John 19 and the 30th verse.
When Jesus, therefore, had received the vinegar, he
said, it is finished.
And he bowed his head and gave up
the ghost.
I said last week, at least I would
attempt, I sure won't fathom it, but I
would attempt to talk to you on the
three most important words, I believe, in history.
It is finished.
This is one, as you guessed, you may
know, and if not, let me tell you,
it's one of the seven sayings, as we
say, of the Lord Jesus on the cross.
It is not the shortest of the seven,
that is in the previous verse, or in
the 28th verse, where it says, I first,
that is the shortest of the sayings of
the Lord Jesus.
This is the next to the last of
the seven sayings.
It has, again, just three words, it is
finished.
The greatest words ever uttered by the greatest
man that ever lived.
Now those three words can only be superseded
by three other words, he is risen, which
again can only be superseded by four words,
I will come again.
In these three words, I see the consummation
of all the Old Testament truth, and the
germination of all New Testament truth.
I guess it's right to say, at least
it's in my thinking, that we have never
lived in a day when words are more
cheap than they are today.
I don't believe words have ever been used
as they used today.
There's not much to this building, it didn't
cost millions of dollars, but it's like the
White House right now.
There are about, maybe 300 nations speaking right
into this room, and I could prove that
easily obviously by putting down a powerful radio,
and we could pick up Japan, we could
pick up other nations, they're all speaking, they're
all using like they used to use catapults,
and they used to hold big rocks through
the air, and now we use the radio
and the TV, and we beam messages out.
Millions and millions of words are spoken every
day, millions and millions are printed, millions and
millions are written in letters.
We throw words across the courtroom, across the
barroom, across the ballroom, across your living room.
Some are kind words, some are cruel words,
some are necessary, some are unnecessary.
I discovered a thing from a survey that
was published recently, I read it this week,
that the average person, the ordinary woman in
the home or anyone else, utters about two
thousand words a day.
But if you're in a social service, a
doctor, a preacher, some other person, uses ten
times that amount of words.
And the survey said, we have taken this
survey and discovered that the average person speaks
two thousand words a day.
So that if you speak two thousand words
a day for 50 years, listen, you speak
thirty six and a half million words.
Now if you're in a position like a
lawyer, a social worker, they discover that the
average social worker or lawyer or somebody in
a profession speaks ten times the amount of
the other person, so they speak twenty thousand
words a day.
So they speak three hundred and sixty-five
million words in the last 50 years of
their lives.
And the book says that we should give
an account to God for every word we've
spoken, whether you said it behind your hand
or behind the door or over the phone
or, you know, it's just between me and
you this.
I know it's a bit slanderous.
Or whether it's kind of every idle word
that a man speaks.
And you think of the billions of people
that have been here since Adam and every
person is going to give an account for
the words that they have spoken.
But I don't believe ever in history, anywhere,
at any time, by anybody, were three words
more pregnant with meaning than these three words
given by one man at the end of
his life.
It is finished.
Now supposing you were here and I was
sitting there, how would you start to handle
a text like this?
I feel as I'm trying to catch the
wind in my arms.
I'm trying to pick the Atlantic Ocean up
in a sieve.
How do you deal with it?
To me, it's magnitude staggers me.
It's mystery staggers me.
It's majesty staggers me.
Well there's going to be at least one
other saying of the Lord Jesus before he
dies, but still I say this is the
terminus.
I remember when I was at Bethany Fellowship,
one day opening a large map of the
world.
It was about four feet by three or
something.
But it so happened that all the roads
in America were all drawn in thin red
lines and up through the Alleghenies and the
Appalachians and the other mountains, there were thin
red lines and they all terminated in New
York City.
And then from New York City there were
black lines showing you this boat goes down
here to Montevideo, this one goes over here
to London, this one goes over here to
somewhere else.
All the roads climax in New York.
All the sea routes began in New York.
It seems to me that here is a
terminus in the life of the Lord Jesus
where all the prophecies, all the law, all
the prophets, they terminate in this saying of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
And everything from there blossoms out because this
is absolutely the foundation stone of it all.
Three simple words.
It is finished.
I suggest to you in all reverence that
these three words terrified hell.
It is finished.
You see, this English word of ours, this
little sentence, it is finished is not in
the Greek at all.
And I don't know much about Greek but
I did discover this, that in the Greek
it is just one word, finished.
And in Matthew 27, it says that when
Jesus came to the end of the chapter
here, he cried with a loud voice, finished.
And I'm sure all hell shook.
You see, this is an arena into which
Jesus is moving.
You could say the life of Jesus is
a kind of a three-act play, though
he wasn't playing, it's a three-act drama.
You get the first years of his life,
30 years in preparation for three years, the
first chapter has been written, the second chapter
now is coming to a climax on the
cross, the third chapter is yet to come
in all his resurrection splendor.
There's nothing to equal it anywhere.
I get indignant when I hear people say,
you know, what we need to do is
study comparative religion.
Well, I say again with some heat and
some feeling in my spirit, Christianity is not
a comparative religion, it's a superlative religion.
Because this one saying of Jesus Christ explodes
every other religion on God's earth, they're all
fakes.
They're all useless.
This momentous event, I can see demons peeping
out of hell as they see Jesus, he's
gone to the cross.
I can see angels looking over the parapets
of heaven, I can see the Jews and
the Romans and the Greeks, they're all at
the cross.
We have a precious colored sister with who
we love her very dearly.
I'm colored too, only I faded.
We're all colored.
You know, I'll tell you one reason I
love colored people amongst others, it was a
colored man that picked up the cross when
Jesus fell under it.
When I see him in heaven, I'm going
to give him a mighty big hug.
The cross of Jesus, here it is.
We sing the hymn often here, don't we?
Beneath the cross of Jesus, I fain would
take my stand, the shadow of a mighty
rock within a weary land, a home within
the wilderness, a rest upon the way.
Look, if you put the cross on Palestine
like that and let one of the arms
reach down, you can scoop it around the
whole world because geographically, the cross is almost
the center of the world.
It is the center of time.
We change Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy, though
they're wanting to change it back and I
don't wonder.
What did we shot a rocket?
Did we change the calendar?
When we invented the atom bomb, did we
change the calendar?
Isn't it amazing?
A little baby came into the world and
he divided time, he divided men, he divided
nations.
People say if we have revival, we'll all
be one.
If we have revival, we'll be more divided
than ever.
The first thing Jesus did before he could
walk or talk, Herod was troubled and all
Jerusalem with him.
The last thing he did on the cross
was divide men.
In his lifetime he divided men.
He went into the synagogue and there was
a division because of him.
And wherever Jesus goes, there's division.
And those demons were looking down in terror.
Come on, come on, you've forgotten.
Think again of the majesty of this event.
Do you know how great it was?
Because you remember one of his other sayings
is, my God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?
In a tongue he knew so well how
to make, he says, Eloi, Eloi, lama sebachthani,
which you cannot be interpreted except, my God,
I'm deserted.
Everybody deserted him.
You see there at that moment when Jesus
says, it is finished, mercy and truth met
together and righteousness and peace kissed each other
and hell went into panic.
How do I know?
Because the earth was shattered by the whole
earth rocked on its axis.
So the earth trembled under the impact of
his sin.
But he bore for us.
Heaven trembled.
You see, I've been to art galleries around
the world.
You've been in many of them, I guess.
If you're in Germany, maybe you saw some.
They have some beautiful pictures.
But you know, there never was a picture
of the cross, it's all imagination.
That event was so sacred that as it
were, God took his coat off and hung
it over the sun.
And there was darkness for three hours.
He wouldn't let anybody see his son become
corruption.
I don't know how God, again as Wesley
says, God was contracted to a stand incomprehensibly
made man.
The heavens of heavens cannot contain him.
How do you press him into the matrix
of the Virgin Mary?
The heaven of heavens cannot contain him.
Oh, I got a letter this week.
I was going to bring it.
I got a letter from a boy 15
years of age.
And he said, Mr. Ravenhill, I've been listening
to some of your tapes in the bedroom
and they've really got hold of me.
And then I read a second one.
And he said, and he's an artist, he's
15 years of age, he's already gone public,
they're lithographing his pictures, they're selling for a
lot of money.
He's 15 years of age.
He said, Mr. Ravenhill, I'm asking God, what
does he want out of my life?
The kid's already got his foot on the
ladder at 15 to be one of the
greatest artists and make more money than I'll
ever see.
But what is God wanting out of my
life?
He said, I was meditating there and I
thought of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah.
And then I went into the 52nd, the
Lord said, not 53, 52.
And he put in brackets, please read it,
Mr. Ravenhill.
And I read it.
You know, it's a very wonderful chapter.
I'll leave it to you to read.
How beautiful are the feet of them that
publish good tidings of peace.
But he said, you know, as I think
of his love for me, just a 15
year old kid.
When I think of what his redemption means
in my life.
Kay was telling me the other day about
a neighbor of hers that, who must be
a neighbor of ours, but this man who
had been camping last week and he went
there, I suppose indifferent, and he camped with
a few kids and two 12 year old
boys ministered to a man.
And it seems to have turned his life
around.
He's a different man.
He said some things to Kay that were
precious and encouraging to her.
Well isn't that what the book says, out
of the mouths of babes and sucklings he'll
ordain.
Very often children enter into simplicity, they enter
into areas that we don't get into.
Now I don't believe intellect is an obstruction
to getting to know God.
I believe pride is the main interest.
I wish my brain was a thousand times
more keen as I get older.
John Wesley was nobody's fool.
Mr. Finney had one of the sharpest minds
America's ever had.
Isaac Watts was nobody's idiot.
You get some of the most profound books
we have.
God uses what he can use.
If the vessel is clay, he blesses clay.
If it's gold, he uses gold.
If it's silver, he uses silver.
I don't have to graduate to an intellectual
standard.
I wish I could, but I don't have
to.
I know there are more things come by
revelation than education, but it still does not
mean we're to despise the intellect or despise
any part of our lives.
Some people move emotionally and so they write
great hymns and they're not even brainy.
Some seem to have a combination of the
whole lot.
But I say remember at this moment when
mercy and truth met together, when Jesus Christ,
who in the mystery of God's divine grace,
God was contracted to a span.
What the theologians call the incarnation.
How does God clothe himself?
He just clothed himself in flesh and blood.
He crept into the womb of a woman.
And how God became man, I don't know.
But less, less, less do I know.
How did he become sin?
You know the answer?
No you don't.
Neither does any living person.
Every man who's honest, you can take Spurgeon
or anybody, the more honest the man is,
the more he says I'm baffled.
As I get older, I've told you before,
I see more and more great is the
mystery of godliness.
I think I said to brother Duane today,
Duane I feel that in spiritual matters, I
after 55 years walking with God, I don't
think I've got my feet wet.
The soles underneath never mind waters to the
ankles or the knees or the loins.
God has opened his treasure house to us.
As I've used the phrase so often before,
do we really explore the possibilities of God?
What's the most exciting thing in your life?
Don't answer me, answer up straight up there
to God.
Tell him what's the most exciting thing.
That you become more knowledgeable or make more
money or become more famous.
What is the most exciting thing to you?
Is it that day by day you slip
into him and worship and adore him?
I was thinking of this great hymn of
Wesley's today.
He's talking about the cross and he says
this, would Jesus have the sinner die?
Why hangs he then on yonder tree?
What means that strange expiring cry?
Sinner he prays for you and me.
Forgive them father, oh forgive they know not,
that by me they live.
Thou loving all atoning lamb, thee by thy
painful agony, thy blood, thy sweat, thy grief,
thy pain, thy cross, thy passion on the
tree.
Thy precious death and life I pray, take
all, take all my sins away.
And then in the rapture of that he
says this and it's so wonderful.
I can see that woman crouching at the
feet of Jesus and I can see Wesley
scholarly dignified.
Trailing his academic gown behind him in Oxford
University.
This is Charles of course, not John.
And yet Charles says, oh let me kiss
thy bleeding feet and bathe and wash them
with my tears.
The story of thy love repeat in every
drooping sinner's ears, that all mankind with me
may prove thy sovereign everlasting love.
Oh let thy love my heart constrain.
You see he loves it, if he works
it inward it's going to work outward somewhere.
God only puts up with words so long.
A brother said to me this during this
week, he said you know brother, I think
we die in areas of our lives.
We don't die totally to God's spirit, we
die in areas.
God gives up on us on certain areas.
He doesn't tolerate anymore.
We've said so much, we've made our vows,
we won't do it.
God bypasses us in that area.
As I've said so often, it says in
the book of the revelation, remember that hold
fast to that which thou hast, that no
man take thy crown.
Not demons, men take thy crown.
So Charles finishes his hymn by saying this,
oh let thy love my heart constrain.
Thy love for every sinner free, that every
fallen soul of man may taste the grace
that found out me.
That all mankind with me may prove thy
sovereign everlasting love.
Isaac Watts used the other language which you
know well enough, he said when I survey
the wondrous cross, this I say was the
most momentous moment in history.
Hell had feared this for centuries, for millenniums.
Why do you think the devil greased the
path of Jesus and tried to make him
take a shortcut to conquer the world?
Why do you think he stirred up enmity
amongst the religious people?
You see there's one rotten canker that's
in so many churches as well as it
was before.
What does it say about Joseph?
His brethren sold him for what?
For envy.
What does it say about the Lord Jesus?
The priests sold him for envy.
That festering thing in the hearts of men
and women, they sold him because of envy.
They sold him because they hated him.
Why bless you, I've missed something vital out
there, did you pick it up?
He was only a little baby, less than
two years of age when they had what
the history calls the massacre of the innocents.
I said to you before, I'll say it
again whether you love me or hate me
for it, if you've got children you ought
to be up an hour before they go
to school and cover those children every day
with the blood of Jesus and really laying
hold of the promises for they live in
a hell of a world in the day
in which we live.
If you don't do it, I'll do it
for you.
Remember when Satan thinks there's something going to
happen, he's going to dog that child.
Now I prayed, you know and I still
do, whether you know or not, I pray
some of our kids, if I'm here or
I'm not, it doesn't make any art.
If Jesus tarries, they'll become some of the
leaders half a generation, a decade from now.
God will make them missionaries and evangelists and
teachers and prophets and apostles.
In the last great awakening which men are
trying to work right up now and you
can't do it.
But he's going to get youngsters and fill
them with the spirit and teenagers and in
their early years.
And you remember Moses was there.
You know people say if you're good you
do as the government tells you.
If you're good you tell the government to
go to hell if you want to tell
it to go and you obey God.
And the father and mother of Moses did
not obey the government, they hid their baby
when the government said he should be destroyed.
He's going to be the lawgiver, he's going
to be one of the greatest men in
history and Satan says no.
The same thing happened in the life of
Jesus.
First slaughter of the innocents in the days
of Moses.
Jesus is not two years of old and
Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him
and they said destroy him.
You know I often think about those kings
they got more faith than the disciples.
Because somebody said this man's going to be
a king and he believed it.
I mean the little thing there nursing on
his mother's breast isn't going to get up
and slug the king is he?
He isn't going to go to a club
at night and raise an insurrection against the
nation.
But somehow, somehow Satan said you better believe
it.
That little fellow is going to be the
son of God with power and authority.
He's going to dethrone you and wreck your
empire.
And so just as they tried to destroy
Moses at two years of age or under
they tried to destroy Jesus.
From the moment he was born to the
last thing on the cross.
As I've said so often I still say
to myself I need to.
That even if you've gone to the cross,
even if you've got on the cross.
The subtle old devil says listen, listen.
He comes with subtle and he says get
down from the cross and save yourself.
Nobody's living like you.
They live it up.
You can't tell the difference except they go
to church on Sundays with us for prayer
and fasting and seeking God and travel.
So why do you do it?
Man why don't you get an easier job?
Get ten times as much as you get
going around here or go to some fancy
church or some other thing.
He comes to you in some way.
You decided that you're going to live according
to the standard of the Lord Jesus and
he says well why don't you pinch it
a little bit here and reduce your convictions
there and not be so stiff right there
and do just a little compromise.
Well everybody gets away with it.
And so from his infancy to the cross
the last thing they did.
I've read that word of Matthew's.
My I'm anticipating myself here a little bit
but remember when he'd gone to the cross
they passed by.
The scum of the earth passed by and
they wagged their heads and reviled him.
I've told you before there was nothing unusual
to see a man going down the street
carrying a cross.
It's as common as a boy carrying a
baseball bat.
Come as a bullfight in Spain.
Hey look who's going.
You know who that is?
So what?
They put many a false prophet to death.
Only he's a bit more brazen than the
others you know.
He preached a sermon they said would shake
the world called the Sermon on the Mount.
Well he did a bit more power but
do you know why he does it?
Do you know why he pushes devils around?
Because he's the prince of devils they have
to obey him.
Here is the holiest, purest, most spotless man
that ever lived.
What does the world do?
Blister him, blast him, bruise him.
They watched a man going down the street.
Well when the high priest went into the
holy place did he go in wags like
this stained with his own blood?
Had he been up for hours?
Had he been pushed around by a vassal
king by the name of Pilate who said
oh you get over to Herod he's in
your domain and Herod says you get him
I don't want this responsibility.
Do you think the high priest could have
got into the holy place with a faded
gown that once belonged to a king?
And a crown on his head made of
thorns and spit on his jaw and hair
pulled from his face?
Staggering under the Lord hardly as though he
were drunk.
The priest went into the holy place in
garments of glory and beauty the most marvellous
garments in the world all hand sewn, meticulous
and marvellous.
He went with a crown on his head,
he went with a breastplate, beautiful stones.
How did Jesus go?
Jesus went there staggering to the cross.
Did he have a stone, a red stone
on his breast?
No, just his own blood that's all.
Did he have an immaculate garment threaded?
No, a peasant's garment.
Did he have a golden crown with holiness
unto the Lord?
No, he had a crown of thorns with
holiness in his spirit.
Did people stand in awe and say the
priest has gone in, will he come out?
This is what he said as the holiest
man that ever lived trudged up that road
that they called the Via Dolorosa.
Staggering under a cross and they say and
he's the man that talked about being strong
and he gave strength to the weak and
eyes to the blind and he did a
lot of things and look he can't keep
up the load.
He wasn't sinking under the load of the
cross.
Those poor dumb blind wizards that stood there,
the gamblers and the thieves and the lawyers
and the doctors and the and the soldiers,
they had no eyes to see.
The priest went into a holy place with
gorgeous garments and priceless stones on his breast
once a year for one nation.
And before next year he might be dead
and they had to re-elect another one.
Here is a man staggering up this road
who is going to take the consummate sin
and grief not of one nation, the whole
world.
There's not a computer of computers that can
give you the staggering amount of human guilt.
It was more than the sands by the
seashore or the stars in heaven.
And he isn't going to go every year.
He's going once into the holy place.
He isn't burdened under a cross of wood.
He's carrying the sin of the world.
But Samson with all his strength could not
carry.
He's solving a problem that Solomon in all
his wisdom could not solve.
Those blind idiots looking out of their chariots.
Those Romans with their proud garments.
Those priests who thought they had an investment
from God.
Those merchants who stare on this poverty.
God pity them.
He's going to a cross.
He hasn't got a dime in his pocket
and he put every vein of silver in
the world and every nugget of gold that's
in it.
Nobody stood by him, not even his disciples.
You say they didn't understand.
I think they did.
Because you see, they not only failed him
there, they failed him on the resurrection morning.
If they really believed him, they'd have been
crowding.
They'd have been lined up at the resurrection.
There was not one of them there.
And this is him that says the pain
in his heart was the hardest to bear.
The heart that was broken for me.
Again I say he's not, he's not going
to repeat the act.
He's doing it once and for all.
That's what he's doing.
Their high priest offered the blood of another.
You see, Jesus is a consummation of everything.
Every type that's in the Old Testament.
You can take the sacrificial types.
He's the red heifer.
He's the perfect lamb.
He's the devil's breast was put in blood
and thrown away.
Sent out into the air.
But the priest has no sacrifice.
It doesn't cost him a thing.
He, he's using the blood of beasts.
This man is going to enter the holiest
place of all in his own blood.
Not every year, but once forever.
The priest that walks into the holy place
to the pod, it's an amazement of all
the people.
He's going to go once and then he's
going to die.
But our high priest is going to live
forever.
He is the perfect offering.
He is the perfect priest.
He is the perfect prophet.
He is the perfect king.
Moses was the greatest prophet.
A greater than Moses is here.
You take the perfection of every one of
those characters in the Old Testament and he
is the ultimate in perfection.
He has the wisdom of Solomon.
He has the patience of Job.
He has the self-reliance of Nehemiah.
He has the statesmanship of Moses.
He has the courage of Joshua.
He has the broken heart of Jeremiah.
All rolled into one personality.
Do you remember that Satan says, if he
can get that man out of God's will,
if he can push him out of the
main track, we can hold the world captive
for millions and millions of millenniums.
Again I tell you that going down that
road, the people mocked him.
That's what he says.
They that passed by reviled him, wagging their
heads.
What a bunch of smart alecks.
The dumb, blind, senseless people thought this man
in these rags, if he'd gone down with
a helmet on his head of gold and
some other thing.
Or if Caesar comes down the road, they
barbarney and say, Hail Caesar!
Caesar!
If the priest comes, they stand in awe.
But you see, he not only was, he
is.
He is in this mad insane world in
which we live.
He is still despised and rejected of men.
As you know, I'm not very fond of
translations of the New Testament.
I like the good old King James.
But I think this one of Phillips is
as smart as anything.
And I love this verse.
I'm going to get it printed on a
little piece of paper.
Because his translation of Ephesians 1 10 is
this, For God has allowed us to know,
the believers, to know the secret of his
plan.
He purposes in his sovereign will that all
human history shall be consummated in Christ.
Well, three cheers for Jesus.
I don't care how drunk the nations are
with their iniquity today.
I don't care that politicians are as hypocritical
now as they were in in Nixon's day,
or anybody else's.
Whether it's British politics or yours or ours.
I say ours because I'm in America.
Live here, pay the taxes, love the country.
Otherwise, I'd leave it.
I don't care how intoxicated men are with
iniquity.
I don't care if people say we're new
in the Middle East at this moment than
ever we've been for years.
The Jews are getting entrenched and they're going
to stay there.
And the Arabs are arrogant.
And the Shah's looking over the fence.
If you listen to the news, the other
night when they finished the news, the newscaster
actually said, well that's the end of the
bad news for the day.
They're not often so honest.
But listen, God has allowed us to know,
come on, lift your chin up, however rough
it's going.
God has allowed us, we're initiated, we're the
believers, we know him.
And he has allowed us to know the
secret of his plan, and it's this.
He purposes in his sovereign will that all
human history shall be consummated in his Christ.
Joe, could you say hallelujah?
Well thank you, I had to prime you,
but it's just good that some of us
can say hallelujah with a push.
Isn't that amazing?
It looks as though the world's in chaos.
Could you try and imagine what Jesus was
thinking on that road to the cross?
I saw the earth shook beneath his feet.
I say God draped the sun, he wouldn't
let anybody see his son dead of sin,
it became sin for us.
Remember please will you, but when Jesus utters
these three words it is finished, it is
after the three hours of darkness.
And there was a historian in Egypt at
the time, and I've forgotten his name for
the moment, there were two, there was one
a Greek, but this was the Egyptian, I
can't get his name for the moment.
But remember there was darkness over the whole
earth for three hours.
And that pagan philosopher wrote this, listen, in
this awful midday that has become midnight, either
God is suffering or somebody he loves is
suffering.
That was a pagan's testimony.
The whole world should have done the impact.
He's not bearing millions or billions or trillions
or quadrillions, he's bearing the sum total of
human sin, not only committed sin but total
depravity.
If men will avail himself of the work
he's doing there.
They reviled him, they wagged their heads.
Verse 41 of that 27th chapter, Matthew said
likewise, the chief priests, these are the men
who know the law and the prophets.
These are the men who've read Isaiah 35
so many times, when he comes the eyes
of the blind shall be opened.
And he did it before them and they
still spit in his face, because that's what
it says a bit later on.
Oh you have it rough, I have it
rough at times.
Anybody boot you behind and almost break your
spine?
Everybody get a nice mouthful of phlegm and
spit in your eye?
Anybody take your beard and pull the flesh
out with it?
Anybody say, well I know you of course,
you're devil-possessed anyhow.
They mocked him, they scorned him, they reviled
him.
Well you can understand the people you say
passing by, they reviled him and they wagged
their heads.
And then their priests, they mocked him.
But wait a minute, there are two men
on either side of him crucified, do you
know what they did?
The thieves which were with him, they cast
the same in his teeth.
Isn't it amazing that to the very doorstep
of hell itself, they scorned him and blasphemed
him.
And they were a heartbeat away from eternity.
Well the good books, one of the hymns
says about this Lord Jesus of ours, it
is the way the master went, should not
the servant tread it still?
It is finished, what is finished?
Well hallelujah, from one angle it's this is
finished, that men aren't going to abuse him
anymore.
A hymn writer says, the head that once
was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory
now.
A royal diadem adorns the mighty victor's brow.
He's out of the reach of men, they're
not going to push him around, they're not
going to crucify him, they're not going to
nail him to a tree.
How do you know that those thieves that
were hailing him and cursing him on the
tree were not part of the crowd?
He fed the five thousand and he didn't
discriminate.
He didn't say give it to Jews but
not to those colored people and not to
those Greeks and he said, feed them.
Well he throws his mercy over the air
over a hundred nations, a thousand nations this
afternoon.
Sure they can't all hear but that lovely
hymn says, give the winds a mighty voice.
Oh my God, my God.
To me it's insufferable that the church has
lived for two thousand years and there's still
a person in the world that doesn't hear
the gospel.
There are still a thousand tribes that do
not have a gospel of the grace of
God.
Partly our fault.
I'm not crowing here at all but I
say I'm glad I left the house.
We never had sports literature.
I lived in a home where it all
was talk about God and missions.
I prayed for missionaries when I didn't know
the missionaries were footballers.
But I prayed for them.
I tried to instill into my boys' minds,
boys look you better get hold of the
right end of the stick.
You don't need to be brainy to be
a doctor.
In one sense you do, I know.
But listen, the choices, the choices are so
temporal.
They're perishing things of clay.
You see, as somebody said, God only had
one son and he was a missionary.
I wonder why there are some tribes up
the Amazon today that have never heard.
You have a look at the Amazon.
If you've got a map of Europe and
you put the mouth of the Amazon on
London there, it would spread over the whole
of Europe and the whole of Russia.
It's so vast.
The greatest river in the world.
And if you go up in a boat
and then can't get any further than in
a commercial steamer, you get a smaller boat
and go up the Orinoco.
Just one branch.
You could go up the Xingu, but go
up the Orinoco River.
And it's bigger than any river we have
in the country.
It's wider than the Mississippi and it's only
a tributary.
And then when you get up there, you
take another branch and take another branch.
Of course, we don't go too much, but
I'll tell you who does go.
Something like, what is it, Omaha, New York.
They go up.
They go up and explore and find out
native people who have still got bones in
the noses, like those men I saw up
in Papua, New Guinea.
They go to people that haven't heard the
gospel.
I remember a missionary telling me he made
a penetration of South America and he said,
I guess, my God, my God, it can't
be.
They told me nobody ever been here before.
And there hanging from a tree as he
came around the road in his jeep was
a sign, Standard Oil.
He said, I felt like weeping.
You wonder me, you mean that men will
push and push and push business and the
gospel has to trail behind?
Let me step back a minute.
He said it is finished.
What is finished?
Well, thank God, he's not going to be
pushed around anymore.
What is finished?
Man's power over him, what they had, was
finished.
What is finished?
Satan's abuse of him, Satan's testing of him.
He started with 40 days in the we
don't say too much about 30.
You see, again, he ministered how long?
He ministered three years.
How long did he live before the three
years?
30 years.
So he had 10 years training for each
one year he was going to minister.
That's pretty good training, isn't it?
Tell me the story of Jesus, write on
my heart every word.
Fasting alone in the desert, think of the
pain that he bore.
30 years of training.
But again, he is going to do in
this one act what all the blood of
beasts on Jewish altars slain, could not give
one guilty conscience, peace or wash away one
stain.
But Christ, the heavenly lamb, takes all our
sins away.
10 million oxen have been slain, thousands of
sheep, sacrifices have been made, new moons and
sabbaths, people have done every kind of thing.
And Jesus ties it all up in one
redemptive act.
Christ, the heavenly lamb.
No, he's not going to be tempted anymore
now.
He's not going to be looking out of
his eye corners as he carries that awesome
cross and carries the sin of the world
and says, I can't see Peter around anymore.
All those disciples, oh when we had miracles,
oh when we were having a good time,
they all said, master you're the greatest person
ever lived and we want you to know,
the world will let you down, but we
won't.
And one of them stepped up and he
says, well Lord, if they do, count on
Peter.
I made that kind of stuff, I never
quit.
I never deny you, I never say I'm
getting a rough deal, I never say I
expect anything better, I can take it.
And Jesus stood and looked at him, and
as he looked an old rooster outside can
cock-a-doodle-doo.
And it broke Peter's heart.
He'd have thanked you for hitting me in
the middle of two by four, but a
rooster just said, there you are, didn't he
tell you that before the cock crows a
third time, you'll three times deny me.
He suffered heartbreak because his disciples were unfaithful.
He suffered heartbreak because the synagogue and the
temple rejected him.
I say they knew the law and the
prophets, they'd heard Isaiah 35 so many times,
they dreamed of it, a highway should be
there and away, bondage is going to cease,
the Romans will lose their power over us,
there's going to be no cripple, no name,
he's going to heal and cure and everybody's
going to be sanctified.
And when they met him in flesh and
blood they didn't even know him.
Do you know why?
Because he didn't do it their way, that's
why.
Because he put new wine in the old
wine skins and they burst.
And in the last great outpouring, a lot
of people say it's here, I don't believe
that for a minute.
I think we've got one or two trickles,
but so not an outpouring.
Well even George Augustus is getting sane now,
he said recently, well if this is a
visitation, if there are 50 million born again
people, why is the nation in this condition,
where the salt has lost its savour?
I believe there'll be such a visitation that
even the workings of God will become headlines,
above the sports headlines, above political headlines, above
economic headlines.
There's going to be such manifestations of divine
power, that God is going to get the
glory for his son.
That's going to shake the world too.
It is finished.
When he said it is finished, really he
is saying, do you know it's finished?
I don't need this body anymore, I don't
need food anymore, I don't need sleep anymore.
I'm not a human being anymore, in the
sense you know humanity.
It is finished.
Men have no power over, Satan has no
power over me.
Right now this afternoon, there are still a
few hot and tots left, they haven't heard
the gospel.
Right now there are still some people called
fakers, f-a-k-i-r, some people
call them fakers.
You can see them in some areas of
India, maybe Nepal, Afghanistan.
You can attend them because they walk with
their arm up and it's atrophied.
And it's been so long, their fingernails have
come down and gone into their flesh.
But you see that's the way they make
a sacrifice to God.
And they live all their lives working with
one hand and they just walk like this.
So you can see them coming half a
mile away.
They've got their arms stuck up.
Somebody said in India, did you go to
Accra, the temple with them?
No, I don't want to see heathenism, I
see enough anywhere else I go, paganism anyhow.
What about those men who saw themselves on
beds of spikes?
Well that's Hinduism.
Why don't we go and tell them there's
no virtue in doing that?
Why don't we tell to the faker there,
listen there's no redemption in that.
Why don't we tell the people in monasteries
who wear hair shirts and fast and why
don't we go to the people who got
somebody to build the entrance to a cave
up except for about 10 inches and they
push plates of food under like they do
for dogs.
And they live with their own excrement there
and they lived in filth and they never
saw daylight, they went blind.
And the only reason you knew they were
dead is that their stinking bodies were worse
than the filth they lived in.
And then they sealed it up and that
was the best way to get to heaven.
Or you deny yourself and live in a
monastery or a nunnery or some other stupid
thing.
Oh there's a blessed wonderful word that says
whom the sun sets free is free indeed.
You know what, I remember somebody who'd been
away from America and been round a few
countries, they'd cry it before they went.
Oh yes, you know what so-and-so
coughed these days, you know what so-and
-so is.
Do you know you have to pay a
toll going down the road?
Do you know they actually got to the
place where they wish they could pay a
toll, there was no road there.
They actually wish there was some gasoline at
two dollars a gallon, there was no gasoline
there.
You get tired of hamburgers and chips and
everything every day, sure be sure your wife
can cook better than that.
But you get to a place where even
that would be a sin.
You know the same thing is true in
the spiritual realm.
All right, Jesus said it is finished, no
more temptation has no power over him, no
more dependence on human agency.
He's going to pass into a tunnel, he's
going to do what no man in history
ever did.
This is an unprecedented act, it's an unrepeatable
act.
I say he's the perfection of the law,
he's the perfection of prophets, take the most
beautiful character in the world and mold them
all into women, he's exactly that.
And instead of angels hanging over him and
coming down and slaying people and say bow
down you rebels, this is the son of
God.
They kicked him, they reviled him, they spat
on him, they mocked him.
You remember that lovely song that said he
could have called ten thousand angels.
I like that song.
I remind you again isn't it in second
Kings where one angel trailed his wings through
a city and destroyed a hundred and eighty
thousand people.
So if he called ten thousand army to
wipe the earth out.
We don't need an air force and bombers,
all we need is a holy determination to
do God's will each send angels around every
house and every window if need be.
I thought with a missionary that actually had
that experience in Vietnam.
That when the communists burned every city and
they saw every town burn night after night
and they were actually coming down the peninsula.
There was no way to back out from
the orphanage yet sent into the sea.
We were having dinner with Dr. R.
R.
Brown that dear old saint and he said
hey tell Brother Radner about when the angels
came.
And they watched the cities burning and villages
burning night by night and then the terrified
children said will it be us tonight?
They said go to sleep don't worry, don't
wake, the Lord will take care of us,
the Lord will take care of us.
Well you know they'd heard that often and
sometimes the Lord was a bit late.
You know the Lord's going to deliver us
tomorrow and he didn't.
The kids didn't understand it.
If they said the Lord's going to deliver
us fine but when you put a time
wave on you're kind of telling God how
to run his business and you know he's
having an idea and he doesn't do it
that way.
And the Lord was late once or twice
and the kids didn't understand it.
So when they said the Lord will take
care of us.
And the communists came marching down that road
and they were routed and they got destroyed.
A lot of them got very seriously injured
and maimed and lost limbs and this missionary
went down with others and said well you
know if your enemy hunger feed him.
Let's go down to the hospital and minister
to them and they went down.
They bound up their wounds and they shared
their rations with them.
He said one of the men looked up
and said are you one of those mission
men?
Mission you say mission men?
Yes yes.
Oh very sorry.
He said but why didn't you march on
us?
Didn't you come to march?
Didn't you send word ahead we're going to
burn the mission station out?
Yes.
Why didn't you do it?
Well he said how could we do it?
I mean you know we couldn't do it.
Those men all in shining armor all standing
right around the mission compound.
We didn't go near them.
We were afraid.
Some said come on we're good.
And then when we saw them they never
moved they just shone they shone.
Well if you told some old liberal that
is a hoax forget it forget it.
And yet he quote in the morning reading
of the scripture he shall give his angels
charge concerning thee to keep thee not out
of thy way.
And then he blasphemed God and out after
and say he doesn't do things like that
anymore.
Huh?
He doesn't pay my bills.
No he didn't he didn't contract your debts
either.
So don't ask him to pay bills that
you contracted debts for.
He's not in our business.
He helps us in our needs.
He pities our weakness or some things he
doesn't do.
He didn't know that but anyhow I told
you.
Now there's no more temptation of life.
There's no more trial.
There's no dependence on human agency.
Jesus knew what was in the heart of
men and until they had been to the
cross for their sins forgiven and been to
the upper room to get purified they were
vacillating.
But once after that Peter never turned around
he never backslid.
It is finished.
What was finished?
Well the tyranny of the devil.
I don't think the church has wakened up
to that yet but it is.
It is so.
I believe that when satan cried with a
loud voice it echoed down every corridor in
hell.
It is finished.
Like normal say demons say what is finished?
He's broken our power.
You mean that satan doesn't have that?
No no no no no no.
Satan is bound.
When the believer stands in a position of
authority.
And not only that.
Death has lost its sting.
It has.
Yeah the grave has no sting.
And more than that.
Oh no can't be more than that.
You mean satan's bound?
You mean that death has lost its sting?
Yes.
Do you know why?
The vilest offender who truly believes that moment
from Jesus of pardon received.
It doesn't matter if he's going in the
Waldorf Astoria this afternoon with somebody else's wife
dripping with diamonds.
Or he's a bum down the street or
he's with the folk that still go naked
on the beach there in San Diego every
Sunday and defy the police to arrest them.
Or whether it's a big ecclesiastical guy standing
beneath the desk behind the desk with all
his mind loaded with such modernistic ideas it
makes no odds.
If he comes to the cross.
Well we sang about it this afternoon.
That old rugged cross so despised by the
world has a wondrous attraction.
You see again I get indignant about this.
There's so much faith going on.
This morning somebody lifted a cup up and
pretended to offer a mass and it's blasphemy.
The epistle to the Hebrews shatters Roman Catholic
theology and you make no mistake about it.
That would be our biggest headache before long.
Not communism as much as Romanism.
It can't stand up to the New Testament.
You see that word when Jesus says it
is finished is altogether different from the English
and the Greek.
It's altogether different.
You see you may say of a man
well those men yeah they're building a building
up there for say for her they're building
it.
I just came past in the form and
said we finished it.
Oh they have yeah yeah finished it uh
-huh.
I don't see any windows in it.
I don't see any doors in it.
I don't see any electric fixtures in it.
Oh well it's finished but but it's not
complete.
But the Greek word doesn't really say it
is finished.
The implication of the Greek word is it
is complete.
This is redemption complete.
You can't add to it.
You can't subtract from it.
It doesn't need something the rotten priest says
needs adding to it.
It doesn't need the blessing of the Vatican.
Jesus made a perfect redemption for men.
His blood was shed.
It's more than all the blood of beasts.
Because again it says in Hebrews 10 and
9 doesn't it.
If the blood of bulls and goats from
the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean
sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh.
How much more shall the blood of Christ
who through the eternal spirit offered himself without
stop to God purge your conscience from dead
works.
He not only takes the sum total of
human sin and he nails it to the
tree.
You see those stupid people thought they'd nailed
the son of God to the tree.
I knew what they were doing.
They were helping him nail sin to the
tree.
Because that's what he did.
Again it wasn't the Greeks that took him
there.
It wasn't the Romans that took him there.
They were all there.
I thank God for that.
The Greeks were there.
Their day was over.
They were coming out of their glory.
They were fading out.
They were the past generation.
The Romans were there.
They were the ruling generation at that time.
They were even ruling in England 55 years
before Jesus died.
And who else were there?
Well the colored folk were there.
A future generation.
So you see the past, the present, the
future, all at the cross.
When you write a letter you write to
the cross.
If you're in another country you start at
the top and write downward to the cross.
If you lay the cross on the floor
it points north, south, east and west.
If you stand the cross up it embraces
its arms as Wesley says.
The arms of love that compass me would
all mankind embrace.
If you stand it up it points to
a topless heaven and a bottomless hell and
the arms are outstretched to save.
We're mutilating all the hymns and we've mutilated
that gorgeous hymn we sing so often beneath
the cross of Jesus.
The last stanza of it says this.
Beneath the cross of Jesus mine eye at
times can see the very dying form of
one who suffered there for me.
No that's, that's not the same.
I'm thinking of another stanza of it.
Beneath the cross of Jesus but on the
farther side, listen, the darkness of an awful
grave that gapes both deep and wide.
That there between us stands the cross, two
arms outstretched to save like a watchman set
to guard the way from that eternal grave.
The other side of that cross there is
an eternal grave.
Oh I'm going to say more about this
another time but you see it's finished.
The law and the prophets they've no, at
least the old testament economy of grace as
we say has no power.
Sin if we obey God has no dominion
over us.
Death has no dominion over us.
The power of Satan has been broken.
Heaven has received him.
The next thing is to say not only
he said it is finished but he, he
has risen which will be superseded with I
will come again four words.
We shouldn't put our tongue in our cheek
and say this in a whisper.
We ought to shout this from the housetop.
We ought to say to a world that's
groping in darkness and Mr Carter and the
others are saying things they said 50 years
ago when I was a youngster.
If we do this we'll adjust that.
If we'll do this we'll adjust that.
You know that's like going to manure heap
and sprinkling it with Chanel 5 and saying
you'll cure it.
We ought to proclaim to the whole world
with a trumpet voice it is finished.
You can't buy salvation.
You can't crawl on your knees through the
holy city.
You can't go to Mecca.
You can't offer your righteousness.
There's nothing you can do but bow in
humility and confess and accept it.
This is the language of earth.
Why?
Because in heaven they never say it is
finished.
Because it's never going to be finished for
all eternity.
All redemption is finished.
All that I've said is finished.
But you see this never finishes.
We're going to live and reign with him
forever and ever and ever.
And Gabriel is going to blow the trumpet
one day and say hey you've been living
in this super millennium now for four billion
trillion years and it's over.
No sir.
I like that part of the Messiah where
it goes up and up and they sing
and he shall reign forever and ever.
King of kings.
Nobody wants it to finish in eternity.
We're going to be with the eternal bride
group.
But wait a minute.
They never say it's in hell either.
There between us stands the cross two arms
outstretched to save like a watchman set to
guard the way.
Because behind it there's an eternal grave and
the only obstruction to that eternal grave is
the finished work of the Lord Jesus.
And there will be people in hell today
and people in hell a billion years from
now who would love a messenger to come
from another world and say it is finished.
Your judgment is passed.
You've no more suffering for your sins.
The wrath of God doesn't abide in you
anymore.
No.
We're going to escape that eternal judgment if
we're going to enter that eternal rest.
It must happen now.
Isn't it amazing that with that love so
amazing and so divine that he bore our
sins in his body.
That he took the curse of God the
wrath of God upon him.
That he took our sins.
His heart was broken that ours might be
healed.
He was an outcast that we might be
brought in.
He suffered without the gate that you and
I might enter into heaven.
Isn't it amazing that people withhold their petty
little lives from him.
That they love their sin enough to get
the anger and wrath of God rather than
repent and believe and be saved.