Last Sunday, we began a brief sermon series through the seven last words of Christ on the cross. Last week, we considered the first two of these words. Today, we'll spend some time thinking about the next three statements that Christ made as he suffered on the cross at his crucifixion. These next three statements come from two different gospel texts. Christ's third and fifth words come from John 19, and his fourth word comes from Mark 15.
We'll read these in order. I'll read the two texts, and then we'll pray for God to bless the reading with understanding and faith, and then we'll spend a few moments. Meditating on these profound words from the lips of Jesus as he died. First, we read John 19, verses 26 and 27. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, Woman, behold your son.
Then he said to the disciple, Behold your mother. And from that hour, The disciple took her into his own home.
Next, we read Mark fifteen, verses thirty-three through thirty-six. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice. Eloi Eloi Lema Sabakthani, which means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, Behold, he is calling Elijah.
And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave it to him to drink, saying, Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down. Then lastly, we read John 19 again, verses 28 through 29. After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said to fulfill the scripture. I thirst. A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch.
and held it to his mouth. Let's pray. Lord, as we come to your word once again, This morning we would ask that you take these words. And give us faith to hear them and believe them. and so obey them.
Thank you for the gospel. Thank you for the good news of salvation. through your Son, Jesus Christ. What we have Read and what we're about to spend the next few moments contemplating are part of that gospel story.
So give us eyes to see. Ears to hear, and hearts that can plumb the depths of your good news to us now. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I have a vivid memory of the first time I ever sprained my ankle.
There was an initial delay of pain as your brain takes a moment to process the trauma of what happened, but then the pain hits and it hits hard. Wallowing on the ground seems to be the right response, as every fiber of your being. submits to the singular goal of coping with the pain. At some point, your body begins to release endorphins, a sort of, I guess, hormonal painkiller. And between the endorphins and the adrenaline and pain of it all, your whole body begins to shake.
and tremble uncontrollably. As I sat on the ground after that first sprain, writhing in agony and wondering how long the pain would last, I can tell you this: I was not thinking about what my friends thought of me. I was not thinking about not getting my clothes dirty as I wallowed in the dirt. I was not thinking about school the next day. My mind and words and reactions were consumed with the single thought of alleviating the pain.
That's all that mattered.
Now multiply that pain exponentially, and you have the pain of giving birth. I've watched my wife deliver eight babies. And I can testify to the fact that pain causes focus. Pain makes us incredibly intentional. Pain erases anything and everything that doesn't matter in those moments of hurting.
If a mere sprained ankle can grip the whole body and mind with raptured focus in an instant. Imagine, friends, what a Roman crucifixion must have been like. Crucifixion was a method of delivering death that had been meticulously designed to maximize physical pain. We can be certain that anyone dying on a cross was not consumed in the least with mundane, unimportant matters. Their mind would have been consumed entirely with getting through the traumatic ordeal as quickly as possible.
And if they spoke at all, it would have been. Words of Utmost importance, not idle words. Not small talk. Only words of great importance and significance. And that's what makes these seven last words of Christ on the cross so profound.
They reflect what Jesus, in his worst moments, thought to be of greatest importance. Have you ever daydreamed about being a martyr? Maybe I'm weird. I have. I suspect most young boys dream quite frequently about the glory and nobility of an honorable death.
Like martyrdom. Assuming I'm not the only one, and you do dream about dying honorably, how does that scene play out in our minds? What would we envision our last words to be given a martyr's death? Perhaps we would want to herald our cause one last time. Whatever it was that landed us on the martyr's pyre is something we would want to affirm with our dying breath.
Perhaps we would want to say something that displays great courage and conviction.
Something that might inspire those who come after us to keep carrying the torch and not lose heart. Jesus said some amazing things as he died. But he also said some unexpected things. And his next word, this third word from the cross, is one of those unexpected statements. Of all the things Jesus could have spoken, he takes the time and stirs up enough energy to make sure that his mother's temporal needs would be met after his death.
It's a word of relationship. He said to his mother Mary, Woman, behold your son. Then he said to the Apostle John, Behold, your mother. In other words, Jesus was assigning to John the responsibility of caring for Mary after. his death and departure as if she were John's mother as if John were her son.
Of all the things Christ could have said in those moments before he died, he only said seven things. And among those seven things, he includes an expression of concern for the care of his mother, Mary. The fact that Jesus said this when he said it. Is an indication of the importance he places on the fifth commandment. The commandment which says honor your father and your mother.
And I want us to think about this for a few moments. I suspect many of us quite possibly would not place this much importance on the Fifth Commandment. Ours is a day when respect towards authority is passe, when dismissiveness of authority is not only excused but often encouraged. But in this third word from the cross, we have a moral example from Jesus that he intends us to emulate. If honoring his mother was important enough to Jesus for him to speak of it from the cross, this is not a matter of little significance.
It matters to Jesus, it ought to matter to us.
Now, we need to be careful here. You know the liberal gospel reduces Christ's earthly ministry and death to merely something we should imitate. Be like Jesus, the liberal gospel says, while ignoring the atoning purpose of Christ's earthly ministry. Jesus did not come to earth and live an ethically perfect life and die an unjust death to merely show us how we ought to live. He came and did those things in our place, as our substitute for our redemption.
And so, to be sure, the gospel message is not, what would Jesus do?
Now go and do likewise. No, the gospel message is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
However, If faith in Christ has truly saved you, there will be visible moral evidence of that salvation. If you are saved, you will act saved. Being like Jesus. Is a terrible ground for salvation because nobody can measure up to that. But being like Jesus is a necessary fruit of salvation precisely because Christ's atoning work is so effective that it changes our thoughts and behavior and attitudes and habits.
It makes us increasingly obedient in life and perfectly obedient in the next life. That's why the Bible does hold up Jesus' life. And example is something we ought to imitate. Be like Jesus is a legitimate call of the gospel, so long as we recognize it is the fruit and not the root of our salvation.
Now, in light of that reality, consider this pointed statement from the old Puritan, John Flavell. In reflecting on Christ's third word from the cross, he said, He that is a bad child can never be a good Christian. He that is a bad child can never be a good Christian.
Now that might strike us as very moralistic. perhaps even legalistic. But is this not A clear inference from the fact that Jesus Christ on the cross prioritized the care of his mother. I suspect we'd have less of a problem saying something like: he that is a murderer can never be a good Christian, or an unrepentant adulterer can never be a good Christian. The fact is, anyone who can habitually dismiss God's commands as unimportant is not demonstrating the fruit of a life that has been transformed by the power of the gospel.
And just because our culture may downplay the moral importance of something that God commands, such as honoring one's parents, doesn't mean it's unimportant. All that to say, Christians. Honor your parents. And I'm not just speaking to children right now. Jesus demonstrated the importance of parental honor as a 30-year-old man.
He took God's commands seriously, even as an adult. Also, he took it seriously, even though he was more righteous than his parent. Jesus was perfectly godly. Mary was a sinner, like the rest of us. And yet, that discrepancy did not absolve even Jesus from the responsibility of honoring his mother.
Another thing we can infer from this statement of Christ on the cross is that temporal concerns. such as the long-term care of an aging parent, are not without moral implication. There's a notion that crops up sometimes today, which seeks to put a wedge, a dichotomy between the spiritual and the practical, as if real obedience is only about the heart and the attitude and the internal motivations, not about one's external visible behavior. We like to keep faithfulness safely contained in the world of the abstract, because if we make it too concrete, our unfaithfulness is suddenly visible and measurable. And that makes us uncomfortably vulnerable.
In my work in our presbytery, I'm often called upon to resolve internal conflicts within churches. Conflicts between pastors and congregations, conflicts between husbands and wives, relationships that have been disrupted by sin. And in trying to help people through those conflicts, I often hear a statement that goes something like this. I wish we could get back to the real business of the church, which is saving souls or planting churches or expanding the kingdom, and quit having to waste time on resolving broken relationships within the church. And I want to say, and have often had to say, in these situations, resolving broken relationships in the church is the real work of the church.
Not to the exclusion of evangelism, obviously, but getting morally right before the Lord is kingdom building also, because Christ came to save souls from hell, yes, but salvation from sin's condemnation entails cleaning up the soul from all the effects of sin. Our salvation is not some mere state of ethereal happiness with God. It is happiness with God because it is morally right with God. And that moral rightness with God works itself out invisible. concrete ways in the temporal physical world.
Romans 8 makes this point very clear. The effects of Christ's atoning work will spill over into the very created order. As that atoning work sets creation free, Paul says, from the bondage and futility of the fall. How we honor our parents, then, is not unrelated to salvation. I'm not saying it saves us, I'm saying it's the fruit of Christ's saving of us.
Christ's concern for the logistics of his mother's care, even while dying on the cross, means that honoring God's moral instruction. In the practical, temporal, relational realms of life is never unimportant. Children. Obey what your mom and dad say. Teenagers.
Unless your parents are demanding something of you that is contrary to God's commands, do what they tell you. Adults. Learn to see your relationship and service to your aging parents as an extension of your worship of God. Not as a distracting encroachment upon your walk with the Lord. And if your parents are godly, Be grateful for the privilege of getting to honor godly parents.
Be grateful for the grace of having godly parents. If your parents are carnal unbelievers, Take special care that you honor them still. Who knows, but what you are God's means of drawing them to the Lord through the very act of honoring them. God said this very thing, specifically about women submitting to unbelieving husbands in 1 Peter 3. In principle, the same thing applies to children of unbelieving parents.
God honors those who honor authority. Therefore, be a godly son, a godly daughter. Honor your father and mother. It was important enough for Christ to use his dying breaths to honor his earthly mother. It's important for all sons and daughters to honor their parents with care and respect and love.
It's a fruit of the salvation Christ purchased for us with His blood. This brings us then to the fourth word of Christ on the cross. We could call it a word of abandonment. Mark 15, 34 says, And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lema sabakthani, which means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
And some of the bystanders hearing it said, Behold, he's calling Elijah. And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine. Put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down. This central statement of Christ's seven last words is the lowest point of Christ's humiliation. This is Jesus experiencing hell for sinners.
Hell is the place of separation from the grace and favor of God. And in these moments, Jesus experienced what he had never previously known, separation from the grace and favor of God the Father.
Now, we need to understand theologically that the second person of the Trinity never ceased being God. And so in that sense, there was no abandonment or separation within the Trinity. God's essence never changes. He didn't stop being a Trinity for a brief moment while Christ hung on the cross. The way to understand this then is to understand this separation in terms of Christ's two natures.
Jesus Christ possesses two distinct natures. He is simultaneously God and man, divine and human. And so the forsakenness that Jesus experienced was real, but it was a forsakenness that applies to his human nature. In his humanity, Jesus ceased experiencing the favor and grace and love of God for those moments on the cross. In his humanity, he descended into hell and suffered its torments.
And the effect of this torment is poignant. Those who were standing around the cross heard the cry of a person experiencing the absolute judgment of God. It wasn't a whimper. Scripture says it was a joltingly loud cry as Jesus stuttered in pain: My God, my God, why? But an answer never came.
Instead of the reassurance of an answer from God. Jesus is Questioning cry was met with ridicule. The word my God in Christ's native tongue sounded like the beginning of the name Elijah. The bystanders then mockingly suggested that since God wasn't coming to his rescue, Jesus was perhaps calling for the Old Testament prophet Elijah to come and rescue him. But Elijah did not come.
God did not answer. And Jesus was more alone than any human being had ever been. Friends, this sentence. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? conveys the effect of sin on the soul.
It ought to then drive the one who was in Christ to profound gratitude for what his soul has avoided. And it ought to drive the one who is not in Christ to grave fear because this is what his soul will be experiencing for all eternity after the judgment. Christ lost favor with God so that we might have favor with God. Either Christ cries out in anguish in your place, Or else there will come a day when you will cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This brings us to the final word we'll consider today.
It's a word of distress. Back in John 19, 28 and 29, we read, After this, Jesus knowing. that all was now finished, said to fulfil the Scripture, I thirst. A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. This is the one mentioned by Jesus of the physical pain he was in on the cross.
And rightly so. There's no indication that he had had anything to eat or drink since the previous night's supper with the disciples in the upper room. Since then, he had sweat drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. He had been beaten mercilessly. He had been forced to carry a cross out of the city and up a hill.
He had been crucified to that cross and then hung on that cross for several hours. He was severely dehydrated and in intense pain and discomfort from, among other things, the sheer lack of moisture in his body. But notice that His crying out in thirst was Motivated by his desire, verse 28, to fulfill the scripture. To fulfill The scripture. Christ's mention of his thirst prompted those standing by to raise a sponge soaked in sour wine, vinegar, to his lips as a taunting way of quenching his thirst.
And all of this happened, John says, so that scripture might be. fulfilled. Back in the Psalms, King David wrote prophetically. about the very events that would transpire centuries later as Christ was crucified. In Psalm 22.1, David wrote, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
In Psalm 22, 15, he said, My strength is dried up like a pochsard, and my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death. Later in Psalm 69:21, David says, They gave me poison for food and for my thirst. They gave me sour wine to drink.
Now, when predictive prophecies were made by the Old Testament prophets, they were made so that when the prophecy came true, everyone would know that the prophet's words were truly from God. Jesus' life fulfilled dozens and dozens of Old Testament prophecies in great detail and with great accuracy. of which his being given sour wine was only one. And so the cumulative effect of these predictive words of prophecy ought to be a confident recognition that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. This was no mere drink of sour wine to quench the thirst of a dying man.
This was prophetic fulfillment of the highest sort. This was a declaration that Jesus is the Christ, God's Holy One, the suffering servant, the Savior of the world, the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head and destroy, secure, rather, the redemption of his people forever. But not only did this act of thirsting and being offered sour wine demonstrate who Jesus is. It also demonstrated what Jesus was doing. There's a strange passage in Jeremiah 31 that says, in those days, speaking of some future era in redemptive history from Jeremiah's standpoint, in those days, they shall no longer say, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge, but everyone shall die for his own iniquity.
Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. In this passage in Jeremiah, the people are complaining of unjust suffering for sin. The fathers commit sin, the children suffer for it. It's unfair, it's unjust. Substitutionary.
And the metaphor for this substitutionary suffering of one person on behalf of the guilt of another is astonishingly the drinking of sour wine. In the specific psalm that predicts Jesus being given sour wine to drink, this same theme of one person suffering on behalf of another is mentioned. Psalm 69:21 says, They gave me sour wine to drink. Verse 4 of the same psalm says, What I did not steal, I must now restore. substitutionary atonement.
It's a substitutionary suffering for the sins of someone else. And in both Jeremiah 31 and indirectly in Psalm 69, this substitutionary suffering is compared to the drinking of sour wine. When we see Christ then being offered sour wine to quench his burning thirst, it's shouting to us that Christ is the predicted Messiah, the Savior of the world, and that on the cross he was suffering not for his own sins, but for the sins of others. We have a few glimpses in Scripture of what eternal judgment is going to be like. One of the most vivid is the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16.
You know the story. There was a rich man who lived sumptuously his whole life, and there was a beggar who would sit outside of the rich man's mansion and beg for crumbs from the rich man's table. Both of these men died, and in the afterlife their roles were reversed. The beggar, who had been a God-fearing believer in life, enjoyed the privileges of heaven, while the rich man, who had hated and ignored God his whole life, suffered the pangs of hell. And how does Luke's gospel describe those pangs?
that the rich man suffered. Luke 16, 24. The rich man called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water. and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish. in this flame.
One of the defining marks of a suffering reprobate is unbearable, unquenchable thirst. Friends, the message should be loud and clear. Either Christ thirsts in your place, or else you will thirst for all eternity. Either Christ suffers for your sins, or you will suffer for your sins. Either way, God's justice will be satisfied.
God's justice must be satisfied. The good news of the gospel is that when Christ has suffered for a sinner, he is able to give that sinner water that will quench his thirst forever. He will never be thirsty again. Jesus said as much to the woman at the well, didn't he? In John 4, he says, The water that I give will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
How does a person get that water? How do I come to the place where Christ's suffering stands in the place of my suffering? where my thirst is replaced by Christ's thirst. Going back to Christ's conversation with the woman at the well, he tells us how to get that water. In John 4:10, he says, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.
Beloved Here's the incredible reality. The way a sinner gets the benefits of Christ's suffering on the cross is simply by asking for them. Lord, give me a drink. Of this living water that wells up to eternal life. Take my place on the cross.
Experience the thirst of hell in my place and for my sin. I have not kept the commandments of God. I have not honored my mother, my father. I have not worshipped God alone. I have coveted and murdered.
I'm a thief. I'm an adulterer. I need a substitute. I need someone to drink sour wine in my place. Jesus Christ, Son of God, you're the only one who can do that.
You're the only one who can drink the bitter wrath of God against my sin and make it so that God's disposition towards me is not one of abandonment and forsakenness, but one of grace and favor and love and friendship. Jesus, please give me a drink of that living, saving water that I might be saved from eternal thirst. Friends, this is the good news. This is. the gospel.
This is the only way. of salvation. For God so loved the world. that he gave his only son, That whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world.
but in order that the world might be saved through him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we live in a world that For the most part, it is quick to join the bystanders around your son's cross and mock what they see. Lord, open our eyes to see. in the life and death of Jesus Christ that There truly is no greater love than this.
And seeing the crucifixion for what it is, may we understand the depths of our sin. and understand the beauty of grace. And in understanding these things, may we run to Christ in faith, asking Him to quench once and for all our thirst. and cover our sin. Thank you, Father, for so great a love as this.
I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Mm-hmm.
