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The night is cold...
Tonight we are looking at one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith - That God the son, having become a man, could die on the cross for the sins of the world.
Hopefully, you have the notes in front of you.
We have a big chunk of scripture to cover it by answering two questions:
How did it happen?
What do we make of it?
Why did it happen?
Why does it matter?
We’ll move pretty pacely through the first question and spend the rest of our time answering questions 2 and 3.
How did it happen?
First off all then, how did this happen?
There are certain events that are so significant that they define a generation.
And I bet that If I were to say to you ‘where you when...’ [Give some examples eg.
moon landing, JFK, 911, 7/7]
Personally, I can still remember exactly where I was when the twin towers collapsed on live television.
No doubt, the death of Jesus of Nazareth was one of those moments in the life Jerusalem.
But this event wouldn’t simply define a generation; a few short hours would change the course of human history forever.
But before we get into the significance of the events, let’s spend a few moments walking with Jesus through his final hours.
The Events So Far...
The night is cold.
Everywhere the streets show signs of a city gearing up for Passover but right now the streets are deserted.
In the gathering darkness twelve figures move though the night towards the the city gate.
One is missing and but will return soon enough, before the night is over.
The figure at the front takes with others as they walk.
They don’t know it yet, but after tonight their lives and their world will be changed forever.
They pause, the leader of the group looks up to sky, but he is still speaking… no he’s praying.
The man finishes, and the group head off again.
They head out out of the city, across the Kidron valley, and up the mount of Olives.
There they all enter a garden called Gethsemane.
The man is Jesus of Nazareth and he’s about to betrayed
His disciples don’t know it yet, but their leader is about to be betrayed by one of their own
and by this time tomorrow, Jesus will be lying dead in a cold, stone tomb.
Having been arrested like a criminal, convicted of crimes he never committed, having been beaten, subjected to mob justice, torture, stripped of his belongings, and hung on a Roman cross to die.
These are the events that we remember today, we’re going to zero in on Jn 19.
let’s camp out in the story itself and tray and work out how this happened?
Jesus’ Death is Shocking
How is that the Song of God, come into human was rejected, arrested, condemned, tortured and murder?
Jesus’ Death is Planned
Strangely answering that question is not as easy as it sounds
Jesus’ Death is Necessary
On the one hand Jesus death was the result of sinful humanity banding together to murder the Son of God
But on the other hand, Jesus death was the pre-planned, pre-arranged will of God.
Peter puts it like this :
Did you catch that?
The Cross is at the same time the fullest expression of sin and at the same time God’s means of grace to a sinful word.
It isn’t either/or but both/and
That is a difficult tension to balance, but that is what we see in Scripture
and that’s what we see here in John’s gospel.
Let me show you what I mean:
What do we make of it?
Jesus’ Death is Shocking
Events that shock us tend to stick in our memories don’t they?
One way to get around this is to talk about
They’re the kind of events that lodge in our memories forever.
Depending on your age, maybe you can still remember where you were when you head that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated,
When John Lennon was stabbed,
Or the Berlin Wall came down,
Personally, I can still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the 911 and 7/7 terror attacks.
Truly shocking events define a generation and some even change the course of history.
In John’s account of Jesus last hours he wants us to see that Jesus death shocking
One of the most interesting things about John’s gospel is that John doesn’t mention any of the miraculous events that surround Jesus death
Where are all the supernatural events that Matthew, Mark and Luke record?
John purposefully leaves them out to make a point:
Jesus death is not shocking because the sky turn blank, the earth shook and the temple curtain was torn from top to bottom.
It is shocking because of the man at the centre of it all
Jesus death is shocking because it is bleak and it is tragic.
Allow me to explain.
but here’s a few things to notice.
Jesus Final Hours are Bleak and Tragic
One of the first major battles that the early church had to deal with was the heresy of docetism.
The Docetist believed that Jesus wasn’t really a human, he merely appeared to be a human.
Firstly, then, Jesus final hours are bleak
They called his humanity a ‘phantom’, shell that covered who he really was,
and because he wasn’t really a man - he couldn’t really suffer.
In fact the Docetics would even write their own false gospels, like the ‘Gospel of Peter’ to spread these lies.
Thankfully, Docetism is not as popular as it once was
but I think we can all be guilty from time to time of a little functional Docetism.
We allow our belief that Jesus is full God to override our belief that Jesus was also truly a human being.
When this happens the bleak horror of all that Jesus experienced fails to grab us as it should.
comes like a hammer blow in the story so far.
They’ll be no last minute stay of execution, no new piece of evidence discovered at the eleventh hour
They’ll be no last minute stay of execution of
Jesus fate is sealed, there is nothing more than that can be done.
he will be crucified.
Add to this the sadness of the event leading up to all this and you start to get handle on the bleakness of the story.
An innocent condemned to death.
Betrayed by Judas, someone who spent three years watching him teach the masses, feed the hungry, and heal the sick
Denied by Peter, the one person who swore in that he would ‘lay down his life’ for his Lord.
John says in , that Jesus
Which is poetic understatement in the extreme
considering that they band together to have him betrayed,
falsely tried, tortured, and then condemned to die like a run away slave.
So as Jesus walks out of the city carrying his cross beam he is in every way a dead man walking.
Tragic (Jn 18:28-19:16)
Every detail John records carries us closer to the bleak, unavoidable fate of Jesus Christ.
Until, there on a hill outside Jerusalem,
overlooking the main road into the city,
Jesus is left to die.
As his mother, his aunt, and his best friend look on in helpless horror.
Here John, takes the time to point some of the tragic irony of this how sad, situation.
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