He bowed His head (John 19)
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John 19
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He bowed His head (John 19)
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…
Mr. Jack Packer takes as his subject the scripture, He bowed his head.
Well, I think you will agree with me that David put us onto the line when he said,
and say that the Lord is good. It's my duty to follow on tonight. I come under a difficulty
today, a difficulty that has hung over me something like a shadow, because what I'm
going to say, I've been tied down to it. This is one straight line as far as I can
see. I come with a burden that this is the message for tonight. Personally, there were
things I would like to have spoken of otherwise, but the Lord has given me no freedom at all
until it narrows down to a very few words. I'm afraid that some of you are going to be
disappointed because you may be in a position to say, heard it before. Well, I take courage
because Brother John Coote, who used to occupy this platform from time to time before he
was taken home to the glory, he once said, if it's worth saying once, it's worth repeating.
If it's true, keep going. Well, we'll take courage. Now I'm going to ask you to follow
me through two very short scriptures and then onto what I feel I may present to you tonight
as that heart-reviving medicine that if you roll it under your tongue, will give you the lift
that will enable you to go forward in the full sense of the love of God. So first of all,
just two little verses in Luke's gospel. Luke chapter 9.
Luke chapter 9, verse 57.
And it came to pass that as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him,
Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him,
Foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.
Now would you turn into John's gospel.
John chapter 19.
Verse 28. This is a chapter you know so well. Verse 28 of the 19th chapter of John.
After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled,
said, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar, and they filled a sponge with vinegar
and put it upon Hyssop and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar,
he said, It is finished. And he bowed his head and gave up the spirit.
My thoughts tonight come to a very small phrase in that last verse.
And he bowed his head. May we put our eyes, by faith, upon this wonderful Savior of ours.
You've heard this verse read many times. I'm sure you've considered it.
We've many times considered in our meetings that wonderful cry in full vigor
when our Lord with a victor's cry on his lips said, It is finished.
And those were words that might well sink down into our hearts
and give us that assurance and safety that the work of redemption was completed.
Not that this was just the end, but this was the completion in the superlative sense.
The work that he came to do had been raised to perfection.
There was no more he could do because there was nothing left to be done.
And those words uttered on earth, may we say they satisfied a holy God in heaven.
A little while ago in hell, we were reminded, as we need to be reminded,
that on Calvary's cross a holy God exerted himself in justice to the utmost of its terror
upon the one who bore the load of sin.
It wasn't a quiet demonstration.
It was a full-scale, complete operation of God in action in justice against sin.
And the person alone who sustained that judgment had time to say,
still in his strength, It is finished.
And would it be wrong if we were to say that the God who sat on his holy throne of justice
had to nod his assent to this.
A work of salvation finished.
And then it says, And he bowed his head.
This leaps out of the scripture at me as one of the most tremendous statements in the scripture
that he bowed his head. Who is he? Well lift your eyes, look.
Pilate wrote a title and said this is Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews.
How right he was.
You see, in his blundering ignorance, God insisted that the truth was there.
This is Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews.
But he was more than that because John's gospel, perhaps above all others,
would impress upon us that this person was none other than the only begotten son of God.
And it says, And he bowed his head.
He had the right to hold his head higher than anyone else.
Ah, but look what he suffered.
Of emotional stress, of disappointment, of physical violence.
But this was not an act of weakness.
This was an act of willfulness because he said my will is to do the will of him that sent me.
Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.
And he, our blessed Lord and Redeemer, the one now exalted to the right hand of the throne of God,
he bowed his head and gave up the spirit.
He bowed his head.
This is always, I think you will agree, taken as an act of submission.
He submitted himself to the will of God.
And he who had the right of command, all authority, the one who friended the worlds, our Lord,
it was in submission that he bowed his head.
Had not this characterized him throughout his life?
There was nothing haughty about him as a man.
It would seem that folk called him by his ordinary name if they called him nothing worse.
He was the one who is put before us in the scripture throughout all the gospels
as the lowly one from God.
He spoke with authority about the dignity of God.
He spoke with authority over demons and disease and death.
But he never, to use a familiar phrase, pushed himself.
He was a man who was submissive.
And this scripture moves my heart so deeply that I would share with you this meditation,
this wonderful comment that he, who is now in John's gospel,
been established as a son of God, which he ever was,
he bowed his head.
And the circumstances, you know, and the reason embraces every one of us
to express the love of God in this world to you and me.
Let's proceed.
It says, and he bowed his head.
I'd like to turn further than thinking of this as an act of submission.
Do you remember, of course you do, the Lord spoke a parable in Matthew's gospel,
recorded in Matthew's gospel, chapter 22, the parable of the wedding party.
I'm not going to take you through the details of that, but to remind you
that amongst the folk who came in eventually,
there was someone who was brought into that wedding party
without a wedding garment.
And it says of him, he was speechless.
He was stood there for all to see, and he had nothing to say.
He was speechless.
There was no excuse he could make.
There was nothing he could plead.
He just, no defense.
When our gracious Lord took our place in death, he bore our guilt.
And isn't this included in this wonderful phrase,
he bowed his head in guilt.
He had nothing to say.
He had no mitigating circumstance because he'd taken my sin upon himself.
And there was no reason why I should be defended.
And the person who takes up my cause, which is hopeless, has no defense.
He bowed his head.
He bowed it with the guilt that was mine.
And the guilt of those who've unloaded their sins onto the one
who became the supreme sacrifice for sin.
Don't let us minimize this in any way.
This was a moment of extremity.
When the extreme holiness of God was at work,
when the extreme horror of sin was fully exposed,
and he alone who could take up such a position,
he bowed his head.
What a terrible comment.
Upon our position by nature before God,
had we stood ever in that position, we would have been eternally lost.
And should it be that somewhere amongst us in our company tonight
there's someone who's never been released from their sins,
we must point you to none other than Jesus Christ
and quote the scripture that the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son,
cleanses from all sin.
There is no other cleansing means.
Then this brings us, in our meditation tonight,
to the fact that here was the one spoken of in Hebrews 12,
who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,
despising the shame.
The shame of the cross.
You know, there have been folk who've minimized this,
but let us put it into its proper place.
This was no beautiful ornament, this cross.
This was no polished means of execution.
This was a stark, naked truth of someone dying for sin.
The cross, no doubt, had been allocated to Barabbas, the prized murderer,
and it became occupied by the Lord of Glory, the only Saviour.
But he despised the shame.
This was something that he turned away from, or did he?
Human words are so difficult.
He accepted the shame,
and it was an open death of open shame
with all that goes with it of stigma.
But you remember that in the 69th Psalm,
when one moved by the Holy Spirit of God
to record the feelings of the sufferings of the Christ,
when he wrote, he said,
shame hath covered my face.
This verse connects with the very short phrase we're examining tonight.
He bowed his head in shame,
saying, shame hath covered my face.
Oh, if I could only assess correctly
what it cost the Lord of Glory,
who had the right to hold his head high above all else,
what an act of compassion,
what a selfless act it was
when he took shame to the very end
and said, shame hath covered my face.
Don't let us get the idea that this was an easy matter for him.
Sin was abhorrent to him.
He voluntarily took our sins
and bore them in his own body on the tree.
Blessed be his name.
May we go further.
I'd like to suggest to you
that there are good scriptural grounds to believe
that he bowed his head in pain and in agony.
Pains of hell got hold of me.
There's only so much pain that can be physically borne
until a man reacts to it.
There are some who would attempt to hide it,
but here was one who knew not only shame but pain.
Let's be simple about it.
Physical pain given relentlessly.
You've read of torture.
There's many a man been tortured,
but here was the one whose face was more marred than anyone's
and his form more than the sons of men.
This is something of the horror of the sufferings of the Christ
who loved us,
and if we could only meditate upon him.
Sometimes there are times
when we would talk about anything but the person of the Christ,
but tonight I would put him fully in focus if I could before you,
not asking you to build up a mental picture of him,
but to listen to the scripture,
to the very words that it says,
and ask yourself, what does it mean?
And if it's true, which most assuredly it is,
it adds up to this,
if we are confronted once again with the love of Christ,
that passive knowledge,
you'll never get to the end of this,
of the one who bowed his head in pain.
Then there's another thought that I would add to this.
Let us not underrate
the fact that he died.
Oh yes, he died voluntarily.
I laid down my life.
I have power to lay it down.
I have power to take it again.
And our risen saviour,
whom we know by faith,
is a living proof of the accuracy of his words.
I lay down my life.
I have power to lay it down.
I have power to take it again.
This was the moment when he laid down his life.
The scripture says,
Christ died for the ungodly.
Not for a good man.
Not for somebody who tried and failed,
who needed some help.
It was no death in a sense of trying.
It was no demonstration of goodness.
It was that Christ died for the ungodly.
You and I may well be glad
that as we look back on our past lives,
ironed upon what we can find in ourselves presently,
that we had someone who went to the extreme,
not in a desire to help us,
but in action to help us.
Action so effective,
this is a word, effective,
that it stands for all time and all eternity,
in all circumstances,
and will stand the scrutiny of the light of God.
There is hope in none other,
but there is hope.
There's hope because Christ died for the ungodly.
How is it that in Christendom today,
there are so many who would rob the truth
of his dying away from us?
They said a young man to me,
I could get on with Christianity
if you got the personalities out of it
and brought it down to something,
just it to a code,
and did away with the personal Christ.
There would be no such thing as Christianity.
Why has there been a dynamic powerful good
wherever the gospel has been preached?
What tamed the cannibal?
What turned the idolater from his ways?
It wasn't the trader.
It wasn't the schoolmaster.
It was a preaching of the gospel
of the death of Jesus Christ
who died for the ungodly.
And here in this little verse,
it says, and hey,
you know who he was.
He bowed his head in death.
When the enemy felt that this was his supreme moment,
he made the biggest mistake in his calculations
because as ever,
God was supremely in charge.
In due time, not too soon,
but thank God, not too late,
Christ died for the ungodly.
It would seem to me
that if there is any measure
of the passing of time,
be it centuries, millenniums, or eternities,
I don't know what the expression is,
that this fact will always stand
in its clear-cut precision
and will never be eroded
that in due time, Christ died.
And this little verse says,
and hey, he bowed his head.
I tell you, he bowed his head in death
that you might live.
What an anomaly.
This book of John starts so triumphantly
in the first chapter by saying
in him, life was.
It always was.
There was never a moment
but what there was life
in this eternal word of God.
But here, as a man,
when we see him taking up our place in death,
he submitted.
He died.
He bowed his head in submission,
in guilt,
in shame,
in pain,
in death.
Now you will recall
that I read to you
two little verses
from the ninth chapter of Luke.
There was a man who came
and he was so moved
by what he saw in Jesus Christ
that he decided this was the man to follow.
He saw that he had to move quickly,
definitely,
and continually.
And he said,
Lord, I'll follow you wherever you go.
I wonder if you've ever had a feeling
like that spring into your heart.
Well, God grant that it's fully founded
and that you mean it,
but listen to the cost.
This gracious Lord said,
count the cost.
The foxes,
they've got their dens.
The birds of the air,
well, they have nests.
But the Son of Man
has nowhere to lay his head.
I understand
that this bowing of the head,
how do we find the words that describe it?
Incline or declining of the head.
An act that was fully consciously done
by the Lord
when he said it's finished,
he bowed his head
and gave up the spirit.
This is exactly the same
as laying down the head
in rest.
He said,
the Son of Man
hath not where
to is it incline or decline
or just to bow,
lay down the head.
May we not consider this point
because it seems to spread out
into what we read later
in the scripture
of the man,
Christ Jesus,
that Paul writes about.
He was the one
who was that man
of whom it is said
this man
after he had offered one sacrifice
for sins forever
sat down at the right hand of God.
He bowed his head in rest.
His work was done.
That's why he said,
well the foxes
every night
or is it day time,
I don't know,
they go to sleep.
And the birds,
they have the cover of their nest
but there's no rest for the Son of Man.
His work wasn't done.
He was engaged
in this great work of salvation
and not until this moment
indicated by the little phrase
that we've read and he,
he bowed his head
because he'd already said
it's finished.
What a load
must have passed off him
at that moment
when he died
that we might be forgiven.
When all the suffering,
all the pain,
all the shame
and all that had marked
his uncheered life
here in this world
when he bowed his head in rest.
And he's the one who now
having risen from the dead
has ascended to the highest
point of authority.
We sometimes forget this.
We may sing of him
as the right hand of the throne of God
on a Sunday
and go out on a Monday morning
utterly dejected
feeling that we've got the whole of the burden
to ourselves.
But isn't this correlated?
Shouldn't we be comforted
and enthused
by the fact
that the one who died for us
in such weakness,
pain, guilt and shame
who took our place
has been raised
to the highest place
of life and authority.
Is it not true
that God's love
has moved out
in such a way
that we could turn you
to promises which satisfy
any inquiring soul
that what God has done
for Jesus Christ
he'll do for
every believer
raise him
and put him
in his place
before almighty God
that place of joy and privilege
in the Father's house
forever.
There is no doubt
there is no possibility
of doubt
that the person who comes
to the Lord Jesus Christ
and kneels at his feet
as a guilty sinner
is going to be
blessed
for all eternity.
Someone
in my office
sort of pushed me
as they passed me on a corridor
and said hello, are you winning?
Well if they'd known
how I felt about my job
at that moment they wouldn't have asked the question
are you winning?
I turned around and said
I'm on the winning side.
I don't know where it came from
but I went back to them
and said look
I am a believer
I'm on the winning side
Are you on the winning side?
Are you on the winning side?
Have you got your
have you sided up
with the Lord Jesus Christ
in such a practical way as this
that come what may
his word
is paramount.
Now this is going to lift
our spirits
as we roll a verse
like this
under our tongue
It will make our hearts
pulse afresh
because if you have lost
your way in this world
there's somebody who knows
exactly where you are
and someone
who has the power to help
and the remedy
and is in himself
the great
restorer.
David knew of the Lord
as a shepherd and said
he restoreth my soul.
Do you remember
in Mark's gospel
there was a man in the meeting room
there, they called it a synagogue
it's exactly the same word
if you chase it through the language
as a meeting room.
Somebody there who had a withered hand
when the Lord said stretch it forth
and this man I'm sure
stretched it towards the Lord
Jesus Christ
in perfect obedience
it says it was restored
he's our great
restorer. And my dear
Christian friend
don't just leave that on the
gospel counter
it's got a meaning to you
and me that if you find
as someone said
there's so many of the Lord's
people dead and withered
if you've got a withered hand
find yourself ineffective
and losing your grip
you stretch
forth that hand to him
and it will be restored
like the other
he's the great restorer
he restores the soul
he can restore the hand
into action
he can restore the heart
into circulation again
in such a way
that you can have
a new
pulsing life
in you and go forward
here in this world
but there's something
else that rests upon
me tonight because
I want to turn your eyes away
from me I want
to turn them to the Lord Jesus Christ
and just for a moment as we close
to say
this act of
bowing the head
he bowed his head
is I believe
I repeat
that phrase I believe
a supreme
act
as a man
of worship
you can
think of many scriptures that speak
of the Lord Jesus Christ in
connection with the burnt offering
the worship offering
it's really too big
a subject to open up just now
but if you
ever want to see
an act
of absolute
and complete worship
I think it's written
in this little clause and he
bowed his head
what I failed to give to God
at every point
in my life
he has done it
the wonderful one
who died
for sins
and in dying
he showed
the perfection
of the person that he
really was
this was an act
of worship
to God
when he died
on Calvary's
cross when
he bowed his head
he offered himself
without spot
to God
and our joy
and our personal
response
and the advantages
that we may gain
are because
of this
wonderful person
in
I must confess a very
incomplete way
I tried to
put across
some of the thoughts
that
linger as I
read this little phrase
and he bowed his head
so effectively
so complete
in its action
that if you look at it
still further
I am sure you will find
there is much more in this
phrase than I have been
able to develop tonight but
if that is the
objective side of it
may we
steal a moment
to say what is this
going to do to me
reaping the benefits
that come through
Christ's
dying for the ungodly
surely
you and I find
ourselves in a position
of privilege
and privilege always
brings responsibility
then
haven't we to listen to
verses like this
submit yourselves
to God
says James, submit yourselves
if I look at my lord
I find his submission
was absolute
in life
and in death
it was absolute
this is something
I need to learn
not
my way
but thy way
not what I want to do
and this knocks my ambition
doesn't it
it accounts for some
who could have gone high in the world
being pushed out
at the side ranks
as unskilled labour
because
they submitted
to God's pattern
in their lives
but they are richer for it
richer far because they are
on the winning side
and when the final
analysis is taken
you will find
that these people are
rich indeed
the lord spoke of
not labouring
for the meat that perisheth
labour not
for the meat that perisheth
there is
that which endures
and as
young men and young women
we must be careful
that we
don't burn up
the future because
of today
the future is secure
in Jesus Christ
and Paul always looked
for that day
this one
this one who bowed his head
has lifted it now
and the day will
come when in
absolute autocracy
he will rule
in this world
in righteousness
and in equity
that's when the glory of the lord
shall cover the earth
as the waters cover the bed of the sea
if we could only get this
into our daily practice
and live like men and women
who have got a living connection
with such a person
though we don't deserve it
it's going to give us
a submissive appearance in this
world
because
our lord himself
even
Christ
pleased not himself
there's
a chapter you know in the bible
I read it a few days ago
and said you know I've got to
admit that as I read
these verses I feel so ignorant
about them that if somebody
had quoted them to me I would have said
good gracious
I don't recollect them
and that's a little chapter
that I've never heard anybody
speak about the fifth
chapter of the acts it's there
you read it
where all the apostles were put in prison
they were all released
they were all scourged
as I read it
and in the last verse
they were counted
it joy that they
were counted worthy
to suffer shame
for their master
he suffered shame
for you and me
he restored
what he hadn't taken
away
it was our account he was settling
and some of us
can't stand the shame
and the derision
when someone turns round as well
they may and looks you
up and down and says oh
I suppose you really
are a kind of religious
man and you feel your ackles
go up don't you
in indignation
but there were those
counted it a joy
to suffer shame
you may
look through these points
I'm not going to labour
because I've gone as far
as I can
to point out
what may be seen
in this little phrase
that he
bowed his head
there's all the glory of it
attached to him
and there's a significant
lesson
in many steps
that if we look at it again
we may find
we'll lift the practice
of our Christian conduct
in this world
and not make us walk
aggressively in this
world but in
independence upon
our lord in the
knowledge that by
and by
we shall be with him
we shall see him
we shall be like him
and with him forever
the guarantee
is so secure
and so complete
that it ought
to be the medicine
that we've spoken of
this afternoon the medicine
that when we roll
it under our tongue
and think what
God has put right into our
mouths will send
through us every one of us
a reviving
sense of spiritual
well-being
that we are God's people
in this world and he's
got his eyes on us
even when we haven't got our eyes on him
but may God help us
to draw the lessons
that we've been trying
to look at tonight for his name's sake …