if you would open your Bibles
to John chapter 19. In our midweek gatherings, I
have been going through the book of John, and we were in John
chapter 19 this past Sunday, or excuse me, past Thursday evening,
and we looked at this portion of scripture, which we'll read
here in a minute, The next day, Friday morning,
I got up and I thought, well, this is the day I got to prepare
the radio broadcast. So I started thinking about what
to preach on and this scripture came to mind. In fact, even the
night before I began saying that I need to, I want to preach on
that, on the radio, such an important message. So I began to write
out some notes for it. And after I'd gotten done with
two pages, which pretty much just got me through, well, the
introduction, the beginning of the first point, but I said,
this isn't a radio message yet, it's, I'm gonna preach this to
the whole congregation. It filled my heart, filled my
heart with joy and confidence, and I hope that it'll do the
same for you. And I got some notes, but I didn't
finish, so. Might be a little bit like last week. But our Lord, and what an awful
scene this was. This is the scene of the crucifixion. And a more awful way of dying
cannot be imagined. Crucifixion, at least as far
as the historical records can determine, began with the Persians. is their choice of how to dispatch
of their enemies, a way to not only kill people, but torture
them in the process, and display them to everyone else who might
have a mind to become an enemy. And the Romans took what the
Persians did and refined it to a level of agony and pain unmatched,
as they nailed people to a cross. Nailed them, Bible says hands
and feet, and anatomically they actually would
nail them here in the wrists, because if you nailed them in
the palm of the hands, that wouldn't have supported them. So it's
not in the palm of the hands, as many pictures, but in the
wrist of the hands. drove nails between the two bones
that make up the lower arm, and therefore put that nail right
against that bundle of nerves that runs into the hand, nailed
them through the feet similarly, and they would hang there on
that cross, and if they hung on their arms, excruciating pain
in the hands from that, And it would pull up on the ribcage
and make breathing virtually impossible. And so when they
had gone as long as they could without sufficient oxygen, they
would push themselves up on their feet, which then would transfer
all that horrid pain to the feet. And they would gasp a breath
and once again, sag against the nails in their arms or their
hands. The wounds that were inflicted
on them were, so far as bringing about death, really not that
severe. They just inflicted pain. And so it was known that many
people, and expected that many would spend days dying, until
finally through sheer exhaustion, they finally could lift themselves
up no more to breathe. would suffocate as they hung
there, the ribcage pulled up so far they couldn't breathe.
And such was the situation on this day as three men were hung
on crosses and at least for our Lord we
know that some who loved him were there and witnessed this
event. His mother was there, his aunt,
whose name we do not know for certain, one who was named Mary, the wife
of Clopas, and then Mary, whose last name or location we do recognize,
they called her Mary Magdalene. And all these women had some
special attachment to our Lord, Mary being the mother, and what
an awful sight this must have been to her. When she took our
Lord Jesus to the temple, there 40 days after he was born,
and Simeon saw him, he prophesied, he said, now let me depart in
peace, Lord, for I've seen your salvation. Then he went on to
say to Mary, this one shall be for the rising and falling of
many in Israel, and a sword shall pierce your heart also. And I
doubt Mary understood what Simon meant when he said that some
30 or so years before this event. But I wonder if maybe those Simon's
words came back to her as she saw her firstborn son being treated
like this. We don't like it when our children
scrape their knee. Can you imagine what she felt?
That mixture of sorrow, anger, and even hatred and helplessness
as she watched these people torture her blessed son to death. His aunt, I suppose she had an
affection for him also, and Mary the wife of Clopas, but think
about this Mary Magdalene now. Here's a woman whom the Bible
says had seven demons, which may not have been so much a number
to count, but a number to indicate, as the number seven indicates,
fullness. She was full of demons, utterly
overwhelmed by them. We don't know for sure exactly
how this demonic presence in her expressed itself. Some say
she was a prostitute, I don't know. Some say she was that sinful
woman who came in and anointed our Lord and prepared, and the
Lord said in preparation for my burial, that might have been
her. She was notably wicked, that
we're sure of. and an uttered bondage to her
wickedness through the demonic spirit or spirits that filled
her. And our Lord had evidently with
a word delivered her from all of that. He'd had mercy on her.
He'd seen her wretched condition and rather than reacting as an
offended judge, his heart was broken for her sake. And he,
with the power that he alone had, told those demons to leave
and they did. And for the first time in her
life, she was a free woman. And you can only imagine the
love that such a woman would have for the Lord Jesus Christ. Why it would be like the love
you have for him who were dead in trespasses and sins and in
bondage to your own sinful nature and the Lord Jesus Christ came
and by his grace set you free. But Mary's standing there and
she knows what the Lord did for her, but she doesn't understand
at this point what the Lord is doing for her at this present
moment. You see, there's nobody that
really understood what was going on on the cross except, interestingly
enough, one of the men crucified. Somewhere during that process,
the Lord revealed to him what was happening. For that one thief
turned to the Lord and said, remember me when you come into
your kingdom. He realized that the work the
Lord was doing was not a work of defeat, but a work of victory.
That he was not a man being driven out of a kingdom rightly his,
but he was a man going to a kingdom that had been given to him and
now he was winning it by the shedding of his blood and by
his victory over sin, death, and hell. But nobody else knew,
not the disciples, not the Lord's mother, not Mary Magdalene. They
didn't realize what he was doing at this point. And all that they
could feel was the horrible agony that must have filled their souls
as they saw one they loved with all their being, being treated
with such hatred and cruelty. And all the hopes that they had
put in him seemed to them to be coming to an end. In fact,
that's what some of them said the day of the resurrection,
when the Lord was walking with them, and yet He hid from them
who He truly was, that He might talk to them a bit and draw out
their thoughts. And He said, why are you all
so cast down? What are you all talking about?
And they said to Him, haven't you heard what's going on? He
said, there's somebody named Jesus of Nazareth, and we had
hoped that He was Messiah. We thought that He was the Christ. We thought He was the One. But they crucified him a few
days ago, and we saw him die. And we saw him get put in a tomb. But this morning, some of the
women, in fact, the very same ones that watched him at the
cross, they went out there to the tomb, and he wasn't there. And one of them even says that
she saw him. And that he's raised from the
dead and tell you, tell you, sir, we're confused. We don't
understand what's going on here. Oh boy, I tell you, they're in
a mess. They're in a mess. And our Lord here says in verse
30, John 19. When he, the Lord, had received
the drink, he said, it is finished. And with that, he bowed his head
and gave up his spirit. In another place, it says that
he cried out with a loud voice. and then gave up his spirit.
In another place it says, he says, Father, into your hands
I commend my spirit. And he gave up the spirit. We
don't know what was the exact last words. I'm assuming these
were actually the next to the last words. He said, it is finished. And then said, into your hands
I commit my spirit. And went on. But I do believe,
as much as we can tell, that these are the words he cried
out with a loud voice. When our Lord said, it is finished,
this was not the crying out of someone who'd been defeated.
He does not mean finished in the sense as if you and I were
maybe watching a boxing match, you know, and then the two of
them are going at it, and then one of them, I mean, he gets
it right under the chin with a good hard right uppercut. And he staggers back, and you
look over and say, he's finished. That's not what this means. Our
Lord is not admitting defeat, He's declaring victory. These are not His words of desperation. These are His words that He has
finished His course. He has completed the work that
He had been sent to do. That not one who had been given
to Him in the covenant of grace before the foundation of the
world, not one of them had been lost. But He had hidden them
within His bosom as He Himself bore the overwhelming scourge
of the wrath of God for their sin. And by the power of who
He was, God in human flesh, and by the greatness of His righteousness,
He had endured that storm. And everything that an offended
God could throw against someone who had offended Him by their
sin had been endured by the Lord Jesus Christ. We find in one
of the Old Testament prophets that our Lord says to tell to
his people, there is no wrath in me. Now he doesn't mean that
absolutely. There's wrath in him for some
people, but there's no wrath in him for his people. There's
no wrath in him for those whom he chose in Christ, no wrath
for those who were redeemed by Christ. Why? Because every bit
of wrath against them was poured out upon this one, the Lord Jesus
Christ. Right there as he hung between
heaven and hell, looking like a victim. He was not a victim in the sense
of being overpowered. Everything that was done to him,
he allowed men to do it. At any moment he could have stopped
it. It says, "...as a lamb or a sheep before her shearers is
dumb, so He opened not His mouth." Why? Because if He had opened
His mouth, it would have been the end of everybody. He made no defense of Himself.
He did not call upon His Father to do as He said His Father would
have done if He'd asked for it. He did not call on His Father
to send a legion of angels and rescue Him. He let them sacrifice him. And when he was done with the
work he came to do, the work he was sent to do, he said, it
is finished. Moses wrote a law and that law
said, do Jesus Christ died on the cross
and added two letters and made it done. And brethren, in all of that
is the gospel. The gospel in two letters, N-E,
from do to done. No more powerful words have ever
been spoken than these words right here, nothing more profound
Several thousand years of promise and prophecy are wrapped up in
these words, it is finished. I say these words in the Greek
language of the New Testament, it's all one word. Whether our
Lord spoke it in Greek or in what would have been his native
Aramaic language, I don't know. It doesn't matter, it has the
same sense, done. Done. These words are the hope
of every sinner, but they are the abomination of nearly all
religion, including much of what passes under the banner of Christianity. You can tell God's religion from
every other religion by this simple test. Every religion of
man says do, the religion of Christ says done. Now that's
it. I mean, I love being forceful
about this. I was about to say, I don't want
to be forceful, but I do. I want to be real forceful. I want to be real
clear. That's the dividing line between
man's religion and God's religion. And if you're in a religion that
tells you to do, you are in the wrong religion. That is, if you're
in a religion that tells you there's something you must do,
some work you must perform in order to put you in a right standing
with God, then you need to get out of your religion. And that's
even if you're a member of this church. Say, what do you mean
if a person's a member of this church? This is the religion
he's involved with. No, that doesn't mean that. Your religion's
what's in your heart. You may profess to believe what
is preached here week by week, but that may not be what you
really believe. And so I say to you, in your
conscience before God, do you come before Him saying, Oh, I've
got to do, or do you come before Him and say, God, it has been
done by the Lord Jesus Christ in my behalf. When the law says to you, Do,
and you shall live. What is your response? To go
out and try to do, or to say to the law, done, finished? When you fall to sin, and your
conscience tells you, you better get out there and do something
to make up for the evil you've done, what is the answer of your
heart? Does it say to you, yeah, I better
go out there and do right, man, I stole something, I'm gonna
have to put it back. Now understand, if you steal
something for the sake of the one you stole it from, put it
back. But don't ever put it back so that you can say, God, see,
I put it back. Oh, when you've stolen, there
is no remedy for you in the sight of God than this one who died
upon the tree and said, it is done. To know what these word means
is to know what the gospel is. To believe the meaning of these
words is to trust the work of him who said these words. It
is to be a child of God and an heir of eternal life. To understand
what our Lord meant and to believe what our Lord meant when he said
it is finished. These words, while acknowledged
by the lips of nearly all who profess Christianity, are denied
by many of them by their addition of things for the sinner to do. The book of Galatians is devoted
to that very issue. There were people in that church
who said, oh yes, you know, Jesus Christ, he is our salvation,
but you know, you need to be circumcised. These Jews, some
of these Jews who profess to believe could not leave off that
do of the law. They really, no matter what they
said about believing Christ, the fact is, as the Lord told
the Jews, you'll be justified by your lips or you'll be condemned
by your lips. And with their lips, on the one
hand, they try to say it's done by Christ, but then you catch
them. It was all do and do and do. And their own mouths condemned
them, according to Paul. As they said, do this, do that,
and you will be accepted by God. Christ said it is done, brethren,
and we need to believe him. They say it is finished, but
they do not believe it. God willing, I want to see what
his statement, what it means as to doctrine. And then when
I, I want to see what it meant to him and then what it means
to us. Now, if you'll turn back in your
Bibles now to John, excuse me, the book of Daniel chapter nine. Daniel's one of those books that
so-called prophecy experts like to take apart and come up with
some kind of chart of the ages and how many years this is going
to take and what's going to happen and tribulation and all that,
when it's really not about those things at all. Daniel, like all
the other books of the Bible, Daniel is about Christ and Him
crucified. and everything in it is designed
to point us to that. There are prophetic portions
in it, that is, times when God told Daniel what was going to
happen. But near as I can tell, everything
God told Daniel was going to happen has already happened.
And if you look in Daniel chapter 9 verse 24, We're going to find out what
it was that was done, that was finished, when Jesus Christ said,
it is finished. Gabriel is talking to Daniel,
telling him about what's going to happen. He says, seventy-sevens
are decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish transgression,
to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness. to bring in everlasting
righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the
most holy. And it is my contention, and
I believe, you know, it's a pretty obvious one, when our Lord said,
it is finished, that right there is what was finished. Now, what
do those things mean? Well it says, and there's five
or six of them here, he said to finish transgression. That
word means to restrain or to shut up. And one of the oddities of the
Hebrew language was often it would put a word and When two words would have been
more to our liking, for example, I'll just tell you, when they
spoke of the sin offering, do you remember hearing in the Bible
about sin offerings? Do you realize in all the Hebrew
Bible, the word offering never appears? It just calls it a sin. The lamb shall be for a sin.
Why? Well, I suppose if you had to
write out everything by hand, you would leave out any of the
words which were obvious and anybody could understand. And
so we understand that when it says the Lamb shall be for a
sin, it means the Lamb shall be for a sin offering. God instituted that sacrificial
system whereby lambs or sheep without spot or blemish would
be sacrificed in the place of the people for their sins. So
they were called sin offerings. That's the way we would state
it. But they just put the word sin because it was understood.
And here's one of those cases, I believe, that that's what's
meant here. that there was, in so much time,
77, 490 years he's speaking of, said there would be a finishing,
a shutting up, a turning off of the sin offering. It would
be offered no more. Not in any way acceptable to
God. So just hold that thought. He
prophesied to Daniel. He said, that's sin offering.
There was daily ones, there was annual ones. It'll be shut off. Two, put an end to sin. How do you put an end to sin?
Now I want you to understand this, it does not say put an
end to sinning. It says put an end to sin. And so here it's saying, for
the people of God, a time would come when God would put away
their sin, put an end to it. You say, well, preacher, I'm
one of the people of God, and I'll tell you this, my sin's
still here. And it's still here, but it ain't
there. It may be before your eyes, but
it's not before the eyes of God. God says, I've cast your sins
behind my back. I put them in the depths of the
sea. As the song says, they're under the blood. God has put an end to them, and
here's how. Okay? Sin offering ceased because
there's been an end put to sin. And how was this done? To atone
for wickedness. An atonement's been made. To
atone means to reconcile or to put away the reason for controversy
between two people. If I wrong you and you're offended
and our relationship is broken, I may come and offer some kind
of atonement. If I, in a fit of anger, took
a baseball bat to the windshield of your vehicle, well, you'd
have every right to be angry with me and say, I don't think
I want to associate with that crazy guy anymore. No telling
what he'll do. Well, I may come to you with
sufficient money. to pay for that windshield and
maybe even some extra to kind of ameliorate your anger toward
me. And that'd be called an atonement.
Well, it says that there would come a time when God would make
atonement for wickedness. Now brethren, it's that atonement
that put an end to the sin offerings. Why did the sin offerings keep
being offered every day and every week and month and year and all,
you know, according to the schedule? Why did they always have to keep
repeating those sacrifices year after year according to their
religious calendar? Very simply this, for all those
sacrifices, sin was never atoned for. You can't put away human
sin with the blood of a lamb. It just can't be done. Lambs can't substitute for human
beings. And so despite all of those sacrifices
of atonement made there in Israel's temple, not one sin was ever
really put away. Until Jesus Christ came, who
was a human being but was called the Lamb of God. The Lamb that
God provided. And when His blood was shed,
it actually made atonement for sin. Every sin that was laid
upon Him was fully paid for at that moment. God's wrath was
righteously stirred up because of our sin, our sin of nature,
our sin of action. But if we had been given to Christ
in the covenant of grace, then in giving us to Christ, all of
our sins were laid on him too. Isaiah said, all we like sheep
have gone astray. Who's the sheep? The Lord's sheep.
We've turned everyone to his own way, but the Lord hath laid
on him the iniquity of all us sheep, made him responsible for
them, and made him pay for them. And when he paid for them, Atonement
was made God's anger over those sins was put to rest And therefore there was no need
for those high priests of Israel to go on offering sin offerings
Finally there had been an offering made an offering made by God
himself to himself Been an offering made that actually
put sin away And brethren once the jobs done You quit doing
it, right? So Jesus Christ said, it is finished,
and here's an interesting thing, when he said it is finished,
atonement's been made, and God did something in the reality
of our, that we could see, people didn't understand it, but nonetheless
it happened, there was an earthquake, and in process of the earthquake,
the temple veil was torn in two. That temple veil that separated
the holy place from the most holy place, it was there as a
Thousand or so year reminder to the Jews that there was no
way to God. You really can't get in there
to where God is. That's what the most holy place
symbolized. God's habitation. But when Jesus Christ died, that
temple veil was torn from the top to the bottom. An unusual
way for it to tear. Why? There's a symbol that it
wasn't us from the bottom up tearing the veil and the obstacle
between us and God. It was God doing a work from
heaven down to earth. And the death of Jesus Christ
made the way to God plain and open. Why? Because atonement has been made. God, there is no wrath in God
towards his people. Because Jesus Christ bore it,
it is done. And because atonement has been
made, all those sins, when it should stir up anger in God,
he put an end to them. See if you can get your mind,
even your heart, wrapped around this child of God. So far as
God is concerned, your sins don't even exist. Put an end to them. Didn't merely hide them. Didn't
say, okay, we'll stuff these in the closet, and as long as
you stay good from now on, we won't open that closet and get
those things out again. Did not merely scribble over
them so that they could still be read underneath the scribble
if you wanted to. They're blotted out, utterly
covered up. Utterly eliminated. It says,
in that day, there shall be a search made for the sins of Israel and
for the iniquity of Judah, and it shall not be found. I said, preacher, I can sure find
mine. Aren't you glad you're not the judge? God's the judge. And he said,
when I look for them, they won't be found. Why? because Jesus
Christ said it's finished, and he put an end to sin. And it goes on and says, here, it's more than just putting away
sin, friends. Our Lord's atonement, his sacrifice
did something positive, not just negative, to bring in an everlasting
righteousness. Does anybody here even have a
five-minute righteousness? Does anybody here think that
they can maintain their righteousness before God for five minutes,
for five seconds? Oh, the moment you recognize
your own righteousness, you've ruined it by pride. Our righteousness is like so
much fog. As soon as the sun of God's sight
comes upon it, it's dissipated, it's nothing. But Jesus Christ,
oh, he brought in an everlasting righteousness, a righteousness
that stands the test of time, a righteousness that withstands
the scrutiny of God himself. He looked upon our Lord Jesus
and said, this is my son whom I love. I'm well pleased with
him. Everything about him is good. I love him. And that righteousness which
our Lord worked out in his perfect life is given to us. as an everlasting
righteousness accepted by God. That's why we don't use that
phrase. I'm gonna make my peace with God. Why? I can't. The only
way of peace with God is to be righteous, and I can't do that.
I can't give God a righteousness. But by faith, the scriptures
teach us, we receive one, an everlasting righteousness, worked
out by the Lord Jesus Christ himself. and it's as eternal
and everlasting as he is. And the upshot is until Jesus
Christ can be declared sinful by God, I and all who are in Christ will
be declared righteous by God. And it goes on to say, to seal
up vision and prophecy. That means, you know, there have
been a lot of visions and a lot of prophecies given about Christ.
Christ came and sealed them all, made them real. And to anoint the Most Holy.
What did they anoint the Most Holy Place with? When the Most
Holy Place was first built, They went in there with the blood
of a sacrifice and anointed the Ark of the Covenant and the Mercy
Seat and everything in there, anointed it with blood. But you
know something? For all that, it wasn't holy,
was it? Why? Because it was just the blood
of an animal. Jesus Christ, it says, went to
the most holy place, not made with hands, not that one over
in Jerusalem. But the very presence of God,
and he went in by his own blood, and he anointed that holy place
with his blood. And God accepted it and said,
it's good enough. The blood is on the real mercy
seat. The satisfying blood has been
poured out before God and has anointed the holy place, the
most holy place of God's presence itself. And God has accepted
it in behalf of all for whom it was offered. Now that's what our Lord was
sent to do. What was prophesied would happen
at that time. And our Lord did all these things
and when it was done, he said, it's done. It's finished. The work's over. I've accomplished. And these are words, all legitimate
translations of that word. Finished, done, accomplished,
perfected. He said, it's done. Now if you
came up to an artist and he was there working on his painting,
finally he gives one more little brush stroke and he stands back
and he goes, it's finished. How do you think he'd feel if
you came up to him and said, well, we need to do this. We
need to add this to it. Wouldn't he be insulted? And
rightly so. By you thinking you could add
something to His masterpiece? Well, you know, this work of
Christ is His masterpiece, and He says it's finished. Dare we
come up to this wonderful thing that Christ has done and say,
well, we need to add our baptism to this, or we need to add our
participation in the Lord's table to this, or we need to add some
charitable works, or going to church to this. We don't add
anything! to what Christ has done. He said
it's done and we dare not insult him by saying that I can make
it better. I'll tell you this, if I came
up to some masterpiece by a good artist and added what I did,
you know what I'd do? I'd ruin it. Because I'm no good at art
and I'll tell you I'm no good at righteousness. I'm no good
at pleasing God. I'm no good at doing what God
says to do. And if I went up there to that wonderful work
of the Lord and tried to add something I did, all I would
do is make some big blot on it and ruin the whole mess. And
that's exactly what Paul says when he says, if you be circumcised,
thinking that's going to help you out. He says, Christ profits
you nothing. You've ruined the whole thing.
Well, what did it mean to Christ when he said it was finished?
Oh, can you imagine the relief with which he said those words?
You see, his work didn't start earlier that day. His work started
when he came into the world. And he, who was perfectly righteous
and holy and pure, had to live among us, who was everything
contrary to his nature. And he lived in this world of
people who were unbelieving and foolish and in rebellion against
God, and it must have grieved his soul to be here. And yet
he treated his people with such love and tenderness and kindness. And then we turned around as
a race and nailed him to a tree, and he suffered the wrath of
God. And he knew all this was gonna fall on him, and oh, it
pressed on his soul. But now he can say, I'm done.
Isn't it wonderful when you can come to the end of a hard day
of work and just say, okay, I'm done? And not just say I'm done
because the clock says it's five o'clock and that's when the factory
shuts down, but you can say I'm done because the work's finished.
And it's one of those jobs that once you do it, you don't ever
have to do it again. That's the kind of work Christ did. You
see, he didn't just do a patch-up job. He came and actually got
it done. And there's nothing more to be done. And he said,
it's finished. And Jesus Christ did not die,
as some say, to send down into hell. He told that thief, today
you'll be with me in paradise. He said, into your hands I commit
my spirit. He said that to the Father. I
guarantee you, the Father did not send him to hell. He had
already endured hell right there on the cross. He died and went
into the presence of his Father with joy, with victory. He didn't spend three days in
the grave suffering the torments of the damned. His body spent
three days in the grave while his spirit was in the presence
of his father and with that thief on the cross and Abraham and
all those others rejoicing in the presence of God. He said, it's finished, I can
go home now. It must have been disturbing
to all his enemies who understood his words. I mean those spiritual
enemies. Because they say, what do you
mean it's perfected? You can imagine Satan and his
demons that have been involved in all this. You know, they go,
what do you mean perfected? That sounds like you got something
done. Doesn't sound like you lost. Oh, well, we're killing
you. He said, no, you're not. I'm
laying down my life. Nobody takes my life from me.
I lay it down so I can take it up again. And I want you all
to realize you've played right into my hands. I came to do a
work. I have done it. It's finished.
You lose. And he went to glory and he entered
his rest because his work was done. What does it mean to us?
Well, hang on to your pew. It means the same thing. The work is done. Our work of
pleasing God and earning His blessings is done. The torment of suffering His
judgment is done. And we can say, at whatever age
we are, we can say in faith, into your hands, Father, I commend
my spirit. And if you leave it here for
another 10 or 20 years, that's fine. If you take it, In 10 minutes,
that's okay too. Because all the hard service,
that's what they said through Isaiah, speak comfortably to
Israel, saying to her, her hard service is completed. She has
received from the Lord double for all her sins. And you say,
how'd that happen? Because Jesus Christ received
that. He's already borne the trouble.
He's already done the hard service. It's finished. And it's finished
for all who are in Him. And so if we believe Him, we
can say, it is finished. I am finished. Christ has given
me His victory. There's nothing left for me to
do. No work of earning blessings left for me. No medals for me to win. No trophies
for me to gain. They have all been gained and
earned by Christ, and they've all been handed to me as though
I were the one who earned them. Christ entered his rest, for
his work was done. And the book of Hebrews says,
he that hath believed has entered his rest. Not meaning that if
I believe, I enter my rest. No. When I believe, I enter Christ's
rest. I go from do to done. I go from here's what you need
to do to it's all been done already. Do you believe that? I hope so.
I tell you, there's peace in that. There's joy in that, there's
salvation in that, and there is nothing but destruction, eternal
destruction, anywhere else. Our lives are a mixture of pleasant
things and unpleasant things. We have good days and bad days.
But for the one who believes he has this confident assurance
in all circumstances, it's done. My hard service to God is over.
My punishment is fulfilled. My life, my eternal life is guaranteed. For my Lord, who did no sin,
died as though he were a sinner, so that I, who am full of sin,
might live as though I were righteous. Well, may God bless His Word.