Alas and Did My Savior Bleed?
Matthew 27:32-28:20 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Matthew 27:38-44 ESV
38 Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. 39 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads 40 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.” 41 So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 42 “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. 43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” 44 And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.
I remember an elderly lady several years ago told me about something that happened to her that caused both she and I to recognize the pain that Jesus experienced and the terror, dread, and loneliness that He endured because of my sin and your sin.
She told me that when her grandson was four years old, she gave him a little cross, about six inches high and about three or four inches wide that was made out of plastic, but was gold-colored and you know, real shiny and everything, and she told him that Jesus died on a cross like that.
She said that the next day her grandson came back over to her house and handed her a piece of paper which when she looked at it, she saw a drawing of a lonely, beat up, jagged, rugged cross. She asked her grandson why he drew this, and he told her, “Grandma, you were wrong when you told me that Jesus died on a shiny cross, this is the kind of cross that Jesus died on. So, I wanted to draw this picture for you, so you would know too.”
Think about that for a moment… That was the kind of cross that Jesus died on. What that represents is what we really are. Rugged, dirty, appalling, deserving of death in the worst possible way. And that is what Jesus took on for His people, on behalf of His elect.
It might sound strange, but sometimes I think that we glamorize the cross. In other words, I think that we see and use the symbol of the crucifix so much that we tend to forget the horrifying reality that the crucifix is.
And when we forget the horrifying reality that the cross is, we fail to recognize the depths of sin that Jesus saved us from as He groaned in agony upon the cross and died the horrifying death that all of us deserve to die.
Today in our reading, we are going to humbly, reverently take a look at what Jesus endured, how He suffered, and the wondrous love that He must have for those He has chosen to die for and thus save.
We look first to verse 38, which tells us:
Matthew 27:38 ESV
38 Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left.
We see here that as Jesus had been placed upon His cross that two robbers were crucified with Him. One at His right, the other at His left.
Now, this is an important detail to note because of what Isaiah 53:12, a prophecy concerning the death that Jesus would die, tells us that “He was numbered with the transgressors”.
Like I said, this was a prophecy concerning Jesus, long before Jesus ever walked this earth, thus, just like we pointed out over and over again in our message last week, so here do we see these Roman soldiers unwittingly, unknowingly being used as objects to fulfill yet another prophecy concerning the Messiah.
But what it also shows is that Jesus died alongside those who actually committed the crime that He was charged with. You see, while these who are crucified with Jesus are known as “robbers” how this term could be translated in the Greek is “plunderer”. Which means to violently seize, to take by force, or even, to throw something down.
What Jesus was charged with when He was brought before Pilate, the Roman governor of the province of Judea, was sedition. Jesus is the King of kings, and thus, the Jews who brought the Lord before Pilate proclaimed that Jesus was threatening to overthrow Caesar Augustus, emperor of Rome. They said that Jesus was threatening to tear Caesar down from his throne and take it from him by force.
Well, these who Jesus was crucified with may not have been revolutionaries and thus tried to take the empire from Caesar, but the fact that they were charged with robbery, with plundering, with forcefully taking what was not theirs shows an even more heinous reality.
On a certain occasion, Jesus rightly told a group of Pharisees that they were of their true father, the devil, because they were not saved and were thus attacking that which was good, Jesus Himself.
Well, we know the great crime that put the devil out of God’s favorable presence forever. That was the crime of cosmic, heavenly sedition. The devil wanted to be God, he wanted to dethrone God, he wanted to plunder what was God’s.
And ever since the fall of man into sin, the chief motive of the unsaved man, though he doesn’t completely realize it, is to dethrone God. He wants to call the shots. He wants to be God.
Thus, as Jesus was crucified beside robbers, plunderers, what it signified is that He willingly suffered and died for the crime that we committed! Indeed, He Who never transgressed was numbered among, took His place with the transgressors, for the transgressors!
Then verses 39 and 40 go on to tell us some of the abuse that Jesus suffered upon the cross where it tells us:
Matthew 27:39-40 ESV
39 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads 40 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.”
As Jesus suffered in agonizing pain upon the cross, the everyday people walked by to gawk at Him while He was in immense pain. The text says that they derided Him. In other words, they ridiculed Him, showed great contempt for Him, scoffed at Him, wagging their heads, making faces like He is some kind of a joke, blaspheming Him.
They said, “You were a lot of big talk! Why don’t You back that big talk up right now?!”
Many of these same people were the ones who followed Jesus, at least superficially, they watched Him performs miracles, they heard Him teach orthodox doctrine. They envisioned big things for Him, but now that they see Him suffering on the cross, they say, “What a big phony!”
Just like many today, they didn’t understand the depth of their sin. They didn’t realize that this is what their sin deserved. Furthermore, they didn’t realize that God loves His elect so much that He would send His Son to die this death for them.
To them it was too much as they refused to believe that God would let His chosen Messiah die such a shameful death. Thus, they just said that Jesus was a fraud.
But it wasn’t just everyday folk who mocked Jesus, as verse 41 tells us:
Matthew 27:41 ESV
41 So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him,
The chief priests, the scribes, and the elders; this was an unlikely trio since scribes would typically gather with Pharisees and not the chief priests and elders, who were typically Sadducees. But all of them were united in opposing Jesus as this unified front of evil came against the Son of God.
And as these came together, they too hurled slanderous words at Jesus, as the first part of verse 42 tells us that they said:
Matthew 27:42a ESV
42a “He saved others; he cannot save himself.
Now, when these say that Jesus “saved others” what they are referring to is His healing ministry, how through His mighty works and wonders, He had made many who were sick, whole.
This was obviously true, in this way, He had indeed “saved others”. But then they follow that up by saying that “He cannot save Himself”. And ironically, that is also the truth. But before you start to boo me out of the pulpit, let me explain what I mean when I say that Jesus could not save Himself.
Jesus is God, therefore Jesus is all-powerful, so technically yes, of course if really wanted to, He could have saved Himself from what He was enduring here. But what Jesus could not do was save Himself in that way, and simultaneously save us, save His elect from our sins.
You see, this makes what Jesus suffered all the more beautiful, all the more precious in that while He could have physically saved Himself from this torment, He did not, because in order to save us, He could not save Himself.
For Him to save us, He had to suffer in agony, bearing the wrath of God on behalf of His elect by Himself. Lonely, forsaken, in worse than the worst terror imaginable, Jesus suffered. Why? Because there was no other way for Him to save us. Jesus could not save Himself, for if He saved Himself, then no one would be saved.
But while that statement may have technically been true, what they say next is the farthest thing from the truth, as we continue to read their words in the second half of verse 42, which reads:
Matthew 27:42b ESV
42b He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.
Now of course, they are right when they say that Jesus is the King of Israel, but the ridiculous statement that they made here was that if Jesus, by His own power, would come down from the cross, they would believe in Him.
And the reason why that statement is so ridiculous is because what we read of time and time again throughout the scriptures is how when Jesus would perform signs and wonders before the reprobate, the response was never saving faith.
No, they would never believe, because anytime that Jesus would perform signs or wonders, the response was either unbelief or a demand for more signs and wonders.
You remember when the Pharisees came to Him and began demanding that He show them a sign from heaven. Jesus said that it is an evil and adulterous generation that seeks for a sign from heaven because even if it were given to them, they still would not believe.
But worst of all are the closing words of our reading, verses 43 and 44:
Matthew 27:43-44 ESV
43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” 44 And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.
The chief priests, the scribes, and the elders, along with the criminals who were crucified beside Jesus, reviled Him, mocked Him, and in the process, tempted Him.
Now, it must be remembered that while Jesus was fully divine, He was also fully man. And we also know from His time in the wilderness when the devil came to Him and also from the statement made in Hebrews 4:15 which tells us that Jesus was tempted in every way, that He was indeed tempted to sin.
It must also be noted that temptation to sin and partaking in sin are completely different things. Jesus is fully man; therefore, He received the temptation to sin just as man receives the temptation to sin.
And as Jesus hung there on the cross, lonely, deserted, writhing in agony, abandoned, and forsaken by all, His opponents say, “He trusts in God; let God deliver Him now, if He desires Him. For He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”
This may very well have been the last temptation of the Lord, indeed, the most challenging temptation of the Lord. They mockingly say, “He says that He’s God’s Son! Would God really let this happen to His Son?!”
And like I said, though Jesus is God, though Jesus knew what the outcome of all of this was going to be, you have to believe that as He hung there writhing in pain with the weight of the sin of His elect people on His shoulders, the temptation was there for Him to reason that perhaps the Father did not love Him after all.
Yet even amid the chaos, the agony, the pain, even amid the temptation, even this was foretold and divinely ordained, as we see the prophecy of Isaiah telling us how the Christ was to suffer, in chapter 53, verse 7, where it tells us:
Isaiah 53:7 ESV
7 He was oppressed, and he 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.
Let us end in reverent silence as we reflect on what He suffered on our behalf…