Dennis Tuuri

I’m going to read two passages from John’s gospel as the sermon text. This will be a topical sermon. I’m going to read from John 4:34 and then John 19:30. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

John 4:34, Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” In John 19:30, so when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for calling us forward to minister Jesus to us by the spirit. We do pray that we would be those who have an understanding of who we are in Jesus Christ. You may cause us to repent of failing to finish the task that you’ve given us to do and give us the mind of our savior that we may indeed find that more important than our food itself or the purpose of our food is to do the will of our father in heaven and to finish the work you give us to do.

In Jesus name we ask it and by his authority and for his kingdom not ours. Amen. Please be seated.

I had a piano lesson this last week and Angela, her teacher, was talking about the classes she was taking now. And she has a class, one of them, as I understood it, taught her how to sit at the piano. So, it’s how your body is when you’re sitting at a piano and how you should sit and understand it.

And it reminded me years ago I saw a video tape about how choir directors and people that sing in choirs should understand body mapping. And that tape was all about the same thing except for choirs. The idea is if you play lots of piano for long periods of time or if you stand and sing in a choir or direct a choir, there are physiological things going on that will hurt you if you’re not aware of them.

And so this video I saw was on body mapping, having a right mental image of where your body is and who you are. You know, teenagers are clumsy because their body map doesn’t fit their body because their body is growing, you know, and so there’s this catching up that their mental understanding of where their body is in space to where their body actually is. And so, what am I talking about? Well, as we come before Christ in worship, a lot of what happens here is Jesus corrects our body maps.

He tells us who we are in him, how he has created us. You know, we just sang “A Mighty Fortress” and you can think of that song as a body map of defensiveness. You know, we’re protected. Satan can’t get at us. But I don’t know if you noticed or not, but I sort of watch for these kind of things that by verse four, we read the words “They shall still remain, nor any thanks have for it. He’s by our side upon the plain with his good gifts and spirit and then they can take our life if they want. It’s okay.” So Luther’s song moves from the fortress to the plain. So it’s an offensive movement.

At the end of the day today we’re going to sing “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” And I’m going to read the section of Isaiah that it’s kind of based on and hopefully it’ll produce a better body map of who we are in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are conquerors. Luther talks about the God of Sabaoth. What does it mean? Host army.

When we come into the worship of God, you know, and I say this because so often worship in our day and age can become this kind of place of timeless abstract ideas and we’re forgiven personally and this is what it’s about is believing that and this is who we are as forgiven people. Well, that’s half the story, but the other half of the story is that Jesus came to bring man back to his dominion calling to make us mighty warriors for King Jesus.

We come into the hall of the great king in worship. We come as fighters, as warriors. And our body map of who we are should include that and understanding that we’re not on the defensive. We are protected by God, but we’re on the offensive. It’s our world. It’s the world of Jesus. I would have liked to have us sung that processional song just a bit more, yeah, yeah. Warrior-like. That’s what worship is, I think. Yes. It’s calming to us. It’s reassuring to us all those things. But it’s to present us who we really are in Jesus that he’s conquered the world.

Well, today I want to finish a sermon I started and didn’t finish. So, this sermon is finishing. Finishing. Yeah, I know it’s ironic that I didn’t finish my sermon on finishing. Probably something even more negative than ironic. But in any event, we’re going to finish it today.

And you know, basically, a lot of what I’m trying to do here is to make sure we understand who we are in Jesus. I’m not trying to gin up something that isn’t ours in the person and work of Jesus. We start, you know, at the consideration of who Jesus is, and this is who we are in him. And that’s the basic idea and thrust of the outline. We’re going to add a few things to the outline that weren’t on here last time we talked on this, the first half of the sermon from the book of Proverbs and the slothful person who is not a finisher, but this is pretty much the same outline from several weeks ago or a month or two ago.

Now, I think finishing is really important. And I mean finishing, you know, there’s big stuff, there’s little stuff, there’s long-term tasks. We’re going to meet first weekend in November, the officers of the church Friday and Saturday up at Skamania Lodge, and we’re going to make plans, visioning, and we’re going to have objective of things that we’re planning out to finish and we’re going to look back over the last two years and did we finish what we put our hand to do from two years ago. Some things we did, some things we didn’t.

So, we’re involved in a process of kind of articulating goals, but not just big goals, but individual tasks to meet those goals that we can finish. And we’ve actually assigned ourselves the duty at this church of having tasks that can’t be completed in our lifetime. The last time we preached on this, we began and talked about Psalm 70 and 71. And how David when he was old wanted to show forth God’s glory and strength to the next generation.

So there’s a sense in which our task is somewhat completed as we die. But there’s a sense in which as a church ongoing life we have tasks to finish that we can’t finish. So there’s long-term things to all this. But we should think about ourselves as those who finish tasks. And very simply put, I want to make, you know, very explicit my desire that we be men and women, boys and girls who reflect the character of the Lord Jesus Christ and finish what we start.

Okay? Now, that there’s some things we’ll have to do to accomplish that. But think about it. If you start tasks and you don’t finish them and you end up with a lot of unfinished tasks in your life, what’s the result of that? Well, the result is enfeeblement. Big word. This means you get weak. You think of yourself, your mental image becomes that you’re a quitter. You’re not a finisher, which is a lie. If you’re a Christian, you are in your essence a finisher like the Lord Jesus Christ was.

Not finishing tasks, not attending to them creates the wrong idea of who we are. It depresses us. It enfeeblesus and make us ineffective for the kingdom. And we are to be strong warriors for the Lord Jesus Christ. So it’s very important that we make this a big deal in the training of our children, in the training of our church, and who we are attending to this particular topic.

And it flows right onto the final point of doctrine from the Canons, perseverance of the saints. Saints finish. That’s a summation of the perseverance of the saints. We have people today that don’t finish. And even worse, we’ve got people today in a culture, even in the Christian culture, that don’t start. You know, you’re not going to fail to finish if you don’t start anything ever. And that’s the way too much of our Christianity is. It’s all that defensive being reassured that God loves me and never doing anything for Jesus.

Praise God that we’ve got lots of people doing lots of things for King Jesus here. I hope we don’t have that problem. We start things and I want us to encourage each other with the word of scripture that we are to be those that finish things as well. And I said this last time, but you know, right away the application of this in homes with young children is get them to finish their task. Train them now to be finishers and you’ll train them to have the right mental image of who they are and right activity as they move into the workplace or in developing homes and households for Jesus as well.

So, we’re supposed to be finishers. People that finish tasks are finishers. A finisher is just somebody who finishes his task, brings them to completion. David wanted to be a finisher by following God when he got old. And that’s what we want to do. We don’t want people that move into retirement if by that they mean they’re sort of done with their tasks. No, we’re given tasks to do and we want to complete them to the end of our lives.

Maybe in a different sphere. Retirement used to be a change of profession, a change of what you end up doing in your calling, but it still was a calling to do things for King Jesus, even when you’re not doing them in the workplace. So, we want to be like David. We want to be finishers and we want to be like the greater David. We just read that kind of the arc of Jesus’s life is beginning with an understanding that his very food was to do the father’s will, not his own, and to finish his work.

And on the cross, we read that he says he cries out. I think that’s what it means. He doesn’t say like, “Oh, it’s done.” That’s how we act in our Christian walk sometimes. Sometimes that’s how we sing. That’s how we worship sometimes. Oh, it’s finished. Oh, good. No, we want to cry out, “It is finished.” The victor’s cry. That’s what that was from King Jesus. He shouted out with a loud cry. Luke tells us. Then he said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” And he gave up the ghost.

He delivers over his finishing spirit to us. Jesus Christ on the cross, I think, threw his head back and said, “It is finished. I’ve done the work. I’ve completed the victory, the definitive victory once for all in putting the world to rights, in bringing all the promises of the father to completion and in vindicating his people and in destroying his enemies.” That was the cross. That was what Jesus said is finished.

The victory of the Lord Jesus Christ is proclaimed in that great message. It is finished. Now, if you think about it, it isn’t totally finished, right? Because Jesus goes to heaven and he’s got more work to do. He’s at the right hand of the father interceding for us. And it says the ultimate finishing of all this is what he sits Psalm 110 says, the right hand of the father till all the enemies of the earth be made his footstool.

So, the world will be conquered by his gospel. So, what’s the implication? Jesus has finished the definitive work. And now we are involved as Gary talked about last week in that mopping up exercise to preach the gospel so that the ultimate work of discipling the nations can be finished and all the enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ be brought under his footstool. So Jesus had tasks. He had specific tasks that he finished.

He had the great task of victory on the cross that he finished and that provided then the means whereby the church would carry on that victory into the world.

Our Jesus is the greater David and he’s the greater finisher. He had the victor’s cry, it is finished. And as G. Campbell Morgan, not someone I would normally quote, but as G. Campbell Morgan says, this phrase can be translated, “round it out to completion.” Round it out to completion. That’s what we want to do with our tasks. We’re told in John’s gospel that Jesus said he thirst. Well, I thirst, he says. What does it mean? He’s in a human body suffering in body for the sins of his people. It refers to the redemption of the bride. The thirst of Jesus Christ means he took upon himself human flesh and that’s the demonstration of it is his thirst and in that human flesh redeemed his bride.

All the words of scripture Jesus says were about him. And so he brings all the promises of the Old Testament to fulfillment in his victory on the cross. Jesus yells out—he does this finishing victor’s cry. Jesus’s food was to do his job and to finish his work. And in a very real sense, he finishes it on the cross. Just as he was dying, that is the victory of Jesus. He yells out, “It is finished.”

Before he says this in John’s gospel, he tells John and he puts John and Mary his mother together. He tells Mary, “Behold your son. Behold your mother to John.” And he restores Christian community. And so Jesus on the cross, the imagery there is that he has definitively once for all brought humanity back from its isolation and alienation from each other in the person of the community, the church of Jesus Christ. He’s overcome the world and the devil.

And in John’s gospel 16:33, he says he’ll do this. He’s overcoming the world. And that’s what he does on the cross. He reveals the father. The whole point of John’s gospel, he says, you know, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the father. No one has seen the father. But the son who is in the bosom of the father reveals him, executes him, displays who he is. So when we see that the son is a finisher, then we know that the father is a finisher as well. And Jesus finishes his task revealing the character of the father in the cross.

And ultimately of course Jesus brings in the new creation. And so we can think of this “it is finished” like the father saying “it is all very good” at the end of creation. Jesus has brought into the new creation. In John’s gospel, Jesus breathes the breath of life on the disciples in his resurrection body. And so the imagery here is that the new creation is definitively brought to pass through Jesus’s victory on the cross.

Now I want to say something here by way of application about finishing in worship. If let’s see what we have here is the focal point of the scriptures is the work of Jesus Christ on the cross and then in his resurrection. The victory is finished definitively there. What we do in Lord’s day worship is derivative from that. It builds on that. It expounds that. It explains it. It proclaims the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So worship becomes the mechanism to celebrate the resurrection and then prepare us for our work in the week. So what I’m saying is if we have worship without the centrality of the proclamation of the gospel of Christ as being the definitive victory his death and the resurrection this is the victory of God not our worship if we think that our worship somehow can accomplish victory apart from the definitive victory when Jesus said it is finished we’re wrong and we can have the fanciest, dansiest worship in the world with great four-part polyphonic singing and all that stuff and robes and everything else but the worship isn’t what does it.

Okay? What does it is Jesus Christ on that cross saying it is finished. And worship is the great proclamation of that truth. When Jesus comes to us, assures us of these things, transforms us, etc. And that moves the victory of Jesus on the cross, his finishing work, it moves it into our work week. It moves it into the rest of our lives. Okay.

I believe that if that’s true, and I think it is, it means that worship is nothing without the gospel of Jesus Christ at its heart. And it secondly means that to love worship is the most important thing for parents to teach their children. That sounds a little weird. Maybe it can be differently phrased to love Jesus. Of course, but what I’m saying is this. If worship takes that once-for-all victory of Jesus Christ, his finishing work, and equips and transforms us to do art, to be finishers as well in his name and by the power of the spirit that if you’re going to finish the task of bringing your kids up, parents, you have to get them to come to well, you should strive mightily to bring them to a love of the worship of Jesus Christ.

And I mean the whole hour and a half or two hours. This is what your children should look forward to. If this is what we it should be, this should be a wonderful time of proclamation and victory and singing like the gusty saints that we are, you know, victors and warriors—the Sabbath of the host of God, the army of God. This is what our children should love and this is what they should fully participate in. And that it should be a major task in finishing our work as parents is to get them to engage in the liturgy of the worship service because that’s the way they’re going to be transformed and take the victory of Jesus Christ into what they do Monday through Saturday.

So Jesus Christ, he’s the victor. And then we are the anointed ones. We are Christians. And we’re finishers. We know that Jesus here turns over his spirit to us. We were saved to be finishers. To be finishers in our home, in our vocation, and in our church. Ephesians 5:1 says we’re supposed to be imitators of God as dear children. If Jesus imitates the father’s finishing work by being a finisher, we’re to be imitators of God and we’re to be finishers. Walk in love. Ephesians 5:2. Just as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, he finished his work. Work of giving himself for us and that’s who we’re to be seeing ourselves as well in the context of who we are. Our body map should be of Jesus Christ, his finishing work and that’s who we are as well.

Paul understood this. He wrote in 2 Timothy 4:7, “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race.” Yeah, the last cartoon the kids have to the coloring page today. You know, we were really looking for somebody racing crossing the finish line. So, it looks like that guy’s never going to finish. But that’s what the picture you can think of it either way. You can be like that guy running forever and never finish things and your life is miserable. Or you can be like that guy and the finish line is right in front of him. And Paul said that’s what he wanted to be. He wanted to be a finisher.

And he did finish his course. John 4:34, as I said, Jesus said that he was going to finish the work of the father. And in John 17:4, “I have glorified you on the earth. I have finish the work which you gave me to do.” So Jesus Christ is a finisher and we’re to be imitators of him as finishers as well.

John did this. Acts 13:25 says that as John was finishing his course, he said, “Who do you think I am? I am not he, but behold, there comes one after me, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to lose.” So John the Baptist was finishing his course. He understood himself to be a living embodiment as it were or rather the transformation of his life into the character of Yahweh. Yahweh is a finisher. John the Baptist was a finisher.

Acts 20:24, “None of these things move me nor do I count my life dear to myself so that I may finish my race with joy.” Paul one more time said he was a finisher. Philippians 3:14, “I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ.” 2 Timothy 4:7, “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” So the Bible is filled with references to people who are being imitators as it were who were influenced by the character of God and that influence resulted in them being finishers.

Hebrews 3:6 says that we’re to hold the confidence and the rejoicing of our hope firm to the end. Hebrews 3:14, “we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast till the end.” John 6:11 and 12. “We desire that each one of you shall show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end.” Over and over again, we have the example of Jesus Christ ultimately the ultimate. This is the source of everything. We have men’s lives, Paul and John and others who David who finished their course. We have then the admonitions to us in Hebrews. We’re to be finishers of the course.

So all of these things should remind us that in order to be Christians, to be properly think of ourselves as Christians, we are finishers with the spirit of Jesus. Christians like Jesus are to be finishers. You’ve been given the finishing spirit. Jesus Christ cries out, “It is finished.” And he delivers over his spirit.

So, and I know that, you know, you can think of that as him breathing out his last, but I think that the words, we’ve talked about this before, but I think it’s a little sign of what he’s going to do. You’re saying the spirit wasn’t given till Pentecost. Well, that’s right. But prior to that, his resurrection, he breathes on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” A little prolleptic prefigurement of what’s going to happen. And I think that begins at the cross. Jesus delivers over his spirit to his disciples at the cross. And what that shows us is that spirit, we know this anyway by inference, but in a very pointed symbolic or impactful way. We see that the spirit of Jesus Christ that he delivers over to his people is the spirit of finishing.

He does it right after he says, “I’m finished.” So, it’s a finishing spirit that Jesus Christ gives over to us. He gave up his spirit and that spirit that he delivers over to his people is a finishing spirit. So, think of that. The very animation of your life in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is indwelling you to the end that you would have Jesus, right? Jesus dwells in our hearts through the spirit that he gives us.

The spirit, Jesus said, the comforter will come, the strengthener to bring you things of me. The spirit comes to exalt Christ and to make him manifest in our lives. And that spirit is immediately identified at the first giving over of it as a finishing spirit. This is who we are. This is our body map. This is who we are in Jesus Christ. We’re spirit empowered.

And if you don’t exercise the spirit of finishing ever in your life, you don’t got the spirit of God. The spirit of God is a finishing spirit. That’s who you are. Quit living a lie if you’re not a finisher in your home vocation or the task that you’re doing.

Well, we can grieve the Holy Spirit. And if we grieve the spirit of finishing, we’re not going to be good as good finishers as we would otherwise. How do we grieve the Holy Spirit? Well, we grieve it through isolation. We grieve it through not being in the context of community.

We’re told in Ephesians 4:30, “Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” And then in Hebrews 3:17, “Now with whom was he angry 40 years was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? They didn’t enter into the community of the faithful in the promised land.” If we’re not part of the People of God, if we hold back, if we move in isolation, we’re grieving the Holy Spirit of God, the spirit brings us together in faithful community.

And now, you could have times of isolation. Jesus went off to pray. But I’m saying that lives lived in isolation from involvement in community is one of the ways we grieve the Holy Spirit. The spirit, what do we read in Ephesians and Colossians, you know, put to death the old man, enliven your new man, man walk put on the new man. How? Speaking to one another. The new man exists in the context of community.

Jesus restored community. John the disciple with his mother at the cross. The finishing spirit is found in the spirit of community and we grieve the spirit of God and we hurt our ability to finish tasks and finish what God has given us to do when we move in terms of isolation.

Secondly, unthankfulness. Philippians 5:16, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing. In everything, give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the spirit.” Here we’re told quite explicitly that to walk in unthankfulness and ingratitude and grumbling and complaining, grieves the Holy Spirit of God. And what’s going to happen? The spirit of finishing. Remember that we can identify him as that. If you grieve the spirit of finishing through unthankfulness and ingratitude, complaining, grumbling, and disputing. You’re not going to be a finisher because the spirit you’ve grieved to. He’s not doing his work in your life.

Third, disobedience. Acts 7:51-53. “You stiff neck and uncircumcised in hearts and ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.” So he says that if you don’t walk in obedience to what God tells you if you don’t hear the word of God to obey it. If you’re disobedient, then he says that you’re like your fathers who resisted the Holy Spirit. The spirit of God ministers the word of God to us.

And when we walk in violation of that word, we’re grieving, resisting, diminishing the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And we’re going to move away from being finishers. So, how do you be a finisher? Well, you do it by being grateful. You do it by being obedient. You do it by living in community. And by implication, when you enliven the work of the spirit in your life and don’t grieve him, then he will give you increasingly the finishing spirit that he is that you can complete your tasks.

So that’s how we’re to do it. Or that’s rather how we can avoid doing it.

Fourth, hard-heartedness. Matthew 3:5. “Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him, but they didn’t really go out to him. They rejected him.” When we’re hard of heart toward the work of God in our in our midst, then we also grieve the Holy Spirit. So Jesus gave us his finishing spirit. We should be sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

Yeah. We should be sensitive to the direction, guidance, movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And we resist, grieve the Holy Spirit by not being grateful. So being sensitive to the Holy Spirit means being grateful, grateful, thankful for what he brings into our lives. And this means normally being with people, living in community. And this also means obeying the spirit of God. And if we don’t do those things, we grieve him and we’ll move away from being finishers.

Now, I want to talk a little bit here about the sluggard. The sluggard. In Proverbs 12:27, we read that the lazy man does not roast what he took in hunting, but diligence is made a precious possession. So the slothful man doesn’t complete, he doesn’t finish the task of feeding himself. He gets something in hunting, but he doesn’t cook it to add value to it. He gets whatever he’s given, but he doesn’t finish the task by adding value to it.

The slothful man is not a finisher. The diligent man is the finishing man, right? He’s diligent to complete his tasks. And the diligent man his life includes possessions but his very diligence his finishing spirit is a precious possession to him. So if we take that number one again you should highly value the finishing work of the Holy Spirit in your life that the spirit you have as a finishing spirit.

Being diligent to finish tasks should be a precious possession to us. Now, if you got, you know, a nice diamond ring you inherited from grandma or grandpa or whatever it was, you got this nice precious thing, you’re going to take good care of it. Might put it in a safe even depending on what it is. If it’s great value, you’re going to be careful to guard it to have it as your precious possession.

Well, the scriptures say having diligence to finish tasks to see them through to completion should be highly valued in that same way by us. Now, there’s some characteristics of the finisher that we can talk about in opposition to the sluggard, to the slothful man. Proverbs 26. Turn there if you will please. Proverbs 26. Which part of the proverbs is this? Well, chapter 25 begins the proverbs of Hezekiah that his men copied out.

They’re the kingly proverbs. The very first thing first proverb in this whole section is about it’s the glory of God to conceal a matter of the glory of kings to search a matter out. And so, 25 is all about glory of a king as opposed to the false glory that a king tries to get. Chapter 26 is an interesting chapter. You know, throughout the proverbs, we have pictures of fools and sluggards and people that are slanderers.

But in chapter 26, there’s actually several verses for each of these categories of people. Why? Well, a king, a ruler has to know how to deal with different kinds of people. He has to know how to deal with the fool, differentiate him from a slothful person, differentiate him from a complaining or a slandering person. And so this chapter is one that you always want to remember if you want to teach your kids the characteristics of a particular group of sinful people. This is where they’re at.

And so in the first verses, it’s all about the fool. Verse 11, for instance, “As a dog returns to his own vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.” Verse 12 is transitional. “Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There’s more hope for a fool than for him.” So now we’re going to talk about a new sort of person. And this guy, it is worse for him than if he was a fool. Now that’s hard to believe. Hard to believe that something could be worse than being a fool.

But that’s what the inspired word of God says. What is it that’s so horrible that you’re worse than being a fool? Verse 13, “The slothful man, the lazy man says there’s a lion in the road.” So what this text tells us if we remember the previous text about the sluggard, it is worse to be a slothful man who is characterized in another part of the proverbs by the single reference to him not finishing tasks, not being diligent to finish tasks.

The non-finisher is worse than the fool. I think that’s what we can infer here. And then it’s going to give us some characteristics of what this non-finisher, slothful, non-diligent guy is like, and it’ll help us. We can’t deal with him in depth, but we can look at them briefly and kind of make some observations upon them.

Well, and as a result of saying what the non-finisher is like, we can draw out examples of who what we’re to be like in opposition to that. The lazy man doesn’t finish things. And the lazy man is described here in several ways as well.

First of all, the finisher gets his lions right. This is implication from the foolish man or the sluggard rather who gets his lion’s mixed up. “The lazy man says there’s a lion in the road. A fierce lion is in the streets.” And the implication is he doesn’t go finish his task for the day because he’s afraid there’s a lion in the streets.

Well, you know what? There are lions in the streets. In the New Testament, we’re told that Satan prowls around as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. There is a lion in the streets. Now, this, of course, the idea is that there’s almost never a literal lion in the streets. The guy’s making excuses, but you know, there is a lion in the streets, but as we read last week from Micah, and we can look at other references, the great lion of all lions is the lion of Judah.

And if you’re going to be fearful about a potential lion in the streets, you better understand that you’re being brave toward the great lion, the Lord Jesus Christ, all right? So, the greater lion, the finisher, recognizes there are lions about, but he’s not going to let fearfulness of opponents of the lesser lion keep him from being like the greater lion. He’s going to be like the great lion, the lion of Judah.

He’s going to see that as who he is, and that’ll drive him to finish tasks. The slothful man gets his lions mixed up. He’s focused on the wrong lion. There’s lions in the street that can hurt me. There’s Satan that prowls about. It’s difficult to take on certain tasks. It’s hard work, but we take them on and we see them through to completion because we know that we serve the great victor.

Now, if we only sing songs that, you know, are soft, gentle, nice songs, we’re going to forget who Jesus is. That’s why we sing the sort of songs we do here to remind ourselves that Jesus Christ is a great lion. “Rise again, you lionhearted.” Correct image of who we are, who Jesus is, so that we get our lions right. Okay. We’re to have courage. We’re to be brave.

It takes courage and bravery to finish a lot of tasks. Some particular tasks. They’re difficult to do, might embarrass us. There’s things we have to do that take courage and bravery to finish. The slothful man doesn’t have bravery. He’s a coward. But he’s a coward in a stupid sort of way because he gets his lions mixed up. He focuses on the wrong lion. We focus on the right lion. We’re fearful of displeasing the one who is the lion of all lions. And more than that, we know that who we are is part of that lion of all lions.

We’re Christians. We’re lions. We’re mighty. We’re lionhearted. You see, and lionhearted men finish tasks.

The sluggard gets his lions mixed up. And as a result, he becomes a coward and excuse maker. The finisher is brave. That’s the first implication of this text.

The next verse says, “As a door turns on its hinges, so does the lazy man on his bed.” The lazy man sleeps too much. That’s clearly the implication. He’s laid down and now he’s going to sleep some more. He turns and he turns. So he sleeps too much. Well, what does this mean? It means he gets his priorities messed up. There are times of sleep. He’s taken a good thing sleep. The Lord gives even to his to his beloved even while they sleep. It’s a good thing from God to sleep. But he’s getting his sleep becomes the primary task for him. What he wants to do is rest and he only works enough so he can rest.

We’re supposed to rest long enough so that we can work. Okay? We’re supposed to get our priorities straight. We’re supposed to prioritize work for Jesus. And sleep well, there’s a nice there’s other imagery involved in sleep, you know, rest and all that stuff, but sleep is preparation for something else. Sleep in the Bible is the way the New Testament talks about death. Now, death’s okay because the other side of death is our new bodies. Okay? But it’s not the resting point. You don’t stay dead. It’s not the idea. You’re raised up.

So, our priorities are to prioritize tasks ahead of rest. Now, there are periods of rest that are good and proper. Nothing wrong with rest, but in proper priority. The slothful man, on the other hand, gets his priorities wrong. He gets his priorities wrong. What’s supposed to be prior to another thing? Work is prior to rest. You rest after you’ve worked and to prepare you for more work for King Jesus.

Now, we can take this general principle and say that one of the important ways to be a finisher is to get your priorities straight. Now, I’ve attached an article on your handout today and don’t turn there now, but it talks about some practical things I wasn’t any great thing I read. I just went on the internet and there it was with. I’ll print that out for folks. There’s tons of material out there on how to be a better finisher and you should if you have trouble in this area you ought to read a few of them and the one here talks about the importance of prioritizing things understanding how much work a particular task will do what kind of resources you’re going to need and having foresight about it okay.

Now as Christians our word is to be our bond right I mean, you know, when it says in the New Testament, don’t swear by the temple or anything else, it doesn’t mean we’re not supposed to take vows. It means that for Christians, when we say we’re going to do something, that is a vow. That’s the idea. It’s not to lessen our speech in the New Testament, it’s to raise up common speech to vow-like speech. That’s the point of it. Our yay is to be yay and our nay. The Bible says our word is to be our bond.

When we say we’re going to do something, we should finish what it is we said we’re going to do. Now, what that means is we should be careful about saying what we’re going to do. One way to be a finisher is to not take on things you shouldn’t take on. You got to set priorities. You only got so much time, so much energy, so much blessing from God to work with, right? So much resources to if you take on if you get your priorities wrong and say Yes to everything that people ask you to do or that you think might be kind of cool to do. You’re not going to be a finisher and you’re going to become ineffective for the kingdom.

You’re going to be a sluggard. Things are going to fall apart in your life. You won’t be a finisher. You’ll get depressed. You’ll think I’m no good and which is wrong. You’ll get the wrong body map, the wrong, you know, map of who you are in Jesus. You’re not a finisher anymore. All because you took on things you shouldn’t have done.

To be a finisher means prioritizing things. In the case of the sluggard sleep and work, but even in the context of our work, we have to think ahead of things. We have to recognize that when we put our hand to a task, when we verbalize a commitment, God expects that to be a vow from us to follow through.

One way we become finishers is by being careful the task that we begin. And the second way is to follow through on the commitments we make. So ahead of time, be careful what you commit to. But once you’ve committed to it, it’s got to be your bond. The worst thing for a Christian I think the worst thing can be if everybody thinks you’re not a man of your word anymore. That’s horrible.

Now, you know, maybe you feel that way today. I know I do sometimes. And then we have to talk about forgiveness. We have to talk about, you know what? This is a brand new day. His mercies are new every morning. This is the day of resurrection. We don’t have to be bound by our practices and sins of the past. Don’t you know that God is at work in you? He’ll bring it to complete completion. He is a finisher. Even if you may not be yet, he will make you a finisher.

That’s what the scriptures say. So don’t, you know, moan and complain about it if you’ve failed in this area. Commit yourself afresh to your word being your bond to take proper priorities before you take on tasks and to finish those particular tasks that you’ve committed your word to do.

The finisher gets his priorities right. He gets his priorities correct before he commits, he takes into account multiple the multiple steps that are required, what resource he has or doesn’t have, etc.

Third, the finisher fights against depression. Verse 15, “The lazy man buries his head, his hand rather, in the bowl. It wearies him to bring it back to his mouth.” And I believe from my studies in the Proverbs, that this is one of several descriptions that the slothful man becomes depressed. He’s clinically depressed. He won’t even feed himself anymore. And we have, you know, we treat that these days with drugs and some that’s okay. But here, his depression is related to him being a sluggard, not being a finisher.

The sluggard doesn’t finish what he starts. And it gets so bad, he gets so depressed, he can’t even eat anymore. It’s wearisome to bring the food to his mouth. Okay. So, but the finisher isn’t supposed to be like that. He’s supposed to have energy. He’s supposed to be upbeat. Well, upbeat. He’s not supposed to lapse into depression.

And now this is something that needs a little bit of explaining on my part because these days depression is treated like some kind of physical illness you’ve got no control over. And I am sympathetic. I’ve been depressed. I have been horribly depressed. I know it’s like a deep pit. I know it’s very difficult to climb out of depression, but I know that the word of God tells me, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” And I know that we can keep avoid the kind of depression that sets into the slothful man.

And one of the ways we do that is by being a finisher. If you’re a guy that’s promised various things and never follow through and people start looking at you like you’re some kind of flake, that’s pretty depressing stuff. And you do get depressed. I get depressed when I don’t get the stuff done I want to get done. And the finisher doesn’t allow that to happen. He controls his emotions. He doesn’t allow himself to be plowed under.

Now, he doesn’t just, you know, whistle past the graveyard and pretend that he didn’t hear, but he makes use of the biblical remedies for sinful and unfinishing. He repents. The way out of depression from being a non-finisher is not just, you know, pretending you’re okay. It’s understanding you’re a forgiven sinner and you need to repent of that sin and move forward.

The slothful man is a depressed man. He doesn’t have control over his emotions. The finisher, on the other hand, doesn’t obey his feelings. He doesn’t give in to the depression. If it’s rooted in the context of not finishing tasks, he takes control of them. Well, how do you do that? It’s easy to say that. Just finish your tasks. But another thing, the article that’s attached to your handout today talks about is the importance of tracking progress. Tracking progress on tasks.

So we’ve got a task as a church to beautify the worship environment. We set up a series of initiatives and then we track progress. Okay. So if you got tasks that you cannot get to that you never seem to finish, one thing you want to do to prevent that kind of depression or if you’re depressed now, you move out of it by setting up accountability structures. You track your progress.

And I would add to what this author says that you track it with somebody else. If you’re trying to be a finisher in complete isolation, you’ve missed the whole point. You grieve the Holy Spirit. What you need is a wife or a husband or a kid or a friend or somebody to meet with you regularly to stay on track about finishing what you put your hand to do. You want to track your progress and you want to exist in the context of Christian community and accountability.

So priorities is a real big important thing. Before you make a commitment, prioritize it. But after you make a commitment, track your progress on that commitment that task and build into your life in significant tasks, accountability structures involving the spirit of God, speaking through other people into your life, encouraging you, holding you accountable, and then giving you encouragement, praying for you, and maybe offering practical helps in terms of how you can finish tasks.

It’s not rocket science, but it’s stuff we tend not to do in our culture because we tend to think of depression as something out of our control. We tend to think of consumption and relaxation as being the goal of life as opposed to production for the kingdom. And we tend to think in a pick in America that we’re rugged individualists and everybody’s got it together. I look around the church and all those guys are great, but I know you all and I know none of us are great.

I know that we have need for each other. In America, the rugged individual is where it’s at, you know, and even in Calvinistic households, we don’t want our wives holding us accountability. That seems like, you know, we’re weak. Well, it’s not weakness. You know, women are important to hold you accountable for tasks because they’re good at it. I believe this sermon is mainly aimed at men. Women have been brought along to help men complete tasks. They complete tasks a lot better than we do, fellas.

You know, I was thinking about that, too. You know, our tendency is to look at a problem, figure out a way to fix it, and we’re done. We got the budget made. Oh, it’ll just work out. And in a way, that’s okay. I mean, in a way, that’s a reflection of our being image bearers of God. God and his decree. That’s it in a way. But then Jesus brings it to pass and finishes his work on the cross.

And then he moves on to a heavenly intercession to work out the implications of that finishing. Okay? And I think that one of the reasons we have wives is to help us we getting good, but we need wives. And I don’t know, I think this is true because man comes first and women come second and women, you know, Eve is there to complete man’s tasks, help him to complete them. He’s given a task beforehand. I think there’s some rooting in the Bible, but you know, I’m not making a big point about this, but I just tend to think generally speaking that men with these conceptual ideas of fixing things is great, but they need to have a wife or someone help them to implement those tasks and hold them accountable to get them done.

So wives are an important part of this tracking and accountability system. The finisher has is accountable. He sets right priorities and does them and he doesn’t allow his feelings to get in his way.

Verse 16, “The lazy man is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly.” And then 17 goes on to the next person, the quarreler.

So finally on my outline and we could spend a lot of time we can’t now though the finisher is teachable, humble, and accountable and vice versa. You know, the people that are teachable, humble, and accountable will tend to be finishers of tasks. The slothful man, he’s not teachable. He’s wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly. Because he’s not teachable, it demonstrates his pridefulness, of course, and it means he’s not going to let himself be held accountable by other people.

On the converse, then if we want to be finishers, we’re those people who are humble before God. We’re teachable. And we want ourselves held accountable by other people. So this is what the scriptures tell us. The most hopeless person in the world, Proverbs says, is not the fool. It’s the non-finisher. And it’s the non-finisher because what he enters into is a course of life that inevitably slides downhill. It’s the opposite of what God calls us to be.

God has delivered over his spirit. His spirit ministers to us today the finishing work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He tells you today, every person in this room that in God’s eye and in reality then you in Jesus Christ are a finisher of tasks. No, don’t live the lie this week. Don’t pretend that you’re not. Live out the power of the Lord Jesus Christ by being a finisher in your task this week.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for his finishing work. We thank you, Lord God, that we’ve been given that finishing spirit. A spirit that is teachable and humble and wants to be held accountable.

A spirit, Lord God, that makes plans like you did, but then brings them to completion in an orderly fashion through steps in particular tasks that we’re to do and being held accountable and tracking our progress. Thank you, Lord God, that we can overcome the depression and sadness that may come upon us. We don’t have to obey our feelings because of the powerful work of the Holy Spirit who strengthens us.

Thank you, Lord God, that we can be those people and we are those people. People who are called to be finishers. May we, Father, persevere by your good grace. Thank you for your preservation, your finishing work in your spirit that causes us to be finishers as well. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.