John 18-19
Washed in His Blood!
This isn’t some stain you can easily wash out. It’s not the same as washing your hands or taking a bath. We know well that there are some things that don’t come off so easily with a little soap and water. You know those times as kids when we got marker on our hands, or maybe glitter. It took several times washing our hands before we finally got everything off. Have you ever tried cutting an onion with bare hands and then realized that your hands smelled like onion for a week? Because it’s not just clean on the outside that matters, but the inside too. For we can wash up, clean ourselves up in order to hide something worse underneath. Perhaps, we just spray some air freshener to cover the smell, but the dirt and grime are still there. For try as we might to rid ourselves of the dirt and smell, every time we try to wash it away, the dirt and smell remain. Indeed, I’m not talking about your average mess that can be so easily washed off. Nor is it the smell that we can mask with perfume or other more pleasant scents. The dirt and grime we struggle with tonight is our own sin. It’s the stain on our flesh that refuses to be washed away. It’s the proverbial mud pit that we love to roll around in. Our sin is the stain that we’ve tried to get rid of, but can never mange to fully wipe away. Or worse yet, no sooner have we been made clean, we dive right back into the mess and filth that was just washed away.
Yes, we realize well that if we’re ever dirty, if our hands are covered in dirt, mud, or other filth, that we need to be washed. We need to be made clean. Our sin must be washed away if we’re ever to appear in the house of our Lord. But everything we’ve tried has failed. So, let us look to our Lord on this night. Let us stop trying to mask our own dirt and filth, and rather, come as we are before our Lord.
2.
I always imagine Jesus being perfectly clean, in dazzling white. It’s the image of his holiness that is always depicted in art as rays of light. It’s the purity, the cleanness that we look at and think, “I don’t want to mess that up with the mud on my shoes.” Yes, there’s this barrier between the filth of our sin and the holiness and purity of God. But dirt, filth, grime always finds a way to make the clean dirty. It all started tonight with one of Jesus’ own disciples... Judas. “Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them,” John 18:5. Judas came in his filthy and underhanded ways, having traded Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Blood money as it would come to be called. And I want us all to understand... Judas can be any of us, all of us even. We too have stretched out our hand to take that which we desire in exchange for Jesus. We’ve traded Jesus for corrupt and underhanded ways. The betrayal of Jesus is just as much our sin, our filth and dirt, just as Adam’s sin is our sin.
See our Lord on this night. His hands have been made dirty. He’s been dragged through our filth and sin. He’s been arrested by Roman soldiers, beaten, bruised, and bloody. He would be taken before Pilate, and Pilate would seek even to release him. But it was the crowd that yelled out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” John 19:6. Jesus would have to bear the forty lashes across his back. He would be brought within an inch of death. And then, they would make him carry his own cross, as we read, “So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha,” John 19:16-17. It was the sweat of his own brow, the blood from his back, the dirt off his hands and his feet. In his hands was not just his own cross, but the filth of all of our sins. Then, see his hands on the cross as they placed the nail into his hand. Every swing of the hammer wounded him just as every sin we’ve committed against him. It was our sins that held him there. It was for our sins that he must suffer. For examine the one whose hands have been nailed to the cross and see what dreadful price our sins have cost.
1.
It should have been our hands nailed to that tree. It should have been our blood dripping from the nails. It should have been our suffering and our agony that we rightly deserved. For we would have fit in there with those two criminals. No, maybe you don’t consider yourself so wretched, but the truth is, we deserved it... Jesus didn’t. He was innocent... we’re the guilty ones. We’re the ones dirty and covered in sin. Yet, hear what Isaiah long foretold, “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; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed,” Isaiah 53:4-5. As horrendous and evil as this day is, we call it good. As gruesome a death as Jesus died... we needed it. For as the blood dripped from his hand, as the weight of the world crushed him, draining the life out of him, it was for us that we might finally be clean.
No soap will wash away this dirt. It doesn’t matter how many times you try; it won’t work. The only remedy to wash us clean is the blood of Christ. It’s his blood poured out for you. His agony, his pain and suffering. So, see your savior bleed for you! See the nails in his hands and know that he does this willingly for you! Then hear Jesus say, “It is finished,” John 19:30. The punishment of sin has been finished. The war with Satan has been finished. Even as Jesus yields up his spirit, breathing his last, he knows that death too is finished! Every sin that you’ve ever committed was there on that cross... it’s gone now. Finished. Done! No more shall Satan torment us because Jesus has spoken the final word.
For let us look to the cross tonight and see and learn:
THE BLOODY HANDS OF JESUS HAVE TAKEN AWAY YOUR SINS!
So, may we go with our Lord to the tomb and see his body wrapped and laid there. For we know that he has joined us in our suffering, our death, that we may be made pure to enter his house washed clean by his hands. In Jesus’ name! Amen!