Sermons | Cities Church

It Is Finished

Jonathan Parnell

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John 19:28-30,

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.

On September 22, 1776, Nathan Hale was executed by the British army in New York City. He had joined the Continental Army just a year earlier at 20 years old, and by September 1776 he had volunteered to be an American spy behind enemy lines. He disguised himself as a schoolteacher and started collecting intelligence on the British army, but he got caught, and they immediately decided to hang him. 

So he was in the gallows, with a crowd gathered around him, he had been humiliated by the British, and just before he died, he declared:

“My only regret is that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

Famous last words … Good last words. 

It’s obvious that such a moment is loaded with power, and what he said lives on. 

Then there’s also William Wallace.

In the movie, Braveheart, the greatest movie of all time, Mel Gibson plays William Wallace. He’s the Scottish hero up against the British (again), and this time the scene is in London. Wallace had been captured, and he was gonna be executed, but they were torturing him first and it was excruciating pain. The magistrate tells him that all he needs to do is beg for mercy, and they’ll stop the torture. The crowd is chanting for mercy, and then Wallace signals that he has something to say. The magistrate silences the crowd and says, “The prisoner wishes to say a word.” Everybody thinks he’s gonna beg for mercy, but instead, he cries out one word … y’all know what he says? “FREEDOM!”

A famous last word — a good last word.

These are amazing moments, but I wanna be clear: there is no example in history or in Hollywood that compares to the last word of Jesus Christ in John Chapter 19, verse 30. 

In our English translations, it’s three words. Jesus says, “It is finished.”

But in the Greek, that’s just one word. It’s the word: tetelestai. (Teh-TEH-le-stie). Everybody say Teh-TEH-le-stie.

It was Jesus’s last word — and it’s not just full of power, but one Bible scholar says: “This one-word summary of Jesus’s life and death is perhaps the single most important statement in all of Scripture.” 

And it changes everything. That’s what I want to show you this morning. I want to tell you three truths about Jesus’s last word. Here’s the first:

1. Jesus finished everything the Old Testament said. 

What exactly did Jesus mean when he said “It is finished”?

Well, John actually starts to explain it to us in verse 28. Notice in verse 28, John tells us, after Jesus ensured the care of his mother in verse 27,

“After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.”

This makes clear again that Jesus is fully aware of what’s going on. Just like nobody takes his life from him, but he lays it down on his own accord (John 10:18), even in his suffering he’s doing everything ‘by the book,’ you could say. He’s doing everything according to plan, and so finally he initiates the fulfillment of Psalm 69:21. 

Psalm 69 is a Psalm of David — and it’s one where David speaks in the voice of the Messiah — and he says in verse 21: 

“They [his enemies] gave me poison for food, 

and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.”

Now David wrote those words around 970 BC, and so Jesus, in the year 30 (about a thousand years later), to fulfill what David wrote, he says, “I thirst.” 

And then John tells us in verse 29: 

A jar full of sour wine stood there … [amazing!]

so they [Jesus’s enemies, his executioners, verse 29] 

they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.

And man, there are layers of meaning here. We could talk about a lot of different things, but I’m convinced that what John mainly wants us to see is that Jesus has finished the Old Testament. 

John basically says that. In verse 28, the word for “fulfill the Scripture” is a different word than the one he typically uses. The root word here is the same as the word tetelestai (it is finished). They sound the same. John is telling us that Jesus said “I thirst” to “finish the Scripture.”

That’s pretty straightforward, but there’s another way John says this. It’s in the fact that they give Jesus the sour wine on a hyssop branch. They didn’t use a spear, they used a branch, and it wasn’t just a branch, it was a hyssop branch. Now why does that matter?

Well, remember it’s Passover. John has told us that. 

The Passover is when the Jewish people celebrated their rescue from Egypt — this is in the Book of Exodus. The LORD passed through Egypt in judgment and he struck down the firstborn of every family, unless you had put the blood of the Passover Lamb on your doorpost (see Exodus 12:12–13, 23).

And back in Exodus 12:22, when Moses tells the people to do this, he tells them to put the Passover Lamb’s blood on their doorpost using a hyssop branch. 

So let’s put two pictures side by side here: 

First, let’s go back to the Exodus and take a snapshot here. Imagine this picture of a Jewish father, covering his door with the Passover lamb’s blood, using a hyssop branch. Hold that picture.

Now let’s go to the year 30, and see Jesus hanging on the cross, beaten and bloodied, and stretched out to his face is a hyssop branch.

This is deep poetry that John is doing here.

He wants us to know what he’s told us from the start of this Gospel: Jesus is the Lamb of God. 

Jesus is the true Passover Lamb. And everything the Passover pointed to is now finished in him. And that’s not just true of the Passover, that’s true of the entire Old Testament.

Charles Spurgeon said something like: 

From Genesis to Malachi, there’s not a single promise you will find, not a single prophecy, not a single type, and not the faintest allusion … which is not now fully worked out in Christ Jesus!

That’s the point.

Everything the Bible says about Jesus is true. All that was foretold by the prophets has come to pass, and all that remains promised will be. 

When Jesus said “It is finished” he meant he has finished everything the Old Testament said.

Here’s the second truth about Jesus’s last word:

2. Jesus finished everything the Father gave him to do.

For this part, I wanna emphasize the relational reality of what Jesus is doing. There’s the fact of Scripture fulfillment, yes, but there’s also the fact that Jesus is being obedient to his Father.

Jesus has talked about this relationship to the Father all throughout this Gospel:

Back in John 4:34, he said: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.”

John 5:36, “… For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.

John 6:38, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

John 12:49, “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. … What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.”

Do you see, there’s this glorious unity between the Father and the Son that’s on display in the Son’s mission. And Jesus makes this so clear in his high priestly prayer, in John 17. Jesus says to the Father:

“I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.”

Jesus prayed that just hours before he said on the cross, “It is finished.”

See, from before the foundations of the world, there has been an agreement within the Trinity about our redemption and how it would go: The Father purposed to redeem a people and the Spirit agreed to apply that redemption to us, and the Son willingly undertook the work of that redemption, The Father sent Jesus here to accomplish that redeeming work, and Jesus has now finished it.

When it comes to fatherhood, I’ve said before that it’s so important for dads to support their kids in anything that would allow them to say, at some point, “You did it.”

I was inspired here by a video years ago that made its rounds. It’s of a dad pitching batting practice to his young son at a baseball field. Just the father and son who are there. He throws a pitch and the little guy gets ahold of it, hits the ball over the fence. First time ever. He tosses his bat, and starts running the bases. And his dad is jumping up and down saying, “Yeah, yeah, home-run!” And then when his son touches home plate, he picks him up and says, “You did it! You did it!” It’s a moving video. 

Years ago, I’m watching this thing, wiping tears, and I wondering: “Man, why is this so moving?” And I then realized, I don’t know if there’s anything more powerful a father could say to his son than “You did it.” 

Now, look, yes, saying “I love you” is important. We should say it. And I love it when momma says “I love you.” But to hear your dad say, “You did it.” … this is deep poetry again. 

And if that means something to us sinners with earthly fathers … Imagine the one-and-only perfect Son, having done everything the Father gave him to do … this not in the Bible, but it would make sense that before Jesus said “It is finished,” God the Father said to him, “You did it.”

Jesus finished everything the Father gave him to do. 

3. Jesus finished everything needed to accomplish our redemption.

Now for this part, I want to go back one day from the crucifixion. Let’s go back to Thursday, which opens in John Chapter 13. John tells us in John 13:1, 

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

And that word for “end” is the Greek word “telos.” Which again is the same root word for “tetelestai.” And you can hear it: telos and tetelestai. It could translate: “the end” and “It is ended.” Or: “the finish” and “It is finished.”

We should see a connection between John 13:1 and John 19:30. What Jesus was determined to do throughout his whole ministry and when he washed his disciples’ feet on Thursday night, Jesus can now say on Friday afternoon, hanging on the cross, “It is finished.”

He had loved his own to the end. He finished it. He finished the definitive revelation of the love of God. Jesus finished everything needed to accomplish our salvation. Understand that when Jesus says Tetelestai! that’s not a cry of despair, that’s a declaration of victory!

No sin remains un-atoned, no debt is left unpaid, no burden stays un-carried, no wrath stands unsatisfied — Everything … everything … everything needed for our redemption has been finished. 

Back in the late 1700s, there was a song that began circulating among Baptist churches in England. It was later credited to an English pastor named Jonathan Evans. He wrote this hymn meditating on Jesus’s last word. He writes: 

“It is finished,” O what pleasure

Do these charming words afford

Heavenly blessings, without measure

Flow to us from Christ the Lord

“It is finished, it is finished,” saints the dying words record

“It is finished, it is finished,” saints the dying words record

Then my favorite stanza goes:

Finished all the types and shadows

Of the ceremonial law

Finished all that God had promised

Death and hell no more shall awe

“It is finished, it is finished,” saints from hence your comfort draw

“It is finished, it is finished,” saints from hence your comfort draw

So do we? 

Saints, do we draw comfort from Jesus’s last word?

This morning, in closing, I want to challenge you toward this comfort. You must be comforted here!

I don’t know if anybody says it better than John Calvin in his commentary on this verse. It’s beautiful. Listen to this. He writes:

We ought to be content with Jesus’s death alone for our salvation, and we are not at liberty to apply for assistance in any other quarter; for he who was sent by the Heavenly Father to obtain for us a full acquittal, and to accomplish our redemption, knew full well what belonged to his office, and did not fail in what he knew to be demanded of him. 

It was chiefly for the purpose of giving peace and tranquility to our conscience that he pronounced this word, It is finished. Let us stop here, therefore, if we do not choose to be deprived of the salvation which he has procured for us. (236).

Calvin is saying that when Jesus said “It is finished” he said it for you. Jesus said that word for your peace.

So then, stop trying to assist him in his salvation of you.

Stop thinking that you can be good enough or that you can work hard enough or that you can serve frequently enough so that he will save you.

Look, it’s easy to think this way. I hear it all the time. So many people assume that if they’re just a good enough person, Jesus will be good with them. But that’s not how it works.

To be saved by Jesus, you can’t add anything to what he’s already done. To be saved, we must stop where Christ is finished. That is faith.

It’s the empty-handed, open-handed receiving of what Jesus has done. Jesus does not need your help. Trust him.

And if you’re here this morning, and you’re not a Christian yet, you can become a Christian right now if you believe Jesus. Trust Jesus to save you because he has accomplished everything needed to save you.

And for all the Christians in the room, saints, be encouraged! 

Take comfort in your Savior’s last word for you, “It is finished.” Tetelestai!

A famous last word — the best last word. That’s what brings us to the Table.

The Table

At this Table, when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are taking comfort in the gospel of Christ. We are resting, not in what we’ve done, but in what he’s done.

And so, Christian, for those who trust in Jesus, I invite you to receive this table.

Four Great Nails He Bore

Marshall Segal

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John 19:17-27,

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. 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.

In the last year, I finally read Flags of Our Fathers, the famous WWII book about the American invasion of Iwo Jima, a small island off the coast of Japan. The battle was one of the bloodiest and most fatal in World War II. Of the 110,000 troops we sent into Iwo Jima, 7,000 men were killed. 19,000 more were wounded. There’s a statue in Arlington, just outside of D.C., of six soldiers lifting our flag above Mount Suribachi. The book I read focuses on those six young men.

To capture the island, the men had to take the 350-foot mountain. It was an extinct volcano. The Japanese knew that and so they filled it with guns and hammered anyone that came close. The mountain was surrounded by hundreds of yards of empty beach. After they landed, the Americans crawled a slow, grueling advance over days that brought them within two hundred yards of the mountain. They prepared to march, at first light, through the closest thing to hell on earth. The colonel had planned for tanks to provide critical cover fire and armor for the boys. . . . Morning came, but the tanks didn’t, and they couldn’t afford to wait any longer. They faced 200 yards of fury with no cover. 

“And then,” the author says, “the heroes of the day began literally to stand up and be counted.” 

“One of the first was Lieutenant Keith Wells of Easy Company’s 3rd Platoon. Wells did not tell his men to follow him. He simply got to his feet, waved his gun toward the mountain, and began running. ‘I just thought it was pure suicide,’ he later recalled.” (183)

It wasn’t suicide. And when he stood up and ran forward, the men around him went in after him. They suddenly found the courage they didn’t have even seconds earlier, and they followed him into the fire.

The tanks eventually came, and the troops were able to advance on the Japanese bunkers. In a matter of some horrifying hours, they lifted the stars and stripes 350 feet high. Hundreds of men died during the awful climb. One soldier said, “It wasn’t a matter of living or dying or fighting. It was a matter of helping your friends.” It was a life-and-death matter of love. I don’t know if Lieutenant Wells knew Jesus. . . but he sure looked a whole lot like the Jesus we find here in John 19. It really is as if we see Jesus get to his feet, wave his gun toward the mountain, and begin running into the fire.

What Was Done to Jesus?

In these verses, we’re watching Jesus be crucified. All of the Gospel of John — all of history — has been preparing us for this moment, when the Son of God bears the wrath of God to satisfy the justice of God, rescue the chosen, undeserving people of God, and demonstrate the almighty mercy of God. We’ve arrived at the cross. And as we arrive, I want us to first ask: What was done to Jesus? What did he have to suffer? What did it cost to save us? I see four ways he suffered here, four great nails in this passage, like the nails that were driven into his hands and feet.

First nail, he was cast out. Beginning in verse 16:

“He delivered him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.”

What does it mean “he went out”? It doesn’t mean he went out of Pilate’s court. No, he went outside the city. Part of the shame of crucifixion was being cast out of the city. This was a fulfillment of the Old Testament ritual when the priest, on the Day of Atonement, would place the guilt and shame of the people on a goat and then the goat was led out of the city and driven into the wilderness. That’s what’s happening here. Jesus is that goat. Before we kill you, we’re going to remove you from society. Jesus was cast out, and he was cast out by the people he came to save.

Second nail, he was humiliated. In these verses, he was stripped naked. Verse 23:

“When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier. . . .”

Now, this was normal for this kind of execution, but it’s incredibly humiliating and shameful. They weren’t content to hurt these men; they wanted to emasculate and degrade them. He has to suffer horribly, for hours and hours, in front of all these people, and he hangs and bleeds there naked. . . . It’s all the more horrible because he’s the one man with literally nothing to be ashamed of. He never sinned. Pilate says three times, “I find no guilt in him.” And yet, while they could find no shame in him, they covered him in shame. They humiliated him, and treated him like a criminal.

And that bring us to the third nail: he was vilified. Verse 17 again:

“. . . and he 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, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.”

The sinless Son of God was hung there, naked, between two criminals. 

The cross was a place for thieves, murderers, and terrorists — the worst of the worst of the worst. And here Jesus hangs, the best of the best of the best. He came healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, stooping to care for children, even loving his enemies — and they condemned him. They saw the very face of Good, and they called him evil.

Fourth and final nail here: the actual nails. He was tortured. Verse 18, again, just four words:

“There they crucified him. . . .”

My word, those four words say so much. He’s already been scourged, struck again and again with a leather whip, laced with metal or stone. And now crucified. This is an awful, awful way to die. They were literally trying to conceive of the most awful way for someone to die — and this is what they came up with. We love the shape of a cross now — we wear it around our necks and put little stickers on our cars and coffee cups — but in this day, those two beams were a horror. A bad word. It was gross and terrifying. Again, they wanted it to be that way. They were scaring people into obedience.

They crossed the beams and then nailed his hands and feet into the wood. And then raised him up for all to see and shudder. To breathe, the dying had to lift themselves up just enough to take a breath. They died because of loss of blood, dehydration, heart failure, a lot of them couldn’t lift themselves to breathe anymore. They suffocated to death, pain coursing through their body. It might take hours or even days for a man to die. . . . All of that in just four words: “There they crucified him. . . .” John witnessed all of this firsthand. And it really feels, to me, like that was all he could bring himself to say — those four words. That’s how horrible this was. 

A crucified person is a helpless, pitiful person. The whole point is for the rulers to demonstrate its almighty power and force submission. “Look at what we’ll do to you if you defy us!” They wanted all of Rome to know who was king here. And they did tell everyone who was King, right, but in a very different way. 

What Was Jesus Doing?

With the rest of the sermon, I want to look at those four nails one more time, but with different eyes. Instead of asking what was done to Jesus, I want to ask: What was done by Jesus? What was he doing? All I’ve said so far describes the awful things that were done to Jesus — he was cast out, humiliated (stripped naked), vilified (hung beside criminals), and he was tortured — crucified. All of that was happening to him — but what was he doing in these darkest hours?

1. As he was cast out, he bore.

Let’s read verse 17 again:

“And he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.”

John tells this part of the story different than the other Gospels. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Simon carries the cross, but John says Jesus carried it — “bearing his own cross.” Did he just get that part wrong? 

No, he watched it all happen. No, we think Jesus must have carried his own cross part of the way before collapsing, and that’s when they grabbed Simon to carry it the rest of the way. Why would John make a point to say that Jesus, and not Simon, bore his own cross? I believe it’s, at least in part, because he wants us to emphasize that Jesus is still in control here. He didn’t just endure the cross, he bore the cross. He took these steps in sovereign strength not in surrender or defeat. Remember John 10:18:

“No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.”

There’s also an important irony here, though, in Jesus “bearing his own cross.” Because this wasn’t his cross. This was our cross. “He was pierced for our transgressions,” Isaiah 53:5, “he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” It was perfectly normal for a criminal to have to carry his own cross out of the city. It wasn’t normal for someone to have carry the crimes of the world on his back like this. As he was cast out, Jesus bore his cross and he bore all our sins against him.

2. As he was unclothed, he clothed.

Jesus was humiliated — not just executed, but stripped naked for all to see. This was part of the judgment he bore for us. And while he was being grossly unclothed, he was preparing to clothe us in his righteousness.

This isn’t as explicit here in these verses, but I couldn’t help but see the deeper, more beautiful reality in Jesus’s humiliation. For our sake, he became poor, so that we, by his poverty, might become rich. And for our sake, he was stripped and exposed — naked — so that we might be wrapped in his seamless, sinless robes. Isaiah 61:10:

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;

my soul shall exult in my God,

for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;

he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,

as a bridegroom decks himself 

like a priest with a beautiful headdress,

and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 

If you believe in him and receive his death in your place, he’s going to clothe you like a groom on his wedding day, like a bride covered in white and wearing the finest jewelry. Do you know what that cost? His nakedness, his blood, his death.

You deserved to be stripped, flogged, mocked, hung up between criminals, and left to die — and instead, he treated you like a treasured wife. No one can take his clothes from him. No he allowed himself to be unclothed, to put on the filthy garments of our sin and shame, bearing our guilt and condemnation, so that we might wear his royal robes. His righteousness. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

3. As he was vilified, he loved.

Jesus may not have been able to physically carry his cross all the way to Golgotha, but he loved at every step — to the very bitter end. We know that he loved his disciples, even when they denied him and fled. We know he loved the crowds, even when they rioted against him. 

He loved his killers, the men who pressed the thorns and swung the whips and drove the nails. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). He loved the two sinners at his side, the men hanging next to him for their crimes. One of them believed and was saved. 

And then Jesus loves like this, look at verse 25:

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.

There’s two things I want you to see here: First, Jesus loves his mom. “Woman, behold, your son!” “Behold, your mother!” He makes sure that someone will look after Mary when he’s gone. He entrusts that high and holy responsibility to one of his closest, most faithful friends. He honors his mother, even to the very bitter end. His Father said, “Honor your father and your mother,” and Jesus wasn’t going to stop now, even now. 

If there was ever a moment to set aside that command and focus on himself, this was it, right? But even here, literally on the cross, Jesus goes out of his way to care for his mom — and to make sure that we remember to honor our mothers.

So, Cities Church, will you honor your mother, your father, even now? I don’t know you all well, but I know enough of you well enough to know that’s not a simple question for a lot of you. We have to ask ourselves, do we have better excuses than Jesus did to ignore the command? 

Watch Jesus caring for his mother while hanging on the cross and ask what you can do next to honor yours, even this week. If he could love his mom then, while he bore the sins of the world, surely we can love ours now.

Second, though, I want you to see that Jesus takes care of his own — his mother, yes, but all of his own. “Woman, behold, your son!” “Behold, your mother!” He’s caring for both Mary and John here. He loved Peter, even as Peter denied him three times: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31–32). Even while he was bleeding to death, he cared for the ones he loved. He made sure they had everything they needed. . . .

So do you think he will forget you? While you’re wrestling with all your trials and heartaches, do you think he’s too busy and preoccupied with more important things? Do you think he’ll leave you to fend for yourself? While he was suffocating to death on a cross, he loved his own. Nothing will distract him from those he loves. Nothing will stop him from caring for you. Even as he was vilified, treated like the worst of the worst, he loved.

4. As he was crucified, he reigned.

As he was hung up by nails and hung out to die, he ruled with infinite, unstoppable power. Let’s start in verse 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.”

You see what’s happening here. Pilate is frustrated that his arm is being twisted so hard like this to execute a man he doesn’t think is guilty. And so he puts the sign up — “The King of the Jews” — not mainly to spite Jesus (who he thinks is innocent), but to spite the Jews. And we know it was about them, because they don’t like it. They confront him: “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” To which Pilate says, “I said what I said.” “What I have written I have written.” It’s Pilate’s little pitiful way to exercise his “great” authority (while doing what he didn’t want to do). It’s a power play (and a tantrum). And while this itty bitty governor and this tiny whiny crowd pitch their fits, we find out what’s really happening. We find out who really has the power on Golgotha. Next verse:

They took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. 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.”

Again, this was pretty typical — soldiers divvying up the clothes. But these guys said, “Oh this is a nice piece of cloth. Let’s not tear it up.” And so they cast lots for the one piece. And John immediately says, verse 24,

“This was to fulfill the Scripture which says, ‘They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.’” This is Psalm 22. John quotes the psalm and he says, “So the soldiers did these things. . . .” 

I don’t know if six words ministered to me more this year. And it’s really just the first word: “So the soldiers did these things. . . .” Who was in control here? The soldiers carrying swords? The crowds yelling, “Crucify him!”? Little Pilate caving to all the pressure? No, they all did what they were told. Why did the soldiers do what they did with the thorns, the whip, the nails, the seamless tunic? Because God said so. Because the almighty God of mercy promised to send a Savior who would suffer and die for the sins of the world. It’s John who says in Acts 4:27–28:

“Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” (Acts 4:27–28).

In fewer words: “So the soldiers did these things. . . .” There was one King over Golgotha on Good Friday — and it wasn’t whiny Pilate or his adorable little emperor. And to make sure that was clear to everyone that Jesus was king, God made sure that it was announced in not one but three languages. 

Will You Bow?

Look at verses 19–20 one more time:

Pilate 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.

Why those languages? Because Pilate wanted everybody around to get his joke. He wanted all the Jews to feel the sting. . . . Is that really why, though? No, this is a seamless-tunic moment. Pilate wrote what he wrote on that sign to do what God’s hand and plan had predestined to take place. God wanted everyone in the city to hear this sermon — “Jesus is the King!” — and so he wrote it in all the local languages: Aramaic, Latin, and Greek.

And now I’m climbing up to add English — for your sake. God wanted the whole world to know that the King had come, that he died for you, and that he will live and reign for all who bow to him in faith. He was pierced for your transgressions, crushed for your iniquities, humiliated for your shame, reviled for your rebellion — if he’s your King. So will you bow this morning?

Behold the Real Man

David Mathis

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I cam across a commentator on John 19 this week and he said,

“This passage is so shocking that words refuse to communicate how offensive it is.”

That’s what we’re getting into this morning. There are various and complex emotional responses to this for those who love Jesus. There’s cause for holy anger, and there’s cause for godly sorrow. And what I don’t want you to miss this morning is there is cause for awe — to be amazed, to wonder at the greatness of Jesus and what he goes through in John 19.

John 19:1-16,

Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. 2 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. 3 They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands. 4 Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” 6 When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” 7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” 8 When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. 9 He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”

12 From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” 13 So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” 15 They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” 16 So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.

It would be easy to focus this morning on this horrific miscarriage of justice, on the shocking evil of the Jewish leaders, on the fickleness of the crowds, on the gutlessness of Pilate, and we’ll get to all that. But I want to make sure we don’t miss the most important thing.

At the end of chapter 20, John tells us why he wrote his Gospel:

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.

In that light, I want to ask three (rhetorical) questions about Jesus as he is delivered over to be crucified.

If you don’t yet believe in him, I want you to believe in him. And if you do believe in him, I want your faith in him to grow and deepen and sweeten as we watch his stunning composure in the face of the most grievous and outrageous injustice.

1. Can you believe how Jesus is treated?

We saw last week Pilate’s initial report to the Jews about this man they brought to him, saying he is worthy of death: “I find no guilt in him” (18:38). Now he says that twice more. Verse 4: “I find no guilt in him.” Verse 6: “I find no guilt in him.” Pilate says it three times in such short space, yet look how Jesus is treated, beginning with Pilate himself.

In verses 1–5, Pilate aims to release Jesus, but also to appease the Jewish leaders at Jesus’s expense. To do that, he has Jesus flogged (whipped here, it seems, then later scourged), and the Roman soldiers strike him and mock him by putting a crown of thorns on his head and a purple robe on his back. Then Pilate parades Jesus out before the crowd. This is a very sad moment. Verse 5: 

Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!”

And like Caiaphas in chapter 11, Pilate speaks better than he knows. He says, Look, is this the man you’re so worried about? Isn’t he pathetic? Surely, he’s not a threat to anyone. 

But oh the irony. “Behold the man.” This is the Word made flesh, the very image of God, the ultimate man, who, as Carson says, is “displaying his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, in the very disgrace, pain, weakness and brutalization that Pilate advanced as suitable evidence that he was a judicial irrelevance” (John, 598). Jim Hamilton writes,

“John 19:5 may contain the greatest display of humility, patience, self-control, restraint, and nobility ever seen in human history. . . . Never was one worthy of more honor treated with more infamy. Never was more power restrained in the face of more provocation. Never was one with more authority treated with more disregard by those dependent upon his goodwill and kindness.” (280)

Pilate hopes that the injustice he’s already done to Jesus will satisfy the Jewish leaders, so he’s caught off guard in verse 6 when they cry out, Crucify him! Crucify him! Pilate doesn’t get it. He hits back: you crucify him; I find no guilt in him. 

So, the leaders try another angle: we have a law that says he should die (Leviticus 24:16, “Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death”). This has been a growing chorus against Jesus in the Gospel of John:

As early as 5:18: they “were seeking . . . to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”

Then again in 10:33, because Jesus calls God “Father,” they wanted to stone him “for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”

Oh the irony. He’s not trying to make himself God, but he has so humbly, so patiently sought to let those know who have eyes to see that he is God himself, the divine Son, in human flesh. The God of Israel, who called Abraham and spoke to Moses and raised up David, and promised to visit his people and rescue them, has come at last in this man. And they reject him.

Back in chapter 1 we heard: “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.” And the climax of that rejection comes in verses 12–16, and with an exclamation point. (We’ll come back to verses 9–11.)

In verses 12–16, Pilate is now seeking all the more to release Jesus, until the Jewish leaders issue the decisive word that turns the tide. Verse 12: 

“If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.”

This is the checkmate. Pilate is cornered. He would not want word to get to Caesar that he freed a pretender to the throne. The die is cast, but Pilate will take one more dig: “Shall I crucify your King?” Then one last death knell and the lowest point in the long history of Israel’s depravity: “We have no king but Caesar.”

It’s hard to state how callous this is. One of the nation’s distinctives was that the one true God was their king. How scary that the leaders of the Jews would stoop to this, renouncing in effect the God in heaven as their king in the name of the pretend god in Rome, to manipulate his governor in Judea, and send their own Messiah to death. This is a ghastly moment.

So, how is Jesus treated? He is falsely accused, then even when Pilate has determined he’s not guilty, he is unjustly whipped (and later scourged) and mocked and utterly humiliated; a crown of thorns is pressed into his brow; then to appease the crowds, with no legal basis, Jesus is sentenced to the horrific, gruesome, literally excruciating public execution of the cross.

This is an appalling miscarriage of justice. Not that we don’t know injustice today. But this is next level. To be clear, we don’t get perfect justice in this world, but we wait for the end, when God will fully right every wrong.

Yet sometimes there is reasonable, solid justice: the righteous acquitted, the guilty punished fittingly (we thank God for that). And sometimes there is disappointing injustice. And sometimes there is egregious injustice, where everybody knows, or at least everyone without a specially warped spirit knows, that’s not how things are supposed to be.

And then, there is the injustice of John 19, that stands above them all. Here the universe’s most worthy person is falsely accused, and unjustly flogged and publicly mocked, and delivered over to be crucified, when the governor himself has said three times, Not guilty. This is God himself in human flesh. Perfect God and perfect man, in one person, being delivered over to death on the cross.

No incident has ever been more tragic, and no future event will ever match it. No surprise attack, no political assassination, no financial collapse, no military invasion, no atomic detonation or nuclear warfare, no cataclysmic act of terrorism, no large-scale famine or disease — not even slave trading, ethnic cleansing, or decades-long religious violence can eclipse the darkness of these moments.

No suffering has ever been so unfitting. No human has ever been so unjustly treated, because no other human has ever been so worthy of praise. Can you believe how Jesus is treated?

2. Can you believe how Jesus responds?

The greatness of Jesus is on display in verses 9–11. Even Pilate is taken aback — first by Jesus’s silence, then by his words.

The Jewish leaders have said “he has made himself the Son of God.” Verse 8: “When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid.” (This passage turns on key statements back and forth: behold the man, then crucify him, then I find no guilt, now this, then later you’re not a friend to Caesar.)

So, Pilate brings Jesus inside for a private conversation and asks, Where are you from? How is Jesus to answer that in a way Pilate will understand? Pilate is showing himself to be swine, and Jesus will not here cast his pearls this question would require. And Pilate is stunned with the silence.

Now, the prophecy of Isaiah 53:7 comes to mind: 

“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, 

yet he opened not his mouth; 

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, 

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, 

so he opened not his mouth.”

I suspect Pilate’s not used to people not answering his questions. He’s unnerved. Who is this man? Verse 10: “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Why aren’t you begging me for mercy?

Then Jesus speaks, and again it’s not at all what Pilate is expecting. No panic. No cowering. Fully composed before the Roman governor who will send him to the cross. These are the most important words in our passage, and they are the only words of Jesus in our passage, and the final words of Christ before he goes to the cross.

So, Jesus doesn’t speak when Pilate expects blabbering panic, and then when he does speak, it is with stunning authority. Who is this man who would even dream to hold his tongue in such a moment, then to speak like he does to the Roman governor?

I marvel at the composure of Jesus, and this dual glory: glory in his silence, glory when he speaks. And do take note that there are times when silence is not cowardly but divine. There are times when saying nothing speaks loudest. It’s unnerving to anxious people who demand certain words right now. Beware when frantic people demand you say certain things.

So when Jesus does speak, what does he say? Verse 11:

You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above (we’ll come back to that). Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.

Jesus doesn’t say Pilate has no sin; Pilate is responsible. But Jesus says someone else has “the greater sin.” Who could that be?

It could be Judas. He says to the leaders in Matthew 26:15, “What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?” Jesus had seen it coming in Matthew 20:18: “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over [that’s Judas] to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified…”

So, it could be the Jewish leaders. They arrested Jesus and bound him and delivered him over to Pilate (John 18:12, 19). Pilate has just said to Jesus in 18:35, “Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me.”

Among the chief priest, Caiaphas played the key role, as John has emphasized (11:50; and again in 18:14). Whether Jesus’s focus is Caiaphas or the whole group of Jewish leaders, this seems to be the main referent. Caiaphas and the Jewish leaders are the party with “the greater sin” than Pilate’s.

Still, Pilate himself is responsible. He is the ranking Roman onsite; he sits in the seat of judgment and issues the formal decree. He is the one, as he says, with authority to release. He is the one, verse 16 says, who “delivered [Jesus] over . . . to be crucified.”

Now, apparently, crowds have gathered by Friday morning, and they too have their part to play, in rallying to the release of Barabbas and joining the chant to crucify. So, a few weeks later, Peter will preach to crowds in Jerusalem,

You delivered [Jesus] over and denied [him] in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. (Acts 3:13–15)

So, Judas, Caiaphas, the leaders, Pilate, the people, and there’s one more unseen, culpable party: you and me. There is a profound sense in which we delivered him over. Our sin delivered him over. Paul will write to the Romans, Jesus was “delivered up for our trespasses” (Rom 4:25); and to the Corinthians, “Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor 15:3); and to the Galatians, Jesus “gave himself for our sins” (Gal 1:4). And 1 Peter 2:24: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.”

And there’s one last person in Jesus’s words in verse 11 we must reckon with. Now look back at the first part of verse 11: “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.”

Those might be the most important words in this chapter: “given from above.” Even in the world’s most horrible miscarriage of justice, God is here, in full control, accomplishing the rescue from sin. In the evil of Judas, the evil of Caiaphas, and the evil of the Jewish leaders, the evil of Pilate, God is doing his greatest through our worst — which is how you and I in our sin, get involved. Apart from divine intention, this whole episode has nothing to do with you and me. But it’s not apart from God. It is “given from above.” He is at work, doing his greatest through humanity’s worst.

What humans meant for evil, God meant for good. He did not only allow it, but as the early church would say in Acts 4, he planned it:

truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4:27–28)

Isaiah 53:10: “it was the will of the Lord to crush him.” But beware a danger here we’re all prone to. In our natural human thinking, wanting to get ourselves off the hook for our sin, or pretend God is not in control, we assume that his sovereignty and our responsibility must be related inversely: the more sovereign God is, the less responsible I am, and vice versa.

But that is dead wrong. God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility are compatible, not mutually exclusive. They operate on different levels.

Pilate’s authority is “given from above.” And when Judas betrays Jesus, and Peter denies him, and the leaders plot against him, and the crowds reject him, neither have they escaped the sovereign hand of God nor have they escaped their responsibility for their sin.

3. Can you believe how Jesus did it?

It is outrageous how Jesus is treated. And it is stunning how he responds. And now we ask, how did he do it?

Let’s end with one text that both brings together this moment in John 19, and our comparatively small moment as a church in 2026.

The text is 1 Peter 2:18–24. It mentions Jesus’s silence, which was not weakness but strength, and a fulfilment of Isaiah 53. And it mentions the grace (“gracious thing”) that God is pleased to do in our lives by his Spirit in the face of injustice, like the grace that shines in the darkness as Jesus stands before Pilate:

Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. 19 For this is a gracious thing [this is grace! — the world may not yet see it, but God never misses it], when, mindful of God [literally, through consciousness of God], one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. 20 For what credit [kleos, glory] is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God [this is grace with God]. 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but [here it is:] continued entrusting himself [παρεδίδου, delivering himself over] to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

So, when you are treated unjustly, and you endure by being mindful of God, it is grace. And verse 23 says the way Jesus did it was: he continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. Literally, he continued giving himself over, delivering himself over, to his Father, knowing every wrong will be righted in the end.

And the greatness of Christ isn’t that it is just a moment. He “continued to entrust himself” because temptation returns again and again to seize justice for ourselves. I’ve entrusted myself to God for a few minutes or hours, or weeks, or ten months; now I’ve had enough; now I’ll return reviling for reviling. But Jesus — and may we be like this, Cities Church — Jesus continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

No Guilt in Him

As we come to the Table, we remember how Pilate spoke better than he knew. We saw that Pilate says three times: I find no guilt in him. But not only did Jesus not deserve death; in fact, little did Pilate know, there was “no guilt in him” at all.

And as we come to this Table we celebrate that because of Jesus, and our union with him by faith, God now says of us what Pilate said of Jesus: “I find no guilt in him.”

We Are Barabbas

Jonathan Parnell

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John 18:28–40,

Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor’s headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor’s headquarters, so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover. 29 So Pilate went outside to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” 30 They answered him, “If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you.” 31 Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” The Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.” 32 This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die. 

33 So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” 35 Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” 37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” 

After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him. 39 But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?” 40 They cried out again, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a robber.

Over the last five weeks we’ve looked at historical examples of how God’s word changes a life, and today, as we get back into the Gospel of John, I want you to know that God’s life-changing power is still at work. 

And in this moment of our worship, as we open God’s word together, we are consecrating ourselves to hear from him. In our liturgy, that’s why we call this moment of preaching Consecration. We are submitting ourselves to the Holy Spirit, and we are asking God to speak to us through the Scriptures. And he does! In times like this, God is at work. 

In fact, this morning there are three truths in our passage that are chocked full of life-changing power, and that’s what I wanna show you. In our passage, I want to show you three truths about Jesus that could change your life … and I’ll go ahead and tell you what they are …

1. The Kingdom Jesus Leads

2. The Purpose Jesus Fulfills

3. The Place Jesus Took

The plan this morning is to see each of these truths in the text, and why they matter.

1. The Kingdom Jesus Leads

We could spend a whole sermon just on this point, but let’s pick up in verse 33. 

Remember, Jesus has been arrested in the Garden, and he’s been put on trial, first with the Jewish leaders, and then now, as of the early morning on Good Friday, he’s been sent to Pilate, the Gentile leader in that area. And starting in verse 33, there’s a dialogue between Jesus and Pilate.

Pilate first asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

Now we should assume that’s what the Jewish leaders told Pilate. They told Pilate that Jesus was claiming to be the King of the Jews, and that’s the so-called evil they mentioned in verse 30. And this was a classic move of manipulation. 

They needed to tell Pilate something that would get his attention and make him see Jesus as a threat to his own leadership. If they had told Pilate that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, or the Son of God, that wouldn’t bother Pilate, because he was Roman (that would have been just a Jewish theological dispute). But to say that Jesus is a King, that could pose a problem for Pilate.  

So Pilate says to Jesus, “Are you a King?”

But Jesus doesn’t play the game. He turns the tables and asks Pilate if he’s going by what the Jewish leaders have said, or if he himself really wants to know. Pilate basically says he doesn’t really care, but it’s obvious to him that these Jewish leaders hate Jesus, so he’s curious. He wants to know: What have you done? What has Jesus done to make these Jewish leaders want to kill him?

And this is when Jesus tells us something really important about his kingdom, verse 36: 

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

Now I should tell you right away that sometimes this can be misunderstood. So I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean first. Jesus’s kingdom (or his kingship) not being of the world, or from the world, does not mean that it has nothing to do with the world. 

This does not mean that the scope of Jesus’s reign is only in heaven and therefore it should not have any influence on our world today. (Remember Jesus teaches us to pray for his kingdom to come!) We want his influence!

But instead, when Jesus says that his kingdom is not from this world, he’s saying that his kingdom, (his kingship, his right to reign) does not have its source from this world. Nothing in or of this world makes Jesus king. Here is not where he gets his authority, so then, where does he get his authority? 

He tells us in the Great Commission. He says “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” — and that is, given to him by God the Father! 

The Father has exalted Jesus as King, with a kingdom. Jesus’s kingdom is not from this world and therefore it’s not established by means of this world.

That’s why his servants, his disciples, don’t fight with worldly weapons — weapons like physical force or deceit or manipulation or even a democratic vote. Whatever humans might do to establish human authorities, Jesus does not need us to do any of those things for him to be the King of his kingdom. Because his kingdom is not from here.

Why It Matters

And this has really important implications for how we live in this world and how we engage the culture. Here’s one …

Because Jesus is the King that he is, it means that we as Christians should have uncompromising confidence as we seek the good of our cities and communities.

This means we are involved in civic life. We are engaged! And in a democratic republic, we vote! And we vote our Christian values! And we seek Christian influence for the common good! We pursue what is good, true, and beautiful for the glory of God. 

And at the same time, we don’t act like civilization itself is hanging in the balance and it’s all up to us. We know that whatever happens in November — if we get the worst-case scenario — even then, Jesus is still King, and our calling as his people remains the same, without compromise. 

We still make him known! We still seek the good of these cities! 

Jesus is King, and his kingdom that we’re a part of, is not from this world. So we carry on with uncompromising confidence. 

The second truth to see in this passage is …

2. The Purpose Jesus Fulfills

This is in verse 37, and it’s just straightforward from Jesus. Pilate sees now that Jesus is not a typical king, and Jesus explains more, verse 37: 

“You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world — to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

Jesus is direct about his purpose. He says the purpose for which he came into the world is to bear witness to the truth. And notice that this purpose is connected to his kingship. It’s not super clear in the ESV translation, but Jesus is saying:

Yes, Pilate, you’re correct in calling me a King, and in fact, the purpose for why I came is to bear witness to the truth.

Jesus is saying more about the nature of Jesus’s kingship. It’s a kingship of truth. He is the king of truth. 

He is the truth — just like he told us in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” That means that Jesus is the definitive revelation of God. 

Jesus is God’s own self-disclosure, and he’s the highest, most absolute standard for what is most real. He’s Ultimate Reality. That’s why he came — to tell us the truth about God and us and about God’s salvation. He came to be that light in our darkness. 

And look, this is the case in the grandest, most cosmic sense, and it’s the case in the smallest, most situational sense. This purpose that Jesus fulfills matters in your details.

Why It Matters

Have you ever been in a situation before when things have gone sideways? They get super convoluted, and you sort of lose your handle on what to do next? You ever been there?

It could be a moment of real pain and loss, or even just a moment of confusion and setback. But whatever it is, you can feel overwhelmed because things are not going how you think they should go, and you feel stuck. 

I’ve been there too many times this year. And there was one moment in the spring that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It was in a pastors’ meeting. It was late one night, and we had been working through various things, and it was like we just came to the foot of this mountain and we didn’t know how to climb it.

And if you’ve been there before, you’re on the verge of despair and you just wanna be somewhere else. And in that moment, we as pastors, unplanned, we just bowed our heads and started praying, and we asked Jesus to come and pastor us.

And he did. … He pastored me. … And he reminded me that he came to bear witness to the truth. He came to be the light. Jesus is the way forward. 

And this is something, with the Spirit’s help, we can learn to ask for any time. There’s a simple prayer here we can learn to pray, and I’ve talked about this before, but when you’re in a hard spot, when you’re stuck, you can simply pray: 

Lord Jesus, you see everything, what do you think?

That simple prayer: Jesus, what do you think?

And you’re not looking for Jesus to audibly answer you in that moment, but the question itself reorients us to remember what is ultimate, and it sends us to the Bible, where we have the testimony of Jesus and his truth. 

This is where we go if we’re of the truth. We remember to think about all things with Jesus at the center. What does he think? What does he say?

Jesus said the purpose for which he came was to bear witness to the truth. The truth is what he’s about. The truth is who he is. And we want that reality to shine in our moments of darkness. 

Here’s a third life-changing truth about Jesus in this passage … We’ve seen the kingdom Jesus leads, and the purpose Jesus fulfills, and now here’s …

3. The Place Jesus Took

So Pilate is cynical in verse 38. He mocks what Jesus says about truth, which shows that he’s not of the truth. Allegiances are being clarified. Pilate is not loyal to Jesus. Truth is standing right in front of him and he doesn’t see it. But, he also says he finds no guilt in Jesus. That’s a fascinating place to be: he doesn’t believe in Jesus, but he also doesn’t think Jesus is bad. 

That’s the way a lot of people think in positions of power. They don’t worship Jesus, but they also don’t dislike him, so they try to use him. And Pilate here, tries to use Jesus to appease the Jewish leaders. He starts by saying Jesus is innocent, and on that grounds alone, Jesus should be released. (He’s not guilty of evil like the Jewish leaders said in verse 30.)

But rather than release him, Pilate makes it a choice of the people. Apparently, there was a custom at Passover when the Roman authorities would release a Jewish person in Roman custody. So Pilate asks the people, “Do you want me to release Jesus?”

And immediately they say No — “Not this man, but Barabbas!” 

And John tells us at the end of verse 40: “Now Barabbas was a robber.”

Okay, so now we’ve come to one of the most ironic moments in this Gospel, and in the event of Jesus’s crucifixion. There are layers of irony going on here. I’ll mention four:

First, there is the irony of timing. 

John is deliberate to tell us twice in this passage that it’s Passover. He says it in verse 28 and in verse 39. The Passover is when the Jews celebrated their deliverance from Egypt. Remember, the LORD passed through Egypt in judgment, striking the firstborn of every family, unless you had the blood of the Passover Lamb on your door. If God saw the blood, he would pass over that house (see Exodus 12:12–13, 23). And so the story of that blood, and that deliverance, is remembered in this Passover season.

Second, there is the irony of innocence. 

Notice that in verse 39, Pilate says plainly: “I find no guilt in him” — that means Jesus is innocent. Then in verse 40, John tells us that Barabbas was a “robber” — and that word for “robber” can mean a revolutionary or insurrectionist. In fact, Mark 15 and Luke 23 tell us that Barabbas was involved in an insurrection against Rome, and he had committed murder (see Mark 15:7; Luke 23:19). 

Which means, not only was Barabbas guilty and Jesus innocent, but Barabbas was guilty of the very thing Jesus said was unlike his kingship — Barabbas used worldly weapons to threaten Rome. Jesus didn’t. He’s innocent. See the contrast?

Third, there is the irony of naming.

John tells us that this man’s name is Barabbas. And that kind of name is what’s called a patra-nymic (or “name of the father”). We have these names today — it’s names that have the word “son” in them — like Peterson (son of Peter), or Johnson (son of John), or Anderson (son of Andrew). These names are very common. Barabbas is the same way. The word “bar” in Aramaic means “son.” And the word “Abba” means father.

The name Barabbas means “son of the father.” 

So get this: we have to imagine Barabbas and Jesus standing side by side. There is a son of the father, Barabbas, and then there is the Son of the Father, Jesus. And this is important because in John’s Gospel we’ve seen over and over again that Jesus has been telling us he is the Son sent by the Father.

He came from the Father, he reveals the Father, and he came to bring us back to the Father. And here, at the very moment when the true Son of the Father stands before this crowd, there is this other man who merely goes by that name. It’s gut-wrenching … because of who they choose.

Fourth, there is the irony of choice.

And all the other ironies culminate here. John is so clear about what’s happening. The Jewish crowd is choosing Barabbas instead of Jesus. 

We see this in the language: they say, “Not this man, but Barabbas!”

Not this one, but that one. They’re doing a swap. Do you see it?

They’re saying:

Don’t let the innocent man go free, but free the guilty.

Don’t release the Son of the Father, but release a son of a father. 

And it’s in this season of Passover! At Passover they condemn the innocent Son of God in the place of the guilty sinner. This almost unbearable injustice. It’s outrageous that this would happen! Somebody do something! Pilate, c’mon, you can’t just let them say, “Not this man, but Barabbas”! You can’t just let Jesus take his place! But then you realize … we are Barabbas. 

And long before anybody said “Not this one, but that one,” Jesus had said, “Not them, but me.”

Just like nobody takes Jesus’s life from him, but he lays it down on his own accord, nobody forces Jesus to take any place. This is a place Jesus himself took. That’s why he came. That’s the kind of King he is, one who lays down his life to save his people. And this morning, he will save you if you would trust him. 

Maybe you’re here and you’re brand-new to Jesus — Or maybe you’ve been involved in church for a long time but have just never taken that step of faith — Or maybe you’re here and you’re barely hanging on and you’re about to walk away — wherever you’re coming from, I hope you see the kind of King he is! 

He takes the place of sinners! He is the innocent Son of God who willingly gave himself for the guilty, so that the guilty can go free. And that’s the only condition you need in order to come to him — you just gotta be a sinner who wants to be free.

If that’s you, trust Christ this morning. Put your faith in him. And brothers and sisters who have trusted him, let’s rejoice in him and in these life-changing truths — remember the kingdom he leads, the purpose he fulfills, and our place that he took. 

That’s what brings us to the Table.

The Table

At this Table, we eat the bread and drink the cup to remember the death of Jesus for us. We rest in Jesus! We rest in his cross and resurrection, and we give him thanks. 

And so, if you’re here and you have put your faith in Jesus, we invite you to enjoy this meal with us, and let’s worship Jesus together. 

Seeking Jesus

Jonathan Parnell

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John 20:24–31,

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” 

26 Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” 

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are 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.

And it was this passage of God’s word that was written by a man whose life had been changed by the Word-made-flesh. His name was John, the son of Zebedee, brother of James, beloved disciple of Jesus Christ. This morning I went to tell you his story. And I want to tell you John’s story for two reasons:

First, going back to the first Sunday of 2025, we started preaching through the Gospel of John, and we’re gonna be back in the Gospel of John next week. And so it seemed like a good way to bridge the “How God Changes a Life” series to the Gospel of John series is talk about how God changed John’s life. 

The second reason I want to tell you John’s story is because he is the human author of one-fifth of the New Testament. After the Gospel of John, he wrote three letters that we have, and the Book of Revelation — about 20% of the New Testament! That’s pretty good for a young fisherman from Galilee. John has an amazing story, and I want to tell it to you in four scenes:

1. When John meets Jesus

2. When John lives up to his nickname

3. When John enters the empty tomb

4. When John sees the future

1. When John Meets Jesus

Now for this scene, we’re in the Gospel of John Chapter 1. And John gives us a vantage that we don’t find in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Those three Gospels are called the Synoptic Gospels (you’ve probably heard that word before). The word “synoptic” means to “see together.”

The idea is that Matthew, Mark, and Luke can be seen together. They follow a similar timeline and describe many of the same events. But John is different.

And one example of the difference is that John tells us about the very first time the disciples met Jesus. The other Gospels — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — skip this part and tell us about when Jesus calls the disciples. 

And that’s a great scene itself. John was fishing with his brother James, and their dad, Zebedee, and they were partners with Peter and his brother Andrew. So they were all fishing together in two different boats, and Jesus sees them and says “Follow me.”

And Matthew and Mark say that immediately they dropped their nets and followed Jesus (Matthew 4:20; Mark 1:18). Luke says they left everything to follow Jesus (Luke 5:11). 

And that would be unusual if that moment was the first time they had ever seen or heard of Jesus. Most likely they knew something about Jesus beforehand, John tells us about this in John Chapter 1, verse 35 … and I’m gonna read this to you, but I want you to follow along. Turn back to John 1, verse 35.

The next day again John [the Baptist] was standing with two of his disciples 36 and he [John the Baptist] looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. 

40 One of the two who heard John [the Baptist] speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41 He first found his own brother Simon [this is Peter] and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). 42 He brought him to Jesus. …

Okay, so by verse 41, we learn about Andrew and then Peter, but John never tells us the name of the other disciple who first met Jesus. 

There were two, remember. One was Andrew. Who was the other? It was John! 

John refers to himself several times in this Gospel, but it’s always in the third person — he often calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20, also 24). And the most common, traditional interpretation of Chapter 1 here is that John is that second disciple with Andrew. 

That’s a big deal. Because get this: Of all the disciples (later the apostles), John was one of the first of these men to meet Jesus.

John was a fisherman, part of the family fishing business, and he was a devout Jewish man who had started learning from the prophet, John the Baptist. But as soon as John the Baptist said the Messiah had come, John the son of Zebedee started literally following him. He started walking behind him.

Jesus realized this, turns around and says to Andrew and John, “What are you seeking?” They ask him where he’s staying, and Jesus says, “Come and you will see.” So they did. And they stayed the rest of the day with Jesus. John says it was about 4PM (he remembered the time).

So this was the first moment they met Jesus, and Jesus made enough of an impression on these fishermen that later, when they were in their boats and Jesus said, “Y’all follow me,” they dropped everything to obey what he said.

They were compelled by Jesus, but I think it’s fair to say: What had Andrew and John gotten these guys into?

2. When John Lives Up to His Nickname

I think we have biblical warrant to single John out, because Jesus did give he and his brother, James, their own nickname. Jesus called them “Boanerges” which means “Sons of Thunder.” 

Now we don’t know exactly why Jesus called them that, but it’s probably because they were bold and zealous, and a little ambitious. That’s certainly how they acted in Mark Chapter 10!

In Mark 10, James and John approached Jesus and said, “Teacher we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you” — they actually said that to Jesus. But Jesus said back to them, “What do you want me to do for you?”

Mark 10:37, 

And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”

Now there’s a lot going on here, but we can’t ignore the fact that these two brothers are trying to secure prominence for themselves in Jesus’s kingdom. And Jesus does not outright rebuke them for this — he just tells them they don’t know what they’re asking. To reign with Jesus means you gotta suffer like Jesus. If you wanna be great, you gotta be a servant!

Jesus teaches us something amazing here, but Mark tells us the other disciples were “indignant” at James and John for what they asked Jesus. They were Sons of Thunder. 

There was another time in Luke 9 when a village in Samaria rejected Jesus, and James and John asked Jesus, Luke 9:54,

“Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 

What a question! They asked Jesus if he wanted them to command fire from heaven! They were Sons of Thunder.

And Jesus did rebuke them for that question. But John lived up to his nickname. And don’t forget that John nicknamed himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” That’s because Jesus did love him. And Jesus kept him close. We know there were twelve disciples, and then at other times, it was only Peter, James, and John. 

It was only those three who saw Jesus bring Jairus’s daughter back to life (Mark 5:37). It was only those three who saw the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2). It was only those three who went with Jesus to the darkness of Gethsemane (Mark 14:33). John was there for all of that. He sat closest to Jesus at the Last Supper. And he heard Jesus’s last words on the cross. 

This is John Chapter 19 … and this is a scene we only find in John’s Gospel. This is when Jesus was hanging on the cross. The soldiers had gambled away Jesus’s tunic, and John writes, John 19, verses 25-27:

“…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 …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.

In Jesus’s final moments, he entrusted the caretaking of his mother to John. A son of thunder, yeah. The disciple whom Jesus loved, yeah. John lived up to his nickname. 

3. John Entered the Empty Tomb

John stayed by the foot of the cross until Jesus breathed his last breath. It was typical in a crucifixion for the Romans to break the legs of the crucified person because it would speed up their death. John tells us that the soldiers came and broke the legs of the two criminals who were crucified beside Jesus, but when they got to Jesus, he was already dead. And so one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’s side, and there came out blood and water. John says he saw this as an eyewitness. He was there. He saw Jesus dead. 

And then Jesus was buried … in a tomb … sealed with a stone. It was Friday night, and then a long Saturday, and then it was Sunday morning. John tells us it was early enough that it was still dark. Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, and she noticed right away that the stone had been moved from the entrance. So she turned around and ran to tell the disciples. And we all gotta see this part. Turn to John Chapter 20, verse 2:

…she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, [this is John!] and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. 4 but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

For the last four weeks we’ve been looking at how the Word of God changes people’s lives. This was the moment when the Word-made-flesh changed John’s life forever. Jesus was risen from the dead. 

And John saw him later that night when Jesus came to where the disciples were staying. He saw him eight days after that when Jesus showed up for Thomas. 

He saw Thomas touch his scars. He heard Thomas declare, “My Lord and my God!” And he heard Jesus say back to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

And John knew that Jesus said that for us. Because at this moment in the Gospel of John, John stops narrating the scene in Chapter 20, and he steps out to tell us:

Hey, I’ve written all this down for you. I’ve written all this down for you who have not seen him, so that, by reading this you may believe in him. 

And the best thing that could happen right now is for all of us to believe in him. If you’re here, and you’ve not yet put your faith in Jesus, believe in him right now. Jesus changed John’s life and inspired him to write this Gospel so that you would believe and he change your life.  

John was never the same. He was most likely the youngest of the disciples, and, according to tradition, he lived the longest. We can read about his witness in the Book of Acts. We can read three different letters he wrote to early Christians. And we can read the Book of Revelation. 

4. When John Sees the Future

John was an old man now. He says in Revelation 1:9 that he was on the island of Patmos “on account of the word of God.” Patmos is a small island about 40 miles off the coast of Turkey. In the First Century, it was rocky and undeveloped. John was on the island because he had been banished there in exile. 

At this point, his brother James was long dead (he was executed in Acts Chapter 12). Peter is also gone. Andrew is gone. Paul is gone. As far as we know, the first generation of the apostles are gone. Except for John.

He’s an old man, in exile, in isolation, and one Sunday morning, Jesus sent an angel to him to show him the things that will “soon take place.” And the angel showed John so that John could show us.

For 22 chapters, John records the apocalyptic vision that the angel gave him: 

John sees the resurrected Jesus in glory, with eyes like a flame of fire, and a sharp two-edged sword coming out of his mouth, and he speaks to the seven churches (Revelation 1:12–18).

John sees heaven opened and the throne of God at the center of everything (Revelation 4:1–11).

He sees the Lamb who was slain standing victorious, and he’s able to open the scroll and break its seals (Revelation 5:6–14).

He sees a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, tribe, people, and language gathering to worship the Lamb (Revelation 7:9–12).

And he sees judgment fall on a world in rebellion against God — He sees the dragon, he sees the beast, he sees Babylon raging against Christ and his people. (Revelation 12:3–17; 17:1–18:24).

But he sees that none of them win.

He sees Babylon fall (Revelation 18:1–24). And Satan defeated (Revelation 20:7–10). And death and Hades thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14). He sees the dead raised and every person standing before the great white throne of judgment (Revelation 20:11–15).

And then John sees a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1). He sees the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God (Revelation 21:2, 9–27). He hears a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man” (Revelation 21:3). There is no more death. No more mourning. No more crying. No more pain (Revelation 21:4).

And John sees the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Revelation 22:1). He sees the tree of life with twelve kinds of fruit (Revelation 22:2). He sees the servants of God worshiping him — night is over! Sun is not needed! Because the Lord God will be our light and we will reign with him forever! (Revelation 22:3–5)

Then John sees Jesus say to him, “Behold, I am coming soon.” 

And John finishes the book and the whole Bible, with the prayer, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20) And how glorious is this?! 

So many years before, when John, the son of Zebedee, first met Jesus, Jesus invited him to come and see! And now John, in the end, is longing for Jesus to come and reign.

That’s the evidence of a changed life. That’s what happens when a life is changed by the Word. Church, the more we get to know Jesus, the more we desire him, the more we love him, the more we want more of him in our lives and in this world.

And that’s what brings us to the Table this morning. 

The Table

At this Table, by the bread and the cup, we remember the death of Jesus for us, we rest in the love of God, and the apostle Paul tells us, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. There’s a future orientation to what we do here. 

We long for the return of Jesus.

Look to Jesus — and Keep Looking

David Mathis

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Isaiah 45:20-23,

“Assemble yourselves and come;
    draw near together,
    you survivors of the nations!
They have no knowledge
    who carry about their wooden idols,
and keep on praying to a god
    that cannot save.
21 Declare and present your case;
    let them take counsel together!
Who told this long ago?
    Who declared it of old?
Was it not I, the Lord?
    And there is no other god besides me,
a righteous God and a Savior;
    there is none besides me.

22 “Turn to me and be saved,
    all the ends of the earth!
    For I am God, and there is no other.
23 By myself I have sworn;
    from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
    a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
    every tongue shall swear allegiance.’

I’m excited to tell you the story of how God used the text we just read to change the life of a man named Charles Spurgeon. His story is for everyone, but it may have a special word to speak to a few groups in the room.

One is laymen — that is, people who work for a living in normal jobs, outside of Christian ministry. People without a seminary education, people who aren’t pastors or have ministry jobs.

We recognize that this series has profiled four men who were preachers. Now, there is an interesting flow to our series: first, Saint Augustine; then, Luther, who was an Augustinian monk; then, John Bunyan, whose favorite book outside the Bible was Luther’s commentary on Galatians; now, Charles Spurgeon, whose favorite book outside the Bible was Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

We’ve moved from one convert to another, each building in some way on the previous one, but a weakness of our series (in some sense) is that they all became preachers. And we don’t expect you all to become preachers; we’d like a few, but most will be laymen, and that’s a good thing.

Now, Spurgeon is known as “the prince of preachers.” However, the hero, under God, in Spurgeon’s story is not Spurgeon and not a trained, paid preacher but a layman. So Spurgeon’s story has a special word for laymen who are willing to open their mouths and say what they know about Jesus.

Spurgeon’s story also has a special word for teens and young adults. Spurgeon came to faith at age 15, which in his day was far more like young adulthood. Still, his story offers a challenge to those who are no longer children and not yet established adults — teens, college students, grad students, even young professionals. Don’t let the world (and the church) lower your standards of what’s possible in being deeply converted and dedicated to Jesus — and how can God can make his Son thrilling to a young soul. May he give you your own engine.

One more group: those in the room who are willing to admit, “I’m here but I’m not saved.” For two thousand years, unsaved people have shown up at churches, for all sorts of reasons. That’s Spurgeon’s story. He was searching. He was unsaved, and in a church on a Sunday morning, when God broke through. So, if you’d say this morning: I haven’t settled the issue of my sin and rebellion against God, I haven’t “been saved,” or if I died on the drive home today, I wouldn’t be at peace with my Maker, this story has a special word for you.

So, let me tell you about Charlie Spurgeon.

His Early and Whole Life

He was born in 1834 about 40 miles northeast of London. He was born into a Christian family. In fact, both his father and grandfather were pastors. But his father met financial troubles and sent the young Charles to live with his grandparents from ages 1–6. This is where he emerged as “precocious” and learned to read and first found Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (which he would read more than 100x). 

From his earliest days, he was unusually sharp, ahead of his age level, “always reading books” (Dallimore, 8). He returned home at age 6 and excelled in school, in both math and reading. He was noticed for “his unusual mental ability and his rare clarity of speech” (10), including “his native audacity” (11). And he naturally soaked in the Bible and truths about the Christian faith.

However, for seven years, he says, he lived in an agonizing sense of his own sin before the majesty and holiness of God. And he even had a season of spiritual wandering, and experimented with atheism. His soul was in turmoil. He knew so much but couldn’t grasp how to have peace with God.

Shouldn’t he have known the answer already? What was he looking for? To be saved, to be right with God, he thought, “I must feel something: I must do something.” Biographer Arnold Dallimore says Spurgeon

wished he might give his back to be scourged or that he might make some difficult pilgrimage, if by such efforts he might be saved. Yet he admitted, “That simplest of all matters — believing in Christ crucified, accepting his finished salvation, being nothing and letting him be everything, doing nothing, but trusting to what he has done —I could not get a hold of it.” (17)

I wonder how many here this morning are in a similar place. Do you want to be saved but think, I must feel something dramatic? I must do something significant? Have your eyes been blinded to “that simplest of all matters,” as he called it — that is, being nothing and letting Jesus be everything, doing nothing but trusting in what he has done.

I want us to spend the rest of this message on the text God used to change Spurgeon and how it happened. But before doing that, I’ll tell you quickly about his next 40 years. 

After Spurgeon finally found saving faith at age 15, he began preaching the next year. A few years later, at age 20, he became pastor at New Park Street Chapel in London. And the church grew and grew. Eventually they needed a massive, new building called the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

There are a few who have been called “the prince of preachers,” but with only one did the title stick. And did he preach. We have no surviving audio recordings of Spurgeon, but we have edited transcripts of his sermons, about 3,600 of them, that fill up 63 volumes.

The church had about 300 members when he showed up. Over the next four decades, it grew to over 5,300 baptized members. The two services were at capacity each Sunday at 6,000. The church also started a school for pastors and trained and sent out ministers and church planters. And an orphanage. They had Sunday School that taught thousands of children.

As he aged, Spurgeon developed multiple chronic illnesses, and he died in 1892 at the age of 57. He had been at the church for almost 40 years.

And all that, thousands of sermons, hundreds of ministers and healthy churches, thousands of members and healthy Christians, and perhaps tens of thousands of conversions to Jesus — it all flowed from God’s work to change a troubled life at age 15.

Let me first setup his conversion text: Isaiah 45:22.

His Conversion Text

Spurgeon was saved through a sermon from a complicated chapter, in a complicated book.

The first 39 chapters are addressed to Isaiah’s own generation about how God will judge them for their sin and rebellion against him. He will send Assyria (and eventually Babylon) to discipline his rebellious people and carry them off to exile. 

But then Isaiah 40 introduces a stunning message of comfort to a future generation. God will not forget his people, but come to their rescue. And he’ll do this in two ways. 

He will deal with their physical need: they are in exile. 

And they have a spiritual need: their sin and disobedience that got them into exile.

At the end of chapter 44, God begins to tell how he’ll meet the physical need through a surprising servant. Then will come a far greater servant after him who will meet the spiritual need (Isaiah 53).

Isaiah 45 has a clear main point: there is no other god like the true God. I count at least 10x that God says there’s none like me, or no other besides me. And in Isaiah 45 God sets himself apart in at least three ways.

1. God will use a surprising figure.

The shock comes in the final verse of chapter 44. Not only is God the one

who formed his people from the womb: 

who made all things, 

who alone stretched out the heavens, 

who spread out the earth by himself, 

who frustrates the signs of liars, 

who makes foolish the knowledge of wise men, 

who confirms the word of his servant

and fulfills the counsel of his messengers.

But he says of the abandoned city of Jerusalem, 

‘She shall be inhabited,’ 

and of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall be built, 

and I will raise up their ruins.’ (vv. 24-26)

What news! Then verse 28 introduces the surprising figure:

[God] says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd, 

and he shall fulfill all my purpose’;

saying of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be built,’ 

and of the temple, ‘Your foundation shall be laid.’”

The shock is that God will use a pagan ruler to get his people home from exile. And God even gives his name: Cyrus. And this is almost two centuries before a leader arises in Persia, known to history by that very name (Cyrus the Great) and does exactly what God promised through Isaiah.

Isaiah 45:1–8 says more. God calls Cyrus “his anointed” (v. 1). God will take Cyrus by the hand and subdue nations before him. He will go before Cyrus and give him success. But here’s another turn: Cyrus will not know the true God. This is the end of verse 4 — God says to Cyrus,

“I call you by your name, 

I name you, though you do not know me. 

5 I am the Lord, and there is no other, 

besides me there is no God; 

I equip you, though you do not know me…”

Why would God use Cyrus? He answers in verse 6:

“that people may know, from the rising of the sun [the east]

and from the west, that there is none besides me; 

I am the Lord, and there is no other.”

God does this for the sake of his people; they stand at the heart of his plans (just as his church is at the heart of his work today). He does it, verse 4,

“For the sake of my servant Jacob, 

and Israel my chosen, 

I call you by your name…”

So, God, through Isaiah, announces a shocking plan. He will raise up an unbelieving king named Cyrus who will free God’s people from exile (v. 13) and rebuild Jerusalem and even lay the foundation of the temple. And here we stand 2700 years later knowing from history that it happened just like God said.

But at the time, can you imagine the instinctive response of some of God’s people to this plan? No way, God! You can’t do it like that. You can’t use an evil, wicked king to bring your people back from exile! To which God responds in verse 9:

“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him,

a pot among earthen pots!

Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ 

or ‘Your work has no handles’?

So, #1, God will use a surprising figure.

2. God designs a swelling fellowship.

That is, he means to expand his people. He will not just bring home Jewish exiles, but he will swell the fellowship, expand his covenant people, to include people from other nations. (Which means one day that God’s salvation would include a 15-yo in England in 1850, and a roomful of 21st-century Americans.)

We already saw that verse 6 mentions that “people may know, from the [east] and from the west, that there is none besides me.” God is not satisfied for Israel only to know there is none like him. He will have people know from east to west. He will extend his rescue to the nations. So, we come to verse 20:

“Assemble yourselves and come; 

draw near together, 

you survivors of the nations! 

They have no knowledge 

who carry about their wooden idols, 

and keep on praying to a god 

that cannot save. 

21 Declare and present your case; 

let them take counsel together! 

The question in verse 20 is this: Is God assembling the nations simply to shame them? To judge them? To damn them for their refusal to acknowledge and obey the one true God? 

The theme of this chapter is that there is none besides him and no other like him. Indeed there is not — including his grace and mercy. And so, contrary to what we might expect, we find out in the next verse that God will gather the nations to offer them rescue too, along with Israel. He will offer them (us!) his grace. His full pardon. Salvation. Deliverance from our sins. Which leads to one last way he shows there is no other like him.

So, God will use a surprising figure; he designs a swelling fellowship; and then…

3. God calls for a simple look.

This is such good news. Whether the 15-yo Spurgeon or the lay preacher that day had any good sense of these complexities of Isaiah 45, this is the clear call that became the open door to eternal life for Spurgeon.

Verse 22 is the hinge of the passage, the turning point. This is where Jewish critics of God’s plan are called to him, and not only them but even the nations:

“Turn to me and be saved,

all the ends of the earth! 

For I am God, and there is no other.”

In all the complexity of this chapter, in the surprise of using Cyrus, and expanding God’s people to “the end of the earth,” God’s one requirement for his rescue rings out with clarity: turn to me. Turn from your sins. Turn from your idols and your pretend gods. And when you turn, don’t look in. Don’t turn to yourself, but look to me. Turn to me. See me do it: I’m your Savior, there is none like me. Look to me and I will save you.

In all the chaos and confusion, God requires faith, simple faith, a humbled, repentant posture of soul, despairing of pretend gods, and despairing of self. Like we heard Spurgeon say earlier:

“being nothing and letting [Jesus] be everything, doing nothing, but trusting in what he has done.”

So here’s the story in Spurgeon’s own words…

His Conversion Story

The day is January 6, 1850:

I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair until now, had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning, while I was going to a certain place of worship. I turned down a side street, and came to a little [chapel]. In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people… I wanted to know how I might be saved...
The minister did not come that morning; he was snowed up, I suppose. At last a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker, or tailor, or something of that sort [Spurgeon doesn’t even know what profession!], went up into the pulpit to preach. 

Now it is well that preachers be instructed, but this man was really stupid. He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was [Isaiah 45:22, in the King James Version] — “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.”

He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimmer of hope for me in that text.

The preacher began [like this]: “This is a very simple text indeed. It says ‘Look.’ Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pain. It aint liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just ‘Look.’ 

Well, a man needn’t go to College to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand a year to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look.

“But then the text says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Ay!” he said… “many [of you] are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. You’ll never find any comfort in yourselves…. Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Some [of you] say ‘We must wait for the Spirit’s workin.’ You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, ‘Look unto Me.’"

Then the good man followed up his text in this way: “Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me, I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to Heaven. Look unto Me; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! look unto Me!"

When [the preacher] had . . . . managed to spin out about ten minutes or so, he was at the end of his tether. Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger.

Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart, he said, “Young man, you look very miserable.” Well, I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home.

He continued, “And you will always be miserable—miserable in life and miserable in death—if you don’t obey [Isaiah 45:22 and look to Jesus]; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.” Then lifting up his hands, he shouted… “Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but look and live!”

[Spurgeon says:] I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said—I did not take much notice of it—I was so possessed with that one thought . . . . I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, “Look!” what a charming word it seemed to me. Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away.

There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him. Oh, that somebody had told me this before, “Trust Christ, and you shall be saved.” Yet it was, no doubt, all wisely ordered…

That happy day when I found the Saviour, and learned to cling to His dear feet, was a day never to be forgotten by me . . . . I listened to the Word of God [in Isaiah 45:22] and that precious text led me to the cross of Christ.

Dear friend, this morning — however miserable you look, or however well you hide it — I say to you, right now, in this moment, on the authority of Isaiah 45:22, “Look to Jesus. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but look and live!”

And if you think that such looking with the soul to Jesus will run out of juice, remember that Spurgeon would go on to preach thousands of sermons over the next 40 years, all of them, in their own varied and fresh ways saying, Look to Jesus. Look! Look! Look!

Later Spurgeon would say that any Christian desiring to “pursue life after a right fashion must look to Jesus, and must continue looking unto Jesus.” Looking to Jesus is not something we do alongside the other Christian habits and patterns. It’s what we’re doing in and through them all:

We look to Jesus when we open his word and hear it preached. We look to him in prayer, as we pray to our Father in Jesus’s name. We look to him in the face and eyes of Christian brothers and sisters who have the Spirit of Jesus and speak words of grace to feed our faith. And we make our personal needs in this life an occasion for looking to Jesus.

My friend Scott Hubbard says one way to keep looking to Jesus is to connect your personal need to his person and work:

“‘Look to Jesus’ does not mean ‘think of anything at all about Jesus’ but rather ‘think of Jesus in a way that perfectly suits your pressing need.’”

For Spurgeon, at the age of 15, that need was how to be saved, how to be rescued from sin and spiritual agony, how to have peace, and be in the right, with the holy God. In his need and desperation, he finally looked to Jesus.

And he didn’t stop looking. All of his Christian life in the four decades that followed grew out of a soul that kept looking to Jesus. Which brings us to the Table.

Table

This Table is one more occasion each week for looking to Jesus. 

I said earlier that God had two surprising figures in Isaiah: Cyrus to meet Israel’s physical need and free them from exile. The other is the Servant of Isaiah 53 who offers himself as the once for all sacrifice for the sins of his people.

When we look to Jesus at the Table, we look to his cross: his body broken for us, his blood shed for us. And so we eat and drink in faith.

United with Christ

Jonathan Parnell

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1 Corinthians 1:26–31 (KJV),

For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: 27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; 28 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: 29 That no flesh should glory in his presence. 30 But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: 31 That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.

And it was this passage of God’s word — along with many other passages from God’s word! — that changed the life of John Bunyan. 

I read from the King James because they are the exact words that Bunyan himself read. He lived from the year 1628 to 1688, and he spent pretty much his entire life within a ten-mile radius of Bedford, which is an English town about 50 miles north of London.

And Bunyan’s story is different from both Augustine and Luther in that there was not a single passage of Scripture that changed everything for him. But instead, it was more like there were dozens of passages over years that impacted him.

He wrote a memoir about his conversion titled Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. It’s an amazing story about how he came to Christ, but nowhere in the book does he say “This was the precise moment!” There were lots of moments. Lots of turning points. Lots of breakthroughs. And a lot of valleys in between.

For Bunyan, his story is not this nice arc, but it’s more like a zig-zag. And I think that’s helpful for us because, if we’re honest, that’s a lot of us in this room. We’ve got messy stories! And that’s okay because it’s not how you start that matters most, it’s how you finish.

For the last two weeks, we’ve looked at some awesome starting points, but today we’re gonna look at a journey. A journey is the best metaphor to use when we think about the life of John Bunyan — and I know he’d agree with that! 

I want to tell you the story of his journey in four episodes (and I’m gonna title each episode with a little quote from his memoir).

Episode 1: The Ungodliest Fellow

Bunyan was born in 1628, during one of the most unstable times in English history. 

This is a lot to explain, but in short, King Charles I and Parliament did not get along, and the English Civil War erupted in 1642. Bunyan joined the Parliamentary Army when he was 16 years old, and he served as a solider for about three years. 

Bunyan doesn’t say a lot about his time as a soldier but we know that God spared his life and he got married right after he finished his service. He was 20 years old, he was married, and he was “a wretched man.” That’s how he described himself.

When he was a boy, he was the worst kid in his town. He said that he would curse and swear and lie, and blaspheme the name of God — and he did it so much it was like second nature to him. 

He had a very foul mouth, and the issue was not simply that he used a few un-choice words, but it was the whole way he engaged people. His entire talk was filthy and vile. And he knew it. He said that even as a kid, he would have nightmares about God’s judgment, but he still carried on in his sin, in open defiance to God. 

Now, Bunyan’s wife was a Christian, and she had some influence on him. He went to church with her, and on one occasion, he experienced some conviction from a sermon, but then he shook it off. He admitted he was miserable in his sin, but said that if he forsook his sins he still wouldn’t be good enough to be a Christian. So he made this calculation: I’m damned if I don’t, and damned if I do.

He wrote: 

I can but be damned, and if I must be so, I had as good be damned for many sins, as to be damned for a few. (15)

You can hear what he’s saying: if he’s damned so matter what, he might as well sin as much as he can, and so he did.

He said “I went on in sin with great greediness of mind” until one day … he was out in the town talking with some friends, standing in front of a shop window …

He said he was “cursing and swearing and playing the madman” — he was raising Hell — and there was a ‘woman of the house’ who overheard him (she was most likely a prostitute), and she told Bunyan that he cursed and sweared at a fearful rate so much that it made her to tremble. Bunyan wrote about it and said: 

she told me “that I was the ungodliest fellow for swearing that ever she heard in all her life, and that I, by this doing, was able to spoil all the youth in a whole town.” (16)

That’s rich coming from this woman. And it hit Bunyan hard. And his response to this is fascinating. Keep in mind at this time he’s an enemy of Christ. He’s defying God. But listen to what he said about this experience. He wrote:

“While I stood there, and hanging down my head, I wished with all my heart that I might be a little child again, that my father might learn me to speak without this wicked way of swearing.”

I don’t know about you, but that’s sad. And it makes me think: I know that there’s a range of emotions that we should feel toward hell-raisers (like how Bunyan was), and one of those emotions should be pity. 

He admitted that beneath his rough exterior, he was a man who wished he could be a little child again. He just wanted a fresh start. That’s a lot of lost people. A lot of people, if they’re honest, they just wish they could do it over. And like Bunyan, they despair, because they think it’s too late for any kind of change.

Episode 2: “Most Fit for a Wounded Conscience”

Bunyan thought it was too late for him to be any different than how he was, but around this time in his life, he decided to try some “outward reformation.” His wife probably influenced him here. So he cleaned up the way he talked, he got sober, and this kinda became the buzz of the town. People noticed he was different … but, he said it was all outward; it wasn’t real; there were some sins that he would not let go … until one day, he’s in the town of Bedford, on the streets again, and he overhears a conversation between four women. They were just sitting outside in the sun, just talking. 

And the names of these four women we will never know, but they were talking about their faith. It was a glorious unsupervised conversation. Bunyan was eavesdropping. And he said they talked like they had a real relationship with Jesus, and he had never heard anything like it before. He wrote:

… methought they spake as if joy did make them speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me, as if they had found a new world … (20)

Isn’t that amazing? These women were just talking. They had no idea Bunyan heard them. And it was was a turning point for him — it drove Bunyan to read the Bible, and really, he started to devour the Bible! He said this is when the Bible became very precious to him. And I think it was at some point around here that he was born again. 

And one evidence of conversion was that he started struggling with doubts. He started doubting that he had faith. (And in general, only people who have faith doubt it — we can’t doubt a faith we don’t have.) And Bunyan had all kinds of doubts, and over and over again, he’d have a crisis and then, a verse of Scripture would bail him out. And it was seldom that this happened while he was actually reading the Bible. 

Often, he’d be going about his day, plagued with doubts, and then a verse, he said, would “break upon my mind.” Or he said, “a Scripture would come upon me.” I could mention several examples:

Once it was Luke 14 where Jesus tells the story of the great banquet. The master of the house wanted a big party, but the first people he invited didn’t show up, so the master told his servant to go out into the city and invite “the poor and crippled and blind and lame.” And the servant did and he told the master, “still there is room for more.” That one sentence filled Bunyan with so much hope. He knew Jesus had room for him.

Another time it was 2 Corinthians 12:9, where Jesus tells Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you.” 

Another time was John 6:37 where Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” 

Bunyan saturated his mind and heart with Scripture, and the words of Scripture became useful in his battles. The Bible helped him on his journey. … And there was another book that helped him around this same time.

I want you to hear him talk about it. He writes: 

“Well, after many such longings in my mind, the God in whose hands are all our days and ways, did cast into my hand, one day, a book of Martin Luther; it was his commentary on Galatians — it was so old that it was ready to fall piece from piece … [this would have been the early 1650s; Luther’s commentary was translated into English in 1575 — so the book was around 75 years old].

Bunyan said:

“I found my condition, in [Luther’s] experience, so largely and profoundly handled, as if his book had been written out of my heart … I do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon the Galatians, excepting the Holy Bible, before all the books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience.” (52)

This is key background info. Bunyan had been steeping in the theology of Luther, and namely, Luther’s teaching on justification by faith alone in Christ alone. 

Episode 3: “Gold Was in My Trunk”

Now it was also around this time, in the early 1650s, that Bunyan started attending a small Baptist church in Bedford pastored by a man named John Gifford. Gifford was a guide for Bunyan, which he needed, because he still struggled with all kinds of anxiety and doubts. 

He went through one dark valley after another, and then one day … he had another bail out, another breakthrough — and if this wasn’t his conversion, it at least confirmed his conversion.

He tells the story that one day he was walking through a field, and his conscience was weighed down and plagued by fear — he dealt with this all the time — and he said:

… suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, Thy righteousness is in heaven; and methought withal, I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there I say, as my righteousness. … I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, not yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself …

Then he said:

“Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed, I was loosed from my affliction and irons, my temptations also fled away …”

And when he got home, he ran to his Bible to try to find that sentence that came upon his soul, and he landed on 1 Corinthians Chapter 1, verse 30 — the King James says:

“But of him [of God] are ye in Christ Jesus.”

God has made us to be in Christ.

God, by his Spirit, has brought us into union with Jesus through faith, and that means that Yes, Jesus is our righteousness, and more than that! — Paul says Jesus is our wisdom and our righteousness and our sanctification and redemption. In other words, Paul is saying Jesus is everything to us. All that Jesus is becomes ours because God has united us to him. 

And it was here that Bunyan said “the Lord did lead me into the mystery of union with the Son of God.” 

Up to this point, he said it was like he had been walking around with pocket change, only to discover that all along “gold was in my trunk at home.”

Union with Christ was gold to him.

Union with Christ is the central wonder of the gospel that unlocks all of its other benefits. Every saving gift we receive in the gospel, we receive by our union with Christ … 

… so for our imagination’s sake … we should not think of ourselves as somehow standing apart from Jesus, and then Jesus merely hands us the gifts of the gospel. 

Sometimes, in my mind, I can think that way: like the Father is here, and Jesus is here, and I’m here …and the Father is just funneling gifts through Jesus to me over here.

Wrong image. Instead, it’s more like the Father has given us to Christ! 

He’s united us with Christ.

So it’s not that Jesus is here and then we are over here. But it’s that we are interlocked together in the center. And now every deed of Christ, every merit of Christ, every victory of Christ, belongs to me because I am in him. I have union with Christ!

And now all we can do — when we understand this — all we can do is to glory in Christ. This is why we boast in Christ alone. Because every saving gift we have is only found in him. 

All glory be to Christ!

This is where we surrender everything to him … because once we truly surrender to Jesus all the glory, what’s left to withhold?

Episode 4: “I Will Venture for Thy Name”

Bunyan was baptized as a believer and became a member of the Bedford church, and that’s where he started preaching. He explained it pretty simply: he said he just wanted to show other Christians what God had shown him in the word. He starts preaching around 1655, at his church and in the area, and he starts writing some Christian books, but then on November 12, 1660 he was arrested because of his preaching ministry.

Things had changed in the English government. Charles II was now King, and he and the Parliament were against any dissenters from the Church of England. So they arrested Bunyan the Baptist in the middle of a church service.

He was 31 years old; his first wife had died two years earlier, and now his second wife, Elizabeth, was at home caring for his four young children, one of whom was blind. Elizabeth herself was pregnant, but not long after Bunyan was arrested, she went into preterm labor and the baby died.

And Bunyan spent the next 12 years of his life in that prison, and he suffered. He spent 12 years of his life in prison for preaching the gospel, and he also battled depression and he constantly feared execution. 

He very much expected in those first years of his imprisonment that he would be put to death … because that happened a lot in those days. 11 years earlier, his side in the Civil War beheaded the King! They also beheaded the archbishop of the Church of England! Bunyan thought that he was going to the gallows.

He writes about this, that the thought of impending execution triggered all kinds of doubts for him. It was spiritual warfare. Bunyan said Satan constantly attacked him, and he became afraid that in the moment of his execution he would not feel comforted by God.

That was his issue. 

He was not afraid of death, he was afraid of the experience, that in his final moments he would not experience assurance. He was afraid that Jesus would feel distant to him. He writes about this in his memoir — and it’s one of the most powerful things I’ve ever read. 

Because Bunyan really wrestled with this. He said “I tossed for many weeks and knew not what to do.” It was a weight upon him. But then he comes to this amazing conclusion: 

He says that if God gives him a feeling of comfort before his death, that’s God’s prerogative. But God does not owe it to him. And even if God does not give him a feeling of comfort, Bunyan said he would trust Christ anyway. 

Bunyan realized that his faithfulness to Christ is not based on his felt comfort from Christ, but it’s based on Christ’s word. He said it doesn’t matter how I may feel, it’s my duty to stand on the word of Christ. 

[So] I am for going and venturing my eternal state with Christ, whether I have comfort here or not … Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do; if not, I will venture for thy name.

Sometimes I wonder, in our Christian lives, if we withhold a deeper trust in Jesus because we think we’ve not felt enough comfort, or that we’ve not experienced enough peace. We might think that if Jesus just made us feel more blessed then we’d have more trust — basically, we try to determine our devotion to Jesus based upon our feelings. 

But, what if we got to the place — feelings aside — where we just staked everything on Jesus because he’s worthy. This is when we are in the furnace of fire and we say: “I know God can deliver me from this, and he can make me feel better, but even if he doesn’t, I’m still with him.” I’m still with Jesus. I’m still gonna trust in Jesus because Jesus deserves my trust. 

Look at him! Look at who he is! Look at what he’s done! 

Get your eyes off yourself, and look to Jesus Christ! We trust him because he’s worthy.

John Bunyan is a help to us. His journey is an example, and may our lives honor Jesus the way his did.

That’s what brings us to the Table. 

The Table

Jesus is everything to us. That’s the message of this Table. 

We take the bread and cup to remember the gospel — that Jesus has died for us and has been raised from the dead for us, and we are united to him. That’s our only hope. It’s not our righteousness. Not the best obedience of our hands. But it’s Christ and Christ alone.

If he’s your hope, if you trust in Christ this morning, we invite you to eat and drink with us, and give him thanks.

By Faith Alone in Christ Alone

Jonathan Parnell

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Romans 1:14-17,

I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. 15 So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. 

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

And it was this passage of God’s word that changed the life of Martin Luther. He lived from the year 1483 to 1546, and later in life he looked back and said of Romans 1:17,

“Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.”

And the story of that experience is the story I want to tell you this morning. We’re gonna look at Martin Luther in three parts: Luther’s World, Luther’s Wrestling, and Luther’s Breakthrough.

Luther’s World

So again, Luther was born in 1483 in Germany. He grew up in a town called Mansfeld. It was a mining town about 100 miles southwest of modern-day Berlin. It was surrounded by deep forests, and in the minds of most 15th-century Europeans, that was spooky.

This is something that can be hard for us to understand today, but Luther lived in a premodern world  — what we could call an Enchanted World. People were very aware that reality was full of spiritual powers, and it affected people. 

Today, at a cultural level, most people in our world live unaffected by the spiritual realm. Our mindset is what what one philosopher calls the Buffered Self.

This means that we tend to insulate ourselves from mystery. We love science and technology and explanation, and so we tend to reduce things from having deeper meanings. We kinda laugh at superstition.

It didn’t used to be that way. For example, in Luther’s village, people believed witches and poltergeists lived in the woods. And in general, people just carried around a fear of the spiritual realm. And it makes sense. Just 130 years before Luther was born, the Black Plague killed over one-third of Europe. This was an invisible sickness, with no explanation, and it killed over 25 million people. Death by disease was still common in Luther’s day.

It makes sense that these people were a little on edge, and superstitious — especially in a mining town. Mining was a dangerous industry, and the town’s patron saint was Saint Anne. 

Now the whole idea of patron saints is strange — it’s not in the Bible — but Anne was supposedly the grandmother of Jesus, Mary’s mother, and she protected miners. So it was common for people from this town to pray to Saint Anne and ask her to look out for them.

But Luther was a good kid. He was raised in the Catholic faith; he was acquainted with the Bible; and he was smart. His dad really wanted him to be a lawyer, so he sent him off to college at 17 years old, a few years later Luther graduated, and he started law school in 1505. But he didn’t stay in law school very long. Other things had been on his mind. 

That same year two of his classmates and two young lawyers had died by the disease, and reportedly, one of the young lawyer’s last words right before he died was “O, that I had become a monk!”

So all this had been weighing on Luther … and it happened that in July 1505, he had been home for a visit and then started traveling back to school. It was 53 miles between his home and his school, and when he got about six miles from school, all of a sudden there was a terrible thunderstorm.

I don’t know how scared we tend to get about thunderstorms, but 500 years ago they were horrifying. Luther is out in the open, in the midst of this thunder and lightning, and he thinks he is gonna die, so he collapses and cries out, Help me, St. Anne!  And then he says: I will become a monk!

Well he survived the thunderstorm. But now he had made a vow. People took vows very seriously back then. Two weeks later Luther left law school and entered the nearby monastery to become an Augustinian monk.

And that brings us to Part Two: Luther’s Wrestling.

Luther’s Wrestling

Luther was a good monk like he was a good student. Later in life Luther said that by monk standards, he was the best. … Fantastic!

He said that if it were possible for any monk to get to heaven through his monkery, it would have been him. He prayed and fasted constantly; he kept vigils; he deprived himself of heat in the winter; he spent long stretches in solitude; and he confessed his sins for hours to his mentor and confessor, a man named Johannes von Staupitz.

We know at least once that Luther spent six straight hours confessing his sins. He would come up with all kinds of things to confess; he was constantly questioning his own motives. He looked for sins even behind the act of confessing sins, and when he couldn’t think of any sins, he confessed pride for not being able to. He just couldn’t escape. Luther had an issue with obsessive self-examination. And truly, he suffered from severe spiritual depression.

Now, I don’t speak German, but there was a particular German word that Luther used to refer to his depression and it doesn’t have a direct English equivalent. The word is Anfechtung. 

Now you hear the word “fecht” in there, and that’s related to our English word “fight.” Anfechtung basically means to be attacked, but it’s spiritual. One biographer explains:

For Luther, [this Anfechtung] seems to have manifested itself as a widening hole of sheerest hopelessness, an increasing cacophony of devils’ voices accusing him of a thousand things … (Metaxas, 28).

It was anguish and despair that would assault him. Luther said the battles would often come late at night in the form of anxiety, terror, and temptation — and he believed he was literally fighting the devil.

But, because he knew that God was sovereign over the devil, he came to see the whole thing as a wrestling with God himself. Like Jacob’s wrestling with God in Genesis 32 — except Luther knew he was no match for God. (See Marty, 23ff)

He was convinced that no matter how hard he tried, he was never doing good enough to appease God’s wrath. He had no peace, so he’d just keep trying harder, and he’d keep complaining it wasn’t hard enough.

He wrestled and worried and wearied himself, again and again and again.

One day his mentor Staupitz got so fed up with Luther’s long confessions that he told Luther that his problem was not that God was angry with him, but it’s that Luther was angry with God!

Now imagine that moment. Has anybody ever told you something like that before? Have you ever been angry with God?

I want to be careful here … but many of us know something about what Luther was going through. It’s not super uncommon, especially not for the more introspective among us. Like: if you’re aware of God’s reality and you know yourself — if you’re convinced of God’s existence but not convinced of his love — your mind will get stuck here.

I know a man who had some Anfechtung when he was in high school. It was the Southern Baptist version though. He was worried sick that he didn’t pray the ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ correctly. He was worried sick that he had missed a word or said something wrong, and he was gonna be left behind.

Many of us know what it’s like to wrestle spiritually. 

And if that’s where you are this morning, I need to tell you: don’t give up.

Luther has his wrestlings, but he also had a breakthrough. This is Part Three.

Luther’s Breakthrough

Luther was sent to the city of Wittenberg to become a professor of theology, and this is where Luther began to pour himself into the Bible. Beginning in 1513 he lectured on the Psalms, and then in 1516, he started lecturing on the Book of Romans. 

This is where things began to change, thanks in part to Augustine (who we learned about last week). So Luther was an Augustinian monk which means he would have read a lot of Augustine, but we know for a fact he did. 

And that’s because — this is pretty fascinating to me — in the year 1889, in a German library about 75 miles from the monastery where Luther lived, someone stumbled upon a stack of old books that turned out to be Luther’s books from when he was a monk. And there was a lot of Augustine. 

His copies of Augustine’s On the Trinity and City of God were devoured. There were notes all in them that dated back to 1509, when Luther was 25. Which means, leading up to 1516 when Luther taught Romans, he had been steeping in the theology of Augustine, and especially Augustine’s teaching about the grace of God in our salvation. I think that’s key background information.

Understanding Romans 1:17

But Luther still couldn’t shake what he called an “extremely disturbed conscience.” And as he studied the Book of Romans, he really struggled with the righteousness of God. He thought the righteousness of God was only God’s justice to damn sinners — it’s that God judges impartially and it’s fair for God to condemn sinners like him. That’s true about God, but Luther resented it. Luther wrote later:

I did not love … yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God … Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat persistently upon St. Paul in Romans 1:17 most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.

Let’s take a look back at Romans 1:17 for a minute. I want us to understand Luther’s struggle. Let’s start in verse 16, Paul says,

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel” — Paul has full confidence in the gospel — “for” [or because] the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

That’s a big deal and we believe that with everything we’ve got: the gospel is the power of God to save. But why? Or: how exactly is the gospel this power?

Well that’s what verse 17 answers. Look at verse 17. Paul says the gospel is the power of God …

For [or because] — verse 17 — in it [in the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.’’

We have to think: If the righteousness of God here means only God’s justice to rule the world and punish sinners, then how is that revealed by faith? 

What does that have to do with our living by faith? And how is it good news?

Gate to Paradise

And this is where Luther began to see that the righteousness of God is not only an attribute of God — it’s not only God’s justice — but Romans 1:17 is talking about the righteousness that comes from God — this is a right standing with God that God gives as a gift to those who have faith!

When Paul says that the righteousness of God is revealed “from faith for faith,” he’s saying that God declares a person righteous solely through their faith — “from faith for faith” means beginning and ending in faith — it’s by faith and nothing else!

This is when lights came on! Luther was in his study, in his monastery, and he had been poring over Romans day and night, and then he saw it: the power of God in the gospel is that God, our Judge, is merciful and just to pronounce the verdict of righteous for everyone who has faith in Jesus. 

Luther said about it later:

Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered into paradise itself through open gates. Thus a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me … And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word “Righteousness of God.” Thus that place in Paul [Romans 1:17] was for me truly the gate to paradise.

And of course it was — and it is, not just for Luther, but this is paradise for everybody who realizes: you can never be good enough to earn a right standing before God — you can’t be good enough; you can’t work hard enough! We are sinners through and through.

Luther loved the image from Isaiah 64 when Isaiah says that our own righteousness before God is like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). The only way we are brought into right relationship with God is because God justifies us — God declares us righteous — through our faith in Jesus. 

The hymn writer Isaac Watts put this in a song two-hundred years later. Goes like this: 

The best obedience of my hands

Dares not appear before Thy throne;

But faith can answer Thy demands,

By pleading what my Lord has done.

Faith alone in Christ alone for the glory of God alone!

This truth will change a life … it did for Luther. It does today. And it can right now. If you’re in this room right now, and you’re tired of trying to save yourself … you can stop.

Put down your works and trust in Jesus and his righteousness. If you do that, it means you come into a faith-union with Jesus and God the Father declares you to be righteous like Jesus. It means you are forgiven for all your sins and you are brought into relationship with him. 

Right now, trust Christ, and receive the gift he is for you … This was a breakthrough for Luther. It changed his life … and he lived happily ever after. No, he didn’t. Again, never works that way in this world. 

Battles Continue

Luther had this breakthrough; he went on to write an amazing commentary on the Book of Galatians, where he explained and defended justification by faith. And this didn’t just change Luther’s life, but it changed the world, and we should be grateful. 

But Luther also still had battles. 

He had battles with a corrupt Roman Catholic Church, and he still had battles with Anfechtung. Luther had a great sense of humor and overall he was a jovial man, but he struggled with depression — and he called it fighting with the devil. 

He had done so much of it when he was younger, that later in life, he counseled a lot of people who had similar struggles. And we have record of his counsel because of the letters he wrote. One of my favorite books ever is a book titled, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel. It’s a collection of these letters Luther wrote to people going through all kinds of situations.

And one letter I want to tell you about. It’s one he wrote to his friend, a man named Jerome Weller. Luther mentored Jerome and influenced him to study theology instead of law, like Luther had done, and Jerome also suffered from Anfechtung. He had a tender conscience and struggled spiritually, and so Luther wrote him letters to encourage him. 

Now I’m gonna read you an excerpt from one of the letters, and I want you to see how Luther is applying the reality of justification by faith to a practical struggle. Justification by faith is not a truth that you just ‘check the box’ with and move on. But it’s a truth, a fact, that we keep front and center. 

For context in this letter, Luther has been telling Jerome what to do in the thick of his struggle — like in the thick of the struggle when Satan is attacking and tormenting him. Luther writes this:

When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares that we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus:

I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? 

By no means. 

For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where he is, there shall I be also. (87)

That’s how we’re supposed to talk in our wrestling. Luther says that we should mock the devil with the gospel. We just keep remembering Jesus. We keep pointing to Jesus.

Because understand: that is justifying faith. Faith itself is not the hero. Faith itself is not what saves us — which is why weak faith does not undo you — Jesus is the one who saves! 

And faith is simply the empty-handed, open-handed receiving of all that Jesus is for us. We look to him in our battles. Very practically. 

Whatever you’ve got going on, look to Jesus. That’s how we apply our justification by faith. We know:

Our hope is built on nothing less

than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;

We dare not trust the sweetest frame,

but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

Amen!

That’s what brings us to the Table.

The Table

At this Table, we remember and rest in the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we receive the bread and cup, we are saying that we receive Jesus — empty-handed, open-handed, we receive all that Jesus is for us. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let’s do that now.

Put On the Lord Jesus

Jonathan Parnell

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Romans 13:11–14,

“Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. 12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

And it was this passage of God’s word that once changed a man’s life forever — his name was Augustine; he was from North Africa; he lived from the year 354 to 430; and the story of his conversion is the story I wanna tell you this morning as we kick off our new series, “How God Changes a Life.” 

The plan for this series is to look at four examples throughout church history of when God transformed someone’s life through the power of his word. 

And the reason we’re doing this is because we believe that God still does this kind of life-changing work today — my prayer has been that we as a church would be inspired by God’s work in the past so that we would expect that same work in the present. 

And if you’re here and you’re not yet a Christian — if you’re here and you need your life to change — first, I want you to know I’m glad you’re here, and you’ve come to the right place. Whatever you’ve got going on, I can almost guarantee that Augustine’s situation was worse. Let me tell you his story in three parts … 

We’re gonna look at Augustine’s context, his crisis, and his change. 

Part One: Context

And we start with the context, or the setting, because this is where every good story starts. The question here is: What kind of world did Augustine live in? 

Augustine was born in the year 354 in North Africa, which was part of the Roman Empire. This was about 40 years after the Emperor Constantine became a Christian and legalized Christian worship. Up until Constantine, Christians were a persecuted minority, but under his protections the gospel began to spread and the church began to grow. But the world was still a big mess — you could call it a world of conquest and confusion. 

Conquest

It was a world of conquest because there was constant fighting and enemy invasions, thanks to the barbarians. Now the word “barbarian” is a word in the New Testament. It was the Greek word for Gentiles outside the Greek-speaking world — these were Gentiles who spoke their own languages and maintained their own culture.

Now as the Roman Empire expanded, Roman armies conquered a lot of these barbarian tribes, but over time these barbarians starting fighting back. A couple of names you’ve probably heard before are the Goths and Vandals (the Vikings came a few hundred years later). But the Goths and Vandals were Germanic tribes who fought against Rome. 

For example, in 410 (when Augustine was 56 years old), the Visigoths sacked Rome (which was a big deal — no foreign army had invaded Rome in over 800 years). This shook the whole world.

Then in 430, the year Augustine died, the Vandals laid siege to the City of Hippo where Augustine lived. So while Augustine was on his deathbed, there was an invading army literally outside the walls of his city. 

And this was his life. This was the world as Augustine knew it — what he would later call the City of Man. It was a world full of conflict and war  — Augustine’s hope was not in politics. 

Confusion

But then, at the same time of these physical threats, there were also layers of ideological confusion. There were all kinds of different worldviews and philosophies and Christian heresies. And one place where all this stuff was most obvious was in the biggest city of North Africa — the city of Carthage. 

Augustine moved there when he was 17 years old to go to college and study philosophy; it was one of the wealthiest cities in the ancient world; it was a bustling place. And this is where Augustine went off the rails.

He later described the city as a “seething cauldron of shameful sex.”

So while he was being indoctrinated with all kinds of junk intellectually, he was also indulging in sexual sin. He would go to church, but it was because he was trying to pick up women. He ended up getting a woman pregnant and they had a son, and then spiritually, he went all-in with a cult called Manichaeism. Manichaeism is too much to explain now, but it was basically a fusion religion that was a mix of Buddhism and Bible heresies and other stuff. And it was super weird (They believed tiny particles of Divine Light were trapped inside material things). They rejected the Old Testament, but they did respect the letters of Paul in the New Testament (that’ll be important later). 

But suffice to say, Augustine was confused. He was lost — and I mean bad lost. 

Like, if you think you have a past … Augustine was a sexually deviant, heretical college philosophy student. He was a very long way from Jesus. But … he had a Christian mother.

Christian Mother

Augustine’s mom was a woman named Monica, she’s a big part of his story. We know a lot about her because Augustine wrote a lot about her. He admired his mom deeply. She was a Christian, from a Christian family (she married a man named Patrick, who was a pagan; he didn’t become a Christian until right before he died). But Monica raised Augustine in Christian truth, even though he rejected it for years. … His mom never gave up on him.  

She prayed for him a lot, and she bugged him a lot. I think she would classify as an ancient helicopter mom, but in the best kind of way. When she found out he had embraced Manichaeism, Augustine said she wept for him “more than mothers weep for their children who die” (and he knew that because she probably told him). 

There’s one story of Monica where she kept insisting with a local pastor to meet with Augustine. The pastor wouldn’t do it because Augustine wasn’t interested. But Monica kept on and on with the pastor … Did you call him? Did you meet with him? Have you seen him? She’d beg this pastor through tears.

Finally, this pastor told her:

“It is not possible that the son of these tears should perish.” 

He told her to keep praying. And she did. Monica was an amazing woman, and we all should be grateful for her. 

And moms in the room, be a great mom like Monica. 

In our cultural moment, motherhood is scorned. Understand that abortion is not just an attack on children, it’s an attack on motherhood too. We see this everywhere. Right now something like half the country is defending a woman who viciously murdered her three children. 

That’s an attack on motherhood. And it’s demonic. And we should stand against it with everything we’ve got. One way to do that is: Moms, be great. Be like Monica.

Our world needs great mothers — and if they’re not coming from the church, it’s not happening. Moms, you have such a high calling! You’re making a difference in the world. Be great.

Monica was a crucial part of Augustine’s context, and her influence was part of what brought him to a crisis.

Part Two: Crisis

Augustine was smart and he was really good with words. He ended up moving to the city of Milan to become a professor of rhetoric. This was a highly esteemed vocation, and he was living high on the hog. He was moving up the social ladder until he met the pastor of the church in Milan, a man named Ambrose. 

Augustine would go to church to hear Ambrose preach, and although he still didn’t believe, he asked a lot of questions. Eventually, Augustine got connected with Ambrose’s mentor, a man named Simplician. And Simplician started mentoring Augustine — and this is pretty fascinating — he inspired Augustine with stories of other people’s conversions.

One story he told him was of a man who was a philosopher in Rome, who was also from Africa, and this man been drawn to Christianity. Apparently this man read the Bible often and came to consider himself a Christian, but he didn’t get baptized (because he thought it was too embarrassing). 

But then he finally became ashamed that he was ashamed, and he got baptized and declared himself to be a Christian openly. Simplician told Augustine this story (and I imagine he kept clearing his throat the whole time). And this story had an impact on Augustine right as he entered into the darkest time of his life in December 384. 

Going by his own account, it sounds like he suffered from what we’d call a depression. He was full of despair and doubts. His pursuit of knowledge and prestige, and all his sexual immorality, had left him unfulfilled. He was not happy with his life — which was right. He should not have been happy with his life. There is a such thing as a holy misery. Maybe that’s something his mother had prayed for … Y’all ever heard anybody pray like that? 

I heard people pray that way when I was growing up. I’ve been in prayer meetings before when somebody would share about a lost family member, and they want God to save them so badly, and so people would pray: 

God, make so-and-so absolutely miserable until they turn to Jesus!

God, don’t let them get any rest! Torment them in their dreams! — until they trust Christ! 

Maybe Monica prayed like that. Because Augustine was in a crisis. 

The way he was living wasn’t working. He was lost and he knew it. 

And that’s the only condition for a changed life — it’s not enough to be lost, you gotta know you’re lost. You have to know you need help. Augustine knew.  

Part Three: Change

Augustine tells this story in a lot of detail in his autobiography, Confessions. I’ll try not to get too much in the weeds, but it happened like this:

It’s a normal day in Milan, and Augustine has a couple of his friends over. (And these are intellectual-types who like to study and share what they’ve learned.) And one of these friends finds a copy of Paul’s letters in a stack of Augustine’s books, and he’s surprised by this, and so he starts telling Augustine and this other friend about how he had heard that there were a bunch of these men, not far from Milan, who had converted to Christ and their lives had completely changed. They had renounced their careers in the imperial service and committed themselves to studying Scripture and living a quiet life.

Well this story wrecks Augustine. After the one friend left, Augustine is overcome with emotion and says to his closer friend who was still with him:

What is wrong with us? What is this? What did you hear? Simple folk are taking heaven by storm while we clever people without a heart wallow in the materialist world of flesh and blood. (Confessions, 8.19, Chadwick’s translation, p. 26)

Then Augustine goes outside to a garden, to be alone. But his friend is so worried about him, he follows him outside. And Augustine is struggling. He’s having some kind of breakdown. He’s weeping and just a mess and then he hears the voice of a child, chanting: “Take up and read; take up and read.”

He hears this, and then he gets up and runs to his copy of Paul’s letters. He grabs them and opens to a random page and he reads the first thing he sees … which was in Romans 13 … 

“… not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” (vv. 13–14)

And that was it! Augustine was born again. Later he wrote, 

No further would I read, nor did I need; for instantly, as the sentence ended — by a light, as it were, of security infused into my heart — all the gloom of doubt vanished away. (8.29)

And … he lived happily ever after. … Not quite! (It never works that way in this world. This is the City of Man.) Augustine had become a Christian — he was 32 years old and his life had been changed — but the change was only beginning. 

He baptized, and then soon after became a monk, and eventually became a pastor and later he became one of the most important theologians in church history. And as a theologian one of the most enduring impacts he made was related to the doctrine of conversion. 

Heart Transformation

When Augustine read Romans 13:13–14, he had read it before that day in Milan. He had read the words and understood Paul’s command, but he lacked the ability in himself to obey it. He had been a divided man.

He respected the commands of the gospel, at least with his mind — he knew chastity was a good thing — but he didn’t really desire to live that way. His heart wasn’t in it. 

During his wayward years, he had actually prayed to God, “Grant me chastity, but not yet.”

That’s how Augustine had felt about all six of the prohibitions in Romans 13:13. 

The apostle Paul says in verse 11 that because of where we are in redemptive history — because Jesus has lived, died, and rose again, and because he’s coming back — it’s time to wake up and get your life in order. 

That means you stop living a certain way. Paul names six sins (it’s not a comprehensive list, but it’s a good list to stop doing). Verse 13, Paul says:

• No more orgies and drunkenness — stop the slosh parties.

• No more sexual immorality and sensuality — stop all fornication. 

• No more quarreling and jealously — stop despising your neighbor.

This is group-think sin, sexual immortality, and hatred of others.

It’s fascinating that this list from the First Century world remains a list of besetting sins in our 21st century world … just like it was in Augustine’s 5th century world — and look: it’s all gotta stop. All of it. 

But how?

By putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. 

And this is is where Augustine has so much insight. 

As a theologian, he stressed that our problem as sinners is that we have disordered loves. Our problem is not simply a lack of love for God, but it’s that we love lesser things more than God. And we desire and pursue those lesser loves.

His biographer Henry Chadwick says it like this: 

[Augustine’s] repeated point is that the object of our love, whether high or low, is the magnet irresistibly drawing us on. 

He’s saying we are all led by our loves, and left to ourselves, this is a bad thing. Because left to ourselves, apart from the grace of God, our loves are broken! — they’re all out of whack and so they lead us down all these dead-end roads. 

If you follow your unconverted heart, you will not end up happy. Augustine had been there and done that. It does not work! And we know it doesn’t work!

And this is why we need a transformation of the heart! We need God to change us from the inside-out. We need to turn from seeking inferior mirages of beauty to seeking supreme beauty which is God himself. 

Augustine put it like this. He writes, 

How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose! . . . You [God] drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and you took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure …  you who outshine all light … you who surpass all honor . . . O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation. (Confessions 9.1)

Do you see what he’s saying? The sinful, lesser things his heart pursued were not merely taken away — they were replaced by God himself, and God himself became his joy. 

Augustine wrote: 

Do not think you are dragged to God against your will. 

The mind is drawn by love which is the source of inexpressible pleasure. There is a pleasure of the heart whose sweetness consists in the bread of heaven … Give me a lover, he feels what I am talking about. Give me a man in a state of desire, of hunger, a traveller thirsty on a desert road who is sighing for the spring at his eternal home; give me a man like that, he knows what I mean. (Chadwick, 156ff)

This is the same insight we read 14 centuries later from the Scottish pastor Thomas Chalmers. He calls this the “expulsive power of a new affection.”  A greater love conquers the lesser loves.

See, we put on the Lord Jesus Christ because we want to. Because we have found in Christ a greater joy than the fleeting pleasures of sin! And that’s the miracle. That is the grace of God working through the word of God. This is a changed life. 

Look, it doesn’t mean as Christians we never sin again, but it does mean that we have a truer joy that triumphs over sin. 

Christian, I want you to know what Paul says in Romans 6, that sin does not have dominion over you!

In Christ, you have power over sin because you have the power of a superior pleasure. And that’s the only way you’re gonna win this battle in the world. You will never love your sin less until you love Jesus more because you know Jesus better. So know him — Know Christ. Seek Christ. Rest in Christ. 

And may your hearts be restless — miserable, tormented — may our hearts be restless until we find our rest in Christ. 

That’s what brings us to the Table. 

The Table

I realize this morning we are coming from all kinds of different places. 

Again, if you’re here and you’re not a Christian, I’m so glad you’re here. 

This morning I invite you to put your faith in Jesus. Right now, turn from your sin and put on the Lord Jesus Christ. He will change your life.

And church, brothers and sisters in Christ, we’ve trusted in Jesus. Let’s rest in Jesus this morning. We’re not searching anymore. We’re not lost. We’re home. Let’s rest in the love of Christ for us this morning as we remember his gospel. 

The Wonderful Works of God

Will Stueve

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Psalm 111,

Praise the Lord!
I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart,
    in the company of the upright, in the congregation.
2 Great are the works of the Lord,
    studied by all who delight in them.
3 Full of splendor and majesty is his work,
    and his righteousness endures forever.
4 He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered;
    the Lord is gracious and merciful.
5 He provides food for those who fear him;
    he remembers his covenant forever.
6 He has shown his people the power of his works,
    in giving them the inheritance of the nations.
7 The works of his hands are faithful and just;
    all his precepts are trustworthy;
8 they are established forever and ever,
    to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.
9 He sent redemption to his people;
    he has commanded his covenant forever.
    Holy and awesome is his name!
10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
    all those who practice it have a good understanding.
    His praise endures forever!

My family and I have noticed an abundance of large spiders around, and occasionally, to our horror, inside our house recently.

There’s a reason for this… apparently, August and September mark “peak spider season” in Minnesota, as adult spiders reach their full size after feeding all summer, and as the morning dew makes their webs more visible to us…

In 1723, the great theologian Jonathan Edwards wrote about this in his treatise “Of Insects and Spiders.” In this short letter, Edwards marvels at the wise design of God the Creator as he considers the complex behaviors of the “flying spiders” common in New England. As he considers the complex design of their webs, how they can seemingly support themselves in mid-air… He says,

“We hence see the exuberant goodness of the Creator, who hath not only provided for all the necessities [of spiders], but also for the pleasure and recreation of all sorts of creatures, and even the insects and those that are most despicable.”

Whereas Edwards studied spiders with delight and saw them as an opportunity to praise God, my only thought when I see a spider is to kill it as fast as humanly possible…

The point is: The wonderful works of God are all around us if we have eyes to see. And that’s what this sermon is about.

Psalm 111 is about the wonderful works of God. More specifically, the big question from our text this morning is: What makes God’s works so great?

In this sermon, I want to answer that question by showing you three truths about the works of God.

1. God’s works demand our praise.

2. God’s works reveal his character.

3. God’s works teach us to fear him.

1. God’s works demand our praise.

Look with me again at verse 1 of our psalm:

“Praise the Lord!
I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart,
    in the company of the upright, in the congregation.”

The psalmist resolves to praise God with his whole heart and publicly. And right off the bat, this first verse convicted me as I prepared this past week. How often do I praise the Lord with half of my heart, and not my whole heart? Have I ever truly praised God with my whole heart?

These were convicting questions for me this week. It made Psalm 86:11 come alive for me… as the Psalmist prays, “unite my heart to fear your name.”So that I may praise you not with half my heart, but with my whole heart.

Oh, to have a congregation, this whole church filled with whole-hearted worshipers, so captivated by God’s glory… so in awe of his wonderful works, that they are moved to praise him with their entire being. That’s what the psalmist envisions for us here.

I can remember when my wife and I came to Cities Church for the first time. We were captivated by this building. When I walked in, I could not help but say, “Wow!” The huge wooden beams holding up the towering ceilings. The beautiful stone steeple. And the colorful stained-glass windows. Look around for a second! This place was designed and built by man. That’s amazing!

This building is truly a wonderful work of art, a feat of human engineering, and we rightly admire its beauty. How much more should we admire the wonderful works of God?!

Get this: The man who designed this building… God made him. God designed him and gave him every breath of his life… And that is true of each and every one of us in this room.

By a miracle of God’s hand, our hearts are beating with blood, our lungs are filled with air, and this earth is still rotating around the sun! Hebrews 1 says that Jesus Christ “upholds the universe by the word of his power.” Meaning, if Jesus were to snap his fingers, you and I would cease to exist in an instant.

Every breath we take, and every moment we continue to exist is due solely to the mercy of God.

Whether we consider that, or the intricate machinery inside every cell in our bodies to the vast reaches of the Milky Way galaxy and billions of galaxies beyond ours. 

God’s wonderful works are all around us in creation and give us countless reasons to praise him! So be an admirer of God’s works in creation…

Thank God for the breath you just took!

Like Edwards, consider the complex web of the spider… God made that!

Consider how the honey bee gets nectar from the flower… God designed that!

Consider the beauty of the night sky… and marvel at the Creator of it all.

The theme of our whole lives should be verse 2…

“Great are the works of the LORD,
    studied by all who delight in them.”

The works of Yahweh are to be studied. Literally, the Hebrew word ‘darash’ means “to seek out.”

We are to study, to diligently seek out the works of the LORD anddelight in them. We should be awe-struck admirers of God’s works in creation, and we should be eager students of God’s word.

The Bible is the works of God written. The works of God written for us. God wrote a book. And we ought to read it, and study it with delight, and meditate on it all the day!

At a chosen time each day,

Read the Bible while you may,

Do not start until you pray,

Ask, “What does this passage say?”

Look for Him who is the Way,

Find a lesson for today,

Pray once more, and go your way.

May we be a people that eagerly studies and delights in the works of God in nature and in Scripture for his works demand our praise.

Look with me at verses 3-6

“Full of splendor and majesty is his work,
    and his righteousness endures forever.
4 He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered;
    the Lord is gracious and merciful.
5 He provides food for those who fear him;
    he remembers his covenant forever.
6 He has shown his people the power of his works,
    in giving them the inheritance of the nations.”

This brings us to part two.

2. God’s works reveal His character.

This is a basic point. What you do reveals who you are. Your works reveal your character. The character of a good student is revealed by their long hours of study. The character of a good parent is revealed by the love and attention they give to their children.

And likewise,the righteous character of God is revealed by the splendor and majesty of his work. And we must press on to know the character of God through his works. Why? Why is that important?

Well, we cannot truly love what we don’t know. 

Am I a good husband to my wife if I know literally nothing about her? If I make no effort to learn about her, her hobbies, her interests…?

So too with God!

We cannot love God very well if we know nothing about him! And make no effort to learn about him!

And if the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart then we must press on to know God’s character. 

And we see God’s character on display in these verses.

Particularly, on the heels of Psalm 110: I believe these verses are celebrating the Greater Exodus, the Greater Provision, and the Greater Conquest of the Melchizedekian Priest-King who is David’s Lord.

Verse 4 says that God’s works reveal that he is gracious and merciful.

This refers to the Exodus… Where God reveals his glory to Moses and says,

“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…”

And we know that God’s righteousness, grace, and mercy is seen most clearly in the greater Exodus of the cross of Christ. The Israelites were delivered from the tyranny of Pharoah and we as New Covenant Christians are delivered from the tyranny of sin and Satan.

Verse 5 tells us that God provides food for those who fear him, which calls to mind the manna he provided for his people in the Wilderness.

And God’s provision is seen more clearly in the greater manna, Jesus himself who says,

“I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

Lastly, verse 6:

“He has shown his people the power of his works,

in giving them the inheritance of the nations.”

This, of course, refers to the conquest of the promised land under Joshua.

We see God’s power in our greater Joshua. Jesus is the greater Joshua… the conquering Warrior-King of Psalm 110, leading his people to a new Promised Land in the New Heavens and the New Earth.

We must know that God’s perfect grace, mercy, provision, and power is sufficient to meet all of our needs…

If you are broken over sin… if you have failed… rest in God’s mercy and grace today.

If you are anxious about your life… are you not of more value than a sparrow? Trust the God who provides!

If you see chaos in the world around you, remember God’s power. That right now he is ruling and reigning over all nations for his glorious purposes!

God’s works demand our praise; they reveal his character, and point three…

3. God’s works teach us to fear Him.

Look at verses 7-8, and notice how God’s works and God’s words are put in parallel here,

“The works of his hands are faithful and just;
    all his precepts are trustworthy;
8 they are established forever and ever,
    to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.”

God is trustworthy, and so everything he says (his precepts, his words) are trustworthy. In other words, you can stake your life upon God’s words!

And verse 8 says that because God’s word is trustworthy, we are to obey him faithfully and uprightly.

The psalmist continues in verses 9-10,

“He sent redemption to his people;
    he has commanded his covenant forever.
    Holy and awesome is his name!”

From the very beginning, after humanity fell into sin, God has promised redemption… And the whole story of the Bible, through God’s covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David… all culminate in Jesus Christ and the New Covenant.

“God sent his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Those who reject Christ will be separated from God forever. But those who receive Christ are given the right to become children of God. Forgiven of all their sin, and given new hearts to obey God with joy. This is beautifully prophesied in Jeremiah 32:40, which says, 

“I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.”

In the new covenant, God puts the fear of him in our hearts, so that we do not turn away from him! What a promise! Has God done that in your life? Do you fear God? What does it mean to fear God?

Proverbs 3 says that to fear the LORD is to turn away from evil.

Psalm 112:1 says that the blessed man fears the Lord and greatly delights in his commandments.

But I think our church’s mission statement also helps us here: Cities Church exists to make joyful disciples of Jesus who remember his realness in all of life.

I think that’s a good definition of the fear of the Lord. To fear the Lord is to remember his realness in all of life. Do you remember God’s realness in all of life? Has God put the fear of him in your heart? 

Do his wonderful works cause you to marvel in awe at him? When you hear the good news of the gospel, does your soul cry out, “Holy and awesome is his name!”?

If that is not true of you this morning, ask God to change your heart. Ask him to put the fear of the LORD in your heart today.

Because, as verse 10 says,

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;”

This is crucial for us to get. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom… Not one helpful tip … Not one thing to tack on to the Christian life… but the beginning of wisdom… the foundation of the good life.

Meaning, if you are not basing your life upon the reality of who God is as your Creator, and what he has done as our Redeemer, then you are a fool! If God is not the central reality of your life, then whatever you are building in your life is a straw-house doomed to fail.

Jesus says,

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”

Or as Psalm 111 puts it,

“Those who practice [the fear of the LORD] have a good understanding.”

So as we close here, I want us all to reflect on this question: Where do I need to grow in practicing the fear of the LORD? In your home, in church, at work, at school. What would it look like for you to remember the realness of Jesus in all of life?

God’s works are indeed wonderful.

They demand our praise.

They reveal his character.

And they teach us to fear him.

His praise endures forever!

Let’s pray.