The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ | Sermon 03/24/2024

All right. Happy Palm Sunday. It's interesting because we've been in John and we went over Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry, a little while ago.

We've been in these micro moments leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

We're going over the crucifixion today. We're going to be in John chapter 19, verses 16 through 30.

The title of the sermon today is simply, The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. So starting in verse 16 of the

Gospel according to John chapter 19, hear now the words of the living and true

God. So he then handed him over to them to be crucified.

They took Jesus therefore and he went out, bearing his own cross to the place called the place of a skull.

Which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha. There they crucified him and with him two other men, one on either side and Jesus in between.

Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It was written, Jesus the

Nazarene, the king of the Jews. Therefore many of the Jews read this inscription for the place where Jesus was crucified, was near the city and it was written in Hebrew, Latin and in Greek.

So the chief priests of the Jews were saying to Pilate, do not write the king of the

Jews, but that he said, I am the king of the Jews. Pilate answered, what I have written,

I have written. Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his outer garments and made four parts, a part to each, to every soldier and also the tunic.

Now the tunic was seamless and woven in one piece. So they said to one another, let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, to decide whose it shall be.

This was to fulfill the scripture. They divided my outer garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots.

Therefore the soldiers did these things. But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister,

Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus then 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 into his own household.

After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the scripture, said,

I am thirsty. A jar full of sour wine was standing there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop and brought it to his mouth.

Therefore, when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, It is finished.

And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Thus ends the reading of God's holy and magnificent word.

Let's pray once more as God's people. God, we've heard this story for some of us many times.

We've heard this. Some of us grew up going to nursery and we went to Sunday school and we've heard the story of the cross.

We've been raised with it, many of us. Some of us haven't, but many of us have.

God, I pray that this would never be something that grows weary in our eyes. I pray, Lord, that this would be something that we continue to have wonder for and we marvel for, and it brings us back to our first love,

Jesus Christ. God, this is the message that saves sinners. This is the message that changes people from death to life.

And so, God, I pray that we would see it today, and we ourselves, it would be like we were revitalized and we would be transformed and edified by what we hear.

So, God, I can't do it. I can't stress it enough. I don't have that gift.

But you, by the power of your spirit, can impress upon your people and the people who need to know and need to believe, and you can show them what this means with Jesus on the cross.

So, God, I pray that you would be with us and you guide us in your word. I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Well, church, this is it. We have hit the climax of Jesus' suffering.

This is the pinnacle of his mission. This is the hour for which he came.

Why did God come down and take on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ? This is it.

In the cross of Christ, we find the very reason our world was made. The reason

God created the world that he did was to present his glory, and his glory is most incomparably displayed in the cross.

God's glory is exhibited there because the cross is the culmination of God's revelation and his character.

Here, at the cross, we begin to discover the depth of his attributes, the intensity of his love, the weightiness of his holiness.

The cross is God's answer to fallen humanity and the human plight that we have.

The cross is God's answer to the problem of evil. It is his answer to your suffering.

It is his answer to your need for redemption, your longing for it. The cross is

God's answer to the problem of forgiveness. How does God actually pardon sinners?

If God is righteous, how can he pardon sinners? The cross is the answer.

Since the beginning of creation, every single moment has pointed forward to this instant, and in many ways, ever since this moment, everything has pointed back at it.

That's what we're doing today. We're pointing back at the cross today. Sin came into this world roughly 6 ,000 years ago, shortly after the creation was spoken into existence by God.

The curse of the fall covered all the land, impacting everything and everyone.

And even more than that, the greatest enemy humanity could ever face was born. Death came into the world.

Disease, decay, degradation, death. Adam and his descendants, all of us, were cut off from the tree of life.

But that's the thing. Hope was not lost then. Hope was never lost in that moment.

God has always had a plan. In God's curse to the crafty serpent,

Satan, the devil, he said in Genesis 3 .15, we've gone over this a hundred times, and I will put enmity between you, he's talking to Satan, and the woman, between your seed and her seed.

He shall crush you on the head, and you will bruise him, the woman's seed, on the heel.

And we've seen the adversary's schemes throughout all of history to keep the holy seed from coming.

Why do you think Cain was incited to kill Abel? Satan was in on that.

Abraham, almost losing his life and losing his wife in Egypt and Gerar.

The slavery of Israel and the killing of all the firstborns by Pharaoh, of all the

Hebrew children. The devil was behind all those moments to snuff out the seed.

The decree of King Ahasuerus led by Haman in Persia to exterminate all the

Jews in the empire. You remember that in the book of Esther? Let's exterminate all the Jews. Kill the seed.

You have the decree of Herod, King Herod, for the slaughter of all the firstborns in Bethlehem so that he might stop the arrival of the

King Jesus in the first century. The enemy was behind all of this.

Then you see in Matthew chapter 4, right, you see the temptation of Jesus by the devil, and the devil wanted one of three things.

Do you remember what those were? He wanted either for Jesus to sin, or he wanted

Jesus to bow down to him, to worship him, or he said, why don't you jump off this pinnacle?

He wanted to kill himself. Satan said, sin, break the fast that God had you do, command these stones to turn into bread, sin, bow down and worship me, be a devil worshiper, or to go ahead and not proceed with what he had determined to do there, kill himself.

But it didn't work. All along the way in Jesus' earthly ministry, the serpent has bruised his heel, that's for sure.

Even in Satan entering Judas, as John said, to betray the Lord. How many times has

Jesus eluded the murderous Jewish authorities when they tried to take him prematurely? Doesn't this fallen angel,

Lucifer, the devil, know that he can't alter the plans of the living God?

He cannot make an assault on the sovereignty of God. It's never worked. It never will.

God's decree simply uses those moments of where he comes after the seed, and he uses it in his providence and brings about his will, and here

Jesus is. This is it. He's come to this moment. Although we saw he was declared innocent, he has been marked as guilty by both

Jews and Gentiles. Governing officials are on this. What kind of people are in on this?

Governing officials, political people, religious people are in on this, represented by the chief priests, the scribes, the

Pharisees. The average ordinary person is in on this. The average

Jerusalem citizen walks by and wags their head at him. They mock him.

And then even so, criminals are in on this. The rejects of society, it says that Barabbas and the thieves on the cross were next to Jesus.

So you have criminals, you have the average person, you have religious people, you have political people.

What we're supposed to see there is everyone's in on this. We are represented in this too.

Our sin necessitates this cross, and we need what it will afford us.

We saw last week how much Jesus has already suffered since his arrest from the

Garden of Gethsemane. He was slapped countless times, spit upon countless times, scourged, flogged with a cruelly adapted whip.

We talked about that. His body was flayed, his blood pouring out.

He was struck in the face over and over again by the soldiers. It said they took the scepter from his hand after mocking him with a purple robe and a crown of thorns, and they beat him with that rod.

Most do not make it past that point of crucifixion. But what we will see is that Jesus won't let himself go until he has fulfilled everything.

He must. We even saw last week that Barabbas possibly had the first name

Jesus himself. His name literally meaning Jesus, son of a father.

Barabbas, Jesus, son of a father. But Jesus, the

Christ, is the son of the Heavenly Father. Jesus was scarlet, he was purple and blue, just like the veil to the presence of God in the

Holy of Holies in the temple. He is the door, he is the way, he is the entry point to God in that moment.

And on this Passover, right here, Passover is the context of Jesus' crucifixion.

Jesus is the spotless lamb to give his blood for the salvation of many.

And I don't know if you saw it last week, but Adam's curse entailed what? Thorns and thistles.

What was placed on Jesus' head? A crown of thorns. So that Jesus, in this act, might even show through that symbol that Jesus takes the curse that was given to the man.

The thorns and thistles of Genesis 3 for man was put on Jesus.

The pain of the woman was given to Jesus. He took the curse upon himself.

He's fulfilled so much prophecy already, he continues to even now. Jesus Christ, the

Son of God, is who humanity waited for. He is who we needed. He's the one we didn't deserve.

And he is the one we look to now and await his return. This is his final hour.

So let's look at the text. Starting through verses 16 to 18.

So then he handed him over to them to be crucified. They took Jesus, therefore, and he went out, bearing his own cross to the place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew, Galgatha.

There they crucified him, and with him two other men on either side, and Jesus in between.

Who's the he that handed him over? Pilate. Pilate. We saw the

Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, give up last week. He gave in. Fearing the threats of the

Jews and what Caesar would do if he heard of him letting a man accused of sedition go free,

Pilate gave in. You know, what does it profit a man if he maintains his political power but loses his own soul?

It says, Pilate delivered Jesus over to them. I think this anonymity is on purpose.

I think John wrote this on purpose because in your mind you might think, okay, they handed

Jesus over to them. Maybe that was the Jews, the

Jewish leaders handed him over to their plan, to their purpose.

But what is likely is that Jesus was handed over, delivered over to Roman executioners and soldiers who handled crucifixion.

But do you see the way that it's recorded when he says handed over to them? It's like as if you might think of Jews and Romans, and in that way

Jerusalem and Rome become one. At the crucifixion of Jesus, Gentiles and Jews become one in their purpose to kill the

Son of God. The whole world is implicated in this statement. The world required the

Son of God to come. The world condemned the Son to the cross, and the world, both Jews and Gentiles, crucified him.

But who will get saved as a result of this work? The world, both

Jews and Gentiles. For God so loved the world,

Jews and Gentiles. Now, the people believe Jesus was delivered over, but this is actually the obedience of the

Son of the Father. He wasn't handed over, Jesus gave Himself. This is His willingness. This is

His purpose. So Jesus went out, it says. He, in the

Greek, exerkamai. He went forth. He actively participated in going forward, and He bore

His own cross. Now, some of you might rightly be thinking of Luke's Gospel.

Do you remember that in Luke's Gospel it said, Simon the Cyrene helped carry the cross with Jesus.

And that indeed happened. John gives us the perspective, though, of what happened immediately.

That was later. Simon helped Jesus, but immediately Jesus carried His own cross.

The Greek historian Plutarch reported that the Romans made each criminal carry the cross for himself.

Family wasn't allowed to help him. Friends weren't allowed to help him.

And so what the Romans would have done is taken a cross member, okay? It's the horizontal beam.

In the Latin, it's called the patibulum. The patibulum was given to Jesus, and it was placed on top of His shoulders.

This piece, the patibulum, would have been about 100 pounds. And so you have

Jesus, He's now after His scourging, bleeding, bruised, exhausted, and shaking, and on the top of His ripped open, whipped back,

He would have carried this 100 pound wooden beam over His shoulders.

He could barely stand before, but now He's extremely faint. And they placed the patibulum, the horizontal cross member on His back near the praetorium in Jerusalem, and He would have carried it throughout the city in front of residents and pilgrims who are visiting for Passover.

His own kin was watching, and the crowds are mocking Him as He's carrying this cross from the praetorium out to get to the city walls, to get to the entrance.

The soldiers would often continue whipping a crucified individual as they carried the patibulum out.

And so each step that Jesus takes is harder than the last, but He knows

He has to go on. He comes out of the city, it says. Do you remember the last time

Jesus came out of the city? The last time Jesus came out of the city, He was on a walk in the evening after eating a meal with His apostles, and He walks out of the city and He heads towards a garden, teaching them, encouraging them no less than 24 hours before this.

That's the last time Jesus walked out of the city was that He was caring for other people.

What brings Him out of the city now? Caring for other people. Luke 23 -26 says,

When they led Him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, and here's the key word, coming in from the country and placed on him the cross to carry behind Jesus.

You see, Simon was approaching the city. He was making his way in from the hill country outside of Jerusalem, and all of a sudden

Simon sees this procession and this man bloodied and marred, and he's carrying the cross over his shoulders and he's falling down, and the soldiers see

Simon coming in, this man who's just walking up the dirt road to Jerusalem, and he says,

You, help him. And so Simon of Cyrene comes up. Jesus has been carrying

His cross on His own, but now He's falling so much, He's so faint, He needs help from Simon, and that's what happens.

This whole processional route, you might have heard of this term, this whole processional route all the way to the cross is often called the

Via Dolorosa. The Via Dolorosa, that is the painful path or the way of suffering.

In fact, there's an amazing song which I love. It's called the Via Dolorosa, and you should check that out on YouTube.

Wonderful song. This is the way of suffering, and so to go this distance in His state would have probably taken an hour or maybe even several hours.

He's collapsing, and so you have to imagine in your mind, church, Jesus drops the cross beam several times, and He drops the cross beam, and He slips, and He falls onto His side into the gravel, and His wounds that are exposed get filled with dirt, and they sting afresh.

And He looks all around Him as He's fallen to the ground, and they're mocking Him, and they're pointing, and they're laughing at Him.

And then the Roman soldiers, while He falls on the ground, whips Him even more and says, get up, get up.

He can barely stand. His vision is blurry, but He presses on.

He gets up. He stands up from these falls, and they put the beam back on His shoulders, and He keeps going, barely living to the cross.

The final destination for His crucifixion is called the place of the skull. In Hebrew, skull is

Golgotha. In Latin, skull is Calvary. Calvary and Golgotha are the same word.

They mean skull. It is estimated that Golgotha was anywhere from a quarter to a half a mile walk from Jerusalem.

And that might sound like a short distance to you, but to a scourged and beaten and dehydrated man, a lifetime.

A lifetime. It is believed that this is one in the same place of Mount Moriah, the place where God called

Abraham to offer His son Isaac, but instead provided a ram to test His faithfulness.

This could be Mount Moriah, where Abraham and Isaac were so many thousands years before.

But think about what else this fulfills in this moment. You see, on Yom Kippur, the

Day of Atonement, there were two sheep, or two goats, for the atonement of sin.

Leviticus 16 states, Aaron shall cast a lot for the two goats.

One shall be for the Lord, and the other will be the scapegoat.

Then Aaron shall offer the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord. That is the sin offering.

Blood is shed for that lamb, that goat. But then the goat on which the lot for the scapegoat fell shall be presented alive before the

Lord to make atonement upon it, to send it into the wilderness as the scapegoat. So that's where that term came from.

Someone says, you're making me the scapegoat. That's to put blame on someone and send them away.

That's what that means. And so, Jesus, with these two lambs, these two goats, they become one in Jesus Christ.

He is the one for whom His blood is shed. He is the one given to the

Lord as an offering, and He is the scapegoat. Right now, the sins are being transferred onto the

Son of God, and He's being taken out, removed from the presence of God's people.

Taken out of the city. Into the wilderness. That in the Hebrew is called the Azazel. He is the

Azazel. The one who is removed. And then He will be offered. There at Golgotha, they crucified

Jesus Christ. All could see Jesus from this vantage point.

You could see it from the city, this hill, and the crosses that were on it. Of the many types of executions done in history, crucifixion is one of the worst.

It is both to be horrifyingly painful and shameful all at once.

According to one commentator, crucifixion was such a brutal form of capital punishment that a

Roman citizen could not be crucified under the order of any regular authorities or judges.

That's right. Roman citizens could only be crucified under the approval of the emperor himself.

But Jesus is no Roman citizen, is He? And so the indignity and the agony of a person was the aim here.

Once at the top of the hill of the skull, they would have stripped Jesus of any coverings

He still had on Him, if any. And He did. We obviously see that they trade those off.

And so all possessions and honor are now gone. What He owns is taken from Him, and His body is exposed to everyone.

The upright beam, the vertical stake of the cross, was already at the hill.

That's what they would do. The same beams would stand upon that hill, the vertical piece.

They would carry the horizontal cross member, the patibulum, and they would come up. And those vertical stakes of wood were typically 10 feet high or more.

And at about 75 % of the way up, there was a groove that the cross member of the crucified one would rest in.

And they would complete the cross figure on the hill.

And so Jesus would then have been thrown down. His patibulum, His horizontal piece, would have been thrown down on the gravel, and they would have pushed

Jesus down, and He would have fallen back. And what they did was they would then either tie your hands on the horizontal piece with rope, or they would pierce your hands with nails, okay?

And so that's what they did. They stretched Jesus out completely. They would sometimes, if your arms weren't long enough, they would take rope and pull your arm and stretch your arm out, and it would come out of its socket, and then they would take the nails and put them through.

And those nails were typically 5 to 7 inches long, and I have some replicas here that you can look at.

These are Roman crucifixion nails, replicas of them. You guys can take a look after, but, you know, might be hard to tell from there, but,

I mean, 5 to 7 inches long. They were meant to go through flesh and bone, to crush the bone as it went through, and that's what they did.

They pierced Him. They took hammers, and they took the nails, and they pierced it through, and they would have done it most likely through His wrists.

In the ancient world, the wrist was considered part of the hand, so that's how often the

Scripture speaks of it. They pierced His hand and His feet, but they would have put it through His bone and His wrists right here, these terrible nails, okay?

They were meant to hold His weight. And as much as you think He couldn't feel much more any longer, it is likely that when this long nail pierced through His wrists, that Christ screamed in anguish, complete agony.

It was so much pain. This fulfills Scripture. Psalm 22 says,

They pierced My hands and My feet. And then the soldiers would have hoisted

Jesus up, okay? He's now attached to His patibulum, the cross member, and they would have hoisted

Him up, and they would have placed it into that groove in the top and put a pin through it so that it stayed.

And so Jesus is now on the cross. And finally, they took the additional nail or nails, and they pierced through His ankles or His feet to hold

Him in place. It would be excruciatingly painful to go through all that bone.

Now, a detail typically left out with Roman crucifixion is that the Romans would put on the vertical piece a little seat, like a very narrow seat, and that was called the sedecula.

The sedecula was not something that was meant to actually hold

His weight. The sedecula was put on, this little narrow seat was put on the cross to increase more pain.

Because what would happen is He might rest upon it, His backside might rest upon the seat for a second, but then the blood from His scourging would make

Him slip off of it, and the nails would hit and hurt His wrists, and then the seat also was created in such a way to make it harder to breathe.

And so what it did was it kind of provided a little hope to people who were crucified. It's like, oh, there's a seat, and they would sit down, and they would catch their breath, but then they would lose energy, and they would fall down.

And what it would do is it wouldn't kill them fast. It would make their death come later.

It would make their suffering prolonged. And that's what that little seat was for.

Crucifixion deaths are related to, actually, asphyxiation. See, hanging there on the cross, it's a very particular way of hanging, and gravity would then collapse the lungs.

It would collapse the chest cavity, hanging the way you are, it would deflate the lungs.

You would constantly, over and over again, lose your breath, and you would try to get your breath.

You see, crucifixion isn't merely about hanging on a cross with nails through you. That's not what it is.

It was a multiple -hour, multiple -day battle of catching your breath, driving your body up, trying to expand your chest cavity, taking a breath, losing all your strength, coming down, feeling everything as you came down.

You see, if He was able to not have the sedecula, if He was able to just hang there, then

He would die very quickly. He would suffocate, and He would die. Because you even see it later, we'll see it in the rest of John 19, that's why sometimes if people were taking too long to die, they would come up with a club, and they would break their knees, and they would break their legs, and their legs would lose all strength, and then they would hang, and they would suffocate, they would die.

They would asphyxiate. And we'll see that later in John 19. And this was meant then to extend suffering, give you hope, take a breath, come down, and Jesus is now being tortured.

The spring heat is at the peak of the day. The flies would come, the very flies that He created are tormenting

Him, and muscle spasms the whole time would wrack His entire body. Muscle spasms would happen as He hangs there on the cross.

Often the accusers of the cross -bearer would assault them by their feet. When people were there, they would see the cross, and they would take little rocks or pebbles, they would throw them at you on the cross, they would mock you.

Matthew 27, verse 39 through 42, it says, And those passing by were hurling abuse at Him, wagging their heads and saying,

You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself. If you are the

Son of God, come down from the cross. Then it says that the religious leaders did this as well.

In the same way, the chief priests also, along with the scribes and the elders of Jerusalem, were mocking

Him and saying, He saved other people, He healed people, He cannot even save Himself.

He's the King of Israel. Let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him.

And they mock Him, they mock Him. Once again, this fulfills prophecy.

Psalm 22, verse 7 says, All who see Me sneer at Me, they make mouths at Me, and they wag the head.

But Jesus is steadfast. He's immovable. He will continue.

And then we see here that more prophecy is fulfilled. It says here that two men were crucified along with Him, two criminals, one on either side of Him.

Mark uses the same word for these men as Barabbas. It's possible that these two criminals on the side of Jesus were part of the rebellion that Barabbas helped lead, that insurrection.

And this fulfills with the two criminals, Isaiah chapter 53, verse 12.

Eric read it, of the suffering servant. It said that the Messiah was numbered with the transgressors.

Jesus was considered part of their lot. But the contrast is great, is it not?

You have a willing sacrifice giving His life opposed to criminals deserving of death.

Now before we move on, I want to address one more thing about the cross here.

We heard Isaiah 53 read aloud today in service, as I said. Verse 10 reported,

But the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief, if he would render himself as a guilt offering.

Now some have asked, How is Jesus, the God -man, making payment here with crucifixion?

What is the wrath of God poured out on His Son for us? What is the wrath?

Is the wrath of God simply these horrific treatments to the sinless

Son of God? Is what makes this so horrible, the fact that He is from glory, that He is divine, that He's perfect, and something so terrible is happening to Him, is that the wrath?

What is happening here? And I'll tell you that there is an aspect of mystery to what is happening to Jesus on the cross and what the crushing was and what all the wrath was.

Could it be that there was a spiritual element to the wrath of God and not merely physical?

Not just the crucifixion? Absolutely. I don't think that they could be separated.

But we simply don't know what the text doesn't tell us. One thing I will say is this. Previously in a sermon,

I don't know, a couple of months ago, I mentioned that the Trinitarian divine connection between the

Father and Son could have never been broken. That divine connection, that intra -Trinitarian communication between the

Father and Son could never be broken while Jesus is on the cross, and I stand by that.

The Son of God was not fully separated or God's character or nature did not change on the cross.

That's not what's happening here. But I wish I would have clarified before then, and this is it.

I think in the other Gospels, when Jesus is on the cross and he cries out in Psalm 22, and he says,

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The easy answer to that moment is just to say that,

Oh, Jesus is fulfilling prophecy. He's just saying what Psalm 22 said.

But I think Jesus doesn't say this or do that just to check things off a prophecy list.

He fulfills them, but what also, what they say of him is actually happening.

So I hope you understand what I'm trying to say is Jesus fulfills prophecy, but he's not just checking it off a list.

What the prophecy says is actually also what happens. So if Jesus says, I am forsaken, then there's an element of forsakenness.

And so if you look back through the Old Testament, through the warnings of the Lord, the one true

God to his people, he says to them constantly, he says that if you turn from me, he says,

I will, in the Deuteronomic blessings and cursing, he says, if you leave me,

I will curse you. And the word is here, forsake. I will forsake them if they forsake me.

He says, I will hide my face from them. That happens multiple times in the Old Testament. God says, you leave me,

I will forsake. And so all along, and you might go, what?

I thought that there's moments of grace in the Old Testament. Absolutely, there's tons of grace in the Old Testament. There's tons of moments pointing forward to the cross.

What God meant in that moment, what God had planned all along is that Jesus would be the one who experiences the forsakenness.

He would be the one where the wrath of God that was meant for those people, for you and me, was placed upon his

Son. And it was affected upon his humanity.

Okay, so I talked about the divine nature of Christ, never separated from the Father, but in Jesus' humanity, he experienced this forsakenness, becoming a curse.

And there's no real way to measure what this forsakenness is, but it was real. And there lies much of the wrath and separation in hell that we deserved and put upon his

Son. You know, in Isaiah 53, it's said here that he was rendered a guilt offering, and guilt offerings were always burned.

God's holy wrath is often viewed as fire. The book of Hebrews says that our

God is a consuming fire, and so the bright white fires of wrath and glory, like the fire at the burning bush, or the fires on the top of Mount Sinai that the people were afraid to look at, or the bright white fire in the center of the pillar of fire that led the people by night, they now, these holy fires of wrath, are placed upon Jesus in this moment.

The type of unquenchable fires of hell that can only be satisfied by Jesus himself, they're here.

You can't see them. And there's an exchange going on in this moment.

The guilt offering is being consumed, and an exchange is happening. Exchange has been part of Jesus' life.

He exchanged his glory at his incarnation. He put himself there in our place.

He became like a man. He became like a slave, it says. He exchanged right here at the cross.

He's in our place. Therefore, we exchanged our sin -ladenness, our sinfulness was exchanged, given to Jesus, and then

Jesus then exchanged and gave to us his righteousness. That's called the imputation of Christ's righteousness.

That's what happened. An exchange took place. We were supposed to endure that wrath.

That cross had our names on it. But Jesus did it, and he exchanged.

We exchanged our death sentences for eternal life reward. But we will see eventually his humility is exchanged for glory.

In fact, what humiliated Jesus became his glory. It became his exaltation. So all this to say the

Son of God received what you and I deserved while we received the outcome of what the

Son of God performed. And believing in that, and having faith in him, and regarding him as Lord, this will save you.

If you believe this, if you believe this exchange, if you believe that this happened, if you have faith in this and turn to him, this saves you.

That's the gospel. That's the good news, that he's our substitute. He's our representative.

Look at verses 19 through 22, moving on. Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross.

It was written, Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews. Therefore, many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and in Greek.

So the chief priests of the Jews were saying to Pilate, do not write the king of the Jews, but that he said,

I am the king of the Jews. Pilate answers, I have written what I have written.

So according to historians, it was the custom for the crime of which the person was doomed to crucifixion and had been guilty of to be written on a tablet or a placard and hung around the neck of the person as they walked to Golgotha, as they went to the cross.

And then it was taken off his neck, and then it was nailed above his head or something like that.

And once the prisoner was crucified, that placard was there as a title for them, and Pilate had the inscription put on there,

Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.

And so the inscription with crucifixion is to be a warning to all onlookers. It's like, look, if you make yourself out to be a king, if you make yourself out to be against the chief priests, the governor,

Herod, or even the emperor, look what happens to you. You rebel, you get this.

That's what it's supposed to do, rebel and die. It is supposed to be a warning to the people. We see several things with this inscription.

First, the accusations of the Jews stuck. He really was accused of rebellion.

Second, this is Pilate's last way to get back at the Jewish leaders' threats and bullying.

Do you remember that? They kept bullying Pilate and threatening him, and he was caught in a difficult place, and so he noticed before when he would call

Jesus the king of the Jews that this would infuriate them, and so he writes it again to get back at these men for making a mockery of him.

With this placard also, it is clear that the Jews chose the emperor of Rome over their true king.

They reject God. We see here, though, that they don't want a statement of fact. They don't want it to say the king of the

Jews. They want it to say, I am the king of the Jews as a quote of Jesus Christ.

They're like, these are his words, not ours. We don't want them on the placard. But Pilate doesn't comply with their request, does he?

He says, what I have written is what I have written. I'm not changing anything.

And so the fact is, in God's providence, in Pilate's stubbornness, this serves as a moment of God's purposes.

What he wrote on that placard was written, and it made itself into sacred

Scripture by the apostle John. This is the truth. This is the king. He's the king of the Jews.

He's the king of the Gentiles. He's the king over the world. He's the cosmic king of heaven and earth.

That's Jesus Christ. And so in this way, the cross is where the king pardons and loves his subjects.

The cross becomes now in this way a throne. Its symbol has forever changed because of what

Jesus did. The cross is where the king pardons and loves his subjects. That's why we have it.

We don't have it up here because it was a death instrument. We have it up here because it was an instrument of death to death.

Death died that day when Jesus died on it. Eternal life was given through this cross of Jesus Christ.

Go to verses 23 to the beginning of verse 25. Then the soldiers, when they had crucified

Jesus, took his outer garments and made four parts, a part to every soldier, and also the tunic.

Now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece. So they said to one another, Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, to decide whose it shall be.

This was to fulfill the Scripture. They divided my outer garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

Therefore the soldiers did these things. And so with crucifixion, church, the garments and property of the condemned were removed, and instead of throwing them away, four soldiers, four executioners, we suppose, split up Jesus' possessions here.

It's possible one soldier had a belt, one soldier had his sandals, one soldier may have had an inner garment of Jesus, and then there could have been an outer tunic, maybe a robe -type item.

And this particular outer piece of cloth was, it says, seamless, woven in one piece.

And whoever would get this seamless tunic would really be fortunate in their eyes, so they cast lots for it.

There was different ways to do that. You've probably pulled straws, the shorter straw, stuff like that.

You can throw dice or something like that. They would do it in a different way in the ancient world, but they would cast lots.

It would be a moment of chance. You know, when I was a kid, we'd do rock, paper, scissors, right?

Things like that. And then they would cast lots for these items. They wanted the tunic.

As much as this meant very little to those soldiers or the Jews witnessing this exchange, John brings it up.

And I think John brings up this woven, seamless tunic because it confirms

Jesus' identity and purpose. Again, fulfilling Psalm 22, verse 18, that for my clothing they cast lots.

This is the Messiah. But some have speculated that John mentions the tunic being seamless and woven in one piece to be like the seamless, woven in one piece tunic of the high priest in Exodus 28.

The high priest would get this special, one -piece, seamless tunic.

And so maybe John is trying to show us, look, this is the high priest.

Jesus is the king. He's the true high priest. And he sets aside his earthly garb and he takes on a heavenly one.

It could be. I see in this moment, I see a strong correlation to chapter 13 when we saw that Jesus washed the disciples' feet.

And when he did so, what did he do? When Jesus kneeled down, knelt down, and he washed the disciples' feet, their dirty feet, it says that he removed this same tunic.

And it says that he put on a slave's garments to wash their feet. So I think in this way,

John might be mentioning this like, Jesus, in this moment of humiliation, crucifixion, took off the best piece of clothing he has, highly coveted clothing, this one -piece, seamless tunic, and he took it off.

And just like the moment of washing the feet, this moment of humility and servanthood, Jesus loses all his clothes and he's a slave for us on the cross.

This is being stripped, taken down, the greatest fulfillment of becoming a slave for others, and then cleansing them, just like the foot -washing scene.

But let's keep going. Go to the end of verse 25 to verse 27. But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, his mother's sister,

Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus then 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.

From that hour, the disciple took her into his own household. So we've seen a lot of people who are against Jesus, but now in this moment we see those who love

Jesus. They're still following. And they are here, standing, it says, by his cross.

They're looking on at him. In crucifixion, the family of the criminal was often shamed along with him.

They would know. Villages and societies would know who was related to the criminal.

And the family would follow their kin, those who were getting crucified, and the people would then shame and mock the family too.

Look at you. Look at your son. He's going to be crucified. And they would mock him as well.

And so the family is here at this moment. And the four executioners are taking his belongings.

And then you have this contrast. You have these four women, four soldiers, taking his stuff, mocking him.

Then you have four women who are likely there mourning him. Totally different postures.

And so you have Jesus' mother, Mary, her sister, likely Salome, Mary, her sister

Salome, Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. So you have his mother and then his aunt

Salome. His aunt Salome is there. Mary, the wife of Clopas. And according to historians,

Mary, the wife of Clopas, was his aunt on Joseph's side. So Salome was his aunt on his mother's side.

And then Mary, the wife of Clopas, was possibly his aunt on Joseph's side.

And historians have said that when James, the brother of our Lord who was the leader of the Jerusalem church, died, when he died,

Clopas' son Simon took over for the Jerusalem church. So Clopas and her family believed in Jesus.

And then you have Mary Magdalene. And this is the first time

John has mentioned Mary Magdalene in his gospel. Unlike what fiction books or fictional movies say about her, there is currently no mystery to this woman.

In each gospel, she is shown to be a female disciple of Christ, like the many others around her.

Jesus, it says that He removed seven demons from her, set her free from that, and she believed in Him.

And so why is Mary here? No other reason, no fantastical reason, other than this is her

Messiah. That's why she's here. That's why they're all here. Among these women is one disciple.

This is the disciple whom Jesus loved. We've named this nameless one before.

This is the one who wrote this gospel. This is the apostle John, we believe. John stands as an eyewitness to the

Via Dolorosa and the passion of Christ. John is able to write about this moment because he was there, likely.

Remember, we saw him even in the priestly courtyard, and Peter was there as well. And so John has been here in this moment.

We talked about in John 2. Long ago, over a year ago, in John 2, at the wedding at Cana, Jesus was purposefully trying to distance

Himself from His mother. And so He does the same thing again here because He's leaving.

He calls her woman. Woman. And He leans His head in the direction of John, and He looks at her and He goes,

Behold, your son. And then He looks intently at John, and then

He moves His head and He gestures, and He says, Behold, your mother. And so there are a host of theories out there of what

Jesus intended by this arrangement. Many of them, I'll tell you, are far -fetched, and they're very much outside the themes that John has been trying to establish here in his gospel of Christ.

Historically, Protestants believe that this was

Jesus' last provision for His mother. If we are correct in assuming that Joseph died maybe years before Jesus' public ministry, because there's no mention of Joseph once Jesus became an adult and started

His public ministry. Joseph was alive when they were betrothed and got married. But it is the belief of many that Joseph died before Jesus' 30th birthday.

And so if that's the case, and Joseph is dead, Mary's husband, then

Jesus would have been for several years the breadwinner of the family, the one who took care of His mother and His brothers and sisters.

And so in this moment, His siblings aren't believing in Him. You remember in John 7,

His brothers mocked Him. Why don't you go to Jerusalem? Show yourself to the world. Sure, whatever.

They mocked Him. And so Jesus is making this provision for His mother, because John, His mother, we think is

Salome right there. And so it's like, if Salome is Mary's sister, then

John is her nephew. And so there possibly is one family coming together to take care of one another, okay?

That's what could be happening here or we don't know for certain. But I think there might be something additional to this, okay?

Because the son aspect of the beloved disciple is mentioned as well. And so it may just be that what

John is trying to show us is that now in Christ, believers have a new family.

As the Lord said, that those who do the will of my Father are my mother and my sister and my brothers in the church, in this church, someone else's mother becomes your mother.

If their children aren't here and there's an elderly woman here and she's a widow, she becomes our mother.

She becomes who we care for. She becomes our concern. In the church that Christ established, this one right here, the son of another family is our concern.

He's like our son. We have all been adopted into the family of Christ. This is the beginning of that.

Behold your mother. Behold your son. This is that church establishment that Jesus sought.

But let's go to verses 28 and 29. We're almost there. After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the

Scripture said, I am thirsty. A jar full of sour wine was standing there.

So they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop and brought it up to his mouth.

Jesus, we see here, doesn't unconsciously play a part in this.

He knows. All things have been fulfilled. He is aware. He has held on this long so that the justice of God would be properly spent.

All the Scriptures and prophecies over his lifetime are now being perfectly fulfilled.

He knows all things that must have been accomplished before his death are complete. And so this moment, this cross, is not the passivity of the son and the action of the father.

No, this is the active participation of the son and the father. They're both in on this. Jesus is willing.

Jesus is active in this. He plays a role in the redemption. And so he completes this with fulfilling

Psalm 69 verse 21. They also gave me gall for my food and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

This is not to be confused with Mark 15 chapter 23 when they tried to offer him wine mixed with myrrh, which was a sedative to numb the pain.

That's right. In Mark 15, he's crucified and they tried to offer him myrrh mixed with wine, which was a sedative.

It would have numbed the pain. It would have made him feel better. But it says in Mark 15 that he refuses it.

He won't even take it. This is sour wine.

And so a sponge was dipped into the wine and using a hyssop branch, they lifted it to his mouth.

You know what's interesting is hyssop leaves were used on the Passover. Hyssop leaves were taken and they were dipped in the lamb's blood.

And hyssop leaves with the blood were the things that they put on the doorposts for the lamb. And so they gave him this sour wine on the hyssop.

They brought it to him and he drank just as he drank down the cup of the wrath of God.

And that cup of wrath that he drank is turning into living waters that we may drink of, welling up to eternal life.

He thirsts that we may never thirst again. He drank the wrath that we might drink life. That's what's happening here.

And so as we wrap up this morning, I can't help but think of once again that story of Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah.

Isaac rode a donkey to the place of the offering just as Jesus rode a donkey to the city of Jerusalem.

Abraham made Isaac carry the wood for the burnt offering on his back up the hill just as Jesus carried the patibulum, the wooden cross beam on his back all the way to Golgotha.

God had Abraham do this on Mount Moriah which is the place where Jesus' cross was.

And if you remember, Isaac asked his father where the lamb was for the offering.

And Abraham what? Abraham assured him, Son, God will provide for us and for himself the lamb.

It said that Isaac, the son of Abraham's love, was bound just as Jesus was bound.

Jesus was nailed to the wood. And Abraham lifted up his knife and as he brought it down, the

Lord stopped Abraham and said, Stop! And he gave him a ram instead.

Right? We saw that. It was to test his faithfulness. But the day has finally come here in John 19 for the lamb to be given.

Isaac said, Father, where's the lamb for the offering? And Abraham said, Son, God will provide the lamb.

But it wasn't then. It would be thousands of years later. It was here in this moment the lamb was given.

And this time God the Father took the knife of his wrath and his son was there on that cross.

And unlike Abraham, the father who was pleased to crush him took up the knife of his wrath to his one and only son, the son of his love, and no one and nothing stopped the father.

And he came down and the father put that knife in his son and caused the anguish and wrath of us all to fall on him.

He did not withhold that judgment for you and I in that moment.

That was it. Nothing would stay his hand. And the father put that into his beloved son.

And according to Mark, at this point, Jesus let out a loud cry of anguish.

And then he says here in our text, to Telistai, he says, It is finished.

And this is no cry of defeat, but complete and total victory.

It says he then bowed his head and gave up his spirit. It was only until he yielded that, that he finally died.

Do you see that? He gave up his spirit. It was only then at that moment.

Jesus was never not in control. The plan of redemption of mankind was finally carried out.

When he received the death blow from the father, death died that day.

Death, Satan, and sin. And he took that upon himself.

It's unbelievable. The Lord was pleased to crush

Jesus and render him a guilt offering, because in doing so, he won.

He won. The Lord caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. Jesus became like Adam, exiled in that moment, removed from the garden, removed from the temple.

Jesus was like the nation of Israel, exiled to Babylon, removed from God's presence.

Jesus was brought to death so that you and I would be brought back into the garden. You and I would be brought back into the presence of God.

That we would have a nation. That we would have the church. That we would have a family.

And we have earth and heaven as our inheritance, it says. We were once not a people and now we are the people of God.

And he died that we would live, and live life never ending. And it is finished.

And the word there, it is finished, is one word. It's three words for us in English, but it's one word in the

Greek. Tetelestai, it is finished. And that's in the perfect tense. You know what the perfect tense means?

It was an action completed in the past with continuing benefits forever. It is finished.

What was finished? The penal substitution, the atonement, the offering, the sacrifice for sins, the redemption of cursed mankind, the undoing of the curse of the fall, the forgiveness of God was purchased by God, the

Son, the great exchange of our sin to him and his righteousness to us.

All of it, all of it happened there at the cross. All of it was finished. Church, this is what the cross of Christ accomplished.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians, and I'm wrapping up here, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 .18, for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

If you don't believe today, but have heard this message of what Jesus did,

I implore you to see the lengths that God went to give you his love.

Don't see the cross as foolishness, as Paul says. Christ didn't come because you and I are good people deserving of such a wonderful gift.

Christ came because the holy justice of God says that we are bad people deserving of hell, but the good news is that Christ satisfied those demands of holy justice for us.

It says he made propitiation, that he appeased the wrath of God, and so the call is to believe on this.

And if you are a believer today, Christ's triumph is your triumph.

His victory is your victory. And so when the accuser comes to you or you forget the gospel or you start reverting to working for salvation, you ought to remember what

Jesus said here. It is finished. But Pastor Wade, you don't get it.

You don't know what I did in my past. It is finished. Pastor Wade, you don't know.

What if God rejects me? It is finished. I don't think

I could ever be good enough to face God. You won't be. It is finished. And so that's what we have to tell ourselves.

And that's what we should say right now. Would you say it with me, church? Let's say together, it is finished.

Right now. It is finished. Amen. Let's pray now.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you, God, for this moment.

We thank you, Lord, for... Lord Jesus, all the suffering, all the punishment, all the anguish, the forsakenness, the levels of wrath that you received that we can't even comprehend, that we can't even understand.

The fact that what you did was efficacious and powerful enough to actually make payment on the eternal sin and damnation of a multitude innumerable.

That was a powerful sacrifice. And so,

Lord, what can we do but say thank you? We recognize we did nothing to receive this.

We recognize that it's purely a gift from your hand. And so, Lord, we do nothing but come to you with open arms.

And we receive that salvation by faith. Thank you for the forgiveness of sins.

Thank you for what you've done. And, God, we thank you for what's ahead next week.

On Resurrection Day, we will go over the resurrection, and we look forward to that blessed day and how that confirms what

Jesus did here was powerful to save. And so,