The Delivered One

*The sermon manuscript below was generated from the recording by AI…

A few days can make a lot of difference. There’s a story in the Old Testament, in 1 Samuel 11, where the people of Jabesh Gilead are being attacked by the Ammonites, by the Ammonites, a ruler called Nahash. And he says to them, “In 7 days, I will destroy you unless you make peace with me.” And the people say, “Sure, we’ll make peace with you.” And he says, “Well, I’ll make peace with you on this condition: if you all rip out your right eye.” Uh, 7 days, it’s a pretty grim offer, right? News spreads to Saul. Saul is anointed to be king. This is obviously before he goes sour, and in his anger, he comes to their deliverance. He marches across to Jabesh Gilead, and he says to them, “Just wait, for I’m coming.” And he gathers some three hundred thousand men, and he destroys the Ammonites and sets them free. It’s amazing what a few days can do. One moment you’re being threatened with having your right eye ripped out, and the next day you’re free and your enemy is destroyed.

On Friday we sat, and we looked at the forsaken one at Golgotha, didn’t we? Stricken, smitten, and afflicted, hanging upon a cross, dead and buried in a tomb. And we saw his heartfelt cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me?” We saw the dawn of the darkest day, as the hymn we sung goes. And yet, what a difference a few days can make. Because here we sit on Sunday in resurrection light, don’t we? There’s a reason we can call it Good Friday, because he rose from the dead. We sat in the gloom of darkness in what people call Silent Saturday, and now he is risen. He is risen indeed, and the light of his face now shines with resurrection light upon every day. Because every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday, isn’t it? We gather every Sunday to remember and rejoice in the reality of the resurrection.

Well, what happened? What happened between the forsaken one and the delivered one? We’ve been thinking about this from Jesus’ perspective, haven’t we? We saw his suffering as the words of Psalm 22 give expression to the reality of what Jesus Christ went through. And now we get to see the same thing as it relates to his deliverance, the Lord Jesus Christ’s deliverance.

And the first thing we see is that the forsaken one remembered. The forsaken one, while he hung upon the cross, remembered. Memory can be a powerful thing, can’t it? It’s amazing the difference when a memory comes back and the Bible constantly tells us to remember. It’s a very frequent command in the Old Testament and in the New Testament as well. Remember your God. Remember his law. Remember his ways. Remember your leaders. Remember those who went before you. Remember the faith. Remember the tradition that has been passed down to you. Remember.

Well, the forsaken one, while He hung upon the cross, remembered. You see, in the face of the intensity of the suffering of Golgotha, Jesus Christ, and we talked about this on Friday, Jesus Christ never gave up His faith in His God. Though He cried out in the gruesome reality of suffering, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He never gave up faith in the living God, and that’s because He remembered. He remembered the God-centered truth of the scriptures.

And we see this in 3 places in this psalm. In verses one to 2, we see the utter wrenching of the soul, and yet in verses 3 to 5, we see Jesus remembering the previous works of His God. And so He says, “You are holy. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted. They trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued. In you they trusted and were not put to shame.”

Jesus remembers 2 things here. He firstly remembers the character of God. He says, “You are holy.” Now, why is that significant? Because it means He can’t do something evil. His father cannot do wickedness because He’s holy. That’s who He is. It’s what He is. But secondly, He remembers the way God has acted throughout redemptive history. He casts his mind back to his forefathers, to David and Moses and Aaron and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and the way that the saints of old had cried out to the living God in their times of despair, and God had delivered them. Maybe He thought of Israel by the Red Sea, crying out and God destroying the Egyptians. Maybe He thought of Israel suffering and languishing and crying out in their soul within Egypt. We’re told in Exodus that the Lord knew, the Lord heard the cry of His people and came to their aid. Maybe He thought of the people of old in Babylon crying out, “O Jerusalem, if I ever forget you, may my hand lose its skill.” And God had delivered them, as we’ve been seeing in Nehemiah. God delivered His people. He remembered that God is a God who works. He’s worked in the past, and He’ll do it again. Though everything around me cries out forsaken, the testimony of redemptive history is the Lord never forsakes His people. The promise of scripture is, “I will never abandon. I will never forsake you. I am with you.”

And so firstly, He remembers God in His previous works.

The second thing He remembers is God’s perspective of Him, God’s perspective of Him. You remember, don’t you, that in verse 6 to 8 we saw the mockery of Jesus, the dehumanization through the mouth as the people ridiculed Him and used His God against Him. “Well, let God save Him if He wants.” And yet now we see Jesus remembering that actually the perspective of God is very different. He says in verses 9 through 11, “Yet you are He who took me from the womb. You made me trust you at my mother’s breast. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help me.”

As the religious leaders and the thieves and the Roman soldiers mock Him and effectively say, “God doesn’t love you. God doesn’t want you. It’s obvious He doesn’t want you because He’s not saving you. If He really loved you, He would come and rescue you, but He’s not.” As those words must have washed over our Savior upon the cross, He says, “God, you caused me to be conceived in the womb of Mary. You placed me there. You created me in human form. It was upon you that I trusted from my mother’s breast. It wasn’t Joseph that I trusted in. It was you, my Heavenly Father, that looked after me. It was you that have been with me throughout my earthly ministry.”

He remembers that in spite of what all of the religious leaders say, his father made him, and his father loved him, and his father said, “This is my son in whom I am well pleased.” Had the perspective of the father changed? Of course not. God is immutable. God never changes, which means in spite of all of the slander, in spite of all of the ridicule, in spite of all of the verbal hatred, nothing between Jesus Christ and his Father in heaven had changed. He was still the beloved Son, and so he could trust his Father in heaven to be with him, couldn’t he? And so he finishes with those words there, “Be not far from me. Trouble is near. There is none to help.” Who could deliver Jesus in that moment? No one. No one.

And so he remembers God’s previous works, and he remembers God’s perspective of him.

And then thirdly, contrast with the physical suffering he endures in verses 12 through 18, where we see those words that he has a compass of enemies around him, and they pierce him, and his bones are weary, and you can count them, and he’s suffering horrendously, and they’re casting lots for him. He remembers God’s power to save, God’s power to deliver him. And so we read in verses 19 through 21, “But you, O Lord, be not far off. O you my help, come quickly to my aid. Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the mouth of the lion.”

What is he doing? He’s remembering that he is a God who is almighty, a God who is able to save, a God who is able to deliver him from the clutches of death. He’s not doomed because God has a right arm of salvation, doesn’t he? No one can stay the hand of God, the Old Testament says. If God says, “Be saved,” a person is saved. Have you ever heard of a person being delivered by the hand of God to eternal life and a person saying, “No”? Well, once a person is caused to be born again, when God saves a person, they’re saved. No one can refute the saving power of God, and no one can deny it from somebody else. As hard as the enemy might try, he can never turn back the hand of God, and Jesus Christ places his hope in this reality. He places his hope by faith in his God.

And this is important, brothers and sisters. You see, in spite of everything that his physical and earthly senses said to him, with eyes of faith, he looked to his Father, a faith that is fueled by memory, biblical memory, scriptural memory, theological truth in the person and work of God. He puts his trust in him.

Now, Jesus knows he’s dying. Jesus knows this is his lot. Jesus knows this is his calling, his mission. This is his Father’s will, that he should die, that he should lay down his life, and 3 days take it up again. He’s prophesied it. He said it throughout his earthly ministry. That doesn’t change the fact that he must die. And humanly, when you’re dead, you do not have consciousness anymore. And humanly, it’s only by faith that one can look out the other side of the grave, right? Jesus’ body was truly and really dead. When Jesus says to the thief on the cross, “Today I will be with you in paradise,” he is not saying, “In my physical body, I will see you in paradise,” but, “As the second person of the Trinity, today I will be with you in paradise.” His body died. His humanity went to the tomb and stayed there for 3 days.

And it was this faith-filled hope that enables Jesus to pray, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,” and to give up the ghost as we say, right? That’s where the saying comes from. He gave up the ghost. He committed himself into the hands of his Father, which we can see quite trivially as not very significant because it’s Jesus, right, and Jesus loves the Father. But let us not forget that what has he just been enduring? The unmitigated wrath of God. He has just been suffering under the hand of God, the wrath of God upon your and my sin. He was made sin so that you and I might be made the righteousness of God. And it’s into his hands, who has just poured out his wrath upon him, that by faith he rests himself in.

I think this highlights for us the glory of our Savior, doesn’t it? Could any of us have done this? Having been tortured, afflicted, mocked, forsaken, betrayed, and borne the wrath of God upon us, look to God by faith and say, “I trust you.” Would any of us have the faith to do so? It highlights the glory of Jesus Christ. It highlights our captain, doesn’t it? He who Hebrews says paths the way for us, who is the author and the perfecter of our faith.

And this is important, brothers and sisters, because one day, one day, each and every one of you, unless Jesus comes back first, will have to take the same journey. And none of us can say we’re nearer than anybody else, because none of us knows the day of our death. It could be tomorrow that you are cast down by a sickness, a heart attack, an accident, and die. And so let me ask you, where will you look for hope? What faith will you lay hold of in order to traverse the grave, to traverse death, to cross, as we sing in hymns, someday the River Jordan? Where will you look?

Well, what we have here before us is our captain leading the way. He’s showing us the way. It’s to look to God, to kiss the hand of he who strikes us, to cast ourselves upon the breakers that roll over us. You see, because who is the one that takes your life away at the end of your days? It’s God, isn’t it? The power of death is in the hand of God. The devil won’t kill you at the end of your life, but the Lord has written down the day of your death, and he will providentially and sovereignly bring it to pass. Let me ask you, can you trust him with your life? Can you trust him with your spirit? Can you say, “Father, into your hand, like my Savior, I commit my spirit”?

Because if you can’t — I can tell you what your death will be like, because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen unbelievers die. It’s a terrible thing, because they die without hope. They die without life. They have no idea what’s on the other side. They die in terror. And yet, what a blessing it has been for me to do what I call the final watch, to stand at the grave, to stand at death’s door with an individual while they pass into death and life, to stand beside the bed of a believer whose hope rests in Christ, and they die with peace.

And that’s the wonderful thing about the death of Jesus, isn’t it? He dies in peace. He doesn’t need His legs broken like the thieves. He doesn’t need to be put to death with a sword. He simply says, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit. My work is done,” and then He breathes out His last, and He dies in perfect fellowship with His Father in heaven.

And brothers and sisters, can I tell you, this same hope is true for you. If you fear death, fear it no longer, because what Christ has done, He has done as a captain so that you might follow in His wake. He travails through the forest and cuts the path open so that you simply walk on a paved road. It is not a fearful thing to die in the Lord. I love that verse in the Book of Psalms where it says, “The Lord delights in the death of His saints.” The death of a saint is a beautiful thing, because God takes them home. The angels carry us to our Father.

So, trust in Him. Don’t put it off any longer. Remember the words of the Apostle Paul, “Any who believe in their heart and confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord shall be saved.” Well so, don’t put it off. If you’ve not professed your faith, do it. Come see me after the service during fellowship and say, “I wanna profess my faith. I want to die in peace. I don’t want to die in turmoil.” Seek Him while He may be found.

And so Jesus remembered, and He sought Him. He remembered, and then the forsaken one received. The forsaken one remembered his God, and the forsaken one received from his God.

Now, there’s not many things that are certain in life, are there? I think it’s Benjamin Franklin who says, “The only 2 things that are certain is death and taxes.” I’ve often said I think it’s wrong, because plenty of people manage to avoid taxes in their life, but no one avoids death. But brothers and sisters, the thing you could add to that list is faith. What we find in the Lord Jesus Christ is the great certainty of faith. He put His faith in His Father and we read in verse 19 to 21, Him crying out to His God for deliverance. Verse 20: “Deliver my soul from the sword. Deliver my soul, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the mouth of the lion.” The devil, he prowls around like a roaring lion, doesn’t he? Seeking whom he may devour, and Jesus says, “Save me from the mouth of the lion.”

And I didn’t read this before, but observe the change in the verse. “Save me from the mouth of the lion,” verse 21, “You have rescued me from the horns of the wild ox.” That’s a shift, isn’t it? Deliver me, help me, save me. You have rescued me.

Jesus Christ received because He whom He trusted in responded to his need. Have a look at verse 24: “He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him. But has heard when he cried to him.”

So what’s going on in the cross in this moment? As Jesus Christ has borne the wrath of God, and as Jesus Christ has called out, “Save me from the lion, don’t let my soul be consumed by the sword,” God in heaven has heard Him and has answered Him.

We can see this faith, what this looks like in the Book of Hebrews. Turn with me to the Book of Hebrews for a second. We’ll come back to Psalms, so keep your finger there. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 36. “For you have the need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. For yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

So follow the logic here. You need to endure. Now, just put this onto Christ for a second. You need to endure, my son, so that once you’ve done the will of God to die on the cross, you will receive what is promised. Verse 38, “You must live by faith, and faith is the assurance of things hoped for.”

And we see this fleshed out more in chapter 11, verse 13 to 16: “All these died in faith, not having received things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city.”

What’s going on here? Well, the writer of the Hebrews argues that the fathers, the patriarchs, they all died, and they didn’t receive any of the things promised to them because it was yet to come. Now, take that to Jesus. What do we see? Jesus cries out to God, “Save me,” and God says, “Yes.” Was Jesus saved? Well, no, but yes, He died. And you might say, “Well, God let Him down.” Jesus cried out for salvation, and God let Him die. But his physical death is not the deliverance Jesus is asking for. Jesus is not being asked to be saved from dying. He didn’t need to ask for that. Firstly, it wasn’t the will of God, but secondly, Jesus had all the authority in the world to say, “Enough. We’re not doing this.” He could have called down a legion of angels to deliver Him, right? But my delight is to do my Father’s will. So what was He praying? What deliverance was He seeking? He was seeking deliverance from the grave. He was seeking resurrection.

So was Jesus delivered? Have a look at Hebrews 5. Hebrews 5, verse 7 says this: “In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death. And He was heard because of His reverence.”

And you think to yourself, “Well, what?” With loud cries, he asked to be delivered from death, and he was heard, and yet he died. What kind of deliverance is that? That’s like a cheap knockoff Temu deliverance, isn’t it? Unless what Christ is pleading for is not deliverance from dying, but deliverance by what we might call exoneration. Do you know what it means to be exonerated? To be exonerated means you’ve been accused of something and then proven to be innocent. When someone falsely lays charges at you.

I went through this in my court proceeding at my workplace in Rotorua. A bunch of charges laid against me, and then after the court case was done, I was exonerated. I was declared to be innocent, proven innocent. The deliverance Jesus Christ is seeking is resurrection exoneration, to be exonerated from the dead, declared to be innocent, and this is exactly what took place, so that in Acts 2 verse 24, the apostles preaching at Pentecost will say, “You delivered him over to die. You declared him guilty, and you killed him. But death could not hold him, so God raised him from the dead.” Similar thoughts come out in Romans 1 verse 4 and in 1 Timothy 3 verse 16. Jesus in 1 Timothy 3 verse 16, he is vindicated by the Spirit. He dies, and the Spirit comes along and vindicates, exonerates, declares him as just, says he was innocent. Pilate said is true. “I find nothing wrong with this man.” This man’s done nothing wrong. He’s righteous. And what the centurion said while standing by him, “Surely this man was a righteous man.” All of those things were true.

And so as Jesus Christ went to the grave, an innocent man dying, the grave could not hold him. The grave had to give him up because what the devil had never counted for is that it’s only sinners that are bound to eternal death, right? And Jesus, having paid the penalty of death as an innocent man, was now set free. It’s like in that wonderful moment in Narnia where Aslan rises from the dead and the children are surprised to find Aslan alive, and they say, “But we saw you die.” And he says to them, “Yeah, but the White Witch didn’t realize that an innocent man can’t be bound. An innocent one can’t be bound up by death.”

And so we see Jesus being delivered by God. The forsaken one remembers, and he receives, and he is given and returned from the dead.

Brothers and sisters, I hope you realize that all of your faith and all of your hope rests in this fact, that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, because his resurrection is the sealing proof that he is the all-sufficient Savior of the world. Because if he stayed dead, he would be proven to be a sinner. If he stayed dead, he would not be able to save anyone from their sins. But he didn’t stay dead. Up from the grave, he arose, we sing. Hallelujah, Jesus Christ arose.

And so, brothers and sisters, rejoice because he is what we call the first fruits of the resurrection. Lazarus wasn’t resurrected. He didn’t go through a resurrection. He was raised from the dead, as were 2 or 3 other people by the hands of Christ, but none of them were resurrected. Why? Because they had to die again. I mean, I’ve often felt a little bit sorry for Lazarus and co. I mean, you die, and you go to be with the Lord, and then next minute you’re raised from the dead again, only to realize you’re gonna have to die all over again. That’s a bit grim, isn’t it? But Jesus Christ never dies again. He is resurrected eternally, and he is the first fruits, and in him we see exactly what will take place for all who trust in God.

You see, he’s not just the pattern of one suffering and facing death, he’s the pattern for how we walk into death and out the other side into eternity. We look to Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith, and in the forsaken one, the delivered one, we find eternal hope. You see, because what Christ received, what God did for Jesus Christ, he will do for everyone that trusts in Christ. It’s the argument of the greater to the lesser, right? If he was able to deliver he who bore the sins of the world, he is able to deliver you and I, isn’t he?

This is why, brothers and sisters, though death, 1 Corinthians 15, though death is the final enemy, what does it go on to say? Death has no sting. It’s not that death doesn’t hurt. That’s not the point. The point is death no longer has a hold on you. But a day will come when your body will be resurrected too, and you will dwell in the presence of your God in the new heavens and the new Earth for all of eternity.

Brothers and sisters, a few days can change everything, can’t it? A few days can change everything. On Friday, we see a deep plunge into dark sorrow, a darkness so thick that the sun can never take it away. And yet on Sunday, see what a morning gloriously bright, the dawning of hope for Jerusalem. The sun rises for the first time. Malachi 3, “The Sun of righteousness will come with healing in its wings.” And on that first Sunday Easter morning, the sun rose, didn’t it? That’s why we say every Easter, “He is risen. He is risen indeed,” because that’s exactly what the apostle said in Luke 24. “He is risen. He is risen indeed.”

You know, sunshine is such a blessed thing, isn’t it? You get to the end of winter, and if you’re anything like some people, you have the winter blues, and everything’s just a bit gloomy. And then the dawning of sun and summer comes, and you sit outside on that first beautiful, crisp summer morning, and you feel the warmth of its glow upon your face, and everything just feels so much better in the world. We have that every day. Every day, the warmth of the sun shines on our face.

So let us live, brothers and sisters, with resurrection hope. Smile. Smile. He’s alive. And let’s live for our risen Savior.

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