Cries No.4 Forsaken

You know how I am scorned, disgraced and shamed. All my enemies are before you. Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless.

I looked for sympathy, but there was none. For comforters, but I found none. They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.

One hundred and sixty-six is the prayer of our hearts for this service. Give me a sight, O Saviour, of Thy wondrous love to me, of the love that brought Thee down to earth to die on Calvary. One hundred and sixty-six.

Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Amen. How deep the Father's love for us. How vast beyond all measure that he should give his only son to make a wretch his treasure.

How great the pain of searing loss the Father turns his face away as wounds which mar the chosen one bring many sons to glory. Behold the man upon a cross, my sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers.

It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished. His dying breath has brought me life. I know that it is finished.

I will not boast in anything, no gifts, no power, no wisdom, but I will boast in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection. Why should I gain from his reward? I cannot give an answer, but this I know with all my heart. His wounds have paid my ransom.

750. What kind of love is this? Ah. What? I. Verse one.

Please be seated. I didn't even know his name, yet I go free. Father, we come in our contrition with remorse, with repentance to the foot of the cross.

Just as I am without one plea, but that his blood was shed for me and that he bids me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come. We come as though it were the first time. We come with the lingering sense of our own guilt.

We come with shaded eyes. We come with broken hearts. We come with remorse.

But we come to say thank you for all that you have done for us. Great is the Lord. Receive our thanks on this day, which commemorates the day the like of which there never was before and there never ever will be again, God's own day, when at high noon a man went forth to die.

And we come and sit and wonder and survey so quicken our hearts, broaden our minds, deal with our wills, release our emotions from our soul as well as from our brain. Get the response that is your due. Great Father God for sending your Son, Lord Jesus Christ for coming, and Holy Spirit for opening our eyes to the truths of Calvary.

Amen. So let's go to the Gospel of John. Some of you have joined with me in these last few mornings at the foot of the cross and for a lengthy period we've considered the events that occurred on that remarkable day.

And here I take you to the account of John who knew what he was talking about because he was the only disciple present for part of the occasion. And in his 19th chapter of the Gospel that bears his name, in the 28th verse, we read this. 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 the stalk of the hyssop plant, and they, the soldiers, 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.

There were seven cries that came from the cross of our Lord. And each one of the cries leads on to the next. And there is a sense, as I've been teaching you, that our Lord becomes more and more isolated as he gives vent to the feelings that are on his heart.

Father, he commences with a wider circle. Forgive them, for they know not what they do, referring to the soldiers and to the priests and to the ordinary gaping crowd who came along to have a look what was happening. Then, narrowing the circle, he speaks of the one who's on one of the crosses and who asks that he might be with Jesus when he comes into his kingdom.

And then our Lord, narrowing the circle even more, speaks to Mary, who is his mother, and commits her into the tender keeping of John. And then the scene becomes more lonely as a divine unseen hand drops the blanket of darkness, screening off from the eyes of the crowd what shall now happen. And there is for three hours, from twelve o'clock noon till three o'clock in the afternoon, that mysterious eclipse of the sun.

And during this time, our Lord goes through the agony of hell. And at the end of that period, he cries, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. And then, then he moves on to the words that we have just been reading.

When he speaks out for those who were on the site again to hear, and refers to his own need of a drink. And then he summons up all the energy that is left. And the marvel is that there is some deposit of strength still there.

And in a loud voice, he says, it is finished. And then finally, with his eyes back to his father, gazing upwards, he says, I commend my spirit to you. But why? Why could not God, the Father, have granted forgiveness to this world? In the way that you and I grant forgiveness, presumably, to each other.

For unless we forgive, we are not forgiven. So to Christian people, forgiveness is automatic. But for the Father, for our great God, forgiveness is a problem.

He has nothing to apologize for. There is nothing that he has done for which he should apologize. He is not only a God of love, he is a God of holiness.

And for him to push our sin on one side, to say it doesn't matter, would actually go against his own integrity. Sin, the Apostle Paul will tell you, in the 8th chapter of Romans, is a violation of the law of God. Sin is an insult deliberately delivered by man to God.

It is a questioning of his authority. It is a suggesting that the holiness of God really does not matter. David will put theological expression to the point when he says against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.

Sin is a violation of the character of God. And those who come and suggest that the Lord God could have dealt with man's sin in the same way as you and I deal with those who trespass against us, is indicative that they know very little about God. He is not man.

And he has to find a way, a way whereby he can maintain his own integrity, his holiness, his love shall still be secure as he devises a plan whereby into this world shall come someone who will bear upon himself the consequences of human sin, God's own son. Says John Stott, if we reinterpret sin as a lapse instead of a rebellion, and God as indulgent instead of indignant, we thereby diminish the cross, and the cross appears superfluous. But to dethrone God and enthrone ourselves not only dispenses with the cross, it also degrades both God and man.

So there has to be some satisfaction before a holy God to compensate for the sins that you and I have committed. And here, on this day, the like of which there was no other day to compare, you find Jesus Christ, God's own son, moving out from the confines of Jerusalem city to the place called Golgotha. And there he is dealt with so brutally by Roman soldiers.

And there he suffers the abuse and the mockery of those who should have known better, the priests, the pastors, the ministers, the clergy of the people. And there, our Lord Jesus, having been pinned to the cross, has his body lifted high, and the cross thuds down into its socket, and the passion of our Lord commences. And at the end, uttering the final cries, having received a vinegar drink, he says, finished.

Pause for a moment, because before he gives his evaluation as to what has been achieved during those hours of intense agony, he requests a drink. And those soldiers who, at one stage, had been so hostile to Jesus seem to have summoned some respect. And maybe it's the sponge that they took to wipe the blood from off their own bodies because the crucified men dropped blood onto the ground.

Maybe it was that sponge that they placed into a mixture of vinegar and water and eggs, a common drink for Roman soldiers, and placed the sponge on the end of a reed and squeezed the sponge, causing the liquid to shoot forth into the lips of our Lord Jesus. And this Savior, who has probably not received any liquid since he was with the disciples in the upper room, now finds that his mouth has been so moistened, and he has these reserves of strength that he can utter the penultimate cry from the cross and say, What I came to achieve has been accomplished. Three occasions in Scripture, the word finished is strongly employed.

God created the heavens and the earth, and he finished his creative handiwork on the sixth day. The book of Revelation, the 16th chapter and the 17th verse, summoning up the total sweep of human history, we read an angel declares, It is finished. And midpoint in the human story, Jesus from the cross uses this word as an evaluation of all that he has done.

Finished. I repeat, these cries from the cross were not whimpers. Our Lord is not in control of the Romans or of the religious leaders.

Neither is our Lord just being controlled by the weakness of human emotion. He is the master of this situation. And every word that he speaks from the cross is of great significance.

It is of great thought. Often he who is the word made flesh will lean on the word inscripturated that he caused to be written in the Old Testament and quote from his own words. But here as he sums up his achievements, he says that everything he came to do on earth has been accomplished.

So we ask, when was it started? You cannot finish something unless you had started it in the first instance. And you remember that he has a knowledge of his program in the early years of his life. Even as a lad in Jerusalem, his first visit in the company of Mary and Joseph, he's delayed somewhat and they go back.

You remember the story to Nazareth where they're living? And suddenly Mary discovers to her horror that her lad is not with them. So they make tracks back to Jerusalem. They find him in the temple with the leaders and he's discussing theological issues and they discipline him.

They indicate their concerns and Jesus spins round and he says to Joseph, Don't you know? I should be about my father's business. I have a work to do. And throughout the whole of his earthly ministry, he is aware of a plan, a program that he has to achieve.

You go to Lansing College, as I sometimes do. Enter that chapel. It's a beautiful chapel.

It's of cathedral proportion. Perhaps the most marvelous building on this part of the South Coast. But you know it's not complete.

They started that building before this church was built. And yet they still have to continue to bring it to perfection. So often in life, people die without what they intended to do being fully performed.

The sculpture is unfinished. The symphony lies incomplete. The book, it needed a final chapter.

But when the blessed Christ of 33 years or thereabouts looks down from the cross on his life's work, he says, Finished. What I started to do has been perfectly accomplished. You see, Jesus lived his life to a plan.

Sometimes he would speak about the terminus of his life, its end, even during his public ministry. He would say to his disciples, using his favorite expression to describe himself, the Son of Man. The Son of Man has come to minister, not to be ministered unto, and to give his life a ransom for many.

He's conditioned by the thought that not only is his teaching important and his practicing important, but when he comes to the end of his life, it will have such a value that his death will benefit many others. And it's to that end that he dedicates himself. His life is not lived capriciously.

It has a plan. It has a purpose. And this is what is finished, you see.

This is what is brought to finality. The plan that was there, that he knew of, even from earliest years. And what's more, the prophecies that were made about him were finished.

One of the great evidences of the truthfulness of Scripture is that in the Old Testament, you can find so much information about the Lord Jesus. It is unique, this book. You don't find this anywhere else.

You really do not. So, the Old Testament Scriptures will tell you that the Messiah was born in Bethlehem. It will tell you that he will spend some time having fled to Egypt in the company of his parents.

He will come back to Nazareth. It will tell you about the way in which he will teach with parabolical expressions and illustrations. He will inform people of spiritual truths.

It will tell you what his life will achieve. And scattered throughout the Old Testament are references to his death. Even the vinegar drink from the psalm that I read earlier on, you discover the evidence for that prediction.

And when Jesus looks down from the cross, the blueprint of the prophecies, they're completed. Bethlehem, Nazareth, parables. A man who is so tender, he won't break the bruised reed.

A man who is so sensitive, he won't snuff out the smoldering facts. A man who can be dramatic. A man who can be severe in his teaching.

And yet a man for others who will be heard by the common folk. All this and more is packed into the Old Testament predictions about this Messiah. And when Jesus looks down from the cross, the prophecies, they've been fulfilled.

So he says, finished. Not only so, the practices that have been installed and have lived on for many a century, they're now brought to completion. What do I mean? Well, over against the cross is the city wall of Jerusalem.

And incidentally, get rid of the notion of the cross as being a romantic place on the top of some green hill. The cross was on no hill. The cross was down in the valley near the brook Hedron.

Alongside the cross ran the equivalent of a motorway so that people, when they passed by, they could see the people who were being crucified. And they would nod their heads. To use the graphic expression of the prophets, they would shoot out their lips and they would say they got their just desserts.

There's nothing private about the cross. Through the golden gate, you go down the cobbled streets and eventually you come to the temple. What's been happening in the temple for years? Well, they've taken the bloody sacrifices.

The lamb's been slaughtered. Time after time, century after century, holocausts of sacrifices have been offered as man has used the blood of animals in some symbolic way to suggest that he is sorry for his sins. But those sacrifices were actually prophetically predicting the day when Jesus, the Lamb of God, shall die for the sins of the world.

And don't you see when he looks down from the cross and says, finished? He is, in effect, putting the full stop behind that Old Testament system. No longer any need for those lambs to be slaughtered. No longer any need for this religious cultic practice to be observed.

Finished. All the old is done away with. And the prohibitions that those sacrifices and that system enforced have now been eliminated.

What do I mean? Well, only once a year could one man representing the people go into the temple and into the holiest place of the temple and there speak with God. But when Jesus dies, in the temple, something remarkable happens. That curtain that shielded off the holy place, that embroidered curtain which is so strong, of the finest material, emblazoned in gold, is split from the top to the bottom.

And the holiest place of all is made available to any human eye that goes into the temple. And what is happening there is actually illustrated in the person of our Lord Jesus. You can look on me now, not just as the bedraggled so-called criminal of the cross, but recognize me to be who I am, the holy God who has taken on a human form.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. Here is an exclusive claim that knowledge of God comes through him.

And here is a gospel that is available to the whole world. And here is our Lord Jesus saying that the exclusive clause of the Old Testament is now annihilated. It is abrogated forever.

Men, women, Jew, Gentile, can have fellowship with God the Father through me. Isn't that wonderful? Finished. Jesus goes through a checklist.

It's common in management practice today every year to have an evaluation of where you're at, what you've done, how useful you are, how better you can be employed. Jesus ticks them off. The plan, the prophecies, the practices, the prohibitions.

He looks down upon the achievements of his life and he ticks off what he has achieved. Finished. And yet, to understand this properly, you have to come not only positively but negatively.

What was not finished? Well, he wasn't finished. The person of Christ. That's what they wanted to do.

That was the reason behind at the human level for his crucifixion. Finish him off. Get rid of him.

As Cain got rid of Abel. As Esau would like to have got rid of Jacob. As the brothers tried to get rid of Joseph.

As the Hebrews at one time, incredible though it seems, wanted to get rid of Moses. Saul wanted to do away with David. As Paul, the future apostle, did away with Stephen, so do away with him.

Get rid of him. That's what they said when Jesus started preaching in Nazareth. They came from Jerusalem to Nazareth.

They listened to him. They realized he was a danger. Get rid of him.

The business of the cross and the conniving behind it at the human level was not just a flash of inspiration diabolically given in the last few weeks when Jesus was in Jerusalem. This was the completion of a plan that had been set 36 months before. Get rid of him.

Finish him off. But the person of Christ is not finished. The martyrdom of Jesus will win millions and millions of souls.

And the word martyrdom has to be put in inverted commas. You see, the martyr is done to death often without his permission. But Jesus says, No man shall take my life from me.

I will surrender it voluntarily. They didn't finish him off. Neither is finished the vindication of Christ.

Because Good Friday, though it's a memorable day, and we evangelicals have difficulty living in Good Friday, we really do. That's why I had to ask you to be quiet before the service started this morning. We live with joyous fellowship, and that's quite proper.

But there are occasions when you have to come the other side of the cross and to think of the horror and the butchery of it. But the cross is not the vindication of Christ. The vindication of Christ is at the end when he offers his spirit to the Father in supreme self-control.

And on the third day, he's raised again in the power of an endless life. We like the resurrection. We're resurrection people.

And that is proper. But never go too quickly to the resurrection and bypass the cross, or else you'll devalue your understanding of salvation. Our Lord is perfectly in control.

Do you remember President Reagan completes three years of office and then says, ye ain't seen nothing yet. Our Lord, completely in control, finished. You haven't seen anything yet.

Into your hands, Father, I commit my spirit. And then in the third day, in the extravaganza of the resurrection, he leaps forward. The singer dances once more.

Death could not keep its prey. Thou wilt not leave thy Holy One to see corruption. All the prophecies again come into play.

Not the prophecies of crucifixion, but the prophecies of resurrection. What is yet to be is the exaltation of Christ. Hey, this priest, this criminal who says, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

That man who could do nothing to save himself. That man who couldn't go to communion, who was never baptized, who never went to a discipleship class. It's typical of Jesus to say, today you'll be with me.

In the exaltation of Christ, as he releases the Old Testament saints from Hades and takes them through into heaven itself, leading the trail, is that criminal that Jesus admitted into the kingdom. And so he takes those for whom he has died and they go into heaven in the train, the forefront carriage of many, many millions more. And Jesus presents to his father those who are part of the exploits of his victory.

And heaven acknowledges what our Lord has done. The Christ of the cross is given the name that is above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every initial bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

What he did on the cross was finished in terms of the areas that I outlined. But there's more. There's more.

They don't finish him off as a person. And the Lord God has got honors to heap up on him that are incredible. But I'm through.

There's an old evangelist by the name of Ebenezer Wilton. There were evangelists before Billy Graham. And this man used to go up and down England.

He had his tent. He used to erect it and preach and then take it down after two weeks and move on. On one occasion, Wilton was pulling his tent down.

And a young fellow came up to Wilton and said, what must I do to be saved? And Wilton said, do? You can't do anything. You're too late. The young man thought he meant that he'd missed the campaign.

Therefore, the opportunity for salvation had been bypassed. What must I do to be saved? Ebenezer Wilton said, what needed to be done to be saved has been done 2,000 years ago and you can't do it, but it's been done for you.