Clough John Lesson 65

Crucifixion – John 19:17-42

Tonight we meet the passage of the death of Christ and we’re going to begin in Romans 3:26. When we see that particular principle we’ll come back to John 19. The great problem that the Old Testament had about God and sin was the problem of how righteousness could be married to mercy. To us this side of the cross it doesn’t seem like a problem at all but you have to go back and put yourself mentally in the situation that people were in before Christ died. The Old Testament saint who had his Old Testament doctrine, he knew God, he knew of God’s character, he knew certain things that God demanded, but the he had problems. And the problem was expressed in no clearer and more precise way than Paul does in Romans 3:26, He says the cross “declare, at this time, God’s righteousness, that He might be just, and the justifier of Him who believes in Jesus Christ.”

The problem with this; it was known in the Old Testament that God would be merciful; it had to be known, obviously no one could have fellowship with God unless God was merciful, given the fact that we’re all sinners, fallen short of His glory. So everyone knew, who was born again, that God would somehow deal with the sin problem, but the problem came up immediately when you raised the question of mercy and this problem has not been solved by the liberals who believe that God just waives His hand and says buddy, you’re forgiven. It isn’t that easy because if that’s really the case, then God just waves His hand, bye-bye to sin. If that’s the case, then there is no righteousness in the universe. And intuitively every person knows this because a small child will see his brother or sister cutting up or something and if that child is not punished they become bent out of shape about because of it. What’s wrong with the lack of authority in the classrooms, the brats that get away with things, oh we mustn’t punish them, we mustn’t restrict them, and what do you teach? You teach all the kids that do behave, go ahead and raise hell because in this class you can get away with it, and you’d better because it’s the only way you get any attention. Who gets all the attention? The brat; a brat should only get one kind of attention, on the seat of his pants.

Now this is obviously not popular in many circles but it shows the kind of morality that was a problem in the Old Testament. How does God be merciful to brats, without everyone else in the classroom looking and saying oh, you got away with that, how come? And we’re all that way; how does so and so get away with God being merciful to him and saying fine, I forgive you of your sin. What’s the deal? How does righteousness hold out in that kind of environment where you constantly break the standard of righteousness to forgive this person, forgive this person, forgive that person, forgive that person, and so after you’ve done all this forgiveness and mercy you’ve exhausted your stand of grace. If you want a more concrete illustration, can you imagine some of the Jews at Auschwitz, watching God forgive Adolph Hitler; you know, what did we suffer for? Does it do any good eventually anyway to stand up for what is right if the bad guys finally get forgiven upon a mere profession of faith.

So the problem is: how does God maintain His righteousness as He forgives and that’s a problem that is only solved in the cross of Christ, and any religion that rejects the authority and cross of Christ has rejected this solution. And you can predict that any theology that denies the cross of Jesus Christ will ultimately wind up denying righteousness. It doesn’t have any source left to uphold righteousness alone with its mercy.

Now we knew in the Old Testament, from the Old Testament framework, at least two pictures; hopefully you remember that these two are the pictures of judgment/salvation. The two concrete illustrations that every Old Testament born again person had; they didn’t know everything about this and how it would culminate in the cross of Christ but they had a lot of information. Let’s review that doctrine; five points of the doctrine of judgment/salvation and we’ll illustrate them with those two events.

The first point is that God is gracious; grace before judgment, grace before judgment. God never judges until He first warns and that was true in the days of the flood. For 120 years God warns and warns and warns, and that was true in the Exodus; before the plagues hit Egypt Pharaoh and his advisers obtained many warnings from Moses and from Aaron. So God always warns before judgment. The judgment is certain but the delay is grace.

Then we found out from that doctrine in the Old Testament that there’s always perfect discrimination, that is, when the judgment falls it is never statistical, it is never probabilistic, it is always concrete and absolute. There is always a category on one side of the fence and a category on the other side of the fence and there’s no oops, I got the wrong person in the wrong slot—perfect discrimination! In the flood no one had to cut a hole in the side of the ark to let in last minute entry. And in the Exodus when the blood had been applied to the door there was no Egyptian child who died by accident, just kind of caught up in the general statistical confusion. God’s judgments are not statistical; man’s judgments are but not God’s, a perfect discrimination between those who are saved and those who are damned.

And then in the Old Testament we knew that there was only one way of salvation in that flood. And similarly with the Exodus, there was only one way of salvation from God’s wrath. So when we come to the cross of Christ we also see that there’s only one way it shouldn’t upset us that we have some narrow minded bigoted type of religion. This is just carrying out the theology of the Old Testament, it was there all along; there weren’t five different arks put-putting around in the water; there was only one! And there were not various things that were put on the door, grease or what have you; there was only one thing put on the door, so there was only one way of salvation.

We found out also that from the Old Testament that always there was an element of faith, that the salvation offered was only good and only applied to those individuals who responded to it. Only those individuals who trusted in the design of the ark, who had the courage seven days before it rained to walk up the ramp into that ark; only those people were saved, a faith expressed by the physical act of walking inside the ark. Similarly the people that were saved in the Exodus were only those people who believed enough in the blood to apply it to their door. They might want to have foregone the decision and say well, I’ve got to think about this some more; sorry, too late. It has to be a decision of response to God’s pro offered means of salvation.

We also note in these two passages, these two events, that God when He judges always judges man and nature collectively. Man is looked upon as the lord of nature; when man is damned, nature is damned and when man is blessed nature is blessed. That was a rough model of judgment that was available to the Old Testament believer, particularly encouraging to him was that there would be one way and it would be by faith, and it’s precisely that element that the Apostle John brings out in this portrait of the death of Christ. John deals with Christ starting with that Exodus picture and goes back to the Exodus picture of judgment/salvation time and time again in this passage, focusing our attention upon these vital elements.

Let’s look at John 19:17, going back to where we left off after Christ had been led from Pilate. It says he was led to a place called Golgotha. [“And He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha:”] Where this place was is a matter of conjecture. There are two sites that compete for scholar’s attention. Let’s look at them; [he shows slides]. This is a map of the city of Jerusalem. Here you can see the temple area. One site of Christ’s crucifixion, the classical site, the site that Roman Catholicism has believed in and probably the genuine site is the site located just to the west of the modern temple area. I didn’t take any pictures of it, you can’t, the problem is that what mound there is is covered with an immense building filled with all sorts of lamps and so on, it reminds me of a lamp shop and that’s supposed to be the site on which Christ died. This is why, by the way, tourists to these sites get nauseous after a while if they have any doctrine. But religion has ruined that site as far as physical beauty is concerned. There is another site to the north of the area; that’s also ruined but for another reason which we’ll see in a moment. Here’s a model of the city of Jerusalem as it existed in Christ’s day; there is the fortress of Antonias that we’ve noticed throughout the trials of Christ, there is the temple complex. Here is the west side, that’s Herod’s temple, Herod’s palace. And this inner wall that you see here was the outer wall in Christ’s day. This wall in the foreground was added after the death of Christ. This model technically reflects the city of Jerusalem before its fall in 70 AD. This was a new wall added after Christ died.

Now the classic site of Calvary is right there, just outside that wall. I want you to notice how close it is to the wall because of a little interesting incident in John’s Gospel; keep in mind the site of Calvary is probably less than 100 feet outside of the wall of the city; I think this is the key site. The other site of Calvary is over to the north of that wall. Here is the one that you often see in the pictures of the New Testament, this is what a tomb looks like cut in the side of a hill; it has a stone that rolls over it. That’s what you always see in the books and they have a very pious expression of what a sacred piece of ground this is. When you go there you’re in for a surprise because lo and behold, underneath it is an Arab bus station. This particular site does show the skull-like, if Golgotha means the skull, which is conjecture, you can see why, this rock has kind of a face to it and that’s why this particular site has been picked out as Christ being crucified on top of it. However, there’s no strict proof of this; this is just conjecture. And today one site covered with religion, the other site covered with Arab buses.

Let’s go to the text. In John 18, wherever this place was, Christ is crucified between two criminals. The crucifixion of Christ is substitutionary in itself because Christ is dying in place of Barabbas. Barabbas was the man who apparently was the ring-leader of this criminal outfit; Christ replaces him and becomes a criminal in his place. So even the immediate physical characteristics of His death were substitutionary and would cause embarrassment to the early Christians, that their great Messiah was crucified as a crook between two other crooks. [18, “Where they crucified Him, and two other with Him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.”]

Now in John 19:19 the title, “And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross.” Now as we read these texts of John remember what we have so carefully inbred in the Gospel of John, that over and over again the Apostle John notes the finest details, a little bit of vinegar here, blood and water here, a title there, it’s the memory of an old man as he thinks back and he says do you remember this detail, this detail, this detail and he pulls all these details up and shows us because he is showing us God’s sovereign control over all of the horrifying chaos that surrounded the death of the Messiah. It looked like an accident immediately but upon reflection God was in charge of it all. This little business about the title is interesting; this is one evidence we have for the shape of the cross. There is a discussion about the different kind of crosses that existed. Some crosses existed as a “T”, was Christ crucified on that one; was He crucified on one which looks more like the classic Christian cross; was He crucified in one which was in the form of a “Y,” these were different Roman shapes and nobody can be sure what kind of cross He was crucified on, except this particular passage with the title suggests that it was that one, that had a post above His head for the title and it was on that post that Pilate wrote this name. Just a suggestion, nothing dogmatic because we don’t have enough material evidence.

But there’s irony in this; throughout the narrative up to this point we’ve noticed that Pilate hates and despises the Jews; despises them and laughs at them for ridiculing this lone carpenter, elevating this one lone Jew as some great enemy of the state. And Pilate washed his hands of the affair and wants to get rid of the whole thing. And so in one final fit of sarcasm he writes, “[And the writing was] JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS,” look at Him. That’s sarcasm, that’s the way Pilate intended it to be, sarcastic, but John points out, under the leading of the Holy Spirit, look what happened. Several things. First of all, notice that it was written in large letters.

It says in John 19:20, “This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.” Three things about this sign that are ironic from John’s point of view. He says first of all, it was written in three languages, the three major languages of that day. There was not a man living in the city of Jerusalem who couldn’t have read that cross. The Latin for the Roman soldier who might have been a new recruit just in from overseas, who might himself come from Italy and not know Greek; even the Roman soldier could peer over the wall and read that sign. The Jew who lived in Jerusalem all his life and never had contact with the Greeks and never knew Greek, he could look up at the sign and say yes, in Hebrew it says “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” And to the many Hellenistic Jews and the other Gentile officials the lingua franca being Greek, they could read the title. And so Pilate intended it for sarcasm; God intended it for good, to communicate the good news of the death of His Son and He did so in three languages.

And notice it says in verse 20 it was near the edge of the city so everybody could see it. If that one site that I showed you on the slide is the correct one, off to the right of that small mound was a gate; that was one of the main traffic patterns, a tremendous amount of traffic goes by that point. And so therefore it was done in public; three languages and in public. But then there’s something else about the sign, over and over again John begins to use a word here that he never uses in the rest of his Gospel. He increases the frequency of the usage of this particular word all during the trials of Christ up to this point. What is the word? It is the word “King,” because the early Christians when they reflected upon this saw the cross as the throne of their King; Christ ruled from the cross; ironic, like ruling from an electric chair, but Christ ruled from the cross. He ruled because it was there that He put Satan down. It was there that He secured out so great salvation and He rules us as the great high priest. Even today, if He makes intercession for u, the Holy Spirit, with groanings that cannot be uttered, but the intercessory ministry of Christ in response to that, all of this work that He does is grounded upon the merit secured in this cross work. The cross is Christ’s throne, and thus the word “King.” [21, “Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews. [22] Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.”]

Now furthermore, the cross was a tremendously painful thing; men were not always killed on the cross; the physical side of the cross has been played up in Christian hymnology, it’s been played up by some preachers, but the New Testament doesn’t play the physical sufferings of Christ. But lest we whip over the passage and not understand, let’s remember some of the features of the cross. First, again assuming that it was the kind of cross that we’re all familiar with, He was nailed not with steel but wooden nails. So when they were rammed through the flesh they took a lot with them. He was probably crucified through the wrist bones, not through the hands as you normally see for the simple reason that the nail would pull out, it won’t sustain body weight, the nails were nailed through the wrist so it gripped between the two bones of the arm and this is how He could hold the top part of the body up. The feet were nailed as a temporary device so that the chest would collapse slowly, it was a system of torture. And a person eventually died by the chest just contracting down, the heart just stopped beating. But then there was an even more painful thing, they were crucified on the ground and then the whole was dug for the cross and the cross was lifted up to the hole and then it was pushed up and then it fell down in; now when it fell down in not only would the nails tear the person but also between His leg at His crotch there was a small stick that extended this and this rammed into His groin as the cross was thrust down into the ground. Now this is some of the physical problems of that cross, some that are not pleasant but nevertheless if we’re to be real that’s what was going on in this passage.

But again, John is not interested in all of these physical gross sufferings; he’s interested in pointing our attention to some of the lesser known details. For example, in John 19:23, he says, “Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also His coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.” There’s a little bit of discussion about what really went on here with the soldiers because in Mark 15:24 it says that they gambled to see which one would get which garment. And yet here it seems that they gamble to see which one gets the whole garment. And the only way we can pull this together is that apparently to show that there were at least two throwing of the dice by the soldiers. Now this seems sort of gross but let’s understand that these men did this about every day or every week, it was just old hat to the soldiers to knock someone up on the cross and the pain to them wasn’t anything, they were used to it, it was their job. And these were hardened tough Roman legionnaires and they probably weren’t even paying attention to who it was they crucified, they were just interested in some clothing, that’s all; they could take this clothing, it was courtesy to the soldiers, payment for the execution, that you would be paid with the man’s clothes.

Now Jesus had four outer garments. He had His sandals; He had a head piece; He had a belt and He had an outer tunic. Apparently they gambled first to see which one would get the tunic and then of course the sandals and so on. This left an undergarment and a loin cloth. The undergarment they couldn’t divide up because that’s what it says in the end of verse 23, “the coat” which was the Greek word for the undergarment, “the coat was without seam,” and it was “woven from the top.” So it had no way to be split up and they apparently saw it was valuable enough not to tear up and use it for just rough cloths, so they gambled for it whole and one of the soldiers got the garment. This left Jesus either completely naked or with a small loin cloth which is all He had.

Now as the soldiers gambled John points out, [24] “Let us not rend it that the Scripture might be fulfilled which says,” [They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith,] They parted My raiment among them, and for My vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.” Notice the word “therefore.” Why did the soldiers gamble? Well, if you’d ask them, well, we just felt like gambling, it’s just customary. But to John, oh no; who was the Lord sovereign over every event in history? It is Christ and the Father and so therefore the soldiers just didn’t do it; they thought they were doing it of their own free will but they were doing it because history, so to speak, compelled them to do it. They were fulfilling and the instruments of the fulfilled prophecy.

What prophecy? Turn to Psalm 22, one of the most famous psalms of all; a psalm that begins with the words that you’ve heard time and time again around Easter, as Christ’s words from the cross. If you haven’t yet seen Psalm 22 you’re in for a surprise because that last word from the cross was nothing but the recitation of Psalm 22; notice. “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Why art Thou so far from helping Me, and from the words of My screaming? [2] O my God, I cry in the daytime, but You hear not; and in the night season, and am not silent.” That was a lament psalm written by David; the year close to 1000 BC. Over a thousand years before this psalm was fulfilled, all the details of the crucifixion had been predicted. Some commentators remark it’s interesting in verse 1, usually when God is addressed as “O God, O God,” in the Old Testament He’s always addressed in triplicate, like Isaiah looks and he says “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God.” It’s significant that One of the three persons is missing in verse 1 and the reason is because the missing One is the One who’s doing the talking to the other two. “My God, My God,” is said by the Son of God.

The Psalm goes on and describes the lament section, going all the way down to verse 18, the praise section picking up at verse 19. If you were here in the Psalm series you know that these kinds of psalms tend to have a lament, a description of the problem, then they have an answer to prayer and then the tone of the psalm shifts, if you were doing it with music you’d have a very lament type of music to begin with and then as the prayer was answered it would be joyous music, the item of praise. Now we haven’t time to go through Psalm 22; we’re just going to look at two sections; one inside the lament and one inside the praise section. In Psalm 22:6-11 this is what was going on in Christ’s mind. I’m showing you this because of a little incident involving the matter of vinegar that was given to Christ and we’re going to have to solve that by looking at this section of the Psalm. This describes what Christ was thinking about as He prayed to His Father.

Psalm 22:6, “I am a worm, and no man;” it’s significant that the Hebrew word for “worm,” again loaded with prophetic meaning because this particular worm was used by the Hebrew women to get dye for their garments; scarlet die for their garments. And how did they get the die? They squashed the worm and from out of the squashed worm came the color that would die their garment; significant, is it not, that the Holy Spirit takes this word to use of Christ, that He’s being crushed, it’s scarlet, the blood, cleanse us from our sins. “I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people. [7] All they who see Me laugh Me to scorn; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, [8] He trusted on the LORD that He would deliver Him; let Him deliver Him, seeing He delighted in Him.” It’s the utter loneliness; that’s one of the features over and over again you see of Christ; He dies in solitude, cut off even from His disciples, absolute loneliness. But even more than that it’s a loneliness cut off even from God Himself; that’s why verse 2, “O my God, I cry in the daytime, but Thou hear not.” During the hours on the cross when the darkness hit, when Christ was bearing the sin of the world, He was totally alone. This is the most absolute loneliness that any person in existence has ever faced, and that’s the theme of Psalm 22, absolute loneliness; not relative loneliness. You and I may feel like we’re alone sometimes; we always have the Lord; in this case that was not the case.

So He has ridicule from those outside, but verse 9, His confidence. Here’s where, and this shows you as He begins to recite the Psalm, which I’m sure He recited for the reason that the Psalm title in the Bible are not the number, they weren’t there. You tell a psalm in the Old Testament and in the New Testament by the first verse; instead of saying let’s read Psalm 22 I would say let’s read “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me,” and everybody would turn in their little role to “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me.” That was the title of it, so in the New Testament when you see Christ says “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me,” what Matthew is communicating in that passage is that Christ recited Psalm 22; that’s what he’s telling us. So as Christ began to recite this, at the moment He was reciting it He was fulfilling it. And it describes perfectly His thought pattern.

In Psalm 22:7-8, He comes to grips with the solitary loneliness of the cross, the ridicule of those outside of Him in verse 8, and now in verse 9, He doesn’t get an ulcer on the cross, He doesn’t become paranoid because of all this injustice heaped upon Me. He doesn’t respond to life that way; He doesn’t become a candidate for Big Spring through a sinful response pattern to pressure. What does He do in verses 9-10, He fights it through to faith; He takes the pressure, He sees the reality of the problem in verse 8, He’s not oblivious to the pressure, He knows the pressure, He knows it very well, but it’s what He does with the pressure. Verse 9, “But Thou art He who took Me out of the womb; Thou didst make Me hope when I as upon My mother’s breasts. [10] I was cast upon Thee from the womb; Thou art My God from My mother’s belly.” Notice how many times in verse 9 and 10 He thinks of His mother. Who is it that’s standing by the cross in a few verses? His mother. And so He goes back to those days of the virgin birth and He remembers that, and this has a great impression upon Him. He knows that He was born to die and the God who pulled off the virgin birth is certainly going to get Him through this. So by verse 9 and 10 He’s beginning to have faith, He’s beginning to actually apply the promises. It seems funny to think of this but Christ in His humanity had to go through the same process we have to go through. Faced with the problem we have to look at the problem and we have to work it through until we can trust the Lord in that problem. He had to do the very same thing.

You might note in passing Psalm 22:14-15 describes how He felt physically. And this is not psychological; Christ suffered but He didn’t suffer in the way men who are sinful suffer. We suffer largely, 90% of it, because we meet the problem the wrong way. We have bitterness, jealousy, envy, hatred, animosity, this is what zaps our strength, by these cruddy sinful mental attitudes that are always washing around and slopping around in our depraved nature, every time we come across some situation. Now Christ suffered pressure here but it was not due to that kind of suffering, it was due to actual sin being poured upon Him and the physical suffering.

Psalm 22:14, “I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint: My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of My bowels [within Me].” That was truer that David meant it; in fact Psalm 22 was written by David but it was a lot truer than even he thought it when it was fulfilled in Christ. We’ll get to the heart problem in a moment also. [15] “My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue cleaves to My jaws;” that’s intense dryness of the mouth, that’s why the vinegar is going to come into the picture shortly in John, “and Thou has brought Me into the dust of death. [16] For dogs,” the word for unbeliever, “dogs have compassed Me; the assembly of the wicked have enclosed Me,” and now “they pierced My hands and My feet.” Interesting isn’t it; crucifixion was not a system of execution in 1000 BC. [17] “I tell [count] all My bones; they look and stare upon Me. [18] They part My garments among them, and cast lots upon My vesture.”

And then He prays in verses 19-21, that’s the prayer that Christ prayed on the cross for Himself, “Be Thou not far from Me, O LORD. O My strength, haste Thee to help Me. [20] Deliver My soul from the sword; My darling [only one] from the power of the dog. [21] Save Me from the lion’s mouth;” now at this point the prayer is answered; there’s a sharp shift in the Hebrew text to the point of perfect tenses now, and so it reads, “Thou hast heard Me from the horns of the unicorn [wild oxen]. [22] I will declare Thy name unto My brethren,” here goes the praise section, and we want to look just a little bit at the praise section because of certain features that will also play in the cross of Christ. Now the prayer has been answered and Christ says, “I will now praise You in the congregation, [23] Ye who fear the LORD, praise Him; all ye, the seed of Jacob, glorify Him; and fear Him, all ye, the seed of Israel. [24] “For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither has He hidden His face from Him, but when He cried unto Him, He heard.” That was the prayer that was answered three days later at the resurrection.

[25] “My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation; I will pay My vows before them that fear Him.” Now that’s starting off with David praising God for answering a prayer, but that’s just a partial picture of Christ rising from the dead in answer to His prayer on the cross and now communicating the New Testament to the world. [26] The meek shall eat and be satisfied; they shall praise the LORD that seek Him; your heart shall live forever.” Notice in verse 27 world-wide gospel preaching, “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee.” [28] For the kingdom is the LORD’s; and He is the governor among the nations.

Now in Psalm 22:30-31 a very unique prophecy is made of the Church; it wasn’t known to be the Church at this point but it works out to include and encompass the Church’s acts. “A seed shall serve Him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.” Now notice this in verse 31, “They shall come, and they shall declare His righteousness,” what righteousness? The righteousness I showed you in Romans 3 as we began, how God can be merciful without compromising His just standard; how God can remain just and be a justifier of the brats. But then it says it will “declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born,” that’s the future generation of Christians in history who will hear after the cross, who will also hear of that great event. So Psalm 22 is a magnificent prophecy given by God verbally in history to describe the cross a thousand years before it happened.

Now let’s turn back to the cross passage in John 19, verse 24 again, the prophecy, John says see, Psalm 22 was fulfilled, the soldiers literally cast lots upon His garments. It was truer than even David thought it would ever be and notice again before we leave it in verse 24, the word “therefore,” see the powerful sovereignty of God in history in charge of every detail of the cross?

Now we come to that section with the women, John 19:25-27, “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.” We don’t know because of the syntax problem here whether there’s three woman or four women; the problem is whether His mother’s sister is an independent woman, then “Mary the wife of Cleophas.” If in fact Mary, who is the wife of Cleophas, if she in fact is Mary’s sister, it can be shown that John the Apostle was probably related to Jesus. But we can’t prove that point, it’s just ambiguous in the text and I don’t know how to solve the problem; the Word of God just doesn’t give us enough material. So there are three or four women here, by the cross. And that’s kind of interesting. The men have left the cross, they’ve fled the cross and who is it that functions according to their roles in creation as the helpmeet? The women. Who is there to see to the last? The women, the three or four women stand and watch; it wasn’t easy for a mother to watch her son crucified, but Mary did.

John 19:26, “When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom He loved, He saith unto His mother, Woman, behold thy son! [27] Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.” It shows you that in spite of that section in the Gospel of Matthew we went over and properly interpreted, it doesn’t mean when He said “let the dead bury their dead” that you’re to disregard parents; Jesus just wants the priorities ordered. And the proof of it is what He did here at the cross; He didn’t ignore His mother’s physical welfare because I hope at least some of you have thought of the fact that, it’s very obvious, this was unnecessary, wasn’t it. Didn’t Jesus have younger brothers that could have cared for His mother? Have any of you thought why did Mary have to be given from the brothers, James and Jude and the other boys, why couldn’t they take care of their mother?

Why did, at the last moment of Christ’s life, He entrust His mother, not to His own brothers, but to kind of a foreigner, the Apostle John. The answer is because John was a believers and His brothers weren’t; His mother was a believer and He wanted to keep the fellowship. And therefore He showed great discernment by having His mother stay with believers at this time. All of Christ’s brothers, those who believed, believed in Him after He died. So lest it ever be said that somebody failed to “live the life,” (end quote) before your family because if you lived the life before your family they’d become Christians by now. Oh really, how then is it true that Jesus’ brothers and sisters never believed on Him? Didn’t He live the life in front of them? So we find that at this point no one in Jesus’ family except His mother had believed on Him and so therefore His mother is moved out of that unbelieving home and into a believing one.

Now John 19:28, and the details become thick and fast here as John picks them up and shows us that point after point God is sovereignly in charge. “After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.” Now if you turn to Matthew 27:34 it seems that we have a discrepancy but like all apparent discrepancies, if you devote enough energy to solving it you get a blessing out of it. “They gave Him vinegar to drink, mingled with gall; and when He tasted it, He would not drink [it].” Here He does not drink; in John He does drink. The answer is they are two separate incidents. Notice verse 34 is followed by verse 35, after they crucified Him.

John is talking about what happened just before He died He asked, I was thirsty. But at this point He refused to take the vinegar; notice He tasted it, so it wasn’t that He was against taking any fluid into His body while He was hanging on the cross but rather they gave it to him on a hyssop apparently, they put it to His mouth and He began to suck the fluid in His mouth and He tasted it and it had gall in it and he rejected it and He would not swallow it. Why is that? We have a passage out of the Jewish Mishnah that tells us why. “When one is led out to execution he is given a goblet of wine containing a grain of frankincense in order to benumb his senses, for it is written, ‘give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish and wine unto the bitter in soul,’ and it has also been taught, the noble women in Jerusalem used to donate and bring it.”

Why does Jesus in Matthew refuse to drink the vinegar mixed with gall? Because it was an anesthetic, and while He was working on the cross, and He did work on the cross because during that darkness and those hours He was bearing your sins and mine, He was performing a spiritual work on the cross and He couldn’t afford to be anesthetized while He was doing that spiritual work. He had to keep His mind clear; He refused drugs; drugs mess up your head. And Jesus Christ refused to mess up His head while He was doing this spiritual work; He could not afford… He was praying Psalm 22, that’s what He was doing, He was thinking. Emotionally He might have had emotions going all over the place but the point was the Scriptures emphasize His thought life while He was encountering this pressure; it wasn’t what Jesus felt; it was what Jesus thought and in order to think clearly He rejected anesthesia.

Now we come back to the drinking of John 19:29, an utterly different matter, for now the work of the cross has been finished and now He says I thirst. But when He is given the drink, even at this point it is not a drugged vinegar, it is just plain vinegar. “Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth.” An innocent little statement, innocent observation, though we should suspect the way John writes that we’d better be careful of these little innocent statements that John makes; they’re not innocent, they’re calculated. Do you know what this is a picture of? The hyssop and the wine; well in verse 31, after this, John is talking about the fact the Jews are very wary that Christ… get Him off the cross now it’s Passover, can’t have this on the Passover. Really? You can’t have Passover on the Passover, because this is the Passover and the giving of the vinegar on the hyssop is exactly what they did in the Passover in Exodus 12, when they took the blood and they put it on the door. And so what you have enacted out physically on that day of the Passover when they were worried about getting Christ off the cross because it was the Passover, they were executing the Passover. While they were doing this, so to speak, with a little lamb originally in the Exodus account, they were doing it to The Lamb right here.

It says in John 19:30 that as this occurred, “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar,” drank it, and then “He said, It has become finished,” it’s a reference to His complete atonement work, “and He bowed His head, and gave up the spirit.” Now here is a most amazing statement. Again on the surface it looks rather innocent, He just died. That’s not what it says. Let’s look carefully, the Greek word is paradidomai, that means to give, it’s a word, a verb that refers to volition. Jesus Christ chose this moment to die; He did something at this point that no member of the human race has ever done or ever will do. Men can kill themselves but God takes the spirit. Think of how many people have tried to commit suicide and they live through it. See, we don’t have total control over the spirit, the spirit is taken from us, we are the passive agents, we’re not the active agents, but John insists at this point Christ is an active agent; Jesus dismisses His human spirit, He deliberately, and you don’t call it suicide but I don’t know what other word we’ve got in our English language to communicate it, He kills Himself at this point; He died on the cross but He did not die because of the cross.

Which now relates back to a question that was asked on the feedback card and here is the amazing answer. Someone asked on a feedback card about when I spent so much time showing how John is very careful here to show that at one point after another Christ avoided stoning; we took those passages and showed, they picked up rocks and they were ready to stone Him, and then something happened and He never was stoned to death. And my point was that Christ worked it out so that He would die a Roman death, not a Jewish death. Now here’s why and this passage tells us why a Roman death. Crucifixion was the only method of execution that would tolerate Him giving His spirit up because if He was executed by stones and they dropped a 300 pound stone and smashed His chest in, the way they did when they killed you with rocks, you wouldn’t have a clear cut case of Christ giving His spirit up; it wouldn’t be clearly demonstrable. You had to have some slow means of execution that wouldn’t compel death immediately but would drag it out. Some people hung on a cross four days in the ancient world without dying. You could survive on the cross and some people did for long times. So the Roman death and the crucifixion execution system was the only apparent way that He could die by His own wish. This is not the death wish, as some people used to interpret it, but it’s a death will; Christ chose to die and He did so by a Roman death.

It says, and we want to skip down to a place in verse 34 that we read during communion, “But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.” The classic work on the medical aspects of the death of Christ was done by a medical doctor by the name of Stroud in the 1800s. He wrote the classic text that’s never been improved upon as to how Jesus Christ physical body was in the process of dying. We would have to say that Dr. Stroud must be corrected at one point, Christ did not die because of this, what I’m going to read you. Christ died because He chose to die; He died with this physical damage to His system. Dr. Stroud contended on the basis of verse 34 that when you had blood and water come together outside of His side the soldiers sword had pierced the outer layer of the heart and that what had happened is that Jesus Christ’s heart had ruptured and so when the spear made a hole of drainage out from the pericardium there was the fluid that had accumulated around the heart and the blood from within the heart together went out through the drainage hole. The significance of it is that the fluid is water in color, which shows that the heart had ruptured hours before; this had already occurred, it wasn’t a fresh rupture or there would have been just pure blood. But it was a separation of the serum and the blood and this had taken a process chemically of some hours and it tells us that Christ was walking abound all during His trials with a ruptured heart.

Now let’s look at it further what Dr. Stroud said: “The rupture of the heart, or great vessels into the pericardium, is not always immediately fatal. As a solid coagulum or fibrinous concretum has in several instances been known to arrest hemorrhage for a few hours. Of the ten cases mentioned by one authority, 8 died instantly, one in two hours and another in 14 hours.” So it’s obvious that a person could walk around with a ruptured heart for as long as a day. When did this take place, however? If Christ’s heart ruptured and it ruptured before the cross long enough for the congealing to occur, when was His heart broken? Turn to Luke 22:44, this introduces a new sidelight on the old expression, somebody died of a broken heart. Christ literally did, in the sense that He died with it, not because of it. When He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, “And being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly; and His sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Medically this is called chromhidrosis and it is due to the tremendously high elevation of the blood pressure so that the blood squirts out of the capillaries and goes into the sweat system and you have a transfer of the red blood. It only happens under extremely high blood pressure, which therefore shows you that during the time when Christ was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane He was that highly agitated, that His blood pressure rose to cause chromhidrosis. Probably it was at this point that His heart also ruptured.

Now what this shows you is the extreme humanity of Christ, that Christ just didn’t kind of cruise into the Garden of Gethsemane with this pseudo sanctification that you get sold in the Christian bookstores on the devotional shelf that if you really trust the Lord you never have a worry, you just kind of like a zombie, float on cloud nine from one problem to the next. It’s strange, isn’t it, that that model doesn’t work for Jesus. Is Jesus out of fellowship in the Garden of Gethsemane and therefore is out of fellowship and this increases His high blood pressure. Not at all; Jesus Christ is agitated over a genuine spiritual issue and He pays a physical price for it.

But more to this, why was Jesus Christ so highly agitated in the Garden of Gethsemane? Well, we know one reason, He was contemplating the cross, but there was another reason, I suggest, that goes along with that theme of Psalm 22. What was it that caused more pressure upon Christ as a man now, not as God, as a man? Where was the pressure building. Turn to Mark 14:37, while He was praying He had asked the disciples to watch with Him and in verse 36, “And He said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee. Take away this cup from Me; Nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou wilt.” There was the reconciliation but He didn’t get into the position where He could say verse 36 without tremendous exertion. And then what does He say in verse 37, “And He comes, and He finds them sleeping, and He said unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? Could you not watch one hour?” That’s an expression of disappointment. Jesus Christ was deeply disappointed in the Garden of Gethsemane by believers. And so I suggest that the theme of loneliness of Psalm 22, the loneliness that is reflected there began in the Garden of Gethsemane when believers deserted Him; gave Him no spiritual encouragement. And he complains; this is a complaint, a complaint in the humanity of Christ about believers who couldn’t one hour stay awake.

Turn back to two passages in the epistles, 2 Timothy 4:6 and Hebrews 7:27. We’ll look at both of them at the same time. Summarizing what we’ve said so far about Christ’s death on the cross, we said number one it was a Roman death to allow Him to very clearly show that He did not die because of it, He died with it. The second thing we said is that Christ died with a ruptured heart, shown by the blood and the water, that this ruptured heart was most likely precipitated by the tremendous pressure in the Garden of Gethsemane, the decision, and the extreme loneliness, suffering the sin of man, separated from God the Father, that absolute loneliness, and then the relative loneliness of not even getting any support from fellow believers. Now in John’s passage and we’re going to these passages to confirm, there’s this expression, “He bowed His head and He gave up His spirit. This is the third thing we want to see about the cross. In 2 Timothy 4:6, this is the way it looks when a normal individual dies, and I want you to notice the voice of the verb. “I am now ready to be offered,” that’s Paul, the apostle, not Jesus, Paul; when Paul speaks of his death he speaks of it passively, as being administered to him; he’s the recipient of it. “I am now ready to be offered.” But if you turn to Hebrews 7:27 where exactly the same word is used of Jesus the voice on the verb shifts from the passive to the active and so in verse 27, “who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for His own sins and the sins of the people, for this He did once, when He offered up Himself.” He chose the offering, He was not offered.

So likewise, turning back to John 19 we have Christ choosing the moment of His death along with His ruptured heart. Obviously if He waited too long He’d be killed by His ruptured heart but He chose to die before He had to die from His ruptured heart. He chose at this point because, as He says in verse 30, “It is finished,” I’ve completed the job, and so now I die.

John 19:31, the Jews, carrying out their very punctilious details of the Law, “The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day, (for that Sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.” This is the way that the Romans had of hasting death; they took a mallet, they came along and smashed the legs of the people on the cross and that way it produced more and more pressure on the chest, collapsed the heart down and caused heart failure. So this is the way they speeded up the system when they’d get tired of waiting around for somebody to die.

John 19:32, “Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with Him. [33] But when they came to Jesus, and saw that He was dead already, they brake not His legs: [34] But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, [and forthwith came there out blood and water.] [35] And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knows that he saith true, that ye might believe.” I’ll come back to verse 35 in a moment. We want to look first at verse 36, “For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled,” notice again the sovereign details of God over every area; even the little fine detail of the soldiers taking that mallet and smashing it into the flesh of one man, and then smashing it in so they could hear the bones snap on the other man, and coming to Christ and ah, we won’t bother with Him. That soldier that remarked, ah, we won’t bother with Him was ordained from eternity, it was ordained back in the days of the Old Testament, the references would be Exodus 12:46 and Numbers 9:12, where the Passover lamb, the bones could not be broken. And along with the hyssop that we showed you in verse 29, which is a picture of the Passover, so now we come in verse 36 to another picture of the Passover. This is the irony that’s John’s doing this, He’s saying look at this people, here they are, worrying about the details of the Passover and the Passover Lamb is being sacrificed right in front of their face and they don’t even know it. “…A bone of Him shall not be broken,” right at that very time in Jewish homes all over the city of Jerusalem they were very carefully preparing the Lamb without a broken bone; that’s the irony of this preparation.

Now let’s come back to verse 35 and 37, “And he that saw it bore witness, and his record is true;” why does John inject that verse 35 in there, we know why he wrote the Gospel, “these are written that you might believer that Jesus is the Christ,” so obviously verse 35 is in there because something significant has just happened, and it’s sort of stop, hold it, I want you people to see I’ve put this detail in there so you’ll believe. What detail did he put in there so we’ll believe? Verse 34, verse 33, verse 32, all the way back to the death of Christ, but in particular verse 34, the one just before this flag passage, and what did verse 34 testify, that “blood and water” had come out. “Blood and water” are two of the three components of humanity according to Jewish Law. 1 John 5:6 talks about the three components, the water, the blood and the spirit. Jesus has given up His spirit, His breathe, and there is therefore left only the two components of genuine humanity, the water and the blood. And so therefore John says this is here, that you might believe that Jesus was a true man who died out of a true body. He was not a phantom, like the later Gnostics tried to teach, the Platonists, who thought that matter was so evil that God couldn’t possibly incarnate Himself in matter. The modern clergyman who preaches from the pulpit an errant Bible does the same thing; oh, God could not speak His holy precious word through sinful men. Oh really, do men always have to be sinful? Jesus wasn’t. And in this case Jesus had a real humanity, He was real flesh, and what He is saying here is real flesh and blood. I saw the blood come out when they speared Him.

Now John 19:37, another very graphic term. “And again another scripture saith, They shall look on Him whom they pierced.” And this is John at his best. Let’s go back to where that’s taken from; Zechariah 12:10, it’s a prediction of what’s going to happen in the future. It’s a prediction of a change of heart in the nation Israel and it says, “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications; and they shall look upon Me” now who’s doing the talking in Zechariah 12:10? It’s Jehovah, isn’t it, “they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for His first-born.” Now a little theological question; how does a human being pierce God? All right, these are one of those loaded passages where John has four or five levels to his verse. The creature can pierce God’s heart by sinning against Him. A God who loves His creature gets the effect of sin, does He not? Is God a statue, like the classical Greeks, that sits in heaven in perfect Michelangelo form? Or is He a real person who feels us and our rejection. So at the very first level of Zechariah 12:10 we have Jehovah pierced in His heart by the rebellion of His creatures.

But now John takes this verse and he brings it over to this passage in John 19 and invests it with a deeper meaning. Yes, true, that we offend God when we sin, but He says suppose God took upon Himself a body and we acted toward that body like we acted toward God without His body; now when we acted in Zechariah toward God without His body we pierced His heart by our rebellion against Him. But how did we say Jesus ruptured His heart literally? Because of the sin, and so in the second way we will look upon Him whom we have pierced, we look upon Jesus Christ whose heart was broken because of the sin of the world, because of the momentous decision He had to make in the Garden of Gethsemane to go to the cross, and because of the believers who scorn Him and spurn Him at that last hour. So literally, says John, Jehovah’s heart was broken when His heart became a human heart subject to human pressure.

And then of course there’s the literal meaning of verse 34, “he pierced His flesh with a sword.” So there’s three levels: Jehovah’s heart pierced in a spiritual sense by rebellion; Christ’s physical heart pierced because of sin of men, and the literal physical sense of verse 34, the soldiers pierced His body.

Okay, we see the after effects; the passage closes in John 19:38-42 with the laying of the body in the tomb. “And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him permission. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus. [39] And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. [40] Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury. [41] Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid. [42] There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews’ preparation day; for the sepulcher was nigh at hand.”

We have a picture of what the sepulcher looked like; we don’t have a picture of exactly the grave that Jesus was buried in but this shows you the statue of Joseph of Arimathaea. Joseph of Arimathaea was a member of the high societies of Jerusalem and therefore Joseph was quite wealthy. This is a picture of the tombs of the Sanhedrin, this is where all the bad guys were buried, the bad guys from the gospel standpoint. It is cut into the side of a cliff; you can walk down here, this is the hole where you walk down into it and there’s a door there and inside is a burial place for each member of the Sanhedrin. It was in this area, wealthy, this had to be hand done, so it represents a very wealthy grave. But we also have a picture of a tomb with a rolling stone on it, just like Jesus was buried in, this is the tomb of Herod, this particular one, Herod’s family and you can see, there intact is one of those stones that the angel moved so it gives you an idea of the size, and this is the door. There’s the rolling stone that was moved across the face of the door. There’s the entrance to the tomb and there’s that stone that would be rolled through the slot just in back of the door. That’s an idea of the kind of tomb that Jesus Christ was buried in.

Joseph of Arimathaea, wealthy, influential, but what does the Scripture say of Joseph in verse 38; it says when he and Nicodemus, they were not like Peter, but they were those who were secret Christians, afraid of open identification with Jesus Christ. Now there’s a lesson in this, 38 and 39 should encourage you. The Word of God doesn’t condemn Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus, these men… the other disciples could condemn, boy, where were you when they were throwing rocks? You were hiding inside the building, big deal, now you come and show up. That would be our reaction, but that’s not God’s reaction. God is gracious to those of us who fear to follow Him, but who eventually, because of the doctrine of perseverance finally make it, and there will come that hour when you can serve the Lord and you won’t be afraid to do it. And the hour when it comes will be the hour that will show you exactly, you doing something for the Lord that no one else could do. You see, all the other disciples could never have pulled this off, gone to Pilate, got permission for the body, buried the body in that kind of a tomb, and not only buried in a tomb but it says in verse 41 buried in a tomb in which no one else could die. See, those tombs are used over and over again; there’s only so much area there that you could use, the body would rot, take out the bones, bury the bones, put a new body in till it rots. But this was a tomb in which no one else had ever been buried, showing once again prophetically Christ was uncontaminated, even in His death. His body was laid in this uncontaminated, undefiled tomb. That’s all due to two men who were chicken, until the last moment and then finally the Spirit moved enough in their heart that they came out into the open and worked for the Lord.

Now we’ve looked at the death of Christ tonight and as we come to the conclusion of the Gospel of John, we’re coming to that conclusion of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, as we’ve looked at all this there ought to be a question that each of us asks ourselves and that is, was it all in vain as far as I’m concerned? Is all this death and all of the details that work together, the trial, avoiding the stoning to get to the Roman way in order that He might choose the moment of His death, the perfect fulfillment of Him being the lamb that takes away the sin of the world, is all that in vain as far as you personally are concerned, or have you personally responded to that? The finished work of Christ is the basis of salvation. We said at the beginning of the doctrine of judgment/salvation there was only one way and it had to be by appropriation of faith. What you have seen in these few verses is the magnificent sovereign working of God to bring about the perfect atonement for you. But it’s only perfect if you respond to it and if its benefit accrue to your account. If that’s not the case, if you have rejected Jesus Christ, then all of it is for waste as far as you’re concerned; not as far as Christ is concerned but as far as you are concerned.

And then again for those of us who are believers, again as we’ve reflected upon the death of Christ, it takes us back, doesn’t it, to 1 John 1:9, that every time we confess our sins, do you realize that we have to go back to the cross, that we have to keep going back there, as long as we’re Christians, as long as we mature, as long as we’re sanctified, as long as we exercise our spiritual gift, it doesn’t make any difference, every time we sin we come back to the starting place by 1 John 1:9 and we have to use the work that Christ did on this cross. Think of it maybe this way, He refused that anesthesia given in the vinegar in order that he might think through and labor under the pressure of bearing your sin to make it a perfect atonement. A believer who is genuinely born again can’t be insensitive to that.

Father, we thank You…..