Well, I'm thankful for the invitation.
That was my little sister. While in my mother's womb, she
raided the gene pool and got all the talent and the looks. And I was left with nothing more
than delusions of mediocrity. It has been a pleasure to be
here, to hear the men declare the word of God faithfully, clearly,
singularly, succinctly. Being in that preacher's class
yesterday was a real treat. Greg and Todd knocked it out
of the park one more time. I'm so pleased to have been here. I had a Kentucky Nightmare last
night. I dreamed that the Lord saved
Christian Laitner and y'all had to call him brother. That took a while to work up
a laugh, didn't it? If you have your Bibles, turn
with me to John chapter 19. Beginning reading with verse
28, which has been the theme throughout this conference, and
I'm so glad it has been. After this, Jesus, knowing that
all things were now accomplished, that word is the same word as
is used in this text, fulfilled, and then translated into three
words, it is finished, same word. After this, knowing all things
were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled,
said, I thirst. And there was set a vessel full
of vinegar, and they filled the sponge with vinegar and put it
on hyssop, and put it to his mouth. And when Jesus, therefore,
had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished. And he bowed his head and gave
up the ghost. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ
is the hinge pin of all eternity and time. It is the nail in a sure place
upon which all theology hangs. It is the singular message of
Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. Some say there's more to preach
than Christ. There's not. There's nothing
else to preach than Christ and him crucified. Now Paul, when
he went to Corinth and wrote the letter to them, he was faced
with almost every imaginable display of the flesh. Read about Corinth. Now that would make lots of fodder
for sermonizing to a lot of preachers. They could preach about adultery.
They could preach about one-upsmanship. They could preach about preferring
one preacher above another. Paul said this, I determined
not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. That covers time and eternity.
He determined not to know anything among them save Jesus Christ
who was at that time enthroned in glory as Lord over all and
historically in time crucified on the cross of Calvary. To the Galatians he gave a simple
rule of life that promised peace and mercy upon the Israel of
God. Folks need rules, they think,
and they want rules to live by, so I'll give you one. I'll give
you the one Paul gave to the Church of Galatia. He said, if
you live by this rule, there's peace and mercy on the Israel
of God. What is that rule? God forbid that I should glory,
save in the cross of Christ, by whom the world is crucified
unto me, and I am crucified unto the world. The fact of that momentous
event is known by everyone. Everybody knows that Jesus Christ
was crucified. Everybody knows that. But what
really happened there on that cross is private information. reserved for the elect of God,
because it can only be understood and received through God-given
faith. And that faith rests entirely
on what was accomplished on that cross 2,000 years ago. There on that cross, the spotless
Lamb of God hung between heaven and earth, drenched in his own
blood, wounded and bruised. Isaiah said, his visage was marred
more than the sons of men. And there he hanged as heir of all things. There he hanged, upholding all
things by the word of his power. There he hanged on that lonely
wooden tower ruling and reigning and manipulating the minds and
muscles of the men that drove the nails in his hand. That gibbet was a throne of grace.
It looked like a cross, but it was a throne of grace upon which
the sovereign potentate finally and completely saved everyone
for whom he died and precisely revealed God as he is, if anyone
is to ever know. No sad story here. No sad story. No place to weep for this mighty
one. He is doing what he came to do. Finishing the work that he was
given. He is setting all things in order. This is the place toward which
he set his face like a flint from all eternity. It has been
said that there are three areas in which men are woefully ignorant
in religion. They're ignorant of what happened
in the Garden of Eden. They're ignorant of what happened
on the cross of Calvary. And they're ignorant of what
happens when God saves a sinner. But all that ignorance is allayed
right here on the cross of Calvary by the one hanging on this tree.
There in agonies and bloods hang all the counsel of God. In just a few hours, nearly 100
prophecies were fulfilled from the Old Testament. It was as
if it is written jumps from the pages of Genesis to Malachi to
envelop this event. And when time is no more, When
all that is is made new by the conflagration, what happened
on the cross will be our poetry and our song and the melody of
our never-dying soul. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain. that has redeemed us by His blood
out of every kindred, nation, tribe, and tongue of people,
and has made us kings and priests unto our God." I address you
kings and priests today about the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And I want us to consider this
crucifixion this morning in three aspects. Personal, punitive,
and propitiatory. These are the three aspects of
the few hours that settled everything that God has for his elect and
everything he has also for the infidel. It was all settled right
here. The first is personal. It's about
the physical sufferings of Christ, sometimes referred to as the
passion of Christ. The Word of God is clear and
graphic concerning both in prophecy and in reporting of the event
here. Very graphic language. It's always been that way from
the beast slain to come of the nakedness of God's sinful pair
in Eden, to Abel's lamb, to every beast that was slain on every
altar, quartered and dismembered. They all point to this God-man
in this moment here on Calvary. Scripture declared that it was
a voluntary act. He gave himself. Scripture says,
He gave his back to the smiters and his face to them that pluck
off the hair. He turned not his face from spitting. He was punched and prodded and
pummeled. A crown of thorns was planted
and pressed into his flesh. His epidermis ripped to the bone
with the shredding lashes of the Roman cat of nine tails.
360 rows plowed into his flesh, stripped naked, there was no
cannon tea towel covering his privates, exposed, and by appearance
he was a slaughtered beast when they hung him on that tree. And
not one sin was put away by that. Not one sin. His physical sufferings were
not about salvation. They were rather about the revelation
of us. It is the story of us. Men shun to think that they hate
God. Most cannot fathom such a raw
emotion in the mind and attribute it then to their own heart. The
physical sufferings of Christ were a public display, however,
of the vehement venom and hatred of the human heart for God Almighty. That's what happened in his physical
sufferings. The carnal mind is enmity against
God, is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be,
and the carnal mind is disclosed here. This is what we see. He gave himself. He gave himself
to us. He gave Himself to us. He gave
His face to us. He allowed us to touch Him, to
touch God once. He allowed it once, and when
we got our hands on Him, we did not embrace Him and kiss Him
with the kisses of our mouth, with the kisses of love. When
we got to lay our hands on Him, our blood-lusting, homicidal
heart went into vengeance mode. Kill him. Kill him. Kick him. Rip him. Tear him. Mutilate him. Strip him. Embarrass
him. Make him bleed. Mock him. Stick
your tongue out at him. Crucify him. Turn him over to
our will, they say. His blood was gladly, will gladly
be on our head. The physical sufferings of Christ
are a story of us and how by nature we feel about God. You
want to know what you are? By nature, you look at what you
did when God let you touch Him. You didn't bow down and worship.
You drew your sword and sought to plunge it into His heart. By nature, we despised Him. And
if you have any doubts of that, All you have to do is look what
he did to him when he allowed us to touch him. And yet, this
did not satisfy God. This did not satisfy God. It
satisfied our blood lust for homicidal deicide. The second
aspect of the crucifixion of Christ is punitive. He was our
penal substitute. That aspect took place in that
three hours when the sun in darkness hit its face, when God cut off
all the lights, because no man can see this and function. We have hints of what took place
from certain scriptures in the Old Testament, such as, I am
consumed with the blow of thy hand. We don't know what that
means, but it sounds pretty fierce. This is when our blessed Lord
was made to be sin. This is when all the sin of all
the elect was made to meet on Him, and the judge of all the
earth did right by Him, and did right to Him, and poured out
punishment on Him for our sin. There our magnificent substitute
bore the punishment due us. Wounded for our transgression,
bruised for our iniquities, numbered with us, we transgressors. But
this punishment, as severe and as complete as it was, did not
put away sin and did not satisfy God. Hell is eternal punishment
without end because punishment does not appease. Punishment does not appease. One man said that hell is God
getting what he can. Maybe that's the truth. Christ
suffered the equivalent of eternal damnation compressing eternity
into 180 minutes. But just as hell will not end
life, but will be dying and never dead, the wrath of God poured
out on Christ did not kill him. We did not kill Him in those
verses that account that we did have to do with intent and not
accomplishment. Our sin was punished and Christ
came through the penal ordeal alive, didn't He? Revealing the acme and the epitome
of that punishment, crying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, my God
My God, why hast thou forsaken me? That's the epitome of punishment. That's what hell is. An eternity
being forsaken by God. And the third aspect of the crucifixion
of Christ is propitiatory. To propitiate is to appease. It is to satisfy. The law of
God and the justice of God must be satisfied. Punishment won't
do it. Our treatment of God didn't do
it. The law of God must be satisfied. What the law requires of sin
is very simple. It's death. That's it. There are no mitigating circumstances
here. There's no appeal that can be
made. The law says one thing to sinners. Die. Die. This is the only way that
the law is kept. The only way that the law is
fulfilled. The only way that the exacting
justice is satisfied. Do you want to keep the law?
Would you keep the law? Well, die. That's the only way it's kept.
It's how Christ kept it. It's how Christ kept it. It's how Christ fulfilled it.
The law is not a moral imperative. The word moral is not even in
scripture. The law is a mortality imperative. And it was not given as a way
of life. It was given as a sentence of death. It did not engender holiness.
It defined sin, assigned blame, set the sentence, and required
the death. And when men had been revealed
for what they were, and God had poured out His wrath to punish
sin, there was but one thing left to do. And our Lord cried, with a loud
voice, so vibrant, alive and well, you see. It is finished. And he finished it. He who is life accomplished death. He gave up gave up the ghost. Law and justice had its pound
of flesh, and in that glorious moment, the law, the holy law
and intractable justice of Almighty God saddled up to old Todd Nyberg
and wrapped its long, all-seeing arms around him and declared,
no problem here, no spot, no blemish, no wrinkle, nor any
such thing, but a perfect specimen of humanity,
the law declared you to be, and all you believers to be. That's
what the law says about you. Boy, what a special human being. He gave up the ghost and sin
was put away. Buried in the depths of the sea,
cast behind God's back, separated from the redeemed as far as the
east is from the west. Erased from God's memory. It was death that saved us. Death that gave us life. Death
to be rehearsed in baptism and memorialized in the Lord's table.
In that moment, When He ceased to live by His own power, think
of that. By His own volition, our salvation
from stem to stern was done and finished and complete and eternal. And God was satisfied with His
people. God's not mad at you. He ain't
never gonna be mad at you. He never has been mad at you. God looks at you. You know what
you are. But He looks at you and says,
you're just a cat's pajamas. You're just the finest thing
that ever was. Why? Because Christ put a way out
of sin by His death. God bless you.