John 19:16-24

[0:00] Today's passage comes from John 19, 16-24. Many of the Jews read the sign for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek.

[0:43] The chief priests of the Jews protested Pilate, Do not write the king of the Jews, but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.

[0:55] Pilate answered, What I have written, I have written. When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, divided them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarments remaining.

[1:10] This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. Let's not tear it, they said to one another. Let's decide by a lot who will get it.

[1:23] This happened that the scriptures might be fulfilled, which said, They divided my garments among them, and cast lots for my clothing. So this is what the soldiers did.

[1:34] This is the word of the Lord. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would do what we have already seen you do this morning, not only here, but also in the lives of the saints.

[1:50] As we think about Kim and Carl and Jess and their testimonies of how your word and your spirit has been sovereignly at work in them and through them.

[2:01] And so we pray, Lord, that your word and your spirit would be at work in us as we consider this passage of scripture today. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

[2:12] Amen. Good morning, church. Welcome to Shoreline this morning. See some out-of-town guests. I'm glad that you're here. My name is Mike, one of the pastors here at Shoreline.

[2:22] And whether you are a saint or a sufferer or a sinner, we welcome you this morning. If you're in Christ, you're all three of those.

[2:33] And in any given day, you might feel one more acutely than the other. But all are welcome this morning. Well, have you ever noticed that our culture is oddly obsessed with horror films?

[2:45] You know, over the past few decades, there's actually been a surge in people seeking out experiences that evoke negative emotions. And did some research this week and found that the percentage of overall films accounted for by the genre of horror has essentially tripled over the past 20 years.

[3:04] And maybe you've noticed in your own neighborhood, it seems like Halloween is becoming a bigger and bigger deal each and every year, not only from the neighborhood, but from media. And I want us to contrast that this morning with the gospel accounts of Jesus' flogging and his crucifixion.

[3:18] So the gospel writers, they scarcely give any details about the actual torture that Jesus is undergoing. Now, perhaps that's explained in part by the fact that, you know, the original first century hearers of these gospel accounts, they would have well understood what that would have entailed.

[3:38] But I think that there's something deeper going on. And I think, I think it's this. You know, I think that rather than become fixated on the physical details, the bone in the metal that would be tied to the leather of the flogging whip or the excruciating pain of one hoisting oneself up against the nails and the splintered wood just to breathe.

[4:03] You know, it seems like the gospel writers would rather us be fixated on Jesus himself. Fixated on who he is and what it is that he actually accomplished by his suffering and his death.

[4:18] So in this account of Jesus' crucifixion written by the apostle John, we see that the Messiah King Jesus secures worldwide salvation by bearing humanity's curse through suffering and death.

[4:35] That's what we see this morning, that Jesus is the Messiah King. He's the Messiah and the King, promised from of old. And this Messiah King Jesus, he secures worldwide salvation by bearing humanity's curse through suffering and through death.

[4:51] And the first thing that we see in this text is Jesus, the curse of sinners. Jesus, the curse of sinners. And John says, so they took Jesus and he went out.

[5:04] And I just want to point out briefly that once again, we see the upholding of two truths simultaneously. Man's killing of Jesus, right? The malice of sin we said last week.

[5:14] They took Jesus. They did it. And he went out. It's an active verb. He went. Jesus is laying down his own life. This was God's means of salvation.

[5:27] So that was last week's message, right? The malice of sin is at the same time God's means of salvation. Jesus had said, we keep pointing back over and over again to what Jesus said in John 10. No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.

[5:42] So they took Jesus and he went out bearing his own cross. Now it's interesting when we compare John's gospel to the synoptic gospels. The synoptics mention Simon of Cyrene.

[5:54] He was just a random passerby, compelled to carry the cross by the Roman soldiers. So clearly Jesus was unable to carry it too far. But here, and this is not a contradiction, Jesus is bearing his own cross for some distance.

[6:09] And John doesn't want to focus on Simon of Cyrene. John wants us to see Jesus. He wants us to see Jesus bearing his own cross. And in this image of Jesus carrying the cross beam of the cross on his shoulders, we see his resoluteness of will, right?

[6:26] Jesus' fixed determination. You know, in Isaiah 50, the third of four servant songs, it says, I have set my face like a flint. Jesus had set his face to Jerusalem.

[6:38] He had set his face to the cross. He's resolved to die. And we have to ask, why, right? Why? Why this resoluteness of will?

[6:48] Why this fixed determination? It's for love. For love. We've talked about this over and over again as well. Love for the Father. Obediently carrying out the Father's will.

[6:59] Love for mankind. Bearing the curse of mankind. And so here Jesus is carrying the cross, the instrument of his own humiliation and death, on his own bloodied shoulders and back.

[7:13] And I want to ask, why a cross? Why did Jesus die this horrific way? Could have mentioned last week, but the Jewish leaders, according to the law, they should have stoned Jesus for the charge of blasphemy.

[7:29] That was what was written in their law. But they specifically wanted Jesus crucified. We saw their fixed determination to have Jesus crucified last week in their persistence before Pilate.

[7:41] Because, you know, the law also stated in Deuteronomy 21, 22, and 23 that a man hanged on a tree was cursed. See, the Jewish leaders, they wanted everyone to see that the man claiming to be the Son of God was actually cursed by God.

[7:59] And, you know, in this we again see God's sovereignty, his power over and even through the evil schemes of men.

[8:09] For this is exactly what Christ came to do, to bear our curse upon himself, to become sin for us. That's why Paul writes to the Galatians in 3.13 that Christ, he redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

[8:26] For it is written, now he's quoting Deuteronomy, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. And this theme continues in the next verse. It says that he went, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.

[8:45] Golgotha is the word from which we get the Latin Calvary. And there's a couple sites in Jerusalem today believed to be this exact location. We're not actually sure.

[8:55] But what we do know is that this place was outside the city walls of Jerusalem. Down in verse 20, John says, near the city. So it's outside of the city walls.

[9:07] And this is significant. Why? Because under the Old Testament law, those within the community who were deemed unclean, whether lepers or one who had touched a dead body, whatever it was that made someone unclean, they were sent outside the camp when it was the tabernacle or outside the gate when it was in Jerusalem.

[9:24] They were no longer ceremonially clean to be able to worship with, to gather with the community of the faithful. We see this especially in Numbers 5. Also, God had prescribed under the law of Moses a day called the Day of Atonement.

[9:40] And during that day, the high priest, once a year, would make atonement for his own sins, his family's sins, for the sins of the nation. And he would offer sacrifices to the Lord to cleanse the people from their sin.

[9:53] And during this ritual, those sacrificed animals would then be carried outside the camp, outside the gates, and their bodies would be burned.

[10:05] And so what we see here, what John is showing us, in both of those ways, the unclean people being cast out of the camp, the sacrificed animals being taken out of the camp, Jesus is the fulfillment of those things by himself going outside the camp to die on the cross.

[10:24] The author of Hebrews shows us this when he writes that, for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp.

[10:36] So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Hebrews 13. We remember how Jesus had just prayed only hours before, and for their sake, I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth.

[11:00] Now this theme of Jesus bearing our curse continues even in the next verse where it says, there they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side and Jesus between them.

[11:14] Consider on Jesus' right, on Jesus' left, criminals, right, deserving of the punishment that was brought upon them. In the middle of these criminals hangs the spotless, sinless Son of God willingly going to his death upon the cross.

[11:34] As we consider that juxtaposition of the criminals on the outside and Christ in the middle, we're drawn again back to Isaiah. Prophecy of the suffering servant, Isaiah's fourth servant song.

[11:45] It says that he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Numbered with the transgressors and among the sinners. And why did he do that?

[11:56] Isaiah says in the very next line, he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. Paul in 2 Corinthians 5.21, For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

[12:17] That's what Jesus is doing. He's becoming the curse of sinners, being numbered among the sinners, going outside the camp to do away once and for all with our sin.

[12:27] Before we move on from this first point, there's one more truth I want us to contemplate. We're talking about that Jesus is bearing humanity's curse, bearing humanity's sin.

[12:38] And some would say that by doing so, Jesus endured the effects or the consequences of our sin. He incurred our debt of sin so that we could be forgiven. And you should say, yes, Mike, amen.

[12:51] Like that all sounds good and true and it absolutely is true, but it's not enough. It's not enough. And I want to illustrate with a story. I played basketball as a freshman in high school and my high school freshman B basketball coach, he ruled his little empire with an iron fist.

[13:10] Too many mistakes and you had to bear the wrath of the coach, which meant doing line drills over and over and over again until he was satisfied temporarily. Now all those drills, you might say, well, those were the consequences of your errors.

[13:24] You know, it's cause and effect. And what we needed in those moments of excruciating pain was someone to come and endure the consequences of our sin, someone to run the line drills for us.

[13:37] And I'd say, well, yes, that would have been awesome. But the problem is that more than that, we needed someone to bear the wrath of the coach, right? To remove his wrath from us, not just bearing our consequences.

[13:49] And friends, the point is, we don't just have a consequences problem. We have a wrath problem. We have a wrath problem. And we need to understand this. This undergirds our understanding of what Jesus did for us on the cross.

[14:04] See, John's Jewish audience, they would have understood God to be a God of anger and wrath towards sin. There was an entire sacrificial system in place to satisfy God's wrath for sin, to bring reconciliation.

[14:18] John's Gentile audience, at the very least, they had a religious and a cultural familiarity with the pagan gods being angry towards men for their transgression and therefore needing to be appeased.

[14:29] But today, today, this is downright offensive. We do not like to talk about, to think about, the wrath of God. And I think it's offensive today because we superimpose upon God our own character.

[14:46] We think God is like us. Friends, God is not like us. See, in my story, I had a capricious coach whose wrath was erratic.

[14:57] Right? But unlike my coach, who was probably trying to make up for his inability to play basketball, God, God is not capricious. He's not capricious. John Stott writes in his book, The Cross of Christ, God's anger is absolutely pure and uncontaminated by those elements that render human anger sinful.

[15:17] We know this. We see our own sinful anger day in, day out. God's anger is not like that, friends. Human anger is usually arbitrary and uninhibited. Divine anger is always principled and controlled.

[15:30] Our anger tends to be a spasmodic outburst. God's is a continuous, settled antagonism. Listen to this. It's aroused only by evil and expressed in its condemnation.

[15:42] God is entirely free from personal animosity or vindictiveness. Indeed, he is sustained simultaneously with undiminished love for the offender.

[15:54] Undiminished love combined with anger. Is your anger like that? Mine's not. Mine's not. God's anger is the wrath of the holy and merciful God called forth by and directed against men's ungodliness and unrighteousness.

[16:08] See, that's the anger and wrath that's directed at mankind. We are morally responsible beings. That's part of the crowning of us as men of his creation.

[16:19] We're morally responsible unlike the rest of the creatures and because we have sinned and rebelled against a perfectly holy God, we have provoked his just and holy wrath.

[16:31] And the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that he bore on the cross God's wrath for our sin. He bore it on himself going outside the camp being numbered with the sinners that he might endure not only our consequences, right, but also drink the cup of God's wrath for sin.

[16:52] And what's more, he gives us his righteousness. So now instead of being objects of wrath, we're objects of mercy and of grace. if you consider this morning that perhaps the idea of a God of wrath for sin is not actually an archaic and primal belief, if you consider this morning that perhaps it's completely logical, even necessary, if God is simultaneously going to be a God of love, how could a God of love allow his good creation to be marred with evil?

[17:26] If you've not repented of your sin and turned to Christ by faith, then you remain under that divine wrath. But friends, today, today, today, you can have a standing in grace and mercy instead.

[17:40] So we see Jesus, the curse of sinners. The second thing we see is Jesus, the King of nations, the King of nations. Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross.

[17:54] 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.

[18:07] Now, on the surface, these verses would seem somewhat commonplace. It was normal for a sign to be posted identifying a crucified criminal's crime so as to deter others from defying the law of Rome.

[18:21] And it's not unusual that the sign would be written in the local, the regional, and the international languages. That's what these are, local, regional, international, so that everybody walking by could read the sign.

[18:32] But there's a little more going on. So the chief priest 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 have written, I have written.

[18:46] Last week, we saw Pilate's annoyance and exasperation even at the Jewish leaders. They refused to submit to his authority. They were persevering in their determination to kill Jesus.

[18:58] They essentially cornered Pilate into having Jesus, whom he believed to be innocent, condemned and crucified. Well, then Pilate took a little stab at them last week.

[19:09] He lured the Jewish leaders into swearing allegiance to no one but Caesar. Obviously, an untrue declaration, but one which no doubt made Pilate chuckle a little bit with vengeful glee.

[19:20] And now Pilate, he's just taking one last jab at the Jewish leaders, attempting to show them, you know, who's the real sheriff in town? Rome has the authority. Your king is right there. He's dying on the cross.

[19:31] It's just a jab from Pilate. But there's a little more going on here, is there not? There's a little more going on because the reality we know is that Jesus is the king of the Jews.

[19:45] Not only the king of the Jews, but the king of the nations, the king of the cosmos. That's who Jesus is, the king of everything. For the Lord, the most high, is to be feared.

[19:57] A great king over all the earth. Psalm 47, 2. Jesus is that king. Psalm 74, verse 12. Yet my God, yet God my king is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.

[20:10] Jesus is that king. In Psalm 74. Now what's going on here is that just as we've seen all throughout the Gospel of John, Pilate is speaking far better than he knows.

[20:21] God is wielding Pilate. He's using Pilate in his pettiness to make him a megaphone declaring his son as king. Pilate is an unwitting prophet, just like Caiaphas was back in John chapter 11.

[20:36] So now God has used the two men most responsible, humanly speaking, for the death of Jesus. The Jewish high priest, the Roman governor, he has used both of them as unwitting prophets to declare the identity and the mission of Christ.

[20:53] He uses them to declare the Gospel. I mean, how incredible is that? And this sign here, it's written in three languages. Again, the local, regional, and international language of the day because Jesus' identity will be made known worldwide.

[21:07] It will be made known worldwide. And you know, Jesus had said in John 12, and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will do what? He will draw all people to myself.

[21:18] So church, let's bow down and worship the king. He's the king. We ought to worship him. But second application point here, as we see here, you can either oppose God's agenda and lose, or you can submit to God's agenda and win in the end.

[21:37] Either way, God is going to advance his kingdom and his agenda through you. That's what's going to happen. God is advancing his kingdom, period. No matter what you do, right? No matter what people oppose the gospel, his gospel is going forth.

[21:51] And I think the last 2,000 years of history have given plenty of evidence to that fact. In the midst of intense persecution, that's how Christianity began, in persecution, and the gospel spread.

[22:02] And even now, the gospel is being opposed fiercely in places like Iran and Afghanistan and parts of Africa. And it is going forth. It is going forth. You know, the Pharisee Gamaliel, if you remember him in Acts chapter 5, the apostles were arrested for sharing the gospel.

[22:21] They're being told not to. And the Sanhedrin is upset. And they want to punish them. But the Pharisee Gamaliel, he says, So, in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone.

[22:37] For if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail. But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God.

[22:50] There he is, speaking truth. Didn't believe that what they were suffering for was real, but he's speaking truth just like Caiaphas, an unwitting prophet. So wouldn't you rather join God and the work that he's doing and receive the blessing?

[23:04] The blessing of being on his team? And what is that work? Well, we see it right here. We see it right here. It's making disciples of all nations, right? God is doing a worldwide thing.

[23:15] It's a worldwide mission. It's not just here in New London, Connecticut, but it's global and it's through the generations. That's what God is doing. And so, that's what he's calling us to do in this room, to be a part of his worldwide mission.

[23:32] How do we do that? In all sorts of ways. We do it in word and deed, pointing people to Jesus, the one who was lifted up on the cross to bear their curse and grant them salvation.

[23:45] This looks like all sorts of things. It looks like adorning the gospel by your work ethic in front of your coworkers. It looks like opening up your homes to your neighbors and unsaved people through hospitality.

[23:55] It looks like inviting people to come to church on Sunday. or maybe the church picnic tonight. This looks like praying, right, for God's gospel to go forth, praying for missionaries and unsaved people all over the world.

[24:09] This looks like supporting the work of international missions financially. We do that as a church. You can do that individually as well. It might look like for some in this room giving themselves fully to full-time missions, whether here, like Benji.

[24:23] We have Benji at InterVarsity. We're around the world, like the whole family who's right now in Papua New Guinea serving Christ over there, bringing the gospel to unreached people groups.

[24:35] Whatever it looks like, that's our mission as disciples of Christ, to carry on his mission, proclaiming the gospel to the nations. So we've seen Jesus, the curse of sinners, Jesus, the king of nations.

[24:52] A curse and a king. Think about that for a second. A curse and a king. How dissonant does that sound? How strange does that sound? Now, if you've been raised in the church, then it might not sound that strange to you, right?

[25:07] But if you put yourself in the shoes of the first century Jews, well, that message was offensive to them. In their minds, that was not at all the king that they were looking for, that they were longing for.

[25:19] But what John does next is he shows us that this is actually exactly the kind of king and Messiah that God had been promising. Jesus, the Christ who suffers.

[25:34] When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts. One part for each soldier and also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.

[25:46] So they said to one another, let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be. Now again, this isn't all that strange on the surface.

[26:00] It was commonplace for soldiers to do exactly this thing, what they're doing, to divvy up the clothes of the victim. The question is, why does John care so much? Like, why is John focused on this?

[26:11] Shouldn't the camera be focused on Jesus who's hanging on the cross? Well, the reality is the actions that the soldiers are performing are actually all about Jesus.

[26:23] Just like the prior scene with Pilate and the chief priest arguing over the sign. But John is more explicit this time because we're less likely to understand. He says explicitly, this was to fulfill scripture, which says, they divided my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots.

[26:43] So the soldiers did these things. See, the reason that John panned the camera over to the soldiers little gambling game is because it was fulfillment of scripture.

[26:54] This is here cited from the psalm that we read earlier, Psalm 22. This is verse 18 of Psalm 22. Now, for good reason, each of the four gospel writers, they quote or allude to Psalm 22.

[27:08] So I actually want you all to turn in your Bibles to Psalm 22. You have your Bible with you. It's not going to be on the screen. I will read portions of it. I was going to read the whole thing but I think we'll read portions of Psalm 22 and what I want you to consider here.

[27:25] This psalm was penned by King David, okay, around 1000 BC and I want you to consider as we read this how closely, as Brother Jim was showing us earlier, how closely it resembles the experiences of Christ.

[27:37] Okay? Verse 1, Down in verse 6.

[27:53] Verse 12.

[28:08] Many bulls encompass me. Strong bulls of Bashan surround me. They open wide their mouths at me like a ravening and roaring lion. I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint.

[28:20] My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast. My strength is dried up like a pot shirt and my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death. For dogs encompass me.

[28:33] A company of evil doers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots.

[28:47] But you, O Lord, do not be far off. O you, my help, come quickly to my aid. Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the mouth of the lion.

[28:57] You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen. I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation. I will praise you. Verse 24, For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted and he has not hidden his face from him but has heard when he cried to him.

[29:18] 27, All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord and all the families of the nations shall worship before you for kingship belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations.

[29:33] You know, we could sit here and talk about all the specific ways that Jesus has fulfilled this psalm, Psalm 22 and that would be very beneficial.

[29:44] I encourage you to do that as we go through the events of the cross over the next couple weeks to read Psalm 22. Did you know that there's over 300 prophecies in the Old Testament that have been fulfilled in the person and work of Christ?

[30:00] 300! And there is about a dozen right here in Psalm 22 and that, saints, that ought to strengthen our faith in the reality and the sovereignty of God, in the reality of Christ's identity as the Son of God and the true King and Messiah when we consider how these words penned hundreds, thousand years earlier have been fulfilled in Jesus.

[30:21] But I want us here to take in the big picture. In Psalm 22, King David is writing poetically as a righteous sufferer, who has been scorned, mocked, rejected by men, even his own people.

[30:35] He feels as though he's been rejected by God. We saw in verse 16 to 18, he describes the severity of the oppression he's experiencing and it appears as though he's describing the agony of crucifixion.

[30:49] But crucifixion wasn't around yet. It wasn't even around. There's no evidence of crucifixions being performed until somewhere around 500 BC. So that's 500 years after King David is writing.

[31:04] And then there's this great turning point that Jim pointed out before. King David calls for God's deliverance verses 19 through 21 and then abruptly he celebrates this deliverance as already occurring.

[31:16] He has been delivered from his enemies. He's been vindicated by God and in turn he will praise God in the assembly. He will cause all the nations to turn to the Lord in submission and worship.

[31:28] So church what the apostle John wants us to see in citing Psalm 22 18 is not merely that the soldiers divided up Jesus' clothing just like God said he would.

[31:39] No. John wants us to see that Jesus of Nazareth is the fulfillment of the pattern and type of King David. In other words Jesus is the Messiah King from the line of David promised by God from ancient times.

[31:55] and as David was the righteous sufferer then vindicated by God Jesus is the ultimate righteous sufferer who has been vindicated by God and he has caused all peoples from all nations through the generations to turn to the Lord in humble submission and worship.

[32:14] So the idea of a Messiah King who suffers it should not have actually been a foreign idea to the first century Jews. It was the pattern of their own forefather David now fulfilled in Christ.

[32:30] You know the problem though as we've seen in John's Gospel the Jews had developed an idea of a Messiah King who would lead a conquest of their political enemies rather than a conquest of sin.

[32:41] They had forgotten what their true problem was. And you know that's not all that different from today is it? I mean who in our culture believes that sin that indwelling sin is their chief problem?

[32:56] Who in our culture believes that that God sending his son to be crucified on a cross is first a picture of love rather than some sort of repulsive and primary nonsense?

[33:09] People today are just as offended by the message of the cross. And we should expect them to be. We should expect the world to oppose this message. You know Richard Dawkins one of the most famous atheists of our day he recently said in a debate that the idea that God couldn't think of a better way to forgive the sins of humanity than to have his son crucified that is a disgusting idea.

[33:33] That's what Richard Dawkins said. Richard Dawkins brilliant as he is does not comprehend the holiness of God and the sin and corruption of men's hearts.

[33:47] The cross is a picture of love. You know what Paul told the Corinthians? He said for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of God for Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom but we preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles but to those who are called both Jews and Gentiles Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God for the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men that's 1 Corinthians 1 let us not be surprised at the offense or the opposition of the world but instead church let us commit ourselves to bearing witness to the truth that is in Jesus that is Jesus for I am not ashamed Paul said of the gospel why?

[34:40] for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek and we see here Christ was not ashamed to go outside the camp to bear our reproach and sanctify us by his blood and Hebrews says therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach that he endured for here we have no lasting city but we seek the city that is to come saints because of what Christ has borne for us the reproach that he bore on our behalf let us gladly bear the reproach of the world for his sake not only for his sake but so that in the power of the spirit our witness will lead more men more women to abandon this fleeting world that is judged by God right and to turn from the world and the ruler of the world the devil and to submit to King Jesus the Messiah

[35:42] King his kingdom is forever this world is fleeting it's passing away his kingdom is forever now this in part bearing the reproach of the world this is in part what Christ means when he calls each of his disciples to deny himself to take up his cross and follow me see we walk the path of humility the path of suffering the path of self-sacrifice for the sake of love you know what Psalm 22 shows us what the gospels show us is that the suffering of Christ gives way to glory the suffering gives way to glory that is the story arc on which God is moving all of his saints through suffering to glory and church God reigns over the macro moments of our lives and also over the little details the micro of our lives like soldiers dividing up and casting lots for our garments seemingly insignificant details of our lives he reigns over all of it in order to transform us from one degree of glory to the next so we can trust the father we can trust him he's working with sovereign love to bring us to bring you saint child of God to bring you to glory you can follow

[37:06] Christ in his path of humility his path of self emptying love you can follow him knowing that that suffering is giving way to glory you can do that in the low level suffering of everyday life the demeaning word Carl was talking about earlier a flat tire on the road a headache like the little trivial things the child's obstinance whatever it is the low level suffering we can trust the father we can follow Christ in humility and self emptying love and also in seasons of profound tragedy profound sorrow in those times we feel more deeply than ever the futility of the curse to which this world has been subjected but we know that Christ bore that curse he bore that curse in those moments we can cast our minds to Calvary and we see the Messiah who suffered and died to bear that curse upon himself and we glory in that king who through the shedding of his own precious blood secured worldwide salvation and when we do that we then are compelled to go and to bear witness to that glorious gospel because we want more people more men more women more lost sinners to come to faith in this Messiah

[38:31] King Jesus and be welcomed into citizenship in his kingdom I just want to close by reading those final words of Psalm 22 that we read earlier posterity shall serve him it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn that he has done it please pray with me father we cannot comprehend the mystery of the cross the agony of what you did for us the separation that you experienced between your heavenly father we cannot comprehend Lord help us though to delve into the depths of this mystery to see your holiness to see your perfection your beauty the God of the universe the king of the nations to see your love your compassion in contrast with that to see our sin our corruption our rebellion this was your plan the agony the horror of the cross should only show us how corrupt we are how greatly we needed to rescue we needed to be saved and we see

[40:12] Jesus in this text bearing our curse upon himself numbering himself among the sinners though he was sinless and spotless we see Jesus being lifted up as the king the true king of the nations who doesn't lead with an iron fist but in love in humility for us Jesus the Christ the anointed one the Messiah prophesied from of old from ancient times suffering in our place oh let us be drawn to worship let us be filled with gratitude for what you have done for us let us be compelled to carry this message to the world to carry on your mission God would you advance your kingdom your gospel in our hearts this morning and in this region and all throughout the world for your glory we pray in Christ's name amen ending