Again, I invite you to turn to the 27th chapter of Matthew, the book of Matthew, the 27th chapter. We'll be reading this morning verses 45 through 50. Keeping in mind the context, Jesus has just been crucified. He's also just endured the mockery of the guards saying, and those around him, talking about he trusts in God, let God deliver him. And now he's still on the cross here as Matthew gives the portrait here of Christ's crucifixion. We'll be reading this morning verses 45 through 50. I remind you that this is the word of the Lord. Now, from the sixth hour until the ninth hour, there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. That is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Some of those who stood there when they heard that said, this man is calling Elijah. Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed and offered it to him to drink. The rest said, let him alone. Let us see if Elijah will come to save him. And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. the reading of God's Word, and we pray that he would bless it to our hearts. Amen. Not often happens in our world today that we're in, we're outside, we're in a position where there is total darkness. Normally, there's some lights on especially in this area. There's always lights on and even if there's no lights on a clear night There are enough stars where you can get some light from there. So it's not total darkness But being in the situation of total darkness indeed is quite terrifying It happened to me once, and it's the only time I remember it happening, and it was a couple of years ago, going up to, actually it was after the first night of Presbytery meeting up at Cambridge, and I remember Duren was in the car with me, and we were, in order to get to the house where we were staying, we had to go through some, it was about 40 minutes away from the church, we had to go through some wooded area, or a forest, basically, and we stopped at a stop sign, and Duren told me, turn off the lights. And just to see, and I did it, and it was spooky. People talk about not being able to see the hand in front of your face, and it's true. You cannot. It is total darkness. It must have been an overcast day when you just couldn't, there were no lights around. And believe me, I turned those lights on pretty quickly and I was worried for the rest of the trip that my headlights would go out or something. I don't know what I would do in that circumstance. Complete darkness, complete powerlessness. You can't see, you don't know, you can't put your head around what's going on because it's pure darkness. And so the darkness for us, even To our day, when we have so much light, the darkness elicits some kind of fears. Most people, when they are afraid, it's more of the dark than of the night. Children are afraid of the dark and, in general, wickedness occurs during the night hours. That's not universally true, of course, but in general. In the scripture, these two ideas are picked up upon, the terror of darkness on the one hand and the idea of wickedness being done on it and God's judgment occurring on the other. So in scripture, darkness symbolizes both God's judgment and chaos, terror, and the reign of evil. And it's those two aspects of darkness which I want to put our attention on here this morning. As Jesus endures the agony of the cross, and it's midday, and the land is covered with darkness, I think It happened, of course, but that because of God and his sovereignty, we know that everything happens, especially during this time. There's value there more than just an occurrence of this weird occurrence. There's symbolic value, and I believe that the symbolic value of the darkness is in the first It is a sign of God's judgment. And in the second, it is a sign of the chaos and the apparent reign of evil. Beginning with the first one, darkness is a sign of God's judgment in here. Then I'll move on to the second one, which is the hour of darkness for the world. Darkness is a sign of chaos and the apparent reign of evil. So, we see in verse 45, now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour, there is darkness over all the land. Now, sixth and ninth hour, we don't speak like that today when we're doing time, but that basically is 12 to 3. So, it's basically 12 to 3 p.m. So, there would never normally be darkness during that time. I think perhaps if there was a storm, it would be a very bad storm, there would be some sort of semblance of darkness, but never the darkness here envisioned. This is pure darkness coming over the land and it's during the lightest hours of the day. So this is clearly something from God and is communicating what is going on here. And throughout the Scriptures, darkness is often prophesied about as a sign of God's judgment. And let me just give you one example. There are actually many examples, but I don't want to be bogging us down with too many examples. I'll give you one quite famous one, which comes from the book of Amos. Amos writes in verse 18 of chapter five, Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord, for what good is the day of the Lord to you? It will be darkness and not light. And what's going on in context is people are desiring the day of the Lord. That is, the day of God's judgment. And they think, of course, that the day of God's judgment will come upon their enemies. But in reality, as Amos points out, it's going to come upon you. It's going to be darkness for you and not light. So don't desire it. Continue to pray for God's patience and mercy because in it is your own well-being. And clearly, we see from this passage that darkness is here evoked as a symbol or a sign for God's judgment. Again, there are many passages which we can go through to talk about that. And we see David feeling God's judgment and thinking that he's under God's judgment as we read the Psalms. In Psalm twenty two one, which, of course, is quoted here. David cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And of course, to be forsaken of God is the ultimate judgment. Adam and Eve were forsaken of God. They had to leave the Garden of Eden. They had to leave the place of God's presence. And so David cries out, David knows that he has done nothing to deserve this. And so he cries out, why have you forsaken me? Why am I under God's judgment? And we read as we read throughout Psalm 22, all other kinds of awful things happening to David. And we think and we can see that verse one is just sort of a summary of all the things that are going on in his life. There are people around them that he likens them to bulls who are around them. His enemies are around them. and they've hurt him, they've pierced his hands and his feet, and they have taken his clothes from him. He is in a situation here of utter desolation, utter darkness. And he cries out to God, why should I receive this judgment from your hands? Why have you forsaken me? David had gone through this darkness. As we see from the psalm, which Jesus cries out here, Psalm 22. There's another psalm alluded to here, and it's not just in verse 46, there's another one in Psalm 48, or not Psalm 48, verse 48, and it deals with Psalm 69. Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed. Now, we've seen this before, and we see it here again. This is an explicit fulfillment of Psalm 69, and in Psalm 69 we read, and this is verse 21, they also gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar, or sour wine, would be the same word, to drink. And what Matthew is trying to show here isn't simply that Jesus is just fulfilling this one aspect of the prophecy, but that he is going through the utter shame also connected with that in the psalm. So what's David going through in Psalm 69? Verse 19 reads, This is David praying to God. You know my reproach, my shame and my dishonor. My adversaries are all before you. Again, he's in a situation of duress. Reproach has broken my heart. I am full of heaviness. I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none. And for comforters, but I found none. He's all by himself. He's under extreme shame. It looks as though he is bearing the judgment of God. And they give him this sour food and sour wine to drink as part of that. David's darkness indeed was clear, and we don't know the situations of those Psalms, but if you read the life of David, you know that he went through some times where he was pretty much in darkness. But it wasn't just David. It was also the people of Israel as a whole that went through a period of darkness. And we should expect this. And we don't think this way in our world, but in the ancient world, and it still persists in certain cultures, it was thought, and it was truly thought in a way, that the king basically embodied the people. The king represented the people, but also embodied them. So what the king did, also the people were expected to do too. And as the king went, so went the people. And so when Israel was reading the Psalms and singing the Psalms of David, they knew that it wasn't just speaking of David and his experience as if David were just some random individual who happened to go through tough times. You have to ask yourself, why then would they be in the Psalms if that were the case? Why would they be part of God's scripture if it were just some random person's misadventures? The idea here is that David is personifying. He is going through these struggles really, but he's doing so as the king and therefore Israel follows them. Israel is the one who is embodied in the Psalms of David because Israel goes the way David did. And we see Israel going through that same struggle. They go through darkness. Now, we could point to many passages which talk about Israel's exile being a time of God's judgment and a time of God's curse, but let me point your attention to one in particular which explicitly connects it with darkness, and that is Lamentations 3, 1 through 2, which reads, I am the man, this is Israel personified here as a man, I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He has led me and made me walk in darkness and not in light. And if you continue to read, this is chapter 3, it has that beautiful part in the middle about God's mercies being new every morning that's always quoted. The rest of it, from the beginning and also the end, is a chapter about judgment and about darkness. Israel had to also endure the judgment and the darkness of God's judgment. They're in this time of darkness. It's interesting to point out about the Book of Lamentations. It's traditionally ascribed to Jeremiah. It may well have been written by him. But it's clearly someone who is representing the people of Israel and pouring out the pain and the suffering that Israel was going through during the time of the exile. And sometimes we lose sight of just how important, not just how painful, but also how important theologically the exile was. God, who had made promise to them, had now abandoned them. And this was a huge problem for them, both in an emotional sense, but also even in a cognitive sense. And in the Book of Lamentations, you have a beautiful poem structure called an acrostic. And that means it's a fancy word, but basically what it means is that every verse begins with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In English, it would be if you're writing a poem, the first verse would start with the letter A, the second verse would start with the letter B, et cetera, and all the way through. And this is the way it is for the first four chapters. All four of them are acrostic poems and lamentations. But suddenly in the fifth chapter, the acrostic is just abandoned and it's just Words on a page and that in a sense signifies the chaos and the struggle and the judgment Under which Israel was going as they received God's judgment in as they went into exile David went through a time of darkness Israel goes through a time of darkness and And now we see here in verse forty five, Christ going through a time of darkness himself. He seems to go through it, but not just simply replay it, but also it escalates. It gets worse for him as it goes. It's not simply that he felt abandoned by God as David did. He actually is abandoned by God. It's not as though he is simply the glory has left in some symbolic way. And as it is in for Israel, it's also that God has actually abandoned him. because of the sin that was placed upon him. He is receiving God's judgment. We read in Psalm 22, Jesus quotes it in verse 46. He quotes it, interestingly, not in Hebrew, but in Aramaic. He says, That's Aramaic for sure, not Hebrew, which means that was probably the tongue Because you're not going to speak in a second language when you're in that kind of agony. You go back to what's there. And he quotes Psalm 22. And I think not because he's explicitly going through the psalm in his mind at that time, but because the psalms are so much a part of him. That he means not just this verse, but the whole of Psalm 22 he has in mind as he's going through these agonies. And we see those connections between David and Psalm 22 and Jesus, and we see them in numerous detail. In verse 9 of Psalm 22, the people around David say, he trusts in God. Let God deliver him if he delights in him. And of course, we saw that taunt from Jesus just last week when we went over the passage, and that was in verse 43. Psalm 22 amazingly talks about how they have pierced his hands and his feet. And he can count all of his bones, and all of these are connected with the crucifixion. The divided garments we saw a couple of weeks ago, in verse 35 of Matthew 27, the divided garments are found in Psalm 22, 19. And of course, the ultimate cry of desperation we find in 22, 1. And Jesus is fulfilling this psalm, but only to a higher degree. He's replaying its sufferings. He's filling them up. Not just Psalm 22, we see Psalm 69 here as well. Psalm 69 has a bit about, in verse 48, about sour wine and putting it on a reed. But in Psalm 69, it isn't just that one part of it that Jesus is fulfilling, it's the whole thing. He's borne reproach. Verse 7, he has become a stranger even to his closest relatives. Verse 8 of Psalm 69, zeal for the health of God has consumed him. Verse 9 of Psalm 69, we know that's quoted in reference to Jesus in God's gospel. And we see most explicitly in verses 16 through 21 how reproach and shame has broken his heart. And he looked for comforters, but he found none. And nothing more can fulfill that greater than as we see Jesus on the cross by himself with no comforters around him. He fulfills these psalms, but not only does he fulfill them, he fills them up. But David can only experience in part. He felt, he experienced, he went through in full. He fulfills these psalms. And before we move on, I do want to think about and apply these in our lives. We are a denomination that loves psalms. And I think that's, frankly, one of the greatest aspects of our denomination. Because through the psalms, We read of the life and the teachings, but not just the teachings, the life and the sufferings and the passion and the vindication of the Messiah. It isn't as though the Psalms are just kind of a bunch of like a jigsaw puzzle. And every now and then you have a little piece of the puzzle, which every verse, a verse here and there, which comes and fulfills a prophecy. I think that's the normal way that we, that in our culture today, we think of prophecy being fulfilled one verse to one place here. There is that, but it's so much more than that. Those verses which are quoted in the New Testament aren't just for those verses, but the whole song. And Jesus is not just fulfilling a verse here and there. His whole life is the song. It is his. And as we sing them in Christ, and as we sing them filled with his spirit, we look back to Christ as he fulfilled them and even ourselves as we are in Christ. So I see the importance of seeing the Psalms and knowing the Psalms and reading the Psalms and praying them because they give us forth here the life of Christ and explicitly hear his sufferings in Psalm 22 and 69. But it's not just the events of David's darkness we find in the psalms that Jesus is fulfilling but also Israel We've seen throughout the gospel of Matthew that Jesus here is portrayed as a new Israel He's born miraculously just like Israel was born out of the womb the dead womb of Sarah. So Jesus was born from a virgin They went down to Egypt Israel did, and so did Jesus. There was a slaughter of the innocents, the children being slaughtered in Pharaoh's time, but also in Jesus's time. Jesus came back from Egypt, as the people of Israel did, went through the waters of baptism, the Red Sea, and out to the other side, was tempted in the wilderness, as Israel was tempted in the wilderness. Went to the mountain and gave the Sermon on the Mount as a new Moses would. And we see from the end of the Sermon on the Mount all the way up to this time, Jesus initiating the kingdom of God, that which Israel was supposed to do under David and Solomon and their dynasty. Jesus initiates the kingdom of God, of course, the big difference is all along the way, Jesus is obedient. Whereas Israel has flickers of obedience, but mainly are disobedient. But Jesus is clearly portrayed as the new Israel and his life replays that of Israel all the way down to the shame and the dereliction of the exile. And so we shouldn't be surprised when we read in Lamentations 215. of the people wagging their heads as they rejoice over the destruction of Jerusalem. And we shouldn't be surprised when we see these same enemies of God wagging their heads at Christ, taunting Him, saying, if you were the Son of God, why don't you come down from that cross? And of course, we see the darkness Of Lamentations 3, 1 through 2, here in Matthew chapter 27, verse 45, as darkness covers. Israel bore the curse of God, and so does Jesus, but there are two big differences. We could say the same of David. We know that David sinned. We know that Israel sinned. But Jesus did not sin. He's bearing it. for his people. That's the one big difference. And the second big difference, and I would beg that you would not minimize this, he fills them up. He went through far more than David or Israel ever went through. And I don't want to ever downgrade what they went through. If you read accounts of the exile, it is horrible. And you would never want to live during that time and receive God's judgment in that way. But it is nothing compared to the judgment that Christ received on the cross when he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The judgment of God fell upon him and this judgment was symbolized in darkness coming over the land. But I don't think that's all the darkness is symbolizing. Because, as we see in Scripture, darkness is not just a sign of God's judgment, it's also a sign of chaos. This goes all the way back to the beginning in Genesis 1, 1, and 2. It says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void. It didn't have any shape. God created it without shape, and then he went on to shape it and fashion it. It was chaotic. And it says in verse 2, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. There was darkness even there. At the time of the Exodus, one of the plagues was darkness. We read in Exodus 10, 21 through 22, The Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, darkness which may even be felt. So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. Egypt, who prided itself on its orderly society, it's been noted by many people who study ancient Near Eastern religions that Egypt's gods were a lot more orderly, a lot more a lot nicer, to be honest with you, than some of the gods of the surrounding regions who were just brutal and wicked. And people have connected that to the regularity of the Nile, the regularity of life in Egypt, et cetera, and who knows why. But it's true. But when God sent darkness over Egypt, it meant that their head god, Ra, who's a sun god, was just blotted out, not even worth anything. But Egypt went into utter chaos, utter panic, utter terror. Darkness is a symbol of terror and chaos. But not just that. In Scripture, it's also a symbol of the reign of evil. Men would not come into light, Jesus says in John 3, because they loved darkness more than light. They loved evil more than good. In Luke 22, verse 53, Jesus says these words when he was being arrested. When I was with you daily in the temple, you did not try to seize me. But this is your hour, speaking to the enemies of God and the enemies of Christ, and the power of darkness. Darkness came over the land because it seemed that evil had won. It seemed that chaos would reign. It seemed that the hope of the world would be blotted out, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we see darkness coming over. Scripture says that we are the light of the world, the church. Jesus says this in Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount. And oftentimes in our culture today, people look to the church as traditionalists, bigots, all kinds of terrible names that people call the church. And I think that because of this, many Christians are timid, or at least perhaps they're embarrassed by their beliefs and they quickly qualify what they say by, well, I'm not going to judge you or something like that, but this is what I believe. And I understand being speaking the truth in the love and we should we shouldn't judge when it's not warranted. That's for sure. But scripture teaches we are the light of the world. Which assumes that the world is in darkness. The world is in chaos. The world without God would spin back into the chaos from which it came. So the church must have a public face and a public voice, not just for the good of the church, but for the good of the world. Because the church is the light of the world and darkness, men may love darkness, but it is not good for anybody, including themselves. And so we need to remember that as we seek to bring light into a society which loves darkness. To do so boldly, not to do so in a way that's that shows that we don't love people like Jesus called us to love as enemies. That's for sure. There's been enough of that. But boldly and truly and non-apologetically because we are what Jesus said we are. We are the light of the world and outside of light is darkness. And here the darkness is over the land because it seems as though evil had won. It seems Is there the reign of chaos? It's beginning because the Son of God was there hanging upon the cross. The hope of the world, the hope of Israel, and therefore the world was dying in a horrible and shameful way. But as we read in Isaiah chapter 60, wherever there's darkness, there's light after it. And so we go to the third section here, and that is after darkness, light. And it's just a hint of it here. And we'll go as we go through the book of Matthew when you get to the resurrection. We'll see this in more detail, but we get just a hint of it here. Versus forty seven and forty nine, some of these those stood there again, verse forty seven, when they heard that, they said, Jesus crying out, they said, this man is calling for Elijah. Now, we're not going to quite get this unless we know, I mean, Elijah is the way English speakers pronounce this, but in Hebrew it's Elya, so it sounds like Eli. So this is why they're thinking it's Elijah. But they also have been programmed in their mind that he would call for Elijah at this time. Why is that? Because They know that before God's restoration came, Elijah would come. We saw this earlier, because John the Baptist played that role of Elijah. This is why everyone was saying, is Jesus Elijah or not? Because in Malachi, the last verses of the Old Testament, actually, verses 5 and 6 of chapter 4, it talks about the time when Elijah has come before the day of the Lord, before God comes and makes things right. And so I think these people here, some of the ones who are standing there and thinking that Jesus is calling out to Elijah, I think that even though they're mocking him, there is still a little sense of fear. I still worry that perhaps Elijah is going to come and rescue him, that perhaps he will be vindicated by God, as David was after suffering. Verse 49, it's even more clear. They say, let him alone. Let us see if Elijah will come to save him. Do you catch the uneasiness and fear in those words? Maybe Elijah will come to save him. And while it's said openly as a taunt, I really think they're worried. They're worried because they know that Jesus was a righteous man and they know that God vindicates the righteous man as they stand there condemning him. They can't get it out of their minds. They are guilty and they know it. And so they even expect someone like Elijah to come to restore all things. Well, Elijah didn't come. He already had come, so of course he wouldn't come again. He came in the person of John the Baptist. But redemption did come. Psalm 22, which Jesus here quotes, begins in the first 20 or so verses talking about all the horrible things that are happening. But in verses 22 through 31, all of a sudden, the tone changes. All of a sudden, David begins to praise God. All of a sudden, He gives forth thanksgiving in words that are reminiscent of God's promises to Abraham being fulfilled. Of all the kings of the earth coming to bow down. The ends of the earth coming. And we see in here not only the fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham, but the very promises that God gave to David's son being fulfilled. The nations coming forth and bowing down to the King of Israel. The same could be said of Psalm 69, the last three or so verses. Israel will again inherit the land. And they will grow numerous and multiply. Again, the fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham. Even in these Psalms, we saw redemption after the period of darkness. Of course, in Isaiah 60, which we read together. Isaiah 60 says darkness will come over the land, but then it says arise and shine for your light has come and the glory of the Lord shall shine upon you, the glory of the Lord. God's presence again will come. I think Christ knew that he he knew. that God's vindication and that God's blessing and redemption would come. And so I challenge you now. We live in a world that loves darkness. Of course we do. The world loves darkness because it's evil. Its deeds are evil. But darkness does not win. So this means that the church should continue and strongly and boldly live out its calling as the light of the world. But it also means for us as a church and individually when we're going through dark periods, either individually or as a church. Remember. It may be dark for the nighttime, but in the morning, the rejoicing comes. And that, of course, is most clearly seen in the light of the resurrection and the light of God's glory coming down to earth and dwelling with his people, where there will no longer be any need for any sun, because God's glory and the glory of the Lamb will shine forth over all. So darkness came upon Christ for three hours and darkness comes upon our life from time to time. Remember that after darkness, there's light. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you that Christ has overcome the darkness. And because of that, he's established us as the light of the world. The very calling which you gave to your people, Israel, is now with the whole church, Jew and Gentile. And so we pray that we would boldly live out that calling and that identity, knowing that we are the hope of a world that loves darkness, but that needs light. And we also pray that when we go through times of darkness, that we would remember your light in the light of Christ, in the light of your glory. And as we pray in Jesus name, Amen.