The four girls in our little choir sang When I Survey the Wondrous Cross right after my message. The two younger girls may have been a little intimidated about singing in front of a crowd of perhaps 130 or 150. They sang well in any case, and they were the only ones to get an applause!
We've seen quite a bit of rain over the last couple of days. The sunny spring has gone the way of rainy spring. The temperatures this afternoon rose all the way up into the mid-50's.
I sat at my laptop PC for much of the day, working on this evening's message, tomorrow's sermon, and putting together the program for tomorrow. I still need to do some studying of the Sabbath School lesson as our only teacher is away in Florida right now, leaving me to pick it up.
Message Text John 19:29-30a (ESV) 29A 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. 30When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished…” What was finished, and what does the sour wine, or vinegar, have anything to do with it? In John's Gospel, one of the themes is the timing of Jesus' mission. In chapter 2, at the wedding in Cana, Jesus tells his mother that his "hour has not yet come." In chapter 7, when Jesus' brothers try to get Jesus to do better PR for himself, Jesus replies, "My time has not yet come." Shortly thereafter when the Jewish authorities try to arrest Jesus, John records that Jesus could not be arrested because "his hour had not yet come." But as Jesus enters his final week, His message changes. John records that "Jesus knew that his hour had come." During this final week and final hours, Jesus himself says: "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." "For this purpose I have come to this hour." “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you…" What was finished? According to John, Jesus' mission of glorifying his Father was completed at the cross. Jesus' work of revealing the true character of God to the world was finished. What is God's character, His glory? Moses asked to see God's glory on Mt. Sinai, and this is what he saw: "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands [of generations], forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty…" Jesus came to reveal this truth about God to the world. Through the cross, Jesus revealed and offered God's grace, patience, mercy, love, and forgiveness for every man, woman, and child. Through the cross, Jesus also revealed that God is just, that he takes sin seriously. Paul records in 2 Cor. 5:21: 21For our sake he [God] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Through the cross Jesus became sin itself, the antithesis of love, to guarantee the destruction of sin itself, and to offer us His righteousness in its place. On the cross, God, in Jesus, finished the work of saving us from the clutches of sin. Right before Jesus declares, "It is finished", he asks for a drink and is given wine that had soured -- vinegar. At the wedding in Cana that opens Jesus' ministry in John's Gospel, Jesus gave a miraculous sign of changing water to wine, and offered it to the wedding guests. On the cross, Jesus chose to take upon himself all that had gone sour and bad in the world, and in its place offered us all the best that he has. Brothers and sisters, boys and girls, will you give to Jesus all that is sour and bad in your life? Will you accept from him his grace, forgiveness and salvation? The work of salvation was finished at the cross, will you accept it? |
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