Matt, that was a good... Oh,
he's out of the room. I was going to say, that was
a good on-ramp. Those verses he read to what
we're going to be reading today. I've titled this message, The
Sovereign God Yielded. Sovereign God Yielded. And I'm
going to start off with four different verses. Four verses,
starting in Mark. And that's it. We're just going
to read the four verses. Mark chapter 15. Starting in verse 33. Chapter 15, verse 33. Now when the sixth hour had come,
there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And
at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying,
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which is translated, my God,
my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of those who stood
by when they heard that said, look, he is calling for Elijah.
And then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine put
it on a reed, and offered it to him to drink,
saying, let him alone, let us see if Elijah will come to take
him down. And Jesus cried out with a loud
voice and breathed his last." Turn to the book of John for
our next one. John 19, these are all verses
recorded of Jesus' crucifixion. So John 19, starting in verse
28, says, after this, Jesus, knowing
that all things were now accomplished that the scripture might be fulfilled,
said, I thirst. Now a vessel full of sour wine
was sitting there, and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put
it on a hyssop, and put it to his mouth. So when Jesus had
received the sour wine, he said, it is finished. And bowing his
head, he gave up his spirit. Turn to the book of Luke, chapter
23. Just one book back. Luke chapter 23. starting in verse 44. It says, Now it was about the sixth
hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the
ninth hour. Then the sun was darkened, and
the veil of the temple was torn in two. And when Jesus had cried
out with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands I commit
my spirit. Having said this, he breathed
his last." And the last verse we're going to look at is in
Matthew 27. Matthew 27, starting in verse
45. Matthew 27, verse 45. It says, now from the sixth hour
until the ninth hour, there was darkness over all the land. And
about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying,
Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, that is my God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? And some of those who stood there
when they heard that said, this man is calling for Elijah. And
immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with
sour wine, and put it on a reed, and offered it to him to drink.
And the rest said, let him alone. Let us see if Elijah will come
to save him. And It's hard to get through these. And Jesus cried out again with
a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. Now what made me want to preach
this message to you today was a hymn we all sing. all the time,
it's by Fanny Crosby. She said, or she wrote, to God be the glory, great things
he has done. So loved he the world that he
gave us his son, who yielded his life and atonement for sin,
and opened the life gate that all his sheep, I wrote that,
may go in. Now it is against man's nature
to yield. To yield means to give something
up. And we all like things, and we
like power, and we like to have power. We like it too much. And we don't want to give them
to anyone else. So when a person yields to someone, they are declining to use their
power or rightful position to have their way. And instead,
they let the one in the weaker position have their way. That's
what yielding means. Now, we know that in the times
of kingdoms, everyone yielded to the king. He was up there. There was no one above the King.
He had that station of power and authority. But that's not
the same kind of yielding that Jesus did. Jesus yielded
up Himself, the stronger for the weaker. So I considered how Jesus yielded
up his life and I found two reasons why that fact was and still is
marvelous. The first is that Jesus was God
in the flesh and God is sovereign. That is one of his primary attributes. He wouldn't be God without sovereignty. Don Fortner wrote a book called
Grace for Today, and he listed three things about God and his
salvation that were a special comfort to his soul. One of those
things he listed was God's sovereignty. He said, the Lord our God is
absolutely sovereign. In creation, in providence, and
in salvation, God has his way and accomplishes his will. Nothing ever comes to pass in
God's creation except that which my Heavenly Father has purposed. He says, I am God and there is
none else. I am God and there is none like
me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times
the things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand,
and I will do all my pleasure." That's from Isaiah 46. Don continues, my heart can safely
trust a sovereign God. The God of heaven is a God who
does what he will, has mercy on whom he will, and graciously
accomplishes the eternal salvation of his covenant people by his
own right arm. And every believer is not just
okay with that. They're not just, okay, fine. They delight in it. They delight
in the fact that God is sovereign. None of the elect wish that God
was not sovereign. We know some things about God's
sovereignty and salvation. Because our God is sovereign,
He can call us effectually. Effectually. Our God can heal our broken soul
because He's sovereign. Our God can love us and cause
us to love Him. The God, excuse me, the God of
false Christianity can only scream in your ear to please listen,
but he cannot call you out from death unto life. The God of false
Christianity pouts on his throne and hopes that someone, somewhere,
sometime before they die, begs him to forgive their sins. That's
not a sovereign God. That's a pitiful God who is not
worthy to be prayed to or praised or revered or worshiped. Tim James once posed this question
to those who say that God cannot control them. They have free
will. Tim said, why pray to God if he is not in absolute control? If you want something to happen
and you pray to God and you don't think He's sovereign, that He's
not in control, why pray? The God of false Christianity
is not my God, is not the believer's God, and is certainly not the
God of Scripture. Has our God ever yielded to you
or to me? once in our entire lives? I don't think so. Because if he has yielded to
someone, that's the person we need to worship. Because that person is more sovereign
than the God of this Bible. Does our God wait for us to call
on him? David said, that his God knew
him and formed him in his mother's womb. Paul said that his God separated
him from his mother's womb and called Paul by his grace, but
not just at any time, not just at any time. Paul specifically
wrote that God called Paul when it pleased him. Now why would Paul even mention
that he, the Hebrew of Hebrews, and by the way, sat at the feet
of Gamaliel, and by the way, did this and did that. Why would he even mention that
he was called only when it pleased God? Because Paul's God is the
God of the Bible and he's sovereign. Now back to Don's point, does
any of that sound like a God who takes no part, no part in
declaring the end from the beginning? Or does that sound like a God
who cannot say, I will do all my pleasure if he's not sovereign? Is that our God? I ask you. Does our God wait for you to
make a decision for Jesus? No. And that's why we love Him. He does what He wills in heaven
and on earth. And no one can restrain His hand,
as it says in the book of Daniel, or say to Him, what have you
done? No one. It's thanks and praise to God
that he does what he wants, when he wants to, how he wants to,
and to whomever he wills. Now, do you know who else is
sovereign? No one. Not one. Not me, I can tell you. I can tell you how things would
be if I was in charge. but not one other being is sovereign. There can't be two sovereigns
in heaven. What if one disagreed with the other? What if one sovereign said, today,
I will burn all creation. And then the other one said,
today, all creation will not be burned. I mean, what happens? That won't happen because there's
only one sovereign in heaven and he alone sits on the throne. David declared that God reigns
over the nations. God sits on his holy throne. The book of Revelations is filled
with verses declaring that it is he, God, singular, one being. who John sees sitting on the
throne. He never said two or more. There
was just one on the throne. Which is why Jesus is such a
mystery. Just Him and His characteristics,
His attributes. Because when God became a man,
He yielded up so many attributes of himself, except righteousness
and perfection. Now, what do I mean? Turn to John chapter one. I guess
I lied in the beginning saying that I would only bring you to
one. I'm sorry, four verses and that would be it. There are a few more. John 1,
verses 1 and 2. This is what I mean. It says, In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with
God. Now that Word is Jesus. We all
know that. That means Jesus was present
before creation. He existed outside of time. Jesus was not subject to the
effects of time, such as aging. Being there before creation means
that Jesus was and still is eternal. But then he became a man. We are all subject to time. Then there's verse 14 of the
same chapter. It says, And the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory
as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
So what else did God yield? And I'm using that word on purpose.
What else did God yield when He became a man? He yielded a
certain amount of power and he yielded eternity. And I know
that sounds weird. It sounded weird to me writing
this message. But the infinite became finite
and the everlasting one became temporal, part of time. He inserted himself into his
creation. And my dad once preached a message,
I'll never forget this. It was almost like the author
putting himself in the book, putting himself as a character
in the book. Because you have an author and he writes. Beginning,
middle, end, that's all him. He wrote the whole thing. If
he were to stop in the middle and never make it to the end,
those characters would cease to be. That's all they had. Their life would go from not
A to B to C, or A to Z. It would just A, and that was
it. But God inserted himself into
his creation. where sin and time weaken bones
and cause all living things to decay. He put himself there.
He did not need to become subject to time. No one was pushing him
out of heaven. But he needed to go where his
people were, and his people were subject to time. So our Lord
became subject to time, and our God became subject to something
He created. That's, I'll wear out this word,
it's a mystery. Some of what Jesus gave up can
also be found in the Old Testament, written way before he was born. Many things in the Old Testament
point to the coming Messiah, that's how we know. Isaiah 42
verse one was one such verse, but allow me to tell you what
it does not say. What it does not say. It doesn't
say, behold my commander, okay? Someone who is in charge. It does not say, behold my right
arm. And when the Bible uses that,
that's like the power, the power. No, it says, behold, My servant, my servant. Now, why would we behold a servant? Why would God bother to even
declare a servant? A servant has no power in a kingdom. He endures the lowest station.
He dwells in the lowest house. But this servant was different.
This servant was God in the flesh. That's the servant we're talking
about. God, who is the singular being that sits on the throne,
that's who became Jesus. And Jesus did not just lower
himself a little bit. Like this step down from up here
by the pulpit down to the floor. That's easy. He fell from, fell, he stepped
off the throne in heaven. He waded out into the muck and
the refuse of his creation to find his lost sheep. The Bible
is about God and his scheme of salvation for his people in Jesus
Christ, and it is full of I will, I am doing, and I have done. It's full of that. Now, why? Why is it full of that? Because God is sovereign. He
can say all those things. In fact, no one has ever taken
that sovereignty from Him. He's never once lost it. because
no one can take his sovereignty away from him. That means that
anything that God has given up was of his own choice and it
was at his own pleasure. He wasn't coerced. Knowing that, see what he yielded
at the last on the cross. Because before that cross, before
that time, when he was up on the cross and they lifted him
up high. Before that, they had marred his face. You couldn't
tell who it was after they marred his face. Before that cross, they shoved
a crown of thorns into his scalp. I remember this is God incarnate
in the flesh. Before that cross, they beat
him. He could have gotten up with
the strength of Samuel and flogged him back. He could have done,
I won't get graphic, but he could have done a lot of things to
these people that abused him. or he could have called upon
the angels to rain down fire from the sky, or any such thing
to avoid the pain. Yet, he yielded. The sovereign God yielded to
the nails in his hands and feet. He could have stopped it. He yielded to the spear that
opened his side. And each of the four writers
of what we call the Gospels wrote this same thing at the last,
he yielded his life. Now, each of those words that
they wrote where it says yielded, commend, commit, gave up the
ghost, each of those four Greek words was different. Mark and Luke, Well, they're
the most scientific about it. They use the word that means
to expire. To expire. Just died. Died. It is a strange thing to say
that God has expired, even though he was a man and people expire. Somehow, though, the being through
which all things were given life, lost his own, or rather gave
it up. He gave it up. Then there's John
who writes the word, a Greek word that means to surrender,
to surrender. In other words, no one took Jesus'
life from him. He surrendered it. He once said, that is Jesus,
that no one takes it, my life. No one takes 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 command I have received from my father. So no one took
it. He surrendered it. And finally, There is Matthew,
the lowly, sneered at, aggrieved tax collector. I always like
to remember that, that Matthew, because he wrote it. He was a
tax collector. The worst job you could have
at that time. He knew what it meant to feel
like a servant, to feel low. Matthew writes that Jesus yielded
up his life. And that Greek word means to
lay aside, to lay aside. How can the sovereign God give
up his own life, you might ask? Without any help, that's how.
without any help, without any assistance, without anyone demanding that
he do it right now. That's how he does it. He relinquished
something that was his alone to do with as he pleased, something
no one else could claim authority over. I can't explain how that works. Jesus is a mystery. But I can say with all confidence
that it happened exactly as God and Jesus intended. Whatever
that was, whatever I can't explain, it's done. Now remember I said there were
two reasons about this yielding up that I found marvelous. And
the second reason that it's marvelous is that it was done in pure love
for his people. Now these weren't cream of the
crop people, safe to say. They were all enemies, not just
enemies, his enemies. from birth. Nobody likes to hear
that, I know, but I'm not sorry. That's what we're called. That's
who we are. Remember, he did not come to
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Sinners. Sinners are people who do and
say and conceive of things that God says are wicked. That's you and me. That's you
and me. And it's not just wicked. It's
not like, oh, I was going a little too fast, or I went through the
red light, You know, that didn't bother anybody. I didn't cause
a crash. It was just me breaking the law.
It's not like that. We weren't just wicked. We were
his enemies. Wicked against him. How many
times did he say that Israel played the harlot? That wasn't
against some judge somewhere or some governor. That was against
God. But it was for this kind of person
that Jesus yielded up his life. Now many of us say that we would
gladly give our lives to save our kids. I think that's just
natural. So if it came to it, we'd, I
don't know, jump in front of the bullet. We would say that
for our spouses. Maybe some of us have close friends
that we would, you know, they're like family. We might say that
we would give up our lives for them. I don't know. But have you ever heard someone
say that they would give up their lives for the person who killed
his friends? The killer. or who abused, threatened, and
stoned his envoys? Would any man stand up in a courtroom
where the trial of his son's murderer is about to end? We're almost up to guilty here. We're this close. And they would
halt the proceedings and they'd say, wait, I love that person. Take my life for the accused. Marvelous. The Bible should start with the
phrase, and I mean in Genesis, start. For God so loved the world. If that phrase would precede
every chapter in the Bible, I think that we would, for lack of a
better word, understand God's love even more. For example, for God so loved
the world that he told Noah to build an ark and he rescued Noah
and his family. Or this, for God so loved the
world that he allowed David to sin with Bathsheba, producing
Solomon, who is a type of Christ for us. Or this, for God so loved the
world that he knocked Paul off his horse and then made him write
75% of the New Testament. That's for us, by the way, not
just for those people back in Paul's time. Or maybe this one, for God so
loved the world that he caused a whale to swallow Jonah so that
he would preach repentance to the Ninevites and they repented.
I could go on. The Bible is just bursting, overflowing
with God's love for his elect. And he's not ashamed to say so.
He's not too proud to admit that those tax collectors and sinners
that the Pharisees are like, why does he eat with these people? Tax collectors. He wasn't too proud to admit
that those are his people. I'm not saying that the people
who have what we would consider A poor taste and occupation are
the ones that are closer to God. They are representative of how
we are compared to God. We are low, looked down upon, sneered at. It was for them that he yielded. Jesus, though the manifestation
of God went through gestation, birth, adolescence, maybe he
tripped sometimes, I don't know. He felt uncomfortable temperatures,
too hot, too cold. He wore sandals. He became hungry and thirsty.
He had his life threatened many times. He suffered abuse unworthily,
and then he yielded up his life. No one could make him do it.
It was all for love. It was all for love. Well, may
the message glorify our Savior. Bruce, would you close us please?