Jesus Forsaken That We Might Never Be

I want to draw our attention to one particular figure that is, to be honest with you, I myself, even as I was studying, overlooked as I was going through Matthew 27. And that figure is the Lord Jesus himself. Verse 45 says this, now from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?

That is to say, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Some of them that stood there when they heard that said, this man calleth for Elias. And straightway one of them ran and took a sponge and filled it with vinegar and put it on a reed and gave him to drink. And the rest said, let be. Let us see whether Elias will come to save him.

Jesus, he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake and the rocks rent. And the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

Let’s pray together. Our father, as we come now to look at Matthew 27 again, we pray for your grace, your help, your mercy. Lord, give us eyes to see and ears to hear. I pray that you would not, Lord, please don’t allow us to sit and read and listen and study this event with an unmoved heart, an unmoved soul. I pray that it would not pass us by like some normal business.

I pray that your spirit would stir us up, would help us to see the great thing you did for us on that cross. Lord, that our faith, that our hope might rest in the Christ who is hanging on the cross. Lord, help us to see Jesus plainly.

And I pray that you would help our hearts to be moved towards you because we see your grace displayed so plainly to us. Help me, Lord, to say the things your people need, to give the burden of the Lord, and I pray for your people that you would give them tender hearts to receive them. And Lord, restrain and rebuke, please, any effort of Satan to hinder the message of your word to any of our hearts.

And Lord, I ask for your blessing upon the reading, study of your word again in Jesus name. Amen. In verse number 45, we we see the scene of the Lord upon the cross and he’s been on the cross three hours already. The Lord Jesus was crucified on the in the third hour of the day. That’s what we read before. Now that that might, you might assume that the third hour of the day would refer to 03:00.

But the day in in this time in in history was reckoned from sunrise. And so of course they didn’t have clocks, clocks didn’t exist at this point in time. So basically, from sunrise to sunset was roughly divided into 12 slots. And so sunrise would be roughly around 06:00, Based upon my research, the sunset at this day, around this day would be about 7PM. And I know we typically say 06:00, but the the sunset varies over the year depending on you know, where, you know, the season and that kind of thing. Well, this time of year around Passover, the the sunset in in Jerusalem is around 07:00 at night, seven, seven, ten, something like that depending on when the Passover falls.

And so, the Lord goes to the cross. He goes to the cross somewhere around the third hour, which is nine in the morning. So counting from sunrise, three hours, you get about 09:00. And so He’s on the cross until around three in the afternoon. So that’s about six hours.

And so the Bible says, now from the sixth hours, that’s we’re at noon now. So six in the morning until six, we’re about about noon. Keep keep that in mind. That’s important to understand what’s happening here. So, what is the feature of noon? Sometimes they call it high noon. Why they call it high noon? Because the sun is high, the sun is, you know, ideally the sun is at the peak, depending on where you’re at in the world.

From the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. Now what we see here is is you have to remember that it’s high noon. There’s no time during the day that it’s brighter outside than when the sun is at is at the the greatest angle to the earth. You know, we were out walking around with Abby and Louie the other the other day on I guess it was Friday, no, Thursday and we were walking around downtown and she noted it was a sunny day, it wasn’t very warm outside, it was like you know 80, a little above 80, but it wasn’t very hot. But she noticed that when you were in the sun, it felt warm, right? And that you know, duh, right? You felt warm. But compared to New York, it felt warmer in the sun than up there in New York. And the the difference is that it’s the angle of the sun down here versus up there. So, and then when you go to a place like Cambodia where the angle is like like this, is you step into the sun, it’s like your skin’s on fire.

And so, this is what we’re looking at. The sun is directly above, the angle is pointed straight down at noon. It is the brightest part of the day, but it is dark. And of course, we know know what’s happening. You know, in scripture, darkness is symbolic thing. Now I’m not saying that this darkness was symbolic, it was not, it was literal. But the fact that this event is occurring in the natural world is reminding us and is kind of reflecting a spiritual truth that is simultaneously happening. Now, when I say spiritual, I don’t mean I don’t mean fake.

When I say spiritual, I just mean you can’t see it with your eyes. You can see the sun but you cannot see what is happening to behind the scenes with Jesus on the cross. Of course, you see Jesus on the cross but as we’ll see in just a minute, there there are there are things happening that cannot be seen with the eyes. And that’s what this this darkness kind of hints at us, that something big is happening.

Something big is happening in the spiritual world, which is being announced by something big happening in the physical world. Now this darkness, some sort of rationalists have tried to explain this darkness as a as a solar eclipse, but that’s not possible. Because the Jewish month began on the new moon, which is the time of the year when you can’t see the moon because the sun is, because of its position in in relation to the sun.

And the Passover happens about two weeks, it’s the fourteenth day of the month, which is two weeks from beginning of the month. So two weeks from the new moon would be the? Full Full moon, for those of you who are into astronomy, not astrology, astronomy. So it’s full moon at this time. The Passover happened around full moon. And if you know the full moon is if if you remember from, you know, physical science or whatnot in middle school, you’ll note that the full moon is when the moon is on this side of the earth, let me do it like this, the moon is on this side of the earth, and the sun is on this side of the earth, and so the sun in all of its glory is illuminating the entirety of the moon from our perspective, and so it looked, that’s why we call it the full moon.

But if it’s the the moon is here and the sun is here, then that means the sun cannot, physically cannot be covering the moon, which is what happens in a solar eclipse. I know many of you have seen a solar eclipse, I’ve seen it, I’ve mentioned it before, and that causes darkness. I don’t know how dark it was, that could explain it, but not at this time in the year. It was not possible.

It was not possible. By the middle of the month, you’re at full moon and a solar eclipse cannot be happening. And we’ve all already seen that the darkness occurred at the sixth hour of the day, which is at high noon, when the sun is brightest. What does that tell us?

That tells us something about this darkness. That this darkness is not natural. There’s nothing in nature that can explain this darkness. You say, well, I don’t know if I believe that darkness happened without some natural explanation. Do you believe in the resurrection of Christ?

Right? I mean, literally, you could take any any miracle, the most difficult one to believe is the resurrection of Christ. But it’s the one that has the greatest proof. And so, the resurrection is true, certainly miracles in in in God’s created world can be true, and I I believe I believe it happened. Do you believe it happened? Amen. I believe it happened. But this darkness was not any kind of natural darkness. It was supernatural darkness and the fact of a supernatural darkness reminds us that the event that this darkness is announcing is also not a natural event.

There, you know, throughout history, there have been people that have been crucified. Throughout history, there were no doubt in during the Roman era, there were probably people who were crucified falsely. Do you think that’s probably true of the thousands and thousands, maybe even millions of people that had been crucified during the hundreds of years of the Roman Empire, do you think there was at least one who was crucified wrongly?

That’s probably something that had happened. It’s not been, had there been people that had been whipped by the cat of nine tails at the stake? Yes, there were no doubt people that had been whipped. Were there people that were wrongly punished for what they did? Were there people that suffered for righteousness at some point? Oh, yes. Those, you know, those are those are natural things. They happen commonly.

But see, this this darkness is not natural, and it tells us this event is not just that. Now, of those things are true of the Lord Jesus, and of the event that’s happening. But if we only see the natural, if we only see what men are doing to the Lord Jesus, we’re missing what is the very essence of the cross. It is not just a natural event.

It is indeed a supernatural event. Now, some people have looked at the darkness and they’ve said, you know, and I understand this thinking, but some people have suggested that because obviously the question is why was it dark? The Bible does not say why it was dark. All that we know is that it was a supernatural thing and it wasn’t natural. But the reason we do not know. So all we can do is kind of conjecture and maybe theorize as to why it went dark.

And one of the theories is this, that god turned the lights out because he could just could not bear to see his son suffer. And I wanna I wanna suggest you that I don’t think that’s scriptural.

Now, is my theory the right theory? I can’t necessarily prove that. Now, what I just described to you as to the reason the lights went out might make us feel warm, right? But there’s something far greater than just a human emotion of someone seeing their son suffer. Indeed, there’s something far more dreadful that’s happening.

You see, Jesus is not the Father, God the Father, is not turning away from the Lord Jesus, He is turning away from Him, but He’s not turning away from Him because He cannot bear the sight of His Son’s suffering. Jesus says that the Father is forsaking him.

Now, if you saw one of your children, God forbid, you saw one of your children have cancer, and you were at like, you know, Saint Jude or the Shriners Hospital, and you were sitting with your children as the the child was ailing. I mean, there there are few things in life I think could be worse than that. You could see that, and you could feel that, you know, your child’s suffering, and that might make you wanna turn away, but you would never, right, you would never forsake your child.

But yet that’s what happened. That’s what Jesus tells us is happening. And Jesus is being forsaken by God as a result of Christ’s suffering in the place of sinners. Now we see the, take a peek, we’re already in Matthew, look at chapter number 25, Just a couple pages over, look at Matthew 25.

Because there is scripture to to help us understand the way darkness is used in in the Bible. Matthew 25, in the parable of the talents, verse number 30, referring to the unprofitable servant, the Bible says, and cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer, what does it say? Darkness. Darkness. Now that that is obviously, I’m not gonna try and prove it here, but that is that is obviously a reference to condemnation in the lake of fire in hell.

There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, which is is additional evidence for that fact. So, but but notice the the ultimate final condemnation for this unprofitable servant was darkness. You see it? So when when people perish without Christ, it’s not just here, second Peter two seventeen describes false teachers who are reserved to the mist of darkness forever. Jude verse number 13 also describes the the the those same false teachers who go to the blackness of darkness forever. I know we think of the Lake Of Fire as a place where there’s obviously fire, but you know, we think of fire as giving light, but there in the Lake Of Fire there is no light, it is dark.

It is absolutely and totally dark. That is a feature of the place of torment where those that do not have the Lord Jesus Christ go. Now we know that. So when we see the darkness taking over the land, right, when we see this supernatural darkness, we should be reminded of this judgment, of this punishment, of this terror that comes upon the unbeliever when he dies in his sin without Christ.

Now, if we keep reading, if you go back to Matthew 27 and verse number 46. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice. So the darkness has persisted for three whole hours and that in the middle of the day.

And when the darkness is over, the darkness lifts. So I just want you to picture it. Our Lord has been hanging on the cross now. He’s been hanging on the cross at this point for six hours.

And three of those hours have been under darkness. So the darkness is lifting, and coming out of that darkness is the moment at which Jesus says these words. The darkness has passed and Jesus says, This is a direct quotation from Psalm 22. And you know that Psalm 22 is the Psalm of the suffering Savior. Well, the the opening verse of Psalm 22, you know, the Psalm that says, they pierce my hands and my feet. Psalm that same Psalm, Psalm 22 opens with these words, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from the words of my roaring? The idea that the psalmist is crying out to God, but God is deaf to him.

And of course, that’s prophetic. It’s it’s primarily referring to the Lord Jesus. So, the Lord makes this cry after three hours in darkness, and it is therefore related to the darkness. Again, the darkness visually illustrated the unseen event that was taking place.

It was a visual illustration of that event. Now, the unseen event which is what we’re going to look at right now is is an event that did indeed happen. It is real but it just was not seen by human eyes.

Jesus says, Well, God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? You know, the Lord, whether the Lord spoke these words or not, the event happens. Jesus is indeed forsaken by God. That’s what he says.

But the fact that the Lord said it. The Bible says he cried with a loud voice, and this won’t be the last time, because you you look down a little bit further in verse number 50, he cries again with a loud voice. He has been on the cross six hours. If you understand anything about a cross, and the crucifixion, the way that a person dies upon the cross is that they get to the they get so exhausted that they they cannot exhale.

That’s that’s the reason they die. They get so exhausted that they their body cannot exhale. Because in order to exhale, they’re they’re hanging by their by their their primarily their wrist. They’re hanging by their wrist and their feet and they have to pull themselves up by their hands and push up with their feet both of which are nailed. You can imagine this excruciating pain And so for every breath, they must lift themselves enough that allows their stretched out diaphragm to compress their lungs and blow the air out and exhale.

And so when they’re exhausted, they just finally relax and it stretches out their abdomen and it makes it so they can’t push the breath out. And when you can’t do that, you die. Your lungs fill with fluid slowly until you finally die.

So that means that every In order to exhale, Jesus has to pull himself up and you have to exhale to to scream. Right? So Jesus two times after six hours of every breath pulling himself up, Every breath pulling himself up. You know, think about think think about what the the price Christ had to pay physically to look at the the thief on the cross and say, verily I say unto you, today shalt thou be with me in paradise. You know what that meant? That meant he had to endure pain at that moment just to say those words.

And here, after all of these exhausting hours, Jesus lifts himself up two final times and he says, one thing he says is, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And he doesn’t just speak it, he doesn’t whisper it, he shouts it. He shouts it. That took a lot of effort. He could have just hung on the cross and just died silently. He could have done that, but he didn’t.

The fact that he spoke was an intentional effort, an active choice. And the fact that he spoke these words is the only, hear me now, is the only way that we would have known what is going on behind the scenes where the eye cannot see. If Jesus had not shouted, we would have seen a man, a Hebrew man being crucified wrongly by those envious and jealous those envious and jealous people of his, who the religious leaders who stirred up the people and and stirred up the Romans to finally carry out their wishes and take him to the cross. They we would have seen a man who suffered injustice.

We would have seen a man who suffered who suffered all kinds of physical suffering and finally is is on the cross like the other two men. We would have essentially seen three men on the cross with little distinction between them. But this word that Jesus spoke gives us an insight into what is happening behind the scenes. You know what is happening behind the scenes? It is this again, this is not a natural event. This is a supernatural event.

Behind the scenes, God is forsaking him. That’s not something you can see with your eyes. The only way we know is because Jesus pulled himself up and cried these prophetic words. That tells us he’s being forsaken. Else, we would not know. Now, the darkness hinted at some miraculous, some supernatural event but that darkness only hints at it. It doesn’t give us the information. The cry gives us the information.

And so Jesus cry is the only way that we can understand truly what is happening. So let’s think about this. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

It is at this point from these words that we begin to understand the depth of the cross. As I said previously, the cross was not just a miscarriage of justice or a betrayal of his disciple Judas. It was not just the abandonment by his followers, it was not just the hatred of the Jews, it was not just stripes and nails. Beyond, those are all natural things, right?

They’re all natural things that can happen to anybody. Beyond all of that, beyond all of these evils that we associate with this event was the very worst thing that is happening. The thing that the lord Jesus dreaded the most, it wasn’t the nails.

It was an act of God. Now hear me, you have got to get this, we have got to understand this truth. You’ve probably seen media and movies that portray the crucifixion of Christ. You probably, there’s been many over the years that have been made that depict this. What we see here is not depicted in a movie. But see, here’s the thing, the world tells us, the world’s perspective on the cross only presents the human, the natural side.

But really, the culmination, the climactic point of the cross is this cry. When God the Father abandons his son as his son carries my sin and yours. So this was not the father turns away because he just cannot bear this. No. This is god the father actively participating in the cross.

Look if you would at Genesis 22. Genesis 22. Verse two. In the bible, there’s probably only a handful of illustrations of the cross that we see, the serpent in the wilderness lifted up, that’s one. One of them is what we wanna read here, is Abraham offering Isaac. Verse two of Genesis 22 says this, and he said, take now thy son, to Abraham now, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah. Moriah, you know what was in the Mountains Of Moriah? It would be the Temple Mount.

And offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell thee of. So Abraham gets his son Isaac, of course, this picture Abraham, father Abraham, is God the father. It symbolizes or pictures God the father. Isaac, his dearly beloved son, his only son, does that sound familiar? That’s what Isaac is.

And the command is to offer Isaac. Abraham is to offer Isaac. Now, if Abraham is going to offer Isaac, does that mean that Abraham has an active part in this process? It does. Let’s keep going. Look at verse nine. And they came to the place which God had told him of, and Abraham built an altar there and laid the wooden order and bound, whose hands bound Isaac?

Abraham’s. His son and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. Now we know what happens, there’s actually, it’s beautiful, there’s actually two symbols, two types that kind of merge here. Up to this point, the type is Abraham is God the father, and Isaac is the the beloved son. Abraham’s command from God is to offer with his own hand his son. And at the last minute, we know that doesn’t happen because a substitute is found, right? With this and then there’s where the ram’s caught in a thicket by his horns, you remember that? Well, that substitute also pictures Christ.

Here’s what I want you to see. When Abraham took that knife, Abraham was the one making the offering. He wasn’t standing by while something was happening to Isaac. No, he was the doer of it.

You see that? Look if you would at Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53. This is the prophetic passage of the suffering servant, of course of the Lord Jesus. Isaiah 53 verse number 10. If we let these words seep into our hearts and get down into the very bottom, it will startle us.

Verse 10. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He, that is the Lord, hath put him, Jesus Christ, to grief. When thou, that’s the Lord, shalt make his soul, Jesus’ soul, an offering for sin. You see this? This is Abraham offering his son Isaac. Who is the one giving the offering in this verse? Verse 10, who is the one doing it?

It is the Lord. This is not natural. This is not a bunch of guys hated Jesus and nailed him to a cross. No, this is God in heaven making an offering. And this is not the only time that we see this. Romans three verse 25, the Bible says, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation which means, an appeasement whom god has set forth. That’s what I want you to see. God is the one that did it. To be a propitiation through faith in his blood. First John four ten, here in his love, not that we loved god but that he, god, loved us and he, god, sent his son, that’s nice, to be the propitiation for our sins.

Listen, I wanna dispel this idea that this world puts in our minds about our gospel. If we’re gonna know our, we need to know it from the Bible. It is not that God was standing by watching this scene as his son is wrongly executed. No, it is that holy and that righteous God was making his own son with his own hand and offering and a sacrifice that was the only way that his righteousness could be satisfied and if that wasn’t done, there would be no way for a sinner like me and a sinner like you to go to him whatsoever.

God played an active part in the crucifixion, which we know and understand because Christ said, why hast thou forsaken me? God forsook him. You know what, that is the core. That is, you know, we talk about when a sinner dies without Christ.

When a sinner dies without Christ, you think of it, we think of the, you know, they go to hell to be punished, or the flames of hell, or outer darkness. Here’s what I want you to remember about this. All that’s true, but you know what, a of the torment of God’s judgment in hell and in the lake of fire, the torment is not a result of them being lost. The torment is a result of their evil works.

Because God says he will judge them according to their works, some more, some less, all condemned, but the torment is related to that. But you know what, even if there were no torment, a person without Christ dies and hear hear me now, I’m gonna say something, it might shock some of you. A person dies without Christ and is utterly, forever abandoned by God. Amen. And it’s frightful.

I mean forget about the flames and all of that, mean that’s one thing, but to be totally and forever abandoned by God, No hope of of any remedy forever for all of eternity. This is you say, well, I don’t I don’t believe God would do that to somebody. He did it to his only son.

Who was standing as a representative in our place, surely he would do it to someone without Christ. He must, for no sinner can come into God’s presence because there is no access. He is holy. We cannot as a guilty sinner waltz into God’s presence. Adam and Eve could not do it, and their sin was but one, and really relatively minor, was it not? And yet they were dismissed from the garden. They could not be with God.

What a Listen, what a dreadful thought that the cross shows us about the fate of the wicked, the fate of those who do not have Christ. It is terrible. It is the most terrible thing that can enter the human mind. And yet our savior is suffering that very thing in your place and in mine. Is it no wonder that God takes rejection of his son and of his cross so personally?

Is it no wonder that he holds every human being to account for rejecting that gospel, that sacrifice that he is making actively with his own hands. God not only sent forth his son into the world, but when the time came for the sacrifice to be made, he took the knife.

He took the knife into his own hand. And unlike Isaac and Abraham, went through with it. So let me summarize this, and we’re almost finished, let me summarize it this way. The atonement, the cross of Christ is at its core, at its heart, a dreadful act of God.

Whereby God is offering his son that you and I might be saved. That God is forsaking his son that he might never forsake you and me. And that’s why He can say to those that trust in Him, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. That’s only possible because He did indeed forsake His Son when He bore our sins on the cross.

Back to Matthew 27. Look if you would down at verse number verse number 47. Those that stood by as the Lord Jesus is essentially dying in the place of sinners by Himself. Why do you say by Himself? Because He was forsaken. He was forsaken.

Verse 47 says, some of them which stood there when they heard that heard that said, this man calleth for Elias. And that’s simply because the word Eli, which is my God, is related to the word Elias. You can tell just in the spelling, it’s related and so they mistook his maybe in his exhaustion and and the way he cried, they mistook that he was calling for Elias which he was not and they straightway, one of them ran and took a sponge and filled it with vinegar which fulfilled the scripture which said, they gave me also gall for my meat and in my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink. Psalm 69 verse 21 and it is at that it it is at this point that the savior says that because John tells us, all things had now been accomplished, and he says, I thirst. Now it’s not recorded in Matthew, but in all likelihood at this point after he cried, what we just read is when he said, I thirst.

And so that prompted them to go get the vinegar. How many of you like vinegar? How many of you are crazy enough to drink like apple cider vinegar straight? It’s not fun. It’s not something you want when you’re thirsty. You might do it for health benefits, but you’re not doing it when you’re thirsty. This is not any, this is a mockery of His thirst.

But the fact that they give it to Him reminds us of His thirst. Our Lord is suffering in the place of sinners and we have one example of a sinner who dies without Christ and goes to hell. In Luke chapter 16, who is a rich man. He dies in his sin and he cries out to father Abraham and says, send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am tormented in this flame. Thirst.

And here our Lord is suffering that. He suffers the darkness, he suffers the forsaking, he suffers the torment one by one in our place. And lastly, verse 49, and the rest said, let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him. Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, John tells us, is it John? I think it’s actually Luke, tells us what is the final thing that he cried. Remember that scream, that shout.

He cried, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And notice what it says in verse number verse number 50. Jesus, when he had cried again, and that would have been, Father into thy hands I commend my spirit, with a loud voice yielded up the ghost. Now it’s not it’s not obvious and evident when you read, when you just curse and and and just quickly read, the English text there. But what’s interesting is as compared to Mark and Luke, what Matthew says is not just he expired. That’s what we would say when somebody dies, sometimes they say they expired.

That is not what is being said here. This is not well, he just let out his last breath. No, this yielded up the ghost is a transitive verb. He is actively doing it. In other words, even though he’s exhausted, even though he’s been on the cross for six hours, even though all of these things have happened to him, he chose the moment when his life would be over. And when that moment came, he said, I’m done.

And he yielded. That is he gave it up of a, as a matter of his choice. Which is exactly what he said. He said, no man taketh my life from me. I have power to lay it down, he said in John, and I have power to what? Take it up again. On that note, keep reading. And behold, the veil of the temple was rent and twain from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake and the rocks rent. Notice 52, and the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. Now, I’m not even gonna spend time kind of, you know, trying to figure out when did this happen, who were those people, where, how long did they stay, what happened? You know, those are all interesting things to think about, but we don’t know the answers to them. It’s just there.

But we do see that when Christ died on the cross, he said, I have the power to lay it down, which He does when He volitionally yields His Spirit, and says, the time is now, and chooses to die at that moment.

But He says, I have power to take it again, which is what we see the evidence of right after that. And so Jesus gives His life. It is not taken from Him because of physical suffering. It is not taken from him because he can’t breathe. It is not taken from him because his lungs are filling with fluid.

Jesus gives his life because it was time and he had fulfilled everything that was required for you and for me to be reconciled to God. He did it all, period. It is done. You know, it is finished. It is finished. And remember, the fact that he cried, Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit, not whispered, but shouted it, showed that he had enough energy to stay alive if he chose to.

And lastly, several events happened immediately after his death. Verse 51, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. The curtain, the veil of the temple was this thick. It was a hand breadth thick. I can’t even tear a t shirt.

And this was a hand breadth thick. And the bible says it was torn from the top to the bottom. That was the curtain that divided the holy place from the most holy place. And if you remember, the most holy place was the place where only the priest could go, the high priest, once a year and with blood. And all of a sudden from the top to the bottom, from God’s place down to the ground, it was God that did it, that way was opened. So that the way into the very presence of God where the Ark of the Covenant was, was opened.

Why? By the the the body of Christ slain for sinners. And so now, access to God is open so long as you go through the Lord Jesus Christ and his bloodshed. There’s an earthquake which is another natural event like the dark darkness but it’s a natural event that happened in that very moment that marks a supernatural death. And then as we’ve seen already, the graves were opened because it’s prophesying, it’s hinting at what’s about to come in chapter 28.

The graves were opened because death has been defeated and death has been spoiled. And in a few short days, the proof of that defeat will be seen with Christ’s own resurrection. All of these things take place at his, the moment of his death. I wanna ask you something.

I don’t wanna ask you, do you believe in Jesus? That’s fine and good, I do. But listen, is your faith truly resting in that savior forsaken for you? Because without him, I promise you on the authority of scripture, without the Lord Jesus Christ, you will one day be utterly, totally and forever abandoned by a holy God who loves you and does not desire to forsake you, but out of his justice and righteousness will.

And he loved you to the point that he was willing to offer his own son to to experience and know that very suffering and punishment. As he stood representing you with your sin on his shoulders. Are you trusting in him?

Are you trusting in him? Let’s pray.