John 19:16-30 - Christ Died Victoriously
Main Idea: Jesus perfectly fulfilled God’s plan for humanity’s rescue.
JESUS PERFECTLY SUFFERED AS ONE OF US & FOR US
- He suffered physically (vs. 17-18)
- He suffered politically (vs. 19-22)
- He suffered religiously (v. 21)
- He suffered shamefully (vs. 23-24)
JESUS PERFECTLY DISPLAYED GOD’S TRUTH & LOVE
- He obeyed the Law of God (vs. 25-27)
- He fulfilled the Prophecies of God’s Word (vs. 18-30)
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)
We have been in the Book of John. We started off our series in August or so of 2024. And we have taken a few pit stops along the way.
Today, we are in the culmination of everything that we have been walking through.
This is the point of all of Scripture, of what we will read today, next Sunday, and then the following Sunday after that, with Jesus' death, his burial, and his resurrection. And so I want to encourage you guys today.
Have an open heart, and be listening for what the Lord would have for you. The title of today's message is Christ Died Victoriously. Christ Died Victoriously.
In chapter one of John, we're told at the very beginning by John the Baptist that Jesus was the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, reminding us of the Passover.
And the Passover lamb that was slain, and the blood that was placed onto the doorposts so that God's people would be passed over in that final plague on Egypt in the Exodus.
In chapter two, we were told that Jesus had an hour coming where his power and his identity would be fully known. In chapter three, we were told that Jesus would be lifted up to save God's people, and on and on, it's gone.
This moment was the one that would define all of human history, both before and after. This is the spot that the whole story of Scripture points to.
The rescue of humanity and our restoration to the relationship that God desired to have with us from the beginning. You see, the cross is not God's defeat.
It was not that God had plan A, but humanity intervened, and so then we got the cross as plan B. No, my friends, this was the moment where the lamb of God who was slain, the plan was for him to be slain from before the foundation of the world.
This is the moment. Let's pray. We'll read through the passage, and then we'll get into the points for our sermon today.
Dear Jesus, we come to you, and Lord, though it is a joyful day, a day of remembering and caring for our mothers, Lord, though it's been a time of sweet fellowship and worship and hearing what you're doing all around our world, God, we recognize in
this moment that there is a profound sense of sorrow that we are called to have as we survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died. God, I pray that you would speak to each person and to each heart today.
Lord, I ask that if there's anyone here today that does not yet know you as their Savior, that today would be the day that they choose you. God, we love you and we pray all this in your name. Amen.
Okay, just so you guys know, this is going to be super heavy because this is it. Also, I guarantee you, Satan does not like any time that we're focusing on Jesus and the Lord.
And so, if there's any distractions that happen during, be aware that God is wanting to speak to you. And so, listen to him. And if you are getting distracted, dial in on me, raise your hand.
I'll get the attention back and we'll be good. I want you guys to enjoy, to ingest what the Lord has for us today. And so, know that the Lord wants to speak to you.
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Jesus Crucified
In verse number 16, we read this. Then he, this is Pontius Pilate, handed him, Christ, over to be crucified. Then they took Jesus away.
Carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called Place of the Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him and two others with him, one on either side with Jesus in the middle.
Jesus' death, it wasn't even particularly notable on the day that he was crucified. They just thought he was another rabble rouser, and so he was crucified between two thieves, as we would read in the other gospel accounts.
Verse 19, Pilate also had a sign made and put on the cross. It said, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Pardon me.
Many of the Jews read this sign because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. So anyone that would pass by would know one of these three languages that was there.
So the chief priest of the Jews said to Pilate, don't write the King of the Jews, but that he said, I am the King of the Jews. Pilate, who as you remember from last week, was not happy with the interchange that had happened.
He had attempted three or four different times to say, no, I released Jesus, like there's no reason for him to die. And so Pilate here is stubborn, and he tells the Jews, no, he's not the one that said, I am the King of the Jews.
He is the King of the Jews.
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Cross Witnesses
Verse 23, when the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, a part for each soldier. They also took the tunic, which was seamless, woven in one piece from the top.
So they said to one another, let's not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who gets it. They're rolling dice, they're seeing who has the short straw, they're going to see who gets Jesus' tunic.
This happened, that the scripture might be fulfilled that says, they divided my clothes among themselves, and they cast lots from my clothing. This is what the soldiers did.
Then the verses that Mike read earlier and that we heard in the video, standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
Want to notice here, we're also going to see one more, and it's John, the one that is writing this account, he says, yeah, and I was also there, Jesus interacts. But I want you to notice who's missing from this list.
Peter's gone, having denied even knowing Christ three different times. And he abandoned Jesus to die. Even John's brother, James, one of the three closest ones to Jesus, was not here in this moment.
In fact, other than John, none of the 12 disciples were there. In the moments when you feel abandoned and betrayed and hurt, know that your God is not alien to those pains. Can I ask you as well?
Will you be the one that sticks by Jesus when it's unpopular? When it's dangerous? When no one else around you is making the choice, will you choose to be with Jesus?
I also love here, Mary Magdalene is there, that Jesus had cast out seven demons, we would read in one of the other gospel accounts.
Jesus had cast out seven demons from Mary Magdalene, and this person that had known what it was to be relentlessly, consistently attacked by evil spirits, when her life had been greatly changed by Jesus, she could not abandon him, even in this
moment. Those that have been forgiven much are to serve and love the Lord. Verse 26, when Jesus saw his mother and the disciple he loved standing there, that is John, he doesn't mention his name at all in the gospel account that he wrote.
What stuck out to John decades later after these events was that Jesus loved him. And so over and over again in the gospel account, he says the disciple Jesus loved. And he said to his mother, woman, here is your son.
Now, he's not saying this because Mary was just, you know, in kind of an adopting type of mood or was a new foster care mom.
Here this is that she would recognize that just as Jesus had watched over her and taking care of her, the gospel accounts after Jesus' birth and after Mary and Joseph leave to Egypt and then make their way back to Nazareth, we don't read again about
Joseph in any of the accounts of Scripture. Many people have speculated that he might have been a little bit older in age and had already passed by this time. So Jesus says, Mary, John's in charge of you now. Well, not in charge of.
He's in charge of taking care of you now. Then he said to the disciple in verse number 27, And here is your mother. The video highlighted it.
Honoring your mother and father is one of the 10 commandments. It's something that if we ever wanted to attain our own relationship with God and be on Team God, we would always at all times honor and take care of our mothers and our fathers.
All of us have failed in that attempt. I know some of you guys and some of you, you have fun relationships with your mom. Some of your moms are in the room today.
And you guys would know as you grew up, there were times where you disobeyed. There was times that you disrespected. Sometimes there were relationships that were broken.
Jesus all throughout his life, always obeyed the Ten Commandments. He perfectly at all times fulfilled the law of God so that what we could not do, because we consistently acted unlike our Heavenly Father.
And so our relationship was broken due to our sin. And we needed someone that could do it perfectly. But as you think about what Jesus was doing on the cross, not many of us think, oh, he was perfectly fulfilling the law of God.
He was obeying the Ten Commandments as he died. Most of the time, we can't even obey the Ten Commandments as we regularly walk and live and breathe.
But this one, God the Son, who became man for us, this was the one that even as he was being crucified, asphyxiating to death, bleeding, his clothing taken off, he was being perfectly righteous, so that you and I would experience forgiveness, a
restored relationship with God, so that his perfect righteousness would be placed on our account. What a God that this is.
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The Work Finished
From that hour, the disciple took her into his home. After this, when Jesus knew that everything was now finished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, he said, I'm thirsty.
And to take just a moment, I did the same route last week, so you guys know the deal. Hi, Wasmers. Hi, Gotham.
It's good to see you. Not every Sunday that you get into these sufferings of Christ, but my goodness, both with that and spring allergies, I can't. Jesus, in verse 28, knew that everything was now finished.
The Lamb of God was being slain by the sins of the world, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord might be saved.
God made Jesus, the one who did not know sin, to become sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
For God loved the world in this way, that he gave his one and only son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.
For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He came unto his own, and his own people did not receive him.
But to as many people as did receive him, he gave them the right, the authority, the power to become the children of God, even to those that believe on his name. What a joy, what a love.
Here in his love, not that we loved God, we crucified him, but that he loved us, and he gave his son to be the propitiation for our sin. Jesus, knowing that that is finished, it is complete. That whoever calls on Jesus experiences salvation.
Not those with the best church attendance record, not those who have given the most to charity, not those who have been the best in their relationship with other people every single day of their life.
No, those that believe and trust in the finished work of Jesus. Those are the ones that experience salvation. Jesus, knowing that everything was now finished.
His concern was not, I'm hurting, I have needs. He says that the scripture might be fulfilled. He said, I'm thirsty.
We would read this prophecy written centuries before by King David in Psalm 69 that he said, for my thirst, they gave me sour wine to drink, and for my hunger, they fed me gall. And Jesus, in fulfillment of the scripture, says, I am thirsty.
We can also think, even as Jesus started off his time on the cross, as we would read in the other gospels, quoting Psalm 22, this song he would have known from the time that he was the littlest boy, and certainly as God incarnate, what he himself had
inspired David to write centuries before, where it says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from me?
And within that Psalm, there's a line in there that says, my tongue sticks, it cleaves to the roof of my mouth, that Jesus experienced thirst, not just in his humanity, but in obedient following of the Word of God.
We're actually told in one of the other gospels that they had attempted to give him a drink earlier in his time on the cross, in one of the earlier hours, and he had refused at that point.
But now that the work was completed, Jesus was interested in fulfilling the entirety of the Word of God. What a joy that this one who was the whole point of the law, and the Psalms, and the prophets, here, he says, I'm thirsty.
Says, a jar full of sour wine was sitting there, so they fixed a sponge full of sour wine on a hyssop branch, and held it up to his mouth. I want you to think about this even within the context of John.
In John 4, Jesus told the woman at the well in Samaria that if you had asked for me, I would give you living water.
Whoever drinks of the water of the well, they'll get thirsty again, but the one that would drink of the water that Jesus would give, the Holy Spirit, would never thirst again. Jesus, the one who could bring living water, thirsted on the cross.
The God who created water, thirsted.
This one who, in chapter 2, with the wedding at Cana of Galilee, who turned what was not water, or what was not wine, into wine, or what was not previously the product of grapes, into the product of grapes, into wine.
In this moment, he could have used his powers to turn the atoms in his mouth, or into water, or something to satiate his thirst. He could have commanded there to be a rainstorm that would bring down rain, so that he could drink.
But just as he had done in the temptation, in the wilderness with Satan, when Satan wanted him to make bread out of the stones, Jesus here, fully powerful, fully in control of all of creation, chose to suffer and to be thirsty.
This one who had met the needs of others and had fed the 5,000, this one who had made the wine at the wedding, so that the family would not be put to shame and be embarrassed when it came to his own needs, he went without.
I would also be remiss if I didn't mention here this hyssop branch that they fill the sour wine. This would be one of the drinks that the soldiers around the crosses would be drinking.
It would be a deeply unpleasant drink, but it would be better than nothing.
They stick it on a hyssop branch, which were told in Exodus chapter 12 in the Passover that this was the kind of stick that they would take the blood of the lamb and place it on the doorposts in the Passover.
And Jesus, who proclaimed himself to be the door in John chapter 10, now the door for Passover, the door for the Exodus of the people of God from the land of death into God's eternal life, the door had now been anointed with hissa.
Verse number 30, when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, It is finished. It's where it is the Greek word, to telestai. This is what you would say when you're a painter and you complete the painting.
You'd look back and you'd say, Man, to telestai, it's finished, it's complete. This is what a banker would say when the note had been paid off in full. They would write down, To telestai, it's complete, it's done.
There is no more to be added. Can I tell you, in your life today, God is not looking for you to earn your relationship with Him. He's not looking for you to earn your home in heaven.
He is looking for you to, as Jesus said in John 3, look at the Son of Man lifted up.
And just like those children of Israel in the wilderness saw the serpent that was lifted up, and they were healed, so we, beholding the Son of God, we are healed from our sin as we repent of our sin and believe in Jesus, His forgiveness and His work.
And in the end of verse 30 says, then bowing his head, he gave up his spirit. Notice there, it doesn't just say he died. Says he gave up his spirit.
Jesus told us in John chapter 10, no man takes my life. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it back up again. And here, Jesus gave his spirit.
Today, as we close out this portion of the Book of John, I want us to see that Jesus perfectly fulfilled God's plan for humanity's rescue.
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Christʼs Perfect Suffering
First way we see this in these verses is that Jesus perfectly suffered as one of us and for us. We saw in verses 17 and 18 that Jesus experienced excruciating physical suffering. We read the verses where he is crucified.
Crucifixion was incredibly brutal. It wasn't just that you were impaled in the hands and in the feet. The actual mark for where the nail would be would be a little bit below the wrist.
This whole section here would still be counted as the hand, but it would go about right here for the nails for Jesus and then through his feet. So that's already painful. That's already excruciating.
But part of the harm of it would be Jesus was already beaten to a pulp before he had even gotten to the cross. So much so that we read that he was hardly even recognizable as a man.
And Jesus, as he suffered, he gave us the model for suffering physically. That Jesus knows what it is like to go through the hardest possible physical suffering in life.
So if you experience physical suffering in your life, you can know that you are not alone. You are not uniquely rejected by God. That God is with you, and he knows what it is to experience the suffering.
And so you can call out to him, and he is not uncaring. He doesn't know. It is not that he does not know what it is like to suffer in the way that you are suffering.
And you can trust and rely on him even through your suffering. Can I ask, are you willing to suffer physically for Jesus?
Continuing to uplift him, to praise him, to tell others about him, even as you physically suffer, are you willing to suffer emotionally for Jesus, to experience loss, rejection, monetary loss, or just comfort for him?
Secondly, Jesus suffered politically. In verses 19 through 22, we see the continued bickering between the chief priests and Pilate, that he suffered as a result of other people's politics.
There was no crime that Jesus had committed that warranted his death.
The chief priests and scribes were jealous of him, and so had put him on trial, and for his claim to be the son of man, God the Son, he was delivered over to the Romans, who crucified him in order to silence the political leaders of the Jews.
Are you willing today to take positions that would alienate the kingdoms of this world?
A Christian who is wholly comfortable with any party's platform, or any party's politicians, is unlikely to be following the Son of God, who was rejected by the Romans, the Pharisees, the Zealots, and the Sadducees alike.
Jesus suffered religiously as well. We read that in verse number 21. That the Jews say that Jesus is not the king of the Jews.
Truth is today that not all religions lead to God. Not every person that claims to be a Christian truly is a Christian, truly having a walk with the Lord and dwelt by the Holy Spirit.
Those that take offense to Christ's righteousness and his death alone purchasing our salvation are just like the very religious, but very wrong religious leaders who decried Pilate's inscription. Jesus also suffered shamefully, stripped naked.
Jesus was beaten, slapped, brutalized, and then stripped naked and hung in the open for the world to see. Are you willing to experience shame and people looking down on you for following the Lord?
Are you willing to experience shame for the one who experienced shame for you? And secondly, not only did Jesus perfectly suffer in every way, going through the hardships that each of us go through, so he is our perfect representative in every way.
He went through what we go through, but Jesus perfectly displayed God's truth and his love. We already saw in verses 25-27 that Jesus obeyed the law of God, that fifth commandment, honor your father and your mother.
Are you one that has a care for the law of God, that you want to do what God has instructed us to do? Jesus did it even as he died. Will you and I do it as we live?
But lastly today, we also see that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of God's words.
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Prophecy and Law Fulfilled
So Jesus perfectly obeyed everything we needed to, but then he also fulfilled every prophecy of God's words so that there would be no mistake in identifying who is the one that has purchased our redemption.
We read in Isaiah chapter 53 that the Messiah was to be one who died with the wicked, and Jesus died crucified between the two thieves.
Jesus' clothes were ripped and gambled over, as was prophesied in Psalm 22 and verse number 18, and as John highlights there in verse number 24. Jesus thirsted and was given sour wine, as was prophesied in Psalm 69 verse 21 and Psalm 22 and verse 15.
He was the door in John 10 that was anointed with hyssop, prophesied in Exodus chapter 12 and verse 22. And just as Jesus himself had prophesied, he gave his spirit. He did not lose his spirit.
The truth today is that Christ died victorious.
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Respond to Christ
Victorious over sin and death and the grave. He died victorious over Satan and the hold that Satan had on all humanity.
He died so that no one would have to perish and spend eternity without God, but that everyone who calls on his name would be saved. The question for you and I today is, what are we going to do about it?
If you're here today and you do not yet know Christ as Savior, I want to challenge you, we cannot behold the crucified Son of God. Reject it and expect anything less than an eternity without God.
Maybe if you have been putting off giving your life over to Jesus, you've just been hoping maybe there's a better day, a better time that you can do it after you've had your fun. Do not risk your soul. Give your life to Jesus.
He is a worthy God to be followed. He is the one that has made our world in all of its various aspects, so that to follow Him is to follow the path of life and love and goodness incarnate.
If you are a Christian today, when was the last time that you told someone else this message? I hope that even as I preach today, you saw the tears coming down my face and it's not coming out my nose.
That you guys, my prayer is that you would be fully convinced that I believe in this Jesus with all of my heart.
And I don't want a single one of you, I don't want a single one of your friends or your family or your loved ones to go an eternity without knowing Jesus. He pursued us. We were the ones going our own way, like wayward sheep.
And yet the Lord laid on him the iniquity, the faults of us all so that we would be forgiven, we would be brought back into relationship. If you do not have a relationship with Jesus, get that taken care of today. Don't wait for another day.
Today is the day of salvation. In just a moment, Amy and Randy are going to come up and we're going to sing together a song, Amazing Grace, My Chains Are Gone.
Our elders are going to be up here at the front of the sanctuary to pray with anyone that needs prayer. I'm going to be in the back of the sanctuary. If you do not know Jesus as your Savior, I want to encourage you, come right back to the back.
I'll be right there as we sing. I would love to open the Word of God and show you how you can accept what Jesus did for you on the cross.
If you are a Christian today, are you obeying and following the example of Jesus, who perfectly obeyed the law of God? Do you worship Him? Do you have gratitude for Him in your soul that you would brag about Him to those around you?
And even as He did. Will you choose to love and to care for your mother for as long as you have her?
And will you choose to invest in and to care for other moms around you, just as John the disciple, Mary wasn't his real mom, but he took care of her and loved her.
Will you do the same for women, whether in a church or in your family, or encourage you in that way?
