Behold Your Mother Series

BEHOLD YOUR MOTHER

TEXT- JOHN 19:23-27

INTRODUCTION-

Last Sunday at our monthly fellowship meal I sat down with David, Byron, and Ben, and I ask David if he had been busy this week. He said that he had 3 funerals, because David owns the cemetery in Troup. When he said that it sparked a conversation between us about our death and what are our final plans were.

We all seem to reach a point in life that we want to take care of our personal business before we depart this life. We make out wills and settle personal things. Jesus did the same thing, but he made His final request from the cross as He was being crucified.

SERMON

Well, this morning as we look at Jesus’ third statement from the cross we can see that Jesus is getting His earthly affairs in order. Take your bibles and turn with me to John Chapter 19 and verses 23-27.

23-“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.

24- “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 scriptures: “They divided My outer garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.”

25- “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.

26- When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, he said to His mother, “Woman, behold, your son!”

27 Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.

Now for Jesus to get his earthly affairs in order was not that complicated of a process because Jesus had no earthly estate to dispose of. You might recall that Luke records a time when He had taken inventory of His possessions and said to His disciples that He had nothing. You might remember the words?

LUKE 9:58

“And Jesus said to him, “the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nest, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

Now think about what He is saying. During His earthly ministry even the wild animals had more to call their own than He did, because Jesus hardly had anything to call His own. In fact during His three and half years ministry along the highways and byways of Palestine He had to pretty munch borrow everything.

I mean not only was he born in a borrowed manger, Jesus preached one of His greatest sermons from a borrowed boat, rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed colt, ate the last supper in a borrowed room, was crucified on a borrowed cross, and was buried in a borrowed tomb. As the world counts riches, Jesus lived and died a poor man. Luke 8 tells us when it came to food He was dependant upon His friends. You can read about it in Luke 8:1-4.

To make matters worse, on the night before is death Judas betrayed them all and took what little remained of their meager funds. I can see why the Apostle Paul refers to Jesus and says

2 COR. 8:9

9-“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.”

Jesus did indeed become poor for our sakes. In fact you might say the only thing He owned at the end of His life on earth was THE CLOTHES ON HIS BACK.

Now Jewish men of that day usually wore five pieces of clothing: a head piece, which was some type of turban or cloth about the head, sandals, an outer robe, which hung loosely around the body, usually all the way down to the angles, a girdle-which was what we would call a belt or a sash that held the loose-hanging robe close to the body, and AN UNDERGARMENT.

Jesus was not even able to say who got those clothes. No, as the scripture says, the Roman soldiers in charge of Jesus’ crucifixion claimed all of Jesus’ clothes. This was their right under Roman law but there was a problem. The detail was made up of four enlisted men and a officer-a centurion. The centurion did not have the right to the clothing, so that left 5 pieces of clothing to be divided between 4 soldiers.

I assume that each soldier picked one piece of clothing, one selected the turban, one the sandals, one the robe, and one the sash, and that left the undergarment . They would gamble for that last piece of clothing. Now when they did that John reminds us they were fulfilling a prophesy made hundreds of years earlier in Psalms 22:18. It said “ They divide My garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.”