Thank you, ladies. That was beautiful. Excellent words, that song. Go back now to Luke 23. You'll
forgive me. I'm warm, so I'm going to take
my jacket off. I won't quite pull a Tim James. I won't roll up my shirt sleeves.
But I am going to take my coat off. My subject is the dying words
of Christ, the dying words of Christ. And I want to make note
of four things here before I get into the message. First of all,
the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus fulfilled scripture. Look at
the 33rd verse. It says, when they were come
to the place which is called Calvary, There they crucified
him. And in the Old Testament, it
talks about one who would be hanging on a tree. And here's
the word of God being fulfilled. Our Savior died according to
the eternal purpose of God. He had set forth his own death,
testified to the fact of it in Matthew 16, he said to his disciples,
he said, the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and suffer many
things of the elders and the chief priests and the scribes
and be killed and be raised the third day. This was all foretold,
foreordained by God, the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. This
was not a great tragedy, This was instead a great triumph. This is the way that God ordained
to save sinners. It's the only way we could be
forgiven and made the righteousness of God was in the substitutionary
atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then another thing I want you
to keep in mind as we go through this message The crucifixion
of our Savior, when he was actually nailed to the cross, it happened
when he was in a very physically weak state. I remind you he was the real
man, Christ Jesus. He knew something about weariness. He knew something about thirst. He knew something about having
nights that he had no rest. The day before, he had spent
all day preaching. And you can read John chapters
14, 15, and 16. You'll find that our Lord spent
quite a bit of time speaking to his disciples and giving them
the necessary instructions to continue the ministry of the
gospel even after he was dead, buried, risen again, and then
finally ascended back to heaven. He was physically weak. He spent
all of the previous wee hours of the morning, actually of the
late at night, in deepened prayer. John chapter 17 is the Lord's
prayer. He offered up his heart to the
Father as he poured out his ardent prayer and petitions unto his
God. And then the soldiers came with
a mob to arrest him early in the morning. It has been a long
24 hours or even longer than that. He is physically exhausted. Finally, they, after having laid
the cross upon him, the authorities noticed that apparently he was
weak in body. They compelled one to carry his
cross for him, lest, I suppose, that he stumble and under weakness
should pass out from all of the hideous agonies that laid upon
him when he was beaten and slapped, violently mistreated. He's thoroughly whipped. He had stood before Caiaphas
and the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish court of the land. He
had stood before Pilate and then Herod and then back to Pilate. He has been beaten. He has been
mocked. He has been ridiculed. One by
one they came by and slapped him. after they had blindfolded
him and said, well, you prophesy who slapped you. And in this
weakened state, our Lord Jesus is then nailed to a cross. The actual crucifixion, it took
place, and as we Pick up our reading there with verse 33. He is nailed to the cross finally. The scripture says that with
a thief on one side and a thief on the other side, in verse 34
he begins to lift his heart in prayer. He remained absolutely silent
before his accusers. but he will not remain silent
before the heavenly Father. And he offered this prayer in
verse 34. And I'll give you one word that
I think sums up our Lord's character in this passage of Scripture. He's the mediator. Listen to
him. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive
them. Forgive them, for they know not
what they do. He begins by praying for others. He did not on this occasion pray
that the agonies of the cross be taken from him. That happened
in the garden. If it be thy will, let this cup
pass from me. He prayed as a real man. But here our Lord is praying
for others. He says, forgive them, forgive
them. They don't know what they're
doing and they don't know who they're doing it to. They're
absolutely ignorant of the fact that this is all coming to pass
according to God's divine purpose. Here is our Savior, our covenant
Head, the surety of the everlasting covenant. Here He is fulfilling
His obligation, an obligation He put Himself under, to live
for and then to die on the behalf of all of those the Father gave
Him in electing grace. He is now offering Himself as
that sacrifice to put away sin. He is the fulfillment of the
Passover Lamb. And when God sees His blood,
when God sees the blood of the Passover Lamb, the Son of God,
the Lamb of God, when God sees His blood, He will pass over,
and He does pass over all those for whom the blood was shed.
Our Lord suffers at the hands of wicked men, but that's not the half of it. He must suffer at the hands of
a holy God. He must endure in His very, very
soul all of the vengeance of God against sin. It will be the
unadulterated fury and wrath of God that will burn into his
soul. He must suffer the just wages
of sin. Please understand that. He must die an ignominious death. And after men had done all that
they could to our Lord Jesus, God is going to deal with him.
But here is our Lord Jesus as the mediator, approaching the
father on the behalf of the guilty. And he says, Father, forgive
them. Forgive them. And I assure you,
those for whom he offered this petition, they shall be and they
were and shall forevermore be the forgiven people of God. Here's
the mediator. None can come into the presence
of God apart from this one. He must stand for us. He must
represent us. He must speak to God for us.
And we know that God always hears him. Here is the great intercessor. The intercessor. He deals with
our God on our behalf. And we come to God in, through,
and by Him. He prays for sinners to be forgiven. And as he said in John chapter
11 at the tomb of Lazarus, so let us hear him say to us as
it were, as he speaks to the father, I know that thou hast
always heard me. Father, forgive them. And then he's not only the mediator,
but he's also the king. And we're going to look at Christ
in seven different characters this morning in the seven final
words that he speaks from the cross of Calvary. The first he
speaks as the mediator, but then he speaks as the king. On either
side was a thief, a malefactor being crucified with him. all
three were convicted felons. Two of these men were there by
the justice of men. One of these is there by the
injustice of men, but by the justice of God, because he bore
our sins in his own body on the tree. He Himself took all of
the filth, all of the guilt, all of the sinfulness of all
of His people to Himself. The scriptures talks about him
being that this was imputed to him. It was charged to his account.
He was not guilty of any sins. He was not guilty of any transgressions. He was not guilty of any iniquities,
but our iniquities were made to meet on him. Isaiah 53, six,
all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way. and the Lord hath laid on him
or made to meet on him the iniquities of us all. And there was at the
cross of Calvary meeting upon the head of our Lord Jesus Christ
a tremendous and an awful amount of iniquities all condensed together,
all put together and heaped upon the Son of God so that as He
hung before God, He was guilty of our transgressions because
they were charged to Him. Now, if they were charged to
Him, they can't be charged to us. And this is the good news
that comes forth from the cross of Calvary. Our Lord is dying
for the sins of his people. Here we have three men dying.
One man dies in his sin, that's the unbelieving thief. One man dies to his sins, that's
the believing thief. And the third man dies for sins. for my sins. Are you a believer? He died for your sins. Oh, let my heart be broken and
yet at the same time rejoice. I'm forgiven of my sins at the
word of the mediator. And I hear the king say to another
malefactor, because I'm a malefactor just like you are. This thief who's brought by sovereign
grace, the effectual work of the spirit, this thief said,
Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Who has a
kingdom but the king? Remember me. Oh God, how many times I prayed
that myself. Remember me. So often, my Lord,
I forget about Thee. Please don't forget about me. While on others Thou art calling,
don't pass me by. The thief said, Lord, remember
me when you come into your kingdom. I believe you're the king. And
he's looking at a man bleeding and dying and suffering. He has
bloody spittle all over his face. Blood is dripping from his wounds. His back has been lacerated. There he hangs and he sees, kind
of out of the corner of his eye, Jesus of Nazareth dying, and
he says, I believe you're the king. Who can say that but a
believer, but a child of God? And who are the words of the
king? Where the word of a king is,
there's power. And Jesus said unto him, verily
I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in paradise. Not in
some halfway house where people go to suffer for some of their
sins and then finally wind up in heaven, no. He said today
you'll be with me in paradise. And our Lord Jesus died before
this believing thief died, and he entered into glory. And when the angels opened the
doors for King Messiah to come back home, having died the death
appointed to him, having accomplished redemption, when the king went
through the gates, he said, leave those gates open. A sinner saved by my grace, whose
sins have been washed away by my blood. He'll be following
me in just a few minutes. And I say to you, we enter in
by a new and living way, Christ crucified. And as surely as our
Lord Jesus went to glory, so we shall too. He said today. Not after you
go to purgatory for a while, not after your soul goes to sleep
for a while, but today, today, thou shalt be with me in paradise. Who made the difference between
the two malefactors? You know. Who maketh thee to differ from
another? is what the apostle Paul would
ask the believing thief. Who made you to be different?
Who made you to be different? It's our Lord himself who is
the king. The hymn writer said, I'll go
to Jesus, though my sin hath like a mountain rose, I know
his courts I'll enter in, whatever may oppose. I'll to the gracious
King approach, whose scepter mercy gives. Perhaps he will
receive my touch, and then this sinner lives. I can but perish
if I go, but I'm resolved to try. For if I stay away, I must
forever die. I'm going. I'm going. And He's never rejected a sinner
yet. Never has. Salvations of the
Lord. Then there's another statement
that our Lord made from the cross. We know He's the Mediator, Father
forgive them. He is the King today. shalt thou
be with me in paradise. But he's also the provider. And I'm not going to ask you
to turn to this, but it's in John chapter 19. As he's hanging
upon the cross, suffering in his body all the torments and
persecutions that men could lay upon him, he looks down from
the cross and He sees one of those for whom He is tasting
death. And He doesn't address her as
mother. He says woman. You see, our Lord looks after
His children. He is the great provider. And he says to John, the beloved
apostle, behold thy mother, woman, behold thy son. Our Lord is indeed
the great provider. He takes care of us. Never fear,
people of God. Our Lord clothes the lilies of
the field. He will take care of you. No wonder our Lord said to His
disciples, therefore take no anxious thoughts saying, what
shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or wherewithal
shall we be clothed? For after all these things do
the Gentiles seek. For your Heavenly Father, your
Heavenly Father knoweth the things that you have need of. But seek ye first the kingdom
of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you. Take therefore no thought, no
anxious thought, for tomorrow, for the morrow shall take care
of the things of itself. You know, in 1 Timothy 5, Paul
is talking to husbands, and he says, if any provide not for
his own, he's worse than an infidel. Our Lord provides for his own.
He provides for us spiritually, he provides for us eternally,
and he provides for us physically. Mary was one of His children,
and as He took care of that woman, so He will take care of all of
His sheep. The middle word from the cross
is especially marvelous, and we see Him as the substitute. Turn to Matthew 27. I'll have
you turn to this one. Matthew 27. I'm saying that the
Holy Spirit recorded the seven last words, dying words of our
Lord Jesus Christ. And here the substitute speaks,
Matthew 27 and 46. Verse 45 says, now from the sixth
hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth
hour. Our Lord was nailed to the cross
at 9 a.m. Friday morning. Now it is 3 in
the afternoon. 9 a.m. was the time of the killing of
the morning sacrifice. Then 3 p.m. is the time of the death of the
evening sacrifice. Here is God's sacrifice for sins. Darkness falls upon the whole
land. And verse 46, in about the ninth
hour, three o'clock in the afternoon, Jesus cried with a loud voice,
saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is to say, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? I know why, God forsook him.
And if you read Psalm 22, 1, 2, and 3, you'll find out, too. It's because God is holy. What
a massive sin was laid upon our substitute. He bore our sins in his own body
on the tree. And God poured out wrath on him. What's that song that's sometimes
sung? I should have been crucified.
I should have suffered and died. But Jesus, God's son, took my
place. It should be me crying now. My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But I won't ever be forsaken. And you who are the people of
God, you'll never be forsaken. Now that unbelieving thief, he
was forsaken. To me, a pretty good definition
of hell is to be forsaken by God. God is life, it's to be
without life. God is light, it's to be without
light. God is holiness, it's to be without
holiness. God is all things, it's to be
without everything spiritual. It's to be left absolutely alone
by God. And that's what happened to our
Savior. The Father turned his back on him, forsook him. Hell is to be forsaken by God. There's no goodness in hell.
There's no truth in hell. There's no purity in hell. There's
no joy in hell. There's no love in hell. There's
no righteousness in hell. I know people make fun. They
say, well, at least I'll have all my friends with me. If you
think or talk like that, you're a fool. You're an absolute fool. You have no idea what it is to
be forsaken by God. He hasn't forsaken you now. That's
why you enjoy His sunshine. You enjoy His rain. You enjoy
whatever daily physical mercies that He gives you, but in hell,
nothing, nothing of that nature from God. He died being forsaken by God
for His people. Forsaken by the Father for He
redeemed us from all iniquity. Forsaken by the Father to save
us. Forsaken by the Father because
he loved us. The substitute. And he's, the next one is he's
a real man. John 19.28 says, the shortest
of his cries from the cross, he said, I thirst. I thirst. Every evangelist, the evangelists
being Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, every evangelist records
at least one of the sayings of our Lord Jesus from the cross. This is the briefest one. I see
here the reality of the humanity of the Savior. I thirst. Who gets thirsty? Does God get
thirsty? Only the God-man. Does God get weary? Only the
God-man. Does God get hungry? Only the
God-man. And he cries out, I thirst. I think there's a bodily thirst
included in this cry. being in anguish of body, feverish, tongue swollen, cleaving to his
jaws, physical bodily thirst, but also
soul thirst. Remember, he has just been forsaken
by God. And he thirsted for the presence
of the Father in his soul. I thirst, I thirst for my Father. They have been one for all eternity. And now there's a separation.
I can't comprehend that. I can only tell you what the
scripture says. David says, as the heart, as
the deer panteth for the water brook, so panteth my soul after
thee, O God." Our Lord Jesus thirsted for the
Father. And it's also a heart thirst.
A heart thirst. He was thirsty for his people. to finish this work that he had
begun. The sixth cry from the cross
is the cry of the victor. It is finished. That's what he
said. It is finished. And he, I saw
a preacher the other day on television and he was talking about Jesus
cried it is finished. And this preacher said what he
was saying was, I'm glad this is finally coming to an end.
I'm glad my suffering is over. That's not what he was saying.
It is finished. It is completed. Redemption is
done. Salvation is accomplished. God's
justice is satisfied. The sins of my people have been
borne away by my death into a land of forgetfulness. Righteousness
has been brought in by my obedience to the Father. The Father's will,
it's been finished. I have saved my people, it is
finished. I fulfilled all the types and
all the pictures and all the prophecies of the Scripture concerning
Messiah and His death. It is finished. I have made an
end of sins. It is finished. I have obtained
eternal redemption. It is finished. I've redeemed
my people from the curse of the law. It is finished. I have fulfilled and made an
end of the law. I have magnified the law of God. It is finished. Wrath is finished. Judgment is finished. Sin is
finished. Righteousness is finished. Redemption
is finished. It is finished. That's what the
Savior said. I've completed the work I was
sent to accomplish. Do you remember what our Lord
first recorded words were. He was only 12 years old. And he said to Mary and Joseph, how is it that you sought me?
Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business? I'm here
on official business. That's what he would say. I'm
here on the father's business. And now, he's right up to the verge of
death. And he says, I finished the father's
business. The business that he sent me
to accomplish. And therefore, the seventh saying
from the cross is found in Luke 23, 46. Father, into thy hands
I commend my spirit. And having said thus, he gave
up the ghost. He committed his soul, his spirit,
to the Father, knowing that the work he came to accomplish was done as God would have it
to be done. And God is satisfied. The wrath
of God is appeased. And all those in whose stead
the Lord Jesus Christ suffered, bled, and died, they were saved. They have to be saved. They must
be saved because the Lord Jesus bore our sins away. He remitted our sins. And He
brought in for us everlasting righteousness. Oh, may God the Spirit give you
faith in this glorious Savior. And if you've already been brought
to trust Him and believe Him as all of your righteousness
and all of your life, ordinance that God gave us called
the Lord's Supper is for you. And you eat the bread, remembering
our Lord's body, that he was the incarnate God. As you drink the wine, remember
his substitutionary bloody sacrifice upon the cross. He who was the eternal God took
flesh and blood into union with himself. Great is the mystery
of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. And the men in just a minute
are going to distribute the bread. Speaks of our Lord's body crucified
for us. We'll all eat together after
I have prayer, and then they'll pass out the wine, which speaks
to us of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. And you just wait
till we're all served, and then I'll lead in prayer, and then
we'll drink that together. So I'll ask these men if they
would come and pass out the bread.