April 9, 2017 PM Service The Disciple’s Mother by Pastor Josh Sheldon

John’s Crucifixion Account and the Third Word from the Cross

The Gospel of John, in chapter 19, verses 23 -27. John 19, 23 -27. This, of course, is John's account of the Lord's crucifixion. And it is the third in our series of the seven words that Jesus spoke from the cross.

I find myself very grateful to the men who long, long ago noted that Jesus spoke these seven things. And when you put them in order, it's a very profound and, I think, a very meaningful study just to remind ourselves of Jesus Christ and during this time of his utmost suffering.

That he had the wherewithal to even say these things. Looking at what they mean, I think, is obviously even a deeper thing. When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts.

One part for each soldier, also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. So they said to one another, let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.

This was to fill 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, where his mother and his mother's sister Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene, when Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, woman, behold your son.

Then he said to the disciple, behold your mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own home. That disciple, of course, is the author of this gospel, none other than John. This being Jesus' third time that he spoke from the cross, we're reminded of the first thing he said, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.

The men who carried out the Lord's crucifixion were indeed blind to the magnitude of their crime, what they were doing, but Jesus, even as nails are being driven into his hands, into his feet, was concerned for them, and so he sought God's forgiveness of their ignorance, this terrible sin.

And the second thing, of course, that Jesus said was to his fellow sufferer, the thief on the cross next to his, who confessed not only that he deserved, and the other thief deserved what they were getting, getting the due reward for their crimes, he said, but this man has done nothing.

And so we understand that he recognized Jesus for who he is and called him Lord. Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus, the second thing he said from the cross, what beautiful words to hear.

No less to us than to him. But this day you will be with me in paradise. And so we know that that indeed is where that sufferer now is. And we will one day, Lord willing, have an opportunity to meet him.

Christ’s Concern for Sinners and the Needs of Others

Our Lord's concern, of course, was for the fate of sinners. This is what he came for. He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. This was his purpose. This is why God sent him.

Even while enduring crucifixion, he had no place for personal concerns. His concern was for the need of others, for the needs of sinners. And what do sinners need but to recognize Jesus Christ for who he is and see the cross as the place where their sins are answered, where God's wrath is poured out and where he is finally satisfied.

First he has forgiveness for murders, then he looks to the need of the man on the cross next to his, and now he looks to the needs of his mother. In this he models perfectly for us what the apostle would later tell the church, let no one seek his own but each one the other's well-being.

If a man does not take care of his own family, what did the apostle say? He's worse than an unbeliever. And Jesus Christ, the exemplar of what it means to look to others' needs, the example that we have of this.

Jesus saw Mary there with John. He continues to think in this way of others. It's probable that Joseph was by then gone. He was probably dead. He's not mentioned except in the earliest part of Matthew and Luke's Gospels.

A widow in that day was of course reduced to poverty. There was no one to take her in. That was the only thing she could look ahead to. Such a fate for his mother, of course, is unacceptable to our Lord.

He had brothers, but he does not commend her to their care. James would later become not only a believer, but a pillar of the early church and the author of the Epistle of James. But in the meantime, pending their conversion, John 7 -5, saying not even his own brothers believed in him.

So he transfers that responsibility that they otherwise would have had to the disciple whom he loved, to John. We think for a moment of the Lord's love for his mother, for Mary. It was a perfect love.

There's no duty to her that he left undone or even partially done. Yet where does he look to ensure Mary's care? He looks to a believer, not to his own family. He looks to one who has no blood ties to him or to her.

He drew from the family of faith. He drew from the family of faith. Luke 8 -19 -21, we read, Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, Your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you.

But he answered them, saying, My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. Where does Jesus draw from? He had other brothers. I forget all their names right now. We know one was James.

Was there a Jude? Joseph, however you pronounce that. He had other brothers. He doesn't say to John, run and get my brothers and bring them here so I can tell them to care for Mary. He goes to John. He goes to the family of faith.

He goes to the church. The church is our family. That's why we come together as we do in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. All the ones in the scripture. How much more profound can it be to us than for Jesus Christ to turn the care of his mother whom he loved over to the disciple who had no blood tie with him at all.

To the family of faith. We have immediate application from this. We are each other's mothers and brothers and fathers and so forth. This does not mean, of course, we abandon our own physical relations.

That would put us against what I quoted before from 1 Timothy 5 .8. If anyone does not provide for his relatives, especially the members of his household, he's denied the faith. Of course, Jesus would never even come close to such as that.

Even if a man is head of a home where he is the only believer, his family's well-being is his first concern. If it isn't, then he can't be trusted to keep his brothers and sisters in Christ in their proper priority.

We know almost nothing about Jesus' brothers, but for whatever reason, he didn't entrust her to them. The law of Moses would make it incumbent upon them to look to her welfare. We do know that they weren't there at the cross.

Only Mary and some of the other women who had accompanied Jesus and the disciple whom he loved were there. He'd ask for a second, you know, could not the Lord have provided for her from heaven? Could not the Lord have instituted a permanent miracle along the lines of what Elijah did for the widow and the barrels of oil and just have them go on until she had no more need for them?

He could have done even more than what happened with Elijah and the widow. He could easily have done this. Instead, he turns her care to the disciple. Says, woman, behold your son. Now some read that and think that Jesus, when he said, behold your son, meant himself.

As if he's telling Mary, look more carefully upon me. I think this has to be wrong. I mean, this would seem to me to be a cruel thing to do, to ask her to look upon him suffering like that. Suffering which she could do nothing to relieve him from.

She couldn't do anything about the agony. And it would only increase hers to see her firstborn and look even more so upon it. So I don't think Jesus would have beckoned her to look upon that kind of horror.

He meant John. Behold your son, John, the disciple whom he loved. Behold your son. I've just given you to him. And he took her into his home from that hour. In other words, at that moment, the disciple whom he loved proved himself in that sense worthy of that love.

He took her into his home. Most Bibles have this final statement, from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. But the original actually doesn't include the word home. Somewhere along the line it got added.

But I don't think it should have been. It doesn't really help. I think it weakens it a little bit. If we think about what was really happening there. To bring her into his own home would be to bring her off the streets.

There she'd be safe and fed. But take away home, and what does it say? From that hour he took her to his own. Not just into the home, like okay, here's a place for you to be warm and dry. Here's a bed you can sit on, and here's your place at the table where you can eat.

All that would be true. But not as a guest. Not simply as a visitor, if you will, coming into the home. He took her into his own. Jesus didn't say just give her a roof over the head. He didn't just say give her a place to sleep.

He didn't just say keep her off the streets. I don't want her suffering. I don't want her starving or anything like that. He said this is your mother. This is your mother. And John took her to his own.

Just period. He was not to dispense charity. He was to care for his mother. Not his master's mother. Not the woman who gave birth to his teacher these past three and a half years. The woman he was to look after was henceforth, what?

His mother. I take Jesus' word very literally here. He's to treat her in every way as he would his own. You know, Jesus had earlier lambasted the Pharisees for the clever loophole that they found or devised, I should say, against God's law.

But you say if a man says to his father or mother, whatever profit you might have received from me is Corban. That is a gift to God. Then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother, making the word of God of no effect through your tradition, which you have handed down.

And many such things you do. He did many such things, but this one, refusal to care for their elderly parents, that represented the paradigm of their hypocrisy. I've read 1 Timothy 5 .8 a couple of times where I don't have to read it again.

It goes totally against God's word. It goes totally against everything that God represents himself as a father who provides for his children. We, by analogy, are to provide for our own. Jesus would never join in such self-serving violence to God's word.

He is the word. If we are faithless, 2 Timothy 2 .13, he is faithful, he cannot deny himself. So often we find warrant to leave God's precepts behind. We plunge ahead like stubborn donkeys and do our own will.

Convenience for us so often wins out over the difficulties of obedience. The Lord is here on the cross. Every breath is a torture. His muscles are cramping into these unrelenting knots. When he tried to raise himself to gain a moment's relief, of course his shoulders, already whipped to the bone, rub against the coarse hardwood of the crossbar.

I mean, if ever there was a moment, if ever there was cause to think of oneself rather than others, the Lord had it. The Lord had it there. And it's entirely conceivable that some of them, some of the Pharisees who had felt the sting of his condemnation of the Corban doctrine, were there at the cross.

That they heard him create a family of John and Mary. And if that is the case, if that is the case, then they saw with their own eyes and they heard with their own ears that Jesus meant what he said. He's on the cross.

He takes care of his mother Mary in this way. And think back, if you were one of the ones who had to hear his rebuke of the Corban doctrine, if you were one of the ones who had followed that doctrine, had believed in it, I just wonder, and I can only wonder, I can barely even speculate, because the scripture gives nothing, I'm just wondering here, if they felt any conviction.

If they realized that it wasn't just a way to make them look foolish for what they had devised against God's word. But that the Lord, following the word of God, as the word of God, really meant it. I wonder if that gave them any conviction in their spirits.

Mary, the Roman Catholic View, and the Meaning of the Text

Even in the throes of death, Jesus, true to the word that he brought, he's faithful to the word, he is that word, he cannot deny himself. There is a Roman Catholic view that Mary's proximity to the cross was because she was somehow contributing to the satisfaction that the Lord's suffering was bringing.

And this is what qualifies her as the co-redemptress of heaven, the joint mediatrix, I think is sometimes how it's put. Yet it was the thief, not Mary, it was the thief who was soon in paradise according to Jesus' promise.

No account is anywhere given of Mary's death, much less her resurrection and exaltation, if that had ever happened. And surely the Holy Spirit would have said something to us in the scripture. That she was to remain a good while longer is clear in the long-term provision that Jesus made for her.

It's as if Jesus was saying, no, Mary, you are going to be here. And here's your care, you have another son, it's John. John, you have a mother, it's Mary. Matthew Henry says here, he was not so taken up with a sense of his sufferings as to forget his mother whose concerns he bore upon his heart.

His mother perhaps was so taken up with his sufferings that she did not think of what would become of her. But he expresses his care for her. It seems pretty clear she had a number of years ahead as she was probably only in her mid-forties at the time.

The Cross, the Family of Faith, and the Lord’s Table

So what do we learn here? We prepare ourselves to take of the Lord's table. We see here a Jesus, a Savior, who in times were good. What did he do? He looked to the needs of others. And now on the cross, struggling for breath, he still looks to the needs of others.

That we could be the same. Where so often we are told in the epistles, Paul says, considers others' needs more important than your own. Look out for each other. Over and over again we are called a family because we're bound together by our common faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here, so perfectly modeled by him. It's the same Jesus whether he is in want or in plenty, in comfort or in distress. For most of us, others' needs fall from view very quickly when our own situation deteriorates.

I don't have time to help you. I'm looking for a job. I don't have any thought left for you because I'm having this trouble at home. Not the case with our Lord. The cross here is the ultimate expression of God's concern for others.

He didn't put his Son there in order that he would pay for his own sins because he never sinned. And consider that had Jesus never left his throne in heaven, if he had never emptied himself of his heavenly prerogatives and privileges, if he had never walked this earth revealing his Father to blind men, to you and me, how much would his glory have been diminished?

Not in the slightest. Not at all. The cross was for us. Not for him. The cross addresses our needs and not his. The cross is the ultimate expression of God's love, his mercy, his justice, and his righteousness.

So I'm very taken with a Lord, a Jesus who in his humanity, suffering as he was, and yet looking out to that need. And I'm very taken, and I hope you are too, with the fact that when he looked to that need, he looked to the family of faith.

Which it seems his brother soon became, but at that time, it was John. We come to a Lord who provides us with what we need. Primarily salvation. And he's provided us with a way to remember how this salvation was procured for us, which is the table.

So God willing, we will all be able to take in a worthy manner. God willing, this scripture speaks to our spirits as we consider what the Lord Jesus at this greatest extremity was saying, what was on his mind, what was coming out of his mouth, and the concerns that it tells us that he had.

May those be the concerns we have for one another. As we partake, let us remember that the Lord Jesus Christ gives us this supper, this somber celebration to remember what he did in order to bring us to himself and make us that family that should look out for one another's needs, even as Christ looked out for his mother's.

Amen?