Well, thank you, Pete and Adaisy, for bringing us our readings tonight.
It's lovely to be together tonight.
My name's Graeme. I'm the pastor here of the church.
And let's just allow our souls tonight to be greatly strengthened
as we gaze at the glory of who our self-giving King is tonight.
So whatever's going on in your life right now,
whoever you've come here today,
whatever struggles that you're facing,
let's be in awe tonight of the King who gave it all for us.
And so as we step into John 19,
as you've got the passage there, have a look at it.
Know that you are looking at the most beautiful marriage proposal ever.
I've had many friends down the years who've proposed.
And as far as I can tell, all of them have one thing in common.
And it's this.
None of them woke up the morning that they got engaged and thought to themselves,
do you know what I fancy doing today?
I really feel like asking a girl to marry me.
And so down they went to Claire's Accessories.
They bought the cheapest ring that they could find.
Before they hit the high street, they stopped the first girl that they happened to see.
And they said to her,
Will you marry me?
It's not really how it works, is it?
Or certainly I hope it's not how it works.
Every single one of those men told me for months and months about this girl who they were crazy for.
And about how they knew from the moment that they first clocked her,
that they wanted to marry her and win her.
And so they set about scraping together every last penny that they had
to buy the perfect ring and to present it to her in the perfect way that communicated to her
that I'm prepared to do whatever it takes to win you and make you mine.
And I've heard some of them tell me stories about how they did it.
And I'm blushing just hearing the story, thinking to myself,
I would have even said yes to something like that.
John chapter 19.
Welcome to the most beautiful marriage proposal ever.
One that whatever is going on in your life right now,
if your faith is in this Jesus,
you have been so wonderfully swept up into.
And at this point, you're likely nudging your neighbor and you're saying,
Have we got the right passage?
And I don't blame you for maybe thinking that,
because I suspect that this was the last thing that you were picturing in your mind
as we read these verses in John 19 together.
Because the first few verses from verse 31 of chapter 19,
this is just business as usual in Rome.
Nothing out of the ordinary to see.
I mean, I take it hundreds of people get crucified
in the several places throughout the Roman Empire
where these crucifixion stations are located.
And it just so happens that in this particular day,
these three men are being crucified,
and they're being crucified just outside Jerusalem.
But with day drawing in,
the Jews want to get the bodies killed and taken down from the cross
before the clock strikes Sabbath.
And I take it that's just because to have someone visibly hanging there on the Sabbath,
not only was it a visible sign of God's curse,
but it was just a really unpleasant and ugly thing to look at.
Didn't want that kind of thing on display,
particularly during the Passover.
And so the Romans,
to speed up the dying process,
because these things we've got to understand could last for days,
they would break the legs of their victims
so that they could not push themselves up anymore to get breath.
So to break their legs is effectively to suffocate them.
They do it to the man on the right,
and they do it to the man on the left,
and then they come to the man in the middle.
And they realize when they come to the man in the middle
that the guy's already dead.
Now, whether it's a random act of violence
to kind of flex their muscles,
or as a way of maybe double checking
that the guy in the middle cross was in fact actually dead,
one of the soldiers takes a spear
and he pierces Jesus' side with it just to make sure.
And yes, indeed, this guy's dead.
So here is another grim day at the office in Rome.
You're a Roman soldier.
This is another day, another dollar.
Nothing to see here.
And yet John the Gospel writer,
remember himself,
he's an eyewitness to all of this as it goes on.
He seems to get really animated at this scene.
Have a look at verse 35.
What does he say?
The man who saw it has given testimony,
and his testimony is true.
He knows that he tells the truth,
and he testifies.
And then what he sees,
then see what he says next.
What does he say?
Why am I telling you this,
says John?
So that you may also believe.
So in this scene,
where the world looks at this scene,
this man on the cross,
where the world sees death,
where it sees power and politics
claiming yet another victim on another day,
John, somehow,
he looks at the same scene,
and he doesn't see death.
He sees life.
And it's not because he's just a sunny, optimist kind of guy.
It's not because he's an optimist he sees it.
It's because he's an evangelist that he sees it.
And in particular,
John sees life in this horrendous of scenes,
and he sees it in three places.
Do you see them there?
He sees it in Jesus' unbroken bones.
He sees it in Jesus' pierced side.
And he sees it in the blood and the water
which flows from his pierced side.
Now, just for a little bit,
let's think about those three things
and how on earth John can see life in those three things.
Take the unbroken bones.
Two contexts to that in the Old Testament
where unbroken bones are spoken of.
The first one is Passover.
The Passover lamb in Exodus 12.
God had told his people
that when they sacrificed the Passover lamb,
that they weren't allowed to break the bones.
And I take it that's a way of saying
and of helping God's people understand
that the lamb that you offer
has got to be a perfect, flawless sacrifice.
What is it commemorating?
What is it helping them remember?
It's that the lamb whose blood was over the door
when they lived in Egypt,
it was only the blood that would keep you safe
from the destroyer who God would send.
In that Exodus scene,
remember the Israelites are just as guilty
as the Egyptians.
But the one thing that stopped the firstborn son being killed
was the blood of the perfect lamb
that was over the door.
Not to do with the quality of their faith
or the intensity of their faith.
It was all to do with the blood of the lamb.
The second context, you get it in Psalm 34.
David there is writing
and he says,
God protect the righteous from our enemies.
And there you get it as well.
Not one of his bones will be broken.
I take it as David's way of saying
the righteous person who dies,
trusting God is like a perfect sacrifice.
Almost symbolically signifying
that the body of this person
will be ready for resurrection.
So the unbroken bones,
John sees life in that.
When the world sees random,
when the world sees insignificant,
footnote detail,
John sees life.
He sees it in the pierced side as well.
And that's where we got a reading from Pete earlier
from Zechariah chapter 12.
If you remember that line,
John quotes from it,
John chapter 19,
they will look on the one who they pierced.
And that's God saying there
that he's going to pour out on his rebellious people
a spirit of grace.
There's going to come a time
when sinners will look on the one that they pierced
and their thoughts will be,
did you get it in the reading?
It will be mourning.
They'll look at it and think,
what did we do to put him there?
What have we done?
What did we do?
And there'll be a mixture of a spirit of conviction.
What did we do to put him there?
And there'll also be a mixture of the spirit of grace.
And that's what the cross is, isn't it?
In one sense,
it is the ultimate criticism of us.
Our real sin put the real son of God
on a real cross.
I remember going to the cinema
to watch Mel Gibson's film,
The Passion of the Christ,
when it came out,
Donkeys years ago.
It's the only film I can ever remember being in
where the film finished
and not a soul moved
for about 20 minutes after the film
in a packed Odeon cinema in Glasgow.
The weirdest thing ever.
But in that film,
maybe you know that Mel Gibson
is in one scene in that film.
It's his hand that's on the hammer
that drives the nails into Jesus on the cross
as he is crucified.
And it was Gibson's way of saying,
of publicly saying,
that he took some responsibility
for what happened to Jesus on the cross
that Friday.
The cross is the ultimate criticism of us.
And yet,
it is also the ultimate liberation for us.
You've got to hear this tonight.
that Jesus took it all.
He took it all.
He paid it all.
You know,
I renewed our home insurance recently.
Have you ever had this experience?
They send you the renewal letter.
And I saw the cost at the top.
And just growing up in this country,
you're told never to pay full price for something.
Or if you do pay full price,
it's spelled F-O-O-L.
Right?
Not paying that price.
I've phoned them up
and they get me a good deal.
Great.
So they send me the stuff in the post the next day
and I look at it.
And if you've ever done that,
you scan down your insurance documents
and right at the bottom is just two columns.
Do you know the two columns I'm talking about?
Two columns.
One says,
what's covered?
And the other one says,
what's not covered?
And what we've got to understand tonight
is that what Jesus has done
as far as our sin is concerned,
there's nothing in that second box.
Nothing in that second box.
Jesus has paid it all.
There is nothing that's not covered.
We cannot out-sin the cross.
It is the ultimate criticism of us.
It was our sin that put him there.
But it is the ultimate liberation for us
because nowhere else
so climactically do we see the love of God
and the justice of God
on full display for the world to see.
It is the criticism
and it's our liberation.
And then we come to the blood
and the water.
And if you're an Old Testament Jew,
you're schooled in the fact
that the life is in the blood.
Without the shedding of blood,
there can be no sacrifice for sin.
And in John's gospel,
water is associated with the Spirit.
And it speaks of cleansing and life.
In Jesus' death,
he releases for us both the cleansing power
and the life-giving power that we need.
And John brings all of these three things together
and he presents it to us
and to his original readers.
And he says,
this is where life is found.
In the one who gave himself for us.
You know that old hymn
that the church have sang down the ages?
There is a fountain that's filled with blood
drawn from Emmanuel's veins.
And sinners plunge beneath that flood.
They lose all their guilty stains.
Friends, welcome to the most beautiful
marriage proposal ever.
Here is the lengths that Jesus the bridegroom,
and that's how he's been portrayed
all the way up to this point in John's gospel.
Here are the lengths that Jesus the bridegroom
is willing to go to
to win his bride.
And I love how Stuart Townend,
in his modern day song,
he captures it so well.
He says,
Oh, to see my name
written in his wounds,
for through his suffering I am free.
And John says to his readers,
Will you see
and will you live?
And it's interesting, isn't it,
off the back of that,
two individuals come onto the scene.
Two individuals come forward
from verse 28.
You get Joseph of Arimathea.
Check him out, verse 28.
The man who was a disciple of Jesus,
but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders.
So he's on the scene here.
And you get Nicodemus as well,
who we've met before twice in John's gospel.
This man who was the top of the religious class.
This man with a CV to die for.
This man who had put us to shame.
This man for whom religion would be his round in mastermind.
This man who came to Jesus at night in chapter 3.
And Jesus told him that you must be born again.
You must be born again.
It's not about what you do.
It's about what God has done.
And then we meet him again in chapter 7.
And he's there.
He's kind of cautiously speaking up for Jesus.
He goes for that.
Is it right to try a man on lack of evidence?
And yet what happens to him in that moment?
He's mocked.
And we're left wondering since that point,
what happened to Nicodemus?
What's going on in his mind?
What does he make of it all?
What did both these men have in common?
They're both in the circles of religious power.
They both know precisely that Jesus is the Christ.
But neither want to say so publicly
because they are frightened about being excluded.
And yet, isn't it fascinating then
that this is the moment
when both Joseph of Arimathea
and Nicodemus choose
as the moment that they come out in the open
about their faith in Jesus.
It's not the miracles of Jesus
that are the thing that provoke them
to come out into the open.
It's not the teaching of Jesus
that prompts them to do that.
Nor is it in John's Gospel,
nor is it the raising of Lazarus
that prompts them to do it.
It's this moment
when they see the death of Jesus,
when they finally decide
to nail their colours to the mast
as they gaze upon the man
who is nailed to a Roman cross.
And remember that John's writing this Gospel.
It was alluded to in the video, wasn't it?
That he's probably an older statesman
at this point.
And it means he probably knows about
and his world know about
the rise and the impact
that God made on the world
through the early church.
And he's trying to explain
who Jesus is for his contemporaries
who are wondering,
what on earth is going on out there
with these Christians?
But as John considers the early church,
what is it that's their song?
What is the subject of their songs?
What is the centre of their preaching?
What is the heart of the discipleship
that they're trying to get into
the lives of the believers?
What's the heart of it?
The heart of it is the cross.
You read Revelation
and you see that the Lamb who was slain
is beauty enough
to fill every single one
of heaven's hymn books.
And it's enough to forever loosen
the tongues of every single person
that gathers there to worship
the three-in-one God.
The Lamb who was slain.
What is the subject?
What is the great object of worship?
It is the Lamb who was slain.
As Paul would say,
it's the Son of God who loved us
and who gave himself for us.
And it's interesting,
on Good Friday,
we close at verse 41.
And do you see where we are
in the narrative?
As Good Friday draws to a close,
we're back in a garden.
And of course,
humanity's story starts
in a garden.
God creates Adam
and he puts him in Eden.
And with everything before that
in creation,
God declared it good.
It's really striking
in the Genesis creation narrative
that for the first time,
you see God declaring
that something is not good.
What is it that's not good?
It's not good that Adam
is alone.
And so God causes Adam
to fall into this deep,
strange,
death-like sleep.
That's what the Hebrew word
there conveys.
And God in this moment,
he reaches into Adam's side.
He takes a rib
and presumably
in a similar way
to that which he did
with Adam,
God breathes the breath of life
into her nostrils
and there is woman.
This one whom Adam
was designed to be one with.
This one whom Adam
is absolutely besotted with.
This one whom Adam
cannot stop singing over.
This one who is Adam's bride.
And she's come from his side.
And so here is the greater Adam
in John chapter 19
who's put to death
and from his side
comes his bride.
In Adam,
we see Christ's glorious intention
to give life to his bride
and to be one with her.
And whatever's going on
in your life tonight,
that is your greatest identity.
That is who you are.
One who has been so greatly pursued
and chosen
and loved
by the Son.
we find our deepest meaning
as believers
here.
You know,
just as we close,
I remember hearing
from a friend recently
about how he proposed.
And his fiancée was in the room
and in front of her
he told me
how he spent ages researching
and saving up for
what he thought
was the perfect ring
with the perfect backstory
that was perfect for her.
And she responded
and she said,
you could have given me
a Harry Bullring
and I wouldn't have cared.
And I thought,
that is great.
That is beautiful.
And yet,
here's what we need
to understand
about what the Bible says
about humanity.
Is that we were not like that.
Until
the gospel
is a scandal,
it will not be a wonder.
The scandal
of the gospel,
the scandal
of this proposal
is that God
loved us,
says Scripture,
even when we were
his enemies.
When we were not
looking for God,
when God was not
on our radar,
when we were not
interested in turning
from the darkness
to the light.
No,
this God
came looking
for us.
As we were facing
eternity
under his judgment,
this God
came looking
for us.
When we were
wallowing in
and happily stuck
in our sin,
this God
came looking
for us.
And so,
all glory
goes to the pursuing
and the holy
God of love.
That the Spirit
opened our minds
and he transformed
our hearts of stone
and he opened us up
to receive this love
seen in the atoning
work of Jesus
for us.
Dear friends,
until the gospel
is scandalous
to us,
it will not be
marvelous to us.
In the words
of pastor,
German pastor,
Frederick Leahy,
he says,
as we stand
and thought
before that cross,
our emotions
are mixed.
How dreadful
and yet,
how wondrous
is this place.
John 19,
welcome
to the most
beautiful
marriage proposal
ever.
God,
why don't we
just be silent
for a moment
just before we
move on
with our service.
And we don't need
to rush on tonight.
Why don't we take time
just to think about
some of these things
as we prepare our hearts
to come before
the Lord's table.
Let's just gaze
upon him tonight
and rejoice
in who our Savior is
and then I'll pray.
Amen.
But he was pierced
for our transgressions.
He was crushed
for our iniquities.
The punishment
that brought us
peace
was on him
and by his wounds
we are healed.
So Father,
thank you
for who you are
tonight.
Jesus Christ,
the same yesterday,
today,
and forever.
And as we look
at the cross tonight,
I pray, Lord,
that it would come
with a fresh
conviction
of our sin
that put him there
and yet with a fresh
knowledge of the love
of God,
the pursuing love
of God
that went to the cross
for us.
Father,
we thank you so much
for your goodness.
We thank you
for your grace
and we pray
that you'd be with us
for the rest of this evening.
In Jesus' name we ask.
Amen.