The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
His death as our substitute, I am always completely overwhelmed. It's impossible for me to conceive,
much less describe the things our Lord endured when He was
made sin for us and died in our stead. Even the things that surrounded
him during his agony are mysteries beyond my ability to comprehend. The jeering, taunting cries of
the Jews, the darkening of the sun at midday, darkness engulfing
all the land, the rending of the veil in the temple, rent
from top to bottom in two pieces as by the hand of God. The opening
of the graves. I don't think I've ever read
one of those passages describing the Lord's crucifixion in Matthew
or in Luke where he spoke of the graves being opened and many
of the bodies of the saints coming out of the graves and walking
into the holy city. But what Someone in the congregation
has asked me, what about those graves and resurrections, folks?
I don't have a clue. I don't have a clue. I think
perhaps the Lord included that just to blind some folks to the
glory of what he was accomplishing in our state. I don't have a
clue. But it's a mystery beyond me.
The dead bodies of the saints coming out of the dust, going
into the holy city, appearing to many men. How confusing that
must have been to multitudes. How shocking. How confusing it
still is. The centurion who was engaged
in all that our Lord physically suffered. seems to be the one Roman soldier
who at last was convinced by all that he saw and heard that
day, truly this man was the Son of God. The rabble that watched
him, beholding these things, enduring all that he endured,
hearing his cries, return to their places with horror. Luke tells us they smoked their
breast and went back where they came from. How often in the years I've been on this
earth and tried to preach the gospel of God's grace, I have
seen many women do exactly that. Smitten. tormented in their souls
by the things they hear, smite their breast, and return home
and go to hell. These are things beyond me. All
our Lord's acquaintances, the women who followed Him, what
must have gone through their minds as they witnessed all these
things. These are all things that are
quickly read and quickly rehearsed. But how little we enter into
those things, how little we enter into what our Lord suffered for
us. Well might we seek grace, and
I do, ever to stand by faith at the foot of the cross, never
moving from this place. rehearsing over and over and
over again until He takes me to glory and I see Him face to
face who loved me and gave Himself for me, that which He suffered
to redeem me. Let me be made conformable unto
His death. May God the Holy Spirit give
me grace and wisdom to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and
Him crucified, to glory only in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and to set Him before you continually. Now I want us
to take another look at Luke 23 tonight. You can open your
Bibles and just hold your Bibles open for a minute. Deliberately, I want us tonight,
work our way to my text, to overlook, look beyond the men and the devils
involved in what's going on here, and to behold the hand of God
in all that transpired on that horrid, glorious day, the day
of the vengeance of our God and the day of our acceptance with
God by the accomplishments of His Son. The Scriptures tell
us plainly that this is God's work. This is God's work. The Lord Jesus was led to Pilate
Taken away to Herod, brought back to Pilate, led through the
streets of Jerusalem, led up to Mount Calvary by the hands
of wicked men who were directed by the hand of God Himself. These things are irreconcilable
in human understanding. But these things are true. Brother
Ron Wood and I were talking the other day. Men always do what
they will. As far as they have ability,
they always do what they will. And they always do what God willed
from eternity. Don't ever forget that. These
wicked men are totally responsible for all their wickedness. But
they had no power against this man who is God our Savior, except
that power be given to them by him. And when our Lord Jesus
was brought to be crucified as our substitute, he was put to
death by his Father's hand. It was the hand of his Father
that gave the finishing wound to our Savior's agony. It was
the hand of God that pierced our Redeemer's heart. His Father's
hand drove the death nail into His soul. I can't comprehend
that. No angel can, much less explain
it. But there are some things that
appear obvious to me when we consider who this is who came
to die and how he died. First, understand this. There
is one reason why it pleased the Lord to bruise him. Why it
pleased the Lord to put him to grief. One reason. One reason
only. Why God Almighty slaughtered
his darling son in the unmitigated fury and wrath of his holy justice. And that is because all The sins
of all His people were made His. When the Holy One of God, who
knew no sin, was made sin for us, He was made a curse. That's the language of this book.
The Scripture does not simply say, sin met on Him, though that's
true. It does not simply say that he
was cursed, though that's true. The language of scripture is,
he hath made him sin for us who knew no sin. Cursed is everyone
that hangeth on the tree. Christ was made a curse for us. Made a curse. Not just the object
of the curse. He was made the curse of God. That's utterly beyond me. But so utterly wondrous. So utterly
wondrous. That it's one of those things
that simply needs to be, you need to sit down and roll it
over in your soul. When the Lord God made His Son
sin for us and made Him the curse for us, His Father poured out
on His Son all the infinite fullness of His holy fury against sin. He who alone is the man of God's
pleasure became the man of God's absolute displeasure. And he
cried, awake, O sword, against one that is my fellow, smite
and slay the shepherd. Surely the midday midnight that
covered the land was intended to intimate the darkness of our
Savior's soul in his agony. The darkness was supernatural. It was not merely to show the
Father's anger against those who tormented His Son. It was
the Lord Jesus Himself who cried, My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? It was Christ of God who was
forsaken, who was now expiating sin by the sacrifice of Himself. The whole weight of all our sin
and all the punishment due our sin was His. as the damned in
hell have eternal darkness, utterly without the slightest
glimmer of light. So the Lord Jesus was engulfed
in darkness, and his Father wouldn't even answer him. wouldn't even answer him. No
glimmer of light for three hours, engulfed in darkness, unvisited
by that light whose absence he had never known before. Surely
these things are written to convince us that our Savior endured and
completely exhausted all the hell of God's wrath that we must
have endured but could never exhaust had He not died in our
stead. I don't know much about hell.
I don't talk much about hell. And honestly, I don't want to
know much about hell. But I know that hell is darkness and fury and wrath, and darkness,
and torment, and agony, and darkness, and wickedness, and vileness,
and darkness forever. It will never wane. It will never
lessen. It will never be something men
and women get used to, it's forever. Because you and I, and all the
world combined, should we be cast into hell, can never exhaust
God's justice by satisfying it. It can't be done, except by a
man. who is of infinite worth, because
that man is God. Somewhere along the line, some
years back, been a long time ago, somebody got hold of that
hymn that's written in our hymn book, Isaac Watts' hymn. I think
it's the third verse, we're saying, Well, might the sun in darkness
hide, and shut his glory's head, when Christ the mighty Maker
died? For man, the creature said, That's
not how Watts wrote that hymn. He wrote it, well might the sun
in darkness hide and shut his glories in when God the mighty
maker died for man the creature said. And I know why folks changed
it. That will confuse people. God
can't die. You don't want people to think God can die. I want
you to know He did. And He never died. No man can understand that. I
can't understand it, but Merle, I can believe it, love it, and
rejoice in it. He who died in my stead is God
who cannot die, wrapped up in human flesh. And He redeemed
us with His blood, suffering all the hell of God's fury until
it was totally exhausted. God plunged his sword into his
son until he lost it. And he cries now, fury is not
in me. Somebody says, well, then Jesus
went to hell. No, he didn't. It's not the place
that he suffered that matters. It is the infinite extremity
of what he suffered that mattered. The Son of God, with one tremendous
draft of love, drank damnation dry. So that it's forever dry. Now, I want you to turn to a
passage in Mark chapter 10. Hold your hands here. in Luke
23. There's a passage in Mark 10 that I've frankly been puzzled
by about all of my life as a believer. And I am not puzzled by it, haven't
been puzzled by it because I haven't studied it. I've been puzzled
by it because I hadn't studied it, hadn't been able to understand
it. And all the stuff I've read about it, I knew didn't say exactly
what our Lord and Savior. You remember when the sons of
Zebedee, James and John, came to the Savior and asked Him to
let them sit, one on the right hand and the other on the left
hand, when He came in His kingdom. They wanted to be top dogs in
the kingdom of God. And the Lord Jesus asked them
in verse 38, Can you drink of the cup that I drink of, and
be baptized with the baptism I'm baptized with? And they overloaded their mouths.
They said, yes sir, we can do that. We can do that. They didn't
have a clue what they were saying. Their foolishness in asking that
place of the highest honor in the kingdom of God was nothing
compared to the presumption of this statement. Yes sir, we can
suffer anything you can suffer. We can be baptized in anything
you can be baptized with. Whatever you require, we'll give
it. But then our Savior made a statement, and He knew exactly
what He was saying. Verse 39, Jesus said unto them,
Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of, and with
the baptism that I am baptized with, all shall you be baptized. What? Darwin, did he say, you're going
to drink the very same bitter cup I drink? You're going to
be baptized in the very same infinite sea of an angry God
in strict justice into which I'm baptized. You're going to
die the very same death that I died? That's exactly what he
said. That's exactly what he said.
Well, that can't be. Oh, bless God it is. When he drank the bitter cup
of divine justice and drank the last bitter dregs We drank it
with Him. And when He was baptized in the
sea of God's horrid wrath, we were baptized with Him. And when
He died, we died with Him. You see, nothing our Lord endured,
nothing He did, Nothing from the time before time was in old
eternity when he struck hands with the Father and was made
our surety. When he assumed total responsibility
for our souls. Nothing did he ever do as a single
man. But all as a public person. As
a representative man. As a covenant head. as one married
to us, wed to us, and one with us. We were crucified with Christ. Literally, this is something
utterly beyond literal. Really, really put to death in
this man. in whom is all the host of God's
elect always. We were one with Him. One with
Him ere time begun. One with Him the God-man born. One with Him as He obeyed. One
with Him our covenant head. One with Him in agony. Baptized
with Him in fury seen. one with Him when He died for
me, one with Him in victory. When God's darling Son was lifted
up on the cross, He was suspended between heaven and earth as one
worthy of neither. He was, as Hawker said, in the
territory of Satan, the prince of the power of the air, hanging
on the cursed tree and made a curse for us. And there he cried, the
sorrows of death come past me, the pains of hell get hold upon
me, all thy waves and billows have gone over me. Now, one more
thing, and I'll get to my text. All this means those for whom
he died can never die. The sin that was made his and
charged to him can never be made ours again and charged to us. The fury he suffered forever
is gone, completely exhausted in him. And because he was cursed, we cannot be cursed. It's not
going to happen. It's not going to happen. Now,
look with me at verse 46. When Jesus had cried with a loud
voice, John tells us in John 19.30, He cried at His face. When he had cried with a loud
voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And having said thus, he gave
up the ghost. Now let me just make three or
four statements about that, and then we'll look at a couple of
other passages where similar words are used. It's obvious that our Lord Jesus
was preeminently a man of the book. Preeminently so. I never thought about this much
until I was preparing this message. As you read the scriptures, those
things that are written in the scriptures recorded words of
our Lord Jesus Christ while he walked on this earth. Did you
ever think, did you ever notice It's almost impossible to find
an original word from him. Almost impossible. The only original
words seem to be parables and illustrations. Whenever he spoke,
he spoke that which was written in Scripture, either by a direct
quote or by a clear inference referring to that which was written
in the Scripture. I find that tremendously instructive. Though our Lord Jesus is that
man of whom it is written, never a man spake like this man, he
chose not to speak in such a way as to call any attention to himself
or his knowledge or his learning, but rather he simply stated the
plain clear word of God. He lived by it all his life,
and he died by it. When Satan tempted him in the
wilderness, what was the bread by which he lived? Thus saith
the Lord. When men questioned his doctrine,
he didn't refer to the church fathers. He didn't quote the
ancient rabbis. He didn't refer to the respected
philosophers. He didn't refer to the learned
doctors. He just simply said, it is written. It is written. And then he enforced his doctrine
with clearly understood, easily understood parables, illustrations. I know a lot of folks, they make
the parables confusion. When men go about business trying
to make something, when you read it the first time, wow. And then
you hear a fellow preacher say, oh, I never saw that. Stick with your first thought.
Stick with your first thought. Our Lord's parables were just
illustrations. Now sometimes fellows like myself
have trouble with illustration and so the illustration becomes
itself confusing and confuses the point. Our Lord didn't have
that trouble. His illustrations were crystal
clear. The parables he gave were stories
by which he illustrated and enforced the very word of God that he
declared. Our Lord did all this as if to
make us understand that this book is indescribably important. He didn't just memorize scripture,
though I'm sure he did. He knew the scriptures. And he
learned the scriptures as a man. That's right. He's a man. He
learned how to read and write just like you and me. He learned
how to walk just like we learned how to walk. And he grew in wisdom
and stature as a man, learning the scriptures. But from his
youth, he was a master at it. From his youth, he understood
the Word of God. And he understood the Word of
God completely. Understood not just the letter
of Scripture, but the message of Scripture. That which the
Scripture declares. And after he rose from the dead,
you remember how he walked with those disciples on the road to
Emmaus and he took them to the law and to the Psalms. And the prophets showed them
all the divisions of the Old Testament. And they said, fellas,
all these things are telling you one thing, just one thing,
just one thing, how that Christ must suffer and die and rise
again, and that through His name, remission and forgiveness be
preached in all the world. And when it got done, they said,
Did not our hearts burn within us as He opened the Scriptures
to us? As He walked with us by the way
and opened the Scriptures. Oh, Son of God, so open our understanding. Children of God, make this book
your daily bread. Don't just read over the Scriptures. Read the Scriptures. Don't just
memorize the words of Scripture. I'm not saying don't memorize
Scripture. That's wonderful. Memorize all
you can. But don't just memorize the words of Scripture. I'm told
that the silkworm, as it crawls across a leaf, consumes the leaf
eating it. He doesn't just crawl across
the leaf. That's how I want to be with this book. Don't just
crawl across the pages. Eat this good bread. Feed upon this Word. The Lord God speaks in Psalms.
He says, Thou hast exalted Thy Word above all Thy name. That's Psalm 138. That's a high
honor given to this book. Read, understand, and study the
Scriptures. When our Lord Jesus says, Father,
into Thy hands I commend my spirit, He's telling us something else. He's telling us that He is completely
content with His Father's will. And Mark, that's in the context. of all that's recorded in his
suffering and death. You know what? Always. Your will be done. Your will
be done. Conscious of his relationship
with his father, he was completely reconciled to his father's will. What a blessed thing it is to
live in contentment before Him. God give me such. What a blessed
thing it must be to die with a conscious awareness that God
is our Father and we are His sons. Oh, how sweet is that life
that in life and in death has the possession of the spirit
of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. Our Lord goes here to death in
calm contentment. God give me grace to go into
death itself with no quiver in my heart, no shaking on my lips,
with the confidence God himself is my Father. Father, into thy
hands I commend my spirit. Our Savior here displays the
fact that he voluntarily laid down his life for us. There are
things, as I've already tried to say and try to say to you
continually, I can't begin to grasp concerning Our Lord Jesus,
His person or His work. He died having suffered all the
fury of God's wrath in His body, heart, soul, and mind. In the Garden of Gethsemane,
it looked like He just... He surely would have died right
there. that the angels hadn't come and ministered to him. As
he was going out of Jerusalem after the scourging, the beating,
the torment he had endured the night before they compelled this
Cyrenian to carry his cross with him, surely, surely this man
is reduced to utter weakness. Wait a minute, wait a minute.
After he hung there on that cross for six hours, he said, I thirst. And then the next day we read,
he cried with a loud voice as only a man in the fullness of
strength could do. Not as one who's exhausted and
worn and weak and weary and about to just sort of gasp his last
breath and say, it's finished. No, he cried with a loud voice,
it is finished. quietly, he says, Father, since
I finished everything I came here to do. Sin's put away. Justice is satisfied. God's honored. The law is magnified
and made honorable. Father, into thy hands I commend
my spirit. And he bows like a reverent,
obedient servant. who's come to the very last thing
commissioned for him to do. And he says, he gave up the ghost. You see, there was no necessity
for his death except the necessity of his love for your soul. Nothing else. We die because
we have to. He died because he wanted to. We die passively because we can't
help it. He died actively giving out his
life. In fact, in the strictest sense
of the words here translated, into thy hand I commend my spirit,
They cannot be used with regard as words from any other man.
Because really this is what he's saying. Father, into your hands
I now place my spirit. It's as if he reached into the
deep pocket of his inmost being and says, here Father, there's
my life. And he breathed it out. All because
He loved us and was determined to have us. Now, those are the
words of our blessed Savior. He died as one who had done all
that God could demand Him to do. As one who had been all that
God could require him to be. As one who had suffered all that
justice could demand that he suffered. As one altogether worthy
of the Father's acceptance. And I want to tell you something. Alvin, that's exactly how I expect
to die. As one with Him. Now, turn back
to Psalm 31 for just a minute. Our Lord Jesus is quoting this
passage. Psalm 31, verse 5. Here we see
these words that fell from the lips of our
dying Redeemer, fallen from the lips of one of God's own children
as he lives in this world. Into thine hand I commit my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord
God of truth. Now, children of God, Commit your life to Him. Constantly. Commit your life to Him. And to Him alone. We have good
reason for doing so. Look at the reasons David gives
right here in this psalm. Verse 5, Into thy hand I commit
my spirit, Thou hast redeemed me. That's a commitment, isn't
it? He who loved me gave himself
for me. I can commit myself to him. He is the Lord God of truth,
he says. Look at verse 7. Into thy hand
I commit my spirit, because thou hast considered my trouble. My trouble is that which you rule, and you see,
and you bring to pass, and you consider me in it, and you'll
bring me out of it. Into thy hands I commit my spirit,
because thou hast known my soul in adversity. In all their afflictions
he's afflicted. Verse 16, into thy hands I commit
my spirit, kindly foolish not to, because my times are in thy
hand. Look at verse 19. Into thy hand
I commit my spirit, O how great is thy goodness, which thou hast
made up for them that fear thee, which thou hast wrought for them
that trust in thee, before the sons of men. Verse 21. Into thine hand I commit my spirit,
because he has shown me His marvelous kindness in a strong city. Let us cheerfully commit our
souls to Him, who is our God, and know that we are completely
safe in doing so. That's such a hard thing for
us to do. I say, that's what I'm talking about, me. I have more trouble with this
than with any other sinful infirmity of this flesh. Believe in God. Just believe in God. Commit your spirit, your soul,
your life to Him. Confident, that's the safest
thing you can possibly do. with the totality of your life. He will do us good. Now, turn
to Acts chapter 7. We have these words again. Very similar words. God's servant
Stephen is being stoned to death. And they stoned Stephen, verse
59, calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, Receive my Spirit. Now look at what he saw. Verse
56, he said, Behold, I see the heavens open, and the Son of Man standing on
the right hand of God. The only time our Lord Jesus
is pictured standing is when He's pictured standing up to
receive His child. Coming home to glory. What does he say here in verse
59? A stone, Stephen, calling upon
the name of the Lord, saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. What does that prayer mean? Let me see if I can tell you.
what God showed me. If I can die as Stephen died,
as my Savior died, I will die with the certainty of immortality. If I can die as Stephen died,
as my Savior died, I can die with the conscious awareness
of His presence and assurance of His approval. If I can die
as Stephen died, as my Savior died, I will die with confidence
that all is well. If I can die as Stephen died,
as my Savior died, I can die willingly. Look at what he asked. Verse
60. Lord, lay not this sin to their
charge. O Spirit of God, let me die like
that, without a trace of malice in my heart toward any man. Look at what he did. Verse 61. Or verse 60, I'm sorry. He fell asleep. Well, they were stoning him to
death. Yeah, but he just fell asleep. He was dying a horrible
death. Oh no. He's dying such a blessed
death. Such a blessed death. Because
he's dying a death that in no way, to any degree, involves
death at all. Just life. Just life. Life forever. And then, as I was trying to tell you this
morning, all his sorrowful were turned to perpetual glorious
feast and blessed rest. Amen. Psalms Grace Book, number 108.