6th Midweek Lenten Service –
Forgive
Us
for Despising
Our Savior’s
Claim!
Mark
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”
(Luke
I imagine that they
would have protested that they knew exactly what they were doing. In their minds they were bringing Roman
justice to this nuisance of a man who had been making noises that he was a
king. In their minds they were bringing a fitting end to this man’s life whose
own people saw him as a monumental nothing.
They were sure that they knew what they were doing. And we know how
wrong they were! They tortured the Son of God! They spit in his face! How will
such an insult be dealt with on the Day of Judgment?
Not a one of us wants
to be standing anywhere in the vicinity of those soldiers on the day Jesus
Christ returns in his glory. And that is why we must beware of even our
slightest drifting in their direction. Now, we protest quite strongly that we
would never join in their mocking and disrespect. But we do; we do when we
don’t know what we are doing. And on that day, we must catch ourselves quickly
and pray to God:
Forgive
Us for Despising Our Savior’s Claim!
1. We think that we
are more important than he.
2. Father, let Jesus be the foundation of our lives.
Why would the
soldiers be so especially cruel to this one man? Consider the times in which
they lived and the ruthlessness of the empire they served. We know it was Roman
policy to humiliate and torture the condemned. The scourging the condemned had
to undergo was known as “the little death,” and the pain and agony did not let
up until they breathed their last. But even beyond that, those who earned the
punishment of the cross were to be put on public display, nearly naked, pinned
to the wood, and bleeding and gasping and dying for all to see.
But with Jesus, there
was more. His case seemed to call forth an even greater kind of cruelty than
did, for example, the two criminals who were crucified with him. There were no crown of thorns on their heads. No insulting taunts of false worship before
them. With Jesus, though, the Roman
soldiers seemed determined to treat him as the greatest of fools. They didn’t take a single thing about him
seriously. Everyone knew about his triumphant entry into
Some
king, the soldiers thought. Where were his armies? Where was his glorious
crown? Was this the best that
And that is why there
was a crown of thorns, a scepter to beat him with, and a rough cloak thrown
over his torn and bloody back. “They began to call out to him, “Hail, king
of the Jews!” Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit
on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. And when they had
mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own
clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.”
Tragically, the same
attitude is rampant in the world around us, where Jesus’ claims and his Word’s
claims are despised in all areas. This attitude is seen in those who mock the
very ideas that our religion puts forth. Think of those who feel they are the
wise and learned of our age, who feels it is the height of childishness to
believe what is in the Bible. Think of those who think we are enemies to all
they hold dear (e.g., the freedom to sin as much as they wish) and so feel the
need to ridicule and bad mouth the truth we expose.
Think of those who have become so cynical about life itself that they resent
any who, like us, think there is a deeper meaning.
The results of this
cynicism can be seen all around us. On a certain secular college campus, there
was a professor who felt it was his duty to persuade, argue, and ridicule the
Christianity out of any believing student who happened to enroll in his class.
He actually boasted about this. And we can be certain that he isn’t alone. Such
an attitude is also seen in the contempt with which our religion is often
treated in books and entertainment or in the constant whining of people who
tell us to be quiet and keep our religion to ourselves.
And even we find
ourselves tempted to edge toward such an attitude. As we know too well, there
are times when life would be easier for us without the weight of a
two-thousand-year-old religion hanging around our necks. Sometimes you just
don’t want to be the one who is being made fun of for your beliefs. Sometimes
our religion demands something we don’t really want to do or condemns something
we’d really like to be doing. And it is then, especially, that the temptation
comes for us to not take all this religion stuff so seriously, but to join the
21st century like everyone else.
If that kind of
thought starts up in your head or your heart, stamp it down immediately. It is
worse than foolish; it is irreligious too. It is the beginning of the sin of
idolatry; it is replacing our Lord and our God with ourselves.
We become the foundation of ourselves and will eventually let no one claim to
have any authority over us. So before we get that close to the cynical Roman
soldiers of
The trouble with
those soldiers was that they had based their lives on something less than what
God holds out for us. Remember how Jesus ended the Sermon on the Mount, talking
about building your house on the rock or on the sand? The soldiers couldn’t
tell the difference. Everything God wanted them to base their lives on had no
appeal for them. “Repent and believe in
Jesus Christ!” To them that was foolish talk.
Repentance
was not even in their vocabulary because they didn’t believe that they had
really done anything horribly sinful—even when they tortured their victims,
they felt it was perfectly justified. Running about, admitting that they were
terrible sinners and in need of a Savior, to them, that was no way for anyone
to live. These Romans had no room for
any Ten Commandments. These foolish Jewish writings were of no use to the
masters of the world. To them, it was all silliness.
I pray that we know
much better than they did when it comes to our place in the world, and are not
tempted to feel as arrogant as the Romans did. We know our place. And what is
that? On the one hand, we are merely creatures who miserably sin against our
perfect, loving and holy Creator every day.
On the one hand, we are merely creatures put here by a God who has every
right and authority to demand our obedience to his laws. This means we have no right
to decide that one or any of these laws don’t really apply to us. We don’t have
the right to decide that this or that commandment can’t really fit into our
lives in this time and this place. God’s code is for all time. This means that
we must approach his laws with the greatest of awe and respect and trust—trust
that the Lord God knows better than we do on how we ought to lead our lives.
But that is only on
the one hand. On the other hand, we are much, much more. We are the redeemed
children of God through faith in Christ. The reason Jesus was in the hands of
these Romans was to save us from our sins. Through his suffering and
crucifixion he would wipe away all our guilt and make us the sons and daughters
of the Almighty. “The blood of Jesus,
his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Jesus endured even this greater kind of
cruelty because of his tremendous love for miserable sinners like you and
me. He wanted to make a way for us to
stand before our Creator. He wanted to
make a way for us to enter the glories of heaven. So he suffered and died in our place. He became sin for us, so in him we can stand
holy before our God. Now, understanding how great a claim he has on us as our
Savior, our God, and our King, we will gladly obey his Word.
Indeed, we will no
longer look at ourselves in the way the world looks at itself but will see the
claim Jesus Christ has on us. We now belong to him, not to ourselves. We are
his people upon the earth, put here to do his will as it is clearly recorded in
his Word. Christ and his Word, then, are
the very foundations of our entire lives from here on in. But this is not some
burdensome and unwelcome imposition upon us. Rather, we are glad and honored to
be the servants of this great King. “Take
my yoke upon you and learn from me,” Jesus once said, “for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls” (Matthew 11:29). Would we really want anything but Jesus Christ and
his Word to be the foundation on which we build our lives?
Let us bend our knees
before him who shed his blood to save us from hell and to make us his own. Let
us gladly confess him as King and pray for the strength to obey his Word. And let
us pray, “Heavenly Father, help us to make, ever more truly our Lord and Savior
the foundation of our lives! Amen.”