Our key text as we've been studying through the Gospel of Luke has been this statement in chapter 19 and verse 10, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. The Lord Jesus came on a rescue mission. He is a Shall we say a first responder, he is the rescuer and redeemer of our souls. He didn't come just so we would have health and prosperity in this life. He's come to give us our daily bread, he's come to be near us, but he promises a fellowship with him, which is eternal life. Luke doesn't record it, but John records it, and it's a text that is so dear to us, or it ought to be, when Jesus defines eternal life. In John 17 and verse 3, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you've sent. we can know God, we can have fellowship with God. Whereas we used to be lost and separated from God, he has brought us near through the blood of his son. What we see here in this passage in Luke 23 is Jesus' blood being poured out for us. Now, truly, when the scripture talks about the blood of Jesus, or even the cross of Jesus, or being crucified with Jesus, it's talking specifically or figuratively, I suppose you could say, of his death. of his sacrificial substitution for us. Somebody's got to die for sin. Thankfully, Jesus died for us. He died in our place so that we don't have to bear the penalty of sin. As we come to this text here in Luke 23, we're gonna see sin being born upon Christ's body on that tree. on that cross. He is the one who is suffering the wrath of God, not because he deserved it, not because the father was so anxious to see his son suffer. And yet, truly, the scripture teaches it was God's good pleasure to crush him, because through crushing his son, he was able to save a bunch of rebels like us, a bunch of sinners, to reconcile us to him. the drama that goes on here. We've seen the mocking, we've seen the sneering, we've seen the ridicule heaped upon Jesus, but now we see God himself coming down and pouring out his wrath upon his son on that cross. Consider that as we read this text. This is Luke 23 and beginning at verse 44, a brief passage and yet so deep and so impactful for us. It was about the sixth hour and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. Then the sun was darkened and the veil of the temple was torn in two. And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit. Having said this, he breathed his last. So when the centurion saw what had happened, he glorified God saying, certainly this man, this was a righteous man. And the whole crowd who came together to that site, seeing what had been done, beat their breasts and returned. But all his acquaintances and the women who followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things. This is on that Friday morning. Luke says here it's about the sixth hour. In that reckoning, he is talking about noon. Jesus was crucified about nine o'clock in the morning, roughly, and then about noon he is, this is a change, a shift from the mocking, the sneering, the ridicule of the people, and now God himself shows up. It says from the sixth hour until the ninth hour, there was darkness all over, over all the earth during that whole time. Now, some people say, oh, is this an eclipse? Truly, it says the sun was darkened. That word there is the Greek word from which we get our English word eclipse or cover or conceal. If you all went or had any part in the great eclipse, great American eclipse of two years ago, about this time, An eclipse doesn't last three hours. If you experience that at all, it does get dark. It's amazing if you all participate at all in that. But what this event described here is not a solar eclipse. By the way, eclipses don't last three hours long. And secondly, eclipses don't happen at the full moon. How do we know this is the full moon? Well, because it's Passover time. Passover, most of the holidays, Jewish holidays, happened at the excuse me, at the midpoint of a month. Jewish months started at the first, at the new moon, and then, of course, the festival's Passover. And I will take a drink and try to remedy this. The Passover festival happened at the height of the full moon time. So on two fronts, this is not a natural event. It's not an eclipse, a solar eclipse caused by the moon coming between the sun and the earth. Some people would describe this as an effect of a Sirocco wind, a wind coming off the Arabian desert and causing dust and stuff. Now there are descriptions of that happening and different situations of time. We don't have any other indication. Oh, it got really hot and dusty and all this kind of thing. What I'm getting at is this is probably a supernatural occurrence. Is God okay with doing supernatural things? Yes, he's okay with that. He is okay with demonstrating, especially on this great crux of the matter, crux being the Latin word for cross. I mean, this is the issue of all time. We shouldn't date our calendar based on when Christ was born, although that is momentous and wonderful. But really, the epics change with the death of Christ. The old covenant has been subsumed in the expression, the confirmation, the ratification of this new covenant. And Christ is the mediator of this new covenant. Things are different now. We're going to see that the even the way that people approach God through this temple, as it's described here, that has changed. That is a whole different basis by which we can come to God. So what we see here is a supernatural, I guess, two things. Endorsement, this isn't just a human mock trial or monkey trial of Jesus. This is fully in line with what Jesus had intended to do from the beginning to come and be delivered in the hands of sinful men and to suffer and die and three days later be raised up. This is not a surprise to God. It's not a surprise to us or it shouldn't have been even from the apostles. They were told what was going to happen when they went to Jerusalem. So it's an endorsement, God, the Father is endorsing, this is me, this is my son in whom I'm well pleased. Now he's saying something different at this point, the Father is. And that is that Christ, this aspect of wrath, when darkness comes upon a land, we've seen this throughout history, throughout biblical history, when God comes near, whoa, That's like W-H-O-A, whoa, but also W-O-E, whoa is me. This is dangerous territory. You remember way back like in Exodus 19 and 20, when darkness and yet lightning was on that mountain, Mount Sinai, and God was coming and distributing or mediating his old covenant, the Mosaic covenant, with his people, there was a darkness that you could feel even, a thick gloom. We see it repeatedly through the prophets where darkness surrounds his throne and you think, well, wait a minute, God is light. Well, yes, it's true. And yet there is an aspect toward us who are not in a right relationship with God. We only expect judgment and wrath and the justice that is due us. So when God is coming, he is saying, OK, all you people, you are mistreating my son, but let me show you what mistreating is or or treating badly. I'm going to make him sin. I'm going to put all my wrath upon him. I am going to judge him as I ought to judge you. He's going to bear it. He is going to be the one to bear the weight of iniquity, of guilt, of the transgression that each of us has done against God. Jesus is the one who has borne that or is bearing that. So when we see this darkness, the people We don't have any record of what the people said, even when it says they were watching these things and they returned because they didn't know what to say. This is just a shut my mouth kind of thing. What's going on? Truly, the only statement we have, well, two statements we have in this in this section is a word from the Lord Jesus Christ of humble trust and devotion in his heavenly father, but also the statement of the centurion, the Roman soldier who said, surely, truly, this man was a son of God or truly this man was innocent. That really comes back to the point, Jesus did not suffer the wrath of God because somehow God was displeased with him. Everything Jesus did from his words that he spoke to his works that he did was pleasing to God. He always did the will of the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so when Jesus is bearing his father's wrath, it's not because he was doing, he was guilty of it or had earned that wrath, he is dying in our own place. When Jesus said earlier, Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. God, the father, could have come down and destroyed everything. Don't you dare mistreat my son. Don't you dare do those mockings, those those sneerings, the spitting upon the beating my son. Don't you dare touch him. And yet Jesus concerned his father. Forbear, hold off your wrath, put the wrath that you have toward the people who are truly nasty, bad, bad stuff. Put that wrath upon me. That's the deal we made. That is the agreement that we had. I would be the lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. I would be the Passover lamb. Now, truly, this day, this Friday that we call in our retrospect Good Friday, from that sixth hour, and it says here until that ninth hour, and then just shortly after this text, Jesus dies. That is the time on the Jewish calendar. This is the 14th of Nisan, the month of the Passover celebration. And right about that time of three o'clock in the afternoon is when the Passover lambs would be slain. Now, again, Jesus is just outside the city walls. He's hanging on a cross, not, you know, 20 feet up in the air, just maybe, you know, just a little bit off the ground. So he can hear and see what's going on. He can see the hustle and bustle because he's crucified, of course, with those two other or two criminals there, right on a main thoroughfare. So people can see this is what Rome does to its rebels or it's criminal, you know, people who are accused of violating Roman law and perfection. Jesus is there fully on display and he sees people coming and going. This is a busy time because not only do you have the Passover and all the meal preparation that's going on. I remember Peter and John had to go and prepare for the Passover meal back earlier in our study of Luke. So people are doing all that kind of stuff. But also, it's the Sabbath day the next day. So all the stuff that you would have normally done on a Saturday or the next day, you've got to do it the day before. So people are coming and going. They see this spectacle. They say, hey, isn't that Jesus of Nazareth, that great miracle-making prophet guy from Galilee or Nazareth? And then they walk on because they've got things to do. I can't just stay here and watch this all day. Crucifixions could last for days, the whole process. It's just a nasty way to die. And yet, for a variety of reasons, each of those three men crucified will die by evening time on that day and taken down from the cross. Jesus is there then, the substitute sacrifice for us. He is there at this time, at the ninth hour, three o'clock in the afternoon, when just across the way, just up the road and into the temple proper, Passover lambs by the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands will be slain. Maybe not hundreds of thousands, but tens of thousands anyway, will be slain there in the temple and their blood poured out. And then people would go and celebrate the deliverance that God gave them over the land of Egypt. Well, good for you. We celebrate that. That is the greatest expression of God's deliverance in the Old Testament, the Passover, the Exodus time. Yet you've got something a whole lot better going on right there, just down the street that nobody's really paying attention to. Nobody really understands the significance of this. Nobody is realizing, wow. This is the end of the old covenant. This is the wrapping up of all these things. Jesus has said it this way, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, the most religious people in our land, you're not gonna enter into heaven. What do you think? You have a righteousness that is so deep in yourself or you are owed eternal life because you're a child of Abraham or because you're circumcised or because you keep kosher laws. What in the world are you thinking? None of that, none of that Moses commandment was designed to convince you that you're good enough. It was designed to convince you you are wicked and you are bad and you rebel against God's wonderful and good decrees any time you get. If you think you can get away with it, you will speak words that are wicked and wrong. You will do things that are displeasing to God. until we recognize we need a savior. We can't just keep doing this stuff over here, you know, Passover lambs and think this is all hunky-dory and wonderful. Yes, it's God's command, but all that stuff was to point to Christ, and they're missing it. We have a Gentile Roman centurion who's one of the only guys here other than that nasty criminal type that just said, Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom. What in the world? When all these religious people here and Jesus' own disciples, they miss what significant events are going on here. They say, oh, Jesus, King of the Jews, why don't you save yourself and us? Totally missed it. What was going on? When Jesus said, father, forgive them, they have no idea. Now they knew, they knew Jesus is the son of God. They knew it from his words, what he spoke, from his wonderful works. He was fulfilling all kinds of scripture, raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, all these things. And yet they refused to acknowledge or submit to the truth of that because it offended their self-righteousness. I'm good enough. I don't need a savior. I've got this thing covered. You go save other people because I'm good. I'm good with God. God is here to prove, look, somebody has got to die for sin. When God comes down in this darkness for three hours, three hours, he is there pouring out God's wrath. Now again, this comes back to the idea, Jesus didn't die to somehow placate Satan, like Satan had a claim over us or something like this. No, this is a relationship or a transaction, I suppose you'd say, with God himself, because God is the offended. He is the one that our sin is directed against. Isn't that what King David said? Against you and you only have I sinned. Well, you think about that story. Wait a minute. David killed a guy, committed adultery, lied to different people. And yet he says against you and you only have I sinned because that is the ultimate relationship that each of us has. We can confuse or mislead other people. We can put up a front that is fake, that we are wonderful and righteous and good, and other people might believe it. Before God, we are naked and exposed before him with whom we have to do. God is not confused by our appearances. He judges righteously. And so when Jesus is there bearing our sin, he's doing it knowing these people don't deserve it. But that's the point. Nobody deserves this. What we deserve from God is wrath, judgment, separation from him. but here Jesus is claiming that or taking that for himself. If you were to read just a little bit in Isaiah 53, you'd see the import of what is going on here, something that was written down hundreds of years before Jesus came, where Jesus is bearing God's wrath in his body. He has become sin, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us or on our behalf so that we could become the righteousness of God in him. Isaiah 53, I won't read the whole passage, but he says in verse 10, the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief if he would render himself as a guilt offering. Who's this he's talking about? Well, it's a suffering servant who is, that's Jesus. Remember in Acts, It's eight, I guess it would be, when Philip goes and talks to the Ethiopian eunuch, this minister in the court of Ethiopia, and the guy is reading Isaiah 53, and he says, whom does this speak, of himself or somebody else? And that is when Philip says, it's talking about Jesus. Jesus is this suffering servant. So we have this clear understanding. This is what God is doing through Christ. Back up to verse seven. It says, he was oppressed and he was afflicted. He did not open his mouth. He was like a lamb that is led to slaughter, like a sheep that is signed before it shares. So he did not open his mouth. It says that he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due. They should have borne the sin. They should have died for their transgressions. But here Jesus is dying in our place. It says here, going back to Luke 23, For about three hours, Jesus is bearing the wrath of God. It's been summarized by saying in that first three hours of Jesus on the cross was bearing the wrath of men, mocking just nasty attitudes toward him. But now in these last three hours, it is the wrath of God that he is he is facing and enduring. It says the sun was darkened. It was covered over, which ought to indicate gloom and doom and woe and judgment. but it's not judgment towards the people. It's God, the Father's judgment toward the Son. Jesus is bearing that for us. And it says here, the veil of the temple was torn in two. Okay, so now we're in the temple, the temple proper, and I'm sorry, I don't have any pictures to show you. about that, but in your mind you can consider that there were several, if you look at the descriptions of the tabernacle back that Moses built in the wilderness, some of that was carried forward into Solomon's temple, which was then carried forward into Herod's temple, the second temple here. But what he's speaking about, I believe, is the veil that separated the holy place from the holy of holies. And the holy place, which is where the priests would come. This is where in Luke chapter one, we met Zechariah. He was there presenting incense before the Lord. That was in the holy place. That was right in front of this veil. Right in front of the veil was this altar of incense. To the right of that was the altar of showbread or the table of showbread. And to the behind that or opposite side of that was the the candlestick or the menorah that was lit up in there. All those things God intended to have in that holy place. And yet, this veil that separated that place from his throne room. Now, in the second temple, there's no record of God himself coming and dwelling in that temple, like we see wonderfully presented, both in Exodus chapter 40, when God comes down and dwells in that tabernacle, and in 1 Kings and in 2 Chronicles, where it's recorded God himself comes down and dwells in that house. And of course, Ezekiel describes such a heart-rending passage where that Shekinah, that glory of the Lord comes up off of that Ark of the Covenant, his throne, the mercy seat comes off of that and goes out incrementally out of that temple place and then back into the heavens. never comes back. It's kind of said that Herod's temple or the second temple built first by Zerubbabel and majorly renovated by Herod several hundred years later, really only described as the second temple. Whoa, it was gorgeous and beautiful and the whole area around it, but the point is And the lights are on, but nobody's home. God is not there. All this trampling of the courts, as the prophets would describe, means nothing. Okay, yeah, you're cured of your idolatry, you people. You're not worshiping and serving the Baals and the Asherim and the Molech and all these other false gods. You're devoted to me. You honor me with your lips and your hearts are far from me. You don't know what you're doing. You're just doing these routines. You think that somehow by doing these things you have acceptance before me. I look to the humble. I look to those who are contrite and tremble at my word. Will you do that? Will you recognize woe is me? Like we saw the tax collector, Luke 18, where he comes before the Lord and he beats his breast. He's not even willing to look up toward heaven. He says, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. That is the attitude that God wanted in his people. That's the attitude he wants in us. Not that we're always concerned. I don't know if I'm saved. I don't know if I'm saved. I don't know if I'm going to really endure to the end. No, the point is, do we have this attitude of humble dependence? It's not my righteousness. I'm not clothed in my righteousness unless I die daily to my own self, unless I submit those evil desires in my life and desire first God's kingdom and His righteousness. I have no part of Him. He wants us to persevere in righteousness in that way. God is faithful. He will fulfill His promises. He's faithful to finish what He started. Divinely speaking, humanly speaking, I, with fear and trembling, I work out my salvation. I want God to be glorified in my life. All these things are on display as we consider the import or the implication of the whole Mosaic system. When it says the veil of the temple was torn in two, that whole system was designed to say, you may not come before holy God unless you bring blood. something, somebody has to die for your sin. Now all those goats and calves and lambs and everything, that was to orient people to recognize I cannot come to the Lord empty-handed. I've got to sacrifice something. Something has to die. So these substitutes were always just shadows, as Colossians talks about, Colossians 2, I'll read it soon, where it's just shadows. The substance belongs to Christ. All these things were just signposts along the way, say, hey, look to Jesus, kind of like John the Baptist did. Somebody is coming after me. I'm not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. And yet he is the one who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. He is the one to whom we look. I must decrease, but he must increase. He is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. So when he describes here the veil of the temple was torn in two, he is touching. And by the way, it doesn't say who did it. Some people would say, oh, it was an earthquake. The other gospel writers say there was an earthquake that was going on here. Kind of like the darkening of the sun for three hours. God did it. I mean, we don't have an explanation how this happened. Before we try to come up with human explanations for it, let's just say God covered the sun. He's coming down in wrath. God is the one now in the suffering of Christ, in being crushed for us. He is the one now that the writer of the Hebrews helps us understand better. We have access within the veil. We have access so that this veil that was separating the holy place from the most holy place, or the holy of holies, it's gone. That separation, that distinction is not valid anymore. There is both access for God himself to come out. This is what we see from the beginning of the scriptures to the end. I will be your God, you'll be my people, I will dwell among you. That's what God has wanted from the beginning. Amazing, amazing love that we have from God, a holy and righteous God, to want to have fellowship with us, finite, may not even dimension our sin, but just finite creatures. What? Why would he want that? For his own glory, for his own celebration of love within himself. He wants other people to share in that, the sufficiency that is his. So the veil of the temple was torn in two. Other gospel writers, Matthew and Mark, describe it was torn in two from top to bottom. Now, this isn't just your normal curtain, like even that blanket or quilt hanging on the wall over there. It wasn't a small little thing. The veil described in Exodus and even some other writings, extra-biblical writings, describe this veil as being a hand-width wide, So like three or four inches wide, and 60 feet long, 30 feet tall, ripped. Now it's described, and maybe this is a little bit fanciful, it took 200 men to open it and close it. Well, people didn't open and close it. This was a veil that only the high priest could enter behind, and only one day a year on the Day of Atonement. Now he did it multiple times that day, Hebrews kind of makes that point. Nobody could get in there except the high priest only once at one time a year. But then he had to do it multiple times. He had to bear sin for himself and then for all the people. But now we have a great high priest who entered within that veil and he offered a sacrifice for sin, not for himself, but for us. And then that veil was rent to show access is open. You don't need to do all this stuff. You don't need to have the Levitical system, the Aaronic priesthood, the sons of Aaron to do all this stuff. No, you are a kingdom. You are a kingdom of priests to God and you should sacrifice the fruits of righteousness to him. So this is a big deal, what's going on here. When God himself comes down and kind of puts his stamp of endorsement upon his son, but also his crushing blow upon the Lord Jesus Christ. But the point of it is, There's access to all who would come before God. The veil of the temple was torn in two. The old covenant is done. All that is still informative to us, but it's not commanded of us to follow, us being predominantly Gentile. We don't need to follow the laws of Moses in order to stand before God accepted and justified. we find our righteousness in Christ himself, and God then proves that acceptance we have by ruining, destroying that whole thing. And truly, this is perhaps a little taste of what is to come. This is about, I think, the year 33, AD 33, 37 years later, that whole temple system, the building, and even the works that were going on there, destroyed and wiped out, has not been rebuilt in 2,000 years. Jesus helped us understand why that was so, because of the wickedness, the treachery, the thievery that was going on there, the hearts that were far from him. But we don't need to return to that. Even when you read about some of the stuff in Yet to Come, eschatologically speaking, all that stuff is pointing back to what Christ has done in terms of the, well, we won't get into all that, but the point is we have Christ, the substance of what our faith is based on, not the works of the law here. to convince or to prove that Christ was fully aware, fully conscious of what was going on. Verse 46 says, Jesus, when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, now you'd have to kind of piece together the different gospel writers. Matthew, or excuse me, John is the one who records two statements before this final statement. And the first statement is, I thirst. Jesus had been hanging on the cross for six hours. He hadn't had anything to eat, drink, or anything from the previous night, right? And the Passover meal, the last supper that he had with his disciples. He's been awake all night. He has been abused, mistreated, scourged, which is a horrible, horrible situation. And it's no wonder he thirsted, but it wasn't a thirst that He was concerned about so much that he wanted to utter something and his mouth was just so dry. Somebody got a little bit of vinegar and moistened his lips so he could say the next statement, not recorded here in Luke's gospel, but he says one word in the Greek, but as it's translated, it is finished. It's done. It's cancelled. What is cancelled? Well, we'll read it in Colossians 2 also. This certificate of debt that we owe to God, it's been cancelled. It has been fulfilled. the fine or the payment, the penalty that was due us, canceled, done, paid for in Christ. And so having done all that, that may be what it says here. When Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, having cried out, you might understand that having cried out, perhaps it is finished. Then he said this word. Now, there was another word that Jesus said before that time when he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why has this wrath come upon me? Where is in this judgment, as the prophets say, in your judgment, remember mercy. Where's the mercy? Well, there's no mercy from God at this point upon Jesus. That's gonna come, if you read Philippians chapter two, when Jesus died on the cross, therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him a name which is above every name. That's coming, but right now you are bearing the sin of man. When he says here, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit, he's quoting what we might refer to as a bedtime prayer. As it came, it's Psalm 31, verse five, I believe, where it says, Father, this is the Psalm of David, and it's a prayer of humble devotion to God. You know, now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, all that kind of stuff. It kind of has that flavor. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. There's still not the comfort that Jesus had, but the comfort from God, but the comfort that Jesus has is knowing that God is just and he's merciful, and this is all part of his plan. It's not surprising to him. It's not saying, oh, this is horrible. This is plan X or whatever, and all what we could have been doing, and now this. No, this is exactly what Jesus wanted to accomplish. This is exactly what his father wanted him to do. And so he says, into your hands I commit my spirit. Do you remember Job, when he, one of his lines, I mean, he said a lot of questionable things, although God has said, you haven't spoken rightly about me like my servant Job has. Interesting, that whole thing. But one of the things Job said is, I think in the King James, yea, though he slay me, yet I will trust in him. Yay, though he slay me, or even though the father is killing me, I'm gonna trust in him. Peter makes a big deal about this, that Jesus kept entrusting himself to him who judges rightly, the one who knows the end from the beginning, who's not dissuaded or confused by our smoke screens of trying to confuse other people. God says, I can see right through you. I know what's going on. And here Jesus says, I trust you with my life. I'm committing my spirit to you. I am humbly exercising my devotion, my dependence upon you. God, I am dying, but you are being glorified. That's what I want. And he says again, he returns to that form of address, whereas he said, my God, my God, feeling that separation, the judgment of God the Father upon him, or God Almighty upon him. Now he says, Father, coming back to that childlike trust that the Son, God the Son had toward God the Father, into your hands, into your care, into your compassion, into your mercy, into your provision. I commit not just partly like I'll trust you with a little bit here. You can have ten dollars. No, the whole thing. I entrust it to you. I commit my spirit to you. Now, we understand that Jesus' body is going to be put into a grave. That's foretold in Isaiah 53 as well. And yet his spirit, which is to say, When God created humanity, he made us body and soul. You could read about Genesis 2, verse 7, I think it is, where God created man, the first man, Adam, and breathed into him the breath of life. And Ecclesiastes 12 talks about when we die, our soul or our spirit returns to the Lord who made it, but our body returns to dust from which it was made. So we have this contrast, and yet, Psalm 16 says, your Holy One will not undergo corruption. You will not allow your son to be corrupted in the grave. So there is that resurrection promise that is coming. But in that meanwhile, in that from Friday afternoon until Sunday, at least after the chronology, at least after that sunrise on what we would call Saturday night, Saturday evening, Sunday, the third day right there. We have our resurrected Lord. We have him whose spirit had gone to be with the Father, just like Jesus said to the criminal, today, truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise, which is another name for heaven, or to be in the presence of God. And as Paul said earlier in 2 Corinthians 5, when we are absent from the Lord, or excuse me, absent from the body, we are with the Lord. That's where we go. And this idea, yes, our bodies may be put in the tomb, but our spirits return to him who made it or gave it. There is a great similarity or unity, I think you'd say, between what words we describe as being soul and spirit. I won't get into the whole thing. But the big idea is that humanity is not body, soul, and spirit, three different components of humanity. We are one person. with a physical body and a spiritual body. We are designed to be one person. In fact, that's why death is so unnatural. The separation of soul, spirit, and body is never supposed to be happening. That's why the resurrection is so wonderful. We are regenerated. We are given a new spirit. But wait a moment, this body of flesh that we have. Romans 7 describes this body of sin. Who's going to deliver me from that? Well, thanks be to God. He does. He is giving that resurrection. Jesus says, into your hands I commit my spirit. I am just trusting you for everything. I am committing to you my spirit. By the way, in Greek and even in Hebrew, the word spirit is also the word for breath or wind, kind of related, kind of various derivations of that word. And so the statement here, I've committed my spirit to you, my breath, my wind, because that's the life of the flesh is in the blood, but you gotta breathe. In fact, when, and describing who's God saving in the great flood of Genesis 6, 7, 8, it's all those whose breath is in their nostrils, because breath is an important aspect. Here Jesus says, I'm committing my breath my spirit my inner man to you and having said this it says he breathed his last he breathed his last now you understand when when somebody is crucified the death that occurs to them is not from the the pain of being crucified. It's not from the blood loss even. It's not from the wounds, anything like that. The way that people die or the mode of death or what would be written on a death certificate to be died of asphyxiation. You cannot breathe. Because when to breathe, you have to raise yourself up on the nails so that you can fill your lungs with air. or actually exhale, it's that whole thing. Because the way that the muscles are working, you just need to move in order to fill your lungs. Here, it says, Jesus is fully awake, fully aware of his whole surroundings until the end of his life. That is indicative too, which is why, we'll have to save this for next time, why the centurion said, surely this man was a son of God, surely this man was innocent. Because people don't die that way. Somebody on the cross, the way he dies, he's going to slowly asphyxiate. He's going to lose consciousness long before he actually succumbs to death. Here, Jesus is fully conscious, fully aware of his everything right to the moment of his death. And nobody does it almost on command. Like Jesus said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And then he breathed his last. He expired. Who does that? Well, Jesus said, I have authority to lay down my life and I have authority to take it back up again. That authority was granted by my father. And so Jesus has full control over himself. He is there fully engaged in fulfilling the will of his father to the very end. And then we have these responses that we'll have to look at next time. Jesus here has died. He is the one who fulfilled the will, the work of his father in heaven to accomplish salvation for us. We don't deserve this. I mean, okay, we want to find fault with Pilate. Well, Pilate, you were wrong to do this. Oh, you bunch of Sanhedrin, bunch of wicked people. I hope God punishes you forever. We'll hit a minute. Lest we jump too quickly on the judgment path, let's consider we don't have any better leg to stand on than Caiaphas or any other members of that Sanhedrin time or Pontius Pilate or Herod Antipas. We were sinners. We transgressed against God except by his grace, except by him accepting us in Christ. we are objects of his wrath. Today is the day of salvation. Anybody can come to the Lord and receive the benefit of Christ's death, his burial, his resurrection, can participate in his life before God, can have fellowship with God and have that relationship that is second to none. I mean, this is what we want. If you're not right with God, It doesn't matter if you have a wonderful marriage, a full bank account, and beautiful children, all that kind of stuff. It doesn't matter. You'd better have a right relationship with God. You'd better be finding your righteousness in Him alone. You'd better cling to the Son. You'd better, like Psalm 2 says, kiss the Son, honor Him, do homage to Him, lest He become angry with you, and guess what? You're going to perish. Jesus' attitude from the cross is, Father, I want to forgive these people. And it's not just absolution, but I'm going to die for them. And then we're going to preach the gospel to the same group of people just a few weeks later. And God is going to save 3,000 people. That first preaching, wow. Many of whom were there present at this time, this crucifixion time. God is in the business of saving people. We need to be saved. Our Father in heaven, we're so thankful for the salvation we have in Christ. We're grateful that he died in our place and lives. We're grateful that we can have that confidence. Christ Jesus has entered within the veil and we can have bold access. We can walk right into your presence, not conclude in our own righteousness, because if we're clued in that, then we'll be cast out. But when we are clothed, when we are enrobed with the clean white linens of righteousness, of the saints, that is how we have this fellowship with you, how we can stand in your presence. We're grateful that Jesus makes this all available to us, accomplishes it for us, and we just need to respond by faith. trusting in him, turning, repenting of our sin, confessing that before you saying, man, I need a savior. And Christ is that savior. I pray that each soul here would cling to you, call upon you for salvation. And then of course, to live for your honor and glory. Thank you for the message from your scriptures. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.