As you're probably aware, we're
in Mark's Gospel in chapter 15, verse 33 and 34 we'll be looking
at today. But just to put it into context,
he was numbered with the transgressors. And those who passed by blasphemed
him, wagging their heads and saying, Aha! You who destroy
the temple and build it in three days, save yourself and come
down from the cross. Likewise the chief priests also,
mocking among themselves with the scribes, saying, He saved
others, himself he cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel,
descend now from the cross that we may see and believe. Even
those who were crucified with him reviled him. Now when the
sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land
until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried
out in a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,
which is translated, My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me? As I've been studying these words
for the last several weeks, I think there comes a point at which
the things of God in a sense are best expressed in poetry. rather than in words of the wisdom
of men. There is a fountain filled with
blood, drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath
that flood lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced
to see that fountain in his day, and there have I, though vile
as he, washed all my sins away. Dear dying lamb, thy precious
blood shall never lose its power till all the ransomed church
of God be saved to sin no more. E'er since by faith I saw the
stream thy flowing wounds supply, redeeming love has been my theme
and shall be till I die. Then in a nobler, sweeter song
I'll sing thy power to save, When this poor, lisping, stammering
tongue Lies silent in the grave. Lord, I believe thou hast prepared,
Unworthy though I be, For me a blood-bought free reward, A
golden harp for me. So wrote our friend Mr Cooper. Yonder, amazing sight, I see
the incarnate Son of God expiring on a cursed tree and weltering
in His blood. Behold a purple torrent run down
His hands and head. The crimson tide puts out the
sun. His groans awake the dead. The trembling earth, the darkened
sky, Proclaim the truth aloud, And with the amazed centurion
cry, This is the Son of God. So great, so vast a sacrifice,
May well my hope revive, If God's own Son thus bleeds and dies,
The sinner sure may live. O that these chords of love divine
might draw me, Lord, to Thee, Thou hast my heart, it shall
be Thine, and Thine it shall ever be. Two verses, Lord willing,
this morning. But before we look at that supernatural
darkness and that extraordinary cry, it's good for us to continue
to be reminded that this man who was hanging on this cross
was a man who had no ordinary birth and no ordinary life and
he had no ordinary death. His death, this death that we're
looking at at this time is not the death that men normally go
through. It was a real death. But the one taken,
the one led, the one slain was Emmanuel, Jehovah's fellow. The blood that was shed was divine
blood, precious blood. The church of God which he purchased
with his own blood. God was in Christ reconciling
the world to himself. So this man who shed this blood
was really God. He was really God and He was
really human. And He became flesh to suffer
death. And this death was an unnatural,
abnormal death, as death had no claim on Him. He was this
holy thing. He was a man who did no sin. who had no sin, who knew no sin. And this death was a death that
was ordained from the foundation of the world. It was a promised
death and all of history's streams flow to this one point. His death was a death where he
laid down his life. He lay it down. I lay down my
life that I might take it again. No man takes it from me, but
I lay it down myself. I have the power. He had the
power to lay it down and He had the power to take it again. He is the Lord of life. He laid down His life. is shown
as much as he was weakened carrying that cross and weakened by that
scourging of the Romans and the other brutalities he suffered.
He was still a man on that cross who cried with a loud voice. He cried twice with a loud voice. God, it says in Psalm 89, had
laid help upon one that was mighty. His strength had not failed him. He was still the master of his
life. He wasn't conquered by death,
but he yielded himself to it. He won his victories through
yielding and submission. He was one who knew and had the
presence of that extraordinary mind about all the things that
were happening to him and around him. The scriptures must be fulfilled. Jesus, knowing that all things
were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled.
And he was talking about a scripture in Psalm 69, 21. It says, I thirst. When he received that vinegar,
he said, it is finished. And the gospel writers say that
he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. If he bowed his head
then his head was erect and he bowed it consciously, calmly,
reverentially bowed his head in majesty and he gave up his
spirit. It wasn't taken from Him. He
gave it up. And crucifixion was designed
to be shameful, to be painful, and to be long. Normally people
survived on crosses for days. Now that was part of the purpose
of it. And so when they go to take that body down, the two
thieves are alive and would have lived for some considerable time.
And they were shocked that Jesus had died. He gave up His life. And this life and this time on
the cross is surrounded by all these supernatural events. the
supernatural darkness, the veil of the temple, that huge veil,
60 feet high, a huge veil. It may have nearly filled this
room if it was laid out. And that veil was torn from top
to bottom, torn by God. The rocks, the very strongest
and foundational things of this earth, they split open. graves
were opened. This was a unique event. And so we have in verse 33, now
that the sixth hour had come, now that midday had come, there
was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. Again,
as everything associated with our Saviour's life, and His death
and His life now reigning in this universe is all but the
fulfilment of God's Word. Amos 8.9 says, And it shall come
to pass, in that day, says the Lord God, that I will cause the
sun to go down at noon. God's promises are precise promises
and I will darken the earth in a clear day." This darkness spread
at least as far as Egypt and may have covered all of the world. Dionysus saw the great darkness
in Egypt And he wrote, either the divine being suffers, or
suffers with him that suffers, or the frame of the world is
dissolving. Tertullian, who wrote in the
third century and defended Christianity, said to the Romans, you can search
your records. It's in your Roman records, the
proof. of this event. God's activities
surrounding the Lord Jesus are public activities. But there
was this supernatural darkness. It was midnight at midday. You've got to remember that the
darkness encompassed even the stars. Everything was darkness. The darkness in the scriptures
is a reference to many things, isn't it? It's a reference to
Satan and the Prince of Darkness as he exerts his power in this
world. It's an emblem, a way of God
defining and judicially blinding people. In Exodus, the last plague
but for the Passover plague was a plague of darkness. A darkness that could be felt,
but extraordinarily, a darkness that divided. There was thick
darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days. They did not see one another,
nor did anyone rise from his place for three days. But all
the children of Israel had light in their dwellings. You may well
remember at the Red Sea, There was that pillar of cloud and
it was light for Israel and it was darkness for Egypt. It brings messages of judgment,
of division. It's a sign. of covenantal activity
of God. Abraham was overcome by a great
darkness which fell upon him at the cutting of that covenant,
a covenant which signified the Lord Jesus and his work for Abraham
and all of Abraham's faith children. It's also in this particular
event a sign that God is light and in Him there is no darkness
at all. It is a sign of what the Lord
Jesus cried out. There is in this darkness a sign
of God withdrawing His face. when sin, all of the sin of all
of God's people came upon Him. The Lord Jesus suffered in darkness. He suffered that eternal utter
darkness that the people of hell are suffering now and will suffer
forever. He was suffering what was due
his church. He suffered hell's agonies. He suffered hell's forsakenness,
hell's anguish, hell's unsatisfied longings for all of his bride. And as we have seen so many times,
will the God of this earth do right? It was right for God to
punish him. It was right for him to be left
alone in this darkness with the sinner's sin on him. It was right for him to suffer
this turning away of God's light in this world, signifying the
turning of God's face. And as that sword, that sword
of justice, was awakened and struck the shepherd, It's a signal
of the outpouring of the wrath of God, the withdrawal of His
presence, the withdrawal of His fellowship. Heaven and earth seem to stand
still for three hours in this darkness. There's not a word
in scripture about the mockers continuing to mock, about those
wild dogs and others. God silenced them all. As 1 Samuel 2.9 says, the wicked
shall be silent in darkness. You see, When judgment comes,
there will be silence. At that great day of judgment,
there will be silence from humanity. They will have no excuse. They will acknowledge by their
silence that God is right and God is just. There is a darkness that covers
this world of ours. There is a darkness that Adam
sought to hide from God in. There is a darkness that all
of us as children of Adam live in. As John 3 says, people love
the darkness. They love the darkness. In John
3.19, this is the condemnation that light has come into the
world, the Lord Jesus has come into the world, and men loved
darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For everyone
practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light,
lest his deeds should be exposed. As we've seen, there was a public
exposing of the Lord Jesus. A public exposing of our sins
on Him. God's children now have light
where there was darkness. Because God shines the light. As 2 Corinthians 4 says, For God, who commanded light
to shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ. So this was a supernatural darkness. A darkness that signified all
of those things and much more. And here, at the end of this
three hours, we have the Lord Jesus crying out in a loud voice,
those famous and familiar words, Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani, translated,
my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That word forsaken, is a word
of appalling woe. We have so many emblems of the
tragedy of forsakenness in this world. We have children forsaken
by parents, wives forsaken by husbands, the weak forsaken by
governments, men and women forsaken by friends. It's a shocking word. But here, this beloved son, God
the Father said, in whom I am well pleased. In eternity, this
one was daily his delight. for 33 years on this earth, there
was never a thought of his out of harmony with his fathers.
There was never an act contrary to his father. I come to do your
will, oh my God. In the busyness of life, he took
himself away again and again, some nights spending the whole
night in prayer, just to be in the company of his father. And now, as he drinks this cup,
this cup of his father's wrath, Possibly the most bitter part
of this cup, the bitter part that he had to drink to the very
end, was to have his father hide his face from him. Here he was,
forsaken. These words, in a sense, mark
the climax of his sufferings. You see, He suffered so much
in silence, the mocking, the spitting, the crucifixion, all
of that cruelty and not a word from our Saviour. But now the
concentrated wrath of heaven itself falls upon Him. His cry should melt the hardest
of hearts. So many people mock the Lord Jesus by treating
Him as less than He really is. And He is mocked most of all
by those in religion who make this anguish and this cry and
this death to be a common and a meaningless thing if all he
was doing was trying and failing. There's suffering here that human
words can't express properly. We just need to bow in reverence
and pray that God would give us soft hearts. You see here
are words of deep mystery. My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? Well, Lord God, had always been
the refuge for His people in all their times of trouble. When
they were helpless, He was their strength. When they felt abandoned,
He was there with them. Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
in that fiery furnace, there was another there with them. David said, I have never seen
the righteous forsaken. Except at this point. You see, the Lord Jesus' other
words are consistent with his character and his purpose. Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do. His compassion Today you shall be with me in
paradise. His grace to sinners. To his
mother, woman, behold thy son. John, behold your mother. His care and concern for his
earthly mother. But here we have solemn words. We can just wonder and pray that
God would let us worship. For the message of the cross
is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are
being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will
destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding
of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the disputer of this
age? Has not God made foolish the
wisdom of this world? For since in the wisdom of God
the world through wisdom did not know God, It pleased God
through the foolishness of the message preached to save those
who believe. The Jews request a sign. The Greeks seek after wisdom. but we preach Christ crucified,
to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness,
but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ
the power of God and the wisdom of God. This is in these solemn words
are fullness of the display of God's divine love and the most
amazing display of his inflexible justice. But more of that later. But here, in this plaintive cry,
we see the awfulness of sin and the character of its wages. The Gospel of the Lord Jesus
has continually been exposing the hearts of men as we've gone
through this Gospel. It's exposed most graphically
here, the depravity of the human heart, its hatred of God, its
ingratitude, its loving darkness rather than light. It's preferring
a murderer rather than the prince of life. Here on the cross, Satan
is exposed. His hostility against God, his
unrelenting enmity against the Lord Jesus, his power and his
influence over those He enters and takes captive. He influenced
a betrayer to his own destruction. He is called the ruler of this
world. And he found nothing in me, says
the Lord Jesus. but he didn't give up his fiendish
attacks. We see the character of God exposed. Holiness demands absolute perfection. Justice, inflexible. God must and will punish sin. we see the terrible wrath of
God. This is what He did to the Lord
Jesus when He found sin on His beloved Son. He will do the same
for eternity to those who meet Him with their own sin and not
robed in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus. Of course, we
see grace, amazing grace. Sin is exposed. We see how vile
it is. We see how lawless it is. We see how far it will go. In the garden, When sin was first exposed, Adam,
in a sense, committed suicide. He destroyed his own spiritual
life. Just outside the garden, we see
Cain slaying his brother. No longer able to hear and respond
to God's pleading. But here on the cross we see
man crucifying the Son of God. Sin is exposed. But also on the
cross its wages are seen. Had there been no sin there would
have been no death. Sin separates from God. Adam's first activity was to
hide, to cover himself in his own activities and to hide. So the wages of sin is spiritual
death and it separates. No longer brings communion with
God, but alienation from God. Sin excludes people from God's
presence. As Cain said, from your face
shall I be hid. Here in Jerusalem, God's place of his earthly throne,
sin is seen as a denial of access
to God. This one day of the year, this
one Passover day, was one man, with blood, allowed into the
presence of God. And sin brings with its wages
a penalty. On the cross the Lord Jesus received
those wages. He was bearing our sins in his
own body on the tree. He was standing as our substitute,
as our mediator, as our guarantor, as our surety. He took our place. He was there in the place we
had earned and He received the wages that we had earned. Separation from God. You see, the unrepentant, the
unbelieving, they will be punished with everlasting destruction.
shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of
his power. This is what the Lord Jesus was
suffering. As he says to the wicked on that
day, depart from me you cursed. There he was hanging on that
tree as a cursed man, with God departing from him. As I said earlier, God must act
in accord with his character. My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? It's God's holiness. God's holiness demands perfect
holy justice. We use the word holiness and
we sing about holiness with so little understanding of what
it is to be holy and for God to be holy. So holy is God that
the very heavens are not clean in His sight. So holy is God
that mortal man cannot look upon Him in His essential being and
live. We need a mediator. So holy is
God that the seraphim, the very angels of God, veil their faces
before Him. So holy is God that when Abraham
stood before Him, and cried, I am but dust and ashes. Job said, I abhor myself. Isaiah saw something of the holiness
of God in that temple. He says, woe is me, I am undone. So holy is God that he is of
purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on iniquity. This holy God had to do what
he did to his son because of his character. That's why when the Lord Jesus
was made sin for us, the holy, holy, holy God would not look
on him. He turned his face from him and
forsook him. My God, my God, why? Who can answer that question. No one around the cross could
answer that question. Not the apostles, not the angels. He alone can answer that question. And the answer is in Psalm 22
verse 3. My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping
me and from the words of my groaning? My God, I cry in the daytime
and you do not hear in the night season and am not silent. But this is the answer that Lord
Jesus can give to that question. But you are holy. The Lord Jesus does not complain
of injustice, but acknowledges God's righteousness. You are
holy in turning your face. You are holy in punishing these
sins. You are holy in making that sword
of divine justice awake and arise and strike the shepherd. You are holy, you are just when
you judge. When sin is found on the Lord
Jesus, a holy God must act. In this cry we see the faithfulness
of our Lord Jesus displayed. He had always been heard. My father always hears me. And now he cries that he is not
heard. He had never been left. He that sent me is with me. And
he has not left me alone, John 8, 29. And now he cries, you have forsaken
me. And now he is left as a man,
a man of faith. A man who in the words of Psalm
22, looks to his father's covenant, his father's promises. He's a man of faith. His was
a cry of distress, but it was not a cry of distrust. Read the rest of the psalm. He
clings to God in this cry. You see, the enemies mocked him. What did they mock him for on
that cross as they walked by? He trusted in the Lord. They
mocked him for his faith in his father. He trusted in the Lord. Let him deliver me. Let him deliver
him. Let him rescue him. He kept on trusting his father. even when there was no sense
of deliverance before him. He trusted his Father in the
darkness. My brothers and sisters, we will
have many times as we walk through this world of darkness, where it will seem as if God
has turned His face from us. The Lord Jesus is the author
and the perfecter of faith. Faith just looks to God, looks
to Him, and His covenant promises. And here in this cry, my God,
my God, why have you forsaken me? We have the basis of our
salvation. We have seen that our God is
holy and just. and he must punish sin wherever
it is found. And God is love and is merciful. And here justice is satisfied. Infinite sin is infinitely punished. See the question that Nahum asks,
is who can stand before His indignation? Who can abide in the fierceness
of His anger? Our Saviour, our Redeemer, our
Substitute, our Surety, He could stand. He could bear the wrath. He could be made the curse. And
He could rise again. as a victim. You see, there's
no way that a just God can transfer sin without transferring the
penalty of sin. The Lord Jesus claimed our sins
as His own. They were treated by God the
Father as if they were the Lord Jesus' sins. And justice was
satisfied. Wrath was satisfied. Holiness is honoured. The law of God is honoured in
its obedience and it's honoured in its punishment. Justice eventually
cries out. It cries out enough. The price has been paid in full. For us who believe, we can say,
I am crucified with Christ. My life is now hidden with Christ
in God. See, it was my death, my punishment
for my sins. that my Saviour took upon Himself."
What an amazing God we have. What an amazing Saviour. He suffered
in our stead. He saved His people thus. The curse that fell upon His
head was due by right to us. The storm that bowed His blessed
head is hushed forever now. and rest divine is mine instead,
while glory crowns his brow.