Communion Message
(Not a bone shall be broken)
August 25-26, 2000
Pastor Donald Sheley

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered unto you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me." In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes. Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

John records for us in his gospel an insight at Calvary. He says, Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on this Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen this testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe. For these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, "Not one of His bones shall be broken." And again another Scripture says, "They shall look on Him whom they pierced."

Dr. Barclay in his beautiful Bible commentary makes these comments concerning the passage we've just read from the gospel of John. He says, in one thing the Jews were more merciful than the Romans. When the Romans carried out crucifixion under their own customs, the victim was simply left to die on the cross. He might hang for days in the heat of the midday sun and the cold of the night, tortured by the thirst and tortured also by the gnats and the flies. Often, men died raving mad on their crosses. Nor did the Romans bury the bodies of the crucified criminals. They simply took them down and let the vultures, crows, and the dogs feed upon them. Jewish law was different. It laid it down that if a man had committed to crime punishable by death and he is put to death and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day. In the Mishna, which is the Jewish scribal law, it says, everyone who allows the dead to remain overnight transgresses a positive command.

The Sanhedrin actually was charged to have two burying places ready for those who have suffered the death penalty, and who were not to be buried at the burying place of their fathers. And on this occasion, it was even more important that the body should not be allowed to hang on the crosses overnight because the next day was the Sabbath, a very special Sabbath of the Passover.

Now a grim method was used to dispatch criminals who lingered long. Their limbs were smashed with a mallet. That was done to the criminals who were crucified with Jesus, but mercifully, He was spared that for He was already dead. John sees that sparing, lay down of the Passover lamb, and where it says and not a bone of it shall be broken. And once again, John is seeing Jesus as the Passover lamb who delivers His people from death.

Finally, there follows a strange incident. When the soldiers saw that Jesus was already dead, they did not break His limbs with a mallet, but one of them--it must have been to make doubly sure that Jesus was dead--thrust a spear into His side. And there flowed out water and blood. Now John attaches special importance to that. He sees in it the fulfillment of the prophecy in Zechariah 12:10 where it says, they look on Him whom they have pierced. And he goes out of his way to say that this is an eyewitness account of what actually happened, and that he personally guarantees that what he has written is true. Now let's ask, what had actually happened? We cannot be sure, but it may well be that Jesus died literally of a broken heart. Normally, of course, the body of a dead man will not bleed. It suggested that what happened was that what Jesus experienced, physical and emotional, was so terrible that His heart ruptured. And when that happened the blood of the heart mingled with the fluid that surrounds the heart. The spear of the soldier pierced that and the mingled fluid of blood came forth. Wouldn't that be something if that were true that Jesus literally died of a broken heart?

Even so, what John stresses here, he says, that to think it was the final unanswerable proof that here Jesus was, a real man with a real body. Here was the answer to the Gnostics with their ideas of phantoms and spirits, and an unreal manhood. They said Jesus was only a phantom. That He never left footprints when he walked. Here was proof that Jesus was bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. But to John this was more than a proof of the manhood of Jesus; it was a symbol of two great sacraments of the church. There is one sacrament which is based on water, baptism, and there is another one which is based on blood, and that's the Lord's Supper. The water of baptism is the sign of the cleansing grace of God in Jesus Christ, and the wine of the Lord's Supper is the symbol of that blood which was shed to save us from our sins. That's why the great hymn goes like this:
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee; Let the water and the blood, From thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

What an interesting insight into that seen at Calvary. Let's kneel together, shall we? Lord Jesus, week after week we come to this beautiful moment on our knees. We grapple and try to understand that great event that took place 2000 years ago, but it's hard for us to do that. Here we are 2000 years removed sitting in padded pews in an air-conditioned room. We're not standing on a rugged hillside hearing the curses of violent men and the thud of a mallet. So it's hard for us to appreciate what You did for us, Lord Jesus, there on that cross. And even though historians and theologians will wrestle with what the meaning of that water and that blood really was, we as believers have enjoyed the knowledge that when we came to You, dear Jesus, we asked You to forgive us. We then in obedience went to the waters of baptism to publicly identify ourselves as followers of You, dear Christ.

And then, to celebrate the cleansing of our sins by Your precious blood, week after week, we lift these emblems to our lips with gratitude and praise. Only when we see You face to face will we really understand the eternal dimensions of this moment. We love You. We praise You. We bow in worship before You Lord Jesus. Thank you for being our Savior. Let's take the bread together, shall we? And then the cup. The wonder of Your grace, amazing, so amazing. The blessings of Your peace and the realization that we are a part of Your eternal family fills our heart with worship today O precious Christ. We love You, and everybody said, amen. Let's stand and greet one another, shall we?