The Love Of God Displayed Series

The Love of God Displayed

Text: John 19:25-30

There’s a great quote that comes from a play written by the poet Francis Beaumont. It goes like this, “O’ Love – Tis enough to make a dog howl in rhyme!” And if you’ve ever been in love, you know exactly what that means. Love can make you do crazy things. Things you wouldn’t normally do…

And love is actually one of biggest problems in our world today… That got your attention right!?!

Let me clarify that – SELF LOVE is one of the biggest problems in our world today. There’s too many people who love themselves too much, and others not enough.

Well that’s never been a problem with Jesus. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Greater love has no man than this – that He lay down His life for His friends.

God IS love… but remember, love IS NOT God.

Well as we go through our text this morning, I do hope that you see the love of God on display through Jesus as He hung upon the cross, because if we do, it will cause us to love Him all the more.

We’re in John 19:25-30 (READ TEXT).

Now that’s love right there… not only the love of a Son for His mother… but the love of God on display.

Now just before our text this morning, we saw the soldiers dividing Jesus’ outer garments, and then casting lots for His tunic… that’s not love in any way, shape, or form. I mean, you’ve got the sinless Son of God, looking down at you, while He’s hanging on a cross… and He’s watching you gamble and squabble over His simple clothes. “I get His belt.” “Well I get His sandals.” “What about His tunic? High rolls wins?” My goodness! What depravity. Jesus isn’t even dead yet, and they’re squabbling about the scraps they get to take home… like modern day politicians screaming about their money laundering… er… uhm… I mean their pet projects being defunded. Squabbling about whatever scraps they can get while everything else around them dies.

What brings a person to that point? SELF LOVE. Loving self above all else.

And then we come to our text… and I love how John starts out verse 25, “BUT standing by the cross of Jesus…”. In other words – the ones who didn’t abandon Jesus. The ones who loved Him more than themselves. The ones who weren’t about their own self-preservation.

And John lists them. He says, Mary the mother of Jesus was there… and Mary’s sister – this would have been Salome, the wife of Zebedee and the mother of James and John. John also mentions Mary the wife of Clopas – she’s the mother of James the lesser and Joseph, and then John mentions Mary Magdalene and maybe you’ll remember her from Luke 8, where she had seven demons cast out of her. And then finally; there’s John himself. The only disciple who dared get close to the cross.

And I personally cannot imagine how they must’ve felt. I mean… I can get a little emotional myself just thinking of Jesus dying on the cross for my sake… but to have been there. To be His mom. It’s probably for the best that Joseph had already passed away because him being a just man… he would’ve been fighting some Roman soldiers that day.

Nobody loves you quite like mom and dad do. As parents we put our lives on hold and pour our lives into our kids. We watch them grow up. And we have hopes and dreams for them. To see your child on a Roman cross would be horrible. Especially knowing He was innocent of any crime.

So we’ve got four women and John – where were the men? That’s a good question right? Maybe they were too busy? Maybe they didn’t see any value in following Jesus. Maybe they were just afraid.

I’m just going to say something, and it’s really not meant to be offensive, but it probably will be. It takes a man to lead his family in following Jesus. It’s one of the hardest things a man can do. It takes strength, and determination, and grit, and stubbornness, and faithfulness. It’s not just 8 weeks like Army basic training… it’s not just 8 to 10 hours a day like your job. It’s all day – every day – day in and day out! From the time you become a husband to the day the Lord takes you home.

You don’t get days off from leading your family in following Jesus. You don’t get a vacation from that. You don’t get sick days, or comp time.

But here at the foot of the cross there’s only one disciple… John the beloved. The guy who wrote this Gospel account. And John was a tough guy. Following Jesus resulted in him being assaulted, attacked, persecuted, tortured, exiled to hard labor in a stone quarry on the Island of Patmos… and at the same time, being used by God to make an impact that changed history.