His Death brought Life

Mark 15:33-41

33 And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 35 And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” 36 And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” 37 And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 39 And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

40 There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41 When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

Pray

There is something supernatural about death. One minute someone is here and then they are not. If you have ever been in those situations where you have been with someone and then they pass, it is an “other worldly” sensation. Something happens. It is not just the light switch turning off on a human or the computer crashing, it is a completely different experience. And we are just fully human.

When we become one with Christ, we become fellow citizens of the household of God. We have this duel citizenship that we are walking in this world and with the Lord at the same time. There is a supernatural nature that we receive when we submit to Christ.

Jesus was something altogether different. He was truly God and truly man. He condescended from His place of power at the right hand of the Father to take on flesh and serve that role. Hebrews 5:8 says that Jesus learned obedience through what He suffered. He lived like us and learned like us, but He did not sin like us. He learned one day that He was to be the perfect sacrifice. That is what the Father had for Christ from the beginning and as He grew and learned in this human body, He came to the realization that the cup of wrath would have to be poured on Him for us.

He would take the wrath for the ones that hated him, despised him and rejected him; past, present and future. He would take the wrath for our sins that we commit willingly against Him because we do not want to change and we find our sin and this world much better than we find Him.

Last week we spoke about the torture and the agony that Jesus went through before the cross from the Roman scourging to the crown of thorns pushed on His head to the beatings with reads. Then He is placed on the cross with the nail driven through his hands and both of his feet. It was a brutal punishment often making the bodies that were hung on the cross unrecognizable, but today’s punishment is much worse and the whole earth would groan in His pain.

33 And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

If you remember from last week, the text said that Jesus was placed on the cross in the third hour of the day which would have been 9am as the Jewish day started at 6am. Here we are in the sixth hour of the day, which would be noon and Jesus has been on the cross for three hours. At the sixth hour the text says there was a darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. This is three hours of darkness.

We just had an eclipse and it made the daytime night for a little over 4 minutes and then the moon moved on in its space and the sun returned to light up our world. What is in our text today is not a natural event like an eclipse but a foreshadowing of what God would do to Christ. For the three hours leading up to the final breath of Christ, there was darkness, which means that God withheld His light from the earth.

The sun is the source of life for our planet. It makes the crops grow that feed the animals and we need both crops and animals for our survival. We need the sun. We need light. When we have light we can clearly see. You can look at this hyperbolically as well and say that the world had the Light, but they still could not see, therefore, God wanted them to sit in the darkness because of their unbelief. However you look at it, this darkness leads to this statement of Jesus.

34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The cross and the physical pain that it brought to Jesus was excruciating, which I learned last week that the word excruciating has its origins in crucifixion. It is a pain like no other, but that pain is nothing compared to the pain of God removing Himself from you. There was a real abandonment by the Father toward the Son as He took on the sins of the world. In order to take the fulness of the wrath, the Father had to draw back.

Some people say that the absence of God is the definition of Hell. This pulling away from Jesus by the Father is making the one who knew no sin to be sin as 2 Corinthians 5:21 says. Imagine for a moment, if you can, no comfort, not a single moment without excruciating pain, no joy, no rest, no mental reprieve from your anguish, only suffering. I believe we take for granted the comfort that we are afforded by God. Every time we get to take a drink of cold water on a hot day or get to sit under a shade tree to block us from the stifling heat of the sun, every time we get a friendly hello or get a call from a friend that makes us smile, every time we get to close our eyes to sleep in our own beds in our own rooms or houses, these are all comforts that help us get through this life. They are given to you by God. Some call them common grace because we all get them. These things are supposed to point us to a loving God that realizes our situation in this broken world and wants to show us a glimpse of His goodness.

We don’t know what it would be like if all of these comforts were taken away. It would be a total removal of God from us. This is a feeling that Jesus has never had, He has lived His life in a close communion with the Father. This feeling of being abandoned is why He cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It does not nullify His deity but magnifies his humanity. He is fully human and fully God, but was able to give Himself over to obedience even to death on a cross. In saying what He said, I believe, that he really felt that abandonment, but He was also teaching and showing us more prophecy about Himself.

The line, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is the first line of Psalm 22. Jesus is pointing to this Psalm to talk about what His personal experience was and showing them that He is the one in whom Psalm 22 was written about. Let’s read it and you can see.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. ……..

Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame………(not my will but yours)

But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;

“He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help. Many bulls encompass me; strong bulls of Bashan surround me; they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd (this is a broken piece of pottery, it is a useless dried fragment), and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.

For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet— I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. But you, O Lord, do not be far off!

Though Jesus is going through this time of great distress, His eyes never left the Father. The Son’s purpose was to always glorify the Father and the Father was always going to testify about the Son. Jesus had all the power and authority to get off of that cross and smite the entire Roman army and the non believing world, but He didn’t because of His love for the world. A pastor friend of mine this week told me, as we were talking about this passage said, “It wasn’t the nails that held Him on the cross, it was love.” Jesus’ love for the Father and love for the world kept Him on the cross to complete this rescue mission for humanity. To rescue a humanity that would not understand and some would not believe.

This humanity would, then, and, today, still see Jesus as a cosmic genie that will do miraculous things, if the right things are said or the people believe it enough, to satisfy selfish desires.

35 And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” 36 And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.”

This idea of Elijah coming back is something that was promised in the book of Malachi. In chapter 4 verse 5 it says,

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.

The bystanders were looking to see if Jesus was the Messiah that they had in their mind. One that was an earthly ruler. If He was what they had in their minds then they would all see Elijah come down, but that is not what the Lord intended. Elijah’s spirit had come in the form of John the Baptist making the way for the Christ to come into the world.

These people wanted to see to believe. They wanted to see the clouds part and God to appear. I was sitting with some pastors earlier this week and one told a story of him trying to evangelize to a man as they were driving around and the man said, “If God is real, make him let an angel show up on the corner of the courthouse.” You probably have had a similar conversation. There are people that want the physical experiences or proofs in order to believe, but Scripture, and our experience with ardent none believers, says that even if God were to raise someone from the dead, they would not believe.

This scene that we are in shows Jesus, even at the end, contending with people that did not have ears to hear or eyes to see, until…

Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 39 And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

It wasn’t the message or Christ, it wasn’t his guiltless body on the cross, it wasn’t the darkness that overshadowed, at least, that part of the earth for three hours, but it was the last breath. Can you imagine the centurion? That as he was guarding Jesus, hearing all of these things about Him and as he stood there he probably contemplated it for a long while. Never asking, but wondering, hearing but never doing anything. Always thinking there will be more time, then Jesus dies and I can only imagine the tremendous burden on his soul when he saw Jesus breath His last and feeling like he had missed the most important event in history. What remorse he must have been feeling. That supernatural feeling when someone dies. They are there and then they are not. It’s like trying to grasp words after they come out of your mouth. I can imagine that centurion saying, “Wait! Not Yet!” but was done and it was finished.

Though it looked like just the death of a man for those who did not believe, at that simultaneous instant the veil to the temple was torn and there was no longer a division between God and man. What does that mean. In the old temple there was a place called the Holy of Holies, It was a room at the back of the temple where the Ark of the Covenant was located. This ark was a box that contained the Ten Commandments given by Moses and that is where the Spirit of the Lord dwelt. There was a thick curtain that separated the sinful people from the Holy God. Only a few times a year were priest allowed back in that room but only after they had been cleansed. It was a serious place, it was the place of God. God cannot be around sin. When Christ died, He became that sacrifice that we needed for our sins. It was no longer the death of bulls and goats and other animals but the sacrifices were complete in Jesus. In His death, the atoning work of Christ was complete.

The sins that He carried on the cross went with him and now those that want to draw near to God can. We have direct access to Him through the Son. The writer of Hebrews tells us that, “we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith

That is the significance of the torn temple curtain. We get to draw near to God, not because we are good and have obtained it but because Christ is good and His work made it happen. That love is the kind of love that transforms hearts. Jewish and pagan hearts alike. When that Roman soldier saw an innocent man breath his last for people that hated him, that was enough to change his heart so he could believe.

This is a great story, but told by itself, it is just a story. What do you need to prove a story? Witnesses. This account is making some wild claims. The sky went dark for three hours in the middle of the day, Jesus did not scream for his life or ask any one to save him. The veil of the temple ripped in two. This is not like your curtains at home that maybe by coincidence something fell on the curtain and it ripped, but you are talking about a piece of fabric that was 60 feet tall, 30 feet wide and 4 inches thick. If this really happened, you would want someone to corroborate the story, so Mark writes down who was there.

40 There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41 When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

It is almost a dare from Mark as he wrote this Gospel down and sent it to the church in Rome. He is basically saying, “If you don’t believe this, go ask the women who were there.” Remember, yes all of the witnesses of Christ death are not living on this earth right now but when this Gospel was written those women were all very much alive and active in the churches. They could have verified that this happened.

We look at these stories and we believe them with faith. It is not a blind faith, but a reasonable faith that is based in actual historical events that become facts to us. I know that Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world because the historical evidence is overwhelming, but I know that He is Lord because He has revealed it to me. I can’t point to a place and show Him to you somewhere on His throne in the heavens, but I can tell you about a man that was once a slave to sin and by His grace I am not longer that man. I am free because of the work that was finished on the cross.

I can come near to the Father because of the work of the Son. There is a supernatural thing that happens in death in that the person that you knew, their body is there but that person is gone, the same thing happens when someone becomes a believer in Christ. That body is there but that old person doesn’t live there any more.