It Is Finished

Intro:

Darkness & Forsaken vs. 45-46

This darkness was especially remarkable because it happened during a full moon – during which time Passover was always held – and during a full moon it is impossible that there be a natural eclipse of the sun.

The remarkable darkness all over the earth showed the agony of creation itself in the Creator’s suffering.

Phlegon, Roman historian wrote: “In the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad, there was an extraordinary eclipse of the sun: at the sixth hour, the day turned into dark night, so that the stars in heaven were seen; and there was an earthquake.”

Why have You forsaken Me? Jesus had known great pain and suffering (both physical and emotional) during His life. Yet He had never known separation from His Father.

At this moment, He experienced what He had not yet ever experienced. There was a significant sense in which Jesus rightly felt forsaken by the Father at this moment.

This is why he sweated drops of blood in the garden

At this moment, a holy transaction took place. God the Father regarded God the Son as if He were a sinner.

2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

He not only experienced separation from his father but he also experienced the outpouring of the Father’s wrath upon Him as a substitute for sinful humanity.

Isaiah 53:10 ESV

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt

Veil is Torn vs. 50-51

Jesus’ final word (tetelestai in the ancient Greek) was the cry of a winner.

At some point before He died, before the veil was torn in two, before He cried out it is finished, an awesome spiritual transaction took place.

God the Father laid upon God the Son all the guilt and wrath our sin deserved, and He bore it in Himself perfectly, totally satisfying the wrath of God for us.

Tele was used in first and second centuries in the sense of ‘fulfilling’ or ‘paying’ a debt and often appeared in receipts. Jesus’ statement ‘It is finished’ (tetelestai, tetelestai) could be interpreted as ‘Paid in full.’”

Most victims of crucifixion spent their last hours in complete exhaustion or unconsciousness before death.

Jesus was not like this; though tremendously tortured and weakened, He was conscious and able to speak right up to the moment of His death.

The veil was what separated the holy place from the most holy place in the temple.

It was a vivid demonstration of the separation between God and man. Notably, the veil was torn from top to bottom, and it was God who did the tearing.

The earth quaked, and the rocks were split: Nature itself was shaken by the death of the Son of God.

Truly the Son of God vs. 54

The scene at the crucifixion of Jesus was so striking that even a hardened Roman centurion confessed that this was the Son of God.

This man had supervised the death of perhaps hundreds of other men by crucifixion, but he knew there was something absolutely unique about Jesus.