Amen. If you'd like to turn to Matthew chapter 27 with me. Father, we come before you, before your word in humility. I ask that you would give us hearts to hear, grant us eyes that see, grant us faith to believe and to take in and accept all that you have said. We praise you for your goodness to us. Help us this morning to understand better what Jesus has done for us. And we thank you for this in his precious name, amen. We're picking up in Matthew where we left off from last week. Of course, my original intention was to finish chapter 27 today, and as I got through it, we're covering three whole verses, so that's When I do that, it's not because I get bored with going on. It's because I find what I'm diving into to be so rich that it'd be a shame to just kind of gloss over it. So in verse 50, which is kind of a bridge from last week to this week, Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And with this, Jesus' physical suffering ended. The separation of soul and spirit from the body is death for us. It's what defined his death. It's important to understand that once God the Son had been incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth, he would be eternally carnated, eternally human, and eternally God. It was not God who died on the cross. It was the Son of Man who died on the cross. Jesus in his humanity. God can't die. I also want to emphasize again, looking at verse 50, that Jesus did not helplessly submit to the processes of death. They didn't overrun him. He was not desperately trying to cling to life and then failed. He chose the exact moment of his death. He did what we can never do. And that is choose how he died and the process of death. There are truly, obviously, some in our time who seek to deliberately end their lives. But even in doing that, they can only bring about a process that will end their life. And it's that process that actually does it. Jesus yielded up his life by the decision of his will. He didn't reach down with his deity and stop his human heart. He didn't stop his breathing and hold his breath until he expired. He simply yielded up his spirit. He did that deliberately and directly. He committed his spirit into the hands of the Father. Luke 23, 46 says, He received the glory that had been his for eternity, that he'd prayed about receiving in John 17.5. He entered paradise with the thief who had died beside him. Just before he died, Jesus said, it is finished. What exactly was finished? What did Jesus accomplish on the cross? And this is all just an excellent reminder Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice for sin. He satisfied the wrath of God as a propitiation for sin. He paid the redemption price to purchase guilty sinners. He was the ransom paid to redeem sinners. He reconciled humanity to God. He was the final sacrifice for sin, ending the need for any other sacrifices, any other offerings. He perfectly fulfilled the law and the prophets. He made it possible for believers to be adopted into the family of God. We who were naturally born as children of wrath are adopted into the family of God through him. And he cleared a way for sinners to approach our God, our creator, boldly and confidently. Paul writes in Ephesians 3 about his ministry and then he closes with a statement about what Jesus did. He says, to me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given to proclaim to the Gentiles the good news of the unfathomable riches of Christ. and to bring to light for all what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things. So that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church, through us. to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. Boy, you could ponder that for a long time. Your life as a Christian, your life within the body of Christ is not just a matter of proclaiming to other sinners the gospel, but proclaiming to rulers and authorities in heavenly places. The spiritual realm is echoing with the preaching of your faith and life. This, Paul says, was in accordance with the eternal purpose which the Father, which God carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in him. Not only did the Lord erase the dividing line between Jew and Gentile, as we see in Ephesians 2, he ended the dividing line, the barrier between God and sinners. That's the mystery of God, which was hidden for ages, but is now revealed through the gospel. The mystery is not something that is hard to figure out, but if we try really hard, we can find it. It's not like watching an Agatha Christie movie, where at the end you go, Deuteronomy 29, 29 says, the hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us. The things that are revealed are the mystery that had been concealed in him, which we could not have understood any other way. We could not have figured it out. We could have not uncovered it. He revealed it. And I love that about our God. I love the scriptures. I love studying the scriptures. I love truth. I love information. I love data. unless he had told us what these things meant, we could never have figured it out. And at the moment of Jesus' death, a tremendous, magnificent sign of what he accomplished was given by God the Father. There's actually three signs. The first is that the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from the top to the bottom. So let's begin by talking about the veil itself. Exodus 20, 26, 31 to 33 says this. You shall make a veil of blue, purple, and scarlet material and fine twisted linen. So four layers thick. It shall be made with cherubim, the work of a skillful designer. You shall hang it on four pillars of acacia wood, overlaid with gold, their hooks also being of gold on four bases of silver. You shall hang up the veil under the clasps, and you shall bring in the ark of the testimony there within the veil, and the veil shall separate for you the holy place and the holy of holies." That's the veil in the tabernacle. It was a veil that was small enough to handle. In fact, in Numbers 4, it says that when they traveled, they used the veil as a cover for the Ark of the Covenant. So it's a piece of fabric that's, as my understanding of the size of the tabernacle goes, four pieces of fabric about 15 feet square. That's my understanding of the inner dimensions of the tabernacle, more or less. Jewish tradition says that each layer of the veil was a finger thick. And I just don't think that that's correct. I think that what, in fact, I don't even think that that's an accurate translation of what they said. What they said was that it was a hand thickness, and I don't think that they meant this. I think that they meant this, the thickness of your palm, which for four layers of relatively heavy fabric, that would be heavy enough. Four men, though, could carry the Ark of the Covenant on poles with the veil over it. It wasn't too much for them to carry. The veil in the temple was another matter, though. The temple was 45 feet wide on the inside, and it was 60 feet tall floor to ceiling. And these four layers hung down from that. I've got no way at all to calculate how much a square yard of material weighs. But to my understanding, a yard of heavy linen would be seven or eight ounces per square yard or more. And we're talking about 20 yards by 15 yards. That's a huge amount. and four layers thick. That veil served a single purpose. It was there to remind the people of God that there was a barrier between themselves and holy God. Only the priest could pass through it, only one day of the year, on the Day of Atonement, only after making exacting sacrifices for his own sins and his own purification, after having made a starting purification for the people, and then bringing in the final offerings of atonement. And he made actually two or three of those during that whole process. But it was extremely difficult for the high priest to go in. During the first century, the century and the years immediately prior to Christ, What the Mishnah says is that the high priest would be under observation 24 hours a day for the week preceding the Day of Atonement. They were afraid that he might become unclean in some way. Now there's a faithfulness to that in the sense of wanting to make sure that the high priest was clean. There also is a superstition to that, that the high priest could come across some kind of uncleanness that would not be dealt with the sacrifices for him, and there's unbelief in that. The high priest might do something this week that isn't covered by the offering of God. So we can understand mentally, socially, religiously why they would do that. Even that action was an act of unbelief for the Old Testament, though the Old Testament promised if the high priest in faith followed those sacrifices, he would be accepted by God behind the curtain. But that was the only time that anybody could enter. Well, the veil is a picture of Jesus. I don't mean that just the torn veil is a picture of Jesus. I mean the veil itself. Jesus is called in John 1.1 the Word of God. He is the eternal Word of God. He is the Word of God for eternity as much as he is the Son of God for eternity. He is the perfect and full expression of everything that God is. And Jesus even before he himself was born, because he is the word of God, was the veil. You had to come through what God had said in his word. And what God said in his word was also a barrier to you. Think of some of the things Jesus said in John 10, seven. He says, I am the door of the sheep. I am the door. In John 14.6, he says, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except, and this is really interesting, he uses the preposition through. No one comes to the father except through me. You pass through a door, you pass through a veil, through a curtain. So Jesus governed access to the father like a door governs access to a place. There's only one door into my office in the back of our building. There's just one door. It governs access. It doesn't govern it well because it doesn't close properly and it won't lock. But it governs access to my office. There's no way to get into my office legitimately except through that door. You could go up through the ceiling, but that now is an illegitimate entry. And Jesus even says in John 10, the one who goes over the wall is a thief and a robber. So Jesus, as the eternal word of God, is the one who governs access. We've got that in our minds. Now, Hebrews 10, 19, and 20 says that we as Christians have the confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way, which he has inaugurated for us through the veil, that is through his flesh. When Jesus died on the cross, when he said it was finished, the veil was torn top to bottom, verses 51. Behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn to from top to bottom. People have said, men could have torn it bottom to top. I don't think so. It was four inches thick. The room was only so wide. If you're going to tear fabric, I think you've got to get a pretty extreme angle on it to pull it apart. They could only pull it like this. I just don't think they could have pulled it. But without any question, only God could tear it from top to bottom. It was 60 feet up in the air. Now the rest of verse 51 says that the earth shook and the rocks were split. It goes on to say the tombs were opened in the first part of verse 52. And there have some who have said, well, it was the earthquake that tore the veil. And all I can say is if you think it was the earthquake that tore the veil, you don't know how earthquakes work. Linda and I lived through the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, which, by the way, I grew up with a pool in the backyard. It threw water out of our pool like a toddler in a bathtub. We always knew if we had an earthquake. In our living room, we had a big, and I mean, it was huge. It had to be at least 20 feet by 15 feet. It was massive, right? When you're little, everything's massive. And my mom had a chandelier. in the fancy, we had a fancy living room that you didn't go in. And every once in a while, you would just be sitting there watching TV or you'd be doing something and you'd hear a big bang. And all you had to do is go in that part of the living room. If that chandelier's moving, you had an earthquake. And we had a lot of those little, just a quick jolt. But the 71 earthquake was really extreme. 1987, the Whittier-Narrows earthquake was 11 miles from our house where we lived when we were married. 1991, the Sierra Madre earthquake hit. That was 40 miles away. It was strong enough that it caused a Crock-Pot lid to fall off the top of our refrigerator, bounce off the floor, and bop Kevin in the head. The 1992 Landers-Big Bear earthquake, we got two for the price of one. Landers was 85 miles from where Kevin happened to be in the hospital, and the earthquake was so strong it shook his bed across the room. I was spending the night with him. He was four. And as soon as I woke up and realized what was happening, I jumped on top of him because he was right next to the window. And he said, get off of me. Stop shaking the bed. And I said, well, I'm not. 1994 Northridge earthquake. did somewhere between $20 and $40 billion worth of damage. Not one of those earthquakes tore a single curtain. That's simply not how earthquakes work. Curtains are just going to shake in the window. It wasn't the earthquake that tore the veil. It was God who tore the veil. And he tore the veil as a promise. The way is now open. See, when you looked at the Temple Mount, Gentiles could walk into the outer courts, the court of the Gentiles it's called, or the outer courts. There were actually several different pathways into that from the south side, from the lower city. There was a massive underground tunnel that came in and that appeared in the middle of the court of the Gentiles. And then you could come into it from every compass direction. But then there was a low wall, the soreg, that had warnings on it that only Jews could pass beyond that point. as you approach the actual sanctuary area, then women could go into the opening part, but they couldn't go past the court of women into the court of men. The court of Israel, it was called. And then the men had to stop, and only Levites could go into the priestly court. But only priests, only Levites of the tribe of Aaron could approach the altar. Every day, three or four men were chosen by casting lots or by some means to go into the sanctuary, the first part of the actual temple building, sanctuary building. One would go in and tend to the lamp stand. On the Sabbath, somebody would go in and change the showbread on the table of showbread. Then there was an altar of incense, which was actually about the dimensions of this, about this height, about this width. And they burned incense right in front of the veil. The veil was maybe just three or four or five feet away, stretching up into the darkness. And God is on the other side of that thick veil. And you've got no idea what's happening. And we don't know what time they offered the incense. I don't know. I've not been able to find out if they did it as soon as the morning sacrifices were over. I don't know when they did it. But it's at least interesting to think that perhaps in the afternoon when Jesus said it is finished, there stood a man offering prayer in front of the veil. And he heard and saw the veil torn. And then there's the Ark of the Covenant right there. and he's not stricken dead. There's a promise in that veil being torn. It's the same promise that Jesus gives in Matthew, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Come to me. There's a promise. Come in faith, come believing, come through the veil, come into the very presence of God boldly and confidently and freely. There's a second sign and the second sign is a warning. The earth shook and the rocks were split. Unlike the tearing of the veil, which was a clearly miraculous work, Earthquakes are common in the eastern Mediterranean. The earliest recorded earthquake was three or four centuries before Christ. It was massive, did tons of damage. There have been many other earthquakes in the region since then. Geologists have found signs around the Dead Sea of a massive major earthquake that took place sometime between, they can't be specific, but sometime between 26 AD and 36 AD. And Linda says, I'm shocked. And so this wasn't something where God just shook Jerusalem. The whole land was shaken. And I have no doubt that between 26 and 36 AD just perfectly encompasses when Jesus died, which was probably in 30 AD. The fact that earthquakes are natural phenomena doesn't mean that this earthquake wasn't miraculous. and that the Lord didn't cause it. Here's the thing about earthquakes. I've not found every reference in scripture to earthquakes. I admit that. But every reference I can find, it's a reference to judgment. God doesn't shake the earth as a sign of his pleasure in his people. He shakes the earth as he delivers them from their oppressors. He shakes the earth as he judges the wicked. Revelation chapter 16. says, then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air and a loud voice came out of the sanctuary from the throne saying, it is done. Interesting choice of words since Jesus says it is finished. And there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder and there was a great earthquake such as there had not been since man came to be on the earth. So great an earthquake was it and so mighty. And the great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. Babylon the great was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the wrath of his rage. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found." So final judgment is depicted in a massive earthquake that simply levels everything. And then it continues from there. And so just as the tearing of the veil is a promise to believe and come and come through Christ, come through the death of Jesus to the Father, the way is open. It's a warning to those who will not come that judgment is still happening. Judgment is still going to take place. The death of Jesus on the cross did not end judgment for all. It only ended judgment for those who believe. The third sign, I think, wraps together the first two signs. You'll have to decide on your own, but I think it brings both of those together. And it's something that only Matthew mentions. And he mentions it so briefly and so matter of fact that people just kind of often skip through it. Verse 52, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many. That's just stunning. This is not a zombie apocalypse. This isn't the walking dead coming out terrifying people. I don't believe that this is a temporal resurrection like we would see with Lazarus, or the son of the widow of Nain that Jesus raised, or the little girl that Jesus raised, or the widow's son that Elijah raised. Those are all temporary. Those people were raised back into their mortal sinful bodies and they had to die all over again. I believe that this is a resurrection to glory. Matthew doesn't do us the favor of saying what happened to them after. If they were simply raised in their mortal bodies, then I assume that they would have simply gone back to the tombs, laid down and died, and the natural processes of decay and decomposition would have continued. But he doesn't say that these were recently deceased saints. And so saints from any age might have been raised. And so I think that this is a resurrection to glory. It's certainly possible that they didn't precede Jesus in the ascension, that when he ascended, then they ascended, but that's not necessary. It's certainly possible that after a few hours or a few days in Jerusalem, they were simply caught up to await him. The point being that Jesus' death has defeated death for God's people. He was raised as a sign of God's receiving his death as our justification. He was crucified for our sins, the end of Romans 4 says, and raised for our justification. But our atonement, our redemption was finished on the cross. He gave up his spirit. He yielded up his spirit because it was done. There was nothing more to do. Which means when we come before him now, whether it's on our own in prayer, in the word, singing praises, whether it's as we gather together more formally in church, we don't have to go through a series of steps to be accepted. We don't have to stand in fear ever of our God. He simply invites us in before him. And if you'll think about it, you instinctively know that as you pray, however often you pray and however well you think you pray. When was the last time that you began your prayer with 30 minutes of ritual to make sure that you were OK? You just simply say, Lord, here. And so that's the part of the promise that the tearing of the veil fulfills, is here's life. Here's life. In John chapter 11, when Jesus was called to Bethany when Lazarus had died, Jesus said to Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies. They had died. And now we see that promise come true. They live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die ever. Do you believe this? There's two deaths there. The first death is physical death. He who believes in me will live even if he dies. The second death is spiritual death. He who lives and believes in me will never die. We'll never go through the second death. All of that promise is represented and depicted, in a sense, with these saints rising. But there's also the warning that's represented, and that's in the fact that it's only the saints. He doesn't say the bodies of many who had died were raised. He says the body is of many saints who had died. What about the wicked? They remain dead. They remain awaiting judgment and death. Their rebellion has been sealed. Only those who had been the objects of God's favor were raised. Only those who had truly trusted in Yahweh had been raised. There are some religious traditions I came across even as I was preparing for the message that said Jesus had to descend to hell in order to complete our atonement. If that was the case, he could not have said, it is finished. If that was the case, these saints would not have been raised from the dead. If he had not been done, he was not done. The Father had accepted his death as our atonement. And everything comes through that. So as we bring this home, I spoke about the mystery of the ages, the fact that Jesus remained in full control of his suffering. Nothing was forced upon him against his will. He submitted himself to death. John 10, he says, I lay down my life. I lay it down. Nobody takes it from me. And I will take it up again. Nobody can stop him from taking up his life again. Even the moment of his death was in his hands. On the tearing of the veil, Jesus opened up, Hebrews 10 says, a new and living way, but really it's the new and living way. There is no other new and living way. It's a new way because what was given in the Old Testament has been completed and done away with, but it's a living way. It's not a way that is reached through the death of animals. Think back to Genesis chapter 15, when God had made the promise to Abraham about an heir. And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. And then God had Abraham take a number of different animals and kill them and divide them in two. And then he caused a deep sleep to come upon Abraham, and God passed through the middle of those dead animals. And it's a way of forming a binding agreement. It's as though the two people who walk through that say, we are now bound by the death of these animals. May we die if we break this agreement. But Abraham doesn't pass through. Only God passes through. God made his promise solemn with an oath, but it was an oath of death. We now have an oath of life because of the risen savior that we serve. Jesus continues to govern access to the Father. There is no way to the Father except through him. We come through his death, through his life. Romans chapter 8 makes this really remarkable statement. Beginning in verse 28, Paul says, we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. for those who are called according to his purpose. Because those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son, so that he, Jesus, would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He who indeed did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? And then he asked this question, who will bring a charge against God's elect? Who will bring an accusation against God's elect? Well, what's the accusation? You didn't leave a big enough tip the last time you went to Whiskey Creek? You don't use your signal properly when you drive. What's the accusation? Isn't it an accusation of sin? Isn't it an accusation of sin? Of course. Who will bring an accusation against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. So the accuser of the brethren, the devil, or a human enemy, or some other entity comes before the Father pointing at you and accuses you of a sin. And God doesn't say, you were right to bring this to me, I'm the judge. God says, I've justified her. I've justified him. You're wasting your breath. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is he who died, yes, rather he who was raised. Who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. See, we come through a new and living way. We don't come to the father based solely on death. We do come through the death of his son, but we also come through the life of his son. It is the new and living way. At the same time, the earthquake was a reminder to everyone there that a day of judgment is coming. First century Israel was a lot like 20th and 21st century America in that people then were fascinated by the end times. If you remember the book of Acts, as the accusations are coming before the Sanhedrin against the apostles, Gamaliel stands up and says, don't you remember so-and-so stood up as a Messiah and he died and his people went away? And then somebody else came up and they're a Messiah and they died and all their followers went away. This idea of messiahs everywhere was really common. They were as fascinated with their end time understanding as people are today with theirs. So when this earthquake hits, the people know what an earthquake means. It means the judgment of God. It would be, I think, very much the same as if you walked out after church today and you saw the sky opening up like a scroll. I remember driving in Southern California one time. It was in the 80s. I was working for my dad. I was coming home. And I looked up and the clouds were unrolling to blue sky. And I just said, here we go, Lord. If you didn't know, he didn't come back then, just to say. So Isaiah 24 describes final judgment, and it uses these words in part of that description. The earth is broken asunder. The earth is split through. The earth is shaken violently. The earth reels to and fro like a drunkard, and it totters like a shack, for its transgression is heavy upon it, and it will fall never to rise again. They knew what an earthquake signified. Tearing of the veil is a promise that's seen in the raising of these saints. The earthquake is a warning, and it's seen by the fact that only the saints were raised. I come away from this text with such a strong sense of the finality of Jesus' actions, of his utter power. Dakota read Psalm 2 this morning. Why do the nations people's rage and the nations imagine vain things. They take counsel against the Lord and against his anointed. Let's cast their fetters from us. And God sits in heaven and laughs at them and mocks them and then terrifies them. And he warns them. Worship the sun. Lest ye be angry and you perish in the way. Worship the sun. There are many ways to God. Yes, there are, but there's only one way to the Father. Every other way to God brings you to his judgment seat. There's only one way to God as Savior. Jesus finished salvation for all who will believe. That's hard for us to believe. That's hard for us to understand. We see the weakness of our lives. We see the sin that's ongoing. We understand our doubts. We understand our frailties. We know that there are things that we don't know. We know that there are opinions and views that we have that are probably not dead on exactly correct. And everything that we are as human beings in Christ, as people in Christ, is incredibly frail. It's incredibly fragile. So Paul is able to say in 1 Timothy, it's a trustworthy saying and worthy of all acceptance that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. That's after being an apostle for a long time. He didn't grow more holy and more sanctified in his understanding about himself. He didn't become more feeble-minded in his awareness of sin, his awareness of sin got stronger. He condemns himself far more after 20 or 30 years in Christ than he ever had before. But because of that, he did what we do, which is to cast ourselves on the goodness of our God and say, I'm only in Christ by his grace and by his mercy. That's what we are to believe. That's what our hope is. We must believe that Jesus has finished everything, even if we are capable of participating in our own salvation and we're not. Jesus said, it's finished. There's nothing left to do. Father, we thank you for that. We thank you that there's nothing left to do. Please help us again and again and again. to take that truth for ourselves and to believe it and to understand it and to find our rest not in us, but in your promise. We thank you for this in your precious name, Lord. Amen. If you'd stand, let's sing.