The Son Of God Became The Suffering Servant | Mark 15:21-47

Y’all can go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Mark 15:21.

This is it. After nearly an entire school year in Mark, we are at the crucifixion of Jesus.

And as I was reading this passage, I couldn’t help but put myself in the shoes of the disciples. Have y’all ever thought about what the disciples’ perspective is in all of this? They’ve been following the man they know to be the Messiah. He’s doing all these awesome things… then He gets beaten, mocked, and killed. That’s gotta be pretty tough for the disciples. Gotta be pretty hopeless in the moment.

I think of a movie that ends on a hopeless cliffhanger. Have y’all ever seen a movie like that?

One of the biggest ones is Avengers: Infinity war. Spoiler alert: the bad guy wins at the end of Infinity War. With Star Wars day being a few days ago, I feel like we gotta talk about Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. Not only is it a movie that ends on a hopeless cliffhanger, it’s an entire trilogy of movies that ends on a cliffhanger. Anakin becomes Darth Vader, all of the Jedi are either dead or scattered across the galaxy. Do I have any fellow Star Wars nerd in the room?

But in those movies, there’s this feeling of hopelessness. Like there’s no way the hero is gonna win.

And some people might walk away from this passage feeling that way. Because this passage is about Jesus’ suffering.

So the software I use to write sermons always asks for a title to the sermon. So for every sermon I write for a Wednesday night, I always put a title to it. I just never tell y’all the title. Cause it would be kinda weird if as soon as I walked up here I opened saying, “The title of my sermon tonight is ‘Do you really want to be like Jesus?’” (which really was a title to one of the sermons in Mark 9). Just… kinda weird.

But I want to share with y’all the title of our sermon tonight because it’s significant.

The title is “The Son Of God Became The Suffering Servant.” And the reason I tell y’all this is because, I mentioned this last week, but Mark is divided into two sections. The first half is showing us who Jesus is, the Jesus is the Son of God and the second half is showing us what Jesus came to do, to suffer and die for our sins.

And many people when they summarize the book of Mark, they summarize it by saying it’s about the Son of God becoming the Suffering Servant to pay for our sins. And I title the sermon tonight “The Son of God Became The Suffering Servant” because this is what the book of Mark has been building up to. The entirety of this book has been building to this passage.

And you’ll even see next week in the resurrection that there’s much more of an emphasis placed on Jesus’ death than His resurrection and the Great Commission. And that’s not to say the resurrection and the Great Commission aren’t important, but the purpose of the gospel of Mark as opposed to the other gospels is to emphasize that the Son of God came to suffer and die for our sins. And while the resurrection is part of that story, the emphasis is placed on the suffering and dying part.

And it almost feels like one of those movies that ends with the bad guy winning and you just feel hopeless. The Son of God is dead. It just feels hopeless.

But the purpose of our sermon and small groups tonight is for us to see that Jesus dying on the cross doesn’t leave us hopeless. In fact, this is a story that gives us hope.

So let’s read the passage together. Starting in verse 21 or Mark 15. For time sake, I’m gonna read our passage for us tonight.

Mark 15:21–39 NLT

21 A passerby named Simon, who was from Cyrene, was coming in from the countryside just then, and the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus’ cross. (Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus.) 22 And they brought Jesus to a place called Golgotha (which means “Place of the Skull”). 23 They offered him wine drugged with myrrh, but he refused it. 24 Then the soldiers nailed him to the cross. They divided his clothes and threw dice to decide who would get each piece. 25 It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. 26 A sign announced the charge against him. It read, “The King of the Jews.” 27 Two revolutionaries were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 29 The people passing by shouted abuse, shaking their heads in mockery. “Ha! Look at you now!” they yelled at him. “You said you were going to destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days. 30 Well then, save yourself and come down from the cross!” 31 The leading priests and teachers of religious law also mocked Jesus. “He saved others,” they scoffed, “but he can’t save himself! 32 Let this Messiah, this King of Israel, come down from the cross so we can see it and believe him!” Even the men who were crucified with Jesus ridiculed him. 33 At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock. 34 Then at three o’clock Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” 35 Some of the bystanders misunderstood and thought he was calling for the prophet Elijah. 36 One of them ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, holding it up to him on a reed stick so he could drink. “Wait!” he said. “Let’s see whether Elijah comes to take him down!” 37 Then Jesus uttered another loud cry and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 39 When the Roman officer who stood facing him saw how he had died, he exclaimed, “This man truly was the Son of God!”

So my original plan tonight was to spend a good amount of time exploring three words that describe what’s going on in Jesus’ crucifixion. And we’re still gonna do that, but for the sake of time we’re gonna quickly move through the first two and spend most of our time on the third word.

1. Prophesy: This was predicted long ago.

There are many moments in this story that are prophesied many years before Jesus’ crucifixion. And I want to quickly touch on these and talk about why they’re important.

And keep in mind, in other gospels there are moments from Jesus’ resurrection not written down here that were prophesied years before as well. But we’re just gonna talk about the moments written here in Mark.

The first one is in verse 24. It says there that the soldiers divided up Jesus’ clothes and threw dice (or cast lots) to decide who would get each piece of clothing. And we actually see King David in the Old Testament prophesy that this would happen in Psalm 22:18.

Psalm 22:18 NASB95

18 They divide my garments among them, And for my clothing they cast lots.

So that’s the first one.

The next one is in verse 29. It says the people passing by Jesus mocked him and shook their heads. We actually see this prophesied in Psalm 22:7 and Psalm 109:25.

In verse 34, darkness has fallen over the land and Jesus cries out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” And David also prophesies this also in Psalm 22. Its verse 1.

And these are just prophecies directly linked to specific events that are happening. Like Jesus’ clothes being divided up and the specific words Jesus says while He’s on the cross.

There’s many other prophecies in the Old Testament though that said the Messiah would come and die for the sins of the world. Isaiah 53 is the most famous one.

You might be wondering, “Okay we get it, this was prophesied long before it happened. What’s the point of this?”

The point is Jesus’ death was not a random act that suddenly happened. It was the plan all along. And that provides us hope and assurance because we know this was God’s plan all along. Way before it actually happened.

And to keep moving along, the second word that describes what’s going on in our passage tonight is…

2. Sacrifice: This involved giving everything.

Jesus endured so much in the crucifixion. Before we even get to the crucifixion He endured so much. He was mocked, humiliated, basically tortured through flogging and the crown of thorns.

And in the crucifixion itself this keeps going. Just being nailed to a cross and lifted up is a pain that none of us can even come close to knowing about.

He was also stripped naked. The pictures of Jesus always have Him wearing an undergarment. This is usually just to convey modesty. It’s likely that Jesus didn’t even have on an undergarment when He was on the cross. So He was not only in major physical pain, but He was completely humiliated as well.

There’s even an emotional pain of what Jesus is going through. Everyone is shouting at Him and insulting Him. Even the two guys crucified beside Him (who are also in incredible physical pain and are being humiliated as well) are insulting him.

But none of that came close to this last thing. We see in verse 34, Jesus cries out to God and says, “My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me?”

All these other things: incredible physical pain, complete humiliation, everyone shouting at Him and insulting Him didn’t matter to Jesus. All that mattered, all that really affected Him was that His Father had forsaken Him. God the Father had abandoned Him on the cross. Cause Jesus was taking on the sin of the entire world. And the Father can’t even be in the presence of one sin, let alone the sin of the world.

Do we value the presence of God that much? I can tell you I don’t. Trevor talked about a few weeks ago when we were in the Garden of Gethsemane that Jesus sweated drops of blood because the Father was leaving Him. I’ve never been in that much distress from not being in the presence of God.

And here Jesus is, enduring what most people would never endure physically or emotionally, but all He cares about is what’s going on spiritually. His Father has abandoned Him.

Jesus sacrificed everything. Because the Father was everything to Him. And He sacrificed being with the Father so He could take the sins of the world on the cross.

And that’s why the word sacrifice is usually a pretty depressing term, that word is our greatest joy. Because the God of the universe loved us enough to endure all of this for us. To sacrifice all of this for us. And that leaves us in awe of Jesus.

3. Atonement: This made us at one with God.