THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR"Jesus Dies in Triumph"Rev. Carl Haak(e-mail: Rev. Carl Haak) March 19, 2006; No. 3298 |
Dear radio friends,
We began last week
a journey of faith to the cross of Jesus Christ, there to behold the very Son
of God suffering for our sins, and there to rejoice in the amazing grace of God
for us sinners, whereby our sin was once paid for and the power of the cross
motivates us to a new and godly life.
You will remember that last week we talked about the fact that Jesus,
after the three hours of darkness, received the sponge of vinegar and sucked
that vinegar out of the sponge, thereby showing us that He had left behind none
of our sins, none of the curse that was yet due to God’s people, but that He
endured all the judgment and all the wrath that was owed to the
elect of God.
We want to continue
at that part in the narrative and take it up again in Mark 15. After Jesus has received that vinegar, we
read in verse 37, “And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the
ghost.” The gospel according to John, in
chapter 19, tells us what He uttered with that loud voice. We read in verse 30, “When Jesus therefore
had received the vinegar, he said, It is
finished: and he bowed his head, and
gave up the ghost.” So today we want to
talk to you about Jesus’ cry of triumph from the cross. That cry was, with a loud voice: “It is finished.”
He had also just
cried, but a few minutes before, with a loud voice, the heart-rending question
of abandonment: “My God, My God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me?” Now, with another loud voice, after He has
sucked every ounce of the vinegar out of the sponge, He has cried the cry of a
victor and a cry of a conqueror: “Tel
telestai” in the Greek: “It is finished!”
The word and the
tense mean that something has been in the process and now has been brought to a
state of completion and there it stands — that an action has been brought to
completion and there is finality to it.
It is done.
The sun has
returned to
What was
finished? Well, we may go to the words
of the Lord Himself in John 17 where, before the cross, He prayed to the Father
and said, “I have finished the work that thou gavest
me to do.” What was finished? The work that God gave Him
to do. What was that work? That work was to take away our sin by bearing
its penalty. Earlier in that night it
had been portrayed as the cup, the cup that Jesus saw His Father presenting to
His lips and, in the Garden of Gethsemane, He had prayed, “Father, if it be
possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will but as thou
wilt.” In that cup was
all the bitter dregs and all the awful vinegar and all the suffering that was
owed to our sins. The Father presented
that to His Son, the substitute. And the
Son has finished it. He has drunk it
all. It is done. He means to say, “All the work of the bearing
of the sins of God’s elect, and the enduring of the penalty that was owed to
them, is done. It is finished.”
Or we may put it in
the words of Hebrews 10:14, “For by one offering he hath perfected for ever
them that are sanctified.” The one
offering of His body upon the cross has perfected, has brought to a final
perfected state, all those who are sanctified in Him. The work of salvation, the work of
redemption, the work of payment for sin is complete. This is the cry of triumph that forms the
basis of all of our salvation and all of our hope. It is done.
There was, then, a
definite outcome to the cross of Jesus.
The issue was not left in doubt.
There is no doubt left as to what He was doing upon the cross and what He has accomplished.
God had already
foretold all of that in Isaiah 53. There
we read that the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all, that He made His soul
an offering for sin. Now, no doubt is
left as to the conclusion of that, to the outcome of that. The Lord laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. Then what happened? Did He endure it? Did He take it away? No doubt is left. Listen.
“It is finished.”
Let us apply
that. First of all, what a horrible
thing to think that anything less than the death of Jesus could accomplish our
salvation, or that anything more is necessary to accomplish our salvation. How horrible it would be to say that
something less than the very Son of God, dying upon a cross, could take away
our sin. Nothing less than that, do you
understand? Sin cannot be erased. Sin cannot be banished from the presence of
God in any other way than this way:
God’s Son doing the work, the eternal Son of God in human flesh bearing
the unbearable and giving to God the full love of His heart in our place.
What can free you
from the debt of your sin? What can
release you from the flames of hell that you deserve? What can take away the bondage and the power
of sin? Only Jesus
Christ, God’s Son, enduring it all upon the cross.
If you are to be
saved, if your are to be delivered from hell, if you are to be brought to
glory, Jesus and Jesus only is able to do that and has done that for all
those given to Him of the Father. But
what a horrible thing it would be to say that something more was
necessary, that something must be added to this. How horrible it would be to say that there
must yet be more, there is need to be another offering, there needs to be
another act, that Jesus did everything that He could, that He has it all ready
if only… but there is something else yet needed to be done before forgiveness
and remission of sin can be a reality in a person’s life.
Hear the
gospel. Not your
tears, not your sighs, and not your prayers.
Hear the gospel. Not the saints,
not mass, not works, not the virgin Mary. Do not look to any of those things. Your repentance, your prayers — do not look to them as a part of your righteousness before
God. If you base your salvation upon
them, you despise the work of Jesus Christ.
Oh, understand me clearly.
Everyone for whom Jesus died will be a praying man or a praying woman,
will be a godly man or a godly woman, will be a
repentant man or a repentant woman. That
is the fruit of the cross. But
that work of repentance, that work of prayer, that work of godliness, does not
so much as erase one sin. No human work,
no work of priest, no work of saint, no work of a child of God removes the
guilt and the penalty of sin. Nothing
needs to be added, nothing may be added, nothing can
be added. Listen to His words: “It is finished.” The forgiveness of sins is based upon the
work of Jesus on the cross alone.
What a word of
comfort and power. Dear children of God,
it is finished. Let hell rage, let the
devil accuse. And even our own
conscience, when it is made alive by the Holy Spirit, convicts us of our
sin. Yet, hear the gospel. The work of gracious salvation is
accomplished. It is done. As the Holy Spirit works in our hearts and as
we come to God in prayer, all the fruit of the cross, we see our sins. Those sins, in the words of the psalmist,
mount up against us prevailing day by day.
We see the vileness of those sins, the repeated nature of those sins,
the deliberateness of those sins, the awfulness of those sins. We ask, Can there be
forgiveness? Can this be washed
away — this awful stain, this awful sin — can it be forgiven? Those awful stains of my
sin?
Listen to His
words: It is finished. The work for the suffering of sin is
concluded.
We are called to
holiness. We are called to a new and
holy life by the power of the cross of Jesus Christ. Will you be wedded to your sins? Will you go back to that which brought upon
Him all His agonies? If you do, then you
know nothing of this power of Christ’s forgiveness. Do you think that the cross is a free license
to sin? Then you blaspheme, you
blaspheme Him who is upon the cross. For
not only did He take away the debt of that sin, but the power of sin is broken
for every one for whom He died. How
shall we who are dead to sin live any longer therein?
But now hear the word of comfort and
power. It is finished.
So we read, after
He cried out with a loud voice, “It is finished,” He gave up the ghost.
Those words are
much more than just saying He died. It
means that Jesus relinquished His life by a voluntary act,
that His life was not taken from Him but He gave it. He had made this very plain in John 10:17,
18, “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might
take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power
to take it again. This commandment have
I received of my Father.” “This
commandment,” namely, “Son, lay down Thy life.”
And He laid down His life. There
is the difference. Death takes us. You do not will to die, but your life is
taken from you. Not Jesus. Death did not track Him down, overcome Him,
and at last overwhelm Him so that He simply submitted and succumbed to
death. But Jesus laid down His
life. He was in complete control voluntarily.
It comes out when
we read in Luke 23:46, “And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said,
Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit:
and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.” There Jesus was quoting from the Psalms
(31:5), “Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.” He did not say those words with a
whisper. He did not say that with a
death rattle in His throat. But He spoke
as a commander. He spoke with a clear
voice. By His own act He sent His
spirit, His human soul, to the hands of God.
And He died. His spirit went to
God. He said to the thief, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” His spirit He sent into the very presence of
God. His body died. His body hung limp upon the cross to be taken
down and placed into the tomb and then raised again on the third day. But He went into the immediate presence of
God. Death had no power over Him as a
victim. But He wills it to accomplish
God’s purpose.
How wonderful! Having taken away the cause of our death,
namely, our sin, He now enters into death willingly to vanquish it and to make
it a passage into Father’s hands. He
dies without dread and without terror.
He is triumphant.
If death is
conquered, then Jesus is triumphant. It
is very beautiful when we read of Stephen, the first martyr, of his death in
Acts 7. He says, “Lord, receive my
spirit.” Stephen died in the confidence
that God’s justice had been satisfied in the work of Jesus, who said, “I commit
My spirit into God’s hands.” Although Stephen was being battered with
stones, by faith he saw Jesus at the right hand of God, and in the triumphant
Christ he too died knowing that there was no terror for him, that his spirit
would be taken by the hands of Jesus to the Father. We need to feed our soul upon those words: “It is finished. Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” Now we
are in the hands of God. That is what
Jesus did on the cross. He took us out
of the hands of the monster, the tyrant — sin/death/hell/and devil and brought
us into God’s hands. And those hands now
hold me and control all that comes to me.
Death, too, will come, unless the Lord returns first. But death is now the door of glory in
Him. The triumphant Lord who died and
gave His soul to God will bring us to glory through death.
Now, do you know
why Jesus died upon the cross? Do you
know it this way, that He died for my sin and He
delivered me from the hell that I deserved?
He did everything that was necessary for me. Do you say it as the apostle said it in
Galatians 2:20, “Who loved me and gave himself for me”? Do you know it this way: that you grieve over your sin and your evil
and you praise God and His grace, who has saved you
through His son? And do you know it this
way: that now you desire to live unto
Him and to walk with Him and to be pleasing to Him?
Let us rejoice
today. Let us rejoice in Jesus Christ
and in His triumph over our sins, over our death, over our grave, over our
hell. All of these
He has vanquished. All
of these He has triumphed over.
ALL!
The great issue now
in your life is this: How will you
die? For die you must. Unless Jesus returns first, die you
will. When that moment comes, and it
must come, and you must leave this world for eternity, how will you die? Do you believe this gospel? For, apart from this gospel, there is no
hope, there is no life, there is only death — eternal death — and the certain
falling into the hands of God. Do you
believe this gospel of the crucified Savior, who died upon a cross in the place
of the elect, in the place of all of God’s children, to remove their sin and to
change death to the door of glory? Do
you know why Jesus died on the cross? Do
you say, “He died to pay the penalty for my sin in order that I might stand now
and forever before the presence of God, and I may appear before His throne not
with terror but with joy”? Then death
means to be absent from the body, as the apostle says in II Corinthians 5, but
to be present with the Lord. Then, no matter today if God apportions to you good or trial,
happiness or sadness, whether God gives to you health or sickness, joy or
difficulty — no matter. You bless
God today, for you belong to the Savior, the true Savior, the living Savior,
the Savior who has and does save, the triumphant Savior. And you say in your soul, “Hallelujah, what a
Savior!”
Let us pray.
Father in heaven,
we thank Thee for Thy Word. We thank
Thee for Him, and for the grace of God that Thou hast given Thine
own Son to bear our death and our guilt and to triumph over them. We thank Thee for the assurance that all is
finished in His suffering and death, that there does not remain for us any of
Thy wrath or judgment. Now give us to
live in this glorious gospel, give us to live in the victory even over
death. May we triumph in our hearts
through Him. In Jesus’ name, Amen.