Good morning. And turn in your Bibles, please, to Matthew chapter 27. This morning we're gonna look at verses 45 through 56. So Matthew 27, 45 through 56. Once you have it, I would ask if you would please stand in reverence for God's word. And these are the infallible and inspired words of God. Now from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani, that is my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, this man is calling Elijah. And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him. And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. Coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, truly, this was the Son of God. There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. And may God bless the reading of his word. You may be seated. In this portion where we are at in the Gospel of Matthew, there has been this recurring theme of Jesus' humiliation, and not by organization, but rather just by providence, our catechism questions have aligned closely with that, that we are in the chapter of Christ's humiliation. This is the most humiliating season of his ministry on earth. Last week, we worked through verses 27 through 44 and saw the intensity of Christ's humiliation in the form of mocking from the Romans. But despite all this mocking, Paul's words in Galatians that God is not mocked still stands because it was the mockers whose mockery turned in on themselves. And this is frequently the way God tells stories. He turns the story inside out so that all things are serving his purposes. But that theme of mocking and humiliation does carry into this portion of chapter 27. And what I hope we will see this morning is that in the death of Christ, what we really have on the large scale is the death of death. Christ has the last word. Death does not have the last word. It is death and not Christ who stay dead in this final contest. And so kids, your capsule sermon is this. Even though the Jews and the Romans did not like each other, they worked together to kill Jesus. And their hatred of Jesus was the strongest feeling that they had. So they worked together to humiliate him, to torture him, and even to kill him in the final end. And so in today's passage, Jesus dies on the cross, and his body and his spirit are separated from each other. That is the normal way that humans die, is body and soul are torn apart, and that happened to Jesus. But what makes Jesus' death different than any other person's death is that Jesus had spent his entire life being a new and better Adam, being a new and better Israel. And so God, the Father, put all the sins of his people on Jesus' shoulders, and that is so important. That's what makes his death so important. Because everyone in this room will die one day. And either you will carry your sins with you on your shoulders and you will give an answer yourself or your sins were transferred onto Jesus's shoulders and he answered for you. So if we put our faith in Jesus, then all your sins are on the shoulders of Christ and he took the punishment for you so that you can be forgiven. Verse 45 to 47 opens up saying, that now from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lima sabacani, that is my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, this man is calling Elijah. So the ancients counted their days differently than we do. Our days start and end at midnight. Their day started and ended at sunrise. So at 6 a.m. is when the day starts. So in this accounting, the 6th and the 9th hours, or the 6th to the 9th hours would be from noon, from 12 noon till 3 p.m., the brightest hours of the day. And the darkness that's described here is not just an overcast, cloudy day, nor is it a solar eclipse. One, no solar eclipse ever lasts for three hours. And secondly, at this time of Passover, in this month, on the calendar, and at this location, it's full moon. So no solar eclipse is possible, at least not in the normal sense. And there's actually extra biblical accounts of this darkness from as far away as Italy and Greece and Egypt. So it doesn't necessarily say that this is a global darkness, like Noah's flood was global, the language doesn't demand that. But it certainly goes way beyond Jerusalem. If you were in Athens, or if you were in Egypt, or you were in Italy, you saw this darkness falling over the earth, and that's even by the account of pagans, by extra-biblical sources. Phlegon, Sextus, Julius Africanus, and Thales all speak of this event, of the world going dark, followed by intense earthquakes. And there's one judge, an Athenian judge, a Greek judge and philosopher by the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, who wrote this. When he saw this darkness, he shuddered at it, and he describes this darkness. So keep in mind, he's an Athenian, he's from Greece, and he's living in Egypt, or he's at least in Egypt when this happens, and he writes this. This is not a Christian. This is a pagan Greek judge who looked at the darkness and he said either the divine being is suffering or he is suffering along with one that is suffering or the entire frame of the world is dissolving. A Greek said that. The world is coming apart. The deity is suffering. And he was not a Christian at the time, but he did become one. In fact, you can read about Dionysius in Acts 17, verse 34. This was a high enough profile conversion that he gets named specifically in the book of Acts. It would be like if, you know, If Jordan Peterson would finally become a Christian, it would be like that level of recognition. And so he gets mentioned by name. But this darkness and his interpretation of it is one of the things that moved him towards his conversion into Christianity. And I think it's fitting that this darkness came. There was a supernatural light that announced the birth of Jesus, and now there is a supernatural darkness that is announcing his death. And the time of the darkness, it says, comes to a close at the ninth hour at 3 p.m. So mid-afternoon is when this darkness ends. And this is the time, according to the Jewish tradition, that the Passover lambs would have been roasting. So the evening sacrifice is getting put on the oven at 3 p.m. so it's ready by sunset. So all these typological lambs, all these lambs and goats that the Israelites were preparing in anticipation of Jesus Christ are being broiled at that moment. They're roasting at the moment that the antitype, that the real sacrificial lamb is roasting under the white hot wrath of God. This is happening at the same time, at the ninth hour. And all the accumulated guilt of every believer is on Christ's shoulders, and God is all directing his justice at this one man, at the sin bearer. Just as Adam represented all his children and made them all guilty with his act of disobedience, now Christ is representing all of God's children, and he is making us all righteous. And because of God's grace, even unbelievers are able to enjoy what we call common grace, right? The sun shines on the just and on the unjust. That's God's common grace. It's not saving grace, but even unbelievers enjoy a level of common grace. However, now what we have in the death of Jesus is this intense concentration of human sin from all corners of the globe, from all ages, from all believers, concentrated on the shoulders of one man. So now not even common grace is possible. The sun's not even shining on the son of God for this moment. This is very serious business. Jesus is the light of the world, and if he, or since he, is bearing the guilt of his people, it is fitting that the light goes dark. There is no common grace. There is no light when the light of the world himself goes dark. And we know from the prophetic and biblical language that darkness is a picture of God's judgment. We see that all over the Bible. You can read about it in Acts, or pardon me, in Joel 2, in Amos 5, Zephaniah 1, are just a few examples where darkness is associated with the judgment of God. And usually, this is metaphorical language, and we talked about that when we were in Matthew 24, where the sun, moon, and stars falling out of the sky aren't events you can see with a telescope, but rather it's ushering in the end of one world and the beginning of a new one. So this darkness is generally metaphorical. Sun, moon, and stars language is metaphorical. And the darkness is usually metaphorical. This language is used also at Pentecost, and there's no indication that the sky went dark at Pentecost, for example. However, occasionally, there's this barrier between heaven and earth. There's this barrier that's between the seen world, the one that we normally live in, and the ones that we get used to, and the unseen world. There's a veil that keeps us almost always from seeing onto the other side. But in some moments in redemptive history, that barrier gets very, very thin. And we can see glimpses of what is on the other side in the unseen realm. It becomes visible to human eyes. And so here, the darkness of God's judgment shows up in a very tangible way. Even pagans in Egypt and Rome are forced to see it. There is one other time where the sky very literally goes dark when God is judging. And interestingly, it was also at the Passover, the very first Passover, the sky goes dark in the ninth plague. When God plunges Egypt into darkness, and this is a darkness that isn't just like the lights are going dim. This isn't just the absence of light. In Exodus 10, it says this is a darkness you could feel. This darkness is heavy. It weighs on your chest. It makes you feel uncomfortable. Something deeply profound is happening at that first darkness. And what followed on the heels of that ninth plague in Egypt, what followed the plague of darkness was the death of the firstborn. And here, we have another death of the firstborn. Just as Egypt was under the judgment of God, now Israel has become just as apostate and just as wicked as that Egypt. Israel has become Egypt, and now they are moving from the ninth plague, from darkness to the death of their firstborn. And Israel's firstborn can only be none other than Jesus Christ. The final plague is going to visit, apostate Israel. Israel has become idolatrous and her heart is no better than Egypt's. Her firstborn must die. Jesus cries out in Aramaic, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And that is language that Ray read from Psalm 22. And the similarity in Aramaic, Eli sounds like Elijah, and there's the same root there. Elijah's name means Yah is God, so Yahweh is God, is Elijah's name quite literally. And so here, Eli is just a reference to God. And so it sounds the same. And because there's many different cultures, even among the Jews, there's Hellenistic Jews and there's Hebrew-speaking Jews, so there's different dialects happening and being spoken in Jerusalem. The similarity here means that the bystanders probably misunderstood what Jesus was saying. They didn't understand this Aramaic dialect, at least that's Matthew Poole in his commentary. His understanding is that they misunderstood the dialect, so they actually very literally thought he was calling Elijah, because Eli sounds like a shortened version of calling out to Elijah. But they mock nevertheless, and that is fitting with their character. Even if it starts as a misunderstanding, it turns into mocking and scoffing. But the forsakenness of Christ is really what should weigh heavily on us here. And I think it's fitting for us to feel the weight of this. When Moses was leading the Israelites through the desert, as difficult as that was, God was with him. When Joseph was in a dungeon, God was with him. When Daniel is in the lion's den, God is with him. And when he's in the furnace with his friends, God is very literally with him in the form of the fourth man. When David lies up all night weeping and writing songs and he's making his pillow wet with his tears, God is with him. And now Jesus Christ does this and God is not with him. Jesus Christ is so hideous, his own father can't look at him. Jesus is doing this alone. He is forsaken of the father. He is becoming a curse. This is much worse than any of those former saints experienced. God did not actually turn his face from any of them, and he does turn his face from Jesus Christ. Jesus is so repugnant, carrying all that sin, carrying your sin and carrying my sin, that God must turn his face away. And we must be careful here, lest we fall into a trap. This does not mean that the second person of the Trinity died. Jesus Christ died. The second person of the Trinity is there all along, so there's no rupture in the Trinity. The Trinity does not dissolve, it's not interrupted, not at all. But Jesus is also truly man, and it's according to his humanity that the Father turns the face away and forsakes him, okay? So don't think that God needed to be resuscitated, or that the Trinity was just down to two members for a period of time, not at all. But the man Jesus Christ died, and he died a forsaken, cursed man. But even in the intensity of Christ's suffering, and even as he acknowledges that he is in the place of the final David, he's the one that David really saw this final forsakenness, God turns the face away, and what does Jesus still say? Yes, he acknowledges he's forsaken, but what does he say? My God! My God, Jesus has faith. He knows that even in this darkest moment, God is his God, the Father is his God. And Jesus is undeterred, even at the point of death, he is undeterred from the mission that God sent him on. Even in his very dark moment here, the son knows that he does belong to the father, and the father does belong to him. When he says, my God, that is an act of faith, because God is his. this doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, which is the lifeblood of the gospel, there is no gospel without penal substitution, has come under tremendous scrutiny and scorn from the mockers and scoffers in our own day, as though this is divine child abuse, and some authors have called it divine child abuse, that God is just so erratic, God just can't help himself and he's in such a bad mood that he comes home and he just kicks the dog because he just has to vent this anger. That is not the doctrine of penal substitution. That is not the doctrine of penal substitution because Jesus is not some disinterested third party. I will admit penal substitution apart from covenant theology or from Trinitarian theology is in fact ugly. But all three persons of the Trinity share in the same divine essence. There's only one God, and there's only one will in God. So Jesus, according to his divinity, is a willing participant in this. Before creation began, Father, Son, and Spirit covenanted together that this is the way they would do it. Jesus' will, according to his divinity, was fully involved in this plan. So we can never compromise that. Jesus is not a disinterested third party that God is venting on. Jesus is God. And this is the way God drew up the plan. I will leave it there. But penal substitution is absolutely integral to the gospel. If Jesus Christ did not die as a substitute, no forgiveness is possible. No other atonement theory we can add to penal substitution. There's other true elements. But anytime someone wants to do away with penal substitution, what they are really doing away with is a Trinitarian view of God, and they are denying the gospel outright. No salvation is possible without penal substitution. But because this happened, because this is a covenanted agreement between all three persons in the Trinity, because there is only one will in God, Because this is a covenantal death and Jesus Christ is representing all believers through all ages, all who will be grafted into him. No Christian will ever have to suffer the rejection that Jesus Christ himself suffered. When we are called to take up our cross for Christ, what we are doing is replicating the steps that Jesus took, or we are not replicating, we are imitating. No one else could ever do this, okay? So when we bear our crosses, when we take up our cross, we are imitating, but it cannot be the same. We're following in the footsteps, but our older brother actually did this, and we can add nothing to it. We just merely follow in his footsteps. But we need to remember the way Jesus acted when we are in our own season of testing, when we likewise cry out to God and wonder why he seems so far away. He's not answering our prayers. The situation is not getting better. It's getting worse. And the more I pray, the worse it gets. God, why is this happening? Are you even listening to me? Am I even your child, God? I start to wonder about my own forsakenness. But then we need to remember that God did not spare his own son. Jesus felt this forsakenness in a way that no true believer can ever experience it. Because in the case of believers, God's forsakenness is not actual. It might be our experience, but it's not actual. Jesus took the actual curse for us. So no one in this room will ever experience the depth of forsakenness that Jesus Christ did. None of us actually have reason to complain when compared to what Jesus himself suffered. So when we go through our own season, if Jesus himself could say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Are we able to do the same in our season of testing? My God, not somebody else's God, not some abstract idea of God, my God, he belongs to me and I belong to him. Yes, even in painful seasons. Even in seasons where God seems dreadfully silent and things go from bad to worse. There's three hours of darkness here. Now picture that. There's a darkness so heavy you can feel it in your bones. It weighs something on your chest. Three hours is an awfully long time. You have no assurance the lights are ever coming back on. There's earthquakes and there's darkness. Three hours is a tremendously long time to live that way. And what I think is happening there when we consider the biblical imagery. I think there is three hours of God heaping all the accumulated wrath of every believer onto Christ. And I tried to picture it. Picture of this as if this is like some kind of a visible wind, like you can see the wind, and it's coming from all four corners of the world. And for three hours, it's just piling up, piling up, piling up, piling up. Second-century Christians from the Roman Empire, and eighth-century Christians from Gaul, and 21st-century Christians from North America are all having their sins in that three hours, heaped on the shoulders of the God-man who is suspended on that cross, bearing it for all his little brothers and sisters. The veil between the seen and the unseen world is very thin in this moment. We can see partially through it at least. And again, we need to be careful here. We talk about that this is the sin of the world, and in a very real sense it is. All times, all places, for all believers. But we must be careful if we're going to be honest with the Galatians 2 language that Ray just read. Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. This is personal and intimate. This is one by one. And this isn't private faith or this isn't individualistic, but it is personal. And no unbeliever can say that I have been crucified with Christ. Jesus did not take every sin from every person actually on the cross. He took the sins of his people. So did Jesus die for the sins of the whole world? Well, yes, of course. Chinese and Brazilian and Canadian and Norwegian and German? Yes, of course. But we should not understand that Christ's death actually atoned for every single person lest we fall into universalism or deny the language that Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. And only believers can say that. Unbelievers do not know the blessing of being crucified with Christ because they're not in union with him. This personal language becomes very pastoral because this means that Jesus did not just die for the next guy's sin. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you can say Jesus Christ died for my sin. You can say exactly what the Apostle Paul said, I, put your name in there, I have been crucified with Christ. This is individual salvation, this is personal salvation, this is covenanted between you and God who has saved you, it's personal. Verse 48 goes on. And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But others said, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him. And Jesus again cried out in a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And the sour wine is further fulfillment of Psalm 69, 21. We saw that already last week in verse 34. There's another aspect of that wine being offered. And as this is happening, these men continue to mock. And by verse 50, Jesus dies. And it appears, in one sense, very much so that Jesus has been passive this whole time. He's been passively paraded around from one courtroom to the next. He's been passive as he took his beating. He's been passive in these courtroom settings. He's been passive as he was nailed to the cross. He's passive as he lays dying. And in one sense, of course, that is very true. Touching on his humanity, he is absolutely passive. but according to his divinity, because Jesus is not just the Son of God, but he is also God the Son. Two different emphases there. God the Son is in charge of all of this, and it's all going exactly according to plan. Nothing is happening out of God's control, even down to the death of Christ. So the separation of body and spirit, or the death of Jesus of Nazareth, is not something that's happening to Jesus. It's something he gives up, it says in the text. He gives it up. This is his call. He gives up his spirit. God is never, and this is important, not just for this, but for everything, God is never acted upon. Nothing happens to God ever. God is the primary mover. God is the first cause. And here, Jesus, the man, gives up his spirit. It's by his choice at the right moment. And because it's his creation, the whole creation gets caught up in this event. The light reverts to darkness. We have de-creation language. When Christ dies in a very real way, the old world died with him. Peter Lightheart commenting here says, as Jesus dies, creation is moving in reverse. A world is coming to an end. The sun is blotted out and the moon does not give her light. The stars fall from the sky. The clock stops for the Jews and the Romans who have put Jesus on that cross. Out of that darkness comes a voice, a loud voice, a voice like thunder, like the sound of many waters. The cry at Golgotha articulates, gives audible shape to the darkness that surrounds it. There's been a long series of catastrophic events that have led up to Jesus' death, starting with Judas and the, well, even before that, the confrontation with the Pharisees and all these courtrooms and the show trials and the beatings and the mocking. This is just one bad event after the other. And now it's over. I don't know about you, but I have sat next to people who are dying. It's a very sobering experience. The breathing gets shallower and weaker. You can kind of see in their eyes they're ready to move on. And you sit there sometimes day after day, sometimes week after week that it takes someone to die. And it's very slow until it's very sudden. There's no breathing. There's no movement. The brain is doing nothing. There's no heartbeat. Nothing happening, they're gone. Jesus died. He died like the rest of us do, he's gone. And with him, Israel died, Judah died, Jerusalem died, the old world died, the old covenant died, and the curse died with him. He had it all on his shoulders, that all died with him, because he is not just the son of God, he is also God the Son. Verse 51 says, And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. The main part of the curse in the garden was that heaven and earth got divorced, God and man became divorced, there's a separation, and it's a separation so severe that God guards it with angels with flaming swords. This is a serious separation, and God is intent on maintaining the separation between him and fallen humanity, between heaven and earth. We are truly separated. and the veil of the temple was a visible reminder, as God's people worshiped under the old covenant, that there really is a divorce. There's a separation here. There is a veil that keeps us from getting to God, and God doesn't get to us. And only one man in Israel is ever allowed on the other side of that curtain, and then even only once a year. It's very mysterious what's on the other side of that curtain. The separation is guarded and God is zealous to guard the separation between him and the sinful race. And this veil was not some light shower curtain either. It stood 60 feet tall and was 30 feet wide with thick threading. So the thickness of the curtain was a man's hand breadth. So four or five inches thick. Okay, double and quadruple stitched. This curtain weighed hundreds of pounds. Some estimates are this probably weighed even in the thousands of pounds. This is not a light curtain that easily tears. God himself is the only one who can tear this curtain and that's why it tears from top to bottom. This is God's decision that now the separation is going to be undone. Christ's road to humiliation has reached its very lowest point and now we have bottomed out and we are climbing back upwards again. The father has received the son's payment for sin once and for all. The one for all atonement has happened. But it's very odd the way it happens. Because if you follow the narrative, all the apostles have scattered. The only people around are scoffers. Only mockers are there in the most pivotal event in world history. and it goes virtually unnoticed. There's no choir singing. There's no prophet preaching. There's no priest doing anything. There's no worshipers. Christ died by himself. in a place with the stench of human remains, in the most uncomfortable setting, Christ dies by himself. But we know from a couple days ago, what's gonna happen if there's no worshipers of God? Even the rocks will cry out, and they do just that. The rocks cry out, creation is praising that there is a new chapter being written. There is new life here is being pictured. This is a Genesis 1 picture. There's a recreation of the world after Christ. The lights come back on. God says, let there be light. And the darkness runs away. And the earth shakes. and living men come out of the dust. This is a new world. This is recreation in this pivotal moment of history. Atonement has been made and a new chapter in world history begins. When the temple veil tears, this means that God in Christ has removed the barrier. Hebrews 10 says exactly that. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. The author of Hebrews says that the torn curtain opens up direct access between us and God. We no longer have to go through priests. Isn't that a great blessing? You can pray directly to God. You don't need a priest to intercede for you. Jesus is your intercessor. Now you have direct access to the other side of the veil. The tearing of the curtain draws an end to the ceremonial law. It draws an end to the priesthood, and it draws an end to the old covenant system. What used to separate Jews and Gentiles is forever gone. It's abolished. And there is now a multi-ethnic church of Jesus Christ across the globe. The gospel is the only thing that can remove the racial animosity and the racial envy that we saw even in the account of Christ. There's all kinds of talk about racial reconciliation and so forth nowadays, but the answer, in the world's eyes, is wokeness, and of course, that can only make it worse, because it's not just a non-gospel, it's an anti-gospel way to deal with conflict. Only the gospel can knit these people back together, the reverse of the curse itself. When the earth shakes and the rocks split apart, the world itself, the physical creation, is recognizing that the curse is being reversed. Romans 8 says the world has been groaning, and now signs of new life are starting to appear. Isaiah says that the people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. Resurrection is happening. And it's not surprising that the language of Ezekiel uses this same kind of language to talk about the conversion of sinners. How does he describe the human heart before our conversion? It's a heart of stone. Only the gospel can break that stone away and make a living fleshly heart start beating in its place. The gospel demolishes this stone. Then we have this odd little mini-resurrection in Jerusalem that we talked about on Ascension Day. These saints that are in the tombs of Jerusalem, and their mini-resurrection here points in the same direction. There's a commotion in the heart of the earth. And then after Jesus is resurrected, these Old Testament saints come out of their tombs. And sometimes the question comes up, okay, what happened to those saints afterward? Did they crawl back in their tombs and die again? and I think Kelvin is helpful here. Kelvin's answer is basically don't sweat it, the Bible doesn't say, so don't worry your sweet little eyes about it. But he does say there'd be nothing wrong or there'd be nothing absurd if they did crawl back in the tomb and die again, as these previous resurrections in the ministry of Jesus happened. But I tend to agree with Kelvin here, where he says, but it is more probable that the life which they received was not afterwards taken from them. "'For if it had been a mortal life, "'it would not have been a proof of a perfect resurrection. "'Now though the whole world will rise again, "'and though Christ will raise up the wicked to judgment, "'as well as believers to salvation, "'yet as it was especially for the benefit "'of his church that he rose again, "'so it was proper that he should bestow on none but saints "'the distinguished honor of rising along with him.'" So in modern English, what Calvin is basically saying is 1 Corinthians 15 talks about Jesus as the first resurrection, the first fruits of the resurrection, and that the fact that there's several people that are resurrected in this local setting together with Jesus this first time points us to the final resurrection in which all the dead will rise. The wicked dead and the righteous dead will all be raised at Christ's return, and this is a down payment, so to speak, of that. And this resurrection shows what our resurrection will be like. It's the same body that comes out of the grave that went in there, okay? The body is new and spiritual in the sense that it's uncorrupted, but a spiritual body does not mean a non-physical body. These people, it's the same person that went into the grave that comes out, and that is how our resurrection will be at the end of history as well. So this resurrection is being pictured here in these Old Testament saints, body and soul are knit back together to live on this planet in a completely renewed and restored condition. Verse 54, when the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, truly, this is the Son of God. And there were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. And so given the way that the physical creation itself has responded to Christ's death, now even the scoffers are moved to make an orthodox confession of Jesus Christ and who he said he was. Remember, the whole controversy, all of Holy Week, the issue is who is this man? Who is Jesus Christ? That's the entire controversy is centered on that one question. And now heathens get it right and the Jews have it utterly wrong. The Romans, who put Jesus to death, now understand who he is. The Jews have rejected their Messiah, and the Romans have their eyes opened. And this should serve as a reminder for us, living today, that God sometimes saves the most unlikely people. And are we okay with that? I thought about this. What if this morning, in a hungover state, A future member of this church is injecting heroin into his veins right now. What if? Can you rejoice at that mass conversion? What if a future matriarch in this church had an abortion to try to cover her shame this last week? Are you okay with her being here? Are we okay with surprise conversions? Are we okay that God draws straight lines with crooked sticks? I sure hope so, because he did it here. The guys who had the scriptures miss it, and the pagans suddenly catch on. Are we okay with that? Can we rejoice in unlikely conversions? And I hope so, because it's a great reminder that salvation does not come from ourselves. Salvation is a gift from the Lord, and he does it when and where and how he wants, with zero help from us. And these women in verse 55 and 56 hold a special place in the history of redemption. Think of where the men have gone. Peter denied Jesus. Judas betrayed Jesus and then killed himself. Pilate is tormented deep in his soul, knowing the truth and still being too coward to honor it. The apostles scatter and the women are left. Godly women who ministered to Jesus. And again, reading Kelvin on this portion is great. He gives such high praise to these godly women for being stronger and more steadfast and more dependable than any of the men were. In the providence of God, it is these faithful and godly women who are going to bear the testimony of the resurrection. So a passage like this cuts to the heart of the gospel, and it leaves questions that everyone here must answer, and we must answer definitively. And again, like we saw last week, to delay an answer or to say, well, I'll figure that out later, is an answer. It's an answer in the negative, okay? So this is not the kind of question you can reserve for another day. This is the kind of question you must answer this morning. Who is Jesus of Nazareth? You must answer that, you must. You must also answer, what happened at the cross? Was it just another Roman crucifixion, or did something significant happen on this one? Another question, what are you going to do with your guilt? Not cosmic guilt, not the next guy's guilt, not the guilt that's accumulated in this church, and there's lots of it, your guilt. What are you gonna do with your guilt? Yours, personally, put your name in there. What will you do with your guilt? Are you fool enough to think you can answer yourself in front of the Father? Or will we acknowledge that Jesus Christ bore the shame and the humiliation and the curse so we don't have to? That's the correct answer. We may wonder if death died at this moment. Why do we still have death? So it sounds great to say death died at Golgotha, and that's true, but don't we all in our experience still taste death? Isn't death still happening all around us? And of course it is, so what do we do with that? I think the Puritan divine here, John Owen, has a great answer in his great book, his masterpiece, The Death of Death and the Death of Christ. And in that book, he lines out how Jesus Christ is the victor over the last enemy, which is death. And so we may wonder, again, so if that's true, why does death persist? It's the same question we might ask on a bigger scale of the world. If the old world died, how does this new world still have sin in it? And there's lots of sin in this new world. How does that work? You've heard me give the analogy that I think helps me to understand it at least is like a wedding. God does not work usually in redemptive history like the 82nd airborne. Like there's this one line in the sand, and then everything on this side is all garbage, and it's all sin, and it's all corruption, and then just one inch on the other side of the line, it's all perfected and glorious. God works in stages. God works in increments. The Israelites took the Holy Land in stages. You are sanctified in stages. Okay, and so when a couple gets married, when are they married? When they share their vows, when they exchange rings, when the minister pronounces them, when the legal paperwork is done, when they consummate their vows into one flesh union later on, when are they married? And that's not such an easy question to answer, but you have a series of events all pointing in the same direction for the same purpose, and that is how redemption works as well. There's many steps involved in pushing back the curse. And God usually works organically and in stages, in increments, in a multiple series of events that are all working together towards a specific outcome. And so, even though the fact of death continues after Golgotha, and it will until Christ returns at his second coming to turn up history, what the Bible says is that the sting of death has been removed. So for the Christian, physical death is no longer a punishment for your sin, but it is one more step to glory. It's another step onto the other side. It's a transition to the better. And this is the blessed hope for all those who belong to Christ. And this is why, when Christ asks us to follow Him, and He gives us our crosses to bear, we must resolve to do it the way He did, to be oriented as He was. Just as He moved from dust to glory, so He moves His saints from dust to glory, from humiliation to glorification. And so we are living in an in-between time. We are living in a period of time which is already, but not yet. That's where we live right now. And many of us taste that in between and the humiliation that remains. Some of us have children who are not following the Lord. Some have very strained marriages. Some go through financial hardship. Some have health problems and death. So there is very much a not yet aspect to the time that we are living in. The not yet aspect of the death of death means that much difficulty and suffering remain in this present age. And so even in these reminders of the fall, nothing we face will match the curse that Christ faced. Yes, our sufferings are real, but they are a reminder that we will never be utterly forsaken as the Father was. He became a curse for us. And so the curse is gone, even if the echoes can still be heard at this moment in time. But there's also the already aspect of the death of death, which means that we have a much clearer picture and much more light coming from the cross. We live in the light of the cross. We have a much better picture of resurrection and glory than what Moses or Abram ever dreamed of. The light that started in Golgotha as a dim flicker is growing brighter and brighter as God's kingdom purposes push outward and they push ahead until that day when Christ returns. The light that flickers on in Jerusalem shows us what resurrection is like. We too will have our souls and our bodies knit back together just as these saints did. But when it happens at that great resurrection day at the end of history, we will walk out of our graves into a much better Jerusalem than these people had. They still walked out into a fallen Jerusalem. We're gonna walk out into a new Jerusalem. Even the reminders, even the echoes and the remnants of sin will be gone at that great resurrection day. And it's fitting that the author of Hebrews joins all of this fact with what? Meeting together for worship on the Lord's Day. He ties that all together, because every Lord's Day happens on the Resurrection Day. Every Lord's Day is an invitation to the King's Feast to remember that he reversed death. He killed death at the cross. He killed the old world at the cross. And when we gather for corporate worship on the Lord's Day, that is what we are commemorating. Every Sunday is Resurrection Day. And so we need to spur each other on, as the author of Hebrews said, in light of this great truth. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the incredible sacrifice that your son made, that we don't have to taste that forsakenness, we don't have to carry our own guilt to the cross, but if we have repented of our sins, if we are in union with your son, then he took it for us. Lord, I pray for those this morning that are not saved, that still have the full weight of their sin on their shoulders and they know that they will have to answer for it. Lord, I pray that you would send your Holy Spirit even right now to remove that guilt from them, that they know and they can see that it has been transferred onto your perfect son and he has answered once for all so that that sin can never be held against them again. Lord, and if there's also saints who have enjoyed this great exchange but are struggling with the assurance to walk in it, Lord, I pray that you would send your spirit to give them assurance that this is true, not just for others, but for them. Lord, I pray that we would all know the joy and the peace that comes from having peace with you through the atonement of your son. Lord, and I pray that we would never get bored with this. I pray that it would never become profane and everyday to us, but that we would see every Lord's Day as a reminder of what you have done for us. Thank you, Lord, and I pray that you would carry this deep into our hearts. Amen. Perhaps a fitting morning to celebrate the Lord's Supper here. And if you're a visitor here this morning at Trinity, we practice a form of communion that is not just for the members here, this is for other baptized believers from other churches. So if you're a visitor and you have been baptized in a gospel-believing church, and you are not evading church discipline in that church, you are welcome to take communion with us this morning, but this is not for small children, this is not for people escaping the accountability of their local church, this is for other believers who have been baptized in a gospel-believing church. We've just heard a sermon with our ears about the gospel. And the Lord's Supper is a sermon that involves our sight, our smell, our taste, and our touch. And this means, this is a means of grace in which God is feeding and strengthening us, reminding us of the body which was crushed and the blood which was shed for our sins so that we can be forgiven. So when we take these elements in through our mouth, we are internalizing Jesus Christ. We are being filled with him. We are in union with him. And we are crucified with him. And we will be raised with him. So I want to come, I want you to come and be welcomed to Jesus Christ. I'll ask the elders up and then we will pray. Lord, thank you for this meal. Thank you for tangible and physical and visible reminders of the gospel that we have just heard with our ears. And Lord, as I pray that as you involve our other senses to internalize these truths, I pray that your grace and your spirit would be here with us and that we would be strengthened and ready for the week ahead. We commit this time into your hands. Amen. For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me, and you can take the bread. that the outer rings are wine and the inner rings are grape juice. In the same manner, he also took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. You can take the cup.