I'm going to turn our Bibles tonight to John chapter 19. John chapter 19. And we will really be focusing together tonight on verses 17 through 30. I'm going to back up and read at the beginning so that we see the whole picture tonight of Jesus going to the cross and the crucifixion and what a section of Scripture to consider together as we get the privilege of coming to His table tonight. So, John 19, beginning at verse 1. Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged Him. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head and arrayed Him in a purple robe. They came up to Him saying, Hail, King of the Jews! and they struck Him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, See, I am bringing Him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in Him. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, Behold the man! When the chief priests and the officers saw Him, they cried out, Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Pilate said to them, Take Him yourselves and crucify Him. for I find no guilt in him. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and according to that law, he ought to die, because he has made himself the Son of God. When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, Where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you? Jesus answered him, You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to you from above. Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin. From then on, Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar. So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at the place called the Stone Pavement and in Aramaic, Gabbatha. Now it was the day of the preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, Behold your king! They cried out, Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him! Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king? The chief priest answered, We have no king but Caesar. So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus and he went out bearing his own cross to the place called the place of the skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him and with him two others, one on either side and Jesus between them. Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this inscription for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, do not write the king of the Jews, but rather this man said, I am king of the Jews. Pilate answered, what I've written, I've written. When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier, also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. So they said to one another, Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be. This was to fulfill the Scripture, which says, They divided My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots. So the soldiers did these things. But standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother and His mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, Woman, behold your son. Then He said to the disciple, Behold your mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to His own home. After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said to fulfill the Scripture, I thirst. A jar full of sour wine stood there. So they put a sponge full of the sour wine on his branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, It is finished. And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. May the Lord bless the hearing of His Word. One of the things that always bothered me in dealing with death and times of death was dealing with the morticians. Dealing with those at the funeral home. They seemed to be so cold. One I'm particularly thinking about. He was so cold. I suppose after doing this for so long, he had just lost all sensitivity to the whole thing. And I thought to myself as I sat down and wrote this sermon and thought a lot about this passage tonight as we anticipate coming to the supper, I wondered if this is a little bit like what John 3.16 and what the message of the cross has become for the Christian community. Is what I'm going to say today really going to impact us the way that it should? Everyone knows it. John 3.16 is plastered everywhere. Jesus died for our sins. Jesus died. It's everywhere. I saw it all over the road driving from Washington to here. The common attitude today is that, hey, we get that, we've heard that, and let's move on. Let's move on to what the Christian life is really all about. And as I was wrestling with this and thinking a lot about this problem, this sort of marginalization of the message of the cross, I remembered a call that I received from someone who had a lot of questions about this. And I remember the call and he asked me, he says, can you tell me, Pastor, about the cross? I want to understand the cross. The message of salvation. And I said to him, I said, oh, well, you must be a non-Christian. He said, no. No, I'm a Christian. I've been in the church all my life. But I don't understand the cross. I don't get it. He says, all I get are shallow ditties in church and there's just no depth to it and I just want to understand why can't somebody tell me about the cross and right then and there I realized how hungry people are to understand the basic message of it. They need it even when often they don't see it. The Lord is calling us tonight to understand this afresh especially as we get to come and feast at His table because He desires that we give ourselves to meditate upon the passion to think about what Jesus endured and what He went through And as many of our forefathers taught us, Luther in particular, Luther used to say that studying the cross, meditating on the cross, considering the passion, extinguishes every other desire in life. I love that. It just wipes out every other desire. The cross, he said, is the death of sin and the death of the sinner. Now what a thing to consider tonight. It's really important we understand it. Paul had to rehearse this with the church in Corinth. Remember when he said, Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you stand, by which you are also saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and He was really, really given to impress the importance of this upon that church. You know what our Lord wants us to understand tonight? It's a simple message, a piercing message. Our sin brought the horrid suffering that we are about to unfold. And yet, He willingly laid down His life for us that we might believe and tonight we might know that everything the Scriptures talked about, everything that needed to be fulfilled for us to stand before God has been accomplished. I'm going to spend for a little bit here some time on the physical aspect of the torture. I'm nervous about doing that because I don't want to pull on heartstrings. I know what people do with this and it makes me nervous that we might end up like those women who looked at Jesus and wept and Jesus said, don't do that, weep for yourselves as He's bearing the cross. But nevertheless, it's important. The Scriptures give us a whole lot of detail about this and then it moves us in that to the main point of teaching us that this event fulfills all the Scriptures. Those are two things I'm going to do tonight with you, Lord willing. What our Lord has been through has been absolutely shocking. They have taken Him. They have scourged Him. They put big whips, didn't they? And they put bone attached to the end and they struck Him over and over and over. They have twisted, at this point, a crown of thorns and have put a reed in his hand to mock him. A purple robe of mockery hangs from his body to ridicule his, they think, supposed kingship. The soldiers of the Roman Praetorium have all stood in ranks and they have marched and they each took a turn giving a blow to his face. Bloody, whipped and beaten, Pilate walks out. And he says, Behold, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find absolutely no fault in him. See how wicked that is? Six times, Pilate says, No fault, no fault, no fault. And he's going to bring him out. The judgment hall was constructed in such a way that it faced the main part of the city street there. So it sat on a platform right in front of the street, similar to a terrace or a patio. Pilate brings them out. Verse 5 is the presentation. So Jesus came out wearing a crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, Behold the man. What an awful sight. What an awful sight. Pilate was hoping one thing. If I humiliate him enough, this mob will calm down and they'll let him go. And I won't have to do what I know I shouldn't have to do, what I shouldn't do. Pilate brings them out on the street in front of them all. And the mob, the religious leaders, The Pharisees, the pastors of Israel are standing there and the multitudes. And we expect some kind of mercy at this point. I'm looking for mercy. I'm thinking there should be some kind of mercy. Don't you think? And all I hear from the religious leaders, all I hear from them is the dark, ominous words. Crucify Him. Crucify Him. Verse 6 shows us that. Pilate then takes his seat. He takes his seat to render the judgment. There was only one thing that they needed to say to get Pilate to do this, by the way. Did you see what it is? There's only one thing they needed to say. What they needed to say was Jesus was a seditious rebel against Caesar. That's all they needed to say. And if he didn't do something about that, they're going to go right to Caesar and Pilate doesn't want that hanging on his head. And so, he renders the verdict. Guilty. Not in himself, but guilty. And so in verse 17, he bears his cross and he goes out to the place of the skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha, where they crucified Him with two others, one on either side and Jesus there in the center. He carries His cross to the gate. It's about a half mile, and we know that He is utterly exhausted and He drops to the ground. The soldiers see this, and they grab a man by the name of Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross. Comparing the other Gospels' accounts, the mockery continues. The soldiers yell out right in front of Him, If this man were a prophet, God would not have let him come to this place. But because he's come here, God has no regard for him. There is no more hope for him. Get it? It's Ephesians 2. No hope without God in the world. That's the chart. He's gone to a place that is full of the dead. It was a Roman place of execution outside the camp full of bones and corpses of years of this horrid form of killing. It was known by the earliest writers, and whether this is true, I can't validate it, but it was known by the earliest writers as a place that was formed like a skull. The hill looked like a giant skull and it sat right outside the Jerusalem gate. And so he is brought there and we read the dark words where they crucified Him. Many writers will go into great detail about this. I'm always moved that the writers of Scripture don't go into a lot of detail about this. It's such a heinous thing. But we know what crucifixion was. I always wanted to understand it as a child. What is crucifixion? Remember, the Scriptures do tell us that they would drive a big nail through the wrist right into the wood. They would take both feet, push them downward, and drive another nail right through the foot, right on into the wood. And at that point, leaving some room for movement, the victim is said to be crucified. So he sits there. He sits pinned to the cross. And in order to get air, you have to lift up. You do this for a period of time, all the while until you are asphyxiated. you can't get air and you die this horrid death. That's crucifixion. He's nailed there with two common criminals. And yet the shame is not over. In this whole process, Pilate takes a sign and he puts it right over Jesus. He puts King of the Jews. And this infuriated them. You have to remember at this moment, this is Passover season. There are swells of people entering Jerusalem, all carrying their lambs for the Passover, walking right by Jesus, heading right on into the gate. They can see this hill. They can see what's going on. And there it sits. King of the Jews. The Jews come to Pilate and say, you take that down. He said he's king of the Jews. Put that up. But don't put he's the king of the Jews. And Pilate responds by saying, what I've written, I've written. He hated the Jews. And then comes the shame. The soldiers strip his clothing. Verse 23, Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments and they made four parts to each soldier a part and also the tunic. The tunic was without seam, woven from the top in one piece, they said, let's not tear it, but let's cast lots for it. Total shame, beloved. Total shame. They stripped him and they took the undergarment. This is what they would do in Roman executions. The text emphasizes that they did this, Casting lots for the pieces. And here we are with our Savior. Crucified in horrid shame. It all ends with him in verse 28. So thirsty. He cries out, I thirst. They mock him with sour wine. He bows his head. It's finished. And he dies. Now the Bible has given us a lot of detail about this. You have to preach that. I mean, that's all over the place. And there's a reason for this. And I'll come back to that. They say that the common proverb is that the person who is crucified dies a thousand deaths. But it even really doesn't come close to what it was for Jesus, does it? How do we understand this? Well, like this morning, there's something that the text is emphasizing here that's telling us to look at this in a little bit different of a light, a little bit deeper of a light, and it keeps saying, keeps giving us the repetition of all of this was done that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. That is a really important statement that we read right over. The Lord is telling us by saying that what to do with this event. Now let's re-read this then with that in mind. Let's go back, if you will, and go over it one more time and consider it with that in mind. All of the Scriptures are being fulfilled in this event. Verse 13. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the pavement. But in Hebrew, Gabbatha. Every word here is loaded. What is this place called the pavement? Gabbatha, it means a lofty platform. Pavement means, here it's a spreading of stones. It's a raised platform, a spread of stones is the idea. Now none of this is in Pilate's control. Jesus said that, remember. But I want you to think back just for a minute to, and maybe you've spent some time throughout the Old Testament and you remember certain things that happened. And one of the things that stands out is Exodus chapter 24, when the Lord had descended upon Sinai in judgment. And if you remember, it was a real judgment scene. There was blackness and there was fire and there was tempest. And remember Moses described looking up. And there's a really amazing statement in chapter 24 that there under the feet of God was as it were a paved work of stone. And it was like the very heavens in its clarity. God had descended on Sinai and it was the same sort of phenomenon of the moving chariot throne, the judgment throne of Ezekiel chapter 1 which is the same sort of imagery that we have. And there Moses looked up and he saw, really what he saw was the bottom floor of heaven and really it was the judgment throne and the floor where the feet of God were, if you will. Now if we had the ability that day to be there, we wouldn't have seen this the way we should. But if we had opened our eyes spiritually, if we saw this in what's really being shown to us, Do you know what was really over Pilate's throne that day? It was another throne, wasn't it? It was the lofty place. It was the place of the pavement. And you see what's really happening here. This is what we confess in our Heidelberg. This is not a strange confession. This is what we say about Pilate. Remember what we say in our Heidelberg. God had taken his seat. By using a human judge, by using a civil judge, it was indicating that God Himself had taken the seat and that God was judging His Son. Why under Pontius Pilate, that though innocent and being condemned by a civil judge, Ursinus goes on to say, he was condemned that day by God Himself. He's carried a wooden cross, hasn't he? if we think back to everything the Law and the Prophets and Moses taught us, is there anything clearer than Genesis 22 that brings this to light as we see it in fulfillment? Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains. It's the same mountain, by the way. So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and he laid it on the back. He laid it on Isaac, his son. And he took fire in his hand and a knife. And the two of them went together. And remember what happened? Abraham lifts up the knife to slay his only son. And God halts him. And He brings, remember, the ram from the thicket. And remember what happened. There, the wrath fell on that lamb instead of Isaac. Jesus here carries the wood. And He goes. And He's numbered with the transgressors. God the Father not here sparing up. He spares up His own Son for us. And there the wrath fell. And in what place? Well, the place of here that is mentioned is Golgotha, which is, the Scriptures tell us very clearly, the place of the skull. He's cursed. He's outside the city. He's outside the camp. He was taken from prison and from the judgment seat, Isaiah says. He was taken right off from that judgment seat. And who will declare His generation? He was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgressions of My people, He was stricken. And we know a whole lot about the skull. Genesis 3 tells us that there were two seeds that were set apart that day. That He would put enmity between the devil's seed and her seed. And that He shall bruise the heel. But the seed would crush His head. And there on the cross are two seeds right next to Him. And there on the cross that day, His heel was bruised as He crushed the head of the serpent. What a moment it is. He's dying. They're casting lots for His clothing. I looked all over for someone who would tell me what that means. And everyone only said, well, it's a fulfillment of Psalm 22. And I says, amen. That's a fulfillment of Psalm 22. But I've yet to understand what it means. Tell me what it means. And only one commentator I found, William Hendrickson, had the boldness to say it. And you know what William Hendrickson said? He bore for us the curse of nakedness. You ever thought about why we're wearing clothes tonight? Before Adam and Eve sinned, What do you read? The man and his wife were naked and they felt no shame. After they had sinned, what happened? They went out and they tried to cover that shame with their own fig leaves. And the first thing they did was make clothes for themselves. Did you ever think tonight that the outward experience of clothing ourselves to this day so that our neighbor doesn't see our nakedness is telling us something about the curse and about our ongoing shame before God. You see why the Scriptures continue to tell us that on that day, everything is going to be brought out right into the open, naked and open, to the One to whom we have to give an account. Job would cry out, you strip men of their clothing, leaving them naked. And you see, that day, Christ has become that curse. Christ is bearing that curse of our nakedness before God. And you see the reason now that in the garden, the Gospel was proclaimed when He took the skins of a shed blood of an animal and He covered Adam from that shame. Remember? So here it is. For us to be clothed, Scriptures say, lest we are found naked, God gave His Son that all who believe in Him would never be put to what? Shame. He had no sin, yet He became sin for us, bearing that curse right before the open judgment seat of God. And the imagery here is powerful. Naked in body and in soul before the judgment seat of God. I can't imagine that. I can't even begin to fathom that. That He at that moment is taking upon Himself the full curse for every single one of our sins. And the Scriptures tell us that all of it is fulfilled. The full extent of it in Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? And then, knowing that all things were accomplished, He makes the declaration of His thirst. Which in John's Gospel, you've been going through for some time, you know should have a lot of meaning, doesn't it? Jesus was announcing that from the cross, the full wrath and torments of hell had fallen upon him. Hell being a place of unquenchable thirst. A place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. And in his soul, he's thirsting. The mockery continues. And finally, it all ends as he declares, it's finished. Bowing his head, he gives up his spirit. How do we understand all this tonight? When I read of that kind of torture, the first thing the Lord wants us to consider tonight is that our sins did that. My sins did that. Your sins did that. This scene is a whole declaration of that. Luther used to write about this and say, When you see the nails piercing Christ's hands, you can be sure it was your work. When you see the crown of thorns, when you behold the crown of thorns on His head, you may rest assured those are your evil thoughts. I crucified Him. You crucified Him. And God was pleased to bruise Him because of the great love with which He loved you. And you see, now you understand why we can call it Judgment Day. We've always understood that for the Christian, Judgment Day was pushed back. And that's where it happened for us. Our Lord stepping into our place, standing before His Father, taking here on that seat of judgment, standing before Him, naked and open, wearing all the shame, feeling the lashes, enduring the cross, despising that shame, doing what we could never do so that He could declare to us tonight that whosoever believes in Him shall never perish but have everlasting life. That's the Gospel. That's what we do. That's what we proclaim. that is how wonderful your Lord has been to you. You say, well, what can I do to thank Him? You can come to this table tonight believing. You can come to this table believing that He did that for you. And as you repent of your sins and you turn to Him, you can believe that He washed you and cleansed you from all unrighteousness. And you can do one other thing. Did you notice in conjunction with this morning's message what's going on here in this text? Did you notice who's standing there? Who is it? As he's on the cross, he looks down and there is his mom and the women weeping. And he looks at John. He looks at his mom. And he breaks down all distinctions right then and there. And he says, Woman, behold your son. And he looks at John and he says, Behold your mother. And John got it that day. John understood this burdened him in the heart of his afflictions how deep his love was for his own who were hurting. And right then and there, he broke it all down. And John took her and he cared for her as his own mother because that is how the love that He demonstrated on the cross would still continue to be shown in His own. That's the message of the cross. That's what is before us tonight. As we come to the table, He makes a declaration. He has told you something. It's finished. It's finished. You don't have to cover your lives anymore. You don't have to do that. you're covered believe him confess your sins and he says to you tonight come and eat and drink the food that I have given you of eternal life Amen