Scripture Introduction
Genesis 3.15 first mentions the sacrificial death of the Messiah: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."
The promises continue through the Old Testament, often by types and symbols. The sacrifices so central to Israel’s religious rites illustrate the interposition of innocent blood between God and mankind. The synagogue and temple, with their holiest places, prefigure a hope that we would one day reenter the presence of God, cleansed from sin by the ministry of the high priest. And maybe the greatest picture of all, Isaac carrying his tree of death to the top of the mountain - until God himself provides the sacrifice.
Then there are passages like Daniel 9, which (though cryptic) hint of the atoning death of Messiah: "Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing" (Daniel 9.25-26).
Some texts are more explicit. Zechariah 13.7: "’Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me,’ declares the Lord of hosts. ’Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’" Psalm 16.10: "For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption." Zechariah 12.10: "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child...." And one of the most direct, Isaiah 53.5,12: "He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.... Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors."
In fact, the Bible teaches so clearly the death of Messiah for his people, that Jesus seems incredulous his disciples missed it: "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" (Luke 24.25). And the apostle Paul insists it is a matter of first importance: "that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures" (1Corinthians 15.3).
With this background, we might expect Jesus’ hours on the cross to fulfill some specific Scriptures. And as John describes the crucifixion, he mentions four times that all happened as prophesied in the Old Testament.
[Read John 19.17-42. Pray.]
Introduction
Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a New York Times bestseller exploring the problem of evil and suffering. When Bad Things Happen to Good People claims that readers of the "parable of Job" want three things to be true. We want to believe that:
a. God is all-powerful and causes everything that happens in the world. Nothing happens without his willing it.
b. God is just and fair, and stands for people getting what they deserve, so that the good prosper and the wicked are punished.
c. Job is a good person.
Kushner: "As long as Job is healthy and wealthy, we can believe all three at the same time with no difficulty. When Job suffers...we have a problem. We can now affirm any two only by denying the third¡¨ (37). Job’s counselors solve the problem by holding tightly to a) and b), convinced that Job must be very bad indeed. Readers, however, know that Job was the most righteous man on earth.
Most people, like Job himself, give up on answer b). Some do so by calling God cruel, since the innocent suffer so much in this world. Religious people, squeamish about criticizing God, usually postpone the fairness till the future. God will make everything right in the end.
Kushner, instead, suggests that a) is the premise which must yield. Job is good, and God is just and fair, but NO ONE can control the whole universe! Kushner claims God says as much at the end of Job: "The most important lines in the entire book may be the ones spoken by God from the whirlwind, chapter 40, verses 9-14: ’Have you an arm like God? Can you thunder with a voice like his? You tread down the wicked where they stand.... Then will I acknowledge that your own right hand can give you the victory.’ I take these lines to mean, ’if you think that it is so easy to keep the world straight and true, to keep unfair things from happening to people, you try it.’ God wants the righteous to live peaceful, happy lives, but sometimes even he can’t bring that about. It is too difficult even for God to keep cruelty and chaos from claiming their innocent victims."
One benefit of reading books like this is hearing how much people’s experiences color their theology. Kushner’s son was born with progeria, a rare disease that aged him rapidly and took his life when he was fourteen. This great heartache prompted his search for answers. His faith (he is a devout Jew) prevented him from blaming God - but what other answer was there? He also knew dozens of parishioners enduring their own sufferings. Could God be all-powerful and there be such misery among so many innocents?
Today we will isolate a part of the Bible’s answer by noticing how every cruel stroke of the cross was planned and predicted by author of this story, the God whose word stands.
1. Scripture Was Fulfilled To Show that Everyone Submits to God’s Sovereign Will (John 19.22-24)
While Jesus writhes in agony, soldiers play a game of chance for his clothing. If anyone was outside God’s control, surely it was these men. Oblivious to epic struggle unfolding around them, they have no interest in religion and are indifferent to the suffering of the innocent. But surprise! they are cast in the drama of the Christ! God is both author and director of this divine play, the Old Testament is the script, and these actors fill their parts without even knowing the rest of the story, just as it was written! They are the background crowd; extras, yet God so directs their lives that they perform perfectly.
Maybe some of you know of the company, Clean Films. Their business model was identical to Netflix, except that they rented edited movies, ones with the offensive language, sexual content, and gratuitous and graphic violence removed. Their business was closed by a judge on the grounds that the authors of the films owned the creative rights and they could prevent any changing of their movies. We will not debate the decision, but do note this: God claims something similar. He wrote the story; we are the cast in his drama, a play in which the star role is reserved for Jesus.
As I re-read Kushner this week, he repeated a point several times: you "cannot believe that God is in control and set the highest value on human life." I think I agree; but you can believe God is in control and set the highest value on him! Our problem is that we want star billing! Proud people want to be the center of the story. But these soldiers cast lots because that is the role God has assigned to them in his play.
2. Scripture Was Fulfilled To Show We Must Actively Obey God’s Sovereign Will (John 19.28-30)
When I have problems, I usually react by feeling sorry for myself. I wallow in my misery, searching out reasons I deserve to be treated better. Jesus, on the cross, searches out Scriptures so as to obey every detail of God’s revealed will. And Psalm 69.21 says: "for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink."
My first pastor was Dr. Richard deWitt: "Pray like a Calvinist; evangelize like an Arminian." He was not speaking literally; it was a slogan designed to impress us, first, with the importance of prayer. Calvinists believe that "God is in the heavens and he does all that he pleases," and it pleases him to "ordain whatever comes to pass" (WCF 3.1). Since nothing can stay his hand, we are delighted to know that, as E. M. Bounds says, "Prayer moves the hand that moves the world." Of all Christians, Calvinists should be first and most to prayer. If we believe that God wants people in Fairfield and Forest Park converted (as we say we do in our vision statements) then we will ask and expect the Lord of the harvest to bring many to faith. Let us pray like God is sovereign!
Dr. deWitt also used that slogan to impress us with the importance of action. Unfortunately, we who call ourselves Calvinists sometimes seem frightened and lazy. Rather than search the Scriptures to see what God has empowered us to do, we may claim "sovereignty" as an excuse to keep our testimony private and our lives devoted to creature comforts. But the true Christian is not passive - she searches out how she might obey. Prayer and preaching; prayer and witnessing; prayer and tutoring; prayer and giving; prayer and mercy ministry. There is depending to be done in prayer, and there is depending on God to be won through action.
Jesus was not passive. The Scriptures said that he would drink vinegar, so he cried out, "I thirst," to fulfill. And only after he had received the sour wine did he cry out, "It is finished." Maybe that translation is not clear enough. It is one word in the Greek language - maybe in English he would have yelled, "Accomplished!" Not merely done, like the roast after 3 hours at 335 degrees. Accomplished - every word fulfilled, every command obeyed.
Let us receive this correction and put our faith into practice, remembering that if our faith does not lead to works, then it is dead.
3. Scripture Was Fulfilled To Show a Perfect Provision Was God’s Sovereign Will (John 19.31-33,36)
Rome used crucifixion to torture, it was designed to extend suffering by postponing death for days. But that would not fit God’s plan to have Jesus buried on Friday and raised on Sunday. So again, unbelieving Jews and pagan Romans unwittingly fill their a role in the drama of redemption. The Jews convinced Pilate to break the legs, speeding death. Otherwise Jesus’ body would have seen corruption by Monday or Tuesday. But when they arrive, he has already acted - Jesus gave up his own spirit when the work was fully accomplished. So without breaking a bone (fulfilling Psalm 34.20), Christ is taken from the cross. It may seem a relatively small matter, but God wanted the reality of Messiah’s spiritually perfect sacrifice to be seen in the image of a body unbroken and whole.
Rabbi Kushner asks why the innocent suffer. I cannot answer that completely. But this I know from the Bible: The Innocent One suffered because of another’s guilt. From the moment of Adam’s and Eve’s rebellion, God looked down with pity and noted that justice would never grant us re-entry to paradise. Who will redeem mankind? Who will save them from the misery of their fallen condition and the pains of eternal hell? Isaiah 63.5: "I looked, but there was no one to help; I was appalled, but there was no one to uphold; so my own arm brought me salvation."
From the beginning, God has said that the sacrifice must be perfect. The Scriptures have long predicted that Jesus’ body would be unbroken in death, so that we would see God’s provision of a lamb without blemish, his own arm bringing salvation, ransoming us with the precious blood of Christ.
4. Scripture Was Fulfilled To Show that Jesus’ Death was God’s Sovereign Will (John 19.34-35,37)
The true Messiah, everyone "knew," would rule over a reconstituted Israel, one from which the hated Romans were forcefully expelled. A Messiah whose coronation path led to a cross is a contradiction in terms! That is why the rulers of the Jews scoffed at Jesus, saying, "Let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, his chosen one! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ’I am the son of God’" (Matthew 27.42.43; Luke 23.35). Everything a faithful Jew knew in his heart about Messiah was repulsed by the very idea of his death on a cross. Such could never be God’s plan.
So John reminds us of the words Zechariah spoke hundreds of years prior to Jesus’ birth: "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn" (Zechariah 12.10).
And to seal the prophecy, there could be no surer confirmation of death than the affirmation of the soldiers. These men studied death; they knew its every nuance, including exactly where to plunge a spear in the body of an enemy soldier to ensure that he was not faking so as to rise again and strike. Their lives depended on running that spear into the side and through the heart, assuring death.
So, when the water and blood flow, when death is assured, is this the final criticism of the Christ? Does this prove he was either a liar or lunatic? Must we now admit that his miracles were mere sleight of hand or the cunning work of a charismatic speaker? Such was the conclusion of his closest disciples. Two days after the crucifixion, depressed and discouraged, they drag their feet on the long trudge to Emmaus: "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel." Hear their confusion? If he had not died, he could redeem.
But John shows us a different way: God’s script, the Old Testament Scriptures, already demanded his death as the price of redemption. "It was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put[the innocent] to grief" (Isaiah 53.10) that the guilty might be restored. Christ paid a debt he did not owe, because we owe a debt we cannot pay.
5. Conclusion
The title of John Owen’s great book conveys well the purpose of God in the sacrifice of Jesus: The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. Another poignant description was given by Rev S. W. Gandy, a minister in a borough south of London in the 19th century. One of his hymns has these lines:
By weakness and defeat
he won the meed and crown;
trod all our foes beneath his feet
by being trodden down.
He hell in hell laid low;
made sin, he sin o’erthrew;
bowed to the grave, destroyed it so,
and death, by dying, slew.
Bless, bless the Conqueror slain -
slain by divine decree -
who lived, who died, who lives again,
for thee, his saint, for thee!
Now we are called to believe the application of this truth, as explained in the final line:
Well may the accuser roar,
of sins that I have done.
I know them well, and thousands more,
Jehovah knoweth none.
Everything happens according to God’s sovereign plan, not to paralyze us or leave us without hope, but so that we will sing:
Well may the accuser roar,
of sins that I have done.
I know them well, and thousands more,
Jehovah knoweth none.
He knoweth none because his plan was always for messiah to carry away the guilt of sin on the cross - just as it was written in the Scriptures. Let us pray.
