. And we continue and we suffer. And there's no doubt about it. That is suffering. And as we live in this world and following Christ, let us do so because look at the example we have and look at the great salvation we have in our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered the curse for us, who is the conquering King. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for these words, even though they're difficult to read. We thank you that Christ is the one who is the King. He is the one who suffered the curse. And he is the one who conquers it in the end. And we pray that as we are called to live in a way that follows him, that you would give us the strength to do so by the power of your spirit. In obedience to our king, it's in his name we pray. Amen.