Preached August 30, 2009 from Matthew 27:45-59
Theme: The events around the cross show us how seriously God treats sin .
We’ve been in a very serious portion of the Gospel of Matthew lately. We’ve been looking together at the story of our Savior’s sacrifice for us on the cross. And today, we come to what I think has to be the most serious passage in all this most serious portion Matthew’s Gospel.
You see; so much of what we have studied together over the past several weeks has had to do with what Jesus suffered from the hands of sinful man. We’ve seen how He was betrayed, and arrested, and tried before wicked leaders. And then, we saw how He was mocked, and scourged, and beaten by the Roman soldiers. Most recently, we’ve seen how He was crucified; and of how He was made to hang between two criminals as He was further mocked and reviled by the crowds.
But with this morning’s passage, we consider not so much what it was our Savior suffered at the hands of the sinful man, as what it was that He suffered from His heavenly Father as He hung on the cross.
As the sinless Son of God hung on the cross, He bore the guilt of your sins and mine in His own Person. As the Bible tells us, it was God who "made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). And in this morning’s passage, we see our Creator God—a God far too holy to look upon sin—turn away from His Son as He bore our sin in our place. And we hear the dreadful cry of the Son as He experienced—for the first time in all eternity—the separation from His Father that our sins made necessary.
In Matthew 27:45-49, we read these words;
Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. 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?” Some of those who stood there, when they heard that, said, “This Man is calling for Elijah!” 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. The rest said, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to save Him" (Matthew 27:45-49).
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This sort of a passage isn’t something pleasurable to look at. It’s painful to think of such a thing. But I believe that it’s absolutely essential to our spiritual well-being that we do so.
Think for a moment about the way many professing Christians deal with the things in their lives that don’t belong there. Some of us who profess to be followers of Jesus constantly fall, it seems, into the same old sinful patterns and habits over and over and over again.
I’m not suggesting, of course, that we will ever become ‘sinless’ during our time on this earth. We are frail offspring of Adam; and we will always struggle with temptations and sins—to some degree—until the day we’re in glory Rather, I’m talking about the way some of us don’t struggle with sin when we should! I’m talking about how some of us fall into the same sinful habits and patterns and practices again and again; and don’t treat the matter seriously! I’m talking about how some of us don’t take the radical, aggressive steps we need to take to live holy lives, because it doesn’t seem to matter to us whether we do or not! We’re still willing to give in to those sins when we’re tempted; and then, to blithely ask forgiveness when we’re through. For some of us, the presence of sin in our lives just isn’t a big deal; and so we don’t do much to rid ourselves of it, or to take the sacrificial steps it sometimes takes to grow in a holy walk with God.
I believe this morning’s passage can be a cure for the casual attitude toward sin that sometimes plagues us. It shows us something of the heart of God—something that we would neither know if it hadn’t been revealed to us, or even be willing to consider if He hadn’t told us about it in His word. It shows us how truly grievous our sin is to a holy God; and how much it cost Him to deal with it.
I can think of an illustration that might help explain what I mean. I heard of a father once who had to punish his disobedient little boy. He wanted to teach his child not to commit that particular act of disobedience ever again. But he also wanted to teach him something about God’s love. So, the father told his little son that his wrong act deserved a spanking; and that the time for a spanking had come. Then, the father took the little son, placed a paddle in his hand, leaned across a chair, and told his child, "Spank Daddy, son. Spank me hard, because what you did was wrong."
The little boy was very hesitant. "I don’t want to spank you, Daddy!" But the father insisted. "Son; what you did was wrong. And a spanking needs to happen. I am going to take the spanking for you." The boy did spank his Daddy—and with each swat he gave his father, he cried. He saw how his own disobedience hurt the father that he loved. And when it was over, the father scooped his crying son up in his arms and told him that the spanking was over, and that everything was okay now. "Now; you don’t want to do that bad thing that you did any more, do you?" the daddy asked. And of course, the boy said through his tears that he never wanted to do it again. "I love you," the daddy told the boy; "but I also wanted you to know how much God loves you. Our sins hurt Him very much; and to show how much it hurt, He gave His own Son to take the spanking we deserve."
Now; our heavenly Father was under no compulsion to give His Son in our place. Nor was the Son forced to bear the guilt of our sin. The Father—in love for us—willingly gave His beloved Son; and the Son—out of love for us—willingly paid the death-penalty in our place. But dear brothers and sisters in Christ; when I look at how my sins hurt the heavenly Father; when I see how it moved Him to give His beloved Son over to take the punishment for my sins in my place; when I see that His innocent, sinless Son took the death-penalty in my place because of it; I cannot be casual about my sin ever again! I can no longer relish and hold-on to the sins I used to take pleasure in! I can no longer be entertained by the questionable things I used to be entertained by! I can no longer laugh at the sort of jokes I used to laugh at! I can no longer harbor the attitudes I used to hold on to! Those things put Jesus—my greatest Friend and the Lover of my soul—on the cross for me! They caused Him to experience a dreadful separation from His Father for my sake! I don’t want to do those things anymore! I want to be rid of them out of love for Him who loved me so!
That’s why we need to take a good, long, hard look at this passage. I don’t enjoy doing so. But I must do so for the good of my soul. And so do you.
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There are certain things in this passage that tell us something of how the heavenly Father felt about the punishment His Son was taking in our place. Let’s begin by considering . . .
1. THE DARKNESS THAT FELL OVER THE LAND (v. 45).
Matthew tells us, "Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land" (v. 45). Jesus, as the Bible tells us, was crucified at "the third hour" (Mark 15:25); which would have been around 9:00 am. And from 9:00 a.m. to noon, the sun shone as it normally does. But from noon to 3:00 pm—the hottest and brightest time of the day—a dreadful darkness fell.
What kind of darkness was this? Some have suggested that it was an eclipse of the sun. I have been in a total eclipse of the sun. I got in the morning as the sun was out to drive to downtown Seattle. I got in my car and drove as the sky grew as black as night. Then, by the time I got out of my car, the sun was shining again. It was an eerie experience!
But this could not have been a natural eclipse of the sun. This was happening at the feast of Passover—at a time of the month when the moon was on the opposite side of the earth from the sun. This was a supernatural darkness that fell over the land—a sudden, unexplainable, unnatural darkness in which, as the Gospel of Luke tells us, "the sun was darkened" (Luke 23:45) at a time when it should have shone at its brightest.
And this darkness was a sign to the people of Israel. God was fulfilling a promise that He had made centuries before—in the Old Testament book of Amos. It was a promise in which God said that He would not forget the disobedience of His people; but would punish their sin. And how would they recognize that punishment? God tells them, in Amos 8:9-10;
“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;
I will turn your feasts into mourning,
And all your songs into lamentation;
I will bring sackcloth on every waist,
And baldness on every head;
I will make it like mourning for an only son,
And its end like a bitter day" (Amos 8:9-10).
That "darkness" was also meant to be a sign to you and me today. It helps us remember how grieved our holy God is toward our sin. He isn’t casual about our sin. He doesn’t simply ignore it, or overlook it, or pass it by as if it didn’t matter. People who demand that God not care about the sinfulness of sin are demanding that God to change in order to accommodate their sins! And He will never do that! He is a holy God; and if He overlooked sin, He would cease to be true to who He is! As a holy God, He must punish sin!
And He did punish it—by punishing His own beloved Son in our place! He did this so that you and I could have a relationship with Him in holiness. He did this because He loves us. But oh, how He hates the sin that made it necessary! The sky became dark as His Son bore our sin in our place, so that we could see how much the guilt of our sin grieved Him.
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Another way that this passage shows us our heavenly Father deep feelings about our sin is by . . .
2. THE CRY THAT WAS HEARD FROM THE CROSS (vv. 46-47).
We’re told that, after three hours of that dreadful darkness, the Lord Jesus shouted out from the cross. He didn’t simply whimper, or moan. He shouted! It was in words that were meant to be heard! He said, in the Aramaic language that the Jewish people of that day spoke, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" Matthew translates these words for us as, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" And it’s those words tell us what was really happening at that moment on the cross.
Jesus’ cry from the cross was to ask why it is that His Father had forsaken Him. The Father had never forsaken Him before. Before He came into this world to take human nature to Himself, the Son shared, completely and continually, in the Father’s glory. In fact, before the worlds ever were, the Father and the Son had enjoyed a perfect and blissful fellowship of eternal love with one another. But now, something was happening in that three-hour period that had never happened before and will never happen again. The Father turned from His beloved Son and forsook Him.
It wasn’t for anything sinful in the Son that this happened. He Himself was without sin. What’s more, the Son still loved the Father; and the Father was still His God. "My God, My God"; He cried—and what He cried in those words was true for Him in a way that it could not have been true of anyone else. But at that moment in time, the Son was bearing the guilt of our sin in our place; and for that reason, He had the dreadful experience of His Father—a God too holy to look upon sin—forsaking Him.
If anyone were ever tempted to say that their sin didn’t matter, they should meditate carefully on Jesus’ cry from the cross—and they would then never dare to say such a thing again.
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Now; we’re told that when Jesus cried out in Aramaic, "Eli, Eli . . ." that some of those who stood there said, "This Man is calling for Elijah!" It may be, as some commentators have suggest, that they didn’t understand His words—that He was so weak that He could not speak those words clearly, and that the crowds mistakenly thought that He was crying out for the prophet Elijah to come and save Him. Or it may be, as others have suggested, that they weren’t mistaken at all—that they understood His words but were mocking Him and adding further to His suffering.
In either case, we know the true meaning of Jesus’ words. Jesus’ cry, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?", was a sincere one. And it wasn’t the first time those words had ever been spoken. They had first been penned by our Lord’s ancestor according to the flesh—King David—nearly a thousand years before.
They are the first words of Psalm 22. I hope you’ll permit me to read that psalm to you in its entirety. It’s truly startling to see how our Lord was fulfilling the words of that psalm as He hung on the cross:
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
Why are You so far from helping Me,
And from the words of My groaning?
O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear;
And in the night season, and am not silent.But You are holy,
Enthroned in the praises of Israel.
Our fathers trusted in You;
They trusted, and You delivered them.
They cried to You, and were delivered;
They trusted in You, and were not ashamed.But I am a worm, and no man;
A reproach of men, and despised by the people.
All those who see Me ridicule Me;
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
“He trusted in the LORD, let Him rescue Him;
Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”But You are He who took Me out of the womb;
You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts.
I was cast upon You from birth.
From My mother’s womb
You have been My God.
Be not far from Me,
For trouble is near;
For there is none to help.Many bulls have surrounded Me;
Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled Me.
They gape at Me with their mouths,
Like a raging and roaring lion.I am poured out like water,
And all My bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
It has melted within Me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And My tongue clings to My jaws;
You have brought Me to the dust of death.For dogs have surrounded Me;
The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.
They pierced My hands and My feet;
I can count all My bones.
They look and stare at Me.
They divide My garments among them,
And for My clothing they cast lots.But You, O LORD, do not be far from Me;
O My Strength, hasten to help Me!
Deliver Me from the sword,
My precious life from the power of the dog.
Save Me from the lion’s mouth
And from the horns of the wild oxen!You have answered Me.
I will declare Your name to My brethren;
In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.
You who fear the LORD, praise Him!
All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him,
And fear Him, all you offspring of Israel!
For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
Nor has He hidden His face from Him;
But when He cried to Him, He heard.My praise shall be of You in the great assembly;
I will pay My vows before those who fear Him.
The poor shall eat and be satisfied;
Those who seek Him will praise the LORD.
Let your heart live forever!All the ends of the world
Shall remember and turn to the LORD,
And all the families of the nations
Shall worship before You.
For the kingdom is the LORD’s,
And He rules over the nations.All the prosperous of the earth
Shall eat and worship;
All those who go down to the dust
Shall bow before Him,
Even he who cannot keep himself alive.A posterity shall serve Him.
It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation,
They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born,
That He has done this (Psalm 22:1-31).
Jesus wasn’t simply quoting that psalm as He hung on the cross, dear brothers and sisters. He was fulfilling it! And the soberness of His cry from the cross comes home to us, I believe, when we consider why He did so. He was bearing the guilt of our sin for a time, and cried out "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" for a brief while, out of love for us; so that you and I would not have that as our own dreadful cry throughout a hopeless eternity!
Consider that the next time you’re tempted to think that sin doesn’t matter.
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There’s one more thing that shows us something about how God felt about our sin on that dark day; and that is . . .
3. THE WINE THAT WAS LIFTED UPON THE REED (vv. 48-49).
Matthew tells us that, as soon as Jesus’ cry was heard from the cross; and as soon as people said that He was calling out for Elijah, "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" (v. 48). It may be that this one man out of the crowd sought to perform a kind act toward our Lord. But whatever the motive, the crowd seemed to have stopped the man from doing so. "Let Him alone," they said; "let us see if Elijah will come to save Him" (v. 49). It’s hard to imagine that people could be so irreverent and wicked at a time like that!
But did you know that, once again, Scripture was being fulfilled in this act? In Psalm 69:21—another psalm that was written by King David—it says, "They also gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." And before the Lord Jesus could die on the cross, even this seemingly obscure promise needed to be kept.
When John, in his Gospel, tells the story of Jesus on the cross, he gives us this additional information:
After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst!” Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit" (John 19:28-30).
Think of that! Our Lord is hanging on the cross! And yet, "knowing that all things were now accomplished", and speaking "that the Scripture might be fulfilled", said, "I thirst"—and then, a man from among the hostile crowd immediately ran and brought to Him the thing that would fulfill this last remaining promise from Psalm 69:21. In all that happened at the cross for us, not one word of God fell to the ground unfulfilled!
This helps us remember that the high cost for our sin that Jesus paid on the cross was something that God had planned all along—and that it was the fulfillment of every one of His promises for His glory!
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When Jesus died on the cross, the grief of the Father over the great cost of our sin caused the sky to darken. When our Savior cried out, His anguish is shown in that He suffered separation from His Father on account of our guilt. And when the sponge filled with wine was brought to Him, the commitment of the Father and the Son is shown to keep every promise of Scripture.
Remember these things, and you’ll be far less inclined to be indifferent about sin.