Expected Resurrection Easter 2021

EASTER 2021

EXPECTED RESURRECTION

Pastor Timothy Porter

TEXT: Mark 16:1-8

INTRODUCTION:

I just stopped by to declare unto you that I just checked my watch. It's not night anymore. Church, it's morning. Wipe the tears out of your eyes, and praise our God, because he rose up early, early, early Sunday morning. Resurrection is yours!

"HE IS RISEN" - "HE IS RISEN INDEED."

I got to thinking this week about jesus when He went alone to pray in dark Gethsemane.

Nothing moves my heart more than thinking about the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus was in such agony, that He literally sweat drops of blood.

Where He cried out to God the Father, and said, "Oh Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." And all of the sin of all of the world was distilled in that cup.

Jesus knew that the wrath of God that comes with that sin was in that cup.

Father, if it possible, let this cup pass from me. But the silence from heaven said there is no other way.

Jesus said, "Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done", and He drank that bitter cup, the dregs of it. Jesus drank it all.

My sin and your sin, and our sin was in that cup. And Jesus suffered there alone.

The disciples were asleep. The city was asleep. But Jesus eyes would not close, until they closed in death.

I began think of the cruel mockery of death, where they hauled Him away to be tried, and the vile injustice that was done to Him.

Never was there a greater miscarriage of Justice than that mock trial that they gave to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally Pilot said, Whether of the two will ye that I release unto you. Jesus or Barabbas? They said release unto us Barabbas.

He said what then shall I do with Jesus, which is called the Christ? And they said "Crucify Him." And Jesus lost an election to a common criminal.

That criminal was a picture of you and I - Barababas and all his evil was released - for Jesus!

"We are Barababas"

1.) THE SUFFERING OF FRIDAY

They stripped the Lord Jesus Christ naked. And some psychopathic, barrel-chested Roman soldier who was probably a volunteer for the job took a long whip called a cat-of-nine-tails. And began to lacerate the body of Jesus with it. Ribbons of flesh would hang down.

The whip would have little bits of bone and lead and glass in the very end. It would wrap around the body of the victim and tear away the flesh, and sometimes disavow the victim. Many times a person who had received a scourging like this was not able to walk.

The Romans were skilled at this. They knew how to punish a man within an inch of death. And still leave Him bleeding.

Then they put a purple robe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. They put a wilted reed in His hand. They pressed a crown of thorns down upon His tender brow.

They spit in His face. And they kneeled before Him and they mock worshipped Him saying, "Hail King of the Jews." And then they would take Him and pass Him from one to another while He was blind folded and smite Him in the face.

The blood trickles down His cheeks and from His nose and drips off His beard. And then someone reaches up and takes a handful of His beard and rips it from His cheek. The Bible says that they plucked the beard from the Lord Jesus Christ. They shoved Him from one to another and said, "If you are a prophet, prophesy. Tell us who it is who is striking you in the face this time."

Then they'd take the Lord Jesus and the lay on His back a rough hewed timber, the splinters are embedded into those wounds. The Lord Jesus starts up that hill called Calvary.

He makes His way down the Via Dolorosa, the way of sorrows, going to Calvary. He is so weak from loss of blood, from the bruised battering that He has received, He stumbles. A whip cracks. He picks up the cross and tries again.

Finally He stumbles again under the load of that cross. Someone else is forced to carry it.

As He comes to top of Galgotha, Calvary, and there they stretched the Lord Jesus out and a hammer drives those rough nails into those quivering palms, into those feet that never walked in sin. And ever nerve in His body becomes a pathway for the feet of pain to travel upon.

No one has known suffering like the Lord Jesus suffered.

But my dear friend, the veil of the temple was rent in twain. The earth began to split. The rocks began to split. The sun hid its face and it was utter midnight when the Lord Jesus was on the cross. And Jesus cried out, My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me?