It Is Finished!

Listen Online:

Watch Online:

Transcript:

I’m going to ask you this morning to take out a Bible, if you’ve got one near you, and turn with me to John chapter 19. John chapter 19. If you’ve got a Bible, or if you’ve got access to a device where you can pull up BibleGateway.

com or YouVersion, get a hold of a Bible somewhere so you can look at this with me. We’re going to look at just a few verses, just a couple verses today, about Jesus finishing the work of the Father. the plans of the Father.

And I was thinking about this this week. One of the great joys in my life is finishing something. I know what we’re going to talk about in just a moment wasn’t necessarily a joyful moment for Jesus, but it was what He had come here to do.

One of the joys in my life is finishing something. Those of you who go to church here regularly, I tell you when you come to me with announcements or prayer requests or things of that nature, I tell you, write it down, or I promise you I will forget it. And it’s not because I don’t care.

My wife will tell you, my brain can handle one and a half things at a time. I know some of you are great at multitasking. I am not.

I’m not wired that way. I can do one thing at a time and maybe do it well and maybe do half of another thing, but that’s about it. And so trying to remember stuff, I can’t do it.

I operate. I’ve learned to compensate for that, though. I keep to-do lists, and I keep shopping lists, and I keep spreadsheets of tasks I’ve got to do.

And one of the calendars, one of the things I’ve got that keeps me on track is Apple has a little reminders app, and I’ve got it set up to remind me every day of the things I’ve got to do that day. And it repeats each week. I mean, there are some things I try to have done by a certain day every week, and it repeats on there.

and I go through and mark it off, and some things don’t get done to the next day, but my goal, I hate those little, some of you, some of you, I’ve seen your phones, you have a thousand emails you haven’t looked at. That drives me nuts. I can’t stand it when I’ve got those little red notification bubbles on my devices.

I’m driven to get the whole list finished. It doesn’t happen every day. Some of those things happen the next day.

One of the best feelings for me is when I can get to the end of the day and I’ve accomplished my whole list. I’ve done everything. There are no bubbles left. And it doesn’t happen every day.

But that’s still what I’m shooting for. I want to feel like I have finished what I’m supposed to do. I feel like then I can relax.

I feel like I can let it go when it’s all finished. And that’s sort of what I thought about in this story where we look at the crucifixion of Jesus. And again, I’m not trying to make light of it.

I know that it was not a joyful experience necessarily, at least not in any way that you and I would understand joy to mean. It was not a pleasant experience by any means. It was not even something that Jesus looked forward to, As we remember the story from the night before the crucifixion, Jesus was in the garden and he was praying, Father, if there’s any other way, let this cup pass from me.

In other words, if there is any other way to fulfill your plans that does not involve me suffering the cross, please let’s go to that plan B. But Jesus at the same time said, Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. He said, Father, if there’s any other way, let’s do that.

But if this is what it takes, I’m willing to do it. Not excited about doing it, but I’m willing to do it to be obedient to the Father’s plans and to fulfill the Father’s plans. So it’s not an exact analogy.

I don’t think Jesus felt the same sense of relief as he was dying on the cross, as I do when I’m checking off boxes on the Reminder app. It’s not the same thing at all. But when I realize I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do, Jesus had that moment on the cross of having completed everything he was supposed to do.

So that’s what I’m trying to get you to see. It was not the same joy. It was not the same sense of relief.

But it was the same sense of being finished. We’re going to look at John 19, starting in verse 28. I’d like to go through the whole story of the arrest and the trial and the crucifixion, but we just wouldn’t have time to.

. . There’s so much detail.

I encourage you this week, go through and read each of the gospel accounts of the crucifixion, of the trial, the arrest, the trial, the crucifixion, and the resurrection of Jesus. Go read all of those this week. You’ve got time.

Go do it. But this morning, I just want to focus in on three short verses that tell us what happened when Jesus marked off all the things on his to-do list. Starting in verse 20. I’m sorry, verse 28.

John 19, verse 28. After this, when Jesus knew that everything was now finished that the scriptures might be fulfilled, he said, I’m thirsty. A jar full of sour wine was sitting there, so they fixed a sponge full of sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it up to his mouth.

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, It is finished. Then bowing his head, he gave up his spirit. And that’s the text for this morning as we continue to work through this series on the resurrection, this road to the resurrection.

We started out by looking at God’s plans and how he expressed those way back in the Old Testament and then how Jesus foretold them himself. Last week he said that if they tore down the temple, he’d raise it again in three days. Today, we’re going to look at how he fulfilled all those plans that God had been putting into place.

And so throughout the crucifixion, this whole experience of the crucifixion, just like his entire time on earth, Jesus sought to carry out the Father’s plans. We need to understand that within the Trinity, Jesus, God the Son, is equal to God the Father. And yet, in the roles that they played, if that’s the right terminology, in the actions they carried out in this plan of redemption, there was still this sense in which Jesus, though fully equal to God, fully equal to the Father, was obedient to the plans that the Father put in place so that all of this could be fulfilled.

How all that works exactly is a mystery, is largely mysterious. If we could explain every aspect of it, then we would have full understanding of God, but we’d have to be God to have full understanding of God. So some of these things we just have to take by faith and hold intention.

But he, during the crucifixion, it was just like his entire life. He sought to carry out the Father’s plans. He sought to be obedient.

Now it says in verse 28 here, Jesus recognized that everything was now finished that the Scripture might be fulfilled. this idea of finishing. We see this word twice in this passage that we’ve looked at.

It’s the same English word, it’s the same Greek word, but has a little bit different application in the context of what they’re saying. What he means here when he says everything was now finished in verse 28, is he’s saying that everything was in place. Everything that had to be done to lead Jesus to the cross, everything that had to be done to set the stage for the crucifixion was done.

Jesus was now on the cross, which was this final destination until his resurrection. Jesus was exactly where he needed to be. All the plans were in place for the Father’s plans to be fulfilled.

Now, I bring that up because some people have looked at this and said, Jesus hadn’t died yet, and so how was the atonement finished? It’s not talking about the atonement being finished when verse 28 says everything was now finished. It’s talking about the plans being in place.

It’s talking about everything Jesus needed to do to get to that point was now in place. And so he’s looking now at the final fulfillment of the Father’s plans. And what we see from that is that he had been obedient to everything that the Father had given him to do.

Throughout his entire life on earth, Jesus had been obedient to his heavenly Father. And we see that all throughout the Gospels. He talks about that need for obedience.

And that’s a little bit of a reminder too that if even Jesus, even God the Son, had this need to be obedient to the Father, we better not think we can get away with being disobedient to the Father. We need to be obedient to Him just as the Son was. And so in John 12, 49, I pulled out a few of these this week, these instances where Jesus talked about, through His ministry, how His goal here was to be obedient to the Father.

He said in John 12, 49, the Father Himself who sent me has given me a command to say everything I have said. So he’s telling people, the things that I’m saying, I’m saying because the Father told me what to say. John, in the next verse, I speak just as the Father has told me.

He makes that abundantly clear. In John 14, 31, he said, I do as the Father has commanded me. So all the things I’m doing in my ministry, not just the things I say, but the things I’m doing, Jesus said, are because the Father told me to do those things.

John 15, 10, I have kept my Father’s commands and I remain in His love. I’m demonstrating my love for Him and demonstrating His love for me by my continued obedience. And then this is an important one.

John 10, 18, no one takes my life from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have the right to lay it down and I have the right to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.

So all the things he did during his earthly ministry, all the things he said during his earthly ministry, and even his going to the cross, were because of his obedience to his Father. And the book of Philippians tells us that he was obedient, in Philippians chapter 2, tells us that Jesus was obedient even to death, even to the point of death, even death on the cross. That he was willing to obey the Father, even though it meant dying, and even though it meant dying on the cross in this really cruel, this barbaric, this agonizing way.

And while he was being obedient to the point of death, he intended to fulfill everything the Father had revealed about this death on the cross. So it wasn’t enough to Jesus just that I’m going to die on the cross in obedience to the Father. Jesus was so concerned about obedience to the Father that he was going to make sure that every detail of the Father’s plan was carried out just as God had said, just as God had revealed.

And so we see all these details that have been foretold throughout the Gospels. We see all these details even going back to the Old Testament, where God explained what the death of the Messiah was going to be like, and Jesus said, basically, we’re going to make sure every T is crossed and every I is dotted. We’re going to make sure everything the Father said is fulfilled to the letter.

And just in these few verses, we see a reference to how the Messiah, it was described in Psalm chapter 22 that when the Messiah died, he was going to be thirsty. I believe I talked about this a few weeks ago. In that prophecy, which was really initially talking about David, he talks about his mouth being dry and his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth.

Now that’s an extreme thirst, extreme dehydration. That’s pointed out, and it refers to the Messiah, too. In Psalm chapter 22, we see it being carried out here.

We also know that it’s consistent with what we would expect somebody in his circumstances to experience. There was a medical doctor who wrote about the crucifixion and said that he would have lost so much blood as a result of the scourging, the whipping that he experienced before the cross, and now being nailed to the cross, he would have experienced so much blood that his body is now going through an extreme dehydration as it tries to pull in what moisture it can to produce more blood to get the blood volume up. It talks about hypovolemic shock in the case for Christ. I’d encourage you to go read that.

So he was thirsty, and at this point, Psalm 69 says the Messiah would be given vinegar to drink, would be given the sponge full of vinegar. I know that sounds crazy to us, but it was just the idea of soured wine. They drank wine a lot because the water wasn’t always safe.

And sometimes wine goes bad, and when alcohol goes bad, the next step is vinegar. It sours. And so that’s what they had there.

It was something that common people might have drank, but it wasn’t something they gave to Jesus necessarily to be nice. It’s what they had lying around that they’d give to the criminals. And by the way, there are two places, I don’t want you to get these confused, there are two places in the crucifixion story where there’s mention of giving Jesus something to drink.

They tried at the very beginning of the crucifixion, at the very beginning of this experience, to give him some sour wine, some vinegar, that was mixed with, I believe, a gall of myrrh, which was some kind of analgesic-type drug that would have numbed the pain just a little bit, Just enough not to be merciful to him, but to prolong the experience of his suffering. To keep him alive as long as possible so that they could continue to have him there on the cross. He refused that.

This is a separate instance. There’s no drug. There’s no Tylenol.

There’s no Oxycontin or whatever. There’s no pain medication in there. It’s just vinegar.

And so, seeing that everything else has fallen into place, seeing that everything else about the Father’s description and the Father’s plan for this crucifixion has been carried out, Jesus fulfilled this final prediction in order to be obedient to the Father. He expressed his thirst. In verse 28, he said, I’m thirsty. Now, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about this because we need to understand this idea of him being thirsty.

It was natural with his blood loss that he’d be thirsty. But we just think of being thirsty and it’s a natural thing, and so we skip over that fact really fast. We need to understand he mentions everything else has been fulfilled, now I’m thirsty. That’s talking about Jesus expressing his thirst in purposeful fulfillment of the Father’s plans.

We need to understand that that thirst and expressing that thirst, even that was an act of obedience to the Father. So he expressed his thirst just like Psalm 22 said he would. He was given vinegar to drink on a hyssop reed, which would have been maybe three feet long at the most, maybe closer to 18 inches.

So it’s not like Jesus was way, way up in the air on the cross. But they put this sponge soaked with vinegar on a stick and kind of shoved it up there in his face in this final indignity. And he was given this vinegar in verse 29 in fulfillment of what Psalm 69 said.

so Jesus knew that by dying on the cross he was finishing his work he knew that he was finishing the work that the father had given him to do because he had been obedient to the father all all along all through his life and up to this time and so he knew he had completed all the steps necessary he just had to express his thirst and then the only requirement left was for him to die The only thing he had left to do was to die at this point. And that’s why he cried out in verse 30, it is finished. Because at that point, Jesus had been obedient to everything.

He’d done everything. At the moment he dies, at the moment he, I don’t want to say loses his life, at the moment Jesus gives up his life, he lays down his life, gives up his spirit, to use the Bible’s terminology, he had accomplished everything the Father had sent him to do. He had left no part of the work undone.

No part of it was undone. No part of it was left lacking. It’s important that we understand that phrase, it is finished.

That Greek word tetelestai means it was paid in full. It was a term that was used in several different areas, but one of the most common that I know of was accounting. When something was paid in full, it was tetelestai.

So when Jesus said, it is finished, he means it’s all done, it’s all paid in full, the bill’s been settled, there’s nothing left, I’m done. And so for Jesus to look at all these plans that the Father’s made throughout history, and revealed throughout the Old Testament and even the Gospels up to that point, for him to look at all of that and then say, it is finished, means that Jesus had completely fulfilled the redemptive plans of the Father. See, God’s plans throughout history have been to redeem mankind.

God’s plans throughout history have been to provide for our salvation. And that’s the reason why it’s so important that Jesus was totally obedient here, aside from the fact that we know that Jesus was perfectly sinless. It was important that he was obedient to the Father’s plans because God the Son was obedient to God the Father because the Father had this perfect plan worked out so that you and I could be saved, so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be redeemed.

Because we have this problem of sin. You and I have sinned. We’ve all sinned.

We’ve all disobeyed God, if you’re wondering what sin is. It’s any kind of disobedience toward God. We’ve all sinned against Him.

We’ve all sinned against Him. And because of that, that sin needs to be punished. That sin has to be dealt with.

That sin has to be. . .

The sin has to be punished. Any sin that’s committed for God to be just and holy, that sin has to be punished. There was a debt that needed to be paid.

There was justice that God’s justice needed to be satisfied. Our forgiveness needed to be provided for. And all of that is what Jesus finished.

All of that is what, when he said, it is finished, he was talking about all of that. He had provided all of that for you and me. He finished the work of redemption for us.

Now, a lot of times people will think that there’s still something for them to do. They’ll think there’s some work they’re supposed to do, some good works, some efforts, some religious activities. I’ve got to go to church.

I’ve got to give money. I’ve got to be a better person. I’ve got to get my life cleaned up.

I’ve got to start doing nice things. And they sort of start to go through life like it’s that reminders app I have on my phone. And that if they can just check all these things off, if they can just check off all these little buttons to where at the end of the day, there’s no red notifications that there’s still something left undone.

If they can just be good enough, that maybe God will accept them, that maybe God will love them, that maybe God will forgive them. But here’s the thing, you and I are sinners. We can never do enough good to undo the wrong that we’ve done.

It’s like for us, that app is frozen. Not only can we not get through all of the items, we can’t get through any of them. We can’t get any of those things checked off on our list. We can’t go to church enough for God to love us, especially now.

But even under normal circumstances, we can’t go to church enough for God to forgive us. We can’t give enough money to the church to undo our sin. We can’t get our lives cleaned up enough to change the sin that we’ve committed.

We’re really to overcome the fact that we’re going to continue to sin no matter how much we get our lives cleaned up. All of these things that I’ve listed off that people trust in, if I could just be a better person, if I could just try harder. There’s not enough of that that we could do that would change the fact that we’re sinners and change the fact that we’re separated from God.

No, that sin had to be paid for. It had to be punished. The debt had to be paid.

And you and I could never do it. But Jesus Christ came. And when He was nailed to the cross, when He shed His blood, and when He died, and when He did it all in obedience to the Father’s plans, He checked off absolutely every box that there was.

He got rid of anything there was for us to do. And he said, it is finished. He didn’t say, guys, I need you to hear me on this.

He didn’t say, it is finished except the part they have to come and do. He didn’t say, it is finished as long as they check their boxes. He didn’t say, it is finished for those who get their lives cleaned up.

He said, it’s finished. The entire work of God’s redemption is finished. Those plans have been fulfilled so that now we can be forgiven.

Our sins can be wiped away. That slate can be wiped clean. We can be saved.

We can have a loving relationship with the Father, and we can receive eternal life not because of anything that we can ever do, but simply because Jesus finished all of the Father’s redemptive plans. He fulfilled them all, and He finished everything that the Father sent Him to do. He finished the work for you so that you could experience redemption in Him.

And this morning, if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, I just want to be as clear as I can. There’s nothing for you to do to try to earn it. If you’re sitting there thinking, I need that salvation.

I need that forgiveness. Oh, if I could just be good enough. Oh, if I could just go to church.

If I could just get my life straightened out. Hear me on this. You can’t.

You can’t do any of that enough. But the good news is Jesus finished the work of redemption. Jesus finished it all.

He did everything necessary. So this morning, I say there’s nothing for you to do in the sense of earning it, but there is something for you to do in the sense of responding to what he’s already done. This morning, if you recognize that you’ve sinned against a holy God, if you recognize that you’ve fallen short of what He desires from you, you’ve disobeyed Him, you’ve rebelled against Him, if you recognize that, and you recognize the fact that you need a Savior, because you understand the Bible says you can’t save yourself, you can’t be good enough.

If you recognize all of that, and you believe that Jesus Christ died to pay for your sins in full, He took your full punishment, He bore the responsibility for your sins on Himself, If you believe that He died as your one and only Savior and that He rose again to prove it, this morning you can talk to God, you can ask His forgiveness, and you can be saved. It’s nothing for you to do in the sense of earning or deserving. The Bible simply calls us to respond to the offer that He makes and to receive it.