TAUNTS TURNED TO TESTIMONIES Matthew 27: 41-43
Muhammad Ali was master of taunting his opponents. He would taunt them before the match and during the match. He is credited with saying some of the following.
"Float like a butterfly.
Sting like a bee.
Your hands can’t hit
what your eyes can’t see.”
“If you even dream of beating me you’d better wake up and apologize.
"He has two chances. Slim and none, and slim’s just left town." Ali taunted Foreman in the ring during the Rumble In The Jungle. "Come on Champ, you can do better than that. They told me you were a big hitter?"
"That all you got, George?" Ali whispered into George Foreman’s ear in a late round during the match.
The bragging and taunting that mars so many sports today can be traced directly to the antics of Ali. Ali is to blame for the trash-talking that goes on in sports today.
Now, nobody likes to be ridiculed, mocked, or taunted by others. However, to be taunted while you are dying is indeed a manifestation of deep depravity
The death of Christ was it the greatest tragedy or the greatest triumph?
“He saved others; Himself He cannot save.”
“If He be king of the Israel, let Him come down from the cross.”
“He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.”
These brutal taunts have lessons for us. They witnessed to what His claims were. Jesus asserted Himself
to be a worker of miracles, the Messiah-King of Israel, the Son of God, and yet here He is dying.
Their scoffing witness to the misconceptions which were found in the minds of so many of that day.
Was it not conceivable that a man who possessed such miraculous power would use it to deliver Himself?
Could it be possible that, if there was a Father at
all, that He should leave a man that really trusted in Him, not to say one who claimed to be His Son, to die like this?
The facts were seen, but their relation was twisted.
Here were taunts turned into a testimony!
Out of the mouths of mockers there comes praise.
The rocks that are cast at the Jesus in reality are roses presented to Him.
I. Their words were a taunt about ABILITY; however, the Cross shows us the Saviour who would not save Himself.
The priests did not believe in Christ’s miracles, and they thought that this was the final token of His inability. To them this was a clear proof that the miracles were tricks and deception.
They saw the two things; and they misunderstood the relation between them.
They had seen Jesus by His word calm the storm, and hush the winds by His word. They had behold Him multiplied bread, turned water into wine. They had seen Him speak to the dead and out of the grave came the dead, stumbling and entangled in the grave-clothes.
All this they had seen; however, here is this passive, and impotent man who hangs as a helpless victim of the Roman soldiers and Jewish priests.
The easy solution to this apparent contradiction was to deny the reality of the miracles? He never worked one, or He would definitely be working one now.
However, let their error lead us into truth. “He saved others,” that is certain. He did not “save Himself,” that is also certain.
Was the explanation a matter of “cannot” as they supposed. The priests by “cannot” meant physical impossibility, defect of power, inability. They were
wrong.
However, there is a profound sense in which the word “cannot” is absolutely true.
The impossibility was purely the result of His own WILLING AND LOVING HEART
The “cannot” did not come from a lack of power, but from a love that was plenteous.
No man taketh his life from Him. He gave His live willingly.
It was not because He could not, but because He would not. The truth is “cannot” was a “will not.” It was NOT THE nails that fastened Him to the tree; He was fixed there by His own steadfast will. He died because He would. if we rightly understand the “cannot” we may take up with thankfulness the taunt which, as I say,
is tuned to a testimony, and reiterate adoringly, “He saved others, Himself He cannot save.” It is because He would save others that He could not saved Himself.
II. Their words were a taunt about His SOVERIGNITY; however, the Cross shows us the King on His throne.
To the priests it seemed ludicrous to suppose that a King of Israel should, by Israel, be nailed upon the cross. Again they saw the two facts, and they misunderstood their relation.
The Cross is Christ’s throne. There are two ways in which the tragedy of His crucifixion is looked at in the Gospels, one that reigns in the three first, another that reigns in the fourth.
These two seem on the surface to be opposite; they are in reality complementary.
In the first three gospels the aspect of humiliation,
degradation, and suffering, is prominent in their references to the Cross. In John’s gospel the triumph is prominent. “’Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up;” “If I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”’
“The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.” It was His death on the cross and not His descent from the cross that would draw men to Him.
The Cross is the foundation of His kingdom. In Philippians, Paul brings together, Christ’s obedience unto death, the death of the Cross, and His exaltation.
The sceptre that was put in His hand, though it was meant for a sneer, was a forecast of a truth. The crown of thorns, that was pressed down on His wounded and
bleeding head, foretold of a time that men will bow before Him who died for them.
It is the Cross that constrains us as nothing else can. The blind priests said, “Let Him come down, and we will believe Him.”
Because He did not come down, sad, sorrowful, and
sinful hearts turn to Him from the ends of the earth.
Faith and love cannot be forced by a display of power. The Lord conquers men by His love (Romans 5:8) He did something better than coming down alive from the cross; three days later He rose from the grave.
III. Their words were a taunt about His ACCEPTABILITY; however, the Cross shows us the Son, who was the beloved of the Father.
The priests thought that it was altogether unbelievable that His claim to be the Son of God should have any reality, since the Cross, to their eyes, disproved this. How can that is allowed to hang on a cross be pleasing to the Father they reckoned.
They judged character by condition, but any who do this make many mistakes.
They again recognized the fact, but as in the other two cases, they misconceived the relation. We can see from the Bible the corrected image.
The Cross of Christ was the very token that this was God’s beloved Son in whom He was well pleased. The
moment of His death Jesus Christ was more than ever the object of the Father’s delight.
Isaiah 53 declares it “pleased the Lord to bruise Him ..... he shall see the travail of his soul and be satisfied.” The Father was pleased in the death of His Son. The pleasure came because of the designed and glious ends accomplished by the sacrifice of His Son. He delighted in the death of death of His son, since it was the effectual method for the salvation of man and the securing and advancing of the honour of God. The pleasure of the Lord IS THE SALVATION OF THE LOST, AND THIS COULD ONLY BE MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH THE DEATH OF Jesus Christ. We are saved only because God the Father was satisfied with what Jesus His Son did for us on the cross.. This is our only hope for heaven In the Cross Jesus Christ revealed God as God’s heart had always yearned to be revealed, infinite in love and plenteous in mercy. In the cross was the highest manifestation of the love of God. “He that spared not His own son, but delivered him up for us all.” 1 John 4:10 states “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
At the Cross, we observe obedience carried out to its perfection! Are you not delighted when your children obey you?
At the Cross Jesus was carrying out the Father’s
dearest purpose for the world, that He might be “just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.”
On the cross I behold Christ the very Son of God in whom the Father is well-delighted and pleased.
Conclusion:
Oftentimes things are not as they truly seem. Let us, led by the errors of these scoffers, grasp the
truths that they perverted.
Let us see that weak Man hanging helpless on the cross, whose “cannot” is the impotence of omnipotence,
imposed by His own loving will to save a world by the sacrifice of Himself. Let us crown Him our King, and let our deepest trust and our gladdest obedience be rendered to Him because He did not come down from, but “endured the cross.” Let us behold with wonder, awe, and endless love the Father not withholding His only Son, but delivering Him up for us all. Let us behold an empty grave and the occupied Throne and observe how the Father by both
proclaims to all the world concerning Him hanging dying on the cross: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
