Following is a transcript of the message preached by Pastor Randy Curtis (Frenchtown Baptist Church) at the EMF Good Friday worship service held on March 25, 2016.
Pastors from the EMF, or Evangelical Ministers Fellowship, shared the pulpit on Good Friday at Living Hope Christian Church and West Kingstown Baptist Church.
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The Conspiracy of the Cross
Randy Curtis, Pastor of Frenchtown Baptist Church
Shared with Permission of Pastor Randy Curtis
I’d like to talk a little bit about the conspiracy of the cross. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a big conspiracy. But that’s not at all a secret. Probably most you know about the conspiracy, right?
It’s all over the Gospels. Jesus comes along preaching, teaching, and doing miracles. But he ruffles a lot of important feathers. He angers and offends the leaders of the Jews – the religious and political establishment. After all, Jesus was campaigning an anti-establishment Messiah.
So the Jewish leaders at the highest level plot to kill Jesus. First, they try to trap him into publicly saying something incriminating, but that doesn’t work. So then they agree to pay Judas money to lead them to Jesus so that they could covertly arrest Jesus under the cover of darkness. When they had arrested Jesus, the Jewish leaders interrogated him illegally. They put Jesus on trial, bypassing and bending their own rules of legal procedure. They falsely accuse him of trumped up charges. They bring forward witnesses who lie and give false testimony. Finally, they get him on a charge of blasphemy when Jesus truthfully admits to being who he really is: the Son of God.
The Jewish leaders bring Jesus to Pilate the Roman governor. At this point Jesus becomes a pawn in a complex political game. Jesus becomes one more political battle between the Jews and Pilate, between Pilate and King Herod, between Herod and the Jews, and between the Jews and Pilate yet again. Finally, the Jewish leaders successfully manipulate and maneuver Pilate into crucifying Jesus. Pilate is convinced that Jesus is innocent, but he is backed into a political corner and feels he has no choice. He agrees to execute an innocent man.
And here in John 19, in the passage read earlier, we see the results of this conspiracy. Jesus is put to death. He is totally at their mercy. It appears that he has fallen victim to the plots and schemes of the powers that be.
In verse 17, Jesus is forced to carry his own cross to his place of execution. In verse 18, Jesus is crucified. Crucifixion was a combination of torture and execution. In that day, it was the most terrible, the most feared, and the most humiliating method of putting someone to death. He is crucified between two others. He is put to death with the riff raff.
In verse 19, Pilate has a sign put on the cross. The sign called Jesus the King of the Jews. But this wasn’t a compliment. Pilate didn’t truly believe Jesus was a king. He is making fun of Jesus. And Pilate is mocking the Jews. We can see in verses 21-22 that Pilate is using this sign to gain points in his political struggles against the Jewish leaders. As Jesus is dying, he is still being used as a pawn in the political games.
In verse 20, we read that many people would have passed by the cross. They would have seen Jesus dying. They would have been able to read the sign. Jesus is being publicly shamed, ridiculed, and humiliated.
In verses 23-24, the Roman soldiers take the clothes from Jesus. So Jesus is left with nothing. And right there in Jesus’ presence, they divide up Jesus’ clothes amongst them.
In verses 25-27, we see that Jesus’ own mother and his friends are looking on, presumably weeping and grieving. Jesus knows he is going to die, so he asks one of his disciples to take care of his mother. It’s a heart-wrenching scene.
In verses 28-29, Jesus grows thirsty. Extreme thirst was part of the torture of crucifixion. The soldiers give Jesus something to drink. The soldiers aren’t being merciful. They gave drinks to extend life. They were drawing out the torture as long as possible.
And then, in verse 30, Jesus died. The conspiracy has succeeded. They wanted to kill Jesus, and now Jesus is dead.
And verses 31-35 give us undeniable evidence that Jesus was totally and completely dead. At the request of the Jews, the soldiers are told to put a quick end to this crucifixion. Their method of doing this was breaking the legs of the criminals. Without the use of their legs, the criminals are not able to pull themselves up to breathe, and they soon suffocate. But when the soldiers come to Jesus to break his legs, they find that he is already dead. They test his corpse to make certain that he is dead. They stab Jesus’ body in the side with a spear and find him to be dead. Jesus has been dead for a little while. In verse 35, the author of the Gospel of John says that he himself was there and saw it with his own eyes. Jesus is definitively dead. He is dead past the point of resuscitation.
In verses 38-42, Jesus’ friends come and take his body. They lay his body in a cave tomb excavated from rock. They sealed in the corpse with a large stone. Jesus is dead and buried.
Jesus becomes one more failed, flash-in-the-pan Messiah. He is just one more victim of politics and power struggles. He has been ground up by the gears of the corrupt system. The leaders of the establishment conspired against him, and their plans have succeeded.
But that is not the conspiracy I wanted to talk about tonight. There is a far greater, deeper, and more complex conspiracy at work here. There is an ancient plot that has come to a head. Someone has been playing a very long game in order to bring Jesus to his death on the cross. Of course, I am talking about the conspiracy perpetrated by God himself.
You can see the evidence of this conspiracy throughout the description of Jesus’ crucifixion. Did you notice in verse after verse John says that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ fulfills Scripture? In other words, in the Old Testament, God had predicted and planned the death of Jesus.
Look at verse 37. John quotes from the prophet Zechariah. God spoke through Zechariah a little over 500 years before the crucifixion. And now, what God said 500 years before, has been fulfilled in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The very fact that the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side was all part of God’s plan.
Then there are at least three references to the Psalms: in verses 24, 28, and 36. These are all references to psalms attributed to David who lived about 1,000 years before Jesus. God inspired David to write down these words 1,000 years before these events took place. But David wrote those psalms out of his own experiences. That means that God had been working out the details and circumstances of David’s life so that when David wrote about his own life he ended up pointing forward to the death of Jesus on the cross. So when the soldiers were cold-heartedly dividing up Jesus’ garments, they were playing out what David wrote down in Psalm 22:18. When Jesus grew thirsty on the cross, he was fulfilling Psalm 69:21. When the soldiers decided not to break Jesus’ legs, they were acting according to what David described in Psalm 34:20.
But our text in verse 36 is not just referring to Psalm 34:20. It is also referring to the instructions that God gave the Israelites in Exodus 12:46 and Numbers 9:12. Those are the instructions of how the Israelites were to prepare the Passover lamb. The first Passover was celebrated 1,200-1,500 years before Jesus. The Passover was the feast during which God saved his people Israel from slavery in Egypt. When the Passover lamb was slaughtered and prepared, the Israelites were to be careful not to break any bones. The Passover was supposed to be celebrated every year, so year after year after year for a millennium and a half the Israelites were to be acting out a picture of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. And when was Jesus crucified? What time of year was it? It was the Passover. Jesus was crucified during the Passover feast, and of all the men crucified that day, he was the only one whose bones were not broken. Coincidence? I think not. It was all a conspiracy. It was all God’s plan.
And Jesus was not a victim of God’s plan. No, Jesus was an accomplice. He was in on it. Look at verse 28. It says: After this, when Jesus knew that everything was now accomplished. See? Jesus knew the plan, and he knew that the plan had come to completion. Then he says that he is thirsty, and it is possible that he says this intentionally in order to fulfill Psalm 69:21. Jesus is following the plan. If we had time, we could look at the other gospels, and we would see that even the fact he takes a drink is all a part of the plan. And then, in verse 30, Jesus declares, “It is finished.” His job is done. The plan is complete. And then he gives up his spirit. He voluntarily dies. In a sense, the soldiers do not kill Jesus. The crucifixion does not kill Jesus. Jesus just dies.
Jesus had talked about it already in John 10. He said that he was the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. He said that no one has the authority to kill him. Jesus had the authority to lay down his own life. And here on the cross, Jesus did it – he laid down his life. It was all according to the plan. It was his plan all along to die.
If we had more time we could see how it’s been talked about all throughout the Gospel of John. Jesus keeps hinting that this day is coming – that the hour is coming when the Son of Man would be lifted up, when the works that the Father had given to him would be complete, when Judas would betray him, when he would go where his disciples could not follow, when he would give his flesh and blood to the world, when he would lay down his life for the sheep, and so on. This was all the plan of Jesus and the Father. This was their conspiracy.
So out of all the people involved in the crucifixion, the soldiers, the Jews, the crowds, Pilate, and Herod – out of all the people involved, it was the man on the cross who was really behind it all. It was the seemingly helpless victim who was really in charge. From the cross, Jesus was running the show. And when he gave up his life, he said, “It is finished,” because the plan was complete. He had done what he came to do – because what he came to do was die.
But how could this possibly make any sense? What could Jesus hope to accomplish by dying? Why is it that God has orchestrated thousands of years of human history and spent centuries recording prophecies, all to bring about this one moment when the Son of God would give up his life on a cross? What is the point?
For 19 chapters so far, the Gospel of John has been preparing us to answer those questions. We don’t have time to consider all of the answers in the Gospel, so let me just point to the answer hinted at in our passage. As we have already seen, Jesus is compared to the Passover lamb. In the first Passover, God was going to kill the firstborn child in every house in the land of Egypt. In one night, God was going to slaughter every firstborn child in the land. The entire land was under the threat of death. However, God gave the Israelites a way to protect their firstborn children. Each Israelite household was to take a perfect, unblemished, spotless lamb. They were to kill it without breaking its bones. They were to drain the blood. And put the blood over their doors. And when God saw the blood he would pass over that house. The firstborn child would be saved. The Passover lamb would die in the place of the firstborn child. By the death of the lamb, the child was given life. And it was by means of the first Passover that God saved the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. When the firstborn children of all of the Egyptians and the firstborn son of Pharaoh were slain, the Egyptians set the Israelites free.
And here it is in John 19 – the feast Passover. Jesus, the perfect man is put to death. None of his bones are broken. The spear pierces his side and some of his blood is symbolically drained. Jesus is put to death just like a Passover lamb. And like the Passover lamb, Jesus died so that others might live.
God has condemned us all to death. Each and every one of us is under the threat of death – a death that we deserve. Each and every one of us lives in slavery. We are slaves of the sin and darkness within our own souls. We are rebels against God, and we are slaves to our own rebellion.
But Jesus came to be the Passover lamb for us. He died in our place. He died so that we might live and so that we might be free from our bondage to sin and to death. That is what Jesus came to do. That was his plan all along. He came to earth to lay down his life so that others might live.
But why would he do this? Why would the Son of God die for us? Why would God the Father plan for thousands of years to put his own Son to death?
The Gospel of John has already told us. For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son. On the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested, John says that Jesus loved his own who were in the world, and he loved them to the end. Jesus himself said, greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friends.
See that’s the reason. It’s love. This conspiracy – it’s been a conspiracy of love. It’s about God’s love for the world. It’s about Jesus’ love for his friends.
And it’s not a pansy, sappy kind of love. No, it’s the love of a marine who falls on a grenade to save his comrades. It’s the lay-down-your life kind of love. It’s extreme love. It’s radical love. That’s the kind of love Jesus has.
And it’s not just a generic, general love. Jesus didn’t lay down his life out of a vague sense of love for the general human race. His love is very personal. You can see his personal love in the passage. Jesus is hanging on the cross in agony. He’s busy accomplishing the greatest thing that has ever been done. He’s saving the world. And while he is suffering and dying, he looks down and sees his mother who is probably a widow. And in the midst of his pain, Jesus asks one of his disciples to take care of his mother. See Jesus doesn’t just care about the world in general. Jesus cares about the individual people in the world. Jesus cares about you, and he cares about me.
And it’s out of that kind of love – that extreme and personal love – that Jesus laid down his life on the cross. It was that kind of love that drove God the Father and God the Son to concoct this conspiracy and to carry it out in spite of the great cost it involved.
This is a love worth experiencing. This is a Jesus worth getting to know. How do you come to know Jesus? How do you become one of Jesus’ friends? How do you receive the life that Jesus died to give?
The passage tells us in verse 35. It says, He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows he is telling the truth. The eyewitness is the disciple in verses 26-27 who took in Jesus’ mother. He was there at the cross. He saw it all happen. And this same disciple is the one who wrote the Gospel of John. He wrote these words so that you and I would read them and believe in Jesus.
Because that is what it takes. It takes trusting in Jesus. It takes throwing yourself upon the mercy of Jesus. It takes claiming Jesus as your Lord and as your Passover lamb. When you do that, you will live. You will be Jesus’ friend, and you will escape condemnation. You will be saved from death. And you will know the life that only Jesus can provide.
What does such faith look like? It looks like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. These were Jewish leaders. They were members of the Jewish government. They had a lot of sympathy for Jesus, but they had been afraid to go public with their faith in Jesus. They were closet disciples of Jesus.
And now Jesus was dead. The Jesus movement appears to be over. Joseph and Nicodemus could have kept quiet and no one would ever had known that they were closet disciples. They could have kept it hidden.
But, no, in the hour of Jesus’ death, they decide to go public. They choose to be associated with a disgraced and denounced dead man. When all of the world is ridiculing and mocking Jesus, Joseph and Nicodemus honor him with an expensive and dignified burial.
They know that by publicly identifying themselves with Jesus, they are exposing themselves to ridicule as well. They are opening themselves up to persecution. They know they will probably be shunned by the mainstream society.
And yet, they do it anyway. By burying Jesus, they own up to their faith in Jesus. They claim the crucified Jesus as their king, their lord, their master and teacher. They are willing to follow him even in death no matter what the cost to themselves personally.
How about you? Do you know Jesus and his love and the life he gives? Do you believe in Jesus? And if you say you do, have you gone public with your faith? Have you come to terms with the fact that your Lord died on a cross, or do you like to gloss over that part? Are you willing to follow Jesus no matter the cost?
To the world in Jesus’ day, it looked like Jesus’ life ended in pain and agony and humiliation and disgrace. But we know there was more going on that day. There was a reason that Jesus died. It was all a part of the plan. And though the world might think it strange that we worship and serve a crucified Jesus, we know that in the plan of God, the death of Jesus on the cross was the central act in all of history. And so we should choose to respond by believing in Jesus and his death on the cross. And we should boldly tell the world about the crucifixion. We should join with the author of the Gospel in testifying to others about Jesus who out of his extreme and personal love laid down his life so that we might live.