Lord, we thank you for this day, we thank you for all that you do. I thank you for this lesson as we contemplate these things, these deep things, Lord. I just pray that you just bless this time and be with us throughout the day. In your name I pray, amen. Okay, so we're getting near the end, and the theme of the chapter is the end, although I don't think, I'm not gonna finish this chapter. It was long and I didn't wanna speed through it. So it's chapter 17 of the book, the end. So we've been marching towards Jerusalem, we had Passover, and Christ is getting ready to be betrayed and arrested. And we are in Mark 14, 53 through 59. We're going to read a bunch of this today. So Mark 14, 53 says, And they led Jesus to the high priest. They've arrested him already. And all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together, and Peter followed them at a distance right into the courtyard of the high priest. And as he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire, now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death. But they found none. For many bore false witness against him, but the testimony did not agree. And some stood up and bore false witness against him. We heard him say, I will destroy the temple that is made with the hands. In three days I will build another, not made with hands. Yet even about this, their testimony did not agree. So Keller starts off, we're going to have a trial in the middle of the night. The trial is illegal, sort of in all sorts of sense and matter. He doesn't talk about this, but here they arrest him in the evening at dark. We read about whenever that last week. And they take him to this sort of weird trial at 3 in the morning or 4 in the morning or some early time. And the trial in multiple ways, I mean they had a legal system just like we did. It's not like they're a bunch of savages. They had rules and everything about their court system the Jews did. I understand the Jews have their own trial system but they don't really have the power because they only have power within their culture because the Romans are ultimately leading their country or they're in charge. And so they've got this two-trial system here and they're having this legal trial in the middle of the night and Keller talks about the drama of being on the trial for your life. You know, you're being accused of something you didn't do and they're going to kill you if they find you guilty. and talks about the shocking nature of the testimony of Jesus once he was placed on the witness stand, Mark 14. And the high priest stood up in the midst and said, Have you no answer to make? What is it these men testify you? But he remained silent and made no answer. And again the high priest asked him, Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with clouds of heaven. And so the high priest puts Jesus on the witness stand, and he says, like, are you the Messiah? Are you the blessed one? And of course, they don't believe he is. They just want him to self-incriminate in their minds. And Jesus had previously avoided this answer in Mark. He had sort of deflected whenever they asked him this question. But here, here he is at this trial. And he says, I am, which that has a lot of implications, you know, Yahweh, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One coming in the clouds of heaven. So Jesus, remember we talked about this way back when He forgave the sins of the guy they let down through the roof. And Keller's point was, Jesus is trying, He needs them to kill Him. He needs to die and He knows that. And Keller's point was that by doing this in front of the Pharisees, so obvious and sort of in their face, Not in a bad way, he's just stating the obvious, but he knew that this would get a response from them. And here he is, on trial, and now he's sort of just going through with that. He's just going to say, okay, I'm going to tell you. I'm going to cause you to crucify me and kill me. And so then he says, I am, which has implications. And then he says, you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming with clouds in heaven. And so, as I said, Jesus had avoided this, but now He answers the questions. And of course, the Jews did not expect, no Jew expected the Messiah to be divine. They didn't understand that. You've got to think, they don't quite understand the triune God. They don't understand that concept. They think of Yahweh, and they think the Messiah is this king in the line of David that's going to come and have a political revolution. We saw that last week when they went to, the way they arrested Jesus is that Judas kind of slipped up and just kissed him. He didn't say, hey, there he is over there, because they were afraid of a battle. They were afraid of some sort of armed conflict. That's why we had the subterfuge. So here Jesus is linking I Am, the Son of Man, they knew who that was, and they're linking Him and the Messiah. And also he makes the point that the Son of Man, the Messiah, is going to sit on the right hand of God. And the Son of Man, of course, is from Daniel 7, 13. At the right hand refers to Psalm 110.1. So both allusions are to Jesus as judge. So here Jesus says, not only I'm the Messiah, but I'm the judge. I would tell you, if you want to get Just an outstanding understanding of this whole thing about the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One. I would refer you back to John's messages several years ago in Matthew 24. He did four, I think, that just covered this topic. And if you've never heard it before, it'll blow your mind. I know it blew mine a little bit because it's things that I've never heard before. And I didn't want to try to even attempt to recapitulate some of that stuff. So I would encourage you, if you've never heard that series of lessons, go back to Matthew 24, 23, where he talks about this, and it's a series of three or four messages, outstanding. But here, Keller points to the fact that here he says that I'm the judge. And everyone in the room, all these Pharisees, Sadducees, you know, all these people, high priests, they know who the Son of Man is. And at Daniel 7, this idea of him judging the world. Of course, the clouds are the very glory of God. We could talk about that. The clouds pop up all over the place, these words. You know, clouds come down over the ark when they start the temple. Jesus, when he goes up into heaven, he ascends in the clouds. That's the idea of the glory of God. And basically, he's saying, Jesus is saying that he will come to the earth in the very glory of God and judge the earth. He's really claiming deity to these men who have him sitting here testifying before him. Keller makes a good point. He says, look, Jesus, as he's there, He could have alluded to multiple other issues about the Messiahship. So, what do you mean by that? Well, he could have said, are you the Messiah? He could have said, yes, I am the Passover Lamb. He could have referred to himself as the Passover Lamb. He could have said, yes, I am the King. I am a descendant of David. I am in the line of David. There's all kinds of Old Testament allusions. He could have said, yes, I'm the suffering servant. He could have said all these different things to them to establish the same principle that I am the Messiah. I am God in flesh." But he didn't. He didn't use those allusions. He specifically uses or refers to the fact that he is going to be judge. Yeah, I'm the Messiah and I'm going to judge all of you, basically is what he's saying to them. He didn't say, yes, I'm going to be the suffering servant, which he's going to be, or I'm going to be the Passover lamb, which he's going to be. He says, I'm the judge. And Jesus is forcing us, Keller makes this point, to see the paradox. that Jesus is the judge of the entire world, and here He is being judged by the world. Here's the judge, the ultimate judge, being judged. He should be the one judging. And again, it's upside down. So Jesus makes this claim, makes this assertion that, yes, I'm the Messiah, I am, you will see me sitting in the right hand of God. And Mark 14, 62 says their response. And Jesus said, I am, you will see the Son of Man standing in the right hand of the power of God, coming with the clouds of heaven. And the high priest tore his garments and said, what further witness do we need? You have heard his blasphemy, what is your derision? And they all condemned him as deserving death. And they began to spit on him and cover his face and strike him saying prophesy and the guards receded with blows So, you know, they didn't want the real answer You know, it's like we were talking about Wednesday night a couple weeks ago about different things like this, you know The truth Even in miraculous ways would not, for whatever reason, penetrate their heart, and that's because God's sovereign. We're spiritually dead, and any sort of awakening that we have is from God. And so, for whatever reason, I guess God needed evil men to do an evil deed in order to save us. He did not. These men, their hearts were closed to this. So like, you know, in John, after he raises Lazarus from the dead, the Pharisees are sitting there talking in a room saying, you know what we need to do? We need to, since he raised this guy from the dead, we need to kill Lazarus so people stop believing him. As opposed to saying, he raised someone from the dead! What's going on? You know what I'm saying? They never dealt, they just, whatever happened, they wanted to put to the side, because they just did not like Jesus, because they're spiritually dead. And here it is. They didn't want to, well, why do you think you're the Messiah? What makes you say that? They didn't even contemplate it. They just wanted him to say that so they could beat their breasts and have further reason or the reason to kill him. So the high priest rips his garments. It was a high-priced suit he just destroyed right there. It's a shame. Out of outrage, you know, buttons flying. Tore his bow tie off, ripped it. The trial then falls apart. It's no longer a trial. It becomes a riot. I've never seen a trial like this. There was the one guy that jumped over and went after the judge. Maybe it was like that. Remember that one where the guy went over and got the judge? Judges and jurors begin to spit on him, beat him. They go berserk. He's instantly convicted of blasphemy and sentencing. There's no contemplation here. It's just like, okay, you're guilty. And the problem is they sentence them to death, but the problem is they don't have the power to pass the sentence of death. They cannot because Rome is over them. They can't do it. Capital cases needed a Roman judge. So then they turn them over to Pilate. So we have another trial. So they take him. Now that we've got him, we've got him where we want him. We need him dead. He's a blasphemer. Mark 15, 1 through 5. And as soon as it was morning, the chief priest held a consultation with the elders and the scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. Pilate asked him, Are you the king of the Jews? And he answered him, You have said so. And the chief priests accused him of many things. And Pilate again asked him, Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you. But Jesus made no further answer. So that Pilate was amazed." Why would Pilate be amazed? It's because Pilate's in control. And Jesus knows he's in control. And Pilate knows Jesus knows. And he's like, You're not even going to defend yourself? You understand you're going to die. Here again, Jesus is on trial, this time with a pilot. A couple of things. So, you know, Pilate was in a tough spot. I'm not letting Pilate off the hook, but Pilate here is, you know, he's got political ambition. He wants to impress the Romans who have put him there, and so his job is to keep peace. His job is multifaceted. He is the Roman governor. He is supposed to employ Roman law and fairness and justice on one hand, But really, the Romans don't, these Jews are always uprising. Remember, they want to throw the shackles of Rome off, to quote Judah Ben-Hur. They want to get rid of Rome. And so they're always, you know, just a pain in the neck. And so Pilate wants them, he does not want the people in Rome to look back, Pilate, can't you keep these people straight? So he wants to keep the Roman people happy, Therefore, he's got to keep the Jews happy, but he also wants to stick with the law. In other words, this guy didn't do anything wrong. I don't want to kill him. But I gotta keep these people happy so I keep these people happy so I keep my job. That's where he is. He's not a winner of any kind of moral awards. He didn't die on his own sword. And again, Acts 2. This is the bizarreness of God needed. bad people to do bad things to save us. There's nothing good going on, but it's required to save us. It's the same thing with Joseph. Same thing. Those guys, everybody did bad stuff to Joseph. From his brothers selling him, to those guys buying him, to them selling him, to the woman accusing him of trying to rape. All that is bad, but it needed to happen in order for a good thing to happen. The parallel is the same. Also of note, you know, forever, the liberals never believe anything. They're like the Pharisees, you know, they don't never believe anything. So for a long time, the liberals, you know, if all our creeds, have you ever noticed that our creeds have Pilate in them? Most of them do. And that's to establish the historicity of it, that it happened in real place in real time, and we've got it linked to this person. Well, forever, for a long time, It's always the Germans too, so I'm glad my dad's not here. He'd get upset about that. I remember being a kid and a lady opens up, I've probably told this before but it's funny, a lady opens up a cabinet and it's a German cockroach. And she goes, oh, a German cockroach! And my dad says, they're blaming everything on the Germans! But the German liberals You know, there was no pilot. Pilot didn't exist. That's a fantasy. There's no evidence of there ever being a pilot. Well, in 1961, in Caesarea, they found this stone plaque that had, you know, pilot as governor. And that sort of just did away with that theory, that we have actual evidence. Not that we necessarily, we need it, but they found something else to whine about. So pilot was a real person. We have proof of it. Back to the trial, religious leaders present charges against Jesus. His charge is blasphemy. It's like, really? That's what you're going to hang this guy for? That's not a Roman issue. Jesus refuses to answer, which surprised Pilate. You're not going to defend yourself? Do you know who I am? Other gospel accounts reveal that Pilate was not really keen on this trial. Even his wife told him, you need to stay away from this guy. He had a dream. Pilate is kind of thinking of a way to get out of this situation, which is to kill someone that really didn't commit a crime and keep these people happy and not get Rome upset and keep my job and all that. So there's an honored tradition at that time during Passover of releasing a prisoner amid a time of general rejoicing. So Pilate has this brilliant, I know how to get out of this. Yeah, he did bad things, but why don't we let him off? You know, that's what we do this time of year. We let some bad guy off. And he's a bad guy, we'll let him off. Mark 15, 6-10. See, they're always insurrecting. there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate, as he usually did for them, and he answered them saying, do you want me to release the king of the Jews? for he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priest had delivered him up." They knew. Pilate is not a dum-dum. He knew the only reason they don't like this guy is because he's got zillions of people following him. He's just attracting people. People are following him in the temple, listening to him, starting to disbelieve the Pharisees. The Pharisees were envious. They weren't worried about truth. They were worried about their power, their status, who they were. They wanted all that they had. Barabbas, he's this violent man who's been convicted of murder. Will Pilate release a guilty man and condemn an innocent man? That's what basically, release this guy who is a murderer to condemn a man who's done nothing wrong. But the chief priests, Mark 15, 11-15, but the chief priests stirred up in the crowd to have him release them for Barabbas instead. And the Pilate said to them, then what shall I do with the man you call the king of the Jews? And they said, crucify him. And Pilate said, why? What evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, crucify him. So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas. Having scurred Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. And here we have a picture of the double exchange. I am Barabbas. And I am cast free as Jesus is crucified instead of Barabbas. See, that's us. We are Barabbas. We're the ones who deserve to be hung on a cross and killed because of our guilt and our sin, but yet Christ, just like Barabbas, He switched. The double exchange. Our sin is put onto Him, His righteousness is put onto us. Now, Barabbas is not righteous, but it's still the same. It's an example of what's going on. And Pilate doesn't want to execute Jesus, despite pronouncing that Jesus is not guilty of a capital crime, but he turns him over to be crucified. And then I think in Luke it says that he has him scourged, which is no fun thing. I mean, if you watch The Passion of Christ, it's pretty, it's horrible. And he thought that would placate him. Okay, you're scourged and that's great, but no, we want him crucified. We talked about this at length when we went through the book by John Stott called The Cross. Not a good way to go. It's humiliating. You're up in your Sunday not-so-best in front of the world to see. You're bloody. It's a gruesome execution. It was reserved for non-citizens. You cannot be a Roman and be crucified. It's really for the worst of the lowest of the lowest criminals. It's this long, bloody, public death with extreme pain and it's very, very, very slow. There was a pathologist, a Christian pathologist years ago who wrote this research paper about, he had a way of mimicking the cross, like not nailing you to it, but sort of putting you up there in straps. And they did tests, like medical tests on you to find out what would happen, and it's really an issue of suffocation. You can't, apparently as you get tired, you can't push up to expand your diaphragm, you can't breathe and all this sort of stuff. It causes heart failure. That's why when they stick them with a spear, they get water out, because one of the signs of heart failure is an effusion of just a big collection of water, it can be. And Mark, you know, again, none of the gospel writers do this. They don't spend any time talking about how horrible the crucifixion is. They don't. They don't go into gory detail. Part of it is because I'm sure everyone knew at the time, but the other reason I think is because that's not really the big thing that Jesus was upset about, remember we went over this last week, it wasn't, I'm sure the physical death was part of it, who am I to speak for Jesus, but it was this idea of him being, he's been eternally in a perfect relationship with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, and now he's going to be cut off. Mark focuses, Keller says, on the deeper meaning behind the events. Mark 15, 20 to 24. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him, and they let him out to crucify him. And they compelled a pastor by, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father Alexander 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, dividing his garments among them, casting lots for them, and decide which he should take. So they got this robe on him like he's going to be the king, and they're mocking him in a crown, and they whip him, take that robe off, put his regular clothes on him, make him carry this cross. that's well depicted in the movie Ben-Hur. And then they make Simon of Cyrene carry the cross, son of Rufus. I'm sure you've heard this connection before. You go to Luke, excuse me, Romans 16, and they talk about Rufus. The thought is that this Rufus in Romans that they were writing about, that was his father. So Mark really echoes his description, echoes Psalm 22. which is, and I'm gonna read verses seven, 14, and then 16 to 18. All who see me mock me. They make mouths at me, they wag their heads. I am poured out like water, and all of my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast, for dogs encompass me. A company of evildoers encircle me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them. for my clothing, they have cast lots." So, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years before, here David pens this psalm that really shows what's going to happen to Christ, even though they had no concept of what that was going to be like. So from the disciples' point of view, you know, here you have this man, Jesus, they've been following around for three years, very close with him, camping, you know, living with this guy for three years as they travel. They've watched him heal sick people. They've watched him stop storms. They've watched him turn a few sardines and a couple pieces of bread into feeding thousands of people, raise people from the dead. He proclaims peoples are forgiven. So he's the Christ. Well, how can this be happening? And he's told them over and over that we went over at least three times. They just didn't get it. Again, because remember, their mindset is he's going to be the king. He's going to get rid of Rome and they're going to establish their kingdom. How could this be happening to him? Mark 15, 25-33, it was the third hour when they crucified Him in the inscription of the charge against Him read, King of the Jews. And with Him they crewed two robbers, one on the right, one on the left, and those who passed by derided Him, wagging their heads and saying, Aha, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it three days, save yourself and come down off the cross. So also the chief priest with the scribes mocked him at one another, saying, he saved others, he can't even save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe. And those who were crucified with him reviled him." They wouldn't have believed if he came off the cross. They didn't believe all the other miracles he did up until now. So Mark, he says, Keller, and the other gospel writers are concerned with this interplay contrasting light and darkness. All four explain what happened to Jesus in the dark. The trial was at night. Remember that Jewish trial? The betrayal occurred in the dark, in the garden. And although the crucifixion is in the daytime, at early noon, At the sixth hour, darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. It's too long for an eclipse. If you remember the glorious eclipse we had a few years ago, it did not last three hours, unfortunately. And clouds came and covered the sun. And plus, eclipses don't happen during a full moon, and the Passover is during a full moon, so that doesn't make sense. And it's not during, apparently, I didn't know this, Keller told me this, because I'm not a Palestine weatherman, also during the season where there are dust storms. So some people, I guess, say there are dust storms, but that was not dust storm season. It was a supernatural darkness. And this darkness is a sign of God's displeasure in His judgment. And it's just like the darkness that went over Egypt in one of the plagues. And who is God judging? Mark 15, 33 and 34. And when the sixth hour had come, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, I'm sure I mispronounced that, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So here we have Christ on the cross, and we've had pictures of this through the Old Testament. What's going to happen? We just didn't know it. One of the most interesting to me is Exodus 17, where they come out of the Egypt, they go to the Red Sea, they're whining. I mean, they just all made part of Red Sea and they want water. So then if you go to Exodus 17, you have a trial and God stands on a rock in front of the elders and then Moses judges the rock by striking it and then water, the Holy Spirit, comes forth. I mean, that's a picture of what's going to happen. That's why it only happened once. That's why when Moses struck the rock the second time, he got in trouble. You got the Passover lamb, right? I mean, you get the blood of this lamb, you kill this lamb that you're intimate with, it's been in your house, it's a pet lamb, the little kid loves it, he sleeps with it, he feeds it milk and all that sort of stuff, and you kill it, eat it, and put the blood over the doorpost, and you're like, Mommy, Mommy, what about our lambs? Be quiet. We gotta do this. That's a picture of Christ, and here is the real Christ, the real Passover lamb. He uses this word, my God, it's a term of intimacy. He uses, you know, my God, my God goes back to I shall be your God and you shall be my people. This is covenantal talk here. This is the covenant. Keller contrasts, when we're thinking about this separation that occurs, Keller talks about, you know, if someone you kind of know says, I'm done with you, I'm leaving you, I'm forsaking you, it's like, oh, okay, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that. But if your wife does it to you, and you still love your wife, or someone that you're extremely close to does it, that hurts. And so he says, the longer, the deeper the love, the greater torment with the loss of being forsaken. And so Keller talks about Jesus being cut out of a dance. We've talked about this from the very first chapter, God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, in this eternal dance. And the reason it's a dance is because each one is loving the other one, so the other ones are the focus of their lives, not themselves. And so that's a dance, they're going around one another. And now here Jesus is being cut out of that after being in it for eternity. We can't wrap our heads around, or I can't. And why was he cut out of the dance? And it's for us, because it should have been us. We're the ones that should be judged, but it fell on him. So then Keller spent some time talking about this darkness and disintegration. And he does, he makes a great point. Light pollution is one of the banes of our society. Can't see the stars. He talks about how we do not understand total darkness these days. It's hard to go anywhere. You have to go to the Gobi Desert or someplace to get complete darkness. Ever since they built that Walmart by my house. I mean, I can just, you know, what's going on? Every time someone builds a house, more lights, really? Come on. But he talks about how when you're in complete darkness, how that is. He talked about Shackleford's men, apparently when they were down there in the South Pole and they start going across the pole and the thing they feared the most was the utter dark, apparently polar darkness is horrible. You have no idea where you are, you have no idea which way is up, which way is down, you can't see your hand in front of your face, you can't see anyone behind you before you feel isolated. That is, physical darkness brings isolation, he says, as does spiritual darkness. God is light, and he's compared to the sun in the Bible. Sun is the source, if you think about it, the sun is the source of all visual truth. In other words, I can see that white car over there because of the sun. I can see you because the sun is what allows us to be able to see. Without the sun, it's the source of all light, because all energy comes from the sun. Therefore, anything is really from the sun. It is the source of visual truth, as it is the source of all biological life. You know, everything comes from the sun, everything. You know, you got the sun rays hit the plant, the plant grows, and then the deer eat it. And then I shoot the deer and I eat the deer. I really don't shoot deer, although I'm thinking about taking it up. But, you know, everything without the light hitting the plant, the deer would die, hallelujah! But then my plants wouldn't grow. So as the sun is, God is the source of all truth and all life. And as this has been a point of this thing, our Christianity and our salvation involves us being part of that dance and us orbiting around God, God being the focus and the center of our life. And when we do that, our life has truth and vitality as we focus on the bringer of all truth and life. If you orbit your life around others, or a career, or the family, or whatever, your hobby, whatever it is, as the source of your hope, by doing that you turn away from truth and light and you turn towards darkness. And then spiritual darkness disorients you, just like physical darkness. When you have spiritual darkness, you think you're headed in the right direction, and you could be completely wrong, because you can't see. You have no idea where you're going. So neglecting God and seeking other things as your hope leads to one, you may never get there and get despair. You know, if the cookie or whatever it is you want, whatever it is, and you're trying to get there, and that is your life. If you never get there, you're going to be just like, I'm a complete failure. but if you actually get it, then you realize it doesn't satisfy my soul. Again, that's why I say all those people in Hollywood are nuts because they've gotten the everything. They got whatever you could ever want in this world. Fame, fortune, great car, house, everything. Beautiful people around and they're all beautiful and they're all on drugs and just divorcing and miserable because they get it and it doesn't satisfy them. And we've talked about this, about that lady who wrote that New York article says, you know what's terrible is someone who gets the fame they want, they become miserable. And this is someone who's not a believer who said this. So that's what happens when you focus your life around something other than God, whether you get it or you don't, it's just disaster. You also lose your identity. Your identity, who you are, becomes whether or not you get that and what you've got and your approval and how well you perform or whether people like you or not. And in the darkness, you really can't see yourself. So you lose your identity, who you are. What it means to be human is only explained through scriptures. And then you're also isolated. You're wrapped up in things, I'm going to quote him, you are wrapped up in the things that you're living for so you're always scared or angry or proud or driven to full of self-pity. You don't want to lose this, whatever it is you got, it's not satisfying you, you're clamoring for it. So he talks about in his personal life, and I can apply it, certainly when he was talking, I was thinking about me, and you could talk about you and whatever you do. He talks about that. So Keller says, look, I want to be a good minister. It's reasonable, right? I want to be a good doctor. I want to be a good dad. I want to be a good husband. I want to be good at what I do, right? You want to be good. Who wants to be a loser, right? But if that ends up being who he is, in other words, I'm only satisfy with myself if I'm a good minister. If that becomes his significance or his security or sense of hope or more important than God's love for him in Jesus, then he loses his sense of identity. Any kind of criticism will destroy him. Hey, Pastor, last week's sermon was okay, but this week was terrible. You know? Any kind of criticism. And you know what? If you deal with people, I don't care who you are, someone's not going to like you. That's the way life is. That's the way it is. He says that failing to live up to his standards are devastating for him because that's who he is. He's a, I am a minister and I've got to do this and if I bring up a bad message then woe is me, I'm a loser. He says it's the same if couples love each other more than God. So if you've got one person that your whole focus is on the person, as you get fights and you get disagreements, and then there's sort of friction in your relationship, and then your relationship is not what it seems to be, it gets worse and worse, you really start to spiral down. I see this in my work all the time, talking to patients about stuff. But turning from God to the true light leads to disorientation and disintegration. Apart from God's intervention, we are all in spiritual darkness. When God returns, he's going to judge everything. If we have anything imperfect about us, we're not going to remain in his presence because he can't be in the presence of sin. And what does out of His presence mean? That's hell, right? That's darkness and disintegration. And so he talks about, I'm going to read some passages from the Old Testament discussing this day of the Lord when God comes to judge and to sort of evaluate us. Isaiah 13 9 through 13 behold the days Lord comes cruel with wrath and fierce anger To make him land in desolation destroy sinners from it for the stars of heaven and her constellations will not give their light The Sun will be dark and it's rising and the moon will not shed its light I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity I'll put an end to the pomp and the arrogant lay down the pompous pride of the ruthless I will make people more rare than fine gold and mankind than the gold of Ophir and Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, and the wrath of the Lord hosts in the day of His fierce anger." And this is all what rained down on Jesus. I understand that. Amos 8, 7-10. And so the point is that we talked about this last week, well how can God have this wrath and be a loving God. And we talked about this last week, that the only way he can love something is to be wrathful when something bad happens to it. So he has this beautiful creation and everything and it's been destroyed by sin, so he has to have, if he doesn't have wrath, then he didn't love it. And that was the point of last week's lesson. You know, if you say you love your spouse or your child and something bad happens to them, you're like, oh well, they'll get over it. I mean, something horrible. then you don't really love that person. Because when injustice happens, even to people I don't know or you don't know, we get a little angry about it. But someone that you love, it really flares up. And that's where we were headed, to this judgment, and Jesus' death was the only way to alter it, as God's wrath poured out on Him and not on us. He fell into the complete darkness. Jesus did that. We were headed. He died to death. We should have died so we can live in the presence of God. So how do we know that it worked? How do we know what Jesus did on the cross worked? And some of the bystanders, Mark 15, 35-39, some of the bystanders hearing it said, behold, he's calling Elijah. And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine and put it to read. He gave it to him to drink. Wait, wait, see Elijah take him down. And Jesus uttered a loud cry. He breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion who faced him saw that the way he breathed at last, he said, truly, this man was the Son of God." A couple of things here. This curtain, we've talked about this, is what separates the holy of holies from the rest of the temple. The holy of holies were the presence of God was in the Jewish temple. That's why, you know, I don't understand these Christians who think we're gonna rebuild the temple at the end. It's over, it's done. Jesus has finished that. the temple has been torn, we now can enter into the presence of God. And that's what that signifies. And the curtain wasn't like some kind of flimsy curtain, it was this thick woven tapestry. I mean, it was not something that was easy to tear. Even me and my giant biceps couldn't have torn it. Who's laughing? Only the high priest, we talked about this, could enter on the day of atonement. Remember, to go into the presence, to go through that curtain or around the curtain or however you got through there, only the high priest could do it once a year on the day of atonement as he put the blood on the ark to pay for the sins for the year. And now, that curtain, before it was torn, said it's impossible for anyone to enter into, anyone with spiritual darkness cannot enter this temple. And we went through all the washing, you've got to wash, wash, wash, change garments, all that went on to get in there, once a year. Christ dies, and this massive curtain is torn in two, from the top to the bottom, to show that God did it. Christ's sacrifice ended all sacrifices. That's why I don't believe there's gonna be a temple in the future because Jesus is the temple. Now, by putting your faith in Jesus, you can enter into God's presence. The barrier's gone. We can now center our life around God. Anyone who believes can enter into God's presence. Mark, to make this point that anyone who believes can enter, shows us who is the first person to enter. It's a Roman centurion. His proclamation, surely this is the Son of God, this is the first chapter line of the book that refers to Jesus as the Son of God. The very beginning of Mark says this. Up then, up till then, no one else has said that. Nobody else, like Peter, didn't say, you're the son of God. Or anybody else. No one has acknowledged this or got the point, figured it out. And here, although the disciples had called him Christ, no one at that time, we talked about this a moment ago, considered that the Christ would be divine. And during the entire book, everything he did pointed to the fact that he was divine. He's healing people, calming storms, doing everything that you would think someone who's God could do. And people would say, who is this that does this? Well, the centurion figured it out. This is really unusual, especially for a Roman. It's ironic because it's not a Jew who figures it out. It's a Roman. Every Roman coin was inscribed with the quote, Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus. The Romans could only call Caesar the son of God. We talked about this, why Polycarp was ended up being burned years later because he would not acknowledge him as God. The centurion was a hardened, brutal man and something had penetrated his spiritual darkness. So he becomes the first man to proclaim the deity of Jesus Christ. And Keller also contrasts the centurion with everyone else there. The disciples trained and taught by Jesus for three years, they were clueless about who he was. And religious leaders, supposed to be the wise, learned, and under, the guys who knew scripture inside and out, they completely rejected him. So Keller says, you know, what was it that got to the centurion? Why did the centurion believe? Keller says, as he thought about this for many years, believes that the centurion hearing Jesus' cry and watching him die, his spiritual darkness was penetrated. Keller talks about how, you know, he's seen, at the time of writing this book, he said, I've seen one person die. And he says, you know, most people, you may see one or two parent die if you're in that situation. And it's, you know, pretty shocking. But the centurion would have been used to seeing death since that was his job to kill people. And that's what he did for a living. He killed people. So why would a death affect him? You know, because you become callous, you know, you start seeing stuff. But his death was unique, Keller says. Keller says something about Jesus was unlike the other deaths that Centurion had seen. The tenderness of Jesus, remember he says, we talked about this Wednesday night, just before he dies, he says, forgive them for they know not what they do. He's forgiving the people that are doing this to him. Centurion heard that. This death, this tenderness of Jesus, pierced through his hardness. And so to quote Keller, he says, the beauty of Jesus' death must have flooded his darkness with light. So I'm gonna stop there. Next week, we'll just continue on. Okay, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for these things. Help us to contemplate on them. I pray now for our worship service. May we worship you in spirit and truth. In your name I pray, amen.