Sermon Notes

March 30, 2025

God in Flesh

John 19:28

Over the last few weeks, through the words of Jesus that were recorded while He was hanging and dying on the cross, we have come to understand much about Jesus and His mission. We have seen His inconceivable compassion and the forgiveness that was on display in the greatest injustice and sorrow that the world will ever know as He declared “Father forgive them for they do not know what they do”. We have seen His amazing grace on display as Salvation was promised to the hopeless dying thief who placed his faith in Jesus alone for His eternal Salvation. We had seen the unimaginable horror when Jesus became sin for us and the wrath of God was poured out in judgment upon Him. We have seen the beauty of a newly defined family that was not made up of those who are blood-related, but by those who are blood-bought. Now as we head back to the cross in its darkened state, we are no longer talking about Jesus' last day or even last hours – we are now speaking of Jesus’ final minutes. In these last few moments, we see 3 final sayings of Jesus. To truly understand the first of these rapid-fired proclamations, we need to understand the physiological suffering that Jesus experienced on the cross.

Many studies and papers have been written on the physical toll of a crucifixion victim, Medical views on the death by crucifixion of Jesus Christ - PMC , The Medical Account of the Crucifixion of Christ , https://www.apu.edu/articles/the-science-of-the-crucifixion/ ,and On the physical death of Jesus Christ | PDF are great resources that I have used. If you are interested in a more detailed explanation of the medical science of the crucifixion, you can click on these titles and they should take you to the related webpage. However we need to understand that before the crucifixion, Jesus would have been at peak health, growing up as a carpenter's son, He would have been no stranger to physical work and in the last three years of His ministry, He would have walked all over the region for miles every day. We can say that Jesus would have been in very good health before the events of the cross. At the Garden of Gethsemane, He would have started to suffer and His physical condition would have begun to wane. It was in the garden that He seemed to suffer from a rare condition called hemarthrosis. This would have been when He started to suffer from stress and began to sweat drops of blood. It was at this point that His physical condition would start its downward spiral. After this event in the garden, He was betrayed and arrested. During that time, He was mocked, beaten, and had not slept as He was paraded around to various rulers as His accusers were looking for some kind of conviction. This would have been close to a three-mile round trip. This coupled with the stress He experienced in the garden, along with the beatings and the sleeplessness, His physical condition to continue to deteriorate. He was then beaten at the hands of the Romans. They probably used a traditional Roman whip which was made up of strips of leather that had metal balls and bone shards attached to the end of each strip. After the beating, Jesus would have lost a large amount of blood which would have caused His blood pressure to drop and would have also caused Jesus to go into shock. The crown of thorns that was placed on His head would have just added to His declining condition. The robe they wrapped Him in would have helped stop the blood loss from His back by helping the wounds clot, but they would have been quickly reopened when the robe was ripped from Him. The blood loss and shock were probably the reason Jesus couldn’t carry His cross to Golgotha and had to get Simon from Cyrene to help. Once they got to Golgotha, Jesus would have been nailed to the cross through His wrist and His feet. The way they were nailed would cause them to struggle to breathe normally and to get a deep breath. They would have had to lift themselves by His nail-pierced hands and feet. All of this trauma and blood loss would have caused His body to start using all available water to produce more blood as his body tried to stabilize itself. This fact is important because of the next thing that Jesus said on the cross as recorded in John 19:28.

Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.”

All of these events since Jesus’ betrayal the previous evening would have caused His thirst that He was speaking of and that is very important. As we start reading this verse, we see that it seems to tell us that this phrase is a fulfillment of Scripture. While what Jesus said was a fulfillment of Psalms 22:15 and Psalms 69:21 at the least, that’s not what John was trying to specifically communicate, even though the fulfillment of prophecy is very important as we have discussed and we will address this more in-depth next week. However, for this week I want to focus on something else that this statement and the suffering Jesus endured communicated. It communicated that Jesus was not only fully God, but He was fully man. The humanity of Jesus is on display through this seemingly simple statement and the humanity of Jesus is of the utmost importance to us as sinners. So this morning I want to briefly look at a few verses to help us understand why Jesus' humanity is so important.

Jesus fulfilled the law to redeem us from it. - Galatians 4:4-5

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

When Jesus came into this world and was born on that first Christmas morning, He came for a very specific reason. He came to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). Those who are lost are the ones who have wandered away from God and that is all of us (Isaiah 56:3). We wander when we do what we think is right or what we want to do instead of what God has told us to do in His law (1 John 3:4). Every human that has ever been born, has been born under the law of God. This law is the law that was given to Moses in the Old Testament. It contains over 600 commandments that we are all supposed to follow perfectly, but there is a problem. This law is impossible to follow, Galatians 3:10 tells us that everyone who doesn't follow ALL of the law is cursed. We don’t like to admit that because we love to rationalize our sins, we tell ourselves that little sins are not that big of a deal. A little lie here or there isn’t going to hurt anyone, but that’s not what God’s Word says. When we look at James 2:10 we will see that if you just fail in a single point of the law (those little lies) then you are guilty of breaking the entire law. So no matter how hard we try, we cannot keep the requirements of God – we all fall short of His standard (Romans 3:23). The law wasn’t meant to be followed perfectly to save us from the curse because God knew that would be impossible. Paul tells us in Romans 3:20 “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.” This is why Jesus had to come in the flesh. Only someone under the law could redeem us from the punishment of violating God’s law. He did this by not abolishing the law, but by fulfilling the law perfectly (Hebrews 8-10). He did this through what we spoke of last week. He was able to redeem the lost when He became sin on the cross and took the wrath of God that we deserve. If Jesus had not come in humanity that was shown through His dehydrated cry of thirst, we would have never had the chance to be adopted into God’s family.

Jesus came to shed His blood. - Hebrews 9:22b

… and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.

When Moses was given the law by God, it was very clear how one would have been temporarily cleansed of the sins they committed by violating God’s law. In Leviticus 17:11, God tells us “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” Hebrews 9:22 also tells us that “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” The book of Hebrews also tells us that this Old Testament sacrificial system was imperfect. That’s why we had to continually sacrifice over and over for our sins, but this system was never meant to be permanent. It was to only be a shadow of things to come and this Old Testament system was only meant to point to Jesus. Hebrews 9:11-14 tells us “But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” Jesus had to come as a man and be born under the law so that He could fulfill the law to perfection and then give that perfect blood as a sacrifice to redeem mankind. This is exactly what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 20:28 when He said “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus could not ransom us without the shedding of blood and the shedding of His blood, our sins could not have been forgiven once and for all. Jesus came as a human to redeem us from the law and redeem us from our sin debt by paying for us with His blood. While this simple statement Jesus made in His dying moments on the cross doesn’t seem to be saying much, we can see its importance and understand that the God of the entire universe chose to step down into time, to take the punishment that we deserve so that we would have the opportunity to be made right with God.

This morning we are going to observe the Lord’s Supper and in the Lord’s Supper, we see the humanity of Jesus on display as well. It’s the humanity of Jesus that was part of the focus of the Lord’s Supper that Jesus instituted just a handful of hours before the cross. Luke records the words of Jesus as He speaks of this. In Luke 22:19, Jesus speaks of the bread element of the Lord's supper and equates it to His body, which will be given to sinners. Then says the wine is the confirmation of the New Covenant God is making with His people which is confirmed by His Blood that was poured out for us. Therefore every time we do this we need to remember that Jesus was fully God, but also fully man, and it’s because of that we can experience Salvation.

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Sermon Notes

God in Flesh

John 19:28

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