God – ∞, Satan – 0

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We’re going to be in Mark chapter 15 tonight and 1 Corinthians chapter 15. We’re going to look a little bit at both of those passages. Mark chapter 15 and 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

You know, history is filled with stories of certain victory and certain defeat that weren’t so certain. They weren’t as certain as everybody figured. Nobody expected Napoleon, as he’s overrunning all of Europe, Nobody expected him to be beaten at Waterloo.

Nobody expected him to be beaten so significantly that he would be overthrown as the emperor of the French. Nobody expected 13 little backwoods colonies to defeat the greatest military power on the face of the earth at that time. And those 13 colonies, of course, would be what became the United States.

And the greatest military power was England. Nobody expected the Americans to be the winning side. The story that I always think of first when I think of certain victory and certain defeat is on November 3, 1948.

Harry Truman defeated New York Governor Thomas Dewey in his bid for re-election to be President of the United States. What makes that so significant, there’s a photo of Harry Truman, I think on a train outside St. Louis, and he’s holding up a newspaper.

He’s holding up the early edition copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune and blazing across the front page of the paper, there in big bold letters, top of the page above the fold, it says Dewey defeats Truman. You see, they went to press a little bit early on election night when some of the early returns were just starting to look like it was going to be a Dewey landslide. Nobody liked Harry Truman, they thought.

at that point. And so the newspaper editors and publishers put out what they thought was going to be the correct headline for the day, for the next morning’s morning edition, but by the time the world woke up the next morning, it had been a Truman landslide. And now most people don’t remember who Thomas Dewey is unless they’re political history nerds like myself, unless they’ve seen that picture.

Truman, everybody was so certain. Everybody hated Harry Truman, they thought. And so they were so certain Thomas Dewey was just going to win this in a walk and be president, that they had printed their headline.

They’ve gone to press with their headline ahead of time, and they got it wrong. It was certain victory for Thomas Dewey. And yet, that’s where the phrase snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory comes from.

Because it was Dewey’s to lose. And he managed, even though everybody was certain that Dewey was going to win, he snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory. And what was supposed to be his certain victory turned out to be kind of an embarrassing defeat.

History is full of those stories. History is full of those stories where a certain victory is not quite as certain as we thought it was going to be. And the most impressive certain victory, the most impressive feat that anybody pulled off in one of these was God.

I mean, you’d have to be, I mean, God would just have to win that. God can do the most impressive things. But there was a day about 2,000 years ago when all of the enemies of God, all the enemies of Jesus Christ thought that they had won.

They thought they had absolutely defeated Jesus. And we’re talking about from an earthly standpoint, the Jewish leaders thought that they were getting rid of Jesus, that they were putting his band of followers and his crazy teachings, they thought that he was the Son of God, that he came to fulfill the law, that he taught the law differently, than they did. They thought that they were putting him out of business.

They thought that they were getting rid of this guy who had made their lives so difficult. They thought they were ending him. And the Roman authorities thought that they were putting a stop to this uprising because the Romans did not like disorder.

You can do just about anything you wanted as long as you didn’t challenge Roman order. And yet here come the Christians claiming that Jesus is king of the Jews. They didn’t like that so much.

We have an uprising on our hands. We’re going to put an end to it. We’re going to put an end to Jesus.

And they thought that they had gotten rid of Jesus. And you know what? I think even the hordes of hell thought that they had won.

They put an end to Jesus. If you look with me at Mark chapter 15, I’m not going to go through it verse by verse, because you know the story. And if you don’t, I’m going to hit the highlights for you tonight.

But starting in verse 1, it talks about him going and being arrested and being taken before the priests and the elders and the scribes. They’ve taken him before Pontius Pilate for a trial. And by the way, they were so concerned about the law, there’s nothing about this trial that was legal. There was nothing about this trial that was in keeping with Jewish law. And even Pilate looks at him and says, I really don’t know what you expect me to do here.

Now, I’m not saying Pilate is a saint, but sometimes I think we pick on Pilate a little more than we should. Because Pilate looks at him and says, I don’t know what you expect me to do. He hasn’t really done anything wrong.

Even by your own law, he hasn’t done anything. And so they come to a kangaroo court. They’ve stacked the deck against him.

They couldn’t come up with evidence against Jesus, so they had to try to bribe people into lying about him. They were determined at this time to break even their own laws to get rid of Jesus. They hated him that badly.

And with the fuss that the Jewish leaders put up, the Romans, Pilate finally said, okay, fine. Because the Romans did not want a riot breaking out in Jerusalem. It probably would have been Pilate’s head if he had let things get out of hand in Jerusalem.

them. And so we see, you know, moving on from there, that Pilate asks the people, who do you want released to you? I’ve got Jesus here who’s done nothing wrong.

Got Barabbas who probably killed a guy. Who should I let go free? And in my mind, Pilate is probably appealing to the people going, come on here, have some common sense and get me out of this while you’re at it.

Just ask for Jesus. And the Jewish leaders went around and got the people to cry Barabbas. So they released Barabbas.

They let the murderer go free. And they took Jesus, and starting in verse 16, it gives the story of how he was mocked, how he was humiliated, how he was brutally beaten. They took him into a hall called the praetorium.

The Roman soldiers did. They made sure everybody was gathered around to watch this. Verse 17 says, They clothed him with purple and plaited a crown of thorns and put it on his head.

Now, purple was the color of royalty, but this wasn’t a show of respect. They were mocking him. Hey, you think you’re the king of the Jews?

Well, let’s parade you around in royal purple. And then they took the crown of thorns. And I’ve seen what these thorn plants look like in Israel.

They’re not the little rose bushes like I have out in front of the house where I tell the kids, okay, don’t get too close. You don’t want to get scratched. We’re talking big spikes of thorns.

And they took these and they, you’ve got to be pretty mad at somebody to take the time to, we’re going to weave a crown out of this stuff that has thorns on it. But they made this and they put it on him and they, whatever they could do to injure and humiliate him. And they began to salute him.

Hail, King of the Jews. Again, this is not a respectful salute. They’re mocking him.

They’re mocking him. Sarcasm. And they smote him upon the head with a reed.

They beat him. They hit him on the head. They spat on him.

I don’t know. I don’t know if you’ve ever had somebody spit on you. And I’m not talking about by accident.

But out of contempt. I have. And I’m not a violent man.

But it made me want to go for the throat. It is one of the, it happened to me when I was in high school. I didn’t do anything about it because I could hear, I could hear turn the other cheek and the voice of my mother saying, if you get in a fight, I’ll kill you.

I could hear both of those things thundering in my ears, but it made me want to go for the guy’s throat. It is one of the biggest displays of contempt that you can show to somebody to spit on them. And these people all gathered around and they took the Lord Jesus Christ and they spit on him.

And they bowed their knees mockingly worshiping him. And then when they had their fun with that they stripped all of this stuff off all this supposed royal regalia and they went out to crucify him. And Jesus was so weak by the beating that he’d already received it wasn’t just the whipping with that reed but the other gospels talk about how he was flogged.

And I’ve talked to you before about the process that that he would have gone through, but he would have been beaten beyond recognition. And he would have been so weak from blood loss that he would have been in and out of consciousness already at this point if he tried to exert any energy at all. And that’s why the Bible says here in verse 21, they had to get some man named Simon of Cyrene.

They had to get a guy from Libya who happened to be in Jerusalem to carry the cross for him up the mountain. And they brought him up to Golgotha, verse 22, which is being interpreted the place of a skull. And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh, but he received it not.

Somebody finally took some compassion on him and tried to give him this drink that would have dulled the pain a little bit. And Jesus refused it. Not because he was being tough.

Not because he’s being stubborn like so many of us men who refuse medicine or medical treatment. You’ve seen that billboard talking about how men don’t get, you may have seen it on the internet, how men don’t get checkups. And so it says, you know, millions of men die of stubbornness.

And then somebody spray painted underneath it. No, we don’t. Okay, Jesus is not being stubborn.

Jesus is not being a stubborn man here and refusing medical treatment. He didn’t want his senses dulled. He wanted to be there because he needed to experience all of this.

He needed to bear the full force of the wrath of God on our sins. He did this for us. It’s the equivalent of he wouldn’t even take an aspirin to dull the pain.

And when they crucified him, once they took him, and all this beating and mocking wasn’t enough, they took these giant Roman spikes, and they drove them through his wrists and through his feet, and they parted his garments. They nailed him to the cross. They hoisted him up there, barely clothed, and nailed to this piece of wood where everybody could see him in this excruciating pain as he struggled for every breath that he took.

And as if that wasn’t all enough, they said, let’s gamble for his clothes. Because nothing says carrying like you can’t even wait until the body’s cold to start competing for his stuff. Casting lots upon them what every man should take.

And it was the third hour and they crucified him. So it was about nine o’clock in the morning. It’s over the days off to a pretty rough start.

And the superscription of the accusation was written over the king of the Jews. So they mocked him again by putting a sign over him. And I’ve heard people say that they would often put a sign as they were executing criminals indicating what their crime was.

So they’re executing him from the Jews’ perspective for the crime of blasphemy and from the Romans’ perspective for the crime of treason according to what the Jews said that he had claimed. and with him they crucify two thieves the one on his right and the other on his left and this was a fulfillment of what the of what the Old Testament had foretold verse 29 says and they that passed by railed on him wagging their heads and saying ah thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days save thyself and come down from the cross these people thought nothing man who was dying. And they’re going to mock him.

They’re going to wag their heads. And I don’t know exactly what that means. But in my imagination, just reading from the context here, I could see little kids in our culture sticking out their tongues and making noises.

There’s this childishness to it. They’re wagging their heads and they’re mocking him. He’s dying and they don’t even care.

While he’s dying for them, they are that callous toward him. They are that cold and unfeeling toward him. But they mock him and clearly they don’t understand what he was talking about.

Oh, you said you could destroy the temple and raise it again. If the temple was destroyed, you could raise it again in three days. If you’re that tough, come down off the cross.

Bunch of fools. When he was talking about the temple, he was talking about his own body. You destroyed that and I’ll raise it up again in three days.

And he could have come down off that cross anytime he wanted. But he stayed there. And the chief priest, verse 31.

The chief priest mocking said among themselves with the scribes, he saved others, himself he cannot save. It drove them crazy. It drove them crazy every time Jesus told somebody, your sins are forgiven.

And they even asked him, you’ve healed somebody on the Sabbath, how dare you? And Jesus asked him, isn’t it a bigger deal that I said their sins are forgiven? And they would ask him at times, by whose authority do you say their sins are forgiven?

And Jesus told them, I don’t have to tell you, because you haven’t, I’m paraphrasing here, but he asked them a question, they refused to answer, and he said, neither do I then tell you by what authority I do these things. I don’t have to tell you, because you’re not going to listen anyway. And oh, they have not forgotten a slight.

These are vindictive people. And yeah, he claimed to save other people, but he can’t even save himself. let Christ the King of Israel descend now from the cross that we may see and believe ok we know that they are mocking him let the King of Israel come down off the cross so we can see it and believe him but there is another insult in here they didn’t usually call him Christ see in our culture we hear Jesus Christ so much we think that is his name Christ is a title Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah the anointed one of God.

And so again, they’re adding another layer of mocking in here, saying, oh, he claimed to be the anointed one. He claimed to be the Messiah. If he thinks he’s the Messiah, if he thinks he’s the king of Israel, let him come down so we may see and believe.

And they that were crucified with him reviled him, even the thieves who were undergoing the same fate that he was, mocked him. Now, one of those we know changed his tune. fortunately for him.

And when the sixth hour was come there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. So there was darkness and Jesus cries out and says my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now we know that God never left Jesus.

We know that God the Father never left Jesus. We know that God the Father and God the Son cannot be separated. But what I understand to be happening here is that for the first time for the first time there’s a break in the fellowship.

Because what has happened is he that knew no sin was made to become sin for us. What God has done in this moment is to carry out a transaction where God took all of the sin that you and I are guilty of God took all of that sin he gathered it up and he put it on Jesus Christ. And so Jesus Christ for the first time experienced the weight and the guilt and the shame of sin. And what you and I feel every day I hope God didn’t see that.

I wish God didn’t know that. We feel the need. We feel like we’re going to hide from God sometimes after what we’ve done.

For the first time, Jesus experienced that feeling. He cried out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That’s the weight of our sin.

Being carried by Jesus. And then they mocked that. And they said, oh, he’s calling out for Elias.

Some people thought he was talking about Elijah. Some people thought he was talking about God. There was some confusion.

And one ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar, sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, let alone, let us see whether Elias will come and take him down. So he gave him something to drink to kind of ease it. I don’t know if this was an act of mercy or if they’re just trying to keep him alive longer to prolong the suffering.

I suspect it’s the latter. Because as they’re showing him this act of mercy, they say, let’s keep an eye out and see if God really will come and take him down off the cross if he wants to call out to God. And we know from the other Gospels that Jesus at that moment said, it is finished.

Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve come to do, I’ve completed. I’ve done it. And then it says here in verse 37 that he cried with a loud voice and he gave up the ghost. And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.

That veil of the temple, that veil of the temple marked the place where the people could not go because that was the dwelling place of God. And so at the moment of Jesus’ death, for that temple veil to be rent in two, to be ripped, and we’re not talking about some tissue paper fabric that, not like the fabric on, sometimes we, my mom makes these dresses for Madeline, they snag on stuff, they tear. We’re not talking about delicate fabric here.

We’re talking about layers and layers of heavy, heavy cloth. And they were shredded in two. And that wall of separation between God and man came down.

And the earth trembled, as we’re told in other Gospels. And verse 39 says, When the centurion which stood over him saw him, saw what he went through, saw him cry out to God that it is finished, felt the earth tremble, saw the darkness around him, the centurion, maybe a little too late, said, oh my, this, wow, this must be the Son of God. What have we just done?

Now that’s my paraphrase of what he said. Imagine the fear of you’ve just executed a man, and just as he dies, you come to the realization, that was God’s Son, what have we done here? What have I just participated in?

And then they took him and they buried him. Pilate was surprised he was already dead. But they had made sure he was dead.

They thrust a spear through his side and pierced the pericardium and the heart and blood and water came out. They knew for sure that he was dead. The Jews thought he was gone.

No more problem for us to deal with. No more blasphemer. No more crazy guy teaching weird ideas.

He’s gone. The Romans thought, okay, we put down this rebellion. He’s gone.

even the believers if we can call him that at this point now he’s gone it’s over don’t you know that Satan just squirred with delight don’t you know he was having a big time thinking God sent Jesus to save everybody and we just killed him God sent Jesus to really to bring in the kingdom and we just killed him the world thought it was a victory for themselves and a defeat for God. But we know better, there’s no such thing as a defeat for God. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 says about this very event, starting in verse 51, Behold, I show you a mystery.

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. This is Paul writing to the church at Corinth and reassuring them that there’s something better waiting for them. There’s no need to fear death.

There’s no need to fear the future. Something better is coming. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump.

For the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed. How is this possible? How is this possible?

If Jesus is defeated, how is it possible that at the last day God is going to blow the trumpet and we’re going to be raised up from the dead. The dead shall be raised incorruptible. For this corruptible must put on incorruption.

And this mortal must put on immortality. He says all things have to be changed here. The dead have to live again.

The mortal have to become immortal. The things that are corrupt on this earth have to be made incorruptible. Verse 54, So when this incorruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality, Then shall be brought to pass the saying that it is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. They thought that they had defeated Jesus at his death, but death was swallowed up in victory three days later.

Because of that it says in verse 55, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. That God, through Paul speaking here, says that we as believers can look at death and say, where is your sting? Where is your power here, death? Grave, where is your victory?

There is no victory for you. Because back in Mark chapter 16, we see what happened three days later. Everything he said about the temple being destroyed and him raising it again in three days was absolutely true.

Because his followers didn’t even expect him to be alive. It’s not like this was some mass delusion that they walked down there thinking, oh, goody, let’s see if he’s back yet. They were defeated and they were headed out there.

The women were headed out there to sort of embalm his body, to provide spices to. . .

We know what happens to bodies and they wanted to prevent that. They wanted to slow that process down. They went out there thinking he was still dead.

And the men didn’t even go with him. The men were in hiding. And they walk out there and they see the tomb, the stone, the giant stone that the Romans put there and sealed was rolled back.

And they look in the tomb and it’s empty. And they cried. Mary Magdalene cried thinking somebody had stolen the body.

Which, first of all, this is not a criticism of her in an emotional moment like that. You don’t think logically. We have 2,000 years of hindsight to look back on it and say, nobody had the motive and the opportunity to steal the body.

the motive means and opportunity nobody had it she thought somebody had stolen the body until she turns her in and comes face to face with the Lord Jesus Christ and he proved to her and he proved to the other women and he proved to the disciples that it really was him that he really was alive they recognized him they saw the nail prints in his hands and at his feet they saw where the sword I keep saying sword where the spear had pierced his side. They knew it was him. He offered to let Thomas feel those wounds.

Because he wasn’t a ghost, he wasn’t a spirit, he wasn’t a hologram. He ate with them because he wasn’t a ghost, he wasn’t a spirit, he wasn’t a hologram. It was the Lord Jesus Christ who had come back to life in his own body.

Because God had taken what the world had looked at, what Satan had looked at as the ultimate defeat of God’s plan and through what they thought was the defeat of God’s plan, God actually fulfilled his plan. See, they thought they were beating God. What they were actually doing was carrying out God’s plan.

Isn’t he amazing? The wisdom and the foresight that God has that his plan was carried out by people who thought that they were defeating him. In Acts chapter 2, when Peter gets on to the people of Jerusalem, he talks about how they had with their wicked hands taken the Son of God and they had put him to death, but he also points out that it was through the determinate and foreknowledge of God.

He says, and that was God’s plan all along. God knew you were going to do that. And through the resurrection, ladies and gentlemen, Jesus proves he wasn’t just some guy who got killed.

Jesus proved that he was the Son of God. That he was everything he claimed to be and that he had the power to do everything he claimed to do. That when he said, your sins are forgiven, they were forgiven.

When those priests were mocking him and saying he saved others, that he couldn’t say, yeah, you bet your life he saved them. When he said your sins are forgiven, you better believe it. Because he backed it up with the resurrection.

And God looks at Satan. God looks at the world who put him to death and says, checkmate. Game over.

I win. What the world thought was the ultimate defeat of God’s plan was the greatest victory in human history. Because God fulfilled a plan and God fulfilled a series of promises that He’d been making for 4,000 years.

And God solved a problem that none of us could solve. God solved a problem that all of us could not solve together. And that was the problem of our sin.

How do we deal with our sin? How do we atone for it? How do we make peace with God?

We can’t. Because we’re sinners. And yet Jesus bore the full weight of our sins and He was punished in our place.

He was punished in my place and in yours. And he paid all the penalty that we deserved. And then God raised him from the dead.

That problem of how do we deal with our sin is not a problem anymore because Jesus Christ dealt with it. I know we hear the crucifixion story, and I’m guilty of this. Yeah, Jesus died on the cross.

It becomes almost cliche. Yes, Jesus died on the cross for us. Folks, we must never let ourselves lose our all over what God accomplished, over what God did.

This doesn’t happen every day. This is the center point of all of history. Everything before it led up to it and prepared for it.

And everything since points our attention or should point our attention back to it. And on Sunday nights, I’ve been talking about the events of the Bible that still shape the world we live in. There’s no event in the Bible that shapes our world more than this.

Because we still feel the direct effects of His crucifixion and His resurrection today. When God offers forgiveness to you as a free gift today, and when the book of Hebrews, I believe it’s the book of Hebrews, says that today is the day of salvation, then that’s an offer He still makes to us today. God is still saving people today.

God is still changing lives today. And He’s doing so because of what Jesus Christ accomplished at the cross and what He backed up with the empty tomb.