The Most Important DayIn the Most Important Life Ever Lived!
The Crown of the Crucified
Matthew 27:27-31
March 10, 2002
What type of king is this Jesus, anyway?
Born in humble surroundings; His earthly parents were mere peasants.
Grew up in relative obscurity, out in the sticks
Worked in a carpenter¡¦s shop until age 30
For 3 years, he traversed the Judean countryside with a ragtag band of followers
No college-level education, much less kingly education
Never elected to public office; never ran!
Never married, no family, much less a queen
Never even owned a home, much less a palace
Frankly, He¡¦d be considered a poor credit risk by today¡¦s standards!
After 3 years of traveling and doing good, the tide of public opinion turned against Him¡Xmost of His best friends deserted Him
Tried before the state on trumped-up charges, but condemned to die even though the evidence was lacking
Executed between two common thieves, and then buried in a borrowed tomb
He had no throne except a mock one constructed by jeering soldiers
He had no scepter save a mock one placed in His hands by a scoffing mob
He had no royal vestiture save a scarlet robe draped around Him by those who feigned homage
He had no crown save a crown of thorns brutally clamped down upon His head by those who made sport of Him
Today, we look at the story of the crowning of this King!
Pilate, as we¡¦ve said earlier, had a dilemma on his hands. He was caught between an innocent man and a bloodthirsty mob. He didn¡¦t want to sentence an innocent man to die; he didn¡¦t want to incur the wrath of his Jewish subjects. Hoping to satisfy the blood-lust of the crowd, he¡¦d had Jesus scourged; this was a severe form of beating, of whipping. A whip was imbedded with jagged pieces of glass and bone, and the resulting carnage of such a beating could be gruesome. Isaiah 52:14 says that His ¡§appearance was disfigured beyond that of any man, and His form marred beyond human likeness¡¨. Even this beating, though, did not satisfy the crowd, so Jesus was handed over to be crucified.
He was taken to the Praetorium, the meeting hall. There, they placed on Him
„h A scarlet robe ¡V this was probably just a common cloak of some kind, but it was the color of royalty.
„h A reed to serve as a mock scepter.
„h A crown of thorns was platted. Imagine: one of those men, or several, took the time to meticulously weave a crown from thorns and briers!
Notice
I. How the truth is hated by the deceitful hearts of wicked men!
Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that ¡§the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked¡¨. The evil that men will do is incredible.
I was listening to a radio talk-show host awhile back, and I¡¦d have called in had I been near a phone. His topic was homosexuality, and his point was that he believed that people were born homosexual. My point today isn¡¦t to debate that issue at all, but rather to allude to the reasoning he used. He said that a key piece of evidence for him in favor of his suggestion was that he could not understand why, if homosexuality were a choice, people would choose a lifestyle which would bring them such ridicule and personal pain. Given society¡¦s disapproval of homosexuality, he reasoned (though frankly, it has becoming the chic thing to ¡§come out of the closet¡¨ these days!), why would a person choose such a lifestyle voluntarily when it could cause such personal pain? Can you say ¡§bogus reasoning¡¨? Sure you can! Unfortunately, he is ignorant of the fact that well over a hundred thousand people this year on this planet will suffer, not merely a little public ridicule, but death on the basis of a ¡§lifestyle choice¡¨. They are called ¡§Christians¡¨, and every day some pay for their choice of Christ with their very lives.
Jesus told us not to be surprised when people say all manner of evil against us falsely, when they hate us. For so many years in this country, as long as there existed what might be called a ¡§Christian consensus¡¨, these words of Christ were ones which were more difficult for us to understand. No longer. In this post-Christian society in which we live, we understand that those who believe in Christ in such a way as to proclaim Him as the exclusive Way to God are likely to be held up to increasing ridicule. In Joe Stowell¡¦s video I¡¦ve been recommending, he remarks that Christianity has survived many things in its history, including martyrdom. But Joe says that perhaps the question for us as American Christians, who¡¦ve grown accustomed to some level of respect for generations, is whether or not Christianity in this country will be able to survive¡Kunpopularity.
How could Jesus, the beautiful Rose of Sharon, be so despised? He aroused such hatred. But it is the sweetest fruit that is pecked at by birds, the highest mountain that is most buffeted by storms, the loveliest character that is most often assailed. People with perverse hearts will reject the truth and look for opportunity to discredit or shame its followers.
II. God will accomplish His plan despite man¡¦s efforts to thwart Him.
¡§We¡¦ll mock Him and prove He¡¦s no King¡¨, they said. ¡§We¡¦ll nail this Jesus to a cross. We¡¦ll put armed guards around a sealed tomb.¡¨ Man¡¦s greatest efforts only played into the plan of Almighty God conceived in eternity past. It was His eternal plan that Jesus leave Heaven to suffer the abuse of men and die for those who spit in His face. Isaiah 53 promised that this Messiah would be One Who would be ¡§despised and rejected; a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.¡¨
Had Jesus willed it, He could certainly in His wrath have destroyed those who opposed Him. But Jesus had yielded Himself to the plan of His Father. God will accomplish His work!
My understanding of Scripture suggests that God yet has a plan for the nation of Israel. If this is the case, how ironic is it that, less than three years following the most intense campaign ever launched to annihilate Jews, the state of Israel sprang from the rubble, nearly two thousand years after it had ceased to exist as a nation. The wrath and power of Adolf Hitler could not stamp out the Jewish people; rather, just the opposite happened, and if indeed national Israel still figures into God¡¦s plan, as many believe, is this not another example of the sovereignty of God trumping the plans of man!
III. As we are sinners in our entirety, so Jesus paid for sin with the entirety of His body.
We might be spoken of as people who ¡§sin all over¡¨. Proverbs tells us that we are plagued by such evils as the ¡§proud look; lying tongues; hands that shed innocent blood; hearts and minds dwelling continually on wicked things; feet that run to mischief¡¨. There are scores of people who make their living inventing new ways for us to sin! The Bible tells us as believers not to ¡§yield our members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin¡¨, but the fact is that there are a lot of people doing such yielding! I like the illustration of our sinfulness that I¡¦ve used before: if sin were blue, I might not be as dark blue as I could be, but I¡¦d be some shade of blue all over! Every part of me is warped in some way by my sin. But notice that Jesus¡¦ physical humiliation was comprehensive as well:
„h He was the Prince of Peace; His royalty was mocked by a scarlet robe;
„h He did kind deeds with His hands; those hands were ultimately nailed to a cross; soldiers used their own hands, shaped by God the Creator, to beat Jesus;
„h With His mouth, He said, ¡§Father, forgive them¡¨; with their mouths, they cursed and mocked Him.
„h His spittle had made a blind man to see; they spit in His face.
„h His feet went about doing good; they nailed those feet to a tree.
„h On His back He willingly bore a cross; they scourged and whipped that back.
„h Jesus reached out His right hand and raised a dead girl to life; they stuck a reed in that same hand as a mock scepter in order to put Him down.
„h On that brow appeared sweat as great drops of blood as He in Gethsemane contemplated the agony that awaited Him as He was being made sin for me; they mercilessly pierced that brow with a cruel crown of thorns.
„h Jesus wore a crown of pain, shame, and humiliation. But
IV. He wore a crown of shame so that I could wear a crown of life.
I Peter 3:18 tells us that ¡§Christ suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.¡¨ Because Jesus suffered for sin, we don¡¦t have to. Because He was made low, I can sit with Him in the Heavenly places. Because He took my pain, I can reign with Him. Because He died, I can live!
Do you remember where thorns came from? According to Genesis 3, they began to come from the ground as a result of the curse brought about by sin. Every time you pull weeds and thorns out of your flower garden, remind yourself of the lecture you¡¦re going to give to Adam when you get to Heaven! Thorns exist because of sin, don¡¦t they? Ironic then, isn¡¦t it, that it was a crown of thorns that was roughly shoved onto the brow of Jesus. Every prick and jab and rip and sting and tear He felt must have reminded Him of the sin He was bearing.
But there¡¦s another story in the Bible about thorns, specifically a thorn bush; do you remember it? I wonder if Jesus was thinking about it as well. The old man had received a son in his old age, the son that God had promised would leave him a legacy as numerous as the sand on the seashore. It was a miracle! But now, Genesis 22 records, God had told the old man to do a very strange thing. He said, ¡§Go up on that mountain and take your boy with you. Build an altar there and then bind up your boy and lay him right on top, and offer him to Me as a sacrifice.¡¨ A gut-wrenching, agonizing decision faced the old man. He¡¦d loved to watch the boy play, this special, miracle son; in his eyes he saw the promise of God. And now, God was telling him to kill the boy as a sacrifice. I don¡¦t know the agony of soul the old man felt, but I do know that, at God¡¦s Word, he took the boy and began the trek. The Bible says that the old man, though of course he¡¦d never seen a resurrection from the dead, had such faith in God that he believed that God could raise the boy from death if he followed through with the sacrifice. And the Bible says that he got as far as taking the knife out to kill his son, but at that moment, the angel of the Lord intervened. And he said, ¡§Abraham! Abraham! Don¡¦t lay a hand on the boy. I know now that you fear God.¡¨ And the Bible says that Abraham looked up, and over in the thicket, in the thorn bush, was a ram, caught by his horns. And the old man took the boy off the altar, and put the ram there, and offered it as a sacrifice. And he gave that place a name; he called it Jehovah-Jireh, which makes no sense to us unless we understand the translation, which is ¡§The Lord will Provide¡¨. God provided a lamb to take the place of the one who was going to suffer death.
I wonder, as Jesus felt that crown of thorns on His head, if He thought of God¡¦s provision of a lamb¡Xand of the fact that He, the Lamb of God, was about to fulfill the sacrifice to which Abraham¡¦s experience pointed. Jesus was there as a result of our sin; He was there to be our sacrifice! He has paid the price; all that remains for us to go free is for us to simply trust in the sacrifice that has been made.
What kind of king is this that wears a crown of thorns? One Who has come to set up His kingdom in our hearts. Is He ruling today in yours?
¡§What do I do with a message like this?¡¨
1. While it would be overstating the case to suggest that believers in our society experience ¡§persecution¡¨, it seems clear that it is growing increasingly unpopular to be a person who takes a strong stand regarding faith. Particularly distasteful to the modern mindset is the Christian insistence upon Jesus as the exclusive way to God. Are you willing to be hated/unpopular because of your standing for the truth of God¡¦s Word¡Xor will you cave in?
2. God¡¦s plan of redemption would be accomplished regardless of the efforts of men; in fact, God used what men meant as bad to accomplish eternal good. Rest in the fact that God¡¦s promise to us as His children is that ¡§He Who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.¡¨
3. Again, be motivated to faithful service and obedience as you consider the sacrifice of Christ for you on Calvary!
