The 7 Sayings of Christ on the Cross
TEXT: Matthew 27:35-50 [READ AS COMMUNION MEDITATION BEFORE SERMON]
INTRODUCTION
Illus. – In 1979 I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and the doctor told Susan that he did not expect me to live more than six weeks. But my urologist and surgeon disagreed about what type of cancer I had, so they sent my results to a national diagnostic center and it took over 6 weeks to get the results.
By that time, I was supposed to be dead, but no words can express how relieved I was to learn that I actually had another, less aggressive type of cancer.
Well, that was 35 years ago, and still I’m around. But during those six weeks when I thought I was going to die, believe me, I said a lot of things that needed to be said. I got a cassette tape recorder (yes, we had such “advanced” devices back then), and recorded for Chris, who was just a toddler at the time, my dreams and goals for him and what I wanted him to remember to grow up into a godly, successful man and how very much I loved him. I voiced my love to Susan and told her how she had enriched and blessed me. I called friends and family members and shared my love and appreciation for their contribution in my life. All the most important things, what was in my heart, my feelings, and what was important to me came out during those dark days.
So it is with the words of Jesus on the cross.
The four Gospels record seven sayings of Christ on the cross. You might think they’re simply the normal responses of a dying man, and if you thought that, you would be wrong. In fact, each saying is pregnant with special personal and theological meaning and significance. They’re like a recording of Jesus’s heart, leaving a record that teaches us how He feels about us; what He meant to accomplish on the cross and what is important to Him.
Let’s examine the seven saying of the cross today and see what Jesus is saying to you.
I. IN THE FIRST SAYING ON THE CROSS, JESUS’S WORDS TEACH THAT HE WILL FORGIVE YOU ALL YOUR SINS, NO MATTER WHAT THEY ARE.
After nailing Jesus on the cross, Luke tells us in “Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do...” (Luke 23:34)
It’s remarkable that Jesus said this after they had nailed Him to the cross—and yet He did. But WHEN He said it is not as remarkable as WHOM He said it ABOUT. Jesus was asking forgiveness for JUDAS, who had betrayed Him; for HEROD and PILOT who had been derelict in their duty; for THE JEWISH RELIGIOUS LEADERS who had plotted Jesus’s execution; for THE CENTURIONS who had scourged Him, mocked Him, rammed a crown of thorns into His head, nailed him to the cross and cast lots for his clothing; and for EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD in that crowd who had shouted in a frenzy, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”
Jesus was not only willing to forgive all those who crucified him and participated in the wicked deed, He was EAGER to forgive them, for JUST after they put Him on the cross, THE VERY FIRST WORDS that come from His lips are words for their forgiveness.
Some people live under a cloud of guilt because they think that some sin they’ve committed is just too bad, too heinous, too wicked, or too depraved for God to forgive. But what sin could be worse; what crime more heinous; what choice more wicked; what act more depraved than crucifying the sinless, innocent Son of God? The whole point of the cross was to take away the guilt and stain of ALL our sin, no matter how bad and no matter how many cumulative sins you have done. John put it this way, “…the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from ALL sin.” (1 John 1:7)
If you’re here this morning struggling with a weight of guilt for some sin or a lifestyle of sin in your past, there is peace and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.
II. THE SECOND SAYING OF JESUS ON THE CROSS TEACHES THAT JESUS WILL SAVE ANYONE WHO IN FAITH ASKS.
The Bible says many in the crowd mocked and taunted Jesus. But there was another drama playing out up on the three crosses above the crowd. Two thieves were also crucified with Jesus, one on His left and one on His right. The one on the left began to mock him as well, and at one point said, “If you’re really the Christ [that is, the Messiah], save yourself and us too.” But the other thief rebuked him, pointing out that they deserved their punishment, but that Jesus had done nothing wrong.
It was at that point that he uttered what has to be the most remarkable request in Scripture. He said, “Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” (Luke 23:42) Then Jesus uttered His second saying on the cross: “Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)
A couple of truths in this statement just cry out for further elaboration:
• First is that Jesus will save ANYONE who asks to be saved, no exceptions!
Remember that crucifixion was not meted out just ordinary criminals, but was reserved only for the most incorrigible, unreformable of criminals. So it’s astonishing that this repeat offender, this man who had lived a lifetime of crime—would be so bold as to ask Jesus to save Him. If there were ever a passage in the Bible that proves that God’s forgiveness is not based upon our works or effort or merit, it’s this earnest request by this repentant sinner and Jesus’s gracious reply that He would take Him to paradise (another word for heaven) with Him.
• Second, it’s never too late for anyone to be saved.
This thief on the cross was probably the least likely person anyone would expect to repent and be saved. Wicked and vile though he was, he has some measure of spiritual knowledge:
1) He seems to know who Jesus is, because He calls Him by name.
2) He calls Him Lord, so he recognizes Jesus’s deity, something that the most astute scribes and Pharisees could not see.
3) He points out to the other thief that Jesus was innocent of sin.
4) He asks Jesus to remember him when He came into His kingdom, so he knew Jesus was Israel’s long awaited Messiah who was to be their king.
All these point to some familiarity with Jesus’s life and ministry. Perhaps he had heard Jesus preach and been convicted of his need to repent and follow the Master, but for some reason, he chose not to.
To others, it seemed he was just a bad guy deserving the death penalty. But they didn’t know what was going on in his heart, and just before his death, he calls out to Christ to take him to heaven with Him.
Folks, no matter how bad someone is, no matter how seemingly hopeless they seem to be, go ahead and share God’s love with them anyway, because you never know when the seed of the Gospel might sprout into faith, perhaps even just before death.
What a gracious Savior Jesus is who will take in any person who humbly asks Him. Have you done that?—Have you recognized that no matter what you have done, Jesus is willing to forgive you if you will only ask Him to and believe in Him?
III. THE THIRD SAYING OF JESUS ON THE CROSS OFFERS YOU A NEW FAMILY WITH JESUS AS THE CONNECTOR.
Most of the disciples had abandoned Jesus, but a small coterie of devoted followers stood with Him to the end.
• JOHN was in that group, whom the Gospel of John refers to as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” – Of course Jesus loved all His disciples—indeed He loves everyone—but there was a special bond that Jesus and John forged, and now, at the risk of his own life, John refused to abandon His closest friend.
• And of course, MARY, Jesus’ mother, would leave her son in His direst hour.
Jesus is in pain and agony, but He remembers His mother and His best friend. His words to her and to John form the third set of sayings on the cross: “Woman,” he says to Mary, “behold thy son!” (John 19:26), and then He turns to His best friend and says, “Behold thy mother!” and John 19:27 continues, “And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.”
On the surface, it’s clear Jesus is looking after His mother, but there’s a deeper truth. That’s that Jesus was beginning the formation of a new family—the family of God. Jesus created a new relationship between His mother and His friend—with Himself as the CONNECTOR; with Himself as the COMMON GROUND.
When you trust in Christ as Savior, you get a new family—Christian brothers and sisters who care for you; love you; want to be a blessing to you—and it’s all because of Jesus; it’s all through Jesus; He’s the glue that binds our hearts in love together. This family is global and inter-generational, spanning all believers from the beginning of the church until the day of Christ’s Return.
IV. THE FOURTH SAYING ASSURES YOU THAT JESUS PAID THE FULL PUNISHMENT OF YOUR SIN IN YOUR PLACE.
All too often people focus on Jesus’s PHYSICAL suffering, but let me be clear: Jesus’s physical torments do reveal the lengths to which Jesus was willing to go to deliver us from sin’s curse, but they did not do one thing to pay for our sin. It was God’s judgment on Jesus on the cross that saves.
You see, God cannot look upon sin, nor tolerate it, nor allow it into His presence. The penalty of sin is death and separation from God. On the cross, Jesus took all our sins on Him, and when He did, God the Father separated Himself from God the Son and poured out His judgment for our sin upon His Son.
It was in that horrible, lonely hour that Jesus wailed out his fourth saying from the cross. He cried out in anguish: “Eli, Eli, lama’ sabach’thani?” which means, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)
There is a subtle difference you should take note of in the sayings on the cross. In His first saying on the cross, He refers to God as “Father” because He was in perfect fellowship with His Father in heaven. But here Jesus calls Him “Eli”—“my God.” Now He does not call out to God as His Father, but as His Judge. Jesus is bearing our sin and God is pouring out His wrath on Him.
This portends a mysterious, majestic exchange: Jesus bore all your sin on the cross so that you could be forgiven and have all His righteousness in exchange. [ILLUSTRATE WITH 2 OBJECTS CHANGING HANDS.]
There are many scriptures that teach this, but I my favorite is how Paul expressed it in 2 Corinthians 5:21 – “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
If you’ve made the exchange by trusting in Christ by faith, then on Good Friday this week, why don’t you pause awhile to give thanks to God for the sacrifice of His Son.
If you haven’t made the exchange, I can’t think of a better time, the week before Easter, to turn your life over to Christ and experience His full and free pardon for sin.
V. THE FIFTH SAYING ON THE CROSS IS A REMIDER YOU THAT YOUR FORGIVENESS IS FOREVER.
Jesus is now in shock. The wounds inflicted upon Him in the scourging, the crowning with thorns, and the nailing upon the cross are now taking their toll. So Jesus says, “I thirst.”
There is no way to describe how horrific was His PHYSICAL suffering at this point, but now Jesus is suffering SPIRITUALLY as God pours out His judgment on Jesus. That’s why I believe here Jesus thirsts in a spiritual sense as well. He thirsts for the love He had had for all eternity with His Father, who has forsaken Him during this awful hour when He must fulfill his mission all alone.
There’s a deep-seated thirst for God in all our hearts that remains unquenched until we find God through Christ. We try to quench that thirst with sex or drugs or alcohol or our job or things or even good things, like our family or our spouse, but these always leave us yearning for something more, something more pure, holy, real, transcendent.
Throughout the Bible, we see the image of God as quenching our spiritual thirst. But Jesus added a new dimension to this idea. He met a Samaritan woman by a well and asked her for a drink of water. Since Jews hated Samaritans, she asked Jesus why, he being a Jew, would ask her, a Samaritan for a drink of water. He replied that if she knew God’s gift and who it was asking her, she would ask HIM for a drink, and He would give her “living water” referring to Himself. And then a few verses later, He said this, “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:13-14)
What Jesus was saying was that His forgiveness was forever and would never end. His sacrifice on the cross was a forever transaction. An eternal exchange takes place in which His sacrifice forever covers our sin, and we receive life that NEVER ends and ALWAYS quenches our spiritual thirst.
Jesus was physically thirsty on the cross, so how ironic it is that He is the everlasting water supply who forever quenches the thirst for God in all who believe on Him!
VI. THE SIXTH SAYING ON THE CROSS SHOWS HOW JESUS PAID YOUR DEBT IN FULL ON THE CROSS.
Jesus is now at the climax of physical pain and suffering, and spiritually He is bearing the weight of our sins as God pours out His wrath for all our sins upon Jesus. Suddenly, He gathers all His remaining strength, and shouts the sixth saying on the cross, recorded for us in John 19:30: “It is finished.”
You might be tempted to think that He’s simply announcing that His death is imminent—a kind of resignation of defeat from man’s torment and violence. But the particular words Jesus used tell us a different story. John records that Jesus chose a particular Greek word that means something very different from an expression of defeat. In the Greek it is one word, not three: “tetelestai.” Bible scholars tell us that the word tetelestai was written on business documents or receipts in New Testament times to show that a bill had been paid in full.
Do you see what this means? Jesus wasn’t saying in defeat, “My life is finished. I’ve been defeated.” Rather, this was a final cry of triumph. He was saying, “The bill has been paid in full. Every sin has been paid for—every sin of covetousness, adultery, blasphemy, drunkenness, extortion, envy, fornication, greed, hatred, idolatry, jealousy, kidnapping, lying, murder, pride, nakedness, oppression, quarrelling, rape, sodomy, violence, and witchcraft.”
VII. THE LAST SAYING ON THE CROSS POINTS THE WAY TO HOW TO RECEIVE CHRIST’S FORGIVENESS.
Luke records them for us in Luke 23:46 – “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost [his spirit].”
• Notice first how Jesus again refers to God as “Father.” – Jesus had paid our bill in full, His work was done, and now He was again in fellowship with God.
• Second, notice that His life was not taken from Him; He GAVE UP HIS SPIRIT in death when HE chose to. – Jesus’s life wasn’t TAKEN from Him; He GAVE it away!
• And third, notice the complete confidence Jesus has in His Father.
Jesus now reposes in death in total confidence and faith in the Father to raise Him up on the third day. Jesus’s faith in His Father points us to the only means whereby we can have our sins forgiven; be in right relationship with God; be a part of His forever family; and live eternally with God to heaven—by faith.
Paul said in Ephesians 2:8-9 – “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves:it is the gift of God:9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
Faith in the Bible sense means “trust.” To “believe in Jesus” means to “trust in Jesus.”
Everybody is trusting in something to make them right with God or to get them to heaven, but all of them are false ways that lead to hell. Some are trusting in their church; others in some religious ceremony, like the mass or baptism; most are simply trusting their good deeds or serving their country or taking care of their family and just being a good person. All of these are false grounds for salvation.
Paul says in Romans 4:5 – “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him who justifis the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”
Just as Jesus reposed in the arms of God the Father and simply trusted Him to raise Him from the dead, so too must we simply trust in Jesus’s promise in John 5:47 – “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.”
CONCLUSION
There you have it: Jesus’s last seven words on the cross. Each one is full of truth, but all are deeply personal. So let me be personal with you this morning.
• Have you turned from all the dumb things we use to quench our spiritual thirst and come to Jesus Christ and trusted in Him as your Savior?
A man asked Paul one time, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” His reply was not a long lecture on doing good, joining the right church, doing religious things or being holy. His answer was short and sweet—just fourteen words: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house.”
This morning I challenge you to pray a prayer of faith to God and say, “Lord I am a sinner. I believe you died for my sins. I accept your free gift of salvation.” The words are not important: It’s your faith that Jesus will honor that confession of faith in Christ that is important.
• Believer, have you forgotten what Christ did for you on the cross?
Have you grown cold toward God or backslidden from Him? Today, confess these things to God and come back to Him and serve Him again.
