Thank you, Ben. So we're continuing our
miniseries in the lead up to Easter, going through various
phrases that were standing out. And last week we had Ben
preaching about do what I have done and he was talking about
Jesus and washing the disciples feet and talking about service
and so forth. If you haven't heard it, go back
and listen to it. It's a great preach.
This week we've got it is finished, which you might think
is a bit of a strange one given that next week is Easter, but
sort of we've got a great preach lined up for next week, so well
worth coming along. Can I encourage you?
As Shaykhun said, it's a time when people are more likely to
come into church to walk through those doors and that is half the
battle. You know, we want to be friendly
to people when they walk through those doors, but quite often
they need to walk through those doors.
We're also believing about going out onto the streets and that's
part of the prayer walk that Shagun's talking about.
So just encourage you, encourage me to actually prioritise that.
Let's pray. Father God, we thank you that
you sent Jesus. He is the most important person
on this world. Lord, we thank you that he came
from heaven and he died for us. Lord, that was always your first
plan. Lord, we thank you that you sent
him. Amen.
So I'm speaking from John 19. I'm only going to grab a couple
of verses rather than reading the whole thing.
But sort of these are just a couple of verses and we'll get
into it. And as you would expect, it's
got the words, it is finished in it.
So at John 19 verse 28 through to 30 in the NIV later, knowing
that everything had now been finished and so that scripture
would be fulfilled, Jesus said I am thirsty.
A jar of wine vinegar was there. So they soaked a sponge in it
and a sorry soaked a sponge on and put it on a stalk of the
hissop plant and lifted it to Jesus lips.
When he had received the drink Jesus said it is finished.
With that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Sorry, I'm trying to provoke my timer to start because yet
again, I will have no clue of how long I'm talking for.
I wonder, when you read that and picture the scene, do you
imagine that it is finished as a whimper?
As a whisper? It's funny, I see a few shakes
of the head, but what goes through my head is exactly that
it is finished. I don't know.
I was thinking about this. I wonder in part if it's because
I imagine death being the sort of last day that going quietly,
You know, this is his last breath, basically, and he's
saying it is finished. If we read the other Gospels,
though, it becomes clear that it wasn't a quiet whisper.
Jesus cried out again in a loud voice and then gave up his
spirit. That's Matthew's record marks.
With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.
Luke. Jesus called out with a loud
voice. Father, into your hands I commit
my spirit. When he had said this, he
breathed his last. So John doesn't say explicitly
that Jesus was speaking in a loud voice, but I think we can
take it that he was. So the thing about that is you
can go from Jesus just dying to Jesus going, it is finished and
you go hold on a moment then was Jesus not in pain?
Was he not nailed to the cross? He's shouting Jesus, it is
finished. And we can think that, well, we
say Jesus was man and God. So perhaps then He just forwent
his manhood at that stage. But if we go down that line, it
ignores everything in the Bible. You see, God was seeking for a
people to live their best life and He created us to live that
life. He experiences pain when we
don't do that, and that is why Jesus was sent.
Jesus was both man and God, but the point is, he's both at the
same time. He doesn't forego his manhood to
get round feeling the pain on the cross.
He experienced it all there, but he was focused on something
else. You see, it wasn't just the
nails that held him to that cross, it was his love for each
one of us. You see that it is finished is a
sound of a builder laying the final stone.
It's the sound of a runner crossing that finish line.
The Greek word. Because we all like a bit of
Greek and theology, don't we? Or is it just me?
The Greek word is tetelestai and I probably butchered that, but
we'll go with it. And it's translation is it is
finished. But it was a regular word.
It was used in business, written on receipts and what it meant
there was paid in full. Amazing, isn't it?
It was used injustice. When a prisoner had completed
their sentence and they sort of moved out of prison, they
received a certificate of debt which had Tete Leste on it.
It basically meant that debt has been fulfilled, it's been
cancelled, it's no longer relevant.
Isn't that amazing too? These two things tell us.
That's why that's not working. Tell us how we can interpret
what God, what Jesus is saying on the cross.
It is finished. So what was it exactly that was
finished? Well, one of the things is that
Jesus came to die on that cross. Yeah, from the very beginning in
Genesis through to Malachi that we were in a few weeks back.
There's this red thread, as people refer to it, running
through all of history. It's the promise of a rescuer.
Thousands of years God's people lived in a state of to be
continued. It's coming, but not yet.
There were shadows in men of God, of Jesus.
You look at Abraham, You look at David, Joseph, Elijah, Isaiah.
I knew I was going to trip there.
Elijah and Elijah and Isaiah, Daniel, Joshua, Joan.
I'm Joan. That's a story about Jesus.
It's a story about persecution and redemption.
It wasn't intended as the story of human persecution, even
though that's how we can identify with that.
Every time a prophet spoke, every time a king failed, every
time a psalmist cried out for mercy, the tension grew.
It's that Sunday school adage, isn't it?
So the Sunday school teacher asked a question, and the kid
answers with, well, the answer's got to be Jesus.
Yeah, the answer was always Jesus to Genesis, to Malachi.
It's about Jesus. He was born of a virgin that was
prophesied in Isaiah. He was born in Bethlehem.
He was descended from the King David.
Even when He was on the cross, his hands and His feet were
being pierced. That's in Psalm 22.
In fact, Psalm 22 carries a lot of things about it.
Psalm 22 says my mouth is dried up like a potsherd and my tongue
sticks to the roof of my mouth. Psalm 6921 finishes with and
gave me vinegar for my thirst. Jesus is there on the cross, and
he's looking to the complete fulfilment of scripture, of the
written word of God. Jesus is focused on the cross,
on completing the word of God, of finishing it.
See, back in Genesis 3, there was a curse that came and God
said to Adam and Eve, well, he said it to the serpent.
He said that the serpent's head, the devil, the accuser, his head
would be crushed and the serpent would strike the heel.
You know, I'm sure the accuser, the devil, assumed that it was
finished. He'd killed Jesus, the Son of
God. God continues to speak.
He continues to speak to us today through His Word, but also
through his Holy Spirit. But it is all because of what
Jesus did, of what Jesus accomplished.
We wouldn't have the Holy Spirit without Jesus having come and
gone back to heaven. Jesus is the completion of all
that God set out to do and accomplish.
So that's prophecy. That's the completion of the
word of Scripture. But the other thing that we
looked at that we talked about earlier was that certificate of
debt. The debt was finished.
The bill was paid in full. The curse is broken.
See, in the beginning we lived with God.
We walked with God in the call of the garden.
And then we did something. We did something that God had
told us not to do. And the result of that was a
curse. Now, this isn't Adam and Eve's
curse. This is all of us.
The result of our actions are a broken world, See?
The result of our actions should, in a just world, be
death. See, We're condemned to die.
Now you might go hold on a moment.
We do something that God says not to do, and that's it.
We're condemned to die. Surely not.
What kind of God would do that? Here's the thing you're missing.
When we did something that was against what God had told us not
to do, that created the separation between US and God.
That meant that we were forced out of His presence because He
is holy and just. It's one of the challenges in
marriage is you can do something that causes pain to the other
person and you have to work out how to reconcile it.
But here the problem was far bigger.
You see, we were separated from God, but now we can't come into
God's presence, so we're stuck to butcher some film quotes.
We're dead already. We just don't know it.
Yeah. If you live without Jesus,
you're dead. Yeah, because God created us,
but he created us to live with him.
Our life comes from God. So if we're separated from God,
we no longer have life. It's only through God's grace
that we breathe that without Jesus that we breathe and walk
around. But eventually that rule comes
in and it says no, you die because we're now no longer
supported by gods in US. See, salvation then trying to
get back into presence of God, Well, there's nothing you can
do. There's no works you can do.
You can't be good enough to come back into God's presence.
See, imagine with me for a moment.
You've got a mortgage, you've got car finance, you've got
finance for other things, say furniture.
It seems to cost an arm and a leg to buy a sofa these days and
and you're right at the limit of what you can afford.
Everything you've got coming in is going out on these things, on
food and so forth. And then war breaks out.
America and Israel decide to invade Iran and now petrol
prices are jumping by 35 PA litre and food prices go up.
It's all overwhelming. It's that stomach drop moment.
I can't pay this, there's nothing I can do.
But imagine somebody steps in and they pay everything.
They pay off your mortgage, they pay off your car, they pay off
your sofa. Finally you can sleep, the
weight is lifted. Finally you can live.
See, that's the but God moment. Jesus loves us so much.
Jesus loves you, Deborah. Jesus loves you, Lizzie.
Jesus loves you, Ethan, so much that he came from heaven.
As Ben told us last week, he came from a place where he was
King of Kings and stepped down to earth as a lowly baby.
See, we needed a Saviour, we needed a Redeemer, somebody to
put us back in right with God. We needed someone to pay the
price of our wrong. We needed someone to pay the
full price to cancel our debt. See, in the spiritual realm,
everyone who has recognised they need Jesus, everyone who has
made Jesus in charge of their life, what they do each day,
everyone who has started a relationship with Jesus, they
get this metaphorical certificate of debt with
Tetelesti put on it, paid in full.
Jesus didn't give us a payment plan.
Oh well, you know, pay this amount every week and by the end
of your life you'll be right. No, he didn't even give us a
discount. Oh, sales happening 50% off.
No, He paid in his blood, paid in full.
The dead didn't disappear, it didn't go.
It was settled by Jesus so it would never be demanded of you
again. We can live because of Jesus
sacrifice, because of his mercy, because of his grace.
Another thing that was finished, the system, I've titled it, but
if you'd walked into the temple on the morning that Jesus was
going to be crucified on the cross, you'd have seen a
massive, thick curtain in there. It was a barrier keeping
everyone out, except for once a year a priest would go through
that curtain. It stood between the dwelling
place of God, the Holy of Holies, and the rest of the
world. It was a constant reminder that
you are not clean enough, you are not holy enough.
But that afternoon, when Jesus gave up his spirit, that curtain
was torn in two, and it wasn't by human hands.
Who would have had to start at the bottom.
No, God tore it from the top down.
The need for a sacrificial system was no longer required.
You see, Jesus sacrifice was the ultimate sacrifice.
The price had been paid in full for everything, fire and
everything going forward. He completed it full.
The religious treadmill of do more, give more, sacrifice more.
It's abolished. It's finished.
The way is open into God's presence now.
The old covenant was finished and a new era, a new covenant
covenant was established in the temple.
There wasn't any place for a priest to sit.
That's because the priest's work was never finished.
But in Hebrews 10 and Mark 16, Jesus is recorded as going and
sitting down at the right hand of God.
See, it is finished. So if prophecy is fulfilled, if
the debt is paid, if the curtain is torn, why do we live as if
we're carrying around the bill? See, Jesus said it is finished.
No, I am finished. No, it is finished.
See, I am finished is the language of exhaustion.
It's the thing we say when things haven't gone quite as we
plan them to. It's the thing that we say when
we fall into that sin for the thousandth time.
We feel like God must be fed up with us.
We see God as the tyrant rather than the loving Father.
We see Jesus as God and perfect, which he is.
But we then compare ourselves to that idea of perfection.
We treat our relationship with Jesus as a spiritual treadmill.
You're all here on a Sunday. You might be attending because
you think that's the thing you've got to do to be the
perfect Christian for God to be pleased with you and smile on
you. We run our race striving for
that finishing line, trying to get clean enough, holy enough.
We try to add our little plus sign to the cross.
The cross plus my good behaviour equals salvation.
I don't know whether you've been to the Louvre or perhaps the
National Gallery is is more easy for us to reach, but in there
there's a load of masterpieces. Yeah, beautiful works of art.
You can go and see them. Here's the thing though, you
can't improve on those works of art, on those masterpieces.
You can't get out your little permanent borough and and
improve those things. In fact, I suspect if you did,
you'd end up in a lot of trouble for defacing them.
See, I'm a doer. Over the last month, though,
God's been talking to me about resting in what He has done.
To accept it is finished means that I have to give up what I
would do to try and save myself. I can't save myself anyhow.
In many ways, it's an assault on my pride.
But Dre says put the pen down. The Ledger is closed if you've
been living in shame. And just because I didn't get
the difference between shame and guilt, shame is where you say
I'm a bad person, OK. Guilt is where you say I did
something wrong. All right?
So if you're living in shame, that isn't of Jesus, that isn't
who he says you are. It's not who he's calling you to
be. That's the accuser in Zephaniah
3 verses 15 to 17, it says the Lord has taken away your
punishment. He has turned back your enemy.
The Lord, the king of Israel is with you.
Never again will you fear any harm on that day.
That's when Jesus died. They will say to Jerusalem, do
not fear Zion. Do not let your hands hang limp.
The Lord your God is with you, the mighty warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you, in his love.
He will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with
singing. We gather here and sing some
great songs and they were amazing this morning.
All about Jesus. And he's there right back
singing over each one of you, singing over you.
Jesus isn't asking you to do more.
He's not asking you to try harder.
He's asking you to rest. When Jesus said it's finished,
he meant your shame is finished, your striving is finished, your
separation from God is finished. And he didn't mean that you've
done enough up to this point. That well done, good and
faithful servant, you've done it all.
No, Jesus has done it all and we just need to accept that there's
nothing we can do. To add to that, Jesus sat down
at the right hand of God. It is finished.
As we move to Easter, it's easy to jump ahead.
It's easy to jump to the Hallelujah of the resurrection,
but for the disciples, on that Friday, it is finished would
probably have felt like a funeral.
They saw a tomb. They saw a stone that had been
rolled over the tomb entrance. They saw silence.
They assumed finished meant over.
They went back to their day jobs because they didn't know what
else to do. As we leave today, realise the
work of salvation wasn't finished when the stone was
rolled away. It was finished on the Friday
when the blood was shed. Sunday was just the proof, but
the payment happened on the Friday.
I hope that you walk out of here not needing to strive to be
better. I hope that for myself, I have
to keep repositioning myself. I hope that you're not wondering
if you're loved, You are. I hope that you're not hoping
you're forgiven because you are, but knowing you are because of
what the King of Kings did. He looked at your life, looked
at your debt, and shouted to the heavens.
It is finished. Next week we're going to hear.
Whom are you seeking? I'm excited for that.
Have a great week. Be blessed, Jesus.
Jesus. Jesus.
Thank you. Jesus, we've sung and and it's
been plain that you deserve all the glory, all the praise.
Jesus, we hold you as just amazing.
Lord, that you would sing over us is wonderful.
That you would come to earth from heaven for us, it's just
amazing. Lord, may we never take it for
granted. May we never stop singing of
what you've done for us. And Lord, may we be a people who
go out amongst the world here and proclaim your life for those
people. Lord, may people here and be
turned to you, Thank you Jesus, Amen.