for a long time, and a large part of that is due to the fact that the past week takes up a lot of time in the scriptures. It's a lot of writing that we've got to cover. But in Matthew chapter 27, Matthew chapter 27, we've started reading about his death on the cross, being nailed to the cross. So we'll back up a few verses and we'll cover a few verses before we get to the text verse for this morning. So those willing and able to, I'm going to ask that you stand with me, please. We'll share together the beginning of reading in verse 45. That's not our text, but we'll get to it. Okay. Now, from the sixth hour, darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. 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 were standing there when they heard it began saying, this man is calling for Elijah. Immediately, one of them ran, taking a sponge. He filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave him a drink. But the rest of them said, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him. And Jesus cried out again for the loud voice and yielded up his spirit. Behold, the veil, the temple was torn in two from top two bottom and the earth shook and the rocks were split. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to open your word again today. And we're blessed to be able to be able to do that and to gather together and focus on it for a few moments. We know, Father, that throughout the week you've kept us and you've preserved us. And part of the reason you've done that is so that we can be gathered together today here in this place at this hour. Though our numbers may be small, it is not indicative of your presence, or of your power, or of the truth of your word, or the reality of your promises. We cling to all of those things. You are our God. We claim you as such because we've been bought by the blood of Christ and become a child of God. Help us not to be afraid of whatever this world throws at us. It is your prerogative, your prerogative, to allow the world to test our faith so that we will be true and our faith will be purified. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you so much, and be seated please. So, our text verse is going to consist of verse 51, okay? That's our text verse for this morning. Now, as we get down there, it's important for us to realize at this time that Jesus Christ is dead. We know that from last week's sermon. His body is limp on the cross. His head is bowed. His limbs are stretched to the limits. Blood pours forth from his head, from the crown of thorns. He's not much to look at. Blood pours down his back. The soldiers have taken a spear and stuck it to his side. So there's blood bleeding from his side. Now you've got to realize that these soldiers are men who are very familiar with death. You cannot fool these soldiers. They're experts. And if somebody's dead, they say they're dead, they're dead. OK? So they're convinced. Everybody standing around is convinced that Jesus Christ is dead. Now, the scriptures do not put it like that. The scriptures are inspired. And what do they tell us? What does Matthew tell us? Well, Matthew tells us in the preceding verses, verse 51, that Jesus breathed out his last. He gave up the spirit. He did it of his own volition. His life was not taken. He died because he chose to die. He did not succumb to his wounds. This is an incredible thought when you think about it. But normal men die because they succumb to their wounds. Jesus Christ was God. The fact of the matter is, he could have stayed on that cross, and stayed on that cross, and stayed on that cross. You know, when a man throws himself on a grenade, to die for his men around him, he's going to succumb to the power of the grenade. Jesus Christ could fall on a grenade, the grenade could go off, but Jesus Christ being God, doesn't have to succumb to the power of the grenade. Jesus Christ, the Bible says, gave up his spirit because that's how you become a sacrifice. You don't become a sacrifice because you're forced to die. If somebody takes your life against your will, that's called murder. Right? That's called murder. So Jesus Christ gave up his spirit to become a living sacrifice. Now, Admittedly, if you're looking at Jesus Christ from the ground level, it does look like Jesus Christ is being murdered. No doubt about it. The Jews had how much evidence against Jesus Christ to crucify him? Nada. Zero. Nothing. They didn't have a case. Did Pilate have a case? Pilate didn't. Nobody had a case against Jesus Christ. He was hanging on the cross and from a purely horizontal view, they were murdering Jesus Christ. But because he had no real case against him, he had not committed any real crime. And Pilate even knew that. Pilate said, I'm going to try to get this man loose. And he did it three times. But he was unsuccessful because the Jews weren't going to have any part of it. But as believers, we're looking at the same scene as they are looking at it, but we see it totally different, right? We don't see the cross the same way as everybody sees the cross. We're looking at the scene, and we see it from a biblical perspective and from God's point of view and the reality is that Jesus Christ is hanging on the cross because He was predestined to die on the cross to cover our sins. That was God's will. We see what's happening there from a totally different perspective. He is the sacrifice of God on the cross. He's the Lamb of God dying on the cross shedding His blood for our sins. That's what we see when we look at the cross. We don't see it like everybody else sees it. We have a different perspective. So all of God's wrath that should have been poured out on me is actually being poured out on Jesus Christ. So much so that when God gets through pouring out His wrath on Jesus Christ, there is no wrath left in God. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine God so emptying Himself of His anger and His wrath for my sins that He has absolutely nothing left to You pour out against me. That's why I am free when I go to heaven. Because God has so dispensed His wrath against me on Jesus Christ, there's nothing that God's going to point to and say, oh yeah, He needs to go to hell. No, that's not going to happen. It cannot happen. It's an impossibility. God emptied all of His wrath on my sin on Jesus Christ. There's no reason that God could ever separate me from Him. Never, never, never, never, ever, ever, ever could God separate me from Him. Now one of the things that made Jesus Christ a complete sacrifice was his complete obedience to God while he was on the cross. Do you realize that none of the miracles that Jesus worked Do you realize that his healing causing the deaf to hear and the blind to see and all the healing of the wither of the hands and all the people that raised from the death and all the fulfilling of the scriptures and all the fulfilling of the prophecies that Jesus Christ did would have been not if Jesus Christ had not died on the cross and been completely obedient to God. while he was hanging on the cross. And I told you this last week, I'm going to remind you again this week, because it is so fundamental to your understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ, what Jesus Christ did on the cross. The Bible says, the first commandment is what? That you love the Lord thy God with all your heart, mind, and soul. When Jesus was hanging on the cross, the devil's whole intention was to get Jesus Christ to break the supreme law of God, which is to love God. That was why Christ was going and while Satan was emptying everything he possibly could, dying on the cross is what it looks like to love God. That's what it looks like. Which results in obedience to Him, which is what Jesus Christ did on the cross. regardless of your circumstances. Jesus was on the cross. He was demonstrating. He was demonstrating something he said earlier in the book of Matthew. Let me remind you what Jesus said earlier in the book of Matthew because he is demonstrating it while he was on the cross. I want you to see Jesus on the cross and I want you to see this passage of scripture at the same time. Jesus said, He who loves father or mother more than me. You remember this one? We studied it years ago. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. He who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. So Jesus is going through the checklist here, okay? He doesn't love anybody more than His Father. And He's telling you and me, this is how much we need to love Him. We don't love any more. We don't love our father more, our mother more, our brothers or sisters more, or anybody else more, our daughters or sons more. No. He says, and he who does not take up his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find a checkmark. That's what Jesus was demonstrating on the cross. For you and me. He was literally fulfilling that passage of scripture. That nothing would come before Him and God. Between Him and God. Period. Supreme love equals supreme obedience, folks. That's the principle. Supreme love equals supreme obedience. Now, while we look at the cross with great confidence and thankfulness for what Jesus Christ did for us there, there are many increasing in the ranks of Christianity that no longer believe that Jesus Christ needed to go to the cross. That it was unnecessary for Jesus Christ to be the bloody, suffering, broken, beaten body that he was to die on the cross for my sins. We're not that bad. There is this growing animosity toward that in Christianity. And even outside of Christianity, I would say this, that one of the biggest cross deniers of Jesus dying on the cross is the Muslims. I'm not saying that the Muslims choose necessarily to say, well, I just don't believe in Jesus Christ down on the cross, but it is taught in the Quran that Jesus Christ was not killed by the Jews, and secondly, that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross. Now, we know that's 100% opposite of what the scriptures teach, but it is what the Quran teaches, and it is what the Muslims believe. But the biggest thing that bothers me is that there's this growing sentiment among those who are, I'll call them liberal Christians out there, who are saying, oh no, Jesus Christ didn't need to die on a cross. He didn't need to go through all that suffering for me. I am simply not that bad. Let me tell you something, the contributing factor in both of these groups, the Muslims and the liberal Christians, the contributing factor is, who denied that Jesus Christ on the cross, is that they have a lack of understanding of who God is. The Bible is God's own account of who He is. The Bible is inspired by God, and therefore it's going to leave a testimony to His character and His nature. And so when you look at the Word of God, the thing that you're going to see most of all in the Word of God is that God is holy. When you look at the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation, the thing that you cannot escape about the Bible is it presents a picture of God, and the picture of God that it presents is that He is a holy God, man! He's holy! Everything God does leaves behind a footprint. Right? I mean, everybody here, everybody here. Well, I say that I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm speaking too broadly perhaps. Some of us have gone out into the woods and when we've got into the woods, particularly after rain, it is, it is not hard to see some kind of animal tracks. left behind in the mud. Or if you've gone out on a snowy day, and you're traversing around, whatever, on a snowy day, you will find, most likely, rabbit tracks, because they're everywhere, right? But you know, by looking at these tracks, what kind of animal put those tracks there? It's indicative. God has left tracks of himself in all that he does, any sculptor, any painter, any artist. is identified by his work because every artist, every sculptor, every painter has a unique personality, a unique makeup, a unique disposition, and that comes through in their art way. All of us, all of us are distinct. We have our personal quirks, we have our idiosyncrasies, we have our peculiarities, our voices are different, and everywhere you go and everything you touch with your finger, you leave behind an identifying mark. Your fingerprint completely identifies who you are from everybody else. God has left his footprint behind. Say, what can we learn from his footprint? God is eternal. God has no beginning. God has no end. We can't get our minds around that. God is preeminent. God is omnipotent. He is omniscient. He is omnipresent. He is ageless. He is blameless. He is faultless. His majesty and his goodness are unparalleled. This is God. Right? This is God. The problem with Allah is that his holiness and is justice or arbitrary. Allah determines who has earned eternal life in and of himself. Who has life and who has not life is not determined by a definite standard of right and wrong. And what's worse is that Allah offers no payment for sin. None for sin. It is not equally applied to everybody under the standards of Allah. Allah offers forgiveness solely based on his subjective desires. If Allah were truly holy, he would require a sin payment from everybody because all are sinners. All sin is an offense against the laws of God. That is justice. Justice requires that if you've broken a law that there must be a payment made for that. Allah offers no payment for sins. The Muslims depiction of holiness of Allah is inconsistent with what it means to be truly holy. Because truly holy gods require a payment for all sin, not just an arbitrary forgiveness. And you don't know if you made it into Allah's presence or if you haven't made it into Allah's presence because there is nothing distinctive. Isn't it interesting that when we read about the angels praising God in heaven, that the angels are not saying about God, love, love, love, God all love. Isn't that interesting? But what do you find the angels in heaven saying? What do you find them saying? Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. Isn't that interesting? Why isn't it that the first thing out of mouth of those who see God isn't a testimony to His love? But those who see God, everywhere you find it in the scriptures, those who see God, the first thing that they do is they bow down before Him. They humble themselves, they fall on the ground, they fall on their faces, they prostrate themselves before God because He's holy. That's why. Because He's holy. Which brings me to my next point though. If God is holy, that means he's flawless, right? If God is holy, he is without blame and without error whatsoever. God has never sinned, God's never done anything wrong. Same thing with Jesus Christ, because he is God, Jesus has never sinned, he's never done anything wrong at all. He's perfect in every way. And there's a part of us though, that old fleshly, sinful nature part of us, that does not really want to stand before a perfect God. You see, it's like standing in a dark room, if you can picture that. You're standing in a dark room, and you're completely naked, right? And all of a sudden, the light comes on. And you're standing. Totally exposed. That, my beloved, is a picture of us standing in the presence of God. Because the perfection of God and the holiness of God automatically exposes everything about us. That is the nature and power of a holy God. that is what happens when you come into His presence. God's righteousness and purity exposes our sinfulness and our evil and our lust and those things that we think we have in secret and that we buried and that nobody else can see and that wouldn't be so bad except God is holy and here's the deal here's the other side of the coin if God sees sin What does God have to do? He has to judge it. You see, God's holiness means that God is righteous. He's righteous. And if He sees sin, it must be judged. Let's say that you are buying, let's say that you go to the gas station. I'm going to go to the gas station, right? And I think I paid $2.89 at Walmart. I got my 10 cents off, you know. So I'm pumping gas in my truck and I notice that, wait a minute, I'm only getting three quarters of a gallon of gas for a dollar for the money that I'm paying for a gallon of gas. Wait a minute, I'm only getting three quarters of a gallon and I am paying for a gallon of gas? Now that's going to rub me the wrong way. Okay, I am going to stand and judge. I expect that pump to measure out one gallon of gas because that is just and that is right. You know why it's just and right? Because that is how much I am paying for. And if I get any less than that, it's not right and it's not just. So God has then created you in his image. And as such, being in His image, you are to bear His image. You are His image bearer. That is what He created you to be from the dust of the ground. So, you are to look like God. Morally, you are to look exactly like God. That's what He created you to be. Guess what? If you don't look like God, you are cheating God. He paid for a gallon of gas. He created you to be perfect just like Him. To demonstrate His character. To demonstrate His likeness. To demonstrate His morality. And if you don't do that, you're cheating God. In other words, God has to make a judgment on you. You're not doing what God created you to do. God can't let your sin go. Why? Because that's not what He created you to be. Just like you don't like paying for three quarters of a gallon of gas. God's offended. He's not getting out of what He created you to be. You're breaking His laws. You're desecrating His image. And the penalty for desecrating the image of God is eternal hell. God's moral laws are not negotiable. Lying is lying. Stealing is stealing. Cheating is stealing. Rape is rape. Murder is murder. Going to the casino is not trusting God for your finances. Taking drugs to deal with your problems is not trusting God. That's a sin against God. Sin! God's laws are not negotiable. You say, I will go, I will say, let me throw this one at you. How about gossip? Well, that seems to be pretty innocent, right? Just gossip. God's not going to send me to hell for gossip. Yeah, because you're desecrating the image of God when you gossip about somebody. So yeah, that's worthy of eternal hell. Yes. All these things break the greatest commandment of all, which is to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, and with all thy soul. And therein is the essence of our sin, is that we do not love God. When we sin, we're demonstrating to the world that we do not love this God who sent his son to die for us on the cross, because he's so holy. He's so holy. He's so holy. He's so holy. Now, why are you telling us all this stuff? Huh? Why are you going through all this stuff? Because that's what's involved in the last part of verse 50 and introduces us to verse 51. Everything I've shared with you is summed up in verse 50 where it says, and yielded up his spirit, and then it immediately goes to verse 51, and notice what it says in verse 51, and behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And behold, now Matthew and Mark are the only two writers that record this, okay? But Matthew particularly draws attention to this, what's going on here. He says it's of particular interest to him because he's a Jew, number one, and he's trying to write to Jews. So he's drawing attention to the tearing of the veil. It's extremely important to the Jewish community. The temple in Jerusalem was like, you know, that was the place to go. The temple in Jerusalem was the place for all the Jews to remember the presence of God, right? It was a top-notch place. And so whatever happened in the temple was extremely important. Extremely important. So Matthew recognizes that. So he kind of makes a big deal out of it here, because it's going to change their worship here. There are two curtains in the temple. The first curtain you go through, you enter to the sanctuary part of the temple, then you go to the end of the sanctuary part of the temple, and you get to the Holy of Holies. When you get to the Holy of Holies, there's this very ornate, very heavy curtain there that separates the sanctuary from the Holy of Holies and it's 30 feet tall a curtain higher than this roof this is 18 feet I think so you can imagine 30 feet tall curtain 30 foot in the air 30 foot wide that's a curtain that's a curtain but the Bible tells us that the curtain was torn how? top bottom If a man was going to tear the curtain, he'd have to start where? The bottom. It's 30 feet up there. So if you're going to tear the curtain, you're going to start from the bottom. But the Bible says this curtain was torn from the top. Which is very indicative of the fact that God is the one who's in control here. And that God is ripping the curtain apart, opening up the Holy of Holies. This is cataclysmic. This is big. The reason it's called the Holy of Holies, beloved, is because that's where God was. The veil was there to separate His presence from the people, and so that no one would arbitrarily, accidentally go into the Holy of Holies. There's only one time a year that anybody went into the Holy of Holies. And that was the High Priest on the Day of Atonement. And he would go into the Holy of Holies one day a year, and the only way he could go into the Holy of Holies was first of all if he did what? Make a sacrifice, right? So he'd make the sacrifice, he would take the blood with him and go into the Holy of Holies. And the Bible tells us in the Old Testament that he would take this blood and he would sprinkle it on the mercy seat, right? And he would do this twice. He'd do it once for him and do it once for the congregation, okay? But you never, ever went into the Holy of Holies unless you were carrying the blood. If you didn't carry the blood, man, you were gone. You cannot go into the presence of God without the blood. You can't go into the presence of God without the death of the Lamb. But God ripped open the Holy of Holies. Jesus breathed his last. And he said it is finished. It is paid for. And the Holy of Holies was opened up. The presence of God was opened up. You don't go in there without atonement. You don't go in there without blood. The purpose of the Holy of Holies was to remind you that you could not just enter the presence of God. You had to have the covering. You had to have the atonement. His justice could not overlook your sin. Your sin has to be paid for. You go into the presence of God without a covering for your sin, and you're going to be killed immediately. Because God is holy and His justice requires your death because of your sin. God cannot dismiss sin. I hear it all the time. You hear it too. Why can't God just overlook it? Why can't God just forget about it? Why can't God just ignore sin? Because He's holy. And it exposes sin. And His justice has to be satisfied. The Bible says Jesus is our propitiation. What does that mean? That means He satisfies God. So that we can actually come into the presence of God. God is not impartial, folks. He's not an impartial God. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The Bible says, says through one transgression there resulted condemnation for all men. In Adam we were condemned and we live it out in our sinful lives. Until. Until you get to verse 51. Until you get to verse 51. until Jesus died on the cross and the veil was split apart. And this is where you say, Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Praise God that the veil was split apart and we have access into the presence of a holy God. We go directly into the presence of God. Directly. Hebrews put it this way. Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place, by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil that is His flesh. Our sins are covered by the blood that Jesus shed on the cross. We go right into the presence of God, right into the holy place. And we do so without any fear. We do so without any anxiety. We do so without any trepidation. We go in there with complete boldness that we are in the presence of God. When we repent of our sins, put our faith in Jesus Christ. As our personal Savior, listen to me, you don't have to wonder if you're going to be in the presence of God. You don't have to guess if you're going to be in the presence of God. You don't have to wonder if I'm going to go to heaven or am I going to hell. You don't have to wonder if I'm going to go to purgatory and do I have to wait in purgatory for God to finally make some kind of decision about my eternity. You don't have to worry about any of that kind of stuff, folks. None of it. None of it. We don't have to worry if we're good enough. We don't have to worry if we've done enough. None of that. None of that. God's standards are not arbitrary. We've all had times in our lives where we kind of doubted Am I really going to make it? Am I really going to be in heaven? Am I sure I'm going to be there? Yes. Because of the blood of Christ, God has opened his presence to you. God is morally perfect and in Christ, in Christ, you are morally perfect. And because of this confidence we have in the death of Jesus Christ and being in the presence of God, we go into the presence of God without any fear. Nothing in this world should cause us to be afraid. Period. And Jesus said, go make disciples. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the world threatens us and tells us we can't do that. You remember, you're under God's authority. You're not under man's authority. And if this world threatens you to the point that it's going to take your life, you laugh. You laugh at death. You don't laugh at your persecutors. You mourn for them. You mourn all the people going to hell. But you laugh at death because you know where you're going and you're not afraid. You know you're not because of Jesus' blood and you claim that blood. Let me end with one more admonition. The Hebrew writer went on to say this in Hebrews chapter 10. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of a living God. If you're without Christ, you're undone. You're holding the bag of your sins. And you need to put your faith in Jesus Christ and you need to repent. And you need to trust the one who died on the cross and covered every sin. Made every payment. Shed His drop of blood and God will not resist what Christ has done for you. I'm going to ask for the RD to come. He's going to help us with an invitation to him this morning.