"Behold Your King" (John 19)

Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're examining the Gospel of John to learn about the words and work of Jesus.As we come to John 19, the crucifixion sounds like a description of Jesus’ deepest and most profound moment of humiliation. But for John, this moment of suffering is actually Jesus’s coronation. It is the public announcement of a new king, a new kingdom, and a new administration, coming into power.  John is trying to provoke a response– of trust and obedience to Jesus’ loving rule. To receive and rest in Jesus as king. And he gives us three images in this chapter that show us what kind of King Jesus is and how his kingly rule moves into this world. Jesus the King is a mirror, a sponge, and a fountain.LINKS & QUOTES:https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-shock-of-the-cross/https://www.apu.edu/articles/the-science-of-the-crucifixion/“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism … Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship… is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.” — David Foster Wallace“Christians are free to take or leave money, power, recognition, and status. How? These things at the top of the kingdom of this world don’t have to control them the same way anymore. When you understand what Jesus has done for you, it frees you. When you realize that you are made righteous by his grace and not by your achievement, and that you are loved in Jesus Christ, it changes the way you look at power, money, and status; they don’t control you anymore.” — Tim Keller“Nothing would have been achieved if Jesus Christ had simply endured bodily death. It was necessary for him to feel the severity of God’s judgment, that he might step between and, by satisfying God’s wrath, somehow prevent it from falling upon us.” — John Calvin“All of these verses highlight the fact that this is happening according to the scripture. Jesus is playing out many themes of the biblical text and fulfilling its prophecies. This is what ought to have taken place. Now it may seem that everything has gone wrong, but at this time when everything seems to be going wrong, we get this litany of fulfillments of scripture. This highlights that this is no accident. Step by step, what is happening in this chapter is fulfilling what God has declared in the past. Jesus is here carrying out the mission that was set for him. He's not rejecting or swerving from it, nor has he stumbled and fallen.”— Alastair Roberts"The blood and water signified the two great benefits which all believers partake of through Christ— justification and sanctification. Blood stands for remission, water for regeneration; blood for atonement, water for purification. The two must always go together. Christ hath joined them together, and we must not think to put them asunder. They both flowed from the pierced side of our Redeemer.”— Matthew Henry