I have a fairly simple, straightforward
message for you this morning. It really is just the essence
of what this book is about. The essence of what life is about.
Jesus Christ is God. There is a God and you're not
Him. There is a God who rules this
universe. There is a God who sits on the
throne of this universe and rules every atom and every little tiny,
tiny speck of this universe, wherever you can cast your mind,
high, low, near or far. Jesus Christ created it. Jesus Christ rules it. Jesus Christ has a purpose for
it all. In Mark's Gospel we hear the
Lord Jesus utter those words after that time of darkness on
the cross, after all of the cruelty of man, after all the scheming
wickedness of Satan, after rejection by his father as he who became sin bore our
sins, took my sins as if he were his sins, called them his own,
and suffered the righteous, just, holy punishment of God for them. When that light shone from heaven
again and the sun shone on our Savior, He just had a few words
to say. He said, I thirst. And we looked
at that last week. And then He says these great
words, it is finished. And for those who think that
the Lord Jesus was defeated, that the Lord Jesus was weak. Verse 37 of Mark 15 says that
he cried out with a loud voice, it is finished. As I said to you earlier, I have
two verses of scripture in a sense. One is those words from Matthew
1.21, and you shall call his name Jesus. and he shall save
his people from their sins. It is finished. And the Lord
Jesus uttered those words. Something was finished. Of course, as we've been going
through Mark's gospel, and especially in that last week, we see again
and again that the words the Lord Jesus uttered were the words
of God from the Old Testament. The actions of Him and the actions
of wicked men were the actions that God had promised beforehand. You see, the Lord Jesus finished
the prophecy as we've just sung. He was promised to be a woman's
seed. And we read, and we've just sung,
that he was born of a woman. He was promised before he came,
700 years before he came, that his mother would be a virgin.
that he would be of the seed of Abraham. He would be Abraham's
descendant. He would be David's descendant. He would be named before he was
born, Isaiah 49.1. And we've just read that he is. And he was born in a specific
place, Bethlehem. and his birth would lead to the
sorrows of others. And in Matthew 2 we read of that
tragic murder of all the baby boys in that town who were two
years and younger. Herod wanted to make sure that
he killed this king who was standing opposed to him. It was promised
that he'd go into Egypt and return, and he did. He was promised 400
years before he came, there was a promise that one like Elijah
would come back and one would go before him, and John the Baptist
did. And then we have followed his
work. All of what he does, all of what
he did is promised. Isaiah 35 says that he had opened
the eyes of the blind. The ears of the deaf will be
unstopped. The lame man will leap like a
deer. The tongue of the deaf, the dumb
will sing. We have read again and again
that he did things that he was promised to do. Isaiah, I mean
Psalm 107, 29 says that he'll still the stormy sea. He stilled it with a word. And we also have descriptions
of this man who was a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. He was a poor man. Poor and needy,
says Psalm 40, verse 17. He would speak and teach in parables,
Psalm 78. And at the end of his ministry,
he would ride into Jerusalem as the King of Israel. Zechariah promised that nearly
500 years before he came. And we have read and we have
witnessed the reaction to his work. He was despised. He was rejected. And he was hated. He was hated without a cause. And we must remember the reason
for the hatred, the reason for the hatred toward the Lord Jesus
of religious, good religious moral people who know their Bibles
back to front. The reason for the hatred is
that he said he was God. He just declared the truth about
himself. He revealed God to people, and
the reaction of people, and particularly the reaction of religious people,
was to kill him. To plot with hypocrisy and deceit,
to kill him who they claimed to worship. There is nothing
more hardening to the hearts of human beings than religion
that has no spirit from God in it. It's full of hypocrisy. It is full of lies. It is full
of self-righteous boasting about what man does. You, a mere man,
make yourself to be God. When he uttered these words in
a loud voice, it is finished. He's declaring again his deity. He's declaring that he is God. Just cast your mind upon the
little things that happen in your world. Have we ever finished
anything? Have we ever finished it in such
a way that it's done and dusted for all time? I've been on our
farm, I came back to our farm when I was 23 years old and it
had been left for a number of years and just was a mess and
our old house was falling down. And I kept thinking, just around
the corner I'll have this thing fixed. Around the corner I'll
have a workshop, looks like Norm Day's workshop, and things will
be in their place. Around the corner, I'll have
these trees and these gardens and all this. We never ever finish. It's part of the frustration
and vanity of this world. In our ignorance, we think that
we will actually get things done and that we will finish them.
Simon and I were at a funeral the other day. If you asked Warren,
in his dying moments what he would like to achieve in the
rest of his life. He could have written for hours
all the things he wanted to do. This life is full of vexation
and full of vanity. But someone who is God, someone
who is God can say that it is finished. Someone who is God
can have something to finish. The scriptures are just so full
of the fact that this world is a world where there is a direction. There is an order. There is a purpose. There is
a destination. There is a goal. We are going
somewhere. We are not just going around
and around in circles forever and ever. This world has an end
and it has a purpose. It has a reason. There is a reason
for everything, and the reason is in God. And you might well
say, as this world does again and again, well it sure doesn't
look like that. You say this Jesus is sitting
on the throne of this universe and rules this world with absolute
supreme authority. Well just look what's happening
in this town. Look what's happening in this
land. Look what's happening in this
world. Look what's happening in my family. Look what's happening in my life. Everything but order and a goal
and a direction is what we see all the time. It looks like it
has no meaning and it has no purpose. So what does God say? I am God. There is no other. There are no rival gods to Jesus
Christ. The rest of them are demonic
figments of man's imagination. There are no rival Hindu gods,
says our God. There are no rivals to Jesus
Christ, says our God to the Mohammedans. I am God and there is none like
me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times
to the things that are not yet done, saying, my council shall
stand and I will do all my pleasure. For those of us who spend much
of life troubled, Trouble because things are not the way I want
them to be. Trouble because things are not
working out how I would wish them to be. We do need to remember
that despite what we see with our eyes, our God has a purpose. There is an eternal purpose that
God set in place before this world came to be, and it is rolling
along absolutely perfectly as God planned. And as I said earlier,
many would say, well, it doesn't look like Jesus is being very
successful. If He's God, then what on earth
is happening in this world? He was God for three years and
walked this earth as God in human flesh. He was God before he came. He was God at his incarnation. He was God for those 33 years
and he was manifestly God and said so to others for those three
years of his ministry. How many did he gather? out of
the tens and hundreds of thousands who knew about him. Maybe 500? Another 3,000 added
at the Day of Pentecost? Just think of how many millions
of people would have heard of him over the next years. Millions of people. And millions
and millions and millions added each day. The answer is in that
verse in Matthew 1.21. You'll call his name Jesus. God saves, God's salvation, for
He will save His people from their sins. If Jesus came to
save all of Israel and all of the world, and He just managed
to gather a few hundred and a few thousand here and there, then
it looks like Jesus is a failure. The religious world around us
presents Jesus as someone who tries to save everyone and therefore
there are billions that he fails to save. The scriptures never
present Jesus as doing that. If he came to save 500 and he
saves him, he is God and he reigns supreme. If he came to save a
multitude beyond number and he did, then that multitude beyond
number will be saved. He will be seen to be God. It is finished, he said. All
of that work is finished. As we've seen, his sufferings
are now finished. The sufferings which are the
just sufferings, his physical sufferings, his mental sufferings,
that anguish and pain of soul and heart and mind that we don't
even have a clue about. We don't know what it is to be
God. We don't know what it is to be
God and to be holy and to suffer the sins. The thing is that we
do not know, the two things that we do not know, is that we don't
know what God is like. until God reveals Himself to
us. And until He has done that, we
do not have a clue what we are like. People diminish what the
Lord Jesus went through because they make Him out to be something
not much more than us. But see, He was God, and His
knowledge was infinite. In Psalm 88.15 he says, I am
afflicted and ready to die from my youth up. He knew the end
from the beginning. He knew about the cross as a
young man. Imagine Jack living all your
life from Noah's age and knowing what was going to befall you. Knowing these people that you
cared about deeply were going to reject you. See, he talked
about his hour at the beginning of his ministry, that marriage
feast in Cana, when he revealed his glory. He said, my hour has
not yet come. When Nicodemus, early in his
ministry, came to the Lord Jesus as a sneaky Pharisee, coming
at night so he wouldn't get caught. Jesus talked to him about the
Son of Man being lifted up. He talked to his disciples about
the cup, about the baptism, even in that glory on that mountain
when he was revealed before Peter, James, and John, in his glory
as God. Moses and Elijah were there,
and what were they talking about? They were talking about his death,
that he should accomplish at Jerusalem. He suffered in anticipation
of what was going to happen to him, and he suffered in reality. But now he can say, it is finished. The Lord his Father has bruised
him. Man, religious man and political
man, men of this world have done their worst. He's taken the cup
of the wrath of God for all of his people and he's drunk it
dry, that awful storm of God's wrath. has finally spent itself
on Him, and the sun shines again. The darkness has ended. The sword
of divine justice, which hangs over all humanity, is now sheathed, and the wages of sin have been
paid. It is finished. Never again shall
our Saviour suffer any of these things. Never again will He be
in the hands of Satan. Never again will the light of
God's love and countenance be taken from Him. The head that
once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now. A
royal diadem adorns the mighty victor's brow. The highest place
that heaven affords is his by sovereign right, the king of
kings and lord of lords, and heaven's eternal light. The joy
of all who dwell above the joy of all below, to whom he manifests
his love and grants his name to know. The goal, as I said,
the purpose for which he came, is finished now. It's written of him in the volume
of the book that he came to do the will of God. As a boy he
was about his father's business. He could actually say the words,
the works which the father has given me to finish, the same
works that I do. How often have we boasted about
something that we will do? What a pathetic effort it is. I'll do this and I'll do that.
As a little kid they used to call me gunner, because I was
always gunner do something. I'm gunner do this and I'm gunner
do that. And I gunner done nothing of
any worth whatsoever. Jesus says in John 17.4, I have
finished the work which you gave me to do. Finish the work. Only God can say He's finished
the work. There's nothing left to be done. God is God and His purposes must
be accomplished. What a wonderful thing it is
to know that there is a God. to know that there is a purpose,
that there is a meaning. I don't want to belittle the
pain that you go through. I don't want to exaggerate the
pain that I go through. But in God's purposes, for God's
people, God will show himself to have done nothing but be absolutely
perfect in His love, to be extraordinarily gracious to our failings and
fallings and our wickedness, and to be absolutely sovereign
in mending the bones that He breaks. You see, He doesn't want
us to find our peace here. Our peace is in the Prince of
Peace. He doesn't want us to establish
our mansion, the throne of our lives, in a place that's like
this. Why is it such a mess? Why is
it so out of control? To remind God's people that there
is a throne and there is a place and there is a purpose and there
is a time when He will come back and all of creation will bow
before Him and all of His people will look back on every little
tiny thing and they will see that God moved this universe
to save His people. God brought the pain that people
might see that in Him there is comfort. God will show and God
will reveal that there is a purpose. Job went through the most extraordinary
sufferings, lost 10 children and everything he had, and in
a sense almost lost his mind as well. And when God comes and
reveals himself to him, he doesn't give Job explanations. What he does is he reveals to
Job who God is. And he reveals to Job who Job
is, asks him those 72 questions, not to test Job's knowledge,
but to show Job that there is a God and there is a purpose. And Job confesses, I know that
you can do everything, No purpose of yours can be withheld from
you. Our God is in heaven, and he
does whatever he pleases. The Lord has purposed, and who
will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and
who will turn it back? He declares the end from the
beginning. All the inhabitants of the earth
are reputed as nothing. So much for our finishing. So much for the efforts of mankind. Add them all together, says God
in Daniel 4.35, and they weigh nothing. What is the United States
of America in God's economy? a speck of dust on the skies. You can blow it off when you
buy your potatoes. You can say to the greengrocer,
I don't want the United States of America or Russia or China
with my potatoes. Thanks very much. That's how
big all of these things that seem so important in this world
are compared to our God. He does according to his will
in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth. No
one can restrain his hand or say to him, what have you done? And we might well say in the
midst of our pain and suffering, well, I wish you had a better
way of doing this for me right now. And then we come to the cross
of the Lord Jesus, and we look at what He suffered for His people,
suffered at the hands of men, suffered at the hands of Satan,
and suffered at the hands of God, and yet was found faithful. And we just need to put our hands
over our mouths and wait in faith. And we will see that God has
a purpose. We will see, God's children,
my brothers and sisters, we will see that there is a purpose in
all of this. It is finished, said the Lord
Jesus. Atonement is finished. It means it's translated in different
ways in our scriptures. When Jesus had made an end of
commanding his 12, it does not your master pay tribute when
they had performed all things according to the law. All things
that are written in the prophets concerning your son be accomplished. When the Lord Jesus is saying
it is finished, It is made an end of. Our sins have been made
an end of. And their guilt, their condemnation
is made an end of. It's been paid. The price that
God demands for the sins that you commit right now, the sins
that I commit right now, They have to be paid. God is holy. His justice demands their payment. It is paid by the Lord Jesus. And not only that, because we
have lived on this earth, we have a requirement to perform
perfectly. God's demand on your life and
mine is simple. He demands for you to get into
heaven that you must be absolutely perfect in thought, word and
deed for 100% of your life. That's the demand of getting
into heaven. The only way you can get into
heaven is to be as holy as God himself. God will not let unclean,
unholy, sinful things into heaven. He's performed that holiness. He's accomplished that work that
the Father gave him to do. All that God requires is done. It has been done. There's nothing left for the
sinner to add. God doesn't demand from us and demand from Jesus. He has
received from Jesus all that is necessary and He will not
have your works and Jesus' works together. It's finished. It's finished. Which is why He
can say that we are complete in Him. we are made perfect,
that He will present us to His Father wholly and spotless. Upon
a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die. Another's death,
another's life, I cast my soul eternally. Bold shall I stand
in that great day, for who anything to my charge can lay. Fully absolved
by Christ I am from sin's tremendous curse and blame. Our sins are
gone. this great day that they were
preparing for, and in a rush, they wanted not to defile the
beauty of their Jerusalem and the beauty of their religious
sacrifices. But what they were going to do
that next day was have the Passover. And in the Passover, that priest
was able to take that blood, that one day of the year, into
the Holy of Holies. And just read what happened.
What happened, what God said happened. All the iniquities
of the children of Israel and all their transgressions and
all their sins, they put them on the head of the goat. And the goat shall bear upon
him all the iniquities into a land not inhabited. and he shall let
the goat go in the wilderness. The goat symbolically takes all
of Israel's sin, all the iniquities, all the transgressions, all the
sins, and he carries them away into a land of forgetfulness.
The cross is the grave of our sins. Why do we make so much
of Jesus Christ and Him crucified? Because we've experienced something
of what our sins are, and we've experienced who He is, and we
long for a holiness that we can't muster, and we rejoice in a righteousness
given to us. We long for a robe and a covering
which is acceptable to God, and in Jesus we have one. All the holy requirements of
God's law are finished. Satan has been defeated. One last question. we might think upon before we
finish. Guess who was the Lord Jesus speaking to? He may have been speaking to
his father. He may have been speaking to
Satan. He may have been speaking to
the religious leaders who mocked him. The Holy Spirit has recorded
these words because I think the Lord Jesus is speaking to his
people. He's speaking to us. You see,
he's come to preach anointed by God to preach the gospel to
the poor. He sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the
blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim
the acceptable year of the Lord. Are there sinners here? Are there poor? Are there broken
hearted? Are there people who are captive? We are so easily captive to so
many things. Are we blind to who we are and
blind to who God is? Are we oppressed? There is good news. There is
great news for the poor. There is great news for the broken-hearted. There is great news for the captives. Our Saviour says, our God says,
it is finished. I will save my people from their
sins. It is finished. It is done. He still reigns. All that remains
between God and His children is love. All that we have between
us and eternity is our Lord Jesus, who carries us and cares for
us. Let's come to Him now, and as
we prepare for the Lord's Supper, let me pray for us.