“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. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished, and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” -Jn. 19:28-30, ESV
When Jesus was on the cross, dying from the most cruel and shameful death ever imagined by the Roman Empire, Scripture records seven things that he said to his disciples and those standing around before he died. You would have to read all four of the gospel narratives to find all seven, because each gospel doesn’t have all seven.
These words reveal some very important characteristics about our Lord. They reveal his true nature. The best way to really get to know someone for who they are, is to subject them to intense pressure. All sorts of interesting thoughts and emotions come bubbling to the surface, some because they lose their inhibitions, others because they hold on to their core convictions to the very end.
This is what Jesus did on the cross. He held to his convictions to the bitter end. The cross showed him to be true to the things that he had been saying and teaching all along, whereas a lesser man might have shown himself to be false when faced with such torture.
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This is one of my favorite sayings of Jesus. He’s not angry, he’s not resisting. The Roman guards are nailing him to a cross, and he has pity on them. He prays for them. There is forgiveness in his heart, and mercy in his words, something that we see again when Jesus talks with the two criminals who have been crucified alongside him. The one mocks Jesus, but the other appears to repent of his crimes, acknowledging that he has received his reward and says to Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Again, Jesus feels nothing but pity and forgiveness and mercy, and he says to the man, “Truly, today you will be with me in paradise.”
What great love the Father has for us.
I’m going to skip around here a little bit, as this could really be an entire 7-week sermon series. And while Jesus’ Words contain one of my favorite quotes of his, they also contain one that I find perhaps the most disturbing.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
How many of us here can honestly say that we have not ever felt abandoned and alone? Have you ever felt forsaken by God? Have you ever felt tempted to just give up?
Jesus has been tortured and crucified, his disciples have abandoned him. Peter, who was to be the Rock upon which the Church would be built, publicly denied Jesus 3 times! The people all surround his cross and mock him.
What would you do?
The Greek actually says that Jesus shouted in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
But God did not abandon His only Begotten Son.
It has been pointed out that Psalm 22 runs through the entire Crucifixion narrative, with this verse being the first verse of the psalm. As we read that psalm on Good Friday, we can see how it moves from despair, saying “I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people (v.6),” to complete hopelessness:
“I am poured out like water...my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death (Vv. 14, 15).”
But then the Psalm takes a positive tone, crying out to the Lord, in whom there is still hope. It ends with a shout of triumph:
“The afflicted shall eat and be satisified; those who seek him shall praise the Lord! All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.”
Now, does that sound like abandonment? Do you think Jesus would have chosen those particular words to exclaim if he truly felt abandoned by God? Yes. And no. Jesus always chose his words very carefully, and very specifically.
He knew what was coming, he knew the glory that awaited him, the glory for which he suffered. But right at that moment, he was abandoned by God. William Barclay says “that Jesus would not be Jesus unless he had plumbed the uttermost and ultimate depths of human experience.” And there is no greater human experience than to feel alone and abandoned, even abandoned by God.
Jesus came to forgive sins, and to live as one of us, experiencing the full range of human emotions and temptations, even the temptation to abandon the One who seemed to have abandoned Him. He came to show us that God is with us, even though we don’t always feel or want His presence.
That’s what Jesus expresses in His last words on the cross. In a nutshell. So there is nothing left. “It is finished,” he said, and gave up his spirit. Amen.
Good to see you're blogging again. Keep it up!
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