It Is Finished

 

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they divided his clothes among the four of them.  They also took his robe, but it was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.  So they said, “Rather than tearing it apart, let’s throw dice for it.”  This fulfilled the Scripture that says, “They divided my garments among themselves and threw dice for my clothing.”  So that is what they did.  Standing near the cross were Jesus’ mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary (the wife of Clopas), and Mary Magdalene.  When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her, “Dear woman, here is your son.”  And he said to this disciple, “Here is your mother.”  And from then on this disciple took her into his home.  Jesus knew that his mission was now finished, and to fulfill Scripture he said, “I am thirsty.”  A jar of sour wine was sitting there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put it on a hyssop branch, and held it up to his lips.  When Jesus had tasted it, he said, “It is finished!”   

Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.  John 19:23-30

Sometimes preachers study a Bible text with the wrong lens (guilty as charged).  We dryly pick-apart the words, tenses, context, and usage.  But language without pathos, and intelligence without feeling, will always claim correctness – and there is an accuracy of linguistics to be claimed – but that dry toast analysis, correct as it might be, will miss the humanity and grit of what is most important. 

Jesus didn’t die in a vacuum; this cross is not a picture to be painted, or a jewelry piece to be worn.  The passion of the Christ is blood, and it is the Word of God made flesh, pierced because of our sins.  It is pain, born of forgiveness.

Contemplating what happened on the cross always brings me to the point of tears, because this is my place which the Son of God willingly took. 

There are technical words, like substitutionary atonement (and many more) used all the time in seminaries where ethereal-minded discussions take place to define the events and meaning of Christ’s sacrifice.  But none of it captures the pathos of excruciating pain, both physical and metaphysical, both flesh and spirit.  Only God, speaking from the cross gave the full understanding:  It is finished!

Scripture declares Jesus was the sacrificial Lamb of God.  That plan was known and inevitable from before the foundation of the world. [1] God had always known this, and chose to do this, to become our sacrifice, even before Adam had taken his first breath.  And the words:  It is finished mean the grisly reality that every part of God’s plan to make our redemption a reality was accomplished. 

It is finished is only one word in the Greek text:  Tetelestai.  Its meaning here is anything but dry theological mumbo-jumbo.  It means paid-in-full.  It was the word written across debt notices when those debts were paid-off. 

When Jesus uttered that final word before groaningly commending His spirit to the Father’s keeping, he took every bit of the agony he had suffered and gave it all for the release of the penalty for our sin.  Jesus paid it all!

That was what He finished…completed…and signed in blood on the cross. 

But, while his High Priestly work here on earth was finished, there was something else that was just getting started…the gift of eternal life which he had promised would be ours when we deny self and sin, take-up His cross, and follow Him.

On Good Friday we take the Savior down from Calvary’s tree and put him in Arimithea’s tomb, sealed and guarded by the soldiers.

We are in darkness until the promise of resurrection is filled.

All we have left to ponder is the cross, the blood, the pain, and emptiness of a broken body…quietness and the cold question:  WHAT NOW?

And we wait…AND we will KNOW the cross wasn’t the last time Jesus finished His promised work.  The culmination of God’s plan of redeeming our sin-sick souls will be celebrated in time yet to come; we will hear and know the final finishing word:

And he also said, “It is finished! I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End.  To all who are thirsty I will give freely from the springs of the water of life.  Revelation 21:16

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, let the church be quiet…and wait for the savior who paid it all.

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[1] Everyone on earth will worship the beast, if they do not have their names in the book of life. The book of life belongs to the Lamb who was killed. That was God's plan since the world was made.  Revelation 13:8                      

Is IT Really Finished?

 

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good!  His faithful love endures forever.  Psalm 118:1

I attended a friend’s church last Saturday evening.  Pastor Michael’s sermon was an inspiring recounting of the transition that flows from the cross, as Jesus proclaimed those fateful words:  It is finished.  That flow turned the typical Easter din of “cross, grave, empty tomb….and (yawn from getting up too early for sunrise service) to now what else?  The sermon was:  It is Finished; but He is Not![1] 

The message centered around the Greek word tetelestai, from which we translate into English “it is finished…or completed”.  The word is military in origin, as in a completed mission.  It was also used in antiquity as a legal tool for debts.  When a debt was fully-paid the debt-holder would write TETELESTAI across the original document, as testament to the honorable completing of all claims.  This is the word shouted from the cross by Jesus…completed…nothing else required.  That is true beyond question, as Scripture declares over and again that His death was propitiation for our sins…paid-in-full. 

But what of the last part…IT was finished…but HE is NOT?  The crux of Micael’s message rested on the fact (again rooted in Scripture) that the completed work of the cross was but the firstfruits of what was to come.  To summarize, it means Christ died once, for all sins; but He’s still working with us (and on us) to develop who we are…we are being transformed into His image.

This concept isn’t new.  Any believer who has entered the world of discipleship, following Jesus with prayer, presence in worship, meaningful stewardship of tithes and offerings, learning to serve others in the community, and being a faithful witness, has an understanding that Christ is anything but finished working on us.  He is bringing us to a mature stature in His character.  For all of us, THAT takes a considerable transformation.  It’s what apostle Paul meant when he wrote to the church at Ephesus:

This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.  Ephesians 4:13

Now, here’s the candy of it all – it isn’t something we HAVE to do…it what we GET to do!  It’s like this:  Elizabeth and I have struggled all our lives to make a monthly mortgage payment.  We never quite got there in the first four houses we bought.  By the time we got to this fifth house, we settled on a 15 year mortgage.  It was paid-off several years ago – I don’t think they actually wrote tetelestai on the mortgage paper – but we did get a letter of thanks from the mortgage company saying our debt was over.  It was finished.  But we are not.  We get to live in the house now.  Elizabeth gets to (within reason) redecorate and rearrange.  Russell gets to repair and take care of cutting the grass. 

And that is what Jesus did with your eternity.  He’s given us a place and a purpose that is as secure as the promise of that empty tomb.  And He’s given us freedom to create (with him) all the beauty that life holds in promise.

For You Today

Two great truths to rest on here:

·       IT (the payment of debt for your sins) is finished.  Receive that gift, and cherish it!

·       YOUR walk with Christ through an eternity of blessing is just getting started, because his faithful love endures forever!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] You can listen to the sermon here

Exalted and Lifted-Up

 

Friday, April 15, 2022

See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high.  Just as there were many who were astonished at him--so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals-so he shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.  Who has believed what we have heard?  And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?  For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.  Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.  But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.  By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future?  For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people.  They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.  Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the LORD shall prosper.  Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.  Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.  Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12

The images of Good Friday hardly look like the promotional ceremony when one is being lifted to an exalted status.  It looks a whole lot more like the essence of grief and brokenness. 

And so it was…for everyone who knew him.  The High Priest and his evil cohorts had accomplished their mission of stifling the upstart preacher from Galilee.  Victory was theirs, and there was probably more than a few cups of wine hoisted in celebratory toasts that night. 

But that was Friday. 

The promotional celebration of a massive rock door holding down the dream of God’s promises would wait to begin early Sunday morning.  It would be a rough start, with the chief dreamers confused and frightened, and the chief supporter mistaking the Son of God for the cemetery caretaker – but the celebration would take place, despite soldiers, and all the demons of hell guarding that tomb.

And it’s still going on!

For You Today

It will be a somber service at most churches tonight for followers of this exalted and lifted-up One.  The observance will call-up images of his pain and brokenness for our sin.  We will feel the aloneness and barbarity of it all.  And yet, as we leave the meeting in silence, the essence of the holy One, exalted and lifted on high, will paint hope and expectation with a broad brush.  It will be a Good Friday!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Laid in the Dust; Left for Dead

 

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?  Why are you so far away when I groan for help?  Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer.  Every night I lift my voice, but I find no relief.  
Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.  Our ancestors trusted in you, and you rescued them.  They cried out to you and were saved.  They trusted in you and were never disgraced.
But I am a worm and not a man.  I am scorned and despised by all!  Everyone who sees me mocks me.  They sneer and shake their heads, saying, “Is this the one who relies on the Lord?  Then let the Lord save him!  If the Lord loves him so much, let the Lord rescue him!”
Yet you brought me safely from my mother’s womb and led me to trust you at my mother’s breast.  I was thrust into your arms at my birth.  You have been my God from the moment I was born.
Do not stay so far from me, for trouble is near, and no one else can help me.  My enemies surround me like a herd of bulls; fierce bulls of Bashan have hemmed me in!  Like lions they open their jaws against me, roaring and tearing into their prey.  My life is poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.  My heart is like wax, melting within me.  My strength has dried up like sunbaked clay.  My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.  You have laid me in the dust and left me for dead.  Psalm 22:1-15

King David is the author of this Psalm, written under extreme duress.  The weight of his problems, personally, and with his reign on the throne, and even if he might live through the next week, were driving him to his knees to pray.  David felt abandoned and isolated, with his opposition ready to strike him down.

He flips back and forth in a see-saw fashion, first in the downward cadence, asking where, why, what, when, and the big one, why.  In the next swing, upward, he soars with declarations of faith and confidence in God.  Much of what he wrote became an echo on Good Friday afternoon’s cries from the cross.

The big “why” question also haunts me sometimes.  Why did Jesus feel abandoned?  Why cry out like that when He was God’s son?  If Jesus could predict Judas would betray him to death, and Peter would deny him three times before the rooster howled the next morning, why didn’t Jesus just look ahead to the resurrection?

The short answer, for us, is two-fold:

1.    This moment in time when Jesus cried out David’s words, why have you abandoned me, the Son of God was identifying with our worst fear, that somehow, we could never be right with God – never live into that for which we were created.  God would reject us, and we would be lost.  It was that identifying with us that made Jesus our sacrifice, the perfect Lamb of God. 

2.    This moment in time also was the first time since before time began that Jesus truly felt the absence of the Father.  Scripture tells us that, in eternity, Jesus the Son, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit are all one.  But, in this moment of becoming our sin, to be the perfect sacrifice, the Father, who will not even look on our sins, had to turn his back on His son.  Jesus became Isaiah’s despised and rejected lamb, with the sins of us all laid upon his back. 

Here is a severe, solemn, sadness:  when God Almighty rejects you, your soul will cry-out in pain and agony.  Jesus was willing to do that for us. 

That’s the cost of our salvation.

This leads us to Our Prayer

Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal One, have mercy on us.

For the glory, honor, and praise to which You alone are worthy, o Lord, we pray in the Name of the Son, cooperating with the Spirit, to honor and exalt the Majesty of the Father.  Let it be so in each of our lives…Amen!

Title Image:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation 

 

Startled!

Good Friday of Holy Week, April 10, 2020

See, my servant will prosper; he will be highly exalted.  But many were amazed when they saw him.  His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man.  And he will startle many nations.  Kings will stand speechless in his presence.  For they will see what they had not been told; they will understand what they had not heard about.  Isaiah 52:13-15

To say that Peter was startled when Jesus began to wash his feet is to muddle around in the understated.  Peter was mortified that the Holy One could even bear to have him around, much less treat him so well as to kneel in front of him like some faceless servant.  But that’s the nature of the greatest of all; he is willing to become the least of all to lift up the most lost of all.

Isaiah’s prophecy pointed to the startling, amazing, mouth-dropping reaction we have at seeing a humbled God…a crucified God.  And it worries us greatly, because, if he’s like that, and we are his disciples, the specter of becoming like that is in our future.

It’s in our DNA, this understanding of God’s image in us; we hardly think about it with the front-burner of our minds, but, deep inside we want to be exalted, lifted-up, and the center of attention – if you doubt that, just watch a two-year-old for a while.  But, at the same time, because of God’s image/stamp on our souls, we know our sin disqualifies this self-worship and separates us from even being near the throne, much less on it!  Like Peter, we’re startled, even repulsed by the thought of it.

This is what troubled young Francis of Assisi as he struggled with the pathway of his own conversion to Christ.  According to one story of his journey, early in the process of committing his life to God’s way, Francis was riding a horse down a road that passed a leper colony.  Lepers were the dirty side of life, emaciated, gray, and despised.  The horse saw the leper in the middle of the road and was startled.  When Francis got the beast under control, he saw the bedraggled, nearly former human standing in front of him.  After a long, frightening, paralyzing moment he dismounted, went to the man (who was motionless, expressionless, nearly lifeless, except for the automatic, unthinking breathing of lungs and beating of what was left of his heart). 

Doing the unthinkable, Francis took the leper’s hand.  It was a poor emaciated hand, bloodstained and cold like that of a corpse.  Francis pressed the hand and brought it to his lips.  As he kissed the lacerated flesh of the creature, who was the most abject, the most hated, the most scorned of all human beings, he was flooded with a wave of emotion that shut out everything around him….it taught him that following Christ may require doing some things that repulse us.  What Francis didn’t know then was that something greater was prompting him, allowing him to do that which, humanly speaking, he was incapable of doing.[1]

Perhaps the greatest lesson Francis learned in this moment was what Jesus did for Francis; when Jesus died for Francis on Calvary, he was kissing the sin-lepers of all eternity. 

And that kiss makes us whole.

For You Today

There’s no shortage of lepers in this world.  When’s the last time you kissed one? 

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO 

Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For another post on Isaiah 52 and Good Friday see This Holy Week – Part 5

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[1] Taken from Arnoldo Fortini, Francis of Assisi, Crossroad Publishing. The Pastor’s Workshop

Never-Ending Sins

[i][ii]

Good Friday, April 19, 2019

“This is the new covenant I will make with my people on that day, says the Lord:  I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”  Then he says, “I will never again remember their sins and lawless deeds.”  And when sins have been forgiven, there is no need to offer any more sacrifices.  Hebrews 10:16-18

Have you ever known people who treat their sins as if they’re in a revolving door of guilt that keeps coming around?  It may have been something said or done in 1935, but it is as fresh as the morning dew, come around to haunt, torture, and generally debilitate the life of Christ in that person.  It’s something of an old, annoying friend that wants to remind you that you’re so less than perfect you may as well give up trying to hear the call of God, you’re too far gone; God would never hear the prayers of someone like you.

One of the more prominent characteristics of revolving door guilt syndrome is that person’s tendency to not only dredge-up their besetting sin, they also treat your sins that way too!  Whether subtle or like a brass band on main street, you are reminded that you also are an awful sinner, and if you make it into heaven, your pinfeathers will smell like smoke!

The writer of Hebrews[iii] is quick to point out that kind of thinking is contrary to God’s ways.  When God forgives, God forgets.  What’s more, having forgiven your sin, and removed them from you as far as the east is from the west[iv] consigning them, with even the memory of it, to the depths of the sea…God has put up a sign that says NO FISHING!  Frankly, if God has declared, in keeping with His holy nature, that forgetting forgiven sins is holy, who are we to drag them up again?  Neither yours, nor anyone else’s!

For You Today

Good Friday is a time to focus on the cross.  Well, let’s do that!  What the cross accomplished is something you can’t…namely getting forgiveness.  And when God responds to a humble prayer of confession, that sin is history.

If you’re going to live-into God’s promise of forgiveness, it’s time to claim that promise every time the revolving door of guilt tries to come ‘round again.  Don’t get on that treadmill.  You’ll only tend to pull others with you; then you’ll have the mess of your own guilt, as well as judging others!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[i] Title Image:   Revolving Door via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©

[iii] Many scholars accept the Apostle Paul as author

[iv] Psalm 103:12

When the Last Trumpet Sounds

[1]

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

What I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that our physical bodies cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.  These dying bodies cannot inherit what will last forever.  But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret.  We will not all die, but we will all be transformed!  It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown.  For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever.  And we who are living will also be transformed.  For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.  Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?”

For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power.  But thank God!  He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.  So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable.  Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless. 

1 Corinthians 15:50-58^(NLT)

Stephen Fife is a fellow UMC clergy who blogs for The Wesleyan Way.  Stephen reminded me of the messyness with which disciples of Jesus Christ are compelled to exist in his recent article, The Great Silence.  In essence he said there are two types of Christians, those who live on Good Friday (the misery and pain of the cross), and those who dwell on Easter Sunday (the joy and victory of resurrection). 

Rev. Fife allowed that dwelling exclusively on either day leads to missing the reality and importance of the other – and both are vitally important.  But there is an equally-vital third perspective that we often ignore:  Holy Saturday.  That is where the world dwells, those who do not know Christ.  They understand the pain in the world, that something has gone horribly wrong with humanity, and something (we call it evil) has driven really sick people to do terrible things – shootings, bombings, war, theft, and general infliction of mayhem on fellow human beings.  They get the pain of loss and suffering; what they don’t get is the faith that leads to resurrection.  They’re Saturday dwellers, imagining not only that there is no Easter; they cannot allow there ever could be an Easter.  For Saturday dwellers, stuck in a fearful huddle of this world’s culture and unbelief, there is no such thing as death being swallowed-up in victory!

And that is where those who name that name of Jesus part company with the culture.  Our faith is grounded in the promise of God[2] to deal with the pain of our sin; it was that which we saw on Good Friday.  Christ shed his blood to redeem us.  Saturday was the darkness of wondering if that was going to be it – cross, pain, blood, and death – and then silence.  But then, the silence was broken, the captives are led to freedom, the stone rolled-away, the curse destroyed, and fellowship with God became a possibility again.  And we can sing Hallelujah, What a Savior, because there really is Easter; Jesus was the firstfruits of God’s promise, and because he rose from the dead, we can too!

For You Today

Go ahead and live in Easter today.  After 6 Lenten weeks of concentrating on the cross and our Savior’s pain, you’ve earned a Sabbath!  But never forget the cost of Easter came at the expense of Good Friday. 

And don’t forget to tell those stuck on Saturday that there is hope; it may look like Good Friday’s darkness, and Saturday’s confusion have won the day…but Sunday’s a-coming!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] Genesis 3:15 indicates God will send a deliverer to redeem us from our sinful ways.