Sermon Tone Analysis

CHRIST’S DYING WORD FOR HIS CHURCH

A Sermon

INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD’S-DAY, JANUARY 21ST, 1894, DELIVERED BY

C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,

On Lord’s-day Evening, November 3rd, 1889.

“It is finished.”—John

19:30.

IN the original Greek of John’s Gospel, there is only one word for this utterance of our Lord.

To translate it into English, we have to use three words; but when it was spoken, it was only one,—an ocean of meaning in a drop of language, a mere drop, for that is all that we can call one word.

“It is finished.”

Yet it would need all the other words that ever were spoken, or ever can be spoken, to explain this one word.

It is altogether immeasurable.

It is high; I cannot attain to it.

It is deep; I cannot fathom it.

“Finished.”

I can half imagine the tone in which our Lord uttered this word, with a holy glorying, a sense of relief, the bursting out of a heart that had long been shut up within walls of anguish.

“Finished.”

It was a Conqueror’s cry; it was uttered with a loud voice.

There is nothing of anguish about it, there is no wailing in it.

It is the cry of One who has completed a tremendous labour, and is about to die; and ere he utters his death-prayer, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” he shouts his life’s last hymn in that one word, “Finished.”

May God the Holy Spirit help me to handle aright this text that is at once so small and yet so great!

There are four ways in which I wish to look at it with you.

First, I will speak of this dying saying of our Lord to his glory; secondly, I will use the text to the Church’s comfort; thirdly, I will try to handle the subject to every believer’s joy; and fourthly, I will seek to show how our Lord’s words ought to lead to our own arousement.

I. First, then, I will endeavour to speak of this dying saying of Christ TO HIS GLORY.

Let us begin with that.

Jesus said, “It is finished.”

Let us glory in him that it is finished.

You and I may well do this when we recollect how very few things we have finished.

We begin many things; and, sometimes, we begin well.

We commence running like champions who must win the race; but soon we slacken our pace, and we fall exhausted on the course.

The race commenced is never completed.

In fact, I am afraid that we have never finished anything perfectly.

You know what we say of some pieces of work, “Well, the man has done it; but there is no ‘finish’ about it.”

No, and you must begin with “finish”, and go on with “finish”, if you are at last able to say broadly as the Saviour said without any qualification, “It is finished.”

What was it that was finished?

His life-work and his atoning sacrifice on our behalf.

He had interposed between our souls and divine justice, and he had stood in our stead, to obey and suffer on our behalf.

He began this work early in life, even while he was a child.

He persevered in holy obedience three and thirty years.

That obedience cost him many a pang and groan.

Now it is about to cost him his life; and as he gives away his life to finish the work of obedience to the Father, and of redemption for us, he says, “It is finished.”

It was a wonderful work even to contemplate; only infinite love would have thought of devising such a plan.

It was a wonderful work to carry on for so long; only boundless patience would have continued at it; and now that it requires the offering of himself, and the yielding up of his earthly life, only a Divine Saviour, very God of very God, would or could have consummated it by the surrender of his breath.

What a work it was!

Yet it was finished; while you and I have lots of little things lying about that we have never finished.

We have begun to do something for Jesus that would bring him a little honour and glory; but we have never finished it.

We did mean to glorify Christ; have not some of you intended, oh! so much?

Yet it has never come to anything; but Christ’s work, which cost him heart and soul, body and spirit, cost him everything, even to his death on the cross, he pushed through all that till it was accomplished, and he could say, “It is finished.”

To whom did our Saviour say, “It is finished?”

He said it to all whom it might concern; but it seems to me that he chiefly said it to his Father, for, immediately after, apparently in a lower tone of voice, he said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

Beloved, it is one thing for me to say to you, “I have finished my work,”—possibly, if I were dying, you might say that I had finished my work; but for the Saviour to say that to God, to hang in the presence of him whose eyes are as a flame of fire, the great Reader and Searcher of all hearts, for Jesus to look the dread Father in the face, and say, as he bowed his head, “Father, it is finished; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do,”—oh, who but he could venture to make such a declaration as that?

We can find a thousand flaws in our best works; and when we lie dying, we shall still have to lament our shortcomings and excesses; but there is nothing of imperfection about him who stood as Substitute for us; and unto the Father himself he can say, concerning all his work, “It is finished.”

Wherefore, glorify him to-night.

Oh, glorify him in your hearts to-night that, even in the presence of the Great Judge of all, your Surety and your Substitute is able to claim perfection for all his service!

Just think also, for a minute or two, now that you have remembered what Jesus finished, and to whom he said that he had finished it, how truly he had finished it.

From the beginning to the end of Christ’s life there is nothing omitted, no single act of service ever left undone; neither is there any action of his slurred over, or performed in a careless manner.

“It is finished,” refers as much to his childhood as to his death.

The whole of the service that he was to render to God, when he came here in human form, was finished in every single part and portion of it.

I take up a piece of a cabinet-maker’s work; and it bears a good appearance.

I open the lid, and am satisfied with the workmanship; but there is something about the hinge that is not properly finished.

Or, perhaps, if I turn it over, and look at the bottom of the box, I shall see that there is a piece that has been scamped, or that one part has not been well planed or properly polished.

But if you examine the Master’s work right through, if you begin at Bethlehem and go on to Golgotha, and look minutely at every portion of it, the private as well as the public, the silent as well as the spoken part, you will find that it is finished, completed, perfected.

We may say of it that, among all works, there is none like it; a multitude of perfections joined together to make up one absolute perfection.

Wherefore, let us glorify the name of our blessed Lord.

Crown him; crown him; for he hath done his work well.

Come, ye saints, speak much to his honour, and in your hearts keep on singing to the praise of him who did so thoroughly, so perfectly, all the work which his Father gave him to do.

In the first place, then, we use our Lord’s words to his glory.

Much might be said upon such a theme; but time will not permit it now.

II.

Secondly, we will use the text TO THE CHURCH’S COMFORT.

I am persuaded that it was so intended to be used, for none of the words of our Lord on the cross are addressed to his Church but this one.

I cannot believe that, when he was dying, he left his people, for whom he died, without a word.

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” is for sinners, not for saints.

“I thirst,” is for himself; and so is that bitter cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” “Woman, behold thy son!” is for Mary.

“To day shalt thou be with me in paradise,” is for the penitent thief.

“Into thy hands I commend my spirit,” is for the Father.

Jesus must have had something to say, in the hour of death, for his Church; and, surely, this is his dying word for her.

He tells her, shouting it in her ear that has become dull and heavy with despair, “It is finished.”

“It is finished, O my redeemed one, my bride, my well-beloved, for whom I came to lay down my life; it is finished, the work is done!”

“Love’s redeeming work is done;

Fought the fight, the battle won.”

“Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it.”

John, in the Revelation, speaks of the Redeemer’s work as already accomplished, and therefore he sings, “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.

Amen.”

This truth is full of comfort to the people of God.

And, first, as it concerns Christ, do you not feel greatly comforted to think that he is to be humiliated no longer?

His suffering and shame are finished.

I often sing, with sacred exultation and pleasure, those lines of Dr. Watts,—

“No more the bloody spear,

The cross and nails no more,

For hell itself shakes at his name,

And all the heavens adore.

“There his full glories shine

With uncreated rays,

And bless his saints’ and angels’ eyes

To everlasting days.”

I like also that expression in another of our hymns,—

“Now both the Surety and sinner are free.”

Not only are they free for whom Christ became a Surety, but he himself is for ever free from all the obligations and consequences of his suretyship.

Men will never spit in his face again; the Roman soldiers will never scourge him again.