This Is The Payment for Our Sins
Text: John 19:17-30 Speaker: Pastor Matthew Ude Festival: Good Friday
Audio Sermon
John 19:17-30
17 and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them. 19 Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” 20 Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. 21 So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” 22 Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”
23 When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic.1 But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, 24 so they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.” This was to fulfill the Scripture which says,
“They divided my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots.”
So the soldiers did these things, 25 but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
The Death of Jesus (Listen)
28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” 29 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. 30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Footnotes
[1] 19:23
(ESV)
This is the payment for OUR SIN
This is the PAYMENT for our sin
We are going to keep it short today because there is only one thing we need to know and think about, Jesus died for our sins.
I think it was about a week ago. I was tired. I was about to go to bed and a thought occurred to me and all of a sudden I couldn’t sleep anymore. It disturbed me that much. The thing that troubled me was Lot’s wife. You remember Lot’s wife. She turned to look behind and the Lord turned her into a pillar of salt.
Here I am trying to teach and preach the love of God. Here we are trying to tell the world that God is love. But then there is this. This is nothing, she turns to look. She isn’t Stalin. She isn’t Hitler. Why does God smite her but leave them. What she did was barely even a sin.
But that is the problem, that word barely. It is a relative term. Man thinks of sin as relative. There is good and bad and there is so many different shades of grey. Man grades on a curve.
God says no, there is no grey when it comes to sin. There is sin and there is righteousness and there is nothing in between. Lot’s wife turned back and that was sin and therefore she died.
The cross of Christ also reminds us. God will not overlook sin. This is the punishment for our sins. This is the punishment of lying. This is the punishment of talking back to our parents. This is the punishment for sins.
It is as though God is quality control on an assembly line, except his standards are absolute perfection and every human that comes down the line with even a single mark is thrown into the fire.
So then why are we still here? Why aren’t we a pillar of salt? Because, this is the punishment for our sins. God will not overlook sin BUT Jesus accepted that punishment in our place and therefore we live.
We are going to leave today in silence. After the service as much as is possible don’t talk, just go. We will leave in silence as is appropriate to think about our sin, but in our hearts we will rejoice because the payment is made and our sin is forgiven in Christ Jesus our Lord.