Jesus' death - Good Friday 2025
Mark 15:33-41

Introduction

Well if you’ve known me for more than 5 minutes … you’ll know that I love Start Wars.  But I don’t just love Star Wars … I also love Start Trek.  I love Stargate.  I love Battle Star Galactica.  Anything with a Star in it really.  Dancing with the stars.  But it’s not just science fiction I love.  I also love Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, Marvel … DC … you name it.  And what all these things have in common … is a hero quest.

• The Rebels have to destroy the Death Star … to stop the evil Empire

• Indiana Jones has to stop the evil Nazis from finding the Holy Grail

• Frodo has to destroy the one ring … to stop the evil Sauron

• Harry has to destroy the Horcruxes … to kill the evil Voldemort

• And the Avengers have to stop the evil Thanos from destroying half the universe

Who doesn’t love a good hero quest?  Good Friday … is the day we commemorate the ULTIMATE hero quest.  It is when Jesus ventured out from heaven … to save his people from their GREATEST enemy … Sin.  Now UNLIKE those books and movies I just mentioned … the Hero quest we’re here to celebrate today … really happened.  The passage that was just read for us … is a historical narrative … based on eyewitness accounts of what happened on that very first Good Friday.

Yet LIKE all other hero quests … this account doesn’t just tell us WHAT happened.  It tells us WHY it happened … and what was the outcome.  And they’re the 3 points I want to look at with us for the next 20 minutes or so.  (i) WHAT Jesus suffered … v. 33-34, (ii) WHY Jesus suffered … v. 37-38, and (iii) What CAME of Jesus’ suffering … which covers the REST of the passage.  Now in fictional hero quests … what CAME of the quest is usually a short epilogue … tacked on to the end of the narrative.  Not so with THIS hero quest.  Because what CAME of Jesus’ death … has been going on for almost 2000 years now.  So Point (iii) is our FOCUS today.  But how about I pray … and then we’ll look at (i) WHAT Jesus suffered, (ii) WHY Jesus suffered, and (iii) What CAME of Jesus’ suffering.

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Prayer

God of all power,

Thank you for the opportunity today to celebrate the ULTIMATE hero quest; the cross of Christ.  Yet please help us NOT treat this … like the fictional hero quests we all love to read or watch.  May we give this passage the seriousness it deserves.  Please show us today the WHAT and the WHY of Jesus’ death.  But more importantly … how you want us to respond.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.

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What Jesus suffered (v. 33-34)?

Well our passage today comes AFTER Jesus has already been arrested … tried in a Kangaroo court … beaten, mocked, spat upon, flogged, paraded through the streets, stripped naked, nailed down to a cross, and hung up between 2 common criminals.  It has been a day of immense suffering for Jesus.  Then we read this:

Mark 15:33 (NIV) At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.

Now just picture that.  Imagine it’s midday in downtown Sydney … and it turns dark at night … for 3 hours.  Now some people look for natural causes for this darkness.  Some say ‘perhaps it was a solar eclipse’.  The problem with that theory is Jesus was crucified at Passover … which occurs on the first full moon after the vernal equinox.  Solar eclipses only occur in the NEW moon phase.

But here’s the thing … looking for natural explanations ends with us missing the point.  You see darkness in the Bible is a metaphor for God’s judgment.  One of the 10 plagues God sent upon Egypt in Exodus was total darkness.  So this darkness is a SIGN.  And it’s a sign that something significant is going on.  Something supernatural is going on.  Something scary is going on.  God is pouring out his judgment.

V. 34 then tells us WHO it is being poured out on:

Mark 15:34 (NIV) And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

The judgement being poured out here is that God the Father is REJECTING God the Son.  Now on one level we might think ‘well … it’s not THAT bad.  I mean guys get rejected at bars all the time by girls.  What’s the big deal?’  The big deal is NOT getting rejected … though that DOES hurt.  The big deal … is WHO Jesus is being rejected by.

You see if you or I get rejected by a stranger … we can cope with that … right.  I mean no one LIKES being rejected.  But if a stranger says ‘no thanks’ … we can cope.  But if we’re CLOSE to the person rejecting us … it’s a different story … isn’t it?  Take being rejected by a friend for example.  That’s going to HURT.  But if that rejection comes from a family member … you turn that pain up to 11?  Psychologists tell us there is little more traumatic in this life than being rejected by a spouse … or a parent.

But here’s the thing.  No spouse … or no child … has ever experienced the closeness that Jesus has with the Father.  The relationships within the Trinity are infinitely closer than even the best marriage … or best parents on earth.  So when the Father casts Jesus out … Jesus is experiencing MORE pain than ALL the hells his people deserved … combined.  And THAT’S the first thing this passage shows us; that Jesus is suffering the infinite judgment of God.

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Why Jesus suffered (v. 37-38)?

The next obvious question is … WHY would God the Father put God the Son through such an ordeal?  Well … Mark tells us in v. 37:

Mark 15:37-38 (NIV) With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. 38 The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

So the moment Jesus died … we’re told the curtain in the temple tore in 2.  Now what’s this about?  Well scholars tell us that when you went to the temple in Jerusalem … which no longer exists by the way.  It was destroyed in AD 70.  But WHEN you went to the temple … one of the first things you noticed were barriers.  And those barriers were there to STOP people from getting too close to God.

• So the first barrier was for Gentiles … like you and I.  OK … NON-Jews were only allowed in the outer court of the temple.

• The next barrier was for women.  The court of women was as far as Jewish women were allowed.

• Jewish men were allowed in the inner court.  But that was still outside the temple.

• Only priests were allowed to enter the actual temple.

• But then you had the Holy of Holies.  And the Holy of Holies was a special room at the BACK of the temple … where God resided.  And this room was cordoned off by this big thick curtain.

So the WHOLE system just screamed ‘no access’.  And the REASON for this goes all the way back to Genesis 3 … where Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit.  Now we need to remember that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not poisonous.  It was a metaphor for whether humanity would OBEY God or not.  God said ‘I’ve got ONE rule; don’t eat of that tree over there’.  And Adam and Eve failed that test … as has every human born since then.  And WHEN they rebelled against God … a barrier opened up between God and humanity.  And that barrier means you and I can no LONGER just stroll up to God … anymore than we can just stroll up to the sun.  The book of Hebrews tells us God is a consuming fire … who burns up anything impure.

Now SOME people like to claim they’re not that impure.  Some people say ‘sure … I’m not perfect … but I’m not THAT much of a sinner’.  But did you know that if you only sin ONCE a day … by the time you’re 50 years old … my age … you’ve committed almost 20,000 sins against God.  If we sin once an HOUR … that 440,000 times we’ve sinned against God.  The reality though … is we tend to sin more like once every minute or so.  And that brings the total number of sins for the average 50-year-old to well over 10 million.  And what that means is … we are too impure to come into God’s presence.

But something amazing happened on that very first Good Friday.  The curtain that separated the holy of holies from the rest of the temple was torn from top to bottom.  What this tells us is that the moment Jesus was cast out … rejected … forsaken by his Father … we were given access TO the Father.  The barrier designed to protect us from being burned up by his holy presence … was removed.  And it was removed by God.  It wasn’t some random bloke with a pair of scissors.  God tore the barrier in 2.

Now WHY would God do this?  WHY would God remove our safety barrier?  It’s because that infinite punishment Jesus suffered on the cross … paid the penalty for OUR sin.  OK … even though every human has sinned thousands … if not millions of times … and therefore DESERVES God’s judgment … Jesus came to take that judgment for us.  He traded places with us.  He was cast out … so we could be let in.  He was rejected … so we could be accepted.  He was forsaken … so that we could never be forsaken again.

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What came of Jesus’ suffering (v. 35-35; v. 39; v. 40-41)?

So … that’s the WHAT and the WHY of Jesus’ suffering.  The final question this passage asks us is … what’s the wash-up of all this?  How are we to RESPOND to the cross of Christ?  Well Mark gives us 3 different responses to Jesus in this passage.  So let’s take a look at them shall we?  And the first is seen in:

Mark 15:35-36 (NIV) When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.” 36 Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said.

Now we’re not told who these people are.  But WHEN Jesus cried out ‘Eloi, Eloi’ … THEY thought he was calling out to Elijah … who was the greatest prophet of the OT.  And what this shows is … these people have completely misunderstood Jesus.  And this is one of the main responses people often make when it comes to Jesus.  They misunderstand the purpose of the cross.

Friends the purpose of the cross … and if you only take ONE thing away from today … this is what you take away.  The purpose of the cross … was to tear down the barrier that Sin had put up between God and humanity.  The main way people have historically misunderstood Jesus … is they think he is like the gods of all the other religions.  You see every single other religion on the planet says ‘If I do GOOD … God will bless me.  But if I do evil, God will curse me’.  Christianity says ‘no amount of good can EVER make up for your millions of sins.  So Jesus took your curse … your punishment upon himself.’  And friends … even if you don’t believe in a God who would do that … don’t you secretly wish he WERE true?

Well this brings us to the SECOND response:

Mark 15:39 (NIV) And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

Now this verse is the climax of Mark’s gospel.  This is the moment the whole gospel has been travelling towards.  The REASON Mark wrote his gospel was to show people (i) Who Jesus is, and (ii) What he has come to do.  And this Centurion is the first human in the gospel to declare that Jesus is the Son of God.  Mark has said it … and God has said it.  But this guy is the first human IN the gospel to say it.

Yet HOW does this Centurion know this?  I mean not even the disciples have declared this yet.  Well … Mark tells us it’s because the Centurion SAW how Jesus died … v. 39.  Now the thing about Roman soldiers … is they’d seen a lot of death.  Yet this Centurion saw something in Jesus’ death that he’d never seen before.  And that was … Jesus’ obedience.  What I mean is … even AS Jesus was dying … he was still showing unrelenting love and loyalty and obedience to the God who was letting it all happen.  You see for most people … God says ‘obey me and you’ll live’.  But for Jesus … God said ‘obey me and I’ll curse you’.  And Jesus obeyed God … loved God … even WHILE he was being cursed.  And this centurion recognised … there’s something special about such a man.  Something … divine.

But here’s the thing.  We’re not told this centurion became a follower of Jesus.  He recognised who Jesus WAS.  But even the demons know Jesus is the Son of God … and they shudder.  The third and final response … is seen in the women in v. 40-41.  According to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John … only 1 of the 12 Apostles was present at the crucifixion; the Apostle John.  No other apostles are mentioned in the crucifixion narratives.

And the REASON they’re not there … is because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities.  The Pharisees and teachers of the Law had just succeeded in their vendetta against Jesus.  And the apostles don’t want to risk being next.  They scattered when Jesus was arrested.  And they were still hiding out in a locked room on Easter Sunday … out of fear of the Jewish authorities.

But all 4 gospels mention that Jesus’ female followers didn’t abandon him.  They followed Jesus even to the crucifixion.  And this is the kind of response Jesus wants.  He wants people who will stick with him … who will follow him … who will OWN the name of Jesus … who will obey him … even when things look dire.

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Conclusion

So let’s put some wheels on this.  We’ve seen what CAME of Jesus’ suffering in these 3 responses.  Let me close by showing how we APLLY these 3 responses:

Number 1 … don’t be like those NEAR the cross … who misunderstand Jesus.  OK … Jesus did not undergo this harrowing hero quest … just so that you and I can then EARN our way into God’s good graces.  The fact is … NO amount of good works can make up for millions of sins.  The WHOLE POINT of Jesus’ hero quest was to take care of that … once and for all.  The barrier between us and God has been torn in 2 by his death.

Number 2 … don’t be like the centurion … who SEES who Jesus is … but does nothing about it.  We don’t hear about him again in the Bible.  IF we see who Jesus is … then we must become one of his followers.  And the way we do that is by repenting … saying sorry for our millions of sins … and then following him as our Lord.

And this brings us to number 3.  The main thing about being a follower of Jesus … is putting to death the sin that Jesus died for.  Now like I said at the very beginning … everyone sins.  Even Christians sin every couple of minutes.  But there’s a difference between falling back into a sin we’re TRYING to rid our lives of … and gladly continuing to commit a sin … because we WANT to.  Being a follower of Jesus means wanting sin gone from our lives … because sin is what killed Jesus.  Charles Spurgeon puts it this way.  He says ‘imagine if my brother had been murdered.  What would you think of me … if I took the knife that murdered him … still stained in his crimson blood … and framed it and put it on my wall?’  It would make me almost a willing accomplice to my brother’s murder.

So too are Christians a willing accomplice to Christ’s death … if we openly, gladly, joyfully revel in the sin that sent him to the cross.  What Jesus wants … are followers who understand (i) WHAT he suffered … the infinite judgment of God, (ii) WHY he suffered it … to destroy the barrier of Sin, and (iii) who live their lives following him … through repenting of the sin that killed him … and putting that sin to death in our lives.  So as we commemorate Jesus’ hero quest this Good Friday … let us be like the women in v. 40-41.  Let us be the kind of followers who live for Jesus … no matter what.