HG164pt2, 165pt2, 166pt2 Matthew 27:35-56

1 My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, And from the words of My groaning? 2 O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; And in the night season, and am not silent. 3 But You are holy, Enthroned in the praises of Israel. 4 Our fathers trusted in You; They trusted, and You delivered them. 5 They cried to You, and were delivered; They trusted in You, and were not ashamed. 6 But I am a worm, and no man; A reproach of men, and despised by the people. 7 All those who see Me ridicule Me; They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, 8 “He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him; Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!” 9 But You are He who took Me out of the womb; You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts. 10 I was cast upon You from birth. From My mother’s womb You have been My God. 11 Be not far from Me, For trouble is near; For there is none to help. 12 Many bulls have surrounded Me; Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled Me. 13 They gape at Me with their mouths, Like a raging and roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, And all My bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It has melted within Me. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And My tongue clings to My jaws; You have brought Me to the dust of death. 16 For dogs have surrounded Me; The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet; 17 I can count all My bones. They look and stare at Me. 18 They divide My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots.

Isn’t it incredible that a Psalm that could have credibly been written after Jesus’ crucifixion was actually written 1000 years before prophesying what would happen to Jesus?

The power of the cross

Of all the prophesies about Jesus there are none so explicit as the one I am about to read which was written 700 years before Jesus came.

Isaiah 52:13–53:12 NKJV

13 Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently; He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. 14 Just as many were astonished at you, So His visage was marred more than any man, And His form more than the sons of men; 15 So shall He sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths at Him; For what had not been told them they shall see, And what they had not heard they shall consider. 1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 And they made His grave with the wicked— But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth. 10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. 11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.

Next hymn

Matthew 27:35–56 NKJV

35 Then they crucified Him, and divided His garments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet: “They divided My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots.” 36 Sitting down, they kept watch over Him there. 37 And they put up over His head the accusation written against Him: THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS 38 Then two robbers were crucified with Him, one on the right and another on the left. 39 And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads 40 and saying, “You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” 41 Likewise the chief priests also, mocking with the scribes and elders, said, 42 “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. 43 He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” 44 Even the robbers who were crucified with Him reviled Him with the same thing. 45 Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” 47 Some of those who stood there, when they heard that, said, “This Man is calling for Elijah!” 48 Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink. 49 The rest said, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to save Him.” 50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. 51 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, 52 and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53 and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. 54 So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God!” 55 And many women who followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, were there looking on from afar, 56 among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.

Hymn

After last night’s ‘Objects of the Cross’ we may wonder if there is anything to add. The fact is, that we could preach on this passage every single day and it will always being out something new for the cross is central to our understanding of the Christian faith. Without the cross there is no salvation. When Muslims and others say that Jesus did not die on the cross they try to undermine the foundation of our faith. And indeed that is what the devil wants, he wants a bloodless death, a Christ who never died for our sins for this was his greatest mistake. The devil and those in cahoots with him thought that by putting to death Jesus that they would win power over God but the devil overreached not realising that God’s plan from eternity was that Jesus should die for the salvation of the world.

Indeed we read in:

1 Corinthians 2:7–8 NKJV

7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, 8 which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Even the accusation against Jesus: Here is Jesus, King of the Jews was meant to be insulting but it was, instead, the very truth.

But darkness came over the whole land from noon until 3pm. This was prophesied in:

Amos 8:9 NKJV

9 “And it shall come to pass in that day,” says the Lord God, “That I will make the sun go down at noon, And I will darken the earth in broad daylight;

This would have been interpreted as God’s judgement, and they would have thought that it was His judgement against Jesus. We understand that God did not judge Jesus but sin.

And this darkness hid, as it were, Jesus from the onlookers, whilst He suffered the most excruciating part of His torture, and no, it was not the cross itself, though that was plainly bad enough with the pain and the inability to get air into the lungs. No, it was not the cross but the realisation that He had been abandoned.

We will never get the complete picture or depth of what happened if we do not realise that for all eternity Father, Son and Holy Spirit had never once been apart. Together they form the Godhead. Together they planned creation and its salvation. Until now. This moment in earthly history, for the very first time, their relationship was severed in a human way. We are told by Paul what happened:

2 Corinthians 5:21 NKJV

21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Jesus who had led a sinless life who very publicly asked:

John 8:46 NKJV

46 Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me?

I cannot imagine anyone of us going in public and asking this. I have done plenty wrong - and I can think of just this week alone. There is no way I would and I don’t think any of us would dare to put ourselves in the public sphere and declare that we are sinless daring others to prove us wrong. But that is what Jesus did - and He could only do this because He WAS sinless.

For those final three hours of darkness upon the cross Jesus became sin. In other words sin, personified. It was in this way that God’s wrath and judgement against sin could be poured out in full, not on us but upon Jesus as He hung in utter darkness.

The sheer and utter desperation and stress that Jesus felt in that moment was because of us causing those haunting words of Psalm 22:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

pause

We come to another important aspect of what happened on Good Friday:

Whenever we see the news where there are bloodstained clothing because of an accident or because of war we immediately faced with the stark reality that we are all mortal.

When we think about what happened on this day even before He got to the cross He had been whipped within an inch of His life and a crown of thorns placed upon His head the blood was already flowing. Then upon the cross the last drop of blood fell from His body demonstrated very clearly by the sword of the centurion.

Blood is very important - for without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sin. But this was no ordinary man with blood loss. It was poured out for us and was sufficient to save us. Without Christ’s shed blood there is no good news, no gospel, no forgiveness, no justification, no sanctification. God’s justice was only satisfied when Jesus paid for our reconciliation with His blood.

Today this is still considered to be offensive but it does not change the facts. Jesus had to die this way to save us from the awfulness of sin. We comfort ourselves with just how well we do compared to others especially with despots. But how despots seem to us is how we appear to God for He is holy, holy, holy. We are truly offensive to Him.

So Jesus’ shed blood was the only acceptable payment for sin and the only way for us to have access to a holy God.

We are only starting to scratch the surface of what happened at the cross of Jesus.

But I ask you, can we continue to live how we live knowing that Jesus had to go through all that for us? Let me make it more pointed. He went through all that for you. You, individually. Every one of you. And, praise God, for me too.

We needed Jesus to come and save us. We were in desperate straits and you still are if you have not invited Jesus into your life. Do you now really think you are good enough to stand before God without the help of Jesus? I certainly am not. And nor are you.

Jesus is exclusive because He did the only work that could exclusively save us:

Romans 6:23 NKJV

23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

John 14:6 NKJV

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

The curtain in the Temple was torn from top to bottom that separated us away from the Holy of holies in the Temple. No longer was it just for the high priest once per year to go in but through the death of Jesus and His sacrifice we all have access to God at anytime anywhere through Jesus.

Like I’ve said we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of all that He has been done for us. I’d like to read to you a poem:

It is high noon when day is bright

But instead becomes dark as night

Something is being forbidden

The Son of God being hidden

From curious people besides

From His Father’s face also hides

Three hours later horrendous cry

Abandoned! Oh why, why, why, why?

Deep sorrows and desolation

The why of His incarnation.

He had come for this very hour

Giving up heavenly power

He became sin personified

God’s wrath and justice satisfied

The thorned crown declares: He is King!

It is finished! Done everything!

Hanging upon the crimson tree

“My Spirit I commit to thee”

The hanging temple curtain torn

The day again begins to dawn.

(Ian)

Friday is here but Sunday is coming. It is on Sunday we realise that the victory has truly been won.

Romans 5:10a NKJV

10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

We give our lives back in thanks to Him who saves us and has given us eternal life.

There was a day in 1986 that I committed my life of Jesus. Was there a day for you? Or is today that day? Is this going to be your Good Friday?

The rest of us can make this a Good Friday too by recommitting our lives to Him, putting aside the sin that is so offensive to God, and love our Saviour with renewed passion; with renewed joy.

Let’s pray:

Dear God,

We remember today, the pain and suffering of the cross, and all that Jesus was willing to endure, so we could be set free. He paid the price, such a great sacrifice, to offer us the gift of eternal life.

Help us never to take for granted this huge gift of love on our behalf. Help us to be reminded of the cost of it all. Forgive us for being too busy, or distracted by other things, for not fully recognising what you freely given, what you have done for us. We ask you into our lives again.

Thank you Lord that by your wounds we are healed. Thank you that because of your huge sacrifice we can live free. Thank you that sin and death have been conquered, and that your Power is everlasting.

Thank you that we can say with great hope, “It is finished…” For we know what’s still to come. And death has lost its sting. We praise you for you are making all things new.

In Jesus’ Name,

Amen

Closing Hymn

Benediction

Philippians 2:5–11 NKJV

5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.