Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Mark 15:33-39 | Date: March 29, 2026 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Jesus, His Saving Death

Mark chapter 15. We continue our series on Christianity Explained, looking at the basics of the Christian faith. Last time we looked at Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and today we look at Jesus, His saving death. Matthew 15, beginning with verse 33:

“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, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Some of the bystanders hearing it said, ‘Behold, he’s calling Elijah.’ Someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, gave it to him to drink, saying, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come and take him down.’ Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. 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.'”

Last time we considered the person of Jesus; that is Mark’s first emphasis in his gospel. We are looking for our information about Jesus in the Gospels. Christianity is about Jesus primarily, and our primary source for understanding Jesus and who he is is in the New Testament Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each of them writing an account of the life of Christ, although their writings are not, strictly speaking, a biography. And each of the gospel writers, in turn, is depending upon the Old Testament prophets, reaching back to show how the prophets that God had sent to Israel in the centuries prior were pointing ahead to what is now come to pass in the person of Jesus.

And Mark begins his gospel, we saw, in chapter 1 and verse 1, saying this is the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Jesus, remember, is his birth name given to him at birth. Christ is not his last name; it is a title. He’s the Messiah, the Anointed One, and he’s the Son of God.

And we saw that the primary emphasis of that in Mark’s gospel, although it’s freighted with many more implications than that, the first emphasis of it is that this is a man with unprecedented authority. And we saw that Jesus has authority and demonstrated his authority over virtually every realm—sickness, death, disease, demons—all of it is under his authority at the mere expression of his will. Everyone obeys. And Mark records all of this for us, but what’s significant also is that these are Jesus’ own claims, that he claims to be this one who has unprecedented authority. And in fact, he makes the supreme claim: he has authority to forgive sins, a prerogative that belongs to God alone. Jesus says he has that authority. And so we finished last time noting that Jesus is the man you can’t ignore.

You’ve got to make a decision. He has said these things about himself. He’s claimed unprecedented prerogatives and authority, and so you’re left with a trilemma. He is either a liar or a lunatic, or he is, in fact, the Lord he claims to be. He’s either lying about all these claims, deceiving everyone somehow, or he’s nuts—he thinks he can do it and he can’t, but somehow everybody thought so. And neither of those options match up at all to the records we have about Jesus. And we’re driven then, and this is where the gospel writers, and Mark now in particular, drive us: He is then who he claims to be. He is the Lord from heaven, the Messianic king who has long been promised.

The Goal Of His Life

Well, today then we look at the next step, and that is his death. Several times during Jesus’ three years of ministry, he told his disciples that he would suffer and die. If you would like to back up just a few pages, you’ll see one example of that: Mark chapter 10, verses 32 and following. Mark 10, verse 32, notice toward the end of the verse: “taking the 12 again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests, the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him. And after three days, he will rise.'”

That’s a remarkable thing, that Jesus can predict his death. And it’s not like all of these things were under his control, that he’s forcing the issue or something like that. He knows the time, he knows the place of his death, he knows the means of his death. That’s a remarkable thing, but it’s also a startling thing to the disciples.

They believed that Jesus was the Messiah, the promised king, the Davidic son who would come. He had demonstrated over and again he is the one with whom God is well pleased. God had said that himself with a voice from heaven. And now he says he’s going to suffer at the hands of men and die. This one who has demonstrated authority over all things is going to suffer and die. It had to be a startling thing for them and puzzling as well. And of course, not until afterwards did they fully understand. But in reality, Jesus’ death was the goal of his life. It was his very reason for coming in the first place.

The Gospel of Mark has often been called a passion narrative with a long introduction. A passion narrative meaning that last few days of his life—the last couple of days where he’s arrested and he’s beaten and he’s flogged and he’s brought up on trial and then finally put on the cross. This is passion narrative. And it’s often been said that Mark is a passion narrative with a long introduction.

And they say that because clearly this is where Mark’s gospel is aiming, and a great amount of the material that Mark gives us is concerning that passion narrative. And in fact, what’s true of Mark is true also of Matthew, Luke, and John, the other gospel writers as well. Something like a third of the material of the gospels focuses around that passion week.

These are not biographies as such. The Gospels share some similarities with biographies, and of course it’s important for the Gospel writers to share some good deal of information about Jesus’ life. But their purpose is not just to give us a life of Jesus. Their purpose in writing these Gospels is to interpret Jesus for us and to tell of his significance. And to do that, there has to be an unbalanced emphasis, if you will, on his death. And so because of all of that, many Christians have adopted the cross as a symbol of the Christian faith. And that is actually otherwise a strange kind of thing. Both in the New Testament and in archaeological records and so on, we learn that crucifixion was a harsh and a cruel way to put someone to death.

It was grotesque. It was not intended to be efficient. It was not efficient. It was intended to draw out the agony, draw out the pain, to draw out the humiliation before everyone else. It was not an efficient way to execute anyone. Using a sword or a spear would have been much more quick. They do this to emphasize the shame and the humiliation and the pain, and to draw it out and to make the suffering a dramatic scene, something as a deterrent as well.

We sing in some of our hymns something about the blood of Jesus. I mentioned it this morning, flowing down, and many of the hymns speak of that as though the blood of Jesus were gushing out. It’s really not exactly accurate. If his blood had been gushing out like that, he would have lost consciousness. The Romans didn’t want you to lose consciousness. They want you to be there to endure the pain and the humiliation of it. And so it was a bloody mess. He had the whipping down to where it would leave the back lacerated, leave wounds everywhere. And as I say, it was a bloody mess, but it was not such that he would lose consciousness. And so it’s a grotesque, an ugly, awful kind of thing.

And yet, the Apostle Paul later can write, “God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of Jesus Christ. I have nothing else to boast of, only the cross of Christ.” Again, historical records, archaeological findings indicate that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of people crucified under the Roman government during that day. But outside of the history books, none of us would ever have heard of those crucifixions today, except for Jesus. It is the crucifixion of Jesus that is significant. In many ways, this was just another day. Crucifixions were evidently not that unusual. But in some ways, this was a very different day.

There was more excitement around this. There had been more public interest about Jesus, and so more public interest about his death now as well. For three years, Jesus had been teaching and preaching, been performing miracles. His popularity had been rising increasingly to the opposition of the Jewish leaders. Then there was that final week. Palm Sunday, he makes his triumphal entry into the city. People are hailing him as the long-awaited Messiah, paving the streets with palm branches and whatnot, acknowledging Jesus for who he was: the promised king who would bring salvation to Israel. While the Jewish authorities had wanted for a long time to have him killed, we read in the gospel accounts that they feared the people because he was so popular with them. And finally, they arranged a time with Judas Iscariot—a time and a place at night, in private, where it wouldn’t be noticed—where he could be arrested and brought in as a prisoner, charged with blasphemy. And he goes through a series of six trials: three Jewish, three Roman.

The charges of blasphemy by the Jews the Romans couldn’t have cared about. They said, “He said he is a king and you can’t allow that.” And with that pressure, they pushed the Roman government then to put him to death as well. Everyone knew this was a travesty of justice. The Roman prefect himself, Pontius Pilate, who had no care at all for the rabble of the Jewish people, even he had hesitations about putting Jesus to death because he said he could find no fault with him. But as Jesus had predicted to his disciples, as he said would happen, he was taken, he was whipped, and he was scourged, and he was mocked. And finally at 9 a.m. that day, Jesus was stripped of His clothing and nailed to a cross for all to see.

The scenes are awful. You have soldiers mocking. You have the thieves, two thieves, one on either side, mocking and cursing at Him. You have the people around Him in front of him, mocking: “Save yourself now, you’ve saved others.” You have the soldiers gambling for his garments while hanging there in absolute humiliation and in excruciating pain, as the Romans had perfected.

Jesus responds to his oppressors. And he responds, first of all, with a prayer: “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” And then his concern for his mother; he speaks to her. He speaks also to his beloved disciple, John, who was there. Others had left. This was an awful mix of hate and injustice and cruelty and mocking and pain and humiliation on the one hand, and on the other, on Jesus’ side, patience, love, and mercy.

Darkness Over The Whole Land

And then, verse 33, we see here, at the sixth hour, noon, the sun is high in the sky, the brightest time of the day. Suddenly, there’s this awful darkness. And it continues over the whole land, it says, until the ninth hour. From noon till 3 p.m., darkness. Now this strange event is recorded for us in all three of the synoptics. It’s here in Mark, it’s also in Matthew, and in Luke.

And also, interestingly, an account of this has survived in some non-Christian writings outside of the Bible as well. Evidently this was a widely known event in the ancient world. A man named Thallus in the mid-first century, a Greek historian, makes record of it. And it’s interesting what he does with it. He acknowledges what has happened, that there was this darkness over the land, and so he tries to explain it. It must have been an eclipse. And of course, the problem with that is this is Passover, full moon. And also, it wasn’t just minutes; it was three hours.

150 years later or so, we have another account of it, this time by a Christian man by the name of Tertullian. He’s a Christian apologist and he holds it up in his argument against a critic of Christianity, a Roman pagan. And he says, “Your own records make mention of what happened, the darkness when Jesus died. You have it in your own annals.”

How do you explain this? Clearly, there’s something significant about this man, Jesus. Well, no wonder. This was certainly a memorable event, no doubt a terrifying event. If you can just imagine standing there with all of this jeering and mocking, the pain of it all, the horrible scene that it is, and people have made a circus of it, and they’re laughing, and they’re mocking at Jesus, and suddenly, at the brightest time of the day, lights out. Total darkness. This is an ancient city. There’s no city lights. Suddenly, it’s just lights out. No moonlight at that time of day, and that for another three hours.

And verse 33 tells us this was over the whole land. How extensive was that? Well, it was extensive enough to make it into the Roman records. Evidently, wherever there was sunlight, it was turned out. And you can imagine that. Imagine standing there when this happens. Mocking and jeering, Jesus is being crucified, and suddenly the lights go out.

What happened? I would imagine there’s an initial hush, a collective gasp. What happened? Screams? Luke tells us that many beat their breasts. That is with what? Grief, remorse, terror of some kind? Matthew records for us that the people feared greatly, even the centurion. No doubt they’re all looking for some kind of explanation. What in the world is happening? How do we explain this? Is this an undoing of creation? Is the creator angry and undoing it all? Is everything going to fall apart? How long will this last? Will we ever have sunlight again? And for three hours, this horrible darkness was over the whole land.

Clearly, this was not your ordinary crucifixion. And this coincided with the execution of a man who was known as a good man. A man who’d been approved of God himself with a voice from heaven. A man who had demonstrated over and again that God was with him in demonstrating his authority over all things. A man who claimed to be the Son of God. Well, that’s the scene then. But what’s the point? How to explain what’s going on? Clearly something supernatural—the Creator had turned the lights out—but why? What was he saying? What was the point of all of this?

As I mentioned earlier, the gospel writers intend for us to understand Jesus in light of the Old Testament prophets. They had made many prophecies about the coming Messiah. They had also made many prophecies about coming judgment. “The Day of the Lord” was the famous phrase. History has had its day; they’ve had their day of rebellion, but God’s going to have his day. And when he comes in his day, he’ll vindicate his people, but all of his enemies will be judged.

And we find hints that this is associated with darkness. The judgment aspect of God’s coming in the end time is associated with this imagery of darkness. It goes all the way back to Exodus and the plague of darkness. We find it all the way forward in the book of Revelation where he’s speaking of that day of judgment when God comes, where it says the sun became black.

But there’s one in particular I’ll draw your attention to, and that is the prophet Amos. Amos is an 8th century BC prophet. He’s 700 and some years before Jesus, and he’s prophesying about the day of the Lord, the day of judgment that will come when God breaks into history in wrath. And he says in Amos chapter 8, verses 9 and 10: “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your religious feasts into mourning and all your singing into weeping. I will make all of you wear sackcloth and shave your heads. I will make that time like mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.”

So here’s his description. When God comes in judgment, he’ll turn the lights out. And at noon it’ll be dark, and all of your feasts and festivities will be turned to mourning. Now there are some specifics in that. It’s unquestionable that Amos is dealing with the end-time judgment that will come. But there are some specifics here that seem beyond coincidence. Notice it again. Amos says, “I will make the sun go down at noon.” And he also says, “I will turn your feasts into mourning.” This is Passover. And at least looking back on it, if no one thought of the connection with Amos at the moment, at least looking back on it, you have to think: Is this that? Amos had prophesied. God had said through his prophet that he will come in judgment. And when he comes in judgment, it’ll be lights out and it’ll be a day of mourning. And we’re left to wonder: Is this that? Well, at the very least, there are the connotations of judgment. And God is signaling his displeasure, and the threatened outpouring of his wrath has come. And in fact, Jesus himself seems to understand the strange event in terms of divine judgment. Mark chapter 15, verse 34:

“At the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lemma sabachthani,’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'” Why would this man, history’s only good man, the promised Messianic king, the great son of David, the Son of God—why would he feel forsaken of God? Judgment falling on him? On Christ, the Son of God?

A Ransom For Many

Well, to help understand this, we could turn back a few pages again to chapter 10. Jesus foretold not only his death—the time and the place and the means of his death—he also explained why he would die. Look at Mark 10, verse 45: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Notice that word “ransom.” It’s all-important here. He came to give his life a ransom for many. A ransom is the price required to purchase freedom.

In that day, if you’ve got a prisoner of war, if you’ve got a prisoner, a hostage of some sort, and you want him back, you can offer to pay a price. That’s the ransom price, which purchases him back. In that day, if you had fallen into such poverty, you may have to sell yourself into slavery. If your family comes into better times, they can pay the ransom price to buy you back. You might be coming into poverty and financial straits and you have to sell off part of your property. You can buy that back with a ransom price.

That’s the word that Jesus used here. He died giving his life a ransom for many. We are prisoners, as it were, hostages to sin. And Jesus had come to pay the ransom price to buy our freedom. We owed a debt that we could never pay and a debt to God’s justice. We had sinned. God’s justice demands punishment. And Jesus steps in and pays the ransom price to free sinners from their sin.

And the ransom price was not money. He came to give his life a ransom for many. Mark’s mentor, the Apostle Peter, would later write, “You were ransomed,” 1 Peter 1 verses 18 and 19, “you were ransomed, not with perishable things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”

And there Peter ties it to the Old Testament sacrificial system. All these strange practices that they have—this routine, this ceremonial religion that they had, where a worshiper would bring an animal to the priest and to the doors of the temple, lay his hands on it, confess his sins, and then the animal would be slaughtered, symbolically taking the sin and taking the judgment. Of course, no animal could ever pay the ransom price for the sin of a man or a woman, but all of it was establishing the structures so that we could understand the death of Jesus. As he himself would say, he would lay down his life for his sheep.

He came to take the place of sinners, and that is the whole meaning of the cross: to die in the place of sinners, thereby paying the ransom price to purchase their freedom. And so it’s an odd kind of thing here. On the one hand, this was an inexcusable travesty of justice. History’s only good man brought up on trumped-up charges, treated cruelly. On the one hand, it is that horrible miscarriage of justice, and yet on the other hand, Jesus had come to take the place of sinners. And in taking their place and dying in their place, bearing the judgment of God in their place, justice is being served.

There was this, as Christians have loved to call this for centuries, a “great transaction.” Paul would say of it, “He who knew no sin was made sin for us.” I think I’ve said that before; these are probably the most awful words in the entire Bible: “He who knew no sin made sin for us.” History’s only good man, the Son of God, God the Son incarnate, constituted the great sinner to die in the place of sinners to pay the ransom price of their freedom. Paul would also write to the Galatians, “He has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.”

The disciples had believed, and Jesus had demonstrated over and again, they believed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, the promised Messiah. They had not yet come to grips with how the Messiah would redeem his people. Yes, he’ll vindicate his people in the end, but before he can do that, he must address this fundamental problem of their sin. And so he comes to pay the ransom price to purchase their freedom.

And in fact, it seems strange to us—it’s a wonder why no one had caught it beforehand—but the prophet Isaiah could not have been more explicit in telling us that this would exactly be the fate of the servant of the Lord. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastisement that brought us peace was on Him, and with His stripes we are healed. All of us, like sheep, we’ve gone astray, we’ve turned every one to his own way. The Lord has laid all of our sin on Him.

God’s justice demands condemnation of sinners. That is an inexorable truth that contemporary religion just has no place for. God’s justice demands condemnation for sinners. That’s the point of the end-time judgments. But here on the cross, Jesus, in the place of his people, took that judgment to himself. All of our greed and all of our lust and all of our slander and all of our worse was laid on Jesus and made His, and He takes the punishment in our place. Now, this is extremely important, and we’re getting now to the heart of the Christian gospel. The Christian gospel addresses fundamental questions that contemporary religion and virtually every other religion as well cannot address. The reality is we have sinned against God, each of us. And the reality is God’s justice demands satisfaction. And the reality is God, being a just God, cannot sidestep what his justice requires. He cannot just let bygones be bygones, or say, “Well, we’ll forget about it.” Justice must be served.

And so the question is: How are you going to answer that problem? You have sinned against God. What are you going to do? Well, “I’ll try to keep the Ten Commandments.” Well, how’s that working out for you? A guy says, “Well, I’m going to try to keep the Sermon on the Mount.” That’s even worse. How’s that working out for you?

Imagine you’re arrested for reckless driving, speeding, running a stop sign. You go to court. And you say, “Your Honor, generally, I’ve been a really good citizen. I’ve never assaulted anyone.” And the judge says, “Yeah, but you were driving recklessly.” “Well, I’ve been a good citizen. I’m a member of the Rotary. I help people and I’m generous with my money.” “Yeah, but you ran a stop sign.” “And I’ve never burglarized anybody’s home. I’ve never assaulted people.” “Yeah, but you were exceeding the speed limit. You’re not on trial here for the things that you did right; you’re on trial here for the things you did wrong.”

And yet contemporary religion somehow imagines God can be like that kind of a judge that would say, “Oh, okay, forget it.” After all you’ve pointed out of what you did right, the stubborn fact of your sin remains. And the fact of God’s justice remains. How will we answer that problem? And that is precisely the problem that the Christian gospel has come to address. God does not pretend. He doesn’t say, “Well, you’ve done pretty well.” We don’t pretend that our good deeds have outweighed our bads, as if somehow that would be all right. It addresses the problem head-on. And it says that God’s justice must be satisfied. And that is the value of Jesus Christ.

This is the meaning of Jesus’ death. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the sin-bearer, dying alone under the wrath of God in place of sinners and accomplishing our redemption. And yet somehow I think here in this very abandonment and darkness, this mysterious shroud of darkness that surrounded them becomes a kind of vindication for Jesus.

This is God’s public statement that here in the unjust treatment of this man, the justice of God is being satisfied. That was the conclusion the centurion comes to in verse 39: “Truly, this man was the Son of God.” And that’s what God would have us see in this passage. Here in the death of this righteous man, suffering under divine wrath and divine judgment, this is the world’s only Savior, the world’s only Redeemer. And here we come then to the very heart of the heart of the heart of what Christianity is all about. Christianity has come into the world—Jesus Christ has come into the world—to address this fundamental problem of human sin.

You can turn over your new leaf. You can try your best. You can do everything that you try to do right. The stubborn fact of your sin remains and the fact of God’s justice remains. How will you answer that problem? And in fact, John the Apostle will write, whether you know it or not, you’re condemned already. You can ignore it. You can deny it. You cannot escape the fact you’re condemned already because of your sin.

I think this is a helpful illustration. I’ll use this book. The Bible often uses a book metaphor as though God is keeping a record of sins and writing them in the book. That’s why at the end-time judgments it says the books are opened. People are judged accordingly. And so here in this book is a record of all my sins. It actually would need a much larger book than this. But here’s a record of all my sin: my greed, my slander, lust, mistreatment of people—all my sins recorded in the book.

Here’s me, this left hand; that’s me. Above is God, and here is what is between God and me: my sin. That’s what bars my fellowship with God. That’s the obstacle. That problem of my sin is what has to be dealt with. How will I deal with that? Let’s say this right hand is Jesus. History’s righteous man. The Christ, the Son of God. And in those three hours of darkness, God laid my sins on him, and he took them and bore the punishment himself. God took the sins of all of his people and laid them on Jesus, and he paid the ransom price for their freedom.

Peter would say it exactly almost in those words: “He bore our sins in his body on the tree.” Or again, the Apostle Paul: “He who knew no sin was made sin for us.” And the condemnation falls on him. The justice of God demands our punishment. God cannot just overlook it. And on the cross, our sins were laid upon Jesus. And Jesus, the world’s only righteous man, bore the condemnation of the sins of his people. He’s redeemed us from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for us. And so that pithy saying: I owed a debt I could not pay; he paid a debt he did not owe.

Now back to the book illustration. My left hand here represents me, or any person who comes to Jesus in faith. How much sin remains on me? It’s all on Jesus. And that is exactly the good news of the gospel. You remember we saw last time in Mark chapter 2, Jesus said he alone has authority to forgive sin. This is how he does it. King David spoke of it in Psalm 32 in a counting term: “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not count sin.” A Christian is not one who claims to be a good person. A Christian is one who claims to be a bad person and has confessed those sins to Jesus. A Christian is one who claims only to be forgiven. We are people who say not that we are sinless, not that we’re good enough; what we say is that God did not count sin against us.

And he did not count it against us because he counted it against Jesus in our place. And it became his. And that is our only hope. Now then, let’s push the illustration a little bit further. Let’s say you reject Jesus and you don’t need to follow him; you’re doing all right. What then? The sins are still yours and you’re on your own. You are left to face the judgment of God by yourself. Let’s look at a couple more verses here quickly. Verses 37 and 38:

“Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” The temple in Jerusalem was not a huge building—a simple building, two rooms: a larger room then a smaller room. Between those two rooms was not a door; it was a curtain. And into that smaller room, that was the dwelling place of God. That’s where the Ark of the Covenant was; that’s where the mercy seat was. This was God’s throne room, His presence.

You dare not enter that. In fact, the whole Old Testament religion, Hebrews tells us, was given to emphasize that fact: that you have no right into the presence of God. And that curtain bars your presence. You can’t go in there. You’re a sinner. You have no right to go into the presence of God. And here we find that at Jesus’ death, at the moment of his death, that curtain was torn from top to bottom.

I think there’s some significance—not bottom to top, but top to bottom. This is God’s doing and what has happened. The way into God’s presence is open through the death of Jesus Christ. If you would have acceptance with God, you can go only through the Lord Jesus Christ who died in place of sinners. This is the meaning of his death. And this is what makes the gospel of Jesus Christ indeed good news.

To a man or a woman, we are all lost. Amazingly, God, against whom we have sinned, provided a redeemer, paid the price of sins, and demands only of us that we come to him through Jesus. So Jesus makes a claim: He’s the Savior. There is no other. He paid for sin; no one else has. And with that claim, he makes an offer. You want release from your sins before God? You may have it. I have authority to forgive sins. Through my death, you can enter in beyond the curtain into the presence of God and be accepted and welcome. But with that offer comes this caution and a warning: There is no other alternative. Where else would you turn? That is the singular importance of Jesus Christ. In him you may have freedom from your sins, or you can reject him, in which case you’re on your own.