SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Please take your Bible with me to Matthew chapter 27.
SPEAKER_01: This is such a powerful text before us this morning, coming before the Lord Jesus at the cross.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have any kind of fancy introduction.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to read the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: Please take your Bible or your device and make your way to Matthew 27, beginning at verse 45.
SPEAKER_01: Been making our way through Matthew's gospel, and we are nearing the end.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 27, beginning in verse 45, Matthew recounts for us the last hours on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.
SPEAKER_01: And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Ali, lama sabakhani.
SPEAKER_01: That is, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_01: And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, This man is calling for Elijah.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: But the other said, Whoa, whoa, hold on, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, all the way from the top to the bottom, and the earth shook, and the rocks were split.
SPEAKER_01: The tombs also were opened, and many of the bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
SPEAKER_01: When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what had taken place, they were filled with awe and said, Truly, this was the Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to go with me into the deepest, darkest hell that has ever been on this earth.
SPEAKER_01: I'm asking you to go there with me because that's where Matthew leads us.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew leads us to that deepest, darkest hell on earth.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's there that we find our Savior and with him the doorway to heaven and heaven's hope.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that we could ask for a better tech to prepare ourselves to participate in the Lord's table together.
SPEAKER_01: And to do that, I want you to think with me about three characteristics of the Lord Jesus that we find in these verses.
SPEAKER_01: And once we do that, then we're going to see Matthew's defining takeaway.
SPEAKER_01: So first, Matthew records three characteristics of the Lord Jesus, and the first characteristic is found in the darkness.
SPEAKER_01: What you need to know about this darkness is that the shepherd, the good shepherd of the sheep, entered that darkest valley to save his sheep.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew tells us it's about noon, the sixth hour, in a way of reckoning of that day.
SPEAKER_01: The day's brightest and most intense moment of light.
SPEAKER_01: But suddenly there is no light.
SPEAKER_01: The greater light created to rule the day had no light to give during the last three hours of its maker's substitutionary life as the second Adam.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're tempted to read something into the text that Matthew didn't make explicit.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew doesn't tell us that the whole world was dark, but he says the entire land was dark.
SPEAKER_01: That's fair to ask.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to tell when Matthew uses this phrase elsewhere in his book.
SPEAKER_01: It seems to always refer to the whole earth.
SPEAKER_01: So is the whole earth covered in this strange darkness, or is it the land of Palestine?
SPEAKER_01: Is it Jerusalem?
SPEAKER_01: We don't really know for sure.
SPEAKER_01: It's challenging to be emphatic on all of the details of the darkness.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew merely describes the event.
SPEAKER_01: Darkness was over the land for three hours.
SPEAKER_01: And we're tempted to go beyond that.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not wrong to wonder what this darkness means.
SPEAKER_01: But we're not given details to answer our questions conclusively.
SPEAKER_01: But we're right to ask, what's up with the darkness?
SPEAKER_01: It seems like somebody just turned off the lights.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew and Mark are nearly identical in their presentation of this event.
SPEAKER_01: John, interestingly, doesn't mention the darkness at all.
SPEAKER_01: But Luke says the sun's light failed.
SPEAKER_01: It failed.
SPEAKER_01: Luke 23, 45.
SPEAKER_01: The light ceased for three hours because it failed to penetrate this strange darkness.
SPEAKER_01: We're not told if the sun's nuclear fusions suddenly stopped happening.
SPEAKER_01: We're not told if there is an eclipse or if the cloud cover was so thick and heavy that the darkness was impenetrable.
SPEAKER_01: We aren't told.
SPEAKER_01: I think that there are two most likely options, though, for this darkness.
SPEAKER_01: One is that the darkness represents the abandonment of Jesus to the powers of this present darkness.
SPEAKER_01: The other is that the darkness is the presence of God in judgment against our sin placed on Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Think about those with me for a minute.
SPEAKER_01: Let's take the first one that this darkness is the representation of the evil forces that God has allowed to influence our sin-cursed world and even the darkness of sin itself.
SPEAKER_01: We see this all throughout the New Testament, even in the Gospels.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 4, verse 10 represents people dwelling in darkness without Christ.
SPEAKER_01: They live in the region of the shadow of death.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 8, also Matthew chapter 22, describe darkness as a place of terror and judgment, saying, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
SPEAKER_01: To the religious leaders, Jesus said in Luke 22, 53, this is your hour, and then he describes that hour as, and the power of darkness.
SPEAKER_01: John chapter 1, verse 5 says, People loved darkness rather than light because their works were evil.
SPEAKER_01: That's why Jesus said in John 12, 35, Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
SPEAKER_01: Again, in Acts 26, 18, darkness is equated with the power of Satan and the reign of sin.
SPEAKER_01: And so Romans 13, 12 says, Let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
SPEAKER_01: Because, Ephesians 5.8 says, For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: But perhaps the most familiar to most churchgoers is Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 12.
SPEAKER_01: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's what's going on.
SPEAKER_01: That for three hours the presence of evil was so intense and so prevalent that the light of the sun couldn't pierce through it.
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, several times in Scripture, darkness and the shaking of the earth are connected to God's presence.
SPEAKER_01: For example, perhaps the most clear demonstration of this is in Deuteronomy chapter 4 on Mount Sinai, where Moses records that Israel came near and stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, and while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom.
SPEAKER_01: He says a chapter later in Deuteronomy chapter 5, verse 11, that God spoke to all of the assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness.
SPEAKER_01: So God's present there, wrapped in thick darkness that even seems to be felt in some way.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Samuel 22, 12, God made darkness around him, his canopy.
SPEAKER_01: Solomon said at the dedication of the temple in 2 Samuel 22, 12.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, 1 Kings 8, verse 12.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness.
SPEAKER_01: What do we make of that?
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps the being of God, because it says he is light, that the only way that his glorious presence does not destroy everything that is unholy is if he wraps himself in darkness.
SPEAKER_01: There is one more interesting passage, and that is Psalm 18, verse 9.
SPEAKER_01: It says, God bowed the heavens and came down.
SPEAKER_01: And thick darkness was under his feet.
SPEAKER_01: So which is it?
SPEAKER_01: Is the darkness the forces of evil or the presence of God in judgment?
SPEAKER_01: I can't say for sure.
SPEAKER_01: I take the route that it's the presence of God in judgment.
SPEAKER_01: We can say with certainty that there was supernatural darkness for three hours in the middle of the day.
SPEAKER_01: And it was during that time that Jesus intensely felt as though the Father abandoned him.
SPEAKER_01: And it's during that time that the Savior bore the awful weight of sin in those dark hours.
SPEAKER_01: He who knew no sin became sin for us.
SPEAKER_01: That's why the prophet Isaiah wrote that it was the will of the Lord to crush him.
SPEAKER_01: During that time that his soul made an offering for guilt, and out of the anguish of his soul, he will see and be satisfied, because by his knowledge the righteous one, God's servant, would be accounted righteous, and so bring many to be accounted to be righteous because he would bear their iniquities.
SPEAKER_01: Now we can also say, friends, confidently, that this moment, these three hours of darkness, were the deepest, darkest valley that any human being has ever walked.
SPEAKER_01: No other valley of the shadow of death compares, for this was hell on earth.
SPEAKER_01: In a way that only divine thought can comprehend, the incarnate Son bore the full weight of God's wrath and the curse against sin for all who would believe in him.
SPEAKER_01: For three hours he endured the darkness of hell that ought to have been our eternity.
SPEAKER_01: This was such hell that it's almost blasphemous for us to just casually or flippantly call our trials a kind of hell.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was surrounded by outward darkness.
SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, he felt the inward darkness of eternal hell apart from the grace of God, and he endured that valley of deep darkness to save his sheep from that darkness of eternal wrath of a holy God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see his love for you in the midst of that darkness?
SPEAKER_01: He endured that valley for you.
SPEAKER_01: Because he first loved you.
SPEAKER_01: The second characteristic of the Lord Jesus is heard in the first cry that Matthew recounts.
SPEAKER_01: And it's there that we see the Son enduring the deepest abandonment known to man so that he would never abandon his own.
SPEAKER_01: Three hours of darkness brought the day to the time of the evening sacrifice, the ninth hour, Matthew calls it.
SPEAKER_01: It's generally 3 p.m.
SPEAKER_01: And Matthew recounts the Lord's words in a way that makes us see Jesus looking back at the three hours that he's just endured.
SPEAKER_01: He endured three seemingly eternal hours of hell, and with the sudden return of the sun's light, Jesus cries out, Ali, Ali, Lemma, Sabakhni.
SPEAKER_01: That's the only time in Matthew's gospel that he records Jesus' words in Aramaic.
SPEAKER_01: So it seems significant.
SPEAKER_01: But I regret to inform you that we may never figure out the intricacies of that cry, this side of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Theologians have wrestled with that statement for millennia.
SPEAKER_01: But I think there are still some truths that we can cling to.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever this means, we have to remember that the Trinity is inseparable.
SPEAKER_01: There are three persons and one God.
SPEAKER_01: The three persons of the Godhead cannot be separated or pitted against one another without destroying the deity of the persons or the singularity of our God.
SPEAKER_01: That means Jesus did not cease to be God the Son during those three hours of darkness, nor did he cease to be human during those three cursed hours.
SPEAKER_01: He remained the God man.
SPEAKER_01: Somehow, as he bore our sin on that tree, the incarnate Son felt the abandonment expressed by the psalmist in Psalm 22.
SPEAKER_01: He never ceased to be God, and he never ceased to be an indivisible person in the Trinity.
SPEAKER_01: Yet he endured something so trying and so agonizing that the only words capable of expressing his anguish were the words of the psalmist.
SPEAKER_01: Why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_01: The most truthful, the truth, in human form, the most objective person to ever walk this ball of dirt knew, knew that he had experienced a temporary change in the divine relationship that was nearly inexplicable for God the Son.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because the scriptures say he became a curse for us.
SPEAKER_01: That's not an aspect of deity.
SPEAKER_01: The incarnate Son had not known the wretched curse of God against sin.
SPEAKER_01: He, the purest of sons, had not experienced even in his humanity what it was to sin, much less to be sin.
SPEAKER_01: In those hours, God the Son endured the deepest, darkest abandonment as he became sin for us.
SPEAKER_01: But look at how, look at how he clung to the Father even in his distress.
SPEAKER_01: Listen carefully.
SPEAKER_01: The Good Shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: The Good Shepherd can lead his sheep through the valley of deepest darkness because he knows what it is to trust the Father when it feels as though the Father is absent.
SPEAKER_01: I can't express the sense here any better than F.
SPEAKER_01: D.
SPEAKER_01: Brunner.
SPEAKER_01: It's a lengthy quote, so bear with me.
SPEAKER_01: He says, this cry looks like a cry of despair at first.
SPEAKER_01: Like a temporary loss of faith, as if Jesus and God were no longer close.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, Jesus, right here, perhaps better than anywhere else, teaches us exactly what faith is at its deepest level.
SPEAKER_01: It is believing God when we do not feel Him.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus asked God about God's absence, when Jesus prayed, My God, why did you abandon me?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus may have taught faith better than any other story in the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Real faith may be calling on God even when experience says God is not there.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus' last words before death teach us the gospel within the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: They tell us that Jesus took our abandonment, our questions, our feelings of betrayal, our most agonizing experience, and still believed in the God he could not feel and was surely tempted to disbelief.
SPEAKER_01: That's a shepherd you can follow through the deepest, darkest valleys of life.
SPEAKER_01: Now the perception around the cross that day was that Jesus was calling for Elijah.
SPEAKER_01: Elijah was sometimes referred to as Elias.
SPEAKER_01: So you can understand how some might have understood Ali as being a call for Elijah.
SPEAKER_01: But the perception is that Jesus is calling for Elijah because Jesus is only a messianic pretender who needed to call for Elijah.
SPEAKER_01: Elijah was, we might say in today's world that he was kind of the Jewish patron saint of those who need help.
SPEAKER_01: For lack of a better way of describing it.
SPEAKER_01: But if we put this in the context of all of Scripture, we see that this is just describing what God has always said.
SPEAKER_01: Let me give you a Couple of examples.
SPEAKER_01: First from Isaiah 50, verse 10.
SPEAKER_01: Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant?
SPEAKER_01: Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus is doing.
SPEAKER_01: Then we see in Ezekiel 34, verse 12, a little bit different perspective.
SPEAKER_01: As the shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, by the way, where are the disciples?
SPEAKER_01: Scattered.
SPEAKER_01: The shepherd's been struck, and so the sheep have scattered.
SPEAKER_01: As a shepherd who is among his sheep who've been scattered seeks them out, so I will seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all the places where they have been scattered on what day?
SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, on a day of clouds and thick darkness.
SPEAKER_01: On that day of thick darkness, Jesus walked the deepest of darkest of valleys, trusting in the Father's purpose and the Father's will, and the Father's care for him, so that everyone who trusts in him might know he is the good shepherd who can be followed and who has promised to never leave you and never forsake you.
SPEAKER_01: So will you put your trust in him that even when you can't feel him and he doesn't seem present, that he is still faithful to his promise?
SPEAKER_01: There's a third characteristic of our Savior in his second cry.
SPEAKER_01: And that second cry shows us that there was no restraining the Savior at the moment of salvation.
SPEAKER_01: You know, good stories often have a critical moment where it seems like everything hangs in the balance.
SPEAKER_01: If it goes one way, then it's going to be terrible.
SPEAKER_01: If it goes the other way, then hallelujah, a great story.
SPEAKER_01: We're at that point in Matthew's biography of Jesus' life.
SPEAKER_01: But it's not merely Jesus' life, but God's eternal plan that hangs in the balance.
SPEAKER_01: You know, if we don't know the story's end, if we haven't flipped the page yet and know that, oh, the tomb's going to be empty on Sunday, if we don't know that yet, if we don't know the end of the story, we might question if Jesus is indeed who he said he is.
SPEAKER_01: He's on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: He can't do anything.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody's mocking him, saying, let him come down from the cross if he's the Christ.
SPEAKER_01: If God trusts him and loves him so much, let him come down from the cross.
SPEAKER_01: If we don't know the end of the story, we might be tempted to think maybe he is just a pretender.
SPEAKER_01: Doubt and fear can overwhelm us as we see the one we trust and love hanging there, as the passers-by hurl insults and the religious leaders insist on folks leaving him alone to see if Elijah does come to rescue him.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever had doubts?
SPEAKER_01: Be honest.
SPEAKER_01: It's not wrong to have doubts.
SPEAKER_01: It's not wrong to have questions flood your soul.
SPEAKER_01: But it's what matters, what matters is what you do with those doubts.
SPEAKER_01: What's most important is what you do with those questions.
SPEAKER_01: Remember that even Jesus felt forsaken and alone.
SPEAKER_01: There was such a distinction, some kind of rupture in what was normal in the Trinity, that Jesus felt that desperately.
SPEAKER_01: But when he felt abandoned and forsaken, he did not turn from the Father, but toward him.
SPEAKER_01: My God.
SPEAKER_01: We have from the other gospels that his final prayer was, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Turning toward God when life doesn't make sense is an act of trust.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus leads us in that example.
SPEAKER_01: This is a critical truth for dealing with our internal strife when life doesn't go as expected, or when we're just struggling to understand why things are the way they are.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus shows us that he knows.
SPEAKER_01: But the echo of human distress makes it feel like everything's hanging in the balance.
SPEAKER_01: Less than 24 hours earlier, Jesus was on his knees sweating blood, saying, Father, if there's any other way.
SPEAKER_01: I know there can't be any other way, but just in case there is.
SPEAKER_01: But in the end, I'm going to trust you no matter what.
SPEAKER_01: Someone is compassionate at the cross and attempts to give Jesus a drink.
SPEAKER_01: However, it was sometimes thought that giving crucified victims a drink increased their torment by lengthening their suffering.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone else shouts, leave him alone.
SPEAKER_01: The word wait there means to leave, to leave off, to let him alone, to leave him there.
SPEAKER_01: Don't give him a drink.
SPEAKER_01: Wait, wait, wait.
SPEAKER_01: Let's see if Elijah does come.
SPEAKER_01: They're more interested in seeing Elijah.
SPEAKER_01: And isn't that typical of our humanness?
SPEAKER_01: Our hearts direct us away from him at those critical moments when truly seeing Jesus is the very best thing for us.
SPEAKER_01: We become distracted by something insignificant in the eternal perspective instead of keeping our eyes on the author of our salvation.
SPEAKER_01: The crowd does not see a savior hanging on a cross, but a condemned criminal.
SPEAKER_01: And so they insist on leaving Jesus alone in case Elijah comes to rescue him.
SPEAKER_01: Now that would be a sight to see.
SPEAKER_01: And in an ironic twist of words, Matthew uses the idea of leaving, leave him alone to end this terrible scene suddenly.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: You know, crucifixion is a slow, agonizing death by asphyxiation.
SPEAKER_01: Just a big way of saying you can't breathe.
SPEAKER_01: Your body is sagging on the cross and it's putting pressure on your lungs.
SPEAKER_01: And so any energy that you have left in your arms and your legs is spent on lifting your body up to give room for your lungs to take in air.
SPEAKER_01: And as your energy and your strength are depleted, so is your ability to push yourself up.
SPEAKER_01: And as you can't push yourself up, you can't get air and you can't breathe.
SPEAKER_01: Suddenly Jesus yielded up his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: That word for yielded is the same word as leave or wait in verse 49.
SPEAKER_01: They wanted Jesus left alone.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, he left them alone by leaving his body.
SPEAKER_01: But in that play on words, Matthew shows us that Jesus is in complete control.
SPEAKER_01: He does not need Elijah, for Elijah needs the salvation that only Jesus can provide.
SPEAKER_01: He does not need Elijah, for Elijah needs Jesus' death.
SPEAKER_01: Crucifixion could last for days.
SPEAKER_01: Days.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus can choose the exact moment of his death.
SPEAKER_01: And Matthew recounts that the moment when the darkness left and the light returned was the same moment when the atoning sacrifice for sin was made a short distance away in the temple.
SPEAKER_01: So we move then from the characteristics of the Savior to Matthew's single defining takeaway.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus dies, the world reverberates.
SPEAKER_01: And it does so.
SPEAKER_01: Because atonement is complete.
SPEAKER_01: Satisfaction, the sacrifice, has been made.
SPEAKER_01: There are times in the Bible when the grammar of the language in which Scripture was written makes a tremendous difference in understanding its meaning.
SPEAKER_01: So, for example, there's a place in Galatians where the Apostle Paul's argument hinges on whether or not a word from the Old Testament is singular or plural.
SPEAKER_01: The grammar of Matthew's account here in verses 51 to 53 is also critical for understanding what Matthew intends us to hear.
SPEAKER_01: There are seven, seven passive verbs, one right after another in these few sentences.
SPEAKER_01: That means that a verb's subject is not doing the action, but receiving the action.
SPEAKER_01: It's being done to them.
SPEAKER_01: They're being acted upon.
SPEAKER_01: And theologians call these divine passives because God is the implied person causing the action.
SPEAKER_01: So notice, beginning in verse 51, the temple curtain was torn all the way from top to bottom, ripped into.
SPEAKER_01: The earth was shaken.
SPEAKER_01: The rocks were split.
SPEAKER_01: The tombs were unsealed and opened.
SPEAKER_01: The bodies of the saints were raised.
SPEAKER_01: The raised saints came out of the tombs.
SPEAKER_01: The raised saints, after going into the city, appeared to many.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, at Jesus' death, God acted on his creation.
SPEAKER_01: If you've ever had any doubts, any questions as to what's happening at the crucifixion, here's where Matthew tells you what's happening.
SPEAKER_01: A thick, woven curtain separated the Holy of Holies from the common people, separating God's presence in the Holy of Holies from unholy people, and that is suddenly ripped into by a divine hand.
SPEAKER_01: God shook the earth, causing the rocks to cry out.
SPEAKER_01: And it's reminiscent, at least, of just days earlier at the triumphal entry when they told Jesus, hey, calm down your followers so that the Romans don't think there's an uprising.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, You don't understand.
SPEAKER_01: If these stay quiet, the rocks will cry out.
SPEAKER_01: When rocks break, it's like a gunshot.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine that sound going on all around you as Jesus yields his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: He broke death's seal.
SPEAKER_01: The tombs were opened.
SPEAKER_01: He applied redemption to saints from ages past.
SPEAKER_01: These are saints that are already dead, who now have redemption because Christ has died.
SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't it be amazing if one of those was Elijah?
SPEAKER_01: It'd just be fascinating.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Elijah's gonna come, but only after Jesus dies.
SPEAKER_01: Because redemption is applied.
SPEAKER_01: We see that by them being raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: He displays the first fruits of resurrection by causing other people to see and interact with those raised saints.
SPEAKER_01: And then, as if that's not enough, as if that's not enough, the Gentiles and Roman soldiers, no less, observed the glory of the sun.
SPEAKER_01: This is one of those little nuggets in Matthew's gospel that's just so precious.
SPEAKER_01: I wish we could spend time on.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 54 when the centurion and those who were with him keeping watch over Jesus saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe.
SPEAKER_01: There's only one other time that that term occurs in Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And that's when Peter, James, and John were up on top of the mountain and saw Jesus transfigured in all of his glory before them.
SPEAKER_01: Creation reverberated when the Father accepted the atoning sacrifice that day.
SPEAKER_01: And he made it unmistakable.
SPEAKER_01: And now the Savior is dead.
SPEAKER_01: But for those who believe, hope always springs eternal.
SPEAKER_01: Now and ever we confess Christ, our hope, in life and death.
SPEAKER_01: For the good shepherd is passing through the valley of deepest darkness, so that those who follow him will know he is a trustworthy shepherd who can safely take us through.
SPEAKER_01: The shepherd endured the valley of deepest darkness so that we might follow him in trust.
SPEAKER_01: The Son of God endured the most agonizing abandonment so that we might never know that feeling and can always believe and trust that he will never leave us and never forsake us.
SPEAKER_01: And God the Son was in complete control of this hell on earth to open the door to heaven as the atoning sacrifice for everyone who believes in him.
SPEAKER_01: And when the centurion saw the glory of the crucified Son, it was as though the stamp is put on there and says, Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, may we see you high and lifted up upon the cross.
SPEAKER_01: And may we who are fallen creatures, weak and unable to do anything to rescue ourselves, may we look to you, the light of life.
SPEAKER_01: May our hope always be in you.
SPEAKER_01: May each one of us here this morning and even listening online, may our hope be put in you alone.
SPEAKER_01: Not because of anything that we've done or anything anybody else has done, but because of your sacrifice on the cross, bearing the weight of sin as the cursed one, so that the door of heaven might be open to we who believe.
SPEAKER_01: What a savior.
SPEAKER_01: Be pleased to receive it now as we sing together, expressing our hope and song.
SPEAKER_01: And as we receive the elements that remind us of your body and your blood, may you be present with us in a unique and wonderful way so that these truths might be embedded in our hearts and minds, so that when we leave this place, we might leave better and more firmly trusting our good shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: We ask this for your glory.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.