Thank God for free grace. Well, our first speaker this
morning is no stranger to our congregation, nor to any of you,
I suppose. Pastor Tim James, pastor of the
Sequoia Baptist Church in Cherokee, North Carolina. Tim and Debbie
have been visiting with us since Tuesday. I'm trying to talk him
into staying another month, but I don't think I can persuade
him to stay that long. Maybe just a couple more hours
is about it. But we've enjoyed having them
stay with us, and always grateful to God for the message that Tim
sets forth to us, the gospel of God's grace. And you come
preach the gospel to us, Tim. First off, I'd like to say thank
you to all of you for your kindness and liberality and generosity
to me and mine. I'm thankful that I've been here
to hear the Gospel preached. It's so good for preachers to
come and sit. They don't have to listen to
the sound of their own voice all the time and hear someone
else tell of the greatness of our Master. Lord Jesus Christ. I'm thankful for these two men
who preach to me. Thank you very much for the messages.
They bless my heart and help me. Thank you for your pastor. He's
been a dear friend for many years. I've learned a lot from him.
And I hope to learn a lot more over the years that we spend
together. John chapter 19. Our brother read from this passage
of scripture, and the text I'm going to take this morning is
found in verse 30, and I think Susanna is actually going to
sing a song entitled this before the next preacher preaches. Three
words spoken here by our Lord Jesus Christ. It is finished. It is finished. I'm fond of absolutes. I like them a great deal. The
Bible is filled with them. In fact, that's all that's in
the Bible are absolutes. Jim and I knew a fellow many
years ago named Dusty Rhodes. Remember old Dusty? He was a
traveling itinerant evangelist, former Las Vegas organ player,
I think he married a showgirl, but I'm not sure about that. He told me one time he was giving
an interview with an antagonistic radio personality, and the man
asked Dusty, he said, do you believe in absolutes? And Dusty
said, yes I do. And the fellow said, well I don't.
I don't believe in absolutes. And Dusty says, really? He says,
yes, sir. He said, are you sure about that?
He said, absolutely. There are three words here in
this particular text that are actually the same word throughout
the scripture. The word fulfilled, when all
things were fulfilled. When all things were accomplished,
the word accomplished. And these three words that are
actually one word in the original, it is finished. There are no words in Scripture
more familiar and more precious to the believer than these three
words. It is finished. This is poetry. pure and plain and simple and
singular and precise, yet very concise. It is the doctrine of
reduction designed by divine inspiration to take all that
is involved from eternity to eternity, all that is encompassed
in time and time, and bring it down to this one indisputable
absolute. It is finished. It is a report. It's a report. Fully written
and published from the master of words, indeed the words himself. It is finished. It is a report. That's important to understand.
This book is a report. That's why nothing can be added
to it or nothing can be taken away from it. Because it's already
written. It's just a report. We stand up here and preach the
gospel. Brother Heller preaches the gospel
down there in New Guinea. He's not coming up with something
new. He's publishing a report. Who hath believed our report? This is the report that God has
given. He that hath the Son hath life,
and he that hath not the Son hath not life. It's a report.
We are reporters. That's what we do. We publish
what has already been written and what has already been done. These are the words that describe
a crowning achievement. The achievement that began before
time when God picked out, chose, selected, marked, severed from
a fallen race that did not yet exist a people for Himself. His
very own people. God chose before the world began.
He even calls them in Scripture, His portion. I can't imagine. Beyond comprehension. I fully
understand when we say He is our portion. But for Him to say
of this rag-tag, motley, scrappy bunch of creatures, are His portion. Why are they His portion? Because
He chose them before the foundation of the world. It's an innumerable
company of sinners, a gargantuan mass of miserable miscreants
on whom he would justly and freely bestow his grace. He gave that number to his son
before the world was. His son signed his name to their
debt, the debt of sin that they owed, and when he came into this
world, owed the debt, and they didn't when they came into this
world. He stood in our room instead,
the room instead of that particular company, and suffered the punishment
they were due, and for three hours of darkness bore up under
the wrath of God. We don't know anything about
that. We've been in His hands since
before the world began, and all we know being in the hands of
a mediator. We don't even think about the
wrath of God. He does. That sword was drawn from its scabbard only
once and plunged into the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ and
it was put back in the scabbard and will not be pulled out again.
Because that sword was finished eternal punishment and hell goes
on forever. These words are powerful in the
declaration of immeasurable import. It is the declaration of the
completion of the redemption of that great chosen company.
And in time, the Holy Spirit, through the publishing of this
report, will make this vast company aware of what has been accomplished
for them through the preaching of the gospel by a report. We stand up here time after time and report to
you what God has done and what Christ has accomplished. We don't
tell you what you must do, what you should do, or what might
be, or what should be. And if you are saved, It simply
means that you have found out that you are saved. How did you find out? You are
not going to find out that there is something for you to do. You
are going to find out something unaccomplished. The Holy Spirit
takes the things of Christ and reveals them unto you. One of
the first things He tells you. It's finished. It is finished. The Holy Spirit comes. Publishing
this report, he'll make this vast company aware of what has
been accomplished for them through the preaching of the gospel,
by taking the things of Christ. In this report, the doctrine
he teaches is so glorious, it's so astonishing, so enticing,
so verbally intoxicating, that the elect will be totally enamored. Totally. Besotted. inebriated
with the heavenly cordial, swept off their feet, and they will
fall helplessly in love with the cheapest among ten thousand."
These words, this sacred synopsis, all of it is planted and ingrained
and etched and seared in the minds and the hearts of the elect. And it's summed up completely
in these three words. It is finished. These words were spoken by Jesus
Christ the Lord, the King, as He was suspended between heaven
and earth on His lonely wooden tower in agonies and blood, appearing
astonishingly marred according to Isaiah 52, a slaughtered lamb. Then with vigor and with strength
seemingly impossible to the situation, He lifts up His head and with
a loud voice it says, He cries, It is finished. It is fulfilled. It is accomplished. It is perfect. It is finished. These words are
stronger than iron and will ring true and absolute when time is
no more. Though religion endeavors to
change the meaning of these words or try to explain them away altogether,
the believer knows He knows what they mean and willingly hangs
His never-dying soul on these three words, this glorious declaration. It is finished. One man said,
not only does the Bible say what it says, it means what it means.
And it does. I've heard many try to make these
words say something other than what they say. One man, while
preaching a funeral, said that what Christ meant by these words
was that He had finished His part, and now the rest was up
to you. It was another one of those occasions
when I wished I'd had a gun. I heard another spend an hour,
a fellow down in Atlanta, trying to explain how the work with
Christ was finished but not complete unless a person believed it.
How sad for the King of Kings to dangle in limbo for 2,000
years until I came along and gave His work and His words some
credence. What a sad character that is.
Men certainly think a lot of themselves, don't they? How desperate
Christ must have felt knowing that the efficaciousness of His
work had to wait for the wriggling worms and maggots of the earth
to lift their heads from their dunghill and make His great work
viable and real. No, that's not how it was. These
words have meaning. Oh, they have meaning. Meaning
that it is backed up with the very authority of heaven. Words
that resound to the glory of God. Words that fulfill all the
prophecies of the Old Testament. All the types and shadows and
all that God has spoken thus far in His Word are fulfilled
in these three words. It is finished. In Isaiah 43, He said, I, even
I, have blotted out like a great cloud thy transgressions. In Isaiah 53 and 5 and 6, it
says, All we like sheep have gone astray, and the Lord has
laid on Him the iniquity of us all. In Jeremiah 31, He says,
There is coming a new covenant, and in that covenant I will remember
the sins of the people no more. Why? Why? It's finished. It's finished. In Jeremiah 50-20,
He says, He will look for sin in Judah and iniquity in Israel,
and there will be none. None. Why? Because it's finished.
It's finished. These words mean something. They
mean something to everyone. They mean something to everyone
here this morning. And I want us to consider this
fact and look at it from three different perspectives, three
points of view, if you will. First, what do these words mean
to God? He wrote them. What do they mean
to Him? Secondly, what do these words
mean to the believer? Thirdly, what do these words
mean to the self-righteous? First, what do these words mean
to God? Well, it's safe to say that since God incarnate is the
one who spoke these words in triumphant glory and power, that
these words are true, or the one who said them is a fraud. God cannot lie. To God these
words are the completion of whatever He intended in the suffering
and death of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is finished. The promises of the Old Testament
are a metaphor concerning what God meant when He spoke these
words. Every lamb, every bullock whose blood was drained from
its victimized body, form a great coagulant crimson finger that
points across history to the one who cried these words from
the cross. It is finished. Every day of
atonement, every prophet, every priest and king lived and died
in this world, existed in this world to point and picture this
man as he spoke these words. To find what God intended is
easy. I know people like to put hooks
in people's mouth and drag them around, especially religion,
trying to find out what God's will is, what God intended. There's a way, and it's very
simple, to find out what God intended is easy. All you have
to do is look at what was done. And that's what He intended.
Because He does all things after the counsel of His own will.
He is in the heaven. He hath done whatsoever He hath
pleased. Paul told Timothy what these words meant. He said, God
has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according
to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which
was given us in Jesus Christ before the world began. Perhaps
the plainest explanation of what this meant and what this meant
to God is found when he sent his angel to tell Joseph what
to name this one who now cries these words from the cross thirty-three
years later. Call him Jesus. Joshua, deliverer. Jehovah saves. Call him Jesus,
for he shall save his people from their sins. Reckon that's
going to happen? Reckon it already has. How do
I know? He said so. It is finished. It is finished. Since this addresses death, because
after He said these words, it says, He gave up the ghost. He gave up the ghost. Now when
we die, we don't do anything. We stop doing stuff. I remember my grandmother who
was a saucy old lady. She had a sister who she didn't
like very much, but they put up with each other because they
were kin. Her sister, my Aunt Ruth, was
a lovely woman with red hair until the day she died, no gray.
It was down her back, down to her waist, and she wound it in
a bun and curled it on top of her head, plaited it on top of
her head. And when she died, she was put in a casket in a
pretty blue dress, and we walked my grandmother down to see my
Aunt Ruth lying dead in her casket. And my grandmother looked at
her for a moment and said, well, that's the best she's ever looked. I guess so. That's the way she
looked forever. She's done. It was finished. This is about death. What we
do is about death. Everything else religion does
in this world is about life. It's about living. About how
to live. Rules and regulations of the
self-help book. This book has become a self-help
book in this day. This book is about death. If
you were going to the Holy of Holies, if you were allowed to
do so, you would not be presented with a beautiful little room
with brocade wallpaper, chair railing, curtains, what you would
see was brown stains everywhere, on the dirt, on the
ground, on the Ark of the Covenant, on the walls. Nothing but, and
you would say, there's carnage happened in this place. This
is a place of death. And that's what we do. That's what we talk about. We
talk about death and we go into baptismal waters. We're confessing
that we died when Christ died. And we do it symbolically by
putting our life in the hands of somebody else to deliver us
into an element where we cannot live. And trust that One to pull
us back out again. That's what baptism is. When we take the Lord's table,
we show for His death until He comes. This is about death. This
is about keeping the law, and that's the only way the law is
kept. Our Lord fulfilled the law in His life, but He kept
the law in His death. That's how the law is kept. But
the law says one thing, the soul that sinneth, it shall die. You're already born into this
world in the electric chair, in the gas chamber, strapped
down and ready for the final injection. You're already there.
And what the law says, it walks in in austerity in a black robe
and opens up a book and simply explains to you, this is why
you're going to die. You deserve to die. Everybody's
going to keep the law. Because everybody's going to
die. Either in a substitute or in yourself. Christ didn't keep the law of
His life. He fulfilled the law of His life.
He didn't have to keep the law because the law has nothing to
do with the righteous man. The law could find no fault in
Him. The law just stayed out of His way as He walked this
earth. He kept the law by dying in our
room instead when He said, it is finished. God said, I have
my pound of flesh. I have my death. It is finished. Justice can demand no more. God
is satisfied, propitiated, and that's sure, and that's absolute. How do I know? Christ said so. It's finished. It is finished. I like that. I'm glad for that. That's my next point. What do
these words mean to the believer? The short answer is everything. Every possible thing. But I will
elaborate a little bit on that. One thing it means is that when
my salvation was finished, it was already done before I ever
heard about it. This means that there was no
way that I could have had anything to do with it because it was
finished. Isn't it foolish how people can read words like it
is finished and then think they have something to do with it? This means the world to me because
I know what I am, and I know the kind of person I am, and
if something had been left up to me, I simply had nothing to
offer to God. I had nothing. And so I'm glad
it is finished. Something else. I'm here now,
and these words mean the world to me right now. It's where I
am in this world. I live and breathe and walk in
this world. I seek to serve the Lord. I want to love my family
and the spiritual family I have. And I seek in my crippled cadence
to please my Savior. But it doesn't matter, because
it's already finished. It's already finished. And that is a constant, pleasant,
sweet reminder that my life has nothing to do with my salvation.
over in Numbers chapter 23. You want to turn there just for
a moment. I was at a Bible conference,
so-called Sovereign Grace Conference many years ago, and one of the
preachers got up and read this verse of Scripture and tried
to apply it to people jumping up and down and acting like fools
in the congregation and shouting and singing and carrying on.
You know, they thought that's what his fellow told me one time,
there's more to preach than the gospel. And I asked him, I said,
is there anything better? He said, no. I said, well, I'll
stick with what's the best then. Verse 21 of Numbers 23 says,
He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither has he seen perverseness
in Israel. The Lord his God is with him,
and the shout of the king is among them." There it is. That's
the shout of the king. And that's why there's no iniquity
or perverseness found in them because the king shouted. He
shouted these words from the cross of Calvary, It is finished. All glory for it belongs to God
and He made it plain when He said it 2,000 years ago. These
words also reveal to me that no event or circumstance can
change the fact Nothing can change the fact. When I find myself
in heights of glory, nothing about it is changed. When I find
myself in depths of despair, nothing about this changes. Nothing. If I live or die, nothing about
this changes. If I live long enough to get
old and infirm and get dementia and forget God altogether, Nothing
changes about death. It is finished. It don't get no better than that. Thirdly, what do these words
mean to the self-righteous? And when I speak of self-righteousness,
I'm not speaking strictly of those individuals who exhibit
such goody-two-shoes behavior that no one can hardly stand
to occupy the same space with them. The self-righteous are
those who believe that they merit a righteousness before God, that
they can merit a righteousness before God. And they believe that based on
what they do or do not do. They believe that somehow, in
some way, their life is worthy of recommending them to God. Repentance. is a radical change
of mind. Old Testament repentance is turning.
New Testament repentance speaks of turning, but that's not the
element of it. It's a radical change of mind. And what is that radical change
of mind? Well, what you've always been thinking, you've got to
stop thinking. You've got to think just the
opposite. Well, what have you always been thinking since you
was born? That you could do something in this life to recommend you
to God. You really do. We're born thinking that. So
if we get in trouble, we stop doing that. And we think in the
back of our heads and on the deepest points of our hearts,
sadly, that God's going to like me for that. That's going to
recommend me to God. When I was in the service, I
used to drink a great deal. I don't know why I did it. Yeah,
I did. I liked it. Anyway, when I left service, I quit drinking. for ten years. Not that I've
started up in a big way again, but I have an occasional glass
of wine. But I stopped drinking and I
thought, when I got out of service, after I stopped drinking, started
going to church, I thought, well, that recommended me to God. God,
I did something good here. I believe that. I was in a very
unsafe place. I was actually safer when I was
lying in the gutter. in my own vomit than I was thinking
that what I did recommended me to God. What do you have to think? I'm
recommended to God by something else altogether. Someone else
altogether. The only righteousness I have,
and let me say this very clearly, the only righteousness I have
is Jesus Christ. And that righteousness is imputed
to me by God Almighty. I have no other. I have no other. Do you believe you should do
something that recommends you to God? People talk about not partaking
in social evils. Some people are kind and philanthropic
and spend their lives in the service of others. Perhaps some
feel righteous because they've embraced a system of theology
and joined themselves with those who worship God in spirit and
truth. All these things are commendable
and things that all men, especially believers, should aspire to.
Except for the recommending to God part. But you see, here's
the thing. Do what you will. Be all you can be. But listen, it's already finished. It's already finished. It's done. You and I can neither add to
nor take away from that which is done and perfect and complete
and finished. It is finished sounds a death
knell to every hope of salvation other than the work of the one
who proclaimed these astounding words. Only in Christ. It is finished. And it is my
prayer that if anyone in the sound of my voice is considering
what they have by any means attributed sufficient righteousness to gain
God's approval, please listen to these words. I don't have
to say anything else. I don't have to go to any other
scripture. Listen to me. If you believe in your heart
that you have attributed something to your salvation, listen. Listen
very carefully. It is finished. PRABHUPĀDA – Yes.