Thank you. It can be easy for any of us to get caught up in the gory details of how Jesus suffered on the cross,

but that clearly wasn't what the gospel writers were focusing on.

Today on Truth for Life

we'll examine the crucifixion story and learn why its purpose isn't to provoke our sympathy,

but to demand a response. Alistair Begg is teaching from chapter 15 of Mark's Gospel. The soldiers are gospel.

The soldiers are now entrusted with the responsibility of leading him away, and in verse 16, they decide that they will bring together the battalion.

Look at the way Mark just moves on, and when they had mocked him.

You see, when children are unkind to other children at school, there's only so many names

you can employ, there's only so many bad things you can do before it runs out of steam. And eventually the mockery

will stop, either because you're tired or you're bored or you're jaded, or perhaps you are

ashamed. Baring shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned, he stood. What is Jesus doing there?

He is bearing the punishment that sinners deserve. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple cloak, that's verse 20.

They put his own clothes back on him, and they led him out to crucify him. Whether it was on

account of Jewish sensibilities that would not have been shared by the Romans,

that would demand that he would not then be paraded around in his nakedness,

but his clothes are on him, and he's on his way to be crucified.

Now, jump forward to verse 24. They led him out to crucify him, verse 20, and verse 24, and they

crucified him. It's just three words in Greek. The most cruel form of execution devised

in all of humanity, probably. The Roman writer Cicero says, let it never come near the body of a Roman citizen,

nay, not even near his thoughts or his eyes or his ears. What the Romans devised was only used

on non-Romans. It was a shame for even the Romans to think about how brutal was that which they

did. The victim was nailed to a cross.

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