Paul declared that he had one
thing in mind when he spoke to people, and that was to declare
the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. There's a lovely description
of what he did in Galatians chapter 3. He said to the Galatians who
had been deceived by false teachers, false teachers with a whole lot
of very sound doctrine. The false teacher said, basically
was saying to these people that you have to do something to make
the work of the Lord more effectual in your life. You have to do
something about your sanctification and we'll show you how you can
live a holy life in this world. Let's just do a little bit of
law keeping together, brothers and sisters. A little bit of
tithing. A little bit, we'll show you.
He says in Galatians 3, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched
you? You should not obey the truth. But then he describes
what his preaching was to them. He says, Before whose eyes Jesus
Christ has been evidently set forth, crucified among you. It appears from what those words
mean that the Lord Jesus Christ in His death was so much revealed
to them that there was absolutely no question that they could,
as it were, see Him, see Him. see him hanging on Calvary's
tree." And no doubt Paul painted that picture and told those stories
and reminded those people of what had happened. But again
and again what he did is he took the Old Testament scriptures,
as we tried to this morning, he took those Old Testament scriptures
and showed them that the Lord Jesus Christ did do all that. but he must have suffered and
he must have died. And it's really interesting,
isn't it, how simply the Gospel writers describe the death of
the Lord Jesus Christ. They just said, and they crucified
him. In Mark's Gospel, in verse 21
of chapter 15, they bring him, 22, they bring him under the
place Golgotha, which is interpreted to the place of the skull. And
they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh, but he received it
not. And when they had crucified him, it's just simply stated
as a fact, isn't it? They parted his garments, casting
lots upon them. what every man should take, and
it was about the third hour they crucified him, nine o'clock in
the morning, and the superscription of his accusation was written
over the King of the Jews." God wrote that superscription. The
Jewish people were offended by it. Pilate said, what I've written,
I have written. And with him they crucified two
thieves, one on his right hand and the other on his left. And
the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, He was numbered
with the transgressors. And when they that passed by
railed on him, wagging their heads and saying, Are thou that
destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days, save thyself
and come down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priest
mocked and said among themselves with the scribes, he saved others,
himself he cannot save. Let Christ, the King of Israel,
descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe. And they that were crucified
with him reviled him. And when the sixth hour was come,
there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. from
midday until three o'clock in the afternoon. And at the ninth
hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama
sabachthani, which is interpreted being, my God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me? I just want to spend these few
minutes that the Lord has given us just to concentrate and spend
our time thinking about what happened on Calvary's tree. There was There was this extraordinary
darkness and we know that it wasn't a darkness because it
was a full moon so there was nothing to do with what people
might think of being a solar eclipse. This was a darkness
from God and darkness is a picture of the judgment of God falling
upon people, isn't it? People who will be cast into
outer darkness where they will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. But in this darkness, as we said
earlier, in this darkness there was a transaction between the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And the remarkable thing
in that darkness is that there was no man to witness what happened. It was hidden. from man's eyes
and it was hidden by the purpose of God. It was hidden so that
we would have what was happening there revealed to us by God and
not by the voyeuristic activities of man. There was this darkness, to hide
this from man unless God shines a light and we are given insight
into what happened. This is the great transaction
of the Gospel, this transaction that we looked at a little bit
earlier between God the Father and God the Son. But there were
seven sayings from the cross, let's just go through them briefly.
The first one is that the Lord Jesus cried out, He said, Father
forgive them, Father forgive them. Now, there's no way in
the world that that is just some generic prayer saying, Father,
forgive all people. Every single one of the them
that the Lord Jesus Christ cried out to His Father to forgive
was a saved person. Every single one of them. It's
Christ the intercessor in John chapter 17. He says, again, he
says twice in John 17, he said, I'm not praying for the world.
I'm not praying for everyone. This is a glorified Messiah,
this is a glorified Saviour. He says, I'm not praying for
them. I'm not praying for them." But
here he is praying for the Father's forgiveness. And then we have
those glorious words that he spoke to the thief next to him. We read in Mark's Gospel that
he reviled him, and we read in another Gospel that all of a
sudden a remarkable transformation with this man hanging naked on
a cross, and all he could see next to him was another naked
man. And that thief on the cross,
he acknowledged that this man was God. And he acknowledged
that this man not only was God, but he was coming back into a
kingdom. This man was going to die like he was, but this man
was going to live again and reign in a kingdom. And he says, remember
me. Remember me when you come into
your kingdom." And the Lord Jesus Christ cried from the cross and
he made a promise, didn't he? We have Christ the intercessor,
Father forgive them. Here we have Christ the promiser
and Christ the assurer and he says, for that dying thief who
could do nothing, No good works. He had nothing in his history
that commended him to anyone, and he had nothing in his future
that was going to commend him to anyone, but he preached the
most marvellous sermon, the most marvellous sermon. And the Lord
said to him, today, today you shall be with me in paradise. That very day, when that man
closed his eyes in death, he opened them again in paradise
with the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ the intercessor, Christ
the promisor. And then he speaks to his mother
and speaks to John who was there with her. And he says, woman,
behold thy son. He committed his mother into
the hands of the church. It's Christ the man caring for
his mother right until the end. And then we have the one that
we read out of Mark's gospel. My God, my God, Why hast thou
forsaken me, the Lord Jesus Christ, the sacrifice, the Lamb of God,
the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world? And then
he cried out, I thirst, I thirst. He's quoting out of Psalm 69. The scripture must be fulfilled. in all of its tiny details. The number of prophecies that
were fulfilled in the last week of the Lord Jesus Christ are
just quite remarkable. Dozens and dozens and dozens
of Old Testament promises had their fulfillment in ways which
can only be explained by the hand of God. I thirst. And then he cried out that wonderful
phrase, didn't he? He said in his prayer in John
17, he said, I've finished the work that you've given me to
do. I've finished the work. I've glorified the father on
the earth. He's been glorified by the son's obedience to the
law. He's been glorified by his perfect righteousness before
God and before man. He's glorified God by loving
God with all of his heart and all of his soul and all of his
mind and all of his strength. He's glorified God by loving his neighbor
as himself. In everything he did, he magnified
the glory of his father. It's finished. It's finished. Suddenly in the 19th century
they started discovering Old Testament Greek commercial papers. And that same word, it is finished,
is what a shopkeeper wrote across a bill. I owe Norm $100 for fixing
chook things, and Norm sends me a bill, and when I give him
the $100, nine rods across it, that exact same word. It is finished. The debt has been paid completely
and fully. It is finished. You can contemplate
that word, it, for an eternity. And then he makes a remarkable
statement at the end, doesn't he? A statement that only deity,
only someone who is God can make. He says, Father, into thy hands
I commend my spirit. We could say to him, receive
my spirit. He alone can say, Father, into thy hands I commend
my spirit. So he begins his saying on the
cross. by including all of his elect
with him, which is exactly what Paul said. Whenever we think
of the Lord Jesus on Calvary Street, believers need to think
of what Galatians 2.20 says, I was crucified with him. I no
longer live. and I was crucified with Him.
The Lord Jesus Christ, for Him to be the Christ means that everything
He does, He does in union with His people. So when He says,
Father, forgive them, He's saying this is how they're all going
to be forgiven. And when He says, into thy hands I commend my spirit,
it's into thy hands I commend myself and all who's with me.
If you're a believer, if you are a child of God, you were
really there on Calvary. He trusted God. It's Christ equal
with his Father, and he's the faithful one. He was faithful
unto death. Job said, isn't he, said, though
he slay me, yet will I trust him. The Lord Jesus Christ is
the only person for whom that is really, really so. He must needs have suffered is
that verse in Acts 17 and it's a verse that's repeated throughout
the scriptures. There is a must about the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a must about him coming.
There's a must about everything that happens in all of this creation.
He's a sovereign God. But in that middle statement,
we have the basis for all the others, isn't it? In his forsakenness
when he cried out to his father, when that sword of God's justice
pierced him, in that darkness when God forsook him, and he
says, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? So there's
one reason, there's one reason that he can say, father forgive
them, was because he was forsaken. There's one reason why he can
say, today you'll be with me in paradise, because he was forsaken
of his father. There's one reason that he became
a man. So this universe exists This
universe was created so that the Lord Jesus Christ could hang
on Calvary's tree outside that city Jerusalem and this universe
still rolls around and time as we know it rolls along because
of what happened on Calvary's tree. It is the centre point
of all creation. There is no point, no understanding
of what's going on in this world unless we understand what happened
on Calvary's tree. He became a man. The word was
made flesh. He suffered as no one else had
ever suffered. When he cried out, it is finished,
it was finished because he really was forsaken of his father and
the payment was paid and the debt was paid in full. He really was forsaken of God. Todd Knight makes a statement
and it's a statement worth remembering and repeating. The most God-like
thing God ever did was to put his son to death on Calvary's
tree. The most God-like thing, the
most God-like act that God ever did was to put his son to death
on Calvary's tree. One of the wonderful things about
this being done in the darkness, brothers and sisters, is that
we struggle. We struggle to understand what
we're talking about, and I'm way over my depth. All we can do is read the words
of God and pray that he'd apply them to our hearts and cause
us just simply to believe them. Because we can't understand this
transaction. It was in the dark and the only
light we have in the dark is the light that God sheds on it. That's why the new creation goes
on forever because it takes eternity for us to grasp the wonder of
what happened on Calvary's tree. The wonderful and remarkable
thing about the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ is that he bore
those marks of Calvary's tree in his own body, and he bore
them into heaven. And when we get to see him, when
we get to see him, when we are made to be like him, when he
wipes the tears from the eyes of his people, We will see that our sins have
marked God forever. But also we will see in those
marks, in that resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, that the sins of
all God's people have been put away forever and ever. And He
lives and reigns. And all of the Psalms in Isaiah
53 and Zechariah 13 that we read and Psalm 22 and all the other
Psalms that speak of the depth and the suffering of the Lord
Jesus Christ, they always finish in triumph, glorious triumph. He calls out from Calvary's tree
and he says, my God, my God. For the rest of his days, all
of his life up until this moment, he had called him my father.
In fact, he'd called him Abba, father, but here he calls him
my God. See, forsaken souls don't address
God as father. He was abandoned by God. He was
forsaken by God. He experienced in that darkness,
he experienced hell. The darkness of hell and the
wrath of God upon sin was really felt in the Lord Jesus Christ. So he experienced the fullness
of damnation. No one in hell ever will, because
hell goes on forever. Because sins are never paid for
in hell. As the Lord Jesus said to those
Pharisees, He said, you die in your sins. It's a horrible thing
to contemplate, isn't it? That you die and everywhere you
look you see your sins. And there is no repentance. And
there is utter darkness. See the Lord Jesus Christ. These
are not figures and these are not pictures anymore like the
Old Testament shows us. This is real wrath of God against
real sin. This, for the Lord Jesus Christ,
is an experience and a felt reality of the wrath of God, the infinite
wrath of God. That sword, that sword and that
flaming sword which typifies the law and the infinite, immutable,
unchangeable law of God that must be satisfied that sword
pierced him. He said in Gethsemane's garden
that the father had given him a cup and he looked into that
cup and nearly died. He looked into that cup and his
heart broke and blood poured out through the veins of his
body. He looked into that cup and he
was absolutely horrified and he was sustained by angels as
he looked into that cup. What was in the cup? Because
in John 19 when he's carried away he says to Peter, shall
I not drink the cup when he's bound? The cup was bound to him. In that cup, there's no doubt
about what was in that cup that caused his horror. In that cup
were all of the sins of all of God's children from all eternity. All of the sins that you and
I are committing right now, brothers and sisters in Christ, all of
those sins are in there. And only a holy God can feel
the weight of the horror of sin. And he drank that cup, he drank
that cup, And the Old Testament scriptures make it abundantly
clear in Psalm 40 and Psalm 69 and many other places that he
owned these sins as his own. And he bore his people's sins
in his own body on the tree. And he was drinking the contents
of that cup in that time of darkness. That cup became one with him,
the contents of that cup became one with him. Can you understand it? No wonder
we're just called upon to believe. We can't understand it. 2 Corinthians
5.21 is that verse that needs to be remembered and quoted as
often as the Lord would allow us to quote it. For he hath made
him to be sin. He hath made him sin for us who
knew no sin. We're not for one moment ever
wanting anyone to think that we are saying that the Lord Jesus
Christ was ever a sinner. He couldn't have been the spotless
Lamb of God if he'd ever committed one sin himself. But God laid
on him. God made him to be sin for us
who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. Let's just quickly look at a
couple of the Psalms because I want you to see it. I want
you to see what God says about what was happening. In Psalm
40, he says, Lo, I come, verse 7, in the volume of the book
it is written of me. This is quoted in Hebrews chapter
10, so there's no question this is about the Lord Jesus Christ.
And he speaks about his preaching and he speaks about his not hitting
the righteousness of God. He's declared thy faithfulness
and thy salvation. I've not concealed thy lovingkindness
and thy truth from the great congregation. Withhold not thou
thy tender mercies from me, O Lord, let thy loving kindness and thy
truth continually preserve me. And then he says, for innumerable
evils have compassed me about, mine iniquities, mine iniquities
have taken hold upon me so that I am not able to look up. They
are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth
me. Psalm 69 verse 5 and Psalm 18
verse 28 and Psalm 38 verse 1 and 4, again and again and again,
the union of the Lord Jesus Christ with His people in that covenant
from all eternity meant that He was fully responsible for
their sins. He was fully responsible for
their sins and He was fully responsible for their righteousness. All
of the sins of God's elect were in his body on that tree. And
when God found sin on his son, and God found his son cursed
under the law of God, according to Deuteronomy 21, cursed is
anyone that hangs on a tree, a cursed man hanging on a tree
as a sinner is going to fall under the wrath of God. And that's
exactly what happened on that tree in Calvary. He says he drank. If he drank, I can't drink. If he bore them, I can't bear
them. The justice of God won't allow
for sins to be punished twice, ever. A holy and just God cannot
allow it. If he paid the price, I can't
pay the price. If he suffered the wrath of God,
I can't, because of the justice of God, suffer the wrath of God. He was abandoned. My God, my
God, why have you forsaken? He was abandoned by God, and
yet the Father loved him. John 10.17 says, Therefore does
my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take
it again. The Father loved him. The Son was operating with the
most ultimate, amazing act of obedience. extraordinary faithfulness. He trusted his father. He trusted
the word of God that you won't leave my soul in hell. But on Calvary's tree, that eternal
union, that delight that he had in the presence of his father
was broken, wasn't it? And he was abandoned. And he's
not just using words and figures of speech. He really was abandoned. He had no sense of his father's
delight, no sense of his father's favour, no sense of his father's
communion. He just felt the wrath of his
father. He just felt the holy justice
of God. dealing with sin. Brothers and
sisters, I keep reminding us the only place you'll ever see
sin in all of the sinfulness of what sin is. See, we drink
it down like fish drink water. We live in it. And we excuse
it. But this is our sin. When you
see the Lord Jesus Christ suffering on Calvary Street, this is how
sin causes God to react. This is how God sees sin. This is the only true view of
sin. Martin Luther spent a day unable
to eat or drink, I believe, and he said, God forsaking God, no
one can understand that. When the sword is awoken against
the shepherd and God says arise and smite the shepherd, The Scriptures
are being fulfilled. When David said, My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? David may very well have felt
forsaken. David no doubt went through times
after his murder of Uriah and his adultery with Bathsheba.
No doubt David must have at times felt that he sinned his salvation
away. And he might very well have said,
my God, my God, you have forsaken me. But was David ever forsaken
by God? I'll never leave you, I'll never
leave you nor forsake you. David was never forsaken. The
Lord Jesus Christ is the only one that really was forsaken. And he knew why. David knew why,
but he didn't know as the Lord knew. In Psalm 22 verse 3, the
Lord Jesus Christ knew why he was forsaken by his father. But
thou art holy. These are the activities. This
is the activity of a holy God. That's why God was forsaken him. See God doesn't play let's pretend
or let's assume or let's treat you as if you were sin and let's
treat you as if these sins are really yours. The scriptures
declare that God made him sin. The scriptures declare that he
bore those sins and when God found those sins there the wrath
of God, the real wrath of God fell on him. That's why in the darkness In
the darkness of Calvary's hours, we have the Scriptures to shine
a light on what happened. And the Old Testament Scriptures
and the New Testament Scriptures are the only light we have. And
the reality is, as we read in 2 Corinthians 5.21 and in many
other places in the Psalms, God took my sin and made it the Lord Jesus Christ's
sin. And he did it willingly. My saviour
did it willingly. He owned that sin as his own. And he bore 100% responsibility
for that sin. He bore 100% responsibility for
its committal, 100% responsibility for its shame, and for its guilt. Mine iniquities have gone over
my head, he says. He owned the sin as His own sin. Why? Because it was His sin. It really was His sin. God took
my sin and He made it His son's, because it was His son's. See,
God would not punish the Lord Jesus Christ for someone else's
sin. God will not do an act of injustice
to His Son and He won't do an act of injustice to anyone. He's a just God and a Saviour. He's a holy God. He will do no injustice. He took
my sins and my sorrows and He made them His very own. He bore
the burden to Calvary and suffered and died alone. And just as truly as my sins
became his sins, his righteousness became my righteousness. We are made in that extraordinary
transaction, we are made the very righteousness of God in
him. As holy as God is holy is how
God the Father in perfect justice sees all of his own. My sins received full satisfaction
and they are gone. Gone, gone from God's presence,
gone from God's remembrance. In the very courts of God, there
are no sins of God's elect. I love how he describes him in
Hebrews chapter one, verse three, isn't it? When he had by himself,
which means that we had nothing to do with it, by himself purged
our sins, purified us from them, he's cancelled them, he's blotted
them out. What is he doing now? He sat down. He sat down because
he's finished the work that God gave him to do, and who's sitting
with him? All of his elect are sitting
with him. This is the eternal purpose of
God being fulfilled, as Revelation 13.8 says. This is a lamb slain
from the foundation of the world. That's the reason Adam and Eve
weren't blotted out in the garden, was because before there was
a sin, there was a Saviour. Before the sheep went astray,
God made the Lord Jesus to be our shepherd. Before we fell
in Adam, we were secure in the Lord Jesus Christ. Before we
broke God's law, the Lord Jesus Christ had owned full responsibility
for that. Before we were cursed by the
law, Christ was our Redeemer. Before we died, Christ was our
resurrection. It's all the determinate counsel
and full knowledge of God. See, the cross is not God's response. to something that caught him
off guard. The fall of Adam and the sinfulness of man is all
for the glory of the cross and the glory and the magnification
of the character of God. Without sin and without the fall,
we'd only know so little about God. But when God forsook God,
we actually see on Calvary's tree, we see a God of absolute
sovereign purpose. We see a God whose word of promise
is perfectly fulfilled in every jot and tittle. We see a God
of infinite and holy justice. We see the holiness of God. You
go to the cross to look at all the attributes of God, and you
see His mercy, and you see His power, and you see His grace,
and you see His love, and you see His holiness, and His justice,
all of them. You see them on Calvary's tree,
the glory, of what happened in that darkness. And this is the
Lord Jesus Christ's love for his bride. He wouldn't let his
bride go to hell because he loved her. And the cause of his love
is in himself. He loves us. We love him by because
he first loved us. He was forsaken. None of his
people could ever be forsaken. There's an old missionary who
was trying to communicate with people and he had all sorts of
struggles. wondering whether they're actually hearing what
he's saying, and he asked this lady to give a summary of what
he'd said, and she said, he die or me die? He die, me no die. That's a good summary of the
gospel, isn't it? This is all of our salvation
is in this one event, isn't it? Who is he that condemneth? It's
Christ that died. How can I know, just in closing,
how can you know that he died for me? How can I know that he
died for me? How can I know that my sins were
on him and they're gone forever? How can I know that the righteousness
and the holiness of God that I'm required to have to go through
that flaming sword to go into the garden and have access to
the tree of life, how can I know that's mine? There are many passages in scripture
that want to that want for the believers to go away rejoicing. They want for believers, God
wants for his people to have the full assurance of faith and
the full assurance of understanding. And if you fit the pictures of
the saved people in the scriptures, then you can claim the promises
of the saved people in the scriptures. Romans 5, just briefly before
we finish. It says, for when we were without
strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. No strength,
no strength in your will, no strength in anything you've ever
done, no strength in any of your righteousness. When you were
without strength, with no ability whatsoever, does that describe
you before God? Without strength, no power, no
ability, no free will, no saying, That's not the way,
that's the way I used to be. I've changed my life. No strength,
no strength. Ungodly. Does that describe you? Ungodly? That word ungodly means
to not be a worshipper. Is that what you are? An unworshipping
person? If you're without strength and
you haven't worshipped God, Christ died for you. Romans 4. Abraham is declared to be not
only a righteous man, a believer, and then it says in Romans 4,
but to him that worketh not. Have you ceased from any of your
works to try and please God? For him that worketh not, but
believeth on him that justifieth. There's that word again, the
ungodly. His faith is counted for righteousness. Acts 17.4, and Paul preached
this Gospel of the Old Testament Scriptures of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and laid out before them Him being evidently crucified. Acts 17.4 says, and some believed. Some believed. Those that believed
went away rejoicing. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we do We pray that you would take your words and write them
on our hearts and that you would cause your people here, Heavenly
Father, to find themselves at peace and at rest in simpling
what you have said and declared about what your son has done
and what he suffered on Calvary's tree. If He's borne our sins
and He's borne them away, Heavenly Father, and He's robed His people
in the very righteousness of God, and He's done it freely
without cause in us, oh, Heavenly Father, there are such grounds
for peace and for rest, and such extraordinary grounds for us
to go away from here, rejoicing in who He is, rejoicing in what
He's done, rejoicing in bringing us to hear the sound of his sweet
words and rejoicing in causing us to just simply believe, simply
to believe what you have said, our Father. Help us to glorify
You and glorify Your Son and glorify the words the Holy Spirit
has written by making us believe in our Father. For we pray in
Jesus' name, in His glory.