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Open your Bibles to Mark 15:15-20.
•We’re continuing our study of the Gospel of Mark.
•This morning we come to Mark’s account of the beating and mocking of our Lord by the soldiers.
Abuse.
•That word conjures many different thoughts in different minds.
•And usually what we imagine is some lesser person on the receiving end of pain and mistreatment by a more powerful person.
•That’s generally how abuse works.
There are exceptions, certainly.
But usually a more powerful person abuses a less powerful person.
1.
We think of spiritual abuse.
•Where a church member is hurt by a Pastor or some other leader.
•They are mentally abused.
Made to believe falsehoods.
Made to believe that the abuser has more authority than they have.
And that God demands their submission to sinful, false, or overreaching commands of men.
2.
Or we think of physical abuse.
•Where a stronger person physically harms the weaker.
•Husbands beating wives.
Parents beating children.
Bullies beating weaker children.
3.
Or we think of sexual abuse.
•Where the stronger forces himself or herself on the weaker.
(Whether physically or mentally weaker.)
•Or where the older harms the younger.
There are other examples, but in all of these, the powerful one harms the less powerful.
•The greater hurts the lesser.
This is usually the way of things with abuse.
But in our text this morning, we are going to see the King of kings suffering abuse.
•We will see the Son of God receiving abuse of all sorts from the VERY PEOPLE HE CREATED AND SUSTAINED AT THAT VERY MOMENT.
•We are going to see the Greater being abused by the lesser.
•We are going to witness the King receive a horrible, wicked, mock coronation.
•We are going to see the Lord of glory made lower than a peasant.
Treated as the dregs of society.
And, in seeing the abuse that our King suffered, we will be reminded of some things:
1.
What our sin deserves and how we should hate it.
2.
How much our King loves His subjects.
3.
The beauty and majesty of our King.
4.
That after His suffering, our King will never suffer again, for He is Lord of all.
•May God bless us this morning as we meet Him at His Word.
If you would and are able, please stand with me for the reading of the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God.
Mark 15:15-20
[15] So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
[16] And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion.
[17] And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him.
[18] And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!”
[19] And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him.
[20] And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him.
And they led him out to crucify him.
(PRAY)
Our Heavenly Father,
We thank you for the opportunity you’ve given us to sit under the ministry of your Word this morning.
It is a privilege to be among your People and to hear you speak to us through the Word you inspired by your Spirit.
But, Lord, we are weak.
And just as we needed you to inspire your Word so that we could know you intimately, so also we need you to work in us so that we can understand and receive it to the benefit of our souls.
And so, we ask that you would open our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts to savingly hear and believe what you have spoken.
By your Spirit working mightily in us through your Word, change us today as we behold Christ with the eye of faith.
Grant that we would leave here different than when we arrived because we came face to face with the Living God in His Word.
We ask these things in Jesus’ Name and for His sake.
Amen.
1.)
Before I get to pointing out some things for our meditation this morning, I want to walk through the text and show you how our Lord suffered.
•We begin in v15.
There we read that Pilate had Jesus scourged.
•Before the trial was over, Jesus was scourged.
•And though the Gospel authors don’t spend a lot of time describing the physical suffering of our Lord, I think we would be in error to not spend a little time reflecting on it.
Jesus was “scourged.”
•Scourging is sometimes called flogging.
And in the Passion narrative, it refers to the same thing.
•It was a Roman beating.
A horrible, horrible thing.
•Some who received Roman scourging actually died from the scourging itself.
•And those who lived through it were beaten nearly to death.
•It was so horrible that, according to Roman law, there were some classes within Roman society whose members could not be scourged.
It was a beating with a whip called a flagellum or flagrum.
•This whip was short.
It had a wooden handle.
And attached to the handle were leather strips with pieces of bone, rocks, and sharpened metal knotted into them.
•The victim to be scourged was stripped naked (or nearly naked) and made to stretch his arms around a pillar or other large object, typically at a forward-leaning angle to expose the back.
•The hands were then bound tightly on the other side of the pillar so that the arms were pulled forward and the back stretched taut.
The victim was then whipped viciously.
•The whip with its pieces of bone, rocks, and sharpened metal would tear into the flesh and shred the victim to pieces from the back of the neck to the top of the legs.
•During scourging, the whip would often expose bone and even internal organs.
•Jewish law demanded that no more than 39 lashes be given.
But the Romans had no such law.
•The soldiers were permitted to continue whipping until they wanted to quit or their commander told them to stop.
•Sometimes soldiers would whip the prisoner until they were exhausted and then another would take over and continue the scourging.
•It wasn’t uncommon for victims to die from blood loss or shock.
The Romans were experts on cruelty.
•The soldiers were vicious men.
They were as men possessed.
They took delight in this.
•For them, it was a welcome break from the monotony of being a solider in Judea.
•And so they tore our Lord apart with their whips, nearly beating Him to death.
•They beat Him beyond recognition.
As Isaiah said of the Messiah, “…His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and His form beyond that of the children of mankind.”
(Isaiah 52:14)
•They beat Him until He did not look like a human being anymore.
They scourged Him until He was a mess of flesh, bone, and blood bound to a pillar.
•And here we see the Lamb of God begin to shed His blood for sinners.
For without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.
But this was not enough for the soldiers.
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