Nakedness Assumed by Christ

I see it is your custom to stand for the reading of the word, and I ask you to turn to Psalm 22, and we'll stand in honor of the reading of the word. Let us stand. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me and from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not hear, and in the night season, and am not silent. But you are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in you, they trusted, and you delivered them. They cried to you and were delivered, they trusted in you and were not ashamed. But I am a worm and no man. a reproach of men and despised by the people. All those who see me ridicule me. They shoot out the lip. They shake the head, saying, He trusted in the Lord. Let him rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him. But you are he who took me out of the womb. You made me trust while on my mother's breasts. I was cast upon you from birth, from my mother's womb. You have been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, for there is none to help. Many balls have surrounded me. Strong balls of Bashan have encircled me. They gape at me with their mouths like a raging and roaring lion. I am poured out like water. and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It has melted within me. My strength is dried up like a pot's herd, and my tongue clings to my jaws. You have brought me to the dust of death, for dogs have surrounded me. The congregation of the wicked has enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They look and stare at me. They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cost lots. But you, O Lord, do not be far from me. O my strength, hasten to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth. and from the horns of the wild oxen, you have answered me. Blessed God be his word. Please be seated. It's a great honor and joy to be in this congregation and to be bringing you the Word of God today. I'm very thankful to the deacons and to Pastor Jeff Riddle for this opportunity, and I want you to know that my wife and I, and I'm sure you, have been much in prayer for God's outpouring not only upon us here, but also upon Pastor Riddle as he ministers in the Northern Neck today. Our meditation for today is found in John 19 and verses 23 to 24. Please turn to it if you will. John 19 verses 23 to 24. Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts, to each soldier a part, and also the tunic. Now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top in one piece. They said therefore among themselves, Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be. that the scripture might be fulfilled which says, they divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. Therefore the soldiers did these things. The soldiers were acting both as executioners and guards. Having done their brutal work of nailing Jesus and the two thieves to their crosses on the hill of Calvary, they now stood guard over their victims. They were responsible for seeing that nobody removed the bodies from their crosses before the last vestiges of life had left them and they were properly dead. And as they waited, they gave themselves to the task of dividing the spoil that had come into their hands. For it was the custom of criminals in those days to be crucified naked. And the clothing that was taken from the bodies of those who were crucified became the property of the men who carried out the execution. So in verses 23 to 24 we have an account of what these Roman soldiers did. And it may seem at first sight that there is nothing of any real significance besides a historical detail in these words that are recorded here. that this is just the record of some coarse and ugly deed that was done by these unfeeling soldiers, which we may quickly pass over without much comment. But if we are tempted to dismiss these verses as of no great importance, there are two things that should make us stop and think. The first is that this incident on the cross is recorded in all four Gospels. Not all the other incidents are recorded in every Gospel, but this incident is. And then second is that we are told very directly in verse 24 by the Apostle John that what happened at this point of the proceedings was a fulfilment of a great prophecy. This happens, says John, that the scripture might be fulfilled which says, they divided my garments among them and for my clothing they cost lots. It's a quotation from the psalm we read, Psalm 22 and verse 18, a psalm written by David about 18, about, goodness me, I don't know what's going on this morning, about 2,000 years, 1,000 years, sorry, before the crucifixion of Jesus. And it not only helps us to understand what was happening at the cross, but it also tells us something that is worthy of our attention today. Now, before we look more closely at the actual words themselves, I think a general observation needs to be made here concerning the wonder and the mystery of the Word of God. Here is this prophecy in the Old Testament, written hundreds of years before Jesus died, and it occurs in a psalm that speaks specifically of his sufferings upon the cross of Calvary. More than that, David tells us in verse 27 of that psalm, that all the ends of the earth shall remember. That is, they will remember these words that David was inspired to write. And as a result, he says, they will turn to the Lord. It speaks, in other words, not only of the sufferings of Christ, but of the glory that is going to follow as a result of those sufferings. And of course, when Jesus went to the cross, that is exactly what happened. Through his death at Calvary, he purchased redemption for mankind. And we need to ask ourselves, how on earth was David ever able to guess such a thing? He couldn't have. Not in a million years. The only explanation is that although Psalm 22 contains the words of David, they are at the same time, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the words breathed out of the mouth of God himself. They are correct without error. in every detail. And I want you to notice the repeated emphasis upon my clothing and my garments, because you will remember that just before the actual crucifixion, Jesus was taken from Pilate by the soldiers to the barracks of the Praetorium God, that is, the governor's special god of protection. And there the soldiers took Christ's clothing off of him and put on a scarlet robe and a crown of thorns as they bowed the knee before him and said, Hail, King of the Jews. But, and this is the point I want you to notice, in their abject ignorance of scripture, they did not leave that scarlet robe on Jesus. For Matthew says that when they had mocked him, they took the robe off him, put his own clothes on him, and led him away to be crucified. Now why did they do that? These soldiers at the barracks were certainly not intending to fulfil the scriptures in Psalm 22. They weren't intending to do that more than those at the cross who cost lots and gambled for his clothing. Nevertheless, we know that under the providence of God, they made sure that the clothing that was going to be divided among the soldiers at the cross was not going to be the scarlet robe, but Christ's very own clothes, as predicted by David. This clothing, you will know, consisted of a head cloth, some sandals, a girdle or belt, and an outward cloak. These four items were divided among the four soldiers there. The fifth item of clothing was a tunic. It was an inner garment of wool, without seam, woven from the top in one piece, says John. And it was because the soldiers didn't want to tear up that garment that was woven in one piece that they cost lots for it, whose it shall be. Who then can doubt that the Bible is the very Word of God? And that even in such small details it stands sure, it is settled, it can never be changed, it can never be faltered, it can never be broken. Well, coming now to our text, how are we to understand these words? They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cost lots. When we think of Calvary and all the sufferings that Jesus endured, how are we to understand this matter of his clothing being taken away? What does it speak of? In answering the question, I think we have to say at once that when Scripture speaks of the removal of our Lord's clothes, it is not just referring to the sorrow of losing His very last possessions. To see the very last things you have, everything else has been taken from you, but to see the very last few things that remain to you also taken away was indeed a sorrow to all of those who were crucified by the Romans. But this is not the sorrow of which our text speaks. There has to be another explanation which I will come to in due course. But before we ponder that deeper meaning of the of the removal of his clothes, we need to recognize that this removal of his clothes speaks to us first of the absolute poverty in which Jesus died. The absolute poverty in which Jesus died. Now, poverty was something that was associated with the whole life of our Lord Jesus Christ. We see it at His birth, when He was born in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid on the straw. Now, that may sound very quaint to us at this stage of history, but it wasn't at the time. It was a poor and squalid place for anyone to lie in. And yet, even in the midst of that poverty, There was glory. The shepherds were moved by the Holy Spirit to come and worship Him. An angel choir sang to Him. The wise men from the east were guided by a star to Bethlehem to bring Him expensive gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. There was more than poverty surrounding His birth. Likewise, as our Lord conducted his public ministry and moved around Judea and Galilee, where he had nowhere to lay his head, he had no home to call his own, there was still ample evidence of his glory. We see his power in turning the water into wine, to multiply the loaves and the fishes, to bring a coin out of a fisher's mouth in order to pay taxes to the state. He is poor, but he is not a prisoner of his circumstances, because as the scripture says, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. Again, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on an ass's colt, it was borrowed from a stranger. But even there, the people threw their garments in the way so that the occult walked over it, and they cried Hosanna, which means save now. They recognised him as their promised king, and they welcomed him. Our Lord's poverty throughout his life, I say, is not without evidence also. of his divine glory. But here at the cross, I want you to notice his absolute poverty. Jesus Christ, who is the creator of all things and the owner of all things, dies unclothed. He dies as naked as the day he was born. As the poet says, all rights denied, naked Christ died. And so even the lost things that remained to him were taken away and possessed by others. He died in physical, material, abject poverty. No wonder Paul says, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich. Now Paul, of course, was talking about something far more than material poverty. And so secondly, we must say that this absolute poverty in which Jesus died, absolute, was on account of sin. Because when the New Testament speaks of the sufferings of Jesus Christ upon the cross, they are always related to our sin. It includes, of course, the fact that Jesus was taken by wicked hands and unjustly slain. But the emphasis of Scripture is not on the wickedness of the men who crucified him. The emphasis is on the sin that Jesus accepted and paid for when he died for us on the cross. This is what is implied by John in verse 17, and he bearing his cross. That is to say, the instrument of execution, the symbol of guilt and condemnation. It was the instrument devised by the Romans a most cruel instrument for executing lawbreakers or criminals. And even in the Old Testament, God pronounced a curse upon anyone who was hung, whether from a tree, or any wooden pole, or the cross. In the Old Testament we read, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. So when John speaks here of Jesus bearing his cross, he means that Jesus was identifying himself with us as lawbreakers, as sinners in the sight of God, who deserved death. He himself, says Peter, bore our sins in his own body on the tree. And again, says Peter, Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. The same thing is implied here in verse 18, where John says that they crucified him and two others with him, one on either side and Jesus in the center. The significance of that reference is that it is a fulfillment of Isaiah 53. John is verifying that what was said by Isaiah in chapter 53 was now being fulfilled, that the Messiah would pour out his life unto death and be numbered with the transgressors and bear the sins of many. So it was because of sin that Jesus suffered the shame and the humiliation and death of the cross. Not his sin, but yours and mine and the sins of his people, the sins of all. who would come to him in repentance and faith. And so Paul says, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. This, I say, is the sorrow that the Messiah endures and is referred to in Psalm 22, verses 16 to 18. They pierced my hands and my feet, symbolizing the act of crucifixion. I can count all my bones, because he's naked. They look and stare at me. They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cost lots. His nakedness, I say, was a sign that he himself, on the cross, was accursed of God, that He was bearing the guilt and the shame of our sin. That is the significance of His being stripped naked. Now, today we generally have forgotten the origin and the purpose of clothes. We wear them and accept them as the proper and fitting thing to do. We don't stop to think that the wearing of clothes has deep spiritual significance. After all, Adam and Eve didn't wear clothes when they were created and put in the Garden of Eden. Somewhere along the line something happened that necessitated the wearing of clothes. Before that, God's word clearly says, they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed, because they enjoyed a divine perfection. They shone with a divine glory, so that there was no need for the covering of clothes. But then they sinned, And amazingly, we read in Genesis 3, 21, the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them. It was when they had sinned and the glory of God's image in them was marred that they had need of clothes. And God gave them clothes to cover the shame of their exposed sinful condition. My friends, we can never understand these words of Psalm 22 and John 19 unless we remember that when sin entered into the world, man could not bear to be seen as a fallen creature. There was need, instinctively felt, of concealment. So the Bible says, Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. There was a sense of guilt and shame that could not stand the full light of God's presence, that was ashamed even in the presence of each other. They had lost their perfection and they were ashamed of their fallen condition. So the scripture says, they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons, coverings. They were now sinners. They had evil in their hearts. And because of their sin, God's judgment fell upon them. God pronounced not only the curse of death, but also a separate curse to the man and his wife. To Eve he said, I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing. And to Adam he said, cursed is the ground because of you. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Yet, and this is important, in the midst of that pronouncement of judgment, the Bible says, the Lord made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them. That tells us that even in God's wrath at this time in history, He did not judge sin without restraint. He tempered his judgment upon these two with mercy. He provided covering to clothe Adam and Eve, and he did so by the slaughtering of innocent animals. And in doing so, God was showing that he was not judging man as he deserved. There was a limitation upon his judgment. there was a restraint placed upon his judgment of man's sins. Because, you know, in the Bible, when God threatens men and women with the fullness of his judgment on the last day, it is always in terms of them being stripped naked. When Israel had come to that place where There was no hope anymore, and they were to go into exile. God warned them that they would be sent into exile naked. In Isaiah 2, verse 2, God says, Plead with your mother that she put away her harlotry, lest I strip her naked and make her as the day she was born. And twenty years later, we know that the ten tribes of Israel were marched naked into captivity in Assyria. So clothes do have real significance. And the further civilization gets away from God, you know, the less respect people have for clothes as a sign and a symbol of God's grace to cover the shame and the humiliation of our sin. And so we find that the further we go away from God, the more we revert to the nudism of paganism. And what is paganism but simply ignorance and contempt of God. It is contempt of God's costly provision of his own blood as an atonement, literally a covering for our sin. And today there is pride in showing as much skin as we possibly can. But here is the amazing thing about John 19. What God did for Adam, he did not do for his own son. Clothing that was given to Adam was denied to Christ when he bore your sin and mine. And the purpose of this event on the cross is to tell us that in Jesus, sin has been fully exposed and fully judged. No mercy was shown to him. All that our sin deserved fell upon Jesus, even its shame. That is why he died as he did. That is why his clothing was removed and he cried, I can count all my bones. They look and stare at me. Christ endured the full shame of our sin on the cross. And my friends, the solemn truth is this, that unless you and I are found clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, Unless our sins are covered by His precious blood and we are adorned with His robe of sinless righteousness, a day is coming when God will fully expose our sin, when we will be stripped naked and, as the Bible says, laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do, when we will be seen by all as the filthy, self-serving sinners that we are. But the Christian's consolation as he or she looks at Jesus hanging on the cross is to know that the shame and the humiliation and the punishment of our sin has been borne by Him. All of it. Which brings me briefly to our last thought. What is the effect of beholding Christ in absolute poverty upon the cross. Well, there were some people at Calvary on whom it had no serious effect at all. They passed by, says Matthew, and they derided him, wagging their heads and saying, as David predicted in Psalm 22, you who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself. If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. He trusted in God, let him trust in Him to deliver him. And they hurried on to the city to do whatever they had to do to prepare. for celebrating Passover. Others again, says Luke, who assembled to see the sight, when they saw what had taken place, they returned home beating their breasts. They were deeply troubled, they were emotionally stirred, but it was only a temporary phenomenon, nothing more. They went home and carried on as usual. And that too, you know, happens today. People hear the truth and for a moment it seems as if their lives are about to be changed. They may be tearful and remorseful, but it doesn't last. It's soon forgotten. There was, however, a third group at the cross. These were those who stood at Calvary and what they saw was the Son of God himself. One of them was the dying thief, you remember, who hung at the side of Jesus and after first cursing him, blaspheming him, he repented and cried, Lord, remember me when you enter into your kingdom. And Jesus said to him today, you will be with me in paradise. But he was not the only one who was changed by what he saw and heard at the cross. There were these soldiers who did the sordid deed and threw the dice for our Lord's tunic. And Matthew says concerning them, when the centurion and those who were with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, truly, This was the Son of God. And it may well be that these soldiers were among the first fruits of our Lord's prayer, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Here were men who a little while earlier were gambling for the clothes of Jesus without a thought of worship or respect or reverence for his person. But now we find them saying, truly, this was not just a man. This was, because he's dead, this was the Son of God. And what that means, my friends, is that what Christ suffered on the cross has power to change the lives of people. It changed the lives of people then, and it changes the lives of people today. And you know, that is the only reason why preachers preach the gospel and the cross in churches today. We do not tell the story of Jesus and his cross in order to learn from the past, to just remember the past as the Jews religiously do regarding the Holocaust. We don't come to the Lord's table merely to commemorate a sacred event that occurred a long, long time ago. No, when we come, we come because of the cross of Christ and because it remains, even today, the power of God unto salvation. Those who come to the Lord's table are those who confess that what happened on the cross has power to change their lives, and has changed their lives. They have looked at the cross and have seen how he bore their shame and their sin, and their lives have been changed. As Paul says, he gave himself for us to deliver us from this present evil age. And friends, if we have looked to Christ crucified for salvation, we have been severed from our old sinful past, from the idols we had pursued, and even from our own selfish will. And that is what we give thanks for when we come to church, when we come to the Lord's table, that our nakedness, the nakedness of our sinfulness and shame was assumed by Jesus Christ on our behalf on the cross. And we can sing with triumph, Jesus, thy blood and righteousness, my beauty are, my glorious dress, Mids flaming worlds in these arrayed, with joy shall I lift up my head. Bold shall I stand in that great day, for who ought to my charge shall lay. Fully absolved from these I am from sin and fear and guilt and shame. Oh, let the dead now hear thy voice. Bid, Lord, thy banished ones rejoice. Their beauty this, their glorious dress. Jesus, the Lord, our righteousness. If there is someone here this morning who cannot yet rejoice in this truth, whose life has not yet been changed by what Christ did upon the cross. It is the Lord Jesus himself who is here this morning and who invites you to come to him saying, he who comes to me I will in no way cast out. And I want to ask you as we come to the end of our service if you would not take the words of our closing hymn and make them your prayer of faith and commitment to Jesus Christ. And use these words as your prayer for him to save you. And so our final hymn is the hymn in the bulletin, Rock of Ages Cleft for Me. And I've asked Joe if we could just recite, not sing, the third stanza. And I have a reason for doing that, because it fits in so beautifully with the theme of our meditation today. And I want us just to break from the music and to read the words and ponder them in that different way. Just for verse three. I'd like to also add that this was the most favourite verse of any hymn that Spurgeon used to quote in his sermons. He quoted it more often, almost in nearly every sermon at the end. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. And the reporter who was reporting on his sermons in the Monday morning newspaper made a comment one day and he said, I'd like to inform Mr. Spurgeon that we are now sufficiently informed of the vacuity that is in his hand. to which Spurgeon replied the next week that he always had to quote these words because they were always true. Rock of Ages cleft for me. Shall we stand?