John 19: 17-27 - from Gabbatha to Golgotha

John 19: 17-27 - From Gabbatha to Golgotha

Service March 25, 2018

We are in the second episode of the crucifixion story:

The first episode: Pilate delivers the Son of God to be crucified from fear for the Jews – 19:1-16. I preached on this the past Sunday morning.
The second episode: The soldiers crucify Jesus on Calvary while Jesus entrusts his mother with love to John – 19:17-27. I preach on this tonight.
The third and fourth episodes: Jesus died with his life’s purpose completed – 19:28-37. And Jesus is buried by two secret disciples, Joseph and Nicodemus – 19:38-42. I'm going to preach on that on Good Friday.
In the middle we will have a Tennebrae (dark) service Thursday 18:00-19:00. The theme is: "It is finished!" We are going to watch a short video and focus on the last six hours of Jesus' crucifixion.

Scripture reading

13 When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha) … 16 Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.

The Crucifixion of Jesus

Mt 27:33–44; Mk 15:22–32; Lk 23:33–43

So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. 17 Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

19 Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: jesus of nazareth, the king of the jews. 20 Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. 21 The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”

22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

23 When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.

24 “Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.”

This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said,

“They divided my clothes among them

and cast lots for my garment.” (Ps 22:18)

So this is what the soldiers did.

25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

There are three journeys or movements contained in the message of John 19: 17-27.

1. The journey from Gabbatha to Golgotha

The first journey is the literal journey from Gabbatha to Golgotha, from the house of Pilate to the cross of Jesus, from the obstruction of justice of humanity to the saving act of God Himself.

The journey from Gabbatha to Golgotha begins, from Pilate's place, the "Stone Pavement", to Jesus' crucifixion, the place of the "Scull".

Gabbatha was a place that had a beautiful pavement of stone as a floor, a sign of civilization, of justice and order. A place like here in the church. Neat tiles. Impressive.
Golgotha was a place where people were killed, where skulls were lying around, many times not even respectfully in a grave. A place like our dumps, a place where waste was discarded, the place where nobody wanted to come.

This journey is depicted for us to persuade us that it was real, it really happened. This is what was done to the Lord Jesus. And this is what He chose to do. For you.

But this journey from Gabbatha to Golgotha is not just a physical journey of civilization to cemetery. It is also a spiritual journey.

It is a journey from the place where Pilate wanted to save his life, but just ended up losing it because he betrayed and rejected the One who holds life in his hand.
It is a journey to the place where Jesus chooses to give his life in death so that those who believe in Him can keep life.

It is thus not just a journey of defeat. It is also a journey from Pilate's abuse of justice, for the sake of his own life, to Jesus' rescue act for the sake of another's life.

That means, even though it was a journey of pain, it was also a journey of salvation. This is also done for you.

An why this is so important we see in the second movement or journey in this text.

The journey of sin to salvation

The second movement we see in this journey from Gabbatha to Golgotha is one that was actually started long before Pilate, long before the NT, even long before recorded history. It is the journey of sin to salvation in the Bible.

The first book in the Bible, Genesis, tells us how excited God was about everything He made. Seven times, Genesis 1 tells us that God looked at everything He made, and that He declared that it was good. In fact, it was "very good" (Gen 1:31).

But, the moment Eve looked at the tree of knowledge of good and evil and saw that the fruit of the tree was: "good to eat," from that moment on, God's good creation was at risk. And Adam ate with her and the relationship with God was broken at that very moment (Gen 3:6).

With this fall into sin, all human history was immersed in the darkness of sin and evil. It brought enmity between God and man (Garden of Eden – Gen 3), and man and man (Adam and Eve – Gen 3; Cain and Abel – Gen 4; the scattering of the nations at the Tower of Babel – Gen 11).

As Paul writes about it: "All have sinned ... and lack the glory of God" (Rom 3).

This is an immense reality. Three things happened with the fall into sin:

The vision of God and his nature and being were disturbed, in which lay the seeds of abuse and exploitation of nature and the shunning of God’s presence in everything;
The Image of God were disturbed in us so that we could no longer rely on him to help us do the right things from the inside, from the centre of our beings;
The presence of God in us were disturbed so that we lost the intimate and innate relationship with God.

This resulted in us preferring the lie to the truth – the choice for pseudology, the law of the lie, deceiving ourselves about the truth. It meant that our lives began displaying self-love rather than the love of God – the choice for humanism, the law of man, trying to live according to our own rules, not God’s. And we lost our sense of meaning and purpose in God's creation – the choice for modernism, in which God was written out of the world he created, even going so far as denying any absolute truth with the pseudology of postmodernism.

But, this did not thwart God. It did not thwart his intentions. How good is it not that there was a “but”. For, with the punishment of God in Eden there was also a promise. In the punishment that God dealt out for the snake – the damnation to a sail-in-the-dust existence – the woman – the pain of childbirth and the desire to dominate her husband – and the man – the painful toil on the cursed soil as well as the corresponding desire to dominate his wife– God also gave a promise to mankind:

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Gen. 3:15).

On the one hand, this promise just indicates the conflict between animals and humans from this moment on. Who of us is not afraid of a snake? And scholars tell us that they are also afraid of us!

But on the other hand, a deeper message is contained in it. It also indicates the conflict between the evil of Satan and the truth of the Son of God. And the victory over Satan would be paradoxically achieved by the death of the Son of God on the cross, in his journey from Gabbatha to Golgotha.

The Lord Jesus, the descendant of Adam and Eve – as one can read into the singular noun in Genesis – hung on a wooden cross on Calvary. And the serpent of old – called the devil and Satan by John in his Revelation (Rev 12:9); who indeed is the devil and Satan as John writes further on (Rev 20:2) – bit Jesus in the heel here on the cross, gave Him the poisonous bite of death.

But little did he know, this serpent’s head would paradoxically be crushed by this death on the cross. As the Hebrew writer echoed the message in Genesis: "he – that is Jesus – too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil.” (Hebr 2:14).

As John also writes in his first letter: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” (1 John 3:8; cf Rev 12:17).

According to Paul, this is a victory in which we as believers also share because: "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." (Rom 16:20).

The miracle is thus that Genesis 3 not only tell us of the fall of humankind, but also begins to tell us the story of the salvation of man, actually of the salvation of sin. God's grace that blotted out sin by the salvation of the cross.

The promise therefore that God gives in Genesis, is that the light will breach the darkness. And God's light will not only brighten the lives of people, but indeed reconcile them with Him again.

This means that Genesis is not only the story of the fall, but also the story of God's choice of people and their families throughout their generations until the choice of the Son, the one who could pay the penalty so that our vision on God could be restored.

As a result, we can see God again in the Son. Our vision of God is restored.
The result is the fact that the image of God in us is restored, because God takes shape in us by the work of His Spirit. That is what this world needs, people that represent God as He truly is.
The result is in the last place that the presence of God in us is restored from an absent external reality to a present internal reality. He can live in us by his Spirit because He has purified our hearts.

All this through the cross of Golgotha. By the crucifixion of the Lord at the place of the Skull. By the ultimate prize our Lord and Saviour paid for us on the cross.

The journey of rejection to trust

The third journey is a spiritual movement. Your journey with the message of the cross of Jesus Christ. The movement from the rejection of Pilate and the Jewish leaders at Gabbatha to the trust in Jesus as King at Golgotha.

It is clear that Pilate was taunting the Jews with the notice at the top of the cross. Thereupon was written, "jesus of nazareth, the king of the jews."

Yet, Pilate ironically encapsulated the truth of this decisive moment of world history.

On the one hand, many of the Jews who read this notice along the road – and everyone could read it because it was in Hebrew, Latin and Greek – rebelled against it. Because they rejected this message. He is not our King. He just falsely said that He is our King.

But for everyone who believes in this crucified Jesus: "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews" there comes this move from rejection to trust, from standing at a distance and condemning Him to an obedience and worship of Him who hereafter would rise from the dead.

This is what this story wants to do with you. It wants to move you from rejection to trust. From looking down on Jesus from a distance to kneeling down before Jesus to worship Him as Lord. That's why John tells us this story. He writes after Jesus' resurrection of all that He recorded in the gospel: "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:31).

So, I invite you to believe in this Jesus to move from a rejection of the message of Jesus to believing and trusting in Him. He shows us on the cross that He is willing to reconcile our sin. To bear the punishment for death and sin that came into existence with Adam and Eve.

Pray now with me this simple prayer and make the choice today to trust Jesus and believe in Him alone:

" Lord Jesus. I believe and trust that you are the Son of God. I believe and trust that you died on the cross for the sake of my sin. I believe and trust that you forgive my sin. I believe and trust that you now give me eternal life. Thank you that I am no longer lost, but forever will stay your child. Amen. "