Unspeakable Darkness

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Sermon by Josh Rice from Mark 15.

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Mark 15, as soon as it was morning, having held a meeting with the elders, scribes, and the whole
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Sanhedrin, the chief priest tied Jesus up, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate.
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So Pilate asked him, are you the king of the Jews? He answered him, you say so.
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And the chief priest accused him of many things. Pilate questioned him again, aren't you going to answer?
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Look how many things they are accusing you of. But Jesus still did not answer, and so Pilate was amazed.
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At the festival, Pilate used to release for the people a prisoner whom they requested.
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There was one named Barabbas, who was in prison with rebels who had committed murder during the rebellion.
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The crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do for them as was his custom.
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Pilate answered them, do you want me to release the king of the Jews for you? For he knew it was because of envy that the chief priest had handed him over.
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But the chief priest stirred up the crowd so that he would release
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Barabbas to them instead. Pilate asked them again, then what do you want me to do with the one you call the king of the
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Jews? Again, they shouted, crucify him. Pilate said to them, why, what has he done wrong?
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But they shouted all the more, crucify him. Wanting to satisfy the crowd,
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Pilate released Barabbas to them, and after having Jesus flogged, he handed him over to be crucified.
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The soldiers led him away into the palace, that is the governor's residence, and called the whole company together.
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They dressed him in a purple robe, twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on him.
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And they began to salute him, hail, king of the Jews. They were hitting him on the head with a stick and spitting on him.
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Getting down on their knees, they were paying him homage. After they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple robe and put his clothes on him.
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They led him out to crucify him. They forced a man coming in from the country who was passing by to carry
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Jesus's cross. He was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus.
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They brought him, they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha, which means place of the skull.
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They tried to give him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. Then they crucified him and divided his clothes, casting lots for them to decide what each would get.
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Now it was nine in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge written against him was the king of the
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Jews. They crucified two criminals with him, one on his right and one on his left.
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Those who passed by were yelling insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, ha, the one who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself by coming down from the cross.
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In the same way, the chief priest with the scribes were mocking him among themselves and saying, he saved others, but he cannot save himself.
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Let the Messiah, the king of Israel, come down now from the cross so that we may see and believe.
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Even those who were crucified with him taunted him. When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.
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And at three, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lima sabachthani, which is translated, my
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God, my God, why have you abandoned me? When some of those standing there heard this, they said, see, he's calling for Elijah.
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Someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, fixed it on a stick, offered him a drink and said, let's see if Elijah comes to take him down.
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Jesus let out a loud cry and breathed his last. Then the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
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When the centurion who was standing opposite him saw the way he breathed his last, he said, truly, this man was the son of God.
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There were also women watching from a distance. Among them were
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Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, the younger and of Joseph, and Salome.
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In Galilee, these women followed him and took care of him. Many other women had come up with him to Jerusalem.
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When it was already evening, because it was the day of preparation, that is the day before the
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Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Sanhedrin, who was himself looking forward to the kingdom of God, came and boldly went to Pilate and asked for Jesus' body.
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Pilate was surprised that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had already died.
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When he found out from the centurion, he gave the corpse to Joseph. After he bought some linen cloth,
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Joseph took him down and wrapped him in the linen. Then he laid him in a tomb, cut out of the rock, and rolled a stone against the entrance to the tomb.
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Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph, were watching where he was laid. Let's pray.
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Father, all of what you've written for us in the Old Testament comes to fruit here in this place and this day in history.
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And Lord, we stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the
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Nazarene, who bore our sins, who, like a lamb before the slaughter, opened not his mouth, but took on the full weight of the wrath of God for us to redeem us.
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Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you stayed on the cross and went to the grave and rose again victorious over sin and death in the grave.
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Lord, we relish in what you've accomplished, your salvation of those who are lost by this great act.
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Lord, thank you for this time together to rejoice in the resurrection and to rejoice in our salvation and the joy of it.
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Lord, use your servant today to preach your word with great boldness and courage.
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And Lord, give us ears that hear and hearts that are ready to obey and take action.
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This is prayed in the powerful name of Jesus, our Lord. Amen. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
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If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
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If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you.
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For my whole life, the church in America has thought that we have superseded and grown in our wisdom outside of these teachings of Jesus on the
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Sermon of the Mount and then in his discourse to his disciples in John 15. And what we've thought is that we have figured out the code to avoid the world hating us.
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And the code that we figured out is to just seek the world's approval, to join them in everything that they can do.
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And we hear verses like, love your enemy, and we immediately raise those up into an ethereal spiritual world where we say, well, loving enemies, the true epitome of loving one's enemies is to have no enemies.
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And so the average Christian today in America through a desert of poor teaching, false teaching would say, love enemies,
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I do love my enemies. I love them so much that I don't even have them. But Jesus had enemies and his disciples had enemies.
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And I might dare say that Jesus and his disciples made enemies and our church fathers made enemies, not through their unrighteousness, not through their reviling, but through their righteousness and through the testimony of the gospel.
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But in America, we think we've solved the Rubik's Cube where Christians can live alongside the world, making no impact on the world because we are just being pulled along on the string by the world.
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And we think of great churchmen as being polished public speakers who can tickle our ears with their oratory skills and their rhetoric and can soften us until we don't know what an enemy is and we deny the masculine urge to go out and fight and we look at courage as some kind of curious thing that's in this list of sins and revelation.
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But we never repent of our cowardice and we never grab for courage.
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Mark 15 is a story of courage. It's a story of the most courageous thing that's ever happened in this world.
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It's a story simultaneously of the darkness of man and the greatest darkness that the world has ever seen that leads next week to the hope of all mankind, the fulcrum of history.
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Where in Mark 15, I think that you can see it, the world is falling apart. The lights go out.
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The temple, the veil is torn. We know that there's tumult, there's confusion, there's great evil on display, but there's also kindness and love.
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So the question I ask to start with, are we going to leave Mark unchanged, church, or are we going to repent of how we have been dominated by this culture?
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And I think we have to admit it. We've been dominated. We hear a bold man of God saying things that are not culturally approved and we shiver.
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And oftentimes we revile and we say, well, that's not prudent, that's not wise.
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And all the while our enemies crush us. Let me be very pointed.
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They crush us because we don't believe in the power of the resurrection outside of its power to save our individual soul.
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This is what we've done in pietistic America, is that we have turned the gospel into a personal salvation experience where we have been delivered from earth to heaven and we're just waiting to get there, doing nothing, ruffling no feathers, just waiting.
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And that's all the gospel is. And if you dare say that the gospel is anything more than that, brother, you're adding works.
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Does the gospel demand something of the people who are being saved of it? I think that our New Testament authors would say a resounding yes.
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The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. The gospel makes enemies.
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The gospel makes people hate you. And if no one hates you, and this finger is pointed directly at me, if no one hates me, it's because I've shoved the gospel under a bushel.
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And I've said, brother, I want you to be in heaven. It would be so great if you repent of your sin. And that is very true.
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But at the same time, the gospel creates new creatures. Creatures who are bold. Look at who
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Jesus called. David sent me a text and it's been, it's been in my brain the last two days. Look at who
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Jesus made his disciples. James and John, the sons of thunder. Peter, the zealot, right?
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He was always running ahead with his mouth. Simon, the literal zealot, who was in political unheaval.
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A dangerous man. Paul, who he called on the road, who was the persecutor. Paul was a man of action.
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Who do we think God calls today? Soft, managerial bureaucrats, who will tamp down any fire in their people, and who feel much more comfortable preaching to the women than preaching to the men.
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Because if we inspire men, we're gonna get uncomfortable and things are gonna start to get broken. Are we gonna be a church that makes war for the gospel, not with swords, but with the gospel?
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Or are we just gonna look like the world so that we can make our way to heaven based on our personal confession?
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Those are the questions that the cross brings to us. The cross is not about you.
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Do you understand that? When we turn the gospel into merely personal salvation, we empty the power of the cross and we make it simply about ourselves.
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It's not about you. It's about the glory of God. It's about a kingdom claimed.
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It's about authority declared. It's about an iron scepter taken up.
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It's about a seat at the throne in the ancient of days with enemies under the footstool, where this king is so self -secure and so known in his power that he will rule amongst his enemies patiently so that all the elect might be numbered and saved.
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But make no mistake at all, he will crush his enemies with the iron scepter and it will not be difficult for him.
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See, the cross is the first fruits of the enemies of Christ being destroyed and they don't even know it.
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And so it is that the devil fights out today and his minions, the people who are doing the work of the prince of the power of the air, they rage and they revile against the king of kings and they put his people to oppression and the sword, all the while not knowing that everything that they do is furthering the purpose of the king of kings who has established his rule in their midst.
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Let me ask you this, do you have enemies? And if you have learned nothing, it is time to wake up.
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If you've learned nothing in the last two weeks, we have learned that in the Christian church, we indeed do have enemies and they want nothing less than to kill us.
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People were gleeful in the murder of a Christian apologist and evangelist. People are gleeful when law and order is taken apart and our enemies would love nothing better than for the church to be destroyed, its people scattered and the courageous ones killed.
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This is not new. It's been that way for 2 ,000 years. What are we going to do?
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As Mark often does, chapter 15 is a chiasm. It's a very technical chiasm with darkness in the middle and if you don't remember a chiasm is a fancy word of saying that there's a center point that's the main point and all of the verses on both sides of it are corresponding to each other.
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This particular one, as I see in broad strokes, I'm not gonna go the nitty gritty one, but in broad strokes, what it does is it has opposites on each side.
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If you see at the beginning, we see a cowardly civil magistrate in Pontius Pilate with the power of the
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Sanhedrin, the darkness of the Sanhedrin. Those who knew better, who suppressed the truth in unrighteousness and embraced the dark and then at the end of the chapter, we see courage in Joseph of Arimathea and we see the light of those who love
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Jesus and are looking to see where his body is laid so that they can take care of his funeral and in the middle of this, what
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Mark wants us to see in the focal point is the darkness of what happens when you kill God, but also the tremendous courage of Jesus in the middle.
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Everything looks to the middle and I could spend a huge amount of time on point one because it is something that really revs my motor.
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You'll know it right away. We're gonna talk about cowardly civil magistrates verses one through five, the trial of Pilate and I say it that way because this truly is the trial of Pilate.
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It's not the trial of Jesus. Jesus committed no crime. This is the trial of Pilate. Pilate, this magistrate of Rome with all of the power to make a decision here, he's put on trial by the heavenly father, but he's also been appointed to this position and he is going to be found wanting and he is a parable for what happens when the civil magistrate is cowardly and unrighteous.
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Tumult, destruction, mobs. Do we see it today?
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See, the Sanhedrin has made their decision and they have heard all that they needed to hear, which if you remember back to last week, all that they heard was a bunch of inconsistent lies.
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There is no case against Jesus. There's no evidence. They grab onto something that the two witnesses could not agree on that he supposedly said three years ago that was totally taken out of context about tearing down the temple and rebuilding it in three days and John helpfully told us that he was talking about his body.
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That's all they got, but the problem the Sanhedrin runs into is they have murder on their heart and they have conspired together.
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If you know the reference, they are busy little bees and they have gotten together and they have in the darkness of night talked to each other and they have decided we have to murder this man.
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We have to kill this man, but our charges are not gonna stick because Rome doesn't care about blasphemy.
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Jesus didn't blaspheme Caesar. He blasphemed the Sanhedrin and he didn't even do that.
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So what are they going to do? They have to scheme to find a way that they can get what they want that they themselves cannot offer, which is the death penalty.
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Remember, they need the state to do this because the state in their mind quashes this movement.
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See, the state has the sword and the sword is not wielded in vain. The state has tremendous power to change minds, to change behavior.
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We have seen over and over again that where the leaders go, the people will follow. We know there's a generation of people who were raised on the power of the television and it's very frustrating to us even today that Fox News, CNN, MSNBC dominate the thought processes of a certain range of ages and people, even though they lie constantly.
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We know they lie, they know they lie, and we know that they know that they lie. And yet, they set the tone.
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Leaders are important. See, Pilate doesn't care about blasphemy and so now
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Mark introduces into this and it's usually on the mouth of his enemies, Mark introduces two phrases that he has not used in this whole gospel.
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Remember, he's talked about Jesus as the son of man over and over, but in this chapter, we have two new titles unveiled, the
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King of the Jews and the King of Israel. See, Mark is drawing attention that even in the enemy's mouths, they are affirming the confession that we saw last week in verse 62 of chapter 14.
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The confession of all of Mark that Jesus is indeed the son of man and he will come on the clouds to make war with his enemies.
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So they come to Pilate and they accuse him of many things, all of them are untrue, all of it's ridiculous. Pilate sees right through it, he understands that this is insane, there is nothing to put on him, but what we know, and from this text becomes very clear, is that Pilate is a coward.
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Pilate will not stand for what is right because he desires to maintain political power and so it is with every coward.
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A coward is a coward because he's afraid of what you might take away from him. Pastors are cowards because they're afraid of losing the check.
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You lose the people by making them angry and then you lose the check and you are a worthless man.
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Pilate is a worthless man because he's afraid that big daddy Rome is gonna come into Jerusalem to quash this rebellion if he doesn't quash it right now.
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He's afraid of losing his seat. So he's gonna kill God to protect his position.
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He's not afraid of the right thing. He's afraid of a rebellion, he's not afraid of sinning against the living
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God. See, Pilate finds no fault in Jesus, but he kills him anyway. The charges are ridiculous, but understand that Pilate is in the sweep, although he has action and although his actions and his behavior is anointed by God from the beginning of time,
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Pilate walks in them because he wants to. Pilate desires to sin to protect his hide.
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But this event, if you read it, and Mark doesn't draw attention to it because Mark's pen is so brutal and it's so expedient and he writes with such brevity that Mark gives us this account and he doesn't draw any attention to the myriad of prophecies that are being fulfilled in this text.
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It's amazing to me that Mark trusts the reader. He really does. Mark trusts you today.
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He trusts you to connect the Old Testament. He trusts me to bring out that connection as prophecies are being unrolled like a scroll as this all plays out.
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Pilate is amazed by the Lord. And there are many today who are amazed by the
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Lord. They see the power of Jesus, but they don't bend the knee. And that is
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Pilate. He's amazed at Jesus' self -control, that he is silent in the face of foolish accusers.
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Could you do it? Could you be silent as these people are making up lies with your life on the line?
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See, there's an amazement of Jesus and we see it all through the Gospels that many men are following Jesus, watching the signs, listening to the amazing teaching, but they don't know who he is.
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They like the show, they don't like the person and they definitely don't want to bend the knee.
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There are many in churches today that like the show, like the preaching, like the people, but will not bow the knee.
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Don't be like Pilate. What Pilate does is he will compromise in a way that cloaks evil.
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We see it in verses six through 15. As this man Barabbas is brought up and this name is probably a pseudonym.
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This name literally means son of a father, son of a father. I hope you can see the irony of these two men being presented to the mob to release one of them.
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One of them is son of a father and the other one is the son of man, the son of the living
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God, the son of the blessed one, as we saw last week. So Pilate tries to do what every civil magistrate does.
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He tries to triangulate. He's a coward and he's trying to balance his desire with this rabble -rousing
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Sanhedrin with the mob because he knows, remember the Passover, 500 ,000 people in Jerusalem.
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This is a dangerous situation and Pilate sees the mob and what he's gonna do in true Roman fashion is he's going to give in to the desires of the mob.
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He could have released anyone he wanted, but as God writes the best stories, this
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Barabbas, he is the very thing that Jesus is being falsely accused of.
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Barabbas is a zealot who has made war on the Romans. He is an insurrectionist, real insurrection, not the made -up
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Fed kind, okay? He is an insurrectionist and so what's gonna happen here is that we have the living
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God who is being accused of undermining the power of Caesar with a man who has spent his whole life undermining the power of Caesar to throw off Roman oppression and the mob is going to choose the weapons of carnality over the eternal delivery of Jesus.
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See, when the crowd sees Barabbas, they're being whipped up into a frenzy and Mark gives us the reason, right, and Pilate knows the reason.
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It's because the Sanhedrin are jealous. They're envious of Jesus. What are they envious of?
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His teaching, he makes them look foolish. He teaches as one with authority.
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He opened the scrolls and he told the people what the word of God said. He did not engage in a bunch of banter and a bunch of questioning where he sounds more like the servant.
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This was the rabbinical tradition, to ask a bunch of questions and never arrive at a point and Jesus would come in and he would open the scrolls of Isaiah and he would say, this is me and the people were amazed and the
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Sanhedrin and the chiefs and the leaders, they cringed inside and they hated it and their envy boiled and they decided that they would kill him.
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See, Pilate offers a sacrificial lamb but not the right one. He's shrewd, as many civil magistrates are and we see them, we see our politicians, they are shrewd, they lie, but they lie and they make it sound so good and you'll know this, if you've ever talked to a politician as they come to your door, they triangulate you, they recognize your pattern and they start telling you what you want to hear and if you wanna know what they really think, you have to start painting them into some more outrageous positions, right?
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I ask them, when they call me, I ask them specifically, are you for executing mothers who abort their children?
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Because they're pro -life all the live long day but they don't see clearly and they're just selling me something the other way.
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That's Pilate. The people want a king like Saul while for hundreds of years, they pined for a king like David but when
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David comes on the scene, they don't want him. They want their carnal leader like Barabbas who makes physical war on the
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Romans. Sure, it's a futile battle. Jerusalem was never gonna be delivered by the insurrectionists.
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Rome would crush them like dust, which they did in 8070. Let's leave and close the book on Pilate by saying this, the priests are despicable hypocrites.
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They hide their malice beneath feigned concern for the peace of the city. We have to be shrewd today,
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Christian. We have to be shrewd. There are many who claim the name of Christ who use religious, pious language to cloak their malice, to cloak their hatred of the brothers, to cloak their hatred of the church, to subversively undermine the church by infiltrating, by taking it off mission.
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That's what they wanna do. Hypocrites, but Pilate is this despicable coward who allows the mob to rule.
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Notice this with him. Everything going on is what you say. What would you have me do? This magistrate, he promotes evildoers and he promotes injustice and he kills justice.
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And what Pilate does is brutal. We miss it. We watch the passion of Christ and it's ugly.
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It's hard to see, but you guys can't imagine. This Roman flogging, it's not like the night before where the
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Jews came and they would hit Jesus in the face and they would spit on him. No, the Romans were craftsmen of torture.
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They had crafted the torture of crucifixion, but before crucifixion, as Pilate orders
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Jesus to be scourged, there's gonna be the whips that have pieces of metal and bone in them and many would report that these floggings, that they would break bones, that they would expose the spine and in many extreme cases, entrails would be coming out.
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Oftentimes the scourging itself would kill the person being scourged. And so Jesus is beaten to a bloody mess.
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Spine exposed, ribs sticking out, muscle shredded. You probably wouldn't have been able to find a square inch of skin left intact as he bled out all over his destroyed body.
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He did that for you because he knew that he would be crushed.
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It was the Father's will to crush him. Can you imagine this? We gloss over these texts academically and we think yeah,
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Jesus died for our sins on the cross and we never stop to think the God of creation, we see it in Philippians 2, right?
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That he was in eternal realms of glory, the second person of the triune God in an indescribable light that he empties himself into the form of a man.
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Not only that, but a man who would be killed for the sins of the world. It's not academic.
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God became man, indescribable as that is. The infinite became finite.
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The tireless got tired. The omnipresent was put into a body.
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God and man together. And this God and man together was beaten, beaten to within an inch of his life.
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But that's not enough, is it? As we see, they amplify the evil. In verses 16 through 21, the soldiers are taking him away into the palace, they dress him up in purple, and they twist a crown of thorns on his head and they beat it into his brain.
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Can you imagine the blood flowing down his face? The loss of blood from this beating.
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The crown of thorns on his head that is a mockery, but it also shows that he is the lamb that Abraham was to sacrifice to save his son
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Isaac. The ram caught in the brambles. This is the Lord of glory who has a crown of thorns on his head, but for Isaac, there was a different sacrifice.
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For the Son of God, there is no different sacrifice. So many shadows in the Old Testament that point to the substance, and the substance is so much greater than the shadows, because every time the shadows, there was another answer.
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There was a different sacrifice. The blood of bulls and goats, but we know from Hebrews that the blood of bulls and goats was never enough to make righteous and to make a permanent end to sin and death.
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So the Lord of glory himself would take on every single bit of this, every lash, every beating of that crown, every mockery of this purple robe put on him so that the prophecy would be fulfilled, that they would cast lots over his garments, because this blood -stained, blood -smeared purple robe was worth something to these soldiers.
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So they would cast lots, as the prophecy said. And they'd kneel down to the
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King of Kings in mockery, and they gave a picture from Philippians 2, that that man who came and he gave his life for the sins of many, he did that so that he would be glorified by his
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Father, and that every knee would bow, and every tongue would confess that he is Lord.
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They led him down to crucify him, and he couldn't carry the cross.
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Beaten as he was, the manliest man of all time, better than we could ever imagine.
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We think often, what would it be like to meet Jesus in the flesh? I don't think we can imagine what it would be like to meet a sinless man.
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We've never seen anybody like that, where everything he says is righteous, where his rebukes are perfectly measured, sharp enough, where his jokes are perfectly righteous.
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He never does excess in anything. Everything he does is right. We can't imagine a man like this, and this man is so beaten down and so shredded with violence that he has to have enlisted a man who's passing by, and this man's life,
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I assume, has changed forever, Simon the Serene. Mark names him because the people who are reading this would have known him.
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His son could be Rufus that's mentioned in Romans 16, 13. Greet Rufus, a choice man in the
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Lord, also his mother and mine. Maybe it's the same Rufus. We have no way of knowing that, but what we do know is this man,
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Simon, his life was changed forever, and his son's lives were changed forever, and that's what happens when we have an encounter with Jesus, the crucified.
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He was dressed in purple. He had a crown of thorns. He is named the King of the Jews. He is beaten on the head with a reed.
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Did you know that he doesn't beat you on the head with a reed? Because the suffering servant himself, a bruised reed he does not break.
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Why? Because Jesus' bruised head was beaten with a reed, but for you, for his people,
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Jesus takes kindness on the weak, and where we are weak, he is gentle, and he does not cut the wick.
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They spit on him, and they kneeled before him, and they stripped his robes, and he was so weak that he couldn't carry his cross, but we have never seen greater kingdom work than what
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Jesus accomplished on this day. It is the fulcrum of human history, the greatest evil that man can concoct against the most innocent person that it could have been carried out on, and in verse 22 through 41, we see the structure of the universe coming apart.
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I've titled this section in a nod to C .S. Lewis, The Deep Magic. We're not gonna see the deeper magic until next week, but this is the deep magic.
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Understand that creation was made in this way. Creation was made with a covenant of works. Adam, if you will take dominion, if you will not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then you will rule, you will live forever, we will walk in the garden together, and you will have bliss on earth, and your kingdom will grow, but Adam took of the fruit, and the world was broken, because see, in God's creation, there is a deep magic that binds it together, and that deep magic is the magic of the law.
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The law demands obedience. You know it, and I know it, and where we come in perpendicular conflict with the law, what we understand from that is that we want to suppress the law.
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We want to ignore what the law says. We want to ignore its demands because we hate the law in our flesh, because we are cursed, because in Adam, we have that sin, and that sin is lawlessness.
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That's what sin is, lawlessness, unrighteousness, injustice.
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Justice is a legal term. We know that on the cross, justice was satisfied. We sing of it, but justice is simply put, getting what you deserve by the law, and the law demands death for lawlessness, and so the deep magic is broken as the greatest act of lawlessness that the world has ever seen is carried out in Mark 15, 22 through 41.
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The one who wrote the law, the one who is the word, was killed, and the reason why is because men hate the light.
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Men scratch out and claw for the darkness because the darkness hides our deeds, and the light exposes them, and we do not want to be exposed, and friends, let me be very pointed on where we are culturally in the church.
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The reason we have cowardly men in the pulpit and the reason we do not accomplish the Great Commission is because there are skeletons in our closet, and we are afraid of the light exposing the skeletons.
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Men who have something to hide will always be cowardly because there's something that can be taken away. I don't know what it is.
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It could be your internet history. It could be your passivity in the home. It could be not ordering the household.
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It could be laziness at work, laziness at home. It could be that you have a taste for lying. It could be that you like a little bit of rebellion.
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Whatever it is, it is a snare that holds onto you, and it saps your courage away, so how can
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Jesus endure this kind of torture for righteousness? Because he is righteous.
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There has never been a man more courageous than Jesus. In many ways, Jesus defines courage, and inasmuch as his disciples were courageous men, it was because of the
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Holy Spirit's power on them, and it was because they saw what we're going to see next week is that the grave could not hold him.
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He is alive, but he's mocked.
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He is nailed to a tree between the unrighteous who scoff him, and Mark doesn't give us the story of the repentant thief, and I think the reason why is it does not fit in Mark's literary structure for what he's wanting us to see here, because he's showing us all darkness, all darkness.
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Notice he doesn't record Jesus' other words on the cross. He gives us one set of words, and that is my God, my
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God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus had his full senses beaten to a bloody pulp, but he will not take the numbing gall of the wine with its myrrh, because he needs to feel every last bit of it.
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He is fully aware, fully conscious, will not dull the pain, but instead, he drinks a different cup.
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It's the cup that he was praying that God would take away from him in the garden, and he drinks it all the way down.
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It is the cup of the suffering based on God's righteous wrath against the sins of man, and he drinks it foaming all the way down, prophecies fulfilled, righteousness accomplished.
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The one accused of blaspheming is blasphemed. The object of breaking the 10 commandments and taking the
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Lord's name in vain, his name is being taken in vain constantly in this passage, because this passage is the apex of lawlessness.
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A joke trial, an unmerciful beating, going over the top.
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Remember, remember what's happening here. Remember what Pilate has put on his docket that is based on nothing.
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This is not a violent murderer. This is not a rapist. This is not someone who has gathered a faction to overthrow
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Caesar. Jesus has healed the sick, tossed out demons, taught the word of God, and preached peace and love, and men hate that.
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See, we're not intended to see and believe. It is folly to seek signs.
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Jesus on the cross, it is something that every man knows about. Do we have a problem in America of people knowing whether or not
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Jesus was crucified? Everybody knows that. It's not intellectual knowledge that's lacking.
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It's the people, they take the Lord's name in vain, seeking signs. Lord, if you will just do this, then
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I will believe. That's folly. Men do not conjure up saving faith by their sight.
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Faith is given by the Holy Spirit. Salvation of the world comes not from a sign.
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It comes from Jesus dutifully carrying out the will of the Father by staying on the cross, even though when people are baiting him to come off the cross.
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Can Jesus save himself? In an instant. He created every part of this and appointed every part of it.
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It's all going as to plan, and Jesus is the executor of the plan. He puts it all into motion.
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So the judgment of God on sin and death falls, and this is the fulcrum of this sermon. Darkness for three hours, and we in our faithlessness, we look around, and when you read commentaries, you're gonna see this.
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There could have been an eclipse for three hours. We had one a couple years ago.
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What was it, like three minutes? You miss it? Total darkness for three hours.
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Why? Amos 8, 9, and it will be in that day, declares the Lord, that I will make the sun go down at noon and make the earth dark in broad daylight.
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The new Passover, the old has given way, and the new comes in.
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But this event, this new Passover, it's not like the old Passover, because in the old
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Passover, there was blood that was smeared on the door post to make the angel pass over. In this one, the sin is taken away by the blood.
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The blood goes underneath the roots of the sin, and it digs it out, and it puts it in a sack, and as Michael would remind us, that sack gets thrown into the deeps of the ocean, never to be recovered.
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See, Jesus' blood is powerful, because he is the great high priest. He's not a bull or a goat.
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He is the scapegoat and the sacrificial lamb. He's the scapegoat, do you see it in the language, that God has forsaken him?
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It is the first and only time that the Trinity's fellowship is interrupted, because the father turns his back on the son, because he sees the sin of the world put on his son, and he cannot look at it, and judgment falls, because the penalty is finally paid, and we know this is true, because with the unbelievable darkness for three hours, look, it's scaring people.
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Do you hear him? Maybe this was the son of God. Is he calling for Ezekiel? It kind of reminds me of when you slap somebody around when they're tied up, and they get untied, and you run away.
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That's kind of what's going on here. This Passover, it's not about looking over the sins, it's about eradicating the sins, and that's the world that we live in today,
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Christian. Your sins do not enslave you. They have been eradicated by the blood of Christ.
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The veil is torn, and this has a double meaning for us. The veil is torn. That means for us that we have access to the holy places.
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The veil separated God from his people. One time a year on the Day of Atonement, the high priest could come in with a rope tied around his leg after he had been washed and ceremonially cleaned so he could go in and make a sacrifice for all of the people, and if he went in in an unworthy manner, he was killed.
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That's why the rope was around his foot, but today, every day, we approach the throne of God with confidence, not with swagger, knowing that we have entrance to the holy places.
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We pray to God in his name because we can call him Abba Father because he's made a way, and he tore the veil, but notice this also.
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It's very important. There's a good and a bad side. The veil is torn. We have entrance, but there's another part.
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Just as the lights went out, that's the lights out on the old way. As the veil is torn, that shows that there is a new temple now, and that temple is the church.
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The Old Testament system is eliminated. We struggle with this today,
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Christian. It's gone. There is no going back. Read Hebrews again if you doubt me.
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The old system has been done away with with a new one, and these old religious rituals are gone.
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We worship Christ in spirit and in truth. The law satisfied. The renewal of the created order is in effect, and it is happening even as we speak.
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When our eyes don't believe it, your heart should believe it that Jesus is making all things new right now, and he has been for 2 ,000 years from his blood that started the unwinding of the curse of Adam.
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And we look outside, and we see murderous enemies, and we see the nation's rage, but we understand this.
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They will kiss the sun, or they will perish along the way, and he will crush their clay pots with his iron scepter.
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Who is on the Lord's side? It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. We need to be on the right side.
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He is reversing the curse right now. This is not something that I'll fly away, oh glory. That's not what's going to happen.
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He is reversing the curse right now. He is making all things new, and in the midst of his enemies, he will triumph.
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He is not going to destroy the heavens and the earth. He is going to rejuvenate and renew them.
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Jesus came as the better Adam. He followed the covenant. He kept the covenant.
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He is perfectly righteous, and through his obedience, we have hope. It's not about you.
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It's not about you. You have no access to God, other than through his promise and his agreement with his people, and his agreement is a covenant made unilaterally, that Jesus came, and he instituted a new covenant, a promise between God and man.
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You kneel to the sun, and you are on the Lord's side. It's very simple, very simple, but it's given only by the
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Holy Spirit. Let's end it. Let's look at the last five verses. Joseph of Arimathea came, a prominent council member, who himself was waiting for the kingdom of God, and he gathered up courage and went in before Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.
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May we have thousands of men like Joseph of Arimathea. How many do we have?
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Christian, are you praying that we would have these men? And this is another skewer on what we've done inside these walls, and I've seen it my whole life.
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What we do is we see a man who, he likes to study scripture, and he likes that sort of thing, and we think, well, his destiny is a pastor, nothing else, and we despise and we accept, and I'm gonna honor
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Vodie Bauckham here, who passed this week. One of the most amazing things
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I ever heard Vodie say, and that's saying something. He said a lot of amazing things. One of the things he said is that nowhere on earth do we accept mediocrity like we do in the church.
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Here's what he meant by that. We think it's okay for a man to be walking with God for 20 years and not know anything.
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Would you accept that of a bricklayer? That's the analogy he uses. You go onto the job site, and a man's been a bricklayer for 30 years, and you're a young man.
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You go, hey, can you teach me how to lay bricks? And he's like, I don't really know how to do it. Yes, you should laugh, but in the church we do this all the time, do we not?
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Hey, could you disciple me? How long have you been a Christian? You're 50. You've been a Christian since you were seven.
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Hey, could you disciple me on how to be a godly man? I don't really know how to do it. That's ridiculous.
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Shame on us. That's what Vodie so eloquently said. I'm not as eloquent as him, and I'm not nearly as good as him, and the
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Lord took him, and he is a much happier man today, but friends, we can't accept it anymore. We have zero
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Joseph of Arimathea's on our public stage. He goes right to the man who just killed his
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Lord. Isn't it counterproductive? Isn't it amazing what the Holy Spirit does? It says that Joseph of Arimathea was waiting for the kingdom of God.
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We've been told that it's at hand. That's what John the Baptist said. The kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus said the kingdom of God is here.
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Jesus is the kingdom of God. Joseph of Arimathea comes, and he sees that the kingdom of God has come.
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When? When Jesus is in the grave? What kind of faith does
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Joseph have? What does he think is about to happen, and how does he think that? I'm gonna tell you how.
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These things are spiritually discerned. The Holy Spirit has raised up this man who risks everything to go into the teeth of the
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Roman magistrate, and to go against his religious leaders who can throw him out of the city and end all of his commerce.
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You know what it's like to be shunned in Jewish? You're done. You're outside with the lepers. He risks all of that for a dead body.
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And we would go, brother, I don't know if that's wise. And we never stop to ask, is it right?
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Quit asking if it's wise. Pray to God for wisdom, and he will give it to you. The more important question we need to start asking is when flamethrowers start saying things, and we're like, ooh, that hurts a little bit.
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And we never stop to ask if it's true. God loves truth tellers.
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Jesus, I think I remember, he is the truth. Is it true?
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Joseph goes, and he risks everything to get the body of a dead man. Why? I think
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I know why. And I'm gonna step outside the scripture for a second. Humor me. I think it's a nod.
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The crown of thorns was a nod to Abraham, obviously. I think this is a nod also.
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I think when Abraham went up, and you have to be thinking about it, right? That was the Old Testament shadow, the most explicit
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Old Testament shadow of the events of Mark 15, is when Abraham was told to take his only son, the son that he loved,
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Isaac, up on the mountain and sacrifice him to the Lord. And then Hebrews tells us, Hebrews tells us that Abraham was going to kill his son,
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Isaac, because he believed that God would resurrect him. Because Abraham could not imagine a world where God's promises weren't true.
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And God said that he would bless the nations through his son, Isaac. See, Abraham tried to go around that when his natural eyes saw that it wasn't working, and he had a son named
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Ishmael. But God said, it's not Ishmael, it's Isaac. Go kill him.
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And Abraham goes up to the mountain, and he raises the knife after he sharpened it. And his son willingly, just like Jesus, ties himself down to the altar.
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And as Abraham raises that knife, he stopped. God was not going to stop himself. The knife was going to plunge down on Jesus, the spear in his side.
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What did Joseph know? I think that through the power of the Holy Spirit, Joseph knew that the prophecy was gonna be fulfilled, that he was gonna be buried among the rich, and that grave was not going to hold him.
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He had told everybody around him that he was gonna raise in three days, had he not. Hey, let's put two and two together here, spiritually.
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I don't think he's gonna stay dead. And if the man can be raised from the dead, I want to be on his side.
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And so has every Christian for 2 ,000 years now said that. If he has power over death, he has power over everything.
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Are you gonna die? Of course you are. But we have a promise, and we have a hope.
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And our brother, Vodie, who, in his small way, made a big impact on my life. He chastised me one time.
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I was in a preaching workshop, and he was in my small group, and Vodie told me, you got that all wrong.
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You messed that up bad. What a manly man. He gave it to me straight.
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I honor him for that. But you know, the faith that we have is,
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Paul lays it out in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus is the first fruits, and if he's a first fruit, there will be more fruit.
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So we have victory over death, not because of anything we did, but because of what the Lord has done. That is the
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Christian hope. Friends, we need to pray for Joseph of Arimathea. Not every great man, and I would say very few great men in the church are gonna be pastors.
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We need men who influence other spheres. We need people who are on councils.
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We need people who are pushing the ball forward. We need people who are gonna root out people like Pilate, and we have a dime a dozen of those in our government, do we not?
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Would you say Pilate or Joseph of Arimathea is more characteristic of the civil magistrates we have?
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I think we all know the answer. To ask it is to answer. We need to pray for them.
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Church, we don't pray. We need to pray for great men, both inside and outside, because God has tasks and jobs and missions for all of us, but the first one is to bow the knee, and the first one is to let this message soak over you, and I want you to think this week of what your
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Savior has done for you. It's not a bumper sticker. It's not a magnet that goes on the refrigerator.
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He was beaten and suffocated and murdered on your behalf because he loves you, but even more than that, and more uplifting than that and more inspirational than that in my mind is that he did that for his church.
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His church is the bride of Christ, not you. You're a part of it.
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His church will not be prevailed on by the gates of Hades.
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Not you. The church. Have you prayed for the church this week?
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Are we gonna leave Mark unscathed? I hope not. I hope we've been cut. Let's pray. Lord, what can be said?
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You have done it all. Lord, you wrote the prophecies.
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You knew all of this before the beginning of time, before any creation had even happened in a way that is completely unbelievable to us, unimaginable to us.
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Lord, that you in your glory and your holiness and your power, you created a world that was going to rebel against you so that you could show all of creation, your justice, your righteousness, but also your compassion and your mercy and your grace.
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Lord, there is no friction between the law and grace for your people. Lord, we love your law because you have given us hearts to love it.
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You have imputed righteousness to us through your son. And so, Lord, we love your law and we pray the prayer of the psalmist that we would love your law and meditate on it day and night.
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Not for nothing, Lord, but so that we would be trees firmly planted by streams of water who would bear fruit in season and our leaves would not wither.
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The wicked are not so. They are the weightless, useless chaff that the wind drives away.
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And Lord, you know the ways of the righteous, but the ways of the wicked will perish. Lord, if there is anyone in here who is in the way of the wicked,
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Lord, I pray that you would break them that you would give them a heart of repentance that they would be planted by streams of water.
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And Lord, I pray that we would not in our arrogance think that we have overcome and have no enemies now because of our cowardly adherence to worldly ideas.
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But Lord, instead, that you would make us bold, dangerous people because you are a dangerous man.
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The son of God who defeated sin and Satan and death and it wasn't even hard for you.
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But we see the depth of our depravity in the text this morning. And Lord, we know that we would have been giving that stroke ourselves in our flesh.
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So Lord, deliver us from evil and help us to walk in your upright ways. It's in your name
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I pray these things, amen. We are about to take communion. Here at Covenant Baptist Church, we practice what is called the open table.
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And what that means is that if you are a true follower in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you have bowed the knee to him, this table is open to you.
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The warning that comes with it is that you are not to take from the table in an unworthy manner. If you are hiding sin in your heart, you need to confess it.
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If you have enmity with a brother, it needs to be confessed. Many have fallen asleep or been sick from taking of the table in an unworthy manner.
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But at this table, there is danger, but there is also grace. And that is that we remember our
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Lord. And so what I want to do before we come up, he's gonna play, we're gonna play a song.
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You can come take the elements and hold them until after the song where we will take them together. But before we do that,
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I want us to take a few minutes and I want us to have a prayer of confession in light of what we've heard this morning.
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And I will lead us to end that out. I'll give you a few minutes. Lord, you call your people to live by faith in dangerous places.
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But the safest place to be is right in the middle of your will. And next to you. So Lord, we adventure out and we are fallen people who are enticed by the snare of sin, who are enticed by our temptations that give birth to sin, that gives birth to death,
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Lord, and you have conquered all that. So your people long for your forgiveness and repentance this morning.
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Lord, I pray that we would confess our sins individually and also as a corporate body, Lord, that we as a church would be courageous and that we would repent of the areas where we fall back.
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Lord, we repent of the ways that we have been afraid and fought for survival instead of advancing the cause.
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Lord, personally, I lift that to you. Lord, and I pray that you would help me to lead.
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Lord, that you would use all means at your disposal to sift me out. Lord, I pray that you would do that for your people also.
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That you would sift out the sin that shackles us, that enslaves us.
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And Lord, that we would walk as new creatures in courage because if you have nothing against us, then what can men say?
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Lord, we trust in your forgiveness. We trust in the promises that you've given us that are true, that you have separated us from our sins as far as the east is from the west.
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Lord, help us to not be so arrogant that we would hold our sins as above your work on the cross that we learned about this morning.
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But instead, Lord, that we would humbly submit to you and know that your blood is enough and that your life is enough for all time for the remission of sins.