The Cross of Christ

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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I was looking back this week as I was preparing this sermon, and Lowell, you had mentioned with what excitement we are approaching the end of the

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Gospel of Mark. Not because we don't enjoy the Gospel of Mark, but because it is a good book and it's been a long haul.

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We have been in the Gospel of Mark, by my calculations. We started on May 15, 2022, and so we only have a few weeks left.

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But, after following Christ and seeing his humble birth in Bethlehem, and after following him through his early ministry around the rolling hills of the

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Sea of Galilee and his tumultuous final week in the crowded city of Jerusalem, we have reached the very climax of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

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And we have reached the very climax, indeed, in fact, when it comes to the very

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Gospel of Mark itself. Today, we arrive, as we've just read, at the cross of Christ.

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The cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. The very scene where Christ will be hoisted up,

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I picture in my mind like a divine lightning rod, to absorb the very wrath of God as a substitute on his people's behalf.

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And it could be said that if Mark has one scene in the whole of his Gospel that he wants us to read and to see and to understand and to remember, it is this scene, nestled in the middle of Mark chapter 15.

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The cross of Christ. And yet, if we look around, look around even at the churches surrounding us today, and I have no intention of being hard on other local churches, but it is apparent that fewer and fewer

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Christians are interested in the cross of Christ. At least fewer and fewer professing

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Christians. The story of the cross just doesn't draw the crowd like it used to.

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And I'm going to reach first for some low -hanging fruit to demonstrate this. If you were to look up the name

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Joel Osteen on the internet as an example, you'll find that he is a pastor of, if you can call him that, of one of the largest churches in North America.

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And yet, by his own admission, he does not desire to preach on the cross.

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He's not interested in preaching on sin. But as he said in the past, he doesn't want to focus on the negative, but on what is positive and uplifting.

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Now, of course, many of us know Joel Osteen. And we know that such a statement is ridiculous.

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And yet, today on the Lord's Day at Joel Osteen's church, 48 ,000 people went to worship at his three services.

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And millions more online and on TV. Each week, tens of thousands of Christians and professing

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Christians send millions of dollars to prosperity gospel preachers around the world so that they can gain health and wealth and happiness.

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Not eternal happiness, but temporal happiness. And I thought about, do I name names?

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I think I will for today. People like T .D. Jakes and Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, Paula White, Jesse Duplantis, Stephen Furtick, Joyce Meyer, and others who preach a false gospel or some semblance of the gospel for their own benefit.

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And I've been looking at trends. You know I'm a student of the church.

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I always like to see what churches are doing. There's a trend this summer where many of the largest and the fastest growing megachurches in North America are doing what's called an

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At the Movies series. Where instead of preaching the word of God, they're preaching

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Hollywood films like Star Wars and the Barbie movie and Super Mario.

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Some of them even coming dressed for their announcements or their sermon as the characters in the movies.

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Tens of thousands of people today flocked to churches to hear their pastor preach

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Barbie and Kent instead of Christ. It's happening. A list of these churches, these largest and fastest growing churches in North America, show us that many church growers want big churches, big productions, motivational talks, short self -help sermons, but not the cross of Christ.

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The cross of Christ is no longer good news, but for many it is old news. And as we listen to this,

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I realize that I'm probably preaching to the choir. Many of you are sitting here watching and going, well, we know the prosperity gospel preachers and we know the trend towards many of the megachurches and the seeker -sensitive churches of today.

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It can be really easy to dunk on these churches. After all, many of them are more interested in herding goats than they are feeding

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Christ's sheep. But we must nevertheless recognize that interest in the cross of Christ is waning today.

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And I think if all of us were to examine ourselves for a moment, even in our own hearts, our interest and our wonder in the cross of the

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Lord Jesus Christ is waning as well. Many of us no longer stand in awe of Calvary's tree where Christ was accursed in our place.

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We can read the passages, we can hear the sermons, but our hearts remain cold and untouched as we hear about Christ on the cross in the stead of sinners.

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We no longer stop to pause and consider the cost and the meaning of the cross of Christ.

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Such a reality we know is a travesty and yet it is true. And it's not new either.

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Oswald Chambers, you might remember him. He wrote the devotional book My Utmost for His Highest. He said this over 100 years ago.

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He said, All heaven is interested in the cross of Christ. All hell terribly afraid of it.

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But men are the only beings who more or less ignore its meaning.

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I like how he even describes that more or less. We have a casual relationship with the cross.

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And so it begs the question, what is the remedy of this ignorance of the cross?

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Brothers and sisters, I would suggest to you it is nothing more and nothing less than preaching

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Jesus Christ and him crucified. Preaching Jesus Christ and him crucified every day of the week in your own hearts.

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Where you become the preacher of Christ. Bearing witness to what Christ has done for you.

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And certainly it is preaching Jesus Christ and him crucified on the Lord's Day from this pulpit.

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And so today we're going to preach. I'm going to preach the cross of Christ. And we're going to consider.

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It's a very simple sermon in many respects. What is the meaning of the cross? Why ought the cross to hold our attention today for this 50 minutes?

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Or for the next millennia? Or the next 10 billion years? What is so special about the cross of Christ?

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We're going to see that in this passage that is before us. And so I'll invite you to turn if you haven't already in our

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Bibles to Mark chapter 15. I want to read verses 21 through 32.

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And then we're going to unpack this together. So Mark 15 verse 21.

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It says, And they compelled a pastor by Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.

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And they brought him to the place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull. And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it.

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And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them to decide what each should take.

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And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read,

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The King of the Jews. And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left.

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And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying,

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Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross.

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So also the chief priests of the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, He saved others, he cannot save himself.

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Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.

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Those who are crucified with him also reviled him. What I've done for today's purposes is

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I'm breaking this text up into four different units, four different facets of the narrative that we're going to focus our attention on.

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And the first facet, I've alliterated again today, I'm not sure why. It's two weeks in a row, but we've alliterated.

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We're going to look at four C's and the first one we're going to look at is the cross. The cross.

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Two weeks ago, you'll remember that we heard about Pontius Pilate and the subsequent persecutions that Christ endured after his trial under Pilate at the hands of the

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Roman guards. And in so doing, you might remember that as we heard about the torments of scourging and the mocking that Christ endured and the suffering that Christ endured for us, we noted that Christ was in that position, condemned as a substitute, a penal substitute in our place.

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And we looked at how the wicked insurrectionist Barabbas was let go, was freed, was given life in lieu of Christ, who became a penal substitutionary atonement in a sense in his place, pointing forward to a greater atonement that was to come.

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And last week in verse 20B, in the second half of verse 20, we saw that it read this, and they led him out to crucify him.

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And that's where we're picking up in our text today. The day has arrived. The time has come for the savior of the world to die.

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In verse 21, we're told that Christ was escorted from this praetorium in Jerusalem to the place where he was to be crucified outside the city walls.

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Now, our text for today doesn't explicitly tell us this, but it's very likely that Christ was already physically exhausted, depleted, drained at this point.

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And we can recognize this looking at a few different things. We see, for instance, that the

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Roman guards were forced to recruit Simon of Cyrene. In fact, it wasn't recruiting, it was forcing

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Simon of Cyrene to take Christ's cross for him. And this was the case, or this was the cultural context in that scenario.

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In Roman times, as a final act of humiliation, it was customary for the condemned criminal to carry his or her own crossbeam, their own instrument of execution, to the place where they were to die.

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And this rough piece of wood that weighed somewhere between 30 to 40 pounds was to be slung on their shoulders, their raw shoulders, from the scourging that had just taken place.

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And they were to carry it to the place of their execution. All the while, a herald would go ahead of them, crying out the charge that they were guilty of.

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That charge would be held on a plaque, which would then be fastened to the top of the cross, so that every passerby would know what that person's charge was, what they were convicted of, in order that they might die on a cross.

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So we see here that Christ was so debilitated by his sleepless night of horrific beatings, both at the hands of the

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Jews and the Roman guards, that this Simon of Cyrene was to carry the crossbeam.

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And it's interesting, none of the other gospel writers do this, but Mark points out that this was Simon of Cyrene, he says in verse 21, the father of Alexander and Rufus.

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You might have noticed in the last little while I've been on a bit of a kick in terms of demonstrating the historicity of the gospel claims.

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And here again, we see an example of that. That Mark leans not on just a random individual who came from the crowd to carry

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Christ's cross, but Simon of Cyrene, in modern -day Libya, where there was a large

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Jewish settlement. And he mentions Alexander and Rufus. Interestingly enough, we see, many scholars believe, we see

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Rufus in Romans 16, 13. Mark, after all, was likely writing to the church in Rome.

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And so they would have known Alexander and Rufus. And so, those who doubted

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Christ's crucifixion, the historicity of these events could go to Alexander and Rufus and say, is it true that your father was the one who carried the cross?

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And they could say, he was. And if he was still alive, they could say, and you might even be able to find him in Cyrene.

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A historical man, in a historical setting, carrying Christ's cross. And verse 22 tells us the final location where Christ was to be crucified and killed.

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We've heard that Golgotha means place of the skull. And it was located outside of the walls of Jerusalem, likely a common place where Romans would execute criminals.

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And this was something that we would expect among the Jews. Wherever something or someone that was ceremoniously unclean was, they had to go outside of the camp.

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And so this is exactly where they went. Outside the walls of the city. Now there is some debate, if you were to go to Israel today, where that hill of Golgotha is, that Mount of Calvary.

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There are two main areas, two main hills that scholars point to, but conservative evangelical scholars believe that it's the lesser known of the two.

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And in fact, it's not enshrined with a bunch of church buildings or fancy things, but it is

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Golgotha's hill next to an Arab bus stop in the middle of Jerusalem. If you were to go there today, you'd certainly find tourists coming and going, but the vast majority of people are just coming and going throughout their day, ignoring the very place where Christ was killed.

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Unlike the world that we live in today. Verse 23 tells us that as Christ went to the cross, he was offered wine mixed with myrrh.

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Perhaps it was an offer of mercy, perhaps not, but what wine mixed with myrrh was, was an ancient painkiller that would be used to dull the pain of crucifixion.

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And it was very likely that the Romans were giving him this so that he would resist less as they drove the nails through his hands and through his feet.

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But we see that Christ declines the wine and the myrrh. Now why would that be?

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Someone might ask, why would Christ want to make his own crucifixion any harder than it had to be?

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And it was because of this. Because when Christ went to that cross, he was on a mission.

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A mission from God. And a mission to drink every last drop from the cup of God's wrath.

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And in order for him to do that, he needed to be fully present, fully conscious, wide awake, both to the torments of the cross and the punishment for sin that awaited him.

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And then in perfect fulfillment of Psalm 22 and verse 18, which

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David penned some 1 ,000 years earlier, Roman soldiers cast lots for his clothing.

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In verse 25, if we skip along, we read that according to the clock, the

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Roman clock at the third hour, that is nine in the morning, Christ's hands were nailed to that cross that Simon had helped him carry up the hill.

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A nail was driven through his ankles to prolong his suffering, to allow him to push himself up to breathe.

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And his cross was lifted up for all to see his uncovered body in the morning sun.

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And verse 26 tells us what that herald would have called out as they went ahead of Christ on the way to Golgotha.

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This was his only charge. Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews. John chapter 19 tells us that it was translated into Aramaic, Latin, and Greek so that all the passers -by would understand why

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Christ was there. In fulfillment of Isaiah 53 .12, he was numbered amongst the transgressors and was crucified with one criminal to his right and one criminal to his left.

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Robbers, or the Greek translation might also be insurrectionists. Maybe they were accomplices of Barabbas.

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Now whether or not that is true, it doesn't change the fact that as Christ hung there, he hung there in Barabbas' place.

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Enduring one of the most cruel forms of execution that the human mind has ever conceived of.

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I think we've all heard of descriptions of crucifixion and the horrors of it.

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I find it very interesting that Mark, in an almost unparalleled way, has an economy with words as he describes the crucifixion.

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He says, and they crucified him. That is all. But it might be important for us to know, what did that crucifixion entail?

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What was happening as Christ went to the cross? As we noted last week, some people didn't even make it through the scourging.

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They were so whipped and so beaten that they would die even before they got to the cross. But for those who did survive that flogging, that precursor to crucifixion, they would be placed on that cross, often nailed to that cross, to hang sometimes for hours or sometimes for days, depending on how long they survived and how much time the guards had.

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Oftentimes, death on a Roman cross came by way of a combination of asphyxiation, dehydration, shock, and heart failure.

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It was a painful way to die. There are some accounts of criminals who would contract tetanus.

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Anyone here is familiar with tetanus and getting your tetanus shot every ten years? They would contract tetanus from the rusty nails that were driven through the criminal's hands and ankles.

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And the criminals were left there long enough, baking in the daytime sun, that the tetanus would begin to take hold.

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Tetanus, after all, is called lockjaw in some countries. And so the criminals would shake and tremor with such violence that it would nearly tear the nails through their limbs.

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And yet they were left there to die until their last breath. One commentator writes, every totalitarian regime needs a terror apparatus, and crucifixion was

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Rome's terror apparatus. Ad horrendum. The Roman statesman

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Cicero called it the most cruel and horrifying punishment that he had ever seen.

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One Roman official wrote, whenever we crucify the guilty, the most crowded roads are chosen.

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Why? Where the most people can see and be moved by this fear.

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It was a terrible thing to see, an even more terrible thing to endure.

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The author Greg Gilbert, who wrote the book The Gospel, I think we've handed out some of his gospel tracts, which is just a condensed version of that book.

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He says this, shredded flesh against unforgiving wood, iron stakes pounded through bone, joints wrenched out of socket by the sheer dead weight of the body, public humiliation before the eyes of family, friends, and the world.

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That was death on the cross. The infamous stake, the Romans called it. Parents hid their children's eyes from it.

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It was a loathsome thing, and the one who died on it was loathsome too.

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A vile criminal, whose only use was to hang there as a putrid, decaying warning to anyone who might follow his example.

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This is how Jesus died. Crucifixion was a special kind of cruelty, and for this reason it was reserved for the lowest and the most despised segments of society, and we've heard this before, that they would not crucify

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Roman citizens. They wouldn't even crucify a Roman traitor, but poor slaves, violent insurrectionists, prisoners of war, and the

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Son of God. And the irony, if we fast forward to verse 31, as the chief priests and the scribes mocked him, they said, he saved others.

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He cannot save himself. Why, that is exactly what

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Christ was doing on that cross, wasn't it? Not saving himself, but saving others at the expense of himself.

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And so here we have a picture of the physical sufferings that Christ endured on the cross.

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Let's look next to the cost of the cross. The cost, and I will read verses 33 through 37.

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It says, And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

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And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lima sabachthani, which means, my

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God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, behold, he is calling

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Elijah. And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.

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And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last. The cost.

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For three hours, Christ hung from that cross in the morning sun. All the while, the crowds parroted

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Satan, intempting Christ to come down from that cross. And think about this for a moment.

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If Christ would have just heard those words and acted on them, he would have derailed eternal redemption, our eternal redemption that he accomplished.

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He would have derailed that forever. But praise God, Christ stayed on that cross, even as the men cried for him to come down to their own demise.

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But the worst was yet to come. So we've already heard in recent weeks, we've heard a lot about liberal scholars.

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Liberal scholars have tried to say that Christ's death, or that Christ's dread in the garden, as he sought the

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Father in prayer, that that dread was due to the physical torments of Roman crucifixion.

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And we settled that a number of weeks ago. That his anxiety in the garden had nothing to do with the floggings.

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It had nothing to do with the nails. It had nothing to do with the taunts of the people. These liberal scholars would deny that there is any unseen spiritual transaction that occurred on the cross on that Good Friday.

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But as we will see, this couldn't be further from the truth. In verse 33, we read that at the sixth hour, this is now 12 noon.

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Ezra is too young to ask, so I'll ask Noah. Noah, where is the sun at 12 noon? In the middle of the sky, at or near the middle of the sky.

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But at 12 noon, when the sun should have been at its highest point, there was darkness over the whole land that lasted three hours, until the ninth hour, until 3 p .m.

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that day. Now we can go back into the history books and see the validity of this event.

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Early church fathers speak of eyewitness accounts who spoke of the widespread nature of this darkness.

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That there were people all through the land of Palestine who experienced this dark sky, dark as night.

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Even Tertullian, another early church father, references a Roman archive which spoke of this cosmic event that happened on that Friday.

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Now it begs the question, why was the sky dark as night over Christ? Some have argued that there was a lunar eclipse.

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There is always a good reason for something. I've told stories before of the man who served as pastor to the church where I was first saved.

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And the Lord saved me there, not because but in spite of the ministry of that church.

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But one of the things that he used to say is that, well, the Lord, Jesus didn't actually walk on water.

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He was just walking in really shallow water and the disciples thought he was walking on water. Or he said one time,

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God didn't actually part the Red Sea. There's actually a really interesting land bridge that's there and you can walk on the land bridge and you might get your ankles wet, but you can still cross the

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Red Sea. There are liberal scholars that would say, well, this was just an eclipse. The problem was they're ignorant to the

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Jewish calendar. For those of us who are familiar with the Jewish calendar, it was inextricably linked to the lunar calendar.

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And so on the Passover, it always took place on the 15th day of Nisan during a full moon.

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And so to have a full moon, you cannot have a lunar eclipse at the same time. As a young Christian, I used to think that the sky became dark because it was a very sad day, that it conveyed the

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Father's sadness over Christ's death. It was a nice thought, but I was incorrect.

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The sky did not darken because it was a lunar eclipse. The sky did not darken because the Father was sad.

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The sky was darkened because judgment was at hand. Every time we see the sky darkening in the scriptures, judgment is coming.

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If we look at the eschatological passages in scripture, like Joel 2 .31, which has some interplay with Acts chapter 2, it says,

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The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and awesome, or some translations say, the great and terrible day of the

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Lord. In Matthew chapter 24 and verses 29 and 30, it says,

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Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will fall from heaven and the powers of heaven will be shaken.

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Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man and all the tribes of the earth will mourn.

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Why? They will see the Son of Man, it says, coming on the clouds of heaven with great power and glory and with that Son of Man accountability.

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But perhaps fewer is uncanny as Exodus chapter 10. If we go all the way back to the

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Exodus of the Israelites. In Exodus 10 .21, it says there that the

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Lord said to Moses, Stretch out your hand toward heaven that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt.

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A dark darkness. Have you ever felt darkness? A darkness to be felt.

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So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven and there was pitch darkness in all the land of Egypt three days.

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We're also talking about a number three in our passage. They did not see one another nor did anyone rise from his place for three days but all the people of Israel had light where they lived.

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Now, why did all of Egypt have darkness? Well, the Israelites still had light because it was a demonstration of the manifold judgment of God upon Egypt.

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That that darkness itself was judgment upon that nation. It was the ninth plague and what immediately came after the ninth plague but the tenth plague and the death of the firstborn son.

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Now you might think that I'm really stretching this. I'm going to lean on a little bit of help here.

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R .C. Sproul writes that this three hours of darkness recalls the darkness in Egypt that lasted three days before the deaths of the firstborn son.

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It corroborates with Amos chapter 8 verses 9 and 10 where the

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Lord promises to darken the earth in broad daylight in a time like the morning for an only son.

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The most fearful thing, brothers and sisters, about the cross and it's hard for me to preach this because I know many of you already know this but it wasn't the cross itself.

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It was the God of the cross on that Friday afternoon. Hebrews 10 .31

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says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God and yet on the cross that is exactly where Christ fell into the hands of the living

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God. The sky was not dark because of Jesus. Think about this distinction.

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The sky was not dark because of Jesus. The sky was dark for Jesus.

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The dark sky of God's disapproval hanging over his head.

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On that cross, as Jesus died, as the song goes, the wrath of God was satisfied for every sin on him was laid.

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The Jews had rejected Christ. We read two weeks ago how the Gentiles had rejected

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Christ. We see in this passage how the passers -by reviled and rejected

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Christ. And now it was the Father's turn to reject the

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Son. The Father's turn to reject the Christ.

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Mark 15 .34 tells us that Christ cried out on that cross

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Eloi, Eloi, Lema, Sabachthani. The people couldn't make sense of this.

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They couldn't understand it. They thought he was calling for Elijah. But dear friends, he wasn't calling for Elijah.

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He was crying out for his Father. The Father whom he had known and lived in unbroken fellowship with since before the world began.

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The Father whom he had known and loved from eternity past. As he cried

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Eloi, Eloi, Lema, Sabachthani, he cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

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Forsaken by the Father. It was not merely to quote the first verse of Psalm 22 which was spoken with perfect accuracy as to what was to come.

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But our Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ in time and in history hung on that cross pouring out his soul in bitter anguish as he was abandoned by the

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Father. This has been called and this expression

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I find deeply moving Emmanuel's orphan cry.

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That Christ became an orphan on that cross. The one who promised in John 14 .18 I will not leave you as orphans

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I will come to you. He was left to hang on that cross as Emmanuel's orphan son crushed under the mighty hand of the

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Father as the vicarious sacrifice for our sins. How many of us can hear that and we are just not surprised.

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And we're just not moved. Far too many of us.

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H .A. Ironside says on that cross on that hill outside the camp

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Christ experienced the awful abandonment of soul into which the

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Lord Jesus Christ went when he became the great sin bearer. It was then that God the righteous judge dealt with Christ as a surety in the sinner's stead.

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In this reality of Christ going to the cross for our sins is replete in Scripture.

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Galatians 3 .13 We've looked at this before. What was Christ doing on that tree at the summit of Golgotha?

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It says Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

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It is written cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. Isaiah 53 .10

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Some people are very offended by these passages. Yet it was the will of the

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Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief when his soul makes an offering for sin.

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2 Corinthians 5 .21 It's probably been my favorite Bible verse for the last ten years.

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For our sake he made him to be sin. Who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God on his behalf.

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You might remember back to the Old Testament on the Day of Atonement there were two goats.

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One goat was sacrificed and the other goat was what they called the scapegoat. William Tyndale coined that phrase the scapegoat.

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A beautiful word. Just a translation of the Old Testament Scriptures. And like the scapegoat on the

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Day of Atonement Christ was taken outside of the camp. The sins and the transgressions of the people our sins and our transgressions were confessed over him.

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And with the force of only God himself he was driven into the barren and godless wilderness to carry away the sin of the people as far as the east is from the west.

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That Christ went to the cross and suffered physical torment was enough for the only Son of God. But that Christ would go to the cross and take your sin and take my sin and become accursed in our place brothers and sisters is unspeakable.

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And yet he did it. And why? Why did Christ do this?

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Or maybe better said let me rephrase that why am I saying this?

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Why am I highlighting this? I've gone to the greatest of lengths and I've fallen short to describe the suffering that Christ endured on the cross.

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Not because I take pleasure in Christ's suffering but because I want to demonstrate to you that because Christ endured all of this in his body and in his spirit on the cross he has consumed every last dark drop from that chalice of God's wrath.

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If you are found in Christ there is not so much as an iota of wrath left for you.

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In verse 37 it says that Christ offered one final cry. Mark leaves us to wonder what that was.

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Praise be to God John includes it in his gospel. John chapter 19 and verse 30

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John uses probably the sweetest Greek word to translate

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Christ's words. Steve knows it. Te telestai. It is finished.

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That on that cross Christ finished it all. If you're a

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Christian you can count on it because Christ went to the cross and because you have placed your faith in him there is no wrath left.

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It is finished. You can bet your eternity on it. Brothers and sisters this is a call to believe on Christ with such force that if the gospel is not true we are damned.

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But it is true Christ took the

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Father's frown that you might have the crown. He took the

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Father's displeasure that we might be welcomed into his presence reconciled with him forever.

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You'll have to forgive me I've been reading Charles Spurgeon this week. He once said that that the

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Christian's new standing to a man who has been declared not guilty in a court of law or sorry he likens the

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Christian's new standing to a man who has been declared not guilty in a court of law and he writes there is a prisoner at the bar and the jury has brought in the verdict of not guilty.

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Our brother is studying law. What does the judge do when the accused is bid not guilty?

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He says you may go free. I've seen it before in my former line of work where you have a man in a jumpsuit and in shackles and at the end of the trial he is found not guilty.

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I remember in one case we took a man to northern

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Alberta in said uniform and shackles and at his trial he was declared not guilty and we realized we weren't prepared to release him and so we released him right then and there handcuffs off shackles off and he left the courthouse in his prison jumpsuit.

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Spurgeon says when a verdict of not guilty is brought in the judge bids him go free.

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There may be people in the court who gnash their teeth at him. Persons in the street who hate him.

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What does he care? He has been declared not guilty by the proper tribunal.

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The judge himself tells that I am acquitted. Not a single law officer can touch me.

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Not the fiercest enemy in the world can drag me into court again. I have been tried and found not guilty and who is it that condemns me now?

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And Spurgeon says so it is with the Christian. Christ's righteousness is put on him.

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Christ takes his sins and when he stands before God's bar the eternal voice seems to say

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I see no sin in the man and how can he?

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All that man sins Christ took away at the cross.

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I don't know how I can convey this any stronger to you but if you're a

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Christian you've repented of your sin and you've placed your faith in Christ Brothers and sisters your sin is gone and there's no law man who can bring a charge against you.

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You stand before the just judge of all the earth God himself and he has one verdict for you and it is this not guilty how often we we trudge along through our weeks tormenting ourselves because of our own sin.

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Brother and sister if you're in Christ that sin is gone it is gone and all that is left is the welcoming and joyous face of your father in heaven who smote his son that he might receive you at the cross.

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In verse 38 you read this and the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom we've looked at the cross we've looked at the cost let's look at the curtain verse 38 tells us that this massive curtain that was in the temple was torn from the very top to the very bottom many have theorized how this could have happened again to visit our liberal scholars well certainly it was the earthquake that tore the curtain friends let me tell you about that curtain it was 80 feet tall

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I suppose an earthquake could tear a little corner out of it but the curtain itself was 80 feet tall and a hand breadth wide three and a half inches thick a massive curtain that separated the holy place from the most holy place of God the very place where as far as the

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Israelites were concerned the very presence of God dwelt it was no earthquake but it was the

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Lord God Almighty who tore that curtain from as the text says top to bottom it was done on God's own initiative and what did it represent as I said it represented the distinction between the holy place where the priest could come and go and do their business and the most holy place where you could come and even only the high priest but once a year to make atonement for his own sins and the sins of the people now imagine for a moment dear friends we've just gone through the pandemic and we know how difficult it is to go to a time when church is forbidden and by God's grace we navigated that in the time that we planted we never had to close the doors we trucked along but we know what it's like to be told that you can only go to church once in three months and how brutal that was how devastating that was imagine being able to enter the presence of God only once a year and here in this system of worship

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God tears the curtain from top to bottom brothers and sisters not so that we need to rely on a priest to enter into the presence of God but once a year on our behalf tradition says with a rope tied around his ankle so that if he dies they could drag his body out but so that we can come into the very presence of God every single day and not in the temple but in our homes and in our cars and in our churches and to know and to walk and to live with the living

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God from top to bottom Romans 5 verses 1 and 2 says therefore since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God that's what that curtain tearing was about peace with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God Paul wrote to the

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Ephesians in Ephesians 3 verses 11 and 12 he said this was according to the eternal purpose that he realized in Christ Jesus our

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Lord in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him if you'll tolerate one more passage

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Hebrews chapter 10 verses 19 to 22 says therefore brothers since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus by the new and living way that is open for us through the curtain that is through his flesh and since we have a great priest over the house of God let us draw near near to God with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water brothers and sisters when that curtain was torn in two that meant we don't rely on priests to come to God we're not like our

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Catholic friends who have to ask for a saint to intercede on our behalf we go to God himself at peace reconciled boldly with great confidence into his very presence why?

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because of the cross of Christ because of what Christ did why it is that many preachers refuse to preach the cross of Christ I do not know but as I preach the cross today

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I do not desire to give you riches I do not desire to give you temporal happiness or self -help tips for the weak or tips on business success

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I'm preaching and we confess and the true church preaches

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Christ and him crucified because in it we have access to we learn of the unadulterated life of the

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Christian in Jesus Christ unhindered access to God and I'm not going to preach the law to you today but I will just say how frequently we neglect that access to God I said

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I was reading a lot of Spurgeon this is my last mention of Spurgeon Spurgeon loved to preach about dogs

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I don't know why in terms of his illustrations Spurgeon was a jolly man who loved his cigars and I guess he liked his dogs as well but he uses an example of how a dog treats something that seems almost too good to be true and how that correlates to our lives as Christians he said it reminds me of an illustration

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I used before he said but it's a good one if you have a dog at a table and if you come to my house tonight you can practice this if you don't have a dog throw him a scrap of meat and he will swallow it right up just one sometimes

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I'm amazed at the things that my dog will eat I will throw a piece of a crumb of bread and she is eager to snap it up he says this but if you were to set the whole table down on the floor before him that dog would turn away he would feel that you could not mean to give such a fine meal to a dog and isn't that true if you've ever owned a dog they would be terrified at the prospect of eating a whole table worth of food he said he would not think of touching it at least a few dogs and it seems to me that if the

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Lord could not have meant all the wonders of his love for such a dog as I that God would set a table before us of unparalleled access to him of all of the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places as Paul would put it and he would do so freely that we would but take of it and yet how often we walk away thinking it's not for us such was given to us through the cross and last we look at the confession the cross, the cost the curtain the confession in verse 39 and when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last he said truly brother

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I liked how you enunciated that as you read that truly this man was the son of God the cross, the cost, the curtain, the confession the centurion was a commander over an army of 100 or a unit of 100 and here we see it might not seem like it but this is the climax of the gospel of Mark how do we know that because if we look back at Mark chapter 1 and verse 1 turn there in your

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Bibles with me Mark chapter 1 and verse 1 what does it say the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ who the son of God the entire gospel

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Mark has been building up to this so that the readers would understand that this is

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Jesus Christ the son of God and it wasn't the disciples who enunciated it first Peter got close but here the centurion with his confession says surely this is the son of God truly this is the son of God and we don't know for sure but tradition says that this centurion became a disciple of Christ brothers and sisters we've seen what

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Christ has done we see the table that he has set before us and we see the way by which we enter into that feast of all the goodness of God we come to Christ and we say truly you are the son of God to repent of our sins and to believe on him there is nothing left for us to do we would be amazed

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I could probably if I had no integrity start a YouTube channel I'd have to hire a taller actor

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I'm sure but if he could convince people that you could find true fulfillment by walking from Edmonton to Calgary after six months it might be a small ragamuffin group but you would have a group of people prepared to walk from Edmonton to Calgary for the purpose of self -actualization to fulfill their destiny but just to say that this is the gospel of Jesus Christ and you need to believe it this is what the

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Lord is looking for that we would believe in our hearts that Jesus Christ is Lord and that we would confess it with our mouths

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Hebrews 3 13 says therefore let us go outside the camp and bear the reproach that he endured to go outside the camp and to say this is the

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Son of God it is so easy and yet so hard for so many one of the stories

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I love to tell my children and I'm realizing I haven't told them in a while I'll have to go back and tell them again is the biblical illustration that Christ uses when he speaks about the bronze serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness sometimes when my kids were younger they would complain about what we made for supper they would complain about the food and maybe this is a little bit too exacting but as a parent

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I would say you guys really shouldn't complain about your food do you know what God did to the Israelites when they complained about their food and they would say what did he do well he sent serpents to bite them and kill them we didn't complain about food at least for the rest of the day but I explained

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Christ's illustration that when that happened we remember that Moses placed that bronze serpent upon a pole and he held it up and what was it that the people had to do to be saved did they have to run to the serpent did they have to crawl to the serpent did they have to say 20

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Hail Marys as they ascended to the serpent on their knees no they had to look to the serpent and they would be saved and so it is the response for every true

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Christian but to see the cross of Christ and to look to him and to believe and to be saved when

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Christ says as Moses lifted up the servant in the wilderness so the son of man must be lifted up that whoever believes on him may have eternal life and so brothers and sisters

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Christ in him crucified must forever be our confession let that be our confession as we go to work this week let that be our confession as we live our lives every day of our lives let that be our confession when we come before the

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Lord as we stand before him and we say my hope is in nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness

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I dare not trust a sweeter frame but wholly lean on Jesus name to trust in Christ now

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I'll close with this illustration Martin Luther he's made a few appearances recently he once had a dying student and he asked the young man what he should take to God this man was preparing to die to go and be with the

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Lord and the young man replied everything that is good dear father everything that is good how would you respond if you were to ask someone that Luther responded he said but how can you bring him everything that is good seeing that you are but a poor sinner and the student replied dear father

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I will take to my God in heaven a repentant and humble heart sprinkled by the blood of Christ and Luther replied truly this is everything good then go dear son you will be a welcome guest to God and so is every