Why Christmas? 3: Come to the Light (John 3.14-21)

Christmas is one of the few moments when our culture still talks openly about light. Lights on trees. Lights in windows. Lights in the darkness of winter.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most people like Christmas lights because they’re decorative, not because they’re revealing. They soften the darkness; they don’t expose it.

John 3 does something very different. It doesn’t say the light came to make us feel warm. It says the light came to show us what’s really there.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night—not just because it’s quiet, but because night is safe. Night hides things. And Jesus immediately tells him two things no one wants to hear at Christmas:

1. You are more broken than you think.

2. God loves you enough to do something about it—at terrible cost to Himself.

This passage forces us to see that Christmas is not primarily about comfort, nostalgia, or moral uplift.
It’s about rescue.

Last week, we saw a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a well-educated teacher of Israel, comes to see Jesus at night, to find out more about who he is and why he came. And Nicodemus surely wasn’t ready for that conversation. Jesus explained why he came, and it wasn’t because Israel needed liberation from Roman occupation; it wasn’t because humanity needs improvement.

Jesus came because humanity needs new birth.

That night, Jesus told Nicodemus that religion cannot save him; effort cannot save him; heritage cannot save him.

But that leaves a question hanging in the air: if none of these things can’t save him, what possibly could? How can anyone be born from above?

New birth sounds beautiful, but it also sounds impossible—because as we saw, it’s not something we do, but something God does in us.

So Jesus continues.

And what He says next tells us that his coming—the event we celebrate at Christmas—is not only about birth—it’s about death.

1. The Manger Already Points to the Cross (vv. 14–16)

We’re going to go back over two verses we saw last week, because they’re an important introduction to what he says here. He said that he, Jesus, the Son of Man, descended from heaven, and then he says in v. 14:

14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

This is a startling thing to say.

Nicodemus is still processing everything Jesus has just said about new birth, and Jesus jumps straight to this Old Testament story of judgment and death, from Numbers 21.

God had sent judgment on Israel because of their sin, judgment in the form of venomous snakes that were biting people. The solution wasn’t an anti-venom; it wasn’t medicine, or reform, or discipline.

God told Moses to lift up a bronze serpent on a pole, and anyone who looked at it would live.

It’s a strange story, whose meaning was a bit unclear until Jesus said in this verse that the story of Moses and the bronze serpent was about him. Just as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the desert, Jesus would soon be lifted up. He would be lifted up on a wooden cross, where he would carry the sins of all of his people, and suffer in their place.

So let’s think of this in the context of Christmas. The baby in the manger wouldn’t just grow up to be a teacher or a healer. The baby in the manger would grow up to be the man on the cross.

Jesus does not come merely to teach life. He comes to be lifted up so that others may live.

And the way to benefit from his sacrifice is belief. He was lifted up “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

Imagine being bitten by one of those serpents in the desert.

You’re in pain. You’re panicking. You want to do something. Apply pressure. Suck out the venom. Run somewhere. Fix it.

And Moses tells you: “No. Look.” Not work. Not improve. Not understand. Just look.

This is precisely why the gospel is hard to swallow for some of us. We don’t mind a God who helps those who help themselves. We resist a God who says, “You are dying—and I will save you, but you must stop trying to save yourself.” That’s belief—it’s not admiration, and it’s not agreement. It’s dependence.

The Israelites who lived weren’t the smartest ones, or the strongest ones. They were the ones desperate enough to trust God’s solution instead of their own. We want something to do. God gives us someone to trust.

That is the context of what is probably the most famous verse in the Bible, which we spent a lot of time on two weeks ago. V. 16:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Just a reminder in case you weren’t here for our Christmas service: when Jesus says that “God so loved the world,” he’s not talking about sentimentality or emotion, he’s talking about intention, and action. He’s not saying that God feels good about us—ask any parent whose kid has just painted the walls how they feel about the kid in that moment. That feeling isn’t important.

Jesus is saying that God made the decision to move toward us in love, despite everything in us that makes loving us difficult. His love is intentional, and it is costly.

God loved a world that did not love Him. He didn’t give advice, but his Son. And he gave his Son to bring life to those who deserved judgment.

Despite all the sentimental Christmas movies that would want us to think the opposite, humanity is not lovable. Christmas isn’t proof that we “all deserve love”.  Christmas is proof that God is merciful.

For some of you, I know that hearing that may feel like a bummer. Recognizing our guilt before God sort of drains Christmas of its good cheer.

But the truth is completely the opposite. At Christmas, we celebrate the grace of God, and grace does not deny guilt—it overcomes it.

If you want to understand the manger, you must look forward to the cross.

2. Come to the Light (vv. 17–21)

Then Jesus continues and tells Nicodemus more about why he came. V. 17:

17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

This sounds nice, but this is often misunderstood.

Jesus doesn’t say there is no condemnation. He says that naturally, we are already condemned. “Condemned” is our default mode.

If you walk into an emergency room, no one assumes you’re healthy. You’re not there to be diagnosed as sick—you’re there because something is already wrong. The doctor doesn’t condemn you by naming your condition. He names your condition because treatment is possible.

Jesus functions like that physician. He doesn’t enter the world to announce bad news. The bad news is already true. He comes because the diagnosis has been made—and a cure exists.

Rejecting Jesus doesn’t make you condemned. Rejecting Jesus means you refuse treatment, and let the disease runs its course.

That’s why neutrality is impossible. Not choosing is still choosing. But those who do trust in him, who do believe in him, are not condemned—they are rescued.

The point is, Christmas is not Jesus coming down to judge humanity more effectively or more harshly. It is Jesus coming down to save those who are already condemned.

Neutrality is not an option.

So the question is, if we are condemned, and if Jesus is the rescue we need, why would anyone refuse him? It’s easy to think that it’s simply a matter of intellectual assent—I don’t think he’s the Savior, I don’t think God exists, so I won’t trust him.

And there’s a little truth to that. But there is a deeper truth motivating that refusal. Intellectual belief isn’t the real problem. Jesus tells us what the real problem starting in v. 19.

19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

This is brutally honest. People do not reject Jesus primarily because of lack of evidence. They reject Him because of misdirected love. It’s not that they believe in the darkness, but that they love it.

And it’s easy to see why. In the dark, we can do what we want, because we think no one will see it. We can do what we want, because we feel hidden and secure and autonomous.

In the light, we can’t do that. Light exposes. Light reveals. Light threatens our autonomy.

Christmas is comforting only if you want to be saved. If you want to remain hidden, it is deeply unsettling.

No one stumbles into darkness; we love it. Most people say they want transparency—until it’s real.

Think about security camera footage. You’re fine with cameras when they protect you. But the moment footage might expose something you’ve done wrong, the tone changes.

“Do we really need to check that?”

“Let’s not overreact.”

“Context matters.”

Jesus says we avoid the light for the same reason. Not because it lies, but because it tells the truth. Darkness lets us curate ourselves. The light takes away our editing power.

And that’s what makes Christmas unsettling. The child in the manger grows up to say, “I already know the worst thing about you—and I still came.”

Christmas—and the whole of the Christian faith—doesn’t divide people into religious and irreligious, but into those who will be honest, and those who won’t.

Coming to the light means no pretending, no performing, no hiding. Christmas invites us out of illusion and into reality.

And reality, in the gospel, is not rejection—but grace. The illusion is that we can be okay on our own, that we have in ourselves everything we need in order to do and to be what we’re here for; the idea that we are self-sufficient is the illusion.

The reality is that we need help; we need God’s grace.

And the only way we can get that help is to come to the light.

That’s a frightening idea for an adult, because we’ve spent our whole lives doing our best to obtain the skills we need to survive and be successful. And we can do a reasonably good job at that, in certain areas. But when it comes to the deeper levels of the heart, when it comes to our eternity, we are woefully lacking. We need help. We need the light.

It’s scary, but it’s also profoundly restful. The light reveals sin, yes—but it also reveals a Savior who has already dealt with it.

The hard work has already been done. Our job is to trust it.

Conclusion

Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. Later in John’s Gospel, we will see him step into the light—slowly, imperfectly, but genuinely. He’s one of the two men who take Jesus’s body from the cross to bury him.

Christmas, if we actually take it seriously, always forces this decision—come into the light, or stay in the dark.

Christmas—the life and work of Jesus Christ—divides humanity, not into good and bad, but rather into a) those who come into the light, and b) those who retreat into the dark

The question Christmas asks is not whether Jesus is impressive, or whether we feel good.

It is this:

Will you come into the light, knowing what it will reveal—and trusting what God has already done to save you?

Christmas is God’s declaration that the Light has come.

The only remaining question is whether we will step into it.

Why Christmas? 2: Born from Above (John 3.1-15)

I grew up in a Christian home in the United States. It’s hard to describe the Christmas season in America to someone who’s never experienced it. Take all of the decorations, the songs, the feelings that we have at Christmas here in France, and raise the volume on all of that as far as it can go. Christmas in America is like a national campaign to feel good.

And the centerpiece of it all is, of course, the image of the baby Jesus in the manger, with his mother and father, the shepherds, the wise men, and maybe some barnyard animals looking on.

All my life, I had assumed that this picture was the one we latched onto for two reasons. The first is that Christmas is the story of Jesus’s birth, so that makes sense. The second is because newborn babies make people feel good—they’re cute, and they sleep all the time, so it’s peaceful. We sing songs like “Silent Night” and it’s like a mini-tranquilizer for our souls, making us feel calm and at rest.

But it wasn’t until I was much older—until I had, in fact, been a Christian for many years—that I realized why the image of Jesus in the manger is such a weighty image. It’s not just because that’s what happened, not just because the coming of Christ is what we celebrate at Christmas. This image is weighty because it’s a mirror, a projection, of what Jesus’s birth does to those of us who believe.

If you were here last week, you’ll know that we are spending the month of December in John chapter 3. It may seem an odd text to choose for the Christmas season, but we chose it for a very simple reason: it makes no sense to go over the story of Christmas without understanding why the story was written.

We know the story, at least in its general details; we’ll have the pictures in our minds that we mentioned before—Jesus in the manger, the angels and the shepherds, and so on. But in this week’s text, that’s not where John starts—he’ll get there, but that’s not where we start.

John tells us the why behind the Christmas story through a conversation that happens at night.

That is not accidental. In John’s Gospel, night is never just a time of day. It’s a condition of the soul.

This is John’s way of telling us something uncomfortable right at the start: Christmas does not begin with warm feelings. It begins with darkness.

And it begins with a man who, by all outward appearances, should not need saving.

1. “You Must Be Born Again” (v. 1–8)

V. 1:

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night…

Nicodemus, John tells us, was a formidable man. He was a member of a hyper-strict religious group called the Pharisees—they were very morally serious and religiously disciplined. Nicodemus was a “ruler of the Jews”. He was influential and respected. And he was “a teacher of Israel”—educated, knowledgeable, and orthodox. If you’re at all familiar with our evangelical context in France, think of someone like Henri Blocher. M. Blocher isn’t a member of a strict religious subgroup, but in terms of the esteem he holds in people’s eyes, and his recognized knowledge, that’s sort of what we see in Nicodemus.

If anyone should be “close to God,” it’s him.

And yet he comes to Jesus at night.

Why?

Mainly because he doesn’t want anyone in his group to see that he’s coming to talk to Jesus. The Pharisees have been critical of Jesus from the first, and Nicodemus wants to keep his reputation intact. So he’s very cautious.

But he’s also curious, because what he had seen in Jesus has troubled him. As he says at the end of v. 2,

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”

Notice the language. He calls Jesus “Rabbi”—a term of respect that recognizes Jesus as a teacher.

Next, he says, “We know that you are a teacher come from God.” He speaks to Jesus as an insider, as a peer—someone who is evaluating Jesus from a position of authority.

But Jesus immediately flips the situation.

He doesn’t say that Nicodemus’ is right. He doesn’t thank him for his openness.

Instead, he challenges Nicodemus’s view of himself.

V. 3:

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

It’s almost funny how ubiquitous that term has become—being “born again”—although if you asked ten people what they thought it means, you’d likely get ten different answers. Rest assured: it was as confusing to Nicodemus as it can be to us. He asked the most obvious, literal question in v. 4:

“How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

Obviously, that’s not what Jesus is saying. So Jesus gives a little more information. V. 5:

5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Now I may be reading between the lines here, but it’s hard to imagine these words as anything other than disconcerting for Nicodemus. Even if he didn’t understand exactly what Jesus meant.

What Jesus says is, you’ve been born once—you’re alive, you’ve been born of the flesh—but something else needs to happen. You need to be born of the Spirit. And this spiritual birth is something you can’t categorize or label or put into an easy framework. The wind blows where it wishes, he says in v. 8, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

He’s saying, You can’t do this yourself. You can’t control it; you can’t predict it; you can’t manage it. God must do for you what you can’t do for yourself.

That’s why Christ needed to come—if humanity could fix itself, the Son of God would never have needed to take on flesh.

Everything Jesus is saying here would have hit Nicodemus like a slap.

Jesus doesn’t say: “You need more clarity”, or “You need deeper devotion”, or “You need to refine your theology.”

He says: You need to be born.

Nicodemus’ entire identity—the Pharisees’ entire identity—was built on achievement: moral achievement, religious achievement, intellectual achievement. Improving in these areas is something they all feel confident that they can do; it may take work, but it’s manageable.

But Jesus tells Nicodemus that none of these things qualify him to even see the kingdom.

Christmas forces this truth on us: The problem with humanity is not that we are uneducated, uncultured, or insufficiently religious. The problem is that we are dead.

And dead people don’t need advice. They need birth.

This isn’t only devastating to Nicodemus, but to us too; it cuts against everything we instinctively believe.

We assume that better parents produce better people; better education, or better efforts, produce better outcomes; better systems produce better humans.

And all of that might be at least superficially true. But if we’re talking about the change that actually matters, the change that brings us to the kingdom of God, it will never be enough.

No matter how refined, disciplined, or sincere it is, human effort cannot generate spiritual life.

That’s why Christmas is not about inspiration. It’s about intervention. God does not come to motivate us. He comes to recreate us. And we aren’t able to decide when or how that will happen.

This idea is terrifying…unless the God doing the recreating is actually good. And Christmas is God’s declaration that he is good.

The Serpent and the Son of Man (v. 9–15)

So Nicodemus is, at this point, flummoxed. “How can these things be?” he asks in v. 9.

To which Jesus gives an answer we might find a bit sharp (v. 10):

10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?”

This isn’t mockery. It’s diagnosis.

Nicodemus knows the Scripture, but he doesn’t yet know God’s grace.

And here is the warning for us, especially for those deeply embedded in the church:

You can know Christian language. You can teach Christian truth. You can defend Christian doctrine. You may be able to do all these things…and still miss the point of Christmas entirely.

Because Christmas is not about knowing about God. It’s about being made alive by God.

Jesus presses further (v. 11):

11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

To put it another way: Jesus comes with a simple message—everything he has been saying about the kingdom of God and the new birth, these are “earthly things”, things that happen here and now. Nicodemus wants more information, but his problem isn’t information; it’s belief. I’ve told you of earthly things, Jesus says…and you do not believe. He doesn’t say, “You don’t understand.” He says, “You don’t believe.” You don’t accept it. You don’t trust it.

What Jesus is saying isn’t all that difficult to understand; but understanding’s not the problem. In order to see the kingdom of God, the Spirit has to wake us up, change our hearts, bring us to faith—everything God promised to do in Ezekiel 36.

It’s not hard to understand what Jesus is saying, but it’s difficult to accept it, because it’s scary to accept that our salvation is out of our hands. We like to be in control, we like to take things forward. And there are some things we can and must do.

But this part—the essential part—is out of our hands.

If you don’t believe when I speak of earthly things, how will you believe if I tell you of heavenly things? There is more to know, yes—but before you’re able to hear it, you have to believe.

If Jesus stopped here, this would be a horribly sad, almost hopeless statement. “So there’s just nothing I can do, then?” we might want to say. “I just have to sit and wait for God to do it in me?”

The answer is both yes and no. Yes, we can’t do this for ourselves—God has to do it for us.

But we don’t have to just sit and wait. Because God already has made the decisive step toward us; all we have to do is see it.

V. 13:

13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

So we see two really essential things here.

First, we see that the one speaking to Nicodemus isn’t merely a teacher, as the Pharisee had earlier said. He is the one who descended from heaven. The Christian faith, the reason for Christmas, is not humanity reaching up to God; it is God stepping down into humanity. It was God’s initiative; it was God’s plan. He made the step toward us.

The second thing may be a bit confusing at first glance.

Jesus talks about Moses lifting up a serpent in the desert. If you don’t know the story, that won’t make a lot of sense—but Nicodemus, a teacher of the law, absolutely did know the story.

In the Old Testament book of Numbers, in chapter 21, we see the people of Israel grumbling against God in the wilderness. They believe God has abandoned them, led them out of slavery in Egypt to have them die in the desert. They despise the way God has provided food for them in the desert, exactly like kids who don’t want to eat their vegetables: they have food, they just don’t want the food that he’s given them.

So God does two things. First, he punishes their ungratefulness; he sends venomous serpents into the camp that start biting the people. This isn’t an emotional reaction, he’s not being unreasonable. He’s trying to show the people just how serious their lack of gratitude is, after everything he’s done.

And he wants them to see that he’s not punishing them with cruelty, because he provides healing for the bites. He instructs Moses to fashion a serpent out of bronze and to lift it up on a pole, and anyone who is bitten has only to look at the bronze serpent, and they will live.

On its own, even this story in Numbers is a little confusing—what is God trying to tell the people through his judgment, and through this image of the very thing which punished them (a serpent) being lifted up as a means of escape from that judgment?

The meaning of that event wouldn’t be fully clear until right now. Jesus tells Nicodemus that just as the serpent was lifted up in the desert, so too the Son of Man (Jesus himself) would be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

The reality is that all of humanity is under judgment for our rebellion against God—exactly like Israel in the desert. God is the one who judges sin, because sin is rebellion against him. But just as God exacts judgment against sin because he is just, he also provides escape from judgment, because he is good.

Later on, at the end of his ministry, Jesus would be falsely accused, he would take the sin of his people on himself, and he would be lifted up on a cross—his judgment for us visible for all to see. This, just like Jesus’s coming, was God’s doing, God’s initiative, not ours.

We couldn’t do it for ourselves; we couldn’t fix ourselves or make things right on our own. That was something God had to do—and he did it.

And like the people of Israel in the desert, all we do is look to him, and believe. Jesus was lifted up so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Conclusion: What Christmas Asks of Us

What does Christmas ask of us all?

Our passage confronts us before it comforts us. Nicodemus comes to Jesus out of curiosity, out of interest. But Jesus isn’t interested in satisfying Nicodemus’s curiosity or answering his questions. He gets to the heart of the matter, and responds by telling Nicodemus what he needs.

The heart of the matter is not: “What do you think of Jesus?” or “Do you admire the major tenets of Christianity?” or “Do you celebrate Christmas?”

Rather, the heart of the matter is: “Have you been born from above?”

People can feel a lot of doubt around this question. Maybe you professed faith in Christ some time ago, but find yourself struggling to live the Christian life, and doubting whether or not the new birth has actually happened for you.

It’s really important for us to see that in this text, Jesus is speaking about origin, not intensity. “Born again” isn’t a measurement of how vivid your emotions are or how consistent your obedience feels. It’s about where life comes from, not how strong it feels today. No baby doubts whether it’s alive because breathing feels difficult. In the same way, struggle—and even failure—is not a measurement for birth.

Jesus’s whole goal in this passage is to point us outward, not inward. Jesus doesn’t tell Nicodemus to He doesn’t tell him to examine his heart endlessly; he doesn’t ask for introspective certainty

Instead, he redirects his attention: as Moses lifted up the serpent, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

New birth is seen indirectly—by faith looking outward, not by reflection pointed inward.

New birth doesn’t remove struggle; it introduces it. Jesus doesn’t ask you to find proof that you’re alive—He asks you to look to Him.

Next week, Jesus will tell Nicodemus how this new birth becomes possible. But this week, Christmas tells us what we need.

So as we get ready to celebrate Christmas on Thursday, we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by meals and presents and events and gatherings. The only way to truly enjoy Christmas for what it should be is to remember why Jesus came—to thank him for the new birth he has given us, or to ask him to bring us to life if that’s not already the case.

Jesus did not come to make us better; he came to make us alive. And all he calls us to do is look to him, the Son who was lifted up, to believe in him, and live.

Why Christmas? (John 3.16)

I remember one of the first times I ever had a truly serious conversation with someone about God. I’d grown up in church, so I knew all the stories, and I knew a decent amount about what Christians are supposed to believe. But I wasn’t really interested.

But I had a friend named Jeremy who was a Christian, and who came at the subject from a completely different angle. He was saying things about the Bible that I’d never heard before, things that I’d never heard any pastor say, and I was completely confused. I found out later, after reading the Bible for myself, that what Jeremy told me was true—the things he said are actually in the Bible, and they make sense—but at that time, during that conversation, all I could think was, What are you talking about?!

That’s the sort of conversation we just read, between Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee—he was the member of an elite group of religious leaders who knew the Jewish Scriptures backwards and forwards—and he had come to Jesus out of genuine curiosity, because Jesus was saying things the Pharisees disagreed with…but at the same time, he was doing things that were so spectacular, Nicodemus figured Jesus must come from God.

And right out of the gate, Jesus starts talking to Nicodemus about being born again, being born of water and the Spirit, about Moses and a serpent, and it was confusing—we saw him say in v. 9, “How can these things be?

In fact, over the course of this whole conversation Jesus has been telling Nicodemus why he, Jesus, was here—why he was born, why he had come.

So it makes perfect sense that this is the text we would choose to speak about at Christmas. At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ—but such a celebration makes little sense if we don’t know why his coming was so important.

And we have a summary of that entire reason in a single verse of this text—we read the whole thing so that we could know the context, but we’ll be focusing today mostly on one single verse: verse 16.

We’ll be starting with the most important thing we need to know, and that is that Christmas—and everything around it—begins with God.

I. Christmas Begins With God

I know plenty of people who don’t like Christmas. And in my experience, one of the things they have such a hard time with is the drippy sentimentality that tends to come along with the season. The Christmas carols and the decorations and the picture of baby Jesus in the manger… Christmas has become commercialized, and we know exactly how to tug on those heartstrings and make people spend more money.

The church isn’t immune to that same kind of mentality. So Christmas services in church can sometimes be, at best, empty, and at worst, manipulative.

But that will only be the case if we properly understand John 3.16, which starts by saying:

“For God so loved the world…”

It’s really easy to look at these words and get stuck on the feeling. You may have a hard time with the idea that an all-powerful God would something as sentimental as love. You may have a hard time with the idea that God would feel love for the world, which is so broken. Or you may think about what you feel when you feel love, and just stop there—you may think that these words are talking about a feeling God has which is similar to what we feel toward those we love.

They’re not.

When the Bible talks about God’s love for the world he created, it’s not talking about how God feels about the world. It’s talking about God’s intention—his intention toward a world that is defined by two fundamental facts.

The first fundamental fact about the world is that God created the world good, and approves of the good thing he created (as we see in the book of Genesis).

The second is that since man rebelled against God, creation has been thrown into chaos. Human beings—and everyone in this room—desired to be their own masters, their own lords, rather than letting God be our God. That is what we call sin, and sin is like a cancer that has infested the world with sickness and death and corruption.

So when the Bible talks about the “love” of God, it’s not talking about a feeling, but rather a very simple truth: that the God who created the world good absolutely refuses to let sin win.

Christmas—the story of Christ’s coming—isn’t a sentimental story; it is the self-initiated mission of God toward a world trapped in darkness. It’s a darkness we wanted, as Jesus says in v. 19:

…the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

The world is no longer lovable. It’s resistant. It doesn’t love light, because it is dark. It doesn’t love God and it doesn’t want God. That disregard for our Creator is at the root of every evil in the world, because in disregarding God, we are disregarding the source of everything that’s good.

But God loves anyway. He refuses to accept the resistance of a world that’s rejected him.

Think about what this means. A lot of us carry around with us the idea (or maybe just the feeling) that God is distant or disinterested—that even if he’s out there, he can’t possibly pay any mind to tiny things like us.

Christmas dismantles that idea, as we’ll see.

What we celebrate at Christmas isn’t sentimentality; it isn’t warm feelings. At Christmas we celebrate grace, moving toward hostility. We celebrate God’s love, which isn’t reactive, but originating. It is given before the people who receive it have done anything to deserve it.

Christmas begins with God.

Now that said, let’s go further. There’s a kind of love that heals, and a kind of love that hurts. Many of you may have experienced this when you were little—you have a bad cold, your nose is stuffy, what did your parents do? They had to get that awful plunger and flush your nose out. It’s terrible. But that is love: it is active love. They want to help you heal, so they do something that feels awful short-term.

That’s the sort of love that the world needs, because it has been corrupted by sin. The removal of sin is by necessity a violent, invasive thing—sin has to be judged, and getting rid of it will be painful. Getting rid of sin would mean, in fact, getting rid of sinners—which means getting rid of every human being who’s ever lived. In order to get rid of sin, God has to judge sin.

But here’s the question that Christmas answers: what if the solution to sin could not only be a judgment against sin…but also a gift to sinners?

II. The Gift: God’s Son

Now you may or may not know that Christians have always believed in what we call the “Trinity”—that is, there is one God, who has always existed in three distinct persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father isn’t the Son, the Son isn’t the Spirit, the Spirit isn’t the Father. But the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. How is this possible? I have no idea; no one does. If we did, we’d be God. We don’t need to understand how it works; we just need to know that this is what the Bible says.

Why did I bring this up? Because John says that:

God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son…”

The gift God gives is infinitely costly—it is the gift of his “only Son”.

That word “only” doesn’t just mean God didn’t have any other kids. It means that the relationship between God the Father and God the Son is entirely and completely unique. God, in response to the world that rejected him, gives himself—his Son. God takes on a human nature, he takes on human flesh, and is born as a human being.

He’s born just like any human being—as a baby. He’s fragile; he’s helpless; for the first years of his life, he needs someone else to feed him and change him and clean him and protect him.

Why did he come this way? Why didn’t he just come as a warrior, or as a full-grown man? Why come as a baby, like the rest of us?

Because God’s plan to save us was nothing we would have expected.

We say that Jesus is the Savior, and he is; but he’s not the kind of Savior we would have asked for. He didn’t just come as a rescuer; he came as a replacement. A substitute.

Jesus experienced everything we do. He got sick; he got tired; he was sad and happy and angry and disheartened and encouraged and even sometimes afraid. He was tempted to do wrong. He experienced everything we do, and he did it so that he could be our substitute. He wouldn’t be a fitting substitute if he came as anything other than a man. He lived a life like us, in all of our weakness—but without ever falling into the traps of sin that we fall into.

And because of this totally unique life he lived—totally human and yet totally divine, without sin—he was able to do what we could not. He took the sin of his people on himself, and was punished in our place, for our sin.

That is the gospel. Jesus takes our sin, is judged for our sin, and gives us his perfectly righteous, morally pure life.

Sin is violently, brutally punished…and sinners receive life.

We’re all used to these images of the manger at Christmas, and we’re used to the manger evoking warm and fuzzy feelings. But the manger is inseparable from the cross.

You see, Christmas forces us to re-examine what love really is. It’s not just a feeling; real love gives sacrificially, intentionally, at a great cost.

III. The Call: Believe and Live

God’s love for the world prompted him to give a gift, the gift of his Son. But all of us know that a gift serves absolutely no purpose if it stays wrapped under the tree. A gift is pointless if it isn’t opened and enjoyed.

Same thing here. God gives a gift, and he calls us to make the choice to receive that gift. What does receiving that gift look like? Jesus tells us:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him…”

I don’t know many of you here today. But I do remember what it was like to be someone who was unconvinced, but curious. That’s what we see in this text; this man Nicodemus comes to Jesus looking for answers; he’s not 100% convinced, but he’s curious, and he’s searching. Jesus tells Nicodemus what he really needs, but Nicodemus doesn’t understand what that means.

So Jesus puts the facts before him.

Jesus’s coming demands a response. In order to receive the gift of God’s Son, we must believe in him.

Now when the Bible talks about belief, it doesn’t mean the same kind of belief we think of today. We think of belief as a purely intellectual thing: I see it, so I believe it. I have the proof, so I believe it.

Belief in the Bible isn’t mainly an intellectual exercise.

It’s more like sitting in a chair.

A while back we invited a buddy of mine over for lunch. He sat at our table, in chairs we’ve used for years; he didn’t think twice about it. He’s not a huge guy, but the chair apparently had a tiny crack in the leg, and over the course of about thirty seconds during our meal, he slowly sunk to the ground, the chair crumbling under his weight.

I could take this chair, and look at it.  I can see what it’s made of; I can examine the legs and the seat and the backrest. And I can be reasonably sure that it will hold my weight. But the only way I can be absolutely, 100% certain is to sit in the chair, and see that it holds me.

That’s what belief is; that’s what faith is. It’s not strength, and it’s not intellect, and it’s not having all the answers to all our questions. It’s trusting. It’s accepting, even when we don’t fully understand.

Knowing the story is not the same as receiving the Son. Christmas invites us to a decisive faith, not seasonal nostalgia.

It’s not automatic salvation; it is offered salvation. It’s a gift that is held out, but not forced. To receive the gift, we must believe. We must entrust ourselves to the Son who was given.

IV. The Outcome: From Death to Life

So God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son for us; he calls us to believe in the Son he sent—why? What’s the goal?

It’s almost like a second gift. God gave his Son—and already (those of us who know him can attest), that is a wonderful enough gift. But when we receive Jesus, we also receive another gift.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

If you’ve been following, this makes complete sense. We die because we’ve sinned; if we are freed from sin, then we are also free from death—not physical death, but the death after death, an eternity separated from the God who created us.

And that’s the most important thing to see in this last part. The idea of “eternal life” can be off-putting, because—well, because it’s so long. And a lot of us have grown up with ideas of heaven that come more from cartoons than from the Bible: ideas of floating on clouds, playing the harp for all eternity. I agree, that sounds awful.

The eternal life the Bible promises is so much better, so much more down-to-earth than that. It promises life—like the ones we have now, in real, physical bodies, with real, physical things to do in a real, physical world…but totally unencumbered by sin and its effects.

And the best part of it all is not even that eternal life won’t be boring, or that it won’t be only spiritual. The best part of the promise of eternal life is that it will be life with the God who created us. Think of it like this: there is no one better than the Creator of life to tell us what life should be like. And the eternal life that is promised to us is that life, life as it should be—beginning now, and continuing on forever, freed from the shackles sin puts on us.

That’s what Christmas brings to those who trust in Christ. The baby in the manger brings the life humanity lost, the life the world cannot produce. As C.S. Lewis said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

That is what God gives us in his Son, and this eternal life is qualitative as much as quantitative: it’s not just long—it’s life with God, under God, from God, now and forever.

Conclusion

That is what we celebrate at Christmas. It isn’t family; it isn’t nostalgia; it isn’t chocolate; it isn’t presents. Christmas isn’t a celebration of sentimentalism, and it isn’t an attempt to escape from the harsh realities of life. Christmas is a confrontation with what reality truly is: a broken world under judgment that God moves to rescue.

I’m so happy you came to be with us today. And I’d like to finish in a very simple way.

I’d like to invite you to see the love of God—his sacrificial, active, self-giving love.

Receive the Son of God—trust him, even if you still have questions. Any number of us here can attest that he is indeed trustworthy.

And once you trust in him, walk in his life.

The world’s gifts fade. This one never does. Don’t leave it unopened.

We Stand Before the Empty Tomb (Mark 15.42-16.8)

Every book of the Bible—whether it’s the book of Jeremiah (1,364 verses) or 3 John (15 verses)—was written for a reason. Every book has a goal in mind, and every book intends to elicit a particular response from its readers.

The gospel of Mark is no different.

Mark has two main goals in mind, which we saw at the very beginning of this series. His first goal is to tell us who Jesus is; and his second goal is to explain and defend the universal call of discipleship—that is, to show us what it means to follow this Jesus, the Son of God, the King of God’s kingdom, the Messiah.

Last week, we got the clearest reminder of who Jesus is, given by the Roman soldier, who proclaimed upon Jesus’s death, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” And this week, he’ll remind us of the call God puts upon all of us, to be disciples of Christ.

This will be the end of our series on the gospel of Mark. But before we get into it, we’re going to need to do a bit of work, because there’s one puzzle we’ll need to sort out.

You probably noticed that we did not read v. 9-20 of chapter 16. And we’re not planning on doing that; we’re not going to see those verses next week. To understand why, we need to understand the use of brackets in our modern Bible translations. (I know, this is going to be really fun.)

In most of our modern translations, whenever you see a word or a verse in brackets, that means that the word or verse inside the brackets does not appear in many early manuscripts.

Now, most of the time, that fact makes almost no difference at all. Most of the time, it’s a word or a phrase that was added for clarification or for some other reason, but it changes nothing about the meaning of the text, or its place in the rest of the Bible. The translators include these things anyway, to be thorough, but they’re honest with us—when they put words or phrases or verses in brackets, that’s their way of saying whatever is inside the brackets was quite possibly added later, and not written by the original author.

Verses 9-20 of Mark 16 are like that. These verses do not appear in many early manuscripts; other manuscripts include these verses, but indicate that even earlier manuscripts don’t include them; and many early church theologians (like Origen or Clement of Alexandria) don’t seem to know about them. And there are several elements here which just aren’t in keeping with Mark’s writing style.

Like I said, most of the time this changes nothing, or very little. But in the case of Mark 16.9-20, it actually changes a good deal.

Most of v. 9-20 contains things we see elsewhere in the Bible: Jesus appearing to Mary and the two disciples first; then appearing to the eleven; then telling them to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel; and finally, Jesus being taken up to heaven and the disciples going out and preaching. All of those things, we see in the other gospels or in the book of Acts.

But there are two verses in particular that are problematic—v. 17-18—which says all believers should expect certain things (like being immune to snake bites and poison) that the rest of the Bible never says believers should or will expect. Some churches have based entire theologies off of these two verses alone—they’ve brought in poisonous snakes for Christians to handle. And guess what? Christians have died after being bitten.

So you see the problem. If these verses do not appear in many early manuscripts; if they contain stylistic differences from the way Mark wrote the rest of his gospel; and if they contain elements that are incoherent with the rest of the Bible, then it’s a pretty good sign that Mark did not write these verses—which means these verses shouldn’t be seen as the authoritative, inspired Word of God. There’s still some debate about this, which is why these verses are still included in brackets in our translations, but the debate isn’t very fierce: most scholars agree that Mark didn’t write these verses, and they were added later—and that’s our conviction too.

But I’ll freely admit that this fact brings up another question—and it fundamentally changes the way we read the end of this book.

We have all seen TV series in the modern era, and we’ve all been frustrated by them. The show builds and it builds and it builds and we get more and more invested and excited in the story. And then there’s a huge revelation, or a twist in the story…and the season ends. And we know we’ll have to wait another year, or two, or three, before we get the next installment.

If Mark ends at v. 8, then that’s essentially what he does: he ends on a cliffhanger. We never actually see Jesus resurrected; the women don’t go see the apostles to tell them about the resurrection; the story just ends. We know those things happened, but Mark never tells us about them. (By the way, this isn’t unprecedented in the Bible; the book of Jonah ends in a similar way.)

But if that is the way Mark truly did end his gospel (and I believe that it is), the question we need to ask is, “Why?” Why did he end his gospel in such an abrupt way?

We know enough about Mark by now to know that he leaves nothing to chance; he says as much through the structure of his narrative as he does through the text itself. So what is he trying to tell us through this mysterious ending?

The answer to that question is actually, I think, the main message behind this text—and it’s astounding. I love the way Mark ends his gospel at v. 8 of chapter 16.

So let’s get into it.

We remember the context. Jesus has just been crucified. The King was falsely accused, falsely condemned, crowned with a crown of thorns, and enthroned on a cross…and then he died. The Roman soldier saw his death and recognized that he is the Son of God, and the faithful women who had followed him throughout Galilee are standing there watching.

That is where we pick up the narrative threat again, in chapter 15, verse 42.

The Outsider (15.42-47)

The first thing we see here is the boldness of a quite unexpected disciple.

42 And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

Joseph of Arimathea, as Mark tells us, was a respected member of the council. He was a Sadducee—and we remember that the Sadducees are among those religious leaders whom Jesus rebuked so many times over the course of his ministry. The Sadducees were among those who tried to trap Jesus and who called for his death.

But apparently this Joseph was more clear-sighted than many of the others; he wasn’t in the council to maintain political power or the Jewish way of life. He was looking for something bigger—Mark tells us he was “looking for the kingdom of God.” It would seem he recognized something in Jesus that the others did not.

So, Mark says, he took courage. He had to, because going to Pilate meant that he, a Sadducee, was publicly identifying himself as sympathetic to not only a convicted criminal, but to the very enemy his own group had worked so hard to bring down. It was risky. And Joseph’s courage was all the more admirable given the fact that at this very moment, Jesus’s own disciples were nowhere to be found. Joseph was an outsider, showing faithfulness to Jesus when the insiders had disappeared.

So Joseph went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’s body, so that he could bury him. V. 44:

44 Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. 45 And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph.

Pilate was surprised that Jesus is already dead—sometimes it took days for a crucified person to die—so he sent for the centurion to confirm that Jesus was indeed dead. (That’s important: he got outside confirmation that Jesus hadn’t just fainted, but was really and truly dead.) And when he got confirmation, he allowed Joseph to take Jesus’s body.

V. 46:

46 And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. 47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

Ever since Jesus was arrested (and even throughout his gospel, really), Mark has been highlighting the irony of God’s plan of salvation. Nearly everything Jesus did throughout his ministry was unexpected. Those who seemed like they should have had a religious advantage—the religious leaders of Israel—were revealed to be the ones who didn’t want anything to do with the Savior God had sent.

And now, in a way, that position has been flipped. Jesus’s own disciples are absent; they’ve all fled. It would seem as if everything Jesus had worked for had come to nothing.

But when the plan looks dead, God raises up unexpected servants, unexpected disciples. The proof of a true disciple of Christ is revealed under pressure. Sometimes the people who look most “established” in the community—in this case, the eleven disciples who had followed Jesus throughout his ministry—end up clinging to safety, while the least likely step into sacrificial courage.

That is what we see in Joseph, and it is what we see in the women as well. We see in v. 47 that Mary Magdalene and Jesus’s mother were following behind to see where Jesus was laid, because they would be coming back.

The Empty Tomb (16.1–7)

Now, in chapter 16, we make a small leap forward in time. Jesus died on Friday. It is now Sunday, the day after the Sabbath. Remember what we saw several weeks ago: Jewish tradition held that the dead would be treated with oils and spices as a way of honoring them, after their death. Given the nature of Jesus’s death, they didn’t have time to do it properly on the day he died, before the Sabbath, so now these women who had followed Jesus are returning to his tomb to treat his body.

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”

A couple of interesting things to note here. We saw these women in chapter 15, v. 40—they were witnesses of the crucifixion, and at least one of them was a witness to Jesus’s burial. Now they are coming to be witnesses of Jesus in the tomb. And their mindset is clear—they’re not expecting anything miraculous. They’ve expecting to find him dead. They’ve brought the spices to treat his body; they’re asking themselves who’s going to roll the stone away from the entrance (the stone was huge). They are still in the grips of grief, not in expectation of a promise.

But God has already solved the problem they expected to face (v. 4):

4 And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. 5 And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed.

So first things first: this young man sitting in the tomb dressed in a white robe is not Jesus. Presumably, it’s an angel. Mark says the women are “alarmed”—not mainly because they saw an angel, but because Jesus isn’t there.

V. 6:

6 And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”

Mark, through this young man’s words, packs the entire gospel into three lines.

He says, “Do not be alarmed.” Don’t be afraid. Stop grieving. Stop fretting. This weekend has been horrendous—but there is no longer any reason to be afraid.

He says, “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen.” The key truth of the Christian faith is not that Jesus died. If Jesus had died, and stayed dead, he would be no Savior at all, because he would not have defeated death. He would have been like any other man—a brilliant teacher, even a miracle worker, but not the Messiah.

But Jesus is risen. He defeated sin on the cross, and he defeated death in the grave. Literally everything we need as fallen human beings—freedom from sin, and freedom from the eternal death that is the consequence of that sin—has been provided for us in him.

He says, “He is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” Jesus did indeed say this to his disciples, in chapter 14—he said that he would be raised, and go before them to Galilee. Even so, the women could easily have doubted at this point, despite the stone rolled away, despite the absence of Jesus’s body in the tomb. Maybe someone stole his body; maybe this young man was a part of some mysterious conspiracy.

But he sends them out with proof to come—not immediate proof, not the kind we always want, but proof to come. He’s going before you to Galilee, and you will see him there. If the women needed proof, they would get it very soon.

And they would get it in the very place Jesus’s ministry began: in Galilee. The risen Jesus is leading his people back to the beginning. He’s not where they last saw him—he’s not in the tomb, he’s not on Golgotha, he’s not in the Garden of Gethsemane. He’s already ahead of them.

And finally, the young man says: “Go, tell the disciples, and tell Peter.”

This is maybe the part of this whole text that hits me the hardest, because it’s so illogical. Some of you are responsible for teams in your jobs. Imagine you’ve been leading a project, and your entire team fell apart under the pressure. It’s cost you millions of euros, they’re all on medical leave for burnout—and you still need to keep going. The project still needs to happen, quickly.

What do you do in that case? You get a new team. You recruit new people. You don’t call the same folks who have just abandoned you, who have failed you so badly.

Jesus could easily have done that. He had plenty of people who had followed him who weren’t among the eleven. He could have called Joseph of Arimathea. He could have called Nicodemus, the Pharisee (John tells us that Nicodemus helped Joseph bury Jesus). He could have called the women who actually showed up. He could have called any number of people.

Instead, he goes back to those he chose at the beginning. “Go tell the disciples” that Jesus is risen, and he’s going to meet you in Galilee. Even better: “Go tell Peter.”

Peter, who had so recently vowed that even if everyone else abandoned Jesus, he wouldn’t—and who, just a few hours later, denied even knowing Jesus.

Jesus’s goal isn’t just efficiency; it’s restoration. The failures of Friday are not the end; Jesus is looking forward, and he knows exactly what he plans for these people who have failed him. He knows what he’s planning for the church they will establish.

This is the gospel. Jesus is risen, his plan is not finished, and he can use anyone—even the most abject failures—to do his will. The resurrection doesn’t just defeat death; it restores failure.

The Call (16.8)

This is incredible news, of course—so what happens now? You’d expect a lot more out of this story…but, as we saw at the beginning, we have very good reasons to believe Mark gives us only one more verse. V. 8:

8 And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

And that’s it. No appearances of Jesus before the disciples. No “and they lived happily ever after.” No matter what the angel has told them, the women are afraid; they are trembling and astonished. They flee from the tomb, and at least at first, they say nothing to anyone. They will—we know this from the other gospels—but at first, they’re just astonished and afraid.

So if Mark really did simply end his gospel at v. 8, as we believe he did, we have to ask: why did he do it that way?

In reality, it’s very much in keeping with what Mark has been doing this whole time—with what Jesus has been doing the whole time. Every time Jesus had told his disciples that he would die and be raised, he followed this announcement with a call to deny themselves in order to follow him. It’s been plain this whole time: after the resurrection, there would be a choice.

And the choice would be made, as Mark’s readers would know. By the time Mark wrote his gospel, the church already existed in its earliest form; his readers would know that the story didn’t actually end here. So they would have understood that the disciples faced this very real choice to deny themselves after the resurrection, and that they made the right choice. What happened next would never have been in question.

Mark is making a deliberate, rhetorical choice. By ending his gospel this way, he forces his readers into the story. The resurrection is announced, but it’s not “finished”. He forces us to stand at the empty tomb, and he asks us to respond.

The women are afraid when they hear the news, and we understand them. Because they are women in Israel, in the first century. Women, at this time in history, would have had no credibility—women weren’t even allowed to be witnesses in a trial. The task to announce Christ’s resurrection to the disciples has been given to them…but why should the disciples listen to them?

Have you ever felt afraid to share the gospel with someone else? Then you know how these women felt. You’ve got this incredible news to share…but what if no one listens?

The resurrection always confronts us with a choice: stay silent, or move forward, and speak. Sooner or later, we all have to make that choice anyway, as these women would—despite our fear, despite our hesitations. Mark’s gospel ends in mid-sentence because he expects his readers to finish it. He ends in uncertainty, not in celebration, because he wants his readers to feel the weight of unfinished obedience.

Jesus is risen! The resurrection has happened!

Now what are you going to do with that incredible news?

I hope you can see why Mark’s choice to end his gospel in this way is profoundly encouraging. All of us will fail, and all of us will have to decide what to do with our faith in the midst of our failure.

If you’re a hesitant disciple of Christ, wanting to move forward but afraid you don’t have all the answers, or afraid that you don’t have the strength in yourself to live for him, God is speaking to you through Mark. He’s reminding you that you don’t need to have “resurrection-level faith” to begin; even frightened disciples, like these women, are invited.

If you’re a Christian living with failure, God is speaking to you through Mark. “Tell the disciples—and tell Peter.” Those men would carry their failure with them for the rest of their lives. But that failure wouldn’t define them; the restoration they found in Christ after their failure would. Our worst moment is not who we are. We are who Christ makes of us.

If you’re a Christian who’s become complacent, a little too comfortable, then God is speaking to you. We can’t assume faithfulness because we’ve grown up in church, or because we belong to a Christian family, or because we “do all the right things. Joseph shows up when the insiders don’t. Our faithfulness shows itself under pressure, not when things are going well.

If you feel like God is absent, and you don’t know how to move forward without him… God is speaking to you too. Jesus is already ahead of you. The silence you feel doesn’t mean that God is absent; he’s before you. He knows exactly where he’s bringing you, even if you can’t see it.

And if you’re hearing this gospel, but you’re still not convinced, you need to understand that you’re standing in front of the empty tomb. Jesus Christ lived, died, was raised…and he’s now calling all of us to follow him. And you’re now faced with that same call, with that same choice.

You see, Mark leaves his gospel open because the resurrection isn’t a conclusion—it’s a beginning.
The empty tomb isn’t the end of the gospel; it’s the place where discipleship truly begins.

So how will we respond?

The Enthronement of the King (Mark 15.21-41)

When I was a teenager, my father was fired from his job. He was a youth pastor at a big church in Tennessee, and he was an excellent youth pastor. I wasn’t a Christian at the time; I didn’t much care for church; but I loved my dad.

We came to this particular church when I was thirteen. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it wasn’t a very healthy church, and my dad didn’t really fit in with the other pastors. He was quite youthful, and he had a peculiar attachment to the Bible, whereas much of the life of this church was based on the “experience” of spiritual things (I don’t mean experience in the Christian life, in the sense of maturity, but rather the experience one might have during a service). I later learned that over the years, the board of the church often complained about my dad, saying that he was too focused on simply preaching the Bible, and not focused enough on giving us kids the “experience” that they thought we needed.

After six years, they’d finally had enough; several board members lobbied hard against him, and they let him go.

I remember the night that Dad told us he had lost his job. At the time he didn’t know what would happen next; we didn’t know if we would have to move (we did—we moved to Florida soon after). He put on a brave face for us, even though he felt devastated and betrayed. I couldn’t sleep that night; I went to the kitchen for a drink of water. And I saw my dad sitting out on the back porch in the dark, by himself, just sobbing.

That memory caused a lot of bitterness in me over the years—bitterness toward the church—but strangely, it’s a good memory for me, because I have never been prouder of my dad than I was right then. I didn’t have the words to tell him why until much later. I was proud of my dad because even though he thought that he had failed us—the kids in the youth group and his family—he hadn’t. This wasn’t a failure. Dad had resisted years of pressure to do something he wasn’t comfortable with in his conscience, and even if he paid the price for it, it was the right price to pay.

When everyone else saw his firing as a defeat, I saw it as a victory. Because my dad didn’t give in to pressure; he did what God had called him to do, which was simply to preach the Word.

It’s the first clear picture I ever had of victory through defeat, and it’s what I always think of when I think of the story of Jesus on the cross, because the story of Jesus’s crucifixion is the ultimate story of victory through what seemed like defeat.

Last week we saw that Jesus was “crowned” through humiliation — he was falsely accused and tried and tortured and condemned to death…but his suffering was his coronation. In today’s text, Mark pushes further: Jesus actively takes his throne through death—and in so doing, he shows that he is not only the true King taking his throne; he is the Son of God achieving decisive victory for the salvation of his people.

Mark organizes his text in a very clear way; he gives us three “markers”, three blocks of time, to orient us—9:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., and 3:00 p.m. So I’m simply going to follow his organization.

9:00 a.m.: The King Enthroned (v. 21-32)

V. 21 starts us off just a little before 9:00 a.m. on Friday morning, actually. Jesus has been tried, he has been condemned, and he has been brutally tortured. At this point he will have lost so much blood that he can barely stand. His clothes are digging into every laceration. And he is now carrying his cross to the place of execution, outside the city, a hill called Golgotha. V. 21:

21 And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. 22 And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). 23 And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. 24 And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. 25 And it was the third hour [9:00 a.m.] when they crucified him.

We can’t get into every detail that happens here, but there is one in particular that we need to see. There are allusions to the psalms—particularly Psalm 22—all over this passage. We see, for example, in v. 23, that they offer him wine mixed with myrrh (which he refuses, because he said at the Last Supper that he wouldn’t have wine again until he drank it anew in his kingdom, cf. Mark 14.25). In Psalm 69.21, we read in this cry of lament from David:

They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.

In v. 24, we see the soldiers strip Jesus naked and cast lots for his clothes—a game in the midst of brutality. This is an echo of Psalm 22.17-18, which reads:

17  I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me; 18  they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

You see, Mark isn’t just recording events that happened; he’s interpreting them through the lens of the Scriptures. Mark wants the reader to recognize that this man on the cross is the righteous King promised in Scripture — the one who suffers on behalf of his people.

They finally arrive at Golgotha, and at 9:00, they crucify Jesus. They nail his hands and feet to the cross and prop him upright, where he will slowly suffocate because of the pressure put on his lungs. As we saw last week, Mark doesn’t go into graphic detail about this, because he doesn’t need to—his readers were well aware of what crucifixion entailed.

V. 26:

26 And the inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” 27 And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. 29 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!” 31 So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32 Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

Jesus is hung between two common criminals, and those passing by sling mockery and insults at him. This too is an echo of Psalm 22. We read in Psalm 22.7-8:

7  All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; 8  “He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

So it’s the same thing we saw last week—everything here, as tragic as it is, is dripping with irony. They mock him—“Save yourself, come down from the cross!” They think the cross is a sign of his defeat; they think the sign nailed to the cross, that declares Jesus “King of the Jews”, is a joke; they think the cross disqualifies him as King. But while the sign may be intended as a joke, it’s not a joke; he is the King, and the cross is the means by which he takes his throne.

When they taunt him to save himself, they’re taunting him to do what he could do, and we all understand the temptation.

And we know it. Think about every instinct in us that runs counter to what Jesus does here. When a marriage is hard, the instinct to run emotionally or physically. When your kids push your last nerve, the instinct to explode because it feels like the only way to keep control. When being faithful to Christ costs you status, friends, or opportunities, the instinct to “come down from the cross” and preserve your image. When following Jesus means waiting, or apologizing, or losing the argument, or confessing sin — the instinct is always, “There must be an easier way.”

The crowd says, ‘Save yourself.’ And every one of us knows that voice. The cross confronts the lie that the path of least resistance is always the best path.

Jesus’s refusal to save himself is the way he saves us—which was his intention the whole time. His apparent powerlessness is in fact a manifestation of his very real power.

At 9:00, the King takes his throne—lifted up for all to see, ruling by giving his life.

12:00 p.m.: The Divine Lament (v. 33)

I hope you see that I’m not trying to paint this story as rosier than it actually was, as if it was only victory. This was Christ’s enthronement, but it wasn’t a joyous enthronement. It was an enthronement borne in sorrow and anguish. That, in part, is what makes the gospel so resonant: it’s not news that’s “too good to be true”. It’s believably good, because it was earned in blood and tears and pain we can’t even imagine.

And the pain in question—Jesus’s pain—wasn’t merely physical. On the cross, Jesus took on himself the sin of all of his people: past, present and future. At this point in the story, he has been on the cross for three hours. So for three hours, he has been enduring not only the most intense physical agony, but the wrath of God poured out against our sin. It wasn’t man punishing Jesus, but God—as Isaiah said in Isaiah 53, when he called the Savior “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted”, saying that “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all,” that “it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53.4, 6, 10).

And in v. 33, we see a very stark and clear picture of that—as if a window on heaven were opened, and humanity was able to see how God felt about this event. V. 33:

33 And when the sixth hour [that is, 12:00 noon] had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour [that is, 3:00 p.m.].

This was not a solar eclipse, as some have suggested, because Passover took place during a full moon, and a solar eclipse is only possible during a new moon. This was not an astronomical coincidence; it was a supernatural event.

And once again, this echoes the Old Testament. Darkness in the Old Testament was a common picture of lament. In Amos 8.9-10, God says through the prophet:

9  “And on that day,” declares the Lord GOD, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. 10  I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.

The darkness covering the land while Jesus hung on the cross was a divine expression of lament.

And of course, we also know that in the Old Testament, darkness is a sign of judgment. Remember what happened in the book of Exodus, when God was judging the Pharaoh in Egypt for not letting the Hebrews out of slavery—he covered the entire country with darkness.

This moment brings both of these themes together. Because Christ’s enthronement came through such horrendous sin and suffering, heaven laments; but at the same time, God is exercising his righteous judgment against the sin of his people. Darkness falls over all of Israel in the middle of the day, which is a terrifying thing—anyone who’s been in a power outage, and suddenly plunged into unexpected darkness, knows how frightening it is.

That fear is appropriate when we’re thinking of the judgment of God. But this is what so many of us have a hard time understanding. We always say that one day God will judge the sin of the world. And as far as the whole world is concerned, that’s true.

But if we belong to him, if we have placed our faith in Christ, we will not be condemned for our sin on that day, because that’s what happened to Jesus as he hung from the cross. As he suffered, as he suffocated, as darkness covered the land, the condemnation that we deserve was falling on him.

So you see the paradox here.

Most of us assume that if God is present, we will feel light. Mark tells you the exact opposite. In the darkness, God was doing his greatest work.

And this is absolutely vital for us to remember. If the Son of God entered darkness to bring you into light, then yourdarkness doesn’t mean you’re abandoned. You may be in a moment where you think God is absent — but Scripture insists that God is often most active when he feels most silent.

The world sees darkness and assumes God is absent. Mark shows the opposite: in the dark, God is intensely present, expressing grief over sin and exercising judgment against sin at the same time. In the darkness, Christ is on the throne.

3:00 p.m.: The Victory of the Son of God (v. 34-41)

Finally, after three hours of darkness, the light returns. It is at this point we see Jesus at his weakest; but it is also at this point that we have the clearest revelation of his identity.

V. 34:

34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Why does Jesus ask this question? After all, he knew why this was happening to him; he’s been telling his disciples for a long time what he was coming to Jerusalem to do—he was coming there to die.

There are two levels behind what he says; the first is purely human. Jesus is crying out exactly what he feels. Although he knows that God hasn’t forsaken him, hasn’t abandoned him—he knows the resurrection is coming—in that moment, it feels as if that’s the case. It feels as if he’s been abandoned and forsaken. Much like in the garden, when Jesus truthfully said that his soul was “very sorrowful, even to death” (Mark 14.34), Jesus is being honest about what he is feeling in that moment. If you have ever felt abandoned, unheard, or unseen — Jesus doesn’t shame that. He enters it. He prays your prayer for you.

But there is a much bigger, deeper level to his words. In v. 34, Jesus is directly quoting—once again—Psalm 22.1, which reads:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

Psalm 22, at the time, was seen as the perfect lament of the suffering innocent. King David, the epitome of the righteous king in the eyes of the people of Israel, lamented because he was facing unjust persecution. Here, Jesus shows that his despair, while more intense than we can imagine, is not random; it is the righteous sufferer entering the depth of abandonment for his people.

All of the Jews watching on that hillside would have recognized this psalm. So they should have immediately recognized that Jesus, in his lament, is identifying himself with this righteous sufferer.

But they still don’t quite understand. V. 35:

35 And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” 36 And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.”

Why didn’t they understand him, and think he was calling for the prophet Elijah? Perhaps it’s because they couldn’t hear Jesus clearly over the noise (the name Jesus called out in Aramaic, “Eli, Eli” sounds similar to the prophet Elijah’s name), or perhaps because they didn’t want to see the link he’s making with Psalm 22.

At any rate, the mocking continues—they give him sour wine to drink (presumably, he didn’t take it, as we saw before), and they taunt him: “Let’s see if Elijah comes.”

And it is on this note that the two most extraordinary moments of this event take place. V. 37:

37 And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

This—the curtain of the temple being torn in two—is the first. It’s not a random detail; this is theology in action. The curtain in the temple was enormous—very tall and incredibly thick. This curtain separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place, where God’s presence was meant to dwell, where men were not allowed to enter, and where the High Priest could only enter once a year.

Now, it rips open, exposing the Most Holy Place to the world.

This is a double sign. It is a sign of judgment on the temple system that rejected Jesus. (Remember the fig tree? This is a much clearer sign of the same thing.) And it is a sign that access to God has now been opened to sinners—the King grants entrance into the presence of God through his death.

Now, the Most Holy Place is open to the world—which means, the temple is everywhere. The place where God’s presence dwells is wherever his people are, because they are the ones he has saved.

We have such a hard time realizing the full weight of this truth. So many Christians live as if the veil is still hanging — as if they need to earn the right to come near God. “I’ll pray more once I get my life cleaned up.” “I can’t come to God when I’ve failed again.” “I don’t want to bring this same sin to God for the hundredth time.” “God must be tired of me.”

The torn curtain should banish all such statements from our minds. The torn curtain is not an invitation for the holy to come close — it’s an invitation for the guilty, the weary, the ashamed, and the inconsistent.

This is the King’s victory—he doesn’t come down off the cross, and he doesn’t call for Elijah to save him. He dies for his people, in order to give us God. This is reconciliation, not self-rescue; it is access, not escape.

And finally, we come to v. 39:

39 And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

The centurion was the Roman soldier who was on the hillside, guarding the site of the crucifixion. This seems like a small thing—a private moment from a single individual. But v. 39 is the climax of Mark’s gospel.

A Gentile, a Roman soldier, a man trained to admire brute power, suddenly recognizes Jesus’s true identity—not a teacher, not a leader, not a healer, but the Son of God. And what is most incredible is that the centurion finally sees Jesus for who he is, not because Jesus won a battle, called down angels, or climbed down from the cross—but because he died.

Once again, what we see here is the gospel in miniature. It is not salvation for the Jews only, but for all peoples. The nations come to faith not through displays of force but through the suffering of the Son of God.

So take courage—bring in the person praying for a loved one who seems impossible to reach. Bring in the cynic, the secular colleague, the teenager who mocks everything, the spouse who seems disinterested. The first human to confess Jesus as the Son of God in Mark’s Gospel is a pagan executioner. If God opened his eyes, no one in your life or in this room is beyond hope.

Now, Mark includes one final mention that is important—not mainly because it is important for this story, but for what comes next, which we’ll see next week. V. 40:

40 There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41 When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

We’ll talk more about these women next Sunday, but I think Mark mentions them here to show that the centurion wasn’t the only person who was seeing Jesus rightly here. Jesus’s disciples (the twelve he had chosen to follow him) have almost all fled—but the women who had followed him have stayed. They become the key witnesses linking cross, burial, and resurrection.

This is a revolutionary detail, because women were considered second-class citizens at the time. And yet, it is through these women that the story will continue; they are the ones who will carry the testimony forward first.

They stand as a living picture of what real discipleship looks like: staying near the King even when his glory is hidden.

Mark is hitting on one of the main goals of his gospel: to show Christians what it looks like to follow Christ. And it rarely looks glorious. Mark knows full well how often following Christ will seem dark and desperate and crazy.

All too often, it will seem like there are so many better things we could be doing. Like there is so much greater happiness to be had. That we are being called to give up so much more than we’re getting.

Mark wants us to see that that is not true.

Most believers think their lives “don’t count” because they’re small, ordinary, unimpressive.

They’re the parent who gets up exhausted to love their kid again

They’re the believer who resists temptation again today

They’re the Christian who refuses the shortcut because it would dishonor Christ

They’re the widow who prays faithfully

They’re the depressed believer who shows up to church even when they feel nothing

They’re the overburdened person who chooses forgiveness instead of retaliation

They’re the believer who keeps trusting God in the dark

It will rarely look glorious. But neither did the cross. Mark’s point is simple: if your life looks unimpressive but faithful, you’re probably right where Jesus wants you.

Conclusion: The Cross as Throne, the Death as Victory

The only true way to light is through the dark, because that is the road Jesus took. The author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus endured the cross “for the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12.2). The way to light is through the dark.

At 9:00, the King is enthroned.

At 12:00, heaven laments and judges.

At 3:00, the Son of God wins the decisive victory.

Nothing in this text looks like glory. But everything in this text is glory.

The cross is his throne. The darkness is his royal canopy. The cry is his victory shout. The torn veil is his achievement. And the confession of the centurion is the first glimpse of the global kingdom he came to build.

We have no reason to despair, and we definitely have no reason to look elsewhere for our purpose or our happiness or our fulfillment. We have everything in him, because he died for us.