Sermon Tone Analysis

Announcements

No Bible Study & Prayer this Wednesday (4.13.22); join us for a Good Friday service (4.15.22) at 7pm

T-shirts should arrive from Custom Ink this Friday—if they do arrive, we’ll be sure to have them here for pick-up after the Good Friday service.

At the very latest, they should arrive by Resurrection Sunday.

I want to again thank those of you that were able to be here yesterday who volunteered your time to serve the church and the community during the PRC Spring Fling event.

Despite the crazy weather, you were willing to come and show the community that you care for them—I’m not completely positive on the statistics for the event because the PRC isn’t positive on the statistics, but it seems as if we have about 80 children come through our door to collect eggs and get their faces painted by the PO cheerleaders, which means we also handed dozens of flyers to children and adults.

Let’s pray for fruit in that outreach effort.

Please be aware of the following dates:

No Wednesday Bible Study & Prayer this week or on April 27th.

Let me remind you again, that there is a Good Friday service this Friday at 7pm, please prepare to partake in the Lord’s Supper during that service.

This coming Sunday is Resurrection Sunday (4.17.22) -- Breakfast at 9am; Worship at 10:30am—please be sure to invite your friends and family for both breakfast and worship.

We’d love to have as many people as we can to join us for the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.

Let me remind you to continue worshiping the Lord through your giving.

To help you give, we have three ways to do so, (1) cash and checks can be given at the offering box.

Checks should be written to Grace & Peace; debit, credit, and ACH transfers can be done either by (2) texting 84321 with your $[amount] and following the text prompts or (3) by visiting us online at www.gapb.church.

Of course, everything you give goes to the building up of our local church and the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Prayer of Repentance and Adoration

Call to Worship (Psalm 48:9-14)

Our Call to Worship is Psalm 48:9-14.

Remember that Psalm 48 is a song about the city of God and the great King.

The people are praising God who loves Jerusalem and in the first part of the psalm, he focuses on how God delivered the city from the hands of the enemies.

In our section for this morning, the focus is on praising God and rejoicing in God’s steadfast love.

Please stand and read with me psalm 48:8-14—I’ll read the odd-numbered verses, please join me in reading the even-numbered verses.

Congregational Singing

My Jesus Fair

There is a Fountain

The Power of the Cross

Scripture Reading (Isaiah 53:7-12)

Our Scripture Reading this morning is Isaiah 53:7-12.

It is a familiar passage for most of us, which we started reading last week.

I’ve asked Tara to read it and because it is so familiar, I’m not going to give much detail other than to remind us that this is a prophecy concerning the Messiah’s crucifixion.

Keep in mind the prophecies that Jesus fulfills as we continue in our worship this morning.

Tara can you read Isaiah 53:7-12 for us?

Sermon

Introduction

If you have your Bible with you this morning, please turn it to John 19:16-30.

Now, I’m sure if you’re familiar with the traditional church calendar, that you’ll notice fairly quick that we aren’t following the traditional church calendar.

Traditionally, today is celebrated as Palm Sunday, which is a reminder of Jesus coming into Jerusalem the week before his death, burial, and resurrection.

Clearly, because of the series that we’re working through, we actually discussed Jesus’ triumphal entry all the way back in October of 2021.

On October 24, 2021, we spent the whole message discussing the meaning and the purpose of the triumphal entry and since we’ve been working through this text in a verse-by-verse manner, it really wouldn’t make much sense for us to go back to discuss the triumphal entry again just to return to our text for this morning after Resurrection Sunday.

I do think that knowing that it’s been several months since we worked through the triumphal entry and that in real-time, Jesus’ triumphal entry occurred just one week before his death, burial, and resurrection does speak to how much Scripture we’ve covered as we’ve worked through the text over these past few months.

Instead of following the traditional church calendar, we chose to continue following the text and with the exception of a brief break for a few weeks, it lined up just right to where we’ll celebrate the Resurrection on Resurrection Sunday at the same time that we’ll study the resurrection in Scripture.

Because of this, today’s message isn’t that of a triumphal entry, but of the death of Jesus on the cross.

This morning’s focus is on the crucifixion, but notice that John doesn’t give us significant detail of the crucifixion.

He doesn’t mention the conversation between Jesus and the criminals that were crucified with Jesus (though he does mention that there were two others crucified with him), John doesn’t mention the words that Jesus cries out, the “Eli, Eli, llama sabachthani,” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”

Much like last week’s message, John is focusing on something, in particular, and its being driven by the purpose of his book, which is found in John 20:30-31 “30 So then, many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that by believing you may have life in His name.”

He’s writing his account of the crucifixion with the mindset that he’s trying to convince people to believe and we need to keep that in mind as we read John 19:16-30.

As we study this passage together, we’re going to take it in two parts, though I will be honest, the last section, we’re not going to spend a lot of time on today because we’ll spend more time on it this Friday during our Good Friday service.

The two parts are this: (1) Vss.

16-22, The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, (2) Vss.

23-30, The Fulfillment of Scripture.

As we study this passage together, we’re going to be struck with the intensity of the crucifixion, but we’ll be reminded again that Jesus was in control of the whole situation and that he intended for these events to happen for the fulfillment of his mission on earth.

This hopefully, will cause us to reflect on God’s sovereignty and what we call God’s providence.

Prayer for Illumination

The Crucifixion (16-22)

The text starts by recording the event itself and again, remember that John is writing this text with the mindset that he’s trying to convince people to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, so he actually doesn’t give too many details.

Vs. 16 starts with “So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.”

Of course, this connects us back to the previous passage in which Pilate interrogates Jesus one final time.

This is the same paragraph in which Jesus makes it clear that he’s really the one sovereign in this situation, he is the one in control.

Jesus is completely sovereign in this whole situation, which is why he can plainly tell Pilate that Pilate wouldn’t have any authority, if it wasn’t given to him from above.

And that idea of Jesus being the one in control continues through our passage for this morning as well.

We need to keep this truth at the forefront of our minds, otherwise, we’ll miss the truth of the text.

So, Pilate, gives Jesus over the them to be crucified and then “they took Jesus, and he [meaning Jesus] went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.

There they crucified him.”

Now John does give a number of details here, but I’m sure you noticed that they’re pretty basic details.

He doesn’t give much more information other than when and where these events took place.

Again, he doesn’t bother with fine details like the fact that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all mention that they had someone else carry the cross for part of the time because Jesus couldn’t physically keep going.

And he doesn’t bother recording what Jesus says in Luke 23 to the crowd of people.

Rather, John is very pointed and very simple with his record.

Jesus carried his cross and they took him to a place called Golgotha and they crucified him.

He does give a few more details in vs. 18, that there were two others, “one on either side, and Jesus between them.”

But it isn’t until vss.

19-22 when we start seeing more specific details concerning the nature in which Jesus was crucified.

When we think of the death penalty today, we think of private the death portion or the punishment being private.

It’s usually just the criminal, their immediate family, a spiritual leader, and the guards (and typically legal council).

But in first-century Rome, most of the death sentences were very public events.

They wanted people to witness these events and the reason for it was quite simple.

Rome was an empire and empires controlled other countries and regions.

In their thinking, what better way to convince people to behave than to publically show them what happens when you break the law?

Thus, in Jesus’ crucifixion, it was a public event, that people watched.

So, it makes sense then that Pilate would make it abundantly clear what the accusation against Jesus was.

He makes this abundantly clear in vss.

19-22, “Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross.

It read, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.’”

The accusation that convinces Pilate to actually crucify Jesus is the claim of Jesus to be the King.

Remember, back in vs. 14-15, that’s precisely how the Jewish people convince Pilate to kill Jesus.

“He said to the Jews, ‘Behold your King!’

They cried out, ‘away with him . . .

crucify him!’

Pilate said to them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’”

And the chief priests respond with “We have no king but Caesar.”

And it’s directly after that exchange that the Bible says Pilate delivered Jesus over to be crucified.

It makes sense then that the primary accusation that causes Pilate to crucify Jesus would be his claim to be the king.

So, Pilate writes this inscription over the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”—whether

Pilate actually believed this to be the case isn’t of any consequence.

More than likely, he didn’t believe that Jesus was the king of the Jews because remember, he’s only crucifying Jesus to placate the Jewish people.

The only reason that Pilate would write this then, is because this is what Jesus was accused of.

Gerald Borchert suggests that the reason Pilate wrote it the way he did, instead of taking the chief priests’ suggestion in vs. 21 to write “This man said, I am King of the Jews” is because he wrote it out of disgust.

Disgust in what the Jewish people did and disgust in how the Jewish leadership forced his hand, but this is purely speculation.

Regardless as to why Pilate wrote it the way that he did, it’s clear that he wrote what he wrote intentionally.