Hail the King of the Jews!!!
Notes
Transcript
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.
Prayer
In the year 1947, something happened that would change the way that professional sports were played in America. Until this point, there was no Black MLB players. The Brooklyn Dodgers went out on a limb and decided to sign Jackie Robinson to the majors. This was not an easy road for him. He was still not allowed where much of the team was allowed. He had to drink from a different water fountain and eat at different restaurants and stay in different hotels. He was often humiliated and mocked because of how he looked.
Despite all of this, he was one of the greatest baseball players to have ever played the game.
Someone who was treated like they were less than was actually a great. Now, I am in no way trying to compare Jackie Robinson to Jesus or even compare the obstacles that they went through. But we can see that there are times when people are written off when they are actually great.
Our passage today follows Jesus through even more ridicule.
Even on the way to the cross, Jesus was mocked and beaten
Even on the way to the cross, Jesus was mocked and beaten
This is what our text is about. We are in some of the hardest bible verses there are to read as followers of Jesus because it describes how severely his treatment was. And even though Mark is not as detailed as others with these events, it does not make it any easier to read.
As I preach this though, I am not going to shy away from how brutal this was and I am going to do my best to rightly describe what he is going through. Some of these descriptions will be graphic. But we need to know what he went through to pay for our sins.
I am actually going to back up to verse 15 even though we covered that some last week because it ties right in with the events of 16 and I did not cover it as much as I would have liked.
15 So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
I want to focus on this word “scourged” right here. This is such a brutal punishment that Jesus went through after facing Pilate and being handed over to be crucified. In the act of being scourged, Jesus would have been stripped down. They would have either thrown him down on the ground or tied him to a post. Then he would have been beaten and whipped until his flesh would have been mangled. The instrument that they used to beat him with was called a flagellum. It was a whip of leather strips but on the strips they would have tied in pieces of lead and bone so that it would have made a sort of chain.
There was not a maximum number of strokes that they had to give the condemned man. They could give as many as they wanted. And it was said that due to this beating, many of the man receiving it would collapse and die from the flogging. I don’t think that we need to read into this and think that Jesus, as a physical man, was some sort of superior to everyone else. He is even described at times as one who looks unassuming. But what we should know about this is that God sustained him to go to the cross to fulfill the mission and prophecy.
16 And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion.
After this beating, they took him inside the palace. This place would have been quite large. He was a representative of Rome. So they would not have put him up in a shack.
In our minds, we would have thought that Jesus has had enough. He is likely holding on to life at this point. This is what our society had deemed as cruel and unusual punishment. But this is not the end for Jesus. They then call together the entire battalion.
This battalion was likely already there because the governor’s headquarters would have served as their barracks. The number of this battalion would have been somewhere close to 600 soldiers. 600 hardened Roman soldiers. And they were coming together to continue this cruel treatment of Jesus.
These soldiers would have taken exception with Jesus. Remember the charge that was given to Jesus that is sending him to the cross is treason. He has been charged with the claim that he has declared himself the King of the Jews. They served the Roman emperor. To have someone else claiming the throne would have been outrageous and deserving of the most severe treatment. So that is what they gave him. This treatment would have the intention of both beating and humiliating Jesus.
17 And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him.
This cloak was probably an old military cloak that was being discarded. But they put this cloak on him. As a means to mock the claim of royalty. But to further that, they made a crown to put on his head made out of thorns.
As most kids growing up, I would love to go and play in the woods. And being adventurous, I would climb around and try to squeeze myself through trees and bushes to make it through. But sometimes, I would get caught up in it. Have you ever been held captive by some briars in the woods? Even through thick blue jeans, it is very painful to go through. I am not sure that we can imagine the pain of having a ring of thick thorns placed over our head. And judging by everything else that they did to him, I doubt that this was something they did gently.
They were doing everything in their power to absolutely mock him. To degrade him and this idea that he is royalty. It is one thing for someone to be picked last in dodgeball in school or to be called four eyes. If you think that people have really tried to pick on you and degrade you, you have another thing coming. Try having over 70 religious leaders lie about you to get you sentenced to death. Try having 600 soldiers beat and humiliate you. Try being tied to a post and having to endure a beating that is known to kill men. And then they put a robe on you and mock you about being the king of the Jews.
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!”
A couple of weeks ago during our Wednesday night bible study, we were looking at the life of Noah. God was fed up with the rampant sin in the world and had chosen Noah to carry on the race of humanity. Every other human besides Noah and his family would be wiped from the earth. So God commanded Noah to build an ark to save and preserve them during the flood. Now, it took some time for Noah to build this ark, somewhere between 50-120 years. And this boat was quite large, so there was no hiding the fact that he was building it.
I feel confident that people were just as nosey then as they are now. I can just see it now. Someone riding by on their camel, rubber necking trying to see this kook working on this boat that God told him to build. He would have been the talk of the town. The women would have been going to Before the flood Beauty shop and just talking all about that guy who is building that boat. Can you believe that he thinks God told him to do this? Or the men going to the Rainbow Razor barber shop and just mocking how crazy this dude is that he is thinking that God is going to flood the earth and kill everyone but his family. They would have treated him like it is a modern day tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist.
Just like the people in the time of Noah would have mocked him for what he was doing, the Roman soldiers were mocking Jesus for this claim of being royalty. They are doing that by this salute that they are giving him. “Hail, King of the Jews!”
This would have resembled the salute that they would give to Caesar. The salute they would give him would have been “Ave, Caesar, Victor, Emperor!”. Hail to the emperor. They are making fun of this accusation of Jesus claiming to be the king of the Jews. Hail to the king of the Jews!!!
During this sequence of events, Matthew’s gospel records that they took a reed and placed it into his hands as a scepter to further this mockery of him being a king. How ironic it is that he is being mocked by them for actually being what he is accused of. He is not only the King of the Jews. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. His kingdom will reign forever. It will have no end and no boundaries. All of the kingdoms will fall. Today, there is no more Caesar, but there is still King Jesus.
These men were not focused on anything spiritual or anything eternal. They were focused on the carnal and the temporal. They beat him and humiliated him. And it didn’t stop.
19 And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him.
The beatings continued. But then, they even proved that they did not see him as even an equal human being. They saw him as someone that didn’t even deserve any form of dignity. They spat on him. What a way to treat someone. To spit on them. But then, to mockingly bow down before him like he is the king.
A lot is happening right here. In the Jewish culture, they would kneel as an act of worship to God. In the Roman culture, the culture that these soldiers were part of, you would kneel before someone as an act or reverence or allegiance. The soldiers would have done this for Caesar. Kneeling before Caesar would have been both political and religious. He saw himself and wanted others to see him as this god-like figure. So they soldiers knelt before him.
What they are doing for Jesus here was not an act of reverence or allegiance, but an act of mockery.
Many of you can remember just a couple of years ago that there was a coronation for the new king of England, King Charles. This was a big deal. Queen Elizabeth had been in office for so long that most people were not around when the last coronation had taken place. But there was this big ceremony. All of the dignitaries and officials went. Everyone was dressed formally and elegantly. This was a big deal because there was a new King.
What we are seeing here in Mark 15 is a mock coronation. They have a man who is charged with a claim to be king. They have taken his nearly lifeless body, put on a robe, given him a crown, put a scepter in his hand, and are now mockingly kneeling before him. They think that they are making a fool out of Jesus but in reality, they are making fools out of themselves.
Because there will come a day where every single one of them will truly bow their knee to him.
10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
He may be physically weakened by the beatings that he is receiving, but he will sit at the right hand of power and he has authority over them. Remember that Jesus is going through this willingly. He was not ignorant of what the cross was going to be. He knew there would be physical pain, he knew there would be humiliation, he knew there would be death.
18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”
He will willingly go to the cross and die. He will be buried. And he will live again. This is the promise that he made and he kept.
These soldiers may have heard the truth about who Jesus was but they did not believe. They may have bowed down before him and mockingly crowned him as king, but they did not believe. But one day they would believe. One day they will stand before God and have to answer for their unbelief. And we may get to heaven and learn that these very men who beat and mocked Jesus for being king, came to faith and now worship him for all eternity as King. But, in the moment, they did not.
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.
They took the makeshift royal garb off of him, put his own clothes back on him and now, he is on his way to the cross. This weakened and beaten man named Jesus would take hold of these large wooden beams and drag them down the street for all to see as he approaches Golgotha.
Do not be discouraged though when we read this. Just as I said last week, we should not only see the cross when we read this as something that was horrific, but we should see something that is hopeful. Yes Jesus died. But he died so that we may have eternal life. And when he does die on the cross, death cannot hold him. He raises from the grave and continues to walk around, fully alive.
That is what we must set our eyes upon when we look to the cross. That it is truly the redemptive work of God towards us as believers.
As we begin to close, I want to give us 2 things that we must do as believers when looking at this text.
We Must Acknowledge the Crown of Christ
We Must Acknowledge the Crown of Christ
Unlike the soldiers who mocked Jesus, we must acknowledge that Jesus wears the true crown. There is none greater than Jesus. When I say that we must acknowledge the crown of Christ, I am not talking about Phil 4 when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. That will happen regardless.
What this means in context with what I am saying here is that we must bow to Jesus as Lord because we have trusted him for salvation. You may have heard people say that you need to make Jesus Lord and savior. There are a couple things wrong with that.
First of all, you don’t have the power to make him Lord, he already is. Our salvation is not because we made him Lord, it is because we have acknowledged that he is Lord. He is not lord because we have said some magic prayer or even because we truly believe. He is Lord because he is Lord, and that is it.
But our acknowledgement should continue. See, to have Jesus as Lord of our own personal life is something that we must continue to do. And this takes our commitment to him. So, if we are claiming that he is Lord of our life, then it must look like he is Lord of our life. There must be change. There must be transformation.
Look at it like this, if we claim that we now follow Jesus as Lord, and we still live like we don’t, then how is that true at all. Our actions and our thoughts should follow our claims.
What are some things that are indicators that we are truly following Jesus as Lord?
actions - how we treat others
words - not only the words that we use but how we speak to others
beliefs - our morality should align with Gods
devotion - what are we devoting our time to?
Can you look at yourself and see how you have changed? Can others look at you and see how you have changed?
I think of Acts 4 when Peter had finished preaching and was standing before the Sanhedrin and was being told not to speak of the name of Jesus but he tells them that he cannot do that. But it is interesting what the elders say about him and John. And this is my prayer for each of us here. They said that they could look at this uneducated, common men and see that they had been with Jesus. They could look at them and tell. It is my prayer that when people look at you, when you look at yourself and you examine things like your actions and speech and beliefs and devotion, they see that Jesus is truly Lord because he has hold of your heart.
We Must Bear the Cross of Christ
We Must Bear the Cross of Christ
As we leave off in our passage, Jesus is carrying the cross on his way to his execution. He was prepared to do this long before this moment. We, as followers of Jesus, we must bear this cross. The cross that Jesus is our Lord and savior. When we think of the cross, it is often associated with death. So we must ask ourselves if we are willing to go to the death for Jesus. Many have done it before us. And although we live in a seemingly safe place for Christians, it may not stay that way. So we need to be willing to bear the cross of Jesus.
Realize though that this does not always mean that we will die. The cross is not just a symbol of death, but for the Christian, it must be a symbol of life. A reminder of what Jesus did by taking our sins on himself hanging on that cross. So to bear the cross must also mean life.
I want to point out some very practical ways that we can live and be a light through bearing the cross of Christ.
speak the message of Jesus - Acts 4; we cannot BUT speak the same of Jesus; They could not live without telling others about Jesus
stay positive and hopeful - if you claim to be a Christian but you complain about everything, no one around you will want to follow the Jesus you follow
invite others into the loving family of the church - I am constantly inviting people to come and be part of Immanuel. Not because I want to see the church grow, but because I know how important it is for someone to be part of a church family.
I hope that these are things that you can take with you and live them out. I want to encourage you to continue to grow, dig deeper into God’s word, spend more time in prayer, have conversations with others where you are encouraged by God working in each others life. These things much be important for us so that we are not like soldiers that are mocking a true king by giving him a false coronation. But because we declare and truly believe when we declare “Hail the King of my life!”
