Jeffrey Heine: If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to Mark chapter 15. We have two weeks left. In Mark, although after Mark, we're going to look at the Ascension, and then we are going to look at Pentecost. Mark has spent much of his gospel describing the life of Jesus at really a blistering pace. You know Jesus is always jumping from town to town quickly.
He's always immediately doing something. But you notice the shift. Once we got to the last week of Jesus's life, things really began to slow down. And And this is not just true in Mark, this is true in all of the gospels. I went through this week and I I counted up all the chapters in the gospels, and it surprised me to find that actually 40% of the gospels are about Jesus's last week on earth.
40%. The last twenty four hours of Jesus's life take up 16% of the Gospels. So if you think of the Gospels as a biography of Jesus, it would be a very unusual biography because we hardly get anything about his birth or most of his life. Almost everything focuses on that last week and really on that last day. It's the gospel's way of saying this, if you want to know who Jesus is, if you wanna know why he came, if you wanna know what he accomplished, look at those last moments.
And that's what we're gonna look at this morning. We are gonna look at the very last moment of Jesus's life and then his death. This is a text I actually went back, and I look, I I have preached on almost 20 times, because it's really just such sacred ground. I I almost feel like we should remove our shoes when we we come to a text like this. But because I've preached it so much, I struggle this week preparing it because what do you leave out?
It is so deep, you will never plunge its depths. So you got to go back and listen to 20 other sermons, if you really want to understand this. So Mark chapter 20, we'll begin reading in verse 33. When the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?
Which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Some of the bystanders hearing it said, behold, he is calling Elijah. And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave it to him to drink saying, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in 2, from top to bottom.
And when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, truly this man was the son of God. This is the word of the Lord. Amen. Would you pray with me? Lord, when we read your word and we say thanks be to God, we mean it.
Thank you. Thank you for giving this life giving word to us. That through your spirit, wraps itself around our heart, makes our heart new, gives us new life, a life that will never fade for all of eternity. Thank you, Jesus. And I pray that in this moment, my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but Lord, your words would remain, and they would change us.
We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. 1 of the things that struck me as I again studied this passage this week, was that pretty much all scholars, not just the conservative scholars, but even the most liberal and secular ones, actually are in agreement that Jesus said these words from the cross. Because if you were just trying to make up something, just trying to write something, to convince people that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, you would never have his last words being a cry that God has abandoned him. When it comes to the end of Jesus's life, it actually seems that there are many people of faith who seemingly died better deaths than Jesus.
For instance, when John Huss was burned at the stake, he cried out, we praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee. Thomas Becket's last words before his execution were, I am ready to die my Lord, that in my blood the church may obtain liberty and peace. This past summer I got to go to Oxford and I stood on the exact spot where Latimer and Ridley were burned in 1555. And in the midst of the flames, Latimer cried out, be of good comfort, Master Ridley. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England, as I trust shall never be put out.
I mean, these men died well, and and at the very end, they they gave us these words that, that were courageous, these words that inspire us. But Jesus, he seems to have completely fallen apart at the end. No one wanting to convince you that he was the Son of God would ever make this up, and yet look what happened right after he said this. For the first time in the gospel of Mark, somebody becomes convinced that Jesus was the son of God. This is remarkable because this is the first time that any human has ever confessed Jesus to be the son of God in the gospel of Mark.
Mark begins by declaring Jesus is the son of God. We know that verse 1, he declares it to us, but after that point no human gets it. And Jesus goes around healing people, he's calming storms, he's casting out demons, yet each time people walked away blown away by the power of Jesus, but always with questions asking, who is this man? How did he gain such authority? How does he have such power?
The demons knew who Jesus was. They would shout that he was the Son of God. God the Father knew who he was, and declared Jesus to be his Son when Jesus was baptized. But no human ever got it, until now. It wasn't till the very end when a Roman centurion of all people, He watches how Jesus dies, and he declares, truly this man was the Son of God.
This centurion would have been no stranger to death. I am sure that he had watched thousands upon thousands of people die. Likely, he put to death, he likely crucified thousands of people. But when he saw the way Jesus died, he had never seen anyone die like that. There was something so extraordinary about Jesus's death at the end that the only explanation that he had was that surely he must be the son of God.
Luke actually tells us in his gospel that the centurion wasn't the only man who was moved by watching Jesus die. He tells us that everyone around the cross who watched Jesus breathe his last, they all left beating their breast. Now keep in mind, these were the same people that were mocking Jesus earlier, casting insults at him, but nobody was mocking Jesus once he died. When they saw that, something changed in them, and they left beating their breasts. And maybe it was just at that moment they realized they had killed an innocent man, or maybe, just maybe, they realized that in that moment, Jesus actually was who he claimed to be.
So what exactly happened during these last moments as Jesus hung on the cross to cause these types of reactions? Well, Mark tells us some extraordinary things happened. He tells us there was a darkness. There's a cry of abandonment. There was 1 final cry before Jesus's death, and then the curtain in the temple was torn in 2.
And I want us to look at each 1 of those events. First let's look at the darkness. Mark begins by telling us that after Jesus had been on the cross for three hours, darkness then began to descend on the land. He says that this took place at the sixth hour, which was high noon, and lasted until 03:00 when Jesus died. So in other words, at the time when the sun should have been at its brightest point, the noonday sun, instead of having light, there was only darkness.
And all 4 gospels make a point to tell us that darkness covered the whole land. It's just a physical. There's a spiritual darkness here. Some people have made it a point to, to say, well, it was likely an eclipse, but eclipse might last for a few minutes. They don't last for three hours.
The sun's light failed. And, Throughout the Bible, darkness is a symbol of God's judgment. 1 of the places we first see this is in the book of Exodus, when God sent the plagues. Do you remember what his second to last judgment was? He brought darkness upon the whole land.
Moses describes that darkness this way. He says, it was a darkness you could feel. So it wasn't just the absence of light. It was a darkness that got in your bones. It was a it's a darkness that sucked the life out of your soul.
It was a darkness you could feel. And then after the darkness, you had the last plague, which was the death of the firstborn. And we see the same thing here. Darkness is coming over the land, and then we will have the death of the firstborn. The prophet Amos, he told us about this darkness eight hundred years earlier, when he prophesied these words.
And on that day, declares the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in broad daylight. That day that Amos is talking about in that prophecy is what we know as judgment day. It's the day of the Lord, it's judgment day. It's the day that God would come and he would finally judge the world for its rebellion and for its sin. And here what we see at the cross happening is Judgment Day.
It's coming, but it's not falling upon all the people. Judgment day is falling on 1 man, Jesus. All the judgment that that was reserved for the whole world, instead of being unleashed on the world falling on 1 man, Jesus, the 1 who never sinned, who never rebelled. In this moment, all of our sins, all of our sins of violence, slander, sexual immorality, sins of lying, greed, lack of compassion for the poor, lack of love for our neighbor, not loving the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul and strength. All of our sins in this moment are being laid on Jesus and he is being judged for them.
1 of the things we should always remember when we look at the cross is how horrible sin is. There's no such thing as a small sin. We look at the cross and we should just be reminded of just how horrible our sin is. And God judges it this way. The next thing we see here is the cry.
After three hours of darkness, Jesus cries out, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? Which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This is a quote from Psalm 22. We've looked at this before but pretty much when you cut Jesus, he bleeds the Psalms. And here in order to find expression for the anguish that he's feeling, he quotes Psalm 22.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This cry has come to be known over the centuries as the cry of dereliction, or the cry of abandonment. It's the heart of the gospel here. It's an extreme cry of distress. It's the only time it's used in the New Testaments, only used to describe this moment.
And here Mark, he records these words in Aramaic just as Jesus said them because it's 1 of those moments that when you hear it you never forgot the words. Eloi Eloi Lama Saba Thani, never forgot them. And it's in this cry that we're we're finally given the source of Jesus's pain. Notice that he does not cry out in this moment, my hands, my hands, my feet, my feet, my head, my head. Instead he cries out, my God, my God, God is the source of his anguish in this moment.
After living this perfect life of total obedience to his father, he is not rewarded for it. He is instead punished and abandoned by God. Some real mysterious way, Jesus is so identified with sinners. There's not just a felt abandonment by God, but a real 1 here by his father. That cup that he briefly tasted, in in the Garden of Gethsemane, now he's drinking to the full.
In other words, in this moment, he is experiencing hell. To not have the presence of God is to experience hell. Actually, if you look at all the different descriptions of hell that you have in the New Testament, 1 of the interesting things you'll find is that Jesus experienced all but 1 of those things on the cross. Hell is described first as a place of utter darkness, and of course we've seen the darkness descend on the land. It is also a place of torment.
Well, Jesus has been physically tormented. It's a place of abandonment. Well, at this point, Jesus has been abandoned by everybody. His disciples, his closest friends, he's even been abandoned by his father. And it's also described as a place of burning.
And we know from John's gospel that in this moment Jesus cried out, I thirst. He's burning inside. Now when Jesus cries out thirst, this isn't the type of thirst that you feel and the reason you have to carry your water bottles with you around everywhere. There's always some kind of new bougie water bottle. It used to be Nalgene's in my day, then I think it was Yettis, and then it moved to I think Corkcicles, Stanley Cups, and now it's is it O'Wallace?
I have no idea. I know all of my girls have them, but, whatever it is, it makes a really loud noise when you drop it in the sanctuary, I know that. But that's not the type of thirst that Jesus is talking about when he cries out, I thirst. This is the thirst from being cut off from living water for the first time ever. John actually doesn't record for us the cry of dereliction, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?
Instead, he only records that Jesus cried out, I thirst. They are likely both statements to be combined. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I am so thirsty. No longer is he experiencing that living water.
He's in hell. The only description of hell that we actually don't see here is the gnashing of teeth. Hell is described as a place where there's the gnashing of teeth, which it means that, it's an image of people lashing out at 1 another in anger. And instead of gnashing of the teeth, what Matthew tells us is that Jesus actually prayed forgiveness. He said, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing.
This is amazing. When Jesus is in the heart of hell, his heart wasn't hell. Jesus in that moment as he is experiencing hell is still filled with love and compassion. It's remarkable. He never loses his faith.
Even when he can't sense his father's presence notice he still prays to him and calls him my God. Now here's the good news for all of us here in this room. This prayer of abandonment that Jesus cried out is a prayer that not 1 of us ever has to pray. That cry never has to be on our lips. Never.
For Jesus here, what we see is he was being abandoned for us. He's our substitute. He is receiving all of the abandonment that we deserve. These words actually were a huge comfort to Martin Luther. Early in his life, he was when he was a monk, Martin Luther actually struggled immensely with his faith.
He just always felt there was a separation between him and God. He had fell in a deep depression. He thought I can never do enough good. I can never obey enough. I can never confess all of my sin.
And so, he just felt he could never have this relationship with this God that he was a monk in order to serve. He actually had a mentor or supervisor, a man named Johan Stalpitz, and he would go and confess his sins to Johan, and it would always be something like, hey, I I struggle with pride this week. And Johan would say, well, God loves you and he forgives you. Okay. And then as Martin Luther would leave, he'd turn around and go back and say, actually, I struggle with pride as I confess my pride.
Johann's like, okay, well, you know, God still loves you, forgives you, and Martin Luther would leave, and you're like, oh gosh, Master Johann, I actually struggle with pride as I confess my pride, as I was confessing my pride. No joke, he would do this. And it would just finally, it drove Johann crazy. And he and he said he gave him these 2 words of advice. First he said, hey, why don't you go and do something serious?
I want you to go and have an affair and come back and have something serious to confess. Not good advice. Don't take them to like, oh, I'm writing that 1 down. No. Alright.
And the next thing he said was this, just can't you concentrate on the love of God? Just concentrate on how much he loves you and how much you love him. Martin Luther saw right through that. He actually said, love him. I hate him.
I hate him because he's just. And Martin Luther realized in that moment, he can't ever be good enough to have a relationship with God. All he felt was this separation. And then he came across Psalm 22, which Jesus quotes, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And in that moment, he began to realize Jesus felt the same way.
That, like, he just separation. Like, the father's turning his face away from this. That's what he, he felt. But even to a greater degree, and slowly that began to develop in him until two years later, he finally reads Romans 1 about how the righteous comes. Righteousness comes to us not by trying to do good works, but from faith in the work of Christ.
And he was reborn. It says to, he said at that moment it was like heaven was opened up to him, and it was. Martin Luther was also the very first to point out to me that when Jesus cried out from the cross, my God, my God, it's the only time in scripture he didn't call God his father. Every time he prays, it's my father. Every time he refers to God, it's my father.
But here, it's just my God, my God, because he no longer felt like a son. When Jesus cried this out, this is the only time that Psalm 23 proved not to be true. You know the twenty third Psalm? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. You know, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
Here Jesus is walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and the Lord is not with him. It's the only time the Psalm is never true, but Jesus walked through that valley without the Lord so that we someday might walk through it and never be alone. Now we read, when Jesus cried out after cried out lama lama sabatani, we read that some people thought he was calling for Elijah because Eloi sounds like Eli, and so they're, wait. Let's see if Elijah comes. Now most commentators, they think that these people are continuing to mock Jesus.
Oh, look. He's calling for Elijah. Wait. Let's see if Elijah comes. I actually disagree with that.
I don't think that's the case. I might be wrong, but I don't think that this case this is the case. I think the darkness that's come upon the land has had a profound impact on the people there. I think things are beginning to change as they watch Jesus die. Remember, people will leave beating their breast.
Remember, at some point, we're gonna have a thief on a cross who was mocking Jesus change and say, Jesus, would you remember me? Would you save me? So I I think change is happening as a darkness is coming on the land and and people are realizing what's happening. So I don't think they're mocking. I think they're beginning to wonder is he actually the Messiah and Elijah was prophesied to come before the Messiah.
But Elijah doesn't come. Instead we read that Jesus he cried out and he took his last breath. Now remember, when people die of crucifixion, they die of asphyxiation. They suffocate to death. They can't make a cry.
You don't even die with a whimper. You're just smothered. But Jesus here, he cries out. Meaning, no one's taking his life. He is laying it down.
He gives up his spirit of his own accord. And we know from Matthew and John exactly what Jesus cried out in this moment. He cried out, it is finished. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. The it, When he says it is finished, that that it is the atoning work for our sins.
He is saying at that moment, our sins have been paid in full. Everything the father has asked him to do, he is done. He has paid our debt. It is finished. It's also the very last phrase in Psalm 22.
That Psalm changes as you read it. It starts off in despair, but then it begins to say, but the Lord will not hide his face from the afflicted. And then it begins to talk about the good news that will be shared with a great congregation, and then it ends with it is finished. He has done it. After this, Jesus said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.
This is also a Psalm. Psalm 31. And it's also something, I love this, that little Jewish children would say before they went to sleep. It's, the equivalent we have today is, now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
It's a sweet, sweet prayer. Father, into thy hands, I commit my spirit. And notice at this point, he is once again calling God, Father. This is the prayer we get to pray as a child of God. Father, it's in thy hands I commit my spirit.
After Jesus cried this out, we read that the curtain of the temple was torn in 2 from top to bottom. This curtain was 60 feet high. There's been a big debate among staff as exactly how tall the ceiling is. We think it's 30 feet high. Somebody said it's it's approximately 5 James Clings high.
And, so the temple curtain would have been 60 feet high, twice the height of this, 30 feet wide. It was 4 inches thick. It was essentially a wall. And it was a wall that separated people from going into the holy of holies, which was where God's presence dwelled. That place could only be entered once a year by the high priest, only after making many sacrifices, by doing all types of rituals to ensure he was pure.
Only then could he go in, and even then they would tie a rope around his, 1 of his legs, so in case he died they could pull him out. And yet we read here that this curtain was ripped from top to bottom, or from heaven to earth, like God was doing this. The result is now anyone can enter. There's no separation between us and the presence of God. Anyone, anyone can enter without fear of judgment.
In verse 39, we read about the very first person to go in. And when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, truly this man was the son of God. And don't miss this, the very first person to enter in was not the high priest or any priest. It was it was not a disciple. It was not even a Jew.
The first person to go in was a hardened pagan Roman Centurion. Do you think this man knew really anything about Jesus? Do you think he had ever once cracked open a Bible? Do you think he ever went to Sunday school? I mean he never heard Jesus teach.
If you were to ask him about the Trinity, he'd be like, what in the world are you talking about? He didn't know any of those things, but he looked how Jesus died and he says, no human dies like that. And so he confesses Jesus as the son of God, and he's the first to gain access to the presence of God. And if he can enter into the presence of God, anyone can. It doesn't matter about your past.
It doesn't matter how horrible of a sinner you are. It doesn't matter whether or not you grew up in church or you know the Bible. All that matters is whether you believe Jesus to be the son of God and that he paid for your sins on the cross. If that's the case, then that curtain of separation has been ripped into, and you have full access to the presence of God. And as we read at the start of the service from Psalm 16, in his presence, there is fullness of joy and in his right hand there are pleasures forevermore.
Heaven is now open to you. Pray with me. Jesus, thank you for your atoning work on the cross. Thank you for being forsaken from the father so that we might never be. For being cast out so that we might be brought in.
For losing your status as a child so that we might all be children of God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your atoning work on the cross and that we get to enjoy being in the presence of God forever. And we pray this in the sweet name of Jesus, our savior.
Amen.