Mark 15 :1 Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders,
the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, reached a decision.
They bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.
2 “Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate. “Yes, it is as you say,”
Jesus replied. 3 The chief priests accused him of many things. 4 So again
Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they
are accusing you of.” 5 But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed.


Pilate was amazed at Jesus silence because He like many of us do not understand Jesus mission. He did not come to save Himself but the world.
He came to defeat death with life and to exchange our sin for His righteousness.


Pilate could not understand Jesus reluctance to defend Himself. He also could not fathom Jesus selfless love and the work of God Jesus came to accomplish. Pilate and the religious did not know His silence was their redemption for He came not to vindicate Himself or to save Himself but to die and rescue those who have fallen deep into sin. He came to conquer death and so he had to first enter the gates of death to defeat and to overthrow death. For before Christ no one was ever able to defeat death and no one had ever come out from the grave. There were many myths and stories created by religions about such deliverers that were created out of human longing and dreams to be set free from death. In legends and stories people revealed a human hope that one day someone would truly come to deliver mankind from the horrors of death. Now the true messiah has come and God gave a host of eye witnesses to forever take it out of the realm of myth. The Roman government, the Jewish religious community, and the followers of Christ were all eyewitnesses. It was forever recorded in history this great event that we celebrate today.

Mark 15:27
They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left.a 29
Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “
So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 come down from
the cross and save yourself!” 31 In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him
among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself!
32 Let this Christ,b this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.”
Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.


They mock Jesus come down and save yourself. How ironic, what a twist of fate. Those mocking did not know if He saved himself death would conquer them.


How terrible are unbelief and doubt because they poison our hearts and blind us to the truth. We want to see what we want to see yet their is a higher order of truth that can only be seen with eyes of faith. They saw a weak dying man. In reality He was a strong and mighty savior going to defeat death. They saw themselves as good but they were evil. They saw Jesus as only a man but He was God clothed in humanity. They saw themselves as free but the prison house of death and hell would claim possess their souls for eternity. The unbelieving want a sign that is pleasing to them. The evil demand God to prove himself to them. God will do what is true and good and will be found by anyone really searching for the truth. Jesus said, "This is what condemns mankind



light came into the world but mankind loved the darkness rather than the light.




God had three purposes He sent Jesus to accomplish
To take our place to suffer our punishment for sin (OT substitution)
We could receive forgiveness if we receive that death and sacrifice as our payment for sin
To conquer death for us and then raising us from the dead with Christ.



The cross was God's instrument for destroying both sin and deaths power over our lives. Death is judgment punishment for sin. Death is the result of sin. Sin causes death and it spread throughout all of creation including mankind.



Rom 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the
world through one man, and death through sin, and
in this way death came to all men, because all sinned



Sin and death both were both crucified in Christ. How few people understood this or Jesus. The holiness the perfection of God demanded perfection from His creation and we all fell short.




Rom 3:22 This righteousness from God comes through faith
in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference,
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,



It was only the perfect, sinless, Son of God as our substitute suffering and dying in our place that could satisfy the perfect justice, wrath, and holy perfection of God. We sowed sin and reaped death and all the consequences fell upon Him as our substitute.


Jesus Christ stood between us and the consequences of our sin.
Jesus stood between us and the wrath of GodJesus stood between us and the judgment of God
He stood between us and the grave.
He stood between us and eternal death.


He suffered them in Himself for us all and by the power of the Spirit conquered them all for us by raising us with Him. He had to die to reverse the effects and injustices to God and His kingdom that our thoughts, words, and deeds had sown so destructively into God's creation. We were warned by God over and over that the effects of sin would result in destruction to ourselves, the creation and that death would rule our world. Yet we doubted God and then disobeyed His holy commands. Our nature grew so evil when His laws were given we defied them in rebellion. When truth came in His Son we crucified Him to avoid the words of judgement and conviction for our sins. We refused God's moral absolutes and adopted our own and reaped heartache and destruction.



Romans 1:18
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of people 39 who suppress the truth by their40 unrighteousness,41 1:19 because what
can be known about God is plain to them,42 because God has made it plain to them.
1:20 For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes – his eternal power and divine nature –
have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made.
So people43 are without excuse. 1:21 For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God
or give him thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts and their senseless hearts
44 were darkened. 1:22 Although they claimed45 to be wise, they became fools 1:23 and exchanged
the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings
46 or birds or four-footed animals47 or reptiles.



Sin and death holds us under their power and under their dominion because of our slavery to sin. Try to cease from sin and we will all fail. Jesus came to break that power over us. We deserved death and reaped it. Jesus sinless and perfect deserved life. He exchanged His sinless life for ours. He ransomed us by taking from us what we deserved and taking it upon Himself. The debt we owed for our sin against a perfect and holy God was beyond our ability to satisfy. Jesus with His unlimited love, power, holiness, and perfection satisfied our debt to God. He ended our slavery to the power of sin and death over us by His own resurrection power.


Peter told Jesus not to go to the cross and Jesus rebuked Him for having made such a comment spoken out of human darkness, sin, and ignorance. Jesus said of Himself, that He came to die for the sins of the world ." After Jesus rose from the dead He explained it to them and it is recorded in



Luke 24:5
That in their fright the women bowed down with their
faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you
look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen!
Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘
The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be
crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ”
8 Then they remembered his words.



The early church was powerful because they lived in the power of God's forgiveness and the reality of His resurrection.



Have we forgotten the message we need forgiveness and power over the destructive forces we have unleashed in our lives, in society, and in the world. His message was turn from evil, love and obey me and I will set you free. He came to set us free from a grave filled with ignorance, weakness, darkness, evil human behavior, and all the things we are powerless to stop and of which there is no return.


We heard a message of redemption and we took it as condemnation. We must receive the diagnosis of our evil to fully embrace the cure. We are sick with sin and it will end in death unless we take the power of the spirit the resurrection power given us in Jesus Christ. The Spirit of Christ living in us is the cure it will raise us out from sins power and deaths grip. Christ in you the hope of glory.


The resurrection was proof that spiritual life exists and will triumph over all. Death is not the end the grave is not our destiny. There is a power greater than physical life that exists in all of us who are united to God's life giving power and Spirit in Jesus Christ. The resurrection is proof we will all live either in the presence of God or in His absence. Spiritual death is a much greater horror than the grave. The grave with its darkness, rotting flesh, the absence of life, thought, love, hope, meaning, and joy is a picture of the true death which is spiritual.


We cannot be delivered from sins power, its consequences or death without God. We are powerless and need a savior.


Until we come to this truth false works and religions will replace the all powerful Christ the only means of deliverance. Religion is man's weak attempt and failure to satisfy God's holiness while we are in bondage to evil in thought, word, and deed. Try one moment to not sin and you will fail, how will any works we do satisfy Him. The problem is we are trying to control our outward behavior while the real problem is the inward corruption of our hearts that disagree with God as to what is right and wrong so we can satisfy our evil desires. Let us cry out to Jesus Christ for His salvation and His power to save us from ourselves. The heart is desperately wicked our flesh will only follow a corrupt nature or one cleansed by the power of God. We must make the choice which nature we will follow. We must cry out for the resurrection power of God to deliver us from sin and death.


Those like Pilate in this world will only be amazed at God's silence because they know only a natural voice and a natural source. The silent invisible spiritual power of God's Spirit has answered and rescued those in bondage to materialism, human philosophies, and false religions for all eternity with an empty tomb. The mysteries of the universe are unfathomable without the revelation of God as to our purpose and place. Humanity would be locked into a hopeless materialistic mindset if it were not for God's revelation of Himself and His purposes. The moral compass of man forever lost in the darkness and chaos of sin.

Yet like Pilate and the religious of that day we fail to see the cosmic power and implications of one life of infinite value sacrificed for many.

We fail to see perfect love as holiness demanding perfection from us and when we utterly failed that same love rescuing us.

We have failed to see the material universe has its limits and treat it as a god and a majestic force. So many fail to see that behind it all is God's plans and purposes. We serve a timeless God who lives both inside and outside of time and space. The resurrection stands in stark contrast to all doubters, unbelievers, skeptics, antichrists, mockers, and devils for the power of God was on display for all to see and know a day of reckoning will come.


If God can conquer death and the earth is one huge tomb spanning millennia how much more powerful is He who will raise us from death into the life of a new creation. The resurrection was the sign of the dawning of a new age where the glory of God will be fully manifest in all its power and it will bring great joy to all who know and serve Him. The life we lived and the death we suffered will not be the end but the beginning of a glorious new one where there will be no more tears of grief, from death, separation from loved ones, and the evil that destroys us all.

Like Christ we are sown into the earth to be resurrected the heavenly fruit of a spiritual, and eternally wise, holy, compassionate, and merciful God who is the architect of this intricate mystery. When we arise from death it will be because of the full power of our choice to know and serve Him and it will bear rich fruit. His abundant glory will spill onto our frail, broken mortal frames and we shall become like Him eternal creatures of light, truth, holiness and goodness able to abide in His holy presence without shame, need, or want for all eternity. Life will end in eternal death worst than annihilation or ceasing to exist to those who persist in doubt and sin. They will live in the absence of God's light and love, mercy and truth for having rejected it fr a lie. It is a generation of Esau who traded their spiritual heritage for the things they corrupted and a fallen world. You have an indestructible spirit which will live in eternal joy or sorrow. The choice is yours. You must choose evil or good, God or His absence. You choose life or death, hope or the loss of all things. In the end the evil will wish they had sought God. There will be one word above all else that will be a beacon of light and life to the redeemed.

John 11:25 Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life he who believes in me though He were death yet shall He live."