Dear Explorer,
Again, remember that we don't know the exact sequence of these events. I believe they all happened – but we don't know in which order. Different witnesses saw different things. So, I will just deal with them in no certain order. These are events that happened after noon on Friday. Jesus has been on the cross since approximately 9 a.m. that morning.
Read Matthew 27:45-49
And
Read Mark 15:33-36
And
Read Luke 23:44-45
The sun stopped shining. You've seen an eclipse. 3 hours is an awful long eclipse! I don't think that was the cause. Scientists have researched this and agree that an eclipse could not explain the extended darkness. I believe this was a supernatural darkness that showed God's grief over what was happening to His Son.
So, what was happening to Jesus?
Not only was He experiencing excruciating physical pain to His physical BODY, but I believe that the darkness represented the Holy Spirit leaving Jesus' body and God turning His face away from Jesus as the sins of the world were placed on Him. Now this is in the spiritual realm – you couldn't see the sins – but God could. Remember that Jesus has always walked and talked with God. Unlike us, there was never a time when He was not in communication with God. But I believe the darkness represents that time when God could not be present with Jesus because He took on my sins and yours and the sins of the whole world.
Because God is holy, we are told that He cannot be in the presence of un-holiness. His holiness will destroy the un-holy. That's why we can't go to Heaven without being covered and paid for by Jesus. God could not stand our sinfulness and would destroy us. In Exodus 19:9-25 we see God teaching Moses these truths that still apply today. The phrase from Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death” is not just a punishment, it is a fact that God's holiness cannot allow our un-holiness in His presence.
So, the sky turned black and God turned His face away from Jesus. When Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” You need to understand the great significance of that. This is what Jesus came to do – to take the sins of you and me on Himself and to pay for them in full. That meant that His relationship to the Father was completely severed, cut off, destroyed. The Holy Spirit inside of Him left and He experienced the pain of emptiness at the core of His being for the first time. No longer could He walk and talk with God. He was an outcast, a sinner, living in darkness. He experienced what a human being experiences if they chose to reject Jesus – separation from a loving, merciful, generous, patient, kind God.
Yet while this was happening in the spiritual realm, the people standing around saw nothing out of the usual. They only saw a typical man facing death.
Jesus cried out in a mixture of Aramaic (the common language) and Hebrew. What did the people mistakenly think He was saying?
They thought He was crying out to Elijah to help Him. We've talked about the role of Elijah as someone who would appear before the Messiah. I believe that some of the people were still hoping that Jesus would prove to be the Messiah by having Elijah come and rescue Him. But God had other plans that they didn't understand.
Read Isaiah 55:8-9
Sometimes we don't understand God's ways. But we must learn to trust Him in everything.
Now you may have noticed that Jesus was given a drink of vinegar – this is the fruit of the vine. Review Day 266. He had been offered this drink before and He refused. Now He accepted it and drank. Why?
Matthew 26:29 says that He would not drink it until the Kingdom of God had arrived. Jesus had received all the sins of the entire world, past, present and future. He was empty and forsaken by God. The only thing left was His final payment – death. This sip of the “fruit of the vine” was Jesus announcing that the next thing that happened would usher in the Kingdom of God, the NEW WAY. If you please, it was the drum roll…
In His service, dale
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