Stricken for the Transgression of My People
Extended Easter Series: Matthew 27:32-28:20 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Matthew 27:45-50 ESV
45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 47 And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” 48 And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. 49 But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” 50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.
There is something in this world that I have found to be so ironic, so shocking, yet, so uncomfortably familiar.
And what that is, is the realization that though man is born knowing that God is good, though man is consistently reminded and ever aware of the fact that God is indeed good, though man knows that there is no other like God, though man knows that God is the One Who we are to aspire to conform to, to love, and to worship.
What is extremely disturbing is the fact that though all men, women, and children know all of these things to be true still the natural desire of every man, woman, and child concerning God, outside of the salvation that God gives them is a desire to flee from God.
Though we were created by God, though we are consistently sustained by God, though we naturally know that we owe God our entire being, still, in our natural state, we are fearful of Him.
And when I say that those not saved by God are fearful of Him, I don’t mean that they possess a reverential fear, no, what I mean is that they desire to flee from Him, to have nothing to do with Him. Indeed, it means that they wish and desire that God was not… Such is the radical nature of man’s depravity.
This unhealthy, sinful fear of God was initially displayed in the Garden of Eden, when after Adam sinned and had heard God approaching, he hid himself.
God had lovingly created Adam and placed him in Paradise. He had sustained him and blessed him with so much more than anything that any one of us will ever have in the world as it currently is. Yet, because of his sin, Adam fled from the presence of God. Indeed, though God had been everything to Adam, once he sinned, he wished that God was not.
You see, what is so sick, so grotesque about man in his fallen state is that he literally wishes that he could do away with God. That He could somehow, someway kill God.
And when God came to this world, when the Lord Jesus Christ trod this soil, that’s exactly what man sought to do. They sought to kill Him.
Now, when God came, He did indeed die while on earth, which we will see in our reading for today. But what we will also see is that when He died, His life had not been taken from Him, no, He willingly laid it down, He surrendered it.
And He done it all because He loved His elect portion of this sick and twisted race so much that He was willing to endure the punishment that they deserved.
We begin to see this voluntary laying down on the part of the Lord Jesus in verse 45 of our reading, where it says:
Matthew 27:45 ESV
45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.
As we approach our reading, what we need to remember is that by this point in the narrative, Jesus had already been mocked, beaten, ridiculed, and placed on a cross. Now as He hangs, suffering and writhing in pain, the interesting detail is made that from the sixth hour to the ninth hour of the day that is, from 12pm to 3pm, there was darkness over the land.
This darkness was not a natural darkness. Some who want to discredit the gospel try to say that this event was a solar eclipse; but an eclipse lasts for minutes, not hours. Also, Passover, which is when this took place, occurs near a full moon and an eclipse cannot take place while there is a full moon.
So, there is no natural explanation for this darkness, therefore the explanation must be supernatural. This darkness must be a God-induced darkness.
Unnatural darkness was considered to be an omen in Jewish thought. Jews of that period believed that when an especially good man died, that darkness would follow. They believed that unnatural darkness was a sign of God’s judgment.
But this judgment, I believe, was not God’s judgment on those who had arrested and crucified Jesus. Rather, I believe that this divine judgment was reserved for Jesus Himself.
Remember that Jesus hung on the cross, not for Himself, but for the sins of those He has chosen to save, therefore, the judgment of God was obviously not for the sins of Jesus, for Jesus had no sin. But Jesus didbear the sins of His elect portion upon the cross, and because He bore our sins, He also bore God’s judgment, He bore God’s wrath for our sins.
This is what many theologians call “The Great Exchange”. This great exchange consists of Jesus, in His infinite love, in His infinite grace, exchanging His righteousness, His sinlessness, for the wretched sin-filled depravity of His elect people. He takes our sin upon Himself, and He gives us His righteousness, placing it upon us.
And as He takes the sins of those He has chosen to save, He is then judged by God the Father, by He Who judges sin. And that is exactly what we see here in this three-hour span of supernatural darkness.
Then, at the pinnacle of His suffering, we read the iconic words of verse 46:
Matthew 27:46 ESV
46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus hangs upon the cross, writhing in agony, experiencing the worst terror that could possibly be experienced, and He cries out with what strength that He has left: “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Now, some have asked why Jesus said this, why did He say that God had forsaken Him? And the answer to that is, because God didforsake Him.
Now, I say what I am about to say very carefully in order to avoid any kind of blasphemy when I say that Jesus bearing the sins of the elect meant that He was momentarily at odds with God as He suffered the penalty of the sins of His elect people.
In Galatians 3:13, Paul the Apostle cites Deuteronomy 21:23 which tells us, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”. Beloved, as the Lord Jesus bore our sins on the cross, He became a cursed thing in the sight of God.
What love! How vast! How deep is that love! How perplexing is the love of God that He would forsake His only begotten Son in order that the Son would willingly be forsaken by His Father, that He would become a cursed thing, for the sake of people like us!
But when this happened, when the Lord Jesus uttered these words, they were misunderstood by some of the bystanders who were nearby.
We read of this in verse 47, where it says:
Matthew 27:47 ESV
47 And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.”
Now, there are a couple of different reasons why these thought that Jesus may have been calling out to Elijah the prophet.
First of all, being in such torment, agony, and pain for so long, the voice of Jesus was surely distorted by this point and may have been hard to properly understand.
Secondly, the words that Jesus used sound like He may be saying Elijah. But lastly and most interestingly, an old Jewish tradition said that when a rabbi was in distress, he could look to Elijah and call for his help from heaven.
Because of this misunderstanding, we read of what happens next in verse 48:
Matthew 27:48 ESV
48 And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink.
The text says that one of the bystanders who thought that Jesus may have been calling out to Elijah for assistance ran off and filled a sponge with sour wine.
Now, saying that this wine was sour meant that the wine was undrinkable. It wouldn’t help Jesus, rather, the shocking taste would merely revive Him and thus cause His sufferings to be prolonged.
Many look at this act by the bystander as an act of mercy, but rather, it was an act of cruelty. He had hoped to extend the life of Jesus, but not because He cared about Jesus, not because He thought that what was done to Jesus was wrong. No, he just wanted to keep Jesus alive long enough to see if Elijah would come, basically for his own entertainment.
But other bystanders who were present had a different approach. We read of this in verse 49 where it says:
Matthew 27:49 ESV
49 But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.”
Once again, many look at this situation and think that these were in suspense, wondering if Elijah might actually come. But I think that these were just mocking Jesus further. It was like they were saying, “He thinks that Elijah will save Him! So, let’s wait and see what Elijah does here! What a joke!”.
But you know, in all reality, they’re right. Elijah would not come. Elijah would not deliver Jesus. Because Jesus, through the death that He now suffers will deliver Elijah, for like us, Elijah too needed a Savior to come and die for his sins.
Jesus had done everything that He needed to do on earth. He preached salvation, He displayed salvation, now He was giving salvation.
His work being complete, there was only one thing left for Him to do, and we see that one thing being accomplished in the last verse of our reading for today, verse 50. Which says:
Matthew 27:50 ESV
50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.
Having fulfilled the entire will of His Father, having completed the task, and finishing the work that His Father gave Him to do, Jesus cried out one more time and committed Himself to His Father.
No one took His life from Him, no one forced Him to suffer and die as He did. Our reading says that He yielded up His spirit, He surrendered it, no one took His life from Him; He laid it down of His own accord.
Even His own life Jesus was sovereign over. It was the will of God the Father for Jesus to lay down His life as a result of being crucified by the hands of lawless men. And as is recorded in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus submitted to this will. And here we see Him laying Himself down, offering Himself in accordance with the will of His Father.
And this laying down, this offering of Himself took place, our text tells us back in verse 46, at the ninth hour, 3pm, the hour when sacrifices were made in the temple.
The sacrificial blood of goats, sheep, and lambs were all but typical to, they all pointed to, they all prefigured this sacrifice. The worthy for the unworthy. The spotless for those covered with blemishes. The clean for the unclean.
Jesus loved us until the very end. Every moment from the time that God had made plain to Jesus what His mission in this world was to be, He had us, His elect people in mind. He knew that He was going to die for us. He knew that it was the Father’s will for Him to die for us.
As Luke 9:51 tells us, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” He knew that this was His time. He knew that now meant suffering, separation from the Father, bearing the full brunt of God’s wrath against sin. He set His face to go. He was determined to go, to offer Himself once for all time for the sins of many.
And this He did because of the love that He has for those He has chosen to save. But infinitely more than that, He done this because He loves His Father Who commanded Him to offer Himself for our sake.
I want us all for a moment to just try to take that in, to marvel at the fact that it was God’s will, God’s purpose, God’s accomplishment of His own glory to send His only begotten Son to die for someone like you.
What need does He have of us? He has no need. He does not need us. Yet He wisely ordained it for His glory to have us, us undeserving wretched creatures.
Let us offer Him eternal thanks!
Amen?