Crucial Cross Hours—It Is Finished!

Good Friday, 4/15/22 John 19:30; Luke 23:46 Crucial Cross Hours—It Is Finished! I. Jesus is finished living for us. II. Jesus is finished suffering for us. Spring has sprung, and that means you have likely begun doing some of the things that spring brings with it. For instance, you might be moving winter hats and gloves to the highest shelf in your closet. You’ve moved your snow shovels to the back of the area where your shovels are located and brought your garden tools into a place that’s easy to reach. You’ve “summer-ized” your snowblower and are making sure your lawn mower is ready to go. Perhaps you’ve even mowed your lawn once already. And most of us look forward to the change in routine that a new season of the year brings. But for how long? I try to avoid mowing my lawn for the first time as long as possible because it isn’t long before I wish didn’t have to do it. But every week of the growing season, there it is—a lawn that needs to be mowed. And even if your spring cleaning includes washing your windows, and they look great for a while, it won’t be long before they’ll need washing again. My point is that we rarely do things once in life and then are done with them. In fact, it’s difficult to think of activities in life that you only do once; the vast majority of them are things that we do over and over again. And it gets to be exhausting. Tonight’s spiritual focus is where it rightly should be—on our Savior, whose body has been nailed to Calvary’s cross. In keeping with our Lenten theme, these are his crucial hours, his final hours of serving you and me and every sinner as the world’s only Savior from sin. As horrific as his death was, what comfort and confidence his death as our Savior gives us because here our Savior completes his work. He stated that very thing in one of his final words, “It is finished.” And then he spoke his final words and committed his soul into the hands of his heavenly Father. On this somber evening, let’s ponder his words and his work. Here are his crucial cross hours—it is finished! Let’s be reminded exactly what that means for us. I. How would you characterize your behavior in the crucial moments of your life? Well, to begin with, you and I tend to get tunnel vision. We eliminate everything that has the potential of diverting our attention and we focus on what’s in front of us. We spend all our emotional and mental effort on doing what needs to be done that moment. And when the pressure becomes intense, then we tend to say and do things that are out of character. We resort to language we try never to use. We lash out at others, even loved ones. Those aren’t our proudest moments. Can you imagine a more intense situation than a slow death by crucifixion? We can’t. Our minds don’t even want to go there. But that’s where Jesus was during these crucial hours on Good Friday, 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM. But, instead of acting and speaking as we might expect from someone else, Jesus continues doing what he has been doing ever since his life on this earth began in the womb of the virgin Mary. He’s living the perfect life of our Savior, a perfect life lived for us. Perhaps that’s most evident in his first words from the cross—words of forgiveness. Imagine it. While we would never want to see something so horrific as a crucifixion, his enemies got some sick satisfaction out of it. They weren’t satisfied with simply getting a glimpse of him nailed to cross; their utterly wicked hearts demanded that they watch the entire ordeal and that they mock him as they do so. Who would have blamed Jesus at that point if he had spit on his enemies and cursed them as long as he had breath to do so? But not Jesus. Instead, he lovingly does so easily what is so difficult, if not impossible, for us to do: he prays for his heavenly Father to forgive them. He does so perfectly without any malice in his heart. He had to, because we don’t. He did so as our Savior. And, when the pain was unrelenting, when the thoughts of most victims of crucifixion were completely consumed with the endless suffering, Jesus’ loving thoughts and his holy heart turned to his mother and her needs. Imagine that! Whose needs at the moment were greater—his or his mother’s? But while suspended between the earth and sky on a cross Jesus is concerned for his mother’s care. He won’t let anyone else take care of this responsibility. He placed her in the care of John, the disciple whom he loved. He perfectly kept the 4th Commandment right to the end of his life. He had to do so, because we don’t. He did so as our Savior. Here are his crucial cross hours—it is finished! There are times in our lives when we derive a good bit of satisfaction from our lives as Christians. The daily news is filled with stories of evil perpetrated by others, and we rightly shudder. We hear about the lies, deception, and corruption that mar the lives of others, and we’re thankful that their stories are not our stories. Instead of trying to take advantage of others, we try to help them. We derive a good bit of satisfaction from our lives as Christians. But then we see and hear what Jesus did on the cross during his crucial hours, we realize how far we fall short of what our God demands. We’ve often failed to forgive others in far lesser circumstances. We’re often too self-absorbed and too busy to think about the needs of others, and we excuse it because of what we’re facing at the moment. But not Jesus. He always put others, even his enemies, ahead of himself. He always did what was best for others, even when it meant offering himself as the sacrifice for their sins, for our sins. He gave his Father a perfect life in the place of our sinful lives. That’s the way it had to be and that’s the way it is. And therein lies our comfort, our confidence. In his crucial cross hours, he finishes the work of living a perfect life for us. II. Life is full of second chances, of opportunities to do things better the next time or even to make up for wrongs committed in the past. We appreciate it when others give us that opportunity and we try to extend those opportunities to others. But there is no second chance when a sin has been committed, at least not with the holy God. The holy and just God has announced that the punishment for a single sin is death in hell. And there’s nothing we can do to clear our sinful record. That’s why Jesus’ hours on the cross on Good Friday were so crucial. That’s where and when he suffered the punishment for our sins, the world’s sins. A few minutes ago, I referred to the unimaginable, unrelenting physical pain that Jesus endured on the cross. I’m sure it was unlike anything you or I have ever endured. The nails through his hands and feet. The thorns pressed into his skull. The skin on his back shredded from the whipping he received. And the ever-decreasing ability for his lungs to draw a breath. We can’t imagine it. But the torture, the physical pain, wasn’t the focus of his suffering on the cross. Again, the punishment for sin is not physical suffering; it’s suffering hell. Hell is separation from God. And that’s what he endured on the cross when he asked his Father in what must have been a haunting, desperate voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” During those crucial hours on the cross the Father withdrew his presence from his Son, and then Jesus felt the full weight of the world’s sins, all of them, of every sinner. He felt the weight of the sins of the Roman soldiers who had nailed him to the cross. He felt the weight of the sins of his enemies whose hearts were filled with hatred for him. He felt the weight of the sins of his disciples who had deserted him in his greatest hour of need. He felt the weight of the sins of all the days in the past and all the days in the future. He felt the weight of my sins, of your sins. His Father left him all alone and he suffered hell for them. And then he spoke his final words from the cross. He committed his soul into the loving hands of his heavenly Father. In doing so, he showed once again that he was in complete control of all that was happening. In fact, he made certain that everything happened as it had to in order for him to complete his work of being the world’s Savior from sin. He bowed his head and died. His crucial hours on the cross came to a silent end. All was now completed. It was finished. Finished. Never needing to be done again. Let’s go back to where we began. Is any task in this life truly ever done in the sense that it never needs to be done again? But here it is. The most important work in the history of the world, the work that the Father had sent his Son to this earth to accomplish. It is finished. No more punishment for sin. No more hell. It is finished. Here’s your answer to the guilt that plagues you. Yes, your God knows your sins and his Son suffered the punishment for them. Here’s your answer to a broken world. This sinful life in this sinful world isn’t the life God wants for you. He has something far better in store, eternally so. His Son earned it for you. It’s finished! In a world of endless unrest and oppression, here’s your daily and eternal peace. It’s here at Christ’s crucial cross hours. It is finished. Amen.