It is a great pleasure to be back here in Woodside with you guys. I just want to again, as I often do when I'm here, just declare our great love of you all and our thankfulness for your support, for your prayers and your continued kindness to us and Lockheed in Scotland. We are deeply grateful to the Lord for you and Yeah, thank you so, so much for your continued support. Let's get to the reason that I'm here, and the reason that Matthew and I are friends, and the reason that, the reason, let's get to it. If you have a Bible, please turn with me to Matthew 27, 27 through 54, and we're gonna pray, and then we'll get stuck in together. Father, we love you. Lord, we thank you for your goodness and your grace to us. Lord, on this day, as we consider the cross of Christ, Lord, we ask that you would come by your spirit and teach us. Lord, give us ears to hear, give us minds to understand, give us hearts that would love Jesus. Lord, give us wills that would obey him. Lord, Be gracious to us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So, Paul Washer famously says these words. He says that all of human history, the whole of it, revolves around two great days. The day Christ hung on a tree before men, and the day that all men will kneel before Christ. Today, as we remember and focus in on the first of these great days, it would serve us well to keep that second and final day in mind. Because here's the facts. What we do with the cross of Christ and the man on the middle cross will determine what Christ will do with us on that day. Let's read together in Matthew 27. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And he stripped him, and he put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. And they put a reed in his hand, and kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, hail, king of the Jews. And they spit on him. And they took the reed and they struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of his robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull. They offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head, they put the charge against him, which read, this is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, you would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself. If you're the son of God, come down from that cross. And so also the chief priests with the scribes and the elders mocked him saying, he saved others. He cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel. Let him come down now from the cross and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God deliver him. Now, if he desires him, for he said, I am the son of God. and the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way. 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, lama sabachthani, that is my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some bystanders hearing it said, this man is calling Elijah. And one of them at once ran and took a sponge filled with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the other said, wait, let's 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, and the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of their tomb, after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. within 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. So as we walk through this passage this evening, I want us just to kind of keep five things in mind. What we are going to do is just wander right through all that we have read together. If you have a sheet there in your bulletin, my outline is there. We're going to see these five things. We're going to see Jesus is crowned with the curse. We're going to see the king crucified. We're going to see Christ, Jesus, cursed by men. We will see Jesus bear the curse, and then we will finish with this great fact that Jesus has opened the way. So Jesus is crowned with the curse. The soldiers, the governor, took Jesus to the headquarters. They gathered the whole battalion around him, stripped him, put this scarlet robe on him, twisted the crown of thorns, put it on his head, and mocked him. After his brutal scourging, Jesus is now brought back into the governor's residence. And by this point, this man would have been a sorry sight to see. Isaiah famously tells us that his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form was beyond that of the children of mankind. He barely looked like a man at this point. The Roman soldiers looking upon this one find the claim that this man as a king to be ludicrous. And they begin to mock and ridicule Jesus without mercy. And I want us just to think for a moment about what Christ has endured so far. He is sleepless. He has been betrayed, abandoned, denied. He has been passed from one kangaroo court to another through the six parts of his farcical trial. He has spat upon, lied about, mocked, punched, slapped, beaten, and now he has been scourged beyond human semblance. And all the while, that which caused him to sweat drops of blood is before him, not behind. The wrath of God is coming. And now as he waits, he is in the hands of these Roman soldiers, these hard, cruel men. Charles Spurgeon famously says this, these soldiers were men for whom bloodshed was amusement. And now, he is given into their hands. The one who's charged with making himself a king. We can conceive of how funny this would have seen to them. Jesus is of little esteem in their eyes. They're not touched by his gentleness or his manner. They're not moved by his sorrowful countenance. They seek to invent all manner of scorn to pour on his beautiful head. Surely the world never saw a more marvelous scene. than the king of Jews, the king of kings, derided as a mimic monarch by the meanest of men. Spurgeon had a real way with words. This is a king, and of course he should be dressed as such. Get a scarlet robe, get him a scepter, place it in his hand, and then the showpiece, a crown of thorns. And these are not thorns that you would find in the rosebush in your garden. No, these are inch long, razor sharp, strong. This is nature's own razor wire, right? And it is twisted into a crown and forced onto his brow, tearing up his face. This mockery is ugly, it is savage, but it is also unintentionally, from the perspective of the soldiers, appropriate. The thorn is itself within the scriptures a sign of the curse of God upon the earth. Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. The fruit of the curse is now woven into a crown. And it's placed upon the head of Jesus. He is literally crowned with the curse. And we should see at this moment the theme of substitution just jump out at us. This moment is foreshadowed back in Genesis 22. Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering. He laid it on his son Isaac. He took him by the hand up the mountain. My father, he said, Where's the lamb? God will provide the lamb. Of course, that is exactly what happened. Where is that lamb provided? On the top of that mountain, crowned in a thicket of thorns. Now we see the true fulfillment of that moment playing out before us. God has provided the lamb, his only begotten, beloved son, and he will do what he spared Abraham from. Jesus will do what he delivered Isaac from. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John cried these words at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, and we should hear them now. Echo, as the soldiers cry, hail, King of the Jews. Behold the Lamb. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him, and they put on him his own robe. and they led him away to crucify him. And this is where we move into that second point. This king, the true king is crucified. As he climbs Golgotha, we see his exhaustion. The scale of his injury is on display. He is physically unable to haul the cross up the hill. And so Simon is forced to carry it for him. When they came to the place of Golgotha, which means the place of the skull, they offer him wine to drink mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. They leave the city and they come to this place of the skull. We have to kind of just take a moment to note the biblical significance of what is being said here. Jesus is sacrificed outside the gate. Outside the camp, the author of Hebrews picks up on this theme, and we should recognize Leviticus 16 is being played out here in front of our eyes. This is the day of atonement. It is being fulfilled. It is coming to pass. The scapegoat will bear away the sin of God's people in the wilderness, outside the gate. If you know the story of Leviticus 16, keep that drama in your mind. We will come back to it later. Notice again the Lord rejects this stupefying gall. He needs to be in full control of all his faculties as he faces the oncoming assault. When they crucified him, they divided up his garments among them, casting lots. It's 9 a.m. and Jesus is crucified here. He is stripped naked, exposed to the most shameful and brutal of executions. The Roman soldiers gamble for his clothes. They casually carry on with their usual routine. They do what they always do. But in this moment, again, they fulfill the scriptures, a prophecy made by David 1,000 years before. I can count all of my bones. They stare at me. They gloat over me. They divide my gardens among them. And for my clothing, they cast lots. Don Carson writes this, he says, crucifixion was unspeakably painful and degrading. Whether tied or nailed to the cross, the victim endured countless spasms and seizures as he pulled with his arms and pushed with his legs to keep his chest cavity open. and then collapsed with exhaustion until the demand for oxygen called for renewed effort. The scourging and loss of blood, the shock from the pain produced an agony that could go on for days, ending at last in suffocation, cardiac arrest, or simply you lost all the blood. When there was a reason to hasten death, the execution squad would smash the victim's legs, and death followed almost immediately, either from shock or just from an inability to lift yourself. This is what it was to be crucified, a shameful, torturous thing, kept for the worst of the worst. And they sat down, and they kept watch over him there. They said, watch, and one, we learned, pays close attention. You see that at the end. And over his head he put the charge against him which read, this is Jesus, King of the Jews. Jesus is executed for being what he truly was, the Messiah, the King of the Jews. Spurgeon again says this, what a marvelous providence it is that moved Pilate's pain. The representative of the Roman emperor was unlikely to concede kingship to any man. and yet here he deliberately wrote, this is Jesus, King of the Jews, and nothing will move him to alter what he has written. On the cross, Christ is proclaimed as King in Hebrew, in Greek, in Aramaic, and in Latin, so that everybody in the crowd could read this inscription. and the two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. And again, scripture is being fulfilled, right? Isaiah 53, 9, they made his grave with the wicked. He suffers this evil man's death. And we move now on as this day continues. We see Jesus is now being cursed by men. Those who pass by deride him, wagging their heads, saying, you would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. Save yourself. If you're the son of God, come down from the cross. Chief priest with the scribes and elders mocked him, saying, he saved others. Can't he save himself? He's the king of Israel. Come down. We'll believe in you if you pull that one off. Be trusting God. Let God deliver him if he wants him. Because he said he's his son. And the robbers, these men, guilty men, hang there. And in their own agony, pour scorn and hate upon Christ. In these verses, what we see is the scorn and bile of men. Sinful men pour out their hate upon Jesus. We've already witnessed the cruel mockery of the Roman soldiers as they pay full homage to Jesus. And now as he hangs naked upon this cross in front of the people, the priests, and even the criminals, they pour on their insults. Save yourself. Come on down. We'll worship you. The crowd mock. And what we see here is the reality of the human heart exposed. Sinful man's deepest truth exposed. We hate God. That's it. By nature, by choice, we are God-haters. And here he is, at our mercy. And even in this state, we pour hatred upon him. Barely human-looking, crucified, and we mock. One author says, make no mistake, Jesus can come down from this cross. He can save himself at any moment. It isn't the nails that keep him there. What keeps him there is what put him there, his passion to do his father's will, his love of sinners like me and you. Without knowing it, these mockers, these onlookers utter fact. about the uniqueness of the Saviour's death and why it mattered. In their spiritual blindness, they in effect express sublime truth. For Jesus cannot both save himself and save me and save you. It is precisely because he refused to save himself that he is able to save others. in the midst of this ugliness and this hideous evil of men, despite all of this awful suffering. Jesus responds with grace, praying for his people, providing for his mother. And as he graciously endures, something clicks for one of these men that hangs beside him. One who hung there and railed at him, saying, are you the Christ? Save yourself and us while you're at it. But the other rebuked him, saying, do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward for our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong. And he said to Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And then these beautiful words come. Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. What we see here is just one token of grace. The power of the cross on display as he dies. One sinner is snatched from the fire, gathered into eternal life, showing us that Jesus can and will save any who come. any, even the vilest criminal on the cross, dying deservedly, the most wicked of men. He can be saved by coming to Christ and trusting him. The old song says the vilest offender that truly believes. That moment from Jesus, a pardon receives. It's a beautiful moment of grace in the midst of the horror. but the big show is coming. And so we go next from the sixth hour. There is darkness over the land until the ninth hour. Everything that has gone before is now about to pale in significance compared with what is coming. It's high noon and the sky goes black. Darkness covers the land and it comes. God begins to pour out his righteous fury at sin and sinners. And Jesus begins to consume the cup of staggering. Here we come to the very heart of the gospel. Jesus takes on himself, on his beautiful, spotless, righteous self, the sin of his people. And his father unleashes the full fury of God's holy justice upon him instead of you. instead of me. And this is the love of God made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation, the wrath removing substitute for our sins. This is the gospel. Jesus takes my sin and takes my place. I deserved the wrath of God, Aye, we all have rebelled against him, all spurned his gifts, all spurned his grace, all blasphemed his name, spat upon his kindness, ultimately responsible for the murder of his beautiful son. Aye, we deserve this wrath to be poured out upon us in hell for eternity, and yet in love. In unfathomable love, He sent His Son to be my substitute, to swap places with me, to swap places with His own, to provide righteousness that we could never achieve, to take the sin and wrath His people deserve. For in the hand of the Lord, the Scripture tells us, there is a cup foaming with wine, well-mixed, and He pours out from it and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs. That cup is mine to drink. I earned it. The wrath that it symbolises is mine. I filled it up and yet, in love unmeasured, Jesus took that cup, he drank it to its dregs, turned it upside down and not a drop was left for me. Because it was the will of the Lord to crush him, and he put him to grief. Jesus is crushed in the stead of his people, put to grief in our place. About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying those famous words, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, that is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This great cry comes. in order that the sacrifice of Christ might be complete. I please the Father to forsake his son. Sin was laid on Christ, so God must turn his face away from the sin bearer. To be deserted of his God is the climax of Christ's grief. It is the quintessence of his sorrow, Spurgeon says. See here the distinction between all martyrs and their Lord. and their dying agonies, they have been divinely sustained. But Jesus suffers as a substitute for sinners, and he was forsaken of God. Those saints who have known what it is to have their father's face hidden from them, even from a brief span of time, can scarcely imagine the suffering that rung this agonizing cry from the Savior. Why have you forsaken me? R.C. Spruill writes this, he said, when Jesus took the curse upon himself, he so identified with her sin that he became a curse, and God cut him off and justly so. This was an act of divine justice. At the moment that Christ took upon himself the sin of his people, he became the most grotesque, obscene mass of sin in the history of the world. And God is too holy to look at iniquity. And when Christ is hanging on that tree, the father, as it were, turned his back on Christ. He removed his face. He turned out the lights. He cut off his son. There was Jesus, who in his humanity had been perfect and was perfect and is perfect and had lived in a blessed relationship with God throughout his whole life. There was Jesus, the Son, in whom the Father was well pleased, and now he hung in darkness, isolated from the Father, cut off from fellowship, receiving in himself the curse of God, not for his own sin, but for the sin he willingly bore by amputation for the sake of his people. What was the application of this? Well, here's one beautiful truth. He was forsaken. that if you who know him will never be. It's a simple fact. Do you feel abandoned? Have you ever felt abandoned? Far from God, alone, struggling, down and out, beaten? It's just a feeling. And it will only ever be a feeling for you if you are in Christ. That's it. As hard as it may be, it will never be a reality. because he took the reality. Some of the bystanders hearing him said, this man is calling Elijah. One of them ran at once, took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the other said, wait, let's see if Elijah will come and save him. As this drama plays out, as divine justice is fulfilled and divine mercy is on display, God's grace is juxtaposed again with man's wickedness. They continue to mock. One attempts to quench his thirst. Let's see if Elijah turns up. They think it's funny. And they just don't get what is happening. That's the reality for most here. But what is happening? Well, Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. Christ's final cry is not recorded here in Matthew, but we know what he said from the passage that Matthew read earlier on. John 19, 30, when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, it is finished. Perhaps the greatest words in the whole scripture. It is finished. He bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Notice, men did not kill Christ. He laid down his life. Because the one who laid it down has the authority to take it back up. It is finished. What is finished? God's wrath is finished. Christ's mission is finished. The law is fulfilled. Atonement is accomplished. The salvation of His bride is achieved. On that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied, as the song goes. Every sin laid on Him, here in the death of Christ I live. Christ's strength was not exhausted. His last words were uttered with a loud voice, like the shout of a conquering warrior. And what a word it was. It is finished. Thousands of sermons have been preached upon that sentence. but who can tell of all the meaning that lies compacted within it. It is a kind of infinite expression, for breadth and depth and length and height are all together immeasurably too small to express. this phrase. Christ's life being finished, perfected, completed, he yielded up his spirit, willingly dying, willingly laying down his life as he said it would. I lay down my life for my sheep. I lay it down of myself and I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again. And he will take it up again on Sunday. Redemption is achieved, his bride is secured, his mission is accomplished, and the final verses of our text display Christ's glorious success. That's what these last verses are. Behold, the curtain of the temple is torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks were split, the tombs were also 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. The curtain in the sanctuary of the temple is torn from top to bottom. The Holy of Holies was the place of God's presence, the place where sinful man was unable to enter and that place is laid open by God. Why? Because there was a way now for sinners to come into God's presence. The Lord himself tears the curtain from top to bottom as it is no longer needed. and everything that it symbolized had been fulfilled. In Genesis 3, when man was cast out of the garden and out of God's presence, the cherubim, the burning ones, the symbols and soldiers of God's holiness stood guard at the entrance to the garden. God's holiness, it was, stood. between sinful man and life. The curtain of this temple was embroidered with images of these cherubim, signifying what this fantastic little children's book, The Garden, the Curtain, the Cross, says, that because of our sin, we could not come in. We were cut off from God, from the source of life. The holiness of God stood between sinful man and life. Here is the great problem of the human heart, the human condition, the great problem at the heart of the scriptures. And this is the great problem that Christ has now solved. Jesus' perfect life has provided the righteousness that a holy God requires of his people. Jesus' substitutionary, propitionary death has satisfied God's justice, removed God's wrath from his people. Back, as I said, to Leviticus 16, on the day of atonement, the high priest would enter the holy of holies and sprinkle the mercy seat with blood of the substitute goat. Year after year over millennia, this drama played out until its fulfillment came to pass. And Jesus, the great high priest, accomplished once for all what all the pictures and foreshadowing had been about. Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure in. And then I said, behold, I have come to do your will, God, as it is written of me in the book of the scroll. You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and in burnt offerings and sin offerings. These are offered according to the law. But then he added, behold, I have come to do your will. And he does away with the first order in order to establish the second. And by that, we have all been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. That's the point, once for all. The curtain is torn in two. And just to make sure we get the point, the Lord does away with the entire building in AD 70. The old covenant is done. The new covenant is established. The earth trembles. The saints rise as the Lord displays the accomplishment of his son. when the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw this earthquake and what took place, they were filled with fear and awe and said, truly, this is the Son of God. Jesus has made a way for us to come to God. Jesus has accomplished the salvation of his people. Let me finish with a question and a story courtesy of my countryman, Alistair Begg. He said this, he said, if you were to die tonight and stood before God and he asked you on what basis should I grant you entry to my heaven, what would you say? If you answer this question in the first person, you've immediately gone wrong. Because I. Because I believed. Because I have faith. Because I am this. Because I am that. Because I am doing something. Friends, the only proper answer to this question comes in the third person. Because He. Because Jesus. Think about the thief on the cross. Beg says, when he gets to the kingdom, he cannot wait to find this man. And just to say to him, how did this all work out for you? Because you were cursing Christ with your friend. You've never set foot in a Bible study. You never got baptized. You didn't know a thing about church membership, and yet you made it. You made it, and how did you make it? Imagine the scene, he says, at the gates of heaven. The angel asks, what are you doing here? He says, I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? I just don't know. Excuse me, let me get my supervisor. He goes, gets his angel supervisor, comes out, asks him a few questions. First of all, are you clear on the doctrine of justification by faith alone? I've never heard of it. What about the doctrine of scripture? The guy's just staring at him blankly. Eventually, in frustration, the supervisor says, on what basis are you here? He says, the man on the middle cross said I could come. That's it. The man on the middle cross said I could come. And so the question for us all tonight is what are you going to do with the man on the middle cross? Because on him and on the two great days of history, everything hangs. There was a day when the man on the middle cross hung before men, and there is a day when all men will stand before Christ. What will you do with the man on the middle cross? Let's pray together. Father, we thank you. We thank you for Jesus. We thank you that he did for us what we could not do for ourselves. That he lived the life we have not lived. That perfect, law-fulfilling, God-obeying life. And that in awesome love, he took upon himself our sin and your wrath as sin and sinners, and he died in our stead. And Lord, we thank you for the great truth that his work, his finished work was acceptable to you. It is seen in your tearing of the curtain. It is seen in his raising from the dead for our justification. We are declared righteous because his work was enough. Lord, help us, cause us to love the man on the middle cross because he loved us first. We pray this in his beautiful, holy name. Amen.