Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript
## John 19:23-24

Sermon text is found in John chapter 19, verses 23 and 24. John 19:23-24. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

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 scriptures might be fulfilled, which says, “they divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” Therefore, the soldiers did these things.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you, Father, for your word. And we pray now that your spirit would illumine our understanding. Help us, Father, to understand this text. We thank you, Father, for calling us to meditate upon it. And we pray that your spirit would teach it to us in a way that would transform our lives. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. Please forgive me for my hoarseness. Perhaps it’ll add a little variety to the way I speak that might hold your interest. We’ll see.

You know, this text is one of several we’re going through as we contemplate the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Like Paul says in 1 Corinthians, he endeavors to know nothing but Christ and him crucified. So we’re meditating on the crucifixion of Christ as portrayed in this concluding and capstone gospel.

You know, there’s a sense in which the gospels are kind of the center of the scriptures. In some of these structures we see—for instance, in the structure before us in the crucifixion narrative—the very center of this are the words of Christ. Three sets of words from the cross. Well, there’s a sense in which all of the Old Testament, of course, finds its fulfillment not in abstract doctrines about Christ but in the person of Christ. And his life is spelled out for us in the four gospels. They’re the capstone of everything the scriptures have taught: the recounting of the life of Christ, both his life, his death, resurrection, and ascension that the gospels give us.

The epistles and the rest of the New Testament is a reflection on the life of Christ as it then impacts history and moves forward in the burgeoning forth of the new creation. So there’s a sense in which the gospels are the central aspect of the scriptures. We don’t want to say that one part of the scriptures is more important than the other, but we’re led almost to say that in the case of the gospels because, as I said, all of the Old Testament speaks to Christ, his life portrayed for us in the gospels, and the epistles work out the implications of those gospels.

John’s gospel is a progressive movement. It’s the fourth in a series of gospels. In all likelihood, the gospels are written about one a decade: 30, 40, 50, 60 AD. As history moved ahead, gospel is first needed. Matthew produces it, then Mark, Luke, John. Each one builds on the former, and John, of course, has been recognized by anybody who reads the gospels as different from the rest. And it’s significant that this different perspective is the capstone of this center part of the scriptures.

So there’s a sense in which John’s gospel is really where everything hinges in the scriptures. They complete the picture of Christ by taking not just now an earthly perspective, but as we’ve talked about before, John, as it were, goes through the heavenly temple, portraying the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in terms of the labor of cleansing, the lampstand, the bread of the world, etc. So we go all the way up to heaven in this fourth and concluding gospel and see things very markedly from a heavenly perspective.

So in a way you can think of it as the great crescendo of the symphonic piece that the scriptures are. These long stories, lines, developments of the Old Testament—now all these pieces of the instrument are coming together to play their music in the gospels. And in John’s gospel, all of that really starts to crescendo up, and we have this tremendous picture of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ, the contemplation of the cross, and then the capstone of his resurrection, of course, in chapters 20 and 21.

And then the rest of the Bible can be seen as kind of a playing out of that climactic crescendo as all the instruments are playing.

Now, at the conclusion of this capstone gospel, this gospel then must be meditated upon in its particular constituent parts. All of this is focused on the cross of Christ, the section we’re in now. The cross of Christ has a verticality to it. It has a dimension. Remember Jesus said in the early stages of the gospel of John to Nathaniel that he would see angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, on the cross.

And the meditation we have of him there is that he is crushing the head of the serpent. He is at Calvary. Calvary means skull—Golgotha. But he’s moving us into the garden through his redemptive work on the cross, standing on the head. Whatever skull it is, we don’t know. But ultimately, it’s death. Death itself that is destroyed by our savior at the cross.

The resurrection themes, the verticality of the Father sending the Son, the Son returning to God the Father, the exodus, the greater exodus portrayed in that. The cross themes can be thought of in the horizontal implication of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in this world, now that’s been transformed by his work. We can imagine the title up there in those three languages we spoke about last week: the crown rights of Jesus Christ being trumpeted forth by an opponent of his, Pilate, who certainly didn’t put it up there as a declaration of faith in Christ, but rather to mock the Jews and maybe even to mock Jesus.

Remember that during the time of Jesus’s crucifixion, Messiah fever—like rapture fever has been a dominant element of our Christian scene in the years in which we live—Messiah fever was dominant. The people knew the calendar of the Old Testament. They knew that they were in the time that Messiah was coming. Messiah, the King of the Jews, was he who would rid them of the oppressing Roman Empire and in fact bring all nations to the mountain of the Lord to worship him.

So Pilate could be mocking Christ, certainly mocking the Jews. Well, this is your Messiah. A long promise. This is him. But you know what? We’re not afraid in Rome. He’s not a king at all to us. We’re nailing him up here to the cross. But we know that the greater hand of God from above is directing Pilate to tell us that those cross members talk of the horizontal going out of the gospel of Christ into every area of the world and over every human endeavor, religious, cultural, and political.

And so the scriptures are seen as a meditation of the cross provides the vertical dimension of what God is accomplishing through Christ’s redemption of his people and the transformation of the whole world. The arms of the cross show us that we’re to go out from all places proclaiming this gospel of Jesus Christ, proclaimed over all the known empires, then the empires that had come together—Greek, Roman, and Hebrew—and ultimately then a picture of the gospel of Christ being trumpeted forth over every area of human endeavor.

So a meditation on the crucifixion of Christ is called for in this capstone gospel. The particular text we have today concludes with a restatement. There’s no reason given for its statement. It says, “Therefore the soldiers did these things.” So it says the soldiers did this, and then it says, “Therefore the soldiers did these things.” And commentators have noted, well, why put this in there? One reason maybe to link to the four women that are mentioned in the next sequence, which I’ll talk about in a little bit.

But in any event, it seems like by inserting this verse it calls us to think about what they did. It describes what they did, and then it said, now this is why they did what they did. And we think, well, why? And the text is telling us that God has given us here some things that we need to pause and reflect upon. Why did they do these things?

You know, the gambling of the clothes by the soldiers is given, I don’t know, maybe 12 words in the synoptic gospels in each of them. It’s recorded in each. But here in John’s gospel, 65 words in the text—you see, gives us a much broader picture of what that was all about, and then it punctuates it by saying, now therefore they did these things, saying, think about this a little bit.

Now we can think about it in the context of our overall outline of this section of John’s gospel. We’ll return to soldiers once more, fulfilling prophecy in a couple of months after we get through the sayings of Jesus, which form the center of this particular narrative of the crucifixion event. So in its biggest picture, we’ve already talked about the fact that we have soldiers fulfilling prophecy.

And I’ll return to that at the conclusion of the sermon today. But it’s important to meditate upon this a little bit more and to think through the specific details that, unlike the synoptic gospels, John’s gospel provides for us. And all of this, I think, should be seen in the context of what we’ve just read in the implications of the three titles.

I mentioned last week that, you know, we had the language of commerce and culture. We have the language of politics and law. We have the language of religion in the title of Christ. Remember, it’s a title of who he is, King over each of these areas. And I mentioned the implications. You know, our mission statement as a church is loving the triune God and transforming the fallen world.

It was funny. One of the members here came to me a couple weeks ago and said, you know, they had the announcements. They said, you know, you ought to have this on the announcements right up here. You know, you just replace this thing at the top and put it up. And I said, “It is on the announcements. It’s on the bottom actually, but it’s in real big letters. And I don’t know if you notice that or not, but the announcements have our vision statement at the at the bottom of the page in big letters: Loving the triune God.

And we’ll talk about the basis for that love today. Transforming the fallen world. You see, transforming the cultural, political, business aspects of the world in all that we do and say.

I mentioned last week and I didn’t really expand upon it. Let me just for a moment do that. The importance, I think, in our day and age of explicitly Christian mission statements for businesses. This was brought up again by another member who wondered what I thought about such things. And there are—at least I know Elder Wilson has an explicitly Christian mission statement for the Beaver and Pet Clinic. And it’s important because the world needs to hear again what the world heard at Pentecost and what the epistles said over and over again: that while the world thinks that Caesar is the name by which all men must be saved, we proclaim a counter gospel to that.

We are subversive while we’re being submissive. We proclaim the crown rights of Christ even in the context of not being revolutionaries or zealots, but being submissive servants of the powers that God has ordained. And explicitly Christian mission statements do that in our day and age. They proclaim to people that we are not religious pluralists, that we are indeed those who are committed to the lordship of Jesus Christ. So it puts in the public arena what needs to be restored to the public arena: the gospel of Jesus Christ.

For far too long, the Christian church in our country has been one that has seen religion as a private matter, private moral and ethical standards. Yes, in the context of our home, it’s important, but when we go into the world, no, that’s not important. What’s important is the little island in our home and then leading to heavenly realities when we get through all of this difficulty.

Well, that is a backwater gospel. That is a backwater culture that says that we can prevent the impact of a pagan culture in our homes by just building bigger and stronger walls around them or around our church. That is an unknown gospel to the first century church. N.T. Wright is right that Pentecost was about the proclamation of a different Caesar, the true one, that Caesar was a counterfeit to who would bring salvation in every area of life, including the political one.

And so that’s what we need to do today, to say that Jesus affects our culture. He affects our businesses. And we want to be very public about our proclamation of Christ. Otherwise, it’s a different Jesus that we’re talking about. He didn’t come to make you okay and safe until you get to heaven. He came to enlist John Barnard at nine or ten days of age into the militia of Jesus Christ, to see everything as ruled by him and to proclaim that every area of life is under the auspices of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That in reality, the truth that we’re to bear witness of is that Jesus reigns from that cross, Jesus reigns at the ascended right hand of the Father until all enemies be made his footstool.

You know, God doesn’t let us have a backwater culture in your homes. If you’ve got a computer, the world bangs in there, does it not? Your young men and women in your homes—the culture is brought within those four walls now. And we can say from one perspective that we don’t like what happens sometimes on the internet. We don’t like the use of pornography, etc. But on the other hand, can’t we see in this the judgment of God upon a people who think that somehow all we have to do is defend our children and let the world go to hell in a hand basket?

God says, “Don’t do that, because it’s going to break through the walls no matter how high you make them, because I don’t want you behind walls. I want you breaking through the walls that the world has set up in its secularism and in its pluralism. I want you invading the world.”

Now I want to talk about boldness today. On the basis, then, continuing this theme—what we have to do is to take the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ into each of these areas and proclaim the implications of it. We need boldness to do it.

And the very first thing I notice in this text gives us a cause for boldness through the forgiveness of our sins. The first thing these soldiers do—the text tells us, it says, “Then they took his garments.” Jesus is stripped in the context of the crucifixion. His clothing is removed from him. This points to him taking upon himself the curse due to us.

We remember that Adam and Eve in the garden, when they sin and when they fall, the implications of the curse upon them is an awareness of their nakedness. Nakedness is tied in the scriptures to the curse, to fallenness. Jesus Christ takes on the nakedness of Adam and Eve so that we might receive his imputed righteousness as our garments of glory.

So when Jesus is pictured here as being humbled on the cross to the point of death, part of his humility is the removing of clothing. Clothing is a picture of glory. We don’t just clothe ourselves to cover up nakedness. It is a picture of putting on garments of glory. Clothing is important in the scriptures. It’s important in the gospel of John.

We’ll see later in this gospel that, you know, Nicodemus prepares Jesus for burying, and after Jesus raises from the dead, his linen garments are left behind. It points that out for us. The clothing of Jesus takes on significance here in the concluding chapters of the gospel and then in chapters 20 and 21 as well.

John, the beloved disciple, comes to the tomb Easter morning. He looks in and sees the linen garments. He tells us that it describes these linen garments as being of two sorts: there’s the linen garments, and then there’s the face cloth that covered his face. It describes this for us. So attention is paid to the clothing of Jesus Christ.

And here the idea is that Jesus’s clothing is being taken off of him. And there’s an implication of that which we’ll touch on in a moment. But the first implication is Jesus bearing our iniquities on the cross, taking upon himself the sin of his people, receiving the curse of God that we might receive the blessing of God.

It was horrible of me when I talked about the crown of thorns not to mention that thorns, of course, are a picture of the curse, right? When Adam is kicked out of the garden, instead of beautiful plants, the world tends to produce blackberries and thorns now in its fallen state. Thorns are a picture of the curse. Jesus takes upon himself the crown of thorns. He has the cross member on his back, a picture of him bearing the iniquity of us. And here on the cross, he bears our nakedness for us. He’s stripped of his garments that he might clothe us with his righteousness.

So the first implication of what is accomplished here at the cross in the scene of the soldiers gambling for Jesus’s garments is Jesus Christ being stripped of his garments that he might clothe us with righteousness, that his naked body was exposed to the insults of men, that we might then appear in glory before the judgment seat of God.

So Jesus Christ takes upon himself the curse due to his people. As one commentator said, “the shame of nakedness came in with sin. He therefore who was made sin for us bore that shame to roll away our reproach. He was stripped that we might be clothed with white raiment.”

Revelation 3:18. We know that Adam and Eve’s nakedness was then covered by God with garments being made. Genesis 3:21: “The Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” And so Jesus Christ takes upon himself here our shame of nakedness that he might then receive at the resurrection and ascension the glorious name above all names and might give to his people his imputed righteousness.

Now on the outline what I’ve mentioned here is that he makes an actual atonement. We cannot meditate upon the cross and death of Christ on that cross without mentioning the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus paid the price. He bore sin for us on the cross.

Now there are aspects of the Christian church—Finney, for instance, the heretic Finney, and revivalism and those people that follow him—are infected with a view of the atonement that is absolutely alien to the scriptures. Finney says that on the cross what we see is an example of the wrath of God against sinners. It’s a moral example to us to drive us to repentance. And that’s about it from his perspective.

But the scriptures say something much more important is happening at the cross. Jesus Christ is bearing the sin of his people. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

Isaiah 53 says, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, not as a picture of what our transgressions should merit from God. He was wounded as our substitute for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. And by his stripes, we are healed.”

We are healed 2,000 years ago, and the atonement made by the Lord Jesus Christ applied to us by the Holy Spirit in our day, but affected really and definitively and finally 2,000 years ago.

“All of us like sheep have gone astray,” Isaiah says. “We have turned everyone to his own way. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

We claim a real atonement for sin, effected on the cross 2,000 years ago. An actual atonement, not an atonement that might be applied to you if you meet certain conditions. A full atonement made for the sins of the elect, accomplished 2,000 years ago at the cross.

We don’t see a moral picture or example ultimately in all this for us. We see a transaction being carried out by the Son in obedience to the Father, carrying the sins of his people away, carrying away our nakedness, our thorns, bearing our iniquity, taking upon himself the full curse due to us that we might receive the blessings of the Savior.

In Calvinist terminology, it’s referred to as limited atonement. The next point will be the unlimited atonement that’s talked about here. But here we can say that what’s really going on is a limited atonement. An atonement that is made—not limited in value, but limited in purpose—to those whom God has elected before the foundation of the world.

If it is a real atonement and affects forgiveness for his people, then we cannot say that atonement is made for every last individual in the world. Otherwise, hell would be empty, right? If the atonement is real and if it’s unlimited in terms of its intent, every last person is the object of it, then there’s no hell left because every sin has been paid the price for, including the sin of unbelief.

And we say, you know, that it is a real atonement. The two ditches are an atonement that is unlimited in terms of its intent and actual, so everyone is saved. And the other ditch is that it’s atonement, not at all, but a picture or a potential atonement that’s based upon you believing in Christ.

And we say, “No, it is a real atonement, effected by the sovereignty of God for his elect people.” Now, what this means is that Jesus paid the price—all of the price—for your sin.

As you read the New Testament, as you read Paul, you know, one thing you must come away with is a sense of the obsession that Paul had with the Lord Jesus Christ. The absolute love and attention of his life was the Lord Jesus Christ and honoring him. Paul understood the fullness of which of his sins the fullness of the atonement made by Christ. Paul understood at the depth of his being that he indeed, apart from Jesus Christ, was cursed.

But Jesus rolls all that curse away from him. The end result of an appreciation of Jesus Christ suffering on the cross, bearing away the sins of his people, should be a response of loving Jesus with all that we have. He gave his all, humbled himself to the point of death, suffers all the pains of hell. That’s why we say he descended into Hades. He suffers all the pains of hell for his people. He makes an actual atonement for us.

He gave his all, and our understanding of that should elicit a response that we give our all to him now.

Let’s return to the theme of clothing. Jesus’s clothing is significant in the scriptures. Our clothing is significant. We come before the throne of God robed in the righteousness of Christ. And our earthly clothing should, to some degree, reflect that.

You know, if we’re going to give all to Jesus the rest of the week, it begins with a consecration of all that we have here now in this service. And that begins with respect, reverence. We’re coming before the throne of the one who made a full atonement for our sins on the cross, who got naked for our sake, taken upon himself the curse.

May we be clothed with garments that represent the righteousness and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we have boldness with ourselves based upon this truth. You see, it’s our sins. You know, the devil likes to—like in the book of Zechariah—whisper in our ear, “Oh, you’re filthy. Oh, you’ve got sins. Two? You messed up a couple of times today already. What are you doing up there leading the people?”

You see, that’s what whispers in our ear. And real sins—not just mistakes, real sins that you commit every week—strip you of boldness and strength for the King. But this text, a reminder of Christ providing a real and actual atonement, of forgiveness of all of your sins, gives you boldness with yourself where you can tell Satan whisper in your ear, “Forget it. I’m a brand plucked from the fire. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ has atoned for all my sins.

I’ve meditated on the cross of Christ. He bore my iniquity away and paid the price for it.” This text begins our boldness to enter the culture by giving us boldness with ourselves, believing in the full atonement for sins effected by our savior.

But there’s more. They don’t just take his garments away. The scriptures go on to tell us then that they split them up—four parts to each soldier, a part.

**Point number two:** And this speaks of the universality of the atonement.

Okay, so Jesus has various articles of clothing, and commentators have speculated on what they might be: a belt, a head covering because it’s hot in that part of the world. We don’t know exactly, but four parts of clothing are divided to the four soldiers. Each man taken to crucifixion has a group of four soldiers that take him. And so here you got four soldiers and four of the bulk of his garments for four of them. They just divvy them up, right?

Now, four in the scriptures is the number of wholeness. The altar has four horns on it. The earth has four corners to it. Even your robe in the Old Testament had four corners to it. You’re a representation of the world. And so four is a number of universal wholeness. It’s a reminder again that as there are four points to the cross, the world is quartered up. The gospel will go out into all four corners of the world.

You know, there was a quartering up of an empire before this in history, and in that quartering up of the empire the whole world is pictured as being quartered up. There’s a sense in which meditations on the cross give us that same picture. And I suppose it’s waxing a little symbolic to say it, but nonetheless I think that we know by other doctrines and can get a picture of it here in these contemplations of the crucifixion of our savior.

The implications of what we’re talking about—the atonement for his people—are it’s not limited in the sense of its comprehensibility or universality. As we said last week, the title in three languages: Jesus is Lord of all the nations and empires and of every activity that goes on in each of those empires. And so there’s a universality here of the atonement of Christ. While it is only for his people, his people will come more and more to inhabit all the world, and the world itself can be said to be redeemed by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, Psalm 22—which we’ll talk about in a minute—you know, the result of this crucifixion of our savior and the men gambling for their clothes is then that all the nations of the world experience and hear the gospel of Christ and worship him. Now, the Gentiles here are still not yet brought into the fullness of the worship of Christ because the seed has to be put in the ground, then it’s raised up, and then Jesus says he’ll draw all peoples to himself.

But we connect not all peoples with these four Roman soldiers. And we know that the cross of Christ will indeed mean the transformation of all four corners of the world.

Beyond that, though, I think that there’s also a reason here to reflect upon the next scene a little bit. There are four soldiers here. And then at the end of the text, as I said earlier, it says, “Thus these soldiers did these things.” And then the next section of narrative describes for us four women: talks about Mary, the mother of Jesus, mother of Jesus and her sister, Mary of Kopas, and Mary Magdalene. Four women represented by one name—Mary—unity and diversity.

The same with the clothing of our savior here: university and diversity. But you know, there’s—it seems like the text wants us to meditate, think about what these soldiers just did as preparation for describing what the women did, right?

So the soldiers do this. They have disregard for the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. They gamble for his clothes while he is atoning for the sins of his people on the cross. The women are in contrast to that. They are there grieving. They are there loving the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why they’re gathered together.

So there’s a contrast here between the four soldiers who are men and the four women. And it just gives us another opportunity to say to talk about the fallenness of men as opposed to women. Ultimately, we don’t have shared responsibility in the Garden of Eden. The scriptures make it quite clear that it is the sin of Adam that is the focal point of God’s judgment in the Garden of Eden. It’s the sin of men that lead women into sin. That’s what Adam did with Eve.

And I think in a in a in a in a big picture sort of sense, that same thing is true now. I do believe that men are the leading edge of perversity in this nation. And that leading edge of perversity draws women with them eventually. But I do believe that men are responsible for the sin in the world. They’re the ones who lead the culture in sin. They’re the ones who must as well turn the culture around and lead the culture in the proper direction as well.

So I think this text draws a contrast between these four soldiers and between the women who attend to Christ. Somehow we have a picture of masculinity as being somehow unmoved, uncompassionate, and you know, not like women. But the scriptures want us to identify here as men, not with the four soldiers, but with the four women in their devotion to Christ.

And indeed the movement of the text is from two zealots who could care less for Christ—they want to usher in the kingdom through revolution—and then at the end of the text we have two men who look like those four women. They have concern and compassion for Christ and the care of his body. And so the scriptures want us to think in terms of that.

Lamentations 1:12 says this: “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the Lord inflicted on the day of his fierce anger.”

Now there’s a recognition that it is the anger of the Lord against sin that Jesus is suffering for us. But then the question comes in Lamentations. Don’t you think anything about what you’re seeing? Now in the first application, this was that were being taken into captivity, being overrun by armies. But by implication, this can be said to speak of these soldiers who ignore the suffering Savior on the cross. They have become, you know, calloused over to the suffering of men at all, let alone to the suffering of Messiah.

And I think that, you know, as we move this point, we should understand that this text gives us a boldness talking about how indeed the gospel of Christ will penetrate the four corners of the world, having boldness with ourselves in terms of the atonement for sins. We can have boldness to do this cultural endeavor we are called to by the three languages in the title of Christ. We can have boldness to do that, emboldened by the fact that Jesus Christ—identified with, his clothing—will indeed go out to the four corners of the world.

There is optimism that undergirds us that gives us a boldness to enter this week in being explicitly Christian in how we go about doing business, how we go about doing recreation, in what we do in terms of political action, in addition of course to the base of our family in our church.

But we don’t want to think of this boldness as somehow separated from the devotion to Christ that the text wants us to identify with—the devotion of women and the devotion of redeemed men at the end of the text.

Now, you know, Paul was obsessed with this delight in Christ. What is our state, men? I want to ask you specifically. As you meditate over the course of these weeks upon the suffering of the Savior, bearing away your sin, taking away your reproach by being himself a reproach on the cross, as you think of these texts, are you more like the soldiers or are you more like the women?

Is this somewhat indifferent to you, the sufferings of the Savior? And if so, then somehow our sense of masculinity has become quite divorced from how the scriptures see true biblical masculinity. True biblical masculinity contemplates the sufferings of the savior and is emboldened to then proclaim the rights of Christ in all that we do and say by being emboldened in terms of the forgiveness of our sins and being restored to the proper sense of a contemplation of the sufferings of Christ and the implications in the world.

So we have boldness with ourselves. We have boldness to engage the culture—not as macho men ultimately, but as godly strong men.

And the third point here brings us to another act of boldness. The tunic was without seam, woven from the top in one piece. So we’ve had four pieces of clothing dispersed, and now we have a tunic without seam being talked about, woven from the top. I don’t understand weaving. I don’t want us to get sidetracked by trying to imagine how you weave such a garment. The fact is such a garment was weavable and was the case here. The scriptures tell us that, as well as something else I’ll mention in just a minute.

Now, this was a piece of clothing of value, and so the soldiers don’t want to destroy it. They gamble for it. We can reflect here upon Joseph’s coat—the beautiful coat of Joseph that his brothers take off of him, right? Put blood on so that his father will think he’s dead. And we can see that here we have the greater Joseph fulfilling that prophecy, as it were, that Jesus Christ would lay aside his garments and particular this garment of glory being a single piece to accomplish work on the cross for us. And that’s a legitimate conclusion to draw from the text.

Another conclusion that has been very popular amongst the early church fathers particularly is that this seamless tunic speaks to the unity of the church. You know, throughout the gospel of John, we’ve seen references to the division amongst the Jews that Jesus brings. And on the counterbalance to that, the unity of the church that Jesus brings.

You know, you’ll be divided. My people will be one. They’ll have one shepherd. They’ll be brought together in unity. We saw the whole theme of the upper room discourse was the unity of the church together that Jesus was preparing them for—that unity after his resurrection and ascension.

And so some have seen in this seamless garment the unity of the church, the garment that was apparently closest to Christ’s body. Now, again, this is an Old Testament reference. In 1 Kings 11:29 we read: “At that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him on the road. Now Ahijah had dressed himself in a new garment, and the two of them were alone in the open country. Then Ahijah laid hold of the new garment that was on him and tore it into 12 pieces.”

And he was saying that this is what’s going to happen. There’ll be disunity in the people of God, torn apart, but they should be unified. And so the church fathers have said that one of the implications, one of the applications for us of a text like this is to try to devote ourselves to the unity of the church.

In fact, during the time of the Reformation, the Catholic Church made big use of this verse in a large way to accuse Luther and others of breaking the unity of the church through the Protestant Reformation. And the party of men that opposed Luther—part of the church of Rome—they actually urged what was called the tunica intacta, the tunic without seam, the tunic uncut. And they actually became known as the party of the uncut, or of the seamless, in their attempts to produce or to keep the reformers from departing from the true church.

Now, you know, we know that the reformers were trying to reform the true church. That’s why they’re called reformers. They weren’t sectarians. The Anabaptists were the reformers who were kicked out of the church. They didn’t seek to leave the church ultimately, but still the text reminds us here of the need to try to preserve the unity of the church. Jesus says that’s of central importance, and that message comes across in the gospel of John. And we can look at this text and say yes, that is a part of what’s happening here.

However, there’s probably something larger being described here. I talked about how the message that we have to take to the church in our day and age is a message that Jesus is Messiah with all the implications for the communities in which we live, the political sphere that’s entailed in that. That’s true. That’s an important part of New Testament doctrine which is central to the reformation of our day and age—the declaration that there is a basic unity of the Messiah of the Old Testament to what Christ has accomplished in the new and their implications for every area of life.

Another message by which the reformation of the church in our day and age is happening is by also looking at Paul and seeing not just that he didn’t cut himself off from Messiah of the Old Testament, but neither do the Pauline epistles cut themselves off from the sacrificial implications of the Old Testament.

And so, for instance, our worship service is based upon a renewed appreciation for the sacrificial language that Paul uses describing worship in the New Testament, which takes us back to Leviticus to see the flow of the offerings as picturing the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So another important dimension that the church of Jesus Christ in America in our day and age has omitted or not focused upon is the sacrificial work proclaimed in the Old Testament being fulfilled by Christ in the New. And if we think a little bit in sacrificial terms, this seamless tunic takes upon itself a little different perspective. What do I mean?

Well, in the Old Testament, let me read a couple of verses to you. In Leviticus 21:10, speaking of the priest’s garments, it says, “The priest who is chief among his brothers on whose head the anointing oil is poured and has been consecrated to wear the garments shall not let the hair of his head hang loose, nor tear his clothes.”

So the priest was not supposed to tear the clothes that he did his work in. In Exodus 28:32, the high priest’s garment is described. And now listen: “It shall have an opening for the head in the middle of it with a woven binding around the opening, like the opening in a garment, so that it may not tear.”

So the seamlessness of the high priest garment is not necessarily seamless, but it’s tearless because of the unity of this piece woven around the top of this garment of glory. Exodus 28:39 says, “You shall weave the coat, the exterior garment of glory of the high priest, in checkered work of fine linen. You shall make a turban of fine linen.”

So the implications are that the coat is of a design work that it unifies the entire coat. You’re not supposed to tear the coat, and a seamlessness is represented by this woven piece at the top of this coat of glory of the high priest.

Now, the high priest had inner garments as well. And when the high priest went into the holy place, he would take off the garments of glory and go in to minister with his interior clothing still in place. And Leviticus 16:23 says this: “Aaron shall come into the tent of meeting and shall take off the linen garments that he put on when he went into the holy place, and shall leave them there.”

So apart from these garments of glory in which he normally did his work, these would be set aside. And on the Day of Atonement when he’s going to take the blood representing the blood of Christ into the holy of holies, he wears a linen garment instead of this glorious coat or robe.

Okay? So we bring all those associations with the clothing of the priesthood into a consideration of this text spoken in the gospel that has taken us through the heavenly realities. We remember he goes through the holy place then—with the in the first part of the gospel, second part of the gospel—goes through the holy place, then through the golden altar of incense as he prays for his disciples.

And now we’re entering the holy of holies. And as we’ve said several times, when we get to the scene of the tomb, there will be a representation of two angels at a holy place. The tomb is the holy of holies. And as we said earlier, when the disciples arrive on the scene, they look in there. John does and he sees the linen, and that’s why he doesn’t go in but waits for Peter.

Okay, what’s the big picture? Well, one other piece of evidence before we draw that what we’re getting at here. While this is a tunic, this seamless garment that Christ has, John uses a particular Greek word that’s not the normal word used to describe the tunic. This is not Jesus’s exterior coat in all probability—the seamless garment. It’s really his interior garment. But the scriptures want us to think of that garment as an exterior garment. Why? Because John uses the Greek word that was the Septuagint translation of the robe that Adam and Eve wore and that the high priest wore in the Old Testament on the outside—this robe of glory.

Same Hebrew word. Adam and Eve were robed with a high priestly robe of power and authority by God after his promising them the coming of fulfillment of the Lord Jesus Christ and forgiving them their sins. They are empowered now for their work. They’re not just covered up. It’s a robe of glory. The high priest wears this robe of glory. This is what Christ will accomplish for us—a robe of glory.

But when he goes into the holy place, he takes it off, puts on linen garments, which he then leaves in the holy of holies. The big picture here, sacrificially, is that the work of Jesus Christ as the great high priest is being pictured from the on the cross in this crucifixion narrative. Jesus’s robe of glory has been removed.

And what we’ll find then is when he does his work on the cross, he is then bound in linen wrappings. And it is those wrappings that are left behind in the tomb that is the visual representation of the holy of holies.

Jesus Christ’s priestly work is being targeted here. And in fact, Josephus tells us that at the time of the writing of the gospels, indeed the high priest coat was actually completely seamless, being woven as one unit from one single length of thread.

So both culturally and then from the Old Testament, we find that the associations with this seamless tunic that Jesus had are made to the work of the high priest. So we have here a representation of the high priestly work of Jesus at the Lamb’s high feast. We sing, not only is he making atonement for us, not only is he the Lamb, but he is the high priest offering that atonement for us as well in the holy of holies.

And what does the scriptures say are the implications of an understanding of Jesus’s high priestly work? “Since we have such a high priest, we may come boldly to the throne of grace.”

Yes, we have boldness with ourselves meditating on the atonement of Christ. We have boldness taking out the message of Christ to the four corners of the world, understanding the comprehensive atonement made. And we have boldness before the throne of God to come to him to pray and affect the transformation of the culture that we’re called to do because of the work of the great high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Not only that, but we are lesser priests under Christ. Priests consecrate what they have to the service of God. You’re going to come forward in response to the gospel of Christ and the assurances that your sins are forgiven, that the world is being transformed, that Jesus has accomplished this as our high priest, and you’re going to offer all that you have to God symbolically and yet really in the response to the preached word that happens during the offertory in our worship.

God says that we are empowered as priests to consecrate all that we have to Christ, to give us ourselves away totally to God, that we may minister in his name. You see, that’s what happens to Jesus, right? He is stripped of everything as this narrative goes on, and now he’s stripped of any semblance of modesty. His clothes are taken away. But the very next thing that happens is Jesus starts to give.

The very next text: Jesus gives his mother to John and he gives John to his mother. And then his third word from the cross, he delivers over and gives the spirit.

We’re so afraid that we’ll have nothing to give to one another if we look weak, if we look humble before each other. And yet the scriptures say that when I am weak, then I am strong in God. God wants us to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. He wants us to confess our sins to one another. He wants us to reveal who we are to each other.

You see, our prayer meetings—this was part of the original purpose of the monthly prayer meetings of this church—was that we might confess sins and have a transparency, at least with the small subculture of our church, that would enable us to be prayed for in an effective way, that sin might be forgiven, that it might be applied to us, that we might hear the words of forgiveness, encouragement, and admonition to each other. “To this is the path. Walk in it.”

God says that Jesus is our great high priest. We can be emboldened as we come to the throne of grace, confessing sins, knowing that they’ve been atoned for, asking for strength to take the gospel out into all areas, knowing that it is indeed the purpose of God. And we can go with boldness knowing indeed that He will empower us to consecrate all that we have and do to the work of the Savior. We are priests under the great high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, the soldiers did these things.

**The fourth point of the text:** We are reminded here that the ground base—the baseline, I’ve got there—there’s a thing called a ground base. I’ve mentioned that John is the culminating climax of this great symphonic piece of the scriptures. A ground base is a baseline in a musical piece that resurfaces again and again. It gives the whole piece its foundation, its bottom, so to speak.

The priests do these things, and as they do it, they fulfill the word of prophecy. They fulfill the words of Psalm 22, verse 18. And it’s a reminder to us that we have boldness because the ground base of our own lives is the sovereignty of God over the most vile of men.

You know, Psalm 22 describes men as beasts. “Deliver me from the dogs. The ox of Bashan. Goring oxes are around me.” He says men are described as mere beasts. That’s what men become apart from the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Men, you know, that’s what we are in our fallen state. God is in the process of restoring dignity to humanity and specifically for men to lead in that context.

Psalm 22 says that men are beasts apart from God. But God superintends the very activities of beasts. You see, beastlike men, worse than animals, depraved men described as animals—the soldiers and Pilate—the ground base of God’s sovereignty resurfaces again and again as we meditate on this cross, reminding us that we can have boldness because God is in control. God is in charge. He is the sovereign over all things.

And because of that, we know that the proclamation of the gospel—the effectual—this description of the Pilate, of the soldiers gambling for the clothes of Christ in verse 18 of Psalm 22 is almost immediately followed then by the prayer of Christ to God and the answer of that prayer from the heavenly throne room, and then Christ’s declaration that he will praise God in the midst of the assembly, and indeed that all the ends of the world shall come to God and come to God with submission and praise to him.

John doesn’t cite the beginning of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That note has been sounded in the synoptic gospels. But here in the great crescendo of this musical piece and symphony, the notes that sound forth most are not notes of despair, but they are notes of the sovereignty of God superintending what comes to pass here for the purposes of bringing about the new creation effected by our savior.

I want to make one final point in closing. This seamless tunic—the text tells us with detail—is woven from above. It’s seamless, being woven from above. And what it means is that the weaving of Mary or whoever, with great devotion to Christ, wove this began at the top of the garment and moved their way down.

Now this particular Greek word is used in a couple of other places in John’s gospel. And the first place it’s used is in John 3 when Nicodemus is told that you must be born again. That word that many translations translate “again” is the same Greek word. It literally means “from above.” You must be born from above.

The second time it’s used is when Jesus tells Pilate that the only authority he has been given him from above. You see, and now we have the seamless tunic of Christ being woven from above. What’s being sounded forth is that the sovereign God is weaving together in the events that are described for us here in John’s gospel in the tapestry of Christ’s redemption—we have a beautiful image being created, being woven from God who is above, the sovereignty of God, the weaving from above of the details of this narrative and the details of what actually occurred 2,000 years ago.

God says that is a beautiful picture that he portrays for us here. Not only that, but he says that we are incorporated into that picture. God sewed another little thread in the life of this church and in the life of the Barnard family today with the baptism of John Barnard. Small act—one little child in the midst of several hundred here—but a major pattern being woven into the seamless tunic that can be said to represent the church of Jesus Christ and each of us individually as well. Unity and diversity. Several garments distributed abroad, one seamless garment.

Your life is such a tapestry from God. John doesn’t know it’s happening today. But what we know is the sovereign God is weaving the tapestry of John Barnard’s life in the context of his assertion of his sovereignty over that child from his earliest days. And not only that, but weaving John into a family that loves him the way that no pagan family can love a child—who understand their limitations as a family and yet the need to use the family structure that God has ordained, forgiven through Christ, to raise a child to indeed praise Christ and honor him in what he does recreationally, vocationally, governmentally, and religiously.

John Barnard is a picture of all of our lives. Our lives represent a tapestry from God. You are being woven from the top. You’re not here today ultimately because you chose God. You’re here ultimately because God chose you and is creating his purposes in your life.

Now, that’s the sort of God. That’s the sort of sovereignty. That’s the sort of gospel, the atonement for our sins, the implication for all the culture, the boldness we have to come before the throne of grace. That is a gospel that gives us boldness to proclaim forth Christ.

Boldness with ourselves, accepting the forgiveness of our sins. These men were wicked sinners—these soldiers who are indifferent to Christ and Pilate who mocked him. And yet through our very sins, God is effecting his purposes. We should have boldness with ourselves based upon the atoning work of Christ. We should have boldness to go forth boldly tomorrow, vocationally, recreationally, and governmentally proclaiming the gospel of Christ because we know all four corners of the world will be reached by that gospel and transformed.

And we have boldness to go before the throne of grace, which John S. will lead us here in a moment, seeking grace from God because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ as our high priest. We have boldness because God is sovereign. And in that sovereignty, he’s weaving our lives as a beautiful tapestry that reflects the glory of Christ.

Christ didn’t stay naked. He puts on the robes of glory in heaven, so to speak. He’s surrounded by glory. He robes himself with all the world seamlessly, as it were. And so it is with us as well. Like Adam and Eve, God robes us today with the authority, the powerful robes, the seamless tunic, as it were, that we’re all priests under the great high priest. We’re all empowered by God to consecrate all that we have and all that we are to the services of the King. We all wear garments of beauty and glory because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the message of our Savior. We thank you for the delight that you have brought us into. Help us now as we come forward with our tithes and offerings to do so—not just consecrating the tenth part here or what we’ve decided to offer, but recognizing that these things represent the whole. Empower us, God, to make afresh our commitments to you, particularly the men of this church, to move in the context of compassion for our Savior, love for him, an obsession for him that we see in the life of Paul, that everything we do and say this week may redound to your glory as we consecrate ourselves afresh to Christ and his kingdom.

In his name we pray. Amen.