Mark 15: Open For Business

The crucifixion of Jesus represents more than just the painful death of a revolutionary teacher—it marks the moment everything changed between humanity and God. Through Jesus' sacrifice, the impenetrable barrier that kept people from experiencing God's presence was dramatically removed.

For centuries, access to God's presence required intermediaries and rituals. The temple's Holy of Holies remained sealed behind a massive curtain, allowing only the high priest entry once per year. This separation symbolized the distance sin had created between humanity and our Creator since Eden. But in one dramatic moment as Jesus breathed his last, that curtain tore from top to bottom—God's divine declaration that direct access was now available to everyone.

What makes this passage particularly powerful is how it reveals unexpected witnesses to this world-changing event. A Roman centurion—not a religious leader—becomes the first to declare Jesus' divine identity after his death. Women disciples maintain their devotion from a distance when others fled. And Joseph of Arimathea risks his reputation to provide Jesus proper burial. These contrasting responses remind us that truth is often recognized first by those society deems least qualified.

The torn temple curtain represents God's permanent "open for business" sign, inviting all who seek him to approach without fear or intermediary. Whatever struggles you face, know that because of Jesus' sacrifice, you now have direct access to the throne of grace. Join us as we explore this pivotal moment in Mark 15 and discover how it transforms our understanding of our relationship with God.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Bible Breakdown
• 1:34 Jesus Before Pilate
• 4:22 Mockery and Crucifixion
• 8:10 Jesus' Final Moments
• 9:56 The Temple Curtain Torn
• 12:36 The Burial and Open Access

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown podcast with your host, pastor Brandon. Today, mark, chapter 15, and today's title is Open for Business. Open for Business. I have a great friend of mine who recently opened a business and it was really cool to be able to go in before it had opened up and to kind of see the process and to see what was going on. But, man, there was nothing like the moment when he was able to turn on the sign that said open, and it was powerful. It was amazing because it was just a culmination of just years of planning and thought and praying and all. It's just a powerful moment, and I can't even imagine what that would have felt like, even more so for the disciples during today's chapter, because they've been walking with Jesus, they've been talking with him. Then they see this horrific thing that he is going through. But then the temple is now open for business because the curtain has been torn, and if you don't know what I mean by that, you're going to know in just a moment. So if you have your Bibles, I want to open up with me to Mark chapter 15,. Get your coffee, get your popcorn, because it's going to get crazy today. But while we're doing that, make sure you take just a moment to like and share and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. It doesn't cost you anything, but it really helps us to get in those search engines. So when people start searching for where can I go to read my Bible every day, we will show up there as an opportunity for them. Also, make sure you're going to the Bible Breakdown discussion on Facebook. There's an amazing group of people doing a wonderful job and, as we always say, the more you dig, the more you find, and you can find all of that at the Bible Breakdown Hub at thebiblebreakdowncom.

Speaker 1: 1:50

Well, we're about to be finished with what, for many of us, has become one of our favorite Gospels, because it is the Gospel in motion. It is just constantly things are happening and really, as we were going through this, it was difficult for me to come up with one unifying theme, to name a lot of these chapters, because there's just so much happening. Today is not one of those days. If you were with us yesterday, it really talked about how Jesus was getting ready to be crucified, because he just outright says I am the one, I'm the one you've been waiting for, I'm the one you've heard stories about. He just laid it down. Well, now the king is about to have his coronation, but it is not a coronation that any of them expected, because they were expecting an earthly king to come and take up a seat. This is the king of kings and he is coming to take over everything. So if you're ready, let's jump in and read this and we'll get to where we see how we can say it's now open for business. Here we go. Chapter 15, verse 1 says this Very early in the morning, the leading priest, the elders and the teachers of religious law, the entire high council, met to discuss their next step.

Speaker 1: 2:58

They bound Jesus, led him away and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate asked Jesus Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus replied you've said it. Then the leading priest kept accusing him of many crimes and Pilate asked him aren't you going to answer them? What about all these charges they are bringing up against you? But Jesus said nothing, much to Pilate's surprise.

Speaker 1: 3:22

Now, it was the governor's custom each year during the Passover celebration to release one prisoner, anyone the people requested. One of the prisoners at the time was Barabbas, a revolutionary who had committed murder in an uprising. The crowd went to Pilate and asked him to release the prisoner. As usual, would you like me to release to you this king of the Jews? Pilate asked For he realized by now the leading priest had arrested Jesus out of envy. But at this point the leading priest stirred up the crowd to demand the release of Barabbas instead of Jesus. Pilate asked them then what should I do with this man you call the king of the Jews? They shouted back crucify him why. Pilate demanded what crime has he committed? But the mob roared even louder crucify him why. Pilate demanded what crime has he committed? But the mob roared even louder crucify him. So, to pacify the crowd, pilate released Barabbas to them and he ordered Jesus to be flogged with a lead-tipped whip and turned him over to the Roman soldiers to be crucified.

Speaker 1: 4:20

Now I want to pause for a second to kind of rehab something, and that is a lot of people, myself included, have given this crowd a hard time over the years Because literally less than a week before this, they are crying out blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, as Jesus is coming into Jerusalem. Now they're crying crucify him. Well, this is something we have to remember. First of all, I know we're reading this one chapter at a time, so it feels like everything is happening at the same time, but a few days have passed, a week has passed, and so this crowd is not the exact same crowd. Plus, as we just got through reading, it was early in the morning Now, the night before. A lot of the people that were in that crowd, they were up late that night feasting and being part of the Passover celebration and they had all these things they had to do, and so if it was early in the morning, it was not most likely this massive crowd of hundreds and possibly up to a thousand or more people that welcomed Jesus into the city. This is a much smaller group of people that is being controlled by these leading priests, and so we have to be careful that, myself included, to automatically assume it's the same people. It is very likely many of the people woke up that day to see Jesus being crucified and were shocked at what was happening. All right, verse 16,.

Speaker 1: 5:38

The soldiers took Jesus into the courtyard of the governor's headquarters, called the praetorium, and called out the entire regiment. They dressed him in a purple robe and they wove thorn branches into a crown and put it on his head. Then they saluted him and taunted Hail King of the Jews. And they struck him on the head with a reed stick, spit on him and dropped to their knees in mock worship. And when they were finally tired of mocking him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him again and then he led him away to be crucified.

Speaker 1: 6:09

A passerby named Simon, who is from Cyrene, was coming in from the countryside just then and the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus' cross. Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus. Now pause. In one of the later letters that Paul writes, he actually references a guy named Rufus. Now, obviously there was probably more than one Rufus alive, but some scholars think that maybe this young guy right here, rufus, later became a Christ follower and was close enough to Paul that he was mentioned in a shout out at the end of one of his letters. I think that's really cool. All right, verse 22.

Speaker 1: 6:43

And they brought Jesus to a place called Golgotha, which means the place of the skull. They offered him wine drugged with myrrh, but he refused it. Then the soldiers nailed him to a cross and they divided his clothes and threw dice to decide who would get each piece. It was nine o'clock in the morning when they crucified him. A sign announced the charge against him and it read the king of the Jews. Two revolutionaries were crucified with him, one on the right and one on his left.

Speaker 1: 7:11

The people passing by shouted abuse, shaking their heads in mockery. Ha, look at you now, they yelled at him. You said you were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. Well then, save yourself. Come down from the cross. The leading priest and teachers of religious law also mocked Jesus. He saved others, they scoffed, but he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross and then we will see it and believe him. Even the men who were crucified with Jesus ridiculed him.

Speaker 1: 7:42

At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o'clock. Then, at three o'clock, jesus called out with a loud voice Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani, which means my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Some of the bystanders misunderstood and thought he was calling out for the prophet Elijah. One of them ran and filled a sponge with sour wine and holding it up to him in a reed stick so he could drink it. Wait, they said. Let's see whether Elijah comes to take him down. Then Jesus muttered another loud cry and breathed his last I love this right here. And the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. We'll talk about why that's so awesome in a minute. And the Roman officer who stood facing him saw how he had died. He exclaimed this man was the son of God. Some women were there watching from the distance, including Mary Magdalene, mary, the mother of James the younger, and of Joseph and Salome. They had been followers of Jesus who had cared for him while he was in Galilee. Many other women who had come with him to Jerusalem were also there.

Speaker 1: 8:50

All this happened on Friday, the day of preparation, and the day before the Sabbath. As evening approached, joseph of Arimathea took a risk and went to Pilate and asked for Jesus' body. Joseph was an honored member of the high council and he was waiting for the kingdom of God to come. Pilate couldn't believe that Jesus was already dead, so he called for the Roman officer and asked if he had died. Yet the officer confirmed that Jesus was dead, so Pilate told Joseph he could have the body. Joseph bought a long sheet of linen cloth and he took Jesus' body down from the cross, wrapped it in the cloth and laid it in a tomb that he had carved out of the rock. Then he rolled a stone in front of the entrance. Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph, saw where Jesus' body was laid. This is just amazing.

Speaker 1: 9:39

There's so many things here I'd like to pull out, but for the sake of just I know I've covered some of this in some of the other you know gospels. I just want to say real quick to make sure you look at the other Gospels, because when it says in verse 34 that he cried out my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Unintentionally, a lot of Bible teachers in the past have used this to say that God, the Father, turned his back on the Son. However, I don't believe that's true. This is actually the beginning of Psalm 22, which is a messianic Psalm. It's telling about how all these bad people are doing all these bad things, but I trust in God and I will overcome and it's all going to end out well. And so what Jesus is actually doing is he is saying remember the messianic Psalm, I am him, which actually would make sense. Why, in the few verses later they say well, let's see if Elijah comes to get him, because Elijah was supposed to be the hype man. You're the running buddy of the Messiah. Well, if you're the Messiah, where's Elijah? Basically is what they're saying? They have no idea that Jesus is not saying I'm in trouble. He's saying don't worry everybody, everything's going according to plan. So it's actually a statement of victory, not a statement of defeat.

Speaker 1: 10:56

The next thing that's interesting is you notice how Pilate was surprised that Jesus was already dead. And here's the reason why is because part of the, the excruciatingness if that's a word of crucifixion was the amount of time it took, the reason why people would die of crucifixion. One of the reasons is exposure. It could take days sometimes for someone to die. They didn't always nail them to the cross the way they did with Jesus. Many times it would be just a slow, agonizing death. So the fact that he died so quickly was something. But the reason why he died was because almost never would they flog someone and then crucify them, because if the whole point of the suffering is that it lasts, you don't want to beat them to the point of death and then crucify them. They kind of don't work together, right. But because they beat Jesus until he almost died, which was very uncommon, to then go crucify him. And then crucified him. He only was able to live for about six hours, which is nothing. And it's also kind of amazing that if they had not have beaten him first, he would not have fulfilled some of the prophecies. So they did something very uncommon, very rare, but it turns out it was exactly what God had foretold such a long time ago, just reminding us all that Jesus knows what he's doing.

Speaker 1: 12:10

But here's the final thing, what I love about this. Verse 38 says when he breathed his last, the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Now, the reason why that's amazing is in the Old Testament there was a veil, a curtain, that was put between the holiest of holies, where the literal presence of God would dwell, and the outside sanctuary, the holy place, and all that because they could not look upon the glory of the Lord and live. There was always a dividing line that kept people from getting to God because of the sin in their heart, and so for thousands of years God was not able to have the relationship he wanted to have with us, like in the Garden of of eden because of the barrier that been created by our sin. But what I love about this verse is that curtain was now torn and now everyone could see in to the glory of god. There was no longer a barrier between us and god, but because of what jesus did, he was declaring the holy place, the holiest of holies, is now open for business, and that's what I want to leave you with today as we get ready to end the chapter.

Speaker 1: 13:17

The amazing thing about the crucifixion was number one, that Jesus knew and he went anyway. He went all the way. He didn't get up to it. He went all the way to the cross and went through it, survived it as far as in he died, but he didn't give up is what I'm trying to say. And in the process he won the victory for all of us that now we can.

Speaker 1: 13:39

The book of Hebrews says go to the very throne room of grace because of what Jesus has done. So whatever is going on in your life, whatever is happening, can I tell you, jesus knows, jesus cares, and Jesus has turned on the open sign and he says come one, come all, experience the freedom of salvation. Let's pray together right now. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you, god, for your word, thank you for your victory, and thank you that you share it with all of us.

Speaker 1: 14:06

My prayer today, god, is that not a single person listening or watching to this will ever feel like the heavens are closed to them. But because of what you have done, jesus, you established the open sign and it never closes. We celebrate you today In Jesus' name. We pray Amen. You know what God's word says in Mark 8, verse 34. It says if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. I'm excited to go to the final conclusion with you, and I've got some announcements for you tomorrow as well, so I will see you then for Mark, chapter 16.