October 22, 2017

Don’t Look Away From the Son of God Part 1

Mark 15:16-20

Don’t look away is a strange title for this message but it’s something that must be talked about. We are in the midst of Jesus’ passion (His suffering, death and crucifixion) and we are reading about the details of everything that He went through for us. This is difficult, and painful to hear, especially when we know the details of the scourging (whipping) and the mocking that our Lord went through for us. We are inclined to look away from something that is so painful, we don’t want to look at scenes like these; there is something so terrible, so frightening that we don’t want to look at Jesus during this time, it is the price, the high price paid for our own sins that really disturbs us.

Mark’s gospel gives us a “matter of fact” reading of the passion of Jesus, there are no gory details, there is no visuals like the “Passion” movie by Mel Gibson, there is just a narrative of Jesus going through what had to be horrific to watch. What is more important here is the way that Jesus goes through each stage of suffering, each stage of his suffering becomes more and more intense, and each stage has to deal with a different people group. There are the Jewish leaders who spit and condemn him in a mock trial at night, there is the Roman Governor Pilate, who doesn’t quite understand Jesus, but understands fully how his needs are to survive long enough to get out of this horrible country; and finally, there are the Roman soldiers executing what is for them just another Jew who is to be killed. The Roman soldiers have all been through this before, they are used to death on a daily, often hourly basis, life is cheap here in ancient Palestine and these soldiers won’t look away today, they will see this execution through to its logical end, but in the end, they will know that this was no ordinary Jew, “Truly this was the Son of God” (Matthew 27:54c).

We cannot look away from this God-man Jesus Christ. We must see the streams of blood we have to feel the agony and we must see and feel something much more important this morning, we have to see ourselves saved through this amazing sacrificial act which has never been done before for us and never will be done again. Jesus Christ, the Son of God is going to pay the debt of sin this morning, He will be separated from His Father, communication will cease with God for you. For you, For me, For us. Don’t look away this morning, look deeper than you ever have before, see the awesome grace of God given to you because of nothing you have done, unmerited grace because of an undying love for you, for me, for us.