GOOD FRIDAY - John 19:28-30 - Jesus Finished It

We’ve been looking at Jesus’s Words from the Cross.

Tonight we look at the last.

The culminating moment meets here at the cross.

So much has happened to get here.

Jesus has been betrayed by one of His friends/the rest ran away denying even knowing Him.

He’s falsely accused by the religious leaders.

Stood before kings and Governor Pontious Pilate On trial by the government

He’s been condemned to die.

He’s been beaten beyond human recognition.

Chunks of his flesh are on the ground he leaves a blood trail behind the cross He’s carrying.

Soldiers have taken 6 inch spikes and hammers, nailing them into His hands and His feet.

He has been spat on, laughed at, mocked, and brutalized on the cross.

Now He hangs there.

He’s there to finish it.

Big Idea: Jesus finished it

John 19:28–30 ESV

28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” 29 A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

“I thirst” fulfilled prophesy

David is in deep anguish crying out to God.

David paints a word picture that many of us understand

Psalm 69:1–3 ESV

1 Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. 2 I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. 3 I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.

Every single one of us feels the weight of hopelessness.

When you’ve cried all your tears, and there’s no steps forward.

The water has come up to our neck and we have forgotten how to swim.

Situation after situation

There is no relief, no help.

David’s soul is sinking and being swallowed up by deep dark waters.

Psalm 69:19–21 ESV

19 You know my reproach, and my shame and my dishonor; my foes are all known to you. 20 Reproaches have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. 21 They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.

David is in the depths of despair, where words fail. His heart is broken. His shame is heavy.

He feels totally alone and abandoned.

David’s sufferings aren’t visible—but God knows. God sees.

From the cross, Jesus connects His final moments to David’s suffering.

The wine wasn’t for cotton mouth—It was to symbolize spiritual abandonment.

Psalm 69:21 witnessed to Jesus’s death.

Jesus’s death finished our hopelessness (vv. 28-29)

In our sins, we were hopeless to be made right before God.

God’s holy wrath was coming for us.

The fires of hell were ready.

We were going.

There was no hope. Your “goodness” was garbage.

The floods of God’s wrath were going to open for our sins and satisfy God’s holy justice.

The truth about each of us is that none of us are good enough.

We have all sinned against God.

We have all done what is evil in His sight.

But God showed His love for us in that while we were still sinners/enemies, Christ died for us.

While we were still in active rebellion

Not one person gets to say, “This part of the sermon doesn’t apply to me.”

It applies to every single one of us.

In our nature, we are sinful to the core. Unable to come to God.

So Jesus, hoisted a cross onto His shoulders and bore your burden.

Jesus endured the suffering on the cross.

Jesus took your hell for you.

He was abandoned by the Father.

He was crushed under the weight of God’s wrath.

He took your punishment.

The debt you owed was credited to Jesus.

Now there’s hope.

While we were lost in the sea of our sins, Jesus thirsted.

He stepped into our place and was nailed to the cross where all His blood poured out.

He was wrung dry.

It pleased the Lord to crush Him.

At one point, we were prisoners to sin and death.

There was no one to help us. No one could save.

Until Jesus stepped into our place.

He took the despair, the agony, the abandonment for us.

Why? So that we could go free.

We willfully submit ourselves to the prisons that sin once held us in.

From the cross Jesus set us free from the hopelessness of our sins.

He set us free from the guilt and shame.

The cross was His purpose for coming!

This was the plan from the beginning!

It was always going to be the cross that set God’s people free from sin!

So when the mission was accomplished, Jesus declared it.

John 19:30 ESV

30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

According to His law, blood had to be shed.

God’s justice toward sin demanded human legally.

Jesus was our sacrifice on the cross.

“It is finished” declares a completed and full atonement for sins.

Say “atonement”

Jesus provided an atonement to the Father to cover our sins.

Jesus was fully God and fully man, so He was the perfect go-between.

Jesus died as a man because man deserved the punishment.

Jesus died as God because only God could forgive sins.

Everything the law required/ceremonial system foreshadowed is now fulfilled.

The weight lies in the completeness.

Jesus doesn’t need us to add anything to what He did for our salvation.

No supplements necessary.

Not our own self-righteousness or any atonement we could provide for ourselves.

Christ’s righteousness atones for our sins, not our own self-righteousness or any atonement we could provide for ourselves.

Jesus surrenders His own life.

Jesus’s divinity is revealed in “bowed His head and gave up His spirit”

Jesus demonstrated unique control over His own death.

This stands in contrast to how death typically operates—Jesus chose to lay down His life when His tasks were complete.

Rather than death claiming Him through exhaustion and weakness, Jesus laid down His life in power and voluntarily surrendered His life.

Jesus’s death finished the mission (v. 30)

This victory robed in death.

The demons of hell rejoiced because Christ had given Himself up to death.

What they didn’t understand was that it was the foundation of the mission.

Jesus surrender to death to save us from it.

Now, hell has no claim on those who trust in Jesus.

Jesus presented His perfect blood and His perfect body in exchange for our sinful and rotten lives!

Jesus gave Himself up to accomplish the demands of death!

Jesus’s death put death to death.

He has overcome death so that we might have life.

Now what do we do?

Live victoriously thankful

Tonight, we focus on the cross.

We have been set free to live victoriously thankful for the cross!

We can look at the cross and say, “Thank you for the nails!”

We live free knowing that Jesus endured the nails

We can thank Him for the nails that pierced His skin that tore through his tendon and the nerve

The nails that burned with our sins.

We can thank Him that He chose to stay on the cross where He had to push up on the nail through His feet just so He could breathe.

He heard the sound of the hammer that pounded them into their place.

Every hammer hit had our guilt attached to it!

We can live because Jesus endured the nails that our sin caused.

We can look at the cross and say, “Thank you for the crown!”

The Romans twisted a crown of thorns and shoved it onto His skull.

He was once crowned King of Glory.

He traded glory for pain.

They shoved a crown of mockery where reverence should go!

The thorns broke the skin onto His skull!

I wonder if Jesus thought about the garden of Eden.

When Adam sin, God cursed the ground and said, “Thorns and thistles it shall bring for for you” (Genesis 1:18).

Who knew He wasn’t talking to Adam—He was talking to Jesus.

Did He think as they pushed the curse of the ground it onto His head that He was lifting the curse of sin off of us by letting it rest on His head?!

We can live because Jesus wore the crown we made for Him.

We can look at the cross and say “Thank you for obeying the Father.”

It was God the Father sent His Son to save me from my sins.

I had sinned against God and I was corrupt to the soul.

But He had a rescue mission for me!

God did not hold us at arms length in anger.

He is a loving, heavenly Father and was willing to crush His obedient Son on the cross so that He could satisfy His own justice!

The will of the Father is that we would believe in the finished work of His Son and be saved.

It was Jesus, the obedient Son, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross.

We get to live because Jesus finished it.

To bring us back to the Father.

That’s what atonement means. To be AT|ONE| with God again.

And at the right time, He was crushed under the weight of God’s wrath so that we can be at one with the Father.

The cross is not a down payment—it’s the full payment.

Jesus didn’t say “It is started.” He didn’t say “Do your part.”

He said, “It is finished.”

Your sin—finished. Your debt—finished. Your striving—finished.

So tonight, you don’t walk away trying harder. You walk away trusting fully.

Because everything required to save you… Jesus finished it on the cross.