(This sermon will be a part of Shaw Ranch Sermons Volume 2)
A Sermon on Raw Faith, Deep Persecution, and Enduring the Dark
By Jared Shaw
Introduction: A Warning to the Comfortable
This sermon is a little more in-depth and difficult to hear then the rest. This is not a sermon designed to make you feel warm and fuzzy. It is not a sanitized, plastic version of the Gospel—the kind that fits neatly on a decorative coffee mug.
Today, we are pulling back the polished curtains of our modern church traditions to look at the raw, visceral, and agonizing reality of what biblical faith actually demands. We have a habit in the modern church of cleaning up the Bible. We bleach the stains out of the text. We turn historical trauma into flannel-graph stories for children. We take the blood, the stench, the social ruin, and the agonizing physical torture of scripture, and we wrap it in neat little packages because the raw truth makes us uncomfortable.
However, if we do not understand the depth of the suffering, we can never comprehend the depth of the faith. Faith is not a magic lever we pull to escape adversity. Faith is the anchor that holds when the world tears our flesh, breaks our hearts, and casts us into the muck.
Today, we are looking at three distinct stories of faith through the mud, the blood, and the cross—shattered, raw, and ultimate.
Part 1: Through the Mud
The Shunned Mother in the Cave
We begin where the earthly story of Christ begins, but we must strip away the porcelain nativity scenes. We have been conditioned to picture a clean, cozy wooden barn, a glowing star, and a peaceful night. That is a cultural myth. The reality of Mary’s journey is a story of profound isolation, family shame, and systemic persecution.
To understand her suffering, you have to understand first-century Jewish culture. Mary was a young girl betrothed to Joseph. When she was found to be with child before their marriage was consummated, the immediate, undeniable assumption of Joseph’s family and community was simple: she was a lying, deceptive adulterer.
In first century Jewish culture, public scandal did not just bring embarrassment; it brought total social alienation and in a lot of cases even persecution under the law’s of Leviticus. Joseph’s family would have been deeply ashamed of her, viewing her pregnancy as an unforgivable stain on their families honor.
When they arrived in Bethlehem—Joseph’s ancestral home—she was not turned away by a cold innkeeper running a hotel. The Greek word often translated as “inn” (kataluma) actually means a guest room or a family dwelling. Joseph’s own extended family shut their doors to her. They forced her out of the main living spaces. They drove her down into the lowest part of the structure—a dark, damp, claustrophobic limestone cave setting in a cave system attached to the dwelling.
History shows us that this is exactly how first-century shepherds lived and worked. They used these caves to protect their livestock from the harsh elements and predators of the desert night.
Think about the sheer horror of that notion. Mary, a young teenager in the agonizing throes of labor, was discarded into the mud, the feces, and the rotting straw of animals because human judgment had deemed her unworthy of human decency.
Luke 2:6-7 (NIV)
“While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.”
She placed the Savior of the world in a feeding trough that was slimy with the saliva of livestock. Yet, in that dark, filthy cave, Mary’s faith kept her strong. She didn’t look up at the stone ceiling and curse God for the lack of a bed.
She didn’t have a midwife or a supportive family. She had a promise from God, and her unwavering faith protected her soul while she brought forth life in the darkest valley.
Take a moment to contemplate this.
To all who are married, to all who have parents. Think about what happened here.
As a husband can you see your wife being persecuted by your family in this way. That the son she is bringing into this world was born into the mud with the animals.
As a mother, can you image being forced to give birth to your child in the barn. A literal stones throw away from a warm clean bed and a family that should be taking care of you?
As a child of a mother, can you imagine your mother and father facing such persecution by those you call family.
The faith of Mary to carry on in such a moment was indisputable strong. Especially in a time when grief and sadness alone could cause a woman to lose her life during childbirth. Yet she carried on, strong and brave. Having faith that literally changed the world.
Part 2: Through the Blood
The Outcast Woman and the Cost of a Touch
Fast forward some thirty years. The child born in the muck is now walking the earth, surrounded by crowds. And in that crowd is a woman whose faith was so fierce, so desperate, that it stopped Christ dead in His tracks.
We talk about the woman with the issue of blood as a quick Sunday school miracle, but we completely overlook the absolute horror of her existence. For twelve long years, this woman’s body had been trapped in a continuous, severe hemorrhage, bleeding far beyond the natural cycle of a woman.
To understand her persecution, we must look at the law of her day.
Leviticus 15:25 (NIV)
“When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days at a time other than her monthly period or has a discharge that continues beyond her period, she will be unclean as long as she has the discharge, just as in the days of her period.”
Under Levitical law, chronic bleeding didn’t just mean a medical illness—it meant she was perpetually, legally unclean.
Everything and everyone she touched became defiled. For twelve years, she could not hug her family. She could not sit on a communal chair. She could not enter the temple to worship. She was a living ghost, socially executed, bankrupt from paying doctors who only made her suffer more, and completely cast out by her community. She was viewed as a physical and spiritual biohazard.
For her to enter a dense, pressing crowd was an act of extreme defiance. If the crowd had recognized her, if they realized an unclean, bleeding woman was pushing past them, contaminating dozens of religious men by her very presence, she would have been legally justified to be dragged out and stoned to death.
Mark 5:27-28 (NIV)
“When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.'”
She was running on pure survival and relentless, desperate faith. She dropped to her hands and knees in the dirt, dodging the heavy sandals of men who would crush her if they knew who she was, risking public execution just to graze the fringe of His garment.
Her faith was so powerful, so heavy with conviction, that it literally drew virtue out of the Son of God. Her faith in Christ moved an insurmountable mountain of shame.
To take a moment and place yourself in her shoes.
The fear she would have had to of overcome.
The shame, disowned by her own family and community.
The pain, the weakness from her aliment.
Years without holding a friend or a hug from a loved one.
She knew that she could be put to death for this act. She knew what she was doing under the law would contaminate those she touched. Thus resulting in her persecution. But her faith in Jesus was so powerful it defied the fear, it defied all logic.
Her faith was so powerful that it literally stopped the son of God in his tracks.
Part 3: Through the Cross
The Ultimate Agony and Endurance
This brings us to the final, most brutal, and most uncomfortable reality of all: the faith of Jesus Christ Himself.
We speak of Jesus saving us, but do we ever stop to look at the sheer, terrifying weight of the faith He had to possess in the Father to endure the cross?
Jesus did not casually drift into the crucifixion. His agony began in the Garden of Gethsemane, sweating drops of blood under the crushing psychological weight of what was coming. He prayed, asking the Father to take the cup away, but ultimately surrendered to the mission.
Matthew 26:53-54 (NIV)
“Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”
He had the power to call down a host of angels to wipe out His executioners. He could have stopped the process at any time, but He believed in God’s plan. He allowed the sacrifice to happen because of his faith in Gods plan.
Christ even had such faith in you and I that he bore the weight of the cross even though this betrayal started with His own people, with humanity and the hearts of man.
Then He was handed over to the Roman Praetorium for interrogation. During this phase, He wasn’t just questioned; He was brutalized. The guards beat Him with their fists, mocked Him, and struck Him in the dark. But the true horror of Roman execution had not yet been unleashed. Before the physical butchery began, Christ had to endure a psychological torment that was almost as devastating as the whip itself.
Pilate dragged Him out and presented Him for judgment before His own people—the very people He had loved, healed, and fed mixed in with the pharisees. There, standing battered and exhausted, He was placed side-by-side with Barabbas, a hardened, violent murderer.
Pilate gave the crowd a choice, condemn one to death and the other would be set free. The crowed chose the killer to be set free. They looked at the Son of God and hurled their insults, spitting their hatred and condemning Him to die. The psychological agony of standing in front of the humanity You created, only to hear them roar with a bloodthirsty demand for Your execution, is a weight that would break the mind of any normal man.
That catastrophic physical torture only came after Pilate washed his hands, caved to the mob, and handed down the final sentence of death.
Once the judgment was cast, Jesus was handed over for scourging.
Roman scourging was the mandatory, agonizing first step of a crucifixion, designed to bring a man as close to death as possible without actually killing him. This was not a simple whipping. The Romans used a weapon called the flagrum, or the cat-of-nine-tails. It was a heavy whip consisting of multiple braided leather thongs, but it was what they wove into the leather that made it a tool of pure butchery. They embedded jagged pieces of shattered sheep bone, sharp metal shards, and heavy lead balls.
The soldiers stripped Him, tied His hands tightly around a stone post, and struck Him with full, uninhibited force.
With every single blow, the heavy lead weights smashed deep into His flesh, causing massive internal bruising and blunt force trauma. Then, the jagged bones and sharp metal caught on the skin and underlying tissue. When the soldier violently yanked the whip back, it didn’t just leave a welt—it literally tore chunks of human flesh away from the body.
Lash after agonizing lash, His back was turned into a shredded, bleeding wasteland.
By the end of a Roman scourging, a victim’s back was often flayed open so deeply that the muscle, the sinew, and even the stark white of the ribs and spine were left completely exposed to the open air.
But the torture didn’t stop there. Then came the crown. The thorns native to the Bethlehem and Jerusalem regions were not the tiny, fragile briars you see on a rose bush; they were rigid, iron-like spikes that grew up to two inches long. The soldiers twisted these vicious thorns together into a crude crown.
They didn’t just gently place it on His head. They shoved it down, and then they took a heavy wooden staff and repeatedly slammed it into His skull. They beat Him on the head over and over, driving those brutal spikes deep into His scalp until the blood poured down His face, blinding His eyes and matting in His beard.
Matthew 27:30 (NIV)
“They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again.”
Mark 15:19 (NIV)
“Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him.”
But the torture didn’t end in the Praetorium.
After they were done making a bloody mockery of Jesus, the Romans didn’t offer Him a cart or a moment of rest. They dragged Him out into the heat and loaded the heavy, rough-hewn wooden cross (weighing more than a hundred pounds) directly onto His beaten and bloody shoulders.
He was already suffering from severe hypovolemic shock, massive blood loss, and intense dehydration. His body was systematically shutting down. Yet, they forced this broken, mutilated man to march up the hill.
They made Him carry the very instrument of His own execution through the winding, crowded streets of Jerusalem. The Romans designed this walk specifically to break a man’s mind before they ended his life. This was a public spectacle of ultimate humiliation.
Think about the profound psychological torment of that march.
He was stumbling, falling face-first into the dirt, collapsing under the crushing weight of the timber as the jagged splinters dug directly into His exposed flesh. And as He crawled and dragged Himself forward, He looked up into the faces of the crowd. These were His people. These were the streets where He had healed their sick, fed their hungry, and wept for their brokenness.
Now, they lined the roads to watch Him be treated like the lowest form of human garbage. They jeered at Him, spat at Him, and cheered for His slaughter. Stripped of all earthly dignity, He dragged that wooden cross to Golgotha—the Place of the Skull—up the very hill we now call Calvary, enduring the absolute rejection of the very humanity He came to save.”
Finally, they laid him down and drove thick iron spikes through His wrists and feet. Then they lifted the cross high in the air.
Medical science tells us that crucifixion is a slow death by suffocation. As a person hangs by their arms, the weight of the body forces the lungs into a constant state of inhalation. To take a single breath, Jesus had to push down on the iron spikes driven through His shattered feet and pull up with His nailed wrists.
Every single breath He took for those agonizing hours required Him to scrape His raw, shredded, open back up and down against the rough, splintered wood of that cross.
Yet, throughout six hours of unmitigated hell on earth, His faith in the Father never shattered. At the very peak of His torture, looking down at the monsters who had mutilated Him, He did not call down curses. He chose forgiveness.
He sacrificed Himself for our sins, enduring the cross because His faith in the ultimate rebirth of humanity was stronger than the agony of the wood.
Take a moment for reflection.
He was accused of false prophesy.
Condemned by his own people.
Beaten and tortured.
Forced to march through the streets in humiliation.
Then hung in complete agony for 6 hours.
However, at no point did he lose his faith in God. At no point did he even lose his faith in humanity. Aking God to forgive his persecutors of their sins while he suffered.
What love he has for us. What faith he has for us to endure such a thing so that we may be cleaned of our sins. Sins he did not commit, yet paid the ultimate brutal price for.
And through all of it he never lost his faith in Gods plan.
Conclusion
Call to the Water
Look at these three stories. Mary in the filth of the animal cave. The bleeding woman crawling through the dirt, facing the threat of death. Jesus Christ, hanging beaten and butchered on a Roman cross.
None of them are clean. None of them are comfortable. Yet, we live in a world where we falsely believe that if we have faith, we will be spared from the fire. We think faith means a comfortable life.
Scripture screams the exact opposite.
Sometimes terrible things happen. When you find yourself in your own cave—when society considers you an outcast, when your body is failing, when you are broken, starved, and standing in the muck—that is when your faith must speak.
Our call as Christians is to show the world our faith in the exact moments when we suffer most. To stand in the midst of total destruction and trust In Gods plan.
To look up through the blood and the tears, and declare to a watching world: “My circumstances are horrific, but my God is still good.”
1 Peter 2:24 (NIV)
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed.’”
If you are reading this today and you do not know this Savior—if you have been dragging your own heavy pack through the muck and the blood, trying to survive this broken world on your own—it is time to lay it down. Christ endured the ultimate torture so that your ledger could be wiped clean.
Do not wait for your life to become comfortable before you turn to Him. True faith starts in the dirt. Step forward, profess your faith in the King who bled for you, and get baptized.
Leave your old life in the water, and walk into the light of grace.
Have faith in the dark. Have faith in the dirt.
Have faith all the way to Calvary.