But the other purpose was to show you that you could not keep the law, thus you could not be the author of your salvation. Because it blinded you, your sin blinds you, and in your sinful state you hate God. and you are dead to the righteousness of God. Therefore, you have no capability of recognizing the truth of God. 1 Corinthians 2.14, to the natural man, the sinner, the things of God are foolishness and you reject them. That is not a matter of logic. It's a matter of perception. Your lost worldview hates the things of God, rejects them. And go back to the first chapter of Romans again, 18 through 32. Recognize the truth of God and reject it. And so their truths of the Pharisees and the priesthood, the Sadducees, were Heber. They were empty, vaporless, or empty babblings, like vapor on a cold winter's day. You breathe it out, it's mist in the air, and then it's gone. This is otherwise following their father, Satan. 1 Corinthians 1, 18 through 24, God chose the foolish of the world, the rejected of the world, on which to bestow His grace, so that people clearly see that it was not us, but Himself. And the wise of the world find the gospel foolishness. Jews searched for signs, which they had plenty of those, and the Gentiles searched for logic or wisdom. And Christ gave them plenty of that, as did Paul. But that's not what they wanted. They wanted to justify themselves. And so in these two verses, back in John 19, He lays bare the true purpose of Father and Son when describing Christ's garments. That He is there to be the Messiah. That is why He is there, to be that King-Priest. Go back to Psalms 22, starting with verse 16. For dogs encompass me, a company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and my feet. I count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them. And for my clothing they cast lots. That is exactly what's happening here at a thousand years. This was written before Christ. It was not a mode of execution. It doesn't mean you haven't seen people tied to a stake, tied to a pole, or left there to linger as an example. But this was a state-sponsored execution, and this is the way the Romans did it, especially to non-Romans. Those non-priestly garments were divided among the soldiers, representing his worldly attire was not needed. Once again, that which belongs to the world, the world divides, the world rips, the world tears. The world in its greed ceased to gobble up and trample underfoot the goodness of God in order to exalt itself. But his priestly tunic was not torn, representing his suitability as both sacrifice and priest. So the lost, they're naked in judgment, but the saved are clothed in Christ. And that is just as true today as it was back then, and will be true throughout all eternity. That we are only righteous because we are covered with the righteousness of Christ. But in the lost, we are naked. And if we go back to Genesis 3, 6 through 11, man and woman sin because Adam is really a Hebrew name for man. Not really a name. We made it a name by putting a capital letter on it. starting with verse 7, then the eyes of both were open and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloth. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees. But the Lord God called to man and said to him, where are you? And he, meaning man, said, I heard the sound of you in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? And of course, that's when they turn on each other because that's what sinners do. They throw each other under the bus. And we go to Romans chapter two to read why that occurs, what that process is. And so Christ, stripped to nothing, was naked like the first Adam. Laid bare. A worm am I, a serpent am I, and not a man. Yet, he took on that role. to bear God's wrath for sin for us. And there's no way that we can do that. But the lost who want nothing of God will stand naked before God in judgment. He will see through them. He will open the books of works and all that they thought and said and did will be laid bare. and it will rise up and condemn them. With the saved, we're going to be closed in that seamless tunic, demonstrating the righteousness of Christ. We're not going to take on the office of priesthood. But it demonstrates that we will be closed in his righteousness. Then we go to his next role, and that is son, and Jesus protects his mother. Christ provided for his mother's subsistence in faith. But he did this in what we would consider an odd fashion. Go back to John 19, we see Christ looked out from the stavros and saw John the disciple with Mary his mother. And he said, woman. And it's important that we understand this because he's making a statement. So, John 19 verse 26, when Jesus saw his mother and disciple whom he loves standing nearby, and that's the euphemism John uses to describe himself frequently. I don't think he ever mentions his name directly in his own gospel. And he said to his mother, woman, behold your son. Then he said to the disciple, behold your mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own home. You have to remember that when Christ began his ministry in John chapter 2, he called his mother, woman. And if you go to Matthew 12, 46 through 50, Jesus is informed, he's in a house, he's teaching a large group of people. Mary and his brothers were standing outside and they've sent word that they're here for him. And Christ said to the crowd, these are my brothers and my sisters and my mother. Anyone who does the will of God is my brother and my mother." So, these three events, Christ is communicating to us that one does not have standing before God because of some earthly position or some earthly claim. There is only one claim that we can have, and it doesn't even come from us. It comes from God himself, and that is to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ and being obedient. Do we grieve the Spirit of God? Do we live to sin? Do we want to remain in immaturity and not grow in the grace and the Scripture of Christ and the understanding of the Word? Are we trotting out our pet doctrines every other day and coming under the sway of the world because we have made that determination to remain in ignorance? You know, the more I study the scriptures, the more ignorant I feel. Because basically, we're ignorant. How do we know the mind of God except the Spirit of God teach us? They are not logically discerned. They are taught by the Spirit. And it's through the Word that He teaches, and the study of the Word. And so, Jesus made the differentiation at the beginning of His ministry, that His ministry as the Son of God was not going to be guided or determined by sinners, not even in the family. This was not going to be that kind of priesthood. because once he dies and he rises, he never dies again. And he had died because he separates the spirit from his fleshly body because, you know, Lord needs it again, as we'll talk about in a moment. And that's how he ends his ministry on the Stavros, by once again making that emphasis. That she was blessed for her faithfulness. Yes, she was saved. But she was still a sinner, who at one point even thought Jesus was insane. The whole family did. In Mark 3, 21, they're, let's go get that boy again, because now he's off his mind. He's off his rocker. We got to go find him and drag him home. They didn't understand. Brothers didn't, because they remained lost until after he rose again. And that would be the writers of Jude and James. But Christ was the eldest son. He did have earthly ties. He had earthly responsibilities. He did not ignore them. There was not a husband for Mary to take over, never remarried after the death of Yosef. And so Christ, as the eldest, was responsible to provide for his mother and sisters. Because in that culture, they could not go out and find work, especially in their elder years. You go back to the book of Ruth, you see this. That when Naomi returns, she has to send Ruth out to glean in the fields so they would have something to eat. Otherwise, the only mechanism open to you is begging and prostitution. The only two avenues. And they were not going to do that. They were going to go out and work. So he's insuring her future. Once again, telling us that John is somewhat wealthy. We know he has influence. We've talked about that before. And he comes from a family that has a thriving business that gives him influence in the capital, in Jerusalem. So he's ensuring his mother's future to be comfortable so they don't have to go out and glean in the fields, because there wasn't probably going to be much of that in this day and age. And both submit to his will. And John provides for her until the day of her death. This provides us great comfort realizing even in great distress, Jesus looked after his family's needs. Hebrews chapter 2, 17 and 18. Because of all he suffered, he was completed. You need to strike the English word perfect from your thinking and from your scriptures. It's usually a form of the Greek word teleos, which means completion or completed or matured. or has come along the way it was supposed to, and now it has reached maturation. It is not perfect in the sense, to me, without flaw, that is implied because He is God, the God-Son, but that is not what the Word is meaning. The Word is meaning that He was made complete Because out of all the religions, out of all the mythologies, Christ is the only one in which God became man, suffered as a man, died as a man, and rose again in order to save men. He didn't require that men die. He required that He die. Men were already dying. He came to give life, not death. And so, because of this, He understands our plight. He has walked it. He has lived it. He has suffered it. He knows it. See, there's an intellectual knowing and there's an experiential knowing. It is the experiential knowing that makes us wise. You can learn to be a doctor out of a book, but you need to practice being a doctor in residency to have that experiential knowledge to be good at your craft. And that works for every profession, every single profession. You, it is the experiential knowledge that allows you to be wise in your field of endeavor. And so Christ became wise in that respect. That is why He is able to comfort us. That is why He is able to provide for us. He understands our prayers because of that. This is what makes Him a wise High Priest, makes Him a merciful Savior, because He Himself has suffered. When tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted, being tested, being tried. And this is why, so we have great comfort. He is doing this while he is seeing great suffering. Providing for her and he will provide for us. Through this act, Christ demonstrates He knows our needs and will meet them even before we know them ourselves. And that is the function of the High Priest of God, to make intercession between man and God. That's what the priest does. He is the intercessory. You bring your sacrifice, the priest would sacrifice it on the altar, and then it would ascend. The smoke of it would ascend. The essence of why you were sacrificing, if you had the right attitude, it would ascend to God as a sweet savor. Is the whole point of a priesthood to be that intercessor and that is what Christ is But this is not the mercy of the Aaronic priesthood of the cultic law covenant Which remember we've talked about that has no mercy Jesus in the Good Samaritan parable taught mercy But they did not really understand that mercy That is why he taught the parables to teach him mercy. And in that parable, in Luke 10, 25 through 37, he showed that the Jews did not have mercy. When you embrace that law, you have no mercy, any law. That colors your worldview. It is what you believe. And you just believe that they were worthy and no one else was. But it's mercy that separates true Christianity from both religious Christendom and all other faiths. All other faiths. I know there's some that think they are exclusive. I'm not going to debate them on that. There's no point. But they will kill you if you tell them that they do not have the true faith. Yet they demonstrate it constantly. The very fact that The Jews looked down on others, belied the fact that they had the true knowledge of God. In fact, they looked down on others, or killed others. And that's why it's said, religious Christendom. Because, down through history, There have been those sects that claim to be Christian and are not, that did salvation via the sword. That is not what Christ taught. They would have mass baptisms or executions, your choice. That is not what Christ did. Christ is not the author of war and death. That is Lucifer. That is man following Lucifer, playing at religion. Playing at being Christian, but not being Christian. That is falling in the path of the false Jews, who have no mercy, because sin doesn't have mercy. It has only death. And then we come to the third aspect here. Christ says, I thirst. If we go back to our passage in John, After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, he has paid the penalty for sin. From noon to three, thereabouts on the cross, he didn't talk to anybody other than cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This is the first time in his existence that he has felt separation from God. Now we have no clue what that is because we've never been joined to God. So to be separated from God is like, I don't know, I don't care, I don't know what his problem is. Because we are constantly separated from God, unless saved. Then we are joined to God, but through his body of flesh. We only dimly perceive it, 1 Corinthians 13, 12. We see as through an enigma, not a broken glass or glass darkly. We know in part, we struggle to understand it, our entire lives about it. And yet we still wholly grasp. And we'll spend the rest of eternity grasping this in pieces of knowledge. trying to understand the infinite mercy and grace, because it's infinite. We will spend all eternity trying to understand it, because we are finite. We are not infinite. But after this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said to fulfill the scriptures written in their parens, and John had it in there, the parens are added, obviously. It doesn't mean that Christ said it to fulfill Scripture. What was I supposed to do again? Oh yeah, yeah, I got a thirst now. It's all done, I thirst. No, he naturally was thirsty. He's had his back ripped open, bleeding. He's had blood rolling down his head from the crown of thorns. He's been beaten four or five sessions. He is a mess. He's been bleeding. His body is screaming out that it needs volume. It needs hypovolemia. And how does the body express that? In thirst. One of the first things wounded soldiers ask for after pain and relief is water. You thirst. But he says it. He didn't have to say it. Because he's going to give up his spirit here in a moment. So he does say this, he's making a point here. Not just doing it because it's in the scripture, but he's making a point that if we begin to read the scripture, we'll begin to grasp. And when he says that to fulfill scripture, he's talking about Psalm 69 verse 21, where it says, and they gave me poison for food and for my thirst, they gave me sour wine to drink. And then we're going to look at that here. So a jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. As they received the sour wine, he said, and we'll stop there for now. So when he said, I thirst, He's showing us that the sacrifice for sin was completed and Jesus was ready to release the spirit from his fleshly body, which we call death. Death is just separation. We were born dead because we were born separated from God. When Christ gives up his spirit, he says, nobody takes my life. I took my life up, and when I'm done, I will put my life aside, my body aside. I will no longer need it. He's getting ready to do that. There's a separation of the spirit from the body. And he's telling us that when he said this, I thirst, that this is about to occur. Now, at the beginning of his execution, he was offered wine and what's commonly translated as gall at the beginning, which he refused. And we just read this in Psalms 6, 9, verse 21, an offer to be poisoned to drink, it says in the Hebrew, it's a rough word to translate. I don't think they were actually offering him poison. And I think that's probably not the best translation of the Hebrew, but they were offering something that was going to deaden his senses, that was going to lighten his load on the Staros. And he refused it. Because if he had done it, it would have destroyed his sacrificial death. He considered it a poison. He considered it something not right to do. And he refused it. He was going to look this dead in the eye and get through it. Because if he did anything else, it would be sin. It would be taking another road. And so we see that Lucifer is tempting him even during his execution to make him fail, to make all this pointless. Knowing that he's son of God, he will not die. It's because he came to be the last man, the last Adam. And by his death, many be saved. Once again, that comes out of Romans, not of the writings of Paul. And so he refused this evil influence, this strange fire. Remember how we talked earlier about Nadab and Abba who had this strange fire, taking alcohol before and then going into the tabernacle, waving the censers and babbling. Because they were drunk. Christ could not do that. So here he is in his priestly function as being the sacrifice. And if he had taken this mixture, he too would be offering strange fire before God. He could not do this. He would not do this. And he did not do this. But yet at the end, he did take the soured wine given him on a sponge and piled on a hyssop. Hyssop is the type of tree, and we see it throughout the Old Testament under the law. It was used to sprinkle blood. And so, it's always associated with the sacrifice. Always. So, here it is at the cross, the ultimate sacrifice. The sacrifice which all the animal sacrifices look toward and represent it. And here is the hyssop. And he's being offered vinegar. Vinegar, the English word comes from the French, vin, which is wine, and agré, which is sour. That's because it's grape juice that's fermented not by yeast to make wine, but by bacteria to make a soured wine. And if you ever took a swig of vinegar, you would understand that. But you really can't drink vinegar, even in its commercial state of being 5% acetic acid. You have to water it down. And it was the main drink of the poor, but also of the Roman soldiers on duty, because you're not going to get drunk on vinegar. Bacteria are producing a type of acid, not a type of alcohol. And so they had it there for their own refreshment. They were offering it to him. Now wine in the Bible signifies the goodness of God, 1 Kings 4, 25. And Christ used the example many times as it's shown in the Gospels. Or as a king had a vineyard and he left and he sent his servants or slaves to reap the harvest of it and they were killed, beaten, thrown away. He sends his son who's also killed, perhaps in Christ. This vineyard is man. He was planted. so to speak, on this earth. And it was good. It was very good. We get that from Genesis 1, 31. And we know that Jesus is the creator because in John 1 verses 1 through 3, it tells us he was the creator. That is part of the opening hymn, which John is following. It's his template for his writings. And thus, God had created man, calling him good. That didn't last very long, obviously. Man had sinned. So, the goodness of man is now soured. Now, Christ had fulfilled God's justice for men's sins. Christ, I thirst, is reinforcing man's utter weakness, man's utter inability to make himself good. The whole point of keeping the law is to demonstrate how good you are. By my own efforts, I'm good. But that is not good. As Christ told the rich young ruler who walked up and said, good teacher, not believing that he was actually the rabbi of Yahweh, or the son of God, but just a man. Jesus told him right up front, there is none good but God. So if you're calling me good, you're calling me God. If you don't believe I'm God, then you can't call me good. Because good only comes from God. Period. And it's represented by the grape, by the wine in the scripture. But man, because of sin, is not good, and can't make itself good. You cannot take the vinegar and turn it into wine. God can. We can't. Once you have vinegar, it will spoil the wine. That is what happened to man. And that is the emphasis here that's being made, that man could not have done this. And that continues down through today. Man cannot save himself. You cannot be saved apart from the work of Christ. It is totally the work of Christ. Reinforce the need for God to provide Himself as the sacrifice for sin. A haunting reminder for all eternity that we were vinegar. We were soured wine. we were unworthy. So John displays the three roles that Christ fulfilled on the Saros, priest, son, and savior. Let's recapitulate them again, recap them. As priest, the seamless white garment designated his priesthood. The Aaronic priesthood was a parenthesis between the priests of Genesis in the form of Melchizedek, who represented Christ's coming priesthood, and Christ's eternal priesthood. But you know, Melchizedek was not the only priest appointed by God. The first book actually written shows us another priest who was appointed by God, and that would be Job. So, probably the patriarch of each clan was both their leader, i.e., that's what a king is, the leader, and their priest. This is how Job opens up. He's taking on the role of priest for his family, offering up ascending sacrifices for their sin, because it's really the only sacrifice we see before the Aaronic priesthood and the instructions of God. And at the end of the book, when Job is saved, God tells Job's three buddies that they don't know him either. So they need to bring sacrifices to Job. Job will sacrifice as intercessor between them and God, and God will forgive them. So here we see Job acting as priest. He's appointed by God to do this. Melchizedek was appointed by God to do this. Aaron was appointed by God to do this, and his sons after him, and his sons' sons, and so on and so forth. God always appoints the priesthood. But the Aaronic priesthood, as we read in Hebrews 9 and 10, was meant to be a parenthesis, was meant to be limited. It was limited to the old covenant which was going to pass away. It was only there, as Paul wrote in Galatians, as a tutor, as a schoolmaster, to teach us about God, but mainly to teach us about how sinful we are, Romans chapter 7, how we cannot control our sin, and that the only thing we can do is throw ourselves on the mercy of God. Because if not, we're going to find ourselves standing before the mercy of the seraphim, which is like being under law, there will be no mercy. So God directly selected these priests in Genesis and thus he selected Christ as priest from eternity past, which we've read. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. And Noah, we see him acting as priest also. When they leave the ark, he does what is the first ascending sacrifice. There is no burning or sacrifice previous to that that's written in the Scriptures. And if you point to Abel and Cain, we don't know what each offered, except how they offered it. We don't know what they offered, we don't know how they offered it. And as son, he shows mercy. He took care of his mother's earthly future in trusting her to John, setting us an example, not only for ourselves, but for us to set and do for others that are under us. Using the term woman, he divorced all human claims from the coming New Covenant ministry. It's going to be by faith alone. Which means that it's by Christ alone. by the Bible alone, by the grace of God alone, by the Spirit alone. We bring nothing to the table. In fact, we are dragged, kicking and screaming to the table. And this has not stopped Lucifer, a man, from co-opting his ministry into Christendom and deifying his mother. Of course, the major Christendom faith that did that would be Roman Catholicism. It was not the only one. In this devotion to our needs, this is what sets Christianity apart from all other faiths, giving us peace and assurance. Hospitals were not developed by the Jews. Hospitals were not developed by the Muslims. Hospital was not developed by the Hindus. Hospital was not developed by Chinese Confucianism. Chinese was not developed by Japanese Shintoism. Hospitals were developed by Christians, and even in Christendom, trying to copy the things of Christ, they did good. They did some good in the development of hospitals, showing the love and mercy of the Savior, even up to His death on the cross. And of course his savior, he gave up his spirit when he successfully satisfied God's justice against sin. And so after he received the sour wine he said, it is finished. And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. See, he was not executed in the sense that they took his life from him. Once his mission was done, his spirit left his now useless body. He no longer needed it. Thus, the purpose of drinking the vinigare, or the vinegar, demonstrated the inability of people to satisfy God's justice on their own merit. One accepts Christ's sacrifice, new wine in his kingdom, or drink one's own sour wine forever. That's your two options. Actually, If you had logic, if you could use logic, if you could make that choice, that would be your only two options, faith or flesh. However, as sin, you cannot make that choice. There's none righteous, no, not one. No one understands. Thus, None of us can make ourselves into new wine. That would be an act of God, as Christ taught throughout the Gospel of John. I have lost none of those whom the Father has called, he said, in John chapter 6. And so, God saves you and you will drink new wine, permit from me, in his kingdom. Or, you will continually drink a cup of sour wine, your sin, for all eternity. And that will be a bitter cup. And there will be no gall, no drug in there to help you through that. So Christ suffered an eternity of punishment in three hours on the cross. Undeadened, because sinners throughout eternity in the lake of fire will have nothing to deaden their anguish. And we see this in the rich man in Lazarus, when the rich man died and opened up his eyes. In hell, first thing he asked was something to comfort him. Abraham says, we can't do that. We can't pass. We can't go there and you can't come here. You're stuck. And thus the words ring out throughout eternity, it is finished. Now, when Christ is in heaven, it's always present tense. So while simultaneously saying it's finished, he is also saying everything is very good at creation. And I am the Alpha Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, end of revelation. That's what he's actually doing here. He's all ringing out simultaneously. Thus, he's always there with, it is finished. He had no further need of his fleshly body, and the Jews rejected his priestly office, yet ensured he would be priest like Melchizedek forever. And the centurion, over his execution, said, praising God, that Christ was innocent, further condemning the Jews. This is John's Gospel. He is king and priest. He didn't need to include many details of the execution, because his focus, as defined by the opening hymn, John 1, verses 1 through 18, to show that Christ is the Son of God, the beloved of God, the only one of God, the divine of God, who came and was rejected, and yet brought salvation anyway. And it was bought and paid for by his suffering the wrath of God on the cross. Not the pain, not the bleeding, not the beatings, all that was part of the prismus of Lucifer to deter him from the cross, to cause him to sin while on the cross. We do not get a glimpse of what he suffered at the hands of his father after he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Until he said, it's finished. When it was all done. The other Gospels, you know, they include some of these details. Once again, each according to their message. And each Gospel has a fundamentally different message. So, in John's Gospel, he's Priest, Son, Savior. Ergo, Lord of Lords. Now, I want to drive home this message. In modern Christianity or Christendom, we have this error, this heresy that says, I could be saved and Jesus, he's my buddy, he's my savior. But at some point later, as you mature, you decide to make him your Lord. That's a foreign concept in the Bible. He is your Lord because he is creator. John 1, 1 through 3. There's no making him anything. He is already Lord. Especially if you're saved. He is the author and finisher of your faith. Something you could not do on your own. But Arminianism says you can choose. You can contribute something. That is what makes it a terrible heresy. It is gutting Christianity today. Whole denominations are walking wholesale into the world arm in arm. Free will. There is no free will. Unless you don't make Him Lord of your life, He already is Lord. This concept of making Him anything is foreign description. It has no basis in Scripture. He is Lord over the lost, over the saved, and over creation. And He calls those He has saved, according to Ephesians 1, 3 through 10, we do not call ourselves, we do not earn salvation. That's works. And that makes us gods. And there is only one God, the first word of the ten words in Exodus 20. He alone is God. He told Job, think you God? Think you want to walk into heaven with your complaints on your shoulder and demand something of me? Let's have a Q&A. Let's have a question and answer. Let's see how this will go. No. It is always and only about God, and not about us. that He has paid the penalty for our sin at great cost. And we are still unworthy of it. We are still soured wine. We are just soured wine in a new cup. A cup of His righteousness. As we lose this body of sin, either at the rapture or later on after death, separation of our spirit from our body. He gives us a new body. Then we will be new wine in the Kingdom of God. Thank you.