“He Saved Others, but…”  Mark 15:1-31
    

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason - July 16, 2006

1Very early in the morning the leading priests, other leaders, and teachers of religious law—the entire high council?—met to discuss their next step. They bound Jesus and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor.
     2Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?”
   Jesus replied, “Yes, it is as you say.”
     3Then the leading priests accused him of many crimes, 4and Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to say something? What about all these charges against you?” 5But Jesus said nothing, much to Pilate’s surprise.
     6Now it was the governor’s custom to release one prisoner each year at Passover time—anyone the people requested. 7One of the prisoners at that time was Barabbas, convicted along with others for murder during an insurrection. 8The mob began to crowd in toward Pilate, asking him to release a prisoner as usual. 9“Should I give you the King of the Jews?” Pilate asked. 10(For he realized by now that the leading priests had arrested Jesus out of envy.) 11But at this point the leading priests stirred up the mob to demand the release of Barabbas instead of Jesus. 12“But if I release Barabbas,” Pilate asked them, “what should I do with this man you call the King of the Jews?”
     13They shouted back, “Crucify him!”
     14“Why?” Pilate demanded. “What crime has he committed?”
   But the crowd only roared the louder, “Crucify him!”
     15So Pilate, anxious to please the crowd, released Barabbas to them. He ordered Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip, then turned him over to the Roman soldiers to crucify him.
     16The soldiers took him into their headquarters and called out the entire battalion. 17They dressed him in a purple robe and made a crown of long, sharp thorns and put it on his head. 18Then they saluted, yelling, “Hail! King of the Jews!” 19And they beat him on the head with a stick, spit on him, and dropped to their knees in mock worship. 20When they were finally tired of mocking him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him again. Then they led him away to be crucified.
     21A man named Simon, who was from Cyrene, was coming in from the country just then, and they forced him to carry Jesus’ cross. (Simon is the father of Alexander and Rufus.) 22And they brought Jesus to a place called Golgotha (which means Skull Hill). 23They offered him wine drugged with myrrh, but he refused it. 24Then they nailed him to the cross. They gambled for his clothes, throwing dice to decide who would get them.
     25It was nine o’clock in the morning when the crucifixion took place. 26A signboard was fastened to the cross above Jesus’ head, announcing the charge against him. It read: “The King of the Jews.” 27Two criminals were crucified with him, their crosses on either side of his. 29And the people passing by shouted abuse, shaking their heads in mockery. “Ha! Look at you now!” they yelled at him. “You can destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days, can you? 30Well then, save yourself and come down from the cross!”
     31The leading priests and teachers of religious law also mocked Jesus. “He saved others,” they scoffed, “but he can’t save himself! 32Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down from the cross so we can see it and believe him!” Even the two criminals who were being crucified with Jesus ridiculed him.

Our text for today is this: “He saved others but he cannot save himself.” These words were uttered by the religious leaders of Israel, the chief priests. They were spoken among themselves, but obviously in the presence of others who heard them talking. And we need to understand that they are words of contempt.
This becomes obvious when we see that the rest of what they said was this: “Let this Messiah, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, that we may see it and believe him!”
Just a few hours earlier, Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah, the King of Israel before the High Priest and then before Pilate, the Roman Procurator. Their challenge is this…let this Christ come down from the cross. This is what they are saying: Jesus has always been calling us to believe and declares that if we do not believe we will die in our sins. Now is the time, they say, for him to give us some proof, so that we might believe!
This is the language of comtempt.
“He saved others…” they acknowledge. Not even they could deny the fact that it was true. Everywhere in Israel and around Jerusalem were people whom he had saved. Palsied limbs, blind eyes, deaf ears, and serious illnesses touched and healed. People restored to life and health; they couldn’t deny. But they could taunt him in the hour of his death and they did.
They saw Jesus as condemned and executed. One of three people crucified on that day. They saw three evil men on those crosses that day. He had been tried and condemned by a religious court, and found guilty of blasphemy against God Almighty. Pilate had released Barabbas instead of Jesus and now he was delivered up for execution of his sentence.
They saw him as an enemy of God. His life is to be taken, he will be buried and we will be done with him. The world will be rid of him once and for all. It was then that they said “He saved others; himself he cannot save.”
We recognize that they were wrong in their estimation of what was happening. Jesus could easily have saved himself. He was not on the cross because of their victory over him. They had not caught him, trapped him, shut him up, imprisoned him, crucified him and therefore, beaten him. His being on the cross was not their victory. They are merely the means of placing him on that cross. But he is there because God put him there.
Jesus could have escaped at any time he wanted to. He could have employed diplomacy with Pilate and won his release. Pilate was seeking some way to avoid killing Jesus and would have been quite willing to work out a deal. A word from Jesus would have been enough to do it. But Jesus would not appeal to Pilate to be released.

Jesus could have appealed to the crowd. In that crowd were people whose lives had been touched by him. The people were only repeating what they were being told when they cried out “Crucify Him!” All Jesus had to do was to appeal to the crowd. If he had appealed to them  first and they would have helped him escape the cross. Remember, the religious rulers were trying to avoid capturing and trying Jesus during the Passover because of this very same crowd that was supporting him. They were afraid that this very group of people would cause a riot if they moved against Jesus during the Passover. Their fears were well founded. Jesus could have appealed to them to save him, But Jesus would not appeal to the crowd.
Just think, Jesus could have appealed to the forces of Heaven to rescue him. He knew that one word was all that was needed for 12 legions of angels to come and free him. One glance of his eye, one word of power was all that would have been needed and Pilate and all these religious leaders would have been swept away. The hosts of heaven could hardly be restrained from delivering him,  as it was. He could have delivered himself. That was their mistake. They did not put him there on that cross.
The religious leaders also made a spiritual mistake as well. He was strong enough to deliver himself, but because he was going to the cross in cooperation with the plan of His Father, he would not. He was restraining his omnipotence as he went to the cross. If we were to be saved, he could not deliver himself. There was no other way for salvation to come to us.
Jesus is walking the Father’s pathway. He is striving against sin. He is resisting to the shedding of his own blood. We don’t really understand it all, but we do know that God has declared that “…without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.” In the Divine economy, Jesus could only slay death by dying himself at the hands of evil men. He could end the hold of sin on mankind only by becoming sin for us…in our place.
Jesus was strong enough to be weak enough to die for us. He accepted the cross as an act of divine love for us.
Look back at their words “He saved others, himself he cannot save.” “He saved…” is past tense…a matter of time past. The “himself he cannot save.” is present tense. All those he had already saved, he saved on the basis of the fact that he could not, he would not save himself. It was in the dying that he purchased the redemption of all who will believe.
In 1981, a Minnesota radio station reported a story about a stolen car in California. Police were staging an intense search for the vehicle and the driver, even to the point of placing announcements on local radio stations to contact the thief. On the front seat of the stolen car sat a box of crackers that, unknown to the thief, were laced with poison. The car owner had intended to use the crackers as rat bait. Now the police and the owner of the VW Bug were more interested in apprehending the thief to save his life than to recover the car. So often when we run from God, we feel it is to escape his punishment. But what we are actually doing is eluding his rescue. Unknown.
How many seek to elude his rescue even today. There are those who do not believe they need to be saved. In fact we hear of people who are offended at the idea that they need to be saved from anything. And many of those people have funny ideas about God and what God requires, much as the religious leaders of Israel of Jesus’ day.
A businessman well known for his ruthlessness once announced to writer Mark Twain, "Before I die I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mount Sinai and read the 10 Commandments aloud at the top." "I have a better idea," replied Twain. "You could stay in Boston and keep them."
Moody Bible Institute's Today in the Word, September, 1991, p. 32.
What we should understand from out text today is this:  To save others, Jesus could not save himself.
He died that we might be set free from the reality of spiritual death that comes with sin.
All we have to do is accept the forgiveness offered to us. It can be offered to us because Jesus did not save himself from the cross. He purchased our redemption and because that was the plan of God the Father, he could not save himself.
Back in 1830 George Wilson was convicted of robbing the U.S. Mail and was sentenced to be hanged. President Andrew Jackson issued a pardon for Wilson, but he refused to accept it. The matter went to Chief Justice Marshall, who concluded that Wilson would have to be executed. "A pardon is a slip of paper," wrote Marshall, "the value of which is determined by the acceptance of the person to be pardoned. If it is refused, it is no pardon. George Wilson must be hanged."
For some, the pardon comes too late. For others, the pardon is not accepted.
Prokope, V. 11, #5.
Accepting the offer of love made by God in the death of His Son on the cross is all that is required for God to rescue us from the wages of sin, which is death – separation from God forever. Jesus could have come down from the cross. He could have escaped the evil and cruelty of those men who condemned him. But He would not accept escape because He could not do so and redeem us from the slavery of sin.

People like us only need to be willing to be rescued. He is ever ready to do so. That is plainly understood by the fact that he could have avoided the cross, but would not so that we might have life and the blessing of His presence forever.

There is one last thought that needs to be considered: 

We have a penchant for refusing to be rescued in most areas of our lives. We get into trouble…and it does not matter much what kind of trouble it is…and instead of calling out to God for help, we just keep digging the hole deeper.

God will help us if we will let him. That is always the issue. I can fix things if you will let me, God says. That is why Jesus would not come down off the cross.

--Dennis Gleason