The Wickedness of the Crucifixion, Pt 2

Matthew 27:38-44

Open your Bible with me to Matthew chapter 27. We're going to be looking again at a portion of scripture we began to examine last Lord's day in Matthew 27, it's verses 27 through 44. It portrays for us the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ.

By way of introduction, may I remind you that Jesus said in Matthew 16:4 that His generation was a wicked generation? He said the leaders of Israel in Luke 11:39 were full of wickedness. When they approached Him in Matthew 22:18, He perceived their wickedness. And Paul, identifying unbelieving Christ-rejecters in general, says that basically they are filled with all wickedness, Romans 1:29. All of this is true because of what Jeremiah identified as the heart of man being desperately wicked.

One thing is made abundantly clear throughout the pages of Holy Scripture and that is that man is wicked, that he is sinful. And given over to his own devices unrestrained will perpetrate crimes beyond imagination. Now the wickedness of man is no more clearly seen, nor does it reach a higher apex than it does in the execution of Jesus Christ. The crucifixion of the Savior is the greatest expression of human evil in history, the epitome of demonstration of the depth and comprehensiveness of the sinfulness of human nature.

And as I noted to you last time, it seems to me that this is Matthew's particular concern. While John seems to want to describe the crucifixion from the standpoint of fulfilled Scripture and God's viewpoint, Matthew says nothing about the fulfillment of Scripture and seems to approach the crucifixion from the standpoint of the wickedness of men. Yes, the crucifixion was the greatest act of love on the part of God and that seems to be John's focus and even more the emphasis of Mark and Luke, but it was also the greatest expression of human evil which seems to be Matthew's particular interest under the direction of the Spirit as he writes.

So, as we go through the passage in Matthew that describes the crucifixion, we see just unrelenting evil. David Thomas wrote, "For thousands of years wickedness had been growing. It had wrought deeds of impiety and crime that had rung the ages with agony and often roused the justice of the universe to roll her fiery thunderbolts of retribution through the world. But now it had grown to full maturity. It stands around the cross in such gigantic proportions as had never been seen before. It works an enormity before which the mightiest of its past exploits dwindle into insignificance and pale into dimness. Wickedness crucifies the Lord of life and glory," end quote.

And as we have seen in this passage and the ones prior, wickedness is not content just to execute Jesus Christ. It must torment Him also in the process. It must taunt Him in the process. It must heap on Him all imaginable evil. It cannot just kill Him, it must slap Him and punch Him and stab Him and spit on Him and defame Him and blaspheme Him and keep that up all the time He is dying. Inconceivable. But such is the cruelty of the human heart when fully exposed.

Now we should not be shocked at this. Sorrow which our Savior bore because He was indeed a man of sorrows, as we read in Isaiah 53, that was the mark of His life. His sufferings were great. They were too great even for us to fully understand or comprehend. I suppose to get some kind of a grasp on it we could say that He suffered more sorrow than any man who ever lived, yes, He suffered more sorrow than all man who have ever lived combined.

You say, "How so?" Because according to Isaiah 53:4, He carried our griefs and He carried and bore our sorrows. And in addition to that His own sorrow in being alienated and separated from His Father. So He not only suffered more than any man has suffered, but He suffered more than all men together have ever suffered.

The prophet Isaiah says He was acquainted with grief. 0, how intimately was He acquainted with grief. In fact, He experienced little else. Grief was His constant companion. He wept on several occasions, Scripture says, but never does it say He laughed. He seems to have had no acquaintance at all with laughter. But deep and profound acquaintance with grief, all the way to the cross.

Years ago Greek Christians used to beg God to give them mercy for he unknown sufferings they might have caused Jesus Christ. And they realized that they themselves could not even conceive of all the suffering that He endured.

How did He suffer? Let me suggest several ways. He suffered from temptation. He was in all points tempted like as we are. He suffered, says the writer in Hebrews, in that He was tempted. He was constantly being assaulted by temptation. He suffered in self-denial. By the way, His temptation was a real temptation and His wrestling with temptation, a real wrestling even though He never sinned. He suffered also in self-denial. He ref used to have those things which we would assume to be the normal comforts of life. He deprived Himself. As the hymn writer says, "Out of the ivory palaces into a world of woe." As Paul says in Philippians 2, mile thought it not something to hold onto to be equal with God, but stripped Himself of that and took upon Himself the form of a servant, was humbled, found in fashion as a man and obedient even to death." He was born in a manger in a stable. He lived a life of deprivation. He knew no personal possessions. He knew hunger and thirst and weariness and the absence of all worldly comforts. And so He suffered just in the area of self-denial. And He suffered rejection as well. He was hated, despised, mocked, maligned, reviled, rebuked, blasphemed, reproached, falsely accused all His life long. And now reaching a culmination of fury in the events around His cross.

And may I add this, and listen careful to what I say. Be suffered from sin also. Though He was sinless, in the cross He suffered from sin. In fact so much so that Paul writing to the Corinthians says He became ... what?...sin for us. He suffered the weight of sin. And no doubt because of His omniscience, He had suffered all the things that He was yet to suffer in anticipation of them. And then He suffered from Satan. Satan who was forever plaguing Him, forever stalking Him from the very time of His birth when he would have had Him eliminated by Herod's decree, all the way to the time of the garden where he comes in three great waves of temptation to distract Christ away from the cross. He is ever and always in a conflict with Satan. And Satan threw at Him the fury that all hell could break loose upon His head and yet, according to Genesis, could only bruise His heel. But He knew the tremendous suffering that comes to one in conflict with Satan. Even Peter was once Satan to Him and He had to say, "Get thee behind Me, Satan." And Judas, the devil entered into him and he betrayed his own friend.

And so, the Lord suffered from temptation and self-denial and rejection and sin and Satan. And then beyond that, monumental category of suffering is the fact that He suffered at the wrath of God because on the cross when He became sin, God then had to pour out all of heaven's fury against all of earth's sin and it all came on Jesus Christ. So He suffered the unmitigated wrath of God.

Now as we come to the scene before us in verses 27 to 4 we see His suffering at the hands of wicked men. We see His suffering due to the evil rage of Satan. We see, also, His suffering because of the wrath of God against the sin that He will bear. And it all reaches its high point. And this seems to be Matthew's high point. For a long time now in Matthew's gospel, he's been emphasizing the rejection of the King, hasn't he? It's been mounting and mounting and mounting and now it reaches its epitome as he presents the crucifixion.

To help us see the wickedness of the scene, I want to draw to your attention four different groups that appear in the scene. Let's call them the ignorant wicked, the knowing wicked, the fickle wicked and the religious wicked. And I want to suggest to you that every person in the world who does not come to faith in Jesus Christ, every Christ-rejecting person fits into these groups. They are constant. They were there at the cross. They're around today. And everybody fits somewhere in these four groups.

Now last time we looked at the ignorant wicked who were illustrated to us by the callous soldiers in verses 27 through 37. And we looked at that portion of the Scripture. We saw that the callous soldiers basically were Roman Legionnaires stationed in Caesarea, no doubt, with Pilate. They didn't really have first-hand information about Jesus. They were not very well apprised of who He was. They may have had a very limited smattering of information. They basically are ignorant. To them Jesus is another criminal and a somewhat deranged one at that. There seems to be no legitimate criminal act that He has done. He seems to be more a maniac who thinks Himself to be a king but by who any ... by any definition they know of a king is not a king at all. They no doubt think Him to be somewhat deficient intellectually and mentally and through all the tortures that they bring upon. Him, He never says a word which probably confirms their suspicion.

They are the ones who have Him as we come to verse 27. They have scourged Him, that is they've tied His wrists to a post, His feet suspended from the ground, His body taut and they have taken leather thongs attached to a piece of wood and in the end of the leather thongs are bits of stone and bone and metal and they have lashed Him until His flesh is ripped off and His internal organs are laid bare and exposed and blood rushes from out of His body. They have then clothed Him again. They brought Him back into Pilate's hall and they start a little game under the watchful supervision of Pilate. And that little game is to make Jesus to appear as a king. And you'll notice what happens in verse 28. They stripped Him. They took off His own robe which had been placed over His open wounds and they put on Him a scarlet robe, that's the heavy outer robe Rome...worn by a Roman soldier. No doubt causing excruciating pain to those open wounds, a mock royal robe. And then they braided a crown of thorns and put it around His head. Put a reed in His right hand representative of a crown and a scepter. They bowed their knees before Him and mocked Him saying, "Hail, king of the Jews." And as they rose from the ground they spit in His face. Then they took the reed out of His hand in a mocking gesture of snatching away His pitiful sovereignty and smashed Him in the head with His own scepter. In John 19:3 it says they kept on punching Him. He is a fool. He is a clown. He's a buffoon. He is an object of mockery. This one who claims to be a king, what a farce, what a joke, how ridiculous. And the soldiers with joy and glee trained in the art of killing and maiming people enjoy to the very fullest their leisure expression on Jesus Christ at His expense.

By the way, this is the second time He has been punched and spit on. The Jewish leaders did it back in chapter 26 verses 67 and 68. There they spit on Him because He claimed to be a prophet. Here they spit on Him because He claimed to be a king. Little did they know the King that He was and long will they know it in hell in eternity. Little did they know that indeed He was a King and indeed He will wear a robe and a blood-spattered robe at that. In Revelation chapter 19 and verse 13 it shows Jesus Christ coming in Second Coming glory out of heaven and He is indeed wearing a robe of royalty and it is a robe spotted with blood. And indeed some day He will wear a royal crown. It will be far different from this crown, not a stephanos, not a crown made of some earthly thing but a diadema, a diadem, a royal regal crown. Yes, Revelation 19:12 says He will wear many crowns for He will not only have His own but He will wear the crown that once belonged to every other sovereign in the world f or He alone will be King.

And some day He will wield a scepter and it will be no reed, it will be according to Revelation 19:15, a rod of iron with which He will bring instant judgment on the unbelieving world.

And then it will be no joke. Then it will be no laughing matter. In fact, the tables will be turned and according to Psalm 2 it says, "God shall laugh at them and hold them in derision." But for now in humiliation, Jesus is the laughing stock. His face is swollen beyond recognition from the many slaps and punches that He has taken to the face. It is covered with spittle mixed with blood that is running down from the thorns that pierce His brow. The blows from the reed which was heavy enough to cause a painful blow to the head are added and more bumps and bruises appear. His body is dripping with blood, oozing from His pores. A lack of sleep, the anguish of sin has contorted and twisted His face so that He is hardly recognizable as human, let alone as Jesus of Nazareth. And He is thought to be nothing more than a fool.

Dressed as a mock king, Pilate then, according to John 19, takes Him back out to the Jewish crowd and says, "Isn't this enough? Haven't you had enough?" He has already stated on several occasions that Jesus is innocent. He has given the findings of the court when he said, "I find no fault in this man." He really doesn't want to execute a man he knows to be innocent. His wife has warned him against that and his own conscience has done the same. But he is being blackmailed into a corner by the Jews and he thinks maybe he can satiate their thirst for blood by showing Jesus to be such a foolish, foolish looking person that they will understand Him to be little threat to Rome or to Israel. And so he brings Jesus out and says, "Behold the man." And the scream the more for His blood and say if you don't kill Him we'll report you to Caesar. And trapped for the fear of the loss of his position, he indicates that Jesus is to be crucified. And so it is determined.

And verse 31 then, after they had finished their mockery, they take the robe of f Him. They put back on His own garment. And they lead Him away to crucify Him. As they leave the city in verse 32, they conscript a man by the name of Cyrus ... of Simon who is from Cyrene. And this man, as we saw last time, is to carry the cross of Christ. They then, verse 33, come to a place called Golgotha, meaning skull place named for the shape of the hill. They give Him vinegar to drink, actually wine, oinos in the better texts. They give Him wine to drink and mingled with bitter herbs. That's a general term. Mark tells us the bitter herbs were in fact myrrh. And myrrh would act like a sedative. This was provided by Jerusalem women. There was an association of woman who provided this for people who were to be crucified as an expression of the fulfillment of Proverbs 31 where it says that strong drink is for those who face death. These women did it out of kindness. The soldiers appreciated it not because they wanted to show kindness, but because it was easier to crucify a drugged victim. So it accommodated them as well.

He tasted it and wouldn't drink it because He wanted to go to the cross with all of His senses acute and alert. And so they crucified Him. As you know, they parted His garments by casting lots.

The rest of that verse which does appear in the Authorized Version really is not in the better manuscripts and has been taken from John's gospel and found its way into Matthew's. But Matthew really doesn't have any relationship here to prophetic scripture in his original intention. As I said, his is not to focus on scriptural fulfillment or God's viewpoint, but rather on the wickedness of men.

And so, they crucify Christ. Rather coldly gambling to see who gets the elements of His clothing. Each of the four soldiers in a quaternion would take one of the five pieces, they would gamble then for the seamless inner robe that He wore. And verse 36 says, "Sitting down they guarded Him there." They just sat down and watched Him so that no one would come along and try to relieve His pain, or no one would come along and try to do anything that was not to be done, they were on guard.

And as I said to you last time, I'm so amazed at the fact that the crucifixion itself is passed over with such brevity. In fact, as I told you, in the Greek text it actually says the having crucified Him ones parted His garments. It almost throws away the crucifixion in the original text. And we really don't have anything given to us about the details of it so we need to kind of fill in just for a moment. The cross would be lying on the ground, the victim would be placed down on the cross and first His feet would be extended, His toes pulled down and then a large nail would be driven through the arch of one foot and then the arch of another foot. And then His hands would be extended allowing His knees to flex a little bit and there would be great nails driven through His wrists just below the bottom part of His hand, the heel of His hand because there is the place where it would hold. In the middle of the hand it wouldn't hold, it would pull through the fingers.