Server Outage Notice: TheSeed.info is transfering to a new Server on Tuesday April 13th
| > Sermon Archive > Sermons by Author > Dr. Wes Bredenhof > Why Christ was Pierced But None of His Bones Were Broken | Previous Next Print |
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Hymn 30:1-2 Psalm 38:1-3 (after the Law of God) Psalm 34:1,7,8 Hymn 28:4 Hymn 30:3-5 Scripture reading: John 19:28-42 Text: John 19:31-37 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
On Good Friday we traditionally focus on the cross and what happened there before and during Jesus’ death. Rarely do we pause and also consider what happens right afterward. That’s what we find in our passage for this morning. Even though Christ has died, he is continuing to experience the state of humiliation connected with his bearing our sin. We haven’t yet reached his burial in the tomb – that’s the absolute lowest point of his humiliation. Here he’s still on the cross and he has things done to him, things the exalted Son of God certainly doesn’t deserve. This Good Friday let’s look closer at John 19:31-37 and we’ll learn Why Christ was Pierced But None of His Bones Were Broken.
John tells us it was “the day of Preparation.” This was the day before the Jewish Sabbath, the Saturday. And it wasn’t just any Sabbath, it was a “high day,” because it took place around the time of the Passover. There was a law from the Old Testament which said that anyone who was hung on a tree shouldn’t be left there overnight. That was in Deuteronomy 21:23. That law didn’t say anything about the Sabbath. It was just a general rule. But for the Jews, if that was true as a general rule, it was even more true for a special Sabbath around the time of the Passover. It was against God’s law to allow these three crucified men to hang there on their crosses overnight and into the next day.
In his gospel, John often uses irony to drive home certain theological truths. It’s here too. Can you see it? The Jewish religious leaders are so concerned with what is lawful and meanwhile what is really against God’s law is the fact that they’ve crucified the only truly innocent man who has ever lived. That’s what’s really unlawful and should be offensive to any believing person. Throughout his sufferings and crucifixion, they have been ignoring the weightier matters of the law, like justice.
Their concern for the Sabbath’s purity brings the Jewish religious leaders again to the Roman governor, to Pontius Pilate. A short time before this they had asked Pilate to change the sign he had hung over Jesus. Pilate refused, “What I have written I have written.” Now they’re in front of Pilate again making another request. They want the legs of those who are crucified broken.
That wasn’t unheard of with crucifixions. At times the Romans would do this practice known as crurifragium. They would have a heavy iron mallet or club and then break the lower leg bones, the tibia and the fibula. When someone was crucified, they would use their legs to prop themselves up. But if your lower leg bones were broken, you couldn’t do that and that would lead to a quicker death by asphyxiation. So if someone wasn’t already dead on the cross, if there was crurifragium, that would soon change. Then the bodies could be taken down and buried and the holy Sabbath day wouldn’t be profaned. Meanwhile, what they were asking for was yet another profanation of the holiness of the Son of God. They were asking for yet one more cruelty to be carried out against Christ, one more thing to humiliate him and make him suffer.
Pilate granted permission for the crurifragium. The Roman soldiers came and did that to the criminals crucified on either side of Christ. But Jesus was already dead – in verse 30, we read how he said “It is finished” and then gave up his spirit. So there was no need to break his legs. It wasn’t worth the effort.
But one of the soldiers decided to double-check whether he was dead. He took his spear, just over a meter long with an iron point on it, and he jabbed it into the side of Jesus. All at once, blood and water flowed out. This has been studied by medical doctors and there are different explanations of why blood and water might have flowed from Jesus’ side. For example, it’s possible that the blood came from his heart or lungs. It’s possible that the water came from the pleural cavity which is a space surrounding the lungs which normally has a small amount of fluid in it. Or perhaps it was from the pericardial sac surrounding the heart. When a body is subjected to trauma or when there’s heart failure, those cavities can end up with a lot more fluid in them. So this is one possible explanation – there are others and we can’t know for sure what actually was medically behind this blood and water here in verse 34.
What we can know for sure is that it meant he was well and truly dead. You can’t lose all these vital bodily fluids and live. This reminds us that the Saviour who hung on the cross was a true human being. He could and he did die. A human being had to pay the price for our sins and a human being well and truly did.
There could be more intended here. Perhaps you know the hymn Rock of Ages. It goes like this:
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let my hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
Did you notice the mention of the water and the blood flowing from Christ’s wounded side? The hymn writer Augustus Toplady said it was the double-cure for sin, taking care of its guilt and its power. Many interpreters believe that John means to tell us that the blood of Christ which flowed from his dead represents the forgiveness of our sins. And certainly blood is connected with forgiveness many times in Scripture. And the water represents the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit. His Holy Spirit will set us free from the power of sin. Yes, the Bible does connect water with the Holy Spirit in several passages. Those who believe this may also refer you to 1 John 5:6, where it says Jesus came “by water and blood.” However, the reference to the water in that passage seems more likely to refer to Christ’s baptism. It’s quite possible that there’s a spiritual meaning attached to the water and the blood here in John beyond pointing to Christ’s real death.
We can be sure about the further explanation for us in verses 35-37. In verse 36, the Holy Spirit tells us that these things took place to fulfill Scripture, “Not one of his bones will be broken.” There are a few things we need to unpack here.
Obviously this is referring to the Old Testament. However, there are several Old Testament passages which use this kind of language. Exodus 12 and Numbers 9 speak about the Passover Lamb. On the evening before the Israelites left Egypt, God commanded that every Israelite family was to kill a lamb, put its blood on their doorposts, and then cook and eat the lamb. This ceremony would mean that God’s angel would not kill the first-born in the Israelite families. For us, the important thing is that God said the Israelites were to make sure that no bones of the lamb were broken. This was to symbolize the unity of the family eating the meal – that whole lamb meant that the whole family was safe during the original Passover event in Egypt. The whole lamb with no broken bones also symbolized the unity of the whole covenant people. That whole lamb meant that the whole nation was safe during the original Passover event.
But we also have Psalm 34:20. David writes about the righteous man. He experiences many afflictions, but God delivers him from them all. Then David writes about the righteous man, “He [God] keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.” The righteous man may suffer, but he will ultimately be completely protected by God and vindicated by him.
So to which of the passages is verse 36 referring to here when it says, “Not one of his bones will be broken”? We don’t have to choose. It’s referring to all of them: Exodus 12 and Numbers 9 about the Passover Lamb, and also Psalm 34:20 about the righteous man. All of these Scripture passages were being fulfilled in Christ.
First of all, Psalm 34:20. Christ was the complete righteous man. Throughout his life he never broke God’s commandments, and not one of his bones was broken. He was wholly obedient and his bones were kept whole. His perfect obedience was rendered in the place of all who believe in him. His perfect obedience qualified him to be the sinless sacrifice for our sins. So Christ completely fulfilled Psalm 34:20.
Next, Jesus was the fulfillment of the Passover Lamb. Earlier in John’s Gospel we hear John the Baptist meeting Jesus for the first time and saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Now the crucifixion itself takes place around the time of Passover, and that’s not by coincidence. Just as the Passover Lamb ensured that God’s destroying angel was turned away from the houses of the Israelites, so also Jesus as the ultimate Passover Lamb ensures that for those who believe in him, the wrath of God is turned away and his favour returned. They’re safe from the wrath they deserve. Loved ones, Jesus is our Passover Lamb. This is why none of his bones were broken, so this truth could be emphasized for us.
Every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper we remember and celebrate this. Every time we have the Lord’s Supper we hear, “Take, eat, remember and believe that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was broken for the complete forgiveness of all our sins.” Did you hear that? His body was broken. Now you might wonder why we say that when Scripture insists that as our great Passover Lamb not one of his bones was broken. The origins of saying that go back to Christ’s institution of the Lord’s Supper. Scripture tells us in Matthew 26:26 that Jesus broke the bread. Then he said, “Take, eat, this is my body.” Now we understand that the bread is not literally his body – it points us to his body and what happened with it. So it’s not a leap to go from Christ breaking the bread, breaking “his body” so to speak, to saying that Christ’s body was broken for the complete forgiveness of all our sins. So the expression comes from Christ. But then what did Christ mean by that? What do we mean by that when we say that his body was broken? It simply refers to the fact that his earthly bodily existence was broken by death. Not one bone was broken, yet his body was broken down to death. Someone can be broken without having their bones broken. This is why the prophecy of Isaiah 53:5 says that he was “crushed for our iniquities.” “Crushed” is the sense in which he was broken. So there’s no contradiction between Christ’s institution of the sacrament, our Lord’s Supper form, and then what we read here about not one of his bones being broken.
Verse 37 tells us that yet another Scripture was fulfilled at this moment, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.” That’s a reference to Zechariah 12:10. In our Bible translation, that says, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”
The prophet Zechariah wrote this after the Jews had returned from exile in Babylon. This was about 500 years before Christ. The book of Zechariah contains several oracles. This particular one is about the restoration of God’s people. A time is coming when the Holy Spirit will be poured out on God’s people. Then, through his grace and mercy, they’ll realize what they have done to God and they shall have tears of true repentance. They’ll realize that they have pierced God.
That raises questions. God is a spiritual being, so how can he be pierced? Even if you turn this into a metaphor or a word picture, how is it that human beings can so afflict God? God is almighty and powerful, so how can a human being pierce him? Those are questions that were unanswerable in the time of the Old Testament.
But now in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit answers these questions by pointing us to Christ and what happened to him. Not only is he a man who can and does die, not only is he a righteous man, not only is he the fulfillment of the Passover Lamb, he is also God himself come in the flesh to rescue his people. This quote from Zechariah 12:10 points us back to Christmas, to the incarnation of the Son of God. God, in the second person of the Trinity, came and took on our human nature so he could suffer and die for us. Since only God could bear the wrath of God, this is essential for the story of our salvation. We need a Saviour who went to that cross both as true man and true God. That Saviour is Jesus Christ.
That brings us to the reason why John put this all down in writing. Verse 35 tells us he saw it. How close he was, he doesn’t say. But he did watch as the soldier put his spear in Christ’s side. John insisted he was telling the truth about it all. Then he adds a personal note to every reader in every age, “that you also may believe.”
That you may believe what? That you may believe that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away your sins. That you may believe that Jesus is the righteous man who lived a perfect life in your place and then offered the immaculate sacrifice of himself in your place. That you may believe that Jesus is God come in the flesh to rescue you from sin and what it deserves.
Loved ones, all of this has been written down so that you may believe. But then the question is: will you believe? Do you believe? I want to address this question especially to our children and young people. You’re being brought up in a Christian home. Your parents send you to a Christian school. You go to church regularly, perhaps you’re going to catechism too. You hear about Jesus all the time. You’re surrounded by people who say they believe in him. But what you have to understand is that all this isn’t enough to make you a Christian. A Christian is someone who personally trusts in Christ for their rescue from sin and then commits to following him with their whole life. You don’t become a Christian by just being with Christian people, being in a Christian church, going to a Christian school, and so on. That would be sort of like saying standing in the garage makes you a car. No, you need to believe in order to be a Christian. Specifically, you need to believe in Jesus Christ for yourself. Your parents can’t believe for you. Your church can’t believe for you. You need to believe personally in the only one who can rescue you from what your sins deserve. It’s been written down so that you may believe, now go and believe it. Believe it all. Believe everything the Bible says about Jesus and take it and make it your own.
And for parents, the most important thing you can pray for with respect to your children is that they will be born again by the Holy Spirit, so they can and do believe in Jesus Christ. Pray constantly for the Holy Spirit to give them a heart of flesh so they see that they are sinners who need Jesus. Pray constantly for the Holy Spirit to open their eyes to see the beautiful Lamb of God. Pray that the Spirit will make them see the value of what was promised them at their baptism. Until you’re sure that they’re Christians, keep on praying and don’t give up. Don’t be shy to tell your kids that what you want above all else for them is for them to be there with you in heaven at the end. Tell them that you don’t want any of your kids to be missing, that you love them that much. It was all written down in Scripture for this purpose -- that we may believe.
As we look to the cross in our passage, we see a dead Jesus. But one thing that has not died is his love for us. That love continues to be shown – the Lamb of God who hangs there dead as the one who has borne our curse and carried our sorrow. Loved ones, this Saviour deserves not only our faith, but also our devotion. He deserves not only our trust, but also our love. He deserves our belief that he is our Saviour, but he also deserves our commitment to him as our Lord. AMEN.
PRAYER
Our Saviour and Lord Jesus,
Thank you that you came as the Lamb of God, the one who fulfilled the Passover Lamb. We praise you as the one who ensures our safety and security in the Day of Judgment. Lord, we thank you that you came as the righteous man. Your obedience is ours and we’re so grateful for that. We’re grateful too that you could offer a pure sacrifice to pay for our impurities and rebellion. And Lord Jesus, thank you that you took on our human nature. You emptied yourself of your heavenly glory, humbled yourself, and became one of us. What amazing love you have shown to us. Please continue to work in our hearts with your Holy Spirit so we entrust ourselves always and only to you. We pray that for our children and young people too. Please give them the gift of spiritual life through your Spirit. Please work a true and living faith in all their hearts. Even if they are currently wandering away from you, we pray that you would bring them back in repentance and faith. Please open their eyes to the value and worth of the gospel of what you came to do, so they embrace it for themselves. O Lord, please have mercy on the children we love so much.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
Please direct any comments to the Webmaster
