Welcome to those of you who are guests and those who are joining us online. We are in the second half of Mark's Gospel in Chapter 15. And if you would, would you stand for the reading of God's Word? We're going to begin in verse 21, but we're only going to look at the last portion of this together this morning. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, may you be pleased to grant that this word would reach deep within us. Speak to each of us what we need to hear today and grant, oh Lord, that in your kindness that you might grant that faith would be united with the hearing of your word, that it might profit us. For we ask in Christ's name, amen. And they, verse 21, and they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha, which means place of the skull. And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided the garments among them, casting lots for them to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, the King of the Jews. And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, ah, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross. And so also the chief of priests with the scribes mocked him to one another saying he saved others. He cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel come down now from the cross that we may see and believe. Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole of the land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, behold, he is calling Elijah. 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 if Elijah will come to take him down. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 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. Please take your seats. In my office at home, there is a print of Rembrandt's crucifixion. subtly into the painting in the background. He painted his own face. This was actually, he did this many, many times. And Rembrandt was doing what we could call visual theology. He was making a statement by painting himself there. He was saying that he had a part in the crucifixion. And I wanted in my office to remind me that I also, played a part in crucifying Christ. I am responsible for his death. Mark's doing visual theology here, and he accomplishes with words what no drawing or painting or film ever could convey about the cross. Like a painter who uses shadow and light form and color space and emptiness to create an image. So Mark's elements are the cry from the cross, the curtain that's torn in two, and the confession of the centurion. The cry, the curtain, and the confession. And each of them is weighted with meaning when they're read in the context of all of scripture, and especially Mark's gospel. Now, Mark slows everything down in the second half of chapter 15. He counts off time. He speaks of the third, the sixth, and the ninth hours, which are 9 a.m., noon, and 3 p.m. for us. He's highlighting the importance of these events. And we're just gonna look at the events of the last three hours. These events have cosmic significance. What God is doing here is cosmically, universally significant. God is acting not just for the Jewish people, but for all mankind. In Jesus, God is opening the way for all the peoples of the world to be able to approach Him. It's cosmic in another way, it's universal in another way, because what's happening here is the very day of judgment, the final day, the day of the Lord has broken in, in this moment in human history. Amos himself, the prophet Amos foresees this in his prophecy and describes this darkness as the dreaded day of the Lord, the day of judgment. And this darkness is not only literal, it's more than literal. It is a spiritual darkness. The powers of darkness have descended as Jesus hangs upon the cross. There's a cosmic battle taking place at the cross between God and all the forces of darkness. This is an intelligent, personal evil. that temporarily seems to have triumphed in this moment over Christ. And God is using this darkness for his own purposes to achieve his own ends. Now, if you're not a Christian yet, we're just delighted that you're here. There's no passage in all of the Bible, no truth that we could examine that is any more significant to the meaning of Christianity than this, Christ dying upon the cross. It's here at the cross that you get the fullest view of who God is and what he's like. And if you're a Christian, the cross is central to your discipleship. Jesus defined following him as being willing to take up your cross. And bound up in the cross are all the riches of the grace of God. And so Paul says this a number of ways. At the end of one of his letters, he says, may I never boast except in the cross of Jesus Christ. Or in another place he says, I resolve to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The cry, the curtain, and the confession. Let's look first at the cry. Now, Mark doesn't tell us what this cry means. He's recorded it without any, well, interpretive comments. And he's left it there for you, his reader, to puzzle over. The cry comes at the end, near the end of the three hours of darkness. Jesus has been rejected and scorned by Israel. He's been sacrificed as a pawn in Pilate's political game. His disciples have denied and abandoned him. Jesus is forsaken and exposed to the horrors of humanity's sin. And this horror is so total that in his dying breath, he expresses his separation from God. What's being said here, the depths of which we probably will never fully understand. It's not possible for us to completely enter in to Jesus' agony. And the question becomes as you hear his words, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The question is, is Jesus crying in hopeless despair or is it an honest cry of pain that's mixed with hope? Is Jesus simply expressing his abandonment and his despondency? He's completely void of hope. Or is his cry an honest word of describing realities he's experiencing and yet with hope? Well, the darkness Jesus is experiencing in his soul is far greater than his physical suffering. And we've seen Mark makes little in terms of describing the agony of what Jesus suffered. He wants us to see this. These three hours as Jesus suffers, as Jesus is alone and he drinks the cup of God's wrath, as the creation itself mourns, as the Father sees that the sins of God's people have been imputed to Christ, and now Christ himself is receiving God's wrath. All the while the spiritual forces of darkness are assaulting the Lord Jesus. But I think to portray him as utterly desolate without hope would just be missing what Jesus is saying to us as he cries out, my God, my God. You see, those very words tell you that Jesus still has his grip upon the reality of God. He's not going to let God go in his darkness, even though his own experience of God is that he is absent, that he's been forsaken. Jesus, as we've seen, was one who lived by the scripture. He believed he was fulfilling the scripture. And that it's not surprising to us that here in this, his greatest moment of trial, that he turns to the scriptures for his comfort and solace. Jesus, on the ninth hour of the day, the hour, the Jewish hour of prayer, takes up the prayer of the righteous sufferer. who's fully trusting in God's protection. It's such a fitting prayer, this prayer of David, some of which for David undoubtedly was meant figuratively, but is the reality of which is being experienced by Jesus. Like David, Jesus has been mocked. Like David, his strength has dried up. Like David, who figuratively experienced this, he literally had his hands and feet pierced and his garments were divided. Why would he cry out to an absent God if he believed indeed he wasn't there at all? If he didn't believe that God was actually able to hear his cry and to live for him, I'm convinced that Jesus prayed this entire psalm, though not out loud, and that the whole of the psalm reflects his intent. And so down in the middle of the psalm, the psalmist expresses his confidence that God will rescue him. And the end of the psalm celebrates how his suffering will actually serve to bring the nations to worship the one true and living God. And so Jesus, aware of the purpose of his suffering, prayed this prayer in light of the fact of what its results would be. Now, the early Christians looked upon Jesus' response through his trial and crucifixion as a model for them as to how they should face suffering. In fact, many of the first Christians experienced the state-sponsored persecution of Rome, and they saw in Jesus an example. They saw that they too should entrust themselves to God, regardless of what kind of evil they're experiencing. Whether it's betrayal by family or insults from neighbors, mocking or cursing. And we too need to learn to leave our pain and suffering in God's hands. And to trust when we believe we are being mistreated, when justice is absent, that God himself notices. He will come to our rescue. Jesus is doing something, though, here that's very unfamiliar to the church in America. Jesus is praying a prayer of lament. And we're not very comfortable with laments. In the American church, we like to keep things upbeat and positive. We want encouraging messages from the sermon. And we regard lament and complaint as kind of, well, cousins. And it just seems when someone's complaining, they're really not as thankful as they should be. And closely tied to this probably is a desire for us to protect God's honor. You know, we don't want someone to think, well, we think God is mismanaging the world, that he's not in control of what's taking place, that something terribly has gone wrong that's escaped his notice. Now, that avoidance of lament in us actually shows that we aren't really as comfortable with the Bible, we're not really as acquainted with its realism as we might like to think. Because the scripture takes seriously the state of the world as it is, and not as it will be. You see, the whole story of the Bible is that Cosmic powers came in rebellion and took over God's world, seeking to destroy humanity. And that Jesus in his death came to break the grip of Satan and the power, the enslaving power of sin in our lives. And laments driven by the conviction that the God of Christian scripture is actually the creator of all things and will redeem them, but at the moment they are not yet redeemed. At the moment, things are not as they will be. And so speaking truthfully about those things and expressing our impatience as we wait for God to act, for God to vindicate himself and to manifest himself by ridding the world of all this evil, this is utterly biblical. The book of Revelation has these words in it. John says, when the Lamb opened the fifth seal, I, John, saw under the altar the souls of those who'd been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, how long, sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood. That's a lament. The onlookers hear Jesus cry and they mistakenly think that he's calling for Elijah. There's a couple reasons why they might do that. One is that the Aramaic for my God sounds a bit like Elijah. But probably the greater reason is that Elijah was the patron saint of rescue. And so they're mocking Jesus as they say, well, let's wait and see if this Saint Elijah comes to his rescue. He's offered what you might describe as the first century Gatorade. It was a refreshing drink served to soldiers and day laborers. And then Jesus, in complete command, choosing the moment of his death, breathes his last and expresses in a loud cry his last, very last breath. Now, at that moment, two things happen. The first is the curtain in the temple is torn in two, and then there's the confession of the centurion. The curtain being torn in two is another cosmic event. Now, the temple was both visually and artistically a depiction of the entirety of the creation, with God being present in its center. The temple, in other words, was the center of the universe. It was the place where heaven and earth met. And Josephus, the Roman historian, describes the curtain in Herod's temple as being 80 feet high. It was a Babylonian tapestry embroidered with blue and fine linen of scarlet and purple. It was wrought with marvelous skill. These mixtures of materials, he comments, pointed to the entirety, the mixture of things present in the universe. Even the panorama of the heavens was embroidered into this curtain. And Mark signals for the careful reader, the reader hearing this in its Greek, The significance of this as he chooses to use a word he's used only once before. The word tear is the same word that he uses regarding the rendering of the heavens at Jesus' baptism when the dove descends on him. That was a cosmic revelatory event, as this is. What's being revealed is something that's both positive and negative, and we might say that a new order between God and man is being revealed. When the curtain is ripped, something is being destroyed, and something previously hidden is being brought into view. The curtain symbolizes this new revelation. The veil that shielded the holiest part of the temple where God's glory resided is being opened. The secret of God's presence is being revealed. And now we can see in the face, we can see the face of God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. And the torn curtain also lets something out. The glory and presence of God can't be confined to part of a stone building. And God's glory and presence moves out into the world. And so God goes forth from the holy of holies. And that means that the barrier between God and man has been torn away. Christ, in his death, makes it possible for humans to be at peace with him. And now all peoples, not just the Jewish race, can have access to this gracious God. who purposed to have his son die on the behalf of many. The tearing of this curtain represents the end of the temple with its priesthood and its sacrifices. A new order, a totally radical spiritual cleansing from sin and guilt is now available. If you are a Christian and you're trusting in Christ, This means that not only can you come into God's presence, but that you should know that you are ever free from the fear of God's judgment and condemnation. Jesus' death is the end of wrath. God does not treat his people with wrath. God would be utterly unjust to do that. He's already poured out His wrath for every sin, past, present, and future, that His people will commit. And He's not going to then pour out His wrath on you when you commit that sin. That would be utterly unjust. No, you have moved, if you're in Christ, from being under the wrath of God for your sins, of being in his full love and acceptance. There's no condemnation left for those who are in Christ Jesus. That means that everything that accompanies condemnation is lifted from us. But it doesn't mean that in our repentance we don't experience any sorrow for our sin. And it doesn't mean that God always mitigates all the consequences of what we do wrong. Although sometimes his gracious hand stays these things. And sometimes the release of our soul from sorrow comes quickly. That's not the essence of what it means, but it does mean you don't live with God's frown. It means that mercy for you, if you're a Christian, is not a question mark. You don't have to go to God like a beggar and say, oh, please show me mercy. God has shown you mercy, will you believe it? God has acted definitively once and for all for your pardon and rescue. And that means that we should richly experience God's love and find freedom from all our lesser fears. We should rest in his love and acceptance of us, so much so that we increasingly are less and less defensive. We less and less need to defend ourselves, to explain ourselves. I've said this many a time in a more informal setting to a husband when he's absolutely sure his wife is wrong about something. I say to him, would you rather be married or be right? Well, I hope you would rather be married than be right. And sometimes you're not as right as you think. Sometimes we need to entertain the possibility that someone else in our lives is actually a lot more right than we are, but in our pride, we wanna just, well, we just wanna insist, we wanna fight, we wanna show that other person that we're right. And you see, the deeper you grasp, the significance of what Christ has done for you, the greater your freedom from the sense that you're condemned. The easier it is to admit the worst about yourself, the easier it is just to own up to something quickly instead of having to have, well, it just put in your face so much. It's easier to get things resolved with other people. Last of all, the last element in Mark's painting is the confession. Simultaneously with the tearing of the curtain, a confession is made. A confession about Christ's identity is made by the most unlikely of all people that we encounter in the gospel. He's a Roman soldier. He's an outsider to Judaism. He doesn't know anything about the Psalms or the teaching of the Torah. He has no idea about the Day of Atonement. He's a rough-hewn executioner. He wasn't a follower of Jesus. He'd never been exposed to Jesus' teaching, and yet he is the very first person who, in faith, confesses that Jesus is the Son of God. This is, in fact, what Mark begins his gospel announcing, that is the gospel of the Son of God. Just what is it in the death of Jesus Christ that awakens within this man faith and leads to this confession? Well, a little background might help illuminate this. The Romans were accustomed to extraordinary occasions at the death of important people. Two Roman authors, Suetonius and Plutarch, record that at the death of Julius Caesar, there were seven successive days where a comet was visible. And these events were regarded by the Romans as kind of a divine eulogy, kind of highlighting how significant this person was. But as we've seen in Mark's gospel, this cosmic event of darkness was not a eulogy. It was an expression of evil and judgment. It's like the plague of darkness over Egypt. These hours of darkness from noon to 3 p.m. were not a solar eclipse. If you've ever seen one, you know they last just a moment. This was something utterly supernatural. And as the soldier witnesses this, he hears Jesus cry. He realizes that this isn't at all what it seems to be. This is not a failed insurrectionist who's been crucified and utterly shamed. No, he, as he reaches for words to express who he is, only religious categories would be adequate. And he takes up this title, the son of God. That's the title that Roman emperors were called by. Because in the Roman cult of the divine emperor, he was worshiped as a son of God. Remarkably, the Roman soldier applies this title to the Lord Jesus, who in his weakness and humiliation exhibits none of the things that Rome valued or would have associated with its emperor. No splendor, no military might is present there. Only a man who suffers. and in his righteousness does not lash out at others. This was an extraordinary thing. He's used to watching people dying across. No one has ever died this way. No one has ever died so quickly and with such strength of voice. And here we see something so important for us, because as Christians, it's so easy for us to think, well, we'll win the world if we can show them the strength and power of God, that some mighty act, if God would just show himself to people through some mighty act, they would believe. But faith is not awakened by such acts. If you could perform miracles, it wouldn't change the heart of anyone. There is a power in the cross that is unlike any earthly power. And so the question Mark has posed in his gospel to us, dear readers, is this. Who is Jesus? Who do you say he is? The centurion can only see who he is after he dies. It's only after he dies that the truth about him is to be grasped. It's only as we look back at the cross and the torn curtain can we understand that it is God who is present on that cross. Jason Meyer, writing about this passage, recounts a story that appeared in the news some time ago. There was a family who had waited too long to abandon their home as the wildfires spread around them. The blaze grew so quickly that every path of leaving was cut off to them. And the desperate dad had an idea. Recently, he'd burned some trash in the field near their home. And he took his family to that spot, and the children laid down first, and then the mother over the children, and then the father over them all. And the fire raged around them. And they felt its searing heat, but they were spared because the fire didn't come to the spot where they laid. There was nothing left there to burn. In the same way, the cross is the one safe place that sinners can run to from the fire of God's wrath. That wrath fell there once, never to fall there again. And here we have the answer to Jesus' cry, why have you forsaken me? It's so that those who put their trust in him might never be forsaken by God. In the place where the innocent one was condemned, that is the very spot where these words became reality. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The cross is the safe ground for us because it is the singed ground. The fire fell there once and will never fall there again. Have you run to the safety of the cross? Have you come and put your trust and surrendered yourself to him? It's okay to still have questions. It's okay to still have things that don't make sense to you. The question Mark presents you is, do you see who it is who's died on the cross? And will you run there that you might not be forsaken? Let's pray. Gracious Lord God, press this scene into our mind and heart, and grant us grace to respond to it in all its meaning. For we pray in Christ's name, amen. For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous man, though perhaps a good person one would dare even to die.