Started Zechariah chapter 12 and then John chapter 19 Zechariah 12 and John chapter 19 here the Word of the Lord. Let's stand for its reading Zechariah chapter 12 beginning in verse 8 it's a section of the prophecy of Zechariah that's fulfilled in John chapter 19 and it's the promise through the prophet Zechariah that Judah will be delivered and Particularly verse 10 is pertinent to our New Testament reading you'll see the connection if you listen carefully you will hear and see the connection between this passage and John 19 in that day the Lord will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem the one who is feeble among them in that day shall be like David and And the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the Lord before them. It shall be in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that will come against Jerusalem. And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and supplication. Then they will look on me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son. and grieve for him as one grieves for a firstborn. Turning to John chapter 19, beginning at verse 31. Therefore, because it was the preparation day that the body should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath day was a high day, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. And the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified. And his testimony is true. And he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe. For these things were done that the scripture should be fulfilled. Not one of his bones shall be broken. Again, another scripture says, they shall look on him whom they pierced. Grass withers, the fire fades away, but the word of our God endures forever. We turn to John chapter 19 as we continue to study in the Gospel of John the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Today, in particular, looking at the fulfillment of the scriptures in the death of Jesus Christ. The fulfillment of the scriptures in the death of Jesus Christ. It is very clear, when you read the Gospels, that the Gospel writers would have you know and understand that the life, the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and his ascension, no matter if you keep reading the Acts and then the Epistles, that the writers of the New Testament, and particularly the writers of the Gospels, would have you know that everything happened according to the Scriptures. That what unfolded in the life and ministry and triumph of Jesus Christ was according to the Scriptures. As a matter of fact, if you open the New Testament and we read that an angel came to Joseph in a dream He said this, and she, Mary, will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. So all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which is God with us. That's Matthew chapter one and verse 22. that the coming, the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ was according to the scriptures. This continues in Matthew, for example, that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem was prophesied in Micah chapter five, but you, Bethlehem, the land of Judah are not least among the rulers of Judah. The ministry of John the Baptist is the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight from the prophet Isaiah. When Jesus began his ministry, It was that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, the land of Zebulun, the land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light upon those who sat in the region in the shadow of death. Light has dawned. And we could keep reading, that's just in the first two pages of the New Testament. We could read page after page through the Gospels and see that the Gospel writers were interested in this truth, that the Scriptures were fulfilled in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. As Jesus said in John chapter five, that the Scriptures are about Jesus. John chapter five and verse 39. You search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, and these are they which testify of me." The gospel writers were, themselves under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, concerned to communicate to us that the coming of Jesus was according to the scriptures. They were convinced that the Bible contained one essential message, that every prophet, every preacher, every page, and in its essence, was about the living word, the Lord Jesus Christ, and salvation by grace through faith, in Christ Jesus alone. That the whole Bible was concerned with the way of salvation, is concerned with the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. Well, we see this particularly in the Gospel of John. I just read from John chapter five that Jesus said in the Scriptures, they testify of me. But we see this particularly and pointedly in the Gospel of John in the narrative of Jesus' death. That the Scriptures were being fulfilled As we study John chapter 19, there are specific events here that we need to be reminded of as we're considering the death of the Lord Jesus. Where we are in chapter 31, in chapter 30 we read that Jesus had bowed his head and he gave up his spirit. Last week already we studied the moment of the death of Jesus. Now how is it that Jesus came to die? Well, first he was taken by Pilate and scourged, Then he was led away to be crucified, verse 16 of chapter 19. And we know from the harmony of the gospels that that included another flogging. And that crucifixion itself, the sentence of crucifixion, which began with an intense beating, a flaying of the flesh with a bone or metal-embedded whip, ended with the crucified one being nailed to a cross, being hoisted on an upright outside the city of Jerusalem, and they are left to hang to die on that cross. The act of crucifixion, verse 18, they crucified him and two others with him, one on either side and Jesus in the center, that for each of them, they were each nailed to this cross beam, they were each hoisted up, feet nailed to the upright, hands nailed to the cross, and then they crucified under this Roman method of brutal execution. would either die of their bleeding from the beatings or they would die if they were able to hang on, not by the bleeding from the nail prints, the nails, but by slow suffocation as they lost their strength and hung from their arms and were unable to breathe again. What we've learned in the study of the cross of Jesus Christ in the last weeks is a number of things. First, that the cross itself, that the central message of the cross is that God has given us a substitute, one who died in the place of sinners. We've studied what we've called penal substitutionary atonement, that the central message of the cross is that Christ himself is our peace, that he himself made propitiation for our sins. He bore the eternal wrath of God against it in our place as the obedient, sinless sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. We've seen the character of Jesus, that while he was dying, he looked upon his mother and he made provision for her. And there we have insight into the loveliness and the tenderness of the one who, while dying, is being scorned by the world yet remains the same yesterday, today, and forever in His gentleness, in His kindness, in His grace. We saw the triumph of the cross, that He said with a loud voice, it is finished, and that He had finished making that one sacrifice for sins, that He had finished, accomplished, offering a perfect, consecrated life to the Father, that He had finished in triumphing over the evil kingdom, delivering us from the power of death and from the power of Satan and from the guilt of sin and from the power of sin, that there's a great triumph at the cross. That the world looks at the cross and what does it see? The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, as Paul says, but to us who believe it is the power of God to salvation. Truly he was the son of God, the king of the Jews. But now he is on the cross and he's dead. The narrative in verse 31 snaps us to the bigger picture, from the focus on the cross now to the events in Jerusalem and around the cross. What's happened? It was the preparation day, preparation for Passover, and bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath day according to the Jews. This is remarkable. Ceremonial law, Deuteronomy chapter 21. said that if someone was hung on a tree, he should not remain there overnight, lest the land be defiled. And the same Jews that falsely accused and saw to it that an innocent man would be crucified, now are concerned that the land would be defiled if a dead body is left on a cross. And so they make provision for the bodies to be taken down. Again, you have to see the contrast. The apparent delicate sensibilities of Israel for the ceremonial wall against the backdrop of the crucifixion of Jesus gives you insight into how twisted the human heart can be and our self-righteousness can be. We've just killed Jesus, but we better be careful to take the body off the cross lest we defile the Passover. There's a solution to the problem, and here again, this is jarring. The Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, that they might be taken away. And here, both Jew and Gentile, all humanity, again, the abject cruelty of sin. Because this request was a request that a Roman soldier would be dispatched with a heavy iron mallet to smash the legs of the crucified in order that, in case they were standing on the lower nails and not quite yet suffocated, that by the crumpling of their shattered legs, they would die quickly. That's the request. Would you mind, pilot, sending someone out with the hammer? with the sledgehammer to destroy these men. And so they did. Then the soldiers came. Just think of these men. The men who ask and the men who do it. They came. They broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. He had already bowed his head and gave up his spirit. He was dead. The executioner recognized the lifeless body of Jesus and recognized that he was finished, that he had died. But in verse 34, it's almost as if he thought he should double check. One of the soldiers then pierced his side with a spear. And again, this is, Just more casual cruelty. Think of how they were treating the bodies of these men. Smashing them with their legs, he appears to be dead. Let me double check and a quick stab with a Roman spear into the side of our Lord Jesus Christ. Did he flinch? No. What happened? He was dead. Instead, blood and water flowed out. Evidence that he was truly dead. Now, the blood and the water, the red and the clear, there are so many theories that have been published on this. Calvin, as a matter of fact, in the 1500s had his own. Some think that the heart of Jesus and the pericardium, which is the sac around the heart, which could have been filled with fluid at this point, that that was pierced. Others think that perhaps Jesus had a hemorrhage between the chest cavity and the lungs, and that had filled up perhaps because of the beating or the crucifixion or both, and that the plasma and the blood had separated. But what John sees very clearly is two things. blood and water, red and clear, flowing from the lifeless body of Jesus. And what is critical here is that we have the eyewitness testimony of the Apostle John, the eyewitness confirmation that Jesus is dead. They didn't break his legs because they saw he was already dead. They did pierce him with this spear, and I saw his bodily fluids pour out. And John is so concerned, look what he says in the next verse, and he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth. John wants you to have fixed in your mind this moment so that you would know that Jesus was truly dead, that they didn't break his legs. and that blood and water flowed out, that he died, and that his death is sure. This is the first eyewitness confirmation of the death of Jesus. The second is going to be the removal of Jesus from the cross. The third is going to be his burial in the grave. The gospel writers would have you know that he was dead. He was really dead. He was truly dead. He was completely dead. This is important. that he was not just dead, but he was dead as a man, a flesh and blood man, that when a spear went into his side, an eyewitness testified, standing near the cross, saw the blood of a real man, that the word indeed had become flesh and dwelt among us. This is important because John, when you read his letters, is concerned with a group of false teachers that say, Jesus wasn't really a man. He just appeared to be, which means he didn't really die. John's saying, no, he did. And I saw the brutal treatment of Jesus on the cross. And I saw that he was really dead. Now perhaps there is in here, also in some remarkable way, as God writes on the pages of human history, and there have been theologians, many of them, who have meditated on what this act might mean symbolically. Is it a reminder of, we read in Exodus chapter 17, that the rock was struck Water came out, water from the rock, and that's a picture of Jesus. The idea of blood and water, blood for cleansing and water for life. Again, men as notable as Chrysostom and Augustine and Calvin have wrestled with the symbolism of this moment. But there's a picture here of the provision that is in Jesus Christ. Hymn writers like the writer of Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee, let the water and the blood from thy rib and side which flowed be of sin the double cure. Cleanse me from its guilt and power. That John's plea that we would look on him who was pierced. would be to settle us in our faith that we would believe that he really died for me. So these are brutal events. Crucifixion is brutal. John would have us know that there was a slight deviation from the routine in the life of Jesus. That his legs were not broken, but he was really dead. Notable. But why? Going deeper now. We're tracing a theme of fulfillment in the scriptures The theme is already in John chapter 18 and 19. You remember that in John chapter 18 and verse eight, when Jesus was being arrested and they came for him, he said, let my disciples go. That the saying might be fulfilled, which he spoke, of those whom you gave me, I have lost none. Jesus was interested in fulfillment. Here in our text, in chapter 19, actually in chapter 19, verse 24, when the soldiers divided the garments earlier before Jesus had died, saying, let us not tear it, let us cast lots for it, whom it shall be, this was that the scripture might be fulfilled, which says, they divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. Therefore, therefore, the soldiers did these things. And there's a running theme that grows through the crucifixion narrative, that there's the Old Testament scriptures that are the backdrop through which we both understand the cross, and the cross is the lens through which we understand the Old Testament scriptures, that they can't be divorced from each other. Our text is even clearer. The theme is growing. For these things, verse 36, were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, not one of his bones should be broken. And again, another scripture says, they shall look on him whom they pierced. Now, if we back up a little, Look at verse 35. John has a cascading testimony, an emphatic statement in verse 35. He says, I have been the eyewitness, the eyewitness of this happening, that his bones weren't broken and his side was pierced. I have given to you by way of testimony. And I want you to know that my testimony is true. And I want you to know that my testimony is true in order that you might believe John's interest from these events is that you would believe in Jesus Christ. And now to buttress that line of argument, he goes on to say, for these things were done that the scripture might be fulfilled. That we have the testimony of God in the word, and we have the work of Jesus Christ in history, And they both come to us as a unified whole in order that you might believe. The truth here is certain in the mind of the witness. And this theme of that you might believe, this is Chuck's theme in his gospel. He's writing that you might believe. He knows that without faith you cannot be saved. He knows that he who does not believe is condemned already, but he believes has salvation and eternal life through the Lord Jesus Christ. This is his theme again and again, page after page after page. And John understands that the glory of God is no more brilliantly displayed in the pages of Scripture and in the fulfillment of all the Old Testament types and shadows in the conquering cross and resurrection work of Jesus. And he's saying all the lines of all of God's testimony point to this moment Now, the fulfillment of these two passages in particular. These things were done that the scripture should be fulfilled, not one of his bones should be broken. First of all, where does this come from? It comes from a number of places. In Exodus and Numbers, particularly in the regulations for the Passover. It's Passover time. Christ himself, Paul writes to the Corinthians, is our Passover. He's the Passover lamb. John had preached on the Baptist, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And the instructions for the Passover lamb in Exodus chapter 12 and verse 46 were that not one of its bones should be broken. And here Jesus then is the fulfillment of Old Testament revealed typology. The lamb as a type of Christ, its bones not broken, that when the Roman soldier came by with the mallet of cruelty that when he saw Jesus was dead and he walked on, God was testifying in history according to his word, this is your Passover lamb. There's another place in Psalm 34 where David, exalting over his deliverance, Mabimelech, And there he testifies that God's anointed one, one of the signs of his deliverance, is that God delivers many of the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all. He guards all of his bones, not one of them is broken. And as David wrote this concerning the anointed, the king, here the king of the Jews on the cross, fulfilling the types and shadows of the Old Testament, not one of his bones is broken. They shall look on him whom they pierced we just read this from Zechariah Chapter 12 Zechariah chapter 12 that they are looking on him whom they pierced is a fulfillment There's a first reference to the Messiah being pierced actually in Psalm 22 that he was pierced on the cross But there his hands and his feet were pierced But there's a second reference in Zechariah chapter 12 and verse 10, which is critical actually, because if we understand our theology of Jesus, there it's the Lord himself speaking of the people piercing him. There's a language of the angel of the Lord, the Lord coming in salvation, the Lord coming for his people, the Lord coming for deliverance. The Lord coming to make satisfaction for the sins of Israel, read in chapter 13. And there, that one, the Lord who is coming to deliver Judah, Jerusalem, and Israel, he is the one who is pierced. And Jesus here fulfills the Old Testament reference. And John is saying, my eyewitness not only testifies to the reality of the death of Jesus in your place, but it matches the granular detail of Old Testament prophecy and is the fulfillment of the eternal purposes of God revealed long ago. Four, he who has seen is testified, and his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth, that you may believe, for these things were done that the scripture should be fulfilled. Some lessons, four of them. The first thing you need to understand, even from this little window, is what the Bible is actually about. The whole Bible. The whole of the scriptures. What is it actually about? There are some people who even in the last 100 years, particularly in American evangelicalism and evangelical theology, have tried to divide up the Bible into dispensations, and say that they essentially have different messages concerning even the way of salvation and God's purposes in history. That there's, in a sense, multiple messages in the Bible for different groups of people, sometimes even positing different ways of salvation, one salvation by works through the law, and for other people, salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But Jesus, John 5 and verse 39, search the scriptures for they testify of me. You remember when he was walking, rode to Emmaus with the disciples, and what he said is they were wondering about what had been happening in Jerusalem. He said to them, these are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me. Now I want you to see there's three categories. The law of Moses, the Passover land, the prophets, Zechariah, and the Psalms, not one of his bones shall be broken. Jesus is saying is, you take the whole of the Old Testament and then the whole of the scriptures and they have one unified theme, Jesus Christ and him crucified for sinners. The ubiquity of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Bible is the first lesson here. Jesus on every page, that God has in, and listen to this carefully, in every age of human history, communicated the glory of his goodness towards undeserving sinners in the form of the promises of the gospel of Jesus Christ. God in every age has communicated to undeserving sinners the glory of his goodness and the promises of the gospel of Jesus Christ. What did God want Adam and Eve to know after they had sinned? That the seed of the woman was coming to triumph. What did God want Noah and us to know as he was saved in the ark? across the waters of the flood. And what did God want us to think of when Noah offered sacrifices and there arose a sweet-smelling aroma to God, pointing to the cross of Jesus Christ and deliverance through Christ who is our Lord. What did God want Abraham to know when he said, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, offer him on a whole burnt offering in the place that I will show you. And then God said to Abraham, stop. Don't kill him. but in the mount of the Lord it will be provided. I will send a redeemer who will be the son of Abraham. What did God want Melchizedek to know? That mystery man in the shadow lands of the Old Testament who was in the priestly line of Jesus Christ, that God was communicating to a portion of humanity that we don't fully know or understand the story. We have a glimpse into it, but in the days of Abraham that he was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations. What did David and Elijah, Isaiah and Micah and Jonah, even Jonah, you think he was sent to Mino to preach repentance, but he was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, a living picture of the death and resurrection of Jesus. In other words, you can't get away from this theme. The scriptures were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He is the living word. And no one has ever come to the father, but through Jesus Christ, by faith in him. The negative lesson is that there is no other message of the scriptures. Expensationalism, for example, is dangerous, or it posits in its worst forms that there are different ways to go, different messages for different groups of people, one gospel for the Jews, another for the Gentiles. There are none. There's one gospel. Positively, how to read the Old Testament is rooted in texts like this, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. It means that God was always preaching concerning Jesus. Second lesson. The doctrine of Scripture itself is taught here in a remarkable way. In our Westminster Confession of Faith, our fathers in the faith summarized that we should have a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. And then they said these words. the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, and then these phrases, the consent of all the parts. There's one unified message. the scope of the whole, that is to give glory to God, and the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation. In other words, if you were to search the scriptures and go from page to page and book to book and go from beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation, it makes the full discovery it proclaims the fullness of the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. And in doing so, think about this, Zechariah, post-exilic prophet, Moses For 1,500 years before Christ take your Passover lamb don't break its bones. This is what God has revealed Isaiah a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and Isaiah 53. He's going to bear the iniquities of his people Micah he's going to be born in Bethlehem David the Holy One will not see corruption Psalm 16. He's going to rise again from the dead Isaac on the altar. You can just go through the whole of Testament, the whole of ceremonial law and the sacrificial system, the temple, everything pulsing and pointing towards Jesus Christ. Now here's the wonder of it. This is across thousands of years of human history. Author after author, time after time, place after place, all testify to one thing. Jesus Christ and him crucified with the consent of all the parts, God testifying in all human history to his son. Third lesson, sovereignty of God, again, over all the events in the death of Jesus. You took him with lawless hands and crucified him, Peter preached, but it was according to the foreknowledge the purposes of God, the eternal counsels of God, that nothing in all the granular detail of the cross, not only did it match the Old Testament prophecies, but it was the fulfillment of because of the sovereign hand of God. Jesus foretold his own death in Mark chapter 10. It was foretold much earlier, like I said, in Genesis 3. The whole of the scriptures is pulsing with prophecies of Jesus Christ. Luke 24 and 27, I just read a moment ago, the Bible is about the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ, the living word. The sovereignty of God is this, that God not only testified hundreds or even thousands of years earlier concerning the specific details, but that when a Roman soldier came by with his mallet to crush the legs of Jesus and stopped because he was dead. It was because not one of his bones would be broken according to the sovereign purposes of God. And then, when he appeared to casually take his spear and pierce the side of Jesus, that too was in the sovereignty of God. Some fools accuse perhaps Jesus of just trying to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. In other words, he knew the Bible. So for example, in Luke chapter four, when he says, this prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled in your hearing, I'm the Messiah, they say, well, that's easy to say, anyone can say that. But when you're dead, hanging on a cross, and the prophecies keep being fulfilled, We ought to stand back and wonder and say and believe the eyewitness testimony of the Apostle John. The extent of that sovereignty was to the moment that that Roman soldier lifted his spear. Now one more lesson. Let's pull all these themes together. We have the first, which is the Bible is the one unified, extraordinarily detailed communication of God concerning his son, Jesus Christ, and salvation through him. The whole Old Testament testifies of me, Jesus says. The events of the crucifixion are the perfect sovereignly eternally purposed execution of that plan revealed in the pages of the Old Testament. When we put these two things together, there's one more thing worthy of our meditation. That this all points back even farther. In John chapter 17, Jesus said, Father, the hour has come to glorify your Son that your Son may glorify you. And Father, glorify me together with yourself but the glory that I had with you before the world was. And sometimes we tend to think that he was praying just concerning his entrance back into glory in his final exaltation, that the glorification of the Father and the Son happened only when the Son appeared again in glory. But if we understand rightly the cross and the eternal purposes of God written across all the pages of the scripture, it's this. There's a theme that's in the Gospel of John, beginning at chapter 12, verse 23. The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. He says the hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. He's coming to the hour. We've studied this again and again. What was that hour? Jesus said, my soul is troubled, what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name. When a voice came from heaven, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. The Father is determined to glorify the Son and to glorify his own name in the Son through the hour of the cross. The glory shines at the cross. The plan of salvation that is testified to in the Old Testament and accomplished in Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Why was it testified to and accomplished? Because it was in the mind of God from eternity. What is being revealed in the scriptures and in its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the living word, is the mind of God concerning his own glory communicated to humanity. That's the scriptures in their whole. Which is why John could describe Jesus in the revelation as the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Or Peter, in 1 Peter chapter 1, that that was in the mind of God before the foundation of the world. That what is being revealed in the pages of Holy Scripture And ultimately, in these last days, in the Son of God, who is the brightness of the radiance of the glory of God, that which the prophets told us long ago now is being revealed in history is one concerted revelation because it is the communication through the word who became flesh of the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ at the triumph of the cross. And that's the one message of the scriptures. The cross of Jesus Christ is the eternal design of God to communicate the contours of his glory to humanity. That the word became flesh and dwelled among us and we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only begotten son of God. I was thinking about this yesterday when I was driving home from Roanoke. We drove Friday through the mountains. and it was raining and foggy, and then we drove back through the mountains, and it was dark, rainy, foggy, and I never really saw the mountains. I know they're there. I saw little glimpses, but I was unable to see that glory. It was kept from me. I couldn't see through the cloud. I couldn't see through the darkness. And the reason why all of the scriptures testify to Jesus Christ is because the glory of God is displayed in the Logos, the living word. And God, through all history, has been communicating to humanity the way of salvation through Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God. That's why there's one message, because there's only one way to the Father. That's why all the scriptures testify of Jesus Christ. Because there's no other way to God except through Jesus. But in Christ, God has made a way for mere creatures to penetrate the clouds that surround those mountaintops and to see his glory. More than that, to live in the full sunshine of his glory, to lift damnable sinners such as we are to life in the presence of God through Jesus Christ. But he himself is the bridge between God and man. You remember long ago, children, There was a man named Jacob who was running for his life from Esau. He came to a place called Bethel. What did he do there? As a child, I remember this story because he used a stone for a pillow, and I always thought that was an interesting choice as a child. But more than that, I remember his dream. He dreamed this dream. Shadowlands of the Old Testament. God said, God showed him through the dream that there would be a ladder between heaven and earth and that there was a ladder on it. The angels of God were ascending and descending. The Lord at the top, Jacob at the bottom, and then the covenant promises were declared again to Jacob. Do you remember how the Gospel of John opens? Nathanael comes to Jesus. Nathanael comes to Jesus in John 1 in verse 49. He said, Rabbi, you're the son of God. You are the king of Israel. He recognizes him at the beginning. Jesus answered and said to him, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these. See the emphasis on faith? You believe now. Wait till you see the greater things. Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. The cross is the vision of the greater things, testified all through history. the fulfillment of Scripture, the revelation of the glory of God, the eyewitness testimony that you would believe in Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Lord our God, we remember these events in history. Long ago, a Roman soldier walking by the body of our Savior, passing him by with a hammer, piercing him with the spear. The testimony of your word through the Apostle John across the ages that these things would be and did happen so that we might believe your consistent witness to the person and work of the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Lord, we pray for grace to see at the cross your voluntary condescension, Emmanuel God with us, to see you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to see your attributes, that you are holy, holy, holy, just, and the justifier of the ungodly, omnipotent, all-powerful, the God who is love and full of mercy. We would see everything concerning you and your glory shining across the pages of the scriptures, and here particularly in the face of Jesus Christ. that you would help us to see the cross of Jesus is the long foretold open window that would reveal and has revealed the full glory and divine attributes of you, the living God. But we pray that through the simple testimony of the eyewitness John, that we would again believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God, believing have life in his name. Amen.