John 20:19-21 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you!’ As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’”

Each of the gospel writers includes a “Great Commission” statement in his gospel. We are most familiar with Matthew’s. “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Mark records another time when Jesus said to his disciples, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” In the book of Acts, Luke gives us the words Jesus’ spoke right before he ascended, “You will be my witnesses.” And right here, in the book of John, we find that already on Easter evening Jesus was giving his disciples their marching orders. He was sending them out to forgive people’s sins. As the Father sent him, he was sending his disciples.

Does this look like a well-organized, confident, motivated little band of Christian soldiers ready to go out and conquer the world to you? Does this group look like the people Jesus should be entrusting with the task of converting the whole world to the true faith? Not at all! Consider how loyal they had been to Jesus over the last few days. One of them had denied he ever knew him. All of them had deserted him. They had disbelieved his promise that he would rise again. They were hiding in a room behind locked doors afraid of being arrested for their connection to him. They were in crying need of the forgiveness Jesus had just won for them.

And so, did Jesus disown them? Not at all! He came to them and promised them peace. He revealed that he had risen and why. He forgave their cowardice and made them his messengers of forgiveness to the world. In a strange twist, they were just the kind of missionaries he needed.

They wouldn’t talk about forgiveness with any air of superiority, as if it were something they stooped to give to others. They had needed it and experienced all too deeply themselves.

They wouldn’t make any mistakes about who’s strength and whose power was turning people to faith as they spread the message. They had been timid little men too afraid to even go outside their room. Do you see the priority Jesus places on his gospel of grace? He makes sure the messengers he sends to preach it have experienced it personally themselves.

That hasn’t changed, has it. I’m not speaking only about the pastors and missionaries. Of course, we are all sinners saved by grace and forgiven by Jesus, too. But the modern-day messenger list is bigger than the clergy, much bigger. Sometimes rank and file Christians are inclined to excuse themselves from delivering Jesus’ message because they feel unqualified. They don’t feel very holy. They don’t see themselves as Bible experts. They don’t believe they are very knowledgeable about matters of faith. They question their their qualifications for the task.

Let’s be honest. They are right. From the standpoint of our godliness and Bible knowledge, we are not worthy, your pastor included. We have plenty of repenting to do for our less-than-shining moral choices and inattention to Bible study and reading, much because our own priorities are often skewed. How much time have we wasted filling our minds with garbage from TV or the internet? But unprepared and unworthy as we might be, Jesus has placed such a high priority on delivering forgiveness to a dying world that he doesn’t wait for someone better to come along. He gives the task to you and me.

And in a strange twist, our own need for forgiveness, our own experience of forgiveness, makes us just the kind of messengers he wants. By God’s grace we have found forgiveness for our sins. We have seen the cross. We have received the gift. We are the satisfied customers whose personal experience with grace makes our testimony authentic, even if it might otherwise be a little shaky.

A recurring question I see on customer satisfaction surveys today is: “How likely are you to recommend XYZ to a friend or colleague?” I may not know the first thing about how XYZ works, but if I like how it works, they want me as a spokesman. I like how grace works. I sin. Jesus pays for it, all. God forgives it, completely. Don’t you like it, too? That’s why we are messengers.

Philippians 3:10-11 “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Paul rates knowing Christ Jesus so high because it changed his life right now. It meant knowing the power of Jesus’ resurrection. This is not “knowing” in the sense of knowing something from a textbook, knowing some piece of trivia that helps you solve the crossword puzzle or win the game show. This is knowing by experience. This is knowing like I know my cup of coffee gets me started in the morning. I feel the effects of the caffeine on my mind and energy. I know that exposing my skin to the sun too long can give me sunburn. Far too often I have experienced the pain and discomfort from too many hours spent outside.

Those who know Christ Jesus, not just some facts they remember from a Sunday School lesson, but know him by faith, know him as friend and Savior, in the same way know the power of his resurrection working in their lives. You see, the power of Jesus’ resurrection isn’t just the power that raises us from the dead at the end of time. It is that, too. But the power of Jesus’ resurrection is a power in the life of a believer right now. It energizes our souls. It renews our hearts. It changes our wills. It inserts the living Lord Jesus into our own lives so that we love like he loved and serve like he served.

That leads to another change right now, one that might not seem so desirable at first: “the fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death.” If the power of Jesus’ resurrection has us living more like Jesus, then we can expect to experience the consequences of that kind of life, too. For Jesus, it often meant suffering. He was opposed and persecuted. He was mistrusted and rejected. Eventually he was arrested and killed. He didn’t go looking for all of this, so to speak. But he didn’t avoid it at all costs, either. He accepted it as the natural consequence, the natural reaction of a world that was hell bent on going its own way and didn’t particularly want to be saved.

It’s not that we go looking for this, either. But if wanting to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, if trying to love and save the people around us, makes us the most hated people in town, so be it. Then we will be closer to our Savior. We will be more like him. It’s an acquired taste, to be sure. But Paul said it was something he wanted to know, and by faith so do all who understand the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus.

It is the last change that puts it all over the top, the forever one: “…and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” This is where it all leads. This is what we are trading the trash of our former life for. This is why it is important to have God’s gift of righteousness as our own. Knowing Christ Jesus means death is not the end. It means rising like he did, perfected and glorified.

When that day comes, that will be the greatest thing any of us has ever done. Then we will know Jesus Christ and all his gifts better and better, forever and ever.

Philippians 3:8b-9 “I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”

It’s not that God doesn’t want us try to be good and live a life of love. He would have us put our whole heart into it. It’s just that we really, really stink at it. You know Isaiah’s observation, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” Have you ever tried to wash the car, or wash the windows, and you tried to use the dirty water in the bucket and the dirty rag too long? At the end you aren’t actually cleaning anything. You are simply moving the dirt around, and when the water dries there are all the spots and streaks.

Isaiah points out that we are unclean (Is. 64:6). It taints our righteous acts. On the surface it looks like clean kindness. But the water is dirty, tainted with our selfish motivations. “Do I look good doing this? Does this make up for my indulgence yesterday, or can I bank it against a little self-gratification tomorrow? I would rather be doing almost anything else, but then I would feel guilty. I think I’m just a little better than your average Joe.”

But to know Christ is to let him throw out the dirty water and hang up the dirty rag at the cross. It is to receive credit not for our own streaked and spotted labors, but his pure love and unsullied mercies, his sincere obedience and selfless service. It is to be righteous not because we live that way, but because for Jesus’ sake God has decided to see us that way.

It is never a righteousness we have earned. It is always a righteousness we have received, received by faith. It is to know Christ not first as my example, but as my substitute, making me look clean and holy and perfect to my God before I have even done a single thing. It is always to look away from myself, and look away from my life, and look to Jesus who makes his righteousness my own.

Doesn’t his life, his righteousness, look infinitely better than yours and mine? If you have to stand before God, isn’t that what you want him to see? Wouldn’t it be great if you could see yourself that way? In Christ Jesus, you can. When we know Jesus as our Lord, we see him replacing our righteousness with God’s own.

Philippians 3:7-8 “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him.”

In his former life, Paul considered many things “to his profit” that he did not regard so anymore. He was Paul, the great champion of the Jewish people and faith. It made him a highly respected member of his religious party, an up-and-coming leader of his people. All the signs pointed to him achieving even greater things, reaching new heights of power and influence. His opportunity, his stature, his future made him the envy of many in Israel. His moral integrity and activism made many regard him a man worthy of God’s favor. Paul was the kind of man who could claim, “I am a good person,” and almost everyone else would agree.

Then he met Jesus Christ and threw it all away. His heritage, his law keeping, his religious activism, his bright future–he no longer saw these things in the profit column, assets for life and eternity, things that could get him ahead or secure a place in the life to come.

They weren’t even neutral. They were losses, obstacles. He calls them “rubbish,” trash. The Greek word can even refer to animal excrement. We have owned cats before. The contents of the litter box isn’t the kind of thing you save and treasure. It’s the kind of thing you have to take outside and dispose of before it stinks too bad. That was Paul’s new regard for the old life into which he had invested so much effort, on which he had based so many hopes. The surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus Christ made everything else merely trash.

To make Jesus part of his life, Paul had to get rid of the bad stuff: the legalism, self-righteousness, and persecution. But note he didn’t stop there. “I consider everything a loss,” he says. The whole contents of his earthly life, good and bad, was so much trash compared to knowing Jesus. And until we have learned to see our own lives that way, the question can be asked if we really know Jesus at all. It’s not just the wicked and questionable parts of our past or present. In my teens and twenties I can point to self-indulgent or mean-spirited things I did or said. They are things that make me wince and blush, the kinds of things that people sometimes excuse as natural youthful rebellion, the kind of things some will even sit around and reminisce about. I am not going to bother you with the specifics. But that stuff stinks. It needs to be taken out like the trash and left at the curb.

On the backside of middle age, I see the filters coming off my mouth. My patience is getting thin. It becomes easier and easier to be a grouch. There is a reason there is a movie titled Grumpy Old Men, but no movie by the title Grumpy Young Men. One grumpy old man I used to serve as pastor confessed a certain pride in becoming a curmudgeon. But these aren’t changes to embrace. They are sins to repent. They are so much doggy doo stuck to the bottom of your shoes that shouldn’t be tracked through the house and stored in the closet. It should be washed off outside before it has a chance to dry on and stick tight.

That much should be easy to see. But what about the high GPA, the awards and scholarships, the diplomas with the fancy Latin words printed on them? What about the acts of charity, the donations to good causes, the dollars and hours spent helping others? What about finally getting that dream job, that dream house, that dream car, that dream vacation, or that dream family? In and of themselves none of these are evil, any more than it was evil for Paul to be circumcised or born into the tribe of Benjamin. But compared to knowing Jesus Christ my Lord? Rubbish, trash, manure. And if my earthly goodness, successes, or possessions get in the way of seeing it so, then clearly they are not to my profit but my loss. They are blinding me to my one true treasure.

To gain Christ and be found in him—that is profit because in him we get credit for his genuinely righteous life and receive the forgiveness for the entire debt of our sin. To know Christ as my Lord—that is greatness, not because we have done something so wonderful, but because he loves us and treats us so well. He makes everything else merely trash by comparison.

Isaiah 43:3b “I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead. Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you, and people in exchange for your life.”

This is a humbling expression of God’s grace. Let me give you a little history behind Isaiah’s words. The people of Judah were taken into captivity by the Empire of Babylon. They were exported from their homeland and forced to live in a foreign country for seventy years. In order to bring them home, a couple of things had to happen. The Babylonian Empire had to be fall to a stronger empire with different policies for the people it ruled, one that would let the Jews go home to Jerusalem.

That was the Persian Empire. And the nations that filled the vacuum when the Jews were taken away had to be defeated and subjugated by the Persians so that they wouldn’t stand in the way of the Jews going home. That was Egypt, Cush, and Seba.

So, in order to take care of his people, the Lord brought defeat on these other countries. He let them lose their freedom. Wars were fought. People died. In a sense, he traded their welfare for that of his people Israel. He preserved Israel as his distinct people at the expense of these other nations.

That was not because the Jews were better people. The Lord was constantly struggling with them and trying to get them to behave. It was because the Lord chose to show them grace. “Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you,” he says through Isaiah here. That’s how he deals with the people he has redeemed.

You are his redeemed today. And the Lord himself hasn’t changed. It is inevitable in our world that not everyone is going to be a friend of the Lord and his redeemed. What serves your best interests, especially your spiritual needs, may not serve the interests of other nations, institutions, or even individuals. It’s not that we are better people. We sin like everyone else.

But if there is a conflict between what serves the faith and salvation of the people he has redeemed for himself, and what serves the welfare of those who have no particular interest in him, no relationship with him in faith, then he knows what he will do. “I will give…people in exchange for your life.” God will intervene for us and against them.

So don’t be troubled by what you see happening on the international stage, or in the halls of political power, or in the movements that seem to oppose Christianity and its beliefs. They can’t hurt you, even if they should kill you. The redeemed don’t have to be afraid. The Lord will preserve them, even at other’s expense.

Isaiah 43:1-3 “But now, this is what the Lord says–he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord, your God the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…’”

Notice that the Lord doesn’t say you aren’t going to have any crisis. Even people who follow him faithfully live in a fallen world. It is broken beyond anyone’s ability to repair. That’s why utopian schemes to create a perfect society will always fail. About the best we can do is try to keep the evil in check. Racism, injustice, violent crime, war, corrupt government and institutions, exploitation: these things are all like the poor. Remember what Jesus said about them? “They will always be with you.”

We are broken people, too. We don’t just suffer crisis. We cause it. Pastor Curtis believed the gospel he preached. He really did. But he got into a compromising position with a woman he wasn’t married to. He had ordinary male desires. He stumbled into an affair. It blew his ministry and his family apart. He had to resign. His wife left him. His children resented him.

Gerry was a genuine Christian woman, and it showed in her generosity and her service to others. But the stress of a large family and certain childhood demons led her to drink too much. Then she didn’t handle relationships so well. Her marriage survived, but some of her children were scarred. They fought with each other and struggled in their own marriages.

So whether the crisis comes from the world around us or is the product of our own sinful stupidity, we are going to “pass through the waters.” We will “walk through the fire.” It is not a matter of “if” but “when.” Sometimes we find ourselves waiting for it to happen. We are afraid, because we have had it too good for too long.

Then comes God’s promise. When the crisis comes, “I will be with you.” The rivers “will not sweep over you.” The flames “will not set you ablaze.” That doesn’t mean you won’t be gasping for air, coughing and sputtering and convinced that you are about to drown in it. The Lord is not suggesting that you will feel cool and comfortable in that fire, ready to pull out a bag of marshmallows and make some s’mores.

But he is going to jump into the water with you. He walks through the fire right beside you. You may not perceive him. A lot of flotsam and jetsom bump into a person swirling around in a flooded river. You may not perceive his hand pulling you toward shore. Smoke and heat make it hard to see in the fire. You may be passed out when he carries you to safety. But the Redeemed don’t have to be afraid, because the Lord sees them through the crisis.

Did you notice why he does it? He bookends his promise with expressions of his value and regard. He “created you” and “formed you.” You take pride in the things you have made, don’t you? When you were in school, did you ever have something you made in school, maybe a picture you drew, that had an honored place on a shelf in your room or on your bedroom wall for years to come? You are that thing God made, that picture he drew, in his own image no less, that he wants to keep and display and show off.

Even more “I have redeemed you, I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” Even though he made us, the Lord paid a second time for us to belong to him. Who buys what is already his? But that is what he does. In Old Testament history he had redeemed Israel out of Egypt. They were already his, but he bought them out of their slavery to Pharaoh with the power he poured into the miraculous plagues and the parting of the Red Sea.

All of that foreshadowed our Redemption, when he bought us out of our slavery to sin and death by pouring out the blood of his Son, and traded the life of Jesus for our own. So doubly he can say, “You are mine.” This is what you are to me.

Then he turns that around. He concludes, “This is what I am to you:” “I am the Lord, your God, the Holy one of Israel, your Savior.” He is not ashamed to be the God associated with us. He is proud to be the God who rescues and saves us. Don’t be afraid. The Lord will see you through every crisis.

1 Corinthians 15:53-56 “For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”

People often ask me what we will look like in our new imperishable, immortal bodies when Jesus raises us from the dead. If someone dies as a child are they raised as a child, with a little body? Will we all look like supermodels? Will we shed those unwanted extra pounds we have been carrying around? We are obsessed with the cosmetics, the externals of immortality.

Friends, look deeper. We will be imperishable. Imagine running around like a little child sometimes does, running for the sheer joy of it, and never getting winded, never feeling a burn in your lungs because they can’t keep up with your body’s need for oxygen.

Imagine pushing your body hard at work or play for long hours, and never getting fatigued today, and feeling no soreness tomorrow.

Imagine never wondering what this ache or pain might mean, because there never is an ache or pain, and because there are no unhealthy conditions or dread diseases to fear.

Imagine your soul so saturated with love that all you know is peace, and joy, all the time.

Imagine your memory filled with experiences many times the sum total of all events of all human history, and none of them ever boring or disappointing. Every one of them is only pleasant and fulfilling, because your life has gone on for the equivalent of many millions of human ages, and yet you don’t slow down, you show no signs of wear, the thought never crosses your mind that you might like something else, or just an end.

And though we might still die before we attain this future (“might,” I say, because Jesus might also return and give it to us while we are alive), even death is no longer what it looks like. It is not a defeat. It has been defeated.

Some victories have a partial or temporary feel. Japan won the battle of Pearl Harbor. They destroyed 19 American ships, but they missed our aircraft carriers, which were not in port that day. The United States had some key pieces for rebuilding our navy in the Pacific. Less than four years later Japan was the nation signing an unconditional surrender, somewhat ironically on the battleship Missouri.

Jesus isn’t giving death any such second chances to come back and win. Death has been “swallowed up,” the Apostle says. It hasn’t just been nipped at, or nibbled around the edges. It hasn’t just had a big bite taken out of it, like the survivor of some shark attack who is missing a hand or a leg. It has been swallowed whole, chugged down till nothing is left.

Picture the college drinking game, and some rowdy student has just downed his whole mug of beer in a few seconds. Even the foam is gone. The glass is empty. There is nothing left. Picture some poor fellow in one of the Jurassic Park movies, practically swallowed whole by one of the dinosaurs. He isn’t coming back. For the child of God, the believer in Jesus, death has been completely taken out of the picture. It gets no second chance at us once it has given us up.

So complete, so utter is this victory, that Paul, quoting the Old Testament prophets, trash talks the enemy. Maybe we miss the tone of his questions because of the formal style of the language, “Where, O death, is your victory?” In 21^st Century America, we might say it more like this: “Hey death, where is your victory? Hey death, where is your sting?” It’s taunting. It’s rubbing the loser’s face in it. It is that confident the victory belongs to us.

For a moment Paul even offers the answer to his taunts. “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” Death needs our sin to win. It needs the penalties of God’s law to win. But you know what Jesus did to those. He erased every sin at the cross. He paid everything the law demanded by his sacrifice. He stripped death of all its weapons. In the end, he destroys death itself.

“Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

1 Corinthians 15:51 “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed–in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”

How long would you like to live? When I was a little boy, there was something attractive about the idea of living to be 100. I think it was a combination of the fact that 100 of anything seems like a big number to a four year old. I also had a sense that it was a relatively rare achievement because I didn’t personally know anyone that old, and people who did reach that milestone sometimes made the news. As a little boy I wanted to be stronger, and faster, and smarter and taller than anybody else. Why not older, too?

Then you meet some people who have lived so long that they have outlived their good health. They may be far from 100, but they live in constant pain, or they are too weak to take care of themselves. You meet others who have outlived their mind, their memory, their reason. At best they have entered second childhood. At worst they are practically comatose. All of a sudden living so many years loses its appeal.

Jesus promises those who believe in him eternal life–not 100 years, but forever. This wasn’t an obscure idea he once floated, a side comment he made while preaching about something else. It was a major theme of his ministry. Read John’s gospel again. Almost every chapter deals with immortality. In light of the unpleasant consequences of old age, we might ask, “Is this really a good idea?”

Paul settles our concerns with the mystery he unveils in this part of his letter to the Corinthians. Among other things, that mystery involves a profound change.

The things we fear about long life aren’t really features of living. They are symptoms of dying. They are evidence that we are infected with death, and we have reached advanced stages of that infection. But everyone reading these words is suffering symptoms already.

When I was still in grade school it got harder and harder to see the blackboard from the back of the room. I needed glasses because my eyes were dying. I went through puberty and my skin didn’t function right anymore. Blemishes started to appear. It mostly recovered when puberty ended, but now it gets too dry and chapped, especially in the winter. I have already reached the age of back pain, and occasional insomnia, and monthly contributions to my local pharmacy. I used to laugh at the old people who didn’t need to talk about the weather to keep a conversation going. They could talk about their ailments for hours. I am quickly becoming one of them.

More than symptoms of death, these are symptoms of our sin. Not everyone I meet is convinced they have much to repent of. “I am a good person,” they object. Really? I may not know enough details of their lives to know the specifics of their sins. It’s not my job to play private investigator and try to point them out. But their symptoms still betray the sickness is present, just like mine do. “The wages of sin is death.” “The soul who sins is the one who will die.” There is no mystery about what is wrong with us. We are dying because of our sin.

But Jesus promises us change. That change first dealt with the sin-sickness underneath. On Good Friday he created the cure. At the cross he produced the medicine of immortality. His blood cleanses us from every sin. His death redeems us from them. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the entire world.

Between Friday evening and Sunday morning, however, Jesus himself went through an astounding change. His body came back to life. But it wasn’t raised the broken and battered body that hung on the cross. His wounds no longer ran with blood. His bones were no longer out of joint. This body was glorified. It passed through sealed stone and locked doors. It materialized, and then disappeared, in a moment, instantly traveling between locations to show himself to his own. It could still be touched and embraced. It could still eat and drink. But now it was elevated, perfected. The only things Jesus kept from his cross were the scars on his hands and feet and side, but those were like badges of honor, the most meaningful and beautiful things ever “tattooed” on human skin.

Earlier in this same chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul assures us Jesus’ new life is a promise and foretaste of our own: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” And later: “Just as we have born the likeness of the earthly man (Adam), so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven (Jesus).” Jesus is both promise and picture of the change waiting for us.

John 19:28-29 “Later, knowing that all was now complete, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips.”

Do you know what Scriptures weighed on Jesus’ mind just moments before his death, what words he needed to fulfill? Buried deep within the psalms, Psalm 69 to be specific, are these seemingly incidental words, “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.” They are hardly the most important detail of the great mission he accomplished this day. They are not directly a part of the price he paid. They simply describe a moment in the misery of the cross. Would anyone have noticed if Jesus never addressed this, or if the gospel writers had left it out of the historical record? Would you?

Didn’t Jesus have more urgent things to be thinking about? He can no longer draw a satisfying breath. His heart is beating like a drum, overworked to the point of failure by the cruel torture he is suffering. His muscles cramp from exhaustion and dehydration, and there is no way to stretch or relax them. Who can even say what the greatest source of pain is for him as he hangs there: these cramps and the struggle to breath? The spikes tearing at his hands and feet? The flesh torn from his back? The wounds from his crown of thorns, now invaded by the burning salt of his own sweat? In literally seconds, he will be dead. Let the obscure prophecy from the psalm go. What does it matter?

It matters deeply to the perfect Son of God. This is his word, after all, and every word of God is true. We don’t take his word so seriously, I am afraid. We don’t see the problem with fudging on it here or there. Sometimes it makes my life harder, or so we think. Why should I give up my pleasure, or my freedom, for something written thousands of years ago? It’s probably just Paul’s, or Peter’s, or a prophet’s opinion anyway. Sometimes it seems so hard to understand. All these details about trinities, and virgin births, and complicated systems of redemption from sin, and distinctions between justification and sanctification–being saved or living saved: all this theology makes my head spin! Isn’t it enough just to be good to other people? Isn’t the Bible just words on a page? Shouldn’t we avoid putting too much trust in a book?

Such casual attitudes about God’s carefully crafted record of his saving love may be popular. But there is nothing Christian about them. In his ministry Jesus preached, “The Scriptures cannot be broken” (John 10:35). “Blessed, rather, are those who hear the word of God and obey it” (Luke 11:28). “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17-18).

And so Jesus could not let this one go, either. He called for a drink. He took the bitter combination of wine vinegar and gall, one last insult to his abused system. There are 419,687 words in the Hebrew Old Testament. This prophecy of Psalm 69 is just six of them. But Jesus took the drink so that every detail of God’s word and our salvation would be fulfilled.