April 30, 2017 PM Service Redemption Accomplished Salvation Secured by Pastor Josh Sheldon

John 19:28-30 and the Meaning of “It Is Finished”

The 19th chapter of John's Gospel, we will devote ourselves this afternoon to mainly verse 30 and most primarily a single word within that verse. I think when I read beginning at verse 28, you will pick up on that word pretty quickly.

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said to fulfill the scripture, I thirst. A jar full of sour wine stood there. So they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, it is finished. And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. So it is finished. Redemption completed. A single word in the original language, to telestai.

To telestai, it is finished. It means done, completed, in a form we call the perfect. Everything Jesus did, of course, was perfect, but that's not what is meant here. We're speaking of grammatically, it is a perfect word.

It means a couple of things. It means that the action described begins at the point that the context tells us. We studied that quite a bit this morning in Sunday school. And the effect of it, the benefit of it, if you will, continues and is with us even now.

Imagine I was building a house and if you came to me and you asked what I was doing, I might say, well, I am building a house. The word building being imperfect. I mean, I'm continuing. I'm doing this now.

The action is not yet done. It's incomplete. If I finished the project, I would change the imperfect. I am building to the perfect. I have built my house. The action being complete, the benefit, even though it was done in the past, it was complete in the past, the benefit, the effects of it are experienced in the present.

So it is with this word to telestai. Jesus saying it is finished. It, of course, is salvation. Salvation, redemption of sinners is complete. He meant that his earthly purpose was complete. His work on the cross brought to an end all that the Father had sent him to do.

To paraphrase Solomon, not one word, not one good word which the good Lord spoke fell to the ground without being done, without being completed, without being accomplished. Jesus said it is finished, and we can wrap all that up in that one word, complete.

But there's that other aspect I mentioned, that the effect of that completed work is with us even now. It is finished. Matthew Henry calls this a comprehensive word and a comfortable one, a word that should give us great confidence, a word that should remind us when Jesus said it is finished, he meant he had finished it.

It was complete, nothing to be added to salvation. It's comprehensive because it entails all the Father's design in having sent his only begotten Son. It's a comforting word because the benefits of that finished work do continue to shower upon us today, even now.

The End of the Persecutors’ Malice and the Comfort of Present Suffering

So what did Jesus finish? Well, I want to follow Matthew Henry here. I'll call on Arthur Pink a little bit here and there, but they do a good job and tell us just what is finished. I said salvation, redemption, of course that is true in the most ultimate sense.

But it could mean, or it does mean that the malice and the enmity of his persecutors was finished. There's nothing more they can do to him. They had done all they could. Jews, Gentiles, governors, kings, all had worked in their own way to silence the Nazarene carpenter.

They had spoken against him. They applauded against him. They accused him of demonic possession. They accused him of lying. They accused him of misleading the people. They accused him once of blasphemy.

King Herod murdered countless babes hoping only to kill this one, Jesus. The governor who should have executed the law instead executed a man who he knew was innocent. Their malice and all that they could do against him was complete.

They could do no more. Even on the cross where he hung naked, where he was helpless, their malice, their anger, their rage was unquenchable. They wagged their tongues at him. They teased and they mocked him, tempting him to come down.

When he was thirsty, a sip of water would have been too kind. So their cruelty offered him the sour wine. There's no more they could do. In another moment his life would be over and all that they wanted to do, all the rage against the king, Psalm 2, is finished.

You know sometimes our trials seem endless. We call out with the psalmist to say, Lord, will you be angry forever? Our health abandons us. Our children rebel. Co-workers mock our faith. Spouses are abused by the one they thought loved them.

Maybe God will bring your suffering to an end in this life. Maybe he won't, but it will end. As difficult as things can be, there's a limit. I can't tell you, nobody can tell you the day your trials, large and small, will come to an end.

But I know there will come, there will come a day where every believer, when their tears will be wiped away by the hand of our Savior. Our days of living under the malice and enmity of this world will one day come to a close.

And this must be a great comfort to us. We can't say it is finished the way Jesus did, but it will be finished. It will come to an end. While we wait, the comfort of the scriptures is still ours. While we wait for that glorious day, fret not yourself because of evildoers, Psalm 37.

Nor be not envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. As evildoers come upon us, as they make our life hard or miserable or seemingly unlivable, and we look to the Lord and we say, will you be angry forever?

Will this never come to an end? Know this, one day it will. One day we say it is finished. For Jesus, when he said it's finished, that malice that this world could place upon him, it was over. They could do no more.

The Father’s Will and the Fulfillment of the Gospel

Secondly, the counsel, the commandment of God his Father concerning his sufferings were now fulfilled. The Lord said in John 17 verse 4, I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

Except for this, there would be no gospel. Except for this, we would have no hope. Except for this, we are of all men most miserable, as the Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians. If any part of God's counsel and commandment awaited completion, then also our salvation would be awaiting completion.

This memorial before us would be meaningless. But in such a case, it would never be completed because Jesus is back in heaven and only he could have done this. And it had to be done while he was here in the likeness of sinful flesh.

Anything he didn't do while he was here on this earth can never be done because only he could do it. Here's our comfort. Jesus came to do his Father's will and that is exactly what he did down to the tiniest detail.

There's a slew of prophecies that came centuries before the advent and points out how excruciatingly and exactly the Father had specified everything concerning his Son. All of it was there when Jesus said, it is finished.

Christ's fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies gives us assurance of those prophecies yet to come. Prophecies that speak of our eternal state and glory. Prophecies that promise us that we will one day see Jesus as he is.

We will be like him. Prophecies that tell us that the Lamb shall never be removed from our sight once we are there with him. Arthur Pink writes this way. He says,. And as we have seen that the former set of prophecies were fulfilled literally, actually, personally, so also must we expect the latter set to be.

All the Father's will was finished, stretching all the way back to the Garden of Eden, culminating in Christ's life and death and resurrection. By this we hold fast to all the counsel and commandment that is yet to be.

The Old Testament Types and Prophecies Fulfilled in Christ

Third, all the types and all the prophecies of the Old Testament which pointed at the sufferings of the Messiah were accomplished. All of them were answered. God never works in secret. He has a secret will which is not for us to know, is not for us to even inquire about, but his works are done openly.

Christ was announced as the seed of the woman who would crush Satan's head in Genesis 3. He is the seed of David prophesied to sit on the throne forever. His suffering was described by David in Psalm 22.

And the benefit to us was foretold by Isaiah when he spoke of this suffering servant. And with his stripes we are healed. When the apostles preached Christ, they never failed to point back to the prophecies and demonstrate how each was a picture of Christ.

If God's purposes in Christ were fulfilled in such detail, no less was every prophet's vision fulfilled with the same exactitude. God said through the prophet, the former things I declared of old, they went out from my mouth, and I announced them.

Then suddenly I did them, and they came to pass. You see, our Savior didn't suddenly appear, gather a following, and invent some new philosophy or found a new religion. We follow a Savior. We follow Jesus Christ, the ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.

It is finished. The ceremonial law is now fulfilled. Many of the laws given to Israel from Sinai were abolished. But in a very real sense, there's a way where the ceremonial law is still in force. It's been completed, but in a way it's not been really set aside.

Hebrews 10 .3 says, but in these sacrifices there's a reminder of sin every year. It's because the blood, the bulls and goats could only symbolize the horror that is sin's penalty. But they could not end the need for an endless flow of blood as payment for our endless flow of sin.

Scripture says, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Only Jesus could do that. Hebrews again 9 .13 and 14. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and the bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

The ceremonial law was included when Jesus said it was it is finished. And one of the ramifications of that is again in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 19. Therefore brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.

With our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. So as did the ancients.

We come to God by a blood sacrifice, do we not? This is what I mean where I said it's been fulfilled, but it still in a way still exists. We come with blood sacrifice. We come with repentance. We, as it were, where the ancients laid their hand on the beast and confessed their confessed their sins and the beast died in their place, all fulfilled in Christ, and yet we come the same way with our hand on Christ, confessing ourselves sinners and understanding by faith that God then by our repentance has transferred our sins to him, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

All that wrapped up and completed and made final. He said it is finished. Sin is finished. That's fifth. Sin is finished and an end made of transgression. Takes us back to the prophet Daniel. Daniel 9 24 said that Christ would put an end to sin and atone for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness.

Confirmed again relying on the book of Hebrews, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world, but as it is, Jesus has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

We still sin. We still transgress God's law. What is finished is our slavery to the sin. What is finished is a penalty that must be exacted against us for it. Isaiah says the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.

God does not punish the same sin twice. So if by faith we apprehend that Christ suffered in our place, then sin has been finished in us. As Pink puts it, the cross of Christ is the grave of our sins. Number six, his suffering is now finished, both those of his soul and those of his body.

The Lord said during his struggle in Gethsemane, my soul is troubled even unto death. I mean, horror anticipated is often worse than it turns out to be. Remember being a child and told, wait till your father gets home.

I've been there, been a few decades, but I've been there, and it's worse sitting there wondering what it's going to be like, but not in this case really, not in Jesus' case. Knowing what lay ahead brought Jesus' very soul into a sort of a death throw.

His body would take no more torture because it had taken the full measure of God, the full measure that God had ordained, both from the wicked men who drove in the nails and from the Father whose fury at our sin was now finished.

Our comfort here is just this, as the hymn writer says, Jesus paid it all. Jesus paid it all. When he says it's finished, we add nothing to it. We know that we come to confidence with confidence before God.

Why? Because we know he paid it all, and God's not going to look and say you're closing my son righteousness, but we've got a toe exposed that isn't clothed. It's not like that at all. It's finished. Jesus paid it all.

He is free of the sin-cursed world where he was because he's now in his rightful place at his Father's side, and we are free of the specter of sin and his dread penalty, and we need no longer fear its ultimate consequence, death and separation from God.

Redemption Accomplished, Salvation Secured

Lastly, the work of man's redemption and salvation is now completed. I think this might be the fourth time I've said it, and we should say it over and over again. We need to remember this. Our redemption, our salvation is complete.

All the promises of God have been assured by the death and the burial, and praise God, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which confirms that he is the first fruits, meaning there are other fruits following, which is us when God raises us up to follow after him in his likeness.

You see, God received full satisfaction for our insults against him. His justice has been satisfied. His mercy has been magnified. Satan has fallen like lightning from heaven, as Jesus told the disciples.

He's no longer allowed before the throne to accuse us because Jesus became sin for us, and he dealt sin its death blow. He accepted the accusations, all of which were true. He paid the penalties. I mean our accusations, of course.

He paid the penalties, all of which were rightly owed, but now he says it is finished. We've been redeemed, and the benefit of Christ's atoning work, this glorious redemption that we have, has been effectually applied to us by the Holy Spirit.

This is, as the Puritans put it, a glad message. This is why this table is a memorial of remembrance and a celebration of victory. Christ died for us, and we must memorialize his sacrifice, and in dying, Christ gained a great victory.

This is the victory that has overcome the world. Our faith, 1 John 5, 4. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Jesus, the eternal Son of God. To refute the Arians of centuries back, the fourth century, there never was a time when the Son was not.

Jesus is the Son of God. Who overcomes the world but the one for whom when Jesus said it is finished, he meant it is finished for you by faith. The one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. You see, it's faith that brings us to this table.

The Lord gave the church two ordinances. This, the only one of the two that is a continuing ordinance that the church does regularly. We hear, pardon me, every Sunday. Faith brings us here. Faith that as we eat of the bread and drink of the wine, that while we're eating just bread, and I don't know what the makeup is, there's flour and there's water in it, it's just bread.

The wine, we serve grape juice and we serve the sweet sort of wine. It's just a liquid, isn't it? Yeah, in one sense. But what it tells us, what it reminds us, other than that we're obeying the Lord's command as often as you do this, other than that reminds us of the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made that led up to what we were considering this afternoon.

It is finished. His body was broken for us. His blood, his life was poured out for us with faith that wonders at the broken body that felt the crushing stripes that ought to have been ours. That's what we remember here this afternoon.

That's why we come together in the afternoon to again hear God's word and gather around this table and to soberly consider ourselves before these elements. And think of all that it means that Jesus Christ, even on the cross, said it is finished.

And what does that mean to us today some 2 ,000 years later? That we drink and we eat and we remember a sacrifice that brings a real salvation that will one day be completed. 1 Corinthians 15 57, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, victory over sin, victory over the flesh, victory over this world, victory over our adversary the devil, victory upon victory, all provided to us by Jesus Christ when he said it is finished and memorialized here in these elements.

The struggle, his. The victory, ours. He said it is finished. He meant everything that is needed for we, miserable, broken sinners, given a new spirit and a new heart by God so that we can repent and come to God, be clothed in Christ's righteousness, and know that that is a complete clothing, nothing left undone, as we can come boldly to the throne of grace.

The struggle is Christ's, the benefit is ours. The old hymn with which I finish, upon a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die, another's death, another's life I cast my soul eternally. Bold shall I stand in that great day, but who ought to change to my charge can lay.

Fully absolved by Christ I am, from sin's tremendous curse and blame, it is finished. Amen. Then hell no more shall hold. Joined to praise Emmanuel's name. Amen. Please be seated. We come now to actually partake of the table that's been set for us by the Lord.

We ask of those who participate these three things, that you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in his sacrifice, and that alone, as your only means to come before God, as your only hope of eternal life, that your faith is in Christ, and Christ alone, and his cross, and his cross alone, that faith.

We ask that you have been baptized upon confession of faith. And third, we ask that you have joined a local church that preaches the gospel that you've heard here this day, and that you are a member of that church in good standing.

If these be true of you, then we'd invite you to partake with us. Amen. We come up. Let us pray. Lord, we seek to partake worthily as the apostle tells us. We pray, Lord, that by your spirit, you would show us and remind us and infuse into our souls the reality behind the symbols we have before us.

The broken bread and Jesus Christ's broken body, the fruit of the vine, and Jesus Christ's life poured out. We again, Father, in awe and just dumbfounded, Lord, by the mercy that you showed us and by the magnitude of the suffering that Jesus Christ endured for us to bring us even to this place here this afternoon, to well remember him and what he did, all that led up to what we consider this afternoon, it is finished.

Lord, I pray that we would all partake worthily, that we would consider ourselves before these elements. They would look to you, Lord, just with astonishment at what you have done for us, and that you, Father, by your spirit would imbue into our spirits a reminder of what you have done for us and the certainty that we have because of you.

So, Lord, again, bowing down before you in humble adoration, thanking you for your son, Jesus Christ, and all that he accomplished for us. We give you thanks for this in Christ's name.

Amen. The Lord Jesus, on night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, there's my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, he also.

Took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is a new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes.

Amen? Amen. Let us stand and close with the doxology. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Amen. Thank you, man. Okay, can you disconnect this for me, please?

I can at least leave it here. I don't know what you mean by disconnect. Oh, in the back, okay.

She's that brave. Remember the first line on that? I wanted to look it up. Which one? The last one he played.