So let us open this morning to Matthew chapter 27, beginning in verse 45. Going to read through verse 50. Now from the 6th hour, darkness fell upon all the land until the 9th hour. About the 9th hour, that's 3 p.m. by the way, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, l-e-l-e lema sabachthani, that is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, This man is calling for Elijah. Immediately one of them ran, and 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 with a loud voice and yielded up His Spirit. The Gospels record that Jesus spoke seven times while on the cross. And we've looked at the first three of those the last two Lord's days. Jesus asked His Father to forgive His accusers, the mockers and murderers, for their crime. And he had given the care of his mother into the hands of the apostle John. Woman, behold your son. And Jesus told a repentant thief who was on a cross next to him, who was being crucified that day, that he would that same day be with Jesus in paradise. All these things Jesus is believed to have spoken between 9 a.m. and 12 noon. 12 noon being the sixth hour. And so in these first three times that Jesus spoke from the cross, we see His concern for others. We see the loving heart of the one whose entire life on earth was given to the service of others, whose whole purpose in being born. was to serve others. And even as he hung falsely accused on that cross, he thought only of the care of his mother on earth, of the eternal destiny of this penitent thief, and of the guilt of his murderers for their crime against him. But still, on the cross, the weight of all our sin was laid upon Him. And He felt that weight. He didn't take our punishment, folks, just as a matter of formality. He didn't just take the blame. He took the punishment in reality. This was a day of judgment. It was a day when God judged all of our sins. This is the day God judged the sins of believers in the one who was taking the punishment. And that judgment, that punishment brought Him incredible and unbelievable anguish. From the sixth hour, from noon until 3 p.m., Matthew says, a darkness fell upon all the land. At 12 noon on Friday, something very dramatic took place. This darkness lasted for three hours, and the very fact that the darkness is mentioned in the gospel shows it must have been something that was quite unforgettable. Luke's wording that the sun was obscured or the sun failing seems to imply that this was an eclipse of the sun, but that could not have been the case. First of all, an eclipse isn't going to last for three hours. And we know from astronomy that this could not have been a natural eclipse of the sun. It couldn't have taken place at Passover when the moon was full. And this darkness occurred, though, when the sun was at its peak, when the light was at its brightest. And it continued for three hours in the middle of the afternoon. The darkness had to be wholly a miraculous work of God. As were the signs which followed. Look what happens. God darkened the sun's light. Later, He shook the earth and split the rocks. A great earthquake occurred. This was a day of supernatural events. And it's not known how much area was affected by this darkness. Some believe it was half the earth. Some believe it was more localized. No one knows because scripture doesn't tell us. So while we're safe in saying and knowing that God brought it about, we don't have a completely satisfactory answer as to how God did that or how much area was affected. The real question is what was the meaning of that darkness? What did it mean? Why darkness? And Scripture does answer that question for us. The darkness was a sign of judgment. The judgment of God upon our sins. God's wrath was being poured out on the sinless Lord Jesus Christ as He, as our substitute, suffered intense physical pain and agony. And not only that, but the abandonment, not only of all His earthly friends, but of His heavenly Father. In a very real sense, hell came to Calvary that day. And our Savior experienced it. for us in our place. Now, the darkening of the sun, the moon, and the stars is frequently seen as a symbol of God's coming in judgment throughout both the Old and the New Testaments. Exodus 10. Verse 21, God covered Egypt in darkness as one of the 10 judgments on the false gods of Egypt. 1021, the Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hand toward the sky that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt. Isaiah 1310, speaking of judgment on Babylon, for the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light. The sun will be dark when it rises. Ezekiel 32.7, as to judgment on Egypt, and when I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars. I will cover the sun with a cloud. Same thing we're reading here. Matthew 24.29, but immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened. Revelation 6-12, I looked and when He broke the seal, there was a great earthquake, as we'll see here in Matthew 27 as well. And the sun became as black as sackcloth. Revelation 8-12, a third of the sun and a third of the moon and a third of the stars were struck so that a third of them would be darkened. In all these passages, we see darkness signifying and or accompanying God's judgment. And as the judgment of God for our sins was being poured out on Jesus, on the cross, He spoke for a fourth time. What would He say? Well, He said the words that we find in Psalm 22. But this time He speaks to His Father. It's three o'clock. He cried out with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani? That is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? There's a variation you'd notice maybe between Matthew and Mark. In Matthew, he uses the Hebrew L-E. Mark uses the Aramaic L-O-E. But both mean my God. And it may be that Jesus quoted the psalm in Hebrew and Mark put it into Aramaic for his readers. But both Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus cried out these words with a loud voice. These are the very first words of Psalm 22. They were written by one of Jesus' ancestors, a great, great, great, great, great grandfather, King David, a thousand years earlier. Speaking loudly as he did, Jesus wanted these words to be heard. He didn't whisper them. He made sure everybody heard them. Why have you forsaken me? This is a remarkable thing for the Son of God to say to His eternal Heavenly Father. Had God actually forsaken, abandoned His Son? These words of our Lord show us the gravity of our sin against a righteous and holy God. That He would forsake His eternal Son. The punishment for our sins was such that as Jesus felt the full weight of those sins, He felt the abandonment of His Father. Just let that sink in for a moment. The wrath of God for our sins meant His being forsaken by our Heavenly Father. Cast out for a time, separated from the very source of life. He did this for us. During those three black hours, Jesus was made sin for us. He was made a curse for us. And so God turned away from Him. So as He suffered on the cross, Jesus cried to God, not now seeing Him as Father, because there was this wall of separation had risen between Father and Son. And what was that? Our sin. Our sin separated Jesus from His Father for the time. God had removed Himself from the one bearing the curse for our sins. The Father had left the Son. The Son cried for God and God made no reply. Think about this. He cries to the Father and the Father does not reply. How do we know this? Well, let's go back and look at Psalm 22 again. We find the explanation. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But he says, I cried by day, but you do not answer. You don't answer. And again, it's not that David wrote these words and Jesus later quoted them. The Spirit of Jesus gave David these words a thousand years before. Recall that as Jesus had predicted the previous night, all His disciples had already deserted Him. All of you will be scattered. And they did. And John tells us that Jesus had already told them, John 16, 32, that an hour was coming for you to be scattered and to leave Me alone. But Jesus said to them, Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. But now, the next day, even his father had forsaken him. Ever feel alone before? This was the most isolated feeling anybody's ever experienced. And let us understand, in order for Jesus to satisfy the wrath of God, which we deserve, it was necessary for him to be placed as a guilty person at the judgment seat of God. That's what was happening in this judgment that day. And nothing, folks, could be more dreadful than to stand before the living God and be found guilty by Him. And then to receive the sentence that one deserves for those crimes. Jesus endured this, not because of any sin of His own, but in our place. This is what Christianity is all about. Do you believe this? It's what saves you. Believing this and turning from your sin and serving Him. Surrendering your life to Him. The sadness of his soul must have been so powerful and so torturous that it forces him to break out into this cry, My God, why have you forsaken me? These words were not just in response to physical agony, were they? But the anguish of his soul. We may ask, how could God forsake God? Well, the answer is not that there was a time when the father stopped loving the son. That didn't happen. And it doesn't mean that the son ever turned away from the father. No. Notice, even as he asks why he's being forsaken, he calls him, my God, my God. So the answer must be that the father deserted his son's human nature, and even this in a limited, though very real and agonizing sense. And this is very difficult for us to understand because we have the dual nature of Christ, which is a little too big for our brains. But by the word forsaken, Jesus was speaking of isolation. He was experiencing isolation as he'd been separated from his Father. Imagine being separated from God right now. Imagine if you couldn't turn to Him. That's the punishment for all sinners, separation from God. You either trust in this sacrifice He made that day and this punishment He took that day, or you will be separated from God and His kingdom for all eternity. There's not any question about that. The punishment for every sinner's rebellion against God is separation from Him for all eternity. People who believe in Jesus, who trust in His offering of Himself, will never experience, never experience that separation from God. What a blessing to have. Jesus went through that kind of separation for us that day. Him who knew no sin was made sin for us. He became a curse for us. As Paul quotes the Old Testament, Galatians 3.13, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. So all that was involved in the forsaking of Jesus by God during those three awful hours, we can't really know. We can't even begin to imagine. But we do know that Jesus was covered with the guilt of all of our sins. We know He was accursed. We know that when God saw Jesus in that way, He turned away from Him. Because God turns away from all sin. The Son of God bore our sin and its curse as a man. But even though God turned from Him and left Him, He cried out to Him. He cried out to Him and clung to Him. We must remember, the divine Son of God took on the weakness of flesh for one reason, because it was necessary for our salvation. He didn't just do it to do it. This wasn't one of many ways that we could have been reconciled to God. This was the only way. A sinless man had to accomplish what was necessary to reconcile sinners to God. in his humanity, Jesus felt God's estrangement from him, but that didn't keep him from continuing to trust in his Father. We see this in the way that Jesus addresses God as His God, my God, even as He's asking why He's forsaking Him. Think about that. Do we have that kind of faith when we feel forsaken by God to yet trust in Him? even as he felt forsaken, his faith and trust in his Father remained steadfast." You see the lesson? And so, as we read these words, when Jesus is asking why, it seems God's purpose in forsaking Jesus was hidden from him. Look, Jesus clearly understood why He had come to Jerusalem, right? I'm going to be taken before the Jewish court, I'm going to be handed over to the Gentiles, I'm going to be scourged and mocked, I'm going to be killed, and on the third day I'm going to rise again. He told Him that three times before it happened. He knew why He was born. Didn't He know that His agony and death on the cross would involve His being forsaken by His Father? Was it necessary? Was it necessary that he not only suffer all that he suffered, but that he be abandoned by God? Wouldn't just the whips and the nails and the blood and the crown of thorns, wouldn't that have been enough? Did he have to be forsaken by his father? And didn't he know this was going to be part of the redemptive process? You know what? We don't have to be surprised to hear from Jesus words that indicate this purpose was hidden from Him, or that this part of the suffering was hidden from Him in His humanity. Remember, other things were kept from Jesus. He doesn't know the hour and the day of judgment in Matthew 24, 36. Of that day, no one knows, He said. He didn't know all things in His humanity. But what we do know is, He was forsaken, and He died, and He suffered, and in doing all of those things, He paid the full price for the redemption of every single person who trusts in what He did that day. We read these words today, but that day the words of our Lord were heard by some of those who were standing there. Remember, He cried them out. Verse 47, Some of those who were standing there when they heard it began saying, This man is calling for Elijah. Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and he gave him a drink. But the rest of them said, Let's see whether Elijah will come and save him. They're still mocking him. None of the gospel writers tells us who it was that said this man was calling for Elijah. But we see in these verses more of the mockery, most likely from the Jews here. And we saw earlier, the word for God in Hebrew is Eli, in Aramaic, Eloi. The word for Elijah is similar, but it's different, Eliy, E-l-i-y-a. And the similarity between Eli and Elia, the Old Testament prophet, was close enough that these blasphemers could make a joke out of it. Remember, the Jews had believed, and if they'd read Malachi, they would have seen, words that said, Elijah would come before Messiah and announce his coming. Of course, that was reference to John. But these mockers knew that Jesus was crying out to God, not to Elijah. They knew that. But they mocked him as though he had called out to Elijah, asking Elijah to rescue him and announce him as the Messiah as he's dying on the cross. Okay, Jesus, there you are. Now let's get Elijah down here and let's see if he tells us you're the Messiah. This was the reply of wicked men to our Savior in His most agonizing hour when He drank the cup of God's wrath for the sin and guilt of the world. And we see in John's Gospel that in the midst of all of that mockery, Jesus spoke for a fifth time. John 19, 28. After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the scripture, he said, I am thirsty, or I thirst. And immediately someone, no doubt a Roman soldier, took a sponge and he filled it with sour wine. Now this was not anything other than a normal kind of wine that the Roman soldiers would have drank. And the soldier took the sponge, he put it on a stick, and he brought it to Jesus' mouth. And Jesus did drink from it, it looks like. As he's doing this, the rest continued their jesting. He's holding that up. Let's see whether Elijah's going to come. Maybe they were saying, look, don't give him that. Let's see if Elijah comes and saves him. Mark 15, 36, even the soldier who gave Jesus the drink joined in the entertainment. How much more mistreated could any person be than our Lord was that day? Brothers and sisters, He suffered this punishment voluntarily. He volunteered. As Isaiah had prophesied, he gave his life. As Jesus said in John, he laid it down. Of course, Matthew records it here in verse 50. He yielded up his spirit. He cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. He knew exactly what he was doing when he offered himself as our sacrifice. I hope you're moved, your soul is moved by what He did for us. His voluntariness is clear from the last two things Jesus said from the cross. First, in the sixth word He spoke, it is finished. He took the drink and said, it is finished. Neither Matthew nor Mark tell us the words Jesus spoke, but both say that He cried out again with a loud voice. But John recorded the words, it is finished. We sung them this morning. Meaning, the work that the father had given him to do had now been accomplished. He had now given his life a ransom for many. The spirit of Jesus then left his body And thus he died. Physical death is the separation of your spirit from your body. So John 19 30 records all of this. Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, it is finished. He bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Now it's Luke who includes Jesus' final words on the cross before his body died. Father, now look what Jesus does here. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. His spirit, his self, his true self. But in these amazing words, we see Jesus is still conscious of what? Of His Father's loving presence. Of His Father's loving presence. This is a stunning affirmation of trust after He had just endured all that agony and is asking God, why are you forsaking me? Now He says, into your hands I commit my spirit. And we see that Jesus knew something, don't we? He knew physical death wasn't the end of life. So as his body died, he entrusted his living spirit to his father's care. And here he shows his confidence and trust that his father would be the faithful guardian of his spirit. And on the morning of the resurrection, what happens? On the third day, the father restored his son's spirit to his body. Never again to die. And Jesus at this point can rejoice. It's done. It's finished. He's now prepared to meet death with confidence, whenever it pleased His Father, knowing the Father would guard His true self even in death. And we learn here, don't leave here without this impressing itself deep into your heart, that as we die a physical death, we live on in our spirit as God receives our souls, if we're believing in Him, into His safekeeping. Apostle Paul assured us of this truth. Philippians 1, 21-24, For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I'm to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me, and I don't know which to choose. But I'm hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ. Stephen, as he was being stoned to death by some wicked men shortly after Pentecost, because he proclaimed his faith in Jesus, because he proclaimed he believed all that we've read here today, he said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And you know what else? Jesus didn't go to paradise alone that day. No, He carried with Him this other guy on the cross, the soul of a penitent thief, a guy who had lived a life that merited the death penalty. He admitted he earned the death penalty and deserved it. And Jesus took him with Him that day. in the Gospels. What happened between 12 noon and 3 o'clock is a blank. We know darkness was over the land, but we know that in those three hours of darkness, Jesus must have suffered indescribable agony to lead him to say, My God, why have you forsaken me? He's made sin for us. He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. God was laying on Him that day the iniquity of us all. We need to understand, and don't leave here without holding this in your heart. This wasn't the defeat of Jesus on the cross. No, this was victory. This was a great victory. In fact, this was the greatest victory in the history of humanity. Not only was Jesus reconciling men who'd been separated from God for 6,000 years to God, but this was victory over sin, over the fallen angel who had incited people to rebel against the Creator, and this would be victory over what? Over death itself. Death isn't the end for anybody. In order to conquer death, Jesus had to die. Someone had to die to conquer death. Because of sin, death came into the world. Jesus came into the world because of sin and death and conquered them both. And because He rose, which He did in three days, all men, 1 Corinthians 15, all men would one day be raised from the grave to live forever. And those trusting in the suffering and death of Jesus as the payment for their sins will be raised to an eternity in the presence and in the glory of the very one who suffered on the cross that day. That's the good news. I don't know what better news I could give you. Hallelujah, what a Savior. Those who don't believe in Him, those who think this is all a big fairy tale, they're going to suffer in agony very much like the one He suffered on the cross that day in Calvary. I don't take any pleasure in that, but I know it's the truth. Only they're going to suffer it for all eternity. And He calls you all to come to Him, to trust Him, to believe in Him. To trust in the loving, voluntary offering of Himself on the cross that Friday, just outside Jerusalem. to come to Him, to believe in Him, to confess Him as your Lord and Savior. And you know what? We have it on the authority of Jesus Himself. He will not turn you away. He'll welcome you into His paradise just as He did that thief that day on the cross. Because why? Because He turned away from that sin and said, I believe in you. He'll forgive all your sins. He'll give you His joy and His peace forever. We're going to take a minute, and I want you to meditate on this passage. If you've not surrendered your life to Him, I implore you to do so at this moment. To cry out to Him. To proclaim your faith in Him. To acknowledge your sin. To acknowledge He paid the price for that sin. To turn from those sins. to surrender your life to Him and follow Him, to ask Him for His Spirit, His guidance. You know, it's a narrow road, but Jesus promised it leads to life and a glorious eternity with Him. Lord, we thank You for the prophets through whom you spoke. We thank you for sending your son who taught us all these things. We thank you for the great preachers, Lord, who have brought the gospel to us. We thank you for the boldness and the courage of the martyrs who planted and built your church. Thank you for your spirit indwelling each believer in our midst here this morning. I pray, Lord, you've impressed all of this on our hearts this morning. Your suffering, Your agony, Your love for us through all You endured. Lord, if anybody came in here not having been born again, I pray You would cause that new birth now. I pray, Lord, that You would increase the faith of everyone gathered here. I pray You would convict us of all that needs convicting. I give you thanks, Lord, for all these brothers and sisters, for their hearts to know you, for their hearts to serve. And I pray, Lord, you would guide and direct us, continue to show us the way in which you desire to have us travel. For your kingdom and for your glory, in Christ's name, amen.