Evening, guys. You can turn to John Chapter 19. That’s where we’re at tonight, beginning in Verse 16. John 19, you guys ready to go? I’ll try and make this brief. I know it’s nice and I’m long, and that combined in a hot room is a real problem. John 19, what we looked at last week, was in John 18: Jesus’ betrayal by Judas Iscariot, his false trials, his sentencing to death. This week we will look at his crucifixion and his death and his burial.

One of the things I wanna give you, though, before we get into that is that you understand that if you’re a Christian or if you’ve heard about Jesus’ death, this may seem to you to be like this really enormous, extraordinary, uncommon event, but, in that day — Jesus’ day — it was not uncommon for guys for guys to get crucified. In fact, they crucified tons of people. The Romans were known to crucify upwards of 500 people a day. They had 1 particular season where they’d been at war for 2 or 3 months, and they averaged 500 crucifixions a day for almost 3 months, and, so, when we think of — or when we study tonight — Jesus’ crucifixion, you need to know that for the people in that day, this is a very common occurrence, something that happened very frequently in their land.

And, for us, it becomes an extraordinary event, but, for them, just looking at it, this was just daily, normal part of life in Rome. That’s where we pick up the story in John Chapter 19. We’ll finish the book in the next few weeks and then do the book of Proverbs, but, I’ll just start reading. First, we’ll look at the crucifixion of Jesus, beginning in John Chapter 19, Verse 16. “Finally, Pilate,” — he was one of the Roman governmental leaders — “He handed him,” — Jesus — “Over to them,” — to the soldiers — “To be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus, and carrying his own cross, he went to the place of the skull,” which, in Aramaic, is called Golgotha. “Here, they crucified him and with two others, one on each side, and Jesus in the middle.”

That fulfills the promise in Isaiah 53:12, that “Jesus would be killed between two transgressors,” two sinners. “Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It simply read ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.’ Those were the charges against him. Many of the Jews read this sign for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in three languages because of all the different nationalities there: Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. The chief priest of the Jews protested Pilate. ‘Do not write the King of the Jews, but rather, this man claimed to be King of the Jews.’ Pilate answered, ‘What I have written, I have written.’”

“When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes,” — probably his outer garment, or his coat — “Dividing them into four shares, one for each of them with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, was woven in one piece, from top to bottom. ‘Let’s not tear it,’ they said to one another. ‘Let’s decide by lot or throwing of dice who will get it.’” And this happened that the Scripture would be fulfilled, which said, in Psalm 22;18, “They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.” So this is what the soldiers did.

“Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved,” — that’s John, the author of this book — “Standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Dear woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.” That’s the account of Jesus’ crucifixion. It’s very simple. It’s very plain. It’s very straightforward. John does not add a lot of emotional appeal. He doesn’t give us a lot of vivid detail. He doesn’t tell us about Jesus bleeding and Jesus’, you know, open wounds and his beard being plucked out. There’s a lot of facts that the other Gospels give us that John just sort of omits. In some ways, John’s is the most brief account of Jesus’ crucifixion. In addition, it is the least dramatic.

It is the least emotionally tugging, and it reads more like a newspaper just telling the facts of an event as they occurred. What I want you to see is that there nothing unusual in Jesus’ crucifixion. This is how thousands of people in Rome were killed. They would be accused of something. They would be tried; if found guilty, they would be, then, sentenced to death by crucifixion. They would have to – after a flogging, which was basically a beating and whipping that ripped the flesh off their back – carry their own cross bar across their exposed shoulders, to their place of crucifixion. There, there was a large poster beam affixed into the ground. Their cross beam would be placed upon that. They would be nailed to that cross, and that’s where they would hang and die.

Above them would be written the charges that they were accused of. In this occasion it was that Jesus claimed to be the King of the Jews, and then a few family, friends would gather around the base of their cross and, obviously, mourn and weep as these women and these men did. Mourning the fact their friend was dying. Jesus looks down in obedience to one of the commands, honors his mother and makes sure that his dear friend, John, keeps an eye on his mom. Comforts her in her distress and looks after her, kind of taking care of her as almost a surrogate- or adoptive-mother-and-son relationship; nothing unusual about this occurrence whatsoever. The next section concerns Jesus’ death. Verse 28: “Later, knowing all that was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I am thirsty.’”

That’s a fulfillment of Psalm Chapter 69, Verse 21. “A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of hyssop plant and lifted it to Jesus’ lips.” Real briefly, you need to know, this isn’t mean or cruel or unusual. This is very common. In that day, one of the common forms of thirst quenching was drinking of this sort of diluted, very inexpensive wine. It kept well. It was readily accessible. It was they same kind of drink that the soldiers were drinking, and, so, they often drank it, as well, through a sponge, and so they put that sponge on a stick and they give Jesus an opportunity to have his parched thirst quenched. And they’re just trying to give him something to drink. So you shouldn’t read that as any indication that they were being mean or mocking or harming him.

In fact, they were doing a bit of gratitude as he was approaching his death. Verse 30: “When he had received the drink, Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’ And with that, he bowed his head, and he gave up his spirit. Now, it was the day of preparation, the next day, was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate, the Roman governor, to have the legs broken, and the bodies, to be taken down. The soldiers, therefore, came and broke the legs of the first men who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other, but when they came to Jesus, and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.”

“The man who saw it,” — John, the author of this book — “Has given eyewitness testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. These things happen so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.” He then quotes Psalm 34:20, ‘Not one of His bones will be broken,’ and as another Scripture says in Zachariah 12:10, ‘They will look on the one whom they have pierced.’ Again, nothing unusual here; the way a man would die by a crucifixion is they would take spikes upwards of seven inches long, drive them just beneath his wrist through his ankles, literally nailing him to his cross. They way that the man would die was a very slow, excruciating and painful death, because his lungs would basically collapse, and he could not get sufficient air into his lungs, and so he would asphyxiate.

He would very slowly choke and die in a very brutal process. Sometimes, however, they would either provide a pushing-up point beneath the leg or the thigh, or sometimes the men, because of the nails being driven through their feet would lift themselves up so they could get just a bit of additional air into their lungs to prolong their life, and so a man could hang there, sometimes in this drastic heat, in this excruciating painful and humiliating way for hours. Some men hung for days, and they would sort of swoon and pass out from the heat and the exhaustion and from the oxygen deprivation, and then they would just about die, and then it would dawn on them that they were near death. And they would sort of panic and come to.

Almost coming from a deep sleep, they would then raise their selves up upon their feet, and they would get a little bit of air in their lungs, which would prolong their life just a little bit, and, so, what would happen is to die in this way was just brutal. It was mean, and it was cruel, and it was painful. And it was slow, but because there was a Sabbath coming, they didn’t want the bodies hanging on the cross during a big religious celebration. You can imagine if we had a major hanging. We wouldn’t want all the bodies hanging out in Cowen Park for Easter, so we’d wanna get that cleared up before we went out and had the big Easter egg hunt with the kids.

So, they’d take all the bodies off the cross before the big religious holiday and if the men were not dying quick enough, or if they got tired of them or were under a real time constraint, they would break the men’s legs so they no longer could press themselves up and get air into their lungs, and, so, they go to the two men, one at – each at Jesus’ side, pressed for time with the religious holiday coming, after all, you know, when you’re killing God, you don’t wanna ruin the religious holiday. So you speed the thing along. What they do is they break the other men’s legs so they die, but, for Jesus, there’s no need to break his legs because he’s already died. He’s already given up his spirit, and that’s the account of John’s Gospel. Again, very simple, completely in line with historical record of how other men died. That’s the crucifixion and the death.

Here’s the burial, Verse 38. “Later, Joseph of Arimethea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now, Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate’s permission, he came and he took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus.” He was a religious teacher we met earlier in John’s gospel, “The man who had earlier visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it with spices and strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden, a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid, because it was the Jewish day of preparation, and because the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.” Here’s his burial. His burial’s very common, as well.

We were prophesied and promised in Isaiah 53 that he would be laid to death with the rich, and here he is given this very expensive tomb of Joseph of Arimethea. Joseph is a rich man. He’s a secret disciple of Jesus. The tombs in that day were usually hewn out of rock or hillside, enormous, sort of cavernous rooms that the body would be laid in, and that a stone placed over. Jesus was a poor man. Could never have afforded that, but Joseph gave him his own tomb, and surrounding that was this beautiful, elegant garden, and so Jesus is placed in this beautiful tomb. His body was prepared in the typical Jewish way: 75-pounds of spices and linens were used to very tightly wrap the body.

Almost it would’ve looked mummified, the way it was wrapped so tightly, to help reduce the scent that would come out of the grave and also to give a dignified burial to the body, and to keep certain bugs and animals and such from consuming the body. Some believe that perhaps Jesus only swooned on the cross, since his legs weren’t broken, but John’s account tell us very clearly that he was, indeed, dead. A Roman soldier thrust a spear through his side, bursting his heart chamber: blood and water gushing out as complete evidence that he died. That is the factual account that John states as eyewitness of the crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus; all of that in very common, typical form and fashion for that day: nothing unusual about the account. There are two things I wanna stress tonight.

One is the historical facts of Jesus’ death, but that is not the primary place I wanna land tonight. I don’t know about you. I was raised to believe that Jesus did die. That he was crucified and put in the tomb. I was told that, and I was raised as a good Catholic boy. I’m not banging on all Catholics, by the way. My parents are still Catholics and love Christ, but I was raised in that church and taught that Jesus died, but my problem was I never knew what the heck that meant. I didn’t know what the big deal was. Okay, Jesus died. Lots of people die. In fact, everybody dies. Some people die painful deaths. Some people die painless deaths, but what is so unique about Jesus?

And I guess my simple question to you is this: how many of you have been told that Jesus died, but up until the present or at some point, you had no idea what the big deal was or why that was such a significant historical event? Any of you have that? You were told it is fact, like Washington was President and we put men on the moon and Napoleon lived and Jesus died, and all of these facts, and if you’ve taken classes like I did in college on the Bible-as-literature or world religions as a philosophical system, you were told this as historical fact, but you were never told what in the world it meant. That’s where I wanna camp tonight. The facts are stated but the issue is: what in the world does this mean? A man dies: significance of that. To answer that question, what I wanna do is I wanna jump to a gentleman named Paul in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 1.

If you would flip there, we’re gonna spend the rest of our time in 1 Corinthians 1. John establishes for us the facts of Jesus’ crucifixion and his death and his burial. Paul comes along, after the fact, reflecting back on this historical event, and interprets its significant for us. Tells us, “Here’s what happened. Here’s what it means.” That’s what I wanna stress tonight, is what this all means for us practically. 1 Corinthians Chapter 1, beginning in Verse 17. Here’s what Paul has to say about this event of Jesus’ crucifixion.

“For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the Gospel. Not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross, Jesus’ crucifixion is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved. It is the power of God. For it is written,” and he quotes from Isaiah, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, the intelligence of the intelligent. I will frustrate.” He goes on with a series of rhetorical questions.

“Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God a made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believed; Jews demanded miraculous signs and Greek looked for wisdom, but we preached Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness to gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God; for the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom and the weakness of God is weaker than man’s strength.” Very simply this: what Paul says is you can look at Jesus, crucified, dead and buried and what you get out of that is utterly dependent upon how you’re looking at it, your perception.

He says that “There are only two ways to view what Jesus did. One is through the eye of reason.” With the eye of reason, look at what Jesus did and all they say is the facts that are available to them. If they say, “Jesus was a man who got killed. That’s it. No big deal.” That’s why if you’ve had any studies in college, you’ll find that what they say is that the historical event of Jesus’ life happened and that everything else that developed after that was myth or folklore that the Christians made up. They extrapolated from it, but are not, in fact, based in a historical reality. That’s what scholars do. Paul says that. Scholars look and they see Jesus Christ hanging on a cross, and they hear all of the things that Christians anticipate that meant. You and I look at Jesus Christ crucified, and we say, “Well, that was God.”

And the religious philosophers and the scholars and the men given to conjecture and speculation say, “I don’t see that. I just see a dead 30-year-old Jew.” “Well, that’s God dying for my sin.” “Well, I don’t see that. I just see a man dying for apparently something that he did, nothing that you’ve done.” That scholars and religious students are incapable of understanding what Jesus was doing on a cross, and so when you and I come along, and we talk about, you know, God loving us and God dying for us, to them it sounds like complete nonsense. It sounds like the tooth fairy. It sounds like the Easter bunny. It sounds like an honest used car salesman. It’s just all myth and fantasy and folklore. It doesn’t exist in reality.

Paul says, “With the eye of reason, that’s all you’ll see,” because what philosophers and scholars and people that are educated beyond their intelligence like to do is gather together all their information and then create a concept of God that makes sense to them with all the available information and evidence that they have, and then they throw that philosophy up in the air and say, “Well that is what God is like.” And let me ask you this: if we were all philosophers gathered together, world religious leaders and scholars trying to understand, from the evidence that we have, what kind of God there is, we would come up with some enormous picture of God. God as being, either as the Jews said, “Miraculous”. We would wanna see miracles. We would wanna see amazing things happen to prove that there was God.

Or if we were philosophers and scholars, we would demand to see airtight evidentiary arguments. We would wanna see logical consistency and rhetoric and debate and philosophy and speculation that was airtight, codified and impenetrable, but Paul says, “You’re not gonna get that. All you’re gonna get’s Jesus. That’s all you get.” God’s not going to do all the miracles that you tell him to do to prove himself. God’s not going to give you an answer to every question that you’ve ever had. Paul says that the world in all of its collective wisdom doesn’t know anything about God. That is very simply because God is not reduced to mental categories. God cannot fit within the brain of a person who only has limited insight. My three-pound mind is not capable of fully comprehending the totality of God. God is a lot bigger than me.

God is far more vast than I could ever conceive of, and so to think that through philosophy and speculation and conjecture, that I could come to an understanding of God is naivety and foolishness. The only way God can be known is if he reveals himself to us. That means is: we don’t know God. We don’t know what he’s like, what he’s doing, where he’s at, and we could toss all of our ideas up into the air, but we’re not close to heaven, but, then, if God knows us and where we are and wants us to understand him, he could reveal himself and show himself to us. That’s exactly what Paul states that God was doing on the cross. God became a man of tremendous humility and suffering and shame and scorn, and God showed himself in the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says to us, who believe, it is the power of God.

It is the full revelation of God in the cross of Christ, that you and have the opportunity, by faith, to see God, and this only possible by faith. Scripture says, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God.” You cannot know, see, comprehend or love God apart from faith. Hebrews 11:1 says that “Faith is essentially this. Faith is being certain of things you can’t prove.” Faith goes beyond reason. Faith goes beyond science. Faith goes beyond empirical evidence. Faith knows things that no one else can understand. Faith is essentially having the ability to not just look at something, but to look through it. Reason says, “Well I see Jesus dead.” Faith says, “I see a lot more than that. I look beyond and through that event that happened in time and in a place, and I see God behind that.” Faith looks through thing and sees God.

In the cross of Christ, then, what we are seeing is God. Hebrews 1 — 1 through 2 says that “In times passed, God spoke in various ways and in various times through servants and prophets and kings, but that God has spoken to us most clearly in Jesus Christ.” That there is nothing more than that God will reveal about himself than is to be found in Jesus. Not just Jesus but in Jesus dying on a cross. All that we need to know of God is found in Jesus’ death. Let’s field-test this idea. Here’s what Paul tells us.

Everything we need to know is in Jesus. I’ll make a little list. We understand God in part. Scripture says, “We see him in part.” We know what we need to know, but we don’t everything there is to know is basically how that is summarized. What we know of God, we categorize as what we call attributes, that there is aspects of God that we put words to, to help us understand how he is. So you tell me: when you think of God, what attributes come to mind? What are God’s attributes?

Response: Sovereign.

Sovereign, holy, okay. Merciful, what was the other one?

Response: Loving.

Merciful and loving, okay?

Response: Yeah.

And just. Omnipotent: that means he can do anything . What was the other one?

Response: Benevolent.

Benevolent: that God is — we’ll use kind. He’s forgiving. He’s jealous. Thank you. He’s what? Fearful and terrible. Anything else you can think of?

Response: He could be angry.

He can be angry. That’s true. Let’s test all of this. The sovereignty of God: that means that God is apart from time, exists — I’ll throw another one down, too. That brings another one to mind: eternality. We’ll do that one next.

Response: Miraculous.

He is miraculous. To him, they’re not miracles. My son thinks when I drive the car, it’s a miracle. All depends on who’s looking. Start with eternality of God. God is eternal. How do we see the eternality of God in Jesus’ death on the cross? I’ll tell you how this works. Do a little logic. God is eternal. That means that God exists apart from time. No beginning, no end, just constant, eternal present. Therefore, if we sin against God, what kind of sin have we committed? An eternal sin. Now, if we sinned against an eternal God and that is an eternal sin that requires what kind of payment? What kind of compensation? Eternal, makes sense, right? So how in the world are we going to make an eternal payment to an eternal God? There’s two options. We pay for how long? Eternally.

That’s the whole concept of God, who is eternal, becomes one of us and the eternal God is punished in our place, thereby meeting the requirements of an eternal payments. God’s eternality is seen in Jesus’ death. Sovereignty of God: that God exists over human history and bends everything to the purposes of his will. Do you see in Jesus’ death, God bending all the circumstances to completely coincide with everything that was promised in the Scriptures? Totally. Here he is just quoted three times from Psalms of Lament. He’s quoted from Zachariah 12:10. Jesus says in the section — John tells, rather, that Jesus knew that all the Scriptures were to be fulfilled. He was promised to be crucified between two thieves. Isaiah 53: it says that there.

He was promised over 500 years prior, in Isaiah 53, to also be put in the tomb of a rich man, although He was poor, and He was put in the tomb of Joseph of Arimethea. Everything is worked out according to God’s sovereignty. Even in the Old Testament, in the Exodus, the way that God’s children were spared is that his death came. Their door posts were covered with the blood of a lamb. Lamb that was supposed to be without blemish or defect, indicating perfection: all of that, a foreshadowing to Jesus, and at what time of the year does Jesus die? Passover: the celebration of the Exodus.

As he crosses over the brook to head into the Kidron Valley, that brook is probably filled with blood from the sacrifices of the animals being offered up in the temple, and when he enters onto the scene, his freaky cousin John says, “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” What you see is that everything, every minute detail of Jesus’ death shows the sovereignty of God working out everything, according to his promises and Scripture. Sovereignty of God: fully seen in Jesus’ death. How about the mercy of God? Do you see the mercy of God in Jesus’ death? Grace means that you’re given that you don’t deserve. Mercy means that you are not given something that you should have coming. What is the penalty for sin. according to God? Death, right? In Genesis, God says, “If you sin, you will die.” Cause, effect, that’s the way it is.

Paul says in Romans that “The wage for sin is death.” You sin. You deserve death. That’s the way that it is. So how come, when Jesus came and died for my sin, I was not given death? But he was given death in my place as a substitute? That’s God’s mercy. God’s holiness and God’s justice had to make good on his word. God just couldn’t say, “Well, okay, no death. I’m sorry. I changed my mind.” That would make God a liar. That would make God a sinner. God’s not going to sin because he loves you and me, and so we sin against God, and the wage for sin is death, but God still loved us. God still had mercy for us. God still had kindness and affection toward us. So God devised a plan to redeem us and to fix the situation that we had made a mess of.

He came down, died in our place for us and our sins, thereby meeting his requirements of holiness and justice and truth and also, then, forgiving us of our sins to give us mercy and love and grace and forgiveness. All of that is fully shown in the cross of the Lord Jesus. Do you see where everything culminates there? It all comes there. What else do we see? How about this? Somebody talked about the omniscience of God, that God knows everything. How in the world do you see the complete and total knowledge of God in the death of Jesus Christ? Think about this with me. Did Jesus die for all of my sin, past, present and future? Yes. That’s what the Scripture is very clear about. I’ll read you a few verses that are clear that Jesus died for my sin. 1 Peter 3:18. I’ll read them quickly.

“For Christ, Jesus died for sins once for all; the righteous for the unrighteous to bring you to God.” Romans 4:25: “He was delivered over to death for our sins.” Romans 6:10: “The death he died, he died to sin once for all.” And Hebrews 9:15, “For this reason, Christ is the mediator of a new covenant that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance now that he has died as a ransom for what purpose to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.” Jesus died for my sins. When you look at Jesus, the eye of reason says, “He must’ve been a bad guy who did something terrible,” otherwise they wouldn’t have killed him. To the eye of faith, we look at that and we go, “No, Jesus is dying not for his sin, but for mine.” So, my question to you is this: did Jesus die for the sins I’m going to commit tomorrow?

He did, didn’t he? If he died for all of my sins, he died for the sins I’m going to commit tomorrow. Now, how in the world — gotta get your mind around this? When did Jesus do that? We did that 2,000 years ago. So how in the world could Jesus have died 2m000 years ago for things that I haven’t even done yet? Because God has complete and total knowledge. God knew. God knew exactly what I was going to do. He knew exactly how I was going to sin. That’s why in Colossians 2, it says in Verses 13 through 15, that “In Christ, my sins were nailed to the cross. God had an enormous list of all the things that I have done and failed to do, and God put them on the cross and nailed them in Christ.” Because God knew, God has total and complete knowledge. How about this one? How about the anger of God?

You see the anger of God in the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Do you see the Father’s anger at sin? Do you see how seriously he takes sin? You and I take sin lightly because we’re very familiar with it. God is holy and other and different. God has never tasted sin, and, so, for him, a sin is a declaration of war against him. It is making yourselves out to be his enemies. Is God angry about sin? Absolutely. Where do we see that? The anger of the Father is poured out on the Son. That’s we’re told in Isaiah that “It was the Lord’s will. It was the Father’s will to crush him and to cause him to suffer and to make his life a ransom for many.” That includes me.

Do you see where all that we need to know about God, everything that we need to know about God is not to be found in human conjecture and philosophy and speculative investigation of world religions and everyone else casting their opinions into the sky? Everything that we need to know about God is revealed to us in Jesus Christ and in his death, but, you know what? It doesn’t look that way, does it? In all honesty, you look at — it doesn’t look like God. If you and I were to walk beneath the cross of Jesus Christ, we would not look up and say, "Well there’s God dying for Mark’s sins 2,000 years from now; to bring him from death to life; to make him a friend instead of an enemy of God; to conquer his enemies of Satan, sin and death and self; to give him a new life; the give him a new birth; to give him eternity in the Kingdom.” That’s what he’s doing.

We’d go, “That’s a dead Jewish guy. That’s all I see; doesn’t appear that there’s anything more going on there than one guy getting killed. That’s it.” Isaiah 45:15 says it well. There Isaiah says, “Surely you are a God who hides.” Do you see God hiding on the cross? If you’re just looking with reason, you would never see him, but through faith, you see him. You fully see him. There’s my God. You say, well, “It doesn’t look like God.” Well, sure it does. What does God have, a throne? And there is on a throne: crucified. “Well a king has a crown.” Well, there’s his crown. It’s a crown of thorns. “Well a king has an army.” Well there they are: some women who are weeping, including his mother and a few close friends. “Well, God is dressed in fine robes.” Well, there he is in his loin cloth, naked.

“Well, God certainly would have a king who was declaring his victory and Jesus simply says, ‘It’s finished.’” In the cross of Christ, God is fully revealed. My sins are fully forgiven, and God is absolutely and completely utterly victorious. It just doesn’t look like it. Nothing in John 18 and 19 looks like God is winning. Jesus was betrayed by a man that he loved and fed and housed and trained for three years. Jesus was denied by the head of his men, Peter. Jesus was brought under false trials. Jesus was beaten and scourged and his beard plucked out and mocked. The crowd that he had created were crying for his death, “Crucify him, crucify him.” They want to see Barabbas, a common criminal, a thug; man who led a revolt; led — released instead of Jesus? You see Jesus carrying his crossbar. You see him crucified, bleeding suffering; people spitting upon him and plucking his beard out.

And then he dies so quickly, because he’s been beaten so brutally that they don’t even need to bust his legs, because he’s already done. See, through human reason, we look at that and we go, “Well that’s no victory. That’s no God. That’s not a conquest of anything, really.” But through the eye of faith, we say, “God is victorious, and there he rules and Reigns.” And it’s only through faith; that is why Paul says in the II Corinthians 5 and 7 that “We cannot live by sight. We are an upside down people from an upside down world.” We believe that we live through Jesus’ death; that the weak overcome the strong; that the simple confound the wise; that those who are last are actually gonna get a cut and make it to the front of the line. That’s what we believe. We believe that nothing is as it appears, that God is holy. That means God is just different.

Totally other, not like we would’ve ever guessed. One of the reasons I think that the Bible is true beyond a shadow of a doubt is simply by virtue of what it says. No one would make this up. If you and I were to get together and create a religious system and create a God, we would not have a 30-year-old, homeless, unemployed, single God who lived in Puollop and got hit by a car and died. We would not make that into a world religion. That is what we have. We have a God that looks completely different than anyone was guessing, but God comes hiding in the cross. The question is, then: where do we get this faith? There’s one thing I would really commission you to. Paul says that this faith comes from somewhere: this kind of faith to see through things and see God on the other side and see Jesus victorious and what he’s about and what he’s up to.

He says in Romans 10 that “Faith comes through hearing,” what? The Word of God. Your faith is built through hearing the Scriptures. You look at all the promises of Jesus in the Old Testament, how they all came true, that builds your faith in your God. You start to see how God has worked through time and history and overcome Satan, sin, death, self: all of our enemies. It builds your faith. Some people say, “Well, why do I need to listen to preaching or teaching, or why do I need to study the Bible or why do I need to go to church?” It’s because faith is birth and built through the hearing of God’s Word. Faith is like a muscle that needs exercise, otherwise it begins to atrophy. Some of you may have had seasons — you may currently be in a season where you have not really been studying or reading the Bible. You have not been listening to God’s Word.

And as you fall away from God’s Word, your faith begins to diminish. Those muscles begin to atrophy. You start to look at your world through the eye of reason and say, “I don’t know if Jesus did win. I don’t know if there is a God. I don’t know if he does care. I don’t know if he knows where I am. I don’t know if he knows what I’m up against. I don’t know if he really is paying any attention.” And your faith begins to waiver, but faith comes through hearing the Word of God, and it builds that faith back up so that we’re no longer consumed with just seeing things as they are, but we are permitted by God’s grace to see through them and to see God. If you look at this world, you’ll be very discouraged and depressed. It’s dark. There’s a reason we’re gonna lock our doors tonight. It feels in every way like Jesus has lost, Satan has won, and we are doomed.

But nothing is ever as it appears. God has always worked through humility and shame; through the margins; through simplicity; through death in the unexpected ways, the unexpected times, the unexpected means. My final word to is this, from I Corinthians 1:26, practically, here’s what this means for us. Here’s the irony and the humor of God. Here’s what Paul says. “Not only do people think that Jesus is foolish and the whole message of his death is foolish, they think that I’m a fool and they think that if you love him, you are a fool also.” Chapter 1, Verse 26, “Brothers,” — I would include sisters — “Think of what you were when you were called to be a Christian; not many of you were wise by human standards.” You know that means? We’re not very bright. Hate to break it to you. We’re not very bright. For some of you, you go, “I knew that.”

But for the rest of you, that’s a revelation. We’re not very bright. People look at Christians. They go, “They can’t be the children of God. God said he was gonna change the whole world. Those people can’t balance their checkbook. Those are not smart people. Those people are not bright. On — you know, on the IQ scale, these are the people that pull the whole average down. These are not geniuses. Those can’t be the children of God. Those can’t be the ones who are loved and forgiven; sent here to change the world. These people don’t even use their turn signal. These are not brilliant people.” Not many of you were influential. Here’s another revelation. None of you guys are very important. I hate to break it to — I mean, God loves you. I love you, but nobody else even knows who you are, right? We’re not very influential.

When you became a Christian, books didn’t start flying off the press. There wasn’t articles on page one of the Seattle — because no one knows you’re here. If we all went outside and got hit by the same bus, no one would know, except for the bus driver. You know, that would be it. We’re not very influential. We’re not big, important, significant people. I pretend that I am, but it’s not just true. Not many were of noble birth. You’re not Rockefellers and Trumps and Kennedys. You come from alcoholics and nut jobs and broken homes and all kinds of problems, right? You wanna see my family tree? It’s all knots and worms. That’s all we got. All my cousins — not all of them, I mean, some of them are dead, but the rest are all thugs, you know? I have uncles that think that bank robbing is a career. I come from nothing.

Just like Jesus: poor, my dad’s a carpenter, not a Jewish carpenter, just a carpenter, just a regular, working guy. His name’s Joe, right? I don’t — I grew up in Sea Tack. No one influential lives in Sea Tack, no one. You’re not going to see — you know, the President of the United States does not go to Sea Tack to raise campaign funds. There’s nobody important or rich or brilliant in Sea Tack. I know. I live there. I grew up there. I still visit there upon occasion. I — you know, and so people look at us and they say, “Man, these — when we look at Jesus we’re not very impressed, and we look at his people, and we’re definitely not impressed.” So how does God plan on changing the world? How does God plan on revealing himself? How does God plan on extending this news of his death for sin?

Verse 27: “But God chose the foolish things,” -that’s you and me - “Of the world, to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world,” — that’s you and me — “To shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world,” — that’s you and me — “And the despised things,” — that’s us — “To nullify the things that are not — excuse me, the things that are not, to nullify the things that are.” So, that what? “So that no one may boast before him.” See, this is how it goes. People say, “How did Christianity get so popular? How many — how come so many people love Jesus?” We can’t say, “Because we’re so winsome and convincing.” We can’t say anything. Well, it’s a miracle. I don’t know, I mean, God chose — he says it here. It’s sort of insulting if it’s not so funny.

He chose dumb, poor people that nobody cares about to make sure that, at the end, everybody’s going, “You know, that was a God deal. That whole thing was really a God deal from beginning to end, because if you look at the whole parade of people who were supposed to be on his team, that’s really not very impressive; didn’t get a lot of help from those people.” It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God in place of our folly. That is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. He quotes Jeremiah. “Therefore, as it is written, let him who boast," what? “Boast in the Lord.” God in Christ has revealed himself in humility, simplicity, shame, suffering, death, completely unexpected, hiding. God is continuing to reveal himself through you and me, as we love God and tell the story of Jesus.

Not succeeding because we’re brilliant or influential or wealthy or powerful or significant — in fact, in spite of all those things. That was a mockery they made against us early on. They called us Christians. That’s a mockery. That means “little Jesus”. Yes, we are a little Jesus: poor, simple, regular, normal, un-impressive, but you know what? Behind us stands God in all of his glory; in all of his attributes; in all of his wisdom, and so nothing is as it appears. We are his kids. He does love us, and the world is a different place by grace through us, absolutely. If you’re here tonight and you’re a non-Christian, I’ll tell you this, you will never have all of your academic and philosophical answers to all of your questions. You just won’t, because God cannot be reduced to a set of syllogisms, propositions and evidences. God is bigger than that. G.K. Chesterton says it very well.

He says, “We have two options. We can either try to get God into our head, and our head splits because it’s not built for that kind of rigor, or we could seek to get our head into heaven and get a little peek at God.” That’s what John offers us. That’s what God is offering us in Christ: a chance to just peek at him. Not having everything sorted out, but knowing that we’re loved and seeing our God and responding to his invitation to love him back. That’s my invitation to you. At this point, we always respond. We believe God speaks to us through the Scriptures and speaks to us through Jesus. The final thing that I will say: if you ever go to a church because you move away or God calls you elsewhere, or you hate me and you leave, or you join that long parade of people who have left this church, please do me one favor.

If you walk into a church and they don’t tell you about Jesus’ death and what that has accomplished as a historical fact, leave. Please leave, okay? You’re wasting your time. You’re wasting your energy. It’s all hyperbole. Jesus just becomes a moral example or a nice guy or something else, unless the preacher sounds foolish and he’s encouraging you to sound foolish, and unless what he’s telling you runs contrary to everything that a philosopher would tell you, you’re probably not hearing a word from God. You’re probably hearing a word from reason and a human brain. That’s why Paul says, “I seek to preach nothing but Christ and him crucified.” That’s what you wanna hear. That’s where everything comes together.

My sin, my past, my present, my future, my eternity, our lives, our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our failures, our God, history, everything, Christ, death on the cross. Everything coalesces right there in John 19. That’s our home. I would encourage you to respond with faith, believing, trusting, looking through the historical event, seeing God. We respond through partaking of communion, which is simply remembering Jesus’ body and blood. That God became a man, and in that humility, died for sin. The good news is he did not stay dead. We’ll look at next week, the resurrection. That Jesus did conquer Satan, sin, death. We respond through singing, praying, contemplating, and hearing the word of God, to build that faith in us.

Lord Jesus, I thank you so much that you have completely revealed yourself and God our Father to us. Lord Jesus, I’m grateful that we are not dependent on philosophical speculation and conjecture. Just parades of people tossing their opinions into the air, but instead we have a word that comes down from on high and just cuts right through all of the mess and the noise and the chaos and just gets right down to the heart of the matter, and that is that we have sinned and that you have remedied our condition and come seeking and saving us whom our lost. Lord Jesus, we love you and we thank you. We praise you. Please give us faith and please keep us in your Word. Amen.