Mark chapter 15 verses 33 through 47. This is God’s holy word. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means, My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?
And some of the bystanders hearing it said, Behold, He is calling Elijah. And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave it to him to drink, saying, Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come and take him down. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, truly, this man was the Son of God.
There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James the Younger and of Joseph and Salome. And when he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him. And there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. And when evening had come, since it was the day of preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.
Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph brought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where he was laid.
Thus far, God’s holy, inspired, and infallible word. Thanks be to God. Now, Heavenly Father, prepare our hearts. Help us to receive your word gladly, and then not to be only hearers of it, but doers as well. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. I’ve entitled this, The Motley Crew, And I’ve divided it actually into two parts. The first part is what we’ll cover today, and then we’ll take the latter parts of it next time, Lord willing. But the word motley means weirdly unmatched. Weirdly unmatched.
The motley crew then refers to the people who were there at the cross, and we’ll include Jesus in that, although we’ll look at his place next time. But today we’ll look at the two thieves, and the bystanders, and the centurion. Those will be our main points of observation today. This passage basically tells us what went on with Jesus while he hung on the cross.
We cannot absolutely be sure of the date, but we can come close. A large number of scholars estimate the date, you might want to write this down, just kidding, the date to be Friday, April the 3rd, in the year 33, AD 33. Although there are other scholars who say it was just the year 30, I suppose because the Bible says he was 30 years old at this time. It’s hard to get these dates from way back just exactly right, but this is pretty close. The important thing is that Jesus’ execution was an historical event. In other words, it really happened. This is not just a nice story that we read about or even a disturbing story that we read about, but it actually happened.
Do remember that Mark is succinct. That is, he compacts things down, says what needs to be said in a shorter volume here than exists in some of the other Gospels like Matthew and Luke and John. Additional events also took place, and we’re sort of going to fold those into what we do this morning, what we study.
There was darkness that came over the land. There were Jesus’ words from the cross. Somebody has numbered them as seven words from the cross. Here, I think the only quote won, where he says, ilo ilo elama sabachthani, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? There was the offer of the sour wine. There was his death, of course. There was the centurion’s comment, surely or truly this man was a son of God.
We’re going to gather everything together by looking at several of these people who are involved. in the crucifixion of Jesus at this point. But I want to stress for you that the reason Jesus died was to save sinners. The Son of Man came into the world to save sinners. That’s why He was on the cross. And it was my sins and your sins that put Him there. but he did come for that purpose.
Now, these other things tell us a little bit more, give us a little bit better understanding of what was going on. So again, the two thieves is our first point to consider today. And with him, they crucified two robbers, one on the right and one on the left. Now, I didn’t read that in the passage today because it occurs just a little bit before this back in verse 27 of Mark chapter 15, but I do think it’s important for us to consider the two thieves. To begin with, both thieves were angry.
I say to begin with, both thieves were angry. They were angry at everybody. Maybe you’ve been around someone and No matter who they meet, they snap at them, or they push them, or they just don’t want to have anything to do with anybody. And so when you sum up their behavior, you say, well, they’re just mad at everybody.
And I think these thieves were kind of in that position, too. They themselves probably had been crucified just prior to Jesus’ being crucified. We don’t know for sure. It might have been hours. It might have been even a day or two. But these two thieves were angry. They were angry men, angry at everybody. And then we see that there’s a change in one of them, which is where we want to put our emphasis today. But in addition to their anger, I just want to stress that they were bitter Because there was no one to help them. At least that’s what they thought. Nobody to help them. They say that, well I shouldn’t say they, but I think it was Dante in his Inferno, says that there was a sign over the gate to hell that said, despair all you enter here. Meaning there’s no other chance here, it’s all over with now.
But there’s a word of encouragement here, in that we know that one of them did say, Lord remember me, He had a change, and all we can say about that change is that the Holy Spirit must have gotten to him. The Holy Spirit must have changed him from an angry and bitter man into someone who looked upon Jesus and said, this is not the gate of hell. This is an open opportunity for me to be saved, and I want to seize that opportunity. So, at least until that took place, these men were bitter, there was no one to help them, and as far as Jesus was concerned, again, up until this point, well, they said this is a joke, this stuff about Jesus and His being the Savior, the Messiah, it’s all just a joke. And then, this one who did change, by the power of God. This one evidently had some knowledge.
Now, I think we get the idea sometimes that these two other thieves were Twins, you know, they had done everything together. I don’t think that was the case at all. I think there was one that got punished for his sins and crimes and the other man also for the wrongdoing, the trespasses that he had done. So I don’t think they particularly knew each other before they were put into prison together and then brought to the place of execution and put upon their crosses as well.
But there was this one that evidently had heard something, somewhere, somehow. Maybe he was in the crowd and saw Jesus healed somebody. Maybe he was a pickpocket, you know, and went through the crowds and was stealing things. Maybe somebody told him that was there and they were told by somebody else. But some way or other, this fellow came to understand that this man was a Savior and that he had the power to save. Again, by the work of the Holy Spirit, this knowledge that maybe He had pushed to the back of His mind, it suddenly came flooding through.
And He said, you know, this man may very well be the Messiah. I’m going to follow Him. And you say, how could He follow Him? Well, of course, He’s going to follow Him beyond death, of course. But there’s very little distance He could follow Him right there at these crosses. But He did what He could. He said, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
Now, Mark doesn’t include all that. As I say, these other Gospels are longer and they give more details about things. But because we know this other stuff, we can certainly put it together with what we have here. And whereas this other thief just kept, I suppose, cursing Jesus and cursing the world and being bitter and angry, this man changed by God’s power.
And he said, there’s something about this man that means salvation. I’m going to take this opportunity. And what a lesson for us today. When you have the opportunity, The Apostle Paul said, now is the day of salvation. Now is the acceptable time. Don’t let it pass from you. Don’t let it slip away from you. Here’s a lesson from this terrible thief. Maybe he had done awful things in his life, but he said, I’ve got the opportunity.
God said, come. Jesus looks like He’s willing to accept me. Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. When that day comes for you, if it hasn’t already, you want to seize on it. You don’t want to let it pass. And if it has indeed come to you, then thank the Lord over and over again that you didn’t let it pass, but that you came to that place where you said, Lord, remember me.
Well, based on his request, Lord, remember me, Jesus’ response was that now he accepted him as a believer. He said, how do you know that? Jesus wouldn’t have said, today you’ll be with me in paradise, were it not true that he had come to real faith. That’s the way that you know. If the Lord says, yes, come on with me. I accept you. I receive you to myself. And so we can rejoice with this man. The other fellow just kept saying, I don’t want him. He’s nothing but a joke. But this man said, oh, I want to take my opportunity. Well, now, before he had no hope, you know, to spare all you who enter here, he was going through that tunnel.
But wait a minute, now there’s hope. There’s hope for a place in the heavenly kingdom. And it’s granted by the one who controls who gets in and who doesn’t. It’s granted by the one who can make sure you get in. And no one can take that away from you. He granted, and he was also a man who granted assurance.
He said, you will be with me in paradise today. There’s hope there, friends. And I hope you hear the Lord saying to you, you’ve come to me, you’ve asked me to save you, you’ve turned away from your sinful life and from the things that used to entice you, and I grant you a place in my kingdom today. or any day that you happen to meet the Lord, you’ll be with me. And when you die or when I come back, you’ll be with me in paradise.
Those are the two thieves, and think on those as well. Well, then we have the bystanders, those people who are just there for no particular reason or because there was something to see. Life must have been pretty boring in those days, Here came the bystanders, and none of them are named as far as we know, but it says that some of the bystanders heard what was being said. Some of the bystanders heard. And a few bystanders evidently felt sympathy for Jesus, but nothing in the way of what we would call true faith, they just felt sympathy.
You know, we can be that way, too. We can see somebody in trouble. We don’t know them. We have other things to do. But something grabs our heartstrings and says, you know, I’m really sorry for whatever. And they were sorry for Jesus. I think they recognized some of the innocence that was on display there, however that got through to them. And they may have even been sorry for these other two guys as well. All the suffering, all the blood, all the agonies that were there. So some of them felt sympathy.
There used to be a show when I was a little boy on television. I can’t even remember the name of it now, but it was like a little quiz show, and if you got the answers right, you won some money. Before you took the quiz, you had to tell your heartbreaking story, you know. My husband left me, or my wife left me, and I’ve got all these children, and I don’t know how I’m going to feed them and all.
And then there was a heart that was on the wall, and it started going thunk, thunk, thunk. Heartline, heartline. And then, you know, you kind of identified with it. Oh yeah, you know, I’m so glad this poor family is getting some help and so forth. Well, I think there was some of that here with the bystanders. You know, the heart began to blink at them and they felt like that, but there’s not really any faith in Christ. So you don’t want to be just a bystander, okay?
Many of these folks had come to Golgotha, I’m sure out of curiosity. Maybe they knew about Jesus, and they thought, maybe he will come down from the cross. Or maybe they just said, you know, it’s been a while since I’ve seen an execution, so I think I’ll go.
But they had a curiosity about it. There was something unusual, anyway, about the crucifixion of Jesus. He had marched down the street with his cross, and somebody else had to carry it part of the way. And it was the things that would kind of pique your interest a little bit. So they had all come there for that. But may I say that most of them were really disappointed when they got there.
Jesus didn’t come down from the cross, and thank God he didn’t. Because if he’d come down from the cross, you and I would be in big trouble right now. We would have no savior. Our sins would not be paid for if he had come down from the cross. But he stayed. And he paid for our sins. The old hymn says Jesus paid it all.
He didn’t leave anything unpaid for those who are his people, those who trust him and believe in him. The miracle worker he was, he didn’t come down from the cross, though he could have, but he didn’t because he loved his people. And Jesus said, greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. God grant us to be his friends, how so?
By trusting him, by following him, by saying I’m giving up what this world has to offer for his sake. The one who started to offer soothing wine, it doesn’t say that Jesus took it or he didn’t, but this was different from the drugged wine that had been offered to him before.
But somebody said, wait, wait, wait, wait, let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down. Now they thought it was Elijah because he said, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. They said, oh, he’s saying Elijah, Elijah. And they were waiting for Elijah to show up. Now, why would they think that? Because in the Old Testament, it says Elijah’s going to come again.
But Jesus had straightened that out already. If anybody had heard him, he said, John the Baptist is that Elijah who was to come. Not actually the person Elijah, but a person in the strength and power of Elijah would come. And that was John the Baptist. Jesus explained that very carefully to the people. But still there were some that thought Elijah was going to come. And they said, let’s see if Elijah shows up.
The vast majority of these bystanders were like the angry, unbelieving thief because they really had no satisfaction in their lives. No, they weren’t suffering like those men. And they weren’t at that point where it looked like everything was hopeless. But they were close to that. They had no satisfaction. You know the old Peggy Lee song, I ain’t got no satisfaction. That was one of those rock groups. But anyway, Peggy Lee said, is this all there is? And the other group said, I ain’t got no satisfaction.
I think that was mainly the description of these bystanders that were around. So we’ve seen the thieves here, and the need especially to seize that opportunity. And then the bystanders, don’t wait for some trick or some thing that suddenly will grab your attention. Just say, Lord, receive me. I’m here, curiously, I’m here. to find out what’s going on, but I do believe that your place on the cross there, somehow, someway, is for my sins.
Well, our third thing, and this is where we’ll have to conclude today, and that’s the centurion who said, truly, this man was the son of God. One must assume that this soldier was aware of other soldiers who believed in Christ. And that’s one of the things you see as you go through the Gospels, that this centurion or that centurion made some effort to follow Christ, whether that was a true effort, whether succeeded in the sense of true faith. It’s not for me to say, but at least one of them, Jesus said about him, I’ve never seen such faith not in all of Israel. Now, this centurion maybe got together with some of these other centurions, and there was a little distance between Judea and Galilee, but I think centurions got together every once in a while, and they shared some of their problems and difficulties in leading men and so forth. And so, He knew a little bit about centurions who decided to become Christians, that is, followers of Jesus.
Well, I think that affected now the way that he looks at things here. Nevertheless, probably at least at the beginning here was still prejudice. He thought of Jews as nasty people that he didn’t want much to do with and didn’t bother him to crucify a bunch of Jews as he was doing here. At least he was leading the crucifixion party. And generally, he didn’t have any use for the Jewish faith, the Old Testament faith. That was his situation.
And right now, what does this say to us? It says, look, you may be a person with a lot of sins, you may have rejected the Lord, you may have said nasty things about Him, and yet there’s something that won’t let you get away. A man wrote a poem one time about how Christ pursued him down the ages until he caught him. And I think in this case, this centurion, he was captured by the Lord Jesus Christ. Something happened as he realized Jesus’ innocence. This was an innocent man. Why an innocent man on the cross? Why is he being put to death like this?
And he might have been kind of hard and said, oh, it’s just these Roman politicians. They did it. And there was some truth in that. But there was also the fact that there was something about an innocent man dying here with sinners, being numbered with the transgressors. He wouldn’t have known necessarily Isaiah there, but numbered with the transgressors. And well, Something about that captured his heart, anyway. We just can thank God that however he worked it out, he heard Jesus say, at least, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And that was directed to the Jews, but it was directed toward the Romans, too.
Father, forgive them. And maybe at that point, I don’t know. Again, God can explain all these things later on. But at that point, This man said, Lord, I don’t know what I’m doing. Forgive me. Have mercy on me. Remember the publican that stood at the temple and smote his breast and said, Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner. Here was an innocent man and here was a sinner. The centurion said, Lord, have mercy upon me. He took his words of forgiveness personally. And that’s what we all need to do. When Jesus says, I’ll forgive you, you need to say, Lord, forgive me. If you’re willing to forgive me, I’ll certainly accept it. Forgive me and cleanse me from all unrighteousness.
Well, suddenly, and it was very fast, quite obviously. You say, well, maybe it was too fast. Well, remember the other thief. He suddenly was a follower of Christ, whereas he’d been cursing Him before, but he suddenly was. And I think you can put the centurion right there with that poor, crucified, suffering sinner, thief on the cross. He says, Lord, I’m as bad as that guy. The Old Hymn says, there may I, as vile as he, wash all my sins away. What a beautiful thing. Here was a terrible sinner nailed to the cross, or hung, or however he was there. And here’s Jesus saying, forgive him too. I’ll forgive him. The centurion says, Lord, forgive me. Forgive me.
This indeed, suddenly, truly, surely, this was the Son of God. He was one with the believing thief. He was something that you could never be said of Pilate, the governor, or of Emperor Tiberius, whoever it was at that time. They would never have come to the place of saying they were sinners like the worst of humanity, like that guy on the cross there. But this centurion did.
He said, this was the Son of God. That’s what I need, the Son of God. I need one with power to save sinners. He could have said, I suppose, with the Apostle Paul, Lord, I really am the chief of sinners, but the forgiveness was His. And that’s where we close today, just in saying that with conviction, with certainty, He said, Lord, I now belong to you. I say it loudly. I say it in front of soldiers and bystanders and other thieves and even the disciples themselves. Lord, I’m a chief of sinners. but thank you for saving me.
I hope you can say that today as well. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we may think of ourselves as pretty good people, or we may think of ourselves as the chief of sinners, but we all need a savior. We all need forgiveness. We all need new life. We pray for that and accept the opportunity that comes our way. In Jesus’ name, amen. Let’s sing the hymn on the back of your bulletin there. Now blessed be the Lord our God, the God of Israel, for He alone doth wondrous works in glory that excel. And blessed be His glorious name to all eternity.