Thank you so much. Go with me
to the book of John chapter 19. For our message this morning,
John chapter 19. And I want to speak to you on the
subject, Christ Gave Up the Ghost. Look at John chapter 19 verse
30. When Jesus, therefore, had received
the vinegar, the sour wine that the soldiers typically drank,
they offered it to him, put a piece of hyssop on a stick or something
and dipped it in that sour wine and gave it to him, put it to
his mouth. When he had received the vinegar,
he said, is finished. And he bowed his
head and gave up the ghost. Our Lord Jesus was crucified
in the morning at about 9 a.m. Scripture says that in Mark 15,
25, if you want the reference, the Jews referred to it as the
third hour. And then about noon to then the
sixth hour, that's when the darkness covered all of that area. And then later in the afternoon,
the ninth hour, that would be hour three p.m., is when our
Savior died. It is noteworthy that that first
hour that is noted when our Lord was crucified, nine in the morning,
that was the hour when the morning sacrifice was offered over at
the temple. And usually that's the time of
the day when the Sanhedrin would have begun to meet shortly after
the offering up to God of that first lamb, the lamb that died
at 9 a.m. That's usually when the Sanhedrin
convened. But on this day, they had convened
very early in the morning. And yet, still according to that
which God taught Israel when he gave his commandments to Moses,
and Moses to the elders of Israel, they offered every morning a
lamb for an offering, and every afternoon another lamb for an
offering. In other words, every day. Every day started with the sacrifice
of a lamb, and every day ended with the sacrifice of a lamb. But on this day, this day was
unlike any other day before then or since. On this day at 9 a.m., There was another lamb that had
to die. And this is God's Lamb, the Lamb
of God. And they affixed Him to the cross
of Calvary at 9 a.m. There He hung for three hours
as the people jeered and mocked. And some of His friends wept. And then at noon, that's when
darkness covered the face of the earth. And our God, in His
holiness and in His righteousness, began to deal with His Son over
our sins. And then that lasted three hours. And then the Scripture says about
the ninth hour, three in the afternoon, that's when our Lord
Jesus said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That's when He said, it is finished. And that's when He said, and
I read this to you out of Luke 23, Father into thy hands, I
commend my spirit. and God's Lamb hung His head. And the Scripture says, gave
up the ghost. Our Savior, before He gave up
the ghost, He made this startling announcement, it is finished.
What was finished? Well, certainly His public ministry
was finished. It was done for three, three
and a half years, whatever it was, He fulfilled all that God
had purposed for him to do during that public ministry, which was
begun with his baptism, and now it is finished. His public ministry
is finished. All of his preaching, all of
his teaching to the Jews, to the lost, all of those things
were now finished. What He has to say after His
resurrection, He says to His people. He says to those in whose
stead He died. It is finished. The agonies of
the garden are now finished. When He wept, as it were, great
drops of blood. That's finished. No more. No more. Jesus is not in heaven
weeping over anybody. The weeping of our Savior, that
took place on one occasion at the tomb of Lazarus. But that
was nothing compared to His weeping in the garden. There He swept,
as it were, great drops of blood. as the agony seemed to sweep
over him that he must bear the full load of the sins of his
people. He must be directly confronted
with our iniquities. God is going to lay on him the
iniquities of us all. Isaiah 53, 6 says that. And as he looked toward enduring
that agony, he said, My Father, if it be Thy will, let this cup
pass from me. But it couldn't pass from him. He has to go through with this.
Listen, if he didn't go through with all of this, there's no
salvation for anybody. If He didn't endure all of the
agonies of the cross of Calvary, if all of our sins were not put
to His account, if He wasn't charged with our guilt, if all
of our iniquities didn't meet on Him, then we're of all men
most hopeless. And we have no cause to even
meet this morning. But they did meet on Him. And he said, nevertheless, not
my will, but thy will be done. Here's a holy man, the only holy
man who ever lived. And as he thought about what
awaited him, the horrors of bearing our sins, our transgressions,
our iniquities, and that wrath of God, the wrath that he was
very much aware of because it was his wrath too. He said, let it pass from me. But it couldn't. And he agonized. There was turmoil
in his soul. And then, then our Savior, He
goes to the cross. The garden experience is finished. That's done. That's done. One writer said this. He said
it was his opinion, and just his opinion you understand, that
Satan actually tempted him to forsake going through with death. I don't know about that. Maybe
he did. But I know this, He always conquered the evil. And whatever
His thoughts were, whatever His feelings were, we don't know.
Maybe one day in glory He'll go into it in more detail. Until
then, it's best for us just to leave what He said as having
been said by the Savior. Leave it there. But then the agonies of the cross
of Calvary came upon Him. What men did to Him, all of their
horrible things, their vile mistreatment, that's finished. That was finished. Now He's at the very end. At
the very end. and all of the wrath of God that
he had suffered in his own soul, all that God poured into his
holy soul, when God made his soul an offering for sin, all
of that is now finished. And the only thing that now remains
to happen is for him to give up the ghost. It is interesting that Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John all record various things about the crucifixion. And there is certainly some overlapping,
but this is one of the things that all of them mention. They
all say that he gave up the ghost. Unlike other men whose head would
drop down upon their chest and they die, our Lord Jesus willingly
gave himself up to death and bowed his head and then he gave
up the ghost. And the idea here is when it
says that He bowed his head and gave up the ghost. He breathed
out his last. He gave up his last breath. I'll tell you, when you give
up your last breath, or when your last breath is breathed,
that which is now gonna, you'll have to face is death. And our
Lord Jesus, He breathed out His last breath and He died. Over there in Luke, I read that
the Savior said, He prayed, Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit
to You. As though this is a valuable
treasure and I now commit it to You. I commit my soul into
the safekeeping hands of God. And God would indeed keep his
soul safe. And I'll say this to the people
of God, and I'm going to be speaking on the death of a righteous man
this evening. A righteous woman, the death
of a righteous person. I'll say this, when it comes
our time to die, we can know that our souls, when
our soul leaves the body, it will be in the good hands of
God. And really, our souls have always
been in the good hands of God. From the very moment that He
spoke our body into existence, And He put a soul, our soul,
in this body. He has always cared for the soul. We care for the body. Oh, that
we had more emphasis upon the care of the soul than the care
of the body. Men neglect the soul. and go
to great lengths to care for the body, but the body, no matter
what you do and what I do, is destined for the brave. It is appointed unto men once
to die, but that's not the end. After that, the judgment. and will do whatever is necessary
to benefit these bodies. And I'm not saying it's wrong
to do that. Take care of your body. It is,
after all, that tabernacle that God gave you. I visited my doctor this week
and she said, I'll give you a star. You've been doing good. I've
been trying to take care of the body a little bit. Take care
of my weight and my sugar and those things. He said, well,
I hope it lasts, preacher. Me too. Me too. And it's reasonable to take care
of the body. But no matter what we do, we're
not going to extend our lives. We won't live a day longer than
God has appointed. It's like I told somebody the
other day, I said, well, it looks like you're losing weight. I
said, yeah, I'm trying to get healthy. I want to die healthy. Well, we're going to die. We
do all of these things for the body. What about the soul? What are you doing for your soul? Listening to the Gospel? Believing
the message of grace? Feasting on the Word of God?
Speaking to your heavenly Father? It is so beneficial, so comforting
to know that when a believer dies, one of our oldest members,
Madge Roach, when in the presence of the Lord this past week. Isn't it comforting to know that
when she breathed her last, that her soul made a very quick exodus,
departure, out of her body, right into the arms of Christ Jesus. Whew, that's glorious. What a
wonderful thought. And when I spoke at the burial
site Thursday, I hope you understand what I'm saying here, it's an
easy, an easy funeral to preach. Because having visited with her,
talked with her, fellowshiped with her, Knowing of the Lord's
love for her and her love for the gospel, that's the evidence
that he loved her. She loved the gospel. When she
breathed out her last, nobody was with her except the Lord. When she breathed out her last,
the Lord took her soul just like that in his presence. Our Savior bowed His head, and
then He gave up the ghost. He gave up the ghost. Let me make several statements
here, and I don't want to labor you too long. These are not one-word
points as we typically like for them to be, but just let me make
five or six statements. concerning the death of our Lord
Jesus, His giving up the ghost. Number one, there is nothing
in all of creation, nothing in all of creation that is more
vital, more wonderful, and more important, and more magnificent
unto our God. than when our Lord Jesus gave
up the ghost. That's the most wonderful thing
to God. And I'm going to make good on
that. Turn over with me just a few pages to John chapter 10. Look at John chapter 10. Here's
the proof of that statement. That's a weighty statement. It
really is. that nothing in all of creation,
God made all of creation of course, but nothing is more wonderful,
more glorious, more vital, more important, more magnificent unto
God than when the Son of God gave up the ghost. When He dismissed
His Spirit. Look at John 10 and 17, and you'll
never read this anywhere else. John chapter 10 verse 17, and
many commentators have been puzzled over this statement. I think
I can help you with it, if you're puzzled about it. He says, therefore
doth my Father love me, and here's the reason. He says, because I lay down my
life that I might take it again. He said, no man taketh it from
me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down and
I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received
of my Father. Now certainly God has always
loved His Son. When the Lord Jesus was baptized,
God spoke. He said, this is My beloved Son
in whom I am well pleased. This is the Son that I love.
the Son that I love. But now He's speaking to our
Savior as that servant, that faithful, righteous servant.
He's speaking to Him as the mediator or the surety of the everlasting
covenant. He's speaking to Him as that
Savior who's going to give Himself a ransom for many. He speaks
to Him as that Lamb of God Who is going to die? And he says
specifically, therefore doth my Father love me. Here's the
reason my Father loves me, he says, because I lay down my life. I give up the ghost. I'm going
to die. My Father loves me. My Father
loves me because of that. It doesn't say that the Father
loved him because he lived a holy life, though he did. But that
isn't written anywhere. He doesn't say anywhere, I perform
all of these miracles, therefore my Father loves me. Doesn't say
that. We know that in his life he honored,
he kept all of God's law. But He doesn't say, I have kept
all of the law, therefore my Father loves me. And I would
take nothing away from His life. But it wasn't by His life that
He redeemed us. It wasn't by His life that He
satisfied justice. His life was indeed perfect. But life without death wouldn't
have honored God. And He ties this together. Therefore doth my Father love
me, and here's the reason I lay down my life, that I might take
it again. He rendered to God that which
God required for the salvation of His people. And he says this
in verse 18, no man takes it from me. This is how voluntary
his death was. No man takes it from me. No man
can force my life from me. They couldn't kill him. Nobody could lay a hand on him
apart from the sovereign purpose of God. He said, no man takes
my life from me. He said, I lay it down of myself. This is my life. I lay it down
willingly. I lay it down voluntarily. I lay it down as God's righteous,
faithful servant. He said, I have power to lay
it down. I have the variability and the
strength. I got strength to lay it down.
You see, with you and me, we die because of weakness. He said,
I have power to lay it down. This is a life that no man could
take from him. He has to give up his life. He has to give up the ghost. He has to commend his soul unto
the Father. He said, I have power to lay
it down, and guess what? I got power to take it again.
He said, this commandment have I received of my Father. I say nothing in all of creation
is more wonderful, more glorious, more important, more magnificent
to God than the death of His Son. And nothing in all of creation
ought to be more important to us than the death of His Son. The angels of heaven, they seek
to look into this redemptive work of our Lord Jesus when He
gave up the ghost. You know they were filled with
astonishment and amazement when the Son of God died at His birth. The angels said
to the shepherds, there is born this day in the city of David
a Savior. I got good news for you, a Savior
is born this day. It's Christ the Lord. And the
angels, they knew Him because He made them. In fact, there's every indication
from the book of Job that that was the first creative work of
the Son of God. And then these angels of light
called the sons of God in Job, they beheld all of His creative
acts. And they sang for joy. This is
their Creator. This is the One who gave them
being. And they watched as He spoke
all things into existence. And now He suffers and He bleeds
and He dies. And they had come to comfort
Him earlier in His ministry. But not now. Not now. The song is sung. He could have
called 10,000 angels. But He didn't. He didn't. Was Peter ever anxious to do
something? We've got to do something. They
come to arrest the Savior and Peter pulls that sword out and
he's ready to go to war for the Savior. He's going to split somebody's
head wide open and he just cuts off an ear. It's the right ear of the high
priest's servant, Malchus. Savior bent down, picked that
ear up, put it right back on. That shows you that a miracle,
seeing a miracle is not enough to make you a believer. Because
they all saw it. No more blood, no wound. Well, he had a story to tell,
didn't he? He could tell some things to
his kids and his grandkids. I tell you, I had my right ear
cut. It was completely cut off. And down on the ground, and this
man picked it up and reattached it. Do you even see a scar? No
stitches. I didn't go to the emergency
room. Our Lord Jesus said to Simon
Peter, put your sword up. Put your sword out. I've come to this hour according
to the purpose of God. He said, hey, if I wanted to,
I'd call 10,000 angels right now. They'd be here just like
that and wipe out all this bunch. But he said, how else shall the
Scripture be fulfilled? Scripture's got to be fulfilled. All the angels, they were watching. And Peter says that they seek
to look into redemption. They're puzzled by it. We studied the tabernacle in
the Holy of Holies. There are the two cherubim. golden
cherubim, and they're both facing each other, but looking down
at the mercy seat, looking at the blood, the blood every year
sprinkled on the mercy seat. It was a bloody lid of that Ark
of the Covenant. Solid gold. And those cherubims
are always in that position. Facing downward, looking at the
blood. But the very cherubim of God,
those real angels, they can't comprehend redemption. It leaves them, if I may put
it this way, scratching their heads. Why would He want to save people
like that? The angels, they beheld their
master, their Lord, who made them leave heaven's glories and
come down here to this earth. And they watched him, they beheld
him as he withstood all the horrible things that men did to him. What do you reckon those angels
wanted to do when they saw the enemies of our Savior spit in
His face? I bet they said, let us at them. We'll take care of them. Don't
worry, He can take care of Himself. He's the Lord of glory. And even
hell itself looked upon the death of our
Lord Jesus Christ as a mysterious thing. And I think about Satan. Satan and the third of the angels
that our Lord cast out of heaven when they committed treason against
God. I think about Satan. He did not
understand Genesis 3.15 that his head was going to be bashed
in by the death of the son of the woman, the seed of the woman.
He didn't understand that. If he had understood that, he
wouldn't have entered into the heart of Judas to betray him.
He didn't know what the result of Calvary would be. But he found
out. He found out when the Savior
dealt him a death blow by his death upon the cross of Calvary.
A blow from which there was no recovery. He didn't know that the death
of the Lord Jesus sealed his dome. And then thirdly, the servants
of the Lord. His preachers. They're all about
preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Him giving up the
ghost. That's really what we're all
about. I don't think people understand, at least not very many people
understand the ministry of a true preacher of the gospel. We're
always studying the Scriptures looking for Him. Looking for
Him. looking to see how our sins were
atoned for, how righteousness was brought in. You know, I enjoy reading. I
used to read my favorite book to read, of
course, The Word of God. I used to read other books more
than I do now. Now, it's mainly the Word of
God and running cross-references and so forth. But I still, I
want to be challenged by reading. And there are men who kind of
put things in a little different light or word things a little
differently than I do. And I read what they have to
say. But so often I read these books,
they get so technical. And they do challenge the mind. But the preacher of the gospel,
hear me, and I wish I could tell preachers this. Our ministry
is not to challenge the mind. Boy, he had said some things
this morning. Man, I'm gonna have to go home
and study those. And he spoke some words. I look forward to
getting my dictionary out. I don't want to challenge your
mind. I want the gospel to touch your
heart. That's what we want. I want my heart to be warmed.
I don't know how you feel. But when I listen to somebody
preach, I don't want him to give me a
theological dissertation. I don't want him to read a paper
to me. I think I've told you this. I
preached years ago in a church where you folks were members
of. And they know who I'm talking
about. I won't point them out. I was
preaching for them. And a guy who preached before
me, he was so... Tried to act deep. And he said, now I'm going to
put the spiritual cookies this morning up on the top shelf.
And you go, oh, you're going to have to work hard to get them. But it'll be worth it. I'm going
to put them way up here. It's really going to challenge
you, but if you'll stay with me and stretch with your mind,
I believe you'll get this. Well, I couldn't even get it. And then I got up afterwards,
I said, our brother has talked about putting the spiritual cookies
up on the top shelf. I'm just gonna put them right
down on the bottom shelf where we can just bend over and get
them. I said, how's that? I don't know why that guy never
got in touch with me again. We lost contact with one another. I don't go for that stuff. You see, there are some preachers,
it's regrettable, that you hear them preach, they'll add in the
Lord Jesus and his giving up the ghost, his substitutionary
death, they'll add it as sort of a P.S. Oh, and by the way,
Christ died for our sins according to Scripture. I was reading a
commentary the other day. This guy goes through all these
pages, page after page after page, and he gets to the end,
And in essence, it was a P.S. He said, this picture is Christ
in this way, this way, this way. And that was all he had to say. That's religion today. You see, in this church, the
gospel of redeeming grace is not a P.S. It's not something
that is just added at the end of the message. Christ and Him
crucified is our message. Isn't that right? He is our message. Therefore, Paul said, he said,
woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel. Easter, we tuned
in and then we lost the signal here. And I was sick, of course,
down in South Carolina. And I found a couple of other
preachers and I listened to them a little bit. How can you talk
about the resurrection and not preach about the death that led
to the resurrection? That's beyond me. But many managed
to do it. Paul said to the Corinthians,
when I was with you, I had a determination not to know anything among you
except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And it almost seemed like these
television preachers, a good many of them, most of them, and
most preachers anyhow, they're bound and determined to preach
anything but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. You want to honor
God? I didn't brag on his son. I bragged
on his death. Therefore the Father loved me
because I laid down my life that I might take it again. Well,
maybe that which pleases God so much is what we ought to major
on. You ever think of that? We're
pretty dense, aren't we? Had a man said, well, I preach
the gospel every once, not me, he said of himself. He said,
I preach the gospel every once in a while on Sunday morning.
But Sunday night and Wednesday night, I preach to the people
of God. I said, me too. Me too, which brings me to my
next point. The children of God want to hear
the gospel of the grace of God, the gospel of redeeming love. Yes, the Father chose a people
to salvation. Yes, the Son of God died. And
yes, the Spirit of God quickens. In Ephesians 1, everything God
does to the praise of the glory of His grace. But don't ever,
don't ever preach on election without bringing redemption also. because the election of some
people unto salvation made redemption a necessity. You say, well, that guy preached
the sovereignty of God. Well, I sure am glad. Did he
preach the gospel? You see, the sovereignty of God,
though there's nobody here who loves the truth and bows to the
truth of the sovereignty of God any more than I do, but sovereignty
without substitution will do you no good. We've got to tell people they
gave up the ghost. It's the only message God will
use for the salvation of sinners. Go ahead and preach the golden
rule. Preach about divorce. Not long ago, I got an email
and somebody said, this person said, you need to listen to this
message. It is very beneficial to all
the people of God to listen to this message against adultery.
Well, we preach adultery is sin. And this sovereign grace preacher
had preached an entire message on adultery. So I listened to
it. The person asked me what I thought
of it. I said, well, he convinced me it's wrong. as if I needed convincing. But
I said, there's only one issue I would take with that message.
He didn't bring it back around to the substitutionary death
of Jesus Christ. And that is a fatal, fatal flaw. If you go hear a man preach one
time and he doesn't preach the gospel, it's that preacher's
fault. If you go back and hear Him again,
it's not His fault any longer. That's your fault. Man, I'm not
going to listen to a man again who first time he didn't preach
the truth, didn't set forth Christ, Him crucified. I'm not going
to listen to him anymore. I'm done with him. Sounds pretty
judgmental, preacher. The Lord Jesus said, judge a
righteous judge. A righteous judgment. I do know what the truth is and
I know what you need to hear. I know who you need to hear about. There's no salvation in any of
these other subjects. And when we deal with them, absolutely,
adultery is wrong. because it's giving your love
to somebody who is not deserving of it. But you see, we've all
been spiritual adulterers. We've given the love of our hearts
to the gods of this world rather than the only one who deserves
it, and that's our God. We've been unfaithful. The Apostle
Paul, in 2 Corinthians, he talks about the subject of giving.
We give of our offerings. The Lord loves a cheerful giver.
But He always manages, the Apostle, He always manages to bring it
back around to the subject, His favorite subject. He said, you
know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who though He was rich
became poor, that you through His poverty might be rich. And
when speaking to the Corinthians about gifts, He said, thanks
be unto God for His unspeakable gift. In Ephesians, he talked
about wives being submissive to their husbands. Absolutely.
As the church is submissive to Christ. He said, husband, love
your wives as Christ also loved the church. Husbands, love your
wife. Well, what kind of love? What
kind of love Christ had for His church? What kind of love was
that? A self-sacrificing love. He loved us so much He gave Himself
for us. And I'll tell you what needs
to happen. This needs to happen to you, to you folks who are
watching, and it needs to happen even more to me. We need to fall
more in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's amazing what changes that
will bring about in your attitude, in your motive, in your desires. Oh God, let me love him who gave
up the ghost for me. Let me love him more and more.
He is indeed the friend of sinners. Bless his name. Get your songbooks
turned to 49, I believe it is. Number 49, let's sing about our
great Savior. I just want you to sing the first
stanza. That will be all. Number 49,
let's sing about our great Savior. Stand together, please.