On Friday, things couldn’t have been any worse. Jesus Christ, who had been preaching and healing for three years, had been completely abandoned by even his closest friends. One of the twelve people closest to him had betrayed him. One of his three closest friends had cursed, saying that he didn’t have anything to do with Jesus. Not even his family believed. The story was over. Jesus had joined the history heap. He was just one of countless messiahs who came, built up a following, and then flamed out. If the Gospel of Mark ended at chapter 15, then Jesus would have been nothing more than a footnote of history, maybe getting a line or two in some ancient text but nothing more.

But just when things are at their worst, everything changes. In just 8 verses Mark shows us that everything has changed. In these 8 verses we’re going to see that Easter was a surprise; that Easter includes us; and that the Easter story continues.

First: Easter is a surprise.

If you had lived at the time of Jesus, you would have understood that Jesus was just one of many messianic figures who came, and ended up dying disappointing deaths. For instance, Simon bar Kokhba led a revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 AD. He set up an independent Jewish state, and ruled for three years as ruler. But his revolt was eventually crushed, and today his name is hardly known. After the failure of the revolt, rabbinical writers began referring to him by a new name. Instead of calling him Bar Kokhba (“Son of a Star”) they started calling him Bar Kozeba (“Son of the disappointment”). If the story of Jesus ended in Mark 15, this would have been the story of Jesus as well. Disappointment. Failure. End of story.

Now, Jesus had told his disciples over and over again what was going to happen.

“We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.” (Mark 10:33-34)

Here it is the third day, and absolutely nobody has even considered the possibility that what Jesus said would come true. His disciples are scattered. In verse 1 of this passage, three women come as soon as they can, early in the morning, with spices to anoint the body of Jesus. These spices would be very costly. They were designed to help deal with the stench that a decaying body would create. Nobody is expecting a resurrection. They expect to find a bloodied and decaying body there. Not a single person expected anything other than a dead body. As far as they were concerned, the story was over. Theologically, they didn’t even believe that a resurrection could even take place in this age. That is something that the Jewish people believed would take place at the end of history. They certainly didn’t expect Jesus to be risen from the dead.

Sometimes we make the mistake of reading the Bible and thinking that of course ancient people could accept the story of someone rising from the dead, and now we’re so much more sophisticated. What you need to understand is that nobody back then expected the resurrection of Jesus. They didn’t even have categories for it. When other leaders were killed, nobody thought to make up a story of resurrection.

The people in Mark didn’t get it either, and yet something happened to transform them completely. A group of first-century Jews who were scattered and defeated and had no category for the resurrection were suddenly changed to emboldened witnesses who were prepared to give up their lives speaking about what they’d seen. As Pascal put it, “I [believe] those witnesses that get their throats cut.” Virtually all of the disciples and early Christian leaders gave up their lives testifying to the resurrection of Jesus. Something happened on Easter morning that nobody had expected that changed everything.

If you’re here this morning and you have a hard time believing the resurrection, join the club. There’s not a person in the Gospel of Mark who expected it to happen. But something happened that changed everything – and is still changing everything today. Easter is a surprise.

But then, secondly, we see:

Easter includes us.

Mark 16:1 says, “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.”

It’s easy to miss how shocking this is. These women had been witnesses of Jesus’ death. “Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome” (Mark 15:40). Two of them, according to Mark 15:47, witnessed where Jesus was buried. Now these three women are about to become the first witnesses to the empty tomb, and to the message of the angel.

What’s so surprising about this? In Jesus’ day, women were viewed as being unreliable witnesses. Their testimony was not considered admissible evidence. N.T. Wright makes the point that if you were inventing the story of the resurrection, you never would have made the first and best witnesses to be female. It would have been too inconvenient. The only reason you would say that women were the first and best witnesses is because that’s what actually happened. It’s there because it’s true.

But it’s surprising for another reason. The readers of Mark’s Gospel would have understood that one of these three women, at least, was a woman with a past. Mary Magdalene was somebody who had previously been demon possessed. Luke 8:2 calls her “Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out.” At least one of these three women is somebody who has a history.

What does this tell us? Mark is showing us how the gospel turns things upside-down. People who are excluded, who are pushed to the side, are the first and best witnesses of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The least likely people become part of the Easter story. You may be here this morning thinking that you’re the least likely person. The first to be discounted in human society are the first to be included in divine society.

And just in case we get ahead of ourselves, Mark still points out that we won’t get it right away. These women go to the tomb. They enter into a small chamber in the tomb and see a young man sitting there. This young man – an angel – announces the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They’re told to go tell the disciples. All along, Jesus has told people not to tell people about him. Jesus commanded people to silence, and they spoke. Now, they’re compelled to speak, and what do they do? Verse 8 says, “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” Easter is for the least likely people, but even the best of us blow it. The Resurrection changes us. The gospel changes us. But it’s a process. Easter includes people like us, people who are the least likely to be included, people who still blunder in our responses to God and who don’t get it right away.

What about the disciples? The angel told the women, “But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you’” (Mark 16:7). Before Jesus was betrayed, he told his disciples:

“You will all fall away,” Jesus told them, “for it is written:
“‘I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered.’

But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” (Mark 14:27-28)

The disciples had completely blown it. Jesus had told them over and over again what was going to happen, and they just couldn’t get it. And when put to the test, they caved and they fled.

And out of all the disciples, no failure was more dramatic than Peter’s. Peter had sworn emphatically, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you” (Mark 14:31). But when the moment came, Peter denied even knowing Jesus. Out of all the disciples, except for Judas, Peter knew that he had let Jesus down profoundly.

Yet the message was, “But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” You see what this means? Jesus hasn’t written Peter and the other disciples off.

Easter includes unlikely people. It includes people who blunder. It even includes people who have completely and utterly failed. Easter includes people just like us.

That’s what Mark has been showing us so far. Easter is a surprise. It caught everyone by surprise. Nobody expected. And Easter includes us – the unlikely ones, the blundering ones, the failures. There’s one more thing Mark shows us:

Finally: the Easter story continues.

You’ll notice this morning that we’ve looked at verses 1 to 8. There’s a reason. The oldest and most reliable manuscripts end at verse 8. Early church fathers don’t seem to know of anything beyond verse 8. It seems like the last verse we have that authentically and originally comes from the pen of Mark is verse 8. Verses 9 to 20 seem to have been added later as a way to smooth out the ending.

I don’t want to get into all the theories this morning about why Mark ends the way it does. Some think Mark meant to end this way. Others think that something happened – Mark wasn’t able to complete his book, or what he originally wrote was lost. In a sense it doesn’t matter. We learn a lot about what happened from the other records. No doctrine is affected no matter what we conclude about the abrupt ending of the Gospel of Mark.

But you have to agree that it’s a strange way to end. Women come to the tomb and find the stone rolled away. They meet an angelic messenger who tells them that Jesus is risen, and he gives them a message to pass on to the disciples. Jesus is alive, and he’s going to reconvene his community. The story continues. And then: “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” The end. Amen. Let’s pray.

What a strange way to end the book! You can see why they’d try to neaten the ending and smooth it out.

But let’s think for a minute. Those who first read Mark’s Gospel would have known that this wasn’t the end of the story. They would have heard the stories of Jesus’ resurrection appearances. The very fact that the Gospel of Mark had been written would have been evidence that this wasn’t the end of the story. Easter Sunday had set in motion a series of events that had transformed the disciples. Somebody points out that you have all the raw materials you need: an empty tomb, the young men’s message, Jesus’ indication that he’s not done with his disciples yet. It’s left to us to pull it together and to trace the line from what happened then to where we are today.

No matter how you understand the ending of the Gospel of Mark, it points out that Easter Sunday was not the end of the story. It’s only the beginning. The resurrection of Jesus set in motion a new story that has not yet finished or resolved. It’s a story that includes us today.

In a sense, Mark’s Gospel ends at verse 8. For all we know, there was more, but we don’t know. What we have ends, though at verse 8. But the story that Mark has begun to tell is a story that continues right to the present day. Jesus has been raised from the dead. It’s taken us all by surprise. And Jesus is calling the most unlikely people – people who have let him down – to join his community of followers, and to announce the good news that Jesus is alive and has finished his work. The Gospel of Mark is over, but the story isn’t. The story continues to this very day, and it includes you.

I’m glad that Mark ends with the disciples scattered and the women scared. I’m glad because we know that it doesn’t end there. God transformed them into a group of people who, through the power of the Spirit, turned the world upside-down.


But it gives me hope, because some of us are scattered and afraid today. There’s hope for us too. Easter may be a surprise, but the Easter story includes you in. It pulls you in so you see that Jesus has risen, and is alive, and the story continues. And it’s a story that includes you.

Father, thank you for Easter. We’ve seen that Jesus bore our sins and our shame. But we’ve seen today that this isn’t the end of the story. Jesus also rose to give us new life. You vindicated him, and he now sits at your right hand as King.

But you take us – those who are caught off guard, those of us who don’t matter, who blunder in our responses, who flat-out fail you – and you pull us into the story. You take us and use us to change the world, not because we’re strong, but because Jesus is risen.

So change us. Would you draw some of us even now into this story. We thank you for Jesus, for what he did. We thank you that he lives. And we pray in his name, the name of the risen and reigning King. Amen.

At first glance, the death of Jesus looks like a horrible defeat. In the passage we just read, Jesus is alone and abandoned. Instead of defeating the Romans as the Messiah, he’s killed by the Romans. His own friends abandon him, and he’s surrounded by mockers and strangers. And he dies with a loud cry, and it’s over, and then he’s buried. Why would Christians celebrate this death? Why do we call this Good Friday?

But you’ll notice as you look at this passage that there’s more than meets the eye. Because in this passage Mark tells, first, us that history’s changed. Not only that, Mark tells us that our lives can change as well. Finally, Mark shows us, what took place at the cross is not a defeat; it’s actually something that’s worth celebrating.

First, History’s Changed

Let’s see how Mark shows us that history has changed by what takes place in this passage. In verse 33, right before Jesus died, we read: “At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.”

This detail – the darkness – is so important that it’s mentioned by three of the four gospels. This couldn’t have been an eclipse. Why? For one thing, an eclipse only lasts for a few minutes. Passover – which is when Jesus died – took place during a full moon, and eclipses only take place when it’s a new moon. So this was no eclipse. Some people think it might have been a dust storm, but a dust storm would have been unlikely at this time because it was the wet season.

What Mark is telling us here is more than a weather report. Mark is showing us the significance of what happened. In the Bible, darkness means judgment. In Deuteronomy, God warned Israel:

However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you…At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you. (Deuteronomy 28:15, 29)

One of the Hebrew prophets foretold a day when God would judge the nation of Israel. Amos predicted that God would call his people to account for their injustice. He said:

“In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD,
“I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.”
(Amos 8:9)

What Mark is saying is significant. We’re going to look at the other events that take place around the cross. You’re going to see that a lot is going on. But for three hours, the focus is not on any human activity, but on unnatural darkness. And it’s not a darkness that goes to midnight. It’s a darkness that ends at the death of Jesus. For three long hours, time passes as the death of Jesus takes place in unnatural darkness. Judgment. Isaac Watts wrote:

Well might the sun in darkness hide
And shut his glories in,
When Christ, the mighty Maker died,
For man the creature’s sin.

What’s going on at the cross? This isn’t simply somebody’s death. This is something far more than that. This is divine judgment. At the cross, Jesus bears the full weight of divine judgment for sins that we had done. God finally judges – but instead of judging those who had done wrong, God bears the judgment himself for all that we had done. As one person puts it, “Christianity is the only faith system where God both makes the demands and meets them” (Tullian Tchividjian). That’s what happened at the cross.

But there’s more. Verses 37 to 38 say: “With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”

At the very moment that Jesus dies, something unbelievable happens. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. There were actually two curtains in the temple. One, the outer curtain, separated the sanctuary from the outer porch. The other was the inner veil that separated the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. Only the high priest could enter in, and only once a year for a moment. The curtain was 60 feet high and 30 feet wide. We don’t know which curtain it was, but Hebrews identifies it as the inner curtain.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body… (Hebrews 10:19-20)

At the cross, Mark is saying, Jesus bore the judgment of God. And something happened at the temple which showed that the death of Jesus changed everything. At the cross, Jesus took the punishment for the sins we had committed. He experienced the judgment that should have been ours. At the death of Jesus, something happened that made the temple system of sacrifices and priests and all that it involved obsolete. This wasn’t just an ordinary death. History changed at the cross.

But it’s not just history that changed. Mark shows us something else in this passage. Here’s the second thing that Mark shows us:

Secondly, Mark says, Our lives can change as well.

Do you notice the motley crew of characters in this passage?

In verse 21, we meet Simon of Cyrene. He’s from north Africa. He stumbles upon the scene, and his family is changed as a result. Mark mentions his sons, Alexander and Rufus, presumably because his sons would have been familiar to the original recipients of Mark’s book. A stranger from Africa stumbles upon the scene, and it evidently transforms his family.

Then there are three big surprises. In verse 39 we read, “And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, ‘Surely this man was the Son of God!’” The centurion in this passage would have observed the death of many crucified criminals. He’s the last person you would expect to be changed. But something about the way Jesus dies grabs him. He says that Jesus is the Son of God. The Romans called the emperor’s son the son of god. This soldier transfers the title of the most revered figure in the Roman imperial cult to a Jew who’s just been crucified. The first human witness to describe Jesus as the Son of God is not a disciple, not a Jew at all, but a Gentile army officer with no previous connection to Jesus. The disciples don’t get it; the religious leaders don’t get it; this Roman officer gets it. He may not have understood the full significance of what he said, but he gets that this is no ordinary insurrectionist. He understands that something more is going on. This is the true Son of God, who does not die in failure. He dies fulfilling his Father’s will.

Then there are the women. Verses 40-41 say:

Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.

What’s surprising about this? In all cultures at that time, women were viewed as inferior. Their testimony was not accepted. Up until this point, women had played a very minor role in the Gospel of Mark. Mark doesn’t mention any female disciples. But here, at the climax of the Gospel, the male disciples have deserted Jesus, and the women are still there, faithful to the last. They are the witnesses of all that takes place. They are the ones that saw Jesus die; they saw his body being laid in the tomb; they are the ones who find the tomb empty. They are the only eyewitnesses of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. God entrusts the message of the resurrection to them. This is one evidence, by the way, of the accuracy of the Gospels. If you were making a story up, you would never invent that women are the first eyewitnesses. You’d only write that if it were true.

Do you see what Mark is showing us? The death of Jesus is turning everything upside-down. It’s changing families of a random person walking by; a Roman soldier becomes the first to grasp something of who Jesus is at the cross; women who are normally excluded are brought into the very center, and become eyewitnesses of the greatest event in redemptive history.

There’s one more person who’s changed in this passage. We read in verses 43: “Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body.” Joseph, Mark says, is a prominent member of the Council, the Sanhedrin – the group that has just condemned Jesus. He has significant social standing in Jerusalem. And yet he risks his life here by going to Pilate and asking for the body of Jesus. Romans usually left bodies hanging on the cross until they decayed as a warning to other would-be rebels and slaves. And yet Joseph puts his reputation and life at risk by asking for Jesus’ body. And even more shockingly, he prepares the body for burial himself. Preparing a crucified corpse for burial would have been an unthinkable task, certainly well below what a man like Joseph would ever do. It was a job that was usually left for those much lower than him.

Do you see what Mark is showing us in this passage? What happened at the cross changed history. At the cross, Jesus bore God’s judgment, and he made a new way for us to approach God. But it didn’t just change history. It changed people. At the cross, the death of Jesus changed the lives of the most unusual people, people who would otherwise have nothing in common. It’s still changing the most unlikely people: people from all different nationalities; people who are religious and people how aren’t; people who are prominent and powerful and people who aren’t. The death of Jesus changes history, and it changes lives as well.

There’s one more thing Mark wants to show us.

The death of Jesus is not a defeat; it’s a victory worth celebrating.

In this passage, Jesus is remarkably silent. Mark records only two times that Jesus says anything. As he dies, Mark says in verse 37, he lets out a loud cry. And in verse 34 he cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

What is this about? At first glance it looks like the desparate cry of someone who’s been completely abandoned by God. It is that, but it’s actually much more.

If you study the gospels carefully, you’ll notice that this is the only time that Jesus addresses God as “My God.” Every other time that Jesus refers to God, he calls him Father. Jesus addresses God not in terms of the intimate relationship he enjoyed with God as his Son; he addresses God at a distance. And his cry, “Why have you forsaken me?” gets to the heart of what happened at the cross. On the cross, Jesus is experiencing the immense pain of divine abandonment. Centuries before, the prophet of Isaiah wrote:

Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save,
nor his ear too dull to hear.
But your iniquities have separated
you from your God;
your sins have hidden his face from you,
so that he will not hear.
(Isaiah 59:1-2)

Isaiah says that our sins have separated us from our God. The Bible teaches that God’s eyes “are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing” (Habakkuk 1:13). On the cross, all of our sins were poured on Jesus. When he took on the sins of the world, “he became the most grotesque, most obscene mass of sin in the history of the world” (R.C. Sproul). And at that moment, God turned his back on Jesus. He hung in the cross cut off from the relationship he had enjoyed with his Father throughout eternity. He didn’t just feel forsaken; he was forsaken. Phil Ryken put it this way:

It was as if God had taken a giant bucket and scooped up all the sins of his people – all the jealousy and the lying, all the rebellion and the stealing and the incest, all the hypocrisy and the envy and the swearing – and dumped them all out on Jesus Christ. “The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us…” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Once he had done that, God the Father had to forsake all that sin. When Jesus was wearing our sin on the cross, God the Father could not bear to look at the sin or at his Son. He had to avert his gave. He had to shield his eyes. He had to turn his back. He had to condemn and reject and curse and damn that sin…When Jesus Christ picked up our sins, he became a curse for us, and when he became a curse for us, he was accursed by God. God was not forsaking his Son as much as he was forsaking the sin the Son was carrying.

I said this was good news. So far I haven’t told you how this is good news, have I? It’s good news in two ways. First: “The forsaking of the Son of God on the cross is a fearful thing, but it’s good news for sinners who repent” (Phil Ryken). Why is it good news? Jesus was forsaken so that we don’t have to be forsaken. He was rejected so that we can be accepted. At the cross, he was cut off from God so that we could be brought in.

It’s also good news because of where Jesus got this prayer: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus is actually quoting Psalm 22. Psalm 22 is the prayer of someone who is being attacked, someone who feels abandoned by God. When Jews quoted the Hebrew Scriptures back then, quoting one verse would be enough to bring up the whole passage. So many of those hearing Jesus quote Psalm 22:1 would have remembered how Psalm 22 ends: it ends with vindication. It begins like this:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?
(Psalm 22:1)

But it ends like this:

For he has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.
(Psalm 22:24)

Jesus is saying that he knows the abandonment is not the end of the story. God will vindicate him. There’s more:

All the ends of the earth
will remember and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him…
(Psalm 22:27)

As Jesus goes to the cross, there’s more than meets the eye. At the cross, history changed. Not only that, but lives were changed. At the cross, Jesus was cut off from God so that we wouldn’t have to be cut off. Because God did not reject him forever, neither will God reject us when he place our faith in Christ and understood what he did for us at the cross.

So help us see beneath the surface, Father. Thank you that on that Friday long ago, history changed. Thank you, though, that it’s not just history that changed. For two thousand years now, you’ve been changing lives because of what Jesus accomplished at the cross. He bore our sins; he was cut off so we wouldn’t have to be.

Help us see the cross. And I pray it would change us today. We pray in the name of the one who was rejected so we could be accepted, in the name of the one who gave his life so that we could live. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

We’re in Mark 15 this morning. Jesus has been tried and condemned, and abandoned by everyone. We are now moments away from his death in this passage.

But before Jesus is killed, we have an interlude. And in this interlude we notice two things. One: that Jesus is mocked. Two: that in the entire time leading up to his death, Jesus does nothing to resist what’s happening. He never raises his voice to defend himself. He willingly endures whatever comes his way as he moves closer to the cross.

As we look at this passage we’re going to see three things. First: we’re going to learn about ourselves. Second: we’re going to learn about Jesus. And then lastly, we’re going to learn about what Jesus accomplished for us not only in his death, but in the hours leading up to his death.

First: let’s learn about ourselves in this passage.

What’s shocking in this passage is the extent to which Jesus is abandoned. Look at this passage and what takes place immediately before:

• In 14:43, Judas – one of the twelve disciples that Jesus had chosen – betrays him with a kiss.
• in 14:51, another one of his followers runs away naked. Some think that this person is Mark himself. Whoever it is, it points to the complete failure of Jesus’ friends to support him when the moment came.
• In 14:65, members of the Sanhedrin – the top religious leaders – spit on Jesus, covered his face, and struck him.
• In 15:13-14, the crowds call out for Jesus’ death.
• In 15:15, Pilate had Jesus scourged. Scourging meant that Jesus was tied to a post and beaten with a leather whip that had pieces of bone and metal that would tear through the skin. Scourging itself was sometimes fatal.
• In 15:16-20, the guards sarcastically mocked Jesus as a supposed king.
• In 15:29-30, those who passed by the scene of the crucifixion mocked Jesus. They wagged their heads and taunted him.
• In 15:31-32, the chief priests and scribes joined the mocking.
• In 15:32, even those who were being crucified alongside Jesus joined in and mocked him.

It’s absolutely shocking as we read this. Jesus is completely and utterly abandoned by everyone. Jews and Gentiles, religious and non-religious, leaders and ordinary folk, and even criminals join in the mocking. His own friends betray him.

What is this supposed to teach us? Martin Luther, a monk and Reformer who lived 500 years ago, wrote:

Let us meditate a moment on the passion of Christ. Some do so falsely in that they merely rail against Judas and the Jews.

Let’s stop there for a minute. Luther was saying that 500 years ago, some would open up the Bible as an excuse to attack Judas or the Jewish people. In other words, the Bible became a tool they used to point the finger at others, and even to engage in racist behavior. Luther continues:

The true contemplation is that in which the heart is crushed and the conscience smitten…Take this to heart and doubt not that you are the one who killed Christ. Your sins certainly did, and when you see the nails driven through his hands, be sure that you are pounding, and when thorns pierce his brow, know that they are your evil thoughts…The whole value of meditation of the suffering of Christ lies in this, that man should come to the knowledge of himself and sink and tremble.

Do you see what Luther is saying? There are two ways to read this account. One is to read it and to shake our heads at the people who mocked Jesus. We look at them and condemn them. The other way to read this account is to contemplate that this is a passage that reveals our hearts. This passage shows us to be enemies of God who abandon and mock him, because nobody is excluded from this passage. Everybody joins the mocking. Everybody abandons Jesus. As Luther says, “The true contemplation is that in which the heart is crushed and the conscience smitten.”

This passage both humbles us and raises us up. First, it humbles us. You know, it’s easy to blame a group of people to which you don’t belong. We’ve all been parts of groups in which we begin talking about the faults of others who aren’t like us. But what if we are all put on even ground, and what if there is no difference between us? That’s exactly what happens in this passage. Everyone is humbled. Everyone abandons Jesus. The religious mock him; so do the irreligious. Jews mock Jesus; so do the Gentiles. His friends abandon him; strangers shake their heads at him. Nobody gets off. Everyone is humbled as we read this passage.

But this passage also raises us up. What do I mean by this? Because we’re all in the same boat, nobody here can claim superiority over the other. Everyone of us is equal in our need for Christ. We’re all brought to the point of sinking and trembling. But we’re going to see in a moment that there is hope for us in this passage as well.

This is the first thing that Mark asks us to see in this passage. Everyone is guilty. Everyone abandons Jesus. Everyone joins in the mocking. All of us are humbled. All our hearts our crushed, and all of our consciences are smitten.

Secondly, let’s learn about Jesus.

If you’ve ever been falsely accused, you know how you want to respond. You are going to let people know the truth. There’s no way that you are going to allow people to spread falsehood about you and to ruin your good name. Yet in this passage, Jesus is falsely accused and verbally attacked, and he says nothing. He’s silent.

If you’ve ever been physically attacked, you know that we all instinctively either fight or flee. But in this passage Jesus does neither. He endures the blows and is beaten and shamed, and he doesn’t raise a voice or a fist to defend himself.

This is especially significant because had Jesus stuck up for himself, he would have been very convincing. Adrian Rogers writes:

If Jesus had risen up in his own defense during his trials, I believe he would have been so powerful and irrefutable in making his defense that no governor, high priest, or other legal authority on earth could have stood against him! In other words, if Jesus had taken up his own defense with the intention of refuting his accusers and proving his innocence, he would have won!

We’ve seen that Jesus is incredibly convincing whenever he’s had a verbal confrontation with anyone in this gospel. Jesus is never at a loss for words. But in this passage, Jesus says nothing in his defense, nor does he make any move to avoid what’s happening to him. Centuries earlier, the prophet Isaiah had written of Jesus:

I offered my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
from mocking and spitting.
(Isaiah 50:6)

In other words, Jesus willingly endured the mocking and the spitting. Hebrews 12:2 puts it this way: “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame.” It’s here that we learn something very important about Jesus.

What do we learn? In a sense, everything that is said about Jesus is true in this passage. They mock him as King of the Jews; ironically, they’re right. He is the King of the Jews, except he’s a king who suffers. Read verses 29-32:

Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!”

In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.”

What are they saying? They’re calling on him to save himself. They accuse him of saving others, but not being able to save himself. And in a way they’re right. Don Carson imagines what it would have been like if Jesus had taken them up on their challenge:

This would be a pretty remarkable and convincing display of power, and the mockers would be back-peddling pretty fast. But in the full Christian sense, would they believe in him? Of course not! To believe in Jesus in the Christian sense means not less than trusting him utterly as the One who has borne our sin in his own body on the tree, as the One whose life and death and resurrection, offered up in our place, has reconciled us to God. If Jesus had leapt off the cross, the mockers and other onlookers could not have believed in Jesus in that sense, because he would not have sacrificed himself for us, so there would be nothing to trust, except our futile and empty self-righteousness.

But then Carson explores the meaning of their statement, “He saved others, but he can’t save himself.” Carson says:

The deeper irony is that, in a way they did not understand, they were speaking the truth. If he had saved himself, he could not have saved others; the only way he could save others was precisely by not saving himself. In the irony behind the irony that the mockers intended, they spoke the truth they themselves did not see. The man who can’t save himself–saves others.

One of the reasons they were so blind is that they thought in terms of merely physical restraints…But those who know who Jesus is are fully aware that nails and soldiers cannot stand in the way of Emmanuel. The truth of the matter is that Jesus could not save himself, not because of any physical constraint, but because of a moral imperative…It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father’s will–and, within that framework, it was his love for sinners like me. He really could not save himself. (Scandalous)

Jesus was completely capable of saving himself – but then he couldn’t have saved us. So he willingly chose to endure the mocking and the spitting. He willingly chose to suffer and die so that we could be saved. He chose death so that we could live.

What is this about? Maybe a movie from 1938 will help. The movie is called Angels with Dirty Faces. James Cagney plays the part of Rocky Sullivan, a celebrity criminal who is the hero of all the young juvenile delinquents in the city. He’s about to go to the electric chair. The night before his execution, he’s visited by his childhood friend Jerry, who is now a priest trying to save inner-city kids from a life of crime. Jerry makes a request of Rocky. He asks Rocky to disgrace himself so that his juvenile followers can live.

I want you to let them down. You see, you’ve been a hero to these kids, and hundreds of others, all through your life – and now you’re going to be a glorified hero in death, and I want to prevent that, Rocky.

Rocky can’t believe it.

You asking me to pull an act, turn yellow, so those kids will think I’m no good…You ask me to throw away the only thing I’ve got left…You ask me to crawl on my belly – the last thing I do in life…Nothing doing. You’re asking too much…You want to help those kids, you got to think about some other way.

Jerry is saying to Rocky, “It’s them or you. If you go down in glory, these kids are going to go down in shame. But if you go down in shame, if you’re willing to throw away everything you have, your entire reputation, then they can be saved.” But Rocky refuses.

The next morning he walks out to the execution chamber as Father Jerry watches. He comes out with a snarl. When one of the guards insults him, he slugs him. He’s in control. He’s going down in glory. But when he gets to the door of the death chamber, suddenly he begins to squeal like a child. “No! I don’t want to die! Oh, please! I don’t want to die! Oh, please! Don’t make me burn in hell. Oh, please let go of me! Please don’t kill me! Oh, don’t kill me, please!”

Father Jerry, as he sees that happen, looks to heaven. The next day, the newspaper says:

At the fatal stroke of eleven p.m. Rocky was led through the little green door of death. No sooner had he entered the death chamber, than he tore himself from the guard’s grasp, flung himself on the floor, screaming for mercy. And as they dragged him to the electric chair, he clawed wildly at the floor with agonized shrieks. In contrast to his former heroics, Rocky Sullivan died a coward.

You see what Rocky did? He substituted his life for the boys. He gave up his reputation so that he could save others.

You see, we are in that story. We are those boys whose life is about to go down. And Jesus is in the story too. He can either save his reputation and his life or save us. And in the most stunning reversal, he offers his life and his reputation so that we could be saved. He substitutes his life and everything he has for us.

Friends, we’ve seen ourselves in this passage this morning. We’re crushed because we are the ones who mocked him. We’ve seen Jesus in this passage. He willingly endures the mocking and the spitting, because he can either save himself or us. He can’t do both. And amazingly, he chooses to save us. There’s one more thing we need to see this morning.

Finally, let’s see what Jesus accomplished by enduring the shame.

Have you ever been shamed? I mean, really shamed? We see it happen with celebrities and politicians. Scandal hits, and somebody’s good name becomes fodder for the late night comedians. We’ve seen it in business. You spend a lifetime building a good reputation, and you hit one rough patch and your name becomes mud. Think of the worst thing that you’ve ever done being made public. It would be enough to disgrace every person here.

What does that have to do with this morning’s sermon? You’ve probably been told that Jesus died for your sins. I believe that this morning’s passage also teaches us that Jesus did more than this. Adrian Rogers puts it this way: “The Bible teaches that when Jesus took our sin, he took all the punishment that goes with that sin. A part of that punishment is shame.”

You see, Jesus assumed your sin. But in this passage he also assumed the shame. Jesus didn’t just die; he was humiliated and shamed so that you don’t have to be. Romans 10:11 says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.”

As one person put it, “You don’t have anything to prove to us or the world. The work is finished at Calvary, and that work has unlimited meaning and value. Keep your focus there” (Jack Miller). You have nothing to prove. You never have to be ashamed. Jesus took all the shame. And anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.

So Father, humble us this morning. We see ourselves clearly in this passage. We are those who mocked him. Everybody abandoned him. Our hearts are crushed, and our consciences are smitten.

But we see Jesus, who willingly endured the mocking and the spitting. He couldn’t save himself and us at the same time, so he chose to save us. For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame.

Because he took the shame, we don’t have to be ashamed. Help us to trust in him and in what he did. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

We’re in Mark 15 this morning. In Mark 15, the book of Mark is reaching its climax. Jesus has been betrayed by Judas and abandoned by his disciples. He has been arrested and beaten and condemned by the religious leaders. And now he’s in his last hours. He’s about to face his death, but before he does he’s going to come up against Pilate, the Roman governor who was in charge of Judea. Only Pilate had the power to condemn Jesus to death. So as we approach this morning’s passage, Jesus is bound and beaten, completely abandoned, and about to lose his life.

This morning’s passage is really a contrast between two people. Mark has set this scene to contrast two types of strength, two kingdoms. One type of strength is the strength that we all aspire to; the other type of strength is what we’ll avoid at all costs. Mark is going to show us what true strength looks like, and if we understand this, it’s going to turn our church and our lives upside-down.

First, let’s look at the strength, the kingdom, that comes from power.

When Jesus was alive, Rome was in power over the nation of Israel. Because Rome was so huge, they appointed governors in different regions to maintain order. The Romans allowed self-government, so that each nation felt like they had some of their identity and autonomy. But the real power belonged to Rome. They had the ultimate say. They had all the military and economic power, and what they decided is ultimately what happened.

So as we open Mark 15, Jesus is brought before the most powerful person he has ever met in his life:

Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, reached a decision. They bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.

“Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate. 


“You have said so,” Jesus replied.

The chief priests accused him of many things. So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.”

But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed. (Mark 15:1-5)

Notice the contrasts.

Scholars tell us that these events took place early in the morning, because Roman officials began work at daybreak so they could be free by midmorning to pursue activities of leisure. Pilate was going to enjoy the rest of his day; Jesus was on his way to being killed later that day.

Pilate was connected to the most powerful people in the world at that time. He was a mover. At one point he was considered a possible future emperor. He had connections and knew how to access the levers of power. Jesus had no connections. His closest friends had abandoned him. He had no access to the levers of power, and was completely abandoned, even by those closest to him.

Pilate was sitting in a palace. The trial probably took place in Herod’s Palace, which was used by Roman governors when they came to Jerusalem for the feasts like Passover. It was encircled with ramparts and towers. It was the largest and most elaborate of Herod’s palaces. It had two huge and elaborate reception halls in which you could entertain hundreds of guests. One historian from the period said described it as “the king’s palace, which no tongue could describe. Its magnificence and equipment were unsurpassable.” The historian wrote that this palace had rooms that were even more magnificent than the Holy Temple, Herod’s greatest edifice in Jerusalem. Pilate had free access to all of this magnificent palace. Jesus, on the other hand, came as a prisoner, bound and about to be beaten and condemned.

Pilate had troops at his disposal. It is written that he had “power even to execute.” He hadn’t been afraid to use his power either. Luke 13 tells us that he had once mixed the blood of Galileans with their sacrifices, perhaps in response to a riot. Pilate was the law, and he could essentially determine what was going to happen. There was no appeal, no supreme court to second guess his decisions.

In short, Pilate has wealth, connections, power, and leisure. Jesus has nothing – no money, no friends, no power, and no freedom. The contrast between Pilate and Jesus in this passage couldn’t be more striking.

I want us to see this today because Pilate has everything that we can hope for in our own lives. Henri Nouwen wrote:

Our addictions make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink; and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love.

I don’t know about Pilate’s sex life, but everything else that Nouwen mentions is what Pilate had, and what we long for too: the accumulation of wealth and power; the attainment of status and admiration; the best food and drink. Pilate had it all. He had everything that we spend our lives trying to get. We want the connections, the money, and the power. In this passage, Pilate embodies everything that we normally want for ourselves.

But notice what happens in this passage. Pilate has all the advantages, but it’s Jesus who seems to be in control. We read in verse 10 that Pilate perceives that the real reason Jesus is on trial is because of the jealousy of the religious leaders. Pilate comes to an accurate conclusion about Jesus, and realizes that Jesus isn’t guilty of treason. It’s here that you begin to realize that what Pilate has is the appearance of power. He’s not a free man. In verses 6 to 15 he tries to free Jesus, but the crowd won’t let him. Look a little more carefully and you begin to see the problem with Pilate’s strength.

He has access to the best that Jerusalem has to offer – but he hates the place. He has all the power, but he’s learned from the past to pick his battles. He’s already backed down from one battle with the Jewish people, and here again he gives in. It turns out he’s really not in control after all. Eventually he is removed from office and and travels in haste to Rome to defend himself against charges. Before he could get there, the Roman emperor died, and so Pilate disappears from history. Nothing more is known about him. Pilate is a man who has everything, but even in this passage you see that there’s really nothing there.

Listen. You and I will spend our lives chasing everything that Pilate had. Many of us are doing this right now. We want the money, the leisure, the respect, and the power. But this passage shows us the futility of this kind of strength. These things are idols that promise the world but that ultimately never deliver. Mark contrasts the strength of Pilate with the weakness of Jesus, which ultimately turns out to be the greatest strength that ever existed.

So let’s look for a moment at the strength, the kingdom, that comes through weakness.

We’ve already seen the weakness of Jesus in this passage. He’s bound and abandoned. The religious leaders turn the crowd against him. An insurrectionist and murderer ends up being more popular than him. By the end of this passage, Jesus is condemned and scourged. Scouring means that Jesus would have been bound to a pillar or post and flogged with whips made of leather that were sometimes weighted with pieces of metal, bone, or even hooks. There was no prescribed number of lashes, so scourging was sometimes fatal if they got carried away. At best it left you severely weakened and already on your way to death. There’s no greater picture of weakness than in this passage.

Yet it’s a chosen weakness. Jesus had a kingdom that far exceeded Pilate’s kingdom. Rome could not compare to the riches or the power or the acclaim that Christ enjoyed. Yet he laid it all aside and chose to become weak for our sakes. He chose weakness.

The irony is that Jesus is bound and seemingly powerless, yet it’s Jesus who is in charge not Pilate, and not the crowds. Jesus had predicted that this would happen. Jesus had said back in Mark 10:

“We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.” (Mark 10:33-34)

And Jesus could have put an end to it at any moment. But he didn’t. Jesus chose everything that happened to him, because somehow his kingdom functions completely different from every earthly kingdom. His kingdom functions through weakness.

That’s why, when Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answers: “You have said so.” What kind of an answer is that? It’s an enigmatic answer that means yes or no – or in this case, maybe it means both yes and no. Jesus says, in essence, that he is a king. But he’s not the kind of king that Pilate is. He doesn’t hold to his rights or his privileges. He’s the king who willingly leaves his throne to come to earth unrecognized, to give his life for people who don’t deserve his grace or return his love. Jesus is the kind of king who offers his life. He’s the king who lays aside his strength and comes in weakness. Isaiah 53 says:

He was despised and rejected by others,

a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces

he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain

and bore our suffering,

yet we considered him punished by God,

stricken by him, and afflicted.
(Isaiah 53:3-4)

If that’s the kind of king we have, what does that mean for those of us who are in his kingdom? It means that we too will lay aside our privileges so that we can serve others. We’ll choose to be weak. Justin Martyr, an early church father who lived from 100-165, wrote:

We who used to value the acquisition of wealth and possessions more than anything else now bring what we have into a common fund and share it with anyone who needs it. We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate with people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies.

Hear that? Willingly choosing to give up wealth and grudges. Clement, who lived around the same time, described a Christian this way:

He impoverishes himself out of love, so that he is certain he may never overlook a brother in need, especially if he knows he can bear poverty better than his brother. He likewise considers the pain of another as his own pain. And if he suffers any hardship because of having given out of his own poverty, he does not complain.

Nobody puts this better than John: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 John 3:16). Jesus chose to be weak, and we’ll choose to become weak as well as we follow him – willingly pouring out our lives for others.

Because it’s not just a chosen weakness, it’s a saving weakness. The end of this passage gives us a picture of what happened because Jesus chose to be weak. This man, Barabbas, actually had another name: Jesus Barabbas. Somebody was going to be free; someone was going to be condemned and killed. Pilate knew that Jesus Barabbas was guilty and deserved to die. He was an insurrectionist and a murderer. Pilate also knew that Jesus did not deserve to die. He was guilty of nothing. The only reason he was on trial was because of the jealousy of the religious leaders.

Unthinkably, the convicted murderer goes free, and the innocent Son of the father is condemned. Barabbas deserves to die, but Jesus dies in his place. The love of God does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. It’s a picture of what Jesus does for every one of us who trusts in him: he dies in our place, while we who are guilty go free. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Mark is showing us two kings, two types of strength. One king, one type of strength, is how we normally live. It’s about getting ahead and enjoying the best of life. As Nouwen said, it’s what “the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment.” But it ultimately leads to the kingdom of self, a kingdom that ends in weakness.

But Mark shows us another type of king, another type of strength. It’s a strength that willingly lays aside its rights, the strength of a Savior who’s condemned for our sins so that we can go free.

Mark shows us two types of kings – but only one is a king who saves, and a king who will reign forever.

So Father, help us to see what Jesus did.

He left His Father’s throne above,
So free, so infinite His grace!
Emptied Himself and came in love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race!

And I pray that all of us would trust in that kind of king.

And I pray it would change us, individually and as a church, so that we would lay down our lives for each other. I pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

I’m sure that many of us have enjoyed the Olympics over the past two weeks. We all know that the real event is still to take place later this afternoon. You can enjoy your biathlons and bobsleds and short track speed skating. You can even have your curling, but we all know it’s about the men’s hockey. So today we’ll be glued to our sets seeing who is going to win the gold medal.

I’m not about to predict who is going to win this afternoon, but let me be clear: the team that wins will have both talent and experience. To put it differently, if they passed out skates and sticks to a random group of people here today, I guarantee we would do worse than Latvia, a team that has won no games and has been scored against four times more than they’ve scored. In other words, it’s no accident that teams like the United States and Canada end up near the top. We have the most experience in hockey. We have the deepest pockets of talent.

This may sound like the most obvious observation ever. Except I want to pose a question for you. We’ve been studying the Gospel of Mark, and today we come to a passage in which Jesus is in the Temple. Jesus is in the holiest place. He is at the center of faith and salvation for Jews and Gentiles around the world. Not only that, he is surrounded by the top religious leaders. This is like home ice with the top religious team present. You would think that we would be watching the equivalent of gold medal action as Jesus and the religious leaders talk, that this would be the spiritual equivalent of TED, when they bring some of the top minds in the world to talk about some of the most important ideas going. You would think this would be a thing of beauty.

But instead it’s a train wreck. Last week we saw that Jesus took a look at this center of faith and its leaders and condemned it as lifeless. In this week’s passage we have a series of confrontations between Jesus and these top religious leaders, who have devoted their entire lives to spiritual things. You have four different incidents in which the top religious leaders go after Jesus. And you have Jesus go after them with a story and a question before issuing a warning about the religious leaders.

To go back to hockey, it’s like if the team that practiced most gets worse and worse the harder they try. It’s like Team Canada being beaten by a bunch of five-year-old Timbits. It’s like the higher they go religiously, the further they move away from God.

This isn’t just an academic question, because there are a lot of us here this morning who are not quite at the level of these religious leaders, but we are pretty religious. This passage is a little like a warning label that comes with a prescription: side-effects of religion include the danger that you drift further and further away from Jesus until you’re opposed to him and he condemns you as spiritually dead.

Because we face this danger, I’d like to ask you to look with me at a story Jesus tells us that will help us understand the danger we face. The story comes in four parts. Not only does it help us understand why religious people end up far from God, it also helps us understand the whole story of Scripture and where we fit into it.

So let’s look at each of the four parts, beginning with part one.

Part One: The Vineyard

Mark 12:1 says:

Jesus then began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place.”

The story begins with a vineyard. It’s a great picture, because the people Jesus was addressing would have been familiar with vineyards, and even though we’re not exactly vineyard folk we can picture what this would have been like.

If you’ve done any gardening, you know the kind of work that it takes to turn a piece of land into something productive and beautiful. It takes planning, and then it takes work. Some of us know the opposite. We know it’s not hard to go the other direction: to take something that was a thing of beauty and see it degrade into a wild patch of weeds.

The picture you get in this passage is of a vineyard that has received a great deal of care and attention from the landowner. This was a new vineyard, so it would take at least four years of work before a crop could even be harvested. It’s a vineyard that has a wall, a pit, a winepress, and a watchtower. The owner has gone to a lot of work. He’s invested a lot in this project.

And then he does what was common in those days. He rents out the vineyard to workers who will care for it in his absence. The workers won’t own it; they will simply rent it. The price of rent would be some of the produce from this vineyard.

If you were one of Jesus’ listeners, you may have remembered a similar image from Isaiah 5:

I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.
He dug it up and cleared it of stones

and planted it with the choicest vines.

He built a watchtower in it

and cut out a winepress as well.
(Isaiah 5:1-2)

What is this about? The vineyard is an image for God’s people, Israel. It is, the Bible tells us, the object of his love and care. God has invested heavily, providing everything that his people need. If you look through Scripture in Genesis, you see that once sin enters the world things go downhill. Everything you can think of happens. It’s like a garden gone wild. It’s all in a state of chaos. But in the middle of that mess God promises Abraham:

I will make you into a great nation,

and I will bless you;

I will make your name great,

and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,

and whoever curses you I will curse;

and all peoples on earth

will be blessed through you.
(Genesis 12:2-3)

God keeps this promise, building and preserving a nation, and delivering them from Egypt, leading them into their land. So you have a beautiful picture here of all that God has done to prepare for his people. It’s a care that extends to this day as well, to everyone who here who has heard the gospel and trusted in Christ’s name. God has lavished his care on every one of us.

Part Two: Rebellion

But, Jesus explains, things don’t go well. You get the most of the Old Testament, right to Jesus’ day, summarized in verses 2 to 5:

At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.

Despite all that the owner has done, these people do not respond out of gratitude, nor do they keep their commitments. Instead, there’s a flat-out rebellion against the owner and his messengers. He keeps sending more and more messengers, and things get even worse. They start by beating but pretty soon they’re killing the messengers.

Again, it reminds us of Isaiah 5:

Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,

but it yielded only bad fruit.
“Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah,

judge between me and my vineyard.
What more could have been done for my vineyard

than I have done for it?

When I looked for good grapes,

why did it yield only bad?
(Isaiah 5:2-4)

What is this about? Throughout the Old Testament, God had sent prophet after prophet to his people to remind them of the covenant, and to call them back to faithfulness. The people kept ignoring the prophets, and things kept getting worse and worse. The prophet Jeremiah put it this way:

From the time your ancestors left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again I sent you my servants the prophets. But they did not listen to me or pay attention. They were stiff-necked and did more evil than their ancestors. (Jeremiah 7:25-26)

Some of the prophets were killed, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, and Amos. The most recent prophet to have been sent and killed was John the Baptist. Jesus had just finished talking about him before telling this story.

What Jesus is saying is that God’s people have a long history of rebellion, of ignoring his prophets. The religious leaders in the temple stood in a long line of people who had rebelled against God. We stand in the same tradition today. One hymn says that we’re prone to wander, prone to leave the God we love. This begins to help us understand where the religious leaders of Jesus day went wrong – and where we can go wrong as well.

Part Three: Rejecting the Son

The story in Isaiah ends at this point. It ends on an awful note.

Now I will tell you

what I am going to do to my vineyard:

I will take away its hedge,

and it will be destroyed;

I will break down its wall,

and it will be trampled.
I will make it a wasteland,

neither pruned nor cultivated,

and briers and thorns will grow there.

I will command the clouds

not to rain on it.
(Isaiah 5:5-6)

Isaiah is talking about foreign invasion here, and national destruction for the nation of Israel.

But Jesus’ story continues, and it takes a shocking turn.

“He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’

“But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. (Mark 12:6-8)

What kind of father would risk sending his own son to these rebels after what they had done to all of the previous messengers?

And that’s exactly the point. God is that kind of owner. At incredible risk, God makes one final effort, one final appeal to his people. God does not give up on his people. He sends his own Son to them at the risk of his life.

But it’s not just at the risk of the Son’s life. It’s at the cost of that life. Because, as Jesus tells the story, they plot against that his life and take it, and throw the body out of the vineyard. They don’t even give the body the dignity of a proper burial.

This puts the arguments in Mark 11 and 12 in a completely different light. The religious leaders question Jesus’ authority. They ask questions to try to catch Jesus in a trap. They give the appearance of having theological issues with Jesus. But those are a smokescreen for the real issue. The real issue is that they have long been in rebellion against God, and now they are plotting to take the life of God’s very Son.

Mark is telling us that it’s possible to be religious, to even be at the top of the religious heap – gold medalists – and to be in direct opposition to God. It’s possible to be very spiritual, and yet oppose God.

And yet this passage tells us that God goes to every length to rectify the situation, going so far as to send his only Son, even at the risk of his Son’s life.

Part Four: Judgment and Hope

The story ends in this passage – and for us as well this morning – on a dual note. There is a note of judgment as this story ends. “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others” (Mark 12:9). To put it as simply as possible, to reject Jesus is to choose judgment. This is a horrible thing. To reject Jesus is to choose judgment.

But there’s a stunning twist. Jesus says, “He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” There are going to be new tenants, new beneficiaries of his care. Jesus then quotes a passage of Scripture that is often quoted about Jesus from this point on. It’s apparently about a stone that was rejected as unsuitable as they were building the temple. Yet this very stone, originally rejected, ended up becoming the cornerstone. The one rejected ends up becoming the most important of all.

Haven’t you read this passage of Scripture:

”‘The stone the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
(Mark 12:10-11)

Jesus is saying that even his rejection and upcoming death accomplishes God’s purposes. Jesus’ rejection was foreseen, and God will even use that to bring glory to himself.

Do you see: Jesus is saying that even the most spiritual people, the most faithful attenders of church, can end up as enemies of God. But God has sent his own Son at the cost of that Son’s life so that he could lavish his care on us. To reject Jesus is to choose judgment; to put our trust in Jesus is to receive all of his blessings.

This passage is depressing, because the spiritual gold medalists end up losing not only the game, but everything. But this chapter is encouraging because it ends with two people who unexpectedly seem to get it. One is a religious leader. Jesus says he’s not far from the kingdom. There’s hope even for the religious! The other is the least likely person of all, not a spiritual gold medalist, but a widow who gives everything – literally in the Greek, who gives her whole life, just like Jesus has done for us.

If you’re a spiritual gold medalist, be warned. You’re in danger. But there’s hope for the most unlikely of people. There’s hope for you.

This morning’s passage is one that’s important on many levels. It’s got layers. It’s like one of those movies that has a plot, but underneath the plot are all these layers of meaning, and the more you look the more you see. It’s got surprises. Just when you think it’s going one way, it goes another. It’s puzzling at parts. This is a passage that gets under your skin.

But when you look at this passage you encounter a message that is just as important for us today as it was for the people who are in this story. The more I looked at this passage, the more I realized that it’s exactly what I need, and what you need as well.

So let me try to lead you to understand the two things that this passage is showing us. And then let me spend just a few minutes applying this to us today, and then we’re done.

The Coming of the Deliverer-King

If you’ve been with us so far as we’ve been going through Mark, you know that the tension has been building. Jesus has told his disciples:

“We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.” (Mark 10:33-34)

You can picture what it would have been like for Jesus and the disciples as they join the massive crowds on the way to Jerusalem. They knew that things were coming to a head. Up until now Jesus had been avoiding confrontation with the religious leaders. Now he was heading right towards a head-on collision with them that would cost him his life.

So picture them as they travel from Jericho to Jerusalem. It was mandatory for all male Jews to go up to Jerusalem for the feasts of Pentecost, Tabernacles and Passover. Passover was the most popular. The population of Jerusalem tripled in size. You would have been with tens of thousands of people walking to Jerusalem to celebrate that God miraculously delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt.

Jericho is the lowest city on earth, 800 feet below sea level. Jerusalem is only about a dozen miles away, but is nearly 3,000 feet above sea level. The road goes through a hot, dry desert. Suddenly, as you approach Jerusalem, you would see the first signs of vegetation and the glorious sight of Jerusalem itself. You would see the temple – the place where God had chosen to place his name and present, where he assured Israel of forgiveness. The pilgrims would be singing the songs of ascent from the Psalms. The whole experience would take your breath away.

As Jesus and his disciples experience this, something strange happens. The entire book of Mark, Jesus has never gone anywhere except on his own two feet or in a boat. He’s walked everywhere, except on water – well, even then he’s walked sometimes. But here he asks his disciples to get a colt, a young donkey, on which nobody has ever sat. As he approaches Jerusalem, the crowds spread their cloaks on the road. What’s that about? In 2 Kings 9, Jehu is made king over Israel, and we read, “They quickly took their cloaks and spread them under him on the bare steps. Then they blew the trumpet and shouted, ‘Jehu is king!’” (2 Kings 9:13). You don’t throw cloaks on the dusty, stony road for just anyone. You do it for royalty.

They’re also spreading branches and singing, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” (Mark 11:10). Palm branches were a symbol of Jewish nationality and victory. Two hundred years before, Judas Maccabaeus defeated a Syrian king. He entered Jerusalem and cleansed and rebuilt the Temple. The people waved ivy and palm branches and sang hymns of praise. Judas started a royal dynasty that lasted a hundred years.

Put this all together. Jesus’ followers believe that he is the true and rightful king of Israel, come to Jerusalem to be seen as such. It’s the time of the Passover, the time of hope and remembrance of freedom. As Jesus arrives, Mark is screaming for us to realize the significance of what’s happening. To really understand, you have to know what the prophet Zechariah had predicted five hundred years earlier. Zechariah had written:

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and having salvation,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will take away the chariots from Ephraim

and the warhorses from Jerusalem,

and the battle bow will be broken.

He will proclaim peace to the nations.

His rule will extend from sea to sea

and from the River to the ends of the earth.
(Zechariah 9:9-10)

The promised deliverer-king is finally coming to Jerusalem. Psalm 72 said of him:

May he rule from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
May all kings bow down to him

and all nations serve him.
For he will deliver the needy who cry out,

the afflicted who have no one to help.
He will take pity on the weak and the needy

and save the needy from death.
May his name endure forever;
may it continue as long as the sun.
Then all nations will be blessed through him,
and they will call him blessed.
(Psalm 72:8, 11-13, 17)

Mark has been asking us to consider the question, “Who is Jesus?” Jared Wilson writes:

No man is probably more misunderstood than Jesus…We’ve spent decades selling a Jesus cast in our own image…The quasi-Puritan Jesus liked to smack you on the knuckles with a ruler when you got out of line. Later, we received Postcard Jesus – the Coppertoned, blond-haired blank-stare Jesus of the gold-framed portrait, a bland two-dimensional portrait occupying moral tales that help us to be better people. This flat portrait evolved into a Get-Out-of-Hell-Free Jesus, and this Jesus has inspired millions to say a prayer to get his forgiveness – and then go on living lives devoid of his presence….Today we have an amalgamation of all – and more – of these Jesuses running rampant in the world and in the church…We’ve settled for the glossy portrait. We’ve used him, made him into types and stereotypes, taken his message out of context and made it about being a better person or being cool or helping us to help ourselves. (Your Jesus Is Too Safe)

Nobody is more misunderstood than Jesus. This morning’s passage is helping us to understand who Jesus is. He is more than a great teacher. He’s not just someone who was especially in tune with God’s presence and power. He is more than just our personal Lord and Savior. He is the long-promised king, the hope of the ages, the king who arrives to reign over the entire earth. That’s the first thing Mark is telling us in this passage. Jesus is the promised deliverer-king.

Before Peace, Judgment

But the second thing Mark tells us is that Jesus is not the king we would expect. They arrive in Jerusalem, and Jesus looks around at the temple. What happens? “He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve” (Mark 11:11). Talk about anticlimax. The tension has been building. You expect something to happen. And then this? It’s baffling.

Then there’s this incident with the fig tree. This fig tree has given people trouble for years. Jesus sees a fig tree from a distance. He goes to see if there’s any fruit on it. It’s not the time for fruit, but he curses it anyway, and the next day it’s withered. At first glance it looks like Jesus is being unreasonable and petulant. It’s the only miracle in the gospels in which Jesus brings death instead of life. What do you make of the fig tree?

And then Jesus goes into the temple and drives out the moneychangers and those who sell pigeons. What’s that about? It’s been misunderstood for years. People often think that it’s about selling things in the church, which I think misses the point of what’s really going on here.

This all looks baffling at first – until you understand what’s really happening here. The prophet Malachi had written:

“I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty.

But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years. (Malachi 3:1-4)

What was Malachi saying? Israel had expected that when the Lord came, it would be good news. Malachi said that God would indeed appear in the temple one day, but not only in blessing. He would come in judgment. “Who can endure the day of his coming?” he asks. When the Lord comes to his temple, Malachi said that he would purify and he would judge.

In the passage we’ve been looking at this morning, the Lord has come to his temple. He came not as a pilgrim but as the sovereign Lord who suddenly comes to his temple. He looks examines it as one who has come to purify and to judge.

What about the fig tree? What’s that about? The key to understanding this is to realize that it’s actually not about the fig tree at all. It’s an enacted parable. Mark places it before and after he judges the temple so he can explain what’s actually happening here.

You see, it wasn’t the season for fruit. But as the leaves appear, there are usually small green figs forming as well that you can eat. This tree had all the appearance of having fruit despite it being early. Yet it as all an empty show. This was a fruitless, barren tree. It had all the appearance of health not no real fruit. Do you see what Jesus is saying? It was a visual parable for the temple: lots of activity, and the appearance of life, with no substance. The fig tree is all about Jesus appearing in the temple, and judging it as lifeless. Jesus arrives at the promised deliverer-king. But before he brings peace, he brings judgment.

The temple was a busy place. At Passover there would have been thousands of people there. There would be hundreds of tables to sell animals for the sacrifices, and hundreds of moneychangers. The historian Josephus tells us that in one Passover week one year, 255,000 lambs were bought, sold, and sacrificed. You know the financial trading floors, how loud and busy and chaotic they used to be? They were probably nothing compared to the temple during the week of Passover.

The temple was at the very center of their national faith and identity. It represented the very presence of God. It went to the very heart of their relationship with God. Jesus looks at it as the long-awaited king and sees that it looks alive, but it’s diseased and blighted. The place of prayer for Gentiles had become anything but that. It was, Jesus said, “a den of robbers.” He’s quoting from Jeremiah 7 there. It’s really not about the buying and selling that was taking place. He’s quoting from a passage that talks about the mindset that you can:

…steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”–safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 7:9-11)

Jesus pronounces judgment on the temple as he curses the fig tree, and when he overturns tables he’s again pronouncing judgment. As Malachi said, “Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple…But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears?”

If this is the case, it’s very depressing. I hope we understand today who Jesus is. He’s the king, the Messiah, the one who comes to rule the whole earth, to bless the nations, to deliver the needy. But he doesn’t come only as the deliverer-king. He also comes to purify and to judge. He finds lots of religious activity, but no life. Where is the hope in all of this?

The hope for us is found in the last few verses of this passage:

“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you say will happen, it will be done for you. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:22-24)

What is this? Is Jesus switching subjects and giving a lesson on prayer? No. Actually, Jesus has just pronounced judgment on the Temple. The prayer that should be happening there isn’t. It’s no longer going to be the locus of prayer. In just a few short years it’s going to be destroyed.

But Jesus envisioned a future without a temple. In its place would be a new praying community. Instead of only the appearance of life, this praying community would demonstrate mountain-moving faith centered on Jesus, who became the new and better temple and the sacrifice for our sins.

Have you seen Jesus as the promised deliverer-king? Have you realized that he sees through our religious appearances; that all our busyness and activity can’t hide the lack of true spiritual life? “But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears?” Only those who are part of this praying community, who understand that the sacrifice Malachi talked about – “Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years” – that this sacrifice is Jesus himself.

There are lots of reasons that people struggle with Christianity. I talk to lots of people who have all kinds of objections. How could a loving God send people to hell? If God is good and powerful, why is there so much evil in the world? Doesn’t science disprove Christianity? How can Christianity claim to be universal truth? And why are Christians such hypocrites?

These are important questions, and they need to be answered. But although they are important, they are not the most important question about Christianity. The main question we have to answer is: Did Jesus really rise from the dead? If he did, then that’s enough to change our worlds and sideline all the secondary issues. If Jesus rose from the dead, then we have to accept all that he said. But if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then who cares about any of the other issues about Christianity? The issue upon which everything hangs is whether or not Jesus rose from the dead. If he did, it changes everything. If he didn’t, then you don’t have to worry about the rest. We can live our lives however we want without worrying what the Bible says.

So today, we really have to pay attention to what the Bible says happened that first Easter Sunday. The resurrection is the ultimate vindication of who Jesus is and everything that he said. The resurrection, if true, means that there is a God, and that he as acted in history. It means that we no longer have to be afraid of anything. If Jesus did rise from the dead, it changes everything. So a lot rides on what really happened.

But we have to be honest. It’s not so easy to believe in a resurrection. And it’s exactly here that today’s passage is going to help us. What this passage tells us is that it wasn’t so easy to believe in a resurrection then either. In fact, some of us are going to really relate to the two people that we encounter in this passage.

So what I want to look at this morning is simply three things: first, at our doubts about the resurrection; secondly, at how these doubts can be resolved; and finally, the difference that it makes.

Let’s first look at our doubts about the resurrection.

We sometimes have the crazy view that we are modern, scientific people, and therefore we are a lot more levelheaded than anyone else who’s lived before us. C.S. Lewis called this chronological snobbery: the belief that the thinking of an earlier time is inherently inferior when compared to that of the present. But one of the things I love about Scripture is that there is every bit as much skepticism about the resurrection as there is today. It isn’t just modern, scientific people who struggle with the idea of resurrections. The people in Scripture struggled every bit as much as we do today. They had the same doubts about the resurrection that we do.

There were dozens of accounts of what are called post-resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ. But out of all the ones that Luke could have chosen to describe, Luke chooses three. And what all three have in common is disbelief. They know something has happened, but they are having a hard time making all the pieces fit. And they are certainly not ready to just believe that Jesus has risen from the dead. It’s as hard for them to accept as it is for the most skeptical person here this morning. And these are his followers, his disciples!

So in verse 14 we meet two of his disciples. We learn later, in verse 18, that one of them is named Cleopas. We have no idea who the other person is, although some guess that it could have been his wife. If you’re the skeptical type, you’ve got to pause here and ask why Luke mentions the name Cleopas. There’s no real need for him to be named. There’s an answer that really helps me. This was a rare name, and it’s so rare that Luke is essentially giving us a footnote, so that the original readers can check the original source and verify the story. If you lived in Luke’s day, and you wanted to, you could look up Cleopas yourself and verify that what Luke wrote was true.

So we get to verses 13 and 14, and we see that these two are walking to a place called Emmaus, and while they’re traveling they’re discussing all that happened in Jerusalem that Passover weekend. We learn what they were discussing in verses 20 to 24: about the crucifixion of Jesus; how their hopes had been shattered; how they had heard of the empty tomb, but were having a hard time coming up with a logical explanation for it. Again, we have to stop and recognize that this was big news. They said in verse 18 to this stranger who walks with them: “Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?” This was not something that a small group of people knew about. The crucifixion and even the empty tomb were big news, so much so that some 25 years later, the apostle Paul could stand before King Agrippa, the ruler over the temple in Jerusalem, and say, “The king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner” (Acts 26:26). Agrippa didn’t deny that he knew. He actually made an attempt at a joke to try to change the subject. And this was 25 years later. People knew the basic facts; the challenge was how to make sense of them.

So as you read about these two disciples who were on their way to Emmaus, you see that they’re trying to make sense of things too. They were shattered. Even though they had heard about the empty tomb, they couldn’t explain it. Don’t miss the fact that they’re leaving Jerusalem; they’re not sticking around with any sort of hope that something world-changing has happened. They’re going home. Verse 15 says that they’re talking and discussing. There’s a bit of a debate going on. They’re trying to make sense of everything that’s happened.

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed before, but when this stranger appears and asks them what they’re talking about, verse 17 says, “They stood still, their faces downcast.” They’re not having a discussion like we have about how Cito is doing as manager, or what the Leafs need to do to rebuild. This is something that’s really hit them. They had hopes for this Jesus, and their hopes had been crushed. And even though they had heard about the empty tomb, they weren’t ready to believe that this could mean Jesus was alive again. They had doubts. They couldn’t make sense of it all.

I think it’s significant that Luke chose three stories about the resurrection, and all of them are about doubt. The Bible is not sentimental at all. It’s not telling us some fairy tale that we’re expected to just swallow, or some story that is not literally true but that warms our hearts. What it’s saying is that it is hard to believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ actually happened. If you find it hard to swallow, you’re in pretty good company. So did everyone else who heard the news that Easter morning.

But something happened to change their doubts. So let’s look at that. We’ve seen their doubts.

Now secondly, let’s look at how these doubts were resolved.

Now everybody is different, and the fact that we have three stories here means that there is going to be more than one way to respond. It means that our stories are going to be different. But out of the three accounts, this one just may be the most meaningful to us today. What happened in the other two accounts will never happen to us. We’ll never stand by the empty tomb and see angels. We’ll never see the resurrected Jesus suddenly appear in a room with us like the disciples did. But what happened to these two followers can, in some sense, happen to us today.

So what happened that moved them from disillusionment and doubt to belief? Jesus appeared to them on the road, even though they didn’t recognize him. That’s the part that won’t happen to us today. But two things happened with these disciples that moved them from disillusionment to belief and joy, and these same two things can and do happen today. In fact, it’s my prayer that they will happen this morning.

First, they came to a new understanding of Scripture. You know, these two disciples had the same problem that we do. They read the Bible, and they had formed certain beliefs about the Messiah. Jesus had fit their beliefs until he died. Their problem is that they had read selectively, but they had never understood fully who the Messiah was going to be and what he was going to do. They didn’t have a category for a suffering Messiah. This is why Jesus said to them in verses 25 and 26, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

Aren’t you glad that we’re better than they were? Actually, we’re not. One of our problems is that most of us have read the Scriptures, and we’ve found the parts that we like about Jesus, but then we leave out the rest. We have this tendency to domesticate Jesus, and the problem is that Jesus doesn’t fit the boxes that we try to fit him into.

So Jesus does something that helps these two, and it can help us as well. Verse 27 says, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” Jesus helped them see that the whole Bible, from start to finish, is about him. The storyline of all of Scripture – indeed, all of history – converge in Jesus Christ. Every page of the Bible is about him – not just the explicit prophecies, but much more. The historical patterns, the promises, symbols, blessings and curses, the pictures of salvation, the shadows and types, the ceremonies – all of them point to Jesus. He’s on every page of every Scripture.

So Jesus that day may have covered some of what we’ve been covering. He may have talked about Abraham, who led his son up Mount Moriah to die, just as God led his one and only Son up the same mountain. He may have talked about the Passover, and how that pointed forward to himself as the true Passover Lamb. He may have talked about the rock that was hit in judgment by Moses in the desert as a picture of what happened when Jesus was struck in judgment on behalf of his people on the cross. He may have talked about the serpent being lifted up in the wilderness, and about David’s victory over Goliath as a signpost pointing to Jesus’ victory as our representative over death and sin. Every page – the ceremonies, the stories, the psalms, the prophecies – point to him.

When these two looked back on what Jesus taught them about Scripture, they said in verse 32, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” Something happened within them as they began to see Jesus on every page of Scripture. The same thing happens today. When we stop seeing Scripture as a set of unrelated stories, or a set of fables and examples almost like Aesop’s Fables, and when we start to see Scripture as about Jesus Christ, something begins to happen within us. Our hearts begin to burn. We begin to see Jesus not in the little box we’ve created for him, but as the climax of all of Scripture, the resolution of every storyline, and the revelation of all of Scripture.

Something else happened to turn them from doubt to belief and joy. Verses 30 and 31 say, “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.” We don’t know what exactly happened when Jesus broke the bread – more on that in a minute – but somehow, something changed. All of a sudden they saw things they hadn’t seen before. In verse 16 it says that they were kept from recognizing him, but all of that changed now. Their eyes were opened.

You may say, “That’s not very useful to me. That’s something they had no control over. It happened to them.” And you’d be both wrong and right. I’ve been reading a short biography of Jonathan Edwards, a brilliant theologian and philosopher who lived in the 1700s. He lived during a new era of scientific progress in which people were leaving Christianity behind. He wrestled with it. He wanted to believe, but he couldn’t seem to overcome his doubts. But one day he found that the certainty and clarity that he had been searching for was there. One day God gave him the spiritual eyesight, just like he gave these two disciples, and it changed everything.

If you are wrestling and seeking, then this is evidence that God is already at work. He’s already opening your eyes. You may feel like you’re all alone, but like these two disciples, you may not realize until later that Jesus has met you on the road of doubt, and he’s already walking with you. If you seek, you will find. God has to give you the gift of spiritual eyesight, but he meets us, and he gives it to those who search for it.

Well, we’ve seen the doubt, and we can relate to it. We’ve seen what changed them: that they began to see that all of Scripture points to Christ, and that they were given spiritual eyesight to see what they couldn’t see before, just like God gave spiritual eyesight to Jonathan Edwards and to all those who seek him.

As we close, I want to look at the results.

As we close, I want to look at the difference it makes when we move from doubt to belief about Jesus, and about the resurrection.

At the surface level, it’s clear that this made a huge difference. We read in verses 33 and 34 that they had certainty, so much so that even though they had settled for the night, they got up right away and made the round trip to Jerusalem.

But there’s something else that happened that’s a little below the surface. Do you remember when their eyes were opened? Verse 35 says, “Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.” Why did they recognize him in the breaking of the bread?

There are three times that Jesus broke bread in the book of Luke: one when he fed the five thousand; one when he broke the Passover bread for what we now call The Lord’s Supper; and here. Scholars who have studied Luke have identified a major theme that develops in the book of Luke: that of a Messianic banquet. In Isaiah 25, the prophet had said:

On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine–
the best of meats and the finest of wines….
On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The LORD has spoken.
In that day they will say,
“Surely this is our God;
we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the LORD, we trusted in him;
let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”
(Isaiah 25:6-9)

Luke keeps pointing us to this Messianic banquet, in which God defeats sin and death, saves his people, and feeds us with the best food and wine. And when Luke says that they recognized Jesus as he broke the bread, I think he’s pointing us to this theme again. He’s saying that these two doubters became guests at the Messianic banquet that God has prepared for us, in which God triumphs, evil is defeated, and the world is set right.

We’re coming this morning to our own foretaste of the Messianic banquet. The food we’re about to eat is a pointer to that day when we say, “Surely this is our God;

we trusted in him, and he saved us.” God still welcomes people who’ve been on the road of disillusionment and doubt to meet him at this table and feast with him.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you that Jesus met these two doubters in the middle of their doubt. I thank you that before they even knew it, Jesus was with them, teaching them and us that all of Scripture is about him. I thank you that you opened their eyes.

I pray today that you would open our eyes. I pray that we would see all the story-lines and symbols of Scripture converge in Christ. I pray that you would allow us to see the risen Christ as someone who changes everything. And as a result, I pray that you would allow us the privilege of feasting at your table with you this morning, and fill us with hope that we will dine at the coming banquet you’re preparing for us. Grant us this I pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

When you go to a doctor, or when you go to a pharmacist, you will probably see a symbol with one or two snakes wrapped around a staff or a rod. One of these symbols is called the Rod of Asclepius. It’s used by the Canadian Medical Association, the World Health Organization, and countless others.

Where did this strange symbol come from, and how did it ever get to be associated with medicine, with healing? There are a few theories, but you’ll notice that the account we just read includes a snake, a staff, and healing. There are some who think that the medical symbol we used today has its origins in the account that we just read.

But this raises even more questions. What in the world is this passage about? It’s incredibly strange. At first glance it looks like some primitive magic from ancient times. It also looks at first glance like there’s a drastic overreaction to a pretty common problem. There are many passages in Scripture that are hard to understand. This one’s easy to understand, but it leaves us scratching our heads.

But as we look at it again, we’re going to see that this passage tells us three things that we need to know. First, what’s wrong with us. Second, where things start to turn. And finally, how we are healed of what’s wrong with us.

So first let’s look at what’s wrong with us.

If you’ve read the books of the Bible that recount the wanderings of Israel on the way to the Promised Land, you know that it wasn’t smooth sailing. They kept grumbling and complaining the whole way through. But when we get to Numbers 21, we’ve reached a turning point. Right before the passage we just read, Israel defeats a Canaanite king. This is the first victory over the Canaanites, and many more are going to follow. It really looks like things are finally turning around for them.

But some things don’t change. In verse 5, we encounter a problem that stayed with the people of Israel, and that if we’re honest it stays with us today. Verses 4 and 5 say:

But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”

Now what’s going on here? When Israel wandered through the dessert, there obviously wasn’t a lot of food. But we read earlier that God miraculously provided for them. Every day he gave them what they called manna, which was a fine, flake-like frost. It was like a coriander seed, white, and it tasted like a wafer made with honey. They ground into a meal, boiled it in pots, and made it into cakes.

When you think about it, it’s amazing and miraculous that God provided so well for such a great multitude in the middle of the dessert. But here we read that the people are impatient. And if you notice, they don’t really complain that they’re hungry or that they lack food. What they do say is that they “detest this miserable food.” The manna that God provided for them, they begin to see as worthless, good for nothing, and miserable.

Now, that doesn’t look like much, but that’s probably because we suffer from the same problem that they had. It’s a problem that really doesn’t look too serious, but as we’re going to see in a moment, it’s fatal, and there are very few cures.

What is the problem? Do you notice when this sense of dissatisfaction hit? It hit right after a victory. Israel had just achieved a great success, and right after they’re complaining. They’re empty.

The New York Times ran an article of some successful people. One of them, Diane Knorr, a former dot-com executive, said, “The first time I got a call way after hours from a senior manager, I remember being really flattered.” She thought, “Wow! I’m really getting up there now.” But eventually her work and family life became a blur with hours that were hard to scale back. Back in college, she had set the goal of making a six-figure salary by the time she was 49. She had reached her goal at age 35, years ahead of schedule, and yet she said, “Nothing happened; no balloons dropped. That’s when I really became aware of that hollow feeling.”

Do you know the problem with us? Inside of us, there is this hunger, this longing. And we think, “If I just get this” – a marriage, a job, children, an achievement, this house, this car, recognition – “If I just get this, then I’ll be satisfied.” But it never happens. We reach our goals, we achieve success, but we’re still left wanting more.

Brad Pitt starred in Fight Club, which is about a man who has the American dream and yet remains unsatisfied. Rolling Stone interviewed him. Listen to what Pitt said:

Man, I know all these things are supposed to seem important to us–the car, the condo, our version of success–but if that’s the case, why is the general feeling out there reflecting more impotence and isolation and desperation and loneliness? If you ask me, I say toss all this–we gotta find something else. Because all I know is that at this point in time, we are heading for a dead end, a numbing of the soul, a complete atrophy of the spiritual being. And I don’t want that.

Rolling Stone asked him what we should do to avoid this dead end of dissatisfaction despite all that we have, and he said:

Hey, man, I don’t have those answers yet. The emphasis now is on success and personal gain. I’m sitting in it, and I’m telling you, that’s not it. I’m the guy who’s got everything. I know. But I’m telling you, once you’ve got everything, then you’re just left with yourself. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it doesn’t help you sleep any better, and you don’t wake up any better because of it.

This isn’t a new problem. It goes as far back as Genesis 3. Adam and Eve were in paradise. Everything was good. They could enjoy everything – everything! – except for one tree that God placed off limits. And even though they were in paradise, it wasn’t good enough for them because they wanted more. They wanted what they couldn’t have. They got it, too, but instead of leading to satisfaction, it led to disaster and disintegration, and the world has never been the same since.

In fact, the apostle Paul says that this dynamic is at the heart of what we call sin. In Romans 1:21 he says, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Sin is essentially looking to other things besides God for meaning and satisfaction, thereby rejecting God and refusing to give thanks to him. And the results, as we’re going to see it, are disastrous. One author put it this way:

It is the desire for God which is the most fundamental appetite of all, and it is an appetite we can never eliminate. We may seek to disown it, but it will not go away. If we deny that it is there, we shall in fact only divert it to some other object or range of objects. And that will mean that we invest some creature or creatures with the full burden of our need for God, a burden which no creature can carry. (Simon Tugwell)

And this leads, ultimately, to not only a rejection of God, but to enslavement and deep dissatisfaction. You see this in what happened in response to this problem in the passage.

Some have wondered why God responded so severely to this problem. We read in verse 6: “Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died.” The word venomous literally means fiery. The snakes would bite, and the result was this burning inflammation. This would probably lead to other symptoms – paralysis, blindness, thirst – and ultimately to death. Why so severe? Tim Keller has pointed out that the physical symptoms here are merely a mirror for the spiritual symptoms. When we’re bitten by this dissatisfaction of the heart, a dissatisfaction that is ultimately a rejection of God, a very similar thing happens within our souls, and the ultimate result is death. We think it’s not a big deal, but our spiritual condition is just as fatal as these snakes.

So what do we do, then? We’ve seen our condition, and how serious it is.

Let’s now look at where things begin to turn.

We read in verse 7:

The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.

You see what’s happened here? One minute they’re complaining. The next moment, they’ve realized what they’ve done wrong. There’s no blame-shifting going on here. There are no excuses. What there is is a simple confession of sin, a recognition of what’s gone wrong.

The biblical word for this is repentance. One of my favorite authors, Jack Miller, says that repentance is a form of sanity. He says that “Repentance is a return to God as my center…What a simple thing it is to humble the heart and return to sanity by repentance and praise.”

We know that repentance itself is a gift of God. It may be that God is giving some of you this gift this morning. Most of us are scared to death of repentance. We have this picture of a traumatic experience, or some dramatic experience. Repentance is something we think we’re going to hate. But repentance is actually just a return to sanity, a recognition that we’ve put other things at the center of our lives that just don’t belong there, and that can kill us. Repentance is coming to our senses and returning to God as our centers, which leads us to the cure for our disease.

That’s the last thing I want to look at this morning: the cure for what’s wrong with us, or how we can be healed.

Verses 8 and 9 say:

The LORD said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

This is the last thing you’d expect. Shouldn’t there be some medicine, some treatment? When you’re being bitten by venomous snakes, the last thing that you want is to look at a bronze version of that snake. And you certainly wouldn’t expect that this would save you! You would at least expect a list of things to do in order to get better. But here you have the simple cure: that anyone who is bitten and about to die can simply look to this bronze snake, and they live.

The poet and composer Michael Card wrote a song about this passage, and he got it right when he said, “the symbol of their suffering was now the focus of their faith, and with a faithful glance the healing power would flow.” What does this mean? It’s a paradox! They’re saved by looking at the very embodiment of what had bitten them.

And that’s exactly how we are saved as well. In one of the most famous passages of Scripture, Jesus explained to Nicodemus and to us what why he came to the world. And, amazingly, Jesus talked about this snake. Listen to what he said: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” (John 3:14-15).

Do you see what Jesus was saying here? Three times in the book of John, this phrase “lifted up” appears. John tells us later in chapter 12 that this “lifting up” image was given to show us “the kind of death he was going to die” (John 12:33). In other words, Jesus was saying that he was like this bronze serpent. That’s shocking! He was going to be lifted up and placed on the cross at Calvary, and that everyone who believes and simply looks will be saved.

On the cross, Jesus became the very embodiment of what was killing us. He became the curse; he became the embodiment of our sin; he absorbed the venom. And Jesus became the source of our healing, so that all who look upon him live. When we look at the cross in faith, our sin and God’s wrath are taken away, and we live. We are healed by looking at what has been lifted up on the tree. We are healed by looking to Jesus. All we have to do is to look.

In 1850, Charles Spurgeon was a young 15-year-old boy. One morning he was walking to church in a snowstorm. The snow was so bad that he never made it to his destination. He turned into a little Primitive Methodist chapel. Only a dozen or fifteen people were there.

The minister never showed up at that church; he probably was snowed in. A thin man who was a shoemaker or a tailor, but not a preacher, was called upon to preach. Spurgeon describes what happened:

He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth [Isaiah 45:22].”

He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text. The preacher began thus: “My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, ‘Look.’ Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pain. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just, ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand [pounds] a year to be able to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look.

“But then the text says, ‘Look unto Me’. . . . Many of ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. Ye will never find any comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the father. No, look to him by-and-by. Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Some of ye say, ‘We must wait for the Spirit’s workin’.’ You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, ‘Look unto Me.’”

At some point in the sermon, with only a small congregation present, the preacher noticed the young Spurgeon there. Spurgeon said:

Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I dare say, with so few present he knew me to be a stranger. Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart he said, “Young man, you look very miserable.” Well, I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home. He continued, “and you always will be miserable–miserable in life, and miserable in death–if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.”

Then lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a primitive Methodists could do, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but to look and live.” I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said–I did not take much notice of it–I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed, so it was with me.

I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, “Look!” What a charming word it seemed to me! Oh! I looked until I could have almost looked my eyes away.

There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to him…

And Spurgeon’s life was forever changed. Let’s pray.

We’ve seen this morning what’s wrong with us. We’ve seen that it’s far more serious than we expected. But we’ve also seen that things begin to turn as we come to our senses and repent.

And we’ve seen that we are healed as we look to the cross and believe. We have nothing to do but to look and live.

I pray, Father, that we would look to the cross, that we would see what Jesus has done for us in absorbing the venom, and that we would live. Because whenever anyone is bitten and looks at what was lifted up, they live.

May everyone here look to the cross today, and live. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

We’ve just read about one of the most well-known and inspiring events in all of Scripture. Even if you’ve never been to church before, chances are that you’ve heard the story of David and Goliath. It’s a story of fear and courage, of the triumph of the underdog. I did a quick search in Google News this week and found dozens of articles that mention David and Goliath in relationship to sports teams, even about Facebook and Microsoft (the Goliaths) fearing young, upstart companies.

You have to admit that it’s a bit strange talking about David and Goliath on Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday marks the day that Jesus entered Jerusalem on the Sunday before he was killed, and was welcomed as the king who came to save his people. But as we’re going to see today, it’s not that unusual a passage after all.

If you’ve ever been to the eye doctor, they’ve do all kinds of things to you to test your eyesight. And then, near the end, they put this contraption in front of your eyes with different lenses. They make you look through the lenses and they ask you, “Is this one clearer, or this one?” I’m always scared of giving the wrong answer! The result, though, is that they end up finding the lens that allows you to see the chart on the wall most clearly. You may have been living with the wrong prescription for years without even knowing it, and it’s only when you see through a better lens that you realize what you’ve been missing all along.

I’m going to suggest that many of us need a new lens through which we can see the account of David’s defeat of Goliath. The lens we have right now is okay, but we may not be seeing what we’re supposed to be seeing as clearly as we should. So today I’d like to flip some lenses before you and and ask, “Is this clearer, or this one?” And I want to begin with the normal lens through which we normally view this story.

Our Normal Lens: Facing the Giants

You may have seen a movie a couple of years ago called Facing the Giants. The movie is about a football coach and team that has to stare down the giants of fear and failure. He challenges his players to believe God for the impossible on and off the field. It’s a modern day story of facing obstacles that are much bigger than ourselves, and digging down deep to overcome them even though the odds are stacked against us.

This is the lens that I think most of us use when we read the account of David and Goliath. We begin chapter 17 with the Philistines and Israel nose to nose and ready for battle, each on a mountain looking at the other side, and with a valley in the middle. Then you have this fearsome man coming out repeatedly. When I say fearsome, I’m not kidding. His height is reported as 9 feet, 9 inches. Some later versions have been found which say that he was only 6 feet, 9 inches – still tall! This may have been an attempt to tone down the height. This guy is huge!

And not only that, he has other advantages as well. They had a huge advantage in military technology. You read in verses 5 to 7 that he has all of this equipment on: a bronze helmet, a coat of mail, armor on his legs, and a javelin of bronze. The coat of mail alone weighs 125 pounds. The shaft of his spear is compared to “a weaver’s rod.” Some scholars think that this is because the technology in the spear was so new that the Israelites didn’t even have a word for it yet. They had to compare it to something they already new. This was the beginning of the iron age, and the Philistines had an advantage not only in the size of Goliath, but in their military technology as well.

So you can understand why the people of Israel were terrified. Verse 16 tells us that Goliath came out every day, twice a day, for forty days and took his stand, taunting the nation of Israel. And everyone was terrified, including Saul. We read in verse 11 that they were “dismayed and terrified.”

And then David comes along. David is not even supposed to be there. He’s not even in the army. When his brother sees him, he completely dismisses David and why he’s there. But David, the most unlikely of people, refuses to wear Saul’s armor. He refuses to accept that someone is defaming God’s name. Instead, he responds to Goliath’s taunt by promising to defeat Goliath. As he goes out to battle, he cries out: “The whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands” (1 Samuel 17:46-47). And then David kills Goliath with a sling and a stone.

It’s hard not to be moved by what happened. And it’s not hard to look through this lens and make application to our lives. This is the normal Sunday school application of this story. You are going to face giants in your life. You don’t stand a chance against these giants. You’re probably going to be afraid at times. But don’t forget: the bigger they come, the harder they fall. You may not be big and powerful in yourself, but with God on your side, you can face the giants in your life.

I’m going to suggest to you this morning that this lens is letting us see the story at some level, but it’s really not the best lens through which to view the account of David and Goliath. It’s leaving some things blurry that really should be clear, and it’s probably making some things clear that really aren’t even there in the first place.

The flaw in this approach is that it assumes that the author of 1 Samuel 17 gave us this story so that we would emulate the example of David. There is no question that David is worthy of emulation here: he alone acted in faith and trust in God when everyone else reacted in fear and doubt. He alone trusted the promises of God when everyone else chose to see the obstacles as bigger than the promise.

But you have to ask yourself: did the author write this passage to lift David up as a moral example for us to follow, or did he have some other purpose?

The problem with this lens is that we start to read the Bible as a set of moral examples to follow. You start to see the Bible’s message as “God blesses those who live morally exemplary lives.” And this approach starts to make people the hero of the text, rather than God.

David is praiseworthy here, but as we’re going to see in a minute, it’s for a reason. And I can’t be like David. I don’t have the power. If you tell me to walk out of here and “Be like David!” I’ll last until Tuesday at the latest before I fall apart in fear again. Not only this, but this lens obscures the message of the Bible, which isn’t that God blesses those who get their acts together, but that God showers his grace on unworthy people who don’t deserve it, and who let him down over and over again.

I’m not saying that we should throw out this lens completely, but I’m going to suggest that we try another lens to see if it will help us to see this passage more clearly.

The Lens of a Greater King

Let me give you a new lens for a minute. This lens may seem strange at first. It may take a bit of time to get used to, but let’s see how it works.

There are a couple of details that are fairly easy to miss, but that really help us grasp what this passage is really about. The first is the wider context. What in the world was the author trying to prove by giving us this account?

As you look at this passage, you realize that it’s not an isolated account buried among other random events that took place. The author has arranged these skillfully in order to communicate a message.

If you look earlier in 1 Samuel, you see that Israel didn’t have a king. But they began to cry out to God for a king who would reign over them so that they could be like the other nations. God granted their request, but before he did so, he said to his prophet Samuel: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king” (1 Samuel 8:7).

As you read 1 Samuel, you know that God gave Israel their first king. His name was Saul. And he shows some promise early on. It’s not too long, though, before Saul begins to get himself into all kinds of trouble. Saul does things his way instead of humbly obeying God’s commands. And there’s a mounting sense of tension in chapters 13 to 15 as Saul makes one bad decision after another, as he does things his way even if what he does is a complete rejection of God and his ways. It gets so bad that the prophet Samuel eventually said, “Now your kingdom will not endure; the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the LORD’s command” (1 Samuel 13:14). And even later: “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbors–to one better than you” (1 Samuel 15:28).

So there is a sense of mounting tension that God has rejected Saul, and that Israel needs a better king. And then you get to chapter 16, and you discover that God has selected this new and better king. David is anointed as king, but he hasn’t yet taken the throne.

And then you get to the story of what happened with Goliath, and where do you find Saul? Verse 11 says, “On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.” It should have been Saul’s job to accept the challenge on behalf of Israel, but instead he was cowering in fear. And then David comes in and responds, as God’s anointed, in faith and trust in the Lord. See if this lens makes sense. The author is not saying, “All of you should muster the courage you need to face giants.” Instead, he’s saying, “Israel needs a better king.” David is that better king.

But wait. There’s more. There’s another detail that’s easy to miss. Verse 4 says that Goliath is – what? – a champion. What does that mean? In ancient times, rival armies would sometimes agree to let selected individuals from each side decide a conflict. This reduced casualties and other costs. I almost wish we did this today! The two would be called champions, and they would represent all the people. Their victory would be attributed to the whole army, and so would their defeat. For obvious reasons, they would normally pick their strongest person to go to battle.

Back then, many of the cultures believed that the god of each nation would be present in that champion, and that god would go to battle along with the representative. Whichever champion won, that god would be vindicated.

And so David went into battle as a representative of all the people, as their substitute, winning the victory that they couldn’t win for themselves, so that God would be vindicated and the forces of evil defeated. He was their substitute. But you see, David came in weakness. He was so unimpressive that nobody would think God would triumph through him. He went almost as a sacrificial lamb. But God used his apparent weakness to destroy the enemy, and David’s victory was imputed to all of them. David stands in the place of many, and through his obedience God brings salvation to Israel.

If you see the story of this chapter through this lens, things look very different. It’s no longer saying that you need to get your act together so that you take on the giants in your life. Instead, it’s saying that we need a better king. We need someone who can take on the battles that we can’t win, so that his victory becomes our victory. We need him to fight on our behalf as our substitute, and as our champion. We need a king like David. We don’t need to try harder so that we triumph! We need a substitute who will come in weakness and trust, and who will win the victory that we couldn’t win ourselves.

That’s a much better lens through which to view the account of David and Goliath, I think. It’s a bit bewildering at first, only because we’re so used to seeing this account through the other lens. It’s much more in line with the structure of the text, I think. We need God’s anointed king who will triumph and win victory on behalf of his people.

But there’s one more lens that will help us see even more clearly.

The Lens of Jesus Christ

On Palm Sunday, two thousand years ago, an even greater King arrived. We read in Matthew 21 that the crowds that followed him shouted:

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

(Matthew 21:9)

Israel needed a better king, and that king was David. And now an even better king has come, a Son of David, to win the victory that we can’t win ourselves. Jesus comes as our champion, our substitute. God’s anointed king arrives, and although, like David, he appears weak and insignificant, he fights for his people, knowing that the battle is the Lord’s. Jesus is the true and better David. He stands alone as our substitute, the one in place of the many, and through him God wins salvation for his people.

When we see the account of David and Goliath through the lens of Jesus Christ, it’s not about trying harder. It’s about the King who entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and went to the cross in weakness, who triumphed over sin and death in our place, and vindicated God’s name. It’s about God’s anointed king who has triumphed on behalf of his people.

Father, as we enter this week, we’re overwhelmed with what Jesus faced as he entered the streets of Jerusalem that Palm Sunday almost two thousand years ago. He came as a greater King, as a true and better David, to win the victory that we could not win for ourselves.

He came not in strength, but in weakness. But through the weakness of the cross he triumphed over evil, and his victory has become the victory of all who trust in him.

As we enter this week, may we do so seeing Jesus as the true and better David, the one who stood alone in the battle that nobody else could win, and through whom you have brought salvation to your people. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

For the six weeks leading up to Easter, we’re looking at the unfolding mystery of the gospel from the ancient Scriptures. Although we see the good news of what God has done to save us most clearly after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, you see glimpses of this good news throughout all of Scripture. This is why Jesus could turn to two of his followers, open the Hebrew Scriptures, and explain “to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). The Bible is not a collection of unrelated stories and moral lessons. It is, we discover, the revelation of God that ultimately takes us to Jesus.

Today we are looking at a crisis that took place not long after God had rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt. What we’re going to read is going to highlight three things for us: the trial; the sentence reached as a result of this trail; and the ultimate trial and sentence that we’re all a part of.

So let’s first look at the trail.

As we start to look at this passage, we need to remember what’s just happened. God has just delivered his people from the most totalitarian regime of that day and set them free from centuries of slavery. He’s guiding them visibly by going before them as a pillar of cloud during the day, and a pillar of fire at night. When they’ve had nothing to drink except for bitter water, he’s provided sweet water for them. He’s fed them miraculously in the desert so that they never have to worry about having enough food. What they have seen is nothing short of amazing. But as we look at the passage that was just read for us, we see that there is a problem. We have to look a little below the surface to understand how serious this problem became, not just for them, but for us as well.

In verse 1 we read that Israel has moved to Rephidim. We have no idea where Rephidim is anymore, but we can guess that it’s within traveling distance of the last place they camped, which presumably had water, an oasis in the desert. We read the problem at the end of verse 1: “there was no water for the people to drink.” This is a significant problem.

The whole nation of Israel was on the move, up to two million people. They were not in a car driving; they were in the desert walking. And they were not looking for the convenience of a refreshing drink. Their very lives were at stake. Stopping in the middle of the dessert with no water was big trouble. In the middle of Sinai, dehydration would take hours, not days. As soon as their water-skins from the last night were empty, death was certain. So you can understand why the people of Israel were concerned.

So we read in verse 2: “So they quarreled with Moses and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’” Notice that this word keeps coming up in these seven verses. Moses says at the end of verse 2, “Why do you quarrel with me?” In verse 7 we read that Moses renamed the place Massah and Meribah, which means testing and quarreling.

Here’s where we need to understand what’s taking place below the surface. What does this word quarrel mean? It means much more than what your kids do when they’re overtired. It’s more than a spat. The word quarrel here is a legal term describing the launch of a lawsuit. The prophet Micah used the term to describe the lawsuit God brought against Israel for breaking his covenant.

The people of Israel were effectively taking legal action against Moses. The charge was negligence. They say in verse 3, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?” And the penalty, presumably, is that after he is found guilty, Moses will be sentenced to death. That’s what Moses says in verse 4. “Then Moses cried out to the LORD, ‘What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.’” They are all going to die in the desert; Moses may as well be the first to go as the one who has brought them there. This is no case of grumbling; this is a trail on a capital offense.

But the defendant in this case wasn’t just Moses. Ultimately, they’re suing God. Verse 7 says, “And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the LORD saying, ‘Is the LORD among us or not?’”

Here’s the real issue: they are not putting Moses on trial; they are putting God on trial. God had provided for them over and over. He had cared for them in miraculous ways. And yet they’ve put God on trail, charging him with negligence on a mass scale. And the penalty, at least for Moses, is death.

We need to understand what this his incident is and isn’t about. It’s not about the doubts that come our way. Most of us, at one time or another, encounter times that we struggle to believe. I know some people who have lost their jobs in the economic crisis. Somewhere along the line they may struggle. They may say, “God, I’m having a hard time trusting you to provide in these circumstances.” We may need to confess to God that we believe, but that we need help with our unbelief. But that’s not what’s happening here.

What is this passage about then? It’s not about doubt; it’s about accusation. Doubt is when we admit that we don’t understand and that we’re struggling. Accusation is when we set ourselves up as judges over God, and make him the defendant, as if God has to answer to us. Do you see the difference? When we struggle with doubt, we still see God as God. When we accuse God, as in this passage, we have set ourselves up over God. We’ve put him on trial.

And what this passage reveals is that we have a problem. And the problem goes deeper than actions; the problem is that our hearts have an inclination.There’s something within us that makes us prone to question God, even accuse him. This began in Genesis 3, and it continues to this day when we set ourselves up over him, and we’re inclined to press charges against him and doubt his presence at every turn.

I’ve experienced times that God has come through in surprising and extraordinary ways. I’ve heard of the same. Just this week I talked to someone who faced a choice between doing the right thing and the wrong thing. The problem with doing the right thing is that it came with a heavy price tag. It was going to cost him and his family. But he did the right thing, and as soon as he got home there was a check for $5,000 from a stranger. He believed that this was God’s provision for him, a reminder that God would care for him no matter how bad things look.

I hear stories like this, and I’ve experienced them too. But when I get into a jam, my heart’s inclination is not to trust God. My heart’s inclination is to doubt, to fret, to worry and to begin to accuse the One who has provided for me, who has given me far more than I deserve. I don’t wait for my need to be met. I don’t always even pray for my needs to be met. Instead, my inclination is to doubt God, even to put him on trial, to expect him to answer to me.

God said later in Deuteronomy 6:16, “Do not put the LORD your God to the test as you did at Massah.” But we do this all the time. So we see there is a trial going on in this passage, and it’s a trial we’re involved in too.

So what’s going to happen with this trial?

Let’s look together at the sentence that was arrived as a result of this trial.

So just to review: Israel has put Moses, and by extension God, on trial. God is in the dock. What’s going to happen? Read verses 5 and 6 with me:

The LORD answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel.

What’s happening here? On the simplest level, God is providing water for his thirsty people, showing again that he provides for his people. That’s true. But there’s much more going on here. What you have going on here is a trial.

God tells Moses to go in front of the people. Why? Because this is the court of judges and witnesses. Court is in session as these elders come together. A trial is underway.

God tells Moses to take the staff with him. What staff? The one he’d used to turn the Nile River into blood, judging the gods of Egypt. In other words, this is the rod of judgment.

Moses passes before the people, and you can imagine them thinking, “Oh my goodness, what have we done?” They’ve accused God, and God has now said, “Okay, let’s take this to court and see how this goes.” And now you have the court assembled and the rod of judgment prepared.

What would happen? What if the rod of judgment fell on Israel for their rebellion? You can only imagine. Later on the prophet Isaiah talked about the rod of God’s judgment coming down on Assyria:

The voice of the LORD will shatter Assyria;
with his rod he will strike them down.
Every stroke the LORD lays on them
with his punishing club
will be to the music of timbrels and harps,
as he fights them in battle with the blows of his arm.
(Isaiah 30:31-32)

But who’s on trial? Is it Moses, who’s been accused by the people? Is it Israel? In one of the most incredible twists, God says in verse 6, “I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb.” You need to understand that in the Old Testament, God does not stand in front of people. People stand before God. God is on trial here. God sits in the prisoner’s dock. Moses has his rod of judgment, and it is God himself who stands to be judged.

And in one of the most incredible passages of Scripture, God tells Moses to raise his rod of judgment and strike the rock. Later on in the psalms that commemorate the event, God is described as a Rock (Psalms 78 and 95). God is standing by the rock as it’s stricken. Do you see what is happening?

God was not guilty. God had done nothing wrong. He had provided for them over and over again. And yet Israel put God on trial. God stands in the place of the accused. And now, at God’s command, the rod of judgment strikes God himself, not because he is guilty, but because the people are guilty. He gets the punishment that they deserve.

And as a result of that judgment, as the rock is smitten, water comes out. The needs of a rebellious people are met as God himself bears the punishment that they deserved. They drink the water they need and their lives are saved precisely because God took the judgment they should have received! The guilty verdict is read, but instead of the guilty being punished, God is. God receives the judgment he didn’t deserve, and the guilty receive the grace that they didn’t deserve.

Do you understand? The God we serve, the Rock of Israel, is a God of mercy who bears his own judgment for the sins of his people. It’s amazing! Some people think the God of the Old Testament was a harsh God. Here we see that God is a gracious and compassionate God, one who – even in the Old Testament – stands in the place of the guilty, bearing the punishment on behalf of his people. The stricken rock shows us the gospel of grace, even in the time of Moses.

But the story doesn’t end there. We’ve seen the trail and the sentence reached at the end of this trail.

What I’d like to look at before we close is the ultimate trail we’re all a part of, and the ultimate sentence that was paid.

God himself took the punishment that Israel deserved. It’s great news. But there is a greater problem, that should concern us all.

In the coming years, Israel fails God time and time again. The events that we just read about took place at the beginning of the wanderings in the wilderness. Sadly, a similar event took place almost forty years later in Numbers 20. The old generation had died out; a new generation is in place, and they’re about to enter the Promised Land. We read in Numbers 20 that this new generation also quarreled with Moses. The wanderings of Israel in the desert are bookended with these failures. This time, tragically, Moses failed by striking the rock twice. He knew that God’s presence was in the rock, and that speaking to it would be speaking with God. He hit the rock twice, and unthinkable outburst of anger against God. God still provided water for Israel, but he announced the verdict. Moses would not be allowed to lead the people into the Promised Land, because he had disobeyed God in such a severe manner.

God was so gracious in Exodus 17 when he stood in the place of sinners. But the problem is that the story doesn’t end in Exodus 17. It continues in Exodus 32 and in all the failures of Israel, and even the failure of Moses himself. Even the good guys fail! What hope is there for us? God took the punishment for them in Exodus 17, but what’s going to happen with all of their other failures? What’s going to happen when even the good guys commit the most horrible sins?

The New Testament answers this question, and it’s amazing. In 1 Corinthians 10:4-5 we read: “They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.”

What does this mean? It means that Jesus Christ was with Israel in the desert wanderings. The rock that was smitten by Moses was Jesus Christ himself. The smitten rock points us to the ultimate Rock who was smitten for our sins: Jesus Christ. We have received the guilty verdict for our sin. God, the righteous judge, must take the rod of divine justice and administer the sentence. But it is Jesus who is smitten. Isaiah wrote:

Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
(Isaiah 53:4-5)

When Moses struck the rock in the desert, life-giving water poured out. And when Jesus was smitten at the cross, blood and water poured out from his side. In the ultimate trial that we’re all a part of, we have been found guilty. But when the rod of divine justice came down, it came down on Jesus. And as a result of that Rock, Jesus Christ, being smitten, we get the water that we need.

As we close, we need to see two things clearly. One is that we’re part of a trail, and that we deserve the guilty verdict. We deserve the rod of justice. Even the best of us don’t stand a chance.

But then we need to see that the rod of divine justice will fall on us, and it should. But there’s another way. Jesus said, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:37-38). Jesus said, “Those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

Let’s pray.

One day we will stand before God in judgment. The rod of divine justice will be there. On that day, there are many who will plead innocence. They’ll talk about all the good things they’ve done. But not even Moses was good enough. On that great and dreadful day, we will have to acknowledge that we deserve that rod of judgement to come down on us, and it’s a rod that can crush us.

But on that day we can have hope. We can look at the rod of justice, admit that it’s what we deserve, but then plead that Jesus our Rock stood in our place and received the judgment that we deserved. I plead with you to put your trust in Christ this morning.

Father, thank you for your amazing grace. Thank you that Jesus endured and exhausted the divine judgement that we should have received. This is our only comfort in life and death. We look to that Rock today. Amen.