Alright brethren, let's go back
there to Matthew 27. Verse 45 says, Now from the sixth hour
there was darkness over all the land, until the ninth hour. And these are the three hours
for which the world was made. Saints of old looked forward
to these three hours. Saints today look back to these
three hours. And in these three hours, God
manifests his glory. He manifests His righteousness.
He manifests His holy name. God spoke of this from the beginning.
When Adam had sinned and plunged us into sin and death, the Lord
appeared and He said to the devil, I will put enmity between thee
and the woman, and between thy seed and her
seed. And it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his
heel. And here's the promised seed.
Here he is, and his heel has been bruised. He's hanging upon
the cross. And all of a sudden, darkness. Now from the sixth hour, there
was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. Eternal salvation, eternal justice,
and eternity of hell was all accomplished by Christ
in those three hours for His people. He satisfied divine justice. He endured the hell that His
people would have had to endure in those three hours of darkness. Now, first of all, in this darkness,
we see the natural darkness of our heart. We see the natural
darkness of all sinners' hearts, but we see the natural darkness
of the hearts of each of us whom Christ came to redeem. God came
down. God came down. He came down in
human flesh. He had no form. He didn't go
about and engage in the forms of religion that men find appealing. He had no comeliness about him.
There was nothing that would have made you look upon him and
have any desire to follow him whatsoever. But this man's God in human flesh. This man is God in human flesh. This is God providing Himself
a Lamb. This one is the righteousness
of God. He's the Holy One. He's the Creator
of all things. He's the One who upholds all
things by the Word of His power. This is the One that is the substitute
for His chosen people. This is God's own only begotten
Son. And yet we see the darkness of
every unregenerate heart right here. This is the darkness of
the sin nature. We see it in this crowd who hated
Him. And this is including the darkness of our natural heart,
the carnal mind of every child He came to save. You and I who
believe on Christ, We put ourselves in this crowd. We take our place
in this crowd right here. This is the enmity, this is the
darkness of every carnal nature. This is the sin nature we got
from Adam. It's the nature of his redeem,
it's the nature of you and I who now believe on Christ by his
spirit, by him giving us a new spirit. God came and dwelt among
us and we despised and rejected God. He came and dwelt among us and
we despised and rejected God. We wouldn't have anything to
do with Him. We made a sport out of crucifying Him. Every believer can see ourselves
right here in this God-hating mob. We see the enmity of our heart.
Now when the governor would release a prisoner, they had a tradition,
sort of like we see in our day, where the governor could pardon
somebody, a prisoner. And the religious folks, the
religious people, the pious people, the holy people, they went through
the crowd saying, we want Jesus to be crucified. And they spread
this through the whole crowd until they stirred them up. They stirred up this mob to where
when the governor said, who is it you want me to release to
you? They cried out, crucify, crucify the Lord Jesus Christ. That's who they wanted to see
crucified. The Lord of glory, they wanted to see him crucified. That's us, brethren, crying,
crucify Him, crucify Him. That's the sin of all our sin. It really is. Every sin of our flesh and every
sin we commit in our flesh, we might as well be crying, crucify
Him, crucify Him. And then we scourged him. We
whipped him with a whip with bone in it. And then we were
there with the soldiers. Look back up at verse 28. I'll just read this. And we'll put our name here.
We stripped him and we put on him a scarlet robe. And then
we had cladded a crown of thorns, we put it upon his head, and
a reed in his right hand, and we bowed the knee before him
and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews. And we spit
upon him, and we took the reed and smote him on the head. And
after that, we had mocked him, we took the robe off from him
and put his own raiment on him and led him away to crucify him. I was there doing that. You and I were there doing that.
That's us. That's our nature. Then we brought
Him to Golgotha, the place of the skull, and everyone wanted
a souvenir. Everybody wanted to have a little
piece of this to remember it by. So we parted His garments. We cast lots and parted His garments. But it was so that the Scripture
would be fulfilled. And then, having lifted Him up
on the cross, the Prince of Life, the God of Glory, having lifted
Him up on the cross. Look at verse 36. Sitting down,
we watched Him. Let's just see what happens. Verse 37, and set up over His
head His accusation. This was in mockery, written,
This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Then there were two thieves
crucified with Him, one on the right hand, one on the left.
And we that passed by reviled Him, wagging our heads and saying, Thou that destroyest
the temple and buildest it in three days, save Thyself. If Thou be the Son of God, come
down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests
mocked Him with the scribes and elders, and said He saved others,
Himself He cannot save. If He be the King of Israel,
let Him now come down from the cross and we'll believe Him.
He trusted in God, let Him deliver Him now if you'll have Him. For
He said, I am the Son of God. And the thieves also which were
crucified with Him cast the same in His teeth. And all this is
going on. All this mockery is going on.
All this blasphemy is going on. Everybody having a big sport
of this whole thing. And all of a sudden, it went
dark. I mean, high noon. Black. Over all the land. Total darkness
fell over the whole land. And it remained that way for
three hours. I just imagine when that happened
things weren't quite as, it wasn't quite as much fun and games at
that point. Something's going on. Never seen
anything like this before. Complete and total darkness in
the middle of the day at high noon. Now you notice there it
was from the least to the greatest. You had thieves, You had common
irreligious folks, you had soldiers, pious scribes and elders. Now
somewhere in there we fit in. All of us born of Adam, that's
you and that's me, that's us. Every sinful thought. Every thought
that's not just perfectly, totally, completely, perfectly set on
God and glorifying God is an idle thought. Somebody might say, well, that's
not me. If I'd been there, I wouldn't have done that. A man that says that don't know
his own heart. He don't know His own sinful
heart. That's us, brethren. A man that
thinks that's not me, that I wouldn't do something like that, is too
good for Christ to save him. He came to save sinners. He came
to save sinners. We have to take our place right
there with this mob and this God-hating mob You know, I don't
know how long ago it was, a few years back, but everybody was
arguing over who crucified the Lord. Was it the Jews or was
it the Romans and all this? We did it. Man did it. Sinful man did it. That's us.
We did it. We did it. And here's the thing
about this now. There were some there doing that
for whom Christ was laying down His life. We know that because
He said, I don't pray for the world, I pray for them you've
given me. And He said, Father, forgive them, they know not what
they do. He didn't say that about all
of them. He was saying that about those that were His. There were
some of His doing that. There were some of His people
doing that. That's why I say we have to take our place there
because that's us, brethren. That is us. The darkness of our heart. Now
secondly, we see the perfect obedience by which He made His
people the righteousness of God in Him. Verse 46 says, In about
the ninth hour, about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud
voice saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, that is to say,
my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? The ninth hour was
3 p.m., around 3 p.m. So from noon to 3 p.m., there
was darkness, judgment, wrath upon our substitute in the room
and place of his people. That's what he was bearing. Forsaken
of God. And then at 3 p.m., which is
the time of the evening sacrifice, every day at 3 p.m. or every time they would offer
that sacrifice at 3 p.m., that sacrifice was pointing to Christ. And here He is, around that same
time of that evening sacrifice, here's the one at Tipiphi. And
He cries out, My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me? That was perfect faith. That was a perfect cry of perfect
faith in the midst of judgment. Judgment. He said, My God. He owned him. My God. He doesn't
hear God speak. He doesn't hear a word from God.
People around him are saying, You don't know God. You're a
false one, you're a blasphemer, you claimed you were the son
of God. Nobody around him believed he
was who he said he was. Nobody. His apostles and disciples that
walked with him, they took off, they left him. And he's there by himself and
God's not answering him. And he said, My God. My God. That's faith. That's perfect
faith. This is perfect obedience right
here. Though he is forsaken of God,
he didn't cry, My Father, because this is judgment time. Judgment
is being poured out. Fury is being poured out. He
is there as the one who is guilty before the throne of God and
God is judging him. And he cries out, My God. This is perfect love. This is
perfect love. Perfect love to the Father. He's manifesting the righteousness
of God. He's showing God's anger towards
sin. He's showing how God will in
no wise clear the guilty. That God's just. He will not
clear the guilty. He's showing here that God himself
must do the justifying. He's showing how God can be just
and be the justifier and do it in a way that's honoring to his
holy law. That was the love that constrained
his heart. That's what he wanted to manifest,
perfect righteousness of God. That's what he's manifesting
here. And that's the perfect love of the law. This was perfect
love for his elect. Now He's God, and He'd have been
just to just come and declared all our sins and condemned us
and sent us to hell. Except that He agreed from before
the foundation of the world that He would take our place. He would step in between us and
God. between His elect and God, between
His people and the angry God, whose justice must be satisfied,
He would take our place. The spotless, holy, sinless Lamb
of God agreed to bear the sin of His people, the shame that
He hated. I'll bear that. Don't charge
it to them. Don't pour out condemnation on
them. Don't even look at them. I'll bear it for them. And what was so shameful about
Him bearing sin for us is not only the shame of the sin that
He hated, but that He's bearing it before the Father He loved. And so having been made to bear
our sin, He's bearing the curse for His people. He's bearing
the condemnation. God separating Himself from God. Forsaking God. And I say this is perfect love
not only because he's there putting away the sin of his people and
he's there justifying us from our sin, laying down his life
for us, but I say it for this reason too. He didn't cry that out for his
own benefit. He knew why he was forsaken.
He's ministering to his people by crying that out. It's the
Old Testament Scripture, it's Psalm 22. He's got to fulfill
it, but he's crying it out so we know that Psalm's about him.
So that we hear that and hear that question and say, why was
he forsaken? He's ministering to us. That's
love in the midst of bearing this travail that we can't even
enter into. Forsaken of the Father, while
he's doing it for the Father and doing it for his children,
he's ministering to us too. You see perfect love in that? Well, why did he do it? He said
in Psalm 22.3, but thou art holy. And he said in verse 6, but I
am a worm and no man. I reproach of men and despise
of the people. We wouldn't say that about him
if he didn't say that. That's what he said. And when
He's bearing the sin of His people, He's declaring to us why He's
doing it. God's justice is holy, it's unyielding,
and God will by no means clear. And God there is not sparing
His own only Son. He's delivering Him up for all
His elect. He's the substitute of His people.
And there could be none to help Him. There could be none to help
him. There can't be a strengthening
angel come there now and help him. Why not? Because it pleased the father
that in him should all fullness dwell. It pleased the father
that his son have all preeminence. It pleased the father that he
be the one in whom all his people are made complete. He got to do it on his own. Completely
on his own. And so our Redeemer has to tread
the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God with nobody
to help, nobody to comfort, alone. He has to bear the curse and
the condemnation. He has to do it to the full satisfaction
of justice. He cannot leave anything undone. Justice has got to be satisfied. J.C. Philpott said, Here we see
the sacred humanity of the blessed Redeemer lifted up, as it were,
between heaven and earth to show to angels and to men the spectacle
of redeeming love, and to declare it one and the same moment and
by one and the same act of the suffering, obedience, and bleeding
sacrifice of the Son of God to show us the eternal, unalterable
displeasure of the Almighty against sin. Show us the rigid demands of
God's inflexible justice. And to show us the tender compassion
and the boundless love of His heart toward the election of
grace. That's what we see looking to
the cross. Hatred for sin, unyielding justice,
and the perfect tender love of God toward His elect. This is
that perfect obedience unto the death of the cross that Paul
wrote about in Philippians 2. This is that perfect, perfect
obedience to the death of the cross. This is how all His people
are perfected forever. And here is where we see this
perfect obedience unto the death of the cross. Our Savior was
in control of His Spirit the whole time. He's not like us. He said, no man takes my life,
I lay it down on myself. He was in total control. He could yield up his spirit
when it pleased him. He could do it whenever he wanted. And from high noon to about three
o'clock, he bore this. Having the ability to get out
from under it just like that, he bore it. That's obedience. I think about what was supposed
to be some great thing that I grew impatient about. Whatever the supposed great thing
was that I couldn't wait on the Lord about. He commands us to
be patient in tribulation, to endure, to wait on the Lord,
trust him, and then he sends some light affliction. Light
in comparison to his affliction. Heavy to us, but light in comparison
to his affliction. And we find out we need a substitute. We need a redeemer. We need somebody
who gave to the law and to God perfect obedience. Perfect patience,
perfect waiting, perfect faith, perfect obedience. And then He turns you from yourself
to behold Him, to see He's your righteousness, He's your obedience.
He patiently waited as He died our death, separated from God
on the cross, bearing the curse and condemnation of it, the heart
crushing load. He patiently, faithfully, obediently
bore that for three hours. We're talking about an eternity.
We'd have suffered for eternity and still not satisfied this
justice. But he's the son of God and he's
eternal and what he's doing has eternal efficacy. But as a man
there, he suffered this for three hours. And when He's brought you to
behold Him, He says, cast all you care on Him, for He careth
for you. And brethren, if there's ever
any doubt in anything you're going through, in anything you're
suffering, in any time your heart's breaking, and you wonder, is
He really caring for me? Look right here. Oh, He cares
for you. He cares for you. Child of God,
that's where we see Him caring for us. He's going to care for
us. He bore that for us. Now lastly, I want you to see
the accomplishment of His death. He's the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believes. Look here in verse 51. And behold,
the veil of the temple was rent entwined from the top to bottom.
He cried out and said, it's finished, and he yielded up the goats.
And when he did that, that thick veil in that temple split from
the top all the way to the bottom. Split it open. He declared by
that that he finished fulfilling the law and the prophets. He
dotted every I and crossed every T. He fulfilled everything that
was written of him. He completely, totally, thoroughly
fulfilled the law in righteousness for all his people. And He totally,
thoroughly took us out away from the old covenant completely. And He makes us to see by that
that He's the way. He's the way. Add nothing, take
nothing away. He's the way by which we approach
God our Father in the holiest of holies and are accepted of
Him. He said in Hebrews 10, having
perfected his people, the Holy Ghost bears witness in our hearts
and declares to us their sins and iniquities will I remember
no more. Now, where remission of these
is, there's no more offering for sin. We're not going back
to a tabernacle or we're not going trying to offer God something
to make amends and to make up for things, no. There's no more
offering for sin. That's settled. It's settled.
Completely settled. How then can I come to God? When
He's made you know that, that He won't remember your sin anymore. There's no more offering for
sin. That's called a purged conscience. That's when a man stops offering
dead works. Having therefore, brethren, boldness
to enter into the holiest." That's where that veil was. He rented
it from top to bottom. And that holiest of holies was
opened up. We have boldness to enter the holiest, listen, by
the blood of Jesus. By a new and living way. A new
way and a living way that He consecrated for us. Through the
veil. What's that veil? What's the
new veil? It's the living veil that He
consecrated. It's His flesh. It's His flesh. This One who
was bearing this on the cross. Through His broken body and His
shed blood, He made a new way for us to come to God. And now,
we have a high priest over the house of God. Not some man in
some earthly house. We have the High Priest, Christ
Jesus, our High Priest, and He's over the whole house of God,
to present us to God. Let us draw near with a true
heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from
an evil conscience, that conscience thinking, I've got to do something,
I've got to fix this, I've got to make amends for this, surely
I need to... No, He says, Sin on you? Have you fallen? Have you sinned?
Do you need help? Come in the full assurance of
faith. Having your heart sprinkled from an evil conscience. That's
the only way you'll do it. That's the only way we'll stop offering
and trying to make up with God. Come to Him. Come to the offering
God will accept. Come to Christ. That's what He
says. And having our bodies washed with pure water, and He says,
whatever you need, whatever grace you need to help in time of need,
if we can come there, He's given us grace. If we can call on Him,
He's given us grace. If we can confess to Him all
our sin and all our transgression and cry out from our true heart
and say, against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this
evil in thy sight, you're just to judge me, you're just to condemn
me, I've sinned against thee, God, He said He's faithful and just
to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all iniquity. That's what He accomplished by
laying down His life. How can He give me such mercy?
Because Christ bore the darkness. Christ's blood applied by the
Holy Spirit shakes All our vain foundations breaks our hard heart
and delivers his child from death. The first hour, and every time
we come into bondage and build some vain foundation and start
getting ourselves in prison and in the graveyard and in death,
this is how he does it. Look here, he says, verse 51,
the earth did quake and the rocks rent. He shook the earth and
the rocks rent. Brethren, our heart's a stony
heart. Our old nature's a stony heart. But He comes and by His
sin atoning precious blood, He breaks all our vain foundations,
breaks our stony hearts, just like He made that earthquake
and those rocks rent. When He does this, the first
time He did it, He did it by making you see Him on the cross
and seeing you there being punished by God in Him. And it destroyed
all your foundation, every earthly foundation you had, and it broke
the stony heart. And He keeps doing that for us.
He keeps doing it. He keeps renewing us daily, inwardly. And then He delivers us, and
He continues delivering us from the grave of death. just like
He opened their graves. Verse 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. Why did they do that? To
show, to be witnesses that He did this, that He raised them
from the dead, that He He brought them out of the graveyard into
the holy city and they are His witnesses. Witnesses in the fact
that they did that. That they just arose out of the
grave and came there. That only God could do that.
Only Christ's blood could do that. And brethren, He makes
His child arise. He comes to you dead in your
sins and He shows you what He's done and He makes you arise out
of your death. Out of your grave. He says, come
forth, and Lazarus comes forth. And you got grave clothes on
you, and you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna have a lot
of death upon you, still, because you're carrying around a dead
body. But he's gonna make, every time, he's gonna make you depart
from your sin, every time he's gonna make you hate it, every
time he's gonna make you abhor it, every time he's gonna make
you turn to him, he's gonna do it by turning you back to Christ
and showing you what Christ has done. Has He delivered you out of all
your sin yet? Why does He leave enemies in
Canaan? To show us He's the only one
that can do this. He's the only one that can do
this. So from the first hour until
the last, He keeps reverence in our hearts. He keeps you truly fearing and
revering His name. How does He do that? He brings
you where He brought this centurion in verse 54. He said, truly,
this is the Son of God. He never ceased revealing Himself
He never seeks working grace in our hearts. He never ceases
delivering us from death throughout the life of faith. He does it
by the gospel of His broken body and His shed blood, by His precious
sin-atoning blood. He continually purges us. There's a fountain for cleansing.
And He keeps fear in our heart, keeps us confessing Him to truly
be the Son of God. Satan's going to come. The oppressor's
gonna come, the accuser's gonna come, and you're no match for
him, and I'm not either. But the oppressor and the accuser's
no match for him, no match for our Redeemer. And he'll keep
you looking to him and keep you trusting him. Hebrews 9, I want
you to turn over there just a minute. I wanna show you there's three
appearings in Hebrews 9. In verse 29, I mean, verse 26, it
says, the second part says, Now, once in the end of the world,
hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He did it. It's done. God says,
I remember Him no more. No more curse, no more condemnation
for His people. Verse 24 says, Now He has gone
into heaven, the second part, He's gone into heaven itself,
now to appear in the presence of God for us. That's where He
is. He ever lives to make intercession
for His people. That's how come we have access
now to the holiest of holies. And one day He's going to shake
this earth again. He's going to shake it again.
And like we saw this morning, everything that He hasn't created
in righteousness and holiness, it's going to be dissolved. It's
going to fall away. It's going to vanish. It's going to be consumed.
The earth and everything in it and all flesh those that He's
created. Verse 28, He says, to them that
look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto
salvation. I pray God would grant you and
I repentance and faith continually. It's not a one-time thing. It's
continually repenting, continually believing, continually repenting,
continually believing, And I pray He grant that so that we might
be found in Him that day, having His righteousness alone. And
He's given us this ordinance that we're about to observe.
Simple, simple ordinance. And He said, as often as you
eat this bread and you drink this cup, you do show the Lord's
death till He come. He's coming back. He gonna appear
the second time. I pray he would help us now give
us spirit to remember him, his broken body and his shed blood
and what he accomplished for us. Amen. All right.