Now, last week I got a couple of texts
or emails or something regarding the sound system that the people
watching online weren't able to hear when my voice would drop. You know, that's something that
people have been telling me ever since I started preaching. Clear
back when I was in Ashland, Kentucky, 13th Street, preach on Saturday
nights with the other men that were being trained for the ministry. And they would say, you know,
that most of the time they can hear me, but I let my voice drop
a lot and they can't hear. I thought this microphone would
fix it. But just to let anybody who's listening and maybe having
problems with that, we're working on it. And we hope that the sound
level is going out a little louder, but let me know. Not you guys,
I know you can hear me. This is people watching on TV. Let me know if the sound doesn't
come through well enough. You can open your Bibles to Matthew
chapter 27. I want to preach a message entitled
The Lowest and the Highest. It is written in the book of
Hebrews that the Lord is the captain of our salvation. And as I understand it, that
word could be translated pioneer, Strictly what it means is first
goer, first goer. In the process of accomplishing
our redemption and of making atonement for our sins, the Lord
descended not just to earth, though that was a dissension
certainly in the metaphorical sense of the word. He came down
here where we are, but he also descended spiritually. He descended
as low as a person can go. It says in the book of Philippians,
he submitted himself unto death, even the death of the cross,
which meant, indicated a death in which one was counted accursed
from God. As the law says, cursed is everyone
who is hanged on a tree. And our Lord was hanged on a
wooden cross, a tree. And yet even in that experience,
he had not gone as low as was required. He'd probably gone
as low as human wisdom could perceive someone going. Certainly
in that day, there was no pain greater, no disgrace greater,
No death worse than the death of the cross. But our Lord died that way, not
because God is sadistic like the Romans were. He did that. He had our Lord
die that way in order to give us a window into perceiving happened
to him spiritually? Our Lord was quite literally
cursed by God. Now we get upset if somebody
curses at us. Somebody hurls some epithet at
us, whether it be by means of using the Lord's name in vain,
or telling us where we can go, as though they had the power
to send us there, or any of those things. It makes us angry, or
it just makes us feel so belittled and humiliated. That's just being
cursed by man. What is it to be cursed by God? What is it to have the God who
made heaven and earth and the God from whom all blessings flow? What is it like to have Him turn
against you? You see, in our natural state,
considering ourselves only as children of Adam. That's the
condition we were in. And that curse from God had worked
death in us, and a death so thorough, not that there's such a thing
as degrees of death, but just to make the point, a death so
thorough we were not even aware we were dead. That's how cursed of God Mankind
became, and here's something if you want to understand something
of the justice, the white-hot holiness and strictness of God,
that happened to all of humanity because one man ate fruit from
a forbidden tree. People have tried to make that
a metaphor for some other sin, that men would count to be bad. Now, when Adam partook of that
fruit and Eve was deceived into it, Adam knew what he was doing. And from our viewpoint, it looks
like a very small thing, that he should take a bite from one
piece of fruit from that forbidden tree. But it had at its heart
rebellion. defiance, rejection of God for
everything that God is. And that's true of every sin. You know, we think our little
ones are innocent. And humanly speaking, I understand
we count them innocent. But even their little bit of
mischievousness, is a high-handed act of rebellion against God. Now I'm not saying that so that
we'll all at once get so strict on our kids and then they do
anything out of the way we think we're going to visit the wrath
of God. I'm just pointing out God isn't joking around when
it comes to sin. It says, as a father pities his
children, so does the Lord pity them that fear him. He knows
we are dust. He knows our frame. He understands
that. He never laughs at our sin. He
forgives it. He has mercy on us and understands
what we are, but he doesn't say, oh, isn't that sweet? Look at
that. No. The only reason that you and
I are breathing air today is because Jesus Christ died and
made atonement for sin. And God is a God of tremendous
mercy. And he has pity on his children,
on them that fear him, because he sees them through the lens
of Christ and him crucified. And that's the only reason we're
drawing breath today. Anything this side of hell, and
I remember a preacher friend of mine saying this one time,
he said, anything this side of hell is mercy. That's how strict God is. But
we were killed, so to speak, because we were in our father
Adam when he did that. And what he did, it says, death
passed on all men. And I've always thought that
was a legal statement, like when they pass sentence on someone.
But the word actually means to spread death like an infection. And it's so contagious that every
descendant of Adam has got a terminal case of death,
death of the body. Now we say we know it, but you
know, we say, oh yeah, I know I'm going to die. Everybody dies.
But we don't act like we're ever going to die. We go on living. We go on, I say we, and I'm speaking
of humans in general. I know some of you take this
stuff very seriously. But the day will come. And sometimes, I'll admit, in
the middle of the night, this realization troubles me, because
I'm getting closer, close enough, you know, like I can see the
horizon. One day, I'll be the guy in the box while everybody
walks by and says, doesn't he look natural? Or when I die,
take me to another funeral home. They didn't do very good here.
He really looked dead. I'll be the one that a few people
will cry about me being gone. And I'll be the one they lower
into the ground, cover me up with dirt, and put
a rock, a stone up there with my, at least my birth year and
death year. And maybe for a few years after
that, there will be a few that remember me. But the day will come when I
am utterly forgotten in this world. in Adam all die. But that death of the body is
not all there is to death. That's one aspect of it, because
our body is only one aspect of us. We have the nature of spirit,
which I believe is what is meant by the image of God, because
God is spirit. It is a nature which enables
us to communicate with God when it's operating correctly. But not only have we sinned,
as the scriptures say, with both hands mightily, the actions of
the hands are merely the expression of the heart. In one case when our Lord, when
God was describing sin, He said that they invent new ways to
sin. People say, the devil made me
do it. You don't need the devil. You don't. You and I are perfectly capable
of inventing new sin. And that death spreads to us
spiritually. And I'm not going to try to describe
hell to you. I believe it's described only
in metaphor in the scriptures, just like heaven is described
only in metaphor, because I don't think that in our present state
we would be able to understand the description of either one
of them. But I can tell you something about it. It's horrible like
fire. Our Lord compared it to Jerusalem's
garbage dump. The Valley of Kinnom or something
like that, I think is what it was. And they just, they had
what was called the trash gate. And outside that gate, they just
dumped all the debris. And that's where our Lord said,
the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die. What's
he talking about? It wasn't a landfill. They weren't
trying to fill up that valley. They'd set it on fire. And there
was a fire going on all the time. And what part wasn't burning?
The worms were crawling in it. And can you imagine what kind
of existence that must be to, in some sense of the word, be
on fire? When it comes to the concept
of torment, whatever torment hell is, the best that could
be done to describe it would be, what's it like to be on fire? And where it says, the worm dieth
not, I think to myself, the worm of conscience, to be forever aware of your great
wickedness and sin, and in the knowledge that there's no remedy
for it, And it just eats at you and eats
at you forever. It's called darkness. Now, the way that the scriptures
describe hell in metaphors, I certainly wouldn't want that.
And I can only imagine that the reality is worse than the metaphor. Because the essence of hell is to be utterly bereft, utterly
without the slightest amount of the goodness of God. To have every shred of his pleasant
presence removed. It's not like he isn't there.
His presence is what makes hell to be hell. If he wasn't there,
it might be uncomfortable, but it wouldn't be anything like
what it is with him being there. Being there in anger, being there
in wrath. Anger is one thing, wrath is
something more. You can be angry with someone
and never show wrath, never do anything about it. Hell is where God gives full
vent to his justified wrath against sin. What must that be? But if our
Lord is to be the pioneer the first goer of our salvation. He must experience that. In order to rescue us, he must
come to us where we are. You say, well, we aren't in hell.
Well, by nature, we are so destined for it, we are as good as there. We may not be experiencing all
the torments of it, but our condition as human beings is no different
than the condition of those in hell. Sinful. Spiritually insane. That's what
we are, apart from the grace of God. But our Lord, you know, it talks
about the Lord, one of the old creeds, and I can't remember
which one, but it talks about Him descending into hell. Now,
I've never looked at it in the language in which that confession
was originally written. It may have been they were simply
saying descended into the grave, because sometimes they, the Bible,
We'll use these words like Hades in Greek and Sheol in Hebrew,
and they'll describe that as hell when all that they meant
was the regions of the dead. But I know this, for the Lord
to be the first goer of our salvation, he must come all the way to where
his people are by the decree of God. And this experience in the life
of our Lord is declared for us in verse 45 and 46 of Matthew
27. This is the lowest, the absolute
lowest a person can go. From the sixth hour until the
ninth hour. Now they're using Roman time
here. So the day started at what we would call six. So the sixth
hour is noon. We're about noon until three
in the afternoon. Darkness came over the land and
at about 3 p.m. Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Elohim lama sabachthanai, which
means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This is a quotation from the
22nd Psalm. We all know the 23rd Psalm. Maybe we should learn the 22nd
one. Some have speculated that many
of these utterances by the Lord were merely excerpts because
he was quoting entire Psalms. In fact, the next utterance of
our Lord is from, I can't remember if it's the 33rd or 35th Psalm. And some have even gone so far
to say, I say some, it was me. Possibly that thief who believed
heard our Lord speaking those Psalms and the Holy Spirit used
it to awaken him to what was really going on. Because why
else would a man look at the crucified Jesus and think he's
a king coming into a kingdom. But a man, a woman can experience
nothing worse than this, and to be forsaken by God. For our Lord, it had to feel
worse in some respects, than it would for us. If we were forsaken of God, if
we died in our sins and were totally deprived of all of His
goodness and experienced that forsaking of God. Do you know what the Bible says
we would do? we would curse him. People think that you can preach
hell and that's gonna make people believe Christ. It'll scare them
into signing up for some heaven insurance. Won't make them love
God. Won't make them repent of sin.
The law has a job to do and it can do it well, but there's one
job the law cannot do. The law cannot make you love
God. The law cannot make you hate sin. It says in the book
of Revelation that those cast into the lake of fire cursed
God. They still wouldn't admit to
their sin. They figured it was unjust that they were there. In truth, I think everybody,
whether they're in heaven or hell, is going to ask the same
question. Why me? If they're in hell, they'll be
so ignorant of what sin is and how much rebellion they've expressed
against the God of their creation. They'll wonder why they're in
hell, and they'll be mad because they are. Those who've been saved
by the grace of God will stand there in the presence of God,
faultless and full of joy. Why me? Why me and not my neighbor? Because
I'll tell you, as I can tell, he's a better guy than me. Hell never did bring about repentance, and it never will. But it was worse for our Lord,
for though he was forsaken of God, he was still a righteous
man. He was still one who loved God. Now you think of that. The atheist says he doesn't want
anything to do with God. And he'll sort of get what he
wants. But he'll continue his hatred
of God. But what would you feel like,
you who believe, you who love the Lord Jesus Christ? What would you feel like if when
you die, you stood in the presence of God? He said, I changed my
mind. And you still, you are still,
shall we say, born again. You're still spiritually alive.
Your heart, as David said, as the deer pants for the running
streams, so does my heart desire, thirst after the living God.
If you had a heart like that, and then God said, I don't want
anything to do with you. I won't have you. And then imagine this, that's
your father. And he just disowned you. Twice
the father had spoken from heaven saying, this is my beloved son
in whom I'm well pleased. Not then. There were no words
like that to him then. Hell with a rebellious, sinful
heart is one thing. Hell with a heart that loves
God and desperately desires to see His face and to be united
with Him in undisturbed fellowship, what that must be. Some have tried to go further into this. Well, what
must the Lord have felt like? Brethren, I don't know. I don't know. But I know this. He felt worse than I've ever
felt in body, soul, mind. He was as alone as a person could
be. These words from our Lord have
a certain mystery about them. Why would he say, why have you
forsaken me? When theologically he knew perfectly
well why he'd been forsaken by God. He was forsaken by his God so
that we wouldn't be forsaken. He was forsaken by his God because
that's the price of sin. The wages of sin is death and
not just the death of body, the death of the whole person and
whatever that must constitute. And I'm not even going to pretend
to fully understand that. He knew the theology behind his
suffering, yet out of the agony of loving God so much, of being
one with Him and now being separated from
Him and forsaken by Him. We can't understand that. Martin Luther, it is said of
him that he had his Bible open to this passage and he looked
and looked and looked. For three hours he just stared
at that. Finally he looked up, closed
his Bible, and he said, God forsaking God. Nobody can understand that. And I look at it, and while I
know it was a horrible thing, I confess, I can't possibly know
one ten thousandth of how horrible that was for the Lord Jesus Christ. Did he go to hell? Not in a geographical
sense, because the whole time he's hanging right there on the
cross. Did he experience hell? Yes, because that was our destiny
apart from him. And if he's to be the first goer,
he's got to go all the way down, then go all the way back up. And thus he is the first goer.
This is the lowest, friends, to be forsaken by God. Now turn to Luke chapter 23. Verse 44 of Luke 23. It was now about the sixth hour.
Once again, that's noon. And darkness came over the whole
land until the ninth hour. For the sun stopped shining and
the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud
voice, and that's a remarkable thing right there. Here's a man
on the verge of death, hanging on a cross, beaten to
a pulp, and he goes out of this world in strength. He cried out
with a loud voice, into your hands I commit my spirit. When he had said this, he breathed
his last. Now, I said I've entitled this message
From the Lowest to the Highest. And you might think, yes, from
hell to heaven. Well, heaven's implied here.
But it's not what's spoken here. Here is the highest, to be in the Father's hands. To be in His hands, not the church's
hands, not the preacher's hands, not my own hands, not my parents'
hands. In His hands. This was a remarkable demonstration
of submission and faith on the part of our Lord. If I read the
chronology right, it hadn't been that long before this that our
Lord said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now one thing to notice about
the utterances of our Lord, we read he said, Father, forgive
them. They don't know what they're doing. Here we read he says, Father,
into your hands I commit my spirit. But in that cry from Matthew, not Father,
my God, You know, whether or not God's your father, he is
your God. That's just a fact. You may not,
a person may not believe it. Doesn't change the fact that
it's so. I know, you know, every time we have a presidential election,
it's about half the country saying, that's not my president. I'm
sorry, it is. Like it or not, that's your president.
It's just a fact. And it's certainly true of God.
He's the only God there is and he's the God of all flesh. And
therefore the Lord could say, my God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? But in that hour of being forsaken,
there was no spirit in his heart to say, father, because that
relationship, he wasn't experiencing that. Now listen to father. into your hands, I commit my
spirit. When I was six or seven years
old, we lived in Springfield, Virginia. And in a shopping center
that was across the road from where I went to elementary school,
first grade, they had a carnival. You know how these traveling
carnivals are set up in a parking lot like that. And so Dad took
us, Mom and Dad took me and my two sisters, and we went there.
Well, of course, I was mesmerized by everything I saw. You know,
at carnivals, there's lights and a Ferris wheel and rides.
And I remember I was standing. Now, this wasn't a mall. This
was the shopping center, you know. Every shop opened out to
a sidewalk with a roof over it. And I was standing on that sidewalk
that was a little bit elevated from the parking lot. And I was
just looking and looking. And probably my dad or my mom
said, let's go. I didn't hear him. I just looked
at him. And then my mind came back to
the present moment. I looked around, and I'm all
alone. And you know, a child that age,
when they suddenly find themselves alone, fear. And I started to
cry. Now, all of this probably transpired
in maybe 10 seconds. Because I'm pretty sure it didn't
take long for my parents to realize I wasn't following them. But
I'm going like this and I'm not seeing them. And I still have
this image in my mind. My dad was in the Navy. A pair
of khaki pants standing in front of me. And I looked up. And my dad picked me up. And for me, at that moment, that
was the best place in all the world to be. And our Lord Jesus says, Father, I'm looking for no other source
of help but you. I commit my spirit to your hands. to be in the hands of the Heavenly
Father, to have the spirit of adoption, as Paul says, whereby
we cry, Abba, Father. That is the highest that a person
can be. Now, I realize that in times
to come, you and I who believe, we will come to know what this
means better than we know it right now. It doesn't change
the fact. Again, we're back to objective
facts. We're in the Father's hands. We who are in Christ, He committed
Himself to the Father's hands. Where were we when He did that? We were in Him. So where did
that put us? Same place He was, in the Father's
hands. That father who pities his children, who
knows our frame, knows that we are dust, and deals with us ever
so graciously and kindly. That father who sees us lost
and scared and picks us up. That father who when we act up
too much in love disciplines us, not to show his wrath, but
to keep us from hurting ourselves, just like good fathers do with
their children. That father in whose house a place has been prepared for
us, that father who orders all things
for the good of his people and weaves all events together to
bring about their eternal welfare. You know, there's a lot of places
in this world I'd like to go. I'd like to go to Hawaii. I don't
think I'll ever make it. We get time off and some way
or another we head south. There's an attraction down there.
I'd like to go to Hawaii. There's some places in the universe
I'd like to go. I've been a space nerd all my
life. I mean, I remember the first
rocket going up. Watched it, first grade television.
Brought TV in there, and we watched that Mercury thing take off. I watched Star Trek. I know you
can't do that, but that sure would be fun, wouldn't it? All
wondrous places to see, the beauty. But here's where I want to be,
in the Father's hands. Because I know if I'm in His
hands, it doesn't matter where else I am. Everything's going
to be okay. Everything's gonna work out right. Now the question is, how did
we get from, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, to
Father, in your hands, I commit my spirit. Look over at John
chapter 19. John 19, verse 30. When he had received the drink,
Jesus said, it is finished with that. He bowed his head and gave
up his spirit. Now we have three statements
by our Lord here. near the end of his natural life. We know that the first one of
these three had to be, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? It puts, it is finished, and
into your hands I commit my spirit. Puts them as right before he
died. Now remember, the gospel writers recorded different details
of the Lord's life. But as I read this, I take it
that he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I don't
know how much later, but with that forsaking, the price had been paid. The
work had been done. The sin that he was bearing had
been paid for and was therefore gone. His work was finished. And so
he said so. It is finished. And the word
means complete, perfected, accomplished. One reason I can never get projects
at my house done, I can never bring them to perfection. I bring them to the point that
I'm so sick of doing them, I say, okay, I'm just going to be satisfied
with that. That's as good as it's going to get. Live with
it. I'm a perfectionist inside, but
on the outside, I just can't do it. Now think of this, our Lord accomplished
death. He completed it. He finished
it. The reason hell is forever is
that the people there are never finished. They're always dying,
but never done dying. They never perfected, our Lord
did. Everything that death meant, everything that was included
in God's statement to Abraham, and the day you eat of it, you
will die. Whatever that meant, our Lord
finished it. Then he said, Father, into your
hands I commit my spirit. He bore our sins in his body
on the tree, and while he's bearing our sins, it is, my God, my God,
why have you forsaken me? And we know the theological answer.
God cannot look on sin with favor. He's a purer eyes than to behold
iniquity, says the scriptures. There was in the nature of God
no choice but to turn his back on his only begotten son, to
forsake him, because sin was on him. It wasn't his son's sin,
that is, Jesus didn't do it, but it was still sin, and it
had been charged to him, and he'd accepted the charge. Therefore
God, the judge of all, looked on him and said, there's a criminal
against my kingdom, there's a sinner, there's a guilty vile person,
and he poured out his wrath on him. and turned his back on him,
so to speak. But such was the greatness of
his person that when the Lord bore that, the sins that he bore
were gone. Try to get a hold of that. Not
just covered up, gone, non-existent. in the register of God, in God's
ledger of right and wrongs. They don't exist. And therefore, he who but a few
minutes ago was forsaken of God, say, I'm finished. It's done. Father, into your hands I commit
my spirit. And brothers and sisters, it
is for the very same reason that we can sit here 2,000 years later
and say, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. For while
I have never suffered hell, my substitute did. And it's finished. It's done. Death has been completed
in me. I'll lay this body down. And
I'll probably resist it until it happens, and like every other
believer, the moment it happens, I'm gonna say, why did I put
this off? Best thing that ever happened
to me was dying. Because it ushered me into his
presence, faultless, full of joy. And I'll be able to see, you
know, it's written, they shall see his face. to be in the presence of God.
And of course it will be, when we're in the presence of God,
it will be our Lord Jesus Christ we see. No man has seen God at
any time. He's a spirit, you can't see
him. But you can see our Lord Jesus Christ, God manifest in
the flesh, and we will see him. We will behold the glory of God
and not die. We will be in his presence. And
it will be a smile of a father, not the stern countenance of
a judge. No one knows ahead of time the
day of their death. I realize some people have diseases
and, you know, they say, well, you got two months or something
like that. But sometimes the doctors are right and sometimes
they're wrong. But if you're in the father's
hand, It doesn't matter. Death will not harm you. One of the oddest things that
Paul said, and I'll close with this, talking about it, he said,
everything's yours. He says, life is yours. Death
is yours. You might say, why? I don't want
it. You can take it back. You'll be glad for it when it
happens if you're a believer. You will say, the best thing
that ever happened to me, aside from being born again, was putting
off this flesh, leaving this body and this world, and being
with Christ, and being like Christ. Scott, you and James, help with
the Lord's table. Eric?