Crucified!
Matthew 27:27-56
Preacher: David Williams
Sermon Mt 27:27-56. Theme: Crucified! Sermon by Pastor David Williams. Strathalbyn Church of Christ. 15 April 2022, Good Friday.
What is our image of God?
For many Aussies, God is distant and unpredictable; for others, he is careless and indulgent. Either way, he can look a lot like our own fathers. Are we making God in our own image? So who is God? What is he like? And how does he view us?
On the cross, we have a unique window into the mind and heart of God.
On the cross, we see clearly what sort of God we are dealing with, and how he regards us. Through word and action, we see God. Interestingly,
i. We see God thru the words of his enemies
The mockers throw up many charges against Jesus, and ironically, they are all true.
o Saviour
o King of the Jews
o Son of God
o Where we meet God
1. Saviour
He saved others; he cannot save himself, they mocked. But he could not save himself, if he was to save others.
Jesus had prayed in Gethsemane, Father, if it is possible, let this cup be taken from me, Mt 26:39. Three times he had pleaded. Three times the Father denied his prayer. And Jesus accepted the Father’s will – yet not my will but yours be done.
Jesus could have opted out.
Why did he do it? Why did he go through all that agony?
Theologians have many theories of what the cross meant. Most are true, at least in part. For instance, Christ’s suffering is an example for us all. And on the cross, he was victorious over sin, Satan and death. But there is one explanation that many church leaders shun. That he was a ransom for sins; a substitute - that he died in my place, that he bore the father’s wrath so that we, like Barabbas, can walk free.
To conquer sin, to take my place, Jesus had to bear my sins and die. There was no other way. As the song goes, _It was my sin that held him there (_Townend, How Deep the Father’s Love). So, the taunt was true, He saved others; he cannot save himself.
2. King of the Jews
The charge that earnt Jesus the Roman death penalty was that he was a king. Caesar couldn’t allow a rival king.
Three times Jesus is mockingly called King. The soldiers crowned him with a crown of thorns while saying, Hail, King of the Jews. Pilate posted a charge on the cross, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews!” Pilate posted it – not because he believed it, but as a taunt to the Jewish leaders. Finally, the Jewish leaders mocked him, He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.
Jesus truly is the King. The King of the Jews, yes, but also the King of Kings. His Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom. His reign extends to the ends of the earth.
But he is a king unlike any other. His crown was a crown of thorns. His throne a cross. His power came through weakness.
3. Son of God
The charge that earnt Jesus the death penalty from the Jews was that he was the Son of God. To the Jews, that was blasphemy. To them it meant that Jesus was claiming some sort of divine status, equality with God.
As with the claim to be king, so they also mocked the claim to be Son of God. Again, his mockers said, prove it – by coming down from the cross.
If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”
The Devil made a similar taunt. Twice, he began his temptations with If you are the Son of God … Mt 4: The Devil was still on the offensive, trying his hardest to make Jesus come down from the cross. Had Jesus given up the cross, that would have been a victory for Satan.
Many church leaders are taking Jesus from the cross today. In many churches, they deny key truths about Jesus and the cross. For instance
- He was not God
- He was not man
- His death was an accident
- He didn’t die for our sins
- He didn’t die to turn away God’s wrath
- He didn’t rise from death.
These pastors are continuing the devil’s work of sowing lies and doubts.
The Jews didn’t just question his status as God’s son, but also challenged his relationship to his Father.
43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”
We might dismiss this as a baseless taunt, but Matthew gives much attention to these venomous barbs that were thrown at Jesus. He focusses more on the mockery than on the physical torture. And this last taunt must have hit hard: If God loves him as his Son, let God deliver him now, if God desires him. This taunt prepares the way for the Cry of desolation. This is the most severe test of his faith, the loss of his Father’s presence.
It is hard for us to know how Jesus felt. But it is clear that he suffered immense agonies – physical, spiritual, relational and mental. Don’t think that because this man was also God that he did not or could not suffer. He was not sustained by enormous reserves of divine power. Rather, he “emptied himself” (Phil 2).
Jesus had been a strong man – 33 years old, a carpenter – no Makita power tools in those days. Everything was done by brute strength. Yet he was so weakened by the flogging that he couldn’t carry his own cross. The physical pain would have been unendurable. Yet the spiritual pain was even harder, for he took the sins of the world on his shoulders. He who knew no sin became sin for us. We can have no idea what that was like, but we get a hint of it in his cry:
My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.
It is not just that he felt or imagined that God was absent. God truly was absent. For the first time in history, the first time in eternity, somehow the Trinity was severed. That special most intimate bond between father and son was severed. How that could be, we don’t know. We are not told. But we know that evil may not dwell with God (Hab 1:13; Ps 5:4). The holy God is light, in him is no darkness at all (Ps 22:3, 1 Jn 1:5.)
The Son bore this alone.
As the Son was dying, he uttered the Cry of desolation.
This was not a failure of faith. I think Jesus was expressing how he felt in the moment. He was expressing the agony, the loneliness, the utter weakness he felt as his life was about to expire, as the pain intensified, as the weight of the sins of the world crushed him, as the mocking taunts kept resounding against his frail body and crushed spirit – the cries, Come down! Give up! You are not really King! You are not really Son of God! Give up!
So, in utter desolation, Jesus cried in native tongue,
46 “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” … “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
It is called the Cry of desolation. Is there a more desolate, lonely, anguished cry that has ever been uttered? Here is the cry of one whose life is about to expire. He is utterly alone. The most crushing blow is that his own Father is absent. In minutes, death will make that alienation complete.
Yet he did not give up. As weak as he was, he did not lose faith. He drank that bitter cup to its dregs. Was there ever a man as courageous as Jesus. Was there ever a man as faithful? Was there ever a man so compassionate?
Jesus was abandoned so that I never need be.
43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now if he desires him.
Jesus did trust in God. God did deliver him – but only after the agony of crucifixion and death.
In the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
Immanuel’s orphaned cry … went up .., “My God, I am forsaken!”
It went up … that, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation!
Jesus cried, My God I am forsaken so that David Williams would never have to. Jesus was abandoned by the father so that we never need be abandoned.
Yet some do feel abandoned.
God will not answer all our prayers – he did not answer Jesus at Gethsemane, he did not answer Paul with his thorn in the flesh. We may feel abandoned, we may feel our prayers are hitting a brick wall – but God hears. God knows. God knows suffering for he has felt it at its most extreme.
And God is in control. Even in Mariupol as we consider those starving, sick and frightened Ukrainians. Jesus suffered terror, torment, abandonment and death – so that evil and death could be conquered. We look to a day when there will be no more wars, no pain or tears. A day made possible by this day of the cross.
It is foolish to attempt a trite answer to why God allows the innocent to suffer. But we can perhaps see the most horrific and unjust example of suffering in human history on the cross. The sufferer is the most innocent of all victims – having never sinned. The suffering is permitted, even planned by his own Father – the all-powerful God.
We cannot explain why God allows the innocent to suffer. All we can say is that we worship a suffering God. God is not remote from suffering. He has experienced the deepest suffering in the core of his being, and he has experienced it as a man. We could even say, if you get my drift, “God died like a man”.
ii. We see God through his actions
What does all this say about the Father? What sort of God would put his son, his innocent son, through so much torture and agony while just sits on a cloud some zillions of light years away watching on? Steve Chalke used to be an evangelical leader. But then he rejected the idea that the Father sent his Son to die for the sins of the world. He said this amounts to cosmic child abuse. But Chalke has completely missed the point.
Jesus went in with eyes wide open. He knew what he was doing. His heart was set on this great project of saving mankind from sin and conquering death. If there had been any other way to save humanity, Jesus would have chosen the alternative. But there was no alternative.
The Father, Son and Spirit operate in a perfect relationship of love and trust. God is not some petulant angry teenager, but a holy God. He always does what is right. God could not stand by and simply ignore humanity’s rebellion. Sin destroys us – it leads to death. It had to be dealt with. It had to be punished by God. It was punished by God himself taking on the penalty and dying as a man – experiencing the full force of sin, judgement, pain and death – so that we could walk free. Unfair? Yes, very unfair. And we are all the grateful beneficiaries of that death.
As his Son was bearing the weight of sin, darkness covered the land. As Jesus, the light of the world was dying, so light was taken from the land. The darkness was a sign of God’s judgment on sin and perhaps mirrored the darkness that was overtaking his Son.
As the Son gave up his spirit – Jesus was in control even of the moment of his death – God responded immediately. His Son had defeated death by his death. God’s answer to his Son’s cry is seen in the following dramatic events. God tore the temple curtain, sent an earthquake, opened the tombs and many Jewish believers rose from death.
Earthquakes were a sign of God’s judgement and his presence. What about the tombs though? Some have puzzled over the fate of believers in OT times. In these resurrections we see that those faithful Jews who lived before the Messiah depended on the power of Messiah’s death and resurrection. It is the same for us who live after the resurrection.
4. Where we meet God
The destruction of the temple gets a lot of attention in Matthew (Mt 12:6; 24:1,2; 26:61; 27:40, 51. Cf., Jn 2:13-22). Jesus predicted it. He was accused of threatening to destroy the temple at his first trial. He is again taunted with this on the cross.
39 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads 40 and saying,
“You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself!
Why so much attention to the temple? Matthew has been called the gospel for the Jews. In their temple once a year, the high priest went through the curtain to the holiest of holies – coming into the very presence of God. But now Matthew wanted his Jewish readers to know that a revolution had occurred. Their Messiah had come and that changed everything.
a. The old system was finished
At the very moment of Christ’s expiry comes a dramatic miracle:
51 And behold,
the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
Why is this the first thing that God did when his Son died? Jesus came to fulfill the Law (Mt 5:17), his blood introduced a new covenant (Mt 26:28) and the Father now accepts the sacrifice of his Son by tearing the curtain. By this, God shows that the temple with its sacrificial system and its priesthood is now obsolete. The torn veil was also a sign that the temple would be completely destroyed. This happened about 37 years later. But before that, in three days, a new temple would rise, with a new eternal priest. Temple, sacrifice, priesthood were all fulfilled in his Son. People could come into God’s presence on the basis of his Son’s blood – not the blood of goats. Anyone can come, anytime.
b. Gentiles too could meet God
Jesus cry is a quote from the start of Psalm 22. As we’ve seen, it expressed just how Jesus felt. But Jesus knew where the Psalm ended too. Psalm 22 ends in hope. Hope for the afflicted one – for despite the cry of being forsaken, the Father
24 has not hidden his face from him,
but has heard, when he cried to him.
But there is more to come. There is hope – not just for the afflicted one, nor even just Israel but hope for the whole world!
27 All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord,
This hope for the nations is taken up again by Jesus himself in the closing words of Matthew. He commanded his disciples to make disciples of all nations.
This new meeting place – through Jesus’ body - was not just for Jews but for all. It is not the Jews but the Gentiles who first glimpse the truth. While the chief priests were hell bent on killing Jesus, Pilate’s wife had a troubled dream about that righteous man (27:19). The Jews mocked Jesus for claiming to be the Son of God. Now a Roman centurion confessed the truth of that claim.
54 When the centurion and those who were with him … saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said,
“Truly this was the Son of God!”
c. No exceptions - God accepts us all
Some think God could never accept them.
Some think they have committed the unforgiveable sin
Some think they need to get their act together before they can come.
The church is the home of sinners. Jesus was friend to prostitutes and publicans. Jesus died for his enemies. There is no one beyond reach of his mercy and grace. If you are standing outside his kingdom, come to him today. Come in, come into the Father’s family.
Conclusion
On the cross, we glimpse the mind and heart of God. The Son who is King, Son of God, Saviour and the new Temple – our access to God. The Father who so loved the world that he gave his only son that all who believe in him should not perish but have eternal life. Let us pray the Spirit may open our minds and our hearts to the mind and heart of God.
God, Father, Son and Spirit, thank you for the cross, the suffering, the sacrifice, the salvation that we have at the price of the death of Jesus. Let us come into your presence today through his blood. In Jesus name, Amen.