Audio Transcript:

Good evening, welcome to this online experience of Mosaic Boston Brookline. Today we are celebrating Good Friday. So happy Good Friday, and it is a celebration. To understand the greatest news in the history of the world we need to understand Good Friday. One word to our listeners, one word for those listening online.

In the same way that I have had to adapt to preach God's word, and it does take adaptation, I ask that you dear listener adapt to listening to God's Word on the screen and it's a different skill. It's different. I work really hard to communicate God's word so that it's heard. And I ask that you work as hard to listen in order to hear.

And I say that because there's distractions. You're at home, your phone's right there. If you're watching with somebody, it's easy to start into commentary on everything. And so I just ask that you set everything aside, and that you focus on God's Word. In particular, you focus today on the sufferings of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Would you pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word?

Holy God, we thank you for this moment. It's a holy moment in a Holy Week. And today, we descend into the darkness of Good Friday in order to on Sunday, ascend into the brightness of the resurrection. Lord, remind us today that in the most hopeless moment in the history of the universe, you were there. Therefore, whatever we feel now, whatever we're going through, we can trust you that you are here with us. Because God, you have the power to take the darkest moment and redeem it into the brightest moment. I pray that you strengthen our hope in you. We trust in you. Jesus, we thank you for taking the thorns of our sin upon yourself, absorbing that in order to redeem the thorns from our souls. I pray that you focus our time in the holy words, send us the Holy Spirit, speak to us. Reveal yourself in a way that perhaps you have never revealed yourself yet. Show us the extent that you are willing to go in order to save us because of your great love for us. And right now, bless the preaching of your holy word. I pray, help us to remove any distractions and let us focus on the gospel. And we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

The title of the sermon is Corona of Thorns. The word Corona in Latin means crown. Today I want us to focus and meditate on the crown of thorns that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ wore, was pounded into his skull. And the reason why today I want to meditate on thorns is because we find ourselves in this historic moment where it feels like we have been covered with thorns, from every which sides, like we've been crowned or ensconced in thorns and not just a needle here, they're piercing at us. It's thorns coming from every which way which go deeper, some less perhaps the thorns are just inconvenience of life, but inconvenience that's coming from every which way, from us it's much much deeper and leads to suffering and sorrow. But our Lord Jesus Christ wore the crown of thorns. Often the Lord sends thorns for a purpose, he always has a purpose for our suffering. We find ourselves in a moment where all of humanity has been humbled. That is the purpose of all of God's thorns.

We actually find a text in the Holy Scriptures in 2 Corinthians. And this isn't the text that I'm preaching on today. But I find it to be particularly relevant that St. Paul, one of the Godliest people whoever lived, the second most influential person in the history of the world only after Jesus Christ, he talks about this divine experience that he has, he gets a glimpse of heaven. And as he describes that experience, he also talks about a thorn that God sends him in order to keep him grounded, in order to keep him close to the Lord.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10, "So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. “For when I'm weak, then I am strong."

He says in order to counter my conceit, in order to counter my pride, by the way, this is a really holy man and he says still struggle with pride. God sends a thorn, a thorn to humble. St. Paul says, "I welcome it gladly." Here we see his humility. And we humble ourselves under the good hand of God. A hand that sometimes sends us thorns, thorns that draw us near to him. He says, "I will gladly boast in that." Why? It sounds so counterintuitive, that in order to make sure I don't get puffed up with pride, God sends a thorn and I will be proud, I will be boastful of this weakness, of this thorn.

It's so counterintuitive. Well, it's counterintuitive because it comes from the upside down kingdom, that when we go low, that's when we are raised high. When we humble ourselves under the good hand of God, he raises us up. Jesus Christ said that if you want to be great, you are to become the greatest servant, if you are to find your life, you are to lose it. It's more blessed to give than to receive, counterintuitive truths from the upside down kingdom.

And today I want to focus on the king of the upside down kingdom, a king who comes in humility. But Jesus Christ is a God man. It's God become men. God came down in order to close that social distance between us and God. He descended in order to raise us up.

We live in a world where everyone is trying to get ahead, everyone's trying to move up, everyone's trying to climb higher in the business world, they're trying to get up the corporate ladder, get the bigger job, bigger office, bigger income.

In politics, everyone's trying to position themselves for prominence, for power to raise the poll numbers, and Jesus was literally at the very top of every single ladder. He was ensconced in the glory of heaven. He was robed in majesty and he comes down. He is born to a family of peasants, husband and wife, Mary and Joseph who were peasants. They were the poorest of the poor. And when Jesus is born, they lay him in a feeding trough for a crib and Jesus lives most of his life in obscurity and works hard with his hands as a carpenter.

He's humble. And this is to show us, this is what it means to be glorious. This is what it means to love, to humble, and to humble yourself, and to serve. And this is contrasted with Satan who was proud and was the first one who tried to usurp God's throne.

C.S. Lewis said, "Pride is a telescope turned the wrong way. It magnifies self and makes the heavens small." The bigger we think that we are smaller, God looks. The Great God of the universe makes himself small.

Scripture says, he comes down like a seed, a seed that dies in order to bear much fruit. When God enters time and space as a human being, the boundless becomes bound. Jesus becomes bound with time and space. He becomes imprisoned, so to speak, with flesh. He's restricted by a body, by hunger, by thirst, by weariness. The unlimited God becomes limited, the limitless becomes willingly limited.

I always wonder if Jesus was ever tempted in his earthly life to reclaim this boundlessness. Were there moments where he was tempted? Because being bounded is so difficult. Just walking around the roads of Palestine, was he ever tempted to say, "You know what, I'm sick of this. Time to teleport, time to fly." Was he ever hungry and said, "You know what, I'm gonna turn these rocks into food," didn't like the weather, just change it. I like to think of Jesus as this great God because He is a great God and he's tempted, perhaps was tempted in order to use it but he never used his power for his own comfort.

Philippians says that, "Though being in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped." Meaning he let go of that, making himself a human, being born in the likeness of men. He never gave into these thoughts, not once to the use of supernatural powers for personal comfort. And I say all that to bring us to our text.

And our text today, we're gonna look at Jesus Christ who is suffering at the hands of people who hate him. With one thought, he could have killed his executioners. With one wave of the hand, he could have paralyzed those in power. We see a glimpse of this when Judas brings a band of soldiers to the garden at Gethsemane. And Jesus asked him, "Who are you looking for?" And they said, "We're looking for Jesus of Nazareth." And he says, "I am here," and all the soldiers, it's said they fell just at the sound of his voice. All that to say that Jesus Christ was not crucified because he couldn't stop it. Everything he did, he did because he chose to do it. Things weren't just done to him. He orchestrated this. And there's a deep, deep truth there.

The context of our texts, we're gonna look at Matthew 27 today. The context is this that for the past 12 to 15 hours, Jesus has gone through the tense atmosphere of the upper room. Then he was betrayed by Judas. Then he goes through the agonies of the garden of Gethsemane where he's under such intense anxiety as he sees what's coming. It says that the capillaries in his face bursting in sweat, blood, then he's arrested, deserted by his disciples, he's taken before the hypocritical trials of the Sanhedrin. And then he goes from one set of trials to another series of these kangaroo court trials. And then he ends up finally before Pilate and Pilate realized that Jesus isn't guilty of anything. And he wants to let Jesus go. A Pilate is so near to the truth, even asked Jesus what is truth when truth is standing right before him. But Pilate fearing men more than God, desiring to please people more than God does not submit to that truth. And he tries to wash his hands of Jesus, but no one can wash their hands of Jesus.

And that brings us to our text today, Matthew 27:27-31, a short text but a profound text, would you look at that text with me? "Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they said stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him and twisting together a crown of thorns. They put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, 'Hail King of the Jews,' and they spit on him and took the read and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him." This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative word, may you write these eternal truths on our hearts.

The big idea, the text, and one big idea and that's all I want to focus on. All I want to meditate on is the crown of thorns. Jesus took crown of thorns for us. Jesus took off his crown of glory and took on a crown of thorns to save us from our crown of thorns and to lift us up into glory.

In this text, we see that the soldiers do three things. They put a crown of thorns on his head, they put a reed in his hand, and they put a purple scarlet robe on him. But most likely, there's a worn out cap of one of the soldiers, a fake crown, a fake reed and a fake robe for, as they thought, a fake king. It was all to mock him, the reed was empty, it was hollow as a symbol of weakness. Jesus often referred to reeds as shaking in the wind. They said, this is you, this is the fake king shaking in the wind, and we know who Jesus was, who he is, he left the Regal robe of glory in order to put on this robe of mockery.

The Romans were masters of political theater, everything they did, they did with intention from the triumphal arcs that they built to celebrate conquering cities. So when you entered your city, you had to enter through the arc underneath the arc as a symbol of this empire, who has power over you. They put insignia of the Emperors all over everything they build to create a personality cult. They never miss an opportunity to underscore who's in charge, the Imperial authority, the supremacy of the Romans, and the weaklings that have to submit.

Last week we talked about Jesus entering Jerusalem and everyone welcomed him as the king. The text says, "Behold, your king is coming to you, gentle," and the Romans couldn't understand a gentle king. And they're mocking him. "Oh, you're king, what kind of king are you? "We've never seen a king like this, a gentle king, "homeless king, a weak king. "No, kings are not like this." So they scourged him and the scourging was different from flogging. The Jewish leaders had a punishment called flogging 39 stripes, 13 for each shoulder and one for the loins. Now, this was different. This was a scourging. This is what the Romans called a half way death. A trained professional would take a tool called a flagrum, also known as a cat of nine tails. The wooden handle and leather strips and tied to the end of each leather strip was either a splintered bone of a sheep or steel or sharp edged rock. And that was take the prisoner Jesus in this case, and take off his clothes and tie him up to a pole, his hands as high as possible to make the back as tight as possible so that with every slash, with every whip, his back would tear. The tighter the flesh, the deeper the tears. And this was of course, prophesied over 700 years before even the birth of Christ. And the book of Isaiah, Isaiah 50:6, "I gave my back to those who strike and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard. I hid not my face from disgrace "and spitting."

The whole process of crucifixion was sadistically designed to put someone through the worst pain imaginable, get them to the brink of death, or balance that out and make sure that the person doesn't slip into unconsciousness so that they feel every single ounce of pain. The Persians had invented crucifixion, the Romans, they had perfected it.

I want you now in your mind's eye to go there, it's hard, but it's important to go into that scene to paint the picture of Jesus tied to this pole, to hear the whistling of the whip, to see his flesh torn, his arteries revealed. And this scourged him so bad that there was no part of his body left unbloodied except for his head. And now they turn to the head, it must suffer, too. Why, because the goal wasn't just to kill the prisoner, it was to deface, it was to degrade, and to dehumanize.

What's fascinating about the Gospel accounts of the suffering of Jesus Christ is they don't tell us anything of how Jesus felt. They don't tell us about his cries. They don't tell us about the excruciating agony. They don't give us any of those details. Why? Because the goal of the Gospel accounts is not to make you feel bad for Jesus. It's not to make you feel pity for Jesus. No, the goal isn't for you to think about Jesus pain and just end it there. The goal is to see in Jesus Christ, the vicarious nature of suffering. He didn't have to do this. He chose to do this. Well, why did the God the universe choose to do this? Well, because he loves you. And he loves me. He loves humanity. And this is the only way for us to be made right with God for someone to pay the penalty for our sin. You see, there's no part of our humanity that isn't tainted with sin. There's no part of our humanity without sin. Therefore, there's no part of the God man of Christ humanity that can be left without suffering. So they inflict this physical pain, but that's not their end goal. They want to pierce the pride, they wanted to crush the dignity of the prisoner. They said, "We'll play the game. "Let's play make believe king, let's pretend."

Kings in the ancient world wore crowns. It was a universal symbol of royalty and also divinity and victory. The crowns that Caesar and the leaders wore were plaited leaves of laurel and they were encased with precious metal. Well, they didn't have one of those crowns and they didn't want to give Jesus a real crown. They wanted a fake crown. What kind of crown can we think of, let's give them a crown of thorns. By the way, this took work. To find the thorns took work. No one planted or cultivated thorn bushes in the middle of a palace in the middle of a city. So someone needs to go out, someone needs to find the thorn bush to give to this worthless man, seemingly giving worthless claims, a worthless crown made out of a worthless plant.

And I want you to imagine the scene of the soldier who found the plant, who found the thorns, as he's sitting there, hardened through war. And you see that in his face, he's sitting there diabolically, perhaps even enjoying sadistically weaving this crown of thorns looking at Jesus. And perhaps he pricks a finger or two and perhaps he curses and perhaps he even uses the name of Jesus Christ as a curse word like so many of our movies. And then he takes this crown. And by the way, this crown is made out of thorns, not briars. These aren't small, tiny little things like we see in movies. Even in the movie, The Passion of the Christ, I don't think it does justice to exactly what's going on in the text. This wasn't a crown for decorative purposes. This was a crown for destructive purposes. This wasn't just to sting a little, it was to savage, it was to destroy. And the thorns are referred to here, they're not just these tiny things, they weren't just half an inch, they were at least two to three, maybe three and a half inches. Sometimes the thorns themselves were used as weapons, as knives. And if you pierce a vital organ, you could actually kill someone. And they take these massive thorns, and they create a crown. They place it on Christ's head, like a crown of nails and they pound it in to the skull. So much so that Isaiah 52:14, another prophecy about Christ says, "As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.”

After the hardened soldiers had finished this ghastly work, Jesus didn't even look human. He wasn't recognizable. And it's gruesome. And it's ghastly. And you got to ask, why, Lord, what is the purpose? You orchestrated every single detail of the Gospel accounts, so much so that we know that you are in charge here of every detail, why? What are you trying to communicate to us, and this is what God is trying to communicate to us. This, when we see Christ, when we see the crown of thorns, nailed down, pounded down into his head, when you see just how destructive this punishment was, you begin to see what sin does to the image of God and each one of us.

God created us in His image and likeness, and it was perfect but because of our rebellion, God's image in us is fractured. So God sends his son, Jesus Christ, who is the perfect image, the exact imprint of God's nature. And then that image is marred so that we could have access to healing. Scripture says that by his wounds, we are healed. By his wounds, we can be healed.Sin makes us a mangled mess of humanity, it mars God's image in us. The more we sin, the less we look like God, the less we look like we were intended to look. It distorts our intended image. It tarnishes us beyond recognition. It makes us misshapen and malformed. And this is really what brings us to the meaning of the thorns. We see Christ in the man with the thorns and brings us to the meaning of the thorns, but they mean something.

Jesus Christ didn't come just to take the throne of Rome or just to take the throne of Jerusalem or just to take the throne of the United States. He didn't do that. He came to take the throne of all of creation and to be king of all of creation. Only a crown of thorns would do. Why? Well, what do the thorns symbolize? They symbolize the curse, that because of our sin, and because of our rebellion, there's a curse in the world. And that curse, the consequence of it is thorns. Where thorns are found, that's where the curse is found. Where the curse is found, that's where thorns are bound inextricably intertwined. The curse comes with these thorns. God created humanity and he created everything perfect in his image and likeness. And he created humanity to rule with God, to rule together, to rule underneath his sovereign rule. And as we submitted to God, God's authority was delegated to us so that we could fulfill His will and yeah, we rejected his rule. We decide to be the kings of our own little kingdoms, to make up our own rules. We want to be kings of ourselves. And we crowned ourselves and it turned out that this crown is the crown of thorns. And that's why when God tells us of the consequences of our rebellion, in Genesis 3:17-18, we see thorns. "And to Adam he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have been of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you should eat the plants of the field."

See, when God had created the world, there were no thorns. Even as you look at a rose, perfect rose in the Garden of Eden had no thorns, there were no thorns, that wasn't part of God's creation. It wasn't part of the original plan. Why, because thorns are a sign of the consequences of sin. They're a picture of unfruitfulness, they're a picture of desolation. They choke out life. They hurt and they harm and they wound. They're ultimately only good for burning. Each thorn that we see in the world is a painful reminder what Jesus had to do. In order to get rid of thorns of our lives from our souls, he had to absorb those in himself.

Romans 8:22 says, "For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now." When sin enters the world, the world was crowned with the crown of thorns. The thorn symbolize sin, they symbolize sorrow, they symbolize sweat, they symbolize rebellion from God. And every single thorn with its piercing pain is a sign, it's a symbol of what sin does to our soul. Sin as it enters, it goes first, it goes slowly, pierces and then it wedges in, it takes up more and more and more and more and it wounds unless until it completely kills. Proverbs 22:5 says, "Thorns and snakes are in the way of the crooked, "whoever guards his soul will keep far from them." Thorns are symbol of what sin does to the soul. It pierces, it wounds, it harms, it kills.

Matthew 7:16, "You will recognize them by their fruits. "Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?" It starts in the soul, and Jesus Christ said, "Whatever's in the heart, that's what comes out." From the heart, we see the fruit of our sin. Therefore, the thorns are such an integral part of God's redemption. They're a sign of the consequences of our rebellion, but they're also part of God's plan to redeem us from our rebellion. And you see, clusters of thorns as part of the redemptive story. I'll give you two and then I'll give you a third later. In two hear, we see is that when God comes to Moses, God brings a word of redemption to Moses. And he says, "I'm going to use you "to bring people out of captivity." And he brings that word in what way? He speaks to Moses from where? From a burning bush. What was that burning bush? It was a bush of thorns and thistles reddened by the fire and God's word comes through that. And then Jesus Christ is the ultimate Word of God. And again, we see the ultimate Word of God given to us through thorns and thistles, a crown of thorns also reddened not by fire, but by the blood of Jesus Christ. He's crowned with thorns and as Jesus is crowned with thorns, the Word of God falls silent.

Why all of this, is because a holy God is bound by his divine nature. He's just and he can't just forgive. It's the only thing he can't just do because to just forgive would be to contradict himself. He can't forgive sin on a whim. A price must be paid. A price must be exacted, every sin exacts a price. The beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that the price that God demands is also the price that he provides as the price that he procures. So every single bundle of thistles, of thorns is a sign of God's grace. Yes, it's a sign of the consequences of our sin, but it's also a whisper of grace, of redemption.

So Jesus here, he steps down from glory. He descended down to us because he's motivated by love. He was in heaven, adored by the angels, by the Cherubim, the Seraphim, they obeyed every single word he said, and here he is. And just imagine the contrast, the weight of the contrast. I want you to feel it, how he's mocked, he's scorned, he's ridiculed. And as he's mocked, he's still Lord and he could still call down 12 legions of these angels to stop these people from inflicting any more pain on him, yet he doesn't. Why? Because he chooses to be there. He's willingly caught in these thorns. He's a willing sacrifice willingly caught in the thorns. And this is, of course, a sign of something that came thousands of years before.

What's fascinating is that when Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, he built it on Mount Moriah. Another time that Mount Moriah shows up in Scripture is in Genesis 22. Another image that we have of thorns reddened by blood. And it's the story of Abraham and Isaac. I'm sure you know the story. Abraham waited for a son. God promised a long awaited son. Finally, toward the end of his life, God does send him a son, Isaac, a son whom Abraham loved with all of his heart. And God comes to Abraham, Genesis 22, and says, "I want you to take your only son, your beloved son, and I want you to sacrifice him," a demand that doesn't make any sense to us until we read the end of the story. So Abraham, in obedience to God, takes this son, they go on a three-day journey up to Mount Moriah and they take the fire and they take a wood and Isaac looks at his father and he says, "Father," this is Genesis 22:7, he says, "My father," Abraham says, "Here I am my son." He said, "Behold the fire and the wood but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham knew where the lamb was and doubtlessly choking back tears, he answers Isaac and says in verse eight, "God will provide for himself the lamb for burnt offering, my son."

So they went both of them together. They take the wood, took the fire, and they took the sacrifice. They go up to the top of the mountain. And Abraham looks at his son with tears in his eyes, and says, "Son, my beloved son, my one and only son, you are the sacrifice." Lays him down on the wood. Takes up a knife. And as he's about to sacrifice his own son, as the blade flashes in the sunlight, an angel of God speaks, his voice erupts. In Genesis 22:11, the angel says, "Abraham, Abraham!" "And he said, 'Here I am.' "He said, 'Do not lay your hand on the boy "'or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, "'seeing you have not withheld your son, 'your only son, from me.' And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son."

The thicket here, of course, literally means a thicket of briars and of thorns. That's why Jesus talking about Abraham. He said this, he said, "Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad." Abraham saw the shadow of the cross cast into the Old Testament, he saw that shadow in the story of God providing a sacrifice, of God asking Abraham to do what God would then do himself, that God himself would give his one and only beloved son. And his son willingly took on the thorns in order to redeem us.

The thorns are symbolic of our sin. They're symbolic of our excuses, and of our procrastination. They're symbolic of procrastination because we say, "I'll turn to Jesus at another time. And right now I want to enjoy my life. I want to enjoy my youth." And those thorns go deep and as they go deeper, they take away more and more of our life. These thorns are symbolic of excuses. I'm not sure if Jesus is the Son of God. I'm not sure that this is how I want to live my life. I'm not even sure that this is true. And we stopped there, instead of pursuing the truth and looking for evidence of the truth, foundation of the truth. Why does so many people believe? Why are so many people transformed by this gospel message we turned from it? But most importantly, the thorns symbolize our sin, sins of pride and greed and lust and envy, gluttony, sloth, wrath, they are all spikes, spikes, spikes, spikes to the head of the Son of God.

What do you crown him with? And this is what I really want you to meditate on this. What am I crowning Jesus with? Am I crowning him with glory, or am I crowning him with thorns? Do I bring good fruit or do I bring thorns? If Jesus Christ is God, we are to serve him. If he is king, we are to obey him. But if he is neither, don't profess him. Don't take his name in vain. He is God, and he is king.

And again, Jesus isn't seeking our pity. We don't see any description of his pain, his exquisite agony, or tears or groans. What he wants us to see is that he is willingly taking on our crown of thorns, our crown of sin. He's crowned with our sin. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Jesus is king over our sins. Therefore, we can have dominion over our sins. He is king over my sorrows. The man of sorrows absorbs my sorrows. Therefore, I can rejoice even in the midst of sorrows. Jesus Christ is king over our suffering. He suffered so that we could triumph. And even in the midst of suffering, we can have peace and tranquility and joy and gladness.

And Jesus Christ is also the king of our distractions. And this is an important note for us today in 2020. Even with extra time perhaps, we're so easily distracted from spending time thinking about what matters most. Holy scripture says, "It's better to go in the house of mourning than to house of feasting because in the house of mourning, we're reminded of the end of each of us." The end that meets each of us, lessons, the most important lessons that we can draw about life and by the turning to a house of mourning. So we take this moment to meditate on the mourning of Christ, but he is king of our distractions.

Another time that Jesus talks about thorns, thorns that crowd out the word of God. In Mark 4:7, he talks about preaching of God's Word or God's word is seed, and "Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain." And then his disciples come to him say, "Jesus, what does this mean? What do these thorns symbolize? Explain the parable to us." And Jesus says, in Mark 4:18, "And others are the ones sown among thorns. They're those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires of other things enter in and choke the word and it proves unfruitful." Today, let Jesus Christ reign over your cares. Let him reign over the deceitfulness of riches of your temptation to pursue worldly riches as the ultimate. He is king over the lust for things, for materials and he's king over all of that. He's king over our distractions. He is king over our cares.

So today, what are the cares that are burdening you? What's on your heart? What's causing you to panic? What's causing you to be anxious? What's causing you to fear? What's weighing you down? Lord says in Psalm 55:22, "Cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved." Our hearts can be caught in the thorns of anxiety, of disgrace, of discouragement, of fear, of shame, of guilt, of sin. And up until this moment, Jesus had never experienced the thorns of sin. He had never experienced the piercing power of sin on his soul. And he comes, and he takes all of that. And all of the thing is pressed in to him. It's pounded in to him. And all of the emotions tumble out and we see this in his final words on the cross, especially in the crescendo where he cries out to his father in Matthew 27:46, "’Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ That is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" He cries out to the God of the universe, this father, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" We heard an echo of this early on with Isaac asking, "Father, where is the Lamb?" Abraham says, "God will provide."

God has provided his one and only son. He forsakes his son on the cross. He abandons his son on the cross. He distances himself from his son on the cross. Why? Because his son is bearing the thorns of our sin. They're pressed upon his head and they're pounded into his soul. Why? This is the only way for God to close the distance that's separating us to bridge the chasm that's separating us from a Holy God. Jesus Christ is paying the penalty for our sin. To take off our crown of thorns, he had to put it upon his own head and into his own soul. And we see Jesus suffering in isolation and abandonment. Why? So that he can extend his love to us.

Jesus Christ chose that crown. He chose the nails. Jesus Christ chose the crucifixion. And he chose the pain. And he chose the agony, the abandonment, the betrayal, the denial, he chose all of it and he welcomes it in and he says, "I embrace all of it." Because that was the only way to embrace us, to embrace you. That's why even God designed Christ dying on the cross, his hands nailed into a cross as a sign of God's embrace. He says, "Come, let me take your spikes, let me take your thorns. Let me take everything that is ravaging your soul." And he embraces that in order to embrace us.

Galatians 3:13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanging on a tree." Isaiah 53:5, "But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed." Romans 5:8-9, "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God?"

Because Jesus Christ bore every single one of our thorns. He bore the greatest thorns that face us, Satan, sin and death. How much more so can we be assured that he can help us with whatever thorns that we're going through, whatever thorns that are in our side now. And even if they're still here, we know that there's a purpose for them. And the main purpose is to humble us and draw us closer to him, so that we know that when we are weak, he is strong. And we are strong.

We can't talk about this crown of thorns without talking about the crown to come and I'll close with this. Jesus knew that as he went through the suffering, he experienced the excruciating pain of crucifixion. Because of the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross because he knew that there would come a time where he would reclaim his crown authority. And in fact, it's many crowns of authority, many crowns of glory, and we see this in Revelation 19:11-16. And this day will come. "Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, many crowns, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. He will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury "of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe, and on his thigh, he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords."

In his first coming, Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, and the second he comes in a white stallion. In the first coming, he came to be judged by people. In the Second Coming, he will come to judge. And that's where we find ourselves. We find ourselves in the already but not yet. We find ourselves in this moment where God is still extending to us grace, he's still extending to us his pierced hands of forgiveness and saying, "Come, give me your thorns, give me your thistles. Give me your sin. Give me your brokenness, give me your guilt. Give me your shame. And in return, I give you forgiveness, and purity, and healing, and grace." In the first coming, he came and received a crown of thorns In the second coming, he will receive a crown of victories and keep these two images in mind, a crown of thorns and a crown of glory. How vast is the distance between the two? Well, it's infinite. It's a sign to show us this is how big God's love is for us. It's an infinite love. And because he was willing to give up his crown of glory to take up a crown of thorns, he can forgive. He can heal, he can provide.

This is what makes Good Friday so good. Now, it's not just Good Friday, it's a great Friday. And a greater Sunday is coming. He was crowned with thorns, he will be crowned in glory. Today's Friday but Sunday is coming. I can't wait. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the promise of the resurrection. And we thank you, that you went through hell in order to give us heaven. You went through the crown of thorns in order to be crowned with glory in order to welcome us into your glory. So we glorify you now, we repent of sin. And, Lord, we thank you. Our hearts are filled with so much joy that you were willing to do this. This is what it took and this is what you were willing to take because of your vast love for us. We thank you and we love you and pray all this in Christ holy name. Amen.