Pastor Muri's message from Sunday (part 4)

Jesus looks through His grief-distorted vision and sees His mother sitting there at the foot of the cross, agonizing over His sorrow and His suffering, and He says to her, “Mother, John here is going to take care of you.” Not the words He used, but we could maybe translate them: “Mother, [end of track 5, 4:57] I’m giving you over to the nurturing care and the protective custody of my beloved disciple John. He’ll take care of you in my place. Don’t worry. Don’t sorrow overmuch. John will take care of you.”

That would be the expanded version. That’s what Mary is hearing from her Son in the words, “Woman, behold your son.”

But then Jesus speaks to John too. And I think there’s encouragement in both of these phrases. He says to John, “Behold your mother.”

You say, “Well there’s nothing to take home from that.”

Oh, wait a minute. You have worked very hard in your imagination to get yourself inside the soul of Mary. Now I need you to work overtime this morning and get back outside of Mary and crawl into John. Okay. Now see the world through John’s eyes.

You find yourself at the foot of the cross, looking at Jesus through the eyes of the apostle John. He was grieved. He was deeply grieved by his temporary cowardice.

You remember when Jesus was speaking to His disciples, and He said to them in Matthew 26:31:

You will all fall away because of me this night.

And do you remember blustering Peter saying:

Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!

And what we sometimes miss is the phrase:

And all the disciples said the same [thing].

So John, who is one of all the disciples, is saying at the same time Peter’s saying, “Oh, no. Not me. If everybody else denies you, not me.” John said it too.

And they did it, verse 56:

Then all the disciples [forsook] him and fled.

Peter and John included. And they did, John and Peter did turn back. We kind of tried to recreate that narrative a couple weeks ago. But Peter, following afar off somewhere, John, at some point, I don’t know how long it took, John found himself working all the way back to the foot of the cross. The only one of the Twelve who had the courage to risk personal harm and savagery to his reputation by finding himself at the foot of this crucified one.

But he’s there. And he’s there, I think, for one reason. He was drawn back by his deeper affections. He loves Jesus. Now he’s looking into the eyes of one he deeply loves and has deeply hurt. And the one has deeply hurt he can’t carry on a conversation with. He can’t say, “Oh, my Lord, I’ve failed you. I’m so sorry. Give me another chance and I’ll be a faithful disciple.”

That’s all empty rhetoric, because his Rabbi, his Master, His Lord is dying. And there’s some things you can say at a deathbed, and there’s some things that don’t work at a deathbed conversation, and that’s one that doesn’t work at a deathbed conversation.

And so John sits there at the foot of the cross, keenly aware of the fact that Jesus is keenly aware of the fact that he forsook Him and fled. But now he’s back because he loves Jesus, has a deep affection for Jesus. Does Jesus rebuke him?

Okay. I’m going to launch into an argument from silence now. And they don’t work long-term. But bear with me. Be patient. Indulge me a little bit.

Does Jesus rebuke John? Does He say to John through tortured visage, does He look at John and say, “I told you so. I said you’d forsake me. You were over-confident. You didn’t pray in the garden. And you fled when the soldiers came. You better buck it up if you’re going to make it tomorrow.”

No, He doesn’t say any of those things. He just simply gives him the high honor of a familial trust. He turns over to him fiduciary responsibility for His mother. [end of track 6, 5:02] That’s huge. He says to this one who has proven undependable, unfaithful in a time of crisis, “I’m giving you a huge responsibility.” What does that say to a man who’s just forsaken his Master in a moment of unfaithfulness and undependability?

Well, it says several things. It says, one, “I know the pain of your tortured soul right now as you grieve over your failure, and I tell you, I forgive you, and here’s an assignment.” That’s Jesus. That’s the Christ we serve.

When He said, “Behold your mother,” I think He was speaking to John in a way, in a manner of words that erased the guilt of his temporary abandonment and affirmed his eternal, undying, undiminished, unchanging love for Him.

Are you a child of God this morning? Is Jesus your personal Savior? The question is not, “Have you at any point abandoned Jesus, even for a time? Have you failed to follow Him with uninterrupted faithfulness and peerless love?” That’s not the question. If that was the question, all of us would have to shoot up our hands, or meekly stick up our hands just a wee bit and say, “Yes, that’s me.”

The question is simply this: Are you a child of God?

And if the answer is, “Yes,” then I want to affirm to you that you can rest assured His love for you is an everlasting love and He will never let you go. His love will never release you from it’s eternal, tenacious grip. And He will eventually complete what He started in you the day of your salvation.

But we’ve tried to crawl into the mind of Mary and we’ve tried to crawl into the mind of John, the soul of John. But the central figure in this narrative is neither Mary nor John. It’s Jesus. Now I’m not going to ask you to carefully try to insinuate yourself into the mind of Christ at this point this morning. We’re about done and I’m going to wrap this thing up. But Jesus is the one who knows what is in each of those other souls. He knows what’s in the heart of Mary. He knows what’s in the heart of John. Even better than you and I who have tried to get in there and root around and figure out what the inventory of thinking is. Jesus knows it completely, absolutely, without flaw. And He ministers to them in their most tormented thinking and tortured moments as they sit there.

James Boyce said it this way of Christ on the cross.

He is stripped of everything and yet He is leaving a rich legacy -- in fact, rich legacies -- from the cross to His executioners, who are still guarding over Him and still carrying out their nefarious assignment. He bequeaths a prayer of pardon, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” To the dying, the believing thief, He grants a promise of forgiveness: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” To John and to Mary, He grants the continuing legacy of His most tender, affirming, forgiving love.

And I would suggest that to all of us who trust Him by faith, He imparts the forgiveness of sin according to the riches of His grace.

Now I have a question for you before we pray and are dismissed. And the question is this: Why would you leave this church this morning still owning the hopelessness of grief and unshared sorrow and the persistent grief or guilt of a soul yet unhealed by the Savior’s great and gracious forgiveness and love? Why would you leave that way? If you are yet unforgiven, [end of track 7, 5:00] if your soul has not been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ, if you don’t have eternal life today, you’ve never trusted Jesus Christ -- the dying, buried, risen, victorious Savior, who is the atonement price for our sin, the sacrificed Jesus, sent into the world to be placed on the altar of the cross to be sacrificed for our forgiveness -- if you’ve never trusted Jesus Christ and found salvation through the work of Jesus, why would you leave this morning still shackled to your own guilt? Still carrying the load of your own sin? Still having the terminal sentence over your head: “Guilty as charged. Sentenced. Eternal condemnation in hell.” Why? Why? When you have the words of this compassionate Savior who is willing to forgive and to save you today?

Let’s pray.

Father, I pray that you’d do a work in our hearts. Lord there are those here today who know you and who are in the depths of sorrow. For some sorrow has become a way of life. They turn page after page after page in the book of their life and every one has sorrow written across, as a watermark on the page. But Lord, I pray that you would sustain them this morning with the confidence that you understand and in your greatest sorrow you are able to read sorrow and in your greatest sorrow you are able to minister to sorrowing hearts, and that you are not one who is unacquainted with grief, but that your greatest grief was a means for us to have victory in our grief, forgiveness and eternal, uninterrupted, unabating, unchanging love. So, Lord, I pray that we would not worship the idol of comfort and pain-free loving, but that we might worship the God of heaven who has promised never to leave us or forsake us, and the Christ who has left this earth with the words, “I go to prepare a place for you and if I go, I will come again to receive you to myself that where I am, there you may be also.” So, Lord, I pray that you would comfort those who are afflicted by their own sorrows as your children and, Lord, I pray that for those who are not yet your children that you would draw them by those cords of conviction, as the Spirit of God ministers in their souls this morning the wonderful truth of your Gospel, draw them to yourself we pray for salvation. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray all these things. Amen. [end of track 8, 3:08]