John 19:16–30

0:00 In his classic little book called Crucifixion, the theologian and historian Martin Hengel once wrote, The cross was not just any kind of death. It was an utterly offensive affair. Obscene in the original sense of the word. So obscene was the cross, in fact, that sophisticated, cultured people in Greek and Roman societies wouldn't even utter the word cross, stauros, as they said it, in polite company.

0:32 He didn't mention it over a dinner table. He didn't mention it in polite conversation. Cross, the stauros, was a reviled word because it conjured up disgusting and even nauseating images. To make it worse, crucifixion in Roman society was never a private event. It was always raw. It was always searingly public because its very purpose was to terrify the masses into submission to authorities. If you went into cities, if you went into towns, crosses often lined the main roads into those towns. Crosses that held the broken, writhing bodies of the condemned, or maybe even displaying the rotting corpses of the dead.

1:09 The Romans, in their cruelty, even scheduled public crucifixions to coincide with the religious festivals of those they conquered. Ensuring that the maximum number of people present were there to witness the horror of it. Murderers, robbers, traitors, slaves were crucified brutally by the thousands all over the empire and always deliberately in full public view. The horror of the cross in Roman society was inescapable and the Romans intended it to be that way.

1:46 And given how many times a Roman citizen would see a cross throughout his life, it's somewhat It's surprising that if you look through the historical sources, you don't find many ancient accounts of crucifixion. They're very rare, and when we have them, they're very short. It's surprising in one sense, but then again in another sense, nobody wanted to write about such a thing. And why would you want to write in much detail about such a thing? Because the cross was basically a government-sanctioned, even government-encouraged opportunity for executioners, Roman soldiers, to carry out on real, living, breathing people their most sadistic, brutal, and viciously inventive fantasies.

2:23 Whatever you wanted to do on a person who was hanging on a cross, you could do, and thus all the accounts historically that we have of it are short. The authors usually only allude to the horrors of the cross rather than describing them in any detail. It's almost as if they're saying, you really wouldn't want to know what happens. The cross was awful. Shredded flesh against unforgiving, splintered wood, iron stakes pounded through bone and nerves. Joints wrenched out of socket by the sheer dead weight of the body as the cross was dropped into the ground.

2:59 Public, naked humiliation before the eyes of family and friends and the world. That was death on a cross. The infamous stake, the Romans called it. The barren wood, the maxima, mala, crux, as they said it in Latin, or as the Greeks just spat it out, the stauros. The stauros. It was a loathsome thing. And the one who died on it was loathsome too.

3:31 It was a vile criminal. His only use was to hang there as a rotting, putrid, decaying warning to anybody else who might follow his example in questioning much less challenging the might of the Roman Empire that is how Jesus of Nazareth died that's the man you just sang songs to that's the man you just prayed to that's the man you say you organized your life around that's the man you call king let me invite you to take a bible and turn to John chapter 19 because this morning we're going to take a few minutes to just stare at this crucified man that we call King, Jesus of Nazareth.

4:24 Take a Bible, turn over to John chapter 19. If you're using one of these Red Pew Bibles, you'll find it on page 905. That's where we're going to be for today. We're continuing our study through the book of John today and this is where we're picking up the story, the moment that this entire book has been driving toward from the very beginning when John the Baptist cried out, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. I mean, from the very first chapter, this is where it has all been headed. Jesus knew it. The disciples kind of picked it up along the way from the very beginning. He told them over and over again that he was going to be handed over to sinful men who were going to crucify him, put him to death.

4:59 And yet even though he knew it, he didn't do anything to try to avoid it. He didn't try to evade that destiny. He didn't try to run away from the Stauros. The Bible says he set his face like flint to go to Jerusalem and face the cross. Why did he do it? Well, because as he said a hundred times through this book of John, and even more times through the other gospels, he did it because he was the Messiah. He was the king of the Jews. And to be king of the Jews, king of Israel, was to be his people's representative, their champion, The one who would stand in their place and die for them in their stead.

5:39 Who would take the punishment that they deserve for their sins. That's why he did it. We come today to the moment when Jesus is actually crucified. The trial is over before Pilate. The trial is over before the Jews. The verdict is handed down. And in our text today, the Son of God is condemned and sent away to be crucified. Let's look at our text for this morning. It starts kind of in the middle of verse 16. So if you look down in chapter 19, you'll see the subheading there, the crucifixion. That's in the middle of verse 16. That's where we're going to pick it up. Here's what John writes.

6:11 So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, 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 priests of the Jews said to Pilate, Do not write the king of the Jews, but rather this man said, I am king of the Jews.

6:45 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 and 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 the 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.

7:19 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, woman, behold your son. And 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 the 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 sour wine, he said, it is finished. And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

7:54 You know, in some ways, this is a surprising text. Because for all of the agonies that attended crucifixion, none of the gospel writers really dwells on the physical torture of it any more than any other ancient writer dwells on the physical tortures. Probably that's because they knew that all of their readers would already be familiar with what happens to the physical body during a crucifixion. So instead, all of the gospel writers tend to focus on other aspects of what's going on around the cross. So Matthew, in his gospel, for example, focuses more than any other gospel on the deeply ironic mockery that Jesus was enduring as he hung there.

8:33 You remember one of the people in the crowd cries out, he saved others, but he can't save himself. And in one sense, that was just utterly untrue, right? If Jesus had wanted to save himself from the cross, he could have. He said, I've got 60,000, 72,000 angels who would come to my rescue if I just whispered to them to come down from heaven. He could have saved himself if he wanted to. But it's deeply and ironically true if you understand what's happening. Because if Jesus is going to save others, then he cannot, in fact, save himself.

9:06 He prayed that very thing in the garden. Lord, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me. And the answer came back from heaven. No. If you're going to save your people, it's got to be this way. Another person in the crowd cried out, if you're the son of God, come down from the cross. It's just like the voice of Satan on the pinnacle of the temple. You're the son of God. Throw yourself down from the temple. God will save you. Because what it meant to be the son of God, the very thing that it meant was to obey God even to death on the cross.

9:38 All of that's what Matthew focuses on. The mockery and the irony behind the mockery. John, for his part, dispenses with the physical tortures of the cross in one sentence. And you can see it there in verse 18. There they crucified him. That's it. And then like all the other Gospels, he turns his focus and he turns his attention to other things that are going on around the physical torture. So what does he focus on? And if Matthew focuses on the mockery, if Mark and Luke focus on other things, what does John focus on and why does it matter?

10:12 Well, if you think about what we just read, if you kind of let your eyes roll over it, he seems to focus on three main things. The first thing is that there's this sign above Jesus' head. The Pilate wrote out with his own hand, Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. That's one thing that he focuses on, and he gives a kind of inordinate amount of time to describing that sign and what happened in the wake of it. Second thing he shows, or that he focuses on, is the soldiers gambling for his clothes and this exchange between himself and John and his mother.

10:44 I mean, for some reason, John seems to tie the soldiers gambling for his clothes and this exchange between Jesus and John and his mother, he seems to tie it together in a contrast. You see that as verse 24 gives way to verse 25 there? He kind of double clicks on the soldiers. The soldiers did these things. He starts the sentence over to tie them together. The soldiers did these things, but standing by the cross of Jesus were these women. And then he describes this exchange. What's that about? And the last thing that John seems to focus on is the death of Jesus himself.

11:18 There's some strange things about that that we'll talk about later. But one of the strangest is that between the moment when Jesus realizes that all is finished and the moment when he declares that it is finished and dies, there's these couple of verses in there, again, just kind of inordinately long, where Jesus says, I thirst. And he's given some sour wine and a sponge on a stick. So what ties all that together? I mean, why does John, is John just kind of ADHD? Like he can't keep his eyes on the thing that matters. He's just kind of looking everywhere, oh, there's a sign, and then there's these people gambling, and then there's the women, and then there's, is that what's going on?

11:53 Is he just not able to keep his attention where it belongs? Or does he have something to say in all of it? What ties it all together? Well, I think what ties it all together, actually, is a theme that John's been pushing to the forefront ever since Jesus allowed himself to be arrested. And you remember a few weeks ago, it is, in fact, that Jesus allowed himself to be arrested. He wasn't captured, he wasn't taken. When the soldiers come into the garden and they ask, you know, he says, who are you looking for? And they say, we're looking for Jesus. And he says, I am.

12:23 And they all fall back flat on their backs. He could have done away with the soldiers, all 600 of them if that's how many there were. But he doesn't. He allows himself to be arrested. And that's a theme that John has been pushing to the forefront throughout this entire narrative. What's that theme? That theme is that none of this that is happening is merely happening to Jesus. None of it is sweeping him away. He's not just caught on the wheel of history in an unfortunate time at an unfortunate place.

12:59 He is in control of every detail of it. And even more, his father is in control of all of it. This is what scripture foretold. This is what must happen, John says, and this is the cup, he said, that he must drink if he's actually going to be what John the Baptist said he was, which is the lamb who takes away the sin of the world. If that's going to be the case, then Jesus has to die on the cross. So that's the main idea. Nobody took Jesus' life from him.

13:31 He laid his life down so that his people would be saved. That's the message John wants to get across to you. This is not some historical accident. This is not just a concatenation of events that come together and Jesus unfortunately gets killed. He does it on purpose. His father does it on purpose. His father had foretold it centuries before in the prophets and now it's all come to a head. Nobody took Jesus' life from him. He laid it down of his own accord so that his people would be saved. I want to look at this text in three parts, just kind of breaking it down like we just talked about.

14:05 So the three main paragraphs of the text. So number one, you've got an executed king. Strange thing, but you've got an executed king in that first paragraph. In that second paragraph, you've got an unexpected family. That runs from 23 all the way down through 27. And then the last little bit, from 28 to 30, a mission accomplished. So those three points, an executed king, an unexpected family, and a mission accomplished. Let's start looking at it. Number one, an executed king. As we looked two weeks ago, the last time we were in John, in our text then, we saw how Pilate, the governor of this particular Roman province of Judea, was finally driven by the Jews to hand Jesus over to be crucified.

14:47 It's been pretty clear now for some time as we've been studying it. You probably kind of remember this theme throughout as we've made our way through this story. It's been pretty clear for quite a while that Pilate really did not want to hand Jesus over to be crucified. He tried four or five different ways to get out of it. He tried pity. He had him flogged, for example, and put in the crown of thorns and the purple robe and pulled out in front of the Jews. And he was hoping that the Jews would see how ridiculous they were being and being afraid of this guy and that they would decide to let him go in some kind of pity or maybe even just embarrassment about their own fears of him.

15:19 He tried to convince them that Jesus wasn't a threat. He tried all kinds of different ways to get rid of it. He even tried the little ploy with Barabbas at the Passover to get the Jews to choose Barabbas or Jesus to be set free. And he hoped it would be Jesus. But none of it works. But for whatever set of reasons, whether it was fear because of this dream his wife had had early in the morning, or maybe it was some lingering sense of justice in Pilate. Maybe even it was this growing understanding he seems to have had in his own head that this Jesus guy was maybe more than just your ordinary crazy would-be Messiah.

15:51 And for whatever set of reasons, he really seems to have wanted to declare Jesus to be innocent and set him free. The last time we were in this book, we saw how the Jews finally pulled out their biggest weapon. I mean, this is the political bazooka. and finally managed to bully Pilate into doing what they wanted. They told him that if he didn't crucify Jesus, if he didn't hand Jesus over to the soldiers to be nailed to the cross, well, they would send some people to Rome to bad-mouth Pilate to Emperor Tiberius. What do you want me to do?

16:27 Oh, there it is. All right. For all kinds of historical reasons that we've already talked about, Pilate's life, then would be in pretty serious danger. You don't want to get bad mouths to the emperor, especially if you've already done some things that make the emperor kind of doubt you. So in verse 16, right before our text today, in the first part of 16, through kind of gritted teeth, it looks like, Pilate gave Jesus over to be crucified. Well, somewhere between 16 and 17, The soldiers would have administered the highest level of flogging.

17:04 If you remember a few weeks ago, there were three different levels of flogging. There was what was called the beating, and then there was the whipping, and then there was the scourging. Well, this one in Latin called the verbaratium, the scourging. There were whips that were used that had pieces of bone and metal embedded in the leather straps. And so when the straps would hit the person's back, they would put the straps into the back and then pull it sideways in order to lacerate the flesh. And a lot of times people were reduced to near death or even death itself by the verbaratium. Somewhere between 16 and 17 is where the soldiers would have done that.

17:38 And then they made him carry his own cross, probably just a cross beam, to a place just outside the city known as the place of the skull. Just by the way, we're not sure why it's called that. We don't exactly know why it's called the place of the skull. Some have thought that maybe it looked like a skull. Maybe it was a kind of elevated place in the terrain, in the landscape, that had some holes in it that looked a little bit like a skull. Maybe that's true. Others have thought that maybe this was just a place where the Romans often crucified people, and so the skull was just a kind of generalized image of death. And at any rate, Golgotha there is the Aramaic word for skull.

18:12 The word we more commonly use, and that will show up in our songs here and there, Calvary, comes from the Latin word calvarium, which also means skull. Calvary is not a different place from Golgotha, which is a different place from the place of the skull. It's all one place, it's just in different languages. It all means the place of the skull. Well, at any rate, wherever this place was and why ever it was called, the place of the skull, Golgotha, Calvary, that's where they crucified Jesus. It would have been an utterly visceral affair.

18:44 They would have stripped him naked, they would have laid him down on the ground with his lacerated back scraping against the dirt, and then they would have stretched out his arms on the crossbeam and then fixed his wrists to it. And sometimes the Romans just used ropes to fix a man's arms to the crossbeam. But John later refers to the nail marks in Jesus' wrists. So we know that that more excruciating method of affixing Jesus to the cross was used. Sometimes in the movies or in art, you'll see the stigmata, the wounds of Jesus depicted being in his palms.

19:18 It's not where they would have been. The Romans had long since learned that if you hang a man by a nail that's put through his palms, it just quickly rips through the middle fingers. It won't hold the weight of a man. So they learned over time that where you have to put the nails right there in the wrist through the bone and through the nerves so that he could hang. And you can imagine the pain of that. If you just take your finger and push on that little spot on your wrist, just right there, you can feel the nerves. You can imagine what it would be like if it was something more than a finger pushing on that spot. Once both his wrists were nailed down, the soldiers would have used ropes or maybe spears of some kind to hoist the crossbeam up, fasten it somehow to the vertical beam.

19:59 And then Jesus' ankles would have been nailed to the vertical and he was left to hang there. In crucifixion, it wasn't the nails through the wrists and the ankles that killed you. It wasn't the crown of thorns that killed Jesus. It wasn't the scourging that killed Jesus. You didn't die in crucifixion through blood loss. You died because you suffocated. You died of asphyxiation because ultimately you couldn't breathe. As your body hung up there with your arms outstretched and the whole weight of your body sagging down, you simply couldn't breathe.

20:35 It made it impossible to take a breath as you were sagging down. And so the only way to get a breath into your sagging lungs was either to pull up by the nails on your wrists or push up by the nails in your ankles in order to get enough height on your body to expand your chest cavity so that you could take a breath. And then when the exertion of that was over, you would sag back down on the nails and they would rip just a little bit further in your wrists or in your ankles. Some of the condemned who were crucified hung there for days.

21:09 Sometimes the Romans would even attach a kind of seat to the cross. Just enough, just enough of a little seat to support the weight of the body just a little bit to make sure the torture went on for even longer. John doesn't dwell on any of that, though. He doesn't talk about it at all, in fact. He just says, they crucified him. And he expects you and me to know what that means. He expects you and me to recoil from that idea just as much as the Greeks would have recoiled from the Stauros.

21:45 They crucified him. And then in verse 19, he turns his attention to a detail that all the gospel writers mention, actually, but about which John tells us much more detail. Look at verse 19. John writes there, 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 rather this man said, I'm king of the Jews.

22:23 Pilate answered, what I have written, I have written. Okay, so that's like four verses or something, right? It's a lot of space that John gives to this sign that identifies Jesus mockingly and insultingly, Pilate thought, as the king of the Jews. Why does John give so much attention to this little sign that would have been affixed to the top of the cross where Jesus was crucified? Why does he spend so much time thinking about it? Well, probably there are a few things going on here.

22:54 And for one thing, just historically speaking, it tells us finally what Jesus was ultimately and officially condemned for. It was the first charge that the Jews made right from the very beginning. He was charged with sedition and convicted of sedition, which is treason against the Roman Empire. That's finally what Pilate sentenced him for, for claiming to be a king. It wasn't unusual, really, for a crucified person's crime to be hung on his cross or even around his neck. That's not unusual at all. What was unusual, though, was for that sign to be written in the governor's own hand.

23:29 So you might get a sign, but it would be written in the hand of an uneducated soldier who wouldn't have even spelled all the words right. But this man gets a sign written by the governor's own hand. And that leads to another thing that's going on here. Not just telling us historically what the charge that he was ultimately convicted for was, but it shows us that this is Pilate's last revenge on the Jews for forcing his hand, for manipulating him into condemning Jesus when he didn't really want to.

24:01 And it's a nasty revenge, isn't it? It is a nasty revenge on the Jews. I mean, look at the specific wording of the sign there in verse 19. Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. It was a nameplate affixed to the cross. Kind of like the way if you work in an office, you might have a nameplate on your desk that says President or Chief Executive Officer. This was a nameplate on the cross that says, this is Jesus, He is the King of the Jews, and this is what we Romans do to kings.

24:36 That's what he was saying. See, it wasn't just, He's a rebel. It wasn't just he was convicted of treason against Rome. It was this is the king of this subjugated people, and this is what we've done to him. Which, of course, was a huge insult to the Jewish leaders and to the entire Jewish nation. You've got this bloody, broken man being presented as their king. And what Romans do to kings. To make it worse, if you look in verse 20, he put it in three languages.

25:11 Three languages there, Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. Well, why those three languages? Well, because Aramaic was the common tongue in Judea. That's the main thing that they spoke in the marketplaces, in the schools, all the rest of it. In Latin, because that's the main language of the Romans, right? So he wanted the Hebrews to see what the sign said. He wanted the Romans to see what the sign said. And then he put it in Greek because basically all over the empire, everyone spoke Greek. So he's trying not to miss anybody. He gets the Hebrews, he gets the Romans, and then he gets everybody by putting it in those three languages.

25:43 And even worse, this crucifixion is happening just outside the city. So John says there that many people saw this as they passed by. It was humiliating for the Jews. And of course the Jews and their leaders felt the sting of it all. So they asked him to change it. They say, Pilate, don't put a nameplate on the cross. Why don't you put his charge up there? Don't say this man is the king of the Jews. Say something more like, this man claimed to be the king of the Jews. Everyone will be happy with that, Pilate.

26:16 But nah, Pilate says, what I have written, I have written. It is staying. It was petty. There's no doubt about that. It was really petty. But it put the Jews in their place. But I mean, still the question is there. I mean, there's this petty insult. I mean, it got the job done, but why does John dwell on that insult? Well, I mean, was John so offended by the insult that it just kind of stuck in his mind and he's going to just record it for posterity and history that Pilate did this horrible thing?

26:54 No, no, no, that's not it at all. The reason John dwells on this sign, the reason he dwells on it is because he sees in it not just an insult, but a deep and glorious irony in what Pilate has written there. See, Pilate meant that sign, this is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. He meant that declaration to be mockery, to be slander, to be a screaming insult against the Jews. But John knows that what he wrote on that sign was true. This was in fact Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews.

27:28 And the very means, John knew because he read the Old Testament, the very means by which Jesus would take the throne of the universe was through the cross and that crown of thorns. It's always been the pattern of the Christian life. It's always been the pattern that the crown comes after the cross, the glory comes after the suffering. That's how it is for Christians. And the reason it is that way for Christians is because that's exactly how it was for our king. We shouldn't for a moment think that we're going to be treated any better than our master was.

28:00 We shouldn't for a moment think that our path to the crown in heaven is going to be any easier than our king's path was. For all of us, it will be suffering and then glory, the cross and then the crown. That's why Jesus says, take up your cross and follow me. The end of it, the great destination will be the crown. It will be the throne. It will be heaven. But in the meantime, there will be the cross. There will be suffering.

28:33 It's interesting, isn't it? That basically two people in this story for the last eight chapters or so are said to kind of have prophesied in a way that they didn't even understand. Do you remember who the first one was? The first one was the high priest Caiaphas. Do you remember how John says that when he told the Sanhedrin, the great ruling council of the Jews, when he said, It's better for one man to die for the nation rather than that the nation as a whole die. And John said he wasn't just saying that of his own accord. He was prophesying about what the death of Jesus would do.

29:05 By dying, Jesus would save the nation. It's better for one man to die for the people than that the people perish. The other person who speaks better than he knew, Pontius Pilate. This is Jesus, the king of the Jews. It's fascinating, isn't it? The highest of the Jews and the highest of the Gentiles speak truth about Jesus and they don't even know it. The truth of the gospel is reverberating through all the peoples of the earth, whether they like it or not. But again, again, why?

29:40 I mean, why? What's the irony? What's the irony? Why does John put his eyes on it for so long? You ever wondered why all the stories of Jesus' crucifixion are so shot through with king imagery? You ever notice that? I mean, it's everywhere. King imagery. It's all over the passion narratives. Now stop and think for a second. Jesus is taught in the Bible to have had three offices to hold right now.

30:13 Three offices. Prophet, priest, and king. Now, which one, if you were just asked about it, apart from this sermon right here, which one of those three offices do you, do we as Christians, most commonly associate with Jesus' death as a sacrifice on the cross? Priests. We think of him mostly as priests, right? And we're right to do that because Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the great high priest who gave himself as an offering so that his people might be saved. We're right to think about Jesus' crucifixion in line with his office as priest.

30:46 But it's fascinating that the gospel writers don't focus on priesthood. And God's providence in these matters doesn't focus on priesthood. Jesus wasn't mocked as a high priest. He didn't have a priest's hat put on him and a priest's robe put on him. No, all the imagery of the crucifixion in all four gospels, the crown of thorns, the purple robe, the charge against him itself, that he was guilty of calling himself a king and making himself treasonous against Caesar. This sign, this is Jesus, the king of the Jews, all of that points our minds and our hearts to his office of king, not priest.

31:24 Why is that? Well, it's because from the very beginning, the very point of the Messiah, the very mission of the king was that he would suffer in the place of his people. If you go back and read the prophets, If you read the Psalms that we've been reading over the past few weeks, you see that to be the king of Israel was to suffer for your people. You stood in their place. You stood in their stead. You were their representative, their champion. You fought battles that they couldn't fight.

31:55 You remember David fighting Goliath? He fought as king. His killing of Goliath showed that he was worthy to be king because he was fighting and suffering in the place of his people who could never win that battle. That's what you did as king. You suffered for your people in their place and in their stead. As their substitute and representative and champion. You think about the Psalms that we've been reading over the past few weeks. Psalm 22, Psalm 69. The point of every single one of those Psalms is that King David is standing as king in the place of his people and suffering for them instead of them as their champion and their Lord.

32:35 Why is that important? well just for a moment theologically it's important because you need to understand and get it deep down into your heart that the gospel of jesus christ the good news of jesus christ is not simply jesus is king period full stop that's not the good news it is not the good news of christianity that jesus is king full stop no matter how many books you read about it or how many podcasts you listen to, that is not the gospel. If Jesus is king and you are still a sinner and a rebel against his kingship, then it is bad news for you that Jesus is king. It is bad news that Jesus has ascended into heaven if you are still a rebel against him. No, that's not good news. Jesus is king, full stop, is not good news. Do you know what is good news? What is good news is this right here.

33:35 This is good news. Jesus is king. And he dies to save his people. That's good news. That's good news. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not just that we worship Jesus Christ the great. It is that we worship Jesus Christ the crucified and resurrected. The one who gives his life so that we might be saved. I mean listen, we're sitting right here at the very heart of the gospel. I mean, this is where it happens.

34:07 This is the white hot center of how the gospel works. If you are a human being, then you are a rebel against God. You are a sinner and the penalty for sin is for you to die. Not just physically, but eternally, spiritually, to be cut off and separated from God and under his wrath for all of eternity. That's the penalty for rebelling against the king. The only way for you to save yourself is not just to pile up a bunch of good works. It's not just to pile up a bunch of apologies. It's not just to do a whole bunch of good things in the hope that it'll balance out the scales and God will declare you to be more good than you are bad.

34:44 No, you need somebody just like the Jews did. You need somebody to stand in your place and take the wrath that you deserve for your sins. You need a champion. You need a king to exhaust the wrath of God in his own body. Friend, you got a penalty so big that you're never going to be able to pay it. There is wrath stored up for you that you are never going to be able to exhaust on your own. You know why the Bible teaches that hell is infinite? It's because the wrath of God against rebels is infinite.

35:15 Because to rebel against an infinite king is an infinite offense. You'll never be able to exhaust that. But what if there were an infinite king? What if there were a king who was so excellent and so worthy of all honor and glory and might that the infinite wrath of God could pour into him and be completely exhausted so that the canons of God's wrath fall silent and smoking in heaven. There's a savior like that and he's right here.

35:47 This is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. The one who was prophesied to stand in the place of his people in their stead as their champion, as their king. Friend, if you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, you need to hear that. You need to hear all that truth. Maybe it sounds completely foreign to you. Maybe it's an utterly new idea to you. And yet it is true. You're a rebel against God. You can't absorb his wrath, even though you deserve it. And you need a champion to stand in your place.

36:18 And Jesus is that champion. So you know what you need to do? You need to go to him. You need to go to him. His hand is out, offering mercy. It won't be forever, but for now it is. You need to go to him and say, Jesus, I accept that mercy. I need you to stand in my place. I need you to die for me so that I don't have to die. I need you to be forsaken by God so that I don't have to be forsaken. I need you, oh Jesus, to do it for me. And he will. He will just go to him in a prayer and say, Jesus, I need you to save me.

36:54 That's how you become a Christian. There's not something else you've got to do. There's not something else you've got to feel. You don't have to cry. You don't have to feel a burning in the bosom. There's nothing you've got to do. Just go to Jesus and say, I need you to save me because I can't do it myself. So many friends need to do that right now, this morning. And then whether you wait until the service is over or not, you need to turn to the person next to you and say, I think I'm a Christian now. It's really that simple. It's really that simple. Go to Jesus and find mercy in his hand, in the hand of this executed king.

37:27 Here's the second thing, an unexpected family, an unexpected family. Well, after verse 22, that's pretty much it for Pilate and the Jews. We've been for the last few weeks watching this dramatic legal tug of war that's been happening between Pilate and the Jews for most of two chapters now. And now all of them, Caiaphas, the Jews, Pontius Pilate, all of them fade from view and John puts the camera, so to speak, firmly on Jesus and the kind of immediate vicinity of the cross.

38:00 This paragraph that runs from 23 to 27, I think is at first glance a little confusing because it seems like it's just describing two kind of unrelated events. I mean, again, John just kind of looks like he's got ADHD. He's just sort of looking everywhere. You've got the soldiers gambling for Jesus' clothes and this little exchange between Jesus on the cross and his mother down at the foot of the cross and the disciple whom Jesus loved, that's almost certainly John himself. But the confusing thing and the reason those two things are stuck together in one paragraph is because of the way John transitions from one to the other.

38:37 Because it's not just this happened and then this happened. Those two things are related as you move from verse 24 to verse 25. You see that? Look at it. 24 to 25. I mean, in 24, you've got the casting of lots for the tunic. This was to fulfill the scripture. And then he kind of backed. He could have just gone on, right? In 25, he could have just skipped right to 25. And he could have said, and another thing, standing by the cross of Jesus, where his mother and et cetera, et cetera. But he doesn't. He sort of backs up and says, so the soldiers did these things, but.

39:10 The soldiers did these things, but somebody else did something else and different. He puts them in contrast with what's about to happen here. Why does he do that? Well, we'll see that in a minute. See why he does that in just a second. But let's look at some of the details. Normally, a crucifixion was carried out by a detachment of four Roman soldiers. That's just, as you look at the historical sources, that's just how it happened. You had four Roman soldiers, and they were overseen by their commander. And part of the payment that those four soldiers received was the right basically to requisition the condemned man's possessions for their own.

39:47 So that's what they're doing here. Now, typical Jewish clothing, the thing that you would wear, unless it was just a very unusual day, was five things. You would wear a head covering, you would wear sandals, you would wear a belt, you would wear an outer garment, and then you would wear this inner garment that was called a tunic. So probably what happened is that these four soldiers laid out those first four things, sandals, belt, head covering, and outer garment, right? And because those are of different value, they probably threw dice for them. That's what casting lots means, right? You've probably done that before. They just cast the dice, you know. First, the guy who gets the highest roll gets the outer garment because that's most expensive.

40:20 Next guy gets the belt because it's made out of leather. You know, that's how they would do it. But then they've got this fifth piece left over, this tunic, right? The inner garment. It's sort of the underwear of the ancient Jews is what it was to keep the harder fabric of the outer garment off the body. It would be a softer fabric. Most of the time, tunics were sewn together in four different pieces, right? You might have the two sleeves, and then you would have the front and the back. And so the thing that the soldiers would do is just tear the tunic along the seams and give each other the piece of this more expensive, softer fabric.

40:53 But as they looked at Jesus' tunic, what they found is that it wasn't in four pieces. It didn't have any seams. It was seamless. It was just woven in one piece of thread, which we know was extremely expensive. And that's what they did. We have no idea where Jesus got this expensive tunic, maybe from his friends in Bethany. We don't exactly know, but he had one. And so the soldiers decide, okay, we're not going to tear this thing into pieces because it will destroy it. Instead, we'll just take this fifth piece and we'll cast lots for it one more time, and we'll see who gets it.

41:25 Okay, super interesting. But why does John tell us that story? Well, for one thing, you can see in verse 24 that he sees it as a fulfillment of a part of Psalm 22, the psalm that we've been reading. We read a part of it today about King David suffering in the place of his own people. You start looking through the Gospels. They're full of this kind of thing. They go to the places, the Gospel writers, go to the places in the Old Testament where the Messiah is prophesied as suffering for his people, and then they look at the details of the Old Testament.

41:56 They're like, okay, this is a place in Isaiah 53 or in Psalm 22 or Psalm 69 or Zechariah 13, where we know the Messiah is suffering for his people, and now let's look at the details. And then let's look at what happened to Jesus, and look at the details, and what happened to Jesus. And they say, it all lines up. It all lines up. All the details that were prophesied about the Messiah suffering for his people line up with what actually happened to Jesus, and then they start pointing it out. Somebody's counted them up, and there are over 20 prophecies from those places in the Old Testament that are fulfilled in just like 60 minutes of Jesus' life when he's being hung on the cross.

42:33 It's incredible, but that's what they do. But is there some other significance to this? I mean, yeah, it's a fulfillment of prophecy, right? One little detail is fulfilled. John's going to mention several of them as we go along. But is there some other significance to this? Well, people have certainly thought so throughout history. And one of the most common thoughts is that this, You've probably heard the phrase, especially if you've read the Puritans, this seamless garment of Christ is symbolic of the church.

43:05 You've probably heard that before. Which would match up with, say, John 17 maybe, where Jesus prays that his people would be one. Sure, you can do that, but there's really no particular connection between this passage and John 17. And besides, it just doesn't quite work as a symbol, right? I mean, if you think about it, here you've got, If the seamless tunic of Christ, the seamless garment of Christ is the church, here you have Jesus' church being stolen from him, taken away from him while he dies, and he can't really do anything to save his church.

43:40 It just doesn't really make sense. It would be weird to have that kind of imagery. I mean, really, the only sort of callback that even remotely works is the last time in this book that we would have seen this tunic. Do you remember where that was? You probably didn't notice it because it's not mentioned, but you've seen his tunic before. Do you remember where it was? It was the night before the crucifixion when Jesus stripped off his outer garment in the upper room in order to wash his disciples' feet. And when he did that, all he would have been wearing then, in his humility, was his tunic.

44:16 And here the message may be that even that dignity, the last dignity, is stripped away from him. He's brought low, and yet he is also exalted as a king. But there's more to it than just that. That thought that maybe, just maybe, there's a resonance here with Jesus' washing of his disciples' feet, I think it helps us understand the real significance of this exchange that happens between Jesus, his mother, and John. Look at verse 25. Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister. Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. It's four people.

44:47 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved, that's John, 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 home. Now, what's going on there? Why does Jesus do that, and why does John record it? Why has it become such a famous story in the life of Jesus? Well, at first glance, you can think that it's just Jesus sort of taking care of his mother. He's just doing some kind of last will and testament stuff, right? A little legal work as he's dying on the cross to make sure that his mother is taken care of.

45:18 He's just having some compassion on his mother. I mean, it wouldn't be out of character for Jesus. And even while he's on the cross, Jesus is showing compassion and love to lots of people. He forgives the Roman soldiers. He tells the thief dying next to him that he's going to be with him in paradise. And here he takes care of his mom. But is there more to this than just that? Just a little picture, a little vignette of Jesus' love for somebody else? No, the Roman Catholic Church has put huge theological weight on this passage. What the Roman church argues is that it shows the church, represented here by John, the disciple, being put in Mary's care.

45:58 So that Mary is the one who most specifically cares for the church through its history. But that doesn't work. It doesn't even begin to work because it's actually precisely the opposite. You can see in verse 27 that it's John who takes Mary into his home. It's Mary being put in John's care, not John into Mary's. So the Roman Catholic Church is just wrong about that. But even so, I do think there's a deeper meaning here than just Jesus taking care of his mother. And I think it has to do with that tunic and its call back to Jesus washing his disciples' feet.

46:37 Okay, now how does the washing of the feet connect to Jesus taking care of his mom and John? How does that fit? Well, think about it. What was Jesus' point in washing his disciples' feet? What was his point? Like what did he tell them was his point? It was to show them that in his kingdom your stance and your status was not to be had by rising to the top. By just relating yourself to Jesus and him alone. It wasn't just get as close to the king as you can and that's the end of it. No, he washed their feet to show them that in his kingdom you rise to the top by caring for other people who are also servants of the king.

47:17 As I have washed your feet, so you should wash one another's feet. As I have loved you, so you should love one another. And then he went on to say in the speech that follows right after that, in chapters 14 and 15, he goes on to show them that the defining characteristic of his people, the people of his kingdom, would be that they would love one another. Horizontally, not just vertically. Disciple to Jesus, but disciple to disciple. In fact, he said, they would become family to one another.

47:49 Remember what he says? He says it over and over again, but here's one. While he was still, this is from Matthew 12, while he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, who is my mother and who are my brothers? Stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my mother and brother and sister. So go back to the cross. Do you see what's happening here? When he points John and Mary to each other, he defines them as family.

48:24 He points their eyes not just to him vertically on the cross, but to each other horizontally. Behold each other as you both behold me. You see what he's doing? He's knitting together the very core. He's knitting together the very beginning of the people of the kingdom. No longer should they define themselves in relation to him alone. John as Jesus' friend. Mary as Jesus' mother. They should define themselves in relationship to each other as well.

48:56 She is mother to him. He is son to her. And that's in stark, stark contrast to what those soldiers are doing. They are dividing. Jesus is pulling together. It's a profound way to think about your relationship to other believers, isn't it? And the rest of the New Testament is going to talk about this again and again and again. As believers, as Christians, we're not just defined in relation to Jesus alone, but we are defined in relation to all other believers, especially those in our local church.

49:30 That's why here at 3rd Avenue, we just want this place to be a preaching point where a whole lot of individuals who don't even know each other can just come and stare at the preacher and sing some songs to the ceiling and then go out and keep their eyes up. No, we want your eyes to be around as they are up. We want you to see one another. We want you to know one another. We don't want you to be able to be anonymous when you come here. We want you to be known. That's why we work so hard too for there not to be within this local church little churches within the church.

50:04 We don't want that. I mean, even though we've sort of divided the congregation up into home groups even, we don't want those home groups to become little independent fiefdoms or churches within churches. We don't want the over 50 crowd that gets together every once in a while to become a little, you know, voting block, a little church within a church with its own allegiances to itself. We don't want the youth group to become that. We don't want campus outreach to become that. We want to be one church who are looking into each other's faces even as we look into the face of Christ.

50:36 Brothers and sisters, you've got to work to make sure that you see and know your fellow believers. It's not just something that happens passively. You've got to do it. You've got to know older women and men. You've got to know younger women and men. That's what Jesus calls us to do, to wash each other's feet, to look at each other like John and Mary would have looked at each other and realize that Jesus has given us responsibility for each other. Brother, behold your sister. Behold your mother.

51:09 Mother, behold your son. Behold your daughter. All in this room. Here's the last thing. A mission accomplished. A mission accomplished. I think when you understand what we just talked about, that Jesus is not just doing some last will and testament legal stuff with his mom, but he's actually knitting the core of the people of the kingdom together right there. He's turning them toward one another in love, right? I think when you understand that about what's happening there, it makes more sense of verse 28. Because if you think it's just about Jesus taking care of his mom, it's a weird thing to say there in verse 28. After this thing that he just did, Jesus knowing that all was now finished.

51:51 What does that mean if it's just like contractual stuff? I mean like he's got the last signature on the piece of paper? Is that his mom is taken care of? Is that what it means? No, no, no. No. If you understand that he's defining the core of his church, it makes more sense. The two people who are closest of all to him, the people he loved most in all the world, are now in his coming absence being given responsibility to love each other. And now that that is done, everything's ready. It's all finished. And so seeing that, Jesus said, I thirst. So they give him some sour wine, and he cries out, it's finished, and he dies.

52:33 Now, if you read that little paragraph too quickly, it's going to seem extremely straightforward, and because it seems extremely straightforward, it's going to seem really unremarkable, and you're going to miss its point. But there are some details in it that once you see them, don't let you go over it quite so fast. There's more going on here than you realize it at first. I mean, for one thing, why interrupt things? Why interrupt things with this little detail about Jesus being thirsty? I mean, it's historically true. If you're being crucified in the hot Middle Eastern sun in the spring, you're going to get thirsty.

53:06 It shows us that Jesus is human. That's true, but it's more than that. And again, John points it out. The reason that this happened was to fulfill another detail from Scripture, from Psalm 69. David, there in Psalm 69, again, suffering as king of his people, It says, for my thirst, they gave me sour wine to drink. And again, he's pointing out that none of this, in any of its detail, even small details like that, none of it's just happening to Jesus. It's happening because God foreordained that it must happen.

53:39 Same thing's happening with the end of verse 30 there, with that phrase, he gave up his spirit. There's a strange, sort of weirdly active way to talk about dying, right? I mean, death is usually a passive thing. It kind of happens to you. And if your spirit goes anywhere, your spirit just leaves, right? His spirit left him or something like that. But this is so active. It's Jesus gave up his spirit. And if you know the other Gospels, you know that Jesus decides the time that that's going to happen. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And then he gives up his spirit. It's all very active.

54:10 Why? Because nobody takes Jesus' life from him. He lays it down for his sheep of his own accord. And three days later, he's going to take it back up again. And then there's that cry, it is finished. It's finished. It's just one word in the Greek, tetelestai. That's it. It's three words in English, one word in the Greek, tetelestai. It just means exactly what it says. It is finished. Sometimes people read that as if it's a kind of sigh of defeat.

54:45 Tetelestai. My life is over. It's ended. It's all come to an end. My project is over. It's failed even. Some have translated it. But you know what the other Gospels say about this moment right here? The other Gospels tell us that at this moment, though they don't record the words, maybe they weren't as close to the cross as John was at this point, they don't record the word, but they tell us that at this point in the crucifixion, Jesus cried out with a loud cry. This wasn't some sigh of defeat.

55:18 It was a cry of victory. Tetelestai! Not it is over, not it is ended, not it is failed, but it is accomplished. Everything that I set out to do is now done. It's finished. That is a wonderful, world-shaking, heart-resolving declaration, and it ought to reverberate in your soul with hope. It is finished. do you rest in that do you rest in that like a Christian ought to rest in that or are you constantly chasing after the next thing that's got to be done the next thing that's got to be done the next thing that's got to be done I told somebody the other day that being a pastor is a little bit like Pac-Man sometimes all you can do is just eat the next dot eat the next dot eat the next dot and avoid the ghosts is that the Christian life for you just eat the next dot eat the next dot eat the next dot do the next thing do the next thing Do the next thing.

56:16 Friend, rest. It is finished. If you miss that quiet time, if you don't shepherd your child's heart just right on this particular time, rest. It's finished. Take a breath, friend, because Jesus sits in throne. Sits, not stands. He's not working anymore because it is finished. And your eternity is secure. If you're not a Christian, it's finished. What else do you think there needs to be done?

56:47 Are you a person who says, I'll become a Christian later, but I've got to clean up my life first. I've got to get some things cleaned up. No, friend, it is finished. Jesus has done everything. It's done. Just come to him and be saved. Do you think you have to stop this particular sin or start doing more of these good things? I've got to do, do, do so that I can present myself worthy before Jesus. No, it's finished. It's already done. Just take it from his hand. Do you think you've got to go to church a few more times? Do you think you've got to feel some kind of emotion in your heart or in your head?

57:21 Do you think you have to cry before you can be a Christian? No, it's finished. Go to Jesus and be saved. In the book of Acts, in the book of Acts, there's a particular man who asks Paul, what must I do to be saved? What must I do? it's a perennial human question I want to be saved I want to be right with God I want to be right with Jesus what do I have to do?

57:55 you know what Paul tells him? believe trust rely on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved you don't have to do anything you just got to throw yourself at the feet of the one who has already done everything it's finished and praise God that it is let's pray our Lord Jesus we thank you today and we praise you because you are the one who has finished everything in the zeal of the Lord you have accomplished all that was necessary for our salvation you lived for us, you died for us you rose again and now you sit ascended and enthroned at your Father's right hand with the title of our salvation and our eternity in your strong fist our Lord we honor you today because of what you have done for us and we do it in your name and by your merit Amen