Thank you. Let's open our Bibles
to Luke chapter 23. Again this evening, Luke chapter
23, words from the cross. Our Lord Jesus, by divine appointment,
is led to Golgotha's brow, where he will give his life as a ransom
for his people. It was among the Romans a traditional
thing that at every Passover, in order to continue goodwill
toward Israel, and in order to kind of appease the Jews, the
governor of that area, and this time it was a man by the name
of Pilate, he would release to the Jews a prisoner that they
would like to have released. This was a way that the government
kind of helped keep the people in check, to kind of give some
goodwill toward the people, and that worked very well. Well,
a man had been arrested and had been found guilty of insurrection
and murder. The man's name was Barabbas.
Matthew says in Matthew 27 and 16, he was a notable prisoner,
notable prisoner which means he was a very notorious man. He was a rebellious man against
authority. As I indicated this morning,
most likely he had stood before Pilate because, after all, Pilate
was the judge. He's the general of the armies.
He's administrator of the government, the taxation department. He's
also the judge. And this man Pilate said in judgment,
no doubt, upon Barabbas, and he sentenced him to death. Now,
of course, this man Pilate, he knew firsthand of the man's guilt. He knew what an awful man he
was. He would just He was a man who
needed to die. He needed to be put away from
society and something had to be done to him so he wouldn't
be a threat anymore. He needed to be crucified and
that was the just sentence that Pilate passed against
this man Barabbas. Well, this governor had what
he thought was a good idea, the way he could get Jesus released
because he had already found that Jesus, he said, I find no
fault in this man. Same thing Herod said, and here
Pilate thought he had a good idea. He said, well, I'll release to you whoever you
say. Barabbas? or Jesus, and his thinking
was, they don't want Barabbas released. He's a murderer. He's an insurrectionist. Surely
they'll want Jesus released. After all, he's a worker of miracles. He's the one that everybody went
to when they were sick. And indeed, our Lord Jesus, He
was the Great Physician, and He never turned anybody away
who was sick. He healed every disease that
appeared before Him, every diseased person. And so He puts this before
the people, and you know how the people responded. They said,
at verse 18, of Luke 23, and they cried out
all at once, saying, away with this man, release unto us Barabbas. And then in the next verse, Luke
tells us what an awful man that he was. And then, of course,
Pilate, therefore, look at verse 20, willing to release Jesus.
He wanted to release Jesus. He spake again to them, who do
you want released? And they said, we want Jesus
to be crucified. Again, here's what the governor
said, what evil hath he done? I find no fault in him. I'll
just beat him and that'll be the end of it. But they wouldn't
stand for that. And so the voices, it says in
the end of verse 23, the voices of them and the chief priests
prevailed. and the governor gave sentence. Well, this is the way
it's going to be. Jesus will die. And he released
unto them him that, verse 25, that sedition and murder was
cast into the prison whom they desired. But notice this last
statement in verse 25. But he delivered Jesus to their
will. I love the way you read this
passage this morning because you labored on that. You emphasized
that. And that was the right thing
to do. This man delivered Jesus to their will. There are those who defend man's
will and say we all have a free will. This is what men will do
with the Lord Jesus Christ if they have their will, if they
have their way. They despise Him. They reject
Him. They won't have Him. This is
evidence of man's depravity, of man's own sinfulness. Every
man's sinfulness. We don't want Jesus. You know,
in our society today, Jesus, the name of Jesus, The person
who's preached as Jesus, he's very popular. Everybody likes
him. Everybody loves him. In fact,
next Lord's Day, everybody's going to be singing about his
resurrection. They're going to be singing up
from the grave he arose. But I'll tell you this, this
one who is the Lord Jesus, He is as much despised today as
He was back then. He is as much hated today as
He was back then. You see, these people, here's
the vast majority of people in Jerusalem, they had no use for
Jesus of Nazareth. They loved His healing of their
sick. They loved these other miracles
that He did. They loved the fact that He fed
them when they were hungry. But that which they would not
abide was His sovereign rule. And they said, we will not have
this man, not this man, rule over us. Not this one. We don't
want Him to rule over us. We're not going to have Him to
rule over us. But here's the fact of the matter.
Jesus of Nazareth is the Lord. He's the Lord of glory. He's
the sovereign and He does His will and way in everything. And this was what they despised
about Jesus of Nazareth. He's the Lord. He's the Lord
of glory. He showed mercy to whom He would
show mercy. when he, in John chapter 5, when
he went through looking at all the sick people there, lame people
there, and nobody was asking him to be healed. Anybody who
asked him to be healed, or was brought to him for healing, he
always healed them. But nobody was asking for healing,
and there was a man there who had been lame 38 years. And our
Lord Jesus, He healed that man, but nobody else. It was his sovereignty,
the sovereignty of his mercy that they despised. Our Lord
Jesus, when he went to Nazareth, and this is what he preached,
sovereign grace. Luke chapter four. He talked
about all those widows in Israel and God's servant, Elijah, was
sent to a Gentile widow. He talked about all the lepers
in Israel and God's servant, Elisha, he was sent and he ministered
to a Gentile, to a Syrian officer of the military. that upset people. You see, whenever the Lord conducts
Himself as the Lord, and He manifests Himself to be that One who is
sovereign over all, that's when men get upset. Because men, we
like to think this way, we're the master of our own fate. We'll
control our own destiny. And then men learn, as our Lord
has set forth, as He has proclaimed, that they don't control anything.
It's the Lord of glory. This is the one that people hate.
People love the God who blesses everybody and who loves everybody
and hates nobody, but that's not the God of the Bible. That's
a figment of men's imagination. This is what people despised
about the Lord Jesus, that He was the sovereign. And they said,
let's be rid of Him once and for all. And so they said, put
Him to death, put Him to death. But this all happened according
to the will of God, according to God's eternal purpose. Our
Lord goes to hang upon the cross of Calvary in fulfillment of
the Old Testament scriptures. And there he hangs nailed to
the cross. And from that cross, he has seven
specific words that are so full of instruction to you and me
and to all of the people of God. Let's go through them briefly
here this evening. First of all, Luke 23 and verse
34, here's the word of the mediator. Luke chapter 23 and verse 34,
then said Jesus. You notice in verse 33, they
crucified him. All of this was determined by
God and now it says, then Jesus said, Father, forgive them for
they know not what they do. Here is the statement or the
word of the mediator. He speaks to God for the guilty. He speaks to the father on the
behalf of sinners. Listen, throughout the Old Testament,
this has always indicated you cannot come to God apart from
the mediator. It's like when the children of
Israel, and I mentioned this a week or two ago, when they
were at Mount Sinai and the mountain thundered and all the things
that were going on, it filled them with fear. And they said,
Moses, you speak to God. We're too afraid. We're too much
filled with fear. You speak for us. If there's
something to be said to God, you speak. If God's got something
to say to us, you speak to us. We need a mediator. That's all
the way through the Old Testament. And here's our Lord Jesus. He's
praying for the guilty. He's praying for those who are
sinful. He says, Father, forgive them. Here's the suffering Savior. He's bearing the sins of His
people. He's facing the indescribable
wrath of God as the penalty for our sins. Here's our covenant
head and our covenant surety fulfilling His obligations by
dying upon the cross of Calvary in order to save His people from
their sins. Here's the Passover lamb who's
being offered as that sacrifice unto God. Here is God's Son. He's suffering. He's suffering
at the hands of wicked men. He's suffering between two wicked
men and He prays for those who made Him suffer. These are His very first words
from the cross. These are the words of our only
Mediator. We read in 1 Timothy chapter
2, For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus. Here's our Lord Jesus. He's suspended
between heaven and earth. And He speaks to the Father on
the behalf of the guilty. And I believe He's speaking not
only about some of the people who were there present, But He's
also speaking about all of His people. Father, forgive them. They're ignorant. That's what
He says. They don't know what they do.
They're ignorant. He does show compassion on the
ignorant. You know, the Savior Himself
understands our feebleness. He understands our lack of knowledge. In fact, He has to make us wise
unto salvation, does He not? He has to give us knowledge.
And He was very much aware of the fact that those who were
crucifying Him were doing it out of ignorance. Out of ignorance. In what, 1 Corinthians chapter
2, if the leaders back then, if Paul said if they had known,
if they had known the Lord of glory, they wouldn't have done
what they did. They did it out of ignorance. Out of ignorance. And our Savior says concerning
those who ignorantly, ignorantly sin, Father, forgive them. Hold your place here. There's
an interesting passage of scripture. Look over in Acts chapter three.
Now, I believe there was a future people that our Lord is considering. In fact, all of his people, Father
forgive them for they know not what they do. But I believe also
there were some people there present before him who would
be forgiven. Listen, many of those there,
they were present at the day of Pentecost when Peter started
preaching. And our Lord's prayer is answered.
Father, forgive them. And they were brought to true
repentance. In fact, don't you remember in
Acts chapter 2, when the people heard that God had made Jesus
Lord and Christ? They said, men and brethren,
what shall we do? You know what Peter said? Repent!
And indicate your repentance by baptism. These people were
baptized because they believed Christ, and their repentance
was because of the remission of sins, because of the forgiveness
of sins. And he says this over in chapter
three. Notice in chapter three, and
you still hear a bunch of these people who undoubtedly were at
the cross, who witnessed all the things that happened at Calvary,
And Peter says to them in verse 13, Acts 3, the God of Abraham
and of Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers hath glorified
his son, Jesus, whom ye delivered up and denied him in the presence
of Pilate when he was determined to let him go. but you denied
the Holy One and the just and desired a murderer to be granted
unto you. And you killed the Prince of
Life, whom God raised from the dead, whereof we're witnesses. And his name, through faith in
his name, hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know. Yea, the faith which is by him
hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all."
Now watch this in verse 17. And now brethren, I want, I acknowledge
that through ignorance, you did it. As did also your rulers. And
remember our Lord's very first word from the cross, Father forgive
them, they don't know what they're doing. And here Peter acknowledges
the fact as well. I want that through your ignorance,
you did it. We're an ignorant people. These
were an ignorant people. They didn't know the Lord of
glory. They didn't know that this man Jesus of Nazareth was
God in the flesh. Otherwise, they wouldn't have
done that. But even in their ignorance, here is our Lord having
great compassion upon them, and He says, Father, forgive them. Father, forgive them. You see,
the only one who can forgive sin is God himself. I can't forgive you of your sins.
That's the reason we don't have a little booth off to the side
somewhere with a partition and you get on one side and I'll
get on the other side and then we'll open some kind of opening
there and you can speak to me and confess your sins and then
I say I absolve you of your sins. Well, that's foolishness. Nobody
can forgive sin, but the one who's been sinned against. It's
like David said in Psalm 51, against thee, thee only have
I sinned, and none this evil in thy sight. Forgiveness is
of the Lord. You remember our Savior. He forgave
the sins of the man sick of the palsy. Matthew 9-2, he said,
son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee. To the woman
who washed his feet with her tears in the house of Simon,
he said, thy sins are forgiven. He forgave the sins himself. Who can forgive sins but God? That's even what his enemies
said. As God, he forgave sin. But watch this. In this context,
he doesn't forgive. He says, Father, forgive. Father
forgive. Why does He now ask the Father
to forgive these who were ignorantly doing the things that they were
doing instead of directly pronouncing forgiveness Himself? And here's
the reason, because He hangs on that cross as one who is guilty
by imputation of all the sins of all of His people. He's hanging
there as the Son of Man and the Son of God. And in that capacity,
He is not the one who will forgive the sin. That's up to the Father. He's hanging there as a convicted
felon. And He's even convicted and found
guilty in the court of heaven. He's guilty of all the sins that
were heaped upon Him by God Himself. He's guilty. He is Himself a
mass of iniquity, having been laid upon Him, all charged to
His account. He can't forgive them. Not in
this capacity. It's the Father who will do it. Father, forgive them for they
know not what they do. You know, here's our Lord Jesus
fulfilling Old Testament prophecy. Isaiah chapter 53, the last verse
of the chapter says, therefore will I divide him a portion with
the great and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because
he poured out his soul unto death. He was numbered with the transgressors
and he bear the sin of many and made intercession. for the transgressors. Here he is making intercession
for the transgressors. Here he is praying for you. Here
he is praying for me. Here he is praying for all of
his elect, the son of God. The first word from the cross
is indeed a word of forgiveness. It's the word spoken by our mediator. And then there's another word
from the cross. It's found in this same chapter,
if you'll go back to Luke chapter 23. And it is the word of the
sovereign king, Luke chapter 23. Look at verse 39. And one of the malefactors which
were hanged, railed on him saying, if thou be Christ, save thyself
and us. But the other answering rebuked
him. And he said, dost not thou fear
God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly,
we are receiving our dear reward. It's a result of our deeds. But
he says, this man, This man, oh, what a man. The only perfect man who's ever
lived. This man hath done nothing amiss. And then he said to Jesus, Lord, how that must have irritated
the ears of the Jews who were gathered around the cross Here's
this man daring to call Jesus of Nazareth Lord. And our Savior, He's wearing
the crown of thorns. He's nailed to the cross. He
is a bloody mess. And to the eye of the casual
observer, He's a helpless victim. And yet here is a man dying beside
of him, and he says, you're the Lord. Lord, remember me. Who will call Jesus of Nazareth
Lord, but a man in whose heart the Spirit of Christ has worked?
Because no man can call Jesus Lord, but by the Spirit of grace,
by the Holy Spirit. Here's the sovereign king. The
sovereign king. He answers in verse 43, verily
I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in
paradise in a walled garden. That's what paradise means. A
walled garden, a garden that is protected. A garden into which
enemies cannot come in. A walled garden, beautiful, glorious. It is indeed paradise, protected
by God Himself. And our Savior says to this believing
thief today, that's where you're going to be and you'll be with
me because that's where I'm going to be. The other thief, He died and went to hell. He died as He lived. He lived in wickedness. He died
in wickedness. He lived in sin. He died in sin. He died in rebellion. He lived
in rebellion. He died in rebellion. He lived
with a fist in God's face. He died with a fist in God's
face. But it's not in God's face anymore.
He's suffering the wrath of God forever. And the only difference
between these two thieves, the only difference is the difference
the king made, the sovereign king. He said, I will show mercy
to whom I'll show mercy. I'll be compassionate to whom
I'll be compassionate. He showed sovereign mercy. Today, you'll be with me in paradise. Not today you'll go to purgatory
and suffer a little while for your sins. No! Today! Not after many years, but today
thou shalt be with me in paradise. In paradise. The next time some
silly preacher says, and you hear him say, what will you do
with Jesus? Tell him we already did something
to Jesus. We killed the Lord of glory,
but God made Him the Lord. So the question now is, what
will Jesus do with me? It's not a question of what will
you do with Jesus. You think the Lord of glory is
in your hands? Boy, man really thinks he's important,
doesn't he? We think we're big. Jesus is
in my hands. There's even a song. I bet you
remember. What will you do with Jesus? Jesus is standing in Pilate's
hall, friendless, forsaken, betrayed by all. That's what he said.
Hearken what men at the sudden call. What will you do with Jesus? And they use that as an invitational
song. What will you do with Jesus?
Neutral you cannot be. And someday your heart will be
asking, Someday the Lord will say to
you, what will you do with me? No, that's not the way it is.
That's not the way it is. It's not what will you do with
Jesus, it's what will the Lord Jesus do with you. There are
two thieves. Could He have saved both of them
if it had been His will? Of course. Could He have saved
all of those who are around Him? These three crosses, of course. He saves whom He will. But here
are two thieves. One is left to die in his sins. Is that unjust? That's not unjust. for a man to get exactly what
he deserves? That's not unjust, that's justice. That's what that's called. That's
justice. And here's another man who lived
just as violently and just as godless a life as did his buddy,
but yet he finds mercy in the hour of death. That's the word
of the sovereign king. Here's the king of grace. Opening
up a man's heart. Here's the King of Grace giving
him a new heart of faith. Here's the Prince of Peace giving
peace to a man who before this never had any peace. Here's the
King of Glory. He promises mercy and everlasting
life to a man who could never merit salvation and everlasting
life. And he says, remember me. Remember me. 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 am resolved to try. For if I stay away, I know I
must forever die." Salvations of the Lord. This man, by faith,
he came to Christ Jesus. Faith was given to him, and he
believed. And where did the sovereign king
take this man? to paradise. Today, you'll be with me. Who
died first? The Savior did. And he went to
glory and he opened up the gates of heaven. Make way. Here's a redeemed sinner. He's
coming right behind me. And I'll tell you, ever since,
all these redeemed sinners have been just going through the gates
of glory. based upon the doing and the
dying of the Lord Jesus. The third word from the cross
is found in John chapter 19. John chapter 19, the word of
the compassionate provider. You'll notice here in John chapter
19, It says in verse 25, John 19,
25, now they're stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother, his
mother's sister Mary, the wife of Cleophas and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus, this is John 19,
26, when Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciples
standing by whom he loved, he said unto his mother, he didn't
say mother, he said woman, behold thy son. And then he said to
the disciple, behold, I'm mother. And from that hour, that disciple
took her into his own house. You know, our Lord Jesus in Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, he never spoke to Mary using the word
mother. Now the Holy Spirit would say,
of Mary, she's the mother of Jesus. But our Lord Jesus, it's
never recorded that He said to her, mother, mother. He speaks to her as woman. She's one of His elect. And here
He makes provision for her, not because she was the mother of
His body, His flesh, He makes provision for her because, number
one, she is His child. She's His child. He is, after
all, said to be the everlasting Father. Isaiah chapter 9 and
verse 6. And also because she is, she's
one of the redeemed ones. He was dying to save her, to
put away her sins, to make her righteous before the Father,
to answer all the demands of the broken law for her. He says,
Woman, Woman, behold Thyself. Here's what he's doing. He is
himself being the very compassionate provider. And we see his faithfulness
to the law of God. Honor thy father and thy mother. That's what the law of God says. That thy days may be long upon
the earth. And here he is making provision
for her. We make provision for and we
honor our parents. And those of you whose parents
are living, there is a respect and an honor that is due to them
according to the Word of God. And here is the very perfect
man, Christ Jesus, showing He is a compassionate provider. He's taking care of that one
from whose womb he came, who provided for him all of his childhood,
this woman that he came to save. I cannot imagine, and you ladies,
you moms, you could more enter into perhaps the feelings of
Mary. You remember when Mary and Joseph
took the Lord Jesus to the temple, and of course, Simeon was there,
and he said, now let us thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation, which shall be to all people through
the earth. But then he looked at Mary. He didn't say this to
Joseph, he said this to Mary. And by the way, most Bible Students
believe that sometime after our Lord Jesus was 12 years of age,
sometime after that, Joseph died. And so Mary was a widow. But
our Lord Jesus is making provision for her and looking after her
and fulfilling the law of God for her. And this is what Simeon
said, only to her. He didn't say it to Joseph. He said, also, yea, a sword shall
pierce thy soul also. That's what he said. When do
you think that happened? That's right here. Can you make
like a dagger in her heart? This is the one that she brought
into this world. She cradled Him. She wrapped
Him. She fed Him. She looked after
Him like moms do. She combed His hair and bathed
Him. And all of those things that
infants have to have done to them provided for them. She provided
for Jesus of Nazareth, for Her Son. And now she sees, she sees
all this, all this awfulness directed toward him and all the
jeers and all the mockery. And she sees he's a bloody mess. There was a sword in her soul. You know it had to be. And I
expect she's there. And the scripture gives no indication
that she made a spectacle or she made a scene, but you know
her heart's broken. Could you stand to see your son
beaten, battered, bloodied, face swollen, and people mocking him
and spitting on him? He's your boy? That's a sword. as our Lord suffered all this
shame. He loved her more than a son
loves his mother. He loved her as the Savior loves
his people. And he's making provision for
her. You see, he is himself making
provision for her spiritually and eternally. And he's going
to make sure that John makes provision for her physically. And then the middle word from
the cross is my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The
reference is Matthew 27, 46, if you wanna turn there, but
I would rather you went back to Psalm 22, where Terry read
for us Psalm 22. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me is taken right from this psalm. And this word from
the cross is the very middle word. It's the word of the great
substitute. And of course it is taken from
verse one of Psalm 22. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping
me and from the words of my roaring? Oh my God, I cry in the daytime,
but thou hearest not, and in the night season, and am not
silent, but thou art holy. And this is why God forsook him. Thou art holy, O Thou who inhabitest
the praises of Israel. And by the way, the very last
verse that Terry read, which is the last verse of Psalm 22,
they shall come and shall declare His righteousness unto a people
that shall be born, that He hath done this literally, and in the
Amplified it reads, and in the Revised Standard Version it reads,
it is finished. It is finished. the work of redemption. Here he is, forsaken by the Father. Terry read for us, and I wanna
emphasize this again. Look at verse four of this Psalm. He says, our fathers trusted
in thee, they trusted, you delivered them. They cried unto thee and
they were delivered. They trusted in thee and they
were not confounded, but I'm a worm. I'm a worm and no man. A reproach of men and despised
of the people. I'm a worm. Literally, I'm a
scarlet worm. I'm a scarlet worm. The scarlet
worm was where they got the dyes for scarlet. And the female worm
would affix itself to the bark of a tree. And just tenaciously,
they would hang on to that tree. And the scarlet worm would lay
her eggs. And then the larva would hatch.
And then the mother, she would bleed out on the tree. And she would give her life to
protect her young, who then began their life cycle. And is that
not a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ? He attached Himself to
the tree, to the cross, to the tree of shame. He was crucified,
but He Himself, He was held there by His own love. The nails couldn't
hold Him because He made the mines from which the nails were
made. It's His love. It's His love
that held Him there. And He held Himself there tenaciously
to finish the work of redemption in order that His little ones
might be safe. And it is said that from the
bark of the tree, when the scarlet worm bled upon the bark, they
would extract from that bark the scarlet And that's what they
use to dye things scarlet. Oh, we're redeemed by the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is our great substitute. He's separated from God. Separated from life. Separated
from light. Cut off from the presence of
God. And I said this morning, and I don't have much more to
say about this, I don't know how God can forsake God. I know the reason. Because all
of our sins were met upon the head of the scapegoat, upon our
Savior, and God's too holy to look on sin, and God looked away. So our Savior no longer calls
Him Father, but my God. My God, my God, why hast Thou
forsaken me? He's cut off from the presence
of the Father. And nobody knows what happened
in those three hours of darkness except to say this, a legal transaction
took place and our Savior suffered all the hell that all of His
people would have suffered forever. The wages of sin is death. That's
what he got. He got the wages for our sin. God paid him back for our sins. God exacted from his only begotten
son the death and the judgment that God's justice demanded.
And that's why there's no condemnation to us. There's no hell for us.
None whatsoever. And I'll tell you, if Christ
was forsaken by the Father for us, we're never going to be forsaken. He's always with us. And let
me go quickly, here's the fifth one. The word of the man Christ
Jesus. He said in John 19.28, I thirst.
I thirst. He's a real man. I think this indicates at least
three things. Bodily thirst. In anguish of
body, burning with fever, he said, I thirst. And I believe
he's also speaking of a soul thirst. You remember what David
said in the Psalms, as the heart panteth after the water brook.
So panteth my soul after thee, O God." He's saying, I thirst
for the presence of God. I'm cut off from God, I thirst. But I think there's another thirst
here. It is his heart thirst. He thirsted for the souls of
his people. He thirsted to redeem his people. He was thirsty to accomplish
reconciliation and bring in righteousness for us. He thirsted. And due to Him being
thirsty, we'll never be thirsty. We're never going to experience
what the rich man experienced and is experiencing in hell.
Just a drop of water, that's what I want. That's what He said.
To cool my tongue. We're never going to have to
endure that. Because the Savior thirsted for us. And then, in
the sixth place, The word of victorious Redeemer, which I
preached upon the last couple of Sundays. It is finished. It
is finished. What's finished? The Father's
will of redemption. What's finished? He saved His
people from their sins. What's finished? All the Old
Testament offerings and sacrifices. What's finished? All of our sin. All of our sin. He made an end
of them. It is finished. He brought in
everlasting life. It's finished. He brought in
eternal redemption. It is finished. He fulfilled
the curse of the law. It is finished. And then lastly,
here's the word of the obedient and contented servant of God. Look with me again in Luke chapter
23. I'll give you this one and I'll
quit. Luke chapter 23. Luke chapter
23. Verse 46. And when Jesus had
cried with a loud voice. He's nearly dead. This is the end of it. He's been
hanging there for six hours. nailed to the cross at nine o'clock
in the morning, nine till 12, and at 12 o'clock, God blotted
out the sun, 12 to three. He was nailed to the cross at
nine o'clock, the time of the morning sacrifice. He gave up
the ghost at three o'clock in the afternoon, the time of the
evening sacrifice, and that's when the veil of the temple was
rent from top to bottom. But here he cries with a loud
voice and he says, Father, oh, the light is shining again. It's
no longer my God, my God, but it's as he began. Father, now
he says, Father, into thy hands I commend, I deposit my spirit,
my soul. And having said thus, he gave
up the ghost. Oh, the words of our Savior.
What a word here of contentment that He had done the work that
God gave Him to do. Here's the obedient and contented
servant of God. I'll tell you, and I know this subject has been
preached on thousands of times by God's preachers. And there
have been books written, and so today I haven't added anything. I've just kind of scratched the
surface of these verses of Scripture. But I know this, it's always
good for us to make a visit to the cross of Calvary. To see
our Lord smitten again for us. To see again what He suffered
in order to save us and to redeem us. Ah, she played, Marty played
this morning the offertory, the way of the cross leads home. And I'll never get sight of the
gates of light if the way of the cross I miss. If you miss
the cross of Calvary, if you miss the cross of our Lord Jesus,
you'll miss the gates of heaven. You'll miss everlasting bliss. You'll miss salvation. And all
that happened there, which we have just kind of put it in a
capsule today, but there's an infinite amount of truth in all
of these seven words that our Lord spoke. But suffice to say
this, this is our Savior. And in those three hours of His
deepest agony on the cross, His heart and His soul was absorbed
love for His people. We were never out of His minds,
never out of His thoughts. Hey, we never have been. From
old eternity, He's loved us with an everlasting love. Let's sing
a closing song