Sunday Sermon
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Sunday Morning 2nd Dec.
Mat 20v17-19:
Intro: Wider context:
Now the third notice of his death is given.
A) Mat 16v21 B)17v22-23 C) our text Mat 20v17-19
The master Teacher is telling a bit at a time.
Disciples mindsets needed changing.
They still thought in terms of power without
sacrifice and glory without suffering,
Our mindsets too need changing.
Often we are shocked when we suffer because we
have the wrong idea of what a Christian is.
Often we don’t consider that the cost of
discipleship is to sacrifice our own way and
follow Jesus which will lead to suffering of
various forms and degrees.
Our inspiration to endure is Jesus and what he
suffered for us.
Thus, like the disciples we need to know what He
suffered.
1) The first thing we see is that Jesus was
betrayed. V18.
His close personal friend does the dirty on him!
Turns him over!
Psalm 55:12-14 12 If an enemy were
insulting me, I could endure it; if a foe were
raising himself against me, I could hide from him.
13 But it is you, a man like myself, my
companion, my close friend, 14 with whom
I once enjoyed sweet fellowship as we walked with
the throng at the house of God.
We know how this came about. Judas has finally
been overcome by greed. He loved money more than
the Lord. Yet in the end he can’t cope with his
betrayal and he kills himself.
Personal wounds from those close to us are often
the hardest to take.
2) next Jesus is sentenced to death. V18.
Those who have hated him all along, the chief
priests and the teachers of the law, now seize their
chance, and condemn Jesus to death.
The leaders of the people loved their power more
than Jesus. They saw him as a threat to that power
so they hand him the sentence of death. A mock trial
with false witnesses is put in place and the end
result is a total miscarriage of justice.
To suffer a miscarriage of justice is totally
shocking, for everyone involved. Even today any
miscarriage of justice is seen as an outrage.
Jesus suffered that!
3) next the Jewish leaders betray Jesus to the
occupying forces! v19
He is handed over to the Gentiles. Betrayed by
Judas, betrayed by the Jews, now in the hands of the
enemy forces.
Jesus the Man of Compassion, the Man of Sorrows,
would have suffered mentally and emotionally in
these first few stages of his suffering.
In many ways his whole life was one of
suffering. Born into poverty, having to work
hard all his life to survive. But now the
suffering steps up a gear.
4) fourthly He is mocked. v19
He is degraded, he is made fun of. He is
dehumanised. Treated as less than human. Simply as
an object to be ridiculed. No dignity given
him.
This suffering starts now to become more than an
attack on the emotions and the mental state.
This kind of mockery is contempt and as such is
an attack on the soul. The very nature of man is
attacked in mockery. Thus Mat 5v22 - name
calling leads to dangerous eternal consequences.
Why? Because you are treating someone as less
than human! It is contemptuous behaviour.
Contempt is when you consider someone as
worthless or despicable. They saw Jesus as
worthless, thus they mocked him.
5) next the suffering attacks at the physical level.
v19
Jesus is flogged. That is brutally beaten with a
whip. The whip itself would have been leather with
bits of wood and glass in it so that the skin would
be torn open. The whipping would have ripped the
flesh off his back and front as the cords curled
around his torso. Thus, Psalm 22v17, could count his
bones. Isaiah 50v6, his beard pulled out - probably
during this beating.
The level of suffering is mounting up and up.
Emotional suffering, mental suffering, soul
suffering, physical suffering.
His physical strength by this point would have
been hugely weakened. He was a man just like us,
stronger than most of us probable, with the
background of his physical working life. And now
his strength is near gone.
There was no intervention. No help given. No
ease of passage. No mercy. He was a condemned
man going through the process of execution.
6) next he is crucified. V19
Already his strength is near gone, but he has to go
through more physical suffering. The bible does not
describe in detail what crucifixion involved. The
reason for that is simple: the people knew what it
involved. Crucifixion was the Roman punishment of
choice. Yet it was so brutal that a Roman citizen
was almost never executed that way. It was used only
for none Romans!
We do not need to detail any more of the physical
suffering that Christ went through on the cross, we
already know he suffered terrible. Further, on the
Cross the suffering turns more to spiritual
suffering.
On the cross his suffering is climaxed
spiritually when he experiences another kind of
betrayal - “my God, my God, why have you
forsaken me”!
The suffering of the Lord is one long list of
betrayal and abandonment. Betrayed by Judas to
the Jews, by the Jews to the Gentiles, by the
Gentiles to the Cross, and on the Cross by the
Father!
He is left alone, betrayed, forsaken, dead.
7) resurrection.
Yet, we cannot stay too long in the suffering. Jesus
does not. He tells the disciples that he will come
alive again! He will suffer and die, but he will
live. Death cannot hold him!
Acts 2:24 24 But God raised him from
the dead, freeing him from the agony of death,
because it was impossible for death to keep its hold
on him.
Revelation 1:18 18 I am the Living
One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and
ever!
Conclusion: why?
V28: “to give his life as a ransom for many”
The “ransom” was the price paid to free the slave.
All this happened because Jesus was paying the price
that we owed as sinners before God. He was giving
his life that we might live, be set free. No longer
slaves, but free men and women.