We're going to turn to God's Word again tonight. It's a wonderful treat to read and study the Word of God. We're going to be reading a portion of Psalm 22, the first 18 verses, and then Mark 15, 33-39. Why don't we stand together now and let's listen to God's Word. I'll read Psalm 22 out of your bulletin, and then Mark 15 out of my own text here. Let's give our attention once again to God's holy word as an act of worship. Psalm 22, 1 to 18, Mark 15, 33 to 39. This is God's holy word. To the chief musician set to the dear of the dawn, this is a Psalm of David. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me? And from the words of my groaning. Oh my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not hear. and in the night season, and I'm not silent. But you are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in you. They trusted and you delivered them. They cried to you and were delivered. They trusted in you and were not ashamed. But I am a worm and no man, or reproach of men and despised by the people. All those who see me ridicule me. They shoot out the lip. They shake the head, saying, he trusted in the Lord. Let him rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him. But you are he who took me out of the womb. You made me trust while on my mother's breasts. I was cast upon you from birth. From my mother's womb, you have been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, for there is none to help. Many bulls have surrounded me. Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. They gape at me with their mouths like a raging and roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It has melted within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd. And my tongue clings to my jaws. You've brought me to the dust of death, for dogs have surrounded me. The congregation of the wicked has enclosed me. They pierce my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They look and stare at me. They devour my garments among them. And from my clothing, they cast lots." I'm actually going to read from Mark 15 beginning in verse 21. So let's listen now to God's holy word. And they compelled a pastor by, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha, which means place of the skull. And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified Him. And the inscription of the charge against Him read, The King of the Jews. And with Him they crucified two robbers, one on His right and one on His left. And those who passed by derided Him, wagging their heads and saying, Aha! You who had destroyed the temple and rebuilt it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross. So also the chief priests and the scribes mocked Him to one another saying, He saved others. He cannot save Himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe. Those who were crucified with Him also reviled Him. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, behold, He's 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's 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 two 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 God's holy Word. May He bless its reading to us. Amen. Please be seated. Let's pray again. Our Father, we come again to You in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and with the help of Your Spirit, and we would ask You now to open up to us the wondrous things in Your Word that we might see the Lord Jesus Christ beholding His glory and that we might be changed. Lord, conform more and more to His image. We pray that You would especially teach us today or refresh in our hearts again the scandal and spectacle of the death of Christ on the cross for sinners. Lord, renew in our hearts and eyes wonder at a Savior such as this. Bless now the preaching of Your Word. and the hearing of it we pray for Jesus' sake. Amen. Well, if there are any aspiring preachers here or even seasoned ones, I'm just letting you know I'm going to do something that I was told never to do in homiletics. But I'm doing it anyway. At the beginning of this especially glorious text, I want to read to you a portion of a prayer from Valley of Vision. If you don't have a copy of this volume, you should get one. But this is the prayer written on page 76 called Love Lusters at Calvary. And the writer says, their grace removes, of the cross, their grace removes my burdens and heaps them on thy son. Made a transgressor, a curse and sin for me. There, the sword of thy justice smote the man, thy fellow. There, Thy infinite attributes were magnified, and infinite atonement was made. There, infinite punishment was due, and infinite punishment was endured. Christ was all anguish, that I might be all joy. Cast off, that I might be brought in. Trodden down as an enemy, that I might be welcomed as a friend. Surrendered to hell's worst, that I might attain heaven's best. Stripped, that I might be clothed. Wounded, that I might be healed. Athirst, that I might drink. Tormented, that I might be comforted. Made ashamed, that I might inherit glory. Enter darkness, that I might have eternal light. It's a portion of the prayer, commend it to you for your own study. It sells us something of the complexities, glories, and horrors of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, not the cross as the object, but the cross as a part for the whole of everything that the Lord Jesus Christ did. And as we come to this passage, we're coming to the very narrative of the very events completed by a real person, the real God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, that stands at the very center of the Christian faith, the biblical religion. And in some sense, as you read about the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus and as a minister would come to preach on this, it's difficult in a way because it's something so familiar to us. And yet, what I want you to think about is that this passage, this very place, it's almost like the holy of holies of the Gospels. This is the place where no eye of man actually was able to see what occurred. This was the time. where those events transpired that the hosts of heaven, angels and men, for all of eternity will spend their days thinking and worshiping God is what happened here at the cross. We're going to look at one simple, gloriously and unsearchably profound truth tonight as we look at Mark 15 v. 33-39. And that is that it took the death of the Son of God to open the way of life for sinners. I want to hopefully open up each portion of this, that it took the death, think about this, the death of the Son of God, God the Son, to open the way of life for sinners. This is the pulsing, the heartbeat of Christianity. This is something that we must all consider and believe. We're going to get three things tonight. I'll make them clear as we move through them. And firstly, what I want to consider with you is the darkness of God's judgment. What all went into this event leading up to the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And this is something that circles around or orbits around all of his sufferings culminating in his death. We're going to look at how Mark records for us or communicates to us these things. The darkness of God's judgment in verses 33 and 34. And the first thing I want you to see from the text here is that the darkness of God's judgment descended down upon Jesus Christ. The darkness of God's judgment descended upon Jesus Christ. When the sixth hour had come, And children, they counted time, not with wristwatches back then, but they counted time basically from dawn until sunset. He was crucified. The Lord Jesus was. He was nailed onto the cross at the third hour of the day. And for by our reckoning, that would be nine a.m. At the sixth hour of the day, which would be 12 p.m., that is high noon, at the very time when the sun would be at its height, at the Palestinian heat of the day, at its zenith, then there was darkness. over the whole land until about the ninth hour. So from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m., total, complete darkness descends. And whether you want to translate whole land as in that area or that region, or actually earth, it's suggestive we could go either way with it. Both could fit. But either way, what I want you to understand, this is no natural phenomenon. This is a supernatural darkness. Again, scholars love to try to reason their way naturally around these supernatural things that occurred in the times of the Lord Jesus Christ. But this was no eclipse. Maybe some of you children, maybe some of you remember a few years ago, there was actually a real solar eclipse, a total solar eclipse that happened right here. Sadly, where I went to go visit it, right when it happened, clouds covered everything. But even so, A total eclipse doesn't make everything go completely black. And even so, it didn't last for three hours. This is a blackness, a darkness. A foreboding look forward to actually that blackness of hell that awaits all those who rebel against Christ and die in their rebellion. This was, make no mistake about it, a supernatural darkness. And it was a terrible darkness. It was a terrible darkness because this darkness was a, if not the sign of God's judgment. If you spend some time reading through the prophets, the minor prophets, the major prophets, whichever ones, as they speak about the awful coming day of the Lord and the aspect of judgment included in that day, oftentimes what you will see is the ingredient of gloom and darkness that attended it. This is a terrible thing, but perhaps, probably the best picture of darkness to have in your mind is that terrible three day long darkness that descended upon the land of Egypt at a very particular time. Children, again, do you remember when did God send the darkness upon the land of Egypt? It was a darkness that came down. As the ninth plague. Immediately preceding something very significant. And that was the death. of the Lamb. The darkness of God's judgment would descend right before the death of the Paschal Lamb. And so again, what we see is that judgment's not descending on God's enemies here, but it's descending on Jesus. This was a sign of God's judgment But this was also something in its terror that when you think about God, God himself, the Bible tells us God is light. In him, in him, there's no darkness at all. And when we think about Jesus, the son, Hebrews 1 tells us that he is the radiance. of the glory of God. He is the brightness of God's glory. And how is it that in this mysterious transaction we'll talk about in a moment, where the Father is dealing with the Son, and in the Son, for the sins of the world, a supernatural, terrible darkness covers it all. In a sense, reverently veiling that mysterious, unsearchable transaction from the empirical possibilities of man to observe. No man could really see what was going on. And you know, it's a remarkable thing. I heard Sinclair Ferguson mention this some years ago. That the most glorious works of God have occurred away from the eyes of men. It was in total darkness. It was out of nothing that God made the world. No man saw it. I think the angels saw it, but no man saw it. When God became flesh, it was in the darkness in the imperceptible realm of the womb of the Virgin. Here, when atonement is made and paid, it's in the darkness that descends upon the land. And when Jesus rose from the dead, it was in the darkness of a sealed tomb. Where again, no man bore witness. Why does God do these things? I don't know. But we ought to search them out and love Him for that. There is a darkness that descends upon the Lord Jesus. But I also want you to know that not only did darkness in general descend upon Jesus, but the fierceness of God's wrath descended upon Jesus. When the sixth hour had come, darkness descends. And then Mark tells us in verse 34, and at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? These words have confused some, Perhaps confuse you tonight. I want to talk about some of these words. Why does Jesus use these particular words? These words, first of all, expressed what Jesus experienced. They expressed what Jesus was actually enduring during these dark hours as He Himself, truly man, truly God, affixed to a torture instrument, concocted in the wicked minds of men, and yet appointed by God for this very task. He bore intensively and mysteriously the wrath of God that would have taken each one of us singularly an eternity to pay. Now let me go back and explain some of that for you. First of all, intensively. In time. In this period of time, Jesus endured and rendered payment for a myriad of eternity's worth. of judgment. And this is a mysterious thing, isn't it? Oh, we need to tread carefully here. We can't give way to speculation. We must be careful. We must be wise. And yet, we must think of these things. How? How could a man in time do this? How could Jesus pay in His body and soul, in His person, something that would take us an eternity to pay? Which means we could never do it. Well, probably the best explanation of this that I've ever read, although some of you here have probably read far more than I have, is what Robert Dabney says about this atonement. He says, a stick of wood and an ingot of gold are subjected to the same fire. The wood is permanently consumed. And don't read into that a false annihilationism. It's not what he's getting to. He's comparing things. The wood is permanently consumed, but the gold is only melted because it is a precious metal, and it is gathered undiminished from the ashes of the furnace. But the fire was the same. And then the infinite dignity of Christ's person gives to His temporal sufferings a moral value equal to the weight of all the guilt in the world. Let me read that last part again for you to think about this. The sufferings in time of Jesus Christ. The temporal sufferings, because of the dignity of Christ's person, contain the moral value equal to the weight. of all the guilt of the world. This Jesus intensively, mysteriously, bore in his person all the sins and the punishment of his own people. Well, during this time, during these dark hours, in Mark's accounting, Jesus cries out for the first time. And again, He expresses what He was experiencing. Now, first of all, what does this not mean? When He says, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? This is not Jesus speaking out of unbelief. This is not Jesus crying out in anger or in unsubmissiveness or in complaint against God. This is not Jesus saying that the Godhead is somehow broken, that He ceased being the eternal Son. He's not saying that the Father has rejected the Son. But what He is articulating is He's saying that God is dealing with Him as the sinner, as the one who is due the penalties of hell. This is why you must believe in a divine Savior. This is why you must believe in One who was righteous, who was eternally glorious, who emptied none of His divinity, who took to Himself true humanity. and then renders up His life, offered up His life, a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice. This is what's going on, and He bears witness to this. This is the second thing. This is why Jesus chooses these words, not merely to articulate His agonizing, hell-enduring, judgment-paying agony on the cross, but He's also, do you know what He's doing? This is glorious. Jesus, to His dying breath, is bearing witness to who He is. Talk to any Jew of those days and any Jew somewhat familiar with the Old Testament and ours. Everyone recognizes Psalm 22 is one of the preeminent messianic psalms. And from the cross, the suffering servant is not merely articulating what he's experiencing, but he's saying, look at me. I am the suffering servant. And the events that would transpire as He was there, that culminates in this great confession, fulfilled Psalm 22 2AT. This is who Jesus is. The suffering Messiah. Isn't it a glorious thing that Jesus, to the very moment He offered up His life to the Father, was bearing witness to His identity that we might know who He is. That we might be saved. The darkness of God's judgment descends upon Jesus and the suffering servant endures it righteously and bears witness faithfully. Well, secondly, I want to show you that Mark He records for us as He says that it takes the death of the Son of God to open the way of life for sinners. We want to look secondly at the desecration of God's temple. And this really happens in two ways. First, through the death of the priest. And then through the death of the temple. First then, in the death of the priest, you see the human priesthood would go from age to age, moving from the life of one high priest to the life of the next high priest. This is the last great high priest. And here we see him dying. Now I want you to look at verse 35. Some of this might be, children, I wonder if you've ever wondered what's going on here. It says, Some of the bystanders hearing it said, Behold, he's calling Elijah. And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, Wait, let's see whether Elijah will come to take it down. And some writers have said, that what was going on here is there was some folklore that had been passed down through the generations. And Jews believed that if a righteous person was suffering, and they cried out to Elijah, the one who was taken up to heaven, you remember? In the chariots of fire. That if there was a righteous sufferer who cried out to Elijah, that Elijah would swoop down and save him. And so the crowd here is caring nothing for the witness-bearing, sin-bearing work of Jesus Christ. They're looking for a spectacle. They're looking for, hey, I wonder if Elijah's in. We might see something incredible here. Let's keep this miserable man alive for just a little bit longer so we can see something amazing. It's in the midst of this kind of callous, superstitious blindness. But Jesus Himself continues His work of sin-bearing atonement. You see, Christ's cries on the cross were unlike any others who had died. Many who would be crucified would hang there for hours, even days. When they still had strength to speak, they would cry out curses and yell and scream in their agony. at others, but from Jesus, he spoke what is true and righteous. And one of my pet peeves, by the way, I'll get to this actually in a moment, so I'll tell you my pet peeve later. Jesus Christ cries out unlike any other who had died, but he also died unlike any other person who died on the cross. One of my pet peeves. is when I hear ministers talk about the cross and talk about crucifixion and give you this endless litany of the physical sufferings of what went on. And yes, there were physical sufferings in the Lord. And then they would say, and the worst part about crucifixion is that the person nailed to the cross would then die of a slow, terrible asphyxiation and suffocation when they couldn't hold themselves up for any longer. That's not how Jesus died. Do you know how I know? because He doesn't get swallowed up in death in weakness. He cries out with a loud voice. A loud voice that did not cry out in cursing, but cried out. And we learn from another Gospel, it is finished, He would say. He did not die in weakness. He died according to His own appointment. He did not die involuntarily. but absolutely, sacrificially, in a voluntary manner. He says in John 10, no one takes my life from me. I have the authority to lay it down. I have the authority to take it up again. No one stole it from him. No Roman soldier took it from him by the nails they pierced on his hands. He died voluntarily. He was not overcome by death in weakness. He entered into death. Willfully, sovereignly, and sacrificially. So much so that Pilate, when he heard that Jesus is already, he says, is he already dead? That didn't take very long. Jesus died unlike any other common thief nailed to a cross. But I want you to understand that the real difference in Jesus' death from every other death is that Jesus died not because he was a sinner, but he died for sinners. He died not because He Himself deserved the consequences of our first Father's fall. He died not because of all those born by ordinary generation are subject to death. Because you remember, children, that's why that little clause is in the Catechism. Jesus wasn't born by ordinary generation, but extraordinary generation as the Holy Spirit came upon Mary. Yes, death is the consequence for sin. Physical and spiritual, Jesus endured both. Not as a sinner, but treated as a sinner. Why did Jesus die? You know, I used to be in the army. Eight years, served as a chaplain. Talked to a lot of people. A lot of people said they were Christians. And oftentimes I talk to these soldiers and they would say, yeah, I'm a Christian. I say, oh, good, that's great. Talk about Christ for a little bit. I say, hey, let me ask you a question. Why did Jesus die? Well, and they would all say, well, to forgive us of our sins. And I say, okay, thank you. But what does Jesus' death have to do with the forgiveness of sins? And do you know what many people would say? Many professing Christians would say, I never thought of that. You never thought of that? This is the Gospel. Why did Jesus die? And let me tell you three reasons. Not all of the reasons, but at least three. Why did Jesus die? And I want you to get this reason first in your minds. Jesus did not die first and foremost to forgive you of your sins. Jesus died first and foremost to perform the will of the Father. This is what he tells us in the Gospel of John. The atonement was not a man-centered act. It was a God-centered act. And Jesus tells us in John 14, he says, I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Now let me ask you a question. When you think about Jesus' death on the cross, do you think of it as the culminating act of obedience by Jesus because He loved the Father? Now those of you who might struggle with obedience, especially obedience when it runs against the grains of your will, let me ask you a question. Have you considered obedience through the prism, prism of the cross of Christ? Have you considered that Jesus went to the cross as an act of obedience because of His love to the Father? Do you think it was pleasant? It was profoundly and infinitely and unsearchably unpleasant for Him, but He did it. He despised the shame. Why? Because of the joy that was set before Him. The second reason that He died, not merely to perform the will of the Father, as an act of love, but yes, to purchase salvation. And all that it includes. He, by His own precious blood, purchased salvation. Your justification. Your cleansing of sin and your covering in righteousness. Your adoption. You're being brought as a child of Satan out from the dominion of darkness into the family of God. Your sanctification. That you might be made like Christ. your glorification, that you might stand because of the merits of Jesus, the work of Jesus, in the presence of God, and ultimately, the reason for these things is not so we can have a set of propositions to memorize, but that we might have communion with God. This is what it takes, the death of the Son of God, to open the way of life for sinners. What is life? Do you remember what Jesus says? This is eternal life. That they know you. the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. He died to perform the will of the Father, to purchase salvation in all it includes, particularly the opening of communion with God. And he died to bring many sons to glory. Many people misunderstood what he was doing. His own disciples there standing at the foot of the cross misunderstood what he was doing. They viewed him for some days as a failure. They didn't understand. His enemies didn't understand what he was doing. Bystanders, look, they didn't understand what he was doing. Do you understand the cross? Not comprehensively, not exhaustively, of course, we're not gonna do that Sunday school answer, but do you understand this is what Jesus was doing? This is the death of the priest. We wanna show you that this led then to the death and desecration of the temple. Something glorious happened, something terrifying happens. That at the very moment, verse 37, Jesus uttered a loud cry, he breathed his last, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The veil is torn. Now, children, this is not like tearing a paper towel. This is not like tearing a T-shirt. Writers tell us that the veil that separated the holy from the holy place was a curtain four inches thick. So, so thick, so strong, teams of oxen could not tear it apart. The veil itself showed not that God needed to be contained, but that the people needed to stay away from God lest they be consumed. How was this veil torn? I want you to note very carefully, do not lose sight of this. The veil was not torn from bottom to top, but from top to bottom because salvation is of the Lord. He starts at the top and He rends it open. Why? That the way to God might be made open to all and any who come in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The old way is gone, the new way has come, and this is what the writer of Hebrews tells us, that there is a new way, a living way, through the rending, the tearing of the veil that is His flesh. As the flesh of Christ was torn, and His cleansing blood ran forth, there's no more need for that veil. There's no more need for that barrier because Christ, Christ had made it open. No need anymore to be a Levitical priest to enter, and only one type of Levitical priest, because the priest himself had been sacrificed, not on the holy altar, but on the unholy altar of the cross. Well, the darkness of God's judgment and the desecration of God's temple. Thirdly, the declaration of God's Son. Verse 38. It's a remarkable text. I want to show you why I think it's a remarkable text. Because it's a great confession. It's a great confession that stands as a pillar at the end of the Gospel of Mark. And when the centurion, who stood facing Jesus, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, truly this man was the Son of God. This centurion, you know what a centurion is, children. A centurion was someone who was over about a hundred soldiers. In our modern army lingo, we would say he was a company commander. He was someone who was a basic unit commander in the Roman army. And this man was on duty to perform crucifixions during this time. How many crucifixions this man witnessed, we don't know, but crucifixion was not at all uncommon in the days of the Roman occupation. How many criminals did he see nailed to a cross? How many curses did he hear rained down? How many times did he see people over the course of hours and days slowly lose their lives? No one was like this. But Mark has something to tell us. that this centurion could never have witnessed as he stood there on Golgotha. This centurion had no idea that the temple veil was torn. And yet, Mark is telling us something remarkable. Here he's rounding out the confession and testimony of his gospel. All the way back, if you have your Bibles, turn to Mark chapter one, all the way back at the very beginning of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have something very similar and very glorious occurring. When the veil is torn in two, it uses the word that from which we get our word schism or schism. And all the way back in Mark 1, what we have is we have Jesus Christ, Mark 1, verse 10, coming up out of the water after being consecrated in the waters of the Jordan as the priest, after the Spirit descends upon Him. It says here that the heavens were ripped open. It's the same word. The heavens were torn open by a supernatural act of God. And what does the Father say? Is my Son. Supernatural rendering of something unable to be torn by the hands of men. And a declaration, this is the Son of God. And at the very end of the gospel. after the death of Christ. Supernatural rending. The tearing of something that no hands of man could ever tear. And a declaration by a Gentile a centurion no less. This is the Son of God. I simply have one question for you as we think about these things. Do you see this? Do you recognize that this is, in His bloody, gory, stripped, thorn-crowned humiliation, are you willing to name that Christ as the Son of God? Making the same confession as the centurion. Though it happened in darkness and in shame, will you own it? Will you believe it? Do you believe it? Have you embraced this Christ, this glorious Son of God? If you've not believed in this shamefully crucified Jesus, I urge you and command you in the name of Christ even now to believe in Him. To turn away from your sins, because sin has been dealt with there on the cross. Why would you continue in sin when the Lord Jesus Christ has dealt with it in His body? Why would you love your sin? when Jesus as an act of love gave Himself up that sinners might be saved? Why would you remain in communion with darkness when Jesus entered into darkness that people might live in the light? We must never, ever, ever ignore these things. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Trust in Him. When you look at the cross and you think about the cross, do you see foolishness? Or do you see the wisdom of God? Does the concept of a vicarious, penal atonement, that is someone suffering on your behalf, enduring legal wrath from the Father on the behalf of others, does that offend you? Or is it the very substance and foundation of your hope? Do you respond to the cross in unbelief or unbridled love, faith, and obedience? I've preached not many, many times, relatively speaking, but fair enough. And sometimes people come up to me after opening up a text like this and they say, okay, so what do I do? What do you do? What's the application, dear friends, of the cross? The cross is the application. Jesus is the application. What do you do? Well, how will this help you love your wife? You love your wife the way Christ loved the church and gave himself in this manner for her. How do you deal with your husband? Well, you deal with your husband by submitting to him the way the son submitted to the father to the point of death on the cross. How do you honor your parents? You honor your parents the way Jesus honored his father and humbled himself all the way down to the end as an act of love. How do you parent your children? Well, you show them patience because God dealt in patience with you by giving you this propitiation for your sins. How do you worship? Well, you worship under the banner of the cross, coming into His presence with joy and offering yourself willingly. How do you think about sin? I'm about to sing in a moment, stricken, smitten and afflicted. And that third verse says, ye who think of sin but lightly, nor suppose the evil great, here may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimate. Do you want to think about what God thinks about your sin? Go to the cross. This is how he regards your unbridled anger. This is how he regards your greed, your petty rivalries, your unsubmissive heart, your lust, your dabbling in the pornography and the wicked licentious entertainment that is all around us. This is how He views it. And this is how He deals with it. We could maybe even change the words of this great hymn, not talking merely about sin, but maybe I could talk to you about it this way. You who think of love but lightly, nor suppose His glory great, Here may view its nature rightly, and here His grace may estimate. John Murray writes of the cross, saying that when we're talking about these things, we're touching the very fringes of the mystery of God's will. We should be aware that the thought and words of men fail. Here we have unsearchable wisdom, facets of revelation that pertain to ways past finding out. But it is only as our feeble minds become engaged with this mystery and we seek to explore its depths that we catch glimpses of its marvel and we exclaim, oh, the depths of both the wisdom and the knowledge of God. So what do you do? What do you do? You believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I would urge you, dear friends, make this your confession. Confess this night along with the hosts of heaven, worthy is the Lamb who was slain. What do you do? Well, make that your confession, and then make it your commitment to follow that Lamb wherever He goes. Remembering that God has promised that the way the church overcomes all of its enemies, they overcome, do you remember what the writer says in Revelation? And they overcame by the blood of the Lamb. And by the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives, even unto death. Look at the cross, look at Christ. Make this your confession. and follow Him wherever He goes. Amen. Let's pray. Our God, how miserably short we fall. Lord, we thank You for the gift of words, the gift of language, and yet, we find the very limits of our ability to communicate and even to think about that intensive and mysterious transaction that occurred in the darkness that descended upon the Lord Jesus Christ. How we thank You that we don't have to understand the vast intricacies and unsearchable glory of what occurred, but we simply need to believe. And that You are the one who gives us grace that we might believe. We thank You that none can take away from the work that Christ has done, We thank You that You do not call us to add to the work that Christ has done. Lord, we would ask that You would now impress upon our hearts and in our minds the glorious of Christ, the crucified One, who became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. We thank You that now, that now He is no longer humiliated, but highly exalted. And we pray, give us grace. To confess, along with the angels in heaven, that he is worthy. And to follow him, for we ask it in his name. Amen.