The 7 Statements of Christ on the Cross

Reality of death puts the mind in a wondrous focus, and the training takes over.

The reality of death puts the mind in a wondrous focus, and the training takes over. It's an interesting statement made by a soldier, obviously, because when soldiers go into harm's way, they have to be tremendously focused, and whatever training they've had is going to see them through. That if ever the training took over in the face of death, it was a step-by-step example that Jesus Christ gave us as He was teaching us at the very moment of His death. The focus and the training that He had undergone came into very sharp and clear focus in the last minutes of His life. As He was reaching within Himself to exercise the power of the Spirit of God to go the distance to be our Savior, and His training kicked in. I'd like to take us through those last few minutes and the things that Jesus said as His life ebbed away, not in the last hours, but in the last minutes of His life as He hung on a slab of wood and His life pouring out. I think there's probably no better way for us to prepare for the Passover service than the time of examination that is upon us. As we all recognize over the next few weeks, we should be focusing our minds and, most importantly, our hearts upon being able to come before God on that night and take the Passover in a manner that is worthy to us as a human being. We are reminded of that by what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11. We usually read this at this time of year. I'll just quote it, but he mentioned that we are to examine ourselves to see whether we are indeed in the faith. And I don't think of, can't think of any better way, perhaps, for us to begin to focus our minds, and most importantly, our hearts on that event than by looking at what Jesus said. And in doing so, rather than want to focus and help us to focus on our hearts. You know, there are a lot of scriptures that we read, and you may have a set number of scriptures that you go through when you prepare for the Passover. You may have a favorite old booklet from years past or a reprint article. I do. Not that there's anything wrong with that. There's one reprint article that goes back probably 35 to 40 years in the church that was written by a minister, and I think it appeared in the Good News. And I usually read that article. I think the title of it is, Who Killed Jesus Christ?

You may have your own favorite ones in scriptures that you go through, and those help us to whatever degree we focus in there. And in some ways, we need to be careful that we don't just go through a list of things that we prepare for and in a sense tick off on our head the things that we normally do.

Because we want to be careful that we don't just prepare in our head for the Passover.

What we really want to do is prepare in our heart for the Passover service. That's the most important preparation, is to get our heart right and to prepare inwardly here. The head will take care of itself. We have certain knowledge. We know the night. We know the procedure. We know how to do it. We're meeting on the right day. But that's head knowledge. The real preparation is the heart and what goes on in the heart. And that's where we really want to focus. So what I want to go through here this afternoon should be the first responses that we have as we prepare our hearts for the Passover service by taking us through seven things, seven statements that we can see from the Gospels that Jesus Christ said as He was dying, as He hung on that cross and He died. And we look at what He said, and I think if we can focus them in this way, our minds will be sharpened and, most importantly, our heart will be prepared to take the Passover service in an appropriate way. Let's look at the first one by turning back to Luke 23.

Luke 23 and verse 34. Jesus said, and I know what Jesus said because it's in red, at least in my Bible, Father forgive them for they do not know what they do. Father forgive them. The context of this verse, this statement shows that those around Him were scorning Him. They were mocking Him, what He said, what He said, who He said that He was. They were even having a garage sale at His feet with His clothing. When you look at it, and the very people who were screwing around at His feet, taking His clothes that had fallen off and selling them, and then mocking Him and scorning Him were the very people that He was dying for, the very ones that He'd come to save. And He said, forgive them. Now, that's a pretty heavy start to think about in terms of Christ's last moments on this earth as a human being, but it was on forgiveness. Those words remind us and refresh our minds that forgiveness and mercy are the first steps toward eternal joy. They are the first steps toward happiness and true well-being. In Christianity, forgiveness comes first. It's the gateway for all who are going to ultimately enter into the full expression of being like Jesus Christ, because this was what was on His mind. Christ here did more than turn the cheek. He did more than just give us cloak. His cloak was already gone, and He watched them bargain over it.

Remember, on other occasions, He had said, you know, that just turn the cheek, go the extra mile with those that would require it of you. But here, He really changed the entire equation.

He really wrote a whole new formula up there, and showing a different way to respond. He truly reflected the greatness of God. He was ready to forgive, because He was God. If you turn back to Psalm 86, Psalm 86, you see that mercy is something that God is ever ready to provide. Psalm 86, verse 5.

He says, For you, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, and abundant in mercy to all those who call upon you. Notice He says that He is ready to forgive. You, Lord, are good, and you are ready to forgive. It's not that He thinks about forgiving. It's not that He takes six months, or six years, or when He is mature enough, so He is ready to forgive. That's God. And aren't we glad for that? Aren't we glad that God doesn't say to you and to be, Well, I'm not ready to forgive you, and I'm going to wait. I'm just going to wait it out.

He says, I'm ready to forgive. He says He is ready to forgive, and He is abundant in mercy. That's what makes God who He is. In other words, it's at the very forefront of God's way of thinking and being. He is ready to forgive. And it was really at the tip of what Christ said there. Why was it the first thing that He said? Why was He so able to say it? Because it was at the tip of His heart. It wasn't just on the tip of His tongue. It was at the tip of His heart, because He was God, and He was able to do it. If it's at the tip of our heart, forgiveness can be at the tip of our tongue as well. Ultimately, forgiving is not something that you do in order to reach for, or you think about, or you wait around until you're ready to do it. It really should be what we are. A forgiving heart is a living heart. An unforgiving heart is a diseased heart that's dying slowly and doesn't know it in some cases. But a forgiving heart is a living heart. And one who is able to forgive is no longer a prisoner of the past or a victim in the presence. Now, that's just a mighty tall order. Sometimes, when I start to think about what I need to say to the churches for the Passover preparation and help us get our mind in it, obviously you go back and you look at the various topics and subjects, and forgiveness is right up there. It's very hard of it, because that's what the Passover service is all about. And sometimes I say, oh, maybe I won't talk about forgiveness this year. Everybody's heard that. Then I stop and I think, well, wait a minute. That's really what the heart of the Passover is all about, isn't it? And it's hard for me to talk about it at times, because I don't always have a forgiving heart. As readily as I see that God did, I looked at what Christ was going through, and He was in physical agony and pain. His life was ebbing away from Him, and He forgave, and He said, God, forgive them. They don't know what they do. Why was He able to do that? Why was it right on the tip of His heart?

Well, one reason is He didn't take it personally. He didn't take it personally. Christ understood better than you and I do, that people are human, and He understood Satan's deception. You know, you saw the Beyond Today program that talked about the reality of the devil, and that information that we go through here, sometimes for us we say, oh, I know all about that, and we think we know all about it. And in one sense, again, a program like Beyond Today is not just aimed at the church, it's aimed at an unchurched audience, and it's aimed at an audience that thinks of the devil and may dabble with demonism in some way or whatever, but really doesn't understand the real seriousness of it, and it's meant to get them into a more serious study of it through the literature and through the Bible. But you and I know that there is a deceiver, and Christ knew that as well.

Mankind doesn't know that. And Christ looked at it from that point of view. He understood that they were deceived, didn't know they were deceived, knew the source of it. He also understood that they were a victim of their own human nature, that the people scorning Him were reacting according to the script that had been written into their life from their earliest childhood memories. Through parents, through their society, their culture, the people that they were around who were scornful, who were caustic, cynical, denied truth, pursued evil, their whole society. And that was the script that was written into them. What's the script in you and me that is a part of our humanity that is still impacting us, that was written on our minds and into our hearts at our earliest years, by people that had a script written for them generations before as well?

And we act and we live sometimes according to that script more than we do according to this script.

Christ knew that with those people. And that's why He could say, forgive them because they don't know what they're doing. They truly didn't. And He could look far beyond that. Our society today is at best dysfunctional and has been since Adam and Eve rejected God. Christ doesn't excuse the sin, but He does understand its sources and its results.

You and I find it difficult to forgive, to refuse that, doesn't even enter our mind.

So what we do, we fall victim to others, and we can't let go. Sometimes our inability, our unwillingness to forgive, is our only way to control somebody.

We've been hurt. We've been abused. We've been offended by someone, people that we thought we knew, people that we trusted, people in our family, people in our church, people that work, people at school. And we can't let it go. And the reason sometimes we can't let it go is because it's the only way we have to control that person. We'd like to, as we used to say a lot of things back in Missouri, but we'd like to lose our conversion for about just three minutes, God, you know, out behind the shed. So we can't do that, or we shouldn't do it, and we might know we might get beat up ourselves. So we don't do that. We might wish that something really bad would happen to them. They'd lose their job. They would have something, you know, horrible happen to them, to humble them, to bring them down. But we can't bring that about. And hopefully in our saner moments we repent of that attitude. We can't make them come to us and say, I'm sorry. So we hold a grudge. So we don't forgive, because that's the only way we can control them in our mind. We can put them in a box, and we can control them that way in our mind. We play our games. We all do. Because forgiveness and mercy is not at the tip of our heart. Christ said, forgive them, because He had a much bigger overview of life than we did. The message of Christ on the cross at this point is not merely forbearance, but forgiveness. It's not merely just tolerating and putting up with somebody. The message is forgiveness, which is the first step toward restoration and reconciliation. Let's look at the second statement that Christ made in Luke 23 again.

And verse 43, this is where the other two thieves were on the cross next to Him. Perhaps Christ was in the middle, however it was. And they were talking among themselves, and one said, look, we're getting what we deserve. This man has done nothing. He's being punished unjustly.

And He said to Jesus, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And verse 43, Jesus said to Him, assuredly, I say to you today, you will be with Me in Paradise. I say to you today, you will be with Me in Paradise. Now, how many of you remember that as a so-called difficult Scripture?

Jim Turner. He's been around since dirt. And Gordon Brockla. He was around before dirt. And the old timers. I knew that's where the hands would go up. Years ago, in Spokesman's Club, or some of our early training, had this whole list of difficult Scriptures. And this was one of them, because it's taken by some to say that Christ was saying to the promising heaven, to this thief on the cross. And you learn it's all in the comma. Where does the comma go? I mean, that's how I learned you understand this verse. Move the comma in the right place, and it's preappropriate. Assuredly, I say to you today, you will be with Me in Paradise. So, you know, we can go on and on about that. But you know what? I don't think Christ was making a doctrine statement here.

I don't think that's what He was talking about at all. He was not defining a doctrine of the afterlife to this thief on the cross. Rather, I think what Christ was doing here was showing just how real to Him was the Kingdom of God. Just how real was the spirit realm. Just how real was eternity to Him. You see, He had come from eternity. He was going back to eternity.

To Him, it was as real as anything that He saw. In fact, He knew that it was more real. And He understood that this physical existence was created as real, but it's not the ultimate reality.

Now, it is our reality. It's all that we have and it's all we know.

And we talk about the Kingdom of God. We talk about living forever. We talk about God. We talk about angels. We talk about the devil and demons. But then, all of us, we get caught up in our physical things, our clothes, our car, our home, our big screen televisions. And I'm not against big screen televisions.

Hope to get one one of these days.

Lord Brokla makes a good living selling those. But we get caught up in our physical life. And how real is God to us? How real is Jesus Christ to us in our life, every day, when we get up, when we go through our days, when we meet some of the challenges that we have, when we have some of the moods and attitudes that we encounter, when we get the news that is a disconnect for us and obsesses, and we react in a just frankly carnal manner because we're not focused on God.

And we don't believe God, or we wouldn't act the way we do. Is that how we approach it?

Christ didn't. The immediacy of God's plan was so much an overwhelming presence and presence in His life, the Kingdom was real. He could reach out and He could touch it because He lived it and was part of it. In His mind's life, what He was going through was just the next step in His journey to eternal life. And at His moment of His death, He was focused on that, to where He could say to this thief, Yeah, you'll be with me. You will be with me. Death to Christ was not a ditch, but is merely a pause and a springboard to God's Kingdom. And He wanted everyone around Him to believe that. And He extended that conviction and that invitation to a thief. And He took the time to do it.

Would you talk to a thief? How would you react to someone like this in this situation? This was a real thief. He said, We deserve what we're getting. We deserve it.

And Christ talked to Him. Christ not only talked to Him, He extended to Him the hope of eternal life. And in these last moments of consciousness, it was filled with the idea, the concept, the seed of the Kingdom that will one day be brought to fruition and sprout and grow in His life in the resurrection. This was a unique man. He had an eye-to-eye representation or view of God in the last moments of His life. And God extended the invitation and said, You'll be with me in paradise. One can only imagine the hope that was within his heart as he died. But that was the reality that Christ had. And this should encourage us in some of our moments to be like Christ in this way. To find comfort in times when we have troubles and our troubling spots and to remember this. Just imagine the comfort that is here. And put yourself in the place of the thief who is hanging there. Because he represents each one of us, caught in our sins, and yet given worth by the fact that God paid attention to us. And it's called us. And He pays attention to us when we repent, when we take the Passover service, He pays attention to us.

We don't deserve it, but we get it. The message of Christ on the cross is that the reality of the kingdom of God must be embedded in us, deep down, where no man or no trial can reach.

Remember what Christ once said, don't fear Him who can kill you.

So don't fear man. Fear Him who can kill both body and soul. In other words, fear God. Because God can deny us eternal life if we don't repent. He said, don't fear man. Don't fear what man can do. Don't fear what any human trial that comes upon us can do. And we don't have to if, way down deep within us, to where none of those can touch, there is embedded within us the reality of God's kingdom. And brethren, that has to be daily in our life. That's one of the things we should prepare ourselves for as we approach the Passover service and ask ourselves how real is the kingdom in our lives and what we do and how we react and how we talk about it and how we go about our life. If it's this deep, then even death is not going to wrench that belief away from us.

Let's go to the third statement that he made in John 19.

John 19 and verse 26. This is a statement about family because verse 25 tells us, there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother and his mother's sister Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing by, he said to his mother, Woman, behold your son. And he said to the disciple, Behold your mother. That's to John. And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home. He looked down from his position. He saw the only followers that made it all the way to the foot of the cross.

The other disciples, the 11 other disciples, as far as we know, had fled. John was the only one of his intimate group there that was at his feet, along with his mother and it says Mary Magdalene and his aunt. And so they were the only ones there. And he makes a statement about to his followers as a family and he gives responsibility to care for one another. As we put on Christ, our spiritual identity has got to move beyond the physical roots and the blood roots that we have and where we've been and where we're headed. The true genetic spiritual happening that is taking place are the spiritual bonds that are being formed within us. In Galatians 2, we will turn there, but in the beginning of verse 27, Paul writes about the fact that if we are of Abraham, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there's neither male nor female, but we are spiritual beings. We're one in Christ. And the point that Paul was making there is that truly we are a spiritual family if we indeed have the Holy Spirit and we are called and placed within the spiritual body of Jesus Christ, then there is a spiritual family being made. And that's what is most important, and that's what Christ was pointing to here. Now, he recognized the responsibility toward his mother, but he said to John, here's your mother. And he said to John, or to Mary, here's your son.

Now, John wasn't Mary's son, but from that moment on, Mary had to look to John for her well-being. And the tradition has it that eventually, you know, that Mary died in near-ephesus in modern-day Turkey, which is where John wound up his days. And the indications are that John fulfilled his duty, and he took care of her as his own mother. And that's what the Church is all about, isn't it? You know, we've all heard the saying, blood's thicker than water. And unfortunately, in many cases, that is true. And I've learned that's still true for many of us within the Church, blood's thicker than water. But the real bonds that Christ is wanting us to develop are the spiritual bonds among ourselves as a spiritual family. And that is the ever-present challenge. Christ said at one point that we would gain family if we forsook all. He said, those of you that follow Me, and you lose your relationships with your physical family, it will be made up through the ties that you have within the body, within the Church. And He was true to His Word. He's true to His Word today. Our job is not to choose God's family, but to accept them as God places them into our lives. Now, over the years, I hope we've all learned wisdom in terms of how we respect and love and work with and maintain the ties of our own physical family. I know when I was young, in one sense, a lot of those ties were ripped up by my mother coming into the Church. It's not that there were open and complete breaches of relationship, because I still had relationships with my aunts and cousins and my grandparents. But indeed, it was different coming into the Church, not only to go through all of that today. You've lived through that yourself.

But all of my dad's sisters are still alive, and when I occasionally get back to my hometown, I like to look some of them up. And the older you get, those things mean more to you as you grow older, and there's no question about that. But, you know, my parents are both dead.

And I look at, you know, the older individuals within the Church as my parents and mothers, and recognize that, you know, I have to look upon and look after their needs in that way, as if they were indeed in many of the physical needs, because, you know, the Church for so many of you is your only real family to which you can turn.

Sometimes it's a Church member that is the only one you can pick up the phone and call for a need, a physical need, as well as some encouragement or whatever. And if that's what it has come to in your life, in a person's life, then by the grace of God, there is a body of believers that are all tied together in this belief that, as Christ said here, look after one another.

Woman, behold your son. And son, behold your mother. Because those ties are some very strong ties. And we share beliefs that we don't have with our physical family. I have a dear aunt. My father's, my favorite aunt. And she's a good Nazarene. And when I go back home, she's the one I call.

And I won't go over to see my aunt Carrie. And she'll call her other sisters, and they'll come over, and we'll have lunch, or, you know, we'll talk. I always call my aunt Carrie. She's the one I bonded with. We used to live next door to one another when I was a little kid running around creating mayhem. And her two sons and I, we all grew up together.

So I call her, and I appreciate her. And yet, I can't talk with her about things of faith. At least the truth in the faith. And I can talk to her about missionary work. I can talk to her about her Sunday church.

And she and her husband, 50 more years ago, put money into the collection plate when it came by at a place at a little Nazarene camp in Missouri called Pine Crest. So you kids that go to Pine Crest every year, my aunt and uncle helped pay for that over 50 years ago when it was just beginning to be built up. And, you know, I find that to be interesting. They were heading off to Nazarene Church by the time my mom was coming into this church, into God's church. But we have those ties, but we have our most important ties among ourselves.

And we have got to accept that. That's not always easy, because we give up on each other real quick. We give up on each other, and we just, as we used to say in the Old West, we just soon be shed of each other sometimes. And one thing I have learned, you know, Rush Limbaugh has his 39 undeniable truths of life. I don't have 39, but I've got a few undeniable truths of life. And one of them was brought back to my mind here lately.

And that is, if I can put it in an awkward way, that God's going to put us in each other's face until we learn to love one another. He's going to keep getting in our, getting us in each other's face. You know how we say, you know, you get in my face, you know, we just soon, they wouldn't get in our face? One thing I've come to realize again, of late, I've forgotten it for a while, is that God is going to keep putting us into each other's face until we learn to love one another.

Now, we can walk away. We can, you know, just pull up whatever holy skirts we've got and go someplace else. We can ignore one another. We can say all we want about one another. And we do. And I have. And we all will. But if God's Spirit's working with us, and if we're going to be really learning the lesson of what Christ was saying as He was dying, then God, in His mercy, is going to put us in each other's face.

And we're going to have to learn to love one another. And we don't get to choose the family. God puts us in the family. He's put some others in the family. And we have to learn to get along. We have to learn, ultimately, to love one another. That's the message that Christ gets across to us right here at John 19. It's not our job to choose God's family, but it is our job to accept those God places in our lives. Let's look at the fourth thing that Christ said in Matthew 27.

Verse 46.

Matthew 27, verse 46. About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, Lama, Sabachthani. That is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why have you forsaken me? This message is not always understood because it's a very powerful message. His statement is not based on His doubt about God's purpose for His life. Sometimes we might read that into it and think that Christ thought that He saw God turn His face from Him and He thought that God had abandoned Him. I don't think Christ thought that. I don't think God the Father turned His back on Christ in that sense. But what was really going through His mind was an overload of the awareness, the enormity of sin that He had voluntarily taken upon Himself, the sins of the world. We're told in 2 Corinthians 5.21 that Christ became sin.

Not that He took on our sins in that case, but He literally became sin for us. And by taking on that burden, it was an enormous, enormous step. And He recognized the enormity of sin from a perspective I think that He had not realized up to that point, even being a God, being what He was. He learned a different perspective of sin as it was placed upon Him at this moment of ultimate sacrifice. And all that He, all that sin does in separating man from God, causing the agony, the suffering, and the pain of the physical life, all of that came crashing in upon Him. And the full agony of what He had been dealing with, and the idea of separation from God, all that ultimate pain was upon Him at that moment in time. You know, He had said the night before, as He prayed to God in the garden, He said, if it's possible, take this cup. And again, He knew that the cup was not going to be taken, and it was not possible. But the weight of that agony was upon Him. And this is where He was here.

How incredibly grateful should we be that God took on this cup, this cup of suffering and separation, that we might not have to be separated from Him. His message from the cross at this moment is that a believer is distressed over sin's results.

We are distressed over the result of sin as we are so aware of its ramifications and sensitive to the presence of God in our life. That God is so real, the holiness of God is so real, that sin in all of us manifestations to us is an abhorrence. And when we think about that every year as we prepare for ourselves and our hearts for the Passover service, hopefully we'll come to the point where we stop looking at sin as a mistake or something as an accident or a trifle or something that we trivialize sin away with words like weakness or infirmities or error or a defect.

And we realize that it's an abomination, that it's blindness, that it's a disease, that it is fatal, that it's lawless, that it's a tragedy, that it's madness. And where we see it in this world, we can nail it for what it is and not want to have any part of it. And come to the point where we do literally, as I was pointing out a few weeks ago in a sermon from Ezekiel chapter 9, we're like those that Ezekiel is told to put a mark on their forehead as he was to go through the streets of Jerusalem and put a mark on the forehead, he was told, of those who sigh and cry for the abominations that are done within the city. And we grieve over the affliction of Joseph, the affliction to our land, to our peoples, to our nations. We literally grieve over that, so that we divorce ourselves from the popular culture and the fascination and the desire to be close to the popular culture of our world, and we can understand it for what it is. We want no part of it. And we recognize that it separates. And we see it as Christ saw sin as he hung in these final moments on the cross, and he recognized what sin is and what it does in separating man from God, and we don't want that to separate us in our relationship with God. And we know just how holy God is. Let's look at number five, John 19. John 19, verse 28. After this, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled, he said, Jesus said, I thirst. It's getting a little shorter as we get down here toward the end. I thirst. Now, he was thirsty. He'd been through a long ordeal. But here he quotes from another psalm that talks about being thirsty, Psalm 22. In fact, let's just turn back to Psalm 22, because this is where this quote comes from. If you look at so many of these statements that Christ made in really quoting elements of the Psalms, Psalm 22 and verse 13 says, they gape at me with their mouths. And Psalm 22 is a prophetic psalm about Jesus and the suffering that he went through. Like a raging and roaring lion, I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax that has melted within me. My strength is dried up like a pot-shirt, and my tongue clings to my jaws.

You have brought me to the dust of death. And he says, I thirst. And this is what he was referring to. What was he offered? Well, he was given a bitter cocktail of vinegar. That's all that he had.

You know, as we approach the Passover brethren, indeed, we two are thirsty. We should be.

We're reminded by this event that we can't expect to have our spiritual thirst satisfied by anything in this life, anything physical. It's not a physical thirst that really is at the heart of our preparation for the Passover. We're completely lacking in the ability to quench that thirst ourselves. The godly person is thirsty in a spiritual sense. We are thirsty, and we need God. In Psalm 40, since we're in the Psalm, let's go back to Psalm 42. Psalm 42.

Psalm 42.1, As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say to me, Where is your God?

So here's a, again, David is talking about a spiritual thirst, a life that is thirsting for God. And the water of life, the nourishment, all that would satisfy is going to only come from God, is what he's saying here. Through prayer, through study. And there are times, brethren, when we all will neglect our periods of time and reflection upon God and to contact with God through these elements of our relationship through prayer and Bible study and fasting and even fellowship. We may drift off and not want to be a part of the church or find ourselves, you know, just through circumstances, sickness and whatever, and we may miss a few weeks. Sometimes it's just we need to be with God's people. And we have a desire that can only be satisfied by being among God's people. That too is a spiritual type of thirst. But it's the thirst that really is at the heart of what we are talking about here. And the only provision can be from God. The message of Christ here is the realization that God alone can supply our needs and only He can fully nurture our spirit.

And it's by studying the Word, it's by praying, it's by spending that extra time on our knees at times in a focused approach. You know, you can pray, and there are times to pray and talk about the things that are bothering us, the things that are important to us at a time when we recognize that need. And that is when that type of prayer or a period of intense reflection and study into the Bible, that's what's going to fill that hunger and that thirst that is within us.

You know, as we come up to these final weeks before the Passover, we're going to take a little vial of wine. And that's not enough wine to amount to much, certainly not enough wine to quench a thirst. But we'll take it. We know we need to take it, and we will take it. But really, the moments and the days and the weeks that prepare us to that moment when it's passed before us and we take it, we think about it for an instant, and then we sip it, really, we're really thirsting for the Kingdom of God when we take that wine. And we should realize that we've been spiritually dehydrated by the events of the previous year. Think about what's been going on in your life, the setbacks. Maybe there's been a death in the family or someone close. Maybe there's been some emotional bruises.

Maybe some disappointments from those that you thought knew better or those that you thought you knew. And we've all had, and we'll have those knocks. And those things dehydrate us. They take the life out of us at times to where we might not want to be around God or talk about God. We may not want to be around God's people, or at least certain ones of God's people. But we have to recognize that as a spiritual thirst for what it is. And the only solution is all that we've been talking about to this point. The forgiveness, recognizing one another as fellow members of the travelers, if I put it that way, within the body of Christ, traveling toward the Kingdom of God. And we can approach the Passover recognizing that that is the element that will help us to slake that thirst and to quench it. And we renew our participation in the New Covenant. And remember, Christ promised that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness indeed will be filled. Let's look at number 6, John 19.

And verse 30.

So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, it is finished. Bowing His head, He gave up His Spirit, and He died. It's finished.

Here was a declarative statement, a final, triumphal statement. The sacrifice, the redemption was in place. That's what was finished. In 1 Peter 1, verse 20, we're told that Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

The fact that the sacrifice of God had been part of the plan from the very beginning, from before the beginning, if the beginning is Adam and Eve, then before that time even, before the foundations of this present world, the idea that there would be a Lamb, there would be a sacrifice that would take care of all of the sins of mankind and allow for the reconciliation of a relationship with God, that now was finished. It was paid in full. And the Lamb of God was squarely being offered up on the altar of Golgotha. It was not a goat, wasn't a bleeding sheep, it wasn't a cow, it wasn't a dove, it was God Himself. A chunk of God nailed to a piece of wood for the sins of the world. A complete sacrifice with no imperfection, so perfect that it covers all sins. The only sacrifice that there could be within the plan of God, and it was all done by blood, by the blood of Christ. So we are reminded by this verse that Christ is a finisher.

And He saw it through to the end. And it's a pretty good example for us to be a finisher. God doesn't like quitters. That's why He says, those who endure to the end, the same shall be saved. It's easy for us to say, it's too much, I've had enough, and to quit. Sometimes we do that with projects.

Sometimes we do that with things we start out to accomplish and goals that we may have set for ourselves. And it gets a little bit too hard to finish that degree, to finish this project. And yes, it does. Anything worthwhile is hard to do. But God doesn't like quitters. He likes those who finish. Christ was a finisher.

At Passover, we partake of the wine and the bread. We're renewing a lifetime commitment to finish the course God has chosen for us. We fully understand the challenge. We understand our weaknesses. We understand our need for help and the help of God to accomplish it. And we know that ultimately, as we really... The real growth comes, brethren, when you and I begin to realize that we're not going to do it ourselves. And that's what we should really learn from keeping the days of unleavened bread, is that we're not going to do it ourselves. It's going to be because Christ lives His life within us. I get... Because we're writing all the time on the web and in articles, we get a lot of mail. And I get a lot of different interesting mail. I had some interesting mail this week. One lady wrote us, and she likes World News and Prophecy. She mentioned the writers and gave us a very nice compliment. And she had one paragraph at the end of her email to us. And I don't know this... I don't know... I'm not sure that she is a member. She has been associated... at least associated with the church. But she just reminded us of something that she felt we were telling her through our articles, that we are not going to do it all ourselves. That we're only going to accomplish it by God's help and by His grace, by Christ living His perfect life over and over again within each one of us. And that's the only way. She meant... She made a comment how in years past she looked at the Church of God as the... how did she put that? It was kind of like the do-it-yourself road to salvation. That if you were just good enough, if you overcame just enough, if you were just about right, you'd make it into the Kingdom, as if it were all up to you by your works. And she was hitting upon an attitude and an idea that we have to always be careful we don't slip into. The idea that we will... we can earn our salvation by works. If we're just good enough, like Goldilocks, just good enough, we can't be good enough.

And we can't climb up that ladder by ourselves. That's what the Days of an Oven Bread teaches. And we have to come to that point. And if we can ever get to that understanding, then the Passover will enter a new dimension for us. And so will the Days of an Oven Bread.

Because it gets burdensome at times. It gets tiring. And we have to keep on going, because we have to finish, just as Christ had to finish. And the last hours and minutes of His life were not easy. And He suffered. And He did it by the grace of His Father. And that's how we will do it. By the grace of our God. Not because we earn it, not because we overcome just enough, the last minute, and are just right. It won't happen that way. And that's how we have to muster, if you will, the endurance to stay the course to where we can finish. Because it has gone on a whole lot longer than probably any of us in this room ever thought that it would. And we signed on to be a Christian. We thought we'd be in a place of safety. Or we thought the Kingdom would be here by a certain time. And there's been... Brother, I have news for you. There's been cost overruns.

The project is going on. And it won't be over until we're over.

And it may not be over in our lifetime. So we have to count the cost. And that cost is going to go on. But if we have our eyes firmly focused upon the fact that Christ finished the job, our Savior is in place. His last moment of real life brought Him to that point. We're going to follow to that end wherever God's Spirit leads us. Because we will then have fully learned the meaning of Christ's last statement, number seven, we find back in Luke 23.

Luke 23 and verse 46. When Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit. And having said this, He breathed His last. And He said, Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit.

Now again, He was reading from another psalm, this time Psalm 31 verses 1 through 5, which is a psalm of a total resolve to give oneself to God.

Christ was going to be the King of the world tomorrow.

And He knew that. He fully surrendered Himself to God.

And His words and example are the standard.

An assured surrender without hesitation, without reservation.

That is something very precious in God's sight.

When we put ourselves in His hands and let Him begin to work with us as the Master Potter, and to shape us, to mold us according to His purpose and to His plan, and to something that is into a useful work of art. A Master Potter will take a lump of clay and fashion it into something beautiful, and something that is useful.

Our problem in understanding the analogy of the Potter and the clay today is that we may have a beautiful piece of pottery that we buy and we bring it home and we put it on the shelf and we look at it and we don't use it that much. In Christ's day, when they made a pot piece of pottery, it was beautiful. It was also very useful. They carried their water, they stored their food.

We put ours in plastic today.

But God is shaping something that's not just beautiful but useful.

And when we commit ourselves into His hands, He can do that work. Christ committed Himself into God. He committed His Spirit, His whole being.

As we approach the Passover, ask yourselves, to whom have you turned your life over?

Have you committed not just your Spirit but everything that you have to God?

Have you asked Him to partner with you in every facet of your life? Is He that real? Just as the reality of the Spirit life was so ever-present in Christ's mind that He could say to a thief, you'll be with Me in the Kingdom. You'll be there. We'll have eternal life together. Because it was real. It was more real than all the pain that He was going through.

That's how real it has to be. What is it in our life that we haven't turned over to God? That's a good place to start and to examine ourselves.

Christ's message here is simply this, that this way of life is not about getting, it's about giving.

It's not about waiting to get from God, from His Word, or from His Church. It's about giving ourselves without hesitation, without reservation, because we are totally committed and we become a living sacrifice. In Romans 12, we become this example here, this type of sacrifice.

Romans 12 and verse 1, I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service, a living sacrifice, not a dead sacrifice. Christ is the died for our sins. We accept that sacrifice, and if we commit ourselves and our spirit to God, we become living sacrifices, and our lives become a daily sacrifice to God, to His Kingdom, to His purpose in our lives, and to the journey toward the Kingdom of God.

That's the type of sacrifice we are called to give. Christ, who gave Himself for us, expects no less. These are seven sayings spoken by Jesus at the moment, literally the moment of His death, and His mind was focused at that time of death. As we examine that death and His life and what it means for us, let's focus our hearts and prepare our hearts to take the Passover service and the right spirit this year.