This Time is a Teacher
As we face the reality of a global pandemic, with not much sign of it abating, how do you see this time? Is this a time a burden or a gift? In his providence, God intends this time to be a teacher for us. This time of struggle and uncertainty and loss is a gift of his grace.
This time is no doubt a burden to us in many ways. We’re being pushed out of our normal schedules. Many of our comforts and preferences have been taken away. We’re separated from loved ones and from each other. We’re struggling with fear and anxiety and loneliness and despair. But these burdens are meant to be a gift to us. How? Because it’s good for us to come to terms with our limits, for us to discover that we have limits, for us to realize that we’re not as strong as we think we are, and for us to start asking deeper questions.
A time like this teaches us what’s important. When comforts and preferences and people are stripped away from us, we realize that God is the only thing that we actually have and that he’s the only thing we actually need. This is a good gift from him. God will sometimes bring pain our way for our good. You don’t fault a doctor for performing a life-saving surgery on you, even if it hurts a little bit. Anything that gives us more of what we need the most is a good thing. Therefore, this time we’re living in is a gift from God meant to teach us that God is the only unshakeable reality in our lives, and that he offers the deepest joys and comforts.
What If God Were Taken Away from You?
But what if, in the midst of this hard time, even God was taken away from you? How would you feel if you lost everything, including the presence of God in your life? What if you had to walk through a global pandemic, or the loss of a loved one, the pain of losing a job, the fear of not being able to pay your bills, or the despair of loneliness without God? What if you were forsaken by God at the moment you needed him the most?
Jesus knows what it feels like to lose everything including God. He experienced it on the cross. On the cross, God the Father turned away from God the Son. At the point of his greatest need, Jesus was abandoned by God. And he did it willingly, for our sake.
Forsaken and Triumphant
But his forsakenness led to his triumph. No, I’m not referring to his resurrection. That’s next week. Through being forsaken, Jesus fulfilled his destiny and revealed his identity. When he died on the cross, he opened the way into God’s presence and revealed his identity as God’s Son.
This is the main point of our text today. In Mark 15:33-39, Jesus is forsaken by the Father in order to save his people and reveal his glory. Jesus is forsaken and triumphant as he hangs on the tree of shame. In verses 33-36, Jesus is forsaken. In verses 37-39, Jesus is triumphant.
Jesus is Forsaken
In verses 33-36, Jesus is forsaken. Jesus’ crucifixion was a crucifixion like no other. Jesus’ death is as extraordinary as his life. The manner of his death wasn’t unusual – people were crucified all the time. But the events around Jesus’ crucifixion and what happens as he hangs on the cross is unusual to say the least.
“Darkness Over the Whole Land”
Verse 33 says that from noon to 3:00pm “there was darkness over the whole land.” It’s not supposed to be dark at midday. This wasn’t a solar eclipse or dust storm, as some have supposed, but was rather supernatural darkness from God meant to show people that something evil was happening. Have you ever experienced a thunderstorm rolling in and turning the skies dark in the middle of the day? That ominous feeling is a fraction of what was happening here.
In the Old Testament, darkness is almost always a sign of God’s judgment. Darkness was the ninth plague that came over the Egyptians because of Pharaoh’s hard heart. Exodus 10:21-23, “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt.’ So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was pitch darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days, but all the people of Israel had light where they lived.” The prophet Amos talks about darkness coming as part of the judgment of God during the end times. Amos 8:9, “‘And on that day,’ declares the Lord God, ‘I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.’”
Darkness during the day was a sign of God’s displeasure. God turned the lights off on the world when he was angry. Light is a symbol of his presence to bless and give life. Darkness is a symbol of his presence to curse and bring death.
Verse 33 says that the darkness was over “the whole land.” The word for “land” can also mean “earth.” The whole world is implicated in Jesus’ death. God turns the lights off on the whole world because the sin of the whole world is why Jesus is hanging on the cross.
The Agony of Jesus
The reason why God sent darkness is because his judgment was being poured out on his Son. This is why Jesus was forsaken by the Father (v. 34). Jesus was forsaken by the Romans, the Jews, even his own followers. Now he’s forsaken by his Father.
Jesus is still in full possession of his faculties. He’s conscious and feeling the pain of the nails in his hands and feet, the lacerations all over his body, the thorns stuck in his skull, and the bruises all over his face. He feels the shame and embarrassment of hanging naked beside the road for all to see. But what he feels the most is the removal of intimacy with his Father. The depth of this emotion is why he “cried with a loud voice, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”
Have you ever hurt so bad that all you can do is cry? The deepest pain we feel, the pain that brings out the most emotion in us, is the pain we experience in relationships. The agony and ache of losing a loved one or the betrayal of a friend or the abandonment of a spouse or a parent touches the deepest part of us. These wounds go deeper than we realize and are the reason for much of our self-destructive behaviors. Much of the sin in our lives is triggered and driven by pain. This is why walking with a good biblical counselor is what many of us need. Wounds left unattended won’t heal themselves. If you’d like to talk with me more about this, please let me know.
“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”
In verse 34, Mark wants us to feel Jesus’ agony. He’s not trying to explain the reason for it, he’s simply reporting it. There are, however, deep and profound and theological reasons for Jesus’ agony on the cross.
Jesus gives us insight into his pain by quoting Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This Psalm is about a righteous person who suffers unjustly only to be rescued by God. Jesus is this righteous person. He’s suffering for no fault of his own. But he doesn’t die renouncing God. He knows that God will deliver him. He’s not losing his faith in God. In the midst of his anguish, he cries, “My God, my God.”
What’s happening here? Why is Jesus in such agony? His pain is because his Father has abandoned him, “Why have you forsaken me?” He didn’t just feel forsaken. He was forsaken. The Son is forsaken by the Father. But why?
The rest of Mark’s Gospel helps us to begin an answer to this question, to develop a theology of the cross. At his betrayal and arrest, Jesus said, “Let the Scriptures be fulfilled” (14:21, 49). What happened to Jesus was all according to God’s plan. When teaching his disciples about servanthood, Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:45). Jesus said he’d “give his life” to purchase, or ransom, a people. He’d pay for them with his life. At the Last Supper, he took the cup and told his disciples, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (14:24). The wine they shared signified the blood he’d spill to inaugurate the new covenant that the prophets spoke about. Those in this covenant receive new hearts that want to obey God, the Holy Spirit, and the forgiveness of sins (Jer. 31:33-34; Ezek. 36:22-27).
So why was the Son forsaken by the Father? According to Mark, Jesus was forsaken in order to fulfill the Scriptures by giving his life as a ransom for the new covenant people of God.
It’s Our Fault
But why did the Father have to forsake the Son to accomplish this? Why did Jesus have to endure such agony of soul to make this happen? Mark doesn’t tell us, but the rest of the Bible does. To put it bluntly, it’s your fault. It’s my fault. Jesus was forsaken by the Father because of our sin. Jesus endured the agony of abandonment because our sin is more horrific than we think.
Because God is holy, he cannot even look at sin. The prophet Habakkuk says that the Lord has “purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong” (1:13). Our sin is so terrible and God is so holy that he can’t look at our sin. On the cross, our sin was put on Jesus. Therefore, because God can’t look at sin, he turned away from Jesus. Because of our sin, the Father had to turn his back on the One he loved the most.
We usually don’t think our sin is that big a deal. We excuse it away by saying, “Nobody’s perfect,” “This is just how I am, this is my personality,” or “At least I’m not as bad as other people.” We assume that the really bad people are the ones in the world, the ones not in church, the ones hijacking people’s Zoom calls, the scam artists, the murderers and molesters, the adulterers and abusers.
We must come to terms with the fact that it’s our sin that Jesus suffered for. He didn’t die in some generic sense for the whole world. He died for your sin. “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). Jesus suffered the shame of the cross and the abandonment of the Father because we’re liars, cheaters, thieves, addicts, and adulterers. The Father turned away from the Son because our selfishness and pride and greed and coveting and lust and idolatry and dishonoring of our parents and neglecting the Sabbath and hate and haughtiness and laziness and self-righteousness was too horrid for him to look at. All of our sins were put on Jesus, and as their stench rose up to God’s nostrils, he was so repulsed that he had to turn away.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin.” And in Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us – for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’” On the cross, Jesus became sin and was cursed by God because of it.
Our sin is so bad that it brought a curse upon Jesus and temporarily broke the fellowship of the eternal God. Your sin is not a small thing. It is a big thing. It created agony in Jesus’ soul. It led to the darkening of the world and the forsaking of the Son of God. Does it do anything to you? Does it create any brokenness in you? Do you feel the effects of it on your soul? Do you hate it? Do you grieve it because you know that it hurt Jesus?
Extra Time to Pursue Godly Grief
I’m not asking if you regret your sin. We all do – that’s easy. It takes an act of grace to open our eyes to see the ugliness of our sin and be moved to genuine grief in our hearts, the kind of grief that pleases God. “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (2 Cor. 7:10).
Maybe one of the reasons God is giving you more down time right now is so that you’ll come to terms with the sin in your past and in your present, so that you’ll stop minimizing it, be honest about it, confess it, and ask God to break your heart over it. Maybe this pandemic will slow you down enough to cause you to think seriously about your sin before a holy God for the first time, to consider that your sin hurt Jesus in the deepest and most profound way. Maybe God is giving you extra time to pursue godly grief over your sin.
Spend some time thinking and praying about this, and as you do, remember that Jesus endured al this for you because he loves you. He stayed on the cross until the very end in order to make a full payment for your sin. Some bystanders thought he was calling Elijah to come rescue him from the cross (vv. 35-36). But he wasn’t. He stayed on the cross until he drank every drop from the cup of God’s wrath for your sin (14:36). And he did this for you. He was abandoned so that you could be accepted. He was forsaken so that you could be forgiven. He was cursed so that you could be blessed. He died so that you could live.
Jesus Is Triumphant
Jesus was forsaken by God, but, even in his death, he was triumphant for God (vv. 37-39). You may be thinking, “How is Jesus triumphant in these verses, all he does is die?” Exactly. Through his death, Jesus opened the doors of heaven and revealed his true identity as God’s Son. Let’s take these one at a time.
Jesus Triumphs by Opening a Way to God
First, when Jesus “breathed his last” (v. 37), the “curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” (v. 38). There were actually two curtains in the temple. One divided the courtyard from the holy place and one divided the holy place from the holy of holies. It’s unclear which one Mark is referring to. Either way, this event is rich with theological symbolism, just as the darkness over the land.
This event signified the end of the Mosaic system and was the beginning of the destruction of the temple. Jesus said that the temple would be destroyed in 13:1-2. The tearing of the curtain began this process which would be completed in 70 AD. Even as Jesus hangs lifeless on the cross, he’s fulfilling his word.
He’s also cancelling the Mosaic system of sacrifices. He died around the time of the sacrifice, and because it was Passover, it’s likely that the High Priest Caiaphas was at the altar in the temple preparing the sacrifice. The man who’d condemned Jesus to death before the Sanhedrin saw his ministry in the temple come to an end in dramatic fashion. Those who rejected Jesus, and their whole system, were rejected by God.
If the curtain that was torn was the one going into the holy of holies, the theological implications couldn’t be clearer. God’s presence was in the holy of holies, only accessible by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement. When the curtain was ripped, however, God’s presence was made available to everyone.
This was an act of God. The curtain was torn “from top to bottom” (v. 38). God made himself available to all people. It wasn’t an angry mob or renegade priests who tore the curtain. God ripped it because he decides when and where his saving presence goes. No sinner can enter his presence without being consumed. But because of Jesus’ death, God’s presence is now freely and fully available to all who trust in Christ.
Listen to how Charles Spurgeon, the great English preacher from the 19th century, describes this: “For believers the veil is not rolled up, but (torn). The veil was not unhooked, and carefully folded up, and put away, so that it might be put in its place at some future time. Oh no! but the divine hand took it and (tore) it from top to bottom. It can never be hung up again; that is impossible. Between those who are in Christ Jesus and the great God, there will never be another separation. ‘Who shall separate us from the love of God?’ Only one veil was made, and as that is (torn), the one and only separator is destroyed.”
Through his death, Jesus triumphs by opening heaven’s gates. Jesus is so strong that even his death pushes heaven’s gates open for all who trust in him.
Jesus Triumphs by Revealing his True Identity
The second way that Jesus triumphs through his death is by revealing his true identity as God’s Son (v. 39). The religious leaders said that if Jesus came down from the cross they would “see and believe” (15:32). This Roman centurion “saw and believed” while Jesus hung lifeless on the cross.
This centurion is the first person to confess Jesus as the Son of God in Mark. God the Father said this about Jesus at his baptism and on the Mount of Transfiguration (1:11, 9:7). The demons said it when Jesus confronted the man with a legion in the country of the Gerasenes (5:7). But no one else. The religious teachers and even his own disciples didn’t understand who he was. Not until Jesus’ bloodied body hung lifeless on a cross did somewhere finally recognize him. Only when Jesus’ body was disfigured did someone finally recognize him.
And it was a Gentile soldier of all people! Throughout his ministry, Jesus drew near to people who were far from him. No one would’ve expected that a pagan, Gentile, low-ranking soldier in out-of-the-way Judea who was in charge of his execution would be the first person to recognize Jesus as the Son of God. An enemy of God is the first person to see the glory of the Son of God.
Faith is found in unexpected places. It’s not based on knowledge or privilege or place or proximity to Jesus. People with more knowledge, more money, more prestige, and more closeness to Jesus didn’t confess him as the Son of God. This centurion does. Why? Because Jesus’ true nature is revealed to the weak and despised things of the world. This means that people who wouldn’t otherwise be interested in the gospel may be interested right now. We all feel weaker than we used to. What better time to tell people about the cross of Jesus?
Jesus’ glory is revealed through his suffering. The cross is the birthplace of faith. If you want faith, or want to strengthen your faith, look to the cross. Look at what the Father did to his Son on the cross for you. He put all your sin on Jesus. Look at what the Son did on the cross for you. He absorbed the holy wrath of God for your sin, soaking up every drop until the cup was empty. He was abandoned so that you could be accepted. We’re in bondage to sin, a fact proven by how much we minimize it and excuse it and explain it away. Yet Jesus paid the price for our freedom. We can be freed from the curse of sin by trusting in the Son’s work on the cross. We can walk through heaven’s doors because Jesus’ death opened them for us. Our sins are many, but God’s mercy is more. The cross of Jesus proves this to be true.
Do you believe this? What do you see when you see Jesus hanging dead on the cross? Do you see the glorious Son of God hanging there in victory?
My plea for you today is that you would, as the hymn says, “Come behold the wondrous mystery, Christ the Lord upon the tree, in the stead of ruined sinners hangs the Lamb in victory. See the price of our redemption, see the Father’s plan unfold, bringing many sons to glory, grace unmeasured, love untold.”
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