Calvary No.5 Jesus Last Word

Now she says that she was very good. And now Brian and Jenny are bringing Alison Jane. Brian and Jenny, is it your will and your wish to thank God with the rest of your family for the gift of this little girl? And you promised as best you can to create such an environment in your home that when she becomes a young lady, she shall put her trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And to that end, you ask for the prayers of Christian brothers and sisters here that they will be supportive of you in the priesthood of being parents. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Our loving God and Father, we bring Alison Jane to you.

We thank you for her. We praise you for a little life that is perfect. And we offer her and this lovely family to you.

And we pray that the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit shall be with them. Be with Alison particularly. Bless her as she grows up.

May she develop perfectly physically and come to a knowledge early on of the Lord Jesus as Savior. Be with Brian and Jenny as they bring up their three children and help them each day. For Jesus' sake, amen.

She was smiling away very, very beautifully there. God bless you. Matthew 27, 45.

And it starts like this. The sixth hour until the ninth hour, darkness came over the land. About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice.

Eli, Eli, lama sabathani, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? When some of those standing there heard this, they said, he's calling Elijah. Immediately, one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine.

Sorry, I'm not getting this right. He filled it with vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. But the rest said, leave him alone.

Let's see if Elijah comes to save him. And when Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to the bottom.

The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs and after Jesus' resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

The centurion who was with him were guarding Jesus, saw that the earthquake and all that had happened. They were terrified and exclaimed, surely he was the son of God. Many women there which were watching from a distance, they had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs.

Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee's sons. Well, may God bless that reading to us. We're now in John's gospel.

It's the same situation as David read from the gospel of Matthew, description of the final moments in the life of our Lord before his resurrection. John 19, the 28th verse. Later, knowing that all was now completed 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.

When he had received the drink, Jesus said, it is finished. With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Quite frankly, I think that Martin Luther got it wrong.

No, I'm not referring to his preaching on justification by faith. I guess that was 101% accurate. It's the carol, away in a manger, no crib for his bed.

The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head. Nothing the matter with the first verse, but it's about the third verse, if memory serves me right, that I object. He said, the cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.

Well, that was Luther's imagination. Jesus made no cry, of course he did. He was born like you and I are born, though his conception was miraculous.

And there must have been, if he was like us in every point, but without sin, there must have been that first gasp for air and that first cry. Babies do cry, you may hear some sound effects this evening of a little baby. Just for the benefit of those who are getting this tape, we've had a delightful dedication service a few minutes ago.

You may hear the cry of a child, not the first cry of someone or any cry of a baby. It's not exactly intelligible. It conveys something, but not in words that you can understand.

But if you're a sensitive mother or a wearied father, then you get the message. I'm hungry, I've got wind. I don't like him cooing at me like this.

So many things that baby gets across through his baby's speech or her baby's speech. Well, it's not the first cry of Jesus that I speak to you this evening, which might have been up for a certain amount of friendly debate as to what the cry implied. It's the last, the final word, or to be accurate, the final word that left his lips.

There he is hanging on a cross. His mouth has been parched, so they've put some vinegar into a sponge and shot it up to him by means of a reed. He's hung there for several hours.

A thick darkness, an uncanny blackness fell across the scene as it seemed as though Jesus Christ was rejected not just by earth, but also by heaven. And from within that darkness came a cry that was blacker than the blackest of darknesses. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And then later on, from the lips of our savior comes that one word in the original language.

Finished, distilled into that word is a dictionary. Compressed into one term is the whole of Christian theology. If I am able by God's grace this evening to explain what is compressed in that word which fell from the lips of our Lord Jesus, then no one will be ignorant as to the historic faith.

I want to bring you this night to an understanding by God's mercy as to what Christianity is all about. I get alarmed as a preacher. I get alarmed about people who come into the tab sometimes casually, sometimes regularly.

And it seems by their reaction that little of the gospel message has really penetrated their heart. And I sometimes, and I'm not exaggerating, spend a sleepless night on a Sunday and say, Lord, did I make it that complicated? What was it in me that failed to get their comprehension? And each Sunday I make a new resolution to make it more plain, to try and get it across so simply that even those who only give me a casual hearing can understand. Well, here I bring you to one word.

Surely that can be explained in such a fashion that all of you can grasp what it's about. This final word of Jesus finished. Where was it uttered? Then I want to tell you how it was uttered.

And finally, why it was uttered. Where was it uttered? Some weeks ago, pardon me for a repeat, but not all were present when I mentioned this Sunday week. Some weeks ago, I was standing on those thick walls which surround the city of Jerusalem.

And I was looking toward a spot where many believe Jesus to have been crucified, rejecting the site on which a church has been built. It strikes me as being possible and authentic because it's in a skull-shaped hill. And that was the sort of scenery from which Lord was suspended on a cross and from where he released this one word.

Just in front of the hill, because it's not recognized by everyone as an authentic place of crucifixion, there's a bus station. That seems to me to be so right. Thousands of people passing by in the year waiting to catch a bus to take them to Galilee, to take them to Bethany, to take them down to Jericho.

And I thought as I was looking at that strangely-shaped hill of the Lord Jesus Christ and that cry which left his lips, it was the greatest sermon for those who can realize that within brevity, a lot is to be discovered, the greatest sermon that was ever preached. But it was the strangest pulpit. Finished, he said.

And there he hangs on a Roman gibbet created to rob him of life, to fill his body with exquisite pain. Finished, he cries. This Lord Jesus, the greatest orator that there ever was, the man who'd spoken in the marketplaces and people had rushed to him and said he speaks in a way we understand and not like the rabbis.

What he has to say rings true. And now his final word, perhaps the most significant that ever dropped from his lips, he utters at that place, the place of a skull. There's a verse in Matthew which when I tell you I've meditated on it hours, I don't exaggerate.

It refers to the death of Jesus and to the high priest who delivered him to the Romans and the Romans who took him to the top of the hill. And it simply says of those who looked on and sitting by, they watched him there. And it's those words him and there that fascinate me, that he should be there.

Do you know what Calvary was? It was the cursed place. And that's where he lets this word out, finished. It's associated with death.

The Romans didn't like it. The Jews despised it. And this was the final pulpit, if you please, of Jesus from Nazareth.

Where did he say this? At a spot that was accursed. A place that's associated with refuse. For just down in the valley, a place called Hinnom, there were fires that were constantly burning.

Jerusalem had its own rubbish problem and the difficulties of disposal, that which is no longer required of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. What did they do with it? They dumped it in Gehenna. They dumped it where the fires always burn.

And Calvary was next to Gehenna so that when the criminals had been crucified, their bodies could be thrown into the fire. Jesus would have been cremated had it not been for the good officers of Joseph of Arimathea. Where does he say finished? He says it in a place associated with a curse, connected with death, with the idea of refuse being burnt away.

Oratory had no stranger pulpit. Language had no finer prece when Jesus said, finished. How was it uttered? There's a great deal that's required in language beside the word itself to give it sense.

You say, I don't understand that statement. All right, Freddy Laker. I feel sorry for that fellow.

If it wasn't that it was 250 million that he's in debt with, I might feel constrained to send him a pound or two. That would just be like a drop in the ocean of debt. Freddy Laker, Laker's Airlines, finished.

The flamboyant cowboy figure of TV commercial fame will become a non-entity in the world of flying. Alas and alack, I'm sorry for Freddy Laker. But when he says finished, he doesn't say it like Jesus said it.

You see, it's intonation. It's the way that you pronounce your words. It's the vehemence or the temerity with which you use language that sometimes conveys a grander meaning.

And that's why David was given Matthew to read. Because when you read of the account of our Lord Jesus, it says that his final word was given in a loud voice. Oh, I tell you, I'd love to have heard Jesus preach.

And there are many occasions when I didn't want just to hear him say something, but to fasten on to the intonation in his voice. Just down the road from Bethlehem, or rather from Jerusalem, a few miles away, only a bus journey, there's Bethany. And one day Jesus was in Bethany and his good friend Lazarus had died.

And Jesus stands outside that seal tomb, or rather the seal had been, the tomb had been opened as Jesus arrived. And he stands outside the tomb and he cries, Lazarus, come forth. I'd love to have heard that cry from the lips of our Savior.

I'd like to have been there on the Sea of Galilee when the disciples were so filled with fear that the waves were several feet high. Their boat was like an uncontrollable cock and it looked as though they'd be plunged down into a watery grave. And Jesus stands up on the stern of the ship and he addresses the wind and the waves.

And he says in the blunt Aramaic, shut up. And I'd like to have heard him. I'd like to have been there in the garden three days after his death when Jesus has been brought back to life and he spies a woman who loves him more than anyone else in the world.

And he recognizes her though her eyes so be clouded by tears, don't realize who he is. And Jesus says, Mary, she recognized his voice. There was music in it, there was intonation in it.

Jesus was a master with language. And when our Lord speaks from the cross of Calvary, his final word, it's in a loud voice, finished. There's triumph in it, there's authority there.

In the Old Testament, there's a man by the name of Gideon and he's leading an army against some troublesome enemies called the Amalekites. And when Gideon leads his men against the enemies of Israel on one occasion, all his troops shout together with one voice, the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. It was that same authority that Jesus speaks.

Or when the trumpet blasted and the walls of Jericho fell flat when Joshua was in command of the Hebrew community. All this it seems to me is mixed up in the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is how it was uttered.

When I was in Israel, I went to that place I described some weeks ago called Masada. Masada is in the area near the Dead Sea, a low lying area. But Masada itself is an encampment built on top of a hill.

And when you get to the top and you lean over the ruins of the Roman or rather of the Jewish castle, there are the Judean hills in front of you. And somebody told me that you could shout so loud that the hills took up an echo. Well, I'd only got our missionaries Catherine and Gerald in with me.

And they were already aware that I have some strange tendencies. And so I cupped my hands around my mouth and I shouted out with all the force that I got in my lungs, hello. And you could hear it all the way around the Judean hills.

Hello, hello, hello. That's how I hear that cry on the cross, finished. This isn't the cry of a boxer throwing in the towel, unable to cope with the next round.

This is the lion of the tribe of Judah with a ferocious roar of success, recognizing that he has been victorious over his prey. It's not just where Jesus preached the one word sermon that's important, it's how he preached it. But perhaps capping it all is why, why it was uttered.

What made him pick this particular word out of 10,000 that were at his disposal for his final address to the world before he surrenders up his spirit? Why does he say finished? He says finished because all the Old Testament prophecies that spoke about the Messiah, the messenger from heaven that would come into the world were fulfilled in him. The Bible makes reference to a man who will be greater than Moses, who one day will turn into this world. The Bible speaks of a lamb that will be slain and it has some sort of human connotation as it describes the lamb-like qualities of a certain individual.

The Bible as it predicts the coming of the Messiah says that kings will fall down when he is born, but it also suggests that thousands of people will be offended by him. The Bible prophesies that when Messiah is born, it will be from the womb of a virgin. The conception will be remarkable.

It will be miraculous. The Bible tells us that when Messiah is born, he will fulfill all the purposes of God. Born in Bethlehem, reared in Nazareth, he would come and proclaim a message and be rejected.

And every prophecy, every single hint of the Messiah that was yet to be as you read through the pages of the Old Testament are summed up in Jesus. And he says, finished. Isaiah, all the prophets, all the Old Testament seers, all the great men of the past, not one of them inspired by the Spirit could ever complain that I did not fulfill their prophetic anticipation, finished.

What else was finished? The temple area is not far from where Jesus was butchered. And there in the temple, not only in the years of Jesus's ministry, but down the centuries, thousands and thousands of beasts have been slaughtered, lambs and goats and bullocks. Ever since the initiation of slaughter, just after the, or sacrifice just after the fall of man, people have brought to the Lord an animal believing that as its blood is shed, somehow or other their sins might be symbolically dealt with.

And here, can you imagine it? Looking over the parapets of heaven, down the centuries, there's Abraham and Abel and Moses and all the Old Testament greats, all the prophets. And they've seen these bloody sacrifices in their thousands. And maybe they have in their minds and maybe they even echo their thoughts to the great God.

Isn't it enough yet? Isn't there one to come who can put an end to all this? Must this sacrificial system continue ad infinitum? But then my friend, the day comes, Jesus born in Bethlehem. Years past, Jesus as a man preaches around Palestine, proclaims a gospel, brings men and women to a position of repentance, realizes that there needs to be a final sacrifice for sins. And so he hauls his bloodstained body up that skull-shaped hill.

He's pinned to the cross. The cross is hoisted into its shaft. It sinks into the ground and hours elapse.

And then the cry comes from his lips, finished, all those sacrifices. They're at an end. No more lambs, no more bullocks, no more goats, nothing to be offered to the Lord God Almighty.

I in my body alone have brought that final sacrifice that does away with the sins of believing mankind, finished. And if you read the epistle of the Hebrews, you'll find it time and time again in the middle chapters as comment is made upon the complete work of Jesus. Once in the end of time, hath he appeared to put away sins forever.

Once, once, once. It was a complete work. There's nothing else to be done.

We're gonna have a visit of a Pope in a couple of months time. And I've got respect for this man and for his origins and for what he's gone through in his East European home. I recognize him to be in the classical sense a charismatic figure, perhaps one of the best Popes that the Catholic Church have ever thrown up.

But when I hear that kindly benevolent looking man tell me that before I get to God the Father, I have to go through Mary or tell me that I've got to offer again on some so-called altar, the sacrifice of the mass. I say, no, finished. Jesus did it all long ago, 2,000 years ago.

You can't add to something that's finished. That's illogical. It's impossible.

If words mean anything at all, the offering of the Christ on the cross was sufficient for the sins of the whole world. And we don't need the saints. And with great respect, we don't need Mary.

We have one mediator between God and man, the Lord Jesus Christ, finished. The work that he was given to do, through Old Testament prophecy, comes to completion. The sacrificial system brought to its termination, finished.

The fear that man has with death, finished. Oh, death, where is your sting? Oh, grave, where is your victory? The terror of hell, finished as far as believing mankind is concerned because Jesus has broken the power of death. He has vanquished Satan.

He has neutralized the terror of hell as a prospect for believing mankind. I said I'd preach briefly, and I'll keep true to my promise. It was one word that left the lips of Jesus, the most pregnant word in many senses in the whole of the Bible, the best, the grandest of sermons.

Understand this, and you've got it all. Where it was preached, the strangest pulpit from Calvary. How it was preached with the triumph of a lion who has slain its prey.

Why it was preached? Because it succinctly summarizes all the achievements of Jesus, finished. He bows his head, he offers up his spirit to the Father, and three days later, God will bring him back to life. But my friend, you can listen to me until the town hall clock struck midnight, and my words would do you no good.

Unless you can identify yourself in the sermon, the one-word sermon of Jesus Christ, and say, I, Lord Jesus, and it's finished for me. My sin is finished in as much as you've taken the consequence of it. My fear of death is vanquished because I recognize that you are the resurrection and the life.

My enslavement to Satan is broken, for you have a power that is superior to his. But you've got to identify, and this is why I come full circle to what I said 20 minutes ago. I worry sometimes, on a Sunday night, that maybe I didn't make it plain enough.

Some people accuse me of preaching too strongly. I tell you, in eternity, my regret will be I never preach strongly enough. That people shall identify with the message of Jesus, and say, yes, I believe it too.

It's finished for me. My hope is built. My life is going to be, from now, unconstructed, on nothing else, but Jesus' blood and righteousness.

Incertainty. So many deceiving voices that are heard respond to the true voice of Jesus, who offers you salvation, as a consequence of his finished work at the cross. Let us pray.

Lord, we come to you, great God and Father of our Lord Jesus. You who make atonement possible. You who forgive the teenage lad or lass who's hooked on drink or sex, or what seem to be lesser addictions.

You who deal with the man who's played fast and loose with his married vows. You who unhook the alcoholic and give him new purpose in life. You who speak to those who are bruised and bashed and bewildered in this world.

We come to you, Heavenly Father. And we bring ourselves and we represent a needy humanity. And we ask that that clarion call of Christ Jesus, his triumphant work of finished, his triumphant work of offering himself and the conclusion of his word finished at the cross, may it be applied to every hungry heart.

And give men and women in this sanctuary this night, by your grace and ability to say, yes, Lord. And that all life is finished for me. I die with Jesus and raised by the power of his spirit.

I open my heart and receive him as my Lord. Oh God, do that in the experience of some people this night, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

And for the invitation to come to the foot of that cross and to reflect on him, the man, the God-man who was made sin for us, we thank you, Father. Many pass by in the day of his death and have no pity on him, but we rush to the cross and look up there and bless you for a savior, compassionate and loving. We thank you for that word finished and bless you, Lord, that he took our sins in his own body and they're finished, done away with, you've forgiven them, you've forgotten all about them.

Blessed God and Father of our Lord Jesus, as we take this communion this evening, let us do so in the light of what we've heard from this book and may the taking of bread and wine be increasingly significant and precious as we wait before the cross tonight in Jesus' blessed name, amen.