Faith and Thought

And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.
Mark 15:21

Introduction
On my way out to California, I had my first up-close celebrity experience. I was in the airport at Las Vegas, when I saw a very elegant looking man with a full head of white hair. I thought he looked familiar, so I walked over closer, and saw that he was reading a script. Then I realize who he was – he was the guy who played J. Peterman on Seinfeld. He was also on the first season of Dancing with the Stars, and I think he hosts Family Feud. I even remembered his name – so I quietly went up to him and asked, “Is your last name O’Hurley? He said yes, and I told him I was a fan of his work on Seinfeld, and that he was the first celebrity I had actually met. And then he said, in the J. Peterman voice, “Nice to meet you.”

Many of you have probably never heard of him. He certainly is not an A-list celebrity. I mean, if he was on the same Southwest flight as me, how great could his career path be? But, he is one of those great character actors who plays the small parts that add so much to the story.

Today we are going to study about one of those kinds of characters in the account of Jesus’ death. There are only three verses in the entire Bible which mention Simon of Cyrene, and they say virtually the same thing. Yet he is an intriguing character. Full-length books have been written about Simon, so I don’t feel like one sermon is that much of a stretch.

While there are only a few verses which mention Simon by name, those passages are packed with details about him and his family, and also provide lots of hints as so what he would have witnessed as one of the cast of the cross. So let’s begin with the most basic facts and move from there to piece together a portrait of this intriguing character.

I. Who Was Simon?

The text says that he was “of Cyrene,” a large city in north Africa (modern day Libya). We know from historical records that there was a very large Jewish population in Cyrene.

We are also told how he came to be connected with the story of the crucifixion. He was “coming in from the country.” The Law of Moses commanded Jews to come to Jerusalem for three great feasts, such as the Passover week of Jesus’ crucifixion. Typically, Jerusalem swelled in population during these weeks, and those coming from out of town often stayed just outside Jerusalem, and traveled back and forth from the country to the city. Jesus apparently did this, staying in Bethany during the week, but coming into the city for teaching and for Passover.

So based on these two simple details, that Simon was from Cyrene and that he was coming in from the country, we can deduce that most likely he was a Jew living in a foreign land (what was called the Diaspora, the dispersed), and that he had come to Jerusalem like so many other pilgrims to celebrate the Passover.

Of course it is possible that he was just a Gentile who happened to be in town during the holy week (though this seems unlikely, since most Gentiles probably would have avoided vacationing in Jerusalem at this hectic time of year!). Perhaps he was a proselyte, a Gentile who converted to Judaism. If he was a native of Africa, it is quite possible he was black. The producers The Greatest Story Ever Told opted for this view, since Sidney Poitier portrayed Simon.

Whether he was a Diaspora Jew or a curious Gentile, Simon’s trip to Jerusalem was going to take a turn he never expected.

II. What Did Simon See?

I want you to try to imagine the scene in Mark 15 if you saw things from Simon’s perspective, rather than from years of familiarity. Think of what has been happening to Jesus at the time Simon is introduced in the gospel account. What would Jesus have looked like when Simon first laid eyes on Him? What was the setting like in which Simon suddenly became a part of the gospel record?

First of all, Simon would have seen a man in his mid-30s who had the physical build of a carpenter, but whose frame bore the grisly evidence of torture. Barely recognizable from the beating and scourging he had received, this man would have been covered in blood, with gaping wounds all over his back, wounds which were made worse by the rugged crossbeam the pathetic figure was carrying. Even the most hardened person would have recoiled at what Simon saw.

Second, Simon saw a man who did not appear to have a friend in this world, a man totally rejected and despised. At this point Simon could not have known that the closest circle of Jesus’ friends had deserted him when the temple guards came to arrest Him, but this is exactly what happened.

And they all left him and fled (Mark 14:50).

But he could not have avoided knowing that this man was hated by just about everyone jammed into Jerusalem. As he came into the city he may have even heard the shouting mob cry out for Jesus to be crucified. Perhaps he had read about the exploits of the criminal named Barabbas that the crowd preferred to released rather than Jesus, even though Barabbas was a murderer (Mark 15:7-14).

This was, in Simon’s eyes, a forlorn and forsaken man.

And third, Simon saw a cursed man. If Simon was a Gentile, he knew that crucifixion was a penalty reserved for only the worst kinds of criminals. The Roman statesman Cicero called crucifixion “the most cruel and disgusting penalty.”

But if Simon was a Jew, in addition to this general revulsion of crucifixion, he also believed that Jesus was under divine judgment. He would have known that the Law said in Deut. 21:23 that a man hanged on a tree for such display was “cursed by God.”

So this is what Simon saw. A wretched prisoner grotesquely disfigured. A rejected prisoner, scorned by a crowd thirsty for His blood. And someone who appeared to be forsaken and cursed by the Lord Himself.

In other words, Simon saw the same person Isaiah did centuries earlier, described in the Song of the Suffering Servant.

-He saw a man whose “appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance” (Isa. 52:14). He saw a man “wounded” – “crushed” – scarred with “stripes” – but as yet he did not recognize that He was

“wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.” (Isa. 53:5).

-He saw someone “despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised” (Isa. 53:3), but just as Isaiah said, Simon, like all the others, “esteemed him not.”

-And he saw someone who from every outward indication was cursed by God, or as Isaiah put it, “we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isa. 53:4).

Little did Simon realize when he chose to come into the city from the country that he was going to see the fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision from hundreds of years earlier, and that he would be dragged into playing a role in this drama of redemption.

III. What Did Simon Do?

Normally it was Roman practice for the condemned to carry their own cross (probably the cross-beam) to the place of execution. This added to the shame and humiliation of the penalty (just like when your folks may have sent you to grab the belt or switch you be whipped with). Though the text does not spell this out, I think we can safely draw the inference that the accumulated punishment Jesus had taken, combined with the lack of sleep and hydration, not to mention the incredible burden of His mission (like Frodo in Lord of the Rings), made it impossible for Jesus to bear the weight of the cross. We as Christians believe that Jesus was God in the flesh, but He was in the flesh, and His humanity was never on clearer display than when He staggered beneath the weight of the cross.

In some of the popular accounts of the story of Simon, he is hailed as a great hero, who nobly chose to step in and help Jesus out when no one else would. But this is not at all what the text says. Mark says he was “compelled,” Luke says he was “seized” (23:26). Simon was pressed into service to carry a heavy beam of wood, splattered with the blood and bits of flesh of a man everyone hated.

How would you have felt if you were Simon? Some of us protest when we are asked to take out the garbage – imagine how we would feel about being drafted into serving as a beast of burden for a condemned man! This beam is too heavy, and besides it is disgusting! What will people think – that I am a criminal? This isn’t fair!

Simon did witness firsthand a horrible injustice – not to him, but to Jesus. There was nothing fair about Jesus taking that cross for us. He didn’t deserve it – we did! Simon did!

-Simon was compelled – Jesus freely gave His life

Mark 10:45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

-Simon bore a cross beam – Jesus “bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).

-Simon carried one man’s cross – by the grace of God Jesus tasted death for all men (Heb. 2:9).

So while Simon was temporarily inconvenienced during a trip into the city to walk a few yards, carrying a piece of wood for just a few minutes, Jesus left the glory of heaven to carry out an eternal plan to be the propitiation for the sins of the whole world!

Simon carried a cross of wood; Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath!

But while Jesus is of course the central character in the cast of the cross, it is tantalizing to wonder what effect this event may have had on Simon. And it may be that Mark left us clues to tell us.

IV. The Rest of the Story?

I freely admit that at this point we are left with more questions than answers, and all we have to go on is circumstantial evidence. But consider the following:

• Mark named Simon’s sons – Alexander and Rufus - indicating they were known to the community for which his gospel was written (Rome).
• Romans 16:3 contains a greeting to a Christian in Rome named Rufus.

Rom. 16:13 Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well.

• Acts 2:10 says that there were Jews from Cyrene present at Pentecost when Peter preached.

Acts 2:10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome

• Acts 11:20 says that some of the Christians in the Jerusalem church who were originally from Cyrene traveled to Antioch to preach.

Acts 11:20 But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus.

• Acts 13:1 mentions a Christian in Antioch named “Simeon who was called Niger,” which means “dark.”

I believe in the basis of this evidence a good case can be made that Simon of Cyrene later became a disciple of Jesus.

It is not at all a wild piece of speculation to imagine that Simon was deeply touched by his encounter with Christ. If a complete pagan like the centurion supervising the crucifixion could confess just moments after Jesus’ death “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39), then it is certainly plausible that Simon came to believe based on what he witnessed, especially if just a few weeks later he heard Peter explain the significance of what had transpired. And since it is only Mark who mentions the names of his sons, perhaps Simon passed on the story of Jesus to his children, who ended up in the city where Mark’s gospel was written.

We cannot be sure how to cross of Jesus affected Simon, but really that isn’t what’s most important anyway. What is vital is how the cross will affect us.

V. Some Lessons for Us
The essence of conversion is accepting the payment Jesus made for our sins on the cross by identifying with the cross.

If in fact Simon became a follower of Jesus, he did so the same way all of us do – by being confronted by the cross.

The Bible employs the imagery of the crucifixion to explain what it means to be converted to Jesus. It means that our old self, the sinner, comes face to face with the cross as Simon did, but on a much deeper level. Simon merely accepted the task of carrying a piece of timber; conversion means we put our trust in Jesus’ death and repent; to change course in such a radical and profound way it is as if the old person we used to be is crucified! Isn’t this exactly what Paul was talking about in Gal. 2:20?

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:20)

Paul knew that Christ loved him – personally; that Christ gave Himself for him-personally; and because he was confronted with the cross, he chose to be “crucified with Christ,” to stop living for Paul and start living for Christ.

The time at which this happens is explained by Paul in Romans 6:3-6. Notice what this passage says – in reverse order:
•    “Our old self was crucified with him” (6:6).
•    This is because “we have been united with him in a death like his” (6:5).
•    When did this occur? In baptism – “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death” (6:3-4).

So our lives as disciples begin with our own confrontation with the cross, virtually re-enacting Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection in our trust that in baptism God will raise us to newness of life.

Or to put another way, Jesus bore the cross that we deserved, and through faith and in baptism we share in His death for us.

Jesus bore our cross so we could become disciples, but paradoxically as disciples, we in turn bear His cross.

Remember what happened after Jesus made the first prediction of His death? In Mark 8, right after Peter’s great confession, Jesus told the disciples what was to happen to Him at the hands of the Jewish leaders (Mark 8:31). Peter was convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, but he was also convinced that he knew what the Messiah would be like, and execution did not fit into Peter’s preconceived beliefs. It seemed absurd, and he essentially told Jesus that – (Mark 8:32). So from Peter’s great confession we now have Peter’s great confusion, and Jesus dispels Peter’s false beliefs with the shocking truth that not only will He bear a cross, but anyone who intends to follow Him must bear a cross.

Mark 8:34 And he called to him the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
Mark 8:35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.

Jesus bore His cross because doing God’s will meant more to Him than life itself. To bear Jesus’ cross means that we embrace the same solemn pledge to deny ourselves, to lose our lives to find them, if that’s what God expects of us.

When is the last time you truly told yourself, NO, you are not going to do something, because no matter how much you want to you know that you are to deny yourself like Jesus, and lose yourself in obedience to God’s will?

Jesus took His cross to serve others, even though they didn’t deserve it – especially because they didn’t deserve it! To accept the burden of Jesus’ cross means that we pour ourselves out to do good for others rather than being fixated on our self-interest.

When is the last time you truly gave up something you really wanted to have so that you could do something for someone else? When is the last time you put someone’s needs ahead of your own when they absolutely did not deserve it?

These are the tough questions that all of us must face if we are really to be genuine cross bearing followers of Jesus.

True discipleship is a lot more than carrying a wooden cross. It is putting God before everything else, even our very life. It is putting others first and serving them, rather than ourselves. It is becoming a slave of all, even as our Master came not to be served, but to serve and give His life for others.

Conclusion
Do you imagine that when Simon returned home that when his wife asked him why his clothes were so filthy and what happened that he just brushed her off? No. In essence Simon helped facilitate the death of a total stranger. I have to think he was deeply affected by what happened that day.

My guess is that being brought face to face with the cross in the dramatic way that Simon was had a powerful effect on him, that he was virtually compelled to follow Jesus after seeing what He went through. It is hard to imagine that when he was allowed to drop that cross that Simon just went on his way strolling home as if nothing unusual happened.

But there have been disciples who one day were bearing the cross of Jesus, and the next just set it down and walked away. That this happens is unthinkable, but undeniable.

On the other hand, you may have come here today not expecting to be confronted with a cross, which you are invited to pick up, just as Simon had no idea what was about to happen when he walked into the city that day. I hope you will pick it up, and never put it down.

I.    The Image (3:1-7)
A.    Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold (3:1).
1.    Perhaps this was inspired by what he saw in his dream in Dan. 2.
2.    Could have been an image of himself, or an idol to a god.
3.    90 feet tall and 9 feet wide.
4.    The location of the “plain of Dura” is uncertain.
B.    Instructions to worship (3:2-7).
1.    All levels of the administration are commanded to come and worship at the time designated by all sorts of instruments (3:2-5).
2.    Those who disobey will be cast into a burning fiery furnace (3:6).
a)    The Babylonians sometimes used very cruel methods of punishment (see Jer. 29:22).
b)    The furnace may have been the one used to forge the statue.
3.    Everyone obeys – almost (3:7).

II.    The Refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (3:8-18)
A.    The accusation (3:8-12).
1.    “Maliciously accused,” implying this was motivated by envy (3:8).
2.    Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are accused of disrespecting the king, his gods, and image (3:9-12).
3.    Daniel is not mentioned, perhaps because he is now working in a different part of the administration (see 2:49).
B.    Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego before Nebuchadnezzar (3:13-18).
1.    Infuriated, Nebuchadnezzar summoned them to verify these charges (3:13-15). Notice the end of v. 15 – “who is the god who will deliver you?”
2.    Their response (3:16-18):
a)    Our God can deliver us (3:16-17).
b)    Even if He doesn’t, we will not serve your gods or worship image (3:18). This was the same determination expressed by Esther (Esther 4:16) and later by Paul (Acts 21:13).

III.    The Furnace (3:19-30)
A.    Nebuchadnezzar orders them into the furnace (3:19-23).
1.    “Filled with fury,” “expression [image, cf. 3:1] of his face was changed” (3:19a).
2.    Furnace heated seven times more than usual (3:19b).
3.    So hot the men who cast the friends in were killed (3:20-22).
4.    Fell in, bound (3:23).
5.    NOTE: at this point, Catholic Bibles contain two apochryphal stories: The Prayer of Azariah and The Song of the Three Children.
B.    Nebuchadnezzar is astonished (3:24-25).
1.    He sees four men, unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, unharmed (3:24-25a).
2.    The fourth was “like a son of the gods” (3:25b).
a)    Later identified as God’s “angel” (3:28).
b)    Many commentators argue this was a pre-NT appearance of the Christ.
C.    The aftermath (3:26-30).
1.    Nebuchadnezzar calls them to come out (3:26).
2.    The witnesses see that no harm of any kind came to them (3:27).
3.    Nebuchadnezzar praises their God, and decrees that no one speak against their God (3:28-29).
4.    The three friends are promoted (3:30).

Concluding Questions for Discussion
1. Why do you think Nebuchadnezzar was so angry about their refusal to fall down and worship the image?

2. Could God have saved them without sending the “angel”? Why do you think He chose to send the angel?

3. Why is peer pressure so difficult to resist?

4. Why do you think the friends refused to fall down and worship even if they thought God might not save them?

Background
Daniel 6 is a pivotal chapter in the book. It is the last of the court narratives, and the first chapter of the Persian period. It is also a puzzling chapter because of the mention of “Darius the Mede.” There is no historical record of any king named Darius in the time of Daniel 6. Even Daniel states that Cyrus was king of Persia (6:28). The fact that as of yet we have uncovered no archaeological information doesn’t mean that he did not exist; it only means that we haven’t found the evidence outside of Scripture.

There are three basic proposals as to his identity:
-Some scholars identify him with Cyrus’s uncle, Cyaxares.
-Some scholars identify this is a throne name taken by Cyrus, and that 6:28 should be translated “during the reign of Darius, that is the reign of Cyrus.”
-Some scholars identify him with a subordinate of Cyrus, such as his son, or a governor, or a general.

The specific identity of Darius the Mede is an unsolved mystery of the Bible, but not a crucial issue in terms of understanding and applying the text.

There are obviously many similarities between this account and Daniel 3. The major difference is that in Daniel 3 the Hebrews are persecuted for not worshipping false gods, while in Daniel 6 he is punished for worshipping the true God.

Bear in mind that Daniel would have been quite old at the time of this account. He was taken to Babylon in 605 BC, and this account occurs sometime after the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. So Daniel was probably over 75 years old.

I.    The Plot Against Daniel (6:1-9)
A.    Daniel’s promotion (6:1-3)
1.    Darius begins to reorganize the newly conquered Babylon (6:1-2a).
2.    Daniel is appointed as one of three “presidents” (6:2b).
3.    Daniel’s excellent spirit was recognized by Darius, who intended to make a virtual prime minister over Babylon (6:3). This is very similar to the way Joseph’s excellent character continually leads him to rise to the top of every situation in Genesis.
B.    The jealousy of the other officials (6:4-5).
1.    Just as the promotion of the three friends raised the ire of the jealous Babylonians in Dan. 3, Daniel’s promotion triggers jealousy in the officials of the new regime, and they unsuccessfully try to find fault with Daniel (6:4).
2.    A great tribute to Daniel is the fact that they recognize the only ground on which to fault him is his religion (6:5).
C.    The conspiracy of the officials (6:6-9).
1.    The officials propose a new law regarding prayer to Darius (6:6-8).
a)    The new law says that Darius will be the only authorized mediator through whom the people can pray for thirty days. Notice that this was not the king’s idea, unlike the image in Dan. 3 which was the king’s idea.
b)    The penalty for disobedience: cast into a dens of lions (the ancient people invented all kinds of grisly ways of executing people).
c)    Notice that they say “all” the officials had agreed to this – a clear lie.
d)    They also emphasized that “the law of the Medes and Persians” was irrevocable (Esther 1:9; 8:8).
2.    The king signed the law (6:9).
3.    This sets up a clear contrast between “the law of his God” (6:5) and “the law of the Medes and the Persians.”
II.    Daniel’s Test (6:10-18)
A.    Daniel’s faithfulness to prayer (6:10).
1.    Daniel’s response is to continue praying as he always had.
a)    Windows open toward Jerusalem, location of the former temple (cf. 1 Kings 8:35-36).
b)    Three times a day (Ps. 55:17), which became a traditional practice among the Jews.
2.    Daniel’s response is neither to fear the law or to flaunt the law, but to keep doing what he always did.
B.    Daniel’s arrest (6:11-15).
1.    The conspirators apparently knew when and where to look for Daniel praying, and immediately reported his disobedience to the king (6:11—13).
2.    The king unsuccessfully tried to pardon Daniel (6:14-15).
a)    Much different from Nebuchadnezzar’s angry response in Daniel 3, Darius…
(1)    Was distressed at the prospect of losing such a valued official.
(2)    Was determined to keep Daniel from the punishment.
(3)    Worked all day to try to make this happen
b)    But the conspirators reminded him of the unbreakable law of the nation.
C.    Daniel’s punishment (6:16-18).
1.    Daniel was cast into the lion’s den (6:16a).
2.    The king expressed hope that Daniel’s God would deliver him (6:16b), unlike Nebuchadnezzar who claimed that no god could deliver the three Hebrews (3:15).
3.    The den was protected with a stone and then sealed to make sure no one tampered, including the king (6:17).
4.    The king had a difficult night – more difficult than Daniel’s turned out to be! (6:18).
III.    Daniel’s Deliverance (6:19-24)
A.    The king’s inquiry (6:19-20).
1.    The king went at “break of day” to inspect the den (6:19).
2.    His voice expressed great concern about Daniel’s fate as he asked whether Daniel’s God had delivered him (6:20).
3.    Note: Longman suggests that this may be read as a “trial by ordeal,” in which there is some question as to the guilt of the accused (see Tremper Longman, Daniel, NIVAC, p. 162-163).
B.    Daniel’s response (6:21-22).
1.    Addresses the king with respect – “O king, live forever” (6:21).
2.    Says that God has delivered him (6:22).
a)    God sent an angel (cf. 3:28).
b)    Shut the mouths of the lions (cf. Heb. 11:33-34).
c)    Because Daniel was blameless.
C.    The king’s response (6:23-24).
1.    Just as he was distressed when he knew what was going to happen (6:14), the king was very glad when Daniel was unharmed (6:23).
a)    Notice there was “no kind of harm,” cf. 3:27.
b)    This was because Daniel “trusted in his God.”
2.    The king also commanded that the conspirators and their families be thrown in the den (6:24-25).
a)    They met the fate they intended for Daniel to meet, cf. Haman in Esther 8:10 (see also Prov. 28:10).
b)    Their families also paid the price, as was customary in Persian law (Young, Daniel, p. 138).
c)    The ferocity with which the lions consumed them highlights the great miracle of Daniel’s deliverance.
IV.    The King’s Second Decree (6:25-28)
A.    The king wrote a new decree to the empire (6:25-27).
1.    The gist of the decree is that all people in the kingdom are to fear “the God of Daniel” (6:25-26a).
2.    While Darius was still a pagan and saw Daniel’s God as one among many, his statement of praise in 6:26a-27 is a powerful testimony to the impact the episode with Daniel had on him (cf. 3:29).
B.    Daniel prospered during the new regime (6:28).

Introduction
Now that Barack Obama has assumed the presidency, historians can debate in earnest where President Bush will rank among our nation’s presidents. It is true that he leaves office with historically low approval ratings, but so have other presidents who are now highly regarded, such as Harry Truman. Only time will tell.

Of all the characters connected to the story of the crucifixion, the one whose reputation has been debated the most over the years is Pilate. In the four gospels of the NT, he is portrayed as a waffling politician who condones a grave injustice to satisfy a mob. In later legends, he is said to have committed suicide, but when his body was dumped into the Tiber River the waters were so disturbed by such an evil presence they rejected his corpse!

On the other hand, a few centuries after the NT period, some alternative gospels were written which exonerated Pilate, claiming that it was actually King Herod who pronounced the death sentence on Jesus. Some of the accounts say that Pilate became a Christian, and this revisionist version of Pilate is so influential that in certain quarters of the Orthodox Church, Pilate is considered a saint!

You might remember that when Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ was released that many Jewish organizations claimed the movie was anti-Semitic, that it unfairly blamed the Jewish leaders for the death of Jesus. So, the Jews aren’t guilty; Pilate isn’t guilty; apparently nobody is guilty! It makes you wonder if none of these people wanted to kill Jesus how He ever ended up on the cross!

This effort to deflect or dilute blame is futile, because it isn’t that nobody is guilty – everybody is guilty. As Isaiah said, “All we like sheep have gone astray” (Isa. 53:6). No one we have read about in Mark so far comes off looking good in the story of the Passion. The disciples are faithless cowards; Judas is a self-serving traitor; the Sanhedrin is a conniving cabal; Pilate is an unprincipled bureaucrat.

So as we approach the text today, let’s do so with the transparent honesty that recognizes the guilt of everyone in the gospels, just as we confess “that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

The text today is outlined for us by two uses of the word “delivered.”
• The end of verse 1: “And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate.”
• Then in verse 15, Pilate “delivered him to be crucified.”

I. Jesus Is Delivered To Pilate (15:1-5)

Remember that Jesus was arrested in the middle of the night, and tried in the time before the third rooster crow (around 3 am). Verse 1 explains why the Jewish leaders were in such a rush to carry out their trial. Roman officials began their work at daybreak, so in order to make sure the governor heard Jesus’ case, they needed to bring him to trial “as soon as it was morning,” which is when Mark 15:1 says they concluded their hearing and delivered him to the governor.

1 And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole Council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate.

Pontius Pilate was appointed prefect (or governor) of Judea in AD 26, and held the post for ten years. His reputation in the works of Jewish writers like Philo and Josephus is uniformly negative, even for a governor. Josephus explained that Emperor Tiberius kept the same governor in his post as long as he could…

out of regard to the subjects that were under them; for that all governors are naturally disposed to get as much as they can; and that those who are not to fix there, but to stay a short time, and that at an uncertainty when they shall be turned out, do the more severely hurry themselves on to fleece the people; but that if their government be long continued to them; they are at last satiated with the spoils, as having gotten a vast deal, and so become at length less sharp in their pillaging; but that if successors are sent quickly, the poor subjects, who are exposed to them as a prey, will not be able to bear the new ones… He [Tiberius] gave them an example to show his meaning: A great number of flies came about the sore places of a man that had been wounded; upon which one of the standers-by pitied the man’s misfortune, and thinking he was not able to drive those flies away himself, was going to drive them away for him; but he prayed him to let them alone: the other, by way of reply, asked him the reason of such a preposterous proceeding, in preventing relief from his present misery; to which he answered, “If thou drivest these flies away, thou wilt hurt me worse; for as these are already full of my blood, they do not crowd about me, nor pain me so much as before, but are somewhat more remiss, while the fresh ones that come almost famished, and find me quite tired down already, will be my destruction. For this cause, therefore, it is that I am myself careful not to send such new governors perpetually to those my subjects, who are already sufficiently harassed by many oppressions, as may, like these flies, further distress them; and so, besides their natural desire of gain, may have this additional incitement to it, that they expect to be suddenly deprived of that pleasure which they take in it.” And, as a further attestation to what I say of the dilatory nature of Tiberius, I appeal to this his practice itself; for although he was emperor twenty-two years, he sent in all but two procurators to govern the nation of the Jews, Gratus, and his successor in the government, Pilate. Antiquities Book 18.6.5

So self-serving politicians are nothing new!

If anything set Pilate apart from the usual corruption of his day it was his pattern of violent overreaction to the Jews, followed by backtracking to cover himself. Jesus mentioned in Luke 13:1 that Pilate had slaughtered some Jews from Galilee while they were offering sacrifices, and Josephus relates another story about Pilate:

On one occasion, when the soldiers under his command came to Jerusalem, he caused them to bring with them their ensigns, upon which were the usual images of the emperor. The ensigns were brought in privily by night, but their presence was soon discovered. Immediately multitudes of excited Jews hastened to Caesarea to petition him for the removal of the obnoxious ensigns. For five days he refused to hear them, but on the sixth he took his place on the judgment seat, and when the Jews were admitted he had them surrounded with soldiers and threatened them with instant death unless they ceased to trouble him with the matter. The Jews thereupon flung themselves on the ground and bared their necks, declaring that they preferred death to the violation of their laws. Pilate, unwilling to slay so many, yielded the point and removed the ensigns.” War 2.169-174, Antiq 18.55-5

Pilate was a career politician who detested the Jews but at the same time deferred to the Jews so he could keep the peace and keep his job.

Mark does not explicitly state what the Jewish leaders accused Jesus of before Pilate, but we can infer from his question -

2a And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

-that they charged Jesus with treason, that Jesus claimed to be the true king of Israel in defiance of Caesar.

Luke gives us the complete run down of charges:

Luke 23:2 And they began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king.”

What audacity these people have! Just a few days earlier some of these same people tried to lure Jesus into a trap by asking Him if it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, and He specifically said “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (12:17).

And while it is true that He did say He was the Messiah, it is precisely because He is not the kind of king who came to destroy the Romans and depose Caesar that they don’t believe in Him! If He had truly been a threat to Caesar they would not have condemned Him – they would have crowned Him! But because these are the only kinds of accusations which would touch a nerve with Pilate, the leaders of the Sanhedrin deliberately lie and twist Jesus’ words to get Him executed.

In the face of such injustice I would be outraged. I hate to be accused of something I didn’t do (in the second grade Mrs. Gillespie said I hit Doyle Ratliff during lunch and paddled my hand even though I wasn’t anywhere near him, and I still haven’t recovered from the trauma!). Jesus could easily refute their charges, just as He blew a hole in their trap about paying taxes a few days previously. But instead, all Jesus said in response to Pilate’s question of whether He was the King of the Jews is:

2b “You have said so.”

This could mean, “Whatever you say,” sort of dismissing Pilate, or it could mean “you said it,” agreeing with Pilate. But the brevity of Jesus’ answer means that He is not going to mount a lengthy defense in rebuttal of these charges. He truly intends to be “like a sheep that before its shearers is silent” (Isa. 53:7).

That silence encouraged His accusers,

3 And the chief priests accused him of many things.

But His silence puzzled the man who held His fate in his hand.

4 And Pilate again asked him, “Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you.” 5 But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed.

II. Jesus Is Delivered to Be Crucified (15:6-20)

I believe that at this point Pilate knew that whatever disagreement these Jews were having among themselves that Jesus of Nazareth was not a seditious rebel. And I think he had enough of a sense of Roman justice that he wanted to find a way to free Jesus without causing problems with his constituents. It so happened that one of his customary procedures during Passover provided him the perfect cover to do this.

6 Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. 7 And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. 8 And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them.

The name “Barabbas” means “son of Abba,” “son of a father”. You remember that Jesus prayed to God as “Abba Father” in the garden. This is the only similarity between these two men. Jesus taught His followers to love their enemies, to lose their lives to find them. Barabbas was a murderer, involved in some sort of rebellion against Rome. I imagine him to be sort of like Spartacus, or Robin Hood, someone who used any means necessary to carry on the struggle against Rome.

Jesus and Barabbas could not be more dissimilar – Jesus is accused of preaching disobedience to the government when He taught the very opposite, and rebuked His disciples when they tried to fight against the authorities. Barabbas not only preached violent disobedience; he practiced it!

Maybe this is the reason Pilate offered the crowd the choice between the two, because Jesus was so clearly innocent and Barabbas was so clearly guilty. Surely the people will pick Jesus, relieving Pilate of having to make the choice, while at the same time preventing a horrible miscarriage of justice.

At least, that’s how I interpret the next couple of verses:

9 And he answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” 10 For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up.

Pilate was a veteran of underhanded political dealings; he could easily sense that the real issue here was not treason but power. The chief priests were envious of Jesus. There was no basis for these charges, and so Pilate presents the people a no-brainer: free Jesus or free Barabbas? At the same time, he couldn’t resist a chance to twist the blade a little in the chief priests, referring to Jesus as their “king.”

But Pilate had met his match in these men. They knew how to play the game with ruthless effectiveness-

11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead.

With speed and cunning the chief priests manipulate the people who were present to ask for a virtual terrorist to be released instead of Jesus. How could they turn the tide of popular sentiment against Jesus so quickly? First of all, it may be that this “crowd” consisted of supporters of Barabbas who had come to campaign for his release. But even if this was a random group of bystanders, think about it. Here you are at Passover, the great feast celebrating Jewish liberation. And on the one hand you have a man of action who has risked his life to fight for the cause of freedom. And on the other hand, you have a man who says things like

Matt. 26:52b For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.

In that kind of highly nationalistic and patriotic climate, who do you think most Americans would have chosen? We love men of action, men who take matters into their own hands. We revere freedom fighters. There is no doubt in my mind that if it had been people from Nashville TN standing there we would have made the very same choice those people did, with just as much enthusiasm.

Luke says

23:18 But they all cried out together, “Away with this man, and release to us Barabbas”

Here is one more irony. When the heavily armed underlings of the Sanhedrin came to arrest Jesus in Mark 14, He asked them,

14:48 “Have you come out as against a robber (lestes), with swords and clubs to capture me?

That word, “robber,” is the same word John uses in John 18:40 to describe Barabbas. They came armed to the hilt to arrest a man who was the farthest thing from an armed robber, only to trade His life for someone who was a violent criminal!

I almost get the sense that Pilate does not want to be the one to pronounce the death sentence, so he frames the issue in such a way that it is the crowd that asks for this penalty-

12 And Pilate again said to them, “Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” 13 And they cried out again, “Crucify him.” 14 And Pilate said to them, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him.”

The crowd is not interested in justice; it wants to see its hero released, even if it means the death of Jesus. And Pilate is certainly not interested in justice either. What he is interested in is pandering to the people-

15 So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

What kind of man would knowingly sentence an innocent man to a grisly death just to gain a very marginal level of public approval? This is no saint; this is a coward.

This was a brutal coward – he ordered the soldiers to scourge Jesus. It was Roman custom to scourge a prisoner before crucifying them. If you saw The Passion, you don’t need for me to explain what a nightmarish punishment this was. The prisoner would be strapped to a column, exposing their back. A soldier would take a lash which was embedded with bits of bone or metal, or even hooks, and flail away at the prisoner. Many ancient accounts describe victims whose bones or internal organs were exposed after a scourging.

Having prepared Jesus for execution, “he delivered him to be crucified.”

In our country, when a person is led to be executed, there is almost a solemn respect shown by the guards and officials who have to carry out the task. The prisoner is given a final meal of his choice and the opportunity to consult with clergy. Our Savior was not afforded any favors. He was treated in a way to strip Him of every bit of dignity, to maximize His pain and humiliation.

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.

Twenty-four hours earlier Jesus was giving His disciples instructions for finding a place to eat the Passover, which they found just as He told them they would. And now, twenty-four hours later, things have transpired just as he told them they would in Mark 10:33-34:

33 saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. 34 And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him.

All that is left is for them to kill Him.

III. Some Lessons for Us

I think the best way for us to draw meaningful applications from this text is to think about how we in so many ways end up imitating the people we have studied about today. Why is it that we fail to honor Jesus as we should? Isn’t it for fundamentally the same reasons as those we have studied about today?

A. In the chief priests, I see my propensity for pride.

Jesus was threat they needed to remove. He openly challenged them by refusing to adopt their traditions, by exposing their corruption in the temple, and by unmasking their hypocrisy. Even Pilate could see that the chief priests were envious of Jesus, that they wanted to get rid of a menace to their power base.

The establishment had every reason to be afraid of Jesus. His authority was undeniable. They could question its source, as they did in the temple when they asked,

Mark 11:28 By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?

They could claim His power came from the Devil, as they did when they tried to explain away His exorcisms. But what Jesus said and did was with such conviction and power you had to take notice.

Mark 1:22 And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.

Mark 1:27 And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”

And so the Jewish rulers could not dismiss Jesus as merely some itinerant preacher. He claimed to be much more than that, and He did so at their expense. Jesus drew sharp lines of distinction between them and Him, and the only solution left was to get rid of Him.

The other night I saw this statement on a website:

I do believe that Jesus walked the face of the Earth and died on the cross, but I want to do my own thing at the same time. This is why I don’t believe I am saved.

“I want to do my own thing at the same time.” That is the issue with us, isn’t it? Just like the chief priests, we want to be the chief in our life, we want to do what we want, and yet there is Jesus, claiming to be the Messiah seated at God’s right hand, telling is that we must be willing to give up houses and sisters and brothers and children and lands and even our own lives for His sake!

And so we have to choose – do I acknowledge Jesus as Lord and follow Him, or – like the chief priests - do I see Him as a threat to eliminate? That is why some of our brothers and sisters fall away. It isn’t because they have lost faith that Jesus lived and did miracles and taught with authority and died and rose again. No, they fall away because they are deeply convicted that is the case, that He did claim to be Lord, but because they want to jealously guard having their own way, because they want to do their own thing rather than submit to Christ, they try to remove Him from their life.

Every time you and I choose to ignore what Jesus wants us to do so we can be in charge instead, we are guilty of the envy of the chief priests.

B. In Pilate, I see my tendency to compromise.

Every time in my life I have compromised a conviction, it has been for the very same reason Pilate delivered Jesus to be crucified –“to satisfy the crowd.” When I have acted like a disciple shouldn’t, it has been because I wanted to fit in with the crowd. When I have failed to speak up when I should, it has been because I didn’t want to get kick out of the crowd. But either way, it boils down to satisfying other people rather than doing what is right.

To be frank, I don’t think Pilate had many convictions to compromise. Pilate represents the cynic, the person who has no principles, no core set of values. He is the paradigm of the person whose only thought is survival, and who will cut any corner, compromise any belief, to gain any kind of advantage. A person like Pilate lives only for the here and now.

We should never allow ourselves to slip into such a nearsighted view of life that we throw away our convictions to gain some kind of temporary approval from worldly people. We are not to be conformed to the world, but transformed by the mercies of God, in hope of an eternity of love and joy with God.

But every time you and I choose the easy way of popularity for the hard road of conviction, we are compromising the truth every bit as much as Pilate.

C. In the soldiers, I see my capacity for cruelty.

I believe that one of the unique endowments God has given man is the kind of conscience that will choose to do gracious things for other people at great personal risk. You may have seen the story in the news this week about the man in Lawrenceburg who raced into a burning apartment building to save someone else’s baby. That runs counter to the instinct for survival that controls animals. But something else unique to human beings is the capacity for cruelty. When a predator attacks and kills its prey, it functions by instinct, driven by the basic need to eat. We have all seen footage of a big cat of some kind chasing down an antelope to feed. That is nature’s way. But the lion doesn’t capture the antelope, drag it back to its lair, and then torture it. That is something only people do – not by instinct, but by choice; it is what happens when our moral conscience is perverted and twisted by sin.

The Roman soldiers had a job to do – execute a convicted criminal. In one sense you can’t fault the battalion of soldiers who carried out Pilate’s orders – they were simply doing what their superior commanded. But they went beyond duty; when they pressed that wreath of thorns into Jesus’ head, it was because they enjoyed it. When they struck him with the reed and spit on Him, it was for their pleasure. When they saluted Him in a parody of the salute given to Caesar, “Hail, King of the Jews,” they weren’t just carrying out orders – they were having a good time.

And if you search your heart honestly, and deeply, you will uncover moments when you have had a good time at someone else’s expense. Maybe a moment when you did something just to spite someone, to cause as much grief or embarrassment as you possibly could. Possibly a time as a little child when you decided to hurt an animal just because you could. Perhaps a moment when you mocked someone because of the way they looked. Cruelty takes many forms.

Those soldiers were cruel because they couldn’t see who Jesus was. They didn’t know He was their true King. They couldn’t imagine they were spitting on the only being in the world who could save them from their sins. And when we are cruel to others, it is because we do not see them as bearers of the divine image, those who are to be object of our love, not our spite.

Whenever you and I are cruel, we are no better than the soldiers who humiliated Jesus.

Conclusion
There is one more character to consider – Barabbas. And for me, he is the one that I most easily identify with. He was a lawless man condemned to death, and by all rights should have been executed by crucifixion. But Jesus took his place.

And I stand before the great Judge as one who has sinned, as one deserving of death, and should by all rights face the consuming fire of God’s wrath. But Jesus took my place. As Paul wrote in 2 Cor. 5:21:

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.

I have no way of knowing exactly where Barabbas was held in custody. The trial before Pilate apparently occurred the in palace of the high priest, and where Barabbas may have been held in relation to the palace is not explained in the text. But just imagine you were Barabbas that early Friday morning. Just perhaps outside the walls of your cell you hear a great crowd shouting. You can’t hear the words of one man, of course – the words of Pilate as he asks,

“Whom do you want me to release for you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” (Matt. 27:17).

But maybe from where you were sitting you could hear the response of the crowd as “they all cried out again, ‘Not this man, but Barabbas’” (John 18:40). And when Pilate asks what should be done with Jesus, maybe if you were Barabbas all you could hear was the crowd say, “Crucify him!” As you heard the footsteps of the soldiers come to get you, if you were Barabbas, and you have just heard a mob shout “Barabbas” and “crucify him!” what would you think is about to happen?

But instead, the guards remove your chains and tell you, “This man is going to die instead of you, you’re free.”

There was a report in the news that a Saudi man who was released from Guantanamo after spending six years inside the prison camp has joined al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen and is now the terror group’s No. 2 in the country. Do you think that’s what Barabbas did? Return to his life of violence and terror? I would like to think that he stopped to thank Jesus, that he made the most of his second chance, that maybe he was so intrigued by the one who was about to die for him that he even became a Christian. We don’t know.

But what I do know is this. Jesus came to “proclaim liberty to the captives” (Luke 4:18), and that is the good news we offer you today. By the grace of God Jesus came to “taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9). And through His blood the chains of sin are broken. This man Jesus died for you, and now you can be free.

What will you do? Will you ignore Him? Will you leave here today and go back to doing what you’ve always done? Or will you entrust yourself to Him, be baptized into Him, and spend a lifetime thanking Him for what’s He’s done?

Introduction
This morning we are going to read why we are here this morning. Mark 15-16 explains why it is that after 14 centuries of setting aside the seventh day of the week as a special day holy to the Lord that God’s people suddenly chose to assemble on the first day of the week as the Lord’s day. It is because this is the day on which the Lord rose from the dead.

Mark’s account of the crucifixion is the bleakest and most foreboding of all the gospels. But just as the darkness that shrouded the death of Jesus gave way to the sunrise of the first day of the week, the gloom of the death of Jesus gives way to the glory of His resurrection. And the first witnesses of each critical juncture in this story are three women: Mary Magdalene, another Mary, and Salome.

One of the greatest travesties of The Da Vinci Code is the slanderous way it distorted the story of Mary Magdalene. Dan Brown and other like minded authors believe that biblical Christianity is fundamentally sexist and demeaning to women, and that their revisionist tales about Jesus are liberating to women.

This could not be further from the truth. In fact, one of the unique qualities of the biblical gospels is the high view of women found in them, and the consistent portrayal of Jesus as someone who went out of His way to care for women. Let’s take a moment to recall stories in Mark-
-One of Jesus’ first miracles in the gospel was healing of Simon’s mother-in-law (1:30-31). -In Mark 5, Jesus performed two miracles for women, healing the woman with the bleeding disease on the way to the house of Jairus to raise his daughter from the dead.
-In Mark 7, Jesus performed a miracle for a Gentile woman, whose daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit (a woman whose spiritual insight far surpassed that of any man in the gospel).
-During His final week, while teaching in the temple Jesus made a point to acknowledge the meager gift of the widow, who gave all that she could.
-And as a final example of the special relationship between women and Jesus, remember that when he was at the house of Simon the leper in Bethany, an unnamed woman anointed Jesus with very expensive perfume. Some of the disciples complained about what they considered an unnecessary extravagance, and Jesus not only defended her, He even said that she would be memorialized for her kindness.

14:9 And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.

What a ridiculous caricature to say that the Bible devalues women, and that the traditional gospel accounts are misogynistic in some way. The Jesus of the Bible took special pains to care for women, to show women the love and grace so often lacking in every day and age.

And no doubt because of His deep concern and kindness, women were drawn to Jesus, and played a critical role in His ministry, by providing hospitality and financial support.

Luke 8:1 Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him,
8:2 and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,
8:3 and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.

But perhaps the best way to illustrate the deep regard for women the gospel record holds is to study the account of Jesus’ resurrection. The story of the resurrection, which is the climactic moment in the plan of redemption, is told from the perspective of three women. They were present when Jesus dies, they saw where He was buried, they were the first to see His empty tomb, and they were the first to see Him! The great privilege to be the first witnesses to the turning point of history went to these ladies!

Today we are going to study the first part of the resurrection, going from Jesus’ death and burial to the discovery of the empty tomb. And next week, Lord willing, we will study Jesus’ appearances. This morning, after we look at Mark 15:40-16:8, I want to then offer some basic reasons I believe the account of the empty tomb is true.

I. The Witness of the Women

The women mentioned here in Mark 15-16 witness three critical moments in the story of Jesus: His death, His burial, and His empty tomb.

A. His Death (15:40-41)

40a There were also women looking on from a distance

The phrase, “looking on from a distance,” may sound familiar to you. It is the same phrase Mark used to describe the way Peter shadowed Jesus during His trial before the high priest.

14:54 Peter had followed him at a distance

But here at the cross Peter doesn’t even choose to look on at a distance – he has disowned the Lord. All of the disciples fled, and except for John, who at some point does come to the cross according to the fourth gospel, the apostles are conspicuously absent from the scene.

But there are some disciples who do pay their respects. Not the familiar three disciples: Peter, James and John, but three other loyal followers:

40b Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41 When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

Despite all the attention she received in The Da Vinci Code, very little is actually said about Mary Magdalene in the Bible. The passage we read from Luke says that Jesus cast out seven demons from her, and no doubt her gratitude for such dramatic deliverance from the forces of evil led her to be the faithful disciple she became.

The other Mary mentioned here is not mentioned other than in the account of the resurrection (though that is still awesome!). And Salome may be the mother of the sons of Zebedee based on the parallel in Matthew’s gospel.

These women made the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, and just as they ministered to Jesus in life they stood by Him in death.

B. His Burial (15:42-47)

Aside from the apostles, another group whose absence is shocking is Jesus’ brothers and sisters. If Jesus’ father Joseph was already dead, as I think must have been the case, then it should have been the brothers of Jesus taking care of His burial. But they are nowhere to be found.

Even John the Baptist’s disciples cared enough to give him a proper burial in 6:29. But there is no one among the twelve or even His family present to prepare a decent burial. The Son of Man had nowhere to lay His head in life, or in death.

But just as the centurion made an unexpected confession, a member of the Sanhedrin stepped forward to do what no one else would – claim the body of Jesus and bury Him.

42 And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the Council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

Joseph was from Arimathea, a town in Judea, and according to the text was a “respected member” of the Sanhedrin. Given the spiteful and dishonest way the Sanhedrin condemned Jesus and abused Him, an obvious question is how could Joseph do what he does for Jesus here while being part of such a corrupt tribunal?

First, its possible that Joseph was not present at the actual hearing when Jesus was condemned. It took place in the middle of the night and was convened in a hurry, and my guess is that many members were not in attendance. And second, even if he was there, according to John 19:38 he “was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews.” Maybe he was led to vote for Jesus’ conviction because of fear, just as Peter denied the Lord.

And yet for some reason this once fearful follower of Jesus “took courage.” Was he moved by the way Jesus died like the centurion was? We don’t know what clicked within him to strengthen his resolve, but this man who was afraid to follow Jesus publicly while He was alive is bolstered in spirit and asked permission to take Jesus’ body for burial.

This is especially remarkable in light of the fact that Joseph was “looking for the kingdom of God,” and must have been bitterly disappointed that Jesus did not assume the throne of David as king in the way the Jews had expected. But as his fear gave way to courage, not even the regrets he may have felt about the seeming failure of Jesus’ kingdom kept him from giving Jesus an honorable burial.

To get permission to do this Joseph had to ask permission of Pilate, who

44a was surprised to hear that he should have already died.

Jesus died after only six hours on the cross, much more quickly than the typical victims of crucifixion. So Pilate double checked to make sure the Nazarene was indeed dead-

44b And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. 45 And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph.

In our day this would mean that Joseph called a funeral home and they would come and pick up the body and take care of the gruesome work of embalming the body and preparing it for burial. But that is not what Joseph did. He had to take the mangled corpse of Jesus and – presuming he followed Jewish custom – wash the hideously wounded body and prepare it for a tomb.

46 And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.

Excavations in Jerusalem have uncovered tombs like the one described here, cut out of the rocky hill on which the city stands. Since the Jews did not embalm their dead, the normal procedure was to wrap the deceased in linen strips packed with ointment and perfume to camouflage the smell of decomposition. The body would then be placed inside the tomb, which would be protected by a stone rolled into a groove.

Think of all the things the text says Joseph did.
-First, he had to ask permission to receive the body of a man condemned to death as a traitor and rebel! The authorities could have easily assumed Joseph was sympathetic to sedition and arrested Joseph, but despite the potential for personal danger Joseph boldly asked to bury Jesus.
-Second, he took the body, a grisly and unpleasant task.
-Third, he bought a linen shroud with his own money and prepared the body for burial.
-And then he laid Jesus in his own family tomb.

Joseph was courageous and generous, and there to witness it all were the devout women.

47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

It was important to these ladies to know where Jesus was buried because they intended to come and honor His body by anointing it with spices according to their tradition. They had no idea what a shocking discovery they would make in just a couple of days.

C. His Empty Tomb (16:1-8)

1 When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.

Remember that Jesus was anointed by a woman in Bethany at the start of the final week, something which Jesus interpreted in light of His death:

14:8 “She has anointed my body beforehand for burial.”

Now Mary Magdalene and the other Mary come to anoint Him after His burial, and they were so intent on doing it they came

2 very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen.

It was so early in fact that they realized there might be a problem trying to get access to Jesus’ body – the stone that was used to seal tombs like this could weigh several hundred pounds, and would be very difficult for a couple of women to shove out of the groove it was slotted in.

3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”

But once they arrived, what they saw amazed them.

4 And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back— it was very large. 5 And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed.

Not only was the stone already rolled back, and not only was Jesus’ body nowhere to be found, but inside the tomb there sat a young man that to their mind could only be identified as an angelic messenger. Because of cartoons, when I think of angels I picture this little pudgy, rosy cheeked cherub strumming a harp. But if you think about it, very often in the Bible when angels came to visit people they were horrified. Daniel and Ezekiel fell face down like dead men when angels came to them. So these women are unsettled – the body of Jesus isn’t there, and an angel is.

But this angelic visit is not designed to cause alarm – but to deliver wonderful news.

6 And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.

These women are the very first to get a glimpse of the evidence of the central miracle of the Bible – the empty tomb. They saw where Jesus was buried, and now that can see that He is no longer in the tomb.

The angel not only wants them to know that Jesus has risen – he wants the disciples to know, and he entrusts the women to give the message to the disciples.

7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”

It is peculiar that he says, “tell his disciples and Peter.” Why distinguish Peter from the rest? Surely it is because Peter had failed in an even more spectacular way that the rest of the disciples in his three-fold denial, and the angel wants to make sure Peter knows that Jesus does indeed want to see him again.

And, this also brings us full circle with how this gospel began in 1:36-

“Simon and those who were with him”

We would probably expect the next verse to say that the women rejoiced and could not wait to share the wonderful news – but that isn’t at all what happened.

8 And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

How ironic! All through this gospel Jesus would tell people not to say anything about Him or His miracles and they would ignore Him and rush right out to spread the news. And now, the Lord finally wants the message to be proclaimed, and the women say nothing! They are afraid!

Why are they still afraid? Old beliefs deeply held for years do not change overnight. None of Jesus’ disciples understood what He meant when He explicitly told them three times that He was going to be killed and rise again. They believed in the concept of the resurrection, but no one believed that the Messiah would be crucified and then raised from the dead. If years of teaching by Jesus did not click, then one angelic visit is not going to change all that immediately. BUT it does get the process started.

In fact, their fear may not be the kind of fear that a little child has who is afraid of the dark and dreads turning off his light, but rather the fear we have of something like a huge thunderstorm, which we fear because we know the kind of awesome power packed into a storm. The reason I suggest this is that throughout the gospel, those who witnessed Jesus’ miracles often reacted with fear-

-When Jesus calmed the storm in Mark 4

4:41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

-Or in Mark 5 when Jesus cast out the Legion of demons from the Gerasene man-

5:15 And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.

- Or the women in Mark 5 who snuck up and touched Jesus’ robe to find healing from her bleeding-

5:33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.

-Or in Mark 6 when the disciple saw Jesus walk on water-

6:50 for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”

-And the disciples with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration,

9:6 For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

So I would say that the fear of the women, like the fear in all these other accounts, is a fear generated by amazement at what has happened, and the realization that some divine power beyond anything they can grasp is at work.

It will not be until they see Him that they will fully understand. Like the blind man in 8:22-25 who was healed in two stages, who first saw men as trees but then clearly, their spiritual vision will be restored in stages.

II. Three Reasons I Believe The Tomb Was Empty

Of course, many people today believe this story is just a fairy tale, a myth generated by disappointed followers of Jesus of Nazareth. As we approach the season of Easter, you can expect magazine articles and documentaries on TV to challenge the truthfulness of the account of Jesus’ resurrection. So I want to offer three reason, based on history and reason, as to why I believe the tomb of Jesus was empty.

A. I believe Mark’s account of what the women saw is true because it is unlikely he would have made it up.

In the first century, the Jews did not place credibility in women. Their testimony was not accepted in court.

But let not a single witness be credited, but three, or two at the least, and those such whose testimony is confirmed by their good lives. But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex. - Josephus, Antiquities 4.15

Consequently, it is highly unlikely that a Jewish author like Mark would have made up a story in which the very first witnesses of Jesus’ tomb were not two or three men, but two or three women. The only reason he would have written this is because it is what happened, and his desire was to faithfully and accurately report the details, regardless of how politically incorrect they were for his day.

So I believe Mark’s account of what they women claimed to see. But what reason do we have to believe the women?

B. I believe the testimony of the women is true because it went against what they expected to see.

I would be suspicious if these women were just so sure Jesus would rise from the dead, that they so desperately wanted to see it happen that they just imagined His tomb was empty. But of course the exact opposite is the case.
-They came to the tomb to anoint a dead body.
-They were worried that they might not find someone to roll the heavy stone for them.
-When they saw the tomb was empty, their first reaction was not faith but fear.
-And even after an angel told them what had happened, they ran away, speechless and afraid.

All of this points to a completely and transparently honest appraisal of what they saw. If anything, these ladies were prejudiced not to believe what they reported, which adds fundamental credibility to their testimony.

C. And finally, I believe the tomb of Jesus was empty because no one ever produced the body of Jesus.

The astonishing claim that Jesus’ tomb was empty could have been easily disproved. All that had to happen was for someone to walk a few yards outside the city walls, roll the stone away, and haul out the decomposing corpse of a crucified man. But no one ever did this.

And so for these three reasons, not based on blind faith but on history and logic, I believe the tomb of Jesus was empty.

Conclusion
I think the most encouraging statement in the narrative we studied today is-

7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.

Jesus had indeed told the disciples He would meet them in Galilee after His resurrection–

14:28 But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.

The resurrection is the pinnacle of God’s eternal plan, but it is also an important practical reminder that when Jesus says something, when He makes a promise, He means it, and it will happen just as He said.

Right now with the economy what it is, I know that some of you have lost your jobs. Others of you are worried about losing yours, and some of you have seen large chunks of your retirement disappear overnight.

So Jesus’ promise in Matt. 6:33 means a lot right now.

33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

And sometimes when I feel so overwhelmed by the evil and hatred and suffering in this world, it is great to be reminded that God has promised that some day

1 Cor. 15:25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

And of course, we all long for the day to come when we will see Him, just as He told us!

The message of the empty tomb is that Jesus’ promises are not empty, but full of meaning and truth and hope.

A moment ago I said that it is sad that Jesus’ own brothers and sisters did not care enough to be with Jesus when He died, or to provide for His burial. But actually, that is not the case. Do you remember what Jesus said in Mark 3 when His family came looking for Him?

3:33 And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

Jesus’ flesh and blood family was absent, but Jesus’ true sisters- Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, and Salome – were there at the cross; and Jesus’ true brother Joseph took care of His burial. And by His grace, we can be His brothers and sisters too, and we can share in His death and burial and resurrection as we are baptized into Him (Rom. 6:3-4).

Would you like to become part of the family?

I.    Nebuchadnezzar and His Wise Men (2:1-16)
A.    Nebuchadnezzar had dreams (2:1-2)
1.    In “second year” his reign, which means the “three years” the Hebrews were trained (1:5) were either partial years or this happened during their training.
2.    He had “dreams,” maybe the same dream over and over.
3.    Left him troubled, and he summoned the full range of wise men to interpret what this meant (2:2).
B.    Nebuchadnezzar and the wise men have three exchanges (2:3-12):
1.    The first exchange (2:2-6).
a)    Nebuchadnezzar says he is “troubled to know the dream” and insists that they tell him not only the interpretation but the dream itself (2:2-3). I assume this was to test their integrity.
b)    They reply that if he will tell them the dream they will tell him what it means (2:4). Remember, this is where the section of the book in Aramaic begins, extending through Dan. 7.
c)    The king insists that they do as he said, promising a great reward if they are successful and a horrible punishment if they are not (2:5-6).
2.    The second exchange (2:7-9).
a)    Once more the wise men ask the king to tell them the dream (2:7).
b)    He accuses them of stalling for time and dishonesty, and threatens them once more unless they tell him the dream and interpretation (2:8-9).
3.    The third exchange (2:10-12).
a)    The wise men reply by saying that no man on earth could do what the king is asking, that he is asking something no other king ever asked for, and that no one could show the king “except the gods” (2:10-11).
b)    Furious, Nebuchadnezzar orders their execution (2:12).
C.    Daniel and his friends face death (2:13-16).
1.    The order goes out and Arioch comes to arrest Daniel and his friends (2:13).
2.    Daniel replied with “prudence and discretion” (2:14), just as he did in Dan. 1.
3.    Daniel was able to request an appointment to see the king (2:15-16). Notice the similarities in this account and Joseph’s experiences in Gen. 41.

II.    Daniel’s Prayers (2:17-23)
A.    Daniel and the friends seek mercy from God (2:17-18).
1.    Daniel immediately informed Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the situation (2:17).
2.    He told them to pray for mercy from God so that they would not be destroyed (2:18).
B.    Daniel’s prayer of thanksgiving (2:19-23).
1.    “Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night” (2:19a).
2.    Daniel responded with a thanksgiving prayer to God, extolling His great wisdom and might (2:19b-23).

III.    Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar (2:24-49)
A.    Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar what happened (2:24-30).
1.    Arioch brings Daniel before the king and explains that he can make everything known (2:24-25).
2.    The king asks Daniel (Belteshazzar) if this is true (2:26).
3.    Daniel responds that “there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries” (2:27-30).
a)    Notice that Daniel says that God had made known what will happen in “the latter days” (2:28), which can simply refer to the future, or specifically to the Messianic era (cf. Acts 2:17).
b)    Notice that Daniel emphasizes this knowledge is from God, not himself.
B.    The dream (2:31-35).
1.    A great image, mighty and exceedingly bright (2:31).
a)    Its appearance was “frightening” (cf. 2:1, “spirit was troubled”).
b)    “As Collins points out, ‘apparitions of gigantic figures are characteristic of ancient Near Eastern dreams’…There is a tradition of recounting world history by means of metals of declining value as early as Hesiod…in the eighth century BC” (Longman 80).
2.    Four sections of decreasing value: head of gold, chest and arms of silver, middle and thighs of bronze, legs of iron and feet of part iron and clay (2:32-33).
3.    A stone cut “by no human hand” struck the feet and broke the image in pieces, which were swept away by wind (2:34-35a).
4.    The stone became a great mountain and filled the earth (2:35b).
C.    The interpretation (2:36-45).
1.    The head of gold represents the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar, to whom God had given sovereignty (2:36-38; cf. Jer. 27:5-7).
2.    The silver and bronze represent a second and third kingdom, inferior to Nebuchadnezzar (2:39). Historically, the Babylonians were succeeded by the Medo-Persians (see 5:28-31) and the Macedonians (or Greeks, led by Alexander (see 8:20-21).
3.    The iron and iron/clay represents a fourth kingdom (2:40-43). Historically, the fourth major empire was the Roman empire.
a. Liberal critics do not believe this kind of prediction is possible and identify it with Alexander’s kingdom.
b. Dispensational premillennialists insert a gap of time in the fourth kingdom since they believe the Messianic kingdom was postponed, so that there can be a reconstituted Roman Empire (as in the European Union) during which the coming millennium will occur.
4.    The stone that was not man-made represents the kingdom of God, which breaks all other kingdoms and lasts forever (2:44-45).
a)    The NT picks up on several OT passages using stone imagery to apply to Christ (see Ps. 118:22; Isa. 8:14; 28:16; Luke 20:18).
b)    The kingdom of Christ is eternal, and will not be overthrown! (see Heb. 12:28)

D.    Daniel’s reward (2:46-49).
1.    Nebuchadnezzar honored Daniel and his God, which he probably thought of as a great god among many (2:46-48).
2.    Daniel used his influence to promote the friends as well (2:49).

Concluding Questions to Ponder
1. Try to recollect some passages from our study of Isaiah which focused on the one true God’s superiority to false gods that would tie in to this chapter.

2. Daniel said that God “removes kings and sets up kings.” Is that true today? In all situations?

3. What can we learn from Daniel’s example regarding how to obtain wisdom? (see James 1:5)

4. In what sense does God’s kingdom crush other kingdoms and fill the earth?

Yesterday I attended the funeral of Mary Lyles, a member of the Jackson Heights church in Columbia, TN. She was 95. I met Mary in the summer of 1986 as a young preacher-in-training at the congregation. Mary was one of those ladies whose outward beauty and elegance was surpassed by an inward beauty and grace. And perhaps no one gained more from her generous spirit than young preachers. Every one of the young men who worked with Jackson Heights over the last 25 years could tell stories about the kind way she always encouraged young preachers, the constant praise she gave even when a sermon bombed (especially when they bombed), and her tremendous southern hospitality.

Throughout my life I have been richly blessed by wonderful women who took a motherly interest in me and my work. As a little kid, Sister Begley (I don’t think I ever knew her first name) would give me 50 cents when we picked her up on the way to church, allowing me to keep one if I put the other one in the basket. She would even whisper the answers to the Bible drill questions in my ear between Bible class and worship!

As I grew up, we moved into town across the street from the Bush family, and in God’s providence the lady of the house, Sandy Bush, was a wonderful Christian lady, who gave me my first New Testament (which I still have). Betty Johnson, the wife of the man who was my father figure growing up, invested the same love and concern in me, giving me free run of the house like I was one of hers (until they got cats!).

On and on I could go. Doris Tyler, a wonderful lady in Pekin, IN who opened her home tome in my first preacher training program (and my first summer away from home). Polly Phillips, who endured my constant teasing about her hats she wore at church and did laundry for me my first two years at Florida College. My dorm mother, Mrs. Heaton. Ladies who encouraged me in my first full-time work, like Loretta Smith and Sylvia Tipton.

Jesus promised that if we have to leave our parents or children for the sake of the kingdom we will “receive many times more” in this life (Luke 18:29-30). I have been blessed to have a wonderful mother and grandmother, and also wonderful surrogate spiritual mothers and grandmothers, like Mary. Just as the apostle Paul greeted Rufus and his mother, “who has been a mother to me as well” (Rom. 16:13), I can thank God for the mothers of others who have been mothers to me as well.

And may God have granted my sister, mother, and friend Mary Lyles a peaceful death and a perfect end.

Joshua 17
14 Then the people of Joseph spoke to Joshua, saying, “Why have you given me but one lot and one portion as an inheritance, although I am a numerous people, since all along the LORD has blessed me?” 15 And Joshua said to them, “If you are a numerous people, go up by yourselves to the forest, and there clear ground for yourselves in the land of the Perizzites and the Rephaim, since the hill country of Ephraim is too narrow for you.” 16 The people of Joseph said, “The hill country is not enough for us. Yet all the Canaanites who dwell in the plain have chariots of iron, both those in Beth-shean and its villages and those in the Valley of Jezreel.” 17 Then Joshua said to the house of Joseph, to Ephraim and Manasseh, “You are a numerous people and have great power. You shall not have one allotment only, 18 but the hill country shall be yours, for though it is a forest, you shall clear it and possess it to its farthest borders. For you shall drive out the Canaanites, though they have chariots of iron, and though they are strong.”

Tuesday when I was teaching what I affectionately call “the old ladies class” at the assisted living place we read this section of Joshua. It comes right in the middle of the narrative of the tribal allotments of the promised land. The tribes of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, were given their territory, but apparently it wasn’t enough for them. And so they came to Joshua whining that they were so numerous that they needed more territory.

I love how Joshua responded. “You want more land - go get it!” Which of course is not the answer these whiners were looking for, and they immediately backtracked into a series of excuses. “The Canaanites will beat us - they have iron chariots and horses!” And then Joshua used their own words against them. “If you are so numerous and powerful you should have no trouble defeating them!”

We never hear any more about this matter!

The problem of whining is at its root a problem of ingratitude. The Lord was responsible for dispensing the land, so when the tribes of Joseph complained like they did, they were really saying, “We don’t appreciate what God has given us - we want more!” You will notice that as Joshua taunts them to go get more land if they want that he never says God will be with them. They have disregarded Him, so they will be on their own.

Sometimes I hear Christians complain that “we don’t do enough evangelism,” or “we aren’t as close as God’s people should be.” And my response is the same as Joshua’s. If you don’t think enough evangelism is being done, GO TEACH SOMEONE! If you don’t think your church is close enough, GO VISIT SOMEONE. And usually, like the tribes of Joseph and Joshua, I never hear anything else from the complainer.

We do not honor God by complaining. We honor God by appreciating what we have, and by taking responsibility for what we can do.

Introduction
This week was a historic moment in my life because I now have over 800 friends. Some of you know exactly what I am talking about – someone of you think that was an odd thing to say – who keeps track of how many friends they have?

Well, I don’t, but a website called Facebook does. You create a page for yourself, and then it helps you network with friends from work, church, hobbies, old schools, and so on.

We all know people we would not add as a friend if they requested it because we wouldn’t want to be associated with them, and we wouldn’t want people to know we even knew each other. But that is a pretty harsh judgment. To be honest, so far I have not turned down a friend request on my Facebook page – that is a tough trigger to pull.

Yet in what we are going to study today, Peter repudiated his friendship with the Lord. And I will suggest that just as Mark 14 describes the formal, legal tribunal of the Jewish leaders before whom Jesus is arraigned, there is another trial. Not in the legal sense, but in a personal sense. The judge and jury are a servant girl and some bystanders; the accused is Peter. The charge: “You were also with Jesus.” By the time he is finished, Peter will deny that he ever even knew Him.

Since Mark brackets the story of Jesus’ trial with reference to Peter’s confrontation with the crowd in v. 54 and 66-72, I believe we are supposed to read these stories together. So let’s begin with the trial of Jesus.

I. The Trial of Jesus (Mark 14:53-65)

In the time of Jesus the ruling authority of the Jewish people was invested in the Sanhedrin Council, composed of the priestly aristocracy (the chief priests), the prominent families (the elders), and the legal experts (the scribes), overseen by the high priest. This is exactly who Mark tells us Jesus was led to.

53 And they led Jesus to the high priest. And all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together.

This is the same evil trinity Jesus mentioned in 8:31.

Conducting a trial in the middle of the night was highly unusual. In Acts 4 when the Council arrested the apostles for preaching the resurrection they waited until the next day to interrogate them because “it was already evening” (Acts 4:3). It would have been even more unusual to have a trial during a holy day like Passover, and it was illegal to convict and execute a man on the same day.

For these reasons many critics of the Bible assume that the gospel accounts are wrong, or even worse, that they were fabricated just to make the Jews look bad and to exonerate the Gentiles. Honestly, how anyone could read the gospels and think that Pilate comes off looking good is beyond me. The fact is that if these men were genuinely seeking justice they would have followed all the correct procedures. But these are not honest men. They had already decided to kill Jesus –
•    After the cleansing of the temple, “the chief priests and the scribes… were seeking a way to destroy him” (11:18).
•    After the parable of the tenants, “they were seeking to arrest him” because they knew he had told the parable about them (12:12).
•    And just two days earlier, “the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him” (14:1).

This was not the determined pursuit of blind justice. This was a kangaroo court which had already decided the verdict, and now just needed to come up with the charges, as Mark pointed out in 14:55:

55 Now the chief priests and the whole Council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death…

But there is a problem: “but they found none” (14:55). They can’t find anyone to testify against Jesus – or at least whose testimony would stand up to scrutiny. The Law gave the standard of two or three witnesses as the criteria to settle legal issues. Verse 56 says, “For many bore false witness against him, but their testimony did not agree.”

Think about it – based on what we have read in Mark’s gospel, what charge could they bring against Jesus? The scribes from Jerusalem leveled two charges against Him earlier-

3:22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.”

And

7:1 Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, 5 And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

But as you recall, Jesus defended His actions with reason and Scripture, so that the scribes were not going to be able to win that argument. How can you put someone to death for delivering people from demonic forces? How can you execute a man for challenging you to honor God’s word and not man’s traditions?

No, to put Jesus to death they need two kinds of crimes. The need one crime that warrants His execution based on the Law; and since the Jews did not have the power to carry out executions, they need another crime the Romans would take seriously. Some false witnesses try to give them the former:

57 And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, 58 “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’”

If they can prove that Jesus threatened to desecrate the temple, even to destroy it, they could justify executing Him. But there is a problem -

59 Yet even about this their testimony did not agree.

What was it about their testimony that did not agree? Jesus did say something about the temple’s destruction. Early in His ministry according to John’s gospel, Jesus said:

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).

But was Jesus threatening to destroy the temple Himself? No – He was challenging them to destroy the temple of His body, which would be raised up in the resurrection. Jesus’ disciples did not understand Him at the time, so I am sure His detractors didn’t either. Maybe that explains their confusion, and in the haste to get a guilty verdict they falsely claimed that Jesus Himself said He would destroy the temple.

Another factor to consider is that Jesus had predicted the destruction of the temple just a few days prior to this trial. When Jeremiah predicted the same thing in his time, he was nearly killed on the spot!

Jer. 26:7 The priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the LORD. 8 And when Jeremiah had finished speaking all that the LORD had commanded him to speak to all the people, then the priests and the prophets and all the people laid hold of him, saying, “You shall die! 9 Why have you prophesied in the name of the LORD, saying, ‘This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant’?” And all the people gathered around Jeremiah in the house of the LORD.

So perhaps Jesus’ prediction of the temple’s ruin combined with His veiled prediction of the rebuilding of the temple of His body created the garbled and contradictory testimony given before the Sanhedrin. And it was the kind of explosive charge that could capture the imagination of the public, because as Jesus hung on the cross the mob taunted Him,

15:29 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!”

The inability to pin something on Jesus exasperated the high priest, especially since Jesus was silent and gave His accusers no ammunition to incriminate Him.

60 And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?” 61 But he remained silent and made no answer.

Centuries earlier Isaiah the prophet foretold of the servant of the Lord, who suffered in silence:

Isa. 53:7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.

In fact, there was one issue about which Jesus was silent His entire ministry. Do you remember the phrase, “the messianic secret”? This is the phrase commentators often use to describe Jesus’ insistence that people not spread the word about what He did or who He was. Let me remind you of a couple key examples:
•    1:34 And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
•    1:43 And Jesus sternly charged him (the leper) and sent him away at once, 44 and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone”
•    3:11 And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 And he strictly ordered them not to make him known.
•    After He raised the daughter of Jairus, 5:43 And he strictly charged them that no one should know this.
•    And of course, immediately after Peter made the great confession, 8:30 says “he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.”

It wasn’t until this very week that Jesus openly accepted Hosannas as the Son of David, but even then the crowds during Passover season would have been singing psalms of deliverance no matter who was coming in to town, so there was still no open claim to be Messiah.

Which is exactly what the high priest is after. If he can prove that Jesus claims to be the Messiah, he can convict Him on religious grounds (since Jesus in no way matches the presumed qualities of the Messiah). And he can convict Him on political grounds in the eyes of the Romans, alleging that He claims to be King of the Jews and a threat to Caesar.

61b Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

Have you ever seen Mister Deeds Goes to Town? It is a classic Gary Cooper movie in which he portrays a small-town man who comes into a fortune, moves to the big city, and ruffles the feathers of the elite because he doesn’t fit into their mold of what a sophisticated person ought to be. When he decides to give his money away, his crooked lawyer rigs phony charges against him to try to take away the fortune for himself. During the trial, Deeds sits in silence as witness after witness presents what seems to be damning evidence, and as you watch it, you can’t help but cheer him on to speak up and defend himself. When he finally does, he just completely annihilates every charge, and makes his scheming lawyer look like a fool – before he punches him in the face!

We know Jesus was capable of demolishing people in a debate – He did so in the temple just a few days prior. But at His own trial, Jesus gave no grand, stirring summation to defend Himself and discredit His enemies. He gave a simple answer, but an answer with shocking implications:

62 And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”

Two simple words (in Greek and English): “I am.” And then Jesus quoted from two passages.

The first is Psalm 110:1, “The LORD says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”

This is the same verse Jesus questioned the Pharisees about in their debate in 12:35-37. Remember the question: How can the Messiah be David’s son and David’s Lord at the same time? Now, Jesus tells the high priest, He is indeed the great David’s greater son, and that He will not merely rule as an earthly king but that He will sit at the very right hand of God in heaven!

The other passage Dan. 7:13, “I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man

This is the same verse Jesus quoted in Mark 13, when He said the destruction of the temple would prove that He was indeed the Son of God receiving royal authority from God (13:26). In the OT, only God “comes on the clouds.” Now, Jesus is saying that He will!

This is far more than a claim to be the Messiah. This is a claim that He will dwell where God dwells, to come as only God comes! No wonder the high priest was horrified!

63 And the high priest tore his garments and said, “What further witnesses do we need? 64 You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?” And they all condemned him as deserving death.

Jesus has given them the perfect grounds for execution – blasphemy. Now all they need is for the Roman governor to carry out their sentence. But before they go to Pilate, they decide to give Jesus a taste of what is to come.

65 And some began to spit on him and to cover his face and to strike him, saying to him, “Prophesy!” And the guards received him with blows.

Spitting on someone is a universal form of humiliation. They also began to beat Him, with His head covered. We have all seen the horrible images from Abu Grab and the way a few reckless soldiers humiliated their prisoners. Maybe we have read this account so often we have lost sight of how despicably Jesus was treated. Additionally, some of the Jews believed since the Messiah “shall not judge by what his eyes see” (Isa. 11:3) that the Messiah would be able to sense who people were with His eyes closed. Maybe this was their cruel parody of that prophecy.

Little do they realize that they are the ones who have eyes, but cannot see.

Isaiah did see this seven hundred years earlier, in another vision of a suffering servant:

Isa. 50:6 I gave my back to those who strike,
and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard;
I hid not my face
from disgrace and spitting.

Before we move on to Peter’s story, there is an important point to be made about the verdict of the Sanhedrin. The Jewish council is an easy target for disdain, given the fundamentally dishonest way they tried Jesus. But there is one sense in which they acted with conviction. If Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, and He was not, then He was a false prophet deserving death. These are really the only options. The idea, so common among people who want to be “spiritual” without the Bible, that Jesus was a great moral teacher and social reformer but was not God in the flesh is absurd. What kind of good moral teacher says He is the Anointed right hand man of God when He’s not?!?

The Jesus of the gospels forces us to pick a side, as Peter is about to find out once more.

II. The Trial of Peter (Mark 14:54, 66-72)

Mark included the narrative of the trial of Jesus between two references to Peter’s experience in the courtyard of the high priest.

54 And Peter had followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire.

66a And as Peter was below in the courtyard

In the chaotic moments of Jesus’ arrest Peter and the disciples were able to escape. And apparently Peter had doubled back to see what happened to His Master, following the temple guards to the high priest’s residence. On the surface, the fact that Peter trailed Jesus all the way to the courtyard of the high priest suggests that some of his courage had returned. But all it takes for that courage to crumble is a simple statement by a slave girl.

66b one of the servant girls of the high priest came, 67and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, “You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.”

Peter was one of the inner circle, and this made him even more conspicuous as a disciple of Jesus. One of the young women working for the high priest sees Peter and recognizes him as one of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

68a But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you mean.”

Suddenly, Peter finds himself in the middle of a spontaneous trial, and whatever curiosity or courage led him to see what was happening with Jesus were no match for his fear of punishment if he was identified as one of His followers. So he immediately responded to this slave girl in language that was the formal legal language of his day and time. He denies any knowledge of Jesus and His disciples. But his non-verbal communication gives him away -

68b And he went out into the gateway

Peter may claim to know nothing, but his move toward the exit of the courtyard speaks volumes. He is looking for another quick getaway.

But he cannot escape the prophecy of Jesus. The last part of verse 68 says, “and the rooster crowed,” immediately bringing to mind Jesus’ prediction about Peter’s denials. The crowing of the rooster also gives us a clue as to what time it is. Those who lived in Jerusalem have for years noticed that roosters typically crow from around midnight to three in the morning. So this indicates that Jesus’ trial and Peter’s denials take placed in the early morning hours.

Peter’s effort to deflect the girl’s accusation fails. Once again she fingers him as a follow of Jesus, and once again he denies it.

69 And the servant girl saw him and began again to say to the bystanders, “This man is one of them.” 70 But again he denied it.

And once again Peter contradicts his own testimony; this time, by his accent. Early Jewish literature often mentioned how peculiar the accent of people from Galilee was. Since it was well known that Jesus was from Galilee, Peter’s rustic accent betrays his identity as a fellow Galilean.

70b And after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, “Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean.”

Three times in the garden Jesus had asked Peter to stay awake while He prayed, and three times he fell asleep. The man who once bragged that if everyone else left Jesus he never would could not even keep himself from nodding of while his Master languished in prayer. And now, for the third time, he denied knowing Jesus in the strongest possible language-

71 But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know this man of whom you speak.”

The Greek says simply that he began to curse (KJV, NKJV, NASB). Was he cursing Jesus? Was he cursing himself (ESV, NIV), as if to say “a curse on me if I’m lying!” (NLT)?

There is no way to know for sure, but what we do know with certainty is that Peter’s denial of Jesus is deliberate, persistent, and emphatic. Sadly, there was a lot of truth in Peter’s denial. He truly doesn’t know Jesus, he still doesn’t really understand what kind of Messiah He came to be.

72 And immediately the rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept.

We refer to someone who is brash and arrogant as “cocky,” because of the way the rooster struts around. How ironic that the cocky Peter who bragged that he would be faithful long after everyone fell away is reminded of his empty boast by the crowing of a rooster.

Peter did not deny himself and take up a cross. He denied Christ to avoid the cross.

III. Some Lessons for Us

From the time Jesus woke him up in the Garden, Peter must have felt like he was in a bad dream that wouldn’t end. First he sees His Master and friend arrested, but not before he tried to take matters into his own hands, only to be rebuked by Jesus. Then he ran like a coward. Then he decided to discreetly see what was going to happen, only to be put on the spot again, only to fail miserably again, and to break down in tears. But this is not the end of the story for Peter. He doesn’t fade from the scene like Judas. He becomes the Rock Jesus named him to be, and if I am right in understanding that Mark’s gospel was addressed to Christians in Rome, then Peter eventually gave his life for Christ in the very city to which this gospel was sent. So Peter must have learned something from what happened in the courtyard of the high priest. Here are three lessons I can think of that we need to learn.

A. We can deny Christ with our lives just as we can with our words.

It is hard to envision a time here in America when we could face grave danger for professing faith in Christ. But as I have said before, there are places in the world today where if you did claim to believe in Jesus as the Son of God you could very well pay with your life. And that was certainly a reality in the time Mark, when Nero’s persecution was in full throttle.

A couple of generations later during another outbreak of imperial persecution, an aged believer in Smyrna named Polycarp was arrested, and urged to proclaim, “Caesar is Lord” rather than Christ in order to avoid death. To this Polycarp responded, “Eighty-six years I have served Christ, and He never did me any wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?” And so he died rather than deny Christ.

Hopefully we are nowhere close to facing that kind of persecution here. But this doesn’t mean we are immune to the temptation to deny Christ. We can deny the Lord in other ways besides saying, “I never knew the man.” The Bible teaches that we can deny Christ by the way we live.

Jude warned about those who

Jude 1:4 have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Paul told Titus:

Titus 1:15 To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. 16 They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.

If you truly believe in Christ, that will be reflected in the way you live because He calls us to a total commitment. But if the way you live does not follow what Christ teaches – loving God with all your being, about loving others as yourself, about purity, about honesty– then what you are really saying is you do not believe Jesus is Lord, you do not believe He is God’s Anointed one enthroned at his right hand, because if you really believed this, you would be doing what He said to do!

We confess Him by our works, and we can deny Him by our works. What testimony does the world see in you?

B. If we deny Christ, He will deny us.

When we deny Christ, like Peter, it is because of self-interest. Peter was obviously scared, afraid of what the authorities would do if they knew he was in the inner circle (especially since he just tried to kill one the henchmen of the high priest!). And the reason we deny Christ in our conduct is self-interest. The simple selfishness of wanting our will rather than His; perhaps combined with the fear of what may happen to us if we dare stand up for His will.

Or to put it another way, it is because we are more concerned with what someone else thinks about us than what Christ thinks about us. But Christ is the only one who can create a saving relationship with the God who holds our eternal destiny in His hand. Not just a beating, not just imprisonment or even death. But eternal wrath!

And if we deny Jesus, He has made the solemn warning that He will deny us before the eternal God.

Mark 8:38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Paul makes the same promise in his final letter to Timothy:

2 Tim 2:12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us

I cannot imagine anything more horrifying than to stand before God, knowing that my only hope of mercy is to belong to Jesus Christ, and to hear Jesus say, “Shane did not want to confess that he belonged to me, and so I don’t recognize Him as one of mine.” Those are the stakes if I deny Christ.

C. If we are faithless, He is faithful.

The third lesson I want to draw is from the next verse in 2 Timothy 2-

13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.

“He remains faithful.” And indeed Christ did remain faithful. While Peter was crumbling in the face of one slave girl’s question, Jesus remained faithful to His Father’s will in the midst of a flurry of false witnesses and degrading abuse.

And it is His faithfulness that gives me hope. Because I know that when I am faithless, He remains absolutely trustworthy, and will keep His promise to forgive me.

1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

We don’t have to imagine how heartbroken Peter was over his failure. But can you imagine how he must have felt when the women who visited Jesus’ tomb passed on this message:

Mark 16:7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee

“And Peter.” Why single him out? Maybe because of all the disciples, the one who denied the Lord three times needed the reassurance that Jesus intended to see him again.

I think this explains the scene at the end of the Gospel of John when Jesus asked Peter to feed His sheep three times. For each denial, Peter received a commission from Jesus to feed His sheep. Because even though he was faithless, Jesus remained faithful.

There may have been members of the church in Rome to whom Mark was writing that had caved in and denied Jesus. They needed to know that whether we have denied Jesus three times, 70 times, 70 times seven, we can have hope that like Peter we can be restored.

Conclusion
Have you ever been ashamed to admit you knew someone? A few years ago I read a book called Seventy Years in Dixie. It is the memoir of a man named T.W. Caskey, who lived through the War Between the States. One of the most moving passages in the book is the third chapter, certainly not PC, called “Black Mammies.” In many southern households, a black slave would help raise the children, especially if the mother was ill or had passed away, as was the case with Caskey. “The relationship between a child and its black mammy was both intimate and affectionate. Any Southern man would resent an injury to his old black mammy, as a personal insult, as long as he lived” (p. 42).

The account turns bittersweet when Caskey admits that the last time he saw his mammy, he was embarrassed when she showered him with affection in front of his sweetheart, which offended his sense of propriety in front of his girlfriend. “I blushed for shame that I should be thus kissed, by an old negress, in the presence of my young lady friend. I have never yet fully recovered my self-respect, when I think how I blushed to be kissed and loved by one who had so nobly earned her right to a mother’s affections and privileges, by all she had done for me during my helpless, infant orphanage. It was mean and contemptible in me. But I will yet atone for it, in a measure, if I am so fortunate as to meet her ransomed soul on the glory-gilded shore of eternity. In that sweet by-and-by, I will walk right up to her, and if her face is as wrinkled and black as it was when last I saw it, I will, nevertheless, throw my arms around her neck and, before God, Christ, the angels and assembled universe, tenderly press a loving, repentant kiss upon her cheeks.” (p. 48-49)

We need to feel the blush of shame for those times we have denied our Savior who has done so much for us. But we should also feel the great joy and hope of knowing that despite our failures, our spiritual blemishes, that He is always faithful to welcome us back, because “he is not ashamed to call [us] them brothers” (Heb. 2:11).

I.    The Handwriting on the Wall (5:1-12)
A.    The feast of Belshazzar (5:1-4).
1.    The identity of Belshazzar (5:1a).
a)    Until 1854 nothing was known of Belshazzar from ancient history, and many critics assumed Dan. 5:1 was an error, since the last king of Babylon was Nabonidus.
b)    In 1854 texts were discovered which mentioned the son of Nabonidus, Belshazzar.
c)    Nabonidus was devoted to a god called called Sin, and left Babylon to worship this god in the desert, leaving Belshazzar behind as crown prince.
2.    The purpose of this great feast (5:1b) may have been to solidify the empire against the impending Persian invasion.
3.    Belshazzar chose to call for the vessels taken from the temple by Nebuchadnezzar to use in this degenerate feast in honor of his gods – which were made of the same materials as the vessels! (5:2-4; cf. 1:2; Ezra 1:7; 6:5).
B.    The writing (5:5-9).
1.    Suddenly the fingers of a hand appeared, writing on the plastered walls of the palace (5:5; archaeology has verified the walls of Babylon were plastered).
2.    The king was terrified by the vision, and called for the usual group of wise men (who have consistently failed throughout the book), offering the one who could read and interpret the writing the place of third ruler in the kingdom (5:6-7).
3.    The wise men could not read the writing (perhaps because it was in Aramaic and contained only consonants – MN’ TQL PRS), and the king was terrified (5:8-9).
C.    The king sends for Daniel (5:10-12).
1.    The queen (probably the queen mother, since Belshazzar’s wives were already present according to 5:2), came into the hall and asks why the king is so upset (5:10).
2.    She then reminds him of the wisdom that Daniel had displayed in the service of Nebuchadnezzar, and says that he should be summoned (5:11-12).
II.    Your Days Are Numbered (5:13-31)
A.    The king summoned Daniel (5:13-16).
1.    There is a decided tone of disrespect in Belshazzar’s treatment of Daniel. He addresses him as an “exile” rather than a respected diplomat, which he had been for years (5:13), and he says that he has “heard” that Daniel has understanding (5:14), in contrast to Nebuchadnezzar who knew that Daniel had divine wisdom (see 4:9).
2.    He explains that the other wise men have failed, and offers Daniel the reward of third place in the kingdom (5:15-16).
B.    Daniel confronts Belshazzar (5:17-23).
1.    There is a decided tone of disinterest in Daniel’s statement to Belshazzar. He basically tells him he can keep his reward (5:17).
2.    Daniel then reviews his relationship with Nebuchadnezzar, and says that he had learned humility (especially after the events of Dan. 4), but that Belshazzar was not humble, which was indicated by his use of the temple vessels (5:18-23).
C.    The interpretation (5:24-28).
1.    Mene = sounds like the Aramaic for “numbered,” and means the days of the Babylonians are numbered (5:24-26).
2.    Tekel = sounds like the Aramaic for “weighed,” and means the Babylonians have been weighed in the balances and found wanting (5:27).
3.    Peres = singular of parsin, sounds like the Aramaic for “divided” and “Persia,” means the kingdom is to be divided and given to the Persians (5:28; cf. 8:1).
D.    The aftermath (5:29-31).
1.    True to his word, Belshazzar rewarded Daniel (5:29).
2.    True to God’s word, that very night the Persians killed Belshazzar and Darius the Mede became king (5:30-31).
a)    The Greek historian Xenophon said that “there was a festival in Babylon, in which all the Babylonians drank and revelled the whole night” when the Persians conquered Babylon.
b)    The identity of Darius the Mede is a puzzle, since Cyrus was the king of Persia (Ezra 1:1). We will talk about his identity in a future lesson.

Simon of Cyrene (Mark 15:21)

The Fiery Furnace (Daniel 3)

Daniel and the Lion’s Den (Daniel 6)

“Crucify Him” (Mark 15:1-20)

"He Has Risen" (Mark 15:40-16:8)

Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream (Daniel 2)

Rest in Peace, Mary Lyles

How to Deal with Whiners - Old School

The Trials of Jesus and Peter (Mark 14:53-72)

The Fall of Babylon (Daniel 5)

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