It hit me yesterday as I was
looking to see how far I might get into the next few weeks to
realize that next week, for the first time in a long time, I'll
actually be preaching on the resurrection of Jesus on that
particular calendar day that most people call Easter and most
really holy people call Resurrection Day. As you know, we do not preach
to a calendar, but we do exposition as it's needed for the church.
So for the first time, I guess Grace Truth Church will have
an Easter sermon on Easter Sunday. But you know what I mean. In
John 19, we're going to start this morning in verse 17 and
go down through verse 30. So read with me. Right before
17, it says, so they took Jesus and he went out bearing his own
cross to the place called the place of a school, which in Aramaic
is called Golgotha. There they crucified him and
with him two others, one on either side and Jesus between them.
Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read,
Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Many of the Jews read
this inscription for the place where Jesus was crucified was
near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in
Greek. So the chief priest of the Jews
said to Pilate, do not write the King of the Jews, but write
rather, this man said, I am the King of the Jews. Pilate answered,
what I have written, I have written. When the soldiers had crucified
Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts.
One part for each soldier, also his tunic. But the tunic was
seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. So they said
to one another, let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see
whose it shall be. This was to fulfill scripture,
which says, they divided my garments among them, and for my clothing
they cast lots. So the soldiers did these things.
But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his
mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing
nearby, he said to his mother, Woman, behold, your son. Then
he said to the disciple, Behold, your mother. And from that hour,
the disciple took her to his own home. After this, Jesus,
knowing that all was now finished, said to fulfill scripture, I
thirst. A jar full of sour wine stood
there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop
branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine,
he said, it is finished, and he bowed his head and he gave
up his spirit." Now this narrative, of course, is taught and has
been taught in most churches and Sunday school classes and
homes throughout the centuries. And it's very easy just to say,
OK, here we are. We've got Jesus. He's being crucified. He talks about his mom. And you see the gospel, the other
synoptic accounts. You see that there are some differences.
Mark in himself does not even does not mention all the things
that John mentions. He doesn't mention the multilinguistic
attributes of the signs. He and so on and so forth. But yet through all four gospels
you get a complete picture and sometimes it's easy for us to
just read it and move on we got the narrative now let's move
on but like I've been saying over the last few years narrative
is difficult to preach because it's not teaching us something
directly it's not intended in that sense to listen to the story
and from that story we see absolute direct teaching However, John's
record of this is, in its narrative, direct teaching. Specifically,
it's theological. Everything that John records
has a theological tune to it. It is part of the greater composition
and the greater, I don't even know what the word I'm looking
for, but the greater grand I don't... scheme, theological narrative,
meta-narrative, there's a better word, the grand meta-narrative
of the reality that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, is the Christ,
is the Son of the Living God, and believing in His witness,
you may have life in His name. Believing in all that He's said
and taught, you may have life in His name. All that He is,
you may have life in His name. But unfortunately, we take narratives
in our culture as just something to hold. I've got the story of
Jesus in my heart. I believe that that really happened
to Jesus. Well, most people believe that
really happened to Jesus. Most historians around the first
and second century continued the story of this man, Jesus
of Nazareth. And the story became legendary
and somewhat mythological. And even those people who call
themselves Christians today, if they take the word of God,
they would even In some way, if you really parsed out what
they think, it's often mythological in their own minds. But there
is absolute theological foundations here. First, we've seen already
that Jesus says to Pilate, the one who is from above has granted
you to have this authority over me in order that I might die
because remember he says do you not know that I have the power
to release you and the authority to crucify you and Jesus says
to him you don't have any authority over me unless it's been granted
you from above now why is that important we talked about that
last week and my mind was so weirded out last week that I
don't even remember the teaching And I did not have time this
week to go back and listen to my own teaching so that I would
know what I taught and what I didn't. But one specific thing that I
want to make sure that we have in our ears and our hearts and
minds today is that all of this is the fulfillment of Christ's
purpose to display the fullness of the glory of God. That's what
it is. Every conversation, every circumstance,
every instance, everything, especially as John records it, is to display
the very purpose of this writing that we may see the fullness
of the glory of God face-to-face in Jesus Christ. The death of
Jesus and all its subsequent glories are, is, the glory of
God in the fullness. So that means that Jesus' death,
His obedience unto death, even on a cross, is seeing God in
all His fullness. There is nothing left to see.
and everything that has happened in the world from the beginning
when God says let there be light to the very point in which Christ
has come in this narrative to be put on the cross is the point
of all creation. It's why everything exists. This is how heavy upon our hearts
and minds should be our understanding of sovereignty It should be our
understanding of omniscience and omnipotence. It should be
our understanding of the power and the rule and the reign of
God, who is Jesus Christ, the man, the God, eternal King. We also saw last week that as
Pilate found no fault in Jesus by his own law, we saw the Pharisees
come back and say, but he has made himself to be the Son of
God. We see Pilate was fearful. Why?
As we talked, I'm sure, I hope and pray we did, that these Romans
were very superstitious. Someone having a claim to deity
is someone to be honored and feared. Not someone that would
be a threat to Caesar, for Caesar in himself is a divine man by
his title Lord. But there was some trepidation
on Pilate's part. to put Jesus to death if this
man were indeed a divine man, a divinely appointed human even,
maybe a child of one of the gods. And something that I failed to
talk about, I did talk about the the desperate beating prior
to the crucifixion, but I failed to mention something that's not
very obvious in John's gospel. When Pilate had Jesus whipped,
and when he put the thorns on his head, and when he covered
him in the purple as a mockery, there are several things that
need to be understood. This is what I was trying to
get to. First, is that Rome hates Israel. It hates them. Pilate, in like manner, hates
Jews. He hates them. And so, part of
what he didn't want to do was to succumb to their wishes, one. Secondly, he did not want to
really crucify an innocent man. And thirdly, when he came out
and presented Jesus having been beaten as their king, I did say
this, he was mocking them. He was mocking them. He was mocking
Christ, oh this king of yours, and more importantly he was mocking
them. Here's your king. There is a
difference in the beating that Jesus received before he was
presented as their king versus the one he did receive when he
was prepared for crucifixion. So in the same few hours Jesus
was beaten twice. A scourging and then the intense
beating that would have torn his flesh from his body. here. As he presents them their
king, what do the Jews do? They become more loyal to Caesar
than Pilate himself. They usurp the very authority
of this king that is being mocked before them and in some way turn
the table on Pilate who has to do what they ask because they
invoke a loyalty to Caesar. This king, if as you say is our
king, is a threat to Caesar. And we want to be a friend to
Caesar. So as Pilate seeks to continue
to let him go, he succumbs. to put Jesus on the cross. And
so that's where we are here in the latter part of 16, starting
in verse 17, as we've already read this morning. It says, So
they took Jesus, and He went out bearing His own cross to
the place, as we see, called Golgotha. Now the synoptics,
some of the synoptics give an illustration of Jesus was not
able to carry His cross very far. Obviously, having been beaten
and then scourged, He could not. So Joseph of Arimathea was grabbed
from the crowd and bore the beam that Christ would die upon. Jesus,
though someone else carried his beam, he still carried the penalty. He still carried the weight.
He still carried the gravity of death. And it was not death
in the sense of just human death that mattered. This was not Jesus
as a holy and divine king getting one over on his enemies. The
cross and his death was the purpose of God the Father that Jesus
would propitiate for the elect of all time. that He would finish
the work of redemption thus revealing the glory of God in its fullest. And so they take Jesus and there
they crucify Him. John is simply not elaborative
here because the synoptics teach that the two murderers or marauders
or whatever You want to call them the people of Barabbas,
those two usurpers, those people who were condemned to death were
on either side of Him. And we know that dialogue, we
know that they mocked Him and they scoffed at Him in their
dying day. And God the Son revealed Himself to one that He might
taste the trueness of eternal life and be with Christ that
day in paradise. But keep in mind, you might say,
then what is the charge that Jesus bore? From a human point
of view, He bore no charge. He was innocent of all things,
but from a judicial point of view, He was charged as one who
was causing political division, possibly like someone who would
become a rebel. Though he was not that and though
he never was found guilty, that was the official charge. So Pilate,
which was very common, actually it was always common, they would
always put a placard or a title, titulos, I think is the Greek
word there. They would put a title above the condemned and the title
would be the charge. And here we see that Pilate wrote,
Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. So for everyone to
see, this man was being killed and dying because he was the
King of the Jews. But he wasn't. in a real sense,
politically. But He was, in a true sense,
spiritually. Because Jesus is the King of
all Israel. He is the King of all Rome. He
is the King of all nations, the King of all kings. But more specifically,
He is the King of His elect, the true Israel of God. He is
the King of the chosen of God. And so this mockery continues.
And we see that it was mockery because of how the crowd responded.
How they came back at Pilate and would dare even say, don't
put that, put that, he said, I am the king of the Jews. Don't
just put him to death and make people think that he's the king.
So even in his death, they wanted nothing to do with him. They
hated their Messiah. The very one who came, they could
care less about him, They could care less about His rule. They could care less about His
authority. Why? Because they had not been appointed
unto life. They had not been granted the
change of mind to see the perfection of Jesus, to see the fullness
of God in all of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ. Some people like to get bogged
down. Higher critics here get really bogged down on why were
there three languages? Some of them get bogged down,
well, why didn't they talk about the second beating? Some of them
get bogged down, how many women were there? Was his mother remarried? Was her name this? Was her name
that? What about this? Were there four Marys standing
at the grave of Jesus from the same house? I mean, you wouldn't
believe it, how much criticism comes. Or even this, I've seen
people write pages and pages about the tunic, and how it really
was assembled, and how it was sewn, and how it was loomed,
and was it really a fulfillment of prophecy? There are some people,
from what I'm about to get into, I'll give you all these objections
first so that we can get into the meat of the reality, but
there are some people who actually argue that the guards themselves
did what they did because they knew the prophecy, so they wanted
to make it fit. Had they known the prophecy,
they would have taken them off the cross. Because the very thing
that they feared, which is to have a king that was ruling over
them, is exactly what they were doing. The very thing they feared
is to see the glory of God face to face is exactly what they
were witnessing. But not from fresh and new and
regenerate eyes, but from old, depraved and worn blindness,
they saw our Savior. Pilate answers as his last ability
to usurp authority over this circumstance. He says, I've written
what I've written and I'm not changing it. What I've said shall
stand. So imagine the frustration. Imagine the pain of Those political
people, the Jews, as they sat there and watched this man be
called their king and watched him die and they hated him. This is probably some of the
areas where people get the motivation that the Pharisees wanted to
get his body down and deal with it quickly and hide it. so that
nothing could be made of it. They didn't want the record,
but of course we know that's not what happened either. As
a matter of fact, everything that happens here, every aspect,
every little inclination that John purposes to put here is
by God, the Holy Spirit, giving him option to detail it so that
we see that Jesus of Nazareth is the king of his people. We
see that this is the point for which he came. This was truly
his crowning moment. This is the reason for His incarnation. This is the glory of God revealed. Now that's hard for us because
we think, well, Sinai was a revelation of God's glory. Look at the tempest
and the thunder and God speaking to Moses and writing with the
tablets of stone with His own finger. earthquakes and fire. I mean, oh, there's God. And
people give little attention to the cross in that same way. But Paul says something completely
different. Sometime in the months to come
as we get through Hebrews on midweek, you'll see when we get
to chapter 12, you'll see that the comparison of Sinai to Zion
And you'll see that Sinai in itself was just a picture of
the righteousness of God, and the fury of God, and the justice
of God, and the glory of God. It's a
picture. Because that fury and that law,
when the law was given to Moses on Sinai, he condemned all humanity
by the law. Who was already condemned by
the law. that was already condemned by
the very righteousness of God who in every way is set apart
from all things as He created all things and He Himself is
eternal without beginning and without end and never changing
yet what Sinai shows us is not the condemnation of man but what
Sinai shows us is the condemnation of the righteous one the one
who will fulfill all truth, the one who is the truth, the one
who is the way, the one who is the resurrection, the one who
is the life, the one who is the Lamb of God that takes away the
sins of His people from all the world, the one who is the first
and the last, the beginning and the end, the true and everlasting
God. This is a glorious reality, this
is the perfect picture of all the prophecies uttered out of
the lamenting mouths of David, uttered from the prophets of
old as Jeremiah would preach, as Ezekiel would preach, as Isaiah
would preach in many different places, but specifically chapter
53. He would be telling of this day
when the fullness of God was seen in a way that it had never
been seen before, that everything from this point forward that
has ever been seen concerning the glory of God was just a shadow.
It's just a shadow. But now it is revealed from glory
to glory by grace upon grace upon grace upon grace. Don't ever forget that beloved.
Why we sit here? 10 ft apart. And many of you sitting at home. And while we breathe air and
while we do everything we do for every day of our lives for
every plan that we make, it is all for the sake of God's glory
and the revelation of his purposes. which He fulfilled in the crucifixion
and the resurrection and the ascension of His Son. We exist
for this purpose. And we are either living in and
by faith, we are living by the mercies of God to believe in
this gospel, or we are not. and the world at large and many
who are religious in their ways, most people are blind to see
it. Most people look at the crucifixion
of Jesus and His resurrection as some type of thing that now
they can hold on to. This abstract event in history
that just gives them hope. Much like the heroes of 9-11
or the heroes of wars throughout the centuries. that saved countless
people through their heroic acts. Jesus did not save anyone through
a heroic act. He substituted for Barabbas who
was guilty and condemned. Not just by Rome and Israel,
but by God Himself. But Jesus substituted. Not through
heroism, but through sovereignty. By putting Himself in the place
of fury. by putting himself in the, being
administered the wage of sin for all the elect of all time
forever, past, present, and future. Jesus Christ did not exhibit
heroism, He exhibited sovereign rule. He laid His life down by
His own will, period. And He rose it, He took it up
and rose again. He submitted to the power and
the authority of God the Father through the submission that He
gave Himself to these people. So they took Jesus and they crucified
Him. Think about that. God the Son
did not have to carry that burden. God the Son did not have to carry
His cross. God the Son did not have to stand
in judgment. God the Son did not have to do
all these things. In His power, He had the ability
and the rule and the authority to not go this way. But in the
wisdom of God, it pleased the Father to crucify His Son in
order that we might be His righteousness. so that everything God could
ever be is seen in that act. And more importantly than just
the act itself historically is the divine purposes and the divine
realities of its efficacy and its consequences. Christ, who
is the King, was crucified for us. So when they crucified him, and
let me give you just a little bit of a picture about crucifixion.
We have this idea through Romanism, historically, that Jesus, who
was paler than I, with blue eyes, was launched up on this cross,
real clean and pretty, with a loincloth on, you know, 15, 20 feet in
the air. Nah. The soldiers could touch
him. The people standing there could
touch him. It didn't take elevation to crucify a man through asphyxiation.
It just took a vertical pole. And so
as Jesus was on that pole, don't envision this large, rope-pulled,
scaffolding-tight being. As you'll see when they give
Jesus something to drink, they use They use a branch, a small
little branch, and they didn't have to reach up too hard. They
could reach probably to about his chin, so they put it up there
where he could just sip something. So have it in your mind's eye,
not what history has shown us through art. Have it in your
mind's eye what the scripture teaches this day. And playing
that out in the realm of historically is not as important as understanding
the depths of it theologically. So here in verse 23 we begin
to see the simple details of a narrative that have deep theological
implications. And I've already given away the
answer as to why it's important. But now let's look at it and
let it unfold. Now, does it say they tore them
all into four parts? No. If you took all of my clothes
and divided them out, and each person got a piece of my clothing,
You could have a jacket, you could have a shirt, you could
have jeans, you could have a belt, you could have a phone case,
you could have a concealed weapon, you could have a watch, you could
have a left sock, a right sock, a pair of boxers, shoe. You could
have two shoes. So here they divided his garments
and it means they just divided them up. It was customary. Those
who crucified, that was part of the way they were compensated.
Just a privilege, not necessarily compensation monetary. It was
just a privilege. This man's possessions are ours. I want
you to think about that for a second now. Here is the God of the cosmos. Everything he owns in the world
is being plundered by the men who are murdering him. If that doesn't show you the
humility of God the Son, I don't understand what will. They strip
him naked and none of the scripture says that they took his crown
away because that was part of the mockery of the hatred of
the Jews by the Romans. That was part of the insult,
that was part of what Christ was supposed to endure in his
humility. So they divided the garments
among them. Why? Because in Psalm 22, scripture
prophesies that they would. They divided my garments among
them and from my clothing they cast lies. Now it was customary
if someone had a large tunic and it was a nice piece of cloth
and it was seamed, they would just cut it down the seams. They
would tear it down the seams and they would just divide the
clothing that way. But this particular garment was
seamless. So there was no way of cutting
it without destroying it. It was worth a lot of money.
So all the people would like to have that. So they said, let's
not tear it, let's not destroy it, but cast lots to see whose
it shall be. Now why was that important? Who would have noticed it other
than his mother, who had probably given him the robe? Nobody. But here is God, the
Son of God, with everything he owns in the world being trampled
upon by greedy men who could care less. They are glad that
it's the Sabbath because they don't have to stand there for
days and watch this man die. They're going to break his legs
before sundown and take his body off. So the soldiers did these things.
They did these things. But standing by the cross of
Jesus were four women, his mother and his mother's sister, Mary
the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother And
John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, standing nearby, he said
to his mother. Now he's spoken to his mother
once before in this gospel. When was it? Chapter 2. When we see Jesus at the wedding
of Canaan, and all of his people, the disciples that he has at
that point, and his mother are there. And this wedding in Canaan,
Galilee, the wine runs out and Jesus mother Mary who at this
time is a widow comes to Jesus in chapter 2 but at the crucifixion
she's a widow comes to Jesus in chapter 2 and I don't she
might have been a widow then as well I think she was and says
what do we do do something about this and he says to her in a
very endearing way a gentle rebuke now in today's time and I'll
go ahead and just reiterate this because it's been a couple years
When someone is talking to you, and your mother is talking to
you especially, and you say, woman, you gonna get it. But in this context, in this
grammar, it is a term of endearment. My dear lady, my dear woman. My dear woman, he rebukes her
in this gospel in chapter 2. She's mentioned briefly just
in the party and two other specific places, but he only talks to
her in chapter 2 and he only talks to her in chapter 19. But here's the God of the cosmos,
fulfilling the purpose of divine redemption for the elect of God.
He's doing all that is required of Him. He's fulfilling and displaying
the glory of God in all of its splendor. And yet, here on the
cross, He's concerning Himself with His birth mother. Now let me just go ahead and
deal with the cult issue right now. A lot of people would say,
you know, Mary is a disciple. No, she's not. She's not a disciple
in the context of John. Some people would say, well,
this is where Jesus puts her in charge like a co-regent. No, it isn't. There is no place
in any of the scripture where the mother of Jesus is given
any divine prerogative, nor given any elevated system of authority
over the assembly, over the work of Christ, or anything. As a matter of fact, while these
men are bartering or throwing dice for her son's clothes, she's
mourning his demise. She's no more inclination to
understand he's going to rise from the grave than the men down
there trying to get his clothes from him. Because if I knew he
was coming back, I wouldn't be trying to get rid of his clothes. Just like if I had a common sense
to know He raised a man from the dead, why would I kill a
man with that power? Silly. It's just silly. But what is silly to us is only
divine. It's only divine that we know
this truth and can see it and can hold fast to the finished
work of Jesus Christ. But here, part of this humility,
not only was the God-man naked and destroyed and dying, and
all that he owned being taken, and the mockery above his head,
the King of the Jews, Jesus of Nazareth. Here are these four women, his
mother and his aunt, and then another woman, Mary, the wife
of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene, whom we're familiar with. When
Jesus saw his mother and disciple John, whom he loved, standing
nearby, he said to his mother, Woman, behold your son. Now, of course,
he wasn't pointing. He says, behold your son. Now,
he wasn't saying, look at me, because she was looking at him.
He was in a very real way, and I could argue historically, but
it's not important, because you don't need to know the historicity
of judicial assertions in order to understand this. It's very
simple. He says to his mother, who's standing next to John,
the writer of this gospel, the only disciple at the cross, look,
this is your son now. This is your son now. Now Jesus
had other brothers, unbelieving brothers, as a matter of fact.
We see that when he's going to go up to Jerusalem and they don't
believe, and the scripture talks about his own brothers didn't
believe him. And so people would say, well, oh, well, what about
his brothers? His brothers, her other sons
had a legal obligation. It doesn't matter what their
legal obligation was. The Lord Jesus Christ affirmed to his
mother, John is now your son. Was John her son? No. Was she John's mother? No. But
what does it mean? Because he says to this, Behold
your son, and then to the disciple, to John, he says, Behold your
mother. What does it mean? It means that John and Mary,
the mother of Jesus, now had a bond put together by Christ. now had a relationship that Christ
had prescribed. One that was superfluous to all
other relationships. One that took over every other
legal demand that was required of anybody else in the world.
Because what Christ had decreed from the cross is exactly what
Mary and John were to do. And the scripture says, and from
that moment, from that hour, the disciple took her into his
own home. That means she became his responsibility. And I would love to know what
happened to her sons. Hey, why is your mama staying
here? And to hear John say, by the
authority of Jesus, the Messiah, she is not your mother anymore. Doesn't this ring a bell to you?
If anyone who loses sibling, or child, or parent, or husband,
or wife, or mother, or father, or brother, or sister, and so
on, being redundant, or houses, or wealth, great are these in
the kingdom of God, for they will receive over and over again. Here is a fulfillment of these
very things. I don't want to read too much
into it, but I think about what it must be like to be married,
to have her other children not be believers, to see Jesus condemned
and mocked as the King of the Jews. What life would she have
had with unbelieving children taking care of her until her
death? who would have probably blamed
her. Mother, if you had not fulfilled his faith, if you'd have tore
his tail up good when he skipped out on us when he was 12, because
you tore mine up when I fussed that we had to go back to get
him. You spanked me good. But no, you didn't spank Jesus
because he said, Oh, I'm about my father's business. Oh, you
know, and that's just silly. But think about it. for many
of us who are divided because of the faith people who love
us deeply and love us greatly and they say it with their mouths
and sometimes they do it in their service they love us in some
way of service but when the gospel of grace comes along and Jesus
is the simple and only reality in our lives they go crazy and
hate us And no matter how loving we are, and no matter how long-suffering
we are, we can never overcome that hatred. Because they hate
our Savior, they must hate His body. Nobody's going to hold and snuggle
the hands of Jesus when they hate His face. And so Jesus, as he was dying,
he was sealing judicially the spiritual promise and covenant
that God made with himself as he met the conditions to save
his people and set them in a relationship that supersedes all organic biological
lineage. and the spontaneous supernatural
affection of the saints that believe the true gospel is so
deep it's indescribable. There is an intimacy that you
have with people that you've never met, that you've never
hardly talked to, but when you finally see them, and when you're
finally face to face, there is a spiritual connection like no
other. There is nothing that the world
can know about that. And that's why my greatest grief
in all of this is that our brothers and sisters cannot be together
like they must be. God is true. In His time, He
will teach us why. After this, verse 28, knowing
that all was now finished, said I thirst. I want to stop there
for just a minute. Remember in the Synoptics we
see, Mark's Gospel specifically, we see that they offered Jesus
a sedative and He refused it. But here they
offer Him some sour wine and He drank it. Why did He refuse
the sedative when it could have helped Him out? Because he would
not drink from the cup of anesthesia because he had submitted himself
to drink the cup of wrath. And that cup of wrath was necessary. Just like this sip of wine was
necessary. Why was it necessary? Now, read
this again. After this, Jesus, knowing that
all was now finished, said, in order to fulfill the scripture,
I thirst. So the work was done. He was
about to die. He understood everything. He
wasn't learning. He had full understanding of
all that he was to do. He knew all things. The divine
nature of Jesus had fully identified everything he needed to know
to his human mind. Now I want you to think about
that for a moment. Though when he was growing, the divine nature
of Jesus hid many things from the human mind of Jesus. What? We don't know. The scripture
says he grew in knowledge. What did he hide? He hid omnipotence. He hid omniscience. He hid omnipresence. We don't understand that and
theologically it's not necessary for us to parse that all out.
It's not necessary to go through systematic theology to understand
all that. It's philosophical at best. Because
unless it creates worship, if it just creates knowledge, it's
worthless. Knowledge that doesn't lead to
praise and thanksgiving is worthless. So here, the scripture is saying
that Jesus knew that everything he was sent to do on this earth
was fulfilled to this point of death. Of course, he still had
to be buried, he still had to be raised, he still had to ascend,
and he still has to come. But the incarnate work of Christ
in his physical body was finished. And yes, he was thirsty, Yes,
he probably needed a lot of stuff. I mean, imagine the blood loss,
the pain, the edema, just where the lungs fill with fluid. Yet Jesus wasn't interested in
taking a sip of something, though he was thirsty and dehydrated. He was interested in fulfilling
Scripture. So he says, in order to fulfill
Scripture, I thirst. And if we look back in Psalm
69, I don't know exactly what verse it is off the top of my
head, we'll see that this is a fulfillment
of prophecy. So Jesus said this in order to
fulfill scripture. Jesus knew The difference in
what Jesus knew and what the guards knew, the guards were
fulfilling scripture because scripture prophesied that they
would divide his clothes and cast lots for them. Jesus knew
how to fulfill scripture by speaking the words that were prophesied
concerning him. Caiaphas fulfilled scripture
prophetically and that what he said, even in his own free will,
was exactly what God determined he would say. The guards, but
Jesus is God. He finishes the work by saying,
I thirst. So they put a sponge of sour
wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. And we had received the wine.
He said, it is finished. and he bowed his head and he
gave up his spirit. That means he died. Not only is Jesus sovereign over
all of this and sovereignly submissive through all of this, He decided
when He was going to die. Had it not been a Sabbath, and
it was against the law of the Jews, and the Romans just obliged
them in this, a crucifixion could have gone on for four or five
days. You need to understand that.
Death by asphyxiation, when you're beaten on your back. Let me explain
to you what crucifixion, how maniacal it is, and how creative
it is. They scourge you with bones and
lead. 40 times, literally tearing from the chest,
the sternum, the solar plexus down, even sometimes the bowels,
ripping the flesh and the muscles open. There are historical accounts
of people holding their entrails in as they walk to crucifixion
because the muscles that hold all that in have been severed.
So here is this on your back, completely exposed, bone, nerve,
muscles, tendons, completely exposed. And then they nail you
through your wrists, which the hand is considered from the elbow
to the tip of the hand. Even in modern day martial arts,
this is your hand, not this. And then they would nail through
the feet and they would put a little stoop up there to either sit
on or to put your feet on, just enough to have a toe hold or
a butt hold. And they would hang you in such
a degree that when you hung, when you were tired, you began
to suffocate. And in order to breathe, to live,
you had to pull against the nerves of your hands that were nailed
to a beam or tied to a beam. and push against the nails in
your feet that were tied to a beam, or against that podium, so you
could slide up on the pole of raw wood, the open back that
you just got torn apart, so you could get a breath, so you wouldn't
die. The word excruciating means out
of the cross. That's the entomology of that
term. And it applies to only the harshest of pain. So crucifixion could go on for
days. Because asphyxiation is not something
that just happens suddenly. And the human body, even through
excruciation, will survive. Jesus gave up His spirit when
He was ready. Why? Because that's what he was sent
to do. And as you'll see in the synoptics
and in other places, as well as what we'll see next week, is how they prepared to take
the body down and broke the legs of the other two so that they
would go ahead and drown by asphyxiation. Beloved, the crucifixion of Jesus
is an ugly picture. It's a terrible picture. It's
a picture that's terrible in my mind, even for the most heinous
criminal. Even in the greatest level of
justice and recompense that I could imagine, it is inhumane, it is
humiliating, it is degrading, and it is something that most
people would go to prison over if they did to an animal who
had killed somebody, much less to a human being. This point
in history, these Romans were known as one of the most vile
generations that ever walked the earth. in their barbarian
mindset of inflicting pain and suffering. Yet it was the will of the Lord
to crush him. It was the will of the Lord to put him forward
as propitiation. It was the will of the Lord.
This was done for you, beloved. See, we can tell one another
that. We can speak that truth into each other's hearts and
minds. The cross of Christ was for you, beloved. And it was
not just for you, beloved. It was for all the beloved of
all time. So when Jesus says it is finished,
He's not just saying, now I get to die. He's saying, now I've completed
the work of redemption. I've finished it. I've done what
I've come to do, now I'm letting go, so that I can be with my
Father. And so that in just a few days,
I will return to the glory that I started this whole world with. That I had before all things.
See, we forget sometimes that Jesus the Son is eternal. God
the Son is eternal. The incarnate Son is not, in
the sense of His body, but His person is eternal. And the body
that He now has, though it bears the mark of His incarnate humanity,
of His crucifixion, it is glorified. It is that which exemplifies
the persona of God, the person of God, the being of God, and
specifically God the Son. Jesus is one person of our one
God. And it is only through this death
that the wrath of God is satisfied. And you all know that, but often
we forget it. And what happens after this point
in history to the elect is very similar to Jesus. What happens
for generation after generation after generation of true regenerative
Christ followers is that they often find themselves under the
same persecution, under the same death, under the same banner
as their Savior and as their Lord. And beloved, even in these
stressful times, we as the elect of God in these United States
are as free as any Christians have ever been throughout the
whole history of the church. We have more liberty in our faith
than any generation has ever had in the entirety of the human
existence. Yet we whine and complain and
fuss and labor over the minute details of nothingness when the
very God of everything gave Himself for us. That is why Paul can
instruct the church, do all things without grumbling and complaining. So you can be seen as a straight
path amongst a crooked generation. See how that instruction works?
Hearing the gospel requires implications. So we must, in order to fulfill
the fullness of the witness of Christ, we learn who He is and
what He's done for us, and that is our main meal every day. Then we learn that the peripheral
sides of this gourmet feast is how we're to live life together
with one another, how we're to approach calamity. The true test
of one's apprehension, that's not a good way of saying it.
The true test of the strength of one's faith is in the midst
of pain. And when we find ourselves fearful,
praise the Lord. Faith is not the absence of fear. Divine faith, divinely given
faith is when in the midst of great peril, great doubt, great
fear, great hostility, great persecution, we have hope in
the Lord Jesus Christ despite what our faces see around us. That's the truth. And the fear doesn't really subside,
but the faith becomes stronger. Why? Not because of us, but because
of Him. The means of grace through which
God continually administers His work amongst the saints is through
the hearing, the teaching, and the collective intimacy of the
Word. It's to meet the needs of the saints. And so how have
I been, in closing, dealing with this gospel 139 weeks, now next
Sunday, with the resurrection The preparation for resurrection,
I might get to it next week, I might not. And I think to myself, how do
I use this for today? Well, number one is I look at
what today is all about. Today, and this pandemic, and
the fear, and everything else, no matter what happens, it's
all about Christ. It's all about His purposes to
fulfill the will of God and He who is my God and your God, beloved. All things are under His subjection.
All things are under His feet. All things are under His control. And so I look at the narratives
of Paul when he wrote from prison. Because I think in some way this
is all like a little house arrest. That's what it is. It's a little
house arrest that God has ordained before the foundation of the
world for we the elect of this world to suffer. And it's going
to help us see that everything that we do and all the frills
and fancies of our programmatic influence of the assembly probably
should go down the toilet and never come back. It should help us to see that
as many of the people in our peripheral congregation, and
I use that word very intimately, I like to say orphans, and some
people don't like that word, but people that would long, that
would like break their left leg and crawl to be part of our fellowship. It gives us a taste of what they've
been going through locally. It helps us to see that, yeah,
we can hear the teaching, but where's my family? It also gives
us an appreciation of our martyred brothers and sisters across the
world, those who are truly persecuted every single day, that it's not
just a pandemic that keeps them apart, but it's the law that
they are not allowed to be believers in certain aspects of the lives
and that it's a crime. But all of these things or for
a specific purpose and we are to keep that first and foremost
in our minds as we see the death of Jesus. We understand that
Paul would say the death of Jesus is manifested in our mortal bodies
that the life of Jesus may be manifested for you. So that in our suffering and
our death, like Paul would say to the church of Colossae, he
says, I pray that I, in my suffering, fill up what is lacking in the
suffering of Christ. What does that mean? We can look at the
text of scripture. And this is where I love historical
theology and historical writings. We can look at the text of scripture
and we can read about the death of Jesus and we know spiritually
and supernaturally and divinely and judicially what that does
for us and in that we rejoice, but there is a disconnect there.
There's a disconnect, even if I illustrate the cross in all
of its goriness, and I could. A friend of mine did his master's
thesis on crucifixion, of all things. I could, and it would
move our emotions. There's still a disconnect there.
But the witness of the church who suffers now together is a
greater ministry to the present circumstances. than just trying
to consider. You hear what I'm saying? That's
why Paul could say, I pray I may fill up what is lacking in the
suffering. Nothing's lacking in the suffering of Christ, but
in your eyes, it is not there, but I'm here. And if I suffer
well for your sake, you rejoice. And if you suffer well for my
sake, I rejoice. And when we weep, we weep together.
When we rejoice, we rejoice together. And we do it because of Christ. Christ looked beyond the cross
to the glory and He rejoiced. He thanked God. So we need to
be thanking God first and forever that Jesus Christ is our Savior
and King and that He died and that He's alive today. I know
that my Redeemer lives. Do you? And because that is true, let
us avoid the fodder of this foolish dead world that has everything
to say but about the glory of Christ, and let us all suffer
well by reflecting on the perfection of the sacrifice of Jesus. See,
that's how we suffer. We suffer, and we fill up what's
lacking in the suffering of Christ, that in our suffering, we don't
whine and complain about our suffering, but we point to Christ's
suffering. So it's always about Christ getting
the glory. And that's always contextual, it's always the Word
of God, it's always the teaching of the disciples, so it is the
Word for us from our Heavenly Father, so that we might have
joy in times like this. Beloved, our King submitted Himself
to die, and we are of this Kingdom, which is not of this world. Let's
pray. We thank You, Father, for this
glorious truth. And Lord, I thank you for sustaining my heart and
my mind, and I thank you for the limited ability to get together
and teach. I thank you for those who are
sitting at home, Lord, who long to be together. I pray, Father,
that you would, as your will is done, bring us together very
soon, that you would hold this nation together. that you would
help people come to see the truth of the gospel, that you would
use these times of suffering as a catalyst to bring your elect
to faith, as an opportunity to proclaim to their ears by your
spirit the true gospel. Father, help us to suffer it
well. Help us to live rejoicing and thankful lives. Father, I
pray for us all. And I pray these things in the
name of Jesus. Amen.