What Got Finished On The Cross?

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For more information about Grand Parkway, visit grandparkway.org.

God, we just so we want to pray what we just saying.

Open up our eyes in wonder.

Wonder is the natural byproduct of God opening the eyes of humanity when it comes to the Bible.

And so when we read this morning, God, we want you to open up our eyes.

We don't we didn't come today to hear from a man, uh, we came to hear from God, which is why we're gonna read the Bible and teach the Bible because it's the truth, and the truth is what sets people free.

And so, Holy Spirit, lead us into the truth so we walk out of here more free than when we walked in.

This is our prayer, make it our experience, Holy Spirit.

In Jesus' name, and everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

You can have a seat.

Have a seat.

If you got a Bible, uh, I want you to open up to John chapter 19.

John 19 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible, don't worry about it.

It'll come up on the screen, okay?

If you're our guest today, let me say welcome.

My name is Neil.

I'm the lead pastor at Grand Park Way, and we've been teaching through the Gospel of John.

Today we're up to chapter 19, verse 17, what's known as the crucifixion, where Jesus dies on the cross.

Uh, and what he's gonna say uh in this section of scripture we're gonna read, Jesus summarizes his entire life, being, and purpose with three words.

And those three words are it is finished.

It is finished.

Now, ask yourself if your life were ending today, what three words would you pick to summarize and explain your life?

For Jesus, the Son of God, he simply said, It is finished.

Okay?

I don't know what your three words would be, but we need to understand what Jesus meant when he said, It is finished.

So today I want to talk to you about this topic what got finished on the cross.

I'm gonna read from John chapter 19, starting in verse 17, down to about verse 37, and then I'm gonna point out four things that got finished on the cross.

John 19 · chapter mention

If you're our guests, we do not believe in religious manipulation, guilt, any shame, any of that kind of stuff.

We'll teach the Bible, and then at the end, I'll say, hey, let's just spend some time thinking about that.

Clyde will come back and he'll maybe sing a song over us, and some questions for reflection will come up on the screen.

I'll come back, speak a blessing over you, and you'll be dismissed.

If you're up for that, say amen.

All right.

John chapter 19, verse 17 says this.

John 19:17

So they took Jesus.

Now Jesus has been put on trial, this mock trial.

They found him guilty, they flogged him, they really beat him up.

He was beaten beyond recognition, and now they come to put him on the cross.

Verse 17.

So they took Jesus and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.

There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.

Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross.

It read, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.

Many of the Jews read the inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city.

And it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek.

So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, Do not write the King of the Jews, but rather this man said, I am the King of the Jews.

Pilate answered them, What I have written, I've written.

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier, also his tunic.

But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.

So they said to one another, Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.

This was to fulfill the scripture which says, They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

So the soldiers did these things.

But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopus, and Mary Magdalene.

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, Woman, behold your son.

And he said to the disciple, Behold your mother.

And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said, To fulfill scripture, I thirst.

A jar full of sour wine stood there.

So they put a sponge full of sour wine on a hyssop branch, and they held it to his mouth.

And when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, It is finished.

And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Since it was the day of preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a high day.

The Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, that they might be taken away.

So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and the other who had been crucified with him.

But when they came to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead.

They did not break his legs.

But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.

He who saw it has borne witness, his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth.

You also may be that you also may believe.

For these things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled, not one of his bones will be broken.

And again, another scripture says, they will look on him whom they have pierced.

Now, I mean, let me explain something that happens when they come to it.

It sounds like really cruel, and it was.

When a person was crucified on the cross, they were nailed to the cross, they split the bones in their wrists.

It wasn't in their hands, that's what kept them there.

But they didn't die because of that.

You could actually survive that.

They died because they asphyxiated, they suffocated because when they were on the cross, they were nailed in such a place they had to push up on their legs, the spike in their in their feet to get a deep breath.

And what would happen is over time they would slowly run out of energy to push up and open the diaphragm and get a breath.

And when they said, Hey, we're going to speed this process up by breaking their legs, they would break their legs so they couldn't push up, so they would asphyxiate.

They would suffocate, horribly cruel way to cause, to bring about someone's death.

But all through John's gospel, Jesus has already said, I'm the good shepherd.

I lay down my life for the sheep.

No one takes my life from me.

I lay it down and I take it back up again.

Lay it down, the cross, take it back up again, the resurrection.

So they come to break their legs to say, let's hurry up and get this over with.

And Jesus has already laid down his life.

And so Jesus didn't die because he got on the wrong side of the wrong people.

He died because God has a purpose in his death.

And so when he says it is finished, it's incumbent upon us to understand what got finished on the cross.

I want to point to four things from the Bible.

Number one, the wrath of God.

The wrath of God.

Now I know that can sound like a weird thing to say, but just stick with me, okay?

If seen only is a statement of our worth and not God's nature, if we just look at the cross and think, oh, look how much God loves us, and we don't look and go, what does the cross tell us about the nature of God?

So back up, if seeing just as a statement of our worth and not God's nature, it leaves us incapable of answering good questions people are asking.

Like if you just say, Oh, look at the cross, God loves me, and you meet people like a guy I met recently who said, I said, Do you have any spiritual beliefs that govern your life?

And he's like, No, I don't believe any of that.

I can't believe in a God that you say is a God of love and yet he killed all those people in the Old Testament.

I just can't reconcile those two things.

And I said, Because you can't reconcile them, does that mean they're not true?

And he's like, What do you mean?

I said, You've already kind of inferred that your intellect is the standard you've erected by which everything gets evaluated, and that's a pretty not very big standard.

Just like my intellect wouldn't be.

And he's like, Well, what do you?

I just can't believe in a God that would kill those people in the Old Testament.

See, if you and I think about the cross and just think, look how much God loves me, then you'll say something like, Well, I know as God loves me, and an intelligent unbeliever will say back to you, So are you saying God doesn't love those people?

And all of a sudden, you've been banished to the margins of the cultural dialogue because you cannot enter in and engage people with the biblical worldview.

And so he said, I just I said, Well, can I speak to that?

You keep asking questions.

Do you want me to speak to any of them, or you just want to just lecture me and walk off?

He goes, Okay, well, I mean, I mean, go ahead, go ahead.

I mean, I'm gonna change my mind.

I said, So basically, you're asking, how can you believe in a God, or how can I believe in a God that killed all these people in the Old Testament?

That's absolutely right.

I said, because I believe he also killed his own son.

And all of a sudden he's like, Whoa! I said, Yeah, he killed his own son, and those people that you're so concerned about, and his son both died because of the same thing: sin.

Now, I said, stick with me.

Here's the distinction and the delineation.

The difference is those people died because of their sin, and Jesus died for their sin.

Their death was an expression of God's wrath, his death was a satisfaction of God's wrath.

And he's like, uh, well, clearly you thought about this.

I said, a time or two.

Because when I said, when I read, and I wasn't mocking the guy, I said, when I read the Old Testament when I first became a Christian, I was like, man, God seems ticked off back here, and Jesus seems cool.

I want to party with Jesus.

I want to avoid that guy back there.

I mean, he is like, whoo, don't cut him off in traffic.

He'll make the earth crack open and swallow you.

And by the way, don't think I hadn't prayed for that power a time or two.

Woo! Well, I can clean this up right now by opening up the earth on some fools.

Uh and I said to the guy, by the way, he said, Thank you for that's that's really thought-provoking.

I said, because here's the thing: Christianity is not about sentiment, it's about principle.

He's like, What do you mean?

I said, your problem, you're it's not with the nature of humanity, and it's not even with the nature of God.

You don't think God's unjust or unfair, you don't think people are good and they don't deserve that.

Here's your real problem, sir.

If I could just tell you, he goes, Yeah, go ahead.

I'm I'm I'm not a bad person.

I said, I didn't say you're a bad person.

He said, Well, I just I just have questions.

I said, and God's not afraid of your questions.

By the way, if you're here this morning and you got questions like that, God's not afraid of your questions either.

He's not looking at you saying, hey, just shut up, check your intellect in the door, come in and feel good for a few minutes, and then we'll leave, and it'll all be okay.

No, God says, because the Bible, the gospel, engages the intellect of everybody.

I said, your problem is not with the nature of God or with the nature of humanity, your problem is with the nature of sin.

He goes, Whatever do you mean?

Oh yeah, now I got you.

I said, here's what I mean.

You do not believe that the wages of sin is death.

Because if you like the Bible teaches, because if you believe the wages of sin is death, then no one dies an unjust death.

If the wages of being born in sin and sinning is the consequence of that is death, then then how do you get offended when sinful people die or are killed by a righteous God?

You have no basis of offense.

So your issue is not, you're not mad at God and you're not defending people because you look like an activist, like, oh, I love everybody.

You and Oprah both.

Thank you very much.

Uh you don't love people, your real issue is with the nature of sin.

Is the wages of sin, is sin really deadly?

And by the way, you and I, whether we we wouldn't language it like this, but our issue is with the nature of sin as well, because if you believe that the really the consequence of sin is death, you would stop sinning.

You you you'd be like, you know what, I don't want to do that anymore.

And so what was finished?

First of all, on the cross is it is the wrath when Jesus says it is finished, he's the three biggest words ever spoken.

Why?

Because the wrath of God is finished.

Why?

What do you mean?

Romans chapter 5, starting verse 6, says it like this for while we're still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.

But God shows his love for us in that while we're still sinners, Christ dies for us.

Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Now, hear that last part.

Much more shall we be saved by him, by God, from the wrath of God.

On the cross, God is saving us from the wrath of God by sacrificing his own son.

Which is why the Bible says it like this greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friends.

Jesus says all already multiple times in John's gospel, no one takes my life from me.

I lay it down.

There's a bigger purpose when he says it's finished.

What he's saying is the wrath of God has been satisfied.

Now I understand that most of you are calling, you hear wrath, you think of your alcoholic stepfather who flew off the handle and beat your mom.

That's not wrath.

That's anger and dysfunction and tequila, but it's not wrath.

Okay?

So let me just kind of frame your thinking biblically about the wrath of God.

What do I mean?

Here's a few truths about the wrath of God.

First of all, uh wrath is God's fixed displeasure with sin.

It's his fixed displeasure with sin.

It's fixed because of God's nature.

He's never neutral towards sin because of his nature.

And his nature is holy, and so he's always going to be militantly fixed against sin.

So much so that when Jesus comes, the Bible says that he is gonna tread the right the winepress of the wrath and the fury of God Almighty, and it's gonna be poured out on all the people who don't believe because God has a fixed displeasure with it.

Now, you have to understand when I say that, God's response to sin is never governed by his mood, but it's informed and influenced by his nature.

You and I have a mood.

You know what I'm saying?

Between mood and nature, like my wife is sweet.

Y'all are like, my wife was a lady that prayed a few minutes ago in the orange sweater.

That's my wife.

And y'all are always like, oh, your wife is so sweet.

Yeah, but sometimes my wife gets in a mood.

Uh and she's like the soup Nazi from Seinfeld.

Like, I'll come home, I'll have an accounselor appointment or something that goes late, and I'll get home like at 6:08, and she's like, hey, we're eating dinner at six, and I'll walk in and she'll be cooking, and I'll be like, hey, and she'll be like, I'm not in the mood.

And when she says, not in the mood, it's not, I'm not in the mood for affection.

I'm not in the mood for anything from you besides she goes, Can you get the glasses filled with ice and get water, get it on the table?

And I'm like, oh, Kitty likes to scratch.

Okay.

Uh, and then I get that, and then our 60-year-old daughter will walk in and I'm like, save yourself, save yourself.

And she's like, Oh, because she kind of knows.

I said, Mom's in a mood.

Mom's got like, we gotta eat because Martha Stewart, we can't eat too late, and blah, blah, blah.

And we sit down.

I thought this was funny last week, it wasn't funny.

But when we prayed, I just said, Lord, help my wife get in a better mood.

And she Sophie and I are howling.

Marcy's one eyebrow is jacked up.

She got done, she popped her napkin.

She goes, I don't think prayer is a place where you display your humor.

I said, I heard the Lord saying, Well done, my good and faithful servant.

And she said, I think the Lord's gonna say that after you're done cleaning the kitchen tonight.

Mmm, mm-hmm.

Well, that's a mood, okay?

That's not her nature.

She is the sweet person you think she is.

But every once in a while she's got, she's like, hey, I need you to get home when you say you're going to get home.

I understand and I'm patient, but uh we're gonna eat.

And we're gonna eat with or without you, to quote Bono and you too.

And I'm like, okay, I love it.

If I'm if I run long, just go ahead and eat without me.

She's gracious about that.

But I called her.

My counsel appointment was done at 5 30.

I said, I'll be home in 15 minutes.

5:30, 15 minutes is 545, not 6.08.

Yeah.

God doesn't have a mood, God has a nature.

And one of those is fixed and constant.

Here's another thing about wrath.

Wrath is a universal experience.

Wrath is a universal experience.

It's not like God looks down and says, Hey, I like that one, I love that one, can't stand that one, I'm gonna get that one.

No, no, here's what the Bible says, Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1.

Ephesians 2:1

And you, Paul's writing to the to Christians in Ephesus, and he's saying, I want to explain what your life used to be like and how it got to be what it is.

He says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

Hear this.

And we're by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

If you have an NIV translation of the Bible, it says, and we're by nature objects of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

And so when I say wrath is a universal experience, what I'm saying is, is that everyone is born under the wrath of God because we are born by nature sinners, and by choice we choose to sin.

Okay?

You track them with me so far.

So I say it's a universal experience.

It's not like God plays favorites and keep away with his love and affection.

No, no, no, not at all.

But but but we're all born, okay, by nature, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

So God doesn't single anybody out.

Matter of fact, John chapter 3 has that great verse, verse 16, that everybody at the football stadium knows they hold up the sign.

John 3 · chapter mention

Uh John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Great promise in the Bible.

You read to the end of the chapter, this same Jesus says this in verse 36.

He says, Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Now, if Jesus says the wrath of God remains on him, then it has to be on him in the first place.

So when I say wrath is a universal experience, everybody in the world is under that.

And actually, it's one of the things that God uses to bring people to himself.

There's a third thing about wrath.

It is in proportion to human sinfulness.

It's in proportion to human sinfulness.

In other words, remember God's nature?

His nature is always going to respond to human sinfulness.

A man named J.I.

Packer wrote a book called Knowing God.

Great book.

In the book, he says this.

He says, God's wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is.

It is instead a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil.

It's not uncaused, okay?

Here's the fourth thing about wrath.

God's wrath is an expression of his love.

God's wrath is an expression of his love.

He doesn't lay down love to be wrathful, okay?

He's not a complex being.

He's not, you know, 64 shoeboxes stacked eight by eight, by eight.

No, no.

He's one box.

And he's integrated.

He's very simple in his nature.

When I say his wrath is an expression of his love, our real problem is not with the wrath of God.

Our real problem is with the fact that God doesn't love the things we love, he loves things we cannot find any affection for.

And because of this, the wrath of God feels foreign to us.

Let me say that again.

I'll demonstrate.

Because when I say that the wrath of God is an expression of his love, when God demonstrates his wrath, what he's really doing in the undercurrent is he's saying, Hey, take note of the things I love.

And the problem for humanity is it is that God doesn't love what we love, and we can't seem to love what God loves.

For example, uh, I was speaking at a gathering of high school students in Alabama, uh, and I thought, I'm going to help these people.

Uh and so I was talking about the story of Mary and Martha.

Remember, Mary's sitting at the feet of Jesus, Martha comes out of the kitchen, she's like, Lord, don't you care that my sisters left me to do all the work?

Tell her to help me.

And I said to these high school students, here's one thing you must understand about God.

There's things in your life that God just does not care about.

I thought this was wildly helpful.

And when I said that, there was a gas.

There was it created a polar vortex.

I almost got sucked into it.

And I was like, Whoa, what just happened?

And one lady in the third row was like, ah, and I thought, well, clearly I need to unpack this and explain this.

I said, here's the thing, students, you gotta understand, God is not created by your affections.

Because if God is created by your affections, then God's always being recreated.

Because you don't always love the things you love.

Like, how many of you were over the age of 30?

Can I see your hand?

Yes.

Put your hands down.

Remember things you loved when you were 16?

You still love those?

No.

No.

But you had moronic high school friends who, when you got your yearbook or your annual, whatever you call it, wrote in the back of your yearbook stupid things like this to a really nice girl I like a lot.

Best of luck in the future.

Stay sweet and stay the same and never change.

No, your parents are banking on you changing.

So is society, okay?

And here's why.

Your frontal lobe is not even developed at this point.

And I tell these kids, your frontal lobe isn't developed.

You don't even know what to love.

You love supremely what you see in the mirror every morning.

That is your worship service when you brush your teeth.

Hey, you're awesome.

Look at you.

You have your own special truth.

Your truth is your truth.

No one can judge you.

Only God can judge you.

That's right, and you don't want that.

And so I just said, here's the thing: we by nature are idolaters.

We just uh the human heart is an idol factory student.

And I'm thinking, this is helping these people.

It wasn't helping these people.

They made a beeline up to me.

One lady, she's the spokesman for the group, and she said, Ah, by the way, that was terrible.

You made those kids think that God doesn't care about everything they care about, and he does.

I said, if God cares about everything they care about, then when Martha came out of the kitchen and said, Lord, don't you care my sisters let me do all the work?

Don't start with a presupposition about God.

Don't you care?

If God really did care about everything we care about, wouldn't Jesus have said to Mary, you know what, she's right?

You stop listening to me and worshiping me and go in the kitchen and make brownies.

Run along.

Too much of this.

By the way, can you feel it in this room right now?

Y'all are like, uh, we kind of agree with the kids.

We think you're wrong.

No, I'm not.

I'm not.

Because here's the thing if if God is just obligated to care about whatever I care about, then who's really In charge?

Who's really the creator?

And this is the problem with not having a biblical doctrine of God is that I can just cut and paste God as I want Him to be.

That's why you say things like, Well, my God's a God of love.

And when somebody like me gets up and talks about wrath, you're like, oh, oh.

And yet it's all through the Bible.

And by the way, when God loves things that you can't seem to find affection for, He's inviting you to sanctification.

He's saying, Hey, hey, because I love this and you can't seem to love this, I'm not condemning you.

I'm saying, start thinking about what it would look like to love this.

That's why back in the Old Testament, it says, What does God require of you?

But to love justice, mercy, walk humbly with your God.

God's saying, let's conform you around these realities.

He's not condemning you, he's inviting you.

Here's the last thing about wrath: the wrath of God is in harmony with God's justice.

It's in harmony with God's justice.

Think of it this way: for God to be just and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus, like the Bible says, if he's going to be just and he's going to justify, because you can't justify people unless you yourself are just, then being a just being, he has to punish the unjust for their injustice.

You are like, this is like a word problem in high school.

What got finished on the cross?

First of all, the wrath of God was fully poured out on Jesus.

So if you're a Christian, you do not have to fear God punishing you.

Because when Jesus says it's finished, he's saying, Hey, I have taken on me the wrath of God.

So you don't have to live in fear of that.

What also got finished is the law.

The law.

Now, when I say what got finished, I'm not saying that Jesus did away with the law or abolished the law.

Look at me.

Jesus filled the law full.

He fulfilled the law.

I'm just gonna read one verse in the Bible, then I'm gonna put a list of things that this implications of what I'm fixing to read.

Don't try to write them down.

Just get out your phone and take a picture.

This is Romans chapter 3, verse 19.

Romans 3:19

Now, when I say the law, look at me.

Think of it like this: it's the rules.

It's the rules, it's the Old Testament that everyone was told, hey, in order to be right with God, you gotta be able to do this.

And here's the reality: nobody can keep the law.

The whole Old Testament finishes on a very bleak and dismal note.

It is dark and silent.

And then Jesus comes crashing onto the scene.

He's always existed, but he comes.

But hear this Romans chapter 3, verse 19.

Romans 3:19

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law.

So that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight.

Since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.

Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

For there's no distinction for all of sin and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance, he's passed over former sins.

It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Now, you're like, well, okay, I don't get it.

What does all that mean?

It's a great question.

This is what all it means.

This exhaustive list up here on the screen.

Again, don't write it down.

Let me just skim over it for you.

What it means is number one, the law establishes universal guilt.

No one can keep the rules.

We're all accountable to God.

Doing good cannot make me good.

The law only reminds me I cannot do it.

A new way of relating to God has been established.

The entire Old Testament points to this reality.

To be right with God, I must have faith in Jesus.

It's not enough to believe.

Put a start by this one.

To be right with God, I must have faith in Jesus.

It's not enough to believe.

Last night, in the wee hours of the morning, you believed in Hose Altuve.

I had faith in Hose Altuve.

I'm sitting there after an incredible men's weekend.

I get home, my sweet wife, who is not always regulated by mood but has a nature, says, I recorded the game.

What do you know?

I said, I know it's three to two.

She goes, All right, you go take a shower, I'll cue it up to that score, and you can watch the rest of it.

So I sat down and I was like, oh.

And then in the ninth inning, and everybody's like, ah, the stadium's going raucous.

Uh JT, whatever his name is, the Yankees guy, I was like, mmm, I said out loud to him, I said, ah, heartburn cometh.

And two pitches later, whack, I was like, hoo, and the stadium fell silent.

Bottom of the night, somebody gets on, then the little five foot six inch, Jose Al Tuven, short man carrying a big stick, walks in, and I said, peace cometh.

Because I don't just believe in Jose al Tufane, I have faith in Jose Al Tufane.

Little man carrying a big stick.

About three pitches in, World Series.

I turned the TV off.

My wife wanted to watch all the celebration, hear them, who they think and how they love their wives, and blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, we'll pick it up again on Tuesday, okay?

Look at me.

Why do I say all that?

Because it's not enough to believe in Jesus.

You can believe in Jesus and go to hell when you die.

You have to have faith in Jesus.

And on the cross, God has given us something to have faith in.

It is finished.

What got finished on the cross?

Here's the third thing that got finished: separation from God.

Separation from God.

The Bible teaches that we are born alienated from God.

We are his enemies.

Remember, we are by nature objects of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

You're not born as God's child.

That's why the Bible says you got to be born again.

What do I mean, separation from God?

1 Peter 3.18, for Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.

Just hear that part right there.

Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.

This sentence should blow your mind this morning because you see these two necessary contrasts that exist.

Let me list them for you here.

Number one, once for sins.

Once for sins.

Think about that.

Think about all the sins you've ever committed.

Now don't dwell on it, don't beat yourself up over it, but just think about all the sins you've ever committed.

Now, if you want to feel better about yourself, look at the person sitting next to you.

And think to yourself, they've surely committed more than me.

I mean, I'm not a bad person, but if you're sitting next to your spouse, just look at them and kind of go, You're in deep weeds, dude.

And I'll make it even better for you.

If you're a child and you're here with your parents, just by the nature of the fact they're so much older than you, look at them and just think, yeah, your list is longer than mine.

Absolutely.

Now, why do I do that?

Not to make you feel bad, but but but I want you to see something.

When he says, once for sins, ask yourself this question.

You're a smart people.

How can one person suffer once for sins?

And yet that's enough, not just for my sins and the person sitting next to me, but for the sins of the whole world.

How can that be enough?

He suffered once for sins.

This is the Gospel of John towards the end of the New Testament.

He writes these three epistles: first, second, and third John.

In 1 John 2, he says, We know that Christ died not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.

Once for sins.

How can that be enough?

Here's the next contrast you need to hear: the righteous for the unrighteous.

Here's why once is enough.

Because he's righteous.

He's righteous.

Not only that, but he wanted you and I to have his righteousness.

So he took on our sin on the cross.

Isaiah 53 says it pleased God to place on Jesus the sin of all of us, therefore all of your sin.

The New Testament says it like this in 2 Corinthians 5 21.

For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

He made him who knew no sin to become sin for us.

So that in him, in relationship with him, look at me, there are things that you can only get in a relationship with Christ that religion will never give you.

And one of those is righteous.

You're righteous, you're right with God.

So when you go to work tomorrow, people say, Hey Bill, how are you?

Respond, I'm righteous.

And get prepared for people to be like, Oh, you're kind of arrogant.

You're self-righteous.

No, I'm not.

I'm just believing the gospel.

Jesus took all my sin.

And so if Jesus took all your sin, when you when I became a Christian, the Bible says Jesus took all my sin.

And so why do I have to still try to define myself in terms of something that no longer exists in the eyes of God?

He took my sin and he gave me his righteousness.

He imputed into me righteousness.

And this can never be changed.

So what got finished on the cross is the separation from God.

Here's the last thing that got finished: doubt as to the authority of the Bible.

Doubt as to the authority of the Bible.

Now, you're smart people.

I'm not trying to defend the Bible.

I'm pointing out how the Bible verifies and validates itself.

Big difference in those two.

Four times already we've read this phrase that scripture might be fulfilled, to fulfill the scripture.

Verses 24, 28, 36, and 37.

Now ask yourself, if you were making this up, because I realize we live in a culture where you're like, oh, the Bible's a book written by men.

They just made that up.

It's like a history book.

It's like any other religious book.

I mean, don't take it too seriously.

Ask yourself this question.

If you were making this up, would you write it like this?

Hey, this God of love who displays his wrath on unrighteous, sinful people, he also sacrifices his own son.

Wouldn't you write a simpler story?

And then ask yourself this: Would you obligate yourself with prophecy?

You go, what do you mean?

Prophecy is these promises God made way back in the Old Testament.

Like if you look at the end of the Old Testament, it ends with a section called the Minor Prophets, guys like Obadiah and Amos and Hosea and Zephaniah, where homeschoolers go to get names for their children.

That part of the Bible.

In that section, we have a lot of homeschoolers in our church.

If you're visiting today, I love all homeschoolers, okay?

Get a sense of humor, all right?

Don't come up to me afterwards and kind of go, we homeschooling our kids.

I can tell by the way you walked, okay?

Relax.

If we'd had a son, I'd have named him Zachariah.

And my wife said, Would you call him Zach?

No, I call him Zachariah.

Or I might just call him Rayah.

She's like, You need help.

But in that little section of minor prophet, there is a guy named Zechariah.

The book of Zechariah, stay with me.

You want to learn something?

We'll go eat lunch.

Amen.

Amen for learning or lunch.

Okay.

I got learning in the back, lunch up front.

And both are welcome here.

Now, by the way, the book of Zechariah was recorded by Zechariah, spoke, God spoke to him.

He records it.

He does, he got the originator of it in 518 BC.

BC means before Christ, okay?

So you got that?

518 BC.

Best we can tell, Jesus was 33 years old when he died on his earthly existence.

So if you add 518 and 33, you come up with 551.

551 years before.

Again, if you were making up the Bible, why would you obligate yourself with prophecy?

Things that were in the Old Testament said, hey, this is gonna happen, this is how it's gonna happen, this is when it's gonna happen.

Why would you do that?

Because all that has to happen is one of those things not come true, then you could discount the whole thing.

And yet, God, in the book of Zechariah, chapter 12, under a section that's entitled, The Lord Will Give Salvation, 551 years before the cross, Zechariah 12, 10 says this.

Zechariah 12 · chapter mention

God says, And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one who mourns for an only child and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.

And then it goes on in a few verses, it's towards the end of chapter 12.

It goes on a few verses and says, The family of David will mourn, and the family of this person will mourn, and the family of this person will mourn.

And then chapter 13 starts, and verse 1 of Zechariah 13 says, This on that day there shall be a fountain open for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.

And here's what I'm saying to you.

Look at me, and we're done.

That 551 years before the cross, which was a couple thousand years before you ever got here and committed any sins, God knew what was going to happen, and he provided a way for you and I to be cleansed from sin and uncleanness.

Now, why do I tell you these things?

The same reason that John records this gospel of John, which we've been preaching through since September 17th of 2017.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why do I tell you that?

Because verse 35 of John 19 says these words.

He who saw it is born witness.

It's John saying, I didn't make this up.

I was an eyewitness.

His testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth.

Why is he telling the truth?

Verse 35 finishes with these five words that you also may believe.

Everything we've read since September 17th of 2017 was inspired by God, breathed out by God, recorded by a man named John.

Why?

To give you something to believe in.

What you have to ask yourself this morning is do I believe that?

Let's pray together.

I told you in the beginning, we like to teach the Bible and then give you some soul space to think about it.

So that's what we'll do right now.

I'll voice a prayer.

Clyde, our worship pastor, will come and just maybe sing something over us.

Uh some questions come up on the screen for reflection.

Don't try to write them down.

Just take a picture with your phone.

We'll talk about them tonight in community groups.

Let me voice a prayer.

God, thanks for the reality of the Bible.

That it's it's stimulating intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, physically, it's nourishing, it's thought-provoking, it's mind-bending, and it's sin-forgiving.

It's all those things.

There's a depth and a breadth and a height and a length and a width to it that we can never, ever, ever fully understand.

And yet it's available to us.

And so, Holy Spirit, just lead us into the truth while we just ponder and reflect for just a moment.

Oh, Father, thank you for language to help us understand the cross.

On the cross, you leaned over and kissed a guilty world in love.

And so you're not mad at us.

You're in love with us.

And so I pray for anyone in this room that has yet to believe that the wrath of God and the love of God would bring them to repentance and faith in you.

Uh, religion will not accomplish anything for us, only in relationship.

And so, Lord, thank you for the difference in that.

We're grateful.

So we say thank you in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

If you're a guest, I want to say again, thanks for being part of our service.

Hope you've had an opportunity to pull one of those guest cards in your row, fill it out on your way out here in just a minute.

If you'll drop on those wooden boxes by the doors, that's also where we receive our offering.

Uh, so if today's the day that you uh practice obedience to God in that, that's where you take care of that.

Uh, I just want to make you aware of an opportunity for connection coming to our church.

And so give your attention to the screens for our videos this morning.

This past year, I've been closing up my grandmother's homestead.

It was built over a hundred years ago by my great-great-grandfather.

And recently, I was crawling under the house and found the original handmade table that used to sit in their dining room.

Well, I found myself staring at it and imagining all of the meals and arguments, laughter and prayer that must have happened around that table.

When Jesus was on earth, he gathered around tables over and over, teaching, laughing, eating with the ones who never dared to hope that a Messiah would live their way, much less eat with them.

This fall, I want us as women to gather in the sanctuary for a time called the table.

We'll feast on the Bible, sing songs to God, and pray for each other.

I'll be teaching from the encouraging book of Philippians, and Lindsay Fraleck will be leading us in worship.

Childcare is free.

I hope you'll come to the table and bring friends.

I want to make you aware of one last thing before you're dismissed.

Uh as a church, we have four core values: gospel, community, mission, and blessing.

We believe the gospel, the good news of Christianity, produces uh uh uh this community of people that are on the shared mission, and central to that mission is to be a blessing.

Uh, I brought some pictures to demonstrate uh how you were a blessing.

Uh, we went uh back in the spring up to North Carolina to visit a small church up in the mountains.

We were curious if there was a missional, possible missional partnership there.

There wasn't, but there was a need.

Uh their carpet, and this is their sanctuary, uh, and they added onto the side, and the car the concrete was all uneven over there.

There's this kind of a step down.

Uh and I asked the guy, I just said, Hey, what needs do you have?

You look down at the carpet.

And so I'm telling you about this because you you paid uh to make it go from that to that.

Uh and so uh the there it's a small church, the pastor's bivocational, which means he has a real job.

He's not like me and just sits around drinking coffee all day and does nothing.

Uh and so uh I want you to know when you put money in the offering box here, it doesn't just stay here.

Uh I went up there and met him and his family, his three daughters, his wife, and three dollars, daughters.

He I said, How are you doing?

He goes, Man, we're just exhausted.

I said, Well, I'm here to bless you.

I want to take your family out to eat.

I told his kids, I said, Hey, you don't have to share a hamburger with your sister.

You get your own meal and get a Coke with it.

You and I don't have to share, you don't have to share.

And they're like, And then after that, we're gonna get dessert, so save room.

And the little girl goes, Shut up.

And I said, No, you shut up.

And so when we say we want to bless, that's what we mean.

And so we I just was sent by our church up there to explore this.

It wasn't a missional relationship.

We blessed them by leveling their floor and putting new carpet in their sanctuary.

So we share that with you so that when you get to heaven and a little kid comes over to you and says, Thank you for paying for the carpet in my church, you'll know what they're talking about.

That's all.

Stand to your feet.

We like to close our service with a blessing.

Hold your hands out.

On the cross, God has kissed the guilty world in love.

That means he's not mad at you anymore.

He's in love with you.

Therefore, do not rely on your love for God.

No one rely on God's love for you.

Because it's not changing and it's not going anywhere.

So you better get used to being loved.

Depart into these realities in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.