The Sign of His Darkest Day

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We’re going to look back some more at a passage we looked at this morning, just one particular part of it as we continue to talk about Jesus and the signs pointing to the fact that He was the Messiah, things that if He was not the Messiah, He would have had no control over if He was just an ordinary man. We’ll start in verse 45, and when we get to verse 45, He’s already on the cross and has been there for quite some time. And verse 45 says, Now from the sixth hour there was darkness all over the land unto the ninth hour.

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, which is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Some of them that stood there then heard that, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias. And straightway one of them ran and took a sponge and filled it with vinegar and put it on a reed and gave him to drink.

The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come and save him. Jesus, verse 50, when he had cried again, with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. This is the ending glimpses of the crucifixion story as told in Matthew. And it’s interesting to me that it starts out with, in verse 45 anyway, with Jesus on the cross.

We’ve already looked at the things that we talked about this morning, that he’s surrounded by wicked men, not only the ones who crucified him, but the ones on either side who were mocking him. And other gospel accounts tell us that one of those thieves eventually turned and repented. But we see him surrounded by wicked men.

We see that they’ve stretched him out. They’ve pierced his hands and his feet. We see that they’ve added insult to injury by taking his clothes and dividing them amongst themselves and actually gambling to see who got what.

But there was a portion that we glossed over this morning, and kind of on purpose. In verse 45, it says, Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And if we read over that, as I’ve done so many times before, and we’re not familiar with the way that the Jews measured time, it seems like just an insignificant detail.

Oh, at the sixth hour, the land was dark unto the ninth hour, so on and so forth. When they talk about such and such hour, they’re talking about daytime. When they talk about the days, they divided it into such and such hour.

When they talked about the night, they divided it into watches. I believe there were four watches of three hours apiece, I believe. I may be wrong on that.

You want to check me. But the day typically ran from about 6 a. m.

to 6 p. m. , the day hours.

And so when it says the sixth hour of the day, there was darkness all over the land, Any math whiz in the congregation want to tell me what time we’re talking about? Noon. Right about high noon, the Bible says, when Jesus was there hanging on the cross.

This is not just some little insignificant detail. At noon, the sky went dark over Jerusalem. And darkness was over all the land until the ninth hour.

About the hottest part of the day, the brightest part of the day, the early afternoon, the time that a lot of times I can’t even go outside without SPF 50, from 12 to 3 in the afternoon. This brightest part of the day, and the sun was nowhere to be seen. The sky went dark.

That’s incredible. That doesn’t happen all the time. We’re not talking about some clouds rolled in and it was overcast. We’re talking about it was darkness all over the land.

That doesn’t happen very often at high noon. And when it does, it’s a foreboding thing. It tells you something big is on the way.

I remember hearing the stories of the Dust Bowl that ravaged Oklahoma and Texas and Kansas back in the 30s. And they would tell us, I’ve seen video, I believe it was, from Boyce City on a day they called Black Sunday. And it was in the morning, not early morning, but getting close into this time, that this big black cloud just rolled in over the Oklahoma panhandle, and they couldn’t see anything.

They couldn’t see the sun. It was pitch black. They couldn’t see three feet in front of them.

It was one of these big, dark dust clouds. And you could see on some of the video. I didn’t realize they had video in the 1930s, but I guess they did.

They had to crank the thing. Anyway, somebody, you know, at home when the tornado sirens go off, people run out and check what’s going on. I guess that’s not a new thing because the black cloud comes rolling in and some yahoo ran out with a video camera.

I guess some things never change. But he runs out there and they take the video and you can see this cloud coming in and you can see the sky turning pitch black in the middle of the day. And it was an ominous thing and it was foreboding and it signaled the start of this dust bowl that these storms would continue for months and months and dirt would get everywhere and it just about destroyed people’s lives up there.

Anytime the sky goes completely dark in the middle of the day, you know good things are not on the way. you know something important is going on. And that’s exactly what happened the day of the crucifixion.

It amazes me that the people, these wicked people, how ingrained their hatred toward Jesus Christ must have been that at the sight of the sky going black, they didn’t turn and say much earlier what the centurion later said, truly this must be the Son of God. The fact that they had hung this man on the cross, they knew he was falsely accused, they knew he claimed to be the Son of God, and they hang him up there, and at noon the sky goes black, that would be a sign that something is not right in what we’re doing, I would think. I try to put myself sometimes in the shoes of the people in the Bible and think, what would I have done?

How would I have responded? And that doesn’t tell us a whole lot except for what I would do. But I think most of us would realize this is not a good thing.

And yet they looked, and such was their hatred ingrained in them toward Jesus Christ that they continued on with what they were doing. It should have been a sign to them, especially since so many of these priests and scribes and religious leaders were so familiar with the Old Testament. They were familiar with the law.

They were familiar with the prophets. They had, as a matter of fact, they had built their entire career, their entire reputation on their ability to know God’s law and to twist it around for their purposes. In the book of Amos, it tells about something like this.

Turn with me real quick to Amos chapter 8. I’ve told you before that Amos is one of these books that, you know, I know everything in the Bible is important. I believe everything in the Bible is important.

But Amos is one of those books that just fascinates me more than some others. And I wish I understood everything about this book. And who knows, maybe the more I study, the closer I’ll get to that goal. But Amos as a person fascinates me.

Because here he was basically a nobody, a farmer from out in the wilderness that God sent to go and warn the royal court of Jeroboam II about their sin. And not only was he a nobody from nowhere, this fig farmer, but he was also from the rival kingdom. And so God sent him across enemy lines to deliver a message that was not going to be well received, and he knew that.

And Amos went anyway. And it’s just an incredible story. And there’s so many interesting things that he tells the royal court.

But one of these things he tells us is in chapter 8. And he’s prophesying about future events. We’re going to start in chapter 8, verse 8.

And it says, Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? And it shall rise up wholly as a flood, and it shall be cast out and drowned as by the flood of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day, and I will turn your feasts into mourning, verse 10, and all your songs into lamentation, and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins and baldness upon every head, and I will make it as the morning of the only sun, and the end thereof as a bitter day.

All throughout the book of Amos, Amos is talking on God’s behalf to the royal court of Jeroboam in the northern kingdom about Israel’s sin. And he gets around to chapter 8 and talking about how God is going to deal with that sin one day and the punishment that will come upon Israel if they do not repent and turn back to God. He said there would be a punishment one day.

And he’s talking about this, about God dealing with sin, God dealing with Israel’s sin. And he tells them in verse 8 that the land would tremble, and everyone that dwelled in the land would mourn. And he says, it shall rise up holy as a flood, and it shall be cast out and drowned as by the flood of Egypt.

Now, I had to study on that a little bit, because I thought, I understood that God was not going to destroy the world again by flood. That’s what he said to Noah. Looking at this some more, it appears that what he’s saying is that as the floods in Egypt and the floods in Noah’s day, he doesn’t mention Noah, but he talks about a flood, that God’s punishment, God’s dealing with sin would come as suddenly as that flood.

Now, from our standpoint, it doesn’t look like that came suddenly. God told Noah to build the ark, and there were, as I understand it, there were about 120 years in there that Noah worked on that ark, And Noah tried to tell the people that God was going to flood the earth. And in all this time, he was only able.

. . Noah had 120 years of ministry and only reached eight people.

They had every opportunity. But from their perspective, so we would say that’s 120 years they had warning. It was not a sudden thing that God’s judgment came, that God dealt with their sin.

But from their perspective, they didn’t heed the warning, and so this flood just came out of nowhere. And so Amos tells them that in the same way it’ll rise up as a flood, God’s judgment, God’s dealing with Israel’s sin will come out of nowhere to those who aren’t paying attention. He says that the earth will tremble and everyone that dwells in the land will mourn.

He goes on in verse 10 and says he’ll turn their feasts into mourning. This is Amos speaking, but it’s God speaking through Amos. Amos is not going to turn their feasts into mourning.

It’s going to be God. Turn their feasts into mourning and all their songs to lamentation. and put sackcloth upon all their loins and baldness upon every head and make it as the mourning of an only son and the end thereof as a bitter day.

God’s dealing with their sin would make them regret their sin as if they were mourning the loss of an only child. It talks about sackcloth upon the loins and sackcloth. They used to do sackcloth and ashes when they were in mourning and sackcloth is like burlap, like an old potato sack.

You wear it when you’re mourning because you don’t feel like you’re worthy to wear better clothes and be comforted. You’re mourning and want to be afflicted. That’s pretty serious mourning.

And he said it would be like the mourning of an only son passing. And in the middle of this here, he says that as he deals with their sin, that the land would tremble, I’m sorry, it would come to pass, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day. Now, if you turn back to Amos chapter 1, verse 1, and you’re welcome to do that.

Amos chapter 1, verse 1, it says, The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. Now, two years after Amos goes and takes this prophecy, takes this message to King Jeroboam, the Bible records that there was a great earthquake. And so some have speculated that verses 8, 9, and 10, verses 8 and 10 dealing with this earthquake, this punishment, and this mourning, and verse 9 dealing with the darkness, that it’s all talking about the same thing.

And you know what? It could have all dealt with the same thing. On the day of this earthquake, when God dealt with the sin in their court, when he dealt with it in an immediate way, there could have been darkness when the earthquake came.

And we know that verses 8 and 10 were fulfilled about the quaking and the trembling because when all this was written down later, when Amos wrote this down later, it says, I went and told them these things two years before the earthquake. So by the time he goes and writes down everything he’d told the king, the earthquake had already happened. But there in the middle, prophecy is kind of difficult sometimes.

I’ve told you that sometimes they’ll switch gears with what incidents, what events they’re talking about. What is that? I’m sorry.

They’ll switch gears as to what events or what incidents they’re talking about without much warning. And it’s not because these guys had short attention spans. It was because they were writing down or speaking what God gave them.

And even the prophets who got a word from God only saw a small piece of what God was up to. Folks, there’s none of us who can completely comprehend God’s plan, no matter how smart or how spiritual we are. And so even these prophets, God was only sharing with them what they needed to know.

And I’ve told you before, it’s like the example of looking out over the mountains. And we went out down Highway 71 yesterday. They wanted to take family pictures while they were all in town.

My family did. So we took them down Highway 71 and stopped at some place called Artist Point, and we went down around the back of Lake Fort Smith and got some good pictures of everybody else and some okay pictures of me. And we stopped at this place called Artist Point, and you look out and there’s a bend in the road and a big canyon thing, and I don’t know all the terminology.

I’m new to mountains. But you look out and you can see the mountains, and you see them in the distance, and they almost, I mean, they’re so pretty and they’re so far away they almost look fake, but you know they’re not. But you can see these mountains in the distance, and some of them, it looks like they are just right there together.

Like this mountain ends where this one begins, and it wouldn’t be until you got several, several miles off to the east closer to these mountains that you realize they’re actually several miles apart themselves. But from my perspective, all I can see is the tops of these mountains, and they look like they’re right there together. That’s how prophecy works a little bit too, because we’re not seeing things from God’s perspective.

We see things distantly, and what God explains to them sometimes came out as looking like one event, and we see the fulfillment, and it actually takes place in a couple of events. We see that with some of the prophecies, some of the very specific prophecies of Christ, where now we realize he’s talking about two different comings. He’s talking about the first coming and the second coming, or if you look at it from the Old Testament perspective before the first coming ever happened, then it looks like it’s all just one event.

And that could explain why some people missed it the first time, because they were expecting him to come in this triumphant power the first time, when in reality it’s like those mountains, there are several miles in between the two peaks. And it could be the same thing is going on here in Amos chapter 8, that he’s talking about different events. It could be that the sky turned black during the earthquake, but I don’t really believe that’s what he’s talking about.

Because I could be wrong, I need to study it out some more, but I didn’t find any place else that it talks about the sun going dark at noonday. I see things about the sun going backwards in the book of Joshua, but I don’t find anywhere else, I haven’t so far found anywhere else that the Bible records at noon, exactly the sun standing still. And Amos said that one day, in the midst of, this is all two different events, but the same context of God dealing with our sin, understand that, God dealing with our sin, the sun would go dark at noon, and he would turn dark the clear day.

And we find that fulfilled exactly as Amos said, as Amos said this would happen, we find it fulfilled exactly in Matthew chapter 27. And so it could be that Amos didn’t even understand, he’s talking about two different events, One where God immediately dealt with the sin of Israel with that earthquake, and one where God later on dealt with the sin of Israel in a more final way by having it nailed to the cross in the person of Jesus Christ. Because the coming of the Messiah was all about deliverance from our sins and God dealing with that sin. And he says here in verse 9, And it shall come to pass in that day, saith God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.

And we see that fulfilled exactly when he says, in the sixth hour, that means six hours after 6 a. m. , 12 noon, it caused the sun to go down, and we saw that there was darkness in Matthew 27 over not just the cross, not just that immediate area like it was a cloud, but over all the land for three hours.

It’s interesting to me, too, that the darkness finally clears about the time that Jesus gave up the ghost. It’s interesting to me because as a Christian, again, if I had been there at that time, that would have seemed like the darkest moment of all. We know that’s the case because so many of his disciples fled and went to hiding. It was a dark day, but the darkness, the sun going dark happened when he was on the cross because it was at that point God was dealing with man’s sin.

And then Jesus said, it is finished. The work of redemption is finished. He finished it there on the cross.

He didn’t have to go and suffer more, as some people believe, but he finished it there on the cross, and when it was finished, and he commended himself into the, his spirit into the Father’s hands, the Bible indicates that that was the end of the darkness, because God had finished dealing with sin in that final way through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And as we look at this, and what Amos talked about, and the fact that it lines up so clearly with what Matthew later records, there are three things that we need to see about this sign of His darkest day that are important for us to know. The first thing is that the Messiah’s death was under the Father’s control. He says in verse 9, And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon.

He talks about Himself, the Lord, God the Father, talks about Himself causing things to happen. That if He could cause the sun to go down at noon, if He could, years before this, if He could cause the land to tremble, he could do all these things, then his son’s death was under his control. I’ve talked about this before in other messages, but I really want to drive the point home that the crucifixion was not God caught off guard.

The crucifixion was not God’s plan B. There is no plan B with God. Before he ever created us, God saw that mankind would fall into sin.

He had to have if he knows everything. And the Bible talks about Jesus being slain before the foundation of the world. It was always in God’s plan that he would redeem us by his son.

Now, I don’t believe also, as some do, that God is the author of sin, that he caused us to sin, but I believe he knew it would happen and was not caught off guard a bit by it. And it was always his plan that Jesus Christ would die. God was not caught off guard.

God the son was not caught off guard when they took hold of him in the garden. He knew it was going to happen. He told his disciples about it.

He had prayed about it and submitted to the Father’s will and went willingly to the cross. That’s one of my big annoyances is today that people teach that God the Father was somehow abusive, that God the Father was somehow mean or tyrannical or that it’s a sign that he’s evil. And folks, there are churches teaching this, that the fact that he sent Jesus Christ to go through this was a sign that he was a tyrant or a cosmic child abuser, one pastor even said.

That’s one of the most annoying things to me because in the Bible we see Jesus willingly submitting to what the Father’s work was for him to do. And we need to understand that the Messiah’s death was under God’s control. It was under God the Father’s control.

He had planned it. He knew what was going on. It was under the Son’s control.

He had submitted to it before he ever left heaven to come down here. He submitted to it again the night before it happened. And we see a little glimpse of that, that in verse 9, God still says, I will cause.

I will cause this to happen. I will make this happen. God was still in control, not only of Jesus Christ and His death, but God was still in control of all the circumstances surrounding it.

And even in Jesus’ darkest day, or what we’d look at as His darkest day, when the sun goes black, when He’s hanging there on the cross, God the Father was still in control. Amen? Brothers and sisters, on our darkest days, God the Father is still in control.

Second, we need to see that the Messiah’s death was no ordinary event. It was no ordinary event. People were crucified in the Roman world all the time.

I said this morning that during David’s day it was unknown, virtually unknown. It was not a common practice at least. But here, David’s world and Jesus’ world were a thousand years apart. And they now had contact with the Romans, and they’d been through a succession of cultures intermingling, and different things were known than were known in David’s day.

And crucifixion was a little more common, a lot more common, in Jesus’ day than in David’s. But it was still, it was reserved for the lowest of the low among the criminals. Jesus was crucified between two thieves.

We see that Roman citizens had, who were viewed as higher, they were superior to slaves and servants and things like that. they got different rights. Paul, history tells us, Paul was beheaded.

Crucifixion was reserved for non-Romans and the lowest of the non-Romans. And it happened that when somebody stole, when somebody broke the law in some heinous way that they would nail them up to the cross. It was not an unusual event for somebody to be crucified in that day.

And if we were just here 2,000 some odd years later worshiping Jesus Christ, telling people about Jesus Christ just because he was crucified. Folks, that wasn’t strange. That wasn’t remarkable.

The way Jesus handled himself through the whole thing. The way Jesus fulfilled prophecy through the whole thing. The way God orchestrated events around the whole thing leading up to the fact that God even made the sun go dark demonstrated that this was no ordinary crucifixion.

Like I said, crucifixion itself was not out of the ordinary, but this one was no ordinary crucifixion. and our Messiah’s death was no ordinary event. How many times have you seen the sky go black at noon?

And again, I’m not talking about a cloud and it being overcast. That doesn’t happen. It may happen in an eclipse, but they don’t record anything. I believe they knew about eclipses then.

They didn’t understand them. Some cultures, even up to the time of Columbus, believed it was a giant. .

. I think there are people in Latin America today, I was told when I was a child, they may have advanced since then, So I hope I’m not insulting anybody. But when I was a child, I was told there were still cultures in Latin America that thought when there was an eclipse, it was a giant serpent eating the moon, and that people would fire machine guns.

But I think the Romans even knew about eclipses. People in this day even knew about eclipses. They may not have understood what they were, but they knew they were there.

And if that’s what had happened, I assume they would have written that down. But they don’t record anything like that. they say the sky went dark inexplicably.

It was important enough for Matthew to write it down. It was no ordinary event. And the fact that it was an out-of-the-ordinary event that took place exactly as Amos talked about five or six, seven, I can’t remember now, several hundred years before, happened exactly as Amos talked about and happened exactly as Jesus Christ was hanging on the cross for the last three hours of his crucifixion.

It may not have been the last three hours. but it happened while Jesus was hanging on the cross, pointed to the fact that that was not an ordinary event either. Too many things fell into place just the right way on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion for it to have been coincidence.

And it demonstrates to us not only that the Messiah’s death was under the Father’s control, but also that the Messiah’s death was no ordinary event. Jesus’ death was a singular one-time event in history. He doesn’t have to be crucified for us over and over again.

Folks, he doesn’t have to die and be present in the sacraments every Sunday. He doesn’t have to die again every time we sin. His sacrifice was once and for all.

And he’s able to save to the uttermost. And finally tonight, we need to see that the Messiah’s death brought defeat to the plans of the wicked. See, only God could cause the sun to go down at noon, and only God could darken the earth on their clear day. They were doing what they thought was a good thing for them.

They were bringing an end to Jesus’ teaching, Jesus’ ministry. They were getting rid of him because he had caused enough trouble from their perspective in Jerusalem and Judea already. He had gotten the people stirred up.

He was a threat to their political and their religious power, and they thought this will be the end of it. This is a good day because we’re going to put him to an end and put his message to an end. And on their bright, clear day, a red-letter day for Christ’s enemies, God turned the sky black, pointing again to the fact that Jesus was foretold in the book of Amos several hundred years before, that Jesus was exactly who they wanted him not to be.

Jesus was exactly who they denied he was. And that Jesus was dealing with their sins. That God was dealing with their sins.

The Messiah’s death brought about defeat for the plans of the wicked. Because see, he wouldn’t just linger there and die and go in the grave and be forgotten. He had told them that if they would.

. . The words that they turned and twisted and used against him, he had told them that if they would destroy that temple, if they would destroy the temple, he would raise it again in three days.

Not talking about Solomon’s temple, not talking about Herod’s temple, talking about the temple, his body. That if they would destroy it, he would raise it again in three days. and that’s exactly what he did.

He didn’t just die on this dark day. He finished the work of redemption. Where Satan, for all this time, for 6,000 years, and I do believe that.

. . I’m sorry, 4,000 years.

I believe the world is about 6,000 years old, according to a literal reading of Genesis. For 4,000 years, Satan had been at work trying to drag us away from God. And he succeeded with Adam and Eve.

And he’d been at work trying to keep us, keep us in his clutches, keep us bound under sin and death. And Jesus ended that once and for all. By making the perfect sacrifice that would make salvation, would make God’s grace available to all those who would come to him in faith.

Satan, on this bright day, this clear day, thought he had won. You know what? It’s an incredible thought to think Satan, who should have known better, underestimated our God.

And on this clear day, God brought in darkness. God rained on their parade, so to speak, because Jesus Christ said it is finished. And he died and he finished the work of redemption, and three days later he rose again.

And God said he would darken the earth in that clear day. It’s a literal darkness he’s talking about, because the Bible records it as literally being dark. But I kind of see it as him raining on their parade as well.

God ended the plans of the wicked that day. His death was meant to bring defeat to him. I believe Satan meant his death to bring defeat to his work, but God had a greater purpose in mind.

And God fulfilled the work of redemption through his Son. And folks, the incredible thing about this darkest day is not just the physical act that God made the Son dark. It’s not just that he ended their plans, not only of the religious leaders, but of Satan himself, ended their plans on this nice day when he turned the Son dark and his Son died.

and then rose again. It’s not just the physical act of turning things dark. If you believe in the Bible as I do, as I’m sure we all do here, if you believe in the accounts of the things that happened in the Old Testament and the New Testament, folks, God created the earth out of nothingness in six literal days.

The idea that God can control the sun enough to make it go dark at noon is not, please understand the context of what I’m saying, is not that impressive in comparison to the other things that God has done. We serve an amazing God for whom this was just nothing. What’s incredible about this is the fact that God did all of this to deal with our sin.

Folks, in the book of Amos, when he talks about the sky going dark, it’s in the middle of these two verses about the earthquakes and mourning and God dealing with sin there. And God did deal with Israel’s sin. The incredible thing about this is that God could have continued to deal with our sin the way he had always dealt with it, just by handing out punishment.

And folks, that’s still an option, as we talked about this morning. If we want to try to pay for it ourselves, that punishment, that eternal punishment, is still an option if we so choose. But the incredible thing is that God didn’t just stop there and say, this is how I’m always going to deal with sin.

He came, and on this dark day, he dealt with sin once and for all by punishing it, pouring out his wrath and his justice on the person of Jesus Christ and the sin that he carried to the cross. That’s what’s incredible about this. Not the darkness, but the fact that the darkness that took place when Jesus was crucified points to the fact that God was dealing with our sin.

God was dealing with our sin. And glory to God, he dealt with