Easter From the King

Easter from the King

April 13, 2025

Matthew 27:27-50

Today we are going to look at Easter through the eyes of the One who had the most valuable and correct perspective of Easter. This is the final set of eyes that we will look through to see this event that shaped all of human history.

We have looked at Easter through the eyes of Mary, Pontius Pilate, Barabbas, and now, the one whom Easter is all about, Christ. We will use Matthew to discuss our Lord’s perspective on the cross that he carried and the finality of His work on that tree.

Remember that each of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) have their driving theme for recording these events. We used Mark for Pilate and Barabbas because of Mark’s laser focus on getting his readers to the cross. But, Matthew has a different perspective.

He wants us to know that there are two kingdoms. One of destruction (sin and death): Dracula’s castle (see pic). One of life and salvation (God’s Kingdom) (See pic). I use these pictures to get our minds on the right wavelength.

Today I want us to know that each kingdom has at its heart a cross of death.

In the kingdom of death, it is the vehicle that every resident must come to. It is the just due for everyone who is in this kingdom. No matter what, the wages of our sin in this kingdom is death both physical and spiritual.

But, in the kingdom of God, there is a cross in the heart of it as well. It stands as the instrument where God finishes the work of the kingdom of death by placing His Son on it. In so doing, sin’s claim on our death is over.

Matthew wants us to see these two opposing kingdoms as he tells us of the moment when the kingdom of death is finally destroyed. That is the backdrop of Matthew’s account of the cross of Christ. Let’s learn how that happens.

There are some milestones that we will see in our passage today that will help us understand this event. The first milestone or point I want us to see is that the cross was a cross of brutality.

1. The cross of brutality.

Matthew 27:27: Remember, Jesus had just been tried. The crowd demanded Barabbas in exchange for Jesus. Pilate sentenced Jesus to Barabbas’s cross and Pilate has now washed his hands of this situation. The next six hours our Lord is led to the most grueling, painful, and sadistic death ever imagined by the human mind.

READ 27:26-31

Keywords to define:

a. Pilate had Jesus “scourged”: A Roman judicial penalty, consisting of a severe beating with a multi-lashed whip containing embedded pieces of bone and metal[1] (see pic)

This was an art form in the most gruesome way possible. The Roman Flagrum was a handle with straps with bone, bits of metal, and other sharp objects used to open the skin in the most brutal way possible. By the time that Jesus got done with this, He would be unrecognizable.

Isaiah 52:13-14

13    Behold, my servant shall act wisely;

he shall be high and lifted up,

and shall be exalted.

14    As many were astonished at you—

his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,

and his form beyond that of the children of mankind— [2]

But, that was not enough, look at what Matthew continues to record.

b. The whole battalion: Is usually 600 men (crowd/mob rule)

c. Stripped Him: usually a Jewish man would have 6 articles of clothing, now our Lord is naked, but they place a robe on him.

d. A crown of thorns: Anyone hate goat heads? Imagine thorns that were 2 inches in length being smashed onto your head. Hedek= rendered “brier”: (see Pic)

e. They spit on Him.

f. They gave him a reed: (kalamos) reed stalk, thick reed-cane[3]It’s a weapon!

Think of a police button. It was a thick, wooden rod, stick, or even club. The Greek word paints a clear image that this is not a straw. It’s a weapon.

g. Struck him with that rod on the head.

Matthew 27:32

32 pAs they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. 33 And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull),[4]

I don’t have time to get into Simon. But we need to look at “they went out…to a place called Golgotha.” Golgotha (Hebrew for Skull/death) and Calvery in the Greek. It is OUT of the city. This is where the dead were deposited without graves. This is where the trash and the human feces were burned.

This is where no king would go. No royalty would go. No well-meaning Jew would go. No Jew would allow this type of death in the city. When Matthew records OUT, it is so symbolic. It is the complete separation and discard of Jesus from His people.

Vs 34 they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it.[5]

This was NOT an act of kindness. It was an act to get Jesus to relax so they could drive the nails in. Most men would pull in and not offer their hands. The wine and gall (or bitter bile) were used to stretch the victim out. Look at what our Lord did. He rejected it. He was not forced down.

Vs 35 35 And when they had crucified him[6]

Six words is it. Ever wonder why the Gospel writers only provide this to describe this horror? Ever wonder why we don’t have details from the Bible as how they crucified Him? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John give us NO extra detail other than this. Why?

Because it is SO VILE! To speak of it was to prove a person less human. It was Marcus Tullius Cicero the Roman statesman who expressed a strong opposition to crucifixion, viewing it as a particularly cruel and degrading punishment. He famously stated that “Every mention of the cross should be far removed not only from a Roman citizen’s body, but from his mind, his eyes, his ears,”

Cicero wrote this before Jesus’s death. The cross was so vile, so wretched, and so brutal, that no Roman citizen would be subjected to its brutality. Oh, how we today have become so calloused that when we see it, it does nothing to so much as to stir a single emotion.

There was no more cruel or barbaric way for a man to die. It was ruthless, inhuman and beyond understanding. The cross was more than violent and brutal. It was designed to be humiliating.

Vs 35-36 35 And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. 36 Then they sat down and kept watch over him there.[7]

Christ was crucified naked. Stripped of His dignity, publicly suspended between heaven and earth for the world to see. His body, pinned to a cross for others to see, in front of His mom and people who walked by on the way to celebrate the Passover. Those who crucified Him sat beneath and divided His clothes.

Standing back you would wonder who would be able to do this? Where was the justice and decency of man that would say, “okay, that’s enough”, or at least leave him with something? No, there was NO act of kindness, no staying of the hands, no one who would come to His aid. Even in His utter shame of nakedness, no one thought about His decency.

2. The cross of abandonment.

READ 37-44

Everyone that should have stopped, intervened, said something did nothing but watched. Those who should have been objective (The Roman government) sent to keep order, chaos at bay, washed their hands of it. Pilate, the one who should have kept this lunacy from happening, did nothing except cave to the screams for murder.

The soldiers took part, the disciples scattered, Barabbas (the one who should have been on the cross is free), the Sanhedrin (moral ambassadors of God) took part in His murder, and His own people discarded Him.

He was completely and totally abandoned by all and worse of all, He was abandoned by the One who designed this from the dawn of creation. God the Father turned His back.

Vs 45 45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”[8]

At this point in the passage, Jesus has been on the cross for three hours. He was suspended on that cross at 9 am. Now at the sixth hour, High noon, while Jesus was still alive it became dark. Utterly dark. It was dark for three hours! This was not a solar eclipse. It was dark from the judgment of God.

In the Word of God, darkness is linked to and associated with God’s divine judgment. It is a clear image that in the darkness God the Father was doing something on the innocent body of His Son.

People stumble over what Jesus cried out with. If Jesus is God, how can God turn His back on God? I am so glad you asked now, write this down in the inner parts of your Bible so you can come back to this when you talk to your LDS, JW friends.

Jesus is 100% God the Son. Jesus is 100% divine while being 100% flesh.

In 7 I’AM statements, “I am the bread of Life, Light of the world, the door, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way, Jesus clearly proves His divinity.

Yet, Jesus is clearly 100% man. His favorite term for Himself being “son of Man” and the physical death we are studying shows him 100% flesh. My point is that He had to be 100% divine to be 100% righteous and the payment necessary for sin. He also had to be 100% man to be the proper payment for the sin of man. Payment had to be made and it required blood.

So, what God turned His back on was the man. Being fully man, He was baring your and my sin in a horrific, terrible payment for every white lie, every slanderous statement made, every eye roll of to your parents behind their backs. Someone had to make that payment. 

Does that make sense? Do you now see why Jesus had to be abandoned? Sin causes abandonment. Not just for the one guilty of it, but for our Lord. He was abandoned by his people. “ He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”[9]And He is now abandoned by His Father.

Why did God turn from His Son? Habbakuk 1:13 You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, [10]

As our sin was laid on the perfect Lamb of God, The Father had to turn His back as God Himself poured out all of the wrath of sin from the beginning of time to today onto the Son. God had to abandon Him or God would not have been Holy. It had to be done.

We need to be very careful to not think that this cross is only for others like the bad guys. NO! When we do that, we are missing the gravity of this cross. This cross of shame, humiliation, and now abandonment was 100% ours to bear.

Do you not see one of the major symptoms and cost of sin in our lives is separation from the body of Christ? When we sin, the first thing we feel as believers is the shame, conviction and then separation. We feel a distance from our Father but, if left unconfessed we see and feel a separation from the body of Christ.

To be clear, our sin is abandonment of choice. By choosing sin, we are choosing this separation! By not confessing, we are choosing to separate from our Lord and others. Our choice is a choice of self-destruction.

But Jesus chose this separation so that you do not have to! By His clear choice to obediently follow the plan of the Father from eternity past, He affords believers a path to come back from this separation. It is a path that is blood-stained by Him but one that is offered for those who seek it.

In the back of your mind, I want you to see the gravity of our contribution to the cross. Each of our sins, my sin, your sin, contributed to the cross of Christ. This is a personal cross for Jesus just as our sins are personal.

3. The cross of Christ is personal.

It was once said wisely that “Sin is a cruel taskmaster. Costing you more than you wish to pay, making you stay longer than you intended.” The wages of our sin are cruel and violent. It is a violence we give so little thought to.

I never want you to look at a cross again in the same way. I want us to see the cross like Jesus saw the cross. He could have allowed us to carry our cross and that would have been the best example of true justice. We cry when we are treated unfairly, but we who are believers in Christ are being treated unfairly. We deserved that cross that He took. That is the greatest injustice in human history.

It should have been me! It should have been you. We can never say things like “But my sin isn’t that bad.” Says who? Who measures the gravity of sin? Culture? You or me? The real measure of the gravity of sin is the one (Holy God) who unjustly pays for all of it on a cross that we should have carried.

We may say that this is too harsh, too extreme. But when we do that we prove just how little we regard our sin and how little we think of God. This is a God who, in just this one section fulfilled over 28 direct prophecies and indirectly over 100. Do you think a God who specifically planned this work of salvation takes your sin lightly? Do you think He takes my sin lightly?

Vs 46 “WITH A LOUD VOICE” The scourging alone would have made us not be able to do this. And yet, after 3 hours of the cross, He still had the strength to cry out with a Loud voice not once but 2 times from the cross. This was not a weak man. Why was he able to do that? Because it was ordained, foretold, and completely executed.

It is fascinating to me that every punch, every spit, every thorn on His head, every grain in the wood of the cross, every insult, every turned eye, and as God turned away from the God-Man, it was all planned. Think this through. Jesus would have known where that tree was planted before it was cut down to be a cross. He knew its grain, its shape, its branches. He knew every tongue that spewed every insult, every ounce of spit, every hand that struck Him.

He knew the eyes of those passing by from the time He knit them in their mother’s wombs. He knew where the iron would come from that made the nails. He knew where the bone came from in the whips that shredded His back.

Every part of this plan was designed, known, and orchestrated. Why? To completely execute the plan of salvation!

4. See the completeness of the cross.

Vs 50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit[11]

Want to know what He cried out with? John 19: 30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. [12]

Believer, it is time that we see how complete and final the cross of Christ is.

Imagine a kingdom that never falls apart. Imagine a kingdom that never experiences decay, never an attack from the outside, never a risk of falling into ruin. Imagine a construction of a kingdom so well done, there is never a risk of it falling to destruction. I know that it is impossible for us to put our minds around. We only know decay. We only know destruction. We only know a kingdom destined for destruction. We see it in every aspect of our lives.

The cross can be viewed in two ways. The way that Satan wants us to would be a kingdom built on sin and destruction. That cross is the natural end of that kingdom. It is a natural death and ending to that kingdom because everyone in Satan’s kingdom deserves their cross.

When we are born, we are born in the kingdom of destruction. Our passport, our license, our identity is the kingdom of destruction. Before Christ, the kingdom that we are apart of is the one that Satan proudly shows us that our destruction is our own personal cross.

God’s kingdom has a cross as well. But this cross was used once. The instrument for destruction for the One who carried it is the means that God ushers into existence the answer to destruction. It is the entrance to a kingdom we cannot understand. The cross completely ends the kingdom that is built on sin. It is the complete and total destruction of death.

We must look at the cross as it is intended. We must not compartmentalize it by saying it is for bad people. Yea it is! Bad people like you and me! WE all deserve this cruel device and yet, instead of leaving you and me in the kingdom of destruction, Christ changes our place of residence by using the cross to secure you and me into a new Kingdom, His kingdom.

This is only possible through Christ. You must respond to the cross of Christ by recognizing your need for it. If you are here and you still do not recognize your need for it, you are in the kingdom of destruction and your end is your own cross. But, Christ is offering you an opportunity to be saved.

2 Cor 5

21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. [13]

For your sake, He made Jesus to be sin so that in Him we might become righteous. Take this opportunity! See the complete work of God the Father in paying your sin on that cross so that you too may be made righteous. The cross of salvation is for those who believe that Jesus is exactly what He claimed to be! Fully God in the flesh, to pay the penalty of our sin. Believe on the LORD Jesus Christ and you will be saved!

This is unimaginable love! This is unimaginable mercy! This is for you! Believe!

[1]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[2]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[3]Swanson, James. 1997. In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament), electronic ed. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

[4]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[5]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[6]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[7]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[8]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[9]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[10]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[11]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[12]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[13]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.