Forsaken - Wild Heart: Mark’s Portraits of a Radical Messiah

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We’re continuing our series Wild Heart: Mark’s Portrait of a Radical Messiah this morning.

Last week we looked at the passion of Christ and a brief glimpse into the depths of unrestrained human cruelty amazing restraint and love that Jesus showed us as He suffered.

Today we’re going to look at Jesus’ death on the cross. I mentioned last week that the crucifixion stories communicate the central point of our faith in Christ that Jesus took on our sins and died in our place. He was our substitute, the scapegoat who took the fall for us and He did it all without even trying to defend Himself.

The OT tells us that the ancient Jews would select a goat to become the scapegoat for the sins of the people. The high priest would symbolically place the sins of the people on the head of the scapegoat and it would then be led out of the city and banished to the wilderness. Its only job was to carry the sins of the people away.

There was one problem though, sometimes the scapegoat would wander back into the city which would cause quite a stir because to them it was sign that God had rejected the scapegoat and that their sins still remained.

But Jesus didn’t come down from the cross, He didn’t avoid death in fact He embraced it fully by taking our sin and dying in our place which meant that God accepted the “scapegoat” and forgave our sin and removed it permanently.

Mark, and all of the gospel writers, included the details that were needed to assure the future followers of Jesus that His death had both physical and spiritual dimensions.

Let’s read Mark 15:33-41

There are three things that are stated by Mark that point to the meaning of Jesus’s death on the cross.

Jesus was forsaken by His God and Father because of our sin. King David wrote In Psalm 37:25 I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his descendants begging bread. The truth in this passage is that God will never forsake the righteous. All through scripture we see this truth played out in the lives of the saints. Yet, Jesus was forsaken. What that means is that He became ‘unrighteous’ because sin.

Jesus didn’t sin Himself, but our sins were placed on Him and became His sins. He became the scapegoat for us and took all the blame and punishment. But this sin was very real and it separated Him from God.

That’s why He cried out “My God, My God why have You forsaken Me.” Those weren’t just words uttered to satisfy a prophetic prediction, they were real and painful and deeply personal. He was really alone.

Jesus experienced physical death for our sin. Mark tells that after Jesus cried out, He ‘breathed His last’ the words used are clear and unadorned. Jesus died physically. His body hung lifeless on the cross for all to see. The death of Jesus is important because death is the result of sin. When the first humans sinned death was the result. The Bible also tells us that the wages of sin is death. When Jesus experienced death it was because of sin. Sinless perfection can’t die so the only way that Jesus could taste death was by becoming sin for us.

Jesus death opened the way to God for everyone. It’s important to understand that the veil of the temple was torn at the moment that Jesus died. You might wonder why that’s such a big deal.

The veil of the temple was a thick curtain that separated people from the Holiest place, and it was symbolic of the sin that separated human beings from their Holy God. The only humans who were allowed to enter the Holiest Place were the High Priests and they could only enter once a year on the Day of Atonement with the blood of sacrifice. This blood “atoned” for the sins of the people giving them a fresh start with God.

The blood made it possible for the priest to enter God’s presence. When Jesus died on the cross His blood removed the barrier that separated us from God. Every person who by faith is cleansed by the blood of Jesus can enter into God’s presence. The veil wasn’t needed any more because sin had been atoned for by the blood of Jesus.

There’s something else that Mark writes that gives us a hint that this death of Jesus was for all people. Of all the people to be the first to proclaim that Jesus was who He claimed to be after His death the most unlikely candidate would be a Roman centurion. The man who was responsible for making sure that Jesus died was the first one to attach spiritual meaning to His death.

It’s obvious that the Centurion didn’t have the clearest insight because He spoke of Jesus in the past tense, but somehow He knew that Jesus was more than a man condemned to death. If it was possible for him it’s possible for everyone.