Well do please keep your Bibles in hand and turn with me in them now to the New Testament scriptures to page 834 if you’re using a church Bible and to the gospel according to Matthew, chapter 27. We are going to be considering verses 32 through 44. Matthew 27:32-44. Last Lord’s Day, we began to look at the various groups that the Gospel writers tell us assembled at the foot of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We considered the lessons that the brutality of the soldiers who crucified Jesus and who gambled for His garments had to teach us. And now this week we are looking at the scoffers who respond to the spectacle of a crucified Christ with only mockery and disdain. And yet as we are going to see, their mockery actually says far more than they intend, proclaiming the very truths about Jesus that their spiritual blindness has missed.
We are going to examine the teaching of the passage under two very simple headings. First of all, we’ll look at the mockers themselves. And then secondly, we’ll consider their mockery. So the mockers and then what they said, their mockery. Before we look at the passage, let’s bow our heads and pray together and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us all pray.
Our God and Father, as we come with Your Word spread before us, we know that our thoughts and our heart secrets are laid bare before Your gaze. O would You now, by Your Holy Spirit, wield Your Word in all our hearts, bringing us to Golgotha, showing us the wounds of our Savior, humbling us under the shadow of Calvary, and bringing us to repentance and to new faith in the Man nailed between those two thieves – Your Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus, in whose name we now pray. Amen.
Matthew 27 at the thirty-second verse. This is the Word of God:
“As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, ‘This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.’ Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, ‘You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.’ So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, ‘He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’’ And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.”
Amen.
The Mockers
Let’s think about the mockers first of all. The mockers. Matthew divides them into three groups. Do you see them in the text? First in verse 39, there are those who “passed by, who derided them, wagging their heads.” You will remember that Jerusalem was bustling with crowds visiting the city for the celebration of Passover. Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified, was outside the city walls intentionally located where people could see the public example that the Roman justice system was trying to make of its three latest victims. So these are the ordinary citizens, busying themselves with the demands of that day’s routine, passing by at the foot of the cross on their way into or out of the city. And here they are, shaking their heads and laughing at how misguided Jesus must have been, after all, to land Himself in this dreadful predicament.
The second group is mentioned in verse 41. “So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him.” These now, on the other hand, these are the elites of Jewish society, members of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council. These are the ones who had put Jesus on trial back in chapter 26. And as verse 1 of chapter 27 says, “When morning came,” after Jesus’ betrayal and trial, “all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel together against Jesus to put Him to death. And they bound Him and led Him away and delivered Him over to Pilate, the governor.” And so here they are now. In all likelihood, at least some of the very same people who had tried Jesus and struck Jesus with their hands and spat in Jesus’ face before handing Him over to Pilate for sentencing. And here they are now come to gloat at the success of their plot to be rid of Jesus once and for all.
And then there is a third group who join the taunts of the crowd. We don’t hear their words. Matthew simply says they participated in the same way. They took up the taunts of others, of the crowds and of the priests. Matthew is talking of course about the two robbers who were crucified with Jesus, one on His right and one on His left. These men are convicted criminals. The word “robber” could be translated “insurrectionist” or “revolutionary,” or it could simply refer to thieves or bandits, armed, common criminals who robbed people on the highway. But whatever the nature of their crimes exactly, the men beside Jesus are being executed and they represent the very bottom of the heap, the dregs of Jewish society.
And so you see what Matthew is doing here, don’t you? He is cataloging a representative slice, a cross section of human society. “The whole of humanity is here,” writes Donald Macleod, “the common people are here, stripped of the romance that attributes special insight to the unsophisticated peasantry. They see no sign of kingship in the crucified one. The world’s power, learning and religion are equally blind. And at the other end of the scale stand His co-condemned. However, death concentrated their minds. They had no compunction about adding to the torment of their fellow sufferer. There was nothing about Him which could enable mere human insight at any point on the social, academic, or religious scale to recognize Jesus for who He was.”
So do not think that if you had been there you would seen in the shame and the sorrow and the suffering of the cross the Son of God made flesh, or that you would have bowed down to adore Him instead of lifting your own voice, along with all the others, to mock Him. No, Matthew’s point is that the wise and the learned are here. The average and the ordinary are here. The criminal underclass is here. The Bible scholar and the political power brokers, they are here. The street-smart working man with callouses on his hands, he is here. The outcasts and the insiders, they all come to take their places at the foot of the cross and not one of them looked at the bloodied face of Jesus Christ and saw anything other than an object of contempt and disdain. And Matthew is saying that is the world’s instinctive and habitual reaction to Jesus Christ. “The word of the cross,” the apostle Paul says, 1 Corinthians 1:18 and 22, “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Greeks.” That’s how people respond by nature to the cross.
And those of us who trust in Christ and who long for the people we care for to trust in Christ too, we need to understand that very clearly and to be ready for it whenever we try to share the good news about Jesus with a lost and dying world. We mustn’t think that if we could only find the right combination of words, if we could just be nice enough or persuasive enough, emotionally compelling enough in our presentation of the Gospel, well then at last they’d suddenly understand the truth and come to believe in Jesus – who He was and why He came. Of course we should use every means available to us to express the truth about Christ with clarity and pathos and power. God will use those means best suited to accomplish His ends, after all. But let’s remember too, as we do it, that there are no gifts that we possess that could ever open blind eyes or ever unstopper deaf ears. This, Matthew says, is how people who are dead in their sin always respond to Jesus, and class and education and social status have no bearing on that fact whatsoever.
Some of you who are bright Christians here today can remember all the years that you heard the Gospel message over and over and over and it never touched your heart, it never moved you. At best, you were indifferent. You shrugged to hear about our Savior’s sufferings. You went on with life quite unperturbed by the cross. Maybe you thought the very idea of a suffering substitute dying in our place is a monstrous notion unworthy of an enlightened society. Maybe you found the exclusive claims of Christ crucified as the only way to God to be narrow minded and bigoted. Maybe you felt repentance to be beneath your dignity and trust in a crucified Messiah an offense to your pride. Until one day, that is, when God in His great mercy took hold of you by His Word and Spirit and He opened your blind eyes and the veil was lifted and you saw in the wretched agonies of the Man of Calvary the very price of your own salvation.
And so now you say, as you look back on those lost years, “Behold the Man upon the cross, my sin upon His shoulders. Ashamed I hear my mocking voice, call out among the scoffers.” That you ever took your place among those who gather here in the shadow of Calvary to heap scorn on the Lord Jesus, now is a source only of sorrow and regret to you now that He has become the great object of your faith and your love and your gratitude. But as unhappy as that memory may be to you, we should never allow ourselves to forget it, to forget that we all at one time joined the scoffers in our rejection of Jesus Christ because that fact will wonderfully humble us and teach us great patience for those all around us for whom we pray and to whom we seek to bear witness who still see nothing in the Man hanging on the middle cross worthy of adoration. And let’s also be comforted as we reflect on those years when we did not know Him that this same God who took scoffers like we once were and helped us to see the truth at last and made us His children, that God can still yet do the same even with the most cynical opponent to the cross of Jesus Christ that we know. The mockers. That’s the first thing I want you to see.
Their Mockery
And now secondly, let’s take a look at the mockery of what they say to and about the Lord Jesus. Matthew records two lists of insults that are hurled at Jesus. Do you see them in the passage? The first you will find in verses 39 and 40 on the lips of the passersby. The second in 42 and 43 from the chief priests and the scribes and elders. And I think we’re meant to understand the mockery that we read here on at least three levels. First of all, they are of course straight-forward expressions of derision, of derision. But then secondly, and on a deeper level, behind the mockery of the crowds there stands something far darker and more sinister. Not only are these expressions of human derision, they’re also expressions of Satanic temptation. And then at the third and deepest level, despite themselves, each of the scoffers actually become instruments of Gospel proclamation, saying far more than they knew about Jesus and the meaning of His cross. And so these three things. Let’s take our time to consider each – derision, temptation and proclamation.
Derision
First of all, these insults are expressions of undisguised derision. The passersby, we’re told in verse 39, derided Him. The Greek verb is “blasphemeo,” from which we get our English verb, “to blaspheme.” That word in Greek at least can simply mean “to mock” or “to deride” in general. Probably Matthew here, however, intends it to have this fuller, more specifically theological meaning given the true identity of the object of their scorn. And so these words are full of venom. They are aimed to inflict a terrible wound, assaulting the divine human person of the Lord Jesus Christ. They’re a terrible blasphemy. And don’t miss the sarcasm with which their words are dripping. Verse 40, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself!” If you think you can do something as great and dramatic as all that, surely you can do something as urgent and as necessary as this and deliver yourself from the agonies you endure.” They are echoing, of course, the charge that was brought against Jesus during His trial before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin in chapter 26 verse 61. Perhaps they were spectators, looking on at that particular occasion. Or maybe some of the false witnesses who leveled this charge against Jesus brought in to testify for the court during Jesus’ interrogation are now here at the crucifixion, hurling their testimony back in His face. Or look down at the words of the chief priests with the scribes and the elders in verses 42 and 43. Interestingly, did you notice this, when they speak they do not speak to Jesus. Do you see that in the passage? They actually seem to prefer to announce their contempt for Christ to one another, or perhaps to the watching crowd before whom they now strut and preen with self-congratulation. Although of course every one of their words are spoken loudly enough that they could be sure Jesus will overhear them. And we all know don’t we that sometimes the cruelest barb is the one that is not addressed to you but addressed to someone else about you that you overhear.
It’s vital, as we take all of that in, to remember that no small part of the agony our Lord endured came in the wounding words of the people to whom He was sent to serve. The trauma of the cross must not, cannot be described only in physical terms, although the bodily pain must have been overwhelming. A large part of the suffering of Jesus Christ was the mental anguish caused by His own people’s relentless rejection of Him. These words were as piercing as any nail driven into His flesh. You may have discovered by painful, personal experience that living openly for Jesus Christ in these days can be a costly business. If your family, your unbelieving family, or colleagues or classmates know that you follow Jesus, you may have found yourself excluded or marginalized or made fun of or ignored or shut out. And if you should stumble, if you should compromise, if you fail to live up to the lofty moral standards to which the Lord calls you, well then they are ready to pounce, calling you a hypocrite and dismissing your commitment to Christ as fake and worthless and insincere. And in those moments, brothers and sisters, we need to remember that Jesus calls us to walk in His steps, to pick up our cross and follow Him even to this place, the place of crucifixion, the place of slander and mockery and exclusion. It’s the cost of discipleship. Do not forget as you bear it that your Lord has walked this dark valley before you and He knows personally the acute sting of derision. He is a great High Priest who has been touched with the feeling of our infirmities and He endured it all ahead of you, so that if you would but go to Him, He will sustain you when your path takes you through trials that are the mirror of His own. Derision.
Temptation
But there is another level upon which we need to understand these words. They are more than derision; they are also actually Satanic temptations. The language, if you look at it carefully, the language echoes the wilderness temptations with which Jesus’ public ministry began back in Matthew chapter 4. Do you remember what Satan said to Jesus back then? “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread. If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple and God will command His angels concerning you and on their hands they will bear you up. And all these kingdoms of the world I will give you if you would but fall down and worship me.” So Satan questioned Jesus’ identity – “If you are the Son of God.” He questioned Jesus’ willingness to be exposed to suffering – “Throw yourself down and the angels will bear you up.” He questioned Jesus’ path to kingship based on His trust in and His commitment to His Father alone – “I will give You all these kingdoms if You will but fall down and worship me.”
And now here at the other end of the story, at the climax of His ministry, in the words now of the scoffers gathered under the cross, these same temptations are hurled at Jesus once again. His identity is questioned. “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” The rightness of His sufferings is questioned – “He saved others, Himself He cannot save. Come down now from the cross.” His path to kingship, based on His trust and commitment to the Father alone is questioned. “He is the King of Israel? Let Him come down now from the cross and we will believe in Him. He trusts in God, let God deliver Him if He desires.” He said, “I am the Son of God.” Jesus’ work in saving others, dying in our place, Jesus’ office as King and Savior, Jesus’ identity as Son of God – they are all assailed by the evil one. And yet you will notice in the face of this dreadful onslaught, our Lord remains entirely silent. As the prophet Isaiah puts it, “He was oppressed and was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth.” Under this great tidal wave of temptation to abandon the path of suffering, to come down from the cross, to summon legions of angels and to be relieved of His agonies, in all of this, our Lord was silent, meekly compliant under the afflicting hand of God who poured out upon His Son the righteous judgment our sins deserve. As Peter puts it in his first letter, “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed.”
And so just as we see behind the derision of the crowds the temptation of the devil, so we should also see in the quiet submission of Christ to all that was befalling Him. We should also see the obedience of our Savior. He stays the course at this most acute moment of temptation to abandon it. He resists temptation and continues the course of His obedience. The point here is not that Jesus is a great model and example of us of how we should resist temptation. No, that’s not the big lesson. The big lesson is that Jesus’ obedience in the face of such terrible temptation is the entire ground of our acceptance before God and our only refuge when we fall into temptation, as we all shall at some time or another. Jesus is no mere victim here, you understand, put upon by others, powerless to resist, helpless before the onslaught of human malice, dying a specimen, a perfect specimen of abject defeat. That’s not the picture. No, here He is, the second Adam, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. As Paul puts it in Romans 5:19, “For as by one man’s disobedience,” meaning Adam’s sin in the garden, “the many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience,” meaning Jesus’ self-giving commitment to the plan and will of God leading Him ultimately to the cross, “so by one man’s obedience the many are constituted righteous.” The jeers and the contempt and the taunting dismissals of the crowd – do you see this now – they become the occasion, the means by which Jesus secured for us that righteousness by which alone our sin can be covered and we can find acceptance before God because Jesus endured their disdain, as they questioned His claim to be the Son of God. As you trust in Him, God the Father can say to you, “You are My beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” His Sonship was questioned that yours might be secured.
Proclamation
And that brings me to the last layer that we need to see in the mockery of the crowds. Derision, temptation, and finally proclamation. Despite themselves, the scoffers actually preach the Gospel here, don’t they? Their words bear testimony to the very truths they reject. They remind me of C. S. Lewis who once testified about his own pre-conversion days. “I was at this time living like so many atheists or anti-theists in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist and I was also very angry with God for not existing.” The people here at Golgotha, they are also in a whirl of contradictions, aren’t they, unable to avoid testifying to the very truth they hate and reject and deny. Look at what they say. Verse 40, they quote a version actually of John chapter 2 verse 19 where Jesus did actually say, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” But they completely misunderstand His point. He wasn’t talking about the stone building in Jerusalem as John explains in John chapter 2. He was speaking about the temple of His body.
And now while they hear the crowds remind Him of what they thought was His obvious failure to do what He said He would do and destroy the temple and tear it down, here He is keeping that promise, doing that very thing the temple of His body was being torn down, soon to be raised once more on the third day. Look at the chief priest’s words. They confess actually in verse 42, it’s extraordinary – “He saved others. Himself He cannot save.” Isn’t it interesting that for all their opposition to Jesus they simply cannot deny that He did in fact save other people. What they do not understand is that He is only ever able to save anyone precisely because He would not save Himself. And they said, “Let Him come down now from the cross and we will believe in Him.” Had He come down, their faith in Him would have been utterly futile. No payment for sin would have been provided, do you see? Now salvation would have been secured. Faith in Jesus has no meaning, none, unless He died and rose again.
So look, here’s the Gospel. Can you see it shining bright and clear in the gloom of Golgotha? Jesus can save others, He can save you, He can save you, but only because He did not save Himself. And yes, you must indeed believe in Him, but you must believe in a crucified Christ. Enough with this notion of Jesus as a fine, moral teacher, a great ethicist, a philosopher to guide your life. Unless you trust in Christ who was immolated and torn at the cross, your faith is futile. It must be a Christ who makes full payment for sin if you are to have any hope. A cross-less Christ cannot save you. But because He died, do you see, because He died you can live. Because He was condemned, you are pardoned. Because He obeyed in the face of terrible temptation, when you fall into temptation there is mercy for you. Here is the Savior our hearts need. Do you see Him here amidst the mockery of the crowds? O may God help us no longer to take our place amongst them but instead now at last, our eyes opened to bow in repentance and faith at the foot of the cross, loving in turn, trusting in turn the One who loved us and gave Himself for us. Let us pray.
Our God and Father, we adore You. We adore You that You have given Your Son, Your only Son, the Son whom You love, the Lord Jesus Christ, to the darkness and cruelty and pain and loss, to the judgment and wrath of the cross for us and for our salvation. We would no longer come before the cross with cynicism or scorn, but instead we bow in repentance asking You, Father, for Jesus’ sake, to forgive our sin and to make us Your beloved children. For we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.